Time To Ask Time To Tell

This mornings Conservative Republican San Diego Union-Tribune has a compelling and provocative Page One story about a local San Diego Navy Veteran and SDSU student who has moved front and center in the debate on Gays in the Military.

James Rocha age 23 has become a poster boy for repeal of Don"t Ask, Don"t Tell. A position he seemed reluctant to embrace, a reluctant warrior perhaps (for a cause) which he now fights partly in memory of a former commanding officer.

The questions and debate has been covered fairly by the hometown paper which serves the Metro area with the largest Military presence in the Nation. (Both Active and Retired).

You can sense here a shift in attitudes as people confront the deeply prejudicial and bigoted reasons the original policy was put in place.

As the young man at the center of this controversy asks?

“Where was the honor in living like a criminal, in silence?”

Indeed the better question might be, Why do we support a national law of shame which was signed with the premise,,"Homosexuality is immoral,wrong and illegal"

If the last statement gives you pause may I remind you in 1993 the move to enact "Don't Ask Don't Tell was led by then Senate Majority Leader Sam Nunn a Democrat from Georgia a State where it was in fact ILLEGAL to engage in Homosexual conduct between consenting adults!

Don't Ask, Don't Tell belongs to a different era!

The era of a Segregated US Military. It is an Anachronism which destroys the credibilty of our Armed Forces, demonizes and denigrates a segment of our Citizenry for no just cause and sends a message to American Citizens.

Some Citizens are less Equal than Others. After 233 years isn't it about time we live up to the Ideals in the Declaration of Independence? Judge a citizen for military service based upon his ability and fitness for the job and not their color,sex,or sexual orientation!

Navy veteran combats ‘don't ask, don't tell’

The rejuvenated debate over the military's policy on gay service members has focused attention on a 23-year-old Navy veteran in San Diego who says he suffered prolonged sexually oriented hazing while serving as a dog handler in Bahrain.

A Navy investigation completed in 2007 and released last month confirmed nearly 100 instances of abuse in the 19-member dog-handling detachment between 2004 and 2006.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead is expected to respond to the report any day.

Some of the abuse targeted Joseph Rocha, now a junior at the University of San Diego majoring in political science.

Rocha has become a spokesman for the drive to lift the “don't ask, don't tell” policy and hopes to someday return to a military free of discrimination.

“You're going to need strong, powerful gay officers to help with the transition,” he said.

Rocha said that he never told anyone of his sexual orientation, but that he endured degrading sexual teasing by members of his unit — including the detachment commander, who assumed that he was gay.

Rocha later left the Navy after acknowledging his orientation to his commander.

“Bahrain is behind me. My cause is not what happened there, but in changing ‘don't ask, don't tell,’?” Rocha said last week. “This is not an attack of mine against the Navy or the military itself, but against the policy.”

In recent weeks, his story has been featured in the national news media. He has spoken at rallies and attended the dinner earlier this month in Washington at which President Barack Obama pledged to allow gay and lesbian troops to serve openly.

It's an unlikely place for someone who grew up in Riverside County in what he described as an abusive household. But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, during his sophomore year of high school, fired up his patriotic drive. He enlisted in the Navy after failing to get an appointment to the Naval Academy.

Rocha knew he was gay, but that seemed less important at the time than fighting America's enemies.

“My understanding was if I didn't act on it, if I didn't tell anyone, then it was OK,” he said.

Rocha landed a military police job in Bahrain, the hub of U.S. naval operations in the Persian Gulf. He worked with dogs specially trained to sniff out bombs.

The investigation later documented that dog handlers were pelted in the groin with rubber balls, hog-tied and forced to eat liver dog snacks, made to stand at attention until a dog barked and walk around with chew toys in their mouths, or duct-taped to chairs and locked in kennels.

Some of the conduct took on sexual overtones. Prostitutes were hired for the unit's parties. One dog handler tried to climb in the shower with another. A sailor was forced to lean over a cabinet and spanked by the other handlers. Sailors told racist and homophobic jokes, according to the investigation report.

The report said a detachment leader concocted sexually degrading “training scenarios” involving the working dogs. In one such case, Rocha said, he was forced to pretend to engage in a sex act with another male sailor, once for each of the unit's 32 dogs. Female sailors similarly were forced to play-act as lesbians, the report said.

“I appreciate tough training. I appreciate a rite of passage,” Rocha said. “There was nothing educational about what they were doing to me. There was nothing dignified.”

He said he kept silent because complaining might have forced him to reveal his sexual orientation. A complaint by a new dog handler in late 2006 prompted the investigation.

Rocha's best friend, Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia, was the detachment's second-in-command during the abuse and later was its commander. A former Sailor of the Year, she had planned to leave the Navy and move back to the United States in early 2007.

But as the investigation concluded, Valdivia was ordered to stay in Bahrain and face disciplinary action for failing to stop the abuse. She gassed herself inside an outbuilding near her villa Jan. 12, 2007. On her MySpace page, Rocha said, Valdivia wrote that she was tired of taking the blame for other people's mistakes.

“I saw her two days before she killed herself,” Rocha said. “She gave me a long, awkward hug, which I realize now was her way of saying goodbye.”

Rocha suffered nightmares after his friend's death, but he proceeded with plans to attend Naval Academy prep school. After a few weeks there, though, he wrote to his commander that he was gay and was honorably discharged.

“Where was the honor in living like a criminal, in silence?” Rocha said.

For the next two years, Rocha attended community college and interned for Democratic politicians, including Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego. Although he had lobbied for gay-rights causes, Rocha said he never intended to go public with his story of abuse. Then, during a protest May 26 in San Francisco against the California Supreme Court's decision to uphold an initiative barring same-sex marriage, he met a reporter for the Bay Area investigative reporting group Youth Radio. A few weeks later she reported the abuse, with supporting documents, on the group's Web site.

Other media picked it up, just as gay-rights activists began a new push to force the repeal of “don't ask, don't tell.” Suddenly, Rocha is a national figure.

“It's been hard,” he said. “But I feel the imperative of doing this now.”

Source San Diego Union Tribune

An older Veteran 86 years old asks a different question.

Where is the compassion and the Equality? Speaking on the subject of Gay Marriage this past April.

Did Conahan Sabatoge Judge Olszewski?

'Party' politics: Judge blames clash for photo's release

By Dave Janoski (Projects Editor)
Published: September 25, 2009

Special to Times-Shamrock Newspapers Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., left, is all smiles during a party in June 2005 with Forty Fort attorney John H. Kennedy, convicted drug dealer Ronald Belletiere, then-county Judge Michael T. Conahan at a condominium in Florida. Olszewski, who is pursuing a second, 10-year term believes the photo was submitted to damage his retention campaign.

Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said a photo of him partying with a convicted drug dealer and former judge/accused racketeer Michael T. Conahan was leaked to media outlets Thursday to damage his retention campaign.

Olszewski said he was unaware of either man's alleged criminal activities when the photo was taken in 2005.

"It's obviously being done to embarrass me before the election," Olszewski said of the photo, which shows him, Conahan, the convicted dealer and a Luzerne County attorney holding drinks and liquor bottles in a Florida condominium that Conahan allegedly used to launder kickbacks in the kids-for-cash case.

