January 28, 2012 at 12:48AM

http://t.co/DehT3KS http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163166482849742848

January 28, 2012 at 12:03AM

http://t.co/ZK8RMm1 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163155210775171074

January 27, 2012 at 11:59PM

Romney’s ‘Blind Trust’ Was Not Very Blind http://t.co/CQIuATM http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163154270160560128

January 27, 2012 at 11:48PM

http://t.co/YW18wr9 http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163151412891623424

January 27, 2012 at 11:37PM

EBay Official: Company Won’t Move Jobs To Utah If It Doesn’t Pass LGBT Employment Protections http://t.co/2WqHeCw http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163148680172552192

January 27, 2012 at 11:33PM

http://t.co/0WYCcOl http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163147590060343296

Echoes

When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
Robert F. Kennedy, Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 1968.

I just finished watching a documentary on RFK's funeral train and I heard this quote. Sadly, Bobby's speech seems as true in 2012 as is was in 1968.

I know I have not written here in ages and the habit has died out. But the spirit and the need have not. Do not think that I have not missed writing my thoughts to you or hearing your comments and responses. Know only that the luxurious fleeting moments of time have been spent with family and friends. Still, I regret my neglect of my online friends and the community of minds that can connect over the Internet through an idea. Like wiretapping and torture are wrong and make us less safe, that our time, treasure, lives, and international regard were needlessly squandered in the sands of Iraq. And yet we as a people need to attempt to see the world through someone else's eyes, and not immediately separate and demonize those who disagree with us.

My hope now is that these thoughts will no longer have to echo through time so that the lessons will not have to be relearned generation by generation.

January 27, 2012 at 09:18PM

http://t.co/fuO02ef http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163113658740781057

January 27, 2012 at 09:12PM

S.L. Co. Councilman Randy Horiuchi suffers stroke http://t.co/pDatagN http://twitter.com/thethirdavenue/status/163112152276811776

Clearly Obama did not think the government would be operating today. The Lincoln Memorial visit was supposed to be a backdrop for a speech about the government shutdown. Instead, it was more Beltway mythology about bipartisanship. Democrats are still demoralized and need Obama to pick a fight, not pick up GOP talking points. The about cut matters to those programs and people effected by it, but have nothing to do with the budget deficit.

For some reason, I find it hard to get worked up over the looming shut down of the federal government. Congressional Dems can't negotiate their way out a paper bag, GOPers only care about hurting things Dems care about and tax cuts, but do not care about the Deficit. And Obama cares about reelection.

the undo something congress

Harry Truman famously labeled the 80th (1947-49) Congress the Do Nothing Congress, while the 110th (2009-2011) Congress has been called the Do Something Congress due to the Democratic Majority's penchant for passing lots of big legislation during their brief period of having 60% in both chambers.

So far, the 111th Congress is hoping to be what I call the Undo Something Congress. Their goal is not to pass anything substantive, but to repeal the reform legislation of the prior Congress, starting with Health Care Reform. Also in the cue is College Aid Reform, Wall Street Reform, and undoing Obama Administration regulations regarding the environment. I am pretty clear what Republicans are against, namely every big accomplishment of the Do Something Congress, but I really have no idea what they are for other than reducing government spending. The reductions they want, however, are not about making the government smaller, but about cutting programs Democrats favor, either because they believe in the merits of the program or because it helps their district/state/reelection.

Maybe it should be called the Undo Something That Democrats Like Congress instead. But that would not be as catchy. And Washington DC is all about appearances and soundbites, not substance and reality.

Did Mitch McConnell overplay his hand?

As much fun as it was to run circles around then Majority Leader Bill Frist, I knew his retirement was bad news for the Democrats whether they won or lost his seat in 2006. Because Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is a million times smarter about Senate rules and tactics than Frist, was poised to assume the role of GOP Senate leader. Sure enough, despite having 40-43 Senators to call from in 2009-10 (and 49 in 2007-09, McConnell was able to keep his troops in rank to impose filibusters at a record setting rate since he has been in charge.

And while this obstructionism has had some victories--several judicial nominees will never get voted on, the federal budget failed, the DREAM Act, etc.--the larger measures still went through the Senate. Heath Care Reform, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Food Safety Bill, the Financial Reform Bill, the Child Nutrition Bill, the START II treaty, along with several nominees passed.

