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Off to the convention

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Well, my wife and I are off to the convention tomorrow, along with our good friend Ruby. Now, if I were a twitterer, I would tweet from the convention. I actually do have a a twitter account, which I never use. Consequently, other than my wife and one local Democrat, my only “followers” are random people, of whom I know nothing and who apparently know nothing about me, that declare their fealty and then apparently move on.

So, I’m going to try to go back to the dim and distant past and “live blog”. I’m going to see if I can do it with an Ipad, just because I have one, want to look cool, and want to see if it will work.

Speaking of the convention, can it be that after all his grandstanding, Merrick Alpert isn’t going to try to qualify for the ballot by petition? Even if the Blumenthal dustup moves some delegates toward him, he didn’t know that was going to happen, and it looks like he still lacks 15%. What made him think he had a chance before Blumenthal’s woes? If he lacks the money to do a petition drive, what makes him think he can mount an effective campaign against Linda McMahon?


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Disparate treatment

Thursday, May 20, 2010

A few days ago I pointed out that Blumenthal had done something only Republicans are allowed to do. I noted a few examples of Republican malfeasance without discernible consequence, but it turns out that there’s an example much closer to the situation, featuring Lindsey Graham, John McCain’s soon to be successor as the media’s darling “moderate” Republican.

Long before he was the Senate’s most powerful sometimes-moderate who won’t support the climate bill he helped draft because of personal pique, Lindsey Graham was just another politician who repeatedly lied about fighting in a war overseas.

According to his (current) official bio, “Graham logged six-and-a-half years of service on active duty as an Air Force lawyer.” After he left the active duty force, he joined the South Carolina Air National Guard. During the first Gulf War, Graham was called up to act as staff judge advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Base in South Carolina. As staff judge advocate, Graham’s duties “included briefing pilots on the law of armed conflict, preparing legal documents for deploying troops, and providing legal services for family members of the South Carolina Air National Guard. ” His service never took him out of South Carolina.

And so, naturally, for years afterward, Lindsey Graham referred to himself in his official biography and elsewhere as “an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran.”

Even after he was exposed the information remained on his website. As we can all see, the consequences were devastating for Graham. The press has hounded him about it ever since, right?


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Bysiewicz decision

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Susan got beat badly. It’s a shame that this happened to her. From any point of view she’s qualified both intellectually and professionally to be Attorney General, but as I’ve said before, the legal questions were serious. Since the court ruled against her, it stands to reason that the court rejected both her claims-that she was engaged in the active practice of law, and that the “active practice” requirement was unconstitutional. On the latter issue, it will be interesting to see if the court’s reasoning, which we won’t know until later, tracks the reasoning that Blumenthal’s office used in coming to the same result.


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The dust begins to settle

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Excellent piece by Colin McEnroe about the Blumenthal kerfuffle. Is Raymond Hernandez the new Judith Miller?


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Blumenthal’s brilliant move

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

There are only two ways to explain Blumenthal’s political brilliance in claiming to have been in Vietnam, when he wasn’t, since this should certainly attract a lot of Republican voters that would otherwise have voted for McMahon.

First, he may have a rich fantasy life, and actually believe he was in Vietnam. In this respect, he is akin to the godlike Ronald Reagan, whose own fantasy about liberating concentration camps in WWII never became an issue, much to no Democrat’s surprise. Surely the Republicans will flock to vote for any candidate so similar to this mythical figure, who was the greatest president of all time, aside from the fact that his greatest achievement was beginning the destruction of the American economy.

The other possibility is that this is a merely cynical move to attract Republican votes by merely appearing to be like the sainted Ronnie. Surely no non-deluded person could have any other reason to have lied so frequently about something that was, more or less, a matter of public record. If this theory is correct, we must question his timing. We are, after all, only days from the convention, but he has that sewn up, since he has no opposition to whom Democrats not impressed with his brilliance can turn, other than an individual more deluded than Ronnie ever was. Why waste this type of good stuff now, when you can wait until just before the election?

Of course, this may be just part of a long term plan. For his second act, Blumenthal might try leaking word that he also frequents whores while wearing diapers, which appears to be a move that also enhances one’s standing among Republican voters, although it appears to draw almost no media attention, and may thus not advance his cause as much as one might think.

