Mexico To Fight Arizona "Minutemen"

This will be an interesting battle,

Mexico will pursue legal action against plans by a U.S. citizens' group to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border in search of illegal immigrants, the country's foreign minister said on Monday.

Luis Ernesto Derbez said he asked lawyers in Los Angeles to draw up a legal strategy to fight the Arizona-based initiative called "the MinuteMan Project" that has signed up hundreds of volunteers for border patrols.

I am not really sure what to make of the odds of this fight, but it appears that the Minutemen aren't really doing anything illegal. I am sure that this will receive national attention very soon.

Full Article at Reuters.

Gays in the Military

I thought that this issue might take a long time to resurface, but of all publications, The Economist is rallying for a change in our policy,

According to a recent poll of enlisted men, more than half thought gays should be allowed in the armed forces. In the current time of overstretch, even the older, more conservative, officer class seems to be changing heart. The number of gay discharges rose steadily till 2001, when America went to war in Afghanistan; since then the annual figure has halved. As for the idea that the ban reflects American mores, polls suggest that at least 64% of Americans would allow gay soldiers.

The truth of the matter is that this is a blatant form of discrimination by the U.S. government and one that should clearly be changed. The article points to the relative success of Britain's policy of inclusion, and this should lend some support to the idea that things must be changed. But then again, Britain is not nearly as homophobic a country we are. Nor are gays subject to so much political manipulation there.

Full Article at The Economist.

How to Break Conservative Rhetoric

It is good that we are all (finally) coming together,

[Influential conservative strategist Frank Luntz has produced a 160-page playbook to advance the right-wing agenda. Think Progress cuts through the spin and gives you the tools you need to fight back. Check here for updates throughout the week.]

Luntz’s playbook is full of things people should never say if they don’t want to undermine the right-wing agenda. Here’s how you can be Frank Luntz’s worst nightmare:

Economy

• Talk about the economy using “facts and figures.”

• Talk about the overall size of Bush’s proposed tax cut.

• Describe how repealing the estate tax protects America’s wealthiest families.

• Talk about the economy without bringing up 9/11.

• Recall how Bill Clinton produced balanced budgets in the late 1990s.

Budget

• Remind people that conservatives want to make painful cuts in vital government services.

• Talk about the deficit without bringing up 9/11.

Social Security

• Remind people that the financial services industry has been embroiled in scandal and corruption.

• Note that money contributed to private accounts will “go into the hands of greedy Wall Street fat cats.”

• Point out that proponents of Social Security privatization “lack factual discipline.”

• Tell people that the push to privatize Social Security is about partisan politics.

Energy

• Tell people what ANWR stands for.

• Say, “We should rely on American ingenuity and not the Saudi Royal Family.”

• Talk about how drilling for oil harms the environment.

• Always say “Drilling for oil"; Never say “Exploring for energy.”

• Give specific examples of safety and security problems at nuclear power plants.

Patients’ Rights

• When talking about trial lawyers don’t use words like “creeps, bottom-feeds, overpaid and evil.”

• Say, “When innocent people who are injured seek compensation from those who cause their injuries it’s anything but frivolous. When a preventable careless medical error forces a child into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, it’s anything but frivolous. And when someone close to you suffers due to doctor negligence, their right to a day in court is anything but frivolous.”

Thanks to ThinkProgress for the Guide and DailyKos for hosting the original Playbook.

Slightly Controversial: Prison Segregation

The Supreme Court finally ruled against Prison Segregation by race, affirming that the doctrine of "Separate but equal" is, and always will be, wrong. However, doubts still lingered if prison segregation should or could be used as a means of protecting inmates.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday all but overturned California's policy of housing new prison inmates by race, declaring that the temporary segregation must be halted unless state officials could show it was the only way to maintain safety and security.

It might be worthy of a debate to decide if segregation is necessary in some cases, but it is important to start the long road to Prison Reform with a victory, and this is clearly an important one.

Full Article at LA Times.

Good Ideas Actually Can Guide Policy

Fo all of the nay-sayers, here is an example of where policy actually makes good sense.

Regional transportation officials approved a plan Wednesday to give free rides on all Bay Area transit systems on days when air pollution threatens to exceed state and federal standards.

