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Kevin Phillips: The New Politics of Inflation: Asian and Monetary Top
When future chroniclers describe the late 20th century and early 21st century global inflation now about to renew, the rise of Asia will be an even bigger causation than the massive money expansion set in motion over a quarter of a century by the U.S. Federal Reserve. And this will be true even though Chairman Ben Bernanke has been pouring trillions of dollars into the bail-out of a reckless and metastasized U.S. financial system. In a nutshell, the rise of Asia - approaching 60% of the earth's population and on the cusp of a plurality of world wealth- is realigning global economics and political power. The history of such great realignments is inflationary. If it were not, prices would not have risen twenty or thirtyfold since the European Renaissance and the original Price Revolution five hundred years ago. As of 2009, from Turkey and the Persian Gulf east to Indonesia, China and Siberia, it's Asia's turn to make the waves, rock the global financial boat and set a new international course . Think of this upheaval as the Second Price Revolution. The United States will be a major participant, but more importantly a principal loser. When I published my first book, The Emerging Republican Majority way back in 1969, I discovered that Washington politicians and pundits had trouble grappling with unanticipated watersheds in the political status quo. Now the same seems true again for the seeming incapacity of the New York and London financial power structure to deal with the economic upheaval now occurring. So here's a relevant bit of economic history - and an admission. The Second Price Revolution notion has been one of my theses since the inclusion of a chapter about it in my 1982 book on the radicalization of Reagan era economics (entitled Post-Conservative America ) During the original price revolution 500 years ago, when Europe gained global supremacy with the Renaissance, the rise of capitalism, and a new maritime supremacy in Arabian, Indian and East Asian coastal waters, coupled with the influx of huge quantities of precious metals from the Spanish-controlled new world, the increase in European price levels over roughly a century reached some 400-600 percent. Pleasure and pain were unequally distributed. Those with capital and skills enjoyed unprecedented opportunity. Peasants who did not understand what was happening usually lost purchasing power. The last three or four decades have been somewhat similar. So powerful was the Renaissance-era version that the the New Cambridge Modern History went so far as to split the title of its 16th century volume, calling it The Counter-Reformation and the Price Revolution, 1559-1610 . For many years, common wisdom attributed the first price revolution to the arrival in Spain and subsequent distribution across Europe of the gold and silver carried by treasure galleons from the Americas. But as the editor of the New Cambridge Modern History explained some years back, "we no longer regard the 'price revolution' as solely the sudden product of an influx of silver from America after the opening of the Potosi mine in 1543 any more than we think of the Renaissance as caused by the sudden influx of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Nevertheless, the flood tide of American silver, pouring in on top of other deeper and longer-term movements of population, of trade and of finance, did quicken and steepen the price rise and make this a more difficult time for governments and for all whose incomes were comparatively inflexible." So much for the long-ago. Let us turn to the contours of recent, present and future inflation in what contemporary Americans may shorthand as the Alan Greenspan-Ben Bernanke era from 1987 to 2010. If Greenspan is now caricatured as Easy Al, Bernanke may be nick-named Printing-press Ben. Okay, skeptics will say, but what does that have to do with Asia? Actually, all too much. Let us begin with the major inflationary pressures of 1966-1981 - a drawn-out, expensive U.S. war in Southeast Asia and then a two-stage oil price increase put through by OPEC, an Asia-dominated cartel. During the late 1980s, U.S. economic policies were sufficiently coordinated with Tokyo that Chicago economist David Hale joked that the Washington-responsive Bank of Japan ought to register as a Republican political action committee. The Asian currency crisis, in turn, was a major financial event of 1997, the Russian mess drew headlines in 1998, and the three U.S. wars between 1991 and 2003 involved Kuwait and Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq again. Southwest-Asian religious extremists orchestrated the 9/11 attack on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These Asian-linked circumstances helped pressure Washington towards permissive fiscal and monetary policy. This decade's ongoing overseas military imbroglios and corollary budget vulnerabilities involve Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Oil price pressures center in Asia, as do this decade's wealth realignments and huge overseas holdings of U.S. dollars -- $2 trillion in China alone - that menace the embattled greenback like a sword of Damocles. Both Easy Al and Printing-press Ben, as well as administrations of both parties, have depended on Asian willingness to tolerate and underwrite Washington-New York public and private debt expansion and bubble-blowing. Something else New York and Washington have enjoyed is finagled U.S. inflation data, which during this decade understated price-hike reality by about one half. Bill Gross of PIMCO, the world's biggest bond manager and a critic of Pollyanna statistics, pointed out in 2008 that over the decade, global inflation had averaged nearly 7 percent even while Washington proclaimed an official U.S. average of 2.6 percent. "Does it make any sense," said Gross, "that we have a 3 percent to 4 percent lower inflation rate than the rest of the world?" Yes and no. No, it doesn't have much statistical logic, but yes it does make tactical sense if you are a Fed chairman running a low-inflation pretense for Wall Street leverage gamesters, G-7 central bankers and Washington budget pseudo-balancers. None of these power centers can afford the various inhibitions attendant on recognizing a Second Price Revolution. Moreover, despite the Greenspan-Bernanke pretensions that the decade's inflation was in the 2.6 percent range, in mid-2008 the International Monetary Fund let the cat out of the bag by candidly acknowledging the "broadest and most buoyant commodity price boom since the early 1970s." The IMF's published data on country-by-country average consumer prices for the 1980-2008 period - charts are available on their website - underscores the Asian depth and sweep. In a nutshell, the data presents the 2000 price level in each nation as 100 and shows the earlier and later inflation rates as percentages of that amount. Here are the progressions for Asia seven biggest economies: China - 25 (1980), 100 (2000) and 158 (2008); India - 18 (1980), 100 (2000) and 144 (2008); Indonesia - 13 (1980), 100 (200) and 201 (2008); Japan - 75 (1980), 100 (2000) and 100 (2008); Korea - 33 (1980), 100 (2000) and 128 (2008); Pakistan - 21 (1980), 100 (2000) and 159 (2008); and Russia - 21 (1995), 100 (2000) and 266 (2008). Note that the 2008 figures were based on IMF estimates. The average 400-600 percent rise is roughly comparable to the changes in Europe during that continent's Price Revolution. A similar parallel exists in the convergence of 1980-2008 economic, demographic and geopolitical trends changing the relationships between continents and escalating Asia's new global centrality. With latterday petroleum movements playing some of the role of 16th and 17th century gold and silver flows, the U.S. National Intelligence Council in late 2008 summed up the emerging re-alignment: "In terms of size, speed and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power now underway - roughly from West to East - is without precedent in modern history." And NIC analysts also assumed that Asia, especially China and India, would account for the vast majority of new demand for food ad energy and the related price pressures. This, in turn, ties in with Spring's' renewal of predictions of predictions that China and India are on track for substantial economic growth even while the U.S., Europe and Old Asia (especially Japan and Singapore) go through their worst economic downturn in 50-70 years. Jim O'Neill, the Goldman Sachs chief economist who pioneered two related concepts - a realignment in favor of the "BRIC" nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and a "decoupling" between economic behavior in the U.S. and Asia - renewed his thesis in an April 23 commentary in the Financial Times . China could overtake the U.S. by 2027. In the meantime, the United States, with an economy already in hock to Asian creditors and desperately requiring further funding and tolerance from China, Japan and the Persian Gulf, is suffering through the pre-inflationary agony of having to spend (and print) trillions of non-existing dollars to bail out the quasi-collapse of leading U.S. financial firms. These culprits, of course, are centerpieces of an overgrown, metastasized U.S. financial structure that crippled itself in an orgy of borrowing, speculation and issuance of unsound. By 2030, history books will remember these mistakes, for decades aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve, as a milestone in Asia's 21st century emergence. The new debt and liquidity-related inflation being unleashed in the United States, in turn, comes on top of the early 2000s global commodity inflation identified by the IMF but cockily ignored by the Bush administration up through 2008. Both the White House and the Fed, waving very suspect government statistics, dismissed inflation as no problem. Then, as the financial system started to sink in 2007-2008, Washington reached back into Chairman Bernanke's academic bag of 1930s analogies for deflationary scare-talk remedies. Unfortunately, that 1930s analogy had more holes than a torn sieve, not least the fact that the 1929-33 U.S. financial and economic implosion took place in a deflationary global context of collapsing commodity prices. Let me paraphrase one economic historian: between 1925 and 1929, the average price of the combined leading agricultural commodities fell about 30 percent and kept on tumbling during the Crash. In the U.S., the wholesale price index dropped from 93 in 1925 to 78 in 1930 and 59 in 1933, and so too around the world. In 2007-2009, by contrast, the underlying commodity pattern was strongly inflationary until the recession took hold in 2008, and as of May we can already see signs of commodity price inflation re-emerging. This was also the pattern in the stagflation of the 1970s - commodity prices would slump in the recession periods but go higher during recoveries. The fallacy guiding Washington policymakers circa 2009 can be summed up. The global, but Asia-linked Second Price Revolution is the truth that U.S. officialdom seemingly cannot face. The current inflationary politics of trillion-dollar budget deficits and Federal Reserve printing presses are pouring gasoline on still smoldering red embers only barely covered by 8-12 months of gray deflationary ashes. Both Americans and foreigners concerned about the incendiary potential of inflation and the devaluation of the dollar have good historical reason for concern. Kevin Phillips's 2008 bestseller Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism has just been published in a new updated and much-expanded paperback edition by Penguin. More on Asia
 
Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Barbecue Your Way to Beautiful Skin Top
It's summertime, and the grilling is easy. One of the joys of summertime is the barbecue. Nothing tastes better than food cooked outdoors over an open fire. But cooking muscle meats and other protein foods at high heats can create carcinogenic chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). In addition, Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) are also created. The more AGEs we have, the more oxidative stress in our bodies, accelerating aging and disease risk in all organ systems, including skin. In fact, AGEs play a key role in both healthy aging and preventing wrinkles and deeply lined, sagging skin. We can still barbecue and reduce our risk of creating toxins if we follow a few simple rules. 1. Choose lean meat, ideally from grass fed cattle or lamb, fish and free-range poultry; trim any excess fat from meat and remove skin from poultry. 2. Marinate before cooking. By marinating and/or basting most foods prior to or during cooking we can cut way back on the AGEs created. Use vinegar, citrus juice, herbs, spices, red wine and olive oil in your marinades because they have antioxidant properties. 3. Keep your grill clean; remove any build up of charred food. 4. Avoid charring food; remove any charred areas from food before eating. 5. Try poaching food on the grill. Nothing is more delicious that salmon poached in an aluminum foil packet, whether in the oven or on the grill. Wild salmon is in season and is an excellent barbecue choice. It is also one of the world's most "wine friendly" entrees, working well with crisp whites or more robust reds. For optimum flavor and anti-oxidants, try Pinot Noir or a glass of iced green tea with this dish. Salmon, Chicken or Tofu Kabobs with a Basting Marinade of Fresh Lime and Rosemary Makes 4 servings Ingredients 4 (6-oz. each) skinless-boneless wild salmon fillets, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, or bricks of firm tofu, cut into chunks 4 large white mushrooms 1 medium zucchini sliced 1 large red bell pepper seeded and quartered 1 large onion peeled and quartered salt freshly ground black pepper 12 skewers Note: If using wooden skewers soak in water for at least an hour, so they don't scorch on grill. Garnishes lime slices rosemary sprigs Basting sauce 1/3 cup chopped shallots 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (use organic lemons to avoid the pesticide residues that accumulate in citrus rinds) Freshly ground sea salt and black pepper to taste Preparation · Wash mushrooms; remove and discard stems. Wash peppers and remove seeds. · Thread vegetables onto skewers. Cook on grill over medium heat for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally and basting with marinade. Grilled veggie kabobs make the perfect accompaniment to our savory skewered salmon, chicken or tofu · Rinse the fish, chicken or tofu and pat dry. Cut into large cubes suitable for skewering. · Place the salmon cubes in a shallow baking dish and sprinkle with freshly grated sea salt and pepper. · Place the marinade ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together until blended. · Pour the marinade over the fish and marinate for at least 10 minutes. · Lace the salmon, chicken or tofu onto the skewers and broil (or grill) for 5 minutes, turning once. · While the fish (et al) is cooking, pour the marinade in a small saucepan and heat it over medium heat. To serve Divide the fish among 4 serving plates and spoon some of the heated marinade over each. Garnish each plate with a few lime slices and a sprig of fresh rosemary and serve. As an active researcher I welcome your comments and suggestions. More on Green Living
 
Stefan Sirucek: The Politics of Laughter: Hitler Takes Center Stage in Berlin Top
BERLIN Mel Brooks' musical The Producers premiered in Germany on Sunday at the Admiral Palast theatre in Berlin. The musical, for those unfamiliar with it, is the story of two scheming Broadway producers, the greedy Max Bialystock and his neurotic accountant Leo Bloom, who set out to stage the worst show ever produced, thereby ensuring a flop, so that they can keep the invested money for themselves. The Producers has been a critical and commercial hit since it started running in 2001 and there have been productions everywhere from London to Tel Aviv. The fact that it's going up in Germany would hardly be newsworthy if not for the simple fact that the name of the god-awful play that the eponymous producers commission - that stinker of all stinkers -is "Springtime For Hitler", a loving musical tribute to the Führer. Accordingly, there have been several recent articles during the run-up to the show, both in and outside of Germany, to the effect of: "Is Germany "ready" for a play that deals comically with the darkest elements of its history? Is Germany ready to see a dancing, singing Hitler? Brooks, though happy that the show was coming to Berlin, had wondered this himself. "I'm curious how the Berliners will receive my handling of Hitler, and I do wonder how they'll react to all the swastikas", Brooks told TIP magazine in an interview before the premiere. "There is the danger, in putting on the show in Germany, that the swastikas and all the jokes about Hitler and the Nazis will take on far too much weight." The Producers had a moderately successful run last year in Vienna - the first time the show was performed in German - but this was Germany, in history-scarred Berlin, and it would be showing at the Admiral Palast, a theatre where Adolf Hitler himself took in shows and had a special "Führer's Box" with the best view in the house. So how would people react? I went to a preview of the show on Friday before it's official premiere to find out. Since it's illegal to display the swastika publicly in Germany, the garish red banners and flags that draped the outside of the theatre to advertise the show instead bore the stark, black image of...a pretzel. Outside, people milled about in the courtyard drinking beers before filing into the theatre - a riot of gold inlay and red upholstery dominated by an enormous chandelier. The Producers , as Brooks and others have pointed out, is not actually about Hitler or the Nazis. It's about a couple of guys trying to make a crooked buck. "It's a 10-minute segment of a two-and-a-half-hour show", said Nigel West, the show's director, when I talked with him a day earlier. Nevertheless, the scene in The Producers that West was referring to, the scene that generates the most press - and also the one that would presumably most test a German audience - is the climactic premiere of the play-within-the-play's "Springtime for Hitler" number. The scene is so ridiculous, complete with tap-dancing Brownshirts and showgirls outfitted with enormous sausage-shaped headdresses, that it's a feat not to laugh. And when Hitler finally appears onstage he is so campy and effete a figure that the effect is purely comedic. "We certainly don't put our friend Mr. H on any kind of pedestal", said West. "It's really rather making fun of him." Quite. Yet just when you think the absurdity has reached its maximum altitude, Brooks takes it higher. Eventually there's a full phalanx of black-uniformed S.S. troops on stage, goose-stepping and Sieg Heil-ing in time to gunshots and bomb-blasts and twirling around in a gigantic human swastika formation. It's obviously meant to be a bit much. But it's a bit much. During the Austrian production there would be this "automatic applause" after the big number, said West, "But every now and then you'd look around and someone wouldn't be laughing - usually an older person." He hoped young, liberal Berlin would be more open to the play and its exuberant irreverence. Berlin is indeed a liberal city with a daring theatre scene. It's not a place that shies away from controversy or from the risqué. Yet, like Germany in general, it has a special relationship with guilt and, due to the country's history, guilt is as German as apple strudel (though some would say that apple strudel, like Hitler, is actually Austrian). Inextricable from that guilt is Hitler - whose figure occupies an enormous amount of space in the German psyche. He's not just a monster; he's their monster. Therefore, it's hardly surprising that people are wary of how the subject is treated. The central question is whether laughter in the face of painful memories and symbols drains them of their power or trivializes their meaning. Brooks is a believer in the former. "The best way to deal with crazy dictators is to make fun of them", Brooks told TIP magazine. "If you can present Adolf as a ridiculous figure, you've won." "Humor is a powerful weapon, especially black humor", he added. "And it's very funny and entertaining to see Hitler sing and dance." As for funny and entertaining - the show was both. The applause was enthusiastic throughout, there was cheering, and, at the end, even scattered standing ovations. I kept craning my neck to watch people's individual reactions - were they smiling? cringing? - but it was mostly a fruitless exercise. It's a funny show and people laughed when you would expect them to. It was, in other words, a success, and, as far as I could tell, no one fainted. "It was the best show we've ever had", said Andreas Bieber, the actor playing Leo Bloom, as he chatted with reporters after the show. "Actually they laughed way too many times." Catherin, 21, agreed that the show was funny but said it was "a little weird" to see the Nazi symbols presented in a lighthearted context. She liked the show but expressed a sense of alienation at certain points. She said she understood why Mel Brooks had written the show - "to deal with the past" - but added that, "...For me, being a German, it's not easy to laugh about everything that was being said and done in this musical." And then for some, the question is neither aesthetic nor political-- but personal. As people were getting their coats I met Friederike, who looked to be about 70. She had lived through some of what Germans call "the Nazi time" and remembered the nighttime bombing raids from her childhood. She had lost relatives and her father had been locked up by people in uniforms like those worn by the dancers twirling and smiling on stage. She praised the show as a whole and the skill of the actors but said it had been a difficult decision to attend. "I thought it was very good", she told me firmly, "but this scene with Hitler...the laughter caught in my throat." More on Germany
 
