On this happy occasion of our graduation from the Landscape Institute, I could talk about how I fortuitously discovered the field of landscape design and its sister field, landscape history. Or, I could talk about the immense pleasure I have experienced struggling to master the contents of every class I have ever taken here. Or, I could dispense unwanted projections or advice on the future of the landscape profession. But I would rather relate my odyssey of discovery into the field of landscape design and what it has meant to me personally. This time around--since I am now over sixty and had previously earned a Masters degree in Reformation history--school has been an awakening--an arousal of my most creative and best talents; a discovery of creative talents that I either never knew existed or did not believe I possessed. My achievements and the approval of practitioners in this field--professionals, teachers, clients, and students--have allowed a new found confidence to take root in me.

With every paper I write, with every garden I design, with every plot and pot of earth I run through my fingers, I have looked for Beauty and Truth--the Janus figure that satisfies both the heart and mind. Why a garden--such a fragile and ephemeral piece of nature--should have this effect, I surely do not know. Perhaps it has something to do with trees. Andrew Jackson Downing once said that "trees are like the returns of gratitude, [they] raise a most delightful train of sensations in the mind; so innocent and rational, that they justly rank with the most exquisite of human enjoyments." And though we may never fully understand why, our sentient being is made better by this brush with nature.

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There has been much discussion regarding the slow expansion of Danny Boyle's dynamite drama 127 Hours. Much of it has revolved around a certain moment that occurs towards the end of the picture. Sure, the film is based on a somewhat publicized true story, so this might not count as a spoiler, but I'll try to be vague for those not in the know. Anyway, in the same way that The Cove had to deal with people who were generally interested in its content (an expose on the practice of dolphin slaughter in Japanese waters) but didn't particularly want to sit through images of dolphins being graphically killed onscreen, 127 Hours has a major handicap in regards to both its mainstream box office success and its Oscar hopes. In a just world, the film will end up scoring at least a Best Actor nomination (if not win) for James Franco, who dominates the film in no less a potent manner than Natalie Portman owns every moment of Black Swan (review for that one coming after the holiday). But there is a genuine concern that enough people will pass on the terrifically engaging and intense character study because they know what happens and are not sure they can handle it. So for those on the fence, here's the scoop:

It is a mesh bag, a reddish woven net with five mandarins inside. They've been carried here -- from Europe -- by a reader who discovered where I live thanks to the tracks left in the blog. After I brought him a glass of water, he took the citrus fruits out of his backpack -- a little embarrassed -- as if he'd come to give me something too common on this island, even more common than the invasive marabou weed, or intolerance. It's inexplicable, then, why I grabbed the bag and buried my nose in every fruit. Within a few seconds I was shouting for my family to let them know about the orange globes I was already beginning to peel. Sinking my nails into their skin and smelling my fingers, I have a celebration of orange zest on each hand.

A trail of peels covers the table and even the dog is enthusiastic about the scent that is wafting through the whole house. The mandarins have arrived! The almost forgotten scent, the extravagant texture, have returned. My niece celebrates their appearance and I have to explain that once these fruits did not arrive by boat or plane. I avoid confusing her -- she's only eight -- with the history of the National Citrus Plan, and the large expanses on the Isle of Youth where oranges and grapefruits were harvested by students from other countries. Nor do I mention the triumphalist statistics thrown out from the dais, or the tropical island juices that started out with pulp extracted from our own crops and now are made with imported syrup. But I do tell her that when November and December rolled around, all the children in my elementary school smelled like oranges.

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"Jumping off the gb bridge, sorry." Those were the last heartbreaking words Tyler Clementi shared with the world on Facebook before jumping off the George Washington Bridge and killing himself. Tyler was the Rutgers University student who took his life after learning that his roommate had posted a video online of Tyler kissing another man. He was so stricken with horror at the prospect of the world coming to learn that he was gay that Tyler decided it was better to leap from a bridge than deal with the shame. Tyler may have driven himself to that bridge, but it is our failure as a society to combat homophobia that wound up taking that poor boy's life.

