Uncommon Sense Archives - 05/2006
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision involving whistleblowers sets up a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” situation for public employees who witness gross negligence or wrong-doing by their bosses. If they speak up internally—which is almost always the first way employees try to handle problems (Who throws a press conference to announce their boss’s bad behavior?)—they can be fired. Yet, in some cases, public employees can be held liable for not speaking up. Certainly this is true of district attorneys' offices where failure to disclose evidence is a major crime for prosecuting attorneys. However, speaking up still got the defendant in this case in trouble. [more]
--Rachel Joy Larris | Wednesday 3:11 PM | Permalink
Yesterday, opponents of South Dakota's sweeping abortion ban filed a petition to stop it. Weeks before the deadline and with twice the number of signatures required, the petition was delivered by a coalition of pro-choice groups called theSouth Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families. The petition clears the way for the controversial abortion ban to be decided by popular vote in the November elections. [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Wednesday 10:56 AM | Permalink
I was just about to start a quick blog advising our readers to examine several recent pieces by Gareth Porter, a historian and journalist for the Inter Press Service, on the history of our diplomatic relations with Iran in the past five years. His articles are critical to understanding the current debacle, revealing the way Bush has continually rebuffed efforts to solve differences diplomatically. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Friday 3:29 PM | Permalink
The court-martial of Sgt. Santos Cardona, the 11th soldier to be prosecuted for crimes committed at Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003, opened without much attention earlier this week in Fort Meade, Maryland. The sentencing of his fellow dog-handler, Sgt. Michael Smith, on similar charges, to only six months of prison, and the general lack of interest on the part of the Defense Department in handing out meaningful penalties to those involved in abuse, has led many to lose hope in seeing justice done. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Friday 10:44 AM | Permalink
Since Jon Stewart has become the poster boy for political humor, academics have been chomping at the bit to draw conclusions about “The Daily Show’s” contribution to our political process. The most recent academic study to garner some attention is a paper published by American Politics Research titled “The Daily Show Effect: Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth.”The Toronto Star touted the research with the headline “Is Jon Stewart helping or hurting?” The study finds that, at least for the young college students they studied, those who watched "The Daily Show" experienced a corresponding increase in cynicism toward not only John Kerry but also the news media and the electoral process in general. Curiously, George W. Bush wasn't viewed with more cynicism. [more]
--Rachel Joy Larris | Wednesday 2:02 PM | Permalink
Think Progress brought to our attention the latest from the Fox spin machine: [more]
--Jeff Rickert | Tuesday 2:27 PM | Permalink
Was it only a year ago? I was living in Egypt. It was the spring of 2005, and across the Arab world, there was something in the air—a feeling no one could put a finger quite on, but that something was coming. Changes were going to happen. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Monday 9:58 PM | Permalink
The country is not happy with how the Republican Party is governing. A big election looms. Time for politicians lacking a clue about what to do in Iraq or the economy to trot out an old standby: banning same-sex marriage. Word is that the Senate Judiciary Committee is doing a mark-up of the Federal Marriage Amendment today (Update: It passed). (It's not like the Judiciary Committee has any pressing oversight business or anything, say, regarding the domestic spying by theNational Security Agency.) And Bill Frist reportedly plans to introduce the bill to amend the Constitution in early June. [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Thursday 9:10 AM | Permalink
It seems if a phone company definitely didn’t participate, in any way, with the NSA data-mining or illegal wiretapping scandals their denials should be pretty clear. Either they did or they didn’t cooperate. For example, Working Assets not only emphatically did not cooperate with the federal government but they are the only phone company to join the ACLU’s lawsuit against the NSA for illegal wiretapping. [more]
--Rachel Joy Larris | Wednesday 3:01 PM | Permalink
Just a quick shout-out to the kids at CorpWatch , providing detailed and invaluable reporting of corporate corruption and the muck of Big Money. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Wednesday 9:32 AM | Permalink
The ongoing revelations about the vast web of surveillance spun around all Americans by the intelligence-industrial complex can get confusing. Over the past year, we've learned so much that it's hard to keep track—especially in a world of multiple acronymed agencies and programs under the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department and the FBI. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Tuesday 11:18 AM | Permalink
Blogger Laura Rozen, of WarandPiece, responding to today's news that the feds are spying on ABC News, eloquently denounces the Bush administration for engaging in police state tactics: [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Monday 2:20 PM | Permalink
I know, we've been distracted of late by talk of massive NSA surveillance of Americans, slipping poll numbers, and the War on Immigration, but let's not lose track of the real kicker: will Bush defy common sense, global opinion, his own advisors, any shred of decency or intelligence, and the interests of the American people by bombing Iran? [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Monday 10:49 AM | Permalink
According to a new poll, a majority of Americans have no problem with the National Security Agency collecting information on their telephone call records. Heck, I'm not a terrorist, the thinking goes. Given this evidence of apathy over basic privacy issues, CQ columnist Craig Crawford's wakeup call couldn't be more timely: "Americans must now tap into their inner Patrick Henry."
