Background
Patrick McElhiney believes highly in the integrity our nation's police and intelligence apparatus, however he also believes there is a lot of room for improvement in law enforcement and in our communities. Patrick has never been charged with a crime, as he maintains that he is and has always been an outstanding citizen—but unfortunately, not everyone is, and that's why we have a Justice department that can sort through the facts and figure out how to help people in the best ways that benefit all relative parties.
McElhiney has spent a lot of time studying law enforcement and the U.S. Intelligence Community, in general, because he has an interest in making our communities safer for everyone. He strives for a future that there is no violent crime, due to advances in technology and policy that allow people to live in the security and safety of a perfect, ideal world. While he realizes that this may never happen in his lifetime, Patrick believes in investing as much time as he can into improving our nation's intelligence and Justice systems.
Stopping Excessive Use of Force and Racial Profiling
The few numbers of cases that result from racial profiling and excessive use of force cast a shadow over the men and women that serve to protect our communities following every letter of the law. The few cases that get attention from the Media are not usually the stories of heroics that happen every day, in virtually every jurisdiction. Officers that profile individuals by race and use excessive force should be prosecuted, and all police officers should be provided more training, including for sensitivity, deescalation techniques, and diversity.
McElhiney's family has been negatively affected in the past by the Oakland Police Department, when a police officer's actions resulted in the death of one of Patrick's cousins because of excessive use of force, because he was an African American. The cases of racial profiling and excessive use of force that are rocking our nation to the core disturb McElhiney, who has always lived in a diverse community of friends and neighbors.
Phoenix, Arizona has had 44 officer-involved shootings from July 2018 to July 2019. They are purchasing software that measures performance of individual police officers — which should really be done across the country. Just because a law enforcement officer is accredited doesn't mean they can shoot first and ask questions later, because most times it's the victim of excessive use of force by the police officer that doesn't survive.
It isn't correct to view the Police as the enemy, because they're meant to be there to help, while at the same time, the Police need to improve, and if an officer breaks the law, they need to be fired and prosecuted for their crimes — just as any regular citizen would be. No one is above the law, and we must follow the law in order to uphold Justice in all instances of time.
The Need for Stronger Hate Crimes Legislation
There is an urgent need for stronger hate crimes legislation by the Federal Government, to prosecute crimes that target people based on their race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, the color of their skin, or any other personally identifiable trait. There has been an increase in prevalence of crimes towards the LGBTQ community, and hate crimes against the LGBTQ community have been under-reported. There are rising murder rates of LGBTQ and women of color. The LGBTQ generally don't get involved in the criminal justice system, fearing bias from officers. They are owed dignity and equal rights and protection under the law.
People shouldn't be targeted because of personally identifiable characteristics. Hate crimes laws should protect Americans of all ages, including the 1 child out of every 50 that identifies as transgender. The stronger laws should also protect the disabled, elderly, and people with mental illnesses. The stigma associated with these differences in people unfortunately attract bullying, and sometimes violence, which can also sometimes lead to the victims of the violence taking their own lives.
We need to do more to protect all people, regardless of their abilities and personally identifiable attributes. According to the FBI, hate crimes against the LGBTQ community are up 5% compared to previous years. States like Georgia don't have hate crimes laws to protect transgender people, which is why the laws need to be Federal — passed by Congress, so they apply everywhere.
We've seen how hate crimes have taken root in our society. Holden Matthews, a deputy's son, had a hatred for religion. He burned down African American churches, and could be sentenced to 100 years in prison. Why can't we have strong legal protections for all types of hate crimes?
Prison and Inmate Sentencing Reform
Repeat drug offenders that have accrued three strikes for small amounts of marijuana possession should be provided leniency in sentencing, and in cases where those sentences were given before a prison and sentencing reform bill was enacted as law, those offenders should be provided a second chance—including the possibility of commutation of sentences or Presidential pardons, depending upon the circumstances of each specific case.
