Their Elephants, Their Choice

I’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I eat and very much enjoy everything from salmon and lots of other fish species, to chicken, turkey, beef, pork, and even alligator (I very much like alligator).

I can respect someone who not only doesn't eat animals, but doesn't want to use animals at all, though I say I'll stop using animals and stop eating them when they stop using and eating each other. I mean, come on now, an alligator would just as soon eat a vegan as I would eat the alligator.

What I don't respect is someone who devotes their resources to fighting against using animals (especially if they insist on laws to this effect), even if they can argue certain uses are cruel or abusive - if that that person doesn't devote at least a little more of their resources to preventing abortion.

Sorry, folks. Unless you have appropriate concern regarding the slaughter of human beings, I can't get on board with your concern about other animals.

Jerry Brown Picks Goodwin Liu for California High Court

California Governor Jerry Brown has selected UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu for the California Supreme Court, and there is virtually no doubt he will be seated. Liu had been picked by President Obama for a federal appeals court, but Republicans thwarted that. Maura Dolan, Maria L. La Ganga and Jessica Garrison report in the Los Angeles Times.

Liu, 40, whose nomination is expected to be approved by a three-member confirmation panel, will become the fourth Asian on the seven-member, moderately conservative court and probably its most liberal member. He will take the seat left vacant by Justice Carlos Moreno, the court's sole Latino and Democrat who retired Feb. 28.

Since Republican Governors have made so many of the appointments, perhaps Brown wanted someone young enough to keep this slot Democrat for a long time to come?

"The dysfunctionality in Washington and the blockage at all costs by the more extreme Republicans — I don't think that should be given a lot of intellectual weight," said Brown, who sources said offered Liu the job Sunday.

Oh right, because Democrats never blocked Bush’s nominations, especially his judicial ones. Right.

Liu is considered a supporter of gay rights, including [neutering] marriage, and civil rights for other minority groups. He is expected to be on the court in time to hear arguments in the challenge against Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that reinstated a ban on same-sex marriage.

There they go again. Proposition 8, duly adopted, enshrined the natural, historical, universal, essential bride+groom requirement for state marriage licensing explicitly into the state constitution. It shouldn’t have been needed in the first place, and it wasn’t a "ban on same-sex marriage". And what civil rights are lacking for what "other minority groups"? Or will those be "discovered" in the future?

The state high court will decide whether initiative proponents have the legal right to appeal court orders against the measures they sponsored.

Brown had been expected to replace Moreno with another Latino, and Liu's nomination angered some bar activists.

"It should have been a Latino and somebody who was native to Southern California," said Victor Acevedo, president of the Mexican-American Bar Assn. No current member of the court now lives in Southern California.

Racist much? Will the Southern Poverty Leftist Clowns deem MABA a hate group? Doubt it.

"We are almost the majority of the people of the state of California," Acevedo said, "and for the governor to say there isn't one Latino who is qualified to serve on the court is extremely troubling.”

Brown didn’t say that. But the good is that since I'm a minority now, as Acevedo points out, then I guess Liu will discover some new rights for me.

“That to me is like the governor turning a cold shoulder to the Latino community in Southern California."

He doesn't need to care. You'll support him anyway.

Brown said he was not concerned that Liu has never served as a judge. Among California's greatest judges was the late Roger Traynor, who was a tax professor at UC Berkeley when appointed to the state high court, he said.

Let's remember that.

He said that a majority Asian court doesn't say anything in particular about the state. "We're all Americans. We're all Californians," he said. "The accidents of birth, though they indicate biography and life experience, it's just part of a larger mosaic."

Pressed about his failure to choose a Latino [failure?], Brown replied: "What about the African American community? What about the Irish American community? Whenever you select one, I guess you exclude the other. That's inherent in any choice.”

Now you're talking like a conservative, which means you are racist. At least according to the Left.

There's No Right to Vote Fraudulently

Alexandra Zavis reports in the Los Angeles Times on the NAALCP having a convention in LA.

In a pointed keynote address Monday, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous urged members of the civil rights organization to stand up against restrictive state voting laws, which he compared to Jim Crow laws of decades past.

