The Boston Progressive

Why are the GOP House members so afraid of Elizabeth Warren?

2011-05-26T10:13:00.004-04:00

There is a saying that has been attributed to trial lawyers, to the effect that you don't ask a question unless you know the answer -- Something that the GOP members of the Oversight Subcommittee on TARP and Financial Services that is investigating the establishment of the CFPB should have kept in mind.

During a recent hearing of the oversight committee when they were questioning Elizabeth Warren.
From trying to claim that Warren and the CFPB had overstepped their brief by advising other entities than the Treasury department and the President.

The problem there was that, much previously, the CFPB had already sent a letter to Congress stating the extent of advising that they had done, at the direct order of the secretary of the Treasury.

Another GOP House member tried to imply that Warren had set up inflated salaries for staffers, yet those salary levels had been actually set by Congress, and the pay scales were in line with the salaries set up for the *other* bank regulatory agencies.

There were other "misunderstandings" about the length of the appointed officials terms (Warren had to point out that five year terms for head of the bank regulatory agencies is common, not the one year that the House member implied was the norm); about some claims that the CFPB would have exemption from oversight because they would be unique in not having to be funded by annual appropriations, yet no banking regulator is so bound. It was pointed out, by Ms Warren, that the long-standing practice is that banking regulators' budgets are paid for by fees charged against the entities that they regulate, so that the agencies are somewhat insulated from the political process, thus preserving some degree of independence. Unlike other bank regulatory agencies, the CFPB budget is capped at $600M a year, so that the agency may need to go to congress, and get involved in the political process, if it is determined that the annual budget may need to exceed that level -- which no other bank regulatory agency has to do.

One of the members was trying to grill Warren as to why none of the complaints that the CFPB would be responsible for have been made public, when the agency is not yet accepting complaints. That house member kept on trying to get Warren to commit to statements on confidentiality of complaints, even though the regulations and procedures are from from being fully developed, never mind approved. (The impression I got there was that the Representative wanted to make sure that complaints that were not acted upon would be made known to the banks or financial institutions involved, in detail - again, my feeling is so that those consumers who might complain or employees be potential whistle-blowers be made available for harassment by those same financial institutions)

Even a dispute over when Ms Warren would be able to leave the hearing, which resulted in the GOP subcommittee chair calling Ms. Warren a liar about what was scheduled. Interestingly, another minority witness has blogged that he had not even been informed about changes in scheduling, but the majority witnesses had been so informed. That following of that dispute is one that has a life of its own in the news cycle, with some Members of the House, from both parties, apologizing to Prof. Warren.

If you think I'm being too harsh in my characterization of the GOP House members in the subcommittee, view the video. Please.

From where I sit, if Elizabeth Warren makes these GOP members so nervous that they feel so bound to block her appointment to this agency, with no real reason except that she might be effective, that it looks like she really is the right person to head the agency, as well as the right person to build it.

"...On Wisconsin..."

2011-02-19T17:14:00.002-05:00

On a news website recently, amid the furor over the Wisconsin Governor's push to eliminate the bargaining rights of most of the state and local civil service unions, one comment thread had an entry where one "Fred" was complaining about the fact that *he* didn't have any pension anymore, and that jobs had been outsourced, and that *he* had seen his health insurance costs rise precipitously, and that he thought that the civil service unions should accept the "painful cuts," I was struck and wondering just why "Fred" was railing against the *unions,* and not the people who had stripped his pensions, and cut his wages, and sent his jobs overseas.

I put the following into the comment thread, in response to "Fred's" missive:

Fred --

You sound like you *enjoy* what the corporate culture in the USA has done to our economy:.

-- jobs lost because the companies decided to move everything overseas and ignored the people who had built the companies in the first place by their hard work
-- Pensions -- that you and your fellow-workers had contributed to -- stripped away, and the promises made when you and your fellow workers were employed, and you made your commitments of loyalty and hard work, were broken when the quarterly stock analysts decided that the short-term gain wasn't big enough
-- Insurance costs being outrageous because the insurance companies are allowed to spend huge amounts of the premiums paid on bloated executive salaries, lobbying and advertising
-- State workers are protected by civil service rules because they (those state workers) were being subjected to arbitrary firings and unsafe work conditions whenever the current politician population changed, and those new office-holders had friends and family to give largess to, rather than having people working who just wanted to do their jobs to the best of their abilities
-- The civil service workers aren't the ones who cut your pensions -- those pensions were cut by the corporations that are given huge give-aways in tax breaks that ordinary citizens cannot even think of getting
-- as for "painful cuts," -- the governor in WI caused this budget shortfall himself when he gave away huge tax breaks to business.

Don't blame the unions and the workers for the mess the GOP and Wall Street have caused. If you want to see who is really behind the mess in the economy, follow the money. Right to the corporate board rooms and the financial firms on Wall Street.

Don't rail at the union workers who have managed to hold onto *their* benefits.
Rail at the corporate monied interests who stole *your* benefits.

You can't make this stuff up - even if you try (conservatives to edit Bible to remove liberal bias)

2010-09-19T17:33:00.000-04:00

sometimes a story comes along that appears too good to be true. Like one that conforms to all our biases and preconceptions. Like "yeah, that's what the cons/neo-cons/tea-partyrs/etc *really* think" And then you find out that it is authored by the Yes Men or the Onion or a like web-site.

Like the following link, from The Chicago Dope: "Texas School Board removes words of Jesus from the Bible," because they are too liberal. The text containing Jesus' words (according to the site) are to be replaced with references to Ayn Rand. Now that detail surely shows that the story is over the top, right? Not quite on a par with The Onion, but up there in the same range.

However, proving that wing-nuttery knows no bounds, we find a story from December of last year, that there are conservatives who, yes, want to remove Jesus' words (at least some of them) from the Bible, because of "liberal bias." Our good friends at Conservapedia are crowd-sourcing a new compilation of the Bible (I hesitate to call it a "translation") so they can remove the "liberal bias." The MSNBC article identifies one passage that the Conservapedia crowd wants to delete -- The passage in Luke 23:34, Jesus's forgiveness of those who crucified Him (But Jesus was saying, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.). In regards to the reasoning involved with this new effort, Andy Schlafly is quoted:

"Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it's professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible..."

No, you can't make this stuff up, even if you try.

Harp Repair - or Adventures in Desperation WoodWorking

2010-08-01T15:23:00.023-04:00

Expository Lump

For relaxation I play music (or least a reasonable facsimile thereof).

The instrument I play is technically known as a "harp-zither," (modeled on a numerical harp-zither) and more usually it's known as a "MacArthur Harp."

To the right is an image of the harp (for this,and all other images,click on the image for a larger view)

An explanation for the terms, you ask?

The "Harp-zither" part is easy -- there are 12 strings (actually steel wires --this is wire-strung harp, rather than nylon-strung) that are parallel to the sound-box (that conforms to the "zither" part). These strings are in diatonic progression from G4 to D6 (that is, from the G above Middle C to the D above the next octave's C) and another set of 12 strings that run from the tuning bridge to the pin-block, and are open to the air (that gives us the "Harp" part) These are in three groups of 4, grouped for use as chords, rather than in direct progression. The diatonic scale is continued from F4 down to F3 (that is, the F above middle C to the F below middle C.

Then there is that "numerical" description. Well, when the original of this was first produced and sold, there were numbers pasted on the tuning bridge, and the owner could "play by number" using music sheets that had the numbers written-in, so the player really didn't need to be able to read "normal" music. It's an idea that is still in use for some instruments.

It's also known as a "MacArthur Harp" after the late Margaret MacArthur, who was a folk song collector and preserver. She had received a (somewhat broken) example of this little harp in 1961, her husband restored it and she used it during her concerts and on her recordings.

My example was built by Keith Young, who is still a practicing luthier. I bought it the year it was made, in 1988 (the label in the sound hole has an identifying number of "M-16") and have been playing it since. Yes, I have a musical instrument that is old enough to drive, vote and legally imbibe Adult Beverages.

However, like most wooden musical instruments, the way parts are joined is usually just by the shape and fit (think variations on the dovetail joint you find in some furniture and in some house construction) and glue. As these instruments age, and especially as they are played, the tension of the strings (which, after all, is what helps determine the note to be played) puts stress on the parts of the instrument where the strings are attached to the body. In a harp of this sort, the stressed parts are the pin-block (at the bottom of the picture, where the wire strings are anchored) and the tuning bridge (the curved structure at the top, where the other end of the strings are threaded through a tuning pin which is adjusted to lessen or increase the tension on the string*.

Pin block
this shows the pin-block, and the anchor pins. The strings at this lower end either pass over the lower bridge (for the zither portion of the string set) or through holes drilled in the bridge itself (for the harp portion of the string set)

Tuning bridge
This shows a portion of the tuning bridge for the higher notes for the instrument. The strings are threaded through a hole in the tuning peg, and the peg is adjusted to decrease or increase the string tension.

In the case of my little harp, the glue in the pin-block was failing, and the string tension was causing the pin-block to rotate away from the instrument back. The first symptoms I saw were that the instrument was always going "flat," and I had to continually tighten the strings back up to the proper tension (as the pin-block was rotating out away from the instrument back, the distance between the anchor pins in the pin-block and the tuning pins in the tuning bridge was shorter, and the corresponding tension was lower, which lowered the frequency of the note produced). The next symptom noticed was that there was a visible gap where the block was separating out.

Being neither a woodworker nor a luthier, I just let things go, until I had no choice but to act. I reasoned that, since this kind of repair would involve partially disassembling the instrument and regluing, the repair cost would likely exceed the cost for a new instrument. I contacted Keith Young by e-mail to ask if he had used hide glue or not (the use of hide glue is common for many luthiers). He said he had not, as he found that the glue did not last as well in the kinds of tensions found in these instruments. I decided that I would use a commercial glue with the brand name of "Gorilla Glue" (prior use of this brand had given my good results in the little wood gluing I had done in the past) for the repair.

Break-down

First thing I had to do was to take the strings off the harp (some had not been replaced in the 21 years I had had the instrument, other had been replaced as often as twice a year). For some of the strings it was a matter of simply unwinding them from their tuning pegs, unthreading from the post and lifting from the anchor pegs. (I don't have any pictures of this phase, because I didn't think to document with pictures until after the dis-assembly had already begun)

Others had to be cut off (I did mention that some strings had been on the harp for two decades), because they were simply too well-coiled on the posts to easily unthread, and would just break if I tried to reuse them.

The plan was to break down the harp, lightly sand all the glued surfaces, repair spacer blocks, re-glue and clamp.

Once the strings were removed, I used a heat gun (cleverly disguised as a hair dryer) and a spray bottle of water to separate the pin-block and support post. The combination of heat and moisture was what was needed to make the glue lose its bond with the wood.

I was able to break the ties that bind and take off the pin-block and the support post (the turned wooden column shown to the left of the body. As mentioned above, I was going to remove the back of the soundbox as well, and more firmly attach the spacer blocks (the interior blocks that keep the front and back of the soundbox from collapsing together.). However, that plan went south when, partway through the dis-assembly of the instrument back, it turned out that, even with the glue softened, the glue was still stronger than the wood of the soundbox, and the wood started to split outside the glue area. So I stopped the process at that point and didn't try any further breakdown.

Disassembled
The picture to the left shows the harp in its disassembled state. The support post is at left, the pin-block is shown separated from the body.

Not shown is the lower bridge. Neither the lower nor upper bridges are glued on, but held in place with small diameter flat-headed nails. The nail holes for the lower bridge can be seen on the soundbox.

The maker's label can be seen through the sound hole.

Re-glue the box

Because I had partially disassembled the soundbox, before anything else, I had to re-glue those pieces so everything was tight before I tried to put the pin-block back. I sanded the areas that I could reach to remove as much of the old glue residue as I could, ran a damp paper towel over the sanded surfaces to catch as much of the dust and residue as I could, applied the new glue and clamped surfaces.

The pin-block and lower bridge can be seen to the left of the body in this image. (Did I use enough clamps?)

.

Reset Post

Next step was to reset the support post. This post slots into a hole in the pin-block, and serves the dual function of providing a support brace against the tension of the metal strings and also provides a handle while playing.

The pin-block and lower bridge can be seen to the left of the harp, the brass rods on the right fit into the bridges and the strings rest on them, rather than on the wood of the bridge.

Finished!
The same clamps, with the addition of straps for vertical stability, were used when the pin-block was set in place. (Sorry no pic of that) But we do have the picture of the harp. rebuilt, before restringing.

And this video gives a sample of what my little girl sounds like. This was just a quick capture to show what the harp sounds like after the rebuild (actually, it sound like it did *before* the rebuild, but it holds tone better now.

==========================================================
*The tension on these strings can be, well stressful (as an example, one string that can be used on a bass mandolin has a tension range from 59 pounds (when tuned to C') to 236 pounds (when tuned to C) ). Imagine now that the tension is constantly being applied between the two attachment points.

You can see that, eventually, Something Has To Give. Ideally, the wear on the instrument can be lessened by either removing the string entirely or loosening the string to slack, both of which remove the tension. However, this puts the strings through mechanical fatigue as the strings are manipulated to slacken them, and then tighten to bring back to the correct tuning. This fatigue is especially acute in metal strings, as metal is very brittle when subjected to that repeated stress.

Tax Court reverses IRS on Sex reassignment deductability

2010-02-03T22:54:00.005-05:00

In 2001 Rhiannon O'Donnabhain, then aged 50, underwent sex reassignment surgery to transition from male to female. She deducted the allowable portion of the surgery costs on her federal taxes.

In 2003 the IRS disallowed the deduction, claiming the surgery, performed after five years of therapy, as "cosmetic," and therefor not a deductible medical expense.

Rather than quietly allow the IRS position to prevail,she decided to appeal the decision, and the initial appeal granted her the deduction for the surgery expense. The local IRS office sought a decision from Washington, and a Tax Letter was issued on Oct 14,2005 denying the applicability of the deduction.

The case went before the Tax Court in 2007. Oral arguments were heard in November of that year. Both sides finished filings in February of 2008. The Tax Court issued its final opinion on Feb 2,2010.

The decision of the court is that the surgery and hormone treatments are deductible expenses, but the breast augmentation surgery was primarily "cosmetic" in nature, and therefore does not pass the statutory test for the qualification as a deductible expense.

(One of the side-notes that, to me, made this more of a political case than a straight-forward finances case, was the choice of one of the expert witnesses by the IRS: forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, who testified that Gender Identity Disorder is not a disease. Dr Dietz has a small problem in credibility, when one reflects that he was the same doctor who testified that Andrea Yates had apparently seen an episode of the TV series "Law and Order" that depicted a woman who had an insanity defense after drowning her children. The problem, however, was that no such episode of Law and Order had ever aired. Indeed, Deitz also stated his opinion during the trial that a disorder should not be called a "disease" unless it has a clear and unambiguous organic or physiological basis)

Legal assistance to O'Donnabhain was rendered through the Gay and Lesbian Advocates & defenders.

I wrote about this in 2007, but I don't have a subscription to the proper legal services to be able to inquire about the progress of cases, and my periodic curiosity about the progress of the case has been, until now, unsatisfied.

Initial coverage from the New York Times,

Initial tax court petition

Tax court decision

This blog's prior posts are here (07/2007) and here (10/2007)

Confirmation hearings start for Sotomayor

2009-07-13T14:55:00.004-04:00

I just finished watching the the start of the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Started out with numerous senators having their preliminary
remarks, including a point where Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
had to caution the audience that respect would be afforded to all persons, whether they were present at the hearings or not, in response to an outburst when Sen Ted Kennedy's name was mentioned.

There were even a few hecklers removed from the room.

From what we heard, some of the Republicans are dead set against her nomination, including some that are complaining that she is overly sensitive to minority and gender concerns, Sen. Kyle (R-TX) even going so far as rather openly saying that she would color her decisions based on the skin color and gender of the litigants.

Of course, the republicans are rather coyly ignoring the records and behavior of the more conservative members of the current court and its' record of "activism" and protection of the embedded privilege of the racial and economic status quo at the expense of civil rights, consumer protection and access to the courts of those who may be of more meager economic means.

The hatter keeps popping out of the rabbit hole....

2009-05-18T03:03:00.004-04:00

Michael Steele, the current GOP RNC chair, seems to be losing touch with what the American people will regard as "reasoned discourse." And by "American people" I mean those outside the confines of the "party faithful" who are not corralled into the party's "big tent."

In a story carried on Saturday (My 16, '09), The AP reported that Steele, in a speech at the GOP state convention in Georgia, had stated that one of the ways that the GOP could be "recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks" would be to push the supposed "extra" cost of health care for spouses to gays.

"Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for," Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. "So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money."

Now, I realize that the GOP likes to present themselves as the champion of small business (even when the real effect of the GOP-supported policies is to give the overwhelming competitive advantage back to big corporations), and they have found themselves in thrall to the ideologues of the Religious Right (tm).

This presents Steele, who is supposed to formulate and articulate the GOP's positions in somewhat of a quandary, as he tries to find a speech that will appeal to both constituencies. The trouble with *this* tactic (a tactic that Steele has to undertake) is that his chosen arguments are patently foolish.

He is trying to equate, as an "added cost" to small business owners a cost that they have to be prepared to bear as a simple cost of employee retention, and attempts to ignore the fact that discrimination, based on marital status, is *already* against the law. It sounds like Steele is trying to be able to roll back the pre-existing civil rights protections against those with married status.

Of course, an oft-stated complaint from this brand of "conservative" is that the civil rights protections afforded the "protected" groups are unneeded and and burdensome to ... business.

Again, forgetting that the "protected" are people.

People who should be afforded fair and equitable treatment under the law.

But, I suppose, most of us know this. Just that damned hatter keeps popping out of that rabbit hole.

"his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American."

2008-10-23T20:11:00.012-04:00

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim - American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn't have a Christian cross.

It didn't have a Star of David.

It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.

And he was an American.

He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life."

-- Colin Powell, Oct 19, 2008, on Meet The Press on the occasion of Powell's public endorsement of Barack Obama for President of the United States

Sweet mystery of life...

2008-03-23T01:06:00.005-04:00

File under: Irony and Karma

P.Z. Myers, who is a biologist and Asst. Professor at the University of Minnesota, and the blogger behind Pharyngula.org., was supposed to be viewing the local premier of "Expelled - No Intelligence allowed", a film supposedly describing, in an even-handed manner,the tension between evolution and "intelligent design."

Long before the film was near to being released, the film was being shot at by the very academics who were interviewed for it -- under claims that the project was misrepresented to them, and that the interview tapes were being cut and reedited in a manner to misrepresent what they had said. (see this piece in the New York Times from 2007 and the footnotes in the Wikipedia article )

As one of the people who were interviewed for the film, Myers was eager to see it (Likely with some trepidations about how cringe worthy it would be).

Well, he needed have worried -- at the premier he was not allowed to enter the theater. It seems he was persona non-grata and was told that he would have to leave the property. But his wife and daughter, with a guest, were allowed in to see the movie.

The irony is that their guest was Richard Dawkins. Someone who is even less enamored of the ID proponents than Myers is -- if thats possible.

And, being a blogger, Myers has, very happily, written about the barring him from the showing. One of the premises in the film is that opposing views are shouted down and barred from being considered. Which makes this so much more surreal (actually not -- it just points up more of the deceit and hypocrisy of the creationists who keep trying to deny that science is real)

Caveat for full disclosure. -- I'm a Christian. Been one all my life. I even teach in Sunday School. I also believe in a manner of "intelligent design." Where I believe that our Creator built and set in motion the universe where we all live and function.

But not the "intelligent design" that says that the Lord has created and enforced physical laws, yet, for some reason, has pettily violated those same physical laws so that radio-carbon dating, and examinations of geology somehow need to be disregarded if the result yields an age for anything that is more than 6000 years old. The sheer pettiness and self-aggrandizement of those conclusions is staggering

And those who espouse the "creationists" and "Intelligent design" dogmas are, at best, fools with monumental hubris without any real understanding of science or intellectual rigor, and at worst, hucksters preying on those who have real faith but need guidance.

The illustration is one that shows the adaptive matrix of Galapagos finches -- also known as "Darwin Finches" "Click" on the image for a larger view.

Update -- the non-admittance story has made the New York Times Science Section

Lawsuit against IRS in re reassignment surgery moves forward

2007-10-02T22:08:00.001-04:00

In July I noted a case going into tax court about Rhiannon O'Donnabhain, who underwent reassignment surgery in 2001, and listed the $25K as a medical deduction, had the deductibility disallowed by the IRS in 2003.

The case has now finished oral arguments, and Judge Joseph Gale has stated he wants briefs filed from both sides by Nov 6.

In a development that indicates that this may not be as simple as just deciding arcane developments in tax law, but seemingly has a definite political slant, one of the government witnesses was forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, who testified that Gender Identity Disorder is not a disease. Dr Dietz has a small problem in credibility, when one reflects that he was the same doctor who testified that Andrea Yates had apparently seen an episode of the TV series "Law and Order" that depicted a woman who had an insanity defense after drowning her children. The problem, however, was that no such episode of Law and Order had ever aired.

Dietz's credibility was challenged by the lawyer for Ms. O'Donnabhain in open court.

The model of a truly impartial judge? (updated)

2007-10-01T19:31:00.000-04:00

During his confirmation hearings in 1991, I recall saying that Clarence Thomas, who was nominated in 1991 by President Bush (senior) to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, would, by his own words, not be an impartial member of the U.S. Supreme Court. I suppose that I should feel lucky, in that Thomas at least never complained pettily that it was unfair for his fellow justices on the appellate court to criticize him for refusing to recuse himself from sitting in judgment over matters that directly affected his family, as another sitting U.S.S.C. Justice has done.

Part of the controversy over the confirmation hearings concerned the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him by Anita Hill, the the absurdly low competency rating from the lawyers guild, and his allegations that the hearings were a "high-tech lynching."

The Thomas nomination was the first in recent history that showed just how unconcerned with acumen a proposed justice could be and how much ideology was the requirement, and the administration would twist arms to get the ideology rather than the competency (the Bork nomination hearings were a different matter -- Bork is extremely intelligent, but a nutcase on Constitutional matters).

Also of concern to me were simple matters of honesty -- as when Thomas declared he hadn't thought about the matter of abortion in a Constitutional setting, or when he was following the conservative line about affirmative action and set-asides when he never would have been admitted to law school except for minority set-asides.

Well, Thomas has a new memoir that has just been published ("My Grandfather's Son" - Harpers), and according to reports about the book he's still railing about how he was "lynched" and about how Hill was just "traitorous" to him. (one of the most telling facets for me that had me give credibility to Hill rather than Thomas was that Hill had nothing to gain by her testimony, and the certain knowledge that her testimony would be a cause of trouble for her in her future career.)

I didn't think he was qualified when he was confirmed, and I think it's even less complimentary for him to be bruiting about these sentiments when he's still a sitting Justice.

As an aside, I see that the right-wing noise tactics are not changing any -- if you look at the comments on Amazon, the description of one commentator who call Thomas a "liar" has just been painted as a "racist" based on that evidence alone. Just as Thomas himself is making the oblique charge of racism when he continues to call the confirmation hearings a "lynching."

I'll wait until I have a chance to see this from the library before I make a final determination about the worth of the book. I very much doubt that it will change my opinion of Thomas a a Supreme Court Justice however -- which feeling has been confirmed by his voting record and written opinions from the bench since his confirmation.
-----------------------

UPDATE: Anita Hill has responded to the smears in Thomas's book (OK, OK, I believe Hill, I don't believe Thomas. And that will affect my choice of phrase). In a piece in the NY Times Hill addresses some of Thomas's accusations against her. Among the comments she made in the Times article is:

Regrettably, since 1991, I have repeatedly seen this kind of character attack on women and men who complain of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. In efforts to assail their accusers’ credibility, detractors routinely diminish people’s professional contributions. Often the accused is a supervisor, in a position to describe the complaining employee’s work as “mediocre” or the employee as incompetent. Those accused of inappropriate behavior also often portray the individuals who complain as bizarre caricatures of themselves — oversensitive, even fanatical, and often immoral — even though they enjoy good and productive working relationships with their colleagues.

Finally, when attacks on the accusers’ credibility fail, those accused of workplace improprieties downgrade the level of harm that may have occurred. When sensing that others will believe their accusers’ versions of events, individuals confronted with their own bad behavior try to reduce legitimate concerns to the level of mere words or “slights” that should be dismissed without discussion.

Unfortunately, Hill thinks those tactics as a defense against sexual harassment are going away, when they really are still being used extensively. And they will continue to be used as long as that kind of deception is allowed, and that will continue as long as sexual harassment is viewed as a minor matter in the workplace.

5'11" and 154 lbs is "fat?"

2007-09-24T06:13:00.000-04:00

At least according to the British television show "Make Me A Supermodel," when model Jennifer Hunter (see picture at left), a divorced mother of one who is 5'11" and weights 154 pounds.

The show, similar to the U.S. "reality" show "America's Next Top Model," pits men and women against each other in an elimination format, with the winner getting a contract with the Select modeling agency, one of the sponsors for the show. The overall winner was a male model, but Ms. Hunter was the top female vote getter in a UK-wide phone vote. This win came after the show's judges castigated her for being "selfish" and "greedy" because she wouldn't drop "extra" weight to fit their demands. In her stead, the judges' favorite female contestant was Swedish teenager Marianne Berglund, who is supposed to weigh 112 lbs, but she appears a lot less. One commentator likened her to a concentration camp survivor. (see side-by-side comparisons of Hunter and Berglund wearing similar swimsuits here)

The judges, while cutting down Hunter, praised Berglund as having a "perfect body for modeling." If that's a "perfect body" we're in bizarro-world and someone's lost the key out.

