Back on the treadmill and the ankle seems fine. Did four miles, running until my left hamstring, close to the knee started to feel tight. Time: 35:45 (listening to Lucinda Williams’ West).
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The Bush Supreme Court — as I mentioned in a short post yesterday — is shaping up as a dangerous group of mostly men intent on reversing the civil and human rights advances gained through the hard work and effort of people like Thurgood Marshall and martin Luther King Jr.
The court yesterday offered a decision in two school integration cases, decisions that The New York Times called “a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.”
Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.
Yesterday, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated.
The LA Times echoed its New York counterpart, saying the decision “the court has dishonored its spirit.”
There are a number of troubling aspects to this ruling, including the way it foreshadows what is likely to come from this regressive court, as the NY Times points out:
Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for “federalism,” or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., programs. So did their supposed opposition to “judicial activism.” This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.
So, it is likely that Brown will not be the only precedent at which the conservative majority will take aim, though they will use the language of the precedent to create the impression they are respecting it.
So, perhaps the best thing we can do is to follow Eugene Robinson‘s suggestion:
We need to realize that for the foreseeable future any progress our increasingly diverse country makes toward fairness and equality will come in spite of the nation’s highest court, not because of it.
The court, he said, “does not consider promoting racial diversity in the nation’s public schools to be a particularly worthy goal.” But, so long as President George W. Bush or someone who shares his ideology is allowed to pack the courts — both the Supreme Court and the lower courts — these are the kind of decisions we can expect.
So, as the Baltimore Sun editorialized today:
(A)nyone who thinks that presidential elections only count for four years or that Supreme Court appointments don’t matter much should pay closer attention as the Roberts’ court, with its tendency to cut back on established minority rights, comes into its own.
The only answer is to organize and vote.
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Anyone who still thinks there is no difference between the two parties at the national level need only read this short overview of President George W. Bush’s choice as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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This just in (well, it is probably a week old or so, but hey): Channel Surfing ranks 17th among the state’s most influential political blogs, according to BlogNews.com. Who knew?
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You know the media is liberal when interviewers like Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America go after Michael Moore, questioning his contentions about media coverage in the run-up to the Iraq War, but allow Ann Coulter to run at the mouth unimpeded.
Consider this comment from Moore (from Crooks and Liars):
“My point is that had ABC News, NBC News, CBS News been more aggressive in confronting the government with what they were telling us back in 2003 about Iraq, you might have prevented this war. You, this network, the other networks,” Moore said. “Those 3,500 soldiers that are dead today may not have had to die had our news media done its job. … My point is that the media didn’t ask the questions.”
Moore’s point was pretty simple. The major news media didn’t approach their jobs with the proper level of skepticism. Was he impolitick about it? Perhaps. Was he wrong. Of course not.
But that did not stop Cuomo from going on the attack:
The simple fact is that the major media — both broadcast and print — allowed the Bush administration to control the debate, failing to question their assertions about Iraq’s weapons programs or links to terrorists. Basically, they failed us.
As for the Coulter appearance, which came about a week later, read this (from Raw Story — scroll to the bottom for video):
At the start of her appearance on Monday’s Good Morning America, Coulter briefly spoke about having been denounced by all three top Republican candidates over the Edwards slur, claiming that it didn’t show a “shift to the tolerant among the GOP,” since she was “denounced all over” for her words. The Godless author then blasted the media for focusing on statements by her, and not criticizing others when they make controversial statements such as the HBO talk show host and comic Bill Maher.
“Though, about the same time, Bill Maher said…and, by the way, I did not call John Edwards the ‘f-word,’ I said I couldn’t talk about him because you go into rehab for using that word,” Coulter said.
Good Morning America News Anchor Christoper Cuomo, a former political policy analyst for Fox News Channel, interrupted, “You said you were joking.”
“I wouldn’t insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards,” Coulter continued, “that would be mean. But about the same time, Bill Maher was not joking when he said he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack.”
Coulter then added, “So I’ve learned my lesson, if I’m gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he’d been killed in a terrorist assassination plot,” but Cuomo had no reaction to Coulter’s latest “threat.”
So, just to be clear, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” about as mainstream a news-magazine show as you can find, challenges Michael Moore when he criticizes prewar reporting, but allows Ann Coulter to blather on.
So what exactly is liberal about our media establishment, anyway?blogger Eric Alterman: “Waht liberal media?
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