Talking Justice

Catholics & Obama -- A Matter of Faith Reconciled with Hope

Doug Kmiec — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:23:00 GMT

Douglas W. Kmiec

Chair and professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University; the former Dean & St. Thomas More Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America and author of Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barrack Obama (Overlook Press),

In his review of my new book entitled Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barrack Obama (Overlook Press), Deacon Keith Fournier writes with the courage of his convictions that I have asked the wrong question, suggesting that the appropriate inquiry is whether Senator Obama ought to or should receive Catholic support? I have concluded that Senator Obama is indeed worthy of the support of conscientious Catholics. The Deacon dissents. Many of his points are unassailable and once again readers of this site are in his debt for the clarity of his thought. Nevertheless, in positing that the book asks the wrong question, the Deacon obscures the correct answer: namely, after proper discernment and with the right intent, Catholics are free to vote for Senator Obama in good conscience.

I offer these few comments in response to his. In what follows I quote the major argument passages from his essay and beneath in bold italics explain why at critical points the Deacon’s approach leaves much of our faith needlessly out of reach and applied only hypothetically. So let us begin with the heart of the matter: The Deacon argues: “It is immoral to vote in a manner which fails to protect innocent human persons from being unjustly killed.”

No, it is immoral to vote with that intent. This point is reaffirmed in the American Bishops’ splendid “Call to Faithful Citizenship,” where it is written: “A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.”

The Deacon continues: “Doug and his candidate are right to emphasize that we are our brother’s (and sister’s) keeper, but wrong to then exclude an entire class of brothers and sisters, the unborn, from the protections of the positive law.”

Yes, I am my brother’s and sister’s keeper, I am not, however as a private citizen, their legislator. In voting for a candidate who represents views affecting the totality of the social gospel, I cannot be assumed to materially participate or cooperate in any particular mistaken decision of that candidate – again, absent my intent to share in that mistaken view.

The Deacon then notes that I rely upon the recent letters of Archbishop Charles Chaput and Francis Cardinal George for guidance, and asserts in a rare moment of uncharacteristic intemperance that this reliance is “sophistry.”

Not so, I have relied upon these fine teachers of the faith in order to undertake the proper inquiry into whether there is proportionate reason allowing the choice of a candidate who has an alternative way of promoting human life other than a thus far futile, and in any event, insufficient effort to criminalize some, but not all, abortion practice.

Continuing, the Deacon observes: “Doug maintains that Senator McCain’s position in favor of the overturning of Roe v Wade is simply a ‘Federalist position’ and not a truly Pro-life stance. The Deacon concedes that McCain’s pro-federalism position is less absolute than the Deacon’s own based upon Catholic teaching, but he writes in apology for the weakness of the McCain position: “I know that the reversal of Roe opens up the field to securing protection of the children and will at least slow the shedding of innocent blood while we work on outlawing the act. I think (Doug) does as well but has backed himself into a corner.”

No, the corner we inhabit together as Catholics is one we were consigned to occupy by the Supreme Court’s mistaken jurisprudence and the larger culture’s hardness of heart. Part of the exercise of conscience we are called upon to make in terms of proportionality analysis as we vote necessarily includes an evaluation of which path is more likely to free us from that corner. In other words, we are asked as part of our proportionality inquiry to evaluate the likelihood of positive result in favor of life. Given the length of time Mr. McCain has exercised the levers of legislative power, is it not the least bit disturbing that during that entire almost 30 year period Senator McCain did not offer and actively champion a Human Life Amendment? Indeed, to the contrary, it was John McCain who previously stated: “I’d love to see the point where [Roe v. Wade] is irrelevant, and could be replaced because abortion is no longer necessary. But, certainly in the short term, or even in the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would force X number of women in America to undergo illegal and dangerous operations.”   Of course, Senator McCain’s change of view is to be welcomed, but let us then not overstate his bona fides as “pro-life,” at least not in the sense the Deacon himself has correctly articulated a position worthy of that title.

Also, as I note in the book in evaluating proportionality, the Church has directed that we exercise our conscience, giving primacy to the issue of life while also considering with due regard and moral weight of the totality of Catholic social teaching. Some individual bishops have given further guidance to their parishioners. For example, while I will not repeat here the full treatment of this important issue from the book, I would like to especially point out to the reader, the rigorous analysis of Archbishop Charles Chaput who writes that a proportionate reason “would be a reason we could, with an honest heart, expect the unborn victims of abortion to accept when we meet them and need to explain our actions -- as we someday will."   This is, as my commentary observes, a powerful statement, but fairly taken on its own terms, I doubt that I could legitimately explain to unborn victims either support for Senator McCain’s claimed ‘pro-life’ position or the Democratic platform reforms of Senator Obama to address the dire social and economic conditions of their mothers.

The McCain approach -- no matter how many hems and haws the Deacon wishes to insert -- is only truly pro-federalism (which is not only not reliably pro-life, but given the tragic example of international practice, might even facilitate in a radical state abortion mandates that because of the reversal would no longer be checked by the women’s individual autonomy right the Court articulated in Roe).

Since I have to make a decision between those incomplete positions if I am going to participate in the political process, I would much more prefer Senator Obama's efforts to directly intervene for the better in the life of an expectant mother now than the remote possibility that after 35 years, the next president may appoint someone new to the Supreme Court of the United States who in turn – in a case not yet filed, not yet accepted for review, not yet briefed and not yet argued -- might be able to persuade four of the other existing justices to overturn, against the principles of stare decisis, the decision in Roe, and then further persuade the individual legislatures of the 50 states and their governors to sign into law protections for human life. In my judgment, the position represented by Senator McCain in the 2008 election represents such an inconceivable chain of events that unborn victims could legitimately ask how could an honest heart ever have expected anything favorable to human life to come from it.

The Deacon then makes this claim: in the book, “Doug vacillates between acknowledging the existence of objective moral truths which should govern human behavior and contending that someone could deny their existence, claim that such a denial is a ‘deeply held religious belief’ and we should form our positive law to accommodate them under some misguided understanding of religious liberty and pluralism.”

Quite honestly, I do not “vacillate.” To the contrary, I state unequivocally, “The humanity of the unborn child to me and every geneticist on the face of the planet is patent. It is the natural law from which no human being can or should want to escape. Try escaping from your nature, it’s uncomfortable, and downright, dangerous. Think you can fly without a para-glider or similar device from the top of the Santa Monica Mountains along the Pacific; think again. Arm-flapping will be your last aerobic exercise.

“Can it be said that natural law is an obligatory part of the American Constitution? You bet, except that, with the possible exception of Justice Thomas, there is not a single Justice prepared to say so. Natural law is not Catholic law; it is universal; it is timeless; and it is what Thomas Jefferson anchored the new American Republic upon in the Declaration of Independence – self evident truths derived from the ‘Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.’ Only one problem: not everyone sees the truth of the unborn child the same way, and in the American democracy, majority rules.”

Now the Deacon may wish to say the majority cannot overrule those natural law presuppositions, and that is a fine point of philosophy and moral reality. It is, however, to lose touch with political reality, which was acknowledged by John Paul II in the Gospel of Life and by His Holiness Benedict XVI in instruction he gave before his elevation to the seat of St. Peter. We are to “promote life and work within the existing political and legal reality.” To just engage in systematic theology or philosophic discourse loses sight of the unborn children, we might actually – right now, this day -- save by improving the life circumstance of expectant mothers – which, by the way, is the experience of all those who have donated time at crisis pregnancy centers as well as the formal conclusion of studies by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United both showing significant reductions in abortion through economic support.

The Deacon correctly observes that he “could never be accused of being what (Doug) now rejects as a “Republican Faith Partisans” (RFP’s).” “Like him, the Deacon continues, “I might be considered a ‘Reagan Democrat,’ at least in the sense that I left the Democratic Party when it abandoned children in the womb and I voted for Ronald Reagan. . . . The problem is that many Catholics do not know the Social teaching of their Church or have wrongly allowed ‘experts’ on the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ to interpret what it is for them.”

Amen, brother. You are indeed not an RFP, since this shorthand applies to those who do not write with courage and insight, as I described your work in the book acknowledgements, but those who instead ply the trade of demonizing and denigrating their political opponents, and worse, those who unfairly and mistakenly portray voting for Senator Obama as a sin contrary to faith and morals. It is, as you noted at the outset, not the calling of the Church to tell us how to vote and you and I join in the expectation that everyone from bishops to priests to fellow parishioners will not use in terrorem tactics denying Communion, threatening the denial of Communion, pronouncing in public press without pastoral counseling the demand that Catholic office holders go to confession, or otherwise being manipulated by those who have learned to win elections by setting red against blue, and who care little if at all, about the full social teaching of the Church.

And what is that teaching? It is not well discussed in the general church since it has been arbitrarily closed off to many by those who insist on putting out fraudulent voter guides that list the reversal of Roe as a nonnegotiable demand to be fulfilled prior to any consideration of family wage, just war, environmental stewardship, or the reasoned welcome and treatment of the immigrant family. RFPs – Republican Faith Partisans – thus take the carefully nuanced and balanced teaching of the Church, including its just call to give life primacy, and derive from it only their own electoral success paid for by a “pro-life” label without meaningful result; the skewing of the tax code in favor of the affluent and in disregard of the dignity of human work (John McCain over the last decade has voted against a modest increase in the minimum wage at least 8 times, yet he is foresworn to keep “the Bush tax cuts” whose target audience is more concerned with compensation packages in the millions of dollars, than the minimum wage); and a war without justification or even well-conceived military objective costing us $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes. The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee.

The costs of war and failed, nay untried, diplomacy are great. Perhaps it is those costs that prompted George W. Bush to veto, and his protégé John McCain to sustain, the disapproval of extending (SCHIP) which had sent more than six million children from low income families to the doctor, cutting the number of uninsured children by one-third. No one has even begun to calculate the cost of John McCain’s drastic proposal to dismantle the present health care relationship with employers and to tax the value of health care to employees. There is reason to be leery, however, of McCain’s prescription of the same principles of deregulation that he brought to the financial markets for which we are paying dearly today, and a predicted increase in the numbers of uninsured will pay tomorrow.

Deacon Fournier is a splendid teacher of the faith.   Reflecting upon that faith, he concludes: “Truly good governance begins with the smallest governance, the family and should give priority to the principle of subsidiarity. We were made for one another and we find our human fulfillment only in giving ourselves to the other. Then there is that other vital principle, a principle of social charity called solidarity, which insists that we are “our brothers (and sisters) keeper.”

Those are important words, and they are echoed by these:

“Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves -- protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe ; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology. Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who is willing to work. That's the promise of America -- the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister’s keeper. That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now.”

Those are the words of Barack Obama accepting the nomination for President of the United States. Their resonance with Catholic teaching is self-evident. Can a Catholic Support Him?

As a matter of faith, yes. As a matter of hope, unquestionably.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Part Two

Andrew Imparato — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:09:00 GMT

As I write this message during the Congressional August recess, I am more optimistic than ever that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Amendments Act will be passed by this Congress and signed by President Bush. Many things can still happen that could derail passage, including simply running out of time in the Congressional calendar. But I have faith in the ability of the bipartisan congressional champions for the bill — people like Orrin Hatch, Tom Harkin, Steny Hoyer, Jim Sensen-brenner, Mike Enzi and Ted Kennedy — to bring home this victory before Congress adjourns.

The June 25 vote of 402-17 in the House and the reintroduction of a Senate bill with 67 Senators signing on as co-sponsors just before the August recess certainly give the bill some momentum going into September.

We would not be where we are now without the coordinated advocacy of disability, civil rights and employer groups. To see who is helping to lead the effort to pass the ADA Amendments Act, go to www.adabill.com and you will see a truly diverse and powerful coalition. I am hoping that we can reunite this coalition to work on other disability, employment, and civil rights policy issues once we have this victory under our belt.

So, for purposes of this message, I am going to focus on what happens after the ADA Amendments Act is signed into law, either by President Bush or his successor (in the event we are not successful in getting it passed in this Congress).

I was recently one of three speakers on a national teleconference, organized by the Great Lakes region’s Disability Business Technical Assistance Center, about the ADA Amendments Act. Commissioner Christine Griffin from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was one of my co-panelists. Commissioner Griffin made the good point that once this bill passes, there will be the need for the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Justice to do another round of training so that people know how the new bill affects their civil rights.

The passage and implementation of the ADA Amendments Act creates an opportunity for us to go out and reeducate our communities at the local, state and national levels about why there is still a need for a civil rights law like the ADA 18 years after its original enactment. What are the access and attitudinal barriers that still exist in our communities, and what can community leaders do in partnership with disability leaders and organizations to remove those barriers once and for all? Why do we have to protest the offensive portrayal of people with intellectual disabilities in Hollywood blockbusters like Tropic Thunder? Why are politicians, including Senators Obama and McCain, failing to mention their disability agendas in their campaign stump speeches? Why has it been so difficult to increase the employment rate for people with significant disabilities, and why is our nation’s largest employer, the Federal Government, moving backwards on this issue? Why do hot new gadgets like the iPhone come out without adequate accessibility? Why has it been so difficult to implement the accessibility requirements in the Help America Vote Act? We should be raising all of these issues and many more as we begin a dialogue with America around the implementation of the restorative amendments to this critical civil rights law.

The bottom line is that implementation of the ADA Amendments Act is an opportunity for all of us to refocus America on the benefits of full inclusion, full participation, and full citizenship for our more than 50 million Americans with disabilities. For the implementation to be successful, we will need to engage the very broad coalition that is now working to pass the bill, and then reach out even more broadly to include more groups who can really help change attitudes and improve access.

