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January 29, 2006
Very cool online clock
My friend Kay found this clock whose digits are composed of images from flickr.
I have photos on flickr, too.
Posted by gans at 10:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 28, 2006
Marquees from the January tour
On the road with Ralph Roddenbery and Mark van Allen.
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January 27, 2006
Jon Carroll re the WOSD
Jon Carroll speaks sensibly about the War on Some Drugs again.
He starts off with a riff on The Law of Unintended Consequences, and then quotes a story from the New York Times: “The drop in home-cooked methamphetamine has been met by a new flood of crystal methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico. Sometimes called ice, crystal methamphetamine is far purer, and therefore even more highly addictive, than powdered home-cooked methamphetamine….”
Jon writes:
…as a friend of mine (who ran screaming from the room when I asked if I could use his name) said: “Gee, here I thought making it impossible to get decongestant would get rid of the meth problem, just like making it impossible to get effective cough syrup eliminated opiate addiction.”Drug laws are now so entirely governed by fear that no one stops to consider the reason for the laws. It seems that everyone now has a story about a dying relative who was denied pain medication because the care providers were afraid that the person would become addicted. The person is dying! Who cares if the patient goes to the grave with a tiny opium habit? It’s not as if you have to pee into a cup to get into heaven.
Later: “…it’s history and money that are determining our drug policy,” then adds, “…it’s not really a policy at all — it’s a set of superstitions. The Drug Enforcement Administration policy boards are run by witch doctors. Almost everyone in medicine and almost everyone in law enforcement would agree with what I’m saying, but the penalties for public dissent are swift and harsh.”
As always, I encourage you to read the whole column. And for that matter, I encourage you to read him every weekday in the SF Chronicle or on The Gate. He’s smart, incisive, funny, and soulful, and he loves cats.
Posted by gans at 1:38 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Thin White Puke is at it again
From the New York Times:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, speaking at a traditionally black college, joked that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned.Coulter had told the Philander Smith College audience Thursday that more conservative justices were needed on the Supreme Court to change the current law on abortion. Stevens is one of the court’s most liberal members.
“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee,” Coulter said. ”That’s just a joke, for you in the media.”
Posted by gans at 11:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 26, 2006
Image of the month
Front page of the Charleston SC Post and Courier, January 13, 2006
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January 25, 2006
Grand Lake Theater marquee 1/25/06
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Gore Vidal on "President Jonah"
Gore Vidal has a piece on Robert Scheer’s new web site, TruthDig:
An excerpt:
Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ’30s movie “The Good Earth.”I have read many of these descriptions of our fallen estate, looking for one that best describes in plain English how we got to this now and where we appear to be headed once our good Earth has been consumed and only Rapture is left to whisk aloft the Faithful. Meanwhile, the rest of us can learn quite a lot from “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
There’s also a nice photo of the dipshit-in-chief and Vice President Evil.
Posted by gans at 9:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Boxer v. Alito
SENATOR BARBARA BOXER’S STATEMENT ON THE NOMINATION OF SAMUEL L. ALITO TO BE ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
Today, I am announcing my opposition to the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court of the United States.
According to Article II of the Constitution, justices of the Supreme Court may not be appointed by the president without the advice and consent of the United States Senate. So it is our solemn duty to consider each nomination carefully, keeping in mind the interests of the American people.
And this nomination is particularly crucial because the stakes have rarely been so high.
First, consider the context in which this nomination comes before us. The seat that Judge Alito has been nominated for is now held by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who came to the Court in 1981.
For years, Justice O’Connor has provided the tie-breaking vote and a commonsense voice of reason in some of the most important cases to come before the Court, including a woman’s right to choose, civil rights, and freedom of religion.
Second, consider the tumultuous political climate in our nation. President Bush understood that in 2000 when he promised to govern from the center, and be “a uniter, not a divider.” Sadly, this nomination shows that he has forgotten that promise because it is not from the center and it is not uniting the nation.
The right thing to do would have been to give us a justice in the mold of Justice O’Connor, and that is what the president should have done.
Let me be clear: I do not deny Judge Alito’s judicial qualifications. He has been a government lawyer and judge for more than 20 years and the American Bar Association rated him well qualified. He is an intelligent and capable person. His family should be proud of him and all Americans should be proud that the American dream was there for the Alito family.
But after reviewing the hearing record and the record of his statements, writings and rulings over the past 24 years, I am convinced that Judge Alito is the wrong person for this job.