The only thing more shocking than Tyler's senseless suicide is the fact that people are shocked it happened. All over the news, images of bewildered parents and students questioning this tragedy dominated the narrative, which is puzzling. We live in a nation defended by first-rate gay soldiers, who are treated as second-rate citizens. We live in a nation married to the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that deprives gay Americans of the freedom to marry. We live in a nation with an electorate that condones this kind of discrimination by supporting candidates who hold these discriminatory values. Despite America's exceptionalism, America remains exceptionally bigoted. The subtext of these policies is that there is something wrong with Americans who are born gay. If we are serious about preventing tragedies like that of Tyler Clementi's, we need to combat the source of this homophobic message. One easy way to do so is by supporting candidates for public office who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans and who do not make distinctions among our people based on their sexual orientation.

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Dennis Lehane so rules the neighborhood of Noir ("Nwaaah," as we say in Boston) that he gets street credit for work he didn't write, like "The Departed" and "The Town." But does the author of "Mystic River," "Gone Baby Gone" and the new Moonlight Mile get credit enough for a body of artistic work now far beyond private-eye or "genre" of any kind -- way beyond his gift for Boston-accented dialog?

Our conversation is about the murkier depths of his Gothic novel and movie "Shutter Island," with Leonardo diCaprio as a U.S. Marshall apparently trapped in a Boston Harbor lock-up for the criminally insane in the 1950s. I think it's Lehane's version of the War on Terror. He says it's more nearly his answer to the Patriot Act, his reliving of the Cold War and the repressions it licensed in America. "All past is prologue," he remarks. "Noir is without a doubt the ultimate genre of 'you cannot outrun the past'... That's 'Mystic River': you cannot outrun your nature. You cannot escape the past." "Shutter Island" in that sense turns out to be Dennis Lehane's recapitulation of McCarthyism (an American Stalinism): those good old days when the CIA experimented with LSD and other psychotropic drugs on Federal prisoners and other unsuspecting guinea pigs. It was a time, he's saying, that foreshadowed the suspension of habeas corpus and the tortures of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in the George Bush years.

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Weekly Audit: Millions of Americans Could Lose Unemployment Benefits

Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren't stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We'll return to our normal schedule next week.

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

According to official statistics, nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed. Between 2 and 4 million of them are expected to exhaust their state unemployment insurance benefits between now and May. Historically, during times of high unemployment, Congress provides extra cash to extend the benefits. Congress has never failed to do so when unemployment is above 7.2%. Today's unemployment rate is above 9% and the lame duck session of Congress has so far failed to extend the benefits.

Congress has until November 30 to renew two federal programs to extend unemployment benefits, as David Moberg reports for Working In These Times. Last week, a bill to extend benefits for an additional three months failed to garner the two-thirds majority it needed to pass in the House. The House will probably take up the issue again this session, possibly for a one-year extension, but as Moberg notes, it's unclear how the bill will fare in the Senate. The implications are dire, as Moberg notes:

The result? Not just huge personal and familial hardships that scars the lives of young and old both economically and psychologically for years to come. But failure to renew extended benefits would also slow the recovery, raise unemployment, and deepen the fiscal crises of state and federal governments.

But wait! There's more:

• The Paycheck Fairness Act died in the Senate last week, as Denise DiStephan reports in The Nation. The bill would have updated the 1963 Equal Pay Act to close loopholes and protect employees against employer retaliation for discussing wages. All Republican senators and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson voted not to bring the bill to the floor, killing the legislation for this session of Congress. The House already passed its version of the bill in 2009 and President Barack Obama had pledged to sign it.

• Economist Dean Baker talks with Laura Flanders of GritTV about quantitative easing (a.k.a. the Fed printing more money) and the draft proposal from the co-chairs of the deficit commission. Baker argues that we're facing an unemployment crisis, not a deficit crisis.

• Charles Ferguson's documentary "Inside Job" is a must-see, according to Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive. An examination of how Wall Street devastated the U.S. economy, the film details the reckless speculation in housing derivatives, enabled by crooked credit rating schemes, that brought the entire financial system to the brink of collapse. The film is narrated by Brad Pitt and features appearances by former Governor and anti-Wall Street corruption crusader Eliot Spitzer, financier George Soros, and Prof. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the collapse of the housing bubble.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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Two years into the Obama administration, the United States has made important progress in tightening sanctions against the Iranian regime, but more must be done to alter Iran's nuclear ambitions. Despite the new sanctions, Iran has continued to gain influence in Iraq and Afghanistan and stir unrest in Lebanon, strengthening its armed forces all while advancing its uranium enrichment efforts. Today, it is unlikely that Iran views the United States, preoccupied with withdrawing from the region and addressing its languishing economy, as a genuine threat to its nuclear aspirations. Moving forward, the United States must establish a successful Iran policy that underlines the importance of international engagement efforts while at the same time outlines clear consequences for Iran's continued defiance.

