Arnold's bad ideas go down to defeat

The Sacramento Bee reports that Prop 75 is trailing 53.0% to 47.0%, with 95% of precincts reporting, in California. This is the bill that would essentially have stripped public employees' unions of their power to influence state politics - an incredibly mean-spirited and unfair proposal. The teachers' unions, in particular, increased their dues in an extremely expensive campaign against the proposal.

All of Arnold's other bad ideas were defeated, too, as was Prop 73, which would have made it harder for pregnant teens to get abortions.

Letter to Harry Reid

Dear Senator Reid,

I am a gay American and a contributor to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

Having just received a fundraising letter you sent on behalf of Bob Casey's campaign for Senate, I want to thank you for mentioning gay rights prominently in your letter.

Admittedly, I shouldn't really have to thank you for this, since Santorum's views on gay rights are so radically out of step with the mainstream. But given the Democrats' tendency to leave gay Americans to fend for ourselves when push comes to shove, I want to give credit where credit is due.

I hope Senator Kennedy won't be the only member of the Judiciary Committee to bring up the topic of gay rights during the upcoming confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito, as he was during the recent Roberts hearings. And I hope and expect that in the coming years, more of your colleagues will stand up for marriage equality in the coming year than have done so until now.

Please continue to speak up for folks like me.

Massachusetts - where gay marriage is the status quo

I just edited a sentence the Wikipedia entry on same-sex marriage in the United States.

BEFORE: "The same political and legal events also gave rise to
a counter movement to freeze the status quo by legally
defining traditional marriage, the marriage of one woman to
one man."

AFTER: "The same political and legal events also gave rise to
a counter movement to legally define traditional marriage, the
marriage of one woman to one man, thus freezing the status quo
in the 49 states without same-sex marriage and reversing the
2003 court ruling, Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of
Public Health, that legalized it in that state."

Dear Anonymous

Thank you for your interest in my blog. Would you like to share your first name and where you're calling from?

Some quick thoughts:
- The spelling is "Roe."
- My understanding is that while Justice Kennedy won't vote to overturn Roe, and thus in a technical sense you are correct, he would uphold very severe restrictions that would make abortions very difficult to obtain. Many states have various restrictions on access to abortion that are
- Everyone is concerned about Roe because the abortion debate, which has been a major fault line in the past qurater century of American political history, grew up in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's finding that states may not interfere with a woman's right to choose whether to end her pregnancy.

"Rich women will fly to California; poor women will use Cytotec."

That is, if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

But first: Miers Led Bid to Revisit Abortion Stance. The role of Bush's new Supreme Court nominee in leading an effort to change the ABA's stance on abortion is self-explanatory and cause for concern, though she was one of several involved in the effort, and it doesn't by any means make clear her own views on Roe v. Wade or the right to privacy. On the other hand, the more vocal factions of the right wing are pissed as hell. They wanted someone with a track record of fanaticism, and this lady ain't it.

Miers is, like Condoleezza Rice, single and childless, which frankly is a welcome contrast to John Roberts' Leave it to Beaver style. I have to say that having run the Texas Lottery Commission sounds a bit like having run a horse association (though Miers was successful in that job instead of fired from it). Miers apparently was running Bush's search for an associate justice, just as Dick Cheney was running his search for a running mate back in 2000. This guy likes to appoint people he already knows.

I guess my tentative thought about Miers is that we could have done much, much worse. An unknown is realistically not so bad for us. I couldn't help but crack a smile when I read in the Times that the Miers nomination reflects a president "struggling to avoid premature lame duck status." We're not in January 2004 anymore, Toto.

Oh: and I was, on balance, glad to see the Times article "Abortion Might Outgrow Its Need for Roe v. Wade". Yes, it may have minimized the potentially devastating consequences of a reversal on reproductive rights. But at least it's taking that possibility seriously instead of pretending we aren't faced with it. And it's of course true that we would not see a return to pre-1973 conditions simply because of changes in the available drugs and medical technologies. The article quotes an Arkansas abortion provider who predicts, "Rich women will fly to California; poor women will use Cytotec."

Thank you, Bob Herbert

"You never want to say that brave troops died for the mindless fantasies spun by a gang of dissembling, inept politicians. But what else did they die for?"

[please note you now have to be a paying "Times Select" subscriber to view columns]

Honoring elders

Here's me with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon at the Gerber-Hart annual benefit tonight, which this year celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Daughters of Bilitis.

