Wednesday, April 29, 2009

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IAC Shares Surge Despite $28M Loss Top
NEW YORK — The recession took a bite out of IAC/InterActiveCorp in the first quarter, as revenue fell 22 percent in the Internet company's media and advertising unit, which includes the Ask.com search engine. Shares of IAC advanced 69 cents, or 4.3 percent, to close at $16.65 Wednesday, however, as investors likely found solace in the fact that IAC slightly exceeded revenue estimates and said it bought back stock during the quarter. The New York-based company, headed by Barry Diller, said that in the first three months it lost $28.4 million, or 19 cents per share. This compares with a profit of $52.8 million, or 38 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. However, that quarter included income from operations that IAC has since spun off _ home shopping network HSN Inc., time-share business Interval Leisure Group Inc., ticketing service Ticketmaster and lending and real estate business Tree.com Inc. Excluding special items, IAC lost 2 cents per share. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a profit of 1 cent per share. IAC said revenue fell 10 percent to $332 million, better than the $330 million analysts expected. The harsh advertising climate, being felt across the media industry, also led to declines at IAC's online city guide Citysearch. Besides being hurt by the economy, revenue in IAC's media and advertising unit was decreased by IAC's decision to remove "toolbars" and search boxes from non-IAC sites and place them mostly on its own sites. The company makes more money from putting these on its own sites, and started this shift last year after renewing a deal through which Google Inc. sells ads on IAC sites. Revenue at IAC's Match unit, which includes the Match.com and Chemistry.com dating sites, dipped 1 percent to $90.1 million even though Match's paid subscribers rose 6 percent to 1.4 million. Revenue per subscriber dipped 15 percent in international markets because of strength in the dollar. That means transactions done in other currencies translate into fewer dollars. During a conference call with analysts, Diller said IAC has had discussions with Yahoo Inc. about acquiring that company's personal-ads business. "Whether (the discussions) will go anywhere or not is, of course, enormously speculative," he said. "But I think Yahoo has said it's not an absolute core asset to their future, and it is core to us, personals." A Yahoo spokeswoman said the company had no comment. As in the prior quarter, IAC saw growth in two units. Revenue in emerging businesses, a unit that includes Web sites like ShoeBuy and RushmoreDrive.com, a search engine focused on the black community, rose 1 percent to $44 million. And ServiceMagic, which runs Web sites that match homeowners with home-improvement contractors, saw revenue climb 8 percent to $31.4 million. RBC Capital Markets analyst Ross Sandler said the overall report was pretty much what he expected. "The environment's tough, but they're hitting numbers," he said. IAC bought back 3 million shares during the quarter at an average price of $15.15 per share _ something Sandler called a nice surprise. "If the company, having not bought back stock for a couple years, is now saying, `Our stock at these levels is attractive and we're finally putting money back to work here,' that sends a nice positive signal to the market," he said. IAC also said Wednesday that it had acquired local restaurant guide Urbanspoon in February for an undisclosed amount. Besides operating Web restaurant guides across a number of cities, Urbanspoon offers a popular free application for Apple Inc.'s iPhone.
 
Donald Trump To Appear On "The View" For First Time Since Feud Top
NEW YORK — Celebrity feuds can't last forever when there is publicity to be had. Just ask Donald Trump and Barbara Walters. Trump is booked to appear next Tuesday on Walters' daytime show "The View." He will promote a book and the season finale of "The Apprentice." Trump gets publicity, while Walters lands an attention-getting guest during a ratings sweeps month. He hasn't been on the show since he got in the middle of Rosie O'Donnell's ugly exit from "The View" two years ago. He told reporters that Walters had said that she was happy O'Donnell had been fired, which Walters denied publicly. The two broke the ice when Trump appeared on Walters' satellite radio show a few weeks ago. More on The View
 
New Dem Specter Votes No On Obama's Budget Top
It didn't take long for Sen. Arlen Specter to let his new colleagues in the Democratic Party know that his vote won't be taken for granted. A day after abandoning the Republican Party for the Democrats, saying the latter better represented his political philosophy, Specter voted against President Obama's budget -- which he and other Democrats have described as a manifestation of the party's political philosophy. Specter was greeted warmly by his new fellow party members on his way into the chamber. "Welcome," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), extending his hand when he saw Specter exit the elevator. Specter was joined in his opposition to the president by the entire GOP. Not a single Senate Republican voted to support the budget. Sen. Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska, also voted no. It passed 53-43. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Arlen Specter
 
Few Illinois Gays Rushing To Marry In Iowa: Tribune Top
Rather than head to Iowa, many same-sex couples in Chicago who want to marry seem content to wait until they can legally wed in Illinois, demonstrating a sense of optimism about the issue once unheard of in the gay and lesbian community. More on Gay Marriage
 
A Guide: Where The Bailout Money Has Gone And Where It Came From Top
It's enough to boggle the mind. If all goes well, it'll be enough to help the economy recover. The US government has deployed more than $3 trillion in an all-out effort to resolve a financial crisis and end a recession. It is acting as lender of last resort, investor of last resort, and consumer of last resort. More on Global Financial Crisis
 
Stephen H. Dinan: A Time for Transpartisanship Top
Yesterday's news about Arlen Specter changing parties, likely leading to a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate, has Democrats justifiably elated about the possibilities to move through bolder legislation. Some jubilation is justified but we need to be careful not to neglect a still deeper need for our country -- to heal our fractious political process and move beyond partisan bickering in a way that leads both major parties to work collaboratively on creating the best solutions for the American people rather than simply jockeying for power. The challenges we face are too vast to handle from one side of the ideological aisle alone; it's an all hands-on-deck moment in history. The final decisive tipping of the power scales to the Democrats can thus mark the shift from an era of partisan horse-trading to transpartisan collaboration on solutions. The former is an era of politics by force; the dominant party simply jams its ideological agenda down the throat of the other. Or, when blocked, that party offers pork-style concessions that don't benefit the American people. This style of politics soured the American people on our government, undermined our sense of hope and created divides in what should be one, united American people. So long as the Republicans held the filibuster wildcard after the last election, there was still an opportunity to drag out the era of politics by force. Now that they are about to lose that option, they need to refocus on influence, ideas, and creative solutions that strengthen legislative initiatives. In other words, they need to win points on merit rather than strong-arm tactics. If party leaders toss ideological grenades rather than generate solutions, the respect of America people for them will dwindle. The Democrats, on the other hand, need to demonstrate that they can do two things simultaneously. First, advance the legislative mandates for which the American people have elected them. And second, to wield considerable power in a way that is respectful and honoring of other political positions and thus acts to heal the political civil war we've been living through. This stance welcomes the ideas, input and creativity of other parties rather than ignoring them on ideological grounds. The Democrats thus need to evolve the political culture of Washington in the next two years, as well as turn America around economically and psychologically. Gloating, lording power over Republicans, or ignoring input and ideas other parties will perpetuate the political warfare. Wounds that fester now erupt later, to the detriment of us all. That is why now is the historical moment when we need a strong national transpartisan movement, such as is offered by ReunitingAmerica.org, a group co-founded by former Republican politico Joseph McCormick who recognized the deep healing needed in our political process after seeing the ways the warfare tore his own life apart. In recent years, they have had succeeded in bringing together an Energy Security summit, with Al Gore convening key progressive leaders and Grover Norquist convening key conservative leaders in a search for improved dialogue and better solutions. MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition found enough common ground from a similar gathering to produce a joint newspaper ad on net neutrality. The group has recently shifted from a leadership-only focus to creating a grassroots Transpartisan Alliance. I attended a gathering in Berkeley last night that is focused on piloting a Transpartisan Alliance movement in the Bay Area. The goal is to have skilled local facilitators help us move beyond polarized political identities to identify shared values and common purposes, so that we can ultimately generate a more holistic approach to democracy. It was a hopeful group filled with both left-leaning and right-leaning people, all with important ideas about how to ignite a transpartisan movement, from developing toolboxes to citizen summits. I believe that the strong tilt in national power towards the Democrats can offer a window for this transpartisan work to gain traction and lead to the healing of partisan wounds and the building of effective bridges of collaboration. Doing this at a personal, local level is essential, as is doing it on a national level. As each of us finds greater political wholeness, integrating the perspectives of the other "side" into our own, we can work more effectively on the truly daunting problems facing our country. The less creative energy we waste in political friction, the more effectively we can create the next evolution of our country -- a whole systems shift that stretches from the grassroots to the White House. If you feel called to play a leadership role in building such a movement, I encourage you to contact Joseph McCormick at jmccormick@reunitingamerica.org . More on Arlen Specter
 
Michael Rowe: What An Ogress You Are, Congresswoman Foxx Top
The comments made today by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) during the House of Representatives debate on the expansion of hate crimes legislation to include, among other things, sexual orientation and gender identity, suggests that a new strain of swine flu is sweeping the Republican Party---a morally porcine variant. Thus far, its symptoms include a Tourette-like impulse to horrify, and a predilection for politically expedient revisionism at whatever moral cost. Addressing the House, Rep. Foxx claimed that the murder of Matthew Shepard, widely perceived to be the most famous gay bashing hate crime in recent American history, was in fact a "hoax," perpetrated by activists eager to pass "these bills." Politico reports that according to a senior Democratic aide, Matthew Shepard's mother, anti-hate crimes activist Judy Shepard, was in the gallery watching when Rep. Foxx said, "I also would like to point out that there was a bill -- the hate crimes bill that's called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn't because he was gay. This -- the bill was named for him, hate crimes bill was named for him, but it's really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills," she said. According to reports in the New York Times , Matthew Shepard was lured from a bar in the early hours of October 7th 1998 on the pretext of a seduction, then kidnapped, tortured, burned, beaten, then tied to a fence for 18 hours in near-freezing temperatures till a passing cyclist eventually spotted him. He died a lingering death a few days later on October 12th. His killers, Aaron J. McKinney and Russell A. Henderson, admitted that they targeted Shepard because was gay. At trial, McKinney's attempt to use the "homosexual panic" defense (essentially that Shepard's homosexuality so distressed and enraged his murderers that they had no choice but to kill him) was thrown out by the judge. The two were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. That Rep. Foxx (herself a mother and grandmother who, according to her gushing MySpace profile, "enjoy[s] gardening, attending church and spending high quality time with their two grandchildren") would, in 2009, refer to Matthew Shepard's murder as an "unfortunate incident" in the presence of his mother , or use this particular murder ---this internationally known and recognized murder --- as her personal fistful of offal flung on Matthew Shepard's memory during the House hate crimes debate, seems not only obscene, but also demonstrates the increasing desperation of the ultra-conservative wing of the GOP as their hold on what they think of as the moral high ground in America crumbles to dust. It's as though Rep. Foxx and her colleagues don't understand that in the age of the Internet and mass media, people don't "forget" the facts of cases like the Shepard murder, and seems unaware that if she's is going to stand up in the House of Representatives and proclaim right-wing lunatic-fringe urban legends to be facts --- for instance calling Shepard's murder "a hoax" --- it will only serve to make her and her party look malevolent, clueless, and inbred. It suggests the scraping of the very bottom of a moral slop bucket, politically and personally. It suggests the transient nature of "family values," and that perhaps dragging Matthew Shepard's memory through the mud in front of his mother was somehow worth it in order to make sure that "immoral" people like Shepard and his kind don't receive posthumous "special rights" due to their "lifestyle choices." And judging by the virulent opposition among the religious right to this expansion of the definition of a hate crime, it suggests, among other things, a by now sickeningly familiar potential for smug cruelty masquerading as Christian morality. It hardly seems necessary to add that the Matthew Shepard murder and its outcome was a shot heard round the world, one which sparked debate and dialogue in several countries including the United States on the necessity of not only acknowledging, but also punishing, hate crimes. The Matthew Shepard Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives today with a vote of 247 in favor to 175 against, ushering in yet another sign of the changing face of American society, one that suggests hope for an inclusive future. I'd like to imagine the feelings of Judy Shepard as the hate crimes bill named after her murdered son passed the House in the presence of the woman whose contribution to the passage of that law was to attempt to besmirch his memory with ugly distortions. But judging by Congresswoman Foxx's preposterous comments earlier in the day, I doubt she felt much besides a peevish sense that her side lost one more battle in what they like to call "the culture war." I rather suspect that calling bigotry and hate by their proper names is still news in Mrs. Foxx's private, personal, dark corner of North Carolina, where it's clearly still a cold October night in 1998. More on GOP
 
Reid's Specter Deal: Dem Senators Not Pleased Top
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) deal to allow Sen. Arlen Specter to retain his seniority after he switches to the Democratic Conference has not been received well by senior senators in the party. Several Democrats are furious with Reid for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep the seniority accrued over more than 28 years as a Republican senator. That could allow him to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels -- including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees. More on Arlen Specter
 
How Glenn Beck Is On Track For An $18 Million Year Top
...as [Glenn] Beck was growing into stardom at Headline News, he built a media operation that stretches from radio to the web to concert halls and convention centers. Throw in the second piece of a $3 million book deal with Simon and Schuster, and the voice of the conservative opposition is on track to have an $18 million year.
 
Dan Pashman: Swine Flu's Next Stop: The Pantheon of Stillborn Pandemics Top
SARS must be rolling over in its grave. Along comes swine flu, a second-rate pretender to the SARS throne, and you'd think it was the second coming of the Black Death. Suddenly we are besieged, not by a large number of people who are actually sick, but by a large number of people who would really like us to take our temperatures one more time, just to be on the safe side. Swine flu will soon take its place in the Pantheon of Stillborn Pandemics. This one doesn't even have a very good name. West Nile sounded vaguely African, which made it vaguely menacing to most Americans. Ditto Ebola. Swine flu is a little better than avian flu, which clearly switched publicists midstream, because it was also called bird flu, and then the annoyingly redundant "avian bird flu." But none of them holds a candle to SARS, which managed to enter a new term into the lexicon. Do you remember what it stands for? Neither do I. Who cares? It's like that symbol that Prince used for his name for a while. Nobody knows what it means, which makes it even more badass. But swine flu just sounds like the flu. And what does the Centers for Disease Control recommend we do to avoid contracting this porcine menace? Wash our hands, and cover our noses and mouths when we sneeze. Easy there CDC, don't bring out the big guns so early in a crisis. If that's really their solution, how serious could this be? What will they recommend next, a temporary moratorium on the Ten Second Rule? Meanwhile Mexican health officials are telling residents of Mexico City to avoid large crowds. Good luck with that. You live in Mexico City. I don't mean to downplay the deaths in Mexico. I think it's a tragedy whenever people in (barely) developing countries die of preventable illnesses. But that's exactly what this is--a preventable illness. I think it's horrible that so many people in Africa die of mosquito bites, but that doesn't mean I'm scared of mosquitoes. Any swine flu deaths are tragic, but the lack of perspective here is maddening. At the time of this writing, swine flu has not killed a single American. (The 23-month-old in Texas was a Mexican child who apparently got sick in Mexico.) Even if swine flu eventually kills hundreds of Americans, it still won't be nearly as lethal as the regular flu, which has killed thousands of Americans already this year, just like it does every year. In fact swine flu would have to kill 36,000 Americans in a year just to be as deadly as the regular flu, and even then it wouldn't be as lethal as driving in a car . (For a more thorough explanation of why you shouldn't be worried about swine flu, click here .) Unfortunately for the US media, and Americans jonesing for a fear high, the facts aren't sufficiently scary, so they've latched onto the death count coming out of Mexico--152 "suspected deaths" at last headline--even though the World Health Organization has only confirmed swine flu in a small fraction of those cases. One of the reasons that "outbreaks" like this make for such wonderful cable news fodder is that they open the door to a discussion of Worst Case Scenarios, which are usually infinitely more compelling than reality. So much of cable news works this way. Whether it's the high speed police chase through the residential neighborhood, the small plane attempting to touch down without landing gear, or the wildfire that's dangerously close to the mansions, cable news loves nothing more than to ask, "What if...?" What if swine flu mutates into an uberflu that can't be stopped? What if it triggers a series of cytokine storms? ( Look it up. ) What if a traveling band of thousands of infected schoolchildren goes to an airport, gets passengers sick, and those passengers transmit the disease all over the world? What if there isn't enough medicine? What if there aren't enough doctors? What if we can't eat bacon anymore? Of course the worst case scenario rarely, if ever, becomes reality. But that doesn't stop some from hoping! Eventually though, cable news anchors and Americans riding their fear buzz will have to prepare themselves for their worst case scenario: a stillborn pandemic.
 