Although the new set of sanctions is hurting the Iranian economy, it is far from crippling, as Tehran continues to weather much of the pressure. Despite new sanctions targeting the energy sector-including harsh financial control on new investments-Iran is still able to sell considerable amounts of oil to nations in demand, most notably to China, Turkey and India. Even as sanctions force Iran to make unpopular cuts in oil and other subsidies, which could potentially stir unrest, it has shown its ruthlessness in quelling domestic dissension. The violent measures taken by the Iranian Basij during the domestic upheaval surrounding the disputed Presidential elections in May of 2009 illustrated that the Iranian government will not easily change course and will do whatever it takes to keep its grip on power. Moreover, although the Iranian clergy is fully aware of the benefits it may derive by ending its international isolation, it is too ideologically committed and consumed by internal rivalries to seek a way out to rejoin the community of nations. For that reason -however severe-the sanctions are not likely to force Iran's hand, unless they are supplanted by other measures the U.S. must be prepared to take.

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Like most brides-to-be, I have a checklist: schedule a tasting with the caterer, review the florist's estimate, carefully word the invitations, find out whether New York is a no-fault state... Now, hang on -- don't panic on my behalf. Even if you're so inclined, don't congratulate me on my prudence. I don't even live in New York State. But as my fiancé and I have been planning our wedding, I've been writing a novel about a crumbling marriage. I couldn't and probably wouldn't have planned it this way, and yet I find I'm thankful for the odd perspective.

I was unprepared for the rushing wave of attention that accompanies an engagement, and still less prepared for the onslaught of wedding-related solicitation that follows. In addition to the congratulations from friends and family, there have been emails from vendors I've never contacted and postcards from total strangers (who creepily somehow obtained my home address) offering their photographic and musical services on our "big day." I am invited to trunk shows and registry events and entreated to subscribe to magazines all centered on the celebration of me in all my bridal glory. Setting aside for a moment that only a tiny fraction of all this white tulle madness even acknowledges the participation of my groom in this event, it's as if an entire industry were raising the aisle up to meet us. I'm not sure I've ever done anything that has universally pleased so many people. And while my innate suspicion of popular opinion offers some protection against frenzied nuptial giddiness, I begin to understand how one could see this single day, this brief ceremony followed by a meal, as an accomplishment, a moment of arrival, rather than as a lovely milestone marking the beginning of a marriage.

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This is the first Thanksgiving that we are eating a turkey that someone else raised. That is one of the first things I will be thankful for. The next thing will be the great friends and family that I get to share this holiday with. Why didn't we raise a turkey? Simple, we just kept waiting for it to stop raining here in Maine, but it never really did. What you have heard about turkeys being less than sensible is all true. They will stay out in their pen in driving cold rain when they could be in a nicely heated house with a foot of pine shavings. Being out in the rain wouldn't be most poultry's first choice, but you can't stop a turkey from self-destruction. One year we decided to experiment with Heritage turkeys like Bourbons and Narragansetts, old varieties. They have a richer, denser meat because they take so long to grow and we were hoping that they would be smart enough to know when to "get in, out of the rain." We ordered our heritage turkeys from Murray McMurray, the premier poultry breeder and 18 of the cutest baby turkeys arrived by mail. The minimum is 18 because that is how many it takes to generate enough warmth for them to arrive safely by mail.

The Postmistress of our small town called at 5:30 in the morning to tell us our chirping box had arrived, which she immediately placed next to the furnace. It is a ritual to take the dogs. They get so excited! It's their job to babysit the birds for the next few weeks. The heat lights are ready, all the water containers and food bowls are filled. We are ready for the turkeys and it is only June! Who said Thanksgiving is an easy holiday? We nurture, feed and chase these 18 turkeys every day for 6 months. They eat more and more grain, picking up speed with each passing month, emptying 50 pound grain bags with more frequency. Every week, I lift a turkey, my sister lifts a turkey and we look at each other. "How much do you think that one weighs?" We'd ask about the biggest one, of course. "Oh, I don't know, maybe 16 or 17 pounds." I shake my head. "I don't think so, but we still have a couple of weeks." Like they were going to balloon overnight!

