Maneuvers and Manure

We liberals may control the media (or is that we Jews? Or are the two the same thing?), but the Grand Old Party does propaganda like nobody's business. While some of us optimistically focus on the number of congressional seats Democrats may pick up this November, there is a considerable amount of conservative legislation masquerading as "moderate" and "rational" because of clever political maneuvering.

Take, for example, a proposal by Senators McCain, Graham and Warner which would strip the right of habeas corpus from political detainees. In other words, detainees couldn't challenge the validity of their imprisonment ("here's proof I'm not a terrorist"), or challenge the legality of their treatment ("here's proof I was tortured").

…Virtually no attention has been paid to this radical and wildly unjust provision, because as bad as the McCain-Graham-Warner proposal is, the president's was slightly worse. And by masquerading as the principled opponents to a handful of the most extreme provisions in the president's proposals, these "dissident Republican senators" were depicted as the moderates in the debate, as the reasonable, serious thinkers who would carefully balance the need for strong antiterrorist measures with the need to safeguard our basic liberties.

The "this may be a finger up your ass, but at least it's not a fist" approach to government shows up again in the debate over Dubya's illegal, warrantless eavesdropping program:

…the understandable focus on the incomparably dangerous [Bush lackey and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen] Specter bill has obscured the fact that there are competing bills sponsored by "independent, dissident Republican lawmakers" that are only slightly less horrible than the Specter bill but still radical and destructive in their own right. Competing bills by Sen. Michael DeWine and Rep. Heather Wilson, for instance, would vest in the president the power to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans without judicial oversight or approval of any kind.

The parallels with the torture debacle are obvious. The torture controversy arose because the president wanted to use techniques of torture to interrogate detainees, and he proposed an extremist piece of legislation to accomplish that. Republican senators flamboyantly opposed that legislation -- thus bestowing themselves with "moderate" credentials -- but introduced their own slightly less extremist proposal that accomplished the same thing (legalizing the torture techniques).

Do you see what's happening here? With virtually no public support for the Interloper or his policies, Republicans are protecting their own hides by lining up in faux opposition to the president's agenda. "Hey, we stood up to Bush!" is a great GOP rallying cry, especially when instead of supporting the worst legislation ever, they're simply proposing the second-worst legislation. But hey, next to a ton of manure, one pile of shit doesn't smell so bad, right?

The Catch-22 is, of course, that Democrats can't really oppose "compromise" legislation because of this diabolical GOP positioning. We have once again been painted into a corner that will force us to "cowardly" defend terrorists if we oppose "moderate" Republication legislation. It's a paradox worthy of Lucifer himself; perhaps Hugo was right after all…

Scooter's Law

If PatRoW had a legal expert, we would ask him to weigh in on a surprising defense mounted by Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame leak case, a defense that, if successful, could change our legal system's definition of fact and fiction, lies and the truth.

If PatRoW had a legal expert, we would ask him to comment on how one man could give a statement contested by three unaffiliated witnesses, yet claim he had not committed perjury.

If PatRoW had a legal expert, we would ask him to expand on the acceptance into evidence of a paradigm-shifting theory – that is, Libby's lawyers' contention that "memory does not function like a tape recorder, with memories recorded, stored and played back verbatim."

That's right; Libby's team has proposed that the defendant may have been mistaken in his sworn statement about the nature of his role in leaking Valerie Plame's identity, but he wasn't lying:

The crux of Libby's defense will be that he was too preoccupied with national security "matters of life and death" and that he could have easily confused "snippets of conversations" he had with reporters from Time magazine, NBC and the New York Times.

To paraphrase, Libby's defense team contends that Scooter was too busy a guy to be expected to remember things as they actually happened, and too important to be held accountable to something as irrelevant as the truth.

Not only is such a defense a self-important/last-ditch effort to avoid criminal charges, but it is a despicable and enthusiastic middle finger at the American justice system. TV has taught me that witnesses must swear to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God." If successful with their horseshit premise, Libby's attorneys will have set a precedent that allows any criminal/witness to lie about his activities and not be held accountable to charges of perjury.

If PatRoW had a legal expert, we would expect him to rail about how such a precedent could destroy the court's power to elicit the truth and reach a fair and just decision. That such a precedent opens avenues for deceit; that such a precedent eliminates the motivation for anyone to testify about unpleasant or inconvenient truths (ones that revolve around a crime, not Al Gore).

