DENNIS LYNCH and his partner, Philip Hinkenach, needed a car but dreaded the buying process. Then Mr. Lynch saw an advertisement in a local gay magazine, Frontiers, announcing that Beverly Hills Ford had set up a showroom and lot on Olympic Boulevard with an all-gay sales staff. (NY Times, registration required)
How ... different. How intriguing.
How very very illegal ... or it would be if the federal courts hadn't just ruled that sexual orientation discrimination isn't covered under federal antidiscrimination laws. (I don't know if it's illegal under California state employment laws.)
Seriously, how do you wind up with an all gay staff without asking potential hires if they're gay? And isn't this the sort of question that people have campaigned for years to be made illegal to ask? I don't deny that it might not be easier to shop in a gay-friendly place (but it's cars for heaven's sake!), but is the price for creating a friendlier space acquiring the right/ability to discriminate as we've been discriminated against? Is this supposed to be a good thing? (Dear god, I sound like Carrie from "Sex in the City." Again.)
@ 11:40 PM CST [Link]
My, what an ... interestingly savage deconstruction of the Shrub and his cabinet at prayer. (Not that I disagree, oh no no no.) (Grandparents? Grandkids? email? what on earth?...)
@ 11:25 AM CST [Link]
[from email] Why do individual criminals get the death penalty when they kill people but corporate criminals get off easy when they do the same?
[from article] In late June, Sara Lee pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts in connection with a listeriosis outbreak that led to the deaths of at least 21 consumers who ate Ball Park Franks hot dogs and other meat products. One hundred people were seriously injured. The company paid a $200,000 fine.
Of course, the email asks the wrong question. I mean, everyone knows the answer to that one: when you have lots and lots of money and can pay lots and lots of very good lawyers, you tend to get off much more easily than you would otherwise.
That said, under roughly the same circumstances -- someone served contaminated hot dogs "by accident" -- it's relatively unlikely that charges would even be brought. They'd be sued back to the stone age, yes, but not brought up on criminal charges.
THAT said, most people can't run around testing for bacteria. And surely the fact that all other cold-loving bacteria besides listeria had suddenly started appearing in droves would, you would think, provoke a food manufacturing company to clean frantically and to hold off producing food, especially since there was a chance that it would make people sick and render you liable to all sorts of lawsuits.
The part of the article I can't help but find vastly amusing, however, is this: [Sara Lee's outside lawyers in this case -- the Chicago firm of Jenner & Block, led by former Chicago U.S. Attorney Anton Valukas] refused, on advice of his client, to speak with us. The client advised the lawyer not to speak to the press. You know, that's just not normally the way things work.
Well, there's that, and there's the truly impressive dodge by Ari Fleischer on the question of whether or not the Shrub favors "the death penalty" for corporations who take deliberate actions that result in death. After all, the Shrub wouldn't want to offend his donors, now would he?
@ 11:20 AM CST [Link]
Hum. Interesting, useful for trivia questions, but .... ew. (Although not as much as this one, which is REALLY ... ew.) That "all other categories" thing is quite the catchall, there. And the "Murderers" category is ... interestingly selective.
@ 11:04 AM CST [Link]
Well ... it'll be useful when I watch Masterpiece Theatre, maybe. (I never knew gormless wasn't normal American usage. Then again, I never thought it meant quite that, either. Been misusing it all these years. Drat. On the other hand, the possibilities for truly massive Australian/American miscommunication at a delicate time are really interesting, in a sort of weird way; I can't imagine what would happen if an Aussie asked an American for some Durex in the office. And I certainly never heard of mud-shark before; I don't care if it IS supposed to be American slang.)
@ 05:23 PM CST [Link]
Bush II Fraudulency has decided to defer protections for Medicaid patients; apparently, the states objected to being required to guarantee certain types of care for the poor. Seems that the states are worried about their "ability to continue as good business partners with private health plans".
This administration just makes me so tired sometimes, with its kowtowing to big business. I hope that his Fraudulency gets lots of campaign donations from the healthcare industry for this; someone ought to get some benefit, I suppose.
@ 03:32 PM CST [Link]
Odd, isn't it, that when the Court can't decide to decide, that a tie vote means that someone dies. You'd think there would be a better safeguard for the death penalty than that.