At AAPD, we want disability to be THE social justice issue of our time. We see implementation of the ADA Amendments Act, coupled with the global implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as a great opportunity to put our issues front and center. Let's work hard in September to get the bill enacted into law. Then, let's work even harder to implement the bill in a manner that truly elevates the visibility and quality of life of all people with disabilities in the United States and reestablishes our country's role as a model of inclusion for the rest of the world.

A Year in the Life

warnewsradio — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:32:00 GMT

Iraqi refugees in Syria in front of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Photo courtesy of the AP.

This week on War News Radio, we compile the most compelling stories that we’ve heard over the past year in our series, A Day in the Life.

First, we hear from Fuad Mufta, an Iraqi refugee in Syria, about his hopes for getting political asylum in the United States. Elise Garrity prepared this report.

Next, we speak with a refugee who found his way to the United Kingdom, but is now second-guessing his decision to leave. Listen now to this report.

We also talk with a garbage collector about his work. Ayub Nuri reports.

Then, we speak with a chef in Baghdad about his restaurant’s day to day operations. Listen now to this report.

Next, we hear from an Imam from the town of Hawija about his struggles to guide the faithful through difficult times. Listen now to this report.

Finally, we talk with a nurse in Kirkuk’s general hospital about how he treats victims of explosions. Listen now to this report.

These stories this week from War News Radio.

Best of Summer '08

warnewsradio — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:31:00 GMT

Two Iraqi soldiers during a nighttime patrol in the city of Mousel in northern Iraq. Photo courtesy of Ayub Nuri.

This week on War News Radio, we proudly present some of our favorite pieces from the summer.

First, three Iraqis from Kurdistan tell us about the day-to-day problems they face when buying and selling food. Sonny Sidhu and Elizabeth Hipple prepared this report.

Next, members of the US military talk about the value of the Awakening movement as a strategy for a safer and self-protecting Iraq. Kristin Caspar and Alex Imas has this report.

Next, we talk to experts about whether Iraq’s security gains will be enough without corresponding political gains. Elizabeth Hipple reports.

Finally, the mother of a young Iraq veteran tells us about how the war has affected his return home. Listen now to Elise Garrity’s report.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.
Read the transcript for this show »

Learning the Wrong Lessons

Kevin Cathcart — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

By Kevin Cathcart, Lambda Legal Executive Director

Back-to-school time brings up mixed feelings for most students, but for some LGBTQ students, fear and anxiety are there in the mix. That’s harmful. It’s unfair. And it’s unacceptable.

Joey Ramelli and Megan Donovan were forced to drop out of high school and complete their education at home after being harassed by their classmates during their sophomore and junior years. The students taunted them with antigay slurs. Ramelli was assaulted, his car vandalized. Lambda Legal recently defended the jury decision in their favor in a California court.

K.K. Logan attended high school in Indiana, where his classmates and teachers supported him when he wore clothes typically associated with girls his age. But when Logan attended the prom wearing a dress, the principal blocked him at the door. Lambda Legal has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Logan arguing that the school violated his First Amendment rights. It’s heartening to know that many of his classmates and neighbors were on his side.

And recently at a Florida high school, 17-year-old Brittany Martin and other students who formed a gay-straight alliance (GSA) were told they didn’t have the right to meet on school grounds, a right that other student organizations were given. The ACLU took the case to federal court and won on both Equal Access Act and First Amendment grounds.

Lambda Legal has had similar victories. When a group of students in a Salt Lake City high school were told they couldn’t form a GSA, we stepped in as lead counsel for a coalition of groups that filed suit against the school district for violating the Equal Access Act. And in California, we fought and won a case on behalf of Anthony Colín and others, after the Orange Unified School District Board denied the students permission to meet. These victories and others like them support students and allies who are working together to make schools safer places where all students have the chance to pursue an equal education — and be themselves.

But even where state laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are on the books, the fight is not over. Lambda Legal filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief to protect a state law in California that is threatened by a lawsuit brought by antigay organizations Advocates for Faith and Freedom and the Alliance Defense Fund, which seek to block their enforcement. And in New York, we spoke up when two different school districts argued that the state Human Rights Law that prohibits discrimination does not apply to them. One district has already dropped its challenge in response to our letter.

School is the place where young people learn history and geometry — and how to be in the world. They also learn how the world around them works, and they don’t miss much: they see when teachers, parents, administrators and elected officials stand up for fairness — and when they don’t.

Back-to-school blues should be about the small stuff — not about the fear of violence or discrimination, whether on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, race or any other factor. We will soon issue an enhanced version of one of Lambda Legal’s most popular educational booklets, and we’re especially proud of the title: every child should be able to return to school and be Out, Safe and Respected.

Support Systems

warnewsradio — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:16:00 GMT

Afghan women learning to make fruit preserves. Photo courtesy of Rosemary Stasek.

This week on War News Radio, we examine just how closely Pakistan’s equivalent of the CIA is tied to Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. Sonny Sidhu prepared this report.

Next, we check in on the current status of al-Qaeda with Bruce Riedell, a counter-terrorism expert at Brookings Institution, amid reports of of a recently discovered letter intercepted from senior members of the organization. Alex Imas has this report.

Then, we talk to a California mayor turned humanitarian aid worker, who has been working and living in Afghanistan for the past six years. Elise Garrity reports.

Finally, we look at what’s behind the rise in violence against journalists in northern Iraq. Elizabeth Hipple prepared this report.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.
Read the transcript for this show »

Thank God for those who "flipped-flopped" on race

Ward Connerly — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:42:00 GMT

One thing I have learned after over 13 years of fighting to bring my nation closer to its promise of equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue – and get away with it – than almost any other issue in the public policy arena.

A few days ago, Senator John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Senator Barack Obama pounced on McCain’s endorsement.

Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”

Having now been thrust into a presidential campaign by Obama, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.

Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature or governor has acted to eliminate preferences and to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act which commands equal treatment “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex” by our government. In addition, the Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter. That is why I have led the national effort to ask the people in various states to exercise their power to end such practices through ballot initiatives, wherever permitted. I find it interesting that the only ones who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Senator Obama. But, they never seem to find preferences themselves as being “divisive.”

Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies and those of us who believe that preferences are fundamentally wrong keep our mouths shut and accept the status quo, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.

While he acknowledged the resentment that affirmative action engenders in his March 18 speech about race, Obama now claims that our initiatives are not really all that important and are “all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.” This is neither the tone nor the substance of what he said on March 18 when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back.

It is true that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is NOT true that he has “flipped” with regard to the substance of this issue. The record is clear that he has consistently evidenced disdain for preferential treatment based on race. But, let’s assume that he has even changed his position substantively.

In truth, millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled and should thank God for race “flippers.” Without them, he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party for president of the United States.

While he criticizes McCain for changing his position, Obama evidences an equal readiness to change his from support of race-based preferences to one based on socioeconomic circumstances – a position with which I concur.

Asked if there would continue to be a need for affirmative action should he be elected president, Obama said, "I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience…”

What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how a president who professes the desire to unite the American people intend to do so by asking those who are not “of color” to look the other way when they are discriminated against.

If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”

Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress; and something tells me that deep in his soul Senator Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.

Hand in Hand

warnewsradio — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:54:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, an Iraqi journalist tells us the story of a suicide bombing, which exploded thirty meters away from him during a peaceful political demonstration. Ayub Nuri prepared this report.

Next, we hear about a diverse group of Iraqi and American youth who assembled in Jordan to construct their own vision of what the war’s big players need to address. Kristin Caspar reports.

We also talk to Congress candidate Tom Perriello whose background in Afghanistan has molded his understanding of US policy in the country. Listen now to Elise Garrity’s report.

Finally, we examine the growing militant presence in Pakistan, despite generous counterterrorism aid from the US. Sonny Sidhu reports.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.
[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Squaring Off

warnewsradio — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:06:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, we take a look at US-Iran diplomacy and what it means for the two countries to be engaging in talks. Asher Sered and Alex Imas prepared this report.

We also hear from three Iranian-Americans about their views on US-Iran relations. Kristin Caspar reports.

Next, we hear about a women’s boxing program in Afghanistan that is teaching young women how to roll with the punches, inside the ring and out. Listen now to Elise Garrity’s report.

Finally, we hear from Iraqis about their thoughts on the US timetable for withdrawal. Sonny Sidhu reports.

These stories, plus the week’s news, from War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio] Read the transcript for this show »

Justice Talking Says Farewell

ilakey@appc — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:46:00 GMT

Note: Justice Talking ceased production on June 30 of 2008. Commenting on blog posts has been suspended. Listeners who still want to communicate with us may address emails to: "jtinfo@justicetalking.org."

Thank you from the JT Crew

Today is the final day for the Justice Talking staff. I want to thank all of the talented people who have been part of our production team! I also want to thank everyone who has posted their thoughts and comments to this blog. Your appreciation for our work is so important to each of us.

A few folks have also made comments about NPR on this blog. I want to be clear that this decision was not NPR’s. We have never received funding from NPR and they have been completely supportive over the lifetime of this program. They, too, were saddened to hear that Justice Talking would be ending.

As for the many suggestions of how we could raise money to keep the show going, we appreciate your activist spirit! At this point though, it is, in fact, too late. There are no remaining staff to produce the show and stations have already found other programs to fill the space left by Justice Talking.

But as Margot Adler said in her closing remarks of our final show. “Justice Talking may end, but show or no show, this conversation and these debates will continue in the courts, in demonstrations and in the continuing battles that courageous men and women wage.”

With gratitude,

Ingrid Lakey

Acting Executive Producer

Justice Talking

Original Farewell Message

After nine years on the air, Justice Talking is ceasing production. We've heard from many people wondering why, so here's the deal: Our grant has ended. In many ways, it is quite amazing that Justice Talking has been around as long as it has. We appreciate the support we’ve received over that time from the Annenberg Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. We are proud of the hundreds of hours of programs we produced which, we believe, helped people to understand the ways that our lives, the U.S. Constitution and the justice system intersect.

It has been an honor to be part of the NPR family and to have been heard by the listeners of over 100 large and small, urban and rural public radio stations.

We are going to continue producing the show through June 30 and you’ll be able to hear those programs here on our website www.justicetalking.org <http://www.justicetalking.org/> . We expect that our archive will remain online for the foreseeable future as well.

On behalf of the entire staff, thank you for listening to Justice Talking!

Questions about Funding

First, I want to thank everyone who has written to us with such thoughful words about Justice Talking! The funny thing about radio is that usually we have to take it on faith that what we produce is actually being heard and, we hope, making a difference.

Second, I'd like to address some of your questions about our funding situation. The show and website cost almost a million dollars to produce. We tried over a three year period to locate the needed funding but had to sunset the program when we failed. If someone found a funder willing to provide a multi-year commitment to the funding needed to produce Justice Talking and our sister website, Justice Learning, we would certainly revisit the decision.

Again, thanks to everyone who has shared their appreciation for Justice Talking. It has been enormously gratifying to the whole staff to hear that our efforts have mattered to you.

Ingrid Lakey
Acting Executive Producer
Justice Talking

Loss of Status

warnewsradio — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:21:00 GMT

Loss of Status

July 18th, 2008
An Iraqi army patrol at Kirkuk’s northern gate. Photo courtesy of Ayub Nuri.

This week on War News Radio, we examine why the negotiations over the Status of Forces Agreement between the US and the Iraqi government have stalled. Asher Sered and Sonny Sidhu prepared this report.

We also talk to two college professors who are sending help from America to Iraqi universities. Elizabeth Hipple reports.

Next, we learn about the Chaldeans, a Christian minority in Iraq that is struggling to survive. Listen now to Kristin Caspar’s report.

Finally, we hear about how Iraqi athletes rebounded after oppression during Saddam’s regime, and how Iraq’s soccer team has boosted morale across the country. Matthew Diaz has more.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.

Out of Tragedy, A Lesson

Kevin Cathcart — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:59:00 GMT

Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond were together almost 20 years. They had adopted foster children and created a good life for their family in Washington State. Last summer they decided to take three of their children on a family cruise — but they never left the port in Miami.

Lisa, a healthy 39-year-old, had been cheerfully watching her children play basketball on the boat’s upper deck, when she suddenly collapsed. She was rushed by ambulance to Jackson Memorial Hospital and diagnosed with a fatal brain aneurysm.

When Janice and their children arrived at the hospital, a social worker was confrontational and rude to them. He told Janice that she was in an antigay city and state. Hospital staff would not give Janice any information about Lisa and kept the family from seeing Lisa for hours. Lisa lay dying alone with her family just feet away in the next room.

No one should have to go through what this family went through at the hospital, making a horrible tragedy worse. That seems like common sense. But even as we are making enormous strides for equality in America, this case is a stark reminder of the kind of discrimination that LGBT people and people with HIV continue to suffer. And it’s particularly egregious when it comes during medical emergencies, when everyone deserves to be treated with compassion.

Lambda Legal has filed a lawsuit against Jackson Memorial Hospital on behalf of Janice and her children. We hope to win justice for the family and also to educate people about discrimination in hospitals and health care settings. We’ve also launched a petition campaign urging the next President of the United States to create a health care plan that ensures equal access for LGBT people and people with HIV in hospitals and health care settings.

Equal access means treating people without discrimination and honoring the wishes of all patients. It also means that hospitals must create visitation policies that have a broader definition of who is considered “family.” It never occurred to Janice, for instance, that she would not be treated like her partner’s family. “We had spent almost 20 years of our life together, were raising children together,” Janice recalled. “If that’s not family, I don’t know what is.”

On top of their deep commitment to each other, Janice and Lisa had created medical power of attorney documents, which Janice had a friend fax to her at the hospital as soon as she got there. A power of attorney or health care proxy allows you to choose the person you want to make medical decisions for you and authorizes doctors and other medical staff to release information to this person. (For more information on health care documents, see “Take the Power,” Lambda Legal’s life-planning toolkit.

