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"Our strategy has been to allow this process to advance to the point where it made sense for the president to take the baton. Now's that time," said senior adviser David Axelrod. "I don't know whether he will Twitter or tweet. But he's going to be very, very visible."* rolls eyes *
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Ahmednur Ali's family fled the chaos and violence of their West African homeland Somalia in the 1990s, eventually making their way to Minnesota like thousands of their compatriots.[snip]
While many of the estimated 32,000 Somalis who settled in the state have struggled to adapt, Ali flourished, blazing a path to Minneapolis' Augsburg College on a soccer scholarship by age 20. He studied political science and aspired to a political career modeled on President Barack Obama's.
He was shot and killed last September outside a busy community center where he worked part-time as a youth counselor, and prosecutors said the 16-year-old accused of killing him was part of a gang.
Ali was one of seven Minneapolis-area Somali men killed over a 10-month period, and authorities believe all were killed by fellow Somalis. Police say it's too simple to tie all the killings to Somali gangs, which have lured hundreds of young community members to their ranks in recent years.
Those in the insular community willing to speak out, however, disagree.
"It was all gang activity, totally, 100 percent," said Shukri Adan, a former Somali community organizer who estimated in a 2007 report for the city that between 400 and 500 young Somalis were active in gangs. "The police don't want to say that but everybody else knows that."
Despite anger and despair over the killings in Minnesota's Somali community - the nation's largest - police and prosecutors have struggled to catch and try the killers. Few witnesses have stepped forward because of a fear of reprisal and deep-rooted distrust of authority. More than half of Minnesota's Somalis are living in poverty, according to state statistics, and many complain that authorities are biased against Somalis because of their Islamic faith.
Last month, prosecutors dropped the murder charge against the teenage boy in Ali's case after one witness backed out and another apparently fled the state.
Gangs like the Somali Hot Boyz, the Somali Mafia and Madhibaan with Attitude have grown more active in recent years, said Jeanine Brudenell, the Minneapolis Police Department's Somali liaison officer.
The recent spate of killings started in December 2007, when two Somali men, ages 27 and 25, were found shot to death at a south Minneapolis home. No arrests have been made in that case.
They culminated last September, when a man was fatally shot outside of the Village Market Mall, a cluster of Somali-owned businesses and a popular destination for local Somalis. Investigators believe the shooter was retaliating for the death of his cousin, one of the other slain Somalis. The mall shooting was the only of the seven slayings for which anyone was convicted - 23-year-old Hassan Mohamed Abdillahi.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said he hoped the conviction would show local Somalis that the law is on their side, and spark new progress in closing the other cases. "We have a job to do to convince people they can trust us," he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.
The administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.
The release of the update - usually scheduled for mid-July - has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.
The administration is pressing for votes before then on its $1 trillion health care initiative, which lawmakers are arguing over how to finance.
The White House budget director, Peter Orszag, said on Sunday that the administration believes the "chances are high" of getting a health care bill by then. But new analyses showing runaway costs are jeopardizing Senate passage.
"Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare," Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, said of the delayed budget update. "There are some things that can't be escaped."
By: David A. Patten
On Friday, Democrats moved one step closer to giving free health insurance to the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens when they successfully defeated a Republican-backed amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving government-subsidized health care under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Barack Obama.
The House Ways and Means Committee nixed the Heller amendment by a 26-to-15 vote along straight party lines, and followed this action by passing the 1,018-page bill early Friday morning by a 23-to-18 margin, with three Democrats voting against the plan.
The Democratic plan will embrace Obama’s vision of bringing free government medical care to more than 45 million uninsured people in America – a significant portion of whom are illegal aliens.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, costs under the Obama plan being proposed by the House will saddle citizens with $1.04 trillion in new federal outlays over the next decade.
Congressional Democrats and Obama have argued that their health plan is necessary to contain rising health care costs.
But, last Thursday, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee and warned lawmakers that the proposed “legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs."
A key factor increasing costs is that Democratic plan provides for blanket coverage to as much as 15 percent of the U.S. population not currently insured, including illegals.
Democrats had insisted throughout the health-care reform debate that illegals would be ineligible for the so-called public option plan that is to be subsidized by taxpayers.
"We're not going to cover undocumented aliens, undocumented workers," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters in May. "That's too politically explosive."
Republicans, however, point out that the Democrats, by refusing to accept the Heller amendment, would deny health agencies from conducting simple database checks to verify citizenship. Many states give illegals driver licenses, which will be sufficient to get free health care under the plan.