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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

It won't be long before the world has to confront its diminishing supply of clean water.

"We've had the same amount of water on our planet since the beginning of time, " Susan Leal, co-author of Running Out of Water, told GritTV's Laura Flanders. "We are on a collision course of a very finite supply and 7.6 billion people."

What's worse, private industries--and energy companies in particular--are using waterways as dumping grounds for hazardous substances. With the coal industry, it's an old story; with the natural gas industry, it's a practice that can be nipped in the bud.

In many cases, dumping pollutants into water is a government-sanctioned activity, although there are limits to how much contamination can be approved. But companies often overshoot their pollution allowances, and for some businesses, like a nuclear energy plant, even a little bit of contamination can be a problem.

Business as usual

Here's one troubling scenario. At Grist, Sue Sturgis reports that "a river downstream of a privately-owned nuclear fuel processing plant in East Tennessee is contaminated with enriched uranium." The concentrations are low, and the water affected is still potable. The issue, however, is that the plant was not supposed to be discharging any of this sort of uranium at all. One researcher explained that the study had "only scratched the surface of what's out there and found widely dispersed enriched uranium in the environment." In other words, the contamination could be more widespread than is now known.

Nuclear energy facilities must take particular care to keep the waste products of their work separate from the environment around them. But in some industries, like coal, polluting water supplies is routine practice.

The dirtiest energy

In West Virginia, more than 700 people are suing infamous coal company Massey Energy for defiling their tap water, Charles Corra reports at Change.org. In Mingo County, tap water comes out as "a smooth flow of black and orange liquid." Country residents are arguing that the contamination is a result of water from coal slurries, a byproduct of mining that contains arsenic and other contaminants, leaking into the water table. Residents believe the slurries also cause health problems like learning disabilities and hormone imbalances, as Corra reports.

Newfangled notions

Even so-called "clean coal," which would inject less carbon into the atmosphere, is worrisome when it comes to water. The carbon siphoned from clean coal doesn't disappear; it's sequestered under ground. For a new clean coal project in Linden, NJ, Change.org's Austin Billings reports, that chamber would be 70 miles out to sea. As Billings writes:

The plant would be the first of its kind in the world, so it should come as no surprise that the proposal is a major cause for concern among New Jersey environmentalists, fishermen, and lawmakers. According to Dr. Heather Saffert of Clean Ocean America, "We don't really have a good understanding of how the CO2 is going to react with other minerals... The PurGen project is based on one company's models. What if they're wrong?"

In this case, it wouldn't only be human communities at risk ("Polluted Jersey Shore," anyone?), but the ocean's ecosystem.

Frack no!

Coal communities in West Virginia have been dealing with water pollution for decades. But a another source of energy extraction--hydrofracking for natural gas--has only just begun to threaten water supplies. Care2's Jennifer Mueller points to a recent "60 Minutes" segment that explores the attendant issues: it's a must-watch for anyone unfamiliar with what's at stake.

Fortunately, some of the communities at risk have been working to head off the damage before it hits. In Pittsburgh this week, leaders banned hydrofracking within the city, according to Mari Margil and Ben Price in Yes! Magazine. They write:

As Councilman [Doug] Shields stated after the vote, "This ordinance recognizes and secures expanded civil rights for the people of Pittsburgh, and it prohibits activities which would violate those rights. It protects the authority of the people of Pittsburgh to pass this ordinance by undoing corporate privileges that place the rights of the people of Pittsburgh at the mercy of gas corporations."

Environmentalists in other municipalities, in state government, and in Congress would do well to follow Pittsburgh's lead.

Mutant fish

Of course, you can't believe every tale of water contamination you hear. At RhRealityCheck, Kimberly Inez McGuire takes on the persistent myth that estrogen from birth control is making its way in large concentrations into the water supply and leading to mutations in fish.

