Elections 2002

Dick Howe blogs about the Election of 2002, when Republicans in Lowell ran a full slate and gave the voters an option.

Regards  —  Cliff

Tea Party Spreads

OK, now we know the Tea Party Movement is out of control.

Here is a post on a Tea Party at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

The Tatanka Oyate Tea Party will hold an organization meeting focusing on traditional Lakota rights and Second Amendment freedoms from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 6, at the Fire Lightning Tiyospaye Building in Wounded Knee.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Sun on Maggie Marshall

I previously blogged on Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stepping down.  Here.

Now The Lowell Sun has come out with an editorial generally complimentary of the departing Ms Marshall.♠

Margaret H. Marshall has a great story to tell and we can't wait for her book, if she ever decides to write one.

The Editorial Writer does note that with the Goodridge decision the Marshall Court may have hurt the issue of gay marriage.

While Marshall takes credit for safeguarding the judicial branch's independence from political influence, her stridency has earned the SJC the label of an "activist court."  The best example is the landmark case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003) in which gay marriage was legalized through litigation rather than legislation in a controversial 4-3 ruling.  Seven years later, however, only four other states grant civil marriages to gays while 30 states have adopted constitutional measures against same-sex marriage.  Instead of generating a transcontinental wave of gay-marriage laws, as most supporters envisioned, Massachusetts' activist ruling had an opposite effect:  It produced a backlash across America as a majority of states moved to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Still, Marshall and the SJC can lay claim to a trailblazing victory or sorts:  Forty states have expanded their civil-union laws to guarantee equal benefits for couples of all sexes.

There were a couple of other rulings that the Editorial Writer objected to, including Brasi Development Corp. v. Attorney General

Brasi Development Corp. v. Attorney General (2010): The SJC overturned a Middlesex Superior Court ruling -- and sided with Attorney General Martha Coakley -- saying a private developer's lease agreement to build a multimillion-dollar dormitory for UMass Lowell, via the Request for Proposal process, skirted the state's competitive public-bidding law. The SJC went to technical extremes to support the attorney general, who was acting at the behest of a pro-union group crying foul for losing out to a nonunion contractor. While noting that the state's public-construction law failed to adequately address parameters for construction leases, the SJC interpreted the inconsistencies as an end-around the existing law, siding with Coakley's reasoning to kill the nonunion developer's project.

UMass Lowell officials have since dropped plans for a new dormitory, terming any public-construction option as cost-prohibitive to students and taxpayers.

I am not sure this is so much a hit on the Supreme Judicial Court as it is on Attorney General Martha Coakley.  She could not leave well enough alone.  Now we have nothing.  The SJC just wandered down the path to to much bureaucracy and not enough common sense.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Remember, articles in The Sun go away after a while, to a different place.  I will not be updating their links unless I am bedridden and have read every book in the house.

Will The Free Press Protect Us?

Over at The Washington Post is this article by Reporter William Booth about the Mexican Press along the border with the United States.  Apparently the Press isn't talking about what the drug cartels are up to.

Here is how the article starts:

Two weeks ago, Mexican soldiers clashed here with drug cartel gangsters in running gun battles that lasted five hours. The outlaws hijacked vehicles, including a bus, for use as barricades and battering rams. Terrified residents scrambled for safety. At least a dozen people were killed, including bystanders. Children were wounded in the crossfire.

Not a single word about it appeared in the local news media.

Nuevo Laredo has three television news channels, four daily newspapers and at least five radio stations that broadcast news, but every outlet ignored the biggest story of the year. Nuevo Laredo is not an isolated village but the busiest city along the U.S.-Mexico border, a vital U.S. trade partner with a population of 360,000, professional sports teams, universities and an international airport.

Fearing for their lives and the safety of their families, journalists are adhering to a near-complete news blackout, under strict orders of drug smuggling organizations and their enforcers, who dictate -- via daily telephone calls, e-mails and news releases -- what can and cannot be printed or aired.