[snip]
Read it all here:
Our federal government is currently just flinging stuff against the wall, in trillion-dollar chunks, to see what sticks. Congress’s own budget office has said the current “federal budget is on an unsustainable path” and that the Democrats’ health plan does not reduce “long-term health costs facing the government.”
The House Democrats’ plan would have the following consequences:
• Most Americans would end up, over time, with government-run health care.
• The only folks who would be able to stave this off are the wealthy.
• The quality of our health care would diminish.
• Someone other than patients and doctors would make decisions on the treatments and medicines we can have.
• The taxes on the rich, otherwise known as employers, would further damage the economy and potentially drive up unemployment at a time we can least afford it.
If you like those outcomes, then by all means, support the House Democrats’ health care plan.
The shame of it all is that there really is an emerging consensus among the populace that we need reform that reduces costs, improves outcomes and puts patients in control.
Imagine if the president proposed a reform package that made health insurance portable, ended frivolous lawsuits, allowed for pooling, required insurance companies
to cover the sick, paid based on outcomes and not activity, used refundable tax credits to increase affordability and incentivized rather than penalized small businesses to provide coverage. Republicans would support those reforms, and the policy would benefit the entire country. True, it wouldn’t be the radical and exciting restructuring that Pelosi is pushing, but it would begin to move us toward common-sense, bottom-up solutions. Solutions! There’s an idea.
But wait, as the late Billy Mays would say, there’s more. Social Security and Medicare, our two biggest entitlement programs in this country, are perpetually underfunded and are always in danger of going bankrupt. Is it even remotely possible that we as a country are now considering adding an entire new entitlement program to our repertoire?
Would the last sane person in Washington please turn out the lights when you leave?
Bobby Jindal is the Republican governor of Louisiana.
Atlanta - “The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification process shows a shocking disregard for the integrity of our elections. With this decision, DOJ has now barred Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification program that DOJ lawyers helped to craft. DOJ’s decision also nullifies the orders of two federal courts directing Georgia to implement the procedure for the 2008 general election. The decision comes seven months after Georgia requested an expedited review of the preclearance submission.
“DOJ has thrown open the door for activist organizations such as ACORN to register non-citizens to vote in Georgia’s elections, and the state has no ability to verify an applicant’s citizenship status or whether the individual even exists. DOJ completely disregarded Georgia’s obvious and direct interest in preventing non-citizens from voting, instead siding with the ACLU and MALDEF. Clearly, politics took priority over common sense and good public policy.
“This process is critical to protecting the integrity of our elections. We have evidence that non-citizens have voted in past Georgia elections and that more than 2,100 individuals have attempted to register, yet still have questions regarding their citizenship. Further, the Inspector General’s office is investigating more than 30 cases of non-citizens casting ballots in Georgia elections, including the case of a Henry County non-citizen who registered to vote and cast ballots in 2004 and 2006.“It is important to underscore that not a single person has come forward to say he or she could not vote because of the verification process. Further, while DOJ argues that the process is somehow discriminatory, the historic voter turnout among Hispanic and African-American voters in the 2008 general elections clearly says otherwise.
...
Voter Demographic
2004 Total Number of Votes Cast
2008 Total Number of Votes Cast
Percentage Increase in Votes Cast
Hispanic/Latino
18,000
43,000
140%
African-American
834,000
1.2 million
42%
White
2.3 million
2.5 million
8%
Ever bought a book from Barnes and Noble, then turned around to find it missing from your bookshelf and replaced with a voucher? Bizarre though it may seem, that’s exactly what’s happened to hundreds of owners of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm books, with Amazon remotely deleting copies on user’s Kindles and crediting their accounts.
While this might be understandable if the copies were distributed illegally, the cause here appears to be a publisher which decided it simply didn’t want to offer a Kindle edition any more. Amazon’s response, as posted in the forums:
The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store
All of which underscores the fact that “buying” a book in the digital realm isn’t the same as “ownership” in the real world. As David Pogue at the NYTimes explains: “apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.”
Or as one of Pogue’s readers describes it, “it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.”
It takes years of yoga to learn the posture necessary for speaking clearly with all your feet in your mouth. But for some the skill comes naturally, which brings us to Joe Biden. Those who saw Dick Cheney as an evil genius crouched silent in the shadows of the Oval Office like Nosferatu must enjoy Biden's high profile: he's out there daily with the sunny enthusiasm of Ronald McDonald opening another store. And, quite often, telling everyone to have a Whopper.
