On Harriet Miers

Ken AshfordSupreme CourtLeave a Comment

I really don’t get it.  Did Bush learn nothing from the Mike Brown/FEMA flap?

I’m sure Harriet Miers is a nice person.  But what is it with this administration appointing people to high positions just because they are nice people — people that you would want to have a beer with?  Or, in Ms. Miers case, tea?

This is the highest court in the land.  Her vote could be the swing on many important legal and social issues.  Is she the best qualified?  Is she even the best qualified woman?  Is she even the best qualified conservative woman?

There’s something very disturbing about the way Bush selects people.  I’m sure he "trusts" her, but the problem is . . . most people (especially right now) don’t trust Bush’s decision-making skills!!

Part of me wonders if this isn’t some part of a larger plan:

(1)   Bush nominates a "stealth" justice.  Someone who has almost no paper trial.  And, being a former White House counsel, don’t expect to see too much paper coming from the White House for the Judiciary Committee to mull (thank you, attorney-client privilege). 

(2)  She has no judicial experience.  Not that I, personally, find this to be a problem — Rehnquist, Byron White, and many others had no judicial experience before being appointed to the Supreme Court.  But it doesn’t sit well in the wake of former Arabian horse judge Michael Brown’s embarrassing tenure as FEMA Director.  My problem is that she seems to lack some actual courtroom experience.  I mean, as she even been in the Supreme Court??

(3)  It reaks of cronyism.  She’s a Bushbot from way back.

(4)  The foregoing will cause consternation among Democrats, and not a few Republicans.  She gets rejected.

(5)  "Fine", says Bush.  And then he nominates Priscilla Owens, or some other horrible arch-conservative judicial activist — someone with a clear (ultra-conservative) paper trial, unquestionable experience, and not susceptible to cronyism charges.  And the fight from the Dems will have been spent on defeating Miers.

UPDATE:  I’m not the only one thinking this.  Nope.

Anyway, it seems nobody is particularly happy about her for many of the same reasons.   Many on the right are outright upset.  Reactions below the fold.

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The Iron-What’s-Her-Face and Tom Delay

Ken AshfordCongress, Crime, RepublicansLeave a Comment

Mmmm.  This is an interesting turn of events:

A DOCUMENT linking Margaret Thatcher to a US corruption probe is so explosive civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed".

The 79-year-old former Premier is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam.

In return for his free holiday, DeLay – who resigned as Republican leader of Congress last week after being accused of laundering political funds – allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups.

Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

Plame Update

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

I haven’t forgotten about this — but I’m not digging in the dirt about it either.  Judith Miller revealed that her source was Scooter Libby — no surprise there.  But the real speculation is on what special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is cooking up.  I’ll let Kevin Drum speak:

In the Washington Post today, Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus provide some additional speculation. They suggest that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be trying to put together a conspiracy case, not an espionage case:

Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

….One source briefed on Miller’s account of conversations with Libby said it is doubtful her testimony would on its own lead to charges against any government officials. But, the source said, her account could establish a piece of a web of actions taken by officials that had an underlying criminal purpose.

Conspiracy cases are viewed by criminal prosecutors as simpler to bring than more straightforward criminal charges, but also trickier to sell to juries. "That would arguably be a close call for a prosecutor, but it could be tried," a veteran Washington criminal attorney with longtime experience in national security cases said yesterday.

Conspiracy. Hmmm. Lot of that going around in Republican circles these days. And George Stephanopoulos said this morning that "a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions."

Bush and Cheney indicted for conspiracy?  Don’t count on it.  But it is nice to dream.

The Next Conspiracy Theory

Ken AshfordHealth Care, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Remember that anti-war protest last weekend in Washington, D.C.?  You know, the one on the weekend of September 24-25 where hundreds of thousands marched on the Mall?

Well, that wasn’t the only thing appearing in D.C. that weekend:

Biohazard sensors showed the presence of small amounts of potentially dangerous tularemia bacteria in the Mall area last weekend as huge crowds assembled there, but health officials said they believed the levels were too low to be a threat.

Health authorities in the Washington area were notified yesterday that the bacteria were found in and near the area between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, where crowds gathered Saturday for an antiwar rally and a book festival.

Yikes.

Tularemia is a biological weapon.  Double yikes:

Francisella tularensis has long been considered a potential biological weapon. It was one of a number of agents studied at Japanese germ warfare research units operating in Manchuria between 1932 and 1945; it was also examined for military purposes in the West. A former Soviet Union biological weapons scientist, Ken Alibeck, has suggested that tularemia outbreaks affecting tens of thousands of Soviet and German soldiers on the eastern European front during World War II may have been the result of intentional use.  Following the war, there were continuing military studies of tularemia. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US military developed weapons that would disseminate F tularensis aerosols; …[b]y the late 1960s, F tularensis was one of several biological weapons stockpiled by the US military.

