Yahoo! News - Black Congress Caucus Refocusing Mission:

"When Democrats all but conceded President Bush would get the additional $87 billion he wanted for Iraq and Afghanistan, the Congressional Black Caucus decided to oppose the bill anyway even though four of its members voted for it.

This was not a civil rights question or a matter of racial inequity — the issues that led to the caucus' creation more than three decades ago.
But these are changing times. Largely due to redistricting, some blacks are now elected from majority-white suburbs, Southern farmlands or thriving business hubs, forcing the caucus to refocus its mission. The agenda is still shaped by the liberal causes of urban black American, but no longer is limited to them.
'It just calls for the caucus to send a message out there that we have sent out in the past but maybe not as clearly: We not only represent African-Americans. We represent the vast majority of Americans,' said the group's chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md . . .

. . . Vanderbilt University law professor Carol Swain, who wrote a book about blacks in Congress, said black Democrats are wise to broaden their vision beyond race."

Wired News: Congress Expands FBI Spying Power: "Congress approved a bill on Friday that expands the reach of the Patriot Act, reduces oversight of the FBI and intelligence agencies and, according to critics, shifts the balance of power away from the legislature and the courts.
A provision of an intelligence spending bill will expand the power of the FBI to subpoena business documents and transactions from a broader range of businesses -- everything from libraries to travel agencies to eBay -- without first seeking approval from a judge.

Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can acquire bank records and Internet or phone logs simply by issuing itself a so-called national security letter saying the records are relevant to an investigation into terrorism. The FBI doesn't need to show probable cause or consult a judge. What's more, the target institution is issued a gag order and kept from revealing the subpoena's existence to anyone, including the subject of the investigation.
The new provision in the spending bill redefines the meaning of 'financial institution' and 'financial transaction.' The wider definition explicitly includes insurance companies, real estate agents, the U.S. Postal Service, travel agencies, casinos, pawn shops, ISPs, car dealers and any other business whose 'cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters.' "

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: FBI denies spying on protesters:

"WASHINGTON � Senior FBI officials took the unusual step yesterday of publicly declaring that agents are not using the war against terrorism as a cover to collect information on people who demonstrate against the government.
John Pistole, assistant FBI director for counterterrorism, said recent allegations by civil-liberties groups and some members of Congress about such an intelligence effort are 'flat-out wrong.'
'We have to have some type of predicate, some foundation, some basis for saying, 'This person poses some type of threat,' ' he said. 'The endgame is not to collect intelligence for political purposes. The endgame is to prevent terrorism or criminal activity.'
Some members of Congress are calling for hearings into a bulletin the FBI sent to more than 17,000 state and local police agencies Oct. 15. It warned about anti-war protests being planned for later that month in Washington and San Francisco and urged authorities to report suspicious behavior to the FBI.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups say the bulletin raises concerns that the FBI might return to the abuses of the 1960s and '70s, when agents gathered intelligence intended to neutralize anti-Vietnam War protesters, civil-rights demonstrators and other dissenters."

Police in Illinois underreporting hate crimes: "The annual report on hate crimes committed in Illinois may give a tally that's far below the number of incidents that actually occur.
State law directs all local police to report hate crimes to the Illinois State Police, which forwards the data to the FBI.
No one is enforcing the requirement.
Only 59 of Illinois' 1,099 crime-fighting agencies filed hate crime information in 2002, according to the FBI. The agency uses the numbers in the national hate crimes report, which was released earlier this month.
According to the state and FBI figures, 199 hate crimes were reported in Illinois in 2002. But at least 26 hate crimes went unreported from just four law enforcement agencies in the Chicago suburbs alone."

Yahoo! News - DOES MARRIAGE MATTER?:

by William F. Buckley

The swirl of opinion that came in after the ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court tells its own story, which is that the judicial arm has achieved a moral standing not even dreamed of by Cotton Mather, or mere popes and rabbinical councils. Witness the failure of the two major political parties to take corporate positions on gay marriage.





The Republicans, reflecting the 75 percent of their members who disapprove of the ruling, have criticized it but have not gone so far as to call formally for a constitutional amendment. There is talk of an amendment, but talk also of the unwisdom of traveling in that decisive way. And on the other side, 52 percent of Democrats disapprove of gay marriage, but there is certainly no talk of constitutional intervention by any Democratic candidate for president. This is substantially owing to the training we have had over three generations to the effect that the court is the moral arbiter of behavior. Democracy's temple.


