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Fear of prosecution caused Cheney to speak out, daughter says in Fox & CNN Interviews. Daughter is making TV rounds with this meme for her dad. Fox Video at this link and quotes from interviews as well as CNN video on the flip.
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Vice President Dick Cheney decided to speak out after learning that President Barack Obama might open prosecutions of former Bush Administration officials, his daughter disclosed Thursday.
Elizabeth Cheney told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that her father decided to speak out after he learned there was a possibility of legal action.
"He certainly did not plan when he left office to be doing this," Cheney’s daughter said. "But I think as we watched in those very first days and weeks after President Obama came into office when he released the memos that lay out for the terrorists — the techniques we used to question them. Then when he suggested in the Oval Office itself that he would be open to the prosecution of former Bush administration officials including many who weren’t political appointees potentially, you know really, I think, made my dad realize this was just fundamentally wrong. We had to speak out."
CNN Video:
Last Sunday, in Torture News Roundup: Cheney's Screwed, I listed some of the evidence against Cheney.
There is a damning CIA Report that should be released by President Obama soon. Jason Leopold gives a few tidbits of information contained in that report as revealed in a book by Jane Mayer in Cheney Intervened in CIA Inspector General's Torture Probe.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney intervened in CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's investigation into the agency's use of torture against "high-value" detainees, but the watchdog was still able to prepare a report that concluded the interrogation program violated some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture.
The report, which the Obama administration may soon declassify, was completed in May 2004 and implicated CIA interrogators in at least three detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq and referred eight criminal cases of alleged homicide, abuse and misconduct to the Justice Department for further investigation, reporter Jane Mayer wrote in her book, "The Dark Side," and in an investigative report published in The New Yorker in November 2005.
... "Cheney loomed over everything," the former CIA officer told Mayer. "The whole IG's office was completely politicized. They were working hand in glove with the White House."
But Mayer said Cheney's intervention in Helgerson's probe proved that as early as 2004 "the Vice President's office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in the [torture] Program." Helgerson has denied that he was pressured by Cheney.
Torture and Prosecution News
- Legal fight for release of terror douments.
The High Court was urged today to order full disclosure of correspondence from America setting out the Obama administration's current stance on whether US intelligence outlining its agents' treatment of former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed should be made public.
Lawyers for Foreign Secretary David Miliband argued that the full text of letters between the US and UK governments must be protected by "public interest immunity".
But Ben Jaffey, for Mr Mohamed, said the public interest in disclosure – even if confined to lawyers involved in the case – was not outweighed by any coherent reason presented by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
- Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements. (Article includes other omissions and misstatements by Cheney)
Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding - simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture - forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."
He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al-Qaida organization that was attacking this country."
In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.
FBI Director Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think the techniques disrupted any attacks.
- Rehab the Terrorists...With Love.
What should Obama do about hard-core Gitmo cases? The Saudis have had success with a program that has nothing to do with waterboarding. Try money, cars, and wives.
The 240 detainees who remain in Guantánamo Bay are the radioactive waste of the war on terror. Earlier this week, the problem of their safe disposal provoked the first serious congressional upset of the Obama presidency, and they were the central theme of the president’s speech Thursday. Obama conceded that he cannot achieve his keynote ambition to close Guantánamo until he can resolve this dilemma.
So what is to be done with ex-terrorists? Can they ever be recycled safely? On Friday night on PBS NOW, I take a look at the unusual answer that Saudi Arabia has been developing to the question: Treat the boys nice—and rather more than nice, if necessary. At the rehab facility I visited in Riyadh, I met bearded jihadis off the jet from Gitmo who’d been enticed to reform with the offer of a car, a job—and even a wife.
Political News
- RNC uses controversial 'Daisy' ad to target Obama.
The Republican National Committee Friday unearthed one of the most controversial political ads in American history to take aim at President Obama's decision to close the detention center in Guantanamo Bay.
Called "Daisy," The RNC's new 30-second Web ad uses footage of the now-infamous 1964 Lyndon Johnson commercial by the same name that showed a young girl picking off the petals of a flower as a nuclear explosion is heard in the background.
That ad, which only ran once but was widely criticized as being extreme, ends with the image of a mushroom crowd and Johnson declaring, "We must either love each other, or we must die."
The New RNC ad splices the image of the girl with Obama's earlier declaration suggesting that closing Guantanamo Bay is "easy." This time the girl asks "To close it? To close it not?" as she picks off flower petals.
- Steele: Obama wasn't vetted because he's black.
Days after announcing an "aggressive new approach" in confronting President Obama, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Friday that the president hadn't been properly vetted because he is black.
"The problem that we have with this president is we don't know him. He was not vetted, folks. He came out of nowhere," Steele told listeners to Bill Bennett's radio show Friday morning. "....We don't know his political background, we don't know his political philosophy, the ideology that shapes his thinking on policy.
"He was not vetted, because the press fell in love with the black man running for the office. 'Oh gee, wouldn't it be neat to do that? Gee, wouldn't it make all of our liberal guilt just go away? We could continue to ride around in our limousines and feel so lucky be alive and in an America with a black president,'" said Steele. "Okay, that's wonderful — great scenario, nice backdrop. But what does he stand for? What does he believe?
- Obama court pick may come next week.
A top aide to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy told fellow Democrats on Friday to get ready for President Obama's Supreme Court pick to come as early as next week, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN.
"It is possible the President will designate his nominee to the Supreme Court as early as next Tuesday or some time next week," Jeremy Paris, Leahy's chief counsel for nominations, wrote in the e-mail to fellow Democratic aides.
- Lawmaker wants to make 2010 'Year of the Bible'.
When the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) hopes you’ll be ringing in "the Year of the Bible."
...Broun’s simple congressional resolution aimed at honoring the Good Book has produced a push-back of biblical proportion in the blogosphere, with critics dismissing it as either unconstitutional or a waste of time. Jews in Congress and atheist activists are dismissing the resolution, while none of the many Democrats in Congress who are Christian have bothered to sign on as co-sponsors.
..."Does that mean 2009 is not the year of the Bible?" mocked Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is Jewish. "What is 2012 the year of? The Quran?"
- Ronald Reagan statue in London.
The former US ambassador apparently thought it a good idea. His replacement, when Barack Obama eventually names him, may not be so keen.
An interior designer from Chelsea who is a leading light in the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group has won approval for a statue of the great American conservative Ronald Reagan to be erected outside the US Embassy in London. The project was given the nod on Thursday night by Westminster City Council’s planning sub-committee in a break with its policy of allowing memorials only to people who have been dead for at least ten years. The former US President died in 2004 aged 93.
- Pooper-scooper Bush on life after the White House.
There is a moment in the life of most former world leaders when the reality of losing office finally hits home.
For George W Bush that moment came when Barney the dog made an unwelcome deposit on a neighbourhood pavement.
Bush – who left the White House just over four months ago – told a graduating high school class in New Mexico this week that his readjustment to a normal existence had been brought sharply into relief while taking the dog for a walk and encountering the hazards that entails.
...He said this new life became complicated when his Scottish terrier made a mess. "And there I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag on my hand," he recalled. "Life is returning back to normal."
War News
- Iraqi Army: almost one-quarter lacks minimum qualifications.
In a legacy of the US rush to build up Iraqi security forces, almost one-quarter of the Iraqi Army currently fails to meet its own minimum qualifications for soldiers, the Iraqi government is discovering in its first real look at the composition of the Army.
"They're finding about 24 percent are not qualified based on Army criterion for being in the Army," US Brig. Gen. Steven Salazar says of an ongoing rescreening of Iraq's 253,000 soldiers.
"A very small number of them are overage, a little bit bigger number of them would be medically disqualified, and then somewhere – around 15 percent they're finding – are illiterate," says General Salazar, deputy commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq, in an interview.
Salazar says the rescreening, which has surveyed 46,000 soldiers so far, was undertaken because neither the Iraqi Ministry of Defense nor US officials knew who exactly was in the Army.
- Prospects are dismal for returning Iraqi refugees.
Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes to escape the violence, half of them abroad. Several months ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki began telling them to return, assuring them that Iraq is safe.