Low collar drug crimes should be treated as a mental disease, including drug offenders that are simply buying the drug—rather than possession with an intent to distribute. Patrick knows that lives have been destroyed simply because of addiction, rather than a real intent to break the law for criminal purposes, and that's why there needs to be prison and sentencing reform.
There should be common decency legislation governing the Bureau of Prisons, which guarantees a set of basic minimum rights for all inmates. It should guarantee a minimum level of living accommodations for all prisoners, such that every inmate is treated with humane living situations.
These living accommodations should include electricity, running water, a clean sewer system, access to books and protected Internet access, and rehabilitation services while in custody regardless of the length of sentence and crime that the inmate committed. The Bureau of Prisons should also guarantee protection from violent inmates, by separating the violent offenders from white collar criminals and other types of non-violent offenders.
Prisoners that participate in educational programs are 43% less likely to return to prison. This is why it's so important to prepare prisoners that will get out of prison later, for the challenges they will face when they are back in our communities.
Black Lives Matter
The profiling and use of excessive force by Police officers across the nation towards African Americans is perhaps the greatest injustice that is occurring today in America. There needs to be real policy change at the Federal level that results in the elimination of events involving racial profiling, racial bias, inappropriate behavior, use of excessive force, and use of deadly force against African Americans by Police in America for no legal reason.
There should be stronger civil rights laws passed to protect African Americans, in addition to Latino Americans, Native Americans, and other classes of individuals that are profiled and targeted frequently by law enforcement agencies. We cannot sit back and allow this state of injustice to corrupt the great progress that our nation has made to correct the mistakes made by the ancestors of America in history.
Slavery and the segregation of people from Africa and other continents prior to the Civil Rights Movement, in addition to what America did to the Native Americans is reprehensible. We cannot bring back the mistakes of our nation's ancestors through the repression of these fine people that are owed reparations.
We are a nation of growth, a nation of pride, and we must come together and solve this serious problem of police violence and racial profiling at a very local level in our communities. Our communities need to be more inclusive of minorities, and help them to succeed in their education and careers, and we need to continue to move forward to repair the damages that were done in history.
Crimes Against American Tourists Abroad
It is a concern when there are mysterious deaths of U.S. residents abroad, like the deaths of numerous Americans in the Dominican Republic in 2019. In cases like this where there is potentially a cover-up by the resorts that the Americans were staying at, we need autopsies of the bodies of the deceased, and we need the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine why the deaths are occurring.
These crimes against Americans in the Dominican Republic could be organized crime, and the State Department should be involved by issuing a travel advisory regarding the Dominican Republic. Authorities said it could take a month to get the toxicology results back, and we won't know what caused the deaths until then.
David Ortiz, a former Red Sox player, was also targeted recently in the Dominican Republic, which only brings additional attention to the problems there. Police initially arrested 6 suspects, and have arrested 3 more suspects in the attempted murder of “Big Papi”. They were paid less than $8,000 to murder someone that was dressed like Ortiz. He's now on the path to recovery after being in critical condition for approximately a week.
As of 6/13/2019, authorities have not found a connection between the 3 recent mysterious deaths of Americans in the Dominican Republic, but the investigation is ongoing. 3 of the 8 mysterious deaths in the Dominican Republic may have been due to bootlegged alcohol. One man that died in the Dominican Republic had something green foaming out of his mouth when he died.
One person that didn't die and drank from the bootlegged alcohol was diagnosed with pesticide poisoning. The causes of death were commonly pulmonary edema, though authorities are still waiting on toxicology reports for the official cause of death. The wife of a man that died in the Dominican Republic said officials recommended that she cremate the remains, to destroy evidence.
Organized crime has targeted Americans overseas in Barbados and Belize in addition to the Dominican Republic. Needs Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the State Department need to investigate, and issue warnings to Americans.
Justice for Wikileaks
Julian Assange should be charged with espionage for publishing Top Secret national security intelligence through Wikileaks, which was obtained from the U.S. Army via Chelsea Manning. Assange also did a disservice to the American People by interfering in the 2016 Presidential Elections in favor of Donald Trump with Russian hackers.
