First, the tax man.

A federal income tax has been part of the United States Constitution for 100 years now. The sixteenth amendment saw to that. The amendment is, frankly, a mockery of the first ten amendments. In a bygone era folks actually worried about limitations to what government could require of citizens. Now the Supreme law of the land tells the tax man the Government is entitled to a piece of all we earn, unless, of course, the Government decides we can keep it. The country has become a tax plantation; your efforts are harvested one dollar at a time. Unless you are rich.

There are no serious calls for tax reform in this country. Instead, we get what amounts to tax war on behalf of the well-heeled and corporations. Nonsense about trickle-down tax policy justifies a growing divide between a privileged few, and an increasingly impoverished many. The rich get richer, and poor, well they fade from view: Just how many Americans have dropped out of the economy is unknown.

The other day, the evening news carried a medley of stories. The stock market reached record highs. Unemployment was down, at least among those still looking for work. Suicide rates overtook total deaths from automobile accidents, with many of the suicides coming among middle-age white males. And older workers, those older than 50-years-old, increasingly were reported to be unable to find work. Four quick snapshots of a country spinning out of control.

Of course, the evening news did not connect the dots. No one asked whether the boom for the few reflected anything other than a deepening divide in a nation riven by vast differences among socioeconomic classes. No one asked whether a rising suicide rate was a response to a loss of hope. We don’t ask such questions in this country. It cuts across the grain of the prevailing ideology of denial.

Political dissent in this country is a limpid joke. From the right comes all manner of sterile chest-thumping about tyranny. Gun groupies snort saltpeter and dance around fictive militia maypoles. For all their rhetoric about liberty and their incendiary anxiety about oppressive big government, the right is, by contrast to dissent at other points in the nation’s history, impotent, sterile, and, frankly, silly.

A century ago, bombs went off at Haymarket Square in Chicago and elsewhere. In Homestead, Pennsylvania, displaced workers exchanged gunfire with corporate security hired by Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills. One of Carnegie’s lieutenants, Henry Clay Frick, was nearly assassinated in his office. Violence was, in those days, as American as apple pie, and the result was, a decade or so later, progressive legislation that made the American dream a reality for a broader class of Americans.

The pissing and moaning that passes for protest among the Tea Partiers is really nothing more than corporate propaganda. These would-be revolutionaries want nothing so much as the right to be let alone, to be unaccountable to the community in which they live, and unmolested in their right to profit from the labor of others. Fearful lest we peons awaken to their game, they wave flags and guns; we’re supposed to salute the flag, arm ourselves against Armageddon, and, if we must shoot, then we are to shoot one another.

If the Government and the Tea Partiers waste one another’s resources squabbling with one another, then here’s to hoping they exhaust one another, and leave the public policy slate clean for the rest of us. All this bitching and moaning about Benghazi and the IRS is white noise. Ordinary Americans are hurting while the likes of John Boehner and the other boneheads on Capitol Hill huff, puff and strut like circus barkers.

We don’t have serious political debates about policy any longer in this country. Politics has become entertainment. In the meantime, a dream is dying.

Here’s some free legal advice that might just keep you out of jail: If federal officials pay you a surprise visit and want to talk to you, don’t do it. If you just can’t say no, then demand that they permit you to tape record your conversation with them. If they won’t let you record the conversation, then, at the very least, take their business cards, call a lawyer, and politely ask them to leave your premises.

Why such a hardline with the feds?

It is a federal offense to lie to a government employee. (It is not, however, a violation of the law for a government official to lie to you as an investigative technique. The Supreme Court recognizes a modest degree of deception as a legitimate law enforcement tactic.)

But who is to say just what constitutes a lie?

Suppose federal officials interview Tom, Dick and Harry, and this happy trio reports that the light at the intersection was green at some important moment. When the agents interview you, you tell them it was red, because that is what you recall. Is that a lie?

Nothing would prevent a prosecutor from so concluding. You might then find yourself defending against an accusation that you lied to a federal official in the performance of their duties, a felony carrying up to five years in prison.

Good prosecutors will tell you not to worry about such mistakes in memory. They will only prosecute serious cases of dishonesty. But who’s to decide what is and is not serious?

Recall the Martha Stewart case.

She was prosecuted for insider trading. She was acquitted of that charge, but convicted of lying to federal investigators. Robell Philoppos, a young man in Boston, now faces federal charges for lying to federal prosecutors about his contact with one of the brothers accused of detonating a bomb at this year’s Boston Marathon.

Federal agents are told not to record interviews, this despite the fact that the technology for doing so is inexpensive and easy to use.

I'm a battle-hardened criminal defense lawyer, so it always surprises me how weak in the knees I get when a policeman pulls me over. The urge to confess runs rampant, even if I haven't done anything. I assume the authorities must have a reason for wanting to talk to me. What have I done?

Police prey upon our tendency to trust them. Yet confusing the sort of soul-cleansing confession one might give to a priest with the Earth-bound variety police officers ask for is playing with Hell fire. Many a man and woman sits now in a prison cell, convicted by their own words.

I pass along some general observations about cooperating with the police in the hope that it may spare you the sorrow that comes of an improvident confession to a lawman. Mind you, nothing I am writing here is meant to encourage folks to commit a crime. I am simply reminding you that however much confession may benefit the soul in some spiritual sense, the corporeal consequences of a confession could well land you in prison. And prison is not good for the soul.

So here are some common myths and misconceptions about what you must do when the police come calling.

1. The police can order me down to the station to give a statement, correct?

Wrong. The police cannot order you to come down and see them. The Fourth Amendment gives them the power to arrest if they develop probable cause to believe you have committed a crime, and they might have the authority to engage you in a brief investigatory detention. But no case stands for the proposition that you are required to come to the station for a chat. Period.

But fear undermines many folk's sense of self-interest. So does a misplaced sense of hope.

An officer may call and say he needs you to come to the station to tell your side of the story. (He may not tell you just what story that is. My favorite investigative technique? Officers show up at your door and ask: "Why do you think we want to talk to you?") The officer may say that if you don't come to the station he will seek an arrest warrant for you.

News flash: The officer is almost certainly going to seek the warrant anyhow once things have gotten to that point. What he is looking for here is a confession, to bolster the warrant and make a conviction all but a foregone conclusion.

The law does not require police officers to get your side of the story before arresting you. In rare cases only does discussing your case with the police benefit you. The only way to make an intelligent assessment of whether you should cooperate is by consulting a lawyer before you talk to the police. There are no exceptions to this rule. Don't accept the invitation for coffee and donuts at the station.

2. When the police show up at my house, I have to talk to them right?

Wrong again. The normal conventions of polite society do not apply here. The police have not come to your home to trade notes on how your respective fantasy sports teams are doing. They are investigating a crime, and you may well be a suspect. It takes perishingly little to convict of certain crimes. Minor details you give them may be used as a means of corroborating a far-fetched story told about you by others.

This is common in child sex-abuse cases. Suppose your niece or nephew now claims you abused them a decade ago. You are rattled. Shocked. The police want to ask you about the relationship. Where you saw the child. What sorts of things you did together. Why you think the child is saying these things. All of these investigative leads can be turned against you to corroborate the fact that you did, indeed, have contact with the child at certain family events. Your assessment of the child's motives will be transformed into claims that you were deceptive.

Evidence that might truly assist you, e.g., the fact that the child has made similar false or exaggerated claims, background on family conflicts that provide the child with powerful motives to lie to assure that mommy and daddy remain together, united in crisis, and other such information can be provided to the police by your lawyer.

3. If the police don't read me my rights, they can't use anything I say, right?

Wrong, unless you are in custody. The so-called Miranda warnings have become part of American folklore. Unfortunately, many people get it wrong, thanks in no small measure to television. Police are only required to advise you of your right to remain silent if you are in custody. If you appear at the station voluntarily and they tell you that you are free to leave, you almost certainly are not in custody. In these cases, courts will regard your statement as voluntary, and, Mirandized or not, you will eat your own words at trial.

If you are unsure whether you are in custody or not, and believe me, figuring that out is no easy task, simply refuse to speak to the police. Once again, don't resort to normal, polite conversational gambits. "Maybe I should talk to a lawyer" is not clear enough to satisfy a court that you were serious about wanting a lawyer present. State the following: "I DO NOT WANT TO SPEAK TO YOU WITHOUT A LAWYER PRESENT." Print it out on a three-by-five card. If you really want to short the officer's circuits, ask him to sign the card, signifying that he gets it. (He won't sign.)

This may sound cynical, but it is a conclusion I've reached after many years of head-banging: the courts are increasingly reluctant to meaningfully enforce the rights of the accused. Ask any criminal lawyer about the serious crime exception to the Bill of Rights. Don't become a victim. Call a lawyer.

Police officers are trained in the art of deception. They know how to prey on fear and uncertainty. Whether you have committed a crime or not, odds are you will be putty in their hands. There are ways to get the information important to your defense into the hands of the police, but you are not equipped to do it without a lawyer.

