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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (29184)	7/19/2005 5:35:03 PM
From: SiouxPal	Respond to of 361265

07.19.2005Craig Crawford A Stealth Pick? What a curious reason WHers putting forth for U.S. Appeals Court Judge Edith Clement to join the Supreme Court: She has so little experience on the bench that liberals will have a tough time attacking her record. Actually, there is little in Clements' appeals court voting record for conservatives or liberals to get much of a handle on her (from Slate): Civil Rights and Liberties For a unanimous panel, allowed a plaintiff who sued the police for violating his right to due process to proceed with his claim that the officers who arrested him used excessive force when they allegedly injured him by slamming the door of their car against his head. Reversed the district court's finding that the plaintiff could also sue for unlawful arrest and excessive force involving the use of handcuffs. (Tarver v.City of Edna, 2005) Environmental Protection and Property Rights Voted for the 5th Circuit to rehear a decision blocking developers from building on a site where six endangered bug species lived in a cluster of limestone caves. Clement joined a dissent that argued that the decision's rationale for protecting the bugs—to preserve the interdependent web of species—bore no relationship to Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. (GDF Realty Investments v. Norton, 2004) Criminal Law For a unanimous panel, rejected the claim of a man flying to Nigeria that his luggage was unlawfully searched at the border. Clement ruled broadly that customs inspectors need not have probable cause to search the bags of people who are leaving the country. (U.S. v. Odutayo, 2005) Agreed with a unanimous panel that an asylum applicant who was 20 minutes late to a hearing because he'd taken the wrong highway exit should not have been ordered deported in absentia and was entitled to a new hearing. (Alarcon-Chavez v. Gonzales, 2005) Habeas Corpus Over a dissent, ruled that a death-row inmate who claimed to be mentally retarded was entitled to a lawyer to develop that claim in a habeas petition. Clement's ruling followed the Supreme Court's 2002 decision barring the execution of the mentally retarded. She followed up with a second opinion that limited the significance of her ruling by stating "this is a fact-bound case." (Hearn v. Dretke, 2004) For a unanimous panel, reversed a decision of the district court finding that a police officer convicted of civil rights violation, for hitting a drunk suspect in the head with his baton, was entitled to a new trial because his lawyer was ineffective. The officer argued that his lawyer erred by failing to call character witnesses to rebut testimony that he'd complained about the need to control Mexicans in the United States. Clement said the rebuttal evidence would have been irrelevant because the officer was not charged with a hate crime. (U.S. v. Harris, 2005) Damage Awards Over a partial dissent, in reviewing a jury verdict in favor of a man whose wife and 3-year-old daughter were killed in a car crash, affirmed damage awards of $1.9 million for the man's loss of his wife and $1.5 million for the loss of his daughter. Reduced from $200,000 to $30,000 an award to the wife's estate for her pain and mental anguish before her death and eliminated a $200,000 award to the daughter's estate for her pain and mental anguish. (Vogler v. Blackmore, 2003) -- Slate, 7/1

To: Ron who wrote (29184)	7/19/2005 6:07:38 PM
From: SiouxPal	Respond to of 361265

ABOUT THE UNRAVELING OF A WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY Scott McClellan and the Rovegate Press Conference July 18, 2005 QwikFIND ID: AAQ75J By Simon Dumenco Until recently, I thought the only thing that could be stupider than hiring your sister to be your publicist -- a la Tom Cruise -- would be hiring your mom to be your masseuse. Or, possibly, commissioning your cat to design your Web site. But nope, if you're truly boneheaded, you hire Scott McClellan to be White House press secretary. Sheesh, his beat-down over Rovegate by the White House press corps was something to see. The excerpts and sound bites from the endless S&M session simply don't do it justice, so fortunately there are multiple unedited videos of the exchange, originally broadcast in full on C-SPAN, floating around online, including this one here -- movies.crooksandliars.com -- which is totally worth watching in the same way that, say, the torture scene in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs is totally worth watching. Mr. McClellan, meet the suddenly rabid White House press pack, wielding verbatim transcripts of your own previous prevarications like switchblades. Cue "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel. Watch your ears, Scotty. You could see McClellan kind of losing it -- emotionally falling down, unable to get up, thinking, "I hate this job more than life itself," as his lips and tongue shaped and slithered themselves around sentences like "I appreciate the question" and "I think I've responded" and "I'm not going to get into commenting based on reports or anything of that nature." Not to mention "You've heard my response" and "I already responded to these questions." For ... an ... interminable ... mind-numbing ... 30 ... minutes. C'mon! When the White House is engaging in a coverup, the press secretary's supposed to put out more than that -- engage in a little verbal jujitsu, kick up a breeze with the old bob-and-weave. Show a pulse, fat boy! Of course, there's a particular kind of tragic beauty to the spectacle of a guy like McClellan lying down on the job for all to see. A great American theatrical beauty of the Death of a Salesman sort. When a guy can no longer sell -- worse, can't even give away -- exactly what he's devoted his life to selling, it's illuminating. All this time, the White House fog machine has been humming along nicely and journalists have mostly been wandering around aimlessly in the soupy air, bumping into one another and saying, "Oh, excuse me." But then, one day, the mighty fog machine suddenly ... stops. Grinds to a halt. Because of its own stripped gears. Somebody forgot to renew the service contract. (D'oh! Damn you, Rummy!) Voila: accidental transparency. The lesson is, if you're trying to pull down some sinister stuff and get away with it, make sure your spokesperson knows the job description is "BS artist," not "BS platter." Someone who knows the job is to serve, not get served. But back to The Publicist-Sister, who has a bit part in the other massive marketing fiasco everyone's obsessed with these days: the failure of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes to convince us that their love is true. If the McClellan video is a must-watch, then Rob Haskell's brief profile of Katie Holmes in the August W is a must-read. Because there are eerie similarities between the two, which both feature an endless string of non-answers delivered with a certain soul-dead vacancy. Some samples: Haskell: "Is there anything you guys don't have in common?" Holmes: "You know, we appreciate each other." Haskell: "Isn't it an adjustment to move in with someone -- after only a month? Holmes: "He's the man of my dreams." Haskell, somewhat astonishingly, makes it pretty clear between the lines that he thinks Holmes has basically been brainwashed and abducted into a creepy cult. (The coverline for the issue actually reads "Cult Classic: The Actress Enters a Weird World Called TomKat.") Hey, couldn't publicist-sister Lee Anne DeVette have anticipated the downside of allowing a Scientologist chaperone to sit in on the interview? (Haskell notes that three days after he interviewed Holmes, she announced her conversion to Scientology.) When Haskell writes, "If Holmes were actually answering the questions posed, rather than simply reciting the same mantra-like love letter ..." I think of Scotty McClellan and his zoned-out, autopilot answers, and I sort of wish he had a Scientologist chaperone, too. Because I'd really like to hear him say, "Karl Rove is the man of my dreams."