The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel joins the speculation about a Feingold Presidential run:

Feingold’s campaign manager for his recent Senate romp, George Aldrich, said Feingold would not be available to discuss just what he was up to. But neither did Aldrich seek to throw cold water on questions about a possible presidential run for the lawyer and former state senator from Middleton. “There is no doubt that Sen. Feingold will be looked at as a new voice for the party as it moves forward,” Aldrich wrote in a statement. “He has every intention of continuing to use his voice to build the party, to speak out on important issues and to advance a progressive reform agenda that not only has a lot of support in Wisconsin but across the country.”

Tamara Pogue, a former official of the Dean presidential campaign now working for the Wisconsin branch of America Coming Together, a Democrat-leaning voter mobilization organization, said a Feingold candidacy was “absolutely realistic,” given Feingold’s ability to build a grass-roots organization and net a big base of small contributors. Paul Maslin, a Madison-based pollster who worked with Dean and has worked for U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), said Feingold had an advantage being next door to Iowa, politically important because of its early caucuses, and because of his outsider status. “He’s at a point in his life where he may be more willing to step out. And why not? This is a time for the Democrats where it’s the more the merrier. The bottom line is, ‘road-test it,’ ” Maslin said…In a 1992 interview with The Washington Post, shortly after his upset of two-better known Democratic rivals and incumbent Sen. Robert Kasten (R-Wis.), Feingold described his formula for winning longshot campaigns. “The plan was to take advantage of the fact that I didn’t have money, to make every weakness a strength, to be the one guy in the race who didn’t look big and powerful and have the big money,” he said.

My challenge to President Levin’s to respond to our agenda for financial aid reform is on-line here:

Last semester, I had the chance to ask President Levin to explain the “philosophy of co-investment” he often references when confronted by internal and external pressure for meaningful financial aid reform. I was disappointed to hear Levin reiterate his argument that the burden of work and debt that Yale currently imposes on students and families is for their own good. This burden, Levin asserted, makes students invested in their own education and parents in the education of their children. Levin went so far as to cite a study by Yale’s Child Study Center demonstrating the importance of parental involvement in children’s lives as justification for not adopting Harvard’s policy of requiring no contribution from families making under $40,000 a year, a policy he derided as a “publicity stunt.” Low-income students choosing between Yale and peer institutions already know that Harvard has gone the extra mile to expand the diversity of its student body. Levin is doing Yale no favors by publicly suggesting that the University’s insistence on charging students for their education is only for their own good to give them something to bond with their parents over.

The same “This hurts us more than it hurts you” attitude lurks behind Yale’s justifications of the current required student contribution of over $4,000 dollars each school year. Administrators have argued that such work, which for many students amounts to 20 hours a week, provides stimulating opportunities for students while giving them the satisfaction of contributing to their own education. Yet no Yale administrator has proposed imposing such a work requirement on students not on Yale financial aid in order to help them better appreciate their education or expressed concern that such students are taking their education for granted. Yale administrators have not suggested to those of us not bound to make a student contribution that the most gratifying pursuits to squeeze into our schedules include working in the library. Rather, freshmen are encouraged at every Convocation to plunge into and take over the reigns of extracurricular opportunities. The implications of a University in which half of the student body is directed to spend up to 20 hours a week working and the other half is directed to spend it running organizations are deeply unsettling for social integration in our community.

Yale folks: Sign our petition for financial aid reform here.

A settlement in the Sudan, but no end to conflict in Darfur:

To cries of “Allah Akhbar” and “Hallelujah,” Sudan’s Islamic government signed a peace agreement today with a predominantly Christian rebel group in the country’s south that calls for the end to one of Africa’s fiercest and longest-running civil wars. Several thousand onlookers – most of them Sudanese refugees who have known nothing but war in their homeland – danced with glee at a downtown sports arena here as Vice President Ali Osman Taha and the rebel chief, John Garang, initialed the pact, which has been years in the making.

