By Evan Puschak
Sarah Slamen left her home in central Texas at 5:30 a.m. Monday to testify at
the Austin Senate against the state’s controversial abortion bill. She didn’t
get to speak until 11:00 pm that night, after listening to hours of what
she described as a “parade of anti-choice zealots and misogynists.” By the
time she was called, Slamen had scrapped her prepared speech about Gov. Rick
Perry’s sister’s ties
to surgical centers and doctor-owned hospitals that would benefit from the
bill’s passage, and went for the senators themselves.
“Thank you for being you, Texas legislature,” Slamen said. “You have
radicalized hundreds of thousands of us, and no matter what you do for the next
22 days, women and their allies are coming for you. Let’s start down the line.
Senator Campbell, you’re an ophthalmologist. So I won’t be making you the expert
on reproductive health. We can give you all the children with chlamydia and
herpes in their eyes, since we don’t have Sex Ed in this state.”
Before she could finish her one-by-one excoriation of the Senate committee,
Slamen was forcibly escorted from the chamber. When asked why she was removed in
an
interview with the Daily Kos, Slamen said, “There was no explanation.
Senator Jane Nelson tried to say I was being disrespectful but how would she
know? I barely got to give the complete performance review of every member on
the committee.”
The Texas bill–SB1/HB2–which limits where and when women can get an abortion
in the state, passed
the state House on Tuesday, and is expected to be voted on by the Senate
early next week.
Outside the committee chamber, Slamen was greeted by dozens of sympathizers
cheering and applauding her testimony.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
The chicanery of corporate food manufacturers
Posted by Jim Hightower
Listen to this Commentary
Mothers the world over have told their children a zillion times: "Stop playing with your food!" I now share their frustration and would like to yell at the conglomerate packagers of America's victuals:
"Stop playing with our food!"
Actually, they're playing with our heads, using dishonest packaging tactics to raise their prices without us noticing it. A 16-ounce carton of something – shhhh – quietly slips to 14 ounces, but does not drop in price. Then there's the dimple trick. A jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise, for example, has had its contents shrunk, yet the new jar looks as big as the old one unless you turn in on its end. There you'll find a big indention in the bottom – a hidden way to shrink the capacity of the jar and give you less for your money.
David Segal, who writes "The Haggler" column in the New York Times, recently reported on his Adventures-In-Kraft-Foods-Land. He talked to a PR lady there about the corporation's unpublicized (but rather dramatic) change in its Baker's brand of cooking chocolate. Instead of an eight-ounce package selling for $3.89, suddenly a box of Baker's contained only four ounces of chocolate, which sells for $2.89. Wow – that's nearly a 50-percent price hike per ounce! What gives, Segal asked the Kraft spokeswoman? "The change was consumer-driven," she craftily replied. "Our consumers have told us that they prefer this [smaller] size."
Uh, sure, said Segal, but what about that slippery price? She was as slippery as the price, declaring that the product "is competitively priced." That wasn't the question, but her whole game is to avoid giving the honest answer: "We're gouging our customers."
Conglomerate food packagers not only feel free to dupe us consumers, but also consider such corporate chicanery to be a legitimate business practice.
"Halving the Portion, But Not the Price," The New York Times, June 23, 2013.
"Sneaky packages," Consumer Reports, June 2013.
Listen to this Commentary
Mothers the world over have told their children a zillion times: "Stop playing with your food!" I now share their frustration and would like to yell at the conglomerate packagers of America's victuals:
"Stop playing with our food!"
Actually, they're playing with our heads, using dishonest packaging tactics to raise their prices without us noticing it. A 16-ounce carton of something – shhhh – quietly slips to 14 ounces, but does not drop in price. Then there's the dimple trick. A jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise, for example, has had its contents shrunk, yet the new jar looks as big as the old one unless you turn in on its end. There you'll find a big indention in the bottom – a hidden way to shrink the capacity of the jar and give you less for your money.
David Segal, who writes "The Haggler" column in the New York Times, recently reported on his Adventures-In-Kraft-Foods-Land. He talked to a PR lady there about the corporation's unpublicized (but rather dramatic) change in its Baker's brand of cooking chocolate. Instead of an eight-ounce package selling for $3.89, suddenly a box of Baker's contained only four ounces of chocolate, which sells for $2.89. Wow – that's nearly a 50-percent price hike per ounce! What gives, Segal asked the Kraft spokeswoman? "The change was consumer-driven," she craftily replied. "Our consumers have told us that they prefer this [smaller] size."
Uh, sure, said Segal, but what about that slippery price? She was as slippery as the price, declaring that the product "is competitively priced." That wasn't the question, but her whole game is to avoid giving the honest answer: "We're gouging our customers."
Conglomerate food packagers not only feel free to dupe us consumers, but also consider such corporate chicanery to be a legitimate business practice.
"Halving the Portion, But Not the Price," The New York Times, June 23, 2013.
"Sneaky packages," Consumer Reports, June 2013.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Marijuana's march toward the mainstream confounds feds
By Alicia A. Caldwell
of Associated Press
AP Photo: Damian Dovarganes
In just a few short years, public opinion has shifted dramatically toward pragmatic acceptance of marijuana.
WASHINGTON
— It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag
from the paranoia of "Reefer Madness" to the excesses of Woodstock back
to the hard line of "Just Say No."
The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously "didn't inhale," to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.
Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.
It is a moment in the United States that is rife with contradictions:
Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.
"It's a remarkable story historically," he says. "But as a matter of public policy, it's a little worrisome."
More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.
"We're on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance," says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.
Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But he knows his side has considerable work yet to do.
"I'm constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself," he says.
BY THE NUMBERS
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.
Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 percentage points just since 2010, according to Pew.
Sixty percent think Washington shouldn't enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use.
STICKY ISSUES
Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.
