It is a shame that we women cannot be supportive enough of each other to be able to claim that we have been able to elect a women to the highest or at least to the second highest office of government in the United States. Shelly Mandell the president of the Los Angeles NOW chapter, introduced Sarah Palin at a political activity in California.

Radar magazine has a great interview this week with Linda Greenhouse, who recently retired after 30 years of covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times.

Here's more video from Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric — in which Couric asks her to name Supreme Court decisions she disagrees with and she lapses into confounded silence after naming only one, Roe v. Wade.

The United State Supreme Court stopped the execution of Troy Davis today, less than two hours before he was supposed to be executed by lethal injection following a decision of the Georgia Supreme Court, that upheld Davis’ conviction for the murderer of an off duty police officer in Savannah, Georgia in August of 1989.

August was a wild month for me. I went from an incredible trip to Beijing to watch my son David compete in the Olympics as a member of the U.S. Rowing Team and then almost immediately to Denver, where People For the American Way hosted a forum on the Supreme Court and the 2008 elections.  Here’s a picture from the forum, which was really quite successful.

Interesting reading today:

www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the _most_activist_court

      current Supreme Court's record - and see related articles list on right

      (I got this from a classmate in the courts class - RJ?)

http://link.latimes.com/r/FGRUKJ/ORYKH/HRSKAD/MFIO/7R29B/D5/t 

      Sup. Ct.:  Gitmo detainees can challenge detention

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-briefs12-2008jun12,0,538997...

      British anti-terrorism bill advances

www.latimes.com/news/la-me-kozinski12-2008jun12,0,4429841.st...

      Kozinski, Chief of 9th Circuit Court, recuses self from porn case after personal porn

Each state has its own courts, then you have the federales.  California once had three levels of court, now just two:  the municipal courts were subsumed into the superior courts.  Then you have the State Supreme Court.  We also have a circuit court in San Francisco, but that one is federal.  Beyond the circuit courts, you only find the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.  Let's see...there is also the difference in civil and criminal cases, but I think those exist side-by-side in all the above courts.  I'm fuzzy on that.  Also, small claims courts exist at the local level;  they are for civil cases only and have a cap on maximum judgments.  To request larger judgments, you have to go to superior court.

On Monday, the New York Times featured a powerful, sobering essay by Waldo L. Fielding, M.D., a retired OBGYN in his mid-eighties. In it, he recounts the desperation of young pregnant women in the days before Roe v. Wade, when there were no safe, legal options available to them.

A hearty, post Summit hello to everyone!! Judith Schaeffer, PFAW Foundation's legal director, and I had a fabulous time at the YP4 Summit in a workshop on how the courts affect our progressive agenda and what we can do about it. Turnout for the workshop was tremendous and we had a really engaging discussion about the rights and liberties we sometimes take for granted that, in fact, are grounded in important decisions by the Supreme Court. We all know about Roe v. Wade, but we also talked about things like the right to obtain contraceptives, the right of same-sex couples to engage in sex; the right of high school students to wear black armbands to school to protest the war (in the case decided by the Supreme Court, called Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, it involved the Vietnam War, but it's obviously still relevant today); the right of interracial couples to marry; the right of an extended family of a grandmother, her son and two grandsons to live together in the same dwelling; and, of course, the case of Brown v. Board of Education, involving the right of African American children to a public school system free of legally-mandated segregation.

Pundits are positing potential election results in November that could give the nation a progressive in the White House and a working progressive majority in the House and Senate. Logically, one would expect this to translate into progressive policies addressing a host of issues including workers rights, the environment, consumer protection, health and retirement security, equal opportunity, and the like.