R.I.P. Geraldine Ferraro

Despite the fact that my political philosophy diverged from your own, you gave little girls like me a reason to dream. Thank you for your contributions to all women regardless of ideology and for being, in my mind, the true feminist ideal. You are already greatly missed.

Right vs. Privilege

I have a lot of teachers who are friends. A lot. People who I love dearly. People whose opinion I respect and seek very often on matters relating to the development and education of my children. People who it is not my intention to personally hurt when I publish this post regarding the misinformation surrounding what we are seeing at the state level regarding teachers' and public employees unions right now. I write this out of love because the fact is that I cringe when I hear the inaccuracies that some of my friends are spouting regarding the current "plight" of teachers' "rights". I write this only to clarify some of these misconceptions so that other people can be more informed about what the law actually says and we can have a better discussion.

Collective Bargaining "Rights"

This is a most unfortunate misnomer. The "right" of a public employee to collectively bargain is not really an inherent right, but rather it is a privilege that was given and codified by only about half of the states in this country to its employees. It is an artificial "right" that became law by state legislators and governors who pandered to teachers' unions for campaign funds.

If this were a true right, then every jurisdiction in the United States, to include that of the federal government, would be forced to allow its employees to collectively bargain. At present, thirty-five of the fifty states have pro-collective bargaining statutes for public employees on the books, five states prohibit collective bargaining of public employees, and eleven have no laws regarding collective bargaining of public employees on its books. The federal government does not allow its employees to collectively bargain.

I find this concept akin to that of sovereign immunity which bars the states and federal governments from civil and criminal prosecution unless they allow for it. The manner by which governments allow for such suits are statutes like the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Tucker Act. This is just like this. Here, the government must give special codified permission as an exception to the rule. I consider such statutes to be governmental privileges rather than rights. Privileges that can be undone if the government is in a state of crisis, perhaps fiscal crisis, or even at the change of its citizens' opinion.

When a government employee strikes, it does so not against a corporation, but against the taxpayers. FDR, a proponent of public employees' rights to associate and assemble even warned that "meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government."

Supporters of public employees' collective bargaining "rights" try to conveniently separate the notion of collective bargaining from an employee's ability to strike. That is a canard. The ability to strike is inherent to the ability to collectively bargain. It is impossible to separate the two because the primary source for a union's bargaining capital is the management's ability or inability to survive a strike. [Steven Abraham, Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy, Volume 1 page 73]

Even for inarguably pro-union FDR, the idea of public employees striking was "unthinkable and intolerable".


Teachers' Due Process Rights Will Be Violated

There is NO SUCH THING as a right of due process in matters of employment. None. The right to due process guaranteed by our constitution ONLY applies to citizens accused of a CRIME. The end. There is no caveat or condition that alters this fact. There are lawyers who get this basic first year constitutional law concept wrong all the time. I've heard them. They should have their licenses to practice revoked.

In the private sector, if you feel you have been wrongfully terminated from employment, you file a discrimination grievance with the state EEOC and have your case settled by a third party. It is actually a decent system. I think public employees should have to use this same system instead of getting their own special procedures that costs us taxpayers even more out of pocket.

I have been told by a friend that she knows several teachers who have been dismissed. These people must have done something pretty terrible for the state or school district to go through the pain of removing them! Or maybe she lives in a state where collective bargaining is prohibited and people can be fired more easily for cause. Even the superintendent of Indiana Public Schools, Dr. Eugene White acknowledges how costly and difficult it is. He blames the administrators for failing to do their jobs, not the unions who pressured to put these procedures in place.

My question: Aren't administrators part of the teachers' unions? Isn't this a distinction without a difference?

In the private sector, management is not part of the union. Part of the reason collective bargaining works is because we have two competing interests coming together in good faith to advance each interest mutually. If the administrators, who are essentially management are on the same side as teachers, where is the competing interest? Where is the adversarial nature needed to keep cost down and bad teachers out of the classroom? There is none.

*I am embarrassed to admit that I must emend my earlier statement regarding right of due process being an exclusively criminal construct. It also applies to government takings like eminent domain. Regardless, it still does not apply to employment.

Tarted Up Daughters & Feminism

Dressing sexy has been around and frowned upon since some cavewomen decided to wear their animal skins on one shoulder as opposed to the dowdy sac style dresses of the more conservative cavewomen. Yet, Jennifer Moses' recent opinion in the WSJ has garnered a lot of attention lately.

