President Bush sought Tuesday to patch up relations with Canada after years of bickering, flying here for tough hemispheric and global talks amid boisterous demonstrations from opponents of the U.S. led-war in Iraq.
Bush's trip here was the first official visit by a U.S. president in nearly 10 years and his meeting with Prime Minister Paul Martin was akin to a political dance; Bush wanted to avoid any missteps that could amplify anti-Americanism north of the U.S. border.
But his unpopularity in some Canadian quarters was unmistakable. Some of the several hundred protesters near the Parliament building were polite. "Please leave," read one sign along Bush's highly secured motorcade route. But others near where Bush and Martin met held placards that branded Bush an "assassin." A truck parked near the motorcade route was emblazoned with the phrase "Bush is a war criminal." Another placard simply commanded, "Go Home ... " and included an expletive. [...] Bush will not make a customary speech at the House of Commons in Ottawa where the sometimes raucous Parliament has been known to heckle speakers.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan shrugged off suggestions that the president feared that sort of scenario, saying Bush had elected to speak "directly to the Canadian people" Wednesday in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he will thank Halifax and other maritime provinces that received tens of thousands of Americans stranded after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
You know, two things strike me about this.
First, that it took four years for him to get around to visiting Canada. I mean, the Canadians can get huffy about him visiting Mexico first if they want, but really, mox nix. Big country directly on our border (just like Canada, yes, we get that), lots lots more people, and he already had a personal relationship with the then-leader of the country. It was kind of to be expected. What wasn't to be expected, however, would be that there would be a lot of back-and-forth visits between the US and Mexico leaders before he ever got around to making one to Canada. In diplomatic terms, a high-level diss, so to speak.
Second: he's not visiting Parliament because he's afraid of being heckled? Seriously, where are this man's cojones? (Oh, I forgot, Cheney and Rumsfeld apparently have one each. Well, never mind, then.) Apparently, he doesn't have the courage to deal with the displeasure of a few legislators -- who, after all, have something invested in not being all that rude to a visiting head of state, at least in public. You'd think he'd have something invested in being seen to rise above it all.
Apparently not.
Canadian ranchers are upset about the U.S. ban on live Canadian cattle that was imposed after a lone case of mad cow disease was discovered in Alberta in May 2003. The United States is Canada's biggest beef customer, and the American ban has cost the Canadian cattle industry billions of dollars. [...] Bush will be served Alberta beef at a dinner tonight that Martin is hosting at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
No comment. Whatsoever.
Posted by iain at 01:17 PM
And a pleasantly startling decision out of the Indiana Court of Appeals, and a thoroughly shocking, if similar, one out of the Texas appeals court.
Appeals court upholds lesbian adoption
By Scott E. Williams
The Daily News (Galveston County)
Published November 27, 2004
A state appeals court has upheld a Galveston County woman’s adoption of her former lesbian partner’s biological daughter.
The appeal, submitted by island attorney Anthony Griffin, asserted that Family Court Judge Janis Yarbrough lacked jurisdiction to grant validity to a void adoption when Yarbrough upheld the adoption after a hearing last month.
Attorneys for the biological mother, Julie Hobbs, said the state court’s ruling cited problems with the form of the appeal, not with the merits of the case itself, and said a further appeal to the Texas Supreme Court was possible.
Hobbs and Kathleen Van Stavern were a couple in 1998, when the girl was born to Hobbs. In 2001, the couple filed for and received termination of parental rights of the biological father, a matter of course in artificial insemination cases. As part of the filing, Van Stavern sought to adopt the child and was successful. [...] Associate Family Court Judge Stephen Baker on Sept. 9 ruled in Van Stavern’s favor under a provision of the state family code that renders unassailable any adoption not challenged within six months of its passage. Attorneys for Hobbs appealed that ruling to Yarbrough, who upheld Baker’s ruling.
Court extends rights to gay mom (Indianapolis Star)
By Tim Evans
November 27, 2004
When female partners in Indiana agree to conceive a child through artificial insemination, both partners are the legal parents, according to a groundbreaking decision this week by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The court also chided state lawmakers for being slow to deal with advances in reproductive technology, urging the legislature to address the "current social reality" of unconventional families. "No (legitimate) reason exists to provide the children born to lesbian parents through the use of reproductive technology with less security and protection than that given to children born to heterosexual parents through artificial insemination," Judge Ezra H. Friedlander wrote in the ruling issued Wednesday. "Our paramount concern should be with the effect of our laws on the reality of children's lives," according to the ruling, which was unanimous.
