Friday, May 15, 2009

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T. Boone Pickens: Stop Worrying About World Crude Supplies Top
Domestic natural gas supplies will replace our need for foreign oil. Independent studies continue to show that America's natural gas reserves are sufficient to meet all of our needs for well over 100 years. We should protect America's interests by making a national commitment to replacing our need for foreign oil by using our enormous natural gas supplies for every possible use - power, transportation, chemicals, pharma, etc. Over the past few days there have been contradictory reports regarding the global demand for crude oil and the ability (or willingness) of the world's oil producing countries to supply the stuff. - The International Energy Agency predicted the world's capacity to produce crude oil will fall by 1.7 million barrels a day this year. - That same day reports surfaced saying that China, the world's second-largest consumer of energy, had announced it had increased its imports of crude oil by 14 percent in April. China has already entered into supply deals with Brazil, Venezuela, Russia, Iran and is negotiating with Kuwait. - Reuters reported "global oil refinery throughput will fall 3.1 million barrels per day in the April-June period from the same quarter last year" which has been reflected by dramatically higher prices at the pump. According to Consumer Reports, prices for regular gas jumped from $2.05 to $2.24 before the summer driving season has even begun - a nine percent increase in just two weeks. - Then the IEA predicted world crude demand this year is expected to contract by 2.6 million barrels a day, or 3%, to 83.2 million barrels a day. Through the week oil prices bounced between just over $60 per barrel to about $57 per barrel. Why the relatively narrow trading range? Traders know that both the production and consumption numbers are artificial. OPEC has had a $75 price target in mind for several months. OPEC nations are wholly dependent on petro-dollars to fund their national budgets and they must find the proper balance between price and production to generate enough money to keep their populations happy. On the consumption side, China has the capacity and the inclination to engineer its oil requirements because so little of its economy is market-driven. Through it all, America continues to import more than two-thirds of our oil needs which puts us at the mercy of the Middle East oil producers, China, and other countries which do not have the interests of the United States in their hearts. In April, we imported 375 million barrels of petroleum at a cost of just under $19 billion. Last week Hugo Chavez sent troops to take over Venezuela's oil service companies because he felt that the state-controlled oil company (which he nationalized a couple of years ago) owed them too much money. There is no reason for America's national interests - our economy, our environment, nor our security - to be based upon a global oil supply-and-usage regime which is based upon an international set of artificially-controlled factors. This past week, a report in Russia, according to the London Times, "raised the prospect of war in the Arctic as nations struggle for control of the world's dwindling energy reserves." The report suggested that Russia "is willing to defend its interests by force if necessary." Russia, just a few months ago, used its natural gas production and distribution system to force its will on Ukraine by shutting off gas supplies to much of Europe during the coldest months of the European winter. It is not hard to imagine other countries, if they get into domestic trouble because they can't cover their internal social costs, to further manipulate supplies and distribution of crude to artificially affect prices. The United States has it in its power and within its borders to effectively defend itself against the whims of foreign governments by taking serious steps to increase the utilization of domestic natural gas. Natural gas is our most widely distributed natural resource - gas lines run up every street and down every alley in almost every city and town in the nation. As a transportation fuel, natural gas is ready-to-go. There are nearly 10 million natural gas vehicles (NGVs) operating throughout the world but fewer than 150,000 are here in the United States. Our energy future is in our own hands. In natural gas we have an enormously abundant domestic resource; we have the technology to utilize it for power, transportation and every other known use; it is cheaper than imported oil; it is cleaner than either gasoline or diesel fuel; and, it is under our own control. Spending time worrying over global oil maneuvers by foreign governments is a waste of time and money. We should have a national project to use domestic natural gas and reduce our imports of foreign oil.
 
Joe Cirincione: Jughead is Real: The Truth About Lost's H-Bomb Top
This article was co-authored by Alexandra Bell, Research Associate at Ploughshares Fund. The giant hydrogen bomb detonated on the ABC hit show, Lost , in its season finale this week really existed. It really was called "Jughead." Constructed in 1954, it was never actually exploded, leaving space for Lost 's writers to whisk it away to the mystery island. As fans of Lost , we were amused to have the 40,000-pound thermonuclear device make its appearance in season five of the show. Jughead, first seen dangling from a tower early in the season, is detonated in the finale as the survivors attempt to change their history. The effect of a nuclear explosion on time travel is a bit outside our expertise, but Lost 's writers got the basic facts of nuclear weapons right. These guys did their homework. Jughead Dissected The United States built thousands of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s. Each, many times more powerful that the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unlike atomic bombs that get their energy from fission, or the splitting of atoms, hydrogen bombs get their energy from fusion of hydrogen atoms. This is the basic energy force in the universe. It is what powers the sun and all stars. There is no theoretical limit to how big we could make a hydrogen bomb. It is just a matter of how large a quantity of hydrogen isotopes we wants to fuse, though the logistics become more difficult. In 1961, the Soviets planned to test a 100-megaton bomb (equal to 100 million tons of TNT), but settled for the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba . It was the largest bomb ever tested, twice the size of the biggest U.S. test . The real-life Jughead was indeed the hulking behemoth depicted in Lost . It was designed to explode with a force of 8 million tons of TNT, or over 500 times more force than the Hiroshima bomb. As accurately depicted in Lost , a fusion weapon like Jughead has two or more nuclear components in the same device that are ignited in stages. As Princeton physicist Frank Von Hippel likes to say," Within each big bomb is a little bomb." Although it is not clearly explained in the show, the Lost character Sayid takes out what would be the smaller fission "primary" that would be used to create the heat, pressure and radiation necessary to compress and ignite the separate fusion secondary, vastly increasing the explosive yield. This is the bomb he takes to the Swan site. Would it look as compact as the device Sayid tucks in his backpack? Probably not, but it would not be too much bigger. Could he actually carry it without fear of radiation? Yes. As physicist Ivan Oelrich, also a Lost fan, details : "People think that the fuel that drives an atomic bomb must be intensely radioactive, but in fact it's not. It becomes radioactive after the reaction." Of course, the story is not entirely accurate - you cannot trigger a chain reaction by beating an atomic bomb with a rock, though props to Juliet for really following through. We can grant the writers of Lost a little leeway, since time travel and smoke monsters are not exactly hard physics either. Nuclear Nuts The fantasy and reality of Jughead illuminate the absolute insanity of the Cold War arms race. (For the best historical account, check out the Richard Rhodes trilogy : The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun and Arsenals of Folly.) While Albert Einstein and some members of the Manhattan Project, like chief scientist Robert J. Oppenheimer, were appalled at what they had created, others like Edward Teller pushed to produce the H-bomb. Oppenheimer and the entire scientific General Advisory Committee saw it as a weapon of genocide. They told President Truman: "The use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives; it is not a weapon which can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations or military or semi-military purposes. Its use therefore carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of extermination of civilian populations." Truman, fearful of the political reaction to a US decision not to build the new bomb if the Soviets did, overruled the scientists. That is how we (and the rest of the nuclear powers) came to create these colossal Jugheads, capable of obliterating entire cities. We went nuclear nuts in the 1950s, increasing the U.S. arsenal from 200 atomic bombs in 1949 to over 20,000 mostly hydrogen bombs by 1960. The Soviets raced to catch up, with both countries peaking at about 65,000 bombs in 1986. The good news: we have cut the number of nuclear weapons by 63 per cent since then. The bad news: we still have around 23,000 left. Lost , intentionally or not, gives us the essential problem: the longer the bomb hangs around the island, the more likely it is that someone's gonna use it. We have been exceedingly lucky to get this far without an intentional or accidental use of nukes. So the next time you think about how crazy Lost is, just think about how insane our nuclear stockpiles are. More on Russia
 
Deane Waldman: Recession is not causing Medicare's demise, just accelerating the inevitable. Top
What is going on with MediCare? Some advocate its expansion as a solution for our healthcare woes. Meanwhile, more and more providers are refusing to see MediCare patients. Recent reports suggest that the recession is killing MediCare . MediCare was passed into law in 1964. At that time, health insurance was available only through one's employer. Therefore, people over or under the working age range were excluded. MediCare and MediCaid were intended to close this gap for retirees and children respectively. The Programs were then greatly expanded to include categories of disease such as HIV, and other parts of our population such as indigents and those below the poverty line. MediCare and MediCaid, though now considered identical entitlements, were initially quite different . MediCaid was a straight entitlement, a means-based government supported Program. MediCare was supposed to fund itself. The worker paid into the MediCare Trust while working and after retirement, received financed-by-oneself-in-advance health services. MediCare is fatally flawed for three reasons . 1) The designers predicted MediCare's future needs...badly, a little like the brilliant mathematical models that got us into this recession. Twenty-five years after MediCare was passed, the GAO compared the projected costs to the actual costs. The Program cost over 800% more than predicted. In essence, we were putting in $500 per year and then expected 25 years later, to take out $250, 000 for our heart transplant. [Do the math: 25 times $500 = $12,500 does not come close to a quarter of a million at any realistic compounding rate.] 2) The MediCare Trust was intended to be a separate "lockbox," accounted and maintained separately so everyone could see what was happening. But just like social security, it was rolled into the General Fund, transparency vanished, and the money was used for whatever the Federal government wanted. 3) Most important, there is micro-economic disconnection . Supply and demand cannot balance when one - demand for services - is unlimited (or variable) and the other - supply of money - is fixed, even declining. Anyone who has ever balanced a checkbook knows this but apparently, our government does not. With fixed supply-unlimited demand, MediCare is balancing its books the only way it can: by spending less. So, to " reduce costs ," MediCare pays less and less for services. In New Mexico, a new patient visit to a general physician generates a bill of $171. Actual payment by MediCare is $68. Given all the fixed expenses to practice medicine, are you surprised that doctors everywhere are increasingly refusing to accept MediCare patients? Caring for them is a sure road to economic suicide. Recent reports of the MediCare Trust suggest that it is going broke faster than anticipated due to the recession. This is true, but we must remember that the Program was non-survivable from the outset. When supply and demand are disconnected, there can never be balance. Consider this as a cautionary tale in light of two recent solutions offered for the continuing healthcare cost crisis. Cautionary Tale President Obama suggested that 'competition among providers will deliver quality care and save money.' He means we can save money when the lowest bidder wins. Is that how you want to choose your provider? Oh, and who will bid for mandated services where there is no payment? Rhetorical question: the answer is no one. More ominous, competing on price means that we continue to focus only on next month's budget, not long term net. The short-term time line is a large part of why we are in trouble now. Healthcare should be treated like an investment , not a line item expense. In the past few days, healthcare leaders (I use that term very loosely) have promised to save $2 trillion over the next ten years. What psychedelic drugs are they on? How do they propose to do this without reducing payments to nothing and cutting services? Wait, I know! Every analysis of healthcare spending shows that 30-50% is devoured by the bureaucracy, which translates to at least $500 billion per year. They could save the entire $2 trillion in just four years [$500b*4=$2tr] by simply eliminating all middlemen jobs, including themselves!! I am ranting this way in order to make a clarion point. Central control of healthcare does not work. Adjusting the current system, no matter how much we tweak it, cannot provide needed services with a financially stable balance of supply and demand . Wherever it has been tried, it has failed or is failing. [Before someone throws some so-called universal health care system as a workable model for us, note that the Province of Quebec, Canada spends 43% (!) of its total yearly budget on healthcare.] Instead of rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, we need to design a new system . It is that simple, that scary and that hard. Central control of U.S. healthcare can never work. We need a new system, one that we design.
 
Robert Naiman: Can Treasury Sneak IMF Money Through the Supplemental? Top
Almost completely lost in the drama over the war supplemental for Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan is a sneaky play by the U.S. Treasury Department to get $108 billion in U.S. tax dollars for the International Monetary Fund through the supplemental. Of course, if Treasury can get the money through the supplemental, it can avoid any Congressional debate over the policies of the International Monetary Fund and whether this is a wise and just use of U.S. tax dollars; and whether Congress should insist on meaningful, observable reforms of IMF policy as the price of new U.S. funding. After 1980 the IMF became one of the most powerful institutions in the world. The IMF's power largely derived from the fact that it headed a "creditors' cartel" that included the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, and as a result developing countries that didn't obey the IMF's policy "advice" could face a cut-off of international credit, a powerful disincentive. This power was used to impose an agenda of privatization, cuts in social spending, and removal of policies deemed obstacles to profit by foreign banks and corporations. The power of the IMF in middle-income countries has waned in recent years, as Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and other countries broke free, repudiating a legacy of policies that failed to promote economic growth and reduce poverty. But in the poorest countries, especially in Africa, the IMF's abusive reign has largely continued. Now, rich countries are trying to strengthen the influence of the IMF, using the "opportunity" of the global economic crisis - that's the context of Treasury's request for more U.S tax dollars. The House so far has rejected Treasury's request. Regardless of what one thinks of the IMF, there's a commonsense, nonpartisan, good government reason not to include IMF funding in the supplemental: funding for the IMF is not an "emergency" and it has nothing to do with funding the wars. The only reason to include funding in the supplemental is to avoid transparency and debate. But on Thursday the Senate Appropriations Committee went along with Treasury's request. The Senate is expected to consider the supplemental next week; if the money for the IMF is not stripped out, the question will go to House-Senate conference. In a House-Senate conference, the leverage of Congressional leadership is high and that of rank-and-file legislators is weak, so Treasury may get its way even if the majority of Members of the House wouldn't support money for the IMF in a freestanding vote. That would be a terrible shame. The last time there was a vigorous Congressional debate on the policies of the IMF was 1998, over ten years ago. Real reforms - not changes in rhetoric that have no practical consequence but actual changes in policy that one can verify - would have a tremendous impact on the quality of life of millions of people around the world. In 2000, at the urging of aid groups and the AFL-CIO, Congress passed legislation that required the U.S. representatives at the IMF and the World Bank to oppose any agreement between these institutions and developing countries that required governments to impose school fees on primary education, a policy previously embraced by the World Bank that had kept many children out of school, especially girls. In part as a result of this legislation, the World Bank publicly repudiated the previous policy, and this opened space for many countries to dramatically expand access to primary education. Today a coalition of NGOs is demanding that as the price for any new U.S. funding, the IMF agree to the following reforms : the IMF must not impose contractionary policies during recessions, or must provide quantitative justification for doing so; the IMF must exempt health and education spending from any government budget caps; parliaments must be given authority to approve or reject deals negotiated between the IMF and finance ministries. If the IMF will not agree to stop imposing contractionary policies during recessions, or will not agree to stop promoting cuts in education and health spending, then the much-advertised pretense that funding the IMF bears any relationship to helping poor people in poor countries doesn't pass the laugh test. If we truly want to help poor people in poor countries, there are far better things we can do with $100 billion dollars. Indeed, simply using this money to stimulate our own economy would do far more good for the world, through increasing our capacity to absorb other countries' exports, not to mention the remittances that flow from our economy to Haiti, El Salvador, and elsewhere, than would increasing the leverage of the IMF to impose austerity. More on Foreign Policy
 
Mike Alvear: How to Survive an Abortion Top
When people talk about the morality of abortion, the barrel of the ethical gun is always pointed at women. Men don't seem to occupy a bearing in the equation. They should. Not in the formulation of abortion's legality or the influence of their partner's choice, but in an entirely different moral obligation: To help women survive their decision. And that lies mostly in bearing witness to their pain. Two essays give men just that opportunity. The first, by Ayelet Waldman , makes you so uncomfortable with its raw honesty that you seriously weigh the merits of keeping your head in the sand. "I decided to terminate my pregnancy," writes Waldman. "I know exactly what I did, I wept for the fetus I killed -- and I have no regrets." Though Waldman goes to great pains to say she believes in a woman's right to make the decision, she writes, "I also believe that to end a pregnancy like mine is to kill a fetus. Kill. I use that word very consciously and specifically." Waldman chose to end her baby's life (her phrasing, not mine) because she didn't feel capable of raising a genetically compromised child. She wanted the baby. She could see it in the ultrasound, feel it move. "I have a very clear memory of his two tiny feet, perfect pearl toes, footprint arches, round heels," she writes. "This was, for me, a baby, not a "clump of cells" ... He was my baby, and I chose to end his life." Another essay, this one by Moxie , takes on a softer but no less reflective view. Hers was a first trimester abortion. She had a "gut feeling it was a boy." And when she prayed, she asked the boy "to understand why I was doing what I was doing." The most jarring part of Moxie's prayer wasn't just that she named the fetus she was about to abort ("William") but that she asked her mother (who had died years earlier) "to take care of him for me." Other than their choice, these women don't seem to have anything in common. Yet, there is a common theme to their experience (other than the obvious): Both pulled themselves out of the emotional rubble by extracting profound lessons. Moxie, especially. For her, the abortion led to a kind of personal accountability. She recalls a woman in the clinic's recovery room saying, "Men suck, huh?" To which Moxie reacted, "No, I suck --for getting myself in this position in the first place. If I had only been strong enough to just be alone. If only I had been able to give to myself what I thought a man could give me. Instead, I allowed my loneliness to rule me...the guy was nobody special...but he gave me attention. Back then that was all I needed to feel pretty and special." As a man, I feel helpless to do anything for women who go through so much pain. Helpless, except to listen and get a deeper understanding of such a complicated issue. Ayelet Waldman's essay, Looking Abortion in the Face Moxie's essay, Why It Took an Abortion to Discover Myself. More on Sex
 
