No Questions Asked

Every once in a while we hear about Katrina’s victims. Another shameful moment in American history.
Hurricane Katrina victims around the Gulf Coast who were told to vacate their temporary trailers by the end of May will instead be allowed to buy them for $5 or less, White House officials announced on Wednesday.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will also give the 3,450 families still in trailers or temporary housing — including many elderly, poor and disabled people — priority for $50 million in permanent housing vouchers. The money for the vouchers was appropriated by Congress last year.

Some of those living in trailers are destitute and have no other housing. Others, including many people in New Orleans, are living in trailers outside their damaged homes, while waiting to complete repairs that would allow them to move back. The May 31 deadline set off a panic among both kinds of residents and raised an outcry because so much of the housing destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has yet to be replaced.

Residents were overjoyed to hear that they would not be evicted. “Are you serious?” asked Belinda Jenkins, a disabled woman living in a trailer in front of her house in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans. “Oh, wow. That’s a blessing.”

More disturbing news from the bench:

The Supreme Court made it easier for the police and prosecutors to question suspects, lifting some restrictions on when defendants can be interrogated without their lawyers present.

In a 5-to-4 ruling, the court overturned its 1986 opinion in a Michigan case, which forbade the police from interrogating a defendant once he invoked his right to counsel at an arraignment or a similar proceeding.

That 1986 ruling has not only proved “unworkable,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, but its “marginal benefits are dwarfed by its substantial costs” in that some guilty defendants go free. Justice Scalia was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

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Kudos to Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the 1986 decision for making an unusual public dissent saying that the “police interrogation in this case clearly violated petitioner’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel,” and that overruling the decision “can only diminish the public’s confidence in the reliability and fairness of our system of justice.”

Miranda rights: “The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he or she has the right to remain silent, and that anything the person says may be used against that person in court; the person must be clearly informed that he or she has the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning, and that, if he or she is indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to represent him or her”

Sixth Amendment: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

Here’s a nice piece by Howard Zinn reminding us that Obama, as good as he is, is still a politician. All politicians lie and cater to special interest groups. It’s just a fact of life in the US.

We are citizens, and Obama is a politician. You might not like that word. But the fact is he’s a politician. He’s other things, too-he’s a very sensitive and intelligent and thoughtful and promising person. But he’s a politician.

If you’re a citizen, you have to know the difference between them and you-the difference between what they have to do and what you have to do. And there are things they don’t have to do, if you make it clear to them they don’t have to do it.

From the beginning, I liked Obama. But the first time it suddenly struck me that he was a politician was early on, when Joe Lieberman was running for the Democratic nomination for his Senate seat in 2006.

Lieberman-who, as you know, was and is a war lover-was running for the Democratic nomination, and his opponent was a man named Ned Lamont, who was the peace candidate. And Obama went to Connecticut to support Lieberman against Lamont.

It took me aback. I say that to indicate that, yes, Obama was and is a politician. So we must not be swept away into an unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of what Obama does.

Our job is not to give him a blank check or simply be cheerleaders. It was good that we were cheerleaders while he was running for office, but it’s not good to be cheerleaders now. Because we want the country to go beyond where it has been in the past. We want to make a clean break from what it has been in the past.

I had a teacher at Columbia University named Richard Hofstadter, who wrote a book called The American Political Tradition, and in it, he examined presidents from the Founding Fathers down through Franklin Roosevelt. There were liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. And there were differences between them. But he found that the so-called liberals were not as liberal as people thought-and that the difference between the liberals and the conservatives, and between Republicans and Democrats, was not a polar difference. There was a common thread that ran through all American history, and all of the presidents-Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative-followed this thread.

The thread consisted of two elements: one, nationalism; and two, capitalism. And Obama is not yet free of that powerful double heritage.

We can see it in the policies that have been enunciated so far, even though he’s been in office only a short time.

Some people might say, “Well, what do you expect?”

And the answer is that we expect a lot.

People say, “What, are you a dreamer?”

And the answer is, yes, we’re dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don’t want war. We don’t want capitalism. We want a decent society.

We better hold on to that dream-because if we don’t, we’ll sink closer and closer to this reality that we have, and that we don’t want.

US jails China bankers for fraud

Two former Bank of China managers and their wives have been given lengthy jail sentences in the United States for stealing $485m (£320m)…

Prosecutors said the convictions showed foreign nationals could not “live off their ill-gotten gains in the US”.

Living off ill-gotten gains is reserved for US bankers. The hypocrisy continues.

Michael Savage replaced Phil Donohue during the buildup to the Iraq War. Good for the UK officials for recognizing a hate monger when they see one. Savage angrily rants against anything he dislikes and urges people to taunt  those with different views. The US banned Yusaf, formerly known as Cat Stevens for security reasons. Who’s more likely to foster hate?

