Good News and Bad News.

There is news this morning. It is good news and it is bad news. Since I believe that bad news is sometimes ameliorated and cushioned a bit by good news. I will deal with the Bad News first.

In today's New York Times I found an article about a sitting Judge for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which sits in Houston, among other places, and handles appeals from the judgments of the district courts of Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana which comprise the Fifth Circuit. You can read the article here. The judge in question is Edith Jones who has been on the Fifth Circuit bench since she was first nominated by President Ronald Reagan at the end of February 1985. She was confirmed by the US Senate thirty five days later on April 3, 1985. That is a most interesting fact since President Obama's nominees have waited sometimes almost two years before receiving the advice and consent of the Senate and taking up their judicial duties. In some cases the senate has refused to vote on his nominees altogether because 'filibusters' could not be broken.

Judge Jones recently made a speech in Pennsylvania before a meeting of the Federalist Society in which she asserted that black and Latino Americans were more predisposed to commit crimes than their caucasian peers and that the death penalty was a good thing because it prodded the soon to be executed to make their peace with god. She also stated that claims of mental retardation by criminal defendants (mostly people accused of capital offenses) were an abuse of the justice system. She commented that the SCOTUS decision in Atkins vs Virginia (2002) 536 US 304 which held that the imposition of the death penalty on the “mentally retarded” violated the Eighth Amendment's proscription against 'cruel and unusual punishments'. She said the case was wrongly decided. That is easy to say about any case. You just have to say it. Now Judge Jones is certainly as entitled to opine that cases decided by SCOTUS were wrongly decided as any lawyer, judge or citizen is. My problem with the comment is that it shows a mindset that believes the society has the unfettered right to dispose of its detritus (as defined by either majority opinion or by loud and raucous minority opinion) by gassing, poisoning, shooting, hanging or any other way. She does not seem to care that capital punishment is un-fixable when wrongly imposed. Any trial lawyer (which she was not) will tell you one of the greatest tasks in trying a case to a jury is to overcome societal prejudice against certain types of defendants (and the crimes they have been alleged to have committed), especially when prosecutors have previously tried those cases in the media.  Additionally Judge Jones for years has been criticized for her demeanor and her open criticism and ridicule of lawyers and litigants who come before her court. She has even told her fellow judges sitting in review of the same case to “shut up.” She apparently is no one's favorite judge. Nor is she a model of judicial temperament and certainly cares nothing for the judicial canon commanding her to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Complaints have been filed against her with the current Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit. If nothing else Judge Jones is distasteful and perhaps her remarks and her beliefs deserve investigation by the House Judiciary Committee with a view towards filing Articles of Impeachment against her for failure to engage in “good behaviour.”

Now for the good news. I want to share with my readers (aren't I presumptuous) the blog of a friend of mine, Robbie. That blog can be found at www. Cutegayboy.com. Robbie is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is also Poz or more clearly living with the fact that he has been infected with the HIV virus. He posts about politics, geek stuff and HIV. He is thoughtful and articulate and deserving not just of a read but of a bookmark. Welcome to the Gathering, Robbie. Enjoy writing, discussing and good faith arguments for and against various propositions. I enjoy your writing and I hope others will too.

An Interesting Evening in the Eastern Orange County Mountains.

Last night I visited a friend here in the Canyon. Actually it was in one of our side canyons. The canyon is named Wildcat Canyon and is of some local historical interest. My friend is a talented beer brewer. So I went over and sat at his bar which is built on the canyon wall under a grove of blue agave which are quite large and protect his bar from being trashed by small rocks dislodged from the canyon wall by various wild critters walking along paths on the canyon wall.

It was a nice spring night and the air was a little crisp and the beer wonderful. We sat and we talked about stuff. He's a geologist and we talked about yesterday's 8.3 quake off the eastern coast of Russia not far from the Aleutian Islands. Remember Sarah Palin talking about how she was qualified foreign policy-wise to be president because she could see Russia from her front porch in Alaska or some nonsense like that? It is interesting that quake which the USGS calls a 'severe' quake has yet to be even mentioned by the US media. I guess it wasn't important enough for our media to comment on or report to us. After all it happened in the land of our Mortalist Enemy (ca 1948-1982) so it couldn't possibly be of interest to us. Even though our leaders and their leaders were committed to the mutual destruction of our peoples. I would like to thank the Media for deciding for us what would be of interest to us as a people.