The appeals court overturned the ruling of Monroe Circuit Judge Kenneth G. Todd, who found Dawn King had no legal standing with the girl born to her former partner, Stephanie Benham, because King was not a biological parent. The child is 5 years old. [...] King admitted she hadn't been optimistic about the outcome of the case, which still could be appealed. "It came as a big surprise, really, considering the political climate," she said.
I should think it was a surprise, yes. Never mind the fact that it was a unanimous decision.
Of the two, the Indiana decision is somewhat more noteworthy for acknowledging that children do appear in circumstances other than the allegedly standard mom-and-dad family. The Texas decision is purely technical ... although, to be sure, it is utterly neutral; the result would likely be the same regardless of the gender of the people involved. The question for Texas will likely wind up being whether or not one child can now legally be adopted between two people who have technically no relationship that the state is allowed to recognize. Will the state supreme court decide that the adoption could not have been valid in the first place, and thus the technical provision does not apply? That would, frankly, seem a likely result, given Texas' laws.
I hope the Indiana decision survives or is affirmed by the Indiana Supreme Court, assuming it gets that far. (I would imagine that, if the custodial parent declines to pursue the case, various conservative groups will try to keep it going, despite lacking standing. That is, after all, what they do.)
Posted by iain at 05:58 PM
Chicago Tribune | Bite-mark verdict faces new scrutiny By Flynn McRoberts Tribune staff reporter Published November 29, 2004
YUMA, Ariz. -- Thelma Younkin used an oxygen tube to help her breathe. Her killer used it as a murder weapon. In November 1991, the frail, 65-year-old Younkin was strangled with the tube, bitten and raped in her room at the Post Park Motel along a grim stretch of this desert town. A fellow resident of the low-budget motel, Bobby Lee Tankersley, was convicted and sent to Arizona's Death Row for the attack, based largely on the testimony of a forensic dentist who said he had matched Tankersley's teeth to bite marks on Younkin's body.
But on Monday, the same judge who sentenced Tankersley to death will hold a hearing that promises to showcase the problems of forensic science in America's courts, from the legacy of discredited experts to new DNA tests exposing the questionable science behind many other disciplines, including bite-mark comparison. Tankersley was granted Monday's hearing largely because the forensic dentist who was key to his conviction also was at the center of perhaps the nation's most noted case of mistaken bite-mark testimony. Dr. Raymond Rawson's opinion helped send an innocent man, Ray Krone, to Arizona's Death Row. At Krone's 1992 trial, Rawson said bite marks on a murdered Phoenix cocktail waitress were "a very good match" to Krone's teeth. Rawson also testified during Krone's 1996 retrial that his teeth were "a scientific match" to a spotty pattern of blood on the victim's bra.
Krone, a former postal worker, spent more than a decade in prison before DNA testing proved Rawson wrong, connecting another man to the murder and exonerating Krone. Just last week, Krone, who had been dubbed "the snaggletooth killer," had his teeth redone courtesy of the ABC television show "Extreme Makeover," according to his attorney, Christopher Plourd, who is advising Tankersley's lawyers.
Increasingly, other forensic dentists are questioning whether such definitive declarations can be made about bite marks left in skin, let alone based on blood patterns on clothing.....
La. death penalty examined (2theadvocate.com, Baton Rouge)
By MARK BALLARD
mballard@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
During the past five years, twice as many condemned inmates have walked free from Louisiana's death row than have been executed.
A review of court records since 1999 shows that, of the last 22 inmates removed from death row when their sentences were finally resolved:
•12 had their death sentences reversed and were ordered to serve lesser sentences;
•Six were released after the courts ordered the first-degree murder charges dismissed;
•One died of natural causes; and,
•Three were executed.
Two of the three who were executed were represented by attorneys no longer allowed to practice law, according to the Louisiana Office of Disciplinary Counsel. One of the lawyers was disbarred after being found to have participated in a laundry list of improper behavior involving several cases. The other lost his license because of mental health problems.
Several death-penalty experts say the data is so shocking that Gov. Kathleen Blanco should suspend executions. They say the governor should name a panel to study the issues, as the Republican governor of Illinois unilaterally did.
"I would think that Gov. Blanco would be in favor of a study in the form of a moratorium to find out why is it that we have these kinds of numbers and what can we do to instill confidence in capital punishment," said Nick Trenticosta of New Orleans.
He is director of the Center for Equal Justice, which represents some death-row inmates.
During her campaign last year, Blanco said she would consider a moratorium if statistics indicated problems....
Death penalty works too slowly, families say
BY GARTH STAPLEY
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: November 29, 2004, 05:59:47 AM PST
Some family members of violent-crime victims are jaded by California's sluggish rate of executing condemned killers.
"If it went faster, the death penalty would be a deterrent," said Carole Carrington, the mother and grandmother of two Yosemite sightseers murdered by handyman Cary Stayner in 1999.
