Starting locally, it s important to ask: what are our values, and how do we protect them? This question recently came to the fore for me when Robert Murray, a lawyer for Cullion Concrete plant, criticized residents of the city who do not live close to the concrete plant for speaking out against it. Geoff Schoos provided an apt response to Mr.
Murray s remarks
[ ] I would also like to address something that one of the Cullion attorneys, Robert Murray, was quoted as saying in the Providence Journal. He stated that, while he could understand why residents close to the plant site might have concerns, it was confusing to him why people in other sections of the city were concerned about this issue. The answer is fairly simple, Mr.
Murray. I live in the Stonehill section of Cranston. Although I will not be directly impacted by the resolution of this issue one way or the other, I am a resident of this city.
The people of Eden Park are my neighbors. What directly affects them impacts me, at least indirectly. When the quality of life for some of us is threatened, all of us are threatened.
We are a community of many parts but we are still one community. If we don’t stand next to our neighbors in the city, no matter where they are located, who will? That’s why a woman from Garden City, mentioned by Mr.
Murray in the Journal, was concerned about this issue. And that’s why the guy from Stonehill is concerned. It’s our city.
You see, in Mr. Murray s view, we are not supposed to care about something happening in our community if it does not directly affect us. In an effort to silence people, Mr.
Murray is tapping into social norms that were spawned in the 80 s and that continue to hold many of us hostage to this day the norms of apathy, self-centeredness, and material gain above all other values. He reminds us that it is socially unacceptable to be concerned about the community as a whole. We have been conditioned to shun those who take an active role in protecting their rights and the rights of others.
Rather, we should all continue to toil in quiet isolation working overtime to earn enough to make this month s Visa bill and spending our scant free time reading the Wal-Mart circular to see what new jewel we might be able to add to our collection of electronics or yard chachkis. Caring about other is just not cool.
the new era to be borne of our young people in the coming years.
This Millenial generation may bring on the antidote to what ails us:
America is aging. Recently, considerable analysis has been devoted to the financial impact that retiring Baby Boomers will have on the American economy. Books such as Financial Armageddon, The Great Bust Ahead, and The Coming Generational Storm ponder such questions as: Have Boomers saved enough to retire on?
Will there be a tremendous stock (housing) market crash as Boomers liquidate their assets in preparation for retirement? How will the government manage to make good on their implicit promises to pay Social Security and Medicare benefits to a growing elderly population? Who will take care of the aging population?
These are serious questions, but they are only half of the story. The other, almost completely ignored half, is the story of a new generation coming of age and ready to reshape the world as Boomers lose their cultural relevance. This generation, alternately known as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation (born 1982 – 2002), is an emerging force ‘that will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls,’ in ways that we have not seen since before the 1960’s.
In many ways, this generation has already begun to make its cultural mark, though this remains under-reported in the mainstream media.
There is no guarantee that the new generation can prevail over the self-centeredness of our times. Further, the tools of change and transformation a democratic society where civil liberties are valued and protected may not be available to the new generation in the way they were available to the movers and shakers of the 60 s.
Naomi Wolf describes the 10 steps to fascism that are taking hold in America, in this recent essay in :
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled.
Because we don t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of homeland security - remember who else was keen on the word homeland - didn t raise the alarm bells it might have.
It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here.
And that we are further along than we realise.
Our civil liberties and our democratic government in which civic participation is valued, need to be reinstated. Only then can the Millenial generation take hold of the reins and steer our country in a better direction.
This will take courage, cooperation, and hard work. Stay tuned here and elsewhere as we struggle to put our government back together again and lend support to a new generation of leaders.
I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
–Capt.Renault.
This line from the great movie classic , uttered just before police Captain Renault collects his winnings, comes in handy in Washington politics because there’s a lot of things to be shocked, shocked about.
In a Washington madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is shocked, shocked to find that the women she dispatched to men’s homes and motels for a ‘high end erotic fantasy service’ might have been exchanging sex for money. Try reading the following quote out loud in a high, tremulous, shocked voice and not burst out laughing
“If any sexual activity occurred, she said, it was not authorized or intended by her but undertaken independently by her female subcontractors and male clients “who disobeyed my directives, their signed contracts and participated in illegal behavior.” In other words, she is stunned at accusations that sexual activity had taken place between the women who worked for her and the men who paid them about $300 for 90 minutes of their attentions.