--Alexandra Walker | Friday 10:46 AM | Permalink
One might think that a long-bearded representative of an eco-farm in Tennessee who talks about the oil addiction of America as “the karmic revenge” of Gaia and an academic who is one of the founders of ecological economics (or eco-economics) would be at opposite ends of some sort of spectrum in the green universe. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Wednesday 11:02 AM | Permalink
Is this man too smart to be president? When Russ Feingold talks about how national security and foreign policy intersect, you think this man might just know what he's talking about. His ideas don't sound canned or full of buzz phrases, nor do they appeal to fear. Plus, they make sense. [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Monday 3:33 PM | Permalink
What does it mean to oppose something on the grounds that it is “illegal”? Should we oppose non-heterosexual marriage based on its illegality? Shall we condemn San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom for the illicit marriages he allowed in 2004? Or are Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (the first couple to be illegally wedded in San Francisco) to blame? [more]
--Sandi Burtseva | Friday 4:31 PM | Permalink
Robert Parry is just the latest principled journalist to come to Stephen Colbert's defense. Responding to WaPo columnist Richard Cohen'sattack on Colbert for being "rude" to the president, Parry gives a useful summary of where politeness in journalism has got us: [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Friday 12:17 PM | Permalink
Okay, Peter Beinart wasn't completely serious about building a fence on the Canadian border. But he dismissed it on practical grounds only. Beinart's more sincere proposal in his latest Washington Post op-ed is that we invest in the creation of a biometric screening program on the border: [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Thursday 2:36 PM | Permalink
All across the board, Republicans, now that they control all three branches of federal government, have jettisoned their former ideology of "state's rights." They've reverted to what some of us expected all along was their true philosophy—seizing power wherever they can and holding on to it for its own sake. Progressives, in retreat at the national level, have responded effectively by embracing local battles. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Thursday 2:22 PM | Permalink
Remember how when Don Rumsfeld came to the DoD he was going to preside over a transformational sweep of our defense establishment? As 9/11, four years in Afghanistan and three years in Iraq have proven over and again, the concern is no longer for "large-scale, conventional warfare against an enemy with power comparable to that of the United States." Rather, as Bush and Rumsfeld have correctly identified, the challenge is effectively dealing with the major threats to our security: non-state actors and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Wednesday 11:32 PM | Permalink
A complete sham. A farce. A joke. That's how Common Cause describes the current House bill which purports to change the way Congress does business. Of course, the problem with the watered-down bill is precisely that it doesn't make any major changes to how Congress does business. It doesn't make significant changes to limit the influence of monied interests. Instead, it offers superficial requirements masquerading as reform, like mandatory "ethics training" for all House employees and perhaps eventually -- gasp -- for lawmakers, themselves. But despite its weaknesses, it will likely pass this week with minimal public attention or outcry. Why? [more]
--Alexandra Walker | Tuesday 11:15 AM | Permalink
In truth , it's not that big a deal. I asked TomPaine.com's fearless captain, Alex Walker, if I could take Monday off in honor of the Day Without Immigrants (a.k.a. La Gran Paro Americano 2006) and she said "Sure." [more]
--Ethan Heitner | Monday 9:51 AM | Permalink
