Thursday, April 23, 2009

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Shannyn Moore: Palin Saga; Pride & Predjudice Top
While waiting for the re-run of Levi & family to appear on Larry King, I watched the last hour of Pride & Prejudice. I loved the book...and wanted a happy ending. Whatever tawdry stories come out in any interview with the Johnston family, there will be no happy ending. Whatever shots fire back from Team Sarah and their rabid spokesperson, Meg Stapleton, there will be no happy ending. It's tragic. Governor's press releases aren't what you'd want in your baby book. Another example of political ambition before family. I'm a pathetic romantic, and want a happy ending for everyone...including myself. When I got a divorce from my child's father, we committed to co-parent, to speak nothing ill of each other to her, and that she was, indeed, the very best part of both of us. We weren't good married; we are brilliant apart. She's the point of our friendship. I haven't written much of the Levi & Bristol situation. When I was young, every relationship and breakup felt like front page news. Theirs actually has been on every front page in the country. It's crazy to expect the "kids" to grow up and take it all in stride. The Palin Parents should know better. Levi will never be "Mr. Darcy." Bristol is no "Elizabeth Bennet." The public banter coming from Governor Palin is hurting her child, her grandchild, and a young man who, for better or worse, is the father. It isn't lost on me that Jane Austen never married, but she wrote a great happy ending. More on Sarah Palin
 
Spain's Princess Cristina To Move To Washington, Children May Attend Sidwell Friends Top
Spain's Princess Cristina is to move to Washington with her family as her husband has accepted a position in the US capital with Spanish telecoms group Telefonica, the royal palace said Thursday. Cristina, 43, is the youngest daughter and second of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia's three children.
 
Rebecca Bond: Public Is the New Private Top
"Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore!" Oh, how those words gathered meaning as I skipped down the road to apply to Public School in New York City this year. I'm a mother who got the hay kicked out of her this year in the "perfect storm" that is the current Public School application process. Public, private, sibling admission, you name it; it seems nearly impossible to get your kid educated in the city these days. My husband, Jon, and I are the parents of a bright, precocious sponge, and decided that we would not apply to a single private school in New York. Why, you might ask? What, pray tell, would possess you to avoid what is, for many city kids, a rite-of-passage? It turns out, we are fortunate to live on the same block as the second highest ranked school in Manhattan, P.S 41. While a part of me wanted to high-tail it back to a cul-de-sac in Kansas, I was thrilled that my daughter would take part in the ultimate, New York City, public school education. As I dug in with my case for public school -- arguing that public education provides a wonderfully diverse foundation for children in the city and is the reason we pay high taxes -- my decision was being met with a bevy of criticism and warnings, including, "You're ruining your child's life" and "You will set her back and will have to hire tutors to keep up with the private school kids!" I heard it all as I defended the choice to send my child down the public school road. The more backlash I encountered, the more committed I became to an education at P.S. 41, and I felt impervious to the warring voices...until I was faced with a voice of resistance that could not be ignored. Our city is experiencing an urban planning disaster: condominium overdevelopment, public school underdevelopment and a financial meltdown. The Emerald City had lost its glitter. Thousands of children are without schools and waitlists for both public and private schools are approaching triple digits. Let me tell you, parents are panicking. It feels like all of my ideals and dreams have abandoned me. The public school education that promised to be so nourishing, and that should be an inalienable right, is now out of reach. We are now waitlisted for our daughter's neighborhood school, and, having forfeited the opportunity to enlist in a private school, are marooned with few options. While I try to figure out our next step, I am challenged by the nagging feeling that somehow the optimism and conviction that drove me to travel down this road in the first place, now feels like hopeful naivety. Was there some meeting I missed? I never intended to throw my child into such risky territory. I merely followed my heart and trusted in the system that, as tax-playing, U.S. citizens, we are so deeply invested in. I guess I forgot I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
 
Ahmed Rehab: Blank Looks Won't Fix What's Broken Top
On a brisk late morning last week, over 100 loud and colorful protesters organized by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), an organization on whose board I sit, lined up on the corner of Clark and Grand. The protesters, young and old, men and women, white, black, Arab, Latino, and Asian came to register their dismay with Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) over the anti-immigrant remarks he has made recently. This was the site of Chicago's upscale Italian eatery, Maggiano's. The City Club of Chicago was hosting a luncheon at the restaurant and Kirk was the keynote speaker. Protesters carried signs saying "We Are America," "Get Real Mark Kirk," and handed "condoms" to guests as they made their way into the restaurant - more on that later. I stood there for a few minutes enjoying the sights and sounds of democracy at work before I had to get inside. I had received a ticket and would represent ICIRR at the banquet. As I sat at my crowded table, I could see that many of the guests were sifting through the material protesters had handed them outside. The material quoted Kirk on his ant-Latino and anti-Arab remarks and raised awareness on the need for real solutions to the immigration crisis our nation has ignored for far too long. Kirk was introduced and got off to an interesting start. For the first few minutes, he spoke mostly in Spanish though most of the audience was clearly white. He went on about his days in Mexico as a student and how he liked Mexico and loved President Calderon, who is one of his "heroes." It was unclear what the context of that introduction was as it really did not tie in to the rest of his speech. I suppose he had seen the protest outside and this was his beat-around-the-bush way of overcompensating for something or another. Kirk's speech covered three areas: national security, health care and the economy. He seemed poised and articulate and managed to get a few laughs. And then all too quickly, the question and answer session came up, I managed to get my question in, and the laughter was gone: "Congressman, what is your stance on comprehensive immigration reform (CIR), do you believe in racial profiling, and what solution do you propose for the 12 million undocumented?" Gone was his smile, gone too was the poise, and gone was the eloquence. In their place stood a shaky and stuttering Mark Kirk. Plodding along, Kirk began with the easy one: "I am against racial profiling." He said it kind of quickly and unsurely, but he said it. You see it was none other than Mark Kirk who, On November 5, 2005, during another Q&A segment at Northwestern University, stated: "I'm okay with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states. I'm okay with that." Now you tell me, which Mark Kirk are we supposed to believe? If it is the discrimination-is-cool Mark Kirk, then we have a serious problem on our hands: a Congress that has racists for leaders. If it is the I-am-against-racial-profiling Mark Kirk, then that is to be welcomed. But first, he needs to put his money where his mouth is. He needs to recant his explicit support for discrimination and apologize for it. Only then will his record on the subject be settled. Until then, it remains in limbo at best. Mind you, that was the good part of his three-bit answer to my three-bit question. On the CIR part, Kirk took the audience on a whirlwind tour of the Mexican cartel drug war, failing to explain the significance of that to the question. Kirk does not need to convince anyone that the cartel war is bad news. The pro-immigrant community are all against it, in both heart and mind. But we are also against using it as a divergence card to escape a response to a problem that will not go away by pretending it will: our broken immigration system. Kirk finally wrapped up his cartel sermon by stating that only when we succeed in having secured borders will there be a bi-partisan push for comprehensive immigration reform. Bogus. Secure borders are absolutely necessary, but that is not a precondition to CIR, it is part of CIR. There is no reason why other aspects of CIR cannot be rolled out in parallel with policies that ensure secure borders in the south. Lastly, Kirk addressed the 12 million part of the question. Actually, I lied. He didn't. I am not sure what happened to that part. Either he conveniently forgot it, or he blatantly evaded it. Either way, it went right back under the carpet where it has been repeatedly shoved back, far and deep, by one weak-kneed politician after another. Here's my issue with that: we send our representatives to Washington to tackle the nation's tough problems, not run away from them. The problems don't run away and they'll be right there waiting for them when they get back - if they ever get back. The moral of the story is this: far too many Washington leaders simply lack a solution to our broken immigration system. That's why they mumble, stutter, or evade. But the fact is, it is broken and someone has to fix it. When leaders like Kirk manage to come up with ridiculous responses like "passing out condoms in Mexico" or being "OK with discrimination," it is not because they are stupid. And I am willing to believe it is not even because they are racist. The fact is they come up with them because they have no real solutions -- and so they brain fart. There is a way forward in which America can deal in a humane, civil, and fair manner with the 12 million workers in this country living in the shadows of our system; ensure strong, secure borders; and enable fair and consistent visa and naturalization programs. It's called fix what is broken, or as we call it, CIR. President Obama has declared his intention to deal with CIR in the near future. Leaders from coast to coast have as well. But there are still far too many weak-kneed leaders who seek refuge from destiny under the let's-close-our-eyes-and-hope-it-will-go-away tree. It's time they caught on, and it's up to us the voters to send them a clear message. More on Immigration
 
Roni Jenkins: Thank Goodness We're Not TARP Wives Top
Who knew being the wife of a top CEO who has received government bail-out money would be so stressful? I just finished reading the anonymous " Confessions of a TARP Wife " in Portfolio and gosh am I grateful I'm not one of those. Here are things I don't have to worry about: I don't have to worry about shipping gift purchases from Berdorf Goodman so I don't get caught with all those bags by some meany press photographer or blogger. Just look at Perez Hilton and Miss California. I wonder what Perez thinks of TARP lady? I won't miss the corporate jet and I actually know my way around commercial airliners, how to board by section number and to bring a sandwich for the ride. I don't have to learn new habits, like turning off the lights in rooms as I leave them. We've been doing that for years. And our bulbs are energy efficient too. I don't have to worry about missing the opening nights of the opera, the ballet, and museums for fear of being photographed for the New York Social Diary. Off-Broadway on a Monday night and my daughter's dance recital are pretty good too. I've been shopping my own closet for quite a while now, except my closet has clothes from L&T and Macy's that were purchased using friends and family discount coupons, not designer duds that we're re-tailoring. And frankly the re-tailoring of my closet clothes would cost more than the original purchase price. I don't have to worry about where I'm hosting my husband's next birthday party. A barbeque on the deck and some really bad karaoke is a crowd pleaser. But TARP wife and I do have some worries in common. My husband too wakes up more often these nights, hoping we'll able to keep paying the mortgage. And he too worries about letting down the people closest to him. Yes, the fear of failure is not just the province of Ivy League MBAs. I too worry if we'll ever be able to retire, although I suspect my definition of that term is somewhat different. And yes, our stock portfolio has declined by 95% too, but our "portfolios" basically exist in a 401K plan. We're eating out less these days too, but I've learned how to make a really wicked lasagna. And the steaks at Ruby Tuesday's are surprisingly good for a no star Michelin joint. And the press isn't usually hovering there either. And like millions of parents, we too hope we can pay for our kids college educations. But, we're stuck in the middle of making too much to qualify for financial aid, yet not making enough where we wouldn't feel it. Who knew we actually had so much in common? So I apologize for being angry with those CEO TARP husbands like yours, and per your suggestion I will place the blame on Andrea Mitchell's husband, that Alan guy who is really responsible for this mess. Roni Jenkins is Director of Marketing and a frequent contributor to The Three Tomatoes, an insiders' guide to NYC for "women who aren't kids." www.thethreetomatoes.com More on Financial Crisis
 