The "gaffes," as we call unscripted thoughts, come delightfully often with Biden. The latest: Speaking before the AARP, Biden aarped up a peculiar formulation to explain the need to borrow 3.2 bejillion dollars in order to transform the American health care system, preferably by next week. He said people ask him "What are you talking about, you're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes, 'I'm telling you.'"
In Vietnam-era terms: we have to burn the hospital in order to save it. Even if that means losing the burn unit.
In one sense, Biden's logic isn't new; anyone who said we had to partition Iraq to save it is perfectly capable of believing we have to dig a deep hole now to keep from falling into a deeper hole later. But how does this fit with Biden's other summer misstatements? Let's take a quick review.
Iran. Earlier this month George Stephanopoulos asked Biden if the US would stand in the way of Israel decided it was time to take out Iran's nuke program. Said the Veep: "We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do ... if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country."
True. But wrong! The sensible thing is to say: "We are seriously concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions, and strongly support serious efforts to be concerned, in coordination with allies whose serious efforts are concerned with -- hey, is that a mushroom cloud on CNN? Turn the sound up." Everyone knows Iran will give up the bomb, but in their own way: by putting it on a rocket and waving safe journey, Allah-speed. As the saying goes: If you love something, set it free. If the US isn't going to stop them, shouldn't Israel have the right to?
But that's not the official line, so YANK went the collar. Administration officials explained that the Vice President was using secret reverse-talking, and the allies remain committed to a sustained effort to frown and grip the podium while hoping there's no follow-up questions.
Swine Flu. Should we panic? "I would tell members of my family -- and I have -- I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said, adding, "When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft." This statement was so true it was retracted by the end of the day. When the experts -- i.e., cable-news reporters on the medical beat -- start talking about Pig-Pandemic bringing down human civilization, everyone's first reaction is to stay away from planes and trains. But a Leader is supposed to say something calming, like "if you're taking a flight full of feverish travelers back from Cancun, don't lick the tray tables."
The Economy. Also in early July, Biden said "We misread how bad the economy was." This one is a bit different to explain away, since the administration billed itself as having super-genius comprehension of the problem and the necessary solutions. Now, many suspect, President Obama finds himself staring at a portrait of FDR, murmuring "Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope."
What Biden meant to say, in his puckish way, that they misunderstood what an economy is, and how it works. Piling up a mountain of proposed taxes, mandates, regulations, do-nothing programs and pork unseen in such dimensions since Pink Floyd floated a dirigible pig over an outdoor concert might, in fact, prevent recovery.
So do not criticize him; applaud his palaver, and hope for more. Biden's "gaffes" are anything but -- they're simply what the administration is really thinking. Truer words have never been babbled.
Finally, we’re starting to see him sweat.
President Barack Obama made his personal icy cool the trademark of his campaign, the tenor of his White House and the hallmark of an early run of successes at home and abroad. But as the glamour wears off and a long, frustrating summer wears on, he is being forced to improvise -- stooping to respond to political foes and adjusting his tactics and demeanor for the trench warfare of a legislative agenda.
The root of the change is one that faces every president: Economic and international realities that resist political charm. Iran and North Korea have shown no interest in the president’s outstretched hand. The economy has delivered a double-whammy, with rising unemployment stirring voters’ concerns while sluggish growth deprives the government of tax revenues Obama would like to spend on new programs.
Health care reform, which once appeared flush with momentum from earlier congressional victories, is now on a slog through no less than five committees, which include Democrats who either aren’t sold on Obama’s expansive vision or can’t figure out how to convince voters to pay for it.“This is when it gets harder,” the president told supporters June 30.
And so it has.
In turn, Obama has adjusted, deviating from the playbook on every front.
The cool president has turned hot on the stump, stripping to shirtsleeves to lambaste doubters in New Jersey Thursday. He departed from his prepared remarks last week to accept a Republican challenge to take personal ownership of the economy: “That’s fine. Give it to me,” he said.
Even Obama's scripted speeches are deliberately more forceful, aggressive and direct in taking on critics, aides say. Friday remarks at the White House had a trash-talk edge – count me out and you’ll be sorry.
Obama’s political operation has dispensed with its post-inauguration cocktails for Republicans – or more often, ignoring them outright — in favor of the old politics of engage, attack and cajole. Obama’s even engaging in a little Democrat-on-Democrat politics, as his ex-campaign arm is beaming TV ads into the home states of moderate fence-sitters on health care.
