On my soapbox (#1?)

One of the reasons I started a blog was to have an outlet for my thoughts on current events and politics. In a previous life, I was quite the little wonk with the Young Democrats of Maryland, but I got disillusioned with the people who were more interested in the title "public servant" than actually serving the public.

I had wanted to make a practical point related to the tragedy in New Orleans, but I held off because I liked the last blog better without pontification. Then, last night, I found out Chief Justice Rehnquist had died. So here we go with what will probably be the first of many blogs from my soapbox.

Who knows what danger lurks...?
Turns out the federal government often does. After 9/11, Nat. Sec. Advisor Condoleezza Rice expressed that we could not have predicted that terrorists would fly planes into buildings. In that case, it actually took a few weeks or months to get out the word that some scenarios had suggested just that possibility.

It has only taken days to hear about the "Hurricane Pam" scenario that predicted levee breaks in New Orleans from a storm Category 4 or greater. I'm not going to dwell on this -- we should have coughed up the cash to fix the levees. Not because it would be cheaper than this mess -- because it would have saved thousands of lives.

What is alarming to me now is that the Sacramento River area is apparently dependent on a somewhat similar system of levees. According to the folks on "This Week in Northern California", many of these levees weren't really engineered, they were just build up by farmers moving dirt. And most of them wouldn't stand up to a major earthquake. The disaster scenario goes something like this:

Earthquake --> levee breaks --> flooding like what we're seeing now. But it doesn't stop there...
...broken levees let the ocean come in --> salt water ruins the pumping system --> LA without water

Meanwhile, contractors are building thousands of new homes on and near the levees. Lets learn something from this horrible tragedy and build up our infrastructure. Perhaps we could keep the estate tax and spend some money to protect the living.

The Supremes
Chief Justice Rehnquist was not, shall we say, my favorite jurist. That said, he spent more years than most trying to make the country a better place, and worked right up until his death. Whether or not you agree with his vision, you have to respect that.

Now we're faced with two openings on The Court to be filled by President Bush's nominations. I'm holding out some hope for Judge Roberts, but I'm concerned about the next nominee. I hope he or she will be more moderate, even if means that Judge Roberts is elevated to Chief Justice (I don't even want to think about a Chief Justice Scalia right now). Unfortunately, the Roberts nomination seems to be sailing so well that it may embolden the president to nominate an even more conservative justice. That could mean good-bye Roe vs. Wade, hello anti-sodomy laws.

Here's my disaster scenario on this one, and you heard it here first (maybe) -- Chief Justice Janice Rogers Brown. I only know her record by report, but all signs point to arch-conservative. If I were a republican president trying to pack the court with conservatives, I'd nominate her. Not only can you make the "you just confirmed her" argument, but democrats would be hard pressed to filibuster the first African-American and woman nominated to be Chief Justice. The dramatic appeal of such a nomination has already been played out in an episode of The West Wing (from which I swiped the title for this part of the blog).

When the next election rolls around (even for Senate in 2006 -- they can hold up these nominations), lets remember that Supreme Court appointments are a big f---ing deal. For now, I'm just going to hope that Justice Rogers Brown is a liberal sleeper lying low until she gets the lifetime appointment. Meanwhile, I'm going to end this blog and have some fun while privacy is still considered a right.