Justice Scalia Truly Doesn't Give A Fuck, Does He?

Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Today, the Supreme Court gave a split ruling on President Obama's challenge against Arizona's controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070.  The court struck down multiple provisions, but did leave the statute that said law enforcement officials could demand to see paperwork if they suspected an individual of being an illegal immigrant.  This, of course, has lead to concerns there would be mass amounts of racial profiling.

The good news for civil libertarians like myself, is that the Court did strike down provisions that said illegal immigrants weren't allowed to seek employment, as well as a provision that allows police to make a "warrantless arrest of anyone they had probably cause to believe they made a deportable offense."

I hoped this ruling would have gone further, and activists need to push for Arizona to change the law completely.  However, in addition to sharing the news about the ruling, I also want to share a quote from the ever-modest, Justice Antonin Scalia.  Here is some of what he had to say while defending he Arizona law in his own ruling:

Notwithstanding “[t]he myth of an era of unrestricted immigration” in the first 100 years of the Republic, the States enacted numerous laws restricting the immigration of certain classes of aliens, including convicted crimi­nals, indigents, persons with contagious diseases, and (in Southern States) freed blacks. Neuman, The Lost Century of American Immigration (1776–1875), 93 Colum. L. Rev. 1833, 1835, 1841–1880 (1993). State laws not only pro­ vided for the removal of unwanted immigrants but also imposed penalties on unlawfully present aliens and those who aided their immigration.

I know Justice Scalia tends to take a more traditional view of the law, but he seems to be crossing a moral line here, especially because he is apparently citing some of these laws as precedent.

UPDATE:

The day after I wrote this post (everything above), E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post wrote an editorial saying that Scalia should resign from the Supreme Court.  On the face of it, I suppose one could say that this is just some left-wing pundit spewing out liberal rhetoric and talking points.  Well, that isn't totally inaccurate, but Dionne makes some excellent points.  As he points out, Scalia wants to be a politician or pundit as much as anyone:

Unaccountable power can lead to arrogance. That’s why justices typically feel bound by rules and conventions that Scalia seems to take joy in ignoring. Recall a 2004 incident. Three weeks after the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case over whether the White House needed to turn over documents from an energy task force that Dick Cheney had headed, Scalia went off on Air Force Two for a duck-hunting trip with the vice president.

Scalia scoffed at the idea that he should recuse himself. “My recusal is required if . . . my ‘impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’ ” he wrote in a 21-page memo. Well, yes. But there was no cause for worry, Scalia explained, since he never hunted with Cheney “in the same blind or had other opportunity for private conversation.”
Don’t you feel better? And can you just imagine what the right wing would have said if Vice President Biden had a case before the court and went duck hunting with Justice Elena Kagan?

Then there was the speech Scalia gave at Switzerland’s University of Fribourg a few weeks before the court was to hear a case involving the rights of Guantanamo detainees.
“I am astounded at the world reaction to Guantanamo,” he declared in response to a question. “We are in a war. We are capturing these people on the battlefield. We never gave a trial in civil courts to people captured in a war. War is war and it has never been the case that when you capture a combatant, you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts. It’s a crazy idea to me.”

It was a fine speech for a campaign gathering, the appropriate venue for a man so eager to brand the things he disagrees with as crazy or mind-boggling. Scalia should free himself to pursue his true vocation. We can then use his resignation as an occasion for a searching debate over just how political this Supreme Court has become.

This is why we need to amend the Constitution and implement term limits on Supreme Court Justices.  I'm just saying . . .

Happy Birthday, Helen Keller

 

Photo from Wikipedia

This amazing woman was born today 132 years ago.  She is most famous as being the deaf and blind girl that learned how to communicate when she was taught by Annie Sullivan (also an amazing woman, and one of my inspirations as a special education teacher).  This was story was famously depicted in the play and movie, The Miracle Worker.  Keller went on to college, and would eventually become the first deaf and blind person to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Picture of Keller (left) and Annie Sullivan (right) from Spartacus Educational

As amazing as her story is, it is only part of the story.  Historically, she is simply by most known as a deaf and blind woman who could talk and become educated.  What most people don't know is that throughout her adult life, she spent her time traveling the globe as an activist.  Among other things, she campaigned in for Women's Suffrage, Labor Rights, and was member of the anti-war movement in the lead up to World War I.  She was even a member of the Socialist Party of America.  That's right: Helen Keller was a Socialist.