Hartmarx Bankruptcy: Over 40 Congressman Ask Geithner To Help Obama's Suit Maker Top
CHICAGO (AP) -- Dozens of lawmakers are asking Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to pressure creditors of Hartmarx Corp. to allow the sale of the struggling menswear maker. The 120-year-old Hartmarx filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January after banks cut off its credit. Its biggest creditor, Wells Fargo, has pushed to liquidate Hartmarx because it hasn't been able to repay $114 million. Forty-three congressional members signed a letter sent Thursday to Geithner. They want Wells Fargo to accept one of three bids for Chicago-based Hartmarx because the bank received $25 billion in federal bailout money. One of the bids is from British company Emerisque Brands, and expires Thursday. Hartmarx makes suits for President Barack Obama and employs more than 3,000 workers in Illinois, Indiana, New York and Alabama. -ASSOCIATED PRESS More on Barack Obama
 
FLEET WEEK 2009: NYC reminds residents of military flyover plans Top
NEW YORK — The U.S. Navy marked the opening of Fleet Week 2009 on Wednesday with a flyover by six military aircraft, and the city warned residents about the spectacle in advance to prevent a repeat of the panic that occurred when jetliner zoomed past lower Manhattan three weeks ago. Three F/A-18 Hornet fighters and two of the Marine Corps' V-22 Ospreys raced up the Hudson River at 1,000 feet as 13 U.S. and Canadian warship paraded past Manhattan's towers to begin the six-day event. A police spokesman said he was "unaware" of any public alarm. The city's Office of Emergency Management had issued a public reminder that the fly-by would occur, a notice not provided on April 27 when the Pentagon staged a low-level "photo op" flight by a presidential Boeing 747 past the Statue of Liberty and the site of the former World Trade Center that was destroyed by hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001. That incident sent panicked workers rushing into the streets in fear of another attack. The Pentagon later apologized and the head of President Barack Obama's White House military office resigned. The F/A-18 Hornets flew in tight formation, followed by the two tilt-rotor Ospreys, making their New York debut. This year's Fleet Week is the smallest ever, with only three major U.S. warships and five Canadian vessels in the lineup. The largest is the USS Iwo Jima, a 40,500-ton assault helicopter carrier.
 
Steven Green Spared Death Penalty For Iraqi Rape, Murders Top
PADUCAH, Ky. — An ex-soldier convicted of rape and murder in Iraq has been spared the death penalty and will get a life sentence after jurors couldn't agree unanimously on a punishment. Former Pfc. Steven Dale Green raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in March 2006 and murdered her and her family in their home south of Baghdad. Jurors had deliberated the penalty for the former 101st Airborne Division member since Wednesday afternoon and decided Thursday on a life sentence. A judge will formally sentence him Sept. 4. The 24-year-old from Midland, Texas, was convicted May 7. He and three other soldiers went to the family's home, where Green and two others raped the teen. Green killed her parents and sister, then her. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) _ A former soldier convicted of raping an Iraqi teenager and murdering the girl and her family "signed his own name" to a death sentence because of the brutality of the killing spree, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday. Federal prosecutor Brian Skaret told jurors during closing arguments that former Pfc. Steven Dale Green intentionally raped and killed 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi after shooting her father, mother and sister. "He crushed that family," Skaret said of the March 2006 attack in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. "And, in doing so, he signed his own name to this death sentence." In his closing, defense attorney Scott Wendelsdorf said Green's family and the military failed him, leading him down the path to the killings. Green's tough childhood included being kicked out of his mother's house at age 14, and years later the Army didn't offer enough leadership or counseling, the defense said. "America does not kill its broken warriors. It does not," Wendelsdorf said. "Spare this boy. For God's sake, spare him." Green, 24, of Midland, Texas, was convicted May 7 of rape and multiple counts of murder for the fatal attack on the al-Janabi family. Green and three other soldiers went to the home where Green shot the other family members before he was the third soldier to rape the girl before killing her. Jury deliberations began Wednesday afternoon, but ended at 5 p.m. with no sentence decided. Jurors are scheduled to resume talks Thursday morning. The other soldiers are serving long sentences in military prison but did not face the death penalty. They testified against Green, who was tried in federal court as a civilian because he had been discharged from the Army before his arrest. In his closing argument, Skaret walked jurors through a series of photos from the shooting scene, including an image of 6-year-old Hadeel al-Janabi, which showed her hair band had been blown off. "Today is the day you can say no," Skaret said. "No, no, no, our soldiers do not do this. We are a good and decent people." During the sentencing phase of the trial, jurors heard from multiple witnesses that Green had little structure in his home life and little guidance from his parents. Skaret said everyone has family issues, but those issues do not lead the majority of people to attack and kill an innocent family. Despite having a rough home life, Green chose to take part in the attack on the al-Janabi family, and his upbringing shouldn't be a factor in the jury decision, Skaret said. "We live in a country that is governed by the rule of law, not by the rule of emotion," Skaret said. Green's attorneys never denied Green's involvement in the attack. Wendelsdorf, though, said the stress of combat, combined with Green's pre-existing emotional and mental problems stemming from his childhood, pushed him over the edge. Compounding that, Wendelsdorf said, is the Army saw all the signs of a soldier in trouble, who would likely act on talk of wanting to kill Iraqi civilians, but did little to help Green. "They knew it. They ignored it," Wendelsdorf said. "It came to pass." During the trial, defense attorneys presented former Marines and other soldiers Green served with who testified that Green faced an unusually stressful combat tour in Iraq in a unit that suffered heavy casualties and didn't get sufficient Army leadership while serving in the "Triangle of Death." Enemy attacks killed two command sergeants, a lieutenant and a specialist in Green's unit during 12 days in December 2005. More on Iraq
 
Russ Wellen: Burma's Rulers Not Only Tread on Their People But Spit at the West Top
Aung San Suu Kyi probably knew she was courting danger when she allowed "that wretched American," as one of her lawyers called John Yettaw, to sleep overnight in her home. He'd exhausted himself swimming across the lake on which her house is situated and withholding mercy doesn't come naturally to the type of person who wins a Nobel Peace Prize. Burma's ruling junta is another tiger that can't change its spots. No doubt, its 12 generals are congratulating themselves over catching up Suu Kyi in a technical violation of her house arrest (allowing, however uninvited, an unauthorized visitor). Aung Din, executive director of the US Campaign for Burma called it a "cunning scheme." But there's nothing clever or cunning about using the flimsiest and most obvious of legalistic pretexts to deposit Suu Kyi in Rangoon's infamous Insein prison. Like many of the junta's actions and policies, it's heavy-handed, just like you'd expect from a tin-pot dictatorship. Even more pitiful, the junta seems to work at cross purposes with itself. For example, the New York Times had just run a story entitled A Year After Storm, Subtle Changes in Myanmar . Last May, Cyclone Nargis, swept through the Irrawaddy Delta killing 85,000 and leaving 54,000 missing (presumed dead). The subsequent "surge of humanitarian aid," reports the Times, "might have opened a breach in the political wall around Myanmar, including perhaps a new and softer line by the United States." If you'll recall, the junta at first refused to allow aid organizations into the country. " But now it "readily accepts air shipments of foreign aid," though not by sea because "the xenophobic junta -- still [fears] a seaborne invasion by Western powers. ... [Also] the number of international aid groups allowed to work in Myanmar has doubled in the past year." The article quotes Frank Smithuis, director of Médecins Sans Frontières in Burma: "Look, the human rights record is shaky, yes, and it's politically nice to beat up Burma, but the military has actually been quite helpful to us." "Shaky"? Try nightmarish. "Politically nice to beat up Burma"? There couldn't possibly be any other reason besides politics that over 100 groups outside of Burma are working for its democracy and that the United States and the European Union have sanctioned it, could there? More to the point, no sooner did a major American media outlet in effect pat the junta on the back for signs it was growing a conscience then the junta turned around and arrested one of the world's most beloved women. Will the Times also praise the junta for allowing foreign media and diplomats to attend the trial? (Uh, probably not, since it only lasted one day.) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was livid, declaring to a congressional hearing that the trial was "baseless" and that the 2010 elections were "illegitimate because of the way they have treated her." Sure, the junta is an easy target, but the point is they shouldn't be, especially since, post-Nargis, the world has been reaching out to it. The UN and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) also censured Suu Kyi's arrest, as did the European Union. Then the United States extended the current sanctions regimen, which wasn't even up for reconsideration until the end of the year, when it expires. Maybe the Times and the aid organizations quoted in the article, however well intentioned, were giving the junta too much credit. In the view of Asia Times Online's Brian McCartan , the flow of aid that the junta allowed is regulated by The Aid Wall. Many international aid groups are angling to extend their activities beyond the Irrawaddy Delta. ... They complain that the junta has maintained restrictions in other parts of the country, effectively building an "aid wall" around the Nargis-hit delta. ... the military rulers clearly still believe an extended relief effort could have political repercussions, including unwanted observers of its alleged human-rights abuses and empowerment of grassroots communities. In fact... . . . the humanitarian aid community's outreach in the Irrawaddy Delta has not resulted in greater openness but rather represents the latest example of the junta's well-worn open-and-closed strategy for maintaining power. Supposedly the 12 generals of the ruling junta are preparing for next year's elections. By mimicking democracy, they hope to seduce the United States and the European Union into removing sanctions. But imprisoning the Lady, as she's known to Burmese, erecting an aid wall, and oppressing minorities such as the Karens and Shan are a funny way of showing you care about the West's opinion.  Clearly, the junta doesn't. Thanks to oil and gas deals, among other business transactions, it already has China and India in their economic corner. Sacrificing development from the West is a small price to pay to ensure that the junta endures. The Bush administration went out on a limb to convince the Nuclear Suppliers Group to overlook India's refusal to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. One can't help but wonder why the United States can't exact some sort of reciprocity from India. Expecting India to completely disengage from the junta is unrealistic. But asking it to withdraw specified deals in response to fresh human rights violations on the part of the junta shouldn't be too much to ask. Meanwhile one encouraging development has emerged as a result of Aung San Suu Kyi's internment. Irrawaddy Magazine reports that East Timor President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta has teamed up with the Burma Lawyers' Council. Together they intend to petition the International Criminal Court to begin investigations in hopes of charging the junta's leader, General Than Shwe, with human rights abuses and violations of international law. The ICC may not be able to haul him into court, but it will make it that much harder for India, if not China, to continue dealing with the junta. More on Burma
 
BIRTH VIDEO, LEICESTER Top
A group called "Hey Babe: Be Aware, Be Educated" out of Leicester, England has produced a PSA of a mock-pregnancy on a school sports field. The group's aim is to reduce teen pregnancy rates. Watch the scary birth video (warning, it's graphic): More on Health
 
White House Announcement On LGBT Policy Is Imminent, Says Calif. Congressman Top
California representative Howard Berman predicted in an interview Thursday that the White House would be presenting new information regarding LGBT policies sometime before annual pride celebrations in June.
 
Senate Dems Hold EFCA Strategy Session Top
Senate Democratic leaders met Thursday afternoon in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office, two sources familiar with the meeting say, to discuss compromise options to get to 60 votes for Labor's top priority, the Employee Free Choice Act (or card check). Reid and his top two deputies, Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois, huddled with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M). The group hashed out strategy going forward but set no timetable for action. Harkin updated those present on what progress he's made in forging a compromise. Glenn Thrush reported on the meeting earlier. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) has said he is open to support some type of EFCA compromise. Conservatives have latched on to an effort to preserve the "secret ballot" -- saying that it prevents union intimidation. But scheduling an election in the distant future allows bosses to fire and pressure workers before the vote. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has suggested preserving the secret ballot by mailing in votes. Under the current proposal, workers could choose to hold a secret ballot election -- but it would be the choice of the employees rather than management.
 
Sheila Ortego: The Road From La Cueva Top
When Mary Charlotte Domandi interviewed me about my novel The Road From La Cueva on Santa Fe Radio, she asked why a woman like the main character Ana would not fight harder for her own rights and independence, especially "in this day and age". My answer was: Have you ever heard of a battered women's shelter? A rape crisis center? Have you heard of a woman's plight in a third-world country, or in the third-world countries that exist for many women right here in America? I answered that Ana was the modern equivalent to Edna Pontellier in The Awakening , or Tolstoy's Anna Karenina , or Flaubert's Emma Bovary . The Ana in my story is constrained, yet passionate. She is subsumed by a controlling husband, but desperately craving her own fulfillment. It is the age-old story of male domination and woman's struggle for fulfillment within real or perceived boundaries. What I like most about Ana is that through hardship and grim determination, she learns to look with her own eyes, to feel with her own heart. Unlike the tragic characters in the novels mentioned above, she discovers a deep well of resilience and compassion, with room for growth and freedom. Ana's story is one of a leap of faith, away from despair and toward life at its fullest. This type of 'survival' response to oppression is not automatic, despite our relatively recent decades of feminism and "liberation". Women everywhere are still afraid -- of their husbands, of themselves and their own urges, of danger, of judgment. I wrote the book so that those who are disenfranchised might be empowered -- so that women who now see through the eyes of fear might learn, as Ana does, to navigate themselves through small but profound changes, into new ways of living, of relating to friends, their children, themselves. I have spoken to many women about the book -- in New Mexico, Texas, and Maine, so far. I find that the women who understand it and love it the best are those who have experienced a similar oppression. I know that "in this day and age", women may technically have all the choices available to them that would allow them to live free and complete lives. But I also know that many of us, like Ana, do not readily have the tools or knowledge or skills to do so. Look at some of the books in Oprah's book club: Sula and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman What are these if not depictions of women who have been weakened by their patriarchal worlds, and who have learned, painfully, of the need to move beyond such worlds? Jane Brunton, one of the book reviewers featured on my blog www.sheila-novel.blogspot.com says: [You depict] the way that our early familial relationships form the unseen scars that twist and warp all future relationships. When our lives are ruled by a controlling parent, we are ripe and ready for the plucking by a controlling partner. And how the controlee, almost feeling she deserves this treatment, becomes subversive rather than rearing up and fighting it out or simply scuttling away in the night... And Linda Bankard says: I could not put this book down. To me it was a true love story, not of the usual type that is so common, but a love story of a woman for her child, her father and a friend. When Ana was able to love herself, she found she was able to be loved by a man and not be his possession. This book will stay with me for a long time. Why was my interviewer so doubtful of the relevance of such a theme in "this day and age"? I can only be grateful, for her and the many other young women who have apparently not known such oppression, for the women's movement that has provided such freedom for them. But I must also stress, as I did in the book, that many women today are not so lucky. If you are a woman who has been oppressed, or even if you just know of one, get the book. Read it, and learn why Theresa Studer said: This book could pertain to any number of women around the world in trouble. Ana learned that life is not always what you're handed, and you can change the outcome. [The Road From La Cueva] captured me, educated me, and let me see that there are true friends and love out there, you only have to reach for them. More on Women's Rights
 
Howie Klein: Two Congressional Democrats Join GOP Anti-Gay Jihad In DC Top
A few weeks ago I mentioned how clueless Mormon demagogue and extremist Jason Chaffetz volunteered to lead the crusade against gay families in Washington, DC. I doubt it will get anywhere but Chaffetz and a couple dozen other congressional bigots signed on to a bill that would force the Washington, DC government to stop recognizing same-sex marriages . The bill was formally introduced by two of Congress' worst hate-mongers, Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK). The man recently voted the most disliked member of Congress by his colleagues, Georgia reactionary Tom Price couldn't wait to sign on as a co-sponsor. "Nothing," he said, "can be more important than the sanctity of our families." What a clown! At 4pm we're going to be talking with singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith over at Crooks and Liars. The title track of her new album, The Loving Kind , is the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a mixed race couple who were not allowed-- by bigots like Boren, Price, Chaffetz and Jordan-- to marry back in the 1960s. They lived in Virginia where, like in almost half the states, it was illegal for people of different races to get married. Just like Tom Price says today, there were horrible racists, just like him then saying "Nothing can be more important than the sanctity of our families." The Lovings went to Washington, DC to get married. When they got home to Virginia, policed broke down their door at night, dragged them out of bed and threw them in jail. One court case after another eventually led to a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court, Loving v Virginia to strike down all miscegenation laws (although, predictably, Alabama kept its own on the books). We'll be talking with Nanci about her song today. Give it a listen: The Loving Kind from Howie Klein on Vimeo .
 
