Unfortunately, Obama's reaction to events in the Gulf are starting to reinforce all the doubts many people had about him during the election campaign. Even his erstwhile supporters are starting to turn against him. And once a liberal loses Jon Stewart, disaster is already nipping at his heels.
I guess we'll see if he can turn it around...but each day the oil keeps gushing, it will only get worse for the president's image.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a retired public prosecutor from Michigan, writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Showing posts with label president obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label president obama. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Obama Worship, and the Perils of Political Correctness
A recent article in the Weekley Standard caught my attention, about the relationship between Obama the Candidate and Obama the President. In this view, much of the recent disappointment in Obama's performance as president is traced to the perception among some of his supporters as the Grand Messiah of the "Religion of Humanity"---a world-view which elevates the god of science to prominence in a modern world often caught between those too primitive to understand it, and those too unenlightened to recognize it. To these adherents, it is proposed, Obama reflects the hope that the world can be saved, if only the "right thinkers" of the politically correct crowd manage to persevere. I thought the article was very interesting, though there is always a danger in pressing interesting thoughts and theories a bit too far.
I've long thought that there was a quasi-religious bent to a quite a lot of the "politically-correct left", both in terms of their fixation on dogma to the exclusion of facts (as with the Global Warming crowd), and their demonization of "non-believers" (as in branding as racists, sexists, or warmongers anyone who disagrees with them). Some organized religions have similar tendencies: though usually the sharper edges are mitigated by a sense of humility, some exhibit the same "holier-than-thou" attitude that seems to be all the range among the "right thinkers" in the PC crowd.
All the same, I think it's a mistake to take this thought too far: I suspect most of what the writer identifies is subliminal, rather than deliberate. In many respects, I think it reflects the longing for an ideal leader or a way toward a less-imperfect world, rather than a conscious effort to establish a specific set of new institutions. But this doesn't really change the possible dangers inherent in our modern version of orthodox "political correctness." It is still as stifling, as destructive of liberty and a free human spirit as if it were deliberate.
Perhaps I'm hopelessly naive, but I think it's more productive to view it as misguided and amenable to reason than the result of a conspiracy of "correct thinkers." I usually follow the advice of Napoleon...who said, more or less, that it's usually a mistake to ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity or incompetence. Besides...at least if I'm any guide...calling someone an idiot for believing what they believe rarely changes any minds; showing them that they're mistaken may. At least, as long as they're not actually idiots...but then, you can't always reason someone out of an idea they never reasoned themselves into in the first place
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
I've long thought that there was a quasi-religious bent to a quite a lot of the "politically-correct left", both in terms of their fixation on dogma to the exclusion of facts (as with the Global Warming crowd), and their demonization of "non-believers" (as in branding as racists, sexists, or warmongers anyone who disagrees with them). Some organized religions have similar tendencies: though usually the sharper edges are mitigated by a sense of humility, some exhibit the same "holier-than-thou" attitude that seems to be all the range among the "right thinkers" in the PC crowd.
All the same, I think it's a mistake to take this thought too far: I suspect most of what the writer identifies is subliminal, rather than deliberate. In many respects, I think it reflects the longing for an ideal leader or a way toward a less-imperfect world, rather than a conscious effort to establish a specific set of new institutions. But this doesn't really change the possible dangers inherent in our modern version of orthodox "political correctness." It is still as stifling, as destructive of liberty and a free human spirit as if it were deliberate.
Perhaps I'm hopelessly naive, but I think it's more productive to view it as misguided and amenable to reason than the result of a conspiracy of "correct thinkers." I usually follow the advice of Napoleon...who said, more or less, that it's usually a mistake to ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity or incompetence. Besides...at least if I'm any guide...calling someone an idiot for believing what they believe rarely changes any minds; showing them that they're mistaken may. At least, as long as they're not actually idiots...but then, you can't always reason someone out of an idea they never reasoned themselves into in the first place
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Used Car Salesman in Chief
Perhaps it's just me, but I'm getting sick and tired of being pushed into hasty decisions.
