The Insanity Offense

The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens by E. Fuller Torrey. The book was featured on Book TV

Torrey has written frequently on this topic. The book opens with a description of the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS). This is a state law in California which had the effect of vastly reducing the patient population in state mental hospitals. The author says that LPS came from an unholy alliance of liberal activists concerned with folks being railroaded into mental hospitals against their will and conservative activists who believed that there is no such thing as mental illness.

Ronald Reagan as governor of California promised that mentally ill patients would be moved from state hospitals to community based treatment facilities. Funds were never provided so that this could happen. Instead, many mentally ill patients became homeless where they then became a huge problem for local police departments.

Torrey continues in this vein documenting what he calls the effect of LPS in California and similar ideas in other states. He recounts examples of mentally ill people who killed because they heard voices telling them to. These cases sound like the plot line of a Criminal Minds television show.

One of the most spectacular examples recounted is the Virginia Tech shooter. Torrey says that privacy laws prevent information sharing so that mentally ill people may go out and buy firearms which make their rampages just that much more deadly.

Torrey continues the book with another topic. That is Anosognosia which is impaired awareness of illness. See treatment advocacy center for a description. Mental illness has a legal definition and a clinical definition. In the legal sphere mentally ill persons are presumed to be competent to decide if they want to take their medications. See the story for more on this. Torrey says that the public is at risk because mentally ill persons frequently decide not to take their medications and then commit violent crimes as a result.

For public policy the question is who should be allowed to purchase firearms. Of course, if you believe there is no such thing as mental illness then anyone should be allowed to acquire weapons. I think this is an extreme position. Is the country destined to suffer more and more mass shootings by mentally ill people who exercised their Second Amendment rights? This is why “The Insanity Offense” is book of the week.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

Justice For All

This week’s Book of the Week is “Justice For All: Earl Warren and The Nation He Made”. The author is Jim Newton. This book was featured on Book TV on C-Span2 on Saturday, April 25, 2009.

Ask anyone what are the three most lasting achievements of the Eisenhower Administration. The Interstate Highway System is one, another is Eisenhower’s farewell address, the most memorable since George Washington. Eisenhower warned about the power of a military-industrial complex. The third, though President Eisenhower didn’t think so, was his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Earl Warren was the longest serving governor of California. He was, as Governor, a moderate centrist Republican in the tradition of Hiram Johnson. Warren won reelection as governor one time by winning both Republican and Democratic party nominations.

On the Supreme Court, Warren used his considerable political skills to build consensus. In the larger society the Warren Court was characterized by some on the right as a liberal activist court intent on legislating from the bench. Gideon vs. Wainwright (372 U.S. 335) for example extended Sixth Amendment right to counsel to states under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Then Miranda vs. Arizona (384 U.S. 436) required notifications regarding right to silence, right to an attorney, etc. in cases involving police interrogations and confessions.

As a demonstration of Warren’s consensus building skill Newton cites the 9-0 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (347 U.S. 483). Warren got Justice Reed to concur in the opinion.

Was the Warren Court liberal, activist, intent on legislating from the bench? Newton says no. He says that Earl Warren believed in conservative reform not liberal activism.

Gradual, conservative constitutional reform has a long tradion in thought. See, for example, Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”.

The subject is timely for today because President Obama may have more than one Supreme Court nomination to make. Warren believed that the Court exists to strike a balance between the weak and powerless versus the rich and powerful.

Posted by Gypsy Chief

The Green Collar Economy

Book of the week for the weekend of February 14 – February 15, 2009 is “The Green Collar Economy” by Van Jones. There was a memorable discussion of the book on Book TV
Jones is a member of the board of Center for American Progress. More information is available at Van Jones Dot Net