Grade This! - July 22, 2005
The week’s wrap-up: gerrymander-shaped cakes, getting shoved for asking tough questions, disappearing city government in San Diego and more.
Friday July 22, 2005
Elbridge Gerry’s Birthday Lends Momentum to Redistricting Reform
In honor of Elbridge Gerry’s 261st birthday, a bipartisan group in Congress hosted a birthday party this week to push their legislation to create independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions in every state. The Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act, H.R. 2642, is sponsored by Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.). In addition to preventing both parties from gerrymandering districts to improve their electoral prospects or protect incumbents, the legislation would once and for all put a stop to the mid-decade redistricting arms race sparked by Tom DeLay’s Texas power grab. Independent commissions have met with substantial success in creating a fairer, nonpartisan redistricting process in states like Iowa, Washington, and Arizona.
The party featured a cake shaped like Gerry’s famous salamandrine district as well as speeches by sponsors of the bill and good-government groups who are lending their support to the effort. Said bill co-sponsor Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.): “There are two things you better not mess with: my wife and my district, not necessarily in that order.”
No word on whether another birthday party is planned to honor the anniversary of the XYZ Affair.
Elbridge Gerry’s gerrymander: D- (Gerry’s preferred candidate still lost)
Tom DeLay’s gerrymander: B+ (it swept away every targeted Democrat but one)
Independent redistricting commissions: A-
Gerrymander-shaped cake: A
XYZ Affair: F (millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!)
Josh Patashnik, Harvard University
John Roberts: International Man of Mystery
John Roberts had been a federal judge for almost four minutes when the President tapped him for the Supreme Court. So his record is thinner than Karl Rove’s hair. Does Judge Roberts share his wife’s anti-choice stance? Does he still believe that minimum wage laws are constitutionally suspect? Does he agree with Justice Thomas that federal laws banning whites-only lunch counters are unconstitutional? We can ask these questions, but John Roberts ain’t answering.
But here’s what we do know: when LBJ made his last Supreme Court pick, he choose the greatest civil rights attorney in American history. When President Clinton had the chance, he picked a hero of the women’s rights movement. In John Roberts, President Bush picked a man who has devoted his life to arguing on behalf of corporate interests, championing anti-environmental causes, and pressing the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations’ anti-choice stance. We don’t know much about Judge Roberts, but it’s hard to like what we can see.
Appointing Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court: A
Appointing Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A
Being forced to settle for John Roberts: D-
Ian Millhiser, Duke University
Mainstream Press Finally Asks the Tough Questions and Gets Shoved
Kudos to Andrea Mitchell, NBC foreign affairs correspondent, for challenging the Sudanese president on the genocide in Darfur. Thanks to Sudanese leaders’ impatience with a free press, a guard shoved her out of the room for her questions. Secretary Rice ended up forcing the Sudanese government to apologize, but it makes you wonder why this administration has “forged a close intelligence partnership” with Sudan’s tyrannical regime.
I hope Ms. Mitchell’s questions are part of a larger effort to boost coverage of Darfur on her network, whose MSNBC cable outlet lagged behind the other two major cable news providers in the month of June. Not that the other major television news sources were much better. When the genocide in Darfur is getting beat by Michael Jackson 50 times over, you know you’re in trouble.
A member of the press asking tough questions: A+
“There’s no free press here”: D
Building alliances with despots: F-
Seeing the “Prince of Pop” on TV an average of 208 times a day: Just scary
Josh Rosenthal, Brandeis University
Pandas Gone Wild
After introducing the ridiculously named Currency Harmonization Initiative through Neutralizing Action (CHINA) Act of 2005, meant to force China to unpeg its currency, House members may now have little to fret about. The Chinese have gone ahead and cut the currency link between the Chinese RMB and the US dollar, a move that promises to benefit both China and the world. However, Congress may still be concerned about the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp’s bid for Unocal, an American oil and natural gas company, and possible Chinese purchases of even larger oil companies.
Yet, in a sign that there are more important things to fret about in US-Chinese relations, America’s panda population chose to get pregnant instead.
China Unpegging Its Currency: B+
Pandas: Phat … and getting phatter
Andrew Fong, Harvard University
Lessons from the Experts
Remember when America was the true leader of forward-looking, compassionate, democratic nations? It wasn’t that long ago when we had a Tony Blair for president.
The dynamic Brit Labour Prime Minister, best known today for his infamous support of Dubya’s war of choice in Iraq, held steady only hours after the deadly and sickening London terrorist attacks on July 7 th in pushing his noble agenda at the G-8 Summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. “We offer today this contrast with the politics of terror,” a triumphant-sounding Blair announced two days after the attacks on London’s mass transit system, as the G-8 unveiled their $50 B US plan for African poverty and $9 B for development in the Palestinian territories.
The world’s richest countries, however, weren’t able to agree to the more ambitious Millennium Development Goals or to an accord on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, two initiatives led by – you guessed it – Tony Blair. World-class leadership has its limits. But that’s no excuse for an intransigent Bush Administration, representing the stingiest OECD nation in foreign aid, agreeing to increase African aid so grudgingly. And Bush’s inner circle of advisors remain the sole body of individuals on the planet – outside of right-wing think-tanks and the oil companies who own them – who believe global warming doesn’t exist.
What do other leaders think about Tony Blair’s exemplary leadership in a time of crisis? Nigerian dictator Olusegun Obasanjo praised Blair and the other G-8 heads for “their resolve not to be diverted by these terrorist acts.” Russian president Vladimir Putin warned against restricting democracy too much in the name of security: “We would be giving a great gift to the terrorists themselves because they are aiming exactly for that.” Take it from the autocrats: Maybe it was just something in the haggis, but Mr. Blair has eclipsed the legendary American diplomatic tradition, scuttled by White House neocons using 9/11 to push their radical agenda, to lead the free world in both words and deeds.
Blair’s resolve: A
The state of American leadership among nations: C-
Sacrificing our freedom to eat haggis at Gleneagles in the name of security: B+
Andrew Garib, Cornell University
 Check out my sweet dance moves
As Jon Stewart noted on Wednesday’s Daily Show, it appears Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has lost the landmark case of Family v. Ritalin. Newspapers and weblogs alike were fast to note the somewhat bizarre antics of Roberts’ 4-year old son and avid Dance Dance Revolution aficionado Jack. Campus Progress, among others, is even more interested in the somewhat bizarre antics of Jack’s mother Jane Sullivan, who chose to dress young Jack like a Victorian-era boy doll in a pastel blue suit and short pants (and we’re assuming that in this traditional family, the mom buys the pants).
Roberts’ son’s dancing: creepy
Roberts’ son being dressed that way: creepier
Roberts: really, really creepy
August Pollak, Campus Progress
Where Did San Diego’s City Government Go?
Talk about small government. San Diego, the nation’s eighth largest city, currently has barely enough city council members to keep functioning and no mayor thanks to a hilariously nightmarish sequence of humiliating departures. After Mayor and council member Dick Murphy left office Friday, councilman Michael Zucchet was convicted of fraud and other charges Monday, along with fellow councilman Ralph Inzunza, and resigned the next day. The council politely declined to search for replacements for Zucchet and Inzunza, assuming that they would not be found guilty. Oh, on what charges? Both took money from a strip-club owner who wanted to repeal the “no-touch” rule between patrons and dancers.
Denying the possibility of negative fallout from a criminal trial: D
Local civic participation: C
Wait, there’s a no-touch rule? Crap…
Amy Schiller, Brandeis University
Illustration: August J. Pollak
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