I will not make fun of his name. I will not make fun of his name. I will not make fun of his name.

"Let us be clear, the right to vote is the right upon which all of our rights are leveraged and without which … none can be protected," Jealous said at the annual convention of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, being held in downtown Los Angeles through Thursday.

Yes, sir, and if someone is voting fraudulently, that dilutes your vote. Unless, of course, you're sure they're voting your way. Hmmm.

He blamed "racist elements" in the "tea party" movement for new voting requirements, which he said have disenfranchised minority voters in dozens of states as President Obama prepares to seek reelection in 2012.

Oooooh, the TEA Party! Oooooh! Did they dim the lights when he said that and make his voice echo? How is it racist to want only actual citizens to vote? Or is Jealous saying that a disproportionate number of minorities are frauds?

"Let us recognize the obvious," Jealous said. "Our voting rights are under attack because we had a great breakthrough — the election of a black president. It was followed by a great backlash."

Goodness knows Clinton and Bush never faced a backlash.

He cited new laws in 30 states that require voters to present approved photo identification at the polls. "Simply put, people who are too poor to own a car tend not to have a driver's license," he said.

It's called... identification. You don't need to drive to get ID. How about doing an outreach?

In Wisconsin alone, he said, half of black adults and half of Latino adults are now ineligible to vote because of this requirement.

Oh, if only there was some way they could get an ID!

Jealous also took issue with laws in Georgia and Arizona that require voters to attach a copy of their driver's license, birth certificate or passport to their registration forms. And in Florida, he said, the establishment of a five-to-seven-year waiting period before felons can vote would disqualify more than 500,000 voters, including 250,000 blacks.

Oh, if only there was some way people could not commit felonies!

Another major issue that Jealous cited was the plight of black men, who he said continue to face high rates of unemployment, incarceration and death.

White people live forever, you see.

"There is a real need to systemically go after the policies, go after the practices which together add up to this dismal situation," Jealous said after his address.

More or expanded federal government programs are his answer, I'd wager. Not, you know, raising children within wedlock after getting an education and training.

Why does the Left think it is important to have fraudulent voters, to make citizens out of illegal aliens, to let felons votes, and make new, Democrat-heavy states? Do they think they can't win enough elections under current conditions with legitimate votes?

Federalism and Incrementalism

A law professor wrote in the Los Angeles Times today, essentially bemoaning the existence of state governments and civil unions, because they made for "confusing" laws on marriage, divorce, and government benefits. I take a look and his commentary over at The Opine Editorials.

Down By the Riverside

Phil Willon has the latest Los Angeles Times coverage of the proposal to split California.

Accusing Sacramento of pillaging local governments to feed its runaway spending and left-wing policies, a Riverside County politician is proposing a solution: He wants 13 mostly inland, conservative counties to break away to form a separate state of "South California."

Accusation nothing. It's demonstrable fact.

Supervisor Jeff Stone, a Republican pharmacist from Temecula, called California an "ungovernable" financial catastrophe from which businesses are fleeing and where taxpayers are being crushed by the burden of caring for welfare recipients and illegal immigrants.

Yeah, that's largely it.

A spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, called Stone's proposal a laughable political stunt, saying the Riverside County supervisors should be more concerned about closing that county's expected $130-million revenue shortfall in the next budget year and possible cutbacks to public safety.

Out of all of the things in California, especially with Jerry Brown, they are calling this a laughable political stunt?

"It's a supremely ridiculous waste of everybody's time," said spokesman Gil Duran.

Uh, look, California Democrats shouldn't be talking about what is a ridiculous waste of everybody's time.

"If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there's a place called Arizona."

And a lot of people are doing that, genius.

The article goes on to point out that there have been hundreds of attempts to break up California before, and since they all failed, this has little chance of working. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible. But something big must happen. California simply can't continue the way it is going. Only so many unskilled, dependent and career criminal illegal aliens and their citizen offspring can be accommodated. The state government can only grow so large before the private sector will literally be unable to support it. The social engineering can only go so far before too many of the normal people are driven away. The nanny state regulations can only get so restrictive before widespread civil disobedience and exodus paralyzes the state.

