GAZETTE COLUMN: VA GENERAL ASSEMBLY - NO RESPECT FOR WOMEN by John Flannery

In the 80s, I first attended an historic spring rite at Wrenn’s Mill in the Isle of Wight County when the shad are said to run in the James River. 

Shad were put on planks the way the native inhabitants had originally and, while this feast was cooked, everyone talked politics and traded political endorsements. 

This shad planking gathering has been going on since the 1930s and it has become a show case for anyone who wants to run for office in Virginia.

When I first attended in the 80s, some of the politicians in attendance whispered that they resented that women had been “recently” allowed to attend; they added, it was no longer just the men, so they could no longer pee in the woods.  Don’t ever get between a man who has been drinking beer and an English box wood.

I was discouraged all the more because the Virginia General Assembly, about the time I first attended a shad planking, had narrowly voted down the Equal Rights Amendment that would have declared equality among the sexes.

In the years since, women have been accepted at the shad planking as guests and candidates.  So I had the profound misunderstanding that Virginia had become the New Dominion.  After all, women appeared to be treated as almost equal.  So it appeared until the current legislative session when our General Assembly has shown itself to be the single most chauvinistic legislative body – and the subject of late night ridicule.

Out of one side of their collective mouth, the Republicans say they don’t want government interfering with our health, and then they pass legislation dictating what a woman’s doctor must do, indeed, a procedure that many parents would be embarrassed to describe to their daughters.  Having described it, any woman of any age would recoil.  You might presume any man would as well at the thought of requiring a mother, wife, sister or friend to endure what our General Assembly contrived without their consent.

Women may have thought that they enjoyed confidentiality when visiting their physicians but the Republicans including women legislators who should know better have fought to intrude upon a woman’s privacy when she consults with her physician about having an abortion.

Lest there be any confusion on this score, I hasten to add that, whatever your religious view of life, and you are welcome to abide by whatever view you have, it is not the law of the land if you believe that abortions are illegal; the U.S. Supreme Court long ago decided that a woman may have an abortion in the first trimester without any government interference. 

Our General Assembly, led by the Republicans, would have required a physician to force any woman who wanted to have an abortion to submit to an examination by a probe that is tantamount to a sexual assault under the criminal code of Virginia.

In response to mass demonstrations in Richmond, the General Assembly now thinks it might be better to demand that a woman have a sonogram that does not invade her physical person but that she will have to pay for, and that the experts tell me, won’t show anything – in terms of fetal development – and that appears calculated to demean and humiliate women because it has nothing to do with a woman’s decision to have an abortion.

Indeed, the bill’s Republican Patron, Kathy Byron, from Lynchburg, admitted at a hearing before the Senate Education and Health Committee that her purpose was to try to change a woman’s mind.  On her web site, she said, “government control over our health care tramples upon the rights of individuals and families.” 

Republican Delegate Todd Gilbert showed his ignorance by saying that women have abortions as a “lifestyle convenience.”  Todd was awarded the “Champion of Justice Award.”  Maybe he should return it.

Republican Delegate Dave Albo took to the floor of the House of Delegates to complain that his wife denied him intimacy because, as he settled in to seduce her (his description in the General Assembly), MSNBC broadcast a critical report of his support of the intrusive sonogram initiative – and, having seen this, Mrs. Albo announced she was going upstairs to sleep – watch it for yourself - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLsy9eKBlI&feature=youtube_gdata_player  .  

You have to wonder what kind of a man would make public such an encounter with his wife.

The answer is easy, a man who doesn’t respect women.  More generally, that’s our General Assembly.  Write and tell your elected representatives in the State Senate and House that this is just not acceptable.

COLUMN: ARE WOMEN EQUAL TO MEN? by John P. Flannery

ERA DEMONSTRATION IN RICHMOND IN 1979

Not everyone believes women are equal to men.

One former Virginia Governor who believed that “all men are created equal” had a different view of women; he wrote, “Were our state a pure democracy, there would still be excluded from our deliberations … women, who, to prevent depravation of morals and ambiguity of issues, should not mix promiscuously in gatherings of men.”

That seemingly unenlightened gentleman was none other than Thomas Jefferson.  But he is not alone in the history of this still young nation.

