Encouraging news from the Supreme Court

We're down to the last week of the Supreme Court's session, and generally that means they're down to the biggest, or most problematic cases. They're scheduled to release three decisions Monday, and I'm not holding my breath for good news.

Still, on Thursday they released a decision that is good news in the case of Safford Unified School Dist. v. Redding, the case involving the strip search of a thirteen year old girl suspected of bringing Advil to school.

If you've been following the case you know the facts: a middle school student ratted out Savana Redding as the source for some Advil she was caught with, so Samantha, thirteen years old at the time, was dragged down to the principal's office, forced to strip to her underwear, and then forced to pull out her bra and panties so the government officials gathered in the office could look inside. They found nothing, and Savana sued the school district and its officials.

The case got a lot of attention at oral argument, in large part because of the mocking tone adopted by many of the justices. Now that the case has been decided, though, the outcome is far from what the questioning by the justices suggested.

In the 8-1 decision, the Court explicitly decides that the search of the young girl violated the Fourth Amendment. This is great news because it is a major departure from recent Supreme Court case law. First, no matter what lip service the Court has paid to the constitutional rights of students, in their recent decisions they have essentially followed a rule that students have no rights, even for activities out of school. Second, this decision is a departure from the growing drug exception to the Fourth Amendment, under which the conservative majority routinely follows the rule of "anything goes" when the government is in search of drugs.

On the other hand, they also found that sovereign immunity applied because the law wasn’t clear enough to inform a reasonable public employee that poking around in a girl’s underwear was improper.

One wonders if the outcome was influenced by:
a) Justice Ginsburg’s comments at oral argument;
b) Justice Ginsburg’s advocacy within the court in conference;
c) Justice Ginsburg’s and Justice O’Connor’s public statements about needing more female justices because of the different experience they bring.

If this case were to come up next year it would be before a different court, one with one more female member, but a female member whose background in the practice of law was as a prosecutor. One hopes that the Court will build on this precedent when the time comes.

Forty years ago today

I honestly don't remember what I was doing forty years ago today, and I don't remember anything about this until I read about it later in the Voice. Still, as we look back, it's clear that the Stonewall riots were, in their own way, as significant as Rosa Parks refusing to get off the bus.

It's worth watching this video of people who were there.

Mark Sanford, bible scholar

Nothing new for Republicans--claiming to take their guidance from their so-called "Good Book"--but I think this guy is taking it to extremes.

Yes, we're still talking about Mark Sanford. Maybe we don't have much more to learn from this whole tawdry episode, but he keeps handing us the material.

Today's lesson: "Because the Bible tells me so".

First, let's delve into Mark Sanford's e-mails to his Argentine bombshell. I'm not talking about the Song of Solomon parts, which are plenty lubricious in their own right, but get this: I looked to where I often look for advice and counsel, and in I Corinthians 13 it simply says that, “ Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude, Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in the wrong, but rejoices in the right, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things”
You've probably heard these very words read at many weddings in your life, but I'm pretty sure they were not talking about the two people getting married, not setting up an illicit relationship with someone outside of the marriage.

Then, yesterday, Sanford had a televised cabinet meeting, and the idea of resignation came up. Once again, where does he look for guidance?

I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.

Don't remember the story about King David (taking for granted, of course, that he ever existed)?

David commits adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, while her husband is away at war. Bathsheba becomes pregnant and David sends for Uriah, who is with the Israelite army at the siege of Rabbah, so that he may lie with his wife and conceal the identity of the child's father. Uriah refuses to do so while his companions are in the field of battle and David sends him back to Joab, the commander, with a message instructing him to abandon Uriah on the battlefield, "that he may be struck down, and die." David then marries Bathsheba and she bears his child, "but the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." The prophet Nathan confronts David, saying: "Why have you despised the word of God, to do what is evil in his sight? You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife."

David repents, but God "struck the child ... and it became sick ... [And] on the seventh day the child died." David then leaves his lamentations, dresses himself, and eats. His servants ask why he lamented when the baby was alive, but leaves off when it is dead, and David replies: "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, who knows whether Yahweh will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me."

And what advice does Sanford glean from this?

I remain committed to rebuilding the trust that has been committed to me over the next 18 months, and it is my hope that I am able to follow the example set by David in the Bible - who after his fall from grace humbly refocused on the work at hand. By doing so, I will ultimately better serve in every area of my life, and I am committed to doing so.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but just maybe Sanford should buy another book.