Why did this happen, especially in the lame duck session? Two reasons. First, Harry Reid was also pretty good at keeping his troops together for the most part and he had 60-51 of them during the same period. Second, the "FU caucus" formed in the Lame Duck this year. People like Bob Bennett and Lisa Murkowski, who are very conservative, but were primaried from the right and did not receive much help from McConnell, were pissed at him. Moreover, these retiring (or in the case of Murkowski, re-elected) GOP senators did not trust the new GOP senators coming into Congress in January and actually liked some of the Democrats policies to a certain degree.

The more important result from this relentless obstruction from McConnell, and his taunting of Democrats, was the fact that every Democrat who will be Senotors in the 112th Congress in January wrote a letter to Sen. Reid demanding that the filibuster rules be reformed. We won't know what the change will be until it passes in January, but we do know that Democrats are united in their dislike of McConnell and his antics. I believe McConnell's sinking of the Federal Budget bill was the last straw for some of the more senior Democratic Senators who still believe that the Senate is the "World's Greatest Dillibrative Body." If the reform is particularly pro-majority, we could see more legislation, nominees and treaties pass the Senate in the 112th Congress with 53 Members in the Democratic Caucus than in the 111th with 60 Members in the Democratic Caucus. January just got a whole lot more interesting.

Was one more innocent Texan put to death?

"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries at 358

William Blackstone should be as revered as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke as one of the key intellectual inspirations behind the American Revolution and the Constitution that followed it. While Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" were only his views of what English law was (or should be), they were so influential with the Founders that they became the basis for American law. Yet it appears in the two hundred and thirty four years since the Spirit of '76 moved the founders to sign the Declaration of Independence, we have strayed.

A DNA test on a strand of hair has cast doubt on the guilt of a Texas man who was executed 10 years ago during George W. Bush’s final months as governor for a liquor-store robbery and murder.

The single hair had been the only piece of physical evidence linking Claude Jones to the crime scene. But the DNA analysis found it did not belong to Jones and instead may have come from the murder victim.

Sadly, this isn't the only man Texas has put to death that might have been innocent.

In December, 2004, questions about the scientific evidence in the Willingham case began to surface. Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, of the Chicago Tribune, had published an investigative series on flaws in forensic science; upon learning of Hurst’s report, Possley and Mills asked three fire experts, including John Lentini, to examine the original investigation. The experts concurred with Hurst’s report. Nearly two years later, the Innocence Project commissioned Lentini and three other top fire investigators to conduct an independent review of the arson evidence in the Willingham case. The panel concluded that “each and every one” of the indicators of arson had been “scientifically proven to be invalid.”

In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, “The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.”

Barry Scheck a founder of the Innocence Project, an anti-death penalty group based in New York City, makes a good point:

“Reasonable people can disagree about the moral appropriateness of the death penalty. The issue that has arisen is the risk of executing the wrong person,” he said.

And that risk is too high--10:1.

feeling down and out of it

i have not written in a long time for several reasons: first, I had a ton of work to do in October and early November, and second, I felt helpless about what was happening. I was supposed to have volunteered by legal services to the Corroon campaign, but that fell through due to conflicts. I had a big oral argument on Election Day and no real spare time to donate in the meantime. So I was reduced to watching from the side lines and did not like what I saw happening and what I saw coming. But since I was doing nothing about it, it did not seem appropriate that I complain. To avoid the crushing feeling to come, I have pretended not to care.

But I cannot pretend any longer. This planet has a number of serious problems that urgently need addressing. And people are too interested in winning the next election and some ideology to try to fix things. Take Obama trip to Asia for example. Clowns like Rep. Michalle Bachman use obviously false internet rumors about the cost of the president's trip to India to oppose it. Then the Chinese use the Fed's belated helicopter drop ("quantitative easing") to distract everyone from their currency manipulation.

Meanwhile, back home, Washington wants to talk about "defecit reducion" under the assumption that all 310 million Americans are like their friends at cocktail parties rather than you know, people that have to physically work to get paid. Proposd staff of new members of Congress are happy to call the outgoing speaker "garbage" and everyone seems happy that nothing of substance will get done for two years. Perhaps this new wrecking crew will realize that they need to try to fix things, and not just break stuff. But I am not going to hold by breath for two years. And neither should you.