In the meantime, for no reason that anyone can discern, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided to stop the execution, which gives the Supreme Court time to hear Beazley's broader appeal, if it so chooses. I can't imagine that it will so choose; if a 3-3 tie means that an execution proceeds, surely it also means that a case can't proceed.
Amnesty International has also issued a paper about executing juveniles, with copious specific reference to that case. Texas in particular seems to be on the juvenile-execution express, but then, they're on the execution express in general.
@ 03:25 PM CST [Link]
Siebert and other advocates of the sage say it has psychoactive healing potential, and is not likely to be adopted as a recreational drug like Ecstasy or make an appearance on the rave scene. "It is not something that will be passed around at parties and concerts," Siebert said. "That will limit its appeal. If you take it in a social context, you'll wish you hadn't. It's a very introspective experience. You can't walk around and socialize."
Oh, please. Can we get real here? It's a hallucinogen. Of course it's going to become a recreational drug. Maybe it won't become a party drug as such, but once the drug becomes widespread enough that Congress actually notices its existence -- or once the wrong person has a fatal drug experience from it in some way, shape or form -- then it WILL be regulated. (Or, most likely, banned, since there doesn't seem to be any medically accepted use for it. And using a drug to deal with loss or other deep feelings is probably not the best longterm strategy in any event.)
@ 04:14 PM CST [Link]
You know, it's very interesting to compare an article about the UN Commission on Human Rights report on racism in the US with the actual press release from the UN about the report itself.
Looking at the press release ... I keep getting the impression that the UN doesn't understand the way the US is organized. That they keep assuming a nationalized police force, which we don't have. That the national government has more influence on training than they actually do. That the national government can absolutely dictate, which it can't.
All that said, it doesn't seem quite as negative as the article would imply -- not quite -- but it's not what you'd call a ringing endorsement of the US, either.
@ 03:22 PM CST [Link]
Well, well, well. The full federal court of appeals has overturned Texas "sleeping lawyer" verdict. Now Texas has to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court, retry the case, or let the man go.
I'm guessing that there will be an expedited appeal to the Supreme Court -- expedited because there exists a standing order directing the state to release Burdine pending a new trial, and the only reason that the order was suspended before is because of the appeal. Now that the appeal has been sent back, the order is once again in force.
@ 02:51 PM CST [Link]
So let me understand this: California schools may have students searched for no reason whatsoever -- they "do not need reasonable suspicion" -- but they also cannot do so in "an arbitrary, capricious or harassing manner".
... What?
OK, work with me here: how is the power to commit arbitrary, capricious or harrassing searches -- if there's no "reasonable suspicion", what else can they be? --exercised in anything but "an arbitrary, capricious or harassing manner"? How do you manage this? Do you establish rules that say, "We can do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want; there's not a damn thing you can do about it ... but we can't be capricious, harrassing or arbitrary!"
Of course, once again, the case used to establish the rules is horrible. The student was acting in such a way as to cause some sort of suspicion. He was carrying a knife. It seems that the rules that the court establishes (or more precisely, does not establish) don't actually fit the case at hand, and they could have so ruled, rather than creating such a broad precedent. (That is, they could have ruled that the student's behaviour established reasonable suspicion, rather than saying that schools don't need any such requirement.)
It will be interesting to see what happens if this moves up to the Supreme Court. I can't help but think (or at least hope) that the Court would be somewhat torn by the precedent established; that students have no protection whatsoever against unreasonable search and seizure. Unfortunately, I think that other considerations will come to the front, that they will opt for relative security rather than relative liberty, seeing as minors have relatively little of either one in any event.
@ 12:21 PM CST [Link]
You know ... I think I can honestly say that I will miss our outgoing governor. At least on some issues. And if you'd told me that I would say that about any Republican in this day and age, I'd have laughed in your face. However, Ryan has been willing to put his money where his mouth is, so to speak. He shut down Illinois executions when the state started releasing more than it was executing, and now he's going out on a limb for gay rights. (Although he picked a damned peculiar place to do it. If it works, the law will talk about vehicular and sexual orientation discrimination, which is just weird.) Now that he's officially a lame duck, thanks to the Great License Scandal That Would Not Die, he seems to have gotten a second wind, so to speak.
Of course, the issue is whether this is part of his call for the Republicans to move to the center, or whether this is an interesting way to kill the bill. After all, gay rights is a position that would, historically speaking, be way out on the left flank of even the Democratic party.
