Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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Not to worry – someone’s keeping an eye on those nefarious Quakers:

In 2002, undercover officers were assigned to attend meetings, rallies and fund-raisers of the Chicago Direct Action Network, the American Friends Service Committee, The Autonomous Zone, Not in Our Name, and Anarchist Black Cross.

Police zeroed in on the groups because protesters were threatening to disrupt the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue — a meeting of international business leaders held in Chicago in 2002 — according to an internal police audit obtained by the Sun-Times. The department made video and audio recordings of the protests, the audit said.

The department would not describe what organizations were targeted in 2003.

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Atrios highlights this story about a New Mexico County Clerk who plans to start granting same-sex marraige licenses on the grounds that local law never prohibited it:

Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap says the county plans to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples. She made the decision after asking for an opinion from the county attorney, who said New Mexico law isn’t clear on the issue. He also says refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples could open the county to legal action. State law defines marriage as a civil contract between contracting parties. It doesn’t mention gender.

And also this story about folks from the Midwest sending flowers to gay couples in San Francisco:

With several hundred, if not more, bouquets already delivered through Flowers in the Heartland, it’s hard to believe that it began just Tuesday in the offices of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Gay co-workers there, Greg Scanlan and Timothy Holtz, were looking at photographs of happy newlyweds on http://www.sfgate.com, The Chronicle’s online partner, and wishing they could somehow play a part in the historic marriages. Scanlan off-handedly remarked, “I’ve always said, ‘If you can’t be there, send flowers.’ “

And here I always read in the newspapers that equality was only something that over-educated Northeastern liberal millionaire Hollywood celebrities cared about…

Meanwhile, looks like one Hollywood celebrity and paragon of sexual morality isn’t too keen on equal rights.

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Kerry and Edwards each try to channel Nader:

Speaking on the campaign trail in Maryland, Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards sought to portray himself as the alternative to Nader for independent voters. “I think if we have someone at the top of the ticket that’s appealing to independents, appealing to the kind of people who might be attracted to a Nader campaign, then we’ll be fine,” he said. “And I think I’m exactly that kind of candidate.”

Democratic front-runner John Kerry said he and Nader “stand together” on issues such as health care, taxes and the environment. “Americans who want to see change in this nation know how important it is to defeat George W. Bush,” Kerry said. “To do that, it is important that we remain united in November and rally behind the Democratic nominee, whoever that may be.”

This represents a welcome change from the failed Democratic strategy of trying to bludgeon Nader, and I hope, should Nader tomorrow announce the unfortunate decision to run, that it represents a new pattern. Progressive voters will, of course, need to continue pressing Edwards on what he has to offer “the kind of people who might be attracted to a Nader campaign,” and Kerry on how close, exactly, he and Nader on standing on “health care, taxes, and the environment.”

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No shame:

Bypassing Senate Democrats who have stalled his judicial nominations, President Bush will use a recess appointment to put Alabama Attorney General William Pryor on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at least temporarily, government sources said Friday…

After senators were informed by the White House, Pryor went to the federal courthouse in Montgomery, where he was expected to be sworn in by U.S. Circuit Judge Ed Carnes in a private ceremony.

The recess appointment, which would last only until the end of 2005, would be the second by Bush to sidestep Democrats who have mounted successful filibusters against Pryor and five other appeals court nominees.
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After reformist candidates were wiped from the ballots, Iranian voters chose yesterday whether to send a stronger message by voting or by staying home:

The reformist movement urged Iranians to boycott the election after more than 2,000 of their candidates, including 87 deputies in the 290-seat body, were disqualified from running by a watchdog council controlled by the hard-liners. But conservatives urged people to vote, suggesting as they have for much of the past 25 years that a huge turnout would sting the enemies of the Islamic revolution. “The turnout will indicate whether people are giving their approval to this regime or not,” said Abbas Amanat, a history professor and the director of the Middle East Center at Yale University. “If the turnout is low, it is an obvious sign of frustration.”

