Women’s Day and Oklahoma

News and analysis…

March is dedicated as Women’s History Month, starting off with International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010. In honor of that occasion, below are some of the recent stories focusing on the status of women in Oklahoma…

Oklahoma House of Representatives | OKLAHOMA CITY (March 2, 2010) — Legislation creating a pilot program that seeks to establish reentry and diversion programs to allow nonviolent offender mothers to receive community-based services in lieu of incarceration unanimously passed the House today.

House Bill 2998, by Rep. Kris Steele, would encourage re-entry and diversion programs as opposed to jail time for nonviolent female offenders in allow them to receive rehabilitative services while maintaining contact with their children.

Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other state in the nation. Its incarceration rate for women is 131 per 100,000 residents, almost twice the national average of 69 per 100,000.

Most women prison inmates, 68 percent, are in prison for nonviolent offenses.

“This bill will give women convicted of nonviolent crimes access to community-based rehabilitative services that have proven effective,” said Steele, R-Shawnee. “As policy-makers, we can be both tough and smart on crime. The average prison stay for nonviolent women is less than a year, but the impact on their children is lifelong and devastating. In-home rehabilitative services will keep these families together and allow Oklahoma women to receive the help they desperately need.”

The bill passed the House with a vote of 92-0 and will next be considered by the Senate.

Henry G. Bennett Memorial Library | The month of March is Women’s History Month. Between the years of 1907 and 2008 only 77 women have been elected to the Oklahoma Legislature. As of February 2009, 46 of these remarkable women have shared their stories as part of the Women of the Oklahoma Legislature Oral History Project.

Since 2006, Associate Professor/Oral History Librarian Tanya Finchum of Oklahoma State University embarked on a project to capture and record information about women who have served or are currently serving in the Oklahoma Legislature. Within the Oklahoma State University Library website, a website was launched in February 2009. The website is a culmination of her work and includes transcripts, audio excerpts, and memorabilia collected as a result of interview efforts. The web address is http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/wotol/.

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence | Domestic Violence in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma Law enforcement agencies answer an average of 15, 000 domestic violence calls each year….

Oklahoma currently ranks 10th nationally for the number of women murdered by males. Among cases where the relationship between the victim and offender was known, 91% of perpetrators were known by the victim.

According to a study conducted by the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of  Battered Women, nearly 3/4 of women incarcerated in Oklahoman state prisons reported being physically abused at some point in their lifetime.

Nearly 20 percent of Oklahoma high school students have reported being hit, slapped, or physically hurt by their boyfriend or girlfriend; this is compared to the 9 percent of all students nation wide.

The rate of dating violence for Oklahoma ninth graders is more than three times the national average, at the rate of 26 percent for Oklahoma freshmen, compared to 8 percent nationwide.

New OK | Budget problems have caused cutbacks statewide in services to women who are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, officials say.

“It hurts my heart,” said Marcia Smith, executive director of the state Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “Demand for help is up, but budget problems are forcing some services to go away.”

About 29 state-supported programs offer help to domestic violence and sexual assault victims, Smith said. All of them have experienced a 10 percent cut in funds for the past two months, on top of 5 percent funding cuts every month since July.

“It’s too much for them to absorb,” Smith said.

Huffington Post | Anti-choice legislators in Oklahoma are experts on at least two things: waste and distraction. After repeatedly introducing laws – and having them overturned by the courts for being unconsitutional – that do nothing more than force government intrusion into the professional lives of physicians and the personal lives of women seeking reproductive health care, they continue to waste taxpayer time and money by ignoring constitutional rules.

Yesterday, a bill that may be unconstitutional sailed through the OK House and is on its way to the Senate. It would force physicians performing abortions to narrate an ultrasound description to the pregnant woman on whom the ultrasound is being performed. This was one week after an Oklahoma district court ruled unconstitutional a 2009 law that created a public web site where doctors would be forced to publish personal information on women who have had abortions (including their names and the reason for their abortions). And now the Oklahoma Supreme Court confirmed the ruling of a lower court that mandatory viewing of ultrasounds is unconstitutional putting to rest a 2008 law that would have forced women to view the ultrasound of their pregnancy prior to receiving an abortion…

Astoundingly, the bill passed the OK House without a question or a discussion, despite this history of wasting taxpayer time and money by passing unconstitutional laws and then having them overturned.

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Senators: Lift Ban on Gays Donating Blood  |  365 Gay News

The senators said that while hospitals and emergency rooms are in urgent need of blood products, “healthy blood donors are turned away every day due to an antiquated policy and our blood supply is not necessarily any safer for it.”

Brian Moulton, chief legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign,the nation’s largest gay rights group, said they are hopeful that the policy, last reviewed in 2006, will change under President Barack Obama, “who is interested in looking at all the policies that have a discriminatory effect.” The goal, he said, is “to have policies in place that are based on the science” rather than “any discriminatory idea about our community.”

One in three killed by US drone strikes is a civilian  |  The Raw Story

The US military has used drones to attack suspected terrorists in Pakistan since at least 2004. Proponents of the small, unmanned planes say they are capable of “surgical strikes” that reduce civilian casualties and effectively combat terrorism.

Is that true? Well, not really, according to a new report from the New America Foundation, a non-profit research institute.

The percentage of civilians killed by drones in Pakistan is at about 32 percent, or one out of three, the report states, and the strikes themselves have little effect in deterring terrorist activities in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Researchers do not believe any of the reported strikes targeted Osama bin Laden.

Ford’s First EV Isn’t Sexy, But It’s Smart  |  Wired

Ford’s first mass-market electric vehicle isn’t a sexy sports car. It isn’t a sleek sedan. And it isn’t cool compact. It’s a van. A delivery van, to be exact, designed specifically for fleet use. It isn’t the sexiest way to break into the electric arena, but it’s a smart move for Ford and a logical place for EVs.

Ford rolled into San Francisco with one of the Transit Connect Electric vans that goes on sale at the end of the year. It isn’t much to look at — a big box on wheels with a definite European flair — but it offers 80 miles of range and charges in as little as six hours. Ford is offering it only its big fleet customers for now but opens the order book next year for anyone who wants one.

Still No Sunset for Patriot Act Measures

News and analysis…

Once again the US Patriot Act has entered the fray between security and freedom of speech. Within the last month there have been two separate debates circling the act. First is the issue of freedom of speech in relation to the Patriot Act’s prohibition on “material support” of terrorists groups, (a broadly defined term that includes everything from supplying weapons to teaching “terrorist” leaders how resolve disputes peacefully). Second is the recent extension of the Patriot Act without any increased restriction to protect privacy rights of citizens. These are fascinating debates to follow because it so clearly expresses how our government deals with issues of dialogue, privacy, and justice for those groups it declares suspect, and how the ideals of freedom of speech, privacy, and “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are balanced against national security.