I don't follow fashion trends, and I tend to view fashion photography with a "bus man's holiday" view. But of late I've been seeing more and more images that I find disturbing, from the heroin-chic wasted runway models to the magazine "fashion" spreads that look like sexual assaults.

Now two fashion models have recently died from self-induced starvation, and the authorities in Spain have gone so far as to regulate what the minimum body-mass-index can be for a profession model.

If it wasn't that the "fashion industry" has such a disproportionate influence in young women as they are growing I could pass it off as an aberration in the industry, but this is too pervasive.

From a meta-context viewpoint, it's also a further indication of the societal constraints that have women's lives and self-images controlled by male-dominated corporations.

Terrorists attacks are in the news? Lets run sexy ads!

2007-09-17T23:31:00.000-04:00

"They're beautiful, and they can strip a rifle"

That's the lead to a short Sky News clip on the nation of Israel's new PR campaign to make the country more attractive to tourists.

According to Sky News, the Israeli government paid for a photo spread in MAXIM magazine that highlights the more personal attractions of the country. As the Sky News correspondent notes, "Israel has an image problem."

And someone had the bright idea that "rebranding" the country by pushing more websites with scantily clad women is the way to fight that image.

This, however, is so bizarre that it feels like it was dreamed up by someone in the Cheney/Bush administration. Or maybe the PR honchos at Southwest Airlines.

Oh, Lord, Protect Us From.. Cleavage?

2007-07-23T07:50:00.000-04:00

Well, it sure seems to be what both the Washington Post and Ann Althouse want to save us from. But I actually agree with her (sort of), which is kinda sad, as she doesn't want to be taken seriously, anyways.

In a copyrighted article on Friday, the WaPo makes noises about Sen Clinton's cleavage. I kid you not. The opening paragraph was: There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The WaPo writer seems to think that it's some sort of Major Story if a female politician reveals evidence of having boobies. I mean, really -- is this something that deserves column space in a Real Newspaper?

And Althouse is no better -- in the comments section of her own post:Ann Althouse said...
Breasts that are conspicuous in the political sphere warrant commentary. A woman speaking in front of the Senate or at a political lunch with an ex-President, unless she is utterly incompetent, has thought about how she wants her breasts to appear. Visible cleavage doesn't just happen. Nor does a clingy sweater. Every woman who is competent enough to play a significant political role knows how to change to a top with a higher neckline or put a jacket over a sweater. So how she has chosen to appear means something and it is a fair subject for political commentary. I will not be pushed back from this subject.
You know, for once I agree with Althouse.

Women in the public sphere (the workforce as well as politics) *do* need to be aware of how any implied sexuality is viewed.

However, where I differ from Althouse is that I don't see it as an issue that the *women* should be modifying their behavior for, but the men (and other observers) -- if someone is so fixated on tits or a rear end that they can't pay attention to "bidness," *they* need to address their own issues.

Thanks to Amanda at Pandagon, where I saw their coverage of this.

The picture at the left up top shows the image on C-SPAN that has the Washington Post and Althouse clutching their pearls over. The image on the right is one of Althouse I cadged from Google Images. *That* pic shows that Althouse is plainly wearing a top with a less-than Victorian neckline, so she is forcing all the menfolk to use their imagination about what might be revealed beyond the image cutoff, and that is worse than outright cleavage, eh? So obviously, Althouse doesn't want anybody to take her seriously on any issues.

Reassignment Surgery Deductability Headed for IRS Tax Court

2007-07-18T00:37:00.000-04:00

Rhiannon O'Donnabhain, who underwent reassignment surgery in 2001, and listed the $25K as a medical deduction, had the deductability disallowed by the IRS in 2003.

The IRS is claiming that the surgery, which O'Donnabhain underwent only after 5 years of therapy, was "cosmetic," and not medically required. (I'm not going to even try to firgure out that logic)

The Tax Court has not ruled on this issue yet, but there has been at least one case where the IRS ruled against the deductability of the procedure, while in another case the IRS allowed the travel expense for a man who drove his college-age son to a clinic for reassignment surgery.

One of the peculiarities of the IRS and the Tax Court are that they do not need to follow strict precedent when considering cases, unless a situation is clearly codified by law, rather than practice.

It would appear, from my viewpoint, that the deductability of the procedure is valid in these circumstances. However, the rules the IRS are operating under may have been influenced by the prevailing political climate in Washington DC from 2001 to the present.

The AP writeup for the story can be found here.

Hang 'em High

2007-07-17T23:55:00.000-04:00

I guess some of our legislators think that if anyone is running from the cops they must be guilty, and deadly force is A-OK.

Sen Tom Coburn (R-OK) (see left) stated, or at least left the impression, that there should have been no repercussions when two U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed a fleeing suspect who turned out to be drug trafficker, but who had neither fired at nor threatened the agents or any bystanders.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Border Patrol agents should be allowed to shoot at fleeing drug traffickers, a Republican senator suggested Tuesday.

Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, testifies about Border Control agents.

The patrol's deadly force rules were questioned at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing concerning the conviction of two agents who shot a fleeing, unarmed drug trafficker and covered it up.

"Why is it wrong to shoot the [trafficker] after he's been told to stop?" asked Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma.

Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the Supreme Court has ruled that using deadly force in that way is illegal. Agents also may not know if the fleeing person is a trafficker, he said.

Agents can return fire to defend themselves, their partners or other people, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar said.

Some of you remember that Coburn is in favor of the border fence between the US and Mexico, and against the guest worker programs.

He also raised a few eyebrows in 2005 and 2006 when he was caught, live, on C-SPAN, filling out crossword puzzles during the confirmation hearings for both the Roberts and Alito appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. (the photo above shows his rigorous concentration during the Alito hearings)

Zuzu nails Kos on the bullseye

2007-04-12T12:30:00.000-04:00

This post may ramble a bit, but bear with me, as I'm trying to articulate some issues that have ben percolating for a while.

Zuzu, over at Feminsite, just nailed the essence of an article on Daily Kos, by Kos, as to the commotion over the death threats and harassment aimed at a woman blogger who had a techie blog site up, until she closed the blog and cancelled her participation at some seminars she had been scheduled to present at. (I'm not going to link to the Kos article -- read Zuzu at Feministe and Amanda at Pandagon, then link to Kos from there)

I had been trying to figure out why I didn't feel all that comfortable porting stuff from my own blog to a diary on Daily Kos, and then the comment thread there crystallized it for me -- it's as if there is no requirement for consideration or thoughtful speech. (including their pooh-poohing of a proposed "blogger code of ethics")

I don't know if it's because the place is so big, or if it's just that "the management" has decided that such consideration is not worth the effort.

And the feeling in the Kos article (never mind some of the wild-a** comments) was just as Zuzu shortened it -- "she was asking for it."

The feeling I got when I read the woman's techie blog was that she was really frightened, and saw no reason why this level of venom was aimed as her. And *I* saw no reason for this level of venom, either.

But when the graphic threats are published, and I read the descriptions of what these people said they wanted to do to her, I saw real reason for her to be frightened.

Blogging can be a liberating activity, partly because of the anonymity, but that same anonymity can be a cause for some to treat what should be freedom as license. I know, and fully understand and accept, that the authors and readers at Feministe and Pandgon will view this issue through a "feminist lens," and they are right to do so. It most certasinly *is* a feminist issue, especially the way that Kos framed his article.

But I want to view this through a more expansive lens, and it leads to my reflection on a survey that BitchPhd had asked readers to participate in on the subject of "blog author anonymity/pseudononimy." My own response had been that I blogged semi-anonymously because it made my wife more comfortable for me to do so, and I wasn't someone who needed personal recognition to be so public that I needed to use my real-life name.

But over the past few months now my feelings have changed, are that she (my wife) was much more right than previously either of us realized -- for reasons that neither us of would have, I think, previously credited.

There are real some crazy people out there, and it really isn't needful to broadcast a way for some nutcase to be able to come directly to your home or workplace in order to confront or "punish" you because you have expressed an opinion that is contrary to what they deem as "correct." Amanda notes in her article on Pandagon that, when she first started blogging she had to spend a lot of time editing comment threads to remove the posting of her real-life name and address. It was, as she put it, the implied threat behind the statment "I know where you live."

There is a lot of presumption in our society these days that threats are all just so much trash-talking that it doesn't need to be believed, or that someone has to just "grow a thick skin" or "get over it." You know what? "Get stuffed."

There is no need for belittling the people who have legitimatly felt they are being threatened, especially someone who, like Soerra, have ben threatened in such a credible fashion that the police are taking it seriously.

Stalkers are dangerous.

People who are delusional can be *really* dangerous, especially if they thinkl they cannot be held acountable for their actions.

Unfortunately, when I look around and compare what I see to what I used to view as the familiar landscape of our "civil society," all I can say is "it doesn't look like we're in Kansas any more, Toto..."

You know, this makes as much sense as anything else we hear from inside the Beltway

2007-04-08T08:51:00.000-04:00

From a comment thread at Available Light on G.W.'s recess appointment of Sam Fox as Ambassador to Belgium :

#14 ::: Paula Lieberman ::: (view all by) ::: April 05, 2007, 10:38 AM:
I figured it out, it's

Satanic Possession!

Yes, the body occupying the Presidency of the United States is possessed by Satan! Karl Rove is another case of demonic-possession, and so is Dick Cheney! Satan is running the US Government!

Melech Ha'Mauvetz is ruling the world, and co-opting people who think they are working in accordance with God's Plans--all those supposedly pious and humble (not...) ministers of Jesus who have open access to the White House from Colorado Springs and elsewhere, who preach intolerance and bigotry and demand conversion of those who are either not of their faith, or have lifestyles and values (including tolerance...) that fail to comply with the preachers' professed credo (Ted Haggerty fell but shall rise again born again and again and again... shades of the hypocritical confessions and soul-cleansings in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). The demonically possessed subvert the populace of the USA, colluded to deliver thousands of souls into death on September 11, 2001 (refusing to accept any briefings about the threat posed by Al-Qaeda until after the start of September 2001, by the time the long-diverted and delayed briefing that finally got scheduled was scheduled for delivery, it was far to late to effective do anything to deter the murderers... complicity and collusion, and thousands of souls sent to death, and millions more sent into financial stress-- //snip//

There was the invasion of Afghanistan--bungled, and the administration of Afghanistan after the invasion bungled even worse. The lot of women in that country has not changed much, the schools that had been closed for years were briefly reopened to girls, and then closed again with atrocities of bombings and arson and massacres effected against those with the temerity to teaching reading and writing to girls, and against the schools the girls were going to, and against the girls who were learning to read and write. US-backed warlords with no different social policies that Taliban--lock the women in purdah and throw away the key, bludgeon all males into wearing full beards and behaving in accordance with rigid codes prohibiting alcohol, graven images, etc., destroy any art or literature considered religiously improper or impious or challenging....

There was the invasion of Iraq--"collateral damage" of more than half a million souls sent into death, more than a tenth of the population fled out of the country as refugees trying to avoid the fate of relatives murdered intentionally or as byproducts of homicidal mania masquerading as sectarianism or of homicidal mania manifesting as zeal for vengeance and revenge exacted for the deaths of friends and relatives....

"Blood and souls for Arioch!" called Elric as he wielded Stormbringer reaping its deadly harvest.. Stormbringer and Elric didn't cause the death and destruction of closing on a MILLION people, did they?

God knows that *I* can't find a rational analysis of why this administration does the things they do. And Voodoo would likely be a step up in the credibility process...

Solidarity

2007-03-24T11:45:00.000-04:00

In January of 2001 Jordon Barab, then an appointee of several years as "a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for OSHA" turned into a self-described pumpkin when the new winds blew through Washington.

A year and a half later, in March of 2003, he started up "Confined Space," a blog intended to cover workers safety and health issues.

And did it so well that it was voted a Kolfax award for "Best Single Issue Blog" in 2005

Unfortunately, the fields had been sown thickly with dragon's teeth, with all too much to tell about roll-backs in safety standards, the eviscerating of OSHA, and the toll of injury and death to America's workers, with more than 15 workers killed every day, and a workplace injury every 2.5 seconds.

Well, with the new winds again blowing through Washington, in January of this year, "Confined Spaces" turned into a pumpkin and Barab turned into a ~~horse-drawn coach~~ an appointee to the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor. Barab has decided that, from the viewpoints both of time and conflict-of-interest, he has given up being an active advocate in phosphor, and will fill that role in the halls of the U.S. Congress

Confined Space will stay up, with its archive as a resource, and some of the focus points will be taken on by other writers.

Even more than wage issues, unions got legs because of worker safety issues. Maybe some unions have adopted some practices that are counter-productive, (even spawning words like "featherbedding").

But the "free market" is one that grinds up workers and discards the carcass, and unions are still desperately needed.

The paradox in all that is that more and more rank-and-file workers think that the unions have had their day, and that management will magicly become altruistic and safety-conscious. I saw this sea-change in my own mother, as she, a woman who had worked for decades as a charwoman and then as a postal worker, bought the free-market lies whole-heartedly.

At the bottom of his last post at Confined Space Barab linked a video from YouTube that shows the need, and the solution, far better than I. I've copied it here.

Keep fighting Jordon, keep fighting.

Student's Free-Speech rights vs Orderly School

2007-03-23T07:53:00.000-04:00

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week on a case that balances a student's free-speech rights with the rights of a school to control the atmosphere, through limits on student speech, of the school itself. In January of 2002 Joseph Frederick, then a senior at a high school in Juneau, Alaska, unfurled a 14-foot banner near Juneau-Douglas High School proclaiming "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

Frederick's display of the banner occurred during the relay of the ceremonial torch for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Fredericks, now studying and teaching in China, claims that the banner was a publicity stunt, with nonsensical wording, just to gather attention and make a point about free speech. Deborah Morse, then the principal of the high school, saw, instead, a pro-drug message, and suspended Frederick for 10 days. (originally 5 days, but Frederick refused to name his fellow-travelers in crime, and the principal upped the sentence on, umm, principle, when he quoted Thomas Jefferson to her)

Frederick appealed the suspension to both the school Superintendent and the district's school board, both of whom upheld the suspension but reduced it to "time-served" of eight days (the days from the incident to the appeal to the Superintendent).

In April of that year Frederick filed suit in the United States District Court for Alaska, stating that his federal and state rights to free speech had been unnecessarily curtailed.

The District Court held for Morse and the school board, but the 9th Circuit court, on appeal, reversed with a unanimous decision and held that Frederick's rights of free speech had been violated.

The School Board, and Morse, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

There is a peculiar cast of supporting characters, as well -- Kenneth Starr (yes, *that* Ken Starr) is representing Morse (now a Juneau schools' administrator) and the School Board. The U.S. D.O.J.'s Solicitor General, Paul Clement has filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the school authorities. The brief calls for near unlimited control of speech in the schools, based on the thought that "it may be banned if it is inconsistent with a school’s basic educational mission ." This kind of control is just ripe for abuse, considering that, like the "war on terror," the definition of a school's "basic educational mission" can be pretty slippery.

The ACLU is representing Frederick, along with Juneau lawyer Doug Mertz. The briefs filed show that the ACLU is framing the case as a "simple" free-speech case, and not necessarily one of "student's rights," noting that the banner exhibition did not cause disruption (some thought "it was dumb."), the display occurred on public property, and it was not an official school-sanctioned "event."

'Though the school did release students to watch the relay parade, Fredericks did not make it to school that morning, arriving at the parade after the school had let the students out, so Frederick had never been under the school's control up to that point.

Along with the ACLU and Mertz, support for Frederick's actions is coming from the American Center for Law and Justice , who have filed an amicus brief in the case. The ACLJ is a right-wing group that must be feeling somewhat nervous being on the same side of a case as the ACLU (indeed, one of their lead items on their web site's home page is attacking the ACLU).

Along with the ACLJ the Rutherford Institute has filed an amicus brief. At least the Rutherford seems a little more comfortable working with the ACLU -- the two organizations have cooperated in several cases in the past.

Others that have filed amicus curiae briefs in support of Frederick:
- Drug Policy Alliance - amicus brief
- Alliance Defense Fund - amicus brief
- Center for Individual Rights - amicus brief
- Christian Legal Society - amicus brief
- Lamda Legal Defense Fund - amicus brief
- The Liberty Counsel - amicus brief
- Liberty Legal Institute - amicus brief
- National Coalition Against Censorship - amicus brief
- Student Press Law Center - amicus brief
- Students For Sensible Drug Policy - amicus brief

Of course, this mix-master of organizations all have their own agenda -- but the one that is most to look after is the right-wing one, as groups like Liberty Legal (these were the people who represented the two women who were fired after they "prayed over" and "anointed" the desk, chair and cubicle of an absent co-worker) and Christian Legal want to try to find a wedge so they can go back to forced prayer and proselytizing in the public schools.

The transcript of the oral arguments before, though the Supreme Court can be found
here.

It's always a chance if you presume that what questions are asked will be probable indicators of where the decision may go. If that were the case, the decision may hinge on the fact that the then-student was on public property and that his "speech" was not disruptive.

On the one side is the student claiming free-speech utterances of a nonsense phrase, and the school board claiming that a "reasonable person" would view "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" as an endorsement of drug use.

The arguments that the lawyers for Morse and the school board were putting forth to support the "drug endorsement" message really seem a stretch.

The court is expecting to issue a ruling before the summer.

A few background notes: the student was harassed by police several times, and he won a lawsuit against the city, and his father was fired from his job with the city's liability coverage, at least partly because he did not intervene to shut his son up. When the elder Frederick sued for wrongful termination, he got a $200,000 from his lawsuit.

Neb. High Court characterizes repeated, persistent bullying as "Stalking"

2007-03-19T03:26:00.000-04:00

For far too long bullying in schools, especially of girls, has been dismissed as being "just a stage" or that the victims just need to "get a thicker skin." Schools often say they cannot do anything about the situations, and that it should be handled by the parents

In at least one case, however, persistent bullying has been recognized as the brutalizing and fear-inducing act that it is.

Neb. court says bullying was stalking
LINCOLN, Neb. --A teenager who called a schoolmate "fat penguin" and other derogatory names in front of other students for months committed misdemeanor stalking, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday

The ruling overturned an appeals court finding that the 16-year-old's actions were intended only for his "own juvenile amusement."

According to court documents, the teen identified only as Jeffrey K. yelled at the girl close to 200 times over two months in 2004 at Omaha Westside High School. He shoved a chair directly into her path, causing her to stumble, repeatedly called her a "whore" and threw food at her, yelling "eat some more, fat ass."

Lets see, bullying that was repeated each day, every school day, for months. Where the hell was the school system all this time, that these actions were permitted to continue for such a long period, and in such a public fashion? Never mind that the incidents with the chair and the thrown food could also be classed as "assault."

A Juvenile Court found that the boy had committed misdemeanor stalking, but an appeals court overturned that judgement.

But I guess they figured it was just a case of "boys will be boys," because the victim, herself a minor, testified that the tone of voice was "mean, but not, really -- like, threatening."

On the face, the victim changed her daily routine in order to avoid her harasser, presumably out of fear. But, because the appellate court viewed the statute only in a subjective manner, they reversed the Juvenile Court.

The state supreme court in its decision (In re Interest of Jeffrey K.) took an objective view of the case, and decided that, from an independent, external view, based upon our review, we determine that the record contains evidence beyond a reasonable doubt demonstrating that a reasonable person would be “seriously . . . intimidated” by Jeffrey’s ongoing verbal and physical attacks as required under § 28‑311.02(2)(a).
It's about damn time some of this behavior is called for what it is.

Ancient Mayan site purified after GW visit

2007-03-19T02:48:00.000-04:00

This is just chock full of pre-loaded snark...

Guatemalans perform rituals after Bush exit

IXIMCHE, Guatemala -- A whiff of incense, a sputter of candles, a hum of prayer.

Mayan Indian activists yesterday offered the gentlest protest yet to the recent Latin American tour of President Bush as they held a purification ceremony to drive out the "bad spirits" they said he had left behind during a stop at their ancient pyramid.

The activists said the bad spirits were roused by Bush's policies, including the US-led war in Iraq and the immigration raid last week in New Bedford, Mass. Several Guatemalans were among the 361 alleged illegal immigrants detained.

Bush visited Iximche, capital of the pre-Hispanic Kaqchiqueles kingdom, during his daylong trip to Guatemala as part of a five-nation trip to the region.

Kroger's and EC in Georgia

2007-03-14T21:15:00.000-04:00

It's nice when I can quote a news story that shows corporate responsibility (even is that "corporate responsibility" will translate into customer's regarding the company as one that wants to actually serve customers, instead of serving well-heeled pressure groups that won't spend money in the chain's stores anyway).

"Kroger reminds pharmacists of company policy after Ga. complaint"

ATLANTA -- Kroger Co. said Friday it was reiterating its drug policies to all of its pharmacists after a Georgia woman claimed she was denied the so-called ”morning after” pill at one of the company’s stores.

The Cincinnati-based grocery chain said if its pharmacists object to fulfilling a request, the store must ”make accommodations to have that prescription filled for our customer.”

”We believe that medication is a private patient matter,” said Meghan Glynn, a Kroger spokeswoman. ”Our role as a pharmacy operator is to furnish medication in accordance with the doctor’s prescription or as requested by a patient.”

//snip//

Supporters of the drug say widespread availability will cut down on unwanted pregnancies and abortions.

Critics argue it encourages promiscuity and unprotected sex and some consider it related to abortion, although it is different from the abortion pill RU-486.

Lets look at that again, "encourages promiscuity and unprotected sex."

In other words, men and women being responsible about not bringing unwanted children onto the planet is to be punished and regarded as "bad."

I'd say that Kroger's was being the responsible one here.

I'm sure that there is also no lack of those who will call this move by Kroger's management as "caving to the forces of immorality!"

Think of it as "evolution in action"

2007-03-11T19:48:00.000-04:00

There isn't a lot you can say about this....
Man burned trying to copy movie stunt

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. --Attempts to duplicate a movie stunt landed one man in the hospital with burned genitals and another facing criminal charges.

The men were trying to do a stunt from one of the "Jackass" movies, in which a character lights his genitals on fire.

Jared W. Anderson, 20, suffered serious burns to his hands and genitals, according to the criminal complaint. Randell D. Peterson, 43, who sprayed lighter fluid on Anderson and lit him on fire, was charged with felony battery and first-degree reckless endangerment Tuesday in Eau Claire County Court

According to one published report, the first attempt failed to ignite, so they, of course, used more lighter fluid.

And, to answer the inevitable question whenever this kind of thing happens:

Witnesses told police that Anderson, who was drunk, volunteered to do the stunt Sunday after watching the movie

Passport denied because name change not recognized.

2007-03-10T21:30:00.000-05:00

Last week's [Worcester, Mass.] Telegram & Gazette detailed a small story where the U.S. passport office has refused to recognize not the marriage itself, but the name change involved in a person choosing to alter their legal name under which they are known when they are married.

On May 20, 2004, three days after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriages in the Commonwealth, Alicia Lison and Amanda Ginese were legally married in a small ceremony. Amanda elected to change her last name to Lison. Under Massachusetts state law, that made her name change a legal fact, not requiring a trip to the Probate Court Department. For the past three years she has used that as an identified for such things as her state driver’s license and her Social Security card.

A few months back Amanda sent in photographs and the required fees in order to obtain a U.S. Passport. This was in preparation for a vacation cruise. A week before her cruise was due to leave, however, she received a letter from the Passport Office saying that the application was being denied because her name change was not being recognized as valid.

The agency said it refused to recognize Amanda’s married name, even though she had wed three years earlier and had legally changed her surname to that of her spouse.

According to the federal government, Amanda had married the wrong gender.

“I guess I’m not all that surprised,” said Amanda, sans passport, as she waited for her cruise ship to sail out of New York City last Thursday. “I should have known. It was amazing to be able to get married. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. But I never had an issue until this passport thing.”

Of course,this kind of intrusion is inevitable, given the language of the so-called "defense of marriage act."
A spokesman from the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., said same-sex couples seeking a passport under a married name can’t do so absent additional documentation, and that the government doesn’t recognize such name changes based solely on marriage certificates, as it does for heterosexual married couples.
....

[Worcester, Massachusetts] City Clerk David Rushford said Amanda’s case is the first he has heard of a gay person being denied a passport based on her married name, partly because many gay couples have kept their own name. Both he and Mr. Bell [Bruce Bell, a lawyer for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders] said that, because a name change is a state issue, Amanda’s name change should be legal.

“So what they’re really rejecting is the change in marital status,” Mr. Rushford said. “They’re not treating people equally with that kind of action.”

Amanda, 23, said she’s contacted the offices of state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. and Gov. Deval L. Patrick, and is angry that the Boston Passport Agency has refused to refund her money. She didn’t have time to get another passport in time for her Eastern Caribbean cruise, which left Thursday from New York. Speaking by telephone from the dock, she said she’s nervous to be without one because if she had to fly home for any reason, she’d have a hard time getting back into the United States.

Mostly, though, she’s sad that her cruise has been dampened by a federal law she thinks is all wet.

“No one told me this could happen and I had no way of knowing it,” she said. “It’s just not fair. We went through so much to legalize gay marriage, and to deny me something like a passport doesn’t make much sense.”

This is just another data point on how that prejudice and unfounded fear of a few is continuing to affect the many. The DOMA is an unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of people who are citizens of this nation, and enshrines an effective religious test into the recognition of marriage, because the arguments in favor of this particular definition of "marriage" all fall back to appeals to "tradition." A "tradition" which is based on a particular religious "standard" itself.

One of the fears of these prejudiced few is that the U.S. Supreme Court has itself declared that the freedom to marry of one's own choice is itself one of the "unenumerated rights" declared in the Constitution -- see, in a Supreme Court case involving involuntary sterilization of criminals, that marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man.” (SKINNER v. STATE OF OKL. EX REL. WILLIAMSON, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) ). And the supreme Court reiteratd that view when they referenced Skinner v State of OKL in the miscegnation case "Loving v VA" (1967)

In the comments to the T&G piece, someone claims that they were able to get the Passport Office to give them the passport under their married name, apparently when they notified the passport office that they were represnted by legal counsel.

Lets look at a couple of pieces of law

First, some old, really “settled” law

Article. IV.
Section. 1.
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Section. 2.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

AMENDMENT XIV
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now some law that hasn’t really been validated yet by confirmation through the U.S. Supreme Court

SEC. 2. POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES.
(a) IN GENERAL- Chapter 115 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by adding after section 1738B the following:
`Sec. 1738C. Certain acts, records, and proceedings and the effect thereof
`No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.'.

This second, to my unlettered eye, contradicts both cited sections of the first.

These are, of course, the Constitution of the United States () and the “Defense of Marriage Act”

The analysis by the DOMA sponsors claims that they have, in essence, their own little set of extra-judicial rules akin to what are commonly referred to as the “presidential signing statements.” Their claim is that they can substantially bypass the “Full Faith and Credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution that would normally compel all the states in the nation to recognize a “same-sex” marriage. However, this interpretation is illustrated by affirmative examples (requirements for the states to recognize and enforce child custody and child support orders), while this legislation allows the several states to effectively ignore the judicial proceedings, and civil contracts, of another state. The analysis itself is a little contradictory, -- in the last paragraph of the analysis:

“DOMA is not meant to affect the definition of "spouse" (which under the
Social Security law, for example, runs to dozens of lines). It ensures
that whatever definition of "spouse" may be used in Federal law, the
word refers only to a person of the opposite sex”. >

Either you are “affecting” the definition or not, guys – you cannot have it both ways.

Both Skinner and Loving hinged on the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that may be the eventual road taken to overturn DOMA. Also, of perhaps more direct import, is ROMER v. EVANS, ___ U.S. ___ (1996) which decision directly confronted a CO state constitutional amendment that directly precluded the granting of equal rights, based upon gender roles. Romer also hinged on the Equal potection language.

My own feeling is that the Full Faith & Credit clause may be more important, and I really don't see the free-market zealots being willing to weaken the part of the U.S. Constitution that relates to the enforcement of civil contracts.

The above is, of course, old news, but it needs to be kept in our minds as an example of how simple it is for the rights of the citizens to be abrogated.

After this, who knows? Maybe the federal government will decide that they can bypass the constitutional protections against warrentless searches, and the requirements of habeas corpus and the guarantee of a speedy trial and to be able to face your accusers. Oh, well. Never mind....

Korean Government wants the US to ban a Book used in U.S. middle schools

2007-03-03T03:26:00.000-05:00

A few months ago (in November) I saw a note about a book challenge to local school district, where a fictionalized autobiography was being challenged as "racist."

Since the book in question, "So Far From The Bamboo Grove" by Yoko Kawashawa Watkins is one I had read myself and am planning to have my older boy (who will be age 10 this year) read and discuss.

The book, originally published in 1986, is now raising controversy due to a concerted effort from a small, but vocal, group of protesters who claim that the book "distorts history," "is racist," "brands Koreans as villains" and "refuses to treat the Japanese as criminals."

The book depicts the flight from northern Korea, just before the end of WW II, of an 11-year old Japanese girl, her sister, brother and mother.

The novel describes the flight from Korea from the viewpoint of the 11-year old, including their passage on a medical train where they are sheltered and protected from Japanese and Korean Communist soldiers, and the further efforts they make to leave Korea and be repatriated to Japan, and their troubles there, without a male relative to sponsor/protect them.

The main thrust of the non-local opposition to this book seems to be because the book doesn't paint the wartime Japanese as vicious or brutal enough. There have also been repeated attempts, completely without any evidence, to link Ms Kawashawa Watkins, who is married to a U.S. citizen and now lives on Cape Cod, to the head of the Japanese "disease prevention and water purification" Unit 731,(this was actually a site where experimentation on human subjects, including vivisection, was performed, some in aid of CBW aims, others on the same "spirit of investigation" that led the U.S. health authorities to conduct experiments where men and women with venereal disease were purposely left untreated, without the subjects knowledge and consent.)

From the netizen attacks on the book, and author, I have seen, it appears that most have not read the book at all, and focus their attacks on a very few points in the book -- there are two points where, very briefly and without detail, attacks and rapes by uniformed soldiers is described. There is also, for some attackers, a "significant point" that the "bamboo grove" alluded to in the title could not have survived in Northern Korea. Others complain that the (presumably Korean Communist) soldiers depicted on the paperback version's cover art doesn't show accurate N. Korean uniforms.

Others claim that Kim Il Sung's forces were still in China at the end of 1945( he was actually withe the Soviet Army units in Siberia).

Others claim as Watkins is being a "hypocrite" when, as she sees groups of school children to discuss her book and experiences with them, she apologizes for what her nation had done during and before WW II.

In the Dover-Sherborn district, the book was first announced to be removed from the curriculum in early November.

In what I had thought was a relatively minor bubble, concerning a local Massachusetts school district, is actually turned into an international event, with Asian English-language web portals-sites showing a lot of activity on the subject. Especially see the discussion at Japan Probe and Marmot's Hole, and at occidentalism( "Yoko Watkins defends memoir" "Review of 'So Far From The Bamboo Grove'") and the reports of misquotes of an american expat journalist by the Yonhap News Service. For more articles at Marmot's Hole enter "Bamboo Grove" into their search window.

My post title alludes to the Korean Government activity shown in this quote:

The Korean Consul General in Boston Ji Young-sun said the issue was first raised last September, when Korean American parents near Boston and in New York publicly complained about the book being used as a set text. This prompted an organized campaign against the book. Ji said many Korean students were shocked by the book and experienced discrimination because of it.

Ji said the fact that the book is taught in U.S. schools was “in a way racial discrimination and violation of human rights,” adding Korean parents will file formal complaints with U.S. education authorities and state government. The consulate has already written to federal and state education authorities.

The publisher claims that the book cannot be published in China because it does not vilify the Japanese enough, and that it cannot be published in Japan because the viewpoint character's mother , early in the book, criticizes the Japanese government for starting the war with the U.S.

The Dover-Sherborn school district has decided, with a unanimous vote, to reinstate the book into the school curriculum, and to beef up other curriculum in order to provide more context for discussion.

As I said, I've read this book, and plan on discussing it with my son after he reads it.

It will be interesting to see what all comes out of this.

OK, where have you been for the past month?...

2007-03-02T23:17:00.000-05:00

OK, OK, Yes, it's been a while, but I've got a good excuse, or reason, or dodge, or something.

I've been working for a living and commuting about 1.5 hours each way.

And Ledasmom has taken to pointing to pictures on the side of milk cartons and telling the boys "say 'Good morning!' to your da."

I've got this huge list of things I've wanted to write about, and many are no longer timely, but some still are, so I'll be writing about some of them anyway...

State of the Union -- 01/23/07

2007-01-23T21:10:00.000-05:00

09:13

"Madam Speaker"

Well, George, of course you're the first prez to use "Madam Speaker," and she's there not at all by your choice, but partially your doing -- your policies made the electorate swing left or stay home.

9:16

"Spend the people's money wisely."
"make life better for our fellow Americans"

Not for the last 6 years, you haven't

"Not with more government, but with more enterprise."

Big business is not really the answer, george.

"Balance the federal budget"
"Don't raise taxes"

Well, we *had* a budget surplus until you trashed it.

Shall we look at the cost to the federal budget what your tax cuts for the rich have wrought?

"earmarks"

Funny, you didn't find earmarks quite so onerous when your republican buddies were running them

"social security & medicaid & medicare"

They don't need "fixing" as much as protection from you.

"No Child Left Behind"

It's to laugh when one of the biggest unfunded mandates that put huge financial burbens on school systems is touted as being "local choice." And NCLB has *not* helped schools, but guaranteed that those who cannot afford to move will see schools strippd of funds.

"Health Insurance"

This shuffling of tax benefits vs. a new taxable class strikes me as smoke and mirrors. (oh, that's right -- you forgot to mention trhe new tax class you were instyituting, on em[ployee-funding fo healtgh isuance premiums -- how could you forget?)

Where were the calls for innovative health insurance options for the last 6 years?

Again, the chimera of malpractice.

Malpractice costs are less than 5 percnt of health costs.

And malpractice insurance rates are not, by-and-large, based on physician experience, but on the performance of insurance company investments in the stock and bond markets.

Again, the call to beef up the profits for corporations (pharma & insurance) and shaft the small consumer with "reform"

"Immigration"

be honest, call it an amnesty and a new class of segregation -- they'll be good enough to provide work for extremely low wages, but not good enough to have a chance to stay.

9:25
"dependence on oil"

If you were so concerned with danger from terrorists, why have you insisted on creating more and more terrorists?

And lets push for more dollars for your friends in the energy companies with ethenal, eh?

Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

9:33
"fair and impartial system of justice"
"terrorist"

George, stop lying -- the democrats have not been some great force blockingthe judicial nominations

The "Patriot Act" is still a bad law, and a bad idea. And if you would stop trying to breed more terrorists you would not have to worry so much about fighting them.

Again with the smoke and mirrors -- none of the cases cited have been proved. But they sound good. What, no yellowcake announcements? I'm sure you can find some -- I'm sure Karl can find it for you.

ANd keep on couching "the wa on terra" in religious terms.

ANd be caeful about invoking binLaden -- remember, he couldn't hide? Oh, wait, he done ran and went hid. Why hasn't he been brought to justice?

*He* was behind the 9-11 hijackings, not Hussein.

(these things would go faster if the audience could refrain from standing everytime GW takes a beath.)

9:45
"democratic Iraq"

By the time the US leaves, we will have lost thousands more of US troops, and tens or hundreds of thousands of civilian Iraq casulties.

ANd also by the time we leave Iraq will be seperate states -- Kurds, Shia and Sunni. And the people will be wishing they had Saddam back

And the "consequences will be grievious if the US leaves" -- sounds like VietNam. It's deja vu all over again.

More troops again.

And again.

9:50
"Civilian Reserve"
Sounds like a good idea, actually, as long as it's not a call to more mercanaries.

"nukes in Iran"

Why the *hell* didn't you go after the mid-east country that *really* wanted to build nukes, instead of Iraq?

"fight AIDS"

How about funding the plans already in place, instead of call for new ones?

and so on, and so on, and so on...

IRS rules for 2007 limit recognition of some donations

2006-12-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

As a year-end tax reminder the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is reminding taxpayers that beginning for tax year 2007, that the rules for deductibility of charitable donations has changed slightly.

In the past, if you made donations to a charitable organization (such as a church) in cash of less than $250 your record keeping requirements were simple, and could include a diary entry or other notation showing the amount you contributed (such as a day-timer entry each Sunday saying "$20 - MyFaithWorship").

Under the new rules, the written record must be independent of the taxpayer -- that is, it must be something such as a cancelled check, credit card statement showing a transfer of funds, or a written record from the charity that acknowledges the donation, its date and value.

From the instructions for Schedules "A" & "B" for the 2006 tax year:
"...What's New For 2007
New recordkeeping requirements for contributions of money.
For charitable contributions of money, regardless of the amount, you must maintain as a record of the contribution a bank record (such as a cancelled check)or a writtten recoird from the charity. The written record must include the name of the charity, date and amount of the contribution... "
This means, however, that those who typically make small contributions in cash (as in "taking a $20 bill out of my wallet") are generally going to be S.O.L on deductibility in many cases, because it is certainly not common practice for the ushers with the collection plate to have a receipt book with them.

Thus, the individual who pulled that same $20 out of their wallet each Sunday could report the aggregate cash contributions of $1,020 (the individual contributions, being less than $250, do not require special reporting), as long as there was that diary notation to back it up.

However, according to the new rules for the 2007 tax year, you had better make that contribution out of your checking account, or else you will not be allowed to deduct it.

Do I have an opinion on this?

Of course I do.

This appears, to me, just a continuation of the nickle-and-dime attack on the small-to-medium taxpayer that is being used to recover the tax revenue lost by the cuts to the taxes of those with big revenues.

Consider, does the small taxpayer benefit when the Alternative Minimum Tax structures are not updated to factor in wage inflation (and certainly not factor in buying power compression)?

Or the general prohibition on the individual taxpayer's ability to deduct most kinds of interest paid on debt (and with credit APRs routinely running from 20% to 25%)?

Or the absurdity of a minimum floor on deductibility of medical expenses?

Do these tax law provisions affect those with large annual revenue to the same extent as those who have a lot less in their take-home pay?

Of course not. And to try to claim that these give-aways for big taxpayers (who wind up shelling out a much smaller proportionate share of their annual income) are somehow of "benefit" to the smaller wage-earner is simply preposterous.

See:

"2006 Instructions for Schedules A & B (Form 1040)"
"Recent Tax Law Changes May Affect People Giving to Charity: IRS Offers Tips for Year-End Donations"
"Publication 526 - Charitable Contributions"

Why are we doing this again?

2006-11-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

In the name of "Democracy," again and again this country supports and props up dictators, despots and regimes that view their time in power as unbridled opportunity for violence and brutality, whether in South/Central America, Africa or S.E. Asia.

As if these governments are certain that, with the United States as patron, they will never fall out of control.

And this support has come from both Democrat and Republican administrations.

The below linked video is from Britain's Channel 4.

If even a tenth of the accusations are true, this is unconscionable.

And it's happening on our watch.

Channel 4 - "Death Squads"

Run

2006-11-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to come up with something to say about this, but it's really beyond me.

All I can think of is a change of scene, and that every generation breeds fools and animals, on both sides..

35 years ago.

Only imagine muddy roads and murderous humidity, instead of dust and the desert.

Somebody's site has been spoofed..

2006-11-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

And it's just so well written.

There is a spoof of the World Trade Organization's website at http://www.gatt.org/.

And right at the top of the spoofed site of "news" is "WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Market for Africa," that has all the flavor of "A Modest Proposal."

There are some commentators who don't seem to be aware that this is a satire, however. (one of the problems that arises if you don't double- and triple-check what a search engine gives you...)

I'm not exactly a fan of the WTO, with its over-emphasis on promotion of "free trade" as the prime answer to so many of the world's issues. On the other hoof, what does it say about what is happening in our society that such a spoof is even considered at all possible?

The actual WTO website is here.

I guess sexist idiocy really is worldwide

2006-11-15T00:24:00.000-05:00

I really can't add any snark to this -- it is so full already.....

China love boat wants rich, good-looking

BEIJING (AP) -- A matchmaking love boat cruise open only to male millionaires and "good-looking and desirable" women is slated to set sail later this month, a state-run Chinese newspaper said Tuesday.

Men on the cruise scheduled to go along Shanghai's Huangpu River must be worth at least 2 million yuan ($250,000), the China Daily quoted organizer Xu Tianli as saying.

Xu said more than 20 men had signed up for the Nov. 25 cruise and that half of those registered to take part were worth more than 200 million yuan ($25 million).

Fewer than 30 of the 1,000 woman who applied were accepted, Xu said.

"Only those who were attractive in every category can take part in this event," Xu said, without giving the specific criteria interested female applicants had to meet....

I suppose it's nice to know that the USA doesn't have the sole franchise on this sort of thing...

Oh, Ye Of So Many Faiths

2006-11-12T15:11:00.000-05:00

On Pandagon, Amanda has noticed that some commentators think that the Religious Right is really reforming and reaching out to the Roman Catholics to bring under the "conservative big tent." Or that the pickup of Catholic voters for Democatic candidates this past week was the result of pandering to that population.

As someone who was raised Roman Catholic, I can certainly attest to the fact that most of the rabid "fundies" see Catholics as saint-worshipping idolaters who will follow the Whore of Rome unthinkingly, and will *really* welcome people of all races into the fold to pray in the same church pews, at the same time as the white folks (yes, I'm pandering to stereotypes here, it's a rhetorical device).

And, to get the full irony, bear in mind that, for all the fundie fringe proclaims about how "oppressed" they are for "their faith," remember that the christian denomination that, in this nation, has suffered the most explicit discrimination and suppression is the Roman Catholics. And that one denomination is, and has been for a *long* time, numerically the denomination that tops the charts in the "self-identified religion" surveys.

Add in that, overall, the Roman Catholics are a lot more "liberal" on social issues than the Fundamentalist base denominations like the current rulership of the Southern Baptists Convention. And any Catholic that votes based on the single hot-button issues like abortion and stem-cell research is ignoring the balance of things that should also be on their minds, like worker's rights, concern for leaving a viable environment, concern about *not* shafting the poor, the use of the death penalty, and separation of Church and State

Any Catholic who thinks that the Religious Right had anything really in common at the core, instead of just a few issues (like BC and abortion) is either being willfully obtuse or knows absolutely no history about the "relations" between Catholic and the myriad other christian denominations, from loudly proclaimed predictions that JFK would be following secret orders from Rome, the expressed fears that the Catholic nannies and housemaids would steal away good protestant babies for secret baptisms, to the equally load proclamations that all these Catholic immigrants would be out-breeding the good Protestants and taking all the good jobs away, and costing the gummint dollars to support 'em.

Believe me, I have issues with the RC hierarchy and current theological climate, but to think that the Religious Right views the Catholics as any but a Dark Days Desperation Denomination-ally as a collaborator is smoking something that will probably net you several years in the gey-bar hotel.

In the interests of full disclosure, even though I was raised Roman Catholic (as opposed to a variety of denominations that call themselves "New Catholic,") I worship these days with an Episcopal congregation that, bless their pointy little heads, has even recruited me to be one of their Sunday School teachers.

OK, yes, I am Happy...

2006-11-09T20:38:00.000-05:00

LAst year about this time I expected that the control of the Senate would be switched decicivly, and that Democrats would pick up some seats in the House, but that body would remain stubbornly GOP.

I never expected that this would be reversed, and especially I didn't really expect that the control would pass to the Democrats.

Thank you Messrs Delay, Foley and Cuningham.

And thank you, Karl Rove, for twisting arms so that Foley ran for another term.

However, I envision that there will be two years worth of hearings, and that GW will figure out where Laura put the ink bottle for the "veto" pen.

This really, really, sucks.

2006-10-22T15:50:00.000-04:00

I just tried to look at Chris Clark's blog, so I could catch up with news, and saw the following page:

This kind of thing *has* to stop.

I understand that some tempers are flaring with the midterm elections coming in, and the real possibility that the House and Senate may change majority affiliations.

But this kind of response to debate is what makes a real dialog impossible.

9-11-01

2006-09-18T01:51:00.000-04:00

September 11, 2001

A day that truly did create a new world.

And a new perspective.

Forever more will be the reference to "before 9-11," "the Day" and "after 9-11"

I've been stalled for more than a week on what to write about the anniversary of the attack.

Partly on how to express my own feelings on that day.

But more, I've been stalled because I have so much trouble getting past the rage that that day, and its aftermath, have engendered.

Rage at bin-Laden, certainly.

But that rage is one that is impersonal, against a target that is the product of an outlaw environment that views individual human lives as insignificant, an environment that uses a guise of religion to subvert that religion's teachings of peace and justice to murder and atrocity.

But the fiercer, and more personal rage I feel is for this presidential administration, that purposely ignored the lessons learned in the Clinton presidency, either because of simple ignorance and disbelief or because of some spiteful "*we* didn't find it, so it must be wrong" process.

An administration that used the attack as a way to try to distract the United States citizens from the Bush administration's failures, and as a way to cement the political and economic power that comprised the status quo obtained when those party conservatives had captured the keys to the kingdom by numerical control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and the executive branch.

An administration that purposely set out to denigrate the aid and support that much of the world offered to the United States.

An administration that has been lying to the citizens of this nation from the start - from trying to downplay the importance of the reports of an impending attack by calling it an "obscure historical analysis."

An administration that directed the agency that is chartered to inform the public about dangers to our environment, and dangers from our environment, to lie about the toxicity of the debris from the remains of the towers' destruction.

An administration that continued to lie, even about its own public utterances, even so far as claim that the President's own statement that he was no longer concerned about the previously stated goal of the capture and trial of the architect of the attack, even after declaring A "War On Terror." A war that would never be ended.

A "war" that has also had the result of quickly stripping the citizens of our constitutional rights, under the guise of "national security."

An administration that started one war against the nation that harbored and collaborated with the attackers, and then lost focus and started another war, using knowing deceit in the expression of the "justification," and created a new environment that fostered a fertile breeding ground for the very terrorists that were supposed to be "eradicated."

A war that is costing the U.S. 250 million dollars a day.

250 million dollars a day that is stripped from funding for education.

250 million dollars a day that is stripped from funding for the proper health care of our seniors.

250 million dollars a day that is stripped from funding for the proper health care of the veterans of our armed forces.

250 million dollars a day that is stripped from funding for the infrastructure of our industrial society.

Thousands of our citizens killed and wounded in that second, unneeded war. And quite truthfully uncounted thousands of the citizens of Iraq who have been killed and maimed.

And levels of corruption and pandering to monied interests has been unmatched since the Unites States' own civil war, and that may add a new catchphrase that will be recognized by the name itself, much as "teapot dome" does.

On that day I turned on my television to catch a weather forecast, and was stunned.

My wife and I watched in disbelief as a second missile struck the second tower.

And the perpetrator is still at large, the people in the nation of Iraq have poorer healthcare and access to civil services than under the Baathist rule, the rights of women in Iraq have been stripped from the, and the poppy-for-heroin crop in Afghanistan is at record levels.

I still cannot freely and dispassionately write about what happened that day.

I don't know if I ever will be able to, no matter which party controls the legislative branch, no matter which party's representative sits in the oval office.

Maybe that's just part of the world we live in now, "after 9-11."

Even when there is a "Plan B" there isn't

2006-09-02T22:23:00.000-04:00

Again, Tata at Poor Impulse Control has pointed out the Catch-22 that the thugs who call themselves "conservatives" have put the country into.

I think every liberal in this country, of whatever stripe, agrees that freedom of thought is a desirable thing, and the freedom to practice one's religion is a right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

But what happens when that right is abused so as to deny others their own fundamental rights, such as the rights to control over their own bodies, and the right to their own privacy?

Tata has noted in this article that there is a pharmacist in Washington State who is refusing to provide the "Plan B" emergency pill.

Because he is morally opposed to it.

So he will take his moral indignation and use it as an excuse to deny the privacy and reproductive rights of others.

I note that this ass of a pill dispenser is admitting that he's willing to let "embarrassment" (that *he* induces) be a bar to people getting medication that they may need.

And he *approves* of it. He's *proud* of it.

"Douchebag" is too kind.

Attitudes like his go hand-in-hand with the pressure on medical schools to not give training to physicians on how to provide a safe and timely abortion. And the tolerance and celebration of those who threaten to harm, and do harm, doctors and their families frightens those doctors who might be willing to perform the procedures away from the performance.

This pharmacist will simply refuse to carry "Plan B" in his pharmacy (paradoxially, it will be simpler to do this in some states, now that Levonorgestrel has been classed as an over-the-counter medication, and it will not need to be stocked as the laws and licensing regulations require for prescription medications).

It will be legal for women to get and use the drug.

It simply will not be available.

The same way that it is legal for a woman to obtain a first-trimester abortion.

There will simply be no physicians who will either know how to perform the procedures or who have not been frightened away.

The end results will be the same as if there were an outright ban on both the pill and the procedure.

And if the ability of these happy few American Talibans to circumscribe your rights doesn't get you enraged and frightened for the rest of your rights, you aren't awake.

I'm male, so the access to either "Plan B" or safe abortions is of a secondary concern to me personally (after all, I'm not ever going to *be* pregnant).

But what happens when the American Taliban decide that access to other medications should be restricted (after all, "depression" can be cured by prayer, or so I've been told).

What if the decision is made that if you are not the "right" shade of xtian, or not xtian at all, that you should either be denied rights or forced to "convert?"

We already have federal monies flowing to "faith-based" "social service" organizations who have denied services based on religious beliefs (such as when they refuse to provide the services unless the "sinner" prays and "repents.")

What comes next?

Archbishop of York Starts Peace Vigil

2006-08-13T21:39:00.000-04:00

Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, holds a position in the Anglican Communion second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he is considered the Primate of the Anglican Church in England.

