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U.S. Out Now! From Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and all U.S. bases around the world; End all U.S. Aid to Israel; Get the military out of our schools and our communities; Demand Equal Rights and Justice for ALL!
TAX THE RICH NOT THE POOR! MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Urgent News
Hearing on Death Penalty June 30, Sacramento
Please: SIGN-UP TO ATTEND!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/signUp.jsp?key=4279
On May 1st, the State of California announced that it is moving forward with developing execution procedures in order to comply with a recent legal ruling and resume executions, which have been on hold for more than three years.
The State will be holding a hearing on Tuesday, June 30th from 9am to 3pm in Sacramento to hear public comments about the proposed execution procedures.
Death Penalty Focus, along with our allies, will be organizing a critical Day of Action to End the Death Penalty on June 30th.
What You Can Do to Help:
1. Please plan to attend the hearing on June 30th in Sacramento. We will be organizing buses from the SF Bay Area (more details to be announced very soon).
Please: SIGN-UP TO ATTEND!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/t/5820/signUp.jsp?key=4279
We need to pack the room with more than 300 hundred supporters. More than one hundred individuals will be needed to give public comment. If they cannot accommodate everyone who signs up to speak, it is possible they will have to schedule another hearing.
After the hearing, we will head to the Capitol to share ours views with elected officials.
2. Please plan to submit a written comment to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). In just a few days we will be sending out suggestions for your comments and instructions on how to submit your comments. The CDCR is required by law to review and respond to every written comment. We need to generate thousands of comments from across the state, country and globe. We need to flood them with paperwork.
Please help us make this Day of Action a success!
Legislative Successes
Colorado
Colorado came very close to ending the death penalty this month when their State Senate voted 17-18 in favor of replacing the death penalty with life without parole and redirecting funding to solve murders. The State House has already passed the bill by a vote of 33-32.
Connecticut
On May 13, the Connecticut House voted 90-56 in favor of ending the death penalty. The bill now moves on to the Senate.
Several abolition bills are still active in other states, including New Hampshire, Illinois, Washington, and also in the U.S. Senate.
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Greetings! We wanted to thank you again for your on-going support, and let you know about 2 upcoming events:
Reinstatement Hearing [Ward Churchill]
Wed. July 1, 9:00 am
Courtroom 6 (Judge Naves)
1435 Bannock St., Denver 80202
www.wardchurchill.net
CU is attempting to completely ignore the jury's verdict in this case, pretending that there was no finding that it violated the Constitution by firing Ward, and arguing that the judge should refuse to reinstate Ward and refuse pay him (or his lawyers).
Its excuse is that Ward is not "collegial" enough because he refused to accept the conclusions of the investigative committees. An odd argument from an entity which is refusing to accept the verdict in this case.
The hearing is scheduled for all day, with both sides presenting witnesses and arguments. If you're in the Denver area, please come and show your support. More details at www.wardchurchill.net.
"Shouting Fire" - HBO documentary on the state of free speech in America, featuring Ward's case, will air on Monday June 29 at 9:00 pm ET. Directed by Liz Garbus, and also featuring her father, famed First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus.
Review from its Sundance Film Festival premiere is available at:
http://festival.sundance.org/2009/film_events/films/shouting_fire_stories_from_the_edge_of_free_speech
HBO schedule at:
http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=573085
In struggle and solidarity,
Natsu
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ATTEND THE JULY 10 NATIONAL ASSEMBLY CONFERENCE IN PITTSBURGH!
REGISTER FOR THE CONFERENCE and DOWNLOAD PRINTABLE BROCHURE (8.5 X 14) at:
https://natassembly.org/Home_Page.html
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
On behalf of the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, we are writing to invite you and members of your organization to attend a national antiwar conference to be held July 10-12, 2009 at La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The purpose of this conference is to bring together antiwar and social justice activists from across the country to discuss and decide what we can do together to end the wars, occupations, bombing attacks, threats and interventions that are taking place in the Middle East and beyond, which the U.S. government is conducting and promoting.
We believe that such a conference will be welcomed by the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Iran, who are the victims of these policies. It will also be welcomed by victims of the depression-type conditions in this country, with tens of millions losing jobs, homes, health care coverage and pensions, while trillions of dollars are spent bailing out Wall Street and the banks, waging expansionist wars and occupations, and funding the Pentagon's insatiable appetite.
This will be the National Assembly's second conference. The first was held in Cleveland last June and it was attended by over 400 people, including top leaders of the antiwar movement and activists from many states. After discussion and debate, attendees voted - on the basis of one person, one vote - to urge the movement to join together for united spring actions. The National Assembly endorsed and helped build the March actions in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the April actions in New York City.
We are all aware of the developments since our last conference - the election of a new administration in the U.S., the ongoing occupation of Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the extreme peril of an additional war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. Given all this, it is crystal clear that a strong, united, independent antiwar movement is needed now more than ever. We urge you to help build such a movement by attending the July conference and sharing your ideas and proposals with other attendees regarding where the antiwar movement goes from here.
For more information, please visit the National Assembly's website at natassembly.org, email us at natassembly@aol.com, or call 216-736-4704. We will be glad to send you upon request brochures announcing the July conference (a copy is attached) and you can also register for the conference online. [Please be aware that La Roche College is making available private rooms with baths at a very reasonable rate, but will only guarantee them if reserved by June 25.]
Yours for peace, justice and unity,
National Assembly Administrative Body
Zaineb Alani, Author of The Words of an Iraqi War Survivor & More; Colia Clark, Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee, Grandmothers for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC) and Economic Justice and Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee (AFSC); Alan Dale, Iraq Peace Action Coalition (MN); Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Jerry Gordon, Former National Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-Era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC) and Member, U.S. Labor Against the War Steering Committee; Jonathan Hutto, Navy Petty Officer, Author of Anti-War Soldier; Co-Founder of Appeal for Redress; Marilyn Levin, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace, Middle East Crisis Coalition; Jeff Mackler, Founder, San Francisco Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice; Fred Mason, President, Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Progressive Democrats of America/Ohio Branch; Lynne Stewart, Lynne Stewart Organization/Long Time Attorney and Defender of Constitutional Rights [Bay Area United Against War also was represented at the founding conference and will be there again this year. Carole Seligman and I initiated the motion to include adding opposition to the War in Afghanistan to the demands and title of the National Assembly.
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NATIONAL MARCH FOR EQUALITY
WASHINGTON, D.C. OCTOBER 10-11, 2009
Sign up here and spread the word:
http://www.nationalequalitymarch.com/
On October 10-11, 2009, we will gather in Washington DC from all across
America to let our elected leaders know that *now is the time for full equal
rights for LGBT people.* We will gather. We will march. And we will leave
energized and empowered to do the work that needs to be done in every
community across the nation.
This site will be updated as more information is available. We will organize
grassroots, from the bottom-up, and details will be shared on this website.
Our single demand:
Equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.
Our philosophy:
As members of every race, class, faith, and community, we see the struggle
for LGBT equality as part of a larger movement for peace and social justice.
Our strategy:
Decentralized organizing for this march in every one of the 435
Congressional districts will build a network to continue organizing beyond
October.
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B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Keep the Arboretum Free
http://keeparboretumfree.org/
Write the mayor and supervisors:
http://keeparboretumfree.org/email-to-board-of-supervisors-budget-committee
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Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
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Mumia Abu-Jamal, death row, Pennsylvania Legal Update
Robert R. Bryan, lead counsel
Introduction
In recent months there have been significant legal developments concerning my client, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on Pennsylvania's death row for nearly three decades. We are presently litigating on his behalf in both the United States Supreme Court and the trial court, the Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia.
Mumia's life on the line in this monumental struggle. He is in the greatest danger since his arrest in 1981.
Like so many on death row, Mumia has been a victim of poverty, racial bigotry, fraud, inadequate legal representation, and an unfair trial. The trial judge was a racist who referred to my client as a "ni - - er" whom he was going to help the prosecution "fry." Prior case lawyers failed to investigate and present pivotal issues both at trial and in the post-conviction process, thereby limiting what could be considered by the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. Below is a brief summary of case developments.
U.S. Supreme Court, Washington
There have been two separate cases pending in the Supreme Court concerning Mumia. One involves strictly the death penalty, while the other concerns the prosecution's use of racism in jury selection.
Abu-Jamal v. Beard, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 08-8483 This case related to the Philadelphia District Attorney's use of racism in selecting the jury that decided both the question of guilt and whether my client should die. The prosecutor used 66.67% of his available strikes to exclude African Americans from sitting on the jury. A judge in the lower federal court determined there was clear evidence that the prosecutor's strikes of black people was race-based and thus unconstitutional. The dissenting justice in a 2-1 decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, found overwhelming evidence of racism by the prosecutor. (Abu-Jamal v. Horn, 520 F.3d 272 (3rd Cir. 2008).) He explained that the "core guarantee of equal protection, ensuring citizens that their State will not discriminate on account of race, would be meaningless were we to approve the exclusion of jurors on the basis of . . . race. . . . I respectfully dissent."