This simply isn't true. As McGuire explains, "The estrogen found in birth control pills, patches, and rings (known as EE2) is only one of thousands of synthetic estrogens that may be found in our water, and the contribution of EE2 to the total presence of estrogen in water is relatively small." Where does the rest of the estrogen come from? Factory farms, industrial chemicals like BPA, and synthetic estrogen used in crop fertilizer. So, yes, the water is contaminated, but, no, your birth control is not to blame.

Greening the US

Stories like these, of environmental pollution by corporations, seem to come up again and again. They're barely news anymore and so easy to ignore. But it's more important than ever for environmentalists to fight back against these challenges and push for a green economy that minimizes pollution. The American Prospect's Monica Potts recently sat down with The Media Consortium to explain the roadblocks to a green economy. If green-minded people want to stop hearing tales like the ones above, these are the obstacles they'll need to overcome. Watch the video:

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger

While Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, was far from the first controversial immigration measure of its kind, it stands out as a hallmark of increasingly visible nativist sentiment. Numerous legal challenges and a federal injunction notwithstanding, the measure continues to inspire copycat legislation and attract millions in donations. Even as Arizona's legislature attempts to outdo itself by pushing increasingly outrageous bills, as Care2 reports, SB 1070 remains center stage.

Perhaps one reason that the measure has gained such traction across the country is that its crafters have been unequivocal about both their intent and the law's objective: Attrition through enforcement.

"That's a fancy way of saying it's public policy aimed at making the lives of immigrants so miserable that they leave on their own accord," explained community organizer Marisa Franco on Making Contact, a National Radio Project program. Andrea Christina Mercado, organizing director of Mujeres Unidas Activas and another guest on this week's show, added that the "attrition through enforcement" strategy exemplified by SB 1070 centers on three pernicious tactics:

"...One is to close off all possibility for economic survival, the second part is to deny access to justice for migrants, making it harder and harder to place a wage claim or a police report, and the third is to normalize mistreatment through rituals of humiliation and hateful language."

SB 1070: coming to a state near you!

While reprehensible to immigrant rights advocates, the "attrition through enforcement" approach to the immigration "problem" is refreshing to immigration hawks. The strategy's unabashed method of self-evicting undocumented migrants through calculated marginalization is the kind of tough, no-nonsense policy that hardliners appreciate. Consequently, similar measures have spread like wildfire across states and municipalities. That such laws directly defy federal immigration policy goals seems only to increase their popularity among immigration hardliners.

Case in point: The incoming wave of newly elected, anti-immigrant governors pushing for SB 1070 copycat laws. As Braden Goyette reports at Campus Progress, governors-elect in Georgia, Florida, Nebraska, Mississippi, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Oklahoma hope to follow in Arizona's footsteps. Nebraska's Dave Heineman (R) explicitly campaigned on that hope, and Georgia's Nathan Deal (R) plans to push for a copycat law as soon as January 2011.

State legislators are moving quickly on similar laws as well. Most recently, Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R) filed a spate of anti-immigration legislation in advance of the 2011 legislative session. According to Change.org's Prerna Lal, Riddle's bills would collectively limit immigrants' access to public education, intensify the penalties for being undocumented in the state, and even prevent undocumented persons from driving there. In total, the proposed measures embody the attrition-through-enforcement philosophy by attempting to make it impossible for undocumented immigrants to live in the state with any measure of quality of life.

Setting the stage for anti-immigrant laws

The attrition-through-enforcement strategy is contagious. But, as ColorLines' Seth Freed Wessler points out, infection follows a predictable pattern. Citing a recent Migration Policy Institute study, Wessler explains that anti-immigrant laws tend to pop up in largely homogeneous white communities that experience an increase in the population of immigrants. The actual size of the immigrant population doesn't seem to matter, and the study found that crime rates are equally irrelevant (and have no correlation to rates of immigration). The only thing that does matter is growth, however small.

It's important to note that in largely homogeneous communities, which generally tend to be segregated along ethnic lines anyway, small fluctuations in minority populations aren't glaringly evident to most residents. Growth among immigrant populations doesn't immediately or spontaneously spark nativist sentiment. In most cases, that growth is noted by incendiary elites, who then repackage and sell it back to the larger community as an "immigration problem." In Wessler's words:

Crime is not actually higher because of immigration but individual incidents of crime, or the presence of day laborers on street corners, are used as animating tools by restrictionist groups. Support for the resolutions are drummed up by local politicians and demagogues, as well as national groups that often play a role in drafting the bills, who concoct a narrative about dangerous criminal immigrants.

