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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15465884.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Become a fanatic? No way, Azzam
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
An open letter to Azzam:
I must admit I'm intrigued; no one's ever invited me to become a fanatic
before.
Of course, it wasn't just me, but all 299 million Americans you wereaddressing in the video posted last week on a militant Islamic website. Youwere featured with al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri. ''Azzam theAmerican,'' read the caption.
Al Qaeda apparently gave you that nickname, but according to the FBI -- which would really like to chat with you -- your real name is Adam YahiyeGadahn. You're 28, a Californian who has trained at al Qaeda camps inPakistan. The group is believed to regard you as someone who can speak toAmericans in their own idiom.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701504_pf.html
The Washington Post Company
Confirmation of CIA Prisons Leaves Europeans Mistrustful
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 8, 2006; A08
PARIS, President Bush's transfer of terrorism suspects out of secret CIA prisons to the Guantanamo detention facility would do little to repair transatlantic distrust that has grown in recent years, political analysts in France and other European countries said Thursday.
"How willing a really liberal Democrat is to listen to George Bush -- that's about how willing the French are," said Nicole Bacharan, an expert on French-American relations at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris.
Bush's acknowledgment Wednesday of the CIA prisons' existence -- and his refusal to say where they were -- touched off new demands in Europe for a full accounting of the locations. The Washington Post reported last year that some were in Eastern Europe, but it did not name countries at the request of U.S. officials.
Poland and Romania, called likely locations by European investigators, issued new denials Thursday that such prisons were on their soil.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-gerhardt8sep08,0,1343068.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
How to Punish Rumsfeld
Impeachment by a Republican Congress is dead on arrival, but critics willhave a better shot after November.
By Michael Gerhardt
MICHAEL GERHARDT, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina LawSchool, is the author of "The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis."
September 8, 2006
VERY FEW Cabinet secretaries have done what Donald Rumsfeld has done. He isboth the youngest and oldest person to serve as secretary of Defense (havingserved previously in the job more than 30 years ago under President Ford),and, at least this time around, he has become one of the most despisedCabinet secretaries ever.
In fact, the number of people who have come to hate Rumsfeld has grown somuch in the Senate and elsewhere that it's become necessary to take a stepback to contemplate by what means the Constitution might allow them to vent their hatred.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_4281616
God invoked often on floor of House
Politics: Religion permeates rhetoric in election year.
By Lisa Friedman, From our Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - On a recent day in Congress, lawmakers invoked God on the floor of the House of Representatives 182 times.The issues being debated were both substantive and symbolic: stem-cell research, the legality of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance
and preserving a cross on a San Diego war memorial.
Together, they highlight the intensity with which religion has come to permeate modern American politics - and the increasing ease with which lawmakers use religious rhetoric to energize their constituents and score election points.
"The rise of religion in politics was the biggest story of the last 30 years, and political scientists just missed it," said Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/09/just_try_voting_here.html
Mother Jones
Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's worst places to cast a ballot (or try)
Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks Sasha Abramsky
September/October 2006 Issue We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws -- a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a
rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions,
various technology choices, and partisan trickery. In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails. Some states encourage voter registration; others go out of their way to
limit it. Some allow prisoners to vote; others permanently bar ex-felons, no matter how long they've stayed clean. Who can vote, where people cast ballots, and how and whether their votes are counted all depends, to a large extent, on policies set in place by secretaries of state and county elections supervisors -- officials who can be as partisan, as dubiously qualified, and as nakedly ambitious as people anywhere else in politics. Here is a list -- partial, but emblematic -- of American democracy's more glaring weak spots.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/083106Z.shtml
There Is Fascism, Indeed
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC
Wednesday 30 August 2006
The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.
Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.
Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis-and the sober contemplation-of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees - with a total omniscience; a total
omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/48683.html
Army recommends death penalty for soldiers print
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL | Associated Press
September 2, 2006
PHOENIX (AP) - An Army investigator has recommended that four soldiers accused of murder in an Iraqi raid face the death penalty.
Lt. Col. James P. Daniel Jr. made the recommendation in report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.
Daniel found several aggravating factors that warrant a sentence of death in the case of four soldiers accused of killing three men during a May raid in Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber, all of the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, were accused in the deaths.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700128_pf.html
GOP Senators' Bid to Confirm Bolton Is Called Off
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A03
Republican efforts to formally confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations hit an unexpected snag yesterday when a Republican senator in a tough reelection bid said he could not support the diplomat until the Bush administration answers his questions on Middle East policy.
The protest by Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) is only the latest development in the long-running battle to get Bolton confirmed to the post he now holds on a temporary basis. Last year, Chafee supported Bolton's confirmation, but the opposition of Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) prompted President Bush to name him to the U.N. post as a recess appointment.
This summer, Voinovich declared that his concerns over Bolton's temperament have been satisfactorily answered by the diplomat's performance at the United Nations. That conversion prompted Bush and GOP leaders to resubmit Bolton's name for confirmation. But Chafee informed Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) of his change of heart yesterday, forcing Lugar to call off the confirmation vote or face the possibility of a 9 to 9 deadlock in the 18-member panel.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700850.html
At Cathedral, Iran's Khatami Urges Dialogue
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A10
Amid noisy protests and tight security, former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami issued a call at the Washington National Cathedral yesterday for leaders in both the West and the Islamic world to launch a historic dialogue to "rescue life from the claws of the warmongers and violence-seekers and ostentatious leaders."
But Khatami, who served as president between 1997 and 2005, signaled that the time is not yet right for direct dialogue between the United States and Iran. He warned that the language of threats needs to end for any negotiation to have a chance -- an indirect reference to US. and U.N. pressure to impose new sanctions on Iran because of disputes over its nuclear program.
Khatami said Iran is prepared to discuss the suspension -- both the timing and the scope -- of its uranium enrichment in negotiations.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700978_pf.html
'Vegetative' Woman's Brain Shows Surprising Activity
Tests Indicate Awareness, Imagination
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 8, 2006; A01
According to all the tests, the young woman was deep in a "vegetative state" -- completely unresponsive and unaware of her surroundings. But then a team of scientists decided to do an unprecedented experiment, employing sophisticated technology to try to peer behind the veil of her brain injury for any signs of conscious awareness.
Without any hint that she might have a sense of what was happening, the researchers put the woman in a scanner that detects brain activity and told her that in a few minutes they would say the word "tennis," signaling her to imagine she was serving, volleying and chasing down balls. When they did, the neurologists were shocked to see her brain "light up" exactly as an uninjured person's would. It happened again and again. And the doctors got the same result when they repeatedly cued her to picture herself wandering, room to room, through her own home.
"I was absolutely stunned," said Adrian M. Owen, a British neurologist who led the team reporting the case in today's issue of the journal Science. "We had no idea whether she would understand our instructions. But this showed that she is aware."
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/business/08crop.html?pagewanted=print
September 8, 2006
Redesigning Crops to Harvest Fuel
By ANDREW POLLACK
More miles to the bushel.
That is the new mission of crop scientists. In an era of $3-a-gallon gasoline and growing concern about global warming from fossil fuels, seed and biotechnology companies see a big new opportunity in developing corn and other crops tailored for use in ethanol and other biofuels.
Syngenta, for instance, hopes in 2008 to begin selling a genetically engineered corn designed to help convert itself into ethanol. Each kernel of this self-processing corn contains an enzyme that must otherwise be added separately at the ethanol factory.Just last week, DuPont and Bunge announced that their existing joint venture to improve soybeans for food would also start designing beans for biodiesel fuel and other industrial uses.
And Ceres, a plant genetics company in California, is at work on turning switch grass, a Prairie States native, into an energy crop."You could turn Oklahoma into an OPEC member by converting all its farmland to switch grass," said Richard W. Hamilton, the Ceres chief executive.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701617_pf.html
'Values' We Have to Hide Abroad
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, September 8, 2006; A17
If the secret prisons where U.S. agents interrogated "high-value" terrorism suspects with "alternative" techniques are so legitimate and legal, if they're so fully consistent with American values and traditions, then why are they overseas?
That's one thing the Decider didn't tell us Wednesday in his forceful yet obfuscatory speech confirming the existence of the CIA prisons and announcing the transfer of 14 detainees to Guantanamo Bay, including boldface-name miscreants such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaida.
The president at least gave a reason why the locations of the prisons are still being kept secret, even if it wasn't the whole story. He said secrecy was needed to protect our allies from terrorist retribution, which might well be true. But governments of the host countries are probably more
worried about the ire of the citizens who elected them, given the unpopularity of the Bush
administration's foreign policy in much of the world, and some doubtless are concerned that the secret prisons violate host-country laws and international treaties.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/opinion/08friedman.html
September 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Central Truth
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
To listen to the latest Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld speeches, you'd think that our biggest problem in Iraq is a violent minority of "extremists," defying the democratic will of the Iraqi people. And you'd think that our biggest problem at home is a misguided group of Democratic appeasers, who want to cut and run in the great totalitarian struggle of the 21st century.
I wish it were so. Unfortunately, we are in trouble in Iraq now not because of what the "fringes" there, or here, believe, but because of what the center in both places has been willing to tolerate or unwilling to change.We have a "center problem."
Let me explain: We are stalled in Iraq not because of something some fringe antiwar critics said, or did, but because of how the Bush team, the center of U.S. policy, approached Iraq from the start. While it told the public - correctly, in my view - that building one example of a tolerant,
pluralistic, democratizing society in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world was really important in the broader war of ideas against violent radical Islam, the administration acted as though this would be easy and sacrifice-free.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090500939_pf.html
End Open-Ended Litigation
By Ted Frank
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 12:00 AM
The Patagonian toothfish sold much better once a marketing association renamed it Chilean sea bass, though most such fish are neither Chilean nor bass. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America, which acquired a bad reputation over the years, is apparently seeking a similar rebirth by renaming itself the American Association for Justice. But a perusal of some recent cases pushed by the plaintiffs' bar show much more of an interest in benefiting trial lawyers than in fairness or justice.
One of the fundamental rules of fairness, from the kindergarten playgrounds to corporate boardrooms, is that a deal is a deal. But more and more, trial lawyers are trying to undo this concept retroactively in lawsuits that posit that a deal isn't a deal if it can be rewritten in a way to provide benefits to yesterday's consumers (and, not incidentally, their attorneys). Such
lawsuits are not only unfair and unjust; in the long run, they end up hurting future consumers.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601749_pf.html
Senators Denounce Scientist's Stem Cell Claims
Confusion Over Harm to Embryos In Study at Issue
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006; A04
Two senators who strongly support human embryonic stem cell research lashed out yesterday at the scientist who recently reported the creation of those cells by a method that does not require the destruction of embryos, saying the scientist and his company have harmed the struggling field by overstating their results.
"It's a big black eye if scientists are making false and inaccurate representations," a combative Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations labor, health and human services subcommittee, which he chairs.
Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., defended his work and the company's statements. "Our paper is 100 percent correct," said the visibly shaken scientist, referring to the highly publicized article that appeared in the Aug. 24 issue of the journal Nature.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/opinion/08krugman.html?pagewanted=print
September 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whining Over Discontent
By PAUL KRUGMAN
We are, finally, having a national discussion about inequality, and right-wing commentators are in full panic mode. Statistics, most of them irrelevant or misleading, are flying; straw men are under furious attack. It's all very confusing - deliberately so. So let me offer a few clarifying
comments.
First, why are we suddenly talking so much about inequality? Not because a few economists decided to make inequality an issue. It's the public - not progressive pundits - that has been telling pollsters the economy is "only fair" or "poor," even though the overall growth rate is O.K. by historical standards.
Political analysts tried all sorts of explanations for popular discontent with the "Bush boom" - it's the price of gasoline; no, people are in a bad mood because of Iraq - before finally acknowledging that most Americans think it's a bad economy because for them, it is. The lion's share of the
benefits from recent economic growth has gone to a small, wealthy minority, while most Americans were worse off in 2005 than they were in 2000.
Some conservatives whine that people didn't complain as much about rising inequality when Bill Clinton was president. But most people were happy with the state of the economy in the late 1990's, even though the rich were getting much richer, because the middle class and the poor were also making substantial progress. Now the rich are getting richer, but most working
Americans are losing ground.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601819_pf.html
Clinton Administration Officials Assail ABC's 'The Path to 9/11'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006; A09
Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV "docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her "false and defamatory." Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions." And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
ABC's entertainment division said the six-hour movie, "The Path to 9/11," will say in a disclaimer that it is a "dramatization . . . not a documentary" and contains "fictionalized scenes." But the disclaimer also says the movie is based on the Sept. 11 commission's report, although that report contradicts several key scenes.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/washington/08legal.html?hp&ex=1157774400&en=c5d9dc0b49f27295&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The New York Times
September 8, 2006
The Legal Debate
Interrogation Methods Rejected by Military Win Bush's Support
By ADAM LIPTAK
Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening.
The proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions.
But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.
"It's a Jekyll and Hyde routine," Martin S. Lederman, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University, said of the administration's dual approaches.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/opinion/08fri1.html?pagewanted=print
September 8, 2006
Editorial
Rated R, for Obscure Reasons
Given the large role they play in shaping the culture, it is remarkable how little is known about movie ratings. Who decides whether a movie is rated PG or NC-17? What criteria do they use? How does the appeals process work? Those are some of the questions posed by an illuminating new documentary, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," directed by Kirby Dick. Mr. Dick's film makes
a compelling case that there needs to be greater transparency in the ratings process, and significant reforms.
The ratings system is operated by two industry groups, the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theater Owners. The system is private, but the public has a strong interest in it, since the ratings play a large role in shaping movie content. Films rated NC-17 can have a hard time attracting audiences. Producers are often willing to make
substantial cuts or changes in movies to get a more commercially viable rating.