Of course, PatRoW doesn't have a legal expert, so you're stuck with my opinion. Here's a hint – it rhymes with "Scooter Libby and his lawyers are all pooch bags".

Millions of divorces are fine, but two guys kissing will destroy American families!

I briefly touched on this issue the other day, but I think I'm ready to go a bit more into the issue now that the State of Washington Supreme Court yesterday upheld a law banning same-sex marriages. For those of you keeping score at home, this means that…

Massachusetts remains the only state that sanctions same-sex marriages. New York's highest court, by a vote of 4 to 2 earlier this month, upheld state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The New Jersey Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the legality of same-sex marriages there.

I know that this is discouraging news to anyone without a conservative nutjob agenda, but you can choose to view the glass as half full. You see, Washington's judiciary last addressed the issue of gay marriage in 1974. At that time an appeals court unanimously voted against the issue (yesterday's vote was 4-3) and the state Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

"You've gone in 32 years from something that was more or less a slam dunk to where the court is almost evenly and very bitterly divided," said William B. Rubenstein, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Sexual Orientation and the Law. "The issue is in play."

Of course, don't get too optimistic. It's hard to feel hopeful when douchebags like this are gleefully celebrating:

"Today is a great day for marriage and the family," said Mathew D. Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a group that opposes the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. "We are pleased that this latest attempt by the homosexual agenda to radically redefine our culture has been stopped dead in its tracks."

The "homosexual agenda" is "radically redefining" our country? Guess again, asscunt. The radical change in our country – and the most viscous assault on the institutions of family and marriage – is coming from the tens of millions of heterosexual divorces. Go ahead – I dare you to tell me I'm wrong.

And how, pray tell, did the Washington Court reach its decision? "Limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples," Justice Barbara A. Madsen wrote in the [majority] opinion, "furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race…" Thank God Justice Madsen is looking out for the human race. I mean, we'd be on the brink of extinction without her, right?

Madsen continued her ill-informed and inflammatory opinion by claiming that a gay marriage ban "furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's biological parents." Does it? Because I could have sworn that there are tens of millions of American children being raised by non-biological heterosexual parents. If this were really the point, wouldn't Madsen and her slack-jawed yokel cronies have to also ban adoption, re-marriage and foster families?

Honestly, all Americans should be embarrassed that this civil rights issue is still on the table. Our legal system is supporting Jim Crow laws that discriminate against 10% of the population, yet we still take two steps backwards every time we make one step toward progress. Why aren't more of us outraged?

Glub Glub Glub, Five Yates in a Tub

Fourth trimester abortion advocate Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity in her retrial for the bathtub drownings of her five young children. I don't have much to say about this; I was simply looking for an excuse to write "fourth trimester abortion advocate".

Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?

Did you hear the Supreme Court knock knock joke of the week?

Knock knock.

Who's th- gbivgs lviushv ;uiosdv;fbv dh kskblujvbseiuvhew;ofihnewrikhbe. Ouch – stop kicking me in the spleen!

Oh man, that gets me every time!

For those of us who hoped against hope that new Supreme Court Justices would not send our country into a Orwellian tailspin, yesterday destroyed our last bit of optimism. In a 5-4 ruling that aligned on strict partisan agendas, the Court ruled that police backed by a search warrant can enter a home without knocking.

Now I like the police. My uncle was a NYPD sergeant. I even have a friend who is a Chicago cop and he tells the best – albeit racist and offensive – stories. These guys risk their lives every day and get too little respect from the people they serve and their politician bosses. That said, can't we make their jobs easier without destroying the constitution?

Now here's the thing – the case in question involved a hardened criminal who was, in fact, guilty of the charges named in the warrant. I can see why the gray areas are difficult to see for "ends justify the means" people. That's why we're SUPPOSED to have enlightened thinkers on the bench…like this guy:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a heated dissent… that was much longer than the majority ruling.

By declining to declare the evidence inadmissible, "the court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce requirement," Justice Breyer wrote. He called the majority's finding "doubly troubling."

"It represents a significant departure from the court's precedents," he wrote. "And it weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution's knock-and-announce protection."