In a tense, hour-long interview with The Citizens' Voice editors and reporters Thursday, Olszewski said he believes the June 2005 photo was mailed anonymously to the media by Conahan and/or his codefendant, former county Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. to hurt his bid for a second 10-year term in November.

"If you publish this, you're doing Mark's bidding," Olszewski said. "You're doing what the most corrupt judges in the world want you to do."

Olszewski said he clashed with Ciavarella during Ciavarella's last months as president judge, before Ciavarella and Conahan were charged in the kids-for-cash scandal in January. Olszewski said he disagreed with a lawsuit Ciavarella filed against the county commissioners to stall proposed cuts in court staffing and other administrative decisions made by Ciavarella.

Olszewski said shortly after Ciavarella's arrest in January, Ciavarella left him a "rambling," angry voice mail message "castigating" him for comments he made to the media about Ciavarella's tenure as president judge.

Olszewski said three people have told him Ciavarella is still "seething" over the criticism.

Through his attorney, Al Flora Jr., Ciavarella said the accusation that he was the source of the photo was "absolutely not true." Conahan declined comment through his attorney.

The two former judges face racketeering, bribery, money laundering and other charges for allegedly accepting $2.8 million in kickbacks in 2003-2006 for helping two for-profit juvenile detention centers secure county contracts. Some of the money was deposited with a company controlled by the judges that owns the condo and falsely recorded as rental payments, federal prosecutors say.

Olszewski said he was unaware of the judges' alleged kickbacks scheme in 2005 when he was a guest at the condo for a golfing trip that lasted several days. He said he was also unaware that a visitor to the condo, Ronald Belletiere, was a convicted drug dealer, although Conahan told him near the end of the trip that Belletiere had been rehabilitated following a sentence for "minor" drug charges.

"If I thought Judge Conahan, who was president judge, was committing a crime, not in a billion years would I have been anywhere near him," Olszewski said. Olszewski said he was aware of allegations made in the 1990s that Conahan had ties to drug dealers, but a state Judicial Conduct Board investigation never yielded any action against the judge.

Conahan's name surfaced during Belletiere's 1991 federal trial in the "Empire" drug case involving cocaine trafficking in Hazleton in the 1980s, when Conahan was a magisterial district judge in the city. A government witness in U.S. District Court in Scranton alleged Conahan had put him in touch with Belletiere as a source for cocaine.

Conahan was never charged in the case, but during a "sidebar" conversation between lawyers and the presiding judge out of the jury's earshot, a prosecutor called Conahan an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the case, according to a transcript.

Belletiere and two other figures in the Empire case gave information about an unnamed "public official" to the state Judicial Conduct Board, attorneys in the case said in 1994, just months after Conahan's election to the Luzerne County bench.

In August 1994, Conahan held a press conference to deny he had referred anyone to Belletiere to buy drugs, but acknowledged knowing Belletiere. The conduct board has never confirmed that it investigated Conahan over the allegations.

Belletiere, who was released from prison in 1995, could not be reached for comment Thursday,

Olszewski said it was only in July 2008, when The Citizens' Voice reported that Conahan's wife, Barbara, owned an interest in a South Florida used-car business that Belletiere operated in 2004-2007, that he made the connection between Belletiere and allegations against Conahan in the Empire drug case. Olszewski said that by then, the federal investigation into Ciavarella and Conahan was public knowledge and he did not confront Conahan.

"I wanted to in the worst way, but what would be the point? Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor," Olszewski said.

Olszewski's account of the Florida trip was corroborated by John H. Kennedy, a Forty Fort attorney who was also on the trip.

Kennedy, Olszewski and their dates flew with Conahan and his wife to Florida aboard a private jet owned by Hazleton businessman Joseph Gans. Conahan had purchased miles on the jet as a present to his wife, Kennedy said. Efforts to reach Gans were unsuccessful Thursday.

Olszewski said he paid Conahan $400 for his own flight. Kennedy and the two women who accompanied them did not pay, according to Kennedy and Olszewski, who was estranged from his first wife at the time.

Kennedy said the 2005 visit to the condo, his first and last, was offered to him by Conahan after he supplied free legal representation to the county's court stenographers during a salary dispute with the county controller's office.

Kennedy said he was unaware of Conahan's and Belletiere's alleged ties to the Empire drug case.

"I did not connect the dots. I was not aware of the accusation of ties between him and Conahan," Kennedy said.

Olszewski, a former Luzerne County district attorney and the son of a former state Superior Court judge, said Conahan did a "terrible thing" by placing him in the company of a drug felon.

"The only relation I ever had with drug dealers was to prosecute them and as a judge to sentence them after they've been found guilty by a jury," Olszewski said.

"I had a father who was the most honest judge in the world. I thought all judges were like that. I was wrong."

Michael R. Sisak, staff writer, contributed to this report.

Source Standard Speaker.com

The Unapologetic Liberal Lion

Proudly so and without apology Sen.Ted Kennedy was a controversial yet highly respected politician.

A true passing of a political giant and his impact will be measured much greater than either of his slain brothers. Sometimes in US Politics serving as a US Senator you can be much more effective than a US President. Ted Kennedy wielded out sized influence and political power, in the Congress and as head of the Kennedy Dynasty.


Kennedy was at the center of the most important issues facing the nation for decades, and he did much to help shape them. A defender of the poor and politically disadvantaged, he set the standard for his party on health care, education, civil rights, campaign-finance reform and labor law

Joe Holley writes in The Washington Post on Ted Kennedy's political importance

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

New York Times journalist John M Broder describes the Kennedy effect.

Seared in my memory: When I interned at the Heritage Foundation, I would pop into Mass at Saint Joseph's on the Hill. And I would almost always find myself sitting near Ted Kennedy. He's responsible for things that are deeply offensive to my conscience and diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic faith, and he probably led some people astray by his example. But our faith also teaches that we are all sinners and that there is redemption. He had some incredibly good forces in his life, not least among them his sister, Eunice, who just died. I pray for the repose of his soul. R.I.P. Senator Kennedy.

Kathryn Lean Lopez blogs her tribute at the National Review.

Elected first in 1962, the 77-year-old Massachusetts liberal was rooted in the civil rights and Great Society battles of that decade, but his enduring strength was an ability to renew himself through his mastery of issues and the changing personalities of the Senate. Nowhere was this clearer than in Kennedy's early support of Barack Obama in 2008, when the young Illinois Democrat needed to establish himself against more veteran rivals for the White House. Kennedy not only campaigned for Obama but, at risk to his own health, opened the Democratic National Convention a year ago in Denver and returned to Washington repeatedly last winter to cast needed votes to move the new president's economic recovery agenda.

David Rogers in Politico highlights the veteran senator's lasting political importance.

In many ways, he was the last man standing, straddling a mythic family mantle of fame and a vaunted career of political service, all the while wearing the crown of Camelot decades after its heyday...the senator's death brought to a close a storied political era - of assassinations, Jackie O, Palm Beach, Chappaquiddick - and a lifetime of both tragedy and public service.

