David Broder and media culpability for Bush crimes
April 26, 2009
by Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
I read David Broder's truly wretched screed yesterday -- in which he demands immunity for Bush officials from investigation and prosecution and attacks those who advocate accountability -- and decided that I wouldn't write about it until today because I didn't want it to infect my Saturday. For purposes of catharsis, I did immediately note on Twitter that Broder's article was "a tour de force of Beltway sickness - even for him" and that "the Washington press corps has exactly the 'dean' it deserves." Fortunately, Hilzoy, Scott Lemieux and Roger Ailes -- among others -- have now made most of the points quite conclusively that need to be made about the morally depraved joke that David Broder is, leaving just a couple of observations worth noting.
To justify the absolute immunity he wants for government lawbreakers, Broder describes the Bush era as "one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States." But that's easy to say now that the Bush presidency is over and the evidence of its criminality so undeniable. But Broder never said any such thing while it was all taking place, when it mattered. In fact, he did the opposite: he mocked those who tried to sound the alarm about how radical and "dark" the Bush presidency was and repeatedly defended what Bush officials were doing as perfectly normal, unalarming and well within the bounds of mainstream and legitimate policy.
As but one example, Broder -- in a September 15, 2006 Washington Post chat -- was asked by a reader about an Editorial in The New York Times which appeared that morning that warned of the grave dangers of abolishing habeas corpus and the protections of the Geneva Conventions, as the soon-to-be-enacted Military Commissions Act sought to do. In other words, back then, the Times Editorial Page was warning of exactly the policies -- "certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion" -- which Broder today, with Bush safely gone, cites as examples of our "darkest chapter." Yet here is what Broder was saying about these things when it mattered:
Kingston, Ontario: I'm rather surprised by your and your correspondents' calm tone of voice this morning. Unless the New York Times editorial page is wildly off-track, the U.S. is in the grip of a major constitutional crisis, with the government trying to set aside long established guarantees of legal behavior, both internally and in relation to international law. Where's the sense of urgency?
David S. Broder: Far be it from me to question the New York Times, but I'd like to assure you that Washington is calm and quiet this morning, and democracy still lives here. Editorial writers sometimes get carried away by their own rhetoric.
On other occasions, Broder mocked those who suggested there was anything extremist or radical about Bush's "counter-terrorism" policies; hailed "Bush's conviction that the quest for freedom is a universal truth"; proclaimed his confidence in Donald Rumsfeld's pre-war Iraq plans; and compared 2002 war opponents to "Jane Fonda in Hanoi or antiwar protesters marching under Viet Cong flags."
Just compare what Broder wrote about the Bush presidency on November 14, 2004, to what he wrote today:
11/14/2004:
Some of my colleagues in the pundit business have become unhinged by the election results. The always diverting Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote the other day that "the forces of darkness" are taking over the country . . . Bush won, but he will have to work within the system for whatever he gets. Checks and balances are still there. The nation does not face "another dark age," unless you consider politics with all its tradeoffs and bargaining a black art.
Today:
Obama, to his credit, has ended one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States.
What Broder states today as fact (that the Bush presidency is "one of the darkest chapters of American history") is almost verbatim that which, when it mattered, when it was happening, he vehemently and repeatedly denied -- and, of course, given that he works in the most accountability-free profession of all (establishment punditry), he does not even have the minimal honesty to acknowledge that. Like so many of his colleagues, Broder played a critical role in defending these crimes and insisting that they were not taking place.
This is a crucial and oft-overlooked fact in the debate over whether we should investigate and prosecute Bush crimes. The very same pundits and establishment journalists who today are demanding that we forget all about it, not look back, not hold anyone accountable, are the very same people who -- like Broder -- played key roles in hiding, enabling and defending these crimes. In light of that, what is less surprising than the fact that, almost unanimously, these very same people oppose any efforts to examine what happened and impose accountability? Back in January, I wrote the following about the virtual unanimity among establishment media figures against investigations and prosecutions:
Bush officials didn't commit these crimes by themselves. Virtually the entire Washington establishment supported or at least enabled most of it. . . . As confirmed accounts emerged years ago of chronic presidential lawbreaking, warrantless eavesdropping, systematic torture, rendition, "black site" prisons, corruption in every realm, and all sorts of other dark crimes, where were journalists and other opinion-making elites? Very few of them with any significant platform can point to anything they did or said to oppose or stop any of it -- and they know that.
Many of them, even when much of this became conclusively proven, were still explicitly praising Bush officials. Most of them supported the underlying enabling policies (Guantanamo and the permanent state of war in Iraq and "on terror"), and then cheered on laws -- the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act -- designed to legalize these activities and retroactively immunize the lawbreakers and war criminals from prosecution.
So when these media and political elites are defending Bush officials, mitigating their crimes, and arguing that they shouldn't be held accountable, they're actually defending themselves. . . . They can't indict Bush officials for what they did because to do so would be to indict themselves. Bush officials need to be exonerated, or at least have their crimes forgotten (look to the future and ignore the past, they all chime in unison), so that their own involvement in it will also be cleansed and then forgotten.
Earlier this week, Paul Krugman made a similar point:
One addendum to today’s column: the truth, which I think everyone in the political/media establishments knows in their hearts, is that the nine months or so between the summer of 2002 and the beginning of the Iraq insurgency were a great national moral test — a test that most people in influential positions failed. . . . But for those who stayed “sensible” through the test, it’s a moment they’d like to see forgotten. That, I believe, is the real reason so many want to let torture and everything else go down the memory hole.
Imagine if a police officer were stationed in front of the hospital room of a key witness in a criminal trial, in order to protect the witness from attack, but instead, the officer fell asleep or wondered off to watch TV and, as a result, the defendant's associates were able to enter the room and murder the witness. Asking establishment journalists if they favor investigations and prosecutions of Bush crimes is like asking that police officer whether he favors an investigation and consequences for what happened or whether he instead prefers that the whole thing just be forgotten and everyone look instead to the future. People who bear culpability in the commission of destructive and criminal acts always oppose investigations and accountability -- i.e., what they'll call "looking backwards" or "retribution." They're the last people whose opinions we ought to be seeking on that question.
* * * * *
Directly contrary to the way the establishment media is describing these facts, polling data has consistently shown that large majorities of Americans favor investigations into Bush crimes and large percentages favor criminal prosecutions. Even with virtually the entire pundit class united in opposition, yet another poll on that question -- from The Washington Post/ABC News today -- finds that a majority (51-47%) answered "yes" when asked: "Do you think the Obama administration should or should not investigate whether any laws were broken in the way terrorism suspects were treated under the Bush administration?" It's amazing how much The Hard Left has grown.
* * * * *
More than anything else, Broder's column illustrates the Central Creed of Beltway Culture, which should be memorialized on plaques throughout that city:
When poor and ordinary Americans who commit crimes are prosecuted and imprisoned, that is Justice.
When the same thing is done to Washington elites, that is Ugly Retribution.
* * * * *
See also: this post from earlier today on Time Magazine's coverage of drug decriminalization in Portugal and this post on one of the most brazen acknowledgments yet that most establishment journalists operate with no standards.
UPDATE: For a perfect example of how etablishment journalists and pundits -- including our ostensibly "liberal" ones -- cheered on many of these crimes, see Digby.
Who are Broderian anti-investigation journalists really protecting?
Glenn Greenwald
Sept. 3, 2009
Salon.com
In one of the most drearily predictable media developments ever, David Broder today -- yet again -- joins in with an endless string of establishment pundits to demand that there be no investigations by the DOJ of war crimes and other felonies committed by the Bush administration. The one silver lining from all of this is that it has clarified a crucial political fact: most establishment "journalists" don't believe in the rule of law for political elites -- period. They believe high political officials should be able to break the law -- commit felonies -- and be immunized from legal consequences. To any reasonable observer, that is simply no longer in doubt. Opposition to investigations -- especially for the real culprits as opposed to low-level interrogators -- is as close to a unanimous media view as something can be (though the NYT Editorial Board today, standing virtually alone, calls for full criminal investigations, including of high-level Bush officials).
Broder claims he "agree[s] on the importance of accountability for illegal acts and for serious breaches of trust by government officials -- even at the highest levels." As examples of this "agreement," he cites this: "I had no problem with the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, and I called for Bill Clinton to resign when he lied to his Cabinet colleagues and to the country during the Monica Lewinsky scandal." But he then goes on to boast that he supported Ford's pardon of Nixon. He thought the prosecution of Lewis Libby was "silliness." He simply believes
that "the rule of law" is only for ordinary Americans, not for powerful political officials who commit felonies -- and in that, he's completely typical of the Beltway mindset. It's not an accident that he's the Dean of Washington Journalism; he is a perfect embodiment of that culture.
That media elites -- ostensibly devoted to accountability for the powerful -- fulfill the exact opposite role by demanding immunity for their lawbreaking is why elite lawlessness is so rampant. But that's well-established by now, so I want to focus on another point raised by this Broderian opposition: a completely self-serving falsehood that lies at the core of the debate over investigations. The standard claim made by investigation opponents in the media is that we all know that torture is abhorrent and that what was done is terribly wrong, but that prosecutions would just be too disruptive. Broder asks: "Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock? . . . The cost to the country would simply be too great."
But it's simply not true that these journalists vehemently objected to torture as abhorrent but now merely believe prosecutions are an over-reaction. The reality is that they did not object to the torture regime as it was implemented. They did the opposite: they mocked those who objected to it and who tried to stop it as overheated, hysterical, fringe leftists -- as Broder did in a November, 2004 Op-Ed, deriding as "unhinged" those who were arguing "that 'the forces of darkness' are taking over the country." Identically, here's what Broder said in an October, 2006 chat when a reader asked him about a New York Times Editorial sounding the alarm about the radicalism of the Bush administration:
Kingston, Ontario: I'm rather surprised by your and your correspondents' calm tone of voice this morning. Unless the New York Times editorial page is wildly off-track, the U.S. is in the grip of a major constitutional crisis, with the government trying to set aside long established guarantees of legal behavior, both internally and in relation to international law. Where's the sense of urgency?
David S. Broder: Far be it from me to question the New York Times, but I'd like to assure you that Washington is calm and quiet this morning, and democracy still lives here. Editorial writers sometimes get carried away by their own rhetoric.
That was typical of Beltway media behavior even as revelations of war crimes and high-level lawlesness proliferated: oh, calm down with your extremist, unhinged rhetoric. Broder boasts that he called for Clinton's resignation over a sex scandal and "had no problem with" Nixon's impeachment over what was, by comparsion to Bush scandals, a relatively minor infraction. As revelations of torture mounted, did he call for Bush's impeachment or even resignation? No. Like most of his colleagues in the media, he did the opposite: he dismissed objections to what was happening as hysterical and fringe and insisted that Serious and Good People were in charge.
This is a vital reason -- I'd say the central reason -- why people like David Broder and his media colleagues don't want investigations and prosecutions: because they were complicit in most of it, and such proceedings would implicate them as much as the criminals themselves. Think about it: what would happen if Dick Cheney were "in the dock," if high-level American officials were adjudicated in formal proceedings as war criminals and felons? The question would naturally arise: how was that allowed to happen? What did the American media do about it while it happened? What was the Dean of the Washington Press Corps saying and doing to stop it and to alert the citizenry as to what was going on? And the answer, of course, is: nothing. They supported the war criminals and mocked and demonized those who objected.
That's why so many media figures want to Look Forward and Not Backwards -- not only because they want to protect high-level political officials who committed felonies and thus preserve America's two-tiered justice system, but more so, because they know that "looking backwards" would reveal who and what they really are. People who engage in heinous acts always want everyone to look forward and not backwards, for reasons that are as obvious as they are ignoble. Tom Tomorrow captured this mentality perfectly in a cartoon this week (click to enlarge):
Yesterday, Physicians for Human Rights issued a new report which finds that CIA doctors "came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation" on detainees in U.S. custody, as "doctors actively monitored the CIA's interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent." Human experimentation on helpless detainees. Is it any wonder that the people who are responsible for that and helped to enable it -- critically including media stars who waved it all away -- don't want any light shined on what was done? If you were them, would you?
While all this was occurring, David Broder and most of his media colleagues not only failed to object, but were insisting that nothing extremist, radical or lawless was taking place. They demonized those who raised the alarm bells and tried to stop it. Their opposition to investigations is absolutely grounded in their rejection of the rule of law for political elites, but at least as much, it's a desperate effort to protect themselves and shield themselves from the accountability and shame they so intensely deserve.
UPDATE: Brad DeLong makes a very, very strong case that David Broder is -- how shall we say? -- not telling the truth in today's column when he claims he "had no problem" with the impeachment of Richard Nixon.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
How crazy is Richard Gage? Physics teachers, please tell us if Building 7 at the WTC fell at speed of free fall
Architect Richard Gage says there are some interesting anomalies about Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
I'm not an expert in these issues, but the Bush administration says Gage has made math mistakes.
Richard Gage says: WTC Building #7, a 47-story high-rise not hit by an airplane, exhibits all the characteristics of a classic controlled demolition with explosives: (and some non-standard characteristics)
1. Rapid onset of “collapse”
2. Sounds of explosions at ground floor - a full second prior to collapse
3. Symmetrical “collapse” – through the path of greatest resistance – at free-fall acceleration
4. Imploded, collapsing completely, and landed mostly in its own footprint
5. Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds
6. Several tons of molten metal reported by numerous highly-qualified witnesses
7. Chemical signature of Thermite (high tech incendiary) found in solidified molten metal, and dust samples by physics professor Steven Jones, PhD.
8. FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples
9. Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional
10. Fore-knowledge of “collapse” by media, NYPD, FDNY
And exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.
1. Slow onset with large visible deformations
2. Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires)
3. Evidence of fire temperatures capable of softening steel
4. High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never “collapsed”.
I'm not an expert in these issues, but the Bush administration says Gage has made math mistakes.
Richard Gage says: WTC Building #7, a 47-story high-rise not hit by an airplane, exhibits all the characteristics of a classic controlled demolition with explosives: (and some non-standard characteristics)
1. Rapid onset of “collapse”
2. Sounds of explosions at ground floor - a full second prior to collapse
3. Symmetrical “collapse” – through the path of greatest resistance – at free-fall acceleration
4. Imploded, collapsing completely, and landed mostly in its own footprint
5. Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds
6. Several tons of molten metal reported by numerous highly-qualified witnesses
7. Chemical signature of Thermite (high tech incendiary) found in solidified molten metal, and dust samples by physics professor Steven Jones, PhD.
8. FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples
9. Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional
10. Fore-knowledge of “collapse” by media, NYPD, FDNY
And exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.
