politics: October 2006 Archives
10.26.2006 - Of God, justice, and disunited states
"I try to keep a balance," Bellah explains, taking a break from research and writing at his home near Memorial Stadium for a visit to Barrows Hall, where he served on the faculty for 30 years before retiring in 1997. "Criticism without any substance ultimately is self-destructive. It undermines everything and leads to nihilism. But substantive belief without any critical perspective also suffers the fate of disaster, because it tends toward actions which are out of the control of reason."
As an example of the latter, Bellah points to President Bush and the war in Iraq. "It's more the religion of neoconservatism than any kind of biblical religion, though Bush himself uses biblical language," he observes. "I think they were so ideologically convinced that they felt they didn't need to look at any data. They were just so sure they would be greeted with roses and were going to create a happy, democratic, capitalist society that would love Israel. Overnight. Without any notion of the history of this country? It's unimaginable."
Bush's family profits from 'No Child' act - Los Angeles Times
A company headed by President Bush's brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act.
With investments from his parents, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and other backers, Neil Bush's company, Ignite! Learning, has placed its products in 40 U.S. school districts and now plans to market internationally.
At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president's signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite's portable learning centers at $3,800 apiece.
This doesn't happen every day, but it is cool when it does. I was recently quoted in the New York Times.
Leaving Prison Doors Behind, Some Find New Doors Open - New York Times
"In 1994, Congress removed prison inmates from eligibility for Pell Grants, a major federal program of aid to low-income students that was the financial backbone of most in-prison college programs. Many states, including New York, followed the federal lead and removed prison inmates from their own college aid programs.
As a result, about 25,000 inmates taking part in such programs with Pell Grants had their "education abruptly ended," according to a study by Kenneth Mentor, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. By 1997, only 8 college prison programs remained active nationwide, compared with as many as 350 in previous years, Mr. Mentor said."
Following is an interesting spin from the New York Times. Were the Democrats "outmaneuvered," or were these past elections stolen? There is plenty of evidence to support the latter. Does this wording, which we suddenly hear everywhere (even Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update), prepare the American public to accept the proposition that Karl Rove is a master at getting out the vote - again - when the reality is that the election has been stolen - again?
Guardedly, Democrats Are Daring to Believe - New York Times
"For Democrats these days, life is one measure glee, one measure dread and one measure hubris. If they are as confident as they have been in a decade about regaining at least one house of Congress - and they are - it is a confidence tempered by the searing memories of being outmaneuvered, for three elections straight, by superior Republican organizing and financial strength, and by continued wariness about the political skills of President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove."
Truthdig - Reports - After Pat's Birthday
It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice... until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Election Issues
The polls all point to a Democratic sweep in November. The news pours in about pedophile Republicans and Team Bush contempt for their fundamentalist bedmates. Iraq implodes. Deficits soar. Katrina lingers. Scandal is everywhere.
On the other hand, there are rumors of an "October Surprise." An attack on Iran. A new terror incident. Osama finally captured.
Gas prices are down, the stock market up.
None of it dampens the Democrats' euphoria. They think they are about to win. In conventional terms, they should.
But think again. Please.
With the critical mid-term elections weeks away from our publication date, this report looks at some of the serious problems that marred the 2004 presidential election and asks: are we any better off today than we were two years ago?
The authors of this report - The Century Foundation, Common Cause, and The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights - are uniquely qualified to answer that question. The three organizations did intensive monitoring of the 2004 elections and held a conference including several of the other major monitoring organizations in December of that year. They reported their findings in Voting in 2004: A Report to the Nation on America's Election Process, published in December 2004.
This follow-up report explores whether a sampling of 10 states with a history of various election problems and potentially close races - Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin - have taken steps to address the concerns addressed in our foundational report.
The findings of our report on the whole are troubling. Some states have made it harder to register to vote rather than easier. This is critical because problems with voter registration were among the most common complaints of voters in 2004. Another critical problem from 2004 - long lines for voters - is likely to recur because few states have dealt with the issue. New voter ID laws in certain states are likely to disenfranchise voters, and only one state has acted aggressively to address voter intimidation tactics.
FindLaw's Writ - Lazarus: The Key Issue of Judicial Independence
In legal circles, the issue of the moment is judicial "independence." For many years now, right-wing conservatives have been conducting an unrelenting attack on supposedly out-of-control "activist" judges, as part of their campaigns against abortion rights, affirmative action, and the judicially-imposed ban on prayer in public schools.
In the last few years, however, the assault on the judiciary has developed a new fury. In the wake of the legal maneuverings surrounding Terri Schiavo's tragic death, conservatives have not only ratcheted up their anti-judge rhetoric, they've started acting on threats to seek impeachment of federal judges they don't like, and to set up systems for monitoring judges who depart from their preferred legal views.
Dobbs: Middle class needs to fight back now - CNN.com
NEW YORK (CNN) -- I don't know about you, but I can't take seriously anyone who takes either the Republican Party or Democratic Party seriously -- in part because neither party takes you and me seriously; in part because both are bought and paid for by corporate America and special interests. And neither party gives a damn about the middle class.
Our country's middle class is not just collateral damage in what has become all-out class warfare. Political, business and academic elites are waging an outright war on working men and women and their families, and there is no chance the American middle class will survive this assault if the dominant forces unleashed over the past five years continue unchecked.
What the Amish are Teaching America
On October 2, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined up eleven young girls from the class and shot them each at point blank range. The gruesome depths of this crime are hard for any community to grasp, but certainly for the Amish - who live such a secluded and peaceful life, removed even from the everyday depictions of violence on TV. When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts' family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don't automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
AlterNet: Blogs: Video: Olbermann to Bush: 'A Special Comment About Lying' [VIDEO]
While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool . . .
While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the revelations of a book with a glowing red cover . . .
The president of the United States -- unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality -- has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.
MoveOn.org Civic Action:
Save the Internet
Ordinary people have scored a stunning victory against phone and cable companies. After months of feeling heat from the public, the Senate adjourned in September without passing Ted Stevens' bad telecom bill, which would have killed Net Neutrality forever.
But companies like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast aren't giving up their fight to control the Internet. They will try to kill Net Neutrality in the "lame duck" Congress - the period right after the Nov. 7 elections when Congress is most unaccountable.
We must act now to keep the pressure on Congress through election season, one way is to register thousands of new "Internet Freedom Voters."
Internet Freedom Voters are people who care about Internet freedom and want their voices heard in the political process.
eSchool News online - Open-access bill divides schools, publishers
Universities and publishers of scholarly journals are at odds over a recently proposed Senate bill that would require institutions conducting research funded with federal tax dollars to publish their findings free of charge online, no more than six months after their publication elsewhere.
If passed, the open-access legislation could put an additional strain on campus IT infrastructures, as colleges and universities would be forced to post many of their research results on the web. But universities and education groups overwhelmingly support the bill, believing it will further the advancement of knowledge worldwide.
Publishers of scholarly journals, on the other hand, fear the bill will undermine their business.
