FIBA’s qualifying tournament for 2008 Olympic basketball in the America was to be held in Venezuela. President Chavez won the bidding, and his country was to host the event. However his bid, much like the socialism he’s attempting to move the country toward, only looked good on paper. In practice, his govenrment failed to live up to its promises of event preparation, and so FIBA rescinded its award of the event to Venezuela.
Hope was not lost for Chavez’s big showcase though. He was still allowed to re-bid for the event again. He didn’t even bother, though, and so Las Vegas will host the event instead.
Good news for USA Basketball, bad news for Hugo Chavez. The only way I’d be happier would be if somehow the NCAA lost out in this.
I’ve suddenly come down with something today. But oddly enough, I’m absolutely dominating GnuGo today via qGo. So either the latest version of qGo is making GnuGo be really easy, or I play better Go when I’m sick.
I really hope it’s the latter, since that would mean I’m right when I think I’m really a much better Go player if I slow down.
Hooray for the National League! The Cardinals have won the World Series! Now we don’t have to hear about that AL streak anymore.
Now on to basketball… Hopefully Kobe will be healthy for the opener against the Suns.
David Stern, NBA Commissioner, has gone pro-gun control. Sure, he’s only asking his players not to carry guns outside their homes, despite their regular need to travel, but in doing so he’s parroting pro-gun control propaganda. Says the AP:
“It’s a pretty, I think, widely accepted statistic that if you carry a gun, your chances of being shot by one increase dramatically,” Stern said during his preseason conference call. “We think this is an alarming subject, that although you’ll read players saying how they feel safer with guns, in fact those guns actually make them less safe. And it’s a real issue.”
With Kobe already having a chance of missing the Lakers’ season opener, this sort of stunt is the last thing I needed for my basketball morale.
Maybe Mark Cuban is right, and the NBA is spending too much effort to expand internationally, that it’s neglecting to keep its fan base here happy and growing.
For some reason I keep thinking about this obnoxious decision. It just now occurred to me WHY the NJ Supreme Court stretched the state constitution in order to get equal protection, instead of falling back on the easily accessible US Constitution: By sticking to the NJ Constitution, the NJ Supreme Court may be hoping that they will be shown deference by the US Supreme Court and so won’t be overturned, as they might be if they relied on the 14th Amendment.
It has since occurred to me that by contrasting ‘opposite-sex couples’ with ‘same-sex couples,’ the court is begging the question. Once you assume same-sex couples are even comparable with married couples, the decision’s already been made.
For some time, I’ve been arguing that any Fourteenth Amendment challenge to marriage is absurd, because unlike actual forms of irrational discrimination (such as ‘race’-based marriage restrictions) the definition of marriage, a union between a man and a woman, treats all men equally and all women equally.
Today, New Jersey’s courts did something different. The sneaky Petes claim that ‘couples’ have distinct Constitutional rights that the court has the authority to protect. For their justification, see the Supreme Court of New Jersey in Lewis v. Harris, page 42:
In passing the [Domestic Partership] Act, the Legislature expressed its clear understanding of the human dimension that propelled it to provide relief to same-sex couples. It emphasized that the need for committed same-sex partners “to have access to these rights and benefits is paramount in view of their essential relationship to any reasonable conception of basic human dignity and autonomy, and the extent to which they will play an integral role in enabling these persons to enjoy their familial relationships as domestic partners.” N.J.S.A. 26:8A-2(d).
The court then goes on to show that the law does not treat ‘same-sex couples’ the same way it treats ‘opposite-sex couples,’ and then decides on page 57 that:
The equal protection requirement of Article I, Paragraph 1 leaves the Legislature with two apparent options. The Legislature could simply amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples, or it could create a separate statutory structure, such as a civil union, as Connecticut and Vermont have done. See Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 46b-38aa to -38pp; Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 15, §§ 1201-1207.
What I cannot find, though, is where the Court shows that the Constitutions of the US or New Jersey provide rights collectively to couples. They do show a right to marry held by individuals, they show a right to individual equal protection, but never are ‘couples’ shown as being entitled to anything. The only justification given, repeatedly, is a series of laws passed by New Jersey and other states (as quoted above), as part of an ‘evolving ethos of a maturing society’ coming around to the side of the plaintiffs (Page 64).
In coming this conclusion the court refers to, in essence, the penumbra of the New Jersey Constitution, not the US Constitution. We still need to be concerned nationally though. See Page 34 (emphasis added):
Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution sets forth the first principles of our governmental charter — that every person possesses the “unalienable rights” to enjoy life, liberty, and property, and to pursue happiness. Although our State Constitution nowhere expressly states that every person shall be entitled to the equal protection of the laws, we have construed the expansive language of Article I, Paragraph 1 to embrace that fundamental guarantee.
So this reasoning is something we have to worry about nationally, because an activist federal court would not have to make that reach in order to claim the existence of a right to equal protection. They only have to look at the Fourteenth Amendment for that.
Well, I rubbed the lens with a cotton swab, and the disc loaded. Seems odd, though, because before cleaned it, the system would still load Final Fantasy IV, which came in the same Final Fantasy Chronicles set as the Chrono Trigger disc that would not load.
We’ll see if it lasts.
My Playstation 2 isn’t very old. I only got it a few years ago. But it’s already starting to break down on me. Seriously: it won’t read my Chrono Trigger disc anymore.
Sony NEVER makes anything worth anything anymore. $500 for a Playstation 3? You’ve got to be nuts, or just have nothing else to spend money on, to trust them to deliver on that value.
PokerRoom.com is a website I’ve frequented over the last two and a half years. But now, because of the SAFE Port Act, a misleadingly-named law that prohbits payment processing with online casinos, PokerRoom is not only going to prohibit US deposits, but they’re also going to prohibit US players, period.
They do this despite the fact that there are ways around that. Hopefully for them they weren’t counting on US business to begin with.
As for me, I was already considering alternatives, anyway. Now my consideration’s done.