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Der Österreicher Kommt

The dark cloud on America’s political horizon is growing a little more ominous. No, not the ultrafundamentalist, ultraright, the-Bible-is-law crowd (they’re not on the horizon; they’re directly overhead, raining all manner of hail and hell on the heads of the unbelievers). No, I’m talking about California’s favorite Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger. As noted previously, there’s a fairly serious though so far fairly quiet move afoot to amend the U.S. Constitution to remove the requirement that the president must be born a U.S. citizen; that way, Arnold could run and bring his brand of bombastic, hit-and-run populism to all the people of America.

Now the campaign is getting aggressive. A new organization somewhat disingenuously called “Amend for Arnold and Jen” — at amendforarnold.org — is launching a series of TV ads promoting a change in the Constitution. I say disingenuous because the site name attempts to make the effort look as if, gee, it benefits all qualifying immigrants, even Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who hails from British Columbia. But it’s clear looking at the site that this is purely an effort to try to get The Austrian into das Weißhaus.

Some of Arnold’s rich Silicon Valley friends are behind the drive, The main mover appears to be Lissa Gaye Morgenthaler-Jones (she’s also known by various permutations of that collection of names). A Google search shows:

–She’s been a heavy contributor to and participant in Schwarzenegger’s various California campaigns.

–She’s an investment banker and analyst and daughter of David Morgenthaler, an early Silicon Valley venture capitalist; in campaign finance statements, she’s said to be head of something called Laeta Capital, though I haven’t found anything on the firm tonight.

–She’s a moderate, pro-choice Republican who’s contributed to the WISH List — a Republican knockoff of the Democratically-focused Emily’s List; the WISH List steers money to pro-choice Republican women candidates on the local, state, and federal level.

It’s really hard for me to look at this calmly, never mind objectively. It’s clear that the principal reasons that foreign-born Americans were barred from the presidency are no longer relevant and that’s it’s reasonable for long-ago naturalized citizens to stand for president. When it comes to talent and ability, there’s nothing magic about being born in the United States. Just look at the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On the other hand, amending the Constitution to benefit one man just stinks of opportunism. Of course, that fits the Arnold mold perfectly: He’s the opportunist’s opportunist. He proposed a measure to create a rich statewide after-school program for all de children of Colly-fornia; but he forgot to include any way to pay for it. He’s governing a state in the midst of a profound fiscal crisis, and his solution is to foist the bill off on the next generation. Meantime, he proposes balancing the budget by slashing education spending. And to get his way, he blusters up and down the state and bullies anyone who tries to stand up to him (his current civics project involves getting rid of the Democratic majorities in the state Legislature and its congressional delegation by putting an amendment on the ballot that would create a new reapportionment commission). And as far as his moderation goes: The guy stood by Bush, a conservative radical, and helped him get re-elected. I think the Austrian would be a friggin’ menace in the White House.

So, my ambivalence aside, I’ll be counting on the narrow-minded knee-jerk xenophobia of my fellow Americans to win out over their slack-jawed drooling love of celebrities in general and The Terminator in particular to keep foreigners out of the White House. For a little while, anyway.

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Sidewalk Reading

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The sign outside the Berkeley Friends Meeting House:

"We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or any under pretence whatever; this is our testimony to the whole world. The Spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world."

–From "A Declaration of the Harmless and Innocent People of God, called Quakers," presented to King Charles II, 1660

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Judge Randy

I got a call this afternoon from one of my oldest friends, Randy Robinson. He was a couple years ahead of me in school, but from seventh or eighth grade on he was my closest friend in our little semi-rural neighborhood outside Park Forest. He went off to the University of Illinois, wound up going to law school there, and in 1976, the same summer I came out to Berkeley, he moved to Lewiston, Idaho, as a Legal Aid Society attorney. And he’s been working Legal Aid ever since — a position in which he’s been an advocate for lots of people who wouldn’t otherwise have decent access to an attorney when they’re dealing with courts.

We haven’t talked for months — the better part of a year, for sure. He said he had news, and it turned out to be good news. And it was: He applied for a vacant judgeship in Clearwater County, east of Lewiston (which is the county seat of Nez Perce County) and he’d just been informed that the committee reviewing candidates had unanimously chosen him for the job. The position he’s been assigned — he’ll be on the ballot for public approval in four years — is magistrate judge; the court doesn’t hear felony cases — those go to the state district court — or civil cases involving $10,000 or more. So it’s roughly equivalent to a municipal court judgeship in California. Which means that it’s one where you’re really dealing with local people in matters involving their day-to-day lives. In a county with just 9,000 people, the judge is a pretty important figure.

