Monthly Archives: January 2004

Just a Little Blip on the South Florida Weird-o-Meter

Posted on January 14, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Our law school courtyard is usually a quiet place, but every so often a flock of very very very loud parrots, descendants of escapees from Parrot Jungle, a nearby mini-wildlife park, take over the trees and make so much noise you can hardly think.

So I sympathize with the residents of Dania Beach, a couple of hours drive north of here. It seems they have a monkey problem. Welcome to South Florida – and beware of the Monkeys.

Of course, as the Miami Herald accurately observes, “Monkeys apparently don’t cause much of a blip on the South Florida weird-o-meter.”

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Posted in Florida | 1 Comment

Nofziger Says Bush Guest Worker Plan Will Enrage His Base

Posted on January 14, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Lynn Nofziger, blogger, opines that George Bush's electorally timed guest worker plan will backfire politically.

Yes, Nofziger is nuts. But he's canny. And he knows the Republican base from the inside, because he's one of them.

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Michigan Supreme Court Might Overturn Its Infamous Poletown Decision

Posted on January 14, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Ilya Somin of George Mason University School of Law has an op-ed in the Detroit News about the possibility that the Michigan Supreme Court might overturn the infamous Poletown decision. Michigan should alter property grab rules.

In Poletown the court allowed Detroit to seize the homes of more than 4,200 people under its power of eminent domain. This time-hallowed power lets the state seize property for public use. Although the state must pay market value, there's no way to monetize the value of the destruction of a neighborhood, its churuches, and its vanished sense of community. 'Public use' had been thought to mean something the government does for all of us, but in Poletown the purpose of the seizure was to give the land to General Motors so it could build a factory. (The idea was that the new jobs would benefit the public; in the event, far fewer jobs were created than promised and Prof. Somin argues that the project was a net economic loss to the community.)

I recall being outraged by this case when I read about it in the papers, and being outraged again when I read it in law school. Here's hoping…

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | 1 Comment

Florida Taliban (Update)

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Turns out that the source for the info about improper questions being asked by Jeb Bush's people of potential state court judges is the very respectable Miami Daily Business Review, and the article—complete with quotes attributed to local lawyers by name—is online at law.com. (Snagged from CalPundit.)

The quotes did not appear in a written questionaire, and weren't state-level, but rather were asked in oral interviews by county-level interviewing committee members.

Here are some choice quotes from an interview with the source of many of those questions, Rev. O'Neal Dozier, pastor of the fundamentalist Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, and one of the Broward County members of the Judicial Nomination Commission:

“This country is founded on the principles of Christianity, not the principles of Buddhism, not the principles of Judaism,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel quoted him as saying Nov. 30, 2003. “I don't believe the developers of the Constitution would want us to compromise our Christian values.”

Dozier is vehemently opposed to homosexuality, which he called in the Nov. 27, 2003, issue of New Times Broward Palm Beach “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit.”

Dozier said he has received complaints from “atheists” who heard about his line of religiously oriented questioning during JNC interviews. But he argues that religion belongs on the bench. “There is no such animal as separation of church and state in the Constitution,” he said.

And this is the guy Jeb Bush nominates, then re-nominates, to help pick judges.

Posted in Florida | 3 Comments

UK House of Lords Takes Lord Chancellor Hostage

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Because there are so few committees in the British Parliament, and because the majority party enforces iron discipline on its members to make them vote for all of its proposals, British MPs have much less to do than their counterparts in, say, the US. As a result they turn up for debates, which are often entertaining (and result in there being I suspect more coverage of the UK debates on cable in the US than there is on TV in the UK….).

There's a whole industry of UK 'sketch writers' whose job it is every day that Parliament sits to produce an entertaining vignette of the day in parliament. It's often the most fun part of the daily paper, as Parliament has its share of eccentrics, and the writers also often have a good eye for the telling detail or the comedic analogy.

The House of Lords tends to get a more gentle treatment, although it is not exempt. And indeed, there's stuff going on there:

Telegraph | News | Commons sketch

Last June Mr Blair suddenly announced in a statement from Number 10 that, after 1,000 years or so, the office of Lord Chancellor was to be abolished as part of a vague upheaval of our judicial system.

One of the Lord Chancellor's duties had been to sit on the Woolsack as Lords Speaker. But Mr Blair indicated that the Lords now had to decide who did that. Then someone remembered that a Lords standing order, dating from 1660, said that the Lord Chancellor could only be absent from the Chamber for more than one day by permission of the Lords as a whole. The Tories were certainly not going to give permission. So they took the Lord Chancellor hostage, holding him on the Woolsack until the legislation abolishing him.

The captured man's name is Lord Falconer, a former flatmate of Mr Blair. Yesterday he looked as if he was well-fed and was being treated reasonably well. But the inactivity and boredom must be getting to him.

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US CPA Adopts Bunker Mentality in Iraq

Posted on January 13, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

A very interesting interview of an anonymous journalist working in Iraq: “People are forgetting Iraq and focusing on hooking up with each other…” (the title refers to US civilians working at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq).

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