On April 6, 2009, the Supreme Court declined to hear our case. This came as a profound disappointment and shock, even though the court rejects 98-99% of cases presented for review. Mumia's case was exceptional, especially in view of the powerful dissenting decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals. Our strong constitutional position was bolstered by briefing from the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, which I had invited into the case to address the racism issue. Tragically the court turned its back on it own case law which held that racism in jury selection offends the U.S. Constitution and mandates a new trial. Our extensive briefing had laid out the overwhelming evidence establishing the prosecutor's race-based behavior and the racially-charged atmosphere of the trial. On May 1, I submitted a Petition for Rehearing which has been rejected.
Beard v. Abu-Jamal, Sup. Ct. No. 08-652
We are still litigating in the Supreme Court in an entirely separate case in which the prosecution is seeking to overturn the victory achieved last year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In that ruling the court ordered a new jury trial on the question of the death penalty. Both sides have gone back and forth in briefing in the Supreme Court. Due to developments in another case with a similar issue, it may be several months before Mumia's case is decided. If we win, then there will be a new jury trial. In the event of an adverse decision, the prosecution would push for a quick execution.
Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia, Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, Nos. 1357-1359
On April 20, 2009, we filed a Petition for Habeas Corpus Relief in the trial court, the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas. At issue is the fact that Mumia was convicted on the basis of unreliable and incomplete expert ballistics testimony presented by the prosecution during the 1982 trial. We have also moved for discovery of all related evidence possessed by the prosecution.
Other Developments in Europe and the United States
In this country the support and activism of the National Lawyers Guild has been crucial on our work on behalf of Mumia. The cry for justice in the case of Mumia continues to be particularly strong in Europe. As an example, on May 17, 2009 a feature article datelined Paris appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. The piece is reprinted at the end of this Legal Update and available online with photographs at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/16/MN4517CARS.DTL. It describes the activism of committed French human-rights activists on behalf of Mumia which has drawn considerable attention in the U.S.
United States
Many people have heard about the support for Mumia by the National Lawyers Guild, headquartered in New York with chapters across the country, but know little of the details. Since its founding in 1937 the NLG has provided legal support to a wide range of legal and social movements, starting with drafting New Deal legislation and aiding in the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). It has actively supported labor rights and played a central role in defending individuals targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. NLG lawyers, legal workers and law students participated in the Civil Rights movement and opened "people's law offices" in the South. In the 1990s and into the new millennium the organization's scope widened to include protecting individual rights against the increasing dominance of corporations, legal defense at mass demonstrations, and training lawyers about developments in the law such as newly developing anti-terrorism legislation.
The NLG aggressively opposes the death penalty, and many of its attorneys specialize in capital defense work. That included the legal effort to save Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed June 19,1953 in New York. Each year the NLG features a "Student Day Against the Death Penalty," and actively assists 100 student chapters in hosting public education events to raise awareness of the multitude of problems with the death penalty and to work toward its abolition. Law professor members and students have hosted hundreds of events featuring leading capital defense attorneys and former death-row inmates, and the NLG provides an organizing kit to students to help facilitate events against capital punishment.
Mumia's case has been a national priority of the NLG for over two decades. For many years he has served on the Board of Directors as Jailhouse Lawyer Vice President. At the annual conventions numerous resolutions have been passed seeking a new and fair trial and over the years the NLG has co-sponsored events around the country related to his case. Three years ago I invited the Guild to file an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief on his behalf. Thereafter a brief was submitted on the issue of the death penalty and other issues by Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, a member professor from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. and others in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Further, Ms Boghosian, an outstanding lawyer, has been active is assisting me in the representation of Mumia for many years, and has joined me in a number of client meetings. Mumia has enormous respect and trust for her and the NLG.
Germany
In Berlin on March 27, the prestigious Akademie der Künst (Academy of Arts), located two doors from the U.S. Embassy at the Brandenburg Gate, hosted an outstanding panel discussion on Mumia as a journalist, author, and political prisoner. It originated from the efforts of the writer Sabine Kebir, PEN, and Nicole Bryan. The audience filled the auditorium. Participating in the human-rights event, was: Madame Danielle Mitterrand, former First Lady of France; Klaus Staeck, President of the Akademie; Johano Strasser, President of PEN Germany; Günter Wallraff, a well known author; Gerhart Rudolf Baum, former Minister of the Interior, the Bundestag (parliament), and United Nations representative; and me.
A video of the entire event is available on the Internet, at:
http://www.adk.de/de/aktuell/forum_dokumentationen/forum_27.Akadgespr.html
The commitment of supporters in Germany is a model of activism, especially those in Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen.
France
The movement for Mumia in France is excellent. It is led by the Collectif "Ensemble Sauvons Mumia Abu-Jamal" (Together We Will Save Mumia Abu-Jamal), composed of approximately 80 organizations. In Prison My Whole Life, the outstanding film on Mumia, is being shown in theaters throughout the country and continues to draw acclaim at film festivals. In Paris on March 15, it was awarded the Grand Prix and the Planete Prix at the Film Festival of Human Rights (Le Festival International du Film des Droits de l'Homme). In my two speeches at the awards ceremony, I accepted the prizes not only on behalf of Mumia, but also "for all the men, women and children who are on death rows around the world." The movie was also featured at the Amnesty International, a past winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is a sponsor of the film. Claude Guillaumaud-Pujol, author of Mumia Abu-Jamal: The Voice of the Voiceless, and I spoke after each presentation. The movie was also featured in the Lyon International Film Festival last October. Mumia is grateful to Jacky Hortaut and the many supporters in France who do so much in the cause of justice.
Netherlands On April 3 and 4, In Prison My Whole Life was shown at Amnesty International's Movies That Matter film festival in The Hague and Amsterdam. Nicole and I participated in both events. There was a panel discussion following each showing in which Arlette Stuip, who attended Goddard College with Mumia, Ms. Guillaumaud-Pujol, and I discussed the case and answered questions.
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation (indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501(c)(3), and should be mailed to:
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
Conclusion It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
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French Still Rally to Abu-Jamal's Cause
Mary Papenfuss, Chronicle Foreign Service
Sunday, May 17, 2009
San Francisco Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/17/MN4517CARS.DTL
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IVAW Member Victor Agosto Refuses Deployment to Afghanistan
Sign our Petition in Support of Victor's Resistance Today:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5966/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=383
Support Victor by making a donation to his legal defense fund:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=27370
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
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Don't let them kill Troy Davis
The case of Troy Davis highlights the need for criminal justice reform in the United States.
Please help us fight for the rights -- and life -- of Troy Davis today by signing the petition below, asking Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue to act on behalf of justice and commute Troy Davis's death sentence to ensure that Georgia does not put to death a man who may well be innocent.
Mr. Davis has a strong claim to innocence, but he could be executed without a court ever holding a hearing on his claims. Because of this, I urge you to act in the interests of justice and support clemency for Troy Davis. An execution without a proper hearing on significant evidence of innocence would compromise the integrity of Georgia's justice system.
As you may know, Mr. Davis was convicted of the 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail, a conviction based solely on witness testimony. Seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted or contradicted their trial testimony.
The courts, citing procedural rules and time limits, have so far refused to hold an evidentiary hearing to examine these witnesses. Executive clemency exists, and executive action - and your leadership - is required to preserve justice when the protections afforded by our appeals process fail to do so.
Thank you for your attention.
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/2446/t/4676/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=369
See also:
In the Absence of Proof
By BOB HERBERT
Op-Ed Columnist
May 23, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/opinion/23herbert.html?_r=1
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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PETITION IN SUPPORT OF PAROLE OF LEONARD PELTIER
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/parole2008/
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C. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) San Francisco to Toughen a Strict Recycling Law
By MALIA WOLLAN
June 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11recycle.html?ref=us
2) Texas: 100-Year Sentence for Teenager
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Southwest
June 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11brfs-100YEARSENTE_BRF.html?ref=us
3) The Big Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
June 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12krugman.html
4) Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru's Amazon
By SIMON ROMERO
June 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/americas/12peru.html?ref=world
5) Prison Term for a Seller of Medical Marijuana
By SOLOMON MOORE
June 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/us/12pot.html?ref=us
6) San Francisco at Crossroads Over Immigration
By JESSE McKINLEY
June 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/13sanctuary.html?hp
7) More Than 1 Billion Go Hungry, the World Food Program Says
By REUTERS
World Briefing | United Nations
June 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/13briefs-G8HUNGER.html?ref=world
8) Many in Congress Hold Stakes in Health Industry
By JACKIE CALMES
June 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/us/politics/14cong.html?hp
9) Mumia Abu-Jamal: Journalism in Hell
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Reporters Without Borders
June 10, 2009
http://www.rsf.org/Journalism-in-Hell-Mumia-Abu-Jamal.html
10) Trims to Medicare, Medicaid Are Proposed to Help Fund Reform
By Lori Montgomery and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 14, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/13/AR2009061301044.html
11) Drugs Won the War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Op-Ed Columnist
June 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14kristof.html
12) Policy and Profit
Following the Money in the Health Care Debate
By REED ABELSON
June 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/weekinreview/14abelson.html?ref=us
13) Stay the Course
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
June 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15krugman.html
14) A Bad Call on Gay Rights
Editorial
June 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16tue1.html
15) Monitor Cites Reform, Though Incomplete, by Los Angeles Police
By SOLOMON MOORE
June 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/us/16lapd.html?ref=us
16) When Suspicion of Teachers Ran Unchecked
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
June 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/nyregion/16teachers.html?ref=us
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1) San Francisco to Toughen a Strict Recycling Law
By MALIA WOLLAN
June 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11recycle.html?ref=us
BERKELEY, Calif. - San Francisco, which already boasts one of the most aggressive recycling programs in the country, has raised the ante, vowing to levy fines of up to $1,000 on those unwilling to separate their Kung Pao chicken leftovers from their newspapers.
