Local first, again. After surviving a threat a few weeks ago to dump him off the Grass Valley Planning Commission, Terry Lamphier finally managed to get himself fired from that job this week. Initially, the slim majority on the City Council which wanted to dump Lamphier cited his outspoken opinion pieces published in the Grass Valley Union. Realizing that some of us still cling to the notion of free speech, Lamphier’s opponents backed off. But now they’ve got him for being belligerent, and although I personally believe in the right to be belligerent, I have to admit that it’s not specifically protected by the Constitution. Lamphier’s specific belligerence came in response to a development proposal called Berg Heights, so we have to assume that the three City Council members who voted to dump him will be voting in favor of that housing development. For the factual record, Dean Williams who appointed him and Mark Johnson were the council members who voted against dumping Lamphier. For the commentary record, Lamphier was dumped for being a slow growth guy and for saying so publicly.

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Okay, more on John Roberts. This guy is too dull to be getting this much ink, but Chief Justice is a pretty big deal, I guess. Actually, the Chief Justice has some administrative and ceremonial duties which aren’t assigned to the other justices, but beyond that, he’s just another of the eleven votes on the court, so Dubya’s decision to elevate Robert’s appointment to the top job doesn’t make much difference in how he should be evaluated in the confirmation process. The real question is whether a guy with only three years of experience as a judge should be on the Supreme Court at all. There have been people on the Court with no judicial experience. William Howard Taft comes to mind. But they were heavyweights. Roberts comes out of nowhere. Obviously, Roberts and the Bush gang have come to some agreements.

Roberts’ line of talk, so far, has been that judges are just the umpires, not the hitters or the pitchers. This is in line with the conservative position that the Court shouldn’t be "activist." What that means, of course, is that the Court shouldn’t be "activist" on any issues that are considered "liberal." But if the Court wants to outlaw abortion, limit free speech, or clamp down on civil rights, that’s just as "activist" as anything a so-called "liberal" court might do. The umpires always can trump what the hitters and pitchers do, if they choose to make that call.

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Speaking of scary judicial actions, a federal appeals court judge has ruled that the U.S. government can keep Jose Padilla in custody indefinitely without filing any charges against him. Padilla is a U.S. citizen from Chicago who’s already has been in jail for three years without charges, because someone says he’s an "enemy combatant." By all accounts, he’s just a small change thug who once expressed some interest in al Queda and dirty bombs, but they don’t have any known evidence that he committed a crime. The judge who made this decision is Michael Luttig who’s said to be a top candidate for the next appointment by Dub to the Supreme Court.

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I’m going to talk a little more about Katrina. The facts are well known, and the failure of the federal government to respond appropriately to the situation has been well reported. Most people seem to accept the idea that the federal government is responsible, and the reports have unanimously blamed the feds for blowing it, but the response of the feds to the media is a story too. The feds sent armed soldiers into New Orleans to attack looters who only were trying to get what they needed to survive. Big retailers locked up their stores and got the hell out of Dodge, while the people who were trying to hold down the fort saw food and supplies behind those locked doors. The feds appeared to be a lot more interested in guarding the locked goodies than in helping the people.

Uniformed, armed soldiers were reported to have told reporters that they were not allowed to observe or photograph the removal of bodies. A story I read quoted an army officer saying, "We’re not going to prevent the media from telling the story; we’re just not going to give them a ride." New Orleans apparently isn’t much different from Bhagdad.

I’m going to read to you now. Things from the internet pass through so many hands I can’t even attribute sources, but these remarks are from an article by Larry Bradshaw and Beth Slonsky, a couple of paramedics who happened to be attending a conference in New Orleans when Katrina came by. Talking about a group of about 500 visitors to the city, they write, "We decided we had to save ourselves. We pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the city. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute they arrived at the city limits, they were commandeered by the military. By day four, our hotels had run out of fuel and water."

I’m condensing and paraphrasing, now: Several hundred people were denied access to the shelters, which already were in chaos and squalor, anyway, so they decided to converge on a police command center where, eventually, a police commander advised them to walk to a bridge on the Pontchartrain Expressway where their buses would be waiting for them. About 200 people started that walk, and their number tripled by the time they arrived at the bridge. Quoting again: "Armed sheriffs formed a line across the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. The commander had lied to us just to get us to move. If you are poor and you are black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you are not getting out of New Orleans."

Paraphrasing again: A couple hundred people set up camp on an elevated freeway–very visible. They accidentally acquired some food which fell off a truck and they stole a water truck. Once their basic needs were met, they behaved like a community and looked out for each other until law enforcement showed up, pointed guns at them, said, "Get the bleep off the freeway," and took their food and water. Only eight of the original group remained together when the writers finally made it out of town.

Here’s a pertinent quote from Supreme Court Justice William Brennan: "The framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to create rights; they designed it to prohibit our government from infringing on rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting."