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Friday, February 27, 2004
posted by gbarto at 11:08 PM:
new header!* * *
Thursday, February 26, 2004
posted by gbarto at 3:50 AM:
Reports Marcus, the Supremes have said that divinity students can be denied state scholarships. He is right to diagnose this as hostility to religion. While we'd be wise to avoid the divinity schools that make you a minister when you save enough cereal box tops - you know what I mean - we'd also be wise to avoid sending our African-American students through self-esteem focused Multicultural Studies programs that teach that Blacks knew how to fly before the white man came and robbed them of their magical, spiritual powers. As long as scholarship money sends students to Cornell West and Leonard Jeffries, I see no reason why it shouldn't send them to divinity school.* * *
posted by gbarto at 3:41 AM:
Cicero takes his shots at my post against FMA here. With his broader concern about the ways of the courts, his opposition to my opposition - if it's not too awkward to put it that way - is coherent within his view of things. I think, however, that implementing FMA to prevent imminent federalization is reminiscent of "destroying the city to save it." The phrase, "We federalized it to keep it from being federalized doesn't wash" - it's about federalizing in one direction instead of another, if anything. The Turkster, though woefully naive and optimistic, thinks there might still be a way to resolve this without working our way down the ugly path from the beautifully open-form and succinct Constitution we have to the ugly laundry lists that most European and state constitutions have over time become.As to the point that laws contract the options of citizens, that's largely true. Laws do. And in some cases, the citizens do need to be restrained. Should they start eating one another or such things, surely our civil institutions, many a part of government, should step in. But my point was that we're no longer talking about laws, changeable by the consensus of the legislative and executive branches at the drop of a hat; we're talking about the Constitution, the meta-law, if you will, which in its conception did less to determine how we would operate than how we would decide how we operated. The Constitution of the US has been so successful largely because the restrictions it placed were not upon citizens, but upon how government could expand its reach. The first ten amendments were explicitly put in place to make sure government knew its place. Succeeding amendments to recognize Blacks as fully human, women as legal voters, etc, tended to expand the powers of citizens and the protections of citizens. Most of the other amendments, including those that gave us the income tax and presidential term limits, were procedural. With the exception of prohibition, the Constitution has largely told us not what the rules were, but how we were to go about making the rules and what things we could or could not make rules about. The FMA skates dangerously close to legislating, which is what laws are for. Its provisions should be debated in Congress, voted on in Congress, and signed or vetoed by the President, before being written into the law of the land. As a matter of fact, this already happened when they passed the DOMA a few years ago. What's going on in San Francisco is, plain and simple, defiance of state and federal law.
So... our problem today is not that we need a Federal Marriage Amendment. What we need is for the government to get a little spine. It is already the law of California that gay marriage is not sanctioned. And it is already the law of the land that San Francisco can issue all the marriage licenses it wants, but if they're issued to gay couples then Nevada won't have to honor them. Why, if this issue is so sacrosanct, are the family values Republican governor and president not enforcing the laws on the books? Why hasn't Governor Schwarzenegger sent the State Police to intervene at San Francisco's gay wedding ceremonies? Why hasn't President Bush issued an executive order that a San Francisco marriage license means no more to the government than the price of the paper it's printed on?
There is no need for a Constitutional amendment. There is a need for the various governments to enforce the laws on the books and let the people and their elected representatives decide if the laws are serving or thwarting public purposes. If the laws were enforced, the results were satisfactory to the populace and the courts struck them down anyway, then it might be time for an amendment to put the courts in their place. But to preemptively enact an amendment in case the courts might strike down a law that isn't being enforced is misguided. The real question is why the laws aren't being enforced and whether the public wants them enforced badly enough to hold their leaders accountable for enforcing them.
Marcus' fourth and fifth points assume marriage is on the ropes. I agree, but due to heterosexuals' mistreatment of the institution, not gays' desire to join it. Britney Spears is a far greater threat to the institution than a lesbian couple of 20 years that wants official recognition. If gays treat marriage like heterosexuals, as I've argued before, they won't have too much effect. If they blow it off, "gay marriage" will stay in quotes and be treated as something less than marriage by the larger society.