”
So they disobeyed her? I’m shocked, shocked to think that Washington politicians, of all people, would be anything less than upright and honest.
This would really be private and personal behavior, reason for their wives to call a lawyer but no concern of mine, except that some of Deborah Palfrey’s clients had inordinate power over ordinary people, and used morality and patriotism as selling points for policies that are getting people killed.
Randall L. Tobias, U.S.
Global AIDS Coordinator, listened to groups that were shocked that some organizations were fighting HIV by educating prostitutes about disease prevention and distributing condoms. On the advice of lobbyists, many from religious right groups such as Focus on the Family, and Concerned Women of America, Tobias placed a ban on US funding for any organization that did not . Any organization getting US money was from giving condoms to prostitutes or working with any subcontractors that did.
The conservative lobbyists vilified the advocates who argued that preventing HIV infection in those most at risk would buy time for other interventions. They instead follow a policy of rescue and restore , with ending prostitution altogether their ultimate goal. Tobias, who was too pure to tolerate his tax money being used to save a prostitute from HIV, resigned last week when he showed up on Deborah Palfrey’s list of clients.
Harlan K. Ullman, a Defense Department consultant, is credited with coining the phrase ‘Shock and Awe’ that horrible, arrogant slogan for the bombing of Iraq at the start of the invasion. He’s also been outed by Palfrey.
The men who used Deborah Palfrey’s service liked to believe that the prostitutes were all PhD’s and career women who I don’t know, just craved their company or something. I supposed they would be shocked, shocked if they found out the women really needed the money, or had a drug habit or leeching boyfriend or something. And where is Deborah Palfrey’s heart of gold?
She’s not going to go quietly to jail? What happened to the code of silence?
The most foolish fantasy in all this is a denial of the role of money and power.
Randall Tobias could buy a fantasy that he thought he could keep private. He could buy the goodwill of the religious right by preventing condom distribution to poor people no one cares about. Poor people are low priority, prostitutes are even more expendable.
We have a situation right here in Providence, the evidence of raids on ‘massage parlors’ that are really brothels suggests that the women are not working there voluntarily. The Providence mayor’s office has a proposed bill, to deal with traffickers and pimps and johns, not just to arrest and deport the prostitutes. We could pass laws to push this problem underground, or over the state line, but that wouldn t help victims of trafficking.
The women in the brothels don’t have any Washington lobbyist, they don’t speak the language, are sometimes illegal. They don t have money or rich lawyers. All they have is our sense of right and wrong.
We need a good law that doesn t criminalize victims, and the will to enforce. We can prosecute the crimes of deception, coercion and fraud, and we can try to reduce the poverty and inequality that leaves so many of the world s people vulnerable to expoitation by traffickers for labor and sex.
(For more information, check out the human rights organization.
)
• —A most interesting article by Alan Schwarz in the New York Times that reports on a recent study which suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.
• —Also from the New York Times, an editorial that raises concerns about the Bush administration s push for a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping.
• —Via the Environmental News Network, a report from the Associated Press that details how more than three dozen scientists have signed a letter to protest a new Bush administration interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, saying it jeopardizes animals such as wolves and grizzly bears.
• —A somewhat amusing piece by Matt Stearns of the McClatchy Newspapers that examines the peculiar management philosophy of the CEO presidency. A close friend told me of the surreal story of Julie Amero, a substitute teacher from Mystic, Conn, who was working in a Norwich 7th grade class and is now convicted of exposing minors to pornography (the actual charges are four counts of risking injury to a minor), all because she couldn t get the pop-up windows to close and wasn t thinking clearly enough to decide to turn off the computer. Why were there pornographic pop-ups on a school computer?
Because the school had not updated its filters. Both The New York Times and the PC Magazine recently covered the story. From
Julie Amero, a substitute teacher at a middle school in Norwich, Conn.
