Political careerism shows no party lines

A bipartisan group of congressmen in California, led by Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) and John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville), worried that they might actually stand for election. The FEC has allowed them to raise unlimited soft money to combat Gov. Schwartzengger's redistricting ballot initiative.

California's congressional and state legislative districts are perfect example of what is wrong with the current system. There are ZERO competitive races in California except those that are state-wide races. Every single district that was carved out by the state legislature-- either for themselves or their congressional delegation-- are hopelessly partisan such that the only campaigns occur when the incumbent dies/retires/resigns in scandal and there is a pitched primary fight. Otherwise, voters can and do mostly stay home. This is why our democracy is in danger, because of greedy folks like Congressmen Berman and Doolittle (aptly named if you ask me).

I don't know if I support the specifics of Prop. 77, or the way in which signatures were gathered, but I do approve of removing redistricting duties from state legislators or other partisan and/or elected officials.

The only good thing I can say about Gerrymandering is that one Rep. way back felt the need to come up with the Bill of Rights to win in his Federalist district. But back then, redistricting was a brute alchemy. Today, with decades of computerized voting totals and computer projections based on race, income, marital status, church attendance, etc. these hacks can virtually guarantee a 10 year term for a 2 year office in the House of "Representatives"

The nutjob that never was

With the release of the pre-screened John Roberts files of the Reagan Administration, the Salt Lake Tribune noticed a familiar name was in the running for what became O'Connor's seat: Dallin Oaks, a then-Utah Supreme Court Justice and soon thereafter a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which, like the U.S. Supreme Court, is a lifetime appointment).



"Bruce Fein, then an associate deputy attorney general, said people like Oaks and future nominee Robert Bork were researched, but they were second-tier prospects because of their gender." And remember how the GOP got all over Clinton for seeking out only women for certain appointments-- like AG, Supreme Court, etc.? Sound like another case of "you're OK if you're a Republican" or otherwise known as hypocrisy. "There weren't anybody but women considered virtually from the start," said Fein, "It wasn't any discredit to Dallin. Bork and [now-Justice Antonin] Scalia weren't in the running either because they weren't women." Bork, Scalia and Oaks in the same breath, you get the idea.

"All this prognostication that this would make Reagan a hero in the female community was absurd, and we ended up with a moderate, then a liberal" in O'Connor, whines Fein. "All those kind of wobbly, non-constitutional or extra-constitutional standards never would have seen the light of day, because she was a vital vote in those cases." I guess he is still bitter they let O'Connor get the nod over those "Constitution in Exile" folks who want to turn the clock back to 1937. O'Connor was a smart pick, there was no real way for Democrats to oppose her and she became the Defacto Chief Justice because of her political savviness. Any liberal progress in the O'Connor court has been lurching yet gradual. I have a hard time crediting or blaming her for launching a new era of Warren Court like liberalism. However, without her, Roe might have been overturned in 1992 with Casey and although she didn't author Lawrence v. Texas or Atkins v. Virginia, they wouldn't have happened without her. Padilla v. Bush also might not have happened.

I am doing a Lexis Nexis search (thanks law school) on his opinions pre-1984 and really focusing on the pre-1981 period, when he was under consideration. Then we can see why folks like Fein liked him.

another dissipointing weekend

So on Friday, we put in an offer above list price, and STILL lost the house by Saturday. I wonder how much more the other buyer offered, but I am sure they are overpaying. Still, in a way I am happy because I want to be able to get a place on my own without so much financial dependance on our parents to make up the difference between what the bank will finance us for and what we have to offer to get the place.

Even worse was the places we looked at on Saturday, a tiny condo facing a busy highway that leads to I-80/215, a small house on 1st Ave that looks like it was 1950 since anyone stepped inside it. I guess I need to come face to face with my poverty and general craziness of the housing market, but still. Every day that goes by without sucess makes me sadder and sadder since that means I will have to live at my parents for that much longer.

Not that they are terrible, but once you hit a certain age, living with your parents becomes an incredibly annoying and stressful experience, particularly when you have experienced living without them and then have to move back home.

I Raq N Roll

Our T-shirt of the month (hattip to Atrios):




Clint will be the featured singer for the DoD's jinoistic May Day Parade...I mean "America Supports Freedom Walk" on the 4th Anniversary of 9.11.01. Freedom, according to the Neo-Con chicken hawks, means giving your full name and telephone number to the government to do a background check to walk with others from the Pentagon to the National Mall to hear right-wing country music star Clint Black.

