Archive for category justice
A Twinkie in California
Posted by zoboxrox in human rights, justice, politics on January 11th, 2010
Oh god no. Why this man? Eyebrows over here, Paul Katami, and his partner, Jeffrey Zarrillo, are among a group of plaintiffs going to court over the recent ban on gay marriage in the state of California, Proposition 8. Somehow, out of all the homosexuals in San Francisco, this is the one who got to do the talking when the time came. And here is what he had to say:
“[It's] like putting a Twinkie at the end of a treadmill and saying, ‘You can only have a bite,’ ” testified Paul Katami, one of the plaintiffs. “And you want the whole thing. … All I want is to be married.”
Hey Paul — are you fucking kidding me? That’s the best you could come up with? First of all, Paul here obviously knows N-O-T-H-I-N-G about the history of his state, most notably, the late great Harvey Milk, who fought so vigorously for gay rights in the very same city Paul and Jeffrey call home. If Paul had studied up a little more, he’d know not to bring Twinkies into the fight (unless Paul is brilliant, and is purposefully evoking the painful memories of Milk’s tragic ending, thereby arousing some deeply closeted heterosexual guilt).
Complete and total mental lapse aside, this is simply not the right argument to be making. While how you feel is always very important to yourself, this will not sway a judge in a court of law, nor will it make all those evangelicals in California suddenly feel bad enough to change their minds. You must evoke the sensation of being denied a basic right by your government — you must shine light on the absurdity of this situation, which is clearly the most prominent case of persecution so far this century.
Its been a while. I apologize.
Posted by zoboxrox in crime, human rights, justice, tragedy on August 31st, 2009
In the meantime, I’ve achieved the dream aka employment aka data entry (hazzah!), Ted Kennedy died (RIP old Lion), 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt died (sad), John Hughes died (sad), Les Paul died (um, sad?), Dominic Dunne died (he was still alive?), DJ AM died (…) and Jaycee Dugard, a 29 year old woman who has been missing for 18 years, was found and “rescued” from her “alleged” abductor, who also happens to be the father of her two daughters, aged 15 and 11 (unbelievable). Now I know I should be writing about Kennedy, as this is a political blog, but I just can’t stop reading about this young woman’s unimaginable life.
There are a lot of bizarre details. For instance, the kidnapper and rapist, Phillip Garrido, had a record and was on parole for a previous abduction and rape charge from the late 1970s. Despite being convicted of heinous crimes, his 50 year sentence was reduced:
Katie Callaway Hall thought about him every day since November 22, 1976 when he asked her for a ride at a supermarket in California, before handcuffing her, binding her and taking her to a mini-warehouse in Reno, Nevada, where he raped her.
Garrido was convicted for kidnapping and raping Hall, but was released after serving just over 10 years of a 50-year sentence. He was labeled a sex offender and put on lifetime parole.
So, not only did they let this guy go, they also neglected to check up on him, despite his “lifetime” parole status. If they had been more attentive, perhaps they would have noticed the three young women, living in shacks in the Garrido’s back yard. In fact, in 2006 neighbors called to report that young girls appeared to be living in tents on the property, and an officer visited the house, but never made it into the back:
…a California sheriff admitted today that his officers booted a chance to rescue Jaycee nearly three years ago.
“We missed an opportunity to bring earlier closure to this situation,” Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren E. Rupf said in a news conference today, “I am first in line …. to offer my apologies to the victims and accept responsibility for missing an opportunity to rescue Jaycee.”
Rupf said that a woman called 911 on Nov. 30, 2006 complained that people, including children, appeared to be living in tents in the backyard of Phillip and Nancy Garrido’s house in the town of Antioch, Calif. “The caller also said Garrido was psychotic and had a sexual addiction,” he said.
How awful. Can you believe there was a wife the whole time?!
But you know what no one’s really talking about, which I think is maybe the worst part of this whole situation: this man is these two girls father, both genetically and, more importantly, paternally. While I can’t even try to imagine what this must be like for Jaycee Dugard, there is a whole other level of grief involved for the children because being discovered, which to the outside seems like a miracle, is in reality destroying the only family they’ve ever had. This is way beyond Stockholm Syndrome.
Its the kind of situation where there’s no right answer, the ultimate Kobayashi Maru.
Not to make light or anything. I just don’t know how to handle such heavy shit.
