What Caught My Eye Today

Stock Market - Wall Street hit levels not seen since 2003, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging below the 8,000 mark. The S&P 500, widely considered the broadest snapshot of corporate America, slipped 52.54 points to 806.58; and the Dow gave up 427.47 points to 7,997.28.If you are keeping score at home the Dow closed at an all time high of 14,164.53 just over a year ago on October 9, 2007--that's about a 43.5% drop. Yeah, that stings. But wait there's more. The financial crisis has already wiped out $6.69 trillion of value from the S&P 500 since its October 2007 high. And, of course, it goes without saying that misery loves company. In Asian trading, Japan's Nikkei index fell 0.66%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 0.77%. In European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 4.82%, Germany's DAX index fell 4.92%, and France's CAC-40 fell 4.03%. In a nutshell, the global economy is basically in the toilet. Just so you know.

Gay Marriage - California's highest court agreed to hear several legal challenges to the state's new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules. The California Supreme Court accepted three lawsuits seeking to nullify Proposition 8, a voter-approved constitutional amendment that overruled the court's decision in May that legalized gay marriage. All three cases claim the measure abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change. That's an interesting tactic. So who does have the authority, if not the voters? Opponents of the ban argue that voters improperly abrogated the judiciary's authority by stripping same-sex couples of the right to wed after the high court earlier ruled it was discriminatory to prohibit gay men and lesbians from marrying. The lawsuits claim that the measure represents such a sweeping change that it constitutes a constitutional revision as opposed to an amendment. What's the difference? The distinction would have required the ban's backers to obtain approval from two-thirds of both houses of the California Legislature before submitting it to voters. Oh. I see...sort of. For the record, I voted against Proposition 8 because, frankly I fail to see what the big deal is about same sex marriage. It's not like the folks on that side of the fence--so to speak--are going to have much interest in those of us on this side of the fence, and vice versa. The way I see it, there's plenty of room on both sides of the fence.

Juris Prudence - A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others named in indictments accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a federal detention center. I didn't see this coming. In the latest bizarre development in the case, the lame-duck prosecutor who won the indictments was a no-show in court today. The judge ordered Texas Rangers to go to District Attorney Juan Guerra's house, check on his well-being and order him to court on Friday. I guess I would be a bit concerned about this dude's well being. Seems rather peculiar--suspicious, even--that a prosecutor would miss out on indictments that he had worked so long to get. Half of the eight high-profile indictments returned by the grand jury are tied to privately run federal detention centers in the sparsely populated South Texas county. One indictment charges Cheney and Gonzales with engaging in organized criminal activity. It alleges that the men neglected federal prisoners and are responsible for assaults in the facilities. The grand jury accused Cheney of a conflict of interest because of his influence over the county's federal immigrant detention center and his substantial holdings in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies. The indictment accuses Gonzales of stopping an investigation into abuses at the federal detention center. Well now, this could be rather entertaining. After all, its not every day that a sitting Vice President gets indicted. Senators? Sure all the time, but a Vice President. This could be huge.