Heatwave!

Whoever said global warming was a hoax can kiss my black a%#! It must be 110 degrees all up and down the least-coast. Anyway, the blog must go on.

Right about now I am feeling Reggie. The little dude, who in true Philly fashion, went on stage and jammed with the Goo Goo Dolls. Definitely a YouTube moment. And, I am not feeling this church lady. Girlfriend sued her church for $250,000.00 large because they allowed Gay marriages. I don't agree with her, but that is not my issue. This is a free country, she can believe anything she wants.

My issue with "church lady" is that she dropped $250,000.00 in the offering plate over a 37 year period. Thirty Seven years ago $250,000.00 would have bought her a really nice house. And it would have been paid for by now. Instead, the good Reverend got it. Man I sure hope she worships in a very nice building.

Hey, did I read this right? They sentenced a woman to death by stoning in Iran? WTF?

"Human rights activists are rallying the international community to stop an Iranian woman being stoned to death. In 2006, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani was convicted of having extramarital relations with two men, who subsequently killed her husband according to Huliq.

While she initially received 99 lashes for adultery, during an appeal of her case, the court sentenced her to death by stoning. Her sentence has caused widespread outrage because there is no conclusive evidence that she actually committed a crime. Ashtiani's attorney, Mohammad Mostafaei, an acclaimed human rights lawyer, told the Guardian, "This is an absolutely illegal sentence. Two of five judges who investigated Sakineh's case in Tabriz prison concluded that there's no forensic evidence of adultery." For a case of adultery to be punishable by stoning, four witnesses must be able to confirm the act, according to Article 74 of the Iranian penal code. In Ashtiani's case, there are no witnesses .

Additionally, the trial was conducted in Farsi, while Ashtiani, from Northwestern Iran, speaks Turkish. Ashtiani's children, son,Sajad and daughter Farideh, are leading the campaign for her freedom. Sajad told the Guardian, "She's innocent, she's been there for five years for doing nothing...Imagining her, bound inside a deep hole in the ground, stoned to death, has been a nightmare for me and my sister for all these years." Women executed by stoning are buried up to their necks (men are buried up to the waist) and a crowd throws stones at their head, which slowly leads to death. Sentences are commuted if one is able to dig oneself out of the hole"...[Article]

Unfortunately for you, Sakineh, this did not happen in Israel, so there will be no real International outcry. Certain bloggers won't take up your cause. And there sure as hell won't be any denouncing of the evil Iranians.

Finally, speaking of evil; I know I touched on this in an earlier post, but I can't let it go just yet. Besides, I saw an excellent article in HuffPo by Stanley Kutler that brought my thoughts around to the subject all over again:

"Elena Kagan's confirmation is likely if no other reason than the emptiness of the Republican case against here. Her hearing had, in her own well-chosen words, "an air of vacuity and farce." Nevertheless, the Republicans scored electoral points and solidified their appeal to those whose hostility toward President Barack Obama is rooted in racial basis.

Kagan, as is well known by now, clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court's first African-American. Apparently, there is no statute of limitations on the kind of attacks Marshall endured in life, and which continue 17 years after his death.

At the first day of Kagan's hearing, the Republicans seemed bent on projecting Kagan as Marshall's clone, one who would follow his "activist" judicial philosophy. Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) laid the cards clearly on the table when he charged that "too often, it sounds to me like Ms. Kagan shares the view of President Obama and Justice [Thurgood] Marshall that the Supreme Court exists to advance the agenda of certain classes of litigants." He insisted that Kagan had the burden to demonstrate she can be "a fair and impartial Justice, rather than one who would have an outcome-based approach."

Kyl and fellow Republicans Sens. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL), Charles Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) invoked Marshall's name nearly forty times in two days, nearly three times more than President Obama's. They repeatedly referenced Marshall's judicial philosophy as "evidence" of Kagan's intentions. Sessions, the ranking member of the Committee, made it perfectly clear, calling Marshall "a well-known activist." The Republicans offered no examples of how Marshall's rulings twisted the Constitution to achieve that sinister-sounding "outcome-based approach."

After the first day of hearings, a Utah newspaper asked Hatch if he would have voted for Marshall when his confirmation came up in 1967. "Well, it's hard to say," Hatch replied. Hatch projects himself as an ordinary fellow (listen to his YouTube rendition of his "Eight Days of Chanukah" song) with an upright Mormon world view, and the Senate's moral voice. Some moral voice.

Had Hatch opposed Marshall's confirmation in 1967, he would have had had interesting bedfellows for 10 steadfast segregationists rejected Marshall, joined by one newly-minted future of the Republican party - the never-repentant J. Strom Thurmond. There are two contexts here: the present moment of Kagan's hearing, and the historical one of Marshall's travail in his confirmation hearings.

Kagan appeared with impeccable credentials, and with smarts and savvy for running essentially a seminar with the senators. Robert Bork foolishly tried to take the lecture senators as if he were in a classroom, but only succeeded in alienating them. Kagan not only demonstrated a learned and supple mind, she showed herself to be a very human, warm individual, with a sense of humor that provided a few spontaneous moments.

