Archive for May, 2009

US DOJ: Black Power

Posted in Politics, Society on May 30th, 2009

US Attorney General Eric HolderDuring the 2008 Presidential Election armed and unformed operatives of the hate group, The New Black Panther Party,deployed themselves outside of at least polling place in order to intimidate White voters. This was a clear case of overt and thuggish voter intimidation and directly violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial epithets and military-style uniforms.

The thugs were escorted away by the police and later a civil suit was brought against them.

Of course, the quasi-terrorist thugs involved – New Black Panther Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson – refused to appear in court to answer the accusations over a near-five month period, court records said.  Therefor the court rendered a default judgment against the vermin on April 20.

Sadly for actual Americans, political appointees by President Obama, our First Black President, who report to Attorney General Eric Holder, our First Black US Attorney General, ordered the career Justice Dept. lawyers to reverse their decision and drop the already won case without sanctions against the Black Power extremists.

A Justice Department spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the agency had dropped the case, dismissing two of the men from the lawsuit with no penalty and winning an order against the third man that simply prohibits him from bringing a weapon to a polling place in future elections.

Jerry Seper
May 29, 2009 – The Washington Times

Apparently, under President Obama and A.G. Holder, the “change we can expect” is a complete change in the meaning of “under Color of Law” – at least when it comes to who is allowed to vote in safety.

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Important Irrelevancies

Posted in Politics on May 27th, 2009

Judge Sonia SotomayerOn Tuesday, May 26, 2009 President Obama announced his first appointee to the US Supreme Court, US Appellate Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. As anyone would expect, the debate over Judge Sotomayer’s qualifications followed immediately upon the heels of the announcement.

Sadly, the debate is distinctly lopsided with each side putting forth different points in the argument instead of arguing the merits of the same points.

A lot of the talking points in the debate that are coming from the Liberals and their pet media have much to do with realpolitik and social engineering and very little to with any valid qualification for any job, much less a Supreme Court Justice. None the less, these trivialities or irrelevancies are important because Sotomayer’s appointment is far more about the politics of the Legislature than it is about the law or the SCOTUS.

Sotomayor Grew Up Poor

Sotomayor was born in the South Bronx and grew up the Bronxdale Houses housing project and then to moved to Co-op City. Her father, Juan Sotomayor, who died when Sonia Sotomayor was nine, was a tool-and-die worker with a third-grade education who did not speak English. Her mother, Celina Sotomayor, was a nurse.

Despite her economic woes as a child, Sotomayor managed to graduate from Princeton University (BA) and later from Yale Law School (JD).

That’s a very touching and heartwarming tale. If Horatio Alger had ever written a rags-to-riches story featuring a Latina protagonist, I’m sure that the character would have had much in common with Judge Sotamayor. It also plays very well with the press and fits nicely with President Obama’s politics of class warfare. The poor being rejected and denied an opportunity by the evil rich is always a useful political ploy for the Liberals.

However, Sotomayor’s upbringing has little or nothing to do with her capabilities in- and proclivities towards jurisprudence and Constitutional law.  The last I checked, neither poverty at birth nor wealth at birth were hard and fast prerequisites for knowledge of the law. The phrase, “All Men Are Created Equal” cuts in both directions without discrimination.

Sotomayor Has Battled Diabetes

Sonia Sotomayor was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at age eight.  Since then she has been insulin-dependent.

Sotomayer’s perseverance in the face of a debilitating disease is certainly inspirational, especially for other sufferers of the affliction. Much like her upbringing, it’s great fodder for the press and great political capital. It will be easy for the Liberals to spin any attack against Sotomayor’s appointment as being a de facto attack against the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of the many children growing up with Type I diabetes.

Appointing a person with diabetes to the SCOTUS is also a useful means for further painting any Republicans who argue against Sotomayor’s appointment as being against healthcare, the socialization of which is a key plank in President Obama’s platform.

With the very remotely possible exception of Asperger’s Syndrome, I cannot think of any positive effect a chronic disease would have on Judge Sotomayer’s ability to understand and interpret US laws and the US Constitution. Inversely, Type I Diabetes is very easily managed with modern medicine and has few serious negative impacts on personality or cognition, so Judge Sotomayor’s affliction has no negative effect upon Judge Sotomayer’s abilities as a SCOTUS Justice.

Sotomayor Is A Woman

Judge Sotomayor was born female. She has chosen to retain her gender throughout her life to date.

Politically speaking this has a lot of value in the appointment process. Women are a slight majority in the US population very large voting block. The GOP has always been somewhat weak in its appeal to female voters, so appointing a woman to the SCOTUS is a decently effective political wedge to drive between the Republican Party and the female voters.

President Obama, after the rampant, virulent, and ongoing  misogyny that was evidenced during his Democratic Primary campaign against Sen. Hillary Clinton, also needs to make visible strides towards gender equality in his administration in general and his political appointments in specific. Judge Sotomayor is very useful in that capacity.

Practically speaking, however, men and women have equal capacities for understanding the law and the US Constitution. Judge Sotomayor’s gender has no impact, despite her own assertion to the contrary,  in her actual ability to be a SCOTUS Justice. If her gender does, due to her own subjective feelings and agenda, have an impact on her abilities it would be, by necessity, a negative impact.

Sotomayer Would Be the 1st Hispanic SCOTUS Justice

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is Hispanic, a Latina in common parlance. In point of fact she is Puerto Rican (Boricua) and English was her second language, one she did not start becoming fluent in until after her father died. While she was born in New York, her mother and father were both born in Puerto Rico – her father in the Santurce area of San Juan and her mother in the Santa Rosa area of Laja.

