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Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies at 80
After 33 years at the bench, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist has passed away at the age of 80 due to thyroid cancer. This comes after the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor from the court over the summer. Rehnquist's passing gives President Bush the opportunity to replace the second justice of his term, this time perhaps to assume the highest role in the judicial system.
fuck all the politics , lets remember the man..
She will kick ass.
I hear cries of woe and lamentations from the liberals all over the world tonight!
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Considering the sweeping implications, I'd say it falls squarely under "stuff that matters".
... after the next Supreme Court Chief Justice dies, make way for Bart Simpson.
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
I, for one, welcome our new Chief Justice Ballmer to lead us!
Say hello to my little sig.
Seriously though. When can we get someone who wasn't in line to buy grandkids Pong when it first came out? I'm not concerned about the political leanings so much as I am about getting someone who doesn't think "The Internet" is a feature of premium adult diapers.
You DO realize what the Supreme court rules on right ?
Things like.. oh.. say.. the DMCA.
Obviously important, but your rights online??!?
Did Grokster matter to you? Guess who decided that? It rhymes with "Mupreme Mort". The people who comprise that court have a very important influence on your rights, even online. Child Online Protection Act, Grokster, inevitable decisions on the Patriot Act and the DMCA, to name a few. So, yes, his death is important to your rights online. Sorry for the condescending rant. Well, not really.
But wasn't Televangelist Pat Robertson praying for the death of a supreme court judge? If so.... @_@
Clinton got his two nominees, looks like Bush will get his two also.
Just hope this won't immediatly swing the issues of legal abortion and religious coersion too far to the right when all is said and done. Right wing judges aren't insane, but they are at least as activist on their core issues.
Ryan Fenton
Here he was just a few weeks ago calling down "additional vacancies occur within the Supreme Court," and Shazzam!
Bush gets two appointments now? How screwed are we.
Though I was not a big fan of Rhenquist -- many of his positions on the Court, his work in the Nixon administration, his fashion sense -- he surely will be better than whoever we get next.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Now, go change your soggy trousers.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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... that this sesssion of Congress will be filled with love, cooperation, friendship, and togetherness.
Are you stupid. The court has more power than the president. They are the only institution that can VETO both the president and congress. They are a staple of humainty.
Back when the court was something, they are the ones who told the police they must read rights to people. Back then, the courts said that people could not be taken by government for no reason. That government could not look at your reading list and label you as a terrorist because you read Carol Marx. Do you know how many Joe McCarthy's there are in government, and how the courts have stopped them?
Times are changing.
Why did Rehnquist not retire? Why did he stay when he was sick? Was he this sick? Why did Vincent Foster kill himself in a public park?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Why would those of us who are Amish care...we don't have rights online.
sigfault. core dumped.
This is truly a sad day. It should be noted that anyone picked to replace Rehnquist though probably won't be too ideologically different. Check his history and you'll see a man who supported VERY CONSERVATIVE views. If GWB is smart, he cut a deal with the senate to appoint a more "moderate" individual in exchange for no fighting on the nominations, not likely but possible.
It should be noted that it is possible he will get more then just the two nominations. John Paul Stevens is 85, and could possibly retire or die before the end of GWB's term. The youngest justice at present is Clarence Thomas at 57. So anything can happen in two years.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Why did Rehnquist not retire? Why did he stay when he was sick? Was he this sick?
My guess is that the reason he didn't retire was that he knew he was going to die, and he didn't want the President and Senate fighting over his position while he was still alive.
They're Your Rights Online because there they go!
If the dems want to continue to have a voice in the future of this country they're going to have to get some leadership that can put out a coherent statement of what the party stands for and which has more charisma than a common flatworm. The party is adrift and in disarray right now and they seem to be at a loss as to how to fix things.
The dems have some golden opportunities with a quagmirey war in iraq, energy prices hitting levels that many Americans will find painful and a less-than-satisfactory federal response to the destruction of New Orleans. If they could put forth a coherent plan to deal with all that crap instead of the usual set of talking points that don't mean anything, they could clean up in the next couple of elections. My money is that they won't, though. *sigh*
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What does Grokster have to do with an "Ice Cream Quart?"
Possible replacements include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales
Based on his past memos, that would be one of the scariest things for human rights as a whole.
