Columnist.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker opened the gates to hell this month when he ruled that strategists for Proposition 8 -- the 2008 ballot measure, passed by 52 percent of California voters, that limited marriage to a man and a woman -- must release internal campaign documents to measure opponents. Political activists of all stripes beware: Unless this ruling is overturned, the word will be out that sore losers who can't beat you at the ballot box and probably can't beat you in court can file a lawsuit designed to pry away proprietary information that they later can use to embarrass you.
If you want to understand why some conservatives were gleeful over Chicago's fourth-place finish in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games -- after President Obama and the first lady flew to Copenhagen to pitch the American city to the International Olympic Committee -- consider this quote in the New York Times from Anita DeFrantz, an IOC member from the United States: "I hate the fact that these elegant people were here, and then our country got treated that way."
It's been a long, strange trip since Gavin Newsom became San Francisco's mayor. When he first ran for City Hall's top job, Newsom led with a campaign to do something about the city's homeless population. Well, the homeless are still here, but Newsom has moved on to a new target -- he is running to be the next governor of California by picking on the personal habits of people who for the most part work hard and pay taxes. Example: Ask some out-of-towners to walk Market Street from the Ferry Building to City Hall. They'll tell you how beautiful San Francisco is, but it's too bad that the farther they traveled from the waterfront, the grungier, smellier and scarier Ess Eff's Main Street became. The problem? Too many panhandlers and crazy people living on the streets. Halfway through the walk, the visitors were hugging their purses and hesitating before looking passers-by in the eye. It's simply not a sunny walking experience when you're trying to dodge people who want to scam you, hit you up for money so they can self-medicate or peddle the kind of sex that you suspect will require penicillin.
On Tuesday, Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan immigrant who was a teenager in Queens during the Sept. 11 attacks, pleaded not guilty to federal terrorism conspiracy charges in New York. This is a scary story. Police stopped and searched Zazi's rented car on the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 10, as the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks loomed and President Obama was about to join world leaders at a U.N. confab. According to the U.S. attorney's office, Zazi flew to Pakistan in August 2008 to receive bomb-making instructions, returned to use the Internet and nine pages of handwritten bomb-making notes he had e-mailed himself from Pakistan to purchase and mix triacetone triperoxide (TATP) -- the explosive used in the 2005 London transit bombings that killed 52 commuters.
Neither is Chattanooga
Democrats seem to have shifted their thinking on a number of issues since President Obama took the oath of office. Figure some Dems have more faith in government with a like-minded man at the helm, and besides, circumstances have changed. But also figure that some Democrats were just looking for sore spots -- and their anti-Bush rhetoric was based not on principle, but raw opportunism. When Obama picked Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, the left applauded because they liked the contrast with President George W. Bush. Shinseki was their hero because he had told Congress that the Bush administration should send "several hundred thousand" U.S. troops to Iraq in 2003. Bush, Democrats used to argue, should have listened to the generals -- by which they meant Shinseki, not the other generals who suggested lower troop numbers -- and put smart military strategy before politics. Now there is a push among top military personnel to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the 68,000 planned by the end of the year. Funny. You don't hear many Democrats demanding now that Obama put aside politics and give top brass the extra troops they say they need to succeed in Afghanistan.
I would not go see the film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" because I found more cruelty than humor in deliberately exposing unwitting civilians to the easy ridicule of smug sophomores. Now the right has its own Borat-style entertainment. Equipped with a video camera, conservative activists James O'Keefe, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, sought the answer to this question: "What if a 'prostitute' and her alleged law school boyfriend walk into ACORN seeking housing for an underage brothel to fund his future congressional campaign?" The answer, they discovered, was that some of the folks who work at ACORN (the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were overly adept at looking the other way -- even after O'Keefe and Giles told them that Salvadoran girls as young as 12 would be working as prostitutes in their brothel.
Will the sex scandal of former GOP Assemblyman Mike Duvall make a difference for the California GOP? In that Duvall -- now known as Spanky -- had the good sense to resign 15 hours into the scandal, the answer would be: No. Orange County Republicans are like weeds. Cut off one and another will grow in its place. With any luck, Duvall's replacement will respect the position and not treat the Capitol like a frat house. True, Duvall comes across as another Republican family-values hypocrite -- but that's only because he proved to be one. The beefy lawmaker bragged in graphic detail before what he thought was a turned-off Capitol microphone about two affairs -- one with a Sacramento lobbyist with business before the energy committee on which he was vice chairman. Insiders, who wouldn't blink at the news of a lawmaker straying outside his marriage vows, were left dumbstruck at the Duvall's barrier-breaking stupidity.
Toward the end of his speech on health care Wednesday night, President Obama said that he had been thinking a lot about the phrase "the character of our country." Too bad the president's speech had all the character of a free lunch. Obama argued for the moral imperative of providing quality health care for all Americans -- but it's not such a moral imperative that most people should have to pay for it. In fact, he promised a load of goodies, starting with access to health care for America's 47 million-plus uninsured. House Bill 3200 would provide subsidies for families of four making up to $88,000. It also mandates that insurers would have to cover not only individuals with pre-existing conditions, but also would have to end co-payments for routine checkups and preventive care.