Not everyone agrees, however, and some families who've come back said they regretted it. They face soaring rents, limited job opportunities and shortages of electricity, clean water, education and health care, not to mention the continuing threat of violence and political instability.
- Special courts offer veterans second chance: Aimed at troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan who get into trouble.
After a high-speed back-and-forth with a driver he says nearly ran him off the road, Army Lt. Andrew Myatt was arrested by police in Illinois and accused of waving a pistol.
But the 41-year-old soldier is getting help through a fledgling court program specifically for current or former members of the military who run afoul of the law.
The "veterans court," one of several popping up across the country, is aimed at getting nonviolent soldiers with otherwise clean records into treatment, sparing them a criminal conviction. Treatment can include psychological counseling or drug and alcohol rehab.
- On war zone tour, Pakistani army claims that 'collateral damage' is minimal.
From the window of a Pakistani army helicopter, the Swat valley looked serene and inviting, not at all like a battlefield in the country's self-described fight for survival against Taliban extremists.
Accounts from some of the 1.5 million refugees who've fled Swat have painted a picture of destroyed villages and burning countryside under massive Pakistani army bombardment. Two weeks into the offensive, however, the military felt confident enough Friday to take foreign reporters on a guided tour of Swat to refute those claims.
A helicopter flight along the vast Swat valley, the site of the government's stand against a brutal Islamist militia that had overrun the northwestern district, seemed to support the military's contention that it's been waging a counterinsurgency operation, not a massive offensive to level the place.
Environmental News
- Coal plant to put power of CO2 to test.
Alabama Power Co.’s Barry Electric Generating Plant north of Mobile will be the site of the nation’s first large-scale attempt to capture carbon dioxide emitted from a coal-fired power plant and to inject the gas deep underground.
The four-year, $175 million experiment begins in 2011 and will test the future viability of coal as a source of electrical power, Alabama Power’s parent firm, Atlanta-based Southern Co., announced Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse gas will be piped 9,000 feet underground around the Citronelle oil fields, about 10 miles from the Barry plant.
- Carbon capture success in Wisconsin.
Capturing the carbon dioxide that wafts up the smokestack after burning coal (or any other fossil fuel) has been identified by everyone from President Obama to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a critical technology to help keep the lights on while combating climate change. And now there has been yet another successful demonstration that the technology to capture that CO2 from flue gas might actually work: chilled ammonia can capture more than 88 percent of the greenhouse gas before it goes up the smokestack.
Alstom Power and We Energies have released preliminary data on their carbon capture pilot project at Pleasant Prairie, Wisc. The pilot plant, set up to siphon the CO2 from a small stream of the total flue gas using chilled ammonia, not only captured most of the CO2, it captured it in a more than 99 percent pure form, according to Robert Hilton, vice president of power technologies and government affairs at Alstom, which is important for any future storage or industrial reuse. "We can [capture] 90 percent [of the CO2] and do it consistently," he notes. "We've done over 90 percent at times."
So far the project has run some 4,600 hours continuously without issue and captured some 18,000 tons of CO2 over the last year.
- US CO2 goals 'to be compromised' by "domestic political opposition".
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the US will not be able to cut greenhouse emissions as much as it should due to domestic political opposition.
Prof Chu told BBC News he feared the world might be heading towards a tipping point on climate change.
This meant the US had to cut emissions urgently - even if compromises were needed to get new laws approved.
- U.S. Climate Bill Falls Short.
A drastically weakened U.S. climate bill released Monday favors polluting industries over truly sustainable clean energy solutions, argues Daphne Wysham, director of a sustainable energy and economy think tank.
"Right out of the starting gate, the [American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009] provides a ridiculous number of giveaways to industry," writes Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies fellow and director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network.
Specifically, 85 percent or more of pollution permits would be given free of cost to the electricity sector, leaving low- to moderate-income families vulnerable to inevitable energy price hikes.
The bill would also create the largest market for carbon emissions in the world. This will enable industries that pollute above permitted emissions levels to buy carbon credits from companies that pollute below these levels. However, "the Government Accountability Office (GAO) claims it's virtually impossible to verify whether carbon offsets represent real emissions reductions," notes Wysham.