The Board of Supervisors passed new recycling and mandatory composting rules on Tuesday in a 9-to-2 vote. The city already diverts 72 percent of the 2.1 million tons of waste its residents produce each year away from landfills and into recycling and composting programs. The new ordinance will help the city toward its goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2020, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city's Department of the Environment.
Under the new ordinance, residents will be issued three mandatory garbage bins: a black one for trash, a blue one for recyclables and a green one for compost.
Garbage collectors who spot orange peels or aluminum soda cans in a black trash bin will leave a note reminding the owner how to separate his trash properly. Anyone found repeatedly flouting recycling protocol will be issued fines of $100 for small businesses and single-family homes and up to $1,000 for large businesses and multiunit buildings. The city has put a moratorium on all fines until 2011 while residents learn the ropes.
Reaction to the new rules was as mixed as, well, recyclables.
"This takes Big Brother to an extreme I'm not comfortable with," said Sean R. Elsbernd, one of two supervisors who voted against the ordinance. "I don't want the government going through my garbage cans."
Garbage cops snooping through the curbside refuse is not the intent of the ordinance, said Nathan Ballard, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom.
"We are not going to throw you in the clink for putting your coffee grounds in the wrong bin," Mr. Ballard said. "Fines will only be imposed in egregious cases."
Mr. Newsom, who proposed the legislation last May and doggedly championed it, is expected to sign it into law within 30 days.
The city's most notorious recycling laggards tend to be owners of apartment buildings, Mr. Blumenfeld said. "We're mainly focusing this new law at multitenant buildings; only 25 percent of those building owners provide recycling for renters."
But it is the mandatory composting that has city officials most excited.
"When the nation is looking at complex solutions for climate-change reduction," Mr. Blumenfeld said, "we should not overlook the importance of simple things like increasing the recycling rate and composting."
The city already composts 400 tons of food scraps a day, 90 percent of which goes to enriching the soil of vineyards in Napa and Sonoma Counties.
"People will embrace composting just like they embraced recycling," said Mr. Ballard, who himself began composting kitchen scraps six months ago. "Here in San Francisco people are crazy about recycling. Composting is the next frontier."
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2) Texas: 100-Year Sentence for Teenager
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
National Briefing | Southwest
June 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11brfs-100YEARSENTE_BRF.html?ref=us
An 18-year-old who has profound mental disabilities was sentenced to 100 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges in a sexual abuse case involving his 6-year-old neighbor. The teenager, Aaron Hart, was arrested and charged after a neighbor found him fondling her stepson in September. He pleaded guilty to five counts, including aggravated sexual assault and indecency by contact, and a jury decided his punishment. Judge Eric Clifford in Lamar County said neither he nor jurors liked the idea of prison for Mr. Hart but felt there was no other option. "In the state of Texas, there isn't a whole lot you can do with somebody like him," Judge Clifford said. Mr. Hart has an IQ of 47 and was diagnosed as mentally disabled as a child. He cannot read or write and speaks unsteadily.
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3) The Big Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
June 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/opinion/12krugman.html
Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s - a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to "segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration" and label them as terrorists.
But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.
There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn't say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.
Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven't directly incited violence, despite Bill O'Reilly's declarations that "some" called Dr. Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer," that he had "blood on his hands," and that he was a "guy operating a death mill." But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.
And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.
Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News's new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news - and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration's "totalitarian" agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).
But let's not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration's house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama "not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself," and that in any case he has "aligned himself" with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
And then there's Rush Limbaugh. His rants today aren't very different from his rants in 1993. But he occupies a different position in the scheme of things. Remember, during the Bush years Mr. Limbaugh became very much a political insider. Indeed, according to a recent Gallup survey, 10 percent of Republicans now consider him the "main person who speaks for the Republican Party today," putting him in a three-way tie with Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. So when Mr. Limbaugh peddles conspiracy theories - suggesting, for example, that fears over swine flu were being hyped "to get people to respond to government orders" - that's a case of the conservative media establishment joining hands with the lunatic fringe.
It's not surprising, then, that politicians are doing the same thing. The R.N.C. says that "the Democratic Party is dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals." And when Jon Voight, the actor, told the audience at a Republican fund-raiser this week that the president is a "false prophet" and that "we and we alone are the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression," Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, thanked him, saying that he "really enjoyed" the remarks.
Credit where credit is due. Some figures in the conservative media have refused to go along with the big hate - people like Fox's Shepard Smith and Catherine Herridge, who debunked the attacks on that Homeland Security report two months ago. But this doesn't change the broad picture, which is that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.
What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even worse than in the 1990s - that thanks, in part, to the election of an African-American president, "the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years."
And that's a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.
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4) Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru's Amazon
By SIMON ROMERO
June 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/americas/12peru.html?ref=world
IQUITOS, Peru - Faced with a simmering crisis over dozens of deaths in the quelling of indigenous protests last week, Peru's Congress this week suspended the decrees that had set off the protests over plans to open large parts of the Peruvian Amazon to investment. Senior officials said they hoped this would calm nerves and ease the way for oil drillers and loggers to pursue their projects.
But instead, indigenous groups are digging in for a protracted fight, revealing an increasingly well-organized movement that could be a tinderbox for President Alan García. The movement appears to be fueled by a deep popular resistance to the government's policies, which focused on luring foreign investment, while parts of the Peruvian Amazon have been left behind.
The broadening influence of the indigenous movement was on display Thursday in a general strike that drew thousands of protesters here to the streets of Iquitos, the largest Peruvian city in the Amazon, and to cities and towns elsewhere in jungle areas. Protests over Mr. García's handling of the violence in the northern Bagua Province last Friday also took place in highland regions like Puno, near the Bolivian border, and in Lima and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.
"The government made the situation worse with its condescending depiction of us as gangs of savages in the forest," said Wagner Musoline Acho, 24, an Awajún Indian and an indigenous leader. "They think we can be tricked by a maneuver like suspending a couple of decrees for a few weeks and then reintroducing them, and they are wrong."
The protesters' immediate threat - to cut the supply of oil and natural gas to Lima, the capital - seems to have subsided, with protesters partly withdrawing from their occupation of oil installations in the jungle. But as anger festers, indigenous leaders here said they could easily try to shut down energy installations again to exert pressure on Mr. García.
Another wave of protests appears likely because indigenous groups are demanding that the decrees be repealed and not just suspended. The decrees would open large jungle areas to investment and allow companies to bypass indigenous groups to obtain permits for petroleum exploration, logging and building hydroelectric dams. A stopgap attempt to halt earlier indigenous protests in the Amazon last August failed to prevent them from being reinitiated more forcefully in April.
The authorities said that nine civilians were killed in the clashes that took place last Friday on a remote highway in Bagua. But witnesses and relatives of missing protesters contend that the authorities are covering up details of the episode, and that more Indians died. Twenty-four police officers were killed on the highway and at an oil installation.
Indigenous representatives say at least 25 civilians, and perhaps more, may have been killed, and some witnesses say that security forces dumped the bodies of protesters into a nearby river. At least three Indians who were wounded said they had been shot by police officers as they waited to talk with the authorities.
"The government is trying to clean the blood off its hands by hiding the truth," said Andrés Huaynacari Etsam, 21, an Awajún student here who said that five of his relatives had been killed on June 5 and that three were missing.
Senior government officials repudiate such claims. "There is a game of political interests taking place in which some are trying to exaggerate the losses of life for their own gain," said Foreign Minister José García Belaunde.
He said the ultimate aim of the protesters was to prevent Peru from carrying out a trade agreement with the United States, because one of the most contentious of the decrees that were suspended on Thursday would bring Peru's rules for investment in jungle areas into line with the trade agreement.
"But," Mr. García Belaunde insisted, "the agreement is not in danger."
Still, the government's initial response to the violence seems to have heightened resentment. A television commercial by the Interior Ministrycontained graphic images of the bodies of some police officers who were killed while being held hostage by protesters. The commercial said that the killings were proof of the "ferocity and savagery" of indigenous activists, but an uproar over that depiction forced the government to try to withdraw the commercial.
The authorities are struggling to understand a movement that is crystallizing in the Peruvian Amazon among more than 50 indigenous groups. They include about 300,000 people, accounting for only about 1 percent of Peru's population, but they live in strategically important and resource-rich locations, which are scattered throughout jungle areas that account for nearly two-thirds of Peru's territory.