A Futile War: Part I
Posted by zoboxrox in War on Drugs, crime, human rights, justice, tragedy on July 28th, 2009
In honor of the late great Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man in America, Part I of my look at the War on Drugs focuses on the following snippets from an article he wrote for The Huffington Post in March 2006 (my comments are in orange).
When I wanted to understand the truth about the war on drugs, I took the same approach I did to the war in Vietnam: I hit the streets and reported the story myself. I sought out the people whose lives this war has affected. Allow me to introduce you to some of them… [there is an entire website dedicated to the innocent victims of the drug war, their ages range from 8 months to 88 years].
…Jan Warren, a single mother who lived in New Jersey with her teenage daughter. Pregnant, poor and desperate, Jan agreed to transport eight ounces of cocaine to a cousin in upstate New York. Police officers were waiting at the drop-off point, and Jan - five months pregnant and feeling ill - was cuffed and taken in.
Did she commit a crime? Sure. But what awaited Jan Warren defies common sense and compassion alike. Under New York’s infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws [recently dismantled by Albany legislature and Governor David Patterson, who is quoted as saying “I can’t think of a criminal justice strategy that has been more unsuccessful than the Rockefeller drug laws”], Jan - who miscarried soon after the arrest - was sentenced to 15 years to life…
In Tulia, Texas, an investigator fabricated evidence that sent more than one out of every ten of the town’s African American residents to jail on trumped-up drug charges in one of the most despicable travesties of justice this reporter has ever seen [here is a link to this story, even more info here]….
…[The Drug War] surely hasn’t made our streets safer [see graph below*]. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of people…disproportionately people of color…who have caused little or no harm to others - wasting resources that could be used for counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime, or catching white-collar criminals.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort - with no one held accountable for its failure.
Amid the clichés of the drug war, our country has lost sight of the scientific facts. Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we’ve become blind to reality: The war on drugs, as it is currently fought, is too expensive, and too inhumane
Imagine That
Posted by zoboxrox in human rights, international, justice, politics on June 22nd, 2009
Imagine you are a citizen in a country that doesn’t recognize your rights: steals elections, lies to its populous, makes politically bad desicions on behalf of your nation, puts you and everyone you know in harms way. Imagine conservative religious leaders take over the political sector, and dictate the law based on archaic beliefs which benefit a small but powerful minority of elite and secretive rulers. Imagine living in a state of fear and frustration — if you cannot dictate who your leaders are, based on fair and honest elections, how can you ever hope for freedom or peace? Imagine being beaten and arrested for protesting the obvious corruption and militaristic nature of your government.
Where do you imagine you are?
The above photographs were taken in the past five years in Seattle, Washington and San Francisco.
The following were taken this past week in Tehran, Iran.
Hopefully it will work out better for the Iranians than it did for us. After all, we got stuck with the wrong guy for a long time. And what happened next wasn’t pretty.
Why You Wanna Break My Heart?
Posted by zoboxrox in church and state, human rights, justice, malfunction, politics, tragedy on June 16th, 2009
I realize I haven’t been completely objective (not that I ever claimed to be), and for a while there, I was a member of the Obama cheer-leading squad, but I’ve got to say, for me at least, the honeymoon is now officially over. Its not that I expected the new administration to do everything right, especially considering the seemingly insurmountable trouble they are faced with; its just, I never thought they would do something so clearly wrong.
To be fair, lets give a little context.
The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA as it is known, was a bill signed into law by President Clinton – NOT President Bush — on September 21, 1996. It basically says that no state can be forced to recognize other state’s same-sex marriages and that the federal government is required not to. So yeah, its pretty bad.
No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.
In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ’spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife
Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, a gay couple who were married in California before Proposition 8 and had taken the two bans on marriage to Federal Court, were fought by the Obama Administration’s Justice Department. While it is rare for an administration not to defend the current laws (though not unheard of), whether or not they agree with them, it makes matters worse that Justice Department has written a brief which makes arguments comparing gay marriage to incestuous relationships.
The brief insists it is reasonable for states to favor heterosexual marriages because they are the “traditional and universally recognized form of marriage.” In arguing that other states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages under the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, the Justice Department cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece.
This is not a direction I expected this president to go in. For someone who travels the globe, preaching tolerance and understanding, he should make more of an effort to practice it at home.
Guns Don’t Kill People - Bombs are much more effective
If anyone is wondering why liberals press for stronger gun control, I think the events of the past two weeks paint a pretty clear picture.
