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The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/wireless/avantgo/la-na-kids15jan15,0,5708641.story
From the Los Angeles Times:
January 15, 2007
Clash emerging over child healthcare plan
The issue of whether to cover all youths in a program's renewal is likely tospark conflict among Democrats.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON - Shopkeeper Wei Vongsavanh was reeling after his healthinsurance premium hit $1,800 a month for his two young boys, both diagnosedwith autism. The bill "came to the point I could not handle it anymore,"said the father, an immigrant from Laos who owns a small Bay Area businessthat sells model airplanes.
Then he discovered a joint federal-state program that helps insure thechildren of low-income workers. Vongsavanh's total monthly costs are nowless than $100, thanks to what in California is called the Healthy Familiesprogram.
That program - known elsewhere in the country as the State Children's HealthInsurance Program, or S-CHIP - is about to become the first battleground inthe effort by newly empowered congressional Democrats to force Washington totake on healthcare.
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Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-dems14jan14,0,5156406,print.story
Democrats feel free to defy Bush on Iraq
Once-skittish party leaders are joining antiwar liberals in opposing abuildup.
By Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writer
January 14, 2007
WASHINGTON - Emboldened by President Bush's deeply unpopular proposal tosend more troops to Iraq, congressional Democrats are shedding theirwariness about tackling the war and embracing positions once primarily heldby the party's most liberal fringe.
Less than two weeks after taking power, party leaders who had promised justan increase in oversight hearings on the war are now talking openly aboutcutting off funds for additional military operations.
Centrist Democrats are lining up beside longtime antiwar liberals, promisingto do everything in their power to stop the president's plans to deploy anadditional 21,500 troops in Baghdad and Al Anbar province.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15harcourt.html?pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars
By BERNARD E. HARCOURT
Chicago
LAST August, a prison inmate in Jackson, Mich. - someone the authoritiesdescribed as "floridly psychotic" - died in his segregation cell, naked,shackled to a concrete slab, lying in his own urine, scheduled for a mentalhealth transfer that never happened. Last month in Florida, the head of thestate's social services department resigned abruptly after having been fined$80,000 and is facing criminal contempt charges for failing to transferseverely mentally ill jail inmates to state hospitals.
Ten days ago, the Supreme Court agreed to determine when mentally ill deathrow inmates should be considered so deranged that their execution would beconstitutionally impermissible. The case involves a 48-year-old Navy veteranwho is a diagnosed schizophrenic. In the decade leading up to the crime hewas hospitalized 14 times for severe mental illness.
According to a study released by the Justice Department in September, 56percent of jail inmates in state prisons and 64 percent of inmates acrossthe country reported mental health problems within the past year.
Though troubling, none of this should come as a surprise. Over the past 40years, the United States dismantled a colossal mental health complex andrebuilt - bed by bed - an enormous prison. During the 20th century weexhibited a schizophrenic relationship to deviance.
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USAToday.com
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2007-01-14-google-usat_x.htm
Google contributes thousands to conservatives
Updated 1/15/2007 12:16 AM ET
By Jim Hopkins, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO - Under pressure in Washington, Google (GOOG) has giventhousands in political contributions to some of the most conservativemembers of Congress, tempering its image as a bastion of liberal campaignmoney.
The online search giant's nascent political action committee gave 61% ofcontributions to Republicans, including Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentuckyand Orrin Hatch of Utah, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
The $31,000 spent by Google NetPAC, launched three months ago, is relativelysmall. Still, the company-controlled PAC's giving came as employees gaveabout 98% of their money to Democrats in last fall's elections.
QUIZ: Google and politics
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USAToday.com
http://blogs.usatoday.com/smallbiz/2007/01/can_google_get_.html
Monday, January 15, 2007
Can Google grow political while battling 'evil?'
Take this short quiz -- and see what other readers think, too.
Online search giant Google last fall launched its first political actioncommittee, Google NetPAC, and has been busy giving thousands of dollars tosome of the most conservative members of Congress. That's a switch from thetrend among its employees: They gave 98% of their personal contributions forNovember's elections to Democrats, one of the highest shares amongtechnology companies. (See this chart.)
Google's young founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, want to make sure theircompany doesn't get left in the political dust while staying true to their"don't be evil" motto. (I wrote about that here.) Other tech companies suchas Microsoft waited too long to establish a beachhead in the nation'scapital. In Microsoft's case, that didn't help during its seemingly endlessantitrust fight with the Justice Department.