GM Dealerships Closing Top
NEW YORK — General Motors Corp. on Friday told about 1,100 dealers, or nearly 20 percent of its U.S. network, that they will be fired by the automaker late next year because their sales are weak. GM's announcement is more bad economic news for dealers, communities and businesses still reeling from Chrysler's similar nationwide dealer cuts a day earlier. Both automakers are scrambling to reorganize and stay alive in a severe recession that has devastated sales of cars and trucks. While GM doesn't own the dealers, its network is too big, causing dealers to compete with each other and giving shoppers too much leverage to talk down prices and hurt the company's future sales. "Too many dealers, in actuality, are a problem," Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president of North American sales and marketing, said in a conference call with reporters. GM declined to reveal which dealers will be eliminated and left it up to franchise owners to report the decision to customers. The cuts are part of a larger GM plan to drop 2,600, or nearly 42 percent of its 6,200 dealerships as the automaker tries to restructure outside of bankruptcy court and become profitable again. Thousands of jobs will likely be lost and governments will lose untold dollars in tax revenue as dealerships are forced to close. Besides the 1,100 dealership cuts, the company will provide updates to about 470 Saturn, Hummer and Saab dealerships on the status of those brands, which it plans to sell. Friday's cuts will not be the last. GM said it expects to lose more dealers through attrition. Ultimately, about 90 percent of the remaining dealerships will stay with GM, the company said. FedEx letters bearing the bad news began arriving Friday morning at GM franchises around the country. The letter states that dealers were judged on sales, customer service scores, location, condition of facilities and other criteria. "Based on our review and current foreseeable market conditions and your dealership's historical performance, we do not see that GM have a productive business relationship with (your dealership) over the long term," according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. However, the letter left open the possibility that the decision could be reversed. "Please understand that our planning in this regard is not finalized, and we are prepared to give you until the end of the month to submit any information you would like us to see," the letter said. Both Chrysler and GM say they are cutting the number of dealers because they have too many outlets that are too close to each other, and the competition drives down prices. But as the ranks of dealers thin and competition decreases, that likely will mean higher prices for car and truck buyers. As GM and Chrysler lost market share to Japanese and other overseas brands, the automakers, as well as Ford Motor Co., ended up with too many dealerships. Many are barely getting by and can't afford to upgrade their facilities or hire the best personnel to compete with the Japanese, who have far fewer dealerships. With fewer dealers, consumers won't see as much competition, said Aaron Bragman, an automotive industry analyst with the consulting firm IHS Global Insight. "No longer will people be able to shop between three or four dealers within 15 minutes of each other for the best cutthroat price," he said. GM knows it will lose sales in the short-term, but over the long haul, fewer dealers will mean higher per-vehicle profits, Bragman said. "As the dealers go, so goes the company in terms of financial health," he said. In the 1980s, GM, Chrysler and Ford controlled more than 75 percent of U.S. sales, but that dropped to 48 percent last year. GM alone held nearly 51 percent of the market in 1962, but only 22 percent last year. Bragman said GM likely will go into bankruptcy protection on June 1, but it's starting to negotiate deals ahead of the filing to speed up the Chapter 11 process. "GM has been ... acting as if they are negotiating a prepackaged bankruptcy," he said. ___Associated Press writer Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.
 
David Gregory Yawns At Torture News (VIDEO) Top
Do I believe that Meet The Press has improved under David Gregory? No, I do not. And as it turns out, in growing numbers, America is agreeing with me. As my colleague Danny Shea pointed out yesterday , "NBC's Meet the Press suffered its lowest ratings since David Gregory became moderator last week, dipping below the 3 million viewer mark for the first time since August 19, 2007. I can't speak to why America is souring on David Gregory, but I can tell you why I am! Gregory demonstrates all of the reportorial tenacity of a dilettante badminton player under heavy sedation. The game -- oh, how it fascinates him! Look at the shuttlecock bob through the air, borne on the wheezing breezes of his hot air emanations and the gentle paddling of his racket! Back and forth and back and forth, if Gregory had his druthers, it would just go on forever, the rich panoply of process story unfolding endlessly until the end of days. In a world like that, it is a terrible thing, to have...you know -- standards. Gregory made an appearance on Morning Joe Friday with this disease in full flower. He gently massaged the unfolding disclosures on torture into a passive reflection on Washington's eternal political sussurations: GREGORY: I think -- this is another example of why the administration doesn't want to go down this road. Doesn't want to get this debate. I spoke to somebody yesterday that said the problem is that nobody comes away cleanly from this debate. Not a Republican and not a Democrat. And now the House Speaker is ensnared in these questions about why she didn't push back harder and when she actually knew about the techniques. So here we are in a position where Pelosi is blaming the CIA, accusing the CIA, misleading her. and you have other Republicans who are in these briefings saying wait a minute. We were all told what was going on. We all knew what was going on. Now calls for the release of the briefing in full. And this is not where the White House wants to be. This is not the debate that it wants to have. And it just goes back to a more fundamental point which is that the more you debate this, the more you realize the politics of the time are incredibly difficult. And as many people who oppose these techniques now have to acknowledge that in 2002, there were not Democrats who were willing to stand up to the White House and say no. We are not going down this road. This is wrong for America. That debate came later. A lot of the beliefs came later because of the time nobody really wanted to get in the middle or stand in the way of techniques that might prevent another terror attack. I just don't know where to begin with this thicket of supine, cloying, dribble. David Gregory is talking about torture. He's talking about criminal behavior. He's talking about moral failings. And by his own admission, "nobody comes out cleanly." By his own admission, everyone was "told what was going on." Everyone "knew what was going on." You'd think that such a target-rich environment would lead a journalist to scramble all available resources to pin down all the wrongdoing, get to the bottom of everything, ensure that the whole matter comes out into the light. You will not be able to watch David Gregory in the above clip and feel like he is even remotely inspired to follow the story. All you get is shrugging, stooped, passivity. Gregory is fascinated by Pelosi, and how shiny she is! On the matter of her being briefed on torture, Gregory reports something widely known: "There is no evidence she was pushing back even internally." But that's only part of the story! Pelosi is not the onion, she's the peel! There is no evidence that ANY of the people briefed on these techniques pushed back, even internally. One would imagine that watching Nancy Pelosi sidestep her way through an ungainly press conference might inspire someone to track down the rest of those who were briefed and stayed silent. Gregory reports, "Other people who were [at these briefings], Republicans who were there, are saying it is clear as day. What they were asking for and what they were already doing." Does Gregory not realize that these sources have openly confessed to the very thing that the press is trying to hound out of Nancy Pelosi? Gregory continues: "So that's the reality of the -- of the public record that we have so far. Now, maybe if we go down this road, maybe we will learn more and get a fuller accounting of what was contained in that briefing." YES, MAYBE A FULLER ACCOUNTING WILL FALL OUT OF THE SKY AND HIT US ON THE HEAD. And when it does, David Gregory will fearlessly document just how shiny its collision with the earth looked! Until then, we will have to dream of a day that someone invents REPORTERS, who actively seek out full accountings ! It gets even more ridiculous. Carlos Watson asks David Gregory, "What in your mind would be one or several tipping points that would move this towards a full investigation?" To my mind, the correct answer is, "Well, I am a dedicated, professional, well-remunerated reporter, and I have the obligation to bring this story in myself, and not wait around, passively hoping for a tipping point to spur me into action." But Gregory's answer is this: "How about nothing?" That's right! That's what he said. He added some important clarification: "Look, if the White House has the kind of political capital that it appears to have, they are going to make it very clear that they do not want this to be the discussion. they have a lot of other things they want to talk about." So there you have it. David Gregory and his colleagues are just paralyzed in the face of the White House's awesome political capital, which is the only thing for which they seem to have any respect. Gregory has been hanging around with too many political consultants. He's forgotten that he isn't one of them. "The more you debate this," Gregory says, "The more you realize the politics of the time are incredibly difficult." Well, boo hoo, you goddamned crybaby. [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 .] Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Morning Joe
 
The Progress Report: Right-Wing Distractions Top
The debate over accountability for torture, as authorized by the Bush administration, heated up this week. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) led a hearing on Wednesday on Bush-era interrogation practices, featuring testimony from the former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow. Notably, Zelikow endorsed an investigation into torture: "The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented program of coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information. ... Precisely because this was a collective failure, it is all the more important to comprehend it and learn from it." Though the hearing was a significant step forward for accountability of Bush officials, the White House announced on the same day that it would no longer release hundreds of photographs showing detainee abuse by U.S. troops. At the same time, while progressives continue to advocate investigations, the right wing is attempting to foil moves toward accountability for the real torture culprits, senior Bush officials, instead conjuring up a new attack on congressional officials who were briefed on so-called enhanced interrogation tactics. New evidence that torture doesn't work: Wednesday's hearing featured testimony from Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator who worked closely with Abu Zubaydah. Soufan slammed torture as being "ineffective, slow and unreliable." Describing his team's use of rapport-building techniques with Zubaydah, Soufan said, "Within the first hour of interrogation we gained actionable intelligence." His team quickly learned, for example, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was a key player in the planning of 9/11. Yet contracted CIA interrogators later pushed for abusive interrogations, including "nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and temperature manipulation against Zubaydah, even before the Justice Department provided legal permission in writing." Torture was also used to fit the administration's political objectives. In April 2003, "very senior" Bush administration officials suggested that an Iraqi prisoner be waterboarded to see if he would "provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime," former Iraqi Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer said yesterday. Two senior U.S. intelligence officials said that the suggestion came from the office of Vice President Cheney. Finding this "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda was the primary purpose of the interrogation program authorized in 2002, said former Colin Powell chief of staff Larry Wilkerson. Whitehouse responded, saying, "I have heard that to be true," adding that the accusations bolster the case for criminal prosecutions. Reversing course on accountability: Last month, the Pentagon agreed to comply with a Second Circuit court order requiring the release of hundreds of photographs showing detainee abuse at the hands of U.S. troops. At the time, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the DOJ "decided based on the ruling that it was hopeless to appeal, and a mandate ordering the release of those photos came Monday." But this week, the White House reversed course and announced that it would appeal the court order and keep the photos secret. The President "believes their release would endanger our troops," the White House explained. "Nothing is added by the release of the photos," Gibbs said this week, calling the photo release a "a sensationalistic portion of that investigation." "Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse," countered Amrit Singh, attorney with the ACLU, which originally sued for the release. Pinning the blame: One of the right wing's latest attempts to distract from the push for torture accountability for Bush officials is saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was equally responsible for Bush's torture program, after reports emerged that the CIA briefed her on "enhanced interrogation techniques" in 2002. Former White House adviser Karl Rove declared that Pelosi was "an accomplice to 'torture.'" House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) claimed Pelosi was "well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were." Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-MI) said yesterday that the "first witness" in a truth commission should be Pelosi. Yesterday, for the first time, Pelosi "acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. But she insisted, contrary to CIA accounts, that she was not told about waterboarding during a September 2002 briefing by agency officials." Pelosi then accused the CIA of "misleading the Congress." Furthermore, in multiple interviews yesterday, former senator and Intelligence Committee ranking member Bob Graham also denied that he had been briefed on waterboarding, contradicting the timeline that the CIA sent to the committee. Regardless, the debate over whether Congress was an "accomplice to torture" ignores the fact that an August 2002 DOJ memo flatly stated that "Congress may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield." In other words, the same conservatives railing that Pelosi should have loudly objected to the program also defended the president's absolute right to order abusive interrogations, with or without congressional approval.
 
CANNES: Jane Campion's "Bright Star" Premiere With Star-Studded Red Carpet (PHOTOS) Top
(AP Article, Huffington Post slideshow) CANNES, France - Jane Campion figured the best way to get modern audiences to love John Keats was to present the great English poet from the perspective of the woman he adored. Campion, the only woman to win the top prize in the 62-year history of the Cannes Film Festival, returned to the world's premier cinema fest with "Bright Star," spinning the brief but passionate romance between Keats and the love of his short life, girl-next-door Fanny Brawne. The film -- one of 20 competing for the festival's Palme d'Or, the award Campion previously won for 1993's "The Piano" -- is told entirely from the viewpoint of Fanny (Abbie Cornish), a spirited neighbor who rises from coquette to soul mate in the eyes of Keats (Ben Whishaw). "I fell in love with Fanny as much as I did with Keats, and I think telling the story through Fanny's eyes was such a brilliant way for me to meet Keats," Campion said Friday before the film's Cannes premiere. "Because we know Fanny fell in love with him, and that way, we could fall in love with Keats with her." AP PHOTOS FROM FRIDAY'S PREMIERE: "Bright Star" follows their relationship from 1818 through Keats' death from tuberculosis at age 25 in 1821. Unsuccessful as a writer while he was alive, Keats was too poor to formally court Fanny, but they became unofficially engaged as his health failed. After his death, Keats rose to prominence as one of the greatest English poets, his works including "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale." The film intertwines the lovers' respective creative outlets, poetry and sewing. Fanny designed and stitched her own clothes, and "Bright Star" depicts her sewing as painstakingly as it does Keats' passion to write. "There was something very focused, dedicated, concentrated about her doing that," Cornish said. "She loves making clothes, and I think Keats, too, when he goes into the world of poetry, it's a place where he is essentially on his own but in a whole world of imagination." While Keats' name is still familiar, his verse had fallen out of favor among modern readers, including Whishaw. "I didn't really know him very much at all," Whishaw said. "I had sort of a prejudice about the romantic poets, generally. I didn't think that they'd be my cup of tea. I thought I liked modern stuff that was sort of short, and short lines, and blunt, and different. But I've grown to love the kind of luxury of his writing and the sensuality of it. "He became kind of irresistible, really, and inspirational." Campion, 55, set out to introduce audiences to the little-known love affair between Keats and Fanny. She also hopes "Bright Star" might revive modern viewers' passion for poetry. "We would love to think that we could help in some way bring people back to poetry, because it's such a beautiful way to plant a garden in your own soul and mind," Campion said. More on Photo Galleries
 
