Hartford, Connecticut, Tuesday, September 22, 2009.

 

5:10 p.m. In front of the Aetna, Farmington Avenue. Some 250 union members and concerned citizens disperse after protesting the insurance giant for its denials of healthcare in the name of profit. They carry signs and wear stickers seeking public healthcare.

 

Rather than advocate for a public option or Medicare for all, the protesters delivered a demand letter to Ron Williams, Aetna CEO, who made $24.3 million last year.

 

They want Aetna to comply with common sense honor before profit demands, such as:

• not standing between a doctor and a patient when it comes to deciding what care that patient needs;

• not denying or dropping coverage based on pre-existing medical condition;

• terminating any policy or incentive that rewards employees financially or otherwise for denying care and rejecting claims;

• not using any resources – including funds, employees, and facilities — to oppose any aspect of the health reform proposals supported by President Obama and being considered by members of the United States Congress.

As I spoke with some protesters afterwards, I spotted a man in a shirt and tie, carrying lunchbox, wearing an Aetna badge on his belt, and walking towards Farmington Avenue.

 

What do you think of this protest? I asked him.

 

"I'm waiting for my ride," he replied.

 

You obviously work for Aetna because of your badge, what do you think of the healthcare debate in America right now?

 

"I'm waiting for my ride," he said again, as his free hand slipped his badge into his pocket, out of sight.

 

Did Aetna instruct you not to talk to the press?

 

"I'm waiting for my ride."

 

In what area of this corporation do you work?

 

"I'm waiting for my ride."

 

Is this the strangest conversation you have ever had? It feels like "Waiting for Godot" to me. Let's go. We can't. Why not?

 

"I'm waiting for my ride."

 

At that point, Phil Sherwood, New Britain City Councilor and staffer at Connecticut Citizens Action Group, walked by. I introduced Sherwood to Mr. "I'm waiting for my ride."

 

Sherwood, who I shared a jail cell with for a night after we were arrested in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq, was diplomatic.

 

Go to Scenes Two and Three from an Evening Bicycle...

 

The problem with political theater is that we never really know when the curtain falls and when the play starts again.

 

The cast and crew of "What's the matter with Connecticut?" met up for a healthcare sinecure – a sinecure being a job you don’t need to show up for, coming from the middle aged feudal position of a job in the church that didn't involve the saving of souls.

 

Sen. Chris Dodd, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, and two Obama cabinet members, former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, now Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Small Business Administrator Karen Mills converged on Hartford.

 

The handlers selected a humble warehouse at 39 Belmont Street in Parkville, home of a successful small business, Connecticut Commercial Maintenance, Inc.

 

More than 90 people packed into this tiny, hot space, where two kayaks sat on wall shelves, and many ladders of all sizes leaned against walls covered in mudded and taped sheetrock that had never been painted.

 

Despite the fact that Parkville is poor, and two perfect-sixes sat across the street from the venue (one blighted and boarded up, the other with broken windows and children sitting on the front stoop), the show attracted a hardly diverse crowd.

 

Perhaps it wasn't fair for me to engage in racial profiling, but I counted six African-Americans in the Democratic audience, (seven if we count a DHHS cop who didn't want me taking pictures of his lapel pin), and maybe a dozen people who appeared to be Latino.

 

Aside from the journalists, the bloggers and the cops, including DHHS' internal security service who refused to identify which law enforcement agency they worked for, the regular suspects attended.

 

The reserved front row featured Connecticut Democratic Party Chair Nancy DiNardo, Senate President Don Williams, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, and Secretary of the State and wannabe Governor Susan Bysiewicz.

 

Also spotted in the audience were City Councilman Larry Deutsch and former State Senator and now a staffer in Congressman John Larson's office, Billy Ciotto of Wethersfield. CCAG boss and former Lamont campaign manager Tom Swann was there, too.

 

The AP daybook email circulating around said the dog-and-pony show about the proposed Democratic health care plan would start at 9:45. Dodd and DeLauro met in a private room upstairs with some locals prior to the show. Sebelius arrived at about 10, and the show began.

 

The Democrats wouldn’t be talking about single payer - the health care policy where the US government becomes the main purchaser of health care services (a monopsony where one buyer controls the market).

 

Why so many cops at protests? (link)

X.Addendum to War:

 

Connecticut's five Democratic members of Congress on Thursday, May 14, voted with a large majority in favor of a $96 billion appropriations bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September 30, 2009. Exactly 51 anti-war Democrats voted against the bill. Just to reiterate, all of Connecticut's delegation - Larson, Murphy, Courtney, Rosa DeLauro, and Jim Himes - approved of paying for slaughter and death with your tax dollars.

 

The Senate passed a similar $91 billion appropriation funding war Thursday, May 21. The two will reconcile and send something worth more than $90 bn to Obama. Yet we are closing schools, furloughing government employees.

 

We who fail to protest this injustice have blood on our hands.

 

Add to war fatigue the end of law school exams. Ever wondered what its like to sit with a pen and blue books for three hours writing an exam? Fumble with this .pdf of a natural resources law exam. Two days after something like that, summer classes started, mixed in with a heavy travel schedule and my need to reflect on the gravity of words, blogging has taken a backseat.

 

But sight never stops. Here's a few thousand words in image.

At least there are no corporate logos on the littered dime bag in Hartford's Keney Park. 7:30 p.m. 5/14/09

 

Ahh. A beach. Near the Palmas de Lucia hotel in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. Eye fish in a sea of word. 10 a.m. 5/2/9

 

The demolition of excess building capacity: the current landlords justified tearing down the old Mass Mutual complex in Hartford's Asylum Hill because of high carrying costs. On the bright side, what kind of green buildings can we build in its place? Plus, they kept the architecturally significant facade. 4:45 p.m. 05/14/09.

 

The Peace Park across the street from the White House demonstrates courage and commitment. 5:30 p.m., 5/17/09.

Photo Essay permanent link...

I. TV News

 

Pushing 11:45 or so, Mark Davis of Channel 8 had no time for pontificating about the Fair Elections Now Act, a scheme cooked up by Congressman John Larson and Sen. Arlen Specter, among others, to publicly finance Congressional campaigns.

 

Davis knew his deadline for noon broadcast loomed. He wasted no time, pouncing the moment Rep. Larson, the fourth highest ranking Congressman in the House, received an open floor for questions from emcee Common Cause CT executive director Cheri Quickmire.

 

Davis asked the ring leader three quick questions about nuts and bolts of FENA financing. Larson didn't answer any of them to Davis' satisfaction.