All people should execute these documents, but for LGBT people and people with HIV they become crucial for two reasons:

While different-sex spouses in every state automatically receive the right to make medical decisions for each other, same-sex couples, even those that have married, do not have this right in most states. A medical power of attorney is one of the few ways anyone can alert health care staff about their medical wishes and who should be making decisions about these wishes.
When discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status does occur, having this documentation gives Lambda Legal and other groups a stronger base that we can argue from.

Nothing can bring back Lisa Pond or the nearly eight hours Janice Langbehn lost with her dying partner. But we can all learn something from her suffering and help make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Wide Awake

warnewsradio — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:09:00 GMT

Wide Awake

July 11th, 2008

An insurgent in custody of the
Iraqi army in Mousel.
Photo courtesy of Ayub Nuri.

This week on War News Radio, we consider the Awakening movement as a path to better security in Iraq. First, Iraqi civilians talk about how the Awakening Councils have affected their personal security. Elise Garrity reports.

Then, members of the US military talk about the value of this movement as a strategy for a safer and self-protecting Iraq. Kristin Caspar and Alex Imas prepared this report.

Next, we examine what it will take for Iraq’s politics to keep up with the recent improvements in security. Listen now to Elizabeth Hipple’s report.

Finally, how a recent car bombing in Kabul may have consequences beyond Afghan borders. Asher Sered reports.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.

This week’s show features music by Ahmed Al Asheq.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio] Read the transcript for this show »

Change of Scenery

warnewsradio — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Change of Scenery

July 4th, 2008
A US humvee during a patrol
in the city of Kirkuk.
Photo courtesy of Ayub Nuri.

This week on War News Radio, the mother of a young Iraq veteran tells us about how the war has affected his return home. Elise Garrity reports.

Then, we hear about one soldier’s dissatisfaction with the media’s coverage of the war, and what he did about it. Elizabeth Hipple has the report.

In February of this past year the Iraqi government announced a new flag, we hear reactions to the change from Kurds in Iraq’s north. Listen now to Jess Engebretson’s report.

Finally we hear about some of the struggles that Iraqi immigrants in America face in their new homes. Sarah Whites-Koditschek reports.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Changing Colors

warnewsradio — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:07:00 GMT

Changing Colors

June 27th, 2008

A camp for displaced people in the southern Iraqi city of Kut.
Photo courtesy of Ayub Nuri.

This week on War News Radio, we look at how ethnic diversity is changing in Iraqi neighborhoods.

First, hear from Iraqis who have left their homes for more homogeneous neighborhoods. Alex Imas and Ayub Nuri report.

Then, we talk about the long term consequences of sectarian segregation. Asher Sered and Elise Garrity report.

Next, we chat with journalist Nir Rosen, who has witnessed the demographics of a Baghdad neighborhood change since the 2003 invasion. Listen now to Sonny Sidhu’s report.

Then, two Iraqi immigrants tell us about what it was like to move to Philadelphia and take root in a new country. Elizabeth Hipple reports.

Finally, we hear from an Iraqi artist who tells us about ethnic diversity inside his own family and his art work. Listen now to Kristin Caspar’s report.

These stories, this week on War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Discrimination

Ward Connerly — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 15:42:00 GMT

One of the least-kept secrets in higher education is the fact that many colleges and universities, especially the more select ones, consciously seek to suppress their “Asian” student enrollment.

During the first year of my term as a regent of the University of California (UC), a prominent member of the staff at one of the UC campuses remarked to me that at least two of the UC campuses could become “all-Asian” if conscious efforts were not pursued to “maintain diversity.” It was at that point that I learned that “diversity” was the fig leaf to hide this pervasive system of discrimination against Asians.

The case filed by Jian Li against Princeton and the decision of the Office of Civil Rights to take this case, and to even expand it, is an extremely important one for those who believe that racial discrimination is morally wrong and that every American is entitled to equal treatment. This insidious practice of Asian discrimination has largely gone unchallenged for a variety of reasons. First, there is a prevailing view that “opportunities” granted to one group do not come at the expense of another. This view was recently expressed by one of the presidential candidates. It is a sentiment that enables institutions of higher education as well as others to get away with their Asian discrimination. Few are aware that the percentage of Asians at the University of California at Los Angeles campus went from roughly 22% when preferences were being accorded to “underrepresented minorities” to over 40% once they were eliminated.

Second, Asian discrimination occurs because Asians – unlike black and Latino activist groups – remain silent in the face of discrimination against them. Stepping forward as he has done, Li might very well trigger an attitude that “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore” among other Asians. And that would be a good thing.

Until recently, the unbridled pursuit of “diversity” has allowed public and private institutions to operate with reckless abandon based on their belief that the end of racial integration and “inclusion” justified the means of achieving it – a means that they failed to even acknowledge as constituting discrimination. Hopefully, the Office of Civil Rights can unmask the consequences of this diversity gambit and restore the principle of individual rights to the decision-making process.

Taking Care of Business

warnewsradio — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:33:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, personal stories of working in a post-invasion Iraq.

First, we talk with Antonia Juhasz, from Oil Change International, and author of The Tyranny of Oil, about the involvement of foreign oil companies in Iraq. Kristin Caspar and Alex Imas report.

Next, we learn what it is like to be an Iraqi working for an American company in Iraq. Listen now to Alex Ginsberg’s report.

Then, we explore why Americans are going to Iraq to find work. Cyrus Stoller reports.

Finally, in our series, A Day in the Life, we speak with a neurosurgery nurse in Kirkuk about how he copes with the stress of his patients’ traumatic injuries. Listen now to Ayub Nuri’s report.

These stories, plus the week’s news, from War News Radio.

Landmark Trials

Jim Landman — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:33:00 GMT

I'm writing this blog from Washington, DC, where our Division will be hosting a summer teacher institute with the Federal Judicial Center. Now in its third year, the "Federal Trials and Great Debates in U.S. History" summer institute engages teachers in study of landmark trials from the lower federal courts. This year's cases include the Aaron Burr treason trial, In re Debs and the Pullman Strike, and the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial.

The institute has become one of the highlights of our year. It's gratifying to work with teachers who are so dedicated to their profession, and to watch the historians and federal judges who join us throughout the institute embrace the opportunity to interact with the teachers. Both academia and the judiciary are perceived as somewhat cloistered professions, but our experiences with the institute have demonstrated that few things are more pleasing to a professor or a judge than the chance to discuss his or her work with others.

Our colleagues at the Federal Judicial Center have over the past few years produced a fantastic set of resources for anyone interested in learning more about how the federal courts have helped to shape some of our most significant national debates. In addition to the three cases we will be studying this year, the FJC has prepared histories of the Sedition Act trials from the early years of our republic, the Amistad trial's challenge to slavery, Ex parte Merryman and Civil War suspensions of habeas corpus, the trial of Susan B. Anthony for voting in a federal election, Chew Heong and the Chinese Exclusion Acts, and Bush v. Orleans Parish , one of the first efforts to enforce the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education. All these units are available for free download from the FJC's website. Simply follow the links to "Federal Judicial History" and "Teaching Judicial History: Notable Federal Trials."

This will be the Division's final post, as the Talking Justice blog prepares to go offline at the end of this month. It has been a pleasure speaking with you on this site. Although we won't be appearing here anymore, you can find always find us at www.abanet.org/publiced. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Legacy of Lawrence v. Texas

Kevin Cathcart — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:59:00 GMT

Apart from allowing same-sex couples to marry in California — which was itself momentous — the recent California Supreme Court ruling did something else important and notable: It reaffirmed the promise of Lambda Legal’s historic U.S. Supreme Court victory striking down all remaining state sodomy laws five years ago. This news is especially gratifying as we prepare to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas this month.

We always knew that Lawrence was about so much more than sodomy laws — and so much more than sex. True, we began the case challenging Texas’s “homosexual conduct” law on behalf of our clients John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who were literally dragged from John’s home one night for having private, consensual sex. But from the beginning, we argued for the fundamental right that all adults have to express private sexual intimacy without interference from the government. For the right that all people in this country have to be treated fairly under the law.

Lawrence overturned an earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bowers v. Hardwick, which had upheld Georgia’s criminal sodomy law. At the time, sodomy laws were being used to justify wholesale discrimination against gay men and lesbians — keeping people from job opportunities, adoption and simply living their daily lives with dignity and respect. Bowers left all of this perfectly legal, because it asked the wrong legal question: Did gay people have a constitutional right to sodomy?

If this sounds familiar, it should. Opponents in our marriage cases often try to convince courts that we are seeking a right to “same-sex marriage,” not a right to marry that all people share. In deciding our marriage case (brought with lead counsel NCLR, the ACLU and others), the California Supreme Court did not buy the “same-sex marriage” argument. It found that some rights, like the right to sexual intimacy we secured in Lawrence, are so fundamental that they cannot be taken away from anyone. This, the court said, was true for marriage as well.

Additionally, the California Supreme Court cited Lawrence several times in its decision and used it to reject the notion that history and tradition can justify discrimination, quoting Lawrence’s now-familiar line: “…times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress.”

“For this reason,” the California Supreme Court added, “the interest in retaining a tradition that excludes an historically disfavored minority group from a status that is extended to all others — even when the tradition is long-standing and widely shared — does not necessarily represent a compelling state interest….”

The weight of Lawrence in this case — and in other marriage cases — cannot be overstated. At five years old, Lawrence v. Texas is coming of age and informing a range of cases that involve liberty and fairness.

In fact, less than a week after the California marriage win, a federal appeals court panel issued a decision in the ACLU’s case challenging the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that relied heavily on Lawrence, just as we’d urged in our friend-of-the-court brief. In the words of the court: “We hold that when the government attempts to intrude upon the personal and private lives of homosexuals, in a manner that implicates the rights identified in Lawrence, the government must advance an important governmental interest….”

In other words: based on Lawrence, the military must prove that it has an important reason for enforcing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” against a well-qualified servicemember. The case now returns to the lower court, where the military will attempt to make its case — something that will be harder now that the standards of liberty set in Lawrence have been held to apply. Meanwhile, we continue to put Lawrence to work in the fight for equality — it’s been cited in hundreds of cases addressing employment discrimination, custody rights, criminal law, and, of course, relationship recognition.

The lesson here, as we celebrate the Lawrence anniversary, is that all aspects of individual liberty and equality relate to each other. And they build upon each other.
As we secure the right to marry in a state like California it gives us added strength to pursue our work on all fronts. We are as much a part of this great nation as anyone else — and that recognition is perhaps the greatest legacy of Lawrence.

Bread and Butter Issues

warnewsradio — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:20:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, we explore the current food crises gripping Iraq and Afghanistan.

First, we talk about the state of agriculture in Iraq and why food production is coming up short. Listen now to Kristin Caspar’s report.

Afghanistan is experiencing a shortage of its most important staple: wheat. Anxieties are rising along with food prices, as Afghans struggle to find solutions. Elise Garrity and Asher Sered report.

Then, we chat with Robin Lodge from the World Food Program in Iraq. As food prices rise around the globe, how and how much is Iraq affected? Listen now to Elizabeth Hipple’s report.

Finally, three Iraqis from Kurdistan tell us about the day-to-day problems they face when buying and selling food. Sonny Sidhu and Elizabeth Hipple report.

These stories this week from War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

A Newer Deal Revisited

Bryan Fair — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:22:00 GMT

I wrote this 18 months ago. We now have two candidates for the national parties. My hope is that as the blog goes out of circulation, all of us will actively involve ourselves in one party or the other and participate in the democracy. -- Bryan

My name is Bryan Keith Fair. I would like to announce my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States, but, for myriad reasons, I cannot.

First, I cannot afford it. I am not a multi-millionaire. I would need others’ money and, if I took it, they might expect me to carry their views into the White House. I would not sell my principles to anyone for any sum.

Second, despite my lifelong commitment to justice for all and the Democratic Party, I cannot gain my party’s nomination. In fact, I probably could not garner enough petition signatures to appear on any State’s ballot. I am simply one of the millions of Yellow Dog Democrats, the backbone of the Party, that no one really knows. I am also an African American and no one of my ethnic ancestry has ever been elected President.

Third, the national government is broken, its basic system of checks and balances among the branches has been too often ignored, and the winner-take-all Electoral College procedure makes it almost impossible for an outsider candidate to win.

Fourth, the Congress has misplaced its compass, accomplishing very little lately. The Executive has trampled the Constitution, disregarding basic civil liberties. And the Supreme Court has become the most partisan branch. Moreover, national spending and trade imbalances are at record highs. More Americans live in poverty and more children end each day hungry. Too many Americans are without health insurance and essential medicines. Incumbents will not fix these problems and they don’t want an outsider threatening the system by which they were elected.

Fifth, the national government has squandered American lives in an unprovoked war that can never be won, has created more enemies of our people and government, and has increased the likelihood of more attacks on Americans for decades to come. The government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a leadership change in a nation full of rival religious factions and zealots that hate each other and that hate us. Because I criticize our current policies, some Americans would consider me unpatriotic and ill-suited for office.

Sixth, the national parties have not done a good job identifying nominees with the personality, diplomacy skills, and the vision necessary to be great world leaders.

Seventh, I would level with the American people and tell them about the economic, political, and social trouble ahead, unless we change course. And most Americans would not believe me or would not want to hear such bad news. My message would not resonate with them and they would vote for someone else. I could go on and on.

It is really unfortunate though because I have a great name for the job, President Fair. Also, no one would work harder and no one cares more about American citizens or global despair and conflict. Plus, I have studied the amazing American Constitution for almost two decades. The President cannot help fix the national government unless the President respects it constitutional commands.

