Thursday, October 31, 2002

Democratic Party lawyer Alan Weinblatt had no immediate comment on the ruling. Weinblatt had asked the court to make replacement absentee ballots available by any means - Web site, fax, even e-mail. But the court order only authorized election officials to use traditional mail.

Just days before Tuesday's election, support for Amendment 31 is creeping back up despite an ongoing $3 million ad blitz urging voters to say no.

Poll results released Wednesday indicate that 46 percent of voters now support the ballot measure, which would require English learners to spend a year in English immersion before joining traditional classrooms. Another 44 percent are opposed and 8 percent are undecided.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

[T]he supplemental ballot instructs voters to "Put an (X) in the square opposite the name of each candidate you wish to vote for." That is standard wording for such ballots, but since the new supplemental ballot covers just one race, and since voters may only vote for only one choice for the Senate, Democrats claim the wording is "misleading and highly likely to result in many ballots being spoiled by voters inadvertently."

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Minnesota has election-day voter registration: Show up at the polls with some documents establishing who you are and where you live, and you can vote. . . . Minnesota law [also] allows a registered voter to bring six unregistered ones with him or her to the polls -- and allows those six each to bring one more -- the potential for swelling student turnout, and the Wellstone vote, is considerable.

Monday, October 28, 2002

Friday, October 25, 2002

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Friday, October 18, 2002

Thursday, October 17, 2002

In Aurora's metro region, which primarily serves Milwaukee County, the budget for such services has grown to $1 million, said Sarah Sullivan, director of interpreter services for Aurora's metro region.

One year ago, Sullivan had six Spanish interpreters on staff. This year, the staff is up to 20, offering medical translation services in Spanish, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Russian and Vietnamese, Sullivan said. She hopes to eventually hire someone who can translate Hmong.

A shortage of help for Hawai'i residents struggling against a language barrier has reached what some observers consider critical proportions that soon could land the state in the midst of a federal lawsuit before it's resolved.

The legal threat that looms over everyone — every state or county office, every private doctor or other contractor who receives federal money — is an executive order, among President Clinton's last acts. The order, upheld by the Bush administration, compels any individual or agency that receives federal money to provide services to speakers of all languages.

The pressure placed on government to comply with equal-access laws has been minimal, said Alohalani Boido, a Spanish-speaking court interpreter currently pressing the judiciary for better pay. One reason interpreters are in short supply, she said, is that the pay is too low to keep them in the profession any longer than it takes to get a "real job."

And few pay attention to the constituency they serve, Boido said.

"Who needs interpreters? They're people who are poor and brown," she said. "They're at the bottom of the social heap."

Friday, October 11, 2002

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Friday, October 04, 2002

Roper So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Thursday, October 03, 2002

Stryker's $3 million donation is the largest political contribution in Colorado history. The group receiving the money -- the misnamed "English Plus" campaign -- promises to use every penny in attack ads to defeat the English immersion initiative. If truth-in-advertising laws applied, English Plus, made up mostly of bilingual teachers and Anglo liberals, would be renamed Spanish First. Their aim is to keep Hispanic youngsters in Spanish-dominant classrooms for a minimum of six to eight years.

The operative rule seems to be: "We're going to do what we think is right unless there's an incredibly clear black-letter statute saying we can't. And then we can always declare it unconstitutional." Does the elected legislature have any role to play here at all? (It's ironic that the court pays such attention to finding what it thinks is the most democratic way to pick a lawmaker, even as it brushes aside the actual work-product of those democratically-elected lawmakers, namely statutes.)

But also there's no doubt the Florida Supreme Court was politically motivated. Bush wins the original tally, then wins the mechanized recount. The Florida Supreme Court, as brazenly pro-Gore as the Washington court was brazenly pro-Bush, steps in and imposes a hand recount whose terms openly defy the Electoral Count Act of 1877, which Congress passed after the Hayes-Tilden election specifically with this situation -- disputed slate in one state that can determine the national outcome -- in mind. Bush then wins the hand recount, making him 3-for-3. Meanwhile, United States Supreme Court issues its first ruling, saying the Florida judges don't seem to understand the Electoral Count Act and ordering the Sunshine State court to explain its reasoning. The Florida judges refuse! Given a direct order by the United States Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court repudiates the United States Supreme Court, since the Florida judges know they can't give any coherent explanation of their first set of orders.

TMQ has always thought the Florida court's snub of the Supreme Court (Florida judges issued an explanation only many weeks later, when the dispute was over and no one cared) was the overlooked momentum-changer in the whole recount mess. How could anyone with a One L understanding of the Constitution think a state court could simply refuse to answer a direct instruction from the United States Supreme Court? Rebuffing a direct instruction from the United States Supreme Court made several Supremes think the Florida Supreme Court was a bunch of buffoons. Sandra O'Connor, prominently, swung to the end-the-recounts position when she concluded that the Florida Supreme Court was under the control of buffoons.