Accessing a confidential database for personal gain, downloading the information, and passing it on to a police department employee is fairly unforgettable. It’s Southers’s selective memory on a fairly egregious abuse of power that’s giving a lot of us pause. He either remembered the details or he truly forgot. Which is worse? Gee, I don’t know . . . Does it matter?

PatHMV: It’s reason to ask for a bit more about the situation, but I would almost guarantee you that anybody with a background in law enforcement has bent those rules at least once in the course of a long career. It’s against the rules, and it was appropriate for him to be censured, but unless it revealed a pattern of activity, I fail to see how it disqualifies the man for public office, even high office.

Because it does reveal a pattern of activity. All policemen abuse their powers for personal reasons.

I knew a guy who was behind a car going home. When the guy got to his house he discovered the guy he was behind was a policeman. The policeman had a bad day and wanted to fight with the guy.

The policemen made a call to check the guys car license while the policeman was off duty and for the personal reason of anger at the guy.

A guy went to an internet bulletin board frequented by policemen. The guy had a disagreement with the policemen. Some petty policemen was so upset by the internet conversation that he broke the law by abusing his police powers to find out for personal reasons about the man on the internet he was talking to.

Police abuse their powers as if abuse of power was one of their powers.

OTOH, law enforcement includes plenty of dolts with internet connections, too. Especially the ones that created the TSA’s watch list. (Or perhaps worse, the jokes I’ve sometimes heard from LEO’s about using the NCIC as a dating registry…)

Anyhow, checking up on who is living with your young kid is not stalking your ex-wife. Apparently, using the NCIC to do so was a violation of the rules, but it was a minor and quite understandable one.

Let’s not get buried in such minor things and forget what is important. Such as appointing a tax cheat to head the treasury, an ethically-challenged lawyer and political operative as Attorney General[1], or a self-declared communist as “jobs czar”.

[1] I know, I know, that describes virtually all the Attorneys General, at least since JFK appointed his brother to the job.

PatHMV: Fub, no, it’s an indication that nobody’s bothering to enforce the rules much at all against most cops. The penalty itself would be fine, if only it were imposed on a more consistent and regular basis.

Which is arguably the heart and soul of a police state: police can do whatever they please, whether lawful or not.

So, what is a workable means to discourage escalation and proliferation of the offense?

If, as some have asserted, there is no actual confidential information in the database, then why not make entirely anonymous public access available?

Why not drop the pretense that only police should have access to the information?

PatHMV: Guest12345… You do realize that if we actually jailed people for every single infraction of the law, whatever the circumstances, we’d be living in a police state, don’t you?

<sarcasm>
Far better to have laws that we can enforce only when someone who is icky needs to be slapped down.</sarcasm>

If you “make an example” out of one or two guys, by giving harsh penalties, and then go back to not paying any attention to the problem at all, then the misbehavior will continue, because the deterrent effect is much more in the getting caught at all, rather than in the potential penalty if one is unlucky (or impolitic) enough to be the one isolated individual singled out for special punishment.

PatHMV: For every Souther who gets busted, I assure you there are plenty of cops who don’t (the FBI actually tends to treat such things pretty tough; agents, unlike cops, are pretty careful not to “roll the gold” — flash their badge — to avoid speeding tickets, because they do face disciplinary action if busted doing so). If you want to propose increased formal censure, and greater penalties for subsequent infractions, by stepping up the monitoring process, I’m fine with that.

If, as you say, “there are plenty of cops who don’t”, then it isn’t unreasonable to conclude that “formal censure” or other administrative actions aren’t very effective at present.

As for Souther himself, you know, a lot of people actually learn lessons from making a mistake, getting caught and being punished. Maybe that’s the case here, maybe not. Certainly it’s appropriate to ask him about it.

TSA leadership involves — arguably, at its core, is — the constant striking of tough balances between encroachments on personal freedom on the one hand, and safety on the other.

Were you being ironical, there? It’s difficult to tell, anymore.

Faced with a candidate who apparently screwed up notably in precisely this regard, the committee should of course learn the details and consider them wisely in the context of the overall nomination.

PatHMV: As to the more general point, my comment about a police state remains valid. If you impose draconian penalties (loss of job and jail time) to ALL infractions like this, then the reality is that you will catch fewer people doing wrong, because fewer people will be willing to “rat out” a coworker for breaking the rules. “Zero-tolerance” policies which impose harsh penalties for relatively minor infractions mean that you’ll periodically have a crack-down so upper management can show that they’re “doing something,” followed by extended periods where everybody continues business as usual. And the crack-downs inevitably are used to weed out folks who are not wanted for other reasons… they don’t play the right politics, kiss the right butts, etc.

I understand the argument. It seems to be premised on the idea that the “broken windows” approach of cracking down on petty crime, so successful in NYC during Giuliani’s mayorship (and also in many other localities), could not possibly work when applied to criminals who are government actors.

I don’t understand why that should be so.

I’m more concerned, as usual, with the fact that it takes Google Image search to find out that the nominee is African-American. Is that supposed to be a secret?

Unless one believes race should be mentioned in the lead of the release and the headline of each news report, what is the reason for concern?

PatHMV: Also, Fub, I don’t think you’re correct in your understanding of Guest12345’s comment. He seems to have compared this offense to embezzlement, contract fraud, murder, etc., and spoke of “even enforcement of the law.” While it was aimed in part at office holders (bar cops who violate this law from ever serving in public office again), I detected a fair amount of “treat all crimes seriously” sentiment. This is, of course, a not uncommon theme in libertarian thinking, that you should either vigorously enforce a law or repeal it.