Assange shouldn't be locked up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as that's only for terrorists, and his fear of being sent there was a pretext to obstruct Justice while staying in the Ecuadorian embassy in Great Britain. Mr. Assange also used his stature with Wikileaks to rape a woman, but he used his obstruction of the Justice system as reasoning for why he shouldn't be charged with the crimes, because he thought he could be extradited and tortured by the United States.
These crimes must be answered for, by Julian Assange alone, and there was no valid reason to ever think that Mr. Assange would be tortured by the Justice Department. The United Kingdom is preparing to extradite Julian Assange in 2020 to the United States, who has charged him with 18 Federal crimes.
Assange faces up to 175 years in prison, and Sweden has decided that it's not necessary to arrest Assange on the rape charges, since he's already serving a jail sentence. Wikileaks needs to be shut down, permanently — it was involved in the Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential elections in the United States, and it has led to countless deaths around the world due to releases of vital national security intelligence.
Varsity Blues
John Vandemore, the Stanford sailing coach who created a fake sailing profile for receiving $500,000 for the sailing program was sentenced in Boston federal court in June 2019. He didn't pocket any of the money, which why he didn't receive any prison time. Stanford said it's going to donate the money.
Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are also defendants. Huffman plead guilty, while Loughlin is fighting the charges in court. Huffman is expected to get 4 months in jail — a reduced amount of time because she cooperated. Lori Loughlin faces much more jail time, because her contributions towards the scam were much greater, and for two of her children.
Students should receive a fair chance to get into college, and shouldn't be obstructed by the rich and powerful.
Women in Jail
Women now represent a growing proportion of the jail population. Four out of five women that go to jail are mothers, and they end up losing their children in the process. Male populations in prison have decreased since 2008, while female populations have stayed the same. One issue is lower incomes for women, so they can't afford to pay for bail.
Women are being incarcerated for stealing cars, and writing checks that they didn't have the money for. Los Angeles has the largest women's jail in the country. They are over-populated. The State of California appropriated $100 million to create a new women's jail. Mental health is a bigger issue with women, especially when they are in jail.
The states are looking into modernizing jails for women, as they're different from men. There need to be things to do — such as educational classes, and art projects. Education-based incarceration is a big business, because prisoners that participate in education programs while in prison are 43% less likely to return to prison after they get out.
The term “Gender Responsive Systems” mean that jails provide women the things that they need — but that term makes prisoners and former prisoners cringe. The jail staff can teach inmates how to cut hair, or cook in a culinary program, or write computer code in a computer lab.
Ideally, inmates' needs can only be met outside of jail, such as alternatives to jail, and crime prevention like greater investments into adult education. Women can often times get their children back after they get out of jail if they've only been in for a short while. It's clear that more needs to be done to prevent crime in our communities, like community-oriented policing.
O.J. Simpson
Like many grade school students around the country, McElhiney watched the trial through new TVs that were installed in the classroom as part of the “TV in the Classroom” initiative by the Department of Education. McElhiney asked first if his school could do this, since it was a major case, and the TVs were brand-new at Brown Elementary School in Turlock, CA.
Everyone in McElhiney's class seemed happy that O.J. Simpson was found not guilty, but at his age, they didn't have the ability to judge whether O.J. Simpson may have been guilty of the crimes at the time and got off because of his stature. In many respects, this same issue comes up again and again in our Justice system — the rich and powerful that can afford the best defense attorneys get off on technicalities, and the poor and infamous are convicted at record rates.
Something needs to be done about this disparity, because people may be slipping through the cracks in the system. Simpson's white Ford Bronco chase was watched by 95 million people. His attorney used the line “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” — referring to the gloves, that may have actually been taken and put in a dryer by the legal defense to make them shrink.
O.J. Simpson maintains his innocence to this day, despite having written a book telling a story of 'if he had done it', and joining Social Media at the 25th anniversary of his police chase after the crimes were committed.
Protecting Abandoned Cities
The Federal Government needs to do more to keep criminals out of abandoned cities across America, such as those in Michigan after the collapse of the automobile industry, as well as coal mining towns in West Virginia. These places are attractive to criminals, such as in Detroit, where officials believe they have stumbled onto a case of a serial killer.
