Rick Santorum (R-Ostensibly-PA-but-actually-VA) wants the weather forecast reserved for those willing to pay up:

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone? That information is available for free from the National Weather Service. But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear. The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites. Supporters say the bill wouldn’t hamper the weather service or the National Hurricane Center from alerting the public to hazards — in fact, it exempts forecasts meant to protect “life and property.” But critics say the bill’s wording is so vague they can’t tell exactly what it would ban. “I believe I’ve paid for that data once. … I don’t want to have to pay for it again,” said Scott Bradner, a technical consultant at Harvard University. He says that as he reads the bill, a vast amount of federal weather data would be forced offline.

Roland Betts backtracks on meeting with GESO:

Contrary to an announcement by striking graduate students, Yale officials say there are no plans to meet with a group trying to unionize teaching assistants. At a Thursday rally that featured Jesse Jackson, members of the Graduate Employee and Student Organization announced that Roland Betts, chairman of the Yale Corporation, had agreed that day to meet with representatives from the group. Organizers said it was a major victory for the organization. Friday, however, Yale officials said Betts misunderstood a request to meet with the group. After addressing a group of Yale employees he was approached by organization members outside the building. “With a bullhorn blaring in one ear,” he did not realize they were talking about meeting with GESO representatives. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Betts said in a statement released by Yale officials. “I was not agreeing to meet with the union, nor with the woman in any representative capacity. Given this unfortunate manipulation of the facts by GESO, I am now declining to have any meeting.” Organization officials dispute Betts’ account. “There was no misunderstanding,” said Wendi Walsh, a lead organizer for the group. “I had a very clear, very explicit conversation with him.” She said Betts’ recollection of the conversation is the result of a disagreement within the Yale administration on how to approach the issue. “I think that the graduate teachers just want to make the university better,” she said. “We would welcome the opportunity to sit down” with university officials.

Erin on feminism and the seder:

But, though the orange on my seder plate will honor the contributions of gay and lesbians to Jewish communal life, my Jewish lesbian sisters still struggle to find acceptance within our own community and within American society. And though my Miriam’s Cup will honor the prophetic call of Jewish women, this voice is too often ignored or—worse–silenced?). Today, four and a half months into the new year, women in the United States will finally reach the earnings mark that their male counterparts achieved in 2004. As Martha Burk, head of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, writes “Dubbed ‘Pay Inequity Awareness Day,’ April 19 reminds us that the 60 million working women in this country are suffering economically because equal pay still is not a reality.” Forty years after the Pay Equity Act was passed, women still make 76 cents for every dollar a men earn. For American women, 40 years in the desert may have brought us further away from Egypt, but we’re still far from the Promised Land. This is the time in the Jewish year when we think both about our people’s experience in slavery and remember the wonder of our liberation. It’s my hope that in this season of our redemption, we remember those who are still wandering in the desert. May we say not only b’shana haba b’yerushaleym, next year in Jerusalem, but also b’shana haba, b’ tzedek, next year, justice.

Congressman John Conyers on the Baker-Carter Election Reform Commission:

At the outset, Mr. Fund laid bare the nasty, racial underbelly of these proposals. The right-wing has been long engaged in tactics to suppress minority votes, but rarely lets slip about such tactics, as Fund did today. In a discussion about provisional ballots, Mr. Fund said that Congress should allow precinct workers to determine whether a provisional ballot should count because they would know who “looks as if they belong in the neighborhood.” Wonder what he meant by that? But we don’t have to wonder what effect the discarding of provisional ballots would have on voters, particularly those that are racial minorities. As detailed in the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff’s report Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?, the Republican Governor of Ohio rightly predicted that such a rule would result in discarding 100,000 valid votes. In one county alone, 1,100 eligible voters, who voted the correct ballot in the wrong precinct, had their ballots discarded. Fund wants to bring Blackwell’s tactics to the rest of the country so what went wrong in Ohio, can go right for Republicans across the country. It is common experience that the poor, elderly voters, minority voters and recent transplants to a state, like students, do not drive and, therefore, do not have a drivers’ license or a license with an in-state address to show at the polls. It is a fact that experts have estimated that nearly ten percent of voters do not have a picture identification card. What facts does the conspiracy theorist Mr. Fund have to offer? A Republican Congressman’s contention that someone voted in his sister’s name. I know and like the Congressman he cites as an authority, but think his lonely experience is hardly a justification for a new rule that would result in the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters.

