Senate Fails on Dream Act

Posted: December 18, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, Democratic Politics, Human Rights, jobs, legislation | Tags: , | 12 Comments

People are NOT Political Pinatas

Right after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had an influx of Mexican workers.  Many spent their evenings at Vaughn’s because owner Cindy has a house in Mexico and has a lot of cantina music on the juke box.  She also runs a gift store that sells native art from all over Mexico.  There’s a side room  with a TV that’s mostly on soccer too.  We’re a very welcoming neighborhood.   The upper 9 is pretty diverse and tolerate.  We’re known as the place where the gay community, artists, writers and musicians live as well as a huge number of working class people.  It’s an inner city hood.  Make no doubt about that. Most of the neighborhood didn’t didn’t flood since it’s so close to the Mississippi. It was a natural place for recovery workers to dwell.   We’re one mile east of the French Quarter via the River Road.  Close enough to walk, bike or take the shuttle, but far enough to miss Mardi Gras madness and tourists.

Anyway, I got to meet a young man in his early 20s there.  He was extremely cute, had a wicked crush on my neighbor, and you wouldn’t know he was Mexican because he could barely speak Spanish.  He’d been brought to the country as a baby and was educated in U.S. schools.  For all intents and purposes, Juan is a typical American young adult about the age of my oldest daughter.  But, if he were picked up by ICE, he would be sent back to a country where he knows no one, can’t speak the language very well, and has absolutely no attachments.  Why would we do that?  His story compelled me to find out more about the Dream Act.  I can’t see visiting the ‘sins’ of the elders on kids like these.  Current immigration policy is way too harsh.

Evidently, Senate Republicans and RINOs disagree with me.

The Senate failed Juan and many other kids of various foreign births in similar situations. (I was surprised to find how many Irish and New Zealand illegals we have in New Orleans so it’s not just all about Mexicans, but their numbers are obviously larger.)  This information is from the NYT and David Herszenhorn. To me, Passing the Dream Act should’ve been a no brainer.  The Republicans held together in their block of “no to everything we didn’t think of” and then there were the usual RINOs like Ben Nelson who represent the neanderthal wing of the Democratic Party.

The Senate on Saturday blocked a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for certain young illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements, including passing a criminal background check.

The vote by 55-41 in favor of the bill, which is known as the Dream Act, effectively kills it for this year, and its fate is uncertain. The measure needed the support of 60 senators to cut off a filibuster and bring it to the floor.

Supporters said they were heartened that the measure won the backing of a majority of the Senate. They said they would continue to press for it, either on its own or as part of a wide immigration overhaul that some Democrats hope to undertake next year and believe could be an area of cooperation with Republicans, who will control a majority in the House

Most immediately, the measure would have helped grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students and recent graduates whose lives are severely restricted though many have lived in the United States for nearly their entire lives.

Young Hispanic men and women filled the spectator galleries of the Senate, many of them wearing graduation caps and tassels in a symbol of their support for the bill. They held hands in a prayerful gesture as the clerk called the roll and many looked stricken as its defeat was announced.

President Obama had personally lobbied lawmakers in support the bill. But Democrats were not able to hold ranks.

Five Democrats joined Republicans in opposing the bill. They were Democratic Senators Max Baucus of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Jon Tester of Montana.

I’ve never been sure why we make it so hard for people to get citizenship here.  My Lama–a Sherpa from Nepal– just got his citizenship last year via his religious VISA and green card being the lama at our Dharma Center.  I’m sponsoring his young son who just started at UNO and wants to be a doctor. His daughter is in Massachusetts now with other sangha family going to community college.  I’ve been sponsoring Sherpas for some time now.

There are lots of students I meet from other countries that major in areas where we could used some help.  Of course, any service to our country through military or other duty should be rewarded.  But, some folks just cling to some xenophobic idea of being overrun by outsiders or something.  This confuses me because if some one really wants to be an American and contribute, we should reward it.  We shouldn’t make villains of the very people that want to be us.  The senate garnered 55 votes.  That’s a clear majority.  Something is very wrong right now with the beltway.  So many people’s lives should not be held hostage by a belligerent minority.  People are not political pinatas.

