I can’t wait to hear the Eagles scream

Virginia Tech battles Boston College tonight on ESPN. I’ll watch from my sofa because I don’t have tickets, but if I did, I’d invoke this logic:

Some colleges have been reluctant to play on Thursday night because administrators feel the midweek games put too much of a burden on fans who travel from far away to attend the games. There are a limited number of hotel rooms in Blacksburg, and many fans have to take Friday off work.

“The special thing about it is it’s a prime-time game,” guard Will Montgomery said. “You get so many vacation days, so you might as well use one on this game. It’s as good of a reason as any.”
…

“I think with our fans, taking that next day off is the least of their worries,” Beamer said. “They’re loyal fans, and they’ll be ready for Thursday night.”

The forecast is for cold, clear skies. There are fans who would let an “inconvenience” like that stop them from going, but Hokies aren’t like that. I know this for a fact because even my grandmother stood in Lane Stadium for more than three hours during this:

Hokies fans proved how rabid and loyal they were when Virginia Tech beat Texas A&M, 35-19, on a Thursday night in September 2003. With Hurricane Isabel knocking out electricity to more than 1 million people in Virginia, a crowd of 65,115 still showed up at Lane Stadium and withstood a downpour and 37-mph winds. “The atmosphere is just wild and crazy on Thursday nights,” Lewis said. “It’s hard for the quarterback to make audibles and calls. You’ll see him walk up to the line and get in everybody’s ears because they can’t hear him. I think the crowd makes it a bigger game. That’s why Thursday night games are so big here because the stadium gets so loud.”

Game on.

Can Children’s Services invoke Eminent Domain?

You’re going to be shocked, but I have an opinion on this story:

A Roman Catholic high school has ordered its students to remove their online diaries from the Internet, citing a threat from cyberpredators.

Students at Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta appear to be heeding a directive from the principal, the Rev. Kieran McHugh.
…

Officials with the Diocese of Paterson say the directive is a matter of safety, not censorship. No one has been disciplined yet, said Marianna Thompson, a diocesan spokeswoman.

It’s a private school, so no civil rights are being abused. That doesn’t make it right. It’s not even the most appropriate response a learning institution could pursue. Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation offered this, which is too logical and obvious for the school, I suppose:

“But this is the first time we’ve heard of such an overreaction,” he said. “It would be better if they taught students what they should and shouldn’t do online rather than take away the primary communication tool of their generation.”

The real issue for me in this is the likely reason the school believes this is within its bounds. The parents who enroll their kids in Pope John XXIII Regional High School probably signed something giving the school the ability to make this decision for their children. But why do parents feel this is good parenting? Better to learn early that parents own children.

This is a high school, where the “kids” are within a few years of adulthood. Sooner rather than later they’ll be making decisions on their own, involving themselves in relationships and activities with the same potential consequences that the school aims to protect with this policy. Shielding them from the world before turning them loose is an abdication of a basic purpose of education. Parents signing this away is worse.

I’d say I’m surprised, but I’ve written enough about that concept to know that it shocks only the foolish.

When Constitutional Rights Become Whimsical Privileges

There is a time for law-and-order government, but it should be within the law. It’s shameful that the case of Jose Padilla has gotten this far:

“Dirty bomb” suspect Jose Padilla has asked the Supreme Court to limit the government’s power to hold him and other U.S. terror suspects indefinitely and without charges.

The case of Padilla, who has been in custody more than three years, presents a major test of the Bush administration’s wartime authority. The former gang member is accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive device.

Justices refused on a 5-4 vote last year to resolve Padilla’s rights, ruling that he contested his detention in the wrong court. Donna Newman of New York, one of Padilla’s attorneys, said the new case, which was being processed at the court Thursday, asks when and for how long the government can jail people in military prisons.

“Their position is not only can we do it, we can do it forever. In my opinion, that’s very problematic and something we should all be very concerned about,” she said.

