A legal challenge to this country’s odious felon disenfranchisement laws, and a sign of hope for more robust democracy:

The entire active roster of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has agreed to rehear an April decision upholding a section of New York state’s election law that denies prisoners and paroled felons the right to vote. Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, a black man incarcerated at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, acknowledged that the law was not intentionally discriminatory. Instead, he argued that it had the practical effect of diluting black and Hispanic voter rolls because the racial disparity in New York’s prison population is driven, in part, by discriminatory sentencing practices…The decision to rehear the case in banc was made by a vote of the court’s 13 active judges. It will be heard on April 7.

As the horror deepens in Southeast Asia, many ask why the US isn’t doing more:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in morning television appearances, chafed at a top U.N. aid official’s comment on Monday that wealthy countries were being stingy with aid. “The United States is not stingy,” Powell said on CNN. Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums — as well as Bush’s decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy — showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia…In Britain, the predominant U.S. voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a “horror movie,” and urged a coordinated international response.

Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: “The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn’t want to make a symbolic statement about ‘We feel your pain.'” Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. “Actions speak louder than words,” a top Bush aide said, describing the president’s view of his appropriate role. Some foreign policy specialists said Bush’s actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. “When that many human beings die — at the hands of terrorists or nature — you’ve got to show that this matters to you, that you care,” said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

So far, unfortunately, this country’s actions in response to a tragedy of this magnitude aren’t speaking loudly enough.

Wal-Mart Watch: This holiday season, the world’s largest retailer gets a well-deserved Grinch Award from Jobs With Justice:

The largest retailer in the world and largest employer in the United States, Wal-Mart is a sets an ever-lower standard for corporate practices across the country. Studies have demonstrated how Wal-Mart’s practices drive down wages and benefits of service-sector jobs, drain taxpayer money from communities, force the closure of local businesses and destroy manufacturing jobs, in part by importing more than $15 billion a year from China. Despite nearly $9 billion in profits in 2003, Wal-Mart wages are so low many employees are eligible for food stamps. Local taxpayers often are forced to finance Wal-Mart’s expansion through tax breaks and development incentives approved by local lawmakers. Small businesses that offer good jobs often are forced to shut down when Wal-Mart comes to their towns. “Wal-Mart has not only fooled the people who work there, it has fooled the public into believing it’s good,” says Robbin Franklin, a former Wal-Mart manager who worked 11 years for the retailer in Michigan. “Wal-Mart has the American public in a death grip—many working people can’t afford to shop elsewhere, because their own wages aren’t keeping up with the cost of living, thanks to the Wal-Marting of American jobs.”

Wal-Mart has created such high barriers to qualify for its health care benefits, many workers must depend upon publicly financed medical services. According to a research study in California, Wal-Mart workers seek $86 million a year in state aid because of inadequate wages and benefits. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart admitted it routinely locked workers in its stores during their overnight shifts. Saying they have been denied promotions and pay raises because of their gender, a group of women sued Wal-Mart this year in the largest sex-discrimination case in history. In June, a U.S. District Court in San Francisco gave class-action status to current and former female Wal-Mart workers, making it the largest class-action lawsuit ever in the United States, representing 1.6 million women who have worked at Wal-Mart since 1998. Meanwhile, workers say when they seek a voice at work with a union, Wal-Mart launches campaigns of intimidation, coercion and threats. In some locations, Wal-Mart has fired workers for seeking to exercise their legal rights to form a union, according to findings from National Labor Relations Board administrative law judges in Alaska and Florida. Unionized workers in the retail food industry make 30 percent more in hourly wages than their nonunion counterparts, according to a 2002 report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Yushchenko wins in Ukraine:

Mr Yushchenko holds an insurmountable lead in the third round re-run of the presidential elections and has given his victory speech to his supporters. Official results, with ballots counted from 99.66% of precincts, gave Mr Yushchenko 52.09% compared to the Kremlin-backed prime minister Viktor Yanukovich’s 44.12%.