 

What about the robocalls? Davis followed up.

 

It's not going to stop 527s or 521s, Larson confirmed.

 

How are you going to fund it? Davis pressed. He didn't seem happy.

 

The Senate and the House differ, but Larson said he wants the monies from the sale of the analog spectrum.

 

It's a one-time deal, Davis said of the sale.

 

When we sell the station frequencies, we'll put the monies in an interest-bearing fund, and we'll expand the check-off on tax returns, Larson said.

 

How much is the average grant going to be, Davis asked.

 

The winning average of 455 districts, Larson said.

 

A few moments later, a woman in the press corps wondered how much it would all cost.

 

"I haven't done the calculations," Larson said. Auctioning the spectrum will be worth billions, he said. They want to get the bill moving forward, and there will be other suggestions.

 

If Congress gives away the analog spectrum the way they practically donate the public resources of gold and oil to corporate interests, the people will be lucky to reap millions.

 

II. Corrupt, not Corrosive

 

Congressmen are always having to reach for money, Larson said, leading off the services. More than twenty local liberal dignitaries lined up against the wall of conference room 1E in the state legislative office building to join the choir seeking to save Congressmen from running perpetual election campaigns.

 

Dialing for dollars leaves little time for Congressional business.

 

"It's not that the process is corrupt," Larson said, "it's corrosive because of the amount of time you have to spend and the money that ends up in the system."

 

Bob Edgar, a preacher at age 19, a six-term Congressman who served his freshman year with the Watergate Class, a former general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ and now national executive director of Common Cause, preached the gospel of clean elections, too.

 

Two corrosive influences in Washington are money and ego, Edgar said.

 

Congressman Courtney said that corrosive was John's wordsmithing, not his.

 

Considering congressmen with freezers full of cash, why corrosive and not corrupt?

 

There's always going to be corruption, this system is not corrupt, Larson said. The engine has been driven by money, and it continues to be exponentially exacerbated, Larson said.

 

What about AIPAC? Will the bill cut the influence of AIPAC? I asked.

 

This will not reduce anyone who is an effective lobbyist. He noted that Common Cause and the Service International Employees Union support the bill, and they are effective lobbies.

 

We take this one step at a time, Larson explained. Next, he wants to expand Congressional terms to four years each and stagger them.

 

"An appropriate first step lays the marker down," he said. "We believe there is too much money, that's what wrong."

 

Link to the other VII vignettes...

With the recent revelations that the CIA waterboarded two suspected terrorists a total of 266 times (proving how effective a torture technique it truly is not), I wonder why I am spending so much time covering UConn sports?

 

It seems the inverse of the 9/11 question - how can we laugh after such tragedy? Why examine entertainment in the face of Constitutional catastrophe? With the war on civil rights raging, the excesses of intercollegiate athletics should take a back seat, right? Over at edgeofsports.com, Dave Zirin suggests that progressives should not cede the contested space of the sporting world to the conservative right, because sports are in play in politics.

 

On Sunday, April 19, Zirin hosted a panel discussion "Sports as A Platform for Dissent" at the Left Forum, a three-day leftist learn-in at Pace University in New York City, featuring of dozens of sessions like "Terror Incognita," "Housing, a Basic Human Right" and "Women's Voices from Iran."

 

About 30 or so people sat in a windowless classroom next to the Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall to grapple with F-16 flyovers of stadium games and the anti-war stances of college basketball players. (And the counter-speech of Yankees' fans cheering for anti-war first baseman Carlos Delgado.)

 

Zirin, who has written several books and runs a satellite radio show, invited as panelists myself and Toni Smith, the one-time Manhattanville College basketball co-captain. Smith raised a ruckus in the run up to the 2003 ground invasion of Iraq not only on her team, but across the country when, in protest, she would turn her back to the U.S. flag for pre-game national anthems.

 

All hell broke loose when Smith held her ground before a game against the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Smith's story illustrates how the sports-entertainment complex provides a powerful platform for the human rights struggle. Like a solid sports fan, Zirin listed the historical highlights of players protesting and protesters playing.

 

My favorite: Black Panther Stokely Carmichael maintained that boxer Muhammed Ali's resistance to the Vietnam draft frightened the racist war machine more than armed, militant black nationalists.

 

So in light of President Obama's release last week of the 2002 CIA torture memos attempting to legitimize the use of medical professionals to terrorize prisoners of war with the worst trapped-with-the-rat-in-the-cage scenes of Orwell's 1984, we must know how UConn football coach and state-made millionaire Randy Edsall will help the people of Connecticut cover the $170,000 he lost on UConn's trip to the 2009 International Bowl in Toronto.

 

"No comment," said Mike Enright, UConn sports information officer. Send your deepest sympathies to Mr. Enright, a dedicated state employee who left a family funeral Saturday, April 19 to come to work, UConn's Blue-White spring football scrimmage at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

 

More on Chomsky, Upton Sinclair and UConn Football...

Should the United States ever vote for a general as president again, it will be for an affable, humorous four-star servant of empire like David H. Petraeus.

 

As General David Petraeus cracked jokes about Brezhnev, told war stories about Iraq and spun lies about murderous policies, he received multiple standing ovations from the packed house at Goodwin College's new riverfront building in East Hartford Friday night, March 13.

 

Among the clapping crowd was a who's who of Connecticut cognoscenti – Congressman Joe Courtney, Ned Lamont, Brad Davis and even former governor and ex-con John G. Rowland. And the business leaders and military personnel who populated the auditorium lapped up Petraeus’ public speaking skills.

 

Petraeus, a four star general, actually saw combat in the invasion of Iraq, and participated in the liberation of Najaf, he said.

 

"You could feel it, it fell," he said. When that happened, he told a fellow officer, "The good news is, we own Najaf. The bad news is, we own Najaf."

 

Congressman Courtney didn't see this as a statement of empire.

 

"I think you're drawing way too much of a conclusion," Courtney said afterwards. "It's a quip, not a policy statement."

 

Was it?

The man Moveon.org called "Gen. Betrayus"...

 

Nelson Mandela, like all great men, isn't the saint that we think he is. He has his faults, like all of us. But that quote up above - I learned it from Oxfam.

 

Coldplay at their mediocre concert in Hartford back in August handed out and Oxfam pamphlet containing the Mandela wisdom. And I've had that Mandela quote on my apartment wall, next to the bathroom door, for months. When I first read it, it grabbed me and throttled me. So simple, so much sense. So difficult.

