Category: Bronx

Post-Primary Day

I voted on Primary Day; did you?

There will be a runoff between John Liu and David Yassky in the NYC Comptroller race. John Liu could be the first Asian-American elected to citywide office. Disclaimer: I had Yassky as a prof back in law school. Further disclaimer: I’m not going to mention who I voted for.

There will be a runoff between Bill De Blasio and Mark Green in the NYC Public Advocate race.

I don’t live in New York County, so I didn’t vote in the DA election across the river. Cyrus Vance, Jr., won; there will be a new DA in NY county, ending the Morganthau era. Funny, Vance doesn’t look like Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy… (never mind; silly joke).

At least three city councilmen have been ousted, including Alan Gerson of lower Manhattan (the district covering Chinatown) who lost to Margaret Chin. More Asians will be representing NYC in city council.

Prof. Peter Kwong answers questions on the City Room Blog of the NY Times on the gentrification of Chinatown.


WQXR will be in a new radio frequency, moving from 96.3 to 105.9. I’m not big on change; it is weird that WNYC bought WQXR.

Change in NYC. Ah well.

History

And… we’re off! President Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the US Supreme Court. Best wishes for smooth sailing through confirmation in Congress (as much as can be possible) to Judge Sotomayor! We could have the first Hispanic/Latina in the S.Ct. She’s a New Yorker, too (the Bronx, specifically), who saved baseball from perpetuating that last strike – so pretty darn cool. (well, not to mention other great stuff, like having been a prosecutor and been in private practice, plus attending Princeton and Yale Law).

Much to read; hopefully I won’t drive myself up the wall with the coverage, as I was during the last bunch of confirmations. Good stuff so far, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick observes that it’s rather pointless to go after Judge Sotomayor for being human (therefore has feelings and stuff like that; one would think that we must have androids or Vulcans be Supreme Court justices).

But recall such fun blog posts regarding past S.Ct. nominees…

Ex., as in the days of the Alito confirmation, with us having a rather curious future – where you’re not sure who your justice is until a few years pass).

Let’s not forget the Harriet Miers stuff, much of which wasn’t all that praiseworthy (I mean, really – she was thought of as an “inkblot” – and not in a positive way; come on, she wasn’t that bad; she just wasn’t meant to be a Supreme Court justice).

Even the Ch.J. Roberts’ confirmation was as close as smooth, with the usual this-is-how-you-prepare stuff.

By the way – I’m behind on linking this, but Jeffrey Toobin’s article on Ch.J. Roberts’ incrementalism to the right is a must-read. Well-written, but a bit worrisome, depending on your politics.

Toobin does confirm that we don’t really know what we have with a justice yet (see that theory, above) – but he notes that Judge Sotomayor’s backstory kind of resembles the president who selected her).

No doubt, Obama’s taking a chance on her – as Slate’s John Dickerson notes, he knew her least of the judges on his list. Time’s Richard Lacayo analyzes Judge Sotomayor’s work in this article, coming down on how she’s seems to be moderate left of center, but on some things, we probably don’t really know.

But, that’s what makes the US Supreme Ct. so interesting, isn’t it? The odds of things happening in ways we just don’t expect – while kind of being exactly what we expect anyway – if I’m making sense at all.

Hey, who knows – maybe one day, we could be closer to having an Asian in the US S.Ct? (well, we need some more in the circuit courts, so I guess it’s one step at a time?).

Anyway, I’m going to keep reading and watching the coverage, since I’m a junkie on this stuff, but maybe I should stay away before things start to upset me (the mainstream media doesn’t seem all that good at making educational and enlightening coverage for lay people, in my opinion).

Last but not least: North Korea’s getting worrisome; and Slate’s Explainer explains that the US is technically still at war with North Korea (no final peace treaty kind of does mean there’s still something going on between two nations).

Sunday and Stuff (Some of it Serious)

Because we of Triscribe are Asians and lawyers, we touch on issues on Asians and lawyers. Consider the following (yes, still part of the whole I’m-catching-up-on-blogging, since I fell behind; where are the other triscribers…?)

I’m not a Yankee fan, but even I was amazed by the how-low-can-you-go of yesterday’s game by Chien-Ming Wang – with the historic 14-2 by the end of the second inning and total loss of 22-4, and it’s not clear what’s the matter with the guy. The fans aren’t too happy in the Bronx at the new Yankee Stadium.

Dahlia Lithwick on the right wing attack on the selection of Yale Law’s Dean Harold Koh to be legal adviser of the US State Dept: she makes good points; but I do wonder what’s the strategy to deal with the right wing extremists. Marginalizing them only makes them nastier; responding to/fighting them doesn’t make them see the light either.

Lithwick on the subject of a gender balanced US Supreme Court. I do think that true diversity – whether by educational background, social class origins, career background (the justices can’t all be ex-law profs/appellate judges) racial/ethnic/gender/religious/etc. – would make for more than just the usual right-of-center thinking on the court… Just my opinion; I could be wrong.

While Dean Koh is dealing with the process of being confirmed, we get other things that impugn the standing of Asian Americans: one of those kinds of “are you serious” stories… Texas legislator’s suggestion that Asian names should make the government’s life easier. Guess the legislator doesn’t understand that confusion regarding the transliteration of names into English are not necessarily the fault of the people with those names… Meanwhile, NYC Councilman John Liu demands an apology from said TX state legislator…

Mussolini made it difficult to be a Jew in Italy, apparently; but that didn’t stop Rita Levi Montalcini from becoming a Nobel Prize winner and now living at 100 years young. Interesting story about her.

Another Nobel Prize winner – Stephen Chu, US Sec’y of Energy – does a Q&A with the NY Times. Apparently, his Nobel Prize didn’t quite impress his mom, because she expected him to come visit more often. Hmm.

A poignant piece – maybe art is the only thing that can save us from doom. … Okay, I exaggerate. But, still, kind of funny to think that the some Wall Street people are just repressed artists.

And, another member of the Cabinet: US Sec’y of Commerce, Gary Locke – some good stuff about him as a descendant of a “paper son” and how he won’t have an easy job with the census, not to mention the rest of trade and other issues.

The state of the world: Skadden lawyer survives the Miracle on the Hudson plane landing; but loses job and his father passes away. Life can be strange. Have hope; it’s all we got when Pandora opened the damn box.

Slate’s Fred Kaplan raises interesting points on maybe a coalition of nations should gather and discuss ways on addressing the pirate problem; but historically, not an easy issue. So… we have G20 to address the economy and we’ll need more international cooperation for security and legal issues? Hmm… We live in interesting times.

Slate’s John Dickerson says sometimes a dog is just a dog; I say: nothing is easy when you’re president and there’s a whole lot of stuff to deal with. Your only best friend’s going to be your dog anyway…

So, they’re changing the way they do news at NYPD; will any new way be any better? If the White House fixed up the press space, why should the NYPD evict the press? Ridiculous (but, that’s just my two cents on that; not like I want the mayor coming after me because I disagree with him).

Plus — the new phrase of the week is: “glimmers of hope.” Hmm. Can I have “Audacity of Hope” back, please? One speaker out there compared “glimmers of hope” to like the green sprouts of spring; well, the hard part is keeping those sprouts growing…

More things we’ll have to wait and see: Adam Cohen in the NY Times’ Editorial Observation on the Legal Profession and how it’s probably time for a change. I’m eagerly awaiting for that cultural shift in the legal profession; a “course correction”? An end to crazy high salaries for Big Firm associates? An end to billable hours? For real? It gets even scarier when we’re in an era where the well-educated are getting unemployed.