1. Slow onset with large visible deformations
2. Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires)
3. Evidence of fire temperatures capable of softening steel
4. High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never “collapsed”.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, formerly known as the Gyre
Reporting From the Gyre
REBECCA TOLIN
August 13, 2009
Scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography are 11 days into an unprecedented "plastics watching" expedition in the North Pacific Gyre. They say there's a lot to see, and it's not pretty.
They are seeing tons of litter from North America and Asia -- including detergent bottles, milk crates, toothbrushes, bottles and buckets -- that have been sucked into the gyre's whirlpool.
"Last night we pulled out a large plastic tube with a whole accumulation of fish and crabs inside of it," said Ph.D. student Jesse Powell, who took a few minutes from his sampling duties to speak with me by satellite phone today from the research vessel New Horizon, which is currently in an area 1,500 miles from the San Diego coast.
The area is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, even though scientists say it’s more like a plastic stew. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation estimates the plastic-rich region is twice the size of the United States. The 28-member crew is sampling deeper than other oceanographic missions have to date, about 500 meters below the surface.
There’s also a whale watcher and bird observer on board, the latter looking at how the black-footed albatross and Cook’s petrel interact with manmade flotables. From other research, it’s known that mammals are mistaking plastics for food.
"The sea birds ingest a lot of plastic and you can find plastic throughout their gullet when they die on islands out in the Pacific," said Powell from the New Horizon. "So plastic floating in the ocean is a definitely a bad thing for larger animals in this area."
But the main focus of the mission -- dubbed the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition -- are smaller scraps not detectable by satellite, airplanes or sometimes even the naked eye. These micro-plastics, which are less than a couple millimeters long, could bind with pollutants like PCBs to create toxic pellets for fish, and possibly for people who eat them.
"We can we see lots of bits of plastics," said Powell from the New Horizon. "It kind of looks like plastic confetti."
Powell says he’s surprised by the volume of tiny plastics, which "photodegrade" into ever smaller pieces but never completely break down...
REBECCA TOLIN
August 13, 2009
Scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography are 11 days into an unprecedented "plastics watching" expedition in the North Pacific Gyre. They say there's a lot to see, and it's not pretty.
They are seeing tons of litter from North America and Asia -- including detergent bottles, milk crates, toothbrushes, bottles and buckets -- that have been sucked into the gyre's whirlpool.
"Last night we pulled out a large plastic tube with a whole accumulation of fish and crabs inside of it," said Ph.D. student Jesse Powell, who took a few minutes from his sampling duties to speak with me by satellite phone today from the research vessel New Horizon, which is currently in an area 1,500 miles from the San Diego coast.
The area is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, even though scientists say it’s more like a plastic stew. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation estimates the plastic-rich region is twice the size of the United States. The 28-member crew is sampling deeper than other oceanographic missions have to date, about 500 meters below the surface.
There’s also a whale watcher and bird observer on board, the latter looking at how the black-footed albatross and Cook’s petrel interact with manmade flotables. From other research, it’s known that mammals are mistaking plastics for food.
"The sea birds ingest a lot of plastic and you can find plastic throughout their gullet when they die on islands out in the Pacific," said Powell from the New Horizon. "So plastic floating in the ocean is a definitely a bad thing for larger animals in this area."
But the main focus of the mission -- dubbed the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition -- are smaller scraps not detectable by satellite, airplanes or sometimes even the naked eye. These micro-plastics, which are less than a couple millimeters long, could bind with pollutants like PCBs to create toxic pellets for fish, and possibly for people who eat them.
"We can we see lots of bits of plastics," said Powell from the New Horizon. "It kind of looks like plastic confetti."
Powell says he’s surprised by the volume of tiny plastics, which "photodegrade" into ever smaller pieces but never completely break down...
Keeping Health Reform Neutral on Abortion
Keeping Health Reform Neutral on Abortion
By STEVEN WALDMAN
AUGUST 13, 2009
Wall Street Journal
Lost in the vitriol about health care is a surprising development: pro-life and pro-choice leaders say they don't intend to use health reform to shift the balance of power in their direction. Many activists on both sides say any big changes to health care should maintain the status quo in the abortion stalemate.
Less surprisingly, while both sides agree on that goal, they look at the same words in the same bills and come to opposite conclusions about what they mean. For instance, the bill passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee declares, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as preventing the public health insurance option from providing for or prohibiting coverage" for abortion in the "public option." Pro-choicers say that this neither-this-nor-that language is self-evidently neutral. Pro-life activists argue that since abortion "could" be covered, it will be covered.
My personal view: the legislation passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee does not mandate abortion coverage, as pro-life groups claim, but does leave open the possibility that the government might pay for abortion. Nor did the "neutral" amendment offered by pro-lifers didn't achieve neutrality, as it would potentially roll back abortion coverage in private insurance plans.
From Waldman's Blog:
Full text of the key amendments
Will health care reform cover abortion?
Health reform, abortion and rationing
Of course, it's easy for me to criticize everyone for not coming up with a neutral solution. It's always more fun to carp than be constructive. So here's my best effort on how to make health care reform neutral on abortion.
First, we need to recognize that part of the problem in being neutral is that health care reform would likely introduce some new features, so you really can't just freeze the status quo. Instead, you have to look at broad principles. In general, the federal government is currently prohibited from directly paying for abortion but allowed to indirectly support abortion.
Indirect support currently happens in a variety of ways. For instance, the federal government set up the Medicaid program, pays for much of it, and allows states to pay for abortions. The government provides support to hospitals, some of which perform abortions. The government gives money to family planning clinics for maternal health care, even though those clinics might also do abortions. In each case, the primary purpose of the spending is not to encourage abortion but, but government funds do support some institutions that also, with their own money, perform abortions. That's the status quo...
Bill Clinton says Republicans are promoting fear regarding universal health care
Bill Clinton: GOP promotes fear over health care
By DAN NEPHIN (AP)
August 13, 2009
PITTSBURGH — Republicans have turned to terrifying people in the debate over overhauling the health care system because the GOP has no political clout to fight it, former President Bill Clinton told a gathering of progressive bloggers on Thursday.
Clinton was president when the Democrats made their last major effort to change the health care system. The big difference now, Clinton said, is that Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as well as control of the House.
The former president called "crazy" the charges that promoting living wills and other end-of-life planning is somehow promoting death.
Clinton spoke at the opening session of the Netroots Nation convention, a gathering of politically progressive bloggers and other online activists.
He urged the crowd to support President Barack Obama on health care reform, along with climate change legislation and other reforms.
"The president needs your help and the cause needs your help," Clinton said. "We have to preserve this progress majority now."
However, he advised them that change may not come as fast as they want and that they may have to accept smaller victories as they continue to work for their goals...
By DAN NEPHIN (AP)
August 13, 2009
PITTSBURGH — Republicans have turned to terrifying people in the debate over overhauling the health care system because the GOP has no political clout to fight it, former President Bill Clinton told a gathering of progressive bloggers on Thursday.
Clinton was president when the Democrats made their last major effort to change the health care system. The big difference now, Clinton said, is that Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as well as control of the House.
The former president called "crazy" the charges that promoting living wills and other end-of-life planning is somehow promoting death.
Clinton spoke at the opening session of the Netroots Nation convention, a gathering of politically progressive bloggers and other online activists.
He urged the crowd to support President Barack Obama on health care reform, along with climate change legislation and other reforms.
"The president needs your help and the cause needs your help," Clinton said. "We have to preserve this progress majority now."
However, he advised them that change may not come as fast as they want and that they may have to accept smaller victories as they continue to work for their goals...
Monday, August 10, 2009
Critics who disrupt town hall meetings on health care are un-American, says Pelosi
UPDATE: Apparently disrupters aren't just un-American, they're also not averse to assaulting opponents. Salon.com's Joan Walsh has an interesting article about some of them.
Anti-health care activist Jack Kimball reports on his blog Granite State Patriots that an opponent "accidentally got a bump on the head when I went to grab his sign." He goes on to say, "Oh well, got to have a little fun at these things."
Pelosi Calls Health Care Critics 'Un-American'
FOXNews.com
August 10, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned the health care debate up a notch Monday, penning a column along with her top deputy that questioned the patriotism of those disrupting town hall meetings to air their complaints.
Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer claimed such behavior is "simply un-American."
It's hardly the first time Pelosi, who earlier this year accused the CIA of lying to Congress and repeatedly has called Republicans unpatriotic, has employed some serious name-calling to characterize her opponents' views.
The jab Monday drew swift scorn from Republicans and critics who say the health care demonstrations are as American as apple pie.
"I, like most Americans, would find that kind of characterization of citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to be offensive," Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., told FOX News. "There's nothing more American than letting your elected representatives know how you feel about important issues facing the nation."
House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, released a statement calling the charge "outrageous and reprehensible."
Pelosi and Hoyer made the accusation as part of a lengthy column in USA Today stressing the need for action on health care reform. The piece was published as lawmakers return to their districts for summer recess, a period that could imperil the legislation if health care critics cause moderate Democrats to lose their stomachs for sweeping reform.
Critics have confronted lawmakers about the bills, sometimes shouting at them, at a number of town halls in the past week alone.
On Monday, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill tried a new tack in rebutting the protesters while also minimizing their complaints. She got several hands when she asked audience members at a town hall meeting to raise their hands if they're so scared about the federal government running health care that they "can't think straight."
For Pelosi and Hoyer, they charged that an "ugly campaign" is afoot to misrepresent the legislation, "disrupt" the public meetings and prevent members of Congress from "conducting a civil dialogue" on the topic.
"Let the facts be heard," they wrote. "These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views -- but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades." ...
Anti-health care activist Jack Kimball reports on his blog Granite State Patriots that an opponent "accidentally got a bump on the head when I went to grab his sign." He goes on to say, "Oh well, got to have a little fun at these things."
Pelosi Calls Health Care Critics 'Un-American'
FOXNews.com
August 10, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned the health care debate up a notch Monday, penning a column along with her top deputy that questioned the patriotism of those disrupting town hall meetings to air their complaints.
Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer claimed such behavior is "simply un-American."
It's hardly the first time Pelosi, who earlier this year accused the CIA of lying to Congress and repeatedly has called Republicans unpatriotic, has employed some serious name-calling to characterize her opponents' views.
The jab Monday drew swift scorn from Republicans and critics who say the health care demonstrations are as American as apple pie.
"I, like most Americans, would find that kind of characterization of citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to be offensive," Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., told FOX News. "There's nothing more American than letting your elected representatives know how you feel about important issues facing the nation."
House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, released a statement calling the charge "outrageous and reprehensible."
Pelosi and Hoyer made the accusation as part of a lengthy column in USA Today stressing the need for action on health care reform. The piece was published as lawmakers return to their districts for summer recess, a period that could imperil the legislation if health care critics cause moderate Democrats to lose their stomachs for sweeping reform.
Critics have confronted lawmakers about the bills, sometimes shouting at them, at a number of town halls in the past week alone.
On Monday, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill tried a new tack in rebutting the protesters while also minimizing their complaints. She got several hands when she asked audience members at a town hall meeting to raise their hands if they're so scared about the federal government running health care that they "can't think straight."
For Pelosi and Hoyer, they charged that an "ugly campaign" is afoot to misrepresent the legislation, "disrupt" the public meetings and prevent members of Congress from "conducting a civil dialogue" on the topic.
"Let the facts be heard," they wrote. "These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views -- but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades." ...
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Chemical company contribuntes half a million dollars to keep shoppers using disposable plastic bags
American Chemistry Council gives $500,000 to stop bag fee
July 21, 2009
Seattle Times
By Marc Ramirez
The American Chemistry Council's latest contribution of $500,000 to the campaign against Seattle's proposed 20-cent fee on disposable shopping bags is one of the city's largest ballot-measure donations in recent history.
The American Chemistry Council has provided $500,000 to help fight Seattle's plan to charge consumers 20 cents for disposable shopping bags.
Adam Parmer, spokesman for the campaign to turn back the Seattle ordinance, said the money given over the weekend will pay for radio ads and direct-mail efforts against Referendum 1, which goes before voters Aug. 18.
It's the single largest contribution to a local ballot-measure in recent history, according to Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission staff.
The money comes from the Progressive Bag Affiliates of the Virginia-based American Chemistry Council, the prime backers of the Coalition to Stop the Bag Tax, which last year gave the campaign about $239,000.
The campaign began placing anti-bag-fee ads on the Internet over the weekend, Parmer said, and radio ads should start airing this week.
Mayor Greg Nickels proposed and the City Council approved the bag fee to encourage the use of reusable bags and reduce waste. The ordinance was put on hold when opponents gathered enough signatures to put the measure to a public vote.
If voters approve the ordinance, Seattle would become the first U.S. city to target plastic and paper.
Backers of the ordinance said their opponent's cash boost does not alter their plans.
"It's what we were anticipating from the outset," said Rob Gala of the Seattle Green Bag Campaign, which has so far raised about $65,000. "We see that this vote is essentially about one of the world's largest polluters telling a city what it can and cannot do in terms of waste reduction."...
Is the Turkish government manipulating US congress members?
Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Completed, DoJ a 'No Show,' Bombshells Under Oath
By Brad Friedman
8/8/2009
The Brad Blog
'State Secrets' privilege NOT asserted by DoJ;
FBI whistleblower answered ALL questions under oath on Turkish infiltration of U.S. Government...coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition at the National Whistleblowers Center in Washington D.C. For background see previous coverage:
* 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony
...I asked if she specified whether the sitting bi-sexual, married Congresswoman who had been taped sleeping with a woman, without knowing, and then bribed by Turkish interests with the tape, to vote against the Armenian Genocide resolution had been a Democrat or a Republican. She said she is a Democrat, and that she testified to that during her deposition. (See Krikorian's long statement above for more details on that woman.)
Second, I asked about the "real" story on Brewster Jennings, as opposed to the "crap...from the media" as she mentioned at the venue.
"Basically," she said, "I told them how [third-ranking State Dept. official in the Bush Admin and former Ambassador to Turkey] Marc Grossman disclosed" that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company to the target of an FBI investigation. "And it was under oath and that some lives may have been lost."
"Novak has nothing to do with it. Wilson has nothing to do with it. Valerie Plame has nothing to do with it. The whole operation has to do with something totally different and it had to do with the American Turkish Council and the Turkish clients who were about to hire Brewster Jennings as an analyst ... and Grossman found out about it, and tipped off his diplomatic contact who was a target of the FBI counter-intelligence, and that person notified the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency], etc."
She says that Brewster Jenning was then "dismantled as soon as the FBI notified the CIA," after which "FBI requested CIA to do a damage assessment, to see if lives would be lost."