In 1969, a World Health Organization expert committee estimated that an aerosol dispersal of 50 kg of virulent F tularensis over a metropolitan area with 5 million inhabitants would result in 250 000 incapacitating casualties, including 19 000 deaths.  Illness would be expected to persist for several weeks and disease relapses to occur during the ensuing weeks or months.

Want more conspiracy theory?  Guess where Bush was that weekend?  In a military base in Colorado.

Still not sold?  Okay, how about this.  Guess what was going on in Washington D.C. only three days before the anti-war protests in which tularemia was floating around?

Today, somewhere in the DC metropolitan area, the military is conducting a highly classified Granite Shadow "demonstration."

Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.

A spokesman at the Joint Force Headquarters-National Capital Region (JFHQ-NCR) confirmed the existence of Granite Shadow to me yesterday, but all he would say is that Granite Shadow is the unclassified name for a classified plan.

Have fun, conspiracy theorists!

No More Illusions

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

The U.S. lost the Iraq War.

What is not in dispute is that at the most basic level—of neighborhoods and communities—the tissue of Iraqi society is already rupturing. It’s not just Shia who are displacing themselves to be among their own kind, though they are the main victims of the Sunni-led insurgents. Many Sunnis, terrified of death squads and Shia-dominated police who look the other way, are fleeing Shia areas even if they don’t support the insurgency. Dozens of Sunni families left Basra in the past year, fearing attacks from Shiite militias that dominate that southern city. "For a Sunni family like mine that was swimming in a lagoon of Shiites, it was almost impossible to continue living in Basra," said one refugee, Abu Mishal. Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the National Assembly, concurs: "We never had this even under Saddam … This is very dangerous."

Sad News

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

WilsonaugustAugust Wilson, who chronicled the African-American experience in the 20th century in a series of plays that will stand as a landmark in the history of black culture, of American literature and of Broadway theater, died yesterday at a hospital in Seattle. He was 60 and lived in Seattle.

The cause was liver cancer, said his assistant, Dena Levitin. Mr. Wilson’s cancer was diagnosed in the summer, and his illness was made public last month.

"Radio Golf," the last of the 10 plays that constitute Mr. Wilson’s majestic theatrical cycle, opened at the Yale Repertory Theater last spring and has subsequently been produced in Los Angeles. It was the concluding chapter in a spellbinding story that began more than two decades ago, when Mr. Wilson’s play "Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom" had its debut at the same theater, in 1984, and announced the arrival of a major talent, fully matured.

Read the full story.

Light Blogging

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

Been under the weather lately, and busy with work and rehearsal, but I thought I would jump in with this terrifying bit of news:

‘We Are in Real Trouble’

A health expert warns of the increasingly real possibility of an avian flu pandemic and what we can do prepare

Since its discovery in the late 1990s, the avian flu virus, or H5N1, has infected at least 100 people, more than half of whom have died. But public health officials around the world are warning that the casualty numbers could be much higher if the virus becomes more easily transmittable between humans. On Thursday,  Dr. David Nabarro, an executive at the World Health Organization and newly appointed United Nations coordinator for avian and human influenza, stoked fears even more when he warned that a flu pandemic could strike at any time,  killing five million  to 150 million people. On Friday, the World Health Organization backed away from the high end of those estimates, but concurred that millions could die in a pandemic.

Scared yet?  How about this?

A global influenza pandemic is imminent and will kill up to 150 million people, the UN official in charge of coordinating the worldwide response to an outbreak has warned.

David Nabarro, one of the most senior public health experts at the World Health Organisation, said outbreaks of bird flu, which have killed at least 65 people in Asia, could mutate into a form transmittable between people.

"The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging," he said.

Constance Baker Motley, 1921-2005

Ken AshfordCourts/LawLeave a Comment

MotleyFrom the NY Times:

Constance Baker Motley, a civil rights lawyer who fought nearly every important civil rights case for two decades and then became the first black woman to serve as a federal judge, died yesterday at NYU Downtown Hospital in Manhattan. She was 84.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said Isolde Motley, her daughter-in-law.

Judge Motley was the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate, as well as the first woman to be Manhattan borough president, a position that guaranteed her a voice in running the entire city under an earlier system of local government called the Board of Estimate.