Having addressed - or maybe just skated right over - Marcus' points, I would like to make a few points about some of the big players in the politics of this:
I think that the cynics are right that FMA is a dodge, an amendment that won't pass. But I think they're missing part of the story. The bottom line is that our central figures here are 1) an avowed liberal, Gavin Newsom; 2) a socially liberal conservative, Governor Schwarzenegger; and 3) a compassionate conservative, President Bush. Let's take a look at the three. What's with the first one, I don't know. But I think the second and third want to find a place for gays other than marriage, and I think Bush supports FMA principally because during the time it takes to work through the system, then fail, he'll have had time to seek a better answer.
1) Gavin Newsom may be a saint to gays, but he's a sonofabitch for California. Two years ago, the citizens of California made it damn clear where they stood on the matter. Gavin doesn't care. A few months ago, fed up with the corruption and abuses of power of the Democratic governor, the citizens booted him out. We're less than 100 days into the new administration and the governor and legislature are working desperately to find a budget compromise amenable to both and - a real change here - amenable to the interests of Californians at large. A few days from now, Californians vote on a measure that could drastically change the way California manages its finances, for good or for ill, for nearly a generation. This should be California's moment. The people of California voted for a chance to start anew. And Governor Schwarzenegger vowed that he would help to restore California to its place as the place of dreams, the place of the future. We're down to the wire in the critical first steps in the effort to restore California, and what's the story? Gavin Newsom violated his oath of office by ignoring the laws of the state in which he serves... and totally buried the story of what California was going to do to come back. Don't you worry. Gavin Newsom doesn't give a damn. This is the biggest spotlight he's ever going to get, and if resurrecting the "You never know what's going to happen next out there" storyline about California is what it takes to stretch out the moment, the rest of the state can get screwed. And so can any serious effort to get gays unions legitimate protections. As I noted above, these marriages are not valid under state or federal law. Sooner or later, someone is going to refuse to recognize one or more of them and part II of all hell breaking loose will come. And Gavin will be delighted to make his tearful pleas about his sincere convictions. But he won't give a damn that he took years of bringing gays gradually into the mainstream and on their way to getting proper protections from a public that came to accept them and traded it in for a couple months carnival. As someone who lives and works in California, I'm ticked at Newsom for knocking our efforts at renewal to the side. As someone who views legitimate and recognized civil unions as necessary to assuring gays their rights, I'm ticked that in short-circuiting process he has probably set that cause back at least a decade. But as I say, Gavin got his carnival, Gavin got his kudos, and Gavin doesn't care what happens to anyone else, including the gays for whom his heart may bleed but his head will not think.
2) Governor Schwarzenegger is rightly ticked at Newsom for violating the law of California. He's probably also ticked that you've got to go ten pages into the paper to find the latest on his budget proposals and the upcoming bond issue because we're too busy debating whether Barney Frank is really mad at Gavin Newsom to pay attention to little things like how we're going to pay for police, firemen, schools, etc and still be able to pay our taxes. By all rights, when a lower-ranking elected official so blatantly violates state law - and a state law put in place by the people - the governor ought to be able to send in the cops, or even the Guard. But that's so Bull Connor, and when you're known as the Terminator, that's not the kind of symbolism you want. Furthermore, Schwarzenegger is not averse to domestic partnerships, just so they're not called marriages. Why is he only offering rhetoric and no action, when as governor he has not only the right, but the responsibility, to enforce the laws of the state? Schwarzenegger is one of many politicians who have really been put on the hot seat by Newsom. He doesn't want to stomp on gay aspirations. Not by the poll numbers and not by his own inclinations. He wants Newsom to act responsibly before the San Francisco mayor makes working to assure gay rights synonymous with disrespect for the laws and the people of California and the U.S. But Saint Gavin doesn't give a damn.
3) George W. Bush is in a rough spot here. The conservative in him knows exactly where he stands. But his compassionate side wants to understand what gays are going through and wants to assure them some place in society, just so that place doesn't offend his traditional moral leanings or his base. I think this is the last issue Bush wanted to be dealing with, because it forces him to oppose the gay lobby and seem intolerant or play ball and lose conservative backers. In his speeches, he has done his damnedest to assure that the states could create other institutions for gays, so long as they didn't call it marriage. For all the ranting, the compassionate side of this Christian conservative is not gone. But it's in a hell of a bind.