, said she had simply wanted to e-mail her husband. The authorities contend that she was — purposely or, perhaps, carelessly — exposing 11- and 12-year-old students to pornography rather than teaching them English.
Last month, Ms.
Amero was convicted in Norwich Superior Court of four counts of risking injury to a child and faces up to 40 years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for March 2. She has insisted on her innocence, refusing to accept a plea bargain that would have allowed her to walk free. She portrays herself as a hapless technophobe too clueless to unplug a wayward computer.
Ms. Amero, 40, a longtime substitute, contends that when she arrived that day in October 2004, she asked the regular seventh-grade language arts teacher at Kelly Middle School if she could use his computer to e-mail her husband. But first, she says, she went to the bathroom, and when she returned, the teacher was gone and students were gathered around the screen, watching a hairstyle Web site.
When she tried to close the site, what she got was an endless barrage of pop-up ads for pornography sites. The images continued all day, since “I absolutely have no clue about computers,” she said in an interview.
Ms.
Amero plans to appeal, and she says lawyers have offered to handle the appeal free.
School administrators and prosecutors have accused her of everything from spending too much time staring at the computer to deliberately surfing pornography sites, and have pointed out that if she was an unwitting victim of an Internet bombardment, she should have fetched help, blocked the screen or, at least, unplugged the machine.
“She could have turned off the computer,” the assistant state’s attorney, David J.
Smith, said in his closing arguments. Ms. Amero insisted during cross-examination that she had never turned off a computer herself and did not even know how to turn off a monitor.
An Internet chatter campaign has made Ms. Amero something of a cause célèbre for Luddites worldwide.
Several computer experts who have followed the case said programs known as spyware and malware could have hijacked the machine’s browser so that it visited pornography sites without prompting and created the computer logs that helped convict Ms.
Amero.
Craig Ellison, an industry analyst who once ran the computer labs at PC magazine, warned in an interview, “These types of things can happen,” especially “if you’re using a very old system.”
[ ] This brings me to an incident that happened in the Kelly Middle School in the apparently backward community of Norwich, Connecticut.
There, a substitute teacher was on a school computer and ran into a pop-up porn storm. I haven t seen one of these for years, since pop-ups are easily blocked with Firefox. But, apparently, they still exist.
I ve never thought of Norwich, Connecticut as a backward community. I m from Connecticut and I like to think we don t perpetrate these kinds of witch hunts anymore. But apparently I m wrong.
Julie Amero is scheduled to be sentenced to possibly 40 years in prison on May 15th. You can learn more about her case at The Defense fund for Julie Amero .
In Arkansas, it appears that some folks—taking their cue from the Bush Justice Department—believe that judges may render legal opinions but ought not express personal opinions, particularly if those opinions run counter to prevailing conservative orthodoxy.
Consider the case of Judge Wendell L. Griffen, as highlighted in this editorial in the Arkansas Leader:
Arkansas will have to be told once again whether the First Amendment to the Constitution applies to Judge Wendell L. Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
It does protect his right to speak as much as it does yours and ours, and an appellate court will one day affirm that one more time.
Meantime, Judge Griffen, who is black, will have to stand on the scaffold accused and probably convicted of dishonoring his judicial robes by uttering an opinion on moral issues of the day from time to time, usually in his capacity as a minister of the Gospel. The state Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission Monday formally accused the judge again of violating the code of conduct for judges by expressing opinions while he was not on the bench.
Yes, that is the charge. Now the commission will hold a hearing, where Griffen will dispute the accusation, and then it will discipline him. The discipline could be a rebuke, a suspension or expulsion from his position on the Court of Appeals, to which people have twice elected him.
Then, two or three years from now, the Arkansas Supreme Court or a federal court will overturn the sanction and restore his good name. All that has already happened once, but the commission by a narrow vote wants to try one more time.
In the interim, he will seek re-election, and voters might assume that the commission’s rebuke or whatever else it does means that he really has done something wrong and defeat him.
One candidate has already been emboldened to run against him in 2008.
Soon after Hurricane Katrina in September 2005 he criticized the federal government’s response to the hurricane in a discussion at an NAACP banquet. The remark got in a newspaper.
