Reporting from Washington – President Obama will nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, The Times has learned.

Liu carries credentials that some conservatives love to hate — including a leadership position in a progressive legal group and a record of opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But he has conservative admirers too. Liu has supported school choice as a solution to problems in urban education, and has served as faculty advisor to the California College Preparatory Academy, a public charter school. He came to the White House’s attention with the recommendation of some conservatives.

If confirmed, he could be the only full-time Asian American judge on a federal appellate court. A senior administration official revealed his nomination on condition of anonymity.

In the political world, Liu is sure to be remembered as an Alito critic. When Alito was nominated to the high court, Liu co-wrote a report critical of his record on capital punishment, saying Alito’s appellate opinions “show a disturbing tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings” and “reveal troubling perspectives on federalism, race and due process of law.” Liu testified against Alito during his 2006 confirmation hearings.

Liu, 39, also is chairman of the board of the American Constitution Society, whose mission statement opposes the “activist conservative legal movement.”

“Keeping Faith With the Constitution,” a 2009 book that he co-wrote, discusses the shortcomings of “originalism,” a conservative legal theory maintaining that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its 18th century framers’ intent. Progressive judges tend to see the Constitution as a living document, shifting with the times, and to validate rights that they see as logical extensions of it.

Even without a possible ideological fight, the confirmation process is highly charged for Obama nominees, with Republican lawmakers stalling votes even on those whom they later support. At the moment, 26 judicial nominees await Senate confirmation, including seven to appellate courts.

But Obama’s judicial choices have won strong bipartisan support on the Senate floor. Liu’s supporters hope that his personal story and slightly unpredictable politics will help him win confirmation.

Liu is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Sacramento and has a history of public service.

Unafraid of television cameras and news interviews, Liu has a reputation as being affable and savvy. He has written several opinion pieces for the Los Angeles Times, most recently analyzing the legal issues surrounding Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

Given Liu’s prominence in legal circles, his nomination does not come as a surprise. His name has been bandied about among candidates for the appellate court, which Obama, a constitutional lawyer, can shape as a pool for future Supreme Court nominees.

“He’s as sharp as they come, with a kind demeanor and a good temperament,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “And he’s someone who has earned the broad respect of his colleagues on the left and the right.”

The only Asian American serving on a federal appeals court is Judge A. Wallace Tashima of Los Angeles. But he took “senior status” in 2004, which means he hears fewer cases than his colleagues. Another Asian American, Denny Chin,has been nominated to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court in New York, but has yet to be confirmed.

The 9th Circuit is the busiest federal appeals court in the system, reviewing about 16,000 lower-court decisions in most years. It is also the most second-guessed: Last year, the Supreme Court overturned the 9th Circuit at least in part in 15 of 16 cases it reviewed.

Liu is associate dean and a professor of law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University and earned a degree from Yale Law School before clerking for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2000.

He worked at the Department of Education during the Clinton administration and at the Corporation for National Service, a government agency that supports community service and volunteerism. He helped launch the AmeriCorps national service program.

At Berkeley, Liu has worked on a research and advocacy project to improve the finance system for California public schools, and served as consultant to the San Francisco Unified School District. He’s married and has a 2-year-old daughter.

In a recent letter supporting Liu’s anticipated nomination, the director of the conservative Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation referred to a law review article that Liu co-wrote. In the article, Liu supported school choice as one way to improve education in urban schools. Many Democrats and progressives oppose school-choice measures, contending that they will weaken schools in struggling neighborhoods.

“It took a great deal of courage and integrity” for Liu and his co-author to take that position, Clint Bolick wrote in the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Having reviewed several of his academic writings, I find . . . Liu to exhibit fresh, independent thinking and intellectual honesty.”

cparsons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

All three of those killed and two of the injured were faculty members. The third injured person was a staff member. No students were involved in the shooting.

Huntsville Hospital spokesman Burr Ingram said two of the injured were in critical condition and the third was in stable condition.

Nick Lawton, the son of a biology professor at the school, said his father was not among the victims, but he did not know much more.

Lawton, 25, was exercising when a friend phoned him to tell him about the shooting. He called his father, Robert Lawton, and found out that he was not hurt, then he let rest of his family know.