"Hiking the Appalachian Trail"

Sanctimonious? Check.

Family values? Check.

Busted? Check.

It's not just liberals, even conservative pinheads like Fred Thompson are using the Sanford scandal to make political hay. Somehow I got on Fred's e-mail list (okay, who's been sabotaging my e-mail account?), but sometimes it's good for a laugh. After all, if it weren't for Fred Thompson I wouldn't know the true message of l'affaire Sanford: We need term limits.

But guess what, Fred: Sanford is already term-limited. Placing any bets on whether he'll make it to 2010?

And the Vermont angle: Who's worse for his state--Sanford in Buenos Aires, or Douglas in Montpelier?

A new look at Nixon

There is a new dump of Nixon tapes out and, as always, they provide more information into Nixon's true character. We haven't had the chance to review everything, but here's one that again emphasizes his racism, a characteristic that permeated his career.

Nixon is heard on a muffled tape recording telling his special counsel that abortion is necessary in some cases - including instances of multiracial pregnancy.

Speaking to Charles Colson after the January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, the president said: "I admit, there are times when abortions are necessary, I know that." He gave "a black and a white" as an example.

"Or rape," Colson offered. "Or rape," Nixon agreed.

There's more to know, but in the face of the nostalgia that has seized some people for Nixon after the true evil enacted by Reagan and Bush, it's useful to be reminded of what an evil son of a bitch Nixon was.

"One base on an overthrow!"

Okay, something a bit lighter today.

For as long as you've been playing baseball you've heard the line, "one base on an overthrow" so you know that if the shortstop overthrows first base and the ball lands in the dugout, or an outfielder tosses the ball over the backstop the runners get to advance one base, right?

So what happened here? You may have heard of this incident last weekend involving notorious redass Milton Bradley, but I'll recount it for you in case you haven't. Bradley is in the outfield for the Cubs and the Twins have men on first and third. One out. A fly ball is hit out to Bradley, right at him, so he doesn't even have to move to get the ball. He catches it, stands there for a minute, and then, forgetting that there are only two outs, tosses the ball to the fans in the bleachers.

Big mistake, but what happens next? The ruling is that the runner on third scores and the runner on first goes to third.

But wait a minute--what about one base on an overthrow? Shouldn't the guy on first stop at second?

No, and here's why. The rule is not one base on an overthrow. The rule is actually that if the ball is thrown out of play (in this case, into the stands), the runners on base are entitled to advance two bases from the position of the runners at the time the ball was thrown (or, in the case of a ball thrown by an infielder, the position of the runners at the time of the pitch).

In other words, the next time you hear "one base on an overthrow", feel free to either correct the speaker, or just enjoy that satisfying feeling of superiority you get when you're right and the rest of the world is wrong.

Next up: "ground rule double".

Sarah Palin, Postscript

Jeez, do we have to talk about that again?

Well, maybe this one more time, so I'll make it quick.

People from all ends of the political spectrum have now come out to defend poor Sarah and her daughter, and how awful it was for Dave Letterman to say something disrespectful about her.

I won't bother to talk about how she made her family her most visible campaign accessory. You already know that.



I will just mention one other thing: When she first went on the air to complain about the Top Ten, she didn't say anything about the "knocked up" joke. She was all about the "slutty stewardess" joke. It wasn't until later last week that she started complaining about the joke about her daughter. People are arguing about whether her outrage was genuine or put on, and they're entitled to their opinions. On the other hand, if that was her true reaction, don't you think we would have heard about it right away, and not after she had the chance to try out the outrage, version one, on TV?

So maybe it's true that she was personally offended by Dave's "knocked up" joke, maybe. Doesn't it seem at least as likely, though, that it was her fallback option after the "slutty stewardess" outrage wasn't getting her enough mileage?

Top Ten Highlights of Sarah Palin's Trip to New York

Actually, royally pissed off is apparently more like it.

You see, Sara Palin was featured in Dave Letterman's Top Ten last night, which recited her top ten highlights of her trip to New York City. There were a number of items that she might take amiss, but I think her "favorite" was Number Two:

"Bought makeup at Bloomingdale's to update her slutty flight attendant look,"

Well, you judge for yourself, but I certainly liked it.

Supreme Court says coal company can't buy judge. Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito disagree.