Yet the celebration was tempered by the fact that war continues in other parts Sudan. The conflict in the western Darfur region, involving different rebels, was not covered under the peace agreement. Whether peace in one part of Sudan helps to quell the crisis in Darfur remains a major unknown. The agreement calls for a six-year transition period to ease the combatants toward peace. It is fraught with potential complications but, if it works, it could help bring development to one of the world’s most destitute and disease-ridden regions…The peace deal calls for merging fighting forces, sharing the country’s oil wealth and diving political offices between northerners and southerners. Mr. Garang, the rebel chief, will become a vice president, reporting to President Omar Hassan el-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup. An estimated two million people have died in Sudan’s decades of war, from starvation and disease as well as bullets and bombs. Previous attempts at negotiation have gone nowhere and this round of talks, which traces its origins back to 1997, have been close to collapse numerous times.

Abu Mazen claims victory in the Palestinians’ first Presidential election in nine years:

According to the exit polls, released moments after polls closed at 9 p.m. local time, Mr. Abbas is expected to win the election with about 65 percent of the vote, more than 40 percentage points ahead of his nearest challenger in a weak field of seven…Despite being held under Israeli occupation, the voting was judged by international observers to be generally free and fair, with little interference from Israel, which eased travel restrictions on Palestinians and largely halted military activity in the territories. But there was concern about a turnout that was lower than expected on a cold but sunny winter’s day, and Palestinian election officials decided to keep the polls open for an additional two hours, until 9 p.m. The election officials first said that Israeli restrictions at checkpoints and confusion at Jerusalem polling stations were the reasons for the extension. But the announcement came after reports of low turnout in some cities, including this one, where election workers at one polling station, the Al Qarami School, said that only 30 percent of those registered had voted by 4:30 p.m…One of the exit polls today estimated turnout at about 65 percent, but again, actual figures will not be available until Monday. In partial municipal elections last month in only 26 towns and villages, turnout was 81 percent…

Mr. Abbas was looking for a sizable popular mandate to provide him the legitimacy and authority to make difficult internal reforms, reorganize Palestinian security services and to negotiate with Israel…Despite their boycott call, Hamas spokesmen made clear today that they would work with an elected president. Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, told reporters that Hamas could have run its own candidate if it really wanted to undermine Mr. Abbas. “Our view is not to undermine,” he said, although he insisted that armed resistance to Israel will continue. Mr. Abbas has called for a cease-fire. Mr. Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, called the election a source of pride for Palestinians as he voted here this morning at Mr. Arafat’s former headquarters, the Muqata. “This process is taking place in a marvelous fashion and is an illustration of how the Palestinian people aspire to democracy,” he said. He urged women in particular to exercise their right to vote.

Some good news for President Bush (read: bad news for America) in his attempt at “bipartisanship” (read: date rape) on tax reform (read: class warfare):

President Bush on Friday named two well-known former senators to head a bipartisan advisory panel on taxes, and gave the group six months to come up with recommendations on how to make the income tax simpler, fairer and more conducive to growth. The panel’s chairman will be Connie Mack III, a former Republican senator from Florida, and its vice chairman will be John B. Breaux, the former Democratic senator from Louisiana who decided not to run for re-election last year…Mr. Breaux, a conservative Democrat, frequently tried to work as a broker between the two parties on tax issues and is best known as a cagey dealmaker.

And some bad news for President Bush (read: good news for America) in his attempt at “bipartisanship” (read: date rape) on social security reform (read: social insecurity):

Senator Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat whose support was essential to the enactment of President Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and his Medicare legislation in 2003, said on Thursday that he would oppose the president’s Social Security plan this year. Mr. Baucus’s position will make it difficult for the White House to obtain the Democratic votes necessary for the measure to get through the Senate. “I seriously doubt I’m going to be the linchpin this time,” Mr. Baucus, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, said in an interview. The president’s plan to allow workers to divert part of their Social Security taxes into private investment accounts would “exacerbate the problem, not solve it,” the senator said.