Policymakers there are grappling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question:
How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?
The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after November's election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.
Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in December that "it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal."
Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, predicts Washington will take a hands-off approach, based on Obama's comments. But he's quick to add, "We would like to see that in writing."
The federal government already has taken a similar approach toward users in states that have approved marijuana for medical use.
It doesn't go after pot-smoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act — even in states that have legalized medical use.
"A REGULATED SYSTEM"
There's a political calculus for the president, or any other politician, in all of this.
Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where the libertarian streak runs strong.
Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, politicians know there are complications that could come with commercializing an addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that legalization will result in increased use by young people.
Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: "Do you want to be the President that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that's popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president that enables youth drug use that will have ramifications down the road?"
Marijuana legalization advocates offer politicians a rosier scenario, in which legitimate pot businesses eager to keep their operating licenses make sure not to sell to minors.
"Having a regulated system is the only way to ensure that we're not ceding control of this popular substance to the criminal market and to black marketeers," says Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group for legal pot businesses in the United States.
COURSE CORRECTION
While the federal government hunkers down, Colorado and Washington state are moving forward on their own with regulations covering everything from how plants will be grown to how many stores will be allowed.
Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, predicts "the next few years are going to be messy" as states work to bring a black-market industry into the sunshine.
California's experience with medical marijuana offers a window into potential pitfalls that can come with wider availability of pot.
Dispensaries for medical marijuana have proliferated in the state, and regulation has been lax, prompting a number of cities around the state to ban dispensaries.
In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. A few weeks later, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure that limits the number of pot shops in the city to 135, down from an estimated high of about 1,000.
This isn't full-scale buyer's remorse, but more a course correction before the inevitable next push for full-on legalization in the state.
"A NEW INDUSTRY"
Growing support for legalization doesn't mean everybody wants to light up: Barely one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year.
Those who do want to see marijuana legalized range from libertarians who oppose much government intervention to people who want to see an activist government aggressively regulate marijuana production and sales.
For some, money talks: Why let drug cartels rake in untaxed profits when a cut could go into government coffers?
There are other threads in the growing acceptance of pot.
People think it's not as dangerous as once believed. They worry about high school youths getting an arrest record. They see racial inequity in the way marijuana laws are enforced. They're weary of the "war on drugs."
Opponents counter with a 2012 study finding that regular use of marijuana during teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ, and another study indicating marijuana use can induce and exacerbate psychotic illness in susceptible people. They question the notion that regulating pot will bring in big money, saying revenue estimates are grossly exaggerated.
They reject the claim that prisons are bulging with people convicted of simple possession by citing federal statistics showing only a small percentage of federal and state inmates are behind bars for that alone.
They warn that baby boomers who draw on their own innocuous experiences with pot are overlooking the much higher potency of today's marijuana.
In 2009, concentrations of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, averaged close to 10 percent in marijuana, compared with about 4 percent in the 1980s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"If marijuana legalization was about my old buddies at Berkeley smoking in People's Park once a week, I don't think many of us would care that much," says Sabet, who helped to found Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization. "It's really about creating a new industry that's going to target kids and target minorities and our vulnerable populations just like our legal industries do today."
WHAT'S NEXT?
So how bad, or good, is pot?
J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, set out to sort through more than 100 sometimes conflicting studies after his teenage son became addicted to pot, and turned his findings into a 22-page article for Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2012.
For all the talk that smoking pot is no big deal, Bostwick says, he determined that "it was a very big deal. There were addiction issues. There were psychosis issues.
"But there was also this very large body of literature suggesting that it could potentially have very valuable pharmaceutical applications, but the research was stymied" by federal barriers.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse says research is ongoing.
Dr. Nora Volkow, the institute's director, worries that legalizing pot will result in increased use of marijuana by young people and impair their brain development.
"Think about it: Do you want a nation where your young people are stoned?" she asks.
Partisans on both sides think people in other states will keep a close eye on Colorado and Washington as they decide what happens next.
But past predictions on pot have been wildly off base.
"Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda movie that pot fans turned into a cult classic in the 1970's, spins a tale of dire consequences "ending often in incurable insanity."
Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Gene Johnson in Seattle, Lauran Neergaard in Washington, D.C., and AP researcher Monika Mathur in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.
It is a moment in the United States that is rife with contradictions:
- People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug's potential dangers, particularly for young people.
- States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.
- Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.
Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.
"It's a remarkable story historically," he says. "But as a matter of public policy, it's a little worrisome."
More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.
"We're on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance," says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.
Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But he knows his side has considerable work yet to do.
"I'm constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself," he says.
BY THE NUMBERS
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.
Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 percentage points just since 2010, according to Pew.
Sixty percent think Washington shouldn't enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use.
STICKY ISSUES
Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.
Policymakers there are grappling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question:
How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?
The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after November's election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.
Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in December that "it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal."
Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, predicts Washington will take a hands-off approach, based on Obama's comments. But he's quick to add, "We would like to see that in writing."
The federal government already has taken a similar approach toward users in states that have approved marijuana for medical use.
It doesn't go after pot-smoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act — even in states that have legalized medical use.
"A REGULATED SYSTEM"
There's a political calculus for the president, or any other politician, in all of this.
Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where the libertarian streak runs strong.
Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, politicians know there are complications that could come with commercializing an addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that legalization will result in increased use by young people.
Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: "Do you want to be the President that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that's popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president that enables youth drug use that will have ramifications down the road?"
Marijuana legalization advocates offer politicians a rosier scenario, in which legitimate pot businesses eager to keep their operating licenses make sure not to sell to minors.
"Having a regulated system is the only way to ensure that we're not ceding control of this popular substance to the criminal market and to black marketeers," says Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group for legal pot businesses in the United States.
COURSE CORRECTION
While the federal government hunkers down, Colorado and Washington state are moving forward on their own with regulations covering everything from how plants will be grown to how many stores will be allowed.
Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, predicts "the next few years are going to be messy" as states work to bring a black-market industry into the sunshine.
California's experience with medical marijuana offers a window into potential pitfalls that can come with wider availability of pot.
Dispensaries for medical marijuana have proliferated in the state, and regulation has been lax, prompting a number of cities around the state to ban dispensaries.
In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. A few weeks later, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure that limits the number of pot shops in the city to 135, down from an estimated high of about 1,000.
This isn't full-scale buyer's remorse, but more a course correction before the inevitable next push for full-on legalization in the state.
"A NEW INDUSTRY"
Growing support for legalization doesn't mean everybody wants to light up: Barely one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year.
Those who do want to see marijuana legalized range from libertarians who oppose much government intervention to people who want to see an activist government aggressively regulate marijuana production and sales.
For some, money talks: Why let drug cartels rake in untaxed profits when a cut could go into government coffers?
There are other threads in the growing acceptance of pot.
People think it's not as dangerous as once believed. They worry about high school youths getting an arrest record. They see racial inequity in the way marijuana laws are enforced. They're weary of the "war on drugs."
Opponents counter with a 2012 study finding that regular use of marijuana during teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ, and another study indicating marijuana use can induce and exacerbate psychotic illness in susceptible people. They question the notion that regulating pot will bring in big money, saying revenue estimates are grossly exaggerated.
They reject the claim that prisons are bulging with people convicted of simple possession by citing federal statistics showing only a small percentage of federal and state inmates are behind bars for that alone.
They warn that baby boomers who draw on their own innocuous experiences with pot are overlooking the much higher potency of today's marijuana.
In 2009, concentrations of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, averaged close to 10 percent in marijuana, compared with about 4 percent in the 1980s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"If marijuana legalization was about my old buddies at Berkeley smoking in People's Park once a week, I don't think many of us would care that much," says Sabet, who helped to found Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization. "It's really about creating a new industry that's going to target kids and target minorities and our vulnerable populations just like our legal industries do today."
WHAT'S NEXT?
So how bad, or good, is pot?
J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, set out to sort through more than 100 sometimes conflicting studies after his teenage son became addicted to pot, and turned his findings into a 22-page article for Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2012.
For all the talk that smoking pot is no big deal, Bostwick says, he determined that "it was a very big deal. There were addiction issues. There were psychosis issues.
"But there was also this very large body of literature suggesting that it could potentially have very valuable pharmaceutical applications, but the research was stymied" by federal barriers.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse says research is ongoing.
Dr. Nora Volkow, the institute's director, worries that legalizing pot will result in increased use of marijuana by young people and impair their brain development.
"Think about it: Do you want a nation where your young people are stoned?" she asks.
Partisans on both sides think people in other states will keep a close eye on Colorado and Washington as they decide what happens next.
But past predictions on pot have been wildly off base.
"Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda movie that pot fans turned into a cult classic in the 1970's, spins a tale of dire consequences "ending often in incurable insanity."
Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Gene Johnson in Seattle, Lauran Neergaard in Washington, D.C., and AP researcher Monika Mathur in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Van Jones Gives Serial Adulterer Newt Gingrich a Pass During 'Crossfire' Preview
By Heather
I have no idea why CNN thinks this is a good idea, or why it might help their ratings, but apparently they're going to bring Crossfire back to the network this fall, and they're going to have Newt Gingrich, S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones host the debate program.
The good news is, anyone who regularly watches MSNBC in the afternoons won't have S.E. Cupp dumbing down the airways come this fall. The bad news is, CNN actually believes that she and Newt Gingrich deserve a spot on their payroll.
I'm not sure how this show is going to differ all that much from what we're treated to on cable news day in and day out already and I don't have any objections to the format being something they'd like to try bringing back. I just don't understand what they think the draw will be with Cupp and Gingrich.
They're both nothing but a couple of right-wing flame throwers, with Cupp perpetually uninformed and Gingrich, the direct mail scam artist and race baiter who is smart enough to con the rubes who actually believed he ever wanted to be President into buying his books or sending off for one of his very special "awards."
And if the preview on Piers Morgan's show this Wednesday night was any indication, they're off to a really bad start already, where Van Jones gave serial adulterer Newt Gingrich a complete pass when it comes to the pure hypocrisy of someone who has been married and divorced as many times and under the conditions that he has, being allowed to be spouting off about gay couples somehow causing harm to "traditional marriages," which Newt has been allowed to enjoy so many of.
My prediction on this show is that it's going to be a bust. I think you could have made the format interesting and informative and entertaining with the right group of people hosting the show, but there are a lot of other people I would have considered first before any of these four.
Full transcript below the fold:
I have no idea why CNN thinks this is a good idea, or why it might help their ratings, but apparently they're going to bring Crossfire back to the network this fall, and they're going to have Newt Gingrich, S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones host the debate program.
The good news is, anyone who regularly watches MSNBC in the afternoons won't have S.E. Cupp dumbing down the airways come this fall. The bad news is, CNN actually believes that she and Newt Gingrich deserve a spot on their payroll.
I'm not sure how this show is going to differ all that much from what we're treated to on cable news day in and day out already and I don't have any objections to the format being something they'd like to try bringing back. I just don't understand what they think the draw will be with Cupp and Gingrich.
They're both nothing but a couple of right-wing flame throwers, with Cupp perpetually uninformed and Gingrich, the direct mail scam artist and race baiter who is smart enough to con the rubes who actually believed he ever wanted to be President into buying his books or sending off for one of his very special "awards."
And if the preview on Piers Morgan's show this Wednesday night was any indication, they're off to a really bad start already, where Van Jones gave serial adulterer Newt Gingrich a complete pass when it comes to the pure hypocrisy of someone who has been married and divorced as many times and under the conditions that he has, being allowed to be spouting off about gay couples somehow causing harm to "traditional marriages," which Newt has been allowed to enjoy so many of.
