Posts Tagged ‘I wish I said that’

A real Catholic Pol

Posted: August 5, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news
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You know that in a district where there hasn’t been a republican congressman since 1890 and is 64% black it might be politically necessary for a newly elected republican to support the president on some key issues. Even if Abortion is paid for in it..

But Don Surber reports that when congressman Anh Cao says he is a Catholic, unlike say a John Kerry or a Nancy Pelosi he means it:

“Being a Jesuit, I very much adhere to the notion of social justice, ” Cao said. “I do fully understand the need of providing everyone with access to health care, but to me personally, I cannot be privy to a law that will allow the potential of destroying thousands of innocent lives.

“I know that voting against the health care bill will probably be the death of my political career, ” Cao said, “but I have to live with myself, and I always reflect on the phrase of the New Testament, ‘How does it profit a man’s life to gain the world but to lose his soul.’ “

This is what a true Catholic Looks like.

Some things never change

Posted: August 4, 2009 by datechguy in fun
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Still reading Hart’s Volume one of American History told by Contemporaries. I still have 150 pages or so to go. It’s a very small font and interesting but slow reading, both due to the age and the style of the documents and of the writer, but there is one thing that jumped out at me today as I read it at Funspot in between games of Paragon pinball and Red Baron (sitdown model)

On page 388 there is a small section written in 1641 by a person named Thomas Lechford called “A note of what things I misliked in the Country (Massachusetts)” Professor Harts subnotes on this section had me laughing aloud. I quote them directly:

The first lawyer in the colony (se No 91 above): he was not kindly received and his notes are rather prejudiced.

I guess our early ancestors aren’t all that different than the rest of us, either that or lawyers haven’t changed in centuries.

That’s pretty blunt

Posted: July 15, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Well at the Volokh Conspiracy (via Glenn) we discover what law professor Louis Michael Seidman of Georgetown thinks of the hearings so far. He doesn’t like what he heard yesterday:

Speaking only for myself (I guess that’s obvious), I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor’s testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts? First year law students understand within a month that many areas of the law are open textured and indeterminate—that the legal material frequently (actually, I would say always) must be supplemented by contestable presuppositions, empirical assumptions, and moral judgments. To claim otherwise—to claim that fidelity to uncontested legal principles dictates results—is to claim that whenever Justices disagree among themselves, someone is either a fool or acting in bad faith.

Not what you’d call a ringing enforcement is it.

I’m not a law professor, or a lawyer, I’ve only argued one civil case before a judge and jury personally against an experienced lawyer (I won.) so I can’t claim anywhere near the experience of law or how it works that the many lawyers who blog can, but I can say this…

…I’ve read Glenn Reynolds for a lot of years and I don’t recall too many assessments this blunt about an individual’s professional competence that wasn’t cloaked in comedy:

If her politics were different, this would be clear evidence that she is unfit.

Professor Reynolds is one of the most honest men in blogs and has been for a decade. The law is his profession, he teaches the law. If after this statement anyone is going to convince me that Judge Sotomayor deserves this position they have quite a hill to climb. Her professional experience on her resume may meet the minimums necessary for the position she is up for, but that’s all.

I think we are past the Sarah Palin Clue Phase

Posted: July 7, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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On the 4th of July I wrote this:

Over the next 15 months there are going to be many congressional candidates all over the country who will be looking for exposure and funds. Imagine if these candidates held A fund-raising dinner featuring the most famous former vice presidential candidate there has ever been. Picture the local/national media coverage, the large crowds and the money raised.

I called it the LBJ strategy since that’s one of the methods that Johnson used to build his power base on capital hill.

Roger Stone calls it the Nixon Plan:

Palin has the most valuable commodity a Presidential candidate can have – a base. Roughly 23% of Americans and 68% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin. She alone has this kind of intense following. She alone can fill a large hall or small stadium anywhere in Republican Country…

Palin will also be more in demand as a dinner speaker, fundraiser and campaigner than any other Republican in 2011.

And now Governor Palin confirms it herself talking to Time:

In fact, my intention is to go out and to campaign for people who can effect change all across our nation. I can’t do that from the governor’s desk no matter how careful I were to be, because we’ve got lots of double standards hitting us. Other governors probably could travel around and campaign for others and speak candidly, using their First Amendment rights to express what they feel about a person, a candidate, a position. I get hit with ethics-violation charges if I do that.

Be afraid Liberals/Democrats; be very afraid. Oh sorry you already are or you wouldn’t have spent the last 8 months trying to destroy her.

Hotair also has video. And Doctor Zero in the Green Room points out something very important:

One of the crucial factors in McCain’s defeat was voter apathy. A huge number of Bush voters couldn’t be bothered to slog to the polls for him. If Sarah Palin climbs into the ring against Barack Obama in 2012, there won’t be many empty seats in the stadium. If she hits hard enough, I don’t think very many people will care that she has “Ex-Governor of Alaska” embroidered on her boxing trunks. Politics is all about possibilities, not certainties. Even those who feel skeptical about Palin’s chances after Friday afternoon must conclude, from the passionate reaction of the public, that an awful lot of people are very interested in voting for someone like Sarah Palin… and there is no one else like Sarah Palin.

I like his campaign slogan too.

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