But the latest report Mr Yanukovich promised to mount a legal challenge against the results which would mean another twist in the protracted battle for the divided former Soviet country’s presidency…Once the election commission releases its final preliminary results, both candidates have seven days to appeal. Both campaigns complained of violations but monitors said they had seen far fewer problems in this round, in which 77% percent of registered voters turned out. The new atmosphere was reflected in the comparatively smaller number of Mr Yushchenko’s backers who poured into the Kiev’s Independence square to hear his victory speech.

Human Rights Watch releases a new report on Angolan abuse of civilians in Cabinda:

In the past year, the Angolan army has subjected civilians to extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other mistreatment, as well as sexual violence. The Angolan army also denies civilians their freedom of movement. Human Rights Watch found little evidence of recent abuses committed by rebel factions against civilians, probably because of the rebels’ weakened capacity.

Since late-2002, some 30,000 Angolan troops have been deployed in Cabinda, a discontiguous province that produces around 60 percent of the country’s oil revenue. By mid-2003, the army had virtually destroyed the separatist movement, Front for the Liberation of the Cabinda Enclave (Frente de Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda, or FLEC), which has been fighting for independence since 1963. Notwithstanding FLEC’s virtual military defeat, the large number of Angolan army soldiers remains deployed in the enclave.

Tragedy in Asia:

The most powerful earthquake in 40 years triggered massive tidal waves that hit coastlines across Asia on Sunday, killing more than 7,000 people in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and Malaysia. Tourists, fishermen, hotels, homes and cars were swept away by walls of water unleashed by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, centred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where at least 1,870 people were killed by floods and collapsing buildings, officials said. But the scope of the disaster became apparent only after waves as high as 6 metres crashed into coastal areas throughout the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea.

In Sri Lanka – some 1,000 miles west of the epicentre – the death toll stood at 2,425, according to a military spokesman. One million more were affected by the surging wall of water, the government said. Indian officials said as many as 1,130 had been killed along the southern coast. Another 198 were confirmed dead in Thailand, 42 in Malaysia and 2 in Bangladesh. Thousands of people were missing, many of them fishermen at sea, and rescue workers struggled against floodwaters to find and evacuate stranded victims. The death toll has climbed throughout the day and is expected to grow even higher as more bodies are discovered. Hundreds of bodies were found on various beaches along India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, and more are expected to be washed in by the sea, officials said.

Governors of both parties resist the Scrooge-In-Chief’s Medicare agenda:

Fearful that President Bush plans to shift more Medicaid costs to the states, the nation’s governors are mounting a bipartisan lobbying effort to stave off new federal limits on the program. Medicaid, the nation’s largest health insurance program, is costing the states and the federal government more than $300 billion a year. The growth of the program, which covers the poor and disabled, has outpaced state revenues, and Medicaid is now a larger component of total state spending than elementary and secondary education combined, according to the National Governors Association. Showing rare bipartisan unity, governors of both parties said in interviews this week that they would press hard in the coming months to preserve or even increase their current Medicaid allotments. “I certainly understand the need to balance the federal budget,” said Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican and the vice chairman of the governors association. “But people need to remember that to balance the federal budget off the backs of the poorest people in the country is simply unacceptable. You don’t pull feeding tubes from people. You don’t pull the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy.”

The association’s chairman, Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat, said the governors were “much more in unanimity on this issue than they are on most issues.” He added, “We do see on a regular basis that unless the governors step up, you will see cost-shifting done because it relieves the federal problem.” The governors could find themselves on a collision course with Mr. Bush, who has pledged to cut the federal budget deficit in half in the next five years. A bipartisan lobbying effort would also put pressure on the Republican-controlled Congress. The White House has not tipped its hand on its new budget and has declined to comment on its plans for Medicaid. Federal officials, however, have said they are sending auditors to state capitals to review Medicaid programs and cracking down on methods that states have been using to try to get as much federal Medicaid money as possible.