Archbishop Sentamu, (Official biography from the Anglican Communion News Service) was born in 1949 in Uganda and had a career of law there, until he had to leave to escape persecution by then-dictator Idi Amin. Sentamu had reached the post of a judge on Uganda's High Court, and was considered "an opponent and agitator". He was allowed to leave Uganda in 1974, to study theology at Cambridge University, on the condition that he never return to Uganda.

Sentamu was ordained in 1979, and held several positions as Chaplin, Curate, priest and Vicar until his election as Bishop of Stepney (1996) and Bishop for Birmingham (2002). He was installed as Archbishop for York in 2005, the first person of color to so serve.

This past weekend Archbishop Sentamu started a vigil in solidarity with the ordinary people on both sides of the current violence between Israel and Hezbollah elements in Lebanon. A Reuters article from Friday ("Archbishop to hold vigil for Mideast") notes that Sentamu will forgo a planned vacation and will spend the week sleeping in the cathedral and fasting. He will also lead prayers each hour for seven days for those affected by the fighting between the opposing military forces.

From Reuters:

"In the Middle East there are thousands of people sleeping in churches, bunkers, underground car parks and shelters in an attempt to escape from the bombs and rockets that are falling on both sides of the border,"

::snip::

"This act is a rallying call to people of all faiths and none, to encourage them to feel that there is something that can be done."

Sentamu also chastised U.S. President G.W. Bush, noting that Bush calling the U.S. involvement in the Middle East meant the U.S. was "at war with Islamic fascists" was counter-productive.

That was not the first foray of Sentamu's to chastise U.S. policy -- in February of this year, Sentamu called the U.S. to task for its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, when he likened what this administration is doing to what he saw Idi Amin do in his native Uganda:

"..By "declaring war on terror" President Bush is perversely applying the rules of engagement which apply in a war situation. But the prisoners are not being regularly visited by the Red Cross or Red Crescent, which is required by the Geneva Convention. They were not even allowed to be interviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Group.

In Uganda President Amin did something similar: he did not imprison suspects because he knew that in prison the law would apply to them, so he created special places to keep them. If the Guantanamo Bay detainees were on American soil, the law would apply. This is a breach of international law and a blight on the conscience of America."

The Archbishop had previously said (17/02/06)

"The American Government is breaking international law. Whatever they may say about democracy, to hold someone for up to four years without charge clearly indicates a society that is heading towards George Orwell's Animal Farm.

The main building block of a democratic society is that everyone is equal before the law, is innocent until proved otherwise and has the right to legal representation. If the guilt of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is beyond doubt, why are the Americans afraid to bring them to trial? Transparency and accountability are the other side of the coin of freedom and responsibility.

We are all accountable for our actions in spite of circumstances. The events of 9/11 cannot erase the rule of law and international obligations. I back the United Nations Human Rights Commission report, recommending that the US try all the detainees, or free them without further delay. If the US refuses to respond, maybe the Commission should seek a writ of Habeas Corpus in a United States Court, or at the Hague."

Thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerrilla where I first saw the Reuter's article.

Per-Diem Suit Against Massachusetts National Guard Still Unresolved

2006-08-11T14:44:00.000-04:00

Followers of this site know that one of the continuing stories I've been following is a lawsuit against the Massachusetts National Guard seeking reimbursement for per-diem payments owed when members of the Guard were activated and missioned to provide security for a variety of infrastructure sites in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The individual guard members were activated, and received orders to go to these sites and provide a presence and security. However, the soldiers were not provided with lodging, travel or food, and were thus entitled to a daily payment for reimbursement of their expenses, according to a set schedule.

The Massachusetts National Guard commander, however, explicitly declared that there would be no stipend or per-diem payments for these postings. In essence, the Guard told these soldiers, that all expenses would be borne by themselves, and they would never be reimbursed.

When these soldiers attempted to get their reimbursements, and repeatedly queried the upper echelons of the Guard in Massachusetts, they were threatened with administrative retaliation if they persisted, including discharge from the guard. Other allegations in the lawsuit are that the decision of non-reimbursement was done as a deliberate cost-cutting measure by the Guard General in charge, and that some soldiers were also told that reimbursements had been terminated (which is false).

In the meantime, over a three year period, many members of the Guard were shelling out thousands of dollars, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars) in expenses for travel, lodging and meals, out of their own pockets.

The National Guard *did* start an audit (in May of 2005), but the audit is (according to court papers) not complete.

The latest hearing on the matter was on Friday, August 4, where the state and federal governments attempted to get the judge to dismiss the suit (covered briefly by the Boston Globe),

Government lawyers argued today that a federal judge doesn't have the authority to consider a lawsuit filed on behalf of Massachusetts National Guardsmen who were denied reimbursement for expenses they paid out of their own pockets while protecting sites around the state following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

US District Judge Richard G. Stearns said he'll take the government's motion to dismiss the lawsuit under advisement. Lawyers for the federal and state government claim the soldiers' claims should be handled administratively by the Guard and an Army review board.

Of course, if the Guard and Army had handled this mater expeditiously in the first place, the soldiers would not have felt the need to bring the suit at all.

The AP has an article that expanded on Judge Stearns' decision to defer a decision on the government's request for dismissal of the suit.

The Guard acknowledged Friday that the ongoing audit revealed it has failed to reimburse some soldiers. Both sides were in court Friday, when federal lawyers argued for dismissal based on jurisdictional issues.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns on Monday said that because the Guard plans to have the audit done within two months, he'll wait.

"Because the results of the audit may resolve a number of the pending claims of both existing and possibly future plaintiffs, the court will defer its decision on the jurisdictional issues for a reasonable period of time, this to permit the administrative process to proceed," Stearns wrote.

Guard officials say the number of soldiers and the total amount owed were not known.

It has been over a year since the audit was started. I'm sure that it doesn't take that long to track down the orders that missioned these soldiers to duty, and to verify that they were *not* paid.

Admit that the soldiers were stiffed, and pay them the money owed.

These are citizens who volunteered to serve and protect their nation.

They deserve our respect and honesty.

See other articles from my blog on this issue:

01/12/2006 - Massachusetts Guardsmen seek pay for post-9/11 duty
03/02/2006 - Suit over Massachusetts National Guard reimbursements continues
06/06/2006 - Updates To some Continuing Stories

U.S. Army Discharges Arabic-Speaking intelligence NCO After Anonymous E-mail about him

2006-08-06T19:43:00.000-04:00

ABC just aired a short interview with Army Sgt. Bleu Copas, who enlisted, at age 26, after the attacks on 9/11.

He learned Aramic and was a member of the Army Intelligence cadre.

Someone hacked into his personal e-mail account, and forwarded edited versions of his e-mails, anonymously, to his superiors in the army.

From the description of the questioning, his superiors certainly violated their own strictures in the "don't ask" part of "Don't ask, don't tell."

Video of the interview is here. NOTE: The link puts you into an AOL.COM news bite, and is preceded by a short commercial.

An AP article notes that "..the GAO also noted that nearly 800 dismissed gay or lesbian service members had critical abilities, including 300 with important language skills. Fifty-five were proficient in Arabic, including Copas, a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in California.

Discharging and replacing them has cost the Pentagon nearly $369 million, according to the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara."

This entire witchhunt atmosphere is absurd.

And all because some idiots cannot get over their obsession over which consenting adult is sleeping with whatever consenting adult.

And men and women who have proven their devotion to this country by their sacrifices are blackmailed and treated like criminals.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

2006-06-10T18:40:00.000-04:00

Over on Bitch,PhD, as an outgrowth of comments on non-commenting about a grad-student survey, Dr B. posed the question of, essentially, civility in discourse:

"...So. The readers of this blog are a pretty diverse group, actually. And mostly, I hope, more interested in discussion and conversation than in simply reinforcing prejudices (our own, or other people's).

And we all know that the current political climate is a … nightmare. What do you believe? Where do we overlap? Where do we differ, and why, and what does that mean? And what in heaven's name do we have in common?

And can we manage to talk about all without taking offense, or being offensive? ...

Her post covers more than a few data points on the issue, but she manages to get across her view, and her question’s basis. The comments thread is diverse (and growing like a weed) and, like Twin Peaks coffee from the RR Diner, is “Damn fine.”

That said, I don't know if the current climate can be made to support actual dialog over any extended basis.

The very first comment to her post illustrated some of what I see is a deep symptom of the issue -- there are factions on both the right, and the left, who don't want a dialog.

From my own (lefty) perspective, it is obvious that those on the right of the aisle (of course!) seem to be the more of a multitude who don't want to seek a common ground, but there are lefties who are just as much buttheads as anybody on the right.

But (and here my progressive bias shows), it also seems that a certain faction of the right-wing, who I will label, for want of a better term, as being "pseudo-conservatives," are actively interested in forcing their views on everybody else without even a pretense of dialog or compromise.

Some of them admit this, and claim it as a virtue, saying they are "being more honest" in their espousal of these views. I don't know if "honest" is the proper phrase, or "naked and scary."

As a case in point, last year, when I was somewhat new to publishing my own blog, there was a blogger who made an open invitation to both sides of the aisle to come to her space and dialog about a particular issue, and to do so in a controlled and non-violent manner.

It worked, for about 3 days.

Then the rightists decided that, essentially, they would *not* tolerate any dialog with those from the left unless it was on the terms of unconditional surrender to all the stipulations of the right. The expressed, collective, opinion was that there was no need for tolerating the expression of differing viewpoints. That to do so would be to somehow sully the purity of their thought. And, yes, that seemed to be the collective opinion. And the writer who had issued the invitation decided to join the collective.

There are some on the left who make the same claim. From what I can see, however, most who make that claim from the left are usually engaged into dialog with others from the left, and if they persist are usually ignored (by the left) or given a pat on the hand and told to come back when they can deal with the prospect of dissent in the ranks.

Of course, as I alluded above, this is informed and colored by my own political perspective, where I style myself as "progressive."

I grew up in a blue-collar household in Boston, firmly entrenched in the teachings of the post-Vatican II spirit.

(And if you want to see "Christian bashing," view how some the "religious right" express, in unguarded moments, their feelings toward Roman Catholics -- "Papist Cult" and "Whore of Rome" are among the gentler descriptions)

For me, being "Christian" means being a liberal, means being someone who believes in the social compact that members of a society owe responsibility to other members of that society.

Because of issues I have with the “conservatism” I saw take over that church, and the unwillingness of even the “old and enlightened” hierarchy to realistically address the place of women in the Church, or the simple anti-survival stance the church took toward both “artificial birth control” and abortion, I left off dealing with organized religion of any stripe for a good number of years, until I was serendipitously introduced to the Episcopal Church (“Anglicanism” to you readers on the European side of the pond). And, bless their pointy hats, they’ve even got me teaching Sunday school.

However, that RC upbringing skewed me pretty firmly towards concerns with “social justice,” “Equality before the law,” and a firm conviction that, “if the poor will always be with us,” it didn’t mean I either had to accept or feel comfortable with that dubious reality.

But part of the process of belonging to a Christian denomination that *was* considered fair game for “attack” (even though it is the single most populous denomination in the country) is that you learned to listen to “the other side” and offer counters to their thesis, or else to respectfully disagree.

Somehow I think that, in a public political climate characterized by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Karl Rove and the aftereffects of Newt’s Contract On America, the “respectfully disagree” path is not an option. And I really don’t know what will be.

Updates To some Continuing Stories

2006-06-06T21:35:00.000-04:00

Looking back over my archives, I see a couple of places where I should probably issue updates to articles I’ve written here.
_______________________________________________

In late October of 2005 I wrote about Retrograde Gun Control, and Bill S397, “The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act,” which prohibited liability lawsuits against gun and ammunition manufacturers and gun dealers when the guns and ammunition made/sold is used in an illegal act.

The bill was signed into law by Pres. G.W. Bush on Oct 26, 2005, and prevents lawsuits based upon misuse of firearms to be brought against the manufacturers and sellers, and also stopped action on all suits that were either in the courts or pending. Note that the same logic that this bill uses to provide the shield against lawsuits (that manufacturers or vendors should not be held liable for misuse by those operating the equipment) was exactly the logic that was used to *bring* suits, by the music industry, against the peer-to-peer networks, claiming that the software providers were responsible for the acts of independent third-parties.

The full text of the law (Public law 109-92) can be found here, at the GPO website.
_______________________________________________

In January and March of this year I wrote about the lawsuit to force the Massachusetts National Guard to pay the expenses for food, transportation and lodging for postings to provide infrastructure security, to the tune of $100 million.

Since my first reporting, one of the complainants, Capt. Louis P. Tortorella has died, and he, according to court documents, was insolvent and his home close to foreclosure, presumably due to the thousands of dollars he, effectively, advanced to the state government when he paid his food and lodging expenses out of his own pocket, expecting the National Guard to actually reimburse him for the per diem payments he was entitled to by law. The suit continues to go forward.
_______________________________________________

In October I reported on a dustup when, with less than a week’s notice, the DoD reversed a decision to air the middle-of-the-road-to-progressive radio talk show hosted by Ed Shultz on Armed Forces Radio.

A second reversal came after a raft of stories that tied the cancellation of the scheduling to reportage that noted that one of President Bush’s “unstaged Q&A session” with some troops in Iraq was really as scripted as a professional wrestling bout.

Two months after the cancellation, Shultz’s radio show was finally available over the cable-tv and satellite audio feeds available to armed forces personnel on military bases throughout the world. I haven’t been able to determine if the show is available through the broadcast service available to be heard off-base.
_______________________________________________

In May I wrote about the dearth of non-local reportage in the rape and murder case of Dominique Samuels.

On 05/12/06 Boston Police arrested Roderick Taylor as a suspect in the case. The prosecution’s theory is that Taylor raped and murdered Samuels after a party at the house she shared, first positioned the body in the victim’s bed to make it appear she was just sleeping, then returned several days later to take the body and burned it in an attempt to destroy evidence.

All this is ripe for tabloid exposure. But there’s still nothing carried on outlets outside of New England.

A quick Google search using the terms “Dominique Samuels murder” still returns only Massachusetts local outlets, one bit on CNN (who was interviewing a Boston Herald reporter) and one of the aggregators for independent papers, which picked up coverage by the Boston Phoenix. It looks like it’s still a case of “murdered while black = spike the story”

_______________________________________________

What Happens When There Is No Plan B?

2006-06-06T13:05:00.000-04:00

Over on Feministe,  Jill has a post up that comments on a WaPo article about a middle-aged woman, married with children, who found herself coping with an unwanted pregnancy.

To me, the WaPo article points up that (as in most matters) the current administration in Washington, in the effort to placate the very small numbered, but very vocal and exceedingly well-funded theocrat-wannabes, has followed their usual practice of not bothering to look at consequences for their actions.

In this case, it’s a direct consequence of the FDA’s bigot-inspired refusal to allow Plan B to be marketed over-the-counter that is causing an abortion.

It also points up another consequence, which has been shown, time and again, from the viewpoint of less-than-wealthy women, that the restrictions on abortion, if not targeted directly at poor and the young, do affect the poor and the young disproportionately.  Dana L, the author of the WaPo story, finds that, since she did not have access to Plan B in its prime window of opportunity (72 hours after intercourse), her unwanted pregnancy was going to be terminated by an invasive procedure.

Dana L. was able to afford the time, and expense, to travel from Virginia to Washington DC and have her abortion terminated in a Planned Parenthood clinic there, while her husband took her two young children to visit the Smithsonian.  She notes that, except for a woman who was the parent of one of the other patients at the clinic, she was the oldest person there.

All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.

After passing through the metal detector inside the building, I entered the Planned Parenthood waiting room; it was like the waiting room for a budget airline -- crammed full of people, of all races, and getting busier by the moment. I was by far the oldest person there (other than one girl's mom). The wait seemed endless. No one looked happy. We were told that the lone doctor was stuck in Cherry Blossom Parade traffic.

He finally arrived, an hour and a half late.

The procedure itself took about five minutes. I finally walked out of the building at 4:30, 6 1/2 hours after I had arrived.

You know, one of the things I have seen in threads on this article (and the various places where the original article, and the post in Feministe are linked) is the commentary about how being concerned about this woman's dilemma (which actually shows that the issue is *not* just of concern to those who are "economically challenged") is misplaced because she’s affluent, “it’s her own fault” and "women in African countries are suffering genital mutilation."

If someone who is relatively well-heeled has to jump through these hoops, think of what someone on the low end of the economic totem pole has to do.  Someone who can’t afford the  two days off from work to satisfy the waiting period and likely lie to their boss about the two days of sick time because they may get fired if the real reason for needing the time off were known, or cannot afford the babysitting fees for someone to watch the kids while she goes to the clinic (if she can find someone to take the money if they ever find out why she needs the time) or simply cannot afford the money to buy the travel to get to a clinic they can use that is outside their own area, because anybody providing services in her area has been hounded out by death threats.

And as for the genital mutilation, well, you know, realistically?  I, personally, can do just about squat for some woman in Africa or the Arabian Peninsula who is being mutilated by her family in the name of “being pure” and “conforming to cultural norms.”

However, I, personally, can, by voting and badgering my elected representatives, do something about what is happening *here,* in the United States.

Thank you, but I’ll fight the battles I actually can, by voting and donating to groups such as NARAL, who aren’t perfect, but at least they are trying to do the right thing.

And I Didn't Even Use Duct Tape On Them

2006-06-05T23:03:00.000-04:00

My wife (known to various blog venues as LedasMom) has just spent a weekend in the wilds of Nebraska, for a mini family reunion with some of her mother’s family.

She left on a 6:30 AM flight on Saturday, and her return flight got her back into the airport at about 8:30 AM  today (Monday).

Yes, the Monday 2 days after the departure.

No, it was not a lot of time.

However, because the boys were ~~abandoned at the work house~~ left at home with me, it gave a chance for she and her mother to spend some time together without having to chase the boys around.  I suspect, however, that at least part of the attraction was simply to have any time without having to chase the boys around.  Or to have to chase the hubby around to get stuff done either.

So, in the tradition that probably dates back to picking up pretty shells and rocks when Ooogha was coming back to the camp after the two weeks away on the mammoth hunt, LedasMom brought us back some tchotchkes from Nebraska.

The key to a good tchotchke is to pick something that will be appreciated by the recipient.  So, the boys got refrigerator magnets with the outline of the State of Nebraska, which they are already fighting over.

And what, you ask, did she bring back for hubby?

I give you – the legendary Tom Swift, Jr.!

Actually, I’ve got to admit that I have never read any of the Tom Swift books, in any of the various incarnations of the series.  The closest I’ve come is by reading Tom Swifties.  I’ll have to get back to you about what my impressions are of the text, but I will say that I recognized as extremely familiar the artwork for the covers and interior illos right away.

Even if the writing turns out to be abysmal, it will still be interesting, in light of the number of artists, writers ans scientists who count the Tom Swift and Tom Swift jr. books as influences to first capture their own imaginations.

Carnival of the Liberals # 13 is Up & Running!

2006-05-24T21:14:00.000-04:00

Carnival Of The Liberals # 13 is now up at Lucky White Girl.

Run over there, and follow those links!

Good articles, all.  (I think my blogroll is going to get some new blood this week…)

"Murdered while Black" = "Spike the Story?"

2006-05-11T05:05:00.000-04:00

Three women.

What do these three women have in common?

All three are from the Boston area, and all three were murdered under circumstances to make any tabloid editor willing to blast the story with 140-pt type.

Three women.

Now, what do two of these women have in common, and the third doesn’t?

The stories of their murders made national headlines, and the stories stayed in the limelight for weeks.

Three women.

Can you guess which two?

Can you guess what else those two have in common, but not the third?

If you guessed that the first and third were the ones whose stories had legs, you have already guessed what they had in common.

They are, in order:

Rachael Entwhistle, 27, murdered in her Hopkington home, with her infant daughter, Lillian. Her husband has been arrested for the murders, after he was extradited from England

Dominique Samuels, age 19, murdered and her almost nude body burned in a field behind a local hospital

Imette St. Guillen, age 24, a student from Boston, murdered outside a club in the Bowery. A bouncer from that club has been arrested and charged with her murder

The Entwhistle and St. Guillen murders garnered weeks of publicity and media profiles from the instant that the bodies were discovered, partly because the circumstances were so tabloid-worthy.

Yet Dominique Samuels, whose murder should be prime fodder for the news cycle, has been ignored by the media outside of the Boston area.

Samuels, a young girl who was a part-time student in community college, had been captain of the cheerleading squad at her high school, was murdered, her body, clothed only in shorts and one sneaker, was dumped into Franklin Park behind the Lemuel Shattuck hospital, doused with accelerant and put ablaze.

This should have all the legs of any big story – a young, pretty woman, well-liked, described as a “big sister to everybody,” who liked to bake cookies and make sandwiches for her friends, a murder and a horrific treatment of the body, either in hatred and spite or as an attempt to disguise the identity of the victim.

But where is the attention from the wider media?

I don’t usually watch the television news, and my newspaper reading outside of the Boston papers is usually limited to the politics, national and international news sections. I had thought that it seemed there was no coverage of Samuels murder outside of Boston, but I put it down to my reading the “wrong sections.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one wondering.

This question was also asked by one of the Boston dailies, the Boston Herald. The Herald contacted both CNN and FOX about the disparity:

Cable talk show hosts and local radio talk jocks tirelessly debated every new development as well as the evidence and motives in the Entwistle and St. Guillen murders. Coverage hit saturation levels.

Nancy Grace of CNN’s Headline News was among the cable hosts who covered the St. Guillen and Entwistle cases extensively.

Janine Iamunno, a spokeswoman for Grace, said the show’s researchers hadn’t learned of Samuels’ murder until contacted by the Herald yesterday. Grace plans to put the case on her show tonight and cover it more extensively next week, Iamunno said.

A bevy of other cable network hosts, including Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, also extensively covered the Entwistle and St. Guillen cases, but have not addressed Samuels’ murder . A Fox spokeswoman declined comment. ...

Sadly, there have been enough other cases of “missing/murdered while black” that just slip under the news writer’s notice to dismiss this as just a case of it being overlooked.

As Errol Cockfield, himself a reporter for Newsday and a board member of the National Association of Black journalists, said to the Herald’s reporter:

… if the national media doesn’t pick up the Samuels murder, “It’s proof to me that there’s something wrong with newsroom managers in terms of how they think about race.

“It’s the same old story with the national media,” Cockfield added. “It’s clear to me that if it’s a white woman who is affected that more attention is paid to than if a black woman is affected.”

Something is wrong

2006-05-09T02:14:00.000-04:00

Something is very wrong.

It’s been 40 years since Griswold v. Connecticut.

It’s been 33 years since Roe v. Wade

Women’s reproductive rights in this country seemed finally, if not assured, at least settled. The battle to outlaw abortion seemed restricted to the far fringe, which showed their desperation with violence. The rights to access to contraception seemed rock solid, with no meaningful opposition.

Now, with the rise to power of a GOP that is beholden to a small, but well-heeled and vocal, minority seeking a fundamentalist theocracy, not only is access to safe and legal elective abortions endangered, but those same elements are fighting access to basic contraception, and contraceptive information.

Along with the effort to deny access to effective family planning choices, a woman’s right to emergency contraception (EC) is being endangered under the guise of “moral choice” laws for pharmacists and an FDA that is adamant that it will keep EC from being offered over-the-counter.

And proving that not only do the would-be theocrats have a staunch ability to completely ignore facts, and showing the true agenda of control over women’s choices, the stated reason for much of the opposition is that access to these contraceptives is because it will “increase the likelihood of teen sex.”

Considering the actual rate of teen pregnancy in the Bible Belt, where “just say no” and “keep your knees closed” is often the sum total of sex-ed, it doesn’t appear that access to Plan B would have much impact. And it won't. This resistance to contraceptive choice is really the battle for who will control a woman's body -- she, herself or a pharamacist who doesn't even know her face, but, for their own sense of entitlement want to control what a woman can do with her own body, out of some supposed moral outrage.

As an indication on how difficult it is likely to be for a woman who needs EC to have access to it over-the-counter or find a doctor to give a written prescription in the 72 hours for best effectiveness, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now advising women to get a preemptive prescription to the morning-after pill.

Get an advance prescription for emergency contraception so it will be on hand if you need it, the nation's largest gynecologist group advised women Monday.

The new campaign aims to increase access to the morning-after pill following the Bush administration's refusal to allow the emergency birth control to be sold over the counter nationwide.

"We want women to be prepared, well before a contraceptive failure or unprotected sex occurs. Afterward may be too late," said Dr. Michael Mennuti, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Something is very, very wrong.

I'm Depressed, Enraged and Frightened.

2006-05-07T21:07:00.000-04:00

Over on Poor Impulse Control Tata opened up an article with

If you're feeling a bit depressed, skip to the next entry. This one's serious.

Which, no matter how depressed I may, or may not, be, is sure to suck me in.

She notes that 21 years ago, when Saint Ronnie was holding court, she had nightmares about nuked landscapes where nobody had a chance of survival (and yes, there were a number of close calls, where nothing more than stupid luck and some divine intervention kept us from making most of the globe glow a soft Cherenkov blue at night).

And The Anointed Leader didn’t care that his international policies were putting the entire world at risk, and his domestic policies were putting the poor of the United States into a generation’s extra gulag of being an “underclass” and accelerated the process that was putting the then-middle class into the same camp.

And, fast-forwarded to 2005, she noted the horror she felt at realizing that the federal government didn’t care, was incapable, or both, to do anything with the spectacle of seeing part of the continental United States turn into a 3rd-world suburb.

