Men with Guns Shoot Man in Buns

I’m writing this on the morning of Sept. 11, 2006. Rudolph Giuliani is back on TV, this time to speak at a Ground Zero memorial ceremony. There’s no humor anywhere, life sucks, terrorists suck, and I have roughly 666 words in which to say something amusing.

OK, well. Speaking of tragedy, there’s a tragedy happening in slow motion in connection with court proceedings in El Paso that might have something to do with 9-11, but may still have funny bits in spite of that. I am speaking of the conviction and pending sentencing of two border patrol agents for shooting a drug smuggler in the butt and not reporting it, and the uproar over said conviction, etc. If nothing else I can say “butt” frequently.

Border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean shot marijuana runner Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila in the butt as he fled from them, in February 2005. Since then Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila has filed a suit alleging violation of his civil rights and is asking $5 million. At the same time, even though Aldrete-Davila was found to have been hauling 800 pounds of marijuana when he was shot in the butt, he was granted full immunity to testify against the border agents, who were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of assault with intent to commit murder, assault with serious bodily injury, and assault with a deadly weapon.

Ramos and Compean both said they thought Aldrete-Davila was armed that day. But the jury didn’t buy it. The jurors were probably more swayed by the fact that the two agents refused to write up the incident and destroyed evidence of the shooting, than by any testimony by the border-flaunting, marijuana-toting, $5 million-wanting, Rosa Parks-wanna-be, woundee.

I mean, if I were a juror in the case, when I learned that Ramos and Compean not only failed to report the shooting, but went so far as to retrieve and hide their shell-casings in order to cover the incident up, I would immediately have wanted them to spend life in prison, because I don’t think armed officers of the law should have a free pass to shoot people on holiday whenever they feel like it. You gotta do the paperwork, and THEN we look the other way.

In any case, a jury has spoken and Ramos and Compean were convicted months ago. The next step is sentencing, which is due to take place in El Paso in October. The slow-motion tragedy of which I spoke earlier is, however, happening right now in Washington, D.C.

Not only are the usual Republicans, such as James Sensenbrenner and John Hostettler, trying to meddle in the federal court’s business in this case, but also so is good old Democrat Dianne Feinstein. They are all asking Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to order the case be reopened and re-prosecuted because they already don’t like the way it turned out, even before allowing the sentences to be read.

You can go to justicefortheborderpatrol.com and sign their petition if you think it’s a good idea. I won’t. It looks to me like they want Bush to assign a new prosecutor in the case now, and then again in the future, and then again, until a prosecutor can be found that doesn’t bring charges, because Sensenbrenner, Feinstein, and the others have decided that if guys with badges can’t shoot Mexicans in the butt without anyone knowing, then the terrorists have won.

What really has the conservatives’ panties in a bunch is that the woundee and undoubted felon Aldrete-Davila got full immunity to testify against two white-hatted good guys, and they RIGHTFULLY see this as a travesty of justice.

It IS a travesty of justice when the bad guys get immunity to testify against good guys. But if you’re going to end that practice just for federal agents, we’re going to be stuck with two separate justice systems, one for liars with badges, and one for all the rest of us. That would be the tragedy.

We Need A Marriage Bank?

I'm writing this over the Valentine's Day/ President's Day weekend. The word now is that, at Mayor Gavin Newsom's direction, San Francisco will issue as many as 2000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples before the courts consider an injunction to stop them. Nearly a thousand have already been married in civil ceremonies authorized by the mayor's office and conducted by volunteers who have given up their three-day weekends for the honor.

And kids these days say we baby boomers had all the fun. Look out, there haven't been this many outraged bigots since those poor tired white people were deprived of Rosa Parks' seat at the front of the bus in 1955.

At least the white riders of that Alabama bus could justifiably whine that they were deprived of a seat. What with seats on a bus being a limited resource and all, you can strain your imagination and visualize how some white guy could get all up and righteous that HIS personal racially reserved seat had been usurped.

But today people declare that the "sanctity of marriage" entitles heterosexuals to have all of it even when there's no shortage! And were only talking about civil marriages! Nobody is forcing churches to recognize any of these same-sex marriages.

Speaking of the sanctity of marriage, the last I heard it was still a violation of the US Constitution for either state or federal US government lawmakers to promote the sanctity of anything or anyone in legislation. So why has the California legislature done so, we wonder idly and pointlessly, with un-bated breath and without question mark.

To me, the really interesting question lies with the clash of morality and legality. This subject is usually subsumed under the categories of "civil disobedience" and "human rights" and in my humble opinion grossly over-simplified at every turn in accordance with the ideologies of the simplifiers.

