**IF YOU CAN'T ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE, CONTACT US ATrays.list@comcast.net and we'll be happy to send the full article.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/16591229.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Thu, Feb. 01, 2007
Casey: Only half of troop boost needed
DAVID ESPO
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The outgoing top U.S. general in Iraq diplomatically aired hisdifferences with the commander in chief on Thursday, telling lawmakers thatPresident Bush has ordered thousands more troops into Iraq than needed totamp down violence in Baghdad.
Gen. George Casey quickly added he understood how his recently confirmedsuccessor, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, could want the full complement of 21,500additional troops that Bush has ordered to Iraq. Casey said they could"either reinforce success, maintain momentum or put more forces in a placewhere the plans are not working."
As the general spoke at a Senate confirmation hearing into his nomination tobecome Army chief of staff, the full Senate lurched toward a widelyanticipated debate on the administration's policy, the first since midtermelections in which opposition to the war helped install a new Democraticmajority.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Black_Youth.html
Survey Details the Lives of Black Youth
By MARTHA IRVINE
AP National Writer
CHICAGO - Decades after the civil rights movement's greatest victories,black youth often see a world rife with discrimination, a new survey says.And yet they remain optimistic about their chances for affecting socialchange.
Researchers at the University of Chicago, who were releasing the studyThursday, say their findings also show that these youth are complex when itcomes to such issues as sex education and hip-hop music.
Cathy Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago andthe report's lead author, said the aim of the survey was to provide datathat goes beyond broad stereotypes.
It found, for instance, that while 58 percent of black youth say they listento rap music every day, the majority of them also think its videos are tooviolent and often portray black women in an offensive way.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.alternet.org/stories/47466/
Note to Progressives: Challenge Market Fundamentalism
By Ruth Rosen, AlterNet
Posted on February 1, 2007, Printed on February 1, 2007
Women have gained the potential of enormous power in DC with Nancy Pelosielected as Speaker of the House. The Congressional Caucus for Women's Issueswill grow to be perhaps the largest in Congress, but the question remains:how will these newly empowered women use their power?
Among the issues on the wish list of newly elected women, according toWomen's eNews, are women's health, educational equity and sex trafficking,women in prison, and international domestic violence.
All are important but will go nowhere if women leaders don't challengeMarket Fundamentalism, the exaggerated and quite irrational belief in theability of markets to solve all problems, an economic fundamentalism thathas dominated our national political debate for a generation. Withoutdirectly challenging Market Fundamentalism, they will ultimately fail toimprove the lives of ordinary American women and their families.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.alternet.org/rights/47477/
Libby Trial: Smoking Gun for Impeachment?
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on February 1, 2007, Printed on February 1, 2007
Not all lies are created equal. It is understood that there is a chasm ofimportance between little white lies and big black ones. Most would agreethat lying about a consensual sexual affair, even by the president, is ofsignificantly lesser concern than lying about the proliferation of nuclearweapons as an excuse to take the nation to war.
How then is it possible that a Republican-controlled Congress impeachedPresident Bill Clinton over his attempt to conceal marital infidelity butthat a Democratic-led Congress will not even consider impeaching thispresident for far more serious transgressions against the public trust? Thatis the question that arises from early revelations in the trial of Lewis"Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.
This case's importance lies not in the narrow charge that Libby committedperjury in testifying about his role in the outing of CIA operative ValerieWilson; that was merely one facet of a far-ranging plot to deceive Congressand the public about perhaps the most important issue of our time: theprospect of terrorists obtaining a weapon of mass destruction.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/01/presidential_power/print.html
The power of King George
This week Bush made another executive power grab -- and our own Constitutionis largely to blame.
By Garrett Epps
Feb. 01, 2007 | Washington was treated to a curious American spectacle onMonday. A president repudiated by virtually every sector of the politicalsystem has responded by arrogating more power to himself.
Under the executive order Bush signed Monday, federal regulators will answerto a new set of Bush appointees in each agency, who will determine whethertheir proposed rules properly serve the Bush agenda. As Peter Strauss of theColumbia Law School told the New York Times, "Having lost control ofCongress, the president is doing what he can to increase his control of theexecutive branch."
Bush's administrative power grab points to a serious flaw in the Americansystem: our uniquely powerful, politically unaccountable executive.Americans take this system for granted -- we are taught in high school thatit was designed by far-seeing statesmen. We seldom even notice how often itmisfires, with results ranging from opera buffa (like the Clintonimpeachment) to dangerous constitutional crisis (like the Nixonimpeachment).
Crisis is what we are facing now. Public opinion has decisively turnedagainst the president's war in Iraq, with voters dissenting where our systemsays they should -- at the polls. Congress, the supposed locus of the powerto "declare war," is belatedly registering its disapproval of Bush's ineptconduct of that war. Even the normally secretive military andnational-security bureaucracies are busily signaling their objections to thecommander in chief's plans.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_013107Z.shtml
Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair
By Jason Leopold and Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 31 January 2007
Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced attrial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter"Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.
Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member ofhis administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy'sstinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligenceled Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIAstatus to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.
But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday duringLibby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question thetruthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledgeof the attacks against Wilson. The revelation that Bush may have known allalong that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit theformer ambassador begs the question: Was the president also aware thatsenior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercoverrole with the CIA?