I think Randy will be great at it . I’m ready to chart his rise to, well, who knows? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wasn’t appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court until he was 61.

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Road Blog: Eugene

Cimg2617We made it to Eugene. Got up early, but not super-early, and drove up Interstate 5 from Yreka to Eugene. It’s different up north: They actually have an autumn with trees turning color and frost in the air and the whole bit. The country along the way starts out mountainous — you have to cross the Siskiyous (SISK-yoos, to you auslanders) to cross into southern Oregon. Then you travel through the valley towns of Ashland (lovely unto annoyance) and Medford (annoyingly ordinary), then begin crossing a series of divides into the watersheds of the Rogue and Umpqua rivers, their various branches, and lesser streams. North of Roseburg, about 130 miles north of the California border, the road begins flattening out some as you pass towns like Oakland, Rice Hill, and Drain. Eventually, you enter the watershed of the Willamette (wa-LAMB-it) and soon get to Eugene.

Cimg2634 We wanted to attend a 1 p.m. orientation session, and we got there in plenty of time to park and get to the Erb Memorial Union (Emu for us auslanders). Since it was a holiday, Veteran’s Day, the session was packed (about 40 or 50 people). We spent an hour hearing how much the University of Oregon cost, what sort of grades and test scores you need to get in, and many, many other aspects of campus life. At 2 p.m., a sophomore business student named Matt Plumb gamely took the whole group on a tour: of the union, a dormitory, a future dormitory (now a hole in the ground), the student rec center, the library, the new Lillis business building, the journalism building, a new science building, and much more.

Quick impressions of campus: Smaller than expected, on a much more humane scale than any of the Big Ten campuses I’ve seen or the UC-Berkeley campus in its present incarnation — maybe more the way Berkeley was through the ’60s (the scale probably reflects enrollment; Oregon’s got a total of about 20,000 students, including graduates; Berkeley’s got about 34,000; several of the Big 10 schools have long since been at or above 50,000 for years). The tallest buildings at Oregon seem to top out at about five or six stories, and there are only a handful of those; there’s just one big lecture hall, and it seats about 500 or so; that’s mid-size by Berkeley standards. The campus is beautifully landscaped; lots of trees, lots of green, lots of open space, still, so it doesn’t have the overbuilt feel you get in some areas of Berkeley. You can’t judge much from a single afternoon, but overall the place felt quieter and less rushed and crowded than Berkeley.

The tour lasted an hour. We decided to drive around Eugene a little to see what flavor we could get. Well — not much from driving, aside from confirming the fact that drive-through espresso is huge north of the California border. Afterward, with no real plan, we decided to drive back south to Ashland to spend the night. But by the time we got there, about 7 p.m. or so, we were in driving mode and after a walk up and down the main street looking for something to eat and deciding we weren’t hungry, we decided to drive all the way home (another 340 miles or so). After stopping for bad Mexican food in Mount Shasta (note: Stay away from Lalo’s, except maybe if you just want a beer), we split the driving (me to Mount Shasta, Tom the next 165 miles or so to Williams — site of the phantom Dairy Queen — and me the last 100 miles) and got back to Berkeley a little before 1 in the morning.

(Pictures: Top: Tom listens to University of Oregon tour-leader guy. Bottom: People, trees, and autumn colors abound on Eugene campus.)

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Guilty Bastard

After my extensive experience as a journalist and legal observer (I’ve put in hundreds if not thousands of hours watching top-notch crime dramas such as “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “Law and Order” in regular, special, and extra-crunchy criminal flavors, “CSI” episodes set in venues as varies as Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City; not to mention formative undergraduate stints as a watcher of “Dragnet,” “Adam 12,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Perry Mason,” “The Defenders,” and even “Burke’s Law“), I was unconvinced that Scott Peterson was guilty of anything but being a lying, conniving bastard (with a dash of sociopath thrown in). But that’s why we have a legal system in this country: to tell when people like that are also murderers. In any case, he’s guilty. At least until the case goes into overtime.

The best part of catching the verdict coverage early this afternoon (this can be read as an admission that I failed to occupy my time with more meaningful business; no need for a trial on that one) was the proliferation of mugging nitwits who showed up in the courthouse shots of every channel covering the story (I checked CNN, Court TV, MSNBC, and Fox News; the two specimens pictured here were captured on MSNBC). I mean, of course it’s nothing new. But it is kind of extraordinary that we’re all so conditioned to the presence of cameras that this kind of behavior — now apparently accompanied by cellphones, so we can talk to our buddies while we’re on screen — has become sort of automatic.

