Two Lives

Two men died recently. Their pictures depict similar looking men, both appear to be gentle elderly men. Both were born in Europe and left after surviving World War II. But the circumstances of their survival couldn't have been more different, the lives they subsequently led were opposites, and the vast differences in their lives are notable and deserving of memory.

Harry Drexler, the father of dear friends, passed away recently. His life was an admirable one, overcoming enormous obstacles to thrive in America. He should be remembered as a much loved and admired family man.

The death of a man named Paul Shaefer was reported today in the Los Angeles Times. His life was a despicable one, taking opportunities to victimize and damage human beings. He should be remembered, if at all, as a monster.

These are their obituaries as each appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Harry B. Drexler, June 8th, 1919 - April 23, 2010of North Hollywood California, passed away Friday April 23, 2010.
Harry Drexler was born in Poland, on June 8th 1919. Harry miraculously survived the Holocaust while almost all of his family perished. Harry was the devoted husband of Rena Drexler for 63 years, the father of David Drexler and Nina Guttman, grandfather of Jonathan and Justin Drexler, Leora Lang and Elana Guttman, and great-grandfather of Shai and Gabriel Lang.

After the War, he met Rena, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, in Germany. They married and immigrated to the United States in 1951.

In 1957, Harry and Rena opened Drexler's Delicatessen, the first kosher deli in the San Fernando Valley. Drexler's Deli became a famous landmark in North Hollywood, with Harry and Rena serving as pillars in the growing Jewish Community.

Harry worked tirelessly, every day, except the Sabbath, as a butcher, providing for his family and serving the needs of his customers and community. With a strong work ethic, and unwavering family values, Harry successfully achieved the American Dream and built a strong foundation for his family. Harry always cherished his family and the traditions of the Jewish faith.

He was grateful for the freedom, liberty and opportunities in America. He deeply loved his Dodgers, Lakers and America.Harry will be fondly remembered as a man of few words, with a big heart. He was the rock-solid anchor of his family and community.

And this is the obituary of the other man:

Paul Schaefer, a former Nazi Luftwaffe medic who founded a secretive, commune-like colony of German immigrants in Chile, died of heart failure Saturday in a Chilean prison where he was serving time for child molestation and human rights abuses dating to the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. He was 89.

Schaefer immigrated to Chile from his native Germany in 1961 and started Colonia Dignidad, or Dignity Colony, a strictly regimented enclave 210 miles south of Santiago that was home to several hundred Germans and Chileans.

According to witnesses' testimony in court documents, Schaefer allowed Pinochet's security forces to operate a clandestine prison on the grounds where they detained, tortured and executed dissidents during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship.

Colony members say he ruled them cruelly as well. Married couples were forced to live apart, and children were separated from parents. Residents were prevented from leaving. Those who angered Schaefer were subject to electric shocks, high doses of tranquilizers and long periods of isolation.

Many "became real slaves of Schaefer, like robots dedicated only to obey his orders and not displease him," members said in a newspaper ad they took out in 2006 acknowledging human rights abuses at the colony and asking for forgiveness. The colony is now called Villa Baviera.There were also dozens of allegations of child molestation, leading Schaefer to flee the country in 1997. He was arrested in neighboring Argentina in 2005 and extradited back to Chile the same year.

Schaefer was convicted in 2006 of sexually abusing 20 children who attended the colony's school and clinic. He was sentenced to 20 years, plus three additional years for an illegal weapons conviction.

In two separate cases in 2008, Schaefer received more prison time for the torture of seven colony residents and for the fatal poisoning of a renegade security agent during the dictatorship.

After his World War II service, Schaefer became an evangelical preacher. He fled Germany after being accused of molesting boys at the orphanage he ran.

Another DNA reversal

NY man wrongly convicted of killing woman in 1988 is cleared by DNA evidence, goes free.

BEN DOBBIN, Associated Press Writer
April 28 2010, 2:47 PM PDT

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A former truck driver who spent nearly 19 years behind bars for a 1988 slaying he didn't commit walked free Wednesday after DNA testing exonerated him and instead pointed to a man who strangled a 4-year-old girl in 1994.

Arizona's Immigration Law: fascist or business as usual?

Arizona’s new law (SB 1070) which, among other things, authorizes detention and questioning of suspected illegal aliens, is a political hot potato.

The law which has the overwhelming popular support of Arizona citizens has been labeled as fascist and Nazi by non-constitutional scholars such as Keith Olbermann and Cardinal Mahoney. "Let me see your papers," cable comic Jon Stewart accurately recalls, was the familiar chilling phrase repeated in all those black and white movies of the 1940's that depicted Gestapo inquiries inevitably leading to concentration camps.