Appointing a Hispanic to the SCOTUS is politically important for several reasons. It allows President Obama to transcend the divide between the Black and Hispanic worlds of racial politics, thereby increasing the attractiveness of the Democrats to Hispanic voters, a minority group that the Dems have not successfully wooed as of yet. It also makes it easy to paint the GOP as standing in the way of the nomination of The First Latina SCOTUS Justice.  This would, they hope, create a schism between the GOP and the Hispanics, the one minority group that the GOP has previously done well with.

Alright, breaking barriers, especially racial barriers, is a good thing, and the The First Latina SCOTUS Justice certainly makes a compelling and inspirational headline; I’m sure Hispanics appreciate the thought. Race has, however, no bearing on the ability of a person, Sotomayor in this case, to interpret US law and the Constitution in an intelligent and objective fashion.

There is no denying that Judge Sotomayor is a compelling figure. She has media potential that few in politics can equal, possibly second only to President Obama himself. Yet the Liberals’ and their media’s emphasis on her upbringing, illness, gender, and race seems to be nothing but political ploys that are focused more on weakening the GOP in the upcoming 2010 House and Senate elections than on affecting the makeup of the Supreme Court’s bench.

These so-called qualifications and talking points certainly are all irrelevant to Sotomayor’s worthiness to be a US Supreme Court Justice, or a waitress – or to hold any other job I can think of with the exception of actress.

Proposition 8 Upheld

Posted in Politics, Society on May 26th, 2009

Today, May 26, 2009, the California Supreme Court, in a 6-1 decision, upheld Prop 8. This is amazing news for fans of democracy, but a brutal defeat for queers and LGBT activists and organizers.

California voters legally outlawed same-sex marriage when they approved Proposition 8 in November, but the constitutional amendment did not dissolve the unions of 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who wed before the measure took effect, the state Supreme Court ruled today.

The 6-1 decision was issued by the same court that declared a year ago that a state law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman violated the right to choose one’s spouse and discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.

Prop. 8 undid that ruling. The author of last year’s 4-3 decision, Chief Justice Ronald George, said today that the voters were within their rights to approve a constitutional amendment redefining marriage to include only male-female couples.

Bob Egelko
San Francisco Chronicle

The actual issue before the justices was whether the voters’ had the power to amend the California State Constitution by initiative, or whether – as the homosexuals and their supporters claimed – Prop 8 legally required a two-thirds legislative vote or approval from delegates at a state constitutional convention in order to have reached the November, 2008 ballot.

It’s rather shocking that the California court didn’t fall victim to judicial activism and actually held firmly to the law and to the merits of the case before them, which was Strauss vs. Horton, S168047.

In addressing the issues now presented in the third chapter of this narrative, it is important at the outset to emphasize a number of significant points. First, as explained in the Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th at page 780, our task in the present proceeding is not to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution. Regardless of our views as individuals on this question of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to confine our consideration to a determination of the constitutional validity and legal effect of the measure in question. It bears emphasis in this regard that our role is limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values.

— Strauss v. Horton 5/26/09 SC
Majority Opinion of the Court

I would suggest to those who favor and/or support same-sex marriage that they gather signatures on petitions and submit them to the California Legislature so that a Constitutional amendment or revision redefining marriage as to be something other than merely “one man and one woman” can be brought to referendum vote in the next few years.

Sick Vick Is Free

Posted in Society on May 23rd, 2009

Michael Vick - Herpes infected, dog killing ghetto thugMichael “Sick” Vick, the subhuman ghetto thug famous for both athleticism and the torture, mutilation, and murder of countless dog at his Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting arena, was released from federal prison Thursday, May 20, 2009. He is on furlough and has returned to his Virginia home.

Sick Vick, due to his celebrity status, served a mere 19 months in a federal minimum security facility and escaped all VA state prison time for his unfathomably disgusting, pernicious, and subhuman crimes. He is currently on parole and is due for full release on from federal custody on July 20,  2009, and then faces three more years of supervised probation.

The arrogant piece of filth hopes afterward to resume his NFL career!

One can only hope that one or more people ensure that Vick’s deranged fantasies never come true. It should rot in poverty and anonymity until it finally betters the Earth by dying and removing it’s stench and disease from the human society it lurks within.

Hopefully such a future, a future without hope for Sick Vick, will come about by lawful means. Hopefully the NFL will not debase itself so much as to allow some like Vick ever put on a uniform again.

If, through greed or coercive racial pressures, such a legally arrived at future cannot be, then I must hope and pray to Morrígu that some right-thinking Americans render this creature physically incapable of playing any sport – or mocking humanity by looking actual people in eye or walking on two legs.

Memorial Day

Posted in Society on May 21st, 2009

memorial-day-motivational-poster.jpg Memorial Day – H/T to The Whited Sepulchre

Yes, these brave men and women who put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of kith and kin, for the sake of clan and country, and for the sake of freedom and security for all those who sheltered behind them, needed no motivational posters, no rousing speeches, no brash fanfares. They sacrificed themselves on the altar of blood because duty demanded it; all the pomp and splendor was but trapping for those left behind.

Review, friends – troops long past review,
All to fate a weight of pains and dollars.
Their spirit’s wear our silver collars.

Review, friends – troops long past review:
Each a dot of time without pretense or guile.
With them passes the lure of fortune.

Review, friends – troops long past review.
When our time ends on its rictus smile,
We’ll pass the lure of fortune.

— Gurney Halleck
Frank Herbert’s Dune

These fallen soldiers are long past review, their arms and accouterments moldering in the earth, yet there they stand in perfect formation. Massed in their ranks, battalion after battalion, in neat rows set out in now peaceful fields, they fulfill their final duty.

So do not review them, these men and women who earned a warrior’s peace. Present yourself to them instead for review. The fallen do not need our thanksgiving or our praise, but we, for the sake of our souls, need to thank and praise them – and to remember.