Andrea Billup writes in the The Washington Times that 'Camelot' fades with Kennedy passing

In losing Kennedy, Obama loses a key Senate dealmaker at a crucial moment in legislative negotiations over the health care bill. Though an icon of Democratic liberalism, Kennedy was known to colleagues as a jovial pragmatist, whose many friendships with colleagues across the political and ideological spectrum made him one of the Senate's most influential players.
Kathy Kiely in USA Today examines the impact of Ted Kennedy's death on healthcare reform.

"When Does the Greed Stop?"" Not just a rhetorical question but prescient coming from Kennedy in 2007 after the GOP controlled Senate had just passed 240 billion dollars in corporate welfare while throttling a vote to increase the minimum wage for the first time in ten years.

How does the Secret Service Protect and..

Distinguish who the crazy potential threats to a President might be when they are Congressmen or until last year one of the LOONS was in the White House!

Read both and Weep for a nation gone mad...

Georgia Republican Worries Dems Will Declare Martial Law

Posted on Aug 13, 2009

house.gov

Rep. Paul Broun, who once compared Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, now thinks the president is part of a radical “socialistic elite” that may try to declare martial law. Broun’s comments came during what an area newspaper described as a “relatively peaceful” town hall.

That’s right, while members of Congress around the country have to deal with screaming crazies at their town hall meetings, in one frightening district of Georgia the member of Congress is one of the screaming crazies.

The Raw Story has a comprehensive look at Broun’s comments, including a classic non-apology. —PS

Athens Banner-Herald:

At another point, Broun, who last year made national news by comparing Obama to Hitler, called Cuba’s former dictator Fidel Castro and leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Obama’s “good buddy.”

He also spoke of a “socialistic elite” - Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.

“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” he said. “We’ve seen that historically.”

Calling Gog and Magog...

The first part of William Plaffs article is disgusting enough then it makes a surreal turn into the truly Terrifying! Seems the French President was at a loss at how to deal with the FREAKING LOON in the White House who was telling him France Had to go to war with America against Iraq.

Cause the RAPTURE was coming! Fucking Elmer Gantry!

Bush’s Pioneering Sadists: A Tale From the ‘War on Terror’ Dark Side Posted on Aug 13, 2009

By William Pfaff

PARIS—Little mainstream comment seems to have appeared on the latest revelations of incompetence and sadistic fantasy that have been published this week about the ways in which the American nation lost its honor and international reputation because of the Bush administration’s infatuation with torture.

Or with, as Vice President Dick Cheney has put it, “the dark side”: its eight-year excursion into what commonly is understood to be criminal international behavior, which the former vice president continues to defend with relish and conviction.

The revelations concern the two men who reportedly created the torture techniques that the CIA and U.S. military have been using on prisoners since early in the “war on terror.”

According to The New York Times (in a story by Scott Shane), the two had for years been involved with an Air Force survival course that was supposedly based on Chinese Communist “brainwashing” techniques used in the Korean War.

The program, housed at an Air Force base outside Spokane, Wash, involved midlevel abuse (and sometimes more; one of the two, Bruce Jessen, allegedly had to be stopped in a mock interrogation that colleagues thought had become “pretty scary”). This was to prepare the airmen for what they might meet if captured by an enemy.

Most anyone who has been in military service since the Korean War has been given a taste of this, but it was an Air Force specialty.

Jessen was a farm boy who earned a psychology doctorate at Utah State in what was known as “family sculpting,” in which clients made physical models of their family to deal with emotional relationships.

The other of the two successive head psychologists at the course was Jim Mitchell, a poor boy from Florida who joined the Air Force in 1974 for adventure, became an explosives expert and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. Later, he received a doctorate at the University of South Florida; his dissertation compared diet and exercise plans in controlling hypertension.

When 2001 came, the two friends saw their opportunity, convincing the government that they were experts on torture. Neither knew much, if anything, about al-Qaida, the intelligence world, Islam, foreign languages or foreign countries.

They simply reversed what they had been teaching, and taught the torture rather than the resistance. According to the Times, they then “made millions selling interrogation and training services to the CIA.”

Now there is an aspect to this which so far as I know has never been mentioned in connection with the U.S. torture program.

“Brainwashing” is a myth. The Defense Department official conclusion after the Korean War was that “no confirmed cases of brainwashing came out of the Korean war.” The DoD said that Chinese Communist treatment of prisoners was not unusual. The academic community eventually concluded that the concept of brainwashing was “not considered useful in Social Science.”

The whole thing came from one sensational book, and the press and public hysteria built up from the fact that some American prisoners in Korea gave “confessions” of war crimes that were used in enemy propaganda, presumably to escape routine brutality or to get privileged treatment.

The Air Force courses of the past 60 years on how to survive brainwashing were cooked up in the United States out of people’s imaginings of what it might be like to be brainwashed. The tortures sold to the CIA by Mitchell and Jessen were made up in the USA.

One more thing must be added to illuminate the atmosphere in which this could have happened in the United States.

The University of Lausanne in Switzerland has allowed it to be made known that one of their theology faculty, professor Thomas Römer, in early 2003 received a call from the Élysée Palace in Paris, the seat of the French presidency.

The president, Jacques Chirac, supposedly wanted a clarification of the significance of the figures of Gog and Magog in biblical prophecy. He was calling Lausanne because he didn’t want his query to be leaked to the press in France.

The theologian explained to him that the two are obscure figures who appear in the Book of Genesis, and again in Ezekiel, in connection with a prophesy of a great war, desired by God, to cleanse the world of his enemies before the arrival of the world’s Last Days, after which a new age would follow.

Chirac reportedly said he was calling because he was distressed that President George Bush had twice telephoned him to inform France’s president that this war was beginning, and urging France to join the United States in fulfilling the divine prophesy. As is well known, France did not do so.

This appears in a new book of interviews by a respected French journalist and friend of Chirac, Jean-Claude Maurice, provocatively called “If You Quote Me, I’ll Deny It.” The report by Maurice has not been confirmed by the former French president. But it has not been denied.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.

Obama still isn’t president in the south

Denying the Obamas American birth is just another form of racism
Andrew Sullivan

A naive person might believe that Barack Hussein Obama was born, as he has long said he was, in Hawaii to a young American mother and a distant father from Kenya. There are notices in two local papers and the certification of birth is filed in the state of Hawaii’s records.

An independent body — FactCheck.org — part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, asked to see a copy of the original during last year’s campaign. FactCheck is non-partisan and takes all sorts of politicians’ claims to task. Here’s its take on Obama’s birth certificate: “FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving US citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. . . Our conclusion: Obama was born in the USA just as he has always said.”

You may be persuaded. Once I’d seen the short-form certificate online, verified by independent journalists and vouched for by state authorities, I was, too. But staggering numbers of Americans remain sceptical. In fact, a majority of Republican voters — 58% — either do not believe or are unsure that Obama is a natural-born American citizen. That means most Republicans believe Obama is constitutionally illegitimate in the presidency because the constitution reserves it for those born in America. The scepticism is — surprise! — concentrated in the south. In Virginia, a southern state that backed Obama last year, only 53% are sure Obama is legitimately president and 70% of Virginia Republicans either don’t believe he is an American or aren’t sure. A poll last week also found that many Republicans believe this issue has not received enough media attention.