Carolynn Carreño: Ask a Mexican Top
The Foodinista and I, both being, essentially, big talkers and guacamole-making novices, have each found ourselves facing an impending Guac-Off, with molcajetes , and no real idea what to do with them. Both of our molcajetes were sold to us as "pre-seasoned," but I found out the relative nature of this term when I made my first batch of guacamole in this primitive mortar -- extremely tasty (if I do say so myself), but unmistakably, errr... sandy. As I posted in a comment on the Foodinista blog, I got in a fight with some poor guy on the other end of the phone at Sur La Table yesterday over the exact definition of "pre-seasoned." "You must have a lot going on," he said (and I wanted to strangle him), implying that no sane and healthy human being could get as worked up as I was over a bit of finely ground black lava in her guacamole. Yeah, I'm entering an effin' guacamole battle, I thought, but that would have made me look really crazy. Instead I backed down, and whimpered: "I would just like to make guacamole that doesn't contain particles of volcanic rock..." I hung up and kept grinding, no closer to a resolution. Finally, I got the brilliant idea to write to my sister, who is actually my half-sister, which we're not supposed to say in our family but which is relevant because in the first line of the email (below) I refer to her aunts, who are not my aunts. Her aunts cook a lot. And she has a lot of aunts. I'm hoping that among them one will have a solution to my molcajete problem. Last week I had to ask this same sister to schedule an appointment with my new, non-English-speaking housekeeper. Which just goes to prove: It never hurts to have a Mexican in the family. Here's the email: Hi Iridia [That's my sister's name; it's unusual even in Mexico, and absolutely impossible to say if you can't roll your r's, which I, thankfully can), Can you ask one of your aunts or any other Mexican woman who cooks a question about a molcajete? I bought one, the traditional kind made of volcanic rock. I keep grinding sand into my guacamole. I seasoned it by grinding rice for an hour. Then again with rock salt. It's gotten better, so I am inclined to think that maybe it just needs more time. Can you help me!? I am entering a guacamole making contest and I cannot win with sand in the guac. And I cannot lose to a girl named Katie O'Kennedy. This would be humiliating. I would not be able to return to Tijuana ever. I would miss everyone greatly. Your half-gringa sister, Carolina More on Food
 
Obama Vs. Cheney: How The Pundits Called The Fight Top
Well, we hope everyone enjoyed today's foreign policy showdown! Because that's what it was, apparently! At least that's what the media's been saying. Who knows? It's so hard to know what to believe anymore! Why, before today, I was under the distinct impression that Barack Obama was going to be discussing foreign policy as a popular elected leader, charged with the duty of running that policy, whereas Dick Cheney was a retiree speaking for a fee in front of a room full of cronies. The two do not seem to be, well...equivalent! And yet, here is how Chuck Todd greeted fellow newsman David Gregory today, after this mano-a-mano had concluded: TODD: David, this seemed like this is the ultimate debate! That if you love American politics, American government, you got the most credible people you could have arguing each side. President Obama, former Vice President Cheney. I'm not sure what sort of labor the word "credible" is tasked with, in that sentence. I'm not sure I want to know. Delving too much might lead inevitably to the conclusion that Chuck Todd has been replaced by some idiot-zombie. After all, Dick Cheney's foreign policies were pretty far from credible: unless of course, he INTENDED to spur an unprecedented wave of deadly jihadism , intended to appease al Qaeda by allowing them the time and space to escape from harm and reconstitute themselves , intended to allow an intransigent Iran to expand it's regional influence -- I could go on and on! Bang up, job, Mr. Vice President! Here's a poll that puts Cheney's "credibility" into context : There you have it. The most credible person that was available to argue the side of Obama's predecessor was a guy esteemed almost, but not quite, as highly as Cuba. Here's a child's compendium of reaction to today's "ultimate debate." ---- Spencer Ackerman flags Dick Cheney saying: Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left, "We brought it on ourselves." But Ackerman points out that Cheney is on the wrong side of Air Force Colonel Donald Bacon and CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus. Ackerman also raps Obama for asserting that "ad hoc legal approaches" to trying terrorists are somehow better just because he's the one at the helm: Here the Bushies really do have a case that the Obama administration is approaching them with intellectual dishonesty. The rap on the military commissions for years from civil libertarians was that rather than use the system of court martials -- with established procedures for the disputation of justice -- the Bush administration was creating an entirely new apparatus with dubious process requirements, evidently designed to engineer a conviction. Here Obama is talking about a system outside the military commissions and outside the justice system that will hold people indefinitely (or "prolongued" detention, in Obama's euphemism), that he'll design... from scratch. The evident difference is that this time, Obama will consult with a Democratic-controlled congress so cowered by demagoguery that it'll shut down funding for closing Guantanamo. Change we can believe in. --- Steve Benen says Cheney's speech was among the noun-verb-9/11iest things he'd read in a long time . "It was enough to make Rudy Giuliani blush." --- Michael Crowley of The New Republic says Obama's speech was "characteristically thoughtful and elegant," but nevertheless, while "Democrats have dramatically narrowed their longstanding national security gap with Republicans...they clearly remain deeply insecure about the issue." I guess this means that what Obama needs are weaponized teleprompters, to fight terrorists. --- No love from Greenwalds. Abe Greenwald rapped Obama thusly : "Barack Obama's tone at the National Archives was so defensive as to be nearly adversarial. But whose wouldn't be if they were trying to convince the country that having no plan is better than using the plan that kept them safe for nearly eight years?" I think the word "safe" is infintely debatable, and "nearly" is doing a lot to cover up a multitude of sins. Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald found Obama's words to be a hollow container for a dearth of actions: Obama's speech this morning, like most Obama speeches, made pretty points in rhetorically effective ways about the Constitution, our values, transparency, oversight, the state secrets privilege, and the rule of law. But his actions, in many critical cases, have repeatedly run afoul of those words. And while his well-crafted speech can have a positive impact on our debate and contained some welcome and rare arguments from a high-level political leader -- changes in the terms of the debate are prerequisites to changes in policy and the value of rhetoric shouldn't be understated -- they're still just words until his actions become consistent with them. --- Peter Kirsanow of the National Review Online says that Cheney was the "adult": As a friend succinctly puts it, "When that big asteroid finally heads toward Earth, who's the person you'd most want to be in charge?" I suspect Cheney would score at or near the top. Yes. Adult. If the Hounds Of Planet Sorloth invade from their moonbase on Jupiter, who should be president? Sounds like Dick Cheney would make a great Dungeon Master. --- Time 's Joe Klein was brutal in his critique of Cheney : From the very first--the notion that those who oppose his policies saw 9/11 as a "one-off"--Cheney proceeded to mischaracterize, oversimplify and distort the views of those who saw his policies as extreme and unconstitutional, to say nothing of the views of the current Administration. This is the habit of demagogues. Cheney's snarling performance was revelatory and valuable: it showed exactly the sort of man Cheney is, and the sort of advice he gave, when his location was disclosed. I hope he continues to speak out. We need his voice to remind us what we've happily escaped. --- Bill Kristol helped to pimp the Cheney=Adult talking point, but I had to admit he had a point, here: This sentence was revealing: "On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004." "Opposed the release"? Doesn't he mean "decided not to permit the release"? He's president. He's not just a guy participating in a debate. Kristol's right. That construction clearly indicates that Obama had accepted the contention that he was, in fact, "debating" Dick Cheney. --- I think Greg Sargent would agree. He wrote: "The national security speech Barack Obama just wrapped up is a sign that he has returned to persuasion mode with a vengeance." --- Jay Nordlinger jumps up to defend U.S. Exceptionalism in the Field Of Torture: Obama said the following about what he called America's "brutal methods" of interrogation: "They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured." In my view, the first part of that statement is arguable -- "They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle." But the second part is flat-out false. Qaedists determine how they treat Americans by how Americans treat Qaeda detainees? Ridiculous. I'll allow that the extent to which our torture of other human beings makes it more likely our own troops will be tortured has not, to the best of my knowledge, been scientifically measured. One thing is for sure, however, the fact that we torture robs me of my right to be outraged when an American soldier is waterboarded. So long as America tortures others, America shall have to grin and bear it when others torture our own. That's the price of making the abhorrent acceptable. If Nordlinger is the sort of wretch who can countenance that, well, my advise to decent people everywhere is to cross the street when you see him coming down the sidewalk. --- Benjy Sarlin of Talking Points Memo told Matt Yglesias : "Dick Cheney, who brought us the phrase 'enhanced interrogation methods,' is currently railing against those who use 'euphemisms' to obscure the debate over national security." Anyway, that's your "great debate." We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Barack Obama
 
Dr. Jon LaPook: Living with Alzheimer's Top
There are few conditions more frightening to my patients -- and to me -- than dementia. It's easily the most common fear voiced in my office. One woman recently said, "I couldn't think of her name and I've known her for years; I think I may have Alzheimer's." Another patient, a physician, half-jokingly asked, "How do I know if I'm losing it or have just misplaced it?" Behind his nervous attempt at humor was a deadly serious concern. The most common form of dementia in the elderly is Alzheimer's disease. According to the Alzheimer's Association, it affects as many as 5.3 million Americans. Especially cruel is the twilight phase when patients can still understand what they are losing, when they can see the receding silhouette of their memories but cannot reclaim what they've lost. This was brought home to me very poignantly last year when I interviewed 65 year old Carol and her husband Mike about Carol's Alzheimer's. At one point, Carol could not remember how long she'd been married even though I had just reminded her two minutes earlier. At another point, Mike -- a retired cop -- broke down talking about his wife's illness. All the words in the world cannot adequately describe the anguish conveyed by the looks on their faces, the tone of their voices. Often forgotten in the tragedy of dementia are the caretakers, frequently family members whose lives are torpedoed by the devastating illness. In this week's CBS Doc Dot Com, I speak with Gloria Signorini, an 80 year old woman with dementia and with her daughter, Joanne, who has put her life on hold to take care of her mother . Mrs. Signorini's physician, Dr. Gayatri Devi, an expert in dementia at NYU Langone Medical Center, provides perspective about Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. Watch CBS Videos Online
 
Dennis Danziger: The Day My Union Died Top
As I cruise around L.A., his eyes follow me. He's in my face when I stop for a coffee or pull up at an ATM. This blond, 30-something, smiling white dude on the ubiquitous billboards looks like he might have sold sub-prime mortgages and enjoyed it. In his hound's-tooth suit and bow tie, I'm pretty sure he fights tax cuts for the rich, and above his head I read these words: Hiring dropouts is just good business. Honestly who else would work that cheap? Below his beaming face, I read: High School Dropouts make 42% less money. Stay in school. But on May 15, 2009, I planned to do just the opposite. I was going to stay out of school for just one day, for the work stoppage. I planned to join my fellow United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) union members; we'd voted to picket outside our respective schools to protest the proposed layoffs of 5,100 of our colleagues, 2,500 of whom are teachers, who have received pink slips for the next school year. UTLA, the second largest teachers union in the country, called this action weeks in advance. I gave my students plenty of notice. I explained it all to them -- that our strike wasn't about us teachers asking for better health care or more money. I explained that we were protesting Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines's decision to hold back as much as $167 of the $554 million dollars of federal stimulus funds the LAUSD received until the 2010-2011 school year instead of spending that money next year. This is the LAUSD which dumped $400 million on the Belmont Learning Center, a new high school that was built, then demolished, then rebuilt on a toxic waste site. The same LAUSD that dolled out $186 million taxpayer dollars to outside consultants in 2006-2007. The same district that paid $95 million dollars for a new payroll system that caused chaos with teachers' paychecks for two years. This same district that has assured us that our 9th and 11th grade English classes of 20 (mandated by law) will next year be ballooning to 35 to 38. Our classes of 35 will mushroom to 42 or more. At Venice High School where I teach English, 55% of our students drop out. If LAUSD fires teachers, APs, deans, college counselors, and librarians, and axes arts and vocational programs, those dropout numbers are likely to soar, sending undereducated teens into a national job market that's losing more than 15,000 jobs a day. So that's what I planned to march in protest of on May 15. On May 12, a judge granted the LAUSD a restraining order, forbidding UTLA to strike. When I heard the news, I knew we were in for a fight, and I was ready to stand up for what I know is right. Sure we were threatened with a fine of a thousand dollars and loss of our credentials if we chose to fight against these layoffs, to challenge Cortines' decision to hold on to the stimulus money, but if we weren't willing to stand up for our rights, we'd never have any. So I was ready for UTLA leadership to come back to ask for our vote, ready to support them in storming into court to appeal the injunction, ready to stand in solidarity with my fellow teachers. And I was eager to see how many others were. Instead, none of that happened. Our leadership simply caved. They called off the strike. And my union died. For as any middle or high school kid could tell you, if you challenge someone to a fight, you'd better show up. On Friday, May 15, 39 of UTLA's 48,000 members, at least one of whom had been responsible for calling off the strike, defied the court order and were arrested for sitting in an intersection near LAUSD headquarters. That same day hundreds of teachers called in sick. Others marched legally outside their school sites before school, but when the school bell rang, they timidly entered their classrooms so as not to defy the court order. I taught that day. I taught and felt despair that boomeranged around my school in a thousand directions -- despair for my fellow teachers, the young, energetic ones who are who are being fired and will never return to the LAUSD, despair for my students whose classrooms are too large and growing larger, despair for my fellow union members whose leadership failed us. I couldn't think about much else that day, and that night I turned on the local TV news to measure the impact of UTLA's actions on the city. The third story on the local news that night was an LAPD interview of a suspect not guilty of kidnapping. The fifth story was about how our city's commuter trains soon will be equipped with on-line cameras. I was falling asleep, but I waited, and finally the 10th story, 48 seconds long, was about 39 teachers sitting in an intersection and being arrested for blocking traffic. Now Superintendent Cortines -- puffed up with success -- has implied that he'd keep most of the pink-slipped employees in their jobs -- that is if the rest of us agree to accept furlough days. That's a fancy name for working for free. And tonight, May 19, 2009, the tax-raising propositions that Governor Schwarzenegger begged and bullied us to vote for, went down in a crushing defeat. Surely, he'll now move to what he's been hinting at, that he'll move to cut the school year and teachers' pay by one week. So come fall when UTLA teachers are complaining about the chaos and exhaustion that accompany their overcrowded classrooms, we union members will have to remember that when it came time to stand up for our students, we stood down. By not appealing the injunction or striking in the face of it, we have insured that tens of thousands of our students will one day come under the spell of that smiling guy on the billboard -- the man eager to hire what LAUSD produces best -- high school dropouts. More on Real Estate
 
Shannyn Moore: Palin Says Thanks But Not Thanks To Stimulus Money Top
Gov. Sarah Palin dropped the hammer today on $80 million from the state budget. Her cuts include the $28.6 million in federal stimulus money designated for energy relief. Even though Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage municipalities are already complying with the federal building codes, Palin turned money down for weatherization and energy assistance to avoid the building requirements statewide. The governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, negotiated taking the money without a statewide code. Alaska has the highest energy costs in the nation. Alaska has two seasons; winter and construction. Now would be the best time for window replacement, weatherization, etc. In a "bring it on" move, Palin dared the legislature to over-ride her veto. I just spoke to a state legislature about the chances of a special session being called. It is possible, if not, the next session is January 2010. Last fall, Governor Palin allocated $740 million in one time "energy bail-out" checks to every citizen in Alaska. This year, $28.6 million is turned down. Alaska loses. More on Stimulus Package
 
