By William Fisher
We all know why our public servants are held in such low esteem: earmarks, bribery, corruption, obfuscation, et cetera.
But there is another practice just as cynical, just as toxic, and just as widespread.
It’s called pandering. And it’s not only practiced – but widely accepted as “professional politics” – by office-seekers and their campaign staffs -- and apparently by voters.
Pandering is particularly useful in primary contests as a means of telling the voters exactly what the latest polling tells you they want to hear. Never mind what a candidate said last week or last year. Never mind principles. Never mind that when the campaign is over, we won’t have the foggiest idea of what a candidate actually believes.
Obama is moving to the left. Hillary is triangulating. Giuliani and Romney are moving to the right on social issues. McCain is moving to the center. And so forth.
On Wolf Blitzer’s CNN “Strategy Session,” guests like conservative Bay Buchanan and liberal Donna Brazile accept these left and right movements as what candidates are supposed to do. Ditto for Chris Matthews “Hardball” with political pillars like onetime presidential wanabee Pat Buchanan and master strategist Bob Shrum.
So it’s not like voters don’t know about these sudden shifts. But, more often than not, they apparently prefer to believe not that the candidate is pandering, but that he or she has experienced some miraculous epiphany.
The most recent epiphany belongs to Senator John McCain, whose “Straight Talk Express” ran off the rails this week, as he wiggled his way from moderate right to hard right to please Falwell evangelicals and conservative primary voters in South Carolina.
In 1999, McCain said overturning Roe v. Wade would be dangerous for women and he would not support it, even in “the long term.” He told the San Francisco Chronicle:
I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.
But that was then and now is primary season for presidential hopefuls.
This week, McCain was interviewed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulis and expressed his unequivocal support for overturning Roe v. Wade.
Here’s part of the transcript:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask one question about abortion...You’re for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, with some exceptions for life and rape and incest.
MCCAIN: Rape, incest and the life of the mother. Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So is President Bush, yet that hasn’t advanced in the six years he’s been in office. What are you going to do to advance a constitutional amendment that President Bush hasn’t done?
MCCAIN: I don’t think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And you’d be for that?
MCCAIN: Yes, because I’m a federalist. Just as I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states, so do I believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don’t believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.
The straight talk senator did another one-eighty on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
When Rumsfeld resigned in November, McCain said, “"While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service."
But in speaking to a conservative South Carolina audience on Monday, McCain scrupulously wiggled out of laying any blame at the feet of President Bush by saying, “The war in Iraq had been mismanaged for years and…Rumsfeld will be remembered as one of the worst in history.”
He added, “We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement -- that's the kindest word I can give you -- of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously." Never mind whom the Secretary of Defense works for!
The saddest part of this tale is that many voters will believe the flip-flops of candidates like John McCain.
We should never expect consistency from human beings – we are blessed with brains to be able to rethink issues and change our minds. But not to rewrite history.
It has to be just a tad suspect that an oncoming primary can result in so many epiphanies.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
THE WEAPON OF MASS CHANGE
By William Fisher
One of the uglier paradoxes of our time is that, as the world becomes vastly more complicated, the punditocracy becomes more simplistic.
Today, those who get paid to deliver their opinions and convictions in newspapers, on television, in the White House, and on the floor of Congress, are more undeniably, more absolutely, more positively certain their point of view is not only the right one, but the only one.
What ever happened to respect for the ideas of another? What ever happened to the question that anyone about to put forth some set-in-concrete viewpoint should ask him or herself: What if I’m wrong?
It’s called intellectual humility. It’s the opposite of hubris. It’s the un-arrogance of the thoughtful.
And it’s gone.
It’s gone because it doesn’t sell newspapers, doesn’t raise cable TV ratings, doesn’t score party political points, makes the Commander-in-Chief look weak, doesn’t further the presidential ambitions of wanabee leaders, doesn’t support ideological dogma based on “to hell with inconvenient facts.”
No one forced us to accept this construct as the “new normal.” We capitulated. We gave up. We surrendered to people who think we are stupid and uninformed. And, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we indeed became stupid and uninformed. The world is just too nuanced for us to understand, we complain, and throw up our hands. We feel more comfortable with well-modulated voices and well-crafted words, the more vitriolic the better. We’d rather live with the faux certitude of flawed ideas than with ambiguity.
Yet the world is intrinsically ambiguous. And no one-dimensional conviction, however passionately or sonorously expressed, changes that reality.
What stirred up this rant was Howard Kurtz’s Washington Post story about Michelle Malkin. Ms. Malkin writes a column syndicated to 150 newspapers, runs a blog and an Internet talk show, and makes frequent appearances on Fox television. She is a mini-darling of the right, a kind of wanabee Anne Coulter.
And like Coulter, she prospers on outrageous rhetoric, the more outrageous the better. Howard Kurtz published this example about the Democrats:
"The donkey party is led by thumb-sucking demagogues in prominent positions
who equate Bush with Hitler and Jim Crow, call him a liar in front of high
school students and the world, fantasize about impeachment and fetishize the
human rights of terrorists who want to kill me. Put simply: There are no
grown-ups in the Democrat Party."
How’s that for nuance?
Or her book, "In Defense of Internment," in which she endorses the World War Two internment of Japanese Americans, and praises racial profiling as a vital tool against terrorism.
Doesn’t exactly exude respect for those with other perspectives, now does it?
Nor is this daughter of Filipino immigrants shy about responding to her critics—moonbats, she calls them. For example, she told Kurtz, "Particularly when you're a minority conservative, you get a lot of ugly, hysterical, unhinged attacks, because you're challenging so many liberal myths about what people of color should think."
Well, Ms. Malkin’s moonbats have their own views on just who is launching these “ugly, hysterical, unhinged attacks.”
But the far right is not the only party guilty of simplifying the world to its virtual vanishing point. For example, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann – one of my personal favorites – rarely invites guests whose views do not match his own. And the only reason we don’t hear more of this from the left is that the right owns most of the media outlets.
This is not a right-left question. There’s more than enough blame to go around. The question is what all of this intemperate, arrogant rhetoric accomplishes?
It dumbs us all down. The common ground it seeks is a burial ground for all ideas “not invented here.” It blurs the line between informed opinion and entertainment. It adds nothing to our understanding of the world or the nation. It makes us less, not more, informed. It further divides us on a myriad of issues. It moves us not a centimeter closer to being able to suggest practical strategies to attack desperately urgent concerns. It serves only to raise TV ratings and enrich the commentariat. We might as well be watching professional wrestling.
There are zillions of facts about which left and right largely agree. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. Millions of American kids have no health insurance. Et cetera.
Beyond these truths, however, lies the question, “Can we fix it and, if so, how?”
Today’s Firing Line style of “debate” does everything to move us further away from ever finding real answers.
We have a right to expect proponents of ideas to advocate passionately. But that doesn’t mean heaping derision and abuse on everyone whose ideas aren’t our own. No one has a monopoly on wisdom.
The bottom line here is that the choice is ours. Thankfully, we still live in a country where the most lethal weapon in the arsenal of ordinary citizens is the TV remote.
One of the uglier paradoxes of our time is that, as the world becomes vastly more complicated, the punditocracy becomes more simplistic.
Today, those who get paid to deliver their opinions and convictions in newspapers, on television, in the White House, and on the floor of Congress, are more undeniably, more absolutely, more positively certain their point of view is not only the right one, but the only one.
What ever happened to respect for the ideas of another? What ever happened to the question that anyone about to put forth some set-in-concrete viewpoint should ask him or herself: What if I’m wrong?
It’s called intellectual humility. It’s the opposite of hubris. It’s the un-arrogance of the thoughtful.
And it’s gone.