 

So in honor of the economic rights as enunciated in the Universal Declaration, signed 60 years ago today, I post the fist in glove. May we someday see the end of hunger and material inequality. An ideal we may never see, but one worth chasing.

 

Thanks for stopping by. Peace, KK

 

P.S. - Anniversaries are the easiest way to make posts during exams. Trust and Estates down, Admin and Education law left, plus one paper. Posting will be thin until 12/19.

 

P.P.S. - Be wary of too many rights: The rights revolution has contributed in its own way to the atrophy of vital local governments and political parties, and to the disdain for politics that is now so prevalent in the American scene. From Mary Ann Glendon.

Link...

 

Brilliant idea that Oxfam beat me to: Somali Civil Society. With all the talk about the pirates in the Gulf of Aden, I began to get curious about how the daily life of Somalians is without government.

 

I wanted to go to Somalia on a fact-finding mission. But I have that law school stuff, and a job, and lots of debt before I can consider traveling again. So we wait.

 

And earlier today, I wrote about Obama's soft changes. It's all about tone, and how much does it say that Obama volunteered at a soup kitchen today with his family. Since I've been in law school, I've done so little volunteer work.

 

I tell myself that blogging, going to school, trying to keep my debt to a manageable level and waging my lawsuit is sufficient public service, because when I get out I will fight for justice with more tools. That I need to be in school to improve my ability to push levers of social change.

 

But it seems insufficient, that I am getting mine, I will have a nice dinner with my parents and sisters. That my wealth - however minimal - is protected. I don't have an answer. I don't think volunteerism is enough, though. We must assume Obama understands Eisenhower's warning - that every dollar for the military industrial complex is a dollar robbed from a hungry child. So why isn't he speaking more clearly on it?

Tara Donovan: Amazing artist who won a MacArthur Genius Grant. She has a show in Boston going on now. My sister is in town from Savannah, and we may go check this out. The toothpick cube Donovan made is pretty amazing. Makes me think of like what Frank Gehry might do if he worked with styrofoam cups instead of steel.

 

This has been a bit of a family week. My sister said I surprised her twice today, because a) I have the Dixie Chicks on my iPod (Traveling Soldier is a great song) and b) I said that I am conflicted on Obama because he is giving voice to concerns that I have, and defusing critics on all sides of the equation.

 

In reading some of the stuff I have written about Obama since the beginning of the year, my opinions have veered wildly on him. I think it will be a fun retrospective at the end of the year to highlight my most contradictory thoughts. It seems like nuance is probably the best word to apply to Obama - he challenges us to think.

 

Funeral: My great uncle Dino died this week. He was my maternal grandmother's only brother, and he lived a long (86), happy life, although his wife (Aunt Mary) of 52 years predeceased him by a few years, and those years were sad and difficult for him.

More on Church, Uncle Dino and the horror of war...

 

Fish links. With Annie's Goddess dressing, instead of tartar sauce.

 

The story about the DA in Texas who indicted Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez just is plain wierd. The DA throws down criminal indictments against the shadow government for its work in perpetuating injustice in a private prison. Then he disappears. The Texas Rangers find him in Mexico, and then a judge removes him from mor than half the work he did. From the Raymondsville Chronicle:

After being AWOL from the job and violating sections of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct - Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel "Johnny Guerra" has been replaced in five (5) of the nine (9) criminal cases he convinced a grand jury to file against Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...more here

FISA save me...A writer from Colors magazine called me from Italy today to talk about the story they are doing on my absurd interaction with Johnny Law back on Jan. 3, 2007. And later in the evening as I was thinking of the call, I wondered if the NSA listened to us discussing how much freedom we have lost. What's the line? "Those who seek to eliminate dissent soon find themselves eliminating dissenters."

 

From a lawyer friend in New Haven: How Hate Radio works. File this one under Morning Radio Chronicles, Too. My favorite line from Dan Shelly, reformed right wing radio producer:

This brings us to perhaps the most ironic thing about most talk show hosts. Though they may savage politicians and others they oppose, they fear criticism or critiques of any kind. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

Then there's the constant stream of informative drug policy reform stories from Mapinc via Cliff Thornton, this one talking about Vancouver's safe-injection rooms saving more than $14 million over 10 years.

Vancouver's safe-injection site will save the health-care system at least $14-million and prevent more than 1,000 HIV infections over a 10-year period, according to a new study about the controversial program.

The study, published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, is the latest piece of research to suggest the potential social benefit of Insite in helping curb substance abuse, and reducing the spread of hepatitis C, HIV and other infectious diseases.

"We were a bit surprised. The model really suggests that there are very considerable benefits," said Ahmed Bayoumi, lead author and scientist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health in Toronto.

This summer in Montreal, I saw Insite advertised on bus stop walls, and I am glad to see it working. Earth to Hartford? Are you listening?

 

Yes, because there is a new Hartford Blog: Weliveinhartfordandyoushouldtoo

 

More Link-fish...

 

The branch of legal critique known as Critical Legal Studies posits that law is merely a linguistic fig leaf to rationalize oppression. I spend hours and hours every day reading decisions that parse words, and every day grow more convinced that Critical Legal Studies is right.

 

One class evidencing this is administration law – the branch of legal theory which governs agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, etc.

 

Last week, we read a case from 1988 about the legality of a retroactivity formula used by the Department of Health and Human Services to recalculate payments and collections from hospitals for contracts from years past.

 

My professor, brilliant and well-versed, asked me if I thought it rational that DHHS gave the hospitals notice the formula was changing.

 

Sure, I said, it is reasonable to allow such an alteration if the hospitals know in advance formula for past years was changing. But what is crazy, I said, is that the government here is taking money from hospitals. Classmates laughed, more in approval and surprise than mocking of me (which has happened before).

 

And the class discussion returned to the arguments of Bowen v. Georgetown. I sat awestruck by the absurdity of the policy, and the enabling devices created by the law to justify taking money away from hospitals. I didn’t come to law school to learn how to bankrupt health care.

 

If I wasn’t in that class, no one else would have voiced that concern. I employ Critical Legal Studies in class because it says that where there are 5-4 opinions in the Supreme Court, it means that logical minds can arrive at two completely opposing, yet seemingly correct answers to the same legal problem.

 

Therefore, something else, like the ideological bent of the justices, or even what the justices had for breakfast, influences their decisions, and is in reality the real reason for the court’s holding. Pick any 5-4 decision, like, say, Bush v. Gore, and consider that more than legal wrangling with precedent came into play.

The Supreme Court's Fig Leaf, continued...