A couple of days earlier, during a discussion at a Baptist convention in Columbus, Ga., (Rev. Griffen was an officer of the national Baptist association) he talked about the qualifications of John Roberts to be chief justice of the U.
S. Supreme Court, apparently not favorably. A story in the little Georgia paper characterized it as criticizing Roberts’ nomination.
Someone sent the article to the Arkansas commission.
Last year, Rev. Griffen was one of a number of ministers who wrote letters formally endorsing an increase in the minimum wage.
They were released at a press conference. Griffen’s was on his ministerial stationery, not the court’s. He also was on record making a comment defending the rights of homosexuals.
They were God’s children, too.
“For the first time in many years, on this Earth Day our leaders in the United States Senate understand the dangers we face from unchecked climate change. The long-term effects of global warming, including the prospect of a dramatic increase in sea levels, could be devastating to our state.
“I support legislation that would push for an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, the most aggressive measure now before the Senate, and will continue to push hard for urgent action to reverse the threat of climate change and reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil. That s just the beginning, because our environmental problems are legion, but it is an important beginning.”
Also, for fellow Sheldon Whitehouse groupies (what can I say?
Some people watch Survivor I watch Sheldon Whitehouse),
One of the finest moments comes when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
, busts out a big, big chart. Which happens after almost everyone has gone home. The chart compares the Clinton protocol for appropriate contacts between the White House and the DoJ on pending criminal cases with the Bush protocol.
According to Whitehouse, the Clinton protocol authorized just four folks at the White House to chat with three folks at Justice. The chart had four boxes talking to three boxes. Out comes the Bush protocol, and now 417 different people at the White House have contacts about pending criminal cases with 30-some people at Justice.
You can just see zillions of small boxes nattering back and forth. It seems that just about everyone in the White House, including the guys in the mailroom, had a vote on ongoing criminal matters.
Sen.
Pat Leahy, D-Vt., calls this the most astounding thing he s seen in 32 years.
At bottom, the worst ickiness is that while Gonzales thinks he should retain his position despite all he has to apologize for (after all, he has learned from his mistakes), he s more than willing to point to the single mistake made by his subordinates that doomed their careers, one by one.
(Daniel Bogden = low energy. Paul Charlton = poor judgment. Kevin Ryan = bad manager.
John McKay = bad information sharing. Carol Lam = Carol Lame.) He is willing to detail everything Paul McNulty should have done differently and everything Kyle Sampson did wrong.
Time and again Gonzales wants to claim the benefit of the doubt for all the great things he s achieved as attorney general, but he s the only one who gets it. Second chances only run one way at Justice.
Today s column by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post perfectly (and humorously) captures the utter incompetence and incoherence of the Bush administration and demonstrates that the dark endeavors of the President, Attorney General and others cannot withstand the light of day:
Alberto Gonzales s tenure as attorney general was pronounced dead at 3:02 p.
m. yesterday by Tom Coburn, M.D.
The good doctor, who also happens to be a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made this clinical judgment after watching Gonzales suffer through four hours of painful testimony. The Oklahoman listed the cause of death as management failure and other complications of the Justice Department s firing of eight federal prosecutors.
It was handled incompetently.
The communication was atrocious, Coburn told the beleaguered attorney general. You ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered, and I believe that the best way to put this behind us is your resignation.
The hearing was billed as Gonzales s chance to explain the contradictions, omissions and falsehoods in his response to the firings.
But instead of contrition, the attorney general treated the committee to a mixture of arrogance, combativeness and amnesia. Even his would-be defenders on the Republican side were appalled.
Mr.
Attorney General, most of this is a stretch, said Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Why is your story changing? demanded Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
Significantly, if not totally, at variance with the facts, said Arlen Specter (Pa.
), the committee s ranking Republican.
Really deplorable, said John Cornyn (R-Tex.).
After this blow, from an administration loyalist and an old Texas friend, Gonzales stuttered in his reply.
Gonzales had weeks to prepare for yesterday s hearing. But the man who sat at the witness table sounded like the sort of person who forgets where he parked his car.
