CALIFORNIA COURT UPHOLDS GAY MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

The California State Supreme Court today voted six to one not to overturn Proposition 8, the so called anti-gay marriage initiative. It was an amendment to the State Constitution. The State Supreme Court last May voted to legatamize gay marriage in a contraversial 4 to 3 decision, which was unambiguous in its stridency for rights for all of the people. Now the court has changed it's tune. What is so perplexing about today's ruling is that it says that the 18,000 gay couples who got married in the "window of oppertunity" last year, are legally married and every state in the union has to recognize these 18,000 as such, according to a provision in the US Constitution. This indeed creates a strange situation where the Court is saying "You eighteen thousand have this inailiable right that's guarenteed; the rest of you don't". Many have questioned the logic of this decision and I am one of these. I never in a million years thought they would vote the way they did because this Court has a record of overturning the sovreign vote of the people on a lot of issues. The thing is that if this were officially to alter the state constitution, then it should have been first been passed by 2/3 of the state legeslature. This did not occur. The reasoning according to some if "Well, the court used the passage of an illegal amendment to justify their current actions that didn't exist last May". But in my oppinion this is engaging in circular reason, if hot "short-circuited" reasoning. I still am against gay marriage, but I'd like the issue be dealt with in a fair and above board fashion. Now the pro gay people are just going to get another initiative on the ballot and try it again. And this time, I have the feeling, they will succeed, because momentum for this gay marriage issue is growing.

Sylvia Sottomayer - - a Hispanic woman, has been picked for the Supreme Court Justice left open by justice Sutor's retirement. This lady is known for her thoughtful rulings, which on occasion have opted for the conservative side of an issue. I see no reason why she shouldn't be approved. Nobody really fought that hard about approving Roberts or Allito. If the Republicans try to be too obstenate in opposing this nomination they will only bee seen for what they are, and that is - obstructionist. Sylvia Sottomayer has been to all the Ivy League colleges and has served as both a trial judge and a prosecutor, among other things. My only reservation is that sometimes "What's in a person's heart" can be relivant. It's relavant for a husband or wife to be. If you don't love the things your husband loves and want the same things he wants, if you only give out a yawn when he pours out his heart and says what he'd really like to accomplish in this life, then such a man or a woman is not a very goot marital candidate. Personally, I don't like family members who show this kind of apathy. But you know what they say. You can pick your friends but not your relatives. Often when I show I'm really interested in a certain subject, there is a yawn apathy that rises up in them, like I'm talking to the fence posts. If I say, "You know, I'm going to spend some of my stimulus check on eating more snacks that I've been missing the past three years" I'm not looking for a lecture on how bad sugar is. I'm saying all of this because in our personal lives we're looking for empathy. If we have a Pastor we talk to, we would like him to care if we expressed concern for the physical health of a loved one, or if we'd just been fired or had debt problems, or worse were arrested in jail. It's classic Christian compassion to care about such thing and if a pastor doesn't do this he isn't doing his job. But in a Supreme Court justice, I don't want feelings, I want objectivity and fairness and a "rigerous legal intellect" and all of that. I want my candidate to have some respect for what "settled law" is. I would like to get to the other issue I wanted to raise and this is the idea of "Liberal activist justice". Statisticians have pointed out that Clarence Thomas has voted to overturn more laws than any other justice at 69% or higher. Justice Kennedy is in at second and Justice Sculia is in at third at 56% Justice Bryer has only a 29% rating when it comes to voting to overturn a case. So the great liber myth is showned to be a falsehood because Clarence Thomas is the most "activist" Justice we have ever had. Personally I don't like activist justices. Capish?

The US Supreme Court today in one of their famous five to four rulings with "the usual suspects" decided that cops have the right to continue to badger and question a suspect clearly after they have indicated they wish to say nothing untill their attorney arrives. While this ruling may seem proper on "technical" grounds, in the real world it doesn't wash, any more than Plecy verses Ferguson will play in the real world Blacks have to live in. You know as well as I that cops are authority figures and the suspect by the very nature of being in the presence of a uniformed officer feels compelled to so whatever the police officer tells them to do, and in real life that means continuing to answer questions. You know how cops don't take kindly to lying to them, because they have the power to let things ride or else to slap on more charges depending on how you, the suspect cooperates. Here is definitely a case where real life personal experiance would come in handy. But as it is now, this is just one more dimuation of personal Civil Liberties.

People are saying now that the Swine flue will be returning in the fall with a vengance. They say that in the epidemics of 1918 and also in 1957 that there was a virus in the summer time but it was dying out and in the cast of 1918 came back in the fall, of that year, and that's when it killed so many people. Some say that if a virus could think, it would never mutate into a fast acting virus because that way it would kill off its host and die out before it could be spread long enough to perpetuate its kind. But the answer may lie in the fact that the virus now has a short incubation period. If a virus had a long incubation period it could still be deadly but be spread for perhaps two weeks before the host had any symptums that could be tested for. At any rate those in the know say this virus will be coming back as more viralint than it has been to date.

I'd like to discuss for my final subject the Soap Opera. OK, the Soap Opera it is. In that one of Victor's sons named Brady, who is really a grandson, turned traitor and called the cops and fingered the other son, Philip, and interfered with a "hostage exchange" that was in a delicate state of negotiation. Of course the Salem PD can be counted on to muck anything up they get their hands on. Another son of Victor is the police comissioner, named Bo Brady, who has let his contempt for his father and his father's chosen profession, become rather obvious over the years. Meanwhile the other principal in this "hostage negotiation" is Elvis Di Mira. He has an employee who is a screw-up named Owen who goofed up deliverage of their kidnap hostage, a young woman named Stephanie. This put Elvis Di Mira in an embarrising position. In the end I think the king pins on both sides could have "worked the whole situation out" perhaps with a few thrown fists, but still worked out. But with the police involved it's a whole different story with a lot more complicating wrinkles.