What do they believe? The most common theory is that Obama was born in Kenya while his mother was visiting his father. The Hawaiian birth certificate exists, the sceptics claim, because Hawaii recognises as natural-born citizens those born to American mothers temporarily outside the United States. The only problem with that theory is the certificate would mention that fact and it doesn’t.

So Obama was born where all the evidence says he was: Honolulu. Why would a woman in her last month of pregnancy travel halfway around the world to deliver a child in a developing country and then bring him back home, even though he wouldn’t have had a passport? How would she get him into the United States unless someone at the border was in cahoots? “You couldn’t sell this script in Hollywood,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week.

Why does this story stay alive? Some, like me, didn’t understand the Hawaiian intricacies at first: we thought there was a single long-form certificate that could resolve the question. But, as FactCheck notes: “The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department.” So Obama did all he could to make this go away.

Yet the conspiracists have only become more adamant. A slew of radio show hosts have fixated on the question; Lou Dobbs, CNN’s resident crank, broadcast several segments expressing doubt about Obama’s birthplace. Sean Hannity, a Fox News pundit, ran two reports on a soldier who refused to follow orders from Obama because he doubted his eligibility to be president. When Major Stefan Cook’s orders to deploy to Afghanistan were revoked, he and his lawyer took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not, in fact, a legitimate citizen by birth.

On cue, as Obama turned 48 last week, a Kenyan birth certificate popped up on the web. It was immediately exposed as a forgery based on a 1959 Australian birth certificate, but the pressure hasn’t let up. Obama’s legitimacy as president has been challenged in five lawsuits, all dismissed.

WorldNetDaily, the far-right website, has run countless editorials, letter-writing campaigns and billboard advertisements on the question. WND is a fringe web publication — but its fringe has, by some estimates, about 2m visitors a month.

Rush Limbaugh, the mega-chat show host, has raised the issue and Michael Savage, the rabid rightist, has said: “We’re getting ready for the communist takeover of America with a non-citizen at the helm.” Other, calmer Republican activists have denounced the so-called “birthers”. The cannier ones have argued that this issue has been drummed up by Democrats to discredit the Good Old Party (and it has). But it’s hard to accept that explains everything.

The bolder rightwingers have condemned the whole thing: radio star Michael Medved has called the birthers “crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters”. But leading Republican politicians, aware of how powerful the conspiracy theory is among their supporters, have tried to avoid the issue. The Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, for example, told a town hall meeting last February: “Well, his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii but I haven’t seen any birth certificate”, even though a resolution on July 27 — issued on the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood — declared Obama a citizen unanimously (with some Republican abstentions).

This is the silly season. But this silly story seems to me an indication of something more ominous. The demographics tell the basic story: a black man is president and a large majority of white southerners cannot accept that, even in 2009. They grasp conspiracy theories to wish Obama — and the America he represents — away.

Since white southerners comprise an increasing proportion of the 22% of Americans who still describe themselves as Republican, the GOP can neither dismiss the crankery nor move past it. The fringe defines what’s left of the Republican center.

The chilling implication is that a large number of Americans believe the president has no right to be in office and has fraudulently maneuvered himself there.

I hope the secret service is on alert. If we thought racial panic had ended with Obama’s election, the resilience of this story in key parts of the country is a helpful wake-up call.

Madoff sentanced to 150 years

To contemplate his Greedy Navel! The greatest financial fraud in history 170 billion plus, results in a life sentence.

So are we finally getting serious with "white collar" criminals in this country? Perhaps this is a temporary hardening of attitudes since so many from the Political and Wealthy Elites were swindled by Mr.Madoff.

Makes you wonder though can we call it a Madoff scheme now?

Ponzi looks positively penny-ante compared to ole Bernie!

A rogues' gallery of scammers and their sentences

Los Angeles Times

9:40 AM, June 29, 2009

Bernie Madoff's sentence of 150 years far exceeds the prison terms given to other high-profile figures involved in financial scams over the last two decades.

Here are some of the names from the rogues’ gallery of the corporate world and Wall Street, and their prison sentences, as compiled by the Associated Press and Bloomberg News:

--- Jeffrey Skilling, Enron Corp.'s former chief executive, was sentenced in October 2006 to more than 24 years in prison for his role in the energy company's collapse. But he will be resentenced July 30 after an appeals court ruled that federal sentencing guidelines were incorrectly applied in his case.

--- Kenneth Lay, founder of Enron, was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in May 2006. His conviction was vacated later that year, after his death.

--- Andrew Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2004 and was sentenced to six years.

--- Joseph Nacchio, former Qwest Communications CEO, was sentenced to six years after being convicted in 2007 on 19 counts of insider trading. He began serving his time in April, but has requested a new trial.

--- Bernard Ebbers, former chief of WorldCom, was sentenced to 25 years in 2006 for his role in the $11-billion accounting fraud that toppled his telecom company.

--- John Rigas, founder of cable television company Adelphia Communications, was convicted in 2004 on charges including securities and bank fraud. He is serving a 12-year term. In addition, he was indicted in 2008 on additional charges of tax evasion.

--- Timothy J. Rigas, Adelphia's former chief financial officer, was convicted on the same charges as his father and is serving 17 years. He also was indicted on tax evasion charges in 2008.

--- Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco International, was convicted in June 2005 on charges including conspiracy, grand larceny and securities fraud. He is serving a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years

--- Mark Swartz, Tyco's ex-finance chief, received the same sentence as his former boss and has been imprisoned since 2005.

--- Sam Waksal, ImClone Systems founder, was sentenced to seven years in 2003 in the insider trading scandal involving the ImClone drug Erbitux. He served five years and now is free.

--- Ivan Boesky, the arbitrageur who was a central figure in Wall Street’s massive insider-trading scandal of the 1980s, served two years of a 3 1/2-year sentence. He was released in 1990.

--- Michael Milken, the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond king who pleaded guilty to securities-law violations in 1990, was sentenced to 10 years. He served 22 months.

-- Tom Petruno

Top photo: Jeffrey Skilling. Credit: Pat Sullivan / Associated Press

Middle photo: John Rigas. Credit: Adam Rountree / Bloomberg News

Bottom photo: Ivan Boesky. Credit: Associated Press

D Day 65 years

Today is the 65th Anniversary of D-Day for many World War 2 Vets and their family's this may be the last major commemoration attended by actual veterans. As someone who had 3 Great Uncles who served (one who is still with us at 87) I felt some kind post was appropriate.


Two of the best articles of the last week.
The first recognizing the forgotten heroes of WW2 our Black Servicemen, most who experienced greater freedoms in the United Kingdom and France than they would as second class citizens of the nation they fought for. Yet they served,1 million of them as patriotic as the white class that showed them contempt on Omaha Beach.

The second article covers the very special bond between the Normandy French citizenry and their deep affection undimmed by the years for the American Liberators of France.

Read both Articles and Remember the sacrifice our Greatest Generation made for freedom and for their familys on this June 6 2009 65 years from D-Day.

Today in Normandy, twenty-seven war cemeteries hold the remains of over 110,000 dead from both sides: 77,866 German, 9386 American, 17,769 British, 5002 Canadian and 650 Poles.

