Category: Issues of the Day

Terror at the elections

Wonkette is beginning to see how the terrorists might threaten the election:

Or if they somehow purged a bunch of law-abiding citizens off the voter rolls for no reason. Or maybe if they rigged up a black box electronic voting system. Or threw the whole thing to the Supreme Court. Those things would be a problem, democracy-wise.

And Jesus’ General writes Pastor Soaries (chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission):

I understand that you have a tough sell. I’m sure there are many who have pointed out that elections have never been suspended before, not even during the Civil War when our very existence as a nation was in danger. These people fail to understand the nature of the threat today. Certainly, Osama bin Laden’s minions pose a greater danger to the Union than the armies of the Confederacy ever did.

Those lovable education secretaries

NewMexiKen is all for cutting Riordan some slack, but the whole incident reminds me of when right-wing California Superintendent of Schools Max Rafferty lost to Alan Cranston for the U.S. Senate. Rafferty eventually left California for the education job in Alabama. Word was his move from California to Alabama raised the average IQ of both states 10 points.

Hmmm

It’s interesting that civil rights groups such as the NAACP, as well as African-American state Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, spoke out against California Education Secretary Riordan when they assumed (why?) the little girl was not white, but withdrew their demands for Riordan’s removal once they learned Isis was white.

Democratic state Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, who had scheduled a protest by civil rights organizations, canceled the demonstration after an apparent mix-up over the girl’s racial background.

Isis

Isis.jpg
Photo of Isis and her mother taken last month. The video of California Secretary of Education Richard Riordan telling the little girl her name meant “stupid dirty girl” is at CNN, but requires a subscription.

Furor grows over Riordan’s remark to girl

From The Sacramento Bee:

“I let my daughter go to story hour and figured she’d be safe in a room full of librarians and parents and other children and the secretary of education,” Lila said.

“If I was in the room, I would have defended her. But she did OK without me. I’m really proud of her for standing up for herself. She’s OK. She’s moved on. It’s not like I’m going to sue to pay her therapy bills.”

The controversy began July 1 when Riordan, a wealthy venture capitalist whose foundation has spent millions of dollars promoting literacy and computer programs for minority and other children, attended a summer reading program at the Santa Barbara Central Library.

With a few dozen children seated on the floor next to Riordan, Isis D’Luciano, a blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl, asked him a question.

“Did you know that my name actually means an Egyptian goddess?” she said with noticeable pride in her voice.

Riordan looked somewhat confused for a moment or two before answering: “It means stupid, dirty girl.”

The kids groaned and giggled, before Isis again said her name was that of a goddess.

“Hey, that’s nifty,” said Riordan, who issued a statement a short time later saying he “teased” her and “immediately apologized … for misunderstanding.”

Lila said her daughter didn’t correct Riordan because “she told me she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I got the impression she just didn’t think he was very bright.”

“I really didn’t know much about the man, so I wasn’t aware of how socially inept he is,” she said. “He’s a bureaucrat and I guess he’s a grandfather. But it doesn’t seem like he’s had a lot of exposure to kids. It was really a stupid thing to say.”

Yes, stupid. Let it go.

Link via Eschaton.

What’s a Girl To Do?

Juanita is at her best this week. Take a look.

This is getting to me. Last weekend, somebody on teevee standing behind a pulpit with a seal on the front and CNN cameras recording and disseminating, said that we should go about our Fourth of July activities like nothing was wrong but that we should be on the lookout for suspicious-looking people. This is Texas, for Pete’s Sake, everybody looks a little suspicious on the Fourth of July. That’s kinda like asking you to be on the lookout for tattoos at a biker convention.

Urban myth

Joshua Green also provides some facts about the McDonald’s coffee case:

To persuade the public that frivolous personal injury suits have brought on a crisis, advocates of change religiously invoke cases like the elderly woman who spilled coffee on herself and won a $2.9 million jury verdict against McDonald’s. Such stories tap into a genuine sense of frustration many Americans have with the modern tendency to blame others for problems of their own making. But on closer examination—the kind likely to happen if the GOP declares open war on trial lawyers—such anecdotes will be exposed as the urban myths most of them are. As Roger Williams University torts professor Carl Bogus explains in his book, Why Lawsuits Are Good for America, the woman who spilled her McDonald’s coffee had to undergo a skin graft, spend weeks in the hospital, and offered to settle for $10,000 (McDonald’s refused). She only sued as a last resort—the epitome of conscientious use of the legal system. Her original award of $2.9 million was later reduced by a judge, as most such judgements are, to $480,000, and she wound up settling for even less. To prevent other suits, McDonald’s, which had previously ignored more than 700 similar complaints, stopped serving near-boiling coffee, as did its competitors.

John Edwards, Esq.

An excellent October 2001 article by Joshua Green about trial lawyers and John Edwards in particular from The Washington Monthly. Some excerpts, though the whole article is well-worth reading:

As it happens, Edwards’ professional biography bears a much closer resemblance to the crusading protagonist of a John Grisham novel than to the ambulance-chasers who solicit on late-night cable.

*****

The defining case in Edwards’ legal career wrapped up that same year. In 1993, a five-year-old girl named Valerie Lakey had been playing in a Wake County, N.C., wading pool when she became caught in an uncovered drain so forcefully that the suction pulled out most of her intestines. She survived but for the rest of her life will need to be hooked up to feeding tubes for 12 hours each night. Edwards filed suit on the Lakeys’ behalf against Sta-Rite Industries, the Wisconsin corporation that manufactured the drain. Attorneys describe his handling of the case as a virtuoso example of a trial layer bringing a negligent corporation to heel. Sta-Rite offered the Lakeys $100,000 to settle the case. Edwards passed. Before trial, he discovered that 12 other children had suffered similar injuries from Sta-Rite drains. The company raised its offer to $1.25 million. Two weeks into the trial, they upped the figure to $8.5 million. Edwards declined the offer and asked for their insurance policy limit of $22.5 million. The day before the trial resumed from Christmas break, Sta-Rite countered with $17.5 million. Again, Edwards said no. On January 10, 1997, lawyers from across the state packed the courtroom to hear Edwards’ closing argument, “the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen,” recalls Dayton. Three days later, the jury found Sta-Rite guilty and liable for $25 million in economic damages (by state law, punitive damages could have tripled that amount). The company immediately settled for $25 million, the largest verdict in state history. For their part, Edwards and Kirby earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s national award for public service.

*****

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result, then clearly lawyers like John Edwards drive GOP operatives crazy.

*****

For all the noise Republicans make about trial lawyers interfering with the free market, most people prefer driving on tires that don’t explode, living in homes with insulation that won’t kill them, and raising babies in cribs that won’t strangle them. They aren’t particularly bothered if it takes fear of litigation to bring these things about.

Link via Slactivist via Eschaton.

We’ve got questions

Dan Froomkin at White House Briefing:

I asked you readers to suggest questions you’d ask the president if you had a chance, and they certainly spiced up my Live Online yesterday. Media blogger extraordinaire Jim Romenesko picked his two favorites: “How does ‘My Pet Goat’ end?” and “Why is Helen Thomas sitting in the back of the room?”

There were some slightly more serious ones: “Mr. President, Have you thought of a mistake yet?” and ” Can you give us instances in which you have been humble in your duties as president?”

And there were some entirely serious ones: “Mr. President, given your enthusiastic support for Turkey’s entry into the EU, could you outline what you believe the EU is and what membership entails? Follow-up: Why are you not granting Mexico the same privileges?” And: “Name 20 of the soldiers who you have sent to their deaths.”

This’ll work

From Knight Ridder via The Arizona Daily Star:

A pilot program to repatriate to the Mexican interior tens of thousands of illegal Mexican entrants will begin in two weeks, Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday.

The pilot program, which runs through Sept. 30, will cost an estimated $13 million to charter planes that Homeland Security officials say will return 300 migrants daily.

Passionate, clever, scathing, funny, snarky, brutal, sad, glib and at times superficial

From Editor & Publisher:

While the country as a whole appears split, along political lines, over the controversial Michael Moore documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” movie reviewers at U.S. daily newspapers are not.

An E&P survey of 63 daily papers that ran reviews, in “red” and “blue” states alike, finds that 56 gave the film a positive nod, with only seven abstaining, an almost 90% favorable rating.

The headline for this entry is from the review of Mary Pols in the Contra Costa Times.

Let’s keep giving them ideas

From Time:

Although there are no plans to raise the threat level from yellow to orange, a senior Justice Department official says, “there’s very serious intelligence that’s corroborated, that’s multiple sourced, that indicates that al-Qaeda is intent on hitting us and hitting us hard this year.” The official concedes, however, that “we don’t have specific information.”

Along with this now familiar general warning, the FBI has introduced the specter of a new terrorism threat: booby-trapped beer coolers. A lightly classified bulletin sent to 18,000 state and local agencies last week advised local authorities to look out for plastic-foam containers, inner tubes and other waterborne flotsam commonly seen around marinas that could be rigged to blow up on contact. Also, the bulletin warned, terrorists might attach bombs to buoys. FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials say no such devices have actually been discovered, nor is there any current intelligence that terrorists are hatching plots involving floating bombs.

My god, take a cooler and an almanac to the beach and you’re in big trouble.

Link via Eschaton.