There are lines of a political character drawn. The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) specifically relieves the states from constitutional full-faith-and-credit obligations in the matter of same-sex marriages. Andrew Sullivan, the Catholic gay activist writer, hails the Massachusetts decision warmly and informs his considerable constituency that all that is established by the Massachusetts ruling is that in that state, gay marriage must be sanctioned. This does not mean that Utah has to sanction it, because the Defense of Marriage Act successfully makes its way across the divide of Article IV of the Constitution. We have then an opportunity for the full bloom of federalism: gay marriages in those states that go along, forbidden where forbidden.


A qualifying legal point derives from the opinion itself. What the court narrowly (4-3) ruled was that the language of the state constitution of Massachusetts simply forbids the kind of distinctions that are enforced by limiting marriage to two-gender participants. The Commonwealth has 180 days in which to contrive language that is not discriminatory, but -- is. The Constitution might say that marriage is a union between two people who can create a third person. A different approach would be to distinguish between the nature of benefits conferred on couples who take on the burdens of raising children and those who do not; though there would surely arise a Philadelphia lawyer conjoining with another Philadelphia lawyer to find something constitutionally objectionable in the very idea.


Dramatic revisions are coming up from the fever swamps of the anthropologists, who are saying: Why not just forget the institution of marriage? After all, 26 percent of Americans live alone, and about half of those who marry proceed to get divorced. So why not a market solution to the whole business? Let the parties who decide to cohabit for more merely than a night, or even a month, devise an agreement of sorts having to do with how property should be distributed if they break up. Oh yes, if there were children, how would custody be arranged? All the business about paying the bills and visiting rights -- couldn't a thoughtful arrangement be made here, suited to the different personalities of the participants?


"In the last five years," says Carol Sanger, who teaches family law at Columbia Law School, "there's been much less written on 'why do we need marriage; it's an oppressive relationship,' and much more on alternative forms of marriage."


Indeed we do not know how exactly the major political parties will come down on the question. David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, ruminates that what we know as the institution of marriage originated about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, "when males were brought into the (mother-child) family." But that was done, back then, without reference to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and its status is therefore properly in abeyance.

A different take on the MA decision . . .


Yahoo! News - MASSACHUSETTS DECISION IGNORES FATE OF CHILDREN: "

By Maggie Gallagher

If same-sex marriage is a culture war issue at all, it's a weird one that cuts across the usual political and ideological lines.

Take Elizabeth Marquardt, for example. Elizabeth is a 33-year-old mother, wife, feminist and lifelong Democrat. 'I've always known gays and lesbians -- school, workplaces, neighbors. I find really repellent those who think it is a sinful lifestyle, and I don't want to be identified with them,' she says.
She is a child of divorce, so she certainly knows marriage is not perfect. In fact, as an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values in New York City, she is in the middle of an important research project on the consequences of divorce for the spiritual, moral and emotional development of children.
So when she actually read the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, how did she feel?
'Really angry. I didn't expect to feel that,' she tells me. Why? 'It really offended me the justices so confidently stated that marriage is about the adult commitment and not children. They didn't seem to give a hoot about children at all. The only children they mentioned were those living with gay and lesbian parents in need of legal protection. I agree with that, but that's not the end of the discussion.'
Elizabeth Marquardt supports civil unions, but draws the line at redefining marriage. There is a big chunk of Americans out there who agree: They are not sexual traditionalists across the board. They mostly accept what might be called the liberal understanding of homosexuality. They support various legal protections for gays and lesbians. And a lot of times, they can't quite put their finger on what is making them so queasy about same-sex marriage . . ."

IHT: Meanwhile: The dinde is dandy, so let's give thanks: "Le Jour de Merci Donnant was started by a group of pilgrims (P�lerins) who fled from l'Angleterre before the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World (le Nouveau Monde) where they could shoot Indians (les Peaux-Rouges) and eat turkey (dinde) to their hearts' content. They landed at a place called Plymouth (subsequently a voiture Americaine) in a wooden sailing ship named the Mayflower, or Fleur de Mai, in 1620. But while the P�lerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the P�lerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them.
.
The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the P�lerins was when they taught them how to grow corn (mais). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their P�lerins.
.
In 1623, after another harsh year, the P�lerins' crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more mais was raised by the P�lerins than P�lerins were killed by the Peaux-Rouges.
.
Every year on le Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.
.
It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilom�tres Deboutish) and a shy young lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth named Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant:
.
'Go to the damsel Priscilla (Allez tr�s vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth (la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action (un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe), offers his hand and his heart - the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you understand, but this, in short, is my meaning."

Wyeth to End Anti-Takeover Provision :

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. drugmaker Wyeth (WYE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday said its board of directors had agreed to terminate the company's shareholder rights plan on December 15 because of opposition by many of its shareholders to the anti-takeover measure.
'The board took note of the opposition of shareholders to such plans, as had been demonstrated by the approval of non-binding resolutions seeking a shareholder vote or termination of Wyeth's plan at its last two shareholder meetings,' the Madison, New Jersey-based firm said in a release.
Such plans are commonly put in place by companies as a defense against takeovers. They make unwanted acquisition advances prohibitively time consuming and expensive. "

Macy's Informs 'Mrs. Claus': It's a Parade; It's Not a Pulpit
: "Gather round, my lovelies. 'Tis that very special season. The turkey is roasting. The family is here. And a flamboyant, guttural-voiced openly gay male cross-dresser is having it out with a unit of a corporate retail conglomerate capitalized at more than $8 billion.
It must be Thanksgiving time in New York.

Making this year's celebration memorable, the actor Harvey Fierstein and the producers of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade engaged one another yesterday in a fierce and somewhat indirect debate over whether or not the parade is a sacred institution that should be regarded as above politics.
The festivities began when Mr. Fierstein wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times using the fact of his scheduled appearance in the parade as a rhetorical device to introduce a meditation on the politics of same-sex marriage. The Santa Claus in today's parade would be half of a same-sex couple, he declared, with him as the other half, 'dressed in holiday finery portraying the one and only Mrs. Claus.'
By the end of the day, it was clear that tradition would hold: Santa Claus would be on the final sleigh float, accompanied by Mrs. Claus, a woman. Mr. Fierstein would be on a separate float. But the confusion set Macy's, owned by Federated Department Stores, on a madcap public relations campaign to distance its parade from his opinions without addressing the topics he raised.
In the morning, Macy's officials quickly issued their first statement: 'The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the icon of the Thanksgiving Holiday. It has delighted and entertained families throughout the world for 76 years. The parade has never and will never be a platform for political and social issues and opinions.'"

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Thais mull legalising sex trade:


"The Thai Government has begun a public debate on whether prostitution should be legalised.
Justice Minister Pongthep Thepkanchana opened the debate attended by academics, officials and sex workers. "

BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Top UK judge slams Camp Delta: "One of Britain's most senior judges has condemned the US over the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
Lord Steyn said conditions at Camp Delta were of 'utter lawlessness', in a speech seen by Channel 4 News.
The Law Lord said the US was guilty of a 'monstrous failure of justice' and challenged UK ministers to condemn the decision to hold any prisoners there.
He said detainees were 'beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts and at the mercy of victors'.
Lord Steyn's comments came as Australia said the US had agreed that two of its citizens at the camp would not face the death penalty, although they could face a military tribunal.
British officials said the deal would not affect talks over two UK citizens also facing trial at the base. "

A Massachusetts court starts a national debate that poses problems for both the Republicans and the Democrats:


"ON NOVEMBER 18th, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ensured that gay marriage would be a galvanising issue in the 2004 election. By a four-to-three majority, the court ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage violates the state's constitution. “The right to marry means little,” the court declared, “if it does not include the right to marry the person of one's choice.”

Gay-rights groups described the decision as a “landmark”. Conservatives were furious. “We must amend the [federal] constitution,” announced Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, “if we are to stop a tyrannical judiciary from redefining marriage to the point of extinction.”

