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Thursday, June 28, 2007
Immigration; race; schools; intown life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Quote of the week — this from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” End of story. Or it should be. But won’t. Despite Thursday’s 5-4 decision striking down race-based school assignment in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, this is but another small step on the journey to the destination Roberts defines. Creative school administrators, convinced of their moral imperative to find just the right “Kodak diversity” mix, will be back.
• Secure the borders, build credibility and return to immigration after President Bush leaves office. U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) nailed it. “Americans feel they are losing their country … to a government that has seemed to not have the competence or the ability to carry out the things that it says it will do.” (U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, incidentally, won re-election this week with his immigration votes.)
• A transplant from Florida is said to have purchased a Peachtree Street loft because he was “pleased by the growing urban sophistication of the intown areas.” I can’t crack that code, but apparently it’s something that stops at the river.
I suppose it is true, though. Years ago, most of the gentlemen consuming wine in the urban alleys were stuck on MD 20/20. Now their palates enjoy Thunderbird, Wild Irish Rose and Night Train Express, too. Very sophisticated.
• These are “Profiles in Courage” days for Georgia’s Attorney General Thurbert Baker, who’s been given the bum’s rush to ignore the law as written in the Genarlow Wilson case. If a fraction of the energy and attention devoted to this case had been spent promoting marriage and responsible fatherhood, untold millions of young men might be spared his plight.
• If your 45-foot wind turbine is so unattractive that it diminishes the value of my property next door, that’s taking — and the neighbors are due either compensation or removal of the offending object. A little neighborhood spat develops among liberals in Grant Park over whether one should be sensibly “green” or fanatically “green.”
• Unions, unsuccessful in the workplace, turn to Congress. Legislation that would allow union representation when 50 percent of a work force signed cards, failed in the Senate, 51-48. Sixty votes were needed to move the bill, which would have eliminated the secret ballot in organizing elections. Chambliss and Sen. Johnny Isakson voted right. All six Georgia Democrats in the House signed on with the union bosses as co-sponsors.
• I don’t know which is cuter: Emory students planting a “Sustainable Food Initiative Education Garden Project” or intowners paying $145 for their little rain barrels to keep alive squash that can be purchased at the supermarket for a dollar a pound or less.
Country boys dress up in camouflage to go to the Piggly-Wiggly. City boys boot up and trap rainwater and plant sustainable food initiatives. All to demonstrate our incredible survival skills. Me, I’m still hoarding freeze-dried bananas — and don’t dare try to take them. I’ve got camos and I know how to use them.
• Holy cow. A questioner asked AJC Q&A researcher Sharon Gaus whatever happened to Tom Stimus, the Forsyth Ford dealer who blanketed TV with commercials years ago. She details a litany of misfortune: bankruptcy, criminal charges later dropped, divorce. She concludes with this further evidence of the poor man’s fate: “and he now lives in Ohio.” Ouch. Surely not Cleveland.
• Cobb School Superintendent Fred Sanderson wants to spend $4.4 million to equip seven schools with the latest in electronic equipment, described as interactive electronic whiteboards, electromagnetic digital pads, high-tech speakers, student response systems, etc. For those who came along before the urban area gained its sophistication, those would be chalkboards, notepads, microphones and kids raising their hands.
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Paris is free! And rehabilitated, too. Oh, joy.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even before the criminal justice system’s most joyous news of the week was emoted from CNN’s Larry King show — the revelation that a freed Paris Hilton has grown from a “traumatic” period of incarceration — there was other good news on the legal front.
It was not, mind you, on the order of Hilton’s confirmation of the conservative belief that prison is usually good for the individual and for society at large — either by offering an opportunity for rehabilitation or, failing that, ridding the free world, however briefly, of a miscreant whose conduct poses a danger to the rest of us. (That is one of the reasons, too, that I am more reassured than alarmed by the other news Wednesday that Georgia’s prison population is the third fastest growing in the country, at 8.1 percent last year. It’s attributed to stricter sentencing, tougher parole board policies and a continuing meth problem.)
Paris is a digression, however. Yes, conservatives are pleased that, as she says, “I took the time to learn about myself. I have a new outlook on life.”
But the more important good news came earlier in the week from the U.S. Supreme Court on three cases:
Schools may prohibit student speech that can reasonably be interpreted to promote drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 5-4 ruling. A student in Juneau, Alaska, unfurled a 14-foot-long banner with a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” message. The principal interpreted it as a message advocating drug use and suspended the student, who contended he thought the message nonsensical and had no idea what it meant. Roberts said the principal’s interpretation was “plainly a reasonable one.” The student, incidentally, pleaded guilty to selling marijuana at a Texas college two years later, the Associated Press reports.
In another 5-4 decision, the court ruled that 8 agnostics and athiests hadn’t a prayer of winning their suit objecting to efforts by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to encourage religious charities to apply for federal grants. The group filing the suit “set out a parade of horribles that they claim could occur” unless the court stopped the faith-based initiative, wrote Justice Samuel Alito. “Of course, none of these things has happened.” If they appeared, Congress could act.
In the third, a 5-4 court agreed with an appeals court ruling that Wisconsin Right to Life should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections that asked voters to contact the state’s two senators and urge them not to filibuster President Bush’s judicial nominees. Democrat Russ Feingold, who co-authored the campaign finance law, was up for reelection in 2004.
Three justices, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, would have used the case to overturn a 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the law, which imposes restrictions on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections. The three should have prevailed, because it is an incumbency-protection restriction on free speech, but Roberts and Alito granted only that the Wisconsin group’s ads were not the equivalent of explicit campaign ads and, therefore, weren’t covered by the 2003 decision.
The U.S. Supreme Court got its three right. But the case — other than Paris Hilton’s — that prompted the most national attention and emotion this week involved a lawyer who is an administrative law judge and the mom-and-pop dry cleaners he’d sued for $54 million over a missing pair of suit pants. Most everything despicable about litigation abuse was contained in the lawsuit filed in Washington by Roy L. Pearson against Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung. owners of Custom Cleaners. Pearson sued for $54 million after the Chungs lost a pair of blue-and-marooon suit pants.
A judge threw out the lawsuit and ordered Pearson to pay the Chung’s court costs, which amount to just over $1,000. Justice will be done when the judge also rules that Pearson must pay the Chung’s legal fees and tosses in a few extra bucks for their suffering as well.
4-for-4. Not a bad day’s work. And yes, Paris is free and rehabilitated. Life’s good.
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