Perhaps it is related to the penchant for ultra-right wing conservatives to turn to violence as means of expression. At least lefty lunatics are mostly non-violent, even if they are smelly… or happy… or whatever it is that makes them so frightening to conservatives. While there are certainly some exceptions to this rule (The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and World War II were all fought for progressive causes or against fascist ones. In addition, members of certain civil rights groups, such as the SDS or the Black Panter Party, occasionally resorted to violence in the 1960s) it is overwhelmingly evident that “there is a dangerous and virulent streak of violence and fascism in American conservatism, now and throughout our country’s history,” (Lux). For Christ’s sake, Dick Cheney shoots his own friends!
The murder of Dr. George Tiller reminded those of us who forgot to live in fear, that the fringe cannot be reasoned with. The more recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum, which killed security guard Steven Johns, reinstated the fact that the deadliest terror occurring on our soil today is home-grown and right-wing. Its all just so ironic and hypocritical, in the end, it fits perfectly into the disintegration of the Republican Party — most conservatives I know don’t want to be associated with violence and murder. It doesn’t look good in alumni magazines.
Here are some other examples:
- The Oklahoma City Bombing - April 19, 1995; Right-wing American terrorist Timothy McVeigh, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, claiming the lives of 168 victims and injuring more than 680. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings in a sixteen-block radius.
- The Centennial Olympic Park Bombing - July 27, 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia; 1996 Summer Olympics, committed by Eric Robert Rudolph, former explosives expert for the United States Army and active member of the Army of God. Two people died, and 111 were injured.
- The Ku Klux Klan, The Army of God, The National Alliance,
- The assassinations of President Abraham Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King
Weekend Update
Posted by zoboxrox in corporate america, crime, human rights, international, justice, religion, tragedy on June 8th, 2009
A lot of people responded to the article I wrote a few months ago, Authority to Kill a Minority. Well I noticed this article recently and I wanted to update you all on the situation of the murder of Oscar Grant, by BART officer, Johannes Mehserle.
An Alameda County Superior Court judge has ruled there is enough evidence to have former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle stand trial on a murder charge for fatally shooting Oscar Grant III.
Cell phone video shows Mehserle, 27, shot 22-year-old Grant once in the back as he lay face down on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station early on New Year’s Day. Police had been called to the station to respond to reports of a fight on a train.
The judge said in his ruling, “Grant and the others may have been loud, uncooperative and argumentative, but these young men did nothing to warrant the use of deadly force.”
Another update comes to us from Laos, where Samantha Orobator was awaiting trial for smuggling drugs into the country. After pleading guilty, Samantha was spared the death penalty, and instead convicted to life in prison. The United Kingdom and Laos, aided by Sweden, are in talks for a prisoner exchange, so that Samantha may be permitted to carry out her sentence in her home.
Samantha Orobator, 20, from South London, admitted attempting to carry 680g (24oz) of heroin on to a flight from Laos to Thailand last August. Campaigners are pressing for her to be returned to serve her sentence in a British jail before the birth of her child, expected in September. But the one-day trial, in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, has not clarified the most puzzling question about the case: how did the Nigerian-born Orobator become pregnant in the notorious Phanthong prison?
The conception may have saved her life. Like other South-East Asian countries, Laos takes an unforgiving attitude to the drug trade and in most cases heroin smugglers face death by firing squad for amounts of more than 500g. Under Laotian law, however, a pregnant woman cannot be executed.
End the War on Love
Posted by zoboxrox in church and state, human rights, justice, malfunction, politics on May 28th, 2009
Prop(aganda H)8*
CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
Can you imagine anything less threatening than a gay wedding? Someone please explain to me what is so troubling to Americans about other people’s private lives. I will never get that. Are we in Saudi Arabia? I understand being threatened by violence, hatred, and fundamentalism, but certainly not by love — or sex for that matter. If you’re not the one having it, who cares?!
Anyway, that really doesn’t have very much to do with Tuesday’s ruling of the California Supreme Court, and while it is disappointing, it was actually a fair decision by the Justices. The fault lay with the argument brought forth on behalf of the plaintiffs, and the Court had no choice but to side with Prop(aganda H)8.
