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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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."

Link...

 

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."

Link...

 

"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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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."

Link...

 

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."

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

 

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...

 

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.

Link...