It's a tragedy that towns and cities have turned into ghost towns because of economic changes and natural disasters, and more needs to be done to ensure that criminals don't use these places as dumping grounds, or for manufacturing drugs, or for places to commit other types of crimes.
Stronger Laws for Drug Dealers
Investigators found $1 Billion of cocaine in Philadelphia on June 18th, 2019, bringing the issue of drugs in America to the forefront of all issues in the Justice Department. We need stronger laws to prosecute drug dealers with, because the possession with intent to distribute is a major category of crime that should not receive any leniency for drugs such as crack, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl.
Drug dealers are more common to have guns and pose a risk to our communities if the unsuspecting stumble upon a drug warehousing operation in their city.
Gun License Legislation
If all gun owners were required to obtain a license that registers it to the gun owner, and certifies that they have taken an adequate amount of safety training to use the gun, the Justice Department would have a much easier time. It would guarantee a more efficient process to ensure the safety of first responders.
When a suspect is arrested, the police can take all of their guns if they are a threat to themselves or others based on the gun registrations, and take the suspect's gun license. The gun license would be linked to the individual's driver's license, and would let police know when an individual has a gun during a traffic stop, which will improve the safety of the community and its law enforcement officers.
Facial Recognition Technology
The City of San Francisco, California banned the use of facial recognition technology by its police force, and it was a step in the wrong direction. Law enforcement officers need to be able to find and apprehend suspects as fast as possible, and this policy obstructs Justice by keeping criminals on the streets longer. There have been no publicly known cases where police have abused facial recognition technology in the United States.
The media's comparison of the new law to China's misuse of facial recognition technology to track Uighur Muslims, which are considered dissidents by the communist regime, is an unfair correlation. Certainly facial recognition shouldn't be used to profile an entire race of people, but this wasn't what the San Francisco Police Department was doing with the technology.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has claimed that facial recognition technology violates people's civil rights, but how else are police officers expected to protect large crowded areas from terrorists? The only people the ACLU is defending, with the suggestion of regulating facial recognition technology from law enforcement, is the criminals that police officers need to get off the street.
Platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure shouldn't self-regulate how their facial recognition technology is used by the government. The limitations could result in loss of life due to criminals being out on the run longer than usual.
With facial recognition technologies, law enforcement can box criminals in from all angles due to the actionable intelligence that facial recognition provides to decision makers, preventing high speed pursuits when hardened criminals take more lives driving at excessive speeds.
Patrick McElhiney would support legislation authorizing facial recognition technology use under Federal law, which would override local laws in cities like San Francisco that have banned the technology for use by law enforcement.
Breaking Up Big Tech Monopolies
Many big tech companies, including Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple are monopolistic in nature, and discourage innovation by purchasing their competitors, or putting them out of business with unfair competition. Their business units need to be broken up so that other entrepreneurs can obtain resources and achieve great things in the American economy.
We live in a marketplace where computer programmers are paid sub-standard wages compared to the overall income of these big tech companies, and there's nothing that these employees can do to earn more of an equitable share of their work at the companies they work at. There needs to be more profit sharing within big tech companies, including to employees that are not computer programmers.
These big tech companies steal ideas from smaller companies, and develop them into large businesses that the small companies can't compete with. Just when you think you've done enough work to make a difference in your own life as an innovator, a big tech company will come and wipe you off the face of the Earth with a business unit that you can't compete with.
Innovation can still happen without monopolistic big tech companies. There needs to be more of a chance for smaller tech companies to succeed in this economy, and currently the big tech companies use unfair business practices putting the little guy out of business.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are currently investigating big tech companies to determine what laws they have broken, and what should be done about it. McElhiney has a personal stake in these cases, as he's had intellectual property stolen from his small technology company, MCE123, by companies including Facebook.
