Duty to Warn

It isn't often that a Senator changes how I see the physical world, but Larry Craig did. Connecting through the Minneapolis airport for the first time since his arrest, I had to use the facilities, and wondered, "Is this the one?" They should put up a plaque. Or name it the Larry Craig Memorial Men's Room. After sitting down, I became hyper-aware of my surroundings, now that I knew the secret foot-tapping codes. Not wanting to inadvertently create an incident, I kept looking at the sides of the stalls and worrying that if I sat slightly too widely, the vice cops would come charging in.

Then I realized that I'd have to sit painfully widely to reach someone else's stall. And without gorilla arms, it would take a contortionist to reach beneath the divider accidentally. With my newfound awareness I've noticed the same in other restrooms as well. In fact, in three decades of flying and using airport men's rooms, no one has ever reached under my stall. Reassured, I'm now able to do my business as usual and head off for my flights.

When the Soviet Union launched the world's first artificial satellite on Oct. 4, 1957, American horizons darkened with self-reproach and fear. Sputnik was a shock to the system. "The fact that we have lost the race to launch the satellite means that we are losing the race to produce ballistic missiles," the influential columnist Walter Lippmann wrote. At a diplomatic party, when an official in the Eisenhower administration commented that Sputnik would be forgotten in six months, Washington's famed hostess-with-the-mostest Perle Mesta shot back: "And in six months, we may all be dead."

Yet we all know the fabled story line: A resilient America rose to the challenge and bested the Soviets in space. A dozen years after its propaganda perigee, the United States landed a man on the moon. And the nation's zeal for cutting-edge technology continues to shape the American experience.

But the triumphant story line bypasses a shadowy continuum of the last five decades.

Americans are convinced that Osama Bin Laden orchestrated the attack on America on September 11, 2001. This “fact” has been called into question by serious researchers because very little hard, credible evidence has ever been presented to support the contention. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell promised release of a White Paper that would document the links to bin Laden, but then claimed he had “misspoken”. The White Paper was shown to British officials instead, who were quoted in their press saying, “It’s not enough to go to court, but it’s enough to go to war.” The contents remain secret to the American public.

While on vacation we made contact with a friend's family on the Rosebud Reservation. Rosebud Reservation is made up of 21 "communities", much like our townships. We visited the Stead family in Mission in Antelope Community. Antelope is the largest of the 21 communities with a population of about 2700 people. Half of those are eighteen years of age or younger! There are very few jobs.

Theresa Whitehorse Stead has birthed and raised 6 children and adopted and raised three more. She has fostered 605 children! There are always children in their home.

Robert and Theresa Stead [both recovering alcoholics] have built a ministry that struggles to solve some of the great problems of the people there. They have built a church and hold worship services, Christian education, and feed and help clothe school children, provide basic needs for those who have no resources of their own. She cares for the youngest school children after school to make sure they have a hot meal.

Barack Obama and John Edwards are competing against each other, including some recent sniping. But more than anything, both are trying to stop Hillary Clinton's momentum, and erode her lead in the polls. Suppose each pledged to focus between now and the primaries on their commonalities, and on their real differences with Clinton's priorities and stands. Even more audaciously, what if each pledged to offer the Vice Presidency to the other if they won? This just might be enough to shift the election.

A story could start almost anywhere. This one begins at a moment startled by a rocket.

In the autumn of 1957, America was not at war ... or at peace. The threat of nuclear annihilation shadowed every day, flickering with visions of the apocalyptic. In classrooms, “duck and cover” drills were part of the curricula. Underneath any Norman Rockwell painting, the grim reaper had attained the power of an ultimate monster.

Dwight Eisenhower was most of the way through his fifth year in the White House. He liked to speak reassuring words of patriotic faith, with presidential statements like: “America is the greatest force that God has ever allowed to exist on His footstool.” Such pronouncements drew a sharp distinction between the United States and the Godless Communist foe.

But on October 4, 1957, the Kremlin announced the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. God was supposed to be on America’s side, yet the Soviet atheists had gotten to the heavens before us. Suddenly the eagle of liberty could not fly nearly so high.

An independent journalist was acquitted October 1 in Illinois 19th Circuit Court, of trespassing and resisting arrest charges going back to July 2006 when he covered a war protest at the Midwest Entrance Processing Command (MEPCOM) at the Great Lakes Naval Base.

Mike Ferner, of Toledo, Ohio was pleased when Judge Patrick Lawler announced his decision from the bench on both counts.

“The case was ridiculous from the first,” Ferner said after the acquittals.  “I was there photographing three people kneeling down in the MEPCOM parking lot, reading the names of those killed in the war in Iraq.  I never should have been arrested in the first place and certainly no one should be put through an ordeal like this, having to make five trips back to Illinois before finally getting my day in court.  I was glad to see the court finally told the arresting officer and prosecutor they had no case.”

The three protesters, members of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, had just finished a month-long, 320-mile walk from Springfield to the Navy base north of Chicago to protest the war in Iraq and the occupation of Palestine.

With the Senate embracing the reckless Kyl-Lieberman amendment, we've moved one step closer to attacking Iran. But there's still time for Congress to assert itself against yet another needless war with massive destructive potential. By defining Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, a core branch of the Iranian military, as a  foreign terrorist organization, Kyl-Lieberman put the U.S. Senate on record as vindicating the Bush-Cheney line that Iranian proxies are part of a global conspiracy, linking Al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents, Hamas, Hezbollah, and any other enemy the administration wants to list. The bill now makes it far easier for Bush to manufacture some Tonkin Gulf-style excuse, then use it to justify an attack. No wonder Senator Jim Webb called it Cheney's fondest pipe dream.

Contempt for the empirical that can’t be readily jiggered or spun is evident at the top of the executive branch in Washington. The country is mired in a discourse that echoes the Scopes trial dramatized in “Inherit the Wind.” Mere rationality would mean lining up on the side of “science” against the modern yahoos and political panderers waving the flag of social conservatism. (At the same time that scientific Darwinism is under renewed assault, a de facto alliance between religious fundamentalists and profit-devout corporatists has moved the country further into social Darwinism that aims to disassemble the welfare state.) Entrenched opposition to stem-cell research is part of a grim pattern that includes complacency about severe pollution and global warming -- disastrous trends already dragging one species after another to the brink of extinction and beyond.

Hello! 

Gosh, I always have so much to say and there's never really enough time or space to say it all in.  I don't want to clog your boxes with mail.  Mine is certainly full, but I enjoy staying abreast of all the news and so I don't mind.  However, I am respectful of your time and storage limitations.  I will keep this message themed to Louisiana (as much as possible)!

The first item is a blatant disregard by the Times-Picayune for the candidacy of Malcolm Suber, running for New Orleans City Council.  Knowing how I've been treated in the "mainstream" media (MSM), I didn't dare let the omission pass without contacting the newspaper.  Of course, somehow I held out hope that they were different given their outstanding coverage during the Katrina tribulations.  In the case of candidate Suber, they are proving to wear the same blinders as many others in the MSM.  Suber's candidacy showcases the Reconstruction Party--a new political party being formed around the country.