Your Morning Sift

Good morning.

Alright, at least it isn't Monday. Enjoy your morning Sift.

A- Over twenty new photos are up at The Street this morning.

B- Obalesque is a good man.

I put the handbag on the roof of my car and wait. In less than five minutes a smallish sedan rolls in, driven by a woman in her late 20s or early 30s, a child in the back seat among various beach items. She pulls up behind my parked car and stares over at the shopping cart, at which point I capture her attention by holding up the bag.

Relief floods her face. She throws herself out of the car, puts a hand on my shoulder and plants a big kiss on my dirty unshaved cheek. “Good man,” she says, “Thank you!” She doesn’t look inside the bag, just shakes her head ruefully and says, “I’d lose my own head if it wasn’t attached.”

C- Justice Building Blog holds a discussion on whether a criminal trial really is a search for the truth.

A criminal trial is and must be a search for the truth. The prosecutor has the job of seeking justice while the defense attorney has the obligation to challenge the evidence as he or she sees fit so that the jury can determine which evidence is believable, which evidence is not. From those dozens or sometimes hundreds of decisions an individual juror makes during a trial a decision is eventually reached- the prosecution did or did not present evidence in the form of witnesses and physical evidence that proved the accused's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

D- Bark Bark Woof Woof takes the time to explain our Constitution to the Little Limbaughs and Neanderthals who seem to always speak from the Right.

For the last ten years, if not longer, we've been hearing the drumbeat of fear and loathing against anyone who might harbor an ill feeling towards us, either philosophically, politically, religiously, or for whatever personal reason they might have a gripe, especially if they are not white and Christian (although Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph were). It's easy to make the argument that non-citizens are not entitled to the Bill of Rights, and people who are in positions of power find it easy to make those arguments to bolster their own political ends. But what makes America an exceptional country, and what fools like Mr. McConnell don't seem to appreciate, is that we are one of a very few nations that grants such rights to all people and has, for the most part, tried to live up to the simple idea of equal justice under the law. It has not always succeeded, and it has some spectacular and on-going failures to its shame, but at least we have made it more than just lip service.

E- The Reid Report shares a copy of the memo that Mayor Gimenez issued yesterday that is the beginning of what is sure to be a bad week for county employees.

F- There's lots going on in Miami-Dade's Democratic Party, according to Miami-Dade Dems.

Against such Republican shenanigans, Democrats have attractive possible candidates. Annette Taddeo is a young mother and successful businesswoman, much younger than Luis Garcia, who’s Cuba-born and a former Miami Beach fireman and fire chief as well as Miami Beach city commissioner before running for the legislature and taking a Republican-held seat in 2006. Taddeo has good Hispanic credentials as her mother is Colombian; her late father was an Italian-American and Korean War veteran. Joe Garcia is a US-born son of Cuban immigrants. He served in the Obama Department of Energy at the sub-cabinet level before resigning to run for Congress in 2010, and he was in Washington Monday for talks at the White House, he said, when he returned your blogger’s call.

G- Coral Gables hasn't always been so straight-laced, as Random Pixels shows us.


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