July 10, 2010, Saturday pot pourri
Item the first: while Clarence Thomas has been one of the most reliable Republican conservative apparatchiks in history, serving as a complete and polar opposite number to the man he replaced, the activist ground-breaking first Black justice, the legendary Thurgood Marshall, this is still the United States of America, and he, and his relatives are still Black. And hence, when his epileptic nephew Derek Thomas got all uppity and suggested he would leave the hospital rather than do what he was told and assume the position in his hospital gown (or was he just being, you know, epileptic?), he got what he deserved in Clarence Thomas's America: his ass punched and tasered by hospital security in New Orleans.. Thomas himself is on his way to New Orleans to look into the matter. Well, good luck Justice Thomas. It's your America: we, including your own relatives, just live in it.
Item the second, fresh from the Obama Administration's much vaunted announcement that it was suing the State of Arizona to prevent implementation of its recent legislation permitting that state's police officers to demand immigration status credentials from those it stops and to stop anyone it suspects of being Latino here illegally, the Grey Lady reports that the very same Obama Administration has been engaged in massive employer audits seeking to purge the employment rolls of illegal immigrant workers. Unlike the less extensive Bush Administration raids of employers which resulted in numerous deportations, the much quieter Obama Administration actions do not; they are much more humanitarian... they result in fines and enforcement actions against the employers, and of course, the much quieter misery of the illegals simply being unable to work at all (and of course, unable to obtain public benefits... perhaps they will then leave on their own, or better yet... die.)
Item the third: Economist James K. Galbraith tells us that "the recovery" ain't never gonna take hold until we do something that the Obama Administration went out of its way not to do when it first took office: restore the rule of law to the financial sector. Let them eat steak, Professor. Truth is no defense here: the business of America is enriching its most dishonest citizens, and that's just going to continue. (And the ever-growing gap between the richest and poorest is the sort of thing that would spawn revolutions in ordinary countries... we in America can take pride in being "special.")
Item the fourth: In other alleged "rule of law" news, yet another federal judge has ordered yet another release of yet another wrongfully held Yemeni Guantanamo detainee, bringing the "score" to something like 37 habeas petitions granted against
14 denied (with one of the 14 the subject of a recent Circuit Court reversal)...
the great Carol Rosenberg tells us it brings the Government's loss rate to 75%.
Item the fifth: it seems that birds, squirrels, insects or rodents of unusual size or something else is nibbling at my zucchini and pepper flowers up on our roof; I'm thinking of just getting some chicken wire and surrounding the damned things, and seeing what happens. I hear you can plant some things that birds, squirrels, etc. don't like... anyone have anything on that?
This has been... Saturday pot pourri.