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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/01/16/politics/p111958S86.DTL&type=printable
McCain Hopes to Make Amends With Dobson
- By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
(01-16) 11:19 PST Columbia, S.C. (AP) --
Sen. John McCain said Tuesday he hopes to patch things up with conservativeChristian leader James Dobson, who recently said he wouldn't support theRepublican's presidential bid under any circumstances.
In a radio interview with KCBI, a Dallas Christian station, Dobson arguedthat McCain didn't support traditional marriage values and said he hasprayed "we won't get stuck with him." Dobson is founder of Focus on theFamily.
"I'm obviously disappointed and I'd like to continue and have a dialoguewith Dr. Dobson and other members of the community," McCain said Tuesdayduring a stop in Columbia.
McCain has said gay marriage should not be legal but has angered someconservatives with his opposition to a constitutional amendment banningsame-sex unions. The Arizona senator said the issue should be left to thestates.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/16468314.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Tue, Jan. 16, 2007
IMMIGRATION
U.S. warning alarms some given asylum, green cards
A statement recently posted on a federal website has raised concern amongpermanent residents who obtained green cards through asylum.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
Thousands of immigrants who obtained green cards after receiving asylum nowrisk losing them if they return to the countries where they claimed theywere persecuted, a recent U.S. government warning suggests.
The notice, titled ''fact sheet,'' marks the first time the agency haspublicly warned those with green cards that they could lose their asylumstatus, according to immigration attorneys. More than 110,000 immigrants whowon asylum since 1996 have received green cards, according to the Office ofImmigration Statistics.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/us/17bomber.html?pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
Court Vacates Term of Algerian in Bomb Plot
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 16 - A federal appeals court on Tuesday vacated the 2005sentence of an Algerian man convicted of plotting to bomb Los AngelesInternational Airport.
The man, Ahmed Ressam, known as the Millennium Bomber because of prosecutors' claims that he intended to bomb the airport on the eve of the millennium,was arrested in December 1999 in Washington State after driving off a ferryfrom British Columbia in a car with bomb-making materials in its trunk. Hewas convicted on nine counts, including document fraud and transportation ofdeadly explosives, and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
But on Tuesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, inSan Francisco, reversed his conviction on the ninth count, which chargedthat he was carrying explosives while committing the felony of making afalse statement to customs officials about both his identity and the factthat he had explosives.
Mr. Ressam became a suspect when a customs agent felt that his itineraryseemed unusual and that he was acting in a peculiar manner.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/opinion/17pearl.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Another Perspective, or Jihad TV?
By JUDEA PEARL
Los Angeles
IN late 2001, three months before my son, the Wall Street Journal reporterDaniel Pearl, was kidnapped, he interviewed the influential Qatari clericSheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and asked him about suicide bombings againstIsraeli civilians. The sheik replied with a novel twist of logic. "Israelisociety in general is armed," he said, implying that Israeli civilians -including women and children, doctors and journalists - are legitimatetargets.
At the time, it was still surprising to see an authoritative Muslim clericgive religious license to the ideology of terror - granting the faithfulpermission to elevate their own grievances above the norms of civilizedsociety.
Daniel would fall victim to that same ideology when he was abducted andmurdered in Pakistan. After his death, I discovered that Sheik Qaradawi isthe host of a weekly program on the Qatar-based TV news network Al Jazeeracalled "Sharia and Life." He uses this forum to preach his new morality tomillions of Arabic-speaking viewers, including Hamas operatives, Al Qaedarecruits, schoolteachers and impressionable Muslim youths. "We have the'children bomb,' and these human bombs must continue until liberation," hetold his audience in 2002. Consistent with this logic and morality, SheikQaradawi later extended his Koranic blessing to suicide bombing againstAmerican civilians in Iraq.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/opinion/17wed3.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
Editorial
Ending the Prison Windfall
The Census Bureau typically uses the decennial census to testdata-collection methods that become routine later on. The 2010 census shouldinclude a test run at counting the nation's 1.4 million prison inmates attheir permanent addresses instead of in prisons. That would help bring anend to a corrosive but little known practice that distorts the politicalprocess in virtually every corner of the country.
Inmates are denied the right to vote in all but two states. But statelawmakers treat them as residents of the prisons when drawing legislativemaps, to inflate the head count in lightly populated rural areas whereprisons are typically built. This creates legislative districts where nonewould ordinarily be, shifting political influence from the heavily populatedurban districts where inmates live.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601334_pf.html
Purse Strings and Pragmatism
By Melvin R. Laird
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; A19
The brewing fight in Congress over continued funding of the war in Iraq willnot be the country's first. It is an ominous reminder of 1975, when Congresscut off funding for the Vietnam War three years after our combat troops hadleft. With the assistance we promised South Vietnam in the 1972 ParisAccords -- U.S. equipment, replacement parts and ammunition -- it had wonevery major battle since we left. But Congress lost the will to keep ourpromise and killed the appropriation. The result was a bloodbath.
