FEC Issues Advisory Opinion On Fired Up! LLC: Victory For Free Speech

By a unanimous vote, the FEC today issued Advisory Opinion 2005-16 which concludes that the Fired Up! Network of blogs qualifies for the "press exception" to federal campaign finance law.   The Commission adopted the draft opinion without revision.

The AO states in relevant part:

Fired Up qualifies as a press entity.  Its websites are both available to the general public and are the online equivalent of a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication as described in the Act and Commission regulations.

 ---

Check this:

Voter ID memo stirs tension

Sponsor of disputed Georgia legislation told feds that blacks in her district only vote if they are paid to do so.
By BOB KEMPER in Washington, SONJI JACOBS in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/18/05

The chief sponsor of Georgia's voter identification law told the Justice Department that if black people in her district "are not paid to vote, they don't go to the polls," and that if fewer blacks vote as a result of the new law, it is only because it would end such voting fraud.

The newly released Justice Department memo quoting state Rep. Sue Burmeister (R-Augusta) was prepared by department lawyers as the federal government considered whether to approve the new law. It also says that despite Republican assurances the law would not disenfranchise elderly, poor and black voters, Susan Laccetti Meyers, the staff adviser for the Georgia House of Representatives, told the Justice Department "the Legislature did not conduct any statistical analysis of the effect of the photo ID requirement on minority voters."

But you can legislate behavior. This is in Atlanta, by the way.

High school teacher suspended for alleged racist remarks
Associated Press
Published on: 11/17/05

CARROLLTON — A history teacher at Carrollton High School has been suspended for allegedly making racially insensitive comments during a civil rights lesson.

Mark McCormick, 46, who is white, has been placed on administrative leave with pay pending a disciplinary tribunal hearing the week after Thanksgiving, Superintendent Tom Wilson said Thursday.

One of McCormick's students said he made "racially harassing comments" during a lecture.

"We've investigated the situation extensively, and we believe these statements were made," said Wilson, who would not comment on what the remarks were.

Why is everyone saying Bush and Cheney are "going on the offensive" over their being busted lying the country into war, when all either is doing is repeating what they've always said, only soewhat more shrilly?

"They looked at the same intelligence we did." Nonsense.

And the worst part is, globaization marches on...and not only has Bush turned much of the world against us, they've turned many Americans against the idea of engaging the world. 

 

Quote of note:

Robert W. Ray, a former independent counsel, said the Woodward disclosure won't help Libby if his defense is that he wasn't the only official leaking Plame's identity. "The point was: Did you make false statements and perjure yourself?" Ray said.

Woodward Claim on CIA Leak Disputes Charge
By TONI LOCY and PETE YOST
Associated Press Writers
3:29 AM PST, November 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — Bob Woodward's version of when and where he learned the identity of a CIA operative contradicts a special prosecutor's contention that Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was the first to make the disclosure to reporters.

On Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, via Scout Prime:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, I'm thinking that, OK, I was going to come and salvage a few pictures or something. And I walk in here. I found my grandma on the floor dead.

DORNIN: Since November 1, 10 bodies have been found in the ruins of the Ninth Ward. The last area, known as the Lower Ninth, will open to residents December 1. Coroner Frank Minyard worries about what people will find.

(on camera): You're fully expecting that more bodies will come in once they open the Ninth Ward?

FRANK MINYARD, ORLEANS PARISH CORONER: Yes. And I think it's -- it's going to come in for a good while. There's so much rubbish around that they might find people in the rubbish. DORNIN (voice-over): They already have. And there are still many bodies left unidentified and unclaimed.

What a priceless piece of bullshit. No wonder Stevens said

I think that under the circumstance it was the best we could expect because of the publicity that came with the Sunday supplements and whatever

No doubt...because he hasn't given up a penny. The money is now a huge slush fund...pretty much what it always was anyway. 

Funding for Alaskan Bridges Eliminated
Republicans Make Largely Symbolic Move in Reaction to Criticism of Transportation Spending
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 17, 2005; A18

An Essay on President Bush and Death

I fault this president (George W. Bush) for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty-one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.