Nowadays, Washington is dominated by a self-righteous Us-And-Them mentality that makes such friendships impossible. The Supreme Court is sort of resistant to this, but is still pretty bad. And we're all suffering for it.
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If he was alive, he would have had power.
Imagine the following exchange.
Rehnquist : Mr President, I am ready to retire, but I want a replacement who is not too whack.
President:: No!
Rehnquist: Okay, I'll stay in office. Maybe I will live longer than the 4 years you were elected for. Maybe a democrat will win, and replace me with someone who you could never fathom. Or you could compromise.
President: No! Now where is my cake. I was promised cake. With sprinkles.
What sick person would cling to a job? The only reason is the job was so important that if he left, everything would get fucked up. What is going on? Think about it?
If you had cancer, would you tell your boss at Microsoft- "Well, I got bone cancer and the doc gives me 6 months to live, but GOD DAMN IT, I WANT LONGHORN DONE RIGHT!!".
What was Rehnquist sticking around for? What is easier? To die like he did. Or to die at home, in comfort? What was he so worried about?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Yes, President Bush can choose a candidate he thinks is best. However, he cannot (successfully) nominate a right-wing extremist who won't conceivably pass through Congress. Yea, this is the kind of power we afford the country's highest elected official.
"Obviously important, but your rights online??!?"
Let's cut Slashdot a little slack. For once they reported news within 14 days of it breaking. We should pat them on the back!
"Derp de derp."
You're forgetting the biggest chack and balance of them all for the Supreme Court; Justices are appointed for life. Many justices have gone in believing one thing, politically speaking, and ended their careers on the opposite spectrum of belief simply because they can afford that luxury. They are not beholden to the whims of Congress or the President after they've been appointed.
Oh, well; I wasn't really using the Fourth Amendment, anyway.
>bush's tax cuts and utterly irresponsible fiscal policy ensured /
>that we will be feeling the sting of his tax cuts for many,
>many/ years to come
You mean the tax cuts that immediately followed a long-term upward trend in unemployment that turned into a steady downward trend in unemployment? You mean the tax cuts that immediately predated an upward trend in tax revenues as well as a steady increase in both the number and size of dividend payments by US corporations? Tax cuts after which followed increased entrepreneurial ventures, an increase in the number of IPOs, as well as a return to a bullish stock market?
Oh, woe be us!
Criticize Bush's spending if you will, but the tax cuts have been a boon to our economy.
Bush and DeLay rail against "activist judges" when judges threaten to bring down DeLay for breaking the law.
But when they want Terri Schaivo kept alive, they lament that the judges can't find a way to do it. They even pass specific laws to have judges look again, even after the judges (who do know their jobs) say there is nothing they can do.
This whole thing is a canard so the Repubs can undermine judges in preparating for the time when all these illegal deeds (locking people up without trial, DeLay's myriad election misdeeds) are declared illegal by the judges.
Furthermore, the whole idea that judges aren't there to read between the lines runs afoul of two things.
1. The whole point of the judicial branch is to interpret the law.
2. Anyone who has been to law school (or heck, watched The Paper Chase) knows that the law can never be completely specific. The world changes, the law doesn't change as quickly. It is invetiable judges will have to make determinations where the law doesn't cover.
I fully agree that when Congress acts, judges should follow those laws. I fully believe it is Congress' job to change the law. But when there are gaps, it is the Judicial branch's job to make determinations as to what should be done, at least until Congress can go back and make more specific laws.
So, the abortion thing comes up because there is no law specifically addressing it. Well, no law that wasn't found to conflict with the Constution, or more specifically the Bill of Rights.
See, a big part of the problem is the Constitution is the highest law of the land and it is terribly vague in many areas. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"? That's the supreme law of the land, it's in the Constitution. It is up to a judge to determine what that means, barring an ammendment which clarifies it.
Anyway, this whole thing torques me off, since just last week Scalia was mouthing off, making the headlines in a way very unbecoming the staid image of the Judicial branch. And he will be our next Chief Justice. Yeech.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Or Groucho Marx's sister?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I was questioning why he stayed in office when everyone was expecting him to retire. I first thought it was just to spite Bush and not give him a chance to seat someone. I think now in hind sight that was wrong. The appoinment of the Supreme court justice is a position that will(can) be held for life. I think Rehnquist is the embodiment of what true commitment is. I don't know the facts, but how many of the previous justices have died while still being seated? Rehnquist is a man, who's life story will be known by many. RIP
The New York Times has their obituary up for him at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/politics/04REHNQ UIST.OBIT.WEB.html?pagewanted=all.