The good news is that the Virginia Senate took up the equal rights amendment (the “ERA”) to the U.S. Constitution in the current legislative session to assure equality among the sexes; the ERA says, in relevant part, that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 

It was passed by Congress and sent to the states in 1972.  It is amazing it has not been passed.  Luckily, the intervening span of years is no obstacle to approving it now.  By way of precedent for its belated passage, consider the “Madison amendment,” regarding the compensation of elected representatives, introduced in 1789, which languished for 203 years before garnering three-quarters of our states for its approval as a constitutional amendment.  The U.S. Supreme Court has said Congress can determine how long to allow for the ratification provided there is no such limitation in the amendment as it is written; and there is no such limitation in the ERA.  So it does still matter if Virginia becomes number 36 of the 38 states necessary to ratify the ERA.

Virginia narrowly rejected the ERA in 1980.  Former State Senator John Chichester famously abstained from voting, interposing a “conflict of interest,” saying, he was after all, “married.”

The intervening years have underscored that this amendment is needed and not surplus verbiage.  Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in September 2010 that the U.S. Constitution does not protect against sex discrimination.  What Justice Scalia was saying is that “sex” is not a “suspect” classification like race or religion or national origin. 

Those who say we have various statutes that protect women at the state or federal level, they ignore the legal process by which any mere statute may be ignored, enforced unevenly or negligently, drastically changed or repealed entirely, and with judicial impunity.  But a constitutional provision is a fundamental and supreme law, a standard by which deprivations of rights and liberty may be measured and remedied in court if necessary.

In the current legislative session, Senator Bryce Reeves (R- 17^th SD) voted for the equal rights amendment in committee, saying, “I have a wife and daughter, I’m for it.”  But he voted against the amendment when it came to the full Senate, saying it was no longer necessary.  What persuaded him that his wife and daughter no longer needed to be considered equal?

Senator Jill Vogel (R- 27^th SD) also reportedly voted for the ERA in committee but then voted against it on the floor of the Senate.  We sincerely hope she’ll reconsider her vote and lobby for its passage in the next legislative session. 

When the amendment came to the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment (R-James City) asked to delay the vote on ratification – as if we need more time to understand this issue. 

Senator Norment explained the reason for delay, by charging that Senator Janet Howell (D-Reston) was among the bra-burning feminists who favored the ERA 40 years earlier, and the delay, he said, was because Senator Howell “still needs some more time to gather up lingerie to burn and protest on this.” 

In the end, the ERA passed the Senate in a bipartisan vote, and the Senate at least revived its reputation.  But the House of Delegates buried the ERA in Committee without a floor vote.  Now, how cowardly is that?

Senator Yvonne Miller warned the General Assembly that the failure to vote for the ERA would lead citizens to understand “that Virginia is a backwards state.”

She was right – we are - so let’s reason with our elected representatives so we can become a forward looking state and get it right the next time – with a bi-partisan vote in both chambers, and finally correct the mis-spoken statement that Jefferson made that he can no longer correct himself.

ML KING Tribute - 3/1/12 - 7:30PM - ST JAMES - LOVETTSVILLE - presenter: JOHN FLANNERY

A TRIBUTE TO THE REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING

Please attend our FAITH & LIFE FORUM

THURSDAY, MARCH 1 2012 at 7:30 PM

ST. JAMES UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

10 EAST BROAD WAY - LOVETTSVILLE VA

__________________________

King spoke of "Beginning the world over again: A challenge to racism, materialism, and militarism."

Rev. Don Prange: "On the heels of Black History Month, we are taking note of the dream of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to 'make the world over again.'"

"John Flannery, a friend of mine, will pay tribute to the vision of Dr. King," Reverend Prange announced, "and John will discuss how Dr. King's message remains relevant today, teaching us how we are still confronted by the triple threat of racism, materialism and militarism."  The Rev. Prange said, "a discussion will follow John's remarks."

Our facilitating speaker: JOHN P. FLANNERY II

About John: He is a former federal prosecutor, former Special Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and to the U.S. House Judiciary Committees, a civil rights lawyer and political activist who served as the Virginia state-wide co-chair for Jesse Jackson?s presidential campaign (in 1988)(Jackson won that Virginia primary but not the nomination); John is also active in the community with his wife Holly Flannery, practices law at his firm in Leesburg, and writes columns and often speaks on tv and radio about law and politics; likely, you?ve seen John appear on Fox TV as part of their "fair and balanced" coverage.