I am deeply concerned about how Justice Alito will impact the ability of other families to live the American dream — to be assured of privacy in their homes and their personal lives, to be secure in their neighborhoods, to have fair treatment in the workplace, and to have confidence that the power of the executive branch will be checked.
As I reviewed Judge Alito’s record, I asked whether he will vote to preserve fundamental American liberties and values —
Will Justice Alito vote to uphold Congress’ constitutional power to pass laws to protect Americans’ health, safety, and welfare? Judge Alito’s record says NO.
In the 1996 Rybar case, Judge Alito voted to strike down the federal ban on the transfer or possession of machine guns because he believed it exceeded Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause. His 3rd Circuit colleagues sharply criticized his dissent and said that it ran counter to “a basic tenet of the constitutional separation of powers.” And Judge Alito’s extremist view has been rejected by six other circuit courts and the Supreme Court. Judge Alito stood alone and failed to protect our families.
In a case concerning worker protection, Judge Alito was again in the minority when he said that federal mine health and safety standards did not apply to a coal processing site. He tried to explain it as just a “technical issue of interpretation.” I fear for the safety of our workers if Judge Alito’s narrow, technical reading of the law should ever prevail.
Will Justice Alito vote to protect the right to privacy, especially a woman’s reproductive freedom? Judge Alito’s record says NO.
We have all heard about Judge Alito’s 1985 job application, in which he wrote that the constitution does not protect the right of a woman to choose. He was given the chance to disavow that position during the hearings — and he refused to do so. He had the chance to say, as Judge Roberts did, that Roe v. Wade is settled law, and he refused.
He had the chance to explain his dissent in the Casey decision, in which he argued that the Pennsylvania spousal notification requirement was not an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion because it would affect only a small number of women, but he refused to back away from his position. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, found the provision to be unconstitutional, and Justice O’Connor, co-writing for the Court, criticized the faulty analysis supported by Judge Alito, saying that “the analysis does not end with the one percent of women” affected … “it begins there.”
To my mind, Judge Alito’s ominous statements and narrow minded reasoning clearly signal a hostility to women’s rights, and portend a move back toward the dark days when abortion was illegal in many states, and many women died as a result. In the 21st century, it is astounding that a Supreme Court nominee would not view Roe v. Wade as settled law when its fundamental principle — a woman’s right to choose — has been reaffirmed many times since it was decided.
Will Justice Alito vote to protect Americans from unconstitutional searches? Judge Alito’s record says NO.
In Doe v. Groody in 2004, he said a police strip search of a 10-year-old girl was lawful, even though their search warrant didn’t name her. Judge Alito said that even if the warrant did not actually authorize the search of the girl, “a reasonable police officer could certainly have read the warrant as doing so… ” This casual attitude toward one of our most basic constitutional guarantees — the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches — is almost shocking. As Judge Alito’s own 3rd Circuit Court said regarding warrants, “a particular description is the touchstone of the 4th Amendment.” We certainly do not need Supreme Court justices who do not understand this fundamental constitutional protection.
Will Justice Alito vote to let citizens stop companies from polluting their communities? Judge Alito’s record says NO.
In the Magnesium Elektron case, Judge Alito voted to make it harder for citizens to sue for toxic emissions that violate the Clean Water Act. Fortunately, in another case several years later, the Supreme Court rejected the 3rd Circuit and Alito’s narrow reading of the law. Judge Alito doesn’t seem to care about a landmark environmental law.
Will Justice Alito vote to let working women and men have their day in court against employers who discriminate against them? Judge Alito’s record says NO.
In 1997, in the Bray case, Judge Alito was the only judge on the 3rd circuit to say that a hotel employee claiming racial discrimination could not take her case to a jury.
In the Sheridan case, a female employee sued for discrimination, alleging that after she complained about incidents of sexual harassment, she was demoted and marginalized to the point that she was forced to quit. By a vote of 10 to 1, the 3rd Circuit found for the plaintiff. Guess who was the one? Only Judge Alito thought the employee should have to show that discrimination was the “determinative cause” of the employer’s action. Using his standard would make it almost impossible for a woman claiming discrimination in the workplace to get to trial.
Finally, will Justice Alito be independent from the executive branch that appointed him, and be a vote against power grabs by the president? Judge Alito’s record says NO.
As a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, he authored a memo suggesting a new way for the president to encroach on Congress’ lawmaking powers. He said that when the president signs a law, he should make a statement about the law, giving it his own interpretation, whether it was consistent with what Congress had written or not. He wrote that this would “get in the last word on questions of interpretation” of the law. In the hearings, Judge Alito refused to back away from this memo.
