Author Archives: John Flannery

The right to vote

Posted on by |

voteflagThe greatest engine for political freedom is the freedom to have a say in your government, to choose who represents your interests, to vote.  Too many failed to exercise this hard won right in the recent election.

When the barons of England confronted King John in 1215 in London with force of arms, the King agreed that the Barons could overrule the King should he break the agreement he made with them.  King John broke his word the instant the Barons left London.  But the Magna Carta was an aspiration to defy the monarch and was found by Sir Edward Coke to encompass not only the nobles but all the subjects of the crown.

Our Virginia Charter of 1606 was drafted by Sir Coke and it said we would enjoy all the liberties of any Englishman.

But that’s not what happened.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the Governed,” it was because King George III governed without our consent.  Jefferson charged in the Declaration of Independence that the King “dissolved [our] Representative Houses” because they opposed “with manly Firmness [the King’s] Invasions on the Rights of the People,”  “impos[ed] taxes …without our consent,” and unilaterally decided the laws that bound us.

50,000 colonials killed or wounded was the price we paid in a revolution to represent ourselves.

In our Constitution in 1787, “we the people” pledged that we would “form a more perfect union,” and our institutions have since become “more perfect,” extending the vote to persons of color, and to women, and having Senators chosen by the people instead of by the several state legislatures.

There are nation-states where the people are forced to vote and taxed if they don’t.  Not here.

There are nation-states that intimidate and brutalize those who vote the wrong way.  Not here.

When I was a young New York federal prosecutor, we would draw duty on Election Day to respond to any allegation of voter fraud.  I never got a call.  Of the hundreds of millions of votes cast in the United States, there is only a handful of persons nationwide ever prosecuted for voter fraud.

In seeking that more perfect union, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to outlaw discrimination against voters.

In response to the 2000 election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, reforming how we vote and setting standards for voting.

We have more work to do to “perfect” our system.

But we have the vote.

The shame of course is that many don’t vote.

Apathy, skepticism, ideological opposition compromise the right of the public to say how they are governed, enabling the cynical to game caucuses and primaries with fewer voters, making forced choices in general elections, again with fewer voters.

The history of individual liberty is the fight to vote.  When we don’t vote, we put at risk our liberty.  So let us vote if we would be free!

Jail House Snitches Lie

Posted on by |

jailCellWe all know jail house snitches are of a lowly character that can’t be trusted.  When I was a NY federal prosecutor, I would never think of using one in the grand jury or on the witness stand in a criminal case.

However convincing the rat, however seemingly useful the testimony to make your prosecution, you had to worry that you were being had – so that the snitch could get what he wanted, some consideration on his sentence, favors to ease his custody, or funds and rewards for his commissary or outside bank account for “cooperating.”

Often the jail house snitch seemingly offers “inside information” on what the target of your investigation said about an offense while the target was in jail, in the yard, at the sally port, by his cell, “admitting” to some aspect of the case you’re pursuing that helps you “make” your case.

These mimetic monsters absorb small and large details from an unwary or reckless prosecutor’s questions and weave a story that “fits,” that helps make a conviction possible in a difficult case where the prosecutor may feel he’s suffering an evidential shortfall.

Our criminal justice system is hardly perfect to begin with but taking one of these snitches and adding them to the mix of a jury trial is to infect an already challenged process with an ingredient you almost certainly know is flawed.  Yet it happens all too often that prosecutors use these snitches at trial in capital or murder cases.

Another challenging aspect of any criminal prosecution is how you use accomplice testimony, meaning someone who was involved in the crime, who “flips,” and agrees to testify for the government in exchange for some consideration on the charges he’ll face or the time he’ll spend in custody, from probation to fewer years than if he took his chances at trial.  You can appreciate how risky it is to shore up an accomplice’s testimony with a jail house snitch.

We will likely be having court arguments, even evidentiary hearings with prosecutors and investigators testifying, so that the court may decide whether a jail house snitch lied at a first degree murder trial in Loudoun County that resulted in a conviction on June 16, 2014, and a jury recommendation that the Accused be imprisoned for life.  Continue reading →

Smaller is better – for learning

Posted on by |

smallschoolWho really thinks that large factory size schools where principals and teachers carry walkie-talkies to manage the place are better than small schools with fewer students in each class room?

If you’ve ever taught a class, or attended one, you know you can give or get more attention in a smaller class, and it’s hard for any son or daughter to get lost or hide from the teacher’s attention when the class is smaller.