Craig Newmark: Craigslist CEO: Crooks who use site will be caught (have been caught) Top
Hey, I guess it's time to talk more about this, but remember, we can't comment on current investigations. As part of the craigslist customer service team, even I've worked with cops and DAs to send away a number of crooks. Jim puts it better, in a new article: Craigslist CEO: Crooks who use site will be caught The chief executive of Craigslist has a message for people who try to use the popular Internet advertising site to commit crimes: You're going to get caught. Violent crimes linked to Craigslist ads in Boston and Minnesota have made headlines, but CEO Jim Buckmaster said Wednesday the site is an "extremely unsafe venue for criminal activity because you're virtually guaranteeing that you're going to get caught." "That's been the case with nearly every serious violent crime that's been connected with the site," Buckmaster said in a telephone interview from San Francisco, where Craiglist is based. "There's an electronic trail leading to yourself. So don't use Craigslist for crime unless you want to go to jail." More on Crime
 
Craig Newmark: The Serve America Act, a really big deal Top
The Serve America Act , just signed, is a really big deal, a call to service for us all. It's not hard to see that it's never been more important for us all to work together. There're a lot of problems to be solved, but maybe that's good; solving tough problems is something Americans are good at, when we have a leader who shares our values. Many people want to fully dedicate themselves to service, they're troops, teachers, social workers, cops, and all manner of public servants. We should remember the nobility of the public service they perform. Me, I spend a lot of every day performing customer service and see real human behavior. I see, every day, that Americans are eager to help out, particularly the millenial youth, maybe the new "civic generation". Serve America provides means for those who want to fully engage, like by seriously increasing support for Americorps, increasing the number of participants from 75,000 positions annually to 250,000. This Act includes a lot of special efforts intended to help Americans figure out how to better help America. That includes the Social Innovation Fund to expand proven initiatives and provide seed funding for experimental initiatives. Serve America provides for serve.gov , which brings together service opportunities from a number of sources. It's genuinely innovative, the first US web site which brings together data from a number of sources, Web 2.0-style. The Summer of Service program helps kids start a career in service. The Serve America Act's a great start; let's get moving.
 
John Marshall: "Vegetarian" Torture on the Table Top
WASHINGTON - After weeks of trying to decide exactly what distinguishes "torture" from the more socially acceptable practice of near drowning, government leaders are considering the sliding scale of morality employed by vegetarians. Just as not all vegetarians follow the same rules, neither would all interrogators. Some vegetarians eat no meat at all, while others eat fish or chicken. Accordingly, some "interrogarians" would question non-brutally, while others would treat themselves once in a while to forcing a subject not to sleep or slamming him into a wall 226 times. The new face of interrogation? This approach is expected to help the debate over whether information obtained using torture kept the country safe for the past eight years. "People used to hate torturers," said a spokesman. "Now we're hoping they'll just be annoyed, the way you roll your eyes whenever you have to pick a restaurant with a vegan." Instituting a sliding, fuzzy scale would also ease the tension over whether to punish officials who practiced torture in the past (i.e., two years ago). "Vegetarians don't condemn another vegetarian just because he once went to Wendy's for a double Baconator," said the spokesman. "We think it's the same, sort of." Members of both parties said it was necessary for the U.S. to have a torture policy that eschews harsh techniques, while still allowing them here and there. "Look, as a nation we've got a lot of violence in our diet already," said the spokesman. "It's not like we're going waterboard. I mean, overboard."
 
Banks Denying Credit Based On Geography: Is Your Neighborhood Getting Shafted? Top
It was a case of reverse lobbying. Earlier this month, a Massachusetts resident opened a letter from CapitalOne informing her that she'd been denied a credit card. The problem, the company explained over the phone when she protested, was simple: the woman -- a doctor, in fact -- lived in a poor neighborhood. Statistically, they reasoned, it wasn't worth the risk to give credit cards to folks in her area. Fortunately for the rejected doc, her congressional representative is also the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. She contacted a local district office and told a staffer to Rep. Barney Frank about the company's practice. Frank's office quickly identified two problems with the company's move. First, the doctor lived in a wealthy Dartmouth neighborhood. But more importantly, it smacked of "redlining," a banned practice banks previously engaged in to discriminate against certain customers, often related to race. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to address the problem. An effort is also underway to expand the CRA to encompass non-bank financial institutions. Agitated by the CapitalOne practice, Frank called a lobbyist connected with the company on Tuesday and demanded the policy be changed, said Frank spokesman Harry Gural. CapitalOne quickly reversed course in a contrite letter dated April 21 and provided to the Huffington Post. Peter Schnall, CapitalOne's chief risk officer, wrote to Frank later that same day that while they consider the practice legal, they'd stop anyway, saying "we have made a business decision to cease using a consumer's resident in a particular Metropolitan Statistical Area as a criterion in approving credit card applications." The company, he said, "understand[s] the concerns that this practice raises in the current environment." Frank mentioned the fight with CapitalOne Wednesday on The Rachel Maddow show. Gural said that he is looking into legislation to ban the practice so that CapitalOne and others don't return to it when the "current environment" changes. If you've had a similar experience with a credit card company -- if you've either been rejected or had your interest rate hiked because of where you live -- send your stories to submissions+credit@huffingtonpost.com . We'll forward your stories on to Frank's staff as they prepare legislation -- unless, of course, you indicate in your e-mail that you don't want us to send it on. The doctor was traveling and couldn't be reached; Schnall's assistant referred calls to CapitalOne's media department, which didn't immediately return a call requesting comment. The full letter, worth a read: We appreciate your bringing to our attention the matter of our use of broad geographic criteria in credit card approval decisioning. While we believe that our actions were permissible under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and other laws governing such lending, we understand the concerns that this practice raises in the current environment, particularly as we seek to partner with Congress and the Administration to support our country's economic recovery. As such, we have made a business decision to cease using a consumer's resident in a particular Metropolitan Statistical Area as a criterion in approving credit card applications. We hope that this change in policy fully addresses your concerns in this matter. We look forward to continuing to work with you and your staff on critical matters facing consumers and our industry. Best regards, Peter Schnall Chief Risk Officer Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 
Intelligent Robo-Penguins Take To Seas, Skies (VIDEO) Top
I like penguins and I like robots. So imagine my delight when I discovered this NewScientist story -- and video -- about bionic penguins . Using their flippers, the mechanical penguins can paddle through water just like real ones, while larger helium-filled designs can "swim" through the air. The penguins are on show at the Hannover Messe Trade Exhibition in Germany. And there's all kinds of other stuff going on -- like the robots communicate with one another. WATCH: More on Video
 
Slade Gorton, 9/11 Commission Member: "It's Not In Our Interest" To Investigate Bush Top
Former 9/11 Commission member Slade Gorton said on Thursday that he did not think Congress or the White House would serve the country's interest by setting up an investigation into the possible use of torture during the Bush years. "Like the president," Gorton said in an interview with the Huffington Post, "I am far more concerned about the future than the past. And in that sense, no, I don't think it is in our interest to look back at this issue." A former Republican senator from Washington, Gorton was one of only ten members to sit on the committee tasked with investigating the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. His work, as well as those of the other nine officials on that committee, has been cited as a possible template for an investigation into the possibly illegal use of interrogation techniques by Bush administration officials. As such, his critical remarks don't help the cause of those who believe that a bi-partisan effort can be put together to look into the authorization of waterboarding and other harsh techniques to interrogate detainees. In speaking out, Gorton has become one of, if not the first 9/11 Commission member to comment about the possibility of investigating Bush years. Another official with ties to the 9/11 Commission, general counsel Daniel Marcus, similarly expressed skepticism that such an effort could be duplicated to look into the Bush years. "The parallels are not exact here," Marcus told the Huffington Post. "I do think that we and the world already know a lot about what happened [with the use of torture] and we now, as a matter of policy, have repudiated what was done, said it was illegal, and said we are not going to do it anymore. So it is a different kind of situation than the 9/11 Commission where no one knew what the hell had happened, what went wrong on 9/11, what happened, why was our intelligence so wrong... if you don't want to foreclose criminal investigations you are going to have a hard time getting testimony from people without giving immunity. And the commission can't grant immunity unless it is under their statute." In addition to expressing concern about a possible investigation of the use of torture, Gorton also criticized Obama for releasing memos that detailed the Bush administration's use of, and legal rationalization for, these interrogation techniques. Joining a growing chorus of Republican officials, he said such a move compromised America's ability to conduct counter-terrorism operations and even made it more vulnerable to terrorist attack. "I think the president has now for all practical purposes guaranteed that we will get no useful information from any terrorist whom we capture," he said. "I think he has guaranteed that the CIA will be as least as risk averse as it was before 9/11. And regrettably he has decreased the chance of preventing a terrorist attack in the future." Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 
Mobile Phones: Key To Developing Nations Top
By Jennifer Openshaw Most of us use our cell phones for just about everything these days -- texting a buddy, monitoring social networking sites, or checking the weather. But the ubiquitous cell phone could dramatically affect hundreds of millions of people in countries like China, India, and Africa. New companies such as Obopay and Moka are providing access to a new virtual world made available by cell phone technology. Obopay, for instance, is enabling third-world countries including India to receive and send payments via text message, while Moka provides language translations, such as English to Chinese. What does this mean? In India, where many people don't have access to an address or a bank account, cell phones are the new means for government or an employer to send payments. Once the money is deposited into the recipient's "account," he/she can then remit money internationally, send funds to his family, or pay bills -- all right from the phone. Obopay's system also eliminates the risk of theft in cash-based economies. Imagine the Indian farmer who heads to the market to sell his products. The buyer arrives with a safe filled with cash to buy goods -- imagine how vulnerable that cash may be. A cell phone makes that transaction less risky. And this new cell phone technology isn't just providing better access to money without physical banks. Imagine living in Mexico, home to 100 million people, or China, with a population of 1.3 billion. Many people living in rural areas in either of these countries face limited access to schools or medical facilities. And in China, with so many different dialects, it's easy for crucial information to get muddied up -- whether it's to teach people English or to inform them of the availability of new vaccinations in their area. By enabling translation via text messaging or SMS, Moka can ensure that converting communication from one language to another is done with fewer problems. With the ever-popular Twitter now readily available via mobile phones, we're now seeing those who never had a voice really take on government. In Myanmar, thousands of monks took to the streets in pro-democracy demonstrations by communicating through twitter via their cell phones, leaving the military generals "caught in a rare dilemma," according to Reuters. It's a reminder of just how powerful social media has become for human rights and other issues. For entrepreneurs, it means new opportunities to start and grow businesses -- and to do good works in the process. It's sparking all kinds of ingenuity - imaginative minds developing new ways to leapfrog over the lack of infrastructure and bring these people into the 21st century. In Africa, for instance, there's been an effort to bring laptops to those who've never owned a computer. But this effort may not be practical, because they take more electricity to charge than a cell phone. For Africans, the challenge isn't so much about getting a gadget, but rather access, and cell phones can help solve this. Bringing it closer to home, the global financial crisis has underscored how little the average person knows about the economy. Yet by breaking outside the traditional Wall Street box in tone and language, even WeSeed.com is able to provide ordinary people -- including students in public schools -- an opportunity to learn and experiment in a way they wouldn't have had before. These days, mobile technology is perhaps the most powerful enabler to access -- access for the billions who have gone without for too long. It's helping people become more self-sufficient and more educated. It's providing the on-ramp to banking, credit, and money-management tools. It's even creating the road to preventative health care and the maps to locate it. If there's one tool that may prevent people from being left behind, it's mobile technology. Jennifer Openshaw, author of The Millionaire Zone, is co-founder and president of WeSeed, whose mission is to enable people to discover the stock market in their everyday lives through their passions, their jobs and the brands they know and love. Her empowering advice, which helps everyday Americans do more with what they have, has been seen on Oprah, Dr. Phil, The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, and Nightline. You can find her on Twitter @jopenshaw or on Facebook. You can also reach her at jopenshaw@weseed.com.
 
