Thursday, May 7, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Paul McRandle: Clearing the Air in LA Top
Last week's release of the American Lung Association's State of the Air report highlighted how far we still have to go in handling our smog problem. Given that air pollution is one of the longest recognized environmental health hazards--the ancient Greeks fought off miasma from rotting debris--the fact that 186 million people in the US live in communities that received failing grades from the ALA may give you little confidence in the odds for improvement. Furthermore, cities such as Houston, Dallas and Las Vegas, have higher pollutant levels than they did 10 years ago, when the ALA released its first report card, and many cities scored worse than they did last year. Nonetheless, it's an ill wind that blows no good. While Los Angeles didn't score as well as in 2008, over the last several years it has removed itself from worst place in short-term and long-term particulates (associated with cardiovascular disease), though it still holds first place among cities most polluted by ozone (a trigger for respiratory ailments ). And for all its troubles, California possesses a crucial advantage--because the state's air vehicle emissions regulations predate the Federal government's, it is able to initiate stricter regulations than are permissible in other states (if it obtains waivers from the EPA). Established in 1967, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has played a key role in building a market for zero-emissions vehicles and has required lower pollutant levels in vehicle exhaust than mandated by the Federal government. In the Los Angeles region, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) formed in 1976, has led the fight to reduce smog from stationary sources ranging from power plants to household paint. Polluting cars, trucks and power plants we're familiar with, but pollution from ports is often overlooked. Yet "L.A. gets a huge amount of pollution from international ocean-going vessels," says State of the Air author Janice Nolen. Much higher levels of sulfur are allowed in the diesel that powers ships than is allowed on land--as much as 25,000 to 45,000 parts per million (ppm) versus 15 ppm for trucks and buses. And high sulfur levels result in higher particulate levels. Nolen notes that this isn't just a coastal problem: "Because of Great Lakes trade, this pollution is winding up even in South Dakota and throughout the lower 48 states." To tackle this problem, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles adopted an ambitious plan to reduce air pollution by 45 percent by 2011. The San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Action Plan (CAAP) includes a number of initiatives, but one vital element has been a voluntary program to encourage ships to switch from dirtier "bunker" diesel to low-sulfur diesel when within 20 to 40 nautical miles of the port of Long Beach. Since July 2008, 17 percent of vessels have signed on and the port is helping cover costs for transitioning to the cleaner diesel. Even better, as of July 1, 2009, CARB regulations will require vessel operators to use low-sulfur diesel when they near the coast. "Cleaner" however is a relative term: These vessels will still be able to burn marine diesel oil with sulfur levels of 5,000 ppm before 2012 and 1,000 ppm afterward. Wherever you live, odds are your air quality suffers at times. While governmental action is necessary for systematic improvements, it doesn't occur in a vacuum. Nolen recommends these actions: • Check your air quality; enter your zip code at State of the Air: 2009 • Get involved when your government considers revisions in air quality regulations that require communities to make changes; polluters will be well represented, so citizens need to speak up as well • Support air-quality measures, such as vehicle exhaust testing • Advocate for clean air to state and federal representative and urge them to look for alternative energy sources. Individual actions help as well, so remember to: • Share rides and reduce your trips • Talk to kids' schools about no-idling policies and read NRDC's Q&A on " What Parents Need to Know About Diesel School Buses " • Avoid burning wood, trash or leaves • Conserve energy to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants.
 
Deane Waldman: Nothing Is Everything: Fallacy of "The One." Top
Luke Skywalker ( Star Wars ) was constantly being drawn to the dark side. He resisted. We don't even try. We instantly succumb to the lure of: the quick-and-easy; the blame game ; the politician's promise; blandishments of the snake oil salesman; and the siren song of "The One." How many times have you heard or read the following? 1. "Context is everything." (Twitter) 2. "Trust is everything." (Every daytime TV soap opera) 3. "Timing is everything." (Movie: Butterfly Effect ) 4. "The key is _______." [fill in the blank]. 5. "All you need is love. (Credit the Beatles.) 6. "Winning isn't the best thing, it's the only thing. (Football coaches) 7. "I am the greatest." (Muhammed Ali...and he was!) 8. "Everything is relative."* (Everyone) (*) Albert Einstein responded to #8 asking, "If everything is relative, relative to what?" It is a seduction few can resist: the catchy phrase that holds "the key;" that special person who has "the answer;" the magic "bullet" that cures cancer. In the movie City Slickers , the late great Jack Palance held up his index finger teaching Billy Crystal about "The One," that singular thing that makes life understandable and worthwhile. While this was a nice dramatic effect, it reinforced the idea that such a "one" exists. It does not. We all seek to reduce competing values to a single "winner," to simplify things that are hard and complex. We do ourselves a disservice by oversimplification. The "one answer" fallacy has infected healthcare. The answer is: Medicare; HMOs; Patient's Bill of Rights; UMRA; HIPAA; single payer; and recently, electronic medical records and universal health care ( so-called ). Every time I read one of these cutesy catch-all phrases, my brain wants to barf and my heart wishes it were true. (No, I am not schizophrenic, just human.) Reality is... Reality is Heisenberg not Newton, quantum physics rather than the world as a machine. We cannot know everything no matter how much data we process with our computers. The world has a mind of its own and some things are unknowable. Reality is systems thinking rather than linear thinking. Perfect control and precise forecasts are mirages. Self-organization, co-evolution, emergence, structured learning and multiple conflicting goals - thinking systems that we are - make a mockery out of the clockwork universe and its predictability. Need proof? Just think about the fancy mathematical models Nobel Prize-winning "quants" used to predict future U.S. economic trends, and where their predictions led us: right into our current economic mess. Now for a little optimism: Though the "one answer" does not exist, there is one approach to answers, and it is medical. Financial or political solutions are ways to implement. They are not answers in and of themselves. The medical approach to answers is just like practicing good medicine on a patient: diagnose the causes of illness and treat them . It is that simple and that hard. For healthcare, people tout universal health care as translated by Washington means universal (maybe) health insurance. Assuming that were possible, they are treating a symptom, not a cause, producing another fix that fails . The cost of healthcare , now in the stratosphere, will reach outer space. To cure healthcare, diagnose the reasons for dysfunction and treat those. "THE ONE" answer does not exist. The ONE approach does.
 