The tightly programmed White House also is chomping at the bit, kicking off what officials say will be a relentless three-week push on health care, starting with the hastily scheduled Friday address. But its first event might have backfired a bit. Its main consequence was proving that the magnetism of Obama’s personal appearances has worn off, as it drew little media attention and a dismissive tweet from the key Senate Republican, Iowa: “Waste of time.”
The sum has been a new sense of uncertainty and strain, and a growing murmur among Democrats in Washington nervous about the White House’s tactics, and a rising tide of concern in the states as local Democratic parties eye midterm elections that are traditionally a challenge for a new president.
“That honeymoon period is over, “ said Chris Redfern, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “Now they’re having to push back, and push back hard.”White House officials and allies brush off any notion that this new sense of unease is meaningful. The only true test, they say, will be results. Obama still might win major health care reform legislation this year that could be the most important new government program in decades. He has a fighting chance to pass regulations on greenhouse gases, in the form of a “cap and trade” mechanism, through the Senate. And Obama continues to press hard, if with no clear progress, for a breakthrough in the Middle East.
“It’s the third quarter, he’s down by a point, and he’s got his best player on the bench – what really is going to be important is the fall,” said James Carville, the veteran Democratic observer.
“If he gets what’s perceived to be some kind of a major health care thing, gets the climate bill through, if the economy recovers, then we’ll all say he had a hell of a summer. Conversely, if the thing falls apart, we’ll say that by July the 19th we could tell the thing was going bad.”
Read the rest here:
Obama feels the heat, changes the play - Yahoo! News
Freedom ain't free, baby.SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The biggest importer of small arms in the world isn't a rogue or war-torn nation. It's us, the United States.
According to a report out this month, we are the largest exporter of small arms too, making America the largest small-arms dealer in the world.
The annual Small Arms Survey says the U.S. "continues to drive the global small-arms trade, remaining the largest importer of pistols and revolvers, sporting shotguns and small-caliber ammunition." Indeed, greater demand for small arms in the United States was responsible for 48% of the worldwide increase in imports from 2000 to 2006.
We aren't talking about tanks or missiles here. This isn't about national defense or our military, which by far is the largest in the world, let's not forget. This is about the right to bear arms -- you, me, our neighbors.
The Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, which produces the annual survey says, "Firearms are also important contributors to crime and societal violence. They are used in 40% of homicides worldwide. The prevalence of small-arms misuse, both in conflict and crime, is leading analysts to examine the economic costs of gun violence, in an effort to assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions designed to reduce it."
In other words, small-arms take a tremendous toll on society. Intervention and all-out prevention can mitigate that loss.
To be sure, there are many defenders of people's right to bear arms, most notably the National Rifle Association. The NRA holds itself out as "America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights."
But what happens when bearing arms actually begins to cost society more than the "right" to bear arms? An overarching societal decision needs to be made about what is the country's -- as in we the people's -- best interest? If drugs, crime and healthcare are promulgated by gun use, shouldn't the hard costs of gun ownership be considered?
The more than $4 billion small-arms market has grown 28% over the past decade, with the largest increase in pistol and revolver sales. That means individuals are stocking up.
Some observers says it's because of the recession and the fears that it brings that is putting more guns into the hands of people. When people get scared no matter what the form apparently, they resort to self-defense tactics. The easier form of that is to buy a gun.
Keith Krause, the program director for the Small Arms survey says, "Current data shows that the global trade in small arms and light weapons is robust and even expanding, and that handguns are driving it."
It's interesting that a society such as ours that is domestically conflict free is driving the market for small weapons.
We systematically analyze the costs of war. It's time we analyzed the costs of gun ownership in this country.
Big Dem cash dump on eve of climate voteThree House Democratic leaders who were whipping members on the climate change bill gave tens of thousands in campaign cash to party moderates around the time of the 219-212 vote on June 26, according to Federal Election Commission records.
It's impossible to tell if that torrent of cash was an attempt to schmear wavering Democrats -- or just part of the usual cash dump made by leaders on the eve of the June 30 quarterly fundraising deadline.
Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) doled out $28,000 to reps who eventually voted yes on June 24, two days before the big vote -- on a day when House leaders were doing some heavy-duty arm-twisting.
Clyburn recipients who voted for the bill included a who's-who of battleground district Dems: Steve Driehaus, D-OH ($2,000); Martin Heinrich, D-NM ($2,000); Suzanne Kosmas, D-Fla. ($4,000); Betsy Markey, D-Colo. ($2,000); Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH ($2,000), Baron Hill, D-Ind. ($2,000); Alan Grayson, D-Fla. ($2,000); Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa ($2,000); Jim Himes, D-Conn. ($2,000); Mary Jo Kilroy, D-OH ($2,000); Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. ($2,000); Jerry McNerney, D-Calif. ($2,000) and Tom Perriello, D-Va. ($2,000).