Explaining his role in the botched firing of federal prosecutors, Gonzales uttered the phrase I don t recall and its variants ( I have no recollection, I have no memory ) 64 times. Along the way, his answer became so routine that a Marine in the crowd put down his poster protesting the Iraq war and replaced it with a running I don t recall tally.
Take Gonzales s tally along with that of his former chief of staff, who uttered the phrase I don t remember 122 times before the same committee three weeks ago, and the Justice Department might want to consider handing out Ginkgo biloba in the employee cafeteria.
The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman. ~Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (writing for the majority in Gonzales v.
Carhart)
In affirming the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress in 2003 and defining in some measure the role that the government may take with respect to the life within the woman, Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas have created a dangerous precedent. The life within the woman has, in effect, been given equal footing with the life of the woman. The government may now feel free to implement policies and practices that are ostensibly in the best interests of the unborn child.
The interests and wishes of the woman are no longer of primary importance. At some point in a pregnancy, the government may interpose itself between a woman and her medical providers and may, as it deems fit, impose its will and authority upon all parties. Such intrusive intervention may arguably evince respect for the life within the woman, but it shows no respect for any others.
And it invites abuse. Where will it all end?
It is not difficult—although it is frightening—to imagine a scenario in which the government seeks to assert its newfound regulatory authority by establishing a process whereby any abortion, both induced and spontaneous, is treated as a potential felony and is subject to criminal investigation.
For example, if a woman were to experience a spontaneous abortion (better known as a miscarriage) during the second trimester of her pregnancy, would it now be reasonable for the government to take action to determine whether the rights of the life within the woman had been violated in some fashion? Many women do not obtain the recommended medical care during pregnancy or engage in practices that may compromise the health and wellbeing of both themselves and their unborn child (e.g.
, cigarette smoking, drug and alcohol use, inadequate diet, exposure to stress, etc.). If the spontaneous abortion could reasonably be attributed to such neglectful behavior, whether such was intentional or not, should the government pursue criminal charges against the woman because she caused or contributed to the untimely demise of her unborn child?
If the government, indeed, ought use its authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman, then ought it not respond to such reckless endangerment? Ought it not intercede to stop such when it can and prevent the occurrence of such? Ought it not enact regulations that provide for the regular monitoring and reporting of a woman s activities and practices during pregnancy, to ensure that the unborn child is being appropriately cared for?
Ought it not mandate certain standards of care and punish those who fail to comply with such? Ought it not assume the role of guardian ad litem for every unborn child? Isn t such governmental intervention the natural extension of the Supreme Court s decision?
Where will it all end?
The five men on the High Court who cast votes in support of the ill-conceived and ideologically-driven Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act have cast aside their judicial robes in favor of vestments and lab coats. They have unwisely and recklessly shoved the nation—most especially all women of childbearing age and all those who may provide for their care—out onto a steep and slippery slope.
They have shown themselves to be activist judges of the most dangerous sort. Where will it all end? Yesterday s stunningly patronizing and patriarchal Supreme Court decision demonstrates how much of a hard right turn the judicial branch has taken (and will continue to take for some time) and how moralistic and even misogynistic the five justices who voted in the majority truly are.
The consequences will be felt for years. In addition, to subordinating a woman s health and a doctor s judgment to conservative ideology, the decision will likely deter many current and future physicians from pursuing obstetrics as a specialty, which will further compromise the health of expectant mothers. This continues to be a sad week for this nation.
Among the major flaws in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision giving the federal government power to limit a woman’s right to make decisions about her health was its fundamental dishonesty.
Under the modest-sounding guise of following existing precedent, the majority opinion — written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito — gutted a host of thoughtful lower federal court rulings, not to mention past Supreme Court rulings.
It severely eroded the constitutional respect and protection accorded to women and the personal decisions they make about pregnancy and childbirth.
The justices went so far as to eviscerate the crucial requirement, which dates to the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, that all abortion regulations must have an exception to protect a woman’s health.
As far as we know, Mr.
Kennedy and his four colleagues responsible for this atrocious result are not doctors. Yet these five male justices felt free to override the weight of medical evidence presented during the several trials that preceded the Supreme Court showdown. Instead, they ratified the politically based and dangerously dubious Congressional claim that criminalizing the intact dilation and extraction method of abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy — the so-called partial-birth method — would never pose a significant health risk to a woman.
