Lost in Wonderland

"Curiouser and curiouser!" Cried Alice.

Without so much as a peep, the Champaign City Council Tuesday night voted 9-0 to approve the extension of employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners. This act gives the same benefits to domestic partners of employees as those received by legally married employees. You can read the whole story here on the Daily Illini's web site. For some reason, it's not on the N-G web site. (Who's surprised?)

Unless you're a constant peruser of meeting agendas, this one slipped right by you. Certainly there was nothing to be found in the local press (i.e. the N-G) the past two days indicating this issue was to come before the council.

"Curiouser and curiouser!" Cried Alice.

My response: It's about damn time. Or: it's past about damn time.

At the same time:
-- Why now?
-- How did this slip through the cracks?
-- How did a council as conservative and study session-addicted as Champaign's approve what in most areas is a very controversial plan? With no study session? (Or no 'announced' study session...?)
-- How did it pass unanimously?
-- And finally, how can he same council that can't get its mind around something as obvious as a smoking ban approve something as historically controversial as this? Unanmously? With minimal debate?

"Curiouser and curiouser!" Cried Alice.

Good work, council.

You constantly keep us guessing.

And so it goes.

Going green

Whatever happened to recycling?

I watched Monday morning as our waste company dumped our garbage can into the back of his truck. Then I watched as he picked up the carefully separated recyclables and dumped them too in the back of the garbage truck. Crunch. Off to the landfill.

The wife tells me this is a fairly frequent occurrance.

Weren't the waste companies supposed to be actually doing something with the recyclables? I mean something other than landfilling them? I thought that was part of the agreement between the city of Champaign and the waste haulers a few years (decades?) ago.

Maybe it's not really all that profitable right now; but to landfill such reusable products seems to be such a waste. A useless waste.

What happened?

And so it goes.

Placing blame

I drove down Springfield Avenue in Urbana Tuesday afternoon. In the short time I was in the campus area, twice college-aged students stepped off curbs into traffic without looking.

Last Friday, a UI student was killed by an MTD bus. Don't they learn? Can't they learn? Won't they learn?

These students may be the best and the brightest, but they sure are not the smartest.

(I blame the MTD).

And so it goes.

Musing

I'm sure everyone's already thought of this, but ...

It sure seems that Bush might actually be moving the Supreme Court to the left.

Roberts certainly appears to be to the left of Rehnquist (who isn't?).

And Harriet Miers, being a former Democrat, would appear to be at least at first glance a moderate. Perhaps as moderate (or more) than O'Connor.

Appearances, of course, can be deceiving. Converted Republicans can be the most fervent. Or opportunistic. The next weeks certainly will be interesting.

In the mean time, it's fun to listen to the right-wing conservative wingnuts screaming berayal.

And so it goes.

Who?

President W-imbecile named White House Counsel Harriet Miers to be associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court today (Monday).

Nice he was able to find someone with great judicial and public service experience.

Although she's a lawyer, she's never been a judge (nor ever sought a judgeship, apparently). She's only held one public office, it would seem, the Dallas City Council, which of couse makes her eminently qualified to sit on the highest court in the nation.

So, who IS Harriet Miers? According to The Washington Post (free registration required),

Miers, who was Bush's personal attorney in Texas, was the first woman elected president of the Texas Bar Association and was a partner at the Texas law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp before coming to Washington to work in the Bush administration.

Fair enough. Although I fail to see how that makes her all that qualified.

Is she conservative? Moderate? Fair? Intelligent? Compassionate? Hey, she works for the W-imbecile. The only hint of where she stands on anything is contained in the same Post article:

Miers was active in a 1992 battle in the American Bar Association, arguing vehemently but unsuccessfully against a resolution supportive of abortion rights. News reports at the time did not quote her on the merits of Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, but rather on what she considered the inappropriateness of the ABA taking a position.

So her career highlight so far was LOSING a fight in the ABA over opposition to abortion.

That comforts me immeasurably.

Of all the amazing and troubling of the W-imbecile's recent actions, this is the most amazing and troubling. What, there isn't one conservative judge serving in the US who is acceptable to him (or actually his handlers)?

This should play out in an interesting fashion. How do you confirm someone with no experience and (apparently) few qualifications? (But then, that's the situation the W-imbecile was in a few years ago, wasn't it?)

And so it goes.