Photo from Huffington Post

As Education Professor Ruth Shagoury points out in a recent piece on Huffington Post, most people don't know the real history of Helen Keller (but should):

If I were creating Hero trading cards for Helen Keller, I would include her passionate work for women's voting rights, and against war and corporate domination. And I'd include her courageous quotes where she asks tough and impolite questions: "Why in this land of great wealth is there great poverty?" she wrote in 1912. "Why [do] children toil in the mills while thousands of men cannot get work, why [do] women who do nothing have thousands of dollars to spend?"

Sounds to me like the mother of today's Occupy Movement.

From publishers like Scholastic Teaching Resources -- which uses her life events to "give children practice reading a timetable" by asking insipid questions such: "How can you use the first two dates to figure out Helen's age at the time she got sick?" -- to St. Aidan's Home School pages, which encourages teachers to show "the Disney version of the The Miracle Worker," the information on-line portrays the same individualistic and socially empty Helen Keller myth.

It takes a little more digging, but I encourage parents and educators to turn to resources like the small press book Helen Keller from Ocean Press's series Rebel Lives, which includes excerpts from her writings on disability and class, socialism, women, and war, or the fine young adult biography Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit by Laurie Lawlor. It's time to share with children Helen Keller's remarkable adult life. As a defiant rebel, she could be a true hero for 21st century activists.

Indeed, schools should teach about Ms. Keller (her whole biography).  She is an excellent role model for all students: girls, boys, disabled and non-disabled.  Helen Keller is a truly remarkable figure, both for overcoming her adversity, as well as her dedication to social justice.

Videos for Martin Luther King Day

In the past year, the prevalence and importance of protest has gained traction like no other time in at least 20 years, and perhaps longer.  On this Martin Luther King day, let us remember the importance of King, not only as a Civil Rights leader, but as a protestor against injustice of all types.  As important as the message of racial equality, he also stood up against economic inequality and unjust wars. 

2011 Person of the Year

I know I am a couple of weeks late writing on this story, but I would just like to take a moment to give credit to Time Magazine's choice for the 2011 Person of the Year: The Protestor.

 

Photo from Huffington Post

Clearly the biggest news story of the year were the protests that arose in the Arab World, and that soon spread to other parts of the globe as well (including in the United States with the Occupy Wall Street movement).  Discontent at those in charge is something that so often gets talked about, but very little ever get's done about it.  Sometimes, a person get's kicked out of elected office, and the next person to replace them is either just as ineffective, or worse than the person they replace.  Occasionally, you see a massive uprising against one's government in a foreign country, but that ultimately falter via government crackdown through brutality and fear (e.g. Iran, 2009).

But this year was different.  Why this year, and not any other year?  It is hard to say.  Time Magazine writer Kurt Anderson writes this:

It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats.

For most years, Time would bestow this distinction to one individual, but in more recent years, it seems they have given the "person" of the year (singular) to groups of individuals.  Examples include "The Peacemakers" (1993; represented Yasser Arafat, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, and Yitzhak Rabin), "The American Soldier" (2003), and the lazy and pandering "You" in 2006 (representing people who post things on the internet).  Of course, this year falls under that category of multiple winners as "Person of the Year", and "protesters" they couldn't have picked a more appropriate choice.

But what if you did have to pick just one person to represent the whole protest movement?  Quite a daunting task considering that the number of individuals involved in protest movements around the world this year are (at a minimum) in the hundreds of thousands, if not in the millions.  In addition, there is not one person who is primarily in charge of any of these movements, nor one individual that is the "face" of any of these movements, other than the faces of some of the despots who the protestors are demonstrating against to begin with (e.g. Mubarak, Gaddafi, Putin, etc.).  These were truly democratic movements in every sense of the word.  But there is one person, however, that can earn this distinction, because without him, all of these demonstrations may have never even started (or had the impact that they did).