Maybe he’s guilty, maybe not, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s an American citizen being jailed without charges. Three years is not a reasonable length of time to hold someone. If the government can’t figure out what he might have done, all involved are incompetent. If they’ve formed an opinion, but don’t feel obligated to share that with anyone, Padilla included, because they believe national security is more important than the Constitution, they don’t believe in the Constitution. They might as well declare the Constitution null and void. The Supreme Court is trying to do that, but it hasn’t gotten there yet. Until it does, the courts need to force the Justice Dept. to charge or release Padilla.

There’s hope that principles will prevail, as evidenced by this piece of logic:

“I think the court is going to have to take it,” said Scott Silliman, a former Air Force attorney and Duke University law professor. “This is a vital case on the principle of an American citizen captured in the United States, and what constitutional rights does he have.”

Of course, I believed that we’d already decided that issue through more than two hundred years of legal proceedings. That’s also why the next Supreme Court nominee is so vital. Better to have someone who understands that the Constitution exists than to have someone who will offer complete deference to the whims of the president. (This is where lackeys for President Bush like to add “in war time”. Until someone can offer a tangible definition of how we’ll know when the war is over and the presidency can revert to peace time rules, I’m leaving it out.)

You may now feel copious amounts of envy.

Now that VH1 is back with I Love the 80s 3-D, I’m once again glued to the television. Pop culture memory lane is tremendous fun. Yet, I can’t watch the Modern Humorist segments without feeling I’ve slipped into a bizarre fourth dimension. Seeing a childhood friend on television, especially in a cool show, is still weird. Every time.

I can’t wait to see who’s next.

This is the meat of President Bush’s statement accepting Harriet Miers’s nomination withdrawal:

I understand and share her concern, however, about the current state of the Supreme Court confirmation process. It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House – disclosures that would undermine a President’s ability to receive candid counsel. Harriet Miers’ decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the Constitutional separation of powers – and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her.

I’ll just reiterate what most people are saying about that. Duh. What did President Bush expect to happen when he nominated his White House Counsel as a stealth candidate? With little other indication of her thinking, that’s what the Senate must fall back upon. He can’t pretend that this is the Senate’s fault. He wants the Senate to abdicate its responsibility, which I find as disturbing as the original nomination.

But this concerns me more:

I am grateful for Harriet Miers’ friendship and devotion to our country. And I am honored that she will continue to serve our Nation as White House Counsel.

Am I the only one concerned that she’s staying on as White House Counsel, providing legal advice on the Constitution when we now know enough about her grasp of Constitutional principles to make a decision?

Success isn’t always good?

Rather than go too deeply into explaining why this drivel is condescending, ignorant, and offensive, I’ll just highlight paragraphs and counter the writer’s non-arguments.

Like a lot of African Americans, I’ve long wondered what the deal was with Condoleezza Rice and the issue of race. How does she work so loyally for George W. Bush, whose approval rating among blacks was measured in a recent poll at a negligible 2 percent? How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans? Is she blind, is she in denial, is she confused — or what?

If President Bush has a 2 percent approval rating among blacks, some people need to be in that 2 percent. Given that there are what, 40 to 50 million black Americans, I don’t find it hard to believe that Ms. Rice is one of the 900,000 or so who supports the President. Or is the implication that those two percent are race traitors?

Rice’s parents tried their best to shelter their only daughter from Jim Crow racism, and they succeeded. Forty years later, Rice shows no bitterness when she recalls her childhood in a town whose streets were ruled by the segregationist police chief Bull Connor. “I’ve always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing,” she said in an interview on the flight home.

Or maybe she found a smarter way to deal with the situation as it existed. Dealing with what is makes more sense than whining about what is. But that’s only a recipe for success. I could be wrong.

She doesn’t deny that race makes a difference. “We all look forward to the day when this country is race-blind, but it isn’t yet,” she told reporters in Birmingham. Later she added, “The fact that our society is not colorblind is a statement of fact.”

Or maybe she found a smarter way to deal with the situation as it existed. Dealing with what is makes more sense than whining about what is. But that’s only a recipe for success. I could be wrong.

But then why are the top echelons of her State Department almost entirely white? “That’s an artifact of foreign policy,” she said in the interview. “It’s not been a very diverse profession.” In other words, there aren’t enough qualified minority candidates. I wondered how many times those words have been used as a lame excuse.

