Federal lawyers backed the measures on grounds of self-defence …
May 7, 2010 archive
May 07 2010
Wild Wild Left Radio #63 Its the Terror, Stupid – or is the STUPID TEWWOW?
Tonight at 6PM Eastern Time, WWL Radio!!!!!
Gottlieb and Diane G. will be live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio tonight at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.
Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!
Wow, are you afraid? You should be. Not of an ADD students wayward bookbag, but heck, the Fed is still being given free rein to run amok and wreak destruction upon us, Iran is now the voice of disarmament reason, while Israel hoards its nukes, and golly. Joe Lieberman thinks you should only be a citizen if he says so.
We have LOTS of reporting and opinions tonight, and we hope you join in with yours!
Please join us!
Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.
Call In!
Join Gottlieb and Diane every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.
WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.
The call in number is 646-929-1264
The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!
CHAT LINK:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/f…
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May 07 2010
Afternoon Edition
Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread
From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Dome plunged deep into sea to cap US oil leak
by Mira Oberman, AFP
1 hr 49 mins ago
VENICE, Louisiana (AFP) – Workers lowered a huge dome over an oil leak gushing from a sunken rig deep in the Gulf of Mexico Friday as energy giant BP raced to contain a slick moving perilously closer to the US coast.
The unprecedented operation to drop the 100-ton (90-tonne) chamber some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface to cap the leak was expected to be completed within hours Friday. “They are in the process of lowering it now,” BP spokesman John Curry told AFP about the operation seen as the best hope to stave off the biggest US environmental disaster since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. |
May 07 2010
For Your Consideration: Elena Kagan
Elena Kagan is currently the Solicitor General for the Obama Administration. She is the former Dean of Harvard Law. She is currently one of the candidates under consideration to replace Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who has announced his retirement after this session. Ms. Kagan has never been a judge, not that that is a qualification, but she also has spent little time in a courtroom. Her record on most issues is sparse but what is known about her is very troubling for progressives and this country. Glen Greenwald has been very critical of her citing not just the scarcity of her opinions but her troubling testimony before Senate judiciary committee.
Now four law professors, (Guy-Uriel Charles is at Duke Law School; Anupam Chander is at the University of California-Davis Davis School of Law; Luis Fuentes-Rohwer is at Indiana University’s School of Law; and Angela Onwuachi-Willig is at the University of Iowa College of Law), question her record on diversity while she was Dean.
The first woman Dean of Harvard Law School had presided over an unprecedented expansion of the faculty — growing it by almost a half. She had hired 32 tenured and tenure-track academic faculty members (non-clinical, non-practice). But when we sat down to review the actual record, we were frankly shocked. Not only were there shockingly few people of color, there were very few women. Where were the people of color? Where were the women? Of these 32 tenured and tenure-track academic hires, only one was a minority. Of these 32, only seven were women. All this in the 21st Century.
May 07 2010
Speechless UPDATED w Rachel vid
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon Thursday banned four reporters, including one from McClatchy Newspapers, from covering future military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, charging that they’d violated ground rules by publishing the name of a former Army interrogator who was a witness at a hearing there this week.
The news organizations – McClatchy, the Toronto Star, the Toronto Globe and Mail and CanWest Newspapers of Canada – said they’d appeal the Pentagon’s decision and that their reporters hadn’t violated the ground rules.
Col. David Lapan, the director of Defense Press Operations, said the ban affects only the individual reporters and that their organizations would be allowed to send others to future hearings. The banned reporters were Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy’s Miami Herald, Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Paul Koring of Toronto’s Globe and Mail and Steven Edwards of CanWest Newspapers.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201…
(UPDATES x 2 at the end)
May 07 2010
F*** these Corporatist Senators and the Bankers limos they rode in on!
I am reminded of the words of our founding father, Thomas Jefferson. 3/4ths of this Senate are not fit to polish his statue. The words this titan among men once said were . . .
“The bank mania… is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties.”
Cry about that, Glenn Beck!
In the face of the defeat of the Kaufman-Brown Amendment to break up the Too Big To Fail banks, I have this to say.
F*** these Corporate Senators and the Bankers Limos They Rode In On!!!!
May 07 2010
A Cautious Analysis Between US and UK Elections
One must be careful when invoking comparative politics. If politics is indeed local, nothing could be a greater challenge than making sweeping generalities between different countries without understanding the full context. Having said this, I have followed the recent UK General Election campaign with much attention and interest over the course of the past few weeks. Those who follow politics to any degree often look for emerging trends which might promise some early clue to predict the future. Much of what enraged and inspired Britons to turn out in relatively large numbers (provided they were able to vote at all), are the very same issues driving an anti-incumbent maelstrom, the results of which on our shores we will not fully understand until early November.
May 07 2010
UK Greens win historic first seat in parliament
Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, won a hotly-contested race in Brighton Pavilion to become the Greens’ first-ever member of parliament. Lucas thanked supporters for “putting the politics of hope above the politics of fear.” In the election at large, Labour and the Liberal Democrats lost seats while the Conservatives gained; however, the Conservatives failed to win a majority, making it possible that Labour and the Liberal Democrats will form a governing coalition.
