Christian Leftist

The choice seems pretty obvious to me, but we all know what Bush does when a vast majority of Americans voice their opposition to his decisions: whatever the hell he wants. The Senate has enough votes to override his veto, but the House doesn’t, so the Democratic leadership has pushed back the deadline for an override for two weeks while they try to scrape together 15 more votes from Republicans. Good luck with that.

The only reason we have out of control spending is because the Bush administration spends it on ALL OF THE WRONG PROGRAMS. It is a sham and a travesty that we are the only developed country ON EARTH that doesn’t have government-funded national health care. Yes, Mr. Bush, these children are uninsured, even if they’re middle class citizens. Private health care is too expensive.

No, I don’t think that asking the nation to pay for everyone’s health care costs is a bad idea. We make taxpayers inhale the foul air of smokers, poison ourselves with pollution from selfish suburban families with inefficient SUVs, and pay for bombs and bullets in the Middle East. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something back.

Reuters covers the Bush veto on health care

Not very. Still, any scent of defeat for the Republicans, be it a whiff of stale roadkill or the rank, vile stench of rotting flesh ‘morality’ has them back at the drawing board. This time, their plan is downright ugly: usurping electoral votes through a referendum that is likely to pass unless we educate the citizens of California.

Several conservative lawyers and lawmakers in the Sunshine State have introduced the so-called “Presidential Election Reform Act,” which would give electoral votes to whatever candidate wins an individual county. That would rob California’s Democratic power of about 20 electoral votes and probably cost the Democratic candidate the presidential election.

The citizens of California don’t seem to understand the law because the conservatives haven’t bothered to explain it to them, probably because doing so would mean its demise at the polls. (Well, duh!)

I’m all for overhauling the Constitution and throwing out the Electoral College. A national vote is the fairest way to decide the president. But piecemeal manipulation of a system that is only convenient when it works for one party is deplorable.

Please spread the word about this nefarious state proposal.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before that whole “we’re-the-government-and-we-can-send-out-letters-and-tell-you-to-turn-over-private-information-on-your-clients-and-you-can’t-say-anything-because-of-national-security-risks” thing blew up like a spark in sawdust. Of course, I didn’t think it would take this long for some sane judge to finally bring the hammer down on a ridiculous provision that makes every U.S. citizen guilty until proven innocent, but better late than never.

Yesterday, Victor Marrero of the Federal District Court in Manhattan struck down the provision in the USA PATRIOT ACT that allowed the F.B.I. to demand civil and financial records from any business or institution with the mailing of a so-called “national security letter.” Some 143,000 of these “national security letters” went out to retailers, local governments and police stations, communications networks and institutions of learning between 2001 and 2006, many of which appear to have been issued under dubious pretenses.

This is a terrific, if possibly short-lived, victory for the ACLU against the Bush administration. But underneath all of the lawsuits, the threats, the rhetoric and the fine print, one essential truth has come to light:

Don’t f*** with librarians.

Justice is served.

Last week, the Bethel Park H.S. administration decided to expel one of its students after someone reported an airsoft gun in the trunk of his car. That’s right,: not in the school; in the trunk of his CAR.

Airsoft guns shoot plastic BBs. They are painful if you get hit on bare skin, but they rarely cause seriously injury outside of freak accidents and random bouts of idiocy by people whose parents never should have allowed them slingshots, much less air-powered toy weapons.

It’s the height of idiocy to kick out a kid because of an after-school hobby. The details aren’t important as long as he didn’t shoot at anyone in the school.

My brother owns a ton of airsoft guns and plays with them all of the time. He’s also one of the best-behaved, non-violent people you will ever meet. I can only imagine what a stink the local chapter of the ACLU could make of this case if it tried. Doesn’t the board have better things to do than to comb through cars in a parking lot looking for reasons to punish its students?

An interesting turn of events in the NSA wiretapping scandal. Here’s an excerpt:

Three federal appeals court judges hearing challenges to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs appeared skeptical of and sometimes hostile to the Bush administration’s central argument Wednesday: that national security concerns require that the lawsuits be dismissed.

“Is it the government’s position that when our country is engaged in a war that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?” Judge Harry Pregerson asked a government lawyer. His tone was one of incredulity and frustration.

Read the full article here.

Another example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Chavez is trying to change Venezuela’s constitution to eliminate term limits so that he can run for president again in 2012 (and presumably in every election thereafter until he dies).

Here at Christian Leftist, I try to point out the upsides and downsides to any and all systems of government, although I obviously have access to more news on American democracy than anything else. Chavez is not a true leftist because he is ultra-authoritarian; anyone who curtails civil liberties while espousing economic egalitarianism is not an egalitarian but a despot who seeks to slowly acquire all political power within his sphere of influence.

