A Troubling Development, Part IV

There was an article in the Watertown TAB & Press on Friday about the proposed Watertown Grove development.  Apparently, there was a Planning Board meeting last Wednesday, the 13th, at which the vote on the project was put off to March 12th.  The TAB describes the project as “condos” a couple of times, and says it was originally to contain 180 units, while at the neighborhood meeting I attended, the Hanover representatives were at pains to stress that these would be apartments, not condos, though a few years after opening they might sell it to another company, which might convert them to condos; and the plans I saw called for 182 units.

According to the TAB that’s down to 174 now, which is a bit of an improvement, but it seems to me the difference in traffic impact between that and 182 units is going to be minimal; the building is still four stories tall, so it seems to me that this small reduction in size also does little to answer concerns about it blocking the light and the view.

The Zoning Board of Appeals is having a public hearing on the plans for the site on the 27th of this month, so I’ll try to make it to that.  I’ve been continuing to find it difficult to find much information on the whole process, so I think I should probably look into subscriptions to the paper editions of the TAB and the Daily News Tribune.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is, presumably, turning over in his grave.

This morning on the BBC World Service’s NewsHour program, broadcast on WBUR, they played an interview with Justice Antonin Scalia, who among some other very dubious arguments, said by way of justifying the idea that treatment which is Constitutionally prohibited when applied to convicted criminals, is nonetheless not necessarily even bad when applied to people who have not yet been convicted of anything, but who are reluctant to give information, that you should be able to “smack a terrorist in the face” to get him to tell you “where he planted the bomb that’s about to blow up Los Angeles.”

Leaving quite aside the shocking bad faith of pretending that what the torture arguments in the US are about is a “smack in the face” rather than violent, painful, terrifying, techniques which (even when, as the arguments for waterboarding tend to claim, they don’t leave obvious physical damage, like bruising or broken bones) can have major long-term physical and especially psychological impact on their victims, and (to stick with waterboarding for a moment) which have been universally recognized as methods of torture for centuries, I’d like to point out something else, perhaps equally horrible, about Scalia’s argument.

The “bomb about to blow up LA, so you smack a guy in the face” scenario is lifted directly from the TV show 24 (the tendency of which to legitimate, if not glorify, torture is something I think Fox has to answer for, morally speaking). Scalia is attempting to make a convincing legal argument about what the US Constitution does or does not permit based on fiction. (Nor indeed is this the first time he’s fallen back on the 24 argument.) He might as well try to support rulings about police procedure based on what works on CSI, or claim that since it worked out so well in that book by Mr. Heinlein, and since “Islamofascists” are so similar, really, to hordes of giant space insects, we should consider whether military service ought not be a prerequisite to citizenship.

It’s really incredible — in the literal sense of “impossible to believe” — that anyone, let alone a Supreme Court Justice would have the gall, or the ignorance, to claim that fictional scenarios ginned up to bring in Nielsen ratings should be considered a reasonable basis for public policy and jurisprudence.  It’s even more incredible that so few people seem to be up in arms about this.  What the hell is wrong with us?

2007-08 Presidential Campaign

It might have seemed from my earlier post “The Problem of ‘Hillary'” that I was a supporter of Senator Clinton for the Democratic nomination. In fact, she was probably my least preferred of the broader field before candidates started dropping out, but I see no contradiction in disagreeing with her policy positions yet finding it repulsive that she’s the target of such egregious misogyny in the media.

I was a strong Edwards supporter until he announced his withdrawal from the race. Now that the Democratic field has narrowed to two, I’ve been struggling with the decision in front of me. There are good reasons to support Clinton, and good reasons as well to support Obama; conversely, there are good reasons to be wary of each of them, especially for a moderate liberal like me.

Many other blogs have been all over the problems with each candidate, so for the moment I’m not going to discuss them at length.  A week ago, in the Massachusetts primary, after a great deal of thought, I voted for Obama, but I’ll be happy to contribute to, vote for, and perhaps volunteer for either Obama or Clinton in the general election.  I think despite their respective failings, either one would be a good president, and each represents important progress toward dismantling some of the biases which are significant problems in our society.

I also think that either Clinton or Obama can win pretty handily in the general election, though they’ll have a tougher time against John McCain, who now seems the likely Republican nominee, either than I think Edwards would have, or than I think they would have against (for example) Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani.

The sort of thing I try not to do very often

A quick link post — Sorry for the minimal content.  But Jill at Feministe, as is her wont, nails it, so just go read that.