For an extensive background on the current debates surrounding the Patriot Act I recommend this article featured on Truthout.

The Huffington Post |  Dashing the hopes of liberals, the Senate Wednesday night instead passed – by voice vote without debate – a one-year extension of key parts of the USA Patriot Act that would have expired on Sunday.

Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

The House was prepared to approve the extension Thursday, dropping even more extensive privacy protections approved by the House Judiciary Committee.

The Democratic retreat is a political victory for Republicans, who gained new ammunition for their election theme that the GOP can better protect America. The outcome is a major disappointment for Democrats and their liberal allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, who believe the Patriot Act fails to protect Americans’ privacy and gives the government too much authority to spy on Americans and seize their property.

Foreign Policy  | Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions, R-AL, confirmed to The Cable that the current thinking was to extend the Patriot Act provisions in their current form, ignoring the changes his own committee approved.

“The Patriot Act has worked and the last thing we should do is weaken it. So I think it’s a good development that we are going to continue it as is,” said Sessions. “That’s the right direction.”

Here’s the scope of the three provisions that will be extended, according to Congressional Quarterly:

One of the expiring provisions allows the government to seek orders from a special federal court for “any tangible thing” that it says is related to a terrorism investigation. Another allows the government to seek court orders for roving wiretaps on terrorism suspects who shift their modes of communication. The third provision allows the government to apply to the special court for surveillance orders involving suspected “lone wolf” terrorists who do not necessarily have ties to a larger organization.”

Alter Net | The specter of McCarthyism is again hanging over America, but this time it has found a new name. Next week, the Court will hear Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, a case that calls into question broad restrictions on speech. The lawsuit challenges parts of the Patriot Act that prohibit American citizens from speaking with groups said to be terrorists. The government argues that speaking with or on behalf of these groups can be seen as “material support.” This is an eerily similar argument to the one made against Adrian during the Red Scare. I have heard family stories of screenwriters labeled communists for bringing food to a canned food drive loosely connected with the Communist Party. This kind of guilt by association is poison for a free society.

The Patriot Act’s provisions go even further than the Hollywood blacklists that ended careers and forced an entire generation of talented artists, intellectuals, and activists into the ranks of the unemployed and exiled abroad. Now, speaking with the wrong group can get you fifteen years in federal prison.

The upcoming suit is brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Ralph Fertig, a civil rights lawyer and president of the Humanitarian Law Project, a nonprofit group that has a long history of mediating international conflicts. His organization hopes to do human rights trainings around the world to promote nonviolent conflict resolution — but if he does so, he may be thrown in jail under the Patriot Act. It is a tragic irony that under the current law promoting nonviolence could get an American citizen imprisoned as a supporter of terrorism. Throwing Americans in jail for trying to convince terrorist groups to lay down their arms doesn’t make us safer. It weakens our democracy.

NPR | Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated as a terrorist group by the secretary of state. But the definition of material support includes not just providing weapons, money or bomb-making skills; it includes providing any sort of expert advice, training or personnel — including advice on how to resolve disputes peaceably or training on how to make human rights claims before the United Nations.

The nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project has a long history of engaging in such activity, mediating international conflicts and promoting human rights. But it has stopped doing some of its work for fear of being prosecuted under the material support provision.

“My speech is particularly nonviolent,” says Ralph Fertig, president of the organization. “I’ve gone to jail in the United States for my advocacy for peace.”

The federal government, he maintains, cannot constitutionally make it a crime to help others advocate lawful, peaceful solutions to international conflicts. In particular, Fertig and his organization have helped the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, make human rights claims before international bodies. They have trained Kurdish leaders in peacemaking negotiations and have brought them to Washington to lobby. But when the PKK was designated an international terrorist organization under the Patriot Act, that all stopped, and the Humanitarian Law Project went to court.

The government, arguing that the PKK had engaged in terrorist activities that have cost some 22,000 lives, said it was justified in making the organization a pariah. Thus, the government contended, even filing a legal brief on behalf of the PKK in an American court would be a crime.

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Sudan Parties Sign Darfur Ceasefire  |  Al Jazeera

The conflict in Darfur, which has pitched ethnic African tribesmen against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government, has raged far the last seven years.

While numerous ceasefires agreements in the past have been short-lived, analysts say that the forthcoming elections in Sudan and increased international pressure could give this initiative a better chance of survival.

But officials warned a March 15 deadline for a final peace deal was overly ambitious.

“After the agreement is signed, the rest will come through more negotiations,” said Adrees Mahmoud, a Europe-based Jem representative, who was in Qatar for the signing.

El Sadig el-Faqih, a former adviser to Sudan’s president, who was also in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the move was a “framework to start discussing the details” and a peace deal could only go ahead when all parties were involved.

Twitter Reaches His Holiness, Now Online @DalaiLama  |  The Raw Story

The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has joined micro-blogging service Twitter, attracting over 55,000 followers in just two days.

The Dalai Lama’s Twitter feed — @DalaiLama — was launched on Monday, a day after he met in Los Angeles with Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s founders.

“Met the Dalai Lama today in LA. Pitched him on using Twitter. He laughed,” Williams “tweeted” following the meeting.

The next day, however, the Tibetan spiritual leader had an account and received a “Welcome @DalaiLama” message from Twitter’s new spokesman, Sean Garrett.

Drug-resistance Malaria ‘Growing’ on Cambodia  |  BBC News

Parasites are developing resistance to one of the most important anti-malaria drugs, according to experts.

Artimisinin has been highly effective, particularly in places where resistance to other drugs has developed.

But now some patients along Cambodia’s border with Thailand are taking longer to respond to the treatment.

Experts on the disease are meeting village health workers in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, to discuss ways to stop drug-resistant malaria spreading.

Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage  |  RH Reality Check

In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior.

Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.

“This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder,” says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, “there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident.”

Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy.

Going “Nuclear” Again?

News and analysis…

It is amazing how history repeats itself… Especially in Washington D.C. where it seems to run in a four year cycle. This phenomena is readily apparent in the most recent argument on Capital Hill–namely filibuster reform. Back in 2005 Republicans tried to introduce an option, (the so called ‘nuclear option’), to kill the filibuster in retaliation to the threats of an uncooperative Democrat minority. Fast forward to the present and we now see Democrats trying the exact same thing in response to a stubborn Republican minority. While is seems unlikely to get anywhere, filibuster reform certainly illustrates the problems of excessive bipartisan ship and why it is so difficult for anything to be accomplished in Congress.

