Politics Plus

I’m pleased to report progress against two of the GOP most hateful initiatives, Arizona profiling and Texas textbook distortion.

Justice Department officials told Arizona’s attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state’s new immigration law. They responded that a lawsuit against the state isn’t the answer.

"I told them we need solutions from Washington, not more lawsuits," said Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat.

The Justice Department initiated separate meetings by phone and face-to-face in Phoenix with Goddard and aides to Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to reach out to Arizona’s leaders and elicit information from state officials regarding the Obama administration’s concerns about the new law.

The strong message that the Justice Department representatives delivered at the private meetings – first with Goddard, then with Brewer’s staff – left little doubt that the Obama administration is prepared to go to court if necessary in a bid to block the new law, which takes effect July 29.

Goddard said he noted that five privately filed lawsuits already are pending in federal court to challenge the law.

"Every possible argument is being briefed," said Goddard, who is running unopposed for his party’s nomination for the governor’s race.

Brewer, who is seeking re-election, later said in a statement that her legal team told the Justice Department officials that the law would be "vigorously defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

In Terry Goddard’s defense, as attorney general, his job is to defend Arizona’s statutes, whether or not he personally agrees with it.  I do not have the slightest doubt that this bill is a direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equality under the law to all citizens, not the GOP vision of white-only rights.  However, given the record of the current Extreme Court, that ideology takes precedent over the Constitution, I fear they may well ratify this abomination.

The California Senate on Friday approved legislation that sends a clear message to Texas and textbook publishers: don’t mess with our kids’ minds.

"My bill begins the process of ensuring that California students will not end up being taught with Texas standards," State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), who authored and sponsored the legislation, said in an interview. Texas standards had better not "creep into our textbooks," he said.

The S.B. 1451 measure – approved on a bipartisan vote of 25-5 – requires California’s Board of Education to examine and report any discrepancies between the new Texas standards and California’s standards. "At that point," Yee told Raw Story, "we will make it very, very clear that we won’t accept textbooks that minimize the contributions of minorities and propagate the close connection between church and state."

California, also a critical client for textbook companies, can counteract Texas’s influence on how books are written for schools across the country. "It’s a warning to the textbooks writers and companies," said Yee, who served on the San Francisco Board of Education earlier in his career and is currently the second highest ranking Democrat in California’s upper house.

The Texas modifications – approved last Friday – include elevating the significance of Christianity in the nation’s founding, minimizing the importance of Thomas Jefferson and his framework for separation of church and state, emphasizing "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s," diminishing the scope of Latino history, and redefining slavery in more pleasant terms.

Yee called the changes "pretty disturbing," accusing the Texas board of seeking to "wipe away history" and "rewrite history." School curriculum, especially social studies and history, he said, should be "devoid of politics."

America "came into existence because the founding fathers wanted to flee the tyranny of the church over a government," added Yee, who immigrated from China at age three. "That part of the pride and joy of living here – that you’re not dictated by religion."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Raw Story>

California neutralizing Texas foils the GOP plan to dominate our entire nation’s textbooks to indoctrinate our children in racism and theocracy.  While I welcome this protection for sane areas of the country, it saddens me that we shall be a nation divided by educational standards: History for some students, Teabuggery for others.

I’m sad to inform you, if you did not know, that BP has abandoned Top Kill in failure, but not before they staged a Potemkin Village for disingenuous PR.

The most ambitious bid yet to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history ended in failure Saturday after BP was unable to overwhelm the gusher of crude with heavy fluids and junk. President Obama called the setback "as enraging as it is heartbreaking."

The oil giant immediately began readying its next attempted fix, using robot submarines to cut the pipe that’s gushing the oil into the Gulf of Mexico and cap it with funnel-like device, but the only guaranteed solution remains more than two months away.

The company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater. It’s the latest in a series of failures to stop the crude that’s fouling marshland and beaches, as estimates of how much oil is leaking grow more dire.

The spill is the worst in U.S. history — exceeding even the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — and has dumped between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

"This scares everybody, the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far," BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Saturday. "Many of the things we’re trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet."

Frustration has grown as drifting oil closes beaches and washes up in sensitive marshland. The damage is underscored by images of pelicans and their eggs coated in oil. Below the surface, oyster beds and shrimp nurseries face certain death. Fishermen complain there’s no end in sight to the catastrophe that’s keeping their boats idle.

News that the top kill fell short drew a sharply worded response from President Barack Obama, a day after he visited the Gulf Coast to see the damage firsthand.

"It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole," Obama said Saturday… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <AP/Google>

When Obama was visiting, he toured several sites where workers were striving to protect the shoreline and save wildlife, but BP did not tell him the rest of the story.

Increased national attention was on the Gulf Coast yesterday when President Obama made a visit to assess the oil spill response effort. An official in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, is reporting that BP “bused 400 cleanup workers into Grand Isle” — at a rate of $12 an hour — to be there when Obama arrived. From New Orleans NBC affiliate WDSU:

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts didn’t buy into the cleanup effort.

“They must think we’re all fools,” he said.

