This blog has moved!

Now that I have fewer Madison-specific posts (settling in!), I've consolidated my 3 blogs:

• Deb in Mad City (journal)
• ...because democracy... (political opinion)
• photos (favorite photography)

into one blog at WordPress. The new blog is at http://debh.wordpress.com .

If you have subscribed via email, no changes are necessary, I am just sending to the Yahoo group from FeedBurner instead of from Blogger.

Glad you're not here.

Postcard sent to reporter Jeffrey Rosen by Rear Adm. Harry Harris after Rosen's visit to Guantanamo Bay.


Read the full article at TNR.com.

Economist: No Child Left Inside

Environment awareness

No child left inside

Feb 8th 2007 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

Put down that Xbox, young man

TO THE alarm of environmentalists and park managers alike, interest in the great outdoors seems to be tailing off among young Americans. The country's extensive system of national parks includes some of the most photographed and best preserved landscapes on earth—like Yosemite Valley in California, the crenellated Teton Range in Wyoming, Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park or the white edifice of Mount Rainier in Washington state. But attendance at the parks is falling. Between 1995 and 2005, overnight stays in them declined 20% overall, and camping and backcountry stays dropped by 24%, according to statistics compiled by the National Parks Service.

No park, it seems, is immune to the decline: even in Yosemite, one of the system's oldest parks and probably its best known, the number of visitors dropped 17% over the ten-year period. The number of visitors to Death Valley, an easy drive from vigorously growing Las Vegas, went down 28% over the same span. In some of the system's remoter parks, such as Lava Beds National Monument near the California-Oregon border, site of much fighting in an Indian war of 1872-73, the number of daily visitors is down to ten or fewer.

The importance of this decline can hardly be over-estimated for big environmental organisations such as the Sierra Club: they have depended on what one expert calls “a transcendent experience in nature”, usually in childhood, to gain new members and thus remain powerful lobbyists for environmental causes. “The political implications are enormous,” says Richard Louv, a writer whose most recent book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, describes the social, psychological and even spiritual ramifications of a dearth of outdoors experience for a generation raised on electronic, rather than natural, stimulation and entertainment.

To encourage environmental interest in young people, particularly non-whites who are much less like to visit parks than whites are, Martin LeBlanc at the Sierra Club manages 65 volunteer-led programmes around the country to bring inner-city children into direct experience with the natural world. “We don‘t need to be giving them propaganda about offshore oil-drilling, not when they're 13 years old,” he said. “We just need to get them outside.”

For its part, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has had its “Ranger Rick” magazine and education programme for children in place for 40 years, but Kevin Coyle, the group's vice-president for education, thinks that the declining interest in the outdoors has spurred a feeling of urgency among environmentalists. “There won't be a conservation movement 30 years from now if there's no love for nature,” he says.

The NWF has created a new “green hour a day” programme to encourage families to spend at least an hour a day outside; a website with green-hour activities will go live in March. The group has also joined with traditional hunting and sportsmen's organisations, which are also experiencing declining membership and interest, to lobby state governments for more outdoor-education funding.

Mr Louv, the writer, has been busy as well, helping local, state and national groups bring America's children outdoors under a campaign he calls “No Child Left Inside”. He is pleased by the idea's wide appeal. “This issue has the power to pull people together from sectors you wouldn't expect. Environmentalists are traditionally liberal, but conservatives, too, are worried about children and nature,” he said. “It's a grass-roots movement in both the literal and metaphoric senses”.

NYT: Bush Is Not Above the Law

Bush Is Not Above the Law - New York Times

LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

More on Iran

From the Jan 20 Economist:

IN THE higher echelons of the Islamic Republic, people may be losing patience with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Informed Iranians do not think he risks losing his job. But plainly he is not as safe as he was. Conservatives in Iran's parliament and press blame his extravagance at home and braggadoccio abroad for Iran's worsening economic malaise and for the unpleasant sense of being ever more squarely in the Americans' firing line.

Irax

Is anyone else completely unnerved by the frequency with which Bush says "Iran" these days? My head says, "of course there's no way he could..." But what, after all, would rational thought have to do with it?

Quotes from last night's State of the Union:

• The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran, and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. (Applause.) With the other members of the Quartet -- the U.N., the European Union, and Russia -- we're pursuing diplomacy to help bring peace to the Holy Land, and pursuing the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.
  
• In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah -- a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.
• In Lebanon, assassins took the life of Pierre Gemayel, a prominent participant in the Cedar Revolution. Hezbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region and are seeking to undermine Lebanon's legitimately elected government.
• In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam -- the Golden Mosque of Samarra. This atrocity, directed at a Muslim house of prayer, was designed to provoke retaliation from Iraqi Shia -- and it succeeded. Radical Shia elements, some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads.
• If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime.
• The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran, and made it clear that the world will not allow the regime in Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. (Applause.)
  

