What Mr. Bumble says in Charles Dickens’ "Oliver Twist" also applies to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulingTuesday on workplace discrimination: "If the law supposes that, the law is a ass — a idiot."
The conservative majority ruled that the law only allows federal claims of pay discrimination if employees file a formal complaint with a federal agency within 180 days after their pay was set. But as dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted, employees often don’t know until well after that deadline that their pay was unfair, given the confidentiality of salaries.
That’s what happened to the plaintiff in this particular case, who learned late in her nearly 20-year career — via an anonymous e-mail — that she received dramatically less pay than the 16 men who had held the same position at a Goodyear Tire plant in Alabama.
If that hard deadline is really what the law requires, then Congress needs to change the law.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Former House speaker and possible GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich isn’t mincing words in blaming President Bush and White House adviser Karl Rove for the "collapse" of the Republican Party. And he said that the GOP should look to France — France! — for how to resurrect itself.
Gingrich complained that Rove’s 2004 election strategy, which he described as "maniacally dumb," focused too much on appealing to the GOP base. "You can’t be a governing national party and write off entire regions," he told the New Yorker. "All he proved was that the anti-Kerry vote was bigger than the anti-Bush vote."
So what should GOP presidential candidates do? Gingrich advised taking a page from the campaign of new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who, in effect, ran against his own party leader, former President Jacques Chirac.
"What’s fascinating about Sarkozy is that you have an incumbent cabinet member of a very unpopular 12-year presidency," Gingrich said, "who over the last three years became the clear advocate of fundamental change."
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
The new $27 million Creation Museum near Cincinnati has lots of glitz and high-tech animatronic displays.
But is it science? No.
The evangelical group that built the museum says science backs its claims that biblical stories such as Adam and Eve and Noah’s ark are literally true and that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Dinosaurs are shown co-existing with humans.
The founders have every right to create a museum extolling their beliefs, which are shared by many Americans. What they don’t have a right to do is claim that this has anything to do with science.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Kansas’ Sam Brownback missed another six Senate votes last week, bringing his AWOL vote total for the year to 58 of 181 votes, or a whopping 32 percent. Among the missed six were Thursday’s key votes on war funding and immigration. Only John McCain and Tim Johnson (the S.D. senator with the brain hemorrhage) have worse attendance records than Brownback this year. Meanwhile, fellow senators and presidential wannabes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have missed only 13 votes and four votes, respectively. At least with the Senate out of session until Monday, Brownback can campaign for president like crazy this week. But Brownback ought to be realizing by now why Bob Dole quit this seat to run in 1996.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
As he announced welcome new economic sanctions against government-run Sudanese oil companies, President Bush spoke the truth Tuesday in saying that “for too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians.” He also directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to push for a tougher response from the United Nations. But it was two years ago this week that Bush labeled the killings in Darfur a genocide. With every day, Bush’s vow that “the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world” sounds more like a hollow promise.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