All of this, she re-iterated, was "long before, three years before," Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his newspaper column.
Brewster Jennings was "absolutely" dismantled in August of 2001.
"Grossman and [Richard] Armitage, they are the only two people involved. Later on Cheney and his people may have used it, but it had nothing to do with those other things, [Brewster Jennings] was completely destroyed and gone by the summer of 2001."
For those not fully up on Edmonds' story, her job at the FBI was to listen to wiretaps in the counter-intel department, to translate foreign targets caught on those taps. Presumably, that's where her details on the destruction of Brewster Jennings comes from. She was hired by the agency shortly after 9/11...
By Brad Friedman
8/8/2009
The Brad Blog
'State Secrets' privilege NOT asserted by DoJ;
FBI whistleblower answered ALL questions under oath on Turkish infiltration of U.S. Government...coverage of the Sibel Edmonds deposition at the National Whistleblowers Center in Washington D.C. For background see previous coverage:
* 8/7/09: EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: DoJ Pressures Ohio Election Commission to Block Edmonds Testimony
...I asked if she specified whether the sitting bi-sexual, married Congresswoman who had been taped sleeping with a woman, without knowing, and then bribed by Turkish interests with the tape, to vote against the Armenian Genocide resolution had been a Democrat or a Republican. She said she is a Democrat, and that she testified to that during her deposition. (See Krikorian's long statement above for more details on that woman.)
Second, I asked about the "real" story on Brewster Jennings, as opposed to the "crap...from the media" as she mentioned at the venue.
"Basically," she said, "I told them how [third-ranking State Dept. official in the Bush Admin and former Ambassador to Turkey] Marc Grossman disclosed" that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company to the target of an FBI investigation. "And it was under oath and that some lives may have been lost."
"Novak has nothing to do with it. Wilson has nothing to do with it. Valerie Plame has nothing to do with it. The whole operation has to do with something totally different and it had to do with the American Turkish Council and the Turkish clients who were about to hire Brewster Jennings as an analyst ... and Grossman found out about it, and tipped off his diplomatic contact who was a target of the FBI counter-intelligence, and that person notified the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency], etc."
She says that Brewster Jenning was then "dismantled as soon as the FBI notified the CIA," after which "FBI requested CIA to do a damage assessment, to see if lives would be lost."
All of this, she re-iterated, was "long before, three years before," Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his newspaper column.
Brewster Jennings was "absolutely" dismantled in August of 2001.
"Grossman and [Richard] Armitage, they are the only two people involved. Later on Cheney and his people may have used it, but it had nothing to do with those other things, [Brewster Jennings] was completely destroyed and gone by the summer of 2001."
For those not fully up on Edmonds' story, her job at the FBI was to listen to wiretaps in the counter-intel department, to translate foreign targets caught on those taps. Presumably, that's where her details on the destruction of Brewster Jennings comes from. She was hired by the agency shortly after 9/11...
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Pittsburg Fitness Center killer George Sodini wrote a blog
George Sodini's Blog, Full Text By Alleged Gym Shooter
Online Diary Apparently Kept by Alleged Pittsburgh-Area Health Club Killer
ABC News
August 5, 2009
A gunman walked into a Bridgeville, Pa., health club tonight, turned out the lights and opened fire, witnesses of the shocking attack said.The shooting left five people dead -- including the shooter, a law enforcement source told ABC News radio. Up to 15 others have been reported injured.
Following is text of a blog kept by George Sodini, the man suspected of opening fire in a Pittsburgh-area gym, killing three and injuring at least 15 others before apparently turning a gun on himself.
BLOG:
George Sodini
Age 48.
DOB 9/30/1960
DOD 8/4/2009
5-10, 155 lbs.
Never married.
...Tetelestai Church in Pittsburgh, PA - "Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!", as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy ----, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven. Ask him. Call him at [phone number]. If no answer there, he should still live at [address]. In any case, guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage. Their web site: http://www.tetelestai.org.
...Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them...
RELATED STORY:
A powerful right-wing Christian group called the family, to which several prominent politicians belong, also twists the concept of predestination. The "Family" helped Senator John Ensign, Rep. Chip Pickering and Governor Mark Sanford with recent sex scandals.
The "Family" believes that if you're chosen, the rules don't apply
...David Coe, Doug Coe's son and heir apparent... Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply...
Online Diary Apparently Kept by Alleged Pittsburgh-Area Health Club Killer
ABC News
August 5, 2009
A gunman walked into a Bridgeville, Pa., health club tonight, turned out the lights and opened fire, witnesses of the shocking attack said.The shooting left five people dead -- including the shooter, a law enforcement source told ABC News radio. Up to 15 others have been reported injured.
Following is text of a blog kept by George Sodini, the man suspected of opening fire in a Pittsburgh-area gym, killing three and injuring at least 15 others before apparently turning a gun on himself.
BLOG:
George Sodini
Age 48.
DOB 9/30/1960
DOD 8/4/2009
5-10, 155 lbs.
Never married.
...Tetelestai Church in Pittsburgh, PA - "Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!", as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy ----, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven. Ask him. Call him at [phone number]. If no answer there, he should still live at [address]. In any case, guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage. Their web site: http://www.tetelestai.org.
...Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them...
RELATED STORY:
A powerful right-wing Christian group called the family, to which several prominent politicians belong, also twists the concept of predestination. The "Family" helped Senator John Ensign, Rep. Chip Pickering and Governor Mark Sanford with recent sex scandals.
The "Family" believes that if you're chosen, the rules don't apply
...David Coe, Doug Coe's son and heir apparent... Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply...
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Genocide may have a long history, with modern humans killing Neanderthals
Remains Show Human Killed Neanderthal
By JEANNA BRYNER
LiveScience.com
(July 22, 2009) -- Newly analyzed remains suggest that a modern human killed a Neanderthal man in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. The finding is scant but tantalizing evidence for a theory that modern humans helped to kill off the Neanderthals.
The probable weapon of choice: A thrown spear.
The evidence: A lethal wound on the remains of a Neanderthal skeleton.
The victim: A 40- to 50-year-old male, now called Shanidar 3, with signs of arthritis and a sharp, deep slice in his left ninth rib.
"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said study researcher Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in North Carolina. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals [aka Neanderthals]. I want to say that loud and clear."
But he added, "We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't, that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."
(The words "Neanderthal" and "Neandertal" refer to the same species, Homo neanderthalensis, which lived on the plains of Europe and parts of Asia as far back as 230,000 years ago. They disappeared from the fossil record more than 20,000 years ago.)
Violent Past
Scientists are continuing to refine their understanding of early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, with hopes of also resolving the mystery of how the latter species went extinct while we did not. Past research has yielded conflicting evidence on interbreeding between the two species, but the new study clearly shows the opposite of affection.
In fact, another Neanderthal skeleton dating back some 36,000 years and found in France showed signs of a scalp injury likely caused by a sharp object that may have been delivered by a modern human at the time, Churchill said.
"So if the Shanidar 3 case is also a case of inter-specific violence and if Shanidar 3 overlaps in time with modern humans, we're beginning to get a little bit of a pattern here," Churchill said...
By JEANNA BRYNER
LiveScience.com
(July 22, 2009) -- Newly analyzed remains suggest that a modern human killed a Neanderthal man in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. The finding is scant but tantalizing evidence for a theory that modern humans helped to kill off the Neanderthals.
The probable weapon of choice: A thrown spear.
The evidence: A lethal wound on the remains of a Neanderthal skeleton.
The victim: A 40- to 50-year-old male, now called Shanidar 3, with signs of arthritis and a sharp, deep slice in his left ninth rib.
"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said study researcher Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in North Carolina. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals [aka Neanderthals]. I want to say that loud and clear."
But he added, "We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't, that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."
(The words "Neanderthal" and "Neandertal" refer to the same species, Homo neanderthalensis, which lived on the plains of Europe and parts of Asia as far back as 230,000 years ago. They disappeared from the fossil record more than 20,000 years ago.)
Violent Past
Scientists are continuing to refine their understanding of early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, with hopes of also resolving the mystery of how the latter species went extinct while we did not. Past research has yielded conflicting evidence on interbreeding between the two species, but the new study clearly shows the opposite of affection.
In fact, another Neanderthal skeleton dating back some 36,000 years and found in France showed signs of a scalp injury likely caused by a sharp object that may have been delivered by a modern human at the time, Churchill said.
"So if the Shanidar 3 case is also a case of inter-specific violence and if Shanidar 3 overlaps in time with modern humans, we're beginning to get a little bit of a pattern here," Churchill said...
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The "Family" believes that if you're chosen, the rules don't apply; helped Ensign, Pickering and Sanford with sex scandals
Sex and power inside "the C Street House"
Sanford, Ensign, and other regulars receive guidance from the invisible fundamentalist group known as the Family
By Jeff Sharlet
July 21, 2009
I can't say I was impressed when I met Sen. John Ensign at the C Street House, the secretive religious enclave on Capitol Hill thrust into the news by its links to three political sex scandals, those of Gov. Mark Sanford; former Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., who allegedly rendezvoused at the C Street House with his mistress, an executive in the industry for which he then became a lobbyist; and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Although Sanford declared today that his scandal will actually turn out to be good for the people of South Carolina because he's now more firmly in God's control, the once-favored GOP presidential prospect will finish out his term and fade away. And Ensign's residence at the C Street House during his own extramarital affair now threatens to end a career that he and other Republicans hoped would lead him to the White House.
When I met Ensign, he was just back from a run, sweaty and bouncing in place, boasting about the time he'd clocked and teasing a young woman from his office. She seemed annoyed that the senator wouldn't get himself into a shower and back on the job. When I wrote about Sen. Ensign in my book about the evangelical political organization that runs the C Street House, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," I described him as a "conservative casino heir elected to the Senate from Nevada, a brightly tanned, hapless figure who uses his Family connections to graft holiness to his gambling-fortune name."
Now, of course, I know I was wrong: John Ensign is a brightly tanned, hapless figure who used his Family connections to cover up the fruits of his flirtations, to make moral decisions for him, and to do his dirty work when his secret romance sputtered...
If sexual license was all the Family offered the C Street men, however, that would merely be seedy and self-serving. But Family men are more than hypocritical. They're followers of a political religion that embraces elitism, disdains democracy, and pursues power for its members the better to "advance the Kingdom." They say they're working for Jesus, but their Christ is a power-hungry, inside-the-Beltway savior not many churchgoers would recognize. Sexual peccadilloes aside, the Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn't registered as a lobby -- and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations like Big Pharma and Big Insurance that exert pressure on public policy.
The Family likes to call itself a "Christian Mafia," but it began 74 years ago as an anti-New Deal coalition of businessmen convinced that organized labor was under the sway of Satan. The Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism...Early participants included Southern Sens. Strom Thurmond, Herman Talmadge and Absalom Willis Robertson -- Pat Robertson's father. Membership lists stored in the Family's archive at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois show active participation at any given time over the years by dozens of congressmen.
Today's roll call is just as impressive: Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family.
Family leaders consider their political network to be Christ's avant garde, an elite that transcends not just conventional morality but also earthly laws regulating lobbying.... "The more invisible you can make your organization," Vereide's successor, current leader Doug Coe preaches, "the more influence you can have." That's true -- which is why we have laws requiring lobbyists to identify themselves as such.
But David Coe, Doug Coe's son and heir apparent, calls himself simply a friend to men such as John Ensign, whom he guided through the coverup of his affair.
I met the younger Coe when I lived for several weeks as a member of the Family. He's a surprising source of counsel, spiritual or otherwise. Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply...
Editor's note: Sharlet is the author of the bestselling "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power."
Sanford, Ensign, and other regulars receive guidance from the invisible fundamentalist group known as the Family
By Jeff Sharlet
July 21, 2009
I can't say I was impressed when I met Sen. John Ensign at the C Street House, the secretive religious enclave on Capitol Hill thrust into the news by its links to three political sex scandals, those of Gov. Mark Sanford; former Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., who allegedly rendezvoused at the C Street House with his mistress, an executive in the industry for which he then became a lobbyist; and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Although Sanford declared today that his scandal will actually turn out to be good for the people of South Carolina because he's now more firmly in God's control, the once-favored GOP presidential prospect will finish out his term and fade away. And Ensign's residence at the C Street House during his own extramarital affair now threatens to end a career that he and other Republicans hoped would lead him to the White House.
When I met Ensign, he was just back from a run, sweaty and bouncing in place, boasting about the time he'd clocked and teasing a young woman from his office. She seemed annoyed that the senator wouldn't get himself into a shower and back on the job. When I wrote about Sen. Ensign in my book about the evangelical political organization that runs the C Street House, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," I described him as a "conservative casino heir elected to the Senate from Nevada, a brightly tanned, hapless figure who uses his Family connections to graft holiness to his gambling-fortune name."
Now, of course, I know I was wrong: John Ensign is a brightly tanned, hapless figure who used his Family connections to cover up the fruits of his flirtations, to make moral decisions for him, and to do his dirty work when his secret romance sputtered...
If sexual license was all the Family offered the C Street men, however, that would merely be seedy and self-serving. But Family men are more than hypocritical. They're followers of a political religion that embraces elitism, disdains democracy, and pursues power for its members the better to "advance the Kingdom." They say they're working for Jesus, but their Christ is a power-hungry, inside-the-Beltway savior not many churchgoers would recognize. Sexual peccadilloes aside, the Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn't registered as a lobby -- and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations like Big Pharma and Big Insurance that exert pressure on public policy.
The Family likes to call itself a "Christian Mafia," but it began 74 years ago as an anti-New Deal coalition of businessmen convinced that organized labor was under the sway of Satan. The Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism...Early participants included Southern Sens. Strom Thurmond, Herman Talmadge and Absalom Willis Robertson -- Pat Robertson's father. Membership lists stored in the Family's archive at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois show active participation at any given time over the years by dozens of congressmen.
Today's roll call is just as impressive: Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family.
Family leaders consider their political network to be Christ's avant garde, an elite that transcends not just conventional morality but also earthly laws regulating lobbying.... "The more invisible you can make your organization," Vereide's successor, current leader Doug Coe preaches, "the more influence you can have." That's true -- which is why we have laws requiring lobbyists to identify themselves as such.
But David Coe, Doug Coe's son and heir apparent, calls himself simply a friend to men such as John Ensign, whom he guided through the coverup of his affair.
I met the younger Coe when I lived for several weeks as a member of the Family. He's a surprising source of counsel, spiritual or otherwise. Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply...
Editor's note: Sharlet is the author of the bestselling "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power."