Modesto's Scott Peterson, 32, faces a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole at the conclusion of a penalty phase scheduled to begin Tuesday. He was convicted Nov. 12 of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner.
Stayner killed four people in all. In federal court, he received a life term for his killing of a Yosemite naturalist. In state court, for his killing of Carrington's daughter and granddaughter, and their friend, he received a death sentence. That was two years ago.
Carrington and her family aren't holding their breath.
Appeals are required in the state's death row cases. Recent history suggests that it takes officials about four years to appoint appellate lawyers, who then spend about a year studying a case and another preparing arguments. "So it'll be like seven years before an appeal happens," Carrington said.
Once a conviction is affirmed by the state Supreme Court, inmates have an array of additional appeals available to them. The result: Of California's 635 death row inmates, Supreme Court justices have affirmed sentences of only 174. And no inmate in this state has been executed since January 2002.
"They're denying us the right to a speedy resolution," said George Cullins, an ex-Marine who has "been fighting the system since 1984." That is when a serial killer murdered his daughter in San Diego [...]
"Texas has a better system," Carrington said. California's slow road to death seems to serve condemned inmates by keeping them isolated — and protected — from the general prison population, she said.....
Let's ignore, for the moment, the fact that the death penalty isn't really much of a deterrent -- people either don't consider consequences or don't think they'll get caught, or think that if they do get caught there may be some sort of mitigating circumstances they can present -- and the ludicrousness of anyone asserting that any part of Texas' judicial system actually works ... it will be interesting to see what happens in those three states regarding death penalty enforcement. Louisiana and Arizona being rather firmly in favor of the death penalty, I would think that getting past people feeling, as they seem to in California, that they would rather have fast resolution than accurate resolution is going to be difficult. (Sad thing is, to the extent that any of these systems works, California's really does seem to do better than most. The long chain of appeals does a better job of assuring that the person who was convicted actually did the deed and had a fair trial than does, say, Texas' hang-em-high, hang-em-fast approach to justice.) Legislators being what they are, they will likely pander to the public's demand for speedier executions, whatever the cost. Assuming that Louisiana's constitution allows it, Blanco will almost certainly have to do a moratorium by executive order, and then hope that the legislature wouldn't override it. Heaven only knows what will happen in Arizona. It's also hard to tell if California will initiate any sorts of "reforms" in their process; being in favor of the death penalty in general may get you votes, but being in favor of making the system less accurate as well as faster may not do the same.
The moratorium in Illinois was put in place by a decidedly unpopular governor on his way out by executive order, and has been sustained mostly because the current governor doesn't feel any urgency to change things. Sustaining the order isn't particularly difficult, politically; putting it in place, if you have political ambitions, will be massively difficult, and likely may be enough to cost some governor their job.
Even here, the solution we've cobbled together isn't really the best. For some reason, as a whole, people in this state seem to be content with a system in which people can be sentenced to death but not actually executed. (This is not, of course, generally true of the relatives and friends of anyone who gets murdered.) It works -- depending on your definition of "works" -- but it's not really a tenable long-term solution to the issues involved. Eventually -- maybe after Hot Rod Blagojevich goes on to wherever his ambitions take him -- there will come a governor perfectly comfortable with removing the moratorium.
Posted by iain at 11:49 AM
Alton was 7. Farrah was almost 2.
The first letters of their names were meant to reflect the initials of their dad and mom - A and F, Adrian and Frances.
The last time Frances Newton saw her husband and children was more than 17 years ago, the evening of April 7, 1987, five days before her 22nd birthday. She'd run a few errands and was accompanied by a cousin as she returned to her Harris County apartment.
Adrian, Alton and Farrah were dead in the home. Two weeks later, Newton was arrested and charged with murdering her family.
Convicted and condemned, she's scheduled to become the first black woman executed in Texas on Dec. 1. In a state that annually leads the nation in executions, Newton will become the fourth woman executed in Texas since executions resumed in 1976, the 11th nationally.
But Newton says she didn't murder her family. She believes the real killer is a drug dealer named "Charlie" who was upset with her husband for not repaying a $500 debt. [...] With no eyewitnesses and no confession, prosecutors built a circumstantial case.
The murder weapon, a .25-caliber automatic pistol, was found in a blue bag in an abandoned house that belonged to Newton's parents. The blue dress Newton wore that night was found to have possible gunpowder residue on it. Three weeks before the deaths, Newton took out $50,000 life insurance policies on herself, her husband and her daughter, with herself as beneficiary. A day before her arrest, she applied for the death benefits.
The insurance money was the motive, prosecutors said. The jury convicted her in 1988. [...]