This makes sense. Of course, details like funding have to be sorted out as well, but nonetheless, this is a good idea being made into good policy. Hopefully, more are to come.

LA Mayoral Race

With only two weeks left, this looks very good for Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa - 36%

Hahn - 19%

Parks - 15%

Hertzberg - 14%

Alarcon - 6%

Other - 4%

Undecided - 6%

With so few undecided, it is quite clear that Villaraigosa will advance to the general election, but won't secure an outright win with a +50% vote. His opponent is still up in the air, but it might be a repeat of the last election.

John Ashcroft would be a "...very good Supreme Court pick"

According to some newly released personal conversations between George Bush and Doug Wead, a friend and former aide, John Ashcroft would not only be a good Supreme Court Justice, but also a "fabulous" vice president. The conversation was one of many that were secretly recorded by Wead in the time when Bush emerged on the national scene.

Mr. Wead said he recorded the conversations because he viewed Mr. Bush as a historic figure, but he said he knew that the president might regard his actions as a betrayal. As the author of a new book about presidential childhoods, Mr. Wead could benefit from any publicity, but he said that was not a motive in disclosing the tapes.

The White House did not dispute the authenticity of the tapes or respond to their contents. Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said, "The governor was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend." Asked about drug use, Mr. Duffy said, "That has been asked and answered so many times there is nothing more to add."

When somebody does something like this when a book comes out, it is obviously for publicity, but that really shouldn't discount the value that will come from the insights. Especially the value that comes from Bush's somewhat unbelievable thoughts like this one,

"It's me versus the world," he told Mr. Wead. "The good news is, the world is on my side. Or more than half of it."

Very very interesting - although it really doesn't make sense. But of course, this really isn't the first time that Bush has said something out of the ordinary.

Full Article at NYTimes.

Good Old Google

Yet another reason why Google is one of the best companies around.

Employees of U.S.-based search engine Google gave $207,650 to federal candidates for the 2004 elections -- virtually all of it to Democrats.

Man, I really love those guys. And scholar.google.com is pretty good too - like almost anything they do.

For Any of You With Deep Pockets

From the Center for Progressive Leadership,

Match and Surpass

An Aggressive Strategy for Developing a Pipeline for a Progressive Farm Team

Progressive leaders are becoming increasingly aware of the need to make long-term investments in a 501(c)(3) think-tank and message infrastructure. We are realizing how incredibly effective institutions like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and American’s for Tax Reform have been at reframing politics in the eye of the public and the media.

Less well known, however, is the fact that in addition to a massive think-tank infrastructure, conservatives have also built a $25 million 501(c)(3) recruitment and training infrastructure that has provided a pipeline for their future political leaders since the late 1970s.

For 25 years, conservatives’ 501(c)(3) leadership pipeline has been entirely unchallenged. There has simply never been a national progressive commitment to investing the resources necessary to create a long-term progressive political leadership development infrastructure.

We cannot afford to let conservatives continue to dominate the arena of long-term leadership development. Progressives must build a 501(c)(3) infrastructure for identifying, recruiting, and training leaders at every level from high school and college students to activists and candidates.

Rather than simply playing catch-up, we must learn from the successes and limitations of the conservative infrastructure, and then innovate to create programs that will soon outpace conservatives. With strategic investments in a far-reaching 501(c)(3) training infrastructure, we can build a pipeline of inspired and inspiring progressive leaders who will reshape American politics.

I. The Conservative’s Infrastructure

Starting in the late 1970s, conservatives built a series of 501(c)(3) training institutions dedicated to developing their new political leadership. Led by the Leadership Institute and the Young America’s Foundation, these nonprofit organizations developed a comprehensive pipeline for supporting emerging conservative political leaders.

Every year, conservatives pour over $25 million dollars into these 501(c)(3) organizations that provide political training for up-and-coming conservative political leaders. After 25 years of conservative leadership development investments, there are over 80 members of Congress, more than 220 state legislators, and thousands of activists, including Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and Karl Rove, who were trained in these programs.

With the capacity to build endowments, fundraise from foundations, and provide individual donors with tax-deductions, these 501(c)(3) training institutions are able to look far beyond any single election cycle and make long-term investments in conservative leaders early in their political careers.