If circumstances were otherwise, I would join Vilsack, Edwards, Obama, Clinton, Kerry, Bayh, Sharpton, among others, to bring a new candor and honesty to the race and to bring simple ideas back into policy debates. The only promise that President Fair would make is to work hard every day on problems of average Americans. I could make many recommendations to the Congress and I could encourage the country to move in certain directions, but unless I completely abuse the power of the office, my greatest power would be to persuade you and your representatives in Congress to support my initiatives.

If I could run, my platform would focus on basic domestic policies. I would recommend A Newer Deal, a series of initiatives designed to help Americans at home to eliminate extreme poverty; to improve reading and math literacy among children ages 3-8; to expand public educational opportunities and aid for all students who maintain passing grades; to upgrade public housing and to expand homeownership among lower and middle income Americans; to ensure all Americans access to adequate health care services and needed medicines; to expand vocational training programs in new technologies so that more Americans can compete for higher paying employment; and, to promote cleaner, alternative energy sources. All of my proposals would seek to create new wealth among average Americans, not simply those in the top income groups. I would try to convince you that if we did these things, our whole nation would rise again.

Of course, I would also tell you that my plans would require significant federal cuts elsewhere. President Fair would review every item of the federal budget and ask how the item advances the common interests of the people of the Unites States. I would ask is each item essential and should it be paid for by the national government, by local government, by private commercial interests, or some combination of these parties. I would recommend complete audits of defense, corporate welfare, social security, and the American Space Program spending to determine how each dollar is spent and whether we could accomplish greater personal and national security through new strategies. My goal through these audits would be to spend less, achieve a better quality of life for more Americans, and to make the national government accountable for every dollar it takes from you in taxes.

Foreign policy initiatives would be secondary to domestic ones. President Fair’s foreign policy would have two primary goals: domestic security and international diplomacy tethered to humanitarian aid. Our nation should support the United Nations or work to create a better international organization to help resolve international conflicts.

President Fair would try to persuade you that our nation should apologize to the Iraqi people for attacking and destroying their country, for killing unknown thousands of Iraqi civilians, for torturing prisoners of war, and for worsening the daily violence in their lives. I would apologize to all Americans, especially those families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. I would renounce the alleged justifications for the Iraq war, admit how badly the war was planned, and accept that the war is illegal under existing international law. I would recommend a complete withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, except for those who might be part of an international U.N. peacekeeping delegation. Moreover, I would recommend deploying American troops only for defensive purposes and only after full efforts through international diplomacy. And, as Commander-in-Chief, I would not send new recruits or weekend reservists into combat zones.

I am sorry I cannot run. Perhaps you have thought about it. If so, I wonder what policies you would promote, if elected?

The Courage to be Neutral and Independent

Virginia Sloan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:53:00 GMT

On May 9^th, Navy Captain Keith Allred, a military judge at the U.S. prison camp in GuantanamoBay, ruled that Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann must remove himself from any involvement in the prosecution of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former body guard and personal driver. The ruling against the Office of Military Commission’s top legal advisor came after another military commission judge, Judge Peter Brownback, heard testimony by Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, that Gen. Hartmann had promoted the politicization of the military tribunal process. Ironically, the order bars Gen. Hartmann, who was previously appointed to provide “neutral, independent” advice to the tribunal, from any further contact with the prosecution in the Hamdan case.

Based largely on testimony from Col. Davis, Captain Allred found that Gen. Hartmann had repeatedly overstepped his authority and engaged in improper conduct. In his 13-page opinion, Captain Allred wrote that Gen. Hartmann told Col. Davis that “certain types of cases would be tried, and that others would not be tried, because of political factors such as whether they would capture the imagination of the American people, be sexy, or involve blood on the hands of the accused.”

Captain Allred also found that Gen. Hartmann compromised his supposedly objective position by “appearing to direct, or attempting to direct” Col. Davis to use tainted evidence that may have been gathered as the result of “torture or coercion.” Contravening his statutory authority, Gen. Hartmann also intended to personally conduct pretrial agreement negotiations without consulting the trial counsel.

Captain Allred concluded that Gen. Hartmann failed to provide “the required independence from the prosecution function to provide fair and objective legal advice to the [court].” As consequence, he removed Gen. Hartmann from the Hamdan case and ordered that a substitute Legal Advisor – excluding any deputies or subordinates to Gen. Hartmann – be appointed for the remainder of the proceedings.

While troubling on their own, Col. Davis’ testimony and Judge Allred’s ruling are only one piece of a much larger maze of political influence and other improper conduct at GuantanamoBay. Shortly after testifying in the Hamdan trial, Col. Davis was denied a service medal routinely awarded to officers who have served in capacities like chief prosecutor because his superiors felt his criticism of the process put “self above service.” Just one week later, Army Col. Peter Brownback, the military judge who had been presiding over the case of Omar Khadr and who had threatened to vacate those proceedings unless Guantanamo officials cooperated in turning required information over to the defense, was removed from his position against his will and without explanation.

These prosecutors and judges are not the only ones to suffer the consequences of standing up for justice at Guantanamo. Lt. Commander Charles Swift, a Navy lawyer who represented Mr. Hamdan in an earlier proceeding that resulted in a landmark victory in the Supreme Court, was told shortly after the Hamdan decision was announced that he would not be promoted. Early in 2007, under the military’s up or out rule, he had to leave the service and his chosen career.

In the fall of 2007, Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps chief defense lawyer for the western US, announced that he would resign on May 1, 2008. He was originally fired after he called the military legal system at GuantanamoBay "horrific" and a "sham." While his firing was rescinded after pressure from former Marine Corps lawyers, it was not surprising that Colonel Vokey decided on his own that he was no longer welcome in the Marines.

These events only further confirm the Constitution Project’s concerns that politicization and undue external influence continue to plague the military commissions process. In its September 2002 report, Recommendations for the Use of Military Commissions, the Constitution Project’s Liberty and Security Committee warned that the President’s original November 2001 order establishing military commissions created a system that failed to ensure necessary safeguards for “the integrity and impartiality of the commission process.” The Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) failed to cure these problems.

The Constitution Project continues to voice its concerns regarding the shortcomings of the MCA and the military commission process and to urge the restoration of the detainees’ habeas corpus rights that were eliminated by the MCA. By the end of the Supreme Court’s current term, we may know whether that MCA provision is constitutional. If the Court does not restore these habeas rights, we will continue to work to repeal the provision.

The military commissions system itself is a disgrace, but we should all applaud these legal and military professionals who have courageously spoken out about the flaws of this failed system. The attorneys who have served at Guantanamo have provided rare, first-hand evidence that the commissions continue to make a mockery of the American justice system.

Ohio Joins the List of States Banning Payday Lending; Who Will Make the Sharks Follow the Law?

F. Paul Bland — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:30:00 GMT

On Monday June 2, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed into law a new statute that bans payday lending and caps the interest rate on loans at 28%. Last Fall, the U.S. Congress passed a statute that capped interest rates at 36% for certain loans for members of the military. (The statute that Congress passed was then gutted to a shocking extent by the Department of Defense. Under heavy pressure from banking industry lobbyists, the Department of Defense wrote regulations purporting to limit the scope...(read more)

A Fishing Lesson of Sorts

Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Earlier, I handed a sheet of stamps and a pile of postcards to my five-year old Remy. He was to place the stamps onto the proper corner of the postcards (invitations to his brother’s birthday party). He stared at the tropical fruits stamps. “Is all you have kiwi, Mama?” he asked, peering over to the fruit bowl. He set to work. He affixed a couple of stamps. “Don’t you have any papaya?” he inquired. After a couple more, he realized that he’d switched to the wrong corner “These stamps are making me wish you had star fruit,” he explained, handing me the mostly untouched pile. “I’m too tired and too hungry for watermelon to do any more,” he added. I thanked him for helping, then tucked him under a baby blanket on the couch and handed him a picture book about knights. He is “reading” now. We are listening to the rain. The birthday boy or I will adhere the rest of the stamps to the postcards later.

Helping’s an impulse that must be nurtured. Helping—in daily life—seems to me not only important for happy home but a virtual sowing of seeds towards helping in the world. Helping is a tricky trait to bring along with joy. This morning, it cost me fifty-two cents. Money well spent, I thought to myself as I pried the errant stamps from the top left corner of two postcards. I’d been careful to display neither disappointment in a mistake (perfectionism is already an issue for Remy) nor any frustration that he didn’t actually complete the task, because I wanted to be sure to appreciate his efforts.

In my household, some helping occurs organically. Before coming downstairs, Remy hung out with his baby sister for about ten minutes until she grew cranky, at which point he passed her to me (literally, given that he’d carried her down the stairs). I didn’t ask for his aid; he wanted to be with her, but he knew he was the one taking care of her, which was not only fun but helpful, too. Getting the twelve-year old to place socks in hamper… well, that impulse doesn’t appear to be a natural one. My voice could wear out solely from repeating phrases like clear your plate or unpack your lunch bag or turn off the lights . Gradually, though, he at least completes those tasks more often than not. For the longest time, I cleared the plate and tossed the socks into the hamper each and every time (and too often still do). Ezekiel’s our first. He was our little baby prince (as my stepfather said soon after Ezekiel started crawling, “But why should his feet touch the ground? We can carry him.”). Ha-ha. It seemed easier to do for him than to have him (learn to , that’s the operative concept) do for himself. When Ezekiel was still a toddler, our second baby arrived, a grandfather was very ill, and for me—already in perpetual caretaking mode—I had more energy to keep doing than to slow down and encourage him to learn to do. By the third child, I’d come to understand that those sometimes tedious or frustrating moments reap eventual reward. Better to learn how to gather your stuff for school or put things away or get the stamp on the postcard than to feel uneasy about attempting routine requests like these—or believe someone else can do them all for you.

All isn’t lost with Ezekiel. He does help with the siblings; he is enthusiastic about saving the earth (along with his middle brother Lucien, they have a Save the Earth club); he volunteers at the school library and co-edited the school’s literary magazine. Although his room’s a disaster (oh, and his locker could more aptly be called the receptacle for lost socks —and even a lost shoe ) he is trying to hone his helpful instincts. He does care for others. The more I encourage him to be empathic and competent, the more these traits emerge. Even if I missed some (okay, many ) teachable moments earlier, I’ve begun guiding him to place feet on ground. While his head remains in the clouds, I think that he likes using his feet.

War News Radio Best of the Class of 2008

warnewsradio — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:15:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, we salute this year’s alums with our “Best of 2008 Grads” show.

First, we hear from Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan, and take a look at how their lives are changing as their resources dwindle. Listen now to Haley Loram’s report.

Then, U.S. service members aren’t the only American forces in Iraq. Thousands of private military contractors are performing jobs once reserved for enlisted forces. But, are they doing a good job? Listen now to Alex Marlowe Ginsberg’s report.

Then, we hear how U.S. service members in Iraq are using Facebook to keep in touch. Listen now to Anne Kolker’s report.

Finally, an Iraqi couple tells us how the war has changed Iraq’s singles scene and how the Internet has helped them stay connected. Listen now to Wren Elhai’s report.

These stories this week from War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Beginning to solve the race problem

Ward Connerly — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:52:00 GMT

Have you ever gone on a family vacation – husband, wife and maybe two kids – with everyone excited about the trip except for one of the kids? A suggestion is made to stop at McDonalds, but the disgruntled one wants to go to Wendy’s. How about a movie? All think it’s a great idea, except for the one who is pouting. Why don’t we see a comedy? “I want to see a thriller.” Let’s go to breakfast at 8:00 a.m. “That’s too early; I want to go at 9:00.” No matter what is done to make him happy, he continues to pout and spoil the trip for everyone else.

This analogy, I believe, describes the attitude of a significant segment of black people with respect to the rest of American society. No matter what is done to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of Americans have no tolerance for racial discrimination, this segment just won’t take accept that premise. They mope, pout and complain that no one likes them, and that everyone is out to get them. Some believe that a return to slavery is just around the corner, assuming you can convince them that it ended at all.

In all of the discussion about Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his relationship to Senator Barack Obama, the political implications of the discussion about their relationship have caused us to ignore a far more important question: How much of the racial garbage that Wright delivered in his sermons is embraced by “the black community?”

Reverend Wright peddles a philosophy that is anti-America and anti-white and represents the most hardcore view of race in American life. His views about race are dangerous and terrifying, and evidence a level of racial paranoia that is deeply troubling, especially when paraded out in public for the consumption of young children and others who are equally vulnerable. But, our focus should not be on Jeremiah Wright; it should be on “the black community.”

When Reverend Wright urged God to damn America, his congregation responded with excitement. When he was introduced at a recent convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation. Were Wright running against Obama for president of black America, with only blacks voting and based on the professed views of each of them about race and about America, I believe the smart money would have to be on Wright. If this assessment is accurate, then that says as much about a significant segment of black as it does about Wright himself. And, that is the issue that needs to be confronted by the American people, especially by blacks.

I frequently appear on college campuses throughout the nation to discuss the issue of race-based affirmative action. It is fair to say that, perhaps, 90 % of the black students at these events express strong opposition to my belief that race preferences are wrong-headed and ought to be abandoned. When asked to explain the basis of their opposition to my view, the general response is that America is the land of the Ku Klux Klan, that our nation is “institutionally racist,” that white males are in control of every lever of American life, and that they cannot be trusted to be fair to women and racial “minorities.”

No matter what I say or how much evidence I produce to substantiate that considerable racial progress has been made over the past twenty years or so, the typical collection of black students at these events will respond by calling me a “sellout,” “naïve,” and a “tool of the oppressor.” The views expressed by black students at these events are Jeremiah Wright writ large. These students are typically very negative about their country and don’t want to hear anyone say positive things about the American people.