Say you own a big coal company that's been sued for fraud, and hit with a judgment for $50 million. Not small change, right? Of course you have to appeal. This is "bet the company" litigation, and you have to win.

And let's say that there happens to be a judicial election coming up. What do you do? Well, maybe you drop $3 million on the election campaign of one of the candidates, more than all his other supporters, including his election committee, combined. and he wins by 50,000 votes.

And then you have to do your appeal in front of the court that now contains the candidate you spent $3 million to elect.

What does he do? Does he recuse himself? Does he tell the world that you've invested all that money in him and he can't judge the case fairly? Or does he decide that the appearance of impropriety is enough to mandate that he recuse himself?

No, in this case what he does is stay in the case and then rule in favor of the coal company that gave him $3 million. Probably just a coincidence.

Although that's not how the Supreme Court saw it. What they decided today is that all of us, even those of us who don't have $3 million to spend on a judge, have the right to due process of law, and that includes the right to have a court that hasn't already been bought and paid for by the other side.

At least, that's what the majority thinks. The minority, Bush's two appointees and the Scalia/Thomas twins, take a different view. They think it's going to be too burdensome for a court to decide if the judge was unduly prejudiced by the pots of money that the corporate party (and it's always going to be a corporate party, isn't it?) has thrown around. After all, we can't really expect a court to spend the effort to make sure its processes are fair, can we?

So when the Senate is considering the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Court, and deciding whether she's too biased to sit on the Court because she likes to eat beans, think about the four right-wingers who are on the Court now, and how they favor a party that would spend millions of dollars to buy a vote on an important case.

Obama's speech

I had a chance to hear Obama's speech live this morning, but I really hadn't collected my thoughts. I still haven't, entirely, but I do have some reactions to share.

Unlike others, who chose to attack Obama's speech even before he gave it, I thought it made sense to wait to see what he was going to say, and how the speech was received.

1. He's right about both Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama points out that we had no choice but to invade Afghanistan after we were attacked without provocation or warning, and that we could, and should, have stayed out of Iraq. Events in Afghanistan have not proceeded to any plan I would have wanted, but the errors have mainly been the result of Bush's abandonment of the Afghanistan effort to invade Iraq.

2. Israel and Palestine.

Here are some key lines:

To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

He probably spoke more strongly in favor of Palestinian rights than any American president ever has. He showed that he recognizes and deplores the suffering of the Palestinian people, and he spoke directly against the Israeli policy of settlements in the occupied territories. The Israelis don't like what he said or how he said it, but we can't go on saying we disapprove of the settlements without doing anything to change Israeli policies.

At the same time he challenged antisemitism and Holocaust denial directly. It won't convince Ahmadinejad, but he may be the one Western leader that Arabs and Palestinians in the Middle East will listen to, and they need to hear this.

3. Women's rights. I thought he was too soft on this. You can't understand "a woman who chooses to cover her hair" outside of the context of a religion that, where it has the power, sends men out in the streets with sticks to beat women who are not covering their hair, face, or entire body, and will allow girls to burn to death in a fire rather than be rescued by male firefighters. I think he was concentrating too much on making nice with the intolerant, and that is not a winning strategy.

4. It worked. That was the way it sounded to me, listening to the audience. They were very receptive and positive. News reports bear that out.

CAIRO — Muslim shopkeepers, students and even radical groups such as Hamas praised
President Barack Obama's address Thursday as a positive shift in U.S. attitude and tone. But Arabs and Muslims of all political stripes said they want him to turn his words into action — particularly in standing up to Israel.

Obama impressed Muslims with his humility and respect and they were thrilled by his citing of Quranic verses. Aiming to repair ties with the Muslim world that had been strained under his predecessor George W. Bush, he opened with the traditional Arabic greeting "Assalamu Aleikum," which drew enthusiastic applause from his audience at Cairo University.

He opened with Assalamu Aleikum, and instead of the anoyingly ubiquitous "God bless you and god bless the United States", he closed with "peace be upon you." Contrast that with Bush talking about engaging in a Crusade. Talking in the language your audience will relate to helps.

This is only the first step in a very long journey. I don't kid myself that this solves everything, or even changes everything, but people will listen to him who would never listen to Bush or any American. This is something that McCain never could have carried off.

Opray Winfrey, scam accomplice

Here's a great piece from Newsweek about Oprah Winfrey and how, shall we say, receptive she is to the claims of scam artists, frauds, and all-around soft headed alarmists.