Newton's case is the kind that shakes the confidence in the criminal justice system, according to lawyers trying to help her, and provides fodder for death penalty opponents questioning the competence of legal help, particularly for the poor.
Newton's court-appointed lead trial attorney was Ronald G. Mock, notorious for having his clients, perhaps as many as a dozen, wind up on death row.
Mock has been suspended or placed on probation by the State Bar of Texas at least three times since he first was licensed in 1978. Earlier this year he was reprimanded for taking a case he wasn't competent to handle, accepting payment, then refusing to refund the money. [...]
Newton's mother contacted another Houston lawyer, David Eisen. With jury selection finally under way, Eisen asked the Harris County court if he could join the case, but asked for time to investigate. Mock, he said, had conducted no investigation and never even talked to one witness. The court refused.
"She didn't get a fair trial, not even close," Eisen said. [...]
David Dow, a University of Houston law professor also working on Newton's case, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for permission to conduct additional ballistics tests and a nitrate analysis on the gun and dress. Improved technology, not available at the time of her trial, should aid her, LaGrappe said.
On Nov. 1, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review her case.
"It's a great, great tragedy," LaGrappe said. "Our criminal justice system has conspired to sabotage this woman's right to due process."
How nice to know that Texas' right to execute alleged criminals is considered more important than her constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial.
Posted by iain at 03:50 PM
Aw, how sweet. The Catholics Against Sacrilege group in St Paul apparently damaged and desecrated the city's cathedral.
An informal exorcism performed at the Cathedral of St. Paul this month was more profane than sacred and was directed toward gay Catholics, police and church authorities said Tuesday.
They said the ritualistic sprinkling of blessed oil and salt around the church and in donation boxes amounted to costly vandalism and possibly even a hate crime.
The damage was discovered Nov. 7 after the noon mass, and after words were exchanged between members of the Rainbow Sash Alliance, a gay rights group, and the opposing group, Catholics Against Sacrilege.
Police speculate that the damage could have been done anytime between late Saturday afternoon and during the mass itself.
The groups are at odds over gays participating in communion, one of the holiest rites in the Catholic Church.
Earlier this year, about 40 men, members of the group Ushers of the Eucharist, knelt in the aisles at the cathedral to block Rainbow members from taking communion.
The Rev. Michael Skluzacek, rector of the cathedral, said he immediately understood the symbolism when he was told that someone had sprinkled the oil and salt around the church. "It's a sign of exorcism," he said. "It's a sign of casting out the power of evil." [...] He estimated the cost to clean up the damage at thousands of dollars, involving crews working three days to remove the oil and salt and cleaning the doors, steps and boxes. A report was filed with St. Paul police, who said the case could be prosecuted as a hate crime if someone is arrested.
Really, you just have to love the irony, especially when it comes with such very large anvils, covered in salt and oil.
Posted by iain at 02:42 PM
Heh. Heh. Heh.
A day after Attorney General John Ashcroft told the nation's largest association of law enforcement executives that the Bush administration had made the nation more secure from terrorist attacks and violent criminals, the group lashed back at the White House on Tuesday.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) said that cuts by the administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever to public safety threats. The 20,000-member group also said in a statement that new anti-terrorism duties for local cops -- which have come as state and local budgets have declined and historically low crime rates have crept upward -- have pushed police agencies to "the breaking point."
The statement reflected the ongoing tension between the administration and many local police chiefs, who believe the White House has saddled them with anti-terrorism tasks without much regard to the cost.
I suppose it doesn't matter much, ultimately. It's not as if these police chiefs have a great deal of ability to influence administration policy. Still, it's interesting to see the variety of people taking issue with Ashcroft's repeated statements, as he exists stage far right, that the nation is safer in various ways today than it has been in recent years.
Posted by iain at 04:36 PM
And the law of unintended consequences rises up in a somewhat unusual place.
Legal questions are starting to emerge -- along with serious uncertainties about personal relationships -- now that voters have supported amending the Utah Constitution to say that marriage exists only between a man and a woman. Newly passed Amendment 3 takes effect Jan. 1, but already Utah lawyers are exploring ways to employ this legal standard -- based on its second sentence, which prevents the legal recognition of any domestic union that is the same, or substantially equivalent, to a marriage.
Salt Lake attorney Mary Corporon recently filed a motion for a male client who contends that Amendment 3 makes it unconstitutional to enforce a court protective order that his former live-in girlfriend got from a judge. Corporon's client was charged with violating the order that was to keep him away from the girlfriend and the apartment they formerly shared. Violating a protective order is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. "If you have two people who occupy the same space together, a man and a woman in a romantic relationship, and the court steps in and says, 'One of you gets to occupy the space you have and the other doesn't,' that begins to look like a marriage breaking up and the temporary protective orders issued in divorces," Corporon said.