The ruling was a significant advance on the most liberal regime so far. In 1999, the high court in another north-eastern state, Vermont, decided that same-sex couples were entitled to marriage-like benefits and protections, but it did not require them to be eligible for marriage licences, thus paving the way for the state's famed “civil unions” which the then governor, Howard Dean, signed into law in 2000. "

Prima-News:

"It has long been impossible in Turkmenistan to register an NGO and function in compliance with existing legislation: organisations are denied registration on various pretexts. From now on, even those NGOs which achieved legal status in the early 90s will be considered to be breaking the law and will have to reapply for registration. Everybody understands perfectly well, that after the adoption of the new law on public associations, only those organisations which, although formally called “non-government” but which are in actual fact run by the state, will be able to achieve legal status, organisations such as the Gurbansoltan Edzhe Women’s Union (named after the president’s mother), the Atamurat Niyazov Council of War Veterans and Labour (named after the president’s father), the Makhtumkuli Youth Union, the country’s trade unions and the sole Turkmen democratic party."

KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS; JOHNSON SWORN IN ON PLANE

Op-Ed Columnist: David Brooks


Still, even in this time of crisis, every human being in the United States has the chance to move from the path of contingency to the path of marital fidelity — except homosexuals. Gays and lesbians are banned from marriage and forbidden to enter into this powerful and ennobling institution. A gay or lesbian couple may love each other as deeply as any two people, but when you meet a member of such a couple at a party, he or she then introduces you to a "partner," a word that reeks of contingency.

You would think that faced with this marriage crisis, we conservatives would do everything in our power to move as many people as possible from the path of contingency to the path of fidelity. But instead, many argue that gays must be banished from matrimony because gay marriage would weaken all marriage. A marriage is between a man and a woman, they say. It is women who domesticate men and make marriage work.

Well, if women really domesticated men, heterosexual marriage wouldn't be in crisis. In truth, it's moral commitment, renewed every day through faithfulness, that "domesticates" all people.

Some conservatives may have latched onto biological determinism (men are savages who need women to tame them) as a convenient way to oppose gay marriage. But in fact we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh and by our gender. We're moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants, such as the one Ruth made with Naomi: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried."

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.

Marriage is not voting. It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage. Not making it means drifting further into the culture of contingency, which, when it comes to intimate and sacred relations, is an abomination.

Special Registration for Arab Immigrants Will Reportedly Stop: "ASHINGTON, Nov. 21 — The Homeland Security Department has decided to stop a program that required thousands of Arab and Muslim men to register with immigration authorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said on Friday.
Hoping to hunt down terrorists, immigration officials fingerprinted, photographed and interviewed 85,000 Muslim and Arab noncitizens from November 2002 to May 2003 under the program. The effort, the largest to register immigrants in decades, required annual reporting. Men from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria began going to immigration offices for a second round of registrations this month.
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Officials have acknowledged that most of the Arabs and Muslims who have complied with the requirements had no ties to terrorist groups. Of the 85,000 men who went to immigration offices early this year, as well as tens of thousands screened at airports and border crossings, 11 had links to terrorism, officials said."

Justices Mull Twist in Law on Age Bias: "When Congress made it illegal 36 years ago for employers to discriminate on the basis of age, it was clear that older workers were protected from discriminatory treatment that favored those who were younger. The question in a Supreme Court argument on Wednesday was whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act also meant the reverse: if Congress in addition meant to prohibit policies that favor older workers over younger ones.
The plain language of the statute suggests one interpretation, while the context in which the law was enacted in 1967 suggests the opposite. An employer shall not discriminate against someone 'because of such individual's age,' the law reads, without specifying 'older age' or 'younger age.' The law's protection begins at age 40 and has no upper limit."

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Despite a media blitz, the biography of America's best-known soldier from the Iraq war, Jessica Lynch, appeared unlikely on Tuesday to translate into big cash as the first day of sales fell short of expectations.
After days of magazine covers, TV movies, tabloid tales and television interviews, first-day sales of her authorized biography, 'I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story,' fell well short of other high-profile books like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoir, which had buyers lining up around the block. "

News: "Anti-war protesters claim that US authorities have demanded a rolling 'exclusion zone' around President George Bush during his visit, as well as a ban on marches in parts of central London.
The Stop The War Coalition said yesterday that it had been told by the police that it would not be allowed to demonstrate in Parliament Square and Whitehall next Thursday - a ban it said it was determined to resist. The coalition says that it has also been told by British officials that American officials want a distance kept between Mr Bush and protesters, for security reasons and to prevent their appearance in the same television shots."