All this at a time when Iranians are flexing the democratic muscles that Bush supposedly values, and electing reform parties in opposition to their confrontational President. You won't hear much about that, though, in Bush's posturing.

I believe that if a Democrat appears to have a chance of winning the 2008 election, we will go to war against Iran before that can happen. I hope my cycnicism is unjustified, but I'm still holding my breath.

AlterNet: Recycled Christmas

"Though we really enjoyed coming together for a mid-winter celebration, the very thought of shopping ruined Christmas. Wasn't there another option? Didn't we have the right to reclaim the holiday and create our own family tradition?"

[Full article linked to title above]

CQ: New House Intel Committee Chair unfamiliar with Al Qaeda

Apparently, Silvestre Reyes, soon to be the next House Intelligence Committee chair, doesn't know a most basic fact about Al Qaeda -- that it is a Sunni organization.

Reyes was chosen by Nancy Pelosi, passing over the more senior Rep. Jane Harmon, with whom she has strained relations.

[Full story linked above]

Padilla case crumbling?

Andrew Sullivan sums up the status of the Jose Padilla case:

So an American citizen, detained without due process for three years, accused of terribly serious crimes, and allegedly tortured, may not be found guilty, after all. And people wonder why many of us have concerns about the way the Bush administration has handled military detainees.

NYT: Bush to Ask Lame Duck Congress...

Big surprise -- Bush wants to push through not only major nominations and pass spending bills (before Democrats try to put pay-as-you-go rules back in place), energy legislation (read: more money for Exxon/Mobil), and surveillance measures (read: more civil liberties violations).

Bush to Ask Lame Duck Congress to Confirm Gates - New York Times: "Earlier, Mr. Bush listed spending bills, energy legislation and a measure authorizing surveillance of terrorist suspects as issues that need to be addressed soon. He did not mention immigration legislation, which stalled in Congress recently."

I know I have to say something...

I know I have to say something about Ted Haggard, but I don't even know where to start. Here's a guy who started and grew a 14,000- member church, and met with the Bush admini- stration on a weekly basis. He associated with leaders of the most vehement of gay-bashing organizations, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

There is this very short video of Haggard (from the frightening documentary "Jesus Camp" about American madrassas), apparently confronting his own homosexuality. There's this May 2005 Harper's profile of him.

One pastor blames Haggard's wife, noting that wives of preachers often let themselves go, assuming that they don't have to work for their husbands' fidelity (I am not kidding!). Then there's David Frum, who thinks it's more moral to be a hypocritical homosexual than an honest one (apparently there is an unwritten commandment about homosexuality that trumps the one about false witness).

So there you have it folks. It doesn't matter how often it becomes clear that gays can be conservative, and even religious, and still be driven by their innate sexuality. It doesn't matter how many hyper-homophobic politicians, preachers, and priests are outed (Rick Santorum -- your day is coming!). The U.S. is so hung up about sex, and particularly gay sex, that it was easier for Haggard to admit to buying the deadly, addictive, illegal drug that is killing people and truly ruining families, than to admit to being gay. His followers will continue to put their blinders on and cover their ears and insist that these are anomolies, and move on to the next charismatic charlatan.

---

On the bright side... Doogie Howser came out. :-)

---

Business Week: Can Design Change the World?

A new book - an outgrowth of the popular worldchanging.com Web site - focuses on simple and complex innovations that could solve global crises. Publisher Abrams set an example by printing the 600-page book on recycled, acid-free paper and purchasing wind credits (from www.renewablechoice.com) equal to the amount of electricity needed to manufacture the book.

read more | digg story

Global Warming Will Devastate World Economy, Report Says

"LONDON -- Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a major British report said Monday."

read more | digg story

Lobbyists Won't Like What Pelosi Has in Mind

In case you need another good reason to vote Democratic...

read more | digg story

Bush Appointee Said to Reject Advice on Endangered Species

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists' recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show.

read more | digg story

NY Mag: Stephen Colbert Has America by the Ballots

Stephen Colbert Has America by the Ballots -- New York Magazine:

The former Jon Stewart protoge created an entire comic persona out of right-wing doublespeak, trampling the boundary between parody and politics. Which makes him the perfect spokesman for a political season in which everything is imploding.