Anyhow one thing led to another and soon we were treating our various ills with a little bit of a small innocent plant banned in the early decades of the last century by Congress at the behest of the then newly legalized liquor industry. Somethings in our system never change and Congress apparently still only acts at the behest of moneyed interests who open their checkbooks to members of congress, much to the chagrin of those of us who really wish for a Congress more open to actually working for the benefit of those who with our hard-earned money pay their basic compensation and pay for their Cadillac medical plans and their overly generous retirement benefits. These are the same guys who have voted no fewer than 37 times to repeal what they derisively call Obamacare in order to deny non members of Congress decent medical care at affordable prices. As to who pays for Congress' non-basic compensation I will leave that to your own imagination, but please don't be surprised when you discover the answer to that.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, or more correctly at the hillside bar in Wildcat Canyon he and I (along with his wife who had by that time joined us) began to notice something odd and unusual. On his bar my friend has a small lamp made from a 'dead soldier' or more commonly called an empty half gallon-sized bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. The lamp has a small conically shaped green lampshade on it. At the top of the lampshade his wife noticed some small winged member of the genus Bug. This poor fellow was repeatedly walking along the top of the lampshade and making circle after circle heading lord only knows where. Sometimes the bug would slip off the side of the top edge of the shade but would quickly recover and head on to wherever it thought it was headed. We watched him probably for an hour engage in this up to then fruitless exercise. At one point my friend decided it might be helpful to the bug's endeavor if it were to walk through a cloud or two of exhaled smoke. So that was arranged. The bug made a couple more trips through the clouds and slipped off a few more times but always recovered and continued on its sisiphistic journey around its small world. It continued to fall, recover and head on. Suddenly it fell again and clung to the side of the shade. It clung there for awhile and then apparently had some sort of epiphany and realized that for the last hour or so it had been headed in the wrong direction! So it climbed back up the rim of its world and began walking in the opposite direction. We continued to observe its progress until it got a bit too nippy to be outside and adjourned our meeting. I have no idea if the bug made it to wherever it was going with such determination. I hope it did. I hope we helped it a bit on its journey. It was indeed a most interesting  fun Friday evening in the eastern Orange County mountains.

Jan Brewer a Monument to Terminal Stupidity.

This morning I awoke to news that I could hardly believe. In the wake of the 2011 shooting in Tucson that resulted in the in the severe wounding of then congress critter Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head by a crazed gun freak Jared Loughner. Loughner was convicted of the deaths of six people of talent and great value to the citizens of Arizona including the sitting Chief Judge of Arizona's US district court and a staff member of then Representative Giffords and several other people who were simply put to death by Loughner. These people were 'convicted' and executed by Loughner for the 'crime' of going to a shopping center in Tucson simply to meet their representative in Congress, The news that so shocked me was that Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed a bill enacted by the crazies in the Arizona legislature that puts guns back on the street.

This bill championed and signed by Brewer requires that whenever police agencies in Arizona sponsor a gun buy back program those sponsoring police agencies may not destroy the bought back weapons of mass destruction to keep them off the streets. They are required under Brewer's Law to auction off the guns they had purchased 'with no questions asked' so they could be sold to other persons 'with no questions asked' and effectively put back on the street to start the cycle of violence all over again. Am I the only one offended by the actions of this unbelievably and terminally stupid waste of food, air and precious water?

Doesn't Brewer understand that she has now become a part of the problem of gun violence that plagues our nation from 'sea to shining sea'? She is the poster child for bad government and is a flesh and blood monument to terminal stupidity.

It's Argument Day!

Finally after all the blood, sweat and the tears since  Stonewall the SCOTUS is hearing arguments on Hollingsworth vs Perry today and in United States vs Windsor tomorrow. Let justice be done. "We the People" means all of us.
As for me and for what it's worth I dedicate today and tomorrow to the gay people I have loved who have not lived to see this day.

AIDS/Lifecycle Ride to End AIDS

Dear Friends,

I want to introduce you to two things: AIDS/Lifecycle’s “Ride to End AIDS” sponsored by among others, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Both organizations have been involved with stopping and combating the spread of HIV from the very beginning in the very early 1980’s and helping to stem the loss of more of our citizens, family members, our friends and our lovers to this disease. Jointly they sponsor a 545 mile 7 day bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles each spring. The ride this year is from June 2^nd through June 8^th. 