The other side of the argument, represented by equally hyperbolic, but openly xenophobic Fox commentators and the Arizona governor, is that this measure is needed because of a "dire emergency" in the state.

The porous border with a near failed drug state is intolerable, dangerous to Arizonans, especially in these fragile economic times of high unemployment and limited government resources.

[As a footnote, I am currently re-reading Barbara Tuchman’s "The Zimmermann Telegram", which summarizes U.S. relations with Mexico circa 1916, when President Wilson sent General Pershing and thousands of U.S. soldiers in a "punitive expedition" to capture or kill General Pancho Villa, after his soldiers raided a New Mexico border town and killed American citizens. Mexico, it seems, was as unstable and poor as it is a hundred years later.]

Adversaries on either side display ignorance of the current state of the law and the demands of our Constitution as they are interpreted by our courts. In the following post, I am going to try to calm the waters a bit, while showing what my legal training leads me to believe is the basic problem with this kind of law.

Note: I’m going to use quotes to denote language of the statute and cases; I’m going to use italics to denote words or phrases that need further definition. Notice how vague these terms of art are, and how much leeway their vagueness gives to police and the courts in their enforcement.

First, these are excerpts of the law, which is titled: "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act." [Now, who can oppose that?]

"B. FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

"E. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, WITHOUT A WARRANT, MAY ARREST A PERSON IF THE OFFICER HAS PROBABLE CAUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THE PERSON HAS COMMITTED ANY PUBLIC OFFENSE THAT MAKES THE PERSON REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES.

"...NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER LAW, A PEACE OFFICER MAY LAWFULLY STOP ANY PERSON WHO IS OPERATING A MOTOR VEHICLE IF THE OFFICER HAS REASONABLE SUSPICION TO BELIEVE THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF ANY CIVIL TRAFFIC LAW AND THIS SECTION.

"F. For the purposes of this section:
"A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR AN OCCUPANT OF A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS STOPPED ON A STREET, ROADWAY OR HIGHWAY TO ATTEMPT TO HIRE OR HIRE AND PICK UP PASSENGERS FOR WORK AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION IF THE MOTOR VEHICLE BLOCKS OR IMPEDES THE NORMAL MOVEMENT OF TRAFFIC.

"B. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO ENTER A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS STOPPED ON A STREET, ROADWAY OR HIGHWAY IN ORDER TO BE HIRED BY AN OCCUPANT OF THE MOTOR VEHICLE AND TO BE TRANSPORTED TO WORK AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION IF THE MOTOR VEHICLE BLOCKS OR IMPEDES THE NORMAL MOVEMENT OF TRAFFIC.

"C. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND WHO IS AN UNAUTHORIZED ALIEN TO KNOWINGLY APPLY FOR WORK, SOLICIT WORK IN A PUBLIC PLACE OR PERFORM WORK AS AN EMPLOYEE OR INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR IN THIS STATE.

"Impounding a vehicle is authorized if:
"... 4. THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE AND IS TRANSPORTING, MOVING, CONCEALING, HARBORING OR SHIELDING OR ATTEMPTING TO TRANSPORT, MOVE, CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE IN A VEHICLE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW."

Even without this statute, our current law is generous to police in their contacts with suspicious people. These are the rules as reflected in the language and reasoning of cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and high state courts:

1. Police can ask anyone for identification.
Law enforcement officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment in approaching an individual on the street or in another public place and asking if he is willing to identify himself. (Florida v. Royer, U.S. Supreme Court, (1983) .)

2. If Police have cause to stop a vehicle [eg,any traffic violation], they can ask the passenger [who has done nothing suspicious] for his identification.

Once the privacy of a car has been intruded upon by a lawful traffic stop, the courts find no reason to expand the rights of passengers in vehicles beyond those afforded travelers in airports; employees in garment factories; or fishermen on public streets. All can be asked for identification.

3. But what if a person refuses to provide identification? May he be detained [defined as prevented from departing] further for identification purposes?

The lawful request by a police officer of anyone on the street for identification does not in and of itself turn the otherwise consensual encounter into a detention.

However, a passenger in a stopped car is not in the same situation as a person standing or walking on the street. When the police stop the car, the passenger is detained.

When a police officer asks a detained passenger for identification, no reasonable person would feel free to refuse that request. Thus, such a request is in fact a demand and thus is unlawful without further cause.

4. When is a detention [a temporary seizure of a person] constitutional?
"The Fourth Amendment prohibits detentions of persons by law enforcement if they are unreasonable." (Terry v. Ohio U.S. Supreme Court (1968).)