Defense Department Study Shows Few Problems with Ending DADT

Posted: November 30, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, GLBT Rights, Human Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 58 Comments

Here is a summary of the report at DOD Live:

U.S. Army Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the study found that 50 to 55 percent of people surveyed said there would be no major effect if the repeal passed, while 15 to 20 percent said they’d expect a positive change. Only 30 percent said repeal would have a negative impact.

Ham indicated that he doesn’t think repeal would be harmful, if handled properly and performed deliberately. He said the leadership today has the ability to implement a new policy and maintain unit cohesion.

There is still a lot of discussion required, Ham said, but the military should begin planning now. “The best way for us to think about this is as a contingency plan,” Ham said. “Our report lays out the groundwork for actions that we recommend, if repeal does come.”

You can read the full report here.

From The Boston Globe: Pentagon study finds overturning “don’t ask, don’t tell” will do little long-term harm.

A long-awaited Pentagon report released today concluded that overturning the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would do little long-term harm to morale or military effectiveness, dispelling chief arguments opponents have had with allowing gay and lesbian service members to serve openly.

The report’s release shifts the focus on the issue to moderate members of the Senate, including Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who had said they wanted to read the report before voting on whether to end the policy.

The House has passed a bill overturning the policy, but a Republican-led threat of a filibuster halted a similar effort in the Senate in the fall….

The study, conducted over ten months, found that 70 percent of troops surveyed believed that repealing the law would have mixed, positive, or no impact. The other 30 percent felt there would be negative consequences if gays were allowed to serve openly, with opposition strongest among combat troops.

Secretary Gates is strongly recommending that Congress and the President complete the repeal of the law before the end of this year. He held a long press conference earlier today. Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun-Times published the transcript. Here is an excerpt:

Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell after a number of steps take place – the last being certification by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman that the new policies and regulations were consistent with the U.S. military’s standards of readiness, effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention. Now that we have completed this review, I strongly urge the Senate to pass this legislation and send it to the president for signature before the end of this year.

I believe this is a matter of some urgency because, as we have seen this past year, the federal courts are increasingly becoming involved in this issue. Just a few weeks ago, one lower-court ruling forced the Department into an abrupt series of changes that were no doubt confusing and distracting to men and women in the ranks. It is only a matter of time before the federal courts are drawn once more into the fray, with the very real possibility that this change would be imposed immediately by judicial fiat – by far the most disruptive and damaging scenario I can imagine, and the one most hazardous to military morale, readiness and battlefield performance.

Therefore, it is important that this change come via legislative means – that is, legislation informed by the review just completed. What is needed is a process that allows for a well-prepared and well-considered implementation. Above all, a process that carries the imprimatur of the elected representatives of the people of the United States. Given the present circumstances, those that choose not to act legislatively are rolling the dice that this policy will not be abruptly overturned by the courts.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, that was seen as a thinly veiled “warning to John McCain.”
[MABlue here]
BostonBoomer was much faster with her post. I wanted to add this video showing McCain bizarre behavior on DADT. What a creep!

Meanwhile, opponents of repeal are shifting their arguments.

The ball is now in the Congress’s court. What will President Obama do now to prevent gays from serving openly in the military? Or will he actually support repeal of this discriminatory and unjust law?

Stay tuned.

Late Night: A Spooky Tale

Posted: November 29, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, just because, Surreality | Tags: , , , , , , | 56 Comments

Those of us who remember the revelations of the Church Committee in the 1970s are at least somewhat familiar with the CIA’s Project MK ULTRA, a ghastly program that sponsored research on human subjects carried out by respected professors at prestigious universities.

Senator Edward Kennedy, 1977:

Some 2 years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an “extensive testing and experimentation” program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens “at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.” Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to “unwitting subjects in social situations.”

One example is the CIA-sponsored work of famed personality psychologist Henry Murray at Harvard. Murray used Harvard students to carry out “research” in which he attempted to break down an individual’s defenses:

Henry Murray’s experiment was intended to measure how people react under stress. Murray subjected his unwitting students, including Kaczynski, to intensive interrogation — what Murray himself called “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” attacks, assaulting his subjects’ egos and most-cherished ideals and beliefs.

MK ULTRA researchers also famously dosed numerous people with LSD to see how they would react. Murray himself used LSD–he and Timothy Leary were on the Harvard psychology department faculty at the same time–and Murray may have administered the drug to his student subjects, one of whom was named Ted Kaczynski. That’s right, the man who later became the Unibomber.