No results were released Friday. State-run radio and television said polls were kept open for an extra four hours because there had been such a high turnout among the 46 million eligible voters. That happens in virtually every Iranian election, however, and it was possible to find evidence that neither side had entirely succeeded. Polling stations were far less crowded than during the previous parliamentary and presidential elections, which saw major victories for those promising greater social freedom and less autocratic rule. While vegetable markets in northern Tehran and the ski slopes were packed, the polling stations were doing a slow trade, witnesses said.

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This should be interesting:

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide if the government can hold Americans accused of being terrorists indefinitely and without due process.

The appeal of Jose Padilla could be heard the same day in April as the case of another U.S.-born ‘enemy combatant’ suspect, Yaser Hamdi, who also is appealing his military detention. Padilla is accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’ in the United States. At issue is whether U.S. citizens arrested on American soil can be held incommunicado without charges…

Let’s see how much wiggle room Sandra Day O’Connor can carve out on this one…

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The YDN reports on a meeting of several dozen international students organized by GESO to mobilize for progressive visa reform:

Sixteen students delivered short prepared speeches about their troubles with the visa process. Regulations instituted after Sept. 11, 2001 have slowed the visa process, making it difficult for foreign nationals studying in the United States to return to their universities after they have left the country. The speakers expressed both professional and personal frustrations they have faced because of visa uncertainty. Several teaching and research assistants said they have been unable to leave the United States to visit family or attend conferences pertinent to their fields because their ability to re-enter the country is not secure.

Moderator Qin Qin GRD ’05, a biomedical engineering student, said University President Richard Levin, Graduate School Dean Peter Salovey, and University Secretary Linda Lorimer were invited to the event. None were present at the event Thursday.

This is, of course, not the first time this invitation has been declined. That obstinance remains shameful. Yale administrators, as Levin himself noted in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month, have a deep vested interest in the freedom of movement of all their students, even if Yale administrators don’t have any trouble getting in and out of the country.

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The Times is reporting that Nader will announce on Sunday whether or not he’ll be running for President in November, and that all signs point to the former:

After weeks of postponing his decision, Nader will appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to make the announcement, said Linda Schade, a spokeswoman for Nader’s presidential exploratory committee.

`He’s going to be discussing his role in the presidential election,” Schade said of the man whose run for president in 2000 is blamed by many Democrats for tilting a close election in favor of George W. Bush. `He’s felt there is a role for an independent candidate to play.’

This would be, as I argued before, an unfortunate setback for progressive change in this country. Also problematic is this quote from DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe:

I’m urging everybody to talk to Ralph Nader. I’d love him to take a role with our party, to energize people, to get out there and get the message out.

Now I’m all for Ralph Nader energizing people – but that means energizing people to fight the rightward shift of the Democratic party as well as of the country. And whatever McAuliffe thinks “the message” is, if it bears any resemblance to the message he had the party push in the 2002 elections, then it bears little resemblance to the message Nader is pushing, or to the real concerns of millions of working people who choose not to vote or who vote for the Democrats as the lesser of two evils.

So once again, Nader’s wrong to obscure that Democrats are not yet Republicans, and McAuliffe’s wrong to obscure that Democrats are not yet Greens. Both should perhaps take heed of this quote:

What’s needed is courageous leaders unwilling either to sacrifice the imperative of unseating Bush or to obscure the failure of the modern Democratic party to articulate or pursue a truly progressive vision for America.

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Katha Pollitt takes Nicholas Kristof to task:

To tell you the truth, I thought those columns were a little weird–there’s such a long tradition of privileged men rescuing individual prostitutes as a kind of whirlwind adventure. You would never know from the five columns he wrote about young Srey Neth and Srey Mom, that anyone in Cambodia thought selling your daughter to a brothel was anything but wonderful. I wish he had given us the voices of some Cambodian activists–for starters, the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO)–both of which are skeptical about brothel raids and rescues, which often dump traumatized girls on local NGOs that lack the resources to care for them. Instead he called Donna Hughes–a professor at Rhode Island University who publishes in National Review, The Weekly Standard and FrontPage Magazine, and whose opposition to all forms of prostitution is so monolithic that she has written against the Thai government’s policy of promoting and enforcing condom use in brothels to prevent transmission of AIDS–and gave her space to ventilate against American feminists.