I love reading through the comments section of these sorts of pieces. People get crazy and completely non sequitur. [Yes, in my world, one can be in a state of being that can only be described as non sequitur. :)]

In this particular comments section, people attribute the sluttification of our daughters to that of the feminist and sexual revolution. Some people are trying to make it a virtue and a victory. Others show it as a failure of feminism. The comments section argument then devolves into a "now you all wonder why you are all still single when we get the milk for free" battle.

Here's my take [based on the fact that I was once a provocatively dressed young single educated woman looking for a spouse who found one].

Girls dress tartish because they don't know HOW to dress sexy. They don't understand that putting together a sexy outfit is an art yet. They are learning. Just the right amount of cleavage or skin or leg leaves more to the imagination of a guy than showing everything. I think there are so many women out there who don't understand this concept that they don't know how to teach their daughters properly. Then they complain about their girls looking slutty.

If you are a single dad or a woman who just hasn't been good at fashion and makeup, do your daughter a favor and take her to the makeup counter at a department store and invest in some good makeup lessons. They don't cost all that much. Usually free, sometimes a minimum purchase.

Then, get her a subscription or two to a couple of appropriate fashion magazines. In Style is the best and People Stylewatch is also a good one for TEACHING about fashion and putting together an outfit without all of the anorexic imagery and oversexed ads. Also, they are not for old ladies. Back when I was a kid, my mom got me a subscription to YM. She said it was the best thing she ever did because I never went through "The Hooker Phase" that all the other girls seemed to go through.

Teach your girls to love their figures and HOW to dress instead of complaining about it. Give them the tools and they will make the better decisions. Proper fashion choices are just as much about education as sex is.

Now for my personal three step lesson on Finding A Spouse For A Feminist

1. Smile and Laugh.

2. Get fit. Get sexy. - Sorry, girls it's the most anti-feminist concept ever. If you want to find a spouse, you need to take care of yourself and make yourself physically desirable. It's simple math, the more guys attracted to you, the more potential mates you have to choose from. Once you are married and running around after kids, you can run around without makeup wearing comfy Birkenstocks all you want, but you ain't gonna get there without sexing it up while you're single. Spare me the whole, "I want to find someone to love me for me" shit. A man doesn't love you for being sexy. The sexiness just opens up the door to the possibility of him loving you. Step three is what will get him to fall in love you.

3. Learn to Cook a Good Roast Beast. - If you want a straight guy who loves women, then you need to learn to cook meat. The end. Guys like meat. You will find the occasional veggie guy, but as women, we all know how to cook veggies because we are fit and taking care of ourselves. See step two. If you find a guy who loves to cook, then be the best dishwasher you can be.

It's not hard. Pretend you live in the 1950's and are trying to rope a guy. Put on a pretty dress that shows off your curves and make him a roast. If you can make a good Manhattan or Old Fashioned, you are two steps ahead of the game.

I'm sorry. I wish there was a more feminist sounding answer for finding a husband. There isn't.

After nearly 7 years of marriage [which isn't really long in the grand scheme of things, we are still newlyweds really] my husband and I have had the conversation about what made the other one of us want to marry that person.

I knew the moment we first started talking that I was going to marry him. We just clicked. He was ridiculously smart, goodlooking, had a ripping sense of humor, and kind eyes [the Marine swagger didn't hurt either].

My husband's response, "I wanted to get to know you because you had a great ass and you usually wore high heels with pedicured toes. I liked that. I knew I was going to marry you the first time you made Jambalaya for me. Speaking of which... I don't think you've made Jambalaya since we've been married."

*Thinking about it, I don't think I've had a proper salon pedicure in over a year either and my footwear of choice these days are a pair of Birkenstocks with jeans. [But they are really CUTE Birkenstocks!]

Once Upon A Time...

I started this blog during the 2008 campaign season to express my political views in lieu of clogging up my facebook feed. I continued to blog for nearly a year following the election and made some fine friends along the way. There were only two problems. One, the conservative blogosphere moves WAY too fast for me to keep up with posting the latest news race. Two, I found myself caving and compromising my own political philosophy in order to get readers. This was nobody's fault but my own--I am not writing this to denigrate ANYONE.

So this is me.

I am a mother. I am a military wife. I am a lawyer. I am a musician. I am a scientist. I am an artist. I love the water. I care passionately about the environment. I am a Roman Catholic adult convert. I am a feminist. I am a clotheshorse. I am pretty funny. I am a good cook. And I am a neoconservative.

So how can someone who, on paper, fits the stereotype of a liberal consider themselves a neoconservative? Two words: Women's Rights.

I consider myself a neoconservative because I think there is no problem worse on our small globe than the overt oppression and subjugation of women. I am not talking about women who can't get access to free abortions in our free society. I am not talking about women not being able to whip out a boob in a public place to feed a baby. I am not even talking about women being paid less for doing the same work. Nope. I am talking about state-sponsored oppression of women wherein women are still deemed chattel by their own governments. I am talking about governments who do not allow their female citizens a voice yet are recognized and supported by the world economy under the guise of multiculturalism.

I guess I am a small "r" republican in that I believe that first generation individual rights of all humans should be guaranteed by not just our own nation, but the global community as a whole.

So this is where I come from. I think about things. I am open to discussion with viewpoints that diverge from my own and I welcome you to engage [albeit thoughtfully and respectfully].

We're No Shining Lights Of The Bar

Between Dahlia Lithwick's recent fifth grade report on women judges and Ginsburg's notion that looking to foreign law when interpreting the meaning of laws made and passed by U.S. legislators is jurisprudentially sound, I sit here embarrassed and appalled by the apparent lack of good representation [excuse the pun] for my fellow women lawyers.

Ms. Lithwick's thesis and support have several very fatal flaws. The reason why Obama should appoint another female to the SCOTUS, she maintains, is that women have a special ability to judge facts. To support this, Ms. Lithwick points to a very narrow sociological study ["award winning" or not, for those hard science background people, like myself, the results of political science studies are overly subjective and malleable] that says women judges or panels with a woman judge are more likely to rule in favor of the plaintiff in a sexual discrimination case than male judges or an all male panel. This is her sole empirical evidence for her thesis that women judge differently. She goes on further to discuss the importance of experiential diversity for judges.

There is no bigger insult to a judge--any judge--than to tell them that their personal life experiences [especially with respect to uncontrollable characteristics] affect their ability to properly interpret and apply the law. It matters not if the speaker's intent is to flatter or denigrate. The best compliment for a judge is impartiality. Maintaining judicial impartiality and experientially guided judging are mutually exclusive endeavors. A fact which seems to have eluded Ms. Lithwick since taking the MPRE or her law school ethics class.

While I personally agree that Obama should appoint more females on the bench, including the SCOTUS, I do not think that one should be appointed based upon gender. Furthermore, I reject her stereotyping of "crisp" male justices versus "soft" female justices. We [the collective one] HAVE GOT TO get past this mentality. The law should be neither masculine nor feminine. It should be neither white nor black. It should be neither Christian nor Buddhist. It SHOULD be blind. Like Ms. Lithwick and Ms. Ginsburg, it is many people's perceptions that the law is biased and not blind in its application. However, we do not combat such bias with judges who hold mirror biases with some eye toward balancing out the undesired bias. The result is polarity of judicial philosophies/theories instead of a social movement toward equality.

I further reject that women judges do not evaluate cases strictly or "crisply"; terms, which connote and reflect accuracy of thought. I'm sure such an allusion was not Ms. Lithwick's intent, but that is the exact effect of such stereotyping and I, for one, am insulted by it. Furthermore, I believe to my core that Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor would reject Ms. Lithwick's assertions. I implore her to read actually read and responsibly reference O'Connors message in her book, The Majesty of the Law, specifically chapter twenty, "Women in Judging". There, Justice Day O'Connor discusses how Clarence Darrow once told a group of women lawyers, "You can't be shining lights at the bar because you are too kind."

For your perusal, I have provided a couple choice quotes from the aforementioned chapter to demonstrate Lithwick's blatant bastardization of O'Connor's words.

As judges, we all strive to be dispassionate and objective in analyzing issues, to be impartial and analytical, to be courageous and independent when we resolve a case in a manner sure to be unpopular generally. Women, like men, can and do have all of these attributes...

...So the question remains: Do women judges decide cases differently by virtue of being women? I would echo the answer of another woman judge, Justice Jeanne Coyne, formerly of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who says that "a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion."

The softness of women is not what "we" mean when we say we need more women justices. In alleging such a thing, Ms. Lithwick has taken our gender in the profession of law ten steps backwards.

Another flaw in the argument for experientially based judging on the SCOTUS is it ignores a common characteristic of 99.99% of cases that go before the SCOTUS: they are last resort appeals on usually VERY VERY minute and narrow issues of law. Such determinations don't require personal experience, they require a sharp legal mind with a thorough attention to detail.

