Texas seizure of polygamist-sect kids thrown out

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 33 minutes ago

SAN ANGELO, Texas – In a ruling that could torpedo the case against the West Texas polygamist sect, a state appeals court Thursday said authorities had no right to seize more than 440 children in a raid on the splinter group’s compound last month.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the state failed to show the youngsters were in any immediate danger, the only grounds in Texas law for taking children from their parents without court action.

The California marriage decision and basic civics

Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Thursday May 22, 2008 09:16 EDT

That a law invalidated by a court is supported by a large majority is not an argument supporting the conclusion that the court’s decision was wrong. Central to our system of government is the premise that there are laws which even the largest majorities are prohibited from enacting because such laws violate the constitutional rights of minorities. Thus, the percentage of people who support the law in question, and how lengthy and painstaking the process was that led to the law’s enactment, is totally irrelevant in assessing the propriety of a court decision striking down that law on constitutional grounds.

Contrary to Wittes’ extremely confused argument, a court striking down a law supported by large majorities is not antithetical to our system of government. Such a judicial act is central to our system of government. That’s because, strictly speaking, the U.S. is not a “democracy” as much as it a “constitutional republic,” precisely because constitutional guarantees trump democratic majorities. This is all just seventh-grade civics, something that the Brookings scholar and those condemning the California court’s decision on similar grounds seem to have forgotten.

The duty — the central obligation — of judges faithfully applying the law and fulfilling their core duties is to strike down laws that violate the Constitution, without regard to what percentage of the population supports that law, and without regard to whether it would be “better” in some political sense if democratic majorities some day got around to changing their minds about it. It’s perfectly appropriate for, say, marriage equality advocates or political candidates to take into account whether it would be preferable, in some political or strategic sense, to achieve gay marriage incrementally or legislatively, only once there is majority support for it. But that is a completely inappropriate factor for a judge to consider, because the judge’s sole consideration is whether the law is consistent with Constitutional protections.

Constitutional protections are all about minority rights.  Super majorities, Electoral College?  All designed to protect the weak from the mob and the State.

It’s not the system, it’s the people in it.

So I was poking around in one of my boxes of salvage parts today and I ran across an old IBM keyboard.

Not so old because it has one of those PS/2 connectors instead of the older style AT (the main drawback is that people plug their mice into the wrong hole) but old enough that IBM was still making a point about their keyboards and how nice the feel was.

People claim that the IBM Selectric Typewriter had the best keyboard ever.  I know that my Olivetti portable had a real snappy action.  Early on in my computing career I got myself 2 Northgate Omnikey Ultras, THE BEST KEYBOARD EVER, with function keys where God intended them, across the top AND down the side.  Sadly they each need about $50 dollars of repair that is not in my current budget, the last one having gone down a little less than a year ago.

Since then I have suffered with a “Windows” keyboard of the mushiest kind imaginable with innumerable function keys to run your Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.  You have to turn them all off to make it not screw up your whole system.

It worked, but it was like pushing your fingers into squishy memory foam.  I’m quite happy to have snappy keys that push back under my digital control again.

Now with extra appeasement!

Yesterday I ran across the piece that NLinStPaul discusses in Full-Blooded Americans at Atrios and it sent me scurrying to teh Google to find some speeches by Hitler that contained “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Furher”.  As it turns out it is so pervasive a theme of Nazi propaganda that searching on it is kind of hopeless, though I did run across some of Goebbels “Our Furher” speeches (birthday speeches for Hitler) that were evocative but not entirely on point.  Just as well because NL’s essay is much better than mine would have been and I’ll Front Page it tomorrow.

So I went instead with my little celebration of Republican party disarray which continues today with-

Six ways the GOP can save itself

Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Politico

Thu May 15, 5:25 AM ET

Summarized they are-

1. New ideas and an attractive agenda
2. Purge scandal-stained members, swear off boondoggle spending projects and promote strong ethical standards
3. Re-build network of donors, think tanks and activist groups
4. Disassociate from President Bush
5. Fresh, reassuring packaging and new spokespeople
6. Stir up concerns about Democratic patriotism and their commitment to national security

and-

Hagee’s apocalyptic support of Israel

Ben Smith, Politico

Thu May 15, 5:16 AM ET

Hagee’s commitment to Israel, however, is itself controversial: It’s rooted in the belief that the Jewish state will — soon — be the site of Armageddon.

Hagee, who leads the evangelical group Christians United for Israel, is a proponent of U.S. aid and support for Israel, and he is a major ally of Israeli conservatives who reject any “land for peace” formula in dealing with the Palestinians. But Hagee is viewed with distrust by some Jews and Israelis because his brand of Christian Zionism closely links support for Israel to the end of the world and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.

Hagee’s predictions are very clear. Armageddon, the final battle, could begin, he wrote in his 2007 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” “before this book gets published.”

Indeed Troutfishing said today that he had a copy of Hagee’s specially annotated Bible (free for a small “faith donation”) where he lays out all his eschatology.

But I want to talk about appeasement.

How bad is it to be a Republican?

“Really the mistake they have made is to nationalize these elections when the national image is poisonous for Republicans right now,” explained Craig Shirley, a Republican strategist with Shirley Bannister Public Relations. “What they should do is focus on local affairs. When you are sending in big time politicians from Washington and cater to the national media, you are reminding people why they are upset with the Republican Party in the first place.”

…

“This is as bad as I can remember since post Watergate,” said Shirley. “It was so bad in 1974 after Gerald Ford was nominated for Vice President that there was a special election for his congressional district, which had been Republican since the civil war, and it went Democratic… The fact is that these are comparable races. These are all three seats that have been in GOP hands for a long, long time… Ultimately voters want to know what a politician is going to do for them. What has happened with the Republican Party over the last eight years is that some of the consultants have decided it is too hard to define what we stand for so we are just going to paint Democrats as worse than us.”

…

“This is 1994 all over again,” Frank Luntz, a famed Republican communications consultant, told The Huffington Post. “I was there. I saw it firsthand. The Republicans of 2008 are behaving exactly like the Democrats of ’94 and making exactly the same mistakes. It’s pathetic.”

GOP Adviser: This is ’94 In Reverse, We’re Pathetic

Sam Stein, The Huffington Post

May 14, 2008 04:49 PM

“The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006, when we lost 30 seats (and our majority) and came within a couple of percentage points of losing another 15 seats,” Rep. Tom Davis, a moderate Northern Virginia Republican who previously headed the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote in a 20-page memo to colleagues.

GOP cancer: Party could lose 20 more seats

John F. Harris, Josh Kraushaar, Politico

Wed May 14, 9:09 PM ET

“Well, this is the floor,” Davis said, stomping on the concrete beneath him. “And we’re underneath the floor.” Without strong medicine, he said, Republicans will lose 25 seats in November. “We’re the airplane flying into the mountain.”

Agitated? Irritable? Hostile? Aggressive? Impulsive? Restless?

By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Glenn Greenwald has finished reading all 8000 pages the Pentagon has released in the Pentagon Propaganda/”Military Analysts” Scandal.  For the past few days he has been reporting on their content and it is just damning!

For a reminder of just what we’re talking about-

Brian Williams’ "response" to the military analyst story

Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Wednesday April 30, 2008 07:00 EDT

New analysis from Greenwald below.