Word: birdness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...this year is different. After only 18 months in office, Chief Justice Rose Bird, the first woman ever put on the California high court, is in danger of becoming the first justice ever voted off it. Last week the state G.O.P. came out against her as "a serious threat to the California courts"; by November a coalition of Bird hunters will have spent upwards of $600,000 on a campaign to clip the judge's wings. Late last week, Bird's chances of hanging on improved somewhat when the State Supreme Court approved the constitutionality of Proposition 13, the highly...
...Bird's appointment was attacked from the outset because she was considered "soft" on crime and the death penalty, and because she had no prior experience as a judge. (Neither did Felix Frankfurter or Earl Warren before they sat on the U.S. Supreme Court, her defenders pointed out.) "She has a very clear mind, a good heart and strong administrative legal skills," said Governor Jerry Brown when he elevated Bird to the court from her prior post as head of the state's agriculture and services agency. "She is vindictive, snaps back and is autocratic as she can be," charges...
...former public defender with a liberal background (at 15 she campaigned for Adlai Stevenson), a graduate of Berkeley's law school, Bird, 41, is also under fire for her vote in a controversial rape case. A man who had raped a woman over a four-hour period, while holding a knife over her and inflicting minor lacerations, did not commit "great bodily injury," ruled the court. The majority opinion was written by one of Bird's temporary appointees, and Bird concurred, alienating law-and-order advocates and many feminists, her natural allies...
However unpopular her vote in the rape case, Bird maintained that she was doing no more than deferring to the meaning given great bodily injury by popularly elected lawmakers. "Personal repugnance toward these crimes cannot be a legitimate basis for rewriting the statute as it was adopted by the legislature," she wrote. Stanford Criminal Law Professor John Kaplan agrees: "Rape, in itself, shouldn't be bodily harm. I think that's what the legislature meant. There's a whole line of cases about this...
Buried amid these tunes, like encrusted gems, are the seeds of the later, far superior rock that the group was to produce. The guitars of Allen Collins and Gary Rossington exhibit the protean stages of the sweaty-fingered flash that made "Free Bird" such a classic. Van Zant was undoubtedly still in the throes of carving a style for himself when he did this record. He imitates Cream lead singer Jack Bruce several times and in one of the oddest numbers, "Things Going On," he double-tracks his vocals and ends up sounding like Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash singing...