On David Ritcheson

A recent story in the news tells that he committed suicide by jumping overboard from a cruise ship. Earlier he was in the news for being attacked:

A Spring teen who survived a brutal beating with a pipe last year jumped to his death from a Cozumel-bound cruise ship on Sunday.

Carnival Cruise Lines officials would not confirm his identity, but Rick Dovalina, head of LULAC in Houston, said Sunday night that he learned through the family's attorney, Carlos Leon, that 18-year-old David Ritcheson has died.

...

Ritcheson's death comes less than three months after he testified before Congress about how two teens nearly killed him on April 23, 2006, by repeatedly kicking a patio umbrella stand into his rectum while shouting "white power!"

The two teens who raped him got very long sentences for their crime. Ritcheson got a very short life. It's important to remember that the suffering of the victim does not end when the crime does.
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Initial link via mia culpa.

On David Brooks And Other Commenters

Brooks wrote about Bush commuting Libby's sentence. If you want to know what I think about it, go to the TAPPED blog.

And pretty surprisingly, Chris Matthews sees the decision as a bad one.

A June 21 post by Josh Marshall seems very relevant here, too. Thanks for Barry for linking to it:

The Supreme Court made it harder Thursday for most defendants to challenge their federal prison sentences.

Appeals courts that review prison terms imposed by trial judges may deem them reasonable if they fall within federal sentencing guidelines adopted in the mid-1980s, the high court said.

The justices upheld a 33-month sentence given to Victor Rita for perjury and making false statements. Rita is a 25-year military veteran and former civilian federal employee.

The prison term falls within the guidelines range and was upheld by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, posing the question of whether sentences within the guidelines ordinarily will be considered reasonable.

Go Free, Scooter

I was taking a nap when George Bush decided to commute Scooter Libby's sentence. I'd bet that Bush thought most of the country was looking elsewhere, given the Fourth of July taking place in midweek. So Bush decided to reward his good friend: Old Scoot doesn't have to go to prison, after all. He just needs to pay the fine which won't be too hard for him.

Why not give Libby a full pardon? The Republican commentators have already made this into a noble and just and thoughtful gesture: Libby wasn't innocent but the sentence was too harsh. This way he is still punished but can stay with his family.

On the other hand, as Josh Marshall noted, a full pardon would have exposed Libby to possible questioning from the Congress. This way he still has the Fifth Amendment privileges.

There are always several different games people play when they write about events like this one, and the above two paragraphs are an example of one game in two moves, if only inside my head.

Games. Whenever I'm sick of writing about politics it is because of all the games people play while elsewhere real people suffer and die. I get the point of the games: they are strategy and tactics. Think of politics as baseball (with a Mafia flavoring) and you get the strutting games and the top-rooster-of-the-tip games, even if you have no testicles. So in that world the way to write about this event is by asking thoughtful questions about the consequences of Bush's act on his popularity with the Republicans (who wanted Libby pardoned) or the Independents (who probably don't know who Libby is, on the whole).

Or if you want to go all erudite you can compare this case to the Clinton impeachment case, even if they are not really the same at all. Or you can write long posts about how the base of the Democratic party is going to react, given the "witchhunt" they have engaged in. You know, trying to get Dick Cheney or Karl Rove and only managing to get poor liddle Libby who is a kind and thoughtful man.

All these games share one thing: They don't ask whether Bush's actions are morally right. Atrios writes that he is very mad today. He sees Bush's act as "obstruction of justice" and none of the many Democrats he quotes has brought that up.

I see Bush's act in the baseball sense. It's as if the coach of one team has decided to overrule the umpire's decision, and everybody just goes and buys more popcorn.

Why?

Why does all technology crash on the same day? Even if you pay the services? Or especially if you pay the services.

Do you think that the machines have gone on a Fourth of July holiday? I wouldn't put it past them.

I'm going to get a quill pen and a bottle of blood-red ink.

Weird Thoughts On Whole Foods

I visited a Whole Foods store recently and thought about Jonah Goldberg. According to Slate he is working on a book about us Nazis:

Three months ago, I speculated that Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming book, then titled Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, was the victim of a swift and violent paradigm shift. The 2006 elections and the right's critical drubbing of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11—which proposed a strategic alliance between Muslim theocrats and the American right against the degenerate American left—had rendered conservatism's lunatic fringe suddenly unfashionable.

...

Gone is The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton. Now the subtitle is The Totalitarian Temptation From Hegel to Whole Foods. This is undeniably kinder, gentler, and less political. But it isn't necessarily more truthful. As liberal blogger Ezra Klein points out, John Mackey, founder and chief executive of Whole Foods, is a libertarian.

So what is so very Nazist about Whole Foods? Well, one of the notices said that shoes and shirts must be worn. That is pretty authoritarian, isn't it? I fleetingly wondered if anyone had tested this Nazist rule by wearing nothing but shoes and shirts. Perhaps Goldberg's book will tell us.

Inside the store was a large placard telling me all about how Whole Foods is in cahoots with the local organic growers. That is pretty Nazist, too. On the other hand, I couldn't find very many organically grown fruits or vegetables at the store at all and only one thing grown locally. On the third hand, I did learn why some people call Whole Foods "Whole Paycheck."

Five Years For A Terrorist Attack

A man douses the interior of his car with gasoline and drives it into a women's health clinic, planning to start a fire and to die in it himself. This sounds quite familiar in an odd way, given the failed attempt at Glasgow airport. It turns out that the clinic he chose doesn't actually perform abortions at all, and that he didn't manage to make much of a fire. But the intentions were there.

He was given a five-year prison sentence for this act.

What would he have gotten if his attempt had been motivated by radical Islam?

My point is not to argue that we should treat terrorist attacks in general like this example case, rather the reverse. But note that the workers and clients at that health clinic could have died because of someone else's religious beliefs. This is no different from the kinds of cases we usually regard as "real" terrorism.

Going Visiting

In the land of unthinking fear. I read the comments section of this post tonight. It is worth wading through, despite the nastiness of doing so, because it tells much about the reasons for the wingnut behavior and how well the terrorists' policies are working. Note how many of the comments advocate wholesale killings of large numbers of Muslims? Note how many explain that liberals, progressives and others with similar views are the real enemies, because they don't allow this mass killing to defend "our values"? That those values appear to include the slaughter of yet more innocents doesn't seem to be noticed. When you read the comments remember that the three recent attacks killed exactly zero people (unless the terrorist who was hospitalized died).

It was helpful for me psychologically to read those comments, though also upsetting. Mostly, because the impact of these (pretty clumsy) U.K. attacks in the U.S. seems to be exactly what bin Laden would desire: fear is growing and so is the desire to start a world war against Islam. If you read about bin Laden's plans you will find out that this is exactly what he intends. He wants to unite the Muslim countries into one unit which will fight the west, and he wants to destroy the open societies of the west. Well, the open societies are closing pretty rapidly already.

But the strongest impression I got from those comments was how they were written from the lizard brain, with the exception of a few reasoned ones. The lizard brain is my term for the times when we act out of some very primal emotion: hate or fear or lust, and when we send the logical part of the brain out drinking. The lizard brain hates liberals, too, because liberals don't write about these topics from the lizard brain. Or most of them don't.

I think the British police operations are the proper response to real terrorist attacks. Treating terrorism as a crime takes away some of the glory it gets when terrorists are given the honor of having a war waged against them. We don't wage wars against criminals; we put them behind bars.

There is much more I want to write about this topic, especially about the values angle, but that will have to wait. Also about the hopeless feeling I get in trying to think how to debate issues with someone who is that afraid. Fear makes us stupid, sometimes.

For now, I hope that most of those frightened-to-death comments were by a handful of sock puppets.