 

Before I dive into the Sarah Palin's incompetence (if you haven't heard the wanna-be Veep pranked by two Montreal comedians, listen here), first, let's review this Syria attack one more time.

 

H/t to Crooks and Liars for putting this in front of me. So Foreign Policy magazine interviewed Syrian diplomat Imad Moustapha. Moustapha says he talked with Joe Lieberman, who promised McCain would talk with Syria.

Foreign Policy: The United States claims its Sunday night raid was undertaken to stem the flow of militants into Iraq. Why do you think this raid happened?

Imad Moustapha: Do we know why? Of course not. The only analysis we have is that they are doing this for pure domestic political reasons that have everything to do with the elections and the electoral campaign. They want to come out with a story.

But we are still waiting for the U.S. administration to come out and tell the American people: “We killed [Abu Ghadiya], and here is the proof that we killed him.” We have presented our side of the story. We have published the photos of the eight people that were killed, their names, and what they were doing. This is our side of the story. Let the United States come with its side.

... Suddenly, after everybody has recognized that the situation has improved dramatically in Iraq, [the United States] comes and they attack a village in Syria. They coldbloodedly murder eight Syrian civilians, villagers who are totally defenseless, totally innocent. This is a terrorist, criminal act.

Moustapha talks about how he met with Condi Rice about a month ago, and he surmises that the attack on Syria was an attempt to undermine the conversation with Rice, which was Syria's first communication with a Cabinet-level official in ages.

 

Don't miss Moustapha's blog, either.

 

Okay, now for Sarah Palin getting pranked hard by two Montreal comedians, the Masked Avengers. A few thoughts:

 

Is it the responsibility of the vice president's campaign to tell the president's campaign that a foreign head of state wants to talk with them? The Avengers called Palin's people a week in advance to set up the hoax.

 

Link...

 

W orking on Nader's 2004 presidential campaign, we endured all sorts of calls from people who once were Ralph's biggest fans, from all across the country, urging him to drop out of the race.

 

We defended Nader's Frist Amendment rights on the phone, and tried to hang up with them in under 30 seconds. Why waste time? Interoffice banter referred to these callers as chicken-shit liberals or viral progressives.

 

The name-calling allowed us to dehumanize the other, the enemy who we thought was with us, in order to protect ourselves. It's kind of easy to label Joe Schmo from San Francisco an idiot when he calls you the same for trying to actually implement the progressive policies you want.

 

But how do you respond to those you love who disagree with your policy ideals? Your friends are your mirrors, the saying goes.

 

I feed the illusion that I surround myself with people who demonstrate characteristics I want to see in myself: smart, critical thinkers who are adventurous, brave, bold, courageous, fearless, loving, caring, compassionate, generous, funny, fun-loving, mischevious, mysterious, skilled, filled with wonder and awe, real, dispensing with pretense, among other things.

 

To expect everyone I know to fall in line with my views is a fallacy, and it would make for a boring world. Yet the past couple of days, ideas I hold as naked truth, so natural as to be undeniable, have been questioned by people who I thought shared such convictions with me.

 

For example, my mom is a justice of the peace, but she swore to me she will not marry gays in Connecticut, despite the recent landmark CT Supreme Court ruling and the promise from legislators to codify said opinion into statute.

How do I convince my mom...

 

So I hate driving my car. I am not a very good driver, and of all the lousy car culture trappings, I loathe when you break down in the middle of the highway at 4:30 on a weekday afternoon.

 

Yuck. It cost me $70 to tow to a garage, and I was 30 minutes late for law school. In education law, the class discussed the reach of the government into our daily lives. I argued that policy impacts behavior, and shapes the way we live, and made me late for class.

 

People said that I granted too much power to the government, that I afforded the institution more credit than it deserves. I tried to use the automobile as an example, how auto manufacturers bought up trolley companies and the laissez faire regulatory state let this radical transit monopoly emerge.

 

Yet I lacked time to delve into the subsidies our tax dollars give the auto industry – if the public fisc didn’t spring for roads, how would the private single-occupant vehicle transportation system work? In ways we don't even realize, government pervades all areas of our lives.

 

When we do challenge corrupt, dangerous policies, we pay a price. This Monday, I attended the wake of John Hogan of Hamden, age 73. I drove my rotten car down to the funeral home. I had never met John, but he inspired me.

 

Hogan and eight others doused hundreds of draft cards with homemade napalm in 1968, saving countless young men from war. They were the Catonsville 9, from Maryland, and they all did between two and three years in federal pens for their acts of conscience.

 

With another of the Catonsville 9, Tom Lewis, I once spent an afternoon in jail. The repercussions of that obstruction of free passage on a sidewalk charge from 2004 still haunt me. I missed Lewis’ wake when he died in May. I had to go pay my respects to John Hogan.

Link...

 

Bunch of somewhat connected thoughts, some sad, some happy:

 

Peter Camejo died Saturday, Sept. 13. He ran for president in 1976 with the Socialist Workers Party. He joined Nader in 2004 as an independent. He was a revolutionary.

 

His range of knowledge led to books like The SRI Advantage: Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially and Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877. The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction.

 

And he was a funny guy. I took headshots of him for the campaign the night he spoke in Maryland (pictured). He told me some joke about Bush and Kerry ice fishing, on a boat, somewhere in Maine. I forget the punchline. Yet I know I laughed when he told it.

 

No matter. Camejo was an amazing man - an Olympic caliber sailor, born in Venezuela, moved to Queens, and in the late 1960s, deemed one of California's ten most dangerous persons by Gov. Ronald Reagan for leading in anti-war demonstrations.

 

Speakign of late 1960s: Richie Havens kicks ass. Freedom. Freedom. John Amato over at Crooks and Liars linked to Havens' performance of Handsome Johnny. But earlier this week, Freedom was on my mind.

 

Here's a well-spent Saturday, November 22, 2008 from 5 to 9:30 pm: Pace (People's Action for Clean Energy) will host "Renewable Energy = Peace," an evening of exhibits, dinner and awards for folks trying to bring us to a carbon-free, energy independent present.

 

And one more Pace event: Sunday, October 19, rain or shine, its the 51st Solar House Tour and Seminar. If you've never done it, call 860-623-5487 for tickets and 860-693-4813 for the skinny on the tour itself. It runs at noon and three out in Bethany. What are you waiting for? Call already.

 

And a shout out to the folks at the Farmington Apple Empire store for getting the powerbook wireless again. Whew. Beto, Tim, Nikki Stan and Kate - thanks!

Vote Camejo...