It’s gone because it doesn’t sell newspapers, doesn’t raise cable TV ratings, doesn’t score party political points, makes the Commander-in-Chief look weak, doesn’t further the presidential ambitions of wanabee leaders, doesn’t support ideological dogma based on “to hell with inconvenient facts.”
No one forced us to accept this construct as the “new normal.” We capitulated. We gave up. We surrendered to people who think we are stupid and uninformed. And, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we indeed became stupid and uninformed. The world is just too nuanced for us to understand, we complain, and throw up our hands. We feel more comfortable with well-modulated voices and well-crafted words, the more vitriolic the better. We’d rather live with the faux certitude of flawed ideas than with ambiguity.
Yet the world is intrinsically ambiguous. And no one-dimensional conviction, however passionately or sonorously expressed, changes that reality.
What stirred up this rant was Howard Kurtz’s Washington Post story about Michelle Malkin. Ms. Malkin writes a column syndicated to 150 newspapers, runs a blog and an Internet talk show, and makes frequent appearances on Fox television. She is a mini-darling of the right, a kind of wanabee Anne Coulter.
And like Coulter, she prospers on outrageous rhetoric, the more outrageous the better. Howard Kurtz published this example about the Democrats:
"The donkey party is led by thumb-sucking demagogues in prominent positions
who equate Bush with Hitler and Jim Crow, call him a liar in front of high
school students and the world, fantasize about impeachment and fetishize the
human rights of terrorists who want to kill me. Put simply: There are no
grown-ups in the Democrat Party."
How’s that for nuance?
Or her book, "In Defense of Internment," in which she endorses the World War Two internment of Japanese Americans, and praises racial profiling as a vital tool against terrorism.
Doesn’t exactly exude respect for those with other perspectives, now does it?
Nor is this daughter of Filipino immigrants shy about responding to her critics—moonbats, she calls them. For example, she told Kurtz, "Particularly when you're a minority conservative, you get a lot of ugly, hysterical, unhinged attacks, because you're challenging so many liberal myths about what people of color should think."
Well, Ms. Malkin’s moonbats have their own views on just who is launching these “ugly, hysterical, unhinged attacks.”
But the far right is not the only party guilty of simplifying the world to its virtual vanishing point. For example, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann – one of my personal favorites – rarely invites guests whose views do not match his own. And the only reason we don’t hear more of this from the left is that the right owns most of the media outlets.
This is not a right-left question. There’s more than enough blame to go around. The question is what all of this intemperate, arrogant rhetoric accomplishes?
It dumbs us all down. The common ground it seeks is a burial ground for all ideas “not invented here.” It blurs the line between informed opinion and entertainment. It adds nothing to our understanding of the world or the nation. It makes us less, not more, informed. It further divides us on a myriad of issues. It moves us not a centimeter closer to being able to suggest practical strategies to attack desperately urgent concerns. It serves only to raise TV ratings and enrich the commentariat. We might as well be watching professional wrestling.
There are zillions of facts about which left and right largely agree. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. Millions of American kids have no health insurance. Et cetera.
Beyond these truths, however, lies the question, “Can we fix it and, if so, how?”
Today’s Firing Line style of “debate” does everything to move us further away from ever finding real answers.
We have a right to expect proponents of ideas to advocate passionately. But that doesn’t mean heaping derision and abuse on everyone whose ideas aren’t our own. No one has a monopoly on wisdom.
The bottom line here is that the choice is ours. Thankfully, we still live in a country where the most lethal weapon in the arsenal of ordinary citizens is the TV remote.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
RUSH TO PEACE?
By William Fisher
These days, trying to identify the most outrageous news story of the month presents an embarrassment of riches. Just think of what we have to choose from. The options range all the way from the U.S. Senate debating about whether to have a debate on President Bush’s “surge” of troops in Iraq, to the President telling us we’re making “slow progress” in that death-ravaged country, to Vice President Cheney proclaiming that the administration has achieved "enormous successes" there, to the neocon renaissance ginning up a war with Iran.
But then comes an event so bizarre that it easily breaks through the fog of delusion to rise right to the top of the list. That event was the nomination of Rush Limbaugh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The nomination came from something called the Landmark Legal
Foundation, which describes itself as the leading conservative public interest law firm in the United States.
The nomination letter, signed by Landmark’s president, one Mark R. Levin, called Limbaugh “the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today.”
Levin went on to praise the nationally syndicated radio talk show host for his "nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin.”
Rush Limbaugh, Mr. Levin wrote, “is the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today. Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law -- and it is fitting that the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations."
And just who is Mark Levin? He is a contributing editor of National Review, as well as a frequent contributor to the Washington Times and Human Events. And he played a role in supporting Paula Jones during the Clinton sexual scandal by receiving funds from the Scaife Foundation and finding lawyers for Jones.
He’s the man who, during the 2004 presidential campaign, asked, “How can [John Kerry] support an organization [the United Nations] that anti-Semitic? I would like to know how the U.N., given the make-up of the august
body, is any different than the KKK or all the rest of it. They've got people in that U.N. that are torturers, mass-murderers, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, anti-freedom, and we're supposed to keep conferring our decisions to them. Why?”
Levin is also the man who said, “We are also challenging what may be the most insidious legacy of modern liberalism – judicial activism and the radical judges who use it to advance an extremist social agenda. America’s courts have become the final bulwark for the advocates of big government who have been defeated time after time at the ballot box at the local, state and federal level.”
And what is the Landmark Legal Foundation? It is a not-for-profit supported by Exxon-Mobil and some of the nation’s most extreme right-wing foundations. It tells us, “Through an aggressive and multifaceted public education campaign, Landmark’s Judicial Reform Initiative is helping to reshape the public debate and crystallize public sentiment about the mission of America’s courts and the proper limits on their authority.”
In other words, reigning in those “activist judges” and their contempt for the rule of law.
According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, LLF “focuses primarily on education and environmental litigation, in an attempt to dismantle institutions that preserve universal public schooling and that promote and fight for a clean environment. It assists state legislators in their pursuit to enact educational reforms such as providing school vouchers, private management of public schools, and other voucher initiatives.
It is a member of Kay Daly’s Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, along with Free Congress Foundation, American Conservative Union, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the Christian Coalition.
And what has the Nobel nominee said that would support his candidacy?
Thanks to Google, Rush’s rants are knowable beyond the 20 million people who listen to him on 650 radio stations every day. Here are some of the more insightful items:
ON GITMO: A picture of religious freedom that “may be a great vacation spot for oppressed Christians in the United States.”
ON AIDS: "And one of the things that -- that the -- the AIDS activists said regularly back then was, oh, this is only a matter of time before it spreads to
the heterosexual community. It's only a matter of time. And they used that as -- as one of the weapons to try to get people like Reagan to start talking about it
from their standpoint. And of course it -- it hasn't. It -- it didn't, and it hasn't, other than in Africa, and in Africa it is -- it is being spread not just by -- it -- it -- it's promiscuity that -- that -- that spreads this, if you want to know the truth. It's promiscuity. But it -- it hasn't made that jump to the heterosexual community."
ON AFRICAN-AMERICANS: "Why should Blacks be heard? They're 12% of the population. Who the hell cares?”
ON CHOICE: "I think this reason why girls don't do well on multiple choice
tests goes all the way back to the Bible, all the way back to Genesis, Adam and Eve. God said, 'All right, Eve, multiple choice or multiple orgasms, what's it going to be?' We all know what was chosen.”
ON CITIZEN SERVICE: “Citizen Service is a repudiation of the principles upon which our country was based. We are all here for ourselves."
ON CONDOMS: “Condoms only work during the school year."
ON DRUG ABUSE: "And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs,
using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
ON EARTH: "The Earth's eco-system is not fragile."
ON FEMINISM: "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive
women easier access to the mainstream of society."
ON HOMELESSNESS: "One of the things I want to do before I die is conduct the
homeless olympics...the 10-meter shopping cart relay, the dumpster dig, and the hop, skip, and trip."