On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn`t the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can`t seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn`t understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. 

GOP race for governor is shaping up to be close
Brent Kallestad
the Associated Press
November 16, 2005

TALLAHASSEE -- Attorney General Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher remain deadlocked in their bid for the Republican nomination for governor, while U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris is far behind incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in a U.S. Senate race, a new poll shows.

Nelson was favored by 55 percent of the registered voters polled to 31 percent for Harris, the only announced Republican candidate for the Senate, according to a survey released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University.

from the Huffington Post:

Mainstream Media to American Democracy: Drop Dead!

It's been a full two weeks now since the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO came out with their 107-page report [PDF] confirming what so many of us have been trying to ring the bell about for so long: The Electronic Voting Machines which are proliferating counties and states across America even as I type, are not secure, not accountable, not recountable, not transparent, not accurate and not adequately monitored or certified by anybody.

...The release of the report was accompanied by a bi-partisan News Release which lauded its findings.

That's right. Six high-ranking U.S. Congressmen (3 Dems and 3 Reps) issued the incredibly rare joint News Release together. Two of those Congressmen were Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee respectively. You do understand how rare it is that those two can agree on anything much less issue a joint press release, right?!

And yet, none of the above has been carried by even one wire service or one major American Newspaper. Not one.

In Fuzzy Math Fallout, Allan Sloan asks

Washington's cut-taxes-and-borrow crew are stalled in their quest for more tax reductions. Have years of using phony budget numbers finally caught up with them?

Only if people realize people who lie to you to get their way are not their friend. By way of pointing that out: 

Let's flash back to the heyday of tax cutting: 2001. You remember, we were supposedly going to have enormous federal budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. But instead of settling for large, straightforward, permanent tax cuts, Bush and his congressional allies used two kinds of "fuzzy math."

First, even though they intended the cuts to be permanent, they pretended that some of them would disappear, so the total would look good in whatever five- or 10-year budget window they were using.

I've decided to have some discussions about interpreting the Constitution. I wouldn't be so presumptuous normally, but we've recently established you don't need judicial, or even legal, experience to do so.

Okay, I make a living being presumptuous. Whatever.

Anyway, I'll be deep in "People of the Word" territory. Knowing this, I thought I'd anchor the discussion with definitions from an impartial (because they got no clue I exist) source.

Originalist? Constructionist? A Confirmation-Hearing Glossary
Darlene Superville
The Associated Press
08-26-2005

When Supreme Court nominee John Roberts takes a seat for his Senate confirmation hearings, viewers in the hearing room and watching on television may find themselves confounded by some unfamiliar legal terms and phrases.

Not an originalist, a strict constructionist or a practitioner of stare decisis? Here are some explanations that may ease the confusion.

Let me know if the definitions aren't acceptable.

Scooter Libby's lawyers are going to get SOMEbody screwed.

Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago
By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A01

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

I'm serious.

The House package, which cuts taxes by $70 billion over five years, would extend the dividends and capital gains tax cuts through 2010. It would not extend a measure to mitigate the impact of the alternative minimum tax, which is increasingly snaring the middle class.

Senate Panel Does Not Extend Tax-Rate Cut
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; A07

Facing a stalemate over one of President Bush's top economic policy goals, the Senate Finance Committee yesterday gave up efforts to extend deep cuts to the tax rate on dividends and capital gains and approved a $60 billion tax measure largely devoted to hurricane relief and tax cuts with bipartisan appeal.

Quote of note:

All three diets produced large enough drops in blood pressure and LDL cholesterol to cut the 10-year risk of coronary heart disease by at least 16 percent. But the diets rich in protein and healthful fats outperformed the standard high-carbohydrate diet on both measures, cutting risk by 20 percent.

"We have a two-part take-home message here," Appel said. "All three diets were healthy and had favorable effects. But the current recommended DASH diet that is rich in carbohydrates can be further improved by partially replacing some of those carbohydrates with lean protein from plants and low-fat dairy products, or with monounsaturated fats" such as olive oil or nuts.