Jerry Leichtling: In Defense Of John Murtha Top
This is both a defense of a centurion and a private perspective on a public man. First, two disclaimers: I'm proud to count Chairman Murtha as a personal friend. I will also acknowledge that on one occasion I accepted a fee from his campaign committee for writing a speech for him. This was only after it was my honor to freely and gladly offer him writing help on a number of occasions. So, I'll come to his unfortunately necessary defense. Rather than rallying around John Murtha, too many Democrats, many of them "guilty" of similar earmarking, are looking the other way or worse, making him the whipping boy for decades-old flaws in the system. Just this week Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics In Washington (CREW) issued a call to urge citizens to petition that John Murtha step down as Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Sub-Committee. I've long been an admirer of CREW and what they do. I understand, to a point, their stance on Chairman Murtha, but I believe their perspective and that of many of his other critics to be both narrow and shortsighted. The criticism of Mr. Murtha has gone on for a number of years, with increasing clamor born both of the recent investigations by the F.B.I. of lobbyists associated with the Congressman and allegations about Mr. Murtha's nephew, Robert Murtha, a defense contractor. These investigations, while certainly casting a cloud over Mr. Murtha, haven't named him as a target. But "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't nearly do justice when defending a great American. John Murtha is a big target. Think back just a few years, to the darkest days of the previous administration, when Cheney, Bush, Rove and Tom Delay had America trapped in a brutal, costly quagmire in Iraq, quaking with fear, with much of the public, press and Congress fully and pathetically intimidated. John Murtha stood up in the House on November 17th, 2005 and issued a call for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. He was the first to do so. Mr. Murtha not only had the courage to carry the flag, he had the credibility to back it up. As a longtime member of the Defense Appropriations Committee and thirty-seven year veteran of the Marine Corps and Reserve, Mr. Murtha had bona fides that some others say, Dennis Kucinich did not have. Yet Mr. Murtha immediately came under intense, hostile fire from Republicans both in and out of government. But Mr. Murtha, a five times decorated war hero, would not be intimidated; when Dick Cheney questioned his patriotism, Mr. Murtha's reply was, "I like guys who got five deferments, and never been there, and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done." That actually shut Cheney up -- Mr. Murtha was the first to do it. John Murtha's passion and valor in leading that uphill charge is well known. But much of the criticism of Mr. Murtha has centered around his steering lucrative Defense contracts to his Western Pennsylvania district. In 2007, the Wall Street Journal led off a front-page story datelined Johnstown, Pa. -- "If John Murtha. were a businessman, he'd be the biggest employer in this town" It went on to detail how Representative Murtha "used his clout on Capitol Hill to create thousands of jobs and steer billions of dollars in federal spending to help his hometown in western Pennsylvania recover from devastating floods and the flight of its steelmakers." The story, meant as a hatchet job, seemed like a helluva compliment to the man who had steered more money, more companies and more jobs to his constituents than any other member of Congress. Isn't that what a Representative is supposed to do? What District in America wouldn't want that now? Now, less than two years later, desperate Republicans like Cong. Pete Sessions of Texas, are actively looking to turn Mr. Murtha into a Democratic Tom DeLay. And if the eventual outcome in Iraq turns out to be worse than expected, you can expect a Republican blame game along the lines of the "Who lost China?" battles of the Truman era. This week Dan Henniger in that same Wall Street Journal (or maybe the realpolitik Murdoch Journal isn't the same?) offered up a huge (albeit backhanded) compliment to Mr. Murtha. Henniger, justly lamenting the spendthrift culture of Washington, wrote "John Murtha of Johnstown is the canary in the mine shaft. In politics, the canaries don't die. They adapt and learn to live with the toxic fumes of public spending on scales beyond morality or understanding." I won't argue with that - not in the face of the obscene trillions of dollars appropriated to replenish the coffers of AIG, Barclay's Bank, First Credit Suisse etc. Whose District is Zurich in? John Murtha didn't invent massive public spending, nor the culture of lobbyists and lawyers who grease the wheels. He managed to accumulate power and move the right levers to benefit his constituents. But when CREW named him one of the ten most corrupt members of Congress, that grossly distorted the idea of corruption. As far as I know, there are no allegations that John Murtha is a corrupt thief like Randy Cunningham, nor has he ever been accused of personally profiting like Ted Stevens. Those are orders of corruption that simply do not apply to Mr. Murtha. John Murtha has a modest home in Johnstown, a small condo in Arlington and drives a Buick. He will only drive American cars. And, as I've been told, he's working for thirty thousand dollars a year -- as a seventeen-term Congressman he could retire today with a pension almost equal to his salary. CREW's expanded definition of corruption may often be necessary to stoke the fires of public outrage, but useful distinctions have to be made. I hope I've made one. Would that that were the end of my defense of a patriot. But CREW criticism of Mr. Murtha comes today in the luxury of current Democratic dominance in Congress and the White House (by the way, some of that Democratic majority comes from Mr. Murtha contributing his supposedly tainted campaign funds to needier Democratic candidates). In the populist, reformist fervor of Barack Obama's ascendancy, and with the country and the world subsumed by economic crises, we forget that we are, in two countries at least, still at war. We are also in the ugly backwash of a war we are attempting to withdraw from. We need experienced warriors as much as we need high-minded reformers. Or is "high minded" as offensive a term as "corrupt?" At almost 77, old soldier John Murtha has a few important tasks left for him. His stewardship of the Defense Appropriations Sub-Committee is one of the most complex, vital and least understood jobs in the Government. He's helping to manage our current defense and, equally important, the re-building of our military readiness, which was shockingly depleted by Iraq. He's also deeply personally committed to the welfare of veterans and military families and to our wounded. One small anecdote -- I remember him in tears telling me how, on one of his weekly visits to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he witnessed a father holding the hand of his comatose son. There were no reporters present and the tears weren't for show. John Murtha is a great American, a patriot and a man of both duty and honor. These are old fashioned and often devalued terms from an era where words like corrupt were rarely used as loosely or over-zealously as they are now. Let the investigations take their course; history will judge John Murtha as a hero, a public servant and a Marine. This country is profoundly lucky to have him on the job. More on John Murtha
 
Jeff Biggers: BREAKING: EPA Clears Waterboarding Permits for Appalachia Top
As American citizens in Mingo County and other areas of the flood-stricken Kentucky and West Virginia coalfields continue to dig themselves out of the muck, indefatigable Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward is reporting on his Coal Tattoo blog that the EPA has "signed off on almost all (87.5 percent, to be exact) of the mountaintop removal permits that has so far been reviewed under the initiative announced in March." Ward has just posted a letter dated yesterday from the EPA to US Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), announcing that: "EPA has raised environmental concerns with six pending permit applications in the Corps' Huntington District out of a total of approximately forty-eight we have reviewed. We have advised the Corps that EPA does not intend to provide additional comments on the remaining forty-two permits. The Corps may proceed with appropriate permit decisions on those remaining projects." Read that line again: Have 42 out of 48 permits for mountaintop removal--the process of blowing up our nation's oldest and most diverse mountains, razing historic communities, poisoning watersheds, and causing massive erosion and flooding, which Vice President Al Gore has termed "a crime, and ought to be treated as a crime"--been cleared as "environmentally responsible" by the Obama administration's EPA? Since President Barack Obama has taken office, an estimated 300 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives have been detonated across our American mountains. In effect: Residents in the mountaintop removal areas have been subjected to a kind of waterboarding environmental policies. All well-meaning intentions aside, an indubitable fact remains: Mountaintop removal is an immoral crime against nature and our citizenry, a human rights violation, and it must be abolished, not regulated. The EPA's letter to Rahall is a curious document. Acting Assistant Administrator Michael H. Shapiro writes: "I understand the importance of coal mining in Appalachia for jobs, the economy and meeting the nation's energy needs. I also want to emphasize the need to ensure that coal mining is conducted in a manner that is fully consistent with the requirements of the [Clean Water Act], the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and other applicable federal laws." If Mr. Shapiro has never been to a mountaintop removal site--among the 500 mountains and 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests that have been erased from our American maps--then he needs to visit now and witness first-hand the failure of our mountaintop removal regulations. "When Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977," testified Joe Lovett, the Executive Director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, at an Oversight Hearing of the US House Committee on Natural Resource on the 30th anniversary of the SMCRA, "it thought that it was enacting a law to protect the environment and citizens of the region. OSM has used, and has allowed the states to use, the Act as a perverse tool to justify the very harm that Congress sought to prevent. The Members of Congress who voted to pass the Act in 1977 could not have imagined the cumulative destruction that would be visited on our region by the complete failure of the regulators to enforce the Act." For more information on today's breaking news, or flooding, see Ward's Coal Tattoo blog: http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/ In the meantime, here's Goldman Prize winner Maria Gunnoe describing how it feels to be flooded out numerous time in the past few years, after mountaintop removal operations altered the natural valleys and terrain: And here's a clip from the recent flooding in Mingo County, which residents attribute to strip mining erosion along the nearby ridges and mountains. Not that we will ever know the true impact of mountaintop removal and strip mining on flooding--as Ward reported in 2001, the WV's Department of Environmental Protection has actually gone to court to resist "efforts to require coal operators to study stream flows more extensively to help pinpoint each strip mine's impact on flooding."
 
Swine Flu: Another Outbreak Closes 3 NYC Schools Top
NEW YORK — A day after a swine flu outbreak shut down three public schools in New York City, officials said Friday the virus is spreading faster than seasonal flu does, but the symptoms have generally been mild. Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said the large clusters of cases at the three schools are "a little surprising," and officials don't know why the virus is spreading more rapidly than traditional influenza. Hundreds of schoolchildren were sent home sick this week and an assistant principal remains in critical condition. The schools were closed Thursday after four students and the assistant principal at the Susan B. Anthony middle school in Queens were confirmed to have swine flu. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there were no immediate plans to close more schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said repeatedly that there would be more deaths and new cases, and that the strain was still on the upswing in the U.S. Texas on Friday reported the nation's fifth swine flu death. The mayor said Thursday that the assistant principal, Mitch Wiener, may have had pre-existing health problems _ but on Friday, Wiener's son Adam said his father had only suffered previously from gout, which he said was unrelated to his current condition. He said his 55-year-old father is now suffering from pneumonia, kidney failure, dehydration and a lung infection. "We're dealing with it the best way we can but it's obviously hard," said Adam Wiener, 23. "They say it's critical but not hopeless." It isn't unusual for flu cases to ebb and surge as the virus moves through a population during flu season. The virus tends to disappear as the weather gets warmer and more humid. Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a deputy commissioner of the health department, said investigators are trying to learn more about why the disease has spread erratically. Schools are a good incubator for illness in general, he said, because space is tight and youngsters often don't practice the best hygiene. Adam Wiener said his father had been sick since at least last weekend with flu-like symptoms "but we didn't think anything of it." Then early Wednesday, he said, the family called 911 after his father began "hallucinating and wasn't coherent." Wiener's case is the most severe illness in the city since its first known cases of swine flu appeared in late April. At least five schools in the city were closed then, but all have since reopened. Frieden said Friday that officials look at a number of factors when deciding whether to close a school, including how many kids are out sick. "It has to be a school-by-school and day-by-day assessment," he said. Meanwhile, maintenance workers at the two middle schools and one elementary school scrubbed desks, floors and door handles Friday. At the shuttered Walter Crowley middle school in the Elmhurst section, a worker in a mask was seen mopping down the cafeteria on Friday. Police cars were parked outside the entrances, and a sign on the door said it was temporarily closed. At that school alone, 241 students were reported out sick with flulike symptoms. New York City's first outbreak occurred when hundreds of teenagers at a Roman Catholic high school in Queens began falling ill following the return of several students from vacations in Mexico, where the outbreak began. An estimated 1,000 students, their relatives and staff at the St. Francis Preparatory School fell ill in a matter of days. Additional sporadic cases continued to be diagnosed, but the symptoms were nearly all mild. The sick children recovered in short order and St. Francis reopened after being closed for a week. The middle school with the confirmed cases is two miles from St. Francis. Adam Wiener said his father has been mostly unconscious because of sedation since Wednesday evening, breathing with the help of a ventilator. One of Wiener's 18-year-old twin sons, Jordan, said his father had been awake briefly and asked him about his leg, which he had injured playing baseball. "He's always about his kids first," Jordan Wiener said Friday. "He was asking me how I was feeling and how my season's going." ___ Associated Press Writer David B. Caruso contributed to this report. More on Health
 
Myanmar Army Officials Accused Of Using Forced Labor Top
Maypon: Burmese army authorities from Western Command based in Ann Town have been forcing villagers to work on construction of a road between Kam Daunt Gri and Shauk Kon Village in Mraypon Township, said one villager. More on Burma
 
Todd Palmer and Rob Pringle: One Way To Preserve The Last Great Places? Endow Research Stations Top
Head to your nearest airport and board the flight to Lima, Peru. From Lima, catch a smaller plane to Cuzco, where you can catch an even smaller plane to Boca Manu. From the airstrip in Boca Manu, head to the river; you'll find a local man waiting for you in a long motorboat. He'll take you up the river. Bring rain gear. Eight hours later, you are in Cocha Cashu Biological Station , in Manu National Park , the heart of the Peruvian Amazon. There are very few frontiers left on this planet, but this is one of them. This is the home of the jaguar , the harpy eagle , the giant otter , the piranha, the mahogany tree. We could go on name-dropping for days; there might be 500,000 species here, maybe many more. Nobody really knows. There are people in this forest who have never contacted Western society--no joke. You can easily get lost and die in here. No joke. Cocha Cashu was established in the early 1980s by an ecologist named John Terborgh , then a professor at Princeton, now at Duke. The rationale was simple: this is one of the very few places left to study a primeval tropical rainforest. It's true that you can still find breathtaking rainforests all over the world, from Washington State to Panama to Australia to Malaysia. But most of those places, beautiful as they are, have been plucked, chopped, girdled, diced, high-graded, and cherry-picked by people. This forest is different. There's a human footprint here, too, but it's small. And thanks to more than 500 scientific publications researched here, we have an ever-better picture of what that means--how a tropical rainforest looks and behaves when it hasn't been tormented by industrial society: What factors determine whether a seed becomes a tree? How do monkeys act when they're not stressed about getting their heads blown off? What role do meandering rivers play in promoting species diversity? Knowing stuff like that makes the forest more beautiful. You can go to Madrid and stand in front of Picasso's Guernica , and it might strike you as pretty. But absent any contextual information, it's also a big, confusing mess, and if you're anything like us, you'll move on after about five minutes. Now come back with the audio tour. In the context of the Spanish Civil War, Picasso's protest takes on meaning, and with meaning, a profound beauty, even though you probably still don't understand everything you're looking at. In the same way, a rainforest is a big, confusing mess if you don't know anything about its ecology and evolution. Knowing something about how these systems work, and how they came to be there, both makes them more beautiful and deepens their mystique. So, the scientists write the audio tour for these forests, but that's not their only role. To paraphrase Dan Janzen, another student of the tropical forest, they are also the pro bono negotiators with society on behalf of hundreds of thousands of species that have no other representation. *** Halfway across the globe, a hyena steals a dead baby topi from a pair of cheetahs. The Serengeti is arguably the other biggest name in tropical nature, and its biological contrasts with Amazonia are stark. Instead of a towering canopy, you have grassy plains on rolling hills, dotted with thorny Acacia trees. This is the home of the spectacular annual wildebeest migration , in which roughly 600,000,000 lbs. of wildebeest, 100,000,000 lbs. of zebra, and 15,000,000 lbs. of gazelle follow the seasonal rainfall from Tanzania to Kenya and back again, harried all the while by big cats and crocodiles . Humans have been part of this ecosystem for as long as there have been humans. Because we evolved here, and because we're large mammals ourselves, we can really connect with this kind of nature. Watching a baby wildebeest run from a lion , you can feel its terror. Somewhere deep in your reptile brain, you know what it feels like to be chased by a predator, even though it's never happened to you personally. The Serengeti is a monument to our history as a species, part of our collective heritage. But it has never been tamed. Tony Sinclair , of the University of British Columbia, has been coming here since the mid-1960s, working with Simon Mduma and other colleagues from Tanzania and around the world to come to grips with the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem. The scientific output from the Serengeti Wildlife Research Centre during that time is impressive. Like the scientists at Cocha Cashu, the researchers here have painted a compelling portrait of the system--the flows of energy and nutrients through the plant and animal communities, the intricacies of the interactions among the species--while simultaneously answering fundamental ecological questions (What are the relative roles of starvation and predation in limiting population growth?). This information is repackaged and supplied to tens of thousands of tourists who visit this iconic landscape each year, and to many more non-travelers via TV documentaries and YouTube clips. And because the scientists are there, monitoring the wildlife, they can tell whether hunting is decimating wildlife populations, or whether measures put in place to protect the animals are working . *** So, how do we ensure that these treasures survive to inspire our descendents and teach them about the many-layered complexities of life? A permanent research presence goes a long way towards protecting a parcel of nature in perpetuity, while simultaneously building a better understanding of that parcel. Terborgh and Sinclair both estimate that it would cost a minimum of $3 million to endow their respective field stations, forever. In Peru, the revenue flowing from such an endowment would pay the salaries of two permanent scientific directors and cover the scant operating costs of the rustic station. In Tanzania, the goal is to underwrite the training and permanent presence of additional Tanzanian scientists, spreading the sense of stewardship of the country's living assets. $3 million is a lot of money. Then again, given what we're talking about, it's really not. Governments will always blow mind-boggling amounts on ridiculous projects, but think about some of the things that even individuals spend that kind of money on. Like the stuff they're selling at Sotheby's . Don't get us wrong: we've got nothing against Jeff Koons's Baroque Egg with Bow (~$7 million) or Robert Gober's funky sculpture of musical notes printed across a pair of ass cheeks (~$3 million). We're just of the opinion that the Amazon Rainforest and the Serengeti Plains are immensely more complex, more meaningful, more important, and more beautiful than anything a mere human brain could ever create. So, $3 million to endow a research station in perpetuity, to secure the continued flow of knowledge, and to rest easily that passionate people will be around to advocate for many voiceless species? We think that's the bargain of the century. More on Animals
 