ON PRISON ABUSE IN IRAQ: “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard
of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?”
ON MICHAEL J. FOX’S SUPPORT OF EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH: "He is exaggerating the effects of (his Parkinson’s) disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act. . . .This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting. This is the only time I've ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. He can barely control himself."
ON THE NAACP” "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies"
ON NUCLEAR ARMS REDUCTION: "The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them."
ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT: “Sexual harassment at this work station will not be reported. However...it will be graded!!!”
ON THE RICH-POOR GAP: "Don't let the liberals deceive you into believing that a decade of sustained growth without inflation in America (in the '80s) resulted in a bigger gap between the have and the have-nots. Figures compiled by the
Congressional Budget Office dispel that myth.”
ON THE CONSTITUTION: “You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.”
Now, isn’t it refreshing to find someone courageous enough to spend his life consistently challenging conventional wisdom?
And can’t you just picture Rush sitting in the Nobel Pantheon along with Shirin Ebadi, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Kim Dae Jung, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and Mother Theresa?
And let’s not forget how his $1.7 million prize would come in handy: After all, Oxycontin isn’t cheap!
These days, trying to identify the most outrageous news story of the month presents an embarrassment of riches. Just think of what we have to choose from. The options range all the way from the U.S. Senate debating about whether to have a debate on President Bush’s “surge” of troops in Iraq, to the President telling us we’re making “slow progress” in that death-ravaged country, to Vice President Cheney proclaiming that the administration has achieved "enormous successes" there, to the neocon renaissance ginning up a war with Iran.
But then comes an event so bizarre that it easily breaks through the fog of delusion to rise right to the top of the list. That event was the nomination of Rush Limbaugh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The nomination came from something called the Landmark Legal
Foundation, which describes itself as the leading conservative public interest law firm in the United States.
The nomination letter, signed by Landmark’s president, one Mark R. Levin, called Limbaugh “the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today.”
Levin went on to praise the nationally syndicated radio talk show host for his "nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin.”
Rush Limbaugh, Mr. Levin wrote, “is the foremost advocate for freedom and democracy in the world today. Everyday he gives voice to the values of democratic governance, individual opportunity and the just, equal application of the rule of law -- and it is fitting that the Nobel Committee recognize the power of these ideals to build a truly peaceful world for future generations."
And just who is Mark Levin? He is a contributing editor of National Review, as well as a frequent contributor to the Washington Times and Human Events. And he played a role in supporting Paula Jones during the Clinton sexual scandal by receiving funds from the Scaife Foundation and finding lawyers for Jones.
He’s the man who, during the 2004 presidential campaign, asked, “How can [John Kerry] support an organization [the United Nations] that anti-Semitic? I would like to know how the U.N., given the make-up of the august
body, is any different than the KKK or all the rest of it. They've got people in that U.N. that are torturers, mass-murderers, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, anti-freedom, and we're supposed to keep conferring our decisions to them. Why?”
Levin is also the man who said, “We are also challenging what may be the most insidious legacy of modern liberalism – judicial activism and the radical judges who use it to advance an extremist social agenda. America’s courts have become the final bulwark for the advocates of big government who have been defeated time after time at the ballot box at the local, state and federal level.”
And what is the Landmark Legal Foundation? It is a not-for-profit supported by Exxon-Mobil and some of the nation’s most extreme right-wing foundations. It tells us, “Through an aggressive and multifaceted public education campaign, Landmark’s Judicial Reform Initiative is helping to reshape the public debate and crystallize public sentiment about the mission of America’s courts and the proper limits on their authority.”
In other words, reigning in those “activist judges” and their contempt for the rule of law.
According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, LLF “focuses primarily on education and environmental litigation, in an attempt to dismantle institutions that preserve universal public schooling and that promote and fight for a clean environment. It assists state legislators in their pursuit to enact educational reforms such as providing school vouchers, private management of public schools, and other voucher initiatives.
It is a member of Kay Daly’s Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, along with Free Congress Foundation, American Conservative Union, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the Christian Coalition.
And what has the Nobel nominee said that would support his candidacy?
Thanks to Google, Rush’s rants are knowable beyond the 20 million people who listen to him on 650 radio stations every day. Here are some of the more insightful items:
ON GITMO: A picture of religious freedom that “may be a great vacation spot for oppressed Christians in the United States.”
ON AIDS: "And one of the things that -- that the -- the AIDS activists said regularly back then was, oh, this is only a matter of time before it spreads to
the heterosexual community. It's only a matter of time. And they used that as -- as one of the weapons to try to get people like Reagan to start talking about it
from their standpoint. And of course it -- it hasn't. It -- it didn't, and it hasn't, other than in Africa, and in Africa it is -- it is being spread not just by -- it -- it -- it's promiscuity that -- that -- that spreads this, if you want to know the truth. It's promiscuity. But it -- it hasn't made that jump to the heterosexual community."
ON AFRICAN-AMERICANS: "Why should Blacks be heard? They're 12% of the population. Who the hell cares?”
ON CHOICE: "I think this reason why girls don't do well on multiple choice
tests goes all the way back to the Bible, all the way back to Genesis, Adam and Eve. God said, 'All right, Eve, multiple choice or multiple orgasms, what's it going to be?' We all know what was chosen.”
ON CITIZEN SERVICE: “Citizen Service is a repudiation of the principles upon which our country was based. We are all here for ourselves."
ON CONDOMS: “Condoms only work during the school year."
ON DRUG ABUSE: "And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs,
using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
ON EARTH: "The Earth's eco-system is not fragile."
ON FEMINISM: "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive
women easier access to the mainstream of society."
ON HOMELESSNESS: "One of the things I want to do before I die is conduct the
homeless olympics...the 10-meter shopping cart relay, the dumpster dig, and the hop, skip, and trip."
ON PRISON ABUSE IN IRAQ: “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard
of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?”
ON MICHAEL J. FOX’S SUPPORT OF EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH: "He is exaggerating the effects of (his Parkinson’s) disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act. . . .This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting. This is the only time I've ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. He can barely control himself."
ON THE NAACP” "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies"
ON NUCLEAR ARMS REDUCTION: "The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them."
ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT: “Sexual harassment at this work station will not be reported. However...it will be graded!!!”
ON THE RICH-POOR GAP: "Don't let the liberals deceive you into believing that a decade of sustained growth without inflation in America (in the '80s) resulted in a bigger gap between the have and the have-nots. Figures compiled by the
Congressional Budget Office dispel that myth.”
ON THE CONSTITUTION: “You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.”
Now, isn’t it refreshing to find someone courageous enough to spend his life consistently challenging conventional wisdom?
And can’t you just picture Rush sitting in the Nobel Pantheon along with Shirin Ebadi, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Kim Dae Jung, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and Mother Theresa?
And let’s not forget how his $1.7 million prize would come in handy: After all, Oxycontin isn’t cheap!
Friday, February 09, 2007
JIM CROW REMEMBERED
By William Fisher
Bob Herbert of the New York Times has written a couple of gut-wrenching columns recently about Gary Tyler, a 16-year-old black youth who in 1974 was accused of murdering a 13-year-old white boy outside the high school they attended in Destrehan, Louisiana.
Herbert recounts how “the boy was shot to death in the midst of turmoil over school integration, which the local whites were resisting violently.
The case against young Tyler — who was on a bus with other black students that was attacked by about 200 whites — was built on bogus evidence and coerced testimony. But that was enough to get him convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair. His life was spared when the Louisiana death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, but he is serving out a life sentence with no chance of parole in the state penitentiary at Angola.”
Herbert writes that “his mother’s sharpest memory of the day Gary was arrested was of sitting in a room at a sheriff’s station, listening to deputies in the next room savagely beating her son.”