When asked whether he believed the president could invade another country, in the absence of an imminent threat, without first getting the approval of the American people, of Congress, Judge Alito refused to rule it out.
When asked if the president had the power to authorize someone to engage in torture, Alito refused to answer.
The administration is now asserting vast powers, including spying on American citizens without seeking warrants — in clear violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — violating international treaties, and ignoring laws that ban torture. We need justices who will put a check on such overreaching by the executive, not rubberstamp it. Judge Alito’s record and his answers at the hearings raise very serious doubts about his commitment to being a strong check on an “imperial president.”
In addition to these substantive matters, I remain concerned about Judge Alito’s answers regarding his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton and his failure to recuse himself from the Vanguard case, which he had promised to do.
During the hearings, we all felt great compassion for Mrs. Alito when she became emotional in reaction to the tough questions her husband faced in the Judiciary Committee. Everyone in politics knows how hard it is for families when a loved one is asked tough questions. It is part of a difficult process, and whoever said politics is not for the faint of heart was right.
Emotions have run high during this process. That’s understandable. But I wish the press had focused more on the tears of those who will be affected if Judge Alito becomes Justice Alito and his out-of-the mainstream views prevail.
I worry about the tears of a worker who, having failed to get a promotion because of discrimination, is denied the opportunity to pursue her claim in court.
I worry about the tears of a mentally ill woman who is forced by law to tell her husband that she wants to terminate her pregnancy and is afraid that he will leave her or stop supporting her.
I worry about the tears of a young girl who is strip searched in her own home by police who have no valid warrant.
I worry about the tears of a mentally retarded man, who has been brutally assaulted in his workplace, when his claim of workplace harassment is dismissed by the court simply because his lawyer failed to file a well written brief on his behalf.
These are real cases in which Judge Alito has spoken. Fortunately, he did not prevail in these cases. But if he goes to the Supreme Court, he will have a much more powerful voice — a radical voice that will replace a voice of moderation and balance.
Perhaps the most important statement Judge Alito made during the entire hearing process was when he told the Judiciary Committee that he expects to be the same kind of justice on the Supreme Court as he has been a judge on the Circuit Court.
That is precisely the problem. As a judge, Samuel Alito seemed to approach his cases with an analytical coldness that reflected no concern for the human consequences of his reasoning.
Listen to what he said about a case involving an African-American man convicted of murder by an all white jury in a courtroom where the prosecutors had eliminated all African-American jurors in many previous murder trials as well.
Judge Alito dismissed this evidence of racial bias and said that the jury makeup was no more relevant than the fact that lefthanders have won five of the last six presidential elections. When asked about this analogy during the hearings, he said it “went to the issue of statistics… (which) is a branch of mathematics, and there are ways to analyze statistics so that you draw sound conclusions from them…”
That response would have been appropriate for a college math professor, but it is deeply troubling from a potential Supreme Court justice.
As the great jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1881, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience… The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.”
What Holmes meant is that the law is a living thing, that those who interpret it must do so with wisdom and humanity, and with an understanding of the consequences of their judgments for the lives of the people they affect.
It is with deep regret that I conclude that Judge Alito’s judicial philosophy lacks this wisdom, humanity and moderation. He is simply too far out of the mainstream in his thinking. His opinions demonstrate neither the independence of mind nor the depth of heart that I believe we need in our Supreme Court justices, particularly at this crucial time in our nation’s history.
That is why I will oppose this nomination.
Posted by gans at 8:01 AM | TrackBack
January 24, 2006
End of the tour
Mark Van Allen, David Gans and Ralph Roddenbery at the end of our first tour together. We’re gonna do it again in April - stay tuned!
Photo by Alex Beaudry
UPDATE: Robert Reid has a slide show from the Charleston SC gig.
Posted by gans at 2:05 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 22, 2006
An end and a beginning
I just got to Mark Van Allen’s house outside Atlanta after a 500+-mile drive from Clearwater FL. Just finished a two-weekend tour with Mark and our pal Ralph Roddenbery, and on the way home we decided to do it again in April.
More details, and recordings, to come. Right now alI have is this blog entry w/ photos from macon.com, courtesy of John Griffin.
Posted by gans at 8:11 PM | TrackBack
January 17, 2006
Felicity Huffman kicks ass
This is great. Salon posts a clip from a 60 Minutes interview of Felicity Huffman by Lesley Stahl, in which Huffman jumps the Hollywood-banality track and tells the shocking truth.