Support For Chicago Olympics Bid Lower Than City's Figure: IOC Poll Top
A public opinion poll commissioned by the International Olympic Committee showed Chicagoans' support for the 2016 Olympics to be 10 percentage points lower than the figure Chicago officials used in their bid book based on their own polling, the Tribune has learned. More on Olympics
 
Obama Budget Bans Federal Funding For Needle Exchange, Breaking Campaign Pledge Top
President Obama's budget released Thursday takes a step backward from a controversial political position he had taken during the presidential campaign. Obama, during the primary campaign, pledged his support of needle exchange programs to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS. When he took over the White House, the administration website affirmed: "The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users." Yet Obama's budget includes language that bans spending federal money on needle-exchange programs. White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said the administration isn't yet ready to lift the ban - but Obama still supports needle exchange. "We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change," he said. "We are committed to doing this as part of a National HIV/AIDS strategy and are confident that we can build support for these scientifically-based programs." He added, "In recent years, Washington has used the budget process to litigate divisive issues and score political points. This practice, which both sides have engaged in, has limited our ability to tackle our major economic challenges. President Obama decided not to play politics as usual with this budget and while he remains committed to supporting the program he wants to address that thru the normal legislative process." The White House website no longer features the president's support of the program, however. See the before and after here. "It's hard to imagine how removing mention of support for a proven lifesaving program from the White House website is part of a grand strategy to 'build support' for syringe exchange," said Tom Angell, a spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Obama's budget also includes a provision known as the "Barr Amendment," which prevents the District of Columbia from implementing a medical marijuana law that voters passed in an overwhelming referendum. Obama has pledged not to use Department of Justice resources to raid medical marijuana clinics in states where it is legal. Ryan Grim is the author of the forthcoming book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America , from which parts of this article are adapted. More on Obama's Budget
 
Sharon Glassman: Interview with the Author: "Broken" by Lisa Jones Top
Full disclosure: Lisa Jones and I are friends. We live in Boulder, where we admit to attending one yoga class together. Our birthdays are technically one day apart. Given these factors, this post about Lisa's new book, Broken: A Love Story [Scribner, May 12, 2009], couldn't be objective journalism if I tried. So I'm trying something else. Here goes: ) Lisa Jones is my kind of reporter: curious, fearless, compassionate. Did I mention fearless? So when it came to interviewing her about her new book, Broken, I decided the best person to interview Jones-the-author was Jones-the-journalist. Letting Lisa interview herself gave me a sneak-peak into how really good journos do the 'view. It also helped me work through the objectivity issue involved in our story. (Which leads us to the question of whether true objectivity exists. Which is a question that's much better suited to my new friend, via Twitter, HuffPost's very own, philosopher Tom Morris Which is another story. Hi, Tom! ) Back to Broken: Seven years ago Lisa Jones, intrepid journalist, went to Wyoming to profile Stanford Addison for Smithsonian Magazine . Sandford was a Northern Arapaho medicine man and horse whisperer. That was pretty Smith-tastic. Stanford was also a quadriplegic who had become a medicine man in the wake of his injuries. At this point, we leave the fact-based land of The Smithsonian Mag and head into the land of Jones's book, which - even if she is my friend, I can objectively state - is beautifully written, with a reporter's eye for a detail and a poet's gift for lovely, lean prose. At the age of 20, the truck in which Stanford Addison was joy-riding fell on top of him. A few minutes earlier, he had been a super-hottie charmer with a cool dude's way of getting past or around life's daily hassles. Now, he was being pronounced dead in his hospital bed. He woke up. And flat-lined. Two post-mortue later, on a morgue table, with one lung, a body full of pain and a set of kick-ass spiritual powers set in motion by the spirits who'd spoken to him on the brink of life-death-and-life again. If you're thinking, "Oh, come on now!" Join the club. Jones enters the story as a hardcore journo. She's not a fan of horses. In fact, she's terrified of them. But within hours of her arrival, she's not only witnessed Standford Addison's gentle approach to horse-training, she has forgotten herself, fears and all. A wild horse has been tamed. And according to everyone present, she has tamed it. Boldly. Fearlessly. Physically. Jones is not a fan of woo-woo spirituality. But she has a warm (if appropriately dispassionate) spot in her heart for Buddhism. Stanford's kindness, skill and reported miracles fascinate her. Her inner journo starts to wonder: What was Stanford's secret to life? How had a man who'd survived such a violent life change become a person of acceptance, aid and quietude? And what was up with all the Vanilla Diet Cokes and KOOLs? A post-article trip to Wyoming leads to another, longer trip. Jones wants to write Stanford's memoir. Stanford and his family agree. They welcome her into their home and tribe. And proceed to kick her ass on multiple levels. Jones loves to ask questions. But the only way to get the information she wants, she discovers, is to wait and listen. Jones is a huge fan of deadlines. She gives herself a year to get "the story". But Stanford doesn't share her views on death - or lines - or "the." Years pass. The plot thickens. And shifts. And re-shifts. "In white culture terms," Jones says. "I wasn't so doing so well." Luckily, wellness , in Broken is a process of redefinition. Over time, Jones moves from looking for answers to living them. Her memoir of Stanford Addison becomes a dual biography of student and teacher. The lessons she's offered aren't always pretty. But for the first time in her life, Jones feels, her mistakes aren't being graded -- or even noted. She can't make sense of Stanford's world of reappearing spirits, corporal healing and physical poverty. She can't force a resolution to her crises d'amour with her boyfriend, who is torn between marriage and becoming a Buddhist monk. And so she carries on, returning to Wyoming when she can. And staying away when she can't. While Stanford addresses the changing nature of his health, Jones meets the changing nature of her nature. She moves from barely surviving a sweat lodge to assisting at one. Her obsession with deadlines becomes a passion for lifelines -- not least, with her mother, a Swedish-born, Volvo-driving horsewoman with a Scottish accent and an Arapaho-esque way with horses and humans. For those of you who'd like to hear the inside scoop from the journo, I'm going to upload an mp3 of Lisa interviewing herself about Broken over breakfast in Boulder earlier this week to my site (as soon as I figure out how to upload a file that big.) Stanford was going to attend her reading in Denver, she told me then. But as of blog-time, Stanford Addison is scheduled to undergo another surgery to relieve the pain of the sores caused by the ongoing pressure of body and wheelchair. It's a sad development, given the pair's years of shared involvement in the book. But happy endings aren't a given, Broken insists. "Healing journeys aren't about feeling good all the time," Lisa says, as we chat and chew, two kinda redheads on a Colorado blue-sky day. "They're about loving things even though they're hard."
 