We all know what drives the super-sized school is the uncontrolled residential development that, these days, burdens all manner of resources including whether our aquifers can continue to supply enough water for all the wells that will be necessary to serve the residential deluge as yet unbuilt.

We have folk, mostly elected, who rattle the budgetary sabre, threatening to close the small legacy schools, running them down, slandering them – in my opinion.

It’s a test of political wills, to see if the political class can cauterize the right-minded impulse of communities and parents who prefer that small schools educate our young.

What’s the proof that small schools are better? Continue reading →

America has a heart!

Posted on by |

marriagestickfiguresWhen a friend wants something you don’t understand, you respect your friend’s choice.

It may not be true of everything but, when it comes to personal relations, we really should err on the side of support and approval for a friend.

If we can’t support and approve, we should at least be tolerant of another’s choices even when our personal religious belief contradicts our friend’s choice.

Same sex marriage has been in dispute a long time, and is often rightly compared with the offensive intolerance once legally visited upon mixed racial couples.

The federal and state courts have almost uniformly found any state prohibition of same sex marriage to reflect a private moral view that advances no legitimate government interest, and that violates an individual’s constitutional right to marry regardless of gender.

I expected that the Supreme Court would leave this constitutional issue to the states and the lower federal courts unless there was a split in the lower federal court decisions.  Justice Ruth Baden Ginsburg seemed to be saying the same thing at a public forum when she commented that the three federal appeal courts considering the question were in agreement.

The Supreme Court foreshadowed its disapproval of any gay marriage ban when it threw out a federal law that refused benefits to same sex couples.

On October 6, 2014, the Supreme Court therefore found somewhat unsurprisingly no reason to give a hearing to lower court decisions in agreement — that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right to same sex partners to marry.

The U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to hear cert petitions from several “agreeable” federal circuits, thus affirmed the lower court decisions, legalizing same sex marriages in Virginia (Rainer v. Bostic, McQuiqq v. Bostic, Schaefer v. Bostic), Wisconsin (Walker v. Way), Indiana (Bogan v. Baskin), Utah (Herbert v. Kitchen) and Oklahoma (Smith v. Bishop).

The Supreme Court’s tacit approval of these appellate court holdings likely means states in those same federal circuits will approve same sex marriage – and that includes Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

On Friday, October 10, 2014, sure enough, a North Carolina federal judge, Max O. Cogburn, Jr., from Asheville, did just that; he struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional, even though the ban had been approved by the voters in 2012.  Judge Cogburn said: “This issue before this court is neither a political issue nor a moral issue.  It’s a legal issue.”  Sheriff Deputies, Chad Biggs, 35, and Chris Creech, 46, were among the first wed after Judge Cogburn’s ruling.

On Friday, October 10, 2014, the Supreme Court denied a stay to a federal appeals court decision that granted freedom to same sex couples to marry in Idaho.  Idaho officials in favor of the ban argued to the high court, a little too much in the court’s face, if you ask this litigator, that, if they meant to signal approval by the Supreme Court of gay marriage, they should deny the stay.  The Supreme Court denied the stay.

In Leesburg, Virginia, where we make our law offices, Carla Rhoads and Cindy Losasso, a couple for 16 years, got their marriage license and reportedly were the first gay marriage in Loudoun County.

America has found the heart to approve same sex couples and – here in Virginia – we can now truly say – “Virginia is for lovers!” – for all lovers.

Lock that digital back door

Posted on by |

banksafeIt’s time to lock that digital back door to your private information to defend against the government’s unrestricted intrusion on what was once presumed to be the safe and easy bit and byte beltway that we call the Internet.

You may not think to lock the doors to your country home until there’s a burglary or home invasion in your neighborhood.

We enjoyed that open country door freedom on the Internet until the sobering disclosures more than a year ago by former CIA computer specialist, Edward Snowden.

Snowden has since made it crystal clear that, if you’re not encrypting what your communicating, your information is likely flowing by the petabyte into NSA’s multi-million dollar data-devouring Super Cray Computer, once called “the Black Widow.”

Since the disclosures, the President, the NSA, and the Congress have lacked the resolve to discourage the government’s uninhibited surveillance of us, its citizens. Continue reading →

Is intolerance a disability?

Posted on by |
Diana Flannery on stage with “A Place To Be.”

Diana Flannery on stage with “A Place To Be.”

“I know I have a learning disability,” said Diana Flannery, my daughter.