Finally, continues Wysham, the bill "makes a mockery of our common understanding of 'renewable energy,' favoring dirty smokestacks over truly clean, renewable energy."
- Mining the ocean floor: It’s not yet a gold rush to the ocean floor, but seabed prospecting is raising concerns..
Pompeii worms, clams, and snails with iron scales armoring their feet are not exactly the cuddly icons that open checkbooks during environmental fundraisers.
But these denizens of the very, very deep are emerging as poster children for concerns about the environmental effects of mining minerals on the deep-sea floor – in particular, around hydrothermal vents that appear in vent fields dotting the length of the globe’s mid-ocean ridges.
- New Study: Global Temperatures to Rise 9 Degrees by 2100.
A new study, which researchers have called "the most exhaustive end-to-end analysis of climate change impacts yet performed", predicts that global warming could be twice as bad as previous estimates had suggested.
Published this month in the Journal of Climate, the MIT-based research found a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100.
Pulling from a variety of data sources back in 2007, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) projected temperature increases anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century. Now due to this new data, it looks like the higher range of that projection may be closer to the truth.
- Drinking from plastic bottles 'increases exposure to gender-bending chemical'.
Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that polycarbonate containers release the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) into liquid stored in them.
BPA has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.
New research by Harvard School of Public Health found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles showed a two-thirds increase of BPA in their urine.
- Sweeteners Linger in Groundwater.
After tickling the tongue, artificial sweeteners pass through our bodies and end up in wastewater virtually unchanged. Some sweeteners are particularly widespread in the environment, according to a new study, making them ideal markers for following pollution from treatment plants and other sources into the environment.
"Groundwater can be polluted by several sources, and it's sometimes not clear where that pollution comes from," said Ignaz Buerge, an environmental chemist
at the Swiss Federal Research Station in Schloss. "We now have a marker of domestic wastewater which can be used in tracing pollution."
Contaminated groundwater is both an environmental and public health issue. Once run-off gets into the environment, though, it can be hard to know whether it came from industry, agricultural fields, traffic, homes or other sources. Scientists have been looking for marker molecules that might help them track down and possibly reduce some of these inputs.
- Shellfish reefs are 'most imperilled sea habitat'.
GLOBALLY, 85 per cent of reefs have been lost. Destructive fishing practices, disease and coastal development threaten many of the survivors. What sounds like an apocalyptic vision of the future for the world's tropical corals is in fact a chilling assessment of the current state of reefs built in cooler waters by oysters and other bivalve shellfish.
According to a report from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), released this week at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington DC, shellfish reefs are the world's most imperilled marine habitats - faring worse than coral reefs and mangrove forests.
- Lead poisoning is still killing condors.
Nearly a year after the California Legislature banned lead bullets in the 15 counties covering condor country, lead poisoning remains the No. 1 condor killer, seemingly in part because small animals are still killed by defiant hunters with lead bullets and become prey to the big birds.
Federal information the California fish and game commission will consider next month shows that 59 percent of condors and two of five nestlings sampled in California tested high for lead from January to June 2008, compared with 45 percent from July to December.
- Alien Species Eroding Ecosystems and Livelihoods.
Continent-hopping alien species are worsening poverty and threaten the agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural systems that underpin millions of livelihoods in developing countries, warn biodiversity experts.
...Alien species are plant, animal, insect and other species that have been introduced outside of their natural habitats. They have become one of the two or three major drivers behind the current extinction crisis.
Today, one in four mammals is on the verge of extinction. Of the 44,838 species catalogued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 38 percent are on their way out. Currently, one species goes extinct every three hours.
And at least 40 percent of all animal extinctions, for which the cause is known, are the result of invasive species.
- Environmentally friendly house gutters.
Q: We will need to replace our house gutters soon. What are our best options from an environmental perspective?
– Jodie Green, Dallas
A: Use a material that is the most durable for your climate. Ultimately, the longer your gutters last, the less environmental cost there will be – from manufacturing to recycling. A cheaper product that degrades twice as fast as another would not be the best choice, even if it has a greener production process. Also, the extra cost of having to fix your water-damaged home could make a "cheaper" gutter in reality much more costly.
"Galvanized steel, copper, and aluminum are preferred gutter materials," reports Austin Energy, the Texas capital’s community-owned electric utility. Copper is a more expensive, high-end gutter material, as are stainless steel and wood, although wood is used mostly in historical restoration.
- Geothermal, the 'undervalued' renewable resource, sees surging interest.
Nearly 200 million acres of public lands, mostly in the West, could become prime generators of emissions-free electricity by extracting steam heat from the earth's core to drive electric turbines.
Yet despite a $400 million stimulus bill allocation to spur geothermal energy production in the United States, industry groups and other experts say the technology remains a distant third behind wind and solar with respect to combined public and private investment in renewable resources.
- Beekeepers accused of stealing each others' hives.
Beekeepers are suspected of stealing hives out of desperation at dwindling bee populations and a shortage of honey, it has been claimed.
Given the complex skills needed to handle bees, it is thought that the people who stole them will have been beekeepers in many cases.
Police are virtually powerless to stop the raids but have suggested branding or hiding hives or even fitting them with satellite tracking devices.
World News
- Fierce battle in Somali capital.
Pro-government forces in Somalia have launched a major attack against Islamist militants controlling parts of the capital, Mogadishu.
The forces said they had made some progress during fierce clashes - a claim denied by the opposition leader.
At least 36 people were killed and some 180 wounded, medical sources say.
Supporters of the transitional government - which is recognised by the UN - lost control of about one-third of the city to the militants last week.
- UN poised to close gender gap and create women's agency.
The UN is poised to create a powerful new department for women who say they have been sidelined for decades, to rectify a glaring omission in the world body.
Advocates for women's rights are looking for a fully-fledged agency with a budget of $1bn (£639m) on a par with other high-profile UN departments, to address crucial areas such as violence against women, property rights and HIV/Aids.
"The UN record on women has been abysmal," said Stephen Lewis, co-director of Aids-Free World, and an advocate of gender equality. "It has neglected the rights and needs of women everywhere. It's clear to everyone that the marginalisation of women over decades is unacceptable and the best way to correct it is a UN agency like Unicef for children."
- U.S. Signals Willingness to Reopen Talks With Cuba.
The Obama administration signaled Friday a willingness to reopen a channel with Cuba that was closed under President George W. Bush by proposing high-level meetings on migration between the countries.
The gesture comes as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to fend off pressure from her Latin American counterparts to make an even bolder break from past policies by endorsing a proposal that would reintegrate Cuba into the Organization of American States.
A State Department spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, said, "We intend to use the renewal of talks to reaffirm both sides’ commitment to safe, legal and orderly migration; to review recent trends in illegal Cuban migration to the United States; and to improve operational relations with Cuba on migration issues."
- PM vows Jerusalem will remain Israel's capital 'forever'.
Right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed that Jerusalem would remain Israel's capital "forever" as the Jewish state marked the 42nd anniversary of the annexation of the city's mainly Arab sector.
"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It has always been, will remain so forever and will never be divided," Netanyahu said at a ceremony marking the occupation and annexation of Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War.
The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the future of the city is a key stumbling block in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.
- World's oldest blogger dead aged 97.
Maria Amelia Lopez began blogging two and a half years ago when her grandson introduced her to the internet on her 95th birthday.
"Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog," she wrote on her first post on amis95.blogspot.com on December 23, 2006.
Her musings on life in old age, Spanish politics and even international relations quickly earned her followers from across the world and she clocked up more than 1.5 million visitors to her blog.
National News
- US state's first assisted suicide.
A 66-year-old US woman with advanced cancer has become the first person to die under a new assisted suicide law in Washington State.
The woman, Linda Fleming, died on Thursday night after taking drugs prescribed by her doctor.
The "Death with Dignity" law was approved by 60% of Washington State voters in a referendum last year.
It is based on a law in neighbouring Oregon, where 400 people have chosen to die over the last 12 years.
- Are Wall Street speculators driving up gasoline prices?.
Oil and gasoline prices are rising fast as Memorial Day weekend approaches, but not because supplies are tight or demand is high.
