Rick Perry For President?

It certainly seems so. As always, it's intriguing to me that Republicans spend a fair amount of time casting their rivals as "un-American," but tend to get a free pass when it comes to things like publicly (and favorably) musing about secession. I guess I should be used to the double-standards by now.

The South Street Bridge Opens Saturday!

And I'm really looking forward to it -- the bridge is just a few blocks from my home and has been closed for most of the two years we've lived here. West Philly, you're not going to keep me out!

The Inky reports:

"The South Street Bridge will allow people to move between two neighborhoods without feeling as if they had made a wrong turn on an interstate. At their narrowest, the sidewalks are nine feet, and broaden to 15 on the Center City side.

For bicyclists, there will be direct connections to the Schuylkill Banks path and new cycling lanes on South and Lombard Streets between the bridge and 21st Street. Though they run only a few blocks, those lanes make it possible to travel from, say, Northern Liberties to the University of Pennsylvania exclusively on the city's bicycle network."

Read the whole piece, as they say. Inky architecture critic Inga Saffron does a wonderful job of explaining the importance of a bridge -- not just as a way to move traffic, but as a public space -- in the life of a city. Fascinating reading.

More About the ACLU's Suit Against Philly Police

The Daily news profiles Mahari Bailey, an African-American attorney who has joined the suit against Philly PD's "stop and frisk" tactics:

"The following August, Bailey and some friends were standing near 53rd and Euclid streets in Wynnefield when officers, without cause or justification, the suit says, ordered Bailey and his friends to stand against a wall to be searched.

When Bailey told the officers that he was a lawyer and refused to consent to a search, one officer 'raised his fists in a threatening manner,' and told Bailey that he didn't 'give a f--- who you are,' the lawsuit says. Bailey was again released with no criminal charges being filed against him.

In May, Bailey was pulled over at 59th and Master streets in West Philadelphia. When Bailey asked why he had been stopped, one of the officers told him to 'shut up' and that he 'was in the wrong neighborhood,' according to the suit."

I'm dubious those tactics would ever be attempted in my Center City neighborhood. I know Philly's tough to police, but treating everybody like a criminal is a crappy -- and unconstitutional -- way to try and fix things. And probably ineffective: If even innocent and accomplished people like Mahari Bailey become angry and alienated from the police, is it any wonder a "don't snitch" ethos prevails in the city?

After The Tidal Wave

Ben and I tackle the question of "what's next after the election?" in our Scripps Howard column. My take:

On Wednesday morning, while most of her friends and flock were still hung over in despair of the election results, a liberal Kansas pastor sent a short note to the newly elected ultraconservative governor of her state, Sam Brownback.

"Dear Sam Brownback, I am pleased that Kansas has a governor who respects the sacred nature of life," the pastor wrote. "In the upcoming legislative session, I urge you to apply your pro-life principles to all people and support the repeal of the death penalty in the state of Kansas."

The pastor gives a fine sermon, but this act may have constituted her greatest lesson. Yes, liberals and their allies were defeated at the polls on Tuesday. But their causes endure -- providing aid and comfort to the needy; expanding the rights of gay and lesbian Americans; resisting the siren call of militarism in a violent age. A day or two of post-electoral bellyaching is understandable, but there is still work to be done. Republican victories don't change that.

Liberals can spend the next few years griping about their GOP rivals --or the folly of voters who elected them -- or they can accept their beating and begin work on rebuilding their coalitions, all while looking opportunities for to advance their agenda in the meantime.

Those advances may be smaller than desired, but doesn't make them unimportant.

Such advances may be more difficult at the federal level. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has plainly said the objective of the GOP during the next two years is to deny President Obama a second term. Also true: In some debates there is little or no room for common ground. But liberals might find opportunities at the local and state levels. And they might take a lesson from the Kansas pastor: there's no time for despair.

Iowa Justices and an Independent Judiciary

At The Corner, William Duncan sniffs about liberal handwringing over the booting of three Iowa justices who voted to approve gay marriage there:

"Prominent law professors and advocacy groups are apparently concerned that the vote threatens the independence of the judiciary.

The framers of the Iowa constitution certainly didn’t see it that way, since they provided for retention elections. Those raising this concern seem to view the independence judges enjoy as independence from responsibility and from the text and meaning of the constitution they are supposed to be interpreting."

Fair enough. My concern isn't that there's a mechanism for removing justices, but that the process is asymmetric. The New York Times reports:

The most sustained effort to oust judges in this election cycle was in Iowa, where out-of-state organizations opposed to gay marriage, including the National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association, poured money into the removal campaign. Judges face no opponents in retention elections and simply need to win more yes votes than no votes to go on to another eight-year term. In Iowa, the three ousted justices did not raise campaign money, and they only made public appearances defending themselves toward the end of the election.

You can, I suppose, blame the justices for not campaigning harder to save their jobs. For better or worse, that's not something they've ever had to do before -- and thus were defenseless when the tidal wave from NOM and the AFA hit their state. I'm certain that a fair number of Iowans oppose gay marriage, but I'm also certain that Iowans only really got to hear one side of the story during the election season. That makes it a rather less inspiring show of democracy.

That probably won't happen again. The judges are going to have to campaign for their jobs from now on. And where campaigns exist, so does money to influence the outcome. My concern about judicial independence isn't that the justices were held accountable for their actions, but that the form of accountability will drive them into the arms of campaign donors -- making the whole independence thing a little more tricky.

Should Philly ban Happy Meals?

There's no real proposal to duplicate what San Francisco did this week; nonetheless, the Inky decides to make trouble:

"Should the Philly area try to catch up to San Francisco? Put the freeze on cheeseburgers? Deny fries to small fries?

Should Philly go further? Under the California cutoff, a Happy Meal with a plain burger, fries and a soda would be fine.

Or should little consumers get to consume whatever food they want and get Transformers, too?"

I'm not going to claim that Happy Meals are good for you, but this does smack of the kind of nanny-statism that's all too easy for conservatives to use to tar all left-of-center law-making. Besides, the problem with Happy Meals isn't that they have toys -- it's that they're cheap, an easy way for poor families to put calories into their kids without offering quite so many nutrients. But even if a Happy Meal ban is somehow justified, it's completely tone deaf as a political matter. Maybe not in San Francisco, but everywhere else. The problem is that such stories make it hard to do important progressive changes elsewhere.

George W. Bush: War Criminal

We already knew it. It's just official now:

"The Washington Post reports that in his new memoir ... President Bush's response to a request to waterboard 9/11 big nut Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was, 'Damn right.' (Meanwhile, Cheney stated earlier this year that, 'I was a big supporter of waterboarding.')

The Post quotes Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch: 'Waterboarding is broadly seen by legal experts around the world as torture, and it is universally prosecutable as a crime. The fact that none of us expect any serious consequences from this admission is what is most interesting.'"

President Obama hasn't been the civil liberties president I hoped for. But as far as we know, he hasn't done this. George W. Bush was a moral disaster for our country, and I'm not sure we'll ever entirely get over it.