And that the President has said, in as many words, that if the avian flu goes to a “worst-case” status that your federal government is going to say “tough love kids, you’re on your own.”

The same government that is composed of elected officials, including the President, who have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution that is the basis for the governing law of this nation, the same Constitution that says, in the first paragraph, that one of the aims of that Constitution is to “promote the general welfare.”

Now I understand that this administration seems to have amply demonstrated that they seem incapable of *reading* that “Goddamn piece of paper,” but somebody in the Cato Institute should be capable of reading it to them.

No, Tata, I’m not frightened. I’m enraged.

No, I’m enraged and frightened.

And I’m even more enraged that it feels like I can’t do anything more. My state (Massachusetts) Senators are pushing the conservatives in the Senate, my representatives in the House are pushing as well, but it feels like the whole damn house of cards is starting to slip away.

21 years ago I was under the thought that there was some sort of continuing thread in the Congress and the Executive that felt that continuity and cooperation between the two sides of the aisle was a way to stability and continued progress, and that the absurdity of "tickle-down economics" was recognized by some in the GOP as "Voodoo.".

But then the GOP decided that courting the far fringe of both politics and religion was the entrée to power, and all that went out the window. With the accession to power that marked the Contract On America, cooperation, moderation and any pretended nod to pluralism vanished. And the meager setback to that assault that occurred during the presidency of Clinton has been more than erased.

This "administration," from the delusional cowboy and his sidekick drunken shot-gunner to the power-mongers in the senate and the house, to their real paymasters, the religious right, the neo-con wingnuts and the players behind the K-street lobbyists do not give a flying ***** about the people who are ordinary citizens. The "productivity gains" in the "job-loss economic recovery" are at the expense of overworking those people who haven't been moved out the door yet to shift their jobs overseas, and we're running up debt in billions for a war my great-grandchildren will be paying off, and basic food and healthcare are deemed "too expensive entitlements" by the Party's ideologues that control the Executive and Legislative branches and has managed to pack the Judicial as well, and bitch that they are being blocked by trhe Mean Liberals.

In the event of a pandemic the religious fanatics will claim that it was "God's will" and anybody who dies is a “Sinner” who deserved to die, the neo-cons will view it as a way to cement “emergency powers” and extend hegemony over the Middle East “for the Good of the United States.” And the moneyed elite will view it as a confirmation of their elevated Right To Rule and as a way to control more of the lives of those who really generate the wealth.

God.

The current landscape in the United States is looking more and more like Russia in 1916, complete to the conscription into the armed forces of large numbers of skilled workers.

Is this what two hundred and twenty-five years of our Republic has come to?

OK, so ads sometimes objectify men too...

2006-05-06T10:22:00.000-04:00

...Or maybe not.

I really don't understand the wording in any focus groups, either "within the company" or "in the real world" who would find a market for this, at least not a market that would justify the cost of R&D and the ad agency time.

I will admit, though, that the ad is a hoot, in a surreal and really crass sort of way.

High points?

- watch the intro, please,
- the test drive
- "The basics," which is a kind of FAQ list,(aside from a truly tasteless homage to Basic Instinct) is smarmy and unremarkable, except for the the response to the question "What do you think of using scissors, tweezers or wax to remove body hair?"

Down points --
-- I haven't had the nerve to listen to the testimonials yet
-- I didn't, no, I couldn't, finish the viewing of the music video.

Heads-up courtesy of Andrew Sullivan (He's calling for a pre-emptive strike, BTW -- notice the difference between the published title of his blog entry and the permalink title.....)

Specter to Call for hearings on Signing Statements

2006-05-03T11:52:00.000-04:00

Just days after an article in the Boston Sunday Globe highlighted the massive number of “Signing Statements” that President G.W. Bush has filed on laws he has had some issues with, Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) have called for answers from the White House about number and breadth of the assertions that Pres. Bush has made in the more than 750 signing statements he has recorded since he took office (this represents a rate of about 1-in-10 of the bills signed.), with Specter calling for Senate hearings in June on the issue. (See this article from the 05/03/06 Boston Globe).

Since he has vetoed no bills, President Bush has not had any public debate over issues the he, in his role of the head of the Executive Branch may have had with legislation that comes across his desk for signing. In some cases, it has been reported that his signing statements directly conflict with some provisions that were crafted as compromises in order to satisfy objections to some proposals in a bill. As I noted in my own article yesterday, because the Office of the President is the overall head of the Executive branch of the Federal government, the signing statements provide guidance to officers of the Executive, including the Departments of Justice, Energy and Defense, when those entities craft regulations or act under provisions of those laws.

This reinterpretation process of legislative provisions came to the fore during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 05/02/06 when Sen. Specter announced his plans for calling for hearings, and when Sen. Feingold was bluntly told by FBI Director Robert Mueller that, if so directed by the executive branch, the real possibility was that the FBI would not comply with the oversight and Congressional briefings called for by the Patriot Act.

At the hearing yesterday, Feingold pressed FBI director Robert Mueller to give assurances that the bureau would comply with provisions in the Patriot Act and to tell Congress how agents are using the law to search homes and secretly seize papers.

Mueller said he saw no reason that the bureau couldn't share that information with Congress. But he also said that he was bound to obey the administration, and declined to promise that he would ''go out there and fight" on behalf of Congress if Bush decided to override the Patriot Act's oversight provision and ordered the FBI not to brief Congress.
[snip]
''How can we know whether the government will comply with the new laws that we passed?" [Feingold] said. ''I'm not placing the blame on you, obviously, or your agents who work to protect this country every day, but how can we have any assurance that you or your agents have not received a secret directive from above requiring you to violate laws that we all think apply today?"

Mueller replied: ''I can assure with you with regard to the FBI that our actions would be taken according to appropriate legal authorities."

As in the question of what “is”, “is,” the question could become the definition of “appropriate legal authorities.”

And, judging by past performance, the roster of those the Bush/Cheney Administration would call on for “advice” in these matters is truly troubling.

Steps Into The New Imperium

2006-04-30T18:37:00.000-04:00

We have heard complaints that President George W. Bush is acting as if he has an “imperial presidency,” of course we cannot forget his remark about how a “dictatorship could be good,” if he were the dictator, and some have pointed to his statements on how his legal staff’s interpretations of the United States Constitution trumps the plain language of what the Congress written into a bill (two of the most publicized are the ban on torture and congressional oversight of the PATRIOT Act).

What is not so well-known to the public is to just what extent he has laid the groundwork for this imperium, by way of the sheer multitude of “signing statements” filed on bills he has signed – over 750.

Because GW has vetoed no bills, he has allowed for no clarification from the Congress on points of the legislation he had issue with.  According to a copyrighted article in the Boston Globe, even though many Bush apologists try to say that the signing statements are just window dressing and have no real legal weight, those statements are also the template that is used by the various federal agencies, that, as part of the executive branch, take direction on how to implement the laws that the Congress passes.

Some, such as the declaration that the President can direct the armed forces to ignore the ban on torture, have some remote “justification” on national security grounds, but how to explain the prohibition imposed on military lawyers that they (the lawyers) cannot advise their commanders on what constitutes “torture” independently of what the administration has declared, which places those commanders at-risk for possible future charges.  Also hard to justify are the prohibition against reports, to the Congress, by the Congressionally-mandated post of an independent Inspector-General (IG) for occupied Iraq, unless the executive branch permits a specific report, this prohibition extends even Congressional directive that the Congress shall be informed if any U.S. official refuses to cooperate with the IG.  Bush has also directed, in that signing statement, that the U.S. military, and other instrumentalities of the executive branch, can reserve for themselves the sole investigative functions of any crime that the Pentagon wants to investigate for itself, rather than the IG.

As noted above, by making these signing statements Bush is reserving for the Executive branch the setting of policy that may be directly contradicted by the letter and spirit of the actual legislation, which is usurping the power of the legislative branch to decide the content and sense of law, and is asserting a right to refuse congressional oversight.

Indeed, because many of Bush’s signing statements have language to the effect that the administration, through the powers of the Executive, can be the arbiter of what is the “sense” of the Constitution in regards to law, rather than the Judicial branch, by declaring that the regulations and implementation of a law shall be subject to the Executive’s view of what is a “manner consistent with the Constitution.”  In some cases the signing statements declare that the law will be implemented (or provisions ignored) even though the letter and sense of the law plainly is that mandated by Supreme Court decisions.

Also troubling is the sheer volume of the signing statements. During the elder Bush presidency, the President appended 232 signing statements over 4 years, Bill Clinton appended 140 during his 8 years, and, since the start of his time in office, G.W. Bush has signed at least 750.  The accompanying graphic shows the relative absolute count and the average “per year” count.

The Globe article (which should be read in its entirety) has detailed the content of some of these signing statements:

March 9, [2006]: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.
Bush's signing statement: The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.

Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Bush's signing statement: the president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."
Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.

Aug. 8: The Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its contractors may not fire or otherwise punish an employee whistle-blower who tells Congress about possible wrongdoing.
Bush's signing statement: The president or his appointees will determine whether employees of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can give information to Congress.

Dec. 23, 2004: Forbids US troops in Colombia from participating in any combat against rebels, except in cases of self-defense.  Caps the number of US troops allowed in Colombia at 800.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can place restrictions on the use of US armed forces, so the executive branch will construe the law ''as advisory in nature."

Dec. 17: The new national intelligence director shall recruit and train women and minorities to be spies, analysts, and translators in order to ensure diversity in the intelligence community.
Bush's signing statement: The executive branch shall construe the law in a manner consistent with a constitutional clause guaranteeing ''equal protection" for all.  (In 2003, the Bush administration argued against race-conscious affirmative-action programs in a Supreme Court case.  The court rejected Bush's view [this is a clear case where the signing statement directly contravenes prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions].)

Oct. 29: Defense Department personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.
Bush's signing statement: All military attorneys are bound to follow legal conclusions reached by the administration's lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon when giving advice to their commanders.

Aug. 5: The military cannot add to its files any illegally gathered intelligence, including information obtained about Americans in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.
Bush's signing statement: Only the president, as commander in chief, can tell the military whether or not it can use any specific piece of intelligence.

Nov. 6, 2003: US officials in Iraq cannot prevent an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority from carrying out any investigation.  The inspector general must tell Congress if officials refuse to cooperate with his inquiries.
Bush's signing statement: The inspector general ''shall refrain" from investigating anything involving sensitive plans, intelligence, national security, or anything already being investigated by the Pentagon.  The inspector cannot tell Congress anything if the president decides that disclosing the information would impair foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations.

Nov. 5, 2002: Creates an Institute of Education Sciences whose director may conduct and publish research ''without the approval of the secretary [of education] or any other office of the department."
Bush's signing statement: The president has the power to control the actions of all executive branch officials, so ''the director of the Institute of Education Sciences shall [be] subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."

Bear in mind that we, as citizens, may not even be privy to whether or not a signing statement is being followed into enacting regulations, what the content of some signing statements are, or indeed, if there is a signing statement at all to a particular law, because they would be pertaining to laws that that are, themselves, secret.

As in the vast increase of the use of the FISA courts (where the courts were even consulted), this President has used the “prerogatives” of office more than any other, and in ways that seem to put political and economic ideology at a premium over the rights of the individual citizens.

OK, So maybe I'm easily impressed...

2006-04-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

... But it looks like Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA [3rd District]) will get my vote again when his name is on the ballot.

McGovern, along with four other members of the House (Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA); Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA); and Rep. John Olver (D-MA)) were arrested Friday (4/29/06) at a protest that blocked the entrance to the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C.

According to the Boston Globe, the congressmen were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after they and the protesters refused to disperse after being requested to do so by uniformed Secret Service agents.
''For us, this is a minor inconvenience," McGovern said at the police station after his release. ''But there is a genocide going on, and the world is watching it unfold. For us to spend a couple of hours in jail is nothing."

The lawmakers, along with three of their colleagues and several other activists, demanded that the Sudanese end the killings in Darfur, which has been the site of a brutal and bloody internal conflict since rebels challenged the Sudanese government in 2003. International agencies estimate that between 140,000 to 400,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in the conflict, which has spilled over to Chad.

''They are slaughtering people, families, entire villages," Olver said. ''What we are doing today is adding weight" to growing international demands for intervention in the troubled west Sudanese region, he said.
The SF Chronicle reports:

"If you're looking for lack of international morality, Darfur encompasses all aspects," Lantos said before his arrest. "Here we see the slaughter of innocent black women, children and men by a monstrous regime. ... I'm appalled by the relative lack of interest in most civilized countries. This is murder on a grand scale."

Lantos, 78, a 25-year veteran of the House, began calling for an international intervention in Sudan in the spring of 2004. The only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, Lantos has urged the Bush administration to take action. He led the debate in Congress to label the situation in Sudan a genocide in the summer of 2004, and soon after, the Bush administration declared it a genocide.

Yes, it's grandstanding.

And some might say it is ill-represented for "the dignity of the House."

But the arrest of 5 congressmen *will* get more media exposure of the issue, and afford a more wide ranging pulpit, than if 50 "ordinary citizens" are arrested for the same non-violent protest.

In a more serious tone, however, the images of 5 Democrat congresscritters being frisked, cuffed and put into patrol cars is so invigorating to the likes of the 101st Keyboard Brigade.

I mean, where can the Democrats look to for guidance?

Offending the dignity of the House this way doesn't hold a candle to the prospects of the House Speaker being censured for abuse of power or the Senate Majority Leader announcing a professional medical diagnosis about a patient he had never seen in the flesh.

And being booked for disorderly conduct while protesting against oppression, corruption and genocide isn't anywhere as impressive in your home district as being booked for wire fraud and money laundering or being under investigation by the SEC for insider trading.

The Voice in The Wilderness

2006-04-23T23:57:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, April 22, 1970, I was still in high school, and played “hooky” from classes at my downtown Boston school to spend the day on the MIT campus in Cambridge, cheek-to-cheek with other high-schoolers, graduate students, undergrads, academics and the press.

It was the 1970 Environmental Teach-In, meant to be a one-shot expository day and turning into the first celebration of the non-equinoctial “Earth Day.”  *  A day of concentration on activities for sustaining the ecology of the planet, on how to preserve what resources were still available, and review how to minimize man’s impact on the balance of the remaining wilderness and planetary environment.

It was a time when some conservative political players (usually backed by pro-business and petro/mineral exploitation interests) tried to deny the existence of “ecology” as either a discipline of study or even validity as a word itself, even though the term had been coined (as oekologie) by Ernst von Haeckel in 1866 (von Haeckel was a Lamarckian zoologist who founded a philosophy called ‘Monism” and coined the (now) discredited axiom "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny").  It was also a time when most of the world’s general public was blissfully unaware of the intricate delicacy of the dance of interaction between participants and the environment’s underlying structures.

1970 also marked the 10-year anniversary of Jane Goodall’s first observations of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania (when she arrived in 1960 the nation was called Tanganyika) and the year that the National Geographic Society reprinted their edition of My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees

In the years since, Earth Day in the U.S. enjoyed a period of official and public support, coupled with the enactment of legislation that recognized that economic considerations may need to be considered secondary to environmental considerations.  Since the dawn of the new century, however, the trend seems to have been reversed and 5 years of new legislation has been attempting to reverse 30 years of progress.  And the federal government’s support of “Earth Day” has been to prop up a sickly façade, where Clinton-administration advances are presented in such a way as to imply that the progress was due to the G.W. Bush efforts, and support for such farces as the “Healthy Forests” and “Clean Skies” programs are presented as “Initiatives” that are beneficial to the ecology, when the “environment” that is really to benefit is the economic one of big-lobby industrial interests.

Conversely, Goodall went on to research and author papers on the Egyptian Vulture, African baboons and Spotted Hyenas, but always returned to the chimpanzees at Gombe.  She was able to capitalize on the popularity of her books, the weight of her accomplishments in primatology and her own presence as a speaker, to have some remarkable success in bringing attention to issues such as poaching of primates (for purposes as diverse as “bush meat,” slaughter for folk medicines or illegal transshipment to foreign zoos), destruction of habitat and the use of primates as subjects in medical experimentation.

In order to provide a more organized presence for her initial efforts at habitat preservation, and to provide ongoing support for field research on wild chimpanzees, “Dr. Jane” founded the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation in 1977.  With her work at the Jane Goodall Institute, she is now “on the road” for about 300 days of each year.

Jane Goodall also formed a separate organization, in 1991, named “Roots and Shoots,” that “plans and implements service-learning projects that promote care and concern for animals, the environment, and the human community.”  Roots and Shoots started with 16 youngsters on the front porch of Dr. Goodall’s home in Dar es Salaam and now has more than 7,500 groups in more than 90 countries

In the 35 years since I skipped school on that Wednesday in 1970, I was involved with a number of environmental groups (some more effective than others), went on to college myself, fell away from the True Faith of the Environmental Front Lines, and have come full circle, back to wondering how I, as a single private citizen, can effect change, driven by the thought that my children, and grandchildren, may never see the world whole, or healthy.

My thought is that my best practice, aside from urging my elected representatives in voting against abominations such the “Clean Skies Initiative,” is education.  Educating my children and (perhaps through The Boston Progressive) educating the public.

As part of educating my children, I try to engage them with as much exposure to the "natural world" as I can, including such "captive nature" as zoos (even in the zoo you can show how the artificial setting differs from, and affects, the animals). I recently noticed that Jane Goodall would be making a speech, in commemoration of Earth Day, at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo, (which is a regional coordinating host for the Roots and Shoots program) and we altered the date for an already planned visit to Franklin Park to cooincide with her visit and to see her speech.

We arrived at the zoo, on a chilly and grey day, close before opening time (when we pulled in, we were the only car in the visitor’s parking lot), and saw Dr. Goodall arrive on the grounds.  We had several hours yet before the scheduled date for her speech, so we “took the airs” and wandered the several areas of the zoo’s collection.  I’m naught but an occasional zoo visitor, so I really don’t know the relative worth of the Franklin Park Zoo’s collection or presentation, but, all the experience being new to them, both of my boys (aged 4 and 8) enjoyed themselves (my 4-year old son was absolutely captivated by the family of lowland gorillas).  I’d like to be able to say that the skies magically cleared and the temperature rose as it came time for Dr. Goodall’s speech, but the clouds stubbornly refused to disburse, and the wind even picked up.

When Dr. Goodall took to the podium, one saw a woman who is moving gracefully through age, and presents a kind of vulnerability that was present in films taken during her first years at Gombe.  Not a physical frailty or infirmity, but rather a feeling that she would never really credit that people could ever do or think anything but the best, if only they were shown what the truth was, and where the real world’s priorities should lie.

She told some anecdotes about her days at Gombe, and noted the very close genetic similarity between chimpanzees and homo sapiens (given a match in blood type, transfusion across strains are effective – which makes chimpanzees prime material for AIDS/HIV vector and progression research), and noted that economic factors are forcing native destruction of habitat and environment, and the outside world appears either oblivious or has determined not to attempt to work towards changing conditions.  She praised those who work with the Roots and Shoots programs, and noted a remarkable program that the new president in Tanzania was embarking on, that all plastic bags in that country would be removed from commerce, and that only paper and cloth would be used for bags from stores.

I’m afraid that, with an exhausted four-year sleeping on my shoulder, and my membership “in the choir,” I didn’t find the portions of her speech on ecology as electrifying as some in the audience did.  Interesting, thoughtful, but not, overall, remarkable.  What I did find more captivating were the anecdotes on her years at Gombe, and thoroughly startling was when she demonstrated some of the “language” and calls her chimpanzees used, including a change in timbre and power of her voice, from that of a relatively unassuming Englishwoman, when she articulated those calls, including a truly amazing exhibition of a “distance call” that I could readily image carrying across mountain valleys.

Although I did not find her presentation itself awe-inspiring, her power as a symbol in the world’s environmental awareness is unquestioned.  And the knowledge that this one woman has had the ability, through education of the world’s people, to bring real change to the policies of nations, is awe-inspiring.

What was unquestionably sad, though, was that none of the local news outlets thought that her appearance was noteworthy enough to even send a film crew to, never mind do a broadcast about.

She appears to be, either still, or again, the prophetic voice crying in the wilderness.

----------------------------
* There is a “competing” Earth Day celebration internationally that is a movable feast, being celebrated each year during the vernal equinox.  There is a (perhaps) cynical observation that the timing of the original Earth Day in late April, 1970, was chosen because it fell between spring break and final exams allowed for more participation on U.S. college campuses

-- My own camera is currently dysfunctional -- the photograph of Goodall at the podium is courtesy of the Jane Goodall Institute

It's Super, Double-Secret...

2006-04-18T23:40:00.000-04:00

When it may cost the agencies some monies, and the Prez doesn't want to get even, I guess you can't say anything.

The wife of a former covert CIA operative is suing the federal government for claims of conduct that caused the woman and her family physical and mental suffering.

Because the government has ordered that neither the woman nor her husband can reveal to their caregivers what is causing the anxiety, and the government has not afforded them alternatives, the family is suing for unspecified damages. From the AP story:

The U.S. District Court lawsuit by the mother and three children asserts that they were victims of unlawful conduct, breaches of contract and broken promises by the CIA after the family suffered enormous strain living a “very, very covert life,” said plaintiff attorney Mark S. Zaid.

The family was not identified because the CIA has continued to label their relationship with the CIA as classified, Zaid said.

Defendants in the case are the CIA, the United States and an agency whose name is classified.

In the largely redacted lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, the wife reports that she “remains a virtual prisoner in her home” and is “constantly fearful of eventual detection” for a reason that is classified.

Federal lawyers claim that they should not have to reveal anything about the man's relationship for "national security" reasons, and that the lawsuit not be allowed to go forward.

In arguing that the lawsuit be rejected, [Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah S.] Normand cited a submission last month by CIA Director Porter Goss, who said state secrets would be divulged that could jeopardize national security if the lawsuit proceeded.

He said it needed to be so secret that the reasons for his assertion of the state secrets privilege cannot be released even to the plaintiffs or their lawyer.

To me this smells just like the case that set the precedent that allows the Federal government to block revelation of material facts -- and I remember that in that case, involving a military aircraft that crashed with civilian contractors aboard, the real reason for the government asserting "national security" was in order to hide incompetence and negligence on the part of the military, not to protect the nation.

It's All The Fault of Clinton! Uhh Zarqawi!

2006-04-18T22:49:00.000-04:00

First we have right-wingnuts claiming that the retired generals who are calling for a different hand at the helm in Iraq is all Clinton's fault, but now Rummy himself is claiming that the "terrorists" are the reason that Mainstream Media reporters are declining being embedded -- that somehow Zarqawi and bin Laden have made the reporters stop.

Editor and Publisher has noted that that is exactly what Rumsfeld said during an "interview" on Rush Limbaugh's talk radio show. From the E&P story:

For one thing, Rumsfeld said it was important to "recognize that the terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees. They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States. They are very good at it. They're much better at (laughing) managing those kinds of things than we are."

//snip//

LIMBAUGH: Let me amend it. Let me ask you one final question. Somebody on my staff is curious to know what your opinion is of embedding reporters with the military. Has that worked? Has that worked as you had hoped?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, it has. It worked during the Iraq conflict, and a lot of people who are reporters and journalists were able to work with our troops and see precisely how terrific they are, the wonderful job they do, the kinds of people they are, how professional they are -- and the rest of their lives they're going to have an impression of the American military that will be good for journalism, in my view. Furthermore, they were able, because they were embedded, to see and then give the world and the people of the United States a slice of what was actually happening, real reality, and it was a good thing. More recently, very few people had been being embedded. We're still offering that opportunity, but there have been far fewer journalists who have stepped up to become embedded.

LIMBAUGH: Why do you think that is?

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: Well, it's a funny thing. I asked one reporter about that, and there was kind of the impression left that, "Well, if you got embedded then you were really part of the problem instead of part of the solution and you were almost going over to the other side," argument. I think that's an inexcusable thought, and I don't know if that's the case.

LIMBAUGH: That's outrageous.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: It is. (Laughing.)

RUSH: I can't believe that.

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: (Laughing.)

The reaction of the reporters simply couldn't have anything to do with the feeling that they are not getting the "real" story when they are only going around with heavily armed troops or stuck in the green zone.

And, of course, Rush is not going to ask any questions that are off-script. I wonder what it feels like to know that you are a pet kept on the lease by your masters the way Limbaugh is -- so tame that Rumsfeld and Cheney can feel secure that only the approved questions will be asked during the "candid interviews."

Enjoy the access, now, Rush -- you won't have the entree into the famous and influential forever, and then it will be back to pandering only to the ditto-heads.

O brave new world, That has such people in't!

2006-04-15T21:19:00.000-04:00

With the recent New Yorker article pointing out the possibility of G.W. releasing nukes over Iran, I cannot but think back to the days of “duck and cover,” before planners realized (admitted?) that there was no such critter as a “limited nuclear exchange.”

Of course, with the assurances of G.W. that he Is Doing All He Can For A Peaceful Solution, I think the film clip that I’ve linked to here is quite appropriate a reminder about what may be involved, even when you are looking at capabilities from 5 decades ago.

This is a 41-second excerpt of a 30 minute film available at the website for the DOE’s Nevada Test Site, showcasing events with such unassuming catalog titles as Fox, Nancy, Badger, Encore and Climax.

