Month: July 2004

California’s Second Appellate District has ruled that the State can no longer reap financial gain from the child support orders that stem from faulty paternity judgments, reversing a long-standing practice imposed by radical feminist legislator Sheila Kuehl. The case is L. A. County v. Navarro, dealing with a man who didn’t respond to a court order sent through the mail in the required six months.

The court cited a law that I helped pass in 2000:

It is this state?s policy that when a mistake occurs in a child support action, the County must correct it, not exploit it. When the Legislature enacted the Child Support Enforcement Fairness Act of 2000, it declared ?The efficient and fair enforcement of child support orders is essential to ensuring compliance with those orders and respect for the administration of justice. . . .

Thousands of individuals each year are mistakenly identified as being liable for child support actions. As a result of that action, the ability to earn a living is severely impaired, assets are seized, and family relationships are often destroyed. It is the moral, legal, and ethical obligation of all enforcement agencies to take prompt action to recognize those cases where a person is mistakenly identified as a support obligor in order to minimize the harm and correct any injustice to that person.? (Stats. 1999, ch. 653 (A.B. 380), italics added.)

The County, a political embodiment of its citizens and inhabitants, must always act in the public interest and for the general good. It should not enforce child support judgments it knows to be unfounded. And in particular, it should not ask the courts to assist it in doing so. Despite the Legislature?s clear directive that child support agencies not pursue mistaken child support actions, the County persists in asking that we do so. We will not sully our hands by participating in an unjust, and factually unfounded, result. We say no to the County, and we reverse.

The court stated that a strict adherence to child support and paternity law required them to enforce the unfounded order, but found a more important authority in AB 380.

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, that a law that I helped to pass has actually helped someone, and stands to help many more – a lot.

But as nice as this is, we can be sure that the radical feminists who wrote the child support laws will shortly be trying to reverse this decision – probably before the legislative year is out in early September.

Reagan’s famous question in his campaign against Carter in 1980 was “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” It resonated with the voters in its time and place because of the conditions that defined that time and place.

This year’s election question, I submit, is “Are you better off than you were on Sept. 11, 2001?” My answer to that is a resounding “Yes!”.

A number of blogs (Kausfiles, Michelle Malkin) say that largely invisible Democratic Party candidate John Kerry had his Sister Souljah moment at the convention of a racialist group in Phoenix:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry talked up pro-Hispanic immigration reforms when he was in Phoenix earlier this week at annual meetings of the National Council of La Raza.

But the Massachusetts senator also told Spanish language media outlet Telemundo that he opposes giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

Kerry told Telemundo that obtaining driver’s licenses is something that is for legal residents of the U.S.

This is somewhat distinct from Clinton’s original moment in that Kerry didn’t have the balls to make the driver’s license remarks directly to the convention, choosing the back-door route instead.

About all I get from this is Kerry’s attempting to keep the voters informed that he’s still breathing, a matter that has been the focus of some debate recently.

The scurrilous critics of the liberation of Iraq are fond of trotting out irrelevant polling data to bolster their case that Saddam should have been left to torture his people and support terrorist networks in peace. The latest example is the Gwynne Dyer attempt to paint the new government of Iraq as Al Qaeda would like us to see them (see previous posting by Mumon.) This is a dishonest exercise.

We all know that the Iraqis are tired of the violent attacks organized and carried out on their streets by the dead-enders, the Baathists, the religious fanatics, and the friends of Al Qaeda, and that they feel the attacks will only stop when American troops have left their country. But does their dissatisfaction with the Occupation automatically translate into mistrust or hatred of the interim government as Dyer asserts? In other words, is the average Iraqi in the same mindset as a Democratic Party hack who still seethes over the loss of the 2000 election?

Probably not. Indigenous polls show broad support among Iraqis for the interim government:

A poll cited in a Defense Department document called “Five Steps to Sovereignty” said 68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in the interim Iraqi government, and 79 percent think the interim government will make things better for Iraq. The new government has an 80-percent approval rating among Iraqis, 73 percent of whom approve of Allawi, and 84 percent of whom approve of Yawar.

So with all due respect to our dark-minded conspiracy theorists (who’ve now sunk to calling Iraq a “quagmire” and blaming it on the J-E-W-S), things in Iraq aren’t really all that bad.

Even occupation-era polling showed that the vast majority of Iraqis thought their lives the same or better than they were under Saddam, not actually a shock to most of us.

UPDATE: John complains that I’ve labeled him an anti-Semite by equating his remarks on Israeli control of George W. Bush with Billy McKinney’s famous remark on the American media. Fair enough, he doesn’t mean what he says.

But this brings us to a problem with carpet-bombing as a method of argument: the Moore-inspired partisans attack the President using a variety of arguments, many of them contradictory to other arguments they employ, with no apparent regard for the inconsistencies. At the same time, according to this logic, Bush is a tool of the Saudis, the Carlyle Group, the International Zionist Conspiracy, the Christian Right, and Karl Rove, yet he’s so stupid he can’t be relied on to remember who’s his master at any given time, and yeah, he’s evil to boot. We first heard this line of self-contradictory whining after the Florida recounts of recounts of recounts, when the Democratic Party’s dead-enders said Bush was a moron who somehow managed to steal the election from their much more brilliant candidate.

It would be nice if these people would make up their alleged minds, but not as humorous as watching them step on themselves.