Roberts called BP’s efforts “shameful.” […]

Roberts said that since oil started coming ashore in Grand Isle last week, no more than a dozen workers hired by BP have been seen on the beaches in the area, until Friday when the president arrived.

Yahoo News adds that Roberts said the “overnight contingent of workers was there mainly to furnish a Potemkin-style backdrop for the event — while also making it appear that BP was firmly in command of spill cleanup efforts.”… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

If only BP was as informed on how to stop the GOP Gulf Gusher as they are at putting on a show.  Their criminal acts demand prosecution.

Corporations are NOT people!  Money is NOT speech!

US use of drones is getting some unwanted attention on the world stage.

In January, the New York Times reported that only 9 percent of Pakistanis approved of U.S. drone strikes in their territory, with a majority of Pakistanis viewing the U.S. as a greater threat to their nation than India or the Pakistani Taliban. And little wonder. Pakistani authorities estimate that some 140 innocent civilians die for every Al Qaeda or Taliban militant killed in a drone strike. Even a much more conservative estimate, from the New America Foundation, found that since 2004, some 32% of those killed in Pakistan by drone strikes were civilians.

The New York Times yesterday reported:

A senior United Nations official is expected to call on the United States next week to stop Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, complicating the Obama administration’s growing reliance on that tactic in Pakistan.

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday that he would deliver a report on June 3 to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva declaring that the "life and death power" of drones should be entrusted to regular armed forces, not intelligence agencies. He contrasted how the military and the C.I.A. responded to allegations that strikes had killed civilians by mistake.

"With the Defense Department you’ve got maybe not perfect but quite abundant accountability as demonstrated by what happens when a bombing goes wrong in Afghanistan," he said in an interview. "The whole process that follows is very open. Whereas if the C.I.A. is doing it, by definition they are not going to answer questions, not provide any information, and not do any follow-up that we know about."

Alston’s call is not legally binding, and he will not make any claims of war crimes. But the Times points out that the same legal rationale used to exonerate those responsible for the drone strikes could just as easily exonerate the "detainees" now held by the U.S. at Guantanamo. But that’s about nuances of the law. What is more important is that innocent civilians are being killed by a clumsy weapon, in a nation with which we are not even at war… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

If we are to be using drones at all, I agree that they should be under military, not CIA control.  But I question using them at all, except in rare circumstances in which civilian casualties are not a risk.  Neither casualty estimate is trustworthy.  I’m sure Pakistani authorities  have exaggerated and the CIA has intentionally underestimated.  But I wonder if we are not responsible for recruiting more terrorists than we are killing through this strategy.

Of course this begs the larger question, and I like John Conyer’s answer.

As of 10:06 a.m., Sunday, May 30th, the United States will have spent $1 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As we approach this milestone, Americans of all political stripes should take a moment to consider what war spending on this scale means, not just in dollars spent, but in terms of opportunities lost to strengthen, invest in, and improve our country. While each of us intrinsically knows that wars have consequences, we are rarely presented with such a stark example of how the choice to pursue war at the expense of priorities at home impacts each of us.

What could we have purchased with this $1 trillion? Today, we might be enjoying the fruits of a green economy, spurred by New Deal-like investments in wind and solar. Perhaps we would have created a single-payer health care system and used this $1 trillion to provide health security to every man, woman, and child in the United States for an entire year. Or, we might have made the smart investments in our domestic law enforcement capabilities and homeland security apparatus to provide true protection from Al Qaeda and others who would wish us harm. Sadly, we’ll never know, because our political leadership never explored alternative means of achieving peace, such as emphasizing rigorous regional diplomacy, and instead overextended our military forces abroad.

If sacrificing progress at home wasn’t bad enough, it is now clear that the injection of our troops into a 35 year civil war is actually fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan and further destabilizing the region. A GAO report released last month spoke to the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, noting:

"total attacks against coalition forces between September 2009 and March 2010 increased by about 83 percent in comparison to the same period last year, while attacks against civilians rose by about 72 percent."

As we gather to honor our brave men and women in uniform at at parades, picnics, and other events this weekend, Americans have much to consider. We can ignore the facts on the ground, hope for the best, and resign ourselves to the fact that our country is embroiled in two unaffordable wars that aren’t making us safer.

Or, we can stand up and speak out. We can let our family members, friends, and neighbors know about the human and fiscal costs of these wars. We can demand that the United States honor its commitment to leave Iraq by December 31, 2011, encourage Members of Congress to join the Out of Afghanistan Caucus, and organize against the $33 billion pending in Congress to fund the escalation, because $1 trillion is more than enough to spend on war… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

When we first deployed in Afghanistan, we had a clear purpose and good reason to do so.  But instead of going after Osama and Al Qaeda, Bush and the GOP opted for conquest in a failed attempt to wrest control of the natural gas output of the Caucuses region from Russia by way of a pipeline intended to run through Afghanistan.  To that end, Bush and the GOP installed a corrupt puppet, Hamid Karzai, an employee of Unocal, an Oil and Gas company since acquired by Chevron.  Bush and the GOP have so mismanaged the war as to make it a quicksand trap that will only suck in lives and resources until we get out.