Registration required as usual, but this seems of high enough quality to make it worthwhile.
Please watch Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Back when the court was something, they are the ones who told the police they must read rights to people. Back then, the courts said that people could not be taken by government for no reason. That government could not look at your reading list and label you as a terrorist because you read Carol Marx.
Actually, I heard she stole most of her ideas from her husband.
I love it when I'm in a discussion and someone quotes the Bible to prove me wrong. (I know that's not what you were doing -- trying to prove the AC wrong, but I think you'll agree with my point.)
When someone does that, I start asking them a lot of questions about the Bible -- not what's in it, but when it was written, when the gospels were written, what sources the writers used, and so on. I have yet to meet someone who uses the Bible as an authority and a "that proves it all" source that has any clue about how it was put together and that the process that brought it into its present form is not at all what they think. Most people who quote the Bible to me are fundies, many of whom hate the Roman Catholic Church, and they get REALLY pissed when I can give them enough history to show them it was that very same church that is responsible for what was put in and left out of the Bible.
I know they're stuck in a mindset and won't change, but after bringing it up with me, they usually go away frustrated. I can only hope that they've heard enough that they start to think, instead of quote what they've been told.
Since blasting McCarthy is so popular, how about another side to the story http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/2003/13 .html
OK, that's... interesting.
For those that don't have time to RTFA, here's a time-saving summary:
Why would those of us who are Amish care...we don't have rights online.
ISIAH!! SLASHDOTTING AGAIN? You are in SO much trouble, young man!
How does a court that can only CANCEL actions taken by other branches of the government wield "more power" than the president - especially when issues have to be raised to them FIRST my citizens with problems!
If Congress passes some law tomorrow that the court wanted to strike down, they could do absolutley nothing about it until a case is brought before them.
So how does a body with no control over the armed forces, and no direct way to influence laws under debate have "more power" than the President?
By design the courts are to be equals with the executive branch. Not superiors, nor does anything they can do tend to lead in that direction.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Open your eyes for just a moment and realize something. Democrats are not your friends. Republicans are not your friends. Each party will seek to expand the government to suit their own interests (which is why it's so great that massive expansion in either direction isn't too easy).
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
Here we go again with this old debate....
Yes, the founders of the United States believed in God -- but this makes them Deists, not necessarily Christians. The Declaration of Independence does indeed speak of "Nature's God", and refer to mankind being "endowed by their Creator" -- but makes no mention of Christianity.
Furthermore, NOWHERE in the Constitution do the words "God" or "Christ" appear — a point oft considered conspicuous by omission in favor of "We The People". Rather, specific references are made to separate church and state, requiring within the constituion proper "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States", and in the Bill of Rights opening with "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion".
Add in the evidence of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli as ratified by Congress and as published with little stir in the Press (albeit not as drafted at the treaty table!) which declared "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." , leads one to believe the Founders were doing their utmost to drag the United States away from the sectarian bloodshed that had divided Europe -- and particularly England -- for centuries.
Jefferson is the source of the phrase "wall of separation between church and state" that the religious right so detest; a man who removed all references to the miracles from his personal transcription of the Gospels; and who felt that his authorship of the Stature of Virginia for Religious Freedom one of the accomplishments most worthy for noting in his epitaph. Living in Charlottesville and having recently visited Monticello, I feel obliged to assure you that the persistent ground vibrations you can feel standing in front of his tombstone is not the rumble of a passing truck, but Mister Jefferson spinning in his grave from Bush's Presidency. =)
As for your assertion on abortion, while your position is better founded, I suggest you read the actual Roe v. Wade ruling all the way through; your assertion about the rights of the states in the 10th Amendment falls aside explicitly to the later "Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment"... although the court might reasonably revisit such a question, given the strained reasoning used. This makes the abortion war yet another twisted legacy of the debate over our former "peculiar institution."