In the second constituency targeted by the Greens, Norwich South, Adrian Ramsay came in fourth despite doubling the Green vote from 2005 to 14.9%. Despite the loss, Greens pointed to recent local victories as evidence that they’re on track to take power in Norwich by 2011, which would mark another first for the party. In the third targeted seat, Lewisham Deptford, Darren Johnson took 11.1%, and Tony Juniper managed 7.6% in Cambridge.
At The Guardian, George Monbiot commented on Lucas’ election to parliament:
It’s a massive breakthrough, not only because she’s a brilliant, charismatic, humane politican who will enrich parliamentary life, but also because it proves it can be done, even under our antiquated political system.
Unlike many European countries that elect their parliaments using proportional representation, UK elections use first-past-the-post voting, contributing to electoral chaos. From The Guardian’s live election coverage:
A hung parliament is virtually inevitable. With more than 500 seats counted, the BBC is predicting that the Conservatives will end up with 306 seats, Labour 262 seats and the Lib Dems 55 seats [325 seats are needed for a majority]. The Conservatives are currently on 37% of the vote, Labour on 28% and the Lib Dems on 23%.
The Guardian reports that the Liberal Democrats may demand a switch to proportional representation as a condition for supporting one of the larger parties in coalition. The Greens, who won 8.7% of the vote in last year’s European elections, also support proportional representation.
After learning of her historic victory, Caroline Lucas gave the following statement:
“The emphatic support of voters in Brighton Pavilion show that they do want to support a party whose values represent fairness, social justice and environmental well-being. They have shown that they are prepared to put their trust in the Greens, despite the overwhelming national media focus on the three largest parties and a voting system that is fundamentally undemocratic. I feel humbled by their trust in me, and I am excited by this vote of confidence and I’m looking forward to the challenging task of fully representing the voters of Brighton.
“This victory is no accident: it is the result of the hard work and commitment of thousands of Green Party members and supporters not only in Brighton but from right across the country over the past months and years. It is their work and support that has helped deliver this win, and the victory is as much theirs as it is mine.
“Thanks to the confidence that the voters of Brighton Pavilion have shown, Green principles and policies will now have a voice in Parliament. Policies such as responding to climate change with a million new ‘green’ jobs in low-carbon industries, fair pensions and care for older people, and stronger regulation of the banks will be heard in the House of Commons. I will also use my influence as an MP in the city of Brighton & Hove to push for affordable housing for the city, a new secondary school for the city, and greater backing for the city’s creative industries.
“Finally, as this election shows, the first-past-the post voting system used for general elections is utterly discredited. I will be strongly backing calls for a referendum to replace it with a form of proportional representation that properly reflects the needs and views of 21st century voters. If a form of proportional representation is introduced, the Green Party is confident that its true level of support nationally can be represented properly.”
Originally posted on Green Party Watch
May 07 2010
May ’70: 8. Memory Loss
The sign was hung out of an NYU dorm window. It read, simply
I want to use that sign as a starting point in talking about some largely unsuccessful emotional archaeology I’ve been doing, trying to reconstruct what it felt like to be 20 years old and a revolutionary in the midst of the first national student strike the country had ever seen.
I know I wasn’t expecting to be killed, even though–forty days ago today-the Kent State murders were only two days in the past and in the forefront of everyone’s thoughts.
And that wasn’t what the dorm room sign was about. Those kids didn’t expect to be killed either. They were celebrating the fact that the scope of our movement, the hundreds of new campuses-including high schools-which had gone out on strike since May 4 had pretty much removed violent repression as an option for the ruling class. I quoted John Kaye on the intensity of those days in yesterday’s installment. I’ve recently spoken with Mirk and Mindy, who, like me, came out of NYU and we all agree that there is a lot, a surprising amount, from these intense weeks that we just don’t remember.
May 07 2010
On This Day in History: May 7
On this day in 1824, the world premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. The performance is conducted by Michael Umlauf under the deaf composer’s supervision. It was Beethoven’s first appearance on stage in 12 years. Over the years the symphony has been performed for both political and non-political from the eve of Hitler’s birthday, to the celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. The Ode to Joy was used as the anthem by Kosovo when it declared it’s independence in 2008.
May 07 2010
MMS rubber-stamped BP’s drilling plan & Assurance of No Eco Risk
US oil regulator ‘gave in to BP’ over rig safety
Firm allowed to drill without devising plan to cope with blow-out
By David Usborne, independent.uk, US Editor — Friday, 7 May 2010
As crude oil continued to pour out of control into the Gulf of Mexico yesterday, questions were being asked over the relationship between BP and regulators in Washington amid allegations that the company was allowed to drill the deepwater well without filing plans for how it would cope with a blow-out like the one now in hand.
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