I have said this to folks hundreds of times. Sadly, each week I get another call from someone who has given away some significant portion of their future by talking about things they would have been better served keeping to themselves.

In medieval times, courts pursued claims not just against persons who committed harm, but also against the material things that cause the harm. Strike me with a stick, and I might have brought an action against you and the stick. This later form of claim is what the law calls an in rem proceeding.

I’d like to believe that law has evolved beyond the point of thinking we need to punish inanimate objects. What could be more inanimate than the lifeless corpse of the suspected Boston Marathon bomber?

But plenty of Connecticut residents were enraged this week when a Vermont resident, Paul Douglas Keane, offered the use of one of the burial plots he owns in Hamden to the Tsarnaev family. Mr. Keane explained that this was his way of showing support for the forgotten, the despised and the oppressed. Everyone, he reminded us, is entitled to a decent burial.

Normally, I’d side with the likes of Mr. Keane. I earn my living on the dark side of the line separating the popular from the unpopular.

Several folks with family members buried at the cemetery maintained by the Mount Carmel Burial Ground Society called to express outrage. Could his burial be stopped?

Under Connecticut law, cemeteries may be maintained by associations organized and operating under state laws. These associations are free to charge subscribers for burial plots. The sale of these plots amounts to contracts that define the rights and duties of the parties.

We don’t normally buy plots for perfect strangers. We purchase the right to bury a loved one, usually with the expectation that other loved ones will be buried nearby. Anticipating these expectations, a contract will typically specify the price of the burial plot, the rights to use plot for limited purposes associated with burial, and the obligations incident to ownership of a plot for such things as upkeep and general maintenance of the property. I doubt any contract for purchase of a burial plot anticipates that the owner might decide to use his plot to bury a reviled suspected terrorist.

Mr. Keane took the position that since his contract for the plot was silent on who could be buried there, he was free to give the rights to use it to whomsoever he wished. Both the bylaws and the constitution of the Mount Carmel Burial Ground Society were silent on the topic. A spokesman for the society suggested in a public statement that there was nothing that could be done to prevent Mr. Tsarnaev’s burial in Hamden. Are Mr. Keane and the society right?

We were prepared to challenge them in court, and had prepared a request for an immediate hearing in Superior Court on behalf of several families who own burial plots. Our argument was simple: Although the contract was silent on who could be buried in the cemetery, there were certain implied promises made to other plot owners when they purchased their property. Those promises would have been violated by turning the cemetery into a controversial theme park for the despised.

 Contracts fall within the broader class of promises. One famous definition of a contract holds that a contract is a promise the law will enforce. Thus, when you pay your neighbor a fee to kill a rival, he promises to perform a lethal act in exchange for whatever you pay him. But don’t try to collect your prepaid fee if the neighbor never does the dark deed. The law will not enforce such a contract. Lawyers say it is against public policy. Similarly, minors cannot make contracts. The contracts of those who are mentally infirm may be voidable, or declared of no force. Contract law is a defense thicket of general rules and exceptions to those rules.

The Knox trials are endlessly fascinating. The case turns on a disputed confession, the statement of a co-defendant, an alibi defense, and the interpretation of trace, and potentially mishandled, forensic evidence. The case has spawned books, articles and web sites. Folks argue with the zeal of religious converts in favor of Ms. Knox’s guilt or innocence. I confess to having acquired more than a passing interest.

I’m of the view that Knox is innocent. She was convicted of engaging in a sex assault gone violently wrong with two other men. When Ms. Meredith didn’t participate, the theory goes, she was killed. The theory simply makes no sense. Ms. Knox had recently struck up a relationship with a moonstruck young man, Rafael Sollecito. My hunch is that these two were so wrapped up in one another that the rest of the world was but a distraction. Young love is a powerful drug.

But there is the troubling matter of a confession Ms. Knox gave while in police custody. She was interrogated without a lawyer for more than 40 hours over a four-day period. She finally told police officers that she was in the flat when Ms. Kercher was killed, and that another man, Patrick Lumumba, was also present. When Mr. Lumumba later produced an air-tight alibi, charges against him were dropped. Ms. Knox was held liable for criminal defamation and fined for falsely implicating Mr. Lumumba.

I read her book to find out how and why she falsely identified a man and why she confessed.

She claims that police broke down her will to resist. She claims she was struck by a female officer and called a liar. Police told her getting a lawyer would only make things worse. She was simply worn down and wanted to end the interrogation when she made her inculpatory statements.

Is she telling the truth? I can’t tell. She says all the right things in her book. She has an innocent explanation for every damning fact. The book addresses all the things her critics throw at her: she cares about the victim’s family; she was not flip, just scared; her sexual explorations were simply the pose of a 19-year-old experimenting with visions of adulthood. And as to her confession, it is exactly the testimony I would want a client to give if I were claiming that a confession was coerced and unreliable.

The book is perfect, all to perfect.

Although Italy and the United States have a very liberal extradition treaty, I would counsel Ms. Knox against returning to trial when her cases is next reached for trial. She can be tried in absentia in Italy. If she is convicted, there are good grounds to fight extradition: there are substantial differences in the criminal procedure employed in Italy that raise questions about whether she can get a fair trial in Italy – inadmissible evidence in a criminal case is nonetheless presented to the jury. Why? The jury simultaneously hears related civil cases, where such evidence can be admitted.

I imagined Ms. Knox’s prosecutors reading her memoirs with a simmering rage. She has all the answers. Each and every one. It’s almost too good to be true, unless, of course, it is true. In that case, reality is stranger than fiction. I just can’t tell.

In the town’s general elections on Monday, a series of municipal offices will be filled, including First Selectman, and members of the Planning and Zoning Commission. Democrat Derrylyn Gorski will seek return to the top office. Three members of the Planning and Zoning Commission, together with seats on the Zoning Board of Appeals, are also up for grabs.

My wife and I will be voting a straight Republican ticket for all municipal offices this year. It will be the first time we’ve ever done so. We are casting these ballots because in our view, the politics of condominium development in Bethany are the most significant issue facing the town. We moved to Bethany because of its rural character. The effort of well-meaning Democrats to open the town to condominium development is a clear and present danger to one of the few rural areas left in Southern Connecticut.

Ms. Gorski has declared that one of her campaign issues is housing "diversity." In Southern Connecticut that means only one thing: transforming open space into tract housing or condominiums. (Ask yourself when Hamden, Naugatuck or Prospect ever plowed under a condominium project in the name of diversity in an effort to create farmland.) Diversity means high density.

There are condominium units, small single family homes on tiny lots, and apartment buildings within a ten minute drive of Bethany. There is no pressing necessity sounding in economics or social policy requiring that we destroy the town’s rural character to import the population density of surrounding towns into Bethany.

This past year, Lynda Munro moved from Sperry Road in Bethany into New Haven. I was devastated to see her leave.

"Why are you leaving Bethany?" I asked.

She and her husband wanted to live in space that took less time and effort to maintain. Stewardship of the land is a commitment that costs plenty in terms of time and money. Their priorities changed. So they moved ten minutes away to a condominium unit in New Haven. The existing housing stock was more than adequate to meet their needs. No open space needed to be destroyed to accommodate their lifestyle decisions.

Supporters of Green Haven, and that includes several Democrats currently seeking re-election to the Planning and Zoning Commission, trumpet the need for high-density housing in Bethany as a means of diversifying the town housing stock. Doesn’t the state’s affordable housing act require such a step? I am not so sure. 

Connecticut lacks any semblance of county or regional government, save for a handful of regional school districts. It defies reason to think that state law makers meant to require that each and every town, rather than each and every region, of the state come to look alike. Some folks like urban living; some prefer the suburbs; some want rural. Bethany is rural. Does the law really require a condominium unit in a farmer’s field?

We intend to fight to keep the town rural, and hence our vote for the Republican ticket.

The manner in which the current administration fostered the Green Haven zone change regulations borders on shameful. At the recent hearings on Green Haven’s proposal, it became apparent that the regulations were the work of many months collaboration between Green Haven investors, town employees and several members of the current Planning and Zoning Commission. When this game of regulatory footsie was exposed at a public meeting attended by hundreds of town residents, supporters of the project suddenly looked like they had swallowed a toad: The regulations were altered; one commission member started to bob and weave like a punch-drunk light weight about whether she had a conflict or not – she owns land abutting the proposed Green Haven project –before finally abstaining from a vote; in the end, the proposal was voted down "without prejudice" so that the issue could not cloud this week’s election.

In lawyerly terms, a matter rejected "without prejudice" can be resubmitted at any time. A denial "with prejudice" kills an item once and for all. In the context of the a town administrative agency, the distinction is meaningless. An applicant can propose a zone change regulation any time they like. The Democrats on the commission simply denied Green Haven’s application "without prejudice" to signal to supporters to come back next week, after the general elections, and to try all over again.

I’m not buying it.

The general election would have been a referendum on Green Haven if the current board had not voted. To avoid a showdown on an extremely unpopular measure, the commission ducked. Its incumbents are no doubt hoping to survive the week’s general election so that the process can be started all over again in the new term.