So far, alliances have proved elusive between Indians in the Amazon and indigenous groups in highland areas, ruling out, for now, the kind of broad indigenous protest movements that helped oust governments in neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia earlier in the decade.
In contrast to some earlier efforts to organize indigenous groups, the leaders of this new movement are themselves indigenous, and not white or mestizo urban intellectuals. They are well organized and use a web of radio stations to exchange information across the jungle. After one prominent leader, Alberto Pizango, was granted asylum in Nicaragua this week, others quickly emerged to articulate demands.
"There has been nothing comparable in all my years here in terms of the growth of political consciousness among indigenous groups," said the Rev. Joaquín García, 70, a priest from Spain who arrived in Iquitos 41 years ago and directs the Center of Theological Studies of the Amazon, which focuses on indigenous issues.
"At issue now," he said, "is what they decide to do with the newfound bargaining power in their hands."
Andrea Zarate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.
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5) Prison Term for a Seller of Medical Marijuana
By SOLOMON MOORE
June 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/us/12pot.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - A federal judge on Thursday sentenced the owner of a marijuana dispensary to a year in prison, a sign that providers of medical marijuana still face the possibility of jail time despite the Obama administration's promise not to prosecute them if they comply with state law.
In imposing his sentence on Charles C. Lynch, who ran a dispensary in the surfing hamlet of Morro, Judge George H. Wu said the changed federal policy did not directly affect his ruling. But the judge talked at length about what he said were Mr. Lynch's many efforts to follow California's laws on marijuana dispensaries and the difficulty the judge had finding a loophole to avoid sending him to prison.
"I find I cannot get around the one-year sentence," Judge Wu said of federal sentencing laws.
The judge said he had reduced the sentence from a mandatory five years because Mr. Lynch had no criminal record or history of violence, and did not fit the strict definition of a "leader" of a criminal enterprise.
Mr. Lynch, 47, was convicted last summer on five federal counts in connection with the running of his dispensary and the selling of medical marijuana to customers under 21.
Legal experts said the case highlighted the conflict between state and federal laws on medical marijuana. Federal law prohibits the cultivation, sale and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but 13 states allow it. In prosecuting for medical marijuana, the Bush administration had considered only federal laws.
Advocates of medical marijuana said the Lynch case would have a chilling effect on activities and undermine state laws. At his trial, and again in seeking leniency in his sentence, Mr. Lynch argued that he had complied with California's law, which allows certain uses of marijuana with a doctor's prescription.
"He is caught between California's voter-approved medical marijuana system and the Bush administration's single-minded effort to smother it," said Stephen Gutwillig of the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization that favors a change in drug policy. "That Attorney General Holder changed federal policy three months ago only makes this miscarriage of justice all the more disturbing. Charlie is like a forgotten prisoner of war, abandoned after a truce was declared."
The United States attorney for the Central District of California, Thomas P. O'Brien, said Mr. Lynch had violated state laws because he was not his customers' main caregiver and provided no medical services beyond the marijuana sale.
Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said that as a general rule "we are not prioritizing federal resources to go after individuals or organizations unless there is a violation of both federal and state law."
More than 100 marijuana dispensaries - most in California - have been raided since 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 215, which sanctioned medical marijuana. About half the raids resulted in prosecutions, and about a dozen owners received prison sentences.
There are now about 25 pending federal prosecutions of medical marijuana dispensaries, most in California, said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy organization.
Among them is a case against Virgil Grant, whose dispensary was raided twice in 2007. He is scheduled to go on trial in the fall. But unlike Mr. Lynch, Mr. Grant has a criminal record and so faces at least 10 years in prison.
Most advocates of medical marijuana agreed that Mr. Lynch presented the best face for a movement that has tried to cast itself as mainstream - like yoga and herbal medicine - and distance itself from recreational drug use and advocates for legalization of marijuana.
Mr. Lynch's defense lawyer, Reuven Cohen, said he planned to appeal the sentence.
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6) San Francisco at Crossroads Over Immigration
By JESSE McKINLEY
June 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/13sanctuary.html?hp
SAN FRANCISCO - In the debate over illegal immigration, San Francisco has proudly played the role of liberal enclave, a so-called sanctuary city where local officials have refused to cooperate with enforcement of federal immigration law and undocumented residents have mostly lived without fear of consequence.
But over the last year, buffeted by several high-profile crimes by illegal immigrants and revelations of mismanagement of the city's sanctuary policy, San Francisco has become less like its self-image and more like many other cities in the United States: deeply conflicted over how to cope with the fallout of illegal immigration.
At the center of the turnaround is a new law enforcement policy focused on under-age offenders who are in this country illegally. Under the policy, minors brought to juvenile hall on felony charges are questioned about their immigration status. And if they are suspected of being here illegally, they are reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for deportation, regardless of whether they are eventually convicted of a crime.
"We went from being one of the more progressive counties in the country to probably one of the least, and the most draconian," said Abigail Trillin, the managing attorney with Legal Services for Children, a nonprofit legal group. "It's been a total turnaround."
Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ordered the new policy, disputes that characterization and ticks off a list of policies that remain immigrant friendly: the issuing of identification cards to residents regardless of legal status, the promotion of low-cost banking and the city's longstanding opposition to immigration raids.
"I'm balancing safety and rights," Mr. Newsom said. "And I'm taking the arrows."
The policy was put in place last summer amid a series of embarrassing revelations about the city's handling of illegal minors and even as reports arose of several serious crimes committed by illegal residents. The policy has led not only to dozens of juveniles in deportation proceedings, but also to criticism from the city's public defender and members of its Board of Supervisors, which is threatening to relax it next month.
"I think the point of sanctuary is that you protect people and treat people the same unless they engage in some felony crime," said David Campos, a county supervisor who came illegally to the United States from his native Guatemala when he was 14.
The new approach has pitted a growing coalition of immigrants rights groups against Mr. Newsom, who is running for governor in a state where immigrants, particularly Latinos, can be vital to being elected.
Mr. Newsom defends the policy as an effort to bring the city's juvenile protocol in line with that for adult illegal immigrants, who have always been reported to federal authorities if they are accused of a felony.
But immigration advocates say the policy has too often swept up juveniles who are in this country illegally but who are innocent or held on minor charges, a list that includes young men like Roberto, 14, who has lived in the United States since he was 2.
Roberto, whose last name is being withheld at the request of his parents who are also in the country illegally, was handed over to immigration authorities last fall after he took a BB gun to school to show off to friends. He spent Christmas at a juvenile facility in Washington State and is now facing deportation to Mexico, where he was born.
The experience left Roberto shaken. "I was feeling really scared," he said in an interview here.
Supporters of the new crackdown say that Roberto's case is unrepresentative and that the majority of youths turned over to the immigration authorities have engaged in serious crimes, including those associated with the practice by Honduran drug gangs in San Francisco of using minors as dealers.
"A lot of them have histories; a lot of them are second, third chances," Mr. Newsom said. "This is not as touchy feely as some people may want to make it."
Mr. Newsom says he still supports the sanctuary ordinance, which grew out of worries in the 1980s about the deportation of Central Americans to war-torn regions. Made city law in 1989, the policy forbids city agencies to use resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law or information gathering.
While proponents say such policies help the police by making immigrant communities - often suspicious of the authorities - more comfortable with reporting crimes, critics say San Francisco's policy had been stretched to extremes, including the practice of occasionally flying some offenders back to their home countries rather than cooperating with immigration authorities.
Mr. Newsom says he discovered and stopped that practice in May 2008, and quickly ordered a review. Juvenile referrals began shortly thereafter and were formalized as policy in August.
In the interim, however, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a group of teenage Honduran crack dealers who had been sent to a group home simply walked away from confinement.
A second event was more serious, when a father and two sons driving home from a picnic were killed in a case of mistaken identity in June 2008. The police later charged Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador and suspected gang member who had had run-ins with the San Francisco police as a juvenile but had not been turned over to the immigration authorities.
At the same time, San Francisco found itself under criminal investigation by the United States attorney for the Northern District of California, and city officials were eager to show that their city was not a lawless haven for illegal-immigrant criminals.
"If we start harboring criminals as a sanctuary city, this entire system is in peril," Mr. Newsom said.
For their part, immigration advocates say they are not asking the city to shelter felonious youths from deportation. The problem, they say, is the point of contact: at arrest, rather than after any sort of legal adjudication.
"Even if you're undocumented, you have the right to due process," said Jeff Adachi, the city's public defender.
The federal authorities, meanwhile, have been pleasantly surprised that the new policy has resulted in more than 100 referrals.
"We are now getting routine referrals," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency.
The most serious challenge to the policy is likely to come in July, when the Board of Supervisors is expected to take up a proposal that would apply the policy only to illegal juveniles found in court to have committed a felony. The measure's sponsor, Mr. Campos, said he expected it to pass.
Such an ordinance would not help Roberto, who is still waiting to plead his case to an immigration judge. He said he had already learned a valuable lesson.
"I will never bring anything to school again," he said.
