A discussion on dissenting justice of how Scalia’s criticizing or getting tough with attorneys is written up very differently from Sotomayor.
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Archive for May, 2009
Poor oppressed Rush Limbaugh!
May 29th, 2009, 10:27 am by fshermanLimbaugh: “If ever a civil rights movement was needed in America, it is for the Republican Party. If ever we needed to start marching for freedom and Constitutional rights, it’s for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is today’s oppressed minority. It knows how to behave as one. It shuts up. It doesn’t cross bridges, it doesn’t run into the Bull Connors of the Democrat Party. It is afraid of the firehoses and the dogs, it’s compliant. The Republican Party today has become totally complacent. They are an oppressed minority, they know their position, they know their place. They go to the back of the bus, they don’t use the right restroom and the right drinking fountain, and they shut up.”
Apparently it eludes Limbaugh’s mentality that nothing in the current Republican situation even remotely resembles the situation of the civil rights activists who confronrted real fire hoses, real dogs and on other occasion real bullets and clubs. Blacks fifty years ago didn’t use the “whites only” restroom because they “know their place,” they did it because it was against the law and they’d be brutalized if they broke it.
Lord, but some Republicans love to whine.
Sotomayor’s speech
May 29th, 2009, 10:17 am by fshermanThere’s been a great deal of fuss over Judge Sotomayor’s statement that a wise Latina woman might reach a different and better conclusion than a wise white male. For the full context, read the speech
Ron Hart’s not only wrong, he’s creepy
May 28th, 2009, 10:13 am by fshermanThe wrong part: “It seems that Dick Cheney, in an attempt to defend his legacy against a one-sided media’s constant attacks, is channeling his best “Batman” villain, “The Penguin” (Burgess Meredith-style), to square off with Obama on torture and what to do with the 240 terrorists currently guests at our tropical all inclusive resort in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”
Except none of them have been convicted of anything, so how does he know they’re terrorists? We know for a fact we still have 17 Uighurs there whom are government has cleared of all charges but won’t release (even though the American Uighur community has offered to take care of them). One estimate is that a third of the people housed there had no connection to terrorism; other studies have put the level even higher.
The creepy part: “In short, Obama views torture pretty much as anything more than nicely asking a terrorist for information on Al-Qaida.
Obama tends to think there is a positive side to all murdering terrorists. I am not sure that Obama wouldn’t say, “Yes, I know Khalid Sheikh Mohammed murders people and is calling for death to America, but people should know he never forgets a birthday.” ”
Yes, I know Hart’s a humorist, or so everyone tells me, but as I’ve noted before, he’s mocking Obama for suggesting we not torture people. Regardless of the fact that torture is a crime, even when used on guilty people, and we’ve used it on multiple people who didn’t do anything.
That’s only funny if you think the idea of not torturing people is inherently ridiculous. And that attitude is just creepy.
Since I know Hart’s admirers keep grumbling I single him out, let me throw Kathleen Parker into the mix. In saluting Dick Cheney’s recent pro-torture speech, she quotes him respectfully saying that the torture was “legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do.”
We know it wasn’t legal.
We have statements from people in the CIA and the FBi that it wasn’t essential, that regular interrogation techniques work fine, even on militants.
We know it wasn’t justified. Innocent people were tortured. And after 9/11, captives were tortured–with the go-ahead from the White House, as Bush has acknowledged–for information about the next big attack, and there wasn’t one. Torturing people for information they don’t have is not justified.
Plus, we have statements from DoD officials that at least some of the torture was directed to getting information about the nonexistent alQaida/Iraq link (we got some from one prisoner; it was bogus). In one case, the CIA said a prisoner was broken and compliant, so no more “harsh interrogation” was needed; they were told to keep going until he confessed to the linkage.
Parker asks what Obama would have done in the weeks after 9/11, but that ignores that the torture, like the Bush administration’s other lawbreaking acts, continued for several years afterwards. It wasn’t an act of panic, it was policy.
And it was not, and never will be, the right thing to do.
What a horse’s rear-end
May 28th, 2009, 8:32 am by fshermanMark Krikorian of National Review on why Real Americans should feel free to mispronounce icky foreign names like Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor:
“Deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent’s simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn’t be giving in to …
This may seem like carping, but it’s not. Part of our success in assimilation has been to leave whole areas of culture up to the individual, so that newcomers have whatever cuisine or religion or so on they want, limiting the demand for conformity to a smaller field than most other places would. But one of the areas where conformity is appropriate is how your new countrymen say your name, since that’s not something the rest of us can just ignore, unlike what church you go to or what you eat for lunch. And there are basically two options — the newcomer adapts to us, or we adapt to him. And multiculturalism means there’s a lot more of the latter going on than there should be.”