Over the past several months it seems that there has been a race to pass legislation through Congress without much thought. Last year, the TARP bailout was raced through in weeks---ostensibly because waiting to give us a chance to think about what we were doing would mean than any action in ridding the country of the "toxic assets" that the TARP funds were to buy up would come too late to stave off the disasters that were looming in the shadows.
Of course, once the bill passed, the Bush Administration got a few better ideas...and we still haven't spent all the money appropriated. Well...not to buy any toxic assets, at least. We still haven't gotten around to that...though that $700 billion dollars sure came in handy for Congress and the new Obama Administration, since they now had a ready source of funds to hand out as they saw fit.
As the new adminstration was about to take office, there was another push---this time for another $787 billion or so---which was passed less than a month after President Obama took office, before anyone in Congress had the chance to read it. Recently, the "Cap and Trade" bill passed the House---with 350 pages or so of amendments added in the wee hours of the morning after Michael Jackson died. That, too, had to pass immediately, before anyone could read it---this time, one presumes, so that the members of the House could attend to more important matters. Like watching the wall-to-wall, 24/7 coverage of the death of Michael Jackson.
Now, amid talk of a few more trillion dollars or so in various bailouts---to prepare the way for the Health Care Reform package that the President insists is needed to save us from imminent bankruptcy---there is a push by Congressional leaders and the Administration to enact the plan...NOW, before it's too late. Today, in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office report confirming what most people instinctively thought---that current health care proposals will cost an awful lot of money---there seems to be a renewed push to get this done in a hurry. The President insists that waiting will result in a catastrophe for this country and future generations...and only quick, bold action can save us.
It strikes me that we've been down this path before. Quite a few times in recent months.
And it's starting to sound more and more like the typical pitch from the local used car salesman---that we need to decide now, because if we stop to think about what we're doing, we'll miss this golden, once-in-a-lifetime chance, and spend the rest of our lives regretting it.
Again...perhaps it's just me. But despite the glowing rhetoric, and the loft notions advanced by the current crop of politicians, it's starting to sound more and more like the high-pressure tactics of the used car lot.
These tactics didn't save the auto industry from disaster.
I doubt that they'll lead the rest of the country to anything but grief, either.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Over the past several months it seems that there has been a race to pass legislation through Congress without much thought. Last year, the TARP bailout was raced through in weeks---ostensibly because waiting to give us a chance to think about what we were doing would mean than any action in ridding the country of the "toxic assets" that the TARP funds were to buy up would come too late to stave off the disasters that were looming in the shadows.
Of course, once the bill passed, the Bush Administration got a few better ideas...and we still haven't spent all the money appropriated. Well...not to buy any toxic assets, at least. We still haven't gotten around to that...though that $700 billion dollars sure came in handy for Congress and the new Obama Administration, since they now had a ready source of funds to hand out as they saw fit.
As the new adminstration was about to take office, there was another push---this time for another $787 billion or so---which was passed less than a month after President Obama took office, before anyone in Congress had the chance to read it. Recently, the "Cap and Trade" bill passed the House---with 350 pages or so of amendments added in the wee hours of the morning after Michael Jackson died. That, too, had to pass immediately, before anyone could read it---this time, one presumes, so that the members of the House could attend to more important matters. Like watching the wall-to-wall, 24/7 coverage of the death of Michael Jackson.
Now, amid talk of a few more trillion dollars or so in various bailouts---to prepare the way for the Health Care Reform package that the President insists is needed to save us from imminent bankruptcy---there is a push by Congressional leaders and the Administration to enact the plan...NOW, before it's too late. Today, in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office report confirming what most people instinctively thought---that current health care proposals will cost an awful lot of money---there seems to be a renewed push to get this done in a hurry. The President insists that waiting will result in a catastrophe for this country and future generations...and only quick, bold action can save us.
It strikes me that we've been down this path before. Quite a few times in recent months.
And it's starting to sound more and more like the typical pitch from the local used car salesman---that we need to decide now, because if we stop to think about what we're doing, we'll miss this golden, once-in-a-lifetime chance, and spend the rest of our lives regretting it.
Again...perhaps it's just me. But despite the glowing rhetoric, and the loft notions advanced by the current crop of politicians, it's starting to sound more and more like the high-pressure tactics of the used car lot.
These tactics didn't save the auto industry from disaster.