II. An Opportunity to Overtake Conservatives

Over the past two years, the Center for Progressive Leadership has closely studied the conservatives’ training programs, reviewed their curriculum, and scrutinized their recruitment and training methods.

● The Center for Progressive Leadership is the nation’s first progressive political training institute ●

Despite all of their successes, the conservatives’ infrastructure has several vulnerabilities that provide progressives with an opportunity to develop a leadership pipeline that will match and surpass conservatives’ efforts. Unchallenged success in long-term political leadership development has reduced the pressure for conservatives to innovate and improve their programs and operational models.

Conservative training programs have been slow to adopt new training models coming out of the corporate sector and have underinvested in recruitment of new leaders who are not currently engaged in politics. In addition, conservative training institutions continue to run their programs from Washington, which limits their capacity to provide long-term support for trainees and develop a stronger state-based infrastructure.

These vulnerabilities create an opportunity for progressives to match and surpass conservative training programs by investing in targeted recruitment and training programs for emerging political leaders.

III. The Challenge for Progressives

Progressives must move aggressively to create a 501(c)(3) political leadership infrastructure that builds on our unique political assets and challenges the conservative pipeline for political leadership.

Fund a 501(c)(3) Infrastructure: Political organizations play a critical role in the progressive leadership pipeline, but PACs, 527s, and Party organizations are required to focus on the current election cycle. This leads to a paucity of programs for supporting emerging progressive leaders and underinvestment in recruitment and early career support for minority and women leaders.

Conservatives understand the limitations of political organizations (and the financial advantages of 501(c)(3)s), and have built a well-funded 501(c)(3) infrastructure for long-term leadership development. Through their 501(c)(3) infrastructure, conservatives are able to recruit, train, and support candidates years before they are ready to run for office, activists early in their political careers, and students as they are forming their political views.

We must commit to raising the resources required to build a parallel 501(c)(3) recruitment and training infrastructure to develop the next generation of progressive political leaders.

Build from the States: Unlike the top-down conservative approach, progressives must create a state-based organizational structure by developing a strong base of staff, volunteers, advisors, and donors in key target states that have the potential for a surge in progressive leadership.

Focus on New Leadership: Progressives must invest heavily in engaging new leadership by drawing from diverse communities and targeting leaders who are not traditionally involved in electoral politics. In addition to engaging young progressives, we must provide progressive leaders in the business sector, military, legal world, nonprofit sector, and government with a bridge to political careers.

Innovate and Apply New Training Strategies: Fellowship training and “executive coaching” models have been used to great success in the business and nonprofit sectors. These training models maximize training impact and ensure long-term support for trainees. By incorporating these methods into progressive training programs, we have an opportunity to maximize the impact of our training dollars.

Develop Messengers: Several progressive organizations are currently dedicated to redeveloping the platform for progressive values and messaging. A progressive leadership training infrastructure can contribute to these efforts by helping to build a cadre of effective and inspiring messengers who connect directly with voters.

IV. A Call to Action

By the end of this decade, the Center for Progressive Leadership aims to catalyze the development of a robust 501(c)(3) political leadership pipeline in 20 states with at least $25 million in funding and thousands of newly engaged and successful progressive candidates, youth, and activists each year.

We need your support to build this pipeline. The Center for Progressive Leadership is working to assemble the team of progressive leaders, organizations, and donors that will drive this vision forward. We are arranging meetings of key progressive leaders across the country to establish a national commitment to building this 501(c)(3) leadership development infrastructure.

If you would like to be a part of creating the infrastructure to support the next generation of progressive leaders, please contact me at Peter.Murray@ProgressLeaders.org or 202-365-5472.

Frenching Gives HIV

I guess you learn something new everyday. Or rather, we try to teach our kids something new that is completely false to scare them out of ever doing anything remotely sexual.

Los Angeles Unified leaders said Thursday they have grave concerns about the conservative tone of a textbook being proposed for ninth-grade health classes.

The book, called "Health," and its supplemental material, published by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill in 2005, lacks information about birth control, tells students that abstinence is the only way to protect their reputations and lists open-mouth kissing as a way of transmitting HIV.

This is pretty insane, but alas, sex education has taken on a tone of complete suppression of feelings rather than a way to learn how to be safe and healthy. As always, this deals with the greater argument, of weather we should completely ignore and scare children from having sex, or if we should equip them with the proper knowledge since it is quite likely that they may be in a sexual situation. The choices: denying reality or accepting it and moving forward. To me, reality is hard to escape.