Are there qualified minority candidates being passed over for lesser-qualified white candidates? I have no idea, but this provides me no evidence to support what the author expects me to conclude, that racism is the only reason the State Department is almost entirely white.

One of the things she somehow missed was that in Titusville and other black middle-class enclaves, a guiding principle was that as you climbed, you were obliged to reach back and bring others along. Rice has been a foreign policy heavyweight for nearly two decades; she spent four years in the White House as the president’s national security adviser. In the interview, she mentioned just one black professional she has brought with her from the National Security Council to State.

That speaks for itself.

As we were flying to Alabama, Rice said an interesting thing. She was talking about the history of the civil rights movement, and she said, “If you read Frederick Douglass, he was not petitioning from outside of the institutions but rather demanding that the institutions live up to what they said they were. If you read Martin Luther King, he was not petitioning from outside, he was petitioning from inside the principles and the institutions, and challenging America to be what America said that it was.”

The civil rights movement came from the inside? I always thought the Edmund Pettus Bridge was outside.

I know very few black Americans who think of themselves fully as insiders in this society. No matter how high we rise, there’s always that reality that Rice acknowledges: The society isn’t colorblind, not yet. It’s not always in the front of your mind, but it’s there. We talk about it, we overcome it, but it’s there.

Secretary Rice implies that she always considered herself “inside”. She expected to be considered “inside” and behaved accordingly. Seeing where she is today, the institutions seem to recognize what she believed. Is it possible the institutions would recognize her feeling of being “outside”, if that’s what she’d chosen to believe?

Consider what Sec. Rice said (“The fact that our society is not colorblind is a statement of fact.”) and what the writer said (“The society isn’t colorblind, not yet.”). Two different worldviews exist in those similar but quite distinct statements. Which is more cynical and self-perpetuating?

I’ll laugh at these posts if I go to law school

I haven’t changed my mind about Harriet Miers being unqualified for the Supreme Court, and I think some of the ridicule she’s getting for her clarity of writing is on target, but some aspects of two 1990s speeches reported in today’s Washington Post don’t seem unreasonable to me. Consider:

“My basic message here is that when you hear the courts blamed for activism or intrusion where they do not belong, stop and examine what the elected leadership has done to solve the problem at issue,” she said.

At a speech later that summer titled “Women and Courage,” Miers went further. Citing statistics that showed Texas’s relatively high poverty rates, Miers said the public should not blame judges when courts step in to solve such problems.

“Allowing conditions to exist so long and get so bad that resort to the courts is the only answer has not served our state well,” she said. “Politicians who would cry ‘The courts made me do it’ or ‘I did not do that — the courts did’ should not be tolerated.”

Is that simplistic, as this indicates? Perhaps, but I think there’s a fundamental truth to what she said. I have no idea if she still believes it (or even believed it then), but it’s a reasonable point. I do agree with this post’s clarification, though.

The argument [Miers] makes is that the courts can’t be blamed when they are forced to step in to resolve problems that elected officials have failed to resolve (e.g., the problems of school funding and low-income housing siting). That is a very standard argument, usually associated with liberals. Eliot Spitzer, for example, often argues that it is necessary to pursue anti-gun policies through the courts because legislatures have failed to act. But it’s hard to see how the courts are to distinguish between a) a legislative “failure to act,” b) a legislative decision that there is no problem demanding solution, or c) a legislative decision that solving any problem would create new and greater problems. Any act of judicial usurpation can be described as a reluctant response to the legislature’s failure to enact what the judges wanted them to enact.

I’m sure a legal scholar (i.e. not Ms. Miers) could posit a useful explanation of how to apply that in a consistent, reasonable manner, but I suspect it’s simply based a) rights being trampled, b) rights being trampled, or c) understanding that the experimentation of federalism has worked for more than two centuries, with the Republic still standing. Or cases will work through the court system as they now do. I don’t claim to be an expert.