Palin Pulls Out Of White House Correspondents Dinner Top
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will miss a chance to chat up President Obama this weekend because she's cancelling plans to attend the White House Correspondents' dinner, but she's got a good excuse. Palin on Wednesday declared a state of emergency because of record flooding in Eagle, Alaska. "It's basically wiped out a town," Bill McAllister, Palin's communications director, told CNN. More on Sarah Palin
 
Mark Joseph: Newsweek's Dumb Idea Top
One of the things I like the most about America is that our Founding Fathers had such a clear understanding of human nature, which is to say they didn't trust it and set up a system of government with lots of checks and balances precisely because they didn't fully trust each other or future generations of Americans. All I can say about Jerry Adler is that I'm glad he wasn't a part of the formation of our country. He's written this piece for Newsweek arguing for a national system for the medical records of all Americans that is stunning in its naivete. No, Mr. Adler, we like the screwed up system we have, because it ensures that to the greatest extent possible our medical records are kept disjointed, disorganized and therefore, private. On this issue, liberals and conservatives should be in agreement: A liberal wouldn't have trusted Dick Cheney with access to his or her private medical records during the Bush administration and a conservative would likely not trust Barack Obama with theirs. Just as good fences make good neighbors, so a healthy understanding of human nature and the depravity of man will keep dumb proposals like Mr. Adler's from gaining traction. More on Barack Obama
 
Dr. Jon LaPook: ADHD Medication: One for All? Top
Dr. Jon LaPook Explores the Use of Adderall on College Campuses This week's episode of CBS DOC DOT COM took me to a college campus where I got schooled by two students about the widespread use of ADHD meds - by kids without a diagnosis of the condition - to study, stay attentive, and sometimes just to feel good. A 2005 Web survey found that 5% of US undergraduates reported having used stimulants over the previous year for non-medical reasons. But the real number may be much higher, especially if you listen to the students I interviewed with Dr. William Fisher, a psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center. Features of ADHD include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. A national survey in 2003 reported that about 4.4 million children in the US have been diagnosed with ADHD and 56 percent take medication to treat it. It's estimated that about one to two thirds of the children with ADHD continue to have symptoms in adult life. ADHD medication was in the news last week with a report that medication use in elementary school children improved math and reading scores. The gains -- equal to about a fifth of a school year in math and a third of a school year in reading -- still left the treated children lagging behind kids without the disorder. The study fans an ongoing debate on who should receive medications such as Adderall and Ritalin. These medications -- along with behavioral/psychological therapy and educational interventions -- help patients with ADHD; but they're also being used by students and adults who have not been diagnosed with the disorder. These drugs have potentially serious side-effects such as high blood pressure, irregular heart beat, and dependency. Doctors prescribing them for patients with ADHD should be carefully weighing the risks and benefits. People taking them on their own are rolling the dice with their health. No matter what you may feel philosophically about using these stimulants, the risk-benefit of their use in patients without ADHD has simply not been established. I feel strongly that ADHD medications should only be used under the guidance of a physician. But that's apparently often not the case. In today's segment, we explore this issue further. Why do people without ADHD take stimulants? How do they start? How does it make them feel? Is society's metronome pulsing so much faster today that people feel pressured to take drugs just to keep up? Click here for a fascinating related article which appeared recently in The New Yorker . http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4999157n
 