Sarah Palin To Be Given Huge Engraved Assault Rifle Top
A custom firearms manufacture plans to give Sarah Palin a smokin' gift at a May banquet of the National Rifle Association, according to RedState . NRA members, keep an eye out for your copy of May's American Rifleman, if it hasn't already arrived. According to the latest edition of the magazine, Bob Reynolds, gunsmith and owner of Templar Consulting LLC, will make a special presentation at the NRA Foundation Banquet on May 14. It's a modified AR-15 (civilian version of the milspec M16 rifle), specially customized in honor of Gov. Sarah Palin and dubbed "The Alaskan Hunter." The gift is an assault rifle custom-engraved with the image of a moose, the Big Dipper, a map of Alaska, and the words "In Honor of Governor Sarah Palin." The governor could really mow down a moose with this thing, or perhaps spray several wolves from a helicopter, or, say, terrify one Levi Johnston. Check it out: (HT: Ben Smith ) Become a fan of HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Sarah Palin
 
Reputed Hitler Watercolors Sell At English Auction Top
LUDLOW, England — What a British auction house claims are a set of paintings and sketches by a young Adolf Hitler sold at auction Thursday for 97,672 pounds ($143,358). Among the 15 pictures is a portrait of solitary figure dressed in brown peering into wine-colored waters. The date is 1910, the signature reads "A. Hitler" and scribbled just over the mysterious figure are the letters: "A.H." So is this a portrait of the Fuehrer as a young man? "I don't think they're fakes," said Richard Westwood-Brookes, historical documents expert at auction house Mullocks that carried out the sale. He said he did not believe anyone would have the nerve to fake the pictures, given the global publicity they have received. The portrait itself sold for about 10,000 pounds ($14,600). The buyer John Ratledge, 46, said he planned to hang it at home or in his office. Westwood-Brookes said the paintings were sold to the current vendor, who is not identified, by a soldier serving with Britain's Royal Manchester Regiment in 1945, when it was stationed in the German city of Essen. Best known as the genocidal dictator who butchered millions in his quest to unite Europe under German rule, Hitler also had a largely unsuccessful career as an artist in his early years. He is believed to have painted hundreds of pieces, although most art critics have been unmoved. Westwood-Brookes acknowledged that the pieces were "hardly Picasso," but _ concerns over authenticity aside _ Hitler's works had a track record of attracting high bids. In 2006 watercolors and sketches attributed to the Nazi leader raised more than 100,000 pounds at an auction in the small town of Lostwithiel in southwestern England. Another batch of purported Hitler paintings is due to come up for auction in the German city of Nuremberg later this month. Even if it were proven genuine beyond a doubt, the Hitler watercolor would not be the first self-portrait of the Nazi dictator discovered. In 1987 the late historian Werner Maser said he had unearthed an oil portrait of Hitler executed in 1925. Maser, who wrote several Hitler biographies, told the AP at the time that the painting showed Hitler in traditional Bavarian dress with short trousers and long white socks. ___ Associated Press Writer Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report.
 
Michelle Obama Repeats Two Most Controversial Articles Of Clothing (PHOTOS, POLL) Top
The first lady sure knows what she likes! When Michelle Obama spoke to children of executive branch employees on Thursday for "Take Your Children To Work Day" ( where she revealed that new puppy Bo is "kind of crazy" ), she fearlessly repeated not one, but two of her most controversial articles of clothing: a Junya Watanbe cardigan that was very similar to the one she wore in London on April 2nd and the white bow shirt by Moschino that was first seen in Prague on April 5th. Huffington Post readers voted the bow their least favorite look of her trip to Europe and the Junya Watanbe cardigan was their second least favorite. See photos below and let us know what you think. More on Michelle Obama Style
 
Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compared Holocaust To Palestinians' Plight Top
Yad Vashem has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in Israel's War of Independence. More on Israel
 
Mayor Daley On Wife Maggie's Cancer Battle: 'She's A Fighter' (VIDEO) Top
Mayor Daley said his wife, Maggie, is "doing very well" after undergoing a bone biopsy Wednesday as part of her ongoing breast cancer treatment. "Maggie's done a tremendous job," Daley said Thursday. "She's a fighter." As Daley started to get emotional while discussing his wife's breast cancer battle, mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard changed the focus of the press conference in what the Sun-Times ' Fran Spielman called "an apparent attempt to protect her boss from choking up."
 
Malaysia Bans Conversion Of Children Without Both Parents' Consent Top
KUALA LUMPUR: In an attempt to ease interfaith conflicts that have strained race relations, Malaysia on Thursday banned the conversion of children without both parents' consent. More on Asia
 
DNC Releases "100 Days Of No" Ad (VIDEO) Top
The Democratic National Committee released on Thursday a new advertisement called "100 Days Of No," calling out the Republican response to the first hundred days of the Obama presidency. Dubbing the GOP the "party of no," the DNC says that while the president and Congress have been hard at work attempting to solve the economic crisis, the Republicans have "openly employed the same obstructionist, just-say-no approach." The video pairs clips of Republican leaders discussing why they voted "no" on various bills with a running count of the first hundred days since Obama's inauguration. "As long as Republicans continue to rely on Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Rush Limbaugh for their inspiration, Americans can only expect more of the same recycled Republican talking points and baseless criticisms from the party of no new ideas and no new leadership," said DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse in a press release. "In the next 100 days and beyond, we strongly encourage the Republicans to set aside their tired partisan games and work with the President to reform our health care system, make America energy independent, and lay the foundation for long-term growth in the 21st Century," Woodhouse said. WATCH:
 
Tod Preston: Want to Fight Hunger? Empower Women and Prioritize Family Planning Top
Have you seen the ads? They seem to be everywhere -- from the Washington Metro system's billboards, to the New Yorker and Roll Call . "9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. NOW WHAT?" While focused on biotechnology, the ad (sponsored by Monsanto) does point to a key challenge in the years ahead: namely, the need to double agricultural output by 2050 to feed a rapidly growing world. One billion people -- the equivalent of three times the population of the United States -- already are chronically hungry in the world today. And despite all the pledged commitments and efforts to eradicate hunger, that number is 100 million people higher than in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, the problem of hunger is likely to get worse in the years ahead as global demand for food skyrockets . Meeting that demand will be daunting enough, but add in the shifts in weather patterns that are beginning to occur because of climate change -- on top of already decreasing cropland and freshwater -- and there's reason to be very concerned. In recognition of the need for bold action, President Obama recently announced his intent to double U.S. funding for agricultural development . It's a long overdue commitment to investing U.S. resources to combat chronic hunger in a more comprehensive and effective way. By most accounts, the primary hunger assistance the U.S. has provided over the last several decades -- emergency food aid -- has done little to fundamentally address the problem . But there's another, seemingly unrelated type of assistance that can play a major role in the fight to eradicate hunger: family planning programs and other initiatives that empower women. A major driver of the need to double food production in the next forty years is population growth: we're currently increasing by 80 million people per year. And one of the primary causes of this growth is high unintended pregnancy rates resulting from lack of access and low usage of family planning in many poor countries. Just look at Ethiopia . Of the country's current 80 million people, an estimated 35 million Ethiopians are undernourished. More than half of children under age five are stunted. A third of the population lives on less than $1 a day. Ethiopian women, on average, give birth to five or six children -- more than many of them desire, because 35 percent of women have an "unmet need" for family planning . Ethiopia's population of 80 million people -- double what it was at the time of the horrendous famine in the mid-1980's -- is projected to increase to 120 million in just the next 15 years. And that's the "optimistic" scenario. According to new data from the U.N. , if birth rates remain at their current high levels -- if access to family planning does not improve -- the population will jump to 132 million by 2025. No realistic amount of food aid or agricultural development assistance will truly combat hunger in Ethiopia unless the underlying demographic realities -- and the very interrelated poor status of women -- are also addressed. Ethiopia received $700 million in emergency food aid from the U.S. just between 2003 and 2007; last year, the Bush Administration requested a mere $15 million for family planning there. The situation in Ethiopia is far from unique. Nearly 60 percent of Haiti grapples with hunger every day and almost a quarter of children under age five are stunted in growth. Haiti's population of nearly 10 million is projected to jump to 15 million by 2030 if birth rates stay where they are today. With little access to contraceptives, Haitian women give birth to an average of four children . 40% of married women have an unmet need for family planning. In the past, policymakers have generally turned a blind eye to the demographic part of the hunger problem -- much the same way they largely turn a blind eye to the more than 500,000 mothers in poor nations who die every year during pregnancy and childbirth from easily preventable causes . For example, since 1995, U.S. international family planning assistance has declined by 35%, even as demand has increased . Perhaps it's not a coincidence that one thing both these issues have in common is the shockingly poor and unjust status of women in many of the world's poorest areas: lack of access to family planning, little (if any) education, few legal rights, and limited economic empowerment. (I've visited Ethiopia twice and have seen first-hand how women are treated.) But we all know where these issues rank on most politicians' agendas. I think it comes down to this: ironically, family planning isn't seen as a sexy issue. It's not an issue that many policymakers -- here in the U.S. and in the affected countries themselves -- feel merits much attention. It's not covered much by the media. And it wrongly gets mired in debates around abortion -- even though family planning reduces abortions . So back to that Monsanto ad: "9 billion people to feed. A changing climate. NOW WHAT?" I say -- and hopefully the Obama Administration will say -- family planning and empowering women, that's what! Tod Preston is Vice President for U.S. Government Relations at Population Action International (PAI). Preston leads PAI's advocacy and outreach activities to U.S. policymakers and opinion-leaders, including Members of Congress and officials in the Executive branch.
 