JONES: Well, first of all, I just want to say, as a Christian, if you're concerned about traditional marriage, Kim Kardashian has done more harm to traditional marriage than any gay person. The institution of marriage has been falling apart on heterosexual has been screwing it up. We're the ones getting divorced. We're the ones cheating. We're the ones who were -- were shacking up.
The people who brought the dignity and the honor back in the institution are the lesbian and gay community. And the problem that we have now is, just because you put something on the ballot, if you put it on the ballot in the civil rights of 1950, we wouldn't have them. The court has a job to do to protect people. I'm glad they did the job.Sorry Van, but that hypocrite who is doing harm to "traditional marriage" is your new "co-host" who is right there on the air with you, and he's the one who should have been called out, not Kim Kardashian.
My prediction on this show is that it's going to be a bust. I think you could have made the format interesting and informative and entertaining with the right group of people hosting the show, but there are a lot of other people I would have considered first before any of these four.
Full transcript below the fold:
MORGAN: From 1990 that's "Crossfire" with a younger Rush Limbaugh, making his case as a guest. Tonight the great news is that he's not back on "Crossfire." He's too old and too boring. Instead CNN is bringing back the "Crossfire" format with four incredible new co- hosts, and we have it all together here for the first time. Van Jones, Stephanie Cutter, Newt Gingrich, and S.E. Cupp.And just for good measure, any time the subject of Crossfire comes up, it's always nice to remind everyone of the drubbing Jon Stewart gave the show years ago when Carlson and Begala were hosting it.
Welcome to you all. And for the first time, may I say, welcome "Crossfire." This should be very lively. We're going to have a little taste from it tonight. Let's get straight into this.
Newt Gingrich, you must be absolutely thrilled about the Supreme Court's decisions today.
NEWT GINGRICH, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Well, I was thrilled that you're missing the core point that eight million Californians voted a particular way. Their governor and their attorney general refused to defend them, and as a result, the court didn't actually decide the substance of the case. David Boise was quite clear. The court said there is nobody here who is standing to defend the case, therefore the case is remitted because of that or amended because of that.
It strikes me that the -- the eight million people in California have a pretty good reason to be a little more alienated from Washington than they were yesterday.
MORGAN: Let me ask you just very quickly before we go to the rest of the panel, why are you so opposed to gay people having the same rights to get married as you? I mean, why?
(CROSSTALK)
GINGRICH: First of all, I'm not opposed to gay people having the right to have a relationship.
MORGAN: But to get married, I said.
GINGRICH: Much like Cardinal Dolan who you were dissing. I actually do believe as a Christian that marriage is between a man and a woman.
MORGAN: Well, Cardinal Dolan described it as a tragedy for America.
GINGRICH: And it's a --
MORGAN: A tragedy?
GINGRICH: Well --
MORGAN: A tragedy that two loving people of the same sex can't get married like you and me? That's a tragedy for America?
GINGRICH: I think if you want to reject the right of the Catholic bishop's collectively, not just Dolan, to actually stand up for their values and you want to say that's -- and you want to trivialize it, that's your right, but in fact, I do believe states are making arrangements. What I object to in this case is very clear cut. You had a 5-4 decision to reject eight million Californians on the grounds that eight million people have no standing before the Supreme Court.
MORGAN: OK. OK.
GINGRICH: That's a huge mistake.
MORGAN: No, I hear that. I hear that. Let's go to Van Jones. It seems like you want to get in there.
Is this a tragedy for America, Van?
VAN JONES, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Well, first of all, I just want to say, as a Christian, if you're concerned about traditional marriage, Kim Kardashian has done more harm to traditional marriage than any gay person. The institution of marriage has been falling apart on heterosexual has been screwing it up. We're the ones getting divorced. We're the ones cheating. We're the ones who were -- were shacking up.
The people who brought the dignity and the honor back in the institution are the lesbian and gay community. And the problem that we have now is, just because you put something on the ballot, if you put it on the ballot in the civil rights of 1950, we wouldn't have them. The court has a job to do to protect people. I'm glad they did the job.
MORGAN: OK. S.E. Cupp, this is quite startling. I think you're going to agree with Van Jones.
S.E. CUP, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Well, when it comes to Prop 8 I agree with Newt. It's a rejection of the voices of the people and that is -- that's a shame. I am a conservative who happens to support gay rights. I'm a conservative who supports marriage. I'm a conservative who supports gay marriage. So on DOMA I think there was a victory, but to me the significant ruling in DOMA wasn't just that the federal government has to acknowledge the right of gay people to marry but that the federal government has to acknowledge the right of the states.
As a small government conservative who supports federalism, I think this was a huge victory for federalism. And if you believe in small government --
MORGAN: OK.
CUPP: -- and conservatism with a C, then you have to see that as at least a silver lining.
MORGAN: OK. Stephanie Cutter, you're putting a face like you've either eaten a very, very, very bad onion or you don't agree with that.
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHANIE CUTTER, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": No, not an onion. I was just waiting to speak. You know, I don't think it's a surprise where I stand. I am very happy about the Supreme Court's decision today on DOMA. A lot of us have been against DOMA for a long time, has been fighting to overturn it.
In terms of the decision on California, you know, yes, eight million people voted for a ballot initiative. But as Van said, people have voted before and they've been wrong. That's why we have checks and balances in our government. We have three branches of government and the courts performed a check on the people and vice versa.
And I think that today, you know, there was a check on ensuring that people have equality in California. And I think that's why --
MORGAN: OK, well, I --
CUTTER: You know, what we saw in the background of Ted and David was a huge celebration. People in California are embracing this.