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7) More Than 1 Billion Go Hungry, the World Food Program Says
By REUTERS
World Briefing | United Nations
June 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/13briefs-G8HUNGER.html?ref=world
High food prices have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first half of 2009, the leader of the United Nations World Food Program said on Friday in Rome. She said the total number of hungry people around the world was now more than one billion. At a meeting of the Group of 8's development ministers, Josette Sheeran, the food program's executive director, said the world faced a "human catastrophe." "This year, we are clocking in, on average, four million new hungry people a week - urgently hungry," Ms. Sheeran said. The agency needs $6.4 billion this year for food aid, she said, but donors' contributions have fallen far behind that level. The agency had around $1.5 billion at the end of last week. Ms. Sheeran said it had had to cut food aid rations and shut down some operations in eastern Africa and North Korea because of the credit crunch.
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8) Many in Congress Hold Stakes in Health Industry
By JACKIE CALMES
June 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/us/politics/14cong.html?hp
WASHINGTON - As President Obama and Congress intensify the push to overhaul health care in the coming week, the political and economic force of that industry is well represented in the financial holdings of many lawmakers and others with a say on the legislation, according to new disclosure forms.
The personal financial reports, due late last week from members of Congress, show that many lawmakers hold investments in insurance, pharmaceutical and prescription-benefit companies and in hospital interests, all of which would be affected by the administration's overhaul of health care.
The lawmakers' stakes are impossible to quantify because the reports ask for ranges of value for each asset, and because many officials' holdings are in stock index and mutual funds. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, for example, has interests in a stock index fund for the health care sector of more than $50,000 and up to $100,000.
Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the senior Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, one of three panels in the House with jurisdiction over health care, reported at least tens of thousands of dollars in health-related interests, including the medical technology giant Medtronic, the drug maker Wyeth and the insurance company Aetna.
In Congress, as members and aides of the three House committees continue to meet privately, the Senate health committee will begin publicly drafting and voting on its bill as soon as Tuesday. Later in the week, the Democratic chairman and senior Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, are expected to unveil a bipartisan plan.
Neither Mr. Baucus, from a ranching family, nor Mr. Grassley, a farmer, have major health-related holdings, their reports show.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, chairman of the health committee, has much of his wealth in blind trusts.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, leads the health committee in consultation with Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Dodd's wife, Jackie Clegg Dodd, is a member of the board and a shareholder in several health-related companies, including Cardiome Pharma, Javelin Pharmaceuticals and Brookdale Senior Living.
Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Republican on the health committee, is an obstetrician with income from his clinic in Muskogee. The wife of Representative Wally Herger of California, the senior Republican on the health subcommittee of the Ways and Means panel, works for Catholic Healthcare West, while the wife of Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, works for JPS Health Network.
Mr. Obama's chief adviser on health care, Nancy-Ann DeParle, also filed disclosure forms with the White House. Ms. DeParle, who served in the Clinton administration, went on to lucrative positions on the boards of health companies and as director of a private-equity firm with health investments, earning more than $2 million from 2008 to this year, according to forms signed on May 13.
The companies included Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefits manager; Boston Scientific, a device maker; Cerner, a provider of medical information technology; and DaVita, an operator of dialysis services.
A handwritten note on the forms, dated June 4, says that "all conflicting assets have been divested." Ms. DeParle is the wife of a reporter for The New York Times, Jason DeParle.
Janie Lorber, Ashley Southall and Jack Styczynski contributed reporting.
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9) Mumia Abu-Jamal: Journalism in Hell
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Reporters Without Borders
June 10, 2009
http://www.rsf.org/Journalism-in-Hell-Mumia-Abu-Jamal.html
While a young reporter for a local NPR (National Public Radio) affiliate, housing was my beat.
In a city which was the oldest in the United States, there were no shortages of housing issues, for Philadelphia's housing stock seemed in a permanent state of disrepair, especially in those sections of the city where Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and poor ethnic whites lived.
But which stories shimmer in the rear-view mirror of memory, brighter than the rest?
Although I reported in several sections of the city, many of those have sunk below the ocean of time. An exception was the rent protest by residents of a dwelling in Southwest Philadelphia, a place I drove by for years, but never entered, until it became my job.
The exterior was attractive and distinctive, and set apart from its neighbors by the decorative moldings and mortar-work which told of another age of its construction, when builders were artisans, who took time not merely to build, but to make the building beautiful.
When I got a call from a contact of the impending strike, I rushed out there and finally entered the building.
The conditions therein made me gasp. Ceilings were dangerously drooping over children's living quarters, plumbing was backed up, and the general conditions of lack of repair made the building a threat to all of its inhabitants.
As I met with the leaders of the strike, their fury was evident.
When I think back on the story years later, it dawned on me that housing, per se, wasn't the issue.
Resistance was. That's what gave the story the meaning, for it represented everyday, working-class people standing up to the injustice of unfair and improper living conditions.
Years later, while in the churning swells of the American House of Pain (prison), this would be my beat.
There are tens of thousands of people in these places, and therefore, tens of thousands of stories.
I have never had a shortage of them.
Sometimes, it's the cases, which brought a man to this place, and more often than not, the procedures by which this occurred.
Like the making of sausages, the American legal process is a messy and ugly thing when one inspects closely.
I've written of unjust and improper prosecutions, harrowing brutality, stunning institutional boneheadedness, and cruelty that would curdle milk.
In 1995, I was institutionally sanctioned for "engaging in the business of journalism." It took years of legal wrangling, including sitting in a courtroom for several weeks, in shackles so tight that one's ankles were swollen and bleeding, to finally prevail on the principle that the U.S. constitution's 1st Amendment protected such activity, but it was well worth the battle (the case was: Abu-Jamal v. Price).
For years, writing a story meant, quite literally, writing a story. With an ink pen. On a legal pad. Sometimes with a 4-inch long flex-pen (this is a pen which has in inner tube of an ink pen, but the shaft is composed of see-through rubber, with a rubber cap at both ends allowing a centimeter of the tip to protrude). It has been likened to writing with a wet noodle. Two of my books were written with these instruments, and then sent out to be typed by friends or editors.
The computer age has not yet dawned on the prison system (at least in Pennsylvania). I am often amused when I receive letters from people, who include, quite innocently and helpfully, their e-mail addresses, or their websites. For it tells me that they actually think I have a computer "here" in the cell, or perhaps computer (or web) access.
Not.
Not only are there no PCs in here; there are no Ipods, no CDs, no cassette tapes! (even though cassette-ready tape players are for sale in the prison commissary!)
We are, for all intents and purposes, dinosaurs, who live in another age, at another warp and woof of time, from the millions who dwell without.
Recently, a man named Amin (Harold Wilson) who won a retrial and acquittal from several unjust murder convictions, was ordered released after almost two decades on death row. He left the county prison in Philadelphia, with all his earthly possessions in a trash bag, and a bus token. A local-country prisoner, a Puerto Rican brother, released at the same time, saw the look of loss on his face, and offered him his cell phone. Amin squinted at the machine, tiny in his fist, and asked, "What do I do with this?" He had absolutely no idea how to operate this strange thing, for he had never seen nor held one before.
He later told me "My it looked like something straight outta Star Trek!"
Sometimes, stories come, unbidden, and unwanted.
Several months ago, a funny and well-liked jailhouse lawyer on the Row, named Bill Tilley, tired from his years of butting his head against the grey, judicial walls, and fearful that his emergent health problems were a prelude to cancer, got up early in the morning, used his laces from his sneakers, and fashioned a noose, by threading them through the steel grate mesh of the air-vents into the cell.
He hung himself.
After his passing, the scuttlebutt was that he did indeed have cancer, but medical staff did not disclose this fact, for, as a death row prisoner, the state wouldn't waste money on such a patient who was going to die anyway.
Several weeks before his death, Tilley confided to a few friends that he suspected it was cancer, given the severity of his symptoms, but whether it was, or not, it was so painful that he remarked, "I don't ever, ever wanna go through that again!"
What we didn't know was that he was telling us, in the only way he could, of his suicide plans, back then. Perhaps he was saying, in so many words, that he didn't fear death, but did fear pain.
His death took place less than 35 feet from the cell door in which these words are written. I broke the story. But it gave me no pleasure.
There are tens of thousands of stories in this House of Pain, and I have written hundreds of them.
This is my hidden beat, one that even the most intrepid of journalists cannot enter.
Yet, it is my beat.
And I intend to do this job with the same thoroughness, the same professionalism, as I did in days of yon.
For, though this is a hidden world, one not seen by millions, it is, too, a public world, for it is bought and paid for with the tax dollars of the citizenry.
Shouldn't they know what their investments have purchased?
Several times a month, in written form, or otherwise (as in books of commentaries) I offer this service, to the best of my ability.
I fight against being here, but I am here. And while here, the beat goes on.
Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote this article from his prison cell on Death Row for Reporters Without Borders on May 23, 2009.
-Reporters Without Borders, June 10, 2009
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10) Trims to Medicare, Medicaid Are Proposed to Help Fund Reform
By Lori Montgomery and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 14, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/13/AR2009061301044.html
President Obama yesterday outlined measures to trim spending on federal health programs for the elderly and the poor by an additional $313 billion over the next decade, bringing his total proposed savings close to the amount necessary to cover the cost of his signature health-care plan, a top adviser said.