Monday, July 13, 2009
July 12 Orange parade celebrates Protestant colonists victory over Catholic natives: Northern Ireland is a protestant country since colonization
Every July 12 Protestants in Northern Ireland have a parade to celebrate their victory over Catholics.
It's sort of like European Americans having a parade every year to celebrate the manner in which they conquered Native Americans. Or Israelis having a yearly festival to celebrate their defeat of Arabs. It's really not about love and goodness. It's about gloating over the people whose country you've managed to take over. It's one of the most shameful reasons for a parade that I can think of. It reminds me of the Romans parading the natives of the lands they conquered through the streets of Rome.
Belfast Catholics riot over Protestant parade
AP
Nationalist demonstrators take cover from a police water cannon behind a mailbox in Belfast
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Jul 13, 2009
BELFAST, Northern Ireland –
Masked and hooded Belfast Catholics hurled gasoline bombs, fireworks and other makeshift weapons at police Monday as the most bitterly divisive day on the Northern Ireland calendar reached an ugly end.
Several rioters and at least seven officers were injured, none seriously, when Irish nationalists in Ardoyne, a militant Catholic enclave of north Belfast, tried to block a parade by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood.
Tens of thousands of Orangemen spent Monday mounting hundreds of similar parades across this British territory, almost all of them trouble-free, in an annual stress test for the province's fragile peace.
More than 1,000 Orangemen and their accompanying bandsmen eventually did march down the main road past Ardoyne to the beat of a lone drum — but only after riot police fought an hourlong street battle backed by a surveillance helicopter and three massive mobile water cannons.
At one point, masked Catholic rioters on store rooftops directed a deluge of Molotov cocktails, bricks and golf balls on riot police below. The officers were protected with flame-retardant suits, helmets and shields.
Later, as the water-cannon gunners sought to take rioters' legs out from under them, Catholics wearing scarves over their faces took cover behind low brick walls and post boxes. They threw rocks, bricks, bottles and even planks of wood that bounced harmlessly off the armored sides and metal-grilled windows of the water-cannon vehicles.
The Ardoyne Catholics' showdown with police continued long after the Orangemen had passed through.
Police said a gunman fired at least one live round at police lines but missed. Rioters also stole at least two vehicles, set them on fire and pushed them toward police lines. Officers responded with plastic bullets.
A senior Belfast policeman, Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay, condemned the anti-Orange rioters as offering "the worst possible face of Northern Ireland — a face of bigotry, sectarianism and intolerance."
These were the worst riots in Belfast since 2005, when the same Protestant parade triggered much more intense and dangerous riots on the same road. Then, more than 100 police officers were wounded amid a hail of homemade grenades.
But the aftermath of that violence also illustrates how street clashes rarely rattle wider peacemaking politics in Northern Ireland. Weeks after those 2005 riots, the outlawed Irish Republican Army disarmed and renounced violence, paving the way for the 2007 formation of a new Catholic-Protestant government here.
Northern Ireland's "Twelfth" holiday typically raises community tensions to their highest point of the year as British Protestants celebrate centuries-old victories over Irish Catholics.
The often elderly, conservatively dressed Orangemen are accompanied by so-called "kick the pope" bands whose hard-faced, tattooed members play an odd mix of Gospel and sectarian tunes on shrill flutes and deafening drums.
Monday's parades were preceded by a string of overnight attacks northwest of Belfast that damaged two Orange halls and two Protestant homes, one of them gutted by fire. Catholic youths cheered the blaze and jeered the home's elderly occupants, who vowed to leave behind their Catholic neighbors after 32 years.
And Catholic youths struck two departing Orangemen in the head with rocks in the village of Rasharkin. Three police officers were injured in subsequent scuffles with Catholics, who threw several Molotov cocktails. One rioter was arrested.
During another Orange parade in the city of Armagh, 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Belfast, police evacuated a major street called Friary Road after spotting a small bomb. It detonated, injuring nobody and causing little damage, before British army experts could defuse it using a remote-controlled robot.
No group claimed responsibility but police and politicians blamed IRA dissidents who reject the underground group's 2005 disarmament. Analysts agree that the dissidents' sporadic bombings and shootings stand no chance of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom, the traditional IRA goal.
Scores of Catholic youths later attacked police on Friary Road with Molotov cocktails and other thrown objects. They also hijacked and burned two cars on the road. Police arrested four rioters.
"The Twelfth" officially commemorates the July 12, 1690, triumph of Protestant King William of Orange versus his Catholic rival for the English throne, James II, at the Battle of the Boyne south of Belfast. This year the parades took place on the 13th because Orangemen — who march beneath banners depicting the British crown on an open Bible — refuse to hold the holiday on a Sunday.
Orangemen once marched wherever they wanted in Northern Ireland, a state created on the back of Orange power as the predominantly Catholic rest of Ireland won independence from Britain in the early 1920s.
Catholic hostility to Protestant parades helped ignite a conflict over Northern Ireland's future that claimed more than 3,600 lives from the late 1960s to mid-1990s, when paramilitary cease-fires finally took hold.
At that time, the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party led protests blocking Orangemen's traditional marching routes in several cities, towns and villages. The tactic brought Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war — and ultimately ended in broad defeat for the Orangemen, who refused to negotiate on their marching rights until it was too late.
Britain punished the Orangemen's stubbornness by imposing bans on parades that encountered the heaviest opposition from Catholics. The Orangemen spent years mounting violent standoffs with British security forces in hopes of regaining lost ground, but eventually gave up.
The Crumlin Road beside Ardoyne is the only remaining parading point in Belfast that inspires recurring violence. There, the Orangemen have no obvious alternative way to march from their lodges to central Belfast and back again.
It's sort of like European Americans having a parade every year to celebrate the manner in which they conquered Native Americans. Or Israelis having a yearly festival to celebrate their defeat of Arabs. It's really not about love and goodness. It's about gloating over the people whose country you've managed to take over. It's one of the most shameful reasons for a parade that I can think of. It reminds me of the Romans parading the natives of the lands they conquered through the streets of Rome.
Belfast Catholics riot over Protestant parade
AP
Nationalist demonstrators take cover from a police water cannon behind a mailbox in Belfast
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Jul 13, 2009
BELFAST, Northern Ireland –
Masked and hooded Belfast Catholics hurled gasoline bombs, fireworks and other makeshift weapons at police Monday as the most bitterly divisive day on the Northern Ireland calendar reached an ugly end.
Several rioters and at least seven officers were injured, none seriously, when Irish nationalists in Ardoyne, a militant Catholic enclave of north Belfast, tried to block a parade by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood.
Tens of thousands of Orangemen spent Monday mounting hundreds of similar parades across this British territory, almost all of them trouble-free, in an annual stress test for the province's fragile peace.
More than 1,000 Orangemen and their accompanying bandsmen eventually did march down the main road past Ardoyne to the beat of a lone drum — but only after riot police fought an hourlong street battle backed by a surveillance helicopter and three massive mobile water cannons.
At one point, masked Catholic rioters on store rooftops directed a deluge of Molotov cocktails, bricks and golf balls on riot police below. The officers were protected with flame-retardant suits, helmets and shields.
Later, as the water-cannon gunners sought to take rioters' legs out from under them, Catholics wearing scarves over their faces took cover behind low brick walls and post boxes. They threw rocks, bricks, bottles and even planks of wood that bounced harmlessly off the armored sides and metal-grilled windows of the water-cannon vehicles.
The Ardoyne Catholics' showdown with police continued long after the Orangemen had passed through.
Police said a gunman fired at least one live round at police lines but missed. Rioters also stole at least two vehicles, set them on fire and pushed them toward police lines. Officers responded with plastic bullets.
A senior Belfast policeman, Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay, condemned the anti-Orange rioters as offering "the worst possible face of Northern Ireland — a face of bigotry, sectarianism and intolerance."
These were the worst riots in Belfast since 2005, when the same Protestant parade triggered much more intense and dangerous riots on the same road. Then, more than 100 police officers were wounded amid a hail of homemade grenades.
But the aftermath of that violence also illustrates how street clashes rarely rattle wider peacemaking politics in Northern Ireland. Weeks after those 2005 riots, the outlawed Irish Republican Army disarmed and renounced violence, paving the way for the 2007 formation of a new Catholic-Protestant government here.
Northern Ireland's "Twelfth" holiday typically raises community tensions to their highest point of the year as British Protestants celebrate centuries-old victories over Irish Catholics.
The often elderly, conservatively dressed Orangemen are accompanied by so-called "kick the pope" bands whose hard-faced, tattooed members play an odd mix of Gospel and sectarian tunes on shrill flutes and deafening drums.
Monday's parades were preceded by a string of overnight attacks northwest of Belfast that damaged two Orange halls and two Protestant homes, one of them gutted by fire. Catholic youths cheered the blaze and jeered the home's elderly occupants, who vowed to leave behind their Catholic neighbors after 32 years.
And Catholic youths struck two departing Orangemen in the head with rocks in the village of Rasharkin. Three police officers were injured in subsequent scuffles with Catholics, who threw several Molotov cocktails. One rioter was arrested.
During another Orange parade in the city of Armagh, 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Belfast, police evacuated a major street called Friary Road after spotting a small bomb. It detonated, injuring nobody and causing little damage, before British army experts could defuse it using a remote-controlled robot.
No group claimed responsibility but police and politicians blamed IRA dissidents who reject the underground group's 2005 disarmament. Analysts agree that the dissidents' sporadic bombings and shootings stand no chance of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom, the traditional IRA goal.
Scores of Catholic youths later attacked police on Friary Road with Molotov cocktails and other thrown objects. They also hijacked and burned two cars on the road. Police arrested four rioters.
"The Twelfth" officially commemorates the July 12, 1690, triumph of Protestant King William of Orange versus his Catholic rival for the English throne, James II, at the Battle of the Boyne south of Belfast. This year the parades took place on the 13th because Orangemen — who march beneath banners depicting the British crown on an open Bible — refuse to hold the holiday on a Sunday.
Orangemen once marched wherever they wanted in Northern Ireland, a state created on the back of Orange power as the predominantly Catholic rest of Ireland won independence from Britain in the early 1920s.
Catholic hostility to Protestant parades helped ignite a conflict over Northern Ireland's future that claimed more than 3,600 lives from the late 1960s to mid-1990s, when paramilitary cease-fires finally took hold.
At that time, the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party led protests blocking Orangemen's traditional marching routes in several cities, towns and villages. The tactic brought Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war — and ultimately ended in broad defeat for the Orangemen, who refused to negotiate on their marching rights until it was too late.
Britain punished the Orangemen's stubbornness by imposing bans on parades that encountered the heaviest opposition from Catholics. The Orangemen spent years mounting violent standoffs with British security forces in hopes of regaining lost ground, but eventually gave up.
The Crumlin Road beside Ardoyne is the only remaining parading point in Belfast that inspires recurring violence. There, the Orangemen have no obvious alternative way to march from their lodges to central Belfast and back again.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Lawmaker says CIA director ended secret program
Lawmaker says CIA director ended secret program
By PAMELA HESS
July 10, 2009
(AP)
CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday.
Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation.
"The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky told The Associated Press in an interview. "But now it's over."
Democrats revealed late Tuesday that CIA Director Leon Panetta had informed members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 24 that the spy agency had been withholding important information about a secret intelligence program begun after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Schakowsky described Panetta as "stunned" that he had not been informed of the program until nearly five months into his tenure as director.
Panetta had learned of the program only the day before informing the lawmakers, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly.
Panetta has launched an internal probe at the CIA to determine why Congress was not told about the program. Exactly what the classified program entailed is still unclear.
The intelligence official said the program was "on-again/off-again" and that it was never fully operational, but he would not provide details.
Schakowsky, D-Ill., said Friday that the CIA and Bush administration consciously decided not to tell Congress.
"It's not as if this was an oversight and over the years it just got buried. There was a decision under several directors of the CIA and administration not to tell the Congress," she said.
Schakowsky, who chairs the Intelligence subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in a Thursday letter to Reyes that the CIA's lying was systematic and inexcusable. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
She said Reyes indicated to her the committee would conduct a probe into whether the CIA violated the National Security Act, which requires, with rare exceptions, that Congress be informed of covert activities. She told AP she hopes to conduct at least part of the investigation for the committee.
She said this is the fourth time that she knows of that the CIA has misled Congress or not informed it in a timely manner since she began serving on the Intelligence Committee two and half years ago.
In 2008, the CIA inspector general revealed that the CIA had lied to Congress about the accidental shoot down of American missionaries over Peru in 2001. In 2007, news reports disclosed that the CIA had secretly destroyed videotapes of interrogations of a terrorist suspect.
She would not describe the other incident.
Schakowsky said she thinks Panetta is changing the CIA for the better, adding that the failure to inform Congress was indicative of "contempt" the Bush administration and intelligence agencies under him held for Congress...
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By SCOTT SHANE
New York Times
July 11, 2009
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.
By PAMELA HESS
July 10, 2009
(AP)
CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday.
Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation.
"The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky told The Associated Press in an interview. "But now it's over."
Democrats revealed late Tuesday that CIA Director Leon Panetta had informed members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 24 that the spy agency had been withholding important information about a secret intelligence program begun after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Schakowsky described Panetta as "stunned" that he had not been informed of the program until nearly five months into his tenure as director.
Panetta had learned of the program only the day before informing the lawmakers, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly.
Panetta has launched an internal probe at the CIA to determine why Congress was not told about the program. Exactly what the classified program entailed is still unclear.
The intelligence official said the program was "on-again/off-again" and that it was never fully operational, but he would not provide details.
Schakowsky, D-Ill., said Friday that the CIA and Bush administration consciously decided not to tell Congress.
"It's not as if this was an oversight and over the years it just got buried. There was a decision under several directors of the CIA and administration not to tell the Congress," she said.
Schakowsky, who chairs the Intelligence subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in a Thursday letter to Reyes that the CIA's lying was systematic and inexcusable. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday.
She said Reyes indicated to her the committee would conduct a probe into whether the CIA violated the National Security Act, which requires, with rare exceptions, that Congress be informed of covert activities. She told AP she hopes to conduct at least part of the investigation for the committee.
She said this is the fourth time that she knows of that the CIA has misled Congress or not informed it in a timely manner since she began serving on the Intelligence Committee two and half years ago.
In 2008, the CIA inspector general revealed that the CIA had lied to Congress about the accidental shoot down of American missionaries over Peru in 2001. In 2007, news reports disclosed that the CIA had secretly destroyed videotapes of interrogations of a terrorist suspect.
She would not describe the other incident.
Schakowsky said she thinks Panetta is changing the CIA for the better, adding that the failure to inform Congress was indicative of "contempt" the Bush administration and intelligence agencies under him held for Congress...