      As for what Mr. Flannery might say, he said, "it was particularly relevant what Dr. King said in a speech he gave in 1967 speech just one year before he was assassinated; that's the starting point for this tribute ? that we still have work to do."

     

      This is the relevant section of Dr. King's 1967 address: 

      "I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of a world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.  We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society.  When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

      

     

  

GAZETTE COLUMN: MITT’S MIND BLINDNESS TO POVERTY by John P. Flannery

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn’t consider “the poor” part of his mission as president if he’s elected.  The lips of Lady Liberty, inviting the world, “Give me your tired, your poor,” are words unheard by Mitt.

The poor have a safety net, Mitt says.  But not too long ago he said the safety net didn’t work meaning it didn’t help – and therefore wasn’t needed – and there was just too much overhead he said – though the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that as much as 99 percent of the dollars set aside for the poor are actually spent on the poor.

Mitt is a well-oiled political weather vane spinning wildly in the winds of public opinion.  Republican activists and Independents fear he is an invertebrate without any principles at the center that one could mistake for political character.  In a recent turn in the news spin cycle, Mitt was caught up short for his hard hearted indifference toward the poor.  He back-filled saying that he’d “fix” the safety net if it needed fixing – the net that he had found unnecessary.

Mitt’s mind is blind to the fact that our “safety net” is not only necessary but it falls short and is past due for a fix for the one in six poor who go hungry, and a third of the poor who have no health insurance.  Incidentally, Mitt wants to cut a few holes in the health insurance net by reducing Medicaid.   Not the kind of “fix” you’d expect from someone who cares about the poor.

You might think Mitt made the calculation that the poor don’t vote – and that the nation doesn’t care about the poor.  But I believe we are all better than that and it explains why Mitt scrambled to explain that he “misspoke.”

Perhaps Mitt thought he was merely topping the chorus of the callous.  Republican Presidential primary candidate, Speaker Newt Gingrich, thought it was funny that so many must rely on food stamps so they don’t go hungry. 

There is this absurd Dickensian projection embraced by the unfeeling, Mitt and Newt included, that gives them some solace, the belief that all poor are malingerers, faking hunger, homelessness, and illness.  Mitt and Newt want us to believe that the poor really could work and earn a living – if they just chose to do so.

Mitt says he favors the middle class.  If so, he ignores the fact that the shrinking fractional proportion of our polity that is the middle class is not being promoted into Mitt’s nether regions of scandalous investment incomes.  The middle class shrinkage means some of us are joining the poor, losing our jobs, home, health care and retirement.

By contrast, the social contract that has worked for this still young democracy is to promote the good life for one and all by encouraging wealth, but also while creating a climate of public and private incentives favoring jobs for the middle class and transfer payments for the poor.

Our society is out of whack.  The true class warfare is the notion that any group has gotten “its own” and the other segments of society must fend for themselves.  Many of the rich get it.  Mitt is not one of those.

Mitt should read the Book of Mormon more carefully for there it is written:

“But wo unto the rich who are rich as to the things of the world.  For because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek and their hearts are upon their treasures; wherefore, their treasure is their god.  And behold their treasure shall perish with them also.”  2 NEPHI 9:30.

So may his candidacy perish -- if not before Tampa then in November!

GAZETTE COLUMN: THE SUPREME COURT SAYS NO TO BIG BROTHER by John P. Flannery

            When I was a law student in 1972, a bunch of us wrote and solicited articles that we published about the horrors of the government invading our individual right to be let alone; it was all about government surveillance and the right of privacy.

            The best part was a meeting with Senator Sam Ervin from North Carolina who agreed to write an article for our publication, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review; this was before the nation knew Senator Ervin as the Chair of the Senate Watergate hearings. 

The Senator was concerned in 1972 about the “insatiable curiosity of the government to know everything about those it governs.”  He said, “Some agencies take the attitude that the information belongs to them and the last person who should see it is the individual whom it is about.”  At the time, “Army agents were sent throughout the country to keep surveillance over the way the civilian population expressed their sentiments about government policies.” 

Our article on remote camera systems for surveillance of public streets seems quaint when you consider “modern” technology.  Thanks to Justice Department funding, Mt. Vernon had installed in 1971 low light TV cameras from Sylvania that could rotate 355 degrees in a horizontal plane and 120 degrees in a vertical plane; they could read a license plate or see a face ½ mile away, and could take photographs even through store or apartment windows.

