The Agrinautica

   I'm sitting in the ASUCD Senate meeting at the moment. So far "today" I've been in Senate meetings for 7.5 hours, and going strong! About an hour ago I made my farewell speech here. I'll try to recreate it as best I can in a subsequent LJ entry.

   Anyway, I was at the impeachment hearing for ASUC Berkeley Chief Justice Banerjee last night, which went until 5:48am.
   I think the whole thing is really summed up by an event that happened towards the beginning. After going back and forth a bit, and then consulting with the chairperson, it was announced that both the Defence & Prosecution had agreed that one of the charges should be dropped. This still had to be approved by a vote of the Senate however. Despite the fact that both parties agreed that the charge should be dropped, a sizable portion of the Senate STILL voted against dropping it. Clearly, some people weren't concerned with any sense of justice.
   Ironically, of the two witnesses the Prosecution called up, one had been convicted of perjury by the Judicial Council last year, and one had been prominantly noted as being a totally evasive witness in a case last year. So you have a perjuror & an evasive witness testifying against the Chief Justice ... needless to say the perjuror (from some analyses I've seen since), was in fact misleading in his answers if not outright lying again, and the evasive witness definitely demonstrated her skills at evasion.
   And incidently, the Judicial Rules of Procedure, which the Senate is to follow during impeachment hearings, clearly state that someone convicted of perjury cannot testify in future cases (unless both sides agree, which they didn't here). The chairman misunderstood the purpose of this rule and said that the perjuror "was only banned from Judicial Council, but THIS is Senate" (paraphrased), but the point of course isn't that the Council doesn't want to see him anymore, but that he's clearly an unreliable witness!!

   Anyway, not to be morbid by saying I enjoyed it, but I found it very interesting. I especially enjoyed meeting all their justices in person. The justices that were assisting in Banerjees defense welcomed me onto their team as if I was one of their own and I greatly enjoyed getting a chance to work with them so closely.

   Anyway, there was no doubt that Banerjee destroyed the case against her. The Prosecution during their closing arguments even said something along the lines of "so, yeah we're obviously not lawyers, and we probably didn't do a very good job presenting our case, but believe us she should be impeached!!" and this was echoed by some pro-impeachment senators during deliberations (which fortunately were open, after some implication in the past few days that it might have been closed), who even went so far as to say the impeachment trial was "unfair" because Chief Justice Banerjee had an unfair advantage in actually knowing the judicial procedures and being lawyerly.
   Don't get me wrong, I went with an open mind that maybe there were salient charges against Banerjee. And a few times it sounded like the prosecution was onto something ... until the defense devastatingly showed how misleading the nuanced account just given by the Prosecution was. In the end, I can't think of a single charge that had any weight left in it, but the final vote was 12 in favour of impeachment, 8 against. Since a two-thirds majority was required to carry the removal, it failed.

   Additionally I'd like to thank Brent Laabs & Laabs' Friend for driving, and our Justice Coady, as well as IAC's Max Mikalonis for coming along and staying till the bitter end with me. It was also nice to meet bloggist Beetlebeat and (one of?) the Calstuff bloggers. Someone I met was very enthusiastic to meet "the Emosnail blogger," which made me feel kind of famous. (= I'd also like to note that I was particularly pleased with Squelch! Senator Wasserman's performance.

Miscellenea: The ASUC Berkeley Senators have brass placards! We all have cardboard ones here. Their justices don't have placards at all. Also, the mythical "point of clarification" used by Senate up here (which allows you to say whatever you want whenever you want) is mirrored by "points of personal priviledge" down there (which as intended by Robert's Rules are for random things like "I can't hear the speaker" or "its too cold in here"). ASUCB: get your justices placards and clamp down on these points of personal priviledge. ASUCD: lets all get brass placards. Especially the Court since we'll all be using them for years. (=


Quotes
   Banerjee: "Objection!," Chair: "There's no grounds for an objection here, what he said doesn't even make sense!!"
   Prosecutor "Objection, Leading!" Chair: "She hasn't asked anything yet!"


Related

   Reporting Live - Berkeley student paper Daily Cal actually publishes an article on the impeachment while the impeachment is still ongoing.
   Official Newspaper Article - The Daily Cal reports. Also notice how short their URLs are compared to the long ugly Cal Aggie URLs.
   Beetlebeat Long Version - account of the impeachment
   Beetlebeat Short Version
   People for the Ethical Treatment of Sonya Banerjee - Facebook group
   [I'm sure a number of people will blog about the events, please bring these entries to my attention for linking]

Impeachment of Chief Justice Banerjee
   Last Wednesday we (the ASUCD Supreme Court) had a joint meeting with the ASUCD Elections Committee (don't tell Kristen Birdsall!!*), which also involved pizza thanks to our $33 budget this quarter. Also in attendance was the Academic Affairs Commission Chair Peter Markevich, and Executive Office Events Coordinator Kevin Powers. Next week we are tossing around the idea of having a joint meeting in Berkeley with the ASUC Berkeley Supreme Court (Judicial Council). Incidently, whats up with their name -- the members are Justices, but the presiding officer is the "Judicial Council Chair." For the sake of consistency, they will be referred to as Chief Justice usually here however.