As to your prime assertion on the legal import of the intent of the founding fathers, I suggest you read Lessig's "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace"... plus a good more of the biographies of those colorful, contestous, and amazingly human founders of ours. Leaving aside Lessig's points on unaddressed assumptions, suggesting they ever had a single unified intent is a slander to their memories and to what they achieved in their struggle to unify in common cause.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I thought I'd share some choice bits of this article with the slashdot readership:
in a troubling comment that largely escaped critical media scrutiny or even notice, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared on Black Entertainment Television that U.S. policy toward Chilean Marxist President Salvador Allende in the 1970s was "not a part of American history that we're proud of." Powell appears not to know that in toppling Allende the Chilean military saved Chile from suffering the same fate as South Vietnam with very little loss of life.
WTF!?! No other part of the article mentions Chile. It seems he just stuck in this paragraph to say "OMG! They democratically elected a Socialist! If we hadn't overthrown him, the region would have descended a into military quagmire."
A large chunk of the rest of the article is devoted to a discussion of Aaron Copland's political leanings. Maybe I'm just naive, but I find it astonishing that people consider someone's political opinions as justification for their persecution. The author of the article and the parent poster seem to feel that if McCarthy's targets believed in the Communist ideology then McCarthy must have been right to vilify them. In contrast, I have always believed that the free expression of ideas is to be encouraged.
In summary, this article failed to change my opinions about McCarthy. I still see him as a man who did his best to kill free political expression in the US and I absolutely cannot agree with that.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
Accuracy In Media claimed, among other things, that Walter Cronkite was a Soviet dupe. They seem to have a fixation with Communists, seeing reds under every bed and in every story to the left of Mussolini. Plus, for added fun sprinkles, they're funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the same guy behind a number of other extreme-right organisations.
In other words, if AIM told me the sun rose in the east, I'd check with a compass just to be sure - their version of "accuracy" is hewn from the same wood as "compassionate" conservatism.
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_in_Media
for a fuller story.
Liberals sit to the left. Conservatives sit to the right. Libertarians are the clowns swinging from the chandeliers. (Heard from a libertarian.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"and just filibuster until the whitehouse is back in our hands."
Depends on exactly what point you call the "height of Watergate" but Nixon's approval rating was down in the 20's at its nadir, Bush is still in the 40's though it will be interesting to see what Katrina does to him. I suspect now that most of the people are evacuated and fed the outrage about New Orleans will blow over.
Wouldn't be surprised if the Republican spin machine manages to turn it in to a story of the Bush administration stepping in to save the day and blame everything that went wrong on the Democratic mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic governor of Louisiana. I assure you Rove and Co. were thinking about the political implications of this disaster from the get go.
I also wager sometimes this session or next Congress will pass a bill giving the executive branch and DOD sweeping new powers to intervene domestically and overturn Posse Comitatus facilitating future imposition of martial law. The catch phrase will be "Remember New Orleans" as they sell our freedom down the river again just like they did with the Patriot Act.
@de_machina
But one interesting thing about the CJ position is that he gets to decide who writes the opinions. The WSJ cited several examples of where Rehnquist unexpectedly did an about face and voted for stuff everyone was expecting him to vote against. The tinfoil-hat theory is that he did this because he knew he was going to lose (like 7-2 votes) but he wanted to "limit the damage." So he would side with the winners, then elect himself to write the majority opinion. He would make a legitimate assent, the theory goes, but he would carefully limit it. One of the examples was the Miranda case. Everyone expected him to vote against it, but he didn't. Instead, he wrote the opinion and basically just said "Miranda stands as is," when many of the majority justices actually wanted to expand it.
So if the WSJ's depiction is accurate, the CJ is pretty important. He can't make policy, but he can guide it. I'm sure there are also lots of procedural advantages that are mostly invisible to outsiders, like maybe he gets to decide who talks first in deliberations or something.
I agree with this in spirit. It's not impossible that the Chief Justice was not a Bush II type Republican - which people really do need to understand is different than what has generally been considered a Republican before the last 10-15 years. Bush II represents the unconcealed face of the plutocracy. If it were otherwise, the National Guard would be here at home taking care of disaster victims instead of protecting the oil interests of Bush II's buddies.
And when it comes to individual rights, the Democrats are now the conservatives.
Basically, everything is fucked up and inverted.
Looks like Pat Robertson does have God's ear.
Were Rehnquist a liberal or a moderate, Bush could significantly change the ideological balance of the Court by nominating a left-of-center jurist to take his place. However, Rehnquist was neither a liberal nor a moderate, and Bush is not likely to nominate anyone substantially to the right of Rehnquist as the replacement. So this new vacancy on the Court is essentially a non-issue.