The Hill | Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) intends to introduce legislation that would take away the minority’s power to filibuster legislation.

Speaking to The Hill, Harkin said use of the filibuster has ground the legislative process to a halt.

“While there are reasons to slow bills down and get the public aware of what’s happening, there’s no excuse for having a few people just stop everything with a filibuster,” he said.

Several liberal activists as well as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) this week have called for filibuster reform to make it easier for legislation to pass.

In the House, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) this week introduced a resolution urging the Senate to lower the filibuster threshold, adding in a statement that the legislative tactic “has begun to erode the integrity of our Democratic process.”

Under Harkin’s bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), 60 votes would still be necessary to cut off debate on an initial procedural motion. If senators failed to reach 60 votes, a second vote would be possible two days later that would require only 57 votes to cut off debate. If that also failed, a third vote two days after that would require 54 votes to end debate. A fourth vote after two more days would require just 51 votes.

NPR  | As he [Evan Bayh] has said all week, one of his main reasons for deciding to leave the Senate is that, with 60 votes seemingly needed to pass anything these days, nothing is getting done. Demanding the magic number of 60 is a tactic “abused” by the Senate minority, Bayh said. He said he would support lowering the threshold from 60 to 55 — the “right way to go,” he thought — reminding us that when his father, Birch Bayh, was in the Senate (1963-80), lawmakers lowered the magic number from 67.

He also got a bit wistful about the filibuster itself; make ‘em do what Jimmy Stewart did in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, if they want to hold up legislation. If the Republicans feel that strongly about stopping this or that, Bayh said, “make them go to the floor” and actually filibuster, rather than simply threaten it, as is the custom today.

Daily Kos | What we’ve come to know as the modern filibuster these days rarely involves anything even remotely resembling marathon speeches on the floor. All of the “action” is abstract. Objecting Senators indicate their willingness to refuse assent to any unanimous consent agreements to bring a measure to the floor for debate, and that resolve is either tested by filing a motion for cloture and holding a vote (with the well-known threshold 3/5 of Senators chosen and sworn — 60 in a full Senate — required to end debate), or else the point is conceded, temporarily or otherwise, that a cloture vote would fail for lack of support.

But that’s not the end of the story, and most of the advocates for “forcing” a filibuster are more interested in what happens next, though in modern practice, what happens next is: nothing. That is, a failed cloture vote or declining to even take a cloture vote because it’s expected to fail usually results in pulling the bill from the floor or otherwise indefinitely delaying its consideration. To be a little clearer about it, then, those who want to see a filibuster forced are interested in what happens if the Senate leadership refuses to give up on a bill that’s being blocked and can’t currently get 60 votes for cloture.

Can’t Harry Reid just leave the bill on the floor for debate, they ask, and keep trying for cloture over and over until someone breaks? Or is a cloture motion even really necessary? If you’re willing to tough it out on cloture votes over and over again, why not simply let the obstructionists talk themselves into a coma instead?

This is all theoretically possible, but none of it would happen in a vacuum. Remember that at any given time, there are hundreds of measures which could and should be moving through a properly functioning Senate. If one measure is stuck on the floor for some indeterminate length of time, that means none of the others are moving. And some of those other measures can by themselves cause enormous problems when they don’t move on time.

TMPDC | The problem is political. ”It’s a brute force move that basically blatantly ignores the existing rules,” said Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “It would be the equivalent of in a Super Bowl game, a team basically tackles all the referees, ties ‘em up and throws them onto the sidelines and declares that a penalty is invalid.”

Reforms by ruling have occurred in the Senate in the past — but mostly for much smaller things, Binder said, like jump-starting debate on a nominee. To use the “nuclear option” on something much bigger — like filibuster reform — Binder believes the majority would have to be absolutely “convinced that what they’re doing is going to be popular.”

Not to mention the fact that Democrats almost certainly won’t have a Senate majority forever. So whatever watering down of the filibuster they push now might end up hobbling them when they become the minority again one day.

“As long as senators think like that, they’re gonna think twice about giving up their own parliamentary rights,” Binder said.

Ornstein notes that the “nuclear option” wouldn’t be quite so nuclear if it came at the beginning of a new Congress. In that case, the presiding officer’s ruling would be a little different — essentially, that the Senate isn’t a continuing body, and has the right to rewrite its rules when new members join, rather than that the Constitution gives the Senate the right to write its own rules carte blanche.

Washington Post | Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday dismissed an effort by some Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, saying the chamber’s procedures were designed to prevent the majority party from unilaterally changing the rules.

Minutes before a pair of colleagues formally unveiled their proposal to eliminate filibusters, Reid told reporters he adhered to the long-standing Senate rule that only a two-thirds majority could change the chamber’s rules. This high hurdle — established decades ago in an effort to prevent a party with a simple majority from ruling the chamber with an iron fist — would require eight Republicans to join the 59 members of the Democratic caucus to alter the rules, something Reid said is not going to happen.

“I’m totally familiar with his idea,” Reid said of the latest filibuster-reform resolution, from Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). “It takes 67 votes, and that, kind of, answers the question.”

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Absolutely Normal Home Schoolers  |  GetReligion.org

This brings us to a perfectly normal news report in the Washington Post about homeschooling. Actually, that is not quite right. This story treats home schoolers with complete and total respect, which is not always the case in the mainstream press.
The news hook, of course, is the fact that the story centers on the choices made by Muslim families — here in the United States. Here is the top of the story by Tara Bahrampour:

Saudi to Grant Women Court Access  | Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia could soon allow women lawyers to appear in court to argue cases for the first time.

Mohammed al-Issa, the justice minister, said the government is drafting a new law to permit female lawyers to argue family-related cases, including divorce and child custody.

Filipino Group Helps Women Find Life Outside of Trafficking  |  CNN World

Funded by individual donations, as well as grants from UNAIDS and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Renew offers shelter-based programs, housing, food, legal representation and education courses, all of which aim to help women return to their families or reintegrate into the community.

Renew also has a keen interest in helping child victims of the sex trade; an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 children in the Philippines are involved in prostitution rings, according to Minette Rimando, a spokeswoman for theU.N.‘S International Labour Organization’s Manila office.

No Girls Allowed  |  Daily Kos

It’s always something.