So, why the Republican hostility? Their not-so-subtle uses of the Marshall analogy amounted to stump speeches for the electorate back home. The senators well know their constituents' hostility toward President Obama has powerful racial overtones that fuel the public anger so calculated for the evening television news. The Thurgood Marshall references amounted to a purposeful, well-orchestrated strategy to fire up the "base." [Article]

Can someone please convince me why I should become a conservative? I promise I will keep an open mind.

Jig alert!

Tiger is in town this weekend, and I am tempted to scoot on over to Aronimink to see what someone who just had to give up almost a billion dollars to his ex, looks like. Dyaaam!

Anyway, barring some last minute bombshell, it looks like Elena Kagan will become one of the supremes. The republicans gave it their best shot, but it wont be enough. (NRA or no NRA, she is pretty much in.) And I know that I wasn't supposed to, but I heard the dog whistles during the process. (And folks wonder why Michael has been on the lawn so long.) And I am sure that the base heard it as well. But be careful Michael, even conservative black folks love Thurgood:

"More than a few of us African Americans are not very liberal. We are born-again Christians, instill a strong work ethic in our children, and are aghast at others who game the system.
Some of us voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984, because he was more optimistic than Walter Mondale; for George Bush the father in 1988, because he was more experienced than Michael Dukakis; and for George Bush the son in 2004, because John Kerry was too elitist.
We wondered why the Republican Party did not encourage Gen. Colin Powell to become the first black president in 2000. Now we know why.

Those of us moderately conservative blacks who enjoy watching Supreme Court confirmation hearings were dismayed last year by the GOP's trashing of Sonia Sotomayor's pep talk to young Latino females (after all, we talk the same way when encouraging our kids toward excellence). But this attack on Thurgood Marshall at Elena Kagan's confirmation hearing is the last straw.

We will not be voting Republican for a very long time, because, to paraphrase Kanye West's Katrina statement, "the GOP don't like people of color."
Rosamond Kay
Philadelphia
yakr47@aol.com [Article]

Rosamond even left an e-mail address, just in case some of his right wing buddies believe that he is a plant.

"This wasn't a surprise. Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, kick-started this bash-Marshall campaign last month by pouncing on Kagan for praising a 1987 Marshall speech in which the ex-justice said the Constitution, "as originally drafted and conceived," was "defective." Marshall had been referring to the Constitution's definition of slaves as three-fifths of "free persons." But Steele's oppo gang at the RNC seized on this and zapped out a memo hammering Kagan: "Does Kagan Still View Constitution 'As Originally Drafted And Conceived' As 'Defective'?'"

Does the lawn still need a jockey"? Yes it does. And, fortunately, thanks to Michael, it still has one.

Elena Kagan, come on down!

Congrats Elena Kagan. Looks like his O ness did you a solid by getting you a lifetime appointment to the most powerful court in the land. Nice.

I could say so much about this pick, but I will leave it alone. (For now) Ms. Kagan certainly has all the right credentials: Princeton. Harvard. You can't get much better than that in the academic department. Still, the liberals are nervous about her. And the wingnuts, of course, believe that O picked her because she is a secret Socialist, just like him.

Some folks are already whining that she has no judicial experience, but then some of our best supremes never had judicial experience. So that's a none issue as far as I am concerned. Personally, it would have been nice if O had put a person of color on the court. (Hey, we could use one. Lord knows we don't have any now.) But, at the end of the day, it's O's call. Besides, the person's color, gender, or religious affiliation- or lack of it- isn't as important to me as how they are going to rule on the important issues of the day.

Of course the rethugs are already getting ready for a fight. It must have been tough for them. Kagan never wrote judicial opinions so there is no paper trail for them to go over to try and find any got ya notes in her writings.

Hmmm what's a good republican operative to do? There must be something they can get her on.........Wait, I think they have something. Something that will really fire up their base and the teabag folks:

"So, did everyone think that the Elena Kagan nomination was going to be easy? Ha, no.
Right out of the gate, the Republican National Committee -- you know, that organization headed by Michael Steele, who recently opined that the GOP had not "done a very good job" giving African-Americans a reason to vote Republican -- has released a statement slagging Kagan for her tribute to... uhm -- Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court. Smooth move!

In its first memo to reporters since Kagan's nomination to the high court became public, the Republican National Committee highlighted Kagan's tribute to Marshall in a 1993 law review article published shortly after his death.

Kagan quoted from a speech Marshall gave in 1987 in which he said the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was "defective." She quoted him as saying the Supreme Court's mission was to "show a special solicitude for the despised and the disadvantaged."
The Sotomayor confirmation process, I think, firmly established how various factions feel about empathizing with the "despised and disadvantaged." Now, the RNC wants to know, "Does Kagan Still View Constitution 'As Originally Drafted And Conceived' As 'Defective'?......"

Oh yeah, that's right, Kagan clerked for Thurgood Marshall. Yep, they have her ass now. [Article]