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Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/01/14/the_many_stripes_of_anti_americanism?mode=PF
The many stripes of anti-Americanism
Sociologists find that anti-American sentiment is more varied -- and lesswidespread -- than you might think
By Neil Gross | January 14, 2007
LAST WEEK, VENEZUELA swore in for a third term President Hugo Chávez -- aman who routinely denounces US "imperialism" and who referred to PresidentGeorge W. Bush as the devil in a speech before the United Nations. Chávez'sreelection caused some commentators here to fret about the so-called "pinktide" of socialism that is sweeping Latin America, from Bolivia to Brazil,but there has been no sense of shock or outrage that a politician spoutingfiery anti-American rhetoric could win 63 percent of the votes in hiscountry.
In part, this is because Americans have grown used to the idea that much ofthe world hates us. Indeed, in the years since Sept. 11, 2001, we have gonefrom having the world's sympathy to being perceived as the world's bully,denounced on the streets of Caracas, Tehran, Paris, and even London for ourunilateralism, aggressive military stance, and free-market economicpolicies.
But is anti-American sentiment as rampant as it seems? In their new editedvolume, "Anti-Americanisms in World Politics" (Cornell University Press),international relations scholars Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane bringtogether a distinguished group of social scientists to consider how muchanti-Americanism there is, and whether, in fact, anti-Americanism is any onething at all.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/13/AR2007011300496_pf.html
New Congress Can Save Lives, or Money
By Desmond Tutu
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, January 15, 2007; 12:00 AM
The new Congress, led in the House by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is about to makeits first decision regarding how America's money should be spent - adecision that leaves millions of lives hanging in the balance. Congress'schoice to bypass 2007 appropriations legislation and extend fiscal 2006funding levels into the new year will mean, in effect, cuts of almost$1billion in funding for programs to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.If not reversed, the lack of funds will force hundreds of thousands ofpeople to forgo prevention, treatment, care and support for the three mostdeadly infectious diseases in the world.
Many of the people most affected by Congress's decision will be my fellowAfricans. Around the world, the most poor and marginalized men, women andchildren will suffer the consequences of flat-lined funding. AIDS, TB andmalaria are diseases of poverty; to truly address them, sufficient aid mustbe reliably and properly channeled in solidarity with the people who willreceive it.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15mon1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Editorial
Busywork for Nuclear Scientists
The Bush administration is eager to start work on a new nuclear warhead withall sorts of admirable qualities: sturdy, reliable and secure fromterrorists. To sweeten the deal, officials say that if they can replace thecurrent arsenal with Reliable Replacement Warheads (what could sound morecomforting?), they probably won’t have to keep so many extra warheads tohedge against technical failure. If you’re still not sold, the warhead comeswith something of a guarantee — that scientists can build the new bombswithout ever testing them.
Let the buyer beware. While the program has gotten very little attentionhere, it is a public-relations disaster in the making overseas. Suspicionsthat the United States is actually trying to build up its nuclearcapabilities are undercutting Washington’s arguments for restraining thenuclear appetites of Iran and North Korea.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/14/AR2007011401139_pf.html
At Libby Trial, Power Players Face Uncomfortable Spotlight
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 15, 2007; A01
When Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff goes on trial Tuesday oncharges of lying about the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity, membersof Washington's government and media elite will be answering someembarrassing questions as well.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's case will put on display the secret strategizingof an administration that cherry-picked information to justify war in Iraqand reporters who traded freely in gossip and protected their own interestsas they worked on one of the big Washington stories of 2003.
The estimated six-week trial will pit current and former Bush administrationofficials against one another and, if Cheney is called as expected, willmark the first time that a sitting vice president has testified in acriminal case. It also will force the media into painful territory, with asmany as 10 journalists called to testify for or against an official who was,for some of them, a confidential source.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15mon4.html?pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Editorial
Ethics Fencing in the Senate
The Senate's promising start in reforming its ethical shortcomings isshowing signs of slippage. Senators ducked a worthy amendment that would barmembers from putting family members on campaign payrolls, or see kin becomelobbyists. The proposal was ruled unrelated to the debate over lobbyist andethics reforms, which is hardly the case.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, insisted that there's nosuch problem in the Senate. Critics instantly noted that her fellowCalifornian, Senator Barbara Boxer, paid $130,000 from her campaign funds toher son's political consultant firm. In the House, the campaign kitty ofRepresentative John Doolittle, Republican of California, paid $200,000 tohis wife as a designated campaign consultant working at home. Congress'sreputation cannot afford more such embarrassments.
As the Senate debate continues, there are key proposals that will test howreal all the talk is about reform. Some lawmakers are already trying towater down the proposal of majority leader Harry Reid, which would stopsenators from accepting the nearly free use of corporate jets. Opponents onboth sides of the aisle are also intent on blocking a measure from SenatorsBarack Obama and Russell Feingold, which would force lobbyists to disclosethe vast campaign funds they routinely raise from corporate donors eager togrease access to lawmakers. The money would still flow, but special-interestbagmen would have to list the take on public record.
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The Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16462207.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Mon, Jan. 15, 2007
ELECTIONS
New voting method improves democracy
BY STEVEN HILL
www.newamerica.net
Political reforms such as redistricting reform, fusion and campaign financereform have been foundering at the ballot box in recent years, rejected byvoters in several states. But another political reform, instant runoffvoting, has been quietly racking up impressive victories.
Instant runoff voting (IRV), which allows voters to rank their candidates 1,2, 3, made great strides forward during the Nov. 7 elections.
Voters in four jurisdictions overwhelmingly approved ballot measures forIRV. In California, voters in Oakland approved the idea with a landslide 69percent of the vote, as did 56 percent of voters in Davis. In Minneapolis, alandslide 65 percent of the voters passed an IRV ballot measure, as did 53percent of voters in Pierce County, Wash.
What was interesting about the victories was that they happened in four verydifferent locations. Oakland is a very diverse, working-class city;Minneapolis is a Midwestern-values city; Pierce County is a mix ofrural/suburban/urban areas with many independent-minded voters; and Davis isa small university town. Yet in every place IRV provided a unique solutionto problems with representative government.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/world/middleeast/16iraqcnd.html?ei=5094&en=296f5efaf8d93db8&hp=&ex=1168923600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Two Hussein Allies Are Hanged, Iraqi Official Says
By JOHN F. BURNS and MARC SANTORA
BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 — Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and the head of hisrevolutionary court were executed before dawn today, according to the Iraqigovernment.
The executions follow that of Mr. Hussein by two weeks. His hanging promptedconsiderable criticism around the world because of the way it was carriedout, including guards cursing the former dictator as he stood on thegallows.
American military officials, who had custody of Mr. Hussein, wereparticularly upset, and pushed hard to ensure that the executions of hisco-defendants — Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, former head of the Mukhabaratsecret police and the younger half-brother of Mr. Hussein, and Awad Hamadal-Bandar, who was chief judge of the revolutionary court under Mr.Hussein — were carried out properly.
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The Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16462115.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Mon, Jan. 15, 2007
IN MY OPINION
King's dream is summons to act, not just to hope
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
And so Dream season rolls round again.
That's Dream, of course, as in ''I Have A . . . '' We celebrate MartinLuther King Day today, which means schoolchildren dutifully reciting thegreat 1963 oration, television news dutifully replaying the grainyblack-and-white footage -- and many people dutifully missing the point.
At least, that's how it often seems to me.
In some ways, King is a victim of his own success. The controversial idealshe championed and for which he was killed -- voting rights for all, accessfor all, liberty and justice for all -- have become accepted to a degree hewould have found difficult to believe.
The march he led, the one that troubled the president and riled theconservatives, has become revered as one of the signature moments of theAmerican experience.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15mon2.html?pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Editorial
Politicizing Prosecutors
The Bush administration has appointed an extreme political partisan as thenew United States attorney for Arkansas. Normally, the Senate would havevetted him, and quite possibly blocked his appointment. But the White Housetook advantage of a little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act, whichallows it to do an end run around the Senate.
It is particularly dangerous to put United States attorneys' offices in thehands of political operatives because federal prosecutors have extraordinarypower to issue subpoenas and bring criminal charges. The Senate should fixthe law and investigate whether such offices in Arkansas and elsewhere arebeing politicized.
H. E. Bud Cummins, the respected United States attorney in Little Rock,recently left office. He has been replaced on an interim basis by J. TimothyGriffin, who has a thin legal record but a résumé that includes working forKarl Rove and heading up opposition research for the Republican NationalCommittee. Senator Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, wanted to raiseconcerns about Mr. Griffin's appointment as part of the confirmationprocess. But he couldn't because there was no confirmation process.
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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/13/AR2007011301445_pf.html
Nationalization May Have Different Look
By FRANK BAJAK
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 13, 2007; 10:12 PM
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Hugo Chavez loves incendiary rhetoric and risk-averseinvestors understandably rushed to sell shares in Venezuela's biggesttelecommunications and power companies after he announced this week that hewould nationalize them.
But it later emerged that the Venezuelan president _ whose "21st-centurysocialism" has managed to co-exist with a vibrant private sector _ isdisposed to pay fair market prices for the two utilities.
That would make these "nationalizations" much less radical than initiallyfeared and not all that unusual for Latin America.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/washington/15trial.html?ei=5094&en=979ef964b6c2a1d3&hp=&ex=1168923600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Trial Is Set to Begin for Former Cheney Adviser
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to VicePresident Dick Cheney, will go on trial on Tuesday, nearly three years aftera C.I.A. operative's name appeared in a newspaper column, setting off amajor investigation of who leaked the name and why.
But neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with disclosing thename, which might have violated a federal law protecting the identities ofCentral Intelligence Agency officers. Instead, he faces five felony countsthat he lied to a grand jury and the F.B.I. agents investigating the leak.