Even though the film catalog description declares this to be “silent,” there actually is a disturbingly appropriate soundtrack.

Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office.

O brave new world, That has such people in't! (The Tempest, Act 5, scene 1)

I'd Like to Welcome...

2006-04-13T00:38:00.000-04:00

... Straight, Not Narrow to the blogroll link-list.

Written by Jim Johnson of Rockville, MD, Straight Not Narrow is focused on "Advocating for GLBT equality in the church and politics," and is member of the Progressive Christian Blogger Network.

"Get It Out"

2006-04-11T10:29:00.000-04:00

USNews.Com 'Lawyer: Bush Left Leak Details to Cheney'

"...Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House..."

Isaiah 32: 6-7
6. For a fool speaks nonsense,
And his heart inclines toward wickedness:
To practice ungodliness and to speak error against the LORD,
To keep the hungry person unsatisfied
And to withhold drink from the thirsty.

7. As for a rogue, his weapons are evil;
He devises wicked schemes
To destroy the afflicted with slander,
Even though the needy one speaks what is right.

OK, So I'm A Geek,...

2006-04-08T17:32:00.000-04:00

... But this video From Cornell is seriously cool.

Many thanks to Jazz at Running Scared

(Source article is here)

The Pain and the Glory of Public School

2006-04-07T22:04:00.000-04:00

Over on Creek Running North Chris Clark has penned an article about how he is trying to cope with the distress that his wife copes with when every day in her professional life she is pushing Sisyphus’ damn rock to the top of that hill.

What did she do to earn the ire of the gods of the underworld?

Becky is a teacher in the public school system, and the stand-ins for Hades are anti-intellectuals who care naught about any but their own spawn and opportunists who don’t have to care about the demise of public schools because their children are in private schools with small class sizes and all their peers are formed with the same cookie-cutter.

She didn’t do anything to earn that boulder, but her mischoice in agreeing to this task is offense enough to some.

As Chris so correctly puts it:

Public school teachers make up the largest, most accessible sector of the United States’ intellectual class.

They are the cannon fodder in the War on Thinking.

Public school teachers are the largest constituency that represents a government-funded social program.

They are the cannon fodder in the War to Starve Government.

Part of Becky’s frustration is the constant fight for materials for use in the classroom, and the ill-conceived notion that standardized norms are the only way to teach anything, and penalize the schools if the luck of the neighborhood draw means that a higher proportion of  students in one school, over a school in another address, are from families with parents absent because they work two or three jobs, or the children are from homes where there is not the wherewithal to afford a breakfast before school each day, or English is a 2nd or 3rd tongue, or any other of a host of circumstance.

Chris also notes that, the actual result of the flight of educational dollars away from “non-performing schools” is to realize in effect what Edward Stanly, military Governor of N. Carolina during part of the Civil War, tried to achieve when he sought to enforce slave-holder laws against teaching blacks to read and write when he closed the schools that were instructing former slaves towards literacy.

Looking through the comments for that article, I saw a number of supportive writers for Chris’ efforts to support his wife, but then the inevitable flies in the ointment whenever public education is discussed – the voucherist hawking “choice” and the lackwit so ready to repeat Mencken’s absurd saw about “those who can, do and those who can’t, teach.”

What the voucher supporter will do is provide a grant to those who can already afford the choice (and in the next breath those same voucherists will usually decry the money spent on subsidized school lunches as "unneeded welfare")

When the child is pulled from the school it isn't just the voucher amount that is withdrawn, it is the money that is no longer there to teach the children who don't have the choice to be on-offer.

The children whose parents don't have the car to get them to the other school.

Or who don't have the time in the day because of the work schedule to get them to that other school.

Or who don't have the money to make up the tuition at that other school beyond the cost of the voucher.

Or they are the student that the other school doesn't want to take:  the whirl-a-gig all day long without a one-on-one aide; or those so challenged that they cannot deal with schoolwork except at a grade level 3 or 4 behind their age peers; or are simply physically broken and need crutches or wheelchairs; or are trying to cope with the mental, emotional or physical scars of malnutrition, physical or emotional abuse or are so lonely that any attention given is reacted to as "inappropriate."

The fancy school doesn't want these kids because accommodating them will lower their pristine scores, and private schools (so far) don't have to take them.

And as for the moronic comment about "those who can't, teach," one truly wonders if the repeater of the saw ever attempted teaching.

Like the saying about the chicken and the egg, if those who can "do," how did they *learn" the skills to "do?"

Did those skills come full-blown into their existence, imparted by some relative of Narcissus?

No, seeing the effort that the public school teachers take for granted in their professional lives, and the compassion and grace that they bestow on their charges' behalf, I'm just surprised as the Devil that there are any of them who last long enough in the system before fleeing in abject terror.

I know I could never persist at that task for any period of time.  And my prayers go to those, like Becky, who do.

Tri-x and Dektol.

2006-04-04T23:51:00.000-04:00

Over on the Heretik we are reminded that the advent of CCD sensors and image-formulation algorithms have brokered a new world in image creation, and that there is a danger that, in the not too distant future, "photograph" will, in the common mind, conjure bits, pixels and monitor screens, not grain, gelatin and paper.

I haven't worked professionally in photography in more than 25 years.

For me, the love of the image was always in shades of grey and sepia, where I had control over the genesis, and did not have to relegate gestation to darkness and baths that needed to be controlled within 5 degrees of temperature.

When the market for portraits of ordinary people went to houses that did sittings in standard poses and all the image taker did was point a box and let an autowinder collect the potential image (In Bright! Honest! True! Color!) and machines imaged paper I gave it up.

Partly from frustration, and partly because, simply, the salary I could make as a computer geek was so much steadier (and bigger) than commissions from sittings, and studio owners who were so desperate to keep their salons open they cheated the craftsmen taking pictures and printing.

Soon after that I realized a love in my life might be slipping away, when I found it harder and harder to get B&W films in a casual market, rather than having to go to a camera store, and the prices posted for processing and printing of B&W outstripping the cost for standard processing of color. It made economic sense, as the deluge of standardized processing for all the major makers' color negative films, the improvements in masking to give "truer color" and the advent of good (not "great," but "good") plastic optics on inexpensive plastic cameras meant that the "economies of scale" made the commercial consumerism of color a Goliath that laughed at the grey-scaled David's sling, and brushed the stones from that sling away.

I was living in small apartments, and tutored in photography classes in exchange for darkroom time and chemistry. But I never was happy teaching color work, and that was what the majority wanted to learn. So I let it slip away, and just did family pictures and trip mementos, in color, and let machines do the realization of the latent image onto negative and paper.

I never had the patience to really work with color until I started using a digital camera. I still really don't do much except for playing with color balance and some tonal range before I tell the inkjet to fire its little droplets of dye, and it doesn't feel the same.

But Black & White, ohh, in that fargone realm of past eons I would spend days in that safe-lit room, creating image after image after image.
I never really liked using gels or other artifacts during printing, using focus, exposure and the occasional "specialty" paper to bend light to my will.

I can remember one image, of a lady "of a certain age" who had such a marvelously youthful mien that was lost completely if I printed the image as taken. Eventually I used my loup to focus the sharpest I could on the film grain, and then backed-off the focus just so, and underexposed the paper just that little gradient to appease that faction of "art," and found the face that my eye had seen, and the film had hidden.

I really don't think I ever would have found the craft to be able to tease that rendering from a color negative, nor justify the cost of the missed efforts along the way.

At some point I'll actually commandeer a room in the house, box it so the dark can't escape, get an enlarger and rekindle that lust for tonal range and grey scale. But not yet.

----------------------------------
Tri-x was a fairly sensitive (ASA 400) black and white negative film marketed to general consumers

Dektol is a chemical formulation that can be used to develop (process) both film and photographic paper

Who Is Paying For Whose Freedom?

2006-04-04T12:40:00.000-04:00

The Unites States is involved in an armed conflict in Iraq.

Whether you call it an “illegal war,” “bringing democracy to the Middle East” or “the front line of the War on Terror” it’s an armed conflict.

As in any armed conflict there are three groups involved, and each group has a portion that are injured or killed by the conflict. The groups involved are the respective combatants, and everybody else caught in the middle.

In “insurgencies” or other guerilla wars it is hard, or impossible, to reliably separate the combatants in the non-uniformed forces from the mass of the “caught betweens.” It is even harder to separate the casualties.

It is harder still to examine what the “fortunes of war” have wrought if the civilians and non-uniformed combatants are not counted, either because it is too difficult to count and estimate or because it is a matter of policy to not count, or to purposely underestimate the numbers.

Last week some students at The College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester (Massachusetts) decided to try to bring a graphic reminder of the costs, in lives, of the “insurgency” in Iraq, and hopefully start a dialog about what is being bought with the lives of the combatants involved and the people caught in between.

With the permission of the College’s administration, and a warning from that same administration that vandalism might be possible, last Thursday (03/31/06) two sophomores at the College, Sarah Fontaine of Somers, CT and Molly Hoagland of Portland, OR (both seen in the photo at left) organized an “installation” of 1026 stakes, some painted green, some white, placed into the earth in the quadrangle outside the main dining hall. Each stake is meant to represent 100 deaths in the war in Iraq.

A white stake represents 100 American casualties; a green stake represents 100 Iraqi casualties. 26 of the stakes are white. The remainder are green.

A stark and graphic reminder of the costs to the people of Iraq of the present conflict.

The two students conceived of the installation as a way to start a more open discussion over the personal cost of the war among the 2700 students at the College.

However, sometime over Friday night the stakes representing the Iraqi dead were pulled up out of the ground and strewn about the quad, and the signs explaining what the stakes represented were destroyed, and in their place a Unites States flag was draped over a fence and a sign was posted saying “Freedom is not free.”

Rather than re-erect the green stakes, the organizers instead opted to pull out the white stakes and mingle them with the scattered green, an installation that is as effective as when they were all in neat rows. The contrast of the white separated from the green will not be as stark, but the symbolism of the commingled fallen is very powerful.

To my own mind, two of the more striking thoughts to come from the vandalism are that there are those who feel the U.S. dead are a priori more important than the Iraqis who have died, and the question of who is paying the price for whose “freedom.”

If those who vandalized this installation truly *do* think that the U.S. lives are more important than the Iraqis, then why do they support our troops being there at all, and why are we, as a nation, paying the blood price of our own dead for those who are not as “worthy?”

The more general questions of disrespect for independent thought, and the cowardice of those who would do this under the cover of darkness, I leave to the reader.

However, the installation, and the vandalism, have been effective at stimulating the desired dialog within the student body, and the reaction to the vandalism may be even more of an impetus for that discussion than the installation on its own.

Coverage of the vandalism by the Boston Globe is here, coverage by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette is here.

Now they want to swiftboat hostages who get released?

2006-04-01T21:39:00.000-05:00

Jill Carroll (seen here in a frame from a video recorded in February, while she was still a hostage) was released Friday, after 82 days in captivity by an Islamic fundamentalist group in Iraq.

Carroll, an unembedded reporter with the Christian Science Monitor, on assignment in Iraq, was kidnapped on Jan 7, 2006, and her interpreter, Allan Enwiya was murdered. Since that time she had been held captive, had all parts of her life and circumstances controlled by her kidnappers.

Before her release there were some video footage made, where she made statements lambasting the US and its forces, and praising the insurgency in Iraq.

Every time I saw some new footage of Carroll I didn't really believe that she was still alive, but that earlier footage had been shot, and was just now being released for broadcast.

Now she really *has* been released, and there are some who call themselves "conservatives" (not all, some, but a large and vocal number of "some") who are crucifying her for making those statements at all.

Unlike her, they have not been subject to being kidnapped, seeing someone you work with every day murdered because of their association with you, and told that your life hinges on your total cooperation with those who have kidnapped you.

And she knew that reporters have been killed by their kidnappers in the past. One of whom, Daniel Pearl, was working for the Monitor when he was kidnapped and murdered in 2002. So the possibility of her own murder was a prospect that had a demonstrated precedent.

Yet there are "voices" on the Right who can't even wait for the videotape replay to stop winding down before they are lighting into her and treating her as a traitor, or willing collaborator or coward.

Part of the subtext on this is that those "voices" on the right don't want to admit that statements made under duress might be less than truthful, and are simply reiterations of what a captor might want them to say. For, to admit that statements made under duress were inherently unreliable, they might have to admit that statements made under "strenuous interrogation" of suspected "enemy combatants" would be suspect. And that would mean that their Crawford demighod was in favor of a course of action that was not entirely reliable. And we cannot have that.

The Moderate Voice's Joe Gandleman has a roundup of some of these "voices," including some on the conservative side who are *not* of the opinion that Carroll is a traitor, but someone who was just trying to stay alive. But the other rhetoric that being broadcast is jaw-dropping in its poison. I suspect that this is a subject where Joe may be working overtime to stay as even-handed as he can, because of his background of being a U.S. journalist on assignment abroad. Crooks and Liars is not being so generous.

The Christian Science Monitor has a story about Carroll's renunciation of the recordings, but I doubt that it will do anything to moderate those who want to vilify her.

The Monitor thinks that these events are important enough that they are allowing the general public to download the entire contents of the March 31 edition of the paper, as a PDF file. See this page for the download.

What Being A Christian Can Mean

2006-03-27T18:10:00.000-05:00

In today's political circus, all too often the label/description of "Christian" is co-opted to refer only to the branch of that is very narrowly confined within the strictures of the current "conservative" political structure.

"Christianity" is actually a faith that has a much broader base than that of the so-called "fundamentalist" and "conservative" flavors.

As an example, within the confines of one distinct sect, Roman Catholicism (which is the single largest self-professed denomination in the United States), there are views and congregations that are as conservative as any found in strictest chapel of the Southern Baptist Convention (which is the branch of Christianity that is most often identified with the American "conservative" political wing) and there are the views and beliefs held by those who are members of the Catholic Worker's Movement, where service, conscience and social justice and equality are the bedrock of their faith, and all those flavors in between. There is a certain titular commonality of definition, but, depending on the national character of the congregants, there is less, or more, emphasis on heterodoxy, with a "gentleman's agreement" not to whisper the "H"- word. As with many Christian sects, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the drive towards orthodoxy and the concept of service without regard to requirement of submission to doctrinal norms.

My upbringing was as a Roman Catholic, but my "flavor" was that which viewed the requirement of active service to be an attainable goal, even if perfection of service itself was not, and this is the background that informs my identity as a "liberal." Part of that early indoctrination was the recognition that there are many roads to "salvation," but that, whereas I earnestly believe that recognition of the glory of sacrifice of a Divine Redeemer, who has made Himself manifest to us, is the "right" road, it is not the *only* road.

Not being bound to a strict doctrine of inerrancy in any human endeavor (and any transcription, and retranslation of text, no matter if divinely inspired is going to be a human endeavor) means that I can regard a set of scriptural texts as being "inspired" and "truth," but that such text can also, by virtue of the human intervention, be inaccurate. I have the freedom to view it all as divinely inspired allegory.

Alas, part of that freedom also means that I feel a stronger pull of conscience if the Church I am a member of strays, in the name of orthodoxy, from the path of service towards all Christ's children. In the case of a member of the Roman Catholic Church, the current and prior "administrations" have moved towards such a state, partially in reaction towards the perceived challenge of the more doctrinaire and stricture-bound sects that comprise the "fundamentalist" Christian movement. Unfortunately, as a single member of a church that is so large, and that is organized under such a strict hierarchy, I could see myself not being able to both answer to my conscience and answer to the Church's demands for "orthodoxy."

So, like any wishy-washy protestant who is looking for the "easy way" I left the confines of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church for the life of a non-observant, non-practicing Catholic.

I still considered myself a Catholic (and yes, Catholics consider themselves "Christian" as well) and part of the greater corpus of Jesus' followers, but without a formal locus for worship.

Until a chance request brought me to a small congregation of a parish of the Episcopal Church.

I went to a Sunday morning service in order to help out a visiting houseguest by giving her a ride so she could attend, and found the Church I thought had left me.

There's more in that vein I could ramble, but this is really serving as a roundabout way to introduce the subject of this post, which is a plea for aid.

Heifer International, an organization that is making the logical extension of the adage about "teaching someone to fish" rather than only giving food away , has been in operation for more than 60 years.

The idea of what has become Heifer International came to a Midwestern farmer, Dan West, when he was serving as a relief worker during the Spanish Civil War. Heifer International's strategy is to provide livestock to a community, and have all members of the community have a stake in the effort, work and responsibility, and all share the benefits. One of the strongest bonds in the heifer project is the commitment many communities make to "pass along the gift." Because Heifer International provides livestock with the aim of providing viable breeding stock, the recipients are in an ideal situation to provide help-in-kind to their neighbors, by donating some of the female offspring from their own animals. This can help start cycles of growth, sustainability, trust and service in communities ravaged by war and natural disaster.

Even though Heifer was started as a project of service within a Christian church, the organization makes no requirements of any church membership, of any faith. But the tradition, and ideal, of service draws many of Christian faith to work in and with the organization.

This brings me (after even more of the roundabout tattoo) to a woman who is currently training to be a deacon in our church. Her "second ministry" is working with Heifer International at Heifer's Overlook Farm Learning Center, in Rutland Massachusetts.

It was through her association with my new church that I learned of a fire at the learning center, on March 6 of this year, where a barn, seed greenhouse and tool shed were destroyed. The fire was finally knocked down by companies from four communities. (news video showing some of the aftermath can be seen here)
Luckily only a small number of fowl and larger animals died in the fire, but the center also lost about 50 baby chicks that had just been delivered. However, the tool shed, with its complement of hand and power tools was completely destroyed.

To help in rebuilding, and replacing the tools lost, I'd like to encourage you to aid the effort at Overlook. I'm not affiliated with the farm at all. If you wish to visit and see if they can use the donation of your own hands, or tools you may be able to donate, please feel free to call them for directions and an appropriate time. If you wish to donate monetarily, checks in any amount can be mailed to:

Heifer International
Overlook Farm
216 Wachusett Street
Rutland, MA 01543

Please note "Overlook Capital Fund" in the memo portion of your check to direct the funds to the rebuilding.

Again, I'm not affiliated with either the farm or Heifer International myself (the closest I've come was when my wife and I donated to Heifer International one year in the name of a relative of ours), but this seems like a worthwhile project that needs support.

Exodus drops t/r/o/u/, uhh, suit

2006-03-25T18:53:00.000-05:00

In an earlier article, I noted that the law firm of Liberty Counsel (partial to right-wing causes) had brought action on behalf of one of their clients, Exodus International (an organization that bills itself as an "ex-gay ministry"), and send a Cease & Desist order to blogger Justin Watt that parodied one of their billboards on his Justinsomnia site.

USA Today is carrying news that Exodus International is withdrawing their complaint, supposedly because he removed an "image watermark" from his parody.

The writer for the news outlet thinks it's more likely that Watt, who had enlisted the help of the ACLU, was able to stare down Exodus & Liberty because he knew what his rights were under copyright law's protection of parody under the "fair use" doctrine, and didn't meekly comply with the threat.

This is the legal talent that big money can buy.

2006-03-25T16:05:00.000-05:00

After the sentencing for three men convicted of a brutal multiple rape of a girl who was then 16-years old, defense lawyer John Barnett announced to the press "Everybody lost today, there were no victors."

The OC Weekly had coverage Tuesday of the sentencing hearing for the trio convicted in the Haidl Gang Rape Case.

The first trial in the case ended with a mistrial. The second ended with the three defendants getting 6 years apiece in prison, and they will have to register as sex offenders after release.

The defense team, bankrolled by the multi-millionaire father of one of the rapists, made statements that should make any lawyer cringe with shame for being in the same profession.

It is one thing to pursue a vigorous defense for your client, but it is beyond the pale for lawyers to make claims, in court, as the defense's Al Stokke did, when he claimed that, since the girl had been drugged unconscious by the trio of rapists, her physical injuries, including penetration by lit cigarette, soda can and a pool cue, were not that severe, with his claim that "There's [no pain] that is felt," he said, "because she was unconscious."

And the lawyer who claimed there were no "victors?"

He tried to claim that it wasn't really "rape." From the OC weekly article:

If their [the defense team's] arguments had prevailed, it would no longer be necessary for a woman to give, say, oral consent before sex. Defense lawyer John Barnett, legendary in Southern California for representing cops accused of excessive force, argued that consent is implied if a man who penetrates a woman's rectum with a foreign object can do so without causing massive injuries. Only a willing sex partner could relax her sphincter muscle, claimed Barnett.

No. No victors at all, especially not the legal profession, that has these men in it.

Except maybe the women these three will not be attacking for the next 6 years.

But they're good-looking boys.

I'm sure they will find lots of bosom buddies over the next few years.

H/t to Bitch PHD and other bloggers for keeping this in our eyes.

What am I bid for one slightly used congressman?

2006-03-23T07:59:00.000-05:00

By now we have all heard the sordid saga of Randy ("Duke") Cunningham and the bribes he took to steer business to specific vendors.

Part of the "take-back" of Cunningham's fines and restitution to the federal government (in addition to cash fines and jail time) is sale of one of his homes, and the contents of that home.

The Boston Globe has a slide show that shows some of the house contents in a warehouse before the auction takes place.

It looks like nothing else but some discount-warehouse company's store, with rugs, furniture and bedding laid out for viewing.

The slide show is here

What a summation to cap off a career of public "service."

On The Road Again....

2006-03-21T11:55:00.000-05:00

I violate some (most?) of the strictures that are supposed to bring in the Big Hit Counts:

- I don’t routinely post several times a day (or even consistently every day)
- I don’t post just short sight-bites, usually tending to more text to illustrate any analysis (too verbose? Maybe.)
- I’m not outrageous (World of Crap, and any number of other sites that exist do that well, but WoC is actually trying to), even if I do admit to the more-than-occasional snarky bits
- I don’t give comments only on the issue de le moment, and sometimes discuss events from days (weeks) past
- I don’t have Big Name Hit Guests to liven up the scene

I often don’t post every day in any case.

Now, I’m not even posting as much as I had previously (as a few readers have noticed).

I started a new job at the beginning of this month, and it eats up about 90 minutes each way in my commute ‘twixt work and home, I work too many hours anyway, and I haven’t yet struck the balance of work/travel/sleep/home-handiness-stuff/reading/writing that will work. Oh, and (as usual in these things), time for “family” get even more short-changed.

I truly admire people like Dr. B (of BitchPhD ) and Joe Gandleman (of The Moderate Voice) who can seemingly get prose out and published in the time it takes to get the car door closed and the oven started for dinner. And it’s *good* writing too. (**grumble**)

So, I’ll try to do better, but I don’t guarantee it’ll be anything more than a “try.”

Look, on the street, it's a parade! No, it's a holiday! No, it's an Ethnic Event!

2006-03-18T21:00:00.000-05:00

Most of the world knows of March 17 as being "St. Patrick's Day," celebrated as a day when people of all nations are Irish For A Day, and people of all faiths commemorate a Christian myth of driving the snakes from Ireland.

However, in the city of Boston, Massachusetts it's also known as Evacuation Day, and is an actual recognized (and take-the-day-off) holiday. (This is a separate holiday from the Evacuation Day formerly celebrated in New York City)

In March of 1776 George Washington's troops, participating in what is now termed "The Siege of Boston," were already in strategic places around the exterior of the City of Boston, and brought in cannon captured by troops under the command of General Benedict Arnold, from Fort Ticonderoga in New York, and transported overland to Boston by General Henry Knox.

Under cover of night, and a light fog, the cannon, and pre-fabricated defensive works, were emplaced on two hills known as Dorchester Heights, on the peninsula of Dorchester Neck. These hills had a commanding vantage over much of the city of Boston, and of Boston Harbor.

After dawn, the commander of the British forces, General Howe, seeing the overnight appearance of the fortifications, attempted an assault, but the March weather conspired to blunt the attempt. Howe, bowing to military reality, agreed to leave the city by sea. When the weather lifted on March 17 Howe, with his troops and loyalist citizens who wished to leave, sailed from Boston Harbor for Halifax.
Since that time, one of the two hills on Dorchester heights has been leveled to provide building materials for the city's expansion in the 1800s. The remaining hill now has a monument tower commemorating the event. (Howe's departure, not the missing hill's)

A few years ago I took a visitor from New Zealand around some of the "sights" in Boston.

The night before her plane was to leave (scheduled for about 3 AM) we did a last round to some of the sights that we had missed, or that were too crowded to appreciate.

One of the locations we had missed was Dorchester Heights, which still retains a magnificent vantage east over Boston Harbor's Dorchester Bay (much of the old harbor that was overlooked from Dorchester Neck to the west has been filled in for the above mentioned expansion). In the evening, with few people about, and more light from a full moon than city lights, it was easy to imagine the vista that Washington and Knox surveyed.

And, yes, she did make her flight on time.

Carnival of the Liberals # 8 [The Haiku edition] is up

2006-03-18T11:04:00.000-05:00

Paul V. at Brainshrub ("...with counterpoints to encourage critical thinking..") is hosting the 8th edition of the Carnival of the Liberals, The Haiku Edition.

For an introduction for each of the selected articles Paul has composed a haiku in the style most of us are familiar with for English-language haiku (three lines with 5-7-5 syllable pattern).

No, you all have not been put on the Do Not Call List

2006-03-17T15:30:00.000-05:00

Blog*Spot Had A Problem, actually, several problems, and a variety of Blog*Spot blogs were giving "forbidden to access" return codes.