After I got my outrage under control, I remembered scenes from 20 years earlier, when I was a cub reporter for a newspaper in Central Florida – then known as the state’s Bible Belt.
One of my beats was what my managing editor called C&C – cops and courts. They gave me the grand title of Bureau Chief and sent me twenty miles away to the county seat. There, covering the local police, the county sheriff, and the county court offered an eye-opening – and terrifying – glimpse into the abyss of the Jim Crow south. For a young Yankee reporter from New York, it was a never-to-be-forgotten education.
Saturday nights were always the busiest for this fledgling journalist. That’s when a couple of dozen sheriff’s deputies got into their patrol cars and headed for “colored town” – the county seat’s ghetto where the dirt-poor African-Americans lived.
They swept in like the 101st airborne, arresting virtually anything that moved. Men and women – and the occasional child – caught up in the sweep were hustled into waiting paddy-wagons and dispatched back to the sheriff’s station. There, they were put behind bars and charged with a variety of heinous crimes – loitering was the most common. If they could post a $25 cash bond, they got out of jail. If not, they stayed locked up.
The sheriff and his deputies much preferred getting the cash, because back in those days they were paid on the “fee system,” i.e., their salaries were substantially composed of a percentage of the fines they collected from the “nigras.”
The later it got, the more arrests were made. It was Saturday night in “colored town.” People drank. Some got into fights. Occasionally there were knifings. The suspects in these crimes were, like their earlier neighbors, hustled off to jail.
For them, there were no $25 bonds. They were quickly put into tiny cells, where most of them remained through their arraignments and until their trials – sometimes for many months. Bail was an unmentionable.
Likewise, legal aid, as we now understand it, was non-existent. The town’s lawyers were ordered by the local bar association and the judge to represent the accused on a rotating pro-bono basis. And since they weren’t about to give up their own Saturday nights, they rarely appeared until Monday morning. By that time, many of the often-illiterate suspects had placed their “mark” on confessions, largely obtained through empty promises of freedom and/or brutal beatings. The sheriff and his deputies were particularly fond of arresting couples, and then sexually abusing a wife to extract a confession from her husband.
Customarily, the next time I saw these people was when they came before the county judge for trial. Their lawyers were often unaware of the charges, since they hadn’t bothered to read the court papers and police reports. Evidence of coerced confessions was routinely excluded, usually without the slightest hint of an objection from the defense lawyers. Juries were, predictably, all-white and
all-male. Some of the attorneys appointed to defend the suspects showed up in court drunk, or with Saturday night hangovers. Many literally slept through the trials.
The next stop for most of these convicted felons was the state prison at Raiford, then widely acknowledged to be one of the more notoriously cruel and overcrowded penal institutions in the country. There were few appeals; appeals cost money.
That was justice in Central Florida in the 1950s, and things only got worse for black citizens after the civil rights movement started to gather steam.
Things didn’t get much better for me either. In addition to writing stories for the paper that paid my salary – which, to their great credit, often got page one above-the-fold treatment -- I started filing articles for the Baltimore Afro-American, one of the oldest black newspapers in the country. They paid me five cents a word. I wrote about what I was seeing on the C&C beat. They also published photos that I shot with my ancient Speed Graphic camera.
Somehow, that information got back to the sheriff, who one morning appeared in my office and, in his laconic Southern drawl, let me know that hanging around his sleepy cowtown could be damaging to my health. Before long, my editors, concerned for my well-being, called me back to the main office.
With the arrival of Disney, lots of Northern retirees, Supreme Court decisions, and dramatic demographic shifts, Central Florida gradually changed. The county sheriff’s department now boasts of its diversity, and I doubt there are any more Saturday Night Massacres these days.
Which is not to say that racial discrimination has gone away. Doubtless poor African-Americans still get arrested, still get represented by incompetent lawyers, still get convicted at far higher rates than white defendants.
But if racial bias in Central Florida hasn’t gone away, it’s certainly become more subtle. If you’re an African-American, you might be concerned about whether your polling place is going to have enough voting machines. And you’re probably less worried about getting shipped off to jail than about getting a business loan from a bank or a mortgage to buy property in a white neighborhood.
I guess that’s progress. Especially if one looks back less than a generation. Which is probably a worthwhile thing to do during Black History Month. And every other month.
Bob Herbert of the New York Times has written a couple of gut-wrenching columns recently about Gary Tyler, a 16-year-old black youth who in 1974 was accused of murdering a 13-year-old white boy outside the high school they attended in Destrehan, Louisiana.
Herbert recounts how “the boy was shot to death in the midst of turmoil over school integration, which the local whites were resisting violently.
The case against young Tyler — who was on a bus with other black students that was attacked by about 200 whites — was built on bogus evidence and coerced testimony. But that was enough to get him convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair. His life was spared when the Louisiana death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, but he is serving out a life sentence with no chance of parole in the state penitentiary at Angola.”
Herbert writes that “his mother’s sharpest memory of the day Gary was arrested was of sitting in a room at a sheriff’s station, listening to deputies in the next room savagely beating her son.”
After I got my outrage under control, I remembered scenes from 20 years earlier, when I was a cub reporter for a newspaper in Central Florida – then known as the state’s Bible Belt.
One of my beats was what my managing editor called C&C – cops and courts. They gave me the grand title of Bureau Chief and sent me twenty miles away to the county seat. There, covering the local police, the county sheriff, and the county court offered an eye-opening – and terrifying – glimpse into the abyss of the Jim Crow south. For a young Yankee reporter from New York, it was a never-to-be-forgotten education.
Saturday nights were always the busiest for this fledgling journalist. That’s when a couple of dozen sheriff’s deputies got into their patrol cars and headed for “colored town” – the county seat’s ghetto where the dirt-poor African-Americans lived.
They swept in like the 101st airborne, arresting virtually anything that moved. Men and women – and the occasional child – caught up in the sweep were hustled into waiting paddy-wagons and dispatched back to the sheriff’s station. There, they were put behind bars and charged with a variety of heinous crimes – loitering was the most common. If they could post a $25 cash bond, they got out of jail. If not, they stayed locked up.
The sheriff and his deputies much preferred getting the cash, because back in those days they were paid on the “fee system,” i.e., their salaries were substantially composed of a percentage of the fines they collected from the “nigras.”
The later it got, the more arrests were made. It was Saturday night in “colored town.” People drank. Some got into fights. Occasionally there were knifings. The suspects in these crimes were, like their earlier neighbors, hustled off to jail.
For them, there were no $25 bonds. They were quickly put into tiny cells, where most of them remained through their arraignments and until their trials – sometimes for many months. Bail was an unmentionable.
Likewise, legal aid, as we now understand it, was non-existent. The town’s lawyers were ordered by the local bar association and the judge to represent the accused on a rotating pro-bono basis. And since they weren’t about to give up their own Saturday nights, they rarely appeared until Monday morning. By that time, many of the often-illiterate suspects had placed their “mark” on confessions, largely obtained through empty promises of freedom and/or brutal beatings. The sheriff and his deputies were particularly fond of arresting couples, and then sexually abusing a wife to extract a confession from her husband.
Customarily, the next time I saw these people was when they came before the county judge for trial. Their lawyers were often unaware of the charges, since they hadn’t bothered to read the court papers and police reports. Evidence of coerced confessions was routinely excluded, usually without the slightest hint of an objection from the defense lawyers. Juries were, predictably, all-white and
all-male. Some of the attorneys appointed to defend the suspects showed up in court drunk, or with Saturday night hangovers. Many literally slept through the trials.
The next stop for most of these convicted felons was the state prison at Raiford, then widely acknowledged to be one of the more notoriously cruel and overcrowded penal institutions in the country. There were few appeals; appeals cost money.
That was justice in Central Florida in the 1950s, and things only got worse for black citizens after the civil rights movement started to gather steam.