The perfect example is same-sex marriage. Any number of issues could apply, of course, but this is the most recent, most obvious example. Essentially, state legislatures and Congress should be in front on the issue, removing DOMA nonsense and removing barriers to civil recognition of marriage for all. They’re not, which means the courts will do it. Not because they’re activist but because it’s obvious that it should and will happen under our Constitution. When elected leaders refuse to remove barriers to liberty, courts are one of the remaining options. The question of judicial involvement as activism is useful prevalent, but no one should be surprised when it’s used.

November 2006 will not be pleasant

This editorial is a few days old, but it’s still timely since it concerns the upcoming election in Virginia. Consider:

… the election is between Kaine and Kilgore, and the most important national implications of November’s voting will grow from issues — in particular, the death penalty and sprawl — that the two men are raising themselves.

If Kilgore wins on the basis of a truly scandalous series of advertisements about the death penalty, it will encourage Republicans all over the country to pull a stained and tattered battle flag out of the closet.

Kaine is a Roman Catholic who opposes the death penalty. “My faith teaches life is sacred,” he says. “I personally oppose the death penalty.” I cheer Kaine for being one of the few politicians with the guts to say this the way he does. It’s disturbing that faith-based political stands that don’t point in a conservative direction rarely inspire the church-based political activism that, say, abortion, arouses. Maybe some of the churches will examine their consciences.

But Virginia has a death penalty on the books, so Kaine says plainly: “I take my oath of office seriously, and I’ll enforce the death penalty.”

That’s not good enough for Kilgore. You have to read much of the ad he ran on this issue to believe it. In the commercial, Stanley Rosenbluth, whose son Richard and daughter-in-law Becky were murdered, declares:

“Mark Sheppard shot Richard twice and went over and shot Becky two more times. Tim Kaine voluntarily represented the person who murdered my son. He stood with murderers in trying to get them off death row. No matter how heinous the crime, he doesn’t believe that death is a punishment. Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn’t qualify for the death penalty. This was the worst mass murderer in modern times. . . . I don’t trust Tim Kaine when it comes to the death penalty, and I say that as a father who’s had a son murdered.”

Having seen the ads, that’s an accurate recap. And they’re every bit as disgusting as one can imagine. No reasonable person wants to embrace a murderer and excuse his actions. Mr. Kaine is not doing that, as evidenced by his response. He made a particular statement that he’s personally opposed to the death penalty, but he would uphold the law if elected. How complicated is that? Do we want our politicians embracing only what the political winds bring? Do reasoned principles account for nothing?

Personally, I agree with Mr. Kaine on this. The death penalty is wrong. It’s absurd that Virginians are so adamantly in favor of executing people. It often borders on a blood thirst. (If I’m not mistaken, we’re second only to Texas – by a wide margin – since the death penalty became legal again.) That does not change my belief that the death penalty is uncivilized. It’s the mark of a society interested in revenge rather than justice. Much like the current presidential defense of torture, I can’t fathom how a party based so heavily on the teachings of Jesus could ever come to the conclusion that execution is justifiable. (Kaine is a Democrat, Kilgore a Republican.)

For what, safety? We lock inmates away on death row now, with few escapes. Is it not possible to continue designing improved prison systems in which society is protected? I’m not sure who will advocate that death row inmates lead particularly fulfilling lives in their cells. Like most people, I don’t care about them, so keep the conditions. That’s the bargain for violating the most sacred right guaranteed within society. But taking that final step to execution only tarnishes the society, without providing added benefit. It’s the real culture of death.

Yet, that’s not the most disturbing aspect of this political smear campaign. Mr. Kilgore is the Attorney General of Virginia. He should understand the most basic function of what Mr. Kaine did as a defense attorney.

Representing death row inmates is unpopular but essential because it allows the justice system to work — and that includes finding guilty people guilty. Challenging prosecutors to make sure the wrong people aren’t executed can actually be a service to crime victims. No one wants an innocent person put to death so the guilty party can remain at large to kill again.

For Mr. Kilgore to allow his campaign to devalue that necessary function in a cheap attempt to win the governorship shows quite effectively that he does not have a sufficient respect for the American legal system or the citizens it protects. I don’t know that I’ll vote for Tim Kaine next month, but I know I won’t vote for Jerry Kilgore. If a pollster asks me why I voted against Mr. Kilgore, I’ll tell her I based my decision on morals.