This speaks to the ferocity of what came to be called The Battle of Normandy.

DeWayne


African-American D-Day veterans celebrate Barack Obama's trip to Normandy source Daily Telegraph

As America's first black president attends D-Day commemorations in Normandy, the Second World War's forgotten African-American soldiers say they enjoyed more freedom in Britain in the 1940s than in the segregated United States.

By Philip Sherwell in New York
Published: 9:00AM BST 06 Jun 2009

They have long been the forgotten heroes of D-Day, the African American military personnel who stormed ashore and risked their lives for a country that still treated them as second-class citizens.

Their faces were missing from the Hollywood films that heaped glory on US forces and and their stories were missing from the books, exhibitions and museums that commemorated the Normandy landings.

But with President Barack Obama, the country’s first African American commander-in-chief, in France for the 65th anniversary celebrations of D-Day on Saturday, black veterans of the segregated US army believe their role is finally being acknowledged.

“Where we were in The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan?” asked Charles Sprowl, 87, referring to two of the best-known films about the events of June 6, 1944. “Where we were we in the history books?” The former corporal in the 490th Port Battalion, who dodged German bullets and rockets as he carried supplies ashore on Utah beach that day, believes that oversight is belatedly being put right.

“I think people are finally realising that there were African Americans there too and how important we were in the operation, but it’s been a long time, too long.”

For Mr Sprowl, who has lived his whole life in Dalston, Georgia, the biggest shock of his wartime service was not the carnage on the beaches of Normandy but his experience in the months before the invasion when he was stationed in Maghull, Merseyside.

“We would go in to Liverpool and we were treated like normal people,” he said. “There was no segregation and we could go where we wanted and do what we wanted. We went dancing in the Grafton Ballroom and shopping on Whitechapel like everyone else.

“My time in England was the first time I had really felt free in my life. And I wondered why another country was treating us better than our own country, better than the country we were fighting for.”

John Noble Roberts nearly paid the ultimate sacrifice 65 years ago. The oldest of 15 children from a poor cotton-growing family in Louisiana, he was a 19-year-old coastguardsman on an amphibious vessel that ferried troops across the Channel on D-Day.

After the second run, the craft became stranded on a sandbank at Omaha Beach as the tide went out and Mr Roberts, whose job was to run errands for the captain, was given a message to carry down to the engine room.

As he made his way across the deck, a German shell hit the marooned vessel, blowing off his right leg and badly injuring the left. “We were sitting ducks and the Germans clearly had us in their sights,” he recalled. “I thought that was it, I was going to die, but I guess it just wasn’t my time.”

The injuries ended Mr Roberts’ war. Back in the US, he received the Purple Heart that is awarded to all injured servicemen, but felt there was little recognition for the role played by African-Americans in Normandy.

“We were just second-class citizens again,” he said from Santa Maria, California, where he moved after the war. “You know, I really think that people didn’t know we were there.”

After the freedoms of his time in Britain, Mr Sprowl felt disheartened when he returned to Georgia, a Southern state where instititutional discrimination was maintained under the guise of the so-called “separate but equal” laws. “We went to war for our country and came home to segregation,” he said.

It took another two decades until the civil rights movement of the 1960s led by Martin Luther King Jr finally dislodged those iniquitious statutes.

Yet bias and ignorance remained. And the story of the black veterans in the Normandy landings went largely untold for more than six decades until a 2007 History Channel documentary entitled A Distant Shore: African Americans of D-Day.

“These men did not want to be portrayed as heroes, they just wanted the world to know they were there and they played their part,” said Doug Cohen, the writer and producer.

“The remarkable thing was that D-Day had been so well documented and yet this part of the story was missing. It was incredibly difficult even to find pictures of the African Americans there that day. The camera lenses were not focused on them so they had disappeared from history.”

In Normandy, Elise Mills, a French historian, pursued a similar mission after noting that she saw no pictures of black US personnel in D-Day memorials and museums.

She discovered thousands of photographs of African American servicemen in the US National Archives, including the all-black 320th Anti-Aircraft Battalion who put up a curtain of helium balloons above the beaches that exploded on impact with German planes. Some of those pictures now feature in exhibitions in France.

In A Distant Shore, one black veteran recalled being pelted with racial slurs by other soldiers on the beach and author Yvonne Latty shared the tale of a young African American medic who saved an estimated 300 lives under enemy fire - only to be denied a medal of honour by the US military, as was everyone of his skin colour. The army has since acknowledged systematic racial discrimination in the criteria used to award medals during the Second World War.

In all, about 2,000 African Americans took part in the landings on June 6, 1944, and about a million black personnel served in the US forces during the war. In recent years, their contribution has started to receive official acknowledgement - the Tuskegee airmen of America’s first black aviation combat unit were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W Bush in 2007.

Mr Obama invited the airmen to his inauguration, saying their breakthroughs had paved his way to the White House. And on Memorial Day last week, he became the first president to send a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial honouring the 200,000 black troops who fought for the North in that conflict.

The role of African American veterans is high in the president’s mind, aides say. Mr Obama’s speechwriters are still working on his words for Saturday, but the forgotten faces of D-Day could be in line for a belated tribute from the highest level.

65 years after D-day, Normandy's gratitude toward US has not faded

By Edward Cody Washington Post / June 6, 2009

CRICQUEVILLE-EN-BESSIN, France - Sixty-five years have gone by since D-day, but Louis Delevin remembers.

When he was elected mayor of this tiny Normandy village in 1989, Delevin's first gesture was to raise a monument to the US 354th Fighter Group, whose time in Cricqueville local farmers have never forgotten.

After the landing at nearby Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, Delevin recalled, young American pilots from the 354th used a grassy meadow here as an advanced landing strip for several months, until the German Army folded back and the front moved on.

One of the soldiers who passed through Cricqueville during that hot summer, according to information discovered recently by the Associated Press, was President Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who served with an Army aviation maintenance unit that helped keep the strip running.

"If they hadn't come, where would we be today?' said Delevin, 77, who as a farm boy of 12 provided the pilots with apple cider between raids on the retreating German troops. "You don't have to be a great scholar to understand that the freedom we enjoy today was decided in those days in 1944."

Up and down the Normandy coast, a rainy stretch of sand and rocks along the English Channel in northwestern France, the memory of what American troops did in that fateful June has remained tenaciously alive, enduring through the political disputes and personal exasperations that often divide leaders in Washington and Paris. Obama, who has scheduled a visit Saturday to the US military cemetery at nearby Colleville-sur-Mer, will find himself in unusually friendly territory here, a place where people like his grandfather are still honored and the image of America as a force for good has remained largely untarnished.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who will accompany Obama to the cemetery, has gone out of his way since coming to power in 2007 to emphasize the tradition of official friendship between France and the United States. The irritation in Washington created by former president Jacques Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war has dissipated while, in France, things American are fashionable once again, particularly since Obama's election and President George W. Bush's departure from the White House.

Sarkozy prevailed on Obama to visit the Normandy landing beaches, ensuring that he would be televised by the new US president's side, affirming France's role - and his own - as a major player in the world. As it was with his predecessors, grasping at that role has been a major preoccupation for Sarkozy. In addition, the photogenic visit comes one day before European Parliament elections that are seen as a test of his popularity among French voters buffeted by the global economic crisis.