In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found the procedure to be medically necessary in certain cases.
Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the procedure was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure they might not fully understand in advance and would probably come to regret. This way of thinking, that women are flighty creatures who must be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman’s place in the family and under the Constitution that have long been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He continues to insist that he has . He is wrong.
He should hide his head in shame and the Senate should tan his hide for his role in the politicization of the Just-Us Department and his general lack of competence and integrity. As the investigation into the firing of U.S.
attorneys proceeds, let us hope that the Senate also takes a good, hard look at other instances, such as the disturbing one described in the following New York Times editorial, in which the Attorney General and his minions may have directly and indirectly pressured prosecutors to pursue cases for political reasons:
Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr.
Doyle was re-elected — and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.
The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political purge.
While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept their jobs.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms. Thompson’s case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was political — but it did make clear that it was wrong.
And in an extraordinary move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a decision. “Your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the prosecutor. “I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.
”
Members of Congress should ask whether it was by coincidence or design that Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, turned a flimsy case into a campaign issue that nearly helped Republicans win a pivotal governor’s race.
There was good reason for the appeals court to be shocked. Ms.
Thompson, a 56-year-old single woman, seems to have lost her home and spent four months in prison simply for doing her job. Ms. Thompson, who spent years in the travel industry before becoming a state employee, was responsible for putting the state’s travel account up for competitive bid.
Mr. Biskupic claimed that she awarded the contract to an agency called Adelman Travel because its C.E.
O. contributed to Mr. Doyle’s campaign.
To charge her, Mr. Biskupic had to look past a mountain of evidence of innocence. Ms.
Thompson was not a Doyle partisan. She was a civil servant, hired by a Republican governor, with no identifiable interest in politics. She was only one member of a seven-person committee that evaluated the bidders.
She was not even aware of the Adelman campaign contributions. She also had a good explanation for her choice: of the 10 travel agencies that competed, Adelman submitted the lowest-cost bid.
While Ms.
Thompson did her job conscientiously, that is less clear of Mr. Biskupic. The decision to award the contract — the supposed crime — occurred in Madison, in the jurisdiction of Wisconsin’s other United States attorney.
But for reasons that are hard to understand, the Milwaukee-based Mr. Biskupic swept in and took the case.
While he was investigating, in the fall of 2005, Mr.
Biskupic informed the media. Justice Department guidelines say federal prosecutors can publicly discuss investigations before an indictment only under extraordinary circumstances. This case hardly met that test.
• —From the Washington Post, a report that details how the U.S. military is increasingly focused on a potential national security threat: climate change.
• —From Think Progress, a thorough refutation of the Bush administration s claim that the emergency supplemental bill passed by Congress, which includes funding for the troops in Iraq, is loaded with pork.
• —From the New York Times, an editorial that raises concerns about the Bush administration’s campaign to transform the minor problem of voter fraud into a supposed national scourge.
• —From Crooks and Liars, a video clip from the most recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, in which the host laced into Monica Goodling and the Bush administration for appointing more than 150 graduates of a tier 4 law school to prominent position in the US government.
Where does childhood misbehavior end and criminal behavior begin? In a growing number of cases around the country, children—some as young as 6 years old—who act out at school are being treated as criminal offenders: arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the police station. That we have reached such a state of affairs boggles the mind.
Bob Herbert of the New York Times (via the San Jose Mercury News) captures it best:
AVON PARK, Fla. - When 6-year-old Desre e Watson threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class a couple of weeks ago she could not have known that the full force of the law would be brought down on her and that she would be carted off by the police as a felon.
But that s what happened in this small, backward city in central Florida.
According to the authorities, there were no other options.
The student became violent, said Frank Mercurio, the no-nonsense chief of the Avon Park police. She was yelling, screaming - just being uncontrollable.
Defiant.
But she was 6, I said.
The chief s reply came faster than a speeding bullet: Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we ve arrested?
