Glibbertysmidgeon

The Supreme Court has just issued a decision that local governments can use Eminent Domain to take away your land so that corporations can build businesses there.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.

“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

CNN

Our government is now so deeply embedded in the pockets of big business that they are happily handing them our homes.

My entire retirement nest egg is my little house.
What’s one woman’s retirement worth, compared to some corporation’s lust for profit?

I guess I just have to hope that no rich, well-connected developer decides to build a mall on my property.
Small comfort, that.

So I was looking at this site, and I started to feel jealous. How come there’s no site dedicated to my people?
Then again, maybe there is. But who are my people?

My grandmother liked to tell me stories about Gideon Detweiler whom I’ve dubbed The Original Ancestor, because he’s the oldest character in any of her stories. Gideon was my grandmother’s father, the first of her family to come to America. Grams liked to tell me how his tools were confiscated at the border and he had to start again from nothing, but I preferred the story about how Gideon was kicked out of the Amish church for wearing orthopedic shoes. Resilient ancestor that he was, Gideon went on to marry a native American woman named Melissa, and helped found a whole new church. Presumably a more liberal church that tolerated the use of orthopedic shoes. Grams never mentioned where Gideon lived before coming to America, but at least I know he was Amish.. before he was not Amish.

I Googled the phrase “Amish Rock”, but all I got was this interview with three shunned Amish boys who formed a rock band, and a bunch of ads for this Amish Rock Shatter Candy.

I don’t know much about Melissa. Besides the frowning sepia toned pictures in the family photo album, I only have this one story about her.

When my grandmother was born, Melissa named the baby after her very best friend, Minnie. Sometime after little Minnie Detweiler was born and christened, Melissa discovered that her friend’s legal name was actually Mary, and that Minnie was only a nickname.

“Then SHE’S Mary too!” Melissa exclaimed. In the end, my grandmother’s legal name was Minnie, and her nickname, Mary. The reverse of her namesake.

That was the story my father told me in response to the question, “why do you call Grandma Forty Dollar Minnie?”

According to Dad, Grams’ real name was a great source of shame, which made it an excellent topic for his constant teasing. (The forty dollar part is a whole other story). I have never seen Grams’ birth certificate, and can not verify that her legal name was, in fact, Minnie. Although my dad is a famous tease and an occasional liar, several of his brothers also call their mother Forty Dollar Minnie (Forty for short), so I’m accepting it as fact.

There are lots of geneology buffs in the Detweiler clan. I’ve seen their charts at the family reunions, but they all begin with Gideon.

So I started thinking about Grandpa’s side. I’ve heard that the Aro name is very common in Finland, which is convenient for me, since I’m very pale, with blue eyes and blonde hair. I often tell people that my heritage is Finnish, and they never question it at all. Maybe it’s true!

There is controversy among the Aros on that point. Some say the Aros are from Finland. Others say the original Aros were French. They claim these French ancestors migrated to Finland where they took the name Aro before moving to America. Grams, who was a Detweiler by birth and an Aro by marriage, claimed that Aro was an Ellis Island edit of a name more like Hairo. Origin: Unknown.

There are no geneology people that I know of on the Aro side, so I can’t verify any of that.

My Grandfather’s family on Mom’s side had a very industrious geneology person who is now, apparently, dead. Mom once showed me a thick book with brittle paper as thin as bible pages. Each translucent sheet contained hundreds of names and birthdates of my family going back many generations. The book ended abruptly at my mother’s generation, so my name does not appear. Mom claims that there is German and Dutch in our family from her dad’s side, and some Irish on her mom’s. I’ve never really known how much of each or from how far back. The dense book of names did nothing to clear things up.

So, based on the evidence at hand, I might be a Faux Finnish French American with a blush of Native American and Irish. Or, something else entirely.

When I look in the mirror, I just see me.
Farm girl from Oregon who went to college, got a job, and moved to the big city.
A typical American story.

Real Friends Fight

You can be honest, share your side
What really can you have to hide?
Lay down your fear and useless pride
And let truth light this dark divide

I wrote this poem four years ago to a girl I had thought of as a close friend.
She has never read it, because we are still not speaking to one another.

For the first three years, this really stung me.

When she went on the annual ski trip with all our friends and I didn’t. When I saw her name on the cc list on emails. When I caught a glimpse of some girl wearing her hair in that french braid thing, like she always did. Pretty much any time her name came up in casual conversation I got a sick little angry stomach ache.

Any time I thought of her, the frustration and betrayal came flooding back like it was brand new. I kept telling myself that if only she had let me explain my side I could have fogiven her, but that just made me mad all over again. In fact, each time the anger came back, it was bigger than the last time. I just got madder and madder.