Sexual Harassment at the FBI
It is a concern that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) trainers allegedly sexually harassed 16 female applicants, who are suing the FBI. You wouldn't expect that this would occur in law enforcement. It's bad for the image of the FBI, and our thoughts are with the victims of these crimes. No one — not even veteran FBI officials, are above the law.
“Gang Stalking”
McElhiney questions the logic behind the claims by some of “gang stalking” by government employees, or the 'stalking' of a particular person for any number of reasons. Individuals may need to be monitored or protected by government employees, due to dangers from the public. The Federal Government could also be conducting an intelligence study, where the individual is being monitored for some official reason.
For an example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) can have special agents follow and monitor a subject in public in the United States, without notifying the subject that they are being monitored, even if the subject hasn't committed a crime. There are dozens of other Federal agencies that can do the same.
McElhiney doesn't think that these activities are rightfully referred to as “gang stalking”, because government employees are not part of a gang — they are part of an agency with rules and organizational processes that can sometimes overlap with the public.
McElhiney also doesn't believe it's stalking, because there may be a legitimate purpose for the government to protect the public from an individual, or there may be a legitimate reason to protect an individual from the public, or both. Stalking is usually when a victim is being followed by another person because that is obsessed with the victim for unprofessional purposes.
McElhiney has had experiences with what could technically be considered “gang stalking” by others under the illogical labeling, because when he wanted to get married to Chelsea Clinton, most notably between 2007 and 2009, he often times had U.S. Secret Service employees around him in public. Still, Patrick McElhiney doesn't think it is proper to refer to these types of activities as “gang stalking”.
Empty Threats versus Intent to Commit Violence
Empty threats, such as those that people who are friends commonly say to each other, should not be considered real threats—as long as there is no intent to commit violence. There may be cases where people have said things that they didn't mean, and as long as there was no intent to carry out the threat, charges should not be filed simply based on the words themselves.
There should be a thorough investigation into every threat that is reported to law enforcement, and repeat offenders that are intending to waste police time could be charged with a crime. Threats that people make towards themselves are a little different — there should never be criminal charges filed against an individual for their making a threat of committing suicide, because it doesn't affect other people.
People that threaten themselves are not necessarily a threat to others—but there should be an investigation into the nature of the threat, such as how the threat would be carried out. If the threat poses a danger to other people, in the case that there is a plan, then there could be criminal charges—or the individual may need psychiatric help if deemed appropriate by the arresting jurisdiction.
Sex Abuse Scandals
The Justice Department should have been more proactive to root out the corruption in professional sports and religious organizations, including Catholic churches, university sports programs, and the Olympics, to ensure that people in positions of power were not abusing that power to sexually abuse young men and women.
Sexual assault of any kind is completely unacceptable, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law in all cases. For hundreds of years, priests, coaches, and university deans, including William Strampel from Michigan State University (MSU), and professional sports trainers such as Larry Nassar from MSU have sexually abused young men and women.
Sexual violence, including rape, is one of the most serious categories of crimes that can be committed. Perpetrators that commit these types of crimes need to have the book thrown at them — there is no length of prison sentence that can heal the victims, and we cannot let these hardened criminals walk the streets of our society.
If you have been sexually abused, McElhiney asks that you please speak up and seek Justice of the person or persons that have negatively impacted your life. It's hard to relive the events in court, however it is unacceptable to let perpetrators go free without any punishment. Even the Catholic church is not above the law!
Abolishing The Death Penalty
It's possible that convicted criminals that may be innocent have died a result of the death penalty, due to the prevalence of errors that have occurred in the Justice Department in the past. Death row should be abolished, because you don't know whether you're taking the life of an innocent person, or someone that has been framed for the crimes that were committed.
Case after case has shown that DNA evidence and other forensics can be planted by police officers, misinterpreted in the courtroom, and framed up to make it look like a defendant committed a crime when they didn't. If there is any doubt in a case, the person should not be put on death row.
Death by lethal injection is a very bad way to end someone's life. If someone has taken lives in their crimes, they should have to live for the rest of their life in prison, because that is more suffering to endure than death by lethal injection, and you can't reverse the execution if a mistake is found later on.