You know this supports the Atkins diet, right? And you know why Dr. Atkins' diet was pummelled in the media immediately after his death, right?

Oh, you don't know how much of the economy is driven by corn and agricultural subsidies, never considered how our diet is impacted by the economy.

Anyway... 

Scientists Fine-Tune Diet by Adding Beans
By Sally Squires
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; A04

Trading about 10 percent of carbohydrates in the diet for beans and healthful fats such as olive oil can help control high blood pressure and raise the level of "good cholesterol," according to a new study.

They wouldn't do it because they knew lies were coming. 

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force
By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; A01

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

A "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that logs everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years is now being built, according to an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) strategy document leaked to the Sunday Times. The system, which will use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), and will be overseen from a control centre in Hendon, London, is a sort of 'Gatso 2' network, extending. enhancing and linking existing CCTV, ANPR and speedcam systems and databases.

Remapping the Cultural Territories of America
By MARGO JEFFERSON

The Believer is a monthly magazine as smartly designed as the comics we call graphic novels. It is filled with what was once labeled new journalism and is now called experimental or creative nonfiction.

So I was drawn to the September issue, advertising as it did an essay about "cultural criticism as experimental fiction" by Greg Bottoms. As it turned out, the subject was George W. S. Trow, a founder of National Lampoon and a staff writer at The New Yorker for some 20 years. But a Believer essay flings a wide net. This one included references to "WASP civilization," Gertrude Stein, Donald Barthelme and Gap jeans.

Quote of note:

The report said he violated federal law by being heavily involved in getting more than $4 million for a program featuring the conservative editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal. It said he imposed a "political test" to recruit a new president. And it said his decision to hire Republican consultants to defeat legislation violated contracting rules.

...The report said that Mr. Tomlinson violated federal law by promoting "The Journal Editorial Report" and said he had "admonished C.P.B. senior executive staff not to interfere with his deal to bring a balancing program" to public broadcasting. The board is prohibited from getting involved in programming decisions, but the investigators found that Mr. Tomlinson had pushed hard for the program, even as some staff officials at the corporation raised concerns over its cost.

An e-mail from around the same time shows that he threatened to withhold some money to public broadcasting "in a New York minute" if public broadcasting did not balance its lineup.

The investigators found evidence that "political tests" were a major criteria used by Mr. Tomlinson in recruiting the corporation's new president, Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and former senior State Department official.

Report Says Ex-Chief of Public TV Violated Federal Law
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias.

'White flight' in Gwinnett?
Non-Hispanic white population saw its first decline last year
By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/15/05

Mary James, an empty-nester from Snellville, craves the in-town bustle. Michelle Forren is tired of planning life around rush hour in Duluth. And Louise Stewart is fed up with the Spanish-language business signs, backyard chickens and overcrowded homes in her Norcross-area neighborhood.

Though their reasons vary, all three women plan to join an emerging demographic: whites leaving Gwinnett County.

In what might surprise metro Atlantans who remember the nearly lily-white county of old, Gwinnett's non-Hispanic white population declined for the first time last year, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The drop of about 1,500 whites came even as Gwinnett, the state's perennial growth leader, added more than 27,000 residents.

I'm writing this in almost total ignorance of Detroit politics. I just think Rochelle Riley made a generally good point when she said:

If you voted for the mayor because you are tired of second-class treatment and accommodations and you believe the mayor can fix that, fine.

But if you voted for him simply because he was a black man criticized, then you've got your work cut out for you.

 

via ThinkProgress

Sunday’s Washington Post reported that Bush’s political appointments in the DOJ’s civil rights division have pushed “out those who did not share the administration’s conservative views on civil rights laws” ...

Alexander Acosta (2003-2005):

“In a speech delivered to the City Club of Cleveland in April 2005, Acosta claimed that the civil rights era was over and a better era has begun—construed by some as the end of a proactive civil rights agenda within the Department of Justice.” [Watching Justice, 6/27/05, Speech to The Cleveland City Club, 4/1/05]

Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials actually does a good job of its self-assigned task. But it closes with:

The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why.

Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.

Quote of note:

Why does this matter? Inequality is socially acceptable and even economically desirable to the extent that it reflects differences in talent, risk-taking and hard work. But if it reflects the circumstances of birth, it is immoral and wasteful. The problem with the 50 percent jump in the inequality ratio is that it gives the offspring of the rich such fundamentally different education, health care and social horizons that it's hard for the rest to catch up. Sharper class differences mean more rigid class differences as well. Talent is squandered.

Class Matters
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, November 14, 2005; A21

Quote of note:

Strong argument -- if only it had happened that way. Either those peddling this conveniently muddled version of events don't remember it correctly or they are betting that others won't. Listeners beware: Those who don't remember history are condemned to be spun by it.

The Ginsburg Fallacy
By Ruth Marcus
Tuesday, November 15, 2005; A21

To hear some Republicans tell it, letting Ruth Bader Ginsburg onto the Supreme Court was a tough pill to swallow. She was an ACLU-loving, bra-burning feminazi, but they supported her anyway, dutifully respecting the president's right to put his own stamp on the high court. Therefore, Democrats now owe President Bush the same deference when weighing his choice of Samuel Alito.

Iraqi, U.S. Officials Talk of Withdrawal
Authorities signal that foreign troops could start pulling out in the next two years.
By Paul Richter and John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writers
November 15, 2005

WASHINGTON — Despite President Bush's effort to halt such talk, top Iraqi and American officials continue to suggest that U.S. and British troops in Iraq could begin substantial withdrawals as soon as next year.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on a British TV program over the weekend that Iraqi forces might be ready to replace British troops by the end of next year. Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi and Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, have also predicted recently that a substantial troop reduction could begin in 2006.

American Progress Action Fund's Progress Report: 

FACT: CONGRESS DID NOT HAVE THE "SAME INTELLIGENCE" AS THE WHITE HOUSE: In his speech, President Bush claimed that members of Congress who voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" as his administration. This is false. As the Washington Post pointed out Saturday, "Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material." For instance, in the lead up to war, the Bush administration argued that Iraq had made several attempts to "buy high-strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." The White House sent 15 intelligence assessments to Congress supporting this notion, but according to the New York Times, "not one of them" informed readers that experts within the Energy Department believed the tubes could not be used to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. Even Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- who has led efforts to delay and downplay the need for investigating prewar intelligence -- confirmed this broader point yesterday. Asked whether the differences between the intelligence available to the White House and to Congress was a "legitimate concern," Roberts acknowledged that it "may be a concern to some extent."

FACT: SENATE INTEL REPORT SHOWED MANIPULATION OF THE EVIDENCE: Bush claimed that "a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs." That argument is wrong on at least two counts. First, "the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence by omitting caveats and dissenting opinions." The so-called Phase II of the pre-war intel investigation is not expected to be completed this year. Second, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase I report found, according to the Los Angeles Times (7/10/04), that the unclassified public version of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was manipulated. "[C]arefully qualified conclusions [in the classified NIE] were turned into blunt assertions of fact." For example, the classified version of the NIE said, "Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons" of certain poisons. The phrase "although we have little specific information" was deleted from the unclassified version. Instead, the public report said, "Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents."

FACT: THE WORLD WAS NOT IN AGREEMENT WITH BUSH: One frequent talking point of Bush's defenders is that the pre-war intelligence failure was a global failure. "Every intelligence agency in the world, including the Russians, the French...all reached the same conclusion," Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said on CBS's "Face the Nation." Similarly, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) claimed, "This was a worldwide intelligence failure," citing the French and Russians, among others. In fact, many of our friends and allies believed that, based on the intelligence they had, the threat of Iraq did not rise to the level of justifying immediate force. French President Jacques Chirac said, "[W]e just feel that there is another option, another way, a less dramatic way than war." German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he did not believe the threat rose to the level requiring the "'ultima ratio,' the very last resort." And Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said, "It is our deep conviction that the possibilities for disarming Iraq through political means do exist."

