It’s Friday night, time to release damaging information about yourself. But if you are not in the mood to confess your sins when no one will be paying attention, do the next best thing.
Read this excerpt of Tom DeLay getting grilled by the editorial board of the Moonie Times and then vent all your pent up frustration at your keyboard.
Mr. DeLay: Ever is a very strong word. Let me start out by saying, you can never find anything that I have done for personal gain. Period. What I’m doing is what I believe in, I’m doing it the way I believe in it. Yes, I’m aggressive. I’m passionate about what I believe in, and I’m passionate about winning and accomplishing our agenda. I know since 1995 that everything that we have done has been checked by lawyers, double-checked by lawyers, triple-checked by lawyers, because I know I have been watched and investigated probably more than even Bill Clinton. They can’t find anything, so they’re going back to my childhood, going to my family, going to things that happened eight years ago. There’s nothing there. And they can keep looking. There’s nothing there. I have tried to act ethically, I have tried to act honestly. I have tried to keep my reputation – to fight for my reputation – while it’s been besmirched, and I have tried to do it in a way that brings honor to the House.
Mr. DeLay: Look, I’m for an independent judiciary. I don’t know where they get this. When you attack the left’s legislative body, they get really upset. But I’m for an independent judiciary. I’m for an independent Congress. I’m for an independent executive. But the Constitution of the United States gives us responsibility for oversight and checks and balances over the executive as well as the judiciary. And we all know that this judiciary is extremely active. I have asked the Judiciary Committee to look at it and give recommendations as to what we ought to do. Read the book Men in Black.
Mr. Dinan: You’ve been talking about going after activist judges since at least 1997. The [Terri] Schiavo case gives you a chance to do that, but you’ve recently said you blame Congress for not being zealous in oversight.
Mr. DeLay: Not zealous. I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.
Mr. Dinan: How can Congress stop them?
Mr. DeLay: There’s all kinds of ways available to them.
Mr. Dinan: You tried two last year on the Defense of Marriage Act and the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Senate didn’t go along with those.
Mr. DeLay: We’re having to change a whole culture in this – a culture created by law schools. People really believe that these are nine gods, and that all wisdom is vested in them. This means it’s a slow, long-term process. I mean, we passed six bills out of the House limiting jurisdiction. We passed an amendment last September breaking up the Ninth Circuit. These are all things that have passed the House of Representatives.
Mr. Dinan: Are you going to pursue impeaching judges?
Mr. DeLay: I’m not going to answer that. I have asked the Judiciary Committee to look at this. They’re going to start holding hearings on different issues. They are more capable than me to look at this issue and take responsibility, given the, whatever, the Constitution.
Mr. Hallow: The president told [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon no more settlements.
Mr. DeLay: You’re not going to get me in a fight with the president.
Flame away!
It’s hard to get more horrible than that, but in the interest of being fair and balanced, I will now say something nice about him and demonstrate that being a politician is not the worst thing a human being can be.
To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence that he is a child molestor.
The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.
Why?
Gnaw on this little tidbit from Cornell Law School:
In the United States, the Right of Publicity is largely protected by state common or statutory law. Only about half the states have distinctly recognized a Right of Publicity. Of these, many do not recognize a right by that name but protect it as part of the Right of Privacy. The Restatement Second of Torts recognizes four types of invasions of privacy: intrusion, appropriation of name or likeness, unreasonable publicity and false light. See Restatement (Second) Of Torts §§ 652A – 652I. Under the Restatement’s formulation, the invasion of the Right of Publicity is most similar to the unauthorized appropriation of one’s name or likeness. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652C, comments a & b, illustrations 1 & 2.
Okay, grannyhelen, what does this mean?
Well, Booites (yes, I’ve coined the term here first), if you do away with the right of privacy, stuff like this can happen:
…and ain’t nothin’ none of these people can do to stop it, because the right of publicity is NOT protected by federal statute. It arises from the right of privacy. Only in limited states – i.e., California, Georgia and Tennessee (that I’m aware of) – is there a significant body of case law that could probably protect the right of publicity on its own without invoking the right of privacy.
Imagine a gun totin’ actor with two tablets doing his best Charlton Heston impersonation in an advertisement promoting Farenheit 911. Without the right of privacy, ain’t nothin’, really, that Mr. Heston could do to effectively stop this.
Now, think about how many REPUBLICANS WITH MONEY want to protect their personas. Ann Coulter. Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh. Bill “I’ll-sue-you-before-you-sue-me” O’Reilly. Without the right of publicity, which arises from the right of privacy, these folks are BONED.
Do they really want to see the right of privacy go away? Do they really, at the end of the day, have a problem with this particular form of “judicial activism” or “legislating from the bench”?
Would LOVE to see someone bring this up to the rightwing opinionators.
if it’s NOT theirs… ; )
cuts both ways. But pro-property Republicans might take this assault on the right of publicity – now considered one’s “intellectual property” – pretty bad.
an interesting angle you are taking Granny. I had not heard that one before.
As for Booites, it is pretty good too. I wonder whether anyone might consider themself a Booster for the idea that Tom Delay be run out of Washington on a rail?
Like that one, too. And I’m willing to be a Booster for the cause…