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/opinion/02friedman.html
February 2, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Oil-Addicted Ayatollahs
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
MOSCOW
There may be only one thing dumber than getting addicted to consuming oil asa country - and that is getting addicted to selling it. Because gettingaddicted to selling oil can make your country really stupid, and if theprice of oil suddenly drops, it can make your people really revolutionary.That's the real story of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union - itoverdosed on oil - and it could end up being the real story of Iran, if we're
smart.
It is hard to come to Moscow and not notice what the last five years of highoil prices have done for middle-class consumption here. Five years ago, ittook me 35 minutes to drive from the Kremlin to Moscow's airport. On Monday,it took me two and half hours. There was one long traffic jam from centralMoscow to the airport, because a city built for 30,000 cars, which 10 yearsago had 300,000 cars, today has three million cars and a ring of newsuburbs.
How Russia deals with its oil and gas windfall is going to be a huge issue.But today I'd like to focus on how the Soviet Union was killed, in part, byits addiction to oil, and on how we might get leverage with Iran, based onits own addiction.
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The New York Times
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/
by Chris Sullentrop
February 1, 2007, 10:29 am
What Biden Meant
Tags: Barack Obama, Elections 2008, joseph biden
Suffice it to say that Joe Biden was not being the best Biden he can be inhis interview with The New York Observer when he said, "I mean, you got thefirst mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean anda nice-looking guy."
Reason's David Weigel, however, comes to Biden's defense at Hit & Run, theReason staff blog. "He meant 'clean' in the sense of 'spotless, not corrupt,'"Weigel writes, adding, "Liberals are giddy about the prospect of Obamakicking the last generation of black leadership to the curb. But they getvery angry at people who say this."
The New Republic's Michael Crowley, on the other hand, says that Biden isgoing where George Allen has gone before. "Unfortunately the problem hefaces is that the nature of his gaffe - for those who assume the worst - can'tbe explained away," Crowley writes at The Plank. "It's a less-extremeversion of George Allen's macaca crack: Allen's defenders said it wasludicrous to consider 'macaca' a slur and not, say, a meaningless goofy[nickname], because clearly no politician would slur someone in public evenif he was thinking such vile thoughts. But the charge in that case, as inBiden's, is that it was the subconscious talking in some unintentionallyrevealing way. And no amount of spin or contrition can undo that."
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The New York Times
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/
by Chris Sullentrop
February 1, 2007, 9:49 am
Just How Experienced Is Hillary?
Most political observers write under the assumption that Hillary Clinton hasmore relevant experience for a presidential candidate than Barack Obama andJohn Edwards have, even though all three have served roughly equal amountsof time in the United States Senate. "Implicitly, the Clinton experienceargument seems to rest more on the fact that she was inside the White Houseadvising her husband for eight years," writes Duke political science gradstudent Brendan Nyhan at his personal blog. "But no one's suggesting thatother people who advised Clinton are qualified to be president on thatbasis - otherwise Rahm Emanuel and Leon Panetta would be throwing their hatsin the ring." Nyhan continues:
a.. Sure, she was a closer adviser to her husband than those two, but tomy mind, you either have experience being "the decider" or you don't. AndClinton has no executive experience, no experience managing a largebureaucracy, and less experience as an elected representative than Obama.Just because she's famous and has lots of experience in national politicsdoesn't make her more qualified to be commander-in-chief than her rivals.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/240190,CST-NWS-calif02.articleprint
Can U. of Illinois turn grass into gas?
February 2, 2007
BY DAVID MERCER
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists from the University of California and theUniversity of Illinois will team up on a project to develop clean energysources, backed by $500 million from oil company BP PLC.
Illinois Gov. Blagojevich and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggerannounced the creation of the Energy Biosciences Institute in Berkeley,Calif., on Thursday.
''We are extremely pleased that Illinois and our flagship public-researchuniversity [are] a part of BP's exciting new Energy Biosciences Institute,''Gov. Blagojevich said.
May help Illinois companies
UC Berkeley wants to find ways to develop new fuel sources and to make solarenergy more powerful and less expensive.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.stuff.co.nz/print/3948973a7693.html
Water wars tipped as planet heats up
Wars will be fought over water, not oil, with the planet staring down thebarrel of a global catastrophe driven by climate change.
Tonight, the world will be told that there is unequivocal evidence that theplanet is warming tens of times faster than it should be, and it isvirtually certain that humans are responsible.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will table areport in Paris saying not enough is being done to curb climate change and,by 2100, freshwater could be a scarce commodity in some regions.
The report draws on research from 2500 scientists from more than 130countries, including New Zealand, and has taken six years to compile.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329703480-121568,00.html
Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday February 2, 2007
Guardian
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby groupfunded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a majorclimate change report due to be published today.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), anExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration,offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of areport from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.
The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded asthe most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It willunderpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed theKyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governmentswere given a draft last year and invited to comment.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.ohionewsnow.com/?jrl=616053&sec=home&email=yes&story=sites%2f10tv%2fcontent%2fpool%2f200702%2f1680969228.html&clk=76301
Consumers Warned About New Scam
Reported by Lindsey Seavert
An identity theft scam is growing in popularity and Consumer Reports callsit one of the top scams to watch out for this year.
