Inequality widens across Connecticut:

Per capita income in the state’s eight wealthiest towns, all in Fairfield County, increased 31.3 percent in the 10-year period, besting the state average of 11.1 percent. The urban poor, meanwhile, saw their per capita income grow only 2.1 percent in the same period. UConn’s Center for Population Research said the data make it hard to paint a picture of the average Connecticut. “The average Connecticut does not exist,” Wayne Villemez, the center’s director, said Thursday. “I asked someone to find me the average town, and it doesn’t exist.”

Another failed conservative attempt to seize the mantle of victimhood:

Bush-Cheney ’04 spokesman Scott Stanzel did not address the question of whether the Kerry fundraising signals sustained Democratic fundraising success. But he said that “we have always indicated we will be outspent by the Democratic nominee and the liberal soft-money groups.” In fact, when money raised by the parties, the two presidential candidates and by “soft money” committees known as “527s” is added, the total on the Republican side is $574 million and on the Democratic side $421 million, a $153 million GOP advantage.

Robert Scheer on rewarding bad behavior:

What a revelation to learn that the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the infamous memo in effect defending torture is now a US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge. It tells you all you need to know about the sort of conservative to whom George W. Bush is turning in his attempt to pack the federal courts.

Human Rights Watch calls for Iraqi prisoners to be charged:

It is unlawful for the United States to hold detainees in Iraq without charge or trial while claiming it has transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi government, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 14, the U.S. military in Baghdad said that the United States will continue to detain without charge some 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners deemed a threat to the coalition even after the declared transfer of sovereignty on June 30.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions permit the detention without charge of prisoners of war and other detainees only in the case of an international armed conflict—which by definition is between governments—or an occupation. Washington says that both will come to an end on June 30, meaning that the ongoing conflict between the Iraqi government and Iraqi insurgents would become a civil war. That a sovereign government may seek assistance from foreign governments does not transform a civil war into an international conflict. In the absence of an occupation or an international conflict, no one can be detained under international humanitarian law without being charged with a recognized crime. Those not charged must be released and repatriated “without delay.”

It’s not only Wal-Mart:

Indeed, he said that when smoke set off the fire alarm at one supermarket he used to clean in the Bronx, firefighters had to saw through a large lock to get in. Interviews with janitors, state officials and local organizers who work with immigrants indicate that the experiences of these men and many others are part of a hidden threat in dozens of stores across the city, where concerns about theft trump worries about the fate of workers. To prevent workers from stealing merchandise, they say, many stores padlock their rear fire exits, even as the front doors are sealed behind steel gates.

Investigators with the New York attorney general’s office say they have found evidence that the practice is not uncommon, and will recommend that the New York City Fire Department look at the Pioneer store as well as a C-Town store in Williamsburg. The Fire Department said it was illegal to lock in workers with no avenue for escape, and a spokesman said the department would examine the allegations.

If anyone was wondering what the mindset was that made the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire possible, I thhink we found our model.

Protestors who believe in small-d democracy may sue the big-D Democrats over their crackdown on dissent at the convention:

Just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, civil rights groups are threatening to sue the city of Boston because a “free-speech zone” near the FleetCenter remains piled high with twisted steel and hunks of Big Dig concrete, no protest groups have received demonstration permits, and the city is enforcing its rule against afternoon marches. The threats of legal action followed a meeting yesterday between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union and National Lawyers Guild, where activists were told of a Boston ordinance that bans marches from 3:30-6:30 p.m. Those are hours when evening commuter traffic is heaviest.

