About Me

Name:DD
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Blog Roll

 

UC Davis Law School: Fair and Balanced

Posted by DD on Friday, August 10, 2007 10:16:56 AM
Recently, three immigration law professors from UC Davis law school were appointed to Sen. Obama's Presidential Campaign's immigration policy group. (story)  Two of the professors, Professor Kevin Johnson and Professor Bill Hing, have recently written books on immigration.  Professor Johnson's newest, "Opening the Floodgates," proposes that we have open borders and suggests that his proposal would be consistent with protecting America from terrorism according to its pre-release summary on Amazon.  The foreword to Professor Hing's book was written by Senator Edward Kennedy.  Together, they have a blog about immigration issues.  On this blog they cite stories and articles.  One post, for example, is an open letter by the founder of the Guerrero Azteca Project where he refers to the DREAM Act as a "covert draft"  (The DREAM Act being a bill that even Sen. Boxer calls "non-controversial.")  Some posts are simply Service Employees International Union (SEIU) press releases reproduced verbatim preceded by a lead-in sentence.

The fact that these guys apparently support unusual views is fine, even if misguided.  But if you're to the left of Sen. Boxer on issues, your "immigration blog" is basically a glorified wire service for the SEIU, and you don't just support immigration, you oppose borders; I imagine most Americans would call you out of the mainstream.  Yet, not far enough out of the mainstream, apparently, to teach a majority of the immigration law classes at UC Davis law school.  Professors should obviously be allowed to have whatever views they want on controversial issues.  Certainly, this includes views that many would consider extreme.  But if you already have a couple of these professors on a single side of an issue, you would think UC Davis would get a professor or two with equally radical ideas on the other side of the spectrum; like say, not getting rid of our international borders.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Predatory Lenders and Predatory Senators

Posted by DD on Friday, July 27, 2007 8:48:57 PM
 I was watching Road to the White House on C-SPAN today (it was an old one that aired on 7/22) and I saw John Edwards on his Poverty Tour in Cleveland, Ohio.  He was at a local resident's house listening to the problems she had with her home loan payments.  I posted an interesting part of the conversation on YouTube. 

Background: The lady received a letter telling her that her house was going to be foreclosed. When Sen. Edwards asks what the basis of the foreclosure was, she gives two possible reasons. I bet you can guess which is the right one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9AlxUV1pnI

What really bugs me about all this is at the end of the conversation, after the YouTube clip ends, Sen. Edwards says, "So, sounds like they were just looking for the opportunity to take advantage of you."  Her lender may very well be a predatory lender who violated all kinds of laws, but Sen. Edwards doesn't know this.  The only facts that were presented to him were that a home loan lender was going to foreclose on a lady's house because she wasn't paying rent.  If not paying rent doesn't justify a foreclosure, I don't know what does.  It's both disingenuous and unsurprising that Sen. Edwards would assume that the company was trying to take advantage of her when he had no reason to beileve it had. Though I guess it makes for a better photo op.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

A Pathetic Precedent

Posted by DD on Monday, July 09, 2007 1:40:15 AM
In response to the Supreme Court's ruling on School Districts using race to select students, Senator Feinstein put out a press release. In it she says:

"'As Justice Breyer noted today, the Robert’s decision 'undermines Brown [v. Board of Education]’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education.'   Sadly, this is just one more example of a Court that is willing to overturn precedent in order to change the law."

When Democrats like a Supreme Court decision, they praise the "solid reasoning" and "progressive worldview" it embodies.  When Democrats disagree with a decision but can't articulate a convincing argument for why you should too, they fall back on precedent.  Democrats don't have a principled loyalty to precedent, it's more of a love-hate relationship that changes from decision to decision.  When changing Supreme Court precedent is in their interest (e.g. Roe), they are all for it and stare decisis is an afterthought, if that.  But when changing precedent means that children won't have to be bussed past the two schools nearest their home so that there can be one more white kid at a school forty minutes away, Democrats are suddenly ardent supporters of precedent.