Judge Motley was at the center of the firestorm that raged through the South in the two decades after World War II, as blacks and their white allies pressed to end the segregation that had gripped the region since Reconstruction. She visited the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed, and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was later murdered.

But her métier was in the quieter, painstaking preparation and presentation of lawsuits that paved the way to fuller societal participation by blacks. She dressed elegantly, spoke in a low, lilting voice and, in case after case, earned a reputation as the chief courtroom tactician of the civil rights movement.

Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama and other staunch segregationists yielded, kicking and screaming, to the verdicts of courts ruling against racial segregation. These huge victories were led by the N.A.A.C.P.’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, led by Thurgood Marshall, for which Judge Motley, Jack Greenberg, Robert Carter and a handful of other underpaid, overworked lawyers labored.

In particular, she directed the legal campaign that resulted in the admission of James H. Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962. She argued 10 cases before the United States Supreme Court and won nine of them.

Judge Motley won cases that ended segregation in Memphis restaurants and at whites-only lunch counters in Birmingham, Ala. She fought for King’s right to march in Albany, Ga. She played an important role in representing blacks seeking admission to the Universities of Florida, Georgia Alabama and Mississippi and Clemson College in South Carolina.

I gave an oral argument before her once, and I saw her lecture several times.  One hell of an interesting lady.

Freedom Haters Succeed In Yanking Plans For Freedom Museum

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/Torture1 Comment

The hysterical moonbats won one:

Governor George Pataki said today he will direct development officials to drop plans for a museum of freedom at the World Trade Center site, saying it has stirred “too much opposition, too much controversy.”

The International Freedom Center would have been put in a cultural center adjacent to a memorial for the Sept. 11 victims, and was part of the master plan for redeveloping the devastated 16-acre site of the nation’s worst terrorist attack.

In the last several months, some victims’ families, groups of firefighters and police officers and public officials said the center, which would feature historical exhibits expressing the worldwide struggle for freedom, would detract from the Sept. 11 themes and provide a possible forum for anti-U.S. messages.

“Today there remains too much opposition, too much controversy, over the programming of the IFC and we must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world,” Pataki said in a prepared statement.

“I am directing the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to work with the IFC to explore other locations for the center,” the governor said.

The rightosphere objected to the International Freedom Center, seeing it as unrelated to the events of 9/11.  Ironically, the rightosphere thinks the liberation of Iraq is related to the events of 9/11.  So, go figure.

Delay Indicted

Ken AshfordBreaking News, Congress, RepublicansLeave a Comment

Delay This just in…

WASHINGTON – A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay’s national political committee.

"I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County district attorney today," DeLay said.

Related:  SEC commences formal investigation of Frist

Not a good day to be a Republican leader.

The “Most Challenged Books” Meme

Ken AshfordPopular Culture2 Comments

Via Majikthise: 

"How many of the American Library Association’s top 100 most frequently challenged books have you read?"

Mmmmm….

3.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

5.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

6.  Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

13.  The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

18.  The Color Purple by Alice Walker

41.  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

47.  Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

52.  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

56.  James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

59.  Ordinary People by Judith Guest

69.  Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

77.  Carrie by Stephen King

84.  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

That makes thirteen . . . not so good.

Don’t Dream It, See It

Ken AshfordPopular Culture5 Comments

140_logoplainI generally don’t write about local events, but my weblog stat counter thingee informs me that I am averaging a couple hundred hits a day now, and many of you are from the Triad region.   So to anyone within driving distance of Winston-Salem, have I got a show for you to see.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the cult film "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".  Yup, thirty years.  Feel old?   I do (and not just because my birthday is Tuesday).   Yes, I was one of those people who went to the occasional midnight showings of "Rocky Horror" in Boston or New York in the 1980s.  (The film, in fact, practically invented the concept of the midnight showing, not to mention "goth" fashion).  Usually my Rocky Horror movie-going was a spontaneous outting with theater friends — something to do post-rehearsal and under the influence of less-than-legal mind-altering substances.

Thumb_rockyhorrorlipsSo I was extremely pleased and a little nostalgic when my theater group announced that it was mounting a production of "The Rocky Horror Show" (the stage musical on which the movie is based).  I opted not to audition — I was musical-ed out at the time (and singing/dancing isn’t my strongest suit) — and I almost instantly had regrets for that decision.

The saving grace was that I actually got to see the production Saturday night at a one-time-only midnight performance.  And seeing a stage version of "Rocky Horror" is pretty damn close to being a part of the production, what with the audience participation and all.  And man, was it fun!  Even without less-than-legal mind-altering substances.

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