I will close with a final quote from The Majesty of The Law,

In class or in grading papers over seventeen years, and now in reading briefs and listening to arguments in court for fourteen years, I have detected no reliable indicator of distinctly male or surely female thinking--or even penmanship.

The speaker of that final quote was none other than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So, the question still remains, what DO you mean Ms. Lithwick?

The Truthiness Commissions

Certain segments of the American left [here too] are calling for truth and reconciliation commissions. Truth commissions like the ones held in South Africa, Germany, Argentina, Chile, and Yugoslavia for a pattern of egregious violations of human rights against their own citizenry. You know, the same truth commissions intended for the healing of countries with protracted histories of complete dehumanization of its citizens usually entailing the kidnapping and murder of suspected political dissidents? Now, we're not just talking about the state sponsored killing or torture of the most radical elements of their society. We're also not just talking about countries who mistreated foreign national sworn enemies of their state. No, we're talking about countries whose own citizens lived in constant fear of exhibiting the mere appearance of dissent.

Is there anything more narcissistic than comparing liberal America's psuedo suffering to that of the actual suffering of the peoples of the aforementioned countries? We only reiterate our "spoiled American" persona by trivializing the real injuries of the truly oppressed with our latest political whimsies.

Much to the dismay of that segment of the left, Obama stated that he will not authorize a truth commission for the outgoing administration. So, to satisfy those who are salivating for such pomposity, I will oblige:

THE TRUTHINESS COMMISSIONS

Neocon Blonde,
Commanding Officer of the Perpetually Serene House of Quinn

Pursuant to the proposal of Dahlia Lithwick, et al.,

DECREES:

Article 1

There is hereby created a polypartisan Commission called the "The Truthiness Commission of Inquiry Into The Poopy Stinky Meanness of BushCheney."

Article 2

The mission of the Commission is:

- to investigate and make recommendation upon the criminalization or just plain general offensiveness of Texas accents and/or swaggering.
- to replace responsible consideration of complicated legal issues with pouting that conforms to spoiled adolescent sensibilities.
- to create an American Intelligence Oversight Committee consisting of the editorial boards of the New York Times, The Nation, and Keith Olbermann which exclusively will determine classification levels and dissemination criteria for all sensitive information.
- to hear testimony from any person willing to complain about BushCheney (Committeeperson Sullivan will chair a one-man subcommittee to hear complaints about Palin).
- to bring back the altogether peaceful, happy, and loving relationship the United States enjoyed with the Arab world prior to the advent of BushCheney.

Article 3

The Commission is composed of:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich: Commission Chair
William Ramsey Clark: Legal Counsel
Michael Moore: Recording Secretary
Cynthia McKinney: Law Enforcement Expert
Congressman Ron Paul: Token Republican
George Galloway: UN Representative
Gore Vidal: Commissioner Emeritus
Dr. Ayman Zawahiri: Medical Expert
David Remes: International Outreach
Andrew Sullivan: Religionism and Feminism Expert
Adam Kokesh: Military Expert
Jane Fonda: Commission Armpiece

Article 4

The Commission may summon any natural, legal, or fictional person in a position to assist it in the pre-ordained missions of the investigation.

Article 5

If the investigation so requires, members of the Commission may provide their own personal testimony and consider their own personal complaints.

Article 6

To this end, the material resources necessary will be put at the disposal of the Commission to enable it to carry out its mission.

Article 7

The Commission shall submit its report within 4 years, preferably during the month of October 2012.

Article 8

When the pre-determined determinations have been properly concluded, a decree of Neocon Blonde will terminate the mandate of the Commission.

Clinging To Our Guns, Religion, and... Happiness?

Republicans are Happier!!!

The Washington Post is incredulous. Forgive my language, but I shit you not. David Montgomery asked the following question:

The data, alas, do not account for those furious Republicans at McCain-Palin rallies. Are they happy in their anger?

Has this guy even ATTENDED a Republican rally? I'm serious. Is he going by the Ruth Marcus or David Singleton accounts: both of which have been completely debunked?

Here's the deal. I'm a Republican. I like my party. That being said, the anger displayed at these rallies is G rated in comparison to the violence [both in language and in action] we have witnessed this election coming from our opponents. The way Ruth Marcus and David Singleton have portrayed [LIED ABOUT is a more accurate description, but I'm Republican and happy, so I can afford to be generous] these rallies, one would think that attending a McCain Palin rally was akin to going to a Pantera concert. The rather uncool reality is that the level of violence is more akin to a John Tesh or Kenny G affair... And, odd as it might sound, that makes me happy.