 US ‘hate list’ DJ to sue Britain

A US radio talk show host says he will sue the British government for defamation after being placed on a list of people banned from entering the UK.

Conservative political commentator Michael Savage, real name Michael Alan Weiner, is one of 22 people barred for fostering extremism or hate.

He has described the Islamic holy book the Koran as “a book of hate” and questioned cases of autism.

Mr Weiner said he opposed violence and objected to being linked to murderers.

He told his radio audience that he was intending to sue British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who he described as the “lunatic … Home Secretary of England”.

“To link me up with skinheads who are killing people in Russia, to put me in league with Hamas murderers who kill people on buses is defamation,” he said.

The best reporters are being kicked aside in this business leaving us with gossip mongers and reporters who don’t know the basics, don’t know how to pursue facts and do not know how to report the news.

Here’s a nice short video of the paper’s last days.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/

Two recent news stories illustrate how little compassion we have for the men and women we send to war and our elderly.

As Soldiers stream home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Between 2003 and 2007 - as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures - Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.

Tax-exempt and legally separate from the military, AER projects a facade of independence but really operates under close Army control. The massive nonprofit - funded predominantly by troops - allows superiors to squeeze Soldiers for contributions; forces struggling Soldiers to repay loans - sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and too often violates its own rules by rewarding donors, such as giving free passes from physical training, the AP found.

And yesterday a bankruptcy judge allowed Delphi Corp. (formerly part of General Motors) to stop paying health insurance for its retired salaried employees

More than 1,600 retirees sent letters to the judge in the days leading up to the hearing begging him to deny Delphi’s motion.

Delphi salaried retirees hired before 1993 and their survivors currently receive health insurance benefits until the age of 65 when they become eligible for Medicare. Under the changes Delphi has requested, those retirees will be responsible for paying the full cost of their health insurance, which could amount to more than $1,000 per month for a retiree and spouse.

The mystery of Ireland’s worst driver

 Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country’s most reckless driver have emerged, the Irish Times reports. He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

But then his cover was blown.

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police’s rank and file had been looking for - a Mr Prawo Jazdy - wasn’t exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award.

In fact he wasn’t even human.

” Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence,” read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda’s traffic division.

“Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.

“It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.”

A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure won the top prize in the World Press Photo competition

Jury members said the strength of the photo by Anthony Suau for Time magazine was in its opposites - it looks like a classic war photograph, but is simply the eviction of people from a house.

Picture: REUTERS

The winner in the General News Singles category, by Brazilian photographer Luiz Vasconcelos, was another eviction scene showing a woman holding her naked child while being pushed away from her home by a line of riot police

Picture: REUTERS

Carlos Cazalis, a photographer based in Mexico, has won the first prize of the Contemporary Issues Stories category with this photo of a homeless person in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Picture: REUTERS

Walter Astrada won first prize in the Spot News Singles category for his picture of a Kenyan boy screaming as he sees a policeman with a baton approaching the door of his home in the Kibera slum of Nairobi

Picture: AFP/GETTY

Carlos F Gutierrez has won the first prize of the Nature Singles category with this photo of Chaiten volcano eruption, Chile

Picture: REUTERS

More here (hit the next arrow, top right to view more images).

Nice NY Times article on how we can teach children to sift through information on the Internet and to decipher fact from fiction. Kudos to the librarians who are helping to educate, enlighten and use the latest tools to teach children how to read between the lines.

In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update

It was the “aha!” moment that Stephanie Rosalia was hoping for.

A group of fifth graders huddled around laptop computers in the school library overseen by Ms. Rosalia and scanned allaboutexplorers.com, a Web site that, unbeknownst to the children, was intentionally peppered with false facts.

Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.

Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus.

“It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!” Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “That’s wrong.”

It was an essential discovery in a lesson about the reliability — or lack thereof — of information on the Internet, one of many Ms. Rosalia teaches in her role as a new kind of school librarian.

Ms. Rosalia, 54, is part of a growing cadre of 21st-century multimedia specialists who help guide students through the digital ocean of information that confronts them on a daily basis. These new librarians believe that literacy includes, but also exceeds, books.

“The days of just reshelving a book are over,” said Ms. Rosalia… “Now it is the information age, and that technology has brought out a whole new generation of practices.”

Some of these new librarians teach children how to develop PowerPoint presentations or create online videos. Others get students to use social networking sites to debate topics from history or comment on classmates’ creative writing. Yet as school librarians increasingly teach students crucial skills needed not only in school, but also on the job and in daily life, they are often the first casualties of school budget crunches.