As the only of the three branches of government that I really have any respect for, I enjoy reading and listening to the workings and decision making process of the justices. To be clear, respect does not always mean I agree with the decisions, but even when I don’t, I fully respect the members of the court and the institution as operating in a way I like. Contrast that to the other two branches of government where I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with the outcomes, but I rarely respect the process and motivations of the members.

Right after the State of the Union, I was poking around iTunes to see if anyone had posted the audio (to no avail), but came across a set of interviews that C-SPAN did with each of the Justices. They are available as podcasts. Each runs between 30 minutes and an hour and it is just a one-on-one interview with the justice. So far, I have listened to Justice Alito, Justice Scalia, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kennedy, and former Justice O’Connor. Each is unique as you would expect, but I have loved them all. While I have had the pleasure of seeing Justice O’Connor, Justice Scalia, and Justice Ginsburg speak in person, it is not often that most people hear the Justices speak publicly; this is a great opportunity if you are curious.

If you are interested in more resources, I also recommend American Original: The Life and Constitution of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia which I read on our cruise last month. A few other books I have enjoyed on the court are Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey, The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice by former Justice O’Connor, The Supreme Court by former Chief Justice Rehnquist, and The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court.

So, as Jim would say: It’s over! The conference finished up yesterday afternoon; I am hanging out in my hotel room until it is time to head back to the train and then home this afternoon. As I had hoped, this was just an amazing experience. For me, the conference material itself was great but was hardly the reason I came. The people the ACLU brings together at this kind of event are intelligent, energetic, and just plain fun to hang out with.

This year I was lucky that I found a great group of people to hang out with. At dinner the first night I joined a table with a bunch of law students from the Brooklyn School of Law. They were part of a larger group that had been sponsored by the NY and NJ delegations that included people from Columbia, NYU, and I’m sure a few other schools.

Quite a few adventures were had including going down to the monuments in the middle of the night (note to self, finding a taxi at 11:30 pm in DC is a challenge), dancing to regae by Maxi Priest, listening to Phillip Glass and Debbie Harry, watching awesome debates with Justice Scalia, Tucker Carlson, John Dean, Rachel Maddow, hilarious satire by Roy Zimmerman and Jim Morris, and many many other events.

So thank you to Claire, Josh, Amy, Kate, Erin, Sarah, Alex, and everyone else whose names I can’t remember for helping to make this an awesome experience. It was wonderful meeting you all and sad to see you go. Hopefully I will see some of you later this year in NY or in future years at more ACLU conferences.

I may post more about specific events, so if you have questions, post them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.

There are a few more photos available on my flickr page but I was bad at remembering my camera. Hopefully I should be getting emailed some more later and I will post them then.

A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.

Net result:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

I will hardly be the first person to recommend The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria’s book on the politics of democracy and freedom, but I wanted to add my vote. I am hardly an expert in government and politics and have rarely found books on this topic that I care about deeply even remotely interesting. Zakaria does an excellent job of making his topic approachable. In reading the book I had many “ah-ha!” moments as observations and points he made clicked with things I had half observed came into focus. In addition to the history and perspective the book gave me, the critical point I think he makes is that there is a difference between democracy and freedom in a country. Both are needed, but one does not imply the other. Nor is freedom without democracy necessarily a bad thing (and sometimes is a good thing).

Good book. It will make you think. Go read it (assuming you are into thinking, that is).

The Virginia ACLU sends out emails during the legislative session highlighting bills and issues that are of concern (wither for or against). You have to sign up to get these emails and there is no online archive of them or place to discuss the issues. So, I have made one. I will be adding the “action alerts” to the website as the come out.

Action VA

If you think this is a good idea, I could use all the help I can get to put the word out about the site and actually get it noticed. Thanks all!

So what do we do now?

I wish I knew. I am afraid of what this country will look like in 4 years. I am afraid that it will be changed so fundamentally that it will take decades to fix. I am afraid that an intolerant, past looking majority will continue to impose it’s moral views on me. Basically, I am just afraid. In conversation today, someone made the point that they thought this may be a point that in 30 years we look back on like McCarthyism. I hope we wise up sooner than that.

All we can do now is try to fight the good fight. I was waiting until after the election to make my annual donation to the ACLU. There are important fights that will be waged over the next years, and we can’t give up now. So I’ve made my contribution.

What happens next is really up to all of us. Don’t forget that.

President Bush goes to an elementary school to talk about the war.

After his talk, he offers to answer questions. One little boy puts up his hand and the president asks him his name.

“I’m Billy, sir.”

“And what’s your question, Billy?”

“I have three questions, sir. Why did the US invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? And whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?”

Just then the bell rings for recess. Bush announces that they’ll continue after recess.

When they return, Bush asks, “OK, where were we? Question time! Who has a question?”

Another little boy raises his hand. The president asks his name.

“I’m Steve, sir.”

“And what’s your question, Steve?”

“I have five questions, sir. Why did the US invade Iraq without the support of the UN? Why are you President when Al Gore got more votes? Whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden? Why did the recess bell go off twenty minutes early? And what the heck happened to Billy?”

This is the first article I have seen that seems to take a balanced approach to our current situation. He argues that it may be necessary to inflict the “lesser evils” for the “greater good.” I am not convinced of all of his arguments however I strongly agree with the argument he makes throughout the article regarding “transparency.”

No matter what the government is allowed to, the system must be designed to allow for transparency; this is the key to democracy. The people must be allowed to scrutinize the actions of their representatives in order to be informed. The media cannot shy away from things “in the name of national security.” It just doesn’t work that way. Secrecy is the cornerstone of governmental excesses.

Go read, comment.

Sunday morning at 5:30am we rolled out of bed and got ready to go. We arrived at PBK hall on campus around 6:40 to find a small group already congregating (most nursing coffees). Jennifer showed up a few minutes later and conscripted Elizabeth and I to hand out maps of the National Mall area. People filtered in over the next 15 minutes and we were ready to go.

Given that the event organizers were expecting upwards of 750,000 people, the plan was to take the bus to RF Stadium outside of DC and then take the metro in to the Mall. As we got close to RFK, I started noticing busses converging from all directions. It took us over half an hour to get from the entrance to the stadium to the actual parking lot. People had bussed in from across the country (I saw busses from Chicago and New York.)

Leaving the bus, we joined the throngs of people (pictures will be linked at the end) moving towards the Metro station. We passed numerous "purveyors of capitalism" selling every imaginable kind of t-shirts, buttons, and food just in the half mile to the Metro station. Among the marchers, the signs and excitement had already begun.

After shuffling down into the Metro station and getting to the L’Enfant station, we all pilled out and made our way back above ground. By this point, Jennifer, Elizabeth, and I had lost all but two other of our group. We headed towards the mall passing trucks passing out signs, buttons, beach balls, and weird tubey things you are supposed to make noise with. It was a zoo.

Each group that had registered for the event had a designated spot on the Mall. Jennifer found one of the "purple people" (volunteers who knew stuff) and found that we were supposed to head towards sections B3, C3, B4, or C4 which is where the VOX delegations were placed. Instead of trying to wade through the crowds, we walked down one of the street parallel to the Mall towards our spot.

Upon arriving back at the Mall, we saw exactly how much of a zoo this actually was. I have never seen so many people in one place at one time. It was amazing. It was a sea of pink signs waving and cheering at the barely heard speakers on stage. We waded in to our position looking for anyone we recognized; yeh right.

The March itself was supposed to start at noon. It may have; Jennifer was warned that it might take a while before the movement at the beginning of the group would be noticed by those further back. We were near the front of the group, so we got started marching around 12:30. "Moving" translated to walk "three steps, stop, repeat" for about the first half hour. By the time we made it out onto the streets, we started moving, only clumping up when we needed to turn.

The march itself was a very interesting event. I had never done anything like this before, so I didn’t know what to expect. The closest thing I can compare it to is to imagine a high school pep rally (albeit one with hundreds of thousands of people). There were chants, people just making noise, and signs shaking (especially when helicopters went overhead).

There were small contingents of counter-protestors spread along the march route. I found out afterwards that they were organized into "themes" by blocks. There was the mutilated fetus picture section, the religious section, the "I had an abortion and now I regret it" section, the cute baby picture section, and probably some others. The pro-lifers were outnumbered easily 100 to 1. Some of them yelled at us, marchers yelled at them, it was all good fun. (Actually I was amazed to find out after the fact that only 16 people got arrested the whole march. A group of pro-lifers who didn’t have a permit.)

It took maybe 2 hours to get back to the mall after walking the 1 mile march route. I looked back at the march starting point and could see that there were large numbers of people who hadn’t even started walking yet. Amazing. We found a place to sit and rested for a while.

The plan was to get back to the bus by 4:30. We started towards the Metro at about 3:15 or so hoping to get a jump on the crowds. Ha! We went to one of the farther Metro stations and actually got on the Metro easily and even got seats. When the subway arrived at the Metro station closest to the march, the platforms were packed. The poor train conductor kept having to reassure people that there were more trains coming.

After much walking, we made it back to the bus and found that we had about two thirds of our people back. Everyone made it back to the bus by about 5:30 and we got out of the stadium lot by 6:00 or so. We stopped for dinner on the way back and made it back to campus by 10:00.

What a trip. I am thrilled that I went; it was the best $25 I have spent in a while. Thanks to everyone who came, it was fun. Now the links and pictures!

• My photo pages
• Planned Parenthood
• American Civil Liberties Union

Now the question is just how bad things will get in the next two years. I am afraid the combination of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Ashcroft will be pretty bad.

Duck and cover.