Obama's Stand In Auto Crisis Shows Early Resolve: CNBC Top
By the time he sat down in the Oval Office to brief Michigan's Congressional delegation, President Obama had made up his mind. Days earlier, he had decided to oust the head of General Motors and give it and Chrysler weeks to fix themselves. If they could not, he was prepared to let them go bankrupt, a prospect fraught with economic and political repercussions. More on Barack Obama
 
'JON AND KATE' DAD Fights Infidelity Rumors: 'I Showed Poor Judgment' Top
Reality star Jon Gosselin is firing back at reports that he has been stepping out on his wife Kate, whose lives with their eight children are showcased on TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8. "Like most people, I have male and female friends and I'm not going to end my friendships just because I'm on TV," he says in a statement. "However, being out with them late at night showed poor judgment on my part. What makes me sick is that my careless behavior has put my family in this uncomfortable position. My family is the most important thing in my life and it kills me that these allegations have hurt them."
 
David Suissa: Mind-State Solution Top
I'm not sure, but I think I have a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least another way of looking at it. It hit me the other day after I broke bread at Pat's Restaurant with some people connected to Americans for Peace Now, a leftist Jewish organization that actively promotes the two-state solution. Now, you should know that whenever I hear the words "peace now," something inside of me cringes. I have never understood how Israel could make peace now with an enemy that hates her no matter what she does. Over the years, I've asked this question of a number of people across the ideological spectrum: "If Israel dismantled all the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, would it stop Palestinian hostility and violence toward Israel?" I never once got a yes. Why? I think it's because most people intuitively understand that dismantling settlements is not the same thing as dismantling hatred. The hatred that has been taught for years in Palestinian schools and summer camps, through television shows and billboards and in mosques is not just aimed at Jewish settlers but at all Jews and at all of Israel. This kind of hatred is too deep to be washed away by well-meaning gestures. So I came to my Peace Now lunch with some apprehension -- and a lot of prejudice. I can't say I connected ideologically with my lunchmates, but I did end up connecting emotionally. The reason was that I trusted their deep commitment to Israel and their sincerity in their search for peace. There was something very Jewish about their attitude toward the conflict. First, the idea of hope, of never giving up. Where would the Jews be today if we didn't have hope? There was also the idea of taking responsibility for our situation -- of not blaming others for our fate. Again, where would the Jewish nation be today without that character trait? My peace-loving lunch companions are not naive. They know about the spread of Jewish hatred in Palestinian society, and they understand the fear many of us have that a Palestinian state could easily become a terrorist state. But they believe the ideals of peace and a two-state solution are so valuable to Jews and to Israel that it is worth pursuing relentlessly, even if it means paying a significant price. It's this idea of paying a price for peace that made a lightbulb go off. For nearly two decades, Israel has gone to one failed peace meeting after another with this question in mind: How much are we willing to pay for peace? In doing so, they have acted as if the Palestinians actually have something to sell. Apparently, no one ever stood up during one of those meetings to say to the Israelis: "Wait a minute, you're not the buyers, you're the sellers!" Why sellers? Because everyone knows that when Israel signs an agreement with an Arab country, it is capable of honoring it. On the other hand, it's no secret that the Palestinians, with or without Hamas, are in no position to deliver peace to Israel. It follows that if any party should be selling, it is Israel. Yet, incredibly, it is always the reverse: The Palestinians are selling a peace they can't deliver, while the Israelis are buying a peace that doesn't exist. Is it any wonder that all the peace plans keep failing? That groups like Peace Now keep banging their heads against the wall, hoping that more concessions from Israel will somehow bring us closer to that elusive solution? The problem with pressuring Israel to buy peace through concessions is that it perpetuates the illusion that the Palestinians have something to sell. What the peace process needs more than anything is for the Palestinians to be able to deliver their end of the bargain. Until that happens, any question of creating a Palestinian state is moot. My solution? Have the sides switch roles or mind-states. Israelis should act like "peace owners," and Palestinians should act like "peace buyers." With a buyer mentality, Palestinians will be more likely to make their own offers, rather than passively rejecting Israeli offers, which is what they often do. As buyers, Palestinians would also learn that Israel needs a minimum security deposit: Stop teaching Jew-hatred to your children. Palestinians can't offer peace while they're teaching war. Tragically, the anti-incitement clause was the great ignored clause of Oslo -- so for more than 15 years, Palestinian society fell back on its habit of demonizing Jews, which contributed to the growth of terrorism and rejectionist forces like Hamas. Israel is hardly blameless in this picture, and it has made its share of mistakes. But settlements or no settlements, the fact remains that the great majority of Israeli Jews have been more than ready to pay a huge price for peace, including evacuating most of the West bank. Had the Palestinians been smart, had they taken more responsibility for their situation and developed a culture of co-existence, they would have long ago made Israel an offer it couldn't refuse. They would have called Israel's bluff and made the process real. Instead, we've all been treated to the continuing and sorry spectacle of global diplomats parachuting into Jerusalem to coax adversaries into yet another round of the "let's play peace process" game. Leading the latest charge is our new can-do president, who believes that a solution is possible if only the U.S. becomes more "engaged." He will soon learn that no amount of American engagement or Israeli concessions can undo the reality that for the foreseeable future, the Palestinians are utterly incapable of delivering peace to Israel. All this, of course, is very sobering for those of us who fear for the future of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. Going forward, the one thing we can be sure of is that groups like Peace Now will continue to pressure Israel to make concessions, and people like me will lament that the whole process is upside down. More on Hamas
 
Afghan Donkey 'Suicide' Bomber Used On Patrol Top
A senior British army officer and six other military personnel survived when a tethered donkey laden with explosives was detonated as their armoured vehicle passed in southern Afghanistan. More on Afghanistan
 
Talking Dirty: Congressman Reads Long List Of Sex Acts Not In Hate Crimes Bill (VIDEO) Top
Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) likely set a congressional record Thursday for the most sexual terms mentioned in one speech on the House floor. "I apologize to our transcriber, but I want to put into the record what we have to put up with in the Rules Committee," says Hastings, who then goes on to read a long, long, long list of sexual behavior that is specifically not protected by hate crimes legislation that passed the House Thursday. Watch: The bill does extend protection to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals.
 
Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Would Replace CEO With Fiat Management Top
Chrysler chief executive Robert Nardelli would be replaced by the management of Italian automaker Fiat under a bankruptcy plan that the United States is preparing for the storied automaker, sources familiar with the matter said. While the government is holding out hope that the bankruptcy could be averted at the 11th hour, the administration has detailed plans in which the ownership of Chrysler would be dramatically reordered and the company would receive billions more in aid from the United States and Canada, where the company has substantial operations, industry sources said.
 
My Own Green Zone Top
By Peter Holley, Huffington Post Contributor The two men on the television screen trotted across a grassy roundabout as they unleashed staccato bursts of machine-gun fire. They were eerily deliberate in their movements, pausing only to reload their guns. Beneath bullet-ridden police trucks and ambulances streams of blood and gasoline collected in dark pools. A man's body lay several yards away. "Sri Lankan Cricket team attacked in Pakistan" the crawler on the bottom of the screen declared. My eye was caught by a distinct black and yellow painted curb, then by a familiar-looking bed of freshly planted flowers arranged in geometric shapes. But it was the, bright, well-maintained grass in the roundabout's center, a rarity in Pakistan's parched, concrete cities, which erased any lingering doubt. This was my old Lahore neighborhood, where I'd spent nine months last year, a place that I had considered safe. Now my personal "green zone," where I'd retreated during hot summer evenings to sip sugar cane juice with friends, was the target of a brazen, Mumbai-style terrorist attack. I was stunned. I had gone to Pakistan to work at an English-language newspaper on December 27, 2007, the day Benazir Bhutto was killed. The former prime minister, and head of Pakistan's most popular political party, had recently returned to Pakistan after nearly a decade in exile to reclaim her throne. When my plane touched down in Lahore, a dusty metropolis of 10 million, I expected to find a country on the verge of chaos. Instead, I found a country of relative calm, where minarets and McDonalds existed side by side. Businesses were closed and the streets were quiet. Only the incessant, slow motion tributes to the fallen leader broadcast on television day and night reminded me that something was amiss. Lahore, I was told by locals, lacked Karachi's lawlessness and Peshawar's unpredictability. For my own sanity, perhaps, I assumed this was true. I moved into a house on a quiet block in a planned neighborhood of military families and upper-middle-class Lahoris. The streets were arranged in numerical rows of two-story concrete homes and rundown shopping centers that sold cell phones, pornography, electronics and bootleg DVDs of the latest American films. Any concerns I had for my safety were allayed by the familiar detritus of American mass culture. Young men packed themselves inside tiny internet cafes to update their Facebook pages and download pictures of Pamela Anderson. Greasy pizza and fried chicken take-out joints were wildly popular. If you ignored the goat herds and children picking through trash, the neighborhood more closely resembled a rundown Jersey strip mall than "the most dangerous place on earth," as pundits frequently refer to Pakistan. Beyond my neighborhood another, more volatile, Pakistan emerged. But over time, even the guards holding assault rifles outside private homes or standing watch at local restaurants faded into the chaotic scenery of the city. So, too, did the child beggars and muted masses warehoused in damp, labyrinthine slums. At the International Club, one of the only places in town that offered American staples like beer, bacon and swimming, I stopped noticing the concrete blast walls at the entrance. When a foolhardy co-worker swiped a shotgun from the guard outside one morning, bursting into the office and cocking it for effect, everybody laughed and went back to work. My first brush with terrorism occurred on a warm morning last March when the aftershock from a suicide blast landed with a thud against my window, rousing me from sleep. I stumbled through the back door and scrambled up to the roof wearing only a pair of gym shorts. Hundreds of frightened vultures flew erratically towards the horizon. In the distance, sirens blared and a white mushroom cloud rose above the trees. I hopped into a rickshaw, water-bugging through traffic, narrowly avoiding fruit vendors. At the scene of the blast I walked through the rubble, taking pictures of snapped tree trunks and housessliced in half. When my adrenaline died down I couldn't help but admire the crude force of the blast. It felt more like a natural disaster than anything a human being could have created. Even then, with all this devastation staring me in the face, the possibility of violence felt distant, confined to a few unlucky blocks in an alien part of the city. The explosive boom of a suicide bombing shook the Lahori skyline almost once a month last spring, but normality continually reasserted itself and the threat of violence seemed an afterthought, particularly in my protective enclave. In the ultra-modern homes of wealthy feudal landlords, Pakistan's ruling class threw lavish parties. To my utter surprise, young men and women drank alcohol, danced to American hip-hop and snorted cocaine on marble counter tops. American diplomats were no different, turning their home's sparsely furnished living rooms into drunken dance floors, where politically connected Pakistanis, ex-pats and the occasional Russian prostitute mingled beneath strobe lights. However, outside the borders of my neighborhood, with it's parties and fast food restaurants, Pakistan was falling apart. The country's economy was in shambles. Long lines of people formed outside grocery stores hoping to purchase cooking oil and flour as food shortages worsened. And nobody, aside from the few able to afford expensive generators, could escape the maddening electricity shortages, which knocked out power for 12 hours a day as summer temperatures rose above 115 degrees. After telling relatives she could no longer afford to feed her family, a woman who worked in my neighborhood walked in front of an oncoming train with her two children in tow. Walking the streets of my Brooklyn neighborhood it's hard to believe I experienced any of it. To inhabit one world seems to cancel out the other. But it doesn't take much - a few words in Urdu with a New York cabbie or the steady stream of violence pouring in on the news each day - to take me back, sometimes against my will. After seeing the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team on the news, I emailed my friend Shabbir to see if he was safe. He works in an office making tea two blocks from the scene of the attack. These days, he tells me things are getting worse in Lahore, but wants to know if I'll be able to attend his wedding in December. I am honored by his question, but I don't have an answer. I've begun to wonder if the city I walked without fear existed outside of my imagination. Peter Holley is a freelance journalist living in New York City and an '07 graduate of Columbia Journalism School. He has written for the New York Post, Newsday and The New York Times. He has also worked for an English-language publication in Lahore, Pakistan. This is part of HuffPost World's Spotlight On Pakistan. We are building our network of people living in Pakistan who can help us understand what is happening there. These people will send us reports -- either snippets of information or full-length stories -- about how the political crisis affects life in Pakistan. If you are interested, this is an opportunity to have a continued conversation with Americans about what's happening in your country. If you would like to participate, please sign up here . Please follow HuffPost World on Facebook and Twitter. More on Sri Lanka
 
Megan Sayers: Authors Show Eclectic Style at the LA Times Festival of Books Top
Hundreds of the biggest names in entertainment and literature came to share the spotlight this weekend at the 14th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held at UCLA. Although parking was a minor challenge, book lovers could attend over 100 speaking panels, book signings, and countless exhibitions with notable authors from every field. The gamut ranged from Gore Vidal and Ray Bradbury to Michael J. Fox and Tori Spelling; a lineup that delivered a wealth of literary variety and promised to please fans of any genre. It was no surprise that the fashion of the festival followed suit: an eclectic mix of glam couture, casual chic, and everything in between. I saw Tory Burch flats, an Armani silk sheath, three different shirts featuring kittens chasing yarn, I even saw one man walking out of the bathrooms in a plaid kilt. Check out some pictures of the authors that appeared at the festival, and their various styles of apparel: More on Photo Galleries
 
Pakistan Taliban Problem Overblown: Juan Cole Top
Readers have written me asking what I think of the rash of almost apocalyptic pronouncements on the security situation in Pakistan issuing from the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent days. More on Pakistan
 