You've heard of phishing, where familiar emails urge people to confirmpersonal information, and with one click, you've instead entered a boguswebsite where information can be stolen.
Now, phishing has morphed into another type of identity theft called"vishing," or voice phishing.
"Really just another term for telemarketing fraud," said Scott Campbell,with the Ohio Attorney Generals Office.
The Ohio Attorney General's office said cyber con artists are using an oldtool with a new name.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2007-02-01-families-workplace_x.htm
Study: U.S. trails most nations on family-oriented workplace policies
NEW YORK (AP) - The United States lags far behind virtually all wealthycountries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such asmaternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding, a new studyby Harvard and McGill University researchers says.The new data comes as politicians and lobbyists wrangle over whether toscale back the existing federal law providing unpaid family leaves or topush new legislation allowing paid leaves.
ON DEADLINE: Read the report, see how nations rank
The study, officially being issued Thursday, says workplace policies forfamilies in the United States are weaker than those of all high-incomecountries and many middle- and low-income countries. Notably, it says theU.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in the survey that does notguarantee some form of paid maternity leave; the others are Lesotho,Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.
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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013102122_pf.html
Democrats Want to Rise With the Middle Class
By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 1, 2007; D01
Meet Joe and Eileen Bailey, a politically independent couple from LongIsland with three kids in public school, mounting financial anxieties and aflock of Democratic lawmakers clamoring to feel their pain.
The Baileys are fictional -- the creation of Sen. Charles E. Schumer(D-N.Y.), who used the family's worries to help Democrats chart a course tovictory in last year's election and claim control of the Senate. Now Schumerwants to transform a sleepy congressional committee into a high-profileplatform for examining the troubles of real people like the Baileys. Hisgoal: to come up with a cure for middle-class angst that will carryDemocrats into the White House.
"We have big plans," said Schumer, who is betting that economic insecuritywill replace the Iraq war as the most important issue in the 2008 elections."The party that can create a model paradigm, a platform that can answer someof these questions, will not only win in 2008 but could create a long-termmajority."
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Chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4516556.html
Feb. 1, 2007, 1:33AM
Quotes and quips from Molly Ivins
Associated Press
Some quotes from Molly Ivins, the liberal political writer whose words couldbe clever, ruthless and humorous - sometimes in the same sentence:
-"I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn't make you a betterperson," she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the samemonth cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.
- "If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision thing,' wait'll youmeet this one," Ivins on George W. Bush in "The Progressive," June 1999.
- "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he'sweaker than bus-station chili," on Bill Clinton, from the introduction toYou Got to Dance With Them What Brung You
-"Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed todiscerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes onehopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise thequestion: Why bother?", in a 2002 column about a California political race.
- "The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point ofbefuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking humanlives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy,"from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.
- "Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably soundedbetter in the original German," Ivins in September 1992, commenting on theone-time presidential hopeful's speech to the Republican NationalConvention.
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USAToday.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-31-giuliani-cover_x.htm
Giuliani: Can hero of 9/11 win over his own party?
Posted 1/31/2007 11:19 PM ET
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
BRETTON WOODS, N.H. - Rudy Giuliani would seem to have all the credentials acandidate for president could want: A hero of 9/11, a crime-busting federalprosecutor, a two-term Republican mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic cityand one of the most admired politicians in the country.
He's got a big problem, though. First, he has to be nominated by Republicanswho don't yet know his views on social issues.
"People remember how he provided leadership at a time the city needed it andthe country needed it," says coin-company executive Jeff Marsh, 41, as hewaits to greet Giuliani at the annual dinner of the Littleton (N.H.) Chamberof Commerce. While Marsh's admiration of Giuliani the man is evident,however, his support for Giuliani the presidential candidate is no surething. Giuliani's advocacy of abortion rights gives him "some pause," Marshsays ruefully.
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Chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4516425.html
Feb. 1, 2007, 12:01AM
Panel will look into whether Bush abuses bill-signing statements
By WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Mcclatchy-tribune
WASHINGTON - New House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers used hisfirst oversight hearing on Wednesday to say he's launching an investigationinto President Bush's possible abuse of presidential signing statements.
Democrats and some Republican lawmakers have accused Bush of conducting animperial presidency by using bill-signing statements to declare that he'llinterpret legislative provisions his way and will feel free to ignore someterms.
Though some influential Republicans, such as Sen. Arlen Specter, ofPennsylvania, have railed against Bush's signing statements, several HouseJudiciary Committee Republicans balked on Wednesday, describing Conyers'hearing and vow as political fishing expeditions.
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Chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4516435.html
Jan. 31, 2007, 11:52PM
Washington notebook
Al Franken may run in Minnesota
From wire reports
Comedian Al Franken has decided to run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota in2008, a senior Democratic official from Minnesota said Wednesday.
The official did not want to be identified because Franken hasn't made anannouncement. Andy Barr, the political director of Franken's Midwest ValuesPolitical Action Committee, declined to comment.
The news was not unexpected. Franken has been calling members of theMinnesota congressional delegation to get their input on a run, and heannounced this week that he would be leaving his show on Air America Radioon Feb. 14. He told listeners he would be making a decision on a race soon.
Should he win the Democratic primary, he would take on Republican NormColeman, a first-term senator who is among the Democrats' top targets.
Franken, 55, was born in New York City and grew up in suburban Minneapolis.He was a performer and writer on television's Saturday Night Live beforewriting best-selling books combining humor and politics.
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Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-color1feb01,1,6596586,print.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
Libby trial shows an insular, backbiting Washington
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer
February 1, 2007
WASHINGTON - With the Bush administration taking a pounding over erroneousprewar claims about Iraq in the summer of 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney'schief of staff consulted his office's top communications advisor on how tostrike back.
As they talked by phone, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby scribbled down a series ofMachiavellian suggestions from Cheney's then-communications guru, MaryMatalin: What to do about MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews and his steadybarrage of Iraq war criticism? "Call Tim," Libby wrote, referring to TimRussert of NBC News. "He hates Chris."
What to make of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had emerged thatsummer to challenge the veracity of one of the administration's mostalarming claims about Saddam Hussein's regime? "Wilson is a snake," Libbytranscribed.
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detnews.com
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070201/OPINION03/702010365/1279&template=printart
Marney Rich Keenan:
Are we ready for a Madame President?
F ifteen years ago in an article for this newspaper, I compiled a list ofwomen who would make good presidential candidates, if only the country wereready for a female commander in chief.
In 1992, we had only three female governors and two female senators inoffice, so the concept of America taking seriously a "Ms. President" was across between futuristic fantasy and a television drama script.
While Geena Davis as President Mackenzie Allen failed on many levels, thefuturistic fantasy has arrived. Ladies, the time is here and now. In Sen.Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., we have a plausible contender for thehighest office in the land.
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Chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4520064.html
Feb. 1, 2007, 11:40PM
Latest poll shows Sen. Clinton leading Obama for the black vote
For many, the race debate has been bubbling for months
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
New York Times
WASHINGTON - He is hailed by supporters as the hope of an increasinglymulticultural nation, a political phenomenon who can wow white voters whilecarrying the aspirations of blacks all the way to the White House.
So why are some black voters so uneasy about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.?
The black author and essayist Debra J. Dickerson recently declared that"Obama isn't black" in an American racial context. Some polls suggest thatObama trails one of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, Sen. HillaryRodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in the battle for black support.
At Shepherd Park Barber Shop here, Calvin Lanier summed up the ambivalence.
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Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=18133
Friday, February 02, 2007
Using the Internet Anonymously?
New open-source software by IBM could let people minimize their digitalfootprints, potentially curbing online fraud.
By Kate Greene
Think about the last time you bought a DVD, booked a flight, rented a car,or signed up for a service or newsletter on the Internet. At some point, youhad to fill out a form that asked for a lot of personal information. Whileit's a hassle unto itself, filling out forms can lead to a bigger problem:each time you give out your information, you provide an opportunity for yourinformation to be picked off by identity thieves.
As more services migrate online, and as tactics of identity thieves becomemore sophisticated, people will need better ways to manage theirinformation, says Nataraj Nagaratnam, chief architect of identity managementfor IBM Tivoli.
Nagaratnam and other IBM researchers have developed open-source softwarethat they think can help. Called Identity Mixer (Idemix), the digitalidentity management software lets people make online transactions--fromfilling out forms to purchasing plane tickets--without disclosing personalinformation.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101865_pf.html
Study Disputes Philadelphia School Changes
Bloomberg News
Friday, February 2, 2007; A02
Philadelphia students who attended public schools managed by privateoperators fared no better academically than other students over the pastfour years, an analysis by Rand Corp. and Research for Action shows.
Philadelphia began an experiment -- the largest in the United States -- withprivate management in 2002 after the state took over the 200,000-studentdistrict. Private managers were given about $90 million extra over fouryears to run 45 elementary and middle schools in the nation's fifth-biggestcity.
"Schools in Philadelphia have shown strong improvement that has beenreflected widely across the district," said Jolley Christman, the report'sauthor and co-founder of Research for Action, a Philadelphia nonprofitorganization. "Our findings show the investment in private management ofschools has not paid the expected dividends."
The private managers include New York-based Edison Schools Inc., thenation's largest for-profit operator of public schools. A five-year Randstudy released in October found that Edison is producing student gains thatare comparable to the public schools they replace. Edison manages 97 schoolswith 58,000 students.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101866_pf.html
Bush's 2008 Budget Calls For Boost to Pell Grant
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 2, 2007; A05
The Bush administration yesterday proposed boosting the nation's mainfinancial aid program for low-income college students by the largest amountin more than three decades, the latest in a flurry of measures this week byCongress and the White House to make higher education more affordable.
The president's 2008 budget, which will be unveiled next week, wouldincrease the annual Pell grant next year by $550, to a maximum of $4,600,Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said yesterday. Grants, unlikestudent loans, do not need to be repaid.
"As costs skyrocket, it becomes increasingly difficult for middle-classfamilies to afford college," Spelling said in a speech at North CarolinaState University in Raleigh. "And for low-income, mostly minority students,college is becoming virtually unattainable. States, institutions and thefederal government--we all must increase need-based aid."