Many people have suggested (and I happen to agree) that the Person of the Year for 2011 is the man in the picture at the top of this post: Mohamed Bouazizi.  Who is, or rather, who was Mr. Bouazizi?  Here is a description from an article on him from the website African Success, where I also copied the picture from above:

Mohamed Bouazizi  was a Tunisian street vendor born March 29,1984- died January 4,2011, poured petrol over himself on December 17, 2011 and set himself, alight in front of the office of the Governor of his region, life turned upside down in Tunisia and the fires that he lit has burned until it engulfed the entire country from town to town.

 Photo from African Success

He was a student from Sidi Bouzid and upon his father’s death, was obliged to stop his studies and find a job.Faced with the difficulty of finding a job, he ended up becoming a street seller, without official authorisation and desperate he plied his trade as best he could.

His plight echoed the hapless fate of so many thousands and thosuands of young Tunisians, seduced by the promises of western education, yet frustrated and thwarted by a visionless, un-productive, corrupt power structure which dominated the country and suffocated creativity and innovation.


In Tunisia, the President Zine el_Abidine Ben Ali and his family rules his country with an iron bar.

Papers to do this and that, land to build houses on, authorisations of all sorts were obtained by the ‘kind patronage’ of the President and his family.

Mohamed didn’t have the right papers and on the 17th December[2010] the police confiscated his good and threw him out of the market because he wasn’t paying the right dividends to the people the President had put in place. Apparently slapped on the face by Faida Hamdy, it has been upheld that the indignation was the 'spark' that led to him setting fire to himself. Her family have always upheld that she never touched him and a witness who had originally affirmed that she did slap him and has since added that it wasn't true that she didn't slap him.

Mohamed decided to protest by the only means he knew and poured petrol on himself, took out his lighter and burnt himself, becoming the hero and initiator of the ‘Jasmin revolution,’ which brought down the President and his family on 14 January 2011 and made him a martyr and hero of the nation.

The tragic story and suicide of Mr. Bouazizi lead to the ousting of Tunisia's president, and that could have been the end of the story.  A small story of and tragedy and triumph for justice in a small African country took place, but the rest of the world kept going along with business as usual.  But that did not happen.  Here is a piece from an article Reuters on why the The Times of the United Kingdom named Mr. Bouaziz their Person of the Year:

Bouazizi' death from his wounds in January prompted protests across Tunisia, forcing autocratic President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country. Soon afterwards, millions took to the streets in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere to protest against repression, corruption, poverty and joblessness.

The uprisings unseated despots in Libya, Egypt and Yemen as well as Tunisia, while Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's writ is disintegrating and other authoritarian rulers in the region are eyeing the tide of public anger with nervousness.

Tunisia has since elected new leaders through peaceful democratic elections.

In an October interview with Reuters, Bouazizi's mother Manoubia urged the new leaders to honor her son's sacrifice by helping poor people like him.

"Nothing would have happened if my son had not reacted against voicelessness and a lack of respect," she said.

"But I hope the people who are going to govern will be able to keep this message in mind and give consideration to all Tunisians, including the poor."

 

Photo from Reuters

Without the death of Mr. Bouazizi, not only would there have not been an uprising in Tunisia, there probably would have been no Tahrir Square, no Arab Spring, no Indignant's protest in Spain, no austerity protest in Greece, no protests on the Kremlin and no Occupy Wall Street.  Without Mr. Bouazizi, both Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gaddafi would probably still be in power, and it is possible that no one in America would be talking about the wealth disparity between the 99% and the 1%.

While I sincerely hope that no one ever imitates the drastic actions that Mr. Bouazizi took, we who care about these protest movements need to realize what he did, why he did it, and pay tribute to him and what has happened since then.  May the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi live on.  And may the movements around the globe that he helped create continue to gain momentum in 2012 and beyond!

MLK, Poverty, and Occupy Wall Street

Picture of Martin Luther King at a march for sanitation workers in Memphis.  Photo comes from San Francisco Bay View website.