Jeannie Ralston: A Mom in Mexico Asks, "When Is It Overreacting?" Top
As health officials dealing with the swine flu outbreak are trying to walk a line between informing and alarming, I--as a recipient of their reports and warnings and an American living in Mexico--try to find the proper balance between sensible caution and overreaction. It's not easy. I seem to swing between the two in any given hour. My husband and I live three hours from Mexico City, with our two sons, ages 12 and 10. On Saturday, the day after news of swine flu in Mexico City appeared on the Internet, I approached my husband with this statement: "You may think this is overreacting but I'm thinking maybe we should keep the boys out of school this coming week." To my surprise, my husband--who is not anything close to an alarmist--agreed that this was a wise step. Even with his backing, I found myself deeply embarrassed when I called their teachers to tell them of our decision. I felt I needed to explain myself. I imagined rolled eyes on the other end of the call. To overreact, in my mind, is to expose yourself as a wimp or a sap who has bought into the hype. I certainly don't want to be a Henny Penny. I remember with a wince how my mother berated me as such after September 11th. I was scheduled to fly to my niece's wedding on September 20, with my then 4-year-old son, who was supposed to be the ring bearer. After much angst, I decided to go but didn't want to take my son; my niece understood, but my mother was terribly disappointed. "So you're worried about a terrorist attack, but you' went ahead and put in a swimming pool. The kids are much more likely to drown in that pool then get shot down in a plane." Her conflating our swimming pool with a terrorist attack spun my head. I was furious and hardly spoke to her the whole wedding weekend. Why can't my concerns be respected? I thought. My view was that we all have our own threshold, which is going to be different than the next person's. I later learned that my mother was right in her way. I wrote a piece for Parenting magazine about worrying that seems especially relevant today. Here is one excerpt: "We naturally use our emotions as much or more than the facts when we decide what to be afraid of, or how afraid we will be," says David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. There are common themes to what we humans choose to worry about. Ropeik says we lose more sleep over man-made risks (radiation from nuclear waste) than natural risks (radiation from the sun). We're more terrified when we're not in control (such as when we're flying) than when we are (driving ourselves and the kids in the car). We're more frightened of risks that are new (SARS) versus those we've lived with for a while (food poisoning). And whenever a threat gets a whirl through the media machine, it moves to the top of almost every parent's panic list. "We misperceive risks over and under what they are because of these prisms of emotions," he says. Even though I recognize the wisdom and truth of this passage, it's difficult to keep my emotions in check. After we made the decision to keep the boys out of school, I was feeling fine--but then I got word that same afternoon that the Mexican government had canceled school through out the country. Instead of feeling vindicated, I was thoroughly alarmed that the situation was this dire. I suddenly developed a pit in my stomach and imagined all kinds of worst-case scenarios (closed borders, shortage of drugs, rioting and looting). I approached my husband with this statement: "You may think I'm overreacting but I'm thinking maybe we should all drive up to Texas and wait this out there." This time my husband did think I was overreacting. He now believes that the press has overblown the situation and fueled a panic. As for me, I can't help but reflect on the movie "Empire of the Sun," in which the British family stays in war-torn China way too long, with dreadful consequences. "Why didn't they leave earlier," I thought to myself as the story unfolded. I don't ever want to have a similar regret in this present situation. So now we're living in limbo--should we stay or should we go? As more people don surgical masks in our town, as more activities are canceled, as the WHO raises the pandemic threat level, I'm trying to keep my wits about me--comparing the down side of staying against the down side of leaving (the truth is that at this point we're more at risk on the highways than from swine flu). To determine our next move, we're keeping up with the news reports, trying to separate fact from rumor, helpful information from the not-so and, most importantly, good sense from the very human tendency to overreact. More on Swine Flu
 
New York Times Union To Vote On Pay Cut Monday Top
NEW YORK — Union employees at The New York Times scheduled a vote Monday on a temporary 5 percent pay cut, a step Times management hopes will head off any need for additional layoffs this year. New York Guild President Bill O'Meara said he expects the measure to pass, with the salary cut going into place next Tuesday at the earliest. The Times has said that for now, the pay cut will save about 80 positions, most of them newsroom jobs, and trim $4.5 million in costs. But O'Meara warned that management has offered no guarantees that more job cuts won't be necessary. "It depends on what happens with the economy and the ad market," he said. "You saw the Times earnings report last week and it wasn't good. I imagine they're keeping their options open." Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis confirmed that management and union officials have reached a tentative deal on the 5 percent cut, subject to a vote. She did not immediately comment on the potential for additional layoffs. The Times said in March it was dropping 100 employees from its business operations, but has avoided the deep newsroom cuts other newspapers have been forced to impose. The New York Times Co., which also publishes The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and other daily newspapers, reported a $74.5 million loss for the first quarter. Advertising revenue has been shrinking quickly at most U.S. newspapers, including 27 percent at the Times Co. in the first three months of the year. The company has taken steps recently to shore up its balance sheet, selling most of its Manhattan headquarters for $225 million and negotiating a $250 million loan from Mexican financier Carlos Slim at a hefty 14 percent interest rate. The extra cash helped the Times Co. pay off $250 million in outstanding notes, pushing off major debt payments for the next two years. But the company still faces intense scrutiny over its future given falling revenue. "Our members are aware of the perfect storm that is hitting the newspaper industry and they're willing to help the company, I believe," O'Meara said. He pointed out that union workers have fared better than nonunion Times employees, a group that includes management. Nonunion workers took the same pay cut beginning April 1 and both groups will have their full salary restored Dec. 31. Union workers also won a 2 percent wage increase beginning March 31, so their pay will not be dropping as much, O'Meara said. Both groups have been offered 10 paid days off in return. Severance packages for employees laid off this year would be calculated based on original salaries.
 
Gay Marriage : New Hampshire Senate Votes To Allow Same-Sex Marriage Top
New Hampshire's Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would legalize same-sex marriage after an amendment was added that allows clergy to decline to marry gay couples. More on Gay Marriage
 
David Rosenblatt, Google Display Ads Head, Quits Top
The president of Google's global display advertising business is leaving, marking the latest in a series of changes within the Internet company's sales team in the past two months. More on Google
 
Michelle Haimoff: A Business Model for Journalism Where Writers Get Paid Top
Portfolio Magazine is just one of a slew of magazines and newspapers to fold in the last few months. The publications that are still holding on are slashing jobs and cutting pay, and online publications aren't faring much better in this recession. Some media companies have tried to charge consumers for information that they are already accessing for free, only to find that it costs them both audience and advertising revenue. The model where print publications act as agents that connect advertisers and content is officially obsolete. The only economically viable option for the future of journalism lies in the direct corporate sponsorship of content. Without media companies, there are only content providers and advertisers, and both parties currently need each other. Content cannot exist if no one is paying for it, and advertisers need a better system than dwindling print ads, which are difficult to track anyway, or banner ads, which yield a less than 1 percent click-through rate. If companies hire content providers to write directly for their sites, content will continue to exist, writers will get paid, and corporations will have a proliferation of visitors. At present, Starbucks.com is a static corporate website. If Starbucks.com were to buy content from online literary magazines that are currently begging for donations, like Narrative , Guernica and Anderbo , Starbucks.com would become a virtual literary coffee house, thereby both enhancing its brand identity and driving visitors to the site. If Exxon.com, another static corporate website, were to buy the content from Car and Driver and Motor Trend , not only would those writers have jobs again, but they would be getting paid more than they ever did. Mattress.com could hire the staff of the now defunct Domino . Apple could take over the entire editorial department of The New York Times . The content would be free, but what was once the front page of the Times would now be the front page of iTunes. Writers, bloggers, podcasters and videographers would get paid again, and they would get paid in advertising dollars instead of editorial dollars, because it would be their content that was driving traffic to these corporate sites. There is an obvious conflict of interest, which is that, if corporations are paying the writers' salaries, those corporations can dictate the content. But as Ted Glasser suggested with his National Endowment for Journalism , political and corporate reporting would be publicly funded. And sites with honest product reviews, like TripAdvisor.com and Amazon.com , have proven that the straighter a company plays it, the more it gains the respect of its audience. Remember too, that people have an authenticity filter now, as was evident by the anger over Bush-appointed Kenneth Tomlinson's campaign against the "liberal bias" at PBS. Finally, even if there is an inevitable conflict of interest, there always has been. Editorial boards have always had to account for their advertisers' interests. And a media owner like Rupert Murdock has always had the power to influence his publications' content based on his own personal financial portfolio. Perhaps it seems vulgar to write for a brand instead of a publication, but content providers need to get paid. The Huffington Post's bloggers, none of whom are currently getting paid, will post on its advertiser, H&R Block.com 's, site for actual money. And if a company like H&R Block starts to feature thoughtful and noteworthy content, there may very well be cache in being its editor-in-chief. As writers, editors and publishers try to make sense of the new media landscape, they should ask themselves: Who has the money and what do they need? The people who have the money are the people who have always had the money: Large corporations. What they need is what they have always needed: Advertising. It's time to cut out the middle man. More on Magazines
 
Michelle Obama Wears Silver Sneakers To Food Bank (PHOTOS) Top
Michelle Obama and Jill Biden spent their 100th day in Washington bagging food for hungry children at the Capital Area Food Bank. Read more about their visit here . For the occasion both women went super casual. The first lady wore cropped gray capri pants and a yellow argyle cardigan with silver and metallic pink sneakers. Dr. Biden did preppy chic in a blue and white striped shirt paired with cropped white pants and silver flats. See photos below. More on Michelle Obama Style
 
Felton Newell: Why Congress Must Hold Hearings Top
"Of course, our values as a Nation, values that we share with many nations in the world, call for us to treat detainees humanely, including those who are not legally entitled to such treatment. Our Nation has been and will continue to be a strong supporter of [the Geneva Convention] and its principles. As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with the military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." -- February 7, 2002 Memorandum from President George Bush Regarding the Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees "C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported. The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative." -- Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects, New York Times, April 19, 2009 Now that the Bush Administration, mercifully, has come to an end, details are beginning to emerge about just how much that Administration compromised cherished American principles in the name of "national security." Washington was gripped last week by reports that officials at the highest levels of the Bush Administration had a direct role in authorizing the use of interrogation techniques that can only be characterized as torture. While President Bush committed to "treat detainees humanely" in 2002, the torture that followed demonstrates that there was a disconnect between his Administration's public statements and its actual conduct. We must get to the bottom of how our military and intelligence officers came to engage in the brutal forms of torture we now know took place. Thorough and exhaustive Congressional hearings modeled on the Church Committee hearings in the 1970's, which investigated illegality by the CIA and FBI, are the best way to accomplish this objective. There are many levels on which this torture policy is troubling, from the potential retribution that may be inflicted on future American prisoners of war to the violation of international law. However, it is most appalling that the men and women of the American military and intelligence community who tortured prisoners did so in our collective name. When they subjected prisoners to waterboarding and sleep deprivation, they did so under the color of that same American flag to which we all pledge allegiance. The effect has been to erode the world's sense of America and Americans. Congress must fully investigate to answer the myriad of outstanding questions regarding the Bush terror program. For example, we know that legal advisors, such as John Yoo, provided legal justifications for these interrogation techniques. However, we do not know who sought these justifications. Who was the architect of this policy? When did he and/or she design the policy? What were the motivations behind the policy? How much of the policy contemporaneously was shared with members of Congress? Of course, the Bush torture program is not the first time in American history that our government deliberately has acted contrary to our values in time of war. Going back to the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress and signed by President John Adams in 1789, to the interment of the Japanese during World War II, our country occasionally has trampled on the civil liberties of individuals when it has faced external and internal threats. As with these other dark moments, however, it is critical that we learn from our mistakes. It is critical that Congress examine the nature and scope of the Bush torture program to determine what went wrong to ensure that it is not repeated. Some have said that the Justice Department should investigate to determine if any laws were broken and prosecute any law-breakers to the full extent of the law. However, the threat of prosecution likely will lead to stonewalling on the part of Administration officials for fear of self-incrimination. We saw this in the prosecution of L. Scooter Libby for his involvement in the Valerie Plame affair. Libby never testified in that case and our understanding of what the President and Vice President knew about the effort to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson and when they knew it remains incomplete. Accordingly, witnesses at the hearings should be granted immunity from prosecution so that the members of Congress conducting the investigation will be able to get answers to the important outstanding questions. As a criminal prosecutor, I appreciate the important role prosecution plays in achieving justice. However, in this instance, truth is more important than retribution and punishment. The individuals who committed these acts will have to live with the shame of their actions and the government leaders who authorized these acts will suffer the harsh judgment of history. It is imperative that Congress immediately launch an investigation into the torture practices the Bush Administration undertook on our behalf. We need to have an exhaustive understanding of how our nation's military and intelligence communities created the apparatus of torture to ensure that torture never again takes place in our name.
 
Ed Kilgore: DeMint's Valhalla Syndrome Top
You do have to say this for South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint: he represents the unmediated subconsciousness of contemporary conservatives, coming right out and saying things that others probably just think. That's certainly true of his rather novel explanation for the decline of Republican fortunes in the northeast, highlighted by the Specter defection. Here's DeMint via CNN's Political Ticker : Appearing on CNN Tuesday, DeMint, a hero of the conservative grassroots, denied that his party has tilted too far to the right. "I don't think many Americans are going to agree that the Republican party has become too conservative," he said. "If you look at our record of spending, our record on every issue, the problem I think we have is Americans no longer believe that we believe what we say we do." DeMint says he isn't worried. He denied that the GOP has become a southern party, attributing Republican losses in the northeast to some northern voters who have left the region and moved south hoping to avoid labor unions and "forced unionization." He said Americans will eventually come back into the Republican fold because of growing alarm about the size of government and President Obama's fiscal policies. Let's get this straight: southern Republicans haven't conquered the GOP; GOP voters have just moved South, and eventually, those poor union slaves they left behind will wake up and vote Republican as well, so long as the party doesn't do anything right now to directly appeal to their current benighted views. DeMint is carrying dialectical reasoning to levels that would have impressed Karl Marx. Losing is winning, and winning means making no conscious effort to win. Aside from that interesting perspective, which applauds the shrinkage of the GOP as necessary to its ultimate victory, DeMint's geographical analysis of partisan fortunes is a fascinating variation on the ancient conservative conviction that economic growth depends on a "business climate" with no unions, low wages, low taxes on high earners and capital, and little or no regulation. According not only to DeMint but to most Republicans and (unfortunately) a fair number of Democrats in the South, keeping the Union Devil down or even out has attracted untold numbers of jobs and highly productive people from the socialist northeast and midwest. If that hoary moonlight-and-magnolias theory of economic development were true, of course, then Mississippi would be the economic dynamo of the whole world, and DeMint's own South Carolina wouldn't be perpetually trailing most of the country in key economic and social indicators. (Despite its Eden-like business climate, SC's unemployment rate according to the latest statistics is third worst in the nation, at 11.4%, rather notably higher than that of union-bossed and Democratic-governed PA at 7.8%). But turning to the political side of DeMint's argument, it's highly reminiscent of the 1990s theory (dubbed the "Valhalla Syndrome" by California-based urbanologist Joel Kotkin) that prosperous white folks fleeing California's crime, taxes and people of color were turning the Rocky Mountain States bright red even as California itself turned blue. Turns out the second half of that trajectory has panned out as predicted, but not the first, as major Democratic gains in the Rockies became one of the huge political stories of recent years. So recent history doesn't exactly reinforce DeMint's theory that people in the northeast, somehow prevented from escaping the economic prisons of their anti-business homelands, and looking south with yearning eyes, will at some point start voting Republican, hoping to turn desperately poor states like Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut (ranked first, second and third in median household income) into mirror images of South Carolina (ranked 41st) or Mississippi (ranked 50th). People do undoubtedly move or stay south for all sorts of reasons, ranging from climate and recreational opportunities to the culture, food, and sociability of the population. But for good government by the likes of DeMint or his colleague SC Gov. Mark "Herbert Hoover" Sanford? Probably not so much. This item was originally published at The Democratic Strategist More on Arlen Specter
 
