Mediaboss Marketing

Forum columnist Jack Zaleski recently wrote an article berating Republicans for their reaction to the FBI raid against Trump . This letter is not about Trump; rather its about a disgusting comment Zaleski made, completely devoid of any historical awareness.

For context, Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment to the US constitution during New Yorks tax case against him. This means he is refusing to testify in court or speak with law enforcement.

In response, Zaleski said,Resorting to the 5th is just short of admitting guilt. The text says no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself... No criminal case. The implication is obvious: The 45th president knows hes guilty of a crime.Anyone with a shred of civics education should call that out for what it is: a crock of bulls***.

The criminal justice system in the U.S. is not perfect. Criminals are rarely caught red-handed. It is the job of law enforcement to gather evidence, find a suspect, then it is the job of a prosecutor to prove that suspect is guilty.

There was a time when suspects were required to testify for their own defense. If they did not testify, they had no defense. But because prosecutors make careers out of convicting thousands of suspects, this exchange is always weighted against the defendant. The defendant, even if they are purely innocent, may misspeak. They may make an assumption that turns out to be false and the prosecution will accuse them of lying. They may be a victim of misidentification and their testimony would only entrench this mishap.

If the prosecution has a solid case against the defendant, they must be able to make that case without relying on the testimony of the suspect.

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the purpose of the Fifth Amendment is to protect innocent people who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances. (Grunewald v US, 1957)

In 1966, the court expanded Fifth Amendment protections to apply in police interrogation rooms. Too often police will lock people in windowless rooms for hours on end until they say something incriminating. But according to the case Miranda v. Arizona, all people have a constitutional right to not be interrogated by the police.

According to the Innocence Project, of all the convictions that are proven to be false with DNA evidence, 29% made a false confession. Police can and frequently do use psychological techniques to induce people to make incriminating statements, even if theyre false. A suspect sitting alone in that room doesnt stand a chance against the resources of the state, but with one exception: they have the Fifth Amendment to protect them.

In Ullmann v US (1954), the Supreme Court said, "Too many, even those who should be better advised, view this privilege as a shelter for wrongdoers. They too readily assume that those who invoke it are either guilty of crime or commit perjury in claiming the privilege."

That is exactly what Zaleski did in his letter. I am not defending Trump. Trump made similar statements when Hillary Clinton invoked her Fifth Amendment rights. Trump was just as wrong as Zaleski. But Zaleski should know better. Hes not a politician trying to woo a crowd.

Invoking ones Fifth Amendment right to stay silent is not an admission of guilt. It is not evidence of any crime. It cannot be used in court to suggest you did anything wrong.

Every defense lawyer will tell you to take full advantage of your constitutional rights, especially if you are innocent.

William Smith lives in Fargo.

This is letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

The rest is here:
Letter: Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt - INFORUM

GRAND RAPIDS, MI Multiple potential witnesses in the Gov. Grethen Whitmer kidnap trial invoked Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Stephen Robeson, described as a double agent for helping the FBI, then sharing information with defendants, and Brandon Caserta, acquitted in an earlier trial, were among those who refused to testify.

The jury trial in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids ended Tuesday, Aug. 23, with Barry Croft Jr., 46, of Bear, Delaware, and Adam Fox, 38, of Wyoming, Michigan, convicted of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to use a weapons of mass destruction.

An earlier trial ended in a mistrial for Croft and Fox when jurors, who acquitted Caserta and Daniel Harris, could not reach a unanimous decision.

The various people who refused to testify in the trial that featured nearly two weeks of testimony was one of several themes that took hold.

Here are five takeaways of the latest trial:

Taking the Fifth

Several witnesses, including those who acted as informants, invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Robeson, a Wisconsin man who provided information to the FBI in the 2020 investigation, was referenced repeatedly at both trials but did not testify.

By my signature below, I hereby assert, invoke, or otherwise claim my rights under the 5th Amendment to the United States Constitution to not be compelled to offer testimony that may be incriminating, he said, in a filing by his attorney, Lawrence Phelan.

Adam Fox, front row on left, and Barry Croft Jr., back row, third from left, are on trial in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids for allegedly conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. (Illustration by Forrest Miller)

As an informant, he allegedly set up meetings and field-training exercises and encouraged others involvement in the kidnapping plot. He also told a defendant about an upcoming arrest and urged another to get rid of evidence, the government said.

Caserta, who was acquitted at the first trial, invoked his Fifth Amendment protections.

But outside of the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, he told FOX 17: I think its ridiculous that the governments still going to try to continue to push this narrative that these people are actually terrorists, and that actually wanted to do violence.

He said the men were a group of dudes who shoot guns and talk crap.

The FBI

Defense attorneys accused the FBI of orchestrating a domestic-terrorism plot - with undercover agents and a dozen informants - to boost careers. Christopher Gibbons, representing Fox, said the FBI worked to turn the defendants big talk into some type of actionable plan.

He noted that an FBI special agent told an informant to get Fox focused on the plan.

Crofts attorney, Josh Blanchard, said his client had no previous connection to Fox or the Wolverine Watchmen, a Michigan militia allegedly tied to the kidnap plot, until the FBI and informants put them in touch. He said Croft became a target for his online criticism of the FBI an anti-immigration fugitives death in Texas.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler called the claims nonsense.

This whole thing was (Crofts) and Adams idea, Kessler told jurors.

Hapless defendants

If they werent facing such serious charges, Croft and Fox might have had their feelings hurt at trial. Their own attorneys portrayed them as pot-smoking losers incapable of plotting Whitmers kidnapping never mind getting others to buy into the idea. A Delaware State Police trooper, assigned to a terrorism task force, said Croft was known as bonehead by investigators.

When asked if he referred to Croft as a moron in a text, he said: It could be Mr. Croft or it could be anyone in the group.

Hes frankly high on marijuana all the time, Blanchard said.

Gibbons called Fox hapless and told jurors that Fox was so enamored by an informants military-combat background that he drew the ire of his girlfriend.

Public officials a target

Top law-enforcement officials said the verdicts were important to protecting public officials and the public.

No governor, no public official should have to contend with what Gov. Whitmer contended with here. All of our elected officials, everyone, deserves to live in safety, not in fear.

James Tarasca, special agent in charge of the FBIs Detroit field office, said: These defendants believed their anti-government views justified violence. Todays verdict sends a clear message that they were wrong in their assessment.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel, whose office is handling state cases related to the alleged kidnapping plot, issued a statement, too: Those who threaten the lives of public officials must be held accountable. No one should have to forfeit their safety or that of their loved ones in exchange for pursuing public service.

In their own words, actions

With two undercover FBI agents and a dozen informants, investigators had real-time information about the defendants. The FBI got past op-sec, or operation security, using, for instance, hidden recorders in key fobs. Adam Fox required attendees of a meeting in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area business Vac Shack, where the unwitting owner let him live as a favor - leave their cellphones upstairs.

The FBI had audio, video, encrypted text messages and social-media posts even a sign up sheet at one event that were shown to jurors. The defense acknowledged that Croft and Fox had strong anti-government views but said it was just talk, protected by the First Amendment. The two had no way of carrying out what has been called a fantastical plot.

The words of the defendants were apparently damning to jurors. They had talked about kidnapping Whitmer at her Elk Rapids summer home and putting her on trial for treason. There was video of training sessions. Jurors saw a smiling Fox light up a Taser.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher OConnor said: Theres no doubt what they wanted to do and who they wanted to kidnap.