Sunday Cats And One Mouse

This is Darryl Pearce's Caesar:





And this is FeralLiberal's Emma:





This is a mouse in a birdhouse. Picture also by FeralLiberal.





All these would be good for the captioning game.

Saturday Hope Blogging

This can be done by stealing Phila's Friday Hope Blogging. It's a useful corrective for the general sense of gloom-and-doom I and quite a few others spread in our attempt to change things. Because some good change is taking place, and it needs to be given attention, too.

The Focus Of Terrorism

Is to make people frightened. This is important to remember when judging the coverage of the recent car bombing attempts in the United Kingdom. It's perfectly fine to report on the attempts. But it's not perfectly fine to spread panic or to make the attempts into something more sophisticated than they really are. That way the media serves the goals of the terrorists. Or so I think.

Lilies, Roses and Delphiniums

Another garden essay. The picture doesn't show any of the plants I write about, but it does show some red daylilies at about this time of the year.





I love lilies, the tall-stemmed perfumed white ones with enormous flower cups. They look unapproachably regal, like the cold queens of some ancient barbaric tribe. Yet their scent in a summer evening evokes much earthier thoughts: one thinks of skin and lips, husky voices whispering endearments, the ladies of the night.

As much as I love lilies I hate the lily beetle. This small orange-red beetle lives for two things: to destroy lilies and to copulate, and it is extremely successful in both. It appears to have no natural enemies in my garden, myself excluded, and each year it comes out a little more victorious in the war I wage against it. I am also getting tired of the manner in which it has turned my daily garden strolls into beetle crushing campaigns. I am beginning to think that my lily growing days may soon be over.

Or perhaps not. There are no good understudies for lilies as August star performers, and some stars are necessary for each month of the gardening season.

Roses are similar divas of the garden. My climbing roses are finally large enough to be admired from below. Their June dance of ivory, silk and lace coincides with the flowering of honeysuckles and leaves me drunk with the garden for days. But once the perfect flowers are gone, the awkward disease-ridden bodies remain to demand the gardener's attention.

Never mind that my roses were bought as disease-resistant, they seem to get blackspot almost before they get leaves. Organic remedies have no perceptible impact, so my blackspot treatment consists of careful removal of the sickened leaves. By August, the roses are close to skeletal, and the lilies are then also needed to draw the spectator's eye away.

Deciding the destiny of my lilies and roses is not going to be easy. Most real choices aren't. For whatever I choose, something essential will be lost: satiny petals, intoxicating scent and beauty of the floral form on the one hand, time and peace of mind on the other. And when the choice is finally made, regrets follow.

I still miss the delphiniums (delphinium elatum) to which I dedicated most of my compost, waking hours and miles of stake and string for several summers. The last summer I grew them they stood seven feet tall with hundreds of slowly opening sky blue eyes. Then one night it rained hard, and the following morning the delphiniums were lying helter-skelter across other plants, looking like duchesses who were dressed for a ball but chose instead to stand on their heads in mud puddles. This may have seemed funny to them, but was not my idea of a star performance. It wasn't too difficult to let them go. But I still have some regrets.

The lilies and roses would be much more painful to lose, as they, at least, complete their performances, and all the understudies I know for them are just that, understudies.

So should I grow them or not? There should be a third answer to this dilemma, just like there should be one for other difficult choices in life.

On The Fourth Branch

That would be Dick Cheney. It's now acceptable to notice how he has amassed power out of all proportion to the actual role of the Vice President and how he uses secrecy and the refusal to acknowledge laws to go on holding it. Acceptable, because David Broder wrote a column on the topic:

Cheney, as described in a breathtakingly detailed series in The Post this week by reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, is something else.

What they discovered, in a year of work that reveals more about the inner workings of this White House than any previous reporting, is a vice president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends and purposes, often overriding Cabinet officers and other executive branch officials along the way.

Cheney used his years of experience, as a former White House chief of staff, as the secretary of defense and as the House Republican whip -- and all the savvy that moved him into those positions -- to amass power and use it in the Bush administration. He was more than a match for the newcomers to the White House, and he outfoxed even the veterans of past administrations when it came to the bureaucratic wars.

As Josh Marshall notes, most of this is not new for those who read progressive and liberal blogs. It is the mainstream media which has been finally given the green light to go after Cheney. It could be too late, of course.

Why did it take so long for Cheney to be properly criticized? Opinions vary (as they say), but my guess is that fear and proximity to the government have their role to play. Also that "he-said-she-said" schtick which means that Cheney could control the debate in many venues.

By the way, read the series Broder mentions. It's good reporting.

A Deep Thought For The Day

Caught on a wingnut blog:

The conservative court campaigned over for the last 25 years has finally come to fruition.

Remember this when the conservatives pretend that they don't want activist judges.

Now Watch This Video

It's about the Paris Hilton case. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski rebels on air about having to make the Hilton case the first piece in the news. Note how she is treated by Joe Scarborough.

Bugs

You know what happens usually this time of the year if you open a window without a screen at night and turn the lights on? Bugs come in. All sorts of flying insects.

Well, they didn't last night. Not only are there no honey bees around the Snakepit Inc., but I don't even see that many moths.

It's an odd feeling to miss something that is a bit of a nuisance. But I do miss the bugs. So do my resident spiders.

And The Third In My Series Of Deep Posts on a Humid Day

This one has to do with Cuba. George Bush is anticipating the death of Fidel Castro and the events that might come about after that:

President Bush openly anticipated the death of ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro today, picturing it as an opportunity to bring freedom to the Caribbean island after nearly a half century of iron-fisted rule by the fiery Communist leader.

"One day, the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away," Bush said during a question-and-answer session at the U.S. Naval War College here. As the audience laughed and began to applaud, Bush seemed to realize that cheering the death of another head of state, even an enemy, might appear unseemly and quickly quieted the crowd. "No, no, no," he told them.

But he then imagined what it would be like once Castro is gone and forecast a debate over how aggressively the United States should try to open up the totalitarian system in Havana. "The question is, what will be the approach of the U.S. government?" he said. "My attitude is that we need to use the opportunity to call the world together to promote democracy as the alternative to the form of government they have been living with."

Wouldn't it be the horned guy who will come for Fidel in Bush's worldview? Never mind. What I wanted to write about is the question what Cuba would look like in the future if Bush's wishes are realized.

Many good things might happen, true. But if Cuba becomes a country of unbridled capitalism, what will it lose? Somehow the comparisons are always with Cuba as it actually is and some libertarian paradise of a society. A more realistic comparison might be between Cuba and other countries nearby. And then you might start to notice that there are things the Cubans might lose, too. Such as good education and fairly accessible health care. They might end up with a country which looks a lot like that Cuba from the 1950s, with few very rich people and loads of poor people without much hope for improvement. Perhaps that is a better country than the present Cuba. I'm not an expert enough to tell.

But it's never useful to compare some real-world society only to a phantom utopia, without telling us how that utopia might actually be achieved.

The Countries Which Lead

Today is the day for wide-ranging goddess posts. Probably because it is so very humid. In any case, I saved this story about how people all over the world rate various countries, because it woke up one of those humidity-related deep thoughts in me. Here's the summary of the survey:

Anti-American sentiments are on the rise in many parts of the world, driven by concerns that U.S. leaders are prone to act unilaterally and have widened the gap between rich and poor nations, a new international survey found.
At the same time, global attitudes about China have also declined, with residents of many countries expressing concerns about China's growing economic and military power, the survey concluded.
The survey of 45,239 people in 47 countries by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found ``worldwide support'' for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and substantial opposition to U.S. and NATO military operations in Afghanistan.
``There is a question as to whether we are living up to our own values, which is what is making people question what our policies are,'' former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at a news conference today announcing the poll's findings.
America's image ``has plummeted throughout much of the world'' over the last five years, the center said in its report on the survey, which was conducted April 6 through May 29.
It found ``sharp drops in favorability among traditional allies in Western Europe, as well as substantial declines in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere.''

