the daily snivel

  If you can't beat 'em, kill em.

Oh, for fuck's sake. The Wingnuts who want to install a theocracy in the United States have decided that an independent judiciary is a threat to their plans for Dominion, apparently forgetting everything they learned in grade school about the constitution, about separation of powers, and checks and balances:

Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.    [emphasis added]

A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."

"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," Schlafly said to applause yesterday. One worker at the event wore a sticker declaring "Hooray for DeLay."

The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents; Alabama's "Ten Commandments" judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral.

The Schlafly session's moderator, Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a "radical secularist relativist judiciary." It turned more harsh from there.

Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.

I'm in essay and exam mode for the next few days. I have a paper due on Monday and an exam on Friday. But this just outraged me beyond words. You may disagree with the decisions made by judges, but their place is to protect against the tyranny of the majority, and to uphold the constitution to strike down illegal laws and prevent political whims from running over the rule of law. 

  Rob is Blown Away

I just received an e-mail from the Director of the Legal Clinic informing me that after counting the votes cast by all 40 law students working at the Clinic this school year, I won the Greenspon Brown Award. I maintain that my good friend Karla was a much worthier candidate, and I intend to remind her of this today, but it's still a very gratifying accomplishment and I am touched that I am so well thought of by the people around me. When the nominations were announced earlier this week at our General Meeting, the Director read out some of the comments left by other students in their nomination forms. Let me tell you that I was blushing and hiding my face as these were read out. The comments glowed with praise and sung wondrous tales of my big heart, helpful nature, and tendency to not leave the Clinic until the wee hours.

Truth be told, I am quite veklempt. Very happy, and very humbled. 

  First the bad news, then the good news.

My dear friend Natalie has been in and out of the hospital for the past couple of days, and I hope you will join me in wishing her well and a speedy recovery. She's been discharged now, with a big prescription of antibiotics and some painkillers, but it was really worrisome for awhile there, especially because it took so long for all the tests and specialists to figure out what was actually wrong. All they could tell was that she was in extreme pain and needed morphine and, when that no longer worked, demerol. Last night, I was asked to go to her house to cat-sit at her home since she hadn't been home since going to the hospital the night before, and I spent a good six hours petting and taking care of two very nervous and lonesome beasties.

Get well soon, Nat.

The good news, though it's scant compared to my relief to hear that Natalie was home, responding to her antibiotics, and feeling better, is that I had my final driving lesson today, and passed my simulated road test. This means I am now qualified to book my road test, eight months after getting my G1 permit, confident that I have become comfortable with the mechanics and handling of a car, and the rules of the road. It was a very satisfying accomplishment, almost as much as actually passing the Official Ministry of Transportation of Ontario Road Test itself. That said, I think when I have a couple of extra dollars, I'm going to book some more lessons, just because I'm going to be a little busy this month with exams and papers, and I don't want to get too rusty in my driving skills before I take the test in May or June. It's very hard to practice since I don't have access to a car, and this way I'll stay comfortable and get even more confident.

All the same -- hooray! 

  Among other things

I was nominated this week for the Greenspon Brown award, which has been an ongoing award here at the University of Ottawa Community Legal Clinic for many years after it was donated by the law firm of Karam, Greenspon and Associates (now Greenspon, Brown and Associates) in recognition of Clinic students who have made a significant contribution to the files and members of the Clinic. The special thing about the award is that you have to be nominated by at least two fellow students, with reasons, and only the students at the Clinic can vote on the ultimate recipient. Along with myself, two of my very good friends were also nominated, which I admit has put me in a bind.

I admit I would love my little name to live on, engraved on the plaques than hang on our conference room wall, especially since I so admire and respect (and nominated) the student who won last year, who is currently articling here as my supervisor. It also comes with a modest bursary, which again would be quite delightful.

On the other hand, I was talking with one of the other nominees, and he and I agreed that the third nominee was really one of the unsung heroes of the Clinic. She's a swell person who has worked hard on the Steering Committee, supervised her division with grace and skill, and while very well liked and appreciated by everyone, nevertheless hasn't gotten the big prizes, such as I did when I won the Clarey B. Sproule Memorial Bursary, or my also-nominated colleague did when he got hired here to help out with research for the criminal division this summer.