News Analysis: It's a Question of Federal Turf:

"By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: November 12, 2003


ASHINGTON, Nov. 11 � In its decision to accept the Guant�namo Bay prisoners' appeals despite the Bush administration's objections, the Supreme Court brushed past the 'judges keep out' fence the administration had tried to erect around its open-ended detention policy.
No matter how the court eventually rules, that action alone may well come to define a singular moment in the relationship between the White House and the Supreme Court, two inherently powerful institutions that for the last several years have been in alpha mode, each intent on exercising its power to the maximum extent possible."

By the way, Linda Greenhouse is coming to Dartmouth late next week.

BBC NEWS | Health | Baby gender selection ruled out: "British parents should not be allowed to choose the sex of their babies, regulators have ruled."

BBC NEWS | Europe | German state plans headscarf ban: "A German state has begun moves to ban Muslims from wearing headscarves in schools. "

Brutal child slave trade uncovered on Romanian pig farm
: "By Daniel Howden, East Europe Correspondent
11 November 2003
A near-fatal accident on a pig farm in Romania has uncovered a brutal new trade in forced labour in which poverty-stricken parents sell their children into slavery for as little as £70."

ON THIS DAY | 11 | 1992 Church of England votes for women priests

Twelve years to this day since women were first ordained as priests in the Church of England.

The Seattle Times: Charles Krauthhammer: Condescending Dean drops his Everyman mask: "WASHINGTON � Howard Dean wants the white-trash vote. That's not exactly what he said, but that's clearly what he meant when he said he wanted the votes of 'guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.' It was a beautiful moment. It produced at the very next Democratic debate the perfect liberal storm: a comedy of class snobbery, regional condescension and political correctness, with a touch of race-baiting thrown in for good measure.
It began with a student at the CNN debate on Tuesday declaring himself offended by Dean's remark. It included the ever-reliable Al Sharpton charging Dean with cuddling up to Stonewall Jackson. It was highlighted by Dean saying, in essence, that he is not a Confederate � indeed, it seemed, that every candidate was ready to declare undying allegiance to Lincoln and the Union � but that if the Democratic Party wanted to compete it would have to go after poor Southern whites.
. . .

Those people? All this proved a bit much for John Edwards, whose knowledge of the South is firsthand. Edwards, who grew up white, working-class and Southern, made the devastatingly correct observation that Dean's problem is not racism but condescension.

Edwards is too politic to say it, but it's not hard to read the subtext of his rejoinder — that this snob from the very White Mountains of New England thinks we Southerners are the kind of trash James Carville once said (of Paula Jones) you find by dragging a $100 bill through a trailer park. You could almost hear Edwards saying: Vote for me, another Southern white like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — winners both — rather than another effete Northerner, this one from the mean streets of Montpelier. "

Finally. . .

Chicago Tribune | Supreme Court to Hear Guantanamo Appeals: "WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court will hear its first case arising from the government's anti-terrorism campaign following the Sept. 11 attacks, agreeing Monday to consider whether foreigners held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts.

The appeals came from British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens held with more than 600 others suspected of being Taliban or al-Qaida foot soldiers. Most were picked up in U.S. anti-terrorism sweeps in Afghanistan following the attacks of two years ago.

The court combined the men's appeals and will hear the consolidated case sometime next year.

Lower courts had found that the American civilian court system did not have authority to hear the men's complaints about their treatment"

What is going on in NH? A priest (Father Don Wilson) was fired because he opposed Gene Robinson's appointment and now his replacement is attacking his supporters.


Push comes to shove: Conservatives disrupt Episcopal service in N.H.: "ROCHESTER, N.H. - A group of conservative Episcopalians walked out of a service here yesterday to protest the firing of a priest who opposed the election of the nation's first openly gay Episcopal bishop.

``We are not leaving the church, but we will not receive communion from a non-Orthodox priest,'' Jacqueline Ellwood said, reading from a written statement at the Church of the Redeemer in Rochester. ``. . . This is to honor our Lord Jesus Christ and support Father Don Wilson.''
With that, Ellwood said, the interim priest assigned by retiring Bishop Douglas Theuner bounded toward her, attempting to grab the statement and pushing her down the aisle."