Note that the United States is the greatest military power on earth and that China is the rising economic power. Also the factory of the rest of the world, right now, with minimal quality controls. And neither of these countries currently seems to care about the rest of humanity at all. Both are pursuing quasi-imperialist policies and navel-gazing. Both sound a little militaristic.

The easiest way I can think of this is with the parable of a school class. There are the wealthy kids who might be cool and admired, because they treat others well and offer leadership. Or they might be the class bullies, using their position and wealth to get even more from others while telling them what to do. To me the U.S. and China, too, look a lot more like class bullies right now. That's what the opinions reflect.

I think the world is quite leaderless right now, in the good sense of leadership.

On School Integration and The Supreme Court of the United States

Remember the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision? It argued that racial segregation of schools should be ended, because "separate" is inherently "unequal". One part of the evidence in that case was a sociological study which showed that black children thought white dolls were better and more desirable than black dolls. But most of the evidence was about the enormous inequities of resources between the racially segregated school systems.

Fifty-three years later, the Supreme Court of the United States has made another decision on school integration. Purposeful school integration should be ended because it is discriminatory:

In a decision of sweeping importance to educators, parents and schoolchildren across the country, the Supreme Court today sharply limited the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.

The court voted, 5 to 4, to reject diversity plans from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., declaring that the districts had failed to meet "their heavy burden" of justifying "the extreme means they have chosen — discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments," as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court.

Today's decision, one of the most important in years on the issue of race and education, need not entirely eliminate race as a factor in assigning students to different schools, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a separate opinion. But it will surely prompt many districts to review and perhaps revise programs they already have in place, or go back to the drawing boards in designing plans.

The opinion's rationale relied in part on the historic 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools — a factor that the dissenters on the court found to be a cruel irony, and which they objected to in emotional terms.

Guess which Justices were with the majority? Yup:

In the now familiar lineup, Justices Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. sided with the chief justice on most points.

The blogs at the National Review site (a conservative paper) had this to say on the decision:

Today's Supreme Court decision striking down Louisville's and Seattle's race-based student assignment plans will surely lead to much gnashing of teeth, recriminations, and accusations of America slipping back to the era of Jim Crow. Politically correct experts, educators, and advocacy types will express outrage and declare their intent to find a way — any way — to ensure that the remaining handful of white students in urban districts attend schools otherwise populated by black and Hispanic children.

They're wrong. Not because we shouldn't feel guilty that so many of our urban schools are racially isolated. Of course we should. And not because Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of an integrated society isn't compelling. Of course it is. But the surest route to such a society is to help all children achieve academically, prepare for higher education as well as jobs with futures, and enter the great American middle class. Because here's the good news: Middle-class black children living in suburbs are much more likely to attend racially diverse schools than poor black children are. The way forward is through progress — which starts with academic progress. That means shaking up the urban school systems that are producing such abysmal results.

When I read that response and also when I read the initial decision by the SCOTUS I had the same odd experience of parts of my brain separating and floating above me in the clouds. Because of that cloud-cuckoo-land aspect.

First, note that the National Review blog post doesn't tell us how we are going to achieve all the wonderful things we should do with inner-city schools populated predominantly by minority students. Schools are funded mostly from local property taxes, which means that poor areas get poor schools. Whenever a proposal tries to change this, the middle-class parents go into a rebellion. In short, there will be no improvements of urban schools as long as this is how the system works. So all that extra stuff in the blog post is meaningless.

Second, the whole SCOTUS decision smells of ignoring the fact that people of color are, on average, poorer and less powerful. To imply that a system that ignores this is somehow fair and balanced is silly.

Put it this way: If I had a child denied access to my most preferred kindergarten, say, I would have very little trouble taking that imaginary child to another good kindergarten or a private school, and I'm not especially rich. But if I was stuck in a ghetto, with two jobs and little education, the slot in a good kindergarten for my child might be the only chance that child ever gets. Now put the two Echidnes in the story fighting each other in a court system for the same kindergarten slot. The SCOTUS says that the rich Echidne must win if the slot is in her backyard. Because she will be a victim of discrimination otherwise. The poor Echidne can just get a third job to pay for a private kindergarten slot.

A hidden underpinning in this whole discussion is the question what integration was supposed to achieve. Was it better education for minority children? Was it an attempt to reduce racism in the society? An attempt to create a society where all children had equal opportunity? I don't quite see what the recent SCOTUS decision thinks it is achieving, but it's none of these things, for sure.

Yes, I am upset over this ruling. I'm one of those politically correct goddesses, I guess. Or perhaps I just happen to have a heart. I'm also frightened of a racially segregated world. It's not good for anybody's basic security.
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Scott Lemieux has a good piece from the legal eagle angle. He also makes a point I forgot to make in this post, which is the fact that this decision rules out most things courts could do to remedy the effects of past discrimination. Such remedies will always have effects on others in the present time. Hence remedying discrimination is...discrimination!

Pointed Words

This New York Times headline is an odd way of framing the conversation Elizabeth Edwards had with Ann Coulter on Hardball the other day:

Ann Coulter's Pointed Remarks Draw Edwardses' Pointed Reply
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

I know that the headline is most likely not written by Nagourney. But it's an odd headline to pick, because it somehow equalizes the remarks on the two sides. Yet if you watched the video of the encounter you can tell that Coulter was just being rude whereas Edwards tried to discuss actual topics. And what John Edwards said later on wasn't rude, either.

One reason why I don't like the "he-said-she-said" distortion of objectivity is shown in this example. It replaces objectivity with balance and the balance can be a false one. It's fine to give both sides of an argument. But to imply that the two sides are equally weighty is often wrong.

The FBI And Graduate Students Working Late

Via No Capital:

THE FBI IS visiting the nation's top technical universities in a bid to stop students taking their holidays outside the country.

MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts, have all had a visit from the spooks to warn them about the dangers of foreign spies and terrorists stealing sensitive academic research.

The FBI wants the universities to impose rules that will stop US university students from working late at the campus, travelling abroad, showing an interest in their colleagues' work, or have friends outside the United States, engaging in independent research, or making extra money without the prior consent of the authorities.

If this is true it shows that the FBI doesn't have anyone working for them who used to be a graduate student. Working late at the campus is what 99.9% of graduate students do. That's how you work. And not to show an interest in the colleagues' work! How are you going to network so that you will one day get a job?

This sounds paranoid to me. Maybe it isn't true.

Added: The original source seems to be this one. Hard to know if the Inquirer take above is correct or not. Thanks for the conversation on Eschaton for this link.

Added even later: Trademark dave on Eschaton linked to the actual FBI instructions(pdf). Remember that this is all about nonclassified research. The FBI document does warn about keeping unusual working hours, for example. But late night hours are actually not unusual, as I stated.

Some Good News

It makes me feel weird to write about good news from our side, but they do happen and I must pay more attention to them lest I push all of you over that high ledge.

Remember the post about the committee planning to raise the money spent on abstinence-only education, even though the well-done studies show that it doesn't work? The good news about that is that the committee reversed some of that. From an e-mail from ACLU on June 21:

The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the Senate
Appropriations Committee's decision to cut funding for the Community Based Abstinence
Education (CBAE) program and raise funding for the family planning program Title X. In a
markup Tuesday, subcommittee members voted to decrease CBAE by $28 million and increase
Title X by $16 million, a move the full committee ratified today.

That makes more sense, too.

The other piece of good news has to do with the recent Supreme Court finding that individuals (in this case women) who have suffered from wage discrimination have only a few months to sue:

On June 22, 2007, Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) and 23 other House co-sponsors introduced H.R. 2831, the "Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007," a bill aimed at fixing a recent Supreme Court decision undermining protections against wage discrimination that have been bedrock principles of civil rights laws for decades.

...

H.R. 2831, which addresses wage disparity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability clarifies that such discrimination is not a one-time occurrence that starts and ends with the first paycheck, but that each paycheck represents ongoing discrimination by the employer. This bill reaffirms the fundamental principle that our civil rights protections are intended to have a broad remedial purpose – to addres and correct injuries suffered because of unlawful employment discrimination.

It might not work, of course, but it's important that the bill is introduced.


----
A correction to the last item. The bill is H.R. 2831: The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
of 2007 and is now available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110u
3rOy4.

To Eat A Peach. Or Fruit Erotica

There it sits, nestled in your warm hand, glowing with that internal peach glow. See the fuzzy fur? Will it tickle your lips? Notice the blushing cheeks and the hint of a cleavage between them?

Lift the golden globule slowly to your nose and inhale. What IS that scent? Come-hither? Does it remind you of cardamom and sandalwood and hot tropical nights in far-away places?

Now bite into the peach. Go on, use your teeth but gently. The peach will resist, ever so slightly and then it will burst with flavor. The waves of taste will spread and spread and spread, recede and spread again. Have another bite. And another. Feel the peach with your tongue and let it feel you. The juice! It runs down your neck and down your fingers like a perfume from a forbidden paradise.

And you will end up all sticky.

What Religious Rights Really Mean

For some people in this Christian country. Via Hecate:

Rita Moran is the Chair of the Kennebeck County Democratic Committee in Maine. She runs a local bookstore, Apple Valley Books, that sells Pagan books, including books related to Pagan parenting, a popular topic among Pagans, most of whom converted to Paganism as adults and are now having families that they want to raise in their religion. Moran is also a member of the Immanent Grove, a gnostic circle.

A group that goes by what I consider to be the un-American name The Christian Civic League has put up a web page with information about Moran's political position and her religious beliefs, including the terrifying fact that she sells books for Pagan parents. The Christian Civic League helpfully provides lots of contact information, including Moran's address, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. We all know the purpose of that.

Note that the Christian Civic League is attacking someone for the religion she has and posting information in a way which could be viewed as menacing. If atheists were doing this to Christians, we'd rightly hear complaints about oppressing the faithful. This case is no different. Should you wish to help, check out Hecate's original post for ways.

Accolades for a Murderer

Suppose that you find that a man has strapped his wife's legs together and then asphyxiated her. Suppose that the following day he asphyxiates his young son and that he then kills himself. Suppose that the man was a famous wrestler (of the pretend-type). What would be the proper media response to the events? It seems to be this:

After learning of what occurred, the WWE canceled its live Monday Night RAW, and USA Network aired a three-hour tribute to Benoit in lieu of the scheduled wrestling telecast.

"WWE extends its sincerest thoughts and prayers to the Benoit family's relatives and loved ones in this time of tragedy," the federation posted in a statement on its Web site.

Read the whole article. It stops just one inch from asking what the wife could have done to anger the poor guy so that he ended up killing his seven-year old son.

Bread And Circuses

The Romans knew that if you give people enough food and enough entertainment they are much less likely to rebel. Too bad about the Barbarians and the Vandals and so on. Today they wouldn't be much of a problem as we have television, and the Romans could have beamed the goodies all over the European continent. Imagine all the Huns (my people!) watching diet programs and ads for the latest in war gear! I'm not sure what would have taken the place of "missing white women" but I'm sure the Roman impresarios would have thought of something.

These are the thoughts that came to my mind when I read that Glenn Beck will guest host for Paula Zahn on CNN's Paula Zahn Now. I wonder if he will eat a rat on teevee? That would be the next logical step in the politics-as-entertainment trend that is so obvious in lots of television. Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck in our living rooms. Next: eating poop and live rats?
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Added later. Elizabeth Edwards called in to the Hardball show in which Ann Coulter was the main course. Here is the video of the conversation they had, if you have stomach for it. The point Edwards makes is a very important one, though.

Those Activist Judges...

It's one of the wingnuts' phrases, to call judges activist when they rule in a way the wingnuts don't like. Well, let's see how the new passivist conservative judges do:

In a series of 5 to 4 decisions, the United States Supreme Court today veered sharply to the right. The Court voted along strict ideological lines to side with the Bush administration in deciding four contentious, high-profile cases.

The four cases ran the jurisprudential gamut. They included challenges to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the Endangered Species Act, and taxpayer-funded faith-based initiatives, as well as a free speech case involving an Alaskan student who waved a sign reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" in front of television cameras during an Olympic ceremony. In the end, the Court opened loopholes in McCain-Feingold and in the Endangered Species Act, dismissed a suit objecting to publicly-funded religious programs, and upheld the suspension of the Alaskan student.

In all four cases, the majority consisted of the same conservative bloc and the minority of the Court's left wing. The conservative majority in all four cases included Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and the two Bush appointees, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer dissented.

Note that freedom of speech is important for electoral campaigns but not for students in schools.

I'm not a lawyering goddess, but even I can see that a lot of interesting information can be derived from these decisions simply by asking: "Qui Bono?" Or "Who Benefits?"

Because all these decisions benefit the Republican party. Odd, this passivist judging.

Today's Action Alert

Also today's humorous moment if you have a dark and sour sense of humor. The PBS is going to have Frank Luntz as the commentator on the next debate between Democratic candidates for the presidency. Now, Luntz is the creator of most wingnut memes (death tax for federal inheritance tax of the very wealthy, say, or the Clear Skies Initiative for pollution-producing policies). He is a dyed-in-the-wool wingnut, and to present him as a neutral analyst stinks to high heavens. See how funny it is, in the sense of the hollow laughter of zombies and those doomed to live in an upside-down world?

If you're not quite there yet, you can complain to the PBS here and to the Tavis Smiley show here. You can inform your friends about the problem at this site.

Chris Matthews on Ann Coulter

Watch the video at Think Progress. It tells us, in Tweety's own words, that Ann Coulter will be the honored guest on Hardball tomorrow. You might also notice, as I did, that Matthews describes Coulter as "dressed for success" in that black cocktail frock.

Tweety has a problem with women the size of Mount Everest. But Coulter's presence on Hardball is not explicable by just his desire to see a sleeveless mini-dress as the way women dress for success. Note that last time Coulter was on Hardball (in 2006) she called Al Gore a "total fag". But, according to Tweety, she sells books and that is enough of a reason to have her on.

I'd really love to know who pays for those books she sells.

A Marine Tutorial on Speech

This article in the New York Times is worth reading. It shows how the marines are taught to speak to the press in cases of, say, murder accusations.

Murders Worthy Of Attention

All murders are horrible. But I can't help noticing that certain murders are seen as more newsworthy than other murders. Compare this murder and the publicity it has attracted:

The boyfriend of a missing pregnant woman was arrested on two counts of murder charges Saturday, and a body believed to be hers was found nearly a week after she vanished from her home, authorities said.

To these murders and the publicity they have attracted:

A suburban Chicago man found shot near the bodies of his wife and their three children in the family sport utility vehicle earlier this month was charged Saturday in their shooting deaths.

The former is familiar to most of you if you live in the United States and watch television. The latter got a lot less attention, despite the fact that many more people were killed. What caused the difference?

I leave that for you to figure out, although I have my own theories.

Lawns

(Something apolitical for Sunday: a garden essay. Well, as apolitical as I can be. The picture is of my ex-lawn last year. Heh.)





Gardeners fall neatly into two political parties: those who love lawns and those who see them as vacant space for more "real" gardening. I am a card-carrying member of the latter party. If I had my way, no lot would have a single non-ornamental blade of grass.