Mr. Dick's documentary investigates how the ratings system works, and the picture is not pretty. Most of the raters are anonymous, so the public cannot assess whether they are qualified or impartial judges. In the movie, Mr. Dick goes to elaborate lengths to learn the raters' identities. One thing he turns up is that even though the M.P.A.A. says they are all "parents," some, perhaps many, are parents of adult children, hardly what the M.P.A.A. has been suggesting when it says it has parents evaluating films for other parents.
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Forwarded from Rusty Gordon and Davy Whims
The Whimsy Loops
twpchwpb@BellSouth.Net
THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
Voting booth '06 is dark and deep
By: DIANE ROBERTS
It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.
That's traditionally been attributed to Josef Stalin. It's not likely he ever said it, however, what with his general hostility toward voting. It wouldn't sound all that cute in Russian, either.
But surely the sentiment has been uttered early and often here in Florida, where screwy elections have virtually become an art form. Only six years ago Florida suffered a plague of butterfly ballots, a storm of dangling and pregnant chads, monumentally messed-up voter rolls, start-and-stop-recounts, labyrinthine lawsuits and the dubious ministrations of then-secretary of state, now Senate candidate, Katherine Harris. Banana republics called Florida a "banana republic;" Fidel Castro offered to send us "democracy educators."
Now here you are in 2006, standing before the touchscreen, filling out the optical scan form, mailing your absentee ballot, are you confident that your vote will be counted accurately and fairly? Sue Cobb, the current secretary of state, would have you believe that all is well. This, despite a federal judge's ruling in the suit brought by the League of Women Voters that a
state law restricting the ability of nonprofits, unions and civic groups, any except political parties, which are exempt, to register voters was unconstitutional. Still, she expects "a smooth election cycle this fall." In her television spots and public service announcements, Cobb is soothing, reassuring. She is, she says, "comfortable."
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2340352,00.html
The Sunday TimesSeptember 03, 2006
Friends of Hillary hint she may pull out of presidential race
Sarah Baxter
FRIENDS of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite herstatus as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination forpresident, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the WhiteHouse race and seek to lead her party in the Senate.
The former first lady longs to return to the White House with husband Billas consort. Only last week she told television viewers America would be ledby a woman one day. "Stay tuned," she said.
First, however, she has to win the election. Some Democratic party elders - the American equivalent of the Tories' "men in grey suits" - say Clinton mayback out of the race of her own volition.
"I would not be surprised if she were to decide that the best contributionshe can make to her country is to forget about being president and become aconsensus-maker in the Senate," said a leading Democratic party insider."She believes there is no trust between the two political sides and that we can't function as a democracy without it."
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/
The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers
Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering, but there are lots of other greedy fingers in the pie. We name names on 10 of the worst.
By Charlie Cray
AlterNet
Sept. 5, 2006
The history of American war profiteering is rife with egregious examples of incompetence, fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement, bribery and misconduct. As war historian Stuart Brandes has suggested, each new war is infected with new forms of war profiteering. Iraq is no exception.
From criminal mismanagement of Iraq's oil revenues to armed private security contractors
operating with virtual impunity, this war has created opportunities for an appalling amount of corruption. What follows is a list of some of the worst Iraq war profiteers who have bilked American taxpayers and undermined the military's mission.
No. 1 and No. 2: CACI and Titan
In early 2005 CIA officials told the Washington Post that at least 50 percent of its estimated $40 billion budget for that year would go to private contractors, an astonishing figure that suggests that concerns raised about outsourcing intelligence have barely registered at the
policymaking levels.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090706K.shtml
Europeans Seek More Info on Secret Jails
The Associated Press
Thursday 07 September 2006
London - President Bush's disclosure that terrorism suspects had been held in CIA-run prisons drew approval Wednesday from activists and defense attorneys, but some called for details on the secret lockups.
Bush said in a White House speech that a small number of high-value detainees - including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed - had been kept in CIA custody, in order to be "held secretly, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts."
International lawmakers and civil rights campaigners have long called on Bush to acknowledge the United States used a network of secret prisons and have transferred prisoners between them on covert flights.
Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, called Bush's acknowledgment of CIA secret prisons "progress," but said their existence was already known.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/090606.html
Election 2006 & World War III
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
www.consortiumnews.com
Sept 7, 2006
As Americans go to the polls in two months, they should have one thought fixed in their minds: they will be voting on whether to commit the nation to fighting World War III against large segments of the world's one billion
Muslims. Beyond the cost in blood and treasure, this war will mean the end
of the United States as a democratic Republic.
Those are the stakes that were made clear by George W. Bush in an alarmist speech to an association of U.S. military officers on Sept. 5. He declared that the United States must battle not only likely or even possible threats from terrorists, but the most fantastical dreams of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda about a mystical global "caliphate."
Adopting some of the most extreme rhetoric favored by his neoconservative advisers, Bush also broadened the "war on terror" beyond al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists and the Sunni-dominated Iraqi insurgency to include the Shiite-run Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and the Shiite government of Iran.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/07/the_torturers_apprentice.php
The Torturer's Apprentice
Ray McGovern
September 07, 2006
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer, then a CIA analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Addressing the use of torture Wednesday, President George W. Bush played to the baser instincts of Americans as he strained to turn his violation of national and international law into Exhibit A on how "tough" he is on terrorists. His tour de force brought to mind the charge the Athenians
leveled at Socrates-making the worse case appear the better. Bush's remarks made it abundantly clear, though, that he is not about to take the hemlock.
As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches and with the midterm elections just two months away, the president's speechwriters succeeded in making a silk purse out of the sow's ear of torture. The artful offensive will succeed if-but only if-the mainstream media is as cowed, and the American people as dumb, as the president thinks they are. Arguably a war criminal
under international law and a capital-crime felon under U.S. criminal law, Bush's legal jeopardy is even clearer than when he went AWOL during the Vietnam War. And this time, his father will not be able to fix it.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006609070311
Politics kill gay rights battle
BY PETER BRONSON | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
"Cincinnati has gone belly-up liberal."
That's not a deranged talk-show host in Idaho who doesn't know Lake Eriefrom the Ohio River. It's the man liberals love to loathe, Phil Burress,venting his frustration about the failure of a petition drive to let votersrepeal the city's latest gay rights ordinance.
And it was seconded by another man whose picture is on "progressive" dartboards: Rep. Tom Brinkman, who ran the petition drive. "The city haschanged," Brinkman said. "Republicans continue to vote with their feet."
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/iraq-for-sale-_b_28849.html
Huffingtonpost.com
Iraq For Sale: Will a Movie Fuel a Democratic Return to Power?Democrats looking for another way to nationalize the midterm elections need look no further than their movie multiplexes and DVD players.
Robert Greenwald's latest film, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (coming soon to a theater -- and a living room -- near you) is a devastating expose of how the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress have allowed private corporations free rein in Iraq, leading to billions of dollars in profits at the expense of American troops, American taxpayers, and the people of Iraq.
Along with being a resounding condemnation of these war profiteers and their political enablers, the hits-you-in-the-gut documentary also highlights their shocking incompetence -- and makes a mockery of the GOP's "we can keep you safer" 2006 framing. How, by privatizing not just the rebuilding of Iraq but many vital operations such as training Iraqi police, providing security
for U.S. officials, and interrogating prisoners?
The Republicans have turned Iraq into a corporate welfare gravy train, funneling billions to corporations that think nothing of cutting corners by sending their own employees onto the mean streets of Iraq without properly armored vehicles or supplying contaminated water to U.S. soldiers or charging $45 for a six-pack of soda -- all while leaving the people of Iraq
dealing with wide-scale food, gasoline, and electrical shortages (to say nothing of a security situation so bad, people are having to change their names to avoid being killed).
=
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/09/06/02gates.h26.html?levelId=1000&rale2=KQE5d7nM%2FXAYPsVRXwnFWYRqIIX2bhy1%2BKNA5buLAWGoKt77XHI2terRpWBSgktL4bXgTCDsilHK%0A6qjkv0kqbN2CY7%2BPyKneOGCox4W7qofh%2F9BFEakU7ZHII%2Fmu01CUEpLNhfZ%2FY5RTSAFMoROfwTsH%0AAsyDLJnT9czpjKHi7khQUPRB5iYdtzXCuAMuQ3ov4edyjRiwwj30tl%2FIGneqb%2BH%2F0EURqRTtkcgj%0A%2Ba7TUJQeYmNFXnHsAfaK7IXNewERJkjOda2rzSA%2B3OCj%2BvO831s9poYBSvNcyXJfTSjmSJkJQm4G%0AxM3OrIrUticW1tX8tv3FV8fLj4%2FDOMwUxgylH3j2RbdxlZAjMat8lInXJPumlvegeQ08Fkg9Nmau%0APZcuuq%2FYEhd1uWiRyCP5rtNQlGQmorKkjSeK4aSRVu4LyeXkqhiUNhQ1QoSrVNOpQdeB6jlajB%2Bj%0AR9SpXoVp1Aki6OSqGJQ2FDVChKtU06lB14GCeFRRf7HABAJGR9q9MpaKBn%2FILJyqNlEPFqQ0Z3Lk%0Au72SAxxsAEIoYw0RSPzBxmb6ewGJ%2B%2BewBivZOjy%2B5jseZcIr8XhnUJQ9xZUqFE4AflFBNCdbqM89%0AEy%2FXuVyX%2BmrEd%2BH2K5w72O4Rf1PdoZMV8jb%2Btid4broVufU4I2LUeRwWJwEgazFCooeM9ESwTIs8%0ARRMpu6xiD%2BDs0lA%2Bc1AJlgRLQRh4qp3KX%2FzwR7cQUg%3D%3D&print=1
Education Week
Published: September 6, 2006
College Board Launches Model for Improving High Schools
By Lynn Olson
The College Board will partner with three large urban districts to launch a new model for improving high schools through a $16 million commitment announced last week by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Further information on the high school initiative is available from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Under the plan, the New York City-based nonprofit organization-best known
for the SAT college-admission test-will work with 11 high schools in Chicago, the District of Columbia, and Duval County, Fla., to raise graduation and college-readiness rates by implementing its new "EXCELerator" model for school improvement.
By the 2007-08 school year, the board expects to bring its high school model
to an additional 19 schools, serving as many as 45,000 students. With
support from the Seattle-based Gates Foundation, the board currently
operates 11 small schools in New York City and elsewhere in New York state.
Focus on Rigor
The EXCELerator model is designed to upgrade achievement in existing schools, in part through the introduction of a rigorous academic program, based on the College Board's SpringBoard and Advanced Placement curricula.
It also emphasizes greater personalized support for students; ongoing professional development for superintendents, principals, teachers, and counselors; extensive use of data; and stronger school-based college and career planning.
"Obviously, the College Board has a great track record in providing professional development and curriculum in high schools," said Marie Groark, a spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation, "and they have demonstrated in New York thus far a very strong record in starting new schools. So, if you combine the two, it seemed like the College Board had the opportunity to bring all those things together . to really make a difference in some of the high schools struggling around the country."
#####
Friday, September 08, 2006
GLBT DIGEST - September 8, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://365gay.com/Newscon06/08/083006legion.htm
Veterans Groups Call For Support of 'DADT' & Constitutional Ban On Gay Marriage
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
August 30, 2006 - 11:00 am ET
(Washington) The nation's two largest veterans groups are holding their annual conventions this week and are expected to pass motions supporting 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' - the ban on gays serving openly in the military - and a federal amendment to the Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage.
The American Legion is meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Veterans of Foreign Wars is meeting in Reno, Nevada.
The Legion will vote today on reaffirming its 2004 policy that calls for passage of an anti-gay marriage amendment.
"The American Legion believes that marriage is an institution, and it's based on a union between a man and a woman." said William Pease, deputy director of Americanism and Children and Youth for the Legion.
Pease also said that children raised in a home with opposite-sex parents experience lower rates of premarital childbearing, illicit drug use, poor health, school failure, behavioral and emotional problems, poverty and arrest.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/17784.html
The Conservative Voice
by James Hartline
Gay Vultures At California GOP Party
September 01, 2006 09:00 AM EST
It is without question, the single most degrading spectacle to have emerged from the current political climate being created by the leaders of the "Big Tent" California Republican Party concept. During the recent California Republican Party's State Convention held in Los Angeles, the radical homosexual group, the Log Cabin Republicans, held a party inside of the event.
Revelations surrounding the promotion of homosexuality within the GOP at the Log Cabin Republicans' festivities were nothing new. What was new, however, was the blatant attacks on Christian values that occured at this immoral homosexual party, when some of California's most public pro-family conservatives joined in the celebration of homosexuality at this despicable
gay love fest.
According to the website, Boi From Troy, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia discarded her feigned public pro-family values gameplan, to join the Log Cabin Republican's homosexual party to show her support for their cause. While Garcia has been able to astutely convince state conservatives that she is a pro-family advocate, her dance with gay activists at the Log Cabin Republicans party during the convention confirms what many have begun to see in her: an undercurrent of moral compromise. It was Garcia who broke with the GOP in 2004, to join the gay activists in the Democratic Party to vote for SB1234 which declared speech against homosexuality in California, a hate crime, if the hearer of said speech feels threatened by its content. SB1234
now has the potential to charge ministers who preach against homosexuality with a hate crime thanks to Garcia and three other Republicans, including Shirley Horton (R) Chula Vista who voted for SB1234. Gov. Schwarzenegger then proceeded to sign into law SB1234 despite receiving hundreds of thousands of emails and telephone calls from Christians pleading with him to veto the bill.
=
Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
October 11-14: GLMA Conference in SF; Make Hotel Reservations Now
GLMA at 25: Moving LGBT Health Care into the Mainstream
GLMA's 24th Annual Conference, the world's largest gathering of lesbian,gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and straight/allied healthcareprofessionals, offers you the opportunity to enjoy the company of otherhealthcare professionals from around the world while earning continuingeducation credits in an affirming environment.
Register and make your travel plans by September 20th to receive discountedregistration and a special rate at the Renaissance Parc 55 (details below).