The O'Connor -> Roberts transition is another matter.
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
Before anyone gets too carried away about abortion litmus tests, remember this.
US Constitution Article VI
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
That was precisely my point. We live under a republic, but we're often told and propegandized into believing it is a democracy. Ask any joe out on the street what type of government system we live under, and he'll very likely reply "a democracy."
The biggest canard in law is that "strict construction" has a coherent meaning. Other than "I am the true interpreter of the Text!" The bigger joke in politics is that there was anything principled about the guy.
You can look over his record and predict his votes by this formula: economic strong trumps weak (corp vs. individual), powerful trumps weak (govt vs whistleblower or random individual.) Remember: he voted that INNOCENCE WAS NOT A REASON TO OVERTURN A DEATH PENALTY CONVICTION. After all, rich white people are hardly ever in that situation, so it can't be very important.
Even CNN is falling for it. "States rights...except where state law threatens Republican election chances."
Gil made his bones in thuggish suppression of minority votes - naturally the shenannigans in Florida in 2000 so overwhelmed him with nostalgia that he could punt 20 years of his own precident to achieve an outcome.
It's just a shame it didn't happen 40 years earlier.
So, the republicans will undo Lincoln's work at freeing the slaves and allow it to be state rights? Oh, wait. That is what the south wanted in the first place (which was under democrat control).
There is a constitutional amendment eliminating slavery. There is no such amendment regarding abortion.
As somebody proposed to me, if lose of upper brain function is considered death, then why not let the opposite of it be considered life. Basically, outlaw Abortion at the point where it can be PROVEN that upper brain functions starts (which is probably somewhere in the 2'nd trimester).
Brain function SHOULD be considered the beginning of life. There is much dispute about when that begins, some claim as early as 8 weeks after conception and others claimed as late as the third trimester(those people had to revise their positions when we had premature babies born before the beginning of the third trimester).
Whatever the case may be, when an EEG detects brain activity, the baby should be safe.
But we also need to return to sensable education and science, such as teaching sex ed with birth control.
I'd even go as far as to advocate universal government subsidized birth control
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Actually, they ruled that gays should have the same rights as everyone else, without having to pretend to be straight in order to get them. (if you think gay marriage is a "special right", imagine yourself living as a straight person in a society where only gay marriages were allowed. Would you consider your wanting to marry someone of the opposite sex a "special right"?)
Not only that, but the court told businesses, no matter what religion of the leadership,
they must pay money to gays to support the "spouse". That is even if the business is private, and the owners are christian and want to give christian values to the world, to make the place better.
Not only that, the courts previously ruled that businesses aren't allowed to discriminate against minorities in hiring, even if the business is private, and the owners are KKK members and want to give KKK values to the world, to make the place better.
Some people even look upon this as a good thing.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It is also worth considering that it takes a kind of courage that few on this planet possess to stay working when (quite probably) in terrible agony and (certainly) in full knowledge that his days were numbered.
I see little honor in the living dying for one's country. I see considerable honor in the dying living for theirs. The difference is important. The former is a waste, the latter is devotion.
While I have a hard time telling him to rest in peace, I do at least wish him no ill and pray that whatever lies beyond this life has mercy upon him and remember him not for his faults - we all have those - but for what good he brought into the world.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
He consistently invented police powers vs. citizens, and in Bush v Gore tossed 20 years of opinions out the window to trash a state election law. The decision was so tortured they felt obligated to put - for the first time in history - a nonsensical clause that this decision should not be used as precedent.
Why not? Because it is so fraudulent? Or, more likely, they can't know in advance whether a Republican would benefit.
Make no mistake: Rhenquist disgraced his robes and acted as a partisan, not a judge. It's too bad he didn't die 30 years ago.
Let's not forget his early career suppressing minority votes in Arizona. He was a partisan thug.
Sincerity is a highly over-rated virtue. If he did a lousy job it doesn't matter very much if he was sincere in how he tried to carry out his duties.
Of the 108 Supreme Court Justices, 48 died in office, of whom eight were Chief Justice. Source: Oyez.org.