Full Article at Los Angeles Daily News

Death Penalty in New York at Last Breath?

The possibility of reviving the Death Penalty in New York seemed great in 1995 when the Assembly voted in favor of reinstating capital punishment. But 10 years later, with $175 million spent, seven sentenced, and zero executed, it appears that New York will realize their folly and put the Death Penalty down for the count... for good.

"My guess is that there will never be an Assembly floor vote on this issue - that if we did anything, it would be nothing, and that would kill the death penalty," said Mr. Lentol, whose Codes Committee reviews death penalty bills.

Yes, it seems that the Assembly, after hours of public hearings has come to its senses, as very few people were able to muster up any good arguments for actually having the Death Penalty in New York. And as if the numerous anti-death penalty groups weren't enough to persuade the politicians of the futility of capital punishment, they need not look further than one of their own neighboring states.

"Look at what's happening over in Connecticut; it's a circus over there with all those delays in a death penalty case," added Assemblywoman Sandy Galef of Westchester County, who also voted for the law and now opposes it. "Why do we need that?"

Although the Death Penalty should hardly be described as a circus, it is certainly nothing more than a mere act of entertainment to distract us all from the real problems of our society. Above all, it is not a solution.

Thankfully though, New York has come to see things quite clearly.

Full Article at NYTimes.

How about this for a Poll?

Mind you that this isn't a national poll, but a Massachusetts Only Poll. So Kerry, the liberal, couldn't even get the most leftist state to back him. Not to mention the state that he actually represents. Very interesting.

Friedman Op/Ed

As always, Thomas Friedman has a way of conveying his thoughts that will astound anyone willing to read. In his latest commentary, he talks about the money that the U.S. has budgeted as rewards for the capture of Bin Laden and Zarqawi.

What I would do with the $75 million we have budgeted as rewards for bin Laden and Zarqawi is use it instead to sponsor an essay contest for high school students in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria and Egypt. The contest entry form would say the following: "In 2,000 words, write an essay on one of these two topics: 1. Why do you believe the Arab-Muslim world is fully capable of achieving democratic, representative government and how do you envisage it coming about through peaceful changes inside your country, without any American or other outside help. 2. Write an essay about the lives of any of the great medieval Arab or Muslim mathematicians, scientists or philosophers and how their innovations helped to shape our world today."

He always fascinates with his ideas. I saw him on Tim Russert and he talked about his way of achieving democracy in the Middle East: by completely stopping our dependence on their oil. Of course, this is not a new solution by any means, but Friedman's way of explaining and breadth of knowledge convey a more serious and acceptable way of solving the Middle East puzzle. Quite an interesting thinker to say the least.

Interesting bit of UC News

I just found this the other day.

The cash-strapped University of California handed out $2.4 million in bonuses to administrators at its five medical schools, angering campus workers and students.

The payments to 65 administrators averaged $36,000 and reached as high as $82,000, according to a report to the UC Board of Regents made public by an employee union.

And here is the part that really pissed me off.

The largest bonus went to UC Davis Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Robert Chason, who received the $82,000, 20 percent of his annual salary of $410,000.

I find it hard to believe that somebody in the UC got a bonus that large, especially when they are already being paid such an extravagant amount.

Overall, I fear that these stories of UC hypocrisy are just a part of what will eventually be the great downfall of our state's prestigious university system. We have dramatically increased fees and seen no real effort to increase the numbers of unrepresented, while still working hard to keep our football programs in tact and renovate our stadiums. It seems we have forgotten our priorities of academia and a public education... but hopefully, I am dead wrong.

"Hell no"

Rejoice, for Dick Cheney has made the announcement we have all been waiting for: He will not run for president in 2008. Thank god.

Of course, it is hard to argue that he wasn't the pseudo-president for much of the last 4 years, but that is beside the point. He had this to say,

"I've still got a lot of rivers I'd like to fish and time I'd like to spend with my grandkids, and so this is my last tour. I don't plan to run for anything,"

And it should be our job to make sure that he spends all of his future time fishing and being a grandpa, rather than directing any sort of policy whatsoever. I will gladly donate to that cause.