Hopefully things will be in better shape now.

Liberty Counsel and Exodus International may not quite understand copyright law

2006-03-04T15:16:00.000-05:00

Exodus International (see Wikipedia article here) is an organization, affilited with Focus On The Family, that claims to be able to, bluntly, "help" individuals "change" from being gay to straight. Primarially through the "transforming power of Jesus Christ." I guess gay and lesbian Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Zoroasterans, atheists and agnostics are on their own.

It may be recalled that there was a touch of trouble in the organization in 1979 when two of the "ex-gays" (both men) who helped found the organization, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper (I am *not* making this up!), eloped. Together.

There was another little "incident" when, in 2003, another "ex-gay" member who was a spokeperson for the organization, John Paulk, was observed "flirting" (as he put it) and hustling drinks in a Washington D.C. gay bar. FotF head James Dobson reported put Paulk "on probation" and made sure he had a chaperone on any future speaking engagements after that.

Part of the Exodus media campaign is a billboard ad campaign to "spread their ministry." One of the ads is displayed at left. Image source from the Exodus website

Justin Watt, the writer of the Justinsomnia blog was inspired to put up a parody of the billboard ad. (see image to the right). Image source from Justinsomnia.

Exodus International is not happy. They have hired Liberty Counsel, a legal firm that specializes in promoting their own version of "religious freedom" that seems to lean toward "freedom" of the far-right pseudo-christian theology to dominate everybody else. Liberty Counsel has issued a Cease and Desist order against Justinsomnia demanding a removal of the image from the website. (see here for the C&D text). I'll be interested in seeing what comes of this. My first impression is that this is still covered by the "fair use" and "parody" portions of U.S. copyright law.

I really wonder at the Exodus and Liberty Counsel strategy here. And litigation is going to bring back into the public awareness the outright defection of co-founders and the "fall into temptation" of Paulk (Hmm, I wonder if any of the bar's patrons were costumed as a fig-leafed Eve or a snake-&-apple combination?). This attention would appear to bring doubt about the effectiveness of the "change" and even of how Dobson views the members of Exodus, if they need to be watched all tyhe time -- if this "change" is so effective, can't they find someone "reliable" who will stay bought? Of course, a cease & desist letter is cheap -- nothing more than a threat, essentially saying "we really don't care of the law is on your side or not: we have more money to burn than you do to get our way." However, that monetary equation may change if the ACLU gets involved or a counter-suit is filed on Justinsomnia's behalf by lawyers willing to work on contingency.

As a further incitement, Jason Griffey at Pattern Recognition has taken to Photoshop himself, and has produced another image for our delectation (see below). Image source is Pattern Recognition.

Of course, to make the point severly obvious about "parody," Griffey has added another image to hammer the point in. (those literature-context-challenged may wish to bypass the next billboard)

Has FEMA's Michael Brown been exonerated?

2006-03-04T13:29:00.000-05:00

New video that has been obtained by AP shows Michael Brown telling GW Bush that there would be troubles with the levees around New Orleans. Whether he told Bush the levees would be breached or overtopped is irrelevant.

Bush kept on saying that nobody thought that there could be troubles with the levees.

However, I can recall analysts on The Weather Channel saying exactly that that was a possibility.

And an article in Scientific American, in 2001 said the same.

Is Brown "vindicated" that he told Bush something that Bush and Chertoff later denied ever hearing about?

Yes.

Does it mean that he was either competent in execution of his duties, or that his hiring was aught but an exercise in cronyism?

No.

All that can be said here is he didn't screw up as badly as those above him in the chain of command.

In the end, when he was hired he was someone who had been bounced from running a part of an organization that shows horses, and he did not grow into the job.

Suit over Massachusetts National Guard reimbursements continues

2006-03-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

Back in January I noted a lawsuit was filed concerning the denial of per-diem payments to members of the Massachusetts National Guard for duties performed in relation to maintaining infrastructure security in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (See “Massachusetts Guardsmen seek pay for post-9/11 duty”)

An amended suit has been filed in U.S. District Court that states that Massachusetts Guard officers deliberately refused to pay the travel-related expense (food, mileage and lodging) as a way to cut costs.

The amendment to the suit relies on testimony from a source, presumably within the Massachusetts National Guard itself that the decision was deliberately made to tell soldiers that they could not request reimbursement; because there was insufficient funding budgeted to the efforts, and not an oversight or (apparent) directive from the Pentagon. However, because the National Guard units of the states are part of the U.S. Armed forces, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldt is also named as a defendant in the suit.

From an AP article:

A confidential informant alleges in legal papers being filed in court today that the man who now leads the Massachusetts National Guard chose not to pay basic expenses for soldiers called to duty after the Sept. 11 attacks because of budget constraints.

The allegation against Brig. Gen. Oliver Mason is part of an amended complaint to be filed today in U.S. District Court in Boston. Attorney John Shek [representing the Guardsmen who initially filed suit] said it was made by someone who came forward after Shek filed a class action suit in January against the state and federal governments.
//snip//

The amended complaint does not name the informant. Shek described him yesterday as a person with knowledge of the "inner workings of the accounting offices of the Massachusetts National Guard."

Shek said the informant requested anonymity because of fears about a loss of employment, and that he would seek to keep the informant’s name from the court record.

According to a statement by the informant, the decision not to pay the "was not an accident or a mistake."

"It was a conscious decision on the part of Col. Oliver Mason with the assistance of his NCO, Sgt. Major Stroscio," the statement reads. "In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, Mason knew he had more security taskings than he had money to support them."

The amendments to the suit also seek to increase the number of Guardsmen estimated to be affected, and to increase the expected shortfall to soldiers from $73 million to an estimated $100 million. A more troubling amendment to the lawsuit is that some members of the Guard were told that the reimbursements had been discontinued (which is not true) and that if they continued to complain they would be discharged from the Guard. Some of those members were also told that they signed a document saying that they waived the reimbursement payments they would be able to remain in the Guard. Some signed, but never received copies of the signed form, and are still being denied reimbursement.

Also from the AP article:

A National Guard spokesman, Major Winfield Danielson, said because of the ongoing legal case he could not directly respond to the allegation about Mason, who became head of the Massachusetts National Guard last April. But Danielson said the Guard’s funding decisions are based on the needs of the mission, not saving money.

Danielson said it’s a priority for the Guard to make sure its members are fairly compensated. "If we don’t, they’re not going to stay”, he said.

Danielson said the Guard began an internal audit last May after receiving complaints about reimbursements from soldiers. The reimbursements vary depending on the security mission. Danielson declined to comment on the audit because it’s not complete.

Under federal law, military personnel are entitled to meals and travel allowance while away from home on active duty. But according to the lawsuit, Massachusetts guardsmen received orders that read: "Government quarters not available; ... government meals are not available; ... per diem: not authorized."

In the field, some of the Guardsmen were working alongside other members of the Guard whose units had been federalized, and who had been getting paid.

As a side note, this issue could be a sharp thorn for first-term Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who is expected to see the GOP nomination for U.S. President in the 2008 election cycle, and has already declared that he will not seek reelection as Governor. As Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Romney is the Commander of the Massachusetts National Guard. It is certain that this will be used, by both Democrats opposing Romney and those within the GOP who wish to promote their own candidates for the Presidential nomination.

I'm gratified to see that there was an audit begun in May of 2005 over the complaints of
denied reimbursements. Of course, the questions now are(and I *always* have questions):
-- why, after 9 months the audit is still not complete,
-- did the Guard notify any of the soldiers being denied reimbursement that an audit was happening
-- Why didn't the Guard inform all involved, when the lawsuit was filed in January, that the audit
was happening?

----------------------------------------------------
Links –

Reuters – “Legal fight over National Guard pay intensifies”

Boston Herald – “Guard brass accused of stiffing soldiers”

Boston Globe – “Guard refused to fund soldiers' travel, suit says”

MetroWest Daily News – “State guardsman alleges decision to withhold expenses deliberate”

Bush Bites Beleaguered Butt

2006-02-25T11:03:00.000-05:00

... His own.

One of the more irreverent web columns that I know of is Bryan Lambert's "You Are Dumb", which skewers 'most everybody, but really enjoys poking holes into the right wing, and the right-wing-wannabees* (probably because there are so many more than the lefties, and they are just so good at being .... strange ... and attracting press coverage).

Lambert's recent column on the proposed sale of the British firm that currently operates port facilities for 6, count 'em, six, uhh, 21, count 'em, 21! U.S. cities to a state-owned company in the UAE reflects both on the "dumbness" that many in the current administration seem to want to foster and the supreme irony that such conditioning to a simple, un-nuanced appreciation of issues may be to have the public react to the White House over this deal as the Congress and the GOP reacted to the Harriet Miers nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

From "You Buy Dubai Do:"

Memo to George W. Bush: PEOPLE ARE DUMB.

And for five years, this has worked to your advantage, dumbass. You've thrown around absolutes and generalities like they were nickels at a whorehouse. You've appealed to the basest, most xenophobic, least rational parts of the American mob mentality as you clawed your way to more and more power.

So pardon me while I revel in it finally biting you on the ass.

This is, of course, about the Great Port Controversy. This is also, of course, an entire column written almost entirely to justify the title, but that's not important right now. What's important is that right now, George W. Bush desperately needs the American public to calm down, think things through, and understand the nuances of a complicated situation involving national security and brown people.

//snip//

But people don't think about it. So there's no point in making them try in the Dubai Ports case. Just let them get worked up into a racist lather, and see if they actually listen now when another story comes out about a big business with a friend in the Administration (Treasury Secretary John Snow, in this case), bypassing the various regulatory steps and oversight in a sweetheart deal that nets them a big wad of cash.

They've never listened before, but if they're mad enough at the thought of "ay-rabs" controlling our borders, maybe some shit will stick. Dubya spent five years creating the precise brand of mob mentality that's turning on him now, and the proper political strategy is to sit back and make sure there are ample supplies of pitchforks and torches handy.

It takes a village, after all.

Lambert is right on the money here.

For years the GOP spinmeisters have been conditioning the public to not really think things through, so it makes perfect sense for the GOP to get away with calling members of Congress who don't kowtow to the Accepted Gospel As Revealed by /K/a/r/l/ R/o/v/e/ George Bush "unpatriotic." Including ones who lost limbs in the service of our country.

And it makes perfect sense for the GOP to imply that, if you have doubts about what the Prez is doing, to keep them to yourself, because you "better watch what you say," with the implied threat of "we know where you live."

And it makes perfect sense for the administration to have its head lawyer, the Attorney General of the United States, actually try to claim that, if the media doesn't remind them, the various terrorists organizations throughout the world will "forget" that the U.S. intelligence agencies will be trying to intercept their communications.

The kind of hand-waving that says "don't just ignore the man behind the curtain, ignore that the man behind the curtain, the curtain, and the machinery being operated, exists at all."

This is the kind of single-level analysis that the GOP has been fostering.

And now it has, as Lambert noted, come back to bite 'em. In the ass.

Because the administration has been fostering the "ohh, we're under constant attack by the evil terrorists in the middle-east, and since the terrorists are there in all the nations in the middle-east (except Israel, of course [and maybe Our Friends The Saudis]) anybody who comes from there must be Working With The Terrorists" paradigm, now that Dubai Ports World is in the picture, the collective White House rear ends are sitting right next to the mastiff's teeth. And it smells like lunch.

As I said in an earlier article, the paramount objection I have is that *any* non-US company is operating the ports, and that includes those companies owned by the Brits and the Chinese. Yes, the company owners will not be responsible for security by themselves, that has been, and will be, the ultimate responsibility of U.S. government agencies. But to admit that means that you have to admit that you have to look at more than the surface, and we can't have that, can we?

And it is certainly *not* helping that the feeding frenzy (to mix a few more metaphors) is being heightened by revelations that not only has GW claimed that *he* had no idea about the deal (but, even though he didn't know about it, he was in support of it all the time), neither did the Cabinet heads of Treasury, DOD nor Homeland Security, none of who will admit that they were aware of the parties involved in the sale. (Just who *is* minding the store over there?)

If a novelist attempted to use these scenarios the manuscript would be thrown back over the transom of any publishing house it was submitted to.

For a look at someone who really *has* been looking further than the skin of the onion, read "Ports Redux" from the Boorman TRibune.

I wonder if I can get part of the torch & pitchfork franchise?

-------------------
* A column of his that was an absolute scream was about somebody who, because Ben Cohen, one of the founders of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, was on a tour promoting a "President Bush has been lying out his ass" display (with the "PantsOnFire-Mobile"** ), that this somebody, who owned a store that *sold* the B&J brand, Would Show Them.

Ignoring the fact that the founder in question no longer owned nor ran the brand, He Would Show Them.

By *burning* his stock of B&J ice cream.

Remember, this store owner had already paid for the stock.

He already had it in his store, waiting to be sold to customers, presumably at a profit.

And he was Going To Show Them by *burning* ice cream.

Burning *ice cream.* Read "Custard's Last Stand" to see the heights of rapture that Lambert can achieve.

-----------------------------
** In a "Do you think anyone will notice?" moment, Talon News (the erstwhile agency that "employed" Crack Journalist Jeff Gannon), took the text of the AP story referenced above, and put it out, pretty much verbatim, under their own byline -- see "Ice Cream Co-Founder Travels Country With Image of Bush With Pants on Fire", where their "reporter" finally, in the penultimate paragraph, gives a nod to the actual source by saying "Cohen said to the AP."

Looks certain that Gannon wasn't the only wanker at Talon.

I don't care that it's the UAE...

2006-02-23T19:10:00.000-05:00

... That bought the U.K. company that bought the United States company that swallowed the fly.

What *I* care about is that *any* non-U.S. company is/was in charge of the operations at these U.S. ports.

One of the issues that has been raised again and again, and consistently disregarded by this administration, is import security at the nation's shipping facilities, especially the facilities handing ocean-borne cargo.

There has apparently been no attempt to do any systematic analysis of the port facilities operations, strengths and vunerabilities, or else the fact that a UK company was running the bulk of operations at 6 ports of entry would not have been such a surprise to so many in the Congress or the Executive branch. It doesn't matter that Great Britain is currently a "friend and ally," a non-US company should not be in charge of those operations.

It also raises more questions of the competency and due diligence that this administration seems to lack, in that the U.S. Congress found out about the sale of the company from media reports, instead of from the cabinet departments involved.

Indeed, both the veracity and the competence of the White House is called into question, where the President is now claiming that he had no idea of the resulting ownership until after it was announced -- competency because it's *his* cabinet appointees who should have told the President and passed the knowledge of what was sure to be a hot potato (especially given the hysteria that this administration has been fostering in regards to *anything* to do with the Middle East vis-a-vis "national security," and veracity because it strikes many as absurd and extremely unlikely that those same cabinet appointees did *not* inform their boss about what was about to happen.

Stupid or lying. Take your pick.

Can I Save This Wall ...

2006-02-23T10:05:00.000-05:00

...From having a hole put through it in frustration?

In an online forum I sometimes peruse someone who characterized themselves as a “moderate Republican” asked some other members of the forum why, when asked to “debate” issues ranging from the instability in Iraq to the delay before Cheney himself talked to police about the hunting accident when he shot a fellow hunter, the replies from those further to the orthodox Right range from “Clinton did it first!” and “Ted Kennedy did it first!”

My personal supposition is that those Orthodox Right True Believers are "doing it" because to actually face what is going on would be to have to admit that their defend-to-the-death pseudo-conservatives are being shown, day by day to be:
- misusing the public trust on a scale not seen since Teapot Dome,
- prosecuting a "war on terror" that seems to have the same legitimacy as the War With Oceania,
- prosecuting another war that is being mismanaged as badly as the Viet Nam war was, and is having a worse effect on the nation’s perception of our officer corps and the world’s perception of the nation as a whole
- scheming to put bills through the U.S. Congress to hide and nullify what looks like enormous fraud and outright theft from the Indian Lands Trust Funds
- channeling billions of dollars being to the "Department of Defense" while essential services to the nation’s poor and needy are being savagely cut,
- defending tax cuts to the nation’s wealthiest citizens and corporations while inflation has forced more and more of the middle-class into being hit with the AMT
- forcing citizens who profess one faith to *directly* support, with their tax dollars, another faith's efforts as those dollars are being channeled directly to “faith-based initiatives” to perform activities that, when they are performed in the publicly-funded arena, should be performed without sectarian bias or trappings, activities ranging from drug rehab to running prisons,
- An executive branch that has *publicly* admitted and endorsed the use of torture as “needed.”
- An executive branch that has *publicly* admitted that they are breaking the law of the nation because they find it inconvenient to bother to abide by the law and even seek a retroactive court order from a court that has been shown to be extraordinarily compliant with the requests of both GOP and Democrat administrations for decades
- a member of the executive branch that feels himself so above the rule of law that he used an instrumentality of the United Stated government, the Secret Service, to block access to the scene of a potential crime involving a shooting,
- a leader of the GOP in the Senate has been shown to lie to the public about his access to, and control over, “investments” that are directly affected by legislation he has voted on, and is under investigation by the SEC,
- a leader of the GOP in the House of Representatives has been shown to have improperly used an instrumentality of the U.S. federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, to prosecute political ambitions in the state of Texas and is also under indictment for what is, in essence, money laundering
- a President who, when faced with the responsibility of appointing individuals to posts of responsibility over the public welfare, seemingly forgoes questions of ability and competence and instead makes loyalty to party and to his person the paramount concerns
- an administration that condones, and rewards, the direct destruction of the domestic economies by moving jobs overseas, and leaving enormous numbers of U.S. citizens unemployed
- an administration that condones, and rewards, the indirect destruction of domestic workforces by allowing for the importation of foreign workers that, supposedly, are to supplement the domestic workforce, and turn a blind eye when the visa workers are used, instead, to displace domestic workers.

Amazing as it is, the list above is not at all exhaustive, even if the implications of what is going on is exausting to contemplate.

Yes, some of the same abuses occurred during Democratic administrations, but at least the “lefties” were willing to admit that such things were happening and try to work towards changing the conditions, and not to be so fearful that the leaders of the philosophy they follow may have feet of clay.

But by heaven, if I hear “Clinton did it!” one more time I swear I’ll put my forehead through this wall.

Carnival of the Liberals # 6 is up

2006-02-20T20:17:00.000-05:00

The 6th edition of "Carnival of The Liberals" is up at Slant Truth

The 7th edition will be hosted at Throw Away Your TV. Submission deadline is 2/27/06, with a publication date of 03/01/06. Links to the submission form (sounds kinky) and guidelines are at Tay.TV

Was He Snark Hunting?

2006-02-13T00:39:00.000-05:00

Of late I've been trying to put appropriate images with some of my articles here in The Boston Progressive, if I can.

The weekend news brought us reports of Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a companion while quail hunting.

The only visual I could think of that would do justice would be from Mel Brook's "History of The World - Part I." The scene where the French monarch is declaring "I *love* the people!" while p/e/a/s/a/n/t/ skeet-shooting. However, since I don't have that clip (and couldn't pay the licensing fee anyway) you will have to be satisfied by knowing what scene I mean.

Luck was with all involved, as the "victim" was reported to be doing fine after being "peppered" with the shot pellets.

Some bloggers and other commentators are saying this will have bad repercussions on Cheney's influence inside the beltway. I really don't see it -- after a bit the jokes will die down and the silly season will go away. But you have to admit that the opportunities for snarkiness are sooooo ripe.

It's not like he makes it a habit, as a certain other VP did when beaning people on the links while golfing.

While we are on the subject of former Vice Presidents, though, I didn't even know that Dan was in season.

Did I Fall Down The Rabbit Hole or Walk Through The Mirror?

2006-02-12T23:13:00.000-05:00

I think I’ve gotten some bad mushrooms or an out-of-sorts pill from the Airplane pharmacy. How else to explain these items?

_______________________________
The unemployment statistics are looking rosier than before, because people who have given up on job searches, or whose unemployment benefits have been exhausted, are no longer counted among the unemployed. The unemployment rate is calculated based on active unemployment claims, not a census of the population actually out of work.

_______________________________

In Gitmo, the Department of Defense is saying that the number of prisoners who are refusing food has dropped from a high of 84 in December of 2005 to a low of 4 as of February 9, 2006. However, according to a New York Times story, (“Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba”) the reason the count has dropped is because the prisoners on the hunger strike have been subjected to measures such as strapped into “restraint chairs” and being force-fed, or
“other measures used to dissuade the hunger strikers included placing them in uncomfortably cold air-conditioned isolation cells, depriving them of "comfort items" like blankets and books and sometimes using riot-control soldiers to compel the prisoners to sit still while long plastic tubes were threaded down their nasal passages and into their stomachs.”
___________________________________
On a blog related note, during a press event about the NSA wiretapping controversy Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill) took a question from blogger Paul Mirengoff of Powerline. Durbin listened to the “ehh, Ummms, wells” from Mirengoff (you know, all those habits that the discourse and public speaking instructors try to drill out of would-be speakers and reporters), recognized a GOP talking point and called it exactly like it was, and was as responsive as deserved to a Paul Gannon-wannabe. (You can see the actual video snippet at Crooks and Liars).

To me it looked like Sen. Durbin had told Mirengoff to, effectively, go home and study up on how the big boys play. Yet Instapundit seems to think that Mirengoff was effective and cogent, because they were “you know, questions,” and that repeating talking points was apparently to be considered “very challenging questions.” Of course, PowerLine seems to think that Mirengoff is the second coming of journalism in the “New Media.” (See “Durbin Encounters the New Media” and “When Bologna met Grinder”)

____________________________
Thanks to Suburban Guerrilla for the pointer to the unemployment notice from Marketwatch and to Body & Soul for the pointer to the NYT story about Gitmo’s new buffet dining plan.

I Wish This Was A Hoax

2006-02-11T14:07:00.000-05:00

According to published reports ( VA Nurse Investigated for "Sedition" For Criticizing Bush; N.M. Sen. Wants Probe into VA 'Sedition' Investigation of Nurse; ACLU Wants Apology to VA Employee Investigated on 'Sedition'; Big Brother Is Watching ) a clinical nurse specialist employed for 15 years by the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico has been accused by her superiors, in writing, of suspicion of "sedition."

Because she wrote a letter to a small "alternative press" weekly paper, the Albuquerque Weekly Alibi, saying that, in light of the federal response to the disasters following the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush was doing a terrible job and he should be thrown out of office. You can see the full text of her letter below.

It was published in the Sept 15, 2005 edition of the Alibi. From the Alibi's story:

Although Berg has chosen not to comment at this time, Bach and Kronen say that a few days after the letter was published, VA Information Security employees seized Berg's computer at the local VA hospital where she works. At the time, she was told this action occurred because of suspicions that she'd composed the letter to the Alibi on government time, on government premises, using government equipment.

According to [George] Bach and [Larry] Kronen [representing Berg on behalf of the N.M. ACLU], on Sept. 19, 2005, Berg's American Federation of Government Employees Union representative, Thomas Driber, informed Berg that her letter to the Alibi had been sent through "VA channels" to the FBI in Washington, D.C.

The attorneys say this information was confirmed by one of the union's Washington lawyers during a conference call between Driber, Berg and the union lawyer. (Multiple phone messages left at Driber's office by the Alibi were not answered.)

As if that weren't creepy enough, the attorneys say Berg made further inquiries and eventually received a response from the VA's Chief of Human Resources, Mel R. Hooker, who, in a memorandum dated Nov. 9, 2005, allegedly admitted that the VA had no evidence the letter was written on Berg's office computer. Despite this, Hooker claimed the investigation was justified because the "Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition."

Sedition, according to the Concise Law Dictionary, is "the federal crime of advocacy of insurrection against the government or support for an enemy of the nation during time of war, by speeches, publications and organization. Sedition usually involves actually conspiring to disrupt the legal operation of the government and is beyond expression of an opinion or protesting government policy.” From the text of the Berg's letter, it would certainly not appear to meet either the requirements of advocating insurrection or "supporting an enemy" during a time of war -- unless I've missed something, rhetoric about "the war on terror" on the government’s part doesn't meet the requirements of a formal declaration of war by the U.S. Congress.

Notice that it took 2 months for the VA administration to acknowledge that they had no evidence that Berg had used her VA office computer to compose or send the letter, even though her computer was returned the very next day. When you review the letter it is transparent that she neither claims nor implies, that, in writing the letter, she is either speaking on behalf of or acting as an agent of the VA in this matter, but is writing as a private citizen. Her mentioning her position as a VA nurse is simply to lend weight to her contention that PTSD will be a factor in recovery of the survivors in years to come.

Hooker has since denied that the FBI was initially contacted by anyone at the VA and now apparently has no idea how the FBI were contacted. When the staff at the Alibi attempted to contact Hooker for clarification they were referred to the VA’s Public Affairs office, where Sonja Brown replied, via e-mail:

"While VA does not prohibit employees from exercising their freedom of speech, we do ask that such activity occurs outside government premises and not during their official tour of duty. When we have reason to believe that this policy is not being adhered to, we have the obligation to review an individual's computer activity."

When the Alibi tried to get Brown to clarify either why there was reason to believe that Berg had used VA time or equipment to compose and send the letter, or why it would be seen as “sedition” she was unresponsive to their requests.

The ACLU is asking that the VA apologize, at least, for the accusations and treatment, and is also seeking copies of all materials that the VA has pertaining to this matter.