Twisted history, yes...

From the article:
"However, CBS gave itself a black eye by spicing up fact with disparaging, ideologically driven fiction. Notoriously, the miniseries contained a scene in which Nancy Reagan pleaded with her husband to do something to help AIDS sufferers, only to have him reply, "They that live in sin shall die in sin." Playwright Elizabeth Egloff, who wrote the final version of the script, admitted there was no record of Reagan saying anything of the kind but argued that "we know he ducked the issue over and over again.""


"LAST WEEK, after a barrage of intense criticism from conservative talk show hosts, activists, and politicians, CBS announced that it was canceling the scheduled broadcast of the controversial miniseries 'The Reagans.' (The four-hour docudrama will air next year on Showtime, a pay cable network.) Is this a blow to free speech or a blow for decency? Much of the reaction has been predictably split along party lines: rejoicing on the right, hand-wringing on the left. Fox News analyst Liz Trotta gushed that the cancellation was 'a triumph for America,' while Washington Monthly commentator Joshua Micah Marshall lamented on his weblog, 'Wake me up when we're back in America.' (There have been exceptions: In Salon.com, the liberal Joe Conason blasted 'conservative commissars who want to censor any negative images of Reagan from network TV' but also harshly criticized the movie for tampering with history -- while on Fox News, William McGowan, a strong critic of left-wing bias in the media, called the backlash against CBS 'political correctness on the right.')"

Read article here.

With Cash Tight, States Reassess Long Jail Terms: "OLYMPIA, Wash., Nov. 6 — After two decades of passing ever tougher sentencing laws and prompting a prison building boom, state legislatures facing budget crises are beginning to rethink their costly approaches to crime.
In the past year, about 25 states have passed laws eliminating some of the lengthy mandatory minimum sentences so popular in the 1980's and 1990's, restoring early release for parole and offering treatment instead of incarceration for some drug offenders. In the process, politicians across the political spectrum say they are discovering a new motto. Instead of being tough on crime, it is more effective to be smart on crime.
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In Washington, the first state in the country to pass a stringent 'three strikes' law by popular initiative a decade ago, a bipartisan group of legislators passed several laws this year reversing some of their more punitive statutes.
One law shortened sentences for drug offenders and set up money for drug treatment. Another increased the time inmates convicted of drug and property crimes could earn to get out of prison early. Another eliminated parole supervision for low-risk inmates after their release."


"It was a little like Nixon going to China when Norm [a Republican] went down to the Legislature to persuade them to support this," said his chief of staff, Dan Satterberg.

Finally, a post I agree with (sort of):

Nick Santos writes: "Congratulations to Texas for finally moving into the 20th century by approving science textbooks that don't pander to the Religious Right. Seriously, considering everything I've heard about the dominance of the Wrong Christians in Texas, it must have taken a lot of courage for the Board of Education to finally take care of this.

But then, not all is well in the land of censorship-free education. The Christian Science Monitor reports on the status of Iraqi textbooks, where censors have included anything that's even remotely critical of the US. That includes the Persian Gulf War, and anything related to Israel. Of course, that means when questions come up, teachers just teach from their personal knowledge and experience -- which isn't THAT bad, in my opinion. The old Saddam-deifying textbooks are gone, and at least we haven't shoved any unabashedly pro-American textbooks down the Iraqis throats. Things could be worse."

The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News - School voucher battlebegins in Concord: "New Hampshire lawmakers are about to launch into another education battle, this time over a school voucher system that would let parents take public school money and spend it at private schools of their choice.
House Bill 754 would allow parents to use up to 80 percent of the state�s per-pupil adequate education grant for tuition at a private school. The bill makes no distinction between religious and secular private schools. "


The ACLU opposes vouchers. . .

FOXNews.com - Business - Illegal Immigrant Workers Sue Wal-Mart

Sunday, November 09, 2003

FREEHOLD, N.J. — Nine illegal immigrants who worked as janitors at Wal-Mart (search) until they were arrested during federal raids last month have sued the company, accusing it of discrimination.

The nine say they were paid lower wages and offered fewer benefit because they are Mexicans, and they accuse Wal-Mart and its cleaning contractors of failing to pay for overtime, withhold taxes or make required workers' compensation contributions.