Ms. Gorski and her fellow Democrats might prefer to transform Bethany into Condo Haven. I am hoping they are turned from office before they succeed.

 NOTE: All of the Democrat zoning officials standing for re-election were defeated, including long-time incumbents. The first selectwoman won a narrow 25-vote re-election. It appears Green Haven struck a raw nerve in a lot of townspeople.

 But opportunities for advancement apparently did not materialize, so he’s returning to private practice, or so he says. This gives the president an opportunity to appoint a new top federal prosecutor for Connecticut. He should choose carefully. The office is in need of fixing. The new U.S. Attorney needs to repair the damage done in the past four years.

 Every top dog has the right to surround himself with the pups of his choosing. When Mr. Fein took control of Justice Department’s Connecticut kennel, he had a distressing tendency to choose prosecutors animated by the attack-dog style of the Southern District of New York. There’s almost a cultural divide in the office: the red meat goes to the young firebrands; everyone else, the old hands, in particular, got the leavings.

 The result was an office transformed in small ways that mattered.

 Under the old regime, a target under investigation had the option to turn himself in, when, and if, a grand jury returned an indictment. Mr. Fein changed that. Prosecutors would mutter apologies about the new policy. The office would not strike deals to permit folks to turn themselves in. Instead, agents would bang on the door of the unsuspecting early in the morning, even for white collar cases.

 I’ve had the wife of more than one client in tears as she relayed to me how armed federal agents demanded entry in the bedroom of sleeping children just after dawn – this after the man of the house, accused of a white collar crime, was already in cuffs and on his way out the door. This isn’t law enforcement; it is thuggery. I lay responsibility for that at the paws of Mr. Fein.

 All at once, the office seemed to have fallen in love with criminal complaints as a means of initiating an arrest. These decisions seemed driven less by the exigencies of public safety than by tactical gamesmanship. A client could demand a hearing in probable cause after such an arrest, but if you made such a demand, you might well be threatened with indictment on more serious charges. The grand jury became less a protection of people from rogue acts of government agents than it did an investigative tool and a club to be used against those took too robust a view of their rights under the federal Constitution. That, too, has Mr. Fein’s paw marks on it.

 And what of the emasculation of line prosecutors? All at once, it seemed as if Mr. Fein’s top dogs had to approve of each and every plea deal in the district. I negotiated a deal with one line prosecutor in a difficult case. We waived a probable cause hearing after being told that failure to do so might yield more significant charges and enhancements for aggravating factors. After months of talks, we agreed to a deal. “No deal,” we were told, and then the client was slapped with every sentencing enhancement the government could apply. When I complained about equity, I was told, with a straight face, I could have my probable cause hearing if I wanted it.

 The old guard in the office was pushed to the side. You could hear them yowling sometimes, consigned as they were to the backrooms of Justice’s kennel. New attack dogs set a more aggressive tone.

 I am not sure that justice has been done in Connecticut in the past four years. Yes, there have been plenty of prosecutions. But that would have been the case even had Mr. Fein’s office remained vacant.

 What was strained in the past four years was collegiality among members of the defense bar and the prosecution. More damaging, a sense arose that prosecutors were suddenly more concerned with convictions and big sentences than they were with seeing that justice was done. 

 The president has a chance to set a different tone and direction in Connecticut’s United State’s Attorney’s office. Mr. Fein’s tenure was not a high point in the office’s history. The new top dog needs better manners, and a greater respect for the leash imposed by due regard for the rights of the accused and their families.

Why would an innocent person confess to a crime he did not commit?

Police officers work hard to get confessions from suspects before their targets can “lawyer up.” Although the days of the “third degree” are over, and police rarely resort to physical force to get a confession, the fact remains that lawmen are trained to use psychological stress and pressure to force confessions. The good cop/bad cop routine of Hollywood policing has a foundation in the reality of rapport-building that good interrogators bring to every interview.

There’s something perverse about the encounter between trained lawmen and a frightened suspect. Claims that confessions are coerced by psychological pressure, subtle promises, fear and intimidation are common. They are central, for example, in the Amanda Knox case in Perugia, Italy. The young American’s words were used to convict her of the murder of a flatmate. When Ms. Knox claimed coercion, the Italian court scoffed, and police threatened new charges against her for defaming them. She faces a retrial after lengthy appeals.

What goes on in a police interrogation? How are confessions obtained? How reliable are confessions?

We will never really know because most police departments refuse to electronically record interrogations in their entirety. All too often, officers sit alone with the accused for hours, peppering him with questions, cajoling her to confess, subtly insinuating that confession is, after all, good for the soul.

But police officers aren’t priests; theirs is not the task of caring for souls; they want bodies behind bars. The dark arts of overcoming a suspect’s will to resist are performed in secret. Only when a confession has been practiced and put in proper narrative form is it recorded for later demonstration to the world at large.

What are lawmen trying to hide by refusing to make a complete recording of their treatment of suspects during interrogations? As evidence mounts that innocent people can be coerced into confessing, we ought to require that interrogations be recorded in their entirety. The refusal to record them is a reason to doubt the integrity of those who refuse to submit to transparency.

Few will be concerned about the treatment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by federal lawmen in Boston. The suspected marathon bomber was hospitalized after his capture. A special federal group of interrogators camped out at the hospital. Their goal? Question him as soon as he could respond.

A nervous world wondered in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing whether there were other explosives set in the city. Were the brothers Tsarnaev part of a larger conspiracy, with associated cells ready to strike? Lawmen skilled at interrogation invoked the so-called public safety exception to the Miranda warnings customarily given to a custodial detainee in order to question Mr. Tsarnaev.

Television has made everyone aware of Miranda warnings. You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. If you cannot afford a lawyer, a lawyer will be appointed for you.

These rights flow from the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The lack of a reading of these rights does not invalidate an arrest.

The rights must be read if the prosecution wants to use statements made by an accused person after he or she has been taken into custody.

Reading the rights is usually done as a prudential matter, just in case an arrestee decides to talk.

In the Tsarnaev case, lawmen refused to read him his rights initially.

They relied on a body of case law that carves out an exception to the requirement to Mirandize a suspect. Officers can both question a person in custody, and use the words he utters in a subsequent prosecution, when there is an immediate threat to public safety and questioning the arrestee will help assess that threat.

We’re told that federal interrogators questioned Mr. Tsarnaev for some 16 hours before he was given notice of his right to remain silent.

According to one report, he initially denied that the brothers had any intent to bomb another location. After hours of interrogation, Mr. Tsarnaev then allegedly told interrogators the brothers were headed for Times Square in New York City. The New York press had a field day with that information. So did New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Public hysteria was fanned anew: We need the police to keep us safe from secret threats.

But who keeps us safe from secret interrogations?

I can’t help but wonder whether the reports about Times Square are true. I’d love to see a videotape of the interrogation. But odds are none was made, or, if it was made, it will be deemed too hot to show to the public — national security requires secrecy you see.

Sure, I am afraid of terrorists. But I am more concerned about the ordinary terror of folks all-too-often held in secret and brow-beaten to say things that simply make no sense. Terrorism is rare; secret interrogations are common.

I would have voted to convict the Central Park Five after seeing the final products of their long interrogations replayed in court. Why are we not entitled to see all that police do in the dark of a station house? Why are we afraid of the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

We generally vote for the Democratic Party in local elections in my household. But this year, there is only one thing that will stop both my wife and me from voting for the Republican Party ticket in the May 6 election this year in Bethany, and that is simple: The town’s Planning and Zoning Commission must vote to reject the proposed amendment to the town’s zoning regulations sponsored by Green Haven at the next meeting of the commission on May 1. Neighbors have told us they will do likewise.

Green Haven slithered before the commission earlier this year with a proposal to change town zoning ordinances to permit high-density residential development on any parcel of land between 20 acres and 35 acres in size. Although ostensibly targeted at development of the Halter farm property on Meyers Road, the initial proposed zone change regulation would open the entire town up to cluster development.  It is really just a Trojan Horse that would invite condominium developers into town.

Bethany is one of the few remaining rural areas in Southern Connecticut. There is no shortage of rental property and low-income property in neighboring towns. What the region lacks are open fields, pasturage, and a community of people committed to a rural way of life -- things Bethany still has.

Bethany’s existing zoning regulations are committed to preserving the town’s rural character. But in 2007, a Superior Court judge ordered that the Halter property be made eligible for the development of high-density low-income housing. The site remains undeveloped because of the prohibitive costs of building high-density housing in a rural enclave.

Green Haven proposes to short circuit the 2007 court order by creating an “overlay” zone. In other words, create a high-density project that just might satisfy the court, while at the same time preserving some portion of the open space. It is a superficially appealing project, but it is unnecessary to preserve the rural character of the town.

First, there is no developer ready, willing and able to build a project that would satisfy the 2007 court order. Suggesting Green Haven will save us from some imminent threat of new development is a red herring. The court ruled on what the land could and should accommodate under the state’s affordable housing act; neither the court nor the state is prepared to fund actual construction. The land is likely to remain either undeveloped or broken into smaller lots, and sold consistent with the current land use plan. Green Haven saves us from nothing.