Time and again, phony concern for women has been used to justify their exclusion from countless Boys Only clubs. And this year, it’s on display again at the Winter Olympics, where ski jumping is the one sport in which only men are allowed to compete.

It didn’t matter that the International Ski Federation voted 114-1 to let women jump. And the Supreme Court of British Columbia — the Canadian province where Vancouver is located — ruled that the International Olympic Committee was clearly committing gender discrimination. No matter: the IOC could not be shamed. As IOC President Jacques Rogge “explained”:

What Bayh’s Retirement Tells Us About Ourselves

Bayh has always been shall we say a frustrating sort. Never a profile in courage.

This marks perhaps the kindest response from the liberal blogosphere to Evan Bayh’s decision to leave the Senate.  Michael Tomasky’s thoughts from across the pond (The Guardian is published in the United Kingdom) at least gives Bayh the benefit of the doubt as to his future.  Perhaps because there is talk that his hasty exit might open the way to a Republican takeover of his seat on November, the conservative blogs have been somewhat kinder.  John Stossel offers a positive view of the move based on Bayh’s remarks that he could create more jobs in private industry.  This drew a strong response from Matthew Yglesias:

The popularity of this sort of rhetoric among small-government types mostly illustrates how small-brained they are. It should be both obvious and uncontroversial to observe that the policy environment shaped by congress has an impact on the welfare of the American people that far exceeds that of most businesses. This is equally true whether or not you’re skeptical of the value of activist government.

James Fallows follows a similar argument in questioning the timing and suddenness of Bayh’s exit:

If he really cared about his Indiana constituents and their problems through that time, great! But if so, how can he walk away with this kind of careless disregard about whether, in the style of his departure, he is smashing up things that had said were important to him. If, on the other hand, these issues and people never really mattered that much, and public life had been a kind of popularity contest — well, that may be true of a lot of politicians, but they don’t like to reveal it quite this bluntly.

However, even the tone of these arguments seems civil compared to some of the other tongue lashings that have been handed out at Evan Bayh’s expense:

The Pernicious Influence Of Lefty Blogs  |  Ta-Nehisi Coates

To double down, it’s not so much that he’s “centrist,” or “moderate,” it’s that his centrism has no real policy core. I don’t know how you support the Bush tax-cuts and style yourself a deficit hawk. Policy-wise, there’s nothing “leftist” about being against the Iraq War. But politically-speaking, the anti-war folks were caricatured as a bunch of hippies who don’t understand national security.

…

But so often with “centrist” Dems, I feel like I’m just watching people take positions so that they can claim to be moderate/independent because it sounds good.

The Emptiness of Evan Bayh  |  Ross Douthat

America needs politicians who stake out interesting, politically-courageous positions on important policy questions. What it doesn’t need is politicians who occupy the safest possible ground on the great issues of the day, shift slightly left or slightly right depending on the state of public opinion, and then get congratulated by the press for being so independent-minded.

Evan Bayh  |  Matthew Yglesias

Simply put: He’s an immoral person who conducts his affairs in public life with a callous disregard for the impact of his decisions on human welfare. He’s sad he’s not going to be president? He doesn’t like liberal activists? He finds senate life annoying? Well, boo-hoo. We all shed a tear.

Bayh Low  |  Jonathon Chait

This was just a completely unremarkable man who, had he not been the handsome son of a famous politician, would never in a million years have been a Senator.

If you’ve been a regular reader of my work, you know that I’m typically not this heavy on the quotations, and if you’re one to follow the links, then you might notice that I’ve been very particular in my editing of the quotes that I have shared.  All of this is to highlight the point: dialogue on the political landscape has all but come to a standstill.

With the TEA Party movement apparently gaining momentum (or at least media coverage), this isn’t a particularly astute observation.  Yet I think that Bayh’s retirement has opened the door to understanding that this isn’t just a right-wing phenomenon.  The critiques leveled at Bayh’s centrism, whether warranted or not, still indicate a “do-nothingness” on the part of political moderates who have passed over opportunities to try and foster compromise and move government forward.  (Anyone remember Henry Clay from their U.S. history courses?)  The venom spewed in Bayh’s direction, again, whether warranted or not, has exposed the frustration on the left and its willingness to resort to verbal broadsides as well.  Frankly, we’re all failing to rise to the occasion when it comes addressing the issues we face.

I doubt that I can sum it up any better than Daniel Schorr’s commentary for All Things Considered:

That [Bayh’s decision] will have electoral consequences goes without saying. But the sullen mood of America goes beyond shifting party loyalties. Many Americans seem close to rejecting the whole machinery of government that Evan Bayh found wanting. What happens when the people turn their back on their government is a phenomenon that this democracy has yet to experience.

I can only pray that we find a way to reclaim our role as citizens who share this economic and political space that we call the United States of America.

Big Brother and the Internet.

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At a recent meeting of the D.C. based Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) the FBI once again pushed for expanded data retention on the part of internet service providers (ISPs). Always a touchy subject in relation to privacy rights, the FBI is trying to extend the regulations to require ISPs to record which web sites costumers visit and retain the records for two years; a demand which generated much conversation among technology and justice groups over the feasibility and wisdom of such an action.

CNET | FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.

The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.

The Technology Liberation Front | But the strongest objection came from John Morris of the Center for Democracy & Technology, who rightly noted that no amount of government subsidies for data retention could prevent leakage of sensitive private data. For this reason and because of the basic civil liberties at stake whenever the government has access to large pools of data about its citizens, Morris argued that we need to strike a balance between how we protect children & the values of free society. Dave McClure of the US Internet Industry Association (USIIA) seconded this point powerfully: If such vast data is retained, it will be abused.

The Next Web | Another concern is whether or not such a law for logging data explicitly for the purpose of federal investigation in some way violates the Constitution. For example, American citizens are entitled to an expectation of privacy. In my opinion, this if you’re just visiting a website in your home that doesn’t have any social features, this activity should be considered private. If, on the other hand, you’re on a site interacting with users, then you’re being less private.

Personally, any proposals for data logging set off my internal Orwellian sensors. The FBI argument will be that more data will allow for better policing of criminal activity, but that’s also the problem: all of the user data collected would be more or less for the purpose of prosecuting people. And the last thing we need in the US is more ways to put people in jail.

Ars Technia | The two-year data retention request has remained consistent over the last four years, even as the Europeans have tightened up many of their data retention policies. That might be, in part, because the US has no equivalent to the EU’s Article 29 Working Group, made of of national data privacy commissioners; here, the push for privacy comes largely from nonprofits outside the government, not from within.