 

Sponsors of Speaker of the United States' House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi's book tour visit to the Hartford Club, Friday, September 12, 2008:

 

United Technologies, the Bushnell. the Global Women's Issues Forum of the World Affairs Council of Connecticut.

 

Laurie Aylsworth, representative of Northeast Utilities Transmission, on what a public utility has in common with Nancy Pelosi, third most powerful elected official in the federal government:

 

"People power."

 

Kelly Romano, corporate spokesperson from Carrier, the air conditioning unit of United Technologies Corporation, reeling off statistics about UTC's relationship with the great state of Connecticut:

 

"We have 27,000 employees in the state. Last year, we gave $4.7 million to not-for-profits in Connecticut last year."

 

Estimated 2007 salary of George David, chief executive officer of United Technologies, including stock options, bonuses, etc:

 

$27 million.

 

Kelly Romano of UTC on similarities between UTC and Nancy Pelosi:

 

"Like Speaker Pelosi, UTC is committed environmental giving areas. UTC embraces sustainability. We have been working towards a 20 percent reduction in absolute energy usage since 1997. Climate change is a priority. We are committed to securing a better energy climate in this country with the deployment of programs and expanded options, like clean energy production tax credits, fuel cells, and more."

 

How UTC, a fictional paper entity, feels about being part of the event with Speaker Pelosi, according to Romano:

 

"Honored."

 

Link to what Pelosi said in Hartford...

 

The way the pattern looks now for pre-emptive arrest of protesters, by the time we finish the proceedings in Krayeske v. City of Hartford, federal docket number 07cv0827, I’ll be able to coach more than a few people in how to protect and exercise Constitutionally protected civil rights.

 

First, I would tell the more than 300 protesters and the dozens of independent journalists in Minneapolis-St. Paul who were arrested this week during the Republican National Convention in Minnesota that protecting civil rights isn't easy.

 

What happened to all them fit the pattern of what happened to me. There has to be a playbook for it in some federal agency.

Link...

 

Toto, the fascists aren't just in Hartford anymore. Not that they ever were limited to Connecticut's state capital.

 

But the record shows the police in Philly, Washington, D.C., Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver and St. Paul are all working from the same playbook. From the Democratic National Conventions in 2000, to the Republican one in New York City in '04, to my arrest and detention in Hartford in 2007, to Denver of this year, the pattern is clear:

 

THE FASCISTS ARE ON THE MARCH, INTIMIDATING JOURNALISTS AND PROTESTERS, AND YOU, THE READER OF THIS BLOG, ARE NEXT! BEWARE!

 

I don't like to sound the alarm, but Paul Revere would have been riding a long time ago. Remember that Amy Goodman had dealt with pigs before. She was once beaten by an American rifle held by an Indonesian riot cop while covering a massacre in East Timor.

 

And now, her producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have been bloodied and bruised while covering anti-war protests in St. Paul.

 

Attorney Glenn Greenwald called the city the most militarized American enclave he had ever seen, beating out Denver which last week conducted massive pre-emptive raids. Minneapolis-St. Paul did the same thing to protesters.

 

It's like Chicago '68, but across the country. In Denver, on the stadium floor where Obama gave his speech, security prevented Goodman from interviewing Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who once marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

And now in St. Paul, this? The police have not dropped charges on Goodman, Kaddous and Salazar, and likely won't. I know from experience that this is a pain in the ass.

 

And worse than that, at first I was being cynical when I thought that the ensuing lawsuits from the false arrests were part of the p.r. budget for the conventions.

 

UPDATE 9/8/8 - On DN!last week, it was reported that the Twin Cities negotiated with the Republican National Committee that they RNC would have $10 million in insurance coverage for lawsuits from false arrests, so that the city wouldn't be stuck with the whole bill.

 

The bastards will arrest people like Goodman or Glass Bead Collective (the people who brought you the video of the NYC cop wrecking a critical mass cyclist), understand that a lawsuit will be coming, but do it anyway, just to stop any bad news from wrecking the Republican image.

 

Sarah Palin's pregnant 17-year-old may have already done that. According to Mark Pazniokas of the Hartford Courant, police response may have been justified because protestors threw watered down bleach solutions on old and infirmed Republicans.

 

I never doubt the use of agents provacatuers, although I have been at some protests where anarchists get out of hand.

 

Whatever the case is, there has to be karmic pushback - non-violent non-cooperation with evil - against the forces of fascism.

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Yusuf James Yee graduated West Point in 1990. He went to Syria, studied Islam, and soon was a Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Army. He later attended to the spiritual needs of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Then he began challenging U.S. military policies on the ground.

 

The Army accused him of spying. Superior officers threatened him with the death penalty. When treason failed to stick, they threw charges of adultery at him. For 76 days, the Army held him in the same Navy brig in South Carolina with Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi.

 

Yee didn't see Padilla or Hamdi because they were all isolated, and all were tortured with sensory deprivation tactics. Yee was never tried, charges were dropped, and he received not just an honorable discharge, but a commendation, too.

 

Sometimes, I get angry that I spent 13 hours in jail for blogging about a sitting governor's misguided policies. So when I saw Yee this past weekend at Hartford's Connecticut Convention Center for the Islamic Circle of North America conference, I asked him how he handled his anger.

 

"When I feel the bitterness, the anger, the frustration," he said, "I try to channel it into positive activities."

 

Yee humbled me. He survived the solitary confinement and torture tactics doled out by the U.S. government from lessons learned at West Point, and he is calm, at peace, almost, when discussing his ordeal.

 

Nor is he merely preaching positive change. He has channeled his angry energy into social organizing and change – he earned a selection to serve as a Washington state delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer.

 

Electoral change is the best avenue not just for Muslims, but for everyone, to reclaim our civil liberties, according to not just Yee, but the five other panelists who shared ideas with him during a discussion Saturday morning entitled "Stand Up and Claim Your Rights: The State of Contemporary Civil Liberties."

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Independence Day is universal. All people want to be free. So I liberated this photo from the old print photo archives at the Waterbury Republican-American more than a decade ago, when I was but a cub reporter.

 

I figured my good readers might enjoy this picture. Remember, Thomas Jefferson was 32 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

 

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Thanks Ned Lamont. I've never said it before, but I feel I need to pay you some gratitude.

 

Thanks, Ned, for reminding how valuable Habeas Corpus is. You spent $15 million or so of your own money - a sum that boggles my mind. You could have bought yourself a 100-foot sailboat and run it with a full crew for four years or so. You could have bought a bunch of houses out of foreclosure and made a mint flipping them.