Things didn’t get much better for me either. In addition to writing stories for the paper that paid my salary – which, to their great credit, often got page one above-the-fold treatment -- I started filing articles for the Baltimore Afro-American, one of the oldest black newspapers in the country. They paid me five cents a word. I wrote about what I was seeing on the C&C beat. They also published photos that I shot with my ancient Speed Graphic camera.
Somehow, that information got back to the sheriff, who one morning appeared in my office and, in his laconic Southern drawl, let me know that hanging around his sleepy cowtown could be damaging to my health. Before long, my editors, concerned for my well-being, called me back to the main office.
With the arrival of Disney, lots of Northern retirees, Supreme Court decisions, and dramatic demographic shifts, Central Florida gradually changed. The county sheriff’s department now boasts of its diversity, and I doubt there are any more Saturday Night Massacres these days.
Which is not to say that racial discrimination has gone away. Doubtless poor African-Americans still get arrested, still get represented by incompetent lawyers, still get convicted at far higher rates than white defendants.
But if racial bias in Central Florida hasn’t gone away, it’s certainly become more subtle. If you’re an African-American, you might be concerned about whether your polling place is going to have enough voting machines. And you’re probably less worried about getting shipped off to jail than about getting a business loan from a bank or a mortgage to buy property in a white neighborhood.
I guess that’s progress. Especially if one looks back less than a generation. Which is probably a worthwhile thing to do during Black History Month. And every other month.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
OUR HOME-GROWN GITMO
By William Fisher
Suspected illegal immigrants held in detention by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are failing to receive timely medical treatment and adequate food, being subjected to frequent sexual harassment, and having their access to lawyers, relatives and immigration authorities improperly limited.
These are among the findings of the department’s inspector general, based on an audit of the U.S.-owned and operated Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, a contract Corrections Corporation of America facility in San Diego, and local jails and prisons in Berks County, Pa., and Hudson and Passaic counties, N.J.
But critics of the agency called the report disappointing, contending that it watered down recommendations and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse collected since June 2004, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody with criminals.
Mark Dow, author of “American Gulag,” a scathing expose of immigrant detention facilities, goes further. He told IPS that the Inspector General’s report “has helped ensure that, for now, the mistreatment will continue.”
He contends the reason is that the IG recommends that the DHS agency responsible for the detention of immigrants, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) police itself.
“That is telling the agency responsible for the mistreatment of its prisoners, and whose own inspections are deficient, ‘ensure that periodic oversight and inspection procedures are in place to address compliance with the Detention Standards’. The (IG’s) report neglects to mention that ICE has refused to promulgate its detention standards as regulations because they would then be, at least theoretically, legally enforceable”, he says.
He adds: “The bottom line is that ‘auditing’ without truly independent enforcement is meaningless.”
In response to the IG’s report, more than a dozen national organizations have filed a petition with the DHS to create enforceable regulations governing detention standards. If the federal government agrees to the request, DHS will promulgate binding standards for the safety, health, and conditions for thousands of detainees around the country.
These advocates believe DHS regulations governing detention standards will ensure effective protection of detainees’ human rights. “Today’s petition highlights our unconscionable detention system. The reality is that county governments vie for lucrative contracts with the federal government to warehouse non-citizens without any binding standards of care.”
The signatories included the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Seton Hall University Law Center for Social Justice.
Among the most significant issues raised in the IG’s report was that detainees face significant hurdles when attempting to make complaints about their conditions of confinement. It further points to the current ineffectiveness of ICE’s own annual inspections of detention facilities. “The report exposes gaping holes in the protection of detainee rights. We cannot trust the jail officials to address detainees’ concerns, and we cannot trust ICE to effectively review the jails’ practices.
Many of the detention centers for immigrants have been privatized and are being run by such companies as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. In 1999, the feds farmed out less than three percent of beds; but seven years later, the number had reached almost one in five.
The boom in privatized prisons began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the Department of Justice rounded up thousands of “Middle Eastern-looking” immigrants and detained many of them for months, abusing many, treating them as criminals, and denying them access to lawyers.
A 2003 report by the DHS Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of immigrants inside various jails in its report, “The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks.” Infractions included routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers, and toilets.
None of those held were ever charged with a terror-related crime. Some were deported for immigration violations.
Privatized detention facilities have grown apace amid the clamor for a crackdown on alleged undocumented immigrants. Contracts for these new jails flowed to the private prison industry despite many previous allegations of mismanagement and scandal.
Detainee advocates accuse prison companies of cutting corners in training guards and in providing basic services. The government has done little to regulate prison administration, but has sanctioned exploitive labor practices and rip-off telephone costs for inmates.
For example, a former detainee in a CCA facility in San Diego testified that “The guards would scream and shout at us as if we were little kids. If we would ask them to stop, they would threaten to lock us down for a few days, which would happen constantly. Three people being locked in a two-man cell, in a 12 x 7 room. This happened a lot; sometimes as punishment for the actions of one or two inmates, the other 105–115 detainees would suffer.”
“Other times” he said, “It seemed ‘just because.’ A lot of the detainees would be missing money on their accounts, which I was recently told by a detainee who keeps in contact with me was being stolen by the staff, according to [an] OIG investigation. We would get underserved during meal times. When we complained to the unit manager she would say that we were given the right amounts, which in my opinion is the appropriate portion for a ten or eleven year old. Some of the guards and staff would curse at us. They would purposely lower the televisions so we couldn’t hear them, just to mess with us. During our free time they would take their time turning on the phones so we wouldn’t be able to call our families. Just to be cruel.”
For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three percent over the previous year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of $50.26 per inmate.
Meanwhile, on July 1, 2005, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded CCA contracts to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts are for three years with five three-year renewal options. In 2005 CCA also secured new prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the state of Kansas, and the Florida Department of Management Services.
Wackenhut has also shared in the private prison boom. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like CCA, had been at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were caught having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high level of deaths in their facilities.
After a CBS Television report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty, its CEO said, “It’s a tough business. The people in prison are not Sunday-school children.” Still more worrying was Wackenhut’s record with inmate-on-inmate killings. In 1998–99 alone, Wackenhut’s New Mexico facilities had a death rate of one murder for every 400 prisoners. For the same period in all U.S. prisons, the rate was about one in 22,000.
Wackenhut's most public response was to change its name to the GEO Group. It continues to win lucrative government contracts.
The corrections industry has routinely argued that privatizing prisons dramatically lowers costs. A 1996 U.S. General Accounting Office report concluded, however, that there was no clear evidence supporting this contention. Prison companies do have clear advantages over other corporations: They are able to save large amounts of money on labor practices that would illegal under any other circumstances. Inmate jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS guidelines mandate that non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than $1 per day, the company gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff, sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.
Author Mark Dow says, “It isn't politically popular to speak up for alien inmates, but Congress has a responsibility to establish independent oversight of the ICE detention system. Congress should hold hearings on ICE detention - with meaningful follow-up.” It should “Create a statutory-based ombudsman's office or independent oversight body outside the Department of Homeland Security. It must have subpoena power as well as authorization to make unannounced inspections of all facilities holding ICE detainees.”
“Eventually, the very nature of our immigration detention system must be
reexamined. We take it as a given that a visa violator, or an asylum seeker, or a thirty-year lawful resident who has paid taxes but committed a non-violent misdemeanor decades ago, should be strip-searched, dressed in a prison jumpsuit, and denied contact with her children.”
Suspected illegal immigrants held in detention by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are failing to receive timely medical treatment and adequate food, being subjected to frequent sexual harassment, and having their access to lawyers, relatives and immigration authorities improperly limited.
These are among the findings of the department’s inspector general, based on an audit of the U.S.-owned and operated Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, a contract Corrections Corporation of America facility in San Diego, and local jails and prisons in Berks County, Pa., and Hudson and Passaic counties, N.J.