I spent 16 years in Congress, much of the time on the Appropriations defensesubcommittee grilling defense secretaries about the conduct of the VietnamWar. Then, as defense secretary I spent four years on the other side of thetable, holding fast to an exit strategy I believed in, "Vietnamization." Inever lost a vote during those four years. But it would have beendevastating if Congress had cut the purse strings before our troops werewithdrawn and before the South Vietnamese had learned to stand on their own.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/us/17race.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
Racial Hate Feeds a Gang War's Senseless Killing
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 16 - The Latino gang members were looking for a blackperson, any black person, to shoot, the police said, and they found one.Cheryl Green, perched near her scooter chatting with friends, was shot deadin a spray of bullets that left several other young people injured.
She was 14, an eighth grader who loved junk food and watching Court TV withher mother and had recently written a poem beginning: "I am black andbeautiful. I wonder how I will be living in the future."
"I never thought something like this could happen here in L.A.," said hermother, Charlene Lovett, fighting tears.
Cheryl's killing last month, which the police said followed a confrontationbetween the gang members and a black man, stands out in a wave ofbias-related attacks and incidents in a city that promotes its diversity asmuch as frets over it.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011201846_pf.html
The Evidence Is Thin on Multivitamins
By Sally Squires
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; HE01
If you're among the 52 percent of Americans who take multivitamins orminerals, you may be surprised to learn how little experts know about theirbenefits -- or their potential harm.
In a series of papers in this month's American Journal of ClinicalNutrition, an expert panel convened by the National Institutes of Healthnotes that there's not enough evidence to recommend for or against thesecommon dietary supplements.
Yet U.S. consumers -- hoping to prevent heart disease, cancer, bone loss andmany other conditions -- spend $23 billion a year on multivitamins andminerals, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.
"If you're taking a multivitamin, there's no reason to stop," notes PaulCoates, director of the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. "But if you'renot taking a multivitamin, there's also no reason to start taking one,either."
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601612_pf.html
Lawmakers' Lobbying Spouses Avoid Hill Reforms
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; A01
When Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) rose to the Senate floor last summer andpassionately argued for keeping the federal estate tax, he left one personwith an interest in retaining the tax unmentioned.
The multibillion-dollar life-insurance industry, which was fighting topreserve the tax because life insurers have a lucrative business sellingpolicies and annuities to Americans for estate planning, has employedDorgan's wife as a lobbyist since 1999.
A few months earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) had pleaded for restraintas she urged colleagues to avoid overreacting to the news that the Bushadministration had let a United Arab Emirates company take over operationsat six U.S. ports. At the same time, her husband, Robert J. Dole, a formersenator and presidential nominee, was registered to lobby for that companyand was advising it on how to save the deal from the political firestorm.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601335_pf.html
Seven Tough Choices We Will Not Make
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; A19
Fulfilling their promise, Democrats in the House have voted to raise theminimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour to $7.25 by 2009. But before youcount the big gains for low-income families, consider this fact: Among thepoorest fifth of U.S. households (their 2005 incomes: less than $19,178),only one in seven has a full-time, year-round worker. About 60 percent haveno worker at all, says the Census Bureau. The rest have part-time orpart-year workers. A higher minimum wage won't help most of thesehouseholds, which consist heavily of single parents and the elderly.
Among social scientists, it's no secret that the minimum wage is a weakweapon against poverty. Modest numbers of workers are affected; many areteenagers, often from middle-class homes; and many of the poor don't work.And a higher minimum wage may destroy some jobs. No matter. Democratsplunged ahead because raising the minimum wage is symbolically powerful. Itsays that you care about "economic justice."
This is, I think, a metaphor for what ails our politics: It's mostly aboutgestures and giveaways; it's not about hard choices.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070115/COL04/701150333
Adultery could mean life, court finds
That's what the law says in sex-drug case Cox appealed
January 15, 2007
BY BRIAN DICKERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan'ssecond-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling canbe prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishableby up to life in prison.
"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended theresult we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for aunanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language ofthe statute from reaching any other conclusion."
"Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration inan adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serioussexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601577_pf.html
Senators To Target Executive Benefit
Deferred Pay May Be Capped
By Lori Montgomery and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; D01
The Senate Finance Committee is considering a proposal to sharply limit theearnings corporate executives and other highly paid employees can placetax-free into deferred compensation plans, one of the most popular executivebenefits in corporate America.
Under the proposal, expected to be discussed today by committee members, anindividual taxpayer could defer no more than $1 million annually incompensation, beginning this year. The shift in tax policy would be likelyto affect top executives at hundreds of corporations and would raise taxeson some of the nation's wealthiest workers by an estimated $806 million over10 years.