Microsoft Quarterly Revenue Falls For First Time In 23 Years Top
SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. said Thursday its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company, and its profit fell more sharply than Wall Street was expecting. The shortfall illustrated the toll the recession has taken on the world's largest software maker, even though Microsoft remains one of the richest and most profitable companies. In January, Microsoft said it needed to resort to its first mass layoffs, cutting 5,000 jobs. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said Thursday that in its fiscal third-quarter, which ended March 31, profit dropped 32 percent to $2.98 billion, or 33 cents per share. In the same quarter of 2008, Microsoft earned $4.39 billion, or 47 cents per share. Microsoft's profit included a $290 million charge for severance from some of the layoffs announced in January. The software maker also wrote down $420 million related to investments that lost value. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a stronger profit, 39 cents per share. Sales in the last quarter slipped 6 percent to $13.6 billion, falling short of analysts' expectations for $14.1 billion in sales. Microsoft makes most of its profit selling the Windows operating system and business software such as Office. Those divisions were hurt when PC shipments fell for the second straight quarter as consumers and businesses sharply cut back on technology spending. The Windows division's revenue sank 16 percent to $3.4 billion, while the division that makes Office saw sales drop 5 percent to $4.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft added 14 cents to close at $18.92. In extended trading after the earnings report, the shares gained 5 percent. More on Microsoft
 
Dr. Josh Dines and Dr. Rock Positano: The goalie felt a pop Top
As the summer approaches, more and more of us are visiting the gym to hit the weights and tone our muscles for the beach. Injuries can occur when lifting weights, however, and it is important that we remember to use proper technique to minimize the chances of injury. Ruptures of the biceps tendon at the elbow are one such injury that can occur with lifting heavy objects and predominantly affects middle-aged men. Martin Brodeur, the goalie for the NJ Devils hockey team suffered this injury earlier this season. Sudden forced extension of a flexed elbow can place extremely high loads on the tendon and cause it to rupture at the elbow, usually accompanied by a "pop" or traumatic tearing sensation. Usually this is accompanied by a visible "popeye" deformity as the muscle retracts into the upper arm, as well as a palpable defect at the elbow compared to the normal side. Frequently, the elbow and forearm region will get very "black and blue." Furthermore, rupture of the tendon leads to weakness with elbow flexion as well as forearm rotation and is usually poorly tolerated by most active individuals or manual laborers. If a distal biceps tear is suspected, it is important to promptly seek the care of a physician. Often the diagnosis can be made by physical examination but MRI can be used to confirm the tear and assess the degree of tendon retraction from bone. Older patients with lower physical demands may opt for conservative treatment of such injuries, which includes physical therapy. Long-term, however, they may find that they are a bit weaker on the side with the torn tendon, and repetitive use of their biceps may result in cramping and easier fatigue. With improved surgical techniques and implants that have helped to make distal biceps tendon repairs more minimally invasive, more patients are opting to have the tendon repaired back to its insertion on the radius bone in the forearm. Patients who elect for surgery need to have it done as soon as possible. Neglect for more than 3 or 4 weeks can lead to retraction of the muscle and scarring of the tendon, making a surgical repair of the tendon at the elbow difficult. Published results in medical literature clearly state that better functional outcomes are achieved when the surgery is done sooner. When treated appropriately, prompt recognition and repair can result in excellent cosmetic and functional outcomes in even the most active individuals. Martin Brodeur can attest to this, as he is already back minding the nets during the playoffs. After surgery, patients are frequently protected in a hinged-elbow brace that allows motion within a protected range for the first 4 to 6 weeks after surgery, which gives time for the repaired tendon to heal. A progressive strengthening program is instituted, with the goal of getting patients back to their favorite activities by 3 to 4 months after surgery. Of equal importance to injury recognition and treatment, however, is injury prevention. Use of proper technique when lifting and avoiding excessive weight, particularly in a deconditioned state, can help us to have a safe Spring while training for the Summer.
 
Jewel Slashing Prices At Chicago Grocery Stores Top
Jewel-Osco is cutting prices up to 20% on thousands of items in a push to attract cash-strapped shoppers and fend of discounters. More on The Recession
 
Craig Crawford: The Politics of Earth Day Top
Earth Day has arrived, and it is bigger than ever -- especially when compared to its humble beginnings in the 1970's. In this CQ Politics video I take a look at how the rise of Earth Day symbolizes the changing politics of the environment since Teddy Roosevelt helped get it all started. Craig blogs daily at craigcrawford.com Follow Craig on Twitter and Facebook More on Earth Day
 
GM To Temporarily Shut 13 Plants, Cut Production Top
DETROIT — General Motors Corp. said Thursday it will temporarily close 13 assembly plants in the U.S. and Mexico _ some for more than two months _ laying off more than 26,000 workers to pare back a bloated inventory. The closures, which will start in May, vary by factory from as short as three weeks to a long as 11, including the normal two-week July shutdown to change from one model year to the next. GM said the shutdowns will help control high dealer inventories and bring manufacturing in line with sales. The company plans to cut production by 190,000 vehicles and reduce inventory from the current 767,000 to 525,000 by the end of July. More than 26,000 hourly and salaried employees will be laid off at the affected assembly plants, but there will be thousands more layoffs and temporary factory closures when GM works out its schedules for engine, transmission and parts stamping factories. The troubled automaker has 22 assembly plants in North America as well as dozens of other parts and powertrain factories. Laid-off hourly workers will get unemployment benefits and supplemental pay from the company that amounts to most of their base wages. Salaried workers also will get some income, GM North America President Troy Clarke said. In a conference call with reporters, Clarke said the shutdowns are not a sign that GM is headed into bankruptcy protection. Clarke would not say exactly how many workers would be laid off, nor would he say if any of the factories would be closed for good. GM has told the government it plans to close five more factories as part of its restructuring plan, and its CEO said additional closures are possible. He also said the company isn't making the cuts because it sees sales worsening beyond current projections. "Instead of spending the whole year to get the inventory in line, we really needed to get it in line much quicker," he said. GM normally shuts down its assembly plants for two weeks each summer to prepare for the new model year, but assembly plants that will see additional down weeks are in Arlington, Texas; Bowling Green, Ky.; Detroit-Hamtramck, Mich.; Flint, Mich.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Lansing, Mich.; Lordstown, Ohio; Pontiac, Mich.; Shreveport, La.; Spring Hill, Tenn.; Wilmington, Del.; Wentzville, Mo.; and Silao, Mexico. The longest shutdown is 11 weeks at Fort Wayne, which makes the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks. The Associated Press first reported Wednesday that GM planned to temporarily close most of its factories. Clarke said he can't remember the company ever having as many layoffs and plant shutdowns. The move is a result of slumping sales, but some analysts and dealers fear the plant closings could further scare car buyers already made nervous by talk of a GM bankruptcy. GM also said Thursday that it has been negotiating with its former parts arm, Delphi Corp., to make sure the supply of parts continues during Delphi's bankruptcy case. GM said it has proposed "fair and reasonable" terms that have been rejected by Delphi and its lenders. "Without successful resolution of this dispute, it is General Motors' view that Delphi or its lenders could force GM into an uncontrolled shutdown with severe negative consequences for the U.S. automotive industry," GM's statement said. The shutdown could be catastrophic to many auto parts suppliers that already are near bankruptcy due to previous production cuts. During the shutdown, suppliers couldn't ship parts to GM and would lose critical revenue. "It's one of those things we've been dreading for a long time," said Jim Gillette, director of financial services at auto-industry consultant CSM Worldwide in Grand Rapids. "It's as bad as its ever been." He said that many suppliers are making employee cuts or forcing workers to take furloughs to reduce operating expenditures. GM is living on $13.4 billion in government loans and faces a June 1 deadline to cut its debt, reduce labor costs and take other restructuring steps. If it doesn't meet the deadline, the company's CEO has said it will enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Treasury Department declined to comment on any effect the plant shutdowns might have on GM's restructuring plans. GM's sales were down 49 percent in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, and GM had a 123-day supply of cars and trucks at the end of March, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. That's down from 162 days worth in January. But as of March 31, the automaker had a more than six-month supply of several models including the Pontiac G5 compact and Chevrolet Silverado hybrid pickup truck. Nearly all automakers with U.S. factories have closed plants or cut production to deal with the auto sales slump. Earlier this year, GM temporarily closed 20 factories across North America due to weak sales, some for the entire month of January. Chrysler LLC, also subsisting on government loans, closed all 30 of its manufacturing plants for a month in January to counter the auto sales downturn. Ford Motor Co. also shut down 10 North American assembly plants for an extra week in January, and both Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. have cut production. ___ AP Auto Writer Kimberly S. Johnson contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS length of longest plant shutdown, Fort Wayne, Ind., to 11 weeks, not 10 weeks.)
 