The child s tantrum occurred on the morning of March 28 at the Avon Elementary School. According to the police report, Watson was upset and crying and wailing and would not leave the classroom to let them study, causing a disruption of the normal class activities.
After a few minutes, Desre e was, in fact, taken to another room.
She was isolated, the chief said. But she would not calm down. She flailed away at the teachers who tried to control her.
She pulled one woman s hair. She was kicking.
I asked the chief if anyone had been hurt.
Yes, he said. At least one woman reported some redness.
After 20 minutes of this uncontrollable behavior, the police were called in.
At the sight of the two officers, Mercurio said, Desre e tried to take flight.
She went under a table. One of the police officers went after her.
Each time the officer tried to grab her to drag her out, Desre e would pull her legs away, the chief said.
Ultimately the child was no match for Avon Park s finest. The cops pulled her from under the table and handcuffed her.
The officers were not fooling around. In the eyes of the cops the 6-year-old was a criminal, and in Avon Park she would be treated like any other felon.
There was a problem, though.
The handcuffs were not manufactured with kindergarten kids in mind. The chief explained: You can t handcuff them on their wrists because their wrists are too small, so you have to handcuff them up by their biceps.
What are we teaching our children when we resort to such unduly harsh and drastic measures, when we abandon all pretense of understanding and sensitivity and instead opt for mindless authoritarianism?
This trend is deeply disturbing. In any regard, here s a couple of other recent cases to make you question our collective moral and mental integrity, one from Shady Cove, Oregon and the other from Brooklyn, New York:
A friend of mine who is a school principal has on occasion voiced frustration about the increasing imposition of private sector thinking and practice in the public sector, specifically the field of education. He is fond of saying, often with a sigh, that schools are not in the business of manufacturing widgets.
Yet, more and more, there is pressure to produce tangible results and improve productivity, regardless of the consequences. As a result, a corporate mentality that has little patience for individuality and craftsmanship—and that values product over process and quantity over quality—becomes the norm. Success is measured by the results on a spreadsheet rather than by the uniqueness and substance of the product or the satisfaction of workers and consumers.
Education is not alone in falling prey to such privatizing, as it were. The justice system has also succumbed. In response to the admittedly inordinate demands and pressures of their jobs, police and prosecutors oftentimes seem to cut corners and opt for expedience over correctness and thoroughness.
A shoddy result is apparently better than no result at all. Justice is measured more by rates of arrest and conviction than by the integrity of the process and the fairness of the outcome. When defined in such terms and then stubbornly maintained, it is no longer justice but injustice that is served.
That is unacceptable.
After five young people identified him in court as the murderer, Fernando Bermudez was convicted in 1992 of killing a 16-year-old youth in Greenwich Village. No other evidence — a gun, a fingerprint or a clear motive — tied him to the crime.
He has been jailed ever since, despite the fact that for 14 years, the same five witnesses have insisted their testimony was false.
The five gave sworn statements in 1993 that Mr. Bermudez was not the killer and that their testimony had been manipulated by the police and prosecutors.
They did so at the risk of being charged with perjury, and they have stuck with those accounts even as they have approached middle age, taken on steady jobs and raised families.
Nonetheless, the recantations have had little impact. The same judicial system that once relied on the witnesses now no longer believes them.
“What does it take, with the system that we have, to reinvestigate a wrongful conviction?” said Scott Christianson, a supporter of Mr. Bermudez and a former state criminal justice official.
“It’s really beyond me.”
The reason is based in the prevailing wisdom of the American justice system, which views recantations as untrustworthy, acts not of conscience, but of sympathy or bribery or coercion. That view is so deeply ingrained that one judge, rejecting one of Mr.
Bermudez’s appeals in 1995, said candidly that five recantations were simply too many to believe.
In recent years, though, the reliability of recantations is being re-evaluated, driven in part by the growing number of cases in which DNA evidence has cleared people who had been locked behind bars for years. In several recent cases, DNA evidence has shown not only that people were innocent, but that witnesses who had recanted really were telling the truth.
“Blanket suspicion of recantations is clearly not warranted,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law. “We know now that many of the traditional precepts that have been held by the courts are not warranted, and yet the courts continue to cling to them.
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