On the other hand, Clyburn also gave at least $14,000 to Democrats who voted no despite his pressure: Mike Arcuri, D-NY ($2,000); Marion Berry, D-Ark. ($2,000); Bobby Bright, D-Ala. ($2,000); Chris Carney, D-Penn. ($2,000); Chet Edwards (D-Tx.), Travis Childers , D-Miss. ($2,000); Parker Griffith, D-Ala. ($2,000) and Harry Mitchell, D-NM ($2,000).
The same pattern held true for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who gave $4,000 to yes-voting Ohio Democrat Zack Space and the same amount to no-voting Chris Carney.
House Energy and Commerce Henry Waxman gave at least $16,000 to yes-voters on June, 25, FEC records show.
A Waxman campaign spokesman said the payouts were part of the usual "end-of-quarter activity."
Ken Spain, communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee emails this response:
“If this was a concerted effort by the Democratic leadership to purchase votes for Nancy Pelosi’s national energy tax at the eleventh hour, then it is unconscionable at best and corrupt at worst. The sad fact for those Democrats who were seemingly bought and paid for, is that it will take a lot more money than they received to defend such an atrocious vote.”
Other than declaring war, neither house of Congress has a more solemn responsibility than the Senate’s role in confirming justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. As the Senate considers the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Americans have been watching to see whether this nominee—if confirmed—would respect the Second Amendment or side with those who have declared war on the rights of America’s 80 million gun owners.Go Lugar!
From the outset, the National Rifle Association has respected the confirmation process and hoped for mainstream answers to bedrock questions. Unfortunately, Judge Sotomayor’s judicial record and testimony clearly demonstrate a hostile view of the Second Amendment and the fundamental right of self-defense guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
It is only by ignoring history that any judge can say that the Second Amendment is not a fundamental right and does not apply to the states. The one part of the Bill of Rights that Congress clearly intended to apply to all Americans in passing the Fourteenth Amendment was the Second Amendment. History and congressional debate are clear on this point.
Yet Judge Sotomayor seems to believe that the Second Amendment is limited only to the residents of federal enclaves such as Washington, D.C., and does not protect all Americans living in every corner of this nation. In her Maloney opinion and during the confirmation hearings, she deliberately misread Supreme Court precedent to support her incorrect view.
In last year’s historic Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual’s right to own firearms and recognizes the inherent right of self-defense. In addition, the Court required lower courts to apply the 20th-century cases it has used to incorporate a majority of the Bill of Rights to the states. Yet in her Maloney opinion, Judge Sotomayor dismissed that requirement, mistakenly relying instead on 19th-century jurisprudence to hold that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states.
This nation was founded on a set of fundamental freedoms. Our Constitution does not give us those freedoms—it guarantees and protects them. The right to defend ourselves and our loved ones is one of those. The individual right to keep and bear arms is another. These truths are what define us as Americans. Yet Judge Sotomayor takes an opposite view, contrary to the views of our Founding Fathers, the Supreme Court and the vast majority of the American people.
We believe any individual who does not agree that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right and who does not respect our God-given right of self-defense should not serve on any court, much less the highest court in the land. Therefore, the National Rifle Association of America opposes the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the position of associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Reactions to Sarah Palin’s decision to resign the governorship of Alaska have been a reminder of her unmatched ability to elicit strong emotions from friend and foe alike. We know some of the reasons why. It’s her evangelical Christianity and her folksy manner. It’s her small-town roots and her “new feminism.”
But there is something more. A year ago, Palin gave birth to her youngest son, Trig, who has Down syndrome. Since then, mother and son have become objects of the left’s unrelenting scorn and the right’s unflinching fidelity.
An underexamined reason why Palin is loved and loathed so fiercely is her intimate association with two of our most divisive issues: disability and the right to life.
In her resignation statement, Palin suggested her decision was due in part to her family’s reaction to personal attacks against Trig. Those comments stoked the rage of the Palin-haters. At Talking Points Memo, an article sarcastically suggested that Palin resigned because “she wants to spread Down syndrome ... because Down syndrome is just too cute to be reserved for one in 800 births.”