Please read my post again. You conflated three entirely different points.

1) That government employees have resources available to them for specific purposes and using those resources for other than those purposes should result in criminal prosecutions and long ranging penalties.

2) The silliness of saying “Yawn. This kind of stuff happens all the time.” as a justification of allowing bad behavior. Embezzlement and fraud happen all the time. Doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Murder was an absurdity included for those who, for whatever moral failing they suffer, don’t seem to care about white collar crimes.

3) The importance of the law applying to everyone without being moderated by position or status. Too often public sector employees get subjected to “progressive discipline”, while those who are not public sector employees get subjected to the criminal justice system for similar or, in some cases, near identical actions.

The suggestion of locking up everyone over every little thing, that’s just you reading into what I wrote. However if you’d like my to opinion a the idea you presented: I’ll take a police state where everyone is locked up irrespective of who they are, over the kind of state you get when there are excessive laws and selective prosecutions influenced by nepotism, political clout, or financial status. For example, on one hand there are people in jail for failing to pay their taxes. On the other hand we have Charlie Rangel and Tim Geithner. That’s flat wrong.

As far as asking for a “background check” that could mean anything like a criminal record check or a verification of an existing person, fair game for a dude shacking up with your ex & son.

Lets stop pretending, our privacy laws are non-existant and are only used by the state to hide their criminal activities, not ours.

As to the more general point, my comment about a police state remains valid. If you impose draconian penalties (loss of job and jail time) to ALL infractions like this, then the reality is that you will catch fewer people doing wrong, because fewer people will be willing to “rat out” a coworker for breaking the rules. “Zero-tolerance” policies which impose harsh penalties for relatively minor infractions mean that you’ll periodically have a crack-down so upper management can show that they’re “doing something,” followed by extended periods where everybody continues business as usual. And the crack-downs inevitably are used to weed out folks who are not wanted for other reasons… they don’t play the right politics, kiss the right butts, etc.

PatHMV: Guest12345… You do realize that if we actually jailed people for every single infraction of the law, whatever the circumstances, we’d be living in a police state, don’t you?

I think Guest12345′s point is not that we should jail every person who commits a crime, but every person who holds a government position and uses that position to commit a crime.

There is a huge difference between the two.

I don’t think that the latter would lead to a police state; in fact it would, if enforced, tend to prevent behaviors by government actors that lead to a police state.

If an ordinary citizen, not a government official, had done what Southers did, access a confidential government database for personal purposes (or any other non-government purpose) he would likely face jail time if caught. So why shouldn’t a government official face the same penalty?

Scott from Fairfax: Re: Dearieme“caught by the media with his pants down”: I fail to see the analogy between abuse of office and philandering.My original post assumed a new candidate who never before held public office. I agree with you, philandering and abuse of office have nothing to do with one another. Unfortunately, to some voters and the press it can be a death sentence for a candiacy, i.e.: Gary Hart and John Edwards to name just two.

So the fact that John Edwards orchestrated an elaborate cover-up, including paying off someone to falsely claim to be the father, as well as apparently misusing campaign funds to pay his mistress, has nothing to do with abuse of office?

Gary Hart didn’t misuse his office, but I don’t take umbrage at the voters punishing that sort of extreme stupidity.

Nick

“The boyfriend had moved in with my ex-wife, from whom I had separated only a short time before, and I was concerned for the safety of her and my infant son, who was also living with them,” he wrote. “The database search revealed an outstanding warrant for his arrest, about which I informed my ex-wife.”

And the information contained in such databases isn’t secret–you can’t have a secret criminal record, or secret wants and warrants.

I’m more concerned, as usual, with the fact that it takes Google Image search to find out that the nominee is African-American. Is that supposed to be a secret?

I’m sorry, but why exactly would you say the same thing about an abuse of office and a religious ritual?

Because both points reflect poorly on judgment (as would rousting someone for personal reasons, or participating in a snake-handling revival meeting), although each could be overcome by other factors during a general assessment.

Widmerpool: It’s the attitidue expressed in this post–we must know all the details of every slip-up, even one that happened over 20 years ago–that accounts for the poor and declining quality of candidates for government positions. Soon only Widmerpools will be governing over the lot of you. And don’t you worry, I’ve remembered every slight suffered–especially being hit in the face with a ripe banana at school. Just you wait!

The problem is that this is somewhat relevant to his job running TSA. Not all political foibles are equally relevant. The Sec. of the Treasury being a tax cheat is relevant, while the save tax evasion in, say, the Dept. of Interior would be far less relevant, since the IRS is under Treasury, and not Interior. This is one of those agencies where abuse of this sort of power is probably relevant. Much more so than, say, the Forest Service.

That said, I don’t expect this abuse, so long ago, to keep him from being confirmed. The Senate confirmed Geitner (tax evasion) and Holder (trading Presidential pardons for campaign contributions, etc.) to much higher posts with greater blemishes.

D Palmer: Yawn. This kind of stuff happens all the time. Fathers/mothers have cop friends check out their daughter’s boyfriend. Son’s have mom’s new BF checked out.

And every single cop who actually does the check should be jailed. And forever barred from any kind of public sector job, including elected offices. We don’t provide powers and tools to law enforcement and investigative agencies so that some subset of the population can use then use those powers and tools to violate the rights of the rest of the population.

FYI. Lots of stuff happens all the time. And we rarely hear people suggest that because of that we should just ignore those events. Things like embezzlement. Contract fraud. Murder. etc. Personally, I prefer living in a society that attempts to maintain equality for all and an even enforcement of the law. Maybe you think differently.