"For G.O.P., DeLay Indictment Adds to a Sea of Troubles"

"This is not what the Republicans envisioned 11 months ago, when they were returned to office as a powerful one-party government with a big agenda and - it seemed - little to fear from the opposition."

So sorry, but...we deserve this. And they deserve this.

I just went online and gave $100 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. You should too. It's early, but giving early means more credibility for them.

A yes on Roberts is not the only "right vote"

I'm tired of having letters not printed, so here they are.

---

September 24, 2005

To: the Washington Post

While I agree with your view that there should not be a
"strongly partisan component" to the Supreme Court
confirmation process, I think you are missing a critical
factor in the decision of five of the eight Democrats on the
Senate Judiciary Committee to vote against the nomination of
Judge John Roberts for Chief Justice ("The Right Vote," Sept.
24). That factor is President Bush's broader relationship to
the judiciary, a record of genuinely unprecedented partisanship.

Judge Roberts is a qualified nominee with decades of excellent
service to his corporate and Republican Party clients, but he
has limited experience as a judge and simply has not faced a
range of cases approaching that which he will encounter if he
spends the foreseeable future leading the judicial branch.
The current Republican assault on the independent judiciary is
so dangerous to the nation's legal system that I find it easy
to understand the Democrats' reluctance to confirm a candidate
for Chief Justice with no discernible track record and no
professed views on the most important issues.

Your editorial complains that Democrats "will oppose any
nominee from this administration" and that the pressure from
liberal lobbying groups is "truly intense." By contrast, I am
impressed that leaders of nonprofit organizations that work on
behalf of civil rights, consumers, women, gays and lesbians,
immigration rights, disability rights, environmentalism, and
public-interest law have finally managed to persuade our party
to stand up for us. President Bush should not appoint another
stealth candidate for the Court's second opening.

---

Friday, September 2, 2005
To: Time Magazine
Subject: President feels pain...of those overpaying for gas?

You say that Bush "stumbles in his initial handling" of the
crisis in New Orleans, but "has a history of righting itself"
(Sept. 1). That's like saying that Janet Reno "stumbled" in
responding to Waco. President Bush's speech Thursday was
astonishing---with his palpable sympathy toward those of us
paying fifty cents extra for gas, and his profound lack of
basic compassion for Americans living without food, water, or
sanitation. For Bush to say on national television that help
is on the way, "but the private sector needs to do its part as
well," goes beyond abdicating leadership; it is obscene. I
feel ill imagining Karl Rove's efforts to arrange a Friday
photo op in New Orleans.

[That one produced a letter back the next day saying basically "we paid attention to your letter and we are thinking of maybe printing it but we're not sure yet."]

---

Monday, August 29, 2005
To: the New York Times
Subject: Women's peace activism is nothing new

In her timely look at the role of mothers in the resurgent
antiwar movement, Elisabeth Bumiller is right to point out
that in Vietnam, “the demonstrations were largely led by young
men, who were subject to the draft” ("In the Struggle Over the
Iraq War, Women are On the Front Line," Aug. 29). But when
she attributes this “striking change" to events that have
"happened in 40 years," Bumiller would do well to brush up on
her history.

Women were highly influential peace activists in the World War
I era. The first Congressional vote cast by a woman was
Jeannette Rankin’s vote against entering World War I, at a
time before federal woman suffrage. Rankin cast the only vote
in Congress against World War II; she went on, at age 88, to
lead over 5,000 women in a 1968 march on Washington against
the Vietnam War.

Massachusetts lawmakers have changed their minds

Today, 6,500 marriages later, the Massachusetts legislature defeated by a stunning 4-to-1 margin the "compromise" constitutional amendment that it narrowly passed last year, which would simultaneously ban gay marriage and create civil unions. Many legislators who voted for the amendment last year say that they've simply changed their minds in the past year.

Because the measure did not pass the legislature two years in a row, it WILL NOT go to the voters next year. The religious right is now collecting signatures in an effort to get an amendment banning both gay marriage and civil unions on the ballot in 2008 - when thousands of same-sex couples will be celebrating their fifth wedding anniversaries.

Wednesday vote may doom MA marriage ban effort

Same-sex marriage may stay legal in Massachusetts (The Advocate)

A fragile coalition of lawmakers cobbled together to support a Massachusetts constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage is falling apart, virtually assuring that for now same-sex marriage will remain legal in the state, according to an Associated Press poll. The survey, conducted September 6–9, found at least 104 lawmakers who plan to vote against the proposed amendment, which would ban same-sex marriage but create civil unions.