During his well-publicized March 18 speech in Philadelphia, Senator Obama artfully identified life in America from the relative perspectives of blacks and whites; and clearly, as he noted, there is a decided difference between those two perspectives. Obama stopped short, however, of taking any position with regard to those two perspectives. For the sake of our nation, however, it is not prudent for the rest of us to ignore the issues that haunt us about race.

Disciples of Jeremiah Wright are to be found all across the land. Some are white and liberal, while most are blacks from all walks of life. They are not typically radical, in a political sense. In fact, most are “mainstream” people who just have no confidence in their country’s capacity for fairness.

I don’t suggest for one second that all racism has ended. It has not (although no group has a monopoly on prejudice and discrimination). But, if the political success of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tell us anything at all, it should confirm the character of the majority of the American people and their willingness to judge others not by the color of their skin but by “the content of their character.” We are not a perfect nation by any means, when it comes to our “racial” differences, but we will never get beyond the issue of race if we can’t start trusting our fellow Americans to be fair. I just wish more black people would abandon their anger and paranoia and enjoy the trip with the rest of the family.

Diplomacy and the Candidates

The Capitol Steps — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT

McCain says Obama is the candidate favored by Hamas, while President Bush has suggested that he's "delusional" for being willing to talk with Iran's president. And the guy even takes his flag pin off sometimes. So just where does Barack Hussein Obama stand when it comes to defending America against terrorists? We bring you this Capitol Steps exclusive:

Obama Meets Osama

From the album Campaign and Suffering.

Faiths and Fears

warnewsradio — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:24:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, we explore the impact the war in Iraq has had on the country’s religious communities, both inside Iraq and elsewhere.

First, we learn about the history of one of Iraq’s most threatened religious minorities - the Mandaens. Listen now to Hansi Lo Wang’s report.

Then, we talk with an Iraqi Mandaen now living in the US to hear what the future may hold for his community. Listen now to Elizabeth Threlkeld’s report.

We take a closer look at Iraq’s Sunni-Shi’a divide and at the different beliefs and practices that separate the two groups. Listen now to Alan Smith’s report.

Finally, in our series, A Day in the Life, we hear about the frustrations of an Iraqi Imam as he struggles to guide the faithful in times of fear. Listen now to this report.

These stories this week from War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Chipping Away at the VRA One Court Decision at a Time

Janai Nelson — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Against the backdrop of a high stakes, history-making, mega-media election cycle, the United States Supreme Court has been deciding important and noteworthy election law cases in areas as wide-ranging as voter identification requirements, judicial elections, and the regulation of political parties. The long-term impact of these decisions on the shape of American democracy has received relatively little popular attention in light of the immediate focus on the presidential elections. One election law opinion issued just this week, Riley v. Kennedy, underscores this point.

Despite its highly technical facts and likely narrow application, Riley is significant because it limits the reach of an integral provision of one of the most transformative civil rights statutes and bodies of American election law—the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). By chipping away at the expansive reach of Section 5 of the VRA, the Court may be signaling a waning appreciation for this anchor provision of the Act, as well as for the broader statute itself which has safeguarded voting rights throughout the country for over four decades. More important, the Riley decision comes at a precarious time for Section 5 of the VRA as Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Mukasey (NAMUDNO), a Texas case that challenges the constitutionality of Section 5 as a whole, will soon be poised for Supreme Court review.

Section 5 of the VRA was originally enacted to serve as an aggressive antidote to the pervasive and persistent voting discrimination against African Americans by state actors in the South and was later expanded to include jurisdictions in other regions of the country. In short, Section 5 requires that all new election practices and laws be pre-approved or “pre-cleared” by a federal district court in Washington, D.C. or the Department of Justice before going into effect. The underlying notion is that federal oversight of state voting decisions is needed in light of the pernicious history of discrimination in the jurisdictions covered under Section 5. Whether a proposed voting change is ultimately precleared depends on whether the proposed voting law or practice will put minority voters in a worse position than their present status or, in other words, whether the voting change is “retrogressive.”

Riley narrows the pool of voting changes subject to Section 5’s protections. Specifically, Riley holds that, if a state’s highest court overturns a voting law, even one that had been precleared and enforced temporarily, the earlier law can go back into effect without any federal inquiry as to whether minority voters are now in a worse position than when the overturned law was in place. While this scenario may not be common, the practical consequences of this holding in the Riley case and the broader implications concerning the Section 5 of the VRA are more readily apparent when you consider Riley’s specific facts.

Riley originated in Mobile County, Alabama, which is covered under Section 5 of the VRA, as is the entire State of Alabama. In 1985 the Alabama State Legislature enacted (and the Department of Justice precleared) a law providing that mid-term vacancies on the commission must be filled by special election and not by gubernatorial appointment as had been the practice since the passage of the VRA. This new law was challenged in Alabama state courts in 1987 and again when a vacancy arose in 2005 in District 1 of the three-member Mobile County Commission. That same year, the Alabama Supreme Court held that the law providing for special elections violated the Alabama State Constitution. As a result, a vacancy was created in District 1 and Governor Bob Riley appointed fellow Republican Juan Chastang to the commission to fill it. District 1 is overwhelmingly Democratic and over 62% African American.

The Alabama State Legislature subsequently enacted a new law providing that midterm vacancies be filled by special election. Merceria Ludgood, an African-American female lawyer and Democrat, handily defeated Chastang with 80% of the votes in the special election that followed the state court decision. Ludgood’s term expires in November of this year; however, there is already talk of Chastang’s immediate reinstatement to the commission in light of the Riley decision. Considering the overwhelming lack of support for Chastang in District 1, this result that would seem to mock the ideals of the VRA and Section 5 in particular. The return to gubernatorial appointment would clearly place minority voters in District 1 in a worse position than they had been under the overturned law by forcing District 1 voters to be represented by someone who received a disproportionately low number of votes.

Justice Ginsburg, who authored the Court’s 7-2 decision in Riley, went to significant lengths to suggest that the opinion is limited to its facts. However, by elevating a state court’s decision above the longstanding, congressionally endorsed limitations on state’s rights that give the VRA its force, the Court seems not only to be indicating decreased support for the VRA, but seems to be exhibiting deference to more conservative concerns of the Court. Indeed, while Riley may seem like a strict case of statutory interpretation on its face, statutory interpretation is rarely, if ever, conducted in a vacuum where the VRA is concerned. Rather, the gradual weakening of Section 5 that was set in motion by the Rehnquist court in earlier decisions like Georgia v. Ashcroftand Bossier Parish School Board v. Reno, and later reversed through congressional reauthorization of the special provisions of the VRA in 2006, seems to have found a second wind and a new direction in the Roberts court.

Even some of the more faithful gatekeepers on the Court have expressed doubt as to the propriety of the VRA’s current scope in light of the impressive reform that has been achieved by its enforcement. Justice Stevens wrote in a dissent, joined by Justice Souter, that “it may well be true that today the statute is maintaining strict federal controls that are not as necessary or appropriate as they once were.” Moreover, if Chief Justice Roberts’s acknowledged fixation during the Riley oral argument on the statutory language linking Section 5 to practices “in force or effect on November 1, 1964” is any indication of his position, it is conceivable that he would opt to limit Section 5’s reach to benchmarks set in 1964 when the VRA was first enacted. Thankfully, the Court did not take this up in the Riley opinion.

Riley’s deference to state courts in derogation of the congressional intent underlying the VRA seems even more misplaced when you consider the recognized role that certain state courts, like those in Alabama, have played historically in perpetuating discrimination in voting. Notably, prior to 1985 when a voting rights challenge was brought successfully under another provision of the VRA, no African American had ever been elected to the Mobile County Commission. Justice Stevens points to the history of discrimination in Alabama in the last few pages of his dissenting opinion in Riley, which is the only part of the entire opinion that provides historical context for the enactment and continued enforcement of Section 5.

As noted above, these issues are most concerning in light the NAMUDNO case, which raises a direct challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5. Inasmuch as Riley is based on a narrow set of facts, the NAMUDNO case has broad and sweeping potential. Both cases indicate a growing skepticism in federal courts toward the role the VRA plays in the present-day electoral arena and, to the extent that the Court’s opinion in Riley is a bellwether, there should be growing concern by those who share an appreciation for the continued relevance of the VRA and one of its most powerful tools.

Voter Fraud by Nuns and Students?

Leslie Griffin — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:39:00 GMT

“ I would think they would pass legislation that would help them vote, rather than not vote .” (Saint Mary's College freshman Lauren McCallick)

I can’t stop thinking about the twelve Sisters of Holy Cross , all in their 80s and 90s, many in wheelchairs or walkers or electric carts, who were not allowed to vote in the recent Indiana primary because they lacked valid Indiana drivers’ licenses or current passports. Indiana now has the most restrictive voter ID requirements in the country. Only a currently valid, government-issued photo ID will do, not the forms of identification (such as leases, utilities bills, signatures, or other identification cards) traditionally permitted in Indiana and the other states. Because the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the Indiana law in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board , other states may soon pass similarly restrictive laws. The nuns’ experience should give them pause.

No one has suggested that these sisters were not law-abiding citizens who were intent on voting fraudulently. Indeed it was a fellow Holy Cross sister, Sister Julie McGuire , who enforced the law against her recognizable, elderly sisters by stopping them from voting at their polling place, St. Mary’s Convent in South Bend, Indiana, where 220 voters cast ballots in the May 6 primary. St. Mary’s College freshman Lauren McCallick was also not permitted to vote; although she had registered to vote in Indiana, her St. Mary’s ID and California driver’s license were unacceptable forms of identification . The same fate befell another St. Mary’s student. There was never any controversy, however, about the actual identify of the nuns or the students, who were clearly the people they said they were and had no intention of voting in multiple jurisdictions.

The absence of any voter fraud at the convent is important to the broader argument about photo identification laws. As Justice John Paul Stevens made clear in his flawed opinion upholding the law:

The only kind of voter fraud that SEA 483 [the Indiana statute] addresses is in-person voter impersonation at polling places. The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.

Yes, you read that sentence correctly, there was no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history! There was evidence that fraud occurs in the casting of absentee ballots, but the statute did not address absentee ballots, targeting in-person identification only. There is evidence that voter participation is decreasing , and, since Bush v. Gore, the fear that all votes may not be counted, but the statute did not address those problems either. Indeed the law would cause more delay and longer lines in casting a ballot in Indiana as voter IDs were checked.

In other words, the Indiana voting act solved a problem that does not exist (in-person voter fraud); avoided a similar problem that does exist (absentee ballot fraud); and ignored the biggest elephant in the voting rights room, namely laws and policies that limit access to the polls or keep ballots from being counted.

In our legal system, courts are expected to exercise judicial review over the legislatures’ actions to make sure that they behave reasonably. Most of the time, they exercise so-called rational basis scrutiny, making sure that the state has some basis for action, and that the state’s means are reasonably related to its ends. Because voting is a fundamental right, however, the courts usually employ more exacting scrutiny over any law that restricts voter participation. As Justice David Souter wrote in his dissent to the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Indiana law:

a State may not burden the right to vote merely by invoking abstract interests, be they legitimate, or even compelling, but must make a particular, factual showing that threats to its interests outweigh the particular impediments it has imposed.

A voting law that solves a non-existent problem while avoiding real ones should not be able to withstand any kind of court scrutiny, whether rational or strict.

As the nuns’ experience confirms, the challengers to the Indiana law accurately predicted that its burden would fall upon the elderly . Judge Terence Evans, who dissented from the Seventh Circuit’s opinion upholding the law, addressed the law’s problem more directly:

Let's not beat around the bush: The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.

The Indiana law passed along strictly partisan lines , with Indiana Republicans in the legislature voting for and Democrats against the bill; a Republican governor signed the bill into law; the Indiana Democratic party challenged it in the courts; the law was upheld by a Republican-appointed district court judge ; upheld again by a vote of two Republican to one Democratic appointees in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals; and by six Republican appointees in the United States Supreme Court, with the only two Democrats in dissent. Only Justice Souter voted out of party alignment, and so I pay the most attention to his conclusion about the law’s unconstitutionality:

the onus of the Indiana law is illegitimate just because it correlates with no state interest so well as it does with the object of deterring poorer residents from exercising the franchise…….the law imposes an unreasonable and irrelevant burden on voters who are poor and old.

And apparently on young students too, who are likely to live and vote in one state while holding drivers’ licenses from another. As the St. Mary’s student rightly pointed out, you would think the goal of the legislature would be to increase voter participation rather than to deter voting by young, old and nuns.

The Memorial Day Economics of John McCain -- Can the Average American Afford Him?

Doug Kmiec — Sat, 24 May 2008 03:03:00 GMT

John McCain's economic policies this memorial day are definitely high-end. Are they out of reach for the average American?...(read more)

Art at War

warnewsradio — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:02:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, we take a look at how war in Iraq has affected local artists and their work.

We meet Mohamed al-Daradji, an Iraqi filmmaker who dared to shoot a movie on the streets of Baghdad. Listen now to Hansi Lo Wang’s report.

Then, we hear from struggling musicians, trying to keep the music alive in the war zone. Listen now to Dan Symond’s report.

Next, we take a look at how American television shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil have changed Iraqis’ perception of the US. Listen now to Emanne Desjardin’s report.

And we learn about the effects that the war has had on Iraq’s once-bustling book markets. Listen now to Elise Garrity’s report.

Finally, in our series, A Day in the Life, we hear from a chef who works the grill in Baghdad. Listen now to this report.

These stories this week from War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Now That’s Intelligent Design: A Well-Drafted Statute Combats Child Pornography

Chuck Williams — Thu, 22 May 2008 02:43:00 GMT

In United States v. Williams, a solid majority of the Court found that key provisions of the unfortunately named “Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003” are a model of clarity when compared to past federal efforts to stop the proliferation of child pornography on the Internet.

