Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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Tonight the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av begins as the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing ends.

From Agence France Press:

[Hiroshima Mayor] Akiba strongly urged US President George W. Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to personally visit Hiroshima and “confront the reality of nuclear war”.

As the clock clicked onto 8:15 am (2315 GMT Tuesday), the exact time the United States dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945, those at the ceremony at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park bowed their heads for a minute’s silence in memory of the victims of the attack.

During the 45-minute ceremony, officials added 5,050 names to the register of victims who died immediately or from the after-effects of radiation exposure in the bombing, bringing the total toll to 231,920, an official said.

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YaleInsider takes a critical look at the New Haven Advocate’s annual round-up of salaries for non-profit employees in the area. Among several interesting statistics – like Yale’s Chief Investment Officer making two and half times as much as its Provost, and President Levin making over one and half times as much as President Bush (that’s over twenty times as much as the average union worker at Yale) – is a gem from Yale – New Haven Hospital Spokesperson Katie Krauss, trying to explain why the Hospital’s CEO, Joe Zaccagnino (who Yale U. named Alum of the Year last month after he and his hospital were caught defrauding the poor and sick to save money), had taken a $70,000 pay cut:

Hospital spokeswoman Katie Krauss says executive pay fluctuates because it’s based on a complex formula of “variable” components … “This is a big place. It’s not a community hospital,” she says. Zaccagnino heads not just Yale-New Haven Hospital, but a network that includes Bridgeport and Greenwich hospitals–a group with a combined budget of more than $1.1 billion and 10,000 employees.

As YaleInsider says:

OK, good to know they don’t consider Yale-New Haven Hospital to be “a community hospital”. Perhaps this means they’ll simplify and shorten their name to “Yale Hospital”?

Given that Levin sits on and appoints a third of the Hospital’s Board, that a quarter of Yale’s income is funnelled through the Hospital and that Local 34 and GESO employees work side by side with (as yet ununionized) Hospital Employees doing the same work, might not be a bad idea.

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A brief round of updates:

Verizon negotiations continued last night, with the company reporting major progress taking place towards a settlement, the unions reporting little substantive movement, and both sides committing themselves to continued talks. Work is continuing as usual in the interim.

Arianna Huffington has a press conference scheduled for today, and has confirmed to members of the press wide speculation that she plans to announce her candidacy for the Governorship. Meanwhile Arnold will announce tonight whether he’ll run, and the national AFL-CIO has come out in support of Davis and against Democrats running to replace him. You can see who’s filed a statement of intention to run for Governor here.

Finally, Bob Culver’s termination as Yale Vice President of Finance and Administration was apparently announced to Yale managers in a letter from President Levin chalking it up to the a sudden exasperation with the “long commute.” No official announcement has yet been made to the press or to anyone else in the Yale community, including the workers whose negotiations Culver was supposedly orchestrating.

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Breaking Yale News:

Bob Culver, Yale Vice President for Finance and one of the key players responsible (despite only showing up three times at the negotiating table) for perpetuating Yale’s policy of negotiation through stonewalling and threats, has resigned. He’ll be temporarily replaced by Bruce Alexander, Vice President for New Haven Affairs and one of the key players responsible for perpetuating Yale’s policy of dealing with the city through condescension, division, and superficial change. Alexander will apparently be serving in both positions for the time being, flogging workers with one hand and keeping the rest of the city down with the other.

More on this as it becomes available.

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Strange how Jacob writes, of this blog,

I’m glad to know that not all the Yale undergrad blogs are scary and rightist

shortly before I (not having seen his link) post my fantasies about the Huffingtons debating each other’s sexual performance on national television…

Not rightist, sure. But not scary? Not ever? Not even a little bit? I guess I’ll just have to try harder.

I should perhaps note here that Jacob’s German condom size musings are really more rightist than scary (hence the plug it earned from a YalePundit) – or would be, if not for the dig at Berlusconi, which makes it all worthwhile.

Thanks.

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But finding a politician willing to talk about fundamental reform of America’s education system beyond the president’s anemic Education Act is harder than locating a flat chest — or a real one — at the Playboy mansion.
– Arianna Huffington, April 4, 2002

Van Jones, quoted in Marc Cooper’s column in today’s LA Weekly, sets forth succinctly and resonantly the bind in which California progressives find themselves:

“We can’t afford another three years of these state budgets,” says the 35-year-old Yale Law School graduate and director of the Oakland-based Ella Baker Human Rights Center. “In my town we’ve got classrooms of 30 kids who have to share six books. We’ve got classrooms without chalk. We’ve got a state where prison spending has risen 650 percent in 20 years. We’ve got a prison guards union that, in the midst of this budget crisis, is getting a 7 and a half percent pay raise. California has become the biggest incarcerator in the world. From our point of view this recall election is a survival struggle. We’re disgusted and appalled by Gray Davis, and we’re afraid of the Republicans. We need another choice.”

That third choice, Van Jones – and a more sceptical Marc Cooper as well – see personified in Republican-Congressman’s-Trendy-and-Witty-Wife turned Trendy-and-Witty-Leftist-Populist-Divorcee Arianna Huffington. As David Brock describes her in Blinded by the Right:

The leading social light in the new GOP power structure in Washington was Arianna Huffington…The indefagitable Huffington, whose failure to comply with the laws governing household help probably cost her husband the election, returned to Washington determined to reinvent herself as the godmother of the Gingrich Revolution. Since her debut as the first woman member of the Cambridge Union student debating society, the witty, articulate Greek-born beauty had set out, with brio, to conquer her world. In the 1970s, she took London by storm, writing a famous antifeminist manifesto at the height of the women’s movement, and carrying on a high-profile affair with the British intellectual Bernard Levin. Moving on to New York in the Reagan years, she hosted the likes of Brooke Astor and Barbara Walters at glittering dinner parties…

With Arianna honing the campaign’s conservative message and even standing in for Michael in candidate debates, Huffington confounded political experts and won the seat. THe only discernible theme through it all was Arianna’s boundless ambition. “The Sir Edmund Hillary of all social climbers,” as Los Angeles magazine put it. Arianna drew the attention of Newt Gingrich during Michael’s first congressional term, when she published a book called The Fourth Instinct, in which she argued that the welfare state should be replaced by reviving the concept of tithing, or charitable giving…

Nearly ten years after the period Brock is describing, Cooper writes:

For anyone who knew Arianna in her past life as a “compassionate conservative,” the meeting of that informal committee at her sprawling Brentwood home last Sunday afternoon would have seemed unimaginable. Van Jones, environmentalists, leaders of the anti-war movement and some of the most effective advocates against the drug war crowded onto Arianna’s sofas and divans to hear her come just short of a formal announcement. The several dozen activists included an ex-president of LULAC (the leading Latino civil rights organization); Marge Tabankin, who once ran the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee; Salon.com founder and editor David Talbot; producer and liberal activist Lynda Obst; Lara Bergthold, from Norman Lear’s operation; the radical educator and former Crossroads School president Paul Cummins; former RTD official and onetime mayoral candidate Nick Patsaouras; Jerry Brown’s former campaign manager and current Code Pink organizer Jodie Evans; and civil rights attorney Connie Rice.

Huffington, who has another week at most to decide whether to run on the recall ballot but says she’s leaning towards it, has several factors running against her. As Cooper puts it:

And as someone who had publicly encouraged Arianna to consider the run, let me be among the first to openly acknowledge the scope of the challenges her candidacy would face, beyond that mountain of $10 million or so. In an extraordinarily compressed campaign window between today and the October 7 vote, Arianna needs to craft an understandable and coherent program that offers serious alternatives to both Republicans and Democrats yet retains mainstream appeal; she must convince voters that, if elected, she has the executive oomph both to manage the current crisis and to effect real policy reform in Sacramento. And she must be effective in blunting what will be the inevitable attempts by the media and other candidates to marginalize and trivialize her independent run.

What Huffington does have, however, is the freedom as a non-Democrat to aggressively promote herself and run against the ugly record of the New Democrat Davis, the potential as an independant to mobilize progressive (or merely exasperated) Democrats with a suspicion of organized third parties, and the combination of wit and charisma responsible for her quick rise first on the right and then on the left. It’s hard not to feel some affinity for a woman who would do televised election-night debate as a Republican in pajamas sharing a bed with Al Franken, and fund commercials as an independant suggesting that, contrary to the government line, it’s your oil habit and not your drug habit that’s funding international terrorism.

The founders of http://www.runariannarun.com, including Van Jones, argue Huffington has a strong shot under three conditions:

1) The Democrats offer up only Davis, and refuse to list any credible, marquee Democrat as one of his potential replacements;
(2) The GOP fields three or four major candidates at the same time;
(3) Liberals and progressives field only one, big-name populist like Arianna as a potential replacement for Davis.

It may be, as has been widely speculated, that the Democrats will draft someone other than Davis at the last minute for the ballot, figuring that the embarrassment of breaking ranks is less than the potential embarrassment of losing the governorship of the largest – and one of the leftest – state in the Union. But pronouncements like Terry McAuliffe’s recent one seem to make such a move more and more costly for them. Meanwhile the chance of the GOP uniting behind one candidate seems infeasible if not impossible – Issa’s spent much too much of his car alarm fortune (plus whatever he made off of those cars he broke into before that) on recruiting petitioners from around to country not to see his name on the ballot; Riordan and Schwarzenagger seem adamant that one or the other will run in an appeal to the libertarians that are convinced Davis is a big spender but would be scared off by the socially conservative Issa; and Bill Simon hasn’t yet figured out how to dig up. Finally, Camejo’s suggestion that he and the Green Party would drop out of the race and throw their support behind Huffington eliminates a crucial competitor.

Where does this leave us? A Huffington candidacy would be, if nothing else, an interesting prospect which would facilitate the articulation of a real progressive agenda and leftist vision during a period in which a conservative Democrat is somewhat successfully being portrayed as a left-wing radical – and could potentially garner competitive support. Meanwhile, check out her writing on SUVS, the drug war, economic justice, and democracy.

Speaking of prospects (the twisted, sensational, voyeuristic kind specifically), while I suppose it’s good news that Michael Huffington has gone back on his earlier suggestion that he too might enter the race, if a deal were cut where the Governor’s race were a one-on-one between Michael and Arianna, with nightly televised debates, I might be convinced to rethink my stance on the merits of the recall…

Picture it:

Michael: Your view of America is as cold as your lovemaking.
Arianna: Your economic plan is as potent as, well –
Michael: You know, for someone who never had time for her children, you sure put a lot of time into bastardizing the political discourse.
Arianna: Michael, let’s not bring your mother into this.

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The CWA and the IBEW are still in negotiations with Verizon as of this afternoon, after passing a strike deadline at midnight last night.

From the CWA:

Shortly before the midnight contract expiration, the unions said members would remain on the job until further notice while the talks are underway. Union leaders determined that enough progress had been made at the bargaining table to continue working toward a contract settlement, however key issues remain unresolved.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The issue of job security loomed over contract talks at Verizon as labor unions bargained Sunday past a strike deadline with the largest provider of local and wireless telephone service in the United States.

Telephone operators and technicians from Virginia to Maine reported to work as scheduled, despite the expiration of a three-year contract at midnight Saturday.

Verizon Communications spokesman Eric Rabe said the company’s negotiators want to reach an agreement as soon as possible.

“Making progress and having an agreement are two different things,” Rabe said. “We need to get an agreement. We’re going to stay with it and keep working on it.”

Major questions are how future layoffs will be handled and whether workers laid off can take jobs in other parts of the company.

Verizon’s local phone service business is shrinking, while growth areas are in wireless and high-speed Internet, separate divisions of the company that are not highly unionized.

Job security is the issue that has been “focused on for a good part” of the discussions at the negotiating table, Jim Spellane, spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents 18,000 Verizon workers, said Sunday.

The other key issue at the talks has been health care. Verizon, like other companies facing soaring health costs, wants employees to assume more of the burden.

The importance of job protection was driven home for Verizon workers just three weeks ago when an arbitrator ordered the company to rehire 2,300 people in New York state who had been laid off in December.

After the ruling, a happy union official joked that “my life will be in jeopardy” if he were ever to give away contract language on job security.

The arbitrator’s decision ratcheted up tension at the labor negotiations and undermined the company’s cost-cutting efforts.

Verizon had argued that the layoffs were justified because of a weak economy and tougher competition from rival companies and new technologies. The arbitrator said that those trends did not justify the layoffs.

The bulk of the 78,000 union employees seeking a new contract are with the Communications Workers of America, whose vice president called the recent decision giving back the New York workers their jobs “the greatest victory in my lifetime” for phone company employees.

Verizon cut 18,000 jobs in 2002 — mainly through attrition and voluntary buyouts.

If the unions strike, some local telephone service for Verizon customers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic region could be affected. The company has insisted that customers making regular long-distance and local calls should not have trouble.

The company says disruptions of phone service should be avoided with about 30,000 managers and outside contract workers prepared to take over.

But delays or disruptions could occur for repairs and new installations of phone and Internet service, and for calls to customer service centers.

A strike in 2000, which lasted 18 days, caused a backlog of about 250,000 repair requests and new orders for Verizon.

Meanwhile, Verizon is taking the gloves off, as LaborNotes reports:

While Verizon has reportedly maintained a “poker face” when presented with union demands, they are preparing an all-out public relations blitz.

In a company memorandum describing Verizon’s strategy, PR strategist Jerry Manheim suggests that Verizon compose a narrative for public consumption that “establishes the moral high ground and the company’s claim to it.” The point is to shape “the ‘reality’ to which journalists, political leaders and the union itself must respond.”

Verizon’s sample narrative reads in part:

“There was a time not long ago-in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks-when CWA members were genuine heroes, and when Verizon was proud to support their endeavors. But the spirit of cooperation born of that tragic time has dissipated…because of the failure of leadership within the CWA.”

This is not the only way Verizon plans to make use of the September 11 attacks. Looking back to the 2000 strike, when rank-and-file workers used militant tactics such as cutting telephone wires and cables to wreak havoc with the company, Verizon is preparing to “educate police/public about the effect of sabotage on…terrorism [and the] critical infrastructure of [the] nation.”

In the event of a strike, Verizon also plans to “greatly enhance security force and efforts,” pushing for “aggressive policing at picket sites.”

On another front of the PR war, Verizon has been training its lower-level managers in the art of spin. Kramer reports that at one New Jersey call center, “[Verizon] had all the managers come in and gave them a three-hour course on how to justify management’s pay to the employees.”

Kramer believes that the educational work unions are doing may be an effective counter to Verizon’s spin. “The members understand how wealthy the company is,” says Kramer. “Last year Verizon made $4.9 billion in profits…they’re making the lion’s share and keeping it for themselves.”

Jacob Remes has some very solid coverage and extensive links on the issue. As he says:

I’ll just continue my drumbeat that Democratic presidential candidates really need to show their support this weekend in order to be taken seriously by organized labor, particularly in New Hampshire. Yesterday, John Edwards was featured in the CWA strike bulletin for supporting Verizon workers already on strike in North Carolina, and the homepage of CWA local 1400 has pictures up of Gephardt’s visit. And at yesterday’s rally in Boston, the president of the IBEW local read a letter from John Kerry introducing it as from the next president, although frankly the fact that he couldn’t manage to show up (unlike three congressmen) doesn’t speak well for him in my book.

…really this strike is about health care for everyone in the country. The slogan they’re using is “Health care for all, not health cuts at Verizon,” and the emphasis is on preventing backsliding on health insurance premiums for those already covered. Ed Hill, IBEW’s international president, explained in his speech last night: “If we had a government that really cared enough about the issue, they would get off their backside and do something about the health care crisis in this country, instead of leaving it to labor and management to fight it out at every contract negotiation. If Verizon is serious about health insurance, we’ll stand with them to fight for decent health benefits for all. But I don’t see their corporate leaders or any other corporate leaders leading the charge on Capitol Hill on that issue.” The aim is to force companies to go with their unions to government and say “health care is too expensive, we need a governmental solution.” But this will only happen if companies are prevented from shifting health care costs to their employees.

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Attention must (belatedly) be paid:

Thanks to ZKSW for the link from the anarcho-syndicalist playground that is his website. Go read it. Now. Especially the “pithy quotations,” like “Run-UOC”:

[Run]
For all you sucker Ph.D’s perpetratin a FRAUD
your lies are cold wack and keep the crowd cold lost
you’re the kind of guy no one could ever afford
cause you eat like you’re a feudal lord
The hall is Woodbridge and we’re here to maraud
And when you see us marchin you better pray to GOD
Because we’re wheelin, dealin, give you a funny feeling
When we hang our banners from your ceiling
We groove it (you move it) it has been proven
We filed seventy-seven complaints because your style is LOSIN
We realize it (contrive it) and always organize it
We’ll diss an administrator make the other fuckers’ eyes itch
We’re rising (suprising) and constantly mobilizing
We always tell the truth and then we never slip no lies in
You steal millions from our kids and then ya still get paid
Well now we’re descending on your house like a fuckin’ air raid