Given my political views, it should come as no surprise that I find lawn fanatics curious people. They spend time, money and water encouraging grass to grow. The minute it obeys, out comes the lawn mower. The process is then restarted. Lawn lovers continually fret over the turf and keep looking for solutions to improve it. It never seems to occur to them that cutting a plant's head off every seven days or so weakens it and may even cause it to lose the will to live. This is what creates most of the problems lawns experience: lawns don't want to be lawns; they want to be tall hayfields swaying in the wind, preferably with lots of other plants thrown in.

But lawn fanatics, and some city ordinances, don't let them fulfill this destiny. Not only is the natural process stunted but often the poor grass is expected to survive on infrequent high-calorie snacks of inorganic fertilizers. All dying vegetation (including grass clippings) is neatly removed so that the lawn never gets a decent meal. And when it throws in the towel, the lawn-obsessed turn to the myriad chemical remedies available in all garden centers. But none of them will work for long, for lawns are an aberration against nature; an aberration which may be successfully maintained in none but a few climatically favored (i.e. rainy) areas. Elsewhere keeping a lawn going is a task suited only to wealthy masochists.

Am I biased against lawns, you might ask. Of course. But I do admit that grass has its place in sports fields and perhaps also as a ground for sunbathing and picnicking; and if it required no upkeep it would even serve as a pleasant green frame for other plantings. I even admit that all gardening is an aberration against nature in that gardeners attempt to slow down nature's plans of making the garden into whatever ecoscape would take its place without human intervention.

But in most cases the natural process we tamper with would take longer than a few days, whereas a lawn unattended for a week's vacation is already well on its way to its natural destination. In fact, it sometimes seems that this is true for a lawn unattended for just an hour

This is my major objection to lawns. They require too large a chunk of gardening time in exchange for barely looking average. And I don't enjoy time spent caring for grass. Perhaps the lawn-obsessed do. If so, how come none of them has offered to take over the upkeep of my lawn?

Me Opinionating in the Dallas Morning News

Thanks to trifecta in the comments, I learned that my earlier TAP piece on research into gender roles is now available in the Dead Tree Press, too. So you can read it again. Or the first time should you have somehow missed it. The reprint doesn't have the links of the original piece, so some of the argument is weakened if you don't check the original, too.

Lies In - Disaster Out, Posted by olvlzl.

Going over some old posts recently this one dealing with the role the media plays in insuring bad government got my attention. I think the argument it makes is valid, the disasters in Iraq and New Orleans don’t seem to have produced its contradiction. In an inversion of how it is supposed to work, media now regularly prevents responsible politicians and public servants from telling the public the simple truth that public services have to be paid for. It prevents public servants from doing their jobs honestly and efficiently. Anyone who is honest about that risks being ridiculed as an idiot, a tax and spender... we all know the words the media whores use. Safe in their air conditioned studios either having or aspiring to the good life of a media shill it’s no skin off their back that the cities, states and entire country are falling apart.

Starting from there the results spread. Anyone who is unwilling to lie about the necessity of paying for things will be removed from office and be replaced by someone who is willing, if not eager, to lie about the possibilities of cutting taxes while cutting essential services to the point of non-existence. Then the media will point to that situation as proof that the public sector can’t deliver and those should be contracted to private companies. But when those contracts don’t work out the way they are supposed to do the media liars mend their ways? Do the politicians who handed them the public sector reconsider?

The media is the problem, they are the source of the lies. A country that lives on a diet of lies can’t govern itself. It is as simple as that, as certain as water flowing and unsupported construction falling. Our media believes that lies are good for ratings and good for business. They think that telling the public lies they will want to hear will give them a ratings advantage. Their ratings and the profit those bring are the only thing they really care about. They won’t stop lying until the news is made not-for-profit, a requirement for holding a broadcasting license or other privilege granted to those companies. And it will take law to force them to stop lying.

My Family Friendly Blog

Via the awesome watertiger, I found a site which rates blogs as if they were movies. Her blog got an R-rating. Mine, of course, got this:





I must try harder.

Silent Spring

I had my morning coffee in the garden, watching the opening sage flowers and the roses at their loveliest. The sun was gently stroking their heads and the birds were taking a rest from their busy flying and feeding activities. Coffee tastes so much better outside, I thought. And the quiet is nice.

Quiet? Where are the bees? They love the sage and my nepeta has been flowering for days now. They love that, too. Last year those violet flowers often looked more like brown-and-yellow ones, because of the number of bees on them. Where are the bees this year?

I took a tour of the garden. All I found were butterflies and one wasp. There were some bumble bees earlier in the year. But no other kind of bees at all.

You may have read about the sudden death of so many bees and about the various theories explaining it. Or trying to explain it. I read those stories, too. But to go out into your own garden and to not hear that buzzing, well, it hits the message home.

Saturday Cat Blogging

The dog and cat above belong to Barry. The caption goes: "Honest, officer, I found her like that."





This one is FeralLiberal's Pippin again. I collected several Pippin pictures for leaner times. The picture looks very zen to me.

Some Echidne Musings

Time for my self-indulgent post of the week. I spent most of this week at the Take Back America conference, and there will be further posts on that later on. For example, I met the Billionaires for Bush at the cocktail reception on Tuesday night. They are very funny. One of them told me that I clean up quite well (I was in my best duds and had high heels n all) and if I only could get some funds I could be one of them! A new career path opened up for me. -- Anyway, I might write about them.

Also on the Code Pink people. I interviewed a pink police officer holding a large "Stop the War" traffic sign. They are an interesting bunch of people and the way they are downplayed is also fascinating. It has feminist links, too.

Then again, I might not write about any of these people. Blogging is hard to do to a formula and often really interesting topics fall down on the to-do list, as some of you know; those who offered me topics I said I would do and still have not. Guilt. It's always with me. I think guilt smells of estrogen.

You can probably guess where I am going with this post. Time, once again, to twist my hands and moan incoherently about the road ahead. Where should I go with this blog? Who is going to guest-post for me on weekends? And when I go to the snake rites on the big mountain? Should I just close up shop or turn this into a team blog of many fascinating feminists? But I'm very bad in social intelligence and all that admin stuff, and even worse at having someone else tell me what to do. Yet the future lies in team blogs, I think.

Even more importantly, is a blog of this type of any real use now that the feminist blogosphere is vibrant and full of all sorts of blogs? My good-cop schtick may no longer be of value if it ever was. And the low-tech setup stinks. No pictures or eerie snake music when you come to the site.

I don't take advice very well at all. Just ask my mom. But I would be interested in your ideas on all this, because a blog doesn't belong to just whoever is writing the posts. It belongs to those who read it and those who participate in the discussion.

Friday Weirdness Blogging

I saved these pictures a long time ago and the acknowledgements got separated from the pics. My apologies for therefore not saying who gave them to me.

These are food items on which we divines send you humans messages of great spiritual importance. The top is a piece of toast with the face of Ernest Borgnine. Now, what a message in that one might be is a very big mystery. But the bottom one is an easier one: a cinnamon bun with the face of Mother Theresa! To remind you not to eat more than your fair share of cinnamon buns.

John Howard and the Aborigines

Or "meanwhile, in Australia", I guess, to continue the format I've been using for short posts commenting on events in far-away places. The Australian government has decided to tackle the high rates of child molestation among the Aborigines by some swift and firm policies:

Australia's prime minister announced plans Thursday to ban pornography and alcohol for Aborigines in northern areas and tighten control over their welfare benefits to fight child sex abuse among them.

Some Aboriginal leaders rejected the plan as paternalistic and said the measures were discriminatory and would violate the civil rights of the country's original inhabitants. But others applauded the initiative and recommended extending the welfare restrictions to Aborigines in other parts of the country.