One of the (many) irritating things about being a Republican in the liberal Bay Area is the certainty that if there is a story out there that makes conservatives look stupid -- like the protests against President Obama's Tuesday speech to America's students -- then you know that wherever you go, folks are going to ask you about that particular flap. What do you think about Obama's speech to students? Or what about those nutty town hallers? Or what about those nasty people who claim Obama wasn't born in Hawaii? I'm supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to prove that, unlike "the mob," I'm a reasonable conservative, a good conservative -- perhaps even worthy to be included at the table when Bay Area luminaries look askance at middle America. All I have to do is behave myself and confirm their belief that everything would be right in the world, were it not for the right's great unwashed.
"You Don't Know Jack" is the perfect title for the upcoming HBO biopic starring Al Pacino as Death Doc Jack Kevorkian -- because it is clear that many of Kevorkian's fawning interviewers don't know much about Jack. Fox News' Neil Cavuto, for example, last week introduced Kevorkian as a "Michigan physician who claims to have assisted in the suicides of at least 130 terminally ill people from 1990 to 1998." Physician? Not the kind who treats patients. Kevorkian was a pathologist until his medical license was yanked in 1991. In 1999, a Michigan jury convicted him of second-degree murder after he gave a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
As he campaigned for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama argued that Afghanistan should become "the central front in the battle against terrorism." Obama has delivered on that issue. U.S. troop levels have more than doubled since the beginning of a troop buildup first begun under President George W. Bush. The price for that promise is not cheap. For the moment, more troops mean more combat. As Institute for the Study of War President Kimberly Kagan noted at a Brookings Institute event last month, "As those new troops come in, as we have seen, violence will go up. They did so in Iraq. They will do so in Afghanistan because we are going into areas that the enemy effectively has controlled. So we mustn't conflate or confuse a rise in violence with success or failure."
Since 1999, when he was placed under California parole supervision for a 1976 rape in Nevada, Phillip Garrido, 58, was subject to drug testing, required to wear a GPS device and subject to twice-monthly visits by his state parole officer. In 2006, a neighbor called 9-1-1 to report that children were living in Garrido's backyard in squalor, but the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department failed to search the registered sex offender's premises. Last month, UC Berkeley Police Officer Allison Jacobs became suspicious of Garrido, figured out that he was a registered sex offender who was accompanied by two adolescent girls, and contacted Garrido's parole officer. Jacobs told reporters that when she mentioned the girls, whom Garrido said were his daughters, the parole officer responded, "Garrido doesn't have any daughters."
When he served as deputy attorney general, now Attorney General Eric Holder gave a "neutral leaning positive" recommendation that led to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of gazillionaire fugitive Marc Rich, who was on the lam in Switzerland hiding from federal charges of fraud, evading more than $48 million in taxes, racketeering and trading oil with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Holder also had a role in the 1999 Clinton pardons of 16 Puerto Rico independence terrorists -- members of the bomb-happy FALN or the splinter group Los Macheteros -- who had been convicted on such charges as bank robbery, possession of explosives and participating in a seditious conspiracy -- even though none of the 16 had applied for clemency. As the Los Angeles Times reported, two of the 16 refused to accept the pardon -- as it required them to renounce violence -- while another later was killed in a shootout with federal agents.
Earlier this month, three federal judges -- Stephen Reinhardt, Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson -- ordered the release of more than 40,000 of California's 160,000 inmates. No lie: They claimed that releasing one-quarter of state inmates would not have "a meaningful adverse impact on public safety." They also wrote, "Evidence shows that mentally ill inmates who are released do not, by virtue of their mental illness, present any higher risk than other released inmates." These three must live in an alternate universe -- one where a quarter of California inmates, many of them mentally ill, can be freed and no one gets hurt in a meaningful way.
When convicted Pan Am Flight 103 killer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi landed to a hero's welcome in Libya last week, there was no question about it: Our Betters in Europe got rolled. They were undone by the vainglory of Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who authorized Megrahi's "compassionate" early release for terminal prostate cancer. MacAskill explained: Compassion means "remaining true to our values as a people. No matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated." Sure, there's a place for justice -- but smugness first.
How do you run for California's top political offices when you often have failed to vote yourself and have no political experience? Some big names in the GOP have rallied behind former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as she eyes a run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as she prepares to run for governor. They see attractive candidates with high name identification, impressive personal resumes and deep pockets.
At a recent Colorado town hall, University of Colorado at Boulder student Zach Lahn asked President Obama how private insurers could be expected to compete with a public health care plan. Lahn, 23, also told Obama, "I'd love to have a debate just all out, anytime, Oxford-style, if you'd like" on health care. Obama answered that UPS and FedEx are a doing a lot better than the Post Office. (If I were Obama, I wouldn't mention the post office while touting public health care.) Then the president observed, "It's good to see a young person who's very engaged and confident challenging the president to an Oxford-style debate." And: "I like that. You got to have a little chutzpah, you know."
When Barack Obama was 11, his mother and grandmother took him and his half-sister Maya on the most American of family vacations -- a road trip that included Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Last week, Obama passed on that gift as he took his wife, daughters Malia and Sasha -- as well as Maya and her family -- on a four-day trip to two of America's most breathtaking national parks.
The latest infamous incident of Major Airline Tarmac Dysfunction occurred in Minnesota last weekend when a severe storm curtailed Continental ExpressJet Flight 2816. The flight, bound from Houston to Minneapolis-St. Paul, was redirected to Rochester, Minn., and landed around midnight. Then, because some person or persons made an unconscionably stupid call, the airline did not release the 47 passengers until 6 a.m.