Eventually, I had to let it go.

The thing I’ve learned about people is this: They are who they are.
When I make a friend, I have to choose them for who they are, and not for who I wish they would be.

I have a different friend, Scot, who is the perfect casual friend. He’s a great storyteller, and a whiz at the barbecue. He is so relaxed that when he enters the room it feels like summer vacation. You can actually catch relaxation from him.

But you can’t expect Scot to show up at any particular time, and you can’t count on him to help with the dishes. I ate a lot of burritos with Scot, but when I needed a ride to the hospital I called someone else.

That’s how it is with friends. Some friends are mostly good for a trip to the movies, while other friends are people you can spend a whole summer backpacking in Europe with. The trick is in figuring out which circle of friends each fits into.

I always knew Grudge Girl had a fear of confrontation, and I’d always been able to live with that because I didn’t need to have any confrontations with her. There at the end, when she suddenly gave me a piece of her mind, I was glad to hear her yelling at me. It seemed to me that this was the beginning of something good, and I was looking forward to that chance to be honest with her right back- once I was off work.

But that didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. Every time I tried to talk to her about the fight, she changed the topic:

“What kind of yogurt do you want?”

And every time she changed the topic, I felt betrayed.

I see now that I am the one who’d made the mistake.
I should have realized that she was a friend who’s good for mountain bike rides and hikes and ski trips, but not the best choice for engaging in emotionally loaded conversations. At least, not in those days. I know people do change.

The ironic part of this story is that all of that anger only hurt me. Every time I got mad, it was my day being soured, not hers. I’m sure that Grudge Girl was completely unaffected by my rage- she didn’t evcen know about it. This is how I learned that forgiveness is not something nice you do for a person who has wronged you.

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

In a single event, Texas Governor Rick Perry managed to attack the separation of church and state, women, gays, and the entire judicial branch of our government.

A few choice quotes:

FORT WORTH, June 5 - Making good on a Republican campaign call to celebrate with “Christian friends,” Gov. Rick Perry traveled to an evangelical school here on Sunday to put his signature on measures to restrict abortion and prohibit same-sex marriage.

New York Times

he signed a bill passed during this session of the Texas Legislature requiring girls under 18 to obtain their parents’ consent before having an abortion. Previously, they needed only to notify their parents.

“We may be on the grounds of a Christian church, but we all believe in standing up for the unborn,” Mr. Perry said.

He also said he was putting his signature - although it was not required - on a measure that places a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages before Texas voters on Nov. 8. “Activist judges have used the bench to advance a narrow agenda,” the governor said, adding that the measure defining marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a woman “places it beyond the reach of activist judges.”

Ibid

The Rev. Robin Lovin, a Methodist minister and an S.M.U. professor holding the Maguire Chair in Ethics, said, “There are lots of reasons to go to church on Sunday, but making laws isn’t one of them.”

Signing a bill into law in a church, he added, “is a pretty clear symbol that the church is at the service of the state or the state is at the service of the church and either way we’ve crossed an important line that has a long history in both politics and theology.”

Ibid

Instead of defending our longstanding tradition of separating church and state, this new Republican party is actively encouraging this one religious group to feel they are entitled to decide not just what’s moral and right for themselves, but what is moral and right for all of us.

I’m certain that if some other group were trying to force their religious norms on the rest of us by making them into laws, these Evangelicals would cry foul.

I can’t help but feel that we should all be crying foul right now.

Today, those “activist judges” on the Supreme Court handed the Bush Administration a gift in the form of a judgement that gives Federal Government power to override State laws on patients’ use of marijuana for medical purposes.

According to the Constitution, this ruling isn’t entirely legal:

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state’s economic activity so long as it involves “interstate commerce” that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

ABC News

The Bush Administration argued that even though there there is no interstate commerce, these sick people are harming the war on drugs:

A federal appeals court concluded use of medical marijuana was non-commercial, and therefore not subject to congressional oversight of “economic enterprise.”

But lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department argued to the Supreme Court that homegrown marijuana represented interstate commerce, because the garden patch weed would affect “overall production” of the weed, much of it imported across American borders by well-financed, often violent drug gangs.

Lawyers for the patient countered with the claim that the marijuana was neither bought nor sold. After California’s referendum passed in 1996, “cannabis clubs” sprung up across the state to provide marijuana to patients. They were eventually shut down by the state’s attorney general.

CNN

These women aren’t drug lords, they’re sick:

The case concerned two seriously ill California women, Angel Raich and Diane Monson. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.

Raich, an Oakland woman suffering from ailments including scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea, fatigue and pain, smokes marijuana every few hours. She said she was partly paralyzed until she started smoking pot. Monson, an accountant who lives near Oroville, Calif., has degenerative spine disease and grows her own marijuana plants in her backyard.

ABC News

But they are being treated like criminals.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) began raids in 2001 against patients using the drug and their caregivers in California, one of 11 states that legalized the use of marijuana for patients under a doctor’s care. Among those arrested was Angel Raich, who has brain cancer, and Diane Monson, who grew cannabis in her garden to help alleviate chronic back pain.

CNN

It seems to me that sending people who are this ill to prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Taking away a drug that can ease their suffering is just plain cruel.

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

LA Times

Thank goodness we kicked those inspectors out and sent in our soldiers.
Now that all those nasty weapons are out of the warehouses, in the wild, doing whatever weapons of mass destruction do when they’re on the loose, I feel so much safer.

Don’t you?

“You look sad.” A security guard broke into my thoughts, “Here, have a candy”

I was sad.
I was walking to work thinking about nuclear proliferation.

I’d been listening to a discussion on the radio about last night’s Meet the Press episode, in which several experts on the subject warned that there is a 50% chance that the U.S. will be attacked with a nuclear weapon in the next 6-10 years. They stressed that we are not doing nearly enough to prevent this from happening.

The greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United States will materialize if the world’s most dangerous terrorists acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons. …al Qaeda has tried to acquire or make nuclear weapons for at least ten years. …officials worriedly [discussed] in 1998 reports that bin Laden’s associates thought their leader was intent on carrying out a `Hiroshima.’ These ambitions continue.

September 11th Commission Report

The gist of the discussion was that we should forget about Iraq, and spend all our energy taking inventory of the nuclear material in the world, and locating the stuff that has gone missing if we don’t want it to come and find us.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER, (D-WV): And I’d ask you, sir: Is the material missing from Russian nuclear facilities sufficient to construct a nuclear weapon?

MR. GOSS: Senator, the way I would prefer to answer that question is: There is sufficient material unaccounted for so that it would be possible for those with know-how to construct a nuclear weapon.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Can you assure the American people that the material missing from Russian nuclear sites has not found its way into terrorist hands?

MR. GOSS: No, I can’t make that assurance. I can’t account for some of the material so I can’t make the assurance about its whereabouts.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Nunn, that’s chilling.

From a clip played on Meet The Press

New Yorkers live our lives accepting that we are all targets. Until now, I’ve been at peace with this fact.

But life has been changing for me. Dreams are coming true. I’ve got more to lose than I’ve ever had.

During this hopeful moment, where I am painting my new apartment, settling into my marriage, building my career, and looking forward to a future filled with writing, travel, and family, I found the prospect of a nuclear attack horrifying in a more deeply personal way than ever before.

Forget about building equity.
Forget about eating organic and exercising.
Forget about saving for the educations of my future children.
My home, my body, my future could all be obliterated in the blink of an eye.

Is it a rational decision to stay here, or should I be looking for a job in Norway like my friend Ben?

All of these thoughts were rolling like dark marbles in my mind as I approached the office.

The securtiy guard shook two Mentos into my hand, and I popped one into my mouth.

Minty candy won’t bring about world peace.
But the friendly gesture did help me get this day off the ground.

May 27, 2005

Dear Friend:

As many of you are aware, a classified memo was recently disclosed in Great Britain that I believe has serious ramifications for the integrity of the United States Government. Dubbed the “Downing Street Memo,” but actually comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and other top British government officials, the memo casts serious doubt on many of the contentions of the Bush Administration in the lead up to the Iraq war. With over 1,600 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen killed in Iraq, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and over $200 billion in taxpayer funds going to this war effort, we cannot afford to stand by any longer.

Along with 88 of my colleagues, I wrote to the President requesting answers about this grave matter. Thus far, our search for the truth has been stonewalled and I need your help. I believe the American people deserve answers about this matter and should demand directly that the President tell the truth about the memo. To that end, I am asking you to sign on to a letter to the President requesting he answer the questions posed to him by 89 Members of Congress.

I will personally insure that this letter is delivered to the White House.

You can read the letter here and sign on to it below. You and I know the White House is just hoping that this matter will fade away, but in a few short weeks, with our steadfastness, the memo has found its way into leading newspapers and White House press briefings. With your help, we can hold this Administration accountable.

Please pass on this important letter to your friends and colleagues, and ask them to sign as well.

Thank you for your help and support.

John Conyers, Jr.

United States Representative John Conyers, Jr.

You can read the Downing Street Memo here.
Please sign the Letter to President Bush Concerning the Downing Street Memo.