Valerie Vetrano Claims Lesbian Affair With Carrie Prejean's Mom Top
Valerie Vetrano, an openly gay sales rep from Corona, Calif., claims she had a lesbian relationship with Prejean's mom, Francine Coppola. "I did date her," she told ABCNews.com Wednesday evening. "I'm not going to deny it, but I'm not going to say anything else." More on Miss California
 
Louis Belanger: "Cheka Kidogo": Congolese Fashion Exhibition Aims To Raise Awareness Of Continued Violence Top
Fashion photographer Rankin has joined forces with aid agency Oxfam to put together a unique selection of portraits from Congo's war-zone: The exhibition "Cheka Kidogo" (Swahili for "laugh a little") aims to raise awareness of the forgotten conflict in Congo. We wanted to go beyond the harrowing statistics and introducing the public to the faces and families of one camp -- Mugunga camp, which is home to 17,000 people displaced by violence. The exhibition's name celebrates the spirit of the Congolese people in the face of adversity, but was also the phrase that people called out to their friends as they were photographed. The exhibition's images are taken against a white backdrop in Rankin's celebrity portraiture style of photography. This approach aims capture the true personalities of the camps inhabitants - not as victims, but as PEOPLE - highlighting their essential humanity and strength. They are grandpas, dads, mums, teachers and future soccer players... And they're longing for peace. Meet some of them: Janvier Charles Kimanuka, 78. Chef - He told us: "I've been a chef since 1945. I used to cook for important people. Now it's hard for me - and my six children here - to survive on the limited stocks of food in the camp." Dageije, 18. He dreams of becoming a Basketball player. Rehema Marina Nyandwi, 70, with her two grandsons. Rankin shooting Jasmine in the makeshift studio in Mugunga camp, Goma. Karo Redi with baby Happiness. Karo is only 14. Singa, 43, Teacher Bilao Muhindo. Husband with second wife Nolla. Exhibition outside the National Theatre in London. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Africa
 
Rick Horowitz: Pelosi Confronts That Age-Old Question Top
In Washington's corridors, hallways of power, It takes just one question afloat in the breeze, One question to call ev'ry ear to attention, To bring some Invincible down to her knees: "What did you know, And when did you know it?" The pressure starts building, But try not to show it, You swear that you're innocent, Out of the loop, Go swear all you want to, You're still in the soup. On Capitol Hill -- in the House, in the Senate -- There's nothing like scandal (or even a whiff), And nothing screams "Scandal!" like one classic query That suddenly points you right over the cliff: "What did you know, And when did you know it?" Come clean! Tell us ev'rything! Don't to-and-fro it! The other side's grinning, They've got you hemmed in, They're waiting to hear Your original sin. In newsrooms and studios, hearts are a-twitter, The sharks begin circling, they've spotted their prey, There's sweat on your forehead, there's blood in the water, They're ready to rip into each word you say. "What did you know, And when did you know it?" The cameras are rolling, You'd better not blow it, You didn't know anything -- That's what you claim -- Now where do you go To get back your good name? So be on your guard when you labor in Washington, Watch for the question that tells you you're through, Or maybe you'll choose to go on the offensive, And stick it to them 'fore they stick it to you. "What did you know, And when did you know it?" Just locate their belt And then aim right below it, You'll prove you're still kicking, You've still got the juice -- What's good for the gander Is good for the goose. Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com. More on Financial Crisis
 
Youth Radio -- Youth Media International: From Adult Prison at 16 to College Commencement Speaker Top
Originally published on Youthradio.org , the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe. Reginald Dwayne Betts went from the high school honor roll to the penitentiary. He spent 9 years in adult prison beginning at age 16, for car jacking in Virginia. Tonight he'll be the first person in his family to graduate from college, and more than that, he'll deliver the student commencement address at the University of Maryland. Betts beat the odds in a big way. Recidivism rates are already high within the juvenile justice system, and they're 34% higher for youth incarcerated in adult jails. The Senate is currently considering the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), a bill that would make it harder to try youth as adults. Reginald Dwayne Betts looks back on everything he's endured to get where he is today. Listen to his story here, or read the transcript below: By: Reginald Dwayne Betts When I was 16 years old, I was certified as an adult and sentenced to nine years in prison. I was certified because I had a robbery charge and in the state of Virginia if you have a robbery, murder or rape, you can automatically be certified as an adult and so I was rubberstamped and sent into the system. When they sent me from the juvenile detention center to the Fairfax County jail, at the time they had a sight and sound policy and that meant that juveniles couldn't be within the sight or the sound of adults. Because they didn't have the proper facilities to hold me in the jail, they put me in solitary confinement. I didn't have a mattress, I didn't have a blanket, I didn't have a pillow and I only had the clothes that I wore on my back for seven days. You know, that sort of prepared me to understand that jail was not designed to be in my best interest and there wasn't anybody that I could complain to. The reality is that in prison people care about your ability to protect yourself or to do whatever you need to do to survive. If you're younger, you aren't prepared physically or emotionally to deal with prison. It took me seven years in prison before I talked to a mental health worker. And, um, I had spent time in two super maximum security prisons, I had spent over a year in isolation, not once was I asked, you know, how was my mental health. For my first, you know, four to six years, no matter where I went, I would be the youngest person in the block that I was in. If I marked an adolescent shift, it was when somebody younger than me asked me for some advice, that's when I realized that, you know, I'm basically growing up in a jail cell. Like, I have all of these memories in my head that have replaced the adolescent markers. Like, I was in a cell below someone that beat a man to death. And I remember the guards carrying the dead prisoner on a gurney like the nurses pushing him down the walkway, banging on his chest, trying to revive him. The thing is, what are you gonna do with all the memories that you have once you leave prison? And, I mean, that's the question posed to all the young people who get sent to prison. Because it's like, you will accumulate these memories and a lot of them won't be good, and the thing becomes, what will you do with all those memories once you get home? Additional Resources: The Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) is dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under 18 in the adult criminal justice system. Reginald Dwayne Betts ' memoir will be published in August by Penguine Books. Act 4 Juvenile Justice is a coalition of youth advocacy groups organized around Congressional reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org
 
David Vines: MLB Draft Preview - Part II Top
Bookended by the Rockies at 11, and the Blue Jays at 20, the middle of the first round is as up in the air as ever. Now, we'll try and sort through this cluster of talent in part two of the Huffington Post's draft preview. * Denotes a compensation pick. 11. Colorado Rockies -- Mike Leake, RHP, Arizona State The Buzz: This Sun Devil has absolutely dominated the Pac-10 conference as he currently boasts a 13-1 record to go along with a sparkling 1.35 ERA in 106 2/3 innings this season. He does not have extraordinary stuff, but he's a command pitcher with four pitches and a guy who knows how to get hitters out. 12. Kansas City Royals -- Tanner Scheppers, RHP, St. Paul Saints (Independent) The Buzz: Scheppers has steadily risen in the draft rankings in recent weeks. He has been lighting up radar guns in Indy ball while easing worries about shoulder problems that caused him to slip in last year's draft. 13. Oakland A's -- Tim Wheeler, OF, Sacramento State The Buzz: Tim Wheeler has been climbing up on draft boards as fast as anyone in this year's class. He's got a good combination of power and speed and plays a very good center field with an average arm. 14. Texas Rangers -- Matt Purke, LHP, Klein HS (TX) The Buzz: The Rangers, already with an embarrassment of riches as far as pitching prospects are concerned, would be nothing short of thrilled if this native Texan fell to them at fourteen. Purke displays great arm strength and movement on his fastball, but he is very raw and might be tough to sign come draft day. 15. Cleveland Indians -- Rex Brothers, LHP, Lipscomb The Buzz: Brothers currently ranks behind only Stephen Strasburg in strikeouts for all NCAA Division I pitchers and has seen his draft stock soar over the past few months. The Indians have an organizational need for young pitching, and this young lefty would help them immensely. 16. Arizona Diamondbacks -- Max Stassi, C, Yuba City HS (CA) The Buzz: Stassi is a risky pick here because of signability concerns coupled with the fact that the D-Backs will have to dish out money for not just one but two first round picks (see below.) However, Stassi is the top prep catcher available with a very good all-around hitting approach, and he fills a major organizational need. Arizona would have a tough time passing him up if he's available here. *17. Arizona Diamondbacks -- Tyler Skaggs, LHP, Santa Monica HS (CA) The Buzz: The Diamondbacks have had great success with high school arms in the last few drafts, and Skaggs would be a good fit for them here. At 6-foot-5, he's got a low-90s fastball with life and two secondary pitches. Right now, he's a young, raw talent with lots of room for growth. 18. Florida Marlins -- Andrew Oliver, LHP, Oklahoma State The Buzz: After a slow start to his 2009 campaign, Oliver has worked hard to rebound from it, although his numbers are definitely not where he'd want them to be this close to draft day. He still has a plus fastball and good upside, but not enough leverage to demand an unrealistic amount of money from the Marlins. 19. St. Louis Cardinals - Jacob Turner, RHP, Westminster Christian Academy (MO) The Buzz: Turner will be one of the most talented pitching prospects available come draft day. However, he is already committed to UNC and it will likely take upwards of $7 million to deter him from heading off to college. It would be a big risk here, but I see the Cardinals rolling the dice on the hometown kid with a live fastball by selecting Tuner with their first round pick. 20. Toronto Blue Jays - Mike Minor, LHP, Vanderbilt The Buzz: Like Oliver, Minor is another collegiate lefty who had a slow start to his season but has since done a nice job of rebounding. He currently has 98 strikeouts in 90 innings pitched to support a 3.90 ERA. According to Baseball America, five of the Jays' top six prospects are hitters, so they will likely look to go for pitching with this pick. More on Sports
 
Karen Rabinowitz: Purple Blab: Insider Intel from the Beauty Frontier Top
It was a typical fashion store opening. A stunning blond teetering on the latest wacky Marc Jacobs wacky heels to my left, a sighting of the new Balenciaga bag at 12:00, and behind me -- my favorite part of any event -- the space from which the waiters emerge with hors d'oeuvres. And this particular soiree was stocked with the best beggar's purses and salmon croquettes. Hunger or not, I have never been the one to pass up a good beggar's purse and after 20 minutes of making sure that every server knew to circle by me before the rest of the crowd, I looked at my husband and said, "I have to go." I had ring around the waist -- the red line that forms around your belly after you eat so much that your waistband suddenly feel one size too small. He was kind of annoyed. We were barely there for a half an hour. "If my lipgloss could plump my lips and not my hips, we wouldn't have this problem," I sniffed. OMG! My Eureka moment! Lipgloss with plumper AND appetite suppressant! That would be my dream product, I told him. "I'd call it Huge Lips Skinny Hips," I said, all excited about my vision. I grabbed my cell phone to call a friend who was CEO for a major beauty brand. I wanted her to make it so I could buy it. Todd, my husband, grabbed my phone, mid-dial. "You make it," he said, totally assuredly. "You start a company and sell it! Your whole career has been leading up to this! You need a brand!" Moi? I had no idea how to make a product or a thing about manufacturing. But why couldn't I figure it out, I thought. Before I go on, let's back up for a minute. My background... The Cliff's Notes version: I was a journalist for over ten years. I got my start at WWD (first job out of college where I was handing out mail, fetching coffee, filing, and faxing -- this before email was an integrated part of our everyday culture, which kind of dates me, I must say). I worked there for 3-plus years before going freelance, when I started writing for all the women's magazines -- Marie Claire, Elle, Bazaar, InStyle, Glamour , etc. -- and the New York Times Sunday Styles section as well as the New York Post . It was amazing fun -- I covered everything frivolous and fabulous, from celebrity soirees on private yachts in St. Barths to going undercover as a phone sex operator to the Sundance Film festival parties to cover stories on the stars (I spent a day with Molly Sims who had to see what kind of things she could talk people into doing for her -- like drop their pants and build a pyramid on the beach and put her on top) to all the trends/beauty/fashion/ pieces I could get my mitts on. It was definitely a crazy ride (one time on the back of a scooter while Liev Schreiber was driving -- I swear!). Then I got an assignment from Marie Claire that wound up being the catalyst for a major career shift. The mission: become famous in two weeks. My friend and now best selling author Melissa de la Cruz (shout out to Mel -- www.melissa-delacruz.com !) did the story with me and for two weeks, we schemed our way on to gossip columns (WWD actually called me K.Ro after Harry Winston loaned me $2 million of rocks, I kid you not!), faked our way into free clothes (borrowed glamour -- nothing like it especially when the label is Dior!), and pretended we were girls from Planet "It" (the major lesson I learned: make your name match your brand of celebrity stardom... Karen von Robin is a lot more believable to the media as an heiress than Karen Robinovitz, which sounds more like I'm a rabbi's daughter when in fact, I'm a car dealer's daughter). We got a call from our agent the minute the piece hit newsstands. "Write a book proposal now! How to become FAMOUS in two weeks or less ." When you get a call like that, you can only say one thing: YES! Call it timing, luck, whatever but we had a book deal two weeks later! That wasn't the part that changed my life, though it was beyond exciting and amazing to write with a friend. It was the aftermath... Three months before launch -- BTW, those horrible sunglasses on the cover were airbrushed on us! -- we received our long-awaited "marketing plan." I put it in quotes because the only initiative was "put book on Hampton Jitney." Marketing plan? That's not even a full sentence! When I asked where the rest of the plan was, our publisher told is there was no "rest of the plan." That was it! That was all they would do! I became a marketing machine. I didn't really know what I was doing but I called every PR contact I had to see what kind of strategic partnerships I could create. When it was all said and done, I was signing books by kissing them with MAC lipstick (they offered makeovers at all of our readings and events), promoting Rock & Republic jeans which had hangtags about our book, working with AOL (shout out to AOL! Woo hoo!), sitting pretty in the back of a Bentley (we did interviews in the vehicle -- how hot is that?), and, um, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie hosted our LA soiree! That was when my life changed... I am a marketing person! I started consulting for brands -- showing them how to become famous in two weeks or less -- and doing all kinds of programs: events, influencer seeding (i.e. giving products to the rich and fabulous to get it in the "right" hands), guerilla marketing (did something awesome for Glam.com where we had hot guys in branded BMWs circling fashion week and handing out Glam branded gumballs, amongst other things), social media programs (Love you, Twitter! BTW, follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/karenrobinvoitz . Shameless plug, I know!). I didn't stop writing though -- Melissa and I co-authored Fashionista Files! Adventures in four-inch heels and faux pas (Michael Kors and Diane von Furstenberg gave us props for our cover!) and I wrote a book for the PR behemoth Harrison & Shriftman: " Fete Accompli! The Ultimate Guide to Creative Entertaining. " I did some TV along the way -- things like the Fabulous Life on VH-1 and MTV's Made . I even shot a pilot about my life for BRAVO, but it wasn't picked up. Still, I have a great DVD for the future grandchildren... if DVDs are still in existence, that is. I get a little -- I don't know -- uncomfortable talking about things I've done but for more deets and to see the hint of the pilot, you can check it out on my site . So that brings us back to my hubby, telling me to make the product. And that is what Beauty Blab will be about... The making of a beauty brand. Think of it like a guide to getting a product made. I'll tell you all the dirty secrets I learn from labs and manufacturers and what we go through to line up distribution, financing, PR, etc. Every trial. Every tribulation. Every success. It will all be here, along with other glittery details I may have to share along the way... like my poledancing classes, Minx manicure parties ( www.stylelist.com blogged about it recently!), celebrity sightings (I spot many in my neighborhood -- West Village of NYC), and fashion moments (I tend to be a very good shopper!). Next week... the first steps of getting a product made! So read, share, tell me what you want to know or hear about, too! I am an open book! Mwah! Karen Purple Lab Creatrix
 