Jim Inhofe: Specter Switch Will Bring Republican Revolution In 2010 (VIDEO) Top
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Wednesday that Sen. Arlen Specter's defection from the Republican Party is "the first visible evidence" that the GOP will crush the Democrats in the upcoming 2010 midterm elections. Inhofe, in an interview with on Fox News, agreed with South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint's comment that Specter's joining the Democrats and giving them 60 seats in the Senate is the "best thing" for Republicans because it will cause a popular backlash similar to the one that brought Republicans to power in 1994. "I thought I was the only one who was really pleased with this change," Inhofe said. "This is the first visible evidence that what happened in 1993 is happening again now." Inhofe compared President Obama to Bill Clinton, saying Bill Clinton was similarly popular and squandered his momentum on gun control and "Hillary health care." "All these things, people rebelled against that," Inhofe said. "You saw what happened in the election of '94. Now we have the same thing happening, we have Obama doing the same thing that Clinton did back in 1993. In fact, it's worse. Instead of a 1.5 trillion budget we have a 3.2 trillion budget. All of these things are happening right now and people are already starting to rebel against it." When asked about a Wednesday Wall Street Journal column arguing that Specter's defection represented a "crushing setback for the GOP" and trouble in 2010, Inhofe said he didn't buy it. "If anything, people will just be focused more on the fact that [Democrats] now will have 60 votes, and that will help reverse this thing in 2010." WATCH: Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Arlen Specter
 
Obama's 100 Days Press Conference: Video Top
President Obama is holding his third prime time news conference to mark the 100th day of his term. HuffPost will be streaming live video of the event. Below are streams from MSNBC and The White House. Check back at 8:00pm EST to watch live. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Barack Obama
 
Christina Bellantoni: After break, Specter returns to Twitter as Dem Top
First published at WashingtonTimes.com Sen. Arlen Specter,  with a big new "D" affixed to the end of his name , blew up the Twittersphere yesterday with his blockbuster news. But even as Tweets buzzed with news about Specter's decision all day long — thousands of tweets pushed it to the top trended topic behind swine flu Tuesday —  his own feed  was silent. Until today. Specter  tweeted :  Please visit http://www.spectervstoomey.com/ and vote. That  site  is run by the Senate Conservative Fund PAC, which is overwhelmingly slated pro-Toomey.   Before today, Specter's last tweet was from last Wednesday, where he noted, "No more million-dollar fines for billion-dollar crimes" and linked to an item promoting the Fraud Enforcement Recovery Act.  In recent weeks Specter had taken to his Twitter feed to blast his potential GOP rival Toomey, posting regular critiques of the antitax Republican.  Last week he said on Twitter Toomey "wants to be Senator number 100 and vote 'no' on everything," and said the Republican "admits Senate is not desirable."  He also linked to his endorsement from GOP Senate campaign chairman John Cornyn, including his now ironic quote, "A vote for Specter is a vote for denying Harry Reid and the Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate."  Mr. Specter's Facebook page was flooded with supportive statements from Democrats across the country, and one man tweeted that Mr. Specter deserves "a great big hug from all of us who voted on the winning side last November."  But there's also an anti-Specter movement afoot. Consider this tweet from liberal leaning "mediagadfly" today: Rock it out Facebook. I joined. Fan page: "I support a real progressive against Arlen Specter." http://is.gd/vnjY Pledge $25 if they step up Conservatives also aren't thrilled with Specter, who  joined President Obama for a brief statement  at the White House today. "Dear Arlen, Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out," conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote on her Twitter feed. Then there's the RNC, which offered supporters a "free flipcam" for goodbye videos to Specter in a  tweet  yesterday. @RNC: Post your goodbye message to Arlen Specter on our you tube channel! The best 3 win a free flipcam! http://tinyurl.com/9zza6  And speaking of Twitter, for our special "First 100 days" section today, I explored the president's popularity there, interviewing Tweeps about their views in 140 characters or less: Even though President Obama has offered up just one "tweet" for his 947,000 followers since taking office, the Twitter ruling is in - his first 100 days have been a resounding success. A random sample of Twitter users engaged in political news mirrored a broader national trend of patience for the new president and a belief that the media exaggerate Mr. Obama's problems. "Obama is our first modern multitasker president," user SteveBeste wrote on Twitter. "I give him an A for bringing a new sanity to domestic and foreign policy." "Why oh why do these people seem to think Obama should have everything fixed in 4 months?" opined Jclipscomb0518. Read the full story here . —  Christina Bellantoni , White House correspondent,  The Washington Times Please track  my blog's  RSS feed  here . Find my latest stories  here , follow me on  Twitter  and visit my  YouTube page . More on Arlen Specter
 
CNN Story On Obama's "Swagga" The Most Embarrassing Ever? (VIDEO) Top
We all expect a bit of fluff from cable news considering they have 24 hours a day to fill and there are only so many events to be "rocked" by, but when we hit a point at which CNN is spending Obama's 100th day in office "assessing his swagga" something is amiss. T.J. Holmes sat down with four men who were never identified by name or title (as if we weren't supposed to care about who they were, just that they were black) to talk about Obama's "swagga." They were sweet and did the best they could with such a ridiculous topic, but anchor Kyra Phillips was way over the top. She asked for the theme song to "Shaft" to be played, she talked about Obama's "flava" and she insisted on getting a fist bump at the end. Here are her choicest moments... WATCH: THE FULL SEGMENT IS AVAILABLE HERE . More on CNN
 
David O. Stewart: Bankers Dance the Federalism Tango Top
Federalism -- the division and sharing of power between state and national governments -- is the Constitution's signal invention, and its most baffling one. Since 1787, Americans have feuded bitterly over state's rights, and fought a bloody civil war over them. Earlier this month, the governor of Texas openly speculated that his state might wish to secede from the union . A case argued before the Supreme Court yesterday vividly illustrates how federalism confounds our customary political line-drawing. In Cuomo v. Clearing House Association , New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants to investigate whether banks extended high-interest loans to too many minority homeowners. That critical question -- which is is intimately connected to the subprime mortgage meltdown that triggered so much economic pain around the world -- has been entirely obscured by a jurisdictional one: Does Cuomo have the power to investigate national banks? Here's where federalism and politics make strange bedfellows. Cuomo, a liberal Democrat, is trumpeting states' rights. The Obama Administration, accused of creeping (or rampant) socialism by many conservatives, defended national power -- as had the Bush administration . Then again, so did the Bush administration . In the court of appeals , the banks (and the federal government) were supported by two judges appointed by Bill Clinton. Cuomo, the aforesaid liberal Democrat, won only the vote of a Republican judge from Utica who was appointed by Ronald Reagan. Got it? Banks have been playing this jurisdictional shell game for generations, seeking federal charters when that suited them and state licensing laws when those were more advantageous, and playing the two against each other. Most of the time, it turns out, federalism is the ultimate lip-service doctrine. If state's rights get you to the outcome you want, then you support state's rights. If not, well, federal power's good, too. And it's not just self-interested economic actors like banks who dance this dance. Take the late Justice William Brennan, the true architect of the liberal "rights" revolution of the Warren Court. A brilliant legal strategist, Brennan was central to the Supreme Court's vindication of federal rights against the states. But when the Court majority shifted against him, Brennan nimbly called in 1977 for state Supreme Courts to interpret their own state constitutions to expand citizens' rights. Or the self-righteously conservative Bush administration, which trampled states' rights to vindicate its own political agenda concerning numerous environmental and safety question. In the tawdry 2005 fight over the fate of Terry Schiavo, the Florida woman on life support, Bush Republicans even stripped Florida's courts of jurisdiction over her case. So what about federalism? Are the states the laboratories of government, to be nurtured in their independence? Or are they captives of narrow interests of small groups, to be controlled by a wise national power? Where you stand depends on where you sit...each time the music stops. More on George Bush
 
KENTUCKY DERBY POSITIONS : "I Want Revenge" Made Early Favorite Top
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — I Want Revenge was made the early 3-1 favorite for the Kentucky Derby, with Pioneerof the Nile and Dunkirk sharing second-favorite status Wednesday in the full field of 20 horses. I Want Revenge is coming off eye-catching victories on dirt in the Gotham Stakes and Wood Memorial at New York's Aqueduct after leaving California and the synthetic surfaces there. "I Want Revenge should definitely go off as the favorite," Churchill Downs oddsmaker Mike Battaglia said. Trained by Jeff Mullins and ridden by 19-year-old jockey Joe Talamo, I Want Revenge drew the No. 13 post position. "It ended up perfect," Talamo said. "It's just what we wanted _ to be outside of the early speed. I think it worked out great." Pioneerof the Nile and Dunkirk were made the co-second favorites at 4-1. Santa Anita Derby winner Pioneerof the Nile drew the No. 16 post, while lightly raced Dunkirk will be next door in the No. 15 spot. Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert carried his 4-year-old son, Bode, to the post position board, where the child named for Olympic skier Bode Miller hung Pioneerof the Nile's silks. "I was set on 10 or 16," Baffert said. "He hasn't had that dirt experience, he'll get less dirt kicked on him out there than on the inside." Friesan Fire was the fourth choice at 5-1, while the other 16 entries carried double-digit odds. "I think the top four will be the top four in the betting," Battaglia said. "I don't think there's any doubt about that." Friesan Fire will leave from the No. 6 hole. Larry Jones, the colt's trainer, saddled filly Eight Belles to a second-place finish last year behind Big Brown. She broke both ankles past the first turn and had to be euthanized on the track. "This horse is going to have a whole lot of the same style as Eight Belles," Jones said. "She had a wonderful trip in there, hopefully we can repeat that. Hopefully we'll be in a running position and be able to go turning for home." This year's draw returned to Churchill Downs after being conducted in front of a huge crowd in downtown Louisville in recent years and shown on ESPN. The draw began with a traditional "pill pull" where the horses' entry blanks were drawn simultaneously with a numbered pill to determine what order the horses' connections picked their position in the starting gate. After a five-minute break to strategize, the actual posts were selected by representatives of each of the 20 starters. The field, from the rail out, is West Side Bernie (30-1), Musket Man (20-1), Mr. Hot Stuff (30-1), Advice (30-1), Hold Me Back (15-1), Friesan Fire (5-1), Papa Clem (20-1), Mine That Bird (50-1), Join in the Dance (50-1), Regal Ransom (30-1), Chocolate Candy (20-1), General Quarters (20-1), I Want Revenge (3-1), Atomic Rain (50-1), Dunkirk (4-1), Pioneerof the Nile (4-1), Summer Bird (50-1), Nowhere to Hide (50-1), Desert Party (15-1), Flying Private (50-1). More on Sports
 
Sandy Maisel: Left and Right Miss Lesson of Specter Switch Top
Bloggers and political analysts from the right and left have commented on Senator Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic party. So too have politicians. And most of them are missing the forest for the trees. The focus has been on Specter's obvious political motive, on the whether this switch will give the Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate once Al Franken's election in Minnesota is certified, on how the decision was reached, who influenced it, and what guarantees Specter obtained before announcing his switch. According to most reports, the Democrats have guaranteed the Senator that he will not face primary opposition, that he will be able to put his case before Pennsylvanians in a general election. And that is what Specter wanted. In exchange the Democrats near the magic number of 60 -- the filibuster-proof Senate -- and that is what they want. A great deal for everyone. Right? Wrong! These factors all seem trivial if one focuses on the forces that led Senator Specter to become a Democrat. The real problem is that Specter does not have a home. The Republican party has become so homogeneous, so monolithic that the mere mention of Ronald Reagan's Big Tent draws derisive laughter. Specter became persona non grata to conservative Republicans with his vote in favor of the President's stimulus package. His Republican party no longer welcomed him. Maine's two moderate Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have responded to the desertion of the only other moderate in their caucus. In a New York Times Op-ed, Snowe argued that Specter need not have been lost, that her party must reach out to moderates to succeed. She is right, of course, but she has been pleading that case for a long time -- and it falls on deaf ears. Senator Collins will stay in the GOP because it is good for the party and would be bad for the country if she switched. Her last point might be debatable -- the country has and can survived worse -- but Senator Collins is right about the implication of a party that narrows its appeal. I am struck by the congruence of four political events -- seemingly unrelated but all of a piece. The first, is Specter's party switch, caused at least in part by ideological extremism in the Republican party. Specter could not stay in the Republican party, because Republicans would not accept him; his fatal flaw in their book was negotiating with the enemy, specifically the Democrats and President Obama. The second is the national fetish with assessing President Obama as he reaches 100 days in office. He has done a great deal in a short period of time. Mostly, in my view, he and his associates have learned how to govern. They came in as smart but inexperienced. They learned under fire. The question is what lessons have they learned. The President ran as a conciliator, reaching out to Republicans in Congress in his first months in office. On the stimulus package, on the budget, and on large legislative initiatives he has received no positive feedback from his efforts. But he persisted. His style is non-confrontational. His strategy has been to go to the public over the heads of GOP legislators, to have their constituents convince them to work with him. One possible response to the Specter switch would be for Obama to move further to the left, to take the gloves off, to govern without seeklng GOP support. The proposed strategy on getting a vote on health care using the reconciliation process to avoid a possible filibuster was evidence that this strategy is under consideration -- and that was before the Specter announcement. That response would be a mistake. While politicians in this country move further toward ideological extremes, the majority of our citizenry remains closer to the center. Citizens away from the Beltway want solutions to problems, not clinging to ideology, certainly not Washington one-upsmanship. The third and fourth events are further from the public view, but may well give us the best insights into the future. Yesterday Kathleen Sebelius was confirmed at Secretary of Health and Human Services, completing the Obama cabinet. But the delay in confirming Cabinet officers, caused largely by partisan and ideological bickering (but also in part by poor vetting as the administration sought to apply stringent ethics standards) has led to large gaps in public officials below the Cabinet level. The kinds of individuals put forth for these positions and how the Republicans in the Senate respond to nominees will speak volumes for governing in the three years ahead. Similarly, the Senate is reviewing the nomination of President Obama's first judicial appointment, the elevation of District Court Judge David Hamilton of Indiana to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Specter switch might make confirmation easier, but how the Senate handles the process merits our attention. On these matters, the ball is now in the Republicans' court. Here are their choices. They can continue to resist all of President Obama's proposals, be overrun by Democratic majorities, and pout. If the economy improves, if Obama remains popular, they will face overwhelming and deserved defeat in 2010 and again in 2012. Or they can move from the party of "NO" to the party of "Let's see what we can find to agree on." Rather than attacking Obama and hoping for failure, more Republicans can work with him, look for partial solutions to problems on which they can agree, and move on. The politics will take care of itself. The Specter switch should be more than a wake-up call for Republicans. It should be a sign for all in Washington that the governing process is out of whack. It is time to get back to the business of solving the nation's problems, not winning partisan battles. L. Sandy Maisel is director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College. More on Arlen Specter
 
Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson: Going Nuclear: Young Christians Redefine Evangelical Politics Top
The story of the "broadening evangelical agenda" -- evangelicals' political engagement with issues such as climate change, poverty and HIV/AIDS -- reached a new level of visibility in 2006 with the devastating mid-term losses by Congressional Republicans, even in blood-red districts. President Obama's doubling of John Kerry's support among young Evangelicals in 2008 indicated that politics were truly changing in the heart of Jesusland. The way this story has played out in the media over the past few years has by now become common knowledge: conservative individual X takes surprisingly progressive stance Y, often accompanied by a sign-on statement filled with other surprising conservatives. This, like all man bites dog! stories, was newsworthy in its time. We Evangelicals have become well-known as a curious, dog-biting species. However, the broadening Evangelical agenda narrative is winding to a close, and another phenomenon--seemingly similar and yet critically different -- is rising to take its place: the maturation of the first generation of Evangelicals with no memory of the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s, and no inclination to fight those battles. This week marks the public launch of the Two Futures Project, a new movement of Christians, led by younger Evangelicals, for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. This seems somehow fitting. How, after all, could we look ahead without abolishing forever the ungodly specter of these indiscriminate weapons? Further, the nonpartisan, pan-Christian support we have received from wise, older saints - from Chuck Colson to Jim Wallis to Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz -- is itself a testament to the readiness of history to turn: we're seeing veteran Cold Warriors wishing their children and grandchildren peace and freedom from the battles they fought. This does not mean that younger Evangelicals are becoming secular progressives. We still believe intractable, unavoidably divisive things like the atonement of the cross, the Lordship of Jesus Christ and his literal resurrection from the dead, and the inspired authority of the Bible. We have no intention of throwing this orthodoxy under the bus for the sake of social acceptability. The generation of Evangelicals currently coming into maturity, however, will decreasingly understand itself in contradistinction to more progressive politics, as the previous generation has largely done. As a result, though we will continue to have profound differences with many progressives -- and conservatives -- there will also be significant areas of overlap and co-belligerency on matters of mutual concern and the common good. Finally, we can certainly draw (at least) three conclusions about the future of Evangelical political engagement. First, Evangelicals will be less politically powerful than we have been in recent decades. Voters willing to pull the lever on one or two issues alone win elections. A diverse constituency with broad interests does not. This will be good for the American Evangelical soul. We'll see what it does for the country. Second, we will increasingly work across internal divisions for common cause, though this change will probably be inscrutable to non-Christians who wouldn't know an Armenian from a TULIP Baptist. This is not to say that doctrine and theology have ceased to matter, but I expect that we'll fight those battles in parallel with, rather than prior to, work on mutual social concern. Third, familiar political distinctions will lose their descriptive value for us. Younger Evangelicals are coloring way outside the lines of a blue/red dichotomy. In this new environment, traditional definitions of conservative and liberal will be stripped of their traditional landmarks and cease to be meaningful. This, too, is for the good. Political divisions based on the left-right seating plan of human legislatures never did lend itself to good cartography for the kingdom of God, anyhow. The Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, born 1977, is the founder and director of the Two Futures Project. Those with eyes to see can follow him on Twitter @2FP. More on HIV/AIDS
 
Rahm Emanuel On Obama's First 100 Days (VIDEO) Top
Rahm Emanuel appears on ABC's "World News With Charlie Gibson" Wednesday night to discuss President Obama's first 100 days. "Did he essentially run for one job and get another?" ABC News' Charles Gibson asked Emanuel. "I think I can reflect, the president's view is, you know, we inherited these set of problems," Emanuel responded. "That's not to point fingers, but the fact that that's the set of problems, and that's basically the hand he's been dealt." "I think what we can extract from the first 100 days is that this is a president who is not afraid to meet the challenges," Emanuel later added. "I've always said that the best kind of metaphor is the president has a very open hand but a firm handshake." The full interview airs at 6:30 P.M. ET. More on Obama's First 100 Days
 
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Buchanan Made The GOP a Heavily White Party Top
GOP hatchet man and media pundit Pat Buchanan recently quipped that the GOP is a "heavily white party." It's not a heavily white party, it's virtually an exclusively white party; Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele notwithstanding. And Buchanan did much to make sure that the GOP got that way and stays that way. The checklist of Buchanan's blunt speak racially charged barbs, insults and inflammatory pitches to unreconstruted bigots during the past two decades can fill up a book. In fact it fills up two books, the State of Emergency and Death of the West. Buchanan damned multiculturalism, railed against affirmative action as blatant discrimination against whites, lambasted Republicans for pandering to the NAACP, applauded those who called Martin Luther King, Jr. a "fraud" and a "demogouge" and in 1969 he opposed the federal holiday for King. Three decades later he hadn't softened his take on King one bit. He's called him a "divisive" figure. Buchanan waded into the fight to keep the Confederate flag flying high on state capitols in the South. To him the flag is an honorable symbol of the South's noble fight in the Civil War for self determination, states rights, and to protect cultural differences (Slavery=cultural differences?) Buchanan also has no qualms about appearing on the aptly named The Political Cesspool radio talk show, a show less charitably described as an on air forum to fan and spew white supremacist views. This is the kooky Buchanan stuff and it can easily be shrugged off as the rants of a fringe political hack and media bloviator to stoke controversy to peddle his books and inflate his on screen presence. But Buchanan and company played a big and insidious part in crafting, tweaking, and honing the GOP's Southern Strategy. The GOP used this to rule national politics for four decades. The strategy was simple; say and do as little as possible about civil rights, talk God, country and patriotism, use racially tinged code words and furiously court white males. The goal was to win elections by openly and subtly pandering to Southern white fears of black political domination. Buchanan even warned that tainting the strategy by pitching the GOP to minority voters would amount to political sepaku. The race tinged strategy was the magic gateway to the White House for Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. and Bush. The key as every Republican president since Nixon has known and in some cases unabashedly said, was to maintain near-solid backing from white Southern males. They have been the staunchest Republican loyalists. Bush grabbed more than 60 percent of the white male vote nationally in 2004. In the South, he got more than 70 percent of their vote. Without the South's unyielding backing in 2000, Democratic Presidential contender Al Gore would have easily won the White House, and the Florida vote debacle would have been a meaningless sideshow. In 2004, Bush swept Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in every one of the states of the Old Confederacy and three out of four of the Border States. This insured another Bush White House. The strategy didn't work in 2008, but not because it's totally outdated. Despite the heavy chains of Bush domestic and foreign policy bungling and incompetence, the deep voter disgust with the lies, corruption, and negativity of the GOP, a failed, flawed, financial and human cost draining war, and an economy sinking faster than a lead balloon, Republican GOP presidential candidate John McCain was still competitive with President Obama for much of the 2008 presidential campaign. The only thing that prevented the election from being a total rout of McCain was the solid majority backing he got from white males in the Deep South, farm belt, and the heartland states. Nationally, McCain won a clear majority of the white vote. The widespread popularity and voter approval of Obama in the months since the election hasn't totally changed that. A recent NYT Times/CBS Poll showed that blacks still are overwhelmingly Obama's strongest backers. The defection of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats, the continued shoot themselves in the foot, and deconstruction of the GOP and the phenomenal success of Obama have only sharpened the political lines. Buchanan knows that. His heavy white party quip drew the headlines, but he was careful not to knock the party for being a white man's party. Buchanan and the Southern Strategy adherents still pine away that the party can regain its fighting form of the past, and it can't do that by pandering to minorities. That's hopeless anyway given the iron grip that Obama and the Democrats have on black and minority voters. But as long as the GOP has its grip on the millions that made and kept the GOP a heavily white party, it's far from dead as a party. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com More on GOP
 
US Wants Mandatory Cuts In Greenhouse Gases Across The Globe In Major Environmental Policy Shift: AP Top
UNITED NATIONS — The Obama administration, in a major environmental policy shift, is preparing to ask 195 nations that ratified the U.N. ozone treaty to enact mandatory reductions in hydrofluorocarbons, according to U.S. officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press. The change _ the first U.S.-proposed mandatory global cut in greenhouse gases _ would transform the ozone treaty into a strong tool for fighting global warming. "Now it's going to be a climate treaty, with no ozone-depleting materials, if this goes forward," an Environmental Protection Agency technical expert on the ozone treaty said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because a decision was not final. The expert said the 21-year-old ozone treaty known as Montreal Protocol created virtually the entire market for hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, so including them in the treaty would take care of a problem of its own making. It's uncertain how that would work in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, the world's climate treaty, which now regulates HFCs and was rejected by the Bush administration. Negotiations to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012, are to be concluded in December in Denmark. The Montreal Protocol is widely viewed as one of the most successful environmental treaties because it essentially eliminated the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, blamed for damaging the ozone layer over Antarctica. Because they do not affect the ozone layer, HFCs broadly replaced CFCs as coolants in everything from refrigerators, air conditioners and fire extinguishers to aerosol sprays, medical devices and semiconductors. But experts say the solution to one problem is now worsening another. As a result, the U.S. is calling HFCs "a significant and growing source of emissions" that could be eliminated more quickly in several ways, including amending the ozone treaty or creating "a legally distinct agreement" linked to the Montreal Protocol, says a March 27 State Department briefing paper presented at one of two recent meetings on the topic. State Department officials told participants at one of last month's meetings that the United States wants to amend the Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of HFCs, a change praised by environmentalists. But there appear to be some interagency snags. Though the State Department secured backing from the Pentagon and other agencies for amending the Montreal Protocol, some opposition remains within the administration, U.S. officials say. It is not clear if the proposal to eliminate HFCs will be submitted by next week, in time to be considered at a meeting in November by parties to the Montreal Protocol. Proponents say eliminating HFCs would have an impact within our lifetimes. HFCs do most of their damage in their first 30 years in the atmosphere, unlike carbon dioxide which spreads its impact over a longer period of time. "Retiring HFCs is our best hope of avoiding a near-term tipping point for irreversible climate change. It's an opportunity the world simply cannot afford to miss, and every year we delay action on HFCs reduces the benefit," said Alexander von Bismarck, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington that first pitched the idea two years ago. Globally, a huge market has sprung up around the use of HFCs, a man-made chemical, as a result of their promotion under the Montreal Protocol. Several billion dollars have been spent through an affiliated fund to prod countries to stop making and using CFCs and other ozone-damaging chemicals and to instead use cheap and effective chemicals like HFCs. Scientists say eliminating use of HFCs would spare the world an amount of greenhouse gases up to about a third of all CO2 emissions about two to four decades from now. Manufacturers in both Europe and the U.S. have begun to replace HFCs with so-called natural refrigerants such as hydrocarbons, ammonia or carbon dioxide. HFCs can be up to 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as climate-warming chemicals, according to U.S. government data. Currently they account for only about 2 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, but the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2005 that use of HFCs was growing at 8.8 percent per year. More recent studies concur and show that HFCs are on a path to reach about 11 billion tons of greenhouse gases, which would constitute up to a third of all greenhouse gas emissions by sometime within 2030 and 2040 under some CO2-reduction scenarios. House Democrats also are adding to the pressure on HFCs. In an April 3 letter to President Barack Obama, California Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, chairman of the energy and environment subcommittee, urged the White House to offer an amendment to the Montreal Protocol this year. "Although we strongly support a comprehensive international agreement on climate change, we believe that adding HFCs to the existing Montreal Protocol would be a sensible, cost-effective method of addressing a small but growing piece of the problem," they wrote. Waxman and Markey also have drafted legislation laying out a broad outline for phasing out HFCs in the United States. Worldwide, phasing out HFCs under the Montreal Protocol could prevent 90 billion tons of greenhouse gases by 2040, by including nations like India and China that were not part of the Kyoto treaty. Nations such as Argentina, the Federated States of Micronesia, Mauritius and Mexico have recently pushed for climate protections under the Montreal Protocol, arguing every possible tool must be used to combat climate change. The EPA in April determined that hydrofluorocarbons were one of six greenhouse gases endangering human health and welfare, a ruling that could eventually lead to mandatory reductions in the U.S. under the Clean Air Act. "This is a strong sign of new American leadership in atmospheric protection," said von Bismarck. More on Barack Obama
 
Baltimore Sun Lays Off Nearly 60 Top
BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Sun has laid off nearly 60 people in its newsroom, including veteran editors and managers, columnists, photographers and designers. A spokeswoman for the newspaper says managerial-level employees were laid off at the end of the day Tuesday, and union-represented employees were informed Wednesday afternoon. The Sun did not disclose how many people lost their jobs, but the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild says 37 people were let go Wednesday. Staffers who were laid off Tuesday say about 21 managers were let go. Maryland's largest newspaper is owned by Tribune Co., which is operating under bankruptcy protection.
 
Monika Kalra Varma: A Human Rights Black Hole: U.N Peacekeeping in Western Sahara Top
Every contemporary United Nations peacekeeping mission on the ground today has a mandate to protect human rights, except one, the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). Without direct authorization from the UN Security Council, MINURSO cannot monitor or report on the human rights situation in Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa. As a result, the Sahrawi people continue to suffer from human rights abuses with no recourse or relief. This week, the Security Council will review and renew MINURSO 's mandate. Although the mission will be extended, this review will reportedly again exclude a human rights component in the mission's mandate, making the UN Secretary General's recognition of a "duty to uphold human rights standards in all its operations, including those relating to Western Sahara," ring hollow. Looking at MINURSO's history helps explain how such a situation was created, but not a justification for the current gap. In the context of a dispute over whether the Moroccan government or the indigenous Sahrawi population (represented politically by the Polisario) would govern Western Sahara, the Mission was created in 1991 to oversee a ceasefire between the two sides and to ensure that the Sahrawi people one day have the opportunity to vote on the future of Western Sahara in a free and fair referendum. It was believed that this referendum could be held within one year, thus possibly justifying a UN Mission that would be limited in scope. Now, almost two decades after MINURSO was first created, the referendum has still not been held and there seems little chance of it occurring in the near future. Although the impasse is in itself a significant problem, the human rights situation on the ground warrants far greater concern. Sahrawis who have sought to promote human rights in the territory, such as the rights to freedom of speech and assembly, are subject to harassment, arrest, beatings, and are charged with crimes they have not committed. The violence against the Sahrawi population by Moroccan authorities has been cited by the US State Department , Amnesty International , Human Rights Watch , Freedom House , the World Organization Against Torture , and Reporters without Borders . In fact, Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara is continually ranked by Freedom House as one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Without human rights monitoring by the only on-the-ground entity which could have the capability to do so - MINURSO - this government-sponsored misconduct will continue to go unchecked. The UN's own human rights arm agrees with this assessment, albeit quietly. The UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a leaked 2006 report , determined that monitoring of the human rights situation in Western Sahara and the refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria would be "indispensable." This report urged that a mechanism be created to ensure adequate and continuous monitoring of the human rights situation in both the Western Sahara territories and in the Polisario-run refugee camps located in Tindouf, Algeria. Why then does MINURSO continue to operate as the only contemporary U.N. peacekeeping mission without a human rights component? With Morocco's rise as an important ally in Western efforts to thwart terrorism, its human rights record and disregard for international rule of law has been conveniently overlooked by permanent members of the Security Council. Furthermore, Morocco has informed the international community that the inclusion of a human rights component in the MINURSO mandate would be tantamount to endorsing the Polisario. Morocco's successful politicization of the situation is not difficult to see. What is confounding is the U.N. Security Council's determination to passively acquiesce to such politics in the face of this true human rights problem - and, especially because MINURSO is the only contemporary Mission in the world where it has chosen to do so. The observance of human rights should be viewed as central to any solution to this seemingly intractable issue, not as a hindrance. As the future of Western Sahara hangs in political balance, the Security Council should, at the very least, take the definitive step of promoting the basic rights of the Sahrawi people as they wait for a resolution of the decades-long conflict over self-determination. Visit www.rfkcenter.org to learn more about the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights and our work in Western Sahara. More on Africa
 
