Supreme Court Justice

After surfing the web for hours I have found some very interesting information on Ms. Sotomayor. I researched several articles but the New York Times has a lot of valuable information for this specific blog and you can find that at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/sonia_sotomayor/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=sonia%20sotomayor&st=Search. As we talked about in class picking Sotomayor was a very smart move for the President. This would benefit the democratic party and make the repbulican party look pretty bad if they do not clear her, seeing that the hispanic vote is up in the air for the republican party and the republicans do not need to make a mess with the hispanic vote. Ms. Sotomayor is a moderate and has a lot of unanswered decisions on a few major topics such as abortion but from what i see leans over to the liberals a little bit. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, to a Roman Catholic family. Her father died when she was eight years old, a year after Sotomayor was diagnosed with diabetes and her mother worked very hard to raise her and her brother. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton and Yale University and as an outstanding background for a judge. Reading this article i can tell that the author seemed somewhat pleasing to the fact the President Obama choose this woman. The article goes through her child hood, work ethic and it explains some of her court cases and talked about where she stands. President Obama called up a few of her colleagues to make sure the rumors were not true about her being hard to get a long with. Her colleagues said that she is a very strong woman and she goes by the book and she is definately not hard to get along with. Many conservatives have shown some criticism about statements that she has made about her ethinic background and sex. If the republicans are smart they wouldn't oppose her for the supreme court justice. Ms.Sotomayor's background gives this court more diversity that it needs. She has a lot of strong work background 54 years old, served as a prosecutor, corporate litigator and federal district judge before joining the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

A Day With Congress

Well as we talked about in class today Congress goes through so much bickering and appointments. Looking at their schedule it really confuses me. The appointments set up between the house and senate seem to over lap one another. I can tell that things can get really hectic especially when something needs to get done. Meeting overlap meetings and discussions overlap discussions. Its a big headache. It took Congress two hours to discuss Inouye amendment number 1133. I feel like that is way to much time being spent on funding for Guantanamo. A bill needs to be passed by one o'clock and I really do not see how this is done with so much other stuff on the agenda. We discussed in class how congress filibusters certain issues because they do not want them to be passed so this is the exact thing that is happening with this bill. What really upsets me is the issue with "guns in the park" which got 28 democratic votes and the article read that they wanted this to be rejected and probably knew this would be rejected in confrence, but voted only so some can say they are "pro gun". I do not see how congress looks out for the people when they are voting only for their personal reasons on the issue. They are not voting pro gun because they are actually pro gun which is very silly to me. They spend so much time bickering back and forth my question is when do they actually sit down and get things done for the people? Senate has two meetings and a business meeting going on at 9:30. How are they voting and discussing important things when everything is scattered around. I do understand that things are hectic and the job looks like it can be demanding from the schedule but I think Congress could get a little more organized. Committees and Sub committees spend a lot of time over looking and revisiting certain bills which is fine but they should spend less time doing this.

Cook County

I was born and raised in the West Suburbs of the Chicagoland area. I spent most of my life in the small town of Bellwood, Illinois. I lived in Bellwood for a total of 13 years. Bellwood has a population of about 20,000 people. Sadly I am just as uninformed about my local politics as well as national politics. While browsing through the web I found out about some of my local elected officials. You can also find this infomation at http://capwiz.com/yo-demo/officials/congress/?district=07&azip=60104&state=IL&bzip=2172
I represent the County of Cook District seven. Cook County was created on January 15, 1831 by an act of the Illinois State Legislature as the 54th county established. Browsing the web i could not find more detailed information about statistics and things going on in Cook county but I know from living in Bellwood that the crime rates and robberies have risen since the past. Living in Bellwood is almost scary now because a lot of the guys that i spent elementary and high school years with have turned into gang members and it has been so many shootings and deaths in our neighborhoods. A few years back Maywood, Illinois had reached a high so high that it was in the New York Times. They compared the killings with Brooklyn. Maywood is our sister town as well as Hillside, Westchester, and Broadview. All of these towns are in a financial crisis. Homes are being foreclosed, people are losing their jobs, and the crime rate are on the rise.

Richard Durbin is our state senator and Danny Davis is our state represenative. Representing Senate in District seven we have Karen Yarbrough for our State Represenative. I applied for a General Assembly scholarship my senior year in high school so i did know a little information about Ms. Karen Yarbrough, i visted her website at http://karenyarbrough.com/MyRecord.htm a few times looking for information on the scholarship so I did find out information about her then and i know a bit more about her now. Karen has been doing hard work since 2000 when she was selected to be a member of the Illinois
House of Representatives and State Representative for District seven. Karen has a really impressive background and just by looking up information for her I can tell that she is really interested in what she does. She emphasizes the importance of educational funding, economic development, protection and care for children and seniors, crime prevention and having a healthier state.
Richard Durbin is our state senator and by looking at his background information i can tell that he is a well experienced and respected individual. In 2006 Durbin was elected the post Assistant Majority Leader. In 2004 he was elected minority whip. Durbin is currently fighting for improving health care, gun safety, fighting for farmers, and working for fair tax code. Durbin is a leader who will continue to fight and do amazing things for Illinois.
With these officials being in our local leadership positions, hopefully things will get better in our towns and from now on I will never be in the dark about who my local officials are.
Jasmine Price

Pol 106(H) "Palin ethics complaints rejected"

Today I found an article at Politico.com which you can find through this link thttp://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=30BC4013-18FE-70B2-A8B007696D8CE5AF titled "Palin ethics complaints rejected". This issue has been going on since she ran for Vice President of the United States. The article talks about how she has become clear of a couple charges that had been filed against her.

Palin was charged with violating state election laws by announcing her position on a controversial ballot measure requiring tougher enviornmental standards for new mines and state ethics laws by using funds from her political action commitee to travel to a National Right to Life rally in Indiana.

I feel like these charges that were made against Sarah Palin were just made because people are intimidated by her confidence as a woman. She spent over 500,000 dollars defending herself for these charges that had no back up from the government. I don't know much about exactly what happened but from reading this article it sounds to me like people are just throwing shots at her and its pointless. I personally do not see anything wrong with anything that Sarah Palin has done as far as the charges that were bought up against her.

My First Blog!!

Hello my name is Jasmine and I am from Chicago, Illinois. I love helping others and I had four years of leadership experience in Navy ROTC in high school. I graduated from Proviso West High School in Hillside, Illinois and it was one of my greatest experiences in my lifetime. In Politics 106 i expect to grow an appreciation for Politics and to learn more about how our government works and to get a better understanding of the political world in general. This is actually my first politics course so I am willing to learn whatever is being taught. This year is the year when i have actually looked into things that are going on in the government seeing that I had the first chance to vote. So i actually began to research and learn more information about politics.