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By SCOTT SHANE
New York Times
July 11, 2009
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
C.I.A. concealed significant actions from Congress from 2001 until late last month,
Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress
New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.
In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.
In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”
In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees.
A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters.” Democrats have complained that under President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for years...
New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.
In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.
In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”
In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees.
A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would undermine “a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters.” Democrats have complained that under President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for years...
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
NPR shows how easy it is to change the world
The Extraordinaries: Will Microvolunteering Work?
npr.org
July 1, 2009
by Linton Weeks
Doing Good-Dot-Org
The microvolunteering movement aims to convince those with big hearts and little time to use their spare moments for the common good. The idea is among a slew of do-good efforts popping up on the Web, including:
The Extraordinaries
Kiva.org
DonorsChoose.org
GlobalGiving
Causecast
Amazee
NPR.org, July 1, 2009 · Got five minutes? Got a cell phone? Want to do good?
The Extraordinaries can help. It's one of a number of newly hatched social-media enterprises that champion speedy cooperation. Here is the 30-second elevator pitch: The Extraordinaries delivers microvolunteer opportunities to mobile phones that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot.
Shazzam! Charity meets brevity. Crowdsourcing for the common good. Turning ADD into AID.
Through The Extraordinaries, you might be able to use your smart phone — while waiting in the dentist's office or standing in the DMV line — to:
• translate a foreign-language document into English
• add identifying tags to photos and videos for a museum
• give advice to a college applicant
During your lunch break you could snap a picture of a pothole that needs patching and zap it to the proper authorities. You could report a dying elm to the parks-and-recreation department or spot a rare woodpecker for the Audubon Society.
"This is an organization that changes the paradigm," says Jacob Colker, 26, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Extraordinaries. "We hope people might look differently at that ride on the bus and not just play video games."
Micro Planet
Fresh off the drawing board, The Extraordinaries is part of a new movement that combines tiny technology and huge social goals. The jury is still out on whether these sites will have large, and long-lasting, effects. But the microvolunteerism movement is undeniable.
It's all part of the micro world. What began with microscopes and microbiology has morphed into microeverything: microchips, microhousing, microjobs. And now: microvolunteerism.
Kiva.org, a microlending site, allows people to easily lend money to the working poor. So far, some 520,000 people have loaned more than $80 million to people in 184 countries, according to Kiva's reports. Using PayPal or a credit card, a visitor to the Kiva Web site can loan a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country $25 or more. The site says the money is usually paid back within a year. Other microlending sites include DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving.
New cause-oriented sites, such as Causecast, which helps people find causes to support, and Amazee, which showcases various social-advocacy projects, are popping up on the Internet all the time...
npr.org
July 1, 2009
by Linton Weeks
Doing Good-Dot-Org
The microvolunteering movement aims to convince those with big hearts and little time to use their spare moments for the common good. The idea is among a slew of do-good efforts popping up on the Web, including:
The Extraordinaries
Kiva.org
DonorsChoose.org
GlobalGiving
Causecast
Amazee
NPR.org, July 1, 2009 · Got five minutes? Got a cell phone? Want to do good?
The Extraordinaries can help. It's one of a number of newly hatched social-media enterprises that champion speedy cooperation. Here is the 30-second elevator pitch: The Extraordinaries delivers microvolunteer opportunities to mobile phones that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot.
Shazzam! Charity meets brevity. Crowdsourcing for the common good. Turning ADD into AID.
Through The Extraordinaries, you might be able to use your smart phone — while waiting in the dentist's office or standing in the DMV line — to:
• translate a foreign-language document into English
• add identifying tags to photos and videos for a museum
• give advice to a college applicant
During your lunch break you could snap a picture of a pothole that needs patching and zap it to the proper authorities. You could report a dying elm to the parks-and-recreation department or spot a rare woodpecker for the Audubon Society.
"This is an organization that changes the paradigm," says Jacob Colker, 26, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Extraordinaries. "We hope people might look differently at that ride on the bus and not just play video games."
Micro Planet
Fresh off the drawing board, The Extraordinaries is part of a new movement that combines tiny technology and huge social goals. The jury is still out on whether these sites will have large, and long-lasting, effects. But the microvolunteerism movement is undeniable.
It's all part of the micro world. What began with microscopes and microbiology has morphed into microeverything: microchips, microhousing, microjobs. And now: microvolunteerism.
Kiva.org, a microlending site, allows people to easily lend money to the working poor. So far, some 520,000 people have loaned more than $80 million to people in 184 countries, according to Kiva's reports. Using PayPal or a credit card, a visitor to the Kiva Web site can loan a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country $25 or more. The site says the money is usually paid back within a year. Other microlending sites include DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving.
New cause-oriented sites, such as Causecast, which helps people find causes to support, and Amazee, which showcases various social-advocacy projects, are popping up on the Internet all the time...
NPR shows how easy it is to change the world
The Extraordinaries: Will Microvolunteering Work?
npr.org
July 1, 2009
by Linton Weeks
Doing Good-Dot-Org
The microvolunteering movement aims to convince those with big hearts and little time to use their spare moments for the common good. The idea is among a slew of do-good efforts popping up on the Web, including:
The Extraordinaries
Kiva.org
DonorsChoose.org
GlobalGiving
Causecast
Amazee
NPR.org, July 1, 2009 · Got five minutes? Got a cell phone? Want to do good?
The Extraordinaries can help. It's one of a number of newly hatched social-media enterprises that champion speedy cooperation. Here is the 30-second elevator pitch: The Extraordinaries delivers microvolunteer opportunities to mobile phones that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot.
Shazzam! Charity meets brevity. Crowdsourcing for the common good. Turning ADD into AID.
Through The Extraordinaries, you might be able to use your smart phone — while waiting in the dentist's office or standing in the DMV line — to:
• translate a foreign-language document into English
• add identifying tags to photos and videos for a museum
• give advice to a college applicant
During your lunch break you could snap a picture of a pothole that needs patching and zap it to the proper authorities. You could report a dying elm to the parks-and-recreation department or spot a rare woodpecker for the Audubon Society.
"This is an organization that changes the paradigm," says Jacob Colker, 26, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Extraordinaries. "We hope people might look differently at that ride on the bus and not just play video games."
Micro Planet
Fresh off the drawing board, The Extraordinaries is part of a new movement that combines tiny technology and huge social goals. The jury is still out on whether these sites will have large, and long-lasting, effects. But the microvolunteerism movement is undeniable.
It's all part of the micro world. What began with microscopes and microbiology has morphed into microeverything: microchips, microhousing, microjobs. And now: microvolunteerism.
Kiva.org, a microlending site, allows people to easily lend money to the working poor. So far, some 520,000 people have loaned more than $80 million to people in 184 countries, according to Kiva's reports. Using PayPal or a credit card, a visitor to the Kiva Web site can loan a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country $25 or more. The site says the money is usually paid back within a year. Other microlending sites include DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving.
New cause-oriented sites, such as Causecast, which helps people find causes to support, and Amazee, which showcases various social-advocacy projects, are popping up on the Internet all the time...
npr.org
July 1, 2009
by Linton Weeks
Doing Good-Dot-Org
The microvolunteering movement aims to convince those with big hearts and little time to use their spare moments for the common good. The idea is among a slew of do-good efforts popping up on the Web, including:
The Extraordinaries
Kiva.org
DonorsChoose.org
GlobalGiving
Causecast
Amazee
NPR.org, July 1, 2009 · Got five minutes? Got a cell phone? Want to do good?
The Extraordinaries can help. It's one of a number of newly hatched social-media enterprises that champion speedy cooperation. Here is the 30-second elevator pitch: The Extraordinaries delivers microvolunteer opportunities to mobile phones that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot.
Shazzam! Charity meets brevity. Crowdsourcing for the common good. Turning ADD into AID.
Through The Extraordinaries, you might be able to use your smart phone — while waiting in the dentist's office or standing in the DMV line — to:
• translate a foreign-language document into English
• add identifying tags to photos and videos for a museum
• give advice to a college applicant
During your lunch break you could snap a picture of a pothole that needs patching and zap it to the proper authorities. You could report a dying elm to the parks-and-recreation department or spot a rare woodpecker for the Audubon Society.
"This is an organization that changes the paradigm," says Jacob Colker, 26, co-founder of the San Francisco-based Extraordinaries. "We hope people might look differently at that ride on the bus and not just play video games."
Micro Planet
Fresh off the drawing board, The Extraordinaries is part of a new movement that combines tiny technology and huge social goals. The jury is still out on whether these sites will have large, and long-lasting, effects. But the microvolunteerism movement is undeniable.
It's all part of the micro world. What began with microscopes and microbiology has morphed into microeverything: microchips, microhousing, microjobs. And now: microvolunteerism.
Kiva.org, a microlending site, allows people to easily lend money to the working poor. So far, some 520,000 people have loaned more than $80 million to people in 184 countries, according to Kiva's reports. Using PayPal or a credit card, a visitor to the Kiva Web site can loan a struggling entrepreneur in a developing country $25 or more. The site says the money is usually paid back within a year. Other microlending sites include DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving.
New cause-oriented sites, such as Causecast, which helps people find causes to support, and Amazee, which showcases various social-advocacy projects, are popping up on the Internet all the time...
Monday, June 29, 2009
Martina Navratilova not ready for marriage equality for gays
Crying foul on Martina Navratilova
Salon.com
By Louis Bayard
June 29, 2009
The tennis star's legal woes remind us that even gay icons have some growing up to do about same-sex marriage...
[H]er current legal troubles remind us that even gay icons have some growing up to do when it comes to gay relationships. We cannot know whether all the assertions in Toni Layton’s lawsuit are true. We can say, however, with some certainty that the two women lived together as a couple, that they celebrated their relationship in a ceremony in New Hampshire, that they shared property and assets, and that Navratilova is much the wealthier of the two. If this were a no-fault heterosexual divorce, the law would unequivocally side with Layton, awarding her alimony and some division of property.
But the law, of course, still has different standards for same-sex relationships, and Layton has been forced to file a "domestic partnership" lawsuit in the deeply inhospitable legal climate of Florida, which has traditionally taken a dim view of alternative lifestyles. Barring a settlement, then, Navratilova stands to emerge from her most recent long-term relationship with little more than bad press and some whopping legal fees. If, that is, she can convince a court that her relationship with Layton doesn't rise to the contractual level of heterosexual marriage.
This stratagem is not new to her. In 1991, Navratilova’s ex-lover Judy Nelson sued her for $7.5 million in spousal benefits -- or, as the slavering tabloids used to call it, "galimony." To buttress her case, Nelson argued that the two women had engaged in not one but two marriage ceremonies and had filmed a video will together.
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Nelson also got vocal support from another Martina ex, Rita Mae Brown. In her memoir, "Rita Will," Brown writes that her sympathies shifted toward Nelson during a pretrial hearing in which Navratilova's lawyers argued (Brown's words) that "Martina and Judy had had a contract for sex," which "amounted to prostitution and therefore was against public policy." By demoting same-sex relationships to the level of a roll in the hay, Brown argued, Navratilova "could inflict colossal damage on every gay person in the United States."
Brown's motives in entering the case were suspect -- she had famously shot out the back window of Navratilova's BMW after a quarrel, and she herself enjoyed a brief liaison with Nelson -- but politically she was on target. The only way Navratilova could escape her financial (not to mention moral) obligations was to argue that her gay relationship did not carry the same legal standing as a straight relationship.
What was cynical then has become indefensible now. Martina Navratilova can no longer cast herself as an apostle for gay rights while using a homophobic legal code to deny her ex-partners alimony. This is more than bad behavior, it is bad precedent. And it comes at the worst possible time.
Very soon -- sooner than anyone could have guessed -- gay marriage will become the law in much of the land. A great deal has been written about whether straight America is ready; less has been written about whether gay America is ready. Not just to be held to the same contractual standards as heterosexual couples but to believe (after years of being told otherwise) that their relationships really are of equal standing. And to go on believing it when those relationships collapse.
In reporting on Toni Layton’s lawsuit, Britain’s Daily Mail used the following headline: "Martina Sued for Millions by 'Wife.'" I hope and expect that those archly condescending quotation marks will one day disappear, but it is the job of the gay community to make them go. If we want our relationships to be taken seriously, if we want the legal sanction of marriage, we must be ready to stand by our contracts and our obligations -- no matter how expensive or inconvenient it is and no matter what example is set by our culturally designated "heroes." Equality has its blessings. It also has its price.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Michael Jackson is dead
Michael Jackson Rushed to Los Angeles Hospital in Possible Cardiac Arrest
Thursday, June 25, 2009
AP
Michael Jackson was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital Thursday afternoon, police told FOX News...
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the legendary singer, 50, died Thursday afternoon...
On Thursday afternoon, multiple reports claimed that shortly after noon Thursday, Jackson went into cardiac arrest and had to receive CPR in the ambulance. Joe Jackson, his father, told multiple news sources that his son is not doing well.
Paramedics responded to a 911 call at around 12:26 p.m. PDT, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was reportedly not breathing at the time of their arrival...
Jackson was born in Indiana in 1958. He rose to fame as part of the successful pop group The Jackson Five, formed with his brothers in 1967. The group went on to earn four number one hits in 1970 alone, and the 12-year-old Jackson became the undeniable breakout star of the group.
In 1972, Jackson enjoyed his first solo hit with the song “Ben.” Six years later, he made his film debut in “The Wiz,” where he renewed his friendship with producer Quincy Jones...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
More right-wingers approving violence against those who disagree with them
Right-wing violence seems to be escalating in the US. First it was the killing of an abortion doctor, then murder at the Holocaust museum, and now this.
FBI Arrests Blogger for Allegedly Threatening Judges
Bloomberg.com
By Andrew M. Harris
June 24, 2009
A New Jersey man described as an Internet radio talk show host and blogger was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill three U.S. Appeals Court judges in Chicago who earlier this month upheld a law banning handguns.
Hal Turner, 47, of North Bergen was arrested by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at his home today, according to a statement issued by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
In the days after the judges’ June 2 decision to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of a National Rifle Association lawsuit challenging the ban, Turner posted on his Web site their names, photographs, phone numbers and work addresses, together with a picture of the courthouse delineating stanchions he called “anti-truck bomb barriers,” according to Fitzgerald.
“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed,” Turner allegedly said in one Web site posting, according to Fitzgerald.
“We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period.” the prosecutor said.
The judges who issued the ruling were 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, as well as Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook.
Unanimous Decision
In their unanimous decision, written by Easterbrook, the judges had said that U.S. Supreme Court precedent, established last year in a high court ruling that struck down a similar ban enacted in Washington, precluded their invalidating the Chicago law.