Single-Issue Temporary Federalists

Ah, the DOMA hearing. A discussion about DOMA is one of the only times you'll ever hear a lot of these people talking about the role of states. I believe in the sincerity of the ones who are consistent federalists. So many of the others, the moment you talk about states doing something independently of the federal government or different from each other, accuse you of wanting to bring back slavery.

Go to the Opine Editorials to read my analysis of the coverage by the the Los Angeles Times.

DOMA Has Done Good, But Is It Done?

When the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, it reinforced the established, historical, natural definition of marriage as something uniting a bride and groom. There was no state in the union that recognized a brideless or groomless union as marriage, let alone issued neutered marriage licenses to such couples. Nor was there a single country in the world that had neutered their marriage laws. However, the writing was on the wall as marriage neutering advocates were doing what they could to change that.

I continue my analysis over at The Opine Editorials.

The Ninth Circus

We've heard this before, but the Los Angeles Times is noting it again – the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is far enough to the Left that it is overturned a lot by the Supreme Court of the United States. Carol J. Williams reports.

It was another bruising year for the liberal judges of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as the Supreme Court overturned the majority of their decisions, at times sharply criticizing their legal reasoning.

Appeals from the nine Western states of the circuit dominated the high court's docket, as usual, supplying more than 30% of the 84 cases taken up by the justices during the term that ended last month.

In other words, the rest of the country should be a little ticked off at how the 9th Circuit is taking up resources.

Although the proportion of reversals was relatively in line with past years and other appellate circuits across the country, the 9th Circuit was often out of step even with the high court's liberal justices, who joined with the conservatives in 12 unanimous rulings.

Here's an astounding quote:

"Reversal rates have no meaning whatsoever," said [liberal UC Irvine law school dean Erwin] Chemerinsky. "If the Supreme Court overrules the 9th Circuit, it doesn't mean that the 9th Circuit was wrong and the Supreme Court was right. It means the Supreme Court had the last word."

And yet the Left appeals over and over again to SCOTUS decisions as if they are Scripture. SCOTUS found a right to abortion, they reason, so that means there is a right. As for me, I recognize that SCOTUS is the top court in the union, can be right or wrong, and that it should be bound by the Constitution.

Coupled with other Supreme Court rulings this term that halted class-action lawsuits against Wal-Mart and AT&T, the Pinholster ruling showed that the justices are "systematically closing the courthouse door" to capital prisoners and those attempting to sue Big Business, Chemerinsky said.

If there is convincing evidence that someone murdered someone else, the court isn't going to let them off of the hook for some iffy technicality that has nothing to do with the evidence. In regards to business, as long as fraud or some sort of deception isn't being used, a customer chooses to use a business, an employee chooses to work for a business, and investor chooses to invest in a business, and any of them can sever their relationship with the business whenever they want to. Thus, many disputes do not require court interference.

The Supreme Court typically reverses about 75% of the cases it reviews each year, having selected them because they raise important questions of law or to resolve the internal contradictions created when circuits come to different conclusions about the same legal question. The 9th Circuit's track record tends to be above average most years: two years ago, 94% of the circuit's cases were reversed.

The article never touches on the elephant in the room. Or, perhaps, the 800-pound gorilla – that experts expect the 9th Circuit to side with Walker's decision to neuter marriage by overturning the amendment to the California constitution, and then SCOTUS will get it. Experts also say the SCOTUS decision could be 5-4 either way under the current makeup of the court, which provides incentive for the lower courts to toss the ball back and forth (like they are doing now) in the hopes that a conservative member of SCOTUS will retire and be replaced by a more Left-leaning pick by President Obama.

What will the Browns do to U(tah)?

I have previously noted that one should never equate same-sex "marriage" to polygamy or incestuous marriage; the latter two have a global history as having been recognized as valid marriages and perpetuating society. Now, "reality" television, the gift that keeps giving, has brought us Kody Brown and his plurality of wives, featured in "Sister Wives". More importantly, the Browns have just filed a lawsuit to overturn a law in the name of regaining their Constitutional rights to freedom of association.