Even if Green Haven were developed, there is no guarantee it would satisfy the requirements of the state affordable housing act. Approval of the Green Haven project would almost guarantee a court challenge asserting the “overlay” zone is really just a sham means of frustrating compliance with the requirements of both the court order and the affordable housing act. Good luck telling a court that this new development is fine and dandy because it brings just the “right kind” of low-income folks to town. Green Haven’s commitment to dedicating a portion of the units to low-income seniors looks like a thinly veiled attempt at racial red-lining likely to draw fire from the NCAAP.

Green Haven’s hasty attempt to redraft the zoning regulations between the recent two public meetings is artless. Sensing opposition to the proposal to open the entire town to condominium development, it tried to amend its proposal to create only one “overlay” zone -- the area of the Halter farm property. But the amended regulation was hastily drafted, and left intact sections that could apply to other properties. If approved, the next developer to eye a cluster housing development could easily either seek a new amendment to the ordinances, or persuade a court that the current regulations are arbitrary. Spot zoning to satisfy Green Haven is a disaster that will haunt Bethany for years to come.

That the proponents of the regulation really have their eyes on a much greater prize than the Halter property is evident by the peculiar behavior of commissioner Patsy Winer. She owns property adjoining the Halter road site. By law she should recuse herself from voting on a matter affecting only that property. She knows this. So what’s her rationale for failure to recuse herself now? The proposed new regulation impacts the entire town, she says. Precisely, Patsy. This silliness strains bonds of affection.

In the last round of litigation about what is to become of Halter farm, the town left significant constitutional issues on the cutting room floor when it challenged the reach of the state’s affordable housing act. Connecticut lacks meaningful county government, and is, instead, governed locally by a crazy-quilt pattern of 169 towns. An act imposing obligations on towns, and not regions meaningfully drawn to reflect not just the need for low-income housing, but also preservation of open space and the right of some to choose to live in rural areas, is flawed, and deserves challenge on broader grounds than were asserted last time around. Green Haven beware, there are broader issues as yet unraised in Bethany.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, creating this zone sets the standard the town will be expected to live by when the next developer saunters into town. Giving Green Haven a green light for cluster housing on Meyers will make it all but impossible to no the next applicant who wants to build such units elsewhere. We are either choose to remain rural, or we do not.

My wife and I moved to Bethany because we wanted to live in a rural community. We still do. If Bethany is to become a site of cluster housing, we’ll have little incentive to remain, paying a high mortgage and high taxes. We could have cut our housing costs substantially if we had elected to live in Hamden or Naugatuck. We didn’t make that choice. I suggest that if the good folk behind Green Haven want to live elsewhere, they do so. I’m just not interested in cluster housing.

In the meantime, we are voting Republican on May 6. Unless, of course, the Democrats on the Planning and Zoning Commission disapprove of the Green Haven project on May 1. 

In the United States, a jury’s decision about guilt or innocence is almost impossible to challenge. We assume that jurors get it right, even when we know better.

The Italians seem to be more sensible about human frailty and failings. In the land of opera, a defendant can appeal, and, in effect, be granted a re-trial before a new collection of judges and jurors, as happened in the case of Amanda Knox, the young American exchange student convicted by her first jury, then acquitted by her second jury, for the murder of a housemate in Perugia. (The acquittal has been reversed by Italy’s highest court, potentially sending her back to trial for a third time.)

Given the number of convictions overturned as a result of the Innocence Project’s work with DNA, and the growing recognition that eyewitness testimony is not all it’s cracked up to be, one would expect the court system to embrace a means of fact-checking the work of juries. More than 225 prisoners wrongfully convicted have been freed due to the work of the Innocence Project alone.

On the federal level, strict filing deadlines limit the efforts an inmate can make to obtain post-conviction relief. Connecticut, on the other hand, takes a perverse pride in permitting virtually unlimited habeas corpus petitions to be filed, so long as an inmate remains in custody. The result are claims that never cease. It is not uncommon for lawyers to be hailed into a courtroom a decade or more after a trial and to be asked to give an account of the tactical decisions made long ago.

In the case of Michael Skakel, for example, evidence is underway challenging the effectiveness of Mr. Skakel’s lawyer, Mickey Sherman, in a trial that resulted in a guilty verdict for the murder of Martha Moxley. The murder took place in 1972. Skakel was convicted in 2002. What took 13-years for the Skakel case to make it into a courtroom?

I don’t know whether Sherman was ineffective in the Skakel case. Hubey Santos, representing Sherman now, makes a good case that Sherman was distracted by financial woes that ripened into tax evasion charges and a bid in federal prison. Press accounts make it obvious that there was a valid third-party culpability defense essentially left in the file by Sherman. It is hard to be confident in the guilty verdict.

But to win the right to a new trial, Skakel must prove that his lawyer’s performance was so bad that it constituted no lawyering at all. That’s a tall order. Even if Sherman was hamming it up for the cameras, he’s no fool, and he knows his way around a courtroom. It’s not enough to prove that Sherman had his eccentricities.

This was the case that was going to make Sherman famous from one coast to the other – he was already playing to the press before the jury even had the case. What’s more, he was reportedly paid a small fortune by the Kennedy family. More than one wit among defense lawyers have muttered, upon learning that the fee exceeded one million dollars: "I could have lost the case for half as much."

I propose that defendants be given a choice after conviction by a jury: Let those who think the jury simply got it wrong elect a new trial by jury. Once these trials are concluded, let the defendant take an appeal. But after the appeal, limit habeas corpus relief to claims that can be brought promptly. Let’s end the perpetual rhythm of petitions without end.

We lawyers like to draw a distinction between matters of fact and matters of law. We say judges decide the legal issues; in a jury trial, decisions about the facts belong to the jury. It’s a facile distinction easily blurred by the third category of issues lawyers recognize: mixed questions of law and fact. Ask a judge sometime just what such a mixed question is, and odds are you won’t get a very satisfying answer.

It might well be the case that the Skakel jury got it wrong, just as at least one of Amanda Knox’s juries did. Can’t we admit that and simply do the just thing by giving to defendants a right to have the case retried? It works in Italy.

Before leaping to the conclusion that lawmen in Boston worked a miracle last week by locking the city down as they searched for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, consider the following: It was only after folks were told they could leave their homes that a private citizen spotted a trail of blood that led to the young man’s hiding place and capture.

This is important because Boston will now stand as a textbook case of what municipal police officers should do in an emergency. Close down businesses. Order people to stay in their homes. Keep folks off the streets. Search homes one by one at gunpoint.

“It was really creepy,” a reporter who was in Watertown, Mass., during the search and lockdown told me. “It felt like the police wanted to do this to test their emergency response drills. It made me very uneasy. I called you to talk about it because I figured anyone else would accuse me of supporting terrorists.”

Wow, I thought. Criminal defense lawyers rarely play priest to the press.

Although composed in words that do not change, the United States Constitution is written in broad terms. The Constitution’s meaning changes depending on how we define its words. This is particularly clear in the area of our freedom to remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The text of the Fourth Amendment is concise: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

But don’t confuse concision with clarity. What, for example, is an “unreasonable” search and seizure? That’s where Supreme Court rulings end up being the real law of the land. It has the final say on what the Constitution’s words mean.

Our current Supreme Court regards an unreasonable search as one transgressing boundaries we are collectively prepared to honor. If that sounds ambiguous, that’s because it is. The court, not a public opinion poll or a referendum, determines the content of our collective expectations. In doing so, the court relies upon all sorts of things, including many things not found in the Constitution at all.

Some of you are no doubt troubled by all this. I thought the Constitution was the fundamental law of the land, you might say. Ponder this question long enough and you will come to understand the furious politics surrounding the appointment of judges. It’s not enough to promise simply to follow the law. Judges make law.

That’s what makes the Boston bombing case so potentially frightening. What if the court concludes when a terrorist is on the loose, all bets are off? Didn’t the good people of Boston submit willingly to what amounted to martial law? Why isn’t their reaction in their time of extraordinary crisis illustrative of what the American people are prepared to accept as reasonable in the war on terror?

I fail to see why the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit went out of its way to tomahawk Attorney John R. Williams. But there it is in cold print: An unsolicited attack on a barrister whose been a role model and inspiration to a couple of generations of lawyers.

In case you missed it, the court chastised Williams for his "history of lawyering that falls below the minimum standards before this Court and the district courts" in an employment case captioned Cutler v. Stop $ Shop Supermarkets LLC. The Court questioned why Williams did not recommend withdrawal of the action during discovery, and why he bothered to take an appeal because the merits of the case were, in the court’s view, so transparently thin.

There was not much Williams could do in response to this professional assassination. He was given no notice or opportunity to be heard. When questioned by a reporter, Williams stood his ground, remarking that he could not violate the attorney-client privilege by disclosing the advice he gave to his client, or why his client elected to pursue the case to the bitter end. Williams showed more restraint that the court.

John Williams was, and remains, a mentor to me. He gave me my first job in the law, and, a few short years after I become an employee, he made me a partner. I count the dozen years I worked with him as a gift I did not deserve. No one works harder than Williams. His brief bank is the library from which I learned what law I know. And his door was always open if I had a question or was otherwise in need of guidance.

I’ve missed him since hanging my own shingle. It’s no fun being top dog is a small shop devoted to ordinary people in extraordinary trouble. I didn’t realize how good I had it when all I had to do was roll out of bed and try the firm’s cases.

I called Williams after reading the decision.

"What’s up with the Second Circuit?" I asked.

"I’ve never pretended to be perfect, and I’m sure I’d have been a washout on Wall Street, but I’ve always tried to do my best for the sorts of people the system tends to leave behind," he said. He sounded tired. "Nobody has more respect than I do for the federal courts, which in many difficult times have been a bulwark against abuses of power; but in the final analysis a lawyer’s duty is to honor the wishes of his or her clients above currying favor from powerful judges."

I have a chip on my shoulder in this case. Had a lawyer written a brief taking a gratuitous slap at a judge similar to what the Second Circuit did to Williams, odds are there would be a disciplinary proceeding convened. We are, after all, officers of the court. What makes it permissible for a court one step removed from the United States Supreme Court to play Star Chamber with the reputation of a litigator?

Williams knows a truth lifetime appointees can choose to ignore: The world is far from a reasonable place. People come to a lawyer’s office because they are afraid, because their hearts have been broken, because they want to be heard. They pursue justice as they conceive justice to be, leaving to their lawyers the often impossible task of translating a client’s idiosyncratic view of the good, true and beautiful into terms a judge will both understand and recognize. We hold the courts open to all out of a recognition that whatever failings the judiciary may have, it is superior to the raw violence of street justice.

But there’s something raw and sinister about the Second Circuit’s potshot at Williams. It is unseemly, even undignified, and patently unfair. I register my dissent here today. The Circuit’s scorn was improvidently and unfairly applied. People in trouble should still call John Williams.

Boston, a city that prides itself on its independence, went supine with fear, apparently volunteering for martial law as lawmen went door-to-door demanding the right to search each home on their radar for a single suspect. Watch as a new national standard in law enforcement emerges: City in crisis? Then lock it down. Demand entry into every home. Dispense even with the requirement of general warrant, the hated instrument the king’s men used in colonial America to ransack the people’s homes and papers. Declare an emergency and all will be forgiven.

And as Mr. Tsarnaev lay recuperating from gunshot wounds in a Boston hospital, federal prosecutors chest thumped that he need not be advised of a right to counsel: This is an emergency, they crow. The ends justify the means. We need to make sure the city is safe. Nary a peep of disapproval echoes from a city that was once the home to the likes of Sam Adams.

President Barack Obama was all patriotic gore after the two bombers were either killed or in custody. "They failed because the people of Boston refused to be intimidated," he said.

Not so fast, Mr. President. Did Boston flinch, and become the bloodied bitch of terrorists, yielding all to state and federal lawmen simply to feel safe again?

I’ve family in Cambridge. Indeed, a niece went to a prom with Mr. Tsarnaev – the young man’s friends remain stunned that the sweet and loving boy and young man they knew could be involved in acts so frightening. They were scared as they heard police tear around town, and they were terrified about leaving their homes. There is no shame in this fear.

But there is something more terrifying that a lone wolf wandering the city after a gunfight, at least there used to be something more terrifying in our historic imagination: We used to fear the king’s men barging into our homes without a particularized and specific need to do so. We used to fear secret interrogations. We used to fear the government would use any pretext to expand its dominion and control over our lives. Now we applaud lawmen who get tough on terror, and excuse them any excess in the name of safety.

The winner in the Boston Marathon bombing? It may well be the Tsarnaev brothers.

They’ve certainly captured the hearts and minds of United States Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. The senators want the 19-year-old suspect classified an "enemy combatant" so that he can be held at a military base, detained indefinitely, and deprived of the rights we used to guarantee to a man accused of a crime in this country.

Mr. Tsarnaev is an American citizen. He is accused of a crime on American soil. His older brother may or may not have connections to foreign extremist groups. Just how this justifies depriving an American citizen of fundamental rights is a telling example of how quickly the slippery slope in the war on terror becomes a descent into Hell. It is a pity we cannot impeach senators. These men are unworthy of the offices they hold.

We’ve been engaged in a decade-plus war on terror in this country, and there is no end in sight to it. Instead, we’re told year-by-year we need to yield more to government so that it can fight our hidden foes. We routinely kill by remote control with drones. We detain people indefinitely and out of sight forever. Now we can lock a city down and rummage through the homes of its citizens on mere declaration of a governor. And still we are not safe enough.

Is it any wonder that terrorists strike us from time to time at home? We’ve spawned a generation of folks with deep grievances against our swagger in the world. The cold war is over, but our armed forces and intelligence services still consume a staggering portion of federal spending; our state and local law enforcement officers are well armed, and forever in need of new tools to surveil and control us. We arm ourselves, too, hissing about tyranny, but knowing full well that armed resistance to any governing authority is futile. We’re frightened, we’re angry, and, some of us least, are alienated from any prospect of singing the national hymn of prosperity for all.

The stock market reaches record highs? How many Americans have dropped out of the labor force? Corporations thrive and expand into all areas of American life? How many middle aged Americans have lost all hope of anything more than a minimum wage? Banks forge mortgage notes? Courts scurry to find way to protect bankers while tossing ordinary folks to the street.

We imprison more people in this the land of the free than anywhere else on Earth. We lag behind other developed nations in care for children, health care, life expectancy. And yet we continue to congratulate ourselves for being a City on a Hill.

The scream of those who despair over all this will not remain silent forever.

Are we naive enough to believe there won’t be further acts of terror committed right here, in our communities, on prime-time broadcasts from our streets, and not on the streets of people we view from afar with a certain smug sense of superiority?

It’s easy to kill and to condemn Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. We can call him evil, a monster, a dupe of dark, sinister and foreign forces. And to keep ourselves safe from further evil acts we can become much like the world we condemn -- a place of iron fists, and ideological blinders applied where the bloody nighttime necessities of security collide with our daytime conceits about liberty.

We can, and, I suspect, we will, rest content with name calling, choosing willful blindness about what motivates terror, until, finally, and some time not to far removed from our own, we wake up to realize we lost the war on terror by becoming the very thing we used to fear most – a people no longer truly free. That’s when terror wins, when there is nothing left to protect.

I hope I am wrong about Boston. But initial signs are the city hung out a white flag in the days following the bombing. I’d hate to think the legacy of the bombing is a new wave of assaults on our freedom to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and the well-meaning conceits of those who think they know best how we should live.

The patriots used to say "Live Free or Die." They weren’t in Boston last week.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is reportedly in serious condition in a Boston hospital. Heavily armed police officers stand guard to assure he does not escape. He is nineteen years old.

He faces prosecution by both federal and Massachusetts prosecutors. His offenses will make him eligible for the death penalty in the federal system, but not in Massachusetts, where the death penalty has been repealed.

Will federal prosecutors seek death? They will almost certainly announce charges that carry that potential penalty, but the process of actually obtaining approval to seek to kill a defendant is complex.

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts must first meet, consider the nature of the offense and the character of the defendant, and then make a recommendation about whether to kill him to their superiors in Washington. Once the case arrives in Washington, another committee will meet to consider the question. This committee will make a recommendation to Attorney General Eric Holder, who must sign off on any death-penalty prosecution.

These death committees, as they are called, are bizarre, otherworldly groups. I’ve twice appeared before them, even traveling to Washington, D.C., to meet with federal prosecutors in a particularly close case. The feds spared my clients’ lives in both cases, but those cases were not politically sensitive -- they involved non-publicized drug-related and contract killings.

The work of these committees is private, and takes place well before a decision is made about guilt or innocence. The decision about whether the government will seek death before the trial begins must be made early because a death penalty prosecution is fundamentally different than a simple murder case.

The key issue in screening cases for death is whether there is something about the defendant or the offense that is mitigating in character. In other words, although the offense may make the accused eligible for execution, is justice really served by the ultimate penalty?

In this case, there will be no hesitation by prosecutors in determining that death is the appropriate penalty for the offenses. The bombing was a classic act of terror, and the shoot outs with police officers while the defendants were on the run will only inspire prosecutors to dig in and drive a harder bargain.

Mr. Tsarnaev’s only real hope is that prosecutors will have pause about killing a 19-year-old. 

Yes, the accused is an adult within the eyes of the law. But every parent knows the limitations of a late adolescent. Neurological evidence mounts that a brain is not fully formed until one’s mid 20s. Yes, Mr. Tsarnaev is capable of forming intent. He can be prosecuted. But what of his judgment? What explains his behavior?

Press accounts suggest that he fell under the influence of an older, and perhaps, bitter 26-year-old brother, who had recently travelled overseas and may have had radical ties to those who hate the United States. The older brother was killed in a shootout with the police. We’ll never truly know his story.

But those who know the 19-year-old are devastated and shocked. He is described as a sweet boy, a keen mind, a loving friend. In recent months, his grades deteriorated in college. Was he sliding into mental illness? Had he lost his way?

I was in New York City when my cellphone rang. My wife reported our niece attended a prom in a group with the young man. I was directed to a web page. There he was, standing next to a young woman I know and love. What am I to tell her if her government decides to kill a boy she knows, loves and cares for? I am darkened by the prospect of explaining death to this young woman.

The first challenge in the Tsarnaev case will be to get prosecutors to understand that he is not the sum of his worst moments. If guilty, he erred, and did so grievously. He can punished without being killed. That might be justice. In no case is it just to kill merely because we are angry, or because, in a passing moment, it seems just.

That’s what terrorists do.

I just don’t get it. A man is presumed innocent. He is put on trial. When the state fails to persuade all members of the jury that the man is guilty, the judge declares a mistrial. How come the judge didn’t just dismiss the case? The state failed to meet its burden of proof; it failed to overcome the presumption of innocence, right?

But Jewu Richardson will almost certainly be tried again.

The 33-year-old New Haven man was shot in the chest by police in the course of a high-speed chase in January 2010. He has since filed a civil suit claiming the police shot him without justification. The police, on the other hand, charged Mr. Richardson with 10-counts of criminal conduct, including assault on a police officer.

The criminal case against Mr. Richardson ended last week with jurors unable to agree about whether he was guilty or not guilty of any of the crimes charged.

Rumor has it the young man was offered a prison sentence of 2½ years, if he would but plead guilty to something. He refused to enter a plea. Hence, the trial.

We give to juries the right to determine whether a person is guilty or not guilty. In the state court system in Connecticut, a person demanding a trial by jury will be judged by six jurors, unless the potential sentence is life imprisonment, in which case the jury will be composed of 12 persons. In order to reach a verdict, a Connecticut jury must be unanimous. In the absence of unanimity, a jury is said to be “hung,” resulting in a mistrial, and giving the state the right to try the case all over again with a different jury.

I’ve never understood the twisted logic that permits the state to try a case again, once it fails to obtain a guilty verdict in a mistried case. This practice of a second, or even a third bite at the defendant’s hide — recall the thrice tried case of Branford’s Eugene Bontatibus for arson — strikes me as yet another way in which we undermine a commitment to the presumption of innocence.

Jurors are told each and every day in our courts that an accused person enjoys the presumption of innocence unless and until the state can overcome the presumption by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, the default setting in a criminal trial is “not guilty.” If the state can’t persuade a jury of the defendant’s guilt, the presumption of innocence alone is enough to obtain an acquittal.

The state failed to persuade all six of the jurors in Mr. Richardson’s case that he was guilty as charged. Apparently, four of the jurors, all Caucasian, voted during deliberations to convict; the two people of color, in the end, would not vote to convict. The result was a lack of unanimity for the group as a whole. The state failed to meet its burden.

“Jewu Won,” a supporter of the young man chimed once the mistrial was declared.

The lawyer filing the suit even wrote a press release to accompany the suit. “I am proud to represent ... Disabled Americans for Firearms Rights in this important case,” Scott Camassar of North Stonington writes. “The new law unconstitutionally discriminates against the physically disabled and we intend to hold the State to the clear requirements of Connecticut constitutional and statutory law.”

The suit is brilliant dark theater. Do the politically correct want tough gun control laws? We’ll show them -- what are you going to say when the disabled claim discrimination because they are now deprived of access to weapons? I mean, Bambi loves the disabled, right?

The law suit is patently frivolous. If this is what we can expect from the National Rifle Association and its groupies, I hope the Attorney General’s Office will not be bashful in seeking sanctions for the filing of frivolous claims.

While the state constitution guarantees citizen’s a right to bear arms, it does not, contrary to the assertions in this suit, have a provision prohibiting discrimination based on disabilities. Article First, Section 20 bars discrimination on account of “religion, race, color, ancestry or national origin.” The complaint fails on its constitutional claim.

What of its statutory claim?

State law prohibits depriving a disabled person of rights guaranteed by law. Hence, a disabled person who believes the new ban on assault weapons abridges his or her rights can seek to sue under this statute. But what of the merits of this claim?

The writ claims that the disabled have special needs for specially designed guns, guns built on the now-banned AR-15 frame. Why they might also need special pistol grips, forward grips or telescopic sights of the very type now banned by law. The governor’s new gun control legislation makes it impossible for the disabled to get the guns they need. “The governor needs to accommodate the disabled,” the suit maintains.

Attorney Camassar’s biography on his firm website makes him look like a pretty impressive guy. He logged time at the Reardon law firm and at Gordon Muir Foley, where he handled wrongful death cases and sophisticated civil litigation. Apparently, he’s a rookie in civil rights cases. Disabled Americans for Firearms Rights, LLC, is nearly a year old; it has a web presence, a Facebook page and an active media presence.

But I can’t help suspecting this litigation is really just political theater. I’d be willing to bet that the litigation is funded by the gun lobby. 

Guns are weapons designed to kill. Yes, they have sporting uses, but the right to arm yourself with the fire power of a SWAT team is not enshrined in either the federal or state constitutions. And recognizing the obvious, that there are some limits on what some folks with disabilities can do, is not a violation of fundamental fairness: It is simple common sense.

The new suit claims that the assault weapon ban prevents the disabled, from, among other things, serving in the state’s militia. Frankly, I don’t know what the state’s militia does. I doubt it serves more than a ceremonial purpose. But if it has a function involving public safety, I’m not sure I want a wheelchair division patrolling my streets.

Guns are a public health problem. If you doubt it, consider this suit: Like a junkie afraid that the next fix will be hard to find, the gunsters are grasping at straws to retain the right to arm themselves for Armageddon. I hope the courts have the sense to make short work of this silly lawsuit. 

Green Haven is a politically correct group who claims virtuous intent. Its web page announces the following purpose: "In our cohousing community members work together to create a socially rich community that is safe, sustainable, diverse, egalitarian, supportive, attractive and affordable.

"Members collaborate to plan and develop their own neighborhood. Homes are owned privately but are deliberately clustered to provide a village-like common space that is protected from vehicle traffic. There is also a common house, which typically includes dining, recreation and childcare facilities and other amenities. In our community there is no effort to establish a religious or philosophical creed; what we share is a desire to live more economically, sustainably, and cooperatively."

It’s unctuous good will like this that makes Vermont look more appealing every day.

Green Haven’s brave new world is targeted for land currently designated by court order for low-income housing, and located at the corner of Amity Road and Meyers Road. It is part of the Elsie Halter farm, land which was the subject of litigation nearly a decade ago when developers persuaded a Superior Court judge to overrule the town’s zoning commission, and to permit low income housing to be built on the property in conformance with the state’s affordable housing act.

Rather than target its efforts at the Halter farm land, however, Green Haven wants to change zoning regulations affecting the entire town. In a series of meetings with zoning officials and town planner Hiram Peck, Green Haven’s lawyer has proposed a bold new zoning regulation that would create Open Space Housing Districts. Parcels of 20-acres or more would be eligible to become such a district, and to build high-density housing. There could be Green Havens scattered throughout the town.

Green Haven is nothing if not determined to change Bethany. At a recent town meeting, supporters of the project first waved the flag of fear about low-income housing. "If not us, then you will be forced to build higher density housing on the Halter farm property," they say. That is a red herring: There is no competing development plan for the Halter property. Green Haven simply appeals to the fear of something worse than what it offers, hoping we’ll forget that there is nothing proposed for the now vacant farmland. Why must we sign a suicide pact with suburbanization?

More frightening is Green Haven’s over-reaching. It claims to have set its sights on the Halter farm land. Then why propose a zone change regulation that would open the entire town, some 45 parcels each of 20 acres or more, amounting to approximately 2,000 acres, to what amounts to condominium development? Forgive me if I prefer not to join a community of geriatric do-gooders dancing around a Maypole. I came to Bethany because it was one of the few places in South Central Connecticut that retains its rural character. It is a place, frankly, where I can be left alone.

Why a zone change aimed at every corner of the town when its proclaimed target could perhaps more easily be hit with a property-specific variance from existing regulations? There is only one honest answer: Demographics are destiny, and some Bethany residents are determined to sell their land to the highest bidder. High-density cluster housing pays a good return if you’re determined to sell the land you inherited.

I was both amused and disturbed at the recent town meeting about the new regulations when zoning board member Patricia Winer stood to ask whether the proposed new housing districts would permit horse lovers to congregate together to create an equestrian community. Does she really believe that this will meet state-mandated requirements for low-income housing? The question was ludicrous, appealing, as it did, to a vision of Bethany the housing districts would destroy: it reeked of bad faith. I am not sure which version of Green Kool Aid Ms. Winer was drinking.

Perhaps town residents are resigned to permitting Bethany to go the way of its neighbors. We can become another Hamden, or Naugatuck, with tiny housing lots crammed one against the other, or condominiums dotting the landscape. We can be much better neighbors wed by our affection for common parks and common space. It’s not what I came to Bethany a decade ago to enjoy. It’s not what hundreds of town residents who turned up at a recent town meeting support either.

There are no cohousing projects in Connecticut. Green Haven wants to experiment here, in our town. And it is not content to experiment on one isolated property. Open up the entire town to development. Pave paradise. Put up a parking lot. We’ll only know what we’ve lost when it’s gone.

I for one don’t intend to let that happen without all the fight I can muster. 

Sam Harris thinks free will as an illusion. It is an error, he says, to "attribute agency" to the action of others and even to our own acts. "There is no question that our attribution of agency can be gravely in error. I am arguing that it always is," he writes. "[T]he idea that we, as conscious beings, are deeply responsible for the character of our mental lives and subsequent behavior is simply impossible to map onto reality," he continues. He makes his case in a splendid little book entitled, appropriately enough, Free Will, (Free Press, New York, 2012).

I am not as persuaded.

I don’t doubt the scientific evidence. Neurological activity, that is, activity rooted in our hardwiring, reflects that nanoseconds before something comes to mind, a neural storm explaining and accompanying any action and thought has already gathered. In other words, matter precedes the phenomenon of the mind. We don’t summon ideas; ideas happen to us, or so the argument goes.

On this view, our sense of freedom may be an illusion. But, I suspect, like so many other illusions, the illusion of free will seems to be necessary, at least for the time being.. The next scientific revolution, the next intellectual frontier, will consist of reframing, or understanding, the relationship of mind and body. If freedom is an illusion, just how are we supposed to comprehend the truth about how we live? Harris doesn’t really have the answer.

Of course, Harris is not arguing that we don’t have choices to make in the lives we live. He is not a fatalist. "To declare my `freedom’ is tantamount to saying, `I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.’" Or, as he also puts it: "Yes, you are free to do what you want now. But where did your desires come from?" Finally, "You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm."

I can’t help wondering whether there is an element of narrative license at work here. I have agonized over choices in the past. The most significant ones -- a divorce, a career path -- seemed unbearably difficult at the time the choices were made. I can see reasons, decades later, for how these chapters in my life turned out. But I am aware that rendering these choices in terms of reasons is the creation of a narrative arc satisfying very present narrative needs. How do I explain a life lived defending folks who find themselves on the wrong side of the law? Why it is because I grew up amid chaos and misfits, and now insist that every voice is heard. There is something almost too simplistic and formulaic about this explanation. I am aware that it justifies the life I live now; I have no idea whether it is "true" in the sense of providing an actual account of causation. It seems just as apt to say that the narrative drive is in our genes, and that the concept of freedom is a necessary theme.

Criminal defense lawyers know a lot about this giving of reasons. Our clients come to us accused of often horrible events. We recreate the past to exonerate, justify, excuse or, at the very least, explain what has happened – we cast a broad net to show that no one is simply the sum of their worst moments. The prosecution, typically, focuses on the moment of choice, and argues that a defendant must be held accountable for the horrible act he or she was free to avoid. I often get the sense that prosecution and defense are talking past one another.

Harris’s book offers a bridge that both the defense and prosecution can walk. There may be no morally perfect world, in which agents are "free" to do whatsoever they will. We’re all caught in a web of desires, instincts, predispositions that are a function of evolution, genome, early childhood, social pressures, and the felt necessities of the chaos that becomes out biography. A man of dangerous dispositions may need to be isolated to protect the rest of us, but that doesn’t make him a moral monstrosity.

Moral condemnation is a quick fix for the ignorant, Harris suggests. What’s more, isolating the choice a defendant makes, and punishing him for that choice, may work gratuitous cruelty. As Harris puts it: "Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself." Again: "The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior."

Criminal jurisprudence is still steeped in Victorian fantasies about agency. Harris sheds much needed light. That we still see so little about how we come to do the things that define us is a reflection of how much more work needs to be done in this area.

The new law requires background checks for all firearms purchasers, and bans the sale of certain assault weapons in Connecticut. Large-capacity ammunition clips are now unlawful to purchase, but not to possess, if they are registered. Background checks will now be required to purchase long rifles. Lah-dee-dah.

Just why Connecticut lawmakers had to engage in Herculean struggles to produce this piddling reform is beyond me. Urban streets have been running with blood for years. Where’s the General Assembly been?

It sadly took the slaughter of elementary school children in a middle-class, and largely white, bedroom community to capture the imagination of lawmakers. Indeed, as part of the debate about gun reform, the names of the children slaughtered in Newtown were read aloud in the Senate chamber in an act of cheap and macabre theater.

It is unlikely there will ever be another slaughter like the Newtown shooting in years to come. But sometime this week another young man, most likely black, will be gunned down on the streets of a Connecticut city. Where is the memorial for these victims of gun violence?

Opponents of gun control don’t care about the urban body count. They fondle their guns with the determination of a child sucking a lollipop. Guns make people feel good. Take them away, or regulate them, and watch stupid signs sprout in protest, reading such things as "Dump Dan the Dictator," as one such sign read in Hartford last week. Governor Dannell Malloy, a dictator? C’mon, the guy’s a limp tool.

It is difficult to gather statistics on gun violence in the United States because the gun lobby wants to make sure the truth about guns remains obscure. But the Centers for Disease Control tries to compile statistics. In 2005, for example, there were 30,694 gun-related deaths in the United States, according to the CDC; 187 of those deaths were in Connecticut. That’s one person shot dead every two days in the Nutmeg state alone.

Hospital statistics in Connecticut for 2005 reflect that 37 percent of all gun-related injuries reported in the state’s hospitals were inflicted upon African-Americans, a group that composed only nine percent of the state’s population. The firearms homicide rate for black male victims is eight times the rate of white male victims; 3.5 times higher than that for Latino male victims. It’s small wonder that in the state’s larger cities one hears words like genocide and holocaust used to describe inner-city gun violence.

I will start believing we are serious about gun violence when I see corporations and gun owners start to bleed cash for their irresponsibility. Why not a national registry of every firearm in the United States? Require the manufacturer to record each serial number. Require a registry of every sale. When one of these guns turns up at a crime scene, fine the manufacturer $100,000, and fine each person who possessed the gun $10,000.

Has the serial number been effaced? Then a general fine on $50,000 per every manufacturer of guns in the United States. Watch how quickly guns start disappearing on inner city streets when manufacturers and purchasers start paying for the mayhem. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, dealers in the United States "lost" at average of 82 guns a day in 2007. Lose a gun? Pay a fine.

And don’t dare call me a friend of tyrants because of my disgust over the manner in which we fail to address gun violence in this country. All the chest-thumping about tyranny by the Second Amendment crowd is white noise. We don’t use guns against tyrants in this country. We use them to kill one another. Guns are corporate lollipops used to soothe the nerves of a frazzled people. We’ve more guns per capita than any nation on earth. Are we free enough yet?

Guns are a public health problem. They aren’t glamorous. They don’t keep us free. They are killing machines more often than not used to kill in the inner city. We’ve not yet begun to have a serious discussion about gun violence in this country.

Speak to me, Muse. Sing about a continent spawned in chaos, sustained by the wild and untamed hope of tomorrow. Tell me of the promises made to the tired, the poor, the weak. Rage about the day that never came, the night that beckons, how a city on a hill became a fortress, frightened, unable to chart a course from one day to the next. Tell me of America, the land of discordant dreams hard pressed against truths we cannot face.

Tell me, Muse. What land is this? What new world dawns amid those afraid to hope? Tell me the dream has not died. Tell me lies; make me believe. I do believe; help thou my unbelief.

The song you heard last week during Supreme Court arguments about gay marriage was new wine being poured into old skins. The old skins were straining, about to break. But the justices could not see it. They cannot hear it. A new world is bursting at the seams of the old. We are dumbstruck, deaf and blind before the fury unfolding in our midst.

The fact is there is no principled reason to prohibit gay marriage other than the weight of tradition. To suggest that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation is to mock the bonds that tie those unable, or unwilling, to conceive a child. It is to suggest that what sanctifies marriage is the blind rutting of beasts in heat, making a sacrament of blind necessity.

Forget for the moment the turgid abstractions of justice. On the one hand, we respect the rights of states to decide; on the other, a nation of many states requires uniform laws. We still chant federalism’s hymns as though the world never changes; we still pay homage to a founding generation dead now for generations, the custodians of a world expired.

I watched the debates about gay marriage as though I were attending the wake of a stranger. I recognized the participants. I understood the arguments. High constitutional principle was at stake. But there was a mournful irrelevance to it all. The court can no more police the bonds of affection, the real law of life, than it can make water flow up hill.

The court must decide whether to treat all people as equal, or to insist that accidental distinctions without difference shall remain the law of the land. At the end of the day, the only argument in favor of bans on same-sex marriage came down to the simple assertion that it has always been so. It brought to mind those who used the Bible and Aristotle to justify slavery in the antebellum South.

What really seems to be at stake in the gay marriage debate is what vision of the future shall bind us as a people. We gave birth to the promise of freedom amid the keeping of slaves. We then promised equality to all men, but failed to recognize women. We held the doors to the land open to all, until the competition for the fruits of the earth got too keen, all the while treating the land’s original owners as little more than animals. Even now, we spawn riches for few while ignoring the multitude in need — did you notice the record highs of the stock market last week? Or is your home in foreclosure?

Our bluff is being called in the gay marriage cases. Full equality for all can be denied by legal artifice. Judges are good at that. A judiciary that wants to avoid an issue can declare that the parties lack standing, that the issues are not ripe for adjudication. The court’s unwillingness to give good reasons for an endorsement of inequality puts it on a collision course with irrelevance. Yes, it can make binding and final judgments about the law, but when the law fails to respond to the felt necessity of the times, the law itself loses its moral suasion.

Everywhere and often in this land of principle we have been happy hypocrites. Our social contract was signed by generation after generation of people wearing blinders: Sign on the dotted line, but don’t look too close at the words. Reality can make a mockery of ideals. I saw nine uneasy consciences on the court last week. They looked at the language of our dreams, and blinked. 

Not so fast.

Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky released a series of search warrants authorizing the search of the Lanza home and cars. But before releasing these documents, Attorney Sedensky asked a judge for permission to keep some of the information in the warrant affidavits from the public, a process lawyer’s call redaction.

Why?

These are Mr. Sedensky’s words:

"There is information contained in the unredacted warrant affidavit that is not known to the general public and any potential suspect(s), the disclosure of which could jeopardize the safety of a citizen witness," he wrote.

"That disclosure and delivery of the unredacted affidavit would identify persons cooperating with the investigation thus possible jeopardizing their personal safety and well-being," he wrote.

"There is information contained in the unredacted search warrant that is not known to the general public and any potential suspect(s), the disclosure of which would jeopardize the investigation and chances of successfully solving any crime(s) involved," he wrote.

This is the second time the state has sought to keep information in the warrants from the public. In its first motion, filed last December, it stated simply that releasing information might compromise an ongoing investigation. Why, three months later, is the state adding a new ground for redaction – the safety of a witness?

One hopes the state did more than resort to a boilerplate cut and paste of previous motions when it asked Superior Court Judge John F. Blawie to deep six information. Surprising as it may seem, the state’s filing suggests that there is an active investigation of another defendant in the Newtown shooting case, a witness with such incendiary information that his or her safety would be in jeopardy were it to become public.

That is an extraordinary claim. From a distance, it appears that Mr. Lanza acted alone. He is dead. His mother, with whom he lived, is also dead, an apparent victim of her son’s rampage. Mr. Lanza can hurt no one any longer.

The state has not had the authority to prosecute inanimate objects since medieval times, when it could prosecute a stick if it so chose: Mr. Lanza is beyond the reach of what we call justice. So who, who, Mr. Sedensky, is a suspect capable of bringing your witness to harm? What crime? Or is this mere grandstanding?

In all but one of the warrants, a secret witness reports that someone, presumably Mr. Lanza, was a virtual recluse, an "avid gamer who plays Call of Duty, among other games. This witness reports that the Sandy Hook Elementary School was "Adam Lanza’s `life.’" These warrants request permission to search automobiles and the family home.

Another warrant has three complete paragraphs blocked out. This warrant requests permission to search for electronic data in the computers at the Lanza home.

What crimes were the lawmen looking to detect in Mr. Lanza’s computer files? What crimes have they detected? Whose life is in danger? Why?

Somehow, I doubt there will be further charges. I hope someone challenges whether the privileges the state claims justifies this cloak and dagger editing are justified.

The Newtown shootings have become part of the nation’s collective experience. This unseemly game of hiding the truth from the public for obscure and most likely unsupportable reasons is offensive.

Mr. Lanza acted alone, of this I am all but certain based on what I’ve read about the case. There’s no crazed gunman out there threatening to kill witnesses. I’m calling your bluff, Mr. Sedensky: Is there really a threat? Someday, we’ll expect an answer. It is a question your curious pleadings makes sadly necessary.

You can thank the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for the recent firestorm in Torrington involving two former football players on the high school team. Two eighteen year old students have been expelled from school, and face felony charges, for having sex with thirteen year-old girls. Classmates of the young men are outraged. We ought to be listening to that outrage rather than being so quick to condemn it.

 In the late nineteenth century, when factory jobs were the siren call drawing young people away from family farms and to the big cities, reformers worried that young girls would be preyed upon far from home. Within a decade the age of consent for sexual relations was increased in virtually every state to 16, or even eighteen, years old. These laws have remained in force since the 1890s.

 In colonial America, the age of consent was 10, or sometimes 12, years old. In Delaware, the age of consent was seven until as late as 1885. The states, you see, have not always thought all that clearly about how to patrol our libidinal boundaries.

 The young men in Torrington are accused of statutory rape. In other words, they stand to be labeled rapists and felons, made to spend some time in prison, forced onto the nation’s morbid sex offender registry and required to undergo counseling as sexual deviants once they are released from prison and placed on probation. Why? For scratching the ancient itch that is the mother of us all?

 Our forebears knew what we refuse to admit: Young people can, and do, consent to sex. When Romeo pined away for Juliet, it create scandal, but not because of his desire for his minor paramour. No hypocritical prudery condemned the young lovers.
 We are hypocrites about sex in the United States. We use it to sell virtually everything, from automobiles, to toothpaste, to clothing. And when your equipment begins to falter, we advertise, on prime-time television, medications to make sure you’re ready when the time is right. Sex sells; sex is everywhere.

 Why, then, are we so quick to punish those who color outside the libidinal lines?

 Historians might some day look back and consider our time to be sexophrenic, of two mind about sex and its consequences. It’s a disease really, a sign of some fundamental inability to be realistic about our desire: we celebrate and criminalize sexuality all at once. 

 Perhaps the colonists had it right: acknowledge the obvious fact that young people can consent to sexual contact, but keep desire under wraps in society at large. It is ironic, I am sure you will agree, that our forebears maintained a public prudery while recognizing sexual reality. We, on the other hand, bathe ourselves in a licentious barrage of sexual images, and then insist on an unrealistic chastity.

 In Connecticut, it is a felony punishable by a mandatory minimum of nine months in prison for a man or woman to have sex with a person under the age of 16 if they are three or more years older than their partner. Consent by the younger person, being mistaken about the younger person’s age, even relying upon the younger person’s representations that they are of age, is not a defense. How many readers were once guilty of this crime? I’ve seen judges blush when asked this very question.

 I came of age in Michigan as a “victim,” I suppose. The young woman who deflowered me was nineteen; I was fifteen on that unforgettable summer night. I will never regard her as a criminal. There’s no question in my mind to this very day that I consented. I recall the look of a classmate when I mentioned just what I did on my summer vacation: his look of shock was laced with more than a touch of envy. To this day, I wonder whether my favorite “criminal” was the fourth person of some sacred trinity.

 Perhaps that is the real point about the flurry of social media castigating the alleged victims in Torrington, and in Steubenville, Ohio, where a prudish nation watched in tongue-clocking satisfaction, as two young men were found guilty of violating innocence itself in a juvenile court proceeding. Classmates of the new, accused sex criminals in our midst are showing solidarity with the accused. They are attacking the victims. The gods and goddesses of political correctness weep at such an affront to decency.

 Amid reports that students in Torrington were rallying to the support of the accused students, and raining scorn upon the 13-year-old paramours, school superintendent, Cheryl Kloczko, was reportedly on the verge of tears. "Sometimes,” she sniffled, “it seems that [the school’s rules of proper conduct] just isn't enough." What rock does Ms. Kloczko live under?

 Rather than condemn these kids, we ought to try listening to them. Maybe they’re trying to tell us that a culture that makes icons of victims is less admirable than we pretend: people ought to aspire to more than random acts of chaos transforming them into fifteen-minute celebrities on Oprah and Dr. Phil.    

   
 Perhaps these kids know something the rest of us can’t admit: We need neither a license nor a certificate on hygiene to get naked. Whatever else we are – and I’ll leave to theologians the task of parsing how many angels dance on the head of a pin, or, for that matter the head of an altar boy – we are first products, and then tools, of desire.

 I hope the kids are aware they are teaching us something else: We are hypocrites. Our sexophrenia comes at a great cost. Labeling a young man a rapist, and consigning him to a virtual penal colony filled with “sex offenders” for his consensual relation with a girl young enough to consent at the time of the founding, but now politically off limits, is simply irrational, twisted, and unworthy of respect.

 The real controversy in Torrington is not that young people are coming to the support of their classmates. What shocks is how quick we are condemn, and how unwilling we are to question whether the crime for which these young men are being prosecuted ought really result in their being treated as though they are violent and dangerous felons in our midst. The fact is, these kids are us: they just got caught, and are now themselves victimized by a society and culture that would rather create victims to adore than face hard truths.