Alexander Russo: A New Kind Of School: The "Neighborhood" Charter Top
What this week's New Yorker story on Steve Barr and Green Dot gets right -- and wrong. This week's New Yorker profiles education activist Steve Barr (article here ), whose upstart nonprofit called Green Dot has created a slew of successful schools in Los Angeles over the past nine years. No doubt, the stunning turnaround at Locke and the possibility of new hope for America's 5,000 persistently failing schools are important issues. And, by and large, writer Douglas McGray gets it right: Barr's charisma and opportunism, the lack of "secret sauce" to Green Dot's instructional model, and the profound sense of change at Locke this year. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Still, McGray misses some key things and gets a few other things wrong. Having spent the last year and a half visiting and researching the school, let me take a minute to fill you in: Barr doesn't drop F-bombs left and right -- except in front of print reporters (who seem to lap up his tough-guy talk). There's a baby seat in the back of his decommissioned police car. And Barr's not just a thorn in the school district's side. He's a possible candidate for superintendent of LA schools -- or even mayor. Assistant principal Zeus Cubias is more than just a poster boy for Green Dot. He's still extremely -- frequently -- candid about the failings of "The Dot." And by most accounts he wasn't one of the three original Locke teachers responsible for gathering most of the signatures needed to hand the school over. The nationwide expansion of Green Dot isn't a done deal - yet. Barr's efforts have won Green Dot a gobs of supporters. Both Arne Duncan (Obama's education secretary) and Randi Weingarten (president of one of the national teachers unions) have energy and money to spare for bold new efforts. And there's probably no one other than Barr who's as well-positioned to lead a national effort to fix failing schools. But so far there's been no public comment about a national partnership from either Duncan or Weingarten, and there's no budget line or action plan that I can dig up. If and when the expansion of Green Dot happens, the New Yorker article will have helped Barr conjure it up. It's ironic, given that the article describes Barr's "outrageous rhetoric" so clearly. In fact, what's going on at Locke goes far beyond just turning around failing schools. The "new" Locke is a hybrid kind of school that doesn't really exist anywhere else. It has most of the familiar features of public schools: open enrollment for neighborhood children, unionized teachers, and a full set of course offerings and electives. It looks and feels like the regular, full-sized public high school that many of us grew up with. But it also has newer elements like autonomy from district mandates, annual teacher contracts, and a major focus on accountability. It's the traditional neighborhood school, re-imagined. It's a "neighborhood" charter school. And its existence - permit me some conjuring of my own - addresses a lot of obstacles to change and makes it extremely difficult for education's entrenched interests to continue their endless, pointless, Cylons-vs-Humans feuding. It's something that many parents (and teachers) might want for their own schools. A Spencer Fellow at the Columbia School of Journalism, Russo is writing a book about Green Dot and the Locke turnaround. You can find his blog at thisweekineducation.com . More on Barack Obama
 