The proposal tracks rhetoric that some Democrats employed during the midtermelections, when they portrayed the Republicans who controlled Congress asbeing too close to special interests and the wealthy. It also offers aresponse to controversies that have erupted over executive pay in recentmonths, including scandals over backdated stock options andmultimillion-dollar compensation packages paid to current and formercorporate chieftains.
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Sacbee.com
http://www.sacbee.com/110/v-print/story/108824.html
Editorial: Reclaiming our values
Endless detention hurts U.S. efforts abroad
-
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, January 17, 2007
During World War II, the United States had 511 camps that housed more than425,000 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war. The POWs weredetained from 1942 to 1945, and then returned to their home countries by1946.
Contrast that history with what's happening with prisoners captured in thewar in Afghanistan that began in October 2001.
The U.S. military picked up some prisoners in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan.But about 86 percent of the 759 prisoners who ended up at the U.S. base atGuantánamo Bay, Cuba, were picked up in random sweeps by Pakistanis andAfghans who had been enticed by U.S. bounties of $500 to $1,000. Someprisoners turned out to be Chinese dissidents training in Afghanistan tooppose Chinese domination, not to fight Americans.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011601463_pf.html
Immigrants Mistreated, Report Says
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; A08
U.S. authorities mistreated suspected illegal immigrants at five prisons andjails nationwide, violating federal standards meant to ensure safe andhumane custody, according to a government report released yesterday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and contractorsdenied timely medical treatment to some of the immigrants, failed todisclose and justify disciplinary actions against them, and improperlylimited access to relatives, lawyers and immigration authorities, accordingto the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.
Detention officers failed to establish a system to report abuse and violatedhealth and safety rules by neglecting to monitor prisoners on hunger strikesor suicide watches and by serving undercooked food, the report said.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/washington/17libby.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1169038927-2SIwJu7SCs249eYzLhx1Cg&pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
As Trial Begins, Cheney's Ex-Aide Is Still a Puzzle
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - Paradox seems to define I. Lewis Libby Jr., whoremains a bit mysterious even to close colleagues. He is the White Housepolicy enforcer who also wrote a literary novel; a buttoned-down Washingtonlawyer who likes knocking back tequila shots in cowboy bars and hurtlingdown mountains on skis and bikes; and a 56-year-old intellectual known toall by his childhood nickname, Scooter.
But now comes the most baffling paradox of all, as Mr. Libby, former chiefof staff and alter ego to Vice President Dick Cheney, began his trial infederal court here on Tuesday on charges of perjury and obstruction ofjustice. By all accounts a first-rate legal mind and a hypercautious aidewhose discretion frustrated reporters, he is charged with repeatedly lyingto a grand jury and to the F.B.I. about his leaks to the news media in thebattle over Iraq war intelligence.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
January 17, 2007
Economix
What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
By DAVID LEONHARDT
The human mind isn't very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2trillion. We don't deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, andso when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it fromany other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion - they all start tosound the same.
The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the numberitself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When youdo that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.
For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public healthcampaign - a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for everyAmerican whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a globalimmunization campaign to save millions of children's lives.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_011607L.shtml
Iraq Edges Closer to Iran, With or Without the US
By Louise Roug and Borzou Daragahi
The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday 16 January 2007
Baghdad - The Iraqi government is moving to solidify relations withIran, even as the United States turns up the rhetorical heat and bolstersits military forces to confront Tehran's influence in Iraq.
Iraq's foreign minister, responding to a U.S. raid on an Iranian officein Irbil in northern Iraq last week, said Monday that the governmentintended to transform similar Iranian agencies into consulates. Theminister, Hoshyar Zebari, also said the government planned to negotiate moreborder entry points with Iran.
The U.S. military is still holding five Iranians detained in Thursday'sraid. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq,said records seized in the raid and statements made by the detainees showedthat at least some of them worked for Iran's intelligence service.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-01-16-violence_x.htm
Baghdad university bombing kills 65 as U.N. reports 34,000 Iraqi civilianskilled in '06
Updated 1/16/2007 3:36 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AP) - An explosion outside a Baghdad university as students wereheading home for the day killed at least 65 people on Tuesday in thedeadliest of several attacks on predominantly Shiite areas. The attacks -and the announcement of four U.S. military deaths - came on a day the UnitedNations said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died last year in sectarianviolence.
Attacks in Baghdad - including the university explosion, blasts at amarketplace for used motorcycles and a drive-by shooting - killed more than100 people in what appeared to be a final spasm of violence ahead of animminent drive by the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to secure thecapital.
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Forwarded from Susan Frishkorn
Tri-County - chances@attglobal.net
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36166
Published on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 by Inter Press Service
Bush's New Iran Policy - No Evidence for IED Charge
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - For 18 months now, the George W. Bush administration hasperiodically raised the charge that Iran is supplying anti-coalition forcesin Iraq with arms.
But in the past, high administration officials have always admittedthat they have no real evidence to support it. Now, they are going further.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on her current MiddleEastern trip, "I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranianinvolvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs[improvised explosive devices] and that are endangering our troops, andthat's going to be dealt with."
However, Rice failed to provide any evidence of official Iranian
involvement.
The previous pattern had been that U.S. and British officials suggestthat Iranian government involvement in the use by Sunni insurgents or Shiitemilitias of "shaped charges" that can penetrate U.S. armoured vehicles isthe only logical conclusion that could be drawn from the facts. But whenasked point blank, they admit that they have no evidence to support it.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
Washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011501204_pf.html
Interrogation Research Is Lacking, Report Says
Few Studies Have Examined U.S. Methods
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; A15
There is almost no scientific evidence to back up the U.S. intelligencecommunity's use of controversial interrogation techniques in the fightagainst terrorism, and experts believe some painful and coercive approachescould hinder the ability to get good information, according to a new reportfrom an intelligence advisory group.
The 374-page report from the Intelligence Science Board examines severalaspects of broad interrogation methods and approaches, and it finds that nosignificant scientific research has been conducted in more than four decadesabout the effectiveness of many techniques the U.S. military andintelligence groups use regularly. Intelligence experts wrote that a lack ofresearch could explain why abuse has been alleged at U.S. facilities inAfghanistan, Cuba and Iraq.
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Forwarded from Susan Frishkorn
Tri-County - chances@attglobal.net
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html
January 17, 2007
What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy
By DAVID LEONHARDT
The human mind isn't very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2trillion. We don't deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, andso when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it fromany other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion - they all start tosound the same.
The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the numberitself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When youdo that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.
For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public healthcampaign - a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for everyAmerican whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a globalimmunization campaign to save millions of children's lives.
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Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/not-only-the-worst-presid_b_38703.html?p=2#comments
Not Only the Worst President, but the Worst Possible President
Back in the year 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote and wasshoe-horned into office by the Supreme Court in spite of clear conflicts ofinterest on the part of Scalia and Thomas, the psychology of Little Georgewas known to only a few. To most of us he seemed like a doofus--a more orless well-meaning guy who enjoyed running things like baseball teams and theState of Texas if not too much work was involved. Had been an alcoholic anda drug user, but had apparently come clean in some hazy, quasi-religiousway--that was his personal history to many Americans (if not to all thosewho met with Karl Rove behind closed doors and heard the truth). At anyrate, I remember thinking that Bill Clinton had done such a good job overthe years getting the budget into a surplus and winning good feelings aroundthe world that it really didn't matter who of the four who were running(Gore, Bradley, McCain, Bush) might win. They all seemed about the same inlots of ways. What we really needed was some respite from Clinton's ownpenchant for mischief. I liked Clinton. I remember that The New Yorkermagazine asked me for my take on the Lewinsky scandal, and I said that onbalance, in spite of the brouhaha, I still preferred a president who wouldmake love, not war. Clinton was a flawed human being, that was evident, buthe knew it. He never didn't know it. And he was always trying to makeamends. But he was exhausting--or the media made him exhausting. I thoughtwe were due for a rest.
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http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/160107Jones.htm
Prisonplanet.com
Mr. Bush: Meet Walter Jones
Patrick J. Buchanan
Lew Rockwell.com
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
America is four years into a bloody debacle in Iraq not merely because Bushand Cheney marched us in, or simply because neocon propagandists lied aboutSaddam's nuclear program and WMDs, and Iraqi ties to al-Qaida, anthraxattacks and 9-11.
We are there because a Democratic Senate voted to give Bush a blank checkfor war. Democrats in October 2002 wanted the war vote behind them so theycould go home and campaign as pro-war patriots.
And because they did, 3,000 Americans are dead, 25,000 are wounded, perhaps100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, 1.6 million have fled, $400 billionhas been lost and America stands on the precipice of the worst strategicdefeat in her history.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-16-army-gear_x.htm
AP: Iran gets army gear in Pentagon sale
Posted 1/16/2007 7:53 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military has sold forbidden equipment at least ahalf-dozen times to middlemen for countries - including Iran and China - whoexploited security flaws in the Defense Department's surplus auctions. Thesales include fighter jet parts and missile components.In one case, federal investigators said, the contraband made it to Iran, acountry President Bush branded part of an "axis of evil."
In that instance, a Pakistani arms broker convicted of exporting U.S.missile parts to Iran resumed business after his release from prison. Hepurchased Chinook helicopter engine parts for Iran from a U.S. company thathad bought them in a Pentagon surplus sale. Immigration and CustomsEnforcement agents, speaking on condition of anonymity, say those parts madeit to Iran.
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