October 2005

Gap

Hey folks, sorry for the long hiatus. I've had a number of projects going on that have demanded my attention, but I found a few minutes to finally get back to this, and there has just been far too much going on for me to stay silent. And with that...

Samuel Alito Summarized

10/31/2005:   Bush, following the laughable attempt to get his personal attorney put on the Supreme Court bench, has nominated an actual judge, Samuel Alito, to take the position. My take on Alito's prior decisions:

  • ACLU v. Schundler. Alito ruled that a Christmas display could appear on city property because it included Santa Claus. Ok. Whatever. I think cities should attempt to display the holiday trappings of any religion that is subscribed to by a substantial portion of the city's population. That definition would leave out Satanism, but would probably include religions like Islam, Buddhism, and some others.

  • Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Alito disagreed with the majority in a ruling striking down a Pennsylvania law that required women to notify their husbands if they planned to get an abortion. Y'know, my initial gut-reaction was that I was ok with this. If you're in a marriage, there are certain things that are assumed. You are married (hopefully) for love and companionship, for financial and social stability, and in the event that you can and do have children, to raise them. The purpose of marriage -- and I say this as a married man -- is not just for security but for the creation of a family that will produce children. Marriage assumes that the couple will have children. For a woman to decide to terminate a pregnancy without informing her husband is as much a violation of that trust, that arrangement, those assumptions, as if he decided to have an affair. Even if his wife is completely frigid, he has no right to violate the sanctity of marriage.

    But then I got to thinking, and two things occurred to me: first, what would telling the husband do if the marriage is abusive? The way I started out picturing this was with well-adjusted intelligent people with a mutual respect and love for each other. But what if that's not the case? Second, and this plays back into the first, what recourse is the husband allowed once he knows she plans to terminate the pregnancy? Well, frankly, I didn't picture any. But if he's abusive, he may take matters into his own violent hands. Now we've force the wife either have a child she doesn't want by a man that abuses her, or divulge a decision to terminate a child to the same violent man. This would be horrible. Some women have very little choice but to stay in abusive situations because they very much fear for their lives, and quite often rightfully so.

    I still think a man has a natural right to know if his wife is with child. But I don't think he has a natural right to stop her. Whether she respects that right to know is between her and her husband, as much as him fooling around. Does she have a right to know. Yes. Should we force him to tell her under penalty of law? No. It's between the two of them, and if the trust is violated, whether the violation is an affair or a secret abortion, there's really not much of a marriage there, is there? I don't think we should codify notification of pregnancy.

  • Fatin v. INS. Stated that a woman's abhorrence of her country's "gender-specific laws and repressive social norms," or because of a belief in feminism or membership in a feminist group, were grounds for eligibility for asylum. Good stuff. Shows he respects women's rights at least at a basic level.

  • Saxe v. State College Area School District. Struck down a public school district's anti-harrassment rules because they were too broad and violated the First Amendment. The policy restricted verbal conduct on matters of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and other characteristics, that "has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with a student's educational performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment." So basically it was a good policy in spirit, but too broad, too open to interpretation. I'm not sure I'm ok with this, simply because some actions do in fact make it hard for students to seek their educational goals. I think the school's policy, as summed up in that statement, was fine. Perhaps they should have been more specific, but I don't see a problem with it at face value.

  • Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S. In this case, he held a school district failed to provide free education to a high school student because it did not protect that student from bullying and taunting from fellow students who harassed him because of his lack of athleticism and his perceived sexual orientation. Which directly conflicts with the ruling mentioned above. Either these kids were practicing their First Amendment rights to express their opinion of the individual or they were harrassing him. I would opine the latter. Apparently Mr. Alito has difficulty putting his finger on it.

  • Williams v. Price. After the trial of a black man, a witness overheard a juror making racist comments. The state courts would not hear that testimony. Alito granted a writ of habeas corpus to the convicted. Good call, IMHO, although he should have given the convicted's attorney some kind of stiff sanction for doing a bad job during jury selection.

  • Homar v. Gilbert. A police officer of a state university was arrested at the home of a friend in the course of a drug raid on the house, and he was charged with possession of marijuana. The police notified the university, which immediately suspended him without pay. While the criminal charges against the officer were dropped, the suspension was not lifted. Thereafter, the university demoted him to the position of a groundskeeper and gave him pay at that level back to the date of his suspension. The Third Circuit held that Due Process requires some sort of hearing before a person can be suspended without pay. Alito disagreed with this. The Supreme Court overturned the ruling for other reasons, but agreed with Alito. Which is weird in my mind. So basically the guard was guilty until proven innocent. And even though the charges were dropped, the suspension stayed in effect. That's crap. The guard should have been allowed to sue their pants off. Either he can be fired for cause or not. I'm against Alito on this one, and I think it demonstrates a distinct disregard for due process and worker's rights. Alito's view was that the criminal charges showed the suspension was not baseless, but he did not address the continuation of the suspension. Either that shows dereliction or negligence on Alito's part.

    • Some lawyers have given him the nickname "Scalito," or "Little Scalia," because, On the hot-button issues, Alito has been consistently conservative. I'm not sure conservatism is bad, but it must conform to some sort of logic, and while Alito is good at expressing his reasons, they don't always fit with what's good or right. There are some basic premises that he fails to honor with some of his rulings, basic premises that I expect the Supreme Court to uphold.