Anyone who remembers this history could not be surprised by the collaboration of psychologists with the CIA in developing techniques of torture “enhanced interrogation” during the Bush years.

And now, all these years later, according to Raw Story,

A group of military veterans are suing to get the CIA to come clean about allegedly implanting remote control devices in their brains.

Whoa!

A 2009 lawsuit (.pdf) claimed that the CIA intended to design and test septal electrodes that would enable them to control human behavior. The lawsuit said that because the government never disclosed the risks, the subjects were not able to give informed consent.

Bruce Price, one plaintiff in the lawsuit, believes that MRI scans confirm that the CIA placed a device in his brain in 1966.

Recently, US Magistrate Judge James Larson ordered the CIA to:

produce records and testimony regarding the experiments conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975.

Dakinikat may be interested to know that much of this “research” was carried out at Tulane University.

According to the attorney for the Veterans, Gordon P. Erspamer:

papers filed in the case describe “electrical devices implanted in brain tissue with electrodes in various regions, including the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, the frontal lobe (via the septum), the cortex and various other places.”

Tulane claims they can’t produce any documents because they were lost during Hurricane Katrina.

This all sounds nuts, I know. But Jeff Stein, who writes the “Spy Talk” column at the Washington Post writes:

It’s not just science fiction — or the imaginings of the mentally ill.

In 1961, a top CIA scientist reported in an internal memo that “the feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated…Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man,” according to “The CIA and the Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” a 1979 book by former State Department intelligence officer John Marks.

“[T]his cold-blooded project,” Marks wrote, “was designed … for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for ‘executive action-type operations,’ according to a document. ‘Executive action’ was the CIA’s euphemism for assassination.”

The CIA pursued such experiments because it was convinced the Soviets were doing the same.

Spooky, huh?

“Chertoff’s naked-screening and the sinister drumbeat of fear”

Posted: November 27, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights | Tags: , , , | 31 Comments

So, I’m in the compare and contrast type of mood today.  Two New Yorkers have weighed in on the ongoing TSA Gate Rape.  Over at the NYT, it’s Roger Cohen from London–New Yorker by job–on ‘The Real Threat to America’.  The quote in the title is the end line from his op-ed.    Over at the NYP, it’s the proverbial nitwit, Republican (NY) Representative Peter King and his title tells all.  That would be ‘Qaeda the enemy – not TSA screeners’.

Guess which man loves our country and our Constitution?  The Britwit or the Nitwit?

Cohen has a remarkable sense of humor.  He suggests that if we ever do get Osama bin Laden that we should “Rotate him in perpetuity through this security hell, “groin checks” and all”.  If ever there was an indication that terrorists have won,  it’s that we’ve now lasted longer than the USSR in the bedouin country of Afghanistan and we’re all considered terrorist wannabes now.  Yup my 87 year old, WW2 decorated Dad and your 2 year old grandchild are threats as we now know it.

What’s next?  Pat downs at every holiday event because some Somalian teenager fell for an FBI sting operation?  Will holiday tree lighting ceremonies see the next set of installations of  “Chertoff’s naked-screening” machines?  If so, let me go buy the stock.  I want a piece of THAT action so I can go buy my own plane and dust off the old pilot’s license.  ( I used to fly in corporate jets a lot in the 80s.  It bothered me that the pilot was the only one who knew how to land the plane.)

So, let’s visit the hysterical and paranoid King’s hyperbole.  You know, the kind that gets you reelected in a solid Republican District.

As a conservative, I find it disappointing that so many on the right taking issue with the TSA sound like left-wing liberals.

It reminds me of when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani stepped up police activity in New York City. Liberals were against it and argued that stop-and-frisks violated people’s civil rights.

But conservatives knew that it was necessary to bring law and order to New York. We were right, and it saved lives.

I have enough faith in TSA chief John Pistole — as nonpartisan a person you can find in government — that he wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t think it right.

For all we know we could find out six months from now these machines aren’t as good as we think they are and there’s another way to do it without the pat-downs.

But for now let’s at least assume that John Pistole and the TSA are well-intentioned and they are doing the right thing based on the information available to them right now.

Excuse me while I Godwin and think that maybe this is akin to the Germans thinking they should just give the S.S. a chance to do their jobs because the government knows best about ‘perceived threats’.  That very well could include your 60 year old butcher!  Yes?