George Orwell’s dystopian Novel, 1984, included telescreens by the ruling party of Oceania, monitored by the thought police, to watch its subjects, supposedly so they could stop any chance of secret conspiracies against the government.

If we fast forward to the present, we have the biggest, “baddest” computing power in the world, as well as the Internet with its digital back alleys, GPS satellites, thermography, electronic bugs, and all manner of possibly intrusive devices that may infringe upon our privacy.  In order to bank, phone, and transact business online, we surrender private information for good reason that can be used for wrong and unconsented purposes.  Private Telecomm carriers reportedly are cooperating with the government to collect and analyze data about all of us.

There is encouraging news, however, that the supreme law of the land still favors our individual privacy.  Last week, the Supreme Court curbed the government’s excessive reliance on GPS surveillance techniques – and made some significant observations about hi-tech devices that threaten to hi-jack our privacy.

In the case that was decided, the government placed a tracking device on Antoine Jones’ Jeep Grand Cherokee for four weeks without a valid warrant.  The government knew within 50-100 feet where Jones was 24/7 and generated 2,000 pages of personal data about his personal activities.

Justice Scalia, writing for the Court, said the Fourth Amendment guaranteed each individual the right “to be secure” in his person, house, paper and “effects” and a “vehicle” was an “effect” that was impermissibly searched by this GPS monitoring technique.

Justice Sotomayor said that we are not only protected against trespass of our “effects” but also violations of our “reasonable expectation of privacy.”  She charged that this e-surveillance “chills associational and expressive freedoms” and is “susceptible to abuse” and “inimical to democratic society.” 

Sotomayor expressed the concern that we are going to have to re-visit how we handle abuses of the information that we disclose to third parties for one purpose that is abused for different purposes and that includes the phone numbers we dial, the text messages we send, the urls we visit, the e-mails we write and receive, and the online purchases of books, groceries and medications. 

Justice Alito joined the chorus of concern with a somewhat different analysis but focused as well on how “closed-circuit television video monitoring is becoming ubiquitous” on toll roads and elsewhere.

While this decision is a hopeful sign that we may still have some right of privacy, we are going to have to be vigilant.

By the way, does anyone know what those cameras at the traffic stop in Leesburg on East Market Street are capturing – they appear to be on 24/7?

GAZETTE COLUMN: BEGIN THE WORLD OVER AGAIN – MARTIN LUTHER KING’S DREAM by John P. Flannery

It was Tom Paine who wrote that we as a people and a new nation had the capacity “to begin the world over again.”

Martin Luther King set out to make the world over again and he made a good start before he was shot dead.

King said, “Let us be those creative dissenters who will call upon our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.”

That’s what we celebrated when we marched last week from the court house to the school house – our opportunity to begin the world over again.

Of course, we talked about the cold and of the diverse community of warmly bundled marchers with colorful scarves and trophies from past political marches carrying steaming hot coffee cups; then, somewhat self-consciously, we realized the only inconvenience we faced in our march was the wind and weather.

Just think about the march in Selma, Alabama and how it succeeded in winning voting rights legislation in 1965 because, as King described it, a “stubborn sheriff” acted so wrongly in handling the protest that he “stumbled against the future.”

Martin Luther King was a man immersed and saturated in the Christian spirit, shaped by the Bible, focused on what was just, on equality, and he chose as his guide for activism the non-violence of Jesus and of Gandhi.

After Selma, King said that, “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end.  That is what I have found in nonviolence.”

Anticipating his own death, King said in the Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, that he identified with those who were poor and hungry and, “[i]f it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because I heard a voice say, ‘Do something for others.’”

The challenge for our nation, in his mind, was human rights; it remains our challenge today.

In this presidential election year, decades later, we have a need and the opportunity to concern ourselves with the collective misfortune of our friends and neighbors.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich declared after his electoral presidential primary victory in South Carolina that the reason for his win was “[t]he American people feel that they have elites who have been trying for a half century to force us to quit being American and become some kind of other system.”

Gingrich celebrates individual freedom from any government program.  Gingrich pretty plainly has said that he will cut out food stamps (makes fun of the President for feeding the hungry) and housing for the poor, unemployment insurance for the jobless, training programs for those who want to join the work force, education grants, and he would curtail or eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  These are among the last 50 years of government legislation and programs that Gingrich disapproves. 