Not that I am a stranger to simplicity. Hey, I took Philosophy 105 and got me a C+ for the section on John Stuart Mill. I learned to spell "Stuart."

What I'm trying to say is, the courts have to figure out whether what Gavin Newsom is doing is legal. He says California's law is illegal under the state's constitution, and that he's only upholding the latter. In which case he is merely the only California mayor to take his oath of office literally in this regard.

But there is no question in my mind that he has done what is morally right. Morality falls heavily on the side of the oppressed, and no matter what Christian Fundamentalists may think Christians aren't oppressed in this country. To encapsulate, Christians are to same-sex marriages as white folks were to de-segregation. You can be one of the ones who get in the way, or not.

In the words of Jesus, "Get thee behind me, Satan." When you are oppressed I'll stand with you. When you are the one doing the oppressing you need to hear it plain and simple, so you can know when to get down off people's backs.

Speaking of getting the plain-and-simple out, and such: I've been obsessing about the practices of certain Christian missions lately, thanks to some semi-private input I've recently received. I'm talking about the practice of requiring poor people who are invited to a "free" meal to attend a church service beforehand.

This practice is wholly legal and justifiable to the extent, and just to the extent, that the meals are intended exclusively for Christians, and that we all are prepared to agree that non-Christians ought to fend for themselves. Let sinners, secularists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, whatever, set up their own "free" meals for their own poor people, right?

But it has come to my attention that there are some who would go out of their way to call non-Christians to these feasts, without setting aside the church-attendance requirement for them. I just want to go on record, as saying that exploiting the hunger of poor people to promote your religion is immoral and reprehensible. Please don't.

Crackpot Writer Says Blowers Blow

From time to time this column inevitably takes a flaming, careening, nose-dive into column hell. The reasons for this are easy to enumerate. You've got your basic procrastination. You've got the fact that yours truly learned to write copying the words off of advertisements (my first word was "colgate".) You've got the fact that I don't get paid for this, unlike some geniuses I know. (I won't say who, I'll leave the director out of this.)

At times like this I naturally turn to Cindy, my personal Muse, Muse of few words, AKA Muse of "Other". I will beg her to give me a clue.

"What should I write about, Oh great immortal Muse," I will say. So I do.

"Well, you act like you're in a bad mood," she says. "Why don't you tell the readers why?"

Hmm. Yeah, that could work.

OK, what the hell was the city thinking when they decided to let skateboarders race outside my window today when I sat down to write this crap? Complete with announcers, paid for by Red Bull, and a PA system aimed directly at my window?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against skateboard racing, and I suppose if it's going to happen it has to happen SOMEwhere, and what the hell, what is there at 3rd S and Washington anyway but poor people and more poor people, they listen to fire truck sirens and aid truck sirens all day anyway, so they're used to it, right?

So whenever the city wants to put some noisy celebration down somewhere on the map let's put it at what is already the 3rd noisiest damned intersection in the city, where the poor people there have proved by the sheer fact of putting up with it year after year that they won't raise hell about it, right?

And let's do it in style. Let's not just ruin everybody's afternoon. We can do much more that that. After having the event, which we'll run until 4PM, we'll do some half-assed but loud cleaning of the area for two hours. Then we'll go away leaving approximately ten stables worth of straw in the streets, so that at roughly 1AM, when that crackpot writer will think we all are gone for the night, we will send in the streetcleaner and the guys with blowers to clear out all of the straw.

No, I don't have anything against skateboarding of any kind, my gripe is with a hypocritical city that would try to shut down a barely audible dance club a few blocks away near prime real estate on the grounds that the noise it generates disturbs the peace, but lets anything go where I live.

A note to the City Council: put it one of YOUR neighborhoods next time. The well-off aren't the only ones who can play NIMBY.

Speaking of finally cracking after all these years of taking it without complaint, let me tell you what else would have my shorts in a bunch, if I were wearing any.

I STILL can't walk into the First Avenue Service Center by the front door. It has been years since I first saw that sign telling me to use the alley entrance.

Excuse me? I wouldn't mind if it were like the Alibi Room, and the alley entrance WAS the front door. But in this case there is a clear front door on the third avenue side, and it isn't even locked! It's open for ventilation all day! So the only reason to tell me to use the back door is to be sure that people like me aren't seen coming and going.

Now Cindy tells me I should wrap up by saying what's wrong with that.

Damn it, where's Rosa Parks when you need her?