I doubt that they'll lead the rest of the country to anything but grief, either.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Supreme Difficulties: The Appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court
The big story in the legal profession this week is President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Throughout the blogosphere, this is now a ranging controversy over her pending confirmation---which, given the current composition of the U.S. Senate, is assured...assuming that there are no hidden skeletons in her professional closet. Most of these discussions, though, appear to miss the real point. There is, to my mind, a big difference between whether someone "should NOT be confirmed" and whether they "SHOULD be appointed" in the first place: since Obama won the election, his choice should be honored in the absence of a clear reason not to confirm; but whether Sotomayor was the best nominee for the job is an entirely different question.
There's a lot about judges and the judiciary that it will be hard for non-lawyers to understand. To my mind her biggest test to date was Ricci v DeStefano (the New Haven firefighters case), which is, in many ways, a lesson in what is wrong with the American judicial system today.
In a nutshell...she was on a panel that gave very short shrift to the argument of the plaintiff that he was the victim of racial discrimination when the City tossed out the results of a civil service test---which had been designed to be racially neutral---because none of the top-scoring applicants were black. The lower court decision had ruled in favor of the defendants on a motion for "summary judgment"---which means, in layman's terms, that their claim was so lacking in merit that it didn't even warrant a trial (meaning that the judges had to accept all the facts alleged as true). A colleague of hers on the Second Circuit---a liberal judge appointed by Clinton, named Jose Cabreras---was outraged that the court didn't address the issues at the heart of the case, and it was only because HE wrote a dissent to the court's denial of rehearing en banc (before the entire circuit, rather than the three-judge panel assigned to the case) that the case got much press; otherwise, it may well have been buried in the thousands of other summary dismissals that come out of the courts, another unpublished summary dismissal at the trial court level followed by a routine summary affirmance.
To my mind, this suggests one of the following: (1) she is a partisan whose rulings will come from the "empathy" she feels with one side or the other (a possibilty also suggested by her YouTube comments at a seminar a few years ago...talking about federal appeals judges "making policy"); (2) she is intellectually dishonest, and was trying to bury the case by using language usually reserved for dealing with frivolous lawsuits (I've been the beneficiary of that myself often enough to recognize it...though the Michigan Court of Appeals has been better about trying to hide "tough" cases in superficial opinions in the last fifteen years or so); or (3) she can't recognize a "big issue" when it hits her in the head. Any of these would have meant that I wouldn't have appointed her, if I were the president. But none of them is a disqualification from office---nor, sadly enough, uncommon among judges in this day and age.
Having said that...I haven't studied the body of her work well enough to know whether the Ricci case is an aberration, or her usual way of doing business. What I've read suggests that she is usually yeomanlike in her work, and reasonably competent in her legal scholarship. I've also read pieces suggesting that her reasoning and writing isn't very "tight" (ie, well thought out and precisely written), and that her judicial temperament leaves a lot to be desired (ie, she has a reputation for being dismissive and abusive from the bench). I suspect that much of what will be written about her in the coming days will be written with a partisan pen...and I plan to double-check any facts I read, and ignore most of the conclusions (which I usually prefer to draw for myself).
None of what is said below speaks to anything I'd regard as important in a judge: I would expect most judges to rule on both sides of First Amendment, Civil Rights, and other issues...depending on the particular facts and law governing each particular case. And, with due respect for Obama, I don't regard "empathy" as a judicial qualification: if anything, it suggests bias, unless the judge feels "empathy" toward BOTH sides...meaning that he (or she) takes the time to understand the human dimension to the legal controversy, as well as the legal issues (something the Second Circuit didn't seem to show in the Ricci case). For me, assuming a bright mind capable of honest legal scholarship, the key qualifications are judicial temperament (ie, fair-mindedness and respect toward everyone who comes to court...and a recognition that being a judge is a privilege and a public trust, not a means to dole out rulings out of a subjective preference for one side or the other), and humility.