Tucker Carlson, Dana Perino Join Fox News As Contributors Top
Tucker Carlson and Dana Perino have joined Fox News as contributors, the Huffington Post has learned. Carlson hosted the 6PM hour on MSNBC until March 2008, when his show, "Tucker," was canceled . Since then, he served as a senior campaign correspondent for MSNBC and has written for The Daily Beast. Perino served as White House Press Secretary from September 2007 through the end of George W. Bush's second term. Last month, it was announced she'd be joining Mark Penn's public relations firm , Burson-Marsteller, as "chief issues counselor." More on Fox News
 
Matthew Alexander: If We're Going to Reveal More Memos Top
Former VP Dick Cheney has requested the release of additional memos showing that torture and abuse saved American lives by preventing terrorist attacks. If the Obama administration decides to release these memos, then I suggest they also release statistics from Iraq showing the number of foreign fighters that were recruited because of our policy of torture and abuse. It was tracked. I know because I saw the slides and because I heard captured foreign fighters state this day in and day out. The government can also release the statistics that show that 90% of suicide bombers in Iraq were these same foreign fighters. These foreign fighters killed hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers. After these revelations, Americans can judge whether or not a policy of torture and abuse kept us safe. Unfortunately, we'll never be able to evaluate the damage that was done to past or future interrogations. As I experienced firsthand, detainees were less likely to cooperate when they viewed us as hypocrites. We can't establish the trust that is required to convince a detainee to cooperate unless we live up to the principles that we preach. I had one detainee in Iraq, a previous Al Qaida fighter, who provided me with all the information he knew willingly without me having to run an interrogation approach. He told me that Al Qaida had accused him of being a mole and tortured him before we rescued him. He then proceeded to say that the reason he was going to cooperate was because we didn't torture him and because of that, he knew everything that he'd been told about us by Al Qaida was wrong. Before 9/11, the protection of American soldiers from terrorist attacks was a priority for our country. Consider our responses to the Beirut Bombing, Khobar Towers, and the USS Cole. When we talk about keeping Americans safe from terrorist attacks, we need to include all Americans, especially those that serve in uniform. More on Iraq
 
Craig and Marc Kielburger: Seeing Potential in Saudi Arabia's Women Top
The topic of our speech at the Saudi Arabian conference was bringing society together through volunteerism. That's why it seemed ironic a screen separated men and women in the audience. Genders were also divided at dinner. During breakout sessions. Everywhere. We spoke with some incredible women. Though we could only see their eyes through the black abaya cloak, they were filled with expression as they discussed their ideas and plans for grassroots volunteerism and civic engagement. Too bad they couldn't share those ideas with their male counterparts. The men told us, "Things are changing." True. The country got a taste of equality in February when Nour al-Fayez was appointed the first female member of the Saudi Council of Ministers. But, that taste is bittersweet. Her position as Deputy Minister for Women's Education exists because of gender-segregated education. That's if the girls even get an education. During our trip, a Saudi judge refused for a second time to annul an 8-year-old girl's marriage to a 47-year-old man. He said she could petition for divorce after puberty. Still, those men are right. Things are changing. Oil prices have fallen and the financial crisis has devastated Western markets. The insecurity of Saudi Arabia vast wealth became clear. To maintain its global status, Saudi needs to diversify. Not just its economy, but its workforce. It needs to unshackle its female population and embrace its potential. "Women of Saudi Arabia, in full respect of their societal values, appear ready to embark on a new stage of engagement," said Yakin Ertürk, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Violence Against Women after a 2008 visit. "Supporting them on their endeavour requires vision, courage, leadership and a firm commitment from the highest levels of the state." It's well-known Saudi Arabia's global status is derived from oil. But last year, we Westerners felt the scourge of our oil addiction when prices broke $145 per barrel. We're down from peak but the U.S. President has vowed to break our habit through alternatives. A scary thought for Saudi Arabia - but one they are addressing. As part of the "sun belt," Saudi Arabia has potential in future renewable energy markets. But, it wants to go beyond energy and develop the knowledge sector. So, it expanded the private sector and invested $7 billion in the Knowledge Economic City, a community near Medina which is poised to create 20,000 jobs in the industrial, academic, cultural and commercial sectors. It also invested in education. Saudi boasts the highest paid academics in the world with an average monthly salary of $6,611 and opened 12 new universities and colleges in the last four years. The Minister of Higher Education says they need 10 more to absorb the 70,000 students who currently study abroad. But a knowledge-based economy requires human capital - and Saudi Arabia is only tapping half. Gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia is described as sexual apartheid. About half of university graduates are women but less than a tenth have jobs. They cannot drive and must receive permission from male relatives to work, travel, study and marry. "According to some professional women and officials, this prevents women from participating in the full range of activities and opportunities of the work environment and results in duplication of tasks as well as human and financial resources," said Ertürk in her report. What Saudi Arabia isn't seeing is potential. We had that pleasure in our conference. But, we've also seen it on the world stage. Women across Saudi Arabia have shown their capabilities by fighting their own oppressive government for their own human rights. Imagine what they could do if given the chance to fight for the rights of others. The potential is there - it's just up to Saudi Arabia to recognize it. More on Women's Rights
 
Dana Joy Altman: Real Food Rehab: The Recession Issue Top
"I am grateful for transparency. Nothing is embarrassing if it's real." --Aya Kanai I have never been so poor in my life. There, I said it. That's humbling to reveal, but it's important to me that you know the truth and the truth is I am struggling, too. I took a risk; I left an unsatisfying job that earned me a very healthy living to find work that moved me; a job that used my innate gifts, challenged me to grow and learn and, ideally, paid me well. I was successful for a while; simultaneously trying out two very different paths -- hospitality consulting and interior design -- but neither was quite right. Then the economy tanked and my fiscal bottom dropped out. Writing this column (which pays me nothing) is ironically, the closest thing I've found to the work I'm meant to do in the world. Discovering what it is you truly desire is work in and of itself -- very rigorous but very rewarding. First, it takes doing away with what you think you should want and, if you've been a pleaser like I have -- doing away with what others think you should want. There have been so many days when the fear of the unknown has been paralyzing. Paying my bills every month for the last year has been a real nail biter. But despite how it appears on paper, there's been an upside to all this; it's brought me face-to-face with what I've outlived in my life. Ways of being and thinking and the discovery that there is so much I can happily live without. It's easy to focus on what you don't have, harder to celebrate what you do. That, to me, is paramount to happiness. Second, I've become more creative and resourceful. Especially when it comes to taking care of myself. And taking care of oneself during a crisis is the key to surviving it. With food, on a small budget, I've had to be more frugal than ever and get to the bottom of what it is I really crave day to day to find satisfaction. I still go to the farmers' market every week -- I buy less but still buy things I love -- this week it was just-picked asparagus and rhubarb. In some cases it has forced me to make changes I didn't want to make but that have worked in my favor, like cutting back on my meat consumption and not drinking as much wine, which has greatly improved my productivity and mental clarity and probably helped stave off depression this winter, too. It's pushed me to work with what's on sale and to expand my repertoire in the kitchen. This winter I spent a lot of time at Stanley's -- an inexpensive green market in Chicago with a decent organic section. What can I do with celery? What can I do with cauliflower and parsnips? I use everything I buy, and I mean everything . I juice whatever vegetables or fruits are starting to go south. Perhaps the most important thing I've learned is that lowering my standards is the kiss of death. I was at a function recently where they were serving crepes stuffed with neon orange processed cheese from a major warehouse superstore. Normally, it's something I wouldn't even consider eating, but that day I was gripped with fear about my situation and created some crazy notion that I couldn't afford to turn away free food even though I wasn't even hungry! I ate it and it was neither tasty nor satisfying. In that moment I gave in to my fears and I lowered my standards. For me, it was an invitation to shame and self-loathing and that is something I certainly cannot afford. I also used to entertain quite a bit and I was not about to let my social life suffer, so I started hosting potlucks. Everyone brings a dish and a bottle of their choosing. I hosted a Mexican-themed brunch one Sunday that lasted for eight hours! We ate and drank, put the food away and brought it back out for a second round five hours later. It's one of my favorite memories of the past year. I'm also grateful for all the fruit and veggie canning I did last summer. I snacked on those all winter, added them to round out other dishes and gave them away as hostess gifts when money was tight. Lastly, I've learned how to receive. I've always been a great giver but a lousy receiver. I have been so lovingly supported by friends and family in ways I could never have imagined. I've slowly come to realize that people's kindness is a reflection of my own graciousness in the world, and I am actively working to pay it forward. Next Week: Ted Turner On Real Food And Authenticity (c) 2009 Dana Joy Altman, Real Food Rehab, Inc. More on The Giving Life
 
Jeff Norman: Bush Ringleaders Could Face Citizen Arrests for Torture Top
I have mixed emotions about the verbal lambasting heaped on Donald Rumsfeld outside the May 9 White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC. On one hand, I like the public to hold our leaders accountable. On the other hand, the first of two Code Pink protesters who loudly repudiated Rumsfeld looks a bit crazed. I'm not sure it helps the cause to reinforce the false notion that only a fringe minority believes war crimes were committed by high-level members of the Bush administration. So let's get serious. I have an idea. Those who say Bush, Cheney, et al. should be prosecuted for authorizing torture, might want to start by identifying the laws that have been violated. I suggest focusing on conspiracy to commit torture , which is a felony under Section 2340A of the U.S. Code. In California, a citizen may make an arrest for a felony - even if he or she didn't witness it . In other words, "actual restraint of the person" is perfectly legal if the apprehender reasonably believes a crime has been committed. Surprisingly, it's even legal for a private person to "break open the door or window of the house in which the person to be arrested is..." The arrestee must then be turned over to the police or a judge, and there's no guarantee the incident will lead to a prosecution. But if the encounter with Rumsfeld had occurred in California, the protesters (or anyone) would have been entitled to arrest him for real, not just political theater. What's potentially most unnerving to the accused is that there's no limit to how many times a person may be arrested for the same alleged offense. That means if, say, John Yoo were arrested by a citizen at 10:00 in the morning, and released by the police at 10:20, Yoo could again be lawfully arrested by a citizen right on the spot, or later in the day, or on subsequent days. I don't know if alleged war criminals are similarly vulnerable in other states, but in at least California (where Code Pink is headquartered, and Yoo teaches law), citizens have the power to transform rhetoric into action. How about it, my fellow Americans? Jeff Norman blogs at CitizenJeff.com .
 
Michael Giltz: Cannes Exclusive Video: Mariah Carey Fools Photogs! Top
Mariah Carey made the paparazzi look foolish today at the Cannes Film Festival. At first, it looked like a scene straight out of La Dolce Vita . Mariah Carey pops out of the Hotel Carlton and crosses the street to attend the press conference for the acclaimed indie film Precious, which has just debuted here to more strong reviews after dominating Sundance. Like a true diva, Carey appeared at 2:15 p.m, a good 45 minutes after the press conference was supposed to start. Cameramen and photographers stood around in the drizzling rain, climbing on street signs or benches to get a better angle for the big moment. Then a clamor erupted from the Hotel Carlton. "Mariah! "Mariah!" A scrum of photographers surrounded her as she walked just a few yards across the street and towards the beach dining area. Women were crushed momentarily against the barricades as Carey got closer and closer, with the guards trying to let Carey in and keep the photographers out. Barely acknowledging them, she slipped past everyone and scurried down the stairs and out of sight. The only problem? That's not Mariah Carey. In fact, it was a body double. While the photographers stood in the wet rain from about 1 until 2:15 p.m., the real Mariah Carey popped up at the press conference by some secret tunnel, professional and polite and right on the dot at 1:30 p.m. She smiled and answered every question along with her costars and director Lee Daniels. (She also stars in the Daniels film Tennessee , which opens in the US on June 5.) Precious , based on the acclaimed novel by Sapphire, opens November 6 via Lionsgate. Carey has a small but important role as a social worker and she appears in a scene with comedian and actress Mo'Nique that has a chance of garnering that actress an Oscar nomination come next January. With the prominent support of Oprah Winfrey AND Tyler Perry, it's also likely to make a fool of the New York Times for saying the inspirational but gritty tale was good but almost impossible to market to a wide audience. Carey is also working on a new album. After the press conference, she really did pose for the photographers on their way out. Or did she? You can never be certain.
 
Alex McCord: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Top
The sun is shining, the birds are singing and things are looking up. As the Real Housewives madness shifts into book writing and work madness, I am taking a moment to be grateful. When I was laid off at the end of February, it seemed like the sky was falling. There's nothing worse than staring into a black hole of pathos and self-doubt, wondering whether you'll ever amount to anything ever again, whether in 6 months time you'll be worried about making ends meet, whether you'll have to change your lifestyle, sell all your shoes and start playing guitar in the subway....I felt all of those things. Nevertheless, in spite of it all I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. People react to stress in different ways. During my period of stress I also started watching the people around me, and it was enlightening. One colleague chronically stayed up too late and overslept every morning -- a case of not wanting to face the day, I guess. Another binge-drank and had a perpetual hangover. Me? I would constantly forget to eat lunch until about 3pm, not wanting to set foot away from my laptop in case the perfect job was lurking on the next Firefox tab, waiting for me to look away so that it could pop out, say "Nyah, nyah, you'll never get me," and disappear while laughing maniacally. Oh, have you never thought that? Maybe I'm crazy. I always think my computer is talking to me, even when the sound is off. In hindsight everything happens for a reason, and my layoff was no exception. Literally the week before it happened, Simon had asked me what it would take for me to decide it was time to resign? It's no secret that it was difficult to maintain a full-time, corporate job where travel was required, deadlines were fast and furious and stress was high, while being on a reality show, renovating a home and raising the kids. The way I coped was basically to ignore the show and most opportunities that arose from it. Would I have known when to quit? Doubtful. I tend to think I can do and have it all, and never shy away from challenge. Had I not been laid off, I'd be out there still trying to balance, and would not have been able to take part in many of the exciting opportunities that have come up since. Let's be real -- there were a couple things I got lucky about, that were atypical for Jane Jobseeker. Number one, I'm lucky to be in New York City, where there is just more of everything, including more companies who might have open positions. If I were not in a big huge city, this would have been more difficult. Number two, I'm on a reality show, and news of my layoff and subsequent job search was publicized in all the tabloids. Even better that it came at a time where many viewers liked me versus thinking I was a psychopath. That made it easy for people to approach, knowing I both wanted and needed a job. For those reasons I was and am very grateful and humbled. I feel for those job seekers in smaller markets, with specialized skills, who don't have the opportunity to tell the world they are job hunting. However, there are a few habits I brushed up on while searching that I do think are good habits to cultivate. I stayed open. I had lunch with people and wrote blogs, which helped me get my thoughts together and process all the emotional highs and lows. I updated my resume immediately, which is important because when you're job hunting people always want it even if they don't necessarily have a job for you. Take the calls that come in, even if someone wants you to do something you've never done or considered, such as beekeeping or doing cold-call sales or becoming a professional clown. FYI two of those things were real job offers -- you decide which! Look at every job listing you can find, and talk to anyone who will listen. Practice a 15 second commercial for yourself, with a brief history of where you've been and where you want to go. These actions in themselves may not be the avenue to your next position, but they get you in shape just like working out at the gym. Along the way, an opportunity came up that seemed like the best possible thing I could be doing in this retail climate. What makes sense, both economically and environmentally? How do you save money and the planet at the same time? How do you clean out your closet and feel good about it? Designer consignment, that's how! Second Time Around , a company based in New England, has stores up and down the east coast and offers fashionistas the opportunity to get rid of items they no longer want and either donate the proceeds to charity, get a check or a store credit to revamp their wardrobes without taxing the environment via chemical processes used to create new clothing. Did you know that in the US, roughly 18 million tons of clothing, accessories and bedding are thrown away every year? I had no idea; that was really sobering. By repurposing clothing you can help address that, and in this topsy-turvy economy, the price is right. Consignment prices are typically less than half of retail -- sometimes much less, and I've always said it's incumbent on those who can spend, to keeping spending as economic stimulus. Here's a way to do that for less! I'll have more to say on that later...but no, I am not consigning Simon's red dance pants....yet! In the mean time, I'm allowing myself a moment to step away from the computer. The boys have a birthday party this afternoon, the reunion specials have aired and I sent our chapter titles to the publisher yesterday. It is now officially time for a great weekend. Cheers!!
 