You can count me out. I walked for Freedom when I strolled into my polling location on November 2, 2004. I guess not enough of us did because now we have four more years of these jokers in charge.

Deja-Vu all over again

It's the dead of August. The DC press is bored because there is nothing to do in the District, and the President's "ranch" is in the middle of nowhere in a dry town. He is taking the longest vacation in over 30-some-odd years.

Bush's poll numbers are well below 50%, people are wonder why they voted for the guy. They don't believe the guy more and more. Democrats are talking about regaining Congress in the mid-term elections next year.

Really it could be the year 2001 or the year 2005. The only difference is this year, we have a woman camped outside his compound whose lost her son in Bush's war that has gone increasingly South. With no end in sight and nothing to do, the press talk to Cindy Sheehan. The right wing noise machine attempted their tried and true Swift Boating. But it seems cheep and biter on your average citizen, and not a public servant or a candidate for office.

Maybe I really can buy into all the talk of the implosion of the Bush-Cheney machine. They have indictments on one of their biggest assests on K Street, whose linked to several powerful members of Congress, including the House Majority Leader. You have the likely indictments of Bush's "brain" and Cheney's "right hand man" in the fall, and it all circling back to the increasingly unpopular War in Iraq. Their are hints that the Plame investigation links back the temporary U.N. Ambassador and the manufactured causus belli for the War.

I can only dream of a Cheney '08 campaign. Almost any Democratic Nominee (maybe even the hapless Kerry) would stomp him into a Dukakis-like drubbing, by running against the Bush-Cheney record the VP's amazing ability to be on the wrong side of a policy decision almost every time throughout Bush's presidency. A close second dream GOP nominee for me would be Bill Frist, the Senate Majority leader tied to indicted vote suppressor in New Hampshire. Frist is also famous for flip-flopping on which GOP interest group he panders to most, the business lobby or the religious extremists. Dr. Bill has also been a terrible Majority Leader in terms of actually getting the president's agenda through the Senate and making his GOP collegues look good. Tied for third place would be Sen. Brownback and Rep. Tancredo, who represent the extreme Right-to-Life and anti-Immigrant wings of the GOP, respectively.

NARAL is NA-wrong

There is something about Roberts that spooks me. Maybe it is deep blue eyes, his smile, his youth, and his hidden ideology. In his 2.5 years on the DC circuit bench, he has done a great job of keeping his head down and following in Reinquist's footsteps as GOP political hack to Supreme Court Justice.

Even though I am basically pro-choice (because I believe in the right to privacy), there are many things I disagree with NARAL. This TV ad is one of them. First of all, on style: it features a lady who was bombed at an abortion clinic talking about how her life has changed etc. but her quotes say nothing about John Roberts. The whole thing is super tenuous.

Why is NARAL making such a ridiculous ad? They figure if the religious right is so excited about Roberts, he must be radically pro-life. And him preparing an Amicus Brief for Operation Rescue makes one rightfully think there is something to NARAL's guess.

We would all be better served if the White House would just release these papers and we could get a better picture of what Roberts really stands for, rather than just guessing based on associations (Federalist Society, Operation Rescue) and side legal work (LAMBA Defense League). Because right now, it looks like he is pro-Corporation, wildly pro-life, and yet pro-gay rights.

On J. Golden Pond

Well reality drove home Saturday afternoon when my parents arrived home from their weeklong vacation. Now it is clear that we have 4 people living in the house with 3 cars and 3 jobs.

We took my mom with us on Sunday to look at a place. I have to say that we are good detectives. First some one told us the previous owner died of brain cancer. But on our second tour of the condo, I noticed a Rx bottle on the floor. On it was the person's name and what used to be in the bottle. When we got home, we learned that the medication was for depression and that the previous owner died of non-Hodgkins Lyphoma about a year ago (we found the obituary). We also now know she had two cats, which to the renovator's credit, you can't smell. She sounds like a great lady.

Overall we like the actual unit, with a nice location, good size (1530 sq. ft.), 2 beds , 2 baths, and over all nice appliances etc. The major downsides are that the HOA fees are high for seemingly no purpose (nearly $200 with no pool etc.) and that the exterior of the building needs lots of work. My bet is that the two are related. So it is still in the running, but we have some serious doubts.