Today, nearly everyone from every political background admires King.  But if King were alive today, he probably would have been called a "a left-wing nut", a "socialist", and even "anti-American".  And just like the Occupy Wall Street movement today, King was considered both radical and controversial during his time.

Today, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial had it's long-awaited dedication.  It is only by coincidence that the Occupy Wall Street movement is gradually increasing support across the country, and around the world.  There is no doubt that today, MLK would not only support the movement with his words, but would be right there with the protesters risking arrest.

Indeed, right before he was assassinated, King had helped organize the "Poor People's Campaign", which was focused on economic justice in the United States.  43 years later, the Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting economic justice in a similar manner as the protests King was involved in, but under different circumstances.  Just as Americans all love Martin Luther King now, and realize how right he was, will America look back to the supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 40 years, and realize how right they are?  I can only hope so.

Here is a link to a YouTube video from a few months back by the amazing Tavis Smiley. He discusses the vital need for American politicians to tackle the issue of poverty (he quote King at the beginning of the video).  This was made before the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it does allude to the disgusting fact that so much wealth in America (the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world), is occupied by the richest 1%.  This is one of the main things the Occupy Wall Street protesters are standing up against.

Corporate Whining: As American As Apple Pie

This graphic says it all:

 

 Photo from Mathematiques Noir

Tonight in Georgia . . .

Photo from Fight Back News

A grave injustice has take place. Troy Davis has been put to death by the state of Georgia.  If you don't know about the details of the Troy Davis case, read here.  What it boils down to is that there is too much evidence to suggest that he not only might not be guilty, but that he was probably innocent.

I was going to take this opportunity to write a post about the injustice of the death penalty.  I will another day.  While I have always been opposed to the death penalty, this case has energized me to become more vocal and speak out against the cruel and permanent injustice of this "punishment".  For right now, I am just sad for Troy and all of those involved in this case (including the MacPhail family).

A grave injustice has taken place in Georgia.  May the real killer of Mark Allen MacPhail face justice one day.  May the memory of Troy Davis be the beginning of the end of the death penalty in the United States.

 

Photo from http://www.examiner.com/african-american-art-in-national/savannah-talks-troy-anthony-davis-no-3-the-slain-officer-macphail

This Labor Day, Thank Unions

 

Picture comes from the blog Boiled Over

Today is Labor Day, a day where workers across the country get a well-deserved day off for all of the hard work they have done.  Of course, this doesn't count the millions of Americans work at a fast-food restaurants, major chain businesses, retail stores and other non-emergency sectors of industry that are open today.  This is a pretty unfortunate fact when considers the type of backbreaking work they often do, along with the low wages and lack of benefits they receive. They deserve the day off as much as anyone.  But I digress . . .

What most people don't realize (or forgot if they ever did) is that the history of Labor Day is rooted in the struggles of the American labor movement of the late 19th Century.  Labor Day, at it's core is a celebration of Unions.

"But why should we be grateful to unions," one might ask.  In fact, this is the type of question I get all of the time when I talk about my support of unions to friends and family.  They either see unions as unnecessary, a nuisance for workers and workplaces, or some combination of the two. Let me be the first to admit that there are (and have always been) unions that are either poorly run, fight for the wrong issues, or are just plain corrupt. That doesn't mean that the overwhelming majority of unions are that way.

As for the necessity of unions, it may not seem like unions are relevant given the decline of unions over the last 30 years (which, by the way, can be directly related to the decline of the American middle class).  But just as most individuals don't realize unions are behind the creation of Labor Day, most people don't realize that it was that gave workers so many rights and priveledges that benefit all American's today.  Here is an excerpt from the Big Corporation blog:

Let's get one thing straight...

Employers and Corporations did not feel generous and decide to give you two days off every week to have a social/personal life. (We now call them weekends). Corporations did not just feel like being nice one day and give their employees paid vacations. CEOs didn't get together in a board room and say "Let's give our employees more rights at work" or "Maybe there should be laws to limit our power over an employee".

Virtually ALL the benefits you have at work, whether you work in the public or private sector, all of the benefits and rights you enjoy everyday are there because unions fought hard and long for them against big business who did everything they could to prevent giving you your rights. Many union leaders and members even lost their lives for things we take for granted today.

