| Tal's Blog |  |
|
This is a travel log.
Wednesday –
Late start. Had to go to school first. Y prepared everything, even bread and wine to take with us and we were off.
First we stopped at Carmel by the sea and went by the sea. It was beautiful. Later in the voyage Carmel featured in the tale about Clint Eastwood and his helicopter bound journeys to WB when he used to mayor.
We continued to make the Big Sur drive. It was uncannily beautiful. Especially remarkable was to drive through those spectacular beaches with our top off, following those James Bond style winding roads following the curve of the mountains. There we stopped and had our lunch accompanied by wine while staring at the ocean-filled valley.
Later we got to SLO, AKA San Luis Obispo. A charming university city. Nothing like my university city but very nice. First we tried to find a pleasant place to spend the night in. We came by an amazing inn, the Garden Inn, which is located on - lo and behold! - Garden street. There were two downers which made us morosely decline their offer: the price and the sign which said something along the lines: “this place presents a health hazard. It contains carcinogenic substances.” We asked the proprietress, she said not to worry. She said it was a law, she said an absurd one. We did not worry while running back to our car and driving away at the speed of light.
Instead we went to work at a bar which had live music and wifi! Then we walked through town and made ice-cream parlor window shopping. This is a routine we have where we enter an ice-cream place and while the person at the counter stares at us intently we debate which flavors we would choose were we to buy ice cream. Then we leave the place while offering our best wishes to the perplexed salesperson.
After that we found a horrendous but adequate place to sleep at. It actually worked fantastically because it helped us manage a very early start the next day.
thursday -
Well, that day we made our way through the central coast’s wine country. We even had a glass of wine at the bar/restaurant where they shot Crossroads. Y picked a conversation with the barman and now we know all there is to know, and even more than there is to know, about that area’s wines. That was fun. I pretended quite convincingly I thought to be a sophisticado.
We left there slightly intoxicated and very happy only to pass through a town called Solvang that seems to be a wholesale importation of a Danish town. Y started chatting with a guy who was preparing taffy (something like that). While they were talking shop, I finally had sufficient time to inspect all of the chocolates that were on sale. Then we found a place to pee, mounted on Moise and cruised all the way to Santa Barbara.
Next was LA – a completely different story. I am tired and ought to go to bed. Tomorrow is one of three hurdles I have to overcome before our home-coming.
Y has created a complete photo-tale of our trip which makes my writing superfluous. It is on Picasa.
|
|
I am sitting in a classroom at the law school where the Supreme Court discussion in regard to Prop 8 is being screened. I think it is flabbergasting that a law school administration would invest resources in making sure that its students have access to this particular debate. To my eyes, it cannot be understood in any way other than the law school making a clear and poignant political stance. It is truly dumbfounding that an academic institution would do that. Yet another reason to be proud to be here.
At any rate, to the discussion itself - I think it isn’t very interesting. The sides are merely voicing what I would think would be the same traditional arguments. Nothing new under the justices’ gavel. They all seem quite conservative, even the two justices whom I think the decision hinges upon, those that instituted the right to gay marriages that got overturned by prop 8. The latter seem to be concerned only with the validity of the marriages instituted between their decision and the prop 8 catastrophe. I take that to mean that they will uphold the wretched measure.
What’s more, I think that the legal tools actually work against us. The legal key is supposedly that prop 8 defines a revision in the state constitution rather than an amendment. And as a revision, that it was unconstitutional to put it on the ballot in the procedure that was followed. This tiny legal detail simply does not hold water, since it is hard to ascertain that gay rights are the type of rights that merit revision when the court denied this idea time and again for other types of rights. In other words, precedent works against it, and attorney general office were thus extremely tenuous as the justices made clear. Our side could only repeat the same tired arguments in regard to the importance of the institution of marriage (this, I think was the most convincing part of the discussion) but of course, that is to no avail if rights as such do not mandate a revision instead of an amendment to the constitution.
And I get to my argument now: we need some counter-majoritarian institution in our governance structure. We being every true-to-the-term democracy. The court can’t be that. The court is constrained by political rope. This is just an example were the court can’t really make a determination that will void the (atroucious) popular vote. The public has had its fulsome say, but it is its fulsome say. No way the judicial arm of government can go beyond that. This doesn’t mean that it is not imperative that we go beyond it. The question remains – how?
|
|
|