- William H. Rehnquist (CJ)
- Fred M. Vinson
- Wiley B. Rutledge
- Robert H. Jackson
- Harlan Fiske Stone (CJ)
- Frank Murphy
- Benjamin N. Cardozo
- Edward T. Sanford
- Pierce Butler
- Joseph R. Lamar
- Edward D. White (CJ)
- Horace H. Lurton
- Rufus Peckham
- Howell E. Jackson
- David J. Brewer
- Melville W. Fuller (CJ)
- Lucius Q.C. Lamar
- Samuel Blatchford
- Horace Gray
- Stanley Matthews
- William B. Woods
- John M. Harlan
- Morrison R. Waite (CJ)
- Joseph P. Bradley
- Salmon P. Chase (CJ)
- Samuel F. Miller
- Nathan Clifford
- Levi Woodbury
- Peter V. Daniel
- John McKinley
- John Catron
- Philip P. Barbour
- Roger B. Taney (CJ)
- James M. Wayne
- Henry Baldwin
- John McLean
- Robert Trimble
- Smith Thompson
- Joseph Story
- Thomas Todd
- Brockholst Livingston
- William Johnson
- John Marshall (CJ)
- Bushrod Washington
- William Paterson
- James Iredell
- William Cushing
- James Wilson
Blah blah blah blah lameness filter sucks.This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Are you stupid. The court has more power than the president. They are the only institution that can VETO both the president and congress. They are a staple of humanity.
Actually, the Supreme Court decisions are powerless without the executive and legislative branches' active will to adhere to them.
So let me say it loud and clear: THE SUPREME COURT CANNOT ENFORCE ITS OWN RULINGS.
They are only as powerful as the rest of government allow them to be. Recent precedents within the last fifty years give the court its authority, but in its earlier days historians note that its frailty was this very notion that the President and Congress could ignore the court's decisions, and were in no way explicitly required by law to support the court's decision with any consequent action.
Yeah, but there were several times during the debate where Kerry seemed evasive or indecisive. When you're under attack for being a flip-flopper you damn well better be sure of your answers.
I still don't get why Kerry just did not say it like it was: politics IS flip-flopping. The last thing you want is someone unable to evolve their view on things, compromise. Especially in the sort of complex decisions that end up in Senate and Congress.. Indecisiveness (indecision?) can be a bad thing, for sure, but it doesn't do anybody any good to make things appear simpler or more clearcut than they really are, either.
And both parties treat this country's citizens like we're retarded.
Obviously I should not generalize -- and I definitely don't mean you personally -- but I must say, from where I'm standing, the average American (i.e. as manifest in polls, elections) shows alarmingly little criticism of government, period. Many argue the mainstream media help, but if people really wanted to know then the media would have to cover -- after all, the public is the product which a network sells to advertisers.
Anyway, that both parties jump on that apathy, use it to make the sheeple look away from what really matters to them and those they represent (corporations, in both cases, not Joe 6P) does not necessarily prove they are responsible for it -- although it is likely they would actively try to maintain it.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
http://www.mintruth.com/blog/index.php?p=323
or even:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WilliamRehnquist
But you're right - it depends on where you sit on the fence. I certainly don't feel like he was one of the greatest, not by far.
Get your Unix fortune now!
At the time the American Communist Party was taking orders (and money) from soviet Russia, idealizing revolution by military force, and encouraging members to lay low, hide their affiliation, and achieve strategic aims by stealth. Sounds like spies to me.
McCarthy goofed not by crusading against the very real Red Menace, but by making anti-communism look unjust, through sloppy targeting and lack of due process.
Well its easy to explain how they will spin it, and in fact already have been in the last couple of days.
Disasters are state and local responsibilities by law and policy. The Federal government is only supposed to provide support at the call of governor's and mayors.
A. They will blame the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans for not marshalling city buses and providing transportation for the poor and infirm. Its a bit unfair because even if they had done this I doubt they could have gotten very many more people out in the short time available. You just can't force people to evacuate a big city in this short time, but providing public transportation for those who want to leave seems like a local failure. Of course once you put them on buses where would they go.
B. They will point out the National Guard is under the control of the Governor so any failure in deploying it is the Governor's fault. This is true though it glosses over the Bush administration had 1/4 to 1/3 of the Guard manpower and 1/2 its equipment in Iraq. The Federal government is by law precluded from putting troops in to states and cities, thanks to the fact the Federal Army ran out of control after the Civil War and was reined in my the Posse Comitatus act in 1878. It is most of the time a good restraint and prevents martial law and dictatorship. In this case it caused problems though.