But critics of the agency called the report disappointing, contending that it watered down recommendations and ignored the most serious allegations of abuse collected since June 2004, which they said included physical beatings, medical neglect, food shortages and mixing of illegal immigrants in administrative custody with criminals.
Mark Dow, author of “American Gulag,” a scathing expose of immigrant detention facilities, goes further. He told IPS that the Inspector General’s report “has helped ensure that, for now, the mistreatment will continue.”
He contends the reason is that the IG recommends that the DHS agency responsible for the detention of immigrants, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) police itself.
“That is telling the agency responsible for the mistreatment of its prisoners, and whose own inspections are deficient, ‘ensure that periodic oversight and inspection procedures are in place to address compliance with the Detention Standards’. The (IG’s) report neglects to mention that ICE has refused to promulgate its detention standards as regulations because they would then be, at least theoretically, legally enforceable”, he says.
He adds: “The bottom line is that ‘auditing’ without truly independent enforcement is meaningless.”
In response to the IG’s report, more than a dozen national organizations have filed a petition with the DHS to create enforceable regulations governing detention standards. If the federal government agrees to the request, DHS will promulgate binding standards for the safety, health, and conditions for thousands of detainees around the country.
These advocates believe DHS regulations governing detention standards will ensure effective protection of detainees’ human rights. “Today’s petition highlights our unconscionable detention system. The reality is that county governments vie for lucrative contracts with the federal government to warehouse non-citizens without any binding standards of care.”
The signatories included the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Seton Hall University Law Center for Social Justice.
Among the most significant issues raised in the IG’s report was that detainees face significant hurdles when attempting to make complaints about their conditions of confinement. It further points to the current ineffectiveness of ICE’s own annual inspections of detention facilities. “The report exposes gaping holes in the protection of detainee rights. We cannot trust the jail officials to address detainees’ concerns, and we cannot trust ICE to effectively review the jails’ practices.
Many of the detention centers for immigrants have been privatized and are being run by such companies as the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut. In 1999, the feds farmed out less than three percent of beds; but seven years later, the number had reached almost one in five.
The boom in privatized prisons began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the Department of Justice rounded up thousands of “Middle Eastern-looking” immigrants and detained many of them for months, abusing many, treating them as criminals, and denying them access to lawyers.
A 2003 report by the DHS Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of immigrants inside various jails in its report, “The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks.” Infractions included routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers, and toilets.
None of those held were ever charged with a terror-related crime. Some were deported for immigration violations.
Privatized detention facilities have grown apace amid the clamor for a crackdown on alleged undocumented immigrants. Contracts for these new jails flowed to the private prison industry despite many previous allegations of mismanagement and scandal.
Detainee advocates accuse prison companies of cutting corners in training guards and in providing basic services. The government has done little to regulate prison administration, but has sanctioned exploitive labor practices and rip-off telephone costs for inmates.
For example, a former detainee in a CCA facility in San Diego testified that “The guards would scream and shout at us as if we were little kids. If we would ask them to stop, they would threaten to lock us down for a few days, which would happen constantly. Three people being locked in a two-man cell, in a 12 x 7 room. This happened a lot; sometimes as punishment for the actions of one or two inmates, the other 105–115 detainees would suffer.”
“Other times” he said, “It seemed ‘just because.’ A lot of the detainees would be missing money on their accounts, which I was recently told by a detainee who keeps in contact with me was being stolen by the staff, according to [an] OIG investigation. We would get underserved during meal times. When we complained to the unit manager she would say that we were given the right amounts, which in my opinion is the appropriate portion for a ten or eleven year old. Some of the guards and staff would curse at us. They would purposely lower the televisions so we couldn’t hear them, just to mess with us. During our free time they would take their time turning on the phones so we wouldn’t be able to call our families. Just to be cruel.”
For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three percent over the previous year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of $50.26 per inmate.
Meanwhile, on July 1, 2005, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded CCA contracts to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts are for three years with five three-year renewal options. In 2005 CCA also secured new prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the state of Kansas, and the Florida Department of Management Services.
Wackenhut has also shared in the private prison boom. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like CCA, had been at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were caught having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high level of deaths in their facilities.
After a CBS Television report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty, its CEO said, “It’s a tough business. The people in prison are not Sunday-school children.” Still more worrying was Wackenhut’s record with inmate-on-inmate killings. In 1998–99 alone, Wackenhut’s New Mexico facilities had a death rate of one murder for every 400 prisoners. For the same period in all U.S. prisons, the rate was about one in 22,000.
Wackenhut's most public response was to change its name to the GEO Group. It continues to win lucrative government contracts.
The corrections industry has routinely argued that privatizing prisons dramatically lowers costs. A 1996 U.S. General Accounting Office report concluded, however, that there was no clear evidence supporting this contention. Prison companies do have clear advantages over other corporations: They are able to save large amounts of money on labor practices that would illegal under any other circumstances. Inmate jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS guidelines mandate that non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than $1 per day, the company gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff, sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.
Author Mark Dow says, “It isn't politically popular to speak up for alien inmates, but Congress has a responsibility to establish independent oversight of the ICE detention system. Congress should hold hearings on ICE detention - with meaningful follow-up.” It should “Create a statutory-based ombudsman's office or independent oversight body outside the Department of Homeland Security. It must have subpoena power as well as authorization to make unannounced inspections of all facilities holding ICE detainees.”
“Eventually, the very nature of our immigration detention system must be
reexamined. We take it as a given that a visa violator, or an asylum seeker, or a thirty-year lawful resident who has paid taxes but committed a non-violent misdemeanor decades ago, should be strip-searched, dressed in a prison jumpsuit, and denied contact with her children.”
Monday, January 29, 2007
AT OUR BECK AND GALL
By William Fisher
Champions of our Constitution’s First Amendment should be resting easier now. ABC’s hiring of Glenn Beck to appear as a regular on its “Good Morning America” show surely proves that, despite the Bush Administration’s efforts, freedom of speech is still alive and well in the United States.
No matter how outrageously uninformed and bigoted that speech may be.
Doubtless, Beck’s arrival will catapult the show’s ratings exponentially. And his former home, at CNN Headline News, will sink further into irrelevance.
Beck, you will recall, is the esteemed Middle East scholar who interviewed Keith Ellison, our first Muslim congressman back in November, and asked him to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”
Surely a question worthy of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh.
Beck’s anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rants should be producing apoplexy in Ted Turner, who founded CNN to broadcast news. Just the facts, ma’am.
Here are some of Beck’s recently-broadcast facts:
Muslims “who have sat on [their] hands the whole time rather than “lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head” will face dire consequences. One of those consequences being that Muslims will be “looking through a razor wire fence at the West.”
Before joining CNN, Beck hosted a radio talk show, distributed by that star player in the vast left-wing media conspiracy, Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks. There, he told his audience that "The world is on the brink of World War III," and then warned:
“All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, 'Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.' I'm telling you, with God as my witness... human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things—when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.”
On September 5, Beck broadcast the same message to his CNN Headline News audience, declaring, "In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West." The “razor wire” is a reference to the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. About which Beck warned, "The razor wire will be coming. "
He explained: “Since 9/11, Americans have gotten so fed up with the "yes, but" Muslims. The "yes, but" Muslims are the ones who show up on talkshows and in the media and say, "Yes, terrorism is bad, but"—and then they go through a list of reasons on why we should try and sympathize with people who fly planes into buildings.... If, God forbid, there's another attack, we won't have anymore patience for the "yes, buts." The Muslim community better find a spokesman who isn't a "yes, but" Muslim. They shouldn't even understand the word "but," because if they don't, when things heat up, the profiling will only get worse, and the razor wire will be coming.”
“You want the profiling to stop?” he asked Muslims. His answer: “Here's an idea. Stop murdering innocent people. Stop excusing the people who do. You do that for a while, and I guarantee you won't have any more problems at the airports. Stop blowing stuff up and the world just might be your oyster. Otherwise, it's going to be like that movie, The Siege. You remember that movie? The Muslims will see the West through razor wire if things don't change.”
He went on. “Look, I'm not saying all Arabs and Muslims are anti-American. Far from it. We should get to know these people and embrace the good Muslims, and eliminate the bad ones. Here's what I don't know. I don't know if the Muslim community will ever step to the plate like the Japanese-American community did during World War II. You know, it was absolutely disgraceful how we rounded innocent people up then and, sadly, history has a way of repeating itself no matter how grotesque that history might be. The Muslim community can prevent this if they act now.”
In an exercise of obvious futility, the three leading Arab- and Muslim-American advocacy groups dashed off a letter to ABC/Disney expressing dismay and requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns.
They wrote: “During his tenure at CNN Headline News and as a talk-radio host, Beck has demonstrated an obvious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in his broadcasts through threats and blatantly inaccurate statements. (Beck's) addition to 'Good Morning America' would disseminate his prejudiced, openly-hostile and ignorant commentary to an even broader national audience, and diminish the credibility of your reputable and highly-rated news show," the letter said, adding, "To provide a platform for his hateful speech is dangerous and irresponsible, and we strongly and urgently implore you to reconsider this move."
The response from ABC News expressed its willingness to discuss the organizations’ concerns, but added that it intends to hire Beck.
Of course it does. It knows the formula:
Rantings + Ravings = Ratings.
Champions of our Constitution’s First Amendment should be resting easier now. ABC’s hiring of Glenn Beck to appear as a regular on its “Good Morning America” show surely proves that, despite the Bush Administration’s efforts, freedom of speech is still alive and well in the United States.
No matter how outrageously uninformed and bigoted that speech may be.
Doubtless, Beck’s arrival will catapult the show’s ratings exponentially. And his former home, at CNN Headline News, will sink further into irrelevance.
Beck, you will recall, is the esteemed Middle East scholar who interviewed Keith Ellison, our first Muslim congressman back in November, and asked him to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”
Surely a question worthy of Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh.
Beck’s anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rants should be producing apoplexy in Ted Turner, who founded CNN to broadcast news. Just the facts, ma’am.
Here are some of Beck’s recently-broadcast facts:
Muslims “who have sat on [their] hands the whole time rather than “lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head” will face dire consequences. One of those consequences being that Muslims will be “looking through a razor wire fence at the West.”
Before joining CNN, Beck hosted a radio talk show, distributed by that star player in the vast left-wing media conspiracy, Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks. There, he told his audience that "The world is on the brink of World War III," and then warned:
“All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, 'Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.' I'm telling you, with God as my witness... human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things—when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.”
On September 5, Beck broadcast the same message to his CNN Headline News audience, declaring, "In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West." The “razor wire” is a reference to the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War Two. About which Beck warned, "The razor wire will be coming. "
He explained: “Since 9/11, Americans have gotten so fed up with the "yes, but" Muslims. The "yes, but" Muslims are the ones who show up on talkshows and in the media and say, "Yes, terrorism is bad, but"—and then they go through a list of reasons on why we should try and sympathize with people who fly planes into buildings.... If, God forbid, there's another attack, we won't have anymore patience for the "yes, buts." The Muslim community better find a spokesman who isn't a "yes, but" Muslim. They shouldn't even understand the word "but," because if they don't, when things heat up, the profiling will only get worse, and the razor wire will be coming.”
“You want the profiling to stop?” he asked Muslims. His answer: “Here's an idea. Stop murdering innocent people. Stop excusing the people who do. You do that for a while, and I guarantee you won't have any more problems at the airports. Stop blowing stuff up and the world just might be your oyster. Otherwise, it's going to be like that movie, The Siege. You remember that movie? The Muslims will see the West through razor wire if things don't change.”
He went on. “Look, I'm not saying all Arabs and Muslims are anti-American. Far from it. We should get to know these people and embrace the good Muslims, and eliminate the bad ones. Here's what I don't know. I don't know if the Muslim community will ever step to the plate like the Japanese-American community did during World War II. You know, it was absolutely disgraceful how we rounded innocent people up then and, sadly, history has a way of repeating itself no matter how grotesque that history might be. The Muslim community can prevent this if they act now.”
In an exercise of obvious futility, the three leading Arab- and Muslim-American advocacy groups dashed off a letter to ABC/Disney expressing dismay and requesting a meeting to discuss their concerns.
They wrote: “During his tenure at CNN Headline News and as a talk-radio host, Beck has demonstrated an obvious anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in his broadcasts through threats and blatantly inaccurate statements. (Beck's) addition to 'Good Morning America' would disseminate his prejudiced, openly-hostile and ignorant commentary to an even broader national audience, and diminish the credibility of your reputable and highly-rated news show," the letter said, adding, "To provide a platform for his hateful speech is dangerous and irresponsible, and we strongly and urgently implore you to reconsider this move."
The response from ABC News expressed its willingness to discuss the organizations’ concerns, but added that it intends to hire Beck.
Of course it does. It knows the formula:
Rantings + Ravings = Ratings.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
MEA CULPA MINIMUS
By William Fisher
The senior defense department official who suggested that major corporations should stop doing business with large law firms who represent Guantanamo Bay detainees without charge has apologized for his remarks – but his apology has failed to satisfy some legal and human rights advocates.
The remarks were made on a Washington, D.C. radio program on Tuesday by Charles D. “Cully” Stimson, a deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former Navy defense lawyer. They drew an avalanche of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists, and bar association officials, who said they found his comments repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.
Lawyers expressed outrage at that, asserting that they are not being paid and that Mr. Stimson had tried to suggest they were by innuendo. Of the approximately 500 lawyers coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, no one is being paid. One Washington law firm, Shearman & Sterling, which has represented Kuwaiti detainees, has received money from the families of the prisoners, but Thomas Wilner, a lawyer there, said they had donated all of it to charities related to the September 2001 terrorist attacks.”
The Pentagon disowned Stimson’s remarks and said they did not represent DOD policy.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also disowned Stimson’s remarks. "Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases," he said.
But in a speech in Washington on Wednesday, he said Guantanamo defense lawyers were responsible for much of the delay in charging detainees and putting them on trial.
He was apparently referring to the delays caused by a lawsuit brought by a Guananamo detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, against then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in which some of the lawyers referenced by Stimson participated.
That suit resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court last summer striking down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of executive power upon which the president had based it. The court ruled that the commissions, which were outlined by Bush in a military order on Nov. 13, 2001, were neither authorized by federal law nor required by military necessity, and ran afoul of the Geneva Conventions.
Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which is also being challenged in the courts.
Yesterday, Stimson issued an apology, published in the Washington Post newspaper.
It said, “Regrettably, my comments left the impression that I question the integrity of those engaged in the zealous defense of detainees in Guantanamo. I do not," Stimpson wrote in response to the furor over his remarks. "I apologize for what I said and to those lawyers and law firms who are representing clients at Guantanamo. I hope that my record of public service makes clear that those comments do not reflect my core beliefs," he wrote.
Stimson also said he supports pro bono work and believes the legal system works best when both sides have competent legal counsel.
But his apology failed to satisfy some legal and human rights advocates. Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA, told us, “Stimson's apology illustrates that he recognizes the grave unfairness of his earlier attempts to discredit the attorneys who represent Guantanamo detainees. Everyone is entitled to due process, including legal representation, and the prisoners at Guantanamo are no exception. This is especially important considering that many detainees have already been released when it was determined that they had been wrongly imprisoned. Supposedly, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Discrediting those who work to ensure justice for our prisoners is akin to discounting the very concept of justice.”
And Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights – an advocacy group that has been responsible for organizing much of the legal representation for Guantanamo detainees -- told us, “After the outcry, what could Stimson do except apologize? But, sadly, his remarks were part of a policy that was approved at the highest levels. This is demonstrated by Gonzales’s fallacious claim that the Guantanamo lawyers are responsible for delaying the trials of Guantanamo detainees and by his attacks on judges who have said Guantanamo detainees have rights. The apology may quiet the waters for a moment, but the denial of fundamental rights to detainees is still at the heart of the administration’s practices.”
The controversy appears to have been triggered when a conservative radio talk show host, Monica Crowley, filed a request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act for the names of all law firms representing Guantanamo detainees. The information she received contained the names of 14 prominent law firms, 12 of which were named by Stimson in his radio interview.
Stimson said, "I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking."
He then went on to say, “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”
When asked in the radio interview who was paying for the legal representation, Stimson replied: “It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”
The outcry from legal experts and civil and human rights organizations was swift. Four law organizations said in a letter to president Bush that Stimson should be fired for remarks that were aimed at "chilling the willingness" of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees.
"The threats by Mr. Stimson are not subtle. They imply these pro bono lawyers are terrorists," read the letter signed by the American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers.
Stimson's remarks were aimed at "chilling the willingness" of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees and were contrary to the "bedrock principles" of the right to counsel and the presumption on innocence, the letter read.
Secretary Stimson should be fired immediately, said George Washington University law school Prof. Jonathan Turley, appearing on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” TV show. He asked rhetorically, “What does it take to get someone fired in the Bush Administration?”
But Stimson’s remarks were supported in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. In a editorial by Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”
This is not the first time US military officials have criticized Guantanano defense lawyers. In March of last year, Col. Moe Davis, chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals, told journalists that several major law firms that have defense contractors as paying clients are providing pro bono lawyers to defend Guantanamo detainees in habeas petitions.
"It's somewhat ironic that the weaponry that we use in the war on terrorism is helping fund the defense of the alleged terrorists," Davis said at the time.
About 50 U.S. federal public defenders are also representing Guantanamo detainees, pro bono, in habeas corpus petitions.
About 395 prisoners remain at the Guantanamo prison camp, suspected of al Qaeda and Taliban links. More than 770 captives have been held at the facility which opened five years ago, soon after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks. Only 10 detainees have charged with crimes.
In the environment created by fear of further terrorist attacks, the question of whether Secretary Stimson’s apology is sufficient is academic. His point of view continues to reflect the Bush Administration’s attitude toward the rule of law and the centrality of due process – even for accused terrorists.
The senior defense department official who suggested that major corporations should stop doing business with large law firms who represent Guantanamo Bay detainees without charge has apologized for his remarks – but his apology has failed to satisfy some legal and human rights advocates.
The remarks were made on a Washington, D.C. radio program on Tuesday by Charles D. “Cully” Stimson, a deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former Navy defense lawyer. They drew an avalanche of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists, and bar association officials, who said they found his comments repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.
Lawyers expressed outrage at that, asserting that they are not being paid and that Mr. Stimson had tried to suggest they were by innuendo. Of the approximately 500 lawyers coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, no one is being paid. One Washington law firm, Shearman & Sterling, which has represented Kuwaiti detainees, has received money from the families of the prisoners, but Thomas Wilner, a lawyer there, said they had donated all of it to charities related to the September 2001 terrorist attacks.”
The Pentagon disowned Stimson’s remarks and said they did not represent DOD policy.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also disowned Stimson’s remarks. "Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases," he said.
But in a speech in Washington on Wednesday, he said Guantanamo defense lawyers were responsible for much of the delay in charging detainees and putting them on trial.
He was apparently referring to the delays caused by a lawsuit brought by a Guananamo detainee, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, against then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in which some of the lawyers referenced by Stimson participated.
That suit resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court last summer striking down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of executive power upon which the president had based it. The court ruled that the commissions, which were outlined by Bush in a military order on Nov. 13, 2001, were neither authorized by federal law nor required by military necessity, and ran afoul of the Geneva Conventions.
Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA), which is also being challenged in the courts.
Yesterday, Stimson issued an apology, published in the Washington Post newspaper.
It said, “Regrettably, my comments left the impression that I question the integrity of those engaged in the zealous defense of detainees in Guantanamo. I do not," Stimpson wrote in response to the furor over his remarks. "I apologize for what I said and to those lawyers and law firms who are representing clients at Guantanamo. I hope that my record of public service makes clear that those comments do not reflect my core beliefs," he wrote.
Stimson also said he supports pro bono work and believes the legal system works best when both sides have competent legal counsel.
But his apology failed to satisfy some legal and human rights advocates. Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA, told us, “Stimson's apology illustrates that he recognizes the grave unfairness of his earlier attempts to discredit the attorneys who represent Guantanamo detainees. Everyone is entitled to due process, including legal representation, and the prisoners at Guantanamo are no exception. This is especially important considering that many detainees have already been released when it was determined that they had been wrongly imprisoned. Supposedly, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Discrediting those who work to ensure justice for our prisoners is akin to discounting the very concept of justice.”
And Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights – an advocacy group that has been responsible for organizing much of the legal representation for Guantanamo detainees -- told us, “After the outcry, what could Stimson do except apologize? But, sadly, his remarks were part of a policy that was approved at the highest levels. This is demonstrated by Gonzales’s fallacious claim that the Guantanamo lawyers are responsible for delaying the trials of Guantanamo detainees and by his attacks on judges who have said Guantanamo detainees have rights. The apology may quiet the waters for a moment, but the denial of fundamental rights to detainees is still at the heart of the administration’s practices.”
The controversy appears to have been triggered when a conservative radio talk show host, Monica Crowley, filed a request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act for the names of all law firms representing Guantanamo detainees. The information she received contained the names of 14 prominent law firms, 12 of which were named by Stimson in his radio interview.
Stimson said, "I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking."
He then went on to say, “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”
When asked in the radio interview who was paying for the legal representation, Stimson replied: “It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”
The outcry from legal experts and civil and human rights organizations was swift. Four law organizations said in a letter to president Bush that Stimson should be fired for remarks that were aimed at "chilling the willingness" of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees.
"The threats by Mr. Stimson are not subtle. They imply these pro bono lawyers are terrorists," read the letter signed by the American Association of Jurists, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild and the Society of American Law Teachers.
Stimson's remarks were aimed at "chilling the willingness" of lawyers to represent Guantanamo detainees and were contrary to the "bedrock principles" of the right to counsel and the presumption on innocence, the letter read.
Secretary Stimson should be fired immediately, said George Washington University law school Prof. Jonathan Turley, appearing on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” TV show. He asked rhetorically, “What does it take to get someone fired in the Bush Administration?”
But Stimson’s remarks were supported in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. In a editorial by Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”
This is not the first time US military officials have criticized Guantanano defense lawyers. In March of last year, Col. Moe Davis, chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo tribunals, told journalists that several major law firms that have defense contractors as paying clients are providing pro bono lawyers to defend Guantanamo detainees in habeas petitions.
"It's somewhat ironic that the weaponry that we use in the war on terrorism is helping fund the defense of the alleged terrorists," Davis said at the time.
About 50 U.S. federal public defenders are also representing Guantanamo detainees, pro bono, in habeas corpus petitions.
About 395 prisoners remain at the Guantanamo prison camp, suspected of al Qaeda and Taliban links. More than 770 captives have been held at the facility which opened five years ago, soon after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks. Only 10 detainees have charged with crimes.
In the environment created by fear of further terrorist attacks, the question of whether Secretary Stimson’s apology is sufficient is academic. His point of view continues to reflect the Bush Administration’s attitude toward the rule of law and the centrality of due process – even for accused terrorists.
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