A new pope:

The new pope, who was born in Marktl am Inn, Germany, and turned 78 on Saturday, was one of the closest collaborators of John Paul II. As the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he has been the Church’s doctrinal watchdog since 1981. He has been described as a conservative, intellectual clone of the late pontiff, and, as the Dean of the College of Cardinals, he was widely respected for his uncompromising – if ultraconservative – principles and his ability to be critical. As cardinal, he had shut the door on any discussion on several issues, including the ordination of women, celibacy of priests and homosexuality, defending his positions by invoking theological truth. In the name of orthodoxy, he is in favor of a smaller Church, but one that is more ideologically pure. On Monday, at a Mass before the conclave convened, he delivered an uncompromising warning against any deviation from traditional Catholic teaching.

The AP on Day One of the strike:

Graduate teaching assistants at Yale and Columbia universities kicked off a five-day strike Monday, an effort organizers hope will force Ivy League administrators to recognize them as a union. It was the first multicampus strike for Ivy League graduate student teachers, who face an uphill battle to win recognition. University administrators say the strikes should have minimal effect on classes. The number of strikers was not immediately available because graduate students teach classes at different times throughout the day. “All the classes and sections scheduled today appear to be covered, either because the grad student involved is not participating in the strike or because the faculty have made other arrangements,” Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said. The graduate students taking part have pledged not to teach classes, grade papers or host review sessions this week. Their demands include health care for family members and a grievance process that would allow student teachers to raise concerns with the universities. “Quite a few classes have been either canceled or moved off campus,” said Dehlia Hannah, a philosophy graduate student at Columbia. Yale organizers did not advocate moving classes off campus as an option.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled last year that graduate students at private universities are students, not workers, and cannot form unions. For the students to get union recognition, the universities would have to grant it voluntarily something they have refused to do. Pro-union groups say universities are increasingly relying on their services and should pay them accordingly. Administrators say teaching, research and grading are part of the educational experience for grad students. While the arrangements vary, graduate students typically receive free tuition and a stipend, which amounts to about $18,000 at Columbia and $17,000 to $25,000 at Yale. Yale’s minimum stipend is set to go up to $18,000 in the fall. Many graduate assistants receive health benefits, but the union is seeking family health benefits as well. “We’re in a fight against the Bush administration, who refuse to recognize graduate students as teachers,” Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, a Yale graduate, said at a morning rally with about 250 pickets and supporters.

GESO and GSEU’s strike begins:

Graduate-student unions at Columbia and Yale Universities plan to begin a one-week strike today, a protest they hope will encourage administrators to negotiate with them…At several private institutions, unions hope that public pressure will prompt administrators to voluntarily negotiate with them. Labor leaders argue that neither the NLRB ruling nor federal law prevents universities from negotiating with graduate-student unions. Teaching assistants participating in the strike will not teach their classes, possibly creating problems for undergraduates as the semester ends.

My piece on the strike in today’s YDN:

Today it’s key to remember which camp on this campus prefers negotiations to strikes and which prefers strikes to negotiations. GESO is in the former camp, having spent a decade calling in vain for President Levin to come to the table and this month asking yet again that the administration resolve this labor struggle by recognizing the vote certified by Connecticut’s secretary of state. President Levin, unfortunately, is in the other camp, willfully forcing another strike on this campus rather than have a discussion with the union in which a majority of humanities and social science TAs claim membership. At no point this year has this contrast been clearer than at President Levin’s February open forum, at which he responded to a student question by saying, “Yes, I would rather have them strike than meet with them, because I believe it would be less detrimental to the University.”

Hard to believe it was only a year and a half ago that President Levin was holding a joint press conference with HERE President John Wilhelm and Mayor John DeStefano Jr. to announce the completed negotiation of contracts with locals 34 and 35 and the end of that fall’s strike. On that day, Levin expressed his hope that Yale’s administration and its employees would be able “to build a stronger, more cooperative relationship.” He told reporters that “in the end, it was the conversations that won the day, not the confrontation.” Some dared to hope that the “new era in labor relations” promised at the tercentennial had finally — however belatedly — arrived. Unfortunately, as hundreds of teaching assistants walk off their jobs, Levin seems to be working from the same old anti-union playbook. The “stronger, more cooperative relationship,” it appears, does not apply to the people who do a third of Yale’s teaching. Here, conversations will have little chance at winning the day as long as Levin continues to maintain that they would be more harmful to the University than the disruption of academic labor.

Picketing starts at 8:30.