In Senator Feinstein's second sentence quoted above, she doesn't challenge the substance of the decision with a well reasoned critique, but instead decries the Court's willingness to "overturn precedent in order to change the law."  In the previous sentence she quotes Justice Breyer in arguing that the recent decision undermines the Brown v. Board of Education precedent.  Ironically, the Brown decision itself was a precedent-shattering decision, ending decades of legal segregation.  Sometimes the best decisions consider precedent and then ultimately decide that it is either untenable, or as in this case, unconstitutional.  Thank God the Brown court was willing to overturn precedent in order to change the law.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Typical

Posted by DD on Friday, June 29, 2007 1:17:41 AM
On her website Sen. Feinstein posted a Press Release outlining her reaction to the immigration bill's defeat.  In it she said that "very few people understood what the bill actually did." The truth is exactly the opposite: the bill failed because too many people understood what the bill actually did.  It wasn't voter ignorance or apathy that killed the bill, it was the intensity of the opposition that ultimately defeated this bill. In fact, constituent calls were so numerous that they might have shut down the Senate switch board.  In any event, this oppositoin to this bill was created and motivated by substantive flaws in the bill, not ignorance of what the bill did.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

I hate hate crimes legislation, is that a crime?

Posted by DD on Friday, June 15, 2007 12:03:10 AM
If you're asking the same question, write a letter to your Congressman like the one I wrote to mine:

The Honorable _____
United States Representative
Address

Dear Representative _______,

I write to you to today as a constituent residing in _____. I have a couple of questions for you or your staff regarding H.R. 1592, a bill you [co-sponsored / support] with Rep. John Conyers Jr. and others.

H.R. 1592, as you are already well aware, deals with hate crimes. It provides a mechanism for local jurisdictions to apply for federal grant money to combat hate crimes and amends Title 18 Chapter 13 Section 249 of the United States Code.

As I understand hate crimes as defined by your bill, they differ from their underlying, "non-hate" crime only in that hate crimes involve a specific type of motive, namely hatred of an enumerated group of which the victim is a member. An example of a hate crime would be kidnapping someone because of their race. But since the general illegality of kidnapping – before any hate crime legislation existed – already included racially-based kidnappings, why do we need hate crimes legislation? Put another way, the general prohibition against kidnapping would already equally apply to both the racially-motivated kidnapper and the kidnapper motivated by ransom money, even without a hate crime law.

Oftentimes, hate crimes statutes carry harsher punishments than the general statutes criminalizing the underlying offense. Meaning someone who commits a crime motivated by “hate” as defined by the hate crime statute would be punished more severely than someone who commits the same crime for different reasons. Why should the person who murders for money be punished less severely than the sexist murderer? I understand why both deserve severe punishment, but I don’t understand why they should have different punishments.

I would love to hear from you or your staff regarding my concerns about H.R. 1592 and hate crimes legislation generally. I can be contacted at the return address on this envelope. Thank you for your time and for your service to our country.

Sincerely,

/s/

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Let's be consistent with our euphemisms

Posted by DD on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 6:55:39 PM
Many media organizations in radio, print and broadcast have banned the use of the term "illegal alien" in their converage. Some have even officially codified these types of policies in their style manuals.  Using the term "undocumented workers" seems the be the hippest way to refer to illegal immigrants nowadays (as if the lack of certain pieces of paper is the most noteworthy identifying characteristic of illegal aliens - not the fact that they are, by definition, lawbreakers). I wonder if we can get to these same organizations to start saying "President Bush's uncodumented wiretapping program..."
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Partisan is not a four-letter word

Posted by DD on Sunday, May 27, 2007 4:47:29 AM
 When confronted with charges of partisanship, many elected officials run for cover (a.k.a. canned responses about the virtues of "working across the aisle" followed by a proud reference to the "broad bipartisan support" their latest Sense of the Senate resolution received).

Though it has taken on a new meaning in today's political landscape, partisanship, I believe, is best defined as adherence to a consistent, overarching political philosophy and taking positions on issues based on the best solutions that result from a practical application of that philosophy to problems.  One of Reagan's basic assumptions he always brought to the proverbial drawing board was that, in most cases, private citizens or  privately owned companies do things better, faster and more efficiently than government.  Applying that philosophy to taxes, for example, produces a simple solution: let people keep more of their own money.

