Councilman Don Redman: An Embarrassment

[urbanlibertarian]

stjr wrote "After comments like Redman's, one can easily understand that another Hitler could some day come to power, elected by a dumbed-down, uncaring, cynical, superficial electorate falling for the latest slick political promise."

Cynical? Sounds like you are very cynical about the character and intelligence of your fellow citizens.  Or maybe I'm just naive.  I think the average person is honest, caring and smart.

[Sportmotor]

I think the average person is honest, caring and smart.

I think that is naive.

[grimss]

Sadly, this isn't the first time Redman has made doufus comments.  I was at the Greenwood bungalow hearing where he, quite sincerely, asked if perhaps the solution (that would solve the concerns of both the preservation community and the property owner) was to tear down the existing bungalow and build an exact replica.  How . . . Disney.

The other day, I happened to be watching a Council hearing on the fee increases issue while I worked out. Redman was pretty much incoherent in his commentary. I can only hope the man is masquerading as a religious hick to disguise some brilliant master plan, but . . .

[stjr]

Cynical? Sounds like you are very cynical about the character and intelligence of your fellow citizens.  Or maybe I'm just naive.  I think the average person is honest, caring and smart.

Urban, I won't quarrel with "average" including being "honest", a trait not addressed by my comments.  But, "cynical", "caring" and "smart", I beg to differ.

If people "cared", we would have a far better informed electorate and one that turned out in far greater numbers for all elections, not just presidential ones.  No, sadly, most don't make the effort because they don't really care.  Maybe they are lazy, maybe it's because they are "cynical" and don't think their voices are heard or the process is rigged by the GOB's, or a little of both.

If people were "smart", then 30 second political ads written to the level of a grade school education wouldn't determine the outcome of elections.*  And raising big money to pay for such ads on television would not be a major factor in winning an election.  Instead, people would visit a candidate's web site, watch "substantive debates" (not the sound bite ones we usually get) and other candidate and/or issue forums, and read pro and con articles in the press to make their "informed" decisions on the candidates.  Not many of us doing that.

As to "cynical", well, yes, the pollsters tell us that many to most of us are cynical about government and many other institutions in our society.  And, per above, voter turnout, or lack thereof, appears to back that up.

Where have you been, lately?

*Regardless of your political leanings, why should a photo of Charlie Crist greeting our President be a determinant of one's vote for him or others.  Yet, Rubio runs this commercial relentlessly as shorthand for Crist = Obama.  Fine, then, call him out on the specific issues.  But, that would require too much thought from the electorate.  Tell me voters aren't shallow.  He wouldn't run it if his pollsters didn't tell him it was "persuasive".  

[sheclown]

People don't have the energy to deal with the complexities of politics -- they are too busy trying to keep or get a job, make dinner, do homework with the kids. 

Too busy to care...unless it involves them personally.

I know...from personal experience.

[sheclown]

Is Don Redman's comment/request an ethics violation?  

Maybe, as a member of the Human Rights Commission, Dr. Ahmed can take action against Redman himself?

Stephen has a saying for this type of Reversals of Fortune, but ... I can't repeat it.

[finehoe]

People don't have the energy to deal with the complexities of politics -- they are too busy trying to keep or get a job, make dinner, do homework with the kids.

This is how the powers that be want it.  That's why they endorse a system that forces people to constantly worry that they may lose their job, become bankrupt if they have medical issues, and fret over the mediocre education their children receive.  And any free time is filled with "American Idol" and/or professional sporting matches.

[finehoe]

Our forefathers knew what they were doing when they set up the separation of church and state.

Supreme Court overturns objection to cross on public land

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2010; A01

A splintered Supreme Court displayed its deep divisions over the separation of church and state Wednesday, with the court's prevailing conservatives signaling a broader openness to the idea that the Constitution does not require the removal of religious symbols from public land.

A 5 to 4 decision by the court overturns a federal judge's objection to a white cross erected more than 75 years ago on a stretch of the Mojave Desert to honor the dead of World War I.

Six justices explained their reasoning in writing, often using stirring rhetoric or emotional images of sacrifice and faith to describe how religion can both honor the nation's dead and divide a pluralistic nation.

The bottom line, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote, is that "the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society." Although joined in full only by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Kennedy's opinion will be closely parsed as courts across the country consider challenges to religious displays in public settings.

But it is a narrow ruling, offering less guidance for the future than a stark acknowledgment of the fundamental differences between the court's most consistent conservatives and its liberals in drawing the line between government accommodation of religion versus an endorsement of religion.

To Kennedy, the cross "is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs" but a symbol "often used to honor and respect" heroism.

He added: "Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens said: "The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith."

Still, despite strong language in Kennedy's opinion, the decision did little to clarify the court's murky jurisprudence about how government can accommodate religious symbols without violating the Constitution's prohibition on the endorsement of religion. It seems likely that once the legal battles are over, the 6 1/2 -foot cross standing atop an outcropping called Sunrise Rock will remain, although that was not settled by the decision.

The five most consistently conservative justices seem tolerant, based on Wednesday's decision and past rulings, of religious symbols on public land, but the court's four liberals seem deeply skeptical. The lineup does not bode well for other challenges to religious symbols, such as San Diego's 29-foot cross and war memorial on Mount Soledad.

But even the five who agreed Wednesday to return the case to lower courts split three ways in their reasoning.

"To date, the court's jurisprudence in this area has refrained from making sweeping pronouncements, and this case is ill suited for announcing categorical rules," Kennedy wrote.

The court battle began when Frank Buono, a former employee in the 1.6 million-acre Mojave National Preserve, objected to the cross being on a plot of public land. Federal courts in California agreed the display was unconstitutional. But after an outcry from veterans groups, Congress forbade removal of the cross. It declared the site a national monument and engineered a plan to swap the land on which the cross was bolted for a piece of private land nearby so that the cross was no longer on public property.

The courts objected to that as well. But it was a mistake, Kennedy wrote, to dismiss Congress's intent in the land swap as "illicit." His opinion returns the case to the lower court, with a strong nudge to approve it.

"The land-transfer statute embodies Congress's legislative judgment that this dispute is best resolved through a framework and policy of accommodation for a symbol that, while challenged under the Establishment Clause, has complex meaning beyond the expression of religious views," he wrote.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have gone further than Kennedy and Roberts and held that the land swap was lawful and that there is no need to send the case back to the lower court.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas went along with only the outcome of the case. They said they thought that Buono should not have been allowed to challenge the congressional action and did not endorse Kennedy's reasoning.

The court's liberal wing dissented.

"I certainly agree that the nation should memorialize the service of those who fought and died in World War I, but it cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message," wrote Stevens, who was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented for other reasons.

The cross was originally erected at Sunrise Rock by a group of World War I veterans who used to gather at the spot socially. It has been replaced several times, most recently in 1998 by Henry Sandoz, who with his wife, Wanda, maintains what is now a 6 1/2 -foot cross built of metal pipes.

As a result of the court battles, the cross is covered with a plywood box.

Both sides of the dispute noted the inconclusiveness of the decision. "It's a win, but it's a win in a battle, not the decisive victory we might have hoped for," said Hiram Sasser, a lawyer at the Liberty Institute, which represented the Sandozes. "I told Henry that the plywood will eventually come down, but it's going to take a while."

Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which represented Buono, said that the fight will be uphill but that it is not over.

"We will continue to argue that the land transfer did not remedy the violation of the establishment clause," Eliasberg said. "The cross is unquestionably a sectarian symbol, and it is wrong for the government to make such a deliberate effort to maintain it as a national memorial."

The case is Salazar v. Buono.

[sheclown]

People don't have the energy to deal with the complexities of politics -- they are too busy trying to keep or get a job, make dinner, do homework with the kids.

This is how the powers that be want it.  That's why they endorse a system that forces people to constantly worry that they may lose their job, become bankrupt if they have medical issues, and fret over the mediocre education their children receive.  And any free time is filled with "American Idol" and/or professional sporting matches.

Indeed.  Keep us afraid and we will turn numb and dumb.

[urbanlibertarian]

Ohh...I see.  It's a conspiracy.  Really?  IMO we have relatively free and fair elections and we're just getting the kind of government we deserve.

[sheclown]

What's with the boundaries of district 4? 

[urbanlibertarian]

http://www.coj.net/City+Council/District+4/D04DistrictMap.htm

[sheclown]

Why is the area shaped like this?  When was it drawn.  Seems weird.

[sheclown]

They're all pretty weird.

http://www.coj.net/NR/rdonlyres/eo4q5mnhpsw6fvaunxrglspblpnub2dagqmthpskpqrg7i54uye4dxwlgq3gabi7euqm4q2arc4hgvsai3afv4lve3h/2007DistrictMap.pdf

anyone with a history on this?

[Charles Hunter]

Well, one absolute criterion used in 2000 (or 2001 or whenever it was done) was to make sure the they did not put 2 (or more) incumbents in the same new districts.