Liz Cheney Defends Father's Torture Legacy (VIDEO) Top
As nearly every HuffPost Media Monitor (well, specifically Derrick, Clayton, Chad, "RStein," and Teresa) pointed out today, former State Department official Liz Cheney came on MSNBC to defend her father's legacy, with regard to the administration's role in authorizing the torture or terror detainees. That's sort of sad. But sympathy wears thin when Cheney indulges in what I guess is the family business -- pretending that waterboarding isn't torture. "It's what our own people go through in SERE training," Cheney says, as if that makes it all okay. Naturally, I'm pretty sure that our soldiers undergo SERE training to learn what it's like to be tortured, if not withstand it. I mean, if we've reached the point where it's okay to not be outraged when our own soldiers are waterboarded, someone should say so. But either waterboarding is a tolerable technique for military interrogations in every case or it is torture and thus the province of sadistic regimes. O'Donnell shoots back, disputing the idea that there is a consensus on the efficacy of waterboarding: O'DONNELL: Liz, the CIA on its own, after 2005 stopped waterboarding. On it's own. The U.S. prosecuted people for waterboarding after World War II, so to suggest that there's a consensus out there that waterboarding is not torture is not in fact accurate. CHENEY: No, I think it is accurate. Three people water boarded and two people are people who gave us incredibly important and useful information, information that saved American lives after they were water boarded, both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. As noted yesterday, Marcy Wheeler gave the case of Abu Zubaydah a thorough going over and found the case that waterboarding revealed worthwhile intelligence to be a weak one. The only thing that torture proponents have to offer in defense of the sadism are claims which they never substantiate. O'Donnell responds by pointing out that Dennis Blair's assessment was that torture was a net negative as a technique and inessential to our national security in any event. Liz Cheney then contends that the White House was misrepresenting Blair: "I'm sure you know that actually, the first statement that Blair put out acknowledged the effectiveness of the programs and acknowledged that very important intelligence had been gained and it was only after the White House got a hold of the statement, edited the statement, censored it and pit it out publicly that his language changed." Very sorry, but she's wrong! As Greg Sargent explains : There seems to be some confusion about whether Obama intel chief Dennis Blair's private memo saying torture has yielded "high value information" is in contradiction with his public statement saying that torture has done us far more harm than good. So let's go over this again. I've got a copy of the full memo right here . Down below is a screen capture of the relevant part ( click...to enlarge ). In his private memo, Blair said that in some cases, torture yielded "high value information" that has "provided a deeper understanding" of Al Qaeda. He said he couldn't promise he wouldn't have approved such tactics in the wake of 9/11. In his public statement, he said that despite those facts, torture still does more harm than good and is not essential to our national security. Sorry -- these two statements are not mutually exclusive. Many will disagree with Blair's initial statement. Many will believe that his real views skew in the direction of the private memo. All fine. But the simple fact is that his public statement deserves to be part of this discussion, and it isn't contradicted by what's in the private memo. The dispute continued, and I think Norah O'Donnell did a fine job, standing up for the this nation's honor and reflecting the decidedly mainstream values of those who oppose the practice of torture. CHENEY: There's absolutely no question the Vice President of the United States supported the program as did the National Security Adviser as did the Secretary of State and the Security Council. There is nobody being clearer saying this is a good program, this saved lives than the Vice President. So, there's nothing about owning up here because this was a good program and people are proud of what we have accomplished. Yes. So proud that they lost their mind when everyday Americans were told of the means by which these so-called accomplishments were achieved. CHENEY: Now setting aside that, what you're doing is reading headlines and talking about direction of lawyers which is a very different thing. The lawyers' opinions were sought in order to make sure that the program that the CIA ran stayed within the law. And the lawyers did a very responsible and professional job of laying out exactly what were the limits of how far we could go. And that is precisely what makes it so damaging, that these memos -- O'DONNELL: Listen to yourself, Liz: "How far we could go." How far could we go with these detainees. How far could we torture them to get information? CHENEY: For how many minute you you could ask certain kind of questions. I'm sorry, it's very, very important point. O'DONNELL: The Geneva conventions were established, Liz, to protect our men and women in the military so America would be a beacon in the world so when our men and women are captured overseas that they would not be tortured, we would never want our people -- CHENEY: Are you going to give me a chance to answer? O'DONNELL: Yeah! Let me just finish my point. CHENEY: I get your point, Norah. O'DONNELL: The point is... CHENEY: Norah, wait a second. O'DONNELL: Now that the world hears that America no longer cares about torture. CHENEY: That's not what the world is hearing. O'DONNELL: If if gets valuable information, then okay, we're for it? Is that a message they send? CHENEY: What i'm saying that is there were a series of tactics a series of techniques done to our own people, we did not torture our own people. These techniques are not torture. O'DONNELL: Did we torture other people? You just said we did not torture our own people. And that's really the question isn't it? Does torture become torture depending on one's nationality? Again, the training Liz Cheney describes is undertaken to prepare our fighting men and women for the sadistic acts that might be done to them if captured . I've always been of the mind that it's proper to be morally outraged at the thought of an American soldier getting waterboarded. But moral outrage is meaningless if you only talk the talk. It's either torture for everyone or its torture for no one. A truly great nation hardly needs an exception to this rule. If one of these torture proponents would simply and forthrightly state: I believe that it's okay for the United States to torture whoever we want, but it's wrong for Americans to be interrogated in the same way , I'd at least give some points for honesty, even if I was thoroughly repulsed. [WATCH.] [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Video
 
Magda Abu-Fadil: Doha Centre for Media Freedom French Director in the Doghouse Top
What a difference a year makes! The man whose name has been tied for years to press freedom and the defense of journalists worldwide from his Paris perch, then transplanted to Doha to start a similar gig, has become the bête noire of a leading Qatari paper that accused him of promoting "immorality" and insulting Qataris. "It's been a year since the center opened, and six months since it became operational, at phenomenal cost, and it was hoped it would provide added value to the local landscape, but it hasn't, and its limelight-seeking director has limited himself to fiery statements," blasted the editor in chief of the daily Al Sharq ( http://www.al-sharq.com ) on Sunday. Al Sharq logo The editor was referring to Robert Menard, who set up the Doha Centre for Media Freedom ( www.dohacentre.org ), with blessings from Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and under the patronage of the country's first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned. Robert Menard (Aljazeera.net) Editor Jaber Al Harmi also slammed Menard for not being a team player, a trait he alleged the Frenchman carried over from the time he founded and headed Reporters Sans Frontiers , or Reporters Without Borders ( www.rsf.org ). "Menard not only got rid of Qataris from the organization, but repeatedly insulted the state of Qatar; most recently by lambasting our brothers in Dubai who tried to limit the toxic effects of obscene websites, notably through YouTube in the United Arab Emirates," Al Harmi said. He added that Menard's excoriation of the Dubai police chief -- charged with maintaining the Emirates' moral standards - meant the former wanted the latter to allow websites that insulted Islam and deities and promoted blasphemy in the name of press freedom. Al Arab logo Menard defended himself in an interview Monday in another daily, Al Arab ( www.alarab.com.qa ), saying he only criticized what was wrong, in Qatar and elsewhere, and that alternate ways existed to counter pornography. He also said his center had helped 250 journalists in distress who had sought refuge in Doha from persecution in their home countries. He denied getting on his political high horse, or hiring French compatriots at his center to the detriment of qualified Qatari employees. But Al Sharq's editor begged to differ and on Wednesday ripped into Menard again with a huge editorial demanding to see proof money had been handed to journalists fighting for press freedom around the world . Al Harmi added that needy reporters in Iraq had never heard of the Doha center and that Palestinian journalists whose freedom had been trampled- 51 being incarcerated by Israel -- weren't even on Menard's radar screen. The media tug-of-war is thought to result from Menard's prickly pear, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, and some of his hosts' sensitivities to ideas running contrary to the Gulf country's conservative population. A Doha-based journalist said the latest flap, one of many in recent months, meant the honeymoon was over for Menard who created a local and international ruckus in March when one of his staffers was barred from leaving Qatar after which he lambasted Qatari authorities for the action. Menard also urged the UN's Human Rights Council to reject a draft resolution by Muslim countries condemning criticism of religion, saying it was "an unacceptable violation" of international agreements. The recent dressing down by Al Sharq, critics believed, spelled his doom because the emir wants him out while the first lady wants him to stay. Sheikha Mozah, Qatar's royal consort (Abu-Fadil) It's a far cry from the fanfare surrounding the DCMF's official launch in October 2008, almost a year after it was set up, with a glittery board of international governors that include actress Mia Farrow, former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, Argentinian-Israeli pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboïm, former South African first lady and Mozambican minister Gracia Machel and former CNN president Chris Cramer. The DCMF's motto is "Let's Give Freedom of Information a Future" and was established to help journalists in difficulty and provide them with shelter and recourse to their rights. But critics say all Menard has done is siphon funds from his benefactors, duplicate the work he did at RSF, hire cronies from his former place of employment, turn the center into a platform to advance his ideology, and lash out at politicians in the Arab region and beyond, much as he had done earlier in France. They pointed to his unabashedly having recycled a journalists' handbook from the RSF days, funded by UNESCO , and passing it off as a DCMF publication. The book is available online ( http://www.dohacentre.org/EN/guide.php ). Only one other publication and three reports are available on the site with thin "resources" piggybacking on different organizations' fame. Maverick Menard is a self-styled activist who, according to Wikipedia , was born to a French family in Algeria and had planned to become a priest before turning left, hooking up with Trotskyist elements and joining the Socialist Party. It said he created a pirate radio station in the mid-1970s, published a free magazine and founded RSF in 1985. All along, media analysts questioned his motives for leaving RSF to head an organization in a region not noted for press freedom. More on CNN
 
Mary Matalin Signs On As CNN Contributor Top
Republican strategist Mary Matalin has signed on to serve as a CNN political contributor, the network announced Thursday. The former Crossfire co-host will appear on programs across the network, including Anderson Cooper 360°, State of the Union with John King, and The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. More on CNN
 
Amitava Kumar: On Susan Boyle Top
One hundred million and counting. Every day the count goes up by a few million. On one link alone on YouTube , the clip has been viewed 40,187,032 times at the time of this writing. "My name is Susan Boyle..." When the clip begins, we watch a stout, frumpy female seated on a chair, biting into a sandwich. She tells Ant and Dec her name, that she has never been married, and never been kissed. The only promise here is of a parade of the abject. Twenty-six seconds into the video, if you were watching it for the first time, you were probably wondering why your friend forwarded this link to you. Certainly neither the crowd nor the critics expected much. "What's your name Dolly?" was Simon Cowell's uninviting welcome to Boyle on stage. It was easy to feel kindly toward the lady with the enormous double chin. But also unease. When was the last time a woman who didn't emit sexual heat get rewarded for her talent on TV? This is what even a child knows nowadays: without makeup, you are mud. On Scottish television later on, Susan appeared with lipstick on her lips. Her wild hair had been tamed. It made me feel that she had been almost defenseless before. But none of it mattered, did it? The background music for the "I dream the dream" song from Les Miserables began to play and a calm descended on stage. Amanda Holden, the sole female judge, whose glamor my friend's daughter wishes to emulate, raised her bare, depilated arms and rested them at the back of her beautiful blond head. In that coolness, with a tremble of a smile, Susan Boyle began to sing. Those first notes stirred magic in our hearts. All that we were feeling, in a rush, was confirmed by the sight of Simon Cowell's eyes widened in surprise. And later I thought that this was the year of the Boyles: it is all about inventing games in which the loser is the dreamer who will win it all. At a time of losses worldwide, banks failing, jobs gone, success has become sweet and natural again. That is the work done by the Susan Boyle phenomenon, even if it is only an individual, by herself, triumphing on the stage of the world with her talent. When she sang, there was an exultation. This feeling would not die even when what she was singing about was sorrowful. "But the tigers come at night/ With their voices soft as thunder / As they tear your hopes apart / As they turn your dreams to shame." This is a song of heartbreak and despair but the audience was applauding because the voice on stage kept soaring to the heavens. This feeling is recognized and also satirized by Jimmy Fallon on his NBC show : in a world gone wrong, Boyle singing "I Dreamed A Dream" can wash away all the malaise of the world. The copier doesn't work, but it's okay. You are pregnant, but it's okay. You're not pregnant, but it's okay. The plague has come, but it's okay. Zombies, too. But it is okay. When Boyle was singing the closing lines of her song--"I had a dream my life would be / So different from this hell I'm living"--it was easy to forget that it might be her own life she was singing about. The life that she, an unemployed woman, is already leaving behind. The words recall another song, "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," an elegiac tribute to suffocated female lives in suburbia. "At the age of thirty-seven / She realised she'd never / Ride through Paris in a sports car / With the warm wind in her hair." I like the precision in that song. "At the age of thirty-seven...." It tells us that the gates close early. That because of the way we have set-up our lives we draw the curtain on our dreams prematurely. Our public culture is one in which only the young and the beautiful will succeed. If you're forty, you're finished. Sung by Marianne Faithfull, who seemed to have smoked just the right number of cigarettes to find that raspy voice, "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" was used in the film Thelma and Louise . It was there to remind us of the yearning whose lifted hands had left nail-marks in the roof of the sky. More on Jimmy Fallon
 