 

Instead, to speak for the Constitution, you put yourself through hell. And you survived. Anyone who doubted your sincerity should eat their hats. I heard you on Jon Dankosky's Where We Live Wednesday not once, but twice. I tuned in at 9 a.m., driving to New Haven. I even called in, and asked a question - 275-4266.

 

On my way home at 8 p.m., I tuned in again. I wanted to hear my question, and I wanted to listen to David Sirota again. I agree with him. You are a revolutionary. I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner.

 

You bought a platform, and you took a huge defeat. You invested $15 million and you lost, yet you stood back up, dusted yourself off and jumped back on your horse. You demonstrate self-confidence and maturity.

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Vacation done, I finished reading Art Spiegelman’s two-part masterpiece Maus on the flight to JFK from Burbank.

 

Maus describes the amazing survival of Vladek Spiegelman in Auschwitz. Art, his cartoonist son, penned the history, with chilling detail, like Vladek’s nocturnal vision accurately foretelling the precise date of departure from a concentration camp.

 

It was a quick but heavy read, and I needed a walk after I finished. Wandering the airplane aisle, I spotted a headline on a seat back tv: "Edwards to Endorse Obama."

 

I hurried back to my seat for a camera close up of Obama announcing his guilt about the DNC punishing Michigan. As penance, he brought a surprise: John Edwards to drive another nail in Hillary's coffin.

 

Thought Zero: Funny how Clinton warns that Obama will not win the Wolverine State in November because of the Dean sanctions, but there Obama stood on stage, soaking in adulation from the crowds and Edwards.

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W hat can I say when Amy Goodman says it so much better than me? In her weekly column, this time called "Where Do We Go From Here?":

It has been 40 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. King was there to support striking sanitation workers, African-American men who endured horrible working conditions for poverty wages. While King’s staff was opposed to him going, as they were scrambling to organize King’s new initiative, the Poor People’s Campaign, King himself knew that the sanitation workers were at the front lines of fighting poverty.

I went to Memphis on Dr. King’s birthday. There I interviewed Taylor Rogers, one of the striking sanitation workers who marched with King. He told me:

"Back in 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers-we were tired of being mistreated, overworked and underpaid. We decided that we were just going to stand up and be men and do something about our condition. And that’s what we did. We stood up, and we told [Mayor] Henry Loeb in the city of Memphis that 'I am a man.'"

Link to the Rest of Amy Goodman's Column ...

 

O bama's speech on race invites the nation to a conversation. Where we want to take the dialogue he initiates is entirely up to us as a people.

 

Two gentlemen in West Hartford's Shield Street Post Office yesterday afternoon seemed attuned to Obama's call, as they stood in the front foyer discussing politics and the Iraq war. Best part was that one man was black, and one was white.

 

I marveled that 100 years ago, that moment in this country was close to impossible, but now it is commonplace, and expected.

 

Me, I respond to Obama's offer by marrying the war on drugs to his comment that "when [white Americans are] told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time." It's time for us to confront a major facet of race relations in this country: our massive non-white prison population.

 

Other folks apparently want to keep the dialogue at the lowest common denominator: reptilian hatred. In my email inbox this week, I received a photo of Chelsea Clinton holding a t-shirt proclaiming "My mom is getting her ass kicked by a Negro." Photoshopped tears in Chesea's eyes betray her happy grin to a look of surprising agony as she displays the small t-shirt like she is trying it on.

 

The only word missing that sounds like it should be there is "Help!" The message feels crafted to appeal to kinship of skin color kind. I see two plausible interpretations, both of which arrive at the same conclusion: "If you are white, then you should be supporting Clinton."

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B aseball season approaches, and the Red Sox players showed today what a good labor organization can do for workers.

 

The Sox are slated to square off against the Oakland in Japan to open the season, but after learning that the trainers, equipment staff and coaches would forfeit a $40,000 agreed-upon bonus, the players voted to boycott the games. They beat management, and the support staff will now get more for a game than I made in the last two years. This is probably the first and only time you will ever this from me, and it hurts my fingers to type the words, but hooray for the Bosox!

 

Elsewhere around the globe, Vice President Dick Cheney is in Oman today fishing on the Sultan of Oman's yacht. The fishing in that part of the world is tremendous. He's over there calming the Sultan's fears of war with Iran and maybe to partake in Oman's glorious health care system, rated 8th in the world according to the World Health Organization. A guy with a heart like Cheney could use some help.

 

Obama's speech yesterday has the pundit class in accolades - the Times editorial board called it a Profile in Courage, ranking it rhetorically with something from Kennedy or Lincoln. I admit that I had tears welling up when I got to the end of his speech and was reading about Ashley and the old man.

 

More on Obama and Israel link...

 

The debate surrounding the GIVE Act in Congress this afternoon is a microcosm of the current stalemate in Congress, according to Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut's Second District.

 

The GIVE Act, or HR 2857, which should've pass Congress this afternoon but was pulled from the floor because of partisan bickering, is a $981 million or so appropriation that provides money for community service activities in many forms, like expanding AmeriCorps by 100,000 people, increasing a foster Grandparents Program, and creating a $20 million Summer of Service program, which was Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of New Haven.

 

Yet at the same time, the almost $1 billion for volunteerism here is merely a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion price tag on the war in Iraq, the latest figure on the cost, according to Bob Herbert in the New York Times this morning.

 

The contradiction isn't lost on Courtney.

 

"I think it is an outcome endemic of a divided government," Courtney said. "That is the problem. There is a complete stalemate about changing course in Iraq that prevents better efforts for this country. Every effort to change policy has run into the math of the present Congress and the White House. We don’t have veto proof margins. We are really just able to redirect priorities in small increments."

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"I grew up with guns and I like 'em," isn't a sentence you normally hear from a Democrat.

 

But former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. is not your regular Democrat. He's a Blue Dog Democrat from Memphis.

 

And Wednesday night at Quinnipiac University's Alumni Hall in Hamden, CT, Ford professed his love for guns and God in front 200 students, faculty and community members.

 

As part of Quinnipiac's Black History Month celebration, Ford, who lost a hotly-contested 2006 Senate contest to Republican Robert Corker, addressed the challenges facing America, namely, energy independence, creating global peace and stability and restoring America's brand image abroad.

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An Open Letter to America.

 

My Fellow Americans:

 

The power of our voices against the U.S. occupation of Iraq is reaching the top echelons of the military and the administration. Our government is persecuting Americans who speak out against the U.S. military presence in Iraq. The U.S. military has launched politicized attacks on its own military members and moral leaders who oppose the war to discredit their voices of dissent.