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101497_pf.html
Who's to Blame for The Killing
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 2, 2007; A15
This week the internecine warfare in Iraq, already bewildering -- Sunni vs.Shiite, Kurd vs. Arab, jihadist vs. infidel, with various Iranians, Syriansand assorted freelancers thrown into the maelstrom -- went bizarre. In oneof the biggest battles of the war, Iraqi troops reinforced by Americanswiped out a heavily armed, well-entrenched millenarian Shiite sect preparingto take over Najaf, kill the moderate Shiite clergy (including GrandAyatollah Ali Sistani) and proclaim its leader the returned messiah.
The battle was a success -- 263 extremists killed, 502 captured. But thesight of the United States caught within a Shiite-Shiite fight within thelarger Shiite-Sunni civil war can lead only to further discouragement ofAmericans, who are already deeply dismayed at the notion of being caught inthe middle of endless civil strife.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101834_pf.html
Senate Democrats Split on Measure Opposing Bush
Compromise Called Weak; Report Raises Estimate of Troops Needed for 'Surge'
By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 2, 2007; A04
Senate Democratic leaders who decided to back a Republican resolutionagainst President Bush's Iraq war plan in hopes of winning broad bipartisansupport ran into stiff resistance yesterday from an unexpected quarter --fellow Democrats.
The Democratic dust-up came on a day when opponents of the president'spolicies received some unexpected ammunition. The nonpartisan CongressionalBudget Office reported that Bush's plan to deploy roughly 20,000 additionalU.S. combat troops to Iraq is likely to require at least 15,000 supportpersonnel, and possibly as many as 28,000.
That could mean the plan would involve up to 48,000 troops and contractors,at a cost of between $9 billion and $13 billion for the first four monthsand up to $27 billion for the first year.
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The Miami Post
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16602638.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Fri, Feb. 02, 2007
Sen. Obama's color plain as black and white
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
A pparently, it comes as quite a surprise to some people that Barack Obamais black.
I'm driven to this realization by the response to a recent column in which Ireferred to the senator as African American. Many people wrote to correct meon that. Among the most memorable was a guy who said: ``I heard his dad wasa radical Muslim from Africa and his mom was a white atheist from KansasCity. If that be the case wouldn't he be half a black man and half a whiteman? If he's a half breed, shouldn't you do a correction?''
Then there's the gentleman who wrote following Obama's mild criticism of arecent comment by Sen. Joseph Biden to the effect that Obama was the firstmainstream African-American presidential candidate ``who is articulate andbright and clean and a nice-looking guy.''
RADICAL CHANGE
The e-mail writer saw Obama's response -- he called the comment''historically inaccurate'' -- as a fatal misstep, sign of a philosophicalalliance with the dreaded Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and it changed, hesaid, his view of Obama. ''Up to now,'' he wrote, ``I did not see him as anAfro American.''
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The Miami Post
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16602758.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Fri, Feb. 02, 2007
Next: Ration drugs, care
BY SARAH BERK
sberk@fightingforfamilies.org
The new Medicare prescription-drug program has reduced consumer drug pricesand premiums by an estimated $13 billion and is projected to expand thosesavings to an impressive $180 billion during the next 10 years.
More than 90 percent of American seniors are enrolled and average $1,100 peryear in savings. An overwhelming majority -- 80 percent -- like the program,according to several opinion surveys.
Medicare Part D is a success, yet for its own political gain the newDemocratic leadership in Congress seems intent on risking seniors' access toprescription drugs and expanded medical benefits.
During the 2006 campaign, Democrats promised to remove the restriction thatprevented the federal government from interfering with drug-pricenegotiations between the plans providing the benefit and the drug companiesselling the medicines. While they claimed this would make prices even lower,it's interesting to note that until 2003, the restriction popped up in everymajor Democratic proposal that added a drug benefit to the Medicare program.
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The Miami Post
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16602760.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Fri, Feb. 02, 2007
The best path to big savings for seniors
BY AMY KLOBUCHAR
senatorklobuchar.senate.gov
When Congress passes a law, the American people have every right to expectthat their elected representatives will do what's best for them. But thecountry did not get a fair deal in 2003 when Congress passed the MedicarePart D prescription-drug program.
By banning the government from negotiating discounts, Congress saddledseniors with inflated drug prices while handing a huge financial windfall tothe pharmaceutical industry.
As I campaigned for the U.S. Senate last year, citizens told me repeatedlythat they wanted Medicare to use every possible tool to get the best prices.
It is a simple principle of economics that consumers strike better dealswhen they band together and exercise the bargaining muscle of many ratherthan the limited leverage of few. Congress rejected this principle when itbarred the federal government from negotiating lower prices.
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The Miami Post
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16602748.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Fri, Feb. 02, 2007
Hiding the facts about climate change
OUR OPINION: POLITICIZING SCIENCE HARMS YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW
Fresh evidence emerged this week that the White House can't tell thedifference between fashioning policy and spinning the facts to suit its ownpolitics. Most administrations share this problem to a degree, but it's farworse when the White House decides to tighten its grip on federal regulatorsat the expense of those who write the laws.
Downplaying warnings
First, to the case in point. Government scientists claim the Bushadministration has been trying for two years to force them to soften theirfindings on global warming. Complaints about interference were aired at aHouse hearing this week where a survey of nearly 300 scientists in sevenagencies studying the subject found that almost half had experienced orheard about pressure to downplay warnings about the growing amount ofevidence of climate change and global warming.
The scientists said Phil Cooney, a former oil-industry lobbyist who at thetime headed the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, hadblue-penciled reports about the effects of climate change on human healthand the environment. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Mr. Cooney -- who nowworks for ExxonMobil -- had ``imposed his own views on the reportsscientists had submitted to the White House.''
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365gay.com
http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/02/020107gore.htm
Gore Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: February 1, 2007 - 7:00 pm ET
(Oslo) Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel PeacePrize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to thedangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.
"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference,and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament BoergeBrende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told TheAssociated Press.
Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen of the SocialistLeft Party to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist SheilaWatt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.
"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses hisposition to get politicians to understand, while Sheila works from theground up," Brende said.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020102238_pf.html
Border Policy's Success Strains Resources
Tent City in Texas Among Immigrant Holding Sites Drawing Criticism
By Spencer S. Hsu and Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 2, 2007; A01
RAYMONDVILLE, Tex. -- Ringed by barbed wire, a futuristic tent city risesfrom the Rio Grande Valley in the remote southern tip of Texas, the largestcamp in a federal detention system rapidly gearing up to keep pace withWashington's increasing demand for stronger enforcement of immigration laws.
About 2,000 illegal immigrants, part of a record 26,500 held across theUnited States by federal authorities, will call the 10 giant tents home forweeks, months and perhaps years before they are removed from the UnitedStates and sent back to their home countries.
The $65 million tent city, built hastily last summer between a federalprison and a county jail, marks both the success and the limits of thegovernment's new policy of holding captured non-Mexicans until they are senthome. Previously, most such detainees were released into the United Statesbefore hearings, and a majority simply disappeared.
The new policy has led to a dramatic decline in border crossings bynon-Mexicans, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcementagency.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101997_pf.html
Democrats Urge Tighter FCC Rules
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 2, 2007; D02
Senate Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Federal CommunicationsCommission yesterday to slap tighter controls on media ownership,public-interest broadcasting and television violence.
Several Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee warned the agency not totry to relax limits on the number of media outlets one company can own, asthe FCC did in 2003 only to have a federal court stay the action. Recent FCCpolicies on media ownership, said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), have been"a spectacular failure."
He railed against rules that allow one entity to own eight radio stations ina large city and against proposals to allow one owner to have three TVstations in a city. "More concentration means less competition," Dorgansaid. "The public-interest standards have been nearly completelyemasculated."
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020100231_pf.html
Senate Adds Tax Breaks To Minimum Wage Bill
Raise Passes, but House Leaders Refuse to Accept Amendments
By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 2, 2007; D01
The Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to increase the federal minimumwage for the first time in nearly a decade, but added small-business taxbreaks that are unacceptable to House leaders, preventing Democrats fromclaiming a quick victory on one of their top legislative priorities.
The Senate voted 94 to 3 in favor of the measure, which would raise theminimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15 over two years.
To attract Republican support, Senate leaders agreed to extend tax creditsand expand deductions for businesses that would be hit hardest by theminimum-wage increase. Those tax breaks, worth $8.3 billion over 10 years,are coupled with a proposal to raise taxes by a similar amount oncorporations, their chief executives and other highly paid workers.
Senate Republicans praised the measure as a responsible package that wouldhelp workers who earn the minimum wage and the businesses that employ them.They implored House leaders to accept the compromise and send it toPresident Bush, who put out a statement yesterday praising the Senate bill.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101496_pf.html
Molly Ivins's Joyful Outrage
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, February 2, 2007; A15
She explained her views on gun control this way: "I am not anti-gun. I'mpro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have tocatch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knivesfor guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation ofgreat runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killedwhile cleaning their knives."
She said of a certain beloved former president while he was in office that"if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards" and that "if hegets even more sedate, we will have to water him twice a week."
And she said of her affection for her home state: "I dearly love the stateof Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discussit only with consenting adults."
Boy, will we miss Molly Ivins, the writer and happy agitator who succumbedWednesday to cancer -- a disease, she said, not sparing herself from her ownlashing wit, that "can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person."Yes, we will remember her for being raucously funny, always at the expenseof the wealthy, the powerful or the Texas legislature.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101783_pf.html
How to Really Help Low-Wage Workers
By Thomas Z. Freedman
Friday, February 2, 2007; A15
If the House and Senate are able to agree on a minimum-wage hike and thepresident signs the bill, some may say we will have done enough to helplow-income workers. It's true that low-wage workers urgently need a raise,that millions of Americans work full time and still live below the povertyline. But while an increase in the minimum wage is better than nothing,alone it is an incomplete instrument for really making work pay.
We should raise the minimum wage while committing our country to a biggerbargain: If you work full time, then you and your family will live above thepoverty line. This goal is not only morally right but one our country canafford.