Hermene Hartman: The Changing Face of Illinois Politics Top
The face of local politics is changing. Barack Obama's election as president of the United States will prove to be a curse or a blessing for black politicians. He has established a new standard. The jargon of diversity takes on a whole new meaning. There are no excuses or limitations, and crossover is evident. Jackson's Saga The recent political saga of Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is mysterious. I am certain he will be proven innocent of all impropriety when the case comes to full light. He is probably the only sitting Congressman with a degree in divinity and law. There was much drama in the appointment of the junior senator from the state of Illinois. Jackson was clearly the best choice. He has experience in the U.S. Congress, and his next obvious step was the U.S. Senate. He had the highest poll ratings for the seat. He was the youngest among those mentioned for the position and this meant he had an opportunity for real seniority and power. His name appeared on the Obama list, where he served in a national capacity during the campaign. Jackson even criticized his father's off-the-cuff comments about then-candidate Obama during the campaign, which was a risky move not sanctioned by many. (Perhaps a public condemnation was politically necessary, but your father is your father after voting is done!) His voting record is stellar. He has missed one vote in 15 years in the Congress. He will be challenged to climb the political ladder, and it will be a shame if he misses his chance at the seat. All the politicians had candidates in the Senate race. Reportedly, the contenders were: Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Illinois Veterans Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Reps. Danny Davis, Luis Gutierrez and Jan Schakowsky, Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson and former state Senate President Emil Jones. Jesse Jackson Jr. was the stellar candidate. He was the best-qualified and had the best portfolio, but was he purposely derailed? He would have had a head start on the race. What happened? Politics happened. Everyone possibly had a backroom agenda but Jackson. His intentions were pure. But there might have been payback. Is there a conspiracy against Jackson to knock the fresh, bright political force down to size? Is the issue to limit Jackson to the congressional seat? Is it to prevent him from forging a campaign for the fifth floor of City Hall one day? Was the White House skittish to have a Jackson in a well-earned cabinet post or to promote him to the Senate seat? What's the deal with a Jackson replacing Obama? These are all curious questions that became parlor room talk as the Jackson saga unfolded. Political Promotions and Pastures The political landscape of Chicago and Illinois politics is destined to change in its black representation. The County Board presidency will surely change. Todd Stroger has been a disappointment. He should go home and not waste the public's time with another run. He will be a downer for the Democrats. At this point, he is having a tough go signing people up for his re-election committee. Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) is running for the seat, though her challenge will be running countywide. Roland Burris should move on, too, and not run. His interim term will have served him well and be so noted historically. The future is promising for Danny K. Davis; he is well-liked and well-received by all, and he has his pick of some prime spots. Davis played smart politics in not accepting the Blagojevich appointment to the Senate. It could be the County Board; it could be the U.S. Senate. Depending on the Davis destiny, state Sen. Rickey Hendon will elevate either in state politics or make a move to Washington for Congress. He is ever-popular and will move his territory. If Chris Kennedy enters the U.S. Senate race, the family business, he will bring it. The Kennedy name is magic and Chris has a wonderful business track record that will transfer nicely into politics. He is certain to have the money and political backing necessary for a win. Cheryle Jackson is a wild card, but with sufficient women's backing and black support, she could be an upset to the apple cart. But then what happens to the Urban League? The League has always been politically astute, but never participating directly in electoral politics. There absolutely would not have been the historical election of Harold Washington had there been no Bill Berry, the then-director of the League. And James Compton was often called upon for his valued opinion and voice of reason in political matters. And after all that, there is the governor's seat. Will Pat Quinn win an election or will he do what is necessary to make the state solvent and move on? The million-dollar question is raising the taxes. Lisa Madigan is sure to run for governor and if state Sen. James Meeks runs, he will challenge the race with the black vote. He will run to push the envelope on school funding and will undoubtedly have a huge chip. The black community should be meeting in its various groups now. We stand to lose a lot in the next election. We stand to lose political ground. All politics is local, and in a real sense, the White House does not matter until the second time around. The stakes are high, and the bets are flying. But one thing is for certain: Change is coming. A new guard will be ushered in, and at best, we may see familiar faces in new seats.
 
Esther J. Cepeda: Trippin' the Light Hispanic: Introducing 'Chicago Latino List 2009' Top
On May 4 Crain's Chicago Business -- a publication I pay for and happily read cover-to-cover every week -- published "2009 Women to Watch," their annual roundup of female Chicago movers and shakers. I leafed through it and proceeded to hit the roof. Here's the full text of my Letter to the Editor, which Crain's was kind enough to print in the Opinion section of the May 11 edition: "It strikes me as absolutely unbelievable that a world-class city like Chicago -- a town with no less than 1.7 million residents of Latino heritage -- could possibly have zero women of Hispanic background worth watching ("Women to Watch," Focus, May 4). The dynamic, accomplished and beautiful women featured represent an impressive array of talent, but Crain's couldn't find a single Latina "bright star" this year? I consider myself to be imminently watchable. Yet, I certainly pale in comparison to the fine selection of Hispanic VPs, college presidents, legislators and entrepreneurs around Chicago." They cut it down and took some of the sting out of it -- and made it sound like it was about me rather than about the many, many incredible Hispanic women who toil away in the blind spots of those who decide "Who's who" in this town -- but you get the point. That all came on the heels of me hitting the roof about BusinessWeek magazine's story from the May 11 issue called "CEO's of Tomorrow." Here's an excerpt of the stinging Letter to the Editor I sent them back on May 4 when my copy arrived in the mail: "I wasn't disappointed by the high caliber of the 19 individuals BusinessWeek chose to focus on; they were dynamic, diverse and already shouldering tremendous responsibility in major corporations. But there wasn't a single Latino professional who might be a CEO of Tomorrow? Not a single Hispanic CEO, President, VP, CFO or COO who might be an innovative leader "tomorrow" when Latinos will make up a third or more of the population in the United States? I don't think so." I'm happy to report that Diane Brady, BusinessWeek 's Senior Editor/Content Chief immediately called me and we had a smart, in-depth conversation about the difficulty of achieving a perfectly diverse mixture of gender, race, ethnicity, industry, etc. in a spread like "CEO's of Tomorrow" -- and the difficulty of finding qualified Latino candidates. I won't quote her because I didn't know I was going to write about this until I heard from so many of my own readers, but she truly was responsive to my explanation that I'm not interested in a "Hispanic leaders" story in BusinessWeek but rather to have Latinos be included in their regular stories. Let me repeat it loudly and clearly: whether you're talking about "Women to Watch" or "CEOs of Tomorrow," great Latino leaders are not "really great...for a Latino" but, instead, "great leaders who just happen to be Hispanic." In order to help blunt this perceived shortage of Latino superstars, I'm taking action. Despite there being, in my mind, a ton of awesome Hispanic people doing truly amazing things here in Chicago, there seems to be no "official" list that mainstream publications can refer to when trying to find great Hispanic candidates to be profiled as Who's Who/Mover-Shaker/Rising Star/One-to-Watch in "mainstream" publications. So, I'm starting one. On June 15, I will publish the first annual compilation of totally awesome Hispanic Chicagoans making this world a better place through personal or professional excellence, and I'm calling it "Chicago Latino List 2009" -- or something better, if any of you have a pithier title. You will nominate 10 Chicago-area residents of any age, from any walk of life, who are doing something to make this world a better place, and I will pick and profile 10 of the best, with five honorable mentions. Rules Your nominations must be e-mailed to me by May 29 and include: The name of this wonderful human being A short blurb about how they're making the world a better place Contact information so I can talk to them myself Nominees can be Hispanic in any way, immigrant or U.S.-born, of any age, and working in any occupation There WILL be prizes...not that my story-telling abilities aren't prize enough...which I'll announce along with the winners. Please send your nominations to eejaycee@600words.com . We'll show 'em all! Esther J. Cepeda is looking for Chicago Latinos changing our world for the better. AND she's looking for swag for the winner's bags. If you're interested in being part of the inaugural "Chicago Latino List" please see more info here on www.600words.com
 
Alden Loury: The Fear Behind Our Fears of the Formerly Incarcerated Top
When The Chicago Reporter broke the news that the Illinois State Police had ignored thousands of court orders to expunge or seal criminal records of some ex-offenders, all hell broke loose. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan expressed her outrage, demanding compliance . Some black state lawmakers expressed their outrage with Gov. Pat Quinn, according to comments state Sen. Donne E. Trotter made on WVON in April. Former Illinois State Police Director Larry Trent resigned, saying judges were trying to expunge or seal records of individuals who are not eligible. "Many of them are child molesters," Trent told The Telegraph , in Alton, Ill . The Reporter 's "Closing Arguments" by Kelly Virella, gives an up-to-date look into this controversy . It's no secret that ex-offenders are hard to employ, especially in a tight job market where employers routinely use background checks. Back in 2004, the Reporter found that the Illinois State Police were handling a record number of requests for background checks . It's also no secret that expungement and sealing are highly effective in improving ex-offenders' chances to find work. That's the reason for some of the outrage. Denying these court orders will dramatically affect the job prospects for people trying to turn their lives around. "Ignoring these expungement orders negatively impacts the lives of people who deserve a fair opportunity to get a job, find housing and take care of their families," Madigan said. But the real problem isn't the shrinking job market, the routine use of background checks or that the Illinois State Police doesn't honor thousands of orders to expunge or seal records. Actually, I don't think the real problem has much to do with criminal records at all. It's true that the stigma of a criminal record casts an ominous shadow that follows an ex-offender long after he or she walks away from prison. Employers will be wary of ex-offenders, not only because of questions they might have about trust, but also because hiring folks with criminal records can be a public relations nightmare. For years, the Safer Foundation has helped connect employers with ex-offenders. But even those employers often don't want their customers to know that they hire individuals who were formerly incarcerated. But if we dig a little deeper than those fears, I think we'll find far more troubling fears -- fears that are confirmed, not raised, by criminal backgrounds. In Illinois, when we're talking about ex-offenders, we're really talking about black men. More than half of the state's prisoners are black men. And it's possible that the race of an ex-offender will tell you more about their chances of connecting with work than their criminal history. Consider that when the Reporter investigated the ways in which African-American and Latino ex-offenders sought work, in "Family Ties" from our March 2005 issue , we discovered that 75 percent of white parolees in Cook County were working compared with 58 percent of Latino parolees and just 35 percent of black parolees. And these racial gaps exist no matter how you break down unemployment statistics in Illinois. African-American residents have an unemployment rate nearly three times higher than that of white residents in Illinois, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent American Community Survey data. Those gaps diminish somewhat with education, but black people are always at the bottom of the ladder. And African Americans with more education still trail their white counterparts with less education. For instance, black folks with associate's degrees are out of work more often than white folks with high school diplomas. African Americans with bachelor's degrees are out of work more often than white people with associate's degrees, and so on. In fact, Devah Pager , a professor of sociology at Princeton University and faculty associate of the university's Office of Population Research, found in a pair of studies that a white felon was more likely to find a job than an African American with no criminal record at all, as Wade Askew notes in the Reporter 's "Double Trouble." It's easier for us to hold conversations, design programs and pass legislation about ex-offenders and their challenges finding work. It's harder for us to talk about our deep-seated struggles with race. However, if we truly want to improve the work opportunities for men and women coming home from prison, our work can't focus solely on dismantling the stigma of a criminal background. We will have to confront our long-standing fears and assumptions about black men.
 
STUDY: Loss Of Appetite In Eldery Linked To Depression Top
That sappy greeting-card commercial, in which an 8-year-old boy cheers up his older neighbor with a card "just because," may be on to something. A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing finds that depression among older adults, particularly women, is a leading factor in malnourishment.
 
Daniel Torday: Swine Fever Top
After giving a talk on administrative law at American University Washington College of Law on April 24, Justice [Antonin] Scalia took a few questions. One was from a student who wanted to know what she had to do to become "outrageously successful" without "connections and elite degrees." "By and large," he said, "I'm going to be picking [Supreme Court clerks] from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can't make a sow's ear out of a silk purse." --The Times 5/14/09 It's a short hop up the 405 from Palos Verdes to Dr. Weintraub's office. I've always wanted an excuse to do something about this childhood dogbite. Weintraub did wonders on my snout back in college, so why not this? I've got a summer before third year starts, and I've been hearing "prosciutto ear" since I was in second grade. I'm not showing up for another semester like this. And on top of it now -- oh, the looks I've been getting on the Strand since I got back from my Puerto Vallarta spring break. "Where'd your father say you're in school now?" Weintraub says. "UCLA law," I say. "Can you do it?" I ask. "Can you fix this ear?" "Does a Prius get 50 miles to the gallon on the highway? Was Babe: Pig in the City an underappreciated masterpiece?" I stare at him. He stares back. "I can," he says through his blue mask. He knocks me out. 5/15/09 Things are awful when I look in my vanity. The new Liberty Fabrics pouch by APC is resplendent as when it arrived in the mail last week, but the ligature's all wrong against my head. It looks like someone wrapped bacon around the thing with twine, and the sutures are weeping. I call Dr. Weintraub's office. "Sorry, hon, doc's out today," the receptionist says. "I look like a first course at Chez Panisse," I say. "It'll get better with time," she says. "He's out with the flu." I say I'm sorry and hang up as fast as I can. 5/21/09 Healed just like the receptionist said it would, and ooh! if my new ear doesn't go with these Anthropologie pants. Just wait till those first-years see me come fall! I'm thinking tomorrow I might get back out for my daily walk up to Santa Monica if my parents don't give me too much trouble. "I'm hemorrhaging money between law school and plastic surgery," my father says. "And I'm telling you you can't go out like that." I go anyway. Somewhere between the Hermosa Pier and Venice Beach I feel like I'm going to tripe on the inside -- if you think people look at you funny after a little outbreak of H2N1, try heading out before your surgery's properly healed. "Your father told you to stay in," Mom says. "And just look at this! Sunburned all around the wound, and how many times do I have to tell you not to leave the house without lipstick? It's shade and SPF 200 for you until you start up again in September, missy." 10/10/09 I call Dad for help on this famous torts case about these minks who lost their fur from the stress of a nearby construction project. It's set precedents nationally, our professor said. "Know of it?" he says. "I defended it! It was a tough one. Turns out the plaintiff and I grew up on the farm together. Came into the courtroom looking like roadkill. It got rough -- when you were a baby I woke up one day and someone had left collard greens and redeye gravy on our doorstep. Ugly stuff." "Did you win?" I say. "How do you think I'm paying for all that surgery?" he says. I get an A in torts. 5/15/10 Scalia turned us down for the graduation keynote address, so we're stuck with Alito. I guess I'd work for him, too. He gives a talk the night before, and I know there'll be a Q & A. I get in line behind the microphone, but there are like a dozen students ahead of me, two girls I recognize from Civ Pro, a couple guys from Con Law. Alito's answering questions. He's really taking his time. He takes a couple tough ones on Federal bailouts, porkbarrel spending, and gets way too into a question about Diane Wood's first year on the bench. Then the line's moving. It's my turn. "Justice Alito," I say. My voice is a little hoarse. I clear my throat. "Justice Alito, sir, with another seat soon to open, and with President Obama having taken a woman, could you see a pig on the bench?" I swipe my bifurcated hoof across some hair on my forehead, turn my good ear stage-ward, and await my answer. More on Supreme Court
 
The Parking Ticket Geek: CTA Employees Park For Free? Top
Why don't CTA employees have to feed the meters? The CTA is working on the blue line tracks along the back side of Milwaukee Ave. in Wicker Park. And there are a lot of burly dudes working on the project. But it seems some of the crew who drive to the job get out of feeding their meters and can park illegally by sticking a bright yellow or orange CTA safety vest in their window. We get reports of this happening at locations all over the city. According to Kevin, who lives along Milwaukee Ave., "They never seem to get ticketed," despite being parked there every day, eight hours a day, without putting a single quarter in the meter. The reason is a time-honored tradition in Chicago called professional courtesy. Many, if not most, Parking Enforcement Aides (PEA's) will not ticket another city employee's vehicle out of courtesy. Vehicles with M (Municipal) plates or identified by a safety vest, or FOP sticker, etc., are passed over for ticketing because of this tradition of courtesy. Ticketing the cars owned by city workers from another department would stir up a hornet's nest of trouble between the departments. And like our resident PEA Ticketmaster says, "Inter-department wars are ugly and take a while to straighten out." In the above photo, the vehicle on the left is ticketed, while the car with the vest gets a free pass from DOR employees and cops. One guesses that the rest of us putzes not employed by the city will just have to feed our meters or get ticketed. Check out The Expired Meter for even more information and advice about parking, fighting parking tickets and red light tickets in Chicago.
 