While I have a lot of reservations, I think it's too soon to judge her...and, as I said, the President is the one who gets to make the appointment, and I don't think "perfection" should be the standard.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Throughout the blogosphere, this is now a ranging controversy over her pending confirmation---which, given the current composition of the U.S. Senate, is assured...assuming that there are no hidden skeletons in her professional closet. Most of these discussions, though, appear to miss the real point. There is, to my mind, a big difference between whether someone "should NOT be confirmed" and whether they "SHOULD be appointed" in the first place: since Obama won the election, his choice should be honored in the absence of a clear reason not to confirm; but whether Sotomayor was the best nominee for the job is an entirely different question.
There's a lot about judges and the judiciary that it will be hard for non-lawyers to understand. To my mind her biggest test to date was Ricci v DeStefano (the New Haven firefighters case), which is, in many ways, a lesson in what is wrong with the American judicial system today.
In a nutshell...she was on a panel that gave very short shrift to the argument of the plaintiff that he was the victim of racial discrimination when the City tossed out the results of a civil service test---which had been designed to be racially neutral---because none of the top-scoring applicants were black. The lower court decision had ruled in favor of the defendants on a motion for "summary judgment"---which means, in layman's terms, that their claim was so lacking in merit that it didn't even warrant a trial (meaning that the judges had to accept all the facts alleged as true). A colleague of hers on the Second Circuit---a liberal judge appointed by Clinton, named Jose Cabreras---was outraged that the court didn't address the issues at the heart of the case, and it was only because HE wrote a dissent to the court's denial of rehearing en banc (before the entire circuit, rather than the three-judge panel assigned to the case) that the case got much press; otherwise, it may well have been buried in the thousands of other summary dismissals that come out of the courts, another unpublished summary dismissal at the trial court level followed by a routine summary affirmance.
To my mind, this suggests one of the following: (1) she is a partisan whose rulings will come from the "empathy" she feels with one side or the other (a possibilty also suggested by her YouTube comments at a seminar a few years ago...talking about federal appeals judges "making policy"); (2) she is intellectually dishonest, and was trying to bury the case by using language usually reserved for dealing with frivolous lawsuits (I've been the beneficiary of that myself often enough to recognize it...though the Michigan Court of Appeals has been better about trying to hide "tough" cases in superficial opinions in the last fifteen years or so); or (3) she can't recognize a "big issue" when it hits her in the head. Any of these would have meant that I wouldn't have appointed her, if I were the president. But none of them is a disqualification from office---nor, sadly enough, uncommon among judges in this day and age.
Having said that...I haven't studied the body of her work well enough to know whether the Ricci case is an aberration, or her usual way of doing business. What I've read suggests that she is usually yeomanlike in her work, and reasonably competent in her legal scholarship. I've also read pieces suggesting that her reasoning and writing isn't very "tight" (ie, well thought out and precisely written), and that her judicial temperament leaves a lot to be desired (ie, she has a reputation for being dismissive and abusive from the bench). I suspect that much of what will be written about her in the coming days will be written with a partisan pen...and I plan to double-check any facts I read, and ignore most of the conclusions (which I usually prefer to draw for myself).
None of what is said below speaks to anything I'd regard as important in a judge: I would expect most judges to rule on both sides of First Amendment, Civil Rights, and other issues...depending on the particular facts and law governing each particular case. And, with due respect for Obama, I don't regard "empathy" as a judicial qualification: if anything, it suggests bias, unless the judge feels "empathy" toward BOTH sides...meaning that he (or she) takes the time to understand the human dimension to the legal controversy, as well as the legal issues (something the Second Circuit didn't seem to show in the Ricci case). For me, assuming a bright mind capable of honest legal scholarship, the key qualifications are judicial temperament (ie, fair-mindedness and respect toward everyone who comes to court...and a recognition that being a judge is a privilege and a public trust, not a means to dole out rulings out of a subjective preference for one side or the other), and humility.
While I have a lot of reservations, I think it's too soon to judge her...and, as I said, the President is the one who gets to make the appointment, and I don't think "perfection" should be the standard.
JEFFREY CAMINSKY, a veteran public prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan, specializes in the appellate practice of criminal law and writes on a wide range of topics. His books include the science fiction adventure novel The Star Dancers, the exciting second volume in the Guardians of Peace-tm series, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, and the acclaimed Referee’s Survival Guide, a book on soccer officiating. All are published by New Alexandria Press, and are available on Amazon, as well as directly from the publisher.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