“I have to organize my thoughts before I speak,” said Diana, “So I stutter.  Sometimes I don’t.”

“I think fine but I hear some people say, and I can hear them say it, that I’m stupid.  I don’t know what to think of people like that.”

“I know I’m in good company, others deal with disabilities, and many help.”

The Good Book says to remove the obstruction from your own eye before judging another.  After all, who among us is perfect, physically or otherwise?  Yet intolerance abounds.

Is intolerance a moral disability? Continue reading →

Teaching Johnny to think

Posted on by |

Virginia has its own standards of learning so it’s really hard to compare how we match up with everyone else in the United States and around the world.

But even by Virginia’s standards of learning (the SOLs), reading scores are down.  Every fourth child reportedly failed to pass the grade-level reading test, and the statistical results were worse among elementary and middle school students.  About 3 out of 10 students didn’t pass the state math exam either.  If you lack reading skills, and are challenged by math, how are you able to think very well?

Some may say it’s an improvement that we have state-wide standards.  But it’s not acceptable that we have a balkanized set of conflicting and variable nationwide standards.

We compete in an ever shrinking world.  Our internet preeminence is up against stiff competition from Chinese tech companies Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, and Alibaba’s US IPO was described recently as “a wake-up call for U.S. tech.”  It should also be a “wake-up call” for educators, parents and students.

Our standard of living depends on our ability to export goods and services, and really to out-think our competitors.

We need a standard by which we can agree what Johnny knows about “the three Rs,” to be able to compare him with everyone else, and to devise an educational strategy to redress whatever lack of proficiency Johnny may suffer in Reading or Math.  Continue reading →

America – a fortress of intolerance?

Posted on by |

No one is originally from the United States – except for the endangered population of Native Americans that have survived this nation’s repeated efforts to wipe them out.

Everyone who is here today came from someplace else, fleeing hostile governments, uninhabitable lands, or drawn here because of a belief in the promise of America.

When I was a kid, one of my heroes was Igor Sikorsky, an engineering genius who made flying machines and, because he was inspired by DaVinci’s hand-drawing of a machine lifted by a rotating disk, set upon the task of creating the helicopter.  Igor came to America from Russia because he had to flee the Bolsheviks.

Albert Einstein had to flee Europe because he was Jewish and met some resistance to becoming an American Citizen.  We remember this brilliant physicist, ensconced at Princeton, partly concealed beneath an unruly mane of whitening hair.  But there were those who weren’t sure he should be a citizen.

The Flannerys came from County Mayo to New York for reasons since obscured by the passing generations.  My maternal grandmother left Ireland for the United States at 6 years of age.  These immigrants from the sod met with some resistance because they were both Irish and Roman Catholic. Continue reading →

Family Values

Posted on by |
Paul Huber – joking around

Paul Huber – joking around

We don’t always appreciate the filaments of family and friends that favor us in life.  We may not assess the significance of our connectedness, what we truly mean to each other, even when we finally lose one of our family to death.  There are so many insignificant distractions from what really matters in life.  But no one missed what mattered about Paul Huber.

Paul was born on October 4, 1951 and a few minutes later, his Mom, Carolyn, gave birth to his twin brother, David.

Paul and David were not identical twins, nor were they rivals, nor was Paul or David into being known as “a twin.”  “I’m my own person,” Paul said. David said, “He was the cool guy.  I was the nerd.”

Dad, Robert Huber, was a serious journalist and a copy editor for the Washington Post and an editor for the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Roberta, the middle child, said, Paul learned to play “his first electric guitar” as a kid when Dad took the family to Tokyo for work, in the 60s, living there for three years, while Dad was an editor for the Stars and Stripes.

The family moved to the country, to Loudoun County, when Dad said, “I want some fresh air and peace and quiet.” Continue reading →

The enlargement of liberty – our progress

Posted on by |
Thomas Jefferson: "All men are created equal"

Thomas Jefferson: “All men are created equal”

When Thomas Jefferson penned the words in our Declaration of Independence in 1776 that “all Men are created equal,” he stated what the Continental Congress believed to be the proper condition of men in the colonies in relation to the offenses suffered under Great Britain.

Unfortunately, all men were not treated as “equals” within the several colonies either.

Even after our federal constitution with its Bill of Rights, slaves and women enjoyed no rights, unalienable or otherwise.  They were property.

The Declaration was an unfulfilled promise of equality.

A former U.S. Senator said: “The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.” Continue reading →