It might not seem important, but she is followed so religiously by so many millions of women that we really shouldn't sit back in silence.

Here's an example:

According to The Secret, however, the Law of Attraction can use the vibrations of the universe to deliver more than just bubbles. The book that Oprah urges everyone to live by teaches that all diseases can be cured with the power of thought alone: "The question frequently asked is, 'When a person has manifested a disease in the body temple … can it be turned around through the power of "right thinking"?' And the answer is absolutely, yes." The book then offers the testimonial of a woman identified as Cathy Goodman. "I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I truly believed in my heart, with my strong faith, that I was already healed. Each day I would say, 'Thank you for my healing'." Goodman watched "very funny movies" to make herself laugh. "From the time I was diagnosed to the time I healed was approximately three months. And that's without any radiation or chemotherapy."

You should read the whole article. Maybe it's going too far to say that, whatever advice Oprah Winfrey gives, do the opposite, but maybe not by much.

When you're right, you're right.

This video is from Fox "News", and I apologize in advance for that. Still, it's important for what Jesse Ventura is saying. I'm not a big Jesse fan, but he makes some great points here. Unlike his right-wing interlocutor, he has the honesty to call torture for what it is. Naturally, the wingers want to make out that he's being all soft and gooey on the terrorists, but he gets it exactly right:

If we’re not going to be a country that goes by the rule of law, whether it’s convenient or inconvenient, then what do we stand for?

I’m not worried about their welfare, I’m worried about what our country stands for.

The reason I bring this up, though, is that it came up in a conversation on FaceBook. Another liberal friend posted the video, and a local conservative extremist commented that she had listened to Ventura, and that he was a loony who believes in conspiracy theories.

So if you want, go back and watch the video again. There's nothing loony in there, it's all based on documented fact. There are no conspiracy theories; he's talking about what we already know: that people being held by the armed forces of the United States were tortured on orders from the highest levels of the government. No conspiracy, just fact.

There's more than that, though. Conservatives like to claim that they're patriots, but they're really not. They think that if you object to torture being committed by our government, you're loony. It's we liberals who are the patriots. You see, we believe that our country is better than this. When we criticize our country, we are calling upon our leaders and ourselves to live up to our highest ideals.

It's the conservatives who think that torture, indefinite detention, and the gross imbalances in wealth and poverty, access to health care, housing, education and other basic human needs, are consistent with their vision of America. If that's the standard you hold your country to how can you call yourself a patriot?

So maybe the recession isn't all bad

(CNN) -- Muzak, the company that put pop, string-filled arrangements of rock songs in your elevator, filed bankruptcy papers Tuesday after it missed a $105 million payment to creditors.
The Muzak company is best known for background music piped into places such as elevators.

The Muzak company is best known for background music piped into places such as elevators.

The pipeline of easy listening will continue to flow as Muzak restructures its debt during the Chapter 11 process, the company said.

Remind me again what we were working for?

He taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

He said he would end torture, and then he did it.

He said he would close the prison camp at Guantanamo.

But now we have this: Not only has he pivoted on military commissions (motto: military justice is to justice as military music is to music) apparently Barack Obama is considering imposing a system of preventive detention on people the government doesn't like.

At a private, off-the-record with human rights advocates, Obama broached the topic of preventive detention.

The two participants, outsiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was intended to be off the record, said they left the meeting dismayed.

They said Mr. Obama told them he was thinking about “the long game” — how to establish a legal system that would endure for future presidents. He raised the issue of preventive detention himself, but made clear that he had not made a decision on it. Several senior White House officials did not respond to requests for comment on the outsiders’ accounts.

“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one participant said. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”

Note: "individuals who we can't charge and detain" means people who haven't done anything, or we don't have evidence that they've done anything, or the case otherwise wouldn't stand up to scrutiny in court.

You'll remember that it was less than a year ago that the Supreme Court, in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, invalidated the Military Commissions Act because it abolishes the right of habeas corpus for military detainees. The new Obama initiative, if it ever comes to fruition, will have to have the same abolition of habeas corpus in order to enable the government to keep people it suspects of harboring lethal intent towards us. How will our Constitutional Law professor president square his desire to abolish habeas corpus with Boumediene, or, for that matter, with his oath of office?

No mojo for MoDo

There are people who love Maureen Dowd's column in the Times. I'm not a huge fan, myself, but she does have the occasional good insight.