Why the title? Utahns and LDS church members will know that J. Golden Kimball was the "swearing elder" who lived in Utah from the day the Mormon Pioneers came into the Salt Lake Valley until 1938. On Sunday night, my wife and I volunteered at KUED for those telethons. I was one of those schucks answering the phones. It was actually quite fun because we were placed with irreverant Barnes and Noble employees and friends and we got a free dinner and tour of the studio. But the show "On the Road with J. Golden Kimball" was the last one to play and it brought the money pouring into KUED. People love the folk stories of "Uncle Golden" as told by his grandnephew Jim Kimball, who died last May of brain cancer (see how it ties together with the condo?). If even half the stories are true, Uncle Golden was quite a funny man and good figure for the church that has a reputation for taking itself too seriously.

I hereby gladly accept any and all J. Golden Kimball stories in this comment thread.

Out-Reagan

The cult of Ronald Reagan is too wierd for me. Before he was even dead, the House of Representatives were tripping over themselves to name stuff after him. Now Rep. Bonilla wants to renaming 16th St. in Northwest DC after him.

Did Democrats back in the day trip over themselves to name stuff after JFK and RFK? If so, at least they waited until the body was cold.

(Hat tip to AmericaBlog)

Sub-urban America

Channeling my favorite bit from Billmon:

I try to remind myself that not all Americans live in Clermont County [OH, county that gave GOPer Jean Schmidt her suspiciously late and recount proof margin over Democrat and Major Paul Hackett]or its vanilla wafer clones in the great suburban outback of GOP America. Maybe some of them still care about trivial things like lost wars and dead soldiers. Or maybe not. Maybe it takes something like $10-a-gallon gas -- or the mass abduction of young, pretty white women -- to get anybody's attention in this bizarre post-industrial shopping mall we now live in. Because at the moment, death, destruction and imperial humiliation a third of the way around the world still don't seem to be cutting through the fog.

Whisky Bar is always a joy to read. To me, he seems like Ed Kilgore's separated-at-birth twin. Only Billmon became a cursing liberal Democrat, and Ed became a witty Third Way-er. Both can write brilliant lines with ease and have personalities to match their prose.

Somedays I wake up and wish it was all a dream, that our President wasn't George W. Bush, and he hadn't been reelected and John Kerry hadn't been the nominee. It is just amazing to think of how different things would be if Al Gore or Wesley Clark were president instead. I guess it wouldn't fix suburban America though, with its miles and miles of strip malls filled with oversized portions of food, people, and vehicles.

Needless to say, I am still searching for a place in the city.

redistricting reform

Why is this important?

Did you realize that over 95% of Members of Congress are reelected with ease every year? I can tell you right now, it is not because over 95% Members of Congress are great Representatives, it is because the system is rigged.

Fewer than 30 districts out of 435, about 6 percent of the entire House of Representative will be competitive (i.e. the winner will capture 55-60% of the vote). Although the US Constitution sets out 2 year terms for Members of the House, in reality the terms of office for most members is at least 10 years.

Why? Because every ten years, local politicians in every state decide how to divide up their state into Congressional districts. The results are either incumbent/party protection-- like California and New York-- or purely partisan gain-- like North Carolina and Texas. The result is the elections of extremists, increased partisanship and decreased voter turnout.

There are only a few constraints with redistricting-- the districts must be equal in population size, and the districts can't be based on the race of the residents/voters. The courts have no problem with creating districts based on partisanship, leading Republicans in Texas to re-redistrict in 2003 after they made won some more seats in the state house. And now the source of the funding for those Republicans is under criminal investigation. Despite this, Democrats in states like Illinois and New Mexico contemplated re-redistricting their states.

Enough is enough. We can stop politicians from picking their voters by pushing through common sense reforms state by state. Ballot initiatives have already started in California and Ohio. Add your state to the list and bring representation back to the House of Representatives. Let the voters pick their politicans, not the other way around.

(cross-posted on Let The People Choose)

Close but...

Sorry for the long absense from posting. We have subsequently had several close calls on getting a condo but for one reason or another they fell through. This Saturday we moved out of our apartment and into my parent's basement with the help of my great friend Evan.

It is a bit sad to be back to the place where I lived in since 4th grade with no hope of our own place anytime soon. There appears to be almost nothing in our price range that is halfway decent near downtown/the law school.