Their lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Superior Court (search) in Freehold, seeks more than $200,000 in back pay.

The plaintiffs, who now face deportation, were among 250 people arrested in an Oct. 23 federal immigration crackdown at 60 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states. Theirs is the first lawsuit among the immigrants arrested.

According to the lawsuit, Wal-Mart employed cleaning contractors "with full knowledge" that they paid illegal immigrants less than legal workers. "


Whaddya think?

And, I thought the names were pretty cute.

FOXNews.com - Views - Tongue Tied - Snow White Snafu, Truth on Campus: "A traditional English Christmas show titled 'Snow White and the Seven Asylum Seekers' has been cancelled out of fears that the content might be too 'racially sensitive,' reports London's Guardian.

The pantomime was to be performed in the village of Merton, but city officials canned it after hearing from a couple of regional racial equality groups. The groups suggested that the play was not illegal, but warned that the committee putting on the show 'had a duty to act in an inclusive and non-discriminatory way.'
In the show, the seven asylum seekers work illegally at a quarry and live in 'grotty' conditions in a cottage in the woods, where they are portrayed as living off baked beans and never bathing. The seven were named Chemical Ali, Comical Ali, Back Ali, Dark Ali, Bowling Ali, Ali G, and Ali-Kiss-Angel. "

Daily online newspaper: The Christian Science Monitor: "USA

Some states to drop presidential primaries


Several states have moved to drop their presidential primaries next year, worried about costs in still-tight financial times and wondering if the political exercise would serve any purpose.
Some say they can't afford the millions of dollars it costs to put on an election. Others say the decisions reflect the lopsided nature of modern primaries: The front-runner gets anointed by the media and campaign donors after the first few state primaries and the rest of the primaries are formalities.
The decisions add fuel to the argument that the primary system is in dire need of repairs. In most states forgoing a primary, party-run caucuses will be used instead to choose delegates to the national conventions.
So far, Kansas, Colorado, and Utah - all with Republican-controlled legislatures - have canceled their state-run 2004 primaries. Republican legislatures tried unsuccessfully to drop primaries in Arizona and Missouri, but Democratic governors either vetoed the primary bill or restored the funding."

College presidents seek to close minority gap | csmonitor.com: "Just five months ago, the US Supreme Court decided ethnic diversity on campus was so important that selective colleges must be allowed to weigh race as one factor in a thorough admissions profile - no blunt race-based admissions formulas allowed, please. It brought cheers at the nation's elite private and public colleges and universities, where officials rejoiced that their style of admissions programs fit the ruling already.
But for some, the high court decision spotlighted another sticky question of racial equity: Just how well are colleges teaching minorities once they are admitted? Why do grades and graduation rates of minority students persistently lag those of white students?
. . .

At 146 competitive colleges and universities, the six-year graduation rate is more than 20 points higher for white students than black students. It is seven points higher for non-Hispanic white students than Hispanic students, the CHAS group reported.

Nationwide, among young adults with at least some college, the graduation rate for African-American students (25 percent) is 19 points lower than for white students (44 percent), it reports."

CNN.com - Gore accuses Bush of undermining freedoms - Nov. 9, 2003: "Gore said that though the threat of terrorism and the potential use of weapons of mass destruction required speedy action by the executive branch, 'President Bush has stretched this new practical imperative way beyond what is healthy for our democracy.'
Gore said the Bush administration has sought 'to rule by secrecy and unquestioned authority,' and he accused Republicans in Congress of aiding the White House by threatening to shut down investigations over political disputes.
'They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, Big Brother-style government -- toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book '1984' -- than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America,' Gore said. "

Boston Herald: Robinson calls for church to welcome outcasts, expand ``fences'': "PETERBOROUGH, N.H. - The Rev. V. Gene Robinson began his ministry as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal church Sunday by saying he wants to bring the message of God's love to ``those on the margins.''"

The third survey is really of interest to me here -- close to 60% of Americans feel that it is more important for the government "To provide freedom to pursue goals" than to provide a healthy standard of living for everyone. Huh? If someone is in need of, say, food and shelter, they wouldn't really have any goals other than to find food and shelter. If the government does not make provisions to provide them with these basic necessities, the homeless wouldn't have the "freedom" to pursue their true goals, which, I am sure, have nothing to do with day-to-day food and shelter.