Tom Engelhardt: Secretary Doomsday and the Empathy Gap Top
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com The Everyday Extremism of Washington A front-page New York Times headline last week put the matter politely indeed: "In Pakistan, U.S. Courts Leader of Opposition." And nobody thought it was strange at all. In fact, it's the sort of thing you can read just about any time when it comes to American policy in Pakistan or, for that matter, Afghanistan. It's just the norm on a planet on which it's assumed that American civilian and military leaders can issue pronunciamentos about what other countries must do; publicly demand various actions of ruling groups; opt for specific leaders, and then, when they disappoint, attempt to replace them; and use what was once called "foreign aid," now taxpayer dollars largely funneled through the Pentagon, to bribe those who are hard to convince. Last week as well, in a prime-time news conference, President Obama said of Pakistan: "We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests, huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don't end up having a nuclear-armed militant state." To the extent that this statement was commented on, it was praised here for its restraint and good sense. Yet, thought about a moment, what the president actually said went something like this: When it comes to U.S. respect for Pakistan's sovereignty, this country has more important fish to fry. A look at the historical record indicates that Washington has, in fact, been frying those "fish" for at least the last four decades without particular regard for Pakistani sensibilities. In a week in which the presidents of both Pakistan and Afghanistan have, like two satraps, dutifully trekked to the U.S. capital to be called on the carpet by Obama and his national security team, Washington officials have been issuing one shrill statement after another about what U.S. media reports regularly term the "dire situation" in Pakistan. Of course, to put this in perspective, we now live in a thoroughly ramped-up atmosphere in which "American national security" -- defined to include just about anything unsettling that occurs anywhere on Earth -- is the eternal preoccupation of a vast national security bureaucracy. Its bread and butter increasingly seems to be worst-case scenarios (perfect for our 24/7 media to pounce on) in which something truly catastrophic is always about to happen to us , and every "situation" is a "crisis." In the hothouse atmosphere of Washington, the result can be a feeding frenzy in which doomsday scenarios pour out. Though we don't recognize it as such, this is a kind of everyday extremism. Being Hysterical in Washington As the recent release of more Justice Department torture memos (which were also, in effect, torture manuals ) reminds us, we've just passed through eight years of such obvious extremism that the present everyday extremity of Washington and its national security mindset seems almost a relief. We naturally grasp the extremity of the Taliban -- those floggings, beheadings, school burnings, bans on music, the medieval attitude toward women's role in the world -- but our own extremity is in no way evident to us. So Obama's statement on Pakistani sovereignty is reported as the height of sobriety, even when what lies behind it is an expanding "covert" air war and assassination campaign by unmanned aerial drones over the Pakistani tribal lands, which has reportedly killed hundreds of bystanders and helped unsettle the region. Let's stop here and consider another bit of news that few of us seem to find strange. Mark Lander and Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times offered this tidbit out of an overheated Washington last week: "President Obama and his top advisers have been meeting almost daily to discuss options for helping the Pakistani government and military repel the [Taliban] offensive." Imagine that. Almost daily . It's this kind of atmosphere that naturally produces the bureaucratic equivalent of mass hysteria. In fact, other reports indicate that Obama's national security team has been convening regular "crisis" meetings and having "nearly nonstop discussions" at the White House, not to mention issuing alarming and alarmist statements of all sorts about the devolving situation in Pakistan, the dangers to Islamabad, our fears for the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, and so on. In fact, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landy of McClatchy news service quote "a senior U.S. intelligence official" (from among the legion of anonymous officials who populate our nation's capital) saying : "The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse, and no one has any idea about how to reverse it. I don't think 'panic' is too strong a word to describe the mood here." Now, if it were the economic meltdown, the Chrysler bankruptcy, the bank stress tests, the potential flu pandemic, or any number of close-to-home issues pressing in on the administration, perhaps this would make some sense. But everyday discussions of Pakistan? You know, that offensive in the Lower Dir Valley. That's near the Buner District. You remember, right next to the Swat Valley and, in case you're still not completely keyed in, geographically speaking, close to the Malakand Division. I mean, if the Pakistani government were in crisis over the deteriorating situation in Fargo, North Dakota, we would consider it material for late night jokesters. And yet, in the strange American world we inhabit, nobody finds these practically Cuban-Missile-Crisis-style, round-the-clock meetings the least bit strange, not after eight years of post-9/11 national security fears, not after living with worst-case scenarios in which jihadi atomic bombs regularly are imagined going off in American cities. Keep in mind a certain irony here: We essentially know what those crisis meetings will result in. After all, the U.S. government has been embroiled with Pakistan for at least 40 years and for just that long, its top officials have regularly come to the same policy conclusions -- to support Pakistani military dictatorships or, in periods when civilian rule returns, pour yet more money (and support) into the Pakistani military. That military has long been a power unto itself in the country, a state within a state. And in moments like this, part of our weird extremism is that, having spent decades undermining Pakistani democracy, we bemoan its "fragility" in the face of threats and proceed to put even more of our hopes and dollars into its military. (As Strobel and Landy report, "Some U.S. officials say Pakistan's only hope, and Washington's, too, at this stage may be the country's army. That, another senior official acknowledged Wednesday, 'means another coup.'") In the Bush years, this support added up to at least $10 billion , with next to no idea what the military was doing with it. Another $100 million went into making that country's nuclear-weapons program, about which there is now such panic, safer from theft or other intrusion, again with next to no idea of what was actually done with those dollars. And now the Obama administration is rushing to create a new Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund that will be controlled by General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command. If Congress agrees -- and in this panic atmosphere, how could it not? -- there will be an initial rushed down payment of $400 million to train the Pakistani military, probably outside that country, in counterinsurgency warfare. ("The fund would be similar to those used to train and equip Iraqi and Afghan soldiers and police, Petraeus said.") Doomsday Scenarios Oh, and speaking of extremism, the ur-extreme statement of the last few weeks came from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was treated like the most ho-hum news here. In congressional testimony, she insisted that the situation in Pakistan -- that Taliban thrust into Swat and the lower Dir Valley -- "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world." Umm... Okay, the situation is unnerving -- certainly for the Pakistanis, the large majority of whom have not the slightest love for the Taliban, have opted for democracy and against military dictatorship with a passion, and yet strongly oppose the destabilizing American air war in their borderlands. It could even result in the fall of the elected government or of democracy itself -- not exactly a rare event in the annals of recent Pakistani history. It's undoubtedly unnerving as well for the American military , intent on fighting a war in Afghanistan that has spilled disastrously across the open border. (As Pakistan expert Anatol Lieven wrote recently : "The danger to Pakistan is not of a Taliban revolution, but rather of creeping destabilization and terrorism, making any Pakistani help to the U.S. against the Afghan Taliban even less likely than it is at present.") In other words, it's not a pretty picture. If you happen to live in the tribal borderlands, or Swat, or the Dir Valley, squeezed between the Taliban, the Pakistani Army, whose attacks cause great civilian harm, and those drones cruising overhead, you may be in trouble, if not in flight -- or you may simply support the Taliban, as most of the rest of Pakistan does not. If you happen to live in India, you might start working up a sweat over what the future holds on the other side of the border. But all of this is unlikely to be a "mortal threat" even to Islamabad, the Pakistani military, or that nuclear arsenal American national security managers spend so much time fretting about. It is certainly not a "mortal threat to the security and safety of our country." So here's a little common sense. If Pakistan poses a mortal threat to you in New York, Toledo, or El Paso, well then, get in line. Believe me, it will be a long one and you'll be toward the back. Despite constant reports that lightly armed Taliban militants are only 60 miles from the "doorstep" of Islamabad, Pakistan's national capital, and increasing inside-the-Beltway invocations of Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution in Iran, you're unlikely to see a Taliban government in Islamabad anytime soon, or probably ever . As one unnamed expert commented recently in the insider Washington newsletter, the Nelson Report , "I find it troubling that we are hyping the 'security situation' in Pakistan. Pakistan is not being taken over, the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] is. This has been happening since 2004." Mind you, when Vice President Joe Biden said something extreme about flu precautions -- don't take the subway! -- the media didn't hesitate to laugh him off stage . When Hillary Clinton said what should be considered the equivalent about Pakistan, everyone treated it as part of a sober national-security conversation. Of course, when it comes to hysteria, nothing helps like a nuclear arsenal, and in recent weeks nuclear doomsday scenarios have broken out like a swine flu pandemic, even though a victorious Taliban regime in Islamabad with a nuclear arsenal would undoubtedly still find the difficulties of planting and detonating such devices in American cities close to insurmountable. By the way, for all our kindly talk about how the poor Pakistanis just can't get it together democracy-wise, the U.S. has a terrible record when it comes not just to promoting democracy in that country, but to really giving much of a damn about its people. In fact, not to put too kindly a point on things, Washington has, over the past decades, done few favors for ordinary Pakistanis. Having played our version of the imperial Great Game first vis-à-vis the Soviets and, more recently, a bunch of jihadist warriors, we are now waging a most unpopular and destabilizing air war without mercy in parts of that country, and another deeply unpopular war just across its mountainous, porous border. And this brings us to perhaps the most extreme aspect of the mentality of our national security managers -- what might be called their empathy gap. They are, it seems, incapable of seeing the situations they deal through the eyes of those being dealt with. They lack, that is, all empathy, which means, in the end, that they lack understanding. They take it for granted that America's destiny is to "engineer" the fates of peoples half a world away and are incapable of imagining that the United States could, in almost any situation, be part of the problem, not a major part of its solution. This is surely folly of the first order and, year after year, has only made the "situation" in Pakistan worse. Closing the Empathy Gap? To complete our picture of this over-the-top moment, we have to leave the heated confines of Washington and head for California's China Lake. That's where the U.S. military tests some of its advanced weapons. On April 20th, Peter Pae of the Los Angeles Times reported the following: "A 5-pound missile the size of a loaf of French bread is being quietly tested in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles as the military searches for more deadly and far more precise robotic weapons for modern warfare."
 