The situation of Mr. Libby, who once worked at the highest reaches ofgovernment power in Washington and now faces the possibility of a long jailsentence, is a vivid example of what has become a contemporary capitalcliché: "It's not the crime but the cover-up" that often leads to legalproblems for officials in high-profile investigations. The perjury andobstruction of justice charges against Mr. Libby stem not from the leak butfrom his behavior in the leak investigation.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15mon3.html?pagewanted=print
January 15, 2007
Editorial
The Light-Touch Tax Audit
With corporations posting record profits amid nonstop accounting scandals,one would assume that the Internal Revenue Service is looking long and hardat big companies' tax returns. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.
Since 2003, I.R.S policy has called for spending less time on any one largecorporate audit, with the purported aim of auditing more big businesses. Butas The Times's David Cay Johnston reported last week, I.R.S. auditors arebeing pushed by the agency's top officials to prematurely close audits oflarge corporations with agreements that they pay only a fraction of theadditional taxes that could be collected. Dozens of auditors said they wereinstructed to limit their examinations to issues that the I.R.S. and thecompanies agreed to in advance, even if suspicious deductions or otherquestionable tax tactics emerged during the audit.
Recently released I.R.S statistics - which the agency is required todisclose, but which it had long withheld - underscore Mr. Johnston's report.In 2006, the time devoted to each large-company audit was nearly 21 percentbelow what it was in 2002. From 2003 through 2005, an ever larger share ofcompanies was audited; but in 2006, the share declined from a high of 44percent in 2005, to 34 percent, about where it was in 2002.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/14/AR2007011400896_pf.html
Testing Reid's Ethical Limits
By Robert D. Novak
Monday, January 15, 2007; A15
A beaming Harry Reid basked last week in the adoration of the DemocraticParty's leading Senate reformers and its nine freshman senators. Theyextravagantly praised the new majority leader as an exemplar of ethicalreform. But within 48 hours, Reid was opposing full transparency ofearmarks. This week, Republican reformers will target Reid with an amendmentto the senate ethics package.
Sponsored by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the proposal is calledthe "Reid amendment" because he inadvertently inspired it. Coburn wouldtighten loose anti-earmark restrictions in the ethics bill by prohibitingsenators from requesting earmarks that financially benefit a senator, animmediate family member of a senator or a family member of a senator'sstaffer.
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Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/01/15/mustering_the_courage_to_end_war?mode=PF
ROERT MANN
Mustering the courage to end war
By Robert Mann
January 15, 2007
SENATOR Edward M. Kennedy's proposal last week to withhold funds forescalating the war in Iraq is a bold effort to stop what many Americansperceive as a lost cause. While the president's veto power makes it unlikelythat Kennedy and his allies will succeed, history suggests that the tacticmay ultimately be an effective way to end the war -- but only if itssupporters are willing to endure short-term political setbacks.
Opposing war has long been politically risky. Despite significant oppositionto the Mexican-American War, leaders of the Whig Party in 1846 believed theyhad little choice but to fund President James K. Polk's bold effort to seizevast regions of land from Mexico.
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The New York Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011202012_pf.html
A Mission of Understanding
At U-Md., Evangelical Christian Teen Breaks Into the Mainstream, Out of HisComfort Zone
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 15, 2007; 12:00 AM
This is an extended version of a story printed Jan. 15 in The WashingtonPost.
Danny Leydorf's world was about to be turned upside down, and he couldn'twait.
The extroverted teenager had shined at the mostly evangelical Annapolis AreaChristian School since kindergarten, but now he wanted to test his faith ina more diverse world. With hopes of becoming a lawyer or politician, hebadly wanted to understand people who didn't think like him.
"I feel like I exist to be interacting," the lanky, towheaded 19-year-oldsaid eagerly one day last summer, shortly after his graduation, "and part ofthat is just getting out there."
So he'd deliberately picked a large, secular college: the University ofMaryland. But the week before he was to leave, the wider world dealt him ablow.
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http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15herbert.html
The New York Times
January 15, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Descending to New Depths
By BOB HERBERT
New Orleans
I was surprised recently by a sudden shift in the tone of a veterancabdriver, Stanley Taylor, who had been kind enough to take me on a nearlyfour-hour tour of the flood-wrecked regions of the city.
For most of the afternoon, Mr. Taylor had been wonderfully informative andpolite, and his comments had been filled with sympathy for those who hadlost so much to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
But as we headed back to my hotel, and darkness began to fall over theeerily still neighborhoods, his tone became unmistakably bitter. We had beentalking casually about the thousands of extremely poor evacuees, most ofthem black, who were still stranded outside New Orleans, some of themscattered to the far reaches of the United States.
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