The minority rejected any suggestion that violations like that in Detroit are isolated. "The cases reporting knock-and-announce violations are legion," Justice Breyer wrote. And contrary to the majority's assertion, there is no known case in which a plaintiff has collected "more than nominal damages" for such a violation, he wrote.

"Of course, had the police entered the house lawfully, they would have found the gun and drugs," Justice Breyer wrote. "But that fact is beside the point. The question is not what police might have done had they not behaved unlawfully. The question is what they did do."

"Would a warrant that authorizes entry into a home on Tuesday permit the police to enter on Monday?" Justice Breyer asked rhetorically. "Would a warrant that authorizes entry during the day authorize the police to enter during the middle of the night?"

Let's forget Justice Breyer's rhetorical questions and jump back to his penultimate paragraph. Instead of arguing that the police *would* have discovered Booker Hudson's gun and drugs if they had legally executed the warrant – as Justice Asscunt Scalia essentially did – why do the officers get a free pass? Yes, the ruling may have retrospectively cleared them of wrong-doing, but they were trained to know their actions were illegal at the time.

What's next? Our country invading a sovereign nation under one pretense and then revising justification after its lies were exposed? Now who would believe that?

Up Yours, Your Honor

If Scott McClellan is a secretarial douchebag, and George W. Bush is a presidential douche bag, does that make Justice Antonin Scalia a supreme douche bag? And which douche bag would win in a fight?

Anyway, the debate on the illegal redistricting of the Texas legislature was heard by the Supreme Court today, and Justice Scalia wasn't exactly coy about which side he supports:

Nina Perales [of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, on behalf of Latino and black voters] argued that each district must be evaluated for its own circumstances but that it was impermissible to "zigzag through neighborhoods and streets" in an "egregious use of race for its own sake." To uphold this district, she said, would "give states free rein to use race to manipulate outcomes."

Justice Antonin Scalia replied, "Of course you want to use race to manipulate outcomes, just sometimes."

Don't you just love it when our chief arbiters of the constitution employ our Founding Fathers' little known "I know you are but what am I" provision?

Quick, someone call the Princeton Review!

Didn’t you always hate it when uppity teachers would issue a test on the first day of school to gauge students’ abilities and potential? Well, Justice Alito’s first day of school will carry a slight amount of pressure; after all, activists on both sides of a contentious issue will use today as a predictor for the Supreme Court’s short-term future.

It seems that the Court will hear a challenge to a federal law outlawing a late-term abortion procedure:

The law, the Partial Birth Abortion Act, was passed in 2003 but was immediately challenged in court and has never taken effect. It was ruled unconstitutional by three federal appeals courts in the last year, in rulings based on a Supreme Court decision in 2000 striking down a similar law passed in Nebraska.

In that case, Stenberg v. Carhart, a 5-to-4 majority that included the now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor found that any abortion ban must include an exception for the health of the mother.

The case accepted by the court today…is certain to rekindle questions of whether the court in the post-O'Connor era will be more sympathetic to efforts to limit abortion rights.

Basically, the Partial Birth Abortion Act would not infringe upon Roe v. Wade – that’s a bigger battle for a later date. But if the Court reverses its precedent and upholds the law, it could start a slippery slope of anti-abortion legislation.

Yet the issue today is not about being Pro-Choice or Pro-Life, it’s about a woman’s safety. The PBAA would have easily passed if it included a provision allowing doctors to perform a partial birth abortion when a woman’s health is in danger. By refusing to consider this distinction, conservative lobbyists have shown their true colors – preservation of life is not nearly as important as they would pretend. When an unborn fetus’ life is valued above a woman’s, even those on the fence about the ethics of abortion can’t help but be outraged (and I won’t even go into the disgusting “name game” politics involved. Who would be in favor of something called partial birth abortion? Who is in favor of ANY abortion? People are in favor of choice and of having the option to have a late-term abortion if medically necessary. Why not call conservative groups “Anti-Choice”? Isn’t that the same thing?)

(OK, I guess I will go into name game politics…sorry).

No, the issue today is not about Pro-Choice or Pro-Life; the issue is about the future of a judicial branch poised to disregard law, science and common sense in the interest of religiously-guided (or misguided) beliefs. Sam Alito, it’s you’re first day of school – please don’t flunk this test. They’re only going to get harder…