MORGAN: Yes. No, you got a lot of happy Americans on this tragic day for America.
Why the MIT Blackjack Team Became Entrepreneurs
The MIT Blackjack Team, made famous by the book 'Bringing Down the
House' and the movie '21,' learned important lessons about running a
business when they were beating casinos in the '80s and '90s. Key
members of the team went on to start influential tech companies like
SolidWorks and Stanza and invest in startups. Why did they do that
instead of becoming, say, hedge fund managers?
MIT entrepreneurship leader Bill Aulet moderated a team reunion panel in Boston, and he writes that the themes that carry over from blackjack to startups include staying disciplined, playing for the long term, and not taking unnecessary risks. And, of course, disrupting the powers that be.
MIT entrepreneurship leader Bill Aulet moderated a team reunion panel in Boston, and he writes that the themes that carry over from blackjack to startups include staying disciplined, playing for the long term, and not taking unnecessary risks. And, of course, disrupting the powers that be.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Obama has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught
The Criminal N.S.A.
By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN
THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the
National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and
that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private
communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program
called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the
Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”
It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions,
like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White
House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby
Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So
have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.
This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the
privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other
critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of
federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through
a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that
Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass
surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay,
fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans
deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has
seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.
The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn.
Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.
The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of
the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that
a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable
grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign
intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate
probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to
terrorism.
Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October
2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for
phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.,
a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act,
and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress
intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted
information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for
information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all —
it’s a dragnet.
“How can every call that every American makes or
receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has
asked. The answer is simple: It’s not.
The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our
phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to
an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular
reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected
might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any
data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by
“eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is
“relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of
relevance.
Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of
communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have
already learned about the N.S.A.’s access to telecommunications and
Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is
collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including
communications to, from and between Americans.
The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct
warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the
director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the
monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any
nonAmerican individual or entity not known to be in the United States,
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to
provide access to Americans’ international communications. The court
does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does
it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the
intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the
court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret
directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over
calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voiceover IP calls (like
Skype) and social networking information.
Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very
broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to
outstrip that authority. In particular, the government “may not
intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all
intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be
located in the United States.”
The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected
communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to
produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as
John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By
turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the
communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has
intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under
the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.
How could vacuuming up Americans’ communications conform with this legal
limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national
intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word
“acquire” only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of
communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the
information.
If there’s a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble.
The administration hides the extent of its “incidental” surveillance of
Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at
the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about
because the surveillance could not “target” American citizens or
permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on
these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read
Americans’ e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a
government fed misunderstanding.
A “target” under the act is a person or entity the government wants
information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to.
It’s actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans’ messages so long as
they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the
United States.
Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable
cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no
precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast
amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications.
The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on
select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public
Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of
privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private
electronic messages that it stores with third parties.
This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least
five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v.
Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A.
Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is
monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line
and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That
principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive
nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking
activity.
We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but
we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of
language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret,
unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that
make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting
Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance
programs what they are: criminal.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
The Mind Your Own Business Act
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) joins “Viewpoint” host John Fugelsang to discuss
an amendment he will soon introduce in the House of Representatives called the
Mind Your Own Business Act.
Grayson hopes this amendment will end NSA spying on Americans. He says, “That kind of spying does not make us safer and it is beneath our dignity as Americans.”
Grayson adds, “Virtually everybody that I know immediately recognizes how silly and pointless it is to spy on every person’s conversation.”
Grayson hopes this amendment will end NSA spying on Americans. He says, “That kind of spying does not make us safer and it is beneath our dignity as Americans.”
Grayson adds, “Virtually everybody that I know immediately recognizes how silly and pointless it is to spy on every person’s conversation.”
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Civil rights leaders dealt ‘a devastating blow’
By Morgan Whitaker
Civil rights groups suffered major setbacks on Tuesday after the heart of the landmark civil-rights law that protects minority voters was effectively gutted by the Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act , which required many Southern states to obtain pre-clearance before making any changes to voting laws.
Although the ruling does state that pre-clearance still stands, it functionally halts that part of the law until Congress can draw up a new set of guidelines to determine which areas are subject to federal oversight.
“This is a devastating blow to Americans, particularly African-Americans, who are now at the mercy of state governments,” Rev. Al Sharpton, PoliticsNation host and civil rights activist said in a statement released through the National Action Network. “Given last year’s attempts by states to change voting rules, it is absurd to say that we do not need these protections.”
Sharpton also vowed to continue the fight, noting the efforts that brought about the civil rights achievements of the 1960′s were set in motion by activism. “It was a people’s movement from the bottom up,” he said on MSNBC Tuesday. “And that’s what’s going to have to happen now.”
“James Crow Jr. Esquire is doing Jim Crow work today,” he added.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, echoed that sentiment.
“The Supreme Court has stabbed the Voting Rights Act in the heart. The White House and Congress must speak out as they are direct beneficiaries of the act and must assume leadership,” he said in a statement released on his Facebook page. “Democracy is just 48 years old. It began in Selma 1965. This decision is designed to unravel 48 years of progress.”
Many legally-focused civil rights organizations also spoke out against the ruling, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court, and called today’s ruling “an act of extraordinary judicial overreach.”
“The Supreme Court ruling takes the most powerful tool our nation has to defend minority voting rights out of commission.” Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the NAACP LDF, said in a statement. “By second-guessing Congress’ judgment about which places should be covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has left millions of minority voters without the mechanism that has allowed them to stop voting discrimination before it occurs.
“This is like letting you keep your car, but taking away the keys,” she added. “To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. Congress must step in.”
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which represented one of the defendant-interveners in the case, criticized the decision as well.
“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation’s most important and effective civil rights laws. Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades,” Jon Greenbaum, Chief Counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights said in a statement. “Today’s decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.”