In his weekly radio address, Obama proposed limiting the growth of Medicare fee-for-service payments, taking hospitals and other health-care providers at their word that they will reduce costs. He also proposed cutting subsidies to hospitals that treat uninsured patients on the theory that such payments will decline as more people are covered through his plan.
The president also called for reducing payments to drug companies that serve Medicare recipients. Advisers declined to release details, saying the idea is still under discussion.
"These savings underscore the fact that securing quality, affordable health care for the American people is tied directly to insisting upon fiscal responsibility," Obama said. "And these savings are rooted in the same principle that must guide our broader approach to reform: We will fix what's broken, while building upon what works."
Obama and his senior advisers have identified rising health-care costs as the biggest long-term drag on the federal budget, mainly because of the sharply escalating costs of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. He has said that reining in health-care costs is the key to reducing the deficit and has vowed that his plans for reform will require no additional borrowing.
The radio address capped a week during which Obama emphasized in and away from Washington the importance of health-care reform. He held a town hall forum in Green Bay, Wis., on Thursday, and he asked that this fall, congressional leaders send him legislation extending health insurance to the 47 million Americans without it. As he said in his radio message yesterday, "I know some question whether we can afford to act this year. But the unmistakable truth is that it would be irresponsible to not act."
His offer of new spending cuts comes against a backdrop of public concern over the nation's fiscal health and long-term spending plans that even he has acknowledged would lead to "unsustainable" deficits. His 10-year budget would shrink the $1.3 trillion annual deficit left by the Bush administration before allowing it to widen again in its final years.
By requiring cuts in federal payments to health providers, the measures would go a long way toward ensuring that innovations produce savings for the federal government and restrain runaway growth in spending on Medicare and Medicaid.
Congressional budget analysts agree that the approach will save money, and the Senate Finance Committee has included two of Obama's biggest money-saving ideas on a list of financing strategies.
"We are examining a wide range of options as we work with the president to craft bipartisan legislation that can become law this year," Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Finance Committee chairman, said yesterday in a statement. He applauded Obama's "commitment to our shared goals of lowering health care costs and ensuring quality, affordable care for all Americans."
But many lawmakers are not enthusiastic about slashing payments to hospitals and other providers without clear evidence that the cuts will not hurt patients back home. Even small cuts on the Senate Finance Committee list have provoked widespread grumbling.
Aides in the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, whose members are working to draft health reform financing plans, said yesterday that Obama's new proposals would "raise some hackles" and spur "some pushback."
The cuts Obama proposed yesterday would bring the total savings he has identified to pay for health-care reform to $950 billion, an amount that may still not be enough to cover the full cost of reform. Some outside analysts have said that Congress may have to spend $1.5 trillion or more over the next decade to extend coverage to all Americans.
"These savings will come from common-sense changes," Obama said. "For example, if more Americans are insured, we can cut payments that help hospitals treat patients without health insurance. If the drugmakers pay their fair share, we can cut government spending on prescription drugs."
Lawmakers have yet to finalize details of the reform plans moving through Congress, much less submit them to congressional budget analysts for a cost assessment. White House budget director Peter Orszag said $950 billion is "in the ballpark" of the plans under consideration. Congressional sources confirmed that, saying lawmakers are looking at plans that would cost about $1 trillion over the next decade, with the annual cost ramping up to about $150 billion by 2019.
In February, Obama's budget request set aside $635 billion for health-care reform, about half in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and half in new taxes. Orszag called the additional savings Obama outlined yesterday an "unprecedented" effort to "put down in such clarity how reform will be financed."
Orszag said the cuts proposed yesterday would save the government money in the short term and "spur productivity in a way that does not exist under current law." They would also save Medicare patients money -- as much as $43 billion in reduced premiums for prescription drug coverage over the next 10 years.
After weeks of loud demands for Obama to cut spending, Republicans reacted cautiously to the proposal. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, "There is no doubt that Medicare and Medicaid need reform, but serious changes should not be rushed through Congress as part of a new government-run program that will raise taxes and make health care more expensive, costing middle-class families even more."
Tomorrow, Obama is scheduled to speak in Chicago to the American Medical Association, a trade organization wary of the president's reform plans.
Another interest group, AARP, said yesterday that it "agrees that there are ways we can eliminate wasteful spending and inefficiencies from Medicare -- such as reducing preventable hospital readmissions or overpayments to drug companies -- that will actually improve care and strengthen the program." The organization, known formerly as the American Association of Retired Persons, has 40 million members.
"We want to make certain that any Medicare savings proposals will reduce beneficiaries' premiums and deductibles so that our members realize real savings in their own out of pocket spending, which has been increasing at a rapid rate," David Sloane, the group's senior vice president for government relations and advocacy, said in a statement. "At the same time, we also believe that some of these savings should be reinvested in filling the gaps in Medicare coverage."
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11) Drugs Won the War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Op-Ed Columnist
June 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14kristof.html
This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.
"We've spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It's a dismal failure."
For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.
Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:
First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that's because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.
Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.
Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)
I've seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.
Mr. Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic liberalization of American drug laws. He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.
"I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana," he recalled. "I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him to jail on a felony charge." The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr. Stamper suddenly had an "aha!" moment: "I could be doing real police work."
It's now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama's new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.
The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there's a genuine risk that liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction. But the evidence suggests that such a risk is small. After all, cocaine was used at only one-fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914. And those states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging consumption.
"I don't see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization," said Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some of the arguments of the legalization camp. At most, he said, there would be only a modest increase in usage.
Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out what works in combating America's drug problem. One approach would be for a state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.
I'm not the only one who is rethinking these issues. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements of the criminal justice system, including drug policy. So far 28 senators have co-sponsored the legislation, and Mr. Webb says that Mr. Obama has been supportive of the idea as well.
"Our nation's broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the entire criminal justice system," Mr. Webb says. That's a brave position for a politician, and it's the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective strategy against narcotics in America.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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12) Policy and Profit
Following the Money in the Health Care Debate
By REED ABELSON
June 14, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/weekinreview/14abelson.html?ref=us
Congress appears ready to confront one of the nation's most contentious issues - health care reform - and arguments will fill the air in the coming months.
Much of the discussion so far has focused on President Obama's proposal for a government-sponsored health plan that he says will reduce costs. Insurers and doctors argue it will limit patient choice. Drug companies warn that the quality of care could be compromised.
But Mr. Obama's proposal is only one of many that await Congress as it wrestles with how to rein in exploding health care costs while taking care of the country's nearly 50 million uninsured. The size and complexity of the issue are daunting. To help understand what's going on, you need to follow the money.
Roughly $2.5 trillion is at stake, the amount the nation spends each year on health care, nearly a fifth of the American economy. How that money is divided up - or prevented from rising at its current pace - is at the center of the debate. Many doctors, insurance companies and drug companies say they fear that their revenues could shrink significantly and patient care could be threatened.
Their arguments may prove to have merit. But "people are voting with their own economic interests," said Les Funtleyder, a Wall Street analyst who is following the debate closely for Miller Tabak & Co. in New York.
When you hear nothing from one of the interest groups on an issue that is part of the larger debate, you can assume the silence means it has no financial stake in the outcome, he said. "You wouldn't probably weigh in if you don't have any skin in the game because if you weigh in, it makes you more of a target," Mr. Funtleyder said.
What all of the interest groups reliably support is any new program that would expand coverage to the uninsured. Such a program would translate into tens of millions of new, paying customers for hospitals, doctors, insurers and drug makers.
But what worries those groups is the accompanying talk in Washington about how to address the skyrocketing cost of health care, since any decline in spending would correspond to a reduction in revenues. The discussion has become particularly heated over exactly how the government will find the savings necessary to help generate the $1 trillion or so that the government will need over the next decade to pay for universal coverage. The nation's doctors, for example, say they wholeheartedly support health care reform. But the American Medical Association has a long history of being opposed to legislation that threatens the status quo. It opposed the creation of Medicare more than 30 years ago.
What concerns doctors about a government-run insurance program that looks like Medicare is the possibility that it will pay like Medicare, said Robert Laszewski, a health policy consultant in Alexandria, Va. "Medicare pays doctors 80 percent of what an insurance company pays," he said. "If you get a public plan, the doctors are going to get a 20 percent pay cut."
But doctors are also likely to disagree among themselves over how different types of physicians should be compensated. Congress is thinking about raising the pay of primary-care doctors - general practitioners, family physicians and the like - as a way to encourage them to more actively oversee the care of patients and reduce expensive visits to specialists and hospitals.
The specialists - the cardiologists, neurologists, surgeons and others - may have a different take on the discussion, Mr. Laszewski noted, especially if Congress cannot raise salaries of primary-care doctors without taking money from the highly paid specialists. "The question is, how are you going to help the primary-care doctors without cutting the cardiologist and the other specialists?" he asked.
But even the family physicians, who stand to benefit the most, say they are opposed to a government-run plan if it reimburses them at the Medicare rate.