Remember he is your father (figure)

Usually, there is little if any news that comes out the semi-annual LDS General Conference, big confab of LDS leaders speaking to the faithful on various topics. For example, I saw a headline from this year that said that the head of the Church, President "Monson urges Mormons to serve missions". That's news? How about "Pope Still Catholic"?

Also not surpassing was that some old grumpy white dude got up talked about the gays and gay marriage, and that grumpy white dude was Boyd K. Packer. What was surprising what this line, which I suppose constituted his reasoning behind his disbelief that gay people are born gay and do not choose to be gay. Sorry Packman, gay folks did not choose to be gay anymore than I chose to be six foot three, left handed and have red hair. Well, I suppose I chose to drink all that milk as a kid.

Speaking to a global audience of millions of Latter-day Saints on Sunday, Packer condemned sexual relationships outside of the procreative ones of husband and wife as not natural.

“Some suppose that they were pre-set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural,” said Packer, president of the LDS Church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles. “Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember he is our father.”

Why did God make us different from each other, why aren't we all the same? Why would he do that to anyone, remember he is your father. And if it is pre-set, as Parker said, how can it be unnatural? Isn't "unnatural" code for "something that gives Boyd Packer the willies"? I believe we are different because different is beautiful what makes us human. Sadly, hating others because they are different than us seems also to be a defining human trait as well. Just ask Boyd Packer.

tightening?

Could there be a race on for Utah's govenor's mansion? What other reason could Herbert be reacting the way he is to Corrroon? If I was ahead by 21 points and a Republican in Utah, I would be ignoring Corroon and his allegations, even if they weren't true and there was no smoking gun out there. But Herbert is trotting out his LG and running campaign ads with his hard earned bribes...I mean campaign contributions, excuse my manners.

But if the race were closer or closing, this whole corruption angle would need to be nipped in the bud.

Disgraceful

The last refuge of candidates in Utah is to claim that's their opponent is not LDS, or worse still, a non-active member. And ex-staffer of Bob Bennnett's claims to have taken it upon himself to send out a mailer to GOP delegates that had imaginary pictures of one candidate standing in front of the Salt Lake Temple and one the US Capitol. And it backfired horribly. I hope the same happens to Gary Herbert.

Gov. Gary Herbert warned Thursday that the education plan put forward by his opponent, Democrat Peter Corroon, would likely mean the elimination of LDS seminary courses. Corroon’s proposal, Herbert said, would require an additional math course and science course for graduation, meaning students could take two fewer elective courses. “That means some arts and probably some seminary time,” Herbert said during his monthly news conference at KUED. “I don’t know if everyone thinks that will be a good idea to give up arts and seminary release time in order to have this more” rigorous schedule.

The obvious subtext of this comment has nothing to do with the competing education plans and everyone to do with religion and othering Corroon. The message here is clear: that Catholic Corroon is fixing to take away your LDS seminary classes, because he hates us Mormons. Herbert really should be ashamed of himself. Can his ideas really not compete with Corroon's that he has to stoop to poorly done whistle dog politics?

He was Corroon's response, which I wish had called out Herbert on this crap:

“There’s plenty of time during the day to take electives and plenty of time during the day to take seminary,” Corroon said. “I think the governor is trying to deflect attention from the fact our graduation rates are starting to fall, that our school system is not funded adequately and is starting to suffer because of it.” ... Asked if he thought Herbert was trying to use religion as a campaign issue, Corroon said he “would hope the governor is not trying to use the religion … card to divide people.”

On the Prop 8 case

It took me a few days to get through the 130-something page opinion for Perry v. Schwarzenegger the so-called "Prop 8 case," but now that I had, I wanted to share some thoughts I had about it with you, my ever faithful readers. Several things jumped out at me.

First, Judge Vaughan Walker put over 100 pages worth of findings of fact in the opinion, which are entitled to substantial deference on appeal. Reading those findings, and opinion as a whole, you can tell it is written for Justice Anthony Kennedy, the proverbial 5th vote on the US Supreme Court who has been favorable to gay-rights plaintiffs in the past. But more on that later. The other thing that is striking about the facts, other than their shear volume and construction, is that the proponents of Prop 8 did a very poor job of presenting their case relative to those in favor of gay rights.