But it is in the little towns and villages of Normandy where the ties between France and the United States have remained most deeply rooted. In fact, here they never really faltered, and American presidents have showed up regularly to bask in them. President Ronald Reagan was here in 1984, and President Bill Clinton had his turn in 1994. Bush came in May 2002.

"When you are 4 or 5 years old, and your parents and your grandparents tell you about this, it sticks with you," said Benoit Noel, 42, who helps administer a museum commemorating what happened on Utah Beach. "Everybody in Normandy remembers the landing. We know what the Americans did for us. We haven't forgotten."

Here in Cricqueville, for instance, people gather at their little stone church once a year to celebrate Mass in honor of the young US soldiers who died on nearby beaches or in the surrounding fields. Inside, the US and French flags hang side by side over the tabernacle.

"Christian, do not forget the American soldiers who risked and sacrificed their lives for you along this coast on June 6, 1944," reads a marble plaque fixed to the wall of the nave. "The bell of this church guided them. You owe them to pray faithfully that God welcomes them."

Jean Castel, a former pilot from nearby Grandcamp who has spent years studying the Normandy landings, said the Cricqueville church bell played a genuine role; the little structure and its stone walls were on US military maps as a landmark for forces fighting their way inland after landing at Utah Beach.

Some of those battles have been commemorated at the Cricqueville City Hall, as well, with a series of photos and drawings depicting a celebrated assault by US Army Rangers up sheer cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. A photo of their commander, Colonel James Earl Rudder, looks out over the community meeting room under a sign reading, "Honor and Gratitude to the American Rangers."

In the dining room of Grandcamp's Hotel Duquesclin, a wall-size oil painting of the Point du Hoc attack has been hung to illustrate the moment for customers feasting on fish brought in from gray channel waters just out the window.

In the image, Rangers descending from landing craft rush toward the cliff walls with ladders and grappling hooks while German machine gun rounds send little fountains splashing up from the sea. Castel said that, in real life, many of the Rangers died before reaching the rocky shore.

Castel, 79, said he has been interested in the Normandy landings, and particularly the air attacks, since at the age of 14 he saw a US B-26 bomber crash near Rouen during a pre-landing raid. After becoming a pilot himself and a civilian employee of the US Air Force in the 1950s, he tracked down the pilot, identified as Dee Mitchell, who had survived the crash and returned home to Texas.

"People here never forget the Americans," Castel said. "For us, they were the liberators."

Historic

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release June 1, 2009
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

GOP Civil War

Colin Powell fires back at tin soldiers Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh on the Sunday news shows. Powell a decorated Vietnam Veteran has been under malicious attack by two of the most infamous Chicken Hawks in American History.

New York Daily News writer Mike Lupica adds a fiery column of his own today, reminding the GOP you are in danger of shrinking your "base" to a tiny rigid fascist core thereby assuring the destruction of an American Political Party. The war for the Future of the GOP continues and in my personal opinion it is already lost.

Leave the ashes to Limbaugh and Cheney the GOP the DO Nothing Party deserves its coming OBLIVION!

GOP led by toy soldiers - Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh - insulting heroes like Gen Colin Powell

Mike Lupica
Monday, May 25th 2009, 4:00 AM

This was at 166th St. and Boston Road in the Bronx Sunday morning, in front of the amazing old building that was still called Morris High School when Gen. Colin Powell graduated from there more than 50 years ago and began a life of service to his country.

This was an hour before Powell would appear on "Face the Nation" to discuss comments made about him by former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose most famous moment carrying a gun came when shooting a lawyer once instead of quail.

These days there are now five smaller schools on the Morris campus. Once, though, this was the first high school in the Bronx. And even with a lot of construction going on, the place is still something to see.

"Like a castle," Michael Moran, 42, from the neighborhood, said.

"Colin Powell went here," he was told.

"You think we don't know that up here?" Moran said.

A week ago Cheney - whose idea of a foxhole is Fox News - went on "Face the Nation" and said he assumed Powell had left the Republican Party after endorsing Barack Obama. Then Cheney said if he had to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh to lead the Republicans, he would go with Limbaugh.

But that really is the current Republican Party, isn't it? Angry old white men like Cheney and Limbaugh talking to each other. Two toy soldiers who enjoy insulting a real one like Powell. Trying to convince the country that if you don't believe in torture, you don't want to keep it safe.

Only here was Powell, who came out of Morris High to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state, telling the real truth about his party Sunday, and about the old men who think they speak for everyone in it.

"In every demographic ... the Republican Party is losing," Powell said.

Of course Dick Cheney wants to talk about torture now. It's all he's got. He doesn't want to talk about the soldiers he sent off to die in Iraq. He doesn't want to talk about all the wounded soldiers from that war, or the trips he didn't make to Walter Reed while he was still vice president.

He doesn't want to talk about how the Republicans lost both houses of Congress and finally the White House while he was vice president, as millions left his party on the dead run. And he certainly doesn't want to talk about what kind of country he left to President Obama, and to the rest of us.

So he talks about the potential danger of closing Guantanamo and puts it all on Obama, failing to mention that his own boss, Bush, also wanted to close the place. It is completely gutless of Cheney, and completely predictable. He continues to live in a weird parallel world, accepting no blame or responsibility for Sept. 11, but making it clear that if anything happens again it's all Obama's fault.

In a quiet voice Sunday, Colin Powell pointed out the obvious about Guantanamo to Bob Schieffer:

"[Cheney is] disagreeing with President Bush's policy."

Then Powell said Obama wasn't closing down Guantanamo to appease the intellectuals of Europe, as Cheney snarkily suggested, "but to reassure people all around the world that we're a country of law."

Understand: Powell is not some kind of perfect American hero; he will always have to live with the appearance he made at the United Nations when he was helping Bush and Cheney sell their intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, reluctantly playing the good soldier to the end.

He is still better than the people to whom he was forced to respond Sunday. He has still led a great American life and served his country more honorably than Cheney ever has or ever will. At the end of his time on television Sunday, on the eve of Memorial Day, he praised the young men and women fighting Cheney's war in Iraq as "another greatest generation."

"This is a time when we reflect on the privileges we've had because we had other citizens put their lives on the line," he said.

Maybe Dick Cheney should do some reflecting, take a good look around this Memorial Day. Or just take in the kind of parade in which he'll never be asked to march. Maybe Cheney could then think about devoting the rest of his life finding ways to help the soldiers he sent off to war, instead of finding ways to keep pinning medals on himself.

It is worth remembering today that guys like Colin Powell, Morris High '54, put their own lives on the line. Cheney always did it with somebody else's.

Confronting the Beast,,of Dogma

No wonder the agents of intolerance and keepers of the flames of rigid religiosity despise Barack Obama. His appearance at Notre Dame was a tour de force and a ritual slaying of the beast(Ignorance)!
Yes the man IS the Antichrist! All hail!


The Notre Dame Postmortem
By Sonia Tsuruoka • on May 18, 2009

After treading treacherous waters for weeks, President Obama averted the jaws of political pitfall and successfully defused much of the faith-charged controversy surrounding Notre Dame’s Sunday Commencement.