Levee funds diverted to Iraq

The following are excerpts from an article by Sheila Grissett published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004:

For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.

"I guess people look around and think there's a complete system in place, that we're just out here trying to put icing on the cake," said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. "And we aren't saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place."

...

"I can't tell you exactly what that could mean this hurricane season if we get a major storm," Naomi said. "It would depend on the path and speed of the storm, the angle that it hits us.

"But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it's important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects."

...

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

...

The challenge now, said emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri in Jefferson Parish and Terry Tullier in New Orleans, is for southeast Louisiana somehow to persuade those who control federal spending that protection from major storms and flooding are matters of homeland security.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Maestri said. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

...

Levee-raising is only part of the flood-related work that has stopped since the federal government began reducing Corps of Engineers appropriations in 2001, as more money was diverted to homeland security, the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq.

More articles from before Katrina:

Repair the marshlands or rebuild New Orleans, Rocky Mountain News, July 16, 2005


New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces record $71.2 million federal cut, New Orleans City Business, June 6, 2005

Coastal advocates dismayed by Bush's opposition, The Courier (Houma, La.), sometime in 2004

See also these stories posted since Katrina:

No one can say they didn't see it coming, on Salon, August 31 (this is an excellent article, well worth the commercial required of non-subscribers)

Funding cuts led way to lesser levees, Chicago Tribune, August 31

Intricate flood protection long a focus of dispute, NYT, September 1

And search for the latest on levees on Google News

Bush's vacation and New Orleans' poor

...this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation. All the focus now must be on rescuing the survivors. Beyond that lies a long and painful recovery, which must begin with a national vow to help all the storm victims and to save and repair New Orleans.

People who think of that graceful city and the rest of the Mississippi Delta as tourist destinations must have been reminded, watching the rescue operations, that the real residents of this area are in the main poor and black. The only resources most of them will have to fall back on will need to come from the federal government. (NYT)

In a society hooked on access to instant and overwhelming quantities of information, it was remarkable how much was unknown about the scope of the disaster wreaked by Katrina; the storm had simply destroyed much of the information network. More often than not, calls to southern Louisiana were answered by a polite recording saying that hurricane damage had rendered telephone service impossible. In most of the storm-socked area, there was no power to run computers, much less pumps to remove the water. The Times-Picayune, New Orleans's main newspaper, was doing a heroic job of covering the crisis until suddenly, at 9:40 yesterday morning, its entire staff had to evacuate the building to flee the rising waters coming through breached levees. On CNN, harried reporters told their anchors on camera that they didn't know much more than what they could see from the hotel rooftops on which they had taken refuge. (WaPo)

Roberts and civil rights

Today's Washington Post:

In the early 1980s, a young intellectual lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. was part of the vanguard of a conservative political revolution in civil rights, advocating new legal theories and helping enforce the Reagan administration's effort to curtail the use of courts to remedy racial and sexual discrimination....

He wrote vigorous defenses, for example, of the administration's version of a voting rights bill, opposed by Congress, that would have narrowed the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He challenged arguments by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in favor of busing and affirmative action. He described a Supreme Court decision broadening the rights of individuals to sue states for civil rights violations as causing "damage" to administration policies, and he urged that legislation be drafted to reverse it. And he wrote a memo arguing that it was constitutionally acceptable for Congress to strip the Supreme Court of its ability to hear broad classes of civil rights cases.

The Hazards of Being Male

[---the titles of an early-1970s anti-women's lib tract]

I just got back from the FedEx facility in Skokie, where I picked up my new cell phone - replaced under warranty - after three days of phone calls and mutually exclusive explanations from FedEx about why they had not delivered it. Since a signature was required, I had had it shipped c/o the feminist bookstore across the street.

During the final round of phone calls this morning before I decided to get in my car to pick up the damn thing, the FedEx manager in Skokie told me that she "understood," based on her conversation with the first person who answered the phone before she spoke to a manager, that the bookstore "has no male employees." Therefore, she was planning to send the package back to Verizon unless I could give her a plausible explanation of why I was sending the package to the bookstore. I am not making this up.

Granted, the person who answered the phone is partly to blame, and it seems to me that the bookstore's non-hierarchical staffing structure probably did not help ensure that I'd get my phone. But the FedEx person, because I was male, actually made me go across the street while she called up the bookstore and heard them state that yes I am a regular customer and yes they should release the package to me.

Crackdown

The general manager of the chorus was arrested for dealing crystal meth. Yikes.