Meanwhile, my summer job is winding down even though I will be staying on for the school year. I wonder if it will change a lot when the out of state clerks go back to school or when the graduated and bar examed law clerks get shoved out the door.

Tribby busts another Mormon myth

No, they didn't need to bother with the "Mormons have horns" or "Mormons have 10 wives" bigoted "myths," but instead the Salt Lake Tribune focused on the claim that the LDS church is the fastest growing church in the world. It's conclusion: false.

Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths - Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups - have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.
And most telling, the number of Latter-day Saints who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.

The 4 million number comes from counting the people on the Church rolls for every continential region and multiplying by the average Sunday attendance. In the early 1990s, Canada, the South Pacific, and the United States had between 40 percent and 50 percent. Europe and Africa, the average was 35 percent. Attendance in Asia and Latin America hovered around 25 percent.

This sounds like Missionaries are having a tough time keeping converts converted, or at least keeping them active in the church. Experts in the article say 70-80% are lost. Never the less, don't feel bad, there are more mormons than jews, and Judism is a major world religion.

The times they are a-changin'

The lead story in today's Salt Lake Tribune on this holiday weekend (for those of you who aren't from Utah, today is Pioneer Day, the day Brigham Young and his troops of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley with President Young proclaiming from a stretcher that "this is the place!") is that the LDS population in Utah, while growing is getting outpaced by non-LDS folks moving in/multiplying in state.

Within the next three years, the Mormon share of Utah's population is expected to hit its lowest level since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started keeping membership numbers. And if current trends continue, LDS residents no longer will constitute a majority by 2030.

To me, this story sounds strangly like those "Whites will be in the minority in California by 20XX" stories, with the same undertone that such an event is something to fear and not welcome.

I think having LDS folks in the minority in this state will only bring good things, and not because I dislike mormons, but because it will ease the stereotypes about the state and about the religion itself. Everytime someone meets me from out of state and I tell them I am from Utah, the first question they ask is: "Are you Mormon?" Maybe some day it will be "Do you ski like every weekend?" or something less centered about the dominant religious group of this state.
According to Church membership documents only 62.4% of the state's population is LDS. That is a lot lower than I have been telling friends from out of state (I thought it was 70%), but it doesn't mean Utah will become a cosmopolitan any-where USA state any time soon.

Professor Tim Heaton, who studies LDS demographics for church-owned Brigham Young University, says the county numbers probably come from church membership rolls, and that between half and one-third of those people are not active in the faith. If that's true, then, at most, 41.6 percent of Utahns are church-going Mormons.

This gradual change does mean that my children will grow up in a much different place than I did. And maybe Pioneer Day won't be big-to-do it is these days.

GOP Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr. (who is LDS) believes this will have political implications down the road as well-- believing that people of the LDS faith vote Republican and non-LDS vote Democratic. "We will become more balanced between Republicans and Democrats eventually," he said, which he later added was a good thing of which he has always been supportive. This is why Jon Jr. has one of the highest approval ratings of any governor in the nation right now. That and people in this state hold a great deal of respect/deference for authority.

This article is the shocker opening article to a series that the Trib will be doing through Tuesday. I think I will be reading them carefully. Very interesting stuff. Like how the fertility rate has nearly halved since the 1960s in this state-- 4.3 to 2.6 kids/woman makes me think many LDS women are either secretly using birth control, or they are gaining more say over the family than they did 40 years ago. Stay tuned.

Photo of the Day

credit: Joan's Lewis & Clark Geek Page/DailyKos

I am sure this was just a party gag, but when you get your picture wearing a button like that, which is making a false statement about something that has prompted a Grand Jury investigation with Special Prosecutor...It ain't all that funny anymore. Especially when you are posing with the rotting corpse who started the whole mess. I have seen Novak in person, and he really is a short, giagantic headed, nastly fat, old white man.

Don't those two make a pair though? They sure deserve each other, as goes CNN and Novak for their little lovefest and spiral down the tubes. It feels like it was only yesterday that they were a respectible world leader in 24 reporting. Now...they are Fox News, Jr. At least CNN international is like the CNN of old, only with more caring about the world around the US. Personally, if I could swap the two without going to super fancy cable, I would.

radar jamming Roberts

The Bush Aministration still has a few tricks up its sleeves and the MSM is still lazy and dumb, or it just seems that way. Rove's wrecking crew pretended several O'Conner-esque judges were in the running, including syncophant Alberto Gonzales, but then pulled out the old standby: a classic "Stealth Nominee."