Gina Solomon: My Toxic Dog: Personal Experiences with Flea Collars Top
When my team at NRDC decided to study whether flea collars leave a hazardous residue on cats and dogs, we really didn't know if there was a problem. It seemed possible that we wouldn't find much, and that the residues would be far below levels of health concern -- after all, that's what the Environmental Protection Agency had concluded on several occasions. Yet we weren't satisfied with the EPA conclusions. Even a cursory review of the basis for EPA's decision revealed major flaws, not the least of which was the complete absence of any actual data on residues from flea collars. Obviously someone needed to collect some real data to figure this out. I volunteered my dogs, Kanga and Cricket, as participants in the study. After all, with no young kids athome, it was free flea control (which meant no baths for the dogs) and an ability to collect some useful information. The negatives started to appear soon after the flea collars went on. First of all, the collars had a nasty odor, so the house began to smell; friends who visited sniffed distastefully, and some even commented. A noticeable powder bloomed on the surface of the collar, and sometimes a little was visible on the fur. Although the dogs didn't seem to notice the collars, I began to get concerned. The package directions advise avoiding direct contact with the collar. So each day I'd go through contortions to put their leashes on and take them off, and would grab for their leather collars to restrain them only to discover that I had the flea collar clenched in my hand instead. I washed my hands frequently, like I do when I'm working in the hospital, and the poor dogs begged for attention while I refrained from petting them. My partner bore with the entire procedure gamely until Cricket began scratching: "The dog has fleas! Damn it, I thought you said this collar would prevent fleas." Over the two week study, both dogs developed nasty cases of fleas - on their rumps, since the fleas wisely seemed to avoid the neck and back area. It was such a relief when the experiment was over and we could give the dogs a good bath, wash their bedding, and rid ourselves of both the fleas and the chemical stench all in one frenzied cleaning session. But the real problem was yet to come. The results came back from the laboratory showing residue levels so high that the lab repeated the tests to be sure there was no error. There wasn't. When we plugged the numbers into standard risk assessment calculations, we had to stop and calculate again just to be sure. The results were worrisome. After three days, half of the pets wearing collars with tetrachlorvinphos had enough residue on their fur to pose significant neurological risks for toddlers who spend about two hours per day with their pet. For toddlers who sleep with their pets, or have multiple pets, 80 percent of the dogs and all of the cats had residue that exceeded acceptable levels. The numbers for propoxur flea collars were even worse: all of the dogs (including mine) had residues on fur posing a neurological risk to toddlers. After two weeks, three-quarters of the pets had levels that exceeded the acceptable amount for average contact with a pet, and all of them had residue levels that could be dangerous for children with a lot of contact. As if neurological harm wasn't enough, we also calculated the cancer risks. Cancer risk calculations assume that people are regular users of these products for most of their lifetime. For adults we found a cancer risk of 56 to 558 excess cancers per million people exposed -- 50 to 500 times greater than what the EPA considers acceptable. When we used EPA guidelines to calculate the increased risks associated with exposures in children, cancer risk soared to 157 to 1,566 excess cancers per million. That's potentially as high as 1-2 cancers per thousand people exposed - and there are a lot of pet owners out there who use these products, which equals a lot of risk to a lot of people. The full story on the results of our flea collar testing is here . The good news in this whole sobering story is that it's so easy to control fleas without resorting to any of these toxic products. My family has had dogs for 14 years, and we easily keep fleas in check with baths every 2-3 weeks, laundering their bedding at bath time, and vacuuming the rugs weekly. It's really not a big deal, and as a bonus, the dogs aren't greasy and they smell nice. For other flea control tips, or for information about flea control treatments, check out Green Paws . This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog .
 
Volcker: US, World In A 'Great Recession' Top
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said the global economic slump is one of the worst in history. "The U.S., along with the rest of the world, is in the midst of a great recession," Volcker, head of President Barack Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said today at a conference in Washington. More on The Fed
 
Chicago Unemployment Hits 9.3 Percent Top
Metropolitan Chicago's jobless rate was 9.3% in March, a level not seen in 17 years. The rate jumped from 5.6% the same month last year. More on Layoffs
 
Home Depot Owl Can't Legally Be Removed Top
HARRISON, Ark. — A Home Depot in northern Arkansas has someone new looking out for mice at the warehouse store. A great horned owl now lives in the Harrison store's garden center, looking down on surprised customers shopping for flowers and paving stones. Employees say the bird's mother flew inside of the enclosed garden center during a January ice storm and laid eggs atop a pallet of merchandise. Over time, the mother disappeared and two baby owls poked their heads out of the nest. One fell to its death, but the other survived, its four-foot wing span blocking out the sun as he flies around the garden center. Since the garden center is open to the sky, the owl will leave, but always comes back, employees said. "He's kind of our pet now," garden center supervisor John Gallagher told the Harrison Daily Times. And the owl likely will remain there. Randy Zellers, managing editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Arkansas Wildlife magazine, said owls are classified as raptors, which are protected under strict federal regulations. To remove the owl, the store would have to get special licenses. Zellers said there's really no reason for anyone to try and move the owl for now. "If he isn't bothering anything, it's perfectly fine," Zellers said. Rusty Scarborough, the education program coordinator at Delta Rivers Nature Center in Pine Bluff, said the Home Depot would be a good spot for an owl. Rodents are the predominant food source for a great horned owl and stores with garden centers stock bird seed and crop seeds _ big draws for rodents. Although the great horned owl is a fierce predator, Scarborough said this owl probably doesn't pose a threat to anyone at the store. "They still have a fear of humans," he said. The Home Depot Inc., based in Atlanta, is the nation's No. 1 home improvement retailer. ___ Information from: Harrison Daily Times, http://www.harrisondaily.com More on Animals
 
Rep. Paul Ryan: Dems Have "Right" To Push Health Care Overhaul Through Congress Top
Shortly after President Obama's Inauguration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) let Republicans know that the election would come with consequences. "Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election," she said in response to GOP complaints that they weren't involved enough in the crafting of the stimulus. Republicans have repeatedly raised that comment as evidence that Pelosi is uninterested in bipartisan cooperation. In an interview with ABC News on Thursday, however, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) went way off script, acknowledging that the mandate delivered by the election gives Democrats the "right" to push their policy proposals. "It's their right. They did win the election," said Ryan, a respected member of House Republican leadership. "That's what I tell all my constituents who are worried about this. They won the election. They did run on these ideas. They did run on nationalizing health care." The GOP repeatedly decried Democratic policies during the campaign as socialist and as wealth distribution. Yet voters chose them anyway. A faction of congressional Democrats is pushing to use a budget process known as reconciliation to push through health care reform. Reconciliation means that only a simple majority is needed to pass the bill in the Senate, defanging any GOP filibuster threats. "They have the votes with reconciliation," said Ryan. "They nailed down the process so that they can make sure they have the votes and that they can get this thing through really fast. It is their right. It is what they can do." President Bush used reconciliation to ram through his major tax cuts. Ryan, however, argued that the process isn't intended for major policy overhauls. "Reconciliation this year is being sort of tortured and used for different purposes than what it was originally intended for. That's the point we're trying to make," he said. Watch his interview. Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Nancy Pelosi
 