Nicholas Carlson: The 10 Best Online Ads Of The Year Top
Besides the nearly infinite amount of inventory out there, probably the biggest problem with online advertising is that usually, the creative sucks. Unlike TV, where there are at least Super Bowl commercials and French-influenced story-telling , or print, where there at leas t the cinematic spreads in high-end glossies like Vogue or Vanity Fair , online ads almost always fail to capture the imagination. Publishers like IAC, with the Daily Beas t, and Gawker Media, with its frequent site-skinnings , are trying, but we're not there yet. Because we'd like this to change -- what digital publisher wouldn't? -- we've decided to celebrate the best digital creative produced over the last 12 months. With the help of Ads Of The World's vast repository , that's what's we've done here, compiling what their many users say are the 10 best online ads of the last 12 months. Click to scroll through the 10 best online ads of the last 12 months. → A note: All but one of the ads we present here -- the very highest rated by Ads Of The World's users -- are either "viral" videos or indepedent microsites, which unless users were directed there by a banner, means they don't benefit any publishers. Perhaps this is the best indication yet that publishers need to hurry up and embrace newer, more customizable units than the banner? More on Advertising
 
Peter Schwartz: Why Wolfram Alpha Flopped Top
Okay, so after months of inflamed hype, Wolfram Alpha launched a week or so ago and nearly everyone agrees it is terrible . The question is not how it could be so terrible; it is why everyone didn't know from the start that it would be terrible. Stephen Wolfram is a brilliant software engineer, but his horizons address the abstract infinite spaces of computational logic, and so he misses the trees for the forest, the earth for the heavens. Let's be blunter. Wolfram Alpha is terrible because Stephen Wolfram doesn't respect and fear data. Wolfram Alpha depends upon data, thousands of different electronic reference sources, "about nine-tenths of what you'd see on the main shelves of a reference library," according to Wolfram. The problem with the assumption that this data foundation is adequate is two-fold. First, the amount of information locked in online databases, information that even Google cannot access, is exponentially larger than what one would find on the shelves of a reference library. Second, even integrating the data on a reference library shelf for the purposes of logical computation requires surmounting basic database relationship challenges that no one has yet to resolve. Those who toil in vast and lonely data mines quickly learn that structured data is no one's friend. Most data does not talk easily or work cooperatively with other data. Yoking database tables together is painstaking, difficult, and often requires hacks and tricks and legerdemain worthy of Houdini. Issues of timeliness, reliability, and performance stymie nearly every ambitious data development effort. At the end of the day, the week, the month, and the year, the creation of useful and powerful database applications requires careful, intelligent attention to the details of the data. Working with databases is artisanal, not mathematical. It is like brewing fine craft beer, not building the Starship Enterprise. More on Technology
 
Frank Sharry: GOP Trots Out Old Extremist, J.D. Hayworth, as Spokesman against Immigration Reform Top
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration held a hearing about border policy. Its chairman, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), has declared 'game on' for immigration reform. This is the same Schumer who was architect of the Democratic takeover of the Senate, who always has his eye on what the party needs to do in order to win. As such, it takes a sledge hammer to the tired conventional wisdom that immigration reform is " too hot to handle ," and instead confirms that the time is most certainly now. President Obama gets it, too, despite some troubling moves that the Administration has been roundly criticized for this week . The President announced just yesterday that he will host a White House strategy session with Members of Congress during the second week of June and has consistently pledged to get started on immigration reform this year. Besides being the right thing to do, moving forward on reform is smart politics, plain and simple. Real immigration reform is the key to earning the trust of our nation's fastest growing block of voters - Latinos-- and also to showing moderate and swing voters who are sick of demagoguery on the issue that Washington is stepping up to the plate to solve tough problems. But while the President and Senator Schumer look to the future , the panel's ranking member, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), was caught facing squarely in the other direction. Cornyn called talk show host, defeated Congressman, and notorious blowhard J.D. Hayworth to testify as an expert on the border. Until his 2006 defeat, Hayworth was one of the most outspoken immigrant bashers in Congress, whose screeds were parroted on David Duke's blog and cheered by the Federation for American Immigration Reform ( FAIR ) - labeled an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hayworth is indeed the poster child for a politics that has driven Latinos away from the GOP - and that has failed to scare up the support of key swing voters.  Even conservatives blame the immigration issue for Hayworth's 2006 loss, according to a study promoted by Linda Chavez : In Arizona's 5th district, six-term GOP incumbent Rep. J.D. Hayworth actually switched positions on immigration from being a sponsor of guest worker legislation to becoming one of the most outspoken opponents of immigration, even advocating a moratorium on legal immigration from Mexico. In 2004, Hayworth received almost as many Hispanic votes as his Democrat opponent, with each receiving about 48 percent; but in 2006, Hayworth lost 59-36 percent in Hispanic precincts. This is consistent with what we saw in the 2008 election. As I've consistently chronicled, in 20 out of 22 competitive races during the 2008 cycle , the pro-reform candidate defeated the anti-immigrant hardliner. What's more, new polling of Hispanic voters in 13 states conducted by Bendixen & Associates found   that, by a 71 percent to 11 percent margin, respondents believed that the Democratic Party best represented the opinion of the Hispanic community on immigration issues vs. the Republican Party.  Additionally, only 23 percent of respondents in the Bendixen poll thought that Republicans "will do the right thing" on immigration issues, while a whopping 60 percent thought Republicans "will not do the right thing" (17 percent don't know).   This, with Gallup reporting that self-identified Republicans have dropped to a near-historic low of 21% and that the GOP's share of nearly every major demographic subgroup had shrunk since 2001. Note to Senator Cornyn: step away from the extremist - he is dangerous to your party. How? In Congress, Rep. Hayworth's extreme views on immigration were so bad that he was the only Member of Congress to object to the draconian "Sensenbrenner" bill in 2006 - a wide-ranging crackdown infamous for its intent to make felons out of both unauthorized immigrants and the religious and service workers who assist them - for not being harsh enough!  The "too-soft-for-Hayworth" Sensenbrenner bill is widely seen as the catalyst that spurred millions of people across the nation to pour out in the streets in protest, a tradition that has evolved into the May 1st immigration and workers' rights rallies that we know today. In fact the momentum created by these events was certainly one force that drove such a high percentage of first-time latino voters to the ballot box last November, flipping four states from red to blue . Hayworth even published a book during his last Congressional election (did we mention that he lost) entitled, " "Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror."    In the notorious manifesto, Hayworth praised the cultural views of notorious anti-Semite, Henry Ford.   He also proposed a three-year ban on legal immigration from Mexico.   After the book was published, The Forward   noted that in his book," Hayworth wrote, 'Talk like that today and our liberal elites will brand you a cultural imperialist, or worse. But if you ask me, Ford had a better idea.'" If you ask just about anyone else, Ford's ideas were extreme for his era, but, in the 21st century, it's hard to find anyone, beside Hayworth and his ilk, who agree them. Here's the good news: after years of an increasingly acerbic tussle over which politician could be more obnoxious on immigration, the vast majority of voters want a real solution. And Latino voters are sick of being slapped around by the pundit profiteers in Congress and on the airwaves. The pressure is on the Democrats to deliver progressive and comprehensive immigration reform - and on Republicans to stop the bleeding. It is time for Congressional Republicans to re-open diplomatic relations with Latino voters and show America that they are interested in real solutions to the very real problems we face. It can be done and the time is right - let's get on with it. Note: Cross-posted at www.AmericasVoiceOnline.org/Blog . More on Immigration
 
GOP Wants More Help From Cheney Top
Democrats and Republicans may have found an area of agreement: Dick Cheney should keep on campaigning for the GOP cause. Cheney's apparently endless retirement speaking tour culminated Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, where he savaged Barack Obama and dismissed criticism of torture as "phony moralizing" and "feigned outrage." Republican poll numbers have continued to crater in the weeks since Cheney first took to the talk-show circuit, but GOP senators told the Huffington Post Thursday afternoon that they think the former vice president will rally voters to their cause. "I'm sure he can help some," said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. "I hope he helps where he can. I like the vice president." Graham qualified that he doesn't see Cheney, 68, as the future of the Republican Party, leaving that role to "some young governor or somebody out there that will emerge over time." He noted that he and Cheney have not always agreed on policy, a caveat that John Thune was also quick to include amid his praise. "He is at heart a Republican, and I think that like a lot of Republicans, he doesn't agree with everything sometimes that our candidates may stand for or perhaps the party's platform necessarily," Thune said. "But he's someone who has had a tremendous leadership role for our country and in the Republican Party." And Thune went further than Graham in voicing a desire for Cheney's support, asserting that he would love Cheney to stump with him across South Dakota next year. "I mean, I think anybody would welcome having a guy of his stature and that kind of respect," Thune said. Reporting contributed by Ryan Grim. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Dick Cheney
 
Ruth Peltason: Amy Mickelson and Breast Cancer Top
Open Letter to Amy Mickelson Dear Amy, We haven't met, but already we're connected, a sort of "six degrees of separation" because once you've been diagnosed with breast cancer you're immediately part of a group of people -- not just women -- who are coping and learning to live with breast cancer. It's not a group any one of us would choose to join, but as they say, "membership has its privileges," and I hope you will find that to be true. I certainly did. One of these privileges is that you'll receive an amazing outpouring of love and support: it's the best medicine I ever had. Your children will give you all the mojo you need to fight, to get well, and to be well. Their happiness will drive you, and motherhood will be your daily vitamin pill. Another privilege is that once you have a diagnosis of breast cancer, you learn -- in fact you will need -- to shore up your meaningful friendships and let go of those people who are in any way toxic. This is a time to clean house, figuratively, and it can be wonderfully liberating. Forget "we must do lunch" -- now you don't have to! Although I was your age when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I was permitted to have my privacy, allowing me to choose when I shared the news with friends and colleagues. You and your husband are public figures and privacy is a luxury you don't have. But this doesn't mean you have to smile, do the fake brave thing and hold news conferences and give interviews. You really don't. Be selfish and think about what will make you feel best and will comfort you and your family. Tuck in, circle the wagons, let someone else take phone calls for you. (I assure you, the press will be waiting for you whenever you decide to emerge.) Which leads me to this next bit of advice: Be proactive. Make your own decisions, ask questions and demand answers. Read well but selectively -- there's a minefield of information on the Internet and elsewhere, and some of it's a slippery slope. Educate yourself and trust in what you learn. Everybody second-guesses their decisions at 2 am; the trick is to leave those doubts behind when you get out of bed. Weirdly, you'll find sometimes that you need to shore up others, that you'll also need to be a caretaker. My oldest brother was recently diagnosed with lung cancer and he told me that he didn't understand how friends could complain, say, of headaches when he was dealing with a deadly illness. I told him that people don't really change their behavior. Yes they'll offer sympathy and mean it, but no leopard completely loses his spots. If you have friends who like to grumble, guess what? They'll still grumble. Actually, I found it refreshing because then I could get out of the "breast cancer spotlight" -- I didn't have to keep talking about how I was doing. Maybe that will help you too. But the best advice I can offer is recognizing that when you've been diagnosed with breast cancer, it doesn't just happen to you. It happens to your husband, to your children, to your parents, and to all the other dear and important people in your life. Having that community of caring is magic and it means that you truly aren't alone in fighting breast cancer. It means that when you triumph, all of you share in that success. For a woman who knows about competition, this will surely be the sweetest Mickelson win ever.
 
Arrested Moroccan Islamists Planned To Attack Jews Top
A group of alleged Islamists recently arrested in Morocco planned to attack Jewish interests in the country, a court source said Thursday, citing the charges against them. More on Africa
 
Darin Murphy: Obama vs Cheney: Future vs Past Top
We couldn't ask for a better favor this morning than the one handed to us by Barack Obama and Dick Cheney. At no other time, not even during the election, have we been able to see such a clear juxtaposition between where we are now as a country and where we used to be. Election '08 was little more than a theater of the absurd that ended promptly on November 4th. This morning, however, was real life, a real opportunity to stand in the age of reason and look back vividly on the age of fear, spite and distortion. We saw a current leader and policy maker lay out every detail of what he stands for, what he has done, what he intends to do and refrain from doing and exactly why, whether you agree or not. He grounded his policy stance in his constitutional scholarship and took nothing personally. He made it absolutely clear that his policies will be made in accordance with the rule of law and not the other way around. We learned that Gitmo is not jot one problem but a series of problems, each of which have to be treated differently. He reminded America and the world of the simple truth that nothing is just that simple; that reducing issues to black and white terms while ignoring important details of color will do nothing but endanger us in the long run. And he did so with respect for our troops and our intelligence. Immediately afterward, we got a healthy dose of nostalgia from 2004, a rehashing of a linear argument that was long ago lost. A man who claimed to have no political agenda opened his remarks with a barb about the length of the Commander-in chief's speech. Indeed, the former vice president's total time at the lectern was maybe a fourth of the president's, but the president had a lot more ground to cover, not to mention a lot more ground to stand on. Cheney's only goal was to defend his torture policies, and apart from that there wasn't really much else he could talk about. He couldn't talk about Iraq, which he only mentioned once in passing, brushing off the whole six-year debacle as "high and low points." He couldn't talk about the real reason he ordered the waterboarding of one guy over 100 times -- to get him to say that Iraq was linked to Al Queda and justify a bogus invasion. He couldn't talk about those things because they're political cyanide, so he had to fill his time with fear-induced anger, inaccurate claims, righteous indignation and cheap shots at Europe. From the outset he played his trump card: 9/11. He played it over and over again as if he and the other 19% of Americans who support him are the only ones who remember it. They aren't. But this was clearly Cheney playing to his audience, for it's all he has left. The bully pulpit now belongs to the new president, and all Cheney can do is preach to his choir. That's why he spoke from within the cozy confines of the American Enterprise Institute while Obama enjoys the broader stage of the National Archives. But it goes deeper than that. Obama gets the bigger platform and the longer time slot because more people are inclined to listen to him, and that's because he's inclined to listen to more people. Cheney and his president didn't want to listen to anyone. That is why his era is bygone and his influence on our future is dwindling. More on Obama Transition
 
Paul Katz: Adam Lambert's "Loss" Due to Homophobia? A Stretch Top
I haven't watched American Idol in two years. I watched three seasons and then decided I was done. The format is tired, in my opinion. So, I was not invested this year. I did, however, catch a clip of Adam Lambert doing Michael Jackson's "Black or White" one night and was mighty impressed with how he held his own. Today, I am reading that because he was not crowned the winner, "homophobia" is alive and well in this country. Well, that may be the case. As a gay man I certainly do not have my head in the sand about homophobia, but the claim in regards to the outcome of this singing/popularity contest is irritating me to no end today. If America really had some issue with Adam Lambert and his sexuality, he never would have made it to the top two. The "fear" of him or the speculation that he might like kissing men would have reared its ugly head and had him cast out weeks ago. America has been voting for him over other contestants week after week for all these months, long after the photos of him apparently kissing another man appeared and after the pink tinted Entertainment Weekly cover story suggesting he was gay hit the stands. Despite statements of "I am who I am" when questioned on the subject of his sexuality, Adam Lambert has never definitively said "I am gay." Without a firm statement on the matter, no one can authentically say he lost due to "homophobia." Yes, all indications point to the fact that he is gay, but those indications are nothing but innuendo and stereotyping until the words "I am gay" actually come out of his mouth. As of now, they have not. Perhaps if Adam had gone through the entire competition as an openly gay man I would feel differently about this outcome. In terms of talent, most people I have spoken with who were invested in watching this season have told me that they definitely thought Adam had "star quality" and "charisma" but thought he had a tendency to scream rather than sing. Then there is the American Idol voting system, which is a complete joke. People can text or phone vote over and over again and it's been reported that the primary audience doing all that multiple voting are teenaged girls working desperately to make sure their favorite cutie is crowned. Switch the voting to "one vote per phone" and the outcomes would likely be radically different. Regardless of this outcome, during most years on American Idol , the top two turn out to be "co-winners." Adam Lambert certainly did not lose. As evidenced by the likes of Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken and Chris Daughtry (to name a few), Adam is now in a position to have a stronger career because he "lost." Note that very few commentators or blogs are focusing on winner Kris Allen today. It's a great spot for Lambert to be in because it brings all the attention to the "problem." I just don't think the "problem" in this case is homophobia. More on American Idol
 
The 10 Best Online Ads Of The Last 12 Months Top
We've decided to celebrate the best digital creative produced over the last 12 months. With the help of Ads Of The World's vast repository, that's what's we've done here, compiling what their many users say are the 10 best online ads of the last 12 months. More on Advertising
 