Leaving aside the fact that Utah's ban doesn't even take effect for nearly two months, one wonders how many states will try to extend the effect of their shiny new laws to smite the ungodly heterosexuals among them. Or, more precisely, how many states will discover that there are many many people out there perfectly willing to use these imprecisely worded amendments to target those of whom they do not approve. Mind, in this case, it's purely a defense tactic, and it's almost certain to lose -- I would think that an order of protection is frankly nondenominational, relationship-wise. But imagine the fun a malicious person could have in a custody case involving a man and a woman who never got around to getting married. In a particularly bitter break-up, I would think that it would be entirely likely for the mother to say, "Well, this man should have no custodial rights whatsoever, because we were never married, and Amendment 3 prevents the state from recognizing any responsibility whatsoever." Or a man saying that, if the state says there was no relationship, then he has no responsibility to pay child support. To be sure, most of these arguments are likely to fail, eventually, because a relationship involving a child would for the most part sit outside that type of amendment's scope. However, one thing it would do is to outright ban "palimony" type suits; after all, alimony as such is an aspect of divorce.
After a few years of this type of misuse -- which will, by its very nature, be much more frequent than attempts by gays to marry in the face of an amendment saying that they can't -- it will be interesting to see how these states react. After all, you can't generally amend an amendment; all you can do is repeal and replace it.
Posted by iain at 02:39 PM
Every so often, people do surprise you in the oddest ways...
The fliers arrived three weeks ago. Some came over the fax machines of local churches, and others appeared mysteriously around town. Printed in bold was the heading "Westboro Baptist Church." No seeming cause for alarm. Sand Springs, population 18,500, is a Christian stronghold in the gently rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma.
But the message that followed was a rant against a 17-year-old Sand Springs resident named Michael Shackelford and his mother, Janice, the subjects of a recent Washington Post series examining Michael's struggles as a young gay man in the Bible Belt. The fliers posted a photo of Michael, called him a "doomed teenage fag" and announced that followers of Westboro Baptist in Topeka were on their way from Kansas to stage antigay protests in Sand Springs. [...] When Phelps announced that his group was coming to picket at several churches and the high school, fresh battle lines were drawn. To many here, homosexuality was a sin, but Michael Shackelford was their sinner. Just as the November election was reducing moral issues to red or blue, Sand Springs confronted subtler shades of truth. Janice Shackelford was terrified by the persecution of her son, then surprised by what happened next. "This Westboro outfit thought they could come to this town and break it apart," Janice said. "But it has brought the town together. It has opened some doors to talk."
[...] The week before the protest, [pastor Bill Eubanks of Cornerstone Church] announced from the pulpit that they were in the midst of a spiritual battle. He read parts of the flier aloud. "We are family," Eubanks said. "We are going to stand united as a family."
The response surprised Michael, who thought he would be cast out. People were being nice to him. Only a few weeks earlier he'd been called a "queer" at Arby's. Now there was a new menace in Sand Springs, and it was Fred Phelps....
You know, newspapers and magazines do these big pieces on various topics, and then you seldom hear what happens afterward. What difference did having all this information about them out in the public make to the people being profiled? This time, you get to see some of the aspects played out, and you get the impression that it may make some difference, down the line.
And in the category of slapping Phelps in the face (metaphorically speaking, of course, and rather lightly at that):
Narrowed plan passes: Discrimination ban limited to city hiring practices
By Tim Hrenchir
(Topeka, Kansas) Capital-Journal (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
Published Wednesday, November 17, 2004
After hearing comments from about 70 people, the Topeka City Council late Tuesday passed a diluted version of an ordinance designed to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. At about 11:30 p.m., council members voted 5-4 to make it illegal for the city to discriminate in hiring upon the basis of sexual orientation.
City attorney Brenden Long said the measure only affects the city of Topeka's hiring practices and not the public at large. He said Shawnee County commissioners passed a similar measure last year. [...] Tuesday's first 20 speakers all urged the council to reject the ordinance. Most who talked in the early stages were members of the Rev. Fred W. Phelps Sr.'s congregation at Westboro Baptist Church, which has conducted anti-homosexual picketing in Topeka and other cities since 1991.
In Kansas, of all places.
Almost gives one hope for humanity.
Almost.
Posted by iain at 01:47 PM
Because, apparently, the past two weeks just haven't been quite bad enough for gays in this great and wonderful land of ours.
ABC is preparing a major investigation of the Matthew Shepard gay-bashing murder that contends it may not have been a hate crime — but a mugging gone wrong.