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Road Blog: Yreka

Tom and I are staying at the Best Western in Yreka (yes, Yreka, California, north of Weed, east of Krakatoa) tonight. On our way up to Eugene for a tour of the University of Oregon tomorrow. Got kind of a late start out of Berkeley — about 7:30 or so — and arrived here just after midnight, Veteran’s Day. This happens to be the same place Dad and I stopped in October 1990 on our way up to see Mount St. Helen’s (Dad, I asked for the Brekke Suite, but the desk person affected ignorance and eventually threatened to call the sherifff when I persisted; so we’re just in a regular double room)

. Not much to report from the road: Light rain off and on, light traffic pretty much the whole way, and we traveled sans landscape since we got on our way so late. We had Tom’s iPod plugged into the car stereo and sung along with many songs, including hits from the Jackson 5, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, and many others. The schedule for tomorrow (later today) is up early for the fine Yreka Bakery complimentary breakfast, then over the Siskiyous to Ashland for real breakfast, then up to Eugene for a 1 p.m. campus tour. Further than that we have not planned.

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Arafat, Sponsored by Israel

A nice segue on one of Charles Osgood’s CBS Radio spots this morning: He did a news item on the strange drama surrounding Yasser Arafat’s decline, and ran a soundbite from one of Arafat’s aides that went something like this: “He will live or die based on his body’s strength and the will of God.” Then Osgood comes on and says, “More after this, from the American Jewish Committee.” The message turned out to be an ad for Israel. A lovely unplanned moment of irony.

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Notes on the New Iraq

A reading: The New Yorker (Nov. 15 edition) has a harrowing piece from Jon Lee Anderson, its principal Iraq correspondent, on the consequences of the U.S. decision to try to break up the Baath Party and the Iraqi Army. I think a lot of this stuff has been said before — that abolishing the party and disbanding the army simply through Iraq’s best and brightest, on one hand, and most desperate and well-armed on the other — into the street with little to do but oppose or fight the occupation. But he presents a couple of tragic examples of what happened to individual Baathists in the wake of "de-Baathification," suggests how poorly the purge program was run, and collects some interesting opinions on the ground from U.S. military and civilian officials who questioned the purge when it was ordered.

"The order had an immediate effect. … ‘We had a lot of directors general of hospitals who were very good, and, with de-Baathification, we lost them and their expertise overnight,’ [Stephen Browning, the U.S. official in charge of Iraq’s Ministry of Health] told me. At the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which was another of his responsibilities, ‘we were left dealing with what seemed like the fifth string. . . . Nobody who was left knew anything.’

"An American special-forces officer stationed in Baghdad at the time told me that he was stunned by Bremer’s twin decrees. After the dissolution of the Army, he said, ‘I had my guys coming up to me and saying, "Does Bremer realize that there are four hundred thousand of these guys out there and they all have guns?" They all have to feed their families.’ He went on, ‘The problem with the blanket ban is that you get rid of the infrastructure; I mean, after all, these guys ran the country, and you polarize them. So did these decisions contribute to the insurgency? Unequivocally, yes. And we have to ask ourselves: How well did we really know how to run Iraq? Zero.’ "

Even if you’ve been paying attention, Anderson’s article is helpful in explaining how our whole Iraq show has fallen apart.

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‘Birthday, Lydell

Happy birthday to Lydell Fisk, a one-time fellow inmate at the state institution in Normal, who like my brother John (yet another former Normalite) is entering the final year of his first half-century of excellence.

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Nocturnal Perambulation

If you want to cut down on the syllable count, just say “night walk.” A storm has been headed our way all day long. And after all the family business of the evening had been transacted, by which I mean dinner (I’ll admit it: frozen pizza), 1.0 episodes of regular old-school (i.e. Michael Moriarty era) “Law and Order” and .5 units of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” on cable, “The Daily Show,” which did a nice bit on Falluja’s impact on the future of Iraqi democracy, and the beginning of the KTVU’s “10 O’Clock News,” which had thrilling local jet-fuel-pipeline-rupture video to show, I headed out for a short walk before the rain. Stopped at the open-till-midnight drug store and bought some unneeded “athletic energy” (or ‘fancy candy”) bars for future consumption. Headed north on the streets that cut across the lower part of the ridge that marks the beginning of the hills here in North Berkeley (our house is about 120 feet above sea level, and the high point on the walk, as I know from my new mapping software, was 400 feet). All was quiet, except for the airline flights climbing as they headed east on all-night trips (if the wind shifts to the south or southwest as the storm moves in, the air traffic pattern will reverse and we’ll have incoming flights descending to the west over the hills). Got home just as the rain really started to come down.