But Europe does face conflicts between its privacy advocates and law enforcement, instructive to consider since the EU is ahead (in a temporal sense) of the US on these issues. While the Article 29 group pushes Internet companies to retain data for no more than six months, the 2006 EU Data Retention Directive requires ISPs and Internet companies to retain certain kinds of data for six months to 24 months. The rule has to be made into law by each EU member state, and was to be fully in place by the end of 2009. Each state can choose whatever retention period it likes best, and can even go beyond two years if desired. (Much like the FBI’s request, the EU rule requires source and destination information, but not the actual contents of communications.)

The US has not adopted either comprehensive data privacy or data retention legislation. The FBI has not been shy about making its views on the matter heard, but the fact that four years have passed without Congress giving the Bureau what it wants shows what a low priority the matter remains.

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Vegetative State Patients Can Respond to Questions  | BBC News

The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method.

Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.

Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.

Costa Rica Elects Female President  | Aljazeera

Costa Ricans have elected their first female president, with Laura Chinchilla, the ruling party candidate, taking 47 per cent of the vote.

Chinchilla declared victory early on Monday, with votes way ahead of her rivals and above the 40 per cent needed to avoid a run-off.

Study Finds Tree Growth Spurt  | The New York Times

Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a new study has found.

The study centered on trees in mixed hardwood stands on the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that are representative of much of the those on the Eastern Seaboard.

All are growing two to four times as fast as normal, according to a study published in Tuesday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Jolly Green (Energy) Giant?

News and analysis…

In light of President Obama’s remarks concerning clean energy during his 2010 State of the Union address and his meeting with the Republican caucus on Jan. 28th, there has been a flurry of media activity concerned with finding out who leads in producing clean energy technology. The answer? China. While a small fraction of China’s domestic energy production currently comes from alternative energy, the Chinese government is actively encouraging the increase of domestic clean energy use. While the United States should hardly emulate China, it is certainly worth considering what the United State’s largest competitor in the realm of energy consumption is doing in the area of clean technology…

The New York Times | TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

Tomas Friedman: Dayton Daily News | China’s leaders know their country is in the midst of the biggest migration of people from the countryside to urban centers in history. This is creating a surge in energy demand which China intends to fill with clean, homegrown sources.

In the last year alone, so many new solar panel makers emerged in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents, according to The Times’s bureau chief here, Keith Bradsher.

With so fevered a push for capacity growth, the Chinese government will take it any way they can get it, and if it means creating a new global industry, all the better. Remember, investor certainty is much less an issue in the Chinese context already, where the government makes the rules and the investments. U.S. companies have no certain market for their products – be it energy equipment or green power – and have no incentive to “bet the house” on E.T.

Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour. And Bradsher noted that China has nearly finished building a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in five hours.

By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.

Clean Techies | Friedman and others may be right that China is doing an exceptional job putting forth a very green face to the world — and, indeed, they are delivering. As Bradsher reports, “China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020….[t]hat compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States.” Bradsher continues, noting correctly, “China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year.”

In other words, while U.S. lawmakers – and even those in the green movement – continue to jostle over where money should be directed (subsidies for green power purchase, green tech research and development, energy efficiency) and debate whether we can stem the anticipated tide of growth in demand for environmental benefit, the Chinese have one directive: more capacity, now! And, a lot of it, from anywhere. They are not shy (nor ambivalent) about capacity growth. After all, it means economic growth.

Reuters | A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.

The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.

The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to “determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period.”

The Washington Post | In the State of the Union Address last Wednesday, President Obama said “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy and America must be that nation.” At the same time, on the other coast, 75 clean energy investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers were debating whether the U.S. can gain this leadership position. They agreed that even though Silicon Valley leads the world in technology, it is not clear if it will ever lead in Cleantech. The Valley may develop some breakthrough technologies, but without government help these are unlikely to translate into global leadership. The technology world is rightfully allergic to government assistance and intervention. Cleantech is different, however, and we aren’t dealing with a level global playing field.

The Knowledge Economy Institute Leadership Summit, which I attended, was held at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), in Emeryville, California. The question posed: what will it take for the U.S. to achieve global leadership in the clean-energy economy? The group concluded that the U.S., by far, has the strongest innovation platform in the world. But other countries may well reap the benefits of its research efforts. China, in particular, is making massive investments and has a huge advantage from focused policy and large markets. Even though China is not likely to produce its own innovation, it will continue to appropriate U.S. technology and gain a major advantage by combining this with its manufacturing prowess. American firms which are increasingly choosing to build design and manufacturing operations in China will provide it with additional advantage.

DAVOS Dairy | In China, the government poured an estimated $440 billion into clean energy last year. It is investing heavily in renewable energy and nuclear power. It also is pursuing efforts to make extraction of its vast coal reserves cleaner. Already home to one-third of the globe’s solar-energy manufacturing capacity and 400 solar-energy companies, China is expected to surpass Spain this year as the No. 3 country in terms of wind power installations, behind Germany and the United States.

William Rhodes, senior vice chairman of Citigroup and board vice chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China relations, predicted that Beijing’s research into storing carbon emissions underground could soon lead to a major breakthrough.

In the United States, meanwhile, President Barack Obama faces an uphill battle in Congress to pass politically-sensitive legislation aimed at capping carbon emissions.

“China has the type of centralized industrial policy that we can’t match and don’t want in the United States or the European Union,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, a U.S. advocacy group. “What we have to compete with China is the power of our marketplace. A clear and declining cap on carbon emissions will send the essential market signal to industry, and that will engage our market directly in this competition.”

Best on the web…

Baptists In Haiti Could Face U.S. Kidnapping Charges | NPR

Haiti’s prime minister said Monday it’s clear to him that the 10 U.S. Baptists who tried to take 33 children out of his quake-ravaged country without permission “knew what they were doing was wrong.”

Prime Minister Max Bellerive said his country is open to having the Americans go before courts in the United States because his own nation’s judicial system was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The aborted Baptist “rescue mission” has become a distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors.

But the prime minister said some legal system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith — as they claim — or are child traffickers in a nation that has struggled to fight exploitation of children.

Al Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment Makes Defense Budget | The Huffington Post

President Barack Obama’s 2011 defense budget proposal includes language that would prevent the government from working with contractors who deny victims of sexual assault the right to their day in court.