David Bromwich: Follow the Evidence Top
Barack Obama's initial statement on the torture memos and his remarks at CIA headquarters suggested that the release of the facts of the case would be accompanied by a policy of refraining from prosecutions. That preference was repeated by Rahm Emanuel last weekend in a televised interview on This Week . But the president, in speaking to the press on Tuesday, shifted ground, and while still promising immunity for agents who believed themselves to be operating within the law, he was careful to intimate no such support for the lawyers who worked up new laws in secret to construct an illegal rationale for torture. Yesterday, in testimony before Congress, Hillary Clinton said once more that agents would be spared who had stayed "within the four corners of the law," but willful distortions of legal understanding by drafters of new laws were another matter. Finally today a New York Times story by Charlie Savage reports the categorical statement by Attorney General Eric Holder that "No one is above the law." His department, said Holder, will "follow the evidence wherever it takes us." The adjustment of stance is now definitive, and it is salutary. Yet the process by which the policy changed leads one to speculate about the temperamental qualities that showed so clear a face of ambivalence in President Obama on successive days. He had set the law in one eye and the spirit of conciliation in the other, and for a while imagined that publication of a series of crimes could inaugurate an agreeable national forgetting. He preferred, he said -- he had said it on his website as soon as he was elected -- to look forward and not back. He wished not to appear to score cheap points against his predecessor. And one of the marks of his own political character is an evident distaste for bluster and harangue. The farthest he tips toward the natural temper of the accuser or the unsentimental judge is the exhibited emotion of paternal outrage under firm control. There was also visible in Obama in these days a certain confusion of roles. He has not settled yet into the posture of a leader--a role that carries distinct privileges but also distinct limitations. He slides between a sense of himself as leader, as a popular organizer, and as a national healer. His town meetings on the economy have cast him in the second role; his statement on the release of the torture memos showed him trying out the third. But he did so at a cost to his stature as chief magistrate -- the leader of a constitutional democracy, whose duty it is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." You cannot at once support the laws and issue a preemptive pardon to those who knowingly distort or knowingly break the laws. It is not a matter of looking back or looking forward but of looking at. What have we done as a country over the past eight years? What wrong acts were performed in our name on the pretext of national security? How far have those actions harmed our fame in the world, and how deeply have our institutions been corrupted by a system of concealment devised to perpetuate those actions and to shelter them from inspection? Among those who broke laws by ordering criminal acts, who are those that remain even now in government, and to what extent can they be relied on not to break the laws again? Do Americans understand the Constitution better today than we did in 2002? We : not just secret agents and government officials, but the civilian lawyers in that time of panic who urged such nostrums as "torture warrants" (as Alan Dershowitz did) and representatives who said such things as "I'm OK with it not being pretty" (as Jane Harman said of extreme interrogations). We are at a moment of national inquest. It was not in the president's power to launch and contain it in a single stroke. In an essay well known to the American founders, "That Politics may be Reduced to a Science," David Hume wrote that "A constitution is only so far good, as it provides a remedy against maladministration." Mere knowledge that crimes were committed is not in itself a remedy. It is necessary that the people responsible for acts of maladministration be rooted out and exposed to public opprobrium. If they committed crimes, they ought to be punished just as other citizens are, without any benefit owing to their official status. Praise of the good is meaningless where blame of the bad is prohibited. So long as servile lawyers and compliant executioners, who work in the dark, continue to be sheltered in the dark, every whistle-blower is at risk by his very loyalty to a public good that trusts the light of day. Let us never forget that the Bush-Cheney administration, under the Military Commissions Act of 2006-a law drafted by some of the same parties that devised the rationale for torture-was given the power to seek punishments by secret tribunals against defendants with evidence obtained under torture . We are speaking not about a few mistakes, but an influential distortion of the American constitution, put into practice by military police and military lawyers, after being drafted by government lawyers higher up, all with the consent of both houses of Congress. And the rottenness penetrated deeper down: from the extralegal culture of an administration drawn to adventurism in every realm, to a popular culture whose apparent sources were quite different. A TV show like 24 contributed heavily to the legitimation of sadism. The star of the show, Kiefer Sutherland, son of the actor Donald Sutherland, a famous anti-war activist of the 1960s and 1970s, doubtless squares it with himself by saying that his show is only fiction. But all fictions are influential: we don't try them on in our minds because they mean nothing to us but because they mean something to us. A series like 24 is as morally regressive for Americans as an Arab show would be, playing across the Muslim world, in which every episode ended with the ritual stoning of a woman who had transgressed the law by falling in love with an infidel. The costumes may differ, but under the burnoose and khaki the surrender to violence is just the same. The Bill of Rights outlaws torture, explicitly, in two of its ten amendments, the fifth and the eighth. All Americans ought to know this; and President Obama might take the opportunity to say it some day: it could not hurt his position. "No person," says the fifth amendment, "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Torture is compulsion; its purpose, when used as evidence in a military tribunal, is to compel the prisoner to serve as a witness against himself. As Leonard Levy points out in Origins of the Bill of Rights , the history of this particular right lies in the horror of the American founders at the arbitrariness of Roman law and its legacy of ex officio oaths and coerced confessions. The non-conforming Protestants whose spirit animates the Constitution were looking to assure that nothing in the history of this country would resemble the Star-Chamber proceedings under Charles I. The language of the eight amendment is even plainer: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Writes Levy: "Cruel and unusual punishment referred to methods of punishment as well as their severity; they had to be as swift and painless as possible and in no circumstances involve a lingering death or any form of torture." Any form of torture: let those words stand alone against the hairsplitting sophistries of John Yoo and Jay Bybee. It has sometimes been made a special plea for the contempt of the Bill of Rights in the Bush-Cheney administration that the laws we live by were intended be only for use by citizens. A weaker version of our laws may thus be all we choose to allow to our enemies. But that plea neglects a precedent and suppresses a fact. In previous wars, the rule governing the morale of America toward our enemies has been that "we bring the Constitution with us wherever we go." And indeed, how could we hold ourselves up as models for emulation unless we did so? At the same time, a disturbing feature of the Military Commissions Act has often been forgotten. It gives the president a free hand to declare an American citizen to be an enemy combatant and thereby to deprive a citizen as surely as an alien of rights under the Constitution. A mood of national unity has thus far yielded an impressive indulgence toward the instigators of torture. It has, in fact, led to some curious refusals to blame, even among those who first detected the scandal of the new policies. Thus both Jane Mayer in The Dark Side and Barton Gellman in Angler , as well as Ron Susskind in The One Percent Solution , stood back and declined to draw the inference from their own discoveries that any motive darker than misguided patriotism could have driven the vice president and the president and their lawyers. Jack Goldsmith, who fought against the Yoo-Bybee memoranda behind the scenes, also took this sympathetic line in public. But actions, not motives, have to be the subject of any merely legal investigation. People have reasons for the things they do, and sometimes they do bad things for good reasons. Sometimes also they do bad things for bad reasons. Were the governors and lawyers at the helm of the country beside themselves with perfervid pleasure at the new powers a national disaster had suddenly placed in their hands? It seems wrong to say it that way; but wrong, not because it is false but because it is conjectural. Yet the unkind hypothesis is no more conjectural than the saccharine notion that these men were high exemplars of an unselfish prudence, conscience- stricken by the disaster, and determined to follow the grim dictates of necessity even at the expense of American liberty and American laws. No: the unpleasant story and the pleasant one are equally speculative. The truth about what Bush and Cheney and Addington and Yoo and Cambone and Feith and a handful of others did, must be known before it can be judged, and all that can be judged is the content of their actions. The proof that it was possible to do other or better than they did, was brought out in a Times story today by Scott Shane, who quotes Robert Mueller III, the director of the FBI, an opponent of the permissive laws on torture who forbade collaboration in those laws by his agents. Asked whether any attacks on the United States had been disrupted by intelligence obtained through torture, Mueller said: "I don't believe that has been the case." He later confirmed the statement through a spokesman. But what if torture "works"? The evidence is that it does not, because a man in constant fear under the threat of extreme pain will say anything. But this is a question that opponents of the practice ought to answer directly and without reference to pragmatic concerns. The question is whether we shall or shall not have a law that places a burden of prosecution always against the person who would employ such methods. People will do awful things, and violent things, when their backs are against the wall; we all know this; the question is: shall we have a law that gives permission and clearance? That was always what was at stake, and arguments about degrees of efficacy can only serve to conceal the depth of disagreement over the principle. As John McCain said in a moment for which he can still be remembered with respect: "It's not about who they are. It's about who we are." Romans of the imperial age practiced torture against enemy combatants on an imposing scale of unrestraint. The gloves were really off. Any viewer of the final montage of Kubrick's film of Spartacus will remember the captives of the slave rebellion nailed on their crosses like trees of that peculiar climate. The Christian religion was founded against the empire that did such things. It incorporated into its central symbol the purest revulsion from torture. Can an investigation be pursued without the appearance of political opportunism? The people who are the first to raise that objection are people who will make the charge in any case. They like to speak, in a canting phrase, of "the danger of criminalizing political differences." But the depth of the cynicism in such a statement should surprise us. It suggests that we understand in advance that politics is essentially a criminal activity. If that were so, the United States would have boiled in its own acids long ago. What the objectors are actually worried about is not the criminalizing of political differences, but the politicizing of criminal differences. If a party in power has advanced its interests substantially by criminal means, it may have something to fear from the other party's success in presenting itself as non-criminal. But we are nowhere close to such a millennium; and it may be a cure for skepticism to recall that until this week no American had done more to rouse the conscience of the country against torture than John McCain. More on Barack Obama
 
David Henry Sterry: Derek Zoolander: "I Hate British Singing Sensation Susan Boyle!" Top
British singing sensation Susan Boyle, an unemployed cat owner, has become, as a result of a mere five minutes of singing, an inspiration to millions of people all over the globe, a symbol that anyone with true, genuine talent can have their lifelong dream come true if they just keep trying. It seems like everyone has fallen in love with Susan Boyle, that plucky, spunky, I-won't-change-for-anybody girl-next-door with a big heart and an even bigger voice. Everyone except a man who was once America's most famous supermodel. Derek Zoolander. "I'm really really really pissed off," a source close to Zoolander reports he said, "Why does someone who looks like her get to have all that talent? It's just not fair. And I think I speak for really really really good-looking people everywhere when I say, How come I don't have any talent, how come I can't sing or dance or tell jokes that are humorously funny? But still, I can make many excellent and exciting and sexy faces. Can Susan Boyle make any sexy faces? I don't think so. Is she really really really good looking? No. Am I? Yes. So why is she so much more famous than I am? I'm telling you, it's totally horribly totally not fair." According to a confidant, the ex-famous supermodel has watched Susan Boyle's triumphant rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from the musical Les Miserables over 10,000 times. "He just watches it over and over and over, and looks at himself in the mirror and makes sexy faces and saying stuff like, 'Her features aren't symmetrical. She has a bad haircut. And she hasn't had any cosmetic surgery. My features are awesomely symmetrical. My haircut is super amazing. I had really really really really really great cosmetic surgery. Please, God, why are you forsooking me?' It's quite pitiful, if you want to know the truth. We're thinking of having an intervention, but we're having trouble finding a caterer in our price range." Susan Boyle's 15 minutes of fame shows no signs of ending. And while everyone from Demi Moore to Ashton Kutcher to Oprah Winfrey are embracing her, a member of Derek Zoolander's inner circle claims the former supermodel is bitter and angry. "Is that really the kind of world we want," Zoolander is reported to have said, "where people who are not good-looking get to be famous? This is a way important issue that's more way important than all these bad economy things, or whatever. We have to put our feet down. I don't want the children of tomorrow thinking that it's more important to have talent than it is to be really really really good looking. Anyone who wants to help can send money to the Really Good-looking People of America Fund." More on Sarah Palin
 
Secession Favored By Half Of Texas Republicans: Poll Top
With numbers like these, it's obvious why Texas Gov. Rick Perry is talking secession in the runup to what will be a tough primary battle against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson...
 