Unlike Congress’s previous attempts (including the ill-fated federal Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996), the 2003 Act only prohibits offers to provide and requests to obtain child pornography. Under the Act (which we could refer to by its belabored acronym, “PROTECT,” but let’s not), anyone who deliberately tries to get someone else to believe that he is offering to provide child pornography (regardless of whether his purported child pornography is real or fake, and regardless of whether he is seeking compensation for it) is subject to a mandatory five years in prison. Likewise, anyone who intentionally tries to solicit child pornography is also liable to spend five years in prison.

But what is child pornography, one might ask. Isn’t it impossible to ban such a thing without inadvertently convicting an innocent grandmother who merely emails grandpa what she thinks is a cute picture of her grandson at bath time? And wouldn’t such a law inevitably end up criminalizing even mainstream Hollywood movies such as “Lolita” and “Titanic”?

In a word, the Supreme Court ruled May 19, no.

First, the statute goes to heroic lengths to define in clarifying detail the various types of “sexually explicit conduct” with which it is concerned. Secondly, as Justice Scalia noted in his opinion for the Court’s 7-2 majority, to run afoul of the Act the portrayal of child sex “must cause a reasonable viewer to believe that the actors actually engaged in that conduct on camera.” In other words, it is not enough that such sex is suggested – it must be explicitly portrayed.

Moreover, the Act does not punish either offers to provide or requests to receive pictures of youthful-looking adults posing as children, nor does it ban offers to provide or requests to receive “virtual” child pornography that features computer-generated images of children. “A crime is committed only when the speaker believes or intends the listener to believe that the subject of the proposed transaction depicts real children.”

The Eleventh Circuit, which the Supreme Court has now reversed, worried that the Act is unconstitutionally vague because instances can be imagined in which it might be difficult to know what the defendant’s true belief or intent was. But as Justice Scalia explains, “the problem that poses is addressed, not by the doctrine of vagueness, but by the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Time will tell, but I think we will find that neither naïve grandparents nor worldly Hollywood producers have anything to fear from this law. I’m also betting that some of the most flagrant child pornography rings will at long last be shut down -- and that the Internet will be a better place without them.

The Right to Live in the World, 42 Years Later

Andrew Imparato — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:20:00 GMT

I recently attended and presented at a day-long symposium hosted by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) called “Disability Law: From tenBroek to the Twenty-first Century.” The title refers to NFB founder and scholar

Dr. Jacobus tenBroek, who wrote a seminal law review article in 1966

that laid the foundation for many of the advances in disability law and policy that have occurred in the last 42 years. Dr. tenBroek’s article, “The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the Law of Torts,” made the case that disabled people had a civil right to participate fully in the lives of our communities.

Many of the presenters noted that despite significant progress the last four decades, we are still fighting for the basic right to live in a world that is free of barriers and welcomes our full participation.

We still fight an institutional bias in the Medicaid program and force people to live in settings that they would not choose if they had an alternative. We continue to unveil new technologies like Apple’s iPhone without accounting for how to make them usable and accessible for people who can’t navigate the touchscreen interface. We spend millions on renovations for buildings and stadiums and fail to dramatically expand accessibility and sustainability of those structures for people with disabilities and an aging population. We apply parental testing technologies in a way that puts pressure on expectant mothers to terminate a pregnancy if the baby is likely to have a gene-linked disability.

As we approach the second decade of the twenty-first century, we have an opportunity to restate our commitment to tenBroek’s fundamental insight: that we as people with disabilities have a right to liberty, equal opportunity, and full participation going back to the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution. Our challenge is to identify and address the many remaining barriers to the full realization of that right in the United States, including a Supreme Court that has chosen to take a miserly approach to disability rights. The recently enacted U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, which takes effect in May, creates an opportunity to build a more closely-connected global disability movement that can truly assert our collective right to live in the world.

It will be difficult for the U.S. to continue to be a global leader on disability issues unless we sign and ratify that historic treaty.

I encourage you to visit the NFB website at www.nfb.org to learn more about the pioneering work of Jacobus tenBroek. If you search his name on the NFB site you will find a great piece about his life and work by Lou Ann Blake, who was the lead organizer of NFB’s recent legal symposium. To learn more about the U.N. Convention, visit the AAPD website at www.aapd.com.

I came away from the symposium inspired to reclaim the mantle of our right to live in the world as equals, to expand our cultural understanding of what that means in 2008 and beyond, and to find ways to work with NFB and other disability organizations to realize Dr. tenBroek’s compelling vision. Working together, we will achieve that vision faster.

Best of Spring '08

warnewsradio — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Iraqi police officers on the job in Basra.

This week on War News Radio , we proudly present some of our favorite pieces from the spring. First, we find out about the slow progress that has been made towards assembling Iraq’s security forces. Listen now to Wren Elhai's report.

Next, joblessness is taking a unique toll on women in Iraq. We hear about how the unemployment situation is changing the work environment for women. Listen now to Jess Engebretson's report.

Then, we speak with US Army Brigadier General Edward Cardon about how oil infrastructure fits into the American military strategy for rebuilding Iraq. Listen now to Elizabeth Threlkeld's report.

Finally, in our series “A Day in the Life”, we speak with an Iraqi refugee who made it to the UK by way of Turkey and Greece–but now thinks leaving was a mistake. Listen now to this report.

These stories this week from War News Radio .

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

Pledging Toward Equality

Kevin Cathcart — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:59:00 GMT

Today thousands of people across the country are taking a stand against discrimination in the workplace. Some are signing the pledge for workplace equality. Some are encouraging others to sign in pledge-a-thons throughout the day. Some will wear buttons and stickers to work, put up posters in their communities or find a few minutes during the day to educate others about the discrimination lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV can experience at work.

This is Lambda Legal’s second national day of action for workplace equality. We created this year’s Clock In: Pledge-A-Thon for Workplace Equality to call attention to the realities of workplace discrimination — and give people a simple action that anyone can take to help stop it.

Of the more than 5,000 calls to Lambda Legal’s Help Desks in 2007, questions about the rights of LGBT employees were by far the most common. Also last year, we saw the struggle over an inclusive federal employment nondiscrimination law that would have protected all LGBT people. While the House passed a non-inclusive ENDA, the Senate has not yet acted. That means there is still no federal law that expressly protects LGBT people in the workplace.

Additionally, in 30 states there is currently no statewide law providing express protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace; and in 40 states there is no statewide law providing express protection against discrimination based on gender identity. Although the Americans with Disabilities Act and similar state laws protect people with HIV from discrimination, people with HIV still experience workplace discrimination due to confidentiality breaches, unjustified fears about transmission and employers’ refusals to provide reasonable accommodations.

While there has been consistent progress, there is still much more work to be done before all LGBT people and people with HIV can make a living and pursue their professional dreams without fear of discrimination.

Recently Lambda Legal won a five-and-a-half-year battle against the U.S. State Department’s blanket ban on Foreign Service job applicants with HIV. Just as we were set to go to trial on behalf of our client Lorenzo Taylor, the department lifted the ban. It will now evaluate HIV-positive candidates on a case-by-case basis as it does for other applicants. This is a tremendous victory for people with HIV across the country.

We’re also continuing to advocate on behalf of people like Izza Lopez, a transgender woman who had her job offer withdrawn by a medical imaging company in Texas because they said she had “misrepresented” herself as a woman, and Richard Mitchell, who was fired from his position as a high school superintendent in Chicago by a new school board president who had previously campaigned against Mitchell’s hiring because he is gay.

Making change is not easy, and we need to use more than one strategy at a time. At Lambda Legal, we seek to change or enforce laws through legal action, but we know that the legal system does not work in isolation from the community. That’s why we also call on our friends and allies to mobilize, join our work and educate themselves and their neighbors.

Please add your voice to the more than 3,500 people around the country who have already signed the pledge for workplace equality. And on May 15 take a moment to talk to someone about fairness in the workplace — we’ll all be better off for it.

An Ill-Conceived Harvest

Leslie Harris — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:31:00 GMT

Your Internet Service Provider may be offering up every click you make online and selling it to a company determined to know any thing and every thing about you, down to the fake name you use when logging on to the “Always ABBA” fan site.

That’s a wiretap by any other name; I apologize for the subtly.

The technique used in this ill-conceived information harvest is called “deep packet inspection” (DPI). In practice it’s used by ad networks engaging in “behavioral tracking,” in principle it is fraught with unresolved privacy, regulatory and legal issues.

Previously, an Internet user’s online information was likely collected by a third party ad network only when visiting web sites participating in the network. Online surfing habits were often combined into profiles to serve up targeted ads geared to a user’s interests. The privacy concerns about this so-called behavioral targeting by web operators are significant. But they pale in comparison to the “always on” collection scheme of DPI recently launched by some ISPs.

Charter Communications this week announced that it was going to start rummaging through each user’s click stream in an effort to provide its subscribers with--I’m not making this up--“[A]n enhanced online experience that is more customized to your interests and activities.”

You’ll love this new intrusion into your life, Charter promises, because now you’ll see ads that are “more likely” in keeping with your “interests.” Browsing the web “can become more like flipping through your favorite magazine,” a promise that should bring chills to those who value the open and free wheeling Internet

Imagine for a moment… perhaps the “magazine” you’re flipping through is a web site dedicated to supporting incest survivors or a cancer research information center or that of a fringe political group. I don’t even want to think about what kind of “targeted ads” might be served up in one of those scenarios. I’m more concerned about what happens to all that information if it has “nowhere to go”? Such information, in the wrong hands, could cripple a person’s life. And while the information collected by itself may not be personally identifiable, it takes no more than a click for an ISP to combine it with billing information (at least name and address) used to set up an account.

At least Charter had the corporate decency to alert its subscribers ahead of time; Other ISPs involved in DPI have been reluctant to own up to the practice or, when discovered, provide only vague explanations as to how and why it’s being used.

The ad companies on the receiving end of this information promise that they respect privacy, that no particular bit of information can actually be tied directly to any unique user.

Charter specifically address this question, telling its users that the service “[S]pecifically and explicitly does not track or display ads related to confidential medical information, racial or ethnic origins, religious beliefs or content of a sexual nature.” Of course, in order to exclude this information, someone (or something) has to riffle through your searches and web browsing to make the cut as to what is over the line. Interestingly, political speech appears to be fair game.

Charter also claims that it doesn’t retain any data, such as the web sites you’ve visited. Likewise, those companies buying your information make similar claims, that they don’t retain your information, nor can it be traced back to any particular users. In addition, those using DPI, including Charter, point to their opt-out policies. OK, fair point. But the existence of an opt-out policy alone, particularly one buried in fine print when you sign up for service, is unlikely to give consumers the choice they deserve.

My organization has researched “DPI-based behavioral ad networks,” for lack of a better phrase, and found that in some cases the data of users that have opted-out still gets passed to the ad network before it’s discarded or ignored. The companies also appear to be using cookies – which are susceptible to deletion especially by privacy-conscious users – to store users’ opt-out status. Given the comprehensiveness of the Web data these companies can potentially collect, we question the effectiveness of these kinds of opt-out procedures in honoring consumers’ choices.

And then there’s that pesky legal issue. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is intended to protect the privacy of Internet communications. With certain exceptions, ECPA and its amendments to the federal Wiretap Act, prohibit ISPs from intercepting their customers' communications or disclosing the content of those communications to a third party without the customers' permission.

So, how do the ISPs working with DPI-based behavioral ad networks justify under ECPA their role in copying or disclosing the content of their customers’ communications without prior consent? And how do the ad networks justify their obtaining customer communications? The Federal Trade Commission should insist that the ISPs and DPI-based behavioral ad networks already engaged in these practices answer these questions on the record.

If implementations of the DPI model continue on their current path, we do not see how an opt-out requirement alone will protect consumer interests. The burden is on the ISPs and the ad networks to demonstrate that it will. And if ECPA demands it, these DPI-based behavioral ad networks should be held to an opt-in only standard, requiring an individual’s affirmative express consent prior to collecting an his or her full packet stream for behavioral advertising.

Wright and Wrong Distractions

Bryan Fair — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:41:00 GMT

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor and former friend, has been much in the news recently. Indeed, throughout the United States, it is fair to say Wright is now a household name, thanks to extensive media and internet coverage of his old and new sermons and speeches. Many believe Wright has irreparably damaged Senator Obama’s chances of becoming president of the United States.

I am not convinced. For me, the question is simple and straightforward: Is Obama responsible for Wright’s views? Isn’t Obama his own man? Hasn’t he written two elegant and eloquent books on his ideas and ideals? Hasn’t he traveled to virtually every state in the country talking to all who wish to hear him? All indications are that Obama is a unifier. So why all the trouble for Obama?

Surely, many of us have friends, relatives, advisers, or ministers who are racists, sexists, or who express bigotry or inflammatory rhetoric that we neither agree with nor utter ourselves. Should we each be tarred by the views of our associates? Must we all disown our "uncles"? If not us, then why is it appropriate for Obama? It is not appropriate and the entire episode smacks of something ancient and insidious. I shall say more about that later.

For me, Obama is responsible for himself and his views. Reverend Wright is responsible for his as well. And, each of the rest of us is responsible for ours. (I have shared some of mine through this blog for the past 18 months.)

As a constitutional law teacher, I am generally committed to broad free speech rights, for myself and for others. This means that, in my view, each of us, including Reverend Wright, has the right to speak freely and directly about anything and government can’t silence us. Instead, those inflamed by remarks should respond with their contrary views. If you contest or detest Wright's views, explain why he is wrong with your own sermons, speeches, or behaviors. Isn't that the American way: uninhibited, robust, wide-open, even caustic debate. Haven't you watched CNN or FOX News lately?