Anyway, here’s the article from the New York Times.

One of the most redeeming aspects of the television news industry is that it can expose the worst possible outcome of any scenario and drive a point starkly home in the space of thirty seconds. That’s what ABC News did on Thursday when it covered the Paris Hilton jail scandal. I don’t think there is an accurate estimate of precisely how much medical suffering goes on in prison, but I’ll hazard a guess and use my treatment when I was in lockup as an example.

If your medical condition requires that you take certain pills on a daily basis to function and it has been proven that going cold turkey on said pills WILL cause severe physiological effects (say, a complete mental breakdown and suicidal tendencies), it is in everyone’s best interests that you receive those medications. When I pleaded for medical attention, the guard took a look at me, snarled, “She’s not dying!” and walk away. Among several other civil rights violations, I was released rather than treated because it would have meant more trouble for the police. If there hadn’t been lawyers filing en masse for a group of us as a whole and a significant media presence surrounding our arrests, other protesters and I would have languished in roach-infested cells as long as the paperwork backups continued, possibly for weeks.

Google the Washington Post articles on Jonathan Magbie, and you’ll understand how cruel and heartless the criminal justice system truly is towards anyone who isn’t as healthy as a horse. That’s just a taste of the horror stories to have emerged from U.S. prisons. I can’t imagine the treatment in countries poorer than our own.

Medical care is not supposed to be a ‘luxury that prisoners don’t deserve.’ It is a basic human need, and there is no excuse that can justify the physical and mental suffering of a patient whose problems are treatable.

The AP reports that Radio Caracas Television, Venezuela’s most popular channel, will be forced off the air at midnight tomorrow because Hugo Chavez’s government has decided not to renew its broadcasting license. Miguel Angel Rodriguez was a talk-show host on Radio Caracas TV until his final segment on Friday, where he vowed, “There is no goodbye. It’s ’see you later.’” Rodriguez had been an active critic of Chavez on the air, and no doubt ol’ Hugo saw the media as a threat to his establishment and changed the laws to suit his own political agenda. Both sides plan street protests over the shutdown during the weekend.

The problem with being either too far to the left or too far to the right is that you end up in essentially the same place – a land of silence. When in college a couple of years ago, I found myself arguing with a real, dyed-in-the-wool Communist about the importance of civil liberties. He shared many social and political ideals with me, yet I argued with him more often and more passionately than I did with pro-war conservatives. He believed ( and probably still does) that freedom of speech is overrated; the first thing he would do if he was in power would be to drag all of the right-wing crazies out into the streets and have them shot. He was only half-joking. His justification for doing so was that allowing the right win a pulpit from which to preach hatred was a threat to the security of the country, and that when you know you’re right, there’s no point in allowing others to create constant turmoil in the political spectrum. I have heard the same type of arguments before; this time only the players and causes were different. My friend’s arguments were decidedly more eloquent than what I have just stated; this is merely my interpretation of his words.

I pointed out that one who is certain s/he is right should embrace criticism, not quash it, and that people have a funny habit of changing their minds, especially when one martyrs the leaders of a cause through persecution. or worse. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. He said the extreme right was no different than he; if Bush and Cheney had anything to do with it, they would probably have locked many of us anti-war activists up long ago. “The reason you are still free,” he said, “is because you are not a significant threat to their power.” It was an astute, if fallible, analysis of majority rule.

[As it turns out, the protests of eleven million people on February 15th, 2003 did not discourage Bush from going to war because, as we now know, Bush and Cheney live in a bubble floating towards the South Pole, last seen heading southeast somewhere over Texas. However, they did convince the rest of the world that if the earth were to take a vote on Iraq, our soldiers never would have left Fort Dix. Despite the unlikelihood of an incumbent 'president's loss in a second-term election, we were enough of a threat that members of the Republican National Committee rented out a comfy ex-bus terminal on Pier 57 to accommodate us during the 2004 Convention sans habeas corpus. The public did not start a revolution upon Bush's re-'election,' either, as I had predicted to my friend. But I digress.]

Only the weak and insecure must fear the birth of conflicting ideas. The more desperate one becomes, the more one tends to suppress one’s opponents by any means necessary, including the hammer of the iron fist. Putin is just as dangerous to the cause of human rights as most neo-cons; he has a nation of citizens who still remember Lenin instead of Stalin, and he has no pesky historical Bill of Rights to stand in the way of his internecine methods of culling his critics from the flocks.