But the civil rights groups complain that the rule effectively bars them from parading in streets when delegates will be arriving at the FleetCenter for convention activities. The civil rights groups were also told demonstrators may not be allowed to carry signs on sticks for security reasons, and that the use of battery-powered bullhorns will require special permits. Those rules don’t appear on the city’s website guide to demonstration permitting. “Here we are, six weeks before the convention,” said Jeffery Feuer, a National Lawyers Guild attorney who took part in yesterday’s meeting. “The DNC has been planned for more than two years. We’ve been meeting with them since last July, so it’s not acceptable anymore. Unless we hear imminently that the procedures have been changed and the constitutional issues are addressed and people can take part in the process, then we’re going to file a lawsuit.” Merita A. Hopkins, corporation counsel for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said that some of the civil rights groups’ complaints appear to have merit, including one that permits are not being issued quickly enough.

The Senate votes against cracking down on war profiteering:

The Senate also overwhelmingly approved a Republican-drafted measure that would strengthen federal anti-fraud laws but defeated, again mostly along party lines, a stronger Democratic-sponsored amendment designed to crack down on war profiteering. That vote was 46 in favor of the amendment and 52 against. “Nobody wants to use the word ‘Halliburton’ around here,” complained Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), referring to the company once led by Vice President Dick Cheney that has come under fire for allegedly overcharging the government for its work in Iraq.

The movement to hold hospitals like Yale – New Haven accountable when they profit from non-profit status while failing in their mission to care for all patients goes national:

A group of plaintiffs’ lawyers filed civil lawsuits against more than a dozen nonprofit hospitals across the country yesterday, contending that the hospitals violated their obligation as charities by overcharging people without insurance and then hounding them for the money. The complaints name some of the largest hospitals in the Chicago, Atlanta and Minneapolis metropolitan areas. More lawsuits are expected to be filed, said Don Barrett, one of the lawyers involved in the cases. “It is part of a coordinated attack on this reprehensible practice,” he said.

The lawyers, some of whom were involved in litigation against the tobacco companies in the 1990’s, are calling for the creation of a trust that would be financed by the hospitals and would provide affordable medical care for those without insurance. Because the hospitals have tax-exempt status and other benefits as nonprofit organizations, the lawyers argue that they have an obligation to provide affordable care to the uninsured.

Many thanks to Daily Kos for making yesterday by far the highest-traffic day this site’s ever had.

Rumsfeld orders Iraqi prisoners hidden from the Red Cross:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison’s rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday. This prisoner and other “ghost detainees” were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross from monitoring their treatment, and to avoid disclosing their location to an enemy, officials said.

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who in February investigated abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, criticized the practice of allowing ghost detainees there and at other detention centers as “deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law.”

This must not be how Chalabi said it would work out:

The bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks further called into question on Wednesday one of President Bush’s rationales for the war with Iraq, and again put him on the defensive over an issue the White House was once confident would be a political plus. In questioning the extent of any ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the commission weakened the already spotty scorecard on Mr. Bush’s justifications for sending the military to topple Saddam Hussein.

Banned biological and chemical weapons: none yet found. Percentage of Iraqis who view American-led forces as liberators: 2, according to a poll commissioned last month by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Number of possible Al Qaeda associates known to have been in Iraq in recent years: one, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose links to the terrorist group and Mr. Hussein’s government remain sketchy.

Nicholas Kristof on ethnic cleansing in the Sudan:

The Janjaweed took her and her two sisters away on horses and gang-raped them, she said. The troops shot one sister, Kuttuma, and cut the throat of the other, Fatima, and they discussed how to mutilate her. (Sexual humiliation has been part of the Sudanese strategy to drive out the African tribespeople. The Janjaweed routinely add to the stigma by branding or scarring the women they rape.) “One Janjaweed said: `You belong to me. You are a slave to the Arabs, and this is the sign of a slave,’ ” she recalled. He slashed her leg with a sword before letting her hobble away, stark naked. Other villagers confirmed that they had found her naked and bleeding, and she showed me the scar on her leg.

By comparison, Ms. Khattar was one of the lucky ones. She lost her parents, her home and all her belongings, but her husband and children were alive, and she had not been raped. Unfortunately, her luck would soon run out…If she and her people aren’t victims of genocide, then the word has no meaning.