Nuns bless hotel staff at conference

These women know whose labor enhances care in the world and where to look for authentic experience of the Good.

The male leadership of some religious institutions, so much so.

Via Thomas Fox, National Catholic Reporter.

Romney and Ryan race to stop the 21st century

These guys better hope that voter turnout among people under 60 who live outside depressed cultural backwaters is close to non-existent. These guys simply don't live in the same country as the rest of us. Their wealthy, male, white guy playpen is gone for good. If we vote, they are history.

Democracy at work

Democrats don't want to see more headlines like this!

What do you do when you are a candidate for office and want people to vote for you? You find out what your potential constituents care about -- and push for it. And then push some more and claim credit for it.

This seems to be what some Democratic Senate candidates are currently attempting.

With Latinos poised to play a major role in the 2012 elections, Democratic Senate candidates in the Southwest are following suit — urging the national party to add the DREAM Act to its national platform. Senate hopefuls Rep. Martin Heinrich in New Mexico, Rep. Shelley Berkley in Nevada and Richard Carmona in Arizona are leading the charge.

The DREAM Act passed the Democratic-led House in 2010, but died in the Senate. Despite widespread support for the measure among Democrats, the DREAM Act has never been on the party’s platform. In 2008, the party called simply for “comprehensive, not piecemeal” immigration reform. This time, the platform drafters are strongly considering adding the DREAM Act. …

Putting the DREAM Act in the party platform would draw a bright line between the two parties and could forces Mitt Romney to discuss his vague position on immigration reform. A typical Romney statement on his immigration plan: “I will address the problem of illegal immigration in a civil but resolute manner,” he told Latino elected officials in June.

TPM

These Senate candidates didn't invent the DREAM Act. This measure would provide a path to legalization and citizenship for young people who were brought into the country without documents as children. The initiative exists because of years of brave community organizing by the youth and their families themselves. There's nothing radical about it; the country needs more of the energy and zest for participation that characterizes these folks.

President Obama has endorsed the DREAM Act and moved toward implementing some of its provisions through an executive order. He needs Latino voters too.

Republicans want Latino voters, but the white supremacist passions of so many of their adherents drive away most Latinos who are not willing to serve as "talking dogs" -- freakish outsiders in a hostile environment. Being a token who defies your group's norms can sometimes get you a really fancy job -- just look at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. But, especially for the community minded, that sort of alienation is not something most people are willing to take on. So until or unless Republicans make their peace with the aspirations of the growing Latino population, they'll continue to make Democrats of most Latinos.

This is popular democracy working itself out.

Friday cat blogging

Too often, I don't know quite what Morty wants. There's something missing, those big eyes seem to say. But I can only distract him with a little scratching behind the ears. And somehow, that's not all ...

BART congeals

The dry announcement reports -- system back on schedule after delays. As I snapped this, downtown train platforms were just beginning to clog up at rush hour. That's what happens when a hub goes down at the wrong moment.

I'm not complaining. BART mostly works quite painlessly to move a lot of people with only minor friction. But scenes like this remind one how sensitive the system is to local failures.

Texas justice

This is appalling on so many levels, I barely know where to begin.

On Tuesday, Texas executed a murderer named Marvin Wilson. In 1992, Wilson believed a man named Jerry Williams had turned him over to the police for possessing cocaine. So he killed Williams. These were not nice men; I feel pretty sure I would not have wanted to meet either of them in a dark alley.

But according to a previous Supreme Court decision in a 2002 case, Texas had no business killing Wilson. According to appeal filings, Wilson had an IQ of 61, well below the generally understood minimum of 70 that defines mental retardation.

Marvin Wilson has the mental development of the average first-grader. He sucked his thumb into adulthood; he cannot use a phone book; and he doesn’t understand what a bank account is. As a child he would sometimes clamp his belt so tightly that he would cut off blood circulation. He couldn’t figure out how to use simple toys such as tops and marbles, and he was tormented by other children, who called him names like “dummy” and “retard.”

Texas was determined to kill him despite his low IQ. So they pushed ahead and the Supreme Court voted, without comment, to allow it. Scott Lemieux sums up the implications of this decision:

Apparently, states are now free to define mental retardation however they see fit, which is essentially indistinguishable from just explicitly permitting states to execute the mentally handicapped. Texas's execution of Marvin Wilson was cruel and unusual, but the Eighth Amendment can't prevent injustices if nobody is willing to enforce it.

***A Texas judge cited novelist John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in which a sympathetic Lennie kills without understanding to explain that Wilson could be executed despite his intellectual disability. He just wasn't as sympathetic as Lennie and lived in the world of social service bureaucracies. Steinbeck's son expostulated on learning of the Texas ruling:

My father was a highly gifted writer who won the Nobel Prize for his ability to create art about the depth of the human experience and condition. His work was certainly not meant to be scientific, and the character of Lennie was never intended to be used to diagnose a medical condition like intellectual disability. I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic. I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way. And the last thing you ever wanted to do, was to make John Steinbeck angry.

***The Guardian newspaper reported Wilson's last words:

Wilson “smiled and raised his head from the death-chamber gurney, nodding to his three sisters and son as they watched through a window a few meters away.” He then told them that he loved them, and said his last words:

“Y’all do understand that I came here a sinner and leaving a saint,” he said. “Take me home, Jesus, take me home, Lord, take me home, Lord!”

I guess Wilson figured he was going "home" -- as we all wish to, whatever that means to us.

Fierce, poetic and brave

I remember vividly the first time I heard Chavela Vargas' gravelly voice. My partner and I at that time (mid-1970s) were newly un-closeted lesbians, still groping to live into our novel and semi-outlaw identity. My partner, in addition, was struggling to take in what it meant that she had a Mexican father, though she had been raised by white-bread, suburban Californian parents.

One day we heard a recording of this amazing, emotional singer. And we knew, immediately and instinctively. "She's a dyke!" Somehow this insight meant a lot.

When Vargas died this week at age 93, her obituary confirmed our instinct.

At 81, she announced that she was a lesbian.

“Nobody taught me to be like this,” she told the Spanish newspaper El País in 2000. “I was born this way. Since I opened my eyes to the world, I have never slept with a man. Never. Just imagine what purity. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

On the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut in 2003, she looked back on how her singing had changed over her career. “The years take you to a different feeling than when you were 30,” she said in an interview with The Times. “I feel differently, I interpret differently, more toward the mystical.” ...No immediate family members survive.

Enjoy and wonder.

Global view

This map of where the Washington Post stations foreign correspondents sat at the side of a web page, not drawing attention to itself, but interesting nonetheless. I know newspapers (perhaps especially one whose economic well being depends on a test prep company) are in decline these days. But apparently nothing much that matters is expected to happen in all of sub-equatorial Latin America, or sub-Saharan Africa aside from Kenya, or Indonesia which is home to the world's largest Muslim population, or even the continent of Australia. Or, for that matter, even in our huge neighbor to the north.

I decided to look at where some other notable papers have staff. The American Journalism Review reported a census of foreign correspondents in early 2011.

Not surprisingly the New York Times has a goodly crop of bureaus -- and unlike the Wapo, they have people in West Africa (Dakar), Jakarta, Johannesburg, and Sao Paulo. That's a bit bigger world. The Wall Street Journal reaches into a few more places including Buenos Aires and Lagos.

But if you really want reach in your news, the most extensive coverage will come from Bloomberg News with global staff of more than 2,300 in 146 bureaus (101 are foreign) in 72 countries. They have extensive staff in all of Latin America and sprinkled across Africa. And they shine in covering what they call "Asia Pacific" with bureaus in Melbourne and Sydney and even in Wellington, New Zealand.

Does this matter? After all, if something unexpected erupts anywhere in the world, journalists can parachute in at a moments' notice. And they will. And these are usually serious professionals who try to give their audience an accurate picture of what they encounter. But is our "globalized world" actually still quite small, our information constrained by commercial concerns? After all, we in the United States are notoriously uninterested in people who live in foreign lands. It probably will never pay to have a bureau in Kinshasa, even though millions have died over the last decade in the ongoing war in the Congo.

No conclusions -- just awareness that the world is so much bigger and more diverse than the picture of it that a moderately conscientious citizen can expect to derive from the media.

Meet Nathan. He's a tough guy!

Okay, I'm watching the Olympics on TV again. And along comes this Nike ad. Go ahead, watch it. It's only one minute long.

This is Nathan. He is 12 years old. He's from London, Ohio. Greatness is not beyond his reach, nor is it for any of us.