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Snapshot from the road
After our show in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, we headed down to Spartanburg to spend the night in the home of my friend Maclyn Humphrey. There we were introduced to her pet llama, Osama.
And that’s not even the weirdest thing that’s happened on this tour!
Posted by gans at 8:27 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 6, 2006
Jon Carroll on domestic surveillance etc.
In today’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle, regarding the revelations about the Bush administration spying on American citizens in blatant and unashamed violation fo the Constitution, Jon Carroll writes:
….what I can’t get is the Bush administration’s hysterical reaction to the revelations. A presidential spokesman named Trent Duffy said, “The fact that al Qaeda’s playbook is not printed on Page One, and when America’s is, it has serious ramifications.” (Al Qaeda’s playbook? Does it sometimes seem to you that the government is being run by retired athletic directors?) But seriously, can you envision a terrorist picking up the New York Times and saying, “My God, men, the government may have been listening in to our telephone calls. Quick, let’s find another way to communicate.” I think probably they’ve figured that part out by now. I think the idea that the New York Times somehow leaked super-duper secrets to the enemy is ludicrous.
…
all the sports-metaphor moralizing has nothing to do with national security — it has to do with changing the subject. It ignores the biggest problem of all — that the Bush administration is just not very good at its job. It has mucked up the Iraq war, and it has attempted to silence all the generals and diplomats who have said so. It has imperiled the lives of Iraqis and Americans alike. It did manage to create the Halliburton full- employment initiative, but that does not seem like a large achievement.
The Sept. 11 commission, it will be recalled, issued its final report late last year. In it, it said that the administration had taken none of the steps recommended in its previous report. Beyond making passenger airplane travel safer, the Department of Homeland Security has done nothing useful. Laws designed to improve security have turned into engines by which midsize cities in the districts of elderly congressmen can buy shiny new fire engines.
…
The administration lives in a sort of fantasy world where petroleum consumption has no long-term consequences…. And the hurricane season would not have been as severe were it not for the changes brought about by global warming. The administration still treats global warming as some sort of zany hypothesis, when it has long since been accepted as fact by anyone really paying attention. And, lest we forget, the No. 1 cause of global warming is emissions from petroleum-burning machines.
Read the column here.
Posted by gans at 10:02 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 2, 2006
Brother Yoo explains it for you
When my head starts to hurt from the arduous mental gymnastics required to make sense of the Bush Admninistration’s actions and explanations, I often turn to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll.
Today is one of those days. Jon has given us an imaginary interview with a real dangerous man.
Perhaps you have been unable to follow the intricacies of the logic used by John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who has emerged as the president’s foremost apologist for all the stuff he has to apologize for. I have therefore prepared a brief, informal summary of the relevant arguments.Why does the president have the power to unilaterally authorize wiretaps of American citizens?
Because he is the president.
Does the president always have that power?
No. Only when he is fighting the war on terror does he have that power.
When will the war on terror be over?
The fight against terror is eternal. Terror is not a nation; it is a tactic. As long as the president is fighting a tactic, he can use any means he deems appropriate.
Why does the president have that power?
It’s in the Constitution.
Where in the Constitution?
It can be inferred from the Constitution. When the president is protecting America, he may by definition make any inference from the Constitution that he chooses. He is keeping America safe.
…
But isn’t there a secret court, the FISA court, that has the power to authorize wiretapping warrants? Wasn’t that court set up for just such situations when national security is at stake?
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court might disagree with the president. It might thwart his plans. It is a danger to the democracy that we hold so dear. We must never let the courts stand in the way of America’s safety.
So there are no guarantees that the president will act in the best interests of the country?
The president was elected by the people. They chose him; therefore he represents the will of the people. The people would never act against their own interests; therefore, the president can never act against the best interests of the people. It’s a doctrine I like to call “the triumph of the will.”
But surely the Congress was also elected by the people, and therefore also represents the will of the people. Is that not true?
Congress? Please.
…
Can the president authorize torture?
No. The president can only authorize appropriate means.
Could those appropriate means include torture?
It’s not torture if the president says it’s not torture. It’s merely appropriate. Remember, America is under constant attack from terrorism. The president must use any means necessary to protect America.
Won’t the American people object?
Not if they’re scared enough.
…
So this policy will be in place right up until the next election?
Election? Let’s just say that we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It may not be wise to have an election in a time of national peril.
Posted by gans at 8:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack