Alternet offers a fun little guessing game.
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
Ann Coulter has a new conspiracy theory: The American government (less often than she thinks, but never mind that) allows people who benefit from government services to vote for candidates who support perpetuating them. This is classic Coulter – first she argues that shredding the federal government is supported by everyone except for wealthy Hollywood celebrities and a pathological underclass – then that tax-cutting Republicans have it rough because so many Americans greedily want to keep paying taxes and benefiting from the services they pay for. Conservatives, of course, never vote their economic interest…
ABC News has decided that a third of the Democratic candidates don’t deserve reporters on their campaigns.
Kucinich criticized Koppel during Tuesday’s debate for beginning with a question about Al Gore’s endorsement of Howard Dean. Later, he was angered when Koppel asked whether he, Braun or Sharpton are “in this as sort of a vanity candidacy.”
Kucinich replied that he “may be inconvenient for some of those in the media but, you know, I’m sorry about that.”
On Thursday, he noted ABC’s coverage decision and his criticisms during the debate, saying “it appears ABC may have taken it personally.”
Today Human Rights Watch releases a new report on the civilian lives lost in the Iraq War because of two American tactics:
The use of cluster munitions in populated areas caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the coalition´s conduct of major military operations in March and April, Human Rights Watch said. U.S. and British forces used almost 13,000 cluster munitions, containing nearly 2 million submunitions, that killed or wounded more than 1,000 civilians.
Meanwhile, 50 strikes on top Iraqi leaders failed to kill any of the intended targets, but instead killed dozens of civilians, the Human Rights Watch report revealed. The U.S. “decapitation” strategy relied on intercepts of senior Iraqi leaders´ satellite phone calls along with corroborating intelligence that proved inadequate. As a result, the U.S. military could only locate targets within a 100-meter radius – clearly inadequate precision in civilian neighborhoods.
“Coalition forces generally tried to avoid killing Iraqis who weren´t taking part in combat,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “But the deaths of hundreds of civilians still could have been prevented.”
International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, does not outlaw all civilian casualties in wartime. But armed forces are obliged to take all feasible precautions for avoiding civilian losses, and to refrain from attacks that are indiscriminate or where the expected civilian harm exceeds the military gain.
Nathan Newman shares a report he worked on for the Brennan Center for Justice on the impact of living wage legislation.
This is the first study of its kind to interview administrators at a wide range of local governments that have actually implemented a living wage law and have had the time to assess the actual costs to their cities or counties. Major findings for those cities where a living wage law was adopted include:
Increased contract costs by less than 0.1% of the overall local budget.
Competitive bidding instituted for contracts.
Increased public support for their economic development programs.
Latino groups have called for a strike/boycott in California today in response to Schwarzenegger’s revocation of Davis’ legislation to allow undocumented workers to drive – one of the former governor’s few progressive moves. Schwarzenegger now says he’s reconsidering the issue. One would hope that he would.
‘Tis the season…to send Wal-Mart a lump of coal.
Jacob highlights (first here, then here) a deeply troubling and shamefully unreported story: US troops being used to destroy and dismantle Iraqi trade union headquarters and arrest their leaders – this in the context of continued US maintenance of Ba’athist labor laws. Of course, it’s easy to become numb to this kind of rank hypocrisy from this administration – but vital not to. Enforcing Saddam’s Pinkerton policies ranks up there with appealing to Cuban sovereignty to justify abusing POWs in Camp X-Ray and co-operating with the “evildoers” at the UN to hamstring global access to contraception. Let’s not forget the Bush Doctrine:
If you can make something that others value, you should be able to sell it to them. If others make something that you value, you should be able to buy it. This is real freedom…
Those other freedoms are just to be trotted out when the situation calls for a moral fig leaf.
Lodge your protest here.
This Washington Post article dramatizes the controversy over posthumous DNA testing of executed convicts. The arguments for this are intuitive and compelling – the death penalty is one of the most controversial pieces of American social policy, and testing – even when it comes too late to save the life of a falsely accused individual – represents a scientific approach to study one its most contentious empirical questions: Does the death penalty claim innocent victims? As one forensic scientist argues:
Although Blake suspects Coleman is guilty based on his earlier work, he is also steadfast in his belief that the public has the right to know the truth. “I’m not anti-death penalty; I’m pro-democracy,” he said in an interview. “How can the state take the position that this is not worth inquiring into? Why not find out once and for all?”
The opposition, while it gets a good deal of space over the lengthy article, fails to offer much of a counter-argument. Mostly it runs like this:
John Eastman, a Chapman University law professor, said that post-conviction DNA testing is not always “about a particular guy being innocent, but an effort to open the door to build a case against the death penalty.”
Much like police who knock on someone’s door with a search warrant often do so trying to build a case against a suspect. But we don’t therefore render evidence inadmissible – we evaluate how persuasive it is.
In the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney bluntly argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O’Dell, “it would be shouted from the rooftops that . . . Virginia executed an innocent man.”
I certainly hope it would be. Because there would be fairly persuasive evidence to that effect.
…a number acknowledge that they remain opposed to what they see as baseless testing, in large part out of concern for the victims’ relatives, who have waited years — sometimes decades — for closure.
I find it hard to believe that victims of violent crime – let alone their communities – are better served by leaving unexplored evidence that might suggest that the one executed didn’t do it. For “closure” to trump truth in a life and death situation like this is unconscionable.
Legal experts say that the costs of testing, which run into thousands of dollars, contribute to the resistance.
The death penalty, incidentally, isn’t cheap – even when compared to life imprisonment.
Ultimately, no one articulates an argument against using the methods available to explore the full truth about the death penalty that’s markedly more persuasive than
Tom Scott, a Grundy lawyer who prosecuted Coleman, believes Warner should “let sleeping dogs lie.”
From the AP:
About 100 Yale University graduate students and hospital workers were arrested Wednesday night on charges of disorderly conduct as they protested what they said are inadequate wages and benefits for women. In a gathering that drew about 200 protesters, activists accused the university of failing to provide affordable child care or health care and said maternity leave policies are weak.
“I may eventually decide to go into grad school and it’s really hard to raise a family there,” said Helena Herring, an 18-year-old Yale freshman. “A lot of people here are on welfare. That is insane. That is not acceptable.”
…Jenny Carrillo, 30, who is a graduate student, said she has two children who are in the HUSKY program. “The graduate school neglects to provide for my family,” she said. “The state should use the money that I’m getting for failing schools in Connecticut.”
…Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” gave a speech at the rally and was later one of those arrested. “What really is at issue here is whether Yale can be an educational institution with a free conscience,” she said.
Fourteen Yale undergraduates were among the hundred-plus women arrested tonight in the shape of an ankh – and they had all the strongest chants.
A telling comment from Yale’s new VP for Finance and Administration on our University:
“At this point in my life, I feel like I can contribute to a team and an institution that in many ways is like Procter & Gamble,” Pepper said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
In all too many ways, unfortunately.
This is disgraceful, if not surprising.
Josh Eidelson 