Published statistics for 2004, the most recent year with solid availabledata, show that about 3.5 million full-time workers earned less thanpoverty-level wages. Factoring in government benefits, about 2.6 percent offull-time workers live below the poverty line. That is about 2.7 millionAmericans. And these struggling workers frequently support families, meaningmillions more depend on them.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101784_pf.html
A Failed Cover-Up
What the Libby Trial Is Revealing
By David Ignatius
Friday, February 2, 2007; A15
Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA'sreporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build anuclear bomb? That's the big question that runs through the many littledetails that have emerged in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney'sformer top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried thatthe CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 tosupport administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, andthat in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. Themachinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave analternative narrative that blamed the CIA.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101495_pf.html
An Inarticulate Kickoff
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, February 2, 2007; A15
What is it, exactly, that white people mean when they call a black person"articulate"?
I'll leave it to Joe Biden to explain (or figure out) why he used "clean" asone of a logorrheic string of adjectives describing his Senate colleagueBarack Obama. I'm not sure his initial revision and extension of hisremarks -- that he meant "clean as a whistle" -- get him off the hook. Justa suggestion, but Biden might fall back to "clean as the Board of Health,"meaning sharply dressed; the last time I saw Obama he was, indeed, wearingan impeccable navy suit.
For anyone who missed it, Biden explained Obama's appeal as a presidentialcandidate by calling him "the first mainstream African-American who isarticulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." He was talking to areporter for the New York Observer, who recorded the interview; an audioclip was soon posted on the Internet.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101909_pf.html
Molly Ivins Shook the Walls With Her Clarion Call
By Maya Angelou
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, February 2, 2007; C01
Up to the walls of Jericho
She marched with a spear in her hand
Go blow them ram horns she cried
For the battle is in my hand
The walls have not come down, but they have been given a serious shaking.
That Jericho voice is stilled now.
Molly Ivins has been quieted.
The writer and journalist, dearly loved and admired by many, hated andfeared by many, died of cancer in her Texas home on Jan. 31, 2007.
The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty, which she railed againstvaliantly all her public life, have not fallen, but their truculence to doso does not speak against her determination to make them collapse.
Weeks before she died, she launched what she called "an old-fashionednewspaper crusade" against President Bush's announcement that he was goingto send more troops to Iraq.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101275_pf.html
Kaine Dubious on Death Penalty Expansion
In an Interview, the Governor Is Steadfast on an Aboveground Tysons Rail
Line
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 2, 2007; B05
RICHMOND, Feb. 1 -- Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who ran for officepledging to enforce the death penalty despite his personal opposition, saidhe has strong reservations about efforts by the General Assembly to expandthe crimes that are eligible for capital punishment.
Kaine (D), speaking to Washington Post reporters and editors, questioned theneed for new laws that would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty forthose who are accomplices to murder, such as Washington area sniper JohnAllen Muhammad, and for people who kill judges.
"I do not look at the expansion of the death penalty with a favorable eye,"Kaine said of legislation moving through both houses. Noting that Virginiais second to Texas in the number of executions, Kaine said, "I would not saythat the problem in Virginia is that the death penalty is not appliedenough."
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/business/02church.html?pagewanted=print
February 2, 2007
Regulators Challenge Kentucky Ruling Favoring Religion-Based Health Plan
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
A Christian ministry that helps its members pay one another's medical billshas won an important round in its legal battle with insurance regulators inKentucky, but regulators have already taken steps to challenge that victory.
After a two-day hearing in October, Judge Thomas D. Wingate of FranklinCounty Circuit Court ruled two weeks ago that Christian Care Ministry ofMelbourne, Fla., qualified for a religious exemption built into Kentucky'sinsurance statutes.
The ministry is the largest of a handful of religious organizations acrossthe country whose members pool monthly payments to help individual familiespay medical expenses.
Kentucky is one of half a dozen states that exempt religious medical-billministries from state insurance regulation. In a case closely watched byother state regulators, Kentucky sued the ministry in 2002, however, arguingthat it operated too much like an insurance company to qualify for thereligious exemption.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/washington/02cong.html?pagewanted=print
February 2, 2007
Compromise Senate Measure Rebuffing Bush's Iraq Buildup Gathers Support
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - A revised Senate resolution criticizing President Bush'stroop buildup in Iraq drew new support Thursday as two authors of a sternerresolution of disapproval said they would accept the compromise, fashionedby Senator John W. Warner.
Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, and Chuck Hagel,Republican of Nebraska, said they would back Mr. Warner's alternative, whichdeclares that "the Senate disagrees with the 'plan' to augment our forces by21,500," calls on the president to consider other alternatives and urges himto limit the American role in countering sectarian violence.
"The bottom line of our resolutions is the same: Mr. President, don't sendmore Americans into the middle of civil war," said Mr. Biden, one of theauthors of the initial resolution, which was approved last week by theForeign Relations Committee, which he leads.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?pagewanted=print
February 2, 2007
Iraq Suicide Bombers Kill 60 and Wound 150 in Market in Southern City
By JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD, Feb. 1 - Twin suicide bombers struck a market jammed with people inthe southern Iraqi town of Hilla on Thursday, killing at least 60, wounding150 and spraying body parts so far that the police were still scouringrooftops for them late in the night.