At times, this position ensures that someone or some group will express views that I strongly support; while other times it guarantees that others will engage in speech that I find reprehensible. Nonetheless, with quite limited exceptions, I value free speech above government restraint. Free speech is important to democracy. It is important to prevent tyranny by the richest, most powerful speakers, who often have far greater influence not because their views are better, but because they have the resources to ensure that their views are aired.

So Reverend Wright can speak. And so can Senator Obama. And, I will not make the Senator responsible for the Reverend’s views. Some may hold Obama accountable for attending a church with Wright as the pastor for over 20 years. They may be skeptical of Obama’s claims that he has shared none of Wright’s views about the country. Reasonable people can disagree on the significance of Wright’s influence. Having read Obama’s books, I have decided Wright has had no negative influence.

But there is another important point: Neither Wright nor Obama speaks for all African Americans. Nonetheless, I fear in some unconscious way, some Americans cannot resist blaming Obama for Wright’s free speech. This is an ancient device which, when unpacked, is little more than a declaration that all African Americans must think alike and all are responsible for the perceived transgressions of any. This device is seductive, but quite unsophisticated.

No African American speaks for all any more than any white person speaks for all. I will judge Senator Obama by his own words. I will not be distracted by a racialized political sideshow. I am convinced Obama loves this country, despite its longstanding faults. I am convinced he has the talent and voice to heal a broken land. I support him for what he says might become of us. He is ambitious for this country in unique ways. I don't agree with him on every issue, but I will resist the political distraction which seeks to diminish him by what someone else has said.

It has been a long time in this country since any orator has captured the imagination and hopes of many Americans. Obama’s spirited orations of hope, love, and change cannot be dismissed because another orator has a quite different message and style.

If Obama loses, it should be based on his own message, not Wright's. Having run such a noble campaign, he deserves to be judged not by the color or tone of another's message, but by the content and character of his own.

DRAWING A LINE

Virginia Sloan — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:19:00 GMT

On April 16, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a case challenging a Louisiana law making child rapists eligible for the death penalty, even when the crime did not also involve a homicide. Only five other states have similar laws.

Patrick Kennedy, the defendant in Kennedy v. Louisiana, was sentenced to death for raping his eight-year old step daughter. Child rapists deserve society’s harshest punishment, short of the death penalty, for their abhorrent crimes. Murderers permanently end the lives of their victims; child rapists also devastate the lives of their victims, but they do not take life and their victims have the hope of recovering to live a normal life.

Child rape is an utterly deplorable crime, but the death penalty is not appropriate for this – or any - non-homicidal crime.

First, where would we draw the line? What kinds of crimes are so egregious that, even if a homicide has not occurred, they should be punishable by death? The list is potentially endless. Allowing the death penalty to be imposed for non-homicidal crimes will likely dramatically increase the number of people subject to the death penalty, will fuel the vague and arbitrary manner in which capital punishment is currently imposed, and runs counter to the sensible consensus in the legal community that the death penalty should be reserved for only those criminals who are the worst of the worst. Applying the death penalty to someone who has not taken a life is cruel and unusual and thus violates the 8th Amendment.

Second, aside from the constitutional issues, there are convincing policy reasons to oppose the death penalty in these kinds of cases. Child advocates note that children – and especially those who have been traumatized – are easily influenced by their elders. The risk that these children will be confused and even mistaken about what happened is high, and thus so is the risk of a wrongful conviction. In fact, the victim in the Kennedy case first identified someone else as the perpetrator. It was only after adult intervention that she changed her story and accused her stepfather. Mr. Kennedy has consistently maintained that he is innocent.

Third, these same child advocates worry that the death penalty for this kind of crime will make it even less likely that the victims will report the assault to the authorities. This is because so many of the perpetrators are family members and close friends. Experience shows that it is already difficult for these children to accuse those who are close to them. Potentially sending them to their deaths would, these child advocates agree, dramatically decrease the likelihood that children would report these crimes in the first place.

The United States has not executed anyone for non-homicidal rape since 1964. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of capital punishment for adult rape was unconstitutional. That ruling, in Coker v. Georgia, dealt with the rape of a 16 year-old woman, who the Court considered an adult, apparently because she was married. While the Court’s decision did not specifically mention child rape, it has been widely considered to bar the death penalty in rape cases where a homicide did not occur. Justice Byron White, writing the Court’s decision, stated, “[T]he death penalty, which ‘is unique in its severity and irrevocability,’ is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.”

The Supreme Court should look to the ruling in Coker as it considers the Kennedy case. Even though the facts of the case now before the Court are tragic, they should not change the reasons why the Court ruled the way it did in Coker. The death penalty is still unique in its severity and irrevocability, and is excessive for anyone who does not take human life.

In recent years the Supreme Court has narrowed capital punishment’s reach in other ways, finding, for example, that the death penalty is cruel and unusual for certain groups of defendants. In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court ruled the execution of a person with mental retardation is unconstitutional, and in 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the Court ruled it was unconstitutional to execute juveniles who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes. The Supreme Court had it right in those decisions, and in Coker. To deviate from the decision in Coker and uphold the Louisiana law at issue in Kennedy would be a giant step in the wrong direction. The Court should stay the course and allow capital punishment to be imposed only for the “worst of the worst.”

A Loving Marriage

Julie Kay — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

Over forty years ago the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia struck down a law that banned marriage if the bride and groom were not of the same race. The death last week of Mildred Loving, the aptly named bride in that case, reminds us of how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go. Prejudice remains embedded in marriage laws that ban same sex marriage in every state except Massachusetts.

It’s easy to envision a time in the not too distant future when people everywhere view bans on same sex marriage with disgust equivalent to how we now regard bans on interracial marriage. It seems incredible to us today that any two people could be prohibited from marrying because they are of different races. Yet it remains widely accepted to prohibit two people from marrying because of their sex.

The harm that bans on marriage cause to individual families is obvious. A wide range of necessary legal protections and social and economic benefits are denied families who cannot access marriage, including: health care benefits, paid care taking leave, parental rights, estate planning and other lifetime benefits, to name a few. The intangible status that marriage conveys -- those rituals and rites that emanate from marriage -- is even harder to quantify.

What is less recognized is that restricting the institution of marriage to opposite-sex couples only perpetuates sex stereotypes about the “proper roles” of men and women within marriage. In denying same-sex couples the right to marry, courts nationwide have relied on outdated sex stereotypes about gender roles within marriage, and particularly foster misconceptions about parenthood. The “norm” is strictly defined as every child having a mother and a father, and implicit in this assumption is the notion that mothers and fathers necessarily fill distinct and separate roles. Mom stays home and teaches care giving; dad goes to work and teaches baseball on weekends.

The conservatives who mount the most vigorous attacks on same-sex marriage continue to embrace gender-specific parenting roles. They often hark back to a fictitious time of Ozzie and Harriet, and Ward and June, invoking such stereotypes as real life role models. Focus on the Family’s James Dobson is clear in his preference: “I don't believe any arrangement for children can compete with an intact family where the mother raises her kids and the father is also very involved in their lives.”

Although courts may not be as blatant in their parental stereotyping when they uphold bans on same sex marriage, it is clear that preconceived notions around parental roles are at the heart of much opposition to same sex marriage. For example, New York’s highest court lacked scientific evidence about the benefits to children when parents conform to gender stereotypes, yet noted that “[i]intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like.” Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d 1, 8 (N.Y. 2006). The court’s "intuition" assumes that having one male and one female parent demonstrates to children what men as a group and women as a group are like; it ignores the individual differences that do not align with gender stereotypes. While each sex possesses its own set of defining characteristics, there is considerable variation and overlap of characteristics between men and women. Women can, and do, teach baseball; men can, and do, demonstrate care giving.

State statutes validating marriage only between a male and a female expressly discriminate on the basis of sex. A woman who wants to marry her (female) partner is denied this privilege simply because she is a woman. A man in her place would be free to marry any woman, even one he had never met before. Similarly a man who is denied marriage to another man faces discrimination on the basis of his sex. Many states already reject such discrimination in parenting and do allow same sex parents to adopt or foster children. Yet these same parents are prevented from marrying each another simply because of their sex.

State level challenges to bans on same sex marriage are now pending in Iowa, California, and Connecticut. (With assistance from the law firm of Irell and Manella, Legal Momentum has submitted amicus briefs in the cases in Iowa and California, urging the courts to recognize the illegal gender stereotyping such bans perpetuate.)

That such stereotypes and homophobia remain ingrained in the law is shameful. Forty years later our courts still have a lot to learn from Loving. It is time to reject the outdated stereotypes about same sex marriage and to genuinely recognize that families come in all shapes and sizes and colors.

Out of Work

warnewsradio — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:01:00 GMT

Men working in Baghdad. Photo courtesy of the Ayub Nuri.

This week on War News Radio, the next of our series focusing in on some of the big unresolved questions about the war in Iraq. We consider Iraq’s unemployment crisis.

First, we hear about the difficulties Iraqis face as they look for work. Listen now to Emily Hager’s report.

Then, we hear form the owner of one garment factory that closed. Listen now to Madeleine Abromowitz’s report.

And, we find out about the difficulties Iraq has faced as it transitions from a state-controlled economy to a more privatized one. Listen now to Cyrus Stoller’s report.

Joblessness is taking a unique toll on women in Iraq. We hear about how the unemployment situation is changing the work environment for women. Listen now to Jess Engebretson’s report.

And finally, we investigate the link between Iraq’s security problems and unemployment.Listen now to Elizabeth Threlkeld’s report.

These stories this week from War News Radio.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]

A Late Start and a Small Start With Credit Cards

F. Paul Bland — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:00:00 GMT

The credit card industry has really been running wild lately. After a frenzy of acquisitions and consolidation in the last several decades, only a few major banks issue the vast majority of credit cards in the United States, and the industry has been able to get more and more Americans to take out heavier and heavier debt loads. Today, America’s credit card debt load is approaching one trillion dollars (with millions of families having ten or more cards and more than $10,000 in outstanding debts),...(read more)

Taking Pride in Northampton's Pride

Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT

We left for Northampton’s Pride March with the typical hubbub of mama’s-taking-too-long-at-the-last-minute-and-papa’s-understandably-annoyed . Good to have family traditions, huh? We stepped out with a close family friend, and three of our kids (five, nine and twelve weeks; our twelve year-old had to forgo Pride for ballet rehearsal). The weather, although overcast and cool, didn’t put a damper on us.

Walking up our street, I asked the five year-old—who remembered fetching tossed handfuls of candy and eating Purple Pride ice cream best—why we march. He wasn’t sure. I explained, “It’s about families with two moms, a mom and a dad, two dads, one dad, one mom, all being great for kids.” He topped me, of course. “Or 99 dads!” he exclaimed.

In our town, Pride—commencing with Dykes on Bikes and sporting floats and people waving from pick-up truck beds—acts much like other towns’ Fourth of July celebrations do, the rainbow banner our flag of choice, friendly, cheering crowds lining Main Street, wafting street fair scents (grilled meat, fried food). Sure, attendance swells with sunny weather and falls off a bit when it’s gray. But the event—by year 27—has solidity; its heft is comprised of tradition and shared sense of purpose. It’s almost impossible to recall the early days, when menacing protesters practically outnumbered marchers. I was in college, then, and I remember feeling afraid and feeling brave simply for showing up. Courage seems less at the forefront now because the mood is so celebratory. And I still notice something different each year. This year for example, the prevalence of faith groups from nearly every denomination was notable, in such sharp contrast to those religious protesters from so many years ago. And schools: long ago, college students participated in Pride. Over time, some high schools joined in. These days, even elementary schools and middle schools are represented. Sure, queer parents have marched for years, but not always with their kids’ schools. A snippet from a longer chant behind us voiced by the Amherst High School Gay Straight Alliance: “2 4 6 8, don’t assume your kids are straight!” Comfort and acceptance offers room for more ease, simple as that.

My kids, familiar with Pride, scampered after brightly colored necklaces and bite-sized pieces of equally bright-hued candies. They waved at friends, regarded the drag queens, and marched along until we reached the rally site and lunchtime. They liked the music, loved the Pad Thai, and enjoyed playing with friends. In short, Pride equals good fun, regardless of any underlying rationale for attending.

Earlier in the week I’d heard about an experiment in Alabama where two men sat on a bench and kissed to see what would happen. Beyond stares, one woman called 9-1-1, because two men kissing—to her mind—represented an emergent situation, and even more disturbing a crime that could, well more so, should , be stopped. I thought of that factoid while I marched. Where can you find comfort and acceptance? Not on an Alabama bench, that’s for sure. Closer to home, there’s so much distance to travel: on the one hand, I thought of friends facing heartbreakingly difficult and legally tenuous custody situations; on the other hand, I recalled the incredible sense of joy that permeated my friends’ wedding a few summers ago. Not only was the sheer beauty of their longstanding love honored, further, there was palpable relief from their extended family constellation with the realization that it was okay—in the state of Massachusetts, but really in a much grander sense—to affirm this romance. Truly, there wasn’t a dry eye to be found.

I hope my kids always know that 99 dads—while a lot of dads—can be terrific. Families are not all the same. In each, we can find ways someone falls just outside the “norm” (nothing sacred about the “norm”). Over time, that message of we’re not all exactly the same seems so basic as to want to ignore it. But we can’t. Not while our ability to honor and protect every family isn’t nearly secure. And that’s why I love our town’s emblematic rainbow flag and more so its rainbow spirit, which affirms these equations: love is love, and love makes families.