Friends and family of Shepard — who became a national symbol of the senseless violence against gays — as well as gay activists are upset about the report, scheduled to air on "20/20" later this month. [...] In a press release promoting the show, ABC promised "surprising revelations, including Laramie's underground world of methamphetamine use that may have contributed to the crime and whether or not Shepard knew his killers." [...] The interviews apparently violate the plea agreements the two men signed at their sentencing. According to reports, the men agreed never to talk to the media about the case as part of the agreement that spared them the death penalty.
I guess they're calculating that the district attorney won't reopen sentencing on the grounds that they've violated their plea agreement. It would make sense, especially if the district attorney is no longer the same person. (There is also the question of whether or not a person can be required to sign away their first amendment rights in that way. Forbidding them from making a profit talking about their crimes to the media is one thing; forbidding them from talking about their crimes to the media at all is another thing entirely.)
I'd also think that the autopsy on Shepard could pretty much answer any questions about methamphetamine use, assuming that they were valid questions to ask in the first place. I'm guessing that they did a toxicology examination at the time of death -- it would not only be standard operating procedures in most jurisdictions, but actually required.
One might also add that the defendants' defenses were explicitly predicated on the fact that they were reacting to him propositioning them.
Really, sometimes you wonder how people who run what they are pleased to call "news divisions" can sleep at night.
Posted by iain at 07:36 PM
My, my, my.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans resigned Tuesday, the first members of President Bush's Cabinet to leave as he headed from re-election into his second term.
Ashcroft, in a five-page, handwritten letter to Bush, said, "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."
It has? How? When? Where? Why didn't we notice? There's still crime in the streets of every hamlet, town and city in the nation. Given the drumbeat of recent revelations about problems with the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies, it's clear that we're still subject to terrorist attacks. About the only thing that is clear is that, given the types of laws this administration has promulgated and plans to advance, we have become a version of 1970s Argentina, with our own Disappeared, with the government asserting that it can arrest and hold American citizens with no showing of proof or evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever, with extraordinary rendition so that others can do our torturing for us. The only thing that Justice has achieved on Ashcroft's watch is to make Americans less safe from their own damned and damnable government.
Speculation about a successor to Ashcroft has centered on his former deputy, Larry Thompson, who recently took a job as general counsel at PepsiCo. If appointed, Thompson would be the nation's first black attorney general. Others prominently mentioned include Bush's 2004 campaign chairman, former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, and White House general counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Dear god. What have we done to deserve Alberto Gonzales to have any authority over anyone in this country, ever?
Just in case your memories need refreshing, it was Gonzales who penned those very charming legal opinions essentially opting the US out of the Geneva Conventions, making us a legal pariah internationally and putting our soldiers at even more risk than they already are. Those legal opinions that led the Pentagon to somehow forget to tell its soldiers in the field that torture was perhaps not something they should be doing, thus leading in part to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. One suspects -- just suspects -- that he may be in large part responsible for the administration's charming new position that outsourcing torture is really fine and dandy.
And this person could possibly be in charge of the Justice department, with the actual authority to arrest and charge people. (I've also heard that, should Rehnquist resign, he may be on the short list for a new Supreme Court justice, with Scalia likely being made Chief Justice, with the ability to assign opinions and to some extent set the agenda. Either way, surely we have not been evil enough to deserve what Mr Gonzales will do to us.)
Posted by iain at 05:50 PM
To be sure, the fact that so many states decided to bar gay marriage -- and eight of them outlawed even civil unions or similar relations (curiously, Mississippi and Montana, two notoriously conservative states, did not, along with less conservative Oregon) -- is depressing. On the other hand, as many people note, it could have been worse. It could have been more widespread; the federal constitutional amendment could have passed -- and make no mistake; if it ever gets out of Congress, it will pass -- the laws that did pass could have been more draconian.
And all that said, given that so many of the laws did pass, with so very little dissent ... how far are we from becoming, say, Zanzibar?
ZANZIBAR (Reuters) - It's the eve of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, but Hamedi says he will not set foot in a mosque for the
whole fasting period, or at any other time for that matter.
As a homosexual in the devoutly Islamic Indian Ocean island, Hamedi is afraid other worshippers will attack him if he dares enter a
mosque. "They know I am gay, they throw stones at me on the streets, they insult me. I don't have time for them, I keep to my business," Hamedi
said, asking that his name and profession be kept secret.
To the outside world, Zanzibar is a laid-back tourist's paradise but in recent months, Islamic groups have spearheaded a campaign to
cleanse the island of "corrupting" practices such as homosexuality and alcohol. In August, the government of the semi-autonomous island archipelago that forms part of Tanzania, outlawed gay sex and set prison terms of up to 25 years for men and seven years for lesbians. The law also set a penalty of life imprisonment for sodomising a minor.