John Roberts is a partisan political hack who has movie star good looks, youth (50 years old), stellar resume, and most importantly, no track record. Yet the American Taliban must know something the press doesn't since they are pleased with this pick, saying repeatedly that he is Scalia/Thomas II. This guy clerked for Rehnquist, wrote George Bush I's amicus brief pushing to overturn Roe for a case where the landmark case wasn't even at issue. He was part of the BC2000 Florida recount legal team, he wrote amicus briefs in support of "Operation Rescue," the hyper-pro-life group that is one step removed from abortion clinic bombers like Eric Rudolph.

We need to pressure the media to cover both Roberts' "secret" life of a paleo-conservative and Rove et al's illegalities. To put it into cult TV show terms if "The West Wing"'s Josh and Bailey outed "Alias"' Marshall to score political points for the rush to Pres. Bartlet's war, 75% of Americans would say that is dead wrong and that Josh and Bailey should be in the slammer. And if CJ lied to Danny about it all, well same deal. Next imagine Bartlet and his staff deciding to float their secretly super-liberal nominee in sooner than expected after Josh and Bailey got in trouble with a special prosecutor. One would rightfully be skeptical about their motives and not let up just because the subject was changed.

But in the real world, our so-called journalists (TV-face-time whores) are like goldfish. "Oh look, a treasure chest!...Oh look, a castle!...Oh look, a treasure chest!"

tired of waiting

Right now I am waiting until it is 6 o'clock and I can get off work. So I can wait to see if my copy of Harry Potter has arrived 4 days late (thanks Amazon), so I can wait a week to find out how to add/drop courses for next year. Before that, I get to wait until Bush announces his Supreme Court nominee, so I can wait for the information and nomination process, so I can wait for Patrick Fitzgerld to counter the distraction by handing down grand jury indictments on folks like Karl Rove.

And then I can wait to find the perfect house/condo, so I can make an offer, and wait to find out what the buyer thinks, and then wait until closing. So I can live in a cramped basement apartment on a month-to-month basis, or move back in with my parents.

When I was younger, I kept hearing people telling me to wait until I was older, and I still feel like I am waiting for something, until I am done with law school, until 2008/impeachment, until whatever. Well, as someone who was diagnosed with ADD as a child, I can't stand waiting (any longer). Some say life is a journey. I am begging to wonder if it isn't just a line at the DMV.

a growing niche job

It is amazing to see how bloggers have become a normal high-level position to fill in big campaigns. In just a few years we have gone from novelity to must-haves for part of the communications and fundraising wings of campaigns.

I am pleased to know at least one of them: Matt Stoller. In the summer of 2003 he was a blogger extrodiniare and Clark Draftee. By the summer of 2005 he is on his second major campaign as blogger. First, he worked for Simon Rosenburg in his big for DNC chair, now he is working for Sen. Corzine in his bid for NJ governor. There are others like him. Folks like Tim Tagaris, who works for GrowOhio.org a pre-Senate grassroots site for US Rep. Sharrod Brown (D-OH) and a PA US Senate candidate whose name I have trouble spelling. He also blogs on SwingStateproject and all the other major democratic blogs.

Of course, I am sure Webmasters used to be a new fangled thing, but now a serious campaign couldn't imagine not having a website, even those running for city council. And before that, it was the TV guy or the Radio guy or the Telephone guy (they were all men I am sure back then).

What will the future bring, and am I too late to get on the blog consultant bandwagon? By the time law school is over, I won't have much of a chance to get on board at a high level of a campaign that is national. Maybe a state-wide one in my beloved state of Utah, but even there I may be too far behind the curve. Still, I always love sharing my thoughts with you all and getting some input.

As an aside, if you have any public interest law topics you would like to speak in public about to the U law students, please contact me. Or if you have any suggestions for events, also feel free to contact me.

Quote of the Day

From the New York Times: "After his conversation with Mr. Cooper, The Associated Press reported Friday, Mr. Rove sent an e-mail message to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, saying he 'didn't take the bait' when Mr. Cooper suggested that Mr. Wilson's criticisms had been damaging to the administration."