Another group with a lot to win or lose is the nation's private health insurers. With the number of people who are privately insured through their employer or their own policy not increasing, insurers are eager to find a new source of business. Health reform promises them at least some new customers who cannot afford insurance now but who might receive government help to pay for coverage.
But the trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans, has clearly staked out its opposition to any kind of government-run health plan, which it says would have an unfair advantage. The trade group fears its members would be driven out of business as the government uses its purchasing power to demand much lower prices from doctors and hospitals.
Karen Ignagni, the chief executive of the association, has criticized the government's track record in running Medicare as a good reason not to expand government health insurance beyond the elderly and disabled. She says the program has done a poor job in taking care of people when they are very sick. "Medicare has not effectively coordinated care, addressed chronic illness, or encouraged high performance," she recently told Congress.
As one way of finding savings to pay for health reform, Congress is also discussing lowering payments to private insurers who are now being compensated to cover some Medicare patients. The A.M.A., perhaps mindful that such savings would not come from doctors if it comes from insurers, says it supports such cuts.
The hospitals have also voiced concerns about a government-run plan. They, too, are paid much less by Medicare than they are by private insurers.
The nation's drug makers are also lining up against a public plan, predicting that it would ultimately lead to a government takeover of the entire system. "I don't think that American patients would - or should - accommodate themselves to the long waits for care, limited options and other forms of rationing that inevitably accompany government health care monopolies," John C. Lechleiter, the chief executive of the drug maker Eli Lilly & Co., recently told a meeting of business leaders. "American doctors and patients need to retain the ability to make choices based on the real value of treatment options."
But drug companies are also wary of the government's pull in demanding lower prices for their products than the insurers they deal with today. "The more government intervention you have, the less payment you have," said Mr. Funtleyder, the analyst.
These companies are also concerned that the government will play a greater role in determining the effectiveness of different drugs and medical devices and use that information to decide which should be covered and how much the government will pay for those products. Insurers, not surprisingly, support the government's taking a harder line against drug and medical device makers so they don't have to.
As Congress gets closer to finalizing any legislation, the opinions of the many stakeholders are likely to become more strident and self-interested, Mr. Laszewski predicted. As in watching the last lap of the Daytona 500, he said, there will be attempts by some of these groups to break out of the pack. "When you get the last lap, there are no friends - it's me, me, me," he said.
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13) Stay the Course
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
June 15, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15krugman.html
The debate over economic policy has taken a predictable yet ominous turn: the crisis seems to be easing, and a chorus of critics is already demanding that the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration abandon their rescue efforts. For those who know their history, it's déjà vu all over again - literally.
For this is the third time in history that a major economy has found itself in a liquidity trap, a situation in which interest-rate cuts, the conventional way to perk up the economy, have reached their limit. When this happens, unconventional measures are the only way to fight recession.
Yet such unconventional measures make the conventionally minded uncomfortable, and they keep pushing for a return to normalcy. In previous liquidity-trap episodes, policy makers gave in to these pressures far too soon, plunging the economy back into crisis. And if the critics have their way, we'll do the same thing this time.
The first example of policy in a liquidity trap comes from the 1930s. The U.S. economy grew rapidly from 1933 to 1937, helped along by New Deal policies. America, however, remained well short of full employment.
Yet policy makers stopped worrying about depression and started worrying about inflation. The Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy, while F.D.R. tried to balance the federal budget. Sure enough, the economy slumped again, and full recovery had to wait for World War II.
The second example is Japan in the 1990s. After slumping early in the decade, Japan experienced a partial recovery, with the economy growing almost 3 percent in 1996. Policy makers responded by shifting their focus to the budget deficit, raising taxes and cutting spending. Japan proceeded to slide back into recession.
And here we go again.
On one side, the inflation worriers are harassing the Fed. The latest example: Arthur Laffer, he of the curve, warns that the Fed's policies will cause devastating inflation. He recommends, among other things, possibly raising banks' reserve requirements, which happens to be exactly what the Fed did in 1936 and 1937 - a move that none other than Milton Friedman condemned as helping to strangle economic recovery.
Meanwhile, there are demands from several directions that President Obama's fiscal stimulus plan be canceled.
Some, especially in Europe, argue that stimulus isn't needed, because the economy is already turning around.
Others claim that government borrowing is driving up interest rates, and that this will derail recovery.
And Republicans, providing a bit of comic relief, are saying that the stimulus has failed, because the enabling legislation was passed four months ago - wow, four whole months! - yet unemployment is still rising. This suggests an interesting comparison with the economic record of Ronald Reagan, whose 1981 tax cut was followed by no less than 16 months of rising unemployment.
O.K., time for some reality checks.
First of all, while stock markets have been celebrating the economy's "green shoots," the fact is that unemployment is very high and still rising. That is, we're not even experiencing the kind of growth that led to the big mistakes of 1937 and 1997. It's way too soon to declare victory.
What about the claim that the Fed is risking inflation? It isn't. Mr. Laffer seems panicked by a rapid rise in the monetary base, the sum of currency in circulation and the reserves of banks. But a rising monetary base isn't inflationary when you're in a liquidity trap. America's monetary base doubled between 1929 and 1939; prices fell 19 percent. Japan's monetary base rose 85 percent between 1997 and 2003; deflation continued apace.
Well then, what about all that government borrowing? All it's doing is offsetting a plunge in private borrowing - total borrowing is down, not up. Indeed, if the government weren't running a big deficit right now, the economy would probably be well on its way to a full-fledged depression.
Oh, and investors' growing confidence that we'll manage to avoid a full-fledged depression - not the pressure of government borrowing - explains the recent rise in long-term interest rates. These rates, by the way, are still low by historical standards. They're just not as low as they were at the peak of the panic, earlier this year.
To sum up: A few months ago the U.S. economy was in danger of falling into depression. Aggressive monetary policy and deficit spending have, for the time being, averted that danger. And suddenly critics are demanding that we call the whole thing off, and revert to business as usual.
Those demands should be ignored. It's much too soon to give up on policies that have, at most, pulled us a few inches back from the edge of the abyss.
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14) A Bad Call on Gay Rights
Editorial
June 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16tue1.html
The Obama administration, which came to office promising to protect gay rights but so far has not done much, actually struck a blow for the other side last week. It submitted a disturbing brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which is the law that protects the right of states to not recognize same-sex marriages and denies same-sex married couples federal benefits. The administration needs a new direction on gay rights.
A gay couple married under California law is challenging the act in federal court. In its brief, the Justice Department argues that the couple lack legal standing to do so. It goes on to contend that even if they have standing, the case should be dismissed on the merits.
The brief insists it is reasonable for states to favor heterosexual marriages because they are the "traditional and universally recognized form of marriage." In arguing that other states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages under the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, the Justice Department cites decades-old cases ruling that states do not have to recognize marriages between cousins or an uncle and a niece.
These are comparisons that understandably rankle many gay people. In a letter to President Obama on Monday, Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization, said, "I cannot overstate the pain that we feel as human beings and as families when we read an argument, presented in federal court, implying that our own marriages have no more constitutional standing than incestuous ones."
The brief also maintains that the Defense of Marriage Act represents a "cautious policy of federal neutrality" - an odd assertion since the law clearly discriminates against gay couples. Under the act, same-sex married couples who pay their taxes are ineligible for the sort of federal benefits - such as Social Security survivors' payments and joint tax returns - that heterosexual married couples receive.
In the presidential campaign, President Obama declared that he would work to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, the administration appears to be defending it out of a sense of obligation to support a validly enacted Congressional law. There is a strong presumption that the Justice Department will defend federal laws, but it is not an inviolable rule.
If the administration does feel compelled to defend the act, it should do so in a less hurtful way. It could have crafted its legal arguments in general terms, as a simple description of where it believes the law now stands. There was no need to resort to specious arguments and inflammatory language to impugn same-sex marriage as an institution.
The best approach of all would have been to make clear, even as it defends the law in court, that it is fighting for gay rights. It should work to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," the law that bans gay men and lesbians in the military from being open about their sexuality. It should push hard for a federal law banning employment discrimination. It should also work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act in Congress.
The administration has had its hands full with the financial crisis, health care, Guantánamo Bay and other pressing matters. In times like these, issues like repealing the marriage act can seem like a distraction - or a political liability. But busy calendars and political expediency are no excuse for making one group of Americans wait any longer for equal rights.
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15) Monitor Cites Reform, Though Incomplete, by Los Angeles Police
By SOLOMON MOORE
June 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/us/16lapd.html?ref=us
LOS ANGELES - The Police Department here has taken significant steps to root out corruption and reduce brutality and racially biased arrests, but it must still do more to eliminate racial disparities in police searches and the use of force, a court-appointed monitor testified on Monday.
The department agreed to sweeping reforms in 2001 after the Justice Department found a pattern of police misconduct over a decade that included the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King in 1991 and the Rampart corruption scandal, which involved police officers' stealing illegal drugs, framing gang members and committing extortion.
Federal authorities also determined that the department had engaged in a pattern of excessive force, false arrests and unreasonable searches, especially of members of minorities, because of poor training and insufficient protocols.