“The Supreme Court has rebuffed requests to apply the Second Amendment to the states,” Easterbrook wrote, referencing the provision of the U.S. Constitution that the Supreme Court had recognized as conferring an individualized right to bear arms.
“These judges deserve to be made such an example of as to send a message to the entire judiciary: Obey the Constitution or die,” Turner reportedly wrote on his Internet site, according to a 10-page affidavit by FBI agent John Marsh, appended to the criminal complaint filed against Turner in Chicago federal court.
Double Murder
In 2005, the mother and husband of Chicago U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow were shot and killed in her home.
While her life previously had been threatened by since- jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale, who lost a case before her, the double-murder was later ascribed to another man unconnected with White, who whose medical malpractice lawsuit Lefkow had dismissed.
That man, Bart Ross, allegedly admitted to the killings in a note he penned before shooting himself in his car during a March 2005 traffic stop in a Milwaukee suburb.
Alluding to the Lefkow murders, Turner said in another posting, “Apparently the 7th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed,” the Marsh affidavit said. ..
FBI Arrests Blogger for Allegedly Threatening Judges
Bloomberg.com
By Andrew M. Harris
June 24, 2009
A New Jersey man described as an Internet radio talk show host and blogger was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill three U.S. Appeals Court judges in Chicago who earlier this month upheld a law banning handguns.
Hal Turner, 47, of North Bergen was arrested by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at his home today, according to a statement issued by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.
In the days after the judges’ June 2 decision to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of a National Rifle Association lawsuit challenging the ban, Turner posted on his Web site their names, photographs, phone numbers and work addresses, together with a picture of the courthouse delineating stanchions he called “anti-truck bomb barriers,” according to Fitzgerald.
“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed,” Turner allegedly said in one Web site posting, according to Fitzgerald.
“We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period.” the prosecutor said.
The judges who issued the ruling were 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, as well as Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook.
Unanimous Decision
In their unanimous decision, written by Easterbrook, the judges had said that U.S. Supreme Court precedent, established last year in a high court ruling that struck down a similar ban enacted in Washington, precluded their invalidating the Chicago law.
“The Supreme Court has rebuffed requests to apply the Second Amendment to the states,” Easterbrook wrote, referencing the provision of the U.S. Constitution that the Supreme Court had recognized as conferring an individualized right to bear arms.
“These judges deserve to be made such an example of as to send a message to the entire judiciary: Obey the Constitution or die,” Turner reportedly wrote on his Internet site, according to a 10-page affidavit by FBI agent John Marsh, appended to the criminal complaint filed against Turner in Chicago federal court.
Double Murder
In 2005, the mother and husband of Chicago U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow were shot and killed in her home.
While her life previously had been threatened by since- jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale, who lost a case before her, the double-murder was later ascribed to another man unconnected with White, who whose medical malpractice lawsuit Lefkow had dismissed.
That man, Bart Ross, allegedly admitted to the killings in a note he penned before shooting himself in his car during a March 2005 traffic stop in a Milwaukee suburb.
Alluding to the Lefkow murders, Turner said in another posting, “Apparently the 7th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed,” the Marsh affidavit said. ..
South Carolina's Sanford joins Republicans with adultery problems
Remind me: Which political party is "decadent" and "sick"?
Mark Sanford's zipper problem is yet more proof that Republican conservatives are just liberals in right-wing drag
By Joe Conason
June 26, 2009
Whenever the latest Republican politician is caught with his zipper undone, a predictable moment of introspection on the right inevitably ensues. Pundits, bloggers and perplexed citizens ruminate over the lessons they have learned, again and again, about human frailty, false piety and the temptations of flesh and power. They express concern for the damaged family and lament the fall of yet another promising young hypocrite. They resolve to restore the purity of their movement and always remember to remind us that this is all Bill Clinton's fault. What they never do is face up to an increasingly embarrassing fact about themselves and their leaders.
They're really just liberals in right-wing drag.
The proof is in the penance, or lack thereof, inflicted on the likes of Mark Sanford, John Ensign and David Vitter, to cite a few names from the top of a long, long list. For ideologues who value biblical morality and believe in the efficacy of punishment, modern conservatives are as tolerant of their famous sinners as the jaded libertines of the left. Even after confessing to the most flagrant and colorful fornication, the worst that a conservative must anticipate is a stern scolding, followed by warm assurances of God's forgiveness and a swift return to business as usual...
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina rose through the Republican ranks over the past decade, from congressman to governor to potential 2012 presidential candidate.
S.C. Governor Admits Extramarital Affair
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
June 24, 2009
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) said this afternoon that he has been involved in an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina and "spent the last five days of my life crying" in that country, speaking at a rambling and emotional press conference that capped days of speculation about his whereabouts after he disappeared from the state capital for nearly a week.
This Story
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S.C. Governor Sanford Admits to Affair
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Capitol Briefing: Sanford 'Agonized' Over Past Argentina Visit
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The Sleuth: One By One, Republicans Say Good-Bye to the Presidency
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The Career of Gov. Mark Sanford
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Online Media Notes: Searching for Mark Sanford
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Q&A, Transcript: Gov. Mark Sanford Admits to Extramarital Affair, Resigns Post
View All Items in This Story
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Sanford, who became a hero to fiscal conservatives in rejecting federal stimulus funds and has often been mentioned as a possible presidential prospect, said his trip to Argentina last week was to visit a woman with whom he struck up an e-mail relationship eight years ago. That correspondence led to a close friendship that went into "serious overdrive" when he saw her three times this past year, he said. His wife of nearly 20 years has known about the affair for five months and he is trying to reconcile with her, he said.
"I've been unfaithful to my wife," he said. "I developed a relationship with what started as a dear, dear friend from Argentina. It began very innocently as I suspect many of these things do, in just a casual e-mail back and forth in advice on one's life there and advice here. But here recently, over this last year, it developed into something much more than that."
He added: "And as a consequence, I hurt her, I hurt you all, I hurt my wife, I hurt my boys, I hurt friends. . . . I hurt a lot of different folks. And all I can say is that I apologize."
The nearly 20-minute press conference was an extraordinary turn in one of the more unusual political episodes of the year, which began when questions about Sanford's whereabouts started circulating early this week. He had left Columbia in a state-issued SUV Thursday, and his office said over the weekend that it knew his location, adding on Monday that he had simply gone off to "recharge after the stimulus battle." But the state's lieutenant governor expressed concern about whether staff members really did know where Sanford was. Sanford's wife told reporters Monday that she did not know his location, speculating that "he was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids."
On Monday evening, the governor's office said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. But this morning, Sanford stepped off a plane from Buenos Aires at the Atlanta airport, before making his appearance at the press conference in Columbia.
The episode has ramifications for the national political landscape. Sanford had emerged as one of the most visible and forceful critics of President Obama's agenda, to the delight of conservatives nationwide and to the chagrin of many in his own state, who despaired over his rejection of hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funding at a time when unemployment was surging in South Carolina. Forced to step down after his current term by term limits, he was seen as a likely contender for the 2012 nomination.
Instead, he now finds himself as the second prominent Republican ensnared in revelations of adultery this month. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) acknowledged last week that he had an affair with a former staff member. Ensign stepped down from his leadership position in the Senate; Sanford said today that he is stepping down as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, but did not address a shouted question about whether he would step down as governor. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will take over the governors' association post.
Sanford is known for his quirky personality, and he took an unconventional approach to his remarks today, beginning with a lengthy preamble about his love for hiking on the Appalachian Trail and the need for getting outside the "bubble." Later, he said that he had in fact suggested to his staff that he was headed to the Appalachian Trail...
Only then did he announce the "bottom line," that he had committed adultery. And he proceeded to elaborate in much detail about how the relationship developed with the woman, whom he did not name. He said that it was "ironic" that the relationship had started when he was counseling her to stay with her husband.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Yelling at kids doesn't work, so why do so many parents do it?
Good Parents, Bad Results
8 ways science shows that Mom and Dad go wrong when disciplining their kids
US News and World Report
By Nancy Shute
Posted June 12, 2008
Does your 3-year-old throw a five-alarm tantrum every time you drop him off at day care? Does "you're so smart!" fail to inspire your 8-year-old to turn off Grand Theft Auto IV and tackle his math homework? Do the clothes remain glued to your teenager's bedroom floor, along with your antisocial teenager, no matter how much you nag or cajole? Being a parent has never been easy—just ask your own. But in this day of two-earner couples and single parents, when 9-year-olds have cellphones, 12-year-olds are binge drinking and having oral sex, and there is evidence that teens are more fearful and depressed than ever, the challenges of rearing competent and loving human beings are enough to make a parent seek help from Supernanny. Actually, there is something better: science.
People Who Read This Also Read
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A Good Parent's Dilemma: Is Spanking Bad? 20179023
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What's Happening to the American Family : Interview with Dr. Margaret Mead, Noted Anthropologist 20214909
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Autism Tied to Older Moms, Breech Birth 24146762
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One View: A Spanking Might Beat Ritalin 20250213
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5 Ways to Be a Positive Parent 20380263
Recommendations by Loomia
Researchers have spent decades studying what motivates children to behave and can now say exactly what discipline methods work and what don't: Call it "evidence-based parenting." Alas, many of parents' favorite strategies are scientifically proven to fail. "It's intuitive to scream at your child to change their behavior, even though the research is unequivocal that it won't work," says Alan Kazdin, a psychologist who directs the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. Other examples:
• Yelling and reasoning are equally ineffective; kids tune out both.
• Praise doesn't spoil a child; it's one of the most powerful tools that parents can use to influence a child's actions. But most parents squander praise by using it generically—"you're so smart" or "good job!"—or skimping.
• Spanking and other harsh punishments ("You're grounded for a month!") do stop bad behavior but only temporarily. Punishment works only if it's mild, and it is far outweighed by positive reinforcement of good behavior.
As yet, few of the bestselling books and videos that promise to turn surly brats into little buttercups make use of this knowledge. That may be because the research goes on in academia—at Yale, at Vermont's Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center, and at the University of Washington's Parenting Clinic, for example. Surprisingly, many family therapists and parenting educators aren't up to speed on the research, either, so that parents who seek professional help won't necessarily get the most proven advice. Case in point: Just 16 programs designed for treating kids with disruptive behavior have been proven "well established" in randomized clinical trials, according to a review led by Sheila Eyberg at the University of Florida and published in the January Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. Kazdin, who for years has pushed clinical psychologists to adopt evidence-based methods, published a book for parents earlier this year: The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child. Other lab-tested tomes include Parenting the Strong-Willed Child by Rex Forehand and Nicholas Long and The Incredible Years by Carolyn Webster-Stratton.
These discipline programs are grounded in classical behavioral psychology—the positive reinforcement taught in Psych 101. Researchers have run randomized controlled trials on all the nuances of typical parent-child interactions and thus can say just how long a timeout should last to be effective or how to praise a 13-year-old so that he beams when he takes out the trash. Who knew that effectively praising a child in order to motivate her has three essential steps? They are: 1) Praise effusively, with the enthusiasm of a Powerball winner. 2) Say exactly what the child did right. 3) Finish with a touch or hug.
What else can parents learn from the science? Researchers say these are the biggest common boo-boos:
1. Parents fail at setting limits
It would be hard to find a parent who doesn't agree that setting and enforcing rules are an essential part of the job description. Yet faced with whining, pouting, and tantrums, many parents cave. "The limited time you have with your kids, you want to make it ideal for them," says Forehand, a professor of psychology at the University of Vermont whose evidence-based program is outlined in his book. "As a result, we end up overindulging our kids."
But, paradoxically, not having limits has been proven to make children more defiant and rebellious, because they feel unsafe and push to see if parents will respond. Research since the 1960s on parenting styles has found that a child whose mom and dad are permissive is more likely to have problems in school and abuse drugs and alcohol as teenagers. "Parents ask their 1-year-olds what they want for dinner now," says Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me. "No one ever said that a generation or two ago." Using surveys dating back to the 1930s, Twenge has found significant increases in reported symptoms of depression and anxiety among today's children and teenagers, compared with earlier generations. Suniya Luthar, a psychologist at Columbia University Teachers College, reported in 2003 that children who are showered with advantages are more likely to be depressed and anxious and to abuse drugs and alcohol than the norm. Luthar says that's probably because those children are under a lot of pressure to achieve at school and think that their parents value their achievements more than themselves. They also feel isolated from their parents...
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2008/06/12/good-parents-bad-results.html?s_cid=related-links:TOP
8 ways science shows that Mom and Dad go wrong when disciplining their kids
US News and World Report
By Nancy Shute
Posted June 12, 2008
Does your 3-year-old throw a five-alarm tantrum every time you drop him off at day care? Does "you're so smart!" fail to inspire your 8-year-old to turn off Grand Theft Auto IV and tackle his math homework? Do the clothes remain glued to your teenager's bedroom floor, along with your antisocial teenager, no matter how much you nag or cajole? Being a parent has never been easy—just ask your own. But in this day of two-earner couples and single parents, when 9-year-olds have cellphones, 12-year-olds are binge drinking and having oral sex, and there is evidence that teens are more fearful and depressed than ever, the challenges of rearing competent and loving human beings are enough to make a parent seek help from Supernanny. Actually, there is something better: science.
People Who Read This Also Read
*
A Good Parent's Dilemma: Is Spanking Bad? 20179023
*
What's Happening to the American Family : Interview with Dr. Margaret Mead, Noted Anthropologist 20214909
*
Autism Tied to Older Moms, Breech Birth 24146762
*
One View: A Spanking Might Beat Ritalin 20250213
*
5 Ways to Be a Positive Parent 20380263
Recommendations by Loomia
Researchers have spent decades studying what motivates children to behave and can now say exactly what discipline methods work and what don't: Call it "evidence-based parenting." Alas, many of parents' favorite strategies are scientifically proven to fail. "It's intuitive to scream at your child to change their behavior, even though the research is unequivocal that it won't work," says Alan Kazdin, a psychologist who directs the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. Other examples:
• Yelling and reasoning are equally ineffective; kids tune out both.
• Praise doesn't spoil a child; it's one of the most powerful tools that parents can use to influence a child's actions. But most parents squander praise by using it generically—"you're so smart" or "good job!"—or skimping.
• Spanking and other harsh punishments ("You're grounded for a month!") do stop bad behavior but only temporarily. Punishment works only if it's mild, and it is far outweighed by positive reinforcement of good behavior.