Then again, maybe “averted” isn’t the right word. No, put it this way: with rhetorical machismo that would make a Spartan shake in his cleats, Obama leapt off the parapet, confronted the beast, and served its twitching head on a platter to every off-campus rabble-rouser that dared litter the scene with “hate-baiting” and hyperbole.

Which, of course, leads us to the most important question of the evening:

Would Alan Keyes like some ice for that third degree…burn?

As always, Obama settled the match without a drop of blood spilt. His strategy was subliminal: to subdue extremist beliefs on both sides of the fence by his advocacy of “middle-ground” politics and refusal to “shy away from things that are uncomfortable.”

As Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” And seize the opportunity Obama did, delivering a remarkable, no-holds barred address that discretely confronted – and conquered – the controversy surrounding the afternoon Commencement.

Yet the sensitivity with which Obama met his most recent ideological hurdle is largely representative of his own persona. He was clever, calculated and courageous, with an undeniable political swag that engaged Notre Dame students and faculty members on common religious ground.

To the probable chagrin of his right-wing counterparts, Obama emphasized the fact that all pro-lifers were not “ideologues” deserving of political dismissal. And it is here the President was careful to draw a clear distinction between the coherent on-campus protests of Notre Dame students (sans fetal pictures), and the demagoguery of far-right extremists in the media.

Watching the address brought me back to the primaries, where “Change you can believe in”, seemed like little more than hogwash poetry. But to media’s most seasoned political analysts, Obama’s uplifting slogan was nothing short of a political coup d’état, a declaration that shook — and eventually toppled – the crudest aspects of Cheney and Rove’s neo-con establishment.

Similarly, Obama’s call for “Open hearts, open minds, [and] fair-minded words,” challenged the tactics of people like Randall Terry who believe Obama’s stances on abortion make him “the adversary…of the global common good,” and Alan Keyes, who believes that the honorary degree being given to Barack Obama “not only honors evil [but] exalts and worships it.”

To that end, I disagree with the premise of many off-campus protests.

Take, for instance, the controversy surrounding Notre Dame’s decision to award Obama an honorary degree. Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League, recently opined that Notre Dame giving Obama an honorary degree “would be like Howard University giving David Duke a degree in racial politics.”

But according to Larry Marsh, a former Notre Dame faculty member, that simply isn’t true. In his involvement with the Notre Dame Honorary Degree Committee, Marsh cites the body was glad to recommend (and eventually award) a Jewish scholar with an honorary degree.

In Marsh’s own words,“How can it be ok to award an honorary degree to a person who does not recognize the divinity of Christ, but not ok to award one to someone who might have a different conception about conception? Why should Christ’s divinity have to take a back seat to the disagreement over when a fetus becomes a child?”

Second, it’s important to emphasize that the President has no direct jurisdiction over a woman’s right to choice – this issue is a judicial precedent under the control of the Supreme Court, that, in the following years, will evaluate its constitutional legitimacy independently from the Oval Office.

Of course, the logical argument used by Catholic protesters on Notre Dame’s campus — and pretty much all pro-lifers — is that the President can influence Supreme Court decisions through new court appointments, should a replacement be necessary. That’s true. Of course, it’s also true that their argument is pretty much identical to the one used by disgruntled pro-choice advocates during the Bush Presidency, all of whom took to hysterics at the notion of a conservative court appointment.

Interestingly enough, the nightmare of many pro-choicers was soon realized in the appointment of Chief Justice Roberts — and as liberals know full well, utter chaos ensued. A day after the seasoned justice was sworn into office, Roe v. Wade was reversed, millions of teenagers became underage parents, America degenerated into violence, and locusts rained down from the sky into the streets of Washington. Then, seven Orc-like horsemen stormed the Capitol and delivered the Apocalypse. The end.

We all know this series of events never transpired. In fact, even the reversal of Roe V. Wade didn’t come close to becoming a reality under the watch of a conservative Chief Justice appointment. And therein lies two harsh truths:

For one, it will take more than a new Supreme Court appointment to challenge judicial precedent, regardless of his/her ideological slant. Since the landmark 1973 decision, conservative Presidents have only halfheartedly suggested that the Court “reconsider” the case, if at all.

Similarly, conservative Justices seated on the Supreme Court have been wary about any reversal; Chief Justice Roberts, though personally pro-life, has been careful to exercise judicial minimalism — the emphasis of legal precedent and decline of judicial activism — in order to preserve the status quo. Even if Obama were to suddenly cast off his liberal leanings, adopt a pro-life platform, and, like Bush Jr., appoint a conservative Justice to the Court, there would be no indication that any reversal of judicial precedent would take place at all.

And why?

Because regardless of what pro-lifers and feminists have come to believe, abortion is, in large part, a wedge issue; comparatively speaking, it has little to no sweeping national consequences. To that end, I have always been indiscriminate; any one-issue voter who concerns themselves solely with the matter of abortion — whichever end of the spectrum they occupy — will likely irritate me, regardless of my own political and religious inclinations.

With the US embroiled in two critical overseas wars and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it baffles (and vexes me) that anyone would preoccupy themselves with an issue so comparatively inconsequential. Sure, it’s possible to cook up an impassioned argument against “moral decay” but these qualms should not, in any instance, supersede government’s primary concerns : the economy and state of US foreign affairs.

In short, I applaud Obama’s fearless political dialogue regarding a subject that has proved untouchable for dozens of Democratic politicians. Well played, Mr. President, well played.

Source Scoop 44

Bishop John D'Arcy not a fan..

GOP Spurns the Young

"locked in the dogmas of their quiet past, unable to think and therefore act anew."

Excellent article from this mornings Los Angeles Times sure to be ignored by Republican Politicos, unthinking,uncomprehending and on the path to Partycide.








The Republican Party ignores young 'millennials' at its peril

The new generation of voters is unified, committed and, for the foreseeable future, overwhelmingly Democratic.
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
May 10, 2009

If the Republican Party thinks it has problems now, just wait. The party's incredibly poor performance among young voters in the 2008 election raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of the GOP.

The "millennials" -- the generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2003 -- now identify as Democrats by a ratio of 2 to 1. They are the first in four generations to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

And a recent Daily Kos tracking poll should send shudders down the spine of any Republican who understands how powerful a voting bloc this generation could become over the next decade.

Only 9% of millennials polled expressed a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. Only 7% were positive about the GOP's congressional leaders. By contrast, 65% of millennials had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, and a majority also approved of congressional Democrats. Though many people question the political sophistication of the millennials, they have been instilled with egalitarian and participatory values by their parents since birth.

This child-rearing produced a generation that was wide open to the personal appeal and message of Barack Obama and his party. Moving forward, the initial preference of millennials for President Obama and the Democrats will remain in place for a lifetime unless Republicans can quickly adapt their message and find a messenger who can speak to this powerful new force in American politics.

Only 41% of all millennials were eligible to vote in 2008, yet their overwhelming support for Obama transformed his win from what would have been a squeaker into a solid victory. Obama's popular-vote margin over John McCain was about 9.5 million nationally; millennials accounted for nearly 7.6 million of those votes.