Quite simply, I think that’s just rude. And I doubt if he were dealing with a white man with a bizarre pronounciation (e.g., the British Bruttenholm, which is pronounced “Broom”) he’d be arguing it should be said like it’s spelled.
I notice Krikorian also seems to imply that allowing foreign people to eat all their icky foreign food and worship their icky foreign gods is some act of generosity on the part of Real Americans.
Transit stops (6:59 p.m.)
May 26th, 2009, 5:02 pm by fshermanBlast, windows found a way to eat my post!
A motion to have Tetra Tech design transit stops for about $14,000 passes 5-1 with Dewey voting no. His concern is that the city probably won’t have the money to build the stops any time soon, so it should be fiscally responsible and hold off on design.
New topic: Kisela mentions that city staff are using a continuing-services contractor to carry out a drainage project; the grant money will dissipate if the city doesn’t get the job done by deadline, no extensions.
Sam compliments everyone who worked on this project. Meeting is adjourned.
I’ll post a story soon as I get back to the office.
Windows is trouble. Nothing but trouble.
Gulf Power (6:44 p.m.)
May 26th, 2009, 4:51 pm by fshermanGulf Power has estimated $373,000 to bury the power lines on MOuntain and relocate the poles. Cox has submitted a $33,000 bill to do the same for its cables. There has been negotiating about who pays for what, and the city’s franchise attorney has said the utilities’ requests are reasonable.
Weidenhamer: Move to accept the binding estimates from the utilities, and for the city to negotiate a binding agreement.
Sam: Compliments city staff on working on this well in advance (utility relocation has been a huge drag on the schedule on other projects).
Passes 5-1, with Dewey voting no and Jim Bagby absent.
Trammell (6:41 p.m.)
May 26th, 2009, 4:44 pm by fshermanGulf Power’s concerned about clashes with overhead wires; maples are also notorious for growing roots into everything underground. We’ll need to think about this.
Jim Wood: It also looks on the designs like the greenery could block “vision triangles” at the intersection. That would be bad. Kisela: We’re aware of that possibility.
Seevers: This has been a good discussion, but it’s inevitable there will be changes, just like on Main and Airport. So if the public has an opinion, they should still feel ready to express it.
Now, the motion: Approve the 90 percent plans with the condition that the bike lane width and markings come back to council for further discussion.
Unanimous to approve.
Eisler’s property: More discussion (6:32 P.M.)
May 26th, 2009, 4:40 pm by fshermanMore discussion of driveway design. Without someone pointing everything out on a map, I can’t transcribe the details correctly.
Eisler sits down after stating her piece.
Gallander: If she wanted to subdivide, it wouldn’t be enough to go to the tax appraiser: We’d have to review the lot and see if subdividing made sense under the code. “Right now there’s no proposal for development, this is the logical place for it.”
Dewey: If the legal description is two separate lots, it’s not a subdivision.
A second concern: Are we committing to money we don’t have? HE’s concerned the CRA won’t have the cash they’re talking about and he doesn’t want us in a position where they have to dip into general revenue to pay off CRA debt.
Kisela: The city should have preliminary tax figures in the next two weeks and final ones around the end of June. It’s a legitimate concern, but everything the city has bid out the past 18 months has come in at half to two-thirds the projected cost. So even if the tax values take a hit, it should be doable. And staff will not recommend anything “that puts us in a financial hole. We’re going to be as conservative as we can be … I think we’re going to have some tough policy issues to decide on July 20. If we can afford to move forward, which components can we afford to go further on.”
Dewey: How much to go through the bid process? Kisela: $2,000 to $3,000.
Weidenhamer: Raises another issue: Landscaped shrubbery should not block signage for businesses on Mountain. The palms won’t, but the live oaks and maples? “They certainly don’t sound conducive to visible signage.”
In that light, points out that while a lot of people have complained about replacing pear trees in downtown FWB with palms, the businesses are much more visible.
K
Dewey Destin (6:25 p.m.)
May 26th, 2009, 4:31 pm by fshermanWhy does Ms. Eisler think she has two lots?
Eisler: She has 230 and 231, with a house on one and a mobile home on the other. She has the option to break them into two for appraisals, giving them two tax bills, two school tax bills, etc. There is some technical discussion of lot size, dimensions, etc.
Dewey: And we don’t want to give her two driveways because?
Kisela: It’s currently shown as one property by the appraiser, so it gets one driveway. “We’re trying to be absolutely consistent–this is not the first time this issue has been raised.” Some people who have four contiguous lots have asked for four driveways, which won’t fly.
Schmidt: Under the original platting, they’re all originally platted as 50 feet wide. What she has are two fifty foot lots trated as one by the tax appraiser; it’s difficult to fit two driveways on two lots of that size. If we put two driveways in now, and she sells, it might not be in the right place for the buyer. Right now, she does not have the right to two.
Dewey: Where does the driveway go? Peterson: Straddles the line between both lots, gives access to both.