Of course, freedoms to pursue our own individualistic goals should not be compromised in any way.






Read article here.

More on the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson saga. . .

Souls Divided: "Nov. 17 issue � Deep in the �War Room,� the battle plan is being honed. The leader talks of �insurgency� and �unconventional war-fare.� But this general is no military man. He is the Rev. Canon David Anderson, an Episcopal priest. In a Washington, D.C., office building, Father Anderson is plotting a fierce rebellion against the Episcopal Church, U.S.A.
WITH THE NATIONAL church�s elevation last week of an openly gay man, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, to a bishop of New Hampshire, conservative Episcopalians are vowing to divorce themselves from the organization, essentially breaking off relations with an institution that has been in place since the Revolution. These dissident dioceses account for perhaps 20 percent of the American church�s 2.7 million members. In the international Anglican community, meanwhile, numbering about 77 million, conservative leaders (mostly in developing countries) say they will boycott meetings with the American church. The Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the worldwide church, appointed a commission in October to study these problems."

With New Hampshire Voters, It's More the War Than the Economy:

"Times are relatively good in New Hampshire. The unemployment rate is more than a point below the nation's — even in Franklin, a blue-collar town that has struggled since the textile mills shut down 30 years ago. Now it's the war that is making some New Hampshire voters nervous, so much so that the division could be seen at the table nearest the kitchen at Cafe Louie."


Well, I guess New Hampshireans don't really care about civil liberties related issues.

"Attorneys for sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo, whose trial opens tomorrow, will strive from the start to limit the use of the graphic evidence that has brought jurors to tears in fellow suspect John Allen Muhammad's trial.
Graphic photographs of sniper victims, disturbing recordings of 9-1-1 calls from frantic witnesses and sobbing testimony from victims' relatives have dominated the 3-week-old Muhammad trial here. In particular, the 9-1-1 recording of William Franklin after his wife, Linda, had been shot in the head in Falls Church on Oct. 14, 2002, caused jurors to weep openly.
Mr. Malvo, 18, faces two capital-murder charges in the slaying of Mrs. Franklin � one under Virginia's new antiterrorism law and one for killing more than one person in three years. His trial begins tomorrow in nearby Chesapeake, Va.
The antiterrorism law 'opens the door to bringing in [as evidence] a lot of other bad acts,' said Craig S. Cooley, a lawyer for the teenager. 'If the terrorism statute is not in play, then you're limited to putting into evidence only the murder of Linda Franklin [and one other murder].'
The sniper cases are the first to be tried under Virginia's antiterrorism law, which was enacted about three months before random shootings in the Washington area left 10 dead and three wounded during a three-week rampage last October.
The new law, which calls for the death penalty, is one of the reasons U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft let the suspects to be tried first in Virginia instead of in Maryland, where the sniper shootings began and which had more victims.
Under the law, terrorism is defined as a crime committed with the "intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy, conduct or activities of the government through intimidation or coercion." Prosecutors are not required to establish who actually pulled the trigger because the law targets "evil masterminds," not just their henchmen. "


Read entire article here.

California bishops split on anointed gay peer / Angry words over whose church is the real church: "Two California bishops have fired new warning shots in the Episcopal Church's holy war over homosexuality.
The battling bishops -- John-David Schofield of Fresno and San Francisco's William Swing -- have each accused the other of separating from the church, but neither appears to be going anywhere.
The long-simmering conflict boiled over when the Episcopal Church anointed the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop last Sunday in New Hampshire. That action, says Bishop Schofield, means that Bishop Swing and other Robinson supporters in the American hierarchy have left the Episcopal Church. "

"WASHINGTON — Tonight, NBC will air its made-for-TV movie celebrating Pvt. Jessica Lynch, whose capture and rescue have been the feel-good story of America's invasion of Iraq.
But some African Americans don't feel so good about Lynch's story. Instead, they ask: What about Shoshana Johnson?

Johnson, an Army specialist, belonged to the same 507th Maintenance Company as Lynch. Unlike Lynch, Johnson fought to stave off its Iraqi captors. Like Lynch, she sustained serious injuries."

Read on here.

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