The bait huh? So I guess Karl wasn't "correcting a false report" like his defenders say he was. Sounds like he was hoping some idiot member of the MSM would pick up his lie and say something like "But Senior Administration officals insist that Amb. Wilson was sent on the mission by his wife, Valarie Plame, a covert CIA operative." There goes that talking point.

long time no update

Dear faithful readers,

I appologize for my week-long absense from the blogging world. My newly minted wife and I have entered the world of real estate while simultiously trying to move out of our apartment. We have made one offer already, but then thought better of it and are now contemplating making an offer on another place. I will be sure to send you all photos if we do. I have returned from my honeymoon and began to dive back into motions gallore at the District Attorney's office.

Meanwhile, the vultures are starting to circle in closer on Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush White House. People are beginning to realize that they do not care about national security, only about how their policies appear to the American voter. They do so by deamonizing their enemies, making them seem what BushCo. really is: weak, politically-centered, poll-driven, and willing to do anything to win an election, even if it means putting people's lives at risk (military and civilian).

Even more dangerous than jeparizing the lives of Vallerie Plame and her contacts to scare off future intelligence community whistleblowers, in my opinion, was the announcement of an important Al Qaeda arrest shortly after the Democratic Convention in the summer of 2004. Prof. Juan Cole points out that this announcement to the world that certain information givers on Al Qaeda had been compromised and stunted a British investigation into cells in their country that were likely involved in last week's bombings of Central London. This was no "accidental leak" like Karl Rove's to Bob Novak and Matthew Cooper, this was a press event by then-DHS Sec. Tom Ridge, who wouldn't have tied his shoelaces without Rove's, and ultimately George Walker Bush's, consent.

How dare they wrap themselves in the flag, dress up in uniforms, and pretend they have our country's best interests at heart? How dare they call veterans like John Kerry waffling political opportunists, career civil servants like Richard Clarke and Joseph Wilson partisan hacks, when it they are only describing themselves?

This is the most politically divisive, inempt, lying, politically-motivated, partisan thugish Administration since Nixon's. And in someways, they surpass that group of criminals. The Bush folks don't give a damn about abortion, gay marriage, or anything else religious conservatives care about, they just pretend to care because a solid 35% of voters do that they can decieve religious conservatives into voting for these morally corrupt individuals.

The more I think about what they are doing to our county and to our relations with the world and our citizen's safety, the madder and more sickened I become. Read this Op-Ed from General Clark to see how it should be done.

Something every group can hate

What's that? A hate/stereotype filled reality show called "Welcome to the Neighborhood" that ABC just canceled under pressure from all sorts of groups. Rare is the day when the FRC (Family Research Counsel) and GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) are united in their dislike in the characterizations on the same show.

FRC hated it because it made their clientele- Rich, White, Religious Conservatives from Red States- come off as moral bigots. GLAAD disliked how the FRC-types found the gay couple on the show's affection for another "disgusting."

Hispanics were mocked as overbreeding animals. I don't know what things they had in store for the black family, or the pierced family, or the family with a Wiccan, or the family with a stripper.

"Why should people of color and others ... be humiliated and degraded to teach white people not to be bigots?" said Shanna Smith, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. "That's not good for race relations in America."

What's really not good for race relations in America is how semi-self-segregated our country is becoming. Why is it that this neighborhood is filled with White people? Why is it there are Black neighborhoods and Hispanic neighborhoods and Gay neighborhoods? Why is it that schools over the last several decades have become as segregated now as they were pre-Brown v. Board of Education? Do Americans of different sorts really not like each other that much? Is the melting pot really a salad bowl? Or is it due to the widening gap between rich and poor, between the suburbs and the inner cities?

Studies have shown that when people call about housing with a "black voice" or a "gay voice" they get different responses as to the housing's availability than if a "white voice" calls (I am sure the same would happen for a "hispanic voice" or an "asian voice"). I would like to think that things really have changed a lot since the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, but has it really?

Sure, ethnic and racial minorities (and openly out homosexuals) now have the ability to move into the middle class and upper management and to move into any neighborhood they please, the color lines are gone. But yet, you still don't see very many truely diverse neighborhoods in Suburbs or in cities like Chicago or Washington, DC.

Debasing shows like "Welcome to the Neighborhood" to me show that we still have a long ways to go in the battle for civil rights. Even a coalition of GLAAD and FRC can't make that ugly fact go away.