Governor Schwarzenegger, President Bush and every other Republican in the country is now at the point where simply doing their jobs in upholding laws that others, including Bill Clinton, put in place, will get them a Time magazine cover: Hates Gays. That Kerry and most other Democrats with aspirations are taking identical positions is irrelevant. A liberal news media is just as quick to assume Democrats would be more open if they could as it is to assume that Republicans would be more restrictive if they could. It's not even an issue of outright bias. It's just a question of which boxes you're trying to fit people in. Which is a helluva thing, because with what Gavin Newsom unleashed, it's going to be as hard as ever for elected officials and community leaders to go beyond what is commonly assumed and work a compromise. Those with any "traditional" notions of marriage will be labeled "bigots," and those favoring gay marriage will be labeled "freaks," and everyone will retreat to their designated corners. Saint Gavin will pronounce a few marriages. Someone, somewhere, sooner or later, will unpronounce them. And with the conflict that's come in the middle, there'll be nothing to do but tell the San Francisco thousands that their papers will make a great momento, though not much else. This, I'm sure, pains President Bush, who loves his Bible, loves his faith as he understands it, and loves his vice-president who is most assuredly in touch with this issue, given that his daughter, one of his best friends, is a lesbian. It puts Schwarzenegger, a Republican trying to wed fiscal conservatism with a more open approach to social issues who would have advanced domestic partnerships in another place and time, in a place where to do his job as governor he must tell the happy couples that they're not really married, which knocks him out of the running for bringing real options to gays as he's said he'd like to.
The question is, in his moment of triumphant civil disobedience, was Gavin Newsom really blind to the fact that people higher up could not be so careless about how they dealt with this issue, blind to the fact that he was sending thousands of gay couples out to find new and different forms of discrimination, indifferent to the fact he would be literally making outlaws out of everyone he wed? Either Gavin Newsom didn't care enough to think through what he was unleashing, or Gavin Newsom didn't care what the end result was for the gay couples struggling for real recognition today. Either way, he has done a grave disservice to San Francisco, to California, to the United States, and most of all to the movement for real progress for the rights of gay couples.
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posted by gbarto at 1:25 AM:
In the post below, the TurkeyBlogger takes a look around at domain name ownership. For those who are curious, most of the domain registrars or resellers can run a WHOIS for you and get you such info. Responsible ones, like godaddy.com (which I use) do have checks in place to keep the info from being culled by spammers, which makes the searching take a little longer. In respect for their operation and motivations, I kept the info light. Those who are truly curious can look it up themselves.One thing I find interesting, and frankly, cool, is that with the addition of .info, .biz, .us and a few others, more domain names are suddenly available and the prices are going down. You can even get an .info address for $5 or $6! And godaddy has .com's for $8. Other sites may be cheaper, but that's the cheapest I've seen.
For the record, the TurkeyBlog owns gbarto.com, turkeyblog.com, thehugopages.com, victor-hugo-poetry.com, jkadvertising.com and multilingua.info. So there's no need for the curious to sort through long registry lists to find out about that.
On the other hand, I'm curious about where to write the Bush-Cheney campaign. I get their e-mails, but don't seem to have any saved at the moment. This is the TurkeySister's clue to send me a note with the address.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004
posted by gbarto at 9:14 PM:
Hmm... Thought I'd send a note to the Bush-Cheney camp about my opinion of the FMA. So I typed in www.bush-cheney.com, figuring that would get me somewhere. All it got me was the Yahoo Page-Not-Found page. So I checked. The site is owned, by someone called PKK, whose info is damn sketchy but who has held the site for quite a while. Will we see anything at Bush-Cheney.com anytime soon? www.bushcheney.com also brings up a page-not-found notice. It's owned by Rendina Communications. No idea if anything will show up at the site.Finding the Bush-Cheney (lack of) webpage thing curious, I tried a few other combos.
www.kerry-edwards.com is parked at godaddy.com. Owned by an individual who I'm guessing is hoping to either get rich or make a major stink about having a name he purchased yanked away. Though it could be a campaign operative, he's got an Illinois address.
On the other hand, the person (listed as TOP SECRET, Georgia address) who owns www.kerry-dean.com is probably feeling pretty disappointed right now.
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posted by gbarto at 4:48 AM:
While I dither quite a bit about gay marriage a few posts down, I'm not nearly so anguished about the Federal Marriage Amendment, which I consider a bad idea through and through.1. It's an enormous expansion of the federal government into the social sphere.
2. It's an enormous enroachment upon the powers of the states to run their own affairs.
3. Like Prohibition and the Flag Burning Amendment (thankfully never adopted), its intent is to contract, not expand, the choices available to a free citizenry (beyond choices about how they run their states, mentioned in no. 2). While there is nothing explicitly supporting this as a criterion for good vs. bad amendments, we did adopt the Constitution to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," not to assure the uniform power of the federal government. Passing amendments that say "no" to citizens, not the government's power over them, seems contradictory to the spirit of the Preamble and the Declaration.
4. Its conception is flawed: The FMA supporters imply that the institution of marriage cannot survive without this. Such an argument represents either a disheartening and misplaced lack of faith in that institution or a cynical willingness to alter our founding document to shore up the base. The first is cause for worry; the second is cause for real fear.
5. It's excessive: If we pass an Amendment every time San Francisco goes a little off the rails, we'll be doing nothing but passing amendments. Let's spend a little more time preparing democracy in Iraq, please, and put aside our quarreling with San Francisco until we really have time for such matters. We don't right now.
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posted by gbarto at 4:03 AM:
Kevin, whose blog is at the link, has become firmly pro gay marriage in response to Bush's attempt to federalize the question. But the reasoning he gives for picking a fight with Virginia's Defense of Marriage Act indicates that federalism isn't the real issue. Liberty is. He writes (the italics are his, for quotation):Section 1. Equality and rights of men.I guess that's the flipside of my comment (right below):
That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
That would seem to include contracting with one another in marriage, regardless of gender.
It raises [my] hackles when government tells people they don't really understand the meaning of what they're doing.Since, I would add, government's job is to secure our liberties, not our salvation, and those liberties were neatly summarized by Mr. Jefferson as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," the third of which cannot be defined by government but only by citizens free to act upon their own will so long as they do not infringe the rights of others.
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posted by gbarto at 3:11 AM:
You've already read it, but here's Instapundit's latest on gay marriage.The TurkeyBlog, for the record, thinks "marriage" probably ought be between a man and a woman. He also thinks taxes should be lower and French fries fat free. But, realistically, an institution that has survived the 25 marriages of Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor probably isn't going to shrivel away because Johnny married Johnny and Joan married Joan at last weekend's double wedding.
The bottom line is that when two people spend considerable time building a life together, there needs to be some assurance that they will both be entitled to the fruits of their shared efforts. This is gradually being achieved through the careful use of available legal instruments - if one can afford them. And yet, it is much easier to protect the investment you've made in a business you partially own than in the very roof over your head in certain circumstances. For heterosexual couples, many elements of such problems are solved in the blanket solution called marriage. While the traditionalist in me is squeamish about calling it marriage, there should be some such solution available to homosexuals unless we want to send the message that homosexuals are so beyond the pale that values like loyalty, committment, shared effort and entitlement to the fruits of shared efforts aren't even worth bothering about where they're concerned. Some people hold that view, I know. I'm not one of them.
As a student of literature, I'm well aware of the power of words. It's why the traditionalist in me is nervous about expanding the definition of marriage. But I'm equally aware of how that cuts for those who view their homosexual committment as being at least equal to the committment between Liz Taylor and Larry Fortensky. Which puts us at a point where compromise on language is both desirable and impossible. Leaping into the void of impossibility, the TurkeyBlog's final statement is this: Marriage has been with us quite some time, and will continue to be with us. Even if the word "gay" gets stuck in front, I'm sure it will muddle through. While the TurkeyBlog isn't comfortable with the phrase "gay marriage," he prefers it to the idea that consenting adults can be told that no committment exists where they have mutually agreed it does. It raises his hackles when government tells people they don't really understand the meaning of what they're doing.
The TurkeyBlogger recommends that gays be given some institution with the attendant rights and responsibilities which marriage brings to heterosexuals. The depth or shallowness of the committment they brought to the new institution, then, would determine whether "gay marriage," by whatever name, became a serious societal institution or became one more element of a counterculture available to those who go for such things but ignored by the larger society. In other words, "gay marriage" could only seriously impact marriage if people took it seriously as being of a piece with marriage. And that would depend on whether the unions homosexuals formed struck the larger society as being an awful lot like what marriage looked like for most people - in which case "gay marriage" would uphold marriage - or something that just wasn't the same, in which case "gay marriage" would stay in quotation marks, held apart from the traditional institution.
The greatest fear for the ultras among the liberals, at such a point, would be that "gay divorce" became the next big thing after and gay marriage was made a mockery. One wonders, though. Would the ultras among conservatives lose more sleep over fears of the whole institution of marriage disintegrating, or over the possibility that gays, mindful of what was at stake, would approach their new institution with a greater measure of caution and seriousness than that shown by their heterosexual brothers and sisters? It would, after all, be pretty rough for the "traditional" institution of marriage if people took for granted that Johnny and Jack would stay together while placing their bets on how long Anna Nicole Smith's next "till death do us part" would actually last.
The careful reader will note that I've laid out a case for even calling it gay marriage if need be, without explicitly supporting or rejecting the proposition. Such a reader has surely already decided whether this makes me a hypocrite or a pragmatist.
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posted by gbarto at 1:42 AM:
Marcus Tullius Cicero is damn right to yell about this issue in the public square: The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments on whether the citizenry can be compelled to carry and at the request of police officers produce ID at any and all times. In a holding that ought get Nevada's "Old West" credentials yanked, the Supreme Court of that state has already said that a loitering cowboy was indeed interfering with an officer of the peace when he asked why his ID had been requested and thought a better answer than "Because I'm investigating" ought be proffered. One hopes that court uses greater discretion in deciding whether officers of the peace need wiretapping authority.The attitudes of the law officer in question and the Nevada Supreme Court are at the heart of the dislike of law enforcement and distrust of government that exist and are, in many quarters, on the rise. Fortunately, we have many means of recourse against such abuses, the last of these being the Second Amendment to the Constitution and all that it implies. One presumes that common sense will prevail before it comes to that.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004
posted by gbarto at 2:37 AM:
A Dog's Life has the chilling story of what comes up in the Russian spring. No, it's not daisies, but the bones of the workers in the labor camps from the time when Communism was thought to be the world's future by some.* * *
posted by gbarto at 2:08 AM:
Instapundit says the idea of an Alaska style oil-trust fund could still be in the works for Iraq. Let's hope so. For Iraqis to have a real stake in the country, they should have some ownership and this is a real quick way to make every Iraqi have an interest in the oil flowing and the industrial economy reviving, rather than having who's-up/who's-down factionalism as the major concern.* * *
posted by gbarto at 12:51 AM:
Cicero has a lot of good commentary on what Nader's entry into the Presidential Race really means and a nice shot at Kerry's grave offense at the GOP mentioning his voting record. He's wise to be upset. Mistaking Daniel Ortega for a democratic leader is at least as far off the mark as thinking those trailers were mobile chemical weapons labs.* * *
Monday, February 23, 2004
posted by gbarto at 11:31 PM:
Andy Rooney: Mel Gibson's 'Wacko'Says 'Passion' director and Rev. Pat Robertson both 'crazy as bedbugs'
Well isn't that special. So now Gibson and the Reverend Pat have gotten America's most crotchety curmudgeon's bad seal of disapproval. This will prompt an immediate reevaluation of the two as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure as far as you're concerned too.
For example, I've never had a problem with Mel but will be perhaps too predisposed to overlooking any questions about the unfolding of his Passion, just knowing that Rooney has a problem with him, which means he can't be all bad. Right?
Except... I've pretty much been of the impression that Pat Robertons is all-bad, or at best incredibly, remarkably, amazingly misguided, for quite some time now. Do I now need to take a second look for the good in Pat Robertson?
Nah.
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posted by gbarto at 10:29 PM:
Poor John Kerry, according to Fox News, his feelings have been wounded:Kerry: Voting Record Critics Attacking My Patriotism
It's worse than that, Johnny-Boy. They're attacking your judgments. The question, frankly, is not whether John Kerry is patriotic enough to be president, but whether - let's whisper this part - his experiences fighting Democrat wars left him too scarred to appreciate the military with whose leadership he would be charged and put past wounds aside to realistically consider both that military's needs and when it needed to be used.
John Kerry is a man who was hard-pressed to find a Communist threat he couldn't laugh off during the Reagan era. When Ronald Reagan was offering peace through strength, John Kerry was hanging out with Eddie Boland's capitulation crowd, eager to leave Nicaragua to the Communists if only out of spite for the Gipper.
In the War on Terror, John Kerry initially cast the right votes, but his antipathy toward American power abroad has resurfaced, reinforced by the liberal circles in which he moves. The problem is not that John Kerry is anti-American, but that his experiences in Vietnam left him too skeptical of the projection of American power to serve as our Head of State. A President must not look upon the military as a rogue element, but as an institution he leads. He must be prepared to direct that institution toward useful purposes. He must recognize in his nation's strengths the ability to make his nation stronger and the world better. With nearly twenty years in elective office, John Kerry has a particularly undistinguished record of showing the imaginative vision needed if one is to actually command American power and not merely critique it.
Fighting the war that another JFK started and LBJ ramped up soured Kerry on American power. Two decades in elective office in Massachussetts dulled whatever sense he might have had of how to transform the institution he feels so badly served him. Health care and other government programs are great fun to tinker with while in the Senate, but the President doesn't get to take a 20-year time-out figuring out how he feels about having the most powerful military in the world at his disposal. As President Bush found out on 9/11, the most placid-seeming world can drop things on your doorstep that require immediate responses based on the best understanding of the world that you've been able to form. Like it or lump it, Bush has his understanding of the world and was able to move swiftly to react to a changing world based on that general understanding. Two and a half years on, John Kerry is still dithering, claiming to have voted for a measure he opposed to show that he was in support, if I understood the latest explanation of his Iraq vote correctly. That's fine and good for a domestic pol playing down a fishy vote, but it doesn't wash when you're the leader of the military and deploying troops. As one in a hundred in the Senate, John Kerry poses little threat to the union, but if this is the best he can do then he is plainly not up to making the decisions the solitary President of the United States, leader of the free world, is called upon to make.
In sum, John Kerry is not the wrong man to be president because his heart's in the wrong place, but because his head is.
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posted by gbarto at 2:34 PM:
Fifty Marines Arrive in Haiti'Fast team' to secure U.S. Embassy as violent rebellion nears capital
Why are we sending Marines to Haiti? I thought Clinton's crack foreign policy team restored order and made the land safe for democracy? ... Just like they defused the nuke situation in North Korea...
In light of this setback to our policies there, I think it's time we look ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves: Why do they hate each other? What did we do to make them hate each other? Were it not for our rejection of Kyoto and our disrespect to the UN, would not the Haitian people still be living in loving brotherhood? And would not the North Koreans be living in a nuclear-free bliss in which Kim Jong-Il brought prosperity and hope to all?
It's your fault, America!
for electing George W. Bush
None of this did we have with Clinton. But now...
First the WTC, then North Korean pacifism, and now Haitian brotherhood - is there nothing we won't destroy, America?
It is a time for introspection. It is a time for new solutions. Since Bush got elected, we've had 9/11, North Korean nukes, Pakistani nukes, Haitian turbulence and the suppression of the Taliban just as they were restoring their culture to its purer, more primitive state. (Play down Libyan disarmament.)
It is time for a new answer! It is time for John Kerry and the Democrats! Then hope will reign! No more 9/11s, for they'll hate us no more! No more Haitian turbulence! Brotherhood will triumph! No more North Korean and Pakistani nukes! We'll buy them off! And no more ridiculous wars to oppress Taliban and Sunni culture - if we let love reign, we'll need war no more! The Democrats - an old answer to new problems!
For those taking this post seriously or believing its content, we've a lovely bridge - cheap!
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posted by gbarto at 1:36 AM:
French news headlinesLe Monde: Le Pen is ineligible in PACA. Due to financial questions, the leader of the Front National and France's number 2 choice for president in the last go-round is ineligible to run in the upcoming regional elections.
France 2: Trans-Jordan: The Wall Before the International Court of Justice - which starts considering what, if any, implications the wall holds for international laws.
Were the Palestinians building a similar wall to hold off Israeli tanks, would the international community be equally up in arms?
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posted by gbarto at 1:28 AM:
The TurkeyBlog's been out off and on having a look at the California coast in his neck of the woods. The gbarto.com main page now has some links for a few shots of what he's seen.
Here are photos of the area between Monterey and Big Sur.
And here are photos of the so-called dog beach just beyond the lighthouse at Santa Cruz.
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French Elections, 1st round
Second round special page
Second Round Results Map
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