C. There will be finderpointing as to whose fault it was the levees broke. Maybe it was inevitable they were going to break under this stress, though I wager these localized failures were due to bad maintenance. More importantly there should have been helicopters surveying them the second the weather cleared and sending resource to plug leaks before they washed out leading to the massive failures. Its sad no one had a plan to survey and do emergency repairs on these levees, a stitch(or sandbag) in time might have prevented this though we may never know unless someone was watching how and why the levees actually failed.
Some things I want to come out in the investigation:
- Who stopped the Red Cross from entering New Orleans because it was "to dangerous". Was it FEMA, state or local. For whatever reason, the Red Cross is the one who insured people get food and water and it couldn't get in to New Orleans because someone stopped them.
- The President of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans accused FEMA on "Meet the Press" this morning of intentionally cutting the communication lines they local and state people were using, they had to patch the lines and post armed guards.
- How much did the levees degrade because the Army Corps of Engineers had its funding cut for them and had its personell and money redirected to rebuild Iraq versus how much was due to cuts from local levee districts.
At this point I'd really like to know did FEMA:
- Do everything possible but it was just to hard
- Do a mediocre and inadequate job
- Did FEMA make things worse and actually obstruct the recovery
I'm more than a little suspicious the Bush administration let things go bad on purpose, they just let it go to far and it backlashed on them. They were probably planning to have the President come in on his white horse followed an hour later by the Army moving in to save the day which is more or less what happened its was just to late.
@de_machina
I'd want the right to marry a woman, but I wouldn't be stupid enough to pretend that it was the "same" right as my neighbour Bob's right to marry his friend Steve.
I'd want the right to marry a white/christian woman, but I wouldn't be stupid enough to pretend that it was the "same" right as my neighbour Bob's right to marry a black/muslim woman.
This would be pretty blatant racial and religious discrimination. Don't you see that what you are suggesting is sexual discrimination? The right to "marry the opposite gender" is not an equal right, it is two different rights "the right to marry men" and "the right to marry women". Imagine a law that said "the right to travel in areas designated for your race". It's pretty obvious segregation, even though everyone has the "same" right. Except it isn't, because white people would have different rights than black people.
Whether or not a person could marry Steve depends on the sex of that person, thus it is discrimination based on sex. Perhaps if I put it in the form of an imaginary amendment it will be brilliantly clear:
"The right to marry an individual [Steve] shall not be denied to any individual on the basis of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sixty years ago, you would have said: "Everyone can marry an individual of the same race. In other words, this is not a civil rights issue as we all have the same right. It's an attempt to alter our culture."
It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
private company forces me to do anything against my will.
The government does this every day.
Corporations have no power over me unless I give it to them - and that is a profound and staggering difference which you are ignoring.
Bush tried to get Governor Blanco to relenquish control for one simple reason, she has failed to follow almost any step in the LA emergency relief plan, and even those she did follow she was pushed into. All the while, the Feds get all the blame for a situation that the Constitution dictates they have no authority over. He declared LA and the surrounding States Federal disaster zones PRIOR to Katrina to open up the federal funds for the various governors use, which is about all he could do. He then had to ask her to request the Mayor order an evacuation prior to Katrina (something that their hurricane plan called for but they failed to do until 24 hours prior to landfall), and even then she failed to mobilize the National Guard and/or State police to assist the NOPD.
Even after discussing options to help speed up the relief refforts she requested 24 hours to consider them (according to statements made by NO Mayor Nagins) and then hired a former Clinton advisor to help her save face.
Members of the State government have made statements that she is refusing to give up control to prevent the Feds from being able to point fingers, not because she has a better plan than them. Simply put, she is putting politics infront of peoples lives.
It amazing how people call for more leadership from Bush with one breath (when he legally has no power to act) but when he attempts to actually do what he can, within the bounds of the law, he is accused of trying to just grab power.
People are dieing and all evidence points to the people in direct control (the Governor and to a much lesser degree the Mayor)of the situation being totally incompetant.
It's a perfect example of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
And the other affected areas don't look as bad, not because of political affiliation, but because their local and state governments have been helping and not impeding rescue efforts.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!