Gingrich’s win in South Carolina confirms, what King said years ago, that “[o]verwhelmingly America is still struggling with irresolution and contradictions.”

Gingrich does not discuss much the elite that he does celebrate, the filthy rich who sustain both Romney and Gingrich, two heads of the same beast, who especially resist any public system that dares regulate their favored elite, even though, to borrow from King again, the current regulatory “[l]egislation … is evaded, substantially nullified and unenforced [making the effort in recent days] … a mockery of law.”

The assistant director of the office of economic opportunity, Hyman Bookbinder, back in 1966, said that “the poor can stop being poor if the rich are willing to become even richer at a slower rate.”  Now the same can be said about what’s happening to the middle class.  But Gingrich and his kind would accelerate their profits – at our expense.

King worked “to begin the world over again.”  In the midst of our almost unprecedented domestic crisis and our costly foreign entanglements, this presidential election is an excellent time to resolve to continue King’s work and to climb that “plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness.”  Now that’s a worthy challenge for any political campaign!

GAZETTE COLUMN: CAN URANIUM MAKE YOU GLOW IN THE DARK? by John P. Flannery

You know how some early Americans thought to invade Canada.  Well, they are now invading Virginia.

There’s a Canadian Company that wants Virginia to lift the 30-year-old ban on mining uranium so that they can dig up about 119 million pounds of uranium, worth about $7 billion. 

You might think they feel safer mining here rather than in Canada.  The truth is they’re coming here because they’ve already thoroughly messed up their own north land – such as the open pit they left behind at the Key Lake Mine in Northern Saskatchewan, and the sand-like Stanrock tailings (70 million tons) at Elliot Lake. What they leave behind looks like a moonscape – barren, lifeless and gray. 

We can’t really want them to do the same to us.  Instead of allowing them to lift the ban on mining uranium, we should be considering every other energy alternative before radioactive material.  Some prefer nuclear because there are no carbon emissions.  That’s good but don’t forget there is the radiation from uranium.  Our best engineers have shown no clear ability to mine uranium safely, nor much more success in avoiding leaks from reactors when generating nuclear energy at plants, and then there is that nasty question of what we do with the spent radioactive rods and ore that sends off radiation for longer than we can imagine our progeny existing.

This Canadian company and its Virginia supporters nevertheless want our Virginia General Assembly to lift the ban on uranium mining – and the legislative outcome is in doubt.

Ordinarily, the unstable Uranium atom decays until it becomes another element that is stable.  In the bargain, it sends out alpha and gamma rays.  Gamma rays rip through your clothing and concrete and heavy metal and can cause radiation sickness and cancer.  Once you inhale or ingest any uranium tailings or dust, no matter how small, once inside you, the alpha rays damage living tissue from within.  We like to think everything wears down and Uranium does but longer than we can imagine.  Uranium 238 has a half-life of 4.51 billion years. Radium 226 has an intermediate half-life of 1,600 years.  This is a half-life longer than all recorded or imagined time.

In order to unearth the fuel for these reactors in Virginia, among the very serious challenges to our safety and well-being, are the radioactive rivers that we shall likely unleash and the toxic dust that will float in the air that Virginians breathe because of the mining of this unstable element.  Heavy rains feeding rivers and winds carrying uranium particles will damage human tissue beyond repair.

Today we are focused on a proposed mining site in Pittsylvania County, the principal object of the Canadian company’s interest, but you should be aware that there are earlier uranium mines elsewhere in Virginia that were abandoned years ago and unexplored Uranium deposits that run North and South parallel to Virginia’s western border and through Loudoun County.

The Canadian company and its Virginian supporters tell us, like that old song, of Bobby McFerrin’s, “Don’t worry.  Be happy,” for there will be federal oversight and regulation of the mining.  We had assurances from these same federal authorities that the mines of West Virginia were safe from gas explosions (when they weren’t), and that the Gulf of Mexico was safe from any major oil drilling disaster (when it wasn’t). So we are not assured.

Rachel Carson wrote in 1962 in “Silent Spring” that “[t]he most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.  This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible.”

This legislation, if powerful vested interests overcome rational argument, is likely to release a clear and irreversible danger in Virginia – and that would be our state’s shame and disgrace.  Write your state delegate and senator -- so that maybe they don’t get this one wrong.