2006 is GLMA's 25th anniversary, and this year's conference takes placeOctober 11-14 in San Francisco, GLMA's home, the city of its founding, andone of world's most beautiful and LGBT-friendly cities. Special programmingis planned to commemorate our Silver Anniversary.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
Lance's Boyfriend Attacks Military Anti-Gay Rules in New Book
Contact Music
www.contactmusic.com
Sept. 4, 2006
Pop star LANCE BASS' boyfriend REICHEN LEYMKUHL has written a new book titled HERE'S WHAT WE'LL SAY, which chronicles his 'coming out' at the US Air Force Academy. The US reality TV hunk hopes his story will prompt lawmakers to change regulations which ostracise gay people in the military. He says, "It's still a criminal offence to be gay in the US Armed Forces. It's an abomination. "In my opinion, it's the last legal human rights abuse the US allows. This book chronicles the secret society we created to survive as gay cadets in the academy. "(With this book) I'm making a political statement. I wrote this book to end the ban on gay people serving in the US Armed Forces... It's just this one thing that needs to be fixed."
04/09/2006 02:22
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
Transgender candidate just another hopeful on the trail
By Daniel de Vise
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Dana Beyer rapped on a door at the end of a Silver Spring, Md., cul-de-sac. A woman answered. She listened to the candidate's spiel, sought her views on abortion rights (for) and growth (against) and found little on which the two did not agree.
"It's good to see more women running," she told the candidate.
For the five decades preceding a fateful 2003 trip to San Francisco, Dana Beyer lived as a man named Wayne.
The September primary will tell whether her legislative district, one of the most progressive in Maryland, is ready to elect the state's first transgender lawmaker.Beyer, 54, a retired eye surgeon, is running against seven other Democrats for three seats that will represent District 18 in
Maryland's House of Delegates. "Mansionization" rates as a major issue.
Beyer's campaign is not about gender. If there is one overarching theme, it is universal health care, a concern that took her to Kenya, Nepal and rural Mississippi as a young physician. Like her seven rivals, Beyer supports abortion rights, opposes capital punishment and endorses same-sex marriage.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://in.news.yahoo.com/060903/139/6780m.html
Rupert Everett slams Hollywood for gay bias
By ANI
Sunday September 3, 03:10 PM
Washington, Sept 3 (ANI): British actor Rupert Everett has slammed Hollywood bosses for discriminating against gay actors when it comes to big budget romantic flicks.
The 'My Best Friend's Wedding' star revealed his frustration at the way homosexuals were discriminated in the industry, and said that even though actors like him had the talent to take on the roles offered to stars like Hugh Grant, they were seldom given the part because of their sexual orientation.
"Without doubt gays are discriminated against in show business. The straight one gets to walk down a red carpet with a beautiful girl and everything works out and the gay one has to back- pedal and do independent movies. Yet everything Hugh Grant does, I could be in," Contactmusic quoted him, as saying.
"To be a movie star you have got to have a good-looking girlfriend and for Hugh, Elizabeth Hurley helped. It is a rophy job. You need a lot of energy to have a trophy girlfriend. I take my hat off to anyone who has one," he added. ANI)
=
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/television/15458118.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Rosie's got her own point of `View'
BY VERNE GAY
Newsday
Despite all the pre-publicity that blew in with Rosie O'Donnell on her firstappearance on The View Tuesday, it's the little stuff that'll ultimatelydetermine whether this ''casting addition'' will work or not. And wouldn'tyou just know? Little stuff started happening almost before Rosie got herseat warm.
About 10 minutes in, O'Donnell -- replacing Today-bound Meredith Vieira --started chatting amiably and rather loudly about something while failing tonotice that Barbara Walters was chatting amiably and less loudly aboutsomething else. Walters' eyes lowered ever so slightly, then her voice trailed away, clearly no match for the boisterous contralto booming just a few inches from her face.
Now, as we all know -- and as Rosie is about to learn -- lowered eyes are not good. One talks to Barbara, not over Barbara. A short while later,Walters even offered this impromptu adjustment in their future workingarrangement -- ''When we want, we can interrupt each other, OK'' -- which,loosely translated, means, ''Please don't ever interrupt me again, mydear.'' One presumptive queen of The View is all this show can handle.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15435545.htm?source=rss&channel=twincities_local
St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minn.)
Posted on Mon, Sep. 04, 2006
Gay Republican seeks re-election
Koering came out last year, angering some constituents
BY PATRICK CONDON
Associated Press
BRAINERD - To understand the challenge facing Sen. Paul Koering, a gay Republican battling to keep his seat against a conservative primary challenger, it helps to listen to Joan Campbell, a retiree and a Republican voter.
"I don't like what they do with their lives," Campbell said of gay people. "It's wrong, according to my Bible."Campbell, mind you, supports Koering.Many Republicans in this socially conservative heart of Central Minnesota take an even harder line against homosexuality, and Koering knows he is testing the outer limits of the GOP's big tent.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701447_pf.html
Ellen DeGeneres Tapped to Host Oscars
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 10:59 PM
LOS ANGELES -- Ellen DeGeneres has been tapped to host next year's Oscars, the Academy of Motions Pictures Arts and Sciences said Thursday.
It will be the comedian and TV talker's first time hosting the Oscars show and first appearance on the award show. She has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast twice and co-hosted it once, and hosted the Grammys twice.
"Ellen DeGeneres was born to host the Academy Awards," said producer Laura Ziskin in a statement. "I can already tell she is going to set the bar very high for herself and therefore for all of us involved in putting on the show. Now all we need is a lot of great movies."The 79th Annual Academy Awards are scheduled to be broadcast live from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 25. This year's Oscarcast, in March, was fronted by "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700916_pf.html
Ban on Gay Rabbis May Be Lifted
By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 2:52 PM
NEW YORK -- A key Conservative Jewish leader is organizing talks nationwide to tell synagogues that the movement will likely roll back its ban on ordaining openly gay rabbis by year's end.
He and two religious law experts joining him at the meetings are trying to help congregations prepare for the confusion and discomfort to follow.Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, says a committee of scholars who interpret Jewish law for the movement will likely loosen the prohibition when they vote in
December.
At the same time, Epstein expects the scholars will endorse a policy aiming to keep more traditional congregations within the fold. Synagogues that believe Jewish law bars same-sex relationships still will be able to hire rabbis who share their view.
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http://www.indynews.4t.com/0318/local1.html
A Family Affair
More Gays to be at 2008 Democratic Convention
By Michael James
Editor
MJames@ourindependent.com
Late last month the Democratic National Committee (DNC) adopted new delegate selection rules for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Under the new rules, approved August 19 at the annual DNC summer meeting in Chicago, state Democratic parties will be required to increase the participation of LGBT Americans within their delegations.
Jo Wyrick, National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director said, "These rules begin the process of correcting historic under-representation of LGBT Americans in party affairs. We expect state parties to use these rules to establish goals that accurately reflect LGBT Americans within their delegations, and we expect the DNC to reject any proposed state party plan that does not meet this threshold."
The Democratic National Committee approves a series of rules every four years that guide state parties in drafting and implementing delegate selection plans for the convention.
=
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501132_pf.html
Going Over to the Girlie Men
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, September 6, 2006; A15
SACRAMENTO -- It was just two years ago that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, angered by his inability to get right-wing bills through his state's Democratic-controlled legislature, termed that body's leaders -- Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Sen. on Perata -- "girlie men." This political neologism went over particularly big with a subgroup with which
Arnold claimed a special rapport: Dumb Young White Guys.
Deluded, perhaps, by the belief that the Census Bureau systematically undercounted the DYWGs, the Governator then spent all of last year campaigning against the Democrats and their institutional allies.
Attempting an end run around the legislature, he called a special election so that voters could approve four partisan Republican initiatives he supported, including a draconian spending limit and a measure that would have curtailed unions' political involvement. Somehow he overlooked that California is a heavily blue state, and a place where independents are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. More bewildering still, he forgot that he had campaigned for governor in the 2003 recall election as the guy who would end the partisan bickering in Sacramento, as a Republican who would forge common-sense solutions with the Democrats.
=
The current issue of The Independent Gay News is online
http://www.indynews.4t.com/
=
http://expressgaynews.com/blog/index.cfm?type=blog&start=9/2/06&end=9/9/06#9025
Express Gay News
Judge me by my enemies
by Chris Crane
It was 10 years ago this weekend, in Atlanta, Ga., and I was sitting in the laundry room of my house, the makeshift location for my home computer. Next to the keyboard was a stack of books I'd checked out from the public library on how to write a business plan, and that's exactly what I was doing.
Ten years later, thanks to the talent and contributions of too many to mention, that business plan has led to the newspaper you are reading. The company was Window Media, and the idea behind it was to raise the bar on the quality of journalism in the gay press.
Back in the mid-'90s, local gay and lesbian publications ran the gamut, from "bar rags" devoted to nightlife and sex, to small community newspapers that circulate largely among the activist and group joiners among us. Very few aspired to something more, attempting serious news reports alongside the lighter fare.
I had come out just a few years earlier in Washington, D.C., inspired and encouraged by the political activism I read about each week in the Washington Blade. I wanted to see more gay communities, in more cities, served by the same quality journalism. And headstrong as I was, I wanted more from the Blade as well.
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45 gays outed in Uganda witch-hunt
Arrests follow, others go into hiding
"Indiscriminate, uncorroborated and unjustified outing" condemned by OutRage!
"President Musiveni is the Robert Mugabe of Uganda," says Peter Tatchell
London - 7 September 2006
The Ugandan tabloid newspaper, Red Pepper, has outed 45 gay andbisexual men, including army officers, priests, university lecturers,entertainers, bankers, students and lawyers. It also published detailsof five venues popular with gays and lesbians.
Ugandan LGBTI activists regard the outings as an open invitation tothe police and queer-bashers to 'have a go'.
At least five men were arrested soon after the outing list waspublished. It is said the police are under pressure to get tough with"sodomites". They are now cracking down on the LGBTI community in anapparent bid to be seen taking action.
Please contact us at rays.list@comcast.net for the full article.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.baywindows.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=82E5CF7420AD43D58B93DE4679692E8B
Issue Date: 9/07/2006, Posted On: 9/7/2006
Dotting the I's, Crossing the T's
Ethan Jacobs
ejacobs@baywindows.com
Trans people face heightened scrutiny in a post-9/11 world
You're driving in your car and get stopped by the police for speeding. The officer asks for your license and registration and takes them back to the police car. He swipes a strip on the back of the license into a computer, and instantly has access to an assortment of personal documents about you, from your birth certificate to letters from your doctor detailing your most private and intimate medical history. While it sounds like a plotline pulled from the Sci-Fi Channel's new fall lineup, it could be a very real scenario for members of the transgender community if the Real ID Act goes into effect as scheduled in May 2008.
The Real ID Act, passed in May 2005 as a post-9/11 security measure, will force states to alter their driver's licenses to conform to uniform federal standards, and it will also force people applying for licenses to produce documents verifying their date of birth, Social Security number, and residency status or citizenship, among other personal characteristics. Registries of motor vehicles will be responsible for scanning those documents into a computer and putting them in a database that would be accessible to RMVs and law enforcement authorities in all 50 states. The act has already generated a firestorm of criticism, from civil libertarians and immigration advocates to state RMV officials who worry about the cost of implementing the change. But Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), said transgender people have another reason to worry about the act that likely has not crossed the
minds of those working to shore up homeland security post-9/11.
=
While performing last weekend in Sopot, Poland, Elton John delivered a
special message for his Polish friends.
Here it is.
"I am just a musician. I come and I play and hopefully make everyone'stroubles disappear for a couple of hours. And I'm also a gay man and I knowthat in Poland there have been a lot of violence towards gay people and Iurge you.. This is a time of compassion. There is enough hatred in theworld, let us all get on with each other. Leave gay people alone [applause].
We're just trying to be oursleves. We do not mean any harm. Love is whatit's all about and Polish people have always been full of love. God blessyou and thank you.. ['Your Song' begins]"
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_News&set_id=1&click_id=&art_id=qw1157276702891W643
Independent Online - S. Africa
Paedophile party aims to legalise child sex
Netherlands - A political party formed by Dutch paedophiles tried on Friday to win more support for its campaign to legalise sex with children so it can run in national elections in November.
The Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity party (PNVD) was launched in May and its campaign for a cut in the age of consent from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals has provoked widespread outrage in the Netherlands.
Party officials said they had gathered over 100 signatures so far but needed to collect several hundred more in the next month to be allowed to run in the November 22 general election.
"We think the child should have the freedom to engage in these contacts with peers or with adults, if and when they choose so," party chairperson Marthijn Uittenbogaard told a news conference in the parliamentary press centre in The Hague.
#####
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://365gay.com/Newscon06/08/083006legion.htm
Veterans Groups Call For Support of 'DADT' & Constitutional Ban On Gay Marriage
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
August 30, 2006 - 11:00 am ET
(Washington) The nation's two largest veterans groups are holding their annual conventions this week and are expected to pass motions supporting 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' - the ban on gays serving openly in the military - and a federal amendment to the Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage.
The American Legion is meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Veterans of Foreign Wars is meeting in Reno, Nevada.
The Legion will vote today on reaffirming its 2004 policy that calls for passage of an anti-gay marriage amendment.
"The American Legion believes that marriage is an institution, and it's based on a union between a man and a woman." said William Pease, deputy director of Americanism and Children and Youth for the Legion.
Pease also said that children raised in a home with opposite-sex parents experience lower rates of premarital childbearing, illicit drug use, poor health, school failure, behavioral and emotional problems, poverty and arrest.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/17784.html
The Conservative Voice
by James Hartline
Gay Vultures At California GOP Party
September 01, 2006 09:00 AM EST
It is without question, the single most degrading spectacle to have emerged from the current political climate being created by the leaders of the "Big Tent" California Republican Party concept. During the recent California Republican Party's State Convention held in Los Angeles, the radical homosexual group, the Log Cabin Republicans, held a party inside of the event.