Todd Wilkinson: The Return of Citizen King Top
After years of pushing Congress to protect a vast swath of her adopted Northern Rockies, Carole King may finally have a more receptive audience "Hi," she said, extending her hand, almost shyly, "my name is Carole." Sixteen springs ago, I went to Washington D.C. on a writing assignment and met a citizen from the West who had come to testify on Capitol Hill. A green pilgrim transplanted into the red-state boondocks of central Idaho, she had a sincere demeanor, was articulate about the nuances of more than 100 pages of legislation she carried in her satchel, and she spoke, just as she was known to sing, with range and presence. That day long ago, she asked members of Congress to consider the merits of a bill called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). Its chief aim: safeguarding the last significant swath of public wildlands left in the Lower 48. A central focus of the legislation she championed, and in May will appear before Congress again, is restoring the health of public forests toppled by decades of abuse by industrial logging and abandoned taxpayer-subsidized roads that have left behind a spaghetti pattern of visual scars across the American backcountry. The message then, as now, is not to banish humans, 0but to put unemployed citizens to work as healers. The idea, in some ways, is borrowed from the New Deal workforces created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression. The name of the activist who bent my ear was Carole King. For you youngsters out there, your Baby Boomer and GenX parents can tell you about King and the 1971 blockbuster album of hits she composed and sang called Tapestry. The album, which sold 24 million copies, is being re-released with enhanced fidelity, giving King the stage again. A four-time Grammy winner, she and her former partner, Gerry Goffin, are rare inductees into both the Songwriting AND Rock and Roll Hall of Fames, giving King shared company with the likes of George Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, Francis Scott Key, Duke Ellington, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles. Once, she delivered a command performance in Central Park that, at that time, drew the largest crowd for a pop concert ever assembled in the middle of Manhattan. King went to the nation's capital because she wanted to use her voice in another way. She looked me in the eye and, with a Capra-esque gleam, said: "I take the role of citizenship seriously, don't you?" NREPA made its debut in 1993 and has been introduced in every session of Congress since. Today, in these different times, it assumes far greater currency. Anyone who listens to the bombastic, retrograde voices on AM talk radio knows the level of tone deafness assumed by the deniers of global warming. They are the same people who have attempted to blockade legislation like NREPA. Ironically, despite the cult of celebrity worship that Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage gleefully court for themselves, they derive a sneering glee in trying to discredit ecologically-minded progressives linked to the entertainment industry who promote anything green. Typically, their rant is that environmentalists who happen to cut their teeth in Hollywood are all flaky, uninformed airheads decoupled from the realities and rewards of capitalism. King, who could be considered a model of capitalistic entrepreneurship, left the limelight of her career by choice, at the top of her game, and built a retreat in central Idaho seeking seclusion and a closer connection to nature. The very same forces that pulled her into the wild West had worked the same magic on Robert Redford, who founded The Sundance institute in Utah, and has used it as an effective stage for promoting landscape protection. When King, 67, returned to Capital Hill recently, I remembered what she told me in 1993. She doesn't fancy herself as a hell-raiser but rather a strategist who became intrigued with the vision of a grassroots conservation organization called The Alliance For The Wild Rockies ( www.wildrockiesalliance.org ) based in Missoula, Montana. Realizing that conservation, when approached in piecemeal fashion, often doesn't work, the Alliance drafted NREPA in concert with leading scientists and economists and identified a vast swatch of the West between Wyoming's Red Desert and the Canadian border as a unique eco-region. Indeed, the bill applies to five states (Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, eastern Oregon and Washington). Big and brash in its ambition, NREPA was initially met with horror by the formerly powerful timber and mining industries, much the same way that Western politicians and titans of natural resource extraction dismissed preservation plans advanced by people like John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Among the earlier "extremist" concepts that prevailed over local opposition: Creating and growing a system of national parks to protect crown jewels such as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Teton, and the Grand Canyon, preserving for future generations the last great groves of sequoias and redwoods, and blueprinting a network of wildlife refuges, all of which today are the envy of the world and represent sustainable engines for economies on small town Main Streets. Despite suffering setbacks, King has been irrepressible. She has put NREPA on the radar screen of the Obama Administration and spoken to Vice President Joe Biden about its elements; she's won support from Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 signed the unprecedented Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and she has leaned on friends like Redford, singers James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, global warming activist Laurie David, and Arianna Huffington to help spread the word. Building on public awareness that has expanded thanks to full page ads in The New York Times , Roll Call and Congressional Quarterly, 50,000 postcards handed out at rocker Steve Miller's "Concerts for the Environment" tour and 75,000 signatures gathered in a petition, NREPA's profile has never been higher and many believe that this session of Congress is its best chance for getting a full, fair hearing. When rural folk in my corner of the West [Montana] heard that King supported NREPA, the response was a predictable blast of redneck ferocity, though every critic I spoke with loves the songs King had written. Knee-jerk, they claimed NREPA would cost jobs, destroy livelihoods, rob citizens of private property rights, and "lock people out of the woods." The fear mongering would have merit, if only it were true. The current Great Recession has eliminated more jobs and destroyed more livelihoods than any alleged green bogeyman ever could. A few years ago, now retired Republican Congresswoman Barbara Cubin of Wyoming asserted that NREPA was "an assault on our Western way of life." Her late colleague, Republican Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, who famously declared that her favorite kind of salmon resided in cans not wild streams and oceans, portrayed NREPA as "unthinkable." With jocular flair, opponents painted King as a wealthy, elitist interloper--the coup de grace of chauvinistic insult being that she was a mere WOMAN who didn't know what she was talking about. One logger told me: "In 10 years, trust me, she'll be gone. She won't have the staying power." Sixteen years later, it's true that King has friends in Hollywood, plenty of them, just as Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston did. But contrary to how right-wing radio delights in portraying green activists on the Left Coast, there's nothing aloof about King or her allies who recognized the world is different from when NREPA was first conceived. Now, more than ever, the economic and ecological dividends of nature are recognized. You cannot have a wealthy country and an impoverished landscape. "There are psychological benefits to human beings of vast, wild places," King says. "They replenish the human spirit and give us sanctuary from an increasingly stressful world. Wilderness stops time. We need more, not fewer, place were we can stop time." She adds that tens of millions of Americans also get their clean water from headwater sources high in the mountains that NREPA is designed to protect. In these difficult times, which echo of the past, King says good questions are being asked by both parties in Washington D.C., not only about how much taxpayer money should be spent, and where to generate stimulus, but equally as urgent is identifying where dollars can be saved. The departed Congresswoman Chenoweth described NREPA as unthinkable. The fact is, we have been thrust into an age where we've been forced to confront numerous once unimaginables through such events as: the collapse of the stock market and the entire U.S. economy, the scale of swindling perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Only months ago, vociferous debates on Capitol Hill were waged over a billion dollars. Now few seem to blink when taxpayers are asked to spend hundreds of times that amount. The $300 MILLION needed to implement NREPA would not come from a new appropriation but by shifting priorities in the agencies charged with stewarding the lands in question: the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish & Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs. On the face of it, NREPA is no less radical than the actions taken by Californians, and spearheaded by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to regulate auto emissions more aggressively than the federal government and develop a carbon market--actions that set the standard as the U.S. prepares to address the human causes of climate change King says that previous antagonists of NREPA, who today are attacking the Obama Administration and waging Tea Parties, should actually love NREPA's classic conservative ideals. When King appeared on Capitol Hill this February, she was thinking of the future, health and well being of her daughters and four grandchildren. The 149 pages outlining NREPA (read the legislation at: thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.980 ) were introduced to the 111th Congress by U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney from New York City and Raul Grijalva of Arizona, both of them Democrats, though NREPA has enjoyed support from many fiscally conservative Republicans. NREPA, Maloney say, is worth debating because it protects "resources by drawing wilderness boundaries according to science, not politics." Grijalva was rumored to be on the short list of candidates Obama considered for Interior Secretary. The cabinet post was ultimately given to former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado. Either way, the upshot is that Latino Americans have their own green role models in the nation's capital. Grijalva presides as chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands. It is the first time the chairman of this subcommittee has served as a primary NREPA co-sponsor. He also authored a stinging report last fall outlining alleged ethical abuses by the Bush Administration in allowing resource extraction industries to shape the management agenda on half a billion acres of public land, including ecologically destructive development of oil and natural gas development. So, what is the "Western way of life" described by Barbara Cubin? Enormous sums of public money have been allocated, largely unscrutinized, by Congress over the last several decades to essentially subsidize companies and destructive land use practices in the West that may deliver jobs and votes over short periods of time but the activities haven't proved to be sustainable, King says. Worse, taxpayers, as a result of that approach, have had to step forward time and again to fix ecological harm caused by taxpayer-subsidized forestry, mining and road building practices, notes Thomas M. Power, professor emeritus and former chairman of the economics department at the University of Montana. Two years ago, Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg of Montana said his office polled constituents who told him they were overwhelmingly opposed to NREPA. Many of his constituents are on the receiving end of federal subsidies. Legion to the resistance is this response: "NREPA takes a top-down approach that doesn't account for the impacts on the local economy, nor does it adequately protect access for hunting, fishing and other forms of recreation," Rehberg says. Despite what Congressman Rehberg contends, King notes the Congressman has it backwards. Prosperity flows from the grassroots and it is evident in the hundreds of mom and pop businesses that support NREPA. People around the world come to the Rockies and spend billions of dollars because of its wild character. In study after study, research shows that communities with an abundance healthy public landscapes are among the fastest growing in the West, are magnets for company relocation, have some of the highest private property values, the best public access to hunting and fishing, and are poised for faster recovery than towns subject to boom and bust. Clearly, King notes, the Congressman did not poll a growing list of national resource economists who note that there is not a single example of where conservation has, ever, over time, damaged a local economy. Another assertion is that NREPA is anti-logging and would serve as the death knell for the commercial wood products industry. Today, 80 percent of the mills that existed when NREPA was first introduced are gone, rendering that argument moot. As King's longtime activist friends Steve Kelly, an artist from Bozeman who once ran for Congress) and NREPA founder Mike Bader, say, lack of timber supply wasn't the cause of the wood product industry's demise. American markets were flooded by cheap wood flowing across the border from Canada causing its own serious ecological problems for our neighbors to the north. Most American mills also reduced their human workforces, the same as the steel, manufacturing, and auto industries did, in favor of mechanization, and some timber companies got out of the tree-cutting business altogether and turned their private property into real estate plays. NREPA, Kelly says, is actually pro-forestry on a micro level, but not at the industrial strength levels of yesteryear. The best opportunities for creating jobs are with smaller family-owned operations that deliver value-added products and can be enlisted in forest thinning projects to prevent wildfire, enhance habitat for wildlife, and manage forests to achieve huge societal dividends, such as absorbing carbon dioxide that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere and accelerate climate change. Principally, NREPA has four objectives: ° Formally protect nearly 23 million acres of publicly owned national parks and forests as federal wilderness areas, many of which already are off limits to incursion from logging, mining, and road building. A point King likes to make is that NREPA has Progressive ideas reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt and fiscally conservative prescriptions for land management. For example, the Forest Service is beset with a multi-billion dollar backlog in road maintenance. Thousands of miles of old logging roads are crumbling, some of them spawning mudslides on mountain slopes that were stripped bare of their trees at the height of the industrial forestry era. The erosion sends tons of silt20cascading into streams, choking habitat for trout, and impairing drinking water downstream. By diverting costly and ineffective road maintenance funds to conservation endeavors, economists say it would save the U.S. treasury $245 million over 10 years, according to Alliance for the Wild Rockies executive director Michael Garrity, who is also an economist. In the waning hours of the Clinton
 

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