A Paliban Daily article titled “Sarah Palin’s Retarded Platform: More Trigs!” interpreted Palin’s outspokenness on disability rights as a political ploy to win votes. Other articles contained subtle but unmistakable eugenic overtones.
Those reactions echoed the hateful response that met Palin when she introduced Trig on the campaign trail last fall. Nicholas Provenzo of the libertarian Center for the Advancement of Capitalism discussed being “troubled” by Trig’s existence because “it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome.”
Sadly, such hatred reflects a broader societal bias against disability. Polls suggest public support for abortion is highest when the child is likely to have a deformity or a genetic condition.
...
To many of the 400,000-plus Americans with Down syndrome and their families, Palin’s emergence marked the first time they felt their existence was embraced.
Palin is controversial, in part, because America is divided over disability. We’ve established laws and institutions that protect people with disabilities. But we also do everything we can to make sure they don’t see the light of day.
Trig is a reminder of our fierce ambivalence over disability. Every mention of his name is a pinprick to our conscience. Every photo of mother and son is a reminder of concepts — vulnerability, dependency and suffering — our culture no longer tolerates, as well as virtues, such as humility, dignity and self-sacrifice, it no longer extols.
Trig is also a reminder of an inescapable truth: Disability is an inherent part of the human condition. At a time of deep cultural divisions, 1-year-old Trig Palin represents the deepest division of all, between a culture that increasingly sees genetic perfection as an entitlement and a culture still rooted in the belief that human beings are defined not by their capabilities but, instead, by the very fact of their humanity.
WASHINGTON, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today announced their six appointments to the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, established by Congress to examine the domestic and global causes of the financial crisis.
"The American people deserve nothing less than a full explanation of why so many people lost their homes, their life's savings, and their hard-earned pensions," said Pelosi. "To avoid a financial crisis of this magnitude in the future, the commission will conduct a thorough, systematic, and non-partisan examination of the failures in both government and financial markets. The men and women we are appointing today bring great experience and credibility to the work of the Commission."
...
Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid appointed former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides as chairman of the Commission. The statute requires the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader to jointly appoint a commission chair. Mr. Angelides, one of Speaker Pelosi's three appointments to the commission, served with distinction as the elected California State Treasurer from 1999 to 2007. He has earned national recognition as an effective public and private sector leader with broad expertise and accomplishments in the fields of investor protection, housing, finance, and corporate and financial market reform.
Breaking: TVNewser has learned CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen's contract will not be renewed and she will be leaving the network.Roesgen, you'll recall, was criticized for her coverage at the tax day tea parties in April, when she said the event she was covering in Chicago was, "anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing, conservative network Fox."
Roesgen took a break for a few weeks after that reporting and returned to the air in May covering the Drew Peterson arrest. Most recently, she covered Michael Jackson's death from Los Angeles. Roesgen joined CNN in 2005.
When TVNewser asked whether Roesgen's comments at the Chicago tea party rally had anything to do with her not being renewed, a CNN spokesperson said, "I can't comment on personnel matters."
Up till now, this has been a notably cheerful year for admirers of Ernest Hemingway – a surprisingly diverse set of people who range from Michael Palin to Elmore Leonard. Almost every month has brought good news: a planned Hemingway biopic; a new, improved version of his memoir, A Moveable Feast; the opening of a digital archive of papers found in his Cuban home; progress on a movie of Islands in the Stream.
Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB's list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.
Its section on the author's secret life as a "dilettante spy" draws on his KGB file in saying he was recruited in 1941 before making a trip to China, given the cover name "Argo", and "repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us" when he met Soviet agents in Havana and London in the 40s. However, he failed to "give us any political information" and was never "verified in practical work", so contacts with Argo had ceased by the end of the decade. Was he only ever a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material, or a genuine but hopelessly ineffective one?
The latter reading would chime with his attempts to assist the U.S. during the second world war in his fishing boat El Pilar, patrolling waters north of Cuba in search of U-Boats, making coded notes but only one sighting.
Revelations made in recent years have not been kind to some of the writers and artists who made their reputations in the Spanish civil war. George Orwell's list of public figures who were crypto-communists, prepared for a Foreign Office propaganda arm in 1949, sullied his saintly image when it was published six years ago. Research in Soviet archives led Antony Beevor to call Andre Malraux a "mythomaniac". Robert Capa has been accused of faking the best-known photo of that conflict. The virulent hatred of Arabs of Martha Gellhorn -- Hemingway's third wife, who covered the civil war with him -- has been exposed. And now it's the turn of Hemingway himself, the biggest name of all, to lose some of his luster.
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