As yet, few of the bestselling books and videos that promise to turn surly brats into little buttercups make use of this knowledge. That may be because the research goes on in academia—at Yale, at Vermont's Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center, and at the University of Washington's Parenting Clinic, for example. Surprisingly, many family therapists and parenting educators aren't up to speed on the research, either, so that parents who seek professional help won't necessarily get the most proven advice. Case in point: Just 16 programs designed for treating kids with disruptive behavior have been proven "well established" in randomized clinical trials, according to a review led by Sheila Eyberg at the University of Florida and published in the January Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. Kazdin, who for years has pushed clinical psychologists to adopt evidence-based methods, published a book for parents earlier this year: The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child. Other lab-tested tomes include Parenting the Strong-Willed Child by Rex Forehand and Nicholas Long and The Incredible Years by Carolyn Webster-Stratton.
These discipline programs are grounded in classical behavioral psychology—the positive reinforcement taught in Psych 101. Researchers have run randomized controlled trials on all the nuances of typical parent-child interactions and thus can say just how long a timeout should last to be effective or how to praise a 13-year-old so that he beams when he takes out the trash. Who knew that effectively praising a child in order to motivate her has three essential steps? They are: 1) Praise effusively, with the enthusiasm of a Powerball winner. 2) Say exactly what the child did right. 3) Finish with a touch or hug.
What else can parents learn from the science? Researchers say these are the biggest common boo-boos:
1. Parents fail at setting limits
It would be hard to find a parent who doesn't agree that setting and enforcing rules are an essential part of the job description. Yet faced with whining, pouting, and tantrums, many parents cave. "The limited time you have with your kids, you want to make it ideal for them," says Forehand, a professor of psychology at the University of Vermont whose evidence-based program is outlined in his book. "As a result, we end up overindulging our kids."
But, paradoxically, not having limits has been proven to make children more defiant and rebellious, because they feel unsafe and push to see if parents will respond. Research since the 1960s on parenting styles has found that a child whose mom and dad are permissive is more likely to have problems in school and abuse drugs and alcohol as teenagers. "Parents ask their 1-year-olds what they want for dinner now," says Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me. "No one ever said that a generation or two ago." Using surveys dating back to the 1930s, Twenge has found significant increases in reported symptoms of depression and anxiety among today's children and teenagers, compared with earlier generations. Suniya Luthar, a psychologist at Columbia University Teachers College, reported in 2003 that children who are showered with advantages are more likely to be depressed and anxious and to abuse drugs and alcohol than the norm. Luthar says that's probably because those children are under a lot of pressure to achieve at school and think that their parents value their achievements more than themselves. They also feel isolated from their parents...
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/living-well-usn/2008/06/12/good-parents-bad-results.html?s_cid=related-links:TOP
Secret Journal of Prisoner of Tiananmen Square
Secret Journal Of Tiananmen-Era Official Released
NPR
All Things Considered, May 16, 2009
Listen Now
All Things Considered, May 16, 2009 · On May 19, 1989, a tearful Zhao Ziyang, one of the Communist Party's top officials, addressed student protesters in Tiananmen Square. That was the last the world would hear from him. After that speech, Zhao was put under house arrest, where he remained until his death in 2005.
But Zhao was recording his memoirs in secret, and next week they're being published as a book titled, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104215639
NPR
All Things Considered, May 16, 2009
Listen Now
All Things Considered, May 16, 2009 · On May 19, 1989, a tearful Zhao Ziyang, one of the Communist Party's top officials, addressed student protesters in Tiananmen Square. That was the last the world would hear from him. After that speech, Zhao was put under house arrest, where he remained until his death in 2005.
But Zhao was recording his memoirs in secret, and next week they're being published as a book titled, Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104215639
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Salamander can regrow spinal cord; has genetic map 10 x size of humans
From the gardens of Xochimilco:
Mexican salamander may yield clues for amputees
Jun 17, 2009
By Mica Rosenberg
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Scientists are genetically modifying a bizarre looking Mexican salamander, which according to ancient mythology is a transformed Aztec god, in the hope its ability to regenerate body parts will one day help human amputees.
Also known as "water monsters," the half-foot-long (15-cm-long) axolotl is nearly extinct in its only remaining habitat: the polluted vestiges of Aztec canals that snake though southern Mexico City, packed with colorful boats carrying tourists and mariachi musicians.
But the slimy animal crowned with frilly gills like a headdress, beady eyes and a goofy smile, is thriving in labs where it reproduces easily. It is a darling of researchers since it can regrow injured limbs, jaws, skin, organs and parts of its brain and spinal chord.
Some other animals have the capacity to regenerate, but only salamanders can regrow so many different parts over and over again throughout their lives.
The U.S. Department of Defense has given a $6.25 million research grant to scientists studying the little creature with the aim of eventually helping the more than 1,000 soldiers who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with missing extremities.
In a lab in Mexico City, where biology students map the shrinking habitat of the animal, an axolotl whose leg was recently bitten off by a tank mate was already budding a tiny replica, complete with little toes.
"Humans do repair tissue but they don't repair it perfectly whereas the axolotl under certain injury conditions can go into kind of a mode where they repeat the process of the embryo," said Elly Tanaka from the Center for Regenerative Therapies in Dresden, Germany.
Tanaka has succeeded in genetically engineering axolotls using a mutant type found in the wild with no skin pigment and inserting a green-glowing gene from a jellyfish into the salamander cells to help see the process of regeneration in action.
"The skin is clear so you can see the fluorescent protein inside the live animal," Tanaka said in a phone interview. The goal is to compare and contrast with the human healing process.
After amputation in salamanders, unlike in humans, blood vessels contract quickly and limit bleeding, skin cells work fast to cover the wound site and form what is called a "blastema," a collection of stemlike cells that will eventually become the new body part.
Working alongside scientists mapping the complex genome of the axolotl, which is 10 times larger than a human genome...
Mexican salamander may yield clues for amputees
Jun 17, 2009
By Mica Rosenberg
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Scientists are genetically modifying a bizarre looking Mexican salamander, which according to ancient mythology is a transformed Aztec god, in the hope its ability to regenerate body parts will one day help human amputees.
Also known as "water monsters," the half-foot-long (15-cm-long) axolotl is nearly extinct in its only remaining habitat: the polluted vestiges of Aztec canals that snake though southern Mexico City, packed with colorful boats carrying tourists and mariachi musicians.
But the slimy animal crowned with frilly gills like a headdress, beady eyes and a goofy smile, is thriving in labs where it reproduces easily. It is a darling of researchers since it can regrow injured limbs, jaws, skin, organs and parts of its brain and spinal chord.
Some other animals have the capacity to regenerate, but only salamanders can regrow so many different parts over and over again throughout their lives.
The U.S. Department of Defense has given a $6.25 million research grant to scientists studying the little creature with the aim of eventually helping the more than 1,000 soldiers who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with missing extremities.
In a lab in Mexico City, where biology students map the shrinking habitat of the animal, an axolotl whose leg was recently bitten off by a tank mate was already budding a tiny replica, complete with little toes.
"Humans do repair tissue but they don't repair it perfectly whereas the axolotl under certain injury conditions can go into kind of a mode where they repeat the process of the embryo," said Elly Tanaka from the Center for Regenerative Therapies in Dresden, Germany.
Tanaka has succeeded in genetically engineering axolotls using a mutant type found in the wild with no skin pigment and inserting a green-glowing gene from a jellyfish into the salamander cells to help see the process of regeneration in action.
"The skin is clear so you can see the fluorescent protein inside the live animal," Tanaka said in a phone interview. The goal is to compare and contrast with the human healing process.
After amputation in salamanders, unlike in humans, blood vessels contract quickly and limit bleeding, skin cells work fast to cover the wound site and form what is called a "blastema," a collection of stemlike cells that will eventually become the new body part.
Working alongside scientists mapping the complex genome of the axolotl, which is 10 times larger than a human genome...
85% want healthcare reforms, but Republicans are opposed to cuts in insurance company profits
Wide support for government health plan: poll
Sun Jun 21, 2009
Reuters
Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday.
The poll came amid mounting opposition to plans by the Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic-controlled Congress to push through the most sweeping restructuring of the U.S. healthcare system since the end of World War Two.
Republicans and some centrist Democrats oppose increasing the government's role in healthcare -- it already runs the Medicare and Medicaid systems for the elderly and indigent -- fearing it would require vast public funds and reduce the quality of care.
But the Times/CBS poll found 85 percent of respondents wanted major healthcare reforms and most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance. An estimated 46 million Americans currently have no coverage.
Seventy-two percent of those questioned said they backed a government-administered insurance plan similar to Medicare for those under 65 that would compete for customers with the private sector. Twenty percent said they were opposed.
President Barack Obama and many Democrats in Congress have argued a publicly run healthcare insurance plan would increase competition and drive down the high cost of care at a time when the U.S. economy is mired in a deep recession...
Obama's healthcare push on rocky road in Congress
Jun 21, 2009
Reuters
By Donna Smith
...Obama and his fellow Democrats, who control Congress, have enormous political capital invested in succeeding at providing affordable medical coverage to the millions of uninsured Americans, after decades of failed efforts by others, including the previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton.
But opposition is building even as a group of senators tries this week to negotiate a proposal they hope will quiet critics and win bipartisan support.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said he was confident he could craft such a bill.
"We're working together and we're getting closer and closer to a deal every day," he said in a statement. "I'm as confident as ever we'll deliver a bipartisan health care reform bill to the President this year."
But Baucus is working with only few Republicans and there are no guarantees he will succeed.
"I'm certainly willing to try to do something and do it right, but we're a long way from that," Republican Senator Orrin Hatch told reporters.
Public drafting sessions by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee have been marked by partisan bickering over costs and the role of the government.
Democrats want a new government plan to compete with insurance companies and "keep them honest."
Republicans say that would drive insurers out of business and lead to a government-run healthcare system...
[Maura Larkins' note: Don't they really mean it would cut profits for insurance companies? Which is more important, the health of the nation, or the profits of unscrupulous insurance companies?]
Sun Jun 21, 2009
Reuters
Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday.
The poll came amid mounting opposition to plans by the Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic-controlled Congress to push through the most sweeping restructuring of the U.S. healthcare system since the end of World War Two.
Republicans and some centrist Democrats oppose increasing the government's role in healthcare -- it already runs the Medicare and Medicaid systems for the elderly and indigent -- fearing it would require vast public funds and reduce the quality of care.
But the Times/CBS poll found 85 percent of respondents wanted major healthcare reforms and most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance. An estimated 46 million Americans currently have no coverage.
Seventy-two percent of those questioned said they backed a government-administered insurance plan similar to Medicare for those under 65 that would compete for customers with the private sector. Twenty percent said they were opposed.
President Barack Obama and many Democrats in Congress have argued a publicly run healthcare insurance plan would increase competition and drive down the high cost of care at a time when the U.S. economy is mired in a deep recession...
Obama's healthcare push on rocky road in Congress
Jun 21, 2009
Reuters
By Donna Smith
...Obama and his fellow Democrats, who control Congress, have enormous political capital invested in succeeding at providing affordable medical coverage to the millions of uninsured Americans, after decades of failed efforts by others, including the previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton.
But opposition is building even as a group of senators tries this week to negotiate a proposal they hope will quiet critics and win bipartisan support.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said he was confident he could craft such a bill.
"We're working together and we're getting closer and closer to a deal every day," he said in a statement. "I'm as confident as ever we'll deliver a bipartisan health care reform bill to the President this year."
But Baucus is working with only few Republicans and there are no guarantees he will succeed.
"I'm certainly willing to try to do something and do it right, but we're a long way from that," Republican Senator Orrin Hatch told reporters.
Public drafting sessions by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee have been marked by partisan bickering over costs and the role of the government.
Democrats want a new government plan to compete with insurance companies and "keep them honest."
Republicans say that would drive insurers out of business and lead to a government-run healthcare system...
[Maura Larkins' note: Don't they really mean it would cut profits for insurance companies? Which is more important, the health of the nation, or the profits of unscrupulous insurance companies?]
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Re Nevada Senator Ensign: "There is nothing wrong with holding yourself to high standard, even if you fail."
"There is nothing wrong with holding yourself to high standard, even if you fail."
Well, maybe not, but if you can't meet your own standards, you should probably quit demanding that others meet your standards.
UPDATE:
Questions Surround GOP Senator's Affair
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
AP
(June 18, 2009)
Sen. John Ensign has been quick to describe his dalliance with an aide in brief and simple terms... No questions will be answered, the married Nevada Republican said in his brief admission of infidelity.
But the first public statement from the woman once involved with the 51-year-old rising political star suggests more is brewing behind Ensign's neat account.
Cindy Hampton and her husband, a couple Ensign has described as "close friends," issued sharp remarks Wednesday through an attorney.
"It is unfortunate the senator chose to air this very personal matter, especially after the Hamptons did everything possible to keep this matter private," Las Vegas lawyer Daniel Albregts said in the statement. "It is equally unfortunate that he did so without concern for the effect such an announcement would have on the Hampton family. In time the Hamptons will be ready and willing to tell their side of the story."
...An Associated Press review of federal records showed that around the time of the affair, Cindy Hampton, 46, received a promotion and a pay raise at one political entity controlled by Ensign and a pay raise at a second. Her husband, Doug, was an employee in Ensign's Senate office, and a golfing buddy.
Since Ensign admitted the affair Tuesday at a hastily arranged news briefing in Las Vegas, he and his staff have refused to comment. It remains unclear what prompted the unexpected announcement.
The disclosure resurrected questions about a two-week period in 2002 when Ensign abruptly dropped from public view. A person familiar with that episode, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the senator told a close associate the absence followed an earlier affair...
ORIGINAL POST:
Sen. Ensign's admission blurs conservative image
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
June 17, 2009
(AP)
For much of his public career, Sen. John Ensign has appeared a model of the religious right. By this week, he had become just another politician diminished by scandal.
Rattled, humbled and alone at the podium, Ensign acknowledged to reporters an extramarital affair, the sort of moral failing he's criticized in the past.
The Nevada Republican once called on President Bill Clinton to resign, declaring "the truth must come out." In October 2007, he was sharply critical of former Sen. Larry Craig, of Idaho, calling the Republican's arrest in an airport bathroom sex sting "embarrassing for the Senate."
His own admission Tuesday came at a time when the two-term Nevada Republican was building his national profile and assuming leadership in his party. He had recently traveled to Iowa, fueling speculation about his White House ambitions.
...On Wednesday, he resigned from the policy committee.
For Nevadans, he was known as a polished pro-business Republican and well-spoken ally of the state's religious conservatives. He was a member of Promise Keepers, a men's Christian group that espoused devotion to family and marriage...
Ensign was adopted at age 15 by his mother's second husband, a Las Vegas casino mogul. He went on to veterinary school, ran an animal clinic and worked the family business as a casino executive before entering politics.