“All I know is that my father is OK,” Nick Lawton told The Associated Press.

Sophomore Erin Johnson told The Huntsville Times a biology faculty meeting was under way when she heard screams coming from a conference room.

University police secured the building and students were cleared from it. There was still a heavy police presence on campus Friday night, with police tape cordoning off the main entrance to the university.

The Huntsville campus has about 7,500 students in northern Alabama, not far from the Tennessee line. The university is known for its scientific and engineering programs and often works closely with NASA.

The space agency has a research center on the school’s campus, where many scientists and engineers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center perform Earth and space science research and development.

The university posted a message on its Web site Friday afternoon telling students the campus was closed Friday night and all students were encouraged to go home. Counselors were available to speak with students.

It’s the second shooting in a week on an area campus. Last Friday, a 14-year-old student was killed in amiddle school hallway in nearby Madison, allegedly by a fellow student.

“This town is unaccustomed to shootings and multiple deaths,” Garner said.

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According to Rafael Reuveny, a professor at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington, the entire negotiation in Congress is “politics as usual” and meant to stall or defeat vital climate change legislation.

“We are trying to win this fight for our lives through consensus. Such compromise will never materialize — not in this country and not internationally,” said Reuveny, co-author of Complex Transformations: Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System (Cambridge University Press, 2009). “No matter how often President Obama pleads for it, bipartisanship has become a joke. So, while the two sides continue this ridiculous game, Rome — read: the planet — is burning.”

Reuveny said it’s imperative that President Obama bypass this unproductive haggling. “He must issue an Executive Order to the Environmental Protection Agency to immediately implement a system that will cut greenhouse emissions of the American economy by meeting the goals set by the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House in 2009,” he said. “He should also order the EPA to design an all-inclusive command and control system of greenhouse emission quotas and monitoring to be backed by severe and immediate penalties on units that would emit more than their allotted amount.

“During his State of the Union address, President Obama made a bold move calling out Supreme Court judges, declaring their decision could enable U.S. and foreign corporations to determine our elections,” Reuveny said. “Surely, the president realizes that his opportunity to affect this crisis is coming to an end as energy-consuming corporations gain even more political power. An executive order is the only solution.”

Reuveny’s research focuses on political conflict and how it interacts with international trade, democracy, migration, and the environment. He is the co-author of “Climatic Natural Disasters, Political Risk, and International Trade” (Global Environmental Change, forthcoming) and the author of “Exploring the Link between Climate Change and Migration” (Human Ecology, 2008) and “Climate Change Induced Migration and Violent Conflict” (Political Geography, 2007).

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(Daily 49er) In the past week, psychology professor Kevin MacDonald had his class interrupted by an organization claiming his views and recent involvement in political organization the American Third Option party are seen as racist and anti-Semitic.

MacDonald, a tenured professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been making headlines on the matter since he was investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2006. The SPLC tracks hate crimes and groups across America.

“I’m used to being harassed,” MacDonald said. “I expect to be harassed because people on the left don’t like what I think. So what? We should be allowed to teach.”

Senior English major Doug Kauffman was one of the students who led the demonstration in MacDonald’s class last Tuesday.

“We planned this [demonstration] at least a month in advance; the goal would be to have every student just get up and walk out,” Kauffman said.

Marylou Cabral, a senior art education major and participant in the demonstration, commented on the student’s reactions.

“Many seemed appalled, and I think a few even left,” Cabral said. “Our goal is to let students know about [MacDonald’s] involvement in Freedom 14 and other neo-Nazi groups. We feel that the students need to know what they’re getting into.”

Both Kauffman and Cabral are students at CSULB and members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Marxist and Leninist organization that advocates revolutionary change and progressive reform.

MacDonald is a member and listed as a director of the American Third Option party, or A3P. The A3P — whose slogan is “Liberty. Sovereignty. Identity.” — is said to be rooted in white nationalism. The A3P is currently on the list of non-qualified political parties but is intending to qualify as a ballot-accessible party by June.

“Any third party is a long shot,” MacDonald said. “My view is not so much that it would get people elected, but to raise consciousness on issues like immigration that should be discussed honestly.”

