This shouldn’t happen in 21st century America. We say we’ve given people the legal tools to protect themselves and their relationships from this kind of horror. A same-sex Sonoma County (CA) couple, Harold & Clay, found that their legal protections were meaningless, because, well — because their government decided their documented protections could be ignored.

That’s not right.

Clay, 77, and Harold, 88, still lived together in their home and cared for one another, having put medical directives in place that allowed one to decide for the other what was best in case of emergencies. But in a perfect example of ‘you are only as protected as your government decides’ they were separated after Harold suffered a fall at home:

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.

While ignoring Clay in deciding about Harold’s care, Sonoma County also decided they’d like to make financial decisions for the couple. A court said the county couldn’t do that, but unfortunately allowed limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care. Then it gets worse:

Without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Harold died alone. Clay has nothing left of their possessions except a scrapbook of photos Harold assembled during his last three months of life. After 20 years of life together, these men were separated, their home torn asunder, their possessions auctioned off, and their lives ruined.

That’s not right. But it happened, in America, despite the couple’s best laid-plans.

Kate Kendall of NCLR tells us that while Clay will never see Harold again in this life, others have stepped up to help him:

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O’Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O’Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

h/t to Bilerico Project, who brought this to my attention and included this note:

Are you disturbed by the story of how Clay Greene was treated by the County? Please blog about this, pass it on over Facebook or Twitter, just do whatever you can to help raise the visibility of what happened to Clay. Send a letter to the local paper, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat at letters@pressdemocrat.com. Send them this link to NCLR’s page.

Much as I would like to sit in the TBogg Cave and be all broody and shit, Gotham City needs me and the TBogg Signal in the sky alerts me to the fact that someone said something stupid on the internet and how often does that happen? Like, always.

Okay. So anyway, Charles Blow was in Texas as some form of punishment and he decided to take in the Dallas-area Tea Party, and we will dispense with the pejorative “teabagger” here since a teabagger is someone who wishes to provide pleasure to a sexual partner, while a Tea Partier is someone who just likes to suck balls.. Blow checks out the local action and writes:

I had specifically come to this rally because it was supposed to be especially diverse. And, on the stage at least, it was. The speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea Party leader was God. It felt like a bizarre spoof of a 1980s Benetton ad.

The juxtaposition was striking: an abundance of diversity on the stage and a dearth of it in the crowd, with the exception of a few minorities like the young black man who carried a sign that read “Quit calling me a racist.”

I assume folks have seen the news about the volcano in Iceland and how it has affected air travel worldwide due to concerns about the affect volcanic ash has on engines.

Well, we now have news from Europe that show another export from the US in operation, i.e., corporate cluelessness. It seems some of the European airlines are anxious to re-start. From today’s New York Times we have this quote:

“While safety remains a non-negotiable priority, it is not incompatible with our legitimate request to reconsider the present restrictions,” Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, which represents 400 European airports in 46 countries, said in a statement.

It appears to me that the airlines are saying “We believe in safety up until the point that governments stop us from making money because it would not be safe.”

What’s the big deal with all of this? Well, this from Boeing might help explain things:

In the past 30 years, more than 90 jet-powered commercial airplanes have encountered clouds of volcanic ash and suffered damage as a result.

So there is a historical record available explaining the affects. Verifiable evidence of the safety problems encountered.

Significant ash encounters from the past include those involving such well-known volcanoes as Mt. Pinatubo, Mt. Redoubt, and Mt. St. Helens. The airplanes that encountered volcanic ash during these events and in the other events listed chronologically experienced varying degrees of damage.

Fairly well known eruptions in that little group…