via Mike at TopDog08.com:

NAME THAT CREEP. From Save Darfur:

The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (H.R. 3127/S. 1462) continues to slowly move forward as Congress enters the home stretch of the legislative year prior to an as yet undetermined adjournment date in late November or early December. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar has favorably reported the bill out of committee, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has indicated his support for bringing the bill to the floor as soon as an anonymous hold is lifted. [Emphasis added]

Last April the White House sent a letter to House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis asking him to quash the Darfur Accountability Act (which was then attached to the Iraq supplemental) by the time it came out of the conference committee. I got ahold of that letter, as did Nicholas Kristof, and we held it up as yet another example of the administration's lily-livered response to genocide. It seems that the White House wanted to avoid repeating that embarrassment this time around so they gave their favorite hack a call and told that senator not to let the legislation even make it to conference committee. Disgusting.

 

Fool wrote this nonsense

Five questions non-Muslims would like answered

THE RIOTING IN France by primarily Muslim youths and the hotel bombings in Jordan are the latest events to prompt sincere questions that law-abiding Muslims need to answer for Islam's sake, as well as for the sake of worried non-Muslims.

...like he's embarrassed to think in public. Black folks got tired of mainstream folks...Abe Foxman in particular...running this particular line on us. Old heads will remember well..."I publically call on Black leaders to repudiate whoever pissed me off!"

It ain't gonna work in the Middle East either.

This isn't the real America
By Jimmy Carter
JIMMY CARTER was the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon & Schuster.
November 14, 2005

IN RECENT YEARS, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

Stonewalling the Katrina Victims

Public outrage is clearly growing over the federal government's woefully inadequate program for housing the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Last week a group of survivors filed the first of what are likely to be several lawsuits alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to live up to its responsibilities. The recovery effort has been subject to blistering criticism from conservative, nonpartisan and liberal groups alike.

The same basic question is this: Why did the Bush administration focus on trailer parks built by FEMA - which is actually not a housing agency - instead of giving the lead role to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has so much experience on this issue?

I like JUST got this in the mail (I'm catching up, people...)

your topic : Langston Hughes
your message : I would hope that as a black conservative and a fan of Langston Hughes that you are in support of equal rights for gays.

I'm...hurt...

Remember this from yesterday?

U.S. Orders College to Drop Fellowships For Minorities
Associated Press
Saturday, November 12, 2005; A14

CARBONDALE, Ill., Nov. 11 -- Federal prosecutors are threatening to sue Southern Illinois University over three scholarship programs aimed at women and minorities, calling them discriminatory.

SIU "has engaged in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities and males," the Justice Department said in a letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The graduate scholarships, or fellowships, violate Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, the department said. The letter said Justice's civil rights division will sue SIU if it does not discontinue the programs by next Friday.

In the comments I told Shannon I'd be looking this stuff up. This is what I found so far.

There's this guy, Mark Safranski who really ought to piss me off. but doesn't. Probably because we came to pretty good terms on an outreach program his people are connected with. We don't have the same positions, but I think we have similar attitudes toward our own opinions.

Mark spammed me this weekend about a "roundtable" he was having on his blog.

I'm running a very special symposium the next three days with a mix of academics, journalists and bloggers on the theme of Globalization and War. Participating in this roundtable are:

Austin Bay

Bruce Kesler

Dr. Doug Macdonald of Colgate University

Dr. RJ Rummel of the University of Hawaii

Simon of Simon World

Dr. Sam Crane of Williams College

Chester of The Adventures of Chester

Paul D. Kretkowski of Beacon

I decided to take it all in at one sitting because I was supposed to be coding and working on something I am procrastinating about as we speak but that I will begin tonight, dammit.

Quote of note:

...while politically pro-choice, I didn't think that my situation had anything to do with the whole abortion debate, and so I put it out of my mind, so much so that when my husband and I drove to Planned Parenthood the morning of the procedure and found our car immediately surrounded by gesturing people, we both thought, "How nice of the Planned Parenthood people to make sure we knew where to park."