Prime Minister John Howard was responding to a report last week that found sexual abuse of children to be rampant in indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The report said the abuse was fueled by endemic alcohol abuse, unemployment, poverty and other factors causing a breakdown in traditional society.

'This is a national emergency,' Howard told Parliament. 'We're dealing with a group of young Australians for whom the concept of childhood innocence has never been present.'

Howard announced the measures for the Northern Territory, an Outback region where the federal government retains powers it doesn't have over Australia's six states. He urged state leaders to apply similar tough rules in their jurisdictions.

The federal government can change laws in the territory with an act of Parliament, where Howard has a majority that ensures he can implement his policy.

What do you think of this approach? Should we ban alcohol and pornography in, say, Washington, D.C.? Only in Washington, D.C.? Should welfare payments be linked to alcohol tests showing no drinking, but only if you are a person of color?

Or perhaps a better comparison would be to do all this within an American Indian reservation. Only American Indians would be forced to stay sober and chaste. Everybody else could go on drinking and watching porn and all that would be paid from welfare checks if the person otherwise qualified. Yes, I like this comparison, because the Aborigines were also the initial occupants of a continent, pushed aside and put into reservations by the incoming Europeans.

I'm sure that the problems Howard talks about are real and horrible. But this solution seems unlikely to work, because it really is paternalistic, put in place from the outside, discriminatory and also wholly punitive. The underlying problems of poverty and unemployment are not addressed by it at all. This summarizes the main trouble with the action very well:

The plan angered some Aboriginal leaders, who said it was the kind of government behavior that has disenfranchised Aborigines and created the problems in the first place. They also complained they had not been consulted; the government had not previously indicated it was considering such action.

You can't feel ownership in a policy if you were never consulted.

On Pigs and Condoms

Amanda at Pandagon wrote about a condom advertisement that has been rejected by Fox and CBS. You can see the ad on Pandagon. It uses pigs. More about that later. But the point Amanda makes is an important one:

Okay, when I first read about this Trojan ad, I thought it would probably be at least mildly offensive. But I found it vaguely amusing.

It trades in the same gender stereotypes common to ads like this, but overall, I didn't think it hit on them too hard. The ad doesn't argue that men are de facto pigs, but it does suggest that men who push for condom-less sex are pigs, and that's a pretty fair assessment of that behavior. But the stereotype issues aside, the issue with this ad is that Fox and CBS rejected the ad and not because it peddles in the same stereotypes that their programming uses. No, they took issue with advertising condoms as being used for what they are used for.

Which is for contraception. It isn't clear why those networks rejected the ad, or not clear to me, at least. If it really is because of fear of the fundamentalist anti-contraception crowd, well, that is very bad news indeed. The first and foremost function of condoms is to prevent undesired conceptions. The second, though also a very important function of condoms is to protect the users against some sexually transmitted diseases.

It could be that the ads were rejected because they are pretty unflattering to men. I found them sexist, even if Amanda did not. See how feminists don't have a hive mind? I read the ad as saying that men are pigs except the one who gets the condom from the bathroom machine and miraculously transforms into a guy. Yes, I know that it's sort of funny. But it's still sexist. It's also sexist in another sense: It assumes that all those men in that bar are there just to get some pussy as rude bloggers might say, and that the woman picks the lucky recipient by the condom rule.

I hate to do this prudish feminist bit but sometimes my inner prude requires it.

On the Democratic Candidates' Speeches

I wrote one of those gut-reaction reports on how Obama, Edwards and Clinton came across to me at the Take Back America conference. You can read it on the TAPPED blog. The idea is to show that I can do the Chris Matthews type of journalism. And then I will get loads of money for chocolate from the mainstream media.

Digby Revealed

You can see her speak here at the "Take Back America" conference where she accepted the Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award we (the venomous rabid lambs of the left blogosphere as David Brooks once so memorably put it) were given.

Who Are You Gonna Believe?

Byron York of the conservative National Review says that the "Take Back America" conference booed Hillary Clinton when she praised the American military:

"We're going to end the war in Iraq and finally bring home the troops," she said as a number of Code Pink protesters stood up in the audience. When she declared, "The American military has done its job," boos began to be heard around the room. As the boos increased, Sen. Clinton raised her voice. "The American military has succeeded," she said, to more boos. "It is the Iraqi government that has failed to make the tough decisions." Still more boos.

Bill Scher posted what actually happened here.

Now, the funny thing is that I was there, sitting among the journalists, pretending to be one hot babee journalist and stuff. And so I was actually present when the boos started and know what they were about. As Scher states, York is mistaken:

That's flat wrong. The Politics on the Hudson blog gets it right: "They jeered the Democratic presidential hopeful when she blamed the Iraqi government for the continued violence that has bogged down U.S. troops."

Indeed. Clinton used the moderate Republican argument that what has caused the war to bog down is the inability of the Iraqi government to take charge. There was nothing at all wrong with the planning of the invasion (assuming that it was planned at all), there was nothing wrong with dismantling whatever civil society Iraq used to have, and the new Iraq government is somehow supposed to be in control of a civil war which includes among the fighters many members of its own military and police forces.

The argument is weak as lukewarm water and really beneath Hillary Clinton's intelligence. That's why there was booing. I didn't boo, by the way, as I was just then devouring a cold bagel.

It's interesting to ponder why Clinton is so adamant about her pro-war stance and about the way she voted for the war to begin with. Everybody knows that not supporting Bush was political suicide in those days of solemn patriotism, and her vote is fully explained by that. Most people don't say it, but the reason lots of politicians voted to hand over the warkeys to Bush was because that's what the Americans, on average, wanted at that point of time. I remember.

Now, it's one of those slimy politician things to vote a certain way just because that might get you elected, and you might decide not to support politicians who do this in the future. Still, we mostly tend to forgive them for their inconstancy. Take Mitt Romney, for instance. His beliefs are swiveling around faster than a Utah weather vane, but mostly people don't seem to mind very much.

This brings me to the question why Hillary Clinton refuses to change her explanation about why she voted for the war to begin with. Perhaps she plans to continue the heroic effort George Bush began. Or perhaps she does not plan to do so, but believes that a woman can't change her mind. La donna e mobile, you know. My personal pet theory is that she thinks the danger from the latter option is greater than the danger of looking like a warmonger. I may be wrong.

Effete, Effeminate and At Risk of Emasculation

This is the American Man, at least in the opinion of many right-wing and anti-feminist writers and bloggers. I came across these adjectives in reading what right-wing columnists and blogs worry about in the male presidential candidates, indeed in the American men. Glenn Reynolds, for instance, is most concerned about the feminization of the American culture (don't laugh). He recommends, repeatedly, a new book entitled A Dangerous Book for Boys. The idea of this book is to teach boys how to be boys, not the effete and effeminate wimps us feminists would wish to make out of them. Honestly.

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post on the whole topic. He notes that the right-wingers think America is being emasculated, and they want to fight back before it is too late. Notice how the terms pile up: effete, effeminate and now emasculated. It is the testicles of boys that are at great risk, it seems.

The fragility of masculinity is an odd and important topic. I have never quite understood how masculinity can be so immensely fragile and at the same time so immensely powerful in the minds of some people. It is such a paradox: First, the traditionalists believe that men and women are biologically very different, in fact extremely so, and these "innate" biological differences are proposed as the explanation for anything at all that women might not excel at.

Why so few women in sciences? It's because women can't do math and don't find it interesting, silly. Evolution has built that into our genes. Or why do women get paid less than men, on average? Well, women "choose" to focus on children and the family. This is a biological imperative and nothing much can be done about it unless we want the Western civilization to collapse. Hidden in all this is the assumption that it would be similarly biologically impossible for men to take on some of those childrearing tasks. Because men and women are innately different and intended for different tasks. In a complementary way, natch. For instance, the low earnings of women compensate for the higher earnings of men. And so on.