Revelations surrounding the promotion of homosexuality within the GOP at the Log Cabin Republicans' festivities were nothing new. What was new, however, was the blatant attacks on Christian values that occured at this immoral homosexual party, when some of California's most public pro-family conservatives joined in the celebration of homosexuality at this despicable
gay love fest.
According to the website, Boi From Troy, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia discarded her feigned public pro-family values gameplan, to join the Log Cabin Republican's homosexual party to show her support for their cause. While Garcia has been able to astutely convince state conservatives that she is a pro-family advocate, her dance with gay activists at the Log Cabin Republicans party during the convention confirms what many have begun to see in her: an undercurrent of moral compromise. It was Garcia who broke with the GOP in 2004, to join the gay activists in the Democratic Party to vote for SB1234 which declared speech against homosexuality in California, a hate crime, if the hearer of said speech feels threatened by its content. SB1234
now has the potential to charge ministers who preach against homosexuality with a hate crime thanks to Garcia and three other Republicans, including Shirley Horton (R) Chula Vista who voted for SB1234. Gov. Schwarzenegger then proceeded to sign into law SB1234 despite receiving hundreds of thousands of emails and telephone calls from Christians pleading with him to veto the bill.
=
Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
October 11-14: GLMA Conference in SF; Make Hotel Reservations Now
GLMA at 25: Moving LGBT Health Care into the Mainstream
GLMA's 24th Annual Conference, the world's largest gathering of lesbian,gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), and straight/allied healthcareprofessionals, offers you the opportunity to enjoy the company of otherhealthcare professionals from around the world while earning continuingeducation credits in an affirming environment.
Register and make your travel plans by September 20th to receive discountedregistration and a special rate at the Renaissance Parc 55 (details below).
2006 is GLMA's 25th anniversary, and this year's conference takes placeOctober 11-14 in San Francisco, GLMA's home, the city of its founding, andone of world's most beautiful and LGBT-friendly cities. Special programmingis planned to commemorate our Silver Anniversary.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
Lance's Boyfriend Attacks Military Anti-Gay Rules in New Book
Contact Music
www.contactmusic.com
Sept. 4, 2006
Pop star LANCE BASS' boyfriend REICHEN LEYMKUHL has written a new book titled HERE'S WHAT WE'LL SAY, which chronicles his 'coming out' at the US Air Force Academy. The US reality TV hunk hopes his story will prompt lawmakers to change regulations which ostracise gay people in the military. He says, "It's still a criminal offence to be gay in the US Armed Forces. It's an abomination. "In my opinion, it's the last legal human rights abuse the US allows. This book chronicles the secret society we created to survive as gay cadets in the academy. "(With this book) I'm making a political statement. I wrote this book to end the ban on gay people serving in the US Armed Forces... It's just this one thing that needs to be fixed."
04/09/2006 02:22
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
Transgender candidate just another hopeful on the trail
By Daniel de Vise
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Dana Beyer rapped on a door at the end of a Silver Spring, Md., cul-de-sac. A woman answered. She listened to the candidate's spiel, sought her views on abortion rights (for) and growth (against) and found little on which the two did not agree.
"It's good to see more women running," she told the candidate.
For the five decades preceding a fateful 2003 trip to San Francisco, Dana Beyer lived as a man named Wayne.
The September primary will tell whether her legislative district, one of the most progressive in Maryland, is ready to elect the state's first transgender lawmaker.Beyer, 54, a retired eye surgeon, is running against seven other Democrats for three seats that will represent District 18 in
Maryland's House of Delegates. "Mansionization" rates as a major issue.
Beyer's campaign is not about gender. If there is one overarching theme, it is universal health care, a concern that took her to Kenya, Nepal and rural Mississippi as a young physician. Like her seven rivals, Beyer supports abortion rights, opposes capital punishment and endorses same-sex marriage.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://in.news.yahoo.com/060903/139/6780m.html
Rupert Everett slams Hollywood for gay bias
By ANI
Sunday September 3, 03:10 PM
Washington, Sept 3 (ANI): British actor Rupert Everett has slammed Hollywood bosses for discriminating against gay actors when it comes to big budget romantic flicks.
The 'My Best Friend's Wedding' star revealed his frustration at the way homosexuals were discriminated in the industry, and said that even though actors like him had the talent to take on the roles offered to stars like Hugh Grant, they were seldom given the part because of their sexual orientation.
"Without doubt gays are discriminated against in show business. The straight one gets to walk down a red carpet with a beautiful girl and everything works out and the gay one has to back- pedal and do independent movies. Yet everything Hugh Grant does, I could be in," Contactmusic quoted him, as saying.
"To be a movie star you have got to have a good-looking girlfriend and for Hugh, Elizabeth Hurley helped. It is a rophy job. You need a lot of energy to have a trophy girlfriend. I take my hat off to anyone who has one," he added. ANI)
=
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/television/15458118.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Rosie's got her own point of `View'
BY VERNE GAY
Newsday
Despite all the pre-publicity that blew in with Rosie O'Donnell on her firstappearance on The View Tuesday, it's the little stuff that'll ultimatelydetermine whether this ''casting addition'' will work or not. And wouldn'tyou just know? Little stuff started happening almost before Rosie got herseat warm.
About 10 minutes in, O'Donnell -- replacing Today-bound Meredith Vieira --started chatting amiably and rather loudly about something while failing tonotice that Barbara Walters was chatting amiably and less loudly aboutsomething else. Walters' eyes lowered ever so slightly, then her voice trailed away, clearly no match for the boisterous contralto booming just a few inches from her face.
Now, as we all know -- and as Rosie is about to learn -- lowered eyes are not good. One talks to Barbara, not over Barbara. A short while later,Walters even offered this impromptu adjustment in their future workingarrangement -- ''When we want, we can interrupt each other, OK'' -- which,loosely translated, means, ''Please don't ever interrupt me again, mydear.'' One presumptive queen of The View is all this show can handle.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15435545.htm?source=rss&channel=twincities_local
St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minn.)
Posted on Mon, Sep. 04, 2006
Gay Republican seeks re-election
Koering came out last year, angering some constituents
BY PATRICK CONDON
Associated Press
BRAINERD - To understand the challenge facing Sen. Paul Koering, a gay Republican battling to keep his seat against a conservative primary challenger, it helps to listen to Joan Campbell, a retiree and a Republican voter.
"I don't like what they do with their lives," Campbell said of gay people. "It's wrong, according to my Bible."Campbell, mind you, supports Koering.Many Republicans in this socially conservative heart of Central Minnesota take an even harder line against homosexuality, and Koering knows he is testing the outer limits of the GOP's big tent.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090701447_pf.html
Ellen DeGeneres Tapped to Host Oscars
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 10:59 PM
LOS ANGELES -- Ellen DeGeneres has been tapped to host next year's Oscars, the Academy of Motions Pictures Arts and Sciences said Thursday.
It will be the comedian and TV talker's first time hosting the Oscars show and first appearance on the award show. She has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast twice and co-hosted it once, and hosted the Grammys twice.
"Ellen DeGeneres was born to host the Academy Awards," said producer Laura Ziskin in a statement. "I can already tell she is going to set the bar very high for herself and therefore for all of us involved in putting on the show. Now all we need is a lot of great movies."The 79th Annual Academy Awards are scheduled to be broadcast live from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on ABC on Sunday, Feb. 25. This year's Oscarcast, in March, was fronted by "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/07/AR2006090700916_pf.html
Ban on Gay Rabbis May Be Lifted
By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 2:52 PM
NEW YORK -- A key Conservative Jewish leader is organizing talks nationwide to tell synagogues that the movement will likely roll back its ban on ordaining openly gay rabbis by year's end.
He and two religious law experts joining him at the meetings are trying to help congregations prepare for the confusion and discomfort to follow.Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, says a committee of scholars who interpret Jewish law for the movement will likely loosen the prohibition when they vote in
December.
At the same time, Epstein expects the scholars will endorse a policy aiming to keep more traditional congregations within the fold. Synagogues that believe Jewish law bars same-sex relationships still will be able to hire rabbis who share their view.
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http://www.indynews.4t.com/0318/local1.html
A Family Affair
More Gays to be at 2008 Democratic Convention
By Michael James
Editor
MJames@ourindependent.com
Late last month the Democratic National Committee (DNC) adopted new delegate selection rules for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Under the new rules, approved August 19 at the annual DNC summer meeting in Chicago, state Democratic parties will be required to increase the participation of LGBT Americans within their delegations.
Jo Wyrick, National Stonewall Democrats Executive Director said, "These rules begin the process of correcting historic under-representation of LGBT Americans in party affairs. We expect state parties to use these rules to establish goals that accurately reflect LGBT Americans within their delegations, and we expect the DNC to reject any proposed state party plan that does not meet this threshold."
The Democratic National Committee approves a series of rules every four years that guide state parties in drafting and implementing delegate selection plans for the convention.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501132_pf.html
Going Over to the Girlie Men
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, September 6, 2006; A15
SACRAMENTO -- It was just two years ago that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, angered by his inability to get right-wing bills through his state's Democratic-controlled legislature, termed that body's leaders -- Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Sen. on Perata -- "girlie men." This political neologism went over particularly big with a subgroup with which
Arnold claimed a special rapport: Dumb Young White Guys.
Deluded, perhaps, by the belief that the Census Bureau systematically undercounted the DYWGs, the Governator then spent all of last year campaigning against the Democrats and their institutional allies.
Attempting an end run around the legislature, he called a special election so that voters could approve four partisan Republican initiatives he supported, including a draconian spending limit and a measure that would have curtailed unions' political involvement. Somehow he overlooked that California is a heavily blue state, and a place where independents are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. More bewildering still, he forgot that he had campaigned for governor in the 2003 recall election as the guy who would end the partisan bickering in Sacramento, as a Republican who would forge common-sense solutions with the Democrats.
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The current issue of The Independent Gay News is online
http://www.indynews.4t.com/
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http://expressgaynews.com/blog/index.cfm?type=blog&start=9/2/06&end=9/9/06#9025
Express Gay News
Judge me by my enemies
by Chris Crane
It was 10 years ago this weekend, in Atlanta, Ga., and I was sitting in the laundry room of my house, the makeshift location for my home computer. Next to the keyboard was a stack of books I'd checked out from the public library on how to write a business plan, and that's exactly what I was doing.
Ten years later, thanks to the talent and contributions of too many to mention, that business plan has led to the newspaper you are reading. The company was Window Media, and the idea behind it was to raise the bar on the quality of journalism in the gay press.
Back in the mid-'90s, local gay and lesbian publications ran the gamut, from "bar rags" devoted to nightlife and sex, to small community newspapers that circulate largely among the activist and group joiners among us. Very few aspired to something more, attempting serious news reports alongside the lighter fare.
I had come out just a few years earlier in Washington, D.C., inspired and encouraged by the political activism I read about each week in the Washington Blade. I wanted to see more gay communities, in more cities, served by the same quality journalism. And headstrong as I was, I wanted more from the Blade as well.
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45 gays outed in Uganda witch-hunt
Arrests follow, others go into hiding
"Indiscriminate, uncorroborated and unjustified outing" condemned by OutRage!
"President Musiveni is the Robert Mugabe of Uganda," says Peter Tatchell
London - 7 September 2006
The Ugandan tabloid newspaper, Red Pepper, has outed 45 gay andbisexual men, including army officers, priests, university lecturers,entertainers, bankers, students and lawyers. It also published detailsof five venues popular with gays and lesbians.
Ugandan LGBTI activists regard the outings as an open invitation tothe police and queer-bashers to 'have a go'.
At least five men were arrested soon after the outing list waspublished. It is said the police are under pressure to get tough with"sodomites". They are now cracking down on the LGBTI community in anapparent bid to be seen taking action.
Please contact us at rays.list@comcast.net for the full article.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.baywindows.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=82E5CF7420AD43D58B93DE4679692E8B
Issue Date: 9/07/2006, Posted On: 9/7/2006
Dotting the I's, Crossing the T's
Ethan Jacobs
ejacobs@baywindows.com
Trans people face heightened scrutiny in a post-9/11 world
You're driving in your car and get stopped by the police for speeding. The officer asks for your license and registration and takes them back to the police car. He swipes a strip on the back of the license into a computer, and instantly has access to an assortment of personal documents about you, from your birth certificate to letters from your doctor detailing your most private and intimate medical history. While it sounds like a plotline pulled from the Sci-Fi Channel's new fall lineup, it could be a very real scenario for members of the transgender community if the Real ID Act goes into effect as scheduled in May 2008.
The Real ID Act, passed in May 2005 as a post-9/11 security measure, will force states to alter their driver's licenses to conform to uniform federal standards, and it will also force people applying for licenses to produce documents verifying their date of birth, Social Security number, and residency status or citizenship, among other personal characteristics. Registries of motor vehicles will be responsible for scanning those documents into a computer and putting them in a database that would be accessible to RMVs and law enforcement authorities in all 50 states. The act has already generated a firestorm of criticism, from civil libertarians and immigration advocates to state RMV officials who worry about the cost of implementing the change. But Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), said transgender people have another reason to worry about the act that likely has not crossed the
minds of those working to shore up homeland security post-9/11.
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While performing last weekend in Sopot, Poland, Elton John delivered a
special message for his Polish friends.
Here it is.
"I am just a musician. I come and I play and hopefully make everyone'stroubles disappear for a couple of hours. And I'm also a gay man and I knowthat in Poland there have been a lot of violence towards gay people and Iurge you.. This is a time of compassion. There is enough hatred in theworld, let us all get on with each other. Leave gay people alone [applause].
We're just trying to be oursleves. We do not mean any harm. Love is whatit's all about and Polish people have always been full of love. God blessyou and thank you.. ['Your Song' begins]"
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_News&set_id=1&click_id=&art_id=qw1157276702891W643
Independent Online - S. Africa
Paedophile party aims to legalise child sex
Netherlands - A political party formed by Dutch paedophiles tried on Friday to win more support for its campaign to legalise sex with children so it can run in national elections in November.
The Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity party (PNVD) was launched in May and its campaign for a cut in the age of consent from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals has provoked widespread outrage in the Netherlands.
Party officials said they had gathered over 100 signatures so far but needed to collect several hundred more in the next month to be allowed to run in the November 22 general election.
"We think the child should have the freedom to engage in these contacts with peers or with adults, if and when they choose so," party chairperson Marthijn Uittenbogaard told a news conference in the parliamentary press centre in The Hague.
#####
Thursday, September 07, 2006
FLORIDA DIGEST September 7, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.expressgaynews.com/print.cfm?content_id=3020
Bill's Filling Station under new ownership
Bar adds new amenities, plans to retain 'neighborhood' feel
Sep. 02, 2006
Bill's Filling Station, a 10-year-old gay bar in Fort Lauderdale, is under new ownership.
Former owner Michael Wright sold the bar Aug. 14 to Jackson Padgett and MarkNegrete, both of whom are gay, the bar's manager confirmed this week.
The bar has just added two new pool tables and new nightly specials,including three-for-one drinks on Wednesdays, said Chad Lynn, manager ofBill's Filling Station.
"We want to remain a neighborhood bar," Lynn said. "We've added some stuffto attract a bigger clientele base."
Lynn, who was also the manager under the previous owners, said he was kepton "to ensure continuity."
The bar is located at 1243 NE 11th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/07/news_pf/Hillsborough/If_it_looks_easy_for_.shtml
If it looks easy for Storms, well, it is
The Republican hardly even campaigned in her primary and won. Voters in District 10 just love her.
BEN MONTGOMERY
Published September 7, 2006
BRANDON - She spent less than half as much as her opponent on the primaryelection. She didn't hire a consultant or tout a single endorsement on herWeb site. She spent campaign funds on pony rentals, a moon bounce and abluegrass band.
And when the votes were tallied Tuesday, Ronda Storms skipped to victory inthe Senate District 10 Republican primary against Sandy Murman, a woman witheight years of experience in the state Legislature.
That means trouble for Democrat Stephen Gorham, a 27-year-old Navy veteran
and political newcomer who faces Storms in November.
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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-colburn0706sep07,0,5728199.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines
OTHER VIEWS
To the victors belong the scars
David Colburn
Special to the Sentinel
September 7, 2006
In the last 24 hours, Republican Charlie Crist and Democrat Jim Davis havebeen alternately celebrating their victories, examining ways to build on theelection results, and reviewing steps to heal the internal party divisionscreated by the contests. Despite their victories, neither came out of theprimaries unscathed.
As we've come to expect from past Democratic primaries, Davis and hisDemocratic opponent, state Sen. Rod Smith, took one another to task on anumber of issues, with perhaps the most telling attack coming from Smith. Heberated Davis' extended absence from his congressional duties as hecampaigned for governor during the past 18 months. Crist will almostcertainly take up Smith's criticism of Davis during the coming weeks.
But the charges and countercharges of Davis and Smith paled next to thepersonal and political attacks Tom Gallagher launched against Charlie Crist.Seldom in Florida's recent political history have Republican opponentstraded such barbs as the two candidates did in this primary.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15457950.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Senate foes will spar on TV
Coming soon to a television screen near you: live debates between Rep. Katherine Harris and Sen. Bill Nelson, the incumbent she is challenging.
BY LESLEY CLARK
lclark@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON - Running 30 percentage points ahead in the polls and sitting ona comfortable cushion of cash, Sen. Bill Nelson agreed Wednesday to twotelevised debates with his Republican challenger, Rep. Katherine Harris.
The controversial congresswoman clinched the Republican nomination Tuesday,but not without further denting her often chaotic campaign by pulling inless than 50 percent of the votes in the GOP primary, despite outspendingthree little-known opponents.
Harris spent the day thanking voters and juggling radio interviews, and hercampaign shrugged off suggestions that the primary results foreshadow aneven rockier quest to unseat Nelson. ''We're not concerned at all,''spokeswoman Jennifer Marks said. ``We're very pleased in a four-way racethat we had such a strong showing of support. We're excited and moving forward.''
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http://www.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGBBAJ8MSRE.html
HOW LOW CAN WE GO?
By KEVIN BEGOS and KEITH EPSTEIN The Tampa Tribune
Published: Sep 7, 2006
Yet again, most Floridians had no say in an important election - because they didn't vote.
Tuesday's primary had one of the lowest turnouts in state history - about 20percent of registered voters in Hillsborough County and statewide, accordingto preliminary results. And that's not counting 2 million or 3 millionadults who never bothered to register.
That lack of participation often is blamed on apathy - people just notcaring or seeing how it matters to them. Voters, however, aren't the onlyones to blame. People in power don't always want everyone to vote.
In Florida and across the country, those in authority are making votingharder, not easier. Big money political machines are being used to boost thepower of extremes on both the left and the right, with the vast middle oftenleft out. Even seasoned politiciansspeak wistfully of the dwindling time they get to spend with the people they represent.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-felxgov07sep07,0,1144345.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
Both candidates court black community as governor's race heats up
By Linda Kleindienst and Jeremy Milarsky
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 7, 2006
TAMPA · The first day of the post-primary run for governor found Republican
Charlie Crist already taking steps to align himself with the governor he
hopes to replace and Democrat Jim Davis looking to mend fences after a
divisive campaign.
Davis won with fewer than half the Democratic votes, edging out chief rivalRod Smith and three minor candidates after a bitter primary in which chargesof favoring special interests and disrespecting civil rights were slung backand forth.
Sugar farmers bankrolled a nearly $5 million anti-Davis campaign aimed atblack voters, focusing attention on Davis' 1990 vote while a statelegislator to deny compensation to Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee, twoblack men wrongly convicted of killing two white gas station attendants in
Florida's Panhandle.
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LAVENDER WRITES PRESENTS AN ONLINE SHORT STORY AND NOVEL WRITING WORKSHOP FOR LESBIAN AND GAY WRITERS
The Next Generation, a project of Lavender Writes, the Broward County Cultural Division, the Broward County North Regional Library and Border Books & Music, presents an ongoing free workshop for gay and lesbian adults who want to learn how to write fiction or improve their knowledge and writing skills. The course will meet online, with free computers available
at the Broward County Libraries for people who do not have access to computers at home.
Students will learn about the elements of fiction, write short stories or novel chapters and critique drafts of work for other students, which will provide feedback for students while helping them learn to evaluate and improve their own fiction. This is an interactive class. Students will
post drafts of their work and participate in discussions of fiction wiring and problems and questions as they arise.
The course is organized as a Yahoo Group and meets weekly. Assignments and discussions are due once a week, but students can participate at a time and date that is convenient for them. The class is ongoing during the year. Students can participate for the entire year or for a shorter time. Students will also have opportunities to read their work at Open Mic readings during the year.
The course is open to new and established writers. A working knowledge of Microsoft Word and the Internet are required. Attendance is limited to keep class size small. Students will be accepted on a first-come basis. Additional students will be accepted during the year as space become available. Pre-registration required at LWrites@mindspring.com.
For more information or to register, contact Lavender Writes at: LWrites@mindspring.com.
Please contact us at rays.list@comcast.nety for full article
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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-college0706sep07,0,2246810.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state
Uneducated kids imperil state growth, report says
Most Florida youths skip college and can't fill jobs of boomers, a study warns.
Dave Weber
Sentinel Staff Writer
September 7, 2006
A generation of poorly educated children unlikely to get college degreesthreatens Florida's ability to create a competitive work force and mayweaken the state's economy, a new report being released today says.
Many Florida students are not academically prepared for college, most willnot attend and many who do will struggle to pay, says the nonpartisanNational Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in Washington. Florida has one of the lowest high-school graduation rates in the country,with only 56 percent of students completing high school in four years,according to the center's latest assessment, released every other year.
Less than a third go to college, with fewer earning degrees, the report says.
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http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060907/NEWS0107/609070422/1002
Crist, Davis look to mend party fences
Gubernatorial candidates to shore up support
By Aaron Deslatte
news-press.com capital bureau
Originally posted on September 07, 2006
TALLAHASSEE - Two weeks ago, Republican Charlie Crist stopped by a meetingwith black Republicans in Jacksonville where he touted a civil rights casehis office prosecuted against a Perry hotel operator who had kept blacksfrom swimming in the pool.
The Republican Party "is a big tent, and it's got to stay that way," thegubernatorial hopeful said to big applause.
Two days earlier, Democrat Rod Smith had opened a new front in his primarycampaign by questioning the civil rights credentials of opponent Jim Davisin an infamous case where the eventual Democratic nominee had voted againstcompensating two black men wrongfully placed on death row.
A mailer sent out a day later by the sugar industry put the attack moresuccinctly: "Davis voted to deny justice." It was a jab that stung all theway to the polls.
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http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060905/NEWS/209050332/1002/news02&template=printpicart
Lethal-injection debate continues across state
BY NATHAN CRABBE
THE GAINESVILLE SUN
GAINESVILLE - While Gov. Jeb Bush has started signing death warrants againin Florida, don't expect serial killer Danny Rolling or other Death Rowinmates to be executed anytime soon.
Some death penalty experts say executions in the state are likely to bedelayed until the courts decide whether the lethal injection method is crueland unusual punishment. The courts face complicated questions over the hemicals used in the procedure, the people giving those chemicals andoversight of executions, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law
professor and expert on lethal injection.
"There are many aspects of the procedure that are problematic," she said.
Bush last month signed a death warrant for convicted cop killer ClarenceHill, setting his execution date for Sept. 20. A spokeswoman for Bush saidhe wanted to spur the courts into deciding Hill's challenge of the lethalinjection method of execution.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/07/news_pf/State/Is_Crist_win_sign_of_.shtml
Is Crist win sign of shift for GOP?
Charlie Crist could be on the way to giving a more moderate face to the state Republican Party.
JONI JAMES
Published September 7, 2006
The incoming leader of Florida's Republican Party, Charlie Crist, lost notime Wednesday announcing the support of current GOP boss and Florida's mostpopular politician, Gov. Jeb Bush.
Just 15 hours after capturing the GOP nomination for governor, Crist toldabout 40 supporters at his St. Petersburg headquarters that he would spendtoday hop-scotching the state with Bush, who had remained neutral in theprimary between Crist and Tom Gallagher.
"The Jeb Bush era has not ended," Crist said. "It still exists and it's important to me."
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pelxvote07sep07,0,5158218.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Two days after small primary, Palm Beach County one of last in state to report
By Andy Reid
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 7, 2006
With bubbles long fizzled from campaign party champagne, Palm Beach Countyvote-counting lumbered into a second day Wednesday while candidates andparty leaders clamored for faster results from Supervisor of ElectionsArthur Anderson. Complete vote totals were not expected until today.
Anderson said accuracy remains his priority and concerns about the pace ofhis tabulation process were "grossly distorted."
Candidate Kelly Skidmore had to wait until about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday todeclare victory by a little more than 200 votes in her race for the District90 state House seat.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GLOBAL TRAIN of NEW THOUGHT
STOPS in WILTON MANORS BRINGING
UNITY and FORGIVENESS
The Religious Science Center for Spiritual Living is joining hearts with churches and organizations across the world to celebrate 11 Days of Global Unity & a Season of Forgiveness with free events every day including an Interfaith Celebration, twice daily peace meditations, and culminating with a Peace Concert presenting various artists.
September 11th opens 11 Days of Global Unity & a Season of Forgiveness and will be memorialized with an Interfaith Service at the Religious Science Center celebrating our connection as a global community and breathing forgiveness where there has been bitterness and pain. Celebrants are from Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian and New Thought traditions.
Peace meditations will be held daily in the Religious Science Center at noon and 7:30 pm offering a place of reflection and restoration on individual, community and global levels. Everyone is welcome regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
WHO: Religious Science Center for Spiritual Living
WHAT: Celebrating 11 Days of Global Unity & a Season of ForgivenessWHEN: September 11 - 21, 2006; all evening events begin at 7:30
COST: All events are free of charge.
Please contact us at rays.list@comcast.net if you would like the full
article.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/06/Columns/For_battered_Davis__w.shtml
St. Petersburg Times
For battered Davis, worst lies ahead
By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
Published September 6, 2006
How can U.S. Rep. Jim Davis possibly beat charming Charlie Crist, the telegenic, lavishly funded Republican gubernatorial candidate who stuck to the ideological center throughout a sometimes bruising GOP primary?
A) He probably won't.
B) But there's way too much material for Democrats to work with to chalk this up as a foregone conclusion yet.Davis emerged as the Democrats' wounded Democratic nominee Tuesday.He had underestimated Rod Smith's strength from the start, saw his 20-point primary lead evaporate, and now faces an even tougher - much tougher - general election campaign.
What won't work well for Davis is trying to cast Attorney General Crist as a right winger out of step with average Floridians. Advocating higher teacher pay, sticking with the class-size reduction mandate and sounding ambivalent on restricting abortions, Crist has campaigned much more like a general election centrist than a Republican primary conservative.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/06/news_pf/Columns/Gallagher_latest_vict.shtml
St. Petersburg Times
Gallagher latest victim of Nice Guy; Davis next?
By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
Published September 6, 2006
In a simpler and more efficient world, things would have worked out like this.
Right after the 2004 election, the boss of the Republican Party of Florida would have put Tom Gallagher, Charlie Crist, and Katherine Harris in the same room and locked the door.
"Tom,'' the party boss would have said, "you're going to be governor, like you wanted to be back in '94.'
"Charlie, you're going to be U.S. senator, like you wanted to be back in '98, and like your mentor Connie Mack.
"And Katherine, you're going to be ambassador to Fiji. Jeb's got it all worked out with the White House. So start packing.''
But there was no boss like that around. So when 2006 came, Crist and Gallagher ran against each other to be the Republican nominee for governor.
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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/state/epaper/2006/09/06/m1a_governor_0906.html
It's Davis vs. Crist for governor
By Brian E. Crowley
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG - Charlie Crist rolled over Tom Gallagher to win the Republican nomination for governor while Jim Davis fought back a late surge from Rod Smith to capture the Democratic nod Tuesday.