Which brings me to my second observation: good lawyers make a big difference. David Boies is particular is a fabulous trial attorney, who was able to really turn the witnesses for the proponents of Prop 8 into his witnesses. Of course, Ted Olsen is hardly a slouch either: his closing argument was as masterful as Boies' cross-examinations. Yet the other side had virtually no lay or expert witnesses to testify as to what purpose California has in enacting this constitutional amendment other than dislike of homosexuality and homosexuals. This case to me was like the Kitzmiller case (the so-called evolution case) all over again. You had a federal judge appointed by a conservative president: Judge Jones in Kitzmiller was recommended by evolution skeptic Sen. Santorum and appointed by George W. Bush during a GOP controlled Senate. Just as Judge Vaughan was appointed by President George HW Bush over the protests of gay-rights members of congress Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Pelosi. But both were confined by the law to observe that the social conservatives had failed to present any credible experts or lay witnesses that there was a legitimate secular purpose behind what they did.

This leads me to ask the question: did the defendants in Kitzmiller and Perry lose because they were outgunned by better attorneys and experts? Or is there simply no evidence out there that would support the case that would need to be made to uphold the Dover School District's decision in Kitzmiller and/or Californian's votes in Perry? Where are the studies showing that gay marriages cause bad things (higher divorce rates, more out-of-wedlock births, lower overall marriage rate, lower adoption rates, economic costs to the government, worse outcomes for children) to happen? Where are the peer-reviewed studies to show that evolution is flawed or that creationism Intelligent Design is science?

Social Conservatives better hurry and find some better experts, better attorneys, and better evidence to bring a companion case to Perry quickly. The evidence is stacked very high in favor of overturning state bans on gay marriage thanks to the legal dream team. Even if Judge Walker was wrong to find that the Prop 8 suporters' experts shouldn't have been tossed out, it is much harder for appellate judges to say that Judge Walker was wrong to view the weight of the evidence was in the plaintiffs' favor and that their experts were more credible than the proponents. Even if Judge Walker sexual orientation caused him to rule the way he did, which there is no proof of, the proponents did not seek to have him recused, so is alleged bias is not reviewable. Judge Walker found that the proponents did not even provide a rational basis for Prop 8, the lowest possible standard for 14th Amendment rights.

Given Lawrence v. Texas (finding sodomy laws unconstitutional) and Romer v. Evans (finding state constitutional amendment prohibiting amendment to the Colorado state constitution that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to recognize homosexual citizens as a Protected class unconstitutional), the argument that gays aren't a class of people whose rights should be examined under the 14th Amendment is an argument that won't fly. And the author of those two opinions? Justice Kennedy. Judge Walker's opinion addresses the Justice Scalia's out there who say that there is no right to gay marriage in the text of the constitution, pointing out that the high court has repeatedly held that marriage is a fundamental right, and combined with the finding that domestic partnership laws are second-class quasi-marriages designed just for gay folks in mind, the step to saying gays and lesbians should be able to receive marriage licenses from the state is not a giant leap.

When I was working for a Massachusetts State Representative when Goodridge v. DPH came out on the heals of Lawrence, I too thought "what's the big deal" about gay marriage and wondered by civil unions didn't cut it. But then I began to read the letters from couples who wanted to marry that came pouring into the office (along with the hate mail), a listened to openly gay legislators discuss what it was like when they wanted to visit the child that they were raising with their partner at the hospital, or make medical decisions, or simply fill out forms. There are over a thousand federal benefits that I received when I married my high-school sweetheart. And there were untold social benefits of being able to say that she was "my wife" is much more socially acceptable and understandable public level of commitment than having to say she is "the girl that I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with since I was 18."

The world didn't end after the Massachusetts legislature failed to amend the state constitution to overturn Goodridge. In fact, studies presented in Perry showed that gay marriage had no effect on the institution of marriage: the divorce rates were the same the years leading up to Goodridge as they were in the years that followed.

Marriage is a grand enough institution with physical (married people live longer on average), psychological (better mental health), financial (lower taxes and fees, economies of scale, division of labor, average high incomes) and social (better outcome for children in married households on average) benefits that people of all sexual orientations should be able to join.

invitations

Forget the Chelsea Clinton Wedding, I wish I had been invited to Lisa's:


Oh and I can't say D'Oh, otherwise I would get sued by Pillsbury.