October 31, 2008

Halloween.  All Hallow’s Eve.  In the old culture this was the end of the year…everything was dying, devolving, unleashing.  Chaos.  The spirits of those who have died looking for rest, for surcease.  We give them as much relief as we are able.  We appease them with treats, we burn what’s left to set them free.  Old bones to new fires.  Bonefire. Bonfire.  We tell weird tales to put all of it in perspective, although we know that we are born owning a death.  How’s that for perspective?  Our turn will come soon enough or too soon.  But it will come.

No, not morbid.  More a desire to understand and live fully.

On an unrelated note: A pox on both their houses!  The Republicans and Justice Taylor have taken after Judge Hathaway with a vengeance, making the transgressions of the Democrats look positively normal.  Has no one any dignitas?  These are NOT judicial temperaments on display here before us.

And it seems likely that Justice Taylor will be reelected.  A recent poll showed the two candidates neck and neck at 19 percent each.  …Not that such is much of a poll.  What most often happens is people get into the booth, can’t recall hearing very much bad about the incumbent and vote to reelect.

And the reason they’ve not heard much about the incumbent is because the news media have really fallen down on the job.  But there are reasons: these stories deal with complex issues.  Certainly there’s nothing there that TV can handle in a 1:30 story (that’s a minute, thirty seconds to you and me).  And newspapers are downsizing at such a rate that fewer and fewer reporters are being asked to do more and more.  There is NO TIME to dig into an investigation that would likely last months.  There’s nobody to do it. And there are very few qualified to even begin.

Then there is the proclivity of, say, the Detroit News and the Grand Rapids Press to lean hard right.  The Lansing State Journal got it correct in its assessment of Justice Taylor: not fit to serve.

This is likely my last post before election.  Go.  Vote.  Not my business to tell you how.

October 22, 2008

NOTE: THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEETING REFERENCED IN THIS POST HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Oh, my! I’ve just seen the latest supreme court ad against Chief Justice Cliff Taylor.  The charge in the ad is that he napped during oral arguments in a case involving the fire death of young children.  The Democrats use a re-enactment to show a nodding judge, ostensibly Justice Taylor. They identify it as a dramatization.  But still….  The Republicans say they are incensed.  They swear that he didn’t do such a thing.  They say that Geoffrey Feiger was in the court and HE of all people would have made note of such an event.  I’m thinking that’s so.  If anyone is curious if such a thing could be there are recordings of the sessions, but they may not show a close up of a nodding Justice, especially if the cameras are switched to show one of the attorneys arguing before the Justices.  This leaves the Republicans with proving a negative…how do you prove something didn’t happen? …At least once?  Good luck.  It’s a dirty trick and smacks of the desperation the Democrats are facing. 

Why?  There are so many substantive and easily verifiable matters with which they could contend with Justice Taylor: the Judge Jennifer Faunce matter in the 37th District Court, the Judge Pam Gilbert O’Sullivan matter in Macomb County Probate Court, the Probate Judge Patty Gardner matter in Kent County.  Each of them has suffered at the hands of the Michigan Supreme Court. 

Then there’s the gag order that flies smack dab into the consititutional duties of the Justices.  And there are plenty of other issues large and small.

To that end the House Judiciary Committee is meeting tomorrow morning in the House Building at 9 a.m. and it has invited both Chief Justice Taylor and Justice Elizabeth Weaver to come and talk about issues of transparency at the court.  I understand Justice Taylor will not be attending; he’s too busy, says his campaign manager, and sees this for a political event to attempt to discredit him.  Well, the timing is unhandy but the Judge Faunce matter was recent.  And I misdoubt that the committee is all Democrats. So, we’ll see what we see.

For now I urge the Democrats to pull what smacks of an unfair ad from the media-television, radio, and internet.  There’s plenty to contend with but it’s unnecessary and purely partisan to make and sanction ads like this.  This won’t help make the situation better.

October 17, 2008

This morning’s light is red and gold and the mist is rising from the river in great lazy tendrils.  They are thick enough for a man to grasp and perhaps pull whatever sleeping river god is attached beneath the surface. But that would break the stillness.

Even though it’s now hunting season, the ducks glide serene on the bayou behind the house.  Perhaps they know they’ve entered an area of safety from the arrow that flies by night or the shotgun pellets that fly at daybreak.

 

I’ve been thinking the last few days that perhaps I had nothing more than shrillness to add to the conversation.  That would be a pity, for there is more than enough shrillness.  Too much.  My dear friend D. says that neither presidential candidate deserves his vote.  That’s one way to look at it.  It’s a sorry state if it’s true.

And, concerning the Michigan Supreme Court race, at the risk of becoming a charter member of the ABC club (that would be Anybody But Cliff) I note that there is a blogging voice out there that’s sounding.  The author is Michael Butler.  He’s now on to something…the chief justice’s rumination in case he is defeated.

http://www.attorneybutler.net/

This is pretty funny.  And it’s true that the communication was intended to be private.  Evidently His Honor doesn’t know that Reply All means to REPLY TO EVERY FREAKIN’ SOUL ON THE LIST, even those you don’t what to see it. And so it’s out.  It’s intended to be a humorous exchange.  And it is: a standing joke among the majority of four justices who style themselves conservative.

It’s my opinion that these four are activists, not conservatives.  Just look at what’s happened in Kent County and now in Macomb County with their selections of Chief Judge.  On, and don’t forget 37th District Court and the appointment of Judge John M. Chmura as chief judge there.  Judge Jennifer Faunce-who had been serving as Chief Judge Pro Tem-got deep sixed. The HOW of that is well worth your read:

http://courts.michigan.gov/SUPREMECOURT/Resources/Administrative/2008-01-37D-CJ.pdf

So we now had Cliff Taylor calling a candidate in advance of her possible-but-unlikely selection telling her she doesn’t have a chance: withdraw now and save yourself the embarrassment.  Wow!  How’s that for shrill?

What do you think about that?  Makes me think that the river gods will slumber on, indifferent at best to the affairs of men.

October 6, 2008

Saturday I had the great good fortune to return to Piety Hill in Mecosta. Piety Hill, the ancestral home of the late Russell Kirk, is now home to The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (http://www.kirkcenter.org/).  This weekend was another in the long series of Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s gatherings there to offer young leaders a taste of the work and sensibility of Russell Kirk (http://www.isi.org/).  Speaking this weekend was the erudite Dr. Gary Gregg of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.  He delivered an introduction to Russell’s concept of the moral imagination. Kirk took the phrase from Edmund Burke’s writing.  Among all of the many of Dr. Kirk’s writing and labors, it may well be that this concept-opposed by the idyllic and diabolical imagination-have done and will do more to help us to a better understanding of what it means to be fully human and in relation to a creator.

Dr. Gregg had posited that perhaps his comments might have seemed dumbed down.  Nope.  For these young students it may have served as an introduction.  For those of us who knew and loved Russell, it was a wonderful reminder of the eternal verities Russell strove to articulate afresh.

The Kirk Center is a wonderful beacon.

In other eventualities, I have just finished editing footage of Dr. Martin Marty speechifying at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids this early September.  I wasn’t there to capture it (my friend Dennis Hart of Semaphore Video was) but in editing it I found several topics of interest, not the least of which is the history of U.S. Presidents and their religious persuasions.  Well, sure it’s available (96 minutes) if you want it ($20 plus $5 tax, shipping and handling).