James S. Gordon: When Depression is Treated as a Disease Top
Memoirs of depression like Daphne Merkin's in The Sunday Times (May 10, 2009), and for that matter like William Styron's Darkness Visible , make me sad. Of course I feel sadness for the writers' dense and burdened suffering, set off so strikingly against their lucid, often spritely, prose. But more important, and far more troubling, I feel sad for the inadequacy of the therapeutic approaches they use, for the lack of understanding their suffering yields them, and, especially, for the fact that inadequate approaches and limited understanding are offered to readers as "state of the art." Daphne Merkin and her doctors seem to have concluded that depression is a disease characterized by inadequacies in brain chemistry and best treated by drugs that raise the levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin and/or norepinephrine. In fact, the evidence that depression is a disease is mixed at best, and the weight of the research evidence --negative studies on antidepressant drugs have notoriously been unpublished--suggests that antidepressants are little, if any, better than simple placebos. What is absent from Merkin's account, and, most sadly, from her experience, is an effort to address the fundamental biological, psychological and social processes that may precipitate depression and contribute to its persistence: the severely impaired response to stress that may indeed be the consequence of the kind of prolonged early life deprivation and trauma Merkin describes; nutritional deficiencies (apparently untested in Merkin's case) that can cause or contribute even to the most severe depression; and the need for the healing power of sustained and sustaining support and intimacy that may have been absent in early life. Nor do her therapists suggest other powerful, non-pharmacological modalities that are proving effective in significantly improving mood; for example, exercise, which is at least as effective as antidepressant drugs (it appears among other benefits to stimulate neuron growth in areas of the brain where cells have been destroyed by chronic stress and depression); and meditation which enlarges our perspective on the role of suffering in our lives and shifts brain activity from cortical areas connected with pessimism and depression to those associated with happiness and optimism. Finally, the saddest thing about Merkin's account is the passive role she assumed, one which it appears was acquiesced in, if not encouraged, by her therapists. "Do what we say; take the pills we tell you to," they seemed to have said, "and all will be well." In fact, therapeutic interventions in which we actively participate are doubly powerful. They have the kinds of inherent benefits I suggested above. Equally important, acting on our own behalf, working in concert with physicians and therapists who value our efforts, we overcome the helplessness and hopelessness that are the hallmarks of depression. Moving forward, as Merkin finally and unexpectedly does, we discover the possibility of change, to see, perhaps for the first time, light in the darkness which had seemed to surround us.
 
Ted Stevens Partying In D.C., Working On Memoir Top
Oh how the world turns. While his prosecutors are now under investigation for misconduct, the curmudgeonly ex-senator Ted Stevens is back on the Washington party circuit - vindicated, shrimp cocktail style. The famed former senator from Alaska, who narrowly lost reelection in November after he was convicted on corruption charges, showed up at a fancy book party Thursday night for Philadelphia radio talk show host Michael Smerconish. More on Ted Stevens
 
Hoping For A Boy Or Girl? Sweden Legalizes Gender-Based Abortion Top
Now, according to a Swedish medical ruling, if a mother or couple discover the gender of their baby and decide "that's what we were hoping for" they can get an abortion on that basis.
 
Census Bureau Nominee Rules Out Use Of Sampling for 2010 Census Top
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's pick to lead the Census Bureau on Friday ruled out the use of statistical sampling in the 2010 head count, seeking to allay GOP concerns that he might be swayed to put politics over science. Robert M. Groves, a veteran survey researcher from the University of Michigan, also testified during his confirmation hearing that he remains worried about fixing a persistent undercount of hard-to-reach populations, typically minorities living in dense areas who tend to vote for Democrats. He told the Senate Homeland Security committee that the success of the 2010 census will hinge on an aggressive outreach campaign, but did not say whether he would push for a government halt to immigration raids _ as the Census Bureau successfully did in 2000. "This is an area of great concern," Groves said, suggesting a media campaign that might utilize government leaders and even Obama to encourage people to respond. "Groups cannot believe the participation in the census will harm them." Groves, 60, faces a relatively smooth confirmation due partly to Democrats' strong majority in the Senate. But that hasn't stopped House Republicans, who have been vocal in expressing concern about Groves. As a former census associate director, Groves pushed for sampling in the 1990s to make up for an undercount of millions of minorities but was later overruled by the Republican Commerce secretary, who called the move "political tampering." On Friday, Groves said he would not pursue statistical adjustment next year because it is now legally barred for the use of apportioning House seats. Groves also said adjustments won't be used in 2010 to redraw congressional boundaries, because there is simply no time to prepare for it. "I am pursuing this post because I believe strongly that this country needs an objective, nonpartisan, professional Census Bureau," he said. "If the information is believed to be slanted by partisan influence, the credibility of the statistics is destroyed." Republicans are also suspicious after the White House indicated earlier this year that it would assert control over the census to address minority concerns over Obama's initial choice of Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., as Commerce secretary. Gregg later withdrew, partly citing disagreements over the census, and the White House backed off its plan. Under questioning Friday, Groves made clear that he would not tolerate political interference either from congressional Republicans or the White House and will step down from his post if necessary. "Are you prepared to resign if you are asked to act in a way ... to satisfy a political concern?" asked Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the committee. "I promise that after I resign I would be active in stopping the abuse in partisanship," Groves responded. Groves said he planned to work closely with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and a team of experts so he can make the "necessary tactical and quick management decisions" within the broad plans already in place for the census count beginning next April. He did not commit on the question of restricting use of sampling in surveys after 2010. The Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the wording of the federal law barred broad uses of statistical sampling to apportion House seats. Justices, however, indicated that adjustments could be made to the population count when redrawing congressional boundaries and distributing federal money. Census officials have already acknowledged that tens of millions of residents in dense urban areas _ about 14 percent of the U.S. population _ are at high risk of being missed because of language problems and an economic crisis that has displaced homeowners. ___ On the Net: Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov Senate Homeland Security committee: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/
 
Military Commissions: Obama Clarifies Position Top
The White House released a statement Friday afternoon clarifying the president's position on the use of military tribunals: Statement of President Barack Obama on Military Commissions Military commissions have a long tradition in the United States. They are appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war, provided that they are properly structured and administered. In the past, I have supported the use of military commissions as one avenue to try detainees, in addition to prosecution in Article III courts. In 2006, I voted in favor of the use of military commissions. But I objected strongly to the Military Commissions Act that was drafted by the Bush Administration and passed by Congress because it failed to establish a legitimate legal framework and undermined our capability to ensure swift and certain justice against those detainees that we were holding at the time. Indeed, the system of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay had only succeeded in prosecuting three suspected terrorists in more than seven years. Today, the Department of Defense will be seeking additional continuances in several pending military commission proceedings. We will seek more time to allow us time to reform the military commission process. The Secretary of Defense will notify the Congress of several changes to the rules governing the commissions. The rule changes will ensure that: First, statements that have been obtained from detainees using cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation methods will no longer be admitted as evidence at trial. Second, the use of hearsay will be limited, so that the burden will no longer be on the party who objects to hearsay to disprove its reliability. Third, the accused will have greater latitude in selecting their counsel. Fourth, basic protections will be provided for those who refuse to testify. And fifth, military commission judges may establish the jurisdiction of their own courts. These reforms will begin to restore the Commissions as a legitimate forum for prosecution, while bringing them in line with the rule of law. In addition, we will work with the Congress on additional reforms that will permit commissions to prosecute terrorists effectively and be an avenue, along with federal prosecutions in Article III courts, for administering justice. This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Barack Obama
 
Anneli Rufus: Virginity Auctions: Going Once, Going Twice Top
Alina Percea is not the first woman in the world to sell her virginity for cash. She's just the latest to do it and tell the media. The eighteen-year-old Romanian student placed an ad on a German dating site offering her "first time" to the highest bidder. The ad said, "I am a 108lbs, 5ft 6in tall, brown-eyed Romanian girl. I don't smoke and own a certificate from a gynaecologist which says I'm a virgin. I want my first time to be special and not very abrupt. I want to meet a gentle, respectful and generous man." Yeah, abruptness. That old life-ruiner, abruptness, eh? I mean, sex with a stranger, sex for money, sure, but when I ponder abruptness my skin crawls. Doesn't yours? "The Romanian had hoped to raise as much as £50,000 through the controversial sale," the Daily Mail tells us. She ended up getting £8,800. The winner was a 45-year-old Italian businessman who, after learning that he'd won, flew Percea to Venice. She described to reporters how, at the arrivals lounge, he smilingly handed her a box of chocolates, looked young for his age and was nicely dressed. "The two went sightseeing," the Daily Mail continues, "then to a five-star hotel where they had unprotected sex." Percea had "promised in her auction pitch that she would bring documentation proving she was a virgin, and said she would agree to forgo the use of condoms on the condition the winning bidder provided her with certificates proving he was free from STIs." The student, who subsequently took a morning-after pill, told reporters: "I was attracted to him, so I enjoyed it, even though it was quite painful." She didn't make nearly as much money as she wanted to: "I hoped I'd be able to have an apartment in town. But now I will live with my parents while I go to university." I wonder what her parents think about this auction thing. I wonder what I think about it too. I turn the story around and around and, like a Magic 8-Ball, it conveys a different message every time. I think: This is basically sex work glamorized with "gentle" and "respectful," sightseeing and candy. Then I think: What's wrong with sex work? Then I think: Nothing, if she's her own boss. But -- But what? It's not as if we who never sold ours but gave it free to college guys who didn't wash their hair have memories worth treasuring. Were our "firsts" better -- nobler, nicer, more authentic -- than hers because we knew the guys (did we?) and/or because no cash was exchanged? What is sex worth to whom? As a scavenger, I spend lots of time thinking of money and how not to spend it. How did Percea decide she was worth £50,000? That's around US $100,000, and see? I said she was worth when she wasn't selling her whole self, body and soul. She was selling one act, once. Still, £50,000? At her age, I had incredibly low self-esteem. Whatever price I would have put on myself, way back when, would have been more telling, and more wretched, than free. If Percea wanted £50,000 and got just £8,800, would I have sought $100 and got $17.60? The Magic 8-Ball asks: Oh, so you envy her? Is that it? I think the specter of envy haunts the dialogue whenever these stories appear. This past year, other young women around the world have posted similar sell-my-virginity campaigns. We're horrified. We're morally outraged. We wrestle thoughts about fame and the media. We yearn to pull these young women aside and whisper: Wait. Someone special is out there for you -- maybe." Then, realizing that we are marveling at this novel idea for making college bucks, we shock ourselves and want to kick ourselves, ashamed, around the block. Among many young women, the general attitude about virginity is "How can I get rid of it?" An urgency, but not the looking-forward-to-it kind of urgency. Rather, the kind of urgency one feels awaiting root canals. This has been true since the late '70s at least. In postmodern society, we mock initiation rites. Our ancestors took them for granted. Approaching each new stage of life, our ancestors prepared to undergo ordeals and ceremonies marking them as changed. Each time, our ancestors might have been a bit scared, yet surely they took comfort in the solidarity of knowing all their peers and elders went through the exact same rites -- with the exact same scriptures, drama, dances and pain that rendered the passage sacred. Today we mock such rituals as backward and dogmatic. But are Alina Percea and her ilk reinventing it, accidentally-on-purpose? Is the online virginity auction the initiation rite of a new age? More on Sex
 
Guatemalan Man Arrested After Sending Twitter Message Top
Police in Guatemala have arrested a Twitter user and confiscated his computer for "inciting financial panic" after he urged people to remove funds from a state-owned bank. More on Twitter
 
Cory Booker: A Great American Servant Top
There is too much disagreement for disagreement's sake. In a time of persistent challenges that still call into question our most sacred aspirations as a country, we cannot afford shallow callous divisiveness in our public debate. We become distracted from productive labors by our perceived opponents; we become focused on them and not on our larger calling to advance our nation; our debate becomes more about scoring points against an adversary and less about advancing our common cause. And we DO have a common cause. In college, I was a fiercely committed Democrat -- meeting Jack Kemp, then Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, challenged my blind partisanship. I met Secretary Kemp in East Palo Alto, California where I was working with youth. He was a Republican, I was a Democrat yet somehow he cut right through my then natural state of cynicism. I must confess that I almost regretted that I immediately liked this Bush appointed HUD Secretary. My mother has a saying, "who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you say." It wasn't his gift for gab that struck me but the power of his ideas and his authentic spirit. Kemp was clearly passionate about urban spaces and the people of cities. He immediately engaged me (a college student) in a direct candid manner; he appealed to my compassion and my logic. And more than that, it was obvious that he was not in East Palo Alto looking for a photo op surrounded by people of color -- he was there to listen, to share his ideas and hear concerns. After that meeting, I sought out more about Jack Kemp. I ordered some of his speeches and read what I could. I found I disagreed with him on some matters of policy, but reading and listening to him, I found that he always challenged me in the most productive of ways. My study of Kemp encouraged me to learn more about subjects from tax policy to international trade and, on occasion, I had to yield to the strength of his ideas and change my views. From my position as a Democrat, I began to look at him with more affection than some within my own party who were great with rhetoric but seemed to lack a substantive analysis of issues. Though I had met him only once, following Jack Kemp was a gift; he challenged me, forced me to defend positions and invited me to engage in more dispassionate objective analysis of facts and less personalized partisan assaults on individuals that had me, in the past, often leaving ideas completely ignored. Even to the end of his life, this was how the man conducted himself - he didn't believe in ad hominem attacks but wanted to keep everyone, even those within his own party, focused on what was important (see his defense of Barack Obama against Sean Hannity ). As Mayor of an American city, I can confidently say that one of the more successful federal/state urban initiatives of the past quarter century has been the creation of the Urban Enterprise Zone. ( See also Bill Maher and Kemp mention ). Jack Kemp was the evangelist for this idea and sponsor of the legislation in Congress which created the zones. Urban enterprise zones, soon adopted by many states, have driven billions of dollars into poor urban areas all across the United States. The next time I saw Jack Kemp after our East Palo Alto meeting was when I was a Newark municipal councilman. We began a friendship and, as always, he challenged me, but now (I'd like to think) I could challenge him a little as well (and felt comfortable enough to tease him about his hair and my lack thereof). I was so encouraged by how much he seemed to be invested in Newark and the success of our City. He really believed that our nation could never claim to have achieved herself unless we made the opportunity and promise of America accessible to everyone. He freely admitted that we, as a country, were falling short and that there was great urgency in the fight to make America real to everyone. He and I bonded on everything from the urgent need of education reform to what many must view as his courageous beliefs on immigration. When I first ran for Mayor , Kemp joined with another one of my political heroes, Bill Bradley, to host one of my early fundraisers in Washington, D.C. These two great men, both athletes, carried with them an intimate, almost visceral, understanding that black or white, Catholic or Jew, Republican or Democrat, we are all on the same team and we will either win or loose together. Jack Kemp, thank you for helping this Democrat to be Mayor of this great American city. Thank you for helping to make me far, far more of an American than I am a Democrat. Thank you for challenging me to think first; consider ideas before individuals; and to always stay focused on the urgent unfinished cause of our country. Jack Kemp, you were a great American servant.
 