Ensign's political life was entwined with his religious beliefs. Once in Washington, he lived for a time with other Christian lawmakers who organized prayer breakfasts and Bible study. When in Las Vegas, he continued to attend an Evangelical church in Las Vegas with his wife, Darlene, who did not move to Washington with him.
Ensign has opposed abortion and gay marriage and backed school vouchers.
"He's been a very reliable ally and outspoken on marriage issues, on life issues," said Richard Ziser, a leading religious conservative in the state. "His religious beliefs were a very high identifier with conservatives."...
"Some will be more forgiving than others, of course," he said. "But I think his apology will be viewed as sincere. There is nothing wrong with holding yourself to high standard, even if you fail."
Well, maybe not, but if you can't meet your own standards, you should probably quit demanding that others meet your standards.
UPDATE:
Questions Surround GOP Senator's Affair
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
AP
(June 18, 2009)
Sen. John Ensign has been quick to describe his dalliance with an aide in brief and simple terms... No questions will be answered, the married Nevada Republican said in his brief admission of infidelity.
But the first public statement from the woman once involved with the 51-year-old rising political star suggests more is brewing behind Ensign's neat account.
Cindy Hampton and her husband, a couple Ensign has described as "close friends," issued sharp remarks Wednesday through an attorney.
"It is unfortunate the senator chose to air this very personal matter, especially after the Hamptons did everything possible to keep this matter private," Las Vegas lawyer Daniel Albregts said in the statement. "It is equally unfortunate that he did so without concern for the effect such an announcement would have on the Hampton family. In time the Hamptons will be ready and willing to tell their side of the story."
...An Associated Press review of federal records showed that around the time of the affair, Cindy Hampton, 46, received a promotion and a pay raise at one political entity controlled by Ensign and a pay raise at a second. Her husband, Doug, was an employee in Ensign's Senate office, and a golfing buddy.
Since Ensign admitted the affair Tuesday at a hastily arranged news briefing in Las Vegas, he and his staff have refused to comment. It remains unclear what prompted the unexpected announcement.
The disclosure resurrected questions about a two-week period in 2002 when Ensign abruptly dropped from public view. A person familiar with that episode, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the senator told a close associate the absence followed an earlier affair...
ORIGINAL POST:
Sen. Ensign's admission blurs conservative image
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
June 17, 2009
(AP)
For much of his public career, Sen. John Ensign has appeared a model of the religious right. By this week, he had become just another politician diminished by scandal.
Rattled, humbled and alone at the podium, Ensign acknowledged to reporters an extramarital affair, the sort of moral failing he's criticized in the past.
The Nevada Republican once called on President Bill Clinton to resign, declaring "the truth must come out." In October 2007, he was sharply critical of former Sen. Larry Craig, of Idaho, calling the Republican's arrest in an airport bathroom sex sting "embarrassing for the Senate."
His own admission Tuesday came at a time when the two-term Nevada Republican was building his national profile and assuming leadership in his party. He had recently traveled to Iowa, fueling speculation about his White House ambitions.
...On Wednesday, he resigned from the policy committee.
For Nevadans, he was known as a polished pro-business Republican and well-spoken ally of the state's religious conservatives. He was a member of Promise Keepers, a men's Christian group that espoused devotion to family and marriage...
Ensign was adopted at age 15 by his mother's second husband, a Las Vegas casino mogul. He went on to veterinary school, ran an animal clinic and worked the family business as a casino executive before entering politics.
Ensign's political life was entwined with his religious beliefs. Once in Washington, he lived for a time with other Christian lawmakers who organized prayer breakfasts and Bible study. When in Las Vegas, he continued to attend an Evangelical church in Las Vegas with his wife, Darlene, who did not move to Washington with him.
Ensign has opposed abortion and gay marriage and backed school vouchers.
"He's been a very reliable ally and outspoken on marriage issues, on life issues," said Richard Ziser, a leading religious conservative in the state. "His religious beliefs were a very high identifier with conservatives."...
"Some will be more forgiving than others, of course," he said. "But I think his apology will be viewed as sincere. There is nothing wrong with holding yourself to high standard, even if you fail."
Monday, June 15, 2009
Does Cheney want America to be attacked again for political advantage?
Monday, June 15, 2009
WASHINGTON NEWS
Panetta Wonders If Cheney Wants Al Qaeda To Attack US To Prove Point
CIA Director Leon Panetta's remarks on former Vice President Dick Cheney made in a nearly 7,600-word interview with The New Yorker generated some media attention last night and this morning.
Calling them "tough words," ABC World News reported briefly that Panetta said of Cheney, who "has repeatedly, of course, criticized the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism," that "it's almost as if he is wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.'"
Panetta, the New Yorker (6/22, Mayer) reports, was responding to a speech the former vice president made at the American Enterprise Institute, where he accused the Administration of making "the American people less safe" by banning brutal CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration.
With "surprising candor," the magazine reports Panetta said, "I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."...
WASHINGTON NEWS
Panetta Wonders If Cheney Wants Al Qaeda To Attack US To Prove Point
CIA Director Leon Panetta's remarks on former Vice President Dick Cheney made in a nearly 7,600-word interview with The New Yorker generated some media attention last night and this morning.
Calling them "tough words," ABC World News reported briefly that Panetta said of Cheney, who "has repeatedly, of course, criticized the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism," that "it's almost as if he is wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.'"
Panetta, the New Yorker (6/22, Mayer) reports, was responding to a speech the former vice president made at the American Enterprise Institute, where he accused the Administration of making "the American people less safe" by banning brutal CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration.
With "surprising candor," the magazine reports Panetta said, "I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."...
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Was Prejean fired for being against gay marriage, or for writing emails like this one?
Carrie Prejean's email (from Popeater.com) sent before she was fired to Miss California executive Keith Lewis:
"You do not cooperate with me, and you pick and chose the the things YOU want me to do. That is not happening anymore. Stop speaking for me. I have MY own voice. What are u gonna do fire me for volunteering for the special olympics hahaha ur crazy."
It looks like Prejean wasn't honoring her contract.
Prejean should stop blaming her firing on her opposition to gay marriage. Donald Trump bent over backwards to keep her even after nude pictures of her surfaced. Prejean apparently let that go to her head, and thought she could get away with anything.
"You do not cooperate with me, and you pick and chose the the things YOU want me to do. That is not happening anymore. Stop speaking for me. I have MY own voice. What are u gonna do fire me for volunteering for the special olympics hahaha ur crazy."
It looks like Prejean wasn't honoring her contract.
Prejean should stop blaming her firing on her opposition to gay marriage. Donald Trump bent over backwards to keep her even after nude pictures of her surfaced. Prejean apparently let that go to her head, and thought she could get away with anything.
Hate radio and domestic terrorists: how many more murders will we see?
Salon.com
Joan Walsh
Wednesday June 10, 2009
Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?
(The above link includes a video.)
I was on "Hardball" today talking about the climate of extreme right-wing rhetoric today, and whether it had anything to do with Wednesday's tragic shooting at Washington's Holocaust Museum, or the May 31 murder of Dr. George Tiller by an antiabortion crackpot.
I tried to choose my words carefully. Unless it's shown that either man had accomplices, we have to be clear that the men responsible for those murders are the ones who pulled the trigger. Still, it's hard not to think about the extreme right-wing rhetoric, especially about Barack Obama, and whether it could conceivably lead to more right-wing violence.
The range of crazy ideas about Obama is broad and wide: He's a secret Muslim, he's going to take our guns, he's even the anti-Christ! James von Brunn just happened to be a "birther," one of the nuts who believe that Obama wasn't born here, his birth certificate is fake, and he thus isn't eligible to be president. I thought it was strange and maybe a little ominous last summer when suddenly Obama was labeled a "socialist" and a "Marxist"; Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are arguably more liberal than Obama; why did he get tagged with that sinister, subversive, alien ideology? It seemed linked to the fact that he's just so … different from other politicians, so easy to marginalize and, frankly, demonize.
Then came Rush Limbaugh with his sexual fears about having to "bend over and grab the ankles" for a black president. Soon Limbaugh was saying he hoped Obama fails; last week he said Obama was more dangerous to our country than al-Qaida, our terrorist enemy who has killed thousands of Americans. Could that conceivably inflame someone marginal and isolated to act against a president who's more dangerous than terrorists?
If there's a through-line between any of these acts of terrorism and the right-wing rhetoric that abets it, of course, it's the one linking Bill O'Reilly to Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Tiller. O'Reilly more than demonized Tiller; night after night he called him a baby killer, compared him to the Nazis, and suggested that he must be stopped. Roeder stopped him, all right. If I were O'Reilly I'd feel terrible for putting a private figure in my public sights night after night, simply for doing his lawful job. But O'Reilly has no conscience, so he's proud of it...
(video)
Joan Walsh
Wednesday June 10, 2009
Can right-wing hate talk lead to murder?
(The above link includes a video.)
I was on "Hardball" today talking about the climate of extreme right-wing rhetoric today, and whether it had anything to do with Wednesday's tragic shooting at Washington's Holocaust Museum, or the May 31 murder of Dr. George Tiller by an antiabortion crackpot.
I tried to choose my words carefully. Unless it's shown that either man had accomplices, we have to be clear that the men responsible for those murders are the ones who pulled the trigger. Still, it's hard not to think about the extreme right-wing rhetoric, especially about Barack Obama, and whether it could conceivably lead to more right-wing violence.
The range of crazy ideas about Obama is broad and wide: He's a secret Muslim, he's going to take our guns, he's even the anti-Christ! James von Brunn just happened to be a "birther," one of the nuts who believe that Obama wasn't born here, his birth certificate is fake, and he thus isn't eligible to be president. I thought it was strange and maybe a little ominous last summer when suddenly Obama was labeled a "socialist" and a "Marxist"; Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are arguably more liberal than Obama; why did he get tagged with that sinister, subversive, alien ideology? It seemed linked to the fact that he's just so … different from other politicians, so easy to marginalize and, frankly, demonize.
Then came Rush Limbaugh with his sexual fears about having to "bend over and grab the ankles" for a black president. Soon Limbaugh was saying he hoped Obama fails; last week he said Obama was more dangerous to our country than al-Qaida, our terrorist enemy who has killed thousands of Americans. Could that conceivably inflame someone marginal and isolated to act against a president who's more dangerous than terrorists?
If there's a through-line between any of these acts of terrorism and the right-wing rhetoric that abets it, of course, it's the one linking Bill O'Reilly to Scott Roeder, the man who murdered Tiller. O'Reilly more than demonized Tiller; night after night he called him a baby killer, compared him to the Nazis, and suggested that he must be stopped. Roeder stopped him, all right. If I were O'Reilly I'd feel terrible for putting a private figure in my public sights night after night, simply for doing his lawful job. But O'Reilly has no conscience, so he's proud of it...
(video)
And God bless Bermuda, too, for resettling Uighurs
Bermuda takes 4 Uighur detainees from Gitmo
By DEVLIN BARRETT and MATTHEW LEE
AP
June 11, 2009
Four Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay prison were freed Thursday and resettled in Bermuda, sparking complaints from China and Britain even as the Obama administration tried to iron out details for sending more detainees to the Pacific island of Palau.
The four were among 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. They remained at the military detention center in Cuba even after the U.S. government had determined they weren't enemy combatants and should be released. Their fate was in limbo for months while courts and nations debated their future...
Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown said the men will be allowed to live in Bermuda, a British territory in the Atlantic, initially as refugees but they would be permitted to pursue citizenship and would have the right to work, travel and "potentially settle elsewhere." Brown said negotiations with Washington over settling the Uighurs began last month and he had no security concerns because the men had been cleared by U.S. courts. But Britain, which handles Bermuda's defense, security and foreign affairs expressed displeasure at the move...
By DEVLIN BARRETT and MATTHEW LEE
AP
June 11, 2009
Four Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay prison were freed Thursday and resettled in Bermuda, sparking complaints from China and Britain even as the Obama administration tried to iron out details for sending more detainees to the Pacific island of Palau.
The four were among 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. They remained at the military detention center in Cuba even after the U.S. government had determined they weren't enemy combatants and should be released. Their fate was in limbo for months while courts and nations debated their future...
Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown said the men will be allowed to live in Bermuda, a British territory in the Atlantic, initially as refugees but they would be permitted to pursue citizenship and would have the right to work, travel and "potentially settle elsewhere." Brown said negotiations with Washington over settling the Uighurs began last month and he had no security concerns because the men had been cleared by U.S. courts. But Britain, which handles Bermuda's defense, security and foreign affairs expressed displeasure at the move...
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
God bless Palau...for helping us find a place for the Uighurs
A while back a federal judge demanded that the Uighurs be freed from Guantanamo. Thanks to Palau, the Obama administration can obey the order.
'Paradise' for Guantanamo Uighurs
By Rob Reynolds, senior Washington correspondent
AlJazeera.net
The Uighurs...have been held for seven years
The long and unhappy odyssey of the Guantanamo Uighurs, from China's Xinjiang province to Cuba via Afghanistan, is apparently about to end in a remote archipelago some call a Pacific island paradise.
The government of Palau, a nation of 20,000 people about two and a half times the size of the US capital, Washington DC, has announced it will accept up to 17 ethnic Uighur detainees following a request from the US.
Palau is better known for its coral reefs and lakes full of gently pulsating jellyfish than as a power player in international politics.
But Johnson Toribiong, the country's president, said he was "honoured and proud" to help the US out, and hoped the Uighurs will be able to restart their lives there.
The US has also pledged $200m in long-term development aid for Palau - but the US state department denies the money is a payoff.
In Washington, a Uighur community leader reacted happily.
"As long as the Uighurs don't get sent back to China I am delighted," said Rabiya Kadeer...
'Paradise' for Guantanamo Uighurs
By Rob Reynolds, senior Washington correspondent
AlJazeera.net
The Uighurs...have been held for seven years
The long and unhappy odyssey of the Guantanamo Uighurs, from China's Xinjiang province to Cuba via Afghanistan, is apparently about to end in a remote archipelago some call a Pacific island paradise.
The government of Palau, a nation of 20,000 people about two and a half times the size of the US capital, Washington DC, has announced it will accept up to 17 ethnic Uighur detainees following a request from the US.
Palau is better known for its coral reefs and lakes full of gently pulsating jellyfish than as a power player in international politics.
But Johnson Toribiong, the country's president, said he was "honoured and proud" to help the US out, and hoped the Uighurs will be able to restart their lives there.
The US has also pledged $200m in long-term development aid for Palau - but the US state department denies the money is a payoff.
In Washington, a Uighur community leader reacted happily.
"As long as the Uighurs don't get sent back to China I am delighted," said Rabiya Kadeer...
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