] The defense claimed that the search at the airport in
] 2003 was not "reasonable" and therefore that evidence
] obtained from it should not be admitted. The Superior
] Court of California, County of San Mateo, is accustomed
] to dealing with cases that arose at the San Francisco
] Airport, but it's not particularly used to constitutional
] challenges to aviation screening procedures, nor to
] having multiple camera crews turn out for a single
] pre-trial evidentiary hearing in a misdemeanor drug
] possession case.

The outcome was as expected, it will be ongoing.

People vs. Barlow, recount

] Our goal here is to provide you information on who gave
] what to what political party this last election cycle.
] There are many factors which will eventually pertain to
] the "Blue-approved" label, however with buying season
] upon us, we quickly wanted to give people SOMETHING to go
] off of. Political donations and their effects are but one
] of many factors we will look at when a company is taken
] into consideration.

When I first saw this I kind of blew it off, but they have put together a fairly interesting list here. I recall a conversation with JLM years ago about political soft drinks. It begins.

Buy Blue Current Campaign

] Political elites, such as party activists and members of
] Congress, tend to be more extreme than the public.
]
] At first, this seems puzzling, because they should have
] an incentive to move to the vote-rich middle. But many
] members of Congress represent districts that are safe for
] their parties, and the threat to their re-election comes
] in party primaries that are dominated by the more
] activist and extreme wings of the parties.
]
] This tendency is reinforced by the rise of cable
] television, which attracts viewers by means of
] contentious "infotainment" programmes, and
] Internet bloggers, who engage in fierce polemics
] with no editorial filter.

A very interesting analysis. I've said that whether you are red or blue has to do with whether you are more afraid of the communists or the fundamentalists. Americans intuitively understand that the structure of their political system is the reason that it doesn't seem to reflect their interests. This comment takes that a little deeper.

I agree with his comment about the blogosphere. Its not a conversation. Its not a dialog. Its a million soap boxes. The popular ones tend to be the most polar because they are the most emotionally charged. The blogosphere, as it currently exists, is part of the problem. Its a check on the mass media, but it will be nothing more unless it can provide discourse.

The red and the blue, by Joseph Nye

] In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the
] president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis
] Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress
] will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them,
] regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert supports "the majority of the majority", only.

Hastert Launches A Partisan Policy (washingtonpost.com)

] Californians will soon see advertisements urging them to
] help give Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other
] foreign-born citizens the chance to run for president.

Push begins to allow foreigners to be President

Elonka wrote:
] I'm continuing to read about Gonzales and haven't made up my
] own mind about him yet, but so far he seems to be a relatively
] moderate choice, with critics and supporters on both sides of
] the political spectrum.

Thats true. The specific use of the word "quaint" is being spun by the left to an unreasonable degree. The other memo that I posted, which Gonzales did not write, but apparently signed off on, is a much greater concern with respect to the torture question. Gonzales is not the source of the torture culture, but then he didn't stand up to fight it either.

I think its likely that he will be approved.

Having said that, I'm not at all comfortable with this memo, for a tangental reason.

Ryan recently reminded me that back when Bush was a Governor in Texas he executed several people who were foreign nationals who were not provided access to their consulate. I'm sure his rationale was murder is murder and these people are murderers, so who cares what happens to them. The problem is that Bush's Texas moral values and our deliberative system of justice do not exist in other parts of the world, and should I be arrested in another part of the world I want access to the US consulate. The only thing that provides it to me is our agreement to do the same. Bush put my life at risk by shunning an long standing international agreement about consulate access for foreign nationals charged with a crime.

This wasn't an anomaly. It's a pattern. Its a pattern of tossing out legal constrictions on the power of the government that exist for very good reasons. As these checks continue to be eroded the abuse they were intended to prevent will break out, even if we don't mean for it to happen that way. In some circumstances a case may be made that these constrictions are obsolete, but the problem is that we don't seek to mend them. We simply toss them away and forget about it. Its a pattern that I feel is reckless.

Its a pattern that repeated itself in the use of material witness warrants and enemy combatant designations to detain American citizens on US soil without access to counsel and without charges.

Its a pattern that repeated itself in the use of patriot act capabilities outside of the scope of anti-terror investigations.

Its a pattern that repeated itself in terms of the standards used to justify our invasion of Iraq, which were a significant break from previously understood international law.

Its a pattern that repeated itself when we declared the U.N. obsolete.

Its a pattern that repeated itself when we removed the ABA from the judicial nomination process.

Its a pattern that repeats itself in the open hostility that the Republicans have for the Constitutional review of legislation.

Its a pattern that repeats itself today in the Republican effort to remove the fillibuster rule for judicial nominations.

Its a pattern that repea... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Gonzales Memo

Here is the torture memo, or rather the sections of it that were declassified. Elonka asked for this. Prepare for a lot of reading.

Portions of Pentagon Working Group March 2003 Draft Report on Interrogation Methods

] As a member of the court, Gonzales ruled with the
] majority that some teenage girls should not be required
] to get parental permission for an abortion.
]
] In his opinion on the ruling, Gonzales wrote, "While the
] ramifications of such a law may be personally troubling
] to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to
] impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing
] my moral view on the decisions of the legislature."

I posted a story about this earlier, which I've deleted. This one is better. Earlier I said that "the radical right doesn't trust him either." More to a point, the radical right doesn't trust him because he was not an activist judge.

CNN.com - Gonzales nomination angers abortion foes - Nov 11, 2004

] Emboldened by their role in re-electing President Bush,
] conservatives are making Mr. Specter - whose brusque
] independence has earned him the nickname Snarlin' Arlen
] on Capitol Hill - a test case of their political power.
] As they try to keep Mr. Specter, a centrist Pennsylvania
] Republican who supports abortion rights, from heading the
] Senate Judiciary Committee, they are demanding a steep
] concession: support for changing a century-old Senate
] rule that permits judicial nominations to be blocked by
] filibuster.

Republicans continue to unravel the checks and balances.

The New York Times - Bork Hearings Resurface as Impediment to Specter

bucy wrote:
] ] WASHINGTON - With a hug and words of high praise,
] ] President Bush (news - web sites) named Alberto Gonzales
] ] as attorney general on Wednesday, elevating the
] ] administration's most prominent Hispanic to a highly
] ] visible post in the war on terror.
]
] He isn't great but better than Ashcroft, probably.

The problem with Ashcroft was his abuse of the Patriot act for investigations unrelated to Terrorism. I have serious doubts that the guy who created the administration's weasly policies on enemy combatants and torture, and who ended 50 years of American Bar Association vetting of federal judges because the radical wing of the Republican party doesn't like the constitution, is going to be a super great AG. The only blessing here is that they didn't put him on the Supreme Court bench.

See the story I'm linking:

RE: Bush Picks Gonzales to Succeed Ashcroft