Arjuna Ardagh: Wellness Retreat with John Gray Top
I've just come home from one of the kindest things I've done for my body in 52 years. Colors look much brighter and sharper than they have before, I can smell flowers and food distinctly, there's a gentle hunger in my belly that's no longer a sense of craving, but a health instinct for nourishment. When I look over at Chameli, my wife, she looks 10 years younger: her skin is glowing like she's lit up inside and she's probably lost 7-10 pounds in the last few days. For the first time in a long time my body seems to really know what it wants to eat, its natural intelligence has been restored. Don't ask me what I've been smoking, or what pills I've been popping. I've just come home from four days at John Gray's ranch on the Mendocino coast. You probably know John Gray's name as the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus , the best selling relationship book of all time. That book has been praised by some as the savior of their marriage and ridiculed by others as overly simplistic, but everyone has heard of it. That breakthrough book has spawned multiple others. Just as Gray's fame as a relationship expert is unparalleled, so his expertise as a health and anti-aging educator is little known. The four-day retreat, which is scheduled once a month at the ranch, combines several exquisitely crafted elements together into a blend that, in my experience, is unparalleled. First of all, there is the "Super-Cleanse." With a couple of days of pre-cleanse preparation, during your stay at the retreat you eat no solid food. Instead you take several "Super-Cleanse" drinks per day as well as a host of supplements that helps the body to eliminate toxins without the cravings, headaches and light-headedness that I have experienced before with cleansing. The second element at the ranch is John's personal state-of-the art-spa, overlooking a magnificent 180-degree view of the Pacific Ocean. Two outdoor tubs offer a full body iodine soak (which restore the much needed mineral often depleted from out body by excessive chlorine use) and another super oxygenated lithium soak which relaxes the brain while promoting cellular cleansing of the whole body. Several oxygenated infrared saunas allow a cleansing sweat without the excessive temperature and humidity that we often associate with saunas. The marble steam room with crystal benches completes the experience . We got two hours in the spa utilizing all of these modalities, every day we were there. The third element of the retreat is by far the most valuable, and worth the investment, on its own. John Gray is onsite and sharing a sometimes overwhelming wealth of information from 8:30 in the morning till 10 at night. Since the retreat is limited to 40 participants, everybody there gets to interact with John personally. Fueled partly by his own successful battle with an infection that blinded him in one eye, John has become a walking encyclopedia of effective, alternative, cutting-edge therapies. From oxygen therapy to PGX, and from hormone balancing to correct ph levels, you get to discover the whole gamut of what works. There is information offered here that you won't find anywhere else. Chameli and I have been faithful users of homeopathy, auyveda, acupuncture, as well as following a consistently conscientious organic diet, but there were things we learned in this retreat that turned a lot of our conventional understanding upside down. "Drinking too much water, if you are not eating enough sea salt, will dehydrate you," "intelligent use of fasting stimulates HGH and will help you to build stronger muscles". I found myself repeatedly asking myself, "Why didn't anyone ever tell me this before?" The last ingredient to the retreat is that it is generously peppered with John's 30 years of insight about intimate relationship and sexuality: delivered with humor, and an extraordinary generosity of spirit and time. If you do this retreat with your spouse or partner, you'll get a deepening of connection you never expected. I know I know, this is turning into an infomercial, and I rarely turn my writings into unqualified endorsements, but in these days of watching the budget and sometimes feeling anxious or stressed, here's something you can do for yourself and your relationship, relatively inexpensively, the benefits of which will last for months if not for a lifetime. I wholeheartedly recommend you to check out John Gray's wellness retreat. More on Wellness
 
Suu Kyi's Detention Sparks International Uproar Top
YANGON, Myanmar — The Norwegian committee that propelled Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi into the world spotlight by awarding her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 called Friday for her immediate release from prison. "Her recent detention in prison is totally unacceptable. She has done nothing wrong," said a statement from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which rarely comments on past laureates. "We sent this because it is a matter of the life and health of a laureate," its nonvoting secretary, Geir Lundestad, told The Associated Press. The protest added to a storm of international appeals to Myanmar's military government to free the 63-year-old Suu Kyi and accelerate genuine moves toward the restoration of democracy in the country, which has been under military rule virtually continuously since 1962. Suu Kyi was taken Thursday from the lakeside home where she is kept under house arrest to Insein Prison to be charged with violating the terms of her detention by allegedly sheltering an American man said to have swum across a lake last week to sneak into her residence. She and two women helpers who live with her are set to be tried Monday. Suu Kyi has already spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention without trial for her nonviolent promotion of democracy. She was scheduled to be freed May 27 after six consecutive years of incarceration but now faces up to five years in prison if convicted, according to one of her lawyers, Hla Myo Myint. She is now is being held in a "guest house" within the prison compound during her trial proceedings, said another of her lawyers, Kyi Win. The charges are widely seen as a pretext for the ruling junta to keep Suu Kyi detained past an election it has scheduled for next year as the culmination of its snail's pace "roadmap to democracy," which has been criticized as a fig leaf for continued military control. Many other prominent dissidents received long jail terms last year, which could hurt any opposition effort to contest the polls. The Nobel committee statement urged the immediate release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. "Free elections should be held as soon as possible," it said. The international uproar against Suu Kyi's detention is hardly unprecedented, as Western nations and human rights groups have long offered support for Suu Kyi in her David vs. Goliath battle with the generals, whose regime holds more than 2,000 political prisoners, according to estimates by the U.N. and independent human rights groups. But even as the international pressure has grown _ peaking in September 2007, when the army violently quashed mass pro-democracy demonstrations _ the junta has shown little inclination to compromise. Despite political and economic sanctions imposed by the United States and many Western nations, it can rely on support from neighboring China. Myanmar's other big neighbor, India, also tries to keep in the generals' good graces to counter the influence of China, its regional rival. Many Southeast Asian neighbors are also inclined to hold a live-and-let-live policy toward Myanmar, with which some have significant trade and investment links. Neither India nor China have officially commented on the latest moves against Suu Kyi. Singapore, however, called it a setback for Myanmar's political reconciliation process. "We reiterate the call for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from detention," said a Singapore Foreign Affairs Ministry statement, also mentioning concern that her health could deteriorate in prison. Suu Kyi has recently been ill, suffering from dehydration and low blood pressure. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was deeply troubled by Myanmar's decision to charge Suu Kyi for a "baseless crime," and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "deeply disturbed" by the development. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for her immediate release. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch accused the junta of taking "advantage of an intruder's bizarre stunt to throw Aung San Suu Kyi into one of Burma's most notorious and squalid jails on trumped-up charges." John William Yettaw, 53, of Falcon, Missouri, swam across a lake to see Suu Kyi for reasons that remain unclear. He is also under arrest and to be tried next week for violating the security cordon around Suu Kyi's house. His wife, Betty Yettaw, described her husband as eccentric but peace-loving and "not political at all." According to his ex-wife Yvonne Yettaw, he said he went to Asia to work on a psychology paper about forgiveness. She said he belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons, but that it was unlikely he went to proselytize for the church or convert Suu Kyi. _____ Associated Press writers Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck in Bangkok, Doug Mellgren and Maria Sudekum Fisher in Kansas City, Missouri contributed to this story.
 
Top House GOP Recruiter Wants Pro-Choice Candidates Top
The Republican Party is looking at a decidedly more diverse list of potential candidates this year. Several top GOP officials have suggested recently that the party needs to be less ideologically rigid in order to be relevant, and they are trying to recruit a broad array candidates -- even some pro-choice candidates -- to win them seats in the mid-term elections: California Representative Kevin McCarthy, the chief recruiter for House Republicans, said he wants his party to select candidates based less on ideology and more on their chances of winning. The goal, he said, is to seek out prospects who are ethnically diverse, female, less partisan and even supportive of abortion rights. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, for his part, "didn't appear to rule it out when asked if he would back pro-choice candidates." He told Bloomberg News, "The essence of being a Republican is the belief in free markets, the belief in individual responsibility, the belief in the faith of the individual. This is what our party is about." This new openness to moderation is not sitting well among conservatives, who most recently expressed outrage over the National Republican Senate Committee's decision to endorse moderate Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's Senate bid. NRSC Chairman John Cornyn brushed off the criticism though, saying the group's primary goal is to win seats and "that it is pursuing candidates who best fit their states," the Associated Press reported . Republicans have to "get away from this attitude that people who disagree 20 or 30 percent of the time somehow are not welcome in the Republican Party, particularly if we're going to maintain our relevance and grow our numbers." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on GOP
 
Pelosi's Charge That CIA Lied Sparks Debate About Criminal Lawbreaking Top
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's declaration that the CIA misled her on the use of waterboarding on suspected-terrorist detainees has sparked a wave of debate in political and legal circles as to whether or not laws may have been broken. At issue are two distinct threads of criminal and constitutional law. Pelosi has alleged that the CIA essentially lied to her by insisting that waterboarding was not in use in the fall of 2002. Subsequent evidence has shown it was employed that August. If that is the case, lawyers say, the Bush administration may have violated criminal statute 18USC1001, which makes it illegal to give false statements to Congress. According to the statute , if a member of the "executive, legislative, or judicial branch" of the government "knowingly and willfully"... (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; ... they "shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both." Whether this definition qualifies in Pelosi's case is debatable. One complication is the fact that the allegedly misleading briefing was not conducted under oath or during congressional inquiry. "There is a federal statute criminalizing false testimony to congress," said Michael Dorf, who cited the Iran-Contra testimony of Oliver North and the steroid testimony of Roger Clemens as two examples. "But the people who talked to Speaker Pelosi may not have been under oath." Added Bruce Fein, the associate deputy attorney general during the Reagan administration and prominent civil libertarian: "Typically if you make a false statement with an attempt to mislead or obstruct the agenda of Congress than yes, that is a crime. Usually, however, it is a crime when it is to obstruct a congressional inquiry... That said, I have no doubt that Congress could enact a law saying that the executive cannot provide misleading information during a briefing." Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, said that there were "a variety of possible charges that can be brought here," though he noted that most of the time "misleading statements are treated with legislative response" -- such as budget cuts or codifying new standards for briefings. But, from a political standpoint, he, like Fein, insisted that any case arguing that laws were broken would be muddled by the fact that Pelosi is not currently calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's use of waterboarding. "In this case Pelosi is charging that she was knowingly misled about a war crime," he said. "Now the problem with her latest explanation is that it is hard to express outrage over false statements regarding war crimes when you have personally blocked the investigations of the war crimes." There is, however, a second legal argument that could come into play if it is proven that Pelosi was kept in the dark about the use of waterboarding in the fall of 2002. Under the National Security Act of 1947 and, likewise, the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, the Executive Branch is required to ensure "that the congressional intelligence committees are kept 'fully and currently informed' of U.S. intelligence activities, including any 'significant anticipated intelligence activity." A former Bush administration official familiar with CIA briefings said that it was "inconceivable that [the agency] would have briefed the congressional leaders on the program and implied that the program had not yet begun." But former Senate Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham told the Huffington Post that he too was not informed of waterboarding. "[The CIA] was under a legal obligation to ensure that the intelligence committees were kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including anticipated intelligence acts," he added. "They did not brief the full intelligence committees, not only on extensive interrogations but also on the detainee program or on the warrantless wiretapping program." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! More on Nancy Pelosi
 
Abby L. Ferber: Workplace Bullying: Are Women Their Own Worst Enemies? Top
Bullying is on our minds these days. Bullying in schools, bullying in the workplace, let's face it, bullying is a problem in all organizations. But lately some of the "reporting" I'm reading does more to contribute to the problem than help us redress it. For example, in the New York Times article " Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work ," Mickey Meece examines the phenomenon of bullying among women. While feminism and the womens' movement have taught us to consider the gendered dimensions of significant social problems, there are many ways one can explore gender. This article provides a great example of how not to do it. Ask a researcher who actually studies gender and they will tell you that gender is about relationships of power that shape every aspect of our daily lives. Yet too many newspaper and magazine articles fail to examine what gender is, and assume it is some set of essential differences between men and women (which may tie to chromosomes, reproductive organs, cultural differences, or some other set of characteristics, depending upon the moment and who you ask). Too often they rely upon commonly held assumptions about gender differences that have no research to support them. This article is a case in point, and these assumptions about gender end up distorting the reality of bullying. The author starts by introducing the problem of bullying in the workplace: " It's probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear ". Despite this fact, however, the article focuses exclusively on the fact that women also bully women, which for some reason is presented as both more surprising, and more disturbing. After all, " a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time ." The issue is examined as another example of the all too common "Women are their own worst enemy" story we have all heard before. Suggesting that women themselves are undermining feminism's goal of advancement for women, Meece asks, " In the name of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, what is going on here ?" Well, let me tell you what is going on here, because this article certainly doesn't . Let's start by looking at the data in this study: The authors conclude that " Bullying is mostly same-gender harassment ," because 32% of cases are between men, and 29% are between women. But let's look at those numbers another way. Men bully both men (54% of the time) and women (46% of the time), whereas women primarily bully women (71% of the time). And keep in mind that 60% of bullies are men, and 57% of the targets are women. So what does this really tell us? It tells us that this is not primarily a problem within genders; framing it that way only serves to obfuscate the issue. Instead, this data reaffirms what we already know about the phenomenon of bullying: bullies tend to be those in power, who target people with less power. This fact is supported even further by the study's finding that 72% of bullies are bosses , while the lower one drops on the career ladder, the less likely it is that they will bully. So bullying is a tool of the powerful. When I was a graduate student taking a class on the sociology of the family, I always remember my professor telling us "nagging is a tool of the powerless." After all, if one had the power to actually make others follow one's commands, they would not need to resort to nagging (does "honey, would you pleeeeaaaassseeee take out the garbage" sound familiar?) So nagging is a tool of the weak, and bullying is a tool of the powerful. Think about it -- if the bully were not in a position of power, the bullying would not be very successful. The fact that the bully has greater access to resources, control and influence over the opinions of others is where their power lies. The same thing is true on the playground -- it is most often the geeky nerd who gets bullied by the more popular kids. And bullying behavior increases when those in power feel that it is threatened. So why do women most often bully other women? Because they are rarely in positions of power over men. According to the article: " After five decades of striving for equality, women make up more than 50 percent of management, professional and related occupations, says Catalyst, the nonprofit research group. And yet, its 2008 census found, only 15.7 percent of Fortune 500 officers and 15.2 percent of directors were women ." In addition, women are more likely to work in careers and workplaces that are primarily populated by other women. Men, on the other hand, wield power in the workplace over both women and other men. Instead of examining the larger dynamics of power at work here, the article focuses on women as a group, asking why they bully other women. We are left with numerous problematic conclusions: Women's relationships with each other are problematic and women need to learn to better support each other. Women are the problem themselves, and they are becoming too much like men as they move into positions of power. Bullying itself is not a gendered phenomenon, men bully men and women bully women, so we are all affected by it. Bullying by men is natural, and not in need of examination. We should expect that kind of behavior from men. Looking at the exact same data, however, informed by an understanding of how the dynamics of gender and power operate, a very different story can be told. The reality is that: Bullying is about power, and people bully those they have power over. Bullying increases when people feel their power threatened. Our unequal gender system contributes to the problem of bullying because it reinforces the idea that some people should naturally have more power than others; that men are by nature more aggressive, and women should be more nurturing and supportive. And bullying in the workplace contributes to economic inequality between men and women. As this study makes clear, bullying is a very serious problem, with real consequences: 40% of the time, the target ends up quitting her job (remember, most targets are women). So bullying is a tool to maintain inequality. The way in which the story of the data is told by the New York Times ends up hiding the real problems and blaming the victims. If our analyses are not informed by research and analyses of gender and power dynamics, we end up contributing to the problem, rather than developing real solutions.
 
