Quote of note: 

last night's direct threat to kill Mr Haniyeh, a democratically elected head of state, sharply raised the stakes.

Israel warns: free soldier or PM dies
Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov
July 01, 2006

ISRAEL last night threatened to assassinate Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh if Hamas militants did not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed.

The unprecedented warning was delivered to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a letter as Israel debated a deal offered by Hamas to free Corporal Gilad Shalit.

It came as Israeli military officials readied a second invasion force for a huge offensive into Gaza.

People whose party affiliation is as strong as their sexual orientation are not psychologically healthy.

As you all no doubt know, "coming out" is a phrase that previously had been used primarily to describe the experience of gays who'd been hiding their sexual identities for fear of discrimination and recrimination, and who finally decide they can no longer live the secret life. They tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may; sometimes they fall hard and painfully...

But, as I've written before, a political identity is much more than that: it often becomes a moral and personal identity, and there are groupthink aspects that lead to ostracism of the apostate. Zell Miller likens political identity to a birthmark, and in a way it is.

Judge Throws Out 'Mafia Cops' Convictions
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge on Friday threw out a racketeering murder conviction against two detectives accused of moonlighting as hitmen for the mob, saying the statute of limitations had expired on the slayings.

U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein also granted a new trial to the defendants, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, on money laundering and drug charges.

Defense attorneys had argued that the five-year statute of limitations had expired on the most serious allegations against the pair -- that they committed or facilitated eight killings between 1986 and 1990 while on the payroll of both the New York Police Department and Luchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.

the Transportation Ministry is run by political allies of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, an outspoken opponent of the U.S. presence in Iraq who runs one of Iraq's largest Shiite militias. U.S. forces, who consider Sadr's fighters a major security threat, use the same access road as civilian traffic and must pass through a checkpoint run by Global before entering their own compounds.

The Transportation Ministry has long considered Global's fees too high and has pressured the company, which once employed a workforce drawn primarily from countries in Africa and Asia, to hire more Iraqis. Now, of Global's 550 employees at the airport, Davis said, more than 85 percent are Iraqi. He also said the company is willing to settle for less money than it is owed if it is awarded a guaranteed contract.

But a Transportation Ministry official said in a telephone interview that although Minister Karim Mahdi intends to pay Global what it is due, he will then sever ties with the firm. 

Financial Dispute May Disrupt Iraq Airport Security
Current Firm Has Not Been Paid; Iraqis Want Local Group to Take Over
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 1, 2006; A18

BAGHDAD, June 30 -- In a standoff threatening to again disrupt security at Iraq's main airport, the multinational firm guarding the facility has not been paid since December, and Iraqi officials say they intend to replace it with a local force.

GOP Seeks Advantage In Ruling On Trials
National Security Is Likely Rallying Cry, Leaders Indicate
By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 1, 2006; A01

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism.

In striking down the military commissions Bush sought for trials of suspected members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the high court Thursday invited Congress to establish new rules and put the issue prominently before the public four months before the midterm elections. As the White House and lawmakers weighed next steps, House GOP leaders signaled they are ready to use this week's turn of events as a political weapon.

Backing George Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo means repudiating the Geneva Conventions.

As Steve Gilliard said:

Charters were sold as a way to have "school innovation", but in reality has more to do with cutting costs than innovating anything. For Bryne Lau to be hired at Brooklyn Tech pretty much refutes the crap her former boss has been libeling her with. To call a Quaker a racist without proof? Wow. That sounds like petty, spitful, libelous behavior to me.

Oh yeah, not funding the 401K is more than a labor dispute, it's also actionable.

Do charter schools need unions?
Leo Casey @ 12:30 pm

Ask Nichole Byrne Lau. Ask her former students.

...Nichole’s supervisors at the Williamsburg Charter High School thought so highly of her work, that when Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein came to visit this spring, they showcased her class. In his March newsletter to New Yorkers, Klein wrote about a lesson Nichole taught to her ninth grade English class on Homer’s Odyssey which engaged the students to think critically about the gods of Greek mythology.

But that was March. Shortly thereafter, Nichole shared with other teachers in the school the salary schedule for teachers in the New York City Department of Education. Although teachers at Williamsburg had many more teaching contact hours, and far less preparation time, than NYC school teachers, they found that they earned considerably less than their public school counterparts.

The soldier suspected of killing the four family members was discharged from the military and is back in the United States, the official said. The official did not provide the reason for the discharge.

The soldiers were reported to have returned from the scene with blood stains on their clothes, the official said.

How long do you think Iraqis have been talking about it?

US soldiers investigated in rape, murders in Iraq
Fri Jun 30, 2006 12:51 PM ET
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military is investigating whether U.S. soldiers raped an Iraqi woman and then killed her and three members of her family, including a child, south of Baghdad in March, officials said on Friday.

This whole week sucked, as a matter of fact. I didn't even like Superman Returns.

Thought you'd like to know. That today sucks, I mean. 

