Name That Nominee

In today's installment on knee-jerk hypocrisy, you will be presented with a quote from a recent nominee to the Supreme Court that displays a nakedly empathetic approach to decision-making based on the ethnicity, religion or gender of the plaintiff rather than a dispassionate review of the law and facts of the case.

Then you get to guess which of the most recent activist-judge nominees made the statement in question.

The correct answer will be revealed in the comments. Good luck.

I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

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A Signing, a sign, a fall, a rising.

Today, Governor Baldacci signed a bill to legalize the fact of Gay Marriage in the state of Maine: LD 1020 "An Act to End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom."

Nearly 25 years ago, Charlie Howard was pitched from a bridge above Kenduskeag Stream in Bangor by three teenagers. Charlie, who could not swim, drowned in the middle of down town Bangor.

Within days of his murder, the bridge had been tagged, "Faggots Jump Here."

The boys who killed him were eventually convicted, as juveniles, of manslaughter.

With the signing of LD 1020, there has been some talk about how far we've come. And we have come a ways, I suppose.

But just in February, 25 year old Scott Libby was strangled with a belt and beaten to death with a frying pan, thrown in a car and left parked on railroad tracks. Basically, because he was gay. Agostino Samson, the man alleged to have killed him, had known Libby for seven years and had been employed by him for a short time.

Samson told police he punched Libby in the nose twice after Libby made sexual advances toward him.

And yet,

According to the affidavit, Samson called Libby's mother, Nancy, of Raymond on Feb. 20 to say he had heard about Libby's death from his sister. Nancy Libby told police Samson "appeared to be crying quite hard on the telephone."

Few of the facts in that case have come out. Yet in spite of the limited story, you'd think the media would be all over it. For all the drama involved (beating, debts owed, a fairly complex attempt to mask a murder by creating a train accident), the local press just doesn't seem all that interested. All the salacious details would ordinarily indicate prime local newsfodder.

The train tracks have yet to be tagged, so I suppose our progress is shown less in the lack of violence than in the lack of glee attending it.

Certainly there are enough people incensed at the idea of Gays Among Us that I believe a petition drive will be mounted. I do not know if it will succeed. In Maine, it will lack the open support of the Republican Party. That's a little progress, I guess.

It will also lack the active support of the Church of Latter Day Saints -- there just aren't that many Mormons in Maine. It will be supported, however, by the Catholic Church. Unlike the Mormons, there are enough Catholics in Maine for the diocese to feel a stake in the story.

The vote in the Maine House (89-57) indicates that there remains significant opposition to the separation of personal conviction from constitutional protection. And the facile conflation and straight misrepresentation of facts persists:

Assistant House Minority Leader Phil Curtis, R-Madison, said he worries how the bill will affect parenting, education and religious liberty.

"L.D. 1020, as printed, proposes a radical redefinition of marriage as we have known it to be for all of history," he said.

Yet the law is signed.

"We see the referendum as an opportunity," said Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. "Maine may well be the antidote to California."

Or, as my friend Doug said on the 'phone tonight, "The tide is rising."

And because

he's fallen for twenty-three years,
despite whatever awkwardness
his flailing arms and legs assume
he is beautiful

and like any good diver
has only an edge of fear
he transforms into grace.
Or else he is not afraid,

and in this way climbs back
up the ladder of his fall,
out of the river into the arms
of the three teenage boys

who hurled him from the edge-
really boys now, afraid,
their fathers' cars shivering behind them,
headlights on- and tells them

it's all right, that he knows
they didn't believe him
when he said he couldn't swim,
and blesses his killers

in the way that only the dead
can afford to forgive.

From "Charlie Howard's Descent"
by Mark Doty

Feeling a little pig-fluey?

After meeting with Mr. Obama, Sen. Collins expressed concern about a number of spending provisions, including $780 million for pandemic-flu preparedness. "I have no doubt that the president is willing to negotiate in good faith, that he wants to have a bipartisan bill," Sen. Collins said.

Thank goodness Maine's own Susan Collins had the foresight to strike that bit of spending from the stimulus bill. Standing strong on this particular 1/1000 of 1 percent of the bill in the name of fiscal discipline in these tough times must have been a hard row to hoe.



Anybody else feeling a bit of sniffle coming on?

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind

"They have deeply corrupted themselves...therefore God will remember their iniquity, God will visit their sins." Hosea 9:9

Jane Harmon's come-to-the-Lord moment is here:

"Maybe I'm even wiretapped now."

And what a surprise, right Jane? I mean, who could have imagined that plainly and vastly unconstitutional violations of privacy would ever be used against the Protectors of the Nation?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Suddenly, finally, and perhaps too late, the media. But only because it suits someone else's shadowy motives to bring down Congresswoman Harmon. But she deserves to be laid low. In 2005

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

That should have been enough to bring her under investigation. And indeed, it was:

[The Justice Department was] prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.

Representative Harmon was primed to fall into the crosshairs of the Bush Justice Department, headed by Alberto Gonzales. This was a dangerous place to be for a Democrat. Well, for most Democrats (and many ordinary citizens). But, oddly, not for Jane Harmon. In fact, Abu Ghonzales himself was looking out for her. Why?

Gonzales said he "needed Jane" to help support the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, "I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities."

Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.

And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

But now, years later, the tapes of the tapes made of the phone calls with the Israeli agent have come into the light. Somehow. And what do we hear from Ms. Jane Harmon, righteous defender of the integrity of the intelligence community?

"I am outraged that I may have been wiretapped by my government in 2005 or 2006 while I was ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee."

Earlier, on MNSBC, she expressed "disappoint[ment] that my country -- I'm an American citizen just like you are -- could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years." "I leave it to Glen Greenwald to sum this up precisely:

[W]hen the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was "both legal and necessary" as well as "essential to U.S. national security," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials. But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power.

Right wingers are fond of saying, "A liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet." Greenwald says, "a 'civil liberties extremist' is a former Bush-enabling, Surveillance State-defending Blue Dog who learns that their own personal conversations were intercepted by the same government that they demanded be vested with unchecked power."

Reap it, Jane.

Nice shot.

By now we've all heard of the rather dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips by the Navy and the SEAL team.

The first thing I thought of when I heard the story is the same thing some pundits are making much of: that's one hell of a shot -- times three.

Think about it: your target is between 100 and 300 feet away, and is about the size of lunch tray. You're bobbing up and down and side to side. Your target is also bobbing up and down and side to side, but on a different, faster rhythm. If you miss, the hostage could get shot (maybe even by you). It's dark enough that you need nightvision goggles.

So -- amazing shot, right?

But here's the kicker: all three guys made the same amazing shot at the same time.

I don't know whether to be proud or terrified.

Anyway, welcome home, Captain Phillips.

In a nutshell

6 minutes you won't regret spending.

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