   On that note, the Berkeley Chief Justice has been called before the ASUC Senate for impeachment! This is basically a reprisal against the Judicial Council for enforcing the rules during the Oren Gabriel Scandal we'd noted earlier. An intelligent and concise overview of the charges can be found here (as opposed to the newspaper "overview," which as is so often the case, suffers from an authority bias (towards what the senate says) and a lack of critical thinking in connecting the dots). The impeachment is scheduled for next Wednesday at 10pm. I'm interested in going down there for it, and so far several of our justices have also expressed an interest in doing so. It looks like we might even make quorum down there. How saucy would that be to hold a meeting down there during their senate meeting? (=


Impeachment of Comptroller Savaree-Ruess
   In other news, an impeachment hearing took place for ASUCD Comptroller Kai Savaree-Ruess (pictured, right), whom you may recall as the guy who was pushing for the elimination of the judicial branch last year.
   Savaree initially affiliated himself with the "Focus" campus political party, but after an unsuccessful Senate run, changed his affiliation to Lead and did so convincingly enough to be given the position of Comptroller by the Lead executive office. However, as of late, he has taken to prominantly wearing the mustard colour Focus shirts again and being seen ubiquitously with prominant Focite politician Chris Harold.
   Cause of Action for this impeachment has been generally cited as two things:
   (1) an incident a few days prior when Savaree was spotted wearing the catsup colour of the Lead party. When asked sarcastically if he was "supporting his party" he allegedly responded "I'd rather kill babies with my bare hands than allow any more Lead kids [in ASUCD];"
   (2) Allegedly, during the Candidates Forum in the Coffee House on Wednesday, he was seen laughing while a Lead candidate spoke about LGBT issues. After the forum, allegedly, the candidate came up to Kai and shook his hand, while asking "so Kai, you find something funny about LGBT issues?" At which point, allegedly, Kai pulled his hand away and yelled to Leadite President Darnell Holloway "HEY, get your kid away from me before I punch him!" Allegedly.
   An impeachment was scheduled for the very next day (This last Thursday). The impeachment closed session took more than two hours, after which Kai emerged and made some vague references like (someone) "so are you still controller?" (Kai) "for now." To note all the noteworthy things that occured durign this time would warrant an entry all its own, and that just might occur, but I thought one of the funniest things was when a Point of Order was made from the hallway during closed session, by writing it on a piece of paper, sliding it under teh door, and then knocking. It was asking if the session could be open now that the witness who had requested it closed had departed. It was answered by Senator Higgens opening the door real quick and telling us "no!" and closing it again.

   Reportedly, there is now "a race on who can send the first ASUCD Court lawsuit" regarding the closed session. I just hope THIS time the Recorder isn't forced to flee the country and/or doesn't wind up hanging in a closet in Sproul! )= They should be assigned an ASUCD Bodyguard.


Indictment of Mr Lubanga Dyilo, Alleged Congolese War Criminal
   Also on Thursday, the International Criminal Court had their first hearing ever, on the confirmation of charges for Mr Lubanga Dyilo.

   Basically, it looks like the Supreme Court of ASUC Berkeley found the president-elect to have become disqualified. President-elect Oren Gabriel then sued the ASUC Judicial Council (their Court) in the local Superior Court. The Superior Court judge summarily dismissed the case because all internal ASUC avenues of resolution had not been exhausted -- there was still an appeal pending before the Judicial Council -- but not before Gabriel managed to incur $22,679 in legal fees.

   The President's party with allied parties "UNITE Greek" & "APPLE Engineering"¹ control 14 of 20 senators, and have authored a bill to reimburse the president for his legal fees. Opponents, including opposition party CalSERVE, argue that since the legal action was unnecessary, it is unfair to use student fees to support it.

¹Apparently they've discovered the secret that if you make your name an acronym it'll keep getting typed up in all-caps, not that anyone here in ASUCD or at EMOSNAIL would ever stoop to that


   In a recent debate in ASUCD about a bill to reduce spending limits for ASUCD campaigns, someone commented "I really don't know why people even spend $250 to get elected." Well, apparently, some people are willing to spend $22,679 for equivalent positions.
   I think he should not only not get reimbursed, he should have to record the expense as a campaign expenditure. (=


In Other News the ASUCD Senate voted 1-11-0 today NOT to pay the increased fee UCSA wanted from us. It is believed by many that UCSA will consequently deny our right to vote in their governance and we will therefore secede.


Picture of the Day

ASUCD Senator Jonathon "Tiny" Sanders demonstrates his technique for tabling for Prop 89