Still curious how a Union has benefited you?  Take a look at this list (also from the Big Corporation blog), which lists what Unions have fought for, and won, through their activism:

1. Weekends
2. All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
3. Paid Vacation
4. FMLA
5. Sick Leave
6. Social Security
7. Minimum Wage
8. Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
9. 8-Hour Work Day
10. Overtime Pay
11. Child Labor Laws
12. Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
13. 40 Hour Work Week
14. Worker's Compensation (Worker's Comp)
15. Unemployment Insurance
16. Pensions
17. Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
18. Employer Health Care Insurance
19. Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
20. Wrongful Termination Laws
21. Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
22. Whistleblower Protection Laws
23. Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
24. Veteran's Employment and Training Services (VETS)
25. Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
26. Sexual Harassment Laws
27. Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 
28. Holiday Pay
29. Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
30. Privacy Rights
31. Pregnancy and Parental Leave
32. Military Leave
33. The Right to Strike
34. Public Education for Children
35. Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
36. Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

This Labor Day, we as Americans need to be thankful for all of the good that Unions have done.  Unions may have their flaws, but we all need to recognize just how important they are for American workers. And after Labor Day, we need to stand up and fight for the relevancy and existence of Unions (just as they have been doing in Wisconsin).  In addition, we should support efforts for workers all of the country to create their own unions.  It's a tough battle, especially in these times when so many people don't even have a job to begin with; but it's a necessary battle.  Please do not take for granted the rights that American workers have, or they will slowly be lost.  Unless we fight for what is right, American workers will suffer the consequences.

A Video for Sunday

One of the things I have missed posting the most since my hiatus were my Sunday videos.  Allow me to explain why I post videos for Sunday, because I'm not sure I ever have.

 I am an Atheist, but I grew up in a Christian Protestant denomination.  I no longer have a belief in God or the supernatural because, as rational individual, belief in such things does not make sense.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of church growing up.  I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it a little bit.  In addition to a sense of community that church provided, I enjoyed the lessons and stories that I learned, as well as the opportunities for mediation on life that my church provided.  I could never get past the superstitions and a lot of the Christian dogma of Christianity or any religion (hence, me becoming an Atheist).  But I took away so many other life lessons from my church. This included the importance of treating people with love and compassion (even those you may not like), the importance for standing up for the poor and weak, and standing up for what is just and right.  These are values and simple traditions I have tried my best to hold onto, even though I am no longer a person of faith.  Sunday videos are my own attempts to recapture those traditions and lessons of life that I received growing up, but in a more secular (and hopefully, entertaining) fashion.  Sometimes, my videos may deal with helping others.  Sometimes they may deal with issues of social justice.  Sometimes they may deal with the origins of existence and our place as human beings in the world.  Sometimes it may be just a fun video that hopefully gives you something to think about.

This week's video comes from Carl Sagan's series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.  Over the past year, I have grown to be a huge Carl Sagan fan, and am currently in the middle of watching the whole Cosmos series on YouTube.  This particular clip has to do with the evolution of human beings. The special effects are far from spectacular by today's standards, but the video still gives viewers something amazing to ponder.



I am happy that they are making a new Cosmos series, produced by Seth MacFarlane, and hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson (perfect Choice).

Some Final Reminders of MLK

I thought I would share a couple of videos for reflection upon this MLK Day.  The first one is from the Adult Swim show, The Boondocks.  This episode, toying with revisionist history, pretends that MLK was never assassinated, but rather, goes into a coma until the year 2000.  He wakes up to find a very different world.  I will admit that it is a commentary on the modern African-American community (of which I have no authority to speak upon), and it does use the N-Word several times.  Having said that, it is perhaps the smartest, funniest piece of social satire I have ever watched, and well worth 22 minutes of your time to watch.








The second video (found at this link) is a re-airing of this morning's Democracy Now.  The entire episode plays two of Martin Luther King's famous speeches (neither of which are the "I Have A Dream" Speech").  Both Speeches deal with King's stance on controversial issues (at the time).  None the less, they show King's dedication to social justice and standing up for what is right.