The New Hampshire State House overruled Governor Sununu's veto of a bill that abolished the death penalty in New Hampshire. We have planned to completely eliminate death row in all future cases, and now it's time for the Federal Government to abolish it, too.
Governor Sununu stated in May 2019 that the legislation would have increased taxes to NH residents, even though it didn't. Carrying out death row costs more money than incarcerating the inmates for the rest of their life. This is a positive, humane change that all states and the Federal Government can benefit from.
Ending Mass Incarceration
McElhiney is opposed to the mass incarceration of petty law violators. We should treat minor crime offenders, even with repeat offenses, like human beings. Many low-collar criminals have drug problems that need to be treated as a disease rather than a criminal infraction. They get out of jail, and go right back to taking the drugs.
Often times, low-collar criminals take to robbing through breaking and entering into people's homes to feed their drug habit. In cases like this, we need to treat the violator like a human being that is sick, and we need to treat them with respect so that we can teach them about their problem, and how it is possible for them to live a life without the drugs.
There are prescription medications that can ease the urges to recommit drug offenses as well, that don't interfere with the person's ability to go to work and become successful again. We need to bring the police and the community together to deal with these challenges, and we need more rehabilitation programs for previous offenders.
The Attorney General
Congress has passed legislation to help enforce subpoena powers against the United States Attorney General, Bill Barr, who has failed to provide the unredacted Mueller report to Congress. He has recently agreed to provide information about whether President Trump obstructed Justice. AG Barr has in the past favored President Trump, through suggesting that the Intelligence Community, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spied on the Trump Campaign during the 2016 Presidential elections. It is still too early to tell whether Congress will hold AG Barr in contempt of Congress.
Searching for Suspects in Cold Cases
The Department of Justice should have a system that automatically searches, nationally, all fingerprint and DNA databases each time there is a new arrest in any jurisdiction, to ensure that any new suspects that have been arrested are potentially matched to any old cold cases that haven't been solved yet.
McElhiney lost a member of his family, that was raped and then murdered, and the person that did it was in the Veteran Affairs (VA) database, yet the DOJ didn't find him until decades later. There should be a system that automatically searches all databases, to find new links to old cold cases, as these cases would otherwise go unsolved, and the evidence sometimes hasn't even been entered into computers until 30 years later.
One example of how states are dealing with the problem of unsolved cold cases is in California, where they have a John Doe DNA case statute, that allows them to charge rapists before the statute of limitations runs out based on the DNA found at the scene. They can prosecute the DNA in court, without the suspect being in court, and then find the perpetrator later based on the DNA profile.
Voting Rights of Convicted Criminals
Patrick believes that convicted criminals that have served their time should be allowed to vote in Federal Elections, as well as state and local elections, after they have served their complete sentence. Studies show that individuals that vote and participate in their community are less likely to commit crimes, and when a convicted criminal is released from prison, they should be re-integrated into society as good as possible, to prevent them from committing additional crimes.
Giving this class of people voting rights is part of the obligation to ensure that they don't end up back in prison. They should not be required to pay fines before they receive voting rights, because even if you haven't paid your taxes, you can still go and vote.
McElhiney believes that voting rights are human rights, because it is your civic duty to participate in your government to help guide how this country improves. Permanently taking away the rights of an individual is not Justice — not for the individual, and not for the nation.
Constitutional Rights of Migrants
Convicted criminals that came to the United States illegally should not be allowed rights under the United States Constitution. Migrants that are not convicted criminals, but have entered the United States illegally to seek asylum should be granted rights under the United States Constitution.
Rights of Foreign Companies and Individuals
Foreign companies should not be considered as Americans with constitutional rights in the United States, and neither should foreign citizens. Foreign companies and individuals should be not be governed by the United States Constitution.
Pardons for War Criminals
McElhiney believes that people that have committed war crimes shouldn't be eligible for a Presidential pardon. There's nothing political about war crimes, and the political process shouldn't get involved in removing these individuals from the military justice system.