Read my thoughts on this over at The Opine Editorials.

OK to Leave the Closet, But Not the Reservation?

Are we to believe that there has never, ever been a person with homosexual feelings, perhaps who has engaged in homosexual behavior and/or identified as a homosexual person, who has, for whatever reasons and through whatever means, gone on to lead a functional happy life while also refraining from ever engaging in homosexual behavior (again), perhaps even falling in love with someone of the opposite sex, marrying, and having an enjoyable heterosexual love life?

More at The Opine Editorials.

Dear Margo Apologizes For a Homofascist

Perhaps the homophobia at work is fear of homofascists, not homosexuality? Read about it at The Opine Editorials.

Textbook Case of What's Wrong With California

The California legislature has a long history of passing homosexuality advocacy legislation and gender confusion/pro-mutilation legislation, even as the state's finances remain in shambles. The Assembly has passed SB 48. Here's the report in the Los Angeles Times by Patrick McGreevy.

Textbooks and history classes in California schools would be required to include the contributions of gays, lesbians and transgender Americans under a proposal given final legislative approval in the Assembly on Tuesday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown.

Let's be clear. If someone who is a homosexual, a crossdresser, or has undergone mutilation has made significant contributions relevant to what is being taught, that would already be included. But now we can expect something silly that points out that a man was sexually attracted to another man, as if that has anything to do with, say, advancing industry.

The measure sparked a spirited debate, including personal pleas from two openly gay lawmakers — Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). They said the bill would reduce the bullying of gay students and correct an oversight by history books.

Right. Reduce bullying. Uh huh.

"I don't want to be invisible in a textbook," Ammiano told his colleagues.

What makes you think you belong in a textbook? Or do you really think "you" are represented by some stranger simply because you both like men? Identity politics are always good for a laugh.

The bill, SB 48, which had already been approved by the state Senate, passed the Assembly on a 49-25 vote. Brown has 12 days to sign or veto the measure, on which he has taken no public position.

Just one of thousands of reasons to leave California or homeschool.

Previously:

Mark Leno More of a Jokester Than Jay Leno

Leave the Jokes to Jay

Splitting California, Gaining Independence?

I have dreamed of splitting up my home state of California for years now. Ain't gonna happen. But it is a nice dream. Now it turns out Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone has gone public with pretty much the same dream. I was first alerted to this by Robert J. Lopez blogging at LATimes.com.

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone is proposing that about a dozen counties break away from California to form the new "State of South California."

Uh, wouldn't that be... Baja California?

The split, Stone said Thursday, would allow officials in the new state to concentrate on securing borders, balancing budgets, improving schools and creating a vibrant economy.

And it would allow the rest of the state to go ahead and neuter marriage licensing again and become even more of a Big Labor Leftist Nanny State Utopia.

Stone suggested that Riverside, Imperial, San Diego, San Bernardino, Kings, Kern, Tulare, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa and Mono counties band together to form the new state.

What, no Orange?

Among the things the new state should consider, he said, are having a part-time Legislature, shifting more power to local governments and adopting a reasonable sales tax.

We should have a part-time unicameral legislature.

There are many reasons why this won't happen. Too many people don't even understand why we have state governments, other than to give more politicians jobs. The Senate is not going to want to seat to more Senators who are likely to be Republicans. Too many people have built their careers on the status quo. The Leftists in Los Angeles and San Francisco love being able to control the people in the rest of the state - and their money.

But my dream would involve letting the Counties of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the coastal counties and any contiguous counties that want to stick with those counties stay together. The rest of the counties should annex to Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona. That way, the Senate would not need to add any members. Or, there had been recent talk of carving out a liberal state out of part of Arizona. Let them do that if a new conservative California state can be formed

It is ridiculous for Orange County to have to suffer being in the same state as San Francisco. I'm sure there are people in San Francisco who feel the same way, in reverse.

See my previous messages on splitting California on the old blog.