A Faded Label

Several years ago following the passing of my father, my mother gave me the task of going through his closet, first to see if there was anything I wanted to keep for myself, second to determine which clothes were suitable for donating to AmVets and finally, which were beyond any further use. As my father and I were of different sizes, and our tastes rarely coincided, going through his closet was emotionally difficult, but the destination of most of it's contents was already pre-determined. I kept only a couple of coats, and the rest went straight to charity. However, what was up in his closet was only PART of the job. In the basement were several large trunks that, judging by the layers of dust on them, and the dirt around them, had not been moved or opened for at least a decade.

When I opened the first trunk, I was greeted wtih the scents of mothballs and mustiness that one would expect to find in a trunk that hadn't been opened since it was packed decades earlier. The first trunk contained women's clothing that I recognized as having been worm by my mother when I was a child. When I opened the second trunk, in addition to the smells, I was greeted by the sight of my father's naval uniforms and as I went through them, I could see his career progression from his days as a third class petty officer to that of a Master Chief Petty Officer. I saw his blues and whites, but I also found another very different uniform in that trunk, that of a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. My father was never a Marine, but HIS father was and what I was looking at was my grandfather's uniform from World War II. He was highly decorated for service in the Pacific theatre, including Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and had achieved the rank of Sergeant at the time of his discharge. I knew I was looking at a real piece of American history and I felt a true sense of pride in the contributions my grandfather, my father, and to a lesser extent, myself have made to the safety and security of this country.

That "pride" all but evaporated when I opened the next trunk and saw, neatly folded and pressed, my father's favorite slate blue leisure suit from the decade of disco. I knew this garment very well as my father wore it everywhere he couldn't wear jeans or chinos. Suddenly I was a child again riding in the back seat of our 1969 Pontiac Catalina staring at the back of that suit, complete with a brightly colored silk shirt with a large spread collar that covered the jacket's collar, breathing in the plumes of cigarette smoke that wafted back from the front seat as disco tunes blared on the radio. Although he had a few leisure suits of varying colors, that slate blue one was his favorite so I had ample opportunity to commit it to to memory.

Further exploration of the contents of trunk found those brightly colored silk shirts with the spread collars, some sportcoats with very wide lapels, and ties as wide as lobster bibs reminiscent of the ones I saw in a "Kojak" rerun on late night cable television. Just as I was about to give up and consign the whole lot to AmVets, I found the piece de rsistance, a faded pair of Levi's blue jeans. They were clearly worn, but far from worn out. They were very stiff and smelled of mothballs, but were otherwise in good condition. I unfolded them carefully, half expecting to see a garish bell bottomed leg, but was pleasantly surprised to see the same standard boot cut jean that was in my own closet. The only thing left was to check the size to make sure I could actually wear them and next to the size tag, was a faded label that said simply "Made in the U.S.A." Like the jeans themselves, the label was faded from the many washings these jeans had no doubt been subjected to. As previously stated, my father practically lived in his jeans which means they were frequently washed, so I figured that one more such washing would take out the mothball aroma and a dose of fabric softener would make them wearable once more.

True to form, my father's Levis jeans did not disappoint. In the space of two hours, they emerged from the dryer virtually indistinguishable from any other pair of Levis or other jeans in my closet with one major exception. They were the ONLY pair to have the "Made in America" label. All the other denim jeans in my closet, inlcuding my other Levis bore labels that said they were made in such exotic places as Malyasia, Singapore, or the Phillipines. How could that happen to this most uniquely American item of clothing, created to fill a need expressed by the rugged miners of the California Gold Rush by a jewish immigrant tailor named Levi Strauss. In true American entreprenurial spirit, he saw a need, and created a product to fill that need, and in the process added a new term to the American lexicon, and created garments that not only covered the miners, but very soon covered the cowboy, the farmer, and every child from the streets of Brooklyn, New York to the beaches of California. It is nothing less than a stain on our national honor that this most American of products is now made in predominately third-world countries.

Sadly this stain is not limited to Levis. Indeed, most of the major brands I remember from my childhood are either no longer in existence, or are no longer made in the USA. In 1941 when my grandfather shipped out to fight the Japanese, everything he and his fellow Marines had with them was made here in the USA. This included the clothes on their backs, and the gear in their packs, the guns and ammo they carried, and the vehicles they rode in or marched behind. Sadly, the troops today wear or carry many items, including UNIFORM items, that are not made in the USA. They carry Chinese made knives, shovels, forks, canteens, etc. Their sidearms are made by Baretta, and even their UNIFORMS have labels indicating foreign manufacture. How, in the space of half a century, did we go from being the predominant manufacturer of finished goods that were desired by the world, to being the world's largest consumer of imported products?

The answer to this question is complex, and there are four actors that share responsibility for the fact that the manufacturing sector of the American economy is on life support. They are the labor unions, the government, the lawyers; and last, but not least, Wall Street. These four actors, individually, and in combination of one or more with the other have destroyed the business of manufacturing finished goods in this country. To understand how, you have to understand the basics of how a business works. There have been libraries full of books on this subject but, to put it simply, a business has to make a PROFIT to survive, let alone thrive.

In a manufacturing business the goal is to produce a finished product made from raw material and to sell that product for more than it costs you to make it. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, what does it really COST to make a product. You have to factor in three things. They are the tools of manufacture, the raw materials needed for the product itself, and the cost of labor. The tools includes the overhead required including machinery, computers, desks, chairs, office space, vehicles, etc. The raw materials are the components of the product itself such as plastic, metal, glue, staples, etc. The labor includes not only the factory workers, but also the secretaries, janitors, security guards, etc. All these elements factor into the per unit cost of the item manufactured. If one or more of these elements increases, then the cost of the finished item also increases. Accordingly, the more a manufacturer has to expend to produce each item, the more he has to charge the consumer to maintain an acceptable profit margin. Contrary to the popular belief of those on the ideological left, profit is NOT a dirty word.

Enter the labor unions, the government, and the trial lawyers all of whom add artificial cost to the manufacturing process and consequently the finished product. Labor unions focus their efforts on the labor side by extorting companies to pay higher wages and generous benefits, regardless of market conditions and other economic factors; and, (when they don't get their way) throwing child-like tantrums and shutting down businesses with strikes, sick-outs, and other such tactics. Ordinarily in business, labor would be the most fungible part of the manufacturing process as one worker can be replaced with either another more reasonable worker. When the union gets involved, however, replacement of workers is no longer an option. After all, the manufacturers are under contract with the unions, and (at least in THIS regard) contracts must be honored. If a company tries to evade the contract and bring in non-union laborers, enter the trial lawyers and pile on more cost. The only other option for a manufacturer is to employ technology to reduce the number of workers needed and thereby reduce his labor costs.

Labor unions served a need when they were first created. Before the unions came into being there was no forty hour work week, minimum wage, child labor laws, maternity leave, etc. These are things today's workers take for granted and they wouldn't exist without the labor unions, but these are Marxist organizations, and with all their initial reforms now codified into federal and state law, they are now only concerned with their own self-preservation. They insure this with political alliances forged with huge campaign contributions using their members dues and pension funds. They have long since outlived their purpose and in extorting companies the way they have, they have caused more than a few of them to close their doors permanently, or in the alternative, to cease manufacturing their products, and to buy them from a foreign source to re-sell them to wholesalers and retailers to realize the needed profit. When the unions were shown to be in league with organized crime, and were themselves exposed as criminal or quasi-criminal organizations, they should have been disbanded once and for all. We would ALL be better off today, especially in Detroit, had that happened.

In addition to the unions themselves, enter the government and it's onerous burden of rules and regulations which range from how many gallons of water your toilet can flush, to the precise angle a computer keyboard should be positioned to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome. Whether federal or state, compliance with these regulations adds enormous costs to the manufacturing process which must then be passed on to the purchaser of the finished product. Additionally, the United States has the second HIGHEST corporate tax rate of the industrialized nations, second only to Japan. As a result of this, it is difficult (if not impossible) to attract new business from foreign manufacturers. Exceptions to this are found in the automobile industry which has set up manufacturing plants in southern non-union, right-to-work states. These companies employ thousands, but if government passes the "cardcheck" bill and the UAW is able to invade these organizations and coerce workers to join the union, these foreign auto makers will more likely than not close these plants and take their business back to their own domestic facilities. They do NOT want to fall victim to the same forces that have all but destroyed General/Government Motors, and Chrysler/Fiat.

If all that weren't enough to run a manufacturer out of business, enter the LAWYERS. With lawsuits for everything from product liability, worker's compensation, employment discrimination and sexual harassment, many of which are dubious at best and fraudulent at worst, businesses are forced to pay out thousands in legal fees or increased insurance premiums, all of which must be passed on to customer of the finished product. Notwithstanding the actual costs of legal actions, there is also the TIME element invested in attending meetings, depositions, and trials.

As a result of these "artificial" costs, the cost of manufacturing a single finished product can more than TRIPLE the actual COST of manufacturing such a product. This forces a manufacturer to sell his product at a minimum cost to a wholesaler, who then sells it at a markup to a retailer, who then sells it at a markup to the final consumer. This means a "widget" that costs about $2.50 in raw materials has to be sold wholesale for $15, and ends up on a store shelf at $24.99. However, if sitting on the shelf right next to it is another "widget" that appears identical in every way to the domestic one, but is made in China, for $9.99, which one is the consumer going to buy? It's a no-brainer and this results in a drastic reduction in demand for the higher priced domestically manufactured products. Decreasing sales mean diminishing profits, which sends a corporation's stock prices plummeting downward.

Enter the fourth villain, Wall Street, and more specifically, the corporate raider. In the 1980's the financial geniuses on Wall Street coined the term "maximizing shareholder value." This innocuous phrase basically translates into the hostile takeover of a business enterprise by a Wall Street raider like the fictional Gordon Gecko in the Oliver Stone movie "Wall Street." the raider, sometimes known as "Larry the Liquidator" makes a stock tender offer to shareholders to pay them more than the stock's current par value so he can acquire a minimum of fifty percent plus one. When he has a majority of the company's stock, the Liquidator will elect himself and his employees or agents to the corporations board of directors and, in short order, he will close all the facilities, liquidate the assets of the corporation, and pay remaining shareholders their share of the profits from these sales. When the corporation is liquidated, it will be dissolved and fade away into the pages of history. This is only possible because the labor unions, government, and lawyers have made it difficult, if not impossible, for a corporation to manufacture a product domestically, and remain a profitable enterprise. Without profit, there is no business and a corporation is worth more dead and in pieces than it would be alive and functioning.

Sadly for the employees of a corporation, the board of directors is only beholden to shareholders, not employees and their unions seem to fail to mention this to them when pushing for a strike. Unions have driven more than one company out of business in my lifetime. Names like Pan-Am and Eastern Airlines come to mind, as do the other brands from my childhood like Quasar and Admiral. Toys that once filled my toybox like Matchbox, Hot Wheels, G.I. Joe, Tonka, etc. are still in existence but are today made in China or some other third world country, like the Levis I purchase today.

In those carefree days of the 70's when I was in elementary school, I'd come home in the afternoon, do my homework, and then plop in front of the TV set and watch reruns of "Lost in Space," "Star Trek," "The Brady Bunch," and other classic shows. During these viewings there would come a commercial jingle that started out with the phrase "Look for the union label when you are buying a shirt, coat, or blouse." This commercial was intended to persuade viewers to purchase only garments made by union workers from the International Ladies Garment Worker's Union and not clothing made in sweat shops by non-union illegal immigrant workers. The tag line of the jingle was "it says we're able to make it in the USA." This line implied that these workers were able to make things here in the USA, and that by purchasing these garments, the workers would be able to realize their share of the American dream. Sadly, this union, like the "Made in the USA" label seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur and the Dodo Bird. I can't recall seeing that IGLWU label on anything outside of my mother's closet in many a year.

The American economy was built on a free market capitalist system of enterprise. but that economy must have a REAL foundation. The economy is rated and valued by our level of production. The letter "P" in the GDP stands for "product." The problem with our economy these days is there is very little "product" in the American economy. We no longer make things in this country. For the reasons set forth earlier, our corporate function has shifted from the manufacturing model, to the import, wholesale, and retail model. Instead of "product", the economy floats on a sea of paper, and even the paper isn't always real when you consider futures and options. An economy built on paper cannot be strong. It is an illusion, at best. This has resulted in our boom, bubble, and bust economic cycles and the recessions are becoming more frequent and longer lasting, especially when the government tries to "help."

Anyone who has started or run a business in this country knows that you only succeed in SPITE of government, not BECAUSE of it. Trying to start or grow a business with a democratically controlled government is like trying to plant a vegetable garden in wet CEMENT. It's not gonna grow without the fertile soil, water, and careful tending. Consequently, in a country rife with union tyranny, high taxes, onerous regulation, and a lawyer's feeding frenzy, who in their right mind would start a manufacturing business in this country? Without such new businesses, where are the unemployed blue-collar workers supposed to find jobs?

We need to become a nation that makes things once more if we are ever going to rebuild our economy with a solid foundation and thus end the boom, bubble, and bust cycles that have wreaked such havoc. This can't happen until we start graduating more scientists, archictects, engineers, etc and fewer lawyers, stockbrokers, and political scientists which is what our colleges and universities seem to turning out in record numbers these days. Even President Obama has repeatedly said we have to start making things in this country. But his idea for how to accomplish this goal is to put unions in charge of growing business in this country. That's like putting a mortician in charge of a hospital. It's a conflict of interest at the very least, and a prescription for economic DISASTER.

The few new businesses that have come to this country from abroad have ALL set up their operations in right-to-work states because they know that runaway labor costs destroy profits and lose share values. The workers that are employed by these companies receive a fair wage, enjoy good working conditions, and have good benefits all without having to fork over a percentage of their hard-earned paychecks to unions. Don't plant your seeds in concrete if you want a garden to grow, and don't put unions into the business if you want them to thrive.

If you look at the union's track record, most of the manufacturing unions, like the companies they worked for, are GONE. With the exception of the United Auto Worker's Union, the strongest remaining unions are SERVICE unions. The reason for this is simple, you can't outsource a "service" oriented job. The same holds true for public employees unions like the ones in California. There are exceptions to this, and you can hear them for yourself when you call up your credit card company or Delta Airlines looking for customer service. You'll likely find yourself talking to someone with a distinct Indian accent, because these companies have decided its cheaper to pay long distance charges for foreign phone workers than it is to pay union scale to American ones, and there go more jobs.

Looking at things as they stand today, you have to wonder if we're ever going to be able recapture our glory days of the 1950s and pre-Vietnam 1960s. In the years following the end of World War II, Americans led the world in the manufacture of finished goods, technology, innovation, and we enjoyed a market share of more than 80% of the world's automobile purchases. Given the current state of that industry in this country, and the improving quality and affordability of foreign competition, it's far from certain we could ever recapture that market share. One thing is for certain, however, and that is that until the "Made in the USA" label becomes something other than an exhibit in a museum, we're not going to be able to "make it in the USA."

Reviolutionary War Redux: Townhall Turmoil!

Like most Americans, I watched the events that occured outside a town hall meeting hosted by Missouri Representative Carnahan in which purple-shirted union thugs physically assaulted and injured Kenneth Gladney, a conservative African-American man as he was passing out buttons and flags bearing that most American of expressions "Don't Tread on Me." I watched this event with a mixture of horror and anger that literally DOUBLED when I learned that these thugs had been dispatched to this meeting and others like it by the WHITE HOUSE. I will not speculate as to the identity of the individual responsible, but I hope that will be the subject of SOMEONE'S investigation at some time in the future.

Both health care reform and town hall turmoil were topics of discussion at my weekly Toasmaster's roundtable. As you might exepct, the dicussion got someone heated and animated, especially given the fact that I'm outnumbered by liberals. These meetings sometimes take on the feel of an episode of "The View" which, for the record, I do NOT watch. I only see the segments that are aired as part of OTHER news programs. Following one of the more aminmated exchanges in which I called a liberal friend's charge that the people protesting and speaking out at these meetings were "hired guns," ridiculous, another friend of mine said "It's a good thing that town hall meetings were not like this before the American Revolution or we'd still be British." Like most things out of the mouths of liberals, this statement was heavy on emotion, and light on fact.

The fact of that matter is that pre-revolutionary war town hall meetings were very contentious events, often erupting in sporadic acts of violence. After all, they culiminated in the American Revolution. So, too, was the act of introducing hired muscle to disrupt such meetings a very colonial american concept. Understanding the significance of these events requires an understanding of the times in which they occurred. Since legitimate US history is no longer accurately taught in public schools, there are at least two generations of Americans that have grown up with out any real understanding of what this country is or how and why it came to be, so if you'll permit me, I'll enlighten you a little.

In the mid 1700s, the North American continent was not a united anything. The british controlled the original 13 colonies which occupied the east coast from Maine, then part of the colony of Massachussetts, down to Georgia. The French controlled most of the middle of the continent in the Louisiana terrirory which ran from Quebec down to New Orleans, along the Mississippi River. France and Britain were longstanding enemies and the French befriended native American indian tribes in their territory and encouraged them to make war against the British colonists' more western settlements. This resulted in a declaration of war by Britain against France and the British exported their army and navy to take on the French and the indians on the north american continent and high seas in what became known as the French and Indian War.

American colonists enlisted and fought with the british army as well as in independent colonial militias, and with the help of such future heroes as George Washinton, and Daniel Morgan, the british and colonial forces successfully prosecuted the war to victory, gaining new territories in the Ohio valley for the british crown. When the conflict was concluded, the vast majority of the british army returned to Britain, leaving only a few volunteer brigades to man the garrisons and the british forts to guard against any repeat of the hostilities by the french or the indians. Some of these troops had to be quartered in colonists' homes, for there were not sufficient military barracks at the forts to house them all. This was mandatory and there was no compensation offered to the inconvenienced colonists for the intrusion on their privacy. Though the soldiers received sufficient compensation to provide for their board, they often helped themselves to their hosts provisions and comandeered the furniture and horses of their hosts for their own personal use without offering any reimbursement. Needless to say, this did not endear them to their hosts and this anger would be demonstrated in later events.

With the hostilities concluded, the british parliament saw that its' treasury had been greatly depleted by the war, because wars as we know are expensive affairs. When parliament examined its' assets and liabilities, it concluded that it was only fitting that the American colonies should be required to recompense the crown's treasury for its assistance in defending the colonists. Ironically, had the colonists been included in these discussions, there might likely never have been an American Revolution, because it's only fair that they should help pay for their own defense. However, since American colonists were britsh subjects but not full british citizens, there was no right of participation in the governance of the empire. Consequently, the parliament passed the Stamp Act, assessing a surcharge on all paper products used in the colonies. The colonists had no idea what had occurred, except that one day a messager disembarked from a ship from London, went to the home of the Royal colonial governor, and from that time on, every paper product purchased in the colonies was suddenly far more expensive. That included playing cards which, in a time without TV's, computers, or IPODs, were the most common form of entertainment in the majority of colonial households.

The anger at having their homes invaded and their pockets picked by a faceless, non-inclusive bureacracy caused colonial Americans to pour into their town halls with the goal of venting and finding the means by which to redress their greivances. Initially all discussions were aimed at petitioning the King or the parliament for the repeal of the Stamp Act and the right to elect colonial representatives to the british parliament to represent the interests of the American colonies in legislation. However, another far more dangerous solution to the problem was also voiced at these meetings, that being the concept of American independence from Great Britain.

When word of this idea having been voiced reached the ears of the social elites, the landed gentry and wealthy merchant class of colonial society also known as Tories, they reacted in alarm. After all, they owed their fortunes to the largesse of the King as it was he or one of his predecessors that gave their family its' land or license, and the same King could just as easily strip them of it if he chose to do so. Even if they did not fall out of favor with the King as individuals, they also knew that if the colonies were perceived to be rebellious, the King or parliament could declare martial law and severely curtail freedom and thereby prosperity in the colonies. A merchant may not lose his import or shipping license, but if the ports were to be blockaded by the british navy, his business would definitely suffer.

With their selfish interests at heart, these societal elites attended the town hall meetings to promote the idea of petitioning the british governor, parliament or the King for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and the inclusion of the colonies into the parliament. These notables were intially very well received by the assembly. They were, after all, the celebrities of their time and it would be as if Donald Trump walked into a town hall today. However, when the citizens realized that these Tory elites were only there to preserve the status quo and protect their own selfish interests, the crowd turned on them. In those days, an angry crowd could do some serious damage to the target of their anger, such as severely beating them, or tarring and feathering them, in the most extreme cases. Consequently, these Tories stopped off at the local docks to pick up a burly stevedor or two to accompany them to these meetings as a bodyguard.

As the rhetoric and passions grew more heated, the Tory elites stopped attending the meetings altogether, as they did not feel safe in their persons when they did so. They still had a a compelling interest to keep the talk of sedition, treason, and revolution from the ears of the government so they came up with a different plan. Instead of taking some dockhands to protect THEM, they decided instead to recuit dockhands in larger numbers to break up the meetings and thereby keep the King's peace. Intially, this worked, but it had some serious and certainly unintended consequences.

The first of these was to compel the American Patriots, as they were now calling themselves, to fight fire with fire. Initially, the toughs that attended the town hall gatherings as bodyguards to the Tory elites were against the patriot cause. However, as they stood and listened to the arguments made, more than a few of them decided they would rather SUPPORT the patriot cause and many of these men joined with Samuel Adams to form the Sons of Liberty, a patriot organization that was formed specifically to do unto the tories as they were doing to the patriots. The Sons of Liberty were the precursors to the Continental Army, and engaged in tactics that can best be described as guerilla warfare against the Tory establishment. Sadly, they are being described by modern educators as terrorists, and equated with the likes of Al Quaeda.

A second, and probably greatest unintended consequence of the selfish goals of the Tory elites was to disenfranchise several of their own, and turn them into ardent patriots. Among these is wealthy Boston merchant, John Hancock, who would later serve as the President of the First and Second Continental Congresses. He and others like him committed their "lives, fortunes, and their sacred honors" when affixing their signatures to the Declaration of Independence which would not have been possible without them. More than one town hall meeting erupted in sporadic violence, either internally as participants assaulted each other, or externally as in the one the triggered the Boston Tea Party or tragically led to the Boston Massacre.

So, take heart Patriots. Continue to attend those meetings and speak your minds. It is our right and obligation as American citizens. Contrary to our own "tories" popular opinons, what's going on in today's town hall meetings is as American as mom, flag, and apple pie. For those entrusted with offices in our goverment to say otherwise just goes to show how ignorant and out of touch they truly are with what America is and has always been.

Today's elitist democrats that want to dismiss the tea parties and town hall meetings as noise, rabble, astroturf, etc. will continue to make their mistakes, but take heart because just as the Tory elitists of pre-revolutionary war America saw their tactics backfire and turn a crazy idea into the United States of America, so too will the dismissive and strongarm tactics of the modern Tories, our own (anything-but-Jeffersonian) Democrats, blow up in their faces. Considering what happened last time, I like the possibilities that could come from this very real movement to let the vox populi or "the voice of the people" be heard, if not undertood,and heeded. Should they fail to do so, the elitist democrats will likely pay a very heavy political price and we will once more live in the USA and NOT the USSA. In the words of the Gipper himself, Ronald Reagan, "government is NOT the solution to the problem, it IS the problem." So to the town halls we go, for where American began, there it shall continue.

Cops 'n Robbers: "Race" Ipsa Loquitur

As a writer, I know that one of the worst sins a writer can commit is plaigarism. That said, let me give credit for part of the title of this essay to the great David E. Kelly and his team of writers of one of my all-time favorite telvision show "Boston Legal." It was from the title of one of (I think) the better episodes of the show that I took part of my title. In law there is term "res ispa loquitur" which loosely translated mean "the thing speaks for itself." The play on words, with the substituion of the word "RACE" is therefore self-evident, as it was to anyone viewing the episode. The plot from that episode is eerily similar to the incident in Cambridge, Massachussetts involving the Harvard professor and the Cambridge police department.

In the "Boston Legal" episode, a young African-American man was accosted by a Boston police officer while standing on a sidewalk in an affluent neighborhood staring at a house. When asked by the officer for identification, the man protested that he was doing nothing wrong and refused to comply with the officer's instruction. The officer then attempted to place the man under arrest and he fought against the officer garnering himself charges of assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. To wrap this up without re-writing the script, the liberal champion fictional lawyer Alan Shore, together wtih a young, black, and very attractive public defender make the case all about race and get the man acquitted on all charges, because as it turned out the man was just doing what he'd read in a self-help book about visualizing success so he could someday afford a home like the one he was looking at for himself which is clearly NOT a crime, and in fact, a pro-active and positive step to achieving what we all acknowledge to be the great American dream. This fictional story ends with hugs, handshakes, and smiles all around.

Before the officer had finished testifying, I knew two things. First was that the writers of the show were liberal. Second, that they had not interviewed a real police officer before writing the testimony script, or if they had, they chose to utterly DISREGARD what he or she actually TOLD them. I know this because of the way the "officer" answered the counsel's question, "is standing on a public sidewalk staring at a house a crime in Boston?" The "officer" answered "no," but any REAL police officer would have said something to the effect that while merely looking at a house is not illegal, being a lookout for a burglary or home invasion in progress is." There is also another act that often precedes a burglary or home invasion, and in the vernacular of law enforcement, it is often referred to as "casing" a place, that is watching it to determine the best time and circumstance in which to commit either burglary with no one home, or home invasion, when the presence of the home's owner is desirable to the criminals.

In a strange twist of life imitating art, we find ourselves in present-day Cambridge, Massachussetts with an incident eerily similar to the fictional episode of Boston Legal in some ways, and distinctively different in others. Similarities can be found in the venue, the nonexistence of an actual CRIME (albeit strong circumstantial evidence and therefore the need to investigate), the cynical use of the racial profiling charge by disingnuous individuals with ulterior motives, and the proverbial "happy ending" in which the conflict is resolved and everybody goes home as happily as they can under the circumstances. The most notable DIFFERENCE between the fictional story and the Cambridge incident is the sociological "stature" of the minority "actor."

In the fiction, the "actor" was a lower income minority who was looking to avail himself of the "Great American Dream" by personal initiative, such as reading self-help success books, and practicing the "visualization/actualization" technique by going to the nicer neighborhood and looking at the kind of house he hoped to one day own. Contrast this with Professor Gates, an academician at the pinnacle as his career as a member of the Harvard faculty. He's not staring longingly at a house from the sidewalk, he's choosing to break into his OWN house and, unfortunately for him, his neighbor did not recognize him. FORTUNATELY for him, he had a neighbor who was willing to do what she thought was PROTECTING his property in his absence, something many neighborhoods organize neighborhood watches to do. Also fortunate for the Professor, the police responded quickly to protect his property, something many minorities complain does NOT happen in their neighborhoods.

In her closing argument in the trial on Boston Legal, the pretty female, African-American public defender who was assisting the rich and liberal silk stocking lawyer Alan Shore, raised the argument that the defendant in that case was a victim of abuse by law enforcement known as DWB - Driving While Black. This is a racially incendiary term which is used to accuse law enforcement of targeting innocent black motorists for harassment in the hopes of finding evidence of some misconduct. It hearkens to the days in the deep south during the civil rights movment when civil rights leaders were detained on the roadside by law enforcement to give other members the Ku Klux Klan (of which most of the local officers were members) time to get some people on the scene to kidnap the hapless black motorist for some "reorientation." This could mean a whipping, a lynching, or any of the other horrors for which the Klan of that era was infamous. In the years following the civil rights movement, the police have frequently stopped black motorists and in doing so have effected numerous arrests for everything from possession and sale of controlled substances to catching parole violators or people in possession of burglary tools, illegal weapons, etc. Notwithstanding their successes, law enforcement officers have been discouraged from the use of their instincts under the pressure from the politically correct crowd and the label "racial profiling."

In the Boston Legal episode, as in the Cambridge incident, there was no racial profiling. I've already covered what happened in the fictional story, so let me address the events that occurred at the home of Professor Gates when Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department responded to a dispatch call to investigate a possible break-in. What occurred can best be summed up as a clash between two strong-willed men with full heads of steam. Race played no discernable part in Sergeant Crowley's mindset as neither the 911 call that reported the break-in, not the dispatch transcripts reveal any suggestion of an African -American perpetrator. What he did know as he approached the door is that there was likely someon e in the house that did not belong there. What he did NOT know was who it was, how many, whether they were armed and if so, how heavily, whether there were hostages, or anything else that might affect the way he handled hinself in the situation. What he DID know is that whoever was inside had the proverbial "high ground," and that the second he went in the door, he could be a target from someone positioned to ambush him.

Sergeant Crowley likely went into the home after announcing himself. He most likely had his weapon drawn and levelled, and was probably holding himself in a classic dueling stance with his shoulders turned sideways to present as narrow a target as possible. When he gets into the living room, he encounters an older African-American man who was probably instructed to show his hands and possbly to assume a position against the wall. Upon ascertaining that there was no further danger to himself, Sergeant Crowley would have holstered his weapon, possibly frisked the man, and began to question him. At this point, Professor Gates likely informs him that he's the owner of the house and that it was he who forced the door either because he'd forgotten his key, or for whatever reason it didn't work. Proper procedure would require Sergeant Crowley to ask Professor Gates for identification both to ascertain his identity, and to confirm that he did in fact reside at that residence. Sinple enough when you think about it calmly and cooly and in hindsight, but if you consider that the sergeant was being verbally harangued by Professor Gates the entire time he was doing his duty, and add the fact that his adrenaline had been pumping mere moments earlier, you can understand how a routine situation could get out of control

Now that we've covered Sergeant Crowley and exp;ained some of what was going through HIS mind, let's look at Professor Gates for a moment. He's an older man who walks with a cane, which likely indicates some stiffness and discomfort in his leg, if not actual pain when he walks. He's been travelling all day, which means he's had to negotiate the hassles of two different aorports during the days travels and travails. Anyone who has been to an airport post 9-11 knows that the experience can test the patience of a saint. By the time the good professor gets to his door he's been through TWO airports, long lines, delays, inconveniences, etc. Imagine how he might be feeling when he's at his front door and all he wants to do is get inside, lose the luggage, change into something comfortable, pop open a cold Red Stripe, plop into his favorite chair, and forget the whole day. Imagine his fustration when he realizes he can't get IN to his own house, so he goes around back, decides to force the door, gets in, and in his own living room he's confronted by a police officer pointing a gun at him and ordering him up against the wall. That has be the straw that broke the camel's back for him.

Given that it was Professor Gates' temperment and his frustrations with the days experiences that caused him to harangue Sergeant Crowley, and given that neither of those two things would have been affected in the least by the presence of another officer, as all police officers are trained to follow certain procedures in a given situation. Professor Gates would likely have been just as belligerant to an African-American officer as he was to Sergeant Crowley. Any officer responding to that situation would likely have behaved in the same manner towards Professor Gates, and would have had the same heightened sense of awareness and adrenaline rushing that Sergeant Crowley had experienced. Professor Gates' race had NOTHING to do with Sergeant Crowley's reaction, as he would have most likely done the same thing had Professor Gates been of the caucasion persuasion. While I DO take issue with the decision to arrest the professor, I do NOT question the Sergeant's right to charge him for disturbing the peace under the circumstances. However, that complaint is usually presented in the form of a summons, NOT an arrest. Still, I have the luxury of hindsight, time, distance, and SAFETY from the situation to make my analysis, which was clearly shared by Sergeant Crowley's superiors in the Cambridge Police Department, as all charges against Professor Gates were dropped. All's well that end's well.

So where then is the "res" or "race" in all this? The answer is, like in many cases we hear about these days, it's either a non-entity or insignificant to the story as a whole. More and more, we are finding racial issues manufactured into the fabric of ordinary events, or even extraordinary ones. Most recently, it's been in levelling the racism charge against American citizens protesting government policies at tea parties and townhall meetings. The TRUTH of the matter is that the tea party I attended in St. Louis was a very integrated one. In fact, one of the speakers was Kevin Jackson, a black man and author of the best-selling book "The Big Black Lie," which talks about the negative effect liberal social policies have had on the African-American population since the 1960s. I've personally observed several large tea parties across the country since April 15 and most if not ALL of them have been thoroughly integrated not only by race but by political affiliation as well, meaning there were as many DEMOCRATS and Indpendents that supported and voted for Barak Obama as there were Republican and McCain supporters. But why let a little thing like the TRUTH interfere with liberal spin?

The simple truth is that there are now TWO generations in this country that have grown up in the "integrated" America following the landmark Supreme Court decisions of Brown v. Board of Education and Plessie v. Washington. My generation was the first, and second generation, or the hip-hop generation is the very personification of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. This is not to say there are not still racists in this country, because there are. But the mainstream, insitutionalized racism of Selma, AL in the 196os is no more. There is no one alive today that has owned or whipped a slave. There is almost no one alive today or in any position of authority, with the exception of Senator Robert Byrd, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Ironically, Sen. Byrd is a DEMOCRAT! Why then is racism still the prevalent social issue that is seems to be?

The answer to that question is both simple, and sinister. It's simple because there is a contingent of our society whose enire reason for being is contingent upon keeping the racial struggle, real or imagined, alive and well. It is sinister, because their motivations for doing so are selfish and they have no regard for the pain and suffering their actions prolong. Their political, social, or economic interests depend on fanning these flames whenever possible, and since the number of white on black racicial incidents is, and has been, steadily declining, they have to resort to manufacturing these claims to jusify their own purposes. Those who do this for political, social, or worst of all, ECONOMIC reasons deserve to have reserved for them a place in the hottest part of hell, for it is on THEIR accounts that we can't seem to heal the racial wounds in this country. My grandmother used to admonish me not to pick at the scabs when I skinned my knee because in her words "if you keep pickin' at it, it will NEVER heal." So to it is with the wounds of racism. If they're left alone, they will heal, but if they're continuously ripped apart by self-serving indiviuals who do NOT have our welfare in mind, those wounds will NEVER heal and we will never get past racial divides.

The other reason we can't get past racism in this country is that there is a contingent of our own population that believes that racisim and descrimination are perfectly acceptable behaviors as long as they're directed against the MAJORITY of our population. This is yet another steaming pile of the horse manure that passes for wisdom on the left. If racism and descrimination are wrong, then they are ALWAYS wrong, regardless of which way the "greater than" or "less than" arrow is pointing. Following the liberal's logic, Apartheid in South Africa or Sunni domination of Iraq would be perfectly acceptable, yet I doubt any self-confessed liberal would agree with those statements. Of course liberals don't consider themselves "racist" or "discriminatory" because they soften those harsh words in politically correct euphamisms like "affirmative action," "levelling the playing field," and "social and economic justice." What they FAIL to take into consideration is that the term "minority" is neither racial, nor pejorative, but DEMOGRAPHIC, and that blacks and hispanics are called "minorities" for a reason. In the words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?" To answer that, I will quote then presidential candidate Barak Obama, "Yes we Can," with the caveat "if you'll LET us."

Is There A LAWYER in the House?

Like most of us who are getting older and feelng the effects of aging, I've come to realize that I am not the invulnerable superhero I've always believed myself to be. In my younger years I would have to be bleeding profusely from a gunshot or knife wound, or have a bone protruding through my skin to feel the need to see a Doctor. Now as I glide towards my golden years, I realize that the need to be able to seek quality health care is no longer the luxury it once was. Consequently I took it upon myself to make sure that I had health insurance so that when the inevitable aches and pains of later life set in, I would be covered. Little did I think at the time that it would be dealing with that selfsame health insurance company that would be the CAUSE of many headaches. This is because I, like so many others do, assumed the insurance company was my PARTNER in health, not the ADVERSAY to it that it turned out to be.

Insurance companies are private, profit-driven enterprises. This means they must take in more than they pay out in order to maintain profitability and thereby viability. In a market that is faced with a shrinking number of people paying premiums and ever-increasing health care costs, this has become a real existential battle for the survival of the industry. Every insurance company employs a battery of both lawyers and accounts because every decision on a claim is run through a model of risk/reward, cost/benefit analysis. To pay or not to pay, that is the question. If an insurance company opts NOT to pay a claim, there are risks inherent in that decision.

Most states have a state run insurance commission headed by a commisioner to help mediate conflicts between an insurance company and an insured over a disputed claim for coverage. If the insurance company can show legal or contractural cause for the denial of the claim, however slight, the insurance commissioner will usually side with the insurance company. Once it has done so, most states then allow for an insured to prosecute a case in civil court for breach of contract, bad faith refusal to pay a claim, or malfeasance against the insurer, but such claims are highly unlikely to succeed, and the lawyers and bean-counters of the insurance company know this. The out-of pocket costs to the insured to pursue these remedies is also often prohibitive, and the insurance company lawyers and accountants know this as well. Consequently, more and more claims are routinely being denied by insurance companies resulting in mounting health care costs to consumers, growing losses to doctors, and increases in fees for both medical services and insurance premiums in a vicious and self-perpetuating cycle. This is just one way lawyers, and to be fair, accountants are impacting health care costs. The other, and for more onerous way is in the area of tort law known as medical malpractice.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me state that I used to make my living as a paralegal and as such, I have worked for law firms that represented both Plaintiffs and Defendants in malpractice cases. I say this so you understand that I am not a layperson and that I have a foundation in both education and experience to support my hypotheses in this article, and that is what these are. That said, when I was a rookie paralegal fresh out of college I was working at my first firm in Los Angeles. This firm specialized in representing plaintiffs in tort cases, including medical malpractice. I remember going into the library to do a bit of research and finding a medical journal on the conference table. The journal was open to an article about the effect of medical malpractice lawsuits on the medical profession, and I remember reading a statistic that said something to the effect of "two out of every ten doctors practicing today can expect to see the inside of a courtroom in their professional lifetimes."

Cut to the future some thirteen years or so and you find me at the end of my paralegal career working for a defense firm in beautiful downtown Atlanta, and I'm looking at another medical journal article on the same subject. Only this time, the statistic reads more like "3 out of every 5 doctors in practice today will likely be sued for medical malpractice." That's an increase of 40% in less than fifteen years. What accounts for that dramatic increase in malpractice lawsuit filings in so short a time? I don't have the definitive answer to that, but I DO have a few ideas.

For one thing, when I first started in the professon, malpractice was a highly specialized area of tort law practiced only by the most successful and venerable of trial lawyers. These were the kinds of lawyers that drove the Mercedes and BMWs, wore the thousand dollar suits, carried the aircraft aluminum briefcases, and worked in highrise luxury office suites. It had to be that way because it was very expensive to successfully prosecute a malpractice case. Expert witnesses, jury consultants, etc were all very expensive and if you wanted to get the multi-million verdict, it cost a lot of money to prepare your case for trial. It was also hard to even get a case initiated because you had to have an affidavit from a doctor to attest that there was malpractice committed. This wasn't easy to come by since doctors used to abide by the old Reagan rule, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican" or doctor, in this case.

After I moved to Atlanta and took the job with an insurance defense firm, I noticed that more than a few of the cases that crossed my desk had been filed by the type of lawyer I categorize as "Andy the Ambulance Chaser." You know the type I'm referring to. The middle aged frumpy man with a suit that hasn't been pressed since the day it came off the hanger in the store, shoes that are scuffed, with the heels worn round, and soles that look like they've walked 100 miles, driving an old four door sedan with dings and rust spots, and practicing law out of a store-front in a strip mall located off the frontage road behind a Stuckey's restaurant. These are the classic "turn-em and burn-em" lawyers whose practice is mainly personal injury cases of dubious merit, and the whole intent is to get a quick settlement from the insurance company without having to expend too much time, effort, or energy. This type of lawyer does not typically take on a medical malpractice case because it's just too much work.

I asked one of the partners how an "Andy the Ambulance Chaser" type lawyer could pursue a medical malpractice claim and he advised me that the only reason it was now possible was that a cottage industry had sprung up in the medical community. Doctors in their late 40s and early 50s who were fed up with hazards of the practice of medicine, practicing defensive medicine, dealing with HMOs and PPOs, etc. decided to take early retirement and quit treating patients. However, these doctors did not go south to Florida to sail their boats, play golf, dodge hurricanes, etc. Instead they adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentatlity and opted to sell their services and expertise to the legal community as expert witnesses and consulatants. This enabled lawyers like "Andy the Ambulance Chaser" to gain access to a "hired gun" to get his opinion letter and jump into the arena that had previously been off his radar.

Even so, "Andy the Ambulance Chaser" isn't desirous of taking his cases all the way to the "twelve in the box," referring of course to a jury trial. He's still in the "turn and burn" mentality of negotiating a quick settlement for what we in the defense term "nuissance value." "Andy" knows the "cost/benefit, risk/reward" formula that insurance company bean counters use to decide whether to try or settle a case, so he makes enough of a nuissance of himself time after time to get settlement offers on his cases. Consequently, he is able to take on multiple cases, regardless of their merit, and the insurance company passes these costs down to the doctors via higher malpractice insurance premiums. The doctors in turn pass these higher premium costs onto their patients via higher fees, and the patients feed the higher fees to their insurance companies resulting in higher health insurance premiums, etc., and the wheel goes round and round.

In addition to the "Andy" lawyers out there, there are the big guns like former Senator and filanderer John "Hairdo" Edwards. Now these are guys of TV and movie legend that stand in front of the jury box and make the women swoon and the men think they've found a new best friend. This kind of lawyer tugs at the heartstrings of a jury and gets them to redistribute millions of insurance company dollars to the grieving widow of "Roger the Roofer," a middle-aged, overweight, hard drinking, chain smoking roofer who just happened to have the good fortune to die on the operating table of a renowned cardiologist, thereby attracting the attention of the firm of Dewey, Screwum & Howe, which employs the wunderkid "Edwards" and makes a cause celebre out of the overindulgent roofer that he would never have been had he merely survived his quaduple bypass operation. Never mind that his lifestyle LED to that operation, or that under the new Obamacare, he probably wouldn't be able to GET that operation, he is now the focus of considerable weeping and hand-wringing in a dog-and-pony show that is solely for the benefit of an audience of "twelve in the box." And the jurors lap it up and reward the "pretty boy" lawyer with the insurance company's millions like it was nothing.

Now if those jurors could only hear "pretty boy" talking about them at the trial prep meeting in his swanky highrise office the night before, it would be VERY different story, because most lawyers think of the average juror as someone "too stupid to get out of jury duty." They also regard inner city jury pools as the "money pits" or "honey pots" because the average resident comes with a lifetime's worth of liberally induced class warfare propaganda and can't wait to "stick it to the rich" doctor or insurance company. The irony is that he's only sticking it to himself and others like him, because insurance companies don't PAY this judgment, they COLLECT it from their customers, namely other doctors. This results in ALL doctors having to pay higher premiums for their malpractice insurance. The next time that juror goes to see his or her doctor, that doctor will pass along the increased costs of his malpractice insurance to that juror and the rest of his or her patients. Finally, when that juror submits the higher medical bill to his or her insurance company either the claim will be denied and he or she will be stuck with the higher bill, or the claim will be paid, and the juror will get a notice in the mail a few weeks later informing him or her that his OWN insurance premium will be going up. You've got to love the irony in THAT.

This calls to mind a scene from the movie adaptation of John Grisham's book "Runaway Jury" in which Gene Hackman plays a hard-bitten, cynical and RUTHLESS jury consultant. He's in the courthouse men's room with Dustin Hoffman who plays the plaintiff's lawyer, a frumpy, rumpled schulb who's in reality anything but. In the scene, the lawyer expresses his confidence that he's going to win the case, and Gene Hackman's character responds with something to the effect of : "So what if you do. Nothing's going to change. He's still dead. The only thing that will change is when the widow goes to visit his grave, she'll drive to the cemetery in a more expensive car, and when she's walking to the gravesite and she snaps a heel on the cobblestone walk, the heel will come off of a much nicer shoe. All the rest is just colored bubbles." Cynical, yes, but truer words were never spoken. And yet, when President Obama stood in front of an auditorium full of doctors talking about health care reform, he stated that he did NOT favor any cap on medical malpractice verdicts. Why on earth would anyone truly interested in reforming the healthcare insurance system say that?

The answer is very simple and was revealed in technicolor when both the House and Senate rolled out their 1000 plus page healthcare reform bills and in those mountains of paper, revealed their intent to create a government run insurance company to compete with those in the private sector. Now, if memory serves, we already HAVE one of those. It's called Medicare, but they want to create a whole new government entity to compete against companies like Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser, etc. Afterwards, President Obama stood in front of his "pet" reporters and asked how such a public company could drive the private ones out of business. I noted he had his little "I know something you don't" smirk on his face as he asked this because he knows the answer all too well.

Private insurance companies have to be profitable to survive and even more so to thrive. In a nutshell, they must take in more money than they pay out. A public company, however, has no such requirement. Look at any government run business such as Amtrak, the Post Office, Medicare, etc. and you will find more red ink on their books that you'll find drops of water in the Red Sea. This is because public companies are backed by the full faith, credit, and printing presses of the US Government. They CANNOT fail. Additionally, most American businesses are protected from such disparities by federal Anti-trust laws that prevent price fixing and other unfair business practices. One of the only two exceptions to this protection is, ironically enough, the INSURANCE industry.

So here's where the rubber meets the road. By allowing the abuses of the legal system to continue to affect the healthcare and insurance industries, the government is basically guaranteeing that the private sector insurers will NOT be able to compete effectively against a public company. Remember that private companies have to remain profitable so they can't pay out more than they take in, and they have no control over things like litigation that drive up their costs, so they have no choice but to pass these costs on to the consumers. If the consumer sees a public company that will save them an appreciable amount of money on their health insurance, they're going to defect like lemmings. As these defections become more massive, you will see private insurance companies closing their doors and declaring bankruptcy until the government run company is the only one left standing. It's human nature to save money, especially when you're dealing with a federal government bent on sucking it out from our wallets like a hoover vacuum cleaner. If you doubt this, visit your local Wal-Mart sometime. It's a living illustration of the point.

Now that the government will be the only source for healthcare insurance coverage left in America, some things will happen very rapidly. First, the trial lawyers will be told the party's over and reform and verdict caps will happen. The government will do this because now it's protecting its' OWN assets. Second, the same Geithner gestapo that's controlling pay for Wall Street executives will turn its focus to our doctors and they'll be told what they can charge going forward. Makes sense that the government should control doctors pay since they're the ones paying them, right? Maybe, but I doubt that the average doctor will like being told he's going to make the salary of a mid-level government bureaucrat for the rest of his life. I further doubt that students trying to decide on their career choices are going to want to pursue a medical career that requires four years of college, four years of medical school, an internship, and residence only to find at the end of all that work that he or she will make less then an assistant manager at JC Penny assuming of course, there still IS a JC Penny chain that survives Obama-nomics. If we cannot recruit qualified applicants to our medical schools, what will we do next? We'll either have to incentevise students or lower the admission requirements, resulting in less competent professionals being responsible for our healthcare, not unlike what happened to our military when we were forced to lower recruiting standards to allow convicted felons to serve because we couldn't get enough bodies otherwise.

Most of the doctors in practice today are older men and women who will be retiring soon, and there are not a lot of new ones coming along to take their places. There will be even less of them entering the profession going forward because the financial incentive to pursue the career, given all the work and expense it will take, will be gone. People talk about the fear of rationing of health care, and they're right. When you have increasing demand, and dwindling supply, it's an inevitability. How that care will be rationed is something only the government knows, but my guess it will be something along the lines of how old you are, and how many productive years of tax paying you have ahead of you. Look out Seniors. Logan's Run may soon be a realty for you, although I don't think even THIS government will try to actually KILL you. They'll just make sure you only get the pain medicine or medical marijuana you need to keep you quiet while you wait to shuffle loose the mortal coil. Forget the quadruple bypasses, hip replacements, knee replacements, etc. that you're getting now, though.

I don't make these predictions as if I have a crystal ball because I don't. What I DO have is eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to think with. Is it an accident that we have almost as many people LEAVING this country these days as we have trying to get into it? Is it a coincidence that our insurance companies are trying to ship patients to India to have surgeries today because the cost is about ten percent of what it here, and if so, why is that? Most Indian doctors and surgeons were educated and trained in western countries, including the United States. They do their medical school, internships, and residencies here. Given that we have a serious shortage of doctors in this country, why would they choose to leave? They are given preferential treatment with regard to getting green cards and they can surely find jobs in our hospitals and clinics, and yet they choose to leave as soon as they complete their education and training.

I asked a friend about this one time and he told me that he saw what our doctors go through with the HMOs, PPOs, malpractice suits, etc. and he would NEVER consider staying here and putting up with all that. Furthermore, he told me that India has an emerging industrial economy not unlike our own following the end of World War II. What he is saying, in a nutshell, is that there are better opportunities available in India than there are here, and this was before the prospect of nationalized healthcare emerged on the horizon. He left to return to India more than 6 years ago. Why then would heart surgery cost $10,000.00 there and $100,000.00 here? Maybe it's because we're only training Indian doctors here, not their LAWYERS.

To summarize, every country that has undertaken to socialize medicine is full of horror stories. We have horror stories here, too, but they mostly involve INSURANCE coverage issues. Let's not overreact here and throw the baby out with the bathwater. We DO need some reform in our health care INSURANCE industry, but NOT in the actual practice of medicine. Let's keep doctors in charge of healthcare, not lawyers or government bureaucrats. We'll all feel better. If all of this has given you a headache, remember what the doctor says: "Take two aspirin, and call me in the morning." If congress does what it wants to do, you can still get two aspirin because they sell those at your local grocery store. However, when you try to call the doctor in the morning, you're going to be on HOLD for a long, long time.

Heil Hitler! Heil Obama! What the Heil is Happening Here??

OK Liberal Democrats. I've really been resisting the urge to compare the modern democratic national socialist agenda with what happened in Germany in the 1930's, but every time I turn around I'm running into liberal propaganda equating George Bush, John McCain or conservative republicans in general with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime. There's an old adage which says that "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," but as you persist in throwing rocks in your glass house, I'm just going to illustrate the many ways in which modern liberal democrats are much more in line with Adolph Hitler's Nazi movement than any conservative republican idea could ever be.
To be fair to liberal democrats, I'm not suggesting that liberal democrats want to commit genocide, conquer the world, or commit any of the other horrors typically associated with Nazi Germany. What I'm comparing is the method by which these comparable political ideologies acquired their power and the social, political, and economic environments that made these movement thrive and flourish.
The biggest single element that both German Nazis and American Liberal Socialists have in common is their spokesperson. In Germany, that person was Adolf Hitler. In modern socialist America, it's Barack Obama. What do Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler have in common? The answers might just surprise you. Again, I'm not suggesting that they are one and the same, far from it. But when you look at the two men side by side, and without the emotional disgust and revulsion that one normally associates with the name Adolf Hitler, you can see some similarities between the two men.
Let's start with Adolf Hitler, since the history has largely been written on him. Hitler came from modest means. Hist entire youth and early adulthood were marred by poverty and social ostracism. His father died when he as young, and he was frustrated in his attempts to achieve recognition and success as an artist. He blamed this failure not on his own lack of talent, evident to anyone who has ever seen any of his artwork, but rather on a conspiracy of Jewish professors at the Vienna Art Institute. This belief that he was cheated by this ethnic minority formed the nucleus of his lifelong passionate anti-semitism. Obama was the bi-racial child of a divorced, single mother but even though he did not grow up in poverty, I am relatively certain he suffered some social ostracism as a child.
Hitler migrated to Germany around the time of the outbreak of World War I, so Hitler joined the German Army. He needed a job, and he wanted to ingratiate himself with his adopted country. As a soldier in the German Army, Hitler distinguished himself in combat and rose to the rank of corporal, quite an achievement for a non-German, and was even awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. It was because of this distinction that Hitler was permitted to remain in the German Army after the mandatory downsizing of the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty restricted the German Army to less than 100,000 personnel. Obama never served in the military or saw combat, but he did engage in public civil service as a community organizer.
As part of his duties following the end of the war, corporal Hitler was assigned by his commanding officer, Captain Ernst Roehm (that's right, the same Ernst Roehm who would later head the Sturmabteilung, the SA brownshirted stormtroopers), to attend political meetings to determine if any of the activities or topics of conversation could be considered subversive or illegal under the new Weimar Republican Constitution. Once such group was the German Worker's Party. Hitler attended a meeting of the German Worker's Party in a beer hall in Munich and what he heard there was a message that extolled the virtues of German ideals, the supremacy of German might, the and the ability of Germany to rise again and take its' place once more among the leaders of the world.
To a fervent nationalist like corporal Adolf Hitler, these words resonated and enthralled the young Hitler so much so that he not only failed to report the group, he actually joined it. When questioned by Captain Roehm about his experiences, he told Roehm that he did not see anything subversive or illegal about the group in that meeting, but that he should attend future meetings to make sure that there was nothing for the government to be concerned about. The next time Hitler attended a meeting of the German Worker's Party, he requested permission to address the meeting. As he was the group's newest member, they were only too happy to have him speak. When he spoke, his spellbinding oratory moved the group to such an extent that membership increased immediately, and Hitler was made the spokesman for the group from that time forward. Obama and the liberal socialists of the democratic party are also strong in the labor movement and enjoy union support. Is it a coincidence that the Nazi party started life as a labor union?
Ironically, Hitler knew that if this group were to become a political force that could achieve any significant political power, there would have to be some changes made. He started with the name of the group, because he understood instinctively that if the party were to achieve any success, it was going to have to appeal to Germans from all social and economic classes and a worker's party implied that the members were blue-collar laborers who carried lunch boxes was pumpernickel sandwiches and warm beer in the thermos. This image was not likely to appeal to the aristocracy, the illuminati, the glitterati, or the professionals he would need to attract to the party.
Germany, unlike France, Russia, and other countries that had experienced revolutions, did not disposess or murder its aristocrats when it became a republic. Even though Germany had been a feudal monarchy prior to World War I, and the ruling Kaiser and his family and court fled the country at the war's end, the German citizenry still had respect and admiration for its' nobility. Many of the heroes of the war were from noble families and Hitler knew he would need the support of men with Von in their names if he were to achieve political power. He also knew he would need to associate himself with academic, political, military, and celebrity personalities to increase his popular appeal. Sound familiar? It wasn't John McCain that was supported by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. Then factor in Colin Powell, Bruce Springstein, Kanye West, P-Diddy Combs, etc. and you have a modern comparison.
Regardless of his entourage, Hitler could not achieve any significant political successes until the advent of the Great Depression. It is only in a climate of economic misery and unbridled fear that the message of national socialism sounds even remotely attractive. Hitler used the Depression, the runaway inflation that made it necessary to take a wheelbarrow full of German currency to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread, and the rampant economic unrest to push his message of national pride, hope, and a return to past glories. Sound familiar?
With lines like "Germany forever," and "The German people are the rightful masters of the world," Hitler seduced the German citizens to support him, but even with all of these things going for him, he still couldn't win the power he sought. His newly named National Socialist, or "Nazi" party was gaining seats in the Reichstag, or Germany's congress, but it couldn't claim a majority against the communists, labor unionists, and worse, the democratic republicans who still believed in the viability of the Weimar Republic. Obama ran his campaign with slogans like "Yes we can," "I believe in you," "Our best days are ahead." etc.
Also problematic to Hitler's ambitions was the advocacy of the media against him. Newspapers and radio newscasters were trying to sound the alarm about Hitler and the true intentions of the Nazis. Unfortunately, Hitler had such reserves of cash and celebrity power that he was able to counter and ulitimately stifle and silence his critics. If you examine the ways this was done, you really begin to see some frightening similarities between Hitler's Nazis and modern liberal democratic politics.
First, the Nazis used their popular appeal and celebrity endorsers to boycott and punish by economic means, any newspaper or radio program that spoke negatively about Hitler or the Nazis. Economic assault proved to be very effective, but sometimes even that wasn't enough. When the economic muscle failed, Hitler brought in the stormtroopers, the brown shirted thugs of the SA, to help the misguided writers, editors, or broadcasters see the light. Sometimes this was done by trashing the newspaper offices, destroying the presses, or burning down the building. If that didn't do it, the stormtroopers would kick in the door of a journalist or editor whose writing they didn't like and maybe kick in his teeth, break his arms or some other such violence. If the target were too popular for such brutality, then the Nazis would engage in the politics of personal destruction to silence their critics. This could be accomplished a number of ways, but the most common was to photograph the person talking to a little girl or gay man, and release the photo charging all manner of inappropriate conduct, labeling the man as either a pedophile or a homosexual, effectively marginalizing him and alienating his public followers. He could then be shipped off to a prison or concentration camp with little or no public outcry. The politics or personal destruction. Sound familiar? Just ask Joe Werzelbacher or "Joe the Plumber" as he's more appropriately known. Ask Sarah Palin, if you need another example.
Silencing one's political critics is essential when you're trying to promote an agenda that if it were ever objectively examined would be denounced and defeated. The Nazis systematically removed any and all independent media outlets by passing laws that made it a criminal offense to publish or broadcast anything not approved by the Nazi Party. Sound familiar? The liberal socialists are idealogically aligned with nearly all of the mainstream media, so there are no worries about unfavorable press there. The same is true with most broadcast and cable television channels. The only media the liberal socialists do not control is talk radio and the internet. Talk radio is almost exclusively dominated by popular and therefore powerful conservative spokesmen and the liberal socialists want to silence these critics. Since they have failed to compete in the arena of ideas, they are turning to the same kind of government intervention that the Nazis relied upon, only now it's hypocritically referred to as the "fairness" doctrine. As for the internet, there have been rumblings about laws to require the registration of political websites. While this would seem to fairly apply to all such sites, it effectively draws a bulls eye on the backs of conservative political writers. After all, if we register, then they know where to send the stormtroopers, don't they?
Now, again to be fair, I'm not saying that Obama and the liberal socialist democrats are the Nazis. I'm not suggesting they are even remotely as malevolent, megalomaniacal, or genocidal as the Nazis proved to be. What I AM suggesting, is that there are remarkable and frightening similarities about how they achieved their power, and how they are attempting to keep it. If this last election cycle proved anything, it was that Nazi political tactics are alive and well and currently being used.
For the unbelievers that doubt that today's liberal socialists don't have their stormtroopers, their gestapo, their SS, etc. you would be very wrong. Ever heard of ACORN or SEIU? Those are the modern equivalent of stormtroopers, complete with kooky orange or purple hats and either orange or purple uniform shirts. They are the thugs that strong arm the opposition by breaking into foreclosed homes, registering dead and fraudulent voters, and engaging in other quasi criminal enterprises they dismiss as "civil disobedience" when confronted with their acts. Not surprisingly, there was a federal investigation into the activities of this group before the recent election, but I'm pretty willing to bet that this investigation will either become a whitewash, or will be swept under the rug altogether given the political sympathies of the group and its long history with our own Supreme Community Organizer in Chief. Of course, in true Hitlerian fashion, if his stormtroopers prove to be too big a political embarrassment, there might be another virtual "Night of Long Knives" in which Obama, like Hitler before him, determines it's more politically expedient to throw his stormtroopers under the bus and allow the justice department to prosecute them fully. Hitler used his SS, to arrest and murder the leadership of the Stormtroopers, including his old friend and Commanding Officer Ernest Roehm, when he needed the support of the German Army.
Who then are the modern liberal socialist's version of the SS?  Well, that is a little more subtle a comparison. There are no uniformed, jackbooted, mass murderers in the liberal socialist party that I'm aware of. However, if you visit sites like "the Daily Kos," "The Huffington Post," "Move on.org" or others of this ilk, you begin to see some similarities to the ideological purity espoused by Heinrich Himmler. Though not a racial issue today like it was with the Nazis of history, ideology has replaced race in the modern liberal socialist dogma. Today it is not Jews that are the target of liberal socialist ire, it is the "rich." Ironic when you consider that most of the liberal socialist poster boys and girls are themselves "rich." Still, it is the "rich" that are demonized and attacked by the liberal socialists. But the issue of Race is also alive and well, as the liberal socialists have proved more than once. They are perfectly willing to play the race card and any opportunity and brand anyone that disagrees with them as "racist."
Could today's "rich" end up in concentration camps? Well, read the editorials and blogs that call for the removal from office, and criminal prosecution of the Wall Street Banking and Trading executives that the liberal socialist propagandists blame for today's economic woes. Noticeably absent from the calls for incarceration, are the liberal socialists whose social engineering hubris is equally to blame. I'm not defending the Wall Streeters here. If they violated laws, they should be held accountable. I don't think anyone doubts that Bernie Madoff deserved his fate. There is, however, something fundamentally wrong with the notion that executives who ran a business and achieved economic success for their efforts should be punished for doing the things that have made them successful in the past merely because they were forced to take government money. Still, these executives may well be made scapegoats for the ills of today's society much in the same way the Jews were scapegoated by the Nazis. It is equally disingenuous behavior on the part of the socialist regimes whether in Germany in the 30's or here today.
Now, maybe next time you see an ACORN worker or SEIU Union member on the street in their conspicuous bright orange or purple shirts and hats, give 'em a "Heil." They might just "heil" you back. And now that I've sufficiently degressed myself, I'm getting the "heil" out of here to go do some serious drinking.  On second though, since HITLER first attempted to seize power in a beer hall, I might have to rethink that idea. 'Til we "meet" again.

Here Comes Da Judge!

I had just started writing this piece when a friend on mine asked if it were not redundant in light of my previously released piece, "His-PANIC" which addressed some of the concerns about the nomination of Judge Sonya Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter as an Associate Justice in the Supreme Court of the United States. I replied that while there were similarities, the previous piece, "His-PANIC" dealt with the racial factors inherent in the nomination and how both Republican and Democratic senators should handle the confirmation hearings about this nominee. With this article, I'm addressing the role of judges and justices in general in the interpretation and enforcement of laws that make the framework for the rule of law that is so essential to the structure and foundation of our democratic republic.

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, and because some of what follows will come across as being somewhat esoteric, let me preface the following by saying that I come by my knowlege of legal and judical practice and procedure very honestly. In addition to having a bachelors degree with a pre-law concentration, I also have the benefit of over ten years of experience working as a litigation paralegal. Additionally, I had the benefit of having as a mentor, a close family member who served as a Circuit/Superior Court Judge for more than thirty years. I also had the pleasure of cultivating personal friendships wtih judges of both the elected and appointed varieties as a result of my political activities over the years. Accordingly, my opinion on these subjects is more than the average layman's opinion.

Like most of the country, I first heard the name Sonya Sotomayor when she was first floated as a potential nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. When I first saw a photograph of her, I knew that identity politics were in play. I also knew that she would have a compellling story, and that she would he a highly qualified jurist, because the democrats are all about the rule of law, or more to the point, the MANIPULATION of the law to suit their political ideology. Democrats have been using the court system for DECADES to force laws and policies on this country our legislators (and the VOTERS who elect them) never intended. Republicans have joined in this practice more recently. By packing courts with "ringer" judges that will rule in accordance with the wishes of politicians, but enable them to avoid political liablity for these acts, the politicians are using the judiciary as "unelected legistlators," a role for which the judiciary was NEVER envisioned or intended by our Founding Fathers as set out in the U.S. or State Constitutions

The Supreme Court was established in Article III of the United States Constitution. Article III, Section II defines the juridiction of the Supreme Court and provides a framework for the kinds of cases the Court may hear and determine. The Court first asserted its jurisdiction in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, which established the precedent for judicial review of laws passed by the Congress and their compliance with the Constitution. The whole rationale for the Supreme Court was that the framers of the Constitution understood that an elected President and Congress could collude to pass laws that would enfringe on the rights and liberties of the citizens, and could become every bit as tyrannical as the British King Geroge we had just sent packing. They also understood that elected legislators and Presidents would be beholden to their electorates, and the whims and caprices of the passions of the moment, because they were all about getting elected and re-elected. Politicians, therefore, must sometimes subordinate their better judgment to satisfy the demands of voters, who sometimes do NOT think about the long term effect of their acting on their momentary passions.

Every elected politician and government appointee from the President down to the newest enlistees in the armed forces takes an oath the "support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" prior to their entry into office or commencing their service. Sadly for us, some of them shed that oath the second they enter their offices and start promoting their social ideologies and political agendas which are sometimes CONTRARY to that very oath. When this occurs, it is to the judicial branch that We the People must look to preserve our rights and liberties. The framers of the Constitution understood this, foresaw it, and for this reason, built the judiciary to be free of the caprices of contemporary politics. Accordingly, once appointed, a federal judge or supreme court justice can serve for the remainder of his life, or as long as he or she so desires and cannot be removed unless they are impeached by the house and found guilty in the senate of serious criminal wrongdoing. This is NEVER happened to an associate justice of the Supreme Court and very RARELY happened to any members of the federal judicial branch. The most recent example I can think of is the case of Federal District Court Judge Alcee Hastings, who is now a serving member of the House of Representatives.

Though the office of a Federal District or Appellate Court Judge or Supreme Court Justice is not a political one, per se, candidates must be nominated and confirmed by elected politicians. These politicians look for judges and justicies that are sympathetic to their political and social ideologoes and agendas because they look to the courts to provide cover and in some cases to take on the role of legislators to protect the politicians from the wrath of the voters when laws may be unpopular with their constituents, but nonetheless support the politicians political or social ideological beliefs.

There are two kinds of judges or justices one can expect to see on the bench. The ones that read into the Constitution and legislation what they choose to support their own political or social beliefs are colloquially referred to as "activist" or "liberal" judges or "legislators from the bench." The other kind of judge or justice is the one that actually reads the Constitution or the law for what it says in black and white and doesn't attempt to read "into" it, his or her own personal politcs or ideas of "social justice" or "empathy." These are referred to as "strict constructionists" or sometimes "conservative" judges or justices. Sadly, there are far more of the former, than the latter sitting on our courts today. At a time when our rights to property, and even life itself, have never been more precarious due to the behavior of an elected President and Congress who have abandoned their oaths of office the second their hands came off the Bible, We the People have never been more dependent on a judiciary that actually FOLLOWS the Constitution as the framers wrote it and intended it. We are faced with government tyranny and corruption as never before and the stakes have never been higher.

In the weeks leading up to the senate's judiciary committee hearings, I did extensive research on the more recent rulings of the Hon. Sonya Sotommayoras well as some of her earlier decisions on the district court bench. I reviewed my research with friends in the legal profession, as well as active jurists and found that her rulings are both fair, and supported by statutory and case law precendents. Her judicial record is both impressive, and conservative though I would stop short of actually calling her a "strict constructionist." Likewise, I do not consider her remarks made at hispanic organizational meetings to rise to the level of indemic racism, and further consider attempts by politcians and political pundits to brand her as a racist on par with David Duke of the KKK, to be neither warranted nor accurate. I was particularly offended by a photoshopped representation of her in Grand Dragon's robes. I guess the election of our first black president hasn't moved us to that post-racial nirvana we were led to believe it would.

A very wise man, a career jurist, and my childhood mentor once told me that I should refrain from drawing a conclusion or making a judgment until it was absolutely necessary to do so. He went on to say that when it WAS necessary, that I should only make my judgment with the evidence of my own eyes and ears and not to rely on the reporting of others. If the past election cycle coverage has taught me anything, it is NOT to trust any so-called journlist for a fair and objective reporting on any political or social issue ever again. To that end, I did my own research and reading of Judge Sotomayor's judicial opinons, discussing them only with men and women more qualified than I to analyze them. I also sat through every agonizing second of the dog and pony show that passed for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on CSPAN so as to avoid the spin applied by reporters and political pundits alike. Despite numerous temptations to change the channel or pop in a DVD, I watched virtually every second of the speeches, the questions, and most importantly the ANSWERS to make my own independent evaluation of Judge Sonya Sotomayor and her fitness to be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

When all was said and done, I arrived at two distinct, and (some might argue) disparate conclusions, or such was the consensus at my Toastmaster's Rountable group discussion earlier this week. The first conclusion was that the Hon. Sonya Sotomayhor is a very impressive woman with a personally inspirational life story, an impressive ciriculum vitae as both a lawyer and a jurist, and that she is in every way highly qualified for the office she aspires to enter. I also believe that she will, in fact, be affirmed to that position for both political and social considerations. While I don't wish to opine that she is an "affirmative action" candidate, I will not hesitate to state that her nomination is the result of the "identity politics" for which both political parties have become renowned in recent memory. Conservatives, anxious to avoid a repeat of the Robert Bork debacle, nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court believing that the Democrats would risk the support of the African-American community if they attacked him too viciously as they had Robert Bork. But for the emergence of the Anita Hill sexual harassment charge, his would have been a relatively passive and successful nomination and a political victory for conservative republicans. He did manage to get confirmed despite the best efforts of senate democrats, and I firmly believe that with Judge Sotomayor, history will repeat itself.

This, too, is the case with the nomination of Judge Sotomayor, and the Democrats have even gone so far as to verbally warn Republicans that they proceed against this nomination at their own peril, meaning they risk losing any support from the Hispanic community if they are perceived to have a bias against Judge Sotomayor for any reasons that can be deemed to be racial. When the facts fail, resort to the racism charge. In point of fact the Republicans have bent over backwards to avoid any racial component in their questioning of Judge Sotomayor, with the exception of asking her to explain her thinking when she repeatedly made her more controversial remarks as both a Federal District and Appellate Court jurist. The republican senators focused their questions and comments more appropriately on her judicial rulings, including the now infamous Ricci case which has since been reversed by the United States Supreme Court, though Judge Sotomayor relied on existing statutory and case law in sustaining the judgment of the District Court dismissing the case. We can only speculate as the whether or not she might have ruled differently if the plaintiff in "Ricci" were of Hispanic or African-American descent.

My second, and more controversial conclusion, judging by earlier reaction, is that if and when she is confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sonya Sotomayor will be every bit the liberal judicial activist that the republicans fear she will be. Now, I can hear the questions forming just as they did in my Toastmaster's roundtable when I was asked how, when conisdering her judicial record, I could conclude that she would totally change her judicial philosophy if confirmed. This is why I disclosed the fact that I had been privy to inside information from other judges. As a result of this special insight, I am aware of several fears shared by judges in general, but only TWO shared by ALL judges regardless of their jurisdiction or party affiliation.

The first universal fear shared by all the judges I know regardless of the demographic differences, is the fear of the loss of control of their courtrooms. This is a very real, visceral, fear that was illustrated and justified all too well a few years ago in Atlanta, Georgia when an escaping felon took the sidearm of a deputy sheriff and shot and killed several people in the courtroom, including the Judge. After this event, even the most liberal of judges, whose rulings had previously gone against the Second Amendment and groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), suddenly found gun ownership to be a good thing. Many of them even started carrying their own firearms, in and out of court. There is nothing like seeing a collegue murdered to change a liberal judge's religion when it comes to firearms.

The second universal fear, and more relevant to the conclusion I reached about the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor, is the fear of having a judgment reversed by a higher court on appeal. This is the equivalent of getting your examination back in school with the dreaded red check marks. A reversal says to the judge "you got it WRONG," Reverals can have a detrimental effect on a jurist's career, esp if such reversals are frequent, and involve high profile cases with political implications. While reversals do NOT impune a judge's qualifications, they can lead a politican or layperson to conclude the judge may be less than competent. If a judge's appointment to higher office is a matter of political contention, numerous reversals can be used to justify NOT supporting the judge's nomination, as the reversals of Judge Sotomayor's rulings, including the "Ricci" case, have been used by the republican senators to challenge her qualifications for higher office.

Judges and lawyers alike have a colloquial expression for being reversed on appeal. It is called "being spanked on appeal." Unless these judges and lawyers are closet masochists, that would seem to imply that reversal is, at a minimum, an unpleaseant experience for a judge. It is for this reason, among others, that judges in lower courts tend to make their rulings conservatively to avoid the dreaded "spanking." The higher up in the chain a judge goes, the less fearful he or she is of the "spanking" consequence. Since there is no higher judicial authority in the country than the United States Supreme Court, and even if a justice's opinion is in the minority, it is not considered "wrong" and will be represented in the published opinion. Therefore, when a jurist is appointed to the Supreme Court, he or she is free to exercise his own opinons without fear of reversal or admonition, whereas as a judge in a lower court, the same jurist might tend to be more conservative in her or her rulings. For this reason alone, a judge's record on the bench is not an accurate predictor of how he or she will behave when all judicial constraints are removed and the said jurist is free to "let his or her freak flag fly,"

Ironically, this is EXACTLY what happened in the case of Justice David Souter, the man retiring from the Court creating the vacancy now being filled. Justice Souter was appointed by George H.W. Bush, a conservative republican president, who believed that he was appointing a conservative justice who would interpret the consitution literally. His vetting team concluded that then Judge David Souter was such a jurist based partly upon his judicial record, and in part upon the extensive interviews they had with the prospective nominee. Apparently Justice Souter was able to provide the team with the answers they wanted, because he got the nomination and he got confirmed. Since his confirmation, however, Justice Souter has ruled liberally more than sixty-five percent of the time, and if often referred to as one of the four liberals on the bench. Clearly, he was able to deceive the Bush vetting team, the President himself, and the senate judiciary committee to get the job, and once ensconced, was free to be himself, a liberal judicial activist.

In the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor, I see very many of the same chameleon qualities that we failed to see in then candidate Barak Obama. While her statements and answers in her confirmation hearings were well reasoned, I could tell she had been prepped very carefully and was, in fact, going to her memory to respond to questions that should have been second nature to her. Like the President, she backpedalled away from not only her record, but also a lifetime of political and social views that she had clearly heretofore embraced. This was reminiscent of the way then candidate Barak Obama threw his pastor of twenty years acquaintance, under the proverbial bus when he became a political liability. Suffice it to say, the logical conclusion is that Judge Sotomayor has been prepped by the same deceptive bunch of experts that caused us to elect a President that is NOTHING like the candidate sold to us under very FALSE pretenses. In short, I don't TRUST her and I don't know which Justice will show up to work on that First Monday in October. Will it be the one she's been all her life, the wise latina woman who will make better decisions than a white man, or the more moderate, and constitutionally faithful one she tried to convince us all she was in a week of hearings before the senate judiciary committee. One thing I am comfortable in saying is that the old expression "birds of a feather flock together" seems to be very much applicable to the present situation. I believe that President Obama would not nominate anyone that he didn't think shared his judicial and social philosophy. I believe he is intelligent enough and skilled enough as both a politician and lawyer to recognized someone who is aligned with his model of the world, and who will likely perform in the manner he expects her to. I do not think he is a man who can be easily fooled, but I also believe that his ego is such, that he may actually believe his press clippings and if that is the case, he might not be able to acknowledge the possibility that he is wrong in his assessment. Judge Sotomayor could turn out to be nothing like he thought and therefore be a pleasant surprise to those of us that want a justice who reads and applys the Constitution as written. Only time will tell.

As to how this likely appointment will affect the current makeup of the Supreme Court, there will not be an immediate impact. The current court consists of four justices that are considered liberally biased and frequently rule for the left side of an issue, four justices that are purported to be conservatives and frequently rule on the right side of an issue, and one lone justice that is referred to as the "swing voter" because he cannot be pinned with either a liberal or conservative judicial bias. Whether this is because he is the only justice who is faithfully adhering to his oath and genuinely trying to make his rulings in accordance with the Constitution, or because he is weak, and moderate in his views and can be readily persuaded by either argument. I can't say. I do not know the man well enough to speculate. I only know that at times I am very grateful for his support, and at other times I curse him for his vascillation. Isn't that always the way it goes?

With regard to judicial nominations, this round goes to the democrats. I congratulate President Obama for a very politically well reasoned and diabolical pick in the person of the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor. He found the one candidate who could actually survive the nomination process virtually unscathed, and claim a bi-partisan victory in the process. Whether you agree or disagree with his political and social philosophy, you have to give the man his due in that he is one formidable politician. Whether the credit for this goes to him or his handlers is a matter for specuation. But he did this without the aid of a teleprompter, cliffs notes, or any other crutch traditionally employed by politicians to help them make their points without making Biden-style gaffes. The republicans wisely chose to not waste their ammo against the unassailable Judge Sotomayor, but the equally, or perhaps MORE important issues of Cap n' Trade, and National Health Care Reform are battles still to be fought, and that fight may well end up before the Supreme Court of the United States where then Associate Justice Sonya Sotomayor will be able to answer our burining question "who will she be tomorrow?"