Andy Worthington: My Message To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No "Preventive Detention" Top
First off, the President has lost none of his oratorical powers. His national security speech today, in which he sought -- and, I think, largely found -- the correct balance with regard to the horrendous legacy of Guantánamo, was well crafted and delivered. He delicately put down the fearmongers in both parties who have recently tried to make political capital out of Guantánamo, laid down facts about the prison with an admirable clarity, eloquently called for cross-party unity on this most pressing of issues, and also explained his proposed solutions in a comprehensive manner. I analyze these points in the article below, but although I believe that this speech will help the President score points from those who have, of late, been seeking to undermine him, I also have to point out that, on two issues -- the use of Military Commissions and the proposal to introduce a form of "preventive detention" -- no amount of eloquence can erode my implacable opposition to both suggestions. The President began by being openly critical of his predecessors, who, "faced with an uncertain threat ... made a series of hasty decisions. Even though those decisions were "motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people," he made it clear that many of them were "based upon fear rather than foresight," and, interestingly, noted that the Bush administration "all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions" -- a statement which appears to refer to the inadequacy of the evidence against numerous Guantánamo prisoners, which I have been writing about for over three years, and have highlighted in two recent articles . Obama proceeded to point out that the Bush administration had also set aside America's core principles "as luxuries that we could no longer afford," but also extended the responsibility for allowing this to happen to "politicians, journalists and citizens," who all "fell silent" in this "season of fear." "In other words," he continued, "we went off course," and he suggested that the American people had realized this when they "nominated candidates for President from both major parties who, despite our many differences, called for a new approach -- one that rejected torture, and recognized the imperative of closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay." Moving on to specifics, Obama defended the absolute prohibition on the use of torture -- although he didn't, of course, mention some reservations about loopholes in this policy that I explored here -- and unreservedly refuted claims that waterboarding was either necessary or useful (a familiar refrain, but one particularly focused just now on Dick Cheney , who appears to be on an endless Torture Tour). "I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe," he said, but added, "I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation." On Guantánamo, Obama and his team had certainly done some research. The President made a point of mentioning twice that the Bush administration's trials by Military Commission had led to only three convictions in seven years, and that 525 prisoners were released from the prison under his predecessor's watch, and proceeded to emphasize that he was "cleaning up something that is -- quite simply -- a mess; a misguided experiment that has left in its wake a flood of legal challenges that my Administration is forced to deal with on a constant basis, and that consumes the time of government officials whose time should be spent on better protecting our country." Stressing that "the problem of what to do with Guantánamo detainees was not caused by my decision to close the facility; the problem exists because of the decision to open Guantánamo in the first place," Obama pointed out that "the legal challenges that have sparked so much debate in recent weeks" -- the court order to release 17 Uighurs into the United States, and the Supreme Court's 2006 ruling on the invalidity of the Military Commissions -- had taken place under the Bush administration, and, in the case of the Supreme Court, in a Court that "was overwhelmingly appointed by Republican Presidents." This was true, but the emphasis he placed on it conveniently allowed him to evade responsibility for not intervening to prevent an appeal court from shamefully reversing the ruling about the Uighurs just three months ago. Having established this background, Obama then openly criticized "some of the fear-mongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue," adding, "Listening to the recent debate, I've heard words that are calculated to scare people rather than educate them; words that have more to do with politics than protecting our country." Explaining, "I want to solve these problems, and I want to solve them together as Americans," he insisted that "the wrong answer is to pretend that this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo," adding, "Our security interests won't permit it. Our courts won't allow it. And neither should our conscience." Moving on to the specific issues relating to the closure of Guantánamo, Obama began by assuring would-be critics that "we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people" (a statement intended, I think, to provide reassurance that the Uighurs are not a threat). He then got down to details, beginning with a pledge that, "[w]here demanded by justice and national security," "some detainees" -- mercifully, not all 240 -- will be transferred to secure prisons on the U.S. mainland (with some added reassurance that "nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal 'supermax' prisons"). After dismissing some of the shrill rhetoric about the recidivism rates of released prisoners by blaming it on the Bush administration's "poorly planned, haphazard approach" to releasing prisoners (and not, of course, mentioning that another shoddy and exaggerated report was leaked by his own Defense Department just yesterday), Obama promised that, "when feasible, we will try those who have violated American criminal laws in federal courts," mentioning, thankfully, how federal courts have been perfectly capable of prosecuting terrorists (as, for example, in the cases of Ramzi Yousef and Zacarias Moussaoui), and also mentioning today's reassuring announcement that one of Guantánamo's "high-value detainees," Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an alleged associate of the African embassy bombers, will be tried in a federal court in New York. More worryingly, Obama also confirmed that, in some cases, he would indeed be pressing for trials using a revised version of the Military Commissions that were first conceived as an appropriate venue for "terror suspects" by Dick Cheney and David Addington , arguing -- wrongly, I believe -- that they have a noble history, are "an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war," and will, with some tweaking, be "fair, legitimate, and effective." We can at least be reassured that, unlike Cheney and Addington, Obama promised to "work with Congress and legal authorities across the political spectrum on legislation" relating to the Commissions, but I have to say that I will continue to campaign against the revival of the Commissions in any form, and that I also regard today's decision to charge Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani in a federal court as a clear indication that trials in the U.S. court system are the only legitimate way forward, and that setting up a two-tier system -- of federal courts on the one hand, and Military Commissions on the other -- appears to be nothing but a recipe for disaster. Moving on, Obama dealt with the question of 21 prisoners whose release has already been ordered by the lower courts (following the Supreme Court's ruling last June, in Boumediene v. Bush , that the prisoners have habeas corpus rights), by rather over-egging the point that "this has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to close Guantánamo," that "[t]wenty of these findings took place before I came into office," and, as an almost apologetic footnote, which betrays, I think, his preference for his own inter-departmental review of the Guantánamo cases over those made by the courts, stating, "The United States is a nation of laws, and we must abide by these rulings." After dropping, in passing, the news that the review team has now approved 50 prisoners for transfer to other countries (a few weeks ago, it was just 30), Obama moved on to a topic that is at least as worrying to lawyers, civil libertarians and those concerned with constitutional issues as the proposal to revive the Commissions: those prisoners who, as the President put it, "cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people." Although it was refreshing to hear Obama state, "I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face," the examples he gave of prisoners who might be imprisoned indefinitely under a form of "preventive detention" -- "people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans" -- cannot be regarded as a separate category of prisoner from those, like Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who will face a trial in a U.S. federal court. Frankly, to even entertain the prospect that a third category of justice (beyond guilt and innocence) can be conjured out of thin air without fatally undermining the principles on which the United States was founded is to enter perilous territory indeed. Fundamentally, Guantánamo is a prison that was founded on the presumption that the Bush administration's "new paradigm" justified "preventive detention" for life, and although Obama stepped up his assurances at this point in his speech -- talking about "clear, defensible and lawful standards," "fair procedures," and "a thorough process of periodic review" -- it is simply unacceptable that "preventive detention" (which he referred to, euphemistically, as "prolonged detention") should be considered as an option, however much he tried to legitimize it by stating, "If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight." To put it bluntly, it doesn't matter how much you dress it up. Look at the sentence, "Hold[ing] individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war," replace "an act of war" with "a crime, any crime," and you will, I hope, realize why the proposed policy is so terrifying and so thoroughly unacceptable. If a President came to power promising to "hold individuals to keep them from committing a crime, any crime," I'd be very worried indeed. I'll leave it to others to analyze the rest of the President's speech, which dealt with broader questions of national security -- including the "State Secrets" doctrine , the release of the torture memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel, and the decision not to release photos of abuse in U.S. prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq -- not because I have no interest in these issues, but because I don't want to distract attention from the two particular responses to the "mess" inherited from the Bush administration that I find deeply troubling: the decision to revive the Military Commissions, and the decision to push for a form of "preventive detention." I'm dismayed by the first, because, as I made clear, I think it represents an unnecessary and unjustifiable two-tier system, but I'm almost speechless with despair about the second, and would urge anyone who believes in the fundamental right of human beings, in countries that purport to wear the cloak of civilization with pride, to live as free men and women unless arrested, charged, tried and convicted of a crime, to resist the notion that a form of "preventive detention" is anything other than the most fundamental betrayal of our core values. Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here . More on Harsh Interrogations
 
Dan Pashman: Explaining The Nation's Non-Reaction To Gay Marriage Top
If a state legalizes gay marriage and nobody notices, can gay people still get married? What if four states do it in six weeks? As more states legalize same-sex marriage, the lack of outrage is striking. Forget the Armageddon we were promised. There's hardly even been a press conference. It would appear that gay marriage is just not that big a deal anymore and that the Christian right -- long the main source of opposition -- isn't either. Both are scenarios I find encouraging, but I question whether the nation's collective shrug can be fully explained by the natural ebb and flow of politics and social mores. What if neither the Christian right nor the issue of gay marriage was ever as central in American politics as the media or the far right would have had us believe? There was a time when an inflammatory remark from one of the leaders of the religious right would spark a media feeding frenzy. (Remember when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed 9/11 on gay people? That was leadership.) If you count New Hampshire, where a bill is awaiting the governor's signature, since the beginning of April four states (the other three are Iowa, Maine, and Vermont) have legalized gay marriage. Predictably, speaking on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson reacted to Maine's legalization of gay marriage with an old chestnut: "What about bestiality and ultimately what about child molestation and pedophilia? How can we criminalize these things and at the same time have constitutional amendments allowing same-sex marriage among homosexuals? Mark my words, this is just the beginning of a long downward slide in relation to all the things that we consider to be abhorrent." Yet nobody seemed to notice Robertson's comments. Just last year, the press made it seem as if the entire Republican presidential primary consisted of a competition for the endorsement of James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. Now where is he? Four years ago he said same-sex marriage would likely lead to "marriage between daddies and little girls" and "marriage between a man and his donkey." Yet lately he has been more concerned about President Obama's decision to skip a National Day of Prayer event than about gay marriage. And Fox News , which not long ago would have been forced to add an extra hour to the day to fit in all the gay-marriage outrage, has decided to focus on tea bags and torture instead. Of course, the growing acceptance of gay marriage hasn't prompted much celebration, either, at least outside those states where it is now legal. So how do we explain the nation's nonreaction to the legalization of same-sex marriage? Attitudes do change over time, and that's no doubt happening here. But those kinds of generational shifts take place slowly. They can't explain how an issue that was supposedly so incendiary so recently could turn into an afterthought so quickly. It's also likely that the recession has played a role in diminishing the focus on social issues, as some pollsters point out . But while the economy remains a concern, the acute fear that gripped the nation over the winter has somewhat receded . And thanks to a bit of mildly encouraging news and our collective ennui, the recession is no longer the all-consuming headline of several months ago. There now appears to be room in the national consciousness for issues besides the economy. Why not same-sex marriage? In 2004, the pundit class latched on to the story line that evangelicals were responsible for the re-election of President Bush, ignoring polls that showed that voters considered Iraq, terrorism, and the economy -- not gay marriage or abortion -- the top issues. Voters also just found Bush more likable than John Kerry. In spite of these facts, the media chose the juicier headline ("Evangelical Christians Taking Over America") over the more accurate one ("Americans Still Trust Friendly Cowboys Over Patrician Phonies"). And in 2008, evangelicals were about the same percentage of the electorate as they were in 2004. But the Democrat won handily. How? Well, middle-of-the-road, independent Americans decided the election, just as they did in 2004. Evangelicals may be crucial to Republicans in the primaries, but they have never been kingmakers in the general election. General elections are decided by moderates, the same people whose changing attitudes are largely responsible for the quiet acceptance of these gay-marriage victories. ( Two recent polls put national support for same-sex marriage at 42 percent and 49 percent, respectively, and rising.) And while those moderates may be more open to gay marriage now than they were a few years ago, it was never a touchstone issue for them -- as evidenced by the fact that it was not a top concern in the 2004 election. Of course, there remains substantial opposition to same-sex marriage in America. But as people start to see that New England hasn't turned into Sodom and Gomorrah -- and as they start to find out that the nice "single" woman in their office isn't so single -- they'll likely get more comfortable with the whole notion. Clearly, that's already happening. How else to explain the lack of outrage? No doubt the religious right will return. But when it does, let's not forget this era of bland acceptance of same-sex marriage. It raises serious questions about the religious right's power. Perhaps it has always been better at projecting influence than exercising it. This piece was originally published on Slate.com . More on Gay Marriage
 
Obama: 50 Guantanamo Detainees Cleared For Transfer Top
WASHINGTON — Forty-eight terror suspects currently held at Guantanamo Bay are waiting to be released to other nations, the Obama administration said Thursday. The detainees are among 50 whose cases have already been reviewed, President Barack Obama said Thursday, pointing to efforts to empty the prison without bringing all its inmates to the United States. Two other detainees have been released since January, to Britain and France, officials said. In a speech defending his plans to close the detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba by early next year, Obama described the 50 detainees as prisoners who "can be transferred safely to another country." "My administration is in ongoing discussions with a number of other countries about the transfer of detainees to their soil for detention and rehabilitation," Obama said in his speech at the National Archives. Military officials described those detainees Thursday as either low-level threats who no longer have valuable intelligence to give, or have been cleared for transfer because of a court order or otherwise lacking evidence against them. Whether they will be transferred anytime soon is anyone's guess. The government has been negotiating with nations like Yemen and Saudi Arabia for months to deal with some of the detainees. Obama is seeking to place up to an estimated 100 Yemeni detainees in Saudi rehabilitation programs. Since 2002, more than 500 detainees have been transferred to at least 30 nations to be prosecuted, rehabilitated or released. Many nations, however, are reluctant to take detainees who remain at Guantanamo because they are seen as higher security risks than those who were cleared earlier. And the U.S. is leery about transferring many detainees to other nations, like Yemen, where they may be released despite the threat they may pose. Pentagon data from January suggests at least 61 detainees have either rejoined or are suspected of returning to the fight against the United States after being released from Guantanamo. The two detainees who have been transferred to other nations since January are: _Ethiopian national Binyam Mohammed, a former resident of Great Britain, who claims he was tortured while at Guantanamo. He was sent back to Britain in February and is seeking to have evidence in his case be released. _Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, was sent to France earlier this month after a U.S. appeals court ordered his release last year. Boumediene's whose landmark 2008 Supreme Court case gave the Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment.
 