Four husbands under Islam | Salon.com

It’s scandalous for a Saudi woman to publicly voice a sense of entitlement to equal rights — but sexual rights in particular? Now, that — that will bring her a lawsuit, threats, slander and infamy. Such is the case for female journalist Nadine Bedair, who recently penned an article for the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Masry Al Youm titled, “My Four Husbands and I.” Mmhm: “My Four Husbands.” You hardly have to read beyond the headline to forecast the shitstorm ahead — but, of course, you’d be missing out on her delightfully daring indictment of polygamy if you didn’t.

Would You Like a Side of Jesus with Your Deadly Weapon?

Analysis…

How ironic that on Martin Luther King Jr. Day ABC broke the story that some U.S. weapons are inscribed with biblical verse references.  Guns with the inscriptions are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places.  These particular guns are produced by the Michigan-based company Trijicon, which has admitted to Biblical meaning behind the inscriptions.  Once again, the blogosphere covers a full spectrum of reactions, from outrage at the symbolism of having Biblical references on weaponry, to defending the right of the company to print whatever they want on their product, to complete indifference.

Religion Clause | Apparently the practice was called to the military’ attention by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. MMRF’s founder, Mikey Weinstein, says members of his group that currently serve in the military have complained about the inscriptions, saying that commanders have referred to the weapons with these sights as “spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.” Interfaith Alliance issued a statement calling on the Defense Department to conduct an immediate investigation and to take appropriate action if Trijicon broke any laws.

Making a Mockery | But, looking back at that quote again, the CentCom spokesperson may actually be on to something, despite him or herself.  The spokesperson argues that our currency has “In God We Trust,” so why should our weapons be free of Christianity?  In a perverse way, that actually makes quite a lot of sense.  Though our money supply serves several purposes, one of its central functions — as articulated by John Perkins in Confessions on an Economic Hitman and Hoodwinked — is to wage a kind of economic war on poor and developing nations, forcing them to open up their markets to our corporations or sell their natural resources for super cheap.  The debt gets passed along to the local population, and the ruling class makes a buck all the while.

So, in a way, it’s almost MORE honest to have Biblical verses on guns if we’re going to keep them on our currency.  Thanks CentCom, for reminding me that wars are waged in more ways than one.

Majikthise | Trijicon should lose the contract and the people responsible for the Bible code fiasco should lose any security clearances they may have. There should be an investigation to determine if anyone inside the military condoned the codes.

It is totally unacceptable for a contractor entrusted with national security to be peddling Christian propaganda. If Trijicon didn’t have enough sense to tell the Pentagon that it was inscribing Christian codes on equipment bound for wars in Muslim countries, it doesn’t deserve our trust. Trijicon is doing the Taliban’s work by reinforcing the perception that the U.S. is waging a Christianist crusade against Muslims.

Religion in American History | Leaving aside the theological issues associated with putting New Testament verses on lethal weapons, the historical connections between conservative evangelicals and the military make this story almost wholly unsurprising. (In fact, a friend pointed out that Trijicon’s practice reminded him of the movie Saving Private Ryan, which portrayed sharpshooter Daniel Jackson reciting Psalms as he sighted his German targets.) Anne Loveland’s book American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military traces the growing influence of conservative evangelicals on the military throughout the post-WWII era. More recently, I talked with Matt Sutton about his current research, which reveals the influence certain generals wielded among evangelicals in the 1950s and 1960s. My own research examines how the Christian right trumpeted missile defense and the stockpiling of nuclear arms as a way of ensuring “peace through strength” in the early 1980s. And proselytizing at the Air Force Academy in recent years led to a lawsuit (later dismissed) and task force recommendations for officers and cadets to foster religious pluralism. Whatever the outcome of the Trijicon case, the historical connections between evangelicals and the military will remain strong.

Winds of Change | So where do I stand on this? On one hand, I’m annoyed at Trijicon for doing this – they’re devout, but not stupid – and they had to know that this would be a significant issue. They have every right to print anything they want on their products, including the unexpurgated text of ‘Ulysses’ but the folks purchasing them have the right to demand that they be ‘Ulysses’-free.

I’m annoyed at the folks in the procurement process who didn’t catch this and deal with it.

I’m going to be incredibly annoyed at the pure-heart activists who are going to demand – DEMAND – that we recall every ACOG in service IMMEDIATELY. Because G** forbid we offend people before we shoot them.

On the Web…

The Evolution of Homeless Chic | Jezebel

Though he was not the first designer to aestheticize poverty — “It’s terrible to say, very often the most exciting outfits are from the poorest people,” Christian Lacroix once told Vogue — John Galliano’s spring 2000 couture collection for Christian Dior is the commonly-given point of origin for the “homeless” “trend.” This was only Galliano’s seventh couture collection for Dior, and the designer explained he had taken his inspiration from the street people he had began noticing along the banks of the Seine after taking up jogging. The collection was crafted from a specially-designed newspaper-printed silk, as well as other luxury fabrics that were ripped, aged, and abraded so that they would appear dirty, and worn with laddered tights.

Why Kids Learn Less When Schools Get Rid of Recess | Change.org

But while school administrators make excuses for why they just can’t handle recess anymore, education and child development researchers are making the case for why it needs to stay. As it turns out, forcing a child to sit inside for hours on end, with no physical or social outlet, causes a host of behavioral and learning problems, not to mention an inactive lifestyle that could contribute to childhood obesity.

A growing body of research supports the idea that physical exercise is essential for learning. For one thing, recess provides the opportunity for peer interaction, which can increase social skills and creative problem-solving. Recess also provides a much-needed break from focused academic activity, which can improve attention and retention of information, especially for kids pegged with attention problems for fidgeting and disruptive behavior in class (can you really blame them?).

US Faith-Based Group Sends Solar Powered Audio Bibles to Haiti | TreeHugger

In the stream of goods that are pouring in to aid the relief effort in Haiti, one will certainly stand out–a solar powered audio Bible. Instead of food, water, or medical supplies, US faith-based group Faith Comes By Hearing has opted to send 600 audible bibles, which are currently en route to the Port-au-Prince.

Each of the units can broadcast the scriptures in Haitian Creole to an audience of up to 300 people.

Divorce and Proposition 8

Analysis…

Advocates of Proposition 8 may now use new findings to support their case:  Research shows that states that have enacted a same sex marriage ban carry statistically higher divorce rates.  Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight writes:

Overall, the states which had enacted a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as of 1/1/08 saw their divorce rates rise by 0.9 percent over the five-year interval. States which had not adopted a constitutional ban, on the other hand, experienced an 8.0 percent decline, on average, in their divorce rates. Eleven of the 24 states (46 percent) to have altered their constitutions by 1/1/08 to ban gay marriage experienced an overall decline in their divorce rates, but 13 of the 19 which hadn’t did (68 percent).