Several faculty members at CSULB are involved in politics and have no guilt about showing their political radicalism, MacDonald said.

“If you look at professors, they are far to the left of the average voter; they are far to the left of people who are similarly educated but go into different fields,” MacDonald said. “All the surveys show that they’re way to the left of just about any identifiable group that you can imagine, and so that’s an important historical question that has to be discussed.”

The Department of Psychology issued a statement on its Web page in 2008, saying that they “respect and defend his right to express his views, but we affirm that they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach.”

The department has since disassociated itself from MacDonald and his writings and is not alone, as other departments, including anthropology and history, have done so as well.

In 2008, the Academic Senate approved a written document disassociating itself. The document stated: “While the Academic Senate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally condemns and disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed.”

Some called on the university to do the same.

In an April 11, 2008, e-mail sent to the Daily 49er, CSULB President F. King Alexander wrote that “despite the fact that I personally disagree and even find deplorable some beliefs and opinions expressed by a few individuals on our campus, particularly those ideas are hurtful of certain groups, I believe as Thomas Jefferson stated that ‘errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.’”

Alexander further explained that the university is a forum itself, “Universities should also be firmly committed, even at times when it is against popular opinion, to freedom of thought, and when we act to restrict opinions from the far right or the far left, then it will not be long before we can no longer call ourselves a university.”

And in his most recent statement to the Daily 49er, on June 20, 2008, Alexander said that “[MacDonald's] views and opinions in no way represent the views of this university in any aspect whatsoever.”

The thesis of MacDonald’s books and papers claims that conflicts in society are based in ethnic interests and activism.

“The idea is that the construction of culture has been influenced by ethnic activism,” MacDonald said. “And I of course focus on Jewish groups. Jews tend to be elite; they tend to be involved in intellectual movements.”

After becoming A3P director, MacDonald resurfaced as the subject of several articles by OC Weekly’s Ask a Mexican columnist Gustavo Arellano, who discussed MacDonald’s views and gathered reactions from students and members of the Associated Students Inc.

The articles led to a one-hour radio program on KPFK last Thursday, during which Arellano spoke of MacDonald’s work that claims that “Jews are undermining western civilization” and the A3P’s “primary plank is to deport all non-whites and that homosexuality should be suppressed.”

MacDonald responded to Arellano in his own blog Friday morning saying:

“Arellano begins by baldly asserting that A3P and I advocate deportation of all non-whites, including African-Americans and every other group, legal or illegal, no matter how long they or their ancestors have been here.

“Not only that, he claims that A3P advocates suppression of all LBGT’s (lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender, for those not in the loop of leftist acronyms). (For the record, my position is that gays and other sexual minorities have ethnic interests just like everyone else). For these supposed crimes, he advocates that I be fired from my academic position.”

Arellano also spoke by phone to ASI President Chris Chavez and former ASI presidential candidate Raul Preciado during the program, discussing what action CSULB is taking regarding MacDonald.

“This has been a perennial thorn in the side of the university,” Chavez said. “This has been an issue, but primarily a faculty issue.”

Chavez went on to discuss the difficulty of firing a tenured professor. However, his move to the directorship of the A3P may have “upped the ante,” Chavez said. “Now you’re going from belief to action.”

While no plan is in motion at this time, the message from ASI was made clear.

“We want to let him know that we don’t want people who are spreading his views on campus,” Preciado said.

The placement of MacDonald to his new position also works into the goals of the PSL to remove MacDonald from campus.

“We’re going to re-start a petitioning campaign to get him off campus. One of the key elements will be this recent development,” Kauffman said. “One petition to support his dismissal and one to support the nonparticipation in his class; we would like to get students groups and faulty to pressure him to leave campus. This is going to take a strong effort to remove him from class.”

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Representatives of Owens Human Resources Department say there was not a policy in place in 1999 to do to do background checks or to require potential employees to disclose such convictions. Reyes-Cairo served one year in prison for the conviction.

Students say they are uncomfortable having a convicted sex offender as a teacher. William Hiatt dropped the class after learning of Reyes-Cairo’s criminal record and says the professor should not be working there. “He may never do anything, but there’s always the remote chance that he could do something,” said Hiatt.