I don't know if Nathan really has greatness ahead of him, but I forgive Nike a lot for putting his image out there as an example of admirable striving.

When we're in a panic about the "obesity epidemic," it is just so easy to demean kids (and adults) who are fat. Look -- we're fat because there is a more food around than our species evolved to have easy access to. We pack it on, genetically programmed to try to defend our bodies against scarcity.

I'm glad we live in a society in which calories -- if not always healthy foods -- are readily available. As a species, we don't quite know how to cope with this unfamiliar abundance. But it is worth remembering that too much of a good thing is still better than not enough at all.

Liberties and privileges

In the United States, the right to vote is nowadays affirmed as a basic right of all people, not a privilege granted by an indulgent state.

William Galston has posted an inquiry into the philosophical roots of the new crop of Republican-initiated voter suppression laws and rules at The New Republic. He says they aim to change our understanding of this basic right. Voter ID requirements that will be especially burdensome to poor and aging voters, additional hoops added to registration procedures, and cut backs in early voting periods all spring from a view of the franchise that is very different from that which most United States people embrace.

Last year, Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers said, “I think [voting is] a privilege, it’s not a right. Everybody doesn’t get it because if you go to jail or if you commit some heinous crime your [voting] rights are taken away. This is a privilege.”

This claim rests on an obvious confusion. Anybody who believes in the Declaration of Independence will affirm that liberty is among our inalienable rights. Nonetheless, certain sorts of crimes are thought to warrant incarceration, which is a deprivation of liberty. Does that transform liberty from a right into a privilege? Of course not.

The real logic is different. Our society presumes (as some do not) that all human beings are equal in their possession of both human and civil rights and that the burden of proof in restricting those rights must be set very high. Some people argue that no reason is compelling enough to override the right to life, for example, which is why the death penalty will always be a contentious issue.

Hardly anyone makes that argument about liberty, which is why life sentence without parole is widely regarded as a legitimate substitute for the death penalty. Without the ability to deprive some law-breaking citizens of their liberty, our entire justice system would come crashing down. But no one thinks that turns liberty into a privilege.

Voting is much the same. All citizens are presumed to be equal in their right to vote. Yes, most felons do forfeit their right to vote, at least temporarily. (We argue about whether permanent forfeiture is legitimate, even after felons have “paid their debt to society.”) But if we take the equal right to vote seriously, we must not pass laws that implicitly treat voting as a privilege some are fitter than others to enjoy.  To confuse that right with a privilege is to change the understanding of American citizenship, and not for the better.

My emphasis.

Because I am working on a campaign that would replace the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, I've had to think hard about what values ought to underly our legal system.

I am profoundly convinced that all of us have a right to expect justice that works -- and that a tough system that keeps people who commit terrible crimes in prison is something that law-abiding citizens deserve. At the same time, we want a justice system that ensures that the state never risks executing an innocent person. We know mistakes are possible. We can never be certain that we have not killed an innocent person so long as the death penalty is possible.

In the debate over the death penalty, we confront, along with daunting waste and cost concerns, quite fundamental questions about how our society can ensure more authentic justice for all. It doesn't surprise me that Galston goes to this issue when looking for analogies to the interplay of inalienable rights with privileges. The discussions do have a lot in common.

The history of liberty in the United States has been about the gradual expansion of voting rights from a few propertied men to nearly everyone. This expansion is part of our gut understanding of what our liberty means in this country. It is a terrible thing to see Republicans willing to undermine fundamental liberties -- to make participation in elections more difficult for people who might vote against them -- in order to win partisan advantage.

Travel's got me down

San Diego, round-trip, yesterday; Orange County and John Wayne Airport last weekend. Glad I can take BART near to my door. Home today, but too pooped to blog.

Gabby Douglas flies

Nice profile of the all-round women's gymnastics victor in today's paper.

“I have an advantage because I’m the underdog and I’m black and no one thinks I’d ever win,” she said. “Well, I’m going to inspire so many people. Everybody will be talking about, how did she come up so fast? But I’m ready to shine.”

And shine she did, ending Thursday night with her hand on her heart, watching the American flag being raised in the arena. In the stands nearby, her family — including her mother and her stand-in parents — huddled together and beamed.

But I have to ask -- can't someone manufacture "flesh colored" athletic tape that comes closer to matching the skin tones of the many peoples of the world?