The government argues there has always been a law against homosexuality, but that it was vague. Officials say the revised legislation is
effective because it defines clearly what parliament considers indecent sexual practices.
Technically speaking, of course, we couldn't become Zanzibar, as far as the legal side goes. Homosexuality or homosexual practices couldn't be outlawed without running afoul of Lawrence vs Texas; it would take a constitutional amendment to get around that.
But given the passage of so many anti-gay state constitutional amendments, I would imagine that not a few states will try.
Posted by iain at 11:28 AM
First, there's this: we survived Reagan (... well, the country did, anyway), we survived Shrub I, we survived Our Glorious Shrub's first term, and we'll survive a second. We won't enjoy it, but well get through.
And now, the vivisection.
In a forum I frequent, someone asked, "So how can we run a truly liberal democrat and hope to win?" And what I said was this:
A truly liberal Democrat will not win the presidency in the near future. This is not -- and really never was -- a truly liberal country. The only hope the Democrats have is to get a moderate Southern governor to run, and at the moment, there's basically no such thing as a moderate Southern Democrat governor. The chance they need is to have someone that the South looks at and says, "Eh. I can live with him," running against someone that the South looks at and says, "Well ... yuck."
Impressive as that block of red running through the middle of the country is to look at on a map, except for Texas, Arizona and Colorado, it's almost, but not completely, irrelevant electorally, except for providing small numbers and small margins -- except in very close elections. You cannot win in this country without taking something in the South, and even something in the intermountain West, as electorally irrelevant as it is. Clinton, I believe, took Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, maybe a Carolina, and New Mexico.
By traditional Democrat standards, Clinton was in fact a conservative Southern governor. It's just that by then, the party had shifted to the right to try to appeal to a broader base. Clinton broke the solid South -- barely -- because he was moderate enough that some of the states could stand him, and because they detested Bush I, who had bounced from a successful war into a recession. After that, he won because he got credit from bouncing us from a recession into a boom economy.
People are also (already) speculating as well on a ticket with either Hillary Clinton or shooting star Barack Obama on it. Interesting as they are, any Democrat ticket with either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama on it would lose. Any ticket with either of them would lose badly. A Clinton ticket would lose because Republicans would be up in arms shouting "Liberal liberal liberal!" ... and they'd be right. Her own political beliefs seem to be quite a bit more liberal than her husband's, although she's learned well the art of political compromise, finally. Obama's politics and positions would be entirely beside the point; a black politician will not take the South, Midwest or intermountain West any time soon. I've no idea how he would run in California; I suspect he wouldn't do particularly well in Oregon or Washington, either. (And, you know, he's not yet even a first term senator. Personally appealing as he is, he could well be a perfectly dreadful national-level politician; let's give him some time to get a record to look at, shall we?)
I honestly don't quite understand what moral values people were seeing in Bush, aside from his religion. Moral values that say, "Hey, hey, torture's OK!" or moral values that say that lying to the country to get people to do what you want is fine? Seriously, the man's government would appear to be morally as well as fiscally bankrupt. I'm guessing that it was the fact that he wanted a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage; their positions on civil unions were pretty much identical. That, and certainty. Bush may be definitively wrong -- he's definitively wrong quite often -- but he's very determined and certain in his wrongness. Maybe people respond to that. Whatever it was they were seeing, that's what they wanted.
It would also help to have someone with an ounce of charisma. Looking at the last Democrats to take the White House, Clinton and Kennedy had buckets of the stuff; Carter had that certain little twinkle until the office beat him down. Much as I hate to say it, Bush also has some of that -- although I note it's getting beat out of him by the work as well. Kerry ... not really. Edwards has some, yes, but Edwards isn't going to have any platform from which to launch a campaign for the foreseeable future. (And I kind of don't like his political positions anyway. But if that ticket had been reversed, it would have stood a far better chance. I don't think it would have won -- and I kind of suspect Ohio would not have been in doubt for nearly so long -- but it would have done better nationally. Certainly would have done better in Florida, at least.)
As someone else also mentioned in that forum, the block of red, while it looks very impressive on a map, isn't solid. There are shades of red, from hard red conservative to pale pink moderate areas that voted for Bush in highly variable degrees. There are also blue areas within most of the red states, urban areas that nonetheless voted for Kerry. If you looked within a county, no doubt a precinct-level map would show breakdowns of shades of red and blue within most individual counties. It's not as monolithic as it looks. Nonetheless, our country is more conservative than we want to believe.
And then there's this: the country is getting older. Age, in general, brings more conservatism in its wake. There is a very good chance that for the next 40-60 years, until the baby boomers start dying off in quite large numbers, this is just the way the country will think. On the other hand, many good people would like to believe that this is some severe aberration, that the country will wake up and realize what it's doing. And it is true that, eventually, as we get used to life in wartime, people may realize that this is just the way things are; that there is no such thing as safety, and that we can't protect the country by violating every single one of its founding principles.
