From Prisoners of the Census:

Most of the counties shown by the Census Bureau to have the fastest growing Black populations…are counties with new prisons with large incarcerated Black populations.

Those of you who’ve been here a while know that Sam Smith, of Progressive Review fame, is a major source of inspiration (and news) for our Little Wild Bouquet. So I’m psyched to be able to share that I just got an e-mail back from Sam, responding to one from me, in which he shared some kind words about the site and invited me to cross-post over at his Undernews Blog. So when inspiration strikes – which will likely be after we at Yale finish final exams (or final Labor History seminar papers as the case may be) – I’ll try to get some stuff up there. Not to worry though – everything will be up here in the old haunt as well. Meanwhile, back to work…Go read Sam’s site.

This makes it that much more contrived to argue that the torture problem is just a few bad apples:

Months before Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld publicly acknowledged the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, top U.S. officials and several international human rights organizations repeatedly warned the Defense Department to halt the mistreatment of detainees. From U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to investigators for the International Committee of the Red Cross, a broad array of officials pressed the Pentagon to improve conditions or face a likely Iraqi backlash, officials from the government and the organizations said yesterday.

Speculation mounts about Rumsfeld’s future after yesterday’s testimony:

The White House is the most important, and some people close to its inner circle suggest that despite the outward display of support for the defense secretary, years of battles with the Pentagon over Iraq war planning and the occupation have taken a toll. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, repeated on Friday that President Bush remained in support of his defense secretary, as did some others. But a person close to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, speculated that Ms. Rice, who has a history of tense dealings with Mr. Rumsfeld, might not be unhappy if he resigned. “He appears to have become a liability for the president, and has complicated the mission in Iraq,” the person close to Ms. Rice said, adding that Ms. Rice, like the president, is leaving options open: “They’re waiting to see what the system will bear, and if the story dies down after today, Rumsfeld survives.” Sean McCormack, the National Security Council spokesman, said Friday night that it was “100 percent absolutely false,” that Ms. Rice would welcome Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation.

Others who know the president said Mr. Bush, who puts a premium on loyalty, would be reluctant to fire Mr. Rumsfeld, and might even have trouble accepting his resignation. Although Mr. Bush has dismissed subordinates like Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill, he has done so only after months, if not years, of dissatisfaction with their service. Mr. Bush, who was on a bus campaign trip on Friday in Iowa and Wisconsin, phoned Mr. Rumsfeld before flying home to tell him he “did a really good job” in his testimony, Mr. McClellan told reporters. Nonetheless, Mr. Bush made no public comments on Friday about Mr. Rumsfeld’s testimony to the Senate and House Armed Services Committee.

Among those now calling for resignation: John Kerry.

The Center for American Progress suggests some questions for Rumsfeld’s testimony today.

Andrew Sullivan:

My sense of the mood among Washington neocons is something bordering on real depression. Bush is campaigning in Ohio and Michigan as if he were in real trouble and knows it. Moreover, his approval numbers are now below 50 percent. In most critical states, the candidates are neck and neck, but Kerry keeps being nominally in the lead…

Ryan Lizza:

Bush’s approval ratings are also the worst Gallup has ever recorded for him on the economy (41%), foreign affairs (42%), the situation in Iraq (42%), and terrorism (52%). And note that these numbers were only partially affected by the prison abuse story because the poll was conducted Sunday through Tuesday, before Bush’s Arab television interviews. But the most interesting finding in the poll is that while Bush and Kerry are essentially tied nationally (Kerry 49%, Bush 48%), in the purple battleground states–where voters are seeing and hearing more from the two candidates than anywhere else–Kerry leads Bush 48% to 44%. And this is after Bush has taken his best shot at Kerry with his $60 million ad campaign in those states, yet before Kerry’s own ad campaign has really even started.

Media Matters (my we’re linking them a lot of late…) tracks the right’s scapegoats for torture: Women, feminists, Muslims, and academia. See if you can stomach this from the American Spectator:

Feminists are good at creating a culture that produces “equal-opportunity abusers,” Donnelly says. What happened at Abu Ghraib is also happening in feminist America, she adds, pointing to an Associated Press article from last month on a “disturbing trend around the country. Girls are turning to violence more often and with terrifying intensity.” …

Perhaps in the eyes of feminists this isn’t a crisis but a potential social program and these girls deserve ROTC credits.

That’s Falwell-worthy.

The Hartford Courant reports on the campaign to save Connie Allen’s job:

Jennifer Pena, a senior from Puerto Rico, has had Nobel Prize-winning professors at Yale but few took the time Allen did to explain tough concepts and offer career advice, she said. “If it wasn’t for her I would have never gone to medical school,” she said. “I’ve taken so many science classes at
Yale – she’s the best professor I’ve had here.”

Several of Allen’s supporters met with Andrew Hamilton, deputy provost for science and technology, Wednesday. Hamilton didn’t dispute Allen’s record as a teacher and mentor, but he told the students Yale requires outstanding scholarship for teachers to be considered tenure-track or “ladder” material. Hamilton did not return phone calls but confirmed the students’ account in
an e-mail, adding: “I explained to them that Yale does not appoint its Ladder faculty based on student demands.”

Phoebe offers a first-hand account of the meeting with Andrew Hamilton.

Wal-Mart Watch: A Las Vegas judge issues a split decision, upholding Wal-Mart firing of a worker for union activity but condeming Wal-Mart’s other anti-union tactics:

Parke also ruled that Wal-Mart managers violated the National Labor Relations Act by “impliedly telling employees to destroy or disregard union literature and taking union literature away from employees” at the Marks Street store in Henderson.

So Wal-Mart gets the standard NLRB penalty:

Parke ruled that notices must be posted at the Marks Street store stating that workers have the right to organize and that the right is protected by federal law. The notices are to be posted for 60 days.

That’s a rough measure, unfortunately, of how seriously the legal system in this country takes the exploitation of workers.

The New York Times joins the chorus calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation:

The United States has been humiliated to a point where government officials could not release this year’s international human rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the rest of the world. The reputation of its brave soldiers has been tarred, and the job of its diplomats made immeasurably harder because members of the American military tortured and humiliated Arab prisoners in ways guaranteed to inflame Muslim hearts everywhere. And this abuse was not an isolated event, as we know now and as Mr. Rumsfeld should have known, given the flood of complaints and reports directed to his office over the last year.

From CNN:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will tell congressional committees Friday that he plans to form an independent panel to review how the Pentagon handled investigations into allegations of abuses of Iraqi prisoners, a senior administration official said. He also will bring a poster-sized blowup of a Pentagon press release to counter accusations that he tried to keep lawmakers in the dark about the case…

“He is an important part of my Cabinet and he will stay in my Cabinet,” Bush said at a White House news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

But not everyone in Washington is convinced:

Prominent Democrats, including presidential candidate John F. Kerry and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, demanded his resignation, while senior Republicans fumed over his failure to alert them to the brewing crisis.

The most recent photos are here.