But then suddenly this very concept of masculinity is at risk, threatened, something that needs to be taught to boys who would otherwise grow up to be something totally different. Turtles, perhaps.

This makes no sense, no sense at all. Either masculinity is biologically determined and will take a certain form in any case or it is not. You can't have it both ways, but the anti-feminists insist on this impossible combination.

Hence the need to change the education, upbringing and environment of boys (by, say, having them read books about how boys should act). Changing education, upbringing or the environment of girls is seen as totally futile, given the biological imperatives these folks embrace.

But of course this nonsensical view tells us much about what really lies behind the fear of the emasculation of American men. The fear is that men might end up not being any better than women are, and given the hierarchical world we still mostly inhabit, this would be a real loss for the men who currently stand on a high rung of the power ladder and also for the women who depend on these men. One of Ursula le Guin's books contains a snippet of conversation about this between Tenar and Ged. When Tenar wants to know why women in that book can't do men's magic, Ged answers by arguing that if women could do the same magic as men then men would be nothing but women who can't give birth.

I found that fascinating, because it is such an insulting statement and also such a revealing one about how women might be viewed. Note first that all women who live long enough will at some point be women who can't give birth and that some women are never able to give birth. Ged sees these women as something without purpose or without use. Then note how Ged defines women by their ability to give birth. This is revealing, because at its most extreme misogyny allows women now other area but the one in which men can't substitute for them. In a sense, the definition of femininity becomes the ability to give birth and this is then the totality of what it means to be a woman. In such an extreme case masculinity is pretty much everything else; all other abilities, characteristics and traits. Only female sexuality and fertility and practical tasks associated with them will be viewed as properly feminine.

This long preamble is to explain why I find the wingnut worry about the emasculation of American culture so frightening. To me it looks like yet another attempt to hoard all sorts of human characteristics under the title of masculinity, and to the extent this succeeds the allowable spheres for women's lives become smaller and tighter and meaner.

Consider the terms "effete" and "effeminate". I looked them up on the Internet and found this definition of effete:
depleted of vitality, marked by self-indulgence, trivial, decadent, overrefined, effeminate

Effeminate, in turn, is defined as follows:
having qualities or characteristics more often associated with women than men;
characterized by weakness and excessive refinement

The antonym of "effeminate" is "manly", which is defined as
having qualities traditionally attributed to a man;
courageous, strong

See the problem? The definitions of effete and effeminate are both circular, being based on what one deems as typical for women or men. But then the additional definitions assign good things to masculinity, such as courage and strength. By definition, then, femininity will lack those.

And this is why Glenn Reynolds worrying about the masculinity of American men and boys directly affects me and other women.


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My apologies for the writing. It's hard to do any at this conference. I promise I will rewrite this later on. Heh.

Guest post by Kay: Pedro Guzman

This is a story that's been floating around for the past week. Penny covered it, and Belledame at Fetch Me My Axe has too. From the ACLU press release:

U.S. Citizen Illegally Deported From Jail Is Missing in Mexico

ACLU and Law Firm Seek Federal Help to Find Developmentally Disabled Man

Monday, June 11, 2007

LOS ANGELES — Federal immigration officers and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department illegally deported a U.S. citizen last month, the ACLU/SC has learned. He is missing in Mexico, and today the ACLU/SC and the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking his safe return.

Pedro Guzman, 29, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Lancaster, California. He was serving time at Men’s Central Jail for trespassing, a misdemeanor offense, when he was deported to Tijuana May 10 or 11. Mr. Guzman is developmentally disabled, does not read or write English well, and knows no one in Tijuana. He declared at his booking that he was born in California.

He spoke to his sister-in-law by telephone from a shelter in Tijuana within a day of his deportation, but the call was interrupted. Family members traveled to the city in an attempt to find him and have remained there, searching shelters, jails, churches, hospitals, and morgues.

There are no circumstances under which government officials may deport a U.S. citizen. Federal officials have refused requests by family members and a private lawyer to assist in the search for Mr. Guzman.

"This is a recurring nightmare for every person of color of immigrant roots," said ACLU/SC legal director Mark Rosenbaum. "Local jail officials and federal immigration officers deported the undeportable, a United States citizen, based on appearance, prejudice, and reckless failure to apply fair legal procedures."

"What has happened to Pedro Guzman is a tragedy," said Stacy Tolchin of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale. "His life may be in danger, and the government must act immediately to locate him and return him to the United States."

Jail and Department of Homeland Security officials failed to identify Mr. Guzman’s disability and improperly obtained his signature for deportation from the United States. "The procedures for determination of legal status implemented by Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs … fail even minimal criteria for constitutional due process," the lawsuit states.

Sheriff's deputies trained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conduct immigration checks at L.A. County jails. The ACLU and immigrant-rights groups warned that involving local law enforcement in immigration policing would lead to mistaken deportations and violate the due-process rights of inmates.

Anyone with information about Mr. Guzman can call the ACLU/SC at (213) 977-9500.

As noted at And We Shall March:

Guzman, a Southern California native, was abandoned in a place where he knows absolutely no one, with no money and without cognitive ability to get himself back to his home. As of right now our government won't even formally ask Mexican officials to search the morgues. That's how little care is extended for someone who is not a missing white girl.

There are no circumstances in which government officials may deport a U.S. citizen.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Guest post by Kay/Blue Lily: Kevorkian's Big Lie

I'm the guest blogger that just won't go away, eh? With Echidne busy at that conference, I once again get a chance to share some more thoughts with her readers. Thanks.


This is written by Diane Coleman, president of disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, from an op-ed in the North Country Gazette:

Every time the courtroom doors opened during Jack Kevorkian’s weeklong trial in 1999, security guards allowed two wheelchair users to enter and sit in designated spaces, as well as three disabled but walking advocates, all representatives of the group Not Dead Yet. We rotated the opportunity to be in the courtroom among about 40 disability activists who came from several states to represent the majority of Kevorkian’s body count, people with non-terminal disabilities.

Kevorkian had been quoted in Time Magazine to say he would love to debate the critics who charge that he is too hasty in deciding who may die. “I will argue with them if they will allow themselves to be strapped to a wheelchair for 72 hours so they can’t move, and they are catheterized and they are placed on the toilet and fed and bathed. Then they can sit in a chair and debate with me.”

In response, our leaflets simply stated, “We’re here, and we demand the equal protection of the law: Jail Jack.”

Kevorkian claims involvement in over 130 deaths, and it’s been irrefutably documented in such respected publications as the New England Journal of Medicine that over 70% were not terminally ill, and 70% were women. Many disability rights advocates view him as a serial killer of people with disabilities.

Read the rest here.

Why is this important now? Because Kevorkian was recently released from jail and the misinformation about his actions and motives continues.

I do believe reasonable people can disagree about the issue of assisted suicide, provided they understand fully the inequality of providing the "freedom to die" for a class of people routinely denied basic freedoms to live. But Kevorkian has no place being named a hero for his actions.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Facebook Feminism And Conferencing

Check this out: If you search for feminist pages on Facebook you get many more anti-feminist sites than feminist ones. Given the average age of those using Facebook, this suggests that we don't have a very big third wave going at the present time. More like the backlash from the second wave is still hitting the shoreline. This is a topic which deserves a much longer post, and it will get one in the future.

I'm still attending the conference and collecting famous presidential candidates. This morning I saw Governor Bill Richardson, and this afternoon I will add Barack Obama and John Edwards to my collection. Wanna trade?

It's really hard to write proper posts in this setting. The bulk of my ideas will probably have to wait until I'm back home at the Snakepit Inc.. On the other hand, my muse has a hangover and might decide to work tonight. To atone, you know.