Speaking to hundreds of cheering supporters in St. Petersburg, Crist immediately launched into the general election campaign, calling on the Democratic nominee to join him in two statewide debates.
Crist, the state attorney general, also called for Republican unity: "I invite those who supported Tom to join our campaign." And repeating his favorite campaign slogan, he said as governor he would call for "less taxes, less spending, less government and more freedom."
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http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/15446088.htm
Posted on Wed, Sep. 06, 2006
Okeechobee levee in danger of collapsing, flooding area
CAROL J. WILLIAMS
Los Angeles Times
PAHOKEE - It's been the backyard hill that children rolled down, with a popular hiking path above canals and cane fields stretching to the horizon. The grass-covered ridge affords townsfolk a soothing breeze off the broad, shallow waters of Lake Okeechobee.
Now the levee circling Florida's largest lake looms as a landmark of potential disaster. The crumbling, 70-year-old earthen barrier known as the Herbert Hoover Dike has been called "a grave and imminent danger" that could breach during a hurricane and inundate the 40,000 people living and working in its flood path.
In April, engineering experts forecast a 1-in-6 chance of the dike's failure this hurricane season, a report that prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to urge federal authorities to speed up repairs and local agencies to draft evacuation plans for residents living south and east of the 700-square-mile lake.
The alarm bells have evoked the death and chaos that ensued a year ago in New Orleans, when Hurricane Katrina's deluge broke through a similarly weakened levee holding back Lake Pontchartrain.
The New Orleans scenario is unlikely here, because the territory surrounding the dike is sparsely populated, flat and above the lake level, unlike the below-sea level urban neighborhoods inundated by Lake Pontchartrain.
But this area has seen its own hurricane disaster. A 1928 storm blew Okeechobee lake water over the surrounding communities, killing more than 3,000 people and leading to the dike's construction.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/us/07florida.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
September 7, 2006
Democrats See Chances to Gain in Florida
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
MIAMI, Sept. 6 - Gov. Jeb Bush is leaving office because of term limits, and Florida Republicans' new Senate nominee, Representative Katherine Harris, is perhaps the party's weakest here in decades. So the state's hobbled Democrats see a rare opportunity to regain some of the ground they have lost in this swing state over the last 12 years.
The going will be rough. Governor Bush's popularity will almost certainly help Attorney General Charlie Crist, who in Tuesday's primary became the Republican nominee to succeed him. And the State Legislature, controlled by Republicans since 1996, will stay that way. Republicans now hold every statewide office except for that of Senator Bill Nelson, who now faces a challenge from Ms. Harris, and all but 7 of Florida's 25 seats in the House.
Yet Democrats believe they can capitalize on national anger toward Republicans this year, and on local concern about home insurance rates and education policy, including what many see as an overemphasis on standardized testing. They are hoping that social conservatives will be kept at home on Election Day by Mr. Crist's moderate positions: he supports stem cell research and civil unions for same-sex couples, and, though against abortion, has said he would not support new restrictions on it.
Republican dominance notwithstanding, Florida has more registered Democrats, who number 4.2 million, than Republicans, at 3.9 million, according to the Division of Elections.
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http://www.expressgaynews.com/print.cfm?content_id=3020
Bill's Filling Station under new ownership
Bar adds new amenities, plans to retain 'neighborhood' feel
Sep. 02, 2006
Bill's Filling Station, a 10-year-old gay bar in Fort Lauderdale, is under new ownership.
Former owner Michael Wright sold the bar Aug. 14 to Jackson Padgett and MarkNegrete, both of whom are gay, the bar's manager confirmed this week.
The bar has just added two new pool tables and new nightly specials,including three-for-one drinks on Wednesdays, said Chad Lynn, manager ofBill's Filling Station.
"We want to remain a neighborhood bar," Lynn said. "We've added some stuffto attract a bigger clientele base."
Lynn, who was also the manager under the previous owners, said he was kepton "to ensure continuity."
The bar is located at 1243 NE 11th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/07/news_pf/Hillsborough/If_it_looks_easy_for_.shtml
If it looks easy for Storms, well, it is
The Republican hardly even campaigned in her primary and won. Voters in District 10 just love her.
BEN MONTGOMERY
Published September 7, 2006
BRANDON - She spent less than half as much as her opponent on the primaryelection. She didn't hire a consultant or tout a single endorsement on herWeb site. She spent campaign funds on pony rentals, a moon bounce and abluegrass band.
And when the votes were tallied Tuesday, Ronda Storms skipped to victory inthe Senate District 10 Republican primary against Sandy Murman, a woman witheight years of experience in the state Legislature.
That means trouble for Democrat Stephen Gorham, a 27-year-old Navy veteran
and political newcomer who faces Storms in November.
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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-colburn0706sep07,0,5728199.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines
OTHER VIEWS
To the victors belong the scars
David Colburn
Special to the Sentinel
September 7, 2006
In the last 24 hours, Republican Charlie Crist and Democrat Jim Davis havebeen alternately celebrating their victories, examining ways to build on theelection results, and reviewing steps to heal the internal party divisionscreated by the contests. Despite their victories, neither came out of theprimaries unscathed.
As we've come to expect from past Democratic primaries, Davis and hisDemocratic opponent, state Sen. Rod Smith, took one another to task on anumber of issues, with perhaps the most telling attack coming from Smith. Heberated Davis' extended absence from his congressional duties as hecampaigned for governor during the past 18 months. Crist will almostcertainly take up Smith's criticism of Davis during the coming weeks.
But the charges and countercharges of Davis and Smith paled next to thepersonal and political attacks Tom Gallagher launched against Charlie Crist.Seldom in Florida's recent political history have Republican opponentstraded such barbs as the two candidates did in this primary.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15457950.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Senate foes will spar on TV
Coming soon to a television screen near you: live debates between Rep. Katherine Harris and Sen. Bill Nelson, the incumbent she is challenging.
BY LESLEY CLARK
lclark@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON - Running 30 percentage points ahead in the polls and sitting ona comfortable cushion of cash, Sen. Bill Nelson agreed Wednesday to twotelevised debates with his Republican challenger, Rep. Katherine Harris.
The controversial congresswoman clinched the Republican nomination Tuesday,but not without further denting her often chaotic campaign by pulling inless than 50 percent of the votes in the GOP primary, despite outspendingthree little-known opponents.
Harris spent the day thanking voters and juggling radio interviews, and hercampaign shrugged off suggestions that the primary results foreshadow aneven rockier quest to unseat Nelson. ''We're not concerned at all,''spokeswoman Jennifer Marks said. ``We're very pleased in a four-way racethat we had such a strong showing of support. We're excited and moving forward.''
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http://www.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGBBAJ8MSRE.html
HOW LOW CAN WE GO?
By KEVIN BEGOS and KEITH EPSTEIN The Tampa Tribune
Published: Sep 7, 2006
Yet again, most Floridians had no say in an important election - because they didn't vote.
Tuesday's primary had one of the lowest turnouts in state history - about 20percent of registered voters in Hillsborough County and statewide, accordingto preliminary results. And that's not counting 2 million or 3 millionadults who never bothered to register.
That lack of participation often is blamed on apathy - people just notcaring or seeing how it matters to them. Voters, however, aren't the onlyones to blame. People in power don't always want everyone to vote.
In Florida and across the country, those in authority are making votingharder, not easier. Big money political machines are being used to boost thepower of extremes on both the left and the right, with the vast middle oftenleft out. Even seasoned politiciansspeak wistfully of the dwindling time they get to spend with the people they represent.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-felxgov07sep07,0,1144345.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
Both candidates court black community as governor's race heats up
By Linda Kleindienst and Jeremy Milarsky
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 7, 2006
TAMPA · The first day of the post-primary run for governor found Republican
Charlie Crist already taking steps to align himself with the governor he
hopes to replace and Democrat Jim Davis looking to mend fences after a
divisive campaign.
Davis won with fewer than half the Democratic votes, edging out chief rivalRod Smith and three minor candidates after a bitter primary in which chargesof favoring special interests and disrespecting civil rights were slung backand forth.
Sugar farmers bankrolled a nearly $5 million anti-Davis campaign aimed atblack voters, focusing attention on Davis' 1990 vote while a statelegislator to deny compensation to Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee, twoblack men wrongly convicted of killing two white gas station attendants in
Florida's Panhandle.
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LAVENDER WRITES PRESENTS AN ONLINE SHORT STORY AND NOVEL WRITING WORKSHOP FOR LESBIAN AND GAY WRITERS
The Next Generation, a project of Lavender Writes, the Broward County Cultural Division, the Broward County North Regional Library and Border Books & Music, presents an ongoing free workshop for gay and lesbian adults who want to learn how to write fiction or improve their knowledge and writing skills. The course will meet online, with free computers available
at the Broward County Libraries for people who do not have access to computers at home.
Students will learn about the elements of fiction, write short stories or novel chapters and critique drafts of work for other students, which will provide feedback for students while helping them learn to evaluate and improve their own fiction. This is an interactive class. Students will
post drafts of their work and participate in discussions of fiction wiring and problems and questions as they arise.
The course is organized as a Yahoo Group and meets weekly. Assignments and discussions are due once a week, but students can participate at a time and date that is convenient for them. The class is ongoing during the year. Students can participate for the entire year or for a shorter time. Students will also have opportunities to read their work at Open Mic readings during the year.
The course is open to new and established writers. A working knowledge of Microsoft Word and the Internet are required. Attendance is limited to keep class size small. Students will be accepted on a first-come basis. Additional students will be accepted during the year as space become available. Pre-registration required at LWrites@mindspring.com.
For more information or to register, contact Lavender Writes at: LWrites@mindspring.com.
Please contact us at rays.list@comcast.nety for full article
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http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-college0706sep07,0,2246810.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state
Uneducated kids imperil state growth, report says
Most Florida youths skip college and can't fill jobs of boomers, a study warns.
Dave Weber
Sentinel Staff Writer
September 7, 2006
A generation of poorly educated children unlikely to get college degreesthreatens Florida's ability to create a competitive work force and mayweaken the state's economy, a new report being released today says.
Many Florida students are not academically prepared for college, most willnot attend and many who do will struggle to pay, says the nonpartisanNational Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in Washington. Florida has one of the lowest high-school graduation rates in the country,with only 56 percent of students completing high school in four years,according to the center's latest assessment, released every other year.
Less than a third go to college, with fewer earning degrees, the report says.
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http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060907/NEWS0107/609070422/1002
Crist, Davis look to mend party fences
Gubernatorial candidates to shore up support
By Aaron Deslatte
news-press.com capital bureau
Originally posted on September 07, 2006
TALLAHASSEE - Two weeks ago, Republican Charlie Crist stopped by a meetingwith black Republicans in Jacksonville where he touted a civil rights casehis office prosecuted against a Perry hotel operator who had kept blacksfrom swimming in the pool.
The Republican Party "is a big tent, and it's got to stay that way," thegubernatorial hopeful said to big applause.
Two days earlier, Democrat Rod Smith had opened a new front in his primarycampaign by questioning the civil rights credentials of opponent Jim Davisin an infamous case where the eventual Democratic nominee had voted againstcompensating two black men wrongfully placed on death row.
A mailer sent out a day later by the sugar industry put the attack moresuccinctly: "Davis voted to deny justice." It was a jab that stung all theway to the polls.
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http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060905/NEWS/209050332/1002/news02&template=printpicart
Lethal-injection debate continues across state
BY NATHAN CRABBE
THE GAINESVILLE SUN
GAINESVILLE - While Gov. Jeb Bush has started signing death warrants againin Florida, don't expect serial killer Danny Rolling or other Death Rowinmates to be executed anytime soon.
Some death penalty experts say executions in the state are likely to bedelayed until the courts decide whether the lethal injection method is crueland unusual punishment. The courts face complicated questions over the hemicals used in the procedure, the people giving those chemicals andoversight of executions, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law
professor and expert on lethal injection.
"There are many aspects of the procedure that are problematic," she said.
Bush last month signed a death warrant for convicted cop killer ClarenceHill, setting his execution date for Sept. 20. A spokeswoman for Bush saidhe wanted to spur the courts into deciding Hill's challenge of the lethalinjection method of execution.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/07/news_pf/State/Is_Crist_win_sign_of_.shtml
Is Crist win sign of shift for GOP?
Charlie Crist could be on the way to giving a more moderate face to the state Republican Party.
JONI JAMES
Published September 7, 2006
The incoming leader of Florida's Republican Party, Charlie Crist, lost notime Wednesday announcing the support of current GOP boss and Florida's mostpopular politician, Gov. Jeb Bush.
Just 15 hours after capturing the GOP nomination for governor, Crist toldabout 40 supporters at his St. Petersburg headquarters that he would spendtoday hop-scotching the state with Bush, who had remained neutral in theprimary between Crist and Tom Gallagher.
"The Jeb Bush era has not ended," Crist said. "It still exists and it's important to me."
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pelxvote07sep07,0,5158218.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Two days after small primary, Palm Beach County one of last in state to report
By Andy Reid
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 7, 2006
With bubbles long fizzled from campaign party champagne, Palm Beach Countyvote-counting lumbered into a second day Wednesday while candidates andparty leaders clamored for faster results from Supervisor of ElectionsArthur Anderson. Complete vote totals were not expected until today.
Anderson said accuracy remains his priority and concerns about the pace ofhis tabulation process were "grossly distorted."
Candidate Kelly Skidmore had to wait until about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday todeclare victory by a little more than 200 votes in her race for the District90 state House seat.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GLOBAL TRAIN of NEW THOUGHT
STOPS in WILTON MANORS BRINGING
UNITY and FORGIVENESS
The Religious Science Center for Spiritual Living is joining hearts with churches and organizations across the world to celebrate 11 Days of Global Unity & a Season of Forgiveness with free events every day including an Interfaith Celebration, twice daily peace meditations, and culminating with a Peace Concert presenting various artists.