Sam Smith observes that 56% opposition means more to the Washington Post when it’s not directed at their Stadium project:

WASHINGTON POST – District residents are closely divided on the future of the Washington Nationals, with slightly more than half supporting private financing for a new stadium even if such a requirement means losing the team, according to a new Washington Post survey. The survey found that 56 percent of those interviewed favored requiring private funding to pay for half the cost of building a stadium. . .

WASHINGTON POST – President Bush heads into his second term amid deep and growing public skepticism about the Iraq war, with a solid majority saying [56%] for the first time that the war was a mistake…

James Carroll on a submerged Christmas narrative:

His census decree is what requires the journey of Joseph and the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem, but it also defines the context of their child’s nativity as one of political resistance. When the angel announces to shepherds that a “savior has been born,” as scholars like Richard Horsley point out, those hearing the story would immediately understand that the blasphemous claim by Caesar Augustus to be “savior of the world” was being repudiated.

When Jesus was murdered by Rome as a political criminal — crucifixion was the way such rebels were executed — the story’s beginning was fulfilled in its end. But for contingent historical reasons (the savage Roman war against the Jews in the late first century, the gradual domination of the Jesus movement by Gentiles, the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century) the Christian memory deemphasized the anti-Roman character of the Jesus story. Eventually, Roman imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing Romans as the main antagonists of Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself. (Thus, Herod is remembered more for being part-Jewish than for being a Roman puppet.)

Human Rights Watch on a refugee crisis in the Congo:

Recent combat between rival units of the Congolese army has forcibly displaced more than 180,000 civilians, raising the risk of a new humanitarian disaster in the Congo’s eastern Kivu region, Human Rights Watch warned today. Fighting between loyalist troops and rebel factions at Kanyabayonga in North Kivu, and soldiers’ looting of homes and shops in nearby villages caused residents to flee, many of them into the forest. According to a United Nations humanitarian worker, this flight represented the largest single incident of displacement since the installation of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s transitional coalition government 18 months ago under the Arusha peace accord.

“Forcing civilians to flee into the forest has been one of the worst killers in the Congo wars,” said Alison Des Forges, senior Africa adviser to Human Rights Watch. “Fleeing civilians are left without adequate food, water or medical aid.” All international humanitarian agencies have quit the area of immediate combat, leaving most of the displaced with little hope of urgently needed assistance. Many of the displaced are women and children. Some had fled from one place to another four times in the last month, first displaced by earlier fighting between rebel troops and Congolese soldiers in Masisi, south of Kanyabayonga, and in Walikale, to the west.

The Times on electoral mayhem in Ohio:

Congressional passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 – which mandated the provisional ballot as a failsafe and provided states money to update voting technology – was considered a landmark overhaul that would help prevent another Florida. But an array of voting rights groups contend that Ohio has underscored shortcomings in the law, including one of its centerpieces, the provisional ballot. Now those groups are pushing for a re-examination not only of the law, but also of other voting issues, including the role of partisan secretaries of state in overseeing elections, electronic voting and the elimination of the Electoral College…In the two weeks since Mr. Bush was certified the winner here by 118,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast, watchdog groups have filed lawsuits contesting the outcome and questioning the counting of provisional ballots. The state has nearly completed a recount, at the request of the Green and Independent Parties. Liberal Democrats have demanded investigations into whether there was voter fraud, tampering and intimidation in urban districts.

“This has fundamentally shocked people’s sense of whether any election can be accurately counted,” said Daniel Hoffheimer, counsel to Mr. Kerry’s Ohio campaign. It is far from clear that Republicans in Congress will have any appetite to revisit voting issues, and many Republicans here argue that the system suffered only minor glitches, even with high voter turnout. “There are no error-free elections,” said Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican whom Democrats have accused of worsening the state’s voting problems in the way he interpreted state law.

What’s puzzling is this line:

But with the 36-day Florida recount of 2000 proving that every vote counts…

If only.