Iman: Michelle Obama No 'Great Beauty' Top
US First Lady Michelle Obama is not a "great beauty," but will "just get better with age," Iman, one of the first black supermodels, says in a magazine interview. "Mrs Obama is not a great beauty," the Somali-born model and wife of rocker David Bowie tells Parade magazine's Sunday issue, reflecting on the first black US first lady, who is a lawyer by training and a former executive. More on Michelle Obama
 
CIA Director Panetta: Records Show CIA Officers Briefed Lawmakers Truthfully Top
WASHINGTON — CIA Director Leon Panetta says agency records show CIA officers briefed lawmakers truthfully in 2002 on methods of interrogating terrorism suspects, but it is up to Congress to reach its own conclusions about what happened. Panetta's message to agency employees came one day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi said bluntly the CIA had misled her and other lawmakers about the use of waterboarding and other harsh techniques seven years ago. Panetta wrote that the political debates about interrogation "reached a new decibel level" with the charges. He urged agency employees to "ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission." More on Nancy Pelosi
 
Traveling Through Russia By Train Top
In a special report for CNN's Eye on Russia week, Moscow Correspondent Matthew Chance travels across the vast country from the northern port of Murmansk in the Arctic to the southern city of Sochi on the Black Sea. Here Chance recalls some highlights from his epic journey. More on Moving America
 
Rob Kall: Get out in the Streets and FIGHT for Universal, Single Payer Health Care Top
A family member's brutal beating by a gang has me extra pissed. Time to get out in the streets to demand universal health insurance like every other first world nation has. There are too many horror stories affecting too many Americans. It's time to pay a LOT more attention to Single Payer Universal healthcare, time to get out in the streets to send a strong, clear message to congress and the White House. It's one of the most important issues facing the U.S. today. It affects the nation's industries' abilities to compete and it is an immoral, shameful situation we are now in, where people must steal, lie or lose their homes and go bankrupt so stinking, despicable politicians like Max Baucus can line their campaign bank accounts with health industry lobbyist money. Over a million Americans a year are going bankrupt because of health issues. That is outrageous. We should be out in the streets and not just marching. Every uninsured person, every person who has a family member who has gone bankrupt or avoided getting checked when they should have -- should be out in the streets protesting and more -- a lot more. Too many lives have been ruined, too many people have died, too many families have been unbearably traumatized. It is time for Americans to tell congress that they are not going to get away with this shit anymore. OEN writer Jennifer Hathaway offers a great idea based on the CSA -- community supported agriculture mode, in her article, "Single Payer or CSM?" . Just imagine if enough communities started their own health care programs. We're talking about it in Bucks county PA, where I live. You know what would happen? The goddamned US congress would protect the effing health insurers and make it illegal. Right? No! We need to put the fear of god into these corpo-whores. Think I'm pissed? Hell yes. This economic crisis includes the city of Philly being short about a billion for its budget. Maybe that's why, when my son called the 911 emergency line Saturday night, no police ever showed up. My son was beat up by a teen gang over the weekend when he went to defend his female roommate, who the gang had dragged to the ground and was pummelling. He suffered a lot of punches to the head and the rest of his body and a nasty laceration over his eye. Now, he's feeling a lot of pain in his ribs. Unfortunately, at 25, he's too old to be on my family plan. He just graduated with a degree and is looking for a job, (need a sound engineer? He's awesome) so he's uninsured. Do you have any idea what MRIs and CAT scans cost if you are uninsured -- about four times more than the big insurers pay. That's another immoral act. The big insurers insist that they get the best rates and that the insured pay a huge amount more. So my son didn't go to the hospital to rule out concussion or broken ribs. Fortunately, his Mom is an RN and a close friend is an ER doc, so we were not operating blind. Most uninsured people are not so fortunate. They go to the hospital and end up owing thousands of dollars. That doesn't happen in Canada, France, Italy, Germany, England, Sweden, Holland, Japan, Taiwan... and that's why the USA is not among the top 30 nations, in terms of healthcare. It's time we change all that. It's clear that the senate and Obama won't do it unless they see that this is pissing Americans off more than any other issue. The only way to show them is to get out on the streets, to call their offices a real lot, to go to meetings, to put bumper stickers on your cars, wear tee shirts, tell your friends and family members that this is immoral and even sinful. It's going to take a real lot of work and we need to do it very soon. There will be votes coming this summer and fall and the multi-trillion dollar health industry will fight us with ads and disinformation campaigns like we've never seen before. Some activists and organizations are saying that there's no hope for Universal single payer so we should give up on it and support the "public" option. The problem is, if you give up on single payer, you could be giving up on it for the foreseeable future. I say fight hard for what is the right thing and that's single payer, nothing less. There are so many healthcare horror stories. Some of them aren't about illness or bankruptcy. Some are about people taking horrible jobs, just so they get healthcare. Americans deserve better than what Obama and the Congress are offering. Even if you have healthcare, it's second rate compared to what the poorest Taiwanese, Brit, German or Frenchman get. It's time we rise up and shout that we won't take it anymore. Some observations: Some will argue that we are moving toward universal, non-single payer. Those models depend too heavily on employer contributions. Putting the load on employers is destroying one after another American industry. Being a part of the WTO and NAFTA, there is no way we can compete with industries in countries where health care is nationalized. Yes, single payer universal health care is socialized medicine. It is not socialism. It is just like we do for police, fire-departments, roads, schools.. and it is a huge, despicable lie when right wingers try to frame it as something akin to communism-- a desperate lie which serves only the giant health care corporations. When someone says single payer universal health insurance is socialism, simply reply "only to morons and right wing traitors who put corporations before country. " cross posted from OpEdNEws.com
 
Catholic Archbishop Writes Obama: Go To Notre Dame, Ignore "Strident Outcries" Of Conservatives Top
Though dozens of his brother bishops have said they were "scandalized'' or "in shock and deep distress'' that our pro-choice president will speak and be honored at the University of Notre Dame this weekend, retired Archbishop John R. Quinn of San Francisco has let President Obama know that not all pro-life Catholics -- or even all strongly pro-life Catholic prelates - see things that way. More on Barack Obama
 
Jim Wallis: Justice for Vieques Top
For more than sixty years - from 1941 to 2003 - the U.S. Navy used the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a testing ground for its weapons. While they have refused to disclose the total amount, it is known that in the fifteen years from 1984-1998, more than 80 million pounds of explosives were dropped on the small island. The people of Vieques, accompanied by supporters from the U.S. and elsewhere, mounted a series of protests and advocacy over those years - many of them covered in Sojourners. Those efforts finally succeeded in 2003, when the Bush administration permanently ended the use of Vieques as a target range. And then, another struggle began. Due to the years of exposure to toxic metals and chemicals found in weaponry, a health crisis has exploded on Vieques. The people have a 30% higher rate of cancer, a 95% higher rate of cirrhosis of the liver, a 381% higher rate of hypertension, and a 41% higher rate of diabetes than the similar inhabitants of the main island of Puerto Rico. The infant morality rate is 25% higher for babies born on Vieques. These diseases are all indications of heavy metal poisoning, and scientific studies have traced them to the contaminants from munitions found in the land, air, and water. In response, the people of Vieques have filed a complaint against the U.S. Navy in federal district court in Puerto Rico, seeking compensatory damages. The Navy has until Monday to respond to the complaint. The question now is whether the Justice Department will allow a hearing on the merits or the complaint, or move to dismiss the claims on the ground of sovereign immunity - "the king can do no wrong." That would be a travesty of justice. The Navy should not be allowed to evade the truth about its illegal actions by hiding under the cloak of immunity. The people of Vieques - U.S. citizens - have suffered greatly at the hands of their government. Their claims for compensation deserve, at the very least, a fair hearing in court. The Justice Department must allow the case to proceed, and not seek to dismiss it by a claim of sovereign immunity. Justice demands no less. Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening , Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com . Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis
 
Jim Wallis: Love Your Neighbor, Love the Earth Top
The industrialized world's collective failure to both regulate pollution and curb gross overconsumption has put millions and billions of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people at increased risk of hunger, thirst, flooding, and disease. The failure of Christians to live up to the God-given mandate to "serve and preserve" the earth and be good stewards of the resources God has given us means an additional failure to live out God's mandate to care for the poor. We cannot claim to care for the poor while we turn our backs on our role in the destruction of the most basic resources our neighbors need for survival. Love for your neighbor and love for the planet on which your neighbor lives cannot be separated. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , the world's leading authority on the issue, an additional 40 to 170 million poor people are at risk of hunger and malnutrition this century, and 1 to 2 billion people already in poor areas could see further reduction in their water supplies. More than 100 million people could be affected by coastal flooding. These dangers are not long off. In Africa, 75 to 250 million will face water scarcity by 2020, and crop yields could be reduced by 50 percent in some areas. All these changes could quickly produce a refugee crisis with as many as 200 million displaced persons by 2050. This reality, while depressing, comes with a sign of hope. According to a recent poll sponsored by Faith in Public Life and Oxfam America, 71 percent of Catholics and nearly two-thirds of white evangelicals believe there is solid evidence that the earth is getting warmer, and nearly eight in 10 Americans and roughly the same percentage of Christians believe that we have an obligation to care for God's creation by supporting stricter environmental laws and regulations. Nearly seven in 10 Americans and a similar number of Catholics and white evangelicals believe that climate change is making life harder for the world's poorest because of drought, famine, and crop failure, and even more of that same group -- nearly three quarters -- support helping the world's poorest people adapt to these changes. Jim Ball, my friend and founder of the Evangelical Environment Network , described to me the other day the uphill fight he used to have in churches to get Christians to pay attention to the environment. That, he says, has changed significantly over the past few years to a broad acceptance of the message of "creation care" and the direct connection that care for the planet has to care for the poor. This summer, Congress will, for the first time, vote on comprehensive climate change legislation. The American Clean Energy and Security Act is now being debated in a House committee, and much of its shape, thrust, and impact are still being discussed and decided upon. The goal of the legislation will be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through setting a cap on them and requiring businesses to hold permits to emit them. Just like you pay the city for the garbage you create by paying for sanitation services, large industries will have to pay for the garbage (greenhouse gases) they throw away into the air we all breathe. The more they throw away, the more they are charged; the less they throw away, the more they can save. If they really cut back, they can even make money by selling their extra permits to pollute to their less clean neighbors. Comprehensive climate change legislation must prioritize care for creation, not the special-interest lobbyists on both sides of the aisle who are working to pick apart this legislation. In addition, poor people, both at home and abroad, must be supported with "adaptation" resources to ensure that the cost of this legislation does not fall unduly on their shoulders. The world's poor will need resources to "adapt" -- to move away from or change living structures in at-risk coastal areas, use irrigation technologies in drought areas, or even mosquito nets for areas in which malaria will become a new or increased risk. They will also need support as certain resources -- fossil fuels or products dependent upon fossil fuels -- increase in price due to more significant regulation. Our voice is crucial in this process and input is greatly needed today. In December, the U.S. will join other countries to discuss an international climate treaty in Copenhagen. With strong leadership from our country, in both word and deed, this could be a transformational conference and result in a climate treaty with some teeth and real impact. The scriptures do not directly address the benefits of coal vs. nuclear vs. solar power, or carbon taxes vs. carbon markets, or appropriate fuel-efficiency levels for mid-size sedans. But scriptures do make clear priorities for Christians that should frame and guide this debate. With any legislation, policy, or personal behavior we should ask two questions: Does this further our God-given mandate to "serve and preserve" God's creation and acknowledge that we are not owners of the earth but the earth's caretakers? How do our decisions affect the world's most vulnerable people? Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening , Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com . Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis More on Health
 
Jan Phillips: Reframing the Crisis: A Wildfire of Opportunity Top
Imagine what it would feel like if , when you turned on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News, instead of seeing interviews with politicians, political pundits and economic analysts, you watched interviews with poets, visionaries, philosophers who helped us make sense of these tumultuous times. Imagine hearing people address the spiritual nature of this crisis, speak to the emotions such times trigger, provide us with a new lens for understanding the vast complexities this systemic collapse is bringing to light. It is not simply a material crisis we are weathering. It is not only about money; in fact, that is the least of it, really. We're facing the biggest decisions we've ever faced as co-creators of Western civilization and American culture: will we take care of each other? As a so-called Judeo-Christian society, will we actually embody the tenets of our faith that ask us to care for others as we care for our own, to share our wealth, to empower the poor? If so, then this very upheaval is a first step in that direction. Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev once wrote, "The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question." And it's really the spiritual questions that are on the table now, though one would never know it listening to the daily news. We are going through a dark night of the soul akin to September 11, but without the kinship, without the expression of our soul-disturbing grief, without a resounding public acknowledgement that the twin towers of capitalism and globalization as we have known it have collapsed in a rubble all around us. We are at a threshold, a turning point--many of us fearful, jobless, steps away from homelessness. And weary as we are, it is our time to be creative, to be vocal, to imagine together the kind of world we want to live in. None of us were educated for this task. We were taught what to think, not how. We were taught to be suspect of anything foreign, un-American, non-religious, but this is the very moment when we need to transcend those fears and entertain every new idea that points to fairness and opportunity for everyone. A huge opportunity for breakthrough right now is in the business environment where there is a collective force, a compelling question, and a sense of urgency. This is a defining moment for leaders, an opportunity to tap into the spiritual energy and creative potential of the workforce. It is a time for collective engagement, community inquiry and company-wide involvement in the search for new solutions. It is a time to address the spiritual nature of our crisis, to appeal to the souls and imaginations of the people gathered, and to ask the questions that cause people to rise up in all their glory and bring their whole hearts to the table: not how can we be the best IN the world, but how can we be the best FOR the world? How can we reframe our questions in such a way that people are inspired by the inquiry? How do we get our teams to embody the idea that waste is food and to conjure up new ideas for sustainable practices? How do we transform ourselves into a triple-bottom line entity? These are spiritual questions because they involve the whole being, the whole planet, the whole human family. We're in a crisis because we failed to address the whole when all our attention was on profit alone. That world is over. That paradigm will never resurrect. We have evolved beyond that thinking as a human organism as it does not take into account the entire human body, the whole group of us. The questions now are bigger than profit, bigger than returns on investment, bigger than individual success. When the finger is cut, even the toe cells respond. As the neural cells of this planet, we are reorganizing ourselves for the benefit of every cell. It's how nature works. Think of wildfires, which are a natural part of terrestrial ecosystems. Wildfire eliminates dead and decayed plant and tree matter, enriching the soil and ensuring that healthier trees have less competition for limited nutrients. What looks like a disaster to us is actually an organic win/win to the forest. So these are our wildfire times. Yes, it's frightening, disconcerting, heated and punishing, but what an opportunity for new growth! Jan Phillips, author of The Art of Original Thinking-The Making of a Thought Leader, is a consultant to businesses and organizations who are committed to bringing some heart and soul into the workplace. http://www.janphillips.com
 
Brooke Shields Upset With Media Glare Top
NEW YORK — Brooke Shields says she's frightened and frustrated by the media storm the Kiefer Sutherland arrest has dumped on her doorstep _ and really doesn't understand why she's being brought into the situation at all. Sutherland was charged last week with head-butting designer Jack McCollough at a Manhattan nightclub. Shields was there, and reports have said the incident was over her. Police have said they want to question Shields. At an event Thursday night to promote The Chain of Confidence, an organization that sponsors girls and promotes positive attitudes in women, Shields expressed frustration that she has been linked to the case. "I am always interested in the fact that I can be minding my own business. I can be in London doing a play and things could happen. It is inexplicable to me," she said. "I can't make any comment legally because of my lawyers and everything like that," she continued. "I am always amazed when I am involved in something like The Chain of Confidence, the obsession with an issue like this versus really what we are talking about. It is not as sexy maybe, but it is so much more important. I am always amazed by the fact. I just shake my head." Shields, 42, said she is also upset the paparazzi are monitoring her since the case developed. "It is frightening and shocking the access people have to everybody else. They are camped outside of my house," she said. "I am shocked and I feel like I have already been through so much that I am fortified in longevity. To me I am not going anywhere. If it hasn't thrown me yet, it is not going to throw me now." ___ On the Net: http://www.chainofconfidence.com/
 

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