    Click the microphone to listen to Central California NetCast (CCNC) episodes and hear Todd and his guests discuss the topics that are driving them to the crack pipe.

    There are no WMDs in Iraq.
     Never were.
    No chemical weapons.
    No biological weapons.
    No nuclear weapons.
    No possible "mushroom clouds."
    Bush lied to you.
    Cheney lied to you.
    Condoleeza Rice lied to you.
    Colin Powell lied to you.
    Donald Rumsfeld lied to you.
    I told you Bush was lying.
    And you didn't listen.
    You believed his lies.
    You focused on his propoganda.
    You allowed yourself to be fooled.
    You re-elected him.
    You elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.

    I told you so.

    Activist Judges: Harriet Miers

    10/30/2005:   Bush nominated Harriet Miers, the family attorney, to the Supreme Court.

    Talk about a promotion.

    Harriet had no judicial experience and had submitted any kind of written opinions about most key issues. And why would she -- she's never been a judge! This one was so stupid, it doesn't require comment. I'm just making sure I jot a note about it so it doesn't get lost.

    Libby Out, Rove Sweating

    10/102005:   Scooter Libby -- don't even get me started on his stupid-ass name -- has been indicted for exposing the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, wife to U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the press. Hallelujah.

    But Karl Rove hasn't been indicted yet. And neither has Cheney. And there is just no way you can't indict Rove. Cheney would be frosting on the cake. For now though, the wheels of justice turn slowly. Too slowly. The special prosecutor needs to extend his investigation to why such lies were told, what motivations were there for lying, who was complicit in the lies, and start pulling in the White House staff to answer those questions, including and especially Dick Cheney, George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and anyone else involved in the Iraq War propoganda campaign.

    2000 And Counting

    10/30/2005:   The other day we reached 2000 official U.S. casualties in the Iraq war. I say official because it's my understanding that those are people that have died on Iraqi soil. If someone is fatally wounded but gets airlifted to a military hospital in, say, Germany, and then dies, they aren't part of the official casualty count.

    And by some estimates the real death toll is around 40,000 at this point. But will Bush ever admit to that? Hell no!

    When we first went to war following 9/11, one of the things I heard people ask was, why go? If 2000 people died in the WTC, then how many do we have to kill before the goal of revenge is met? Look it this way: we lost 2000 in the WTC. Now we've lost 2000 (officially) in Iraq. That sounds like a good cut-off point. Now we just need to get the Iraqis set up and get the F out of town....

    World Series

    10/30/2005:   I was actually rooting for the Astros. It was their first time to the Big Game. And it was a great competition, but you can't argue with the numbers. The White Sox dominated. Well done, guys!

    Rosa Parks vs. Cindy Sheehan

    10/30/2005:   I heard someone trying to compare Cindy Sheehan with Rosa Parks (pronounced "Park" by Gee Dub Bush). Well, let's get this straight: Rosa did something that could have gotten her killed, lynched, right there on the spot. But she stood up for her rights, was arrested, and drew the national spotlight. Her actions took a level of bravery Cindy to which hasn't even pretended. You can't compare them.

    Having said that, I'm on Cindy's side. She should have kept her message simple and not represented anyone except herself. Being co-opted by so many causes not completely consistent with her own or even with each other degraded her message to a terrible degree. But I stand by her original message: Why George? Why did we really go? Because people are dying and you can't give a good reason.

    George was an ass for not meeting with her. If he'd done that early enough, he could have looked like a human being. But not now.

    Bush and Iraq: The Timeline Series

    6/9/2005:   Check out my PodCast for a timeline of the lies that Bush told the American public, Congress, and the U.N. in order to get his unnecessary war.

    Closing the Borders

    10/30/2005:   We should have closed the borders immediately after 9/11. As it is, we still have thousands of non-Mexican nationals each month that are caught and released into the U.S. because we simply can't process all the people that we actually catch, nevermind the ones we don't.

    George Bush doesn't care about national security. He cares about himself and his elite buddies. Read on.

    10 Billion "Lost"

    10/30/2005:   Did I hear that right the other day on AM radio? Have the contractors working to "help rebuild Iraq" really lost over $10 billion USD? Halliburton alone is responsible for $9 billion of that? Really?

    Ok, so is there any question anymore about the real reason we went to war with Iraq? There's no frikkin' nation to build when we're done with Afghanistan, so there're no projects Cheney can set up to funnel money to his buddies. But Iraq? Hey, now there's a thought! Poke a really big stick into the wasp nest that is the Middle East and generate business for decades to come! Yeehaw!

    New Orleans

    10/30/2005:   I was lucky enough to go to New Orleans a couple of years ago with my wife and a really good friend, Julie Vandervort. We had a fantastic time, ate the best food, and partied like rock stars for a week during Mardi Gras.

    Now after the heart-wrenching scenes on TV, the terrible stories of personal tragedy and devastation, to hear that moron, Michael D. Brown, the former FEMA director, was busy having relaxed dinners and giving interviews while the destruction was mounting and lives were being lost is just enough to turn my stomach. It's not enough that he lost his job. He should be pillaried via negligence lawsuits for the rest of his life.