And that's something no amount of adjusting Black folks' behavior will address.

As just one example, the following case records this team’s experience applying for a position at a local auto dealership. Joe, the black tester, applied first and was informed at the outset that the only available positions were for those with direct auto sales experience. When Josue, his Latino partner, applied, the lack of direct auto sales experience was less of a problem. Josue reports: “He asked me if I had any customer service experience and I said not really…. He then told me that he wanted to get rid of a few bad apples who were not performing well. He asked me when I could start….” Josue was told to wait for a call back on Monday. Keith, their white ex-felon test partner, was first given a stern lecture regarding his criminal background. “I have no problem with your conviction, it doesn’t bother me. But if I find out money is missing or you’re not clean or not showing up on time I have no problem ending the relationship.” Despite the employer’s concerns, and despite Keith having no more sales experience than his test partners, Keith was offered the job on the spot.

I'm going to quote extensively here from Race at Work (pdf) by Devah Pager and Bruce Western of Princeton University.

Check out his comment on PBS's The Newshour yesterday.

JOHN YOO, Professor, University of Berkeley: Well, it puts the government in a terrible position. They either have to, as Andrew said, continue to hold people and have no trials at all, or have lots of Moussaoui-like trials, because the other alternative is to force the government to go into a situation where they have to put someone on trial in civilian court or a court-martial court, but at the same time risk blowing their intelligence sources and methods.

So I don't think the executive branch is going to want to choose either of those outcomes. I think everybody wants there to be some kind of trial, rather than holding them indefinitely.

So I bet what's going to happen, as President Bush said today, they're going to go to Congress, and, as they did at the end of last year, get another statute which overrules these same justices again, who've been overruled in their Detainee Act of 2005.

But that's going to take a lot of effort and political time and energy, which the court could have saved the president and Congress, if they had just left things alone and let the president and Congress fight between themselves over these matters.

And here's why that's a problem.

He's getting nailed in the least damaging ways possible. He can still back away from his more extreme unconstitutional positions.

A Governing Philosophy Rebuffed
Ruling Emphasizes Constitutional Boundaries
By Peter Baker and Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 30, 2006; A01

For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it.

Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country. In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate.

Cobb's still trying...

Alan Colmes' Death Goes Unreported On Hannity & Colmes
June 28, 2006 | Issue 42•26

WASHINGTON, DC—The accidental death of Alan Colmes, the liberal commentator sometimes featured alongside conservative Sean Hannity, has gone unreported on their Fox News political commentary show for two weeks. "I can't understand why—why the Republicans are afraid to pull the trigger on immigration!" said Hannity, speaking to an empty seat across the set.

America the Untethered
By DAVID RIEFF

Obviously, the United States will remain strong enough to exercise considerable power for the foreseeable future. In the medium term, however, an America that does not understand — and makes little effort to understand — why it has become so unpopular abroad is almost certain to find itself both disliked and ineffective in many parts of the world. Indeed, just last month, the Pew Global Attitudes Project issued a new survey showing that anti-Americanism, which seemed to be in decline a year ago, is again on the rise. By 41 percent to 34 percent, a plurality of Britons believe that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is a greater danger to world peace than the government of Iran — this in Tony Blair's Britain, supposedly America's staunchest ally. The Bush administration clearly realizes that such findings are not good news and has greatly toned down its earlier unilateralist swagger.

Of course, if unilateralism is a dead end, multilateralism is no panacea — as the current impasse with Iran demonstrates. But we have to start somewhere. Simply to repeat that we live in a post-9/11 world, while the Europeans have not yet heard the bad news — in other words, waiting for our allies to come around to seeing things as we do in the United States — is unlikely to do anything but aggravate the differences that already exist.

[TS] One Nation, Under One Roof
By DAVID BROOKS

The American Revolution was fought in a climate of anticipation. Enlightened thinkers around the world hoped that America's new spirit of freedom would unleash a political, economic and cultural renaissance.

"A new Greece will perhaps give birth on the continent ... to new Homers," predicted the Abbé Raynal, the French philosophe. Horace Walpole speculated: "The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico."

It didn't end up quite that gloriously. Many of the 18th-century figures assumed that economic growth and cultural genius were part of one thing — progress — and that in an atmosphere of freedom they would rise together. But in America it became clear that commerce and culture were different things, and that while commerce surged, culture lagged.

Flawless beginning.

Before long, people noticed that the United States had become divided into, as Van Wyck Brooks put it, "two publics, the cultivated public and the business public, the public of theory and the public of activity, the public that reads Maeterlinck and the public that accumulates money."

(I guess Black and Amerind folks were America's two private parts...)

Still got no beef.

In response to: 

I think I have good company in my insistence that there is, and must be a discoverable black ideal towards which African Americans must comport themselves to attain the freedom which is their stated imperative.

You are in good company. They're wrong too.

You are free, regardless of your comportment. Your comportment only determines whether or not people appreciate the fact of your freedom.