September 11th opens 11 Days of Global Unity & a Season of Forgiveness and will be memorialized with an Interfaith Service at the Religious Science Center celebrating our connection as a global community and breathing forgiveness where there has been bitterness and pain. Celebrants are from Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian and New Thought traditions.
Peace meditations will be held daily in the Religious Science Center at noon and 7:30 pm offering a place of reflection and restoration on individual, community and global levels. Everyone is welcome regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
WHO: Religious Science Center for Spiritual Living
WHAT: Celebrating 11 Days of Global Unity & a Season of ForgivenessWHEN: September 11 - 21, 2006; all evening events begin at 7:30
COST: All events are free of charge.
Please contact us at rays.list@comcast.net if you would like the full
article.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/06/Columns/For_battered_Davis__w.shtml
St. Petersburg Times
For battered Davis, worst lies ahead
By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
Published September 6, 2006
How can U.S. Rep. Jim Davis possibly beat charming Charlie Crist, the telegenic, lavishly funded Republican gubernatorial candidate who stuck to the ideological center throughout a sometimes bruising GOP primary?
A) He probably won't.
B) But there's way too much material for Democrats to work with to chalk this up as a foregone conclusion yet.Davis emerged as the Democrats' wounded Democratic nominee Tuesday.He had underestimated Rod Smith's strength from the start, saw his 20-point primary lead evaporate, and now faces an even tougher - much tougher - general election campaign.
What won't work well for Davis is trying to cast Attorney General Crist as a right winger out of step with average Floridians. Advocating higher teacher pay, sticking with the class-size reduction mandate and sounding ambivalent on restricting abortions, Crist has campaigned much more like a general election centrist than a Republican primary conservative.
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http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/06/news_pf/Columns/Gallagher_latest_vict.shtml
St. Petersburg Times
Gallagher latest victim of Nice Guy; Davis next?
By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist
Published September 6, 2006
In a simpler and more efficient world, things would have worked out like this.
Right after the 2004 election, the boss of the Republican Party of Florida would have put Tom Gallagher, Charlie Crist, and Katherine Harris in the same room and locked the door.
"Tom,'' the party boss would have said, "you're going to be governor, like you wanted to be back in '94.'
"Charlie, you're going to be U.S. senator, like you wanted to be back in '98, and like your mentor Connie Mack.
"And Katherine, you're going to be ambassador to Fiji. Jeb's got it all worked out with the White House. So start packing.''
But there was no boss like that around. So when 2006 came, Crist and Gallagher ran against each other to be the Republican nominee for governor.
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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/state/epaper/2006/09/06/m1a_governor_0906.html
It's Davis vs. Crist for governor
By Brian E. Crowley
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG - Charlie Crist rolled over Tom Gallagher to win the Republican nomination for governor while Jim Davis fought back a late surge from Rod Smith to capture the Democratic nod Tuesday.
Speaking to hundreds of cheering supporters in St. Petersburg, Crist immediately launched into the general election campaign, calling on the Democratic nominee to join him in two statewide debates.
Crist, the state attorney general, also called for Republican unity: "I invite those who supported Tom to join our campaign." And repeating his favorite campaign slogan, he said as governor he would call for "less taxes, less spending, less government and more freedom."
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http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/15446088.htm
Posted on Wed, Sep. 06, 2006
Okeechobee levee in danger of collapsing, flooding area
CAROL J. WILLIAMS
Los Angeles Times
PAHOKEE - It's been the backyard hill that children rolled down, with a popular hiking path above canals and cane fields stretching to the horizon. The grass-covered ridge affords townsfolk a soothing breeze off the broad, shallow waters of Lake Okeechobee.
Now the levee circling Florida's largest lake looms as a landmark of potential disaster. The crumbling, 70-year-old earthen barrier known as the Herbert Hoover Dike has been called "a grave and imminent danger" that could breach during a hurricane and inundate the 40,000 people living and working in its flood path.
In April, engineering experts forecast a 1-in-6 chance of the dike's failure this hurricane season, a report that prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to urge federal authorities to speed up repairs and local agencies to draft evacuation plans for residents living south and east of the 700-square-mile lake.
The alarm bells have evoked the death and chaos that ensued a year ago in New Orleans, when Hurricane Katrina's deluge broke through a similarly weakened levee holding back Lake Pontchartrain.
The New Orleans scenario is unlikely here, because the territory surrounding the dike is sparsely populated, flat and above the lake level, unlike the below-sea level urban neighborhoods inundated by Lake Pontchartrain.
But this area has seen its own hurricane disaster. A 1928 storm blew Okeechobee lake water over the surrounding communities, killing more than 3,000 people and leading to the dike's construction.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/us/07florida.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
September 7, 2006
Democrats See Chances to Gain in Florida
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
MIAMI, Sept. 6 - Gov. Jeb Bush is leaving office because of term limits, and Florida Republicans' new Senate nominee, Representative Katherine Harris, is perhaps the party's weakest here in decades. So the state's hobbled Democrats see a rare opportunity to regain some of the ground they have lost in this swing state over the last 12 years.
The going will be rough. Governor Bush's popularity will almost certainly help Attorney General Charlie Crist, who in Tuesday's primary became the Republican nominee to succeed him. And the State Legislature, controlled by Republicans since 1996, will stay that way. Republicans now hold every statewide office except for that of Senator Bill Nelson, who now faces a challenge from Ms. Harris, and all but 7 of Florida's 25 seats in the House.
Yet Democrats believe they can capitalize on national anger toward Republicans this year, and on local concern about home insurance rates and education policy, including what many see as an overemphasis on standardized testing. They are hoping that social conservatives will be kept at home on Election Day by Mr. Crist's moderate positions: he supports stem cell research and civil unions for same-sex couples, and, though against abortion, has said he would not support new restrictions on it.
Republican dominance notwithstanding, Florida has more registered Democrats, who number 4.2 million, than Republicans, at 3.9 million, according to the Division of Elections.
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NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST September 7, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/washington/07terror.html?ei=5094&en=4232fc565b4e597b&hp=&ex=1157688000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
A Challenge From Bush to Congress
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - In calling for public war-crime trials at Guantánamo Bay, President Bush is calculating that with a critical election just nineweeks away, neither angry Democrats nor nervous Republicans will dare denyhim the power to detain, interrogate and try suspects his way.
For years now, Guantánamo has been a political liability, regarded primarilyas a way station for outcasts. By transforming Guantánamo instead into thenew home of 14 Qaeda leaders who rank among the most notorious terrorsuspects, Mr. Bush is challenging Congress to restore to him the authorityto put the United States' worst enemies on trial on terms he has defined.
But the gambit carries with it a potential downside by identifying Mr. Busheven more closely with a detention system whose history has been marked bywidespread accusations of mistreatment.
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http://www.local10.com/politics/9800909/detail.html?treets=mia&tml=mia_natlbreak&ts=T&tmi=mia_natlbreak_1_09290209072006
British PM Tony Blair Says He'll Resign
POSTED: 10:54 pm EDT September 6, 2006
UPDATED: 10:37 am EDT September 7, 2006
LONDON -- Tony Blair is quitting -- but not just yet.
The British prime minister is promising to resign within a year. Hisannouncement comes one day after eight members of his government quit toshow their displeasure with him. They were among 15 members of Blair's ownpolitical party who signed a letter demanding he step down.
Blair said Thursday that he would've preferred to do this his own way. Hehad hoped to keep the time frame for his resignation private, and stillisn't setting a specific date. But he said this month's Labor Partyconference will be his last. The next one is scheduled a year from now.
Blair led Labor to a third consecutive victory last year, and he had earliersaid this would be his last term. The next election is expected in 2009, and he can stay until then if he wants.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/education/07educ.html?pagewanted=print
Report Finds U.S. Students Lagging in Finishing College
By TAMAR LEWIN
The United States, long the world leader in higher education, has fallen behind other nations in its college enrollment and completion rates, as theaffordability of American colleges and universities has declined, accordingto a new report.
The study, from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education,found that although the United States still leads the world in theproportion of 35- to 64-year-olds with college degrees, it ranks seventhamong developed nations for 25- to 34-year-olds. On rates of college
completion, the United States is in the lower half of developed nations.
"Completion is the Achilles' heel of American higher education,'' saidPatrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonprofit,nonpartisan organization based in San Jose, Calif., and Washington.
One particular area of concern, Mr. Callan said, is that younger Americans -the most diverse generation in the nation's history - are laggingeducationally, compared with the baby boom generation.
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Pakistan.html?pagewanted=print
Musharraf Denies Pakistan Is Helping Taliban
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:15 a.m. ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharrafacknowledged Thursday that al-Qaida and Taliban militants were crossing fromPakistan to launch attacks in Afghanistan, but denied his government'spowerful military intelligence agency was helping them.
''You blame us for what is happening in Afghanistan,'' Musharraf said in anaddress to Afghan government and army officials and lawmakers at the ForeignMinistry in Kabul. ''Let me say neither the government of Pakistan nor ISI(Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence) is involved in any kind ofinterference inside Afghanistan.''
Musharraf's speech, attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, came a dayafter the two leaders resolved to cooperate to fight the ''common enemy'' ofterrorism and extremism.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609070196sep07,1,6373054.story?track=rss
ANALYSIS
Behind disclosures, GOP political agenda
By Michael Tackett
Tribune senior correspondent
September 7, 2006
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's surprising concessions about secret CIAprisons, military tribunals and harsh treatment of terror suspects werestartling, yet had an air of defiance. His justifications were stark, bluntand emotional, yet had an air of authority.
Given that many see him and the Republican Party limping into a midtermelection season burdened by the grimness of the war in Iraq and a growingsense among Americans that the threat of another terrorist attack has notbeen diminished, Bush showed he still has a sense of the bold.
And he demonstrated a willingness--again--to make the election fortunes ofhis party a referendum on his effectiveness in fighting the war onterrorism, a tactic that almost certainly secured his second term in theWhite House. The risks of such tactics no doubt rise the further the publicmind is removed from the day Bush grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero in New York; the public now listens with a far more skeptical ear.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/sfl-editafcongressdeadlocksep07,0,6040134.story?coll=sfla-news-editorial
Lawmakers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
September 7, 2006
ISSUE: Congress back in "inaction."
The 109th Congress is back at work for one of its last sessions before a newCongress convenes in January. But, how much work it'll get done ahead of themidterm election is questionable.
When it first assembled in January 2005, the 109th Congress had an ambitiousagenda to match White House talk of "political capital." The list includedSocial Security reform and tackling the tax code. Late last year, Congressalso tacked on another major domestic agenda item, overhauling immigrationlaws.
Yet, for all the hype and bluster, this Congress could enter the midtermelections without a heck of a lot to show for its efforts, its time and themoney that taxpayers spent on these federal representatives.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609070178sep07,1,6241982.story?track=rss
Book says Rove ordered office exorcism
Advertisement
Newsday
September 7, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Karl Rove says he's not The Exorcist.
Rove, the Bush political shaman Democrats love to demonize, enlisted a trioof clergymen to exorcise Hillary Rodham Clinton's left-wing spirit when hemoved into her West Wing office in 2001, according to an unflattering newbiography.
"I talked to Karl; he said it's not true and, beyond that, he will have nocomment," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Clinton smiled and shook her head in disbelief Wednesday when asked aboutthe tale, which appears in "The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan forAbsolute Power," by James Moore and Wayne Slater.
"I'm speechless," she finally said, heading toward a Senate elevator.
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http://www.365gay.com/opinion/besen/besen.htm
WMD: Weapons Of Mullah Destruction
by Wayne Besen
We already knew that George W. Bush was losing the war in Iraq, but a NewYork Times article reveals that he may also be losing the war on drugs. Inhis bloodlust to avenge Saddam's attempt to kill Poppy, Bush invaded Iraqand left the Afghan poppy fields in the hands of a resurgent Taliban. The President's failure to smack down the black turbans has led to a 50 percent spike in smack production, accounting for more than 92 percent of theworld's opium supply on the black market.
Having mastered the law of unintended consequences, Bush's bungling inAfghanistan has somehow led to the proliferation of both syringes and Sharia(Islamic Law). Sadly, this new OPEC (Opium Producing Exporting Countries) isthe only industry that seems to be working in the forgotten country thatactually had something to do with 9-11.
Now that the duel distractions of the Israeli/Hezbollah war and John Karrhave subsided, the public is once again focused on the Iraqi debacle in therun up to midterm elections. With pundits pontificating about a Democratictakeover of the House, Bush gave a cynical speech once again tying Osama binLaden to the quagmire in Iraq. Trying to confuse Americans, Bush sounded
alarms about Osama working to create a caliphate based in Baghdad.
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Our magnificent isolation
It's hard for Americans to visualize our country's collapse.
If the president turns out to be a shallow fool, we still expect to survive it.
By Garrison Keillor
Sep. 06, 2006 | Growing up in the '50s, we imagined our country defended byguided missiles poised in bunkers, jet fighters on the tarmac and pilots inthe ready room prepared to scramble, a colonel with a black briefcasesitting in the hall outside the president's bedroom. But Sept. 11 gave us aclearer picture. We have a vast array of hardware, a multitude of colonels,a lot of bureaucratic confusion, and a nation vulnerable to attack.
The FAA has now acknowledged that the third of the four planes seized by the19 men with box cutters had already hit the Pentagon before the FAA finallycalled there to say there was a problem. The FAA lied to the 9/11 Commissionabout this, then took two years to ascertain the facts -- a 51-minute gap indefense -- and released the finding on the Friday before Labor Day, anexcellent burial site for bad news.
So America is not the secure fortress we grew up imagining. Perhaps it neverwas. What protects us is what has protected us for 230 years: ourmagnificent isolation. After the disasters of the 20th century, Europe put nationalism aside and adopted civilization, but we have oceans on eitherside, so if the president turns out to be a shallow jingoistic fool with asmall rigid agenda and little knowledge of the world, we expect to survive it somehow. Life goes on.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/29/bonghits.4jesus.ap/index.html
High court to get 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' case?