Silver’s research has prompted dialogue across the blogoshpere.  Here are some of the opinions regarding Proposition 8 that are floating about the web:

The Mahablog |  As you can see, states that have gone to the trouble of banning same-sex marriage, and in particular when it’s banned by constitutional amendment rather than merely by statute, tend to have higher divorce rates.
And the state with the highest divorce rate, Alaska, also was the first to add a same-sex marriage ban to its constitution, in 1998.
Maybe the secret to a happy marriage is to marry a gay Buddhist.

Matthew Yglesias |  The theory that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will somehow “undermine” heterosexual couples’ marriages is almost too silly to investigate. But for the record, Nate Silver determines that banning gay marriage is statistically associated with elevated divorce rate.
One seriously doubts that this sort of research would be persuasive to anyone. Certainly if the sign on the coefficient of correlation had gone the other way, I wouldn’t suddenly become an opponent of marriage equality.
Taylor Marsh |  Ted Olson states, “First – Marriage is vitally important in American society.
Second – By denying gay men and lesbians the right to marry, Proposition 8 works a grievous harm on the plaintiffs and other gay men and lesbians throughout California, and adds yet another chapter to the long history of discrimination they have suffered.
Third – Proposition 8 perpetrates this irreparable, immeasurable, discriminatory harm for no good reason.”
Nothing is more basic than being able to commit to your partner. It doesn’t matter the gender or sexual persuasion. It’s fundamental to our very soul nature to reach out and have the choice of this emotional, physical and spiritual realization. It’s flatly un-American to deny it to anyone.

News…

Unemployment: The 2010 Time Bomb  | Alternet

New figures show jobs were lost in December at ten times the expected rate.
American employers eliminated 4.2 million jobs in 2009 and sent unemployment soaring into double digits for the first time in more than a quarter century.
Since the fall of last year, the official jobless rate has been over ten percent, while the unofficial rate (taking in the severely underemployed and those who have given up looking) has been over 17 percent.
And, despite the ridiculous “green-shoots” speculation of the Obama administration and overblown “recovery” fantasies of the financial media that has blown every major economic story of recent years, the situation is getting worse.

A Risky Proposal  |  The New Yorker

On January 11th, a remarkable legal case opens in a San Francisco courtroom—on its way, it seems almost certain, to the Supreme Court. Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California referendum that, in November, 2008, overturned a state Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry.
The Olson-Boies team hopes for a ruling that will transform the legal and social landscape nationwide, something on the order of Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, or Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

New Jersey Assembly Approves Medical Marijuana  |  Truthout

New Jersey would become the 14th state in the nation to allow medical marijuana, under a bill that received final approval from the Assembly today and is expected to be posted for a vote in the Senate later today.
Gov. Corzine is expected to sign the bill within the next several days, during his last week as governor, if it receives final approval in the Senate. The law would go into effect six months after it is enacted.
Advocates have worked for years to legalize the medical use of marijuana in New Jersey.

Church, State and the Common Good

If I would’ve started a pool as to what issue would be the first to catch my attention in this new year, my money would not have been riding on church and state.   That is, at least, until I discovered what may seem like a relatively obscure action of taken by the Board of Aldermen from my hometown of Centralia, MO.  In their final meeting of 2009 they discussed three proposed ordinances that would have amended the city code’s non-discrimination protections to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” a change that I welcome and support.  Unfortunately the meeting ended with a failure to pass the proposed changes by a vote of 4-2. However it wasn’t the inaction of the aldermen that concerned me; it was the religious activism on the part of a local pastor.  Here’s an excerpt of coverage from the local newspaper:

One speaker, for example, was Larry Lewis, interim pastor of the Centralia [First] Baptist Church. Suggesting he spoke for “Centralia’s faith community,” he said the ordinances violated the separation of church and state and would, among other things, give the city’s stamp of approval to those lifestyles. “This would be divisive when this community needs healing.”

This prompted me to look into the proposed ordinances for myself, and I was disappointed but not surprised to discover that the language of the bills included very specific exemptions for churches and other religious institutions and organizations.  (I write more about this at my own blog.)  The claim that the bills violated the separation clause was nothing more than political grandstanding designed to provide a supposedly “legal” cover for the public moralizing of an exclusivist religious perspective.  In actuality, this no-holds-barred attempt by so-called Christian interests to codify their own morality proved to be the greater threat to the separation clause.  In instances such as this, the dual meaning of “separation of church and state” is too often forgotten.  The first amendment not only protects religious institutions from encroachment by the state, but protects the state, and by extension its citizens, from the encroachment of religion.

I discovered that I wasn’t alone in this new year’s concern.  As I wrote about the moral tyranny of religion in local politics, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State wondered about similar issues at the national level.  They recently posted a report offering a look at President Obama’s record on this issue after one year.  Their findings aren’t nearly as gleeful as those on the Religious Right might have you believe:

There’s no denying that when Obama took office, many who stand guard on the church-state wall breathed a sigh of relief. The previous eight years had been difficult ones, and there was a sense that things had to get better because they really couldn’t get any worse.

…

But that doesn’t mean everything Obama has done has pleased advocates of church-state separation. Indeed, the Obama record on church and state is mixed. One year later, it’s a good time to step back and assess his record so far.

Lifting up Obama’s decision to open federal funding for stem cell research and inclusion of minority and non-religious voices in his speeches and public functions as highlights, this report goes on to address areas of concern.  Noting the President’s rather ambiguous record regarding appointments to federal judgeships, including the appointment of Justice Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the report goes on to raise real questions with regard to the administration’s positions concerning faith-based initiatives, school voucher programs, and church/state cases being pursued by the Department of Justice.  While I don’t necessarily share these concerns to the same extent that Americans United might, I do think they make legitimate points about Obama’s record on the separation between religion and politics.

Yet, as important as these collisions between religion and politics are, I’m left with a troubling question: If we are to honor the non/religious pluralism of our contemporary society, how do we effectively work to promote the common good?  And perhaps even more importantly, how do we even determine a common good?  While it should be apparent that I support the liberal (lowercase “L”) ideal of tolerance, I’m not blind to its problems.  Ethicist and scholar David Hollenbach perhaps describes them best:

In public life, all encompassing understandings of the common good must be subordinated to the importance of tolerance.  A live-and-let-live ethos thus leads to what John Dewey once called an “eclipse of the public.”  The good that can be achieved in the shared domain of public life is hidden from view as protection of individual, private well-being becomes the center of normative concern.