So, we both agreed it was time to vote for our good friend, which we did, yesterday. Everyone's wishing me luck, and again I'm torn, but in the end I'd be very happy if my good friend won instead ... though, OK, perhaps I'd be just as happy if we tied and were awarded it together.

What an award whore am I.

***

As another aside, let me say that there will be a ruling from the judge at the head of the Gomery Inquiry into the Liberal Party sponsorship scandal today about whether or not the publication ban will be lifted, which will probably result in some furious discussion about whether this government is going down or not. You might have noticed that I spend a lot of time talking about US politics, but less about Canadian. I think, on the whole, that the wingnutty culture in the US is just so freaking scary that it captivates my horrified attention and outrage. Canada has pockets of the same, but the US is really a chilling example of what could come, and I'm anxious to see those fires put out.

Still, I think it is time to take more of an interest in local issues as well, which is certainly in the works and I'll be able to talk about (and read more about) if the publication ban is lifted. I'm no fan of the Liberal Party, but we as Canadians have put ourselves in a silly quandary by concluding that there are only two options -- the Liberals or the Conservatives -- and preferring sleazy and corrupt to freaky and scary. I personally think it's time to put a progressive party in power that can balance some amount of fiscal prudence with genuine progressive and constitutionally justifiable stances on issues that Canadians care about.

As it stands right now, given the waste, corruption, ideology, and non-denial-denials, neither the Liberal Party nor the Conservatives can honestly lay a claim to either priority. 

  Back, you ghouls!

During the height of the sad fiasco involving Terri Schiavo, her husband, and her parents, a memo was circulated amongst Republican lawmakers with talking points intended to be used to play up the issue as a way for Republicans to score points, excite their base, and put the Democrats on the defensive. In other words, use this family's suffering for crass political opportunism (was there ever any doubt)?

ABC News has obtained talking points circulated among Republican senators explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them: "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited..." and "This is a great political issue... this is a tough issue for Democrats."

Of course, the right-wing blogs were quick to claim the memo was a forgery and a "dirty trick." Chief among those creating a ruckus were the lugubriously fluffed wankers at Powerline [no link to thee from me], aka Time Magazine's foolishly chosen "blog of the year" (for their overly hyped and ultimately discredited sleuthing which they nevertheless took credit for when it was revealed that the Texas Air National Guard "Killian Memos" were most likely forgeries -- these being the documents that brought an end to Dan Rather's career).

So shrill was the cry that no such "crudely written" memo could really have been written and circulated by Republicans that Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post jumped on the story and also declared that it must not be authentic. Of course, while one should always be critical and skeptical of documents that seem too-good-to-be-true (or, if they make your preferred line of thought look bad, horribly embarrassing), the fact is that Republicans did cynically exploit this issue to appease the pro-life fringes, and just as cynically backed off when polls indicated that the majority of Americans believed that their interventionw as politically motivated and constitutionally unjustifiable.

Anyway, the legal counsel to Republican Florida Senator Mel Martinez, just admitted today that he wrote the memo which Martinez then passed along. As they say: when the shoe fits, wear it:

The legal counsel to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) admitted yesterday that he was the author of a memo citing the political advantage to Republicans of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, the senator said in an interview last night. Brian Darling, a former lobbyist for the Alexander Strategy Group on gun rights and other issues, offered his resignation and it was immediately accepted, Martinez said.

Martinez said he earlier had been assured by aides that his office had nothing to do with producing the memo. "I never did an investigation, as such," he said. "I just took it for granted that we wouldn't be that stupid. It was never my intention to in any way politicize this issue."

Blogs get things wrong all the time, which is why I continually maintain that the triumphalism and hype about how the "blogosphere" will kill mainstream media dead is so much bosh and flimshaw. What is redeeming is when you take ownership of your mistakes and admit to them. I read a lot of blogs (see the column of links to the right), generally quite lefty, and I'm not ashamed to say I find the intellectual honesty of those writers and commenters to be on the whole much more rigorous than the likes of Free Republic, Powerline, Little Green Footballs, and of course the wildly insane Adam Yoshida [again, no links for thee from me]. Will the mea culpas and retractions from these esteemed, frequently-called-upon-for-panels-on-blogging-ethics types start rolling in? I wouldn't hold my breath.