"I'm coming day and night"

I just watched Pumping Iron, the 1977 documentary that made Arnold Schwarzenegger famous. Here are my favorite things Arnold had to say:

1. "The greatest feeling you can get in a gym, or the most satisfying feeling you can get in a gym, is the pump. Let’s say you train your biceps; blood is rushing into your muscles, and that’s what we call the pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute - you know, it's really tight, it’s like somebody blowing air into your muscle. It just blows up and it feels different. It feels fantastic. It’s as satisfying to me as coming - you know, as having sex with a woman and coming. So can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am like getting the feeling of coming in the gym, I'm getting the feeling of coming at home, I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage when I pump up, when I pose out in front of 5,000 people I get the same feeling. So I'm coming day and night. I mean, it’s terrific, right?"

2. "I was always dreaming about very powerful people, dictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years, you know - or even, like Jesus you know, being for thousands of years remembered."

Calling all Democrats: it's Roe v. Wade, stupid!

***To NARAL staff member: contact me at timsw at uchicago dot edu***

First of all, right this minute, go contribute $25 to NARAL Pro-Choice America. Just do it. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Out of all of the Democratic Party's constituencies, the pro-choice organizations are the only ones who know what they're doing right now. Bush's team chose made such an incredibly brilliant choice of nominee that the top liberal organizations have been scrambling, with remarkably little success, to figure out what the hell he's all about.

Many Democratic politicians seem incapable of actually talking about reproductive rights or about Roe v. Wade, or to say in public the simple fact that 65 percent of Americans are in favor of keeping Roe. They're desperately trying to find some other reason to oppose Roberts, but the pro-choice lobby knows what's at stake. There really is no other reason to oppose Roberts. He has very little paper trail, on the abortion issue or on anything else, but here's a clue: his wife is "deeply involved in the antiabortion movement."

The New York Times talked to one of the other people Bush apparently interviewed for the job, and they make it sound like Bush basically picked him cause he's a swell guy. But the conservatives seem pretty sure they know his politics. Check out JudgeRoberts.com, a website where you can view a new right-wing TV commercial now hitting the airwaves. It proclaims Judge Roberts to be an honest man, top in his Harvard Law class, who deserves a fair hearing. The website was created by a right-wing 501(c)(4) organization called Progress for America, which according to an email I received from the Feminist Majority, has already raised $18 million just to campaign for the confirmation of Bush's Supreme Court nominees. (Did PFA buy the domain names for all of the 11 candidates Bush that were supposedly on Bush's short list?)

For those who "want to know more," PFA has created an ever-so-slightly-higher-brow website, UporDownVote.com. Play Senator - browse Judge Roberts' "resume." Things like that. In dramatic contrast, the liberal Alliance for Justice has only a fairly mealy-mouthed statement on its specialized website SupremeCourtWatch.org:

At this time, Alliance for Justice cannot support Judge Roberts’ elevation to the Supreme Court. While we will be conducting a complete analysis of his record on and off the bench, an initial review has led to serious concerns about whether he will be fair, independent and will protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans.

In a sidebar, AFJ says something slightly more interesting (and, I think, right on the money):

The radical right groups screaming about fulfilling promises and not engaging in consultation are pleased with the outcome--Sekulow has replaced his “don’t consult” petition with a “support Roberts” petition. What do these groups and the White House know about Roberts’ record that we don’t? That’s a question Roberts and the White House must answer. They must be transparent and fully answer questions. We all have a right to know before putting Roberts on the Supreme Court.

You can download a "podcast" for "an in-depth discussion of these issues."

The Toronto Globe and Mail had a lead paragraph that's pretty devastating:

WASHINGTON -- With richly stocked war chests and massive media campaigns planned, the public battle over the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts was brewing yesterday, even as it became evident that Judge Roberts may face robust scrutiny but no real opposition in confirmation hearings.

Christian conservatives expressed hope that the conservative judge would help bring about an end to the "killing" of millions of "pre-borns," a source of bitter controversy since the Supreme Court affirmed a woman's right to abortion in 1973.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Senate's judiciary committee, said confirmation hearings "will be full, fair and complete." They may also be anti-climactic.

While some environmentalists worry over an apparently flip reference to an endangered toad in one of the judge's opinions, wags noted his hard-hearted backing of police who busted a teenager eating French fries on the Washington Metro, whereas the woman he is likely to replace on the Supreme Court voiced regret that U.S. President George W. Bush selected a man.

