Take this job and shove it-Update

Bump & update: The Senate voted 72-23 Thursday afternoon to proceed to the bill. This is a good thing. Be proud, Democrats and Progressives.

Also, to show the awfulness of Alito:

President-elect Barack Obama paid a visit Wednesday to the Supreme Court and chatted in front of a fireplace with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a fellow Harvard law graduate whose confirmation he opposed three years ago.

. . . Wednesday's meeting was described as a relaxed, get-acquainted session. It included Roberts, seven associate justices and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

The absence of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was at the court Wednesday morning for arguments in two cases, was a mystery. He has, however, voiced lingering anger over Senate Democrats, including Obama and Biden, who voted against his confirmation three years ago. When walking on Capitol Hill, Alito has said, he crosses to the far side of the street whenever he nears the Senate Office Building.

Great. We have a fucking petulant adolescent on the Supreme Court. Judicial temperament my ass. This prick has the temperament of a shunned Heather, still willing to lash out at classmates who called her geeky. Reminds me of the slut-monkeys in Carrie who trashed and humiliated her. Difference here is Alito deserved to be trashed and humiliated.

While I don't believe Obama has Carrie-like powers, still, I hope he realizes that Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and Scalia are self-important Right-wing ideologues, who have no, none, never not any chance of being rehabilitated.

They are broken men.


(Take This Job and Shove It-Johnny Paycheck)

Remember the name Lilly Ledbetter? She's the woman the Supreme Court royally screwed in 2007, when Injustice Sam Alito ruled that it was completely OK for an employer to illegally discriminate against an employee, as long as the employer keeps the discrimination secret for 180 days:

Justice Alito held for the five-justice majority that employers are protected from lawsuits over race or gender pay discrimination if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more.

This was a case of statutory rather than constitutional interpretation. The plaintiff in this case, Lilly Ledbetter, characterized her situation as one where "disparate pay is received during the statutory limitations period, but is the result of intentionally discriminatory pay decisions that occurred outside the limitations period." In rejecting Ledbetter's appeal, the Supreme Court said that "she could have, and should have, sued" when the pay decisions were made, instead of waiting beyond the 180-day statutory charging period.

She might have sued except that she DIDN'T FREAKING KNOW! So as long as the employer keeps a successful secret, the employee is screwed. Republican values at work again. Of course, Ms. Ledbetter, being a woman, probably shouldn't have even been working at all.

Thankfully, Sen Pat Leahy (D-VT) has started a movement to fix this awful problem, and the details are at the Equal Pay for Equal Work website:

American women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. In the year 2009, that's downright shameful.

That's why I am joining several of my colleagues in the Senate to introduce the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act of 2009, to protect women from discrimination in the workplace. But this common-sense legislation faces considerable opposition from some of my colleagues -- and a likely filibuster attempt -- so I urgently need your help to ensure it passes when it comes before the Senate on Thursday.

Please stand up for the principle of "equal pay for equal work" by forwarding this message to your Senators, urging them to support the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009!

Thank you for taking action.

Indeed. Please click through and use the tools there; you can send an email to your Senators, and you can copy and paste the letter and send to other politicians, especially your representatives. This ruling by the Supremes is unconscionable to any normal person. It makes perfect sense to conservatives, who want to keep things the same:

• No justice for "them"
• No voting for that gender.
• No marriage rights for "them".
  
• No rights for anyone but "us".

Bastards.

We say yes, but you say no.

Bush signed the OPEN Government Act which made the FOIA stronger, but now he's trying to ignore the law and shift things to the Justice Department. Does that mean he has more loyal Bushies there?:

In August, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government reported that “current government handling of FOIA requests is deteriorating” and that the Justice Department was “consistently granted the lowest percentage of [FOIA] appeals of any agency.”

On New Years Eve, facing “congressional pushback against the Bush administration’s movement to greater secrecy,” President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act, toughening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation — unanimously passed by the House and Senate — would push agencies to respond more quickly to records requests.

But now, the White House is doing everything it can to neuter the law. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) said yesterday that Bush’s FY2009 “funds for the Office of Government Information Services authorized under the newly enacted OPEN Government Act will be shifted to the Department of Justice” from the National Archives. Congress Daily reports:

“But by shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there,” according to an aide to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT). […]

National Archives officials are relatively independent of political pressure, the staffer explained, “but DOJ is different.” Government transparency advocates consider the department hostile to efforts to improve FOIA responsiveness, in part because it represents agencies sued by FOIA requesters.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a cosponsor of the OPEN Government legislation said he “does agree with Senator Leahy and would oppose that effort” of the adminstration.

Okay, the first thing the new Democratic president needs to do is fire everyone in the Department of Justice who was hired on after January of 2001, or has had close connection to the Bush administration during these eight long years. The Department of Justice should protect the law not the president's ass. It's about freedom of information not secrecy. It's about justice not cover.

crossposted at Rants from the Rookery.