For Your Viewing Pleasure
Dan Udell's video of the very uneventful mayor's hearing on the 2017 budget and the comparatively tame November Common Council meeting, both of which took place at City Hall last night, can now be viewed by clicking here.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CAROLE OSTERINK
Uneventful?!
ReplyDeletePresident DeStefano was vindicated, and Alderman Friedman - for all his virtue signaling about the 1st Amendment - shown to be wrong.
After his insulting, wrong-headed pyrotechnics, I don't call that uneventful.
The adjective "uneventful" was applied to the mayor's hearing on the budget. The Common Council meeting was described as "comparatively tame."
DeleteRight, right, right. My apologies.
DeleteI'd still say that we owe it to the Common Council President to acknowledge the correctness of her position, particularly after the Alderman did his damnedest to damage her reputation.
ReplyDeleteRecall that it was the alleged wrongness of her action which was the occasion for the Alderman's display of self-righteousness. The incident should not be swept away in cowardly fashion now that the President is vindicated.
In retrospect, the Alderman's display of pique was unfounded in constitutional law, which is something too few could see at the time. (And kudos to Mr. Dow for spotting the truth right away, in situ.)
As a public servant the Alderman deserves our censure. As a lawyer, well, readers may draw their own conclusions.
Whoever doesn't see that an apology is in order is probably beyond the pale of good society. But that's a persistent hazard with those who are rights-oriented, because self-righteousness, even when it's in the wrong, always trumps civility.
ReplyDeleteTo pay a paradoxical compliment, the Alderman can't possibly have believed in the truth of what he was saying: that the demotion of a colleague from a committee infringed on her free speech rights.
However, it is just possible that the Alderman, who had already announced he won't be running again, was trying to take the Council President with him. He certainly managed to injure her.
Not withstanding what the Alderman himself believed, the fact that so many accepted his incorrect account of the 1st Amendment gives me the willies!
For all I know, you're the same people who secretly support speech codes. That would make a lot of sense, too, where the ostensible defenders of our rights are actually the greatest threat to them.