Appointing Federal Judges
One of the most important roles of the President of the United States is to pick judges. If McElhiney's job included picking judges, he would pick civil rights lawyers, environmental lawyers, women's rights lawyers, and even defendants of past cases to be judges.
How the United States Senate changed the rules to fast-track judge appointments is going to help the Democrats in coming years to fill judicial positions that otherwise would not make it through the Senate approval process.
President Trump has picked two Supreme Court judges, and wants to see Roe v Wade overturned, while some polls show that as many as 88% of Democrats want Roe v Wade upheld. If McElhiney had to pick judges, he would likely pick liberal judges because they most closely align with his own values.
Separation of Powers
McElhiney believes strongly in the separation of powers defined by the U.S. Constitution, and believes that there should be more laws that limit the oversight of the Justice Department by the Executive Branch and President of the United States. The Justice Department has been politicized by the Trump Administration, including through the investigation into the investigators led by Attorney General Barr.
McElhiney believes that the President of the United States should never influence the Justice Department, because of the separation of powers.
Protections for Professionally Conflicted Personal Relationships
There are currently both written and unwritten laws that prohibit personal relationships between parties of opposing legal sides in the United States. An example would be a female that works at a hedge fund, and a male that works at an investment bank.
McElhiney thinks these relationships deserve protections, because personal relationships are part of the human rights that are guaranteed to us under International laws, such as those established by the United Nations. It isn't right to limit relationships between opposing professional sides, because there is so much that they can learn from each other in a personal relationship, that has the capability to improve the processes that our nation's economy and other sectors have been built on for hundreds of years.
Being against these relationships would be the professional equivalence of being against diplomacy with a hostile foreign nation, and everyone knows that this would only lead to a war. Even personal relationships within the U.S. Intelligence Community that domestic assets take advantage of personal relationships with foreign counterparts should be respected, even if the individuals are completely at odds against each other professionally.
These relationships serve a powerful purpose to gather intelligence on both sides, and today's organizations are conscience of their own security needs, and can protect valuable resources from contentious relationships while still allowing them to occur. Without these types of personal relationships, we will gain nothing usable from the interactions between opposing sides. We need to be more open and accepting of opposing sides in loving, caring relationships with each other.
Preventing Crime
It is more important to stop and prevent future crimes, than it is for citizens to have privacy, which is why Patrick supports programs at the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. Patrick also believes that there should be a program, that takes a DNA sample from every child that is born, for the purpose of screening individuals from the time of birth from potential future crime scenes.
This initiative would allow future generations to not have to suffer with as much crime, because when there is certainty of Justice, there is less likelihood of crimes occurring. DNA samples can even be collected by private companies, such as 23andme.com and Ancestry.com, for the purpose of providing law enforcement with samples to screen existing families from criminal activity.
The Supreme Court
In 2019, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to expand double jeopardy protections, essentially ruling that states can prosecute suspects that have already been tried and found not guilty in Federal cases. This should send a signal to criminals that are intending to get off on a technicality, that Justice will catch up with them, eventually.
The Supreme Court also ruled that a citizenship question could not go on the United States Census, though President Trump has been defiant of this ruling, proposing to delay the Census Bureau from printing the forms needed for the 2020 Census. President Trump's Administration has said it needs to enforce the Voting Rights Act, because it believes that non-citizens do not have the right to be counted.
The case was brought by the State of New York, because the Administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The majority in the Supreme Court upheld the Trial Judge's ruling, because the Commerce Secretary allegedly wanted the question for a discriminatory purpose.
Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled that it doesn't have jurisdiction over gerrymandering cases. Computer software can help state administrators draw districts that achieve a specific goal, because they know where people live and how they vote. It allows administrators to create partisan districts.
Maps in North Carolina and Maryland were challenged, and the Supreme Court found that the Federal Courts don't have the authority to take up cases on gerrymandering. Justice Elena Kagan read her dissent from the bench that this ruling threatens our democracy with partisanship, showing how serious the issue is; one party is beating the other party over the head.
The United States Supreme Court ended its recent term on 6/27/2019.