POSTED: 5:17 p.m. EDT, August 29, 2006
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) --
Former Whitewater special counsel Kenneth Starr petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up Alaska's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, a disputeinvolving a high school student, a banner and a tough school policy.
Starr, who gained national prominence while investigating formerPresident Clinton's Whitewater land deal and relationship with MonicaLewinsky, filed the petition Monday on behalf of the Juneau SchoolDistrict in response to a March ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court sided with a high school student who displayed abanner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during an Olympic torch relay in2002. It ruled former Juneau-Douglas High School principal Deborah Morseviolated former student Joseph Frederick's free speech rights.
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The Washington Post
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/opinion/07brooks.html?pagewanted=print
September 7, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Populist Myths on Income Inequality
By DAVID BROOKS
There are two schools of thought on income inequality. Members of the first school - populist politicians and a few economists - say the key issue is economic power.
The haves exercise more power over the have-nots. As a result, corporate profits soar, while wages stagnate. Money-drenched politicians push through shareholder-friendly trade deals that outsource American jobs while job insecurity skyrockets. C.E.O.'s get absurd salaries while the 99 percent of earners enjoy few benefits from productivity gains. Unions are weakened while manufacturing wages tumble and the middle class suffers.
In short, populists argue, the market is broken. The rules are rigged. The reigning ideology in Washington must be upended. Unions must be revived. Globalization needs to be reorganized.
The problem with this narrative is that it doesn't really fit the facts. First, workers over all are not getting a smaller slice of the pie. Wages and benefits have made up roughly the same share of G.D.P. for 50 years. Second, offshore outsourcing is not decimating employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, outsourcing is responsible for 1.9 percent of layoffs, and the efficiencies it produces create more jobs at better wages than the ones destroyed.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/washington/07cong.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
September 7, 2006
Democrats Force a Debate, but Can't Get a Vote on Rumsfeld
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - Senate Democrats failed Wednesday to force a vote on a resolution calling for the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after an extended debate that served as a proxy for a partisan clash over the war in Iraq.
Republicans blocked the proposal, which called for President Bush to replace Mr. Rumsfeld as an acknowledgment that the administration sees a need to change strategy in Iraq. They accused Democrats of a political assault on a man they credited with capably running the war effort and advising President Bush.
"He has been, I think, a very impressive secretary of defense,'' said Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. "I can think of no one who has worked harder as secretary of defense than Donald Rumsfeld.''
Democrats, who entered the fight expecting to be denied a vote, used the opportunity to castigate Mr. Rumsfeld not only for what they said was gross mismanagement of the Iraq effort, but also for what they said were ugly attacks on his critics.
"Secretary Rumsfeld's speech in Utah was a low point,'' said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, referring to an address last month in which the secretary compared critics of Bush terror policy to those who appeased Hitler before World War II. "We got a lot of name-calling, more slogans, but for all the hype, we didn't get any new policies.''
#####
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/washington/07terror.html?ei=5094&en=4232fc565b4e597b&hp=&ex=1157688000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
A Challenge From Bush to Congress
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - In calling for public war-crime trials at Guantánamo Bay, President Bush is calculating that with a critical election just nineweeks away, neither angry Democrats nor nervous Republicans will dare denyhim the power to detain, interrogate and try suspects his way.
For years now, Guantánamo has been a political liability, regarded primarilyas a way station for outcasts. By transforming Guantánamo instead into thenew home of 14 Qaeda leaders who rank among the most notorious terrorsuspects, Mr. Bush is challenging Congress to restore to him the authorityto put the United States' worst enemies on trial on terms he has defined.
But the gambit carries with it a potential downside by identifying Mr. Busheven more closely with a detention system whose history has been marked bywidespread accusations of mistreatment.
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http://www.local10.com/politics/9800909/detail.html?treets=mia&tml=mia_natlbreak&ts=T&tmi=mia_natlbreak_1_09290209072006
British PM Tony Blair Says He'll Resign
POSTED: 10:54 pm EDT September 6, 2006
UPDATED: 10:37 am EDT September 7, 2006
LONDON -- Tony Blair is quitting -- but not just yet.
The British prime minister is promising to resign within a year. Hisannouncement comes one day after eight members of his government quit toshow their displeasure with him. They were among 15 members of Blair's ownpolitical party who signed a letter demanding he step down.
Blair said Thursday that he would've preferred to do this his own way. Hehad hoped to keep the time frame for his resignation private, and stillisn't setting a specific date. But he said this month's Labor Partyconference will be his last. The next one is scheduled a year from now.
Blair led Labor to a third consecutive victory last year, and he had earliersaid this would be his last term. The next election is expected in 2009, and he can stay until then if he wants.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/education/07educ.html?pagewanted=print
Report Finds U.S. Students Lagging in Finishing College
By TAMAR LEWIN
The United States, long the world leader in higher education, has fallen behind other nations in its college enrollment and completion rates, as theaffordability of American colleges and universities has declined, accordingto a new report.
The study, from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education,found that although the United States still leads the world in theproportion of 35- to 64-year-olds with college degrees, it ranks seventhamong developed nations for 25- to 34-year-olds. On rates of college
completion, the United States is in the lower half of developed nations.
"Completion is the Achilles' heel of American higher education,'' saidPatrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonprofit,nonpartisan organization based in San Jose, Calif., and Washington.
One particular area of concern, Mr. Callan said, is that younger Americans -the most diverse generation in the nation's history - are laggingeducationally, compared with the baby boom generation.
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Pakistan.html?pagewanted=print
Musharraf Denies Pakistan Is Helping Taliban
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:15 a.m. ET
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharrafacknowledged Thursday that al-Qaida and Taliban militants were crossing fromPakistan to launch attacks in Afghanistan, but denied his government'spowerful military intelligence agency was helping them.
''You blame us for what is happening in Afghanistan,'' Musharraf said in anaddress to Afghan government and army officials and lawmakers at the ForeignMinistry in Kabul. ''Let me say neither the government of Pakistan nor ISI(Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence) is involved in any kind ofinterference inside Afghanistan.''
Musharraf's speech, attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, came a dayafter the two leaders resolved to cooperate to fight the ''common enemy'' ofterrorism and extremism.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609070196sep07,1,6373054.story?track=rss
ANALYSIS
Behind disclosures, GOP political agenda
By Michael Tackett
Tribune senior correspondent
September 7, 2006
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's surprising concessions about secret CIAprisons, military tribunals and harsh treatment of terror suspects werestartling, yet had an air of defiance. His justifications were stark, bluntand emotional, yet had an air of authority.
Given that many see him and the Republican Party limping into a midtermelection season burdened by the grimness of the war in Iraq and a growingsense among Americans that the threat of another terrorist attack has notbeen diminished, Bush showed he still has a sense of the bold.
And he demonstrated a willingness--again--to make the election fortunes ofhis party a referendum on his effectiveness in fighting the war onterrorism, a tactic that almost certainly secured his second term in theWhite House. The risks of such tactics no doubt rise the further the publicmind is removed from the day Bush grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero in New York; the public now listens with a far more skeptical ear.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/editorial/sfl-editafcongressdeadlocksep07,0,6040134.story?coll=sfla-news-editorial
Lawmakers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
September 7, 2006
ISSUE: Congress back in "inaction."
The 109th Congress is back at work for one of its last sessions before a newCongress convenes in January. But, how much work it'll get done ahead of themidterm election is questionable.
When it first assembled in January 2005, the 109th Congress had an ambitiousagenda to match White House talk of "political capital." The list includedSocial Security reform and tackling the tax code. Late last year, Congressalso tacked on another major domestic agenda item, overhauling immigrationlaws.
Yet, for all the hype and bluster, this Congress could enter the midtermelections without a heck of a lot to show for its efforts, its time and themoney that taxpayers spent on these federal representatives.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609070178sep07,1,6241982.story?track=rss
Book says Rove ordered office exorcism
Advertisement
Newsday
September 7, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Karl Rove says he's not The Exorcist.
Rove, the Bush political shaman Democrats love to demonize, enlisted a trioof clergymen to exorcise Hillary Rodham Clinton's left-wing spirit when hemoved into her West Wing office in 2001, according to an unflattering newbiography.
"I talked to Karl; he said it's not true and, beyond that, he will have nocomment," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Clinton smiled and shook her head in disbelief Wednesday when asked aboutthe tale, which appears in "The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan forAbsolute Power," by James Moore and Wayne Slater.
"I'm speechless," she finally said, heading toward a Senate elevator.
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http://www.365gay.com/opinion/besen/besen.htm
WMD: Weapons Of Mullah Destruction
by Wayne Besen
We already knew that George W. Bush was losing the war in Iraq, but a NewYork Times article reveals that he may also be losing the war on drugs. Inhis bloodlust to avenge Saddam's attempt to kill Poppy, Bush invaded Iraqand left the Afghan poppy fields in the hands of a resurgent Taliban. The President's failure to smack down the black turbans has led to a 50 percent spike in smack production, accounting for more than 92 percent of theworld's opium supply on the black market.
Having mastered the law of unintended consequences, Bush's bungling inAfghanistan has somehow led to the proliferation of both syringes and Sharia(Islamic Law). Sadly, this new OPEC (Opium Producing Exporting Countries) isthe only industry that seems to be working in the forgotten country thatactually had something to do with 9-11.
Now that the duel distractions of the Israeli/Hezbollah war and John Karrhave subsided, the public is once again focused on the Iraqi debacle in therun up to midterm elections. With pundits pontificating about a Democratictakeover of the House, Bush gave a cynical speech once again tying Osama binLaden to the quagmire in Iraq. Trying to confuse Americans, Bush sounded
alarms about Osama working to create a caliphate based in Baghdad.
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Our magnificent isolation
It's hard for Americans to visualize our country's collapse.
If the president turns out to be a shallow fool, we still expect to survive it.
By Garrison Keillor
Sep. 06, 2006 | Growing up in the '50s, we imagined our country defended byguided missiles poised in bunkers, jet fighters on the tarmac and pilots inthe ready room prepared to scramble, a colonel with a black briefcasesitting in the hall outside the president's bedroom. But Sept. 11 gave us aclearer picture. We have a vast array of hardware, a multitude of colonels,a lot of bureaucratic confusion, and a nation vulnerable to attack.
The FAA has now acknowledged that the third of the four planes seized by the19 men with box cutters had already hit the Pentagon before the FAA finallycalled there to say there was a problem. The FAA lied to the 9/11 Commissionabout this, then took two years to ascertain the facts -- a 51-minute gap indefense -- and released the finding on the Friday before Labor Day, anexcellent burial site for bad news.
So America is not the secure fortress we grew up imagining. Perhaps it neverwas. What protects us is what has protected us for 230 years: ourmagnificent isolation. After the disasters of the 20th century, Europe put nationalism aside and adopted civilization, but we have oceans on eitherside, so if the president turns out to be a shallow jingoistic fool with asmall rigid agenda and little knowledge of the world, we expect to survive it somehow. Life goes on.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/29/bonghits.4jesus.ap/index.html
High court to get 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' case?
POSTED: 5:17 p.m. EDT, August 29, 2006
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) --
Former Whitewater special counsel Kenneth Starr petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up Alaska's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, a disputeinvolving a high school student, a banner and a tough school policy.
Starr, who gained national prominence while investigating formerPresident Clinton's Whitewater land deal and relationship with MonicaLewinsky, filed the petition Monday on behalf of the Juneau SchoolDistrict in response to a March ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court sided with a high school student who displayed abanner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during an Olympic torch relay in2002. It ruled former Juneau-Douglas High School principal Deborah Morseviolated former student Joseph Frederick's free speech rights.
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The Washington Post
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/opinion/07brooks.html?pagewanted=print
September 7, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Populist Myths on Income Inequality
By DAVID BROOKS
There are two schools of thought on income inequality. Members of the first school - populist politicians and a few economists - say the key issue is economic power.
The haves exercise more power over the have-nots. As a result, corporate profits soar, while wages stagnate. Money-drenched politicians push through shareholder-friendly trade deals that outsource American jobs while job insecurity skyrockets. C.E.O.'s get absurd salaries while the 99 percent of earners enjoy few benefits from productivity gains. Unions are weakened while manufacturing wages tumble and the middle class suffers.
In short, populists argue, the market is broken. The rules are rigged. The reigning ideology in Washington must be upended. Unions must be revived. Globalization needs to be reorganized.
The problem with this narrative is that it doesn't really fit the facts. First, workers over all are not getting a smaller slice of the pie. Wages and benefits have made up roughly the same share of G.D.P. for 50 years. Second, offshore outsourcing is not decimating employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, outsourcing is responsible for 1.9 percent of layoffs, and the efficiencies it produces create more jobs at better wages than the ones destroyed.
=
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/washington/07cong.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
September 7, 2006
Democrats Force a Debate, but Can't Get a Vote on Rumsfeld
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - Senate Democrats failed Wednesday to force a vote on a resolution calling for the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after an extended debate that served as a proxy for a partisan clash over the war in Iraq.
Republicans blocked the proposal, which called for President Bush to replace Mr. Rumsfeld as an acknowledgment that the administration sees a need to change strategy in Iraq. They accused Democrats of a political assault on a man they credited with capably running the war effort and advising President Bush.
"He has been, I think, a very impressive secretary of defense,'' said Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. "I can think of no one who has worked harder as secretary of defense than Donald Rumsfeld.''
Democrats, who entered the fight expecting to be denied a vote, used the opportunity to castigate Mr. Rumsfeld not only for what they said was gross mismanagement of the Iraq effort, but also for what they said were ugly attacks on his critics.
"Secretary Rumsfeld's speech in Utah was a low point,'' said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, referring to an address last month in which the secretary compared critics of Bush terror policy to those who appeased Hitler before World War II. "We got a lot of name-calling, more slogans, but for all the hype, we didn't get any new policies.''
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