Residents there were catching up on their shopping after the Shiite holidayof Ashura. A student at a local high school, Ali Mohammad, said he and twofriends had just left the school gym and were about to make some purchaseswhen the first bomb went off at a checkpoint on the edge of the market. Theleader of a local commando unit said the bomber set off a suicide vest whena policeman at the checkpoint discovered it during a search.
Seconds later, a second bomb went off. "I was hit in the leg, a small wound," Mr. Mohammad said. "I was so scared, I didn't help my friends. Ijust left them in the area and went home."
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/science/02oceans.html?pagewanted=print
February 2, 2007
Even Before Its Release, World Climate Report Is Criticized as TooOptimistic
By CORNELIA DEAN
In its 2001 assessment, its third, the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange estimated that in the next hundred years sea level would riseglobally by at least a few inches and perhaps as much as three feet, acatastrophe for low-lying coastal areas and island nations.
In Paris today the panel will issue its fourth assessment, and peoplefamiliar with its deliberations say it will moderate its gloom on sea levelrise, lowering its worst-case estimate.
In theory that is good news, because rising seas bring erosion and floodingto coastal areas. But a lower estimate has not been uniformly cheered.
In letters to and conversations with panel members, and in scientificjournals, several climate experts said the estimate was almost certainlywrong because the panel was leaving out a growing body of data on meltingglaciers and inland ice sheets, which are major contributors to sea levelrise.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/us/politics/02obama.html?ei=5094&en=258a5c83f02ad44e&hp=&ex=1170478800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
February 2, 2007
So Far, Obama Can't Take Black Vote for Granted
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - He is hailed by his supporters as the hope of anincreasingly multicultural nation, a political phenomenon who can wow whitevoters while carrying the aspirations of African-Americans all the way tothe White House.
So why are some black voters so uneasy about Senator Barack Obama?
The black author and essayist Debra J. Dickerson recently declared that"Obama isn't black" in an American racial context. Some polls suggest thatMr. Obama trails one of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, SenatorHillary Rodham Clinton, in the battle for African-American support.
And at the Shepherd Park Barber Shop here, where the hair clippers hummedand the television blared, Calvin Lanier summed up the simmeringambivalence. Mr. Lanier pointed to Mr. Obama's heritage - he is theAmerican-born son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother fromKansas - and the fact that he did not embody the experiences of mostAfrican-Americans whose ancestors endured slavery, segregation and thebitter struggle for civil rights.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/world/europe/02russia.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
February 2, 2007
Moscow May Seek Accord With Tehran on Gas Supply
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW, Feb. 1 - Even as the United States intensifies its efforts toisolate Iran, President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that Russia wouldconsider OPEC-like cooperation with Tehran on sales of natural gas. Hestopped short of endorsing price fixing, however, saying he was concernedonly with ensuring stable supplies for consuming nations.
Mr. Putin reiterated Russia's opposition to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons,but his remarks underscored a widening rift with the United States and itsallies over how to force Tehran to comply with United Nations SecurityCouncil resolutions.
"We think that the people of Iran should have access to modern technologies,including nuclear ones," he said, adding that "they should choose a variantthat will guarantee Iran access to nuclear energy" while complying withtheir commitment not to build weapons under the Nuclear NonproliferationTreaty.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_013107Z.shtml
Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair
By Jason Leopold and Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 31 January 2007
Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced attrial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter"Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.
Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member ofhis administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy'sstinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligenceled Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIAstatus to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.
But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday duringLibby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question thetruthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledgeof the attacks against Wilson. The revelation that Bush may have known allalong that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit theformer ambassador begs the question: Was the president also aware thatsenior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercoverrole with the CIA?
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Black_Youth.html
Survey Details the Lives of Black Youth
By MARTHA IRVINE
AP National Writer
CHICAGO - Decades after the civil rights movement's greatest victories,black youth often see a world rife with discrimination, a new survey says.And yet they remain optimistic about their chances for affecting socialchange.
Researchers at the University of Chicago, who were releasing the studyThursday, say their findings also show that these youth are complex when itcomes to such issues as sex education and hip-hop music.
Cathy Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago andthe report's lead author, said the aim of the survey was to provide datathat goes beyond broad stereotypes.
It found, for instance, that while 58 percent of black youth say they listento rap music every day, the majority of them also think its videos are tooviolent and often portray black women in an offensive way.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/16591229.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Posted on Thu, Feb. 01, 2007
Casey: Only half of troop boost needed
DAVID ESPO
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The outgoing top U.S. general in Iraq diplomatically aired hisdifferences with the commander in chief on Thursday, telling lawmakers thatPresident Bush has ordered thousands more troops into Iraq than needed totamp down violence in Baghdad.
Gen. George Casey quickly added he understood how his recently confirmedsuccessor, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, could want the full complement of 21,500additional troops that Bush has ordered to Iraq. Casey said they could"either reinforce success, maintain momentum or put more forces in a placewhere the plans are not working."
As the general spoke at a Senate confirmation hearing into his nomination tobecome Army chief of staff, the full Senate lurched toward a widelyanticipated debate on the administration's policy, the first since midtermelections in which opposition to the war helped install a new Democraticmajority.
[Send your comments about articles to Rays.List@Comcast.net]
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