Owens VP of Human Resources, Cynthia Eschenburg, says the school created a policy three years ago to cover background checks and criminal disclosure. She says they reviewed Reyes-Cairo’s case and decided to keep him on staff. ”He was a low-level offender. There have been no complaints of continued behavior. Not any complaints at all regarding this instructor,” she said.

Reyes-Cairo would not agree to an interview but did say by phone: “I should have been taken off the registration list after ten years. That has expired, and now they have added extended registration. It is totally unfair.” He also said he never committed the crime.

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http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1812947

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It used to be the neighborhood school was good enough and there was enough room for everyone. But, those days are gone. And with test scores in play in a big way now, certain schools are in high demand.

Outside Don Callejon Elementary School in Santa Clara Wednesday, about 70 parents pitched tents, ate pizza and played on their iPhones passing the time and waited for night to come. On Thursday morning, bleary-eyed parents got out of their sleeping bags and gathered together, waiting for a chance to get their kids the road to a good education.

Don Callejon is one of those schools in demand for a laundry list of reasons. Parents say test scores have improved but that’s not the driving factor.

There are 120 slots and students with siblings get first priority. Parents say the neighborhood has a high count of kids, so competition is tough. The school is one of few new ones in the district.

There is a sense of community at the school. At 8:45 a.m. the doors swung open and the first step to getting in was under way.

Overall, they need to find out how many students have siblings before they know how many of those in line got in.

Christie Smith remembers her first day of college and it wasn’t this impacted. There was a meet and greet with snacks and no line at all. Ah, how times have changed.

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Daly died Sunday of natural causes at Wachusett Manor nursing home in Gardner, Mass., said her longtime friend, Nancy Kelly.

She passed away as a friend read to Daly from one of her own books, “Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language,” Kelly said Wednesday.

Daly’s tumultuous career at the Jesuit-run Boston College ended after three decades when she refused to open her classroom to men, believing women did not freely exchange ideas if men were present. Men, she said, “have nothing to offer but doodoo.” But Emily Culpepper, a friend and professor at the University of Redmond in California, said Daly was not anti-male.

“She was anti-male domination, which is a different thing,” Culpepper said.

Poet Robin Morgan called Daly “the first feminist philosopher.”

“She really pushed the boundaries, and that drove some people bananas,” Morgan said. “But that kind of intellectual courage is, in fact, what usually moves the species forward, even if it gets trampled on in its own time.”

Daly grew up in Schenectady, N.Y., the only child of an ice cream freezer salesman and telephone operator. She received her bachelor’s degree from the College of Saint Rose, then a master’s degree at Catholic University of America. She later earned doctorates at Notre Dame and the University of Fribourg in Switzerlandbefore becoming a professor at Boston College in 1966.

Daly’s career at BC ended in 2001, when she retired to settle a lawsuit. Daly sued BC after the school tried to force her to retire over her refusal to accept men in her classes. She had agreed to privately tutor men who wanted to take her classes

Daly wrote about her intellectual formation in a 1996 article in the New Yorker “Sin Big,” in which she recalled being mocked by a male classmate, and altar boy, at her parochial school because she could never “serve Mass” because she was a girl.

“(T)his repulsive revelation of the sexual caste system that I would later learn to call ‘patriarchy’ burned its way into my brain and kindled an unquenchable Rage,” she wrote.

Daly described herself as a pagan, an eco-feminist and a radical feminist in a 1999 interview with The Guardian newspaper of London. “I hate the Bible,” she told the paper. “I always did. I didn’t study theology out of piety. I studied it because I wanted to know.”

Her first book, “The Church and the Second Sex” in 1968, criticized the church as a product and fount of sexism amid the growing women’s movement. Five years later, she wrote “Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation.” Her other books included “Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy” in 1984.

Gloria Steinem called Daly “a brilliant writer, a brilliant theoretician,” who enabled women to move beyond the oppression of male-dominated religious hierarchies to see “that there’s God in themselves and in all living things.”

“She was enough ahead of her time so that I believe she will be appreciated far beyond it,” she said.

Daly’s ashes will be buried at Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, Kelly said. A memorial service is planned in the Boston-area in the spring.

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