And if that doesn’t work, there are any number of other proven Republican tactics for trolling for votes that he might care to emulate. The trick is, you have to know how to pull it off. Either you or your surrogates should blame the press, or your political enemies. It works great for Republicans.

But despite what appears on the surface to be a brilliant move, I nonetheless suspect that this might not work for Blumenthal. There’s a rule of politics that he might have forgotten. What was it again? Oh, yes IOKIYAR (But, oh my God, even that rule appears to have exceptions!).


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I don’t control those Bishops, says the Pope

Monday, May 17, 2010

A couple of days ago I expressed a bit of amazement about the fact that the Cardinal of Boston didn’t just order a Catholic school district in his jurisdiction to reverse a decision to discriminate against a child whose parents are lesbians, despite the fact that the Cardinal said he disagreed with the decision. This seemed to run afoul of time honored Catholic teaching, recognized in our law, that the Church is a hierarchical institution-indeed, perhaps the most hierarchical major institution in the present day world.

Well, it looks like the Church is officially abandoning that hierarchical status, at least when it doesn’t suit its purpose (via Truthdig, from the London Times Online):

The Vatican will today make its most detailed defence yet against claims that it is liable for US bishops who allowed priests to molest children, saying bishops are not its employees and that a document from 1962 did not require them to keep quiet.

The Vatican will make the arguments in a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds filed in Louisville, Kentucky, but it could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See.

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican’s lawyer in the US, said the Vatican would assert that bishops are not its employees because they are not paid by Rome, don’t act on Rome’s behalf and are not controlled day-to-day by the pope — factors courts use to determine whether employers are liable for the actions of their employees.

Mr Lena said he would suggest to the court that it should avoid using the religious nature of the relationship between bishops and the pope as a basis for civil liability because it entangles the court in an analysis of religious doctrine that dates back to the apostles.

“Courts tend to avoid constructing civil relationships out of religious materials,” he said.

Well, actually courts often have no choice but to construct civil relationships out of religious materials. Consider questions that arise when a local church decides to break away from the mother ship, as happened with the Anglicans here in Groton recently. The Anglican Church, like the Roman Catholic, is hierarchical, so the courts have generally ruled, as the court did in the case of the Groton Church, that regardless of who holds paper title the land belongs to the Mother church. Contrariwise, if the Church is congregational in nature. And, at least according to this Catholic website, the church’s hierarchical structure was laid down as a matter of religious dogma by the Big Guy’s son himself1 .

The opposing lawyer, by the way, says he doesn’t have to prove that the Bishops were “employees”, merely that they were wholly controlled by the Pope and his co-conspirators, which they undoubtedly are. I wonder…if this gets to the Supreme Court, do Scalia, Thomas and the rest of the Catholics have to recuse themselves, and leave it to the Jews to decide if the Pope can be deposed?

  1. The Catholic Church teaches as a doctrine of faith that Christ gave the Church, in his apostles, a hierarchical structure of an episcopal nature and that within the hierarchy and the Church he established a primacy of authority in the successor of St. Peter.?


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Vanity candidates

Monday, May 17, 2010

We learn today (or yesterday if we watched television) that Janet Peckinpaugh most likely voted for Joe Courtney back in 2008. Or, to be more accurate, she’s not willing to say who she voted for, which leads to the obvious conclusion.

The truth is, that Janet is a person who hitherto had no very fixed political principles or passions, and is now perfectly willing to don any ideological clothing necessary to win an election. If the incumbent were a Republican, she would be perfectly comfortable running as a Democrat.

Janet appears to be the poor man’s version of what seems to be an increasing phenomenon-the vanity candidate. Linda McMahon is perhaps the best exemplar, with the billionaire duo from California running right behind her. These are people who have no obvious interest in politics, no particular issue they can point to as motivating their participation, and no history of committed political involvement. Having earned their laurels in other fields, or, in Carly Fiorina’s case, having spectacularly failed but still made lots of money, they look to cap their careers by acquiring a title. For McMahon, it’s U.S. Senator, for Peckinpaugh, who by dint of money and second rate celebrity status, it’s the lowly Congress.