A detention is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment if the detaining officer, at the time of the detention, can point to specific articulable facts that, considered in light of the totality of the circumstances, provide some objective manifestation that the person detained may be involved in criminal activity.

5. The courts recognize the wide variety of necessary police functions of modern life.

The community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement derives from the expanded role undertaken by the modern police force. Because of the extensive regulation of motor vehicles and traffic, and also because of the frequency with which a vehicle can become disabled or involved in an accident on public highways, the extent of police-citizen contact involving automobiles will be substantially greater than police-citizen contact in a home or office.

Some such contacts will occur because the officer may believe the operator has violated a criminal statute, but many more will not be of that nature. Local police officers, unlike federal officers, frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.

In addition to their investigative tasks, police officers regularly perform community caretaking functions—helping stranded motorists, returning lost children to anxious parents, assisting and protecting citizens in need.

There are other exceptions recognized by courts, which free police from constitutional restraints. The emergency aid component of the community caretaking exception requires specific, articulable facts indicating the need for swift action to prevent imminent danger to life or serious damage to property.

In addition, "circumstances short of a perceived emergency may justify a warrantless entry, including the protection of property, as ‘where the police reasonably believe that the premises have recently been or are being burglarized.’

The appropriate standard under the community caretaking exception is one of reasonableness: Given the known facts, would a prudent and reasonable officer have perceived a need to act in the proper discharge of his or her community caretaking functions? . . .

In determining whether the officer acted reasonably, due weight must be given not to his unparticularized suspicions or hunches, but to the reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience; in other words he must be able to point to specific and articulable facts from which he concluded that his action was necessary.’

As I see it, the problem with this law is the same problem we have been coping with for fifty years or more. The standards of police contacts are so vague that they are almost meaningless. Police are free to be "creative," i.e., to lie. They claim to "see" suspiciious acts, smell odors, hear words and acts that their "experience and training" gives cause to suspect criminality over the denials of indepependent witnesses. Courts (made up of judges who are former prosecutors elected or appointed to enforce popular laws) will not wish to negate police activity intended to, in the words of the title of the statute: "support law enforcement and safe neighborhoods."

Tea Partying

One of the advantages of being old ... probably the only advantage among many disadvantages ... is the length of memory ... actually a blessing and a curse. Reading or viewing the news is like deja vu all over again.


For instance: The Tea Party Movement.

The thing to understand about his so-called phenomenon is this: It is nothing new. We have seen them many times before in our lifetime and the lifetime of our country.

Whether you believe the polls that claim that the participants have more income and education than the average American (which is contrary to previous polling which showed that most opposition to Obama from supposed independents and Clinton Democrats came from white, low middle class, high school education, lower income middle aged suburbanites and small town occupants),

anyone in my age easily (but chillingly) recognizes these people as the survivors of the half of our generation that Nixonians used to call their "silent majority"; that is, the ones who favored the Viet Nam War, who abhorred all the vocal movements of the 60's and 70's that were considered too liberal.


They were terrified by "Women’s Lib" and its associated demands for reproductive rights and equal rights in the workplace. They were on the wrong side of the civil rights movement in the South and the North. They opposed laws and courts actively enforcing voter registration, housing, employment, education (including busing). They have resisted and resented the changes in social consciousness that modified our language, customs, attitudes for the past half century.

What they mean when they claim to be defending "traditional American values" is that they prefer everything that existed in the 1950's, including racial and gender discrimination, mostly the domination by WASP male values.

The Mad Hatter is their hero but "Mad Men" is the culture they want to reinstate.

One thing is different, upside down really.

The Tea Partiers claim to be a coalition of several disparate movements unified by one principle — a general distrust of the government. This too is deja vu all over again. But in a twerped sort of way, because back in the day, these people were bitterly opposed to the coalition which was on the other side of the political spectrum who were deeply suspicious of the government.

That opposition to the government was called "unpatriotic": The bumper stickers that appeared were: "Your country: love it or leave it" and "I love my country — right or wrong." Opponents of the government were considered "anti-American".

I can understand the shock caused by the images of election night, 2008. I felt it. Barack Obama's election in my lifetime was as shocking as the Berlin Wall, the walk on the moon, the darkness of most faces of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Texas university football and basketball team members.

But the warm, fuzzy glow I felt on Inauguration Day, the optimistic sense that this was a better world we had long wished for, a feeling that at last, my generation had gotten it right ... that feeling soon proved to be premature.

The "forces of reaction" - as my father, whose memory of The Depression were , warned - can never be defeated.
Eventually, like monsters in horror movies, they revive from their stupor, and renew their age old complaints.

In the 19th century, they were the Know Nothings. In the 20th, they were the isolationists, America Firsters, John Birch Society, Minutemen, Christian Coalition.