Drew Peterson Arrested In Connection With Third Wife's Death Top
BOLINGBROOK, Ill. — Authorities say former Illinois police sergeant Drew Peterson has been indicted on a murder charge in the death of his third wife. The Will County state's attorney's office says the indictment was issued Thursday in the death of Kathleen Savio. It did not immediately give details but scheduled a news conference for later Thursday. Bolingbrook police say Illinois State Police arrested Peterson on Thursday. A state police spokesman did not immediately return phone messages from The Associated Press. Peterson's attorney, Joel Brodsky, says in an e-mail that he's on his way to New York and referred messages to Peterson's publicist, Glenn Selig. Selig says he can't confirm Peterson's arrest. Peterson also has been named a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy. He has denied any wrongdoing.
 
Doug Kendall: What in the World is Jeff Sessions Talking About? Top
One of the most common attacks conservatives have made against progressive judges over the past five years is the claim that citing to decisions of courts of other countries constitutes a sure sign of liberal judicial activism. Fed by questions from Republican Senators, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito both forcefully denounced this practice at their nomination hearings (despite their assertion that they could not take a position about just about every other legal issue), with Roberts colorfully asserting that this was akin to "looking out into a crowd and picking out your friends." Just this morning, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, recently chosen to be the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, repeated this claim on "Morning Joe," attacking the Court's "four or sometimes five liberals" for citing foreign cases and implying that he would vote against any nominee who had the temerity to suggest this was appropriate. Repetition does not make these claims any less absurd. No judge we are aware of has asserted that the rulings of foreign courts should dictate how American judges interpret the U.S. Constitution, or be considered precedent that must be followed. The issue is whether American judges trying to resolve a dispute may look for guidance in how judges in other countries with similar legal systems have resolved similar disputes. On that question, let's start with first principles. Much of our Constitution is breathtakingly novel, but not all of it. Some terms - "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus," "bill of attainder" - were borrowed from English law, and no one has ever seriously questioned the propriety of citing the precedent of English courts in determining the meaning of these constitutional terms. Nor, certainly, were our framers averse to looking for guidance from the tribunals of other nations. On the contrary, in Federalist 63, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton urged "attention to the judgment of other nations," explaining that "in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed." It is also utterly uncontroversial for the Supreme Court to cite to foreign precedent when interpreting a treaty, something the Justices must do under the Supremacy Clause, which makes treaties part of the "supreme Law of the Land." Even Justice Scalia - the Court's harshest critic of the practice of looking to foreign decisions in constitutional cases - accepts that the Supreme Court must look to the decisions of foreign courts when interpreting treaties that the United States has signed. Indeed, in the 2004 case of Olympic Airways v. Husain, Scalia went so far as to dissent from the Court's interpretation of a treaty because the majority did not give sufficient consideration to the views of courts in England and Australia, which had rejected the Court's construction of the treaty. So what precisely is Senator Session's problem? The main answer, it seems, is that he and other conservatives don't like the way the Supreme Court has interpreted the Eighth Amendment's bar against "cruel and unusual punishments" to reflect "evolving standards of decency." Justice Scalia and other conservatives have argued, based on a dubious reading of the Eighth Amendment's text , that judges should look only at whether a punishment was considered cruel and unusual in 1789. Scalia thus wants judges to look only at old English precedents, not modern rulings from around the country and around the world. That's a plausible, if ultimately unpersuasive , position on the Eighth Amendment, but it hardly supports a total ban on citing the work of foreign courts in cases dealing with American constitutional law. And the Court's majority can hardly be criticized as "activist" for following the long-standing Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, which compels an inquiry into evolving standards of decency. If American judges are required to consult foreign law when it comes to treaties, as well as old English cases about English equivalents to rights in our Constitution, it is hard to understand why American judges may never consider other foreign rulings when it comes to the Constitution, even when both the problem and the relevant legal standards are similar in the United States and the relevant foreign nation. As Justice Ginsburg recently put it, "Why shouldn't we look to the wisdom of the judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would review a law review article written by a professor?" Conservatives should be forced to answer that unanswerable query every time they assert that it is improper for a judge to cite the ruling of a court of another country. This post was written by Doug Kendall and David Gans. Doug Kendall is the President of Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), a law firm, think tank and action center based in Washington DC, David Gans is CAC's Human and Civil Rights Director. For more on the progressive promise of the Constitution's text and history visit CAC's website or blog. More on Supreme Court
 
Sam Sedaei: Michael Savage Hangs Up on NPR Top
England has banned Michael Savage from entering the United Kingdom, along with 15 other individuals that include a Hamas extremist, a Jewish-Israeli extremist and Russian gang members. Michael Savage appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation with Neil Conan to defend himself. He opened by vigorously defending his right to free speech and showed outrage about what he perceived as British intolerance. But when the first caller to the show began criticizing Savage for some of his extreme views, seemingly angry Savage quickly put an stop to the caller's exercise of free speech, issued a ultimatum to the show host to stop accepting additional questions and comments from callers and hung up on NPR when Neil made it clear that he wasn't taking any orders from Savage. It's quite ironic that someone like Michael Savage sees no hypocrisy in strongly defending his right to the First Amendment only to show outrage and intolerance a few minutes later toward the views of someone else he doesn't agree with. Follow Sam Sedaei on Twitter More on NPR
 
Tom Ridge On GOP: "We're Too Doggone Shrill" (VIDEO) Top
Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge went on MSNBC's "Hardball" Thursday evening to discuss his decision not to run for the Senate in 2010. He refused to say whether he would vote for the likely Republican nominee, Pat Toomey, against Arlen Specter. "It's called secret ballot," Ridge said. Ridge, a pro-choice moderate like Specter, had some criticism for his party. "We have to reshape our message, reduce the decibel level -- we're too doggone shrill -- and be less judgmental about the people in the party that may disagree with us." He reiterated the point later: "Our message became shrill. We became very divided over these social issues, and at some point in time, we'll have to be a lot less judgmental." Watch: More on Arlen Specter
 