Jobless Rate Rises In All US Metro Areas In March Top
WASHINGTON — Unemployment rates rose in all of the nation's largest metropolitan areas for the third straight month in March, with Indiana's Elkhart-Goshen once again logging the biggest gain. The Labor Department reported Wednesday all 372 metropolitan areas tracked saw jobless rates move higher last month from a year earlier. Elkhart-Goshen's rate soared to 18.8 percent, a 13 percentage-point increase. That was the fourth-highest jobless rate in the country. The Indiana region has been hammered by layoffs in the recreational vehicle industry. RV makers Monaco Coach Corp. Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International have sliced hundreds of jobs. The jobless rate jumped to 17 percent in Bend, Ore., a 9.2 percentage-point rise and the second-biggest monthly gainer. Bend for years has been the center of the central Oregon real estate and construction boom, largely fueled by retirees from California. Many of them bought vacation or retirement homes in high-end rural developments called destination resorts, which the state began allowing in 1984 as an exception to land use laws that otherwise aim to preserve rural land from development. The credit crunch and falling home prices have made it harder for retirees to cash out of their existing homes. Part of the area also features easy access to skiing, mountain biking, hunting, fishing and golf. But as unemployment rises, state analysts have cited weakness in the service and entertainment sectors. Roger Lee, executive director of the nonprofit Economic Development for Central Oregon, said losses in construction jobs have battered the area, with the impact rippling through retail and service sectors. The region's unemployment rate also has been affected by a growth in the labor force. State officials believe that is due to spouses going back into the job market to keep households afloat and retirees returning to work to supplement damaged retirement savings accounts. Rounding out the top three was North Carolina's Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, which saw its unemployment rate rise to 15.4 percent last month, an increase of 9.1 percentage points. That region has been especially hard hit by heavy layoffs in manufacturing amid a recession that is nearing a record as the longest in the post World War II period. El Centro, Calif., continued to claim the highest unemployment rate _ 25.1 percent. The jobless rate there is notoriously high because there are so many unemployed seasonal agriculture workers. Following close behind were Merced, Calif., with a jobless rate of 20.4 percent, and Yuba City, Calif., at 19.5 percent. The national unemployment rate soared to 8.5 percent, a quarter-century high, in March. Companies have seen their sales and profits hurt by the recession. They have been laying off workers and taking other cost-cutting steps to survive the downturn, which began in December 2007. Many economists believe employers will stay in cost-cutting mode even if the recession ends this year, as some hope. The nationwide unemployment rate could top 10 percent early next year before it starts to slowly drift downward. Companies won't feel inclined to boost hiring until they are confident any economic recovery has staying power. More layoffs were announced this week. Textron Inc. said it will expand layoffs, eliminating 8,300 jobs, or 20 percent, of its global work force as the recession weakens demand for corporate planes. The maker of Cessna planes, Bell helicopters and turf-maintenance equipment earlier this year said it would reduce its work force by 6,200 jobs, or 15 percent, mostly at Wichita, Kansas-based Cessna. Elsewhere, General Motors Corp. laid out a massive restructuring plan that includes cutting 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year. Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest owner of U.S. radio stations, said it's cutting 590 jobs in its second round of mass layoffs this year. And bearings and specialty steels maker Timken Co. indicated it will cut about 4,000 more jobs by the end of this year after earlier suggesting about 3,000 jobs already had been targeted In Wednesday's metro unemployment report, the government said 18 regions registered jobless rates of at least 15 percent. Meanwhile, 15 regions had rates below 5 percent. They include: Ames, Iowa; Houma-Bayou-Cane-Thibodaux, La.; Iowa, City, Iowa; Manhattan, Kansas; and Lubbock, Texas. Both Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, and Houma-Bayou-Cane-Thibodaux had the lowest unemployment rates at 3.6 percent each. The Louisiana region, with about 200,000 residents, is located on the coast and serves as a vital support area for the offshore petroleum industry in the Gulf of Mexico. Because of deepwater drilling in the Gulf, where projects take years to complete and bring to production, there has been little short-term effect from low energy prices. _____ Associated Press Writer Tim Fought in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report. More on The Recession
 
Michelle Obama And Jill Biden Spend Afternoon Volunteering At DC Food Bank Top
WASHINGTON — First Lady Michelle Obama is making good on her promise to actively volunteer in the Washington area, bagging food for hungry children at a local food bank on her husband's 100th day in office. Mrs. Obama and Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, joined more than 100 congressional spouses at the Capital Area Food Bank on Wednesday, passing out packages of wheat pasta and cans of pineapple as volunteers bagged 2,000 meals for low-income kids in the area. This is the second time the first lady has volunteered for the hungry in the District of Columbia. In March, she served lunch to the homeless at a soup kitchen. The event was sponsored by the food bank and Feeding America, a hunger relief group. View a slideshow of the First Lady's March visit to a soup kitchen. -or- Watch Michelle Obama's Call To Service. More on The Giving Life
 
David Goldstein: Inglorious Bastards Top
Via Dan Savage, the Chicago Sun-Times' Neil Steinberg has a modest proposal of his own, suggesting that if traditionalists object to the use of the word "marriage" to describe same-sex civil unions, shouldn't the same rigid defense of language be applied to the children of same-sex couples? How much longer will they allow gays to press their agenda by claiming their children are "born" when of course, by entering the world as part of these lesser civil unions, they could easily be relegated to a similarly lesser state? Perhaps mainstream America would be happier if couples that can form unions but not marry would have children that are "birthed," or "whelped" or "emerge." Instead of a "birth certificate" the couples could be issued a "document of existence." Sure, we naysayers might point out that doing so would cause discomfort for the affected children, who, when asked where they were born, would have to answer, "Well, I wasn't technically 'born,' but I 'came into existence' in Evanston.'' But since opposition to gay marriage considers neither the feelings of children nor the concerns of their gay parents, it's a little late to start caring about them now. Of course, there already is a common English word to describe children born of unmarried parents; we call them bastards , with all the negative connotation that word intentionally implies. If -- while arguing that the institution is the " gold standard " for raising children -- opponents of gay "marriage" insist on defending the traditional use of the word, they should at least acknowledge the traditional meaning associated with its absence. Steinberg only satirically suggests that the product of "these lesser civil unions" could easily be relegated to a lesser status themselves, but by the inner semantic logic of the traditionalists, that is indeed the inevitable and intentional outcome of codifying this semantic distinction in law. For once the political battle over same-sex marriage is reduced to an argument over the definition of a single word, a linguistically consistent defense of traditional marriage would inherently imply that Dan's son is a bastard , while my traditionally legitimate daughter is not. Yes, I know... there are some who might argue that as mores and circumstances have changed over the past half-century or so, the literal meaning of the word "bastard" has become archaic. English is a vibrant, living language that constantly evolves. And that is exactly my point. [David Goldstein blogs on WA state politics at HorsesAss.org ] More on Gay Marriage
 
Scott Murphy Sworn In As New York's Newest Congressman Top
Democrat Scott Murphy, winner by a hair in an upstate New York special election that became a multimillion-dollar early referendum on the popularity of President Obama's economic policies, was sworn in Wednesday as the House's newest member.
 
Mark Bazer: Collaboraction Executive Artistic Director on The Interview Show Top
Anthony Moseley, executive artistic director of the wonderful Collaboraction theater company in Chicago, appeared on The Interview Show , which I host at The Hideout the first Friday of every month, to discuss the Sketchbook Festival (now going on), the history of Collaboraction, his golf game and more. Check out the interview below. Next Interview Show is this Friday (May 1), from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Guests will include decorator Nate Berkus, novelist Joe Meno and and the authors of Now Hiring: White House Dog .
 
Teresa Puente: Swine Flu Stirs Hate Top
It was only a matter of time before the hate mongers would start to blame illegal immigrants for the swine flu and stir up anti-Mexican sentiment. "Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico," Michael Savage stated in his April 24 nationally syndicated show. "If we lived in saner times, the borders would be closed immediately." And his bigotry becomes more sinister. "[C]ould this be a terrorist attack through Mexico? Could our dear friends in the radical Islamic countries have concocted this virus and planted it in Mexico knowing that you, [Homeland Security Secretary] Janet Napolitano, would do nothing to stop the flow of human traffic from Mexico?" This is completely absurd but so is what other commentators are spewing. During the April 27 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Neal Boortz, said, "So if you want to get that epidemic into this country, get it going real good and hot south of the border. And, you know, then just spread a rumor that there's construction jobs available somewhere, and here it comes. Because we're not gonna do anything to stop them from coming across the border." And they won't stop at xenophobia either. In an April 25 blog post, syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin, wrote, "9/11 didn't convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools will." Luckily, Media Matters , a nonprofit dedicated to monitoring misinformation in the U.S. media is keeping tabs on these right-wing racists. But we have to debunk the hate. First of all, there's no evidence illegal immigrants are bringing the swine flu into the United States and other countries. It appears it may be carried by American and European tourists who have visited Mexico. But the hysteria over the swine flu has to stop. Let's just put it in perspective with some simple facts. There have been 159 deaths in Mexico. Only seven have been confirmed as swine flu and the rest are suspected, according to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. But the population in Mexico is over 100 million. So can we really call this a pandemic? I don't think that's cause enough for us to close the borders or boycott Mexico. There also is, tragically, one confirmed death in the United States, a 23-month-old Texas child. More important to note there are an estimated 36,000 people who die from flu related causes each year in the United States, according to the CDC. That's the REGULAR flu. Since January, 13,000 people have died of complications from the seasonal flu, according to the CDC. The regular flu looks to be far more deadly that the swine flu. Let's just keep those numbers in perspective. Yes, we do need to take some precautions and it's a good thing the Obama Administration is making plans for a new vaccine. But as Obama said, "This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm." This means the television networks should also dial it back and stop making people so afraid. They need to put the actual numbers into perspective -- swine flu vs. regular flu. So far you're more likely to die from the regular flu. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and wash your hands more often and use hand sanitizer. But I don't think we all need to start wearing masks or pulling the kids out of school. Let's not bash Mexico or view Mexicans or brown people in the United States with suspicion. We have to stand up to the people fomenting all the fear and hysteria. Teresa Puente teaches journalism at Columbia College Chicago and is the editor and publisher of Latina Voices. More on Swine Flu
 
`Government Motors': Will Feds Take The Wheel At GM? Top
WASHINGTON — If the government takes a majority stake in General Motors, will it end up taking the wheel, too? Under a restructuring plan put forth this week by GM, the ailing automaker would give majority ownership to the federal government to stave off bankruptcy. That handoff would amount to an extraordinary partial nationalization of the maker of Buicks, Cadillacs and Chevys that has been an independent company since 1908. The Obama administration has said it isn't interested in running an auto company, but with that big of a stake, some analysts say the government would probably be tempted to push its own policies on such issues as alternative fuel vehicles and unions. And that could affect the types of cars that roll off GM's assembly lines. "The fear here is that a company owned by the government would move toward the do-good results, not the bottom line," said Gerald Meyers, a University of Michigan business professor and former CEO of American Motors Corp. GM's proposal would give the government more than 50 percent of the automaker's stock in exchange for forgiving $10 billion in government loans. The United Auto Workers union would end up with a 39 percent stake. The plan is far from a sure thing. Holders of GM's $27 billion in unsecured debt have dismissed it as unfair because they would lose most of their investment. And the White House repeated this week that it doesn't want to own GM or any other auto company. But through its broad efforts to rescue the auto industry, the White House is already deeply involved in the operations of GM and Chrysler. It has sunk nearly $25 billion into the two companies and their financial arms, and is ready to give them even more if their restructuring plans are deemed workable. The Obama administration has already flexed its muscle by forcing out Rick Wagoner as GM's CEO. GM said Monday that it would still retain day-to-day control of the company. But at the direction of the Treasury Department, GM will replace several members of its board of directors at its annual meeting in August. In most corporations, the board sets long-term policies and goals. If the handover plan goes through, at least one of those seats will probably be held by a government representative who would look out for the taxpayers' interests. "The U.S. government as a major shareholder would probably ensure that the board is doing their role," GM chief financial officer Ray Young said in an interview this week. Exactly what interests the government would look out for remains to be seen. Some analysts said that with government ownership of GM, the company could be used to press issues like building more fuel-efficient vehicles and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. GM, which spent recent years selling SUVs and other gas-guzzlers, is already making a push into hybrid and electric vehicle technology and is spinning off the behemoth Hummer. But its best-selling vehicle is still the Chevy Silverado, a full-size pickup truck. In another possible conflict of interest, the White House could find itself in the odd position of being a partner with the UAW while simultaneously sitting on the board as it negotiates contracts with the union. "This almost by definition injects politics into the reorganization," said James Gattuso, a scholar at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. However, Michael Ettlinger, vice president for economic policy at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group, said that while the government would have an interest in protecting its investment in GM, it probably wouldn't try to dictate how the company does business or what types of vehicles it makes. As a member of GM's board, the government would have a responsibility to the company and its shareholders to make sound business decisions, not those based on policy, Ettlinger said. "The administration's strategy to deal with our energy challenges is not to take over automobile companies and make them do things. That is a losing strategy," he said. Meyers said the British auto industry, which went through a period of nationalization during the 1970s, holds some clues to government ownership. In that case, he said, pressure groups like unions held powerful sway through their allies in the government. "It's a populism kind of management," he said. As for how long Washington would stay in the auto business, Ettlinger said the government might hold a stake in GM for several years, but added: "I don't think that long-term the federal government is interested in running companies." More on Auto Bailout
 