The other issue coming up soon in his term is the permanent disposition of executions in Illinois. The task force charged with making recommendations came back with its first wave earlier this year, and is due to make a final report in September or October. Given what they said in the first batch, it wouldn't surprise me if they simply recommended that executions in this state be ended, but that will never get through this legislature. At a minimum, they'll recommend radical changes in the process; it will be interesting to see how much of his waning political capital Ryan spends to get their recommendations enacted. And if he has time; this will be his last full legislative season, after all. A year from November, we vote in a new governor, and that following January, Ryan goes off into political retirement.
And the people who would replace him are already calling for a return to the conservative roots of the party. Never mind that Illinois rejected Mr Compassionate Conservative rather emphatically. (And yes, that was primarily pushed by Chicago, but there are more registered voters outside the city than inside it, they trend Republican, and the state still went for Gore. So it would seem that, on average, the state doesn't want to be all that conservative.) I can't imagine, somehow, that Jim Ryan (no relation to the Gov) would have supported a suspension of the death penalty, given his disgraceful oversight of the Rolando Cruz case.
@ 03:07 AM CST [Link]
At age 68, Pat Kerrigan is working nearly 40 hours a week to help pay for medication and give her a cushion against unexpected expenses. The Akron resident's small pension and Social Security just don't go very far.
I don't imagine that the situation is unique to Ohio; I would imagine that elderly all over the country have been forced to find some sort of fulltime work. And that said fulltime work is very low paying; given rampant age discrimination in this country, if you're lucky enough to hold on until retirement age, there's not much available besides low paying service jobs.
I wonder how many people my age and younger feel that retirement will simply never be any sort of option.
@ 02:42 AM CST [Link]
... Critchet, 29, told police that she approached Spingola, a self-avowed street preacher, and Thomas R. Meyer, also of Newark, at the southwest corner of Broad and High streets and told them to stay away from parade participants. That's when, she said, he splashed her with gasoline. "He said, 'You're all gonna burn in hell,' and he flipped it up on me,'' Critchet told The Dispatch at the time.
For trying to burn someone to death, the man now faces a total of ... 18 months in jail.
Granted that he wouldn't be facing any more than 18 months no matter who he tried to fry.
I do wonder why that wasn't bumped up to a full attempted-murder charge, though. After all, you have the action, you have the threat .... what more would you need?
One person in the article says that it's time to stand up and say that enough is enough. But ... what then? Most people in this country aren't generally in favor of public immolation. (Not generally.) Even most of the Far Right would have found setting lesbians aflame at a parade to be a morally dubious thing to do. This guy is a nutcase, and unfortunately, there will always be nutcases as long as there are people. Confronting nutcases doesn't do anyone any good; it gives them the attention they want, and distracts from other things. (It's only when the nutcases come in flocks with followers, such as the Reverend Fred, that the issue changes a bit.)
@ 02:36 AM CST [Link]
Pink Money A Myth ... you know, what gets me about this (well, aside from that stupid article title) is the concept that someone was trying to cultivate the gay market as a path to the straight market. I mean ... what?
As for the rest, well, it doesn't surprise me that the data were bad. After all, most of these surveys are relentlessly self selecting, and until the stigma is taken off sexuality, that's the way it's going to be. Comfort level does tend to follow income, after all.
@ 02:19 AM CST [Link]
My goodness. The Shrub is determined to piss off his party this week, isn't he? I must admit, I do ... wonder at the reason for this position. It can't simply be that he inherited the lawsuit and feels bound to defend the government position; it's not a position that the current government agrees with. (Other incoming administrations have been directly ordered by the Court to defend the previous administration's position in such cases, but that doesn't seem to be what happened here.)
That said, I can't believe that this one decision would be "fatal" for the Shrub on its own. Combined with the stem cells decision, however ... well, I suppose we'll see, won't we? It does seem a bit early to call any decision "fatal", doesn't it? After all, he could produce something that would make the conservatives cream their pants, if they're just willing to wait a bit longer.
@ 01:18 AM CST [Link]
You know, I thought the US was hard on people who sought asylum here. We don't trust them, we don't like them, and in general, we don't want them, no matter how justified their case. Heaven knows, the INS can be harsh to deal with. I thought that the US was the worst of the Western countries. But after hearing stories about Germany and now about the wonderful and humanitarian ways that Australia treats asylum-seekers, I can see that we've got some way to go to catch up.
@ 12:22 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!