Wal-Mart faces a collective action lawsuit by exploited undocumented workers:

A collective action on behalf of undocumented workers performing cleaning services who were arrested in a 2003 immigration raid of Wal-Mart stores was approved by a federal judge in New York Dec. 29 (Zavala v. Wal-Mart Stores, D.N.J., No. 03-5309, 12/29/04). Approving the conditional certification of an overtime and minimum wage claim brought by 17 named plaintiffs, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey said the plaintiffs could send a notice to thousands of janitors who worked for Wal-Mart contractors performing cleaning services throughout the United States. Judge Joseph A. Greenway Jr. limited the collective action to Wal-Mart employees and refused to expand the class to the company’s Sam’s Club operations. The ruling on the FLSA claims was the first in what is expected to be a series of rulings resulting from a November 2003 lawsuit filed on behalf of undocumented workers who performed cleaning services for Wal-Mart and who were arrested in the Homeland Security Department’s Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids of 21 of the chain’s stores. The workers also have filed claims alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (42 U.S.C. § 1985(3)), and New Jersey’s wage and hour and anti-discrimination laws.

The workers named in the suit–who are residents of Mexico, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia–charged that they worked at least 60 hours per week without overtime, workers’ compensation coverage or health insurance benefits, sick leave, or disability benefits. The workers claimed they earned between $350 and $500 a week…The workers allege a fraudulent scheme by Wal-Mart and its maintenance contractors across the United States, including stores in New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, and Texas, to use undocumented workers to provide janitorial and cleaning services. The original complaint alleged workers were “locked-in” to stores overnight to perform cleaning services. In certifying the collective action, the court said Wal-Mart was required to produce the names, addresses, and nationalities of all former and current janitors who have performed work under contract with Wal-Mart since January 2000, as well as copies of the agreements with contractors.

Feeling the heat, Sinclair engages in some blatant intimidation:

Although Sinclair respects the rights of these organizations to voice their opinions, we find inappropriate that their tactics include advocating their constituency to contact our advertisers in a blatant attempt to use economic pressure to censor the speech of Sinclair. Moreover, the continued misrepresentation of the facts surrounding any company’s advertising practices regarding Sinclair stations constitutes “trade defamation” which would entitle Sinclair to seek damages in a court of law. Sinclair will aggressively pursue any organization or any individual which engages in such defamation, including individuals who lend their names to mass e-mail campaigns spreading such misinformation.

I’ve made clear my stance on libel law here before. Let’s try a little experiment:

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP EATS BABIES. LOTS OF BABIES. ALL THE TIME. ALSO, DON’T DO BUSINESS WITH THEM OR THEIR BABY-EATING COHORT.

Anyone want to join the experiment?

Your tax dollars at work:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams “to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts,” and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Wal-Mart Watch: Hartford passes protections for organizing on Wal-Mart property:

For the first time in Connecticut, among the first times in the nation, a local ordinance gives union organizers – and any other groups – the right to do their thing on Wal-Mart property, peacefully and within reason, without fear of the boot or handcuffs. They can rouse rabble right up to the front door of the 155,000-square-foot store. This is a big deal at Wal-Mart, which has so far remained 100 percent non-union in its North American stores in part by keeping labor organizers as far as possible from its “associates.” Worker organizers and Wal-Mart opponents say they won’t wait long to exercise their new rights after the Jan. 26 opening at Charter Oak Marketplace. They are the ones, after all, who helped the city council draft the ordinance, which passed Dec. 13 in a 6-2 vote. This Wal-Mart differs from others because it sits on Hartford Housing Authority land…Among the organizers’ ideas: a bake sale, right on the site, to raise money for Wal-Mart workers to buy health coverage.

To whoever got here looking for

new haven brothel,

sorry – can’t help you. Actually, not sorry. Can’t help you.

What’s in store:

The success of President Bush’s push to remake Social Security depends on convincing the public that the system is “heading for an iceberg,” according to a White House strategy note that makes the case for cutting benefits promised for the future. Calling the effort “one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times,” Peter Wehner, the deputy to White House political director Karl Rove, says in the e-mail message that a battle over Social Security is winnable for the first time in six decades and could transform the political landscape. The White House confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail but did not have an immediate comment.