Of Stem Cells and State Ballot Initiatives

William Saunders — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:10:00 GMT

News came over the weekend of a state district court being overruled by a higher court. Ho hum, no news there, one would think, a routine occurrence…except this concerned stem cell research, and that is always newsworthy.

The state was Missouri, and what was at issue was whether the description by the secretary of state of a ballot initiative (a description that would appear on the ballot, and hence, might influence a voter) was misleading. The lower court said yes, and re-wrote the description in what it believed was neutral language. But the appellate court – by a 2 to 1 vote - overruled that court, ordering the secretary of state to change merely one word – from stating that the ballot initiative would “repeal the current ban on human cloning” to “change the current ban on human cloning.” The losers will likely appeal, and round the judicial merry-go-round we go, endlessly it seems. It would be amusing but for the fact that the court’s decision means the initiative will not be on the ballot in the fall and Missouri voters will be deprived of their right to decide the matter.

To understand the current dispute, it is necessary to recall previous developments in this controversy.

In 2006, there was a well-funded effort to pass a bill, titled, the “Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative” (the “Initiative”). The Stowers family, who established the Stowers (research) Institute in Missouri, where much good, ethical, scientific research takes place, poured over $15,000,000 into supporting the Initiative. That was sad because it was a misleading bill.

For instance, the Initiative defined “cloning” as occurring when there is implantation in a woman’s womb. But that is wrong. Cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (the two terms are synonyms), is a technique with one aim: the creation of a living genetic duplicate of the same species. Thus, human cloning produces a human being, while sheep cloning produces Dolly. It does not matter where the living clone is located. Whether in Scotland or Missouri, whether in a laboratory or in a womb, artificial or animal or human, “cloning” has occurred whenever a living genetic duplicate comes into existence, not when it is implanted in a womb. A womb is like a safe-house. You may need to hide there to live, but you were a human being before you went inside.

Likewise, the Initiative was misleading about “stem cell research.” Adult stem cell research (“ASCR”), at the time of the Initiative, had delivered over seventy successful human treatments, involving thousands of individual patients, while embryonic stem cell research (“ESCR”) had not delivered one (and has not done so to this day). There were (and are today) hundreds of FDA-approved trials in process with ASCR, but, again, none with ESCR. In other words, ESCR made the promise, but it’s ASCR that has redeemed the pledge. Nevertheless, the Initiative swept all this under the carpet. By making it legally impossible to “discourage” ESCR in Missouri, it ensured that Missourian’s tax dollars would go to ESCR and away from proven ASCR treatments and research. If the Missouri legislature found ESCR was not promising and that the best way to help sick people was to fund ASCR, the state constitution would, after the passage of the Initiative, forbid them from doing anything about it.

And that is what happened – the Initiative passed, but just barely. In a very close vote, where the pro-Initiative forces once lead by over thirty points, the ballot initiative passed by a vote of 1,077,276 to 1,028,495.

Since then, anti-Initiative forces in Missouri have been trying to pass their own referendum in order to enact a ban on all human cloning, whether the clone is implanted in a womb or not. However, Missouri Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, decided to describe\ on the ballot their language as follows: “Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to repeal the current ban on human cloning or attempted cloning, and to limit Missouri patients’ access to stem cell research, therapies and cures approved by voters in November 2006…”

Missourians seeking to overturn the Initiative found this language characterizing their own initiative to be seriously misleading (for instance, since there are no therapies and cures from ESCR, how could banning cloning “limit Missouri patients’ access to…therapies and cures”?). They took the matter to court. On February 20^th, Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled that the existing ballot language was “insufficient and unfair.” She re-wrote the description to say that the ban includes “prohibiting human cloning that is conducted by creating a human embryo at any stage from the one-cell stage forward; prohibiting expenditure of taxpayer dollars on research or experimentation on human cloning.”

It is, frankly, hard to see how she can be wrong, despite what the appellate court said. The description she supplied makes clear the point at issue – what a clone is, i.e., a genetic duplicate from the first cell stage onward. The original Initiative had obscured that fact by focusing on implantation. Many voters were misled – in a very close vote – into thinking they were banning cloning, on creating clones, while all the Initiative did was to ban its implantation. By requiring the change of only one word, from “repeal” to “change,” while continuing to allow the underlying law to be described as “the current ban on human cloning,” the appellate court permitted the deception of Missouri citizens to continue.

What will eventually happen in Missouri no one can know. However, I do know that until we are honest about the science, we will never reach a just – or even honest – resolution of the issues.

The Small Donor Future

Bob Edgar — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:21:00 GMT

Even before it ends, this 2008 presidential campaign will transform our democracy – in fact, it already has. Hundreds of thousands of new voters have registered and cast ballots, Sen. Barack Obama has drawn huge crowds previously reserved for the likes of Bruce Springsteen, and a surge in small donations has given the campaigns more money from more individuals than ever before at this stage – with Obama already topping 1.5 million donors.

Putting regular voters in charge of our democracy – rather than wealthy and powerful interests – has long been a goal of reformers. Common Cause's focus over the past few years has been to enact public financing systems around the country, from Congress to states and cities, with the goal of empowering everyday citizens and the general public to provide the resources to a candidate's campaign for office.

Am I excited about this surge in small donors in the presidential primary? Incredibly so.

Am I still concerned that wealthy, powerful interests play too large a role in politics and in funding electoral campaigns? Absolutely.

It's not a paradox. In part, it's a question of the presidential race versus everything else. Once you get outside the presidential campaign, you'll find that wealthy donors (giving upwards of $1000) have increased their hold on our campaign system. Let's look at that trend in a minute.

The presidential campaign has been funded, in almost equal parts, by small donors and large donors. For a quick breakdown – and see this study by the Campaign Finance Institute (http://www.cfinst.org/pr/prRelease.aspx?ReleaseID=189) and this table (http://www.cfinst.org/president/pdf/Pres08_M4_Table2.pdf) for more details – Obama has received 45% from small donors ($200 and below) and 37% from large donors ($1000 and up), with the rest falling in the middle range of $201-$999. Sen. Hillary Clinton's finances break down to 30% from small donors and 55% from large donors. Sen. John McCain stands at 23% small and 63% large. The small donor trend has been partly mitigated by greater giving overall, including large donors, although the past few months have been dominated by small donors on the Democratic side (http://www.cfinst.org/president/pdf/Pres08_M4_Table1.pdf).

What's the advantage of small donors? For the campaigns, they are relatively low-overhead – many come from online lists and from candidate events, which the campaigns would hold anyway – and the small donors tend to be an important source of activists. This is, of course, great for the democratic process in general: political giving often leads to greater civic and political participation and investment. And of course, small donor dollars don't give the impression that they're trying to buy undue influence with the campaign.

But races for Congress, unlike the Presidency, do not typically generate the same energy, the same buzz, and the same wall-to-wall media coverage. Not surprisingly, the trend in Congress is moving in the opposite direction: (http://www.cfinst.org/pr/prRelease.aspx?ReleaseID=151)

House and Senate candidates have raised 80 percent more money in contributions of $1,000 or more in the years after BCRA [since 2002] than before while small contributions over the same time period have actually declined. As a percentage of total receipts, House and Senate candidates raised half again as much money in amounts of $1,000 or more after BCRA.

Large donors have increased their influence in congressional races, making the notion of a major "change in Washington" hard to imagine without a significant shift to small donors and public funding as a source for candidates' campaign chests.

Indeed, the "Clean Elections" model being used in several states and cities does exactly that: candidates who raise enough small contributions (typically $5-10) to reach a threshold level of support, and who also agree to abide by spending limits and to stop raising additional private contributions, receive public funding to run their campaign. Those candidates are eligible for additional public matching funds if they're being outspent by a privately-financed opponent.

The Fair Elections Now Act, introduced in the Senate by Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), and soon to be introduced in the House, would create a "Clean Elections" system for Congress. It's a critical change given the trend against small donors in congressional races.

At the end of this presidential election, we'll want to take a close look at the role small donors played in that race as well. We'll want to construct a public financing system for the presidential race that embraces and promotes a small donor strategy and limits the influence of wealthy campaign contributors. Capitalizing on the energy of this presidential race to further change the way we finance elections in this country – from top to bottom – would be a welcome democratic reform.

Why Discrimination is Wrong Against "Old" Guys

Ward Connerly — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:10:00 GMT

What if I said that I would not vote for Senator Barack Obama for president of the United States because he is black (or multiracial); or Senator Hillary Clinton because she is a woman; or that I would not have voted for former Mayor Rudy Giuliani because he is Italian; or former governor Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon? Any of those statements would most assuredly result in revocation of invitations to a lot of dinner parties and probably would contribute to more than a few appearances on CNN to explain my “racist,” “sexist,” or otherwise “bigoted” comments. And, well they should!

But, what if I said that I won’t vote for Senator John McCain for president because he is too old? There would be very little, if any, social ostracism for making such a statement. Why is this so? Obviously, when someone is voting for president or any other political office, they have the right to apply whatever standards they choose in making their selection. Yet, our society is rapidly evolving an antipathy toward the application of factors such as an individual’s skin color, sex, religion or ethnic background in virtually any aspect of American life. We profess to be an “equal opportunity” society. We believe that a person’s “immutable” traits – those things over which an individual has no control – should not play a part in how that individual is treated. Moreover, our belief in religious freedom deters us from openly practicing religious discrimination.

At the heart of each of these negative reactions to discrimination is the fundamental belief that our beloved nation is comprised of individuals, not representatives of “groups,” and that every individual is entitled to an equal chance to compete and to succeed on the basis of his or her merits. Why should this value not apply to “seasoned” citizens?

When I pose this question, I often get a question in response: what if John McCain, God forbid, died in office? Well, the Constitution provides an answer to that question and it is the vice president. There is a succession plan for such eventualities; and it is unfair to apply the issue of mortality to a senior citizen when we do not apply the same factor to one who is not a senior citizen. History proves that age is not a determining factor for whether a president will live out the fullness of his or her term. Some who were elected when they were young and vibrant were tragically snuffed out at a relatively young age. Others lived to a ripe age while in office and served the country well. Thus, I would submit that age should not be any more relevant in our presidential decision-making process than the factors of race, sex, color, ethnicity or religion.

It is important to empathize that we are not electing a physical education coach. We are electing a chief executive officer of the most powerful public corporation in the world. Relevant experience, sound judgment and the overall compatibility of the candidates’ beliefs and values compared to my own are the overriding characteristics for which I search in a presidential candidate. I do not ask whether I believe that the candidate will live for four years beyond taking the oath of office. Only God can answer that question and I doubt that He is prepared to give me His insight about the matter.

There is another factor to consider regarding this issue of age. As the projected life span of the average American increases, so must our thinking about the roles that “senior citizens” should be allowed to play in our society. Instead of consigning individuals to the pastures of retirement at 65, we should encourage them to remain productive, defer social security until a later age, forget about the senior citizen discounts at Denny’s and the theater houses, get rid of the old man’s shuffle, and live life fully and productively until one’s toes curl up. This is not to diminish those who make the conscious decision that they would prefer to abandon the labor force and to live life at a slower pace; it is simply to emphasize that the choice should be theirs and not one dictated by societal attitudes about age and the actuarial charts.

If we value individual merit and the principle of not judging individuals by the color of their skin, then it certainly seems to me that we should not judge individuals by the extent of their wrinkles or the number of calendar years they have lived.

Who is legally responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing?

Ted Frank — Sun, 04 May 2008 09:59:00 GMT

In the wake of the September 11 bombings, Congress established a Victims Compensation Fund and limited liability for a number of deep-pockets who were also victimized by the attacks. A number of academics questioned that it was even conceivable that innocent third parties could be held liable for a terrorist attack. Anthony J. Sebok, What's Law Got to Do With It? Designing Compensation Schemes in the Shadow of the Tort System, 53 DEPAUL L. REV. 901, 917 (2003); RICHARD A. NAGAREDA, MASS TORTS IN A WORLD OF SETTLEMENT 104 (2007); Peter Schuck, Special Dispensation, AM. LAWYER (June 2004); see also LLOYD DIXON AND RACHEL KAGANOFF STERN, COMPENSATION FOR LOSSES FROM THE 9/11 ATTACKS (RAND Institute for Civil Justice 2004).

But the legislators' fear turned out to be more than hypothetical. When given a chance to allocate responsibility for the earlier 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a jury held the Port Authority 68% responsible for the deliberate bombing of the World Trade Center by terrorists. The Port Authority appealed the absurd ruling, but the Appellate Division has affirmed unanimously since, after all, such absurdities are central to the modern tort regime and it is thus not "legal error" to abandon the centuries-old concept of intervening causation. As I noted in a related Wall Street Journal editorial, contingent-fee attorneys' incentives are not to seek out the truth behind wrongdoing, but to construct a narrative that will hold the deepest pocket the most responsible, regardless of the effect on justice. This distortion has worked its way into popular culture; a survey of family members of September 11 decedents found that the median respondent held the terrorists only 30% responsible for losses. Gillian Hadfield, Framing the Choice between Cash and the Courthouse: Experiences with the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, 42 L. & SOC. R. __ (forthcoming 2008).

I discuss the decision in more detail in an op-ed in the New York Sun.

Children at War

warnewsradio — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:57:00 GMT

This week on War News Radio, we take a look at how war has affected the youth of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We hear about the new lives of two Afghan students studying in America. Listen now to Jess Engebretson’s report.

Then, we find out about an Iraqi couple who use the Internet to sustain their relationship. Listen now to Wren Elhai’s report.

And we take a look at No More Victims, an organization that’s bringing wounded Iraqi children to the U.S. for treatment. Listen now to Peter Holm’s report.

We also speak with two Iraqi girls who underwent rhinoplasty for very different reasons. Listen now to Elizabeth Threlkeld’s report.

[Download mp3] [Streaming audio]