Court TV...Or Audio, Anyway..Now On, Every Friday

(9:47:11 PM)
A couple of Supreme Court cases have caught my attention.

The more important of the two is FCC v AT&T and CompTel, #09-1279, in which AT&T is claiming protection from requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, for records relating to, well, just about anything that happens in the company. AT&T is that part of FOIA "which exempts document disclosures in law enforcement records that would constitute an invasion of “personal privacy” ", according to this article  applies to AT&T because AT&T is...wait for it...a person !! The GOP continues to play the long con, and with the Roberts court dealing from the bottom of the cold deck the District court judges have been stacking since they were installed during Republican administrations, I don't have any doubts that AT&T and corporations across the world will win big on this ruling. Instead of the specific law in question, Roberts, Noni, Guido and Unka Thom will pull another Citizens U, addressing issues not in evidence and expanding rights that don't exist.

And they said 'penumbra' was nebulous.

This matters why? Because, as the conservative turnover of government services into private hands advances, this will assure that we, the dumb masses, the former citizens, have no right to find out what happens to the tax dollars, or fees, or whatever we end up paying are called, once they're collected by the private providers. Sure, the city of Bell is a cesspool of official corruption, but citizens found out what was going on, and pulled the threads that led to it unraveling. AT&T can't let that happen to them, and Roberts, et al, will make sure it doesn't.

The reason why you can't run a government like a business, at least not in the United States, is because you can't hang that sign that says "We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone" in the lobby at the DMV. Or at the Social Security office, or at the VA. And the reason a CEO usually makes a lousy elected executive is because they've lost the skill of negotiating, of working with people who aren't beholden to them, who won't ask 'How High?' when told to jump. Much as Arnold would like, he can't fire a state senator, or the attorney general. Meg wouldn't be able to, either.

But if this case gets the fine fondling I expect it will, in the hands of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas, the debacles behind closed doors at the companies that will be providing your formerly-government services will be unknown to you...forever.

A sly note: why would this be reviewed by the Supremes when it went the company's way at the appellate level in the Third Circuit? If you pull up the PDF on that page (the link's under 'Documents', called 'Petition') you'll notice the 'Solicitor General, Counsel of Record' for the government is Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court's newest Supreme. As a participant in the case, she now has to recuse herself from its appeal. With an 8-justice panel, a tie affirms the Third Circuit's ruling in favor of the corporations. So the fearsome four-some of Scalia's Mighty Mafia won't have to cajole Tony Kennedy into joining in.

I don't know why they'll bother hearing arguments. Thomas won't ask any questions anyway. He never does. "...than to open your mouth and remove all doubt", I guess.

The other case of interest, and I suppose, for entertainment, is the Westboro Church case, Albert Snyder v. Fred Phelps (or 'how to make your family a tax-sheltered operation'), about the right of this family of "Christians" to picket at the burials of US servicemen, like my dad's at Arlington a couple of weeks ago. Their picketing includes signs claiming that 'God Hates Fags' and that our service personnel are dying because America allows homosexuality. Not "allows it in the military" or "allows it is schools". Just "allows it."

Their right to perform these pickets is what's at issue in the Supreme Court case that was argued yesterday. But the lunacy, stupidity and insanity of this position is what strikes me. Does this mean if we just expelled all homosexuals from America, we could then send our soldiers into battle knowing they could not be killed? A new policy of "MAME", 'Must Ask, Must Expel' would certainly cut down on Defense Dept. expenses, since armor and all defensive systems would become pointless. Send our soldiers into battle with boots, underwear, a gun and lots and lots of ammo. God'll keep 'em from harm.

Yea.

Think of the impression of Christianity this gives to those not familiar with its better works, and saner followers. Think of how all the soldiers of all the 'Christian' nations down through history must have died because there were homos in that nation's populace. It would seem to make hunting down homos the most important thing in the world. It would mean that the people who founded our nation, since a few soldiers died along the way to our independence, need to be held accountable for not writing 'and kill all the homos' into the Constitution.

I think the case should have been brought in a different way: Westboro is an insane asylum that is failing to protect the populace from its patients. It needs to be closed, and the inmates need to be interred at other, more competent institutions. Camarillo got closed out here during the Reagan governorship. Is Bellevue still available in New York?

(10:28:27 PM)(10:39:54 PM)