La Crosse (WI) Tribune: Quaker statement on gay marriage

Quaker statement on gay marriage
By DAVE CHAKOIAN | Viroqua, Wis.
La Crosse Tribune
Published - Friday, October 20, 2006

On November's ballot, Wisconsin will vote on a constitutional ban on same-gender marriages. We of Religious Society of Friends believe the movement to isolate and scapegoat homosexuals, to promote hatred against them, and to impose in law one group's religious beliefs on us all, is blatantly immoral and contrary to Jesus' teachings.

With half of marriages ending in divorce, unquestionably the right thing to do is to strengthen marriages. But diverting the question to whether two people of the same sex can have legal rights together completely loses track of the problem of frail marriages.

The proposed constitutional amendment really has nothing to do with marriage; it is a thinly veiled attack on gays and lesbians, part of a pattern of discrimination and institutionalized hatred. It is a strategy of power practiced by would-be tyrants throughout history.

Some have portrayed persecution and hatred of gays as a Christian thing to do. We can find nowhere that Jesus said anything about homosexuality. Nor did Jesus ever suggest encoding Christian teachings into a Sharia-like law to force religious beliefs on society.

We believe that God loves us all equally, and that we are called to treat each other with the same love in which God created us. We have no need to hate, or to discriminate against, any group for any reason. It is simply not Christian to do so.

David Chakoian is clerk of the Kickapoo Valley Monthly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quaker).

"...different families or something"

New York Times
October 17, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor

Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?
By JEFF STEIN
Washington

FOR the past several months, I've been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: "Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?"

A "gotcha" question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don't think it's out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I'm not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who's on what side today, and what does each want?

[...]

But so far, most American officials I've interviewed don't have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

[read the full story for all of the frightening details]

YoBimbo: What Would Happen if Humans Disappeared from the Earth Today?

A fascinating timeline of the effect of the extinction of humans from Earth:

What Would Happen if Humans Disappeared from the Earth Today?

Bush denies Congressional infringement on incompetent hires

Bush cites authority to bypass FEMA law
Signing statement is employed again
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff October 6, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush this week asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey a new law in which Congress has set minimum qualifications for future heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Congress passed the law last week as a response to FEMA's poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. The agency's slow response to flood victims exposed the fact that Michael Brown, Bush's choice to lead the agency, had been a politically connected hire with no prior experience in emergency management.

To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency's director in last week's homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has "a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management" and "not less than five years of executive leadership."

Bush signed the homeland-security bill on Wednesday morning. Then, hours later, he issued a signing statement saying he could ignore the new restrictions. Bush maintains that under his interpretation of the Constitution, the FEMA provision interfered with his power to make personnel decisions.

The law, Bush wrote, "purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the president may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."

The homeland-security bill contained measures covering a range of topics, including terrorism, disaster preparedness, and illegal immigration. One provision calls for authorizing the construction of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border.

But Bush's signing statement challenged at least three-dozen laws specified in the bill. Among those he targeted is a provision that empowers the FEMA director to tell Congress about the nation's emergency management needs without White House permission. This law, Bush said, "purports . . . to limit supervision of an executive branch official in the provision of advice to the Congress." Despite the law, he said, the FEMA director would be required to get clearance from the White House before telling lawmakers anything.

Bush said nothing of his objections when he signed the bill with a flourish in a ceremony Wednesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. At the time, he proclaimed that the bill was "an important piece of legislation that will highlight our government's highest responsibility, and that's to protect the American people."

The bill, he added, "will also help our government better respond to emergencies and natural disasters by strengthening the capabilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Bush's remarks at the signing ceremony were quickly e-mailed to reporters, and the White House website highlighted the ceremony. By contrast, the White House minimized attention to the signing statement. When asked by the Globe on Wednesday afternoon if there would be a signing statement, the press office declined to comment, saying only that any such document, if it existed, would be issued in the "usual way."

The press office posted the signing-statement document on its website around 8 p.m. Wednesday, after most reporters had gone home. The signing statement was not included in news reports yesterday on the bill-signing.

[...]

Bush's use of signing statements has attracted increasing attention over the past year. In December 2005, Bush asserted that he can bypass a statutory ban on torture. In March 2006, the president said he can disobey oversight provisions in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill.

In all, Bush has challenged more than 800 laws enacted since he took office, most of which he said intruded on his constitutional powers as president and commander in chief. By contrast, all previous presidents challenged a combined total of about 600 laws.

At the same time, Bush has virtually abandoned his veto power, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Bush has vetoed just one bill since taking office, the fewest of any president since the 19th century.

Earlier this year, the American Bar Association declared that Bush's use of signing statements was "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers."

Last month, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded that Bush's signing statements are "an integral part" of his "comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power" at the expense of the legislative branch.

© Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Full story here]