Illinois Review on the court victory of Sen-elect Al Franken!
Archive for June, 2009
Banana Democrats
Consider this article a follow-up to that article about Honduras that I had posted yesterday!
During his campaign, President Obama made a big deal of criticizing leaders who are elected democratically but don’t govern democratically. He’s had a chance to show that it mattered in Honduras. He didn’t.
That’s the sorry story as Honduras’ now ex-president, Mel Zelaya, last Thursday defied a Supreme Court ruling and tried to hold a “survey” to rewrite the constitution for his permanent re-election. It’s the same blueprint for a rigged political system that’s made former democracies like Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador into shells of free countries.
Zelaya’s operatives did their dirt all the way through. First they got signatures to launch the “citizen’s power” survey through threats — warning those who didn’t sign that they’d be denied medical care and worse. Zelaya then had the ballots flown to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. After his move was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, he tried to do it anyway.
As a result of his brazen disregard for the law, Zelaya found himself escorted from office by the military Sunday morning, and into exile. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro rushed to blame the U.S., calling it a “yanqui coup.”
President Obama on Monday called the action “not legal,” and claimed that Zelaya is still the legitimate president.
There was a coup all right, but it wasn’t committed by the U.S. or the Honduran court. It was committed by Zelaya himself. He brazenly defied the law, and Hondurans overwhelmingly supported his removal (a pro-Zelaya rally Monday drew a mere 200 acolytes).
Heh! Read the whole thing!
Via Instapundit!
Court Rules Franken Has Won Senate Seat
The Minnesota Supreme Court has just issued its long-awaited judgment in the Senate race, declaring that Democrat Al Franken is the winner.
The unanimous decision was released after a seven-months long battle over the seat formerly held by Norm Coleman. On every ground, the judicial panel rejected Mr. Coleman’s claims of trial errors or constitutional violations, and decided that Mr. Franken’s election should be certified by the state as valid.
Heh! So now the US Senate can count amongst its membership a former cast member of Saturday Night Live. How’s that for bragging rights!
ALSO from The Caucus, Sen. Norm Coleman has just conceded the race:
The Minnesota Supreme Court has just issued its long-awaited judgment in the Senate race, declaring that Democrat Al Franken is the winner. And Norm Coleman, his opponent, at 4 p.m., announced that he had conceded and contacted Mr. Franken.
…
Mr. Coleman stepped outside his home just a short while ago to give his news conference. He indicated that he and Mr. Franken had a positive, personal talk and he told the Democrat that being senator was the “best job he’ll ever have.”The Republican’s statement began this way: “Ours is a government of laws, not men and women. The Supreme Court of Minnesota has spoken and I respect its decision and will abide by the result. It’s time for Minnesota to come together under the leaders it has chosen and move forward. I join all Minnesotans in congratulating our newest United States Senator – Al Franken.”
With Mr. Coleman’s concession, Gov. Tim Pawlenty will assuredly sign the certificate required for Mr. Franken to be seated. The governor had indicated as late as Monday that he was willing to certify Mr. Franken as the winner once the state’s highest court decided the recount and Mr. Coleman’s battle. On CNN on Sunday, Mr. Pawlenty said: “I’m prepared to sign it as soon as they give the green light.”
The Death of Macho
For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men’s club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe.
The death throes of macho are easy to find if you know where to look. Consider, to start, the almost unbelievably disproportionate impact that the current crisis is having on men—so much so that the recession is now known to some economists and the more plugged-in corners of the blogosphere as the “he-cession.” More than 80 percent of job losses in the United States since November have fallen on men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the numbers are broadly similar in Europe, adding up to about 7 million more out-of-work men than before the recession just in the United States and Europe as economic sectors traditionally dominated by men (construction and heavy manufacturing) decline further and faster than those traditionally dominated by women (public-sector employment, healthcare, and education). All told, by the end of 2009, the global recession is expected to put as many as 28 million men out of work worldwide.
Things will only get worse for men as the recession adds to the pain globalization was already causing. Between 28 and 42 million more jobs in the United States are at risk for outsourcing, Princeton economist Alan Blinder estimates. Worse still, men are falling even further behind in acquiring the educational credentials necessary for success in the knowledge-based economies that will rule the post-recession world. Soon, there will be three female college graduates for every two males in the United States, and a similarly uneven outlook in the rest of the developed world.
Via Newsalert!
Priced to Sell
At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. “They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue,” Moroney testified. “I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device.” The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper’s contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. “I get thirty per cent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon?” He was incredulous. “That, to me, is not a model.”
How will the newspaper industry survive?
Refund details for Jackson concerts still sketchy
About the curtain call concerts that were never to be unfortunately! 
It’s a tragic loss — and an accounting nightmare for the promoters of Michael Jackson’s doomed 50-night “This is It” concert extravaganza in London.
More than 750,000 fans are waiting for details on ticket refunds, and the British government’s consumer protection board told them Monday not to hold their breath — complex legal issues need to be worked out first.
“The advice we’re giving is that it may take a little while because it was quite a large ticket distribution,” said Frank Shepherd, spokesman for Consumer Direct. “We’re advising people to be a bit patient.”
In addition, he said ticket holders may not be able to reclaim fees paid to sellers, which in some cases reached $16 per ticket.
The skirmishing over refunds is just one aspect of what is likely to be years of legal wrangling over financial matters, including Jackson’s considerable debts, assets and custody of his three children. The battles are likely to dwarf earlier fights for the control of assets left by other departed rock gods, including guitar hero Jimi Hendrix and reggae trailblazer Bob Marley.
