Coyote Blog

Via Reason:

Because, unbelievably, Cartwright had previously been served with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO)—a civil order that is used to control the minutiae of British people’s behaviour—that forbade her from making “excessive noise during sex” anywhere in England.

This case sheds harsh light not only on the Victorian-style petty prudishness of our rulers, who seriously believe they can make sexually expressive women timid again by dragging them to court, but on the tyranny of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders themselves. Introduced by our authoritarian Labour government in 1998, anyone can apply for an ASBO to stop anyone else from doing something that they find irritating, “alarming,” or “threatening.”

Local magistrates’ courts issue the orders, sometimes on the basis of hearsay evidence (which is permissible in “ASBO cases”). In short, the applicant for an ASBO does not have to go through the normal rigors of the criminal justice system in order to get a civil ruling preventing someone he doesn’t like from doing something that he finds “alarming” or “dangerous.” Once you have been branded with an ASBO, if you break its conditions—by having noisy sex in your own home, for example—you are potentially guilty of a crime and can be imprisoned.

The ASBO system has turned much of Britain into a curtain-twitching, neighbor-watching, noise-policing gang of spies. The relative ease with which one can apply to the authorities for an ASBO positively invites people to use the system to punish their foes or the irritants who live in their neighborhoods.

I don’t really have much time to comment on this, but is there any need?  And for those smug enough to think this will never happen in the US, just look on college campuses today, where a number of universities are coming awfully close to creating a right not to be offended, and allowing students to define crime as anything that offends them.  And it almost goes without saying that such standards tend to be enforced unevenly, depending on the ideology of those who happen to be in charge.

Tigerhawk asks:

If the CEOs of banks that take federal money, including those who took federal money only after Hank Paulsen essentially ordered them, have their salary capped at $500,000, under what principle do we allow universities that request federal funding to pay their own presidents much more money? Is there a rational basis for the distinction, or is it simply that the Democrats do not want to go after one of their most important constituents?

Forget about the university presidents, what about the football coaches?  One Hundred Billion dollar banks can’t pay their CEO’s or deal-makers more than $500,000, but state-run football programs can pay their coaches $ 4 million dollars?