I assert, without taking the trouble to prove it, that this is a relatively new phenomenon. There was a time, after all, when our betters felt that involvement in politics was tawdry, something to be avoided by the better sort.

Is it simply coincidental that the acquisition of these titles, like the buying of titles in England, is taking place while the actual power wielded by the office holder is waning? Wikipedia has this to say of the Roman Senate after the fall of the Republic:

After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Though retaining its legal position as under the Republic, in practice, however the actual authority of the imperial senate was negligible, as the emperor held the true power in the state. As such, membership in the senate became sought after by individuals seeking prestige and social standing, rather than actual authority. (Emphasis added)

We Americans offer two levels of social prestige, one for billionaires and one for millionaires and washed up celebrities. We call them the Senate and the House of Representatives1 . As the executive absorbs more power will we be seeing more of these candidacies?

I don’t think that Tom Foley, with all his millions, fits into this category. I do him the honor of believing that he has a true political objective in mind-he wants to do to the State of Connecticut what George Bush did to the country. Not a terribly laudable ambition, but a political ambition nonetheless.

  1. Some mavericks go for governorships, only to discover that the job still requires the holder to work.?


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Oh, the horror

Saturday, May 15, 2010

My wife and I just got back from the Bee & Thistle, where we had a belated Mother’s Day Celebration, my wife’s actual Mother’s Day having been spent dealing with my mother.

We had a great time, except…

I am the type of person who is keenly aware of whatever music happens to be playing in my vicinity. I can’t ignore it. There is no such thing as background music as far as I’m concerned.

Well, the Bee & Thistle somehow came into possession of an album or some other source of music featuring a fourth rate Bobby Darin/Frankie Avalon wannabe lounge singer covering rock and roll classics. The first song he massacred was the Beatles Can’t Buy Me Love, after which he went on to mangle a few more Beatle songs, whose names I can’t remember because of the trauma inflicted by the first one.

Then.., there was a blessed pause, after which he returned, turning his attention to such songs as How Sweet It Is and You Don’t Know Me. My God, it was painful. I told my wife if he started in on Satisfaction I was leaving.

Where do these establishments find this kind of music? Surely, no one in their right mind would purchase it to listen to in the privacy of their home. This is not a guilty pleasure-it’s pure torture. Now I know how my wife feels when she complains about being subjected to Fox when she goes to the gym.


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What gives?

Saturday, May 15, 2010

My wife and I abandoned the Hartford Courant for the Boston Globe some time ago, so we have been following this tawdry little story since its inception. A Catholic School in Hingham, Massachusetts, in Jesus’ holy name and in Christian love, rejected the application of an 8 year old for admission to its grammar school because his parents are lesbians.

Amazingly, even some institutional Catholics have reacted with outrage. This may be hypocritically fueled, in part, by the fact that they are anxious that their basic hypocrisy, so much on display of late, would not be highlighted once more. It does, after all, seem a little much that the Church that finds it so easy to forgive the repeat priestly offenders that “repent” and then sin once more should find it necessary to punish an eight year old for the “sins” of his parents.

So the Boston Bishop, cardinal or whatever he is, has officially pronounced that this particular form of discrimination is not among the many sanctioned by the Church. But the eight year old will nonetheless not be going to the school of his choice; Church officials will be looking for another school willing to take him.

Now, it’s possible that this is because the parents have told Church officials that they would not feel comfortable sending him to a school that has already discriminated against him, but there is no indication from the press reports that this is so. It appears that the Church is here deferring to local control, something that we Connecticut folks recently learned is otherwise anathema to the Church.

Now, there are few monarchs on earth with more absolute power within their realms than the Catholic Pope. The Pope’s power is, in turn, exercised by his viceroys, otherwise know as Bishops. In other words, the Bishop can just tell this school to take the kid and they have to do it. So why, in this case, the kid glove treatment. Imagine, if you will, that same school allowing Planned Parenthood to come in and speak favorably of birth control. How long before the Bishop puts the kibosh on that?


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Friday Night Music-Lena Horne

Friday, May 14, 2010

Okay, I admit that I don’t really know much about her, but she did die this week, and she was a great singer. This is her signature song, from the movie of the same name.


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