Scott Mendelson: How my coverage of "Wolverine" turned me into the worst kind of film critic/pundit... Top
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read." There is a movie coming out this Friday that I have written quite a bit about over the last month. While some have taken my constant commentary on said movie and the circumstances which surrounded the month prior to its release, as some kind of rooting interest in its artistic and financial failure. This is not the case. Although I will confess that I perhaps became, for a moment, the sort of media person that I often criticize. In that, I became aware that if X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened well this weekend, despite the leaked work print and despite the current flu scare, then there would be no story and there would be nothing to discuss. However, if the film underperformed over the weekend, it would be news. "But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. " It it opens at anything under $55 million, it will be seen as a true disappointment. It may be blamed on the availability of the rough cut, the bad word of mouth, the slowly forming bad buzz in the form of negative reviews, or, yes, the theoretical panic of swine flu (quick, what's the most memorable scene in Wolfgang Peterson's Outbreak ?). But if it bombs it's news. If it does the 'normal' $70 million+ opening weekend, there will be nothing for us to talk about. So if I am guilty of subconsciously wanting the film to under perform, it is because such a thing would be news, and it will give me material to discuss on Monday night. So, yes, I'm guilty of being a film pundit who hoped for a situation in which there would be news. In those moments, I was no better than the political pundits who constantly try to turn every election into a horse race, because that would be more exciting to write about than a blow out. Regardless of how Wolverine opens this weekend, I will still write about it. But I will not take joy or sadness in whatever comes of it. "But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends. " The main reason I'm writing this is to give some context to a review of the film, which is coming down the pike. It just went up at Mendelson's Memos and it will appear here on Friday. As for the movie, it is everything I feared.. And, frankly, at this point, it feels like any full on negative review feels like kicking a sick puppy. The failure of this beleaguered project, after all that has transpired, brings nothing so much as pity for those involved. Contrary to popular belief, a film critic should take no joy in the failure of the art form which he or she covers. When a film fails, it is a cause for mourning, not celebration. Nothing would have made me happier than to be proven wrong. But, alas, I am not wrong. Not this time. "Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source." My review of Wolverine will be up at Huffington Post on Friday morning. In the meantime, let me do my job as a film critic and point my readers along the path to some truly great somewhat recent movies that have slipped through the cracks. Some are simply great movies that failed to find their audience, some are unfairly maligned gems that deserve a second look. All of them are better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine . All of them are examples of what makes this worthwhile. Meet The Robinsons , Akeelah and the Bee , Frailty , Black Book , Nothing But The Truth, Shanghai Knights, Sixteen Blocks, Dark Water (the remake), Open Range, In America, Spirited Away, Joyride, Wet Hot American Summer, Sunshine , and the just released State of Play . Scott Mendelson
 
Elizabeth Hemmerdinger: Something Wonderful is happening in Michigan tonight Top
Something Wonderful is happening in Michigan tonight By Elizabeth Hemmerdinger My heart goes out to Michigan. A state that has, over time, contributed is so many major ways to enhancing the American Dream, is in a state of financial disarray that's hard to appreciate here in New York City on a glorious spring day. We were in Detroit recently and saw first-hand how the downtown, except on the night of a Final Four game, would be desolate; how the housing stock is deteriorating - and will probably get worse. And then there's rural Michigan to consider. The plight of the local farmers is frightful. Rather than describe the problem, I'd like to bring your attention to a most wonderful film that I hope you'll get to see, "ASPARAGUS! Stalking the American Life," by Anne de Mare and Kirsen Kelly. Sweet as a new vegetable shoot, gentle as the spring sunshine, funny as a loving family Sunday supper (if that's not entirely fiction - and if it is, then let's just celebrate the possible), and yet piercing as a Samuri sword, ASPARAGUS! might just change the way independent American farmers are viewed by their fellow Americans. If you live in Michigan tune in tonight for the state-wide Michigan Broadcast Premiere. Tonight, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 8:00 pm. Never before have all seven Michigan Public Television stations done a simultaneous broadcast. So hustle up some Michigan Roll-Ups or Asparagus Guacamole and tune into WGVU-TV Grand Rapids; WFUM-TV Flint; WDCQ-TV Saginaw; WNMU-TV Marquette; WKAR-TV East Lansing; WTVS -TV Detroit; WCMU-TV Mt. Pleasant at 8:00 pm. We, at Womens Voices For Change (www.womensvoicesforchange.org) take every opportunity to support mature women artists, so I had the opportunity to hear Anne present the film last week at The Food For Thought Film Festival at Columbia University Medical Center. She is the gentle, sweet and funny person you'd expect to meet, after seeing the film. She said, ""There is a growing bubble of awareness about the complexity of farm politics, and a true yearning to be more connected to the food we eat. It is exhilarating to be part of that movement. Our film tells the story of one small American community's struggle, and I am constantly amazed at how deeply people from all walks of life respond to the issues it brings up. I think part of that is because food can and should be such a joyous part of our lives, we all know this instinctively, yet in many ways, we lost much of our food culture when we industrialized so much of our food supply. Sometimes when people look at the mountain of changes that now need to be made - from food safety to nutrition and the obesity epidemic, from globalization to the politics of greed and the behemoths of agribusiness - it is easy to be discouraged. Access to healthy, local, sustainable agricultural products for everyone might seem like a pipe dream, but I try to remind people of how far we have come. Growing up I had never heard of a farmer's market or CSA, but now more and more of us have the opportunity to get much of our food directly from the source. So take up your knives and forks - there is a delicious revolution happening!" There will be an additional broadcast on WGVU-TV on Monday, May 18th @ 9:00 pm, and we expect more broadcast dates in June! IRONWEED FILM CLUB RELEASE has chosen Asparagus! Stalking the American Life as the May selection by the Ironweed Film Club, which issues a DVD of important social issue documentaries each month. They are a fantastic organization, so check them out at www.ironweedfilms.com. And if you want your own copy, you'll find the DVD with Bonus Features, @
 
WHO Raises Pandemic Alert Level Top
GENEVA — The World Health Organization has raised its pandemic alert for swine flu to the second highest level, meaning that it believes a global outbreak of the disease is imminent. WHO says the phase 5 alert means there is sustained human to human spread in at least two countries. It also signals that efforts to produce a vaccine will be ramped up. WHO has confirmed human cases of swine flu in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, New Zealand and Spain. Mexico and the U.S. have reported deaths. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan made the decision Wednesday to raise the alert level from phase 4 _ signifying transmission in only one country _ after reviewing the latest scientific evidence on the outbreak. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. BERLIN (AP) _ The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that the swine flu outbreak is moving closer to becoming a pandemic, as the United States reported the first swine flu death outside of Mexico, and Germany and Austria became latest European nations hit by the disease. In Geneva, WHO flu chief Dr. Keiji Fukuda told reporters that there was no evidence the virus was slowing down, moving the agency closer to raising its pandemic alert to phase 5, indicating widespread human-to-human transmission. But he said the health body not yet ready to move the pandemic alert level up from its current level of 4, which means the virus is being passed among people. Phase 6 _ the highest in the scale _ is for a full-scale pandemic. As fear and uncertainty about the disease ricocheted around the globe, nations took all sorts of precautions, some more useful than others. Britain closed a school after a 12-year-old girl was found to have the disease. Egypt slaughtered all its pigs and the central African nation of Gabon became the latest nation to ban pork imports, despite assurances that swine flu was not related to eating pork. Cuba eased its flight ban, deciding just to block flights coming in from Mexico. And Asian nations greeted returning airport travelers with teams of medical workers and carts of disinfectants, eager to keep swine flu from infecting their continent. In Mexico City, the epicenter of the epidemic, the mayor said Wednesday the outbreak seemed to be stabilizing and he was considering easing the citywide shutdown that closed schools, restaurants, concert halls and sports arenas. Swine flu is suspected of killing more than 150 people in Mexico and sickening over 2,400 there. Dr. Richard Besser, the acting chief of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said 91 cases have now been confirmed in 10 states, and health officials there reported Wednesday that a 23-month-old Mexican boy had died in Texas from the disease. Across Europe, Germany confirmed three swine flu cases and Austria one, while the number of confirmed cases rose to five in Britain and ten in Spain. WHO conducted a scientific review Wednesday to determine exactly what is known about how the disease spreads, how it affects human health and how it can be treated. Dr. Nikki Shindo, a WHO flu expert, said the review would focus on the large trove of data coming from Mexico and from a school in New York City that has been hard-hit by the outbreak. Germany's national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, said the country's three cases include a 22-year-old woman hospitalized in Hamburg, a man in his late 30s at a hospital in Regensburg, north of Munich, and a 37-year-old woman from another Bavarian town. All three had recently returned from Mexico. Austria's health ministry said a 28-year-old woman who recently returned from a monthlong trip to Guatemala via Mexico City and Miami has the virus but is recovering. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said health officials were ordering extra medicine and "several million more" face masks to deal with the virus. British media reports, citing an unidentified European surgical mask manufacturer, said the U.K. was seeking 32 million masks to protect its health workers from a possible pandemic. "We've decided to build stocks of anti-virals, from 35 million to 50 million," Brown said, adding that the government had put in enhanced airport checks and was going to mail swine flu information leaflets to every household in Britain. In addition to a couple in Scotland who got swine flu on their Mexican honeymoon, new British cases included a 12-year-old girl in the southwest English town of Torbay. Brown said her school had been closed as a precaution. He said the other two cases were adults in London and in Birmingham. All three had visited Mexico, were receiving anti-viral drugs and were responding well to treatment, Brown said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Cabinet ministers to discuss swine flu and his health minister said France will ask the European Union to suspend flights to Mexico. The U.S., the European Union and other countries have discouraged nonessential travel to Mexico. Cuba suspended all regular and charter flights from Mexico to the island but was still allowing airlines to return travelers to Mexico. New Zealand's number of swine flu cases rose to 14, 13 of them among a school group that recently returned from Mexico. Officials say the swine flu strain infecting the students is the same as that in Mexico. All were responding well to antiviral drugs and in voluntary quarantine at home. New Zealand has 44 other possible cases, with tests under way. Mexico was taking drastic measures to fight the outbreak. It closed all archaeological sites and allowed restaurants in the capital to only serve takeout food in an aggressive bid to stop gatherings where the virus can spread. Schools remained closed until at least May 6. A regional beach soccer championship in Mexico was postponed and all Mexican first-division soccer games this weekend will be played with no audiences. Cruise lines were avoiding Mexican ports and holiday tour groups are canceling holiday charter flights there. The Philippine health chief appealed to dozens of Filipino legislators to abandon plans to visit Las Vegas to cheer for boxing idol Manny Pacquiao _ even though Las Vegas is more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) from the Mexican border. Egypt's government ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution, though no swine flu cases have been reported there. Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork, but farmers raise up to 350,000 pigs for its Christian minority. In Australia, officials were testing more than 100 people with flu symptoms for the virus and the government gave health authorities wide powers to contain contagious diseases. "(We can make) sure that people are isolated and perhaps detained if they don't cooperate and are showing symptoms," said Health Minister Nicola Roxon. ___ Associated Press Writers around the world contributed to this report. More on Swine Flu
 
SaraKay Smullens: Arlen Specter: Determined Survivor, Pragmatic Politician, Loyal Friend Top
When Arlen Specter, a five-term Senate veteran, announced that he would return to the Democratic Party, my land line, iPhone, and text messages went into overload. For Arlen Specter has been a friend of my family's for over 30 years. Our family does not see him often, however. At our daughter's wedding, she welcomed him, thinking he was someone else. I told her not to feel bad. Throughout his political life, Specter has been called far worse than the wrong name. From the first moment that Arlen Specter, a Democrat, received the Republicans' nod to run on their ticket as a Democrat for the office of Philadelphia's District Attorney, he has been controversial. After winning this 1966 election, Specter became a Republican. Yet throughout his Senate years right-wing Republicans have insisted that Arlen remains a "dangerous liberal." The Republican Club for Growth, which ruthlessly targets moderate Republican incumbents, has labeled him "devoted to more spending, more bailouts, and less economic freedom." Liberals, on the other hand, often brand Specter a turncoat opportunist who cares only about amassing and maintaining personal power. But the truth about this very tough and complex man and brilliant attorney cannot be simplistically assessed. For many liberals, the apex of sheer antagonism toward Specter was the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, an episode that threatened Specter's reelection and one that caused the New York Times to describe his treatment of Anita Hill as that of a "mean spirited prosecutor." However, turn the clock back just four years to 1987. That is when Specter helped torpedo Robert Bork's candidacy for the Supreme Court, and a new verb, "to bork," was birthed. That time conservatives were sickened and liberals delighted. Indeed, some conservatives wanted to destroy Specter at his next reelection. I think that the reason Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh did not stand against him in 1992 was that Thornburgh was told by Republican leadership that Specter could win the general election, while he could not. And Specter always deeply appreciated not having to go through the kind of bruising primary he would endure and win against Pat Toomey six years ago. I have always viewed Specter's support of Clarence Thomas as his payback to those who supported him in 1992. To appreciate Arlen Specter's quality of leadership it is necessary to look back at his initial win as Philadelphia's District Attorney in 1966. Before Specter, the Philadelphia D.A.'s office was a home to those with political clout and connection, regardless of degree of competence, skill, work ethic or character. Arlen Specter changed all of that. Specter hired excellent, much sought-after assistant D.A.s regardless of their political views or persuasion. What he wanted was brilliance and competence, and he was the most loyal of bosses and mentors. Among the many Republican and Democratic future stars he hired are Governor Ed Rendell, who may have returned to New York had it not been for Specter. Philadelphia's District Attorney, Lynne Abraham, was hired and nurtured when few women were given this opportunity. There are federal and common pleas judges, first hired by Specter, who have served and continue to serve with distinction, as do countless community leaders. Further, Arlen Specter was one of the first D.A.s in the country to see that a lack of education and family and community stability led to rises in crime. The community programs that Specter initiated and fostered broke dramatic new ground. In 2004 right-wing ideologues were determined to brutalize and destroy Arlen Specter. Many of his Democratic supporters, including my husband and me, temporarily changed their registration to vote for him in the primary against Pat Toomey. Specter won by just 17,200 votes, and his entire campaign chest of $15.3 million was depleted. Now six years later, here are the facts: Toomey is once again in the race. Arlen Specter is one of three Republicans to vote for Obama's stimulus legislation. Polls indicate that Toomey will win a primary if Specter cannot get thousands of Republicans who have changed their registration to flip back, at least temporarily, to vote for him. Specter called his decision to leave the Republican Party "painful," which, knowing him, I believe to be an understatement. For the Republican Party offered Specter a coveted once-in-a-lifetime opportunity both to serve and to become prominent. And Arlen Specter is fiercely loyal, personally and politically, to those loyal to him. However, Pennsylvania's 79-year-old veteran of 29 years in the Senate, a man who has stared down cancer without flinching, is a pragmatic and determined survivor. Arlen Specter well knows that the Republican Party that deserved his loyalty and independent thought no longer exists. More on Arlen Specter
 
Harry Moroz: The Fake Out: Imitating Regulation in the Era of Madoff Top
The size and scope of the financial crisis and the resulting financial bailout require all sorts of simplifications. Some are necessary just to allow the general public to talk about what went wrong. We no longer explain in detail what a CDS is. Rather, it has become a symbol: everyone knows what one "means" when you say that "CDSs caused the financial crisis." (No matter that your friend in finance calls CDSs "essential" to modern finance.) In the same way, the great fraudsters have been blamed - mostly by the media - for many of the financial difficulties we are currently experiencing. Bernie Madoff is, of course, the most famous because his fraud was biggest or perhaps because his behavior as a billionaire was so anodyne and, thus, the fraud so inexplicable. My personal favorite is that of the lawyer Marc Dreier who impersonated executives inside of their own offices in order to sell promissory notes (one executive even watched the impersonation, albeit unknowingly) and lived with the pomp and excess expected of such bilkers. Allen Stanford, who chose cricket manipulation as his guilty pleasure, is an equally intriguing thief. But these villains are doubly bad in a way that simplifications like "financial weapons of mass destruction", which Warren Buffet famously used to describe derivatives, are not. These villains, and the media voices that villanize them, create public support for the least common denominator: ending financial fraud. So this week the Senate took up, debated for a week (a long time), and then passed antifraud legislation that extended mortgage fraud regulations to nonbank mortgage companies and strengthened some protections against fraudulent manipulation of TARP. Senator Reid stated confidently : Passing this bill will be a crucial step toward deterring the type of financial fraud and illegal manipulation of markets that were the root cause of the current economic crisis. The Senate, in other words, is capable of making activity illegal that the general public already assumes is illegal. But neither the Senate nor the House has taken steps to, say, create a mortgage lending market that works in the interests of homeowners most of the time, instead of against them. Nor has Congress passed legislation that prevents credit card companies from charging exorbitant fees because a cardholder has withdrawn more than the credit limit set by the card company . But notice who has been tossed around in the mud: Madoff, Dreier, Stanford, Wagner. Do we believe that the gentlemen and gentlewomen atop Goldman Sachs, for instance, think twice about these crooks while they are quite cleverly figuring out how to wiggle out of the weak restrictions imposed by TARP? Really, it's not the bad guys we should be worrying so much about. The causes of the financial crisis - and the causes of so much pain to consumers, of which abusive credit card interest rate hikes are just the start - are radioactive because they are not illegal nor thought to be so. If regulation is going to be robust and effective, it must originate from the perspective of the homeowner and the credit card customer, not from the perspective of the villain.
 
