Opinion: In today’s pages: Fixing Obama’s lapel, bidding Dutton’s farewell
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Gregory Rodriguez advises Barack Obama to start wearing his patriotism on his sleeve -- or on his lapel -- and American University law professor Nancy D. Polikoff calls for laws to recognize the whole spectrum of family structures, whether gay or straight, married or unmarried. Civil rights lawyer Peggy Garrity assesses the damage that tort reform has caused the justice system:
A second woman is likely to face the same fate in the same court, in a suit alleging that she was drugged and brutally gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq and then held incommunicado, without food or water, in a shipping container by the same employer.... Adding insult to injury, the rape kit used by a military doctor in examining the victim was reportedly handed over to Halliburton/KBR, and doctor’s notes and photos of her bruises are missing. There was no criminal prosecution of the alleged perpetrators because they worked for a defense contractor, which is exempt from criminal sanctions under an order enacted by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq during L. Paul Bremer III’s tenure as its administrator. That decision was outrageous enough. But now the Texas court ruling appears to say that because of the arbitration clause, these women have no standing in a U.S. civil court either.
In the next installment of its series ‘The Great Thirst,’ the editorial board predicts plans for a peripheral canal will be a win-win in the water wars between Northern and Southern California. The board also kicks off the one-year countdown to round one of Los Angeles’ city elections, and calls out John McCain and Barack Obama for inching away from their commitment to public funds:
[W]ith his new front-runner status -- and facing the prospect of raising more private money than McCain in a general election -- Obama has begun to waver. Asked in the last Democratic debate if he was waffling on a promise to accept public financing, he dodged, saying that, if nominated, he wants to ‘sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that is fair for both sides.’ That sounds like the ‘old politics’ that Obama inveighs against. Both candidates should get over their buyer’s remorse. What they gain by abandoning public financing, they may lose in credibility.
Readers write requiems for Dutton’s books, set to close at the end of April. ‘With the imminent passing of Dutton’s books,’ mourns Burt Prelutsky, ‘I feel as if I am on the verge of losing a relative. That is, a relative I actually like.’