But everybody knows what this is really about. The pro-choice organizations certainly do. At a panel discussion during a "Counter-Inaugural" held at the University of Chicago on January 20th, George Chauncey said he thought unfortunately that it might possible take the rollback of reproductive rights to generate the next major electoral realignment in this country. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a political scientist, responded by saying that in her view of political transformation, "more oppression" doesn't necessarily lead to "more activism." Thoughts?

(If you want to be additionally creeped out - and I do this periodically in order to see what we're up against with these religious right folks - check out the Family Research Council website. Then go give money.

Bye-bye civil liberties, it was nice to have a few of you for a while

From Salon:

So that leaves two important questions: Will the Democrats insist that Roberts be forthcoming about his personal views on important constitutional questions? And how will Roberts respond if they do?

Robert Bork was defeated for confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1987 largely because of the extreme conservative views he expressed, views that senators considered outside the mainstream of American legal thought. This has led to the nomination by conservative Republican presidents of so-called stealth nominees, individuals -- like Roberts -- with fairly thin paper trails. But given all that is at stake -- and the Democrats' long preparation for this moment of O'Connor's retirement -- that may not be good enough this time. And Roberts may find himself having to be more forthcoming at his confirmation hearing than he would like.

If Roberts is as conservative as some believe, that could put him between a rock and a hard place. And while the next few days will see deeply detailed analyses of all his writings, there is at least one tea leaf among his judicial opinions that suggests that he may hold such deeply conservative views.

Last year, in Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Roberts wrote an opinion upholding the arrest of a 12-year-old girl for eating a single French fry in a Washington, D.C., Metrorail station while on her way home from junior high school. As the court described, the "girl was arrested, searched, and handcuffed. Her shoelaces were removed, and she was transported in the windowless rear compartment of a police vehicle to a juvenile processing center, where she was booked, fingerprinted, and detained until released to her mother some three hours later." Except for the time she was being fingerprinted, the girl remained handcuffed with her hands behind her back until she was released.

Roberts concluded that the arrest and detention under a mandatory arrest policy for minors was not an "unreasonable" seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, even though adults found to have violated the same no-eating-in-the-Metro ordinance were simply given citations. For obvious reasons, this decision is likely to be a point of some contention in Roberts' confirmation hearing. But of more significance than the decision itself is a part of its reasoning.

Roberts wrote that the Metro's mandatory arrest policy was not unconstitutional in part because it would not have been "regarded as an unlawful search or seizure under the common law when the Amendment was framed," that is, under the law as it stood in 1791. He described this inquiry as "the usual first step" in assessing Fourth Amendment cases, but really it is not. Instead, it is part of an approach to the law put forward by Justice Scalia, one that has been used inconsistently at best by the Supreme Court, garnering a clear majority's support in only one Fourth Amendment decision. It is an approach that would in essence freeze our rights as they were in 1791. And it is contrary to a great deal of modern Supreme Court case law that is dear to most Americans -- from protection against wiretapping to protection of the right to choose.

Why Roberts chose this approach and whether he indeed supports this narrow type of history-based constitutional interpretation of course remains to be seen. But what his approach is to interpreting the Constitution may well turn out to be the critical question in his confirmation hearings -- not whether he is adequately accomplished. This is largely because of the way in which President Bush has gone about choosing all his previous judicial nominees. And it means the ball is firmly in the Democrats' court.

When museums give you a "vacation" instead of making sure you "have to work"

I just read the Tribune's review of the new Toulouse-Lautrec show. According to their art critic Alan G. Artner, the exhibition's curators display a faddish obsession with the "cafes, dance halls, cabarets and brothels" that Lautrec depicted. For example, his brothel paintings are examined in the context of brothels, when in fact they are "simply some of his greatest works in any medium" and could have been "exhibited as such."

Even though the show includes works by contemporaries Renoir and Degas and trace Lautrec's influence on Picasso and Van Gogh, these artists' works are unfortunately "presented for documentary instead of artistic value." All this social and material context comes at the expense of "formal analysis" and something called "the process that turned his documents into art."

The show emphasizes "popular culture," for example showing how Lautrec's commercial poster for the Moulin Rouge helped make the nightclub famous, and how that in turn transformed Lautrec's own career. In contrast to last year's Seurat exhibition, where the audience was "told it would have to work," this exhibition "promises a vacation of touristic, voyeuristic fun."

By the way, the Tribune wasn't the only big-city daily newspaper to endorse Bush in '04 - there were lots of others, such as the Dallas Morning News, the Indianapolis Star, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch.