Category: Law

Barely three months after Senate Republicans denounced Goodwin Liu as a left-wing extremist and torpedoed his nomination to a federal appeals court, he was lauded as a brilliant and open-minded legal scholar Wednesday and confirmed to a seat on the California Supreme Court.
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The new Brown appoints the new Rose Bird.

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Rose Bird, Once California’s Chief Justice, Is Dead at 63
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: December 06, 1999

Rose E. Bird, who became the first woman on California’s Supreme Court and whose resolute opposition to the death penalty later led voters to remove her as chief justice, died of complications from breast cancer on Saturday at a hospital near her home in Palo Alto, Calif. She was 63.

Almost from the moment she was appointed to head the state’s highest court by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1977, Ms. Bird, a pioneering liberal lawyer who had never been a judge, became one of the most controversial figures in California politics. She led a liberal majority that strengthened environmental laws and consumer rights. But in 1986, voters angry at her opposition to the death penalty removed her and two other Brown-appointed justices by refusing to extend their terms. They were the first such removals in California history.

Ms. Bird, who came of professional age at a time when major law firms still resisted hiring women, held a succession of path-breaking jobs. She was the first woman hired by the Santa Clara County public defender’s office in Northern California, and she became the first woman to hold a cabinet-level post in state government when Mr. Brown named her his secretary of agriculture in 1975. Many of her detractors were forced to acknowledge her administrative skills, while even her admirers among judges and lawyers conceded the brittleness that made her a lighting rod for criticism.

Lenders make loans based on credit scores. Poor people are not well served by getting loans they can’t afford.

Now the Justice Department is going after banks using “disparate impact” theory — the idea that even if lenders don’t actively discriminate they can still be sued if the cumulative effect of their actions implies discrimination.

The Obama Justice Department is forcing banks to lend to minorities at below market rates and in effect dish out cash to politically favored “community groups”. It’s a good bet that many of these loans will eventually go bad.

And the Justice Department is on a roll. In less than two years the government has settled with AIG ($6.1 million), Prime Lending ($2.million), Midwest Band Centre ($1.5 million) and Citizens Republic Ban-corp ($3.5 million). More cases are in the hopper and bigger banks are now in Justice’s sights.

Is there a screw loose? There is something fundamentally wrong when President Obama lists only 7 pending major rules topping $1 BILLION yet the Wall Street Journal reports 410 major regulations put out by Obama during the first two years.

Why is growth so slow in America? The weight of 410 regulations that cost more than 1 BILLION each is one major reason.

DrCameronJackson@gmail.com

A persistent scammer named Fofana Mbemba has been prowling the self-service parking lots along the Embarcadero, pretending to be a parking attendant.

He takes money – often from tourists – and hands them a fake tag.

When they return, there’s a parking ticket on the windshield.

“The guy had blue pants and a white shirt with an insignia on it,” said former Mayor Art Agnos, one of the victims. “He says, ‘That will be $10, sir,’ and when I come back, there’s another attendant putting a ticket on my car.

Mbemba was arrested Monday for the hustle, but this isn’t the first time. Mbemba has been arrested at least 14 times for similar crimes and has been convicted and sent to state prison, yet repeatedly has returned to the waterfront to engage in more scams.

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Well, you can understand the ex mayor of San Francisco being taken. But can’t this guy get a new gig or location?

FirenzeSage48@aol.com

Oakland leaders once touted a municipal identification card as a solution to an array of issues faced by undocumented immigrants and others in society’s margins.

The undocumented would have an identity card, transgender people would be able to prove who they are without a specified gender, and the urban poor would have a debit card.

Cardholders may have to bear the burden of the costs, not the city. Instead of paying, say, $30 for a card, they may have to pay $100, he said.

To evaluate that, the city would probably need to hire a consultant at a cost of $5,000 to $10,000, according to city staff.

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Now let’s see: Someone gets a sex change operation and doesn’t now know what his/her ex sex was or now is and needs a card to show others that he doesn’t know. And it only cost 20 thousand, for now.

FirenzeSage48@gmail.com

Sheilah Jackson-Lee sits on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics .She visited Jet Propulsion Laboratories and asked if the Mars Rover would be able to show “the flag the astronauts planted there before”.

In February, Congress was debating federal spending. And Sheila Jackson-Lee got up to make her contribution denouncing a Pepsi commercial as racist. Other things that Jackson-Lee has denounced as racist include hurricanes, a balanced budget and secret service agents.

In 2003, Sheila Jackson-Lee complained that hurricane names were too “lily white” and said that “All racial groups should be represented.” She suggested Hurricanes “Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn”.

Last year, Lee tried to denounce the Tea Party as racist at an NAACP meeting, but in the middle of it she forgot the word for sheets, and condemned them for wearing, “uh, clothing with a name.”

Not only has Jackson-Lee voted against every national security measure she could think of, but she actually goes out looking for dictators to support. She invited Assad to speak in Texas, urged F-16 parts sales to Hugo Chavez,and called for an end to economic sanctions against Saddam.

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And she will vote on the national debt increase.

FirenzeSage48@gmail.com

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is calling for formation of a coalition of Bay Area transportation agencies and cities to work with the California High-Speed Rail Authority to come up with an acceptable plan to run high-speed trains between San Jose and San Francisco, perhaps at less-than-high speeds.

But opposition surfaced when residents and cities along the tracks realized that high-speed rail plans called for adding two to four extra tracks perched, in some locations, atop 30-foot-tall structures.

And it must meet the legal requirements of Proposition 1A, which specifies that high-speed trains must be able to run between the Transbay Terminal and Los Angeles Union Station in less than 2 hours, 40 minutes.
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350 miles SF to LA. 100,000 environmental lawsuits. Projected upwards of a 30 billion cost. Treble that for realism. Fare? Oh, who cares, none of these things pay for themselves.
FirenzeSage48@gmail.com

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Friday strongly suggested that members of Congress are making it difficult for President Obama to raise the debt ceiling because of his race.

“I do not understand what I think is the maligning and maliciousness [toward] this president,” said Jackson Lee, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Why is he different? And in my community, that is the question that we raise. In the minority community that is question that is being raised.

“I hope someone will say that what it appears to be is not in fact accurate,” said Lee. “But historically it seems to be nothing more.”

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Eric Holder wants honest talk about race. Well how about, “In my community Obama doesn’t like Cantor because of his religion.”

What about that Rep. Jackson?