I am a huge fan of Josh Marshall, so I do get annoyed when people, especially bigfoot journalists, steal his work and don't give him credit, like MoDo did Sunday.

After she got called on it she admitted it. At least, she admitted that the words in her column had apparently come from somewhere else. Really, what choice did she have? You judge for yourself.

Josh wrote:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

Maureen wrote:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

I'll save you the trouble of counting. It's forty-five words, and the only change is from "we were" to "the Bush crowd was". Dowd's explanation is that she got the line from a friend and reproduced it in her column. Even if you grant that as a professional writer she may have a slightly greater sensitivity to, and recollection of words, than most people, do you believe that she heard this sentence one time, in a conversation, and was able to reproduce it in her column, word for word, down to the punctuation?

Or if you're like me, maybe your first reaction was, "My sweet lord!"

A quiz

Where does this quotation come from:

Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his face continually. 1 Chron 16:11.

A. Pope Benedict's blessing on the inauguration of Barack Obama.
B. Jerry Falwell's graduation address at Liberty "University".
C. A daily defense briefing from Donald Rumsfeld to George W. Bush.

If you guessed C, you are correct.

This is part of a slide show of defense briefing cover sheets delivered by Rumsfeld to Bush to keep manipulating him in his conduct of the war in Iraq. GQ magazine has uncovered these cover sheets as part of its coverage of how Donald Rumsfeld's organizational behavior contributed to the Bush Administration's crimes and failures.

On the morning of Thursday, April 10, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon prepared a top-secret briefing for George W. Bush. This document, known as the Worldwide Intelligence Update, was a daily digest of critical military intelligence so classified that it circulated among only a handful of Pentagon leaders and the president; Rumsfeld himself often delivered it, by hand, to the White House. The briefing’s cover sheet generally featured triumphant, color images from the previous days’ war efforts: On this particular morning, it showed the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down in Firdos Square, a grateful Iraqi child kissing an American soldier, and jubilant crowds thronging the streets of newly liberated Baghdad. And above these images, and just below the headline secretary of defense, was a quote that may have raised some eyebrows. It came from the Bible, from the book of Psalms: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him…To deliver their soul from death.”

This is only the latest of exposes involving Rumsfeld, which include such things as Rumsfeld's cheating at squash against his subordinates (Hey, if you're the Second Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, are you going to call the boss on his cheating?), but this is obviously much more substantive, since it involves the failures and crimes the permeated the Bush administration.

The article is exhaustive in cataloguing Rumsfeld's bureaucratic tactics, and the entire thing is worth reading. The logical question, of course, is whether Rumsfeld's mastery of the situation absolves Bush of responsibility.

I submit the answer is clearly no. First, the fundamental decisions were made, and the fundamental lies were told, by or at the behest of Bush. Second, in Bush we had an aggressively ignorant and incurious president, who by his actions mocked the very idea of competence as a governing principle. Despite the fact that he seized power in a judicial coup, once he took office Bush had the same obligation to the American people as any president, a responsibility that, once again, we are shown that he utterly failed to discharge.

And as Frank Rich points out in today's Times, it is for this reason that we cannot afford to simply turn the page, move on, and act as though the past eight years never happened.

Judge to parents: I won't let you kill your kid

Good news for Daniel Hauser: a judge in Minnesota has ruled that his parents may not refuse him treatment for his cancer, even though he allegedly also wanted to refuse treatment.

The boy is thirteen years old, and dominated by his parents, who are Catholics but also belong to a made-up cult that claims to use "natural healing" methods. His doctors testified that with treatment Daniel has a 90% chance of surviving, whereas without it his chances are 5%.

So why doesn't the kid get to make his own decision?

Well, first off, he's thirteen, and kids that age don't get to make that kind of decision. He can't read. And, as the judge found, Daniel has only a "rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy. ... he does not believe he is ill currently. The fact is that he is very ill currently."

What's the parents' solution? Treat him with "herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water, and other natural alternatives — despite testimony from five doctors who agreed Daniel needed chemotherapy."

Sometime, assuming this kid grows to adulthood, and he understands a little more about life and death, I'll be glad to see him make his own decisions. Now, as a juvenile who has no understanding of the situation he's in, and in the hands of parents who are equally clueless, he needs someone with a level head on his shoulders to protect him from those parents. I'm glad this judge was there.