That’s why I’m so pissed off at Danny Glover for actively supporting the Venezuelan president’s cause. Chavez and Bush are two sides of the same coin. All the socialist medicine in the world cannot make up for the loss of basic human freedoms. Bush may be an evil moron, but he is not nearly as adept or as capable at silencing his political foes as others are.

Yet.

I love Pennsylvania these days. We seem to be the testing ground or battleground for a number of fascinating ventures: grassroots activism (of the kind that kicked Rick Santorum out of office), illegal immigration (Hazelton, PA), intelligent design (Dover, PA), the Allegheny County smoking ban (which the Commonwealth Court just overturned on the basis that the county had no authority to enforce an ordinance on large restaurants), and Rep. Darryl Metcalfe’s nationwide campaign to pass state laws cracking down on illegal immigrants. It was only a matter of time before the ire over judicial decisions evolved into a new form of political theatre: a world in which judicial candidates can and will speak their personal opinions on legislation that might come before them in the future.

Last Monday, a federal judge in Philadelphia said that the Judicial Conduct Board cannot enforce a section of the Judicial Code of Conduct that stops candidates from voicing their positions on present or future disputed legal or political issues. The article that discusses this decision in detail is from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Why is this such a big deal? Because it is an unwritten rule within the American Bar Association that politics are best left out of judicial appointments. I know that sounds strange, but in essence, this means that the ABA wants judges appointed who are the most qualified for the bench (or maybe the prettiest). Remember when Samuel Alito refused to answer any questions on abortion during his confirmation hearings? Although the Supreme Court seems to be the lone exception when it comes to mud slinging at candidates, Alito still maintained that it would not be ethical for him to predict his decisions on cases that might come before him on the Supreme Court.

The current model is to cite experience on past cases and let voters decide how they think a candidate might vote on a subject based on past decisions. Whether or not the threat of punishment by the JCB stifles the free speech of potential judges is a murky question. The violation of the “appears to commit” clause, a section of Pennsylvania law appended after a Supreme Court decision in 2002 (in which statements that show a candidate’s likelihood to have pre-formed opinions on a subject and therefore a lack of impartiality in new cases were allowed to be expressed) is the snowball that set this recent Pennsylvania case in motion. If I am interpreting the news article correctly, the Philadelphia decision has taken the U.S. Supreme Court decision, called Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, one step further: it has concluded that the state’s amended “appears to commit” clause is illegal or unconstitutional.

Whether or not the case will survive an appeal is unclear. What is perfectly clear is the potential damage the cloud of negative campaigns that disgrace the typical political campaign would have on the justice system if state and local judges had to agree with the majority views on social issues in order to gain or keep their jobs. Instead of leaving their personal partisan opinions at the door when they don the robes, judges would carry the weight of thousands of small-minded, geographically-based, socio-economic views into the courtroom with them. You could have identical criminal cases two towns apart where the legal precedent for a minimum sentence was clear, yet one judge imposes a fine and the other imposes a 15-year sentence. The potential implications of all nationwide judicial appointments “going negative” is enormous.

Is free speech absolute in this country? No. You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded cinema or make threats to kill people. Those examples represent forms of speech that could potentially endanger lives. The political opinions of judges may indirectly threaten the lives of innocent people, but I doubt that anyone could prove it to the point that it becomes constitutionally infallible. Something to think about.

After all, that judge you’ll be standing across from for speeding shouldn’t be somebody who has promised to lock up all reckless drivers under 35.

Or should he?

There are probably a ton of people writing to the DHS concerning the enforcement of the so-called REAL ID Act, so I’m not going to pull out a bulletpoint presentation. All I’m going to say is that if for no other reason, placing all of one’s personal, private information like one’s social security number, bank statements, birth certificates, and passport information into a national database accessible by thousands of underpaid local employees is about as secure as posting that information on a billboard on a Nebraska highway. It only takes on unscrupulous passerby to notice and steal it.

If the government can’t even protect us from information brokers who selfishly expose our names and information to corporations and their own employees to turn a profit, why in the hell would I want any DMV Joe with a basic understanding of computer programming to have access to my birth certificate? People I’ve never even met would have an easier time accessing records that verify who I am as a person than I ever would.

Genealogists can’t even receive birth certificates from 200 years ago if they can’t prove a direct link to a family member. Information that is technically ‘free’ to the public, like census records, aren’t even available online unless through a paid subscription on a private site. Yet the US government wants to make information on the living that they need to work, accept payments, and receive medical care open to the Department of Motor Vehicle’s equivalent of an airport baggage handler.

What is wrong with this picture?

To write the DHS before 5pm EST on May 8th, go to http://www.realnightmare.org/actioncenter/109/