Friday cat blogging

Morty appreciates our habit of leaving computer bags lying around the office. Whether in chairs or on the floor, he appropriates any comfortable padded perch.

War-o-tainment atrocity

This week, not only is the Yes on 34 campaign reducing my attention to this blog, but then there are the Olympics. Like most everyone else who is a fan of athletic prowess and not a saccharine nationalist, I find NBC's coverage pretty disgusting.

But an ad last night for a fall TV show headlined by retired general Wesley Clark hits a new low. The premise of Stars Earn Stripes is that celebrities play at war, earning money for "military-based" charities.

Roots Action has mounted a protest:

On "Stars Earn Stripes," celebrities will pair-up with members of the U.S. military to compete at war-like tasks, including "long-range weapons fire." Only there won't be any of the killing or dying.

Our wars kill huge numbers of people, primarily civilians, and often children and the elderly. NBC is not showing this reality on its war-o-tainment show any more than on its news programs. Other nations' media show the face of war, giving people a very different view of war-making...

While 57% of federal discretionary spending goes to the military, weapons makers can't seem to get enough of our tax dollars. In the spirit of transferring veterans' care to the realm of private charity, "Stars Earn Stripes" will give prize money each week to "military-based charities" in order to "send a message." We have our own message that we will be delivering to NBC: Dont lie to us.

One of NBC’s corporate parents, General Electric, takes war very seriously, but not as human tragedy -- rather, as financial profit. (GE is a big weapons manufacturer.) A retired general hosting a war-o-tainment show is another step in the normalization of permanent war.

The least we can do is sign this petition.

A very good day: Thanks Obamacare!

Yeah for #ThanksObamacare.

Warming Wednesdays: When new technologies mature

An encouraging article about a report on increasing global production of renewable energy in USA Today points out a fact that should have been obvious to me, but which served as a good reminder of what it looks like whenever a new technology is emerging.

The report's authors said the demise of companies such as Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, Solar Millenium and Solon was a sign that the solar industry is maturing.

"In 1903, the United States had over 500 car companies, most of which quickly fell by the wayside even as the automobile sector grew into an industrial juggernaut," the report said. "Today, the renewable energy sector is experiencing similar growing pains as the sector consolidates."

Of course. I grew up very aware of the demise of those early auto companies. This building was just blocks from my house and Buffalonians often mentioned the lamented Pierce-Arrow.


No cause for complacency, but perhaps the move to less destructive energy is another transition we can accomplish. We have to.

Despite every other legitimate concern, we cannot ignore that our economic and social system is rapidly making the planet less habitable. So I will be posting "Warming Wednesdays" -- unpleasant reminders of an inconvenient truth.

A good week for Prop. 34

Momentum is building in the campaign to replace California's death penalty with justice that works. We've had a good couple of weeks as we work to pass Prop. 34.


First, the California Labor Federation included Prop. 34 among its endorsements. We're talking about a lot of people here:

The California Labor Federation is made up of more than 1,200 AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions, representing 2.1 million union members in manufacturing, retail, construction, hospitality, public sector, health care, entertainment and other industries.

That endorsement is even more gratifying as this year organized labor is in an electoral fight for its own life -- and the lives of all of us who depend on labor to support the best of our values. A deceptive initiative -- Prop. 32 -- aims to fool Californians by masquerading as “stopping special interests” while actually it would prevent unions from standing up for workers and would give even more voice to the wealthy one percent in elections.

Then over the weekend, the California Democratic Party gave its approval to Prop. 34. The party of Barack Obama and Jerry Brown has our back.

And today, the San Jose Mercury News explained why it supports Prop. 34. Here's an excerpt:

California's death penalty is archaic, unfairly applied and fiscally insane. More than 135 nations have abolished capital punishment, and the list of those that still use it is a who's who of human rights' abusers: Iraq, Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Sudan, for starters. Oh, and us.

This fall voters should make California the 18th state to repeal the death penalty in favor of life in prison with no chance of parole. Vote yes on Proposition 34.

… Death penalty supporters argue that the lengthy appeals that run up public costs should be cut short or ended. That works in barbaric nations that immediately execute prisoners. But it doesn't deal with a major reason other states have abolished the death penalty: increasing evidence that innocent people have been executed. More than 100 inmates have been freed from death row nationwide in the past 35 years. California has had none so far, but with more than 700 prisoners on death row and improving forensic techniques, the likelihood of finding errors is ever more likely. Why not just lock people away for life?

Guilt or innocence aside, it's clear that the death penalty is unfairly applied in California. A county-by-county study of death sentences from 2000-07 found residents of Alameda County nearly eight times more likely to be sentenced to death than residents of Santa Clara County. Blacks in California are sentenced to death at a rate five times higher than their proportion of the population.

The paper lays out a strong case. Go read the whole thing.

Sometimes "occupying army" is no metaphor

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Patrick T. Fallon / Los Angeles Times

This was the scene in Anaheim yesterday afternoon as "law enforcement" converged to disperse citizens protesting seven shootings by police this year.

Sunday's was the latest in a series of demonstrations staged in Orange County's largest city in the wake of two fatal police shootings last weekend.

Manuel Diaz, 25, was shot and killed by police July 21. Authorities said the unarmed man was avoiding arrest. The day after Diaz was killed, Anaheim police fatally shot Joel Acevedo, 21, who authorities say had fired on officers during a foot chase.

A third officer-involved shooting -- this one on Friday, in which police opened fire on a burglary suspect, who was unhurt -- was the city's seventh such shooting this year, five of which have been fatal. The city had four officer-involved shootings in all of 2011.

Anaheim resident Brad Owens, 55, watched protesters from the shade of a tree near the police station Sunday afternoon. He’s lived in the city for 20 years, he said, and is "not a fan" of how police handled the officer-involved shootings this week. Police Chief John Welter “has to go," he said.

“It’s a style of management. It has to be a mind set if so many people are doing it,” Owens said of the officer-involved shootings. “They’ve been aggressive and lethal.”

Los Angeles Times

Something is very wrong in the "Magic Kingdom."

Where was it Romney wants to be President?

Mitt is apparently running for President of those right wingers, like billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who confuse the interests of Israel with those of the United States.

As Romney prepared to fly to Israel on Saturday, an aide on board the plane he was travelling on was photographed briefly holding aloft an Israeli flag in front of journalists. It served as a reminder of the emphasis that the candidate's campaign team have placed on the high-profile visit.

UK Guardian

Good that the candidate is so clear about who matters to him.

And a little more from Juan Cole:

It is distasteful that Romney is promising his donors in Jerusalem a war on Iran. When George W. Bush promised his pro-Israel supporters a war on Iraq, it cost the US at least $3 trillion, got hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, destabilized the Gulf for some time, cost over 4,000 American soldiers’ lives, and damaged American power, credibility and the economy. As Nancy Reagan said of drugs, so US politicians must say to constant Israeli entreaties that the United States of America continually fight new wars in the Middle East on their behalf: “Just say no.” Instead, Romney is playing war enabler, and that abroad!

The last thing this country needs in another war for no purpose but to elect a Republican.

Lovely Anaheim

Since I'm in this city today, the least I can do is share this clip of what was happening in a neighborhood here last weekend.

Over in the tourist section of town where I am, not far from Disneyland and the Convention Center multiplex, I won't see any of this. But this city of 335,000 people is seething. According to AP, Anaheim was 90 percent white in 1970; today it is 53 percent Latino. Old timers and newcomers have not made peace with each other.

Last time I was here, in 2009, Disney workers were protesting for a living wage. It's not much fun to work in the "service industry" where a job entitles you to provide drudgery with a smile for people who seldom notice your humanity. You should at least be paid decently for your efforts.

The current upheavals began when cops acted as if suspicion of gang-membership was enough to justify shooting at young Latino men.

On Saturday, a police officer fatally shot Manuel Diaz outside an Anna Street apartment complex. Officers say Diaz, who had a criminal record, failed to heed orders and threw something as he fled police. The city's police union said Diaz reached for his waistband, which led the officer to believe he was drawing a gun.

Diaz's family, which is suing for $50 million in damages, says he was shot in the leg and the back of the head. During a protest the night of the shooting, a police dog escaped and bit a bystander.

On Sunday night, police shot to death Joel Acevedo, a suspected gang member they say fired at officers after a pursuit.

Let's hope the police can get over thinking they have to behave like an occupying army in communities where their brown-skinned neighbors live.

Over in the resort area, we hope that the California Democratic Party will today endorse the Yes on Prop. 34 initiative to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole.