Enemy Combatant
Thursday, March 31, 2005
NewSpeak BushState Eliminates "Hunger" -- Now "Food Insecure"
Did you know, citizen, that 89% of Americans were "food secure" in 2003?
DoublePlusGood! All Hail Fearless Leader!
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Judicial System Proves Itself In Thrall To "Reality Based" Community (The Side Of The Looking Glass Where We Keep The Constitution)
Right now I'm watching Joe Scarborough's show, and I have to confess Catherine Crier is my new media hero. She went toe to toe with Joe, and later Pat Buchanan, and kicked their asses over the whole Terri Schiavo matter. (Crooks and Liars has the video here.) Joe -- who is either the stupidest or the most disingenuous wingnut demagogue I have ever seen -- was upset about the "tone" [PDF] of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection of Schindlers' appeal. (He conveniently forgot to mention that the stinging language he was quoting was by Judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr. -- appointed to the bench by George Herbert Walker Bush.)
Crier's a former Texas trial judge, so I can see why she might object to the GOP putsch to burn down the judicial system wholesale, and salt the earth it sat on. She kept bringing up "inconvenient facts," like Tom DeLay's father and Mr. Schindler's mother, which Pat tried to rule "out of bounds" via sheer bluster. Crier was having none of that.
Toward the end of the show, word came down that the US Supreme Court refused to review the case again. (My read is that they feel guilty enough now about Bush v. Gore, so they're in no mood to give George W. Bush a second "do-over" decision -- not in this lifetime.)
Sunday, March 27, 2005
"DeLay, c'est moi"
I have to say, as a lawyer, I think this is the best explanation I've read yet, why the Terri Schiavo putsch is the worst festering excrescence on the law since Bush v. Gore:When [Florida state trial] Judge Greer ruled that Terri wouldn't have wanted a feeding tube, he made a finding of fact. As far as the law is concerned, Terri's wishes are no longer up for debate. An appeal court affirmed Greer's finding, noting that even in siding with Michael Schiavo in the controversy, Greer had erred on the side of life. From that point, on the law is crystal clear. If the patient wouldn't have wanted the tube, the tube must come out. That's all there is to it.This, then, is the Bush promise: Screw equal protection for everybody. We can't possibly guarantee you that.
The federal legislation is remarkable because it gives Terri Schiavo's parents the right to demand a new trial in federal court. The bill states explicitly that the new trial would disregard the findings of all of the state courts who have ruled on the issue over the years. A new trial would have allowed Terri's parents to reopen the question of Terri's wishes. No Florida court has ever found in favor of Terri's parents. No principle of law in Florida gives them legal standing to sue on behalf of their daughter. Terri's parents had no legal standing until it was granted to them by the legislation. They are not Terri's legal guardians. They have not convinced a court to revoke Michael Schiavo's guardianship of his wife.
The Schiavo legislation is also remarkable in that it applied explicitly and exclusively to Terri Schiavo and her parents. It is not generally considered acceptable to write laws that apply exclusively to a particular case. The law is supposed to be a system of principles that are impartially applicable to anyone who meets the relevant criteria. An impartial law would apply to every case that was relevantly similar to Schiavo's, not just to a particular group of individuals.
The fact that the legislation violates the rule of law also impugns it on the grounds of separation of powers. If Congress is entitled to intervene, it is to protect the rights of Terri Schiavo. However, the only arguments that might establish that Schiavo's rights had been violated should also apply to everyone else in a similar situation. For example, if discrimination against the disabled is a good enough reason to send Schiavo's case to federal court, why shouldn't the same principle apply to all Americans who have suffered discrimination under similar circumstances? If the Florida guardianship system is systematically biased, why should the law protect only Terri's family and not the thousands of other people affected by the system?
The writers of the Schiavo bill probably thought they were being very clever in drafting such a narrowly tailored piece of legislation. By writing a law that applies only to Terri Schiavo and her family, they hoped to avoid accusations of making a general power grab on behalf of Capitol Hill. However, the bill's narrowness is also its undoing. If this bill only applies to one case, it may respect the separation of powers. However, if the bill applies only to one case, it can't claim to be upholding the right to due process as such – otherwise the bill should apply to everyone whose rights were threatened, not just to Terri. When squeezed between due process and the rule of law, the true motivations of the lawmakers become damningly clear. The bill is simply an attempt to further a partisan agenda by granting special privileges to a single family.
If you're lucky, though, and you play your cards right, we'll give you --
DoublePlusJustice: HyperEqual Protection! By Lottery!!
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Weekend At Terri's II
Given the weak judicial and popular box office resulting from the first Weekend At Terri's, plans to have the West O'Waco Kid, "Hammer Time" Delay, "Catkillah" Frist and all the other Roving Oprahs in Washington co-star in this weekend's sequel have, shall we say, lapsed into a persistent vegetative state.
I debated whether to start this entry with those words, but then I realized I couldn't possibly show that poor woman any more disrespect than CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and their usual necrophiliac castmembers, the Vultures of Strife, have subjected her to already.
As for any wingnut trolls out there waiting to blast me with the usual froth of feigned outrage and sanctimonious twaddle, please, spare your breath. Apparently the fact that, two weeks ago, you believed in law & order and the sanctity of marriage -- and you're suddenly willing to "go Columbine" on judges and invoke Islamic hisba to forcibly divorce Michael Schiavo from Terri -- means nothing to you. (And yes, I do fervently wish for her impending death: I think she's earned it, don't you?)
You watch: Terri Schiavo will shuffle off this mortal coil on the same damn day as the Pope. In a year, maybe the Church will even make her a saint.
Friday, March 25, 2005
The More Things Change, Etc.
"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, and restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. . . . If the game runs sometime against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and when we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1798
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Hammer Time!
I'm going out on a limb here, and announcing my wager that DeLay is finished within the next 10 days. ("Finished" as in, "announced his resignation," even if not gone entirely from Washington -- boy, the Shrub era certainly has ushered in the "slow-motion quit" hasn't it?)
Any takers?
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
I Don't Like Mondays, Revisited
The news out of the Red Lake (Chippewa) Nation, up in Minnesota, is that yet another picked-upon and misguided young man, Jeff Weise, 16 years old, has decided to act out his feelings, with the result that there's 10 dead (including himself), and 7 wounded. Got up Monday morning, killed his immediate family (what there was left of it: his tribal-policeman grandfather, and the grandfather's lady friend), then drove his grandfather's squad car to his high school, where he shot up more people before turning the gun on himself.
One strange twist: Apparently the kid had skinhead sympathies, calling himself "NativeNazi" and "Todesengel" (German for "Angel of Death") in online chat rooms. Unfortunately, that doesn't make him the first such "unlikely" white supremacist.
No, before Jeff Weise there was Leo Felton. And before him, Daniel Burros.
Hatred begins at home: As comedian and activist Dick Gregory (perhaps apocryphally) once said, when asked why there's so much black-on-black crime, "It's because black people are conditioned to hate the same people that white people are conditioned to hate: Niggers."
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Our Braindead Congress"We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. "That's the very least we can do for her."
Coming from a former exterminator, that's rich. These folks could give two shits about your life -- ask yourself, how many Terri Schiavos are they creating, every day, in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Why can't the Congress simply let Terri Schiavo "go to God" in much the same way people in her physical state have inevitably done (that is, up until the last 20 years or so of medical technology)?
Terri Schiavo has been in a persistent vegetative state for *15 years.* Because her Catholic parents say so, they've artifically kept her alive (at whose expense, it's never made clear). Now the Congress -- which seems to have entirely abdicated its presidential oversight, war-declaring, and fiscal responsibilities -- wants to play National Nanny, and wetnurse every mirror-fogging Brainstem Wonder they can find.
What's the Greek word for "governed by fuckwits?"
We Ire The World
Ah, it's good to see President Bush bringing so many of the world's people together, as one:From London's Trafalgar Square to the streets of Istanbul, tens of thousands of people across Europe protested against the Iraq war today on the second anniversary of the US-led invasion.
I hope Bush's dreams are haunted by each and every war dead he's caused. And I hope the hottest parts of Hell are reserved for the neocons.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Welcome Aboard Air Bitch One!
from the First Draft blog, posted by Holden.
(Frankly, I don't know which is scarier -- her, or that simian-looking doofus of a son behind her . . . )
Monday, March 14, 2005
"Separate, But" Sequel
The good news out of California for committment-minded gays and lesbians is that even a married, Catholic male trial court judge appointed by former (GOP) Governor Pete Wilson understands that the issue is equal protection. The (possibly) bad news ahead, could turn out to be that a majority of the California Supreme Court won't agree with him:The state maintained that tradition dictates that marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples. Attorney General Bill Lockyer also cited the state's domestic-partners law as evidence that California does not discriminate against gays.
But [San Francisco trial judge Richard] Kramer rejected that argument, citing Brown v. Board of Education — the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down segregated schools.
"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts — separate but equal," the judge wrote.
I must point out, as well, that I accurately "called" this one, on this very blog, nearly a year ago:. . . One possibility, it seems to me, is to hold that civil unions (which, in California at least, are supposed to grant gay couples every right of marriage except the name) are a system of "separate-but-equal" rights, and that such apartheid schemes are no more constitutional when enacted by legislatures than when imposed by courts.
It does seem ironic that California's domestic partnership law -- quite possibly the broadest in the country -- has backfired on those who wished to use it to head off full marital rights for gays and lesbians. Strange as it sounds, the less distinction the legislature makes between civil unions and marriage, the more likely the courts will strike down the former as only a pale imitation of the latter.
(An interesting sidenote: The anti-gay-marriage parties to this dispute, early on, maneuvered mightily to get the "gay marriage" trial moved to Judge Kramer's courtroom, and out of the courtroom of Judge James Warren -- a grandson of that "evil lib'rul activist" Chief Justice Earl Warren -- and an openly gay man. Guess that move didn't yield the results they'd hoped.)
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Nuking The Cooling Saucer
Two excellent articles have just been published (both in New York publications) on the plans of Senate Republicans to use "the nuclear option," changing the Senate's rules in effect for nearly the last 90 years that have required the votes of 60 Senators, rather than a simple majority, to override a filibuster. But first, an explanation of the second part of the title:Most popular histories of Congress include an exchange, very likely apocryphal, in which Washington and Jefferson discuss the difference between the House and the Senate. “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” Washington asks. “To cool it,” Jefferson replies. “Even so,” Washington says, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.” For Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat and a senator since 1973, the Senate remains a place where “you can always slow things down and make sure that a minority gets a voice,” he said recently. And, he added, “the chance to filibuster”—using extended debate in order to block legislation—“is what makes the difference between this body and the other one.”
I'm hopeful that there are at least six GOP Senators who understand what is truly at stake here, and will draw back from the precipice before jumping. They know, full well, that Bush is the most dictatorial President in our history. They should also realize that if the Senate is willing to destroy itself as a deliberative institution just to accomodate Bush, there'll be no stopping him. Chief Justice John Ashcroft? Nuking Social Security, and then gutting the federal budget? War with Syria and Iran? The little lunatic igoramus will become fucking Pol Pot in cowboy boots.
My, My, My.
Certainly a radical-secularist-Baptist bunch of letter-writers in the Star-Telegram today!The many documents that did influence our law say little about religion and nothing about the commandments. Further, the United States is not a Puritan theocracy; it is a constitutional republic in which all religions are protected and none is endorsed.
The First Amendment is not subject to the will of the majority; it protects the minority, the individual, even the atheist.
This doesn't mean that Christians cannot be "involved politically." To the contrary, separation of church and state allows all Americans to present their beliefs in the public square.
(Good to see strong, assertive Blue people out there in the Red States. As Dr. King put it, A man can't ride your back if it ain't bent.)
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Supreme Court Scouting Report: Spring Training
Following close on the heels of John Bolton's nomination to the UN ambassadorship, I think we've found Bush's first Supreme Court nominee!
Let's see: Evelyn W. Hill is a North Carolina Superior Court judge who, at about the halfway point in her 8-year tenure on the bench, has already been censured twice by the state Supreme Court for:
1. getting into a physical altercation with a deputy sheriff in a courtroom doorway, and after grabbing at his balls (and getting put into a pressure hold by the deputy for her pains), was heard by the three sheriff's personnel present to threaten the deputy by stating, "It's been a while since I've shoved a male's balls down his throat" or "It's been a while since I shoved a man's balls through his nose holes.";
2. describing a black lawyer from out of town in her courtroom as a "token," repeatedly referring to a short-skirted female lawyer in her courtroom as "Ally McBeal," and telling another lawyer to use his "big boy voice"; and
3. once belittling a witness on the stand, who was describing a weapon, by asking, "Was it a Bradley tank? . . . With you I'm just checking."
In fact, eight criminal defendants reportedly have now based their appeals on Judge Hill's courtroom conduct, and at least one was granted a new trial because of the Judge's negative comments about a defense lawyer before the jury.
All the sarcasm and arrogance of Scalia, all the sexual crudity and bullying of Cheney, all the racial insensitivity of Rehnquist, and repeated violations of the accepted norms of behavior, just like -- Gonzales, Negroponte, Abrams, etc., etc. . .
Seems like the perfect choice!
Monday, March 07, 2005
Time To Kick The Governator Right In His Steroid-Shrunken Schwarzeneggers
Like Alan Greenspan's reputation for nonpartisan fiscal stewardship, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reputation as incorruptibly standing with the little guy and against special interests is laughably undeserved. It's high time California Democrats (who hold every statewide elective office, save one) begin to make that clear.
Gov. Ahnuld may soon overreach, as Bush is doing on Social Security, by calling on voters to approve yet another special election, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars that we don't have, to bypass the legislature and approve his version of a tightened budget. Meanwhile, however, Democrats need to point out in the press (and not in our local version of Bush's "fake press," either) that California has one of the most stringent conflict-of-interest laws in the country for elected officeholders, and begin aggressively (and publicly) investigating how Schwarzenegger is benefitting financially from his own political decisionmaking (in violation of this law).
As long as Ahnuld's going to play this game, we might as well get his uniform dirty . . .
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
The Communist Fret
The front page of my local fishwrap this morning features this brave act of derring-do by the numbskull knuckledraggers who make up the Young Republican contingent at the local outpost of so-called "higher education:"Santa Rosa Junior College's oak-studded campus is aflame with controversy triggered by the anonymous posting of red stars and a reference to communist indoctrination on 10 faculty office doors.Rest assured, no instructor at the local JC is "indoctrinating" anyone there with "communism" (the dubious constitutionality of that Cold-War-era education code prohibition aside), but the McCarthyite Maoists known as the local College Republicans sure seem to have learned well both the tactics and the targets of China's Cultural Revolution.
Instructors quickly saw the action as a threat to academic freedom, but the student who claimed credit for the protest said it was about left-leaning bias in the lecture hall.
The stars, which unnerved some instructors, were accompanied by a copy of a state Education Code section prohibiting the teaching of communism with the "intent to indoctrinate" students.
"Down With the Chief Backer of the Revisionist Line in Education," 1968