Who’d o' Thunk It?

A paper reports the news and the people read it. Posted by olvlzl.
Spending so much of my time bemoaning the media it was good to read a Buzz Flash piece by Rory O'Connor about a small paper that did some reporting, The Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The people at that paper did something like what the Boston Globe did in breaking and pursuing the clergy sex abuse scandal but it was the Boys Scouts and they went up against the Mormon establishment instead of the Catholics.

Here's what happened: after receiving a tip that a pedophile caught at a local scout camp in 1997 had not two victims (as the paper reported at the time) but actually dozens, Post Register reporters went to the courthouse to look for a civil suit filed by victims, only to be told that there was no such case. They later learned that the national Boy Scouts of America and its local Council had hired two of Idaho's best-connected law firms to seal the files -- thus covering up the entire affair.

Or so they thought... But the Post Register went to court and "dragged the case file into the light of day." What reporters found astonished them; scout leaders had been warned about the pedophile years earlier, but hired him (again!) anyway. Lawyers for the Boy Scouts knew about more victims, but never told those boys' parents. Top local and national leaders of the Mormon Church, which sponsors almost all area scout troops, had also been warned.

The Post Register ran a six-day series about the affair. The first story featured a 14-year-old camper -- "the son of a Mormon seminary teacher and a cinch to become an Eagle Scout" -- who forced adult leaders to call the police about the pedophile.

Then the backlash began. Mormon church members were among the first to complain, characterizing the paper's coverage as an attack on their faith. "The drums banged, and we were flooded with calls and e-mails and letters to the editor from readers who told us that holding the Grand Teton Council accountable was Mormon-bashing," Miller recounted.

The backlash came as well from advertisers, and the economic pressure built everyday the paper ran the series. "It's one thing to lose an account when you're an employee," Miller wrote. "It's quite another when you're also a stockholder; 140 employees hold close to 49 percent of the company's stock. For many families, this is their retirement." Nevertheless, he recalled, "Most of what I heard inside our building were words of support." Publisher Roger Plothow was also staunchly unapologetic throughout, "standing up with a stoic and clear-eyed defense... for the values of journalism."

The attacks weren't just financial, but personal as well -- including the outing of a gay staff reporter, Peter Zuckerman, by a local multimillionaire who bought full-page ads devoting several paragraphs to establishing that Zuckerman is gay. "Strangers started ringing Peter's doorbell at midnight,"

The local paper stood up for the right of their readers to be informed over what would seem likely to be a pretty severe punishment, financially and personally for its staff. Like what Bogart did in [“The Front Page”ct] Cut that, make it "Deadline".

But unlike in the movies and beyond what you, and the media itself, might expect, the paper that reported the news doesn’t seem to be suffering.

"One of the sweeter moments of our year occurred when we received figures from our circulation audit. While the sales numbers of other U.S. newspapers were in free fall, we were among the nation's faster growing daily papers."

Now that's a surprise ending. A story of a courageous newspaper staff and ownership that doesn't end in bitter-sweet cynicism and the paper closing. Maybe other papers should stop the presses and do a rewrite of their own story. Makes you wonder why they think people buy papers in the first place.

Update: My thanks to the poster who pointed out that I somehow got Charles MacArthur's play mixed up with one of Bogart's least appreciated movies. If you can rent "Deadline", it's worth watching.

Take Back America

I've been enjoying Washington, D.C. today, at the "Take Back America" conference. From my window I can see that phallic symbol of patriotism. More seriously, Washington is a pretty city, and I love the absence of tall buildings. What I don't love so much is the amount of street harassment I underwent in about thirty minutes. No, I don't want to get naked with you. And no, I'm not a sad young lady who needs some company. I'm an old grumpy goddess and ever so slightly drunk.

The conference has been interesting, though I arrived too late to attend the early sessions. I found today's deeper message to be the need to take care of the poor first. If we do that the middle classes will be propped up, too. More substantial posts tomorrow when I'm not quite so tired.

The More Things Change...

I recently posted on the stupid idea that one can make a tool or a gadget female-friendly just by painting it pink. Well, it seems that the marketing folks figured this out fifty years ago:

The Dodge La Femme was a product of the Chrysler Corporation's Dodge division between 1955 and 1956. The La Femme's Raison D'être stemmed from Chrysler's marketing department's observation that more and more women were taking interest in automobiles during the 1950s, and that women's opinions on which color car to buy was becoming part of the decision making process for couples buying an automobile. The La Femme was an attempt to gain a foothold in the women's automobile market.

...

The interior of the car also received attention and features. La Femme interiors were upholstered in a special tapestry material featuring pink rosebuds on a pale pink background and pale pink vinyl trim. The La Femme also came with a rectangular purse that coordinated with the interior of the car. The purse could be stowed in a special compartment built into the back of the passenger seat. Each purse was outfitted with a matching set, which included a compact lipstick case, cigarette case, lighter and change purse, all by designed and made by "Evans".

It didn't work then, either. I'm very saddened by this total lack of progress, perhaps because it implies that the group "women" are still not worthy of actual study by the marketing departments.

Honour Killings in the U.K.

Thanks for Jules for the link to this awful topic:

Dedicated teams of senior prosecutors are to be deployed in the UK's honour killing hotspots in the wake of the failings exposed this week by the case of a young Kurdish woman murdered by her family.

The prosecutors, who have all had experience of complex organised crime cases, will start work this month as part of an overhaul of how cases are handled. The move is designed to boost conviction rates and improve protection for victims.

...

The changes come after Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year-old Kurd, was murdered by her father and uncle because they disapproved of her boyfriend who was not a strict Muslim and was not of their tribe.

She was found dumped in a suitcase, with the shoelace used to kill her around her neck. She had repeatedly told police her family were trying to kill her. In one instance where she had escaped from her father, she was not taken seriously, and described as melodramatic and manipulative by an officer who interviewed her.

It is a horrible topic, and there isn't anything very bright I can say about it. I could say a lot about the feelings of despair that overtake me, the insistent disbelief I have that someone could do this to their sister or daughter or niece and yet be regarded as a good person, and what this all says about how the humanity of women is viewed in vast areas of the world.

But perhaps the wider lesson is that no family should ever be regarded as owning its members, that no family's honor should ever be regarded as lodging inside someone's vagina and that the police should not assume that families always want the best for their members, especially the women.

Happy Fathers' Day!

Good fathers matter. So enjoy the ties and the baseball games and the monogrammed golf balls and the hugs.

What Comes Next After A Quarter Of A Century Of Right-Wing Dominance?

Posted by olvlzl.
One of the early posts I did talked about Victor Berger and the long lived, successful progressive-Socialist movement he was a part of in Milwaukee. I’m sorry to have to report that things don’t appear to be the same there anymore.

Next month in Milwaukee:

George L. Wilson of Children Need Heroes and Drew Heiss of Street Preach are planning to honor Paul Hill in a series of events called "Paul Hill Days" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 26th - 29th -- "to honor him as God's man and our hero."

For those who have forgotten Paul Hill, he’s the murderer of the abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his escort James Barrett in Pensacola Florida in 1994. He also seriously wounded June Barrett in the attack. The “honoring” is timed to the week of the anniversary of Hill’s attack.

People everywhere should be putting pressure on political, community and religious leaders to condemn this, especially Catholic Bishops and Cardinals who have injected themselves into politics over the issue of ‘the right to life’. The three days of festivities is to include a 'Reenactment of 7-29-1994' (the murders of Dr. Britton and James Barrett and the wounding of June Barrett) we shouldn’t let them get away with a few mealy mouthed regrets. This is incitement to murder and recruitment of children into their ranks seems to be the primary motive of one of the cults involved. This is Jesus Camp-xtra. Let’s see how they really feel about the right to life.