(guitar solo by Julie Gonzales)

[Run]
Because the lies you say, When you’re running Yale
Prove it to me that this place for sale
Like Phil Lesh, your shit is so stale

[U.O.C.]
We get no rest from the UOC but we never fail
We couldn’t wait to demonstrate
cause your contract proposal’s insensate
Came here cause we were lured from what we’d heard
But your administration’s quite absurd
Tell you what we don’t like, that’s when you say
That if it weren’t for GESO there’d be A Better Way

Also, I should print in its entirety a recent message from Julie Gonzales:

your blog is amazing.
but it’s missing la cucaracha !
www.ucomics.com/lacucaracha

I should admit at this point to never having read this comic before.

From the makers of Legally Blonde II…
And the people who brought you “PATRIOT ACT II”…it’s…
“ILLEGALLY BROWN III: FULL THROTTLE ROUNDUP”

With the Julie Gonzales hashkachah (Julie – know what that means now?), you know it’s good…

Also, while we’re doing the Day-After-All-the-Rape-Links-Shout-Out-to-College-Friends-and-Websites, go check out Alyssa’s Rosenberg’s Elm City Politics Blog for a much more responsible (and coherent) brand of blogging than this one. No seriously. It’s very solid.

And then for something completely different, check out Thomas Frampton and his band.

“Revolution is just about to come
and for two dollars you can read about the fun
One paper at a time the party ladder I will climb
Till state power and authority are mine”

Yeah well I have imperialists
But you turned equally fascist
And your papers won’t do jack to get me free
And you sold your youth the day you bought their Truth
And now you’re hawking Worker’s Weekly, issue 3

In the (unlikely) event that you’re reading this site and not one of the four people mentioned above, go read their stuff. Now. And, as always, the UOC site, unless you’ve been there since it was updated a couple months ago before the webmaster’s ex went to Senegal (we’re working on it…).

And if you want to see yourself against this pea-soup background, e-mail me – eidelson@yale.edu. Or e-mail me anyway. I like e-mail.

Peace.

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Coming before President Bush’s desk soon will be the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which passed both houses unanimously last Friday. From a press release from Human Rights Watch, which was instrumental in the crafting and passage of the legislation:

“For far too long the United States has ignored the brutality of prison rape,” said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S.Program. “Sexual violence – indeed, any violence – should not be part of anyone’s prison sentence. This legislation puts prison staff on notice that they can no longer turn a blind eye to rape.”

The Prison Rape Elimination Act would initiate a series of efforts to track and curtail the incidence of rape in prisons and jails.
The legislation requires the collection of national statistics on the prevalence and effects of rape; directs the Department of Justice to provide training and technical assistance to federal, state and local officials responsible for addressing prison rape; authorizes federal grants to support state and local programs to prevent and punish prison rape; and provides for the reduction of federal prison funding for states that do not control prison rape. The National Prison Rape Reduction Commission, a federal body created by the legislation, will spearhead the creation of a comprehensive report on the subject and issue recommendations to be
used by the Attorney General in generating national standards to detect, prevent, and punish prison rape.

“The unanimous passage of this bill is an extraordinary accomplishment,” said Fellner. “If implemented fully and effectively, it will be a first step towards ensuring that prison sentences are not sentences to sexual violence and abuse.”

HRW wrote a damning report on prison rape, No Escape, in 2001.

A Florida prisoner whom we will identify only as P.R. was beaten, suffered a serious eye injury, and assaulted by an inmate armed with a knife, all due to his refusal to submit to anal sex. After six months of repeated threats and attacks by other inmates, at the end of his emotional endurance, he tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor. In a letter to Human Rights Watch, he chronicled his unsuccessful efforts to induce prison authorities to protect him from abuse. Summing up these experiences, he wrote: “The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it’s indifference.”

…Prison authorities, unsurprisingly, generally claim that prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse is an exceptional occurrence rather than a systemic problem. Prison officials in New Mexico, for example, responding to our 1997 request for information regarding “the ‘problem’ of male inmate-on-inmate rape and sexual abuse” (the internal quotation marks are theirs), said that they had “no recorded incidents over the past few years.”
…Yet prison authorities’ claims are belied by independent research on the topic. Indeed, the most recent academic studies of the issue have found shockingly high rates of sexual abuse, including forced oral and anal intercourse. In December 2000, the Prison Journal published a study based on a survey of inmates in seven men’s prison facilities in four states. The results showed that 21 percent of the inmates had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sexual contact since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility. A 1996 study of the Nebraska prison system produced similar findings, with 22 percent of male inmates reporting that they had been pressured or forced to have sexual contact against their will while incarcerated. Of these, over 50 percent had submitted to forced anal sex at least once. Extrapolating these findings to the national level gives a total of at least 140,000 inmates who have been raped.

