Brown: Asians need names "easier for Americans to deal with"

Frustrated that Asians insist on naming their children after the sounds made when throwing pots and pans against a wall, Rep. Betty Brown lashed out at a representative of the community by demanding that his people name all future children after her ancestors ...

Myrtle, Gertrude, Hortense,and Genevieve:

A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.

The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Can't you see that you are a nasty bigoted ass, Representative Brown?

No, of course you can't.

Off you go to the Leo Berman Hall of Shame.

Update: My Betty Brown-Approved Name is Roy "Golden Corral" Brown. Find yours.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D - Wal-Mart)

The gentlelady from Arkansas has announced she cannot vote for the Employee Free Choice Act:

"I cannot support that bill," Lincoln said, according to Arkansas Business. "Cannot support that bill in its current form. Cannot support and will not support moving it forward in its current form."

Labor forces can ill-afford to lose any Democrats in this legislative battle, given the partisan lines of the EFCA vote in 2007. Already, Sen. Arlen Specter, the lone Senate Republican to vote for cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act back then, has indicated he will oppose cloture if the bill were to be brought up in this Congress.

Lincoln, long considered a crucial Democratic vote on EFCA, was the focus of intense political pressure. Union groups were courting her support while the business community had made her a primary target for defection. Indeed, Wal-Mart hired her former chief of staff for the precise purpose of lobbying on EFCA. Lincoln is up for re-election in 2010.

Count also endangered Republican Arlen Specter, Dianne Feinstein, and a wavering Mark Warner of Virginia as declaring themselves in favor of Big Bidness over the little guy. Expect more of the god-damned Senate Blue Dogs to slink out from under the porch and lie down in the lap of their corporate masters.

This is bullshit. This action defies the attempts of the middle class to resurrect itself in the face of the worst economic times in three generations.

And it makes me feel like sharpening my pitchfork.

Don't forget those Tea Bagger Parties next week!

Click on the toon to read it larger. Be sure and stock up on extra guns and ammo for the celebration, too (if you can find any, that is).

Obama joins Bush in "states secrets" club

In the matter of extraordinary rendition as well as warrantless wiretapping:

In the Mohamed v. Jeppesen extraordinary rendition case, the Obama administration reiterated the Bush administration argument that the case should be dismissed to preserve "states secrets." Likewise, in the Al-Haramain wiretapping case, Obama's DOJ used the arguments of the Bush administration to argue, again, that state secrets should prevent the Al-Haramain case -- in which the only secret isn't a secret because it was inadvertently shared with plaintiff's attorneys -- from moving forward.

Late Friday, the Obama DOJ actually went the Bush administration one argument further, in a third case. In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is "suing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records." The Obama administration filed its first response [pdf] to the suit Friday, demanding dismissal of the entire suit.

Just a reminder, as pointed out by Glenn; one of the rationales provided by all of those Senators who supported the FISAAA that granted immunity to the telcos was the the avenue of suing the government was still open. Jello Jay wrote: "If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House's year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials."

Needless for me to say, what's good for the goose (Bush) is NOT good for the gander (Obama). I expected more and much better from a Democratic president than this, and expect now that either a Democratic Congress or the Supreme Court will limit these illegal powers claimed by the most recent head of the executive branch.

Stop laughing. Back to mcjoan:

It's difficult to read the administration's brief in any other way than a reinforcement -- even an inflation of -- the unitary executive, or to attribute it to Bush holdovers. This is first of the cases in which the DOJ attorneys aren't carrying over arguments from the previous administration -- they are initiating this case. And it appears that the promises of last summer and fall when FISAAA was being argued were pretty damned empty. As EFF points out:

"President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a 'secret' that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."