Admittedly, partisanship carried too far would lead to absurd results (e.g. trying to eliminate taxes altogether).  But this is not usually the context in which the partisanship accusation is lobbed at public figures.  For example, the New York Times recently ran an opinion piece decrying the practice of allowing a candidate's political philosophy to influence decisions regarding the promotion and/or hiring of U.S. Attorneys.  The author does not explain why this is a bad thing, presumably hoping that his readers will assume partisanship in the hiring process for any government official is automatically a no-no. Regrettably, most of the American public probably does make this premature conclusion.  However, the U.S. Attorney position is a great example of when partisanship is not only permissible, but desirable.

In an ideal world, prosecutors' offices would have the resources necessary to prosecute all crimes with equal vigor.  In the real world, U.S. Attorneys must prioritize and exercise prosecutorial discretion in determining what violations of the law will be prosecuted and which will not.  This is possibly one of the most value-laden processes performed in the entire federal government, and it is done by an unelected official. Surely a certain degree of insulation from political pressure is necessary for the proper functioning of a prosecutor's office.  However, like judges (for whom political independence is arguably even more important), prosecutors are appointed by people who are subject to political pressure because in a representative democracy, anyone with substantial power exercising discretionary, value-laden authority must be subject in some way, however attenuated, to the will of the people. The fact of the matter is, the only way you and I can influence who is choosing which federal crimes are prosecuted in our neighborhoods is to vote for the President.  Since Presidential candidates don't explicitly identify every prosecutor they would appoint if they were elected, we as voters must rely on the President's ideology and party affiliation as a reasonable indicator of the type of prosecutors they would appoint.  The President and Attorney General, in turn, must rely on the ideology and political philosophy of potential candidates in the hiring process for U.S. Attorneys as predictors of the type of prosecutor they would be.

Furthermore, if a President or his Attorney General were not allowed to take into account ideological considerations, voters would have no recourse in the event a prosecutor were to have different priorities than the general public.

Partisanship in the hiring of U.S. Attorneys is a good thing, and I imagine many of those who disagree will have a change of heart should a Democrat win in '08.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Senator Feinstein: fluent in double-speak

Posted by DD on Sunday, May 27, 2007 4:45:02 AM
Earlier this month Senator Feinstein sent a letter to Senator McConnel asking for his help in passing her Electronic Filing bill. According to the letter, a McConnell spokesperson said that a roadblock put up by an anonymous Republican Senator was used to give Senators more time to propose amendments.  In response, Senator Feinstein said in the letter:

"If those amendments, like this bill, have broad bipartisan support and no one opposes them on the merits, we may be able to reach agreement to have them considered.  If, on the other hand, they are controversial proposals and would threaten the ultimate enactment of this bill, I would ask that you allow the Rules Committee to consider them in the normal course and permit this bill to go through without amendment."

Apparently, Senator Feinstein believes that controversial amendments to important bills should be offered as separate legislation so as to not delay the bills they would amend.

Of course, there is a caveat the Senator doesn't mention in the letter. This rule only seems to apply to legislation she drafted.  When a controversial amendment was proposed to the Fiscal Year 2007 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill establishing a timeline for troop withdrawal, Senator Feinstein supported it. She gave her support in spite of the President's promise of a veto were the amendment to be passed. This is exactly the type of amendment Feinstein said should be "consider[ed] in the normal course." The amendment was unqeustionably controversial and - considering the President's explicit veto promise - threatened the ultimate enactment of the bill.  Senator Feinstein offered no reason why her belief that controversial amendments should not be offered in the case of her Electronic Filing bill but not with the Appropriations bill.  There are no readily apparent reason to distinguish the two with respect to her views on appropriate amendments.  To the contrary, the Appropriations bill involves vastly more important subject-matter, suggesting that, if anything, the controversial amendment she supported was more counter-productive than any modifying an electronic filing bill.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive
« Previous1Next »