My friend Victor “Jesse” Samora has signed up again this year to make that week long ride to end AIDS. Jesse entered the ride last year but was forced to withdraw after an accident last spring before the ride which left him with a broken collar bone, an embarrassed look on his face and unable to participate. He spent months training for this ride and raising money necessary to guarantee him a place in the ride. He was laid up for close to four months.

Jesse, being the tiger he is, has determined that he will make the ride this year. As the price of making this ride he has to raise $3,000 for the AIDS/Lifecycle “Ride to End AIDS.” Jesse is a hardworking stiff but he cannot fund his entry alone. He is asking and I am asking each one of you to make some sort of pledge anywhere from ten thousand dollars to ten dollars on Jesse’s behalf. That’s all you have to do. That’s it. The link below takes you directly to a pledge page for Jesse. Follow the link and give, Jesse’s giving of himself for this and we ought to support him in this event.

The amount of your gift does not matter. It can be ten dollars or it can be ten thousand dollars or anywhere in between. You decide. Join me in giving Jesse the opportunity to rid in this campaign to end this scourge that has ended so many wonderful lives and taken so many wonderful people from us. Please give and give generously.

You can read more about this wonderful charity at: http://www.aidslifecycle.org

To donate to this and to sponsor Jesse with your donation visit http://www.tofighthiv.org/goto/jessealc

It's simple, it's easy and makes you feel good. As an added incentive each of you who donate to Jesse's (and our cause) on Jesse's behalf  will get an invitation to a Leg of Lamb Barbece on Saturday May 11th  at the world famous Silverado Men's Club in lovely Silverado California. This repast will be prepared for your pleasure by none other than yours truly Eamon O'Connor. It will be a great opportunity to meet Jesse and to cheer him on in this really great endeavor. You will have an opportunity to autograph his spandex riding shorts and participate in the Secret Raffle. You can't get a better deal anywhere: a free meal, a tax deductible donation along with a grateful smile and a great hug from a truly great friend. Let's do this!!

The 

Distractions Abound

I have been silent for most of this year. The reasons why are many but suffice it to say that the stuff out there to write about is almost overwhelming and I have been unable to decide what I wanted to write about because there is just so much really distressing and distracting stuff that has happened since the beginning of the year. Much of what is going on is a distraction from the really important stuff.
I am interested in the news surrounding the change of heart on 'the marriage issue' that is dominating CPAC's annual circle jerk. Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) has announced that he is switching his position on marriage equality from being an opponent to being a supporter. He says that he changed his position because his son Will came out to him. I wonder if his position change extends to voting for repeal of DOMA and of course, preliminarily to such a vote into a vote for cloture of the always launched “GOP filibuster” machine. The conversion of Rob Portman makes me wish he had been the veep nominee of the GOP in the last election. Could it be that Paul Ryan was second choice to Rob Portman and that Portman was disqualified because he has a gay son at Yale and because the wingnuts in the GOP figured the potential nominee was struggling with something that might be an October Surprise for them?

Last weekend was also the weekend of the annual CPAC conference. There was a lot of the old in and out at CPAC this time around. This year Trump was in and Christie was out. Both Ted Cruz and Rand Paul competed for favorite son status at the conference. GoProud is also out apparently. Sarah Palin was obviously in. Sarah was in good form but sounded like her next gig is going to be in a back alley comedy house somewhere. Rand sounded like Rand, someone who would create his own ophthalmology association in order to call himself an eye doctor. Oh and in case you were worried Barack Obama is still on the outs, and according to some of our fellow citizens at CPAC, the worst thing to happen to the US of A since the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment. Speaking of the Thirteenth Amendment Mississippi just got around to ratifying it a few weeks ago. Repeal of ongoing injustices should never be entered into abruptly and only after careful thought apparently. It only took one hundred forty-three years.

One of the afternoon presiders at the conference on the afternoon before the straw poll was taken urged the attendees to vote 'early and often' as the saying goes. He suggested they just make up names and vote ignoring the log-in system that been established to provide security for the CPAC members' right to vote. These are the same people who are by and large arguing for and legislating to protect the sacred and fundamental right to vote by making sure exercise of the right by people of color, poor people and old people is as onerous as possible.