“This decision disregards the documented history of ongoing voting discrimination in the covered states and paralyzes Section 5, which has blocked thousands of racially discriminatory voting practices and procedures before they could ever take effect,” Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights President and Executive Director Barbara Arnwine added in a statement. “Civil rights and civic organizations must now unite with the American people – fighting new discriminatory voting laws lawsuit by lawsuit and state by state—until Congress acts decisively to replace what has been one of the most effective civil rights laws ever passed.”
For Rev. Sharpton, Tuesday’s decision has helped define the focus of the commemorative march honoring the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, which he says ”will now be centered around the protection and restoring of voter protection.”
“This ruling has in effect revoked one of Dr. King’s greatest achievements, the teeth of the Voting Rights Acts,” he added.
Civil rights groups suffered major setbacks on Tuesday after the heart of the landmark civil-rights law that protects minority voters was effectively gutted by the Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act , which required many Southern states to obtain pre-clearance before making any changes to voting laws.
Although the ruling does state that pre-clearance still stands, it functionally halts that part of the law until Congress can draw up a new set of guidelines to determine which areas are subject to federal oversight.
“This is a devastating blow to Americans, particularly African-Americans, who are now at the mercy of state governments,” Rev. Al Sharpton, PoliticsNation host and civil rights activist said in a statement released through the National Action Network. “Given last year’s attempts by states to change voting rules, it is absurd to say that we do not need these protections.”
Sharpton also vowed to continue the fight, noting the efforts that brought about the civil rights achievements of the 1960′s were set in motion by activism. “It was a people’s movement from the bottom up,” he said on MSNBC Tuesday. “And that’s what’s going to have to happen now.”
“James Crow Jr. Esquire is doing Jim Crow work today,” he added.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, echoed that sentiment.
“The Supreme Court has stabbed the Voting Rights Act in the heart. The White House and Congress must speak out as they are direct beneficiaries of the act and must assume leadership,” he said in a statement released on his Facebook page. “Democracy is just 48 years old. It began in Selma 1965. This decision is designed to unravel 48 years of progress.”
Many legally-focused civil rights organizations also spoke out against the ruling, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court, and called today’s ruling “an act of extraordinary judicial overreach.”
“The Supreme Court ruling takes the most powerful tool our nation has to defend minority voting rights out of commission.” Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the NAACP LDF, said in a statement. “By second-guessing Congress’ judgment about which places should be covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has left millions of minority voters without the mechanism that has allowed them to stop voting discrimination before it occurs.
“This is like letting you keep your car, but taking away the keys,” she added. “To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. Congress must step in.”
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which represented one of the defendant-interveners in the case, criticized the decision as well.
“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation’s most important and effective civil rights laws. Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades,” Jon Greenbaum, Chief Counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights said in a statement. “Today’s decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.”
“This decision disregards the documented history of ongoing voting discrimination in the covered states and paralyzes Section 5, which has blocked thousands of racially discriminatory voting practices and procedures before they could ever take effect,” Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights President and Executive Director Barbara Arnwine added in a statement. “Civil rights and civic organizations must now unite with the American people – fighting new discriminatory voting laws lawsuit by lawsuit and state by state—until Congress acts decisively to replace what has been one of the most effective civil rights laws ever passed.”
For Rev. Sharpton, Tuesday’s decision has helped define the focus of the commemorative march honoring the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, which he says ”will now be centered around the protection and restoring of voter protection.”
“This ruling has in effect revoked one of Dr. King’s greatest achievements, the teeth of the Voting Rights Acts,” he added.
Obama’s ‘Internal Threat’ program: ‘We’re on the road to East Germany’
Cenk Uygur talks to TYT panelists Ana Kasparian, “TYT University” host John
Iadarola, and comedian Jimmy Dore about the government’s “Internal
Threat” program, which aims to discourage leaks by equating
whistleblowing with treason.
The program also encourages government employees to rat out co-workers who may be potential whistleblowers based on risk indicators, such as martial or financial distress.
”In East Germany, once they found the paperwork after the wall came down, it turned out that one out of every ten people…was a government collaborator,” Cenk says. “We’re on the road to East Germany.”
The program also encourages government employees to rat out co-workers who may be potential whistleblowers based on risk indicators, such as martial or financial distress.
”In East Germany, once they found the paperwork after the wall came down, it turned out that one out of every ten people…was a government collaborator,” Cenk says. “We’re on the road to East Germany.”
Monday, June 24, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
America's infrastructure: Made in China?
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
This Will Not End Well
By Eugene Robinson
A general view of damaged shops in Qusair, Syria.
AP/SANA
WASHINGTON—In Syria, the Obama administration seems to be stumbling back to the future: An old-fashioned proxy war, complete with the usual shadowy CIA arms-running operation, the traditional plan to prop up ostensible “moderates” whose prospects are doubtful and, of course, the customary shaky grasp of what the fighting is really about.
This will not end well.
It is tragic that more than 90,000 people have been killed in the bloody Syrian conflict, with more than a million displaced. But I have heard no claim that President Obama’s decision to arm the rebels will halt or even slow the carnage. To the contrary, sending more weapons into the fray will likely result in greater death and destruction, at least in the short term.
So this is not promising as a humanitarian intervention. And if the aim is to punish dictator Bashar al-Assad for his apparent use of chemical weapons, surely there are measures—a missile strike on the regime’s military airfields, for example—that would make the point without also making an open-ended commitment.
Why decide now to announce stepped-up direct support for Gen. Salim Idriss and his rebel forces? It is surely not a coincidence that the Syrian military—with the help of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran—has been pulverizing the rebels in recent weeks and now threatens to recapture Aleppo, the country’s commercial hub.