Supervision of the court-mandated reforms was set to expire Tuesday. At a hearing in federal court, Michael Cherkasky, who has been the monitor of the Police Department for eight years, said more time was needed. Mr. Cherkasky and lawyers for the civil rights division of the Justice Department told Judge Gary A. Feess that oversight should continue for three years, but with the Police Department dealing directly with the court instead of a federal monitor.
Nonetheless, Mr. Cherkasky told the court that the department had progressed enough to warrant shifting more authority from federal oversight to the department's internal monitors.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics of the department disputed the idea that the police were ready to institute reforms without the impetus of federal monitoring and urged Judge Feess to extend the consent decree.
The judge acknowledged the department's success in reducing crime and abuses, and he extended the consent decree for two weeks to review arguments on ending federal monitoring.
Mr. Cherkasky urged the court to put in place a three-year transitional agreement that would end federal monitoring if the department reduced racial bias in searches and arrests, instituted a financial disclosure policy for certain kinds of investigators and created a better system to gauge problem officers by tracking complaints against them and use of force.
"We're saying these things need to be resolved before we can say that there has been substantial compliance," he said. "If they do these things, we don't have a problem with a transitional agreement."
Under the transitional agreement, Mr. Cherkasky said, he would end his monitoring and the court would directly oversee final reforms by the department.
Mr. Cherkasky said that although the Police Department had more work to do, it was "psychologically" important for the court to acknowledge the progress it had made. He said a decision to phase out federal monitoring in Los Angeles could be an encouraging sign to other departments that compliance with court-mandated reforms would eventually end well for agencies that cooperated.
Chief William J. Bratton has complained that the consent decree is expensive and unnecessary since the Police Commission and the office of inspector general can fulfill the watchdog function.
But Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U., said Judge Feess should extend federal monitoring until the department ended racially biased policing practices. Mr. Rosenbaum cited recent department statistics that showed officers had used force against African-Americans and Latinos more frequently than against whites. He also said statistics showed that African-Americans were searched by the Los Angeles police more frequently than whites, even though officers were less likely to find evidence of a crime when they searched blacks.
"This is still a police force where, unfortunately, race still matters when deciding to frisk or arrest, even when there is no evidence of criminal conduct," Mr. Rosenbaum said in an interview.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an expert on policing, agreed that the department had made strides since the inception of the consent decree. But Mr. Chemerinsky said it was premature to end the federal court's role. "If L.A.P.D. has the capacity to make the necessary reforms, the consent decree is at worst unnecessary and redundant," he said. "At best, it is essential. Why take the chance?"
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16) When Suspicion of Teachers Ran Unchecked
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
June 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/nyregion/16teachers.html?ref=us
Fifty-seven years later, Irving Adler still remembers the day he went from teacher to ex-teacher at Straubenmuller Textile High School on West 18th Street.
It was the height of the Red Scare, and the nation was gripped by hysteria over loyalty and subversion. New York City's temples of learning, bursting with postwar immigrants and the first crop of baby boomers, rang with denunciations by interrogators and spies.
Subpoenaed in 1952 to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee investigating Communist influence in schools, Mr. Adler, the math department chairman and a member of the executive board of the embattled Teachers Union, refused to answer questions, citing his constitutional right.
The end came quickly, recalled Mr. Adler, 96, who later acknowledged membership in the Communist Party: "I was teaching a class when the principal sent up a letter he had just received from the superintendent announcing my suspension, as of the close of day."
Mr. Adler, who has written 56 books, was one of 378 New York City teachers ousted by dismissal, resignation or early retirement in the anti-Communist furor of the cold war, when invoking the Fifth Amendment became automatic grounds for termination. These painful stories may have been buried to history, if not for a coming documentary and a lawsuit seeking to reopen 150,000 documents on more than 1,150 teachers who were investigated and on the informers who turned them in. Among the questions, all these years later, is whether their names can be published, and whether there is still a stigma in being named, or having named, a Communist.
The Board of Education's purges came to be widely condemned as the city's own witch hunt, repudiated decades later by subsequent administrations that reinstated dozens of dismissed teachers.
"None of those teachers were ever found negligent in the classroom," said Clarence Taylor, a professor of history at Baruch College who has written a study of the Teachers Union and the ideological strife that destroyed it. "They went after them for affiliation with the Communist Party."
Teacher interrogations also occurred in Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo, among other cities. In hearings of the security subcommittee, about 1,500 of the country's one million teachers were said to be "card-carrying Communists," with two-thirds of the accused residing in New York City.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Lisa Harbatkin, a freelance writer, applied in 2007 to see the files on her deceased parents, Sidney and Margaret Harbatkin, and other teachers summoned for questioning in the 1950s by the city's powerful assistant corporation counsel, Saul Moskoff, assigned to the Board of Education as chief prosecutor.
As next of kin, she got access to files showing that informants had named her parents as Communists, and that her father had surrendered his license rather than be interrogated while her mother escaped retribution. But files on other teachers and suspected informants were withheld.
Under privacy rules adopted last year by the Municipal Archives, researchers without permission from the subjects or their heirs can review files only upon agreeing to seek city approval before quoting material or publishing identifying personal information about the subjects (except for accounts from already-public sources like newspapers).
Ms. Harbatkin sued, gaining free representation from the Albany firm of Hiscock & Barclay. "The city's offer imposes restrictions on her freedom of speech that are unconstitutional," said her lead lawyer, Michael Grygiel. The legal brief calls it "more than a little ironic" that the city sought "to prohibit Ms. Harbatkin from 'naming names' in writing about this period of history."
A lawyer for the city, Marilyn Richter, said that a 1980 court ruling allowed the archives to redact some names before releasing files. But the same ruling noted that the city had sealed the files only until 2000.
"The courts previously determined that the individuals named in these records have a right of privacy not to have their identity revealed," said Ms. Richter. She said the offer to allow Ms. Harbatkin to review unredacted copies of the documents, "if she agrees not to reveal identifying information, actually provides her greater access to the records than the law requires."
Ms. Harbatkin said her aim was to write about cases she found compelling but not to expose every name in the files. "The fear increases directly proportional to how closed off everything is," she said. The city, she said, had no right "to tell you what you can see."
Files already released to Ms. Harbatkin recount a battle of wills in 1956 between her mother and Mr. Moskoff, the inquisitor who became the fearsome face of the crusade to ferret out subversion in the schools. In her interrogation, Margaret Harbatkin acknowledged joining a Communist Party cell under a pseudonym but said she later withdrew.
Then, directed by Mr. Moskoff "to identify those people who were members of this group," she replied: "I don't remember any. I've known teachers at so many different schools. As a substitute I went from - I don't even remember all the different schools I worked at, Mr. Moskoff, and that's the truth."
The files contain reports by informants who have never been publicly identified. But one operative known as "Blondie" and "Operator 51" was later revealed as Mildred V. Blauvelt, a police detective who went undercover for the Board of Education in 1953 and was credited with exposing 50 Communist teachers. Later, in a series of newspaper reminiscences, she said her hardest moments came when, posing as a Communist hard-liner, she had to argue disaffected fellow travelers out of quitting the party.
Other material was collected for a documentary, "Dreamers and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges," begun in 1995 by a social worker and artist, Sophie-Louise Ullman. She died in 2005, but the project, accompanied by a Web site, dreamersandfighters.com, has been continued by her cousin Lori Styler. The unfinished work is narrated by the actor Eli Wallach, whose brother, Samuel, was president of the Teachers Union from 1945 to 1948 and was fired from his teaching job for refusing to answer questions before the superintendent of schools, Dr. William Jansen. Samuel Wallach died at 91 in 2001.
"They called everybody a Communist then," growled Eli Wallach, 93, in a telephone interview, still bridling over the way his brother was treated.
The Teachers Union, which was expelled from the American Federation of Teachers in 1941 before disbanding in 1964 and being succeeded by the United Federation of Teachers, maintained that "no teacher should be disqualified for his opinions or beliefs or his political associations." State and city authorities countered that Communists were unfit to teach because they were bound to the dictates of the party.
When asked by Mr. Moskoff, "Are you now or have you ever been a Communist?" many teachers refused to answer. They were then charged with insubordination and subject to dismissal.
In his case, said Mr. Adler, the math teacher, it worked out happily. In response to his challenge of the state's Feinberg Law, which made it illegal for teachers to advocate the overthrow of the government by force, the United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.
He went on to a successful career as a writer of math and science books, settling in North Bennington, Vt. But although he renounced communism after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, he said, the F.B.I. in 1965 listed him as "a potentially dangerous individual who should be placed on the Security Index" - subject to detention in the event of a national emergency. Another teacher, Minnie Gutride, 40, killed herself with oven gas in 1948 after being called out of her classroom to be questioned about Communist activities.
Outside the written record, Ms. Harbatkin did discover unexpected moments of humanity. The Board of Education was often reluctant to oust a husband and wife when both were teachers, and her mother, who died in 2003, confided to her that after she told Mr. Moskoff she would never sleep again if she provided or verified the names of fellow teachers, he turned off his tape recorder "and told her to keep saying she didn't remember the names."
She was not charged and continued teaching into the 1970s.
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