There was probably more fun stuff going on at CPAC but news of that circus was completely overtaken and pushed off the front page by the drama going on in Rome over the conclave of cardinals charged with selecting a new pontiff. Wonder, speculation and whimsy seemed to dominate that offering. The result of course was the guy no one expected, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the fellow who rides to work on the bus, cooks and eats his own meals. The man called Francis. He has apparently not yet moved into his apartment in the apostolic palace because he has complained of its size. It is being remodeled to reduce its size. That's an ominous sign for things to come at least as far as the curia goes. Talking heads are saying that the man's biggest task is going to be to rein in the curia and to diversify it. It is interesting to note that many of the papal electors were and are curia members. Perhaps that's why after five ballots they chose Jorge for the simple reason he has no curia experience and probably has no idea where the skeletons are buried in Vatican City and has no clue where to start. Or perhaps after two pontificates stretching thirty-five years headed by non-Italians the choice of an Italian-descended Argentine pope was a nudge back to selecting Italians as popes. Who knows? Doctrinally this Francis is pretty much by the book and I don't expect any large changes to come in doctrine. Although it is of some interest to note that when the Argentine national legislature was considering marriage equality he argued to the conference of bishops that they should not struggle against civil unions but should instead support them as the lesser of two evils. So he appears to be somewhat of a pragmatist. He is seventy-six years old and if he rubs too many medieval lords the wrong way they will most likely be rid of him soon, one way or another.

Original Tunes and Friendships

I suppose that it is no great secret at least to me that I will soon have my seventieth birthday. That's about as breathtaking realization as any I can imagine. How on earth did I get this old? Aren't I supposed to feel some great increase in the wisdom that is supposed to come with age that I have been told we are going to experience. The coming event has caused me to think about that getting older and of course not getting older. I have focused for some reason on the 'birthday presents' that I as a septuagenarian might want to receive. It isn't that I need anything or really 'want' for anything. But it sure looks like someone quite by accident and without thinking about it gave me one great gift.

Today I went to the post office and found a package in my box. It was from a friend of mine whom I knew when he lived in Huntington Beach with another friend of mine and I lived in the Big Mormon House in Garden Grove more than forty years ago when we were both under 30. This package contained a short note from Joe and three CDs of music, one of which was simply titled Original Tunes. Joe if you haven't already guessed is a very fine musician, a guitarist, a banjo player, a pianist and lord only knows (and I can't remember) what else he plays and it turns out he's also a fine lyricist. I love the way his voice has matured.

Listening to Original Tunes has taken me back over the more of forty years of his and his wife Kay's friendship with me. Joe when I first met him just sort of bounced around. He worked construction and played guitar and did what we all did back then enjoyed life, enjoyed music and enjoyed a fair bit of pot. We discovered things and many of them we discovered together. I remember one our discoveries back then: finding out for the very first time that french fries should come to the table hot. One night I noticed they didn't and Joe did too. He pitched a bitch and we sent our orders of fries back to the kitchen twice complaining that they were ice cold. French fried potatoes really are better when they are hot! Since then I have always insisted on hot fries. I hope the server got over what was probably a pretty bad shift that night.

Then he met this breathtakingly beautiful blonde woman named Kay. The both of them quickly became an item and wandered through life together raising two kids and heading everywhere and landing everywhere in places like California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington sucking up free air, being each others' best friends and the parents to two amazing kids. All the while Joe is making more and more music, living his life all wrapped up in his marriage, his family and his music. We should all be so involved and happy.

They had moved away from California when I began the awesome task (in all senses of the word) of coming out to myself and to the rest of the world. I decided that the people I had to tell first were Joe and Kay so I sat down and wrote them a letter. It took me a couple days before I put it in the mail. Then I held my breath and waited. After what seemed like an eternity but was only really a few days I got a response. I was overjoyed with their response. They thanked me for telling them and praised me for removing “the one great impediment to our friendship” and expressed their great love for me. I have never forgotten that and in fact I still have the letter.

Something else I have never forgotten is that when Kay was pregnant with their first child, they lived a few doors east of me and used to go over there at night and Kay would make these phenomenal buttermilk pancakes and Joe and I would drink Wild Turkey and enjoy watching Kate build Jesse. I still use that recipe and everyone I ever make buttermilk pancakes for praises them. I am still shallow enough to accept the buttermilk pancake praise as my due rather than Kay's.

I am really enamored of Original Tunes and I am going to sit right down and listen to it again. It's marvelous and thank you Joe for sending it to me. You and Kay have never ceased to impress me with your love and the depth of your friendship.