Hence, a complicated proxy war: The United States supports Idriss. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are U.S. allies, send money and arms to competing rebel factions that dream of turning Syria into an Islamic republic. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are supporting Assad with weapons, money and—in the case of Hezbollah—well-trained troops. The rebel side is mostly Sunni; the government side largely Shiite.
As I said, this will not end well.
President Obama’s reluctance to get dragged into this morass has been commendable, but now his ambivalence and caution become liabilities. Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world is Syria. Russia’s only military base outside of the former Soviet Union is in Syria. Does Obama care as much as those nations’ leaders do about who wins the war? If not, what’s the point?
It could be argued that providing Idriss with light arms and ammunition is a way to equip moderate, secular forces for their inevitable fight against Islamists in a fractured post-Assad Syria. But this is moot if Assad crushes the rebellion and holds on. Accordingly, U.S. aid reportedly may include some heavier weapons for use against tanks and aircraft. The CIA will take the lead in transferring the arms and training the rebels to use them, according to The Washington Post.
Perhaps bolstering Idriss can at least buy time for negotiations to produce a political settlement, which is what Obama has said he prefers. For a long time, Russia balked at joining the call for an international peace conference. Now that momentum on the battlefield has shifted and the Assad regime is in a stronger position, Russia is more willing to summon everyone to the table—but the Obama administration is no longer in such a big hurry.
Not every slope is slippery, but this one looks like a bobsled run. It was August 2011 when Obama issued a statement declaring that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Now that the president has put muscle behind those words, it will be difficult for the United States to accept any other outcome.
There will be pressure to impose a no-fly zone to neutralize Assad’s devastating air power. There will be pressure to contain the war so it does not spill beyond Syria’s borders and destabilize our allies in Turkey and Jordan, or our sort-of, kind-of allies in Iraq. There will be pressure to alleviate the immense suffering of the Syrian people. Perhaps all of this can be accomplished without putting American lives at risk. I doubt it.
Above all, there will be pressure to win a proxy war that Obama never wanted to fight. This is how quagmires begin, with one reluctant step after another toward the yawning abyss. (See: Vietnam.)
We do sometimes win proxy wars—in Afghanistan, for example, where the CIA helped the warlords defeat the mighty Soviet army. In the process, however, we created the chaotic power vacuum that allowed al-Qaeda to set up shop—and ultimately launch the 9/11 attacks.
I hope I’m wrong, but fear I’m right: This will not end well.
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com
WASHINGTON—In Syria, the Obama administration seems to be stumbling back to the future: An old-fashioned proxy war, complete with the usual shadowy CIA arms-running operation, the traditional plan to prop up ostensible “moderates” whose prospects are doubtful and, of course, the customary shaky grasp of what the fighting is really about.
This will not end well.
It is tragic that more than 90,000 people have been killed in the bloody Syrian conflict, with more than a million displaced. But I have heard no claim that President Obama’s decision to arm the rebels will halt or even slow the carnage. To the contrary, sending more weapons into the fray will likely result in greater death and destruction, at least in the short term.
So this is not promising as a humanitarian intervention. And if the aim is to punish dictator Bashar al-Assad for his apparent use of chemical weapons, surely there are measures—a missile strike on the regime’s military airfields, for example—that would make the point without also making an open-ended commitment.
Why decide now to announce stepped-up direct support for Gen. Salim Idriss and his rebel forces? It is surely not a coincidence that the Syrian military—with the help of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran—has been pulverizing the rebels in recent weeks and now threatens to recapture Aleppo, the country’s commercial hub.
Hence, a complicated proxy war: The United States supports Idriss. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are U.S. allies, send money and arms to competing rebel factions that dream of turning Syria into an Islamic republic. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are supporting Assad with weapons, money and—in the case of Hezbollah—well-trained troops. The rebel side is mostly Sunni; the government side largely Shiite.
As I said, this will not end well.
President Obama’s reluctance to get dragged into this morass has been commendable, but now his ambivalence and caution become liabilities. Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world is Syria. Russia’s only military base outside of the former Soviet Union is in Syria. Does Obama care as much as those nations’ leaders do about who wins the war? If not, what’s the point?
It could be argued that providing Idriss with light arms and ammunition is a way to equip moderate, secular forces for their inevitable fight against Islamists in a fractured post-Assad Syria. But this is moot if Assad crushes the rebellion and holds on. Accordingly, U.S. aid reportedly may include some heavier weapons for use against tanks and aircraft. The CIA will take the lead in transferring the arms and training the rebels to use them, according to The Washington Post.
Perhaps bolstering Idriss can at least buy time for negotiations to produce a political settlement, which is what Obama has said he prefers. For a long time, Russia balked at joining the call for an international peace conference. Now that momentum on the battlefield has shifted and the Assad regime is in a stronger position, Russia is more willing to summon everyone to the table—but the Obama administration is no longer in such a big hurry.
Not every slope is slippery, but this one looks like a bobsled run. It was August 2011 when Obama issued a statement declaring that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Now that the president has put muscle behind those words, it will be difficult for the United States to accept any other outcome.
There will be pressure to impose a no-fly zone to neutralize Assad’s devastating air power. There will be pressure to contain the war so it does not spill beyond Syria’s borders and destabilize our allies in Turkey and Jordan, or our sort-of, kind-of allies in Iraq. There will be pressure to alleviate the immense suffering of the Syrian people. Perhaps all of this can be accomplished without putting American lives at risk. I doubt it.
Above all, there will be pressure to win a proxy war that Obama never wanted to fight. This is how quagmires begin, with one reluctant step after another toward the yawning abyss. (See: Vietnam.)
We do sometimes win proxy wars—in Afghanistan, for example, where the CIA helped the warlords defeat the mighty Soviet army. In the process, however, we created the chaotic power vacuum that allowed al-Qaeda to set up shop—and ultimately launch the 9/11 attacks.