Oh, and let me put this in perspective for you.   “Peter King is a Long Island GOP congressman and soon-to- be chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.”   Doesn’t that make you feel better about the future of this country?  That would be up to and including the viability of commercial airlines in the next few years. I just hope every stock plan I’ve been forced to invest in by the State of Louisiana doesn’t hold any airline stocks.  Next time, I’m going Greyhound or Mustang.

Cohen’s op-ed–in contrast to the abrasive King–talks about the undie bomber and the shoe bomber and demonstrates how one failed plot after another has led to “another blanket layer of T.S.A checks, including dubious gropes, to the daily humiliations of travelers”.  He’s right.  None of these things were functional and that doesn’t even appear to matter.  Which brings me back to the idea of buying stock in the new KBR and Halliburton government-fund-leaching corporations hawking security measures.  Exactly how much of this involves our safety instead of their profit motives and the political donations they can offer well-positioned pols like King?  Check this Cohen tidbit out.

There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year. One of the people pushing them most energetically is Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security.

He’s the co-founder and managing principal of the Chertoff Group, which provides security advice. One of its clients is California-based Rapiscan Systems, part of the OSI Systems corporation, that makes many of the “whole body” scanners being installed.

Chertoff has recently been busy rubbishing Martin Broughton, the wise British Airways chairman who said many security checks were redundant — calling him “ill-informed.” Early this year Chertoff called on Congress to “fund a large-scale deployment of next-generation systems.”

Rapiscan and its adviser the Chertoff Group will certainly profit from the deployment underway (some of the machines were bought with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Americans as a whole will not.

Rapiscan: Say the name slowly. It conjures up a sinister science fiction. When a government has a right to invade the bodies of its citizens, security has trumped freedom.

RapE-a-Scan or Pillage-The-Treasury?  Or both?  Your call.

Just for good measure, Cohen adds the 4th amendment to the conversation.  Good place to start this discussion.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Lest we forget what a bunch of people thought their soldiers have died fighting for–I might add–let it not be the profits of any more of these blood sucking government sponsored corporations.  Chertoff should be run out of the country; tar and feathered, on the nearest rail.  I’d like to extend that courtesy to Pete King too.  But first, let’s make sure that both of them spend plenty of time in a crotch groping session with the TSA.  Then, let’s put their nudie scans on the internet where we all can see the demi-emperors with  no clothes.

Hate is NOT a family value!!!

Posted: November 25, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Rights, GLBT Rights, Marriage Equality | Tags: , , | 27 Comments

I wanted to pass this link on from  WAPO because I think it’s got an important message in it today.  You cannot hide hate behind religion and expect people to remain silent.  We know who you are and we know what your agenda is.  You cannot hide behind a bible any more than slave owners and wife beaters can.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been an important voice in civil rights for a very long time  Today,  ” they labeled as “hate groups” several political and religious organizations that campaign against same-sex marriage and, the center says, engage in “repeated, groundless name-calling” against gays and lesbians.”
Good for them!!!

Included on the list released by the civil rights organization is the Family Research Council, a prominent and politically influential group of social conservatives. The report by the law center, which has spent four decades tracking extremist groups and hate speech, accuses the council and a dozen other groups of putting out “demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities.”

The report, which has sparked debate across the Internet, taps into the continuing potency of social issues, such as same-sex marriage, in American politics. Several of the groups described in the report supported a successful effort to oust state Supreme Court judges in Iowa because of a unanimous ruling last year that legalized same-sex unions.

The Family Research Council has been at the forefront of political activism against same-sex marriage. In explaining the decision to put the council on its hate-groups list, the law center highlighted comments by Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the council, who told MSNBC host Chris Matthews this year that he thinks “homosexual behavior” should be outlawed.

Council President Tony Perkins, who was also named in the report, called the hate-group designation a political attack by a “liberal organization.”

“The left’s smear campaign of conservatives is . . . being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state . . . that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so,” Perkins said in a statement.

I cannot figure out why ‘marriage’ needs defending against anything.  Any institution that’s viable will stand the test of time and public support.  The defense of marriage is not more than a horrible campaign to exclude people that don’t meet specific physical criteria defend by a bunch of narrow minded bigots.

It’s about time we label them all what they are.  They are hate-groups.  Now, if we could only get CNN and other MSM outlets to start treating them like the KKK which is another organization that tries to define its insidious form of hatred behind religion too.

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