Every state has their own constitution, which, like the big one, can be amended as time passes, communities integrate, states modernize, etc. The Constitution of the State of California has been amended over 500 times and has a fairly clear set of instructions for the process:
ARTICLE 2 VOTING, INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM, AND RECALL
SEC. 8. (a) The initiative is the power of the electors to propose
statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject
them…
ARTICLE 18 AMENDING AND REVISING THE CONSTITUTION
SEC. 3. The electors may amend the Constitution by initiative.
SEC. 4. A proposed amendment or revision shall be submitted to the
electors and if approved by a majority of votes thereon takes effect
the day after the election unless the measure provides otherwise…
It is under this pretense that opponents of Proposition 8 appealed to the State Supreme Court, arguing that the 52% vote for Proposition 8 was, in fact, not an amendment, but instead a revision to the Constitution, which cannot be written into law without further legislation (unlike an amendment). The ever trusty New York Times describes the lawsuit fairly clearly:
Supporters of same-sex marriage, who filed several suits challenging the proposition after its adoption, argued that the change to the state’s Constitution was so fundamental that the initiative was not an amendment at all but instead a “revision,” a term for measures that rework core constitutional principles.
Under California law, revisions cannot be decided through a simple signature drive and a majority vote, as with Proposition 8. Instead, they can be placed on the ballot only with a two-thirds vote by the Legislature.
But the justices said the proposition was an amendment, not a revision. It has been historically rare for the state’s courts to overturn initiatives on the ground that they are actually revisions, and many legal scholars had deemed the challenge to Proposition 8 a long shot.
Whether or not the justices felt Proposition 8 was constitutional, they have to rule in favor of the majority under this law suit. To ignore the majority vote would be to take the power out of the hands of the electors, and to do so would ultimately be considered tyranny. In this particular case, the California Supreme Court, which voted in favor of gay marriage just one year ago, was right in their decision.
Next time, why don’t you try Article 1, Section 1, which is pretty much a universal constitutional right, but in California is worded as such:
All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights.
Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty,
acquiring, possessing, and protecting property,
and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.
I mean, there’s your argument right there. Pretty basic.
It should be noted that the vote was 6-1, with the sole dissenting voice coming from Justice Carlos R. Moreno (once considered a possible Supreme nominee), who determined that the amendment was an illegal revision based on its unconstitutionality. He wrote that Proposition 8 requires “discrimination” and “strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and… places at risk the state constitutional right of all disfavored minorities.”
Say It Ain’t Sonia
Posted by zoboxrox in justice, politics, powerful women on May 26th, 2009
If you had asked me a month ago who the next Supreme would be, I would have said Sonia Sotomayor, without question. She was afterall, the only candidate offered who fulfilled both the need for an additional female to the highest court and the strong desire for a Hispanic justice. There is no question on whether or not she is qualified: having attended Princeton University and Yale Law; having worked as a prosecutor for the New York District Attorney and a partner at the private commercial litigation firm of Pavia & Harcourt, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation; having been appointed a federal judge by a republican, Bush Sr., in 1991 to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then in 1997 receiving a nomination from a democrat, Clinton (William), to the seat she now holds as a jurist in the elite U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In other words, she fit the job requirements.
Its just… she was so obvious. In a world of safe choices, Obama has made a number of relatively risky ones (Biden, Geithner) and he never seemed to be intimidated by the status quo into doing the obvious. I just assumed he would completely surprise us. But the more I think about Sotomayor the less obvious she becomes. I’m a born and bred New York City gal and I can tell you from personal experience, there’s nothing ordinary or boring about a strong Latina from the South Bronx.
Additionally, she is considered a moderate liberal, and while she’s not exactly an activist, appointing her to the Supreme Court won’t cause the shake-up her predecessor, the wonderfully strange and suprising David Souter, did when he failed to appease the Right after his nomination by Bush (41).
She is liberal…..Liberal without being a flaming type of do-gooder or anything of the sort. To call her a centrist would not be accurate. To call her wild-eyed would also not be accurate. She is far too rational, far too interested in the underlying facts.
So in this way, while she’s safe for Obama to nominate politically, as she fills the double need for a Hispanic and a woman, she is also safe for progessive causes, such a gay marriage and equal rights, and thereby satisfies his base as well. She is strengthened by the fact that she is completely qualified and also socially necessary. Unless they want to lose the Hispanic and female vote completely, the GOP will have a hard time rejecting her nomination.
In a move that seemed so simple and obvious at first, Obama has once again displayed his cunning and savy political mind.
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