 

We have seen them target Cpl. Adam Kokesh to stop him from exercising his freedom of speech, after risking his life in Fallujah, Iraq. We have seen them threaten Sgt. Liam Madden for publicly stating the legal fact that the U.S. invasion is a war crime according to the Nuremberg principles. They have targeted Cpl. Cloy Richards, a soldier put in the media spotlight when his mother Tina Richards worked to get him the health care he needs after returning from Iraq eighty percent disabled. These are not happenstance targets. These young men are leaders of the Iraq Veterans Against the War and they are speaking out in a strong and coordinated way.

 

And now I have been targeted.

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Gov. M. Jodi Rell expressed legitimate concern about the medicinal marijuana bill's lack of a distribution apparatus, yet her veto demonstrated her inability to lead, considering that in some polls, 83 percent of the people hold that certain types of ill persons should be able to use marijuana.

 

Rather than suggest a solution that people obviously want, Gov. Rell went against the will of the people, and those who suffer from AIDS wasting syndrome, cancer or a host of other illness remain criminals as they attempt to appropriate their medicine, which is better than most pharmaceuticals.

 

Now if a high school student brings the above two paragraphs to school and distributes them, that child may now be punished by school authorities, thanks to the ruling handed down by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Monday afternoon in the Frederick v. Morse student free speech case from Alaska.

 

"We hold that schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use," Roberts wrote.

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Connecticut has a friend in Alabama. According to an AP story (via Huffington Post) the Alabama Dept. of Homeland Security had a website labeling as terrorists environmentalists, gay rights workers and anti-war groups.

 

The website has been taken down, but who wants to bet that the lists go on, even they are not publicly accessible? The AP noted that the site will return, sans specific identifications of groups. Most importantly, though:

 

The site included the groups under a description of what it called "single-issue" terrorists. That group includes people who feel they are trying to create a better world, the Web site said. It said that in some communities, law enforcement officers consider certain single issue groups to be a threat.

Single issue? End the War on Drugs? Watch out, you may be Hezbollah. Seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Might as well be in Al Qaida.

 

And, this latest report begs the question: how many other state homeland security departments are doing this?

 

And not to sound like a raging paranoid freak, but at what point do they start rounding up the people on the lists wholesale and detaining them? Why else collect lists?

 

This is the problem with the post-9/11 world created by Bush-Cheney Co. - everyone who doesn't think like them is suspect, from U.S. Attorneys with stellar records to pacifist activists seeking social justice.

 

While 2009 can't come soon enough, has our culture passed the point of returning to a republic? I feel like we have been invaded by the Nazis.

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Suppose that 70 million people vested their hope in an illusion, fully convinced of its supernatural power over their daily lives? Suppose those 70 million were convinced that anyone who didn't believe in their magical myth deserved death and damnation?

 

Now suppose that the leaders preaching intolerance to those 70 million people wanted to replace the Bill of Rights with the 10 Commandments?

 

Who are these 70 million people? They're Christian dominionists, according to author Chris Hedges, and they're intolerant of anyone who doesn't think like them, and they're amassing political power to turn the U.S. into a theocracy.

 

Worse than you think now. Don't believe me? Go listen to Hedges when Squeaky Wheel brings him to the Center Church on the Green in New Haven, Saturday, May 12 from 2 to 4 p.m. as part of a tour for his newest book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 with student ID.

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Hartford might be able to learn a lesson from the Heartland. The industrial revolution built Youngstown, and when capitalism realized that it could get the steel cheaper overseas, Youngstown crumbled.

 

In the past several decades, Youngstown has lost 60 percent of its population, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (h/t to scoop). Faced by the devastation of emigration from this steel hub, city planners today are seeking answers.

 

One solution they have hit upon: "an economic development plan that boils down to controlled shrinkage," wrote Timothy Aeppel of the Journal.

 

Let neighborhoods empty out, then when they become desolate and unpopulated, the city has an almost rural place that can be torn up and turned into gardens and parks.

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Despite my exhaustion last night, I sat awake in bed for some time, pondering the potentially unstable future of American democracy.

 

Two events yesterday combined to push me to such discomfort. First, I took a tour of Waterbury's Rowland Courthouse with about a dozen students from Watertown High School, and two teachers (one of whom is my sister), where a law enforcement officer promised the students the situation in the States would worsen.

 

Then I read "Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps," an essay in the UK's The Guardian by Naomi Wolf, clearly too hot to publish in any American newspapers.

 

Perhaps I shouldn't have added to my unrest by reading my notebook entries from early January, after I was arrested. But the longtitudinal ripples across the state that resulted when police here put a pacifist like me on a list and threw me in jail for taking photos are too hard to ignore.

 

And I hope this confluence of thoughts about dirty bombs and dictatorships in America is all wrong, that I am jumping to a Y2K conclusion here. But I can't quell the primal doubts about consolidation of executive power.

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Ed. Note: Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced another nine American soldiers died in Iraq yesterday. Here's a short story about one who I hope is still alive.

 

The Hartford Police Department admits that it lacks sufficient officers to patrol city streets ruled by gang violence and teen gun battles.

 

Now, here comes George W. Bush to make things worse by stealing four of our officers to patrol the insurgent streets of Iraq for 18 months.

 

Bush's war of choice has called two Connecticut Army National Guard companies to duty. One of them, the 1048th Medium Truck Company, will escort military convoys across the desert with the 82nd Airborne Division.

 

The 1048th counts Asylum Hill Community Officer Jim Barrett and three other of Hartford's finest among its ranks. The 1048th also contains officers from police departments of surrounding towns, according to Barrett.

 

Governor M. Jodi Rell, for all her bickering with Mayor Eddie Perez about state police support for beleaguered city law enforcement, will send these two Connecticut companies off to hell with a celebration at the state house on June 25.

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This was one of those weeks which may be bound by the weight of human history to just be rotten. These past seven days represent the collective anniversaries of Hitler's birthday, the shootings at Columbine (1999), the massacre at Waco (1993), the response at Oklahoma City (1995), and now, the shooting spree at Virginia Tech.

 

That's a lot of bodies, and I haven't even talked about the deadliest week in Iraq in a long time. They had like 20 Virginia Tech's since last Sunday. It's all so numbing.

 

Perhaps its just the media cycle that makes this week seem more brutal than any other of the 52. But now we have another reason to dread its passage.

 

What is it about these last seven days as part of the annual cycle that lend themselves to this bleeding piece of earth? Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Caeser bids us that we should not be "meek and gentle with these butchers!"

 

This week, I found myself thinking about the dead, from a moment in Oklahoma City I had in the summer of 1997. My dad and sister and I drove cross country, back to Connecticut from San Francisco, and we had an opportunity to visit the spot of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

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Democrats, fear not, you won't have to support a pro-war candidate for president in 2008, like you all did in 2004, according to Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich.

 

"I expect to be the nominee because I am the only peace candidate. The American people should not have a nominee who is not opposed to war," Kucinich told a crowd of more than 50 people at a fundraiser Sunday night at the home of Audrey Blondin, a former Litchfield Selectwoman and candidate for Secretary of the State.

 

In a short half-hour speech and question and answer session, which he curtailed because of a CNN appearance in New York City, Kucinich explained the stark differences between him and the Democratic frontrunners, and he laid out a progressive, green vision of the future.

 

"The Democrats can't have a nominee who brought us into this preemptive war," Kucinich said. "While I expect to be the nominee, I don't expect there will be many people who will support a position other than what I am taking."

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What makes a good mayor? Leadership? Willingness to take risks and speak out for what's right even though it may subject you to ridicule and criticism? How about just standing against war?

 

The war in Iraq and the war on terror are not a hot-button issue in Hartford's mayoral campaign. But they should be, according to Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

 

"I think it is very important for mayors to speak up on this," Anderson said while he waited to address the thousands of anti-war protestors at the Pentagon March 17, 2007.

 

"Too many people think they are not in a position of responsibility when they hold local office," Anderson said. "War impacts our cities. Our federal funding for police has been cut by more than half."

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If just 5,000 committed people in each one of the 535 Congressional districts nationwide mobilized behind universal health care, America could have a single payer system, consumer advocate Ralph Nader said Friday night.

 

Nader appeared at Real Art Ways Friday night, March 30, in support of the Connecticut Premiere of An Unreasonable Man, the new documentary about his life. (Disclosure - the Nader folks paid me to promote the movie.) Click here to hear Colin McEnroe interview Ralph Thursday, which has similar talking points to what he said Friday night.

 

About 400 people showed up at Real Art Ways to see the movie - from former gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry to CCAG executive director Tom Swann to Manchester Journal-Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell.

 

It was a record-breaking crowd according to RAW staff, as no film in RAW history had ever drawn that many people for an opening.

 

The RAW theatre only seats 153 people (not including standing room). So while 50 people went away, 175 stayed in the main gallery to listen to Nader speak while the two hour, two minute long documentary rolled. An Unreasonable Man shows at RAW through April 5.

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On the mall in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, thousands of peace protesters gathered to march to the Pentagon. Across the street, under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, hundreds of Vietnam War veterans crowded to hurl hate at the hippies.

 

Apparently, somewhere on the blogosphere, some anonymous "peace" poster suggested that someone would defile and spray paint the Wall, the Vietnam War Memorial.

 

Conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin began prepping us for this counter-demonstration backing late February. Funny thing, I didn't even hear about it until I was actually on the bus ride down to D.C. But word spread and the battle was on.

 

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If wisdom prevails, the U.S. Supreme Court will not purchase the fallacy peddled by Kenneth W. Starr and the federal government that students have no right in schools to challenge the failed policy of drug prohibition.

Starr argued in front of the nine justices of the august Supreme Court Monday, March 19 that the educational mission of teaching students the dangers about illegal drugs outweighed a student's right to exercise the First Amendment.

As part of my law school education, and for the loyal readers of this column, I obtained a press pass and secured a front row seat in the hallowed Court chambers for the oral arguments of Frederick v. Morse.

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Some 20,000 or so people rallied on Saturday, March 17 in Washington, D.C. Most of those gathered were against the war, others, were there to protest the protest. I've got interviews with Cindy Sheehan, Michele Malkin and Rocky Anderson to come soon.

But on to the photos first.

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Hillary Clinton thinks I am her friend. At least that's how she addressed a letter to me the other day. "Dear Friend," it said.

I have no idea how she got my address (perhaps she bought a subscription database from some magazine, or maybe Russ Feingold gave her a list). I really don't want any mail from her either.

But since she thinks we're buddy-buddy, and she asked me what was important, I was honest with her. On the lines her campaign staff provided, I wrote that she needs to renounce her support for the Iraq war, that Bush needs to be impeached, and that AIPAC's dominance over Israel-Palestine-US policy demands to be challenged.

I sent her a small campaign contribution in the hopes that my thoughts will be taken more seriously because of it.

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Forget any of the work that I have been doing. Kiri Davis, a high school student from Washington state, has produced a solid news documentary with great production values that puts the race issue back at the center of the debate.

Kiri interviews African-American teen women and they discuss the difference between being dark and light skinned black. The kicker, though, is the black and white doll test she conducts with black children, identical to the one done for Brown v Board of Education, the school desgregation lawsuit.

When 15 out of 21 black children choose the white doll as the nice one and the black doll as the one they don't want to play with in Kiri's documentary, we know we are still mired in racial issues.

This comes to me the same day Wendy Wallace of Poynter.org wrote a story about the Washington state legislature considering legislation to extend First Amendment protections to high school journalists. Right now, Supreme Court law limits the rights of high school journos.

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This one is in this week's New Haven Advocate, from a night at QUSL last week.

When it comes to prosecuting the war on terror, distinguishing between dissent and danger is an art.

So said Kevin O’Connor (the Republican U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General who doubles as U.S. Attorney for Connecticut) last week at a Quinnipiac University Law School forum on terrorism and the U.S. courts.

Link to Story on Advocate site...

 

The concept of non-binding resolutions opposing the war in Iraq anger Sen. Chris Dodd.

"We need to get away from the non-binding proposals. They are infuriating," Dodd said this afternoon during a short conference call with Ned Lamont and Congressman John Larson.

"The House did better than the Senate in this regard," Dodd said during his three minute call. The call between Dodd, Larson and Lamont was piped into about 30 organizing meetings attended by around 1,000 people.

CTNewsjunkie.com covered more of the meetings held simultaneously across the state to help plan the March 17 anti-war rally at the Old State House in Hartford sponsored by COW - Connecticut Opposes War.

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Have we gone mad? The signs on the ferry warn that thou shalt not emulate Henri Cartier-Bressonwithout consequence.

Meanwhile, the uptight Yankee security state in Boston over-reacted to capitalism's attempt for the next best thing. And I wonder if America isn't playing with a full deck.

Complete with links to new stories about the crazy criminal case known as the State vs. Kenneth J. Krayeske.

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