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May 27th, 2009
11:32 pm - awareness
I've not been taking care of my cuticles lately, so they tear and get those annoying staph infections. Adding to the bother is the extent to which I still sunburn; cue more redness and swelling. Frustrating. But for a moment, I stopped and thought. My body, without my being particularly aware of it, is responding to threats. It's working to protect me against radiation from the sun; it's attacking foreign bodies that my torn cuticles admitted. In the most ridiculously literal sense of the words, my body is fighting for me. It shouldn't be as encouraging as it is, but there you have it.
Work is routine, although the reading is good. I've mostly been working on this women of color in academia issue, trying to find articles that also treat it as an issue of class, which is surprisingly hard. I'm more inclined to do the other research job that I have, the international criminal law articles. Still knitting, on a difficult lace shawl that just seems to take forever. The summer is heavenly.
Buffalo Bill's Orange Blossom Cream Ale tastes like soda pop. I'm going to Washington DC on the 18th (only for the weekend) and to Ireland on July 10th (for study abroad). The future's so bright I oughta wear shades.
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May 26th, 2009
02:02 pm - About the Prop 8 lawsuit
I feel like I should make this point clear to my non-law friends: while the decision of the California Supreme Court is unfortunate, the Court's hands were essentially tied. The issue being argued was not whether Prop 8 was wrong, or hateful, or a product of the LDS; the issue was whether it was an 'amendment' (requiring only a simple majority of the popular vote) or a 'revision' (requiring prior approval by 2/3 of each house of the CA legislature). However the CA Supreme Court felt about the amendment, they could only decide whether or not Proposition 8 was procedurally sufficient under the California constitution.
So please, stop Facebooking about how disappointed you are in the California Supreme Court which, if I may point out, already overturned one ban on same-sex marriage. Democracy means that sometimes the voters get to do mean, mean things to people they don't like, and until there's a recognized federal right to same-sex marriage, it will continue to be so.
(A caveat: I personally disagree vehemently with Prop 8. Of course same-sex partners should have all the rights given to heterosexual married couples. But the specific law being applied in this case means that it really could have only come out one way.)
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May 5th, 2008
10:10 am - looking back on Loving
Mildred Loving, of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, passed on today. I can only hope that forty years from now, we'll look back at the various DOMAs the way we look back today on the anti-miscegenation laws: to ask, how did that take so long? There is no rational reason not to allow gay people to marry, just as there was no rational reason not to allow members of different races to marry.
(Turns out Mrs. Loving thought the same, for what it's worth.)
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January 4th, 2008
03:26 pm - Gachnar for America
Verbatim Ron Paul ad: 'Repeal birthright citizenship!'
That's right, kids, Paul wants to repeal part (if not all) of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one that says that '[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' This was, of course of course, the amendment that made slaves born in the United States US citizens, thus vacating the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott. Paul's objection to it no doubt is connected to what anti-immigration activists call 'anchor babies'- US citizen children born to illegal immigrants, who can then petition to have their parents become legal permanent residents and, eventually, US citizens. What those activists don't consider is that those parents are still deportable; in order to gain US citizenship they would have to leave the United States, usually for a 10 year period, then go through consular processing (usually taking 1-2 years) then wait another five years to apply for citizenship. That's IF they succeed in consular processing, which they sometimes won't. What this means is that 'anchor babies', as they are invoked by anti-immigrationists, are effectively a myth. If you enter the US illegally, you have to have a really exceptionally good reason not to be deported, and a young child usually isn't enough. (See, for example, Elvira Arellano.)
The 14th amendment continues to the Equal Protection Clause, which states that 'no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' The Equal Protection Clause has been the basis for countless progressive Supreme Court decisions - Strauder v. West Virginia (overturning a state law that prohibited blacks from serving on juries), Brown v. Board of Education (mandating racial integration of segregated school districts) and most recently, Lawrence v. Texas (overturning anti-sodomy laws). No doubt Paul doesn't approve of these decisions either, seeing as how they limit the power of the states.
The point is, eliminating the first clause of the 14th Amendment would eliminate a number of important humans rights advances made in the last 140 years and reestablish an underclass of persons not protected by the Constitution. Children born to immigrant parents; racial, ethnic or religious minorities; gay and transgendered persons; all would be at the mercy of the electorate in the state they lived in. Without the Equal Protection Clause, imagine how many more lynchings would be allowed under color of law; imagine how much worse the racial or economic divides in our nation would be. Ron Paul wants to take our country back in time, and the destination he has in mind is a darker, crueler era that most of us wouldn't recognize.
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August 11th, 2006
11:50 pm - Yet more proof that the author is an inveterate communist
So I get my deposit back- or rather, some of it. This excites me, initially; I look forward to maybe spending the deposit on some clothing, or putting it into savings. Then ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ni_q comes home, looks at it, and points out that under the state's Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, they should have provided the refund, and list of deductions from it, within 14 days of the day that I vacated. Since they didn't, they're liable for the whole deposit.
I draft a vaguely legal-sounding and technically accurate letter; I look forward to receiving the remaining balance of my deposit and blowing the whole thing on an art class at Pratt Fine Arts Center.
Thank god for my fine legal upbringing and the perpetual well-informed-ness of my live-in boyfriend. Today's moral: RCW 59.18.280: Give Me My Money Back, Punks.
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