Related:

Judge in Whitmer kidnapping plot trial explains why juror wasnt dismissed after attorney complaint

Guilty verdict in Whitmer kidnap case highlights anti-government threats to public officials

Men found guilty of leading plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer

Did FBI save lives or is it to blame? Jury deliberates Gov. Whitmer kidnap case

Defendants in Gov. Whitmer kidnap trial called pot-smoking morons

FBI pushed hapless client into Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot, attorney says

Prosecutor rests in Gov. Whitmer kidnap case after undercover FBI agent recalls secret trip to her house

Lawyers object to limit on cross examination in Gov. Whitmer kidnap case

Kidnapping Gov. Whitmer was all they talked about, former co-defendant testifies

Man in Gov. Whitmer kidnap case wanted to hang her on TV, witness says

Alleged leader of Gov. Whitmer kidnap case excited driving past her home, recording shows

FBI says defendants in Gov. Whitmer kidnap case posed threat; defense raises concern about juror

Suspect in secret recording played at trial suggested killing Gov. Whitmers security detail

Defendant in Gov. Whitmer kidnap case wanted to build an army, jury told

Defendants in alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer were big talkers, had no plan, attorneys tell jurors

Retrial of 2 suspects in alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer ready to begin

Defense attorney says Gov. Whitmer was never in any real danger

More:
Taking the Fifth, FBI attacked: 5 takeaways of Gov. Whitmer kidnap trial - MLive.com

Most people older than 30 probably remember doing research with good old-fashioned encyclopedias. Youd pull a heavy volume from the shelf, check the index for your topic of interest, then flip to the appropriate page and start reading. It wasnt as easy as typing a few words into the Google search bar, but on the plus side, you knew that the information you found in the pages of the Britannica or the World Book was accurate and true.

Not so with internet research today. The overwhelming multitude of sources was confusing enough, but add the proliferation of misinformation and its a wonder any of us believe a word we read online.

Wikipedia is a case in point. As of early 2020, the sites English version was averaging about 255 million page views per day, making it the eighth-most-visited website on the internet. As of last month, it had moved up to spot number seven, and the English version currently has over 6.5 million articles.

But as high-traffic as this go-to information source may be, its accuracy leaves something to be desired; the page about the sites own reliability states, The online encyclopedia does not consider itself to be reliable as a source and discourages readers from using it in academic or research settings.

Metaof the former Facebookwants to change this. In a blog post published last month, the companys employees describe how AI could help make Wikipedia more accurate.

Though tens of thousands of people participate in editing the site, the facts they add arent necessarily correct; even when citations are present, theyre not always accurate nor even relevant.

Meta is developing a machine learning model that scans these citations and cross-references their content to Wikipedia articles to verify that not only the topics line up, but specific figures cited are accurate.

This isnt just a matter of picking out numbers and making sure they match; Metas AI will need to understand the content of cited sources (though understand is a misnomer, as complexity theory researcher Melanie Mitchell would tell you, because AI is still in the narrow phase, meaning its a tool for highly sophisticated pattern recognition, while understanding is a word used for human cognition, which is still a very different thing).

Metas model will understand content not by comparing text strings and making sure they contain the same words, but by comparing mathematical representations of blocks of text, which it arrives at using natural language understanding (NLU) techniques.

What we have done is to build an index of all these web pages by chunking them into passages and providing an accurate representation for each passage, Fabio Petroni, Metas Fundamental AI Research tech lead manager, told Digital Trends. That is not representing word-by-word the passage, but the meaning of the passage. That means that two chunks of text with similar meanings will be represented in a very close position in the resulting n-dimensional space where all these passages are stored.

The AI is being trained on a set of four million Wikipedia citations, and besides picking out faulty citations on the site, its creators would like it to eventually be able to suggest accurate sources to take their place, pulling from a massive index of data thats continuously updating.

One big issue left to work out is working in a grading system for sources reliability. A paper from a scientific journal, for example, would receive a higher grade than a blog post. The amount of content online is so vast and varied that you can find sources to support just about any claim, but parsing the misinformation from the disinformation (the former means incorrect, while the latter means deliberately deceiving), and the peer-reviewed from the non-peer-reviewed, the fact-checked from the hastily-slapped-together, is no small taskbut a very important one when it comes to trust.

Meta has open-sourced its model, and those who are curious can see a demo of the verification tool. Metas blog post noted that the company isnt partnering with Wikimedia on this project, and that its still in the research phase and not currently being used to update content on Wikipedia.