I hope I’m wrong, but fear I’m right: This will not end well.
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is dark and full of terrors
The world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is dark and full of terrors (preview)
June 17, 2013 8:30 AM
There’s
about 80 different monsters in The Witcher 3, the developer says, and
each has its own habitat, strengths, and weaknesses. During the demo,
the developer showed a side quest involving a formerly peaceful woodland
spirit that is now terrorizing the village that used to worship it.
Geralt agrees to slay the beast (for a price), but first he has to find
it. A simple press of a button activates Geralt’s new Witcher Sense
(think Detective Vision in Batman: Arkham Asylum), and it’s not long
before he spots the creature’s trail. He discovers that it’s a Leshen — a
tall, antlered being that can control the forest and disappear in a
cloud of ravens.
You know, when you think about it, The Witcher video game series shares some similarities with the hit HBO TV show Game of Thrones.
Both are based on works by popular fantasy authors. Both tell tales of
characters that are neither completely good nor completely evil. Both
are set in harsh fictional medieval worlds populated with mythical
creatures, scheming nobles, and the occasional brother-sister incest.
And they both look damn good.
Due for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One sometime in
2014, The Witcher 3 is the final entry in CD Projekt RED’s critically
acclaimed action-role-playing game franchise. It’s also the first title
in the series to feature a truly open game world and free-roaming
exploration, and it’s gorgeously detailed.
CD Projekt claims it’s 35
times bigger than The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (a large game in
itself) and takes 40 minutes to travel on horseback end to end.
“Basically, the new philosophy of exploring the world in
The Witcher 3 is that you can get to every place you see on the screen,”
the developer told the media during a live gameplay demo at this week’s
Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. “This is a massive
improvement in comparison to Witcher 2, which had some artificial
barriers.”
Of course, a world that big and beautiful is pointless
unless it’s filled with interesting things to do.
The Witcher 3′s
standalone, nonlinear story once again focuses on mutant monster hunter
Geralt of Rivia. CD Projekt promises a more personal story for Geralt
this time around. Now freed from the political machinations of kings and
elves, he’s able to search for his loved ones and pursue the Wild Hunt,
a spectral force straight out of folklore that brings death and terror
to all it passes. The beginning of the demo shows these skeletal riders
attacking a village, and Geralt seeks the lone survivor of the massacre
to get some answers.
The ability to track down and slay epic beasts is nothing new — Capcom built an entire franchise
around it. But it’s an important part of The Witcher lore, and CD
Projekt is putting greater emphasis on it this time around. “We decided
we would no longer have this world of enemies who are very weak and who
you’re just slashing them and killing them,” said The Witcher 3 game
director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. “We decided to create this Monster
Hunting system and the Witcher Sense system and create monsters in a way
that would be unique. They got their own special abilities, and the
hunt for every one of these monsters will be different. You will feel
that you’re a monster hunter actually in the game.”
There’s
about 80 different monsters in The Witcher 3, the developer says, and
each has its own habitat, strengths, and weaknesses. During the demo,
the developer showed a side quest involving a formerly peaceful woodland
spirit that is now terrorizing the village that used to worship it.
Geralt agrees to slay the beast (for a price), but first he has to find
it. A simple press of a button activates Geralt’s new Witcher Sense
(think Detective Vision in Batman: Arkham Asylum), and it’s not long
before he spots the creature’s trail. He discovers that it’s a Leshen — a
tall, antlered being that can control the forest and disappear in a
cloud of ravens.
Geralt has deep knowledge of his world’s more deadlier
creatures, and all of that information is in the game’s Monster Journal.
This Wikipedia-like bestiary is incredibly detailed; by reading it, the
player learns that the Leshen is very territorial and uses totems to
steal power from the forest. It also likes to bind itself to a nearby
human and use that person’s vital energy to resurrect itself if it’s
slain. Once again, Geralt’s heightened senses allow him to find the
marked person, an innocent woman named Hilde. Once she’s dealt with
(presumably killed), Geralt is free to hunt down and destroy the totems
and finally the spirit itself.
The battle with the Leshen is a spooky, tense affair.
Wolves spring out of the shadows at Geralt, and massive tree roots rise
up to strike and hinder him. The Leshen itself is a cagey opponent that
randomly teleports about the forest, but eventually Geralt is successful
and returns to the village to collect his reward.
There he learns that not all of the world’s monsters have
antlers or walk on four legs. While he was off dealing with the Leshen,
the man who hired him decided to stage a coup, slaying the village
elders in cold blood. Geralt calls the man a murderer but ultimately
collects his fee and moves on. What else can he do? The world of The
Witcher is dark and morally ambiguous, and sometimes picking the lesser
of two evils is the best choice available.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Martin Bashir to Michael Steele: 'What Does the GOP Hope to Accomplish?'
By scarce
After playing a series of embarassing clips from Michele Bachmann, Phyllis Schlafly, Allen West, Sarah Palin, John Ratzenberger and others, the same bunch of assorted lunatics who show up at all these conservative conferences over and over again, this time at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference now on in DC, Martin Bashir asked former RNC Chairman Michael Steele this rather pointed question...
After playing a series of embarassing clips from Michele Bachmann, Phyllis Schlafly, Allen West, Sarah Palin, John Ratzenberger and others, the same bunch of assorted lunatics who show up at all these conservative conferences over and over again, this time at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference now on in DC, Martin Bashir asked former RNC Chairman Michael Steele this rather pointed question...
MARTIN BASHIR: What does the GOP hope to accomplish by repeatedly appealing to the far right of the party while at the same time possibly alienating more mainstream republicans?
MICHAEL STEELE: [Deep breath and a sigh] Well, I think they need to.......and Steele's voice trailed off as MSNBC's Karen Finney and Touré burst into howls of laughter.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
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