For the record, I don't belong to any group, including those below. I'm not
wired to be a casual member of anything and my life's work is obvious.
However, I admire and closely follow activities of PDLA, and have known
and respected several Stonewall members for many years, including Ann
Marie Stass and John Heilman. I'd vote Green, not Henry Waxman, unless
he were in genuine danger of losing to a Republican, which he is not. His
dissembling, blind support for all things Israeli is reprehensible. Etc.,
except for friend/sometime Ash Grove attorney, Debra Bowen, my heroine.
If wishes were fishes, I'd be swimming. -Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Linda Sutton
To: pdla@svpal.org ; pdla@yahoogroups.com ; Steve Brooks
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2010 11:52 AM
Subject: [PDLA] If you vote by mail, now's the time
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeff Book <jeffbook@yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 9:50 AM
Subject: [StonewallDemClub] If you vote by mail, now's the time
To: "Stonewalldemclub@yahoogroups.com" <stonewalldemclub@yahoogroups.com>,
StonewallYoungDems@yahoogroups.com, friends@jeffbook.com
If you vote by mail and have not already mailed your ballot, please mail it
now. Please remind your family, friends, and co-workers that mailed ballots
need to be mailed, with regular postage, now.
Ballots need time to reach the Registrar-Recorder's office. Mailed ballots,
to be counted, must be received not later than Election Day, Tuesday, Nov.
2 -- if it arrives on Wednesday, Nov. 3 or later, it will not be counted.
Don't run any risk that your ballot will not be received in time.
If you forget to mail your ballot, you can turn it in at any polling place
in L.A. County on Election Day, November 2.
If you have already voted by mail in L.A. County and would like to verify
whether your ballot has been received, you can do that here:
https://lavote.net/SECURED/AV_INQUIRY/
If you want to vote by mail, but have not yet requested a vote-by-mail
ballot, you can still request one here:
https://lavote.net/SECURED/AV
The deadline for requesting a vote-by-mail ballot using this online form is
midnight on Tuesday, Oct. 26.
If you plan to vote at the polls and want to verify the location of your
polling place -- or look at an online copy of your sample ballot -- you can
do that here:
http://www.lavote.net/LOCATOR/
Stonewall and West Hollywood/Beverly Hills Democratic Clubs support (in
ballot order):
Governor -- JERRY BROWN
Lieutenant Governor -- GAVIN NEWSOM
Secretary of State -- DEBRA BOWEN
Controller -- JOHN CHIANG
Treasurer -- BILL LOCKYER
Attorney General -- KAMALA D. HARRIS
Insurance Commissioner -- DAVE JONES
Board of Equalization, District 4 -- JEROME HORTON
U.S. Senator -- BARBARA BOXER
U.S. Representative, 30th District -- HENRY A. WAXMAN
State Assembly, 42nd District -- MIKE FEUER
Superior Court, Office No. 28 -- MARK K. AMELI
Superior Court, Office No. 117 -- ALAN SCHNEIDER
Superintendent of Public Instruction -- TOM TORLAKSON
Assessor -- JOHN R. NOGUEZ
Prop 19 -- YES
Prop 20 -- NO
Prop 21 -- YES
Prop 22 -- YES
Prop 23 -- NO
Prop 24 -- YES
Prop 25 -- YES
Prop 26 -- NO
Prop 27 -- YES
West Hollywood/Beverly Hills Democratic Club and L.A. County Democratic
Party recommend:
YES to retain Supreme Court Justice CARLOS MORENO
YES to retain 2nd District Court of Appeal Justice JUDITH M. ASHMANN
YES to retain 2nd District Court of Appeal Justice ORVILLE "JACK" ARMSTRONG
--
Linda Sutton
Los Angeles, CA
_______________________________________________
PDLA mailing list
PDLA@svpal.org
http://mailman.svpal.org/mailman/listinfo/pdla
***
http://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-the-justice-system/clarence-thomas-owes-apology/
Why Clarence Thomas Owes African-Americans an Apology
by David A. Love
LA Progressive, 23 October, 2010
When Ginni Thomas - the Tea Partying wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas - left Anita Hill a voicemail message asking for an apology,
she got it all wrong. It's really Clarence Thomas who owes the apology, to
the black community that is.
During his confirmation hearings in 1991, America was introduced to Thomas.
His handlers and boosters created a Horatio Alger, a
pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps story of a black man who emerged from a
meager upbringing in Pinpoint, Georgia to become an embodiment of the
American dream. We learned that he had Gullah roots. As someone with Gullah
ancestry myself via Charleston, South Carolina, I must ask what happened to
Thomas to make him run away from his people and forget from whence he came.
Justice Thomas is part of the high court's conservative majority (led by
Justices Roberts and Scalia), and often is regarded as the most rightward
judge among his peers.
His record on the bench tells the story:
An originalist, Justice Thomas believes in the original intent of the
framers of the Constitution. That is bad news for black folks, and
presumably for Thomas as well, given that under that judicial philosophy, he
and all other blacks should be in chains on someone's plantation.
Thomas staunchly defended gun rights for African-Americans by cynically
making an argument that had hints of Malcolm X or the Black Panther Party.
He suggested that black people needed guns to protect themselves from the
mob violence of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. True, but that
argument seems misplaced in the realities of present-day black America, when
young black men in the cities are shooting each other to death. The staunch
second amendment advocate had nothing to say about that.
In Hudson v. McMillian (1992), Thomas dissented from the court's majority
opinion which said prisoners were covered by the constitution's protection
against "cruel and unusual punishment." Consistently, Thomas and Scalia have
dissented when the court ruled in favor of prisoners who alleged cruelty,
including the case of an inmate who was repeatedly punched in the mouth by a
guard, a prisoner who was handcuffed to a "hitching post" and forced to
stand shirtless for seven hours in the hot sun. Thomas even believed that an
inmate who was slammed against a concrete floor, punched and kicked by a
guard for filing a grievance did not have his constitutional rights
violated.
According to Thomas, such harsh treatment did not qualify as cruel and
unusual punishment. "Judges - not jailers - impose punishment," he wrote.
And while his outrage over the tasering and beating of his suicidal
epileptic nephew in a Louisiana hospital was understandable if not laudable,
never has he shown any sympathy for the one in nine prison inmates suffering
from mental illness. It is understandable that Thomas' former law clerk John
Yoo was investigated for writing memos in the Justice Department justifying
torture of terror suspects.
In another case dealing with the death penalty, Thomas concluded in a
concurring opinion that a defendant's childhood misfortunes or poverty
should have no bearing in a case. And he sided with the minority when the
court's struck down random drug searches by police at highway checkpoints
because they violate the right to privacy.
Thomas voted with the majority in Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission, which turns corporations into people with free speech rights
that need protection, and paves the way for unlimited corporate funding of
elections if not the outright purchase of democracy. That decision laid the
groundwork for the corporate-sponsored Tea Party campaign of voter
intimidation and voter suppression against blacks and Latinos in the current
election season.
As Justice Stevens eloquently stated in his dissent, "The financial
resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations
raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our
lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic
duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious
effects of corporate spending in local and national races."
Although a beneficiary of affirmative action, an arguably an unexceptional
one at that, Clarence Thomas is dead set against such diversity programs. In
Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña (1995), he stated that, "so-called
'benign' discrimination teaches many that because of chronic and apparently
immutable handicaps, minorities cannot compete with them without their
patronizing indulgence. Inevitably, such programs engender attitudes of
superiority or, alternatively, provoke resentment among those who believe
that they have been wronged by the government's use of race."
Meanwhile, Thomas' supporters insisted he was the most qualified person for
the position, when he was arguably not even the best black conservative for
the job.
Thomas was the only justice to vote against a key provision of the Voting
Rights Act on the grounds that blacks no longer need protection against
denial of ballot access through intimidation and violence.
Justice Thomas' wife Ginni worked in the transition team for George W. Bush
while her husband was casting his vote in the infamous Bush v. Gore case,
when the Supreme Court essentially selected Bush as president. Perhaps he
should have recused himself.
And it gets better, or should I say worse. Outside of the courtroom and
judge's chambers, Justice Thomas has dabbled in Tea Party politics, just as
his wife fashions herself as a leader of that movement. Thomas and his
cutting buddy Scalia have attended events sponsored by Koch Industries,
masterminds and financiers of the racist Tea Party movement. This suggests
deplorable politics at best, and a conflict of interests and a judicial
ethics problem at worst. He says he doesn't read newspapers. And Thomas
officiated Rush Limbaugh's third marriage ceremony in 1994 - at Thomas' home
no less. And he also attended the blowhard radio host's fourth wedding
earlier this year. During his nomination hearings, then-Supreme Court
candidate
Thomas told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the proceedings were "a
high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for
themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a
message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to
you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S.
Senate rather than hung from a tree."
To that I say, whatever. After he took his seat on America's high court,
Justice Thomas proceeded to lynch black America each day he went to work.
And he has been doing it ever since.
David A. Love
This article first inThe Grio and is republished with permission.
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