Jake Brewer: Data.Gov Launches: Why You Should Care and What You Should Do Top
Sometimes the geekiest stuff is the most important. When it comes to creating a more transparent and accountable government, Thursday, May 21, is one of those sometimes. On this beautiful morning, our nation's citizenry received one of the greatest gifts it could receive from its government: raw, freely and easily accessible data. Mmmmm... data. New federal CIO Vivek Kundra and the Obama Administration have officially launched Data.gov , which is the first-ever catalog of federal data being made freely (and easily) available to citizens. Now, it's unlikely the description of Data.gov will send chills down the spine of anyone who doesn't speak Ruby or Python or MYSQL, and if you visit the site, it's unlikely you'll be struck or know to be impressed by what's there. But if you step back and take a minute to understand what you're looking at, you'll realize we've just taken an unprecedented first step into the Era of Big Open Government. When information becomes free and participatory, markets get created (think about weather data), more people engage more deeply with their government (see: Obama's online townhall ), and ultimately, citizen apathy is destroyed. ...it's nearly impossible for people to know more about what's going on and care less. The key with this new data, though, is that we do something with it. While opening up data is a beautiful thing in its own right, what will make this release truly great is when citizens actually take the information and create new, brilliant applications. That's why Sunlight Labs in partnership with Google, O'Reilly Media, and Craig Newmark of Craig's List has simultaneously launched a contest with $25,000 in awards to incentivize the creation of said brilliance. Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge This is a wonderful, one-time opportunity to show the administration the good that follows when they make information free - so we need to seize it. And everyone's help in getting the word out is key - whether you're a developer, someone who knows developers to share this with, or someone who simply writes and talks to others. At the end of the day, the more great entries the Apps for America contest receives, the more likely government is going to release more data - and the more data government releases the more transparent, accountable, and efficient it can be. Open, free, raw information - true Transparency makes - government work the way it's supposed to (for you). So let's get on this. Geeks, wonks and active citizens alike. More on Transparency
 
Jesse Jenkins: Climate Bill May Let U.S. Emissions Rise for Next Twenty Years Top
Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute At the heart of the nearly thousand page long climate change and clean energy bill being debated in the U.S. House of Representatives this week is a "cap and trade" mechanism aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. However, a provision in the bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454 or "ACES"), allows polluting firms in the U.S. to finance emissions reductions overseas in lieu of reducing their own global warming pollution and may allow American emissions to continue to rise for up to twenty years, according to new analysis from the Breakthrough Institute. The provision allows power plants, oil refiners, and other polluters regulated under the bill's cap and trade program to use up to one billion tons of international emissions reductions, or "offsets," to be used instead of reducing their own emissions each year. The bill also allows up to one billion tons of additional offsets each year, sourced from sectors of the U.S. economy that do not fall under the pollution cap, such as forestry and agriculture. If a suitable supply of domestic emissions offsets are unavailable, the limit on the use of international offsets may be raised to 1.5 billion tons annually at the discretion of the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The extensive use of these international and domestic offsets would effectively allow U.S. firms in capped sectors to continue emitting global warming pollution at levels well above the reductions supposedly driven by the emissions cap. New analysis from the Breakthrough Institute reveals that if fully utilized, the offset provisions in the ACES bill would allow continued business as usual growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions until 2030. While the bill intends to reduce economy-wide U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 20% below historic 2005 levels by 2020, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050, the use of international offsets would allow U.S. emissions to continue at up to 1.5 billion tons higher than the emissions reduction path intended by the bill. For capped sectors of the economy only, up to two billion tons of additional emissions would be permitted by full use of offsets. The following graphics illustrate the effect of the offset provisions. Click any of them to enlarge. This first chart illustrates the range of potential emissions across the entire U.S. economy allowed by the ACES bill if international emissions offsets are utilized at the levels permitted by the legislation (1 billion tons in normal circumstances; up to 1.5 billion tons if domestic offsets are unavailable). Because the use of domestic offsets will merely shift emissions reductions from the sectors that fall under the greenhouse gas cap and trade regulations to non-capped sectors of the U.S. economy (assuming they are credible offsets), they are not considered in this chart. As the graphic illustrates, offsets could create a major oversupply of emissions allowances during the first nine years of the cap and trade program. This oversupply would either collapse the market value of emissions allowances or allow significant quantities of emissions permits to be banked for future compliance years (ACES allows unlimited banking of unused allowances) -- or both. (Compare this graphic with this analysis from the World Resources Institute , which does not consider the impact of international offsets on U.S. emissions levels.) The following chart illustrates emissions allowed in the sectors that fall under the greenhouse gas cap and trade regulations only. Up to two billion tons of domestic and international offsets may be used in lieu of emissions reductions in these capped sectors, resulting in the potential range of emissions levels shown below. Again, if extensive offset provisions are utilized, the supposed "cap" on regulated sectors of the economy will essentially be lifted for more than a decade after the start of the cap and trade program. The result will be very little pressure to shift practices in capped sectors as long as affordable offsets are available for purchase. However, the situation is even worse than the picture painted by these two charts. Because regulated polluters are allowed to bank unused emissions allowances indefinitely -- and because CO2, the main greenhouse gas, persists in the atmosphere for centuries-long timescales -- the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions permitted by the ACES bill are most critical to examine. The following graphic illustrates the allowed cumulative emissions for the entire U.S. economy and for capped sectors only between 2012 and 2030. As this graphic illustrates, the offset provisions in the bill -- combined with the ability to bank allowances during the major oversupply likely in early years of the program -- would allow economy-wide U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to rise at projected business-as-usual rates through the year 2030. Emissions in capped sectors could exceed business-as-usual projections by nearly 9% in 2030 if the full two billion tons of offsets are routinely utilized. This all leads one to wonder: where's the cap in the "cap" and trade program? Note: All of these graphics and the underlying calculations and assumptions can be downloaded here as a .xlsx file . [Update 5/21/09]: Here's two more graphics that show potential annual emissions in 2020 and 2030. Note that because of banking and the potential for oversupply (and therefore lots of banked allowances) in the years proceeding these, annual emissions in 2020 and/or 2030 may even exceed the levels shown here (the graph showing cumulative emissions above gets at this issue). More on Climate Change
 
Jeff Schweitzer: Dick Cheney Will Protect You, and Liberals Want Your First Born Top
This week the Republicans have finalized their descent to irrelevance. Two prominent spokesmen for the right have diminished the national debate, and themselves, with irresponsible statements meant to rewrite history. George Will opining in Newsweek and Dick Cheney speaking at the American Enterprise Institute together provide the two bookends for the encyclopedia of Republican attacks on reason. George Will has concluded bizarrely that liberals are "...bothered by the automobile. It subverted their agenda of expanding government -- meaning their supervision of other people's lives." Huh? Well. The statement contains a number of truly ridiculous assertions. First, being labeled a liberal myself, I have never been "bothered by the automobile" nor are any of my friends particularly annoyed by the newfangled horseless carriage. But the truly outrageous claim is that liberals want to supervise other people's lives, particularly in light of the dangerously intrusive policies implemented by Republicans. Let us examine what Party wishes to supervise the lives of American citizens. Republicans want the government to sit in the examining room with a doctor and patient to ensure that a woman does not exercise any control over her own reproductive destiny. Republicans interfered directly with Terri Schiavo's doctors and family, preventing her from dying with dignity. Republicans spied illegally on American citizens. Is that not the worst kind of supervision? Republicans arrested American citizens and deprived them of habeas corpus. Republicans want to force schools to teach Intelligent Design in our classrooms, supervising the curriculum of our children. We will next be teaching the "stork theory of reproduction" as they supervise sex education. Republicans, not Democrats, have committed the greatest sins of government supervision, to a degree never before seen in our history. What about fiscal policy? Well, all of the largest tax increases, national debts and deficits, and increases in the total size of government have come under Republican presidents. We'll see at the end of Obama's first term how his deficits fit in that long line of Republican irresponsibility. If Republicans wish to claim that tax policy is a means for government to supervise the lives of American citizens, they are to blame for the most egregious examples, with their hero Ronald Reagan being the worst practitioner of all. The Republican claim that Democrats aspire to the "supervision of other people's lives" is raw meat to the devoted but completely dissociated from reality. And now we have Dick Cheney and his new-found love for publicity in place of his previously never-ending series of undisclosed locations. Dick is out on the stump defending torture, claiming that Obama is undermining our security by being a wimp. If you're not pulling fingernails, you're with the terrorists. Let's look at that for a moment. Cheney defends torture on the argument that coercive interrogation was essential to saving American lives. Why, then, would he stop at waterboarding? What if simulated drowning was not sufficient to get the vital information needed in the "ticking bomb scenario" that he so often cites? If torture really works, and yields information that will prevent disaster, would he not want to do whatever was necessary to extract that information to save American lives: poking out eyes, skinning prisoners alive, pulling fingernails, or lopping off limbs. By limiting the techniques to waterboarding is he showing a lack of commitment to our national security? Cheney cannot have it both ways. He needs to answer the following questions directly: how far are you willing to go to extract information from a prisoner? If torture works, and can be justified morally as a means of protecting us against attack, how can you justify limiting torture to waterboarding? What if sticking a hot poker into a prisoner's eye would yield the location of a nuclear bomb, would you do that? If not, why not? Once we condone torture, we have no justification for limiting the techniques used. Pretending to drown someone is OK to save Americans, but shocking genitals is a no-no. On what grounds? If Cheney agrees that he would use that hot poker to reveal the location of a nuclear bomb, he is a war criminal, a torturer no different than the thugs that Saddam used to torture his opponents. If he would not use that hot poker, he is admitting that torture is wrong, and therefore that waterboarding is wrong. And he is therefore a war criminal for approving waterboarding. But the problem is not only that Cheney's position on torture is untenable. He has no credibility. Cheney never served in the military and has no field experience. His views on the efficacy of torture are counter to expressed views of experts from the FBI, CIA, and multiple branches of the military. The man has zero standing on this issue. Let us be clear how wrong Cheney has been on the most important national security issue of our time, the war in Iraq. He is equally wrong about torture as his many false statements about the war: In 2005, he claimed the insurgency in Iraq was "in the last throes." It was not. "In terms of the question what is there now, we know for example that prior to our going in that he had spent time and effort acquiring mobile biological weapons labs, and we're quite confident he did, in fact, have such a program. We've found a couple of semi trailers at this point which we believe were, in fact, part of that program." He was wrong. "I continue to believe. I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I mean, this is a guy who was an advocate and a supporter of terrorism whenever it suited his purpose, and I'm very confident that there was an established relationship there." He was wrong. Saddam had no ties to al Qaeda, and Cheney knew that when he made this statement. "Saddam Hussein had a lengthy history of reckless and sudden aggression. His regime cultivated ties to terror, including the al Qaeda network, and had built, possessed, and used weapons of mass destruction." Another knowingly false statement trying to tie Saddam to al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein "now is trying through his illicit procurement network to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium." This proved to be untrue, and was know by intelligence reports to be highly unlikely when he made this statement. Cheney falsely claimed that insurgents were timing their attacks to influence the mid-term election in the United States. The claim was so absurd that even President Bush finally had to go public and disavow the statement, admitting that they had no intelligence to suggest anything like what Cheney was claiming. Concerning our treatment of prisoners at Gitmo, Cheney said, "There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people." Did he mean that other countries would not have stooped low enough to waterboard a prisoner 83 times? Be crystal clear that the intelligence community has concluded unambiguously that Saddam had no ties to al Qaeda prior to our invasion. President Bush was eventually forced to state that publicly. Cheney was so desperate to make the connection, however, that prisoners were tortured specifically to get them to admit to a link between Saddam and al Qaeda. Be crystal clear that interrogation experts from multiple agencies conclude that torture does not work. Cheney is a man with no military or field experience, who was wrong about every major aspect of Iraq, and who holds an untenable position on torture. And people take him seriously? Until he comes clean and answers those specific questions about torture, he needs to go back to his undisclosed locations. Given what Cheney has done to undermine our national security, his efforts to paint Obama's policies as making us vulnerable to attack are grotesque. Forget not that 9/11 happened on his watch. He has nothing to say about what it takes to protect us. More on GOP
 
Feds: Synagogue Bomb Plot Suspects "Eager To Kill Jews" Top
A federal prosecutor says four men accused of plotting to blow up two New York City synagogues were "eager to kill Jews." (SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO OF THE SUSPECTS) The whole AP article : WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Four men arrested after planting what they thought were explosives near two New York City synagogues were disappointed that the World Trade Center wasn't still around to attack, a federal prosecutor said Thursday as the men appeared in court for the first time. The suspects were arrested Wednesday night, shortly after planting a 37-pound mock explosive device in the trunk of a car outside the Riverdale Temple and two mock bombs in the backseat of a car outside the Riverdale Jewish Center, another synagogue a few blocks away, authorities said. Police blocked their escape with an 18-wheel truck, smashing their tinted SUV windows and apprehending the unarmed suspects. Authorities said the men also plotted to shoot down a military plane. James Cromitie, 55; David Williams, 28; Onta Williams, 32; and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles. All the suspects except Payen appeared in federal court in White Plains on Thursday, their hands shackled to their waists. Payen was expected to appear in court later Thursday. Lawyers for the defendants, all of whom are U.S. citizens, did not seek bail. In arguing against bail, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder told the judge "it's hard to envision a more chilling plot" and described the men as "extremely violent." Story continues below They were "disappointed...that the best target (the World Trade Center) was hit already," he said, adding that the men were "eager to bring death to Jews." He also said Cromitie wanted to see what he did on TV and be able to say, "I'm the one who did that." Earlier, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly spoke at a news conference outside the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx. "They stated that they wanted to commit jihad," Kelly said. "They were disturbed about what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that Muslims were being killed." Kelly said he believed the men knew each other through prison. They had long rap sheets for charges including drug possession and assault. During the hearing Cromitie told the judge he had used marijuana on Wednesday but was clear-headed enough to understand the proceedings. An official told The Associated Press that three of the men are converts to Islam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation. Payen, who officials said is of Haitian descent, occasionally attended a Newburgh mosque. His statements on Islam often had to be corrected, according to Assistant Imam Hamin Rashada, who met Payen through a program that helps prisoners re-enter society. Acting U.S. Attorney Lev L. Dassin said the defendants planned to shoot Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles at planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, about 70 miles north of New York City. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to an informant for the defendants. The confidential informant who broke the case told Cromitie that he was involved with Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist group. It is one of several militant groups suspected of having links to Pakistani intelligence. Jaish set up training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban and several senior operatives were close to Osama bin Laden. Cromitie expressed interest in joining the group to "do jihad," according to a criminal complaint. According to state Department of Correctional Services records, Payen was released on parole in August 2005 after serving just more than a year in prison for attempted assault in Rockland County. Onta Williams served just more than a year in state prison for attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance in Orange County. He was released on parole in August 2003. Cromitie has been in prison at least three times under three different names, prison records show. He served two years on a drug sale conviction and was released on parole in 1991. Then, under the name of David Anderson, he spent 2 1/2 years in prison for selling drugs in New York City before being paroled in 1996. Under the name James Crometie, he was convicted of selling drugs in a school zone in 2000 and spent almost four years in prison before being released on parole in 2004. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Kelly met privately with congregants inside the Riverdale Jewish Center Thursday. Nancy Harris Rouemy said she was alarmed when she learned the news from a neighbor and definitely paused before dropping off her 4-year-old son at the Riverdale Jewish Center, where he goes to school. "However, the assurance is that the perpetrators were caught and my son wouldn't be in danger," she said. "It is so upsetting," agreed her husband, Isaac. "If it was an actual bomb, it would be a disaster. It's not just a synagogue. It's a school and there are senior citizens who come here too." The arrests came after a nearly yearlong undercover operation that began in Newburgh. The defendants bought a digital camera at Wal-Mart to take pictures of targets, they spoke in code, and they expressed their hatred of Jews on several occasions, according to a criminal complaint. In June 2008, the informant, who was acting under law enforcement supervision, met Cromitie in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces, officials said. Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing "something to America," they said in the complaint. In October 2008, the informant began meeting with the defendants at a Newburgh house equipped with concealed video and audio equipment, the complaint said. Beginning in April 2009, the four men selected the synagogues they intended to hit, it said. They also conducted surveillance of military planes at the Air National Guard Base, it said. Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, issued a statement praising law enforcers "for their efforts in helping to prevent any harm to either Jewish institutions or to our nation's military." "We repeat the American Muslim community's repudiation of bias-motivated crimes and of anyone who would falsely claim religious justification for violent actions," the statement said. ___ Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett in Washington, Michael Hill in Newburgh, N.Y., and Jim Fitzgerald in White Plains, N.Y., contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS UPDATES with court hearing, including appearances by 3 of 4 defendants, their ages, all U.S. citizens, appearing in shackles, other details; corrects quote attributed to Nancy Rouemy. Multimedia: A pdf of the criminal complaint against the accused temple bombing conspirators is in the _documents folder slugged temple_bomb_complaint.pdf. AP Video.) WATCH: (PERP WALK 1 MIN IN) Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Video
 