If you imagine a not-too-distant future where everything you read on Wikipedia is accurate and reliable, wouldnt that make doing any sort of research a bit too easy? Theres something valuable about checking and comparing various sources ourselves, is there not? It was a big a leap to go from paging through heavy books to typing a few words into a search engine and hitting Enter; do we really want Wikipedia to move from a research jumping-off point to a gets-the-last-word source?

In any case, Metas AI research team will continue working toward a tool to improve the online encyclopedia. I think we were driven by curiosity at the end of the day, Petroni said. We wanted to see what was the limit of this technology. We were absolutely not sure if [this AI] could do anything meaningful in this context. No one had ever tried to do something similar.

Image Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Read more here:
Meta Is Building an AI to Fact-Check WikipediaAll 6.5 Million Articles - Singularity Hub

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. People can become involved in politics in a number of ways. They can vote, volunteer in campaigns, or even run for office themselves. But when it comes to improving the state of the U.S. democracy, what can the average citizen do?

Christopher Beem, managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, attempted to answer that question in his upcoming book, "The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy."

The book describes the characteristics and practices such as humility, courage, and charity that Beem said can help people become better democratic citizens. According to Beem, the book was inspired by a question he was often asked when people learned about his area of study.

Many people would ask me what the average citizen can do to defend our democracy, and its a good question that deserves a serious answer, Beem said. People might not be able to change the way the news is reported or overcome the power of lobbyists and campaign donations. But we can step up and analyze our own behavior and make small changes to the way we think and act to help stand up for our democracy.

According to Beem, one of the greatest current threats to democracy in the U.S. is tribalism, the tendency for people to form groups, cooperate within them, and distrust and disparage those outside the group. He argued that tribalism is a basic neurological tendency for people to be drawn to others similar to themselves, and that it affects almost everyone.

Beem said that while democracies are generally vulnerable to tribalism for example, the two-party system in the U.S. tends to split people into one team or the other the problem has reached new heights in the U.S. in recent years.

It has swamped the banks of our democratic life and turned us into two ever-more-hostile camps, Beem wrote in the books introduction. In this moment, the other side is no longer an opponent but an existential threat; norms of behaviors are for suckers; politics has become a zero-sum game. As more partisans politicians and citizens alike reflect this attitude, the rhetoric ratchets up, leading to ever more distrust, antagonism, and even enmity.

However, Beem said there is still opportunity for people to step up and be part of the solution: changing the way they think about democratic citizenship.

To organize the list of virtues that would help citizens live together and thrive within a democracy, Beem broke them down into three categories: democratic thinking, democratic acting, and democratic belief.

According to Beem, intellectual or thinking virtues help us understand what is good and just, and the three thinking democratic virtues are humility, honesty and consistency. While humility is about understanding that everyone has biases that are hard to overcome, honesty is about recognizing that those biases can lead us to believe falsehoods.

Consistency is how we can try to overcome those biases, Beem said. For example, if you think a certain behavior is acceptable when its done by someone on your side, would you feel the same way if it was somebody on the other side? Of course, every circumstance is different and there could be exceptions. But at minimum, having that kind of discussion helps move us beyond our biases. Thats democratic thinking.

Next, Beem described the moral or acting virtues, which help us improve our actions courage and temperance. Courage is the ability to challenge the beliefs and actions of members of your own group, not just those of other groups. Temperance, meanwhile, is the ability to keep anger toward others from morphing into hate.

Finally, Beem listed the final virtues of charity and faith. While charity is the process of giving each other the benefit of the doubt and trusting that everyone has a common, shared commitment to democracy, faith is the belief that democracy can ultimately prevail.

Faith is the idea that you can be a witness for what you understand to be true, and you can have faith that your fellow citizens will respect your voice and actions, listen to what you have to say, and actually be moved, Beem said. Thats not to say that happens all the time, or even the majority of the time, but that it can and has happened.

Ultimately, Beem said he hopes people walk away from reading the book feeling more empowered than when they started.

If youre unhappy with the state of the country, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed or even despair, Beem said. I hope people can find things they can do to feel like theyre making a difference. In President [Joe] Bidens inaugural address, he talked about times that America has been in crisis before, and that it took enough people standing up and doing the right thing to find a solution. And I think that's right, that if you have enough people, you can change the culture. And by doing that, you can change our politics.

