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]