Ari Ne'eman: Health Care Reform and the Disability Community Top
As we speak, Congress is deliberating on vast and important changes to the system of health care in the United States. This issue is one of crucial importance to all Americans, but of particular interest to those Americans who interact with public health insurance more than almost any other group -- people with disabilities. Ranging from veterans with disabilities who receive care through the Veteran's Administration health care system to the many low-income disabled adults who are eligible for Medicaid, the disability community interacts with the public health care infrastructure in the United States in a wide variety of ways. As we consider how to reform, streamline and expand that infrastructure through any of a variety of means, it is incumbent upon us to remember the key issues for making sure that health care reform doesn't leave disabled adults and youth behind. 1. Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS): Ever since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act 19 years ago, the main priority of the disability rights movement in the United States has been eliminating the institutional bias in Medicaid. This bias imprisons Americans both young and old in nursing homes and institutions in order to get the basic services necessary to survive. This is both tragic and unnecessary. Individuals and families are forced to choose between having to fend for themselves or living out their lives in institutional care. Both research and the experience of countless people with disabilities show that, with the right support, people can live in the community rather than be relegated to institutions. Community living settings, when properly implemented, improve quality of life, reduce the risk of abuse, make it more likely that a person with a disability will be able to work and are actually much less costly than institutional care. Right now, the main obstacle to LTSS reform is the bias in Medicaid long term care policy which reimburses states for costly and segregated institutional care but makes it extraordinary difficult to use the same money to support adults in the community instead. A person who uses a wheelchair or an adult with a developmental disability such as autism or Down Syndrome can get the government to pay for a costly institutional placement with low quality of life, but often must spend years on a waiting list for far less expensive services, such as attendant care that could keep them in their home or their family's. The abuses that take place within nursing homes and institutions are well documented and are truly shocking. This situation benefits nobody but lobbyists for the nursing home/institutions industry, which has been quite active in opposing reform on this issue. The Senate Finance Committee has recognized the need for some action on LTSS, but so far has only recommended limited reforms like increasing the federal Medicaid reimbursement for Home and Community Based Services by 1%. The real answer can be found in the Community Choice Act, which would add a benefit to Medicaid that would require states to allow people who meet an institutional level of care to instead control their own supports while choosing to live at home or with their families. President Obama won kudos from the disability community by supporting the Community Choice Act during his campaign, but since then the White House has signaled that this issue will not be considered as part of health care reform. The Community Choice Act should be properly considered a civil rights issue, as it means the difference between segregation or integration for millions of disabled citizens as well as many senior citizens for whom LTSS reform may be what keeps them out of a nursing home and living a life of dignity. Health care reform that fails to include this issue is health care reform that fails to meet the needs of over 50 million Americans with disabilities. 2. Health Care Disparities for People with Disabilities: Both Congressional leaders and the President have talked about the importance of addressing health care disparities on the basis of race, income and geography. But what about disability health care disparities? Too often, medical problems faced by people with disabilities are assumed to be normal and unavoidable as a result of being disabled. However, disability and ill health should not be considered synonymous. People with disabilities face significant barriers to access quality health care, due to both poverty and accessibility problems. In addition, most physicians lack necessary expertise on common co-existing medical issues that people with disabilities of various kinds face. For Autistic adults and children, who often have sensory hyper- and hypo-sensitivities as well as trouble with social and/or verbal communication, communicating medical problems can be exceedingly difficult. For people with Down Syndrome and other developmental disabilities, a doctor's expertise on co-existing medical issues can mean the difference between living full, meaningful and fulfilling lives or facing an early death due to preventable secondary conditions. For Deaf people, getting access to sign language interpreters in hospitals and doctor's offices is often exceptionally difficult. For many wheelchair users or people with other mobility impairments, even getting in the door to the doctor's office can be a problem. If they can, they often face inaccessible examination tables and other medical equipment that prevents them from getting the same medical care available to any other person. One woman with a mobility impairment was told by her physician that the scales they possessed were inaccessible to people with her disability, but that she should consider going to the post office and being weighed on the scale for large packages instead! Respectfully, people with disabilities are not postal mail. It is disturbing to think of the number of preventable medical conditions caused by lack of access to appropriate medical care. This is imposing a cost that can be measured both in terms of quality of life and dollars spent later on preventable secondary medical conditions. Congress must recognize people with disabilities as an underserved population subject to health disparities by undertaking both data collection and serious policy reform to ensure that issues of access, expertise and coverage are address for the disability community. 3. Insurance Discrimination: According to the Executive Director of Access Living, a Center for Independent Living in Chicago, and past Chair of the National Council on Disability Marca Bristo, insurance discrimination has been one of the single largest obstacles to full integration of people with disabilities in society. States have tried to address this matter with a patchwork of insurance mandate laws, virtually all of which have represented disability and methodology-specific approaches that do not come close to comprehensive reform. As Congress determines the structure of our updated health care system, it is important that obstacles to access, such as pre-existing conditions, as well as obstacles to coverage, such as the refusal of many insurance companies to cover "habilitative" care for children and adults with developmental disabilities, be considered and addressed. 4. Stop discrimination in the provision of care: Too often, people with disabilities are denied necessary -- sometimes even life-saving -- medical care because of assumptions that non-disabled people make about our quality of life. For many people, disability is still considered a fate worse than death instead of a part of the human experience. As a result, it has been disabled people who are pushed over the side first when resources become scarce. As recently as last year, a task force including doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidelines stating that, in the event of a flu pandemic or similar emergency, people with intellectual disabilities as well as those with chronic health conditions may be excluded from care. The eugenic impulse that views people with disabilities as "burdens on society" or "life unworthy of life" is still regrettably alive and well within our health care system. Just last week, Disability Rights Wisconsin, the state's protection and advocacy system for people with disabilities, filed suit against the University of Wisconsin hospital as a result of their decision to withhold medication and basic nourishment from two patients with intellectual disabilities who had pneumonia. These individuals were not in a persistent vegetative state, were not dying and one even asked for food. The decision to refuse anti-biotics, nutrition and fluids for a treatable medical condition was made by hospital officials based on their determination of "quality of life" for the individuals in question. Health care reform must include non-discrimination protections that prevent these types of atrocities by health care providers. These concerns are also relevant because of the likelihood that cost containment measures will be included in the health care reform initiative. Congress should avoid repeating the highly controversial Oregon Health Plan of the early 1990s, whose priority list of services ranked medical conditions in order to ration out care on the basis of a government determination of severity. Americans, with or without disabilities, deserve not to be pitted against each other in their efforts to obtain the health care services they need. With limited resources, Congress will need to make difficult decisions - yet discriminating against people with disabilities in the provision of health care services should never be considered an acceptable option. One of the key critiques of the Disability Rights Movement has always been that, for many of us, the problems we face are not inevitably associated with whatever condition or diagnosis we may possess but are as much the result of societal discrimination in the form of infrastructures that were built without consideration that people like us might one day use them. Nowhere is this issue clearer than in health care. A health care reform agenda that includes these concerns can drastically improve the lives of many millions of Americans. One that simply reinforces the status quo will represent yet another wasted opportunity. It is no longer acceptable to doom a considerable portion of the American populace to more discrimination, more segregation and more disparities in access to meaningful health care. Disability has often been called the great equalizer -- our community reaches throughout every racial, religious, gender and political classification. Furthermore, though we are wide and varied, including both people with acquired disabilities, such as many of our brave men and women in uniform coming home from overseas, and others who were born with their disabilities, such as myself and the rest of the Autistic community, we can unite around our common dream for full participation, inclusion, integration and equality of opportunity for all. The disability message is a civil rights message. It is time for Congress and the President to hear our voices: Nothing About Us, Without Us! More on Autism
 
NYTimes Reporter Casts Doubt On Own Claim That I In 7 Detainees Returned To Jihad Top
New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller is now casting doubt on the claim in her front page story today, pounced on by the right and quickly picked up on cable, that one in seven detainees released from Guantanamo "returned to terrorism or militant activity." More on Guantánamo Bay
 
Stefan Deeran: GOP Sen. Snowe Shows Support for Public Health Plan Top
Are Republicans coming around to the idea of a public health care plan? Maine's moderate GOP Senator Olympia Snowe recently signaled her support. From the Exception Magazine, an editorial by Ali Vander Zanden , a healthcare organizer at the Maine People's Alliance: Thanks are due to Senator Olympia Snowe for recently professing her support for the creation of a public health care option as part of federal health care reform legislation. I'd like to respectfully disagree, however, with Snowe's suggestion that it might be best for such an option to kick-in several years down the road, and only if for-profit insurance companies fail to bring down costs and expand coverage. A Capitol Hill newspaper reported yesterday that Snowe discussed the idea of a delayed public plan at a private meeting held last week, and Snowe later confirmed that report. Snowe has previously stated that she believes "We have a totally dysfunctional system now," and that a government-run health care system may be the only way to respond to the health care crisis. A public plan is a key part of President Obama's strategy for health care reform and is a major item of debate right now in the halls of Washington. This new support is a big step for Senator Snowe and I appreciate her leadership. Skyrocketing health insurance premiums and record insurance company profits, however, have already provided ample evidence for the need for an immediate public option. I hope that Senator Snowe will soon reach this conclusion as well. A new report released today by Health Care for America Now gives even more weight to the argument for an immediate public plan. The report found that Health insurance premiums grew 5.4 times faster than Maine wages between 2000 and 2007 and provided examples of insurance companies engaging in questionable business tactics to increase premiums and their own profits. Small business owners gathered in Portland today to release the report and call for a public option. I hope Senator Snowe continues to listen to them and to other voices calling for an immediate public plan. Disclosure: I publish the Exception Magazine , Maine's online newspaper. More on Health
 
Obama Delays Panama Trade Deal Under Pressure From Unions Top
U.S. officials said they will delay seeking congressional approval for a pending free-trade deal with Panama until President Barack Obama offers a new "framework" for trade.
 
Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, Teen Somali Pirate, Pleads Not Guilty In NY Top
NEW YORK — A Somali teenager accused of leading a pirate attack on an American cargo ship off the coast of Africa pleaded not guilty Thursday to piracy charges. A somber-looking Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse entered the plea in a soft voice with his head down during a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Afterward, his lawyers said Muse has been kept in solitary confinement since being captured in his impoverished nation and brought to the United States last month _ a predicament that's left him scared and confused. They continued to deny the U.S. government's claim that their client is 18. "He's a boy who fishes and now he's ended up in solitary confinement," said one of the lawyers, Deirdre von Dornum. "It's truly terrifying." Muse's age has been in dispute since his arrest. His family has said he is as young as 15, but a magistrate judge concluded he could be tried as an adult since there was evidence that he is 18. Authorities say Muse was the only surviving pirate among a group that attacked the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on April 8. He was captured April 12 as U.S. military snipers fired on a group holding the cargo vessel's captain hostage. The captain, Richard Phillips, has since returned to his home in Underhill, Vt., to a hero's welcome. Muse was indicted earlier this week on 10 counts including piracy under the law of nations, conspiracy, hostage taking, kidnapping and possession of a machine gun while seizing a ship by force. If convicted of the most serious charge, he faces a mandatory life sentence. When the Maersk Alabama was attacked, it was carrying humanitarian supplies about 280 miles off the Somali coast. U.S. authorities say Muse led the attack on the ship, firing his AK-47 assault rifle at Phillips. Authorities say Phillips, held hostage for several days on a lifeboat, had an AK-47 held near his back when the snipers killed three pirates as the small vessel bobbed in the water near three U.S. warships and beneath a helicopter. Muse was ordered to return to court on Sept. 17. More on Somalia
 
William 'Refrigerator' Perry Released From Hospital After A Month Top
AIKEN, S.C. — William "The Refrigerator" Perry has been released from the hospital after a monthlong stay for complications of a nervous system disorder. Aiken Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Melissa Summer said the former Chicago Bears star was released on Wednesday after being treated for Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Summer had no details about Perry's condition other than that doctors considered the 46-year-old improved enough to go home. A call to Perry's agent, Adam Plotkin, was not immediately returned. A phone at the home of Perry's nephew, Purnell Perry, went unanswered. Perry was a 300-pound plus defensive tackle for the Bears' and scored a TD in the team's win over New England in the 1986 Super Bowl. More on Sports
 
Kate Clinton: Club for Growth Top
Founded in 1999, the Club for Growth is a fiscally conservative political organization and an affiliated political action committee that raises money for candidates -- AKA Republicans -- who support a low-tax and limited-government agenda. Because the group was about to use its club dues to support Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Republican primary against him, Arlen Sphincter bolted to the Democratic Party. The Club had dubbed Arlen a RINO -- Republican in Name Only. Now he's a DINO. And not the urbane, smoking, drinking Rat Packer Dean Martin. Too bad. Arlen is a Democrat in name only. The Club for Growth hates moderate Republicans. Just ask the former Republican Senator from Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee. Maine's Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins cause the CFG to put their Club heads back in the darkening sky and howl like wolverines. It's as if those Gathering Storm zombies did too much testosterone and then set off to find their gay prey. See that chewed up bow tie by the side of the road? That's all that's left of poor old Lincoln Chafee. Club for growth. Nothing says it better. It sounds like a Monty Python sketch. I picture those Capital One "What's in your wallet?" barbarians or those blue-faced Braveheart guys doing their creative destruction best, marauding, trampling new green shoots and thumping little baby seals. It's very Conan the Republican. Cudgel for creativity. Shillelaghs for peace. After thirty years of an ascendant, dominant Republican Party, the club-like pendulum is swinging back from its far outer reach. In the next thirty years it will swing out wide the other way and the Democratic Party will peak then diminish. A strong moderate Republican Party might save the Democrats from themselves but not by trying tag it "the Democrat-Socialist Party," calling for secessions or tea-bagging its way into activism. Perhaps by the time the Dems are descendant again, there will be a viable third party waiting in the midpoint of the arc like a big brick wall to stop the inevitable oscillation once and for all and start a whole new movement. More on GOP
 
Cheney Says Obama Himself Should Declassify CIA Docs Top
In a speech on Thursday, former Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his call for the CIA to declassify and release interrogation documents, this time pointing his finger directly at President Obama. "It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the president himself," Cheney said, during an aggressive speech in which he also said that "brutal methods like water-boarding" were "necessary to keep us safe." The CIA announced in a press release last week that it was denying Cheney's request. At today's speech, the former VP said: "As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of [Obama's] defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I've formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected. It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials." Cheney's speech today was a caustic rebuttal to an earlier speech on anti-terrorism policy given by Obama. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Harsh Interrogations
 
AIG CEO Liddy To Step Down Once Replacements Found Top
NEW YORK — American International Group Inc. says its chairman and chief executive plans to step down when a search for replacements is complete. The company also says its board agrees with a recommendation from Edward M. Liddy, who took over the troubled insurer in September, to separate the chairman and CEO roles.
 
Mike Malloy: Dominus Vobiscum Top
What is it with the Catholic Church and children? Why does this blood cult insist on violating the innocence of defenseless kids and then giving those who might complain the Papal middle finger? How long has this been going on? Decades? Centuries? The latest example of these hideous acts of violence against those whom Jesus claimed were his chosen comes from Ireland, a country that has been willing to hand over its moral authority to an organization that has been made - in the last several years - synonymous with the worst violence imaginable against these favored by their own declared "Son of God." A report just released by a state-appointed commission, one that took nine years to produce, shows the level of sexual and physical violence that can erupt only from those who claim the protective mantle of divinity and direction from an obviously insane "god." The report, ostensibly, was meant to help Ireland face and move on from one of the ugliest aspects of its recent history. According to The New York Times the report states tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted. These were kids. Children abandoned or forced into what amounted to a labyrinth of Catholic labor camps/brothels. "A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions," the report says. In the boys' schools, sexual abuse was "endemic." Notable for its exclusion from the report is a compilation or list of the names of any of the hundreds of individuals accused of this violent abuse. The hideous secrecy of the medieval institution that is the Catholic Church therefore continues. The names and histories of the next generation of children violated by the priests, nuns, bishops, and cardinals will be published sometime towards the end of the current century and the result will no doubt be the same. A bit of shock, a few deflected mea culpas, a wringing of hands, a hasty flutter of robes and white vestments as, in church after church, the molesting priest slips behind the chancel, vanishes into the sacristy. The institution of the Catholic Church, as well as its priesthood and Sisters, is corrupt. This latest report on the centuries-old corruption details the "loving" attention paid to desperately frightened children - some as young as two years old: "Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them." Yes, it does read as thought it is a report from Guantanamo or Bagram or any of dozens of torture facilities run for the past eight years by the government of the United States. Only worse. The report focuses on the violence directed against children . Girls were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time, the report said, in "dormitories, schools, motor vehicles, bathrooms, staff bedrooms, churches, sacristies, fields, parlors, the residences of clergy, holiday locations and while with godparents and employers." Employers. The children were often forced into bondage, slavery. Some of the schools operated essentially as workhouses. In one school, Goldenbridge, girls as young as 7 spent hours a day making rosaries by stringing beads onto lengths of wire. They were given quotas: 600 beads on weekdays and 900 on Sundays. The quotas were to be met, bloodied little fingers to the contrary notwithstanding. Following the work sessions, the little girls would be placed at the disposal of the priests and nuns who would then use them to whatever extent was necessary, for whatever adult perversion needed to be satisfied. As is its custom, the Vatican, the nest from which this sickness originates and spreads, has had no response to the report. Nothing. Maybe tomorrow? Next week? As The Times reports, Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, an American group that maintains an Internet archive of material related to Catholic abuse, said that the report had failed by not going far enough. "The report is significant in that it provides a detailed anatomy of how the abuse occurred and the institutions in which it occurred," he said in an interview. "The problem is that you spend almost 10 years and who knows how much money, and you never get to the point of saying who was responsible." And a separate report on responsibility would be unnecessarily redundant. The responsibility lies squarely with an institution that has wallowed in two millennia of deceit, lies, fear, murder, torture, rape and incalculable violence. That institution is The Roman Catholic Church. Dominus Vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. Lies. Horrific lies. - MDM Mike Malloy can be heard daily on his radio show 9pm - 12pm ET. Visit www.mikemalloy.com to stream live or find a station near you.
 

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