As I exited the car like some kind of odd celebrity, I wasn't prepared for the older woman who shoved her face an inch from mine and screamed that I was murdering my baby. I wasn't prepared for the looks of pure hate, no, the looks that could kill. I seem to vaguely recall being warned not to make eye contact, but I did, and I saw what I thought was someone who would gladly murder me to keep me from entering the clinic.

Facing The Reality Of Choice
By Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Sunday, November 13, 2005; B07

I wasn't carrying life, only death, something called a blighted ovum, when I walked into Planned Parenthood. I was 40, the mother of one child; another one was a possibility, but not with this pregnancy. Ironically, I had the worst nausea and other symptoms I've ever had and was suspecting that this one, unlike the string of miscarriages I'd had before and after my single successful pregnancy, was a strong one. Instead, there was no one home inside my womb, only an empty gestational sac and hormones, somehow tricked, careening inside me.

My midwife suggested that instead of waiting a few more weeks and being admitted to the hospital for a procedure to clean out the contents of my uterus, I could go to Planned Parenthood for, basically, a first-trimester abortion. It would be safer and quicker, she said, and I wouldn't have to stay in the hospital. I was thrilled with the idea of ending this torturous nausea and fatigue and going home.

While making arrangements on the phone, before signing off, the Planned Parenthood nurse mentioned something about being careful about the protesters.

A Tent Divided

...What Republicans desperately needed after Mr. Clinton was an international enemy threatening enough to replace the Soviets, and by a remarkable turn of events, they soon had one. The terrorist attacks of 2001 not only unified the country for a brief time; they also gave the Bush administration a grace period of more than three years in which anti-terrorist rallying cries were sufficiently compelling to paper over factional and ideological differences that the party ultimately would have to confront.

The grace period has ended. The results in Virginia, California and Colorado are the first serious warning to Republicans that they now must deal with political life largely as it existed on Sept. 10, 2001, and for nearly a decade before that. They are a hyper-extended family whose members are starting to realize that they have very little to say to each other. The internecine arguments over the year's Supreme Court nominees and last week's House budget bickering only serve to underscore the discomfort.

The Democrats and Judge Alito

...Judge Alito has tried to reassure Democratic senators by talking about his respect for Supreme Court precedents, including Roe v. Wade. It would be unwise to put too much stock in such reassurances. Even justices who value precedent, as most do, sometimes overturn existing case law with which they disagree. It should give Democrats pause that after Judge Alito's meetings with senators, both sworn opponents of Roe and fervent supporters have emerged reassured.

Even if Judge Alito does stand by important precedents, there is still reason for concern. Under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the Supreme Court perfected the art of reaffirming precedents in areas like criminal procedure while poking enough holes in them to render them almost unrecognizable. Judge Alito showed as a federal appeals court judge - when he voted to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring women to inform their husbands before getting an abortion - that abortion rights can be severely diminished even within the framework of Roe. The same thing could be true in other areas.

One group that clearly does not believe that Judge Alito will be a slave to existing Supreme Court precedents is the far right. Many of the same groups and individuals who waged a fierce campaign against Ms. Miers, President Bush's previous nominee for this seat, appear to be lining up in support of Judge Alito. Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who strongly opposes abortion, and other rights the court has recognized over the years, declared after meeting with Judge Alito, "This is the type of nominee I've been asking for."

Civil Rights Focus Shift Roils Staff At Justice
Veterans Exit Division as Traditional Cases Decline
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 13, 2005; A01

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which has enforced the nation's anti-discrimination laws for nearly half a century, is in the midst of an upheaval that has driven away dozens of veteran lawyers and has damaged morale for many of those who remain, according to former and current career employees.

Nearly 20 percent of the division's lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration's conservative views on civil rights laws. Longtime litigators complain that political appointees have cut them out of hiring and major policy decisions, including approvals of controversial GOP redistricting plans in Mississippi and Texas.

At the same time, prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have declined 40 percent over the past five years, according to department statistics. Dozens of lawyers find themselves handling appeals of deportation orders and other immigration matters instead of civil rights cases.