An internal departmental survey of corrections officers in a southern state (provided to Human Rights Watch on the condition that the state not be identified) found that line officers — those charged with the direct supervision of inmates — estimated that roughly one-fifth of all prisoners were being coerced into participation in inmate-on-inmate sex. Interestingly, higher-ranking officials — those at the supervisory level — tended to give lower estimates of the frequency of abuse, while inmates themselves gave much higher estimates: the two groups cited victimization rates of roughly one-eighth and one-third, respectively. ….

It’s a relief to know that stopping prison rape, at least, is a human rights cause that none of our legislators are willing (publicly) to stand against. The passage (once signed) of this legislation is an important step. There are more difficult ones to follow.

Counterpunch has several strong pieces on the topic.

Joanne Mariner:

The hostility with which some prison authorities reacted to the draft legislation suggests the extent of the official unwillingness to acknowledge the problem of prison rape. According to Reginald Wilkinson, head of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction — which is, ironically, one of only two state prison systems to retain the now old-fashioned concept of rehabilitation in its name, if not in its practices — the idea that prison rape is common is “a flat-out lie.”

Steve J.B.:

The Prison Industrial Complex is supported by tax dollars. It operates the way that it does because people don’t object. I was in prison for shoplifting. Should I have been locked in a cell with a guy twice my size and weight who was doing life for a violent crime?

I don’t object to having been incarcerated for committing a crime. But I don’t think it was right that I was made a gift to another inmate.

I don’t think that “Prison Bitch” is a very funny song.

Alex Coolman:

Martha Stewart’s name hasn’t been dragged into this newest rape “joke” because she’s a woman and our society now understands that the rape of women isn’t funny.

But in Borowitz’ hands, the rape of men in prison is once again being treated as fodder for cruel, inane humor instead of what it really is: one of the most appalling, institutionally ignored abuses of human rights in this nation.

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Looks like inviting the world to place bets on terrorist attacks did to John Poindexter what selling arms to terrorists in Iran to pay for supporting terrorists in Nicaragua and telling Congress it was his duty to lie to America about it couldn’t:

John M. Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, is stepping down “in the next few weeks,” the official said, following disclosure of a proposal that outraged lawmakers and embarrassed senior Pentagon officials. The plan was to create in essence an online betting parlor that would have rewarded investors who forecast terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups.

While Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not personally dismiss Admiral Poindexter, the defense official said, Mr. Rumsfeld agreed that the admiral’s credibility was shot and it was time for him to go.

This has echoes of Henry Kissinger, international terrorist extraordinaire, being tapped to head a comission to study terrorism without any objection from the Beltway but losing the post because continuing to advise the Chinese government through Kissinger Associates was more important to him.

Know who the only person to serve jail time because of the Iran-Contra scandal was? Not Oliver North. Not Elliot Abrams. Not John Poindexter.

The retired minister who took hostage the sign put up on his street when his town decided the way to honor John Poindexter for lying to America was naming a street after him. This guy announced that he was holding the sign hostage for the few million dollars in question. He was arrested and sent to jail.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, John.

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Just when you thought American democracy was over…

The hoagie ban is dead.

Gov. Rendell announced this morning that the Eagles, acting in response to public criticism, would allow fans attending events at the new Lincoln Financial Field to bring in small amounts of food from the outside.

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This must be why President Bush doesn’t do press conferences more often.

One highlight would be the implication (in the context of defending himself as tolerant of gay people despite not wanting them to have civil rights like marriage) that homosexuals are sinners:

I am mindful that we’re all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor’s eye when they got a log in their own,” the president said. “I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts.”

Another would be blaming the failure of massive tax cuts to jump-start the economy on the media’s choice to cover his desire to go to war:

I remember on our TV screens–I’m not suggesting which network did this, but it said: “March to war,” every day from last summer until the spring: “March to war, march to war, march.” That’s not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear “march to war” all the time.