Scritti Politti: May 7, 2009 Top
Earlier this week, Rachel Maddow discussed the ongoing saga of the torture memos, and how the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility recommended "'disbarment, but not prosecution' for Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury, and John Yoo, as punishment for erecting the legal mechanisms that paved the way for the erection of the Bush administration's torture regime." Did you know that the OPR came to this conclusion after input from Bybee, Bradbury and Yoo, themselves? They were, and, as Daphne Eviatar reported, they were allowed to make comments, and the OPR was allowed to make revisions based upon their comments. And all of this is apparently SOP : On Tuesday, Durbin and Whitehouse received assurances from the department that although the subjects of the report -- including former OLC head Steven Bradbury, who signed several of the recently released OLC memos authorizing waterboarding and other "extreme" techniques -- were allowed to review and comment on the draft, "this opportunity for review and comment was fair and reasonably correlates with the process usually applicable to OPR investigations relating to former employees. . . .Any revisions to the report thereafter will be based upon OPR's best judgments about the accuracy and fairness of the document." The comments from the report's subjects were due on Monday. Eviatar's Washington Independent colleague, Spencer Ackerman , however, wonders why this same procedure doesn't seem to apply to everyone: Tell it to Jesselyn Radack. Radack was an early casualty of the Bush Justice Department. In 2001, as a department lawyer in the Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, she advised the FBI that it couldn't interrogate John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban captured in Afghanistan, without affording him counsel. It happened anyway. Here's what happened next, according to Jane Mayer in the March 10, 2003 New Yorker: [Radack] received a "blistering" performance review. It never mentioned her advice in the Lindh matter, but it severely questioned her legal judgment. She was advised to get a new job; otherwise, the performance review would be placed in her permanent file. Radack, who had received a merit bonus the year before, quickly found a job with a private law firm. Worse, Radack learned that the department made an incomplete filing to the judge in the Lindh case, who had requested the department's full record of internal discussions on the interrogations. Radack's attempts to correct the record by providing the judge with the complete discussion ended up getting printed in Newsweek. Then Radack learned, as she recounted this morning in a Daily Kos diary, that OPR had opened a case file on her. Far from allowing her a chance to contribute to OPR's investigation, the office didn't even solicit her perspective before sending a letter to the Maryland Bar informing it of "possible professional misconduct" on Radack's behalf. More here . Thought Exercise : What would happen, conversationally, if Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews were locked in a room together? And if you wrote down what they said to each other, in script form, how soon before the estate of Samuel Beckett sued you for plagiarism? AIG Is Gonna Have The Same Problem : "Blackwater's rebranding doesn't seem to have helped them very much. Not only do they still manage to look as thoroughly dishonest and unethical as they used to before, but a 575-word AP story calls them Blackwater throughout except for one solitary reference to their new name in para 5. Some names -- and images -- just fit so well that they stick forever , and no amount of rebranding effort can give you a fresh start." And What, Pray Tell, Does 'Late Night' Have To Do With Anything : What substance acts like one of those "squeezy desk toys," "very slowly un-dents itself" when poked, actively "tries to flatten itself," secretly "wants to be a liquid," and, from time to time, "emits little sighs?" You may not want to find out . Labor Law Reform, Cartoon Style : It's hard out there for the working stick-figure ! [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Chris Matthews
 
Mona Gable: Question: What do Christiane Amanpour and Afghanistan have to do with the prom? Top
I really wasn't planning on writing about my daughter going to her prom. But sometimes the most unexpected occasions take on political meaning. Don't get me wrong. It was priceless, one of those moments you hope your teenager will eventually appreciate you showed up for. Before the dance my daughter and about 20 best friends and their "dates" convened at someone's house. The guys looked impossibly awkward in their dark, shiny suits. The girls looked like they'd just finished a shoot for "America's Next Top Model." Proving, once again, how much sooner girls mature than boys. As for me I pretended I was Annie Leibowitz and annoyed my daughter no end by insisting on taking photos. The horror! (In one shot she's reaching out toward the camera, glaring at me like I'm one of the paparazzi. I probably won't upload that one on Flickr.) So what does a high-school prom in Los Angeles have to do with Christiane Amanpour reporting on Afghanistan? Just how different a young woman's life can be by virtue of geography. Cut to a few nights later. I'm sitting in a packed ballroom at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the Global Women's Rights Awards held by the Feminist Majority Foundation. Mavis Leno, who has been advocating for Afghan women and girls with the group long before Kabul became cool, is being honored. Jay is here too, making political jokes, including one about Obama's much-covered 100th day. ("George Bush didn't spend 100 days in office!") Also getting an award is The One Million Signatures Campaign, a group of brave Iranian women who are fighting to end laws in Iran that discriminate against women. They don't have an office or a staff; it's all done by volunteers in different countries. They aren't ideological, either. Unless you consider fighting for women's rights to be particularly radical. Which I guess many people do. Because of their campaign, nearly 50 women have been held by Iranian authorities on such nebulous charges as "activity against national security." Other activists haven't been allowed to travel or had meetings in their homes broken up by police. Then we have Afghanistan, where life for women and girls has gone from horrific to even more horrific under the Taliban. Forget about the prom. For the simple act of going to school, girls have had acid thrown in their faces. Female teachers have been murdered and hundreds of girls' schools burned. In terms of women's rights Hamid Karzai hasn't exactly been Hillary Clinton. In March Afghanistan's increasingly unpopular president approved a law that would have made it a crime for Shia women to refuse having sex with their husbands. (Essentially we're talking marital rape here.) They also couldn't work or go to school without their spouse's permission. Or leave the house without a male escort. Naturally, a lot of Afghan women weren't thrilled. When scores of them protested at a rally in Kabul, they were pelted by an angry mob with stones. Nice! But fortunately bad news travels fast. Thanks to an international outcry by women's groups, human rights activists and Sen. Barbara Boxer, among other scary opponents, Karzai was forced to back-pedal. A few days ago he promised to amend the law so that it respects the rights of girls and women. Which brings me to Christiane Amanpour, the fearless CNN correspondent. At the event, she was being honored for her coverage of Afghanistan, and had recently returned from filming a documentary there. Before dinner I had a chance to speak with her. And she was surprisingly optimistic about our involvement in Afghanistan and its potential to improve women's lives. (A disclaimer here: This was before the American airstrikes that reportedly killed dozens of civilians in Farah. Not to mention Obama's meetings with Karzai about cracking down on the Taliban.) "I strongly believe it's not a hopeless case," Amanpour said of Obama's new push in Afghanistan. But U.S. military officials also told her that troops won't solve the situation alone. Amanpour said we also need to honor the promises George Bush made--and then broke when he got obsessed with Iraq--to rebuild the country. "The correct involvement by this administration could be critical. It's about developing. This is the critical element toward making a success out of what's going on there." This will take time and patience, Amanpour said. But then the Afghans really aren't asking for much. "All we want is to feed our families and to send our children to school," they kept telling her. More on Afghanistan
 
Pelosi Briefed On Use Of Interrogation Tactics In Sept. 2002 Top
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence's office and obtained by ABC News. More on Nancy Pelosi
 
Lawmakers Press For Second Black Justice Top
The Congressional Black Caucus is launching a campaign to persuade President Obama to appoint one of their members to the Supreme Court seat that will be vacated by Justice David Souter. More on Supreme Court
 
Sen. Jeff Merkley: Words Designed to Kill Health Care Reform Top
Over and over again, I hear from Oregonians that we need real health care reform that provides every American with access to quality, affordable care. That is why Congress and President Obama are so focused on this issue. Of course there are folks in the insurance and hospital industries, from the medical profession, and both political parties who will have different ideas about how to achieve our goal. But I was shocked when I read a memo from Republican strategist Dr. Frank Luntz laying out plans to dismantle any effort to give all Americans access to quality health care. Dr. Luntz, the man who developed language designed to promote preemptive war in Iraq and distract from the severity of global warming, is at it again -- this time with a messaging strategy designed to sink our historic opportunity for health care reform. Let's be clear: this is not a strategy to push certain ideas about health reform. It is a strategy intended solely to kill reform efforts altogether. In his own words, Dr. Luntz has stated, "You're not going to get what you want, but you can kill what they're trying to do." Not surprisingly, since the American public is strongly in favor of fixing the broken health care system, the Luntz strategy is predicated on deception. In his memo, Dr. Luntz lays out multiple ways that opponents of health care reform can trick and manipulate the American public. One strategy that stood out to me is to call efforts to reform our broken health care system a "bailout for the insurance industry." This is ridiculous. This statement is developed to serve the same interests who stopped at nothing to derail health care reform in the 90's, who blocked health care coverage for low-income children, and whose top Medicare priority for 15 years has been transferring money from seniors and taxpayers to the insurance industry. When support for a prescription drug benefit in Medicare became too powerful to ignore, President Bush and his allies created the convoluted system we now have. Rather than simply add a prescription drug benefit to the tried, true, and popular Medicare program as Democrats wanted, they devised a giveaway for insurance companies. For years Dr. Luntz's clients have virtually abdicated health care policy making to the insurance industry; the last thing it needs is a bailout. Today though, even the insurance industry is engaged in constructive negotiations about how to repair the health care system. Unfortunately for the vast majority of Americans who support reform, however, Dr. Luntz's new game plan to stop change is being embraced by leaders in the Republican Party. In a briefing where Dr. Luntz presented his strategy to Republican House members, Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, made it official by saying, "Frank is back." So expect a massive misinformation campaign coming to a health care debate near you. Opponents using Dr. Luntz's doublespeak will argue for a "balanced, common sense approach" to health care but what they really want is to keep the system the way it is. They'll say that a public plan will not be "patient centered," but their real goal is to block accessible health care for every American. They'll say reform will deny Americans "choice" even when every American will be allowed to keep their health insurance and their doctor. They'll claim that the "quality of care will go down," while callously ignoring the fact that millions of Americans have no health care at all and millions more are denied the medications and procedures they need. What we are seeing, yet again, is that while Dr. Luntz and his clients may have excellent polling data, they are utterly clueless about what the American people want. But, I have to give Dr. Luntz credit on one front: he points out that Republicans need to appear to be on the "right side of reform" or they lose the health care argument. The problem is that you can't fake support for reform. You're either for improving the quality and affordability of health care or you're against it. You're either for expanding coverage to every American or you're against it. At the end of the day, no matter what talking points they use, each member of Congress is going to have to vote for or against improving our broken health care system. With small businesses and families being buried by rising costs, with 47 million uninsured, millions more underinsured and American companies losing ground against their global competitors, it is evident to anyone that our health care system is broken. There are Republicans and Democrats, insurance executives and patient advocates, physicians and hospital representatives all working to meet one of America's most pressing challenges. We certainly do not all agree on what a reformed health system should look like or how to get there, but there are people on all sides who are negotiating in good faith. The country deserves that debate on the merits, not poll-tested attack lines intended to prolong the broken system we have today. More on Health
 
Focus On The Family: We Don't Oppose Gay Supreme Court Nominee Top
In a move that will surprise gay activists and liberals, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family, a top religious right group, tells me that his organization has no problem with GOP Senator Jeff Sessions' claim today that he's open to a Supreme Court nominee with "gay tendencies." More on Supreme Court
 
Green Meanies Top
Columnist Peter Dykstra names eight men to his environmental hall of shame.
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)