(David Hollenbach, The Common God and Christian Ethics, 10)

In an age of religious and nonreligious sectarianism, competing political visions, and outright discord and distrust, how do we seek out a vision for the shared good?  The health care debate that spanned the entirety of 2009 really exemplifies the difficulties we face.  The cries of nationalized health care and “death panels” drowned out the voices of reason for a rational public discussion.  And to make matters worse, this non-debate effectively silenced discussions on other important issues such as the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, apprehension, detainment and trial of suspected terrorists, and the plight of the poor, which extends to far more basic concerns than health care.

It is my hope for 2010 that we as a nation will work to find some means for engaging in national discussions that don’t automatically degenerate into shouting matches and propaganda wars.  Yet looking back at 2009, I’m left to wonder if we can actually summon the ethical wherewithal to make that hope a reality.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies?

Analysis …

U.S. security officials spent the weekend scrambling to assure the airline-flying public that security measures are in place after a Nigerian man was arrested in a Christmas Day, botched attempt to detonate explosives on a Northwest Airlines flight. According to the Associated Press, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who was arrested this weekend in the alleged plot, has claimed to have received training from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen, a U.S. law enforcement official said. Bloggers wondered after the incident whether increased security would make fliers safer or just more stressed, while others began connecting dots between the political situations of Nigeria and Yemen, and al-Qaida’s presence there.

Tech Crunch |  “Before I begin, let me just state that TSA has yet to confirm any of this on its website, so the details aren’t entirely clear at the moment. That said, there are several indications that orders have been issued to cease the use of electronics during international flights. Yes, that means no laptops, no iPods, no Kindles, no CD players, no portable DVD players, no Nintendo DSes — nothing that requires any sort of power on these flights. If this is true, it’s absolutely awful news. … the simple fact is that if the TSA was really this seriously worried about electronic devices, they could have banned them anytime since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Instead, they’re doing it more than 8 years later after a man apparently lit some sort of mixture of powder and liquid in his lap. How that relates to electronics, I’m not sure. This just reeks of a “well, we have to do something” move.”

Alas, a Blog |  “So the guy got some chemicals on that could have maybe started a fire, but weren’t explosive. That’s not particularly scary. Oh, sure, it would be frightening in the moment. But you can’t bring a plane down with an incendiary device. Not even close. In a way, this is the sort of “attack” that proves that terror countermeasures are working. If this is the best al Qaeda and its sympathizers1 can do…well, it’s pretty pathetic. Basically, they’re as frightening as your high school friend who discovered you can set hair spray on fire. Both could hurt someone, other than themselves. But that would be more by chance than by design.”

Hillbilly Report |  “Despite what the final truth may be of the man’s motives and whether he acted alone or not a couple of things immediately jump out at me about this attack. Number one, this shows that sending our troops to Afghanistan and Iraq supposedly to “fight them there so we do not have to fight them here” is obviously playing out a flawed policy by the previous chickenhawks to go to war at all costs and even to a certain extent the current leadership. Their prescence there did nothing to stop this man from boarding plane and trying to blow it up. Perhaps it is better to have our troops here in America to protect the American people.”

Hot Air |  “The priority for this administration should not be “emptying out” Gitmo. It should be securing the US and defeating our enemy.  Our enemy now operates with near-impunity from Yemen and has already conducted two attacks on the US, one of which resulted in 14 deaths and the other could have killed hundreds in the air and others on the ground.  Allowing 95 of their allies to run back to Yemen now would demonstrate the victory of political expediency over national security.  It’s time to close the revolving door on Gitmo and keep the terrorists where we can make sure they don’t attack Americans again.”

• Related link: Bomb Complicates Gitmo Plan  |  Politico

The Agitator |  “If you’re really cynical, you could make a good argument that they’re really only interested in the appearance of safety. They’ve simply concluded that the more difficult they make your flight, the safer you’ll feel. Never mind if any of the theatrics actually work.”

Best of the Web …

Don’t Tread on Me: I Homeschool  |  Miller-McCune

While many of the old arguments against homeschooling have corroded (namely that certified teachers, in the majority of cases, can educate better than parents and that homeschooled children will grow up bewilderingly sheltered from the “real” world), there always seems to be new fronts in this distinctly American culture war.

Culture war. That’s really what homeschooling signifies circa 2009: a sound rejection of the splintering mainstream (and, perhaps now, the perceived heavy hand of an Obama nanny-state) out of deep ideological or personal convictions. Roughly half, and perhaps more, of these homeschoolers are drawn from an evangelical Christian subculture that’s more than wary of encroaching secularism. For these parents, there’s no more pronounced statement than this: “I’ll educate my children however I please — and don’t stand in my way.”

But as the practice rapidly grows — it has seen more than 74 percent increase since 1999 and estimates peg the current number of those homeschooled between 1.5 and 2 million students — it might be time to consider some sensible oversight.

The Blind Side’s Blind Spot  |  GOOD Magazine

Many have poked fun at President Obama’s oft-repeated campaign line, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” but it actually carries a positive and true message that applies here. We can’t sit around and hope that a wealthy family like the Tuohys will step up and help a child in need. The rest of us can do it, too. Of course, not everyone can take a child into their home and provide food, clothing, and a private tutor. But most adults can volunteer to tutor a struggling elementary school student after school, or mentor a middle schooler as she deals with the challenges of adolescence, or help a high school junior prepare for the SAT and the college admissions process. Regularly spending time with a student, especially over an extended period of time, can make a profound impact on her or his life.

Rethinking Work: How About We Take Activism Seriously  |  Global Comment

A government that doesn’t provide for its people, after all, depends on charities—nonprofits–to do its work for it. And nonprofit work requires an acknowledgment that you’re not in it for the money. Especially for those of us in left causes, we are pressured constantly to work harderfastermore! “for the cause,” and we’re not supposed to care about money. At least, I presume, at right-wing think tanks and organizations, they openly worship the Dollar and wouldn’t dream of working for less than bloated compensation packages. But do we have to think that money is the only incentive to work hard in order to be treated fairly?

Activism is often an extracurricular activity—we have day jobs, sometimes more than one, and then we work overtime and weekends volunteering for causes that matter. And to some degree the work keeps us alive and going. It is fulfilling and refreshing in a way that our day job is not.

But it is also work.

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