They may.
In the meantime, sad as it is, it's probably a good thing that Kerry didn't win, given the set of circumstances that attended his loss. An intractably hostile Congress would have been impossible to work with. If he had won Ohio, the Republicans would have said -- as the Democrats said almost nonstop, and with considerably more point this time -- that the country did not want him as president. It wouldn't simply have been the case that more people voted against him than for him; an absolute majority would have voted for the other guy, and watched their votes wiped out. (Although it would have been our last best chance to get the electoral college abolished.)
I will admit, I also feel a certain ... detachment from those I know who are bemoaning the clean sweep of all the antigay constitutional amendments in the 11 states voting for such. First, it is a poisonously bad idea to have a majority voting to grant rights to a disliked minority; it never works. Second, I keep wanting to say to them, "Well, what on earth did you expect?" While I had hopes for Kerry to win the election, I never had the slightest doubt that every single one of those amendments would pass, and pass by huge margins. The only surprise to me in all of that was that Oregon passed its measure by less than a 2-1/3-1 margin, unlike every other state where the issue was being voted.
But then, nobody wants to hear reason the day after a catastrophic loss. Everyone's more into wound-licking, and that's perfectly understandable. Right now, nobody wants to hear, "Yo, people, get a fucking grip."
I do hope people get over this feeling of despair quickly. You can't do anything when you're locked down in despair mode.
Plus, I feel like bitchslapping them all across the country and yelling, "Snap out of it! Get to work on people! Talk to them! Find out what the hell was going on and let's fix this mess next time." To be sure, I'm not sure that this mess can be "fixed" next time. I think we may have polarized too strongly to make things better. (Although it will be interesting to see how people feel when the economy collapses, and that's surely coming.)
And all that said ... if becoming a landed immigrant in Canada weren't so mindnumbingly difficult, and if I could get a job there, I might well be gone. But since it is mindnumbingly difficult, and Canada has quite enough librarians of its own, thanks, my only real choice is to try to make things better here.
Posted by iain at 03:08 PM
My, but Mr Keyes had himself a busy day, didn't he?
Republican Alan Keyes opened up with both barrels Sunday, blasting Democratic front-runner Barack Obama for taking "the wicked and evil position" on issues such as abortion and vowing to stay in Illinois to rebuild the tattered Republican Party -- whether he wins or loses Tuesday. "There is no way on this Earth that I would leave the good people of the Republican Party I've met prey to some of the leadership I've seen ... that is corrupt, that lacks integrity and has betrayed their best values and their best interests," Keyes said. "They are history."
Oh, and then there was this stunningly lovely item:
Illinois' U.S. Senate candidates spent much of Halloween at churches Sunday, but Republican Alan Keyes was the one who openly mixed his faith with politics as he declared that any Roman Catholic who votes for Democrat Barack Obama would be committing a mortal sin.
Keyes, who earlier told GOP leaders of his intention to make provocative campaign statements to get attention, ratcheted up the rhetoric further as he declared that there was no difference between Catholics who support Obama and Germans who voted for the Nazi Party.
The media cycles and attention spans being what they are, you know the only parts of the above statements that will filter through all the other shouting are the terms "Catholic" and "Nazi", and people will assume that he said something that he did not quite say. Misinterpretations notwithstanding, the central core of the Illinois GOP tends to be moderate pro-choice -- they hate the idea of abortion (as most people do, really), they support some regulation of the process, but in general, they are in favor of the right to choose. These people, who might or might not have voted for Obama anyway, will strongly resent the portrayal of their political beliefs as the equivalent of German National Socialism, as well they should.
Regarding his announcement that he plans to inflict his brand of rhetoric upon the state and the poor misguided GOP for the foreseeable future, I'd think there will be three different sets of reactions:
Illinois Democratic Party machinery: YAY! One of the wingnuttiest people on the planet could be one of the public voices of the Republicans! The moderates hate him because he's an archconservative, and the archconservatives hate him because he's black and he's (at the moment) a carpetbagger! What a win-win situation!
Illinois GOP Politburo: Oh, dear gawd, NO! What have we done? What have we done? What, will these hands ne'er be clean of the wound we have inflicted on our own party? ... hey, he just called us all crooks!
Alan Keyes' family: .... what do you mean, you're staying out there? We're not moving, that's for damn sure.
The near future of Illinois politics promises to be relentlessly entertaining. Not necessarily terribly informative, but relentlessly entertaining ... whether we want to be entertained or not.
Posted by iain at 12:05 PM