In the 2010 off-year election, half of millennials will be eligible to vote, representing about a fifth of the overall electorate. By 2012, 60% will be eligible to vote, and they could make up about a quarter of the American electorate when Obama runs for reelection. By 2020, when virtually all millennials will be over 18, they will represent 36% of the electorate and will completely dominate elections and the political agenda of America.

And it seems likely that this civic generation, like its "Greatest Generation" great-grandparents, will vote in big numbers. Turnout among voters under 30 has been rising steadily since millennials began to replace the alienated and more cynical Gen-Xers in this age group. From a low of 37% in 1996, turnout increased to 53% of all eligible millennials, and 59% in the key battleground states in 2008.

Their unity of opinion and their numbers will make millennials' preferences for economic activism, a non-intrusive approach to social issues by government at any level and a multilateral interventionism by America in foreign affairs the policy paths to political success during the next decade.

It is simply inconceivable that the Republican Party can craft a winning strategy between now and then that doesn't accommodate these ideas.

But so far, Republicans appear to be tone-deaf on the issues that millennials care about.

Millennials have been reared with a desire to serve their community, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act provides them an opportunity to do just that, while at the same time dealing with their single biggest financial worry -- the high cost of a college education. Unfortunately, all but 25 House Republicans voted against the bill, despite its co-sponsorship by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Millennials also are experiencing higher levels of unemployment than any other generation. They expect the federal government to take an active role in fixing that problem and support redistributing income if necessary. But the almost-unanimous Republican opposition to the "recovery" act helped convince millennials that only one party actually understood their problems and was prepared to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Polls consistently show millennials are more committed to environmental protection than any generation in American history, willing to sacrifice economic growth or endure higher prices in order to save the planet. Given the millennials' overwhelming concern with the environment, House Minority Leader John Boehner's comments recently that carbon dioxide isn't a real threat because "we all breathe it out" and, besides, "cows give out a lot of gas too," went beyond inanity into the realm of political suicide.

The only tentative Republican gesture to millennial power to date is the GOP's sudden fascination with a new social network platform, Twitter. By choosing Twitter -- with its limitations on content -- to connect to millennials, Republicans are actually demonstrating how little they know about this generation's commitment to engaging in the content-rich challenges of rebuilding the nation's civic institutions and national unification.

Republicans will need to find a new message and much better messengers than their last presidential ticket or their current congressional leaders if they want to truly connect with today's young voters. Failure to do so will leave Republicans, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "locked in the dogmas of their quiet past, unable to think and therefore act anew."
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of the think tanks NDN and the New Policy Institute and the coauthors of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics."








Former GOP Congressman Micky Edwards has almost the same point of view as the above article, and explains why McCain and the GOP's debacle in November was far worse and more damaging than Barry Goldwater's 1964 rout. DH

The Nation NEEDS a Better GOP!
or a new party of the opposition.

Republicans have to put a leash on attack-dog tactics and engage in a constructive manner to deal with serious problems facing the country.

By Mickey Edwards
May 10, 2009

There are optimists within the Republican Party. They look at the wreckage left behind after last year's elections, and recall 1964. That was the year that Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for president, was so badly trounced that pundits proclaimed the GOP dead. But it was also the year that a new breed of conservative activists, myself among them, brought a new energy to the party that eventually reshaped it and led to years of Republican domination of the executive branch.

The whistle-past-the-graveyard crowd imagines that this year's doomsayers have simply forgotten history: Four years after the 1964 disaster, they remind us, Republicans won the presidency. We'll just do it again, they say. But the Republicans' defeat last year was far different from their 1964 loss -- and it will be a lot harder to come back from.

In 1964, Goldwater was seen as an anomaly. He was not representative of his own party, and, to a large extent, was rejected by it. The conservatives voters so soundly rejected in 2008 are seen not as anomalous but as representative of the larger party.

The Richard Nixon who won the presidency in 1968 had been vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, who left the White House with his popularity intact. The GOP candidate in 2012 will have to overcome the nation's memory of the previous Republican in that office, George W. Bush, who was less popular in most of America than the New York Yankees are in Boston. There will be no "glorious days of Republican leadership" to hark back to unless the party's candidates continue to dredge up memories of Ronald Reagan, who left Washington two decades ago, before a good many younger voters were born.

When Republicans rebounded in 1968, they were a national party, helped to victory by strong support in areas where, today, the party wanders in a political wilderness.

There are now large chunks of the country almost without a Republican presence. Draw a map of the east side of the U.S., from the tip of Florida to the Canadian border, and see how many Republican senators or governors you find. In 1969, by contrast, the GOP held both Senate seats in New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Vermont; there were Republican senators from New Jersey, Michigan, Maryland, even Massachusetts. In the House, Republicans held three of the six Connecticut seats, five of 12 in Massachusetts, both in New Hampshire, 15 in New York, seven of 10 in Wisconsin. You get the idea.

What can you say about the Republican Party in 2009? That it has Alabama locked up? Well, that's not even true: Democrats are far more competitive in the South than Republicans are in much of the country.

It's certainly true that to some degree Arlen Specter's defection from the Republican Party was opportunism. Specter, after all, became a Republican in the first place not because of any particular political point of view but because, in 1966, when both Republicans and Democrats were trying to recruit him to run for district attorney in Philadelphia, the GOP promised more support. Specter himself has said that he's now a Democrat because that's the best way to get elected again. To Specter, party has never mattered much.

But there's more to the story. While Specter will not march in lock step with Democrats any more than he did with Republicans, he will vote with them on many procedural issues, and in the Senate, that's no small matter. So the loss matters. And that's why Republicans need to take seriously the fact that Specter was not so much seduced by Democrats as driven away by a GOP that has become increasingly intolerant of disagreement within its ranks and seemingly incapable of putting forth an appealing platform.

At one point, Republicans put forth a coherent, idealistic vision of America, one that summoned it to greatness. There was a profound belief in the dignity of the individual, a reverence for the Constitution and the founders who proposed it, a belief in doing whatever it took (including spending tax dollars to build a military second to none) to preserve the peace. Republican platforms preached prudence and the virtues of small business.

Today, the Republican belief system has degenerated into an embarrassing hodgepodge that worships political victory more than ideas; supports massive deficits; plunges the nation into "just-in-case" wars without adequate troops, supplies or armor; dismisses constitutional strictures; and campaigns on a platform of turning national problem-solving over to "Joe the Plumber." It's hard to see how all that points the way to a reawakening of voters to trust in the GOP.

This may suggest, of course, that the party should just toss in the towel, accept its designated role as the Whigs of the 21st century and leave governance to its betters. But American freedom depends on power checking power. If Democrats control the legislative and executive branches without meaningful opposition, the country will be the weaker for it. Some of President Obama's initiatives would dramatically shift the boundaries between public and private, reshape the relationship between citizens and government and alter the lens through which America views its international commitments. These are serious matters and deserve serious, and constructive, engagement.

Merely attacking administration proposals and labeling Obama a "socialist" will only ensure that instead of rebounding, as the GOP did in 1968, the party will slip even further into irrelevance. And that will not be good for America.

Mickey Edwards is a former U.S. congressman, a lecturer at Princeton University and the author of "Reclaiming Conservatism."