Just sayin...I mean, thnaks for the minority voting rights thing, but on the political tip you KNOW that's where all this is heading. 

the court ruled that state legislators may draw new maps as often as they like -- not just once a decade as Texas Democrats claimed. That means Democratic and Republican state lawmakers can push through new maps anytime there is a power shift at a state capital.

Justices Back Most G.O.P. Changes to Texas Districts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights.

What if, instead of focusing exclusively on college, we identified success as the ability to earn a living, support a family, and be a contributing member of society? 

One-size-fits-all doesn't suit our students
By David Crane  |  June 28, 2006

I ATTENDED two high school graduations this month. One was for my own son, and the other was for students at Boston's Josiah Quincy Upper School, a grade 6-12 school that I helped to create seven years ago, and that was graduating its first class. At these ceremonies, teachers, administrators, and guests spoke with pride and excitement about the colleges to which the students had been accepted and from which scholarships will be received.

Where the hell is Denny Hastert? Every day it's another random person as Speaker Pro Tem..it's like Speaker of the House is the best no-show patronage job ever.

The Midwest Heart Foundation, and the way it has become quietly interwoven into its doctors' professional lives, is far from unique. Around the country, doctors in private practice have set up tax-exempt charities into which drug companies and medical device makers are, with little fanfare, pouring donations — money that adds up to millions of dollars a year. And some medical experts see that as a big problem.

The charities are typically set up to engage in medical research or education, and the doctors involved defend those efforts as legitimate charitable activities that benefit the public. But because they operate mainly under the radar, the tax-exempt organizations represent what some other doctors, as well as regulators and industry consultants, say is a growing conduit for industry money. The payments, they say, can bias the treatment decisions of physicians, may lead to suspect research findings and at times may even risk running afoul of anti-kickback laws. 

Charities Tied to Doctors Get Drug Industry Gifts
By REED ABELSON

Why does Bush need a line item veto when he has his signing statements? if Bush can sign legislation outlawing torture with a note that he's free to ignore the law when he judges it necessary, why can't he do it with budget bills too?

The point: the request is an admission that he does not currently have the power to excise those bits of the law he doesn't like, respect, agree with or whatever. That undercuts any claim that an equivalent (those signing statements) is legitimate.

President to Press for Line-Item Veto Power
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, June 27 — With his proposed overhaul of the nation's immigration laws now in legislative limbo, President Bush focused on another priority on Tuesday, to secure Congressional approval of a presidential line-item veto.

Speaking to a conservative group here in the morning, Mr. Bush said he would use a line-item veto to eliminate spending on the pet projects called earmarks that lawmakers attach to spending bills.

The Brennan Center for Justice did this work. Check their press release for more details. 

A Single Person Could Swing an Election
Electronic Systems' Weaknesses May Be Countered With Audits, Report Suggests
By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; A07

To determine what it would take to hack a U.S. election, a team of cybersecurity experts turned to a fictional battleground state called Pennasota and a fictional gubernatorial race between Tom Jefferson and Johnny Adams. It's the year 2007, and the state uses electronic voting machines.

Jefferson was forecast to win the race by about 80,000 votes, or 2.3 percent of the vote. Adams's conspirators thought, "How easily can we manipulate the election results?"

The experts thought about all the ways to do it. And they concluded in a report issued yesterday that it would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the outcome.

I wind up taking these damn quizes. Curse you, Superman!

Your results:
You are Iron Man

Iron Man 75% Hulk 65% Spider-Man 65% Green Lantern 60% Batman 55% Supergirl 50% The Flash 50% Robin 47% Wonder Woman 45% Catwoman 45% Superman 40%

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

 

Affirmative Damage
Students sacrificed in the name of “diversity.”
By Peter Kirsanow

What if proponents of affirmative action are wrong? That is, what if racial-preference policies don’t increase the numbers of minorities who graduate from colleges, law schools, etc, but rather, do just the opposite? Moreover, what if the harm done to minority academic and employment prospects is compounded by the fact that the policies are blatantly unlawful?

What if affirmative action is a giant, devastating sham? 

What if opponents of Black folks advancing are fishing? That is, what if they are so desperate to keep Black folks from competing effectively they become willing to sign their name to absurdity? Moreover, what if the absurdity they advance is old, well known , and demonstrably full of crap?

And what if a blogger is fooled by it? Twice?

I thought about this for a long, long time.

Been thinking while I was away

by Prometheus 6
Tue, 06/27/2006 - 2:28pm

In the course of a discussion about libertarianism on Prometheus 6, I had cause to say

If you lined up all the libertarians in the world, ordered from Batshit Crazy Libertarian to barely noticeable tendency libertarian

• the commonality would be acceptance of the principle that the legitimate function of government is contract enforcement
• the difference would be how close that principle is to being the first one they consider

Later I looked at that and asked myself if I could line up Black folks that way. I think I failed.

read more | Prometheus 6's blog