On February 7, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) Veterans Affairs Secretary James Nicholson for a thorough inquiry of his agency's investigation into whether or not Laura Berg had committed “sedition,” saying he was concerned about the agency’s decision to open the investigation at all.

Sen. Bingaman was quoted in an AP story run in the Albuquerque Journal:

Merely opposing government policies and expressing a desire to change course "does not provide reason to believe that a person is involved in illegal subversive activity,'' he said.

Bingaman said such investigations raise "a very real possibility of chilling legitimate political speech.''

"In a democracy, expressing disagreement with the government's actions does not amount to sedition or insurrection,'' he wrote. "It is, and must remain, protected speech. Although it may be permissible to implement restrictions regarding a government employee's political activities during work hours or on government premises, such employees do not surrender their right to freedom of speech when they enlist in government service.''

Bingaman said he wants the matter investigated so VA officials will have guidance about handling similar situations in the future.

To the VA’s credit, Berg has not lost her job. But you can be sure that the memorandum about the suspicion of “sedition” will stay in her permanent record at the VA, and that allegation will be seen, and considered whenever she gets a new boss at the VA or if she were to apply for any other job in the federal government.

Nobody would question the VA’s concern about if the letter were written on her employer’s time or equipment, that is a concern that is, if not commonplace, at least well-known in today’s workplace. The imperative questions now, however, are why the “investigation” took such a draconian turn at the start and why did this implication of “sedition” occur?

Recently we have seen allegations of someone getting into trouble with the federal government because of requesting a copy of Mao's "little red book," which has proven to be a hoax, and accusations that the U.S. armed forces are covering up conditions that are endangering our women soldiers, which may be suspect because of an "agenda" on he part of the officer reporting it, but no so for Laura Berg's woes. I'd really like to classify this one as one of the hoaxes but I don't think I can. Pity, that.

Thanks to Night Bird’s Fountain where I first saw this story.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Text of Laura Berg's letter:
Wake Up, Get Real

Dear Alibi,

I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government. The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes! Bush and his team partied and delayed while millions of people were displaced, hundreds of thousands were abandoned to a living hell. Thousands more died of drowning, dehydration, hunger and exposure; most bodies remain unburied and rotting in attics and floodwater. Is this America the beautiful?

The risk of hurricane disaster was clearly predicted, yet funds for repair work for the Gulf States barrier islands and levee system were unconscionably diverted to the Iraq War. Money and manpower and ethics have been diverted to fight a war based on absolute lies! As a VA nurse working with returning OIF vets, I know the public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder; now we will have hundreds of thousands of our civilian citizens with PTSD as well as far too many young soldiers, maimed physically or psychologically—or both—spreading their pain, anger and isolation through family and communities for generations. And most of this natural disaster and war tragedy has been preventable ... how very, very sad!

In the meantime, our war-fueled federal deficit mushrooms—and whither this debt now, as we care for the displaced and destroyed?

Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence. This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. Katrina itself was the size of New Mexico. Denials of global warming are ludicrous and patently irrational at this point. We can anticipate more wild, destructive weather to occur as a response stress of the planet. We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit. Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.

Laura Berg
Albuquerque

The Mockingbird Returns

2006-02-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

Last week over on One Good Thing, Flea published an essay that recalls both the fictional Atticus Finch, from the 1960 novel To Kill A Mockingbird, and a real-life "man in grey" with the courage to run a gauntlet of religious and racial bigots to bring his child into an integrated school in New Orleans.

The man in grey was not the father of any black children, but of a white student, and the gauntlet of ignorance reserved special hate and bile for him, as this white man, a Christian minister, was betraying the members of that shameful gauntlet.  They could understand blacks trying to rise above their proper station.  But to have a white man, a minister of their own professed faith, willingly put his own child into that school, with the black child, was a betrayal that could not be allowed to pass unvoiced.

We recently lost a beacon in the area of civil rights, Coretta Scott King, and that, combined with Flea's post, reminded me of the past of my own natal city.  And reminded me as well that discrimination and segregation are still alive and well, but the driving impetus now is economic, rather than ethnic or racial.  Sadly the result is often the same as what was seen 42 years ago.

I'm from Boston, sometimes called the "Athens of the New World" for its diversity and access to institutions of higher learning, and well known as "a city of neighborhoods," where common racial, ethnic, religious, economic and national backgrounds work to sustain that diversity, but also supports a balkanization of those populations and their interests, where different groups tend to their own geography, and little drift between areas, resulting in a geographical stability that bred insularity in one of the cities that was seen externally as one of the most cosmopolitan and "European" in the United States.

During the mid 1970s, when the rest of the country was celebrating events leading up to the nation’s bicentennial, Boston was rocked by massive unrest that forever changed the perception of what kind of a city it was, both to the “outside world” and to its own citizens.

This unrest was caused by a court-ordered scheme to desegregate the city’s public schools.  The effort resulted in violence against targets that would have been unthinkable in the past, and resulted in a final change in the makeup of the city as a whole, and a diminishment, both in perception and in fact, of the city.

Much of the resistance to the forced desegregation plan was just that – it was forced, not of a voluntary choice, and the citizens felt they had no choice.

After the first few years of forced busing, the tensions dropped off, but at the same time the racial makeup of the city as a whole changed, with more white families leaving, and the tax base of the city was further eroded by deterioration of the housing stock, especially in areas with a high percentage of absentee landlords.  When court-ordered busing was first implemented, the city’s public schools reflected an enrollment that was approximately 50% white.  By the late 1990s the percentage of Caucasian students in Boston’s public schools had dropped to less than 10%.

And the quality of public education accessible to the minority students in Boston, the original impetus for the landmark lawsuit that started forced desegregation in the city, has lagged far behind advances made in other cities in the Commonwealth, even in cities that are neither suburban nor affluent.

The change in the school system demographics resulted from "white flight" of relatively more affulent families to the suburbs, increases in the number of small private schools in predominently white areas and increases in enrollments into the neighborhood schools run by religious orders. Some of the flight from the school system was the result of racism, but more was the result of fear.

A fear that was fostered by the media reporting of crime and violence that spent more attention on what happened in the black community of the city than on what happened in the rest of the city. Part of that coverage was dictated by the fact that poverty breeds crime, and those in the black community tended, when they got a "leg up" financially, to themselves move to communities where they could own their own homes for their families to grow in, which meant that one of the moderating factors against crime, opportunity and visibility of success, left with those families. The underlying causes of poverty, and of crime, are complex and don't make ratings -- reports covering robberies and drug deals gone awry do. And that was the reportage that informed those who saw forced busing as a real danger to their children. And busing, 'though slow in coming, was implimented over a short period of time, without allowing those white families to see, and meet, the families on the other side of the city's divide. And no opportunity to see that those "others" had the same hopes, and fears, for their own children.

Would a more gradual approach to desegregation been more appropriate, or would it simply have perpetuated the problems, while substituting a sham of “separate but equal” schools?  We will never know.

What we do know is that voluntary and community-directed efforts at school desegregation have been successful in other cities.  But we still do not know if a city the size of Boston would have been able to overcome the institutional and cultural inertia that caused the misperceptions and hostility in the early years of the effort.

And should we view this grand, and ultimately failed, experiment on a wider scale – will the externally-imposed changes that are being implemented in Afghanistan and Iraq fare any better, over a population that has less in common with those doing the imposition than Boston’s neighborhoods had with the federal judge who imposed his will on the city’s schools?

(For a fuller treatmentof this issue, see the accompanying article Under the Fold)

The Cartoons

2006-02-05T19:12:00.000-05:00

I've been watching the drama, and in some cases, the horror, surrounding the publication of the representations of the Prophet Muhammad.

Originally requested by the newspaper because of a complaint by a children's book author that no illustrator was willing to work other than anonymously to provide art for a book about the Prophet, out of fear of reaction for daring to create a representation of Muhammad.

Some commentators have claimed that the threats against journalists, newspaper editors and bloggers, and the burning of a national embassy, show the true nature of Islam.

What it really shows is that there are people everywhere who will take any excuse to further their own agendas. Some use political philosophy, some religion, and all too often the strategy is violence. Not that that philosophy or religion is violent, but that there are individuals in positions of power who will choose that tactic to further their aims, and will use the philosophy or religion as a cloak.

Is "Zero Tolerence" Going Too Far?

2006-02-03T19:29:00.000-05:00

There have been some widely publicized cases where "threats" against President G.W. Bush have investigated by the Secret Service and been found wanting of any actual credible intent or ability to harm.We now have another (see Threats by a boy, 13, start a probe), where a Rhode Island seventh-grade, middle-school student, assigned to write an essay describing a "perfect day," turned in one where he described that he wanted to hurt President Bush and kill celebrity Oprah Winfrey.

"The boy, school officials said, had written an assigned class essay saying that his idea of a perfect day was to hurt President Bush, kill the popular talk show host, and harm executives of Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart. He did not threaten teachers or students"

- After turning in the essay, his teacher alerted school administrators,

- School administrators alerted local police

- Local police alerted the Secret Service

- The Secret Service sent two agents to question the boy and school personnel

It doesn’t appear that the Secret Service will treat it as a credible threat.

The local police think it was a stupid essay, but apparently not a credible threat.

It looks like the school administrators have been caught in the trap of the “zero tolerance” panic.

Zero tolerance for weapons or drugs means a 3rd-grader making a “gun” out of two sticks makes headlines and if a mother sends her child to school with an OTC cold remedy she’s in trouble with the school board.  Zero tolerance for “insecure items” and weapons on aircraft resulted in confiscation of nail clippers and expressed breast milk to be treated as a potential poison.

In this case, it’s zero tolerance for “threats.”  In the post-Columbine era, any kind of “threatening speech,” itself very broadly defined, is treated as if the student had just walked into the school gym with an Uzi and a hand grenade.

Yes, events such as what has happened at Columbine High School, and other venues across the country, has shown that the programs in place to warn of immediate violence and prevent the intense bullying and purposeful degradation by students against other students that may predispose  into that violence were inadequate, or just outright absent, or the degradation was ignored as “kid stuff” and allowed to continue.

But the resulting atmosphere was one where anything that didn’t fit the “normal” profile had to be treated as an immediate and credible “threat” against life and property,. no matter how incredible the scenario really would be.

On a wider perspectiver, the treating of a speculative essay as a manifesto brings to the fore very real questions about what is, and is not, protected speech.  Is anytime that someone writes that the President should be taken out behind the woodshed and “given a hiding” going to be subject to scrutiny by the federal government?  How far do we lower the bar?  How about if someone writes that G.W. Bush should be tried for war crimes?  Or that a sitting Supreme Court Justice should either die outright or be poisoned?

We have already seen that a political cartoonist can be investigated if they draw a cartoon that reprises the RVN intelligence officer execution of a VC suspect, but with the president in one of the roles, and an art exhibit where a faux postage stamp with G.W.’s visage being threatened were both investigated as “possible threats,” when they were actually political speech, and from both ends of the political spectrum.

Whatever happened to individual analysis and the flexibility, and common sense in reaction?
In the case of the 13-year old, wouldn’t the more sensible path be that the essay should have been discussed with the student first, to help the student clarify for himself if the scenario was really what would make a “perfect day,” or if there would be anything that the student might actually *do* to effect the described situation, or if it was purely wishful thinking?

Instead, what could have been an avenue for discussion and self-discovery turned into interviews with the police and Secret Service, and a potential further chilling of the right of free speech.

I understand with my whole heart that school boards and parents do not wish any repeats of the violence that has happened at some of our schools, but policies that allow for no flexibility or rational choices don’t seem to be what is called for.

Cindy Sheehan Wasn't The Only One "Asked To Leave" at the SOTUA-- Updated

2006-02-01T17:07:00.000-05:00

(scroll to bottom for update)

By now everybody should have heard about Cindy Sheehan being forcibly removed from the visitor's gallery before the State Of The Union Address, for an alleged "demonstration." (she was wearing a t-shirt with the message "2,245 Dead. How Many More?")

What hasn't gotten *quite* as much press (but it's growing) is the fact that the wife of a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives was also ejected (or "left voluntarily" according to Capitol Hill Police) for ""protesting." Also because she was wearing a t-shirt. What did *her* shirt say? "Support the Troops Defending Our Freedom."

Beverly Young, wife of Rep. Charles W. Young (R - Fl) was also "asked to leave" the gallery by Capitol Hill Police Tuesday night.

According to published reports, Young, who was seated in the front row of the gallery, and about 6 seats away from First Lady Laura Bush,

“… was approached by someone who told her she needed to leave, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

After reluctantly agreeing, she said, she argued with several officers in an outside hallway."They said I was protesting," she said in a telephone interview with the newspaper Tuesday.

"I said, 'Read my shirt, it is not a protest.' They said, 'We consider that a protest.' I said, 'Then you are an idiot.'"

A spokeswoman for the Capital Police claim that Mrs. Young was not “ejected,” but that she “did leave on her own.”

Rep. Young, who is elected from Florida’s 10th Congressional District, did not hear about the ejection until after President Bush’s speech. and he was not happy.

"I just called for the chief of police and asked him to get his little tail over here," Young said. "This is not acceptable."

According to other published reports,

“ on Wednesday, he [Rep. Young] held up his wife's shirt on the House floor and denounced her treatment.

"She has a real passion for our troops, and she shows it in many, many ways," Young said.

"And most members in this House know that. But because she had on a shirt that someone didn't like, that said 'Support Our Troops,' she was kicked out of this gallery while the president was speaking and encouraging Americans to support our troops. Shame. Shame."

Young and his wife are known as passionate supporters of U.S. service members. He has spoken in the past about their many visits to military hospitals during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and their efforts to ensure the needs of the wounded and their families are met.

When I first heard about Sheehan’s arrest, I was expecting to hear that she had unfurled a banner or some such, not that she was just sitting and being quiet.

Then when I read about the Congressman’s wife’s “incident” with Capital police, I was awestruck.

The President of the United States, the Commander In Chief of the sole remaining “superpower” on the planet, is so insecure about what people may see in juxtaposition with his image, or is so fearful of what he may see himself, that he needs to turn every space where he is into areas where no contrary view may be expressed.

As Congressman Young said in the well of the House floor, “Shame, Shame.”
------------------
UPDATE: on Wednesday, the AP is reporting that Capital police have admitted that the ejection of both women, and the arrest of Cindy Sheehan was improper.

“The officers made a good faith, but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol,” Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement late Wednesday.

//snip//

For his part, Bill Young said he was not necessarily satisfied.

“My wife was humiliated,” he told reporters. He suggested that “sensitivity training” may be in order for Capitol Police.

Karpinski Reports Command Structure Covering Up Causes Of Female Soldier's Deaths

2006-01-31T16:47:00.000-05:00

After reports that U.S. forces have been kidnapping the wives of suspected insurgents to use as "levers,"("U.S. Army detained suspects' daughters, wives as leverage"), and prior reports of rapes in the U.S.-run "detention facilities" (what the real world calls "prisons"), the former head of the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison has spoken of conditions in the field in Iraq where women in the U.S. armed forces are being subjected to conditions and attitudes that promote rape, sexual assault and harassment by male soldiers in the U.S. forces.

She made these statements to a panel comprised of a group of American lawyers, academics, writers and human rights activists, as well as a number of people from other countries, that have established what it calls "The 2005 International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration of the United States."

Although this "commission" has no legal powers, it can help publicize reviews and allegations of abuses either sponsored by, or directly committed by, members of the U.S. armed forces or intelligence communities.

In the case at hand, Col. Janis Karpinski (formerly a brigadier general) has stated that, on at least one U.S. base in Iraq (Camp Victory, about 5 KM from the Baghdad International Airport) women soldiers are being subjected to conditions that are conductive to their being raped by their own fellow soldiers. She further contends that these conditions have been in place for several years and that the command structure, as far up as Rumsfeld, has ordered that the facts be covered up, rather than be addressed openly.

According to Karpinski's statement before the panel, and in a 2004 interview she gave to US Army Col.(ret) David Hackworth,

The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," ....
It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.

Accordingng to Karpinski's statement,

a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep."

"And rather than make everybody aware of that -- because that's shocking, and as a leader if that's not shocking to you then you're not much of a leader -- what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those details anymore" ...

For example, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez's top deputy in Iraq, saw "dehydration" listed as the cause of death on the death certificate of a female master sergeant in September 2003. Under orders from Sanchez, he directed that the cause of death no longer be listed, Karpinski stated. The official explanation for this was to protect the women's privacy rights.

Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying. Karpinski told me [Marjorie Cohn of TruthOut.org] that Sanchez, who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political ramifications of everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the information about the cause of these women's deaths was passed to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released. "That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.

To illustrate how lightly she felt the DoD treated the very real problem of sexual assault against women soldiers, Karpinski noted during an interview in October of 2004 that the military established a stateside 1-800 (toll-free) telephone number that could be used to report a sexual assault.

Unfortunately, many women in the field or at forward bases do not have access to telephones. There was also great difficulty in connecting through to the 1-800 number, and even when connected, the reporting soldier would hear a recording and be told to leave a message. Karpinski said that even after more than 83 assaults against U.S. soldiers were reported during just a 6-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the dedicated number was still being answered with a recording telling the soldier to leave a message.

Some people will claim, like Karpinski asserts Sanchez's attitude shows, that women should be in neither combat nor combat bases, or they should "tough it out." Rather, what we, as a society, should be saying is that this treatment, especially of our own soldiers, should not be tolerated as all. If the perpetrators of these assaults cannot be rooted out, what does that say about our ability to field forces that can be relied upon not to commit like assaults, or other atrocities, against the people in the countries they are being fielded in.

Cyberpunk is a Literary Light?

2006-01-31T10:15:00.000-05:00

zuzu has a new article over at Feministe that links to a list from LitLine of the "100 best first lines from novels"

I don't know the parameters used by LitLIne to select the novels to include (Novels with great first lines? First lines from great novels? Great Novels with great first lines?).

One of the listed entries is the opening line from Bill Gibson's novel Neuromancer, which has sometimes been described at the first in the "cyberpunk" genre (even though Bruce Bethke coined the term earlier in 1980). Someone in the comments section over at Feministe seemed surprised that something that was modern Science Fiction was included in a "literature" list.

There are a slew of "academics" who don't regard Gibson's Sprawl cycle as "Science Fiction." They can point to the fact that he didn't own a computer until after Neuromancer was successful and that he had typed the manuscript using manual typewriter.

Maybe they consider those works as "futurist magical realism," I suppose.

When I asked him about it during a convention he thought that those who claimed *he* didn't think of it as SF were full of themselves.

The interview/Q&A session was actually somewhat surreal.

Gibson had been slated to be the Writer Guest of Honor (GOH) at the con, but bailed at the last minute because his father-in-law suddenly passed on, so instead of being in a hotel in suburban Boston, he was in Texas. (Readercon 8, 1996)

The GOH interview was conducted in the ballroom, and the GOH's virtual presence was accommodated by the consensual reality via a fax machine, whereby the questions and answers were communicated from the assembled multitude.

Bear in mind that was much before the advent of personal, casual access to anything like high-speed access, so this was a "cutting edge" endeavor.

This same stratagem was used during a panel discussion, where someone was delegated to fax the panel discussion to Texas, and then read the resulting comments aloud. This resulted in some significant propagation delay, comparable to, say, Pluto (as characterized by one audience member)

Tangential Note From the Alito "Debate"

2006-01-31T01:43:00.000-05:00

While listening to the "debate" (what has now been revealed to be pro forma speechifying, thanks to the Democratic senators who voted to allow cloture), one of the GOP members was going on (and on and on) about how Great GW Has Been and how Terrible The Left Has Been, and was pontificating about how terrible it is that the Left is using onerous environmental regulation to keep us from achieving "energy independence."

One example was that there were natural gas reserves that would supply our needs for the next 37 years. *My* not-so-hypothetical question is, what do we do in 2043?

Another thought that crossed my mind was - "How much of that oil and gas the Democrats are 'withholding' are under the ground in the National Parks system and in Indian lands?"

Cloture Vote Update

2006-01-30T22:29:00.000-05:00

Here is the roll call vote, as recorded by the Senate Bill Clerk.

(Question: On the Cloture Motion (Motion to Invoke Cloture On The Nomination of Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of New Jersey, To Be An Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court)

Being from Massachusetts I can derive cold comfort that both of my Senators voted against cloture, but others are not so lucky.

Alito Cloture vote

2006-01-30T16:43:00.000-05:00

(I'll try live blogging)

After debate, with the only stirring rhetoric from Ted Kennedy, and a lot of misleading speeches and misdirection from the GOP senators, the vote for Cloture to cut off debate is proceeding at 4:30 PM, East-Coast time. The vote requires 60 votes to pass.

If the cloture vote passes, the final vote for Alito's confirmation to the United States Supreme Court will occur on Tuesday, at 11:00 AM ET, requiring a simple majority vote.
-------------------------
at 4:49 PM the clerk is reading back the votes received, and soliciting votes from those senators who were not at their desks.
--------------------------
At 4:57 the polling is still taking place.

I'm not able to take the running tally, so I'll have to wait on the clerk (or C-SPAN) to get the tally and names.

The video shows most of the Senate standing in the well of the Senate floor, presumably making sure of votes, or arm-twisting to change votes.

If this nomination passes through, I really think this will be a black day for our country.

Unlike what Hatch claimed during his speech, this is *not* just about Roe v Wade.

It's about undue deference to government instrumentality.

It's about undue deference to monied business interests.

It's also about whether or not the GOP ideology will take precedent over the needs of the people of the nation.

at 05:06 PM the clerk is still taking names.

Today Cheney has a day off from the Senate (he doesn't vote on issues like this)
-------------------
At 05:15 still not final tally.

------------------
At 05:27 the final tally is 72 to support cloture and 25 agai9njst.

This will aloow the vote to proceed tomorrow.
----------------------------

The Boston Progressive

Why are the GOP House members so afraid of Elizabeth Warren?

"...On Wisconsin..."

You can't make this stuff up - even if you try (conservatives to edit Bible to remove liberal bias)

Harp Repair - or Adventures in Desperation WoodWorking

Tax Court reverses IRS on Sex reassignment deductability

Confirmation hearings start for Sotomayor

The hatter keeps popping out of the rabbit hole....

"his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American."

Sweet mystery of life...

Lawsuit against IRS in re reassignment surgery moves forward

The model of a truly impartial judge? (updated)

5'11" and 154 lbs is "fat?"

Terrorists attacks are in the news? Lets run sexy ads!

Oh, Lord, Protect Us From.. Cleavage?

Reassignment Surgery Deductability Headed for IRS Tax Court

Hang 'em High

Zuzu nails Kos on the bullseye

You know, this makes as much sense as anything else we hear from inside the Beltway

Solidarity

Student's Free-Speech rights vs Orderly School

Neb. High Court characterizes repeated, persistent bullying as "Stalking"

Ancient Mayan site purified after GW visit

Kroger's and EC in Georgia

Think of it as "evolution in action"

Passport denied because name change not recognized.

Korean Government wants the US to ban a Book used in U.S. middle schools

OK, where have you *been* for the past month?...

State of the Union -- 01/23/07

IRS rules for 2007 limit recognition of some donations

Why are we doing this again?

Run

Somebody's site has been spoofed..

I guess sexist idiocy really *is* worldwide

Oh, Ye Of So Many Faiths

OK, yes, I am Happy...

This really, really, sucks.

9-11-01

Even when there *is* a "Plan B" there isn't

Archbishop of York Starts Peace Vigil

Per-Diem Suit Against Massachusetts National Guard Still Unresolved

U.S. Army Discharges Arabic-Speaking intelligence NCO After Anonymous E-mail about him

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Updates To some Continuing Stories

What Happens When There *Is* No Plan B?

And I Didn't Even Use Duct Tape On Them

Carnival of the Liberals # 13 is Up & Running!

"Murdered while Black" = "Spike the Story?"

Something is wrong

I'm Depressed, Enraged and Frightened.

OK, so ads sometimes objectify men too...

Specter to Call for hearings on Signing Statements

Steps Into The New Imperium

OK, So maybe I'm easily impressed...

The Voice in The Wilderness

It's Super, Double-Secret...

It's All The Fault of Clinton! Uhh Zarqawi!

O brave new world, That has such people in't!

I'd Like to Welcome...

"Get It Out"

OK, So I'm A Geek,...

The Pain and the Glory of Public School

Tri-x and Dektol.

Who Is Paying For Whose Freedom?

Now they want to swiftboat hostages who get released?

What Being A Christian Can Mean

Exodus drops t/r/o/u/, uhh, suit

This is the legal talent that big money can buy.

What am I bid for one slightly used congressman?

On The Road Again....

Look, on the street, it's a parade! No, it's a holiday! No, it's an Ethnic Event!

Carnival of the Liberals # 8 [The Haiku edition] is up

No, you all have not been put on the Do Not Call List

Liberty Counsel and Exodus International may not quite understand copyright law

Has FEMA's Michael Brown been exonerated?

Suit over Massachusetts National Guard reimbursements continues

Bush Bites Beleaguered Butt

I don't care that it's the UAE...

Can I Save This Wall ...

Carnival of the Liberals # 6 is up

OK, where have you been for the past month?...

I guess sexist idiocy really is worldwide

Even when there is a "Plan B" there isn't

What Happens When There Is No Plan B?