"The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy" will be published Aug. 30, by Penn State University Press. Beem will be teaching a one-credit class organized around the book in Spring 2023.

Follow this link:
What are the seven virtues of a healthy democracy? - Pennsylvania State University

Is the United States a democracy?

According to a strict definition of the term, the answer is no. Citizens dont vote on proposed legislation, with the exception of infrequent ballot initiatives and perhaps in some small New England towns. We vote for people to represent us when they vote on legislation. That makes America a republic or, and I concede this point, a representative democracy.

So most of us would answer the question in the affirmative. We are as much a democracy as any other nation in the world, even if imperfect in our application of the textbook definition.

That said, why do so many of our politicians charge their opponents with being threats to democracy? We heard this for years, as many Democrats and not a few Republicans claimed that the election of Donald Trump was such a threat. The inconvenient fact that he won the 2016 election because he received more Electoral College votes than did Hilary Clinton simply moved their target to our faulty Constitution.

The operating principle here appears to be: Democracy is under threat whenever our side loses an election.

And give Donald Trump credit, something I am generally loath to do, for simply turning that argument back on his opponents by claiming election fraud to explain why he lost in 2020. They may be strange bedfellows, but they are fellow travelers in their lack of allegiance to our constitutional structures.

What is the single most important characteristic of a democratic form of government? Surely it is the expression of the will of the people at the ballot box. Democracy, in its simplest sense, is about voting. We either trust our fellow citizens or we dont. Hurling irresponsible charges of illegitimacy whenever the wrong candidate wins does not advance a democratic polity. Rather, such reckless hyperbole erodes its very foundation.

There is a reason we are not a pure democracy, and not simply that it would be ponderously inefficient for a nation of our size. The Founding Fathers recognized the need for checks and balances to guard against a tyranny of the majority. Hence, they established different election procedures for the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Most critically, they assured that our judiciary would be independent of and removed from political pressure. Disagreeing with the Supreme Courts decisions is ones right under the First Amendment; it does not make the Court illegitimate nor does it justify political attacks bent on reducing or removing its independence. Threatening individual justices or the Court as a whole is the true threat to our democracy. Conservatives didnt understand that in the previous decade and Progressives dont understand it now.

We have John Adams, among others, to thank for this balance of power. While not attending the Constitutional Convention of 1787 due to his foreign posting as ambassador to England, his influence was in the room. It was he who midwifed the Massachusetts constitution which served as a model for others. The more I read about the period, the more I appreciate Adams despite his curmudgeonry.

The question of how much democracy is good consumed much of the debate during the 1780s leading up to the 1787 convention. The existing state legislatures tended to be captured by temporary majorities of special interests that passed self-serving laws. James Madison, who served briefly in the Virginia legislature, was beside himself with the lack of altruism among his fellow representatives.

I have the historian Gordon Wood to thank for this new insight. His most recent book, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution, is a travelog through the decades of the 1770s and 1780s as the great thinkers of the day wrestled with defining the role and structure of a government created to advance liberty. He made me realize that my understanding of the issues of the day was rather shallow.

Our system is one of majority rule, even when election results are not to our liking. At the same time the rights of all are protected from a tyranny of the majority. The Constitution draws the line past which the majority dare not go. That line of defense is our court system, as unpopular as it is with one side or the other. That unpopularity among the powerful attests to its fidelity in performing its constitutional function.

Our national discourse would benefit from a ratcheting down of the illegitimacy rhetoric. Democracy is about elections, about winners and losers. When the people speak through the ballot box, thats just pure and simple democracy as it is meant to work.

As long as I am referencing presidents low on my ranking scale, I must add Barack Obamas response to Republican criticism during the early years of his administration. I won. Get over it.

A better quote comes from a losing Democrat candidate in a California Senate primary election. The people have spokethe bs.

Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Excerpt from:
The Warts of Democracy | Opinion | shelbynews.com - Shelbynews