I know that Nuevo Laredo is a long ways away.  About 1900 Statute Miles (or, for those of you using the communist scale, 3048.7 kilometers).  There is a theory that the drug cartels will never get here.  The basis of that theory is that they don't want to stir up the US Government (and People) and they are content to take our money and destroy the United Mexican States in the process.  If you are under 50 years of age you should be concerned about the validity of this theory.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Civil War in Four Minutes

I think this video clip gives a good quick overview of the US Civil War, at a week of time every second of play, through that long and bloody war.

We lost 2% of our population or 620,000 people in that war.  On the other hand, it ended slavery, although the lack of follow-through on the part of the Union meant that Segregation was able to slowly build into the Twentieth Century.

I did get in trouble this AM for suggesting that Jefferson Davis was the worst President the Democrats have every coughed up.  :-)

Regards  —  Cliff

What is Going On Here?

Why this game of chicken between the Legislature and the Governor?

Is this a "gambling" addiction?

Regards  —  Cliff

Racism in America

Over at God's Politics Blog, a blog by the Reverend Jim Wallis and friends (and the Sojourner Community, down in Washington), we have a discussion of Race by Edward Gilbreath.

Here is the beginning:

The Shirley Sherrod incident, the latest stumble in our nation’s clumsy dance with race, should be the one that finally breaks us out of our rut of racial dysfunction and shows us that we’ve got to change our moves if we’re ever going to advance to a more meaningful discourse on the subject race relations in America.

But it won’t be.

We’ll continue to play our respective race cards, working ourselves into stalemates of anger and cynicism … casting blame and derision on others over perceived slights, both real and imagined … barricading ourselves behind walls of suspicion and resentment. And the end result: We’ll continue to be just as clueless and divided as we were before.

Post-racial? Ha! More like post-human, as we’ve become comfortable with the practice of turning people who are different from us or with whom we disagree into ugly labels, devils that we can rightfully attack or simply ignore.

There it is in a nutshell.  While I don't agree totally with Mr Gilbreath's analysis of what went on with regard to the Shirley Sherrod imbroglio, his opening paragraph says a lot.

Here is a paragraph that speaks to me, but drew some criticism of the author:

Calling a white person a “racist” has in many ways become the equivalent of calling a black person a nigger. White people are tired of being repeatedly cast as the villains in our nation’s racial drama, especially when it seems political correctness forbids them from broaching racial topics while blacks and other ethnic groups are free to bash whites for their racial prejudice. This perception of a double standard looms large in our dealings with race, and it will hinder our efforts at progress unless we’re all able to engage in frank communication about these tough subjects without fear of being labeled a racist.

This paragraph spilled over into other blogs and from Mr Gilbreath's blog there is a link to the blog of David Swanson, where the subject is hashed over.

From my own point of view, I see the too free use of the term Racist as a tool for trying to limit me in the public square.  That is what I think was happening when the NAACP made the acquisition against the Tea Party Movement.  There is for sure racism out there, but it needs to be dealt with in a laser like fashion and not used as a justification to shut up people one might not agree with politically.

At the end of the article the author brings out the most taboo word in the English language in the US today—sin.

Finally, as we engage each other across racial and cultural lines on these difficult subjects, we must start thinking less in terms of racism and more in terms of sin. Many take issue with the notion that there’s such a thing as “reverse racism,” because the balance of power in this nation would need to have always been equal in order for that to be true. While those matters remain a topic for honest debate, for Christians one thing is indisputable: We all stand on level ground when it comes to sin. The Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). When we acknowledge that, we realize that we are all guilty of stereotyping, of falsely accusing our neighbor, of harboring prejudice, suspicion, and ill will toward those who are not from our particular interest group.

We have to be willing to rediscover the true meaning of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, that it’s not some hackneyed truism or the cute poetry of a Middle Eastern hippie. Loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is at the center of everything we’re supposed to be about as Christians, and those Americans who argue that we are a Christian nation should be the first ones living out this “love your neighbor as yourself” truth. Unfortunately, when ideology becomes our idol, disregarding our neighbor can become the acceptable thing to do, especially if the story about something she did two decades ago can be conveniently manipulated to make our political point.

A very good point, that.

Regards  —  Cliff