RIP William Buckley

Old-school conservative windbag William Buckley Jr. died today. Bankrolled by the ill-gotten wealth of his oil-speculator daddy, Bill Jr. can be remembered for his bold pro-segregation stance and his innovative ideas on public health (he stated in a New York Times OpEd that, “Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals"). Let's look back at Buckley's glory days as he gets his rhetorical butt kicked by a youthful Noam Chomsky:

Catherine Roraback

Catherine Roraback was the only woman in her class at Yale Law School. She was a founder of the Connecticut ACLU, and a president of the National Lawyers Guild. During her long career she defended labor organizers, immigrants being threatened with deportion under McCarthy era policies, civil rights workers, Black Panther Ericka Huggins, and maybe most famously, Estelle Griswold before the United States Supreme Court in the case that struck down restrictions on the distribution of birth control (at least to married women and men) and set the precedent for Roe vs. Wade. She died this week at age 87.

A friend sent me this lovely obituary from the Hartford Courant, and here's the New York Times.

Sekou Sundiata

I just heard that Sekou Sundiata died this week. If you don't know his work, here's a little:

Based on interviews I've heard, he seems to have been as thoughtful a person as he was a poet. He'll be missed.