U.S. crude oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades, and demand has fallen to a 10-year low, but crude oil prices have climbed more than 70 percent since mid-January to a six-month high of $62.04 on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, although refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, leaving them plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season, the price of gasoline at the pump has climbed 28 cents a gallon from a month earlier to $2.33.
This time, Wall Street speculators - some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers' bailout money - may be to blame.
Big Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley and others are able to sidestep the regulations that limit investments in commodities such as oil, and they're investing on behalf of pension funds, endowments, hedge funds and other big institutional investors, in part as a hedge against rising inflation.
These investors now far outnumber big fuel consumers such as airlines and trucking companies, which try to protect themselves against price swings, and they're betting that the economy eventually will rebound, that the Obama administration's spending policies and Federal Reserve actions will trigger inflation - or both - and that oil prices will rise.
- US dollars under sustained assault.
THE US dollar remained under sustained assault in currency markets on Friday, with the pound and the euro reaching levels at or near their highs for the year.
The yen was bolstered by a clear statement that Japan won't intervene against its strength.
Without significant data releases or other market-moving developments in the US, the US dollar selloff unleashed on Thursday continued to hold sway on Friday.
- California overdoses on debt.
TOO much democracy, it turns out, is a bit like too much alcohol in that they both seem like a great idea at the time.
But as Californians wake up this morning, hung over from yet another overindulgence in democracy, they will hear their Treasurer, Bill Lockyer, confirm to the state legislature what everyone already knows: the world's sixth-largest economy is flat broke.
The reasons for the $US21.3 billion ($27.3 billion) budget shortfall are wide and varied. Some are obvious - the global recession - but the biggest issue is hard to grasp, difficult to admit and just about impossible to resolve: this is a state dying of democracy.
A century ago it was thought that letting the people decide their own fate was a tremendous idea, and so California instituted a system of direct ballot initiatives, which allowed voters to override politicians on big decisions.
Ballot initiatives were supposed to be a measure of last resort, and they largely were until the 1990s, when special interest groups with full pockets realised they could change laws.
More than 100 major ballot measures have emerged this decade - a record - all handcuffing legislators, making government dysfunctional. Predictably, voters want their favourite programs funded, but without raised taxes.
Civil Rights, Discrimination & Hate News
- State high court to rule Tuesday on Prop. 8.
The state Supreme Court will rule Tuesday on a challenge to Proposition 8, the ballot measure that reinstated California's ban on same-sex marriage.
The court announced the impending decision today in lawsuits by same-sex couples and local governments, led by San Francisco, seeking to overturn the measure that 52 percent of California voters approved in November. If the court upholds the measure, it must also decide how the proposition affects the marriages of about 18,000 same-sex couples who wed before the Nov. 4 election.
- Answering your questions about Proposition 8 and gay marriage.
What do legal experts expect the court to do?
Based on comments the justices made at a hearing this year, most legal experts expect the court to uphold Proposition 8, but continue to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who wed before the November election.
If the court upholds Proposition 8, what happens next?
State officials would continue a ban on issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Supporters of same-sex marriage, however, are expected to go back to the ballot as soon as 2010 with another constitutional amendment recognizing gay marriage.
- University bans Democratic Party club based on political views.
Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying "we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by" the university.
... "We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech."
..."His bottom line was, ‘You can’t be a Democrat and be a Christian and be a university representative,’" Childress said.
Part of Hine’s e-mail said, "The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the "LGBT" agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.)" LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
- ACLU says school censored student's Milk report.
The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday threatened to sue a San Diego County school that refused to let a student present a report on slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk until her classmates got permission from their parents.
David Blair-Loy, legal director of the ACLU of San Diego County, said the principal of Mt. Woodson Elementary School in Ramona violated the free speech rights of 6th-grader Natalie Jones, who was the only student in her class prevented from giving an in-class presentation.
According to Blair-Loy and Natalie's mother, Mt. Woodson Principal Theresa Grace concluded last month that the subject of the girl's project triggered a district policy requiring parents to be notified in writing before their children are exposed to lessons dealing with sex.