I like Ike

NewMexiKen has been provided with some background on the 22nd Amendment, including a paper by Bruce G. Peabody and Scott E. Gant, “The Twice and Future President: Constitutional Interstices and the Twenty-Second Amendment.” (Minnesota Law Review (1999), 83 Minn. L. Rev. 565).

The paper concludes there is no constitutional bar to a twice-elected president becoming president other than by election as president.

Particularly interesting to NewMexiKen however, was this material regarding Eisenhower.

As the election of 1960 neared, however, attention again turned to the Twenty-Second Amendment. In a press conference on January 13, Eisenhower invited reporters to look into the question of whether he would be eligible to run as a vice presidential candidate under the terms of the Twenty-Second Amendment. As Eisenhower put it, “the only thing I know about the Presidency the next time is this: I can’t run. [Laughter] But someone has raised the question that were I invited, could I constitutionally run for Vice President, and you might find out about that one. I don’t know. [Laughter]”

…

At a press conference two weeks after Eisenhower first raised the possibility of his serving as Vice President, he was asked whether he had received an “official opinion” on the question. Eisenhower was somewhat circumspect but he did say

that the afternoon of that [first] press conference, there was a note on my desk saying a report from the Justice Department–I don’t know whether the Attorney General himself signed this, but the report was, it was absolutely legal for me to do so. That stopped it right there, as far as I’m concerned.

…

While Eisenhower ultimately backed away from the idea that he might run as Vice President, there is some evidence that, despite the constraints of the Twenty-Second Amendment, he did not completely relinquish his presidential ambitions at the end of his second term. Only four months after Kennedy’s inauguration in May 1961, Eisenhower indicated that he would have considered running for a third term if he had not been constitutionally barred from doing so and he had been able to foresee Nixon’s defeat in the 1960 election. Eisenhower’s son, John, also indicated that he and White House officials believed that had Eisenhower not been barred from running for reelection, he probably would have done so in 1960. And some political commentators have speculated that if Eisenhower had run, he would have been renominated and reelected.

You sorta, kinda have the right to remain silent

From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police their names.

The 5-4 decision frees the government to arrest and punish people who won’t cooperate by revealing their identity.

The decision was a defeat for privacy rights advocates who argued that the government could use this power to force people who have done nothing wrong, other than catch the attention of police, to divulge information that may be used for broad data base searches.

Police, meanwhile, had argued that identification requests are a routine part of detective work, including efforts to get information about terrorists.

The justices upheld a Nevada cattle rancher’s misdemeanor conviction. He was arrested after he told a deputy that he didn’t have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural road in 2000.

NewMexiKen posted items on this case here, here and here.

Read the decision.

The name game

Attempting satire, Kimit Muston, writing in the L.A. Daily News, suggests it’s time for the City of Los Angeles to rid itself of its religious name.

Before the Spanish started putting up subdivisions, I believe the Yang-na tribe called this place, “Ours,” which is a great name, but I’m not sure their word “ours” means the same thing as our word “ours.” We might just call ourselves, “Here,” and then refer to everywhere else as “There,” but that could get confusing. And “Laker Town” seems to be out of the running for now.

We might rename our town “La Brea,” after the pits on Wilshire where creatures have the life sucked out of them by a black viscous fluid. Or not. I even considered changing our name to “Beverly Hills,” just to stick it to those snobs shopping on Rodeo Drive, but then, Tuesday afternoon it came to me in a flash, a new name that would fit our terrain, our vision, our history and our future.

So I humbly suggest as the new non-religious name for Los Angeles, California — Shaker Heights.

By the way, it’s worse than Muston realizes. The original full name of Los Angeles was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, which means The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Little Portion (i.e., small parcel of land).

Pickle stepping into history

Jon Stewart takes a look at Clinton’s “pickle stepping into history” (video).

Update: The link is no longer working. Here is what Stewart said:

“The Bushes hosted their predecessors at the White House yesterday, for the official unveiling of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s White House portraits. The occasion moved the current commander in chief to a rare show of gracious bipartisanship…. Bush then handed the mic over to Clinton. It’s been a long time since this skilled orator spoke in the White House. I’m sure he’s got some profound words to share…. [clip of Clinton: ‘All those kind and generous you said, made me feel like I was a pickle stepping into history.’] … Uhhh, I don’t get that at all. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, your pickle’s already stepped into history.”

What you have to understand

From Steve Gilliard’s News Blog:

What you have to understand is this: Paul Johnson was a dead man when they took him. The Saudi version of Al Qaeda is especially hard core and vicious. They are not into concessions and general humanity. They are the outgrowth of a fundamentalist society riven with hypocrisy. Think about this, in a country where the religious police forced girls to burn alive rather than escape a fire in their school, these guys think that they have to make the country more fundamentalist.

Link via Kos.