Robert A. Freling: Energy: At the Nexus of Climate, Poverty, and Global Security Top
Imagine living your whole life without electricity. No lights at night, no radio or television, no laptop or cell phone, to name but a few of the many things that we take for granted in our daily, hyper-linked, 21st century lives. The often viewed satellite image of earth at night speaks volumes: a perpetual blackout is the stark reality for some two billion people -- almost a third of humanity -- who live beyond the reach of an electric power grid. These folks, most of whom live in rural villages in the developing world, are forced to retreat each evening into homes that are illuminated, if at all, by the dim light of candles or smoky, polluting kerosene lanterns. These two billion people are being left further and further behind a divide that is polarizing humanity into a world of information haves and have-nots. And yet, information poverty is only one aspect of a condition which is even more far-reaching in its consequences: "energy poverty". Without access to electricity, it is difficult to read or study at night, to pump or purify water, to store vaccines, or to communicate with the outside world. In the 15 years I've worked with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), I've traveled to some of the poorest parts of the world where I have seen the devastating toll that energy poverty exacts on the health, education, and economic well-being of un-electrified households and communities. At the same time, I've also been blessed with the opportunity to witness the incredibly positive transformation that even modest amounts of electricity can bring to rural villages, not just for basic lighting but also to provide essential power for schools, clinics, water pumping systems, microenterprise centers, and WiFi-enabled Internet kiosks. Sadly, energy's role in development has often been overlooked. Case in point: universal access to energy was not included as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) despite the fact that without an effective energy strategy none of the MDGs are ultimately achievable. The good news is that energy poverty is finally starting to gain the attention it deserves. Tom Friedman, in his latest book Hot Flat and Crowded, devotes an entire chapter to the subject, and last month, I was honored to receive the King Hussein Leadership Prize for the work I've facilitated in bringing solar power to some of the poorest, most marginalized parts of the world. Presenting the award, Her Majesty Queen Noor said, "SELF, working at the intersection of environmental stewardship and sustainable human development, helps whole villages leapfrog from no reliable energy to affordable green power that in turn provides access to other basic rights - clean water, education, healthcare, and economic empowerment." Her Majesty further added, "True peace and security will never be won through military force. They will only be achieved to the degree that we can address the human realities of poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation that underlie so much of the instability in the world." I couldn't agree more. In affirming SELF's mission, the King Hussein Foundation has made a powerful statement which underscores the critical role that clean, renewable energy can play in addressing climate change and combating extreme poverty, and ultimately, in making the world more equitable, peaceful, and secure. It's not likely that grid electricity will ever reach all of the two billion people on the planet who are living in darkness. But that's alright. Rural villages can now bypass the age of fossil fuels and catapult themselves into a bright, sustainable, carbon-free future by tapping directly into the ultimate form of distributed power - the sun. More on Energy
 
Bill Chameides: Staring Down the Double-Barrel Climate Shotgun Top
Dr. Bill Chameides is the dean of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He blogs regularly at theGreenGrok.com . Surprises in the climate system can very quickly make global warming a whole lot worse than predicted. Scientists have known that one such surprise could come from a sudden release of methane , from wetlands or marine clathrates frozen on the ocean bottom, or both. Thanks to a new paper , we probably know which barrel of that double-barrel shotgun to worry about first. Our understanding of the climate system is imperfect -- no argument there. And so, it is possible that this global warming thing won't be so bad, that the models have over-predicted the amount of warming and climate disruption that will occur in the coming decades. Risky Business: Underestimating Climate Change The kicker is that uncertainty cuts both ways. It is just as likely (some argue even more likely) that the models have under-predicted the change and things will be a lot worse than we now think. The major worry is a "climate surprise," an unforeseen rapid climate change. For example, the climate could pass a tipping point that, like a runaway truck barreling down a hill without brakes, triggers a much more rapid warming that leads to catastrophic climate disruption. It's a worry that has some grounding in reality. The geologic record tells us that such shifts in climate (either warming or cooling) have occurred in the past, and sometimes over the space of just a few years closely followed by a decades-long temperature response. Big Methane Burp Wreaked Climate Havoc in the Past One such event occurred about 11,600 years ago (the so-called Younger Dryas -Preboreal transition), when the northern hemisphere's climate rapidly moved from ice age to non-ice age conditions in a short period of time (over the course of several years to several decades). Analysis of air bubbles trapped in ice from that time period show that the transition was accompanied by a rapid rise in the concentration of atmospheric methane. Because methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas (more than 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide as a global warmer), the obvious inference is that much of that rapid warming was caused by methane emissions. Such a large increase in methane could have come from two sources: melting of frozen clathrates (also called methane hydrates) that are buried on the ocean's bottom and/or volatilaztion of organic carbon from wetlands as methane. (This latter source includes wetlands formed from melting permafrost.) But which one? Scientists have been unsure. Last week, a paper published in Science by Vasilii Petrenko of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and colleagues suggests an answer -- wetlands. Through what has been described as a "heroic" effort Petrenko and colleagues mined tons of ice from west Greenland. Yes, that's right, tons of ice -- one ton for each time sample collected. They then analyzed the methane trapped in the ice's bubbles for its radiocarbon abundance. Why radiocarbon? To understand, let's digress a moment to review. What Is Radiocarbon? (Hint: It's Not a Hard Rock Station on Satellite Radio, I Don't Think) Radiocarbon is the isotope of carbon that has six protons and eight neutrons (thus, C-14). Most carbon on the Earth has six protons and six neutrons (C-12). Radiocarbon is produced by cosmic rays; fast neutrons entering the upper atmosphere slam into nitrogen atoms and convert the nitrogen (N-14) to C-14. Called radiocarbon because it is radioactive, over a period of tens of thousands of years C-14 decays back into N-14. (For those of you up on your nuclear physics, C-14 has a half-life of about 6,000 years. Thus, if you started with 100 atoms of C-14, you would expect to find about half or 50 left after 6,000 years, 25 after 12,000 years, and so on.) Because radiocarbon decays on time scales of tens of thousands of years, it provides a great way to distinguish between methane from wetlands and methane from clathrates. You see, the methane in clathrates was formed millions of years ago and so has no radiocarbon left, not so for wetlands methane. Source of the Vintage Methane? And so, Petrenko et al. realized they could figure out where the methane blip from the Youger Dryas-Preboreal transition came from by looking for radiocarbon in the methane in the bubbles trapped in the ice from that period. The problem is, such a measurement requires a lot of methane, and to get that much methane requires a lot of air bubbles, which in turn requires a lot of ice -- about a ton per sample, to be exact. Undaunted by the challenge, Petrenko and his colleagues mined their tons of ice, isolated the methane, and did the radiocarbon analysis. They found that the major source of increased methane during the Younger Dryas-Preboreal transition was from wetlands. What Does What Happened ~12,000 Years Ago Tell Us About Today? Huge amounts of carbon currently reside in clathrates and permafrost, more so in clathrates than permafrost, but both are substantial. If either of those reservoirs should give up their carbon as methane, the event would cause a major increase in the global warming from greenhouse gases (what we call an increase in the equivalent carbon dioxide concentration) -- and one of the climate surprises that scientists are not sure about but worry about. The Petrenko work is one of those good news/bad news things. It suggests that clathrates may not be a problem, which is good. But it confirms that melting permafrost may very well be not so good. And here is the kicker: the permafrost is melting already and methane has already been found to be bubbling up from lakes formed from melting permafrost . More on Climate Change
 
Airport In Murtha's District Gets $30M In Wartime Upgrades From Pentagon Top
At the behest of House Defense Appropriations Chairman John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the Pentagon has spent about $30 million equipping a little-used airport named for the congressman so that it can handle behemoth military aircraft and store combat equipment for rapid deployment to foreign battlefields. More on John Murtha
 
Page Gardner: Expanding Voter Participation:The Roadmap is Clear Top
Almost half a year has passed, but the 2008 election still looms as an epochal event: With a record voter turnout, the American people, including members of many groups who have been excluded from the political process, changed the face of the nation's leadership and the direction of our public policies. In many ways, this view is not only optimistic but realistic. More than 133 million Americans cast ballots in the election last year - the largest number of voters in U.S. history and 9 million more than in 2004. Four constituencies that have historically been under-represented - African Americans, Hispanics, unmarried women and young voters (ages 18-29) - provided the margin of victory for President Obama. But the other side of the story is that 79 million eligible Americans did not vote. Forty-four million of these non-voters were not registered, and another four million were discouraged from voting because of burdensome policies, such as voter identification requirements. Disproportionate numbers of non-voters belong to the very groups that have historically been excluded and whose increased participation helped to elect Obama. With the prospect of electing the first black president, African American turnout increased dramatically in 2008, but, in 2004, only 60 percent of African Americans voted. Meanwhile, in 2008, among voting-age Americans, 21.5 million young people, 20.4 million unmarried women, and 9.8 million Hispanics did not vote. Why did 79 million Americans - more than the total population of Great Britain or France - not vote in an historic election after an exciting campaign? As Professor Nathaniel Persily of Columbia Law School testified before the Senate Rules Committee, "The United States continues to make voting more burdensome than any other industrialized democracy." As an organization focused on encouraging the political participation of the nation's 53 million unmarried women, Women's Voices, Women Vote (www.WVWV.org) recently released a report, "Access to Democracy: Identifying Obstacles Hindering the Right to Vote" by Scott E. Thomas, former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission, and Alicia C. Insley and Jenifer L. Carrier. The report found that many states have confusing and cumbersome registration requirements, limited options to cast ballots before Election Day, complicated voter ID requirements, inconsistent rules regarding casting and counting provisional ballots, and varied regulations regarding the maintenance of voter lists. These obstacles make registering and voting especially difficult for underrepresented groups who tend to move more often, to have less formal education and income, to hold jobs where they can't take time off during the day, and, especially among immigrants, to lack common forms of identification. The best way to make it encourage voter participation is to enact a Federal Universal Voter Registration Act. This would establish a national mandate for universal voter registration within each state. Federal funds would be provided to the states to create permanent voter registration systems that will allow voters to stay on the rolls when they move. Short of this comprehensive initiative, five other reforms would bring the nation closer to the goal of full voter participation. First, Same Day Registration would allow eligible Americans to register on Election Day. In the 2008 presidential election, voter participation rates were highest in the states that allowed Same Day registration - 69 percent, compared to 62 percent. Second, there needs to be more clarity about voter qualifications, including whether people without permanent addresses or felons who have served their time are now eligible to vote. Qualifications should be similar in different states; the nation must not return to the days when arbitrary poll taxes and literacy tests set discriminatory standards in some parts of the country. Third, registration deadlines should not vary from Election Day to a month or more before. Americans who are excited about a presidential campaign debate a week before the election should not be told it is too late to register and vote. Fourth, registration should be brought into the Twenty-First Century. Busy Americans should be allowed to register online so that they do not have to wait on line. Fifth, there should be "no excuses" early and absentee voting. As of January, 2009, 32 states allow no-excuse early voting, 15 require excuses, and four do not allow early voting at all. There is no excuse for states not to allow no-excuses early voting. The U.S. still lags behind most other advanced democracies in the percentage of the population that votes in national elections. We know how to correct this condition, and we have "no excuse" not to remove the obstacles to expanding American democracy.
 
Jasmine Tyler: Obama Administration Calls for End to Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity Top
On President Obama's 100th day in office the White House asked Congress to address the issue of disparity in penalties for the use of powder/crack cocaine. This historic request follows a national lobby day held yesterday that was co-sponsored by a dozen advocacy groups. The day brought together voters from Utah, California, Oklahoma, New Jersey, South Carolina and other states to pressure key members of Congress to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences. The groups held a breakfast briefing with members of congress and victims of the federal disparity on Tuesday morning. Chocolate bars weighing fifty grams, the equivalent weight that would trigger a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine, were on hand to demonstrate to members of Congress just how small that quantity is compared to the 5000 grams -- five kilos -- of powered cocaine that garners the same penalty. The 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts created a disparity in sentencing between two forms of cocaine, crack cocaine and powder, at the federal level even though scientific evidence, including a major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has proven that crack and powder cocaine have similar physiological and psychoactive effects on the human body. It takes only five grams of crack cocaine (the equivalent of the contents of two sugar packets) to receive a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, while it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to receive the same sentence. As a presidential candidate, then-Senator Obama said the "war on drugs is an utter failure" and that he believes in "shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public health approach." He also called for eliminating the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, repealing the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS, and stopping the U.S. Justice Department from undermining state medical marijuana laws. Within 24 hours of taking office, the White House website made clear that Obama's campaign commitments to eliminate both the crack/powder disparity and the ban on syringe exchange funding were now official administration policy. The Obama Administration has articulated the need to address this issue by completely eliminating the disparity. Current penalties for crack cocaine are excessively harsh and have little to do with an individual's actual culpability and more to do with the color of their skin. It's not fair and it's not working. While two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Latino according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 80 percent of those convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses in 2006 were African American. Last year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission moderately reduced sentences for crack cocaine offenses and the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that judges have the right to sentence people below the guidelines in Kimbrough v. the United States. However, judicial discretion is still undermined by the statutory mandatory minimum sentences that Congress enacted over 20 years ago, and those mandatory minimums are the source of the crack/powder disparity. Thus far, two legislative proposals have been re-introduced in the House -- one by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX, and one by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA. Both would end the disparity between powder and crack cocaine sentences. The Senate Crime and Drugs subcommittee will hold a hearing to discuss crack cocaine sentencing on Wednesday, April 29. The House Crime, Terror and Homeland Security committee also will hold a hearing on this issue on May 21. The stars are aligning to ensure Americans will no longer be subjected to the same draconian policy set in the late 80s, which flies in the face of scientific and legal research. Congress and the administration have an obligation to fix this and show the country that our criminal justice practices will be fair and sentences proportional to the offense. We can no longer prioritize precious federal resources solely on the incarceration of individuals who are low-level, nonviolent drug users and sellers nor permit any racial group to continue to be unjustly targeted. Jasmine L. Tyler is the Deputy Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. Anthony Papa is the author 15 to Life.
 

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