As I've written before, anti-immigrant sentiment is driven by the fear that, as immigrant communities grow larger and more economically competitive, their increasing political power will threaten the status quo. And so politicos feed the immigrant-as-criminal narrative to their communities, bit by bit, eventually passing pernicious laws intended to self-evict the threat.

Thus far, 107 communities have passed anti-immigrant laws in the last 10 years, the bulk of them since 2006, when heightened discourse on immigration reform motivated anti-immigrant groups to redouble their efforts. A few years later, Arizona state senator Russell Pearce (R) teamed up with Kris Kobach--a lawyer for FAIR, the most powerful anti-immigrant group in the nation--to draft SB 1070 which has now unleashed a new wave of oppressive immigration laws.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse<. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

As some Americans obsess over whether to brine or deep-fry their Thanksgiving turkeys, others are going hungry. Seth Freed Wessler reports for ColorLines that 50 million Americans went hungry in 2009, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Astonishingly, more than 36% of female-headed households suffered from food insecurity last year, in spite of a massive expansion of federal food stamp benefits as part of the economic stimulus. Forty-two million families received food stamps last year, 10 million more than the year before. Congress gutted the food stamp program this summer. If something isn't done, families of four will lose $59 a month in food stamp benefits at the end of 2014. At the time of the cuts, House Democrats promised to restore food stamp benefits during the lame duck session of Congress, but Freed notes there's been little sign recently that they plan to follow through on the promise.

Making Crisis Pregnancy Centers come clean

The New York City Council is preparing to vote on the legislation to force so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs) to disclose that they are not health care facilities and that they do not provide birth control or abortions. CPCs are anti-choice ministries that deliberately mimic abortion clinics in order to trick women who might be seeking abortions. It's all a ruse to bombard these women with false information about abortion under the guise of health care. As we discussed last week in the Pulse, CPCs also serve as incubators for more extreme forms of anti-choice activism, from clinic obstruction to violence.

In RH Reality Check, Dr. Lynette Leighton explains why she supports New York City's proposed bill to require so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" to disclose that they aren't real clinics staffed by health care providers:

As a family physician, I provide comprehensive health care for all of my patients, including safe abortions for women who decide to end a pregnancy. I've cared for many women who came to me in crisis when they learned they were pregnant. The last thing my patients need is to be misled by anti-abortion organizations masquerading as health clinics. I'm strongly in favor of the New York City bill requiring crisis pregnancy centers to disclose that they do not provide abortions or contraception, or offer referrals for these services.

New York CPCs are claiming that the requirement to disclose violates their freedom of speech, Robin Marty notes in RH Reality Check. In other words, they are claiming a First Amendment right to bait and switch. The executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is scheduled to testify before the City Council that the free speech claim is baseless.

See you in court!

In other reproductive rights news, the Center for Reproductive Rights took the FDA to court on Tuesday over access to the morning after pill. The FDA has been ignoring a court order to make emergency contraception available over the counter to women of all ages, and the Center is going to court to spur the agency to comply, Vanessa Valenti reports for Feministing.

Look at this smokin' hipster

Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds is courting hipsters with a new "Williamsburg" cigarette, Brie Cadman reports for Change.org. "[Smoking Camels is] about last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building... It's where a tree grows," according to the online ad copy. Mmm, kissing smokers.

It's all part of an online marketing campaign in which users are invited to guess where brand mascot Joe Camel will show up next week. Interestingly, the contest's name is "Break Free Adventure," a twist on the Camel brand's "Break Free" tagline. Odd that they'd pick a slogan usually associated with quitting smoking, rather than feeding the addiction. Those hipsters sure love irony.

Blowing the whistle on health insurers

On Democracy Now!, health insurance executive turned whistleblower Wendell Potter predicts that the Republicans will back off their grandiose campaign promises to repeal health care reform and instead try to dismantle the bill's provisions that protect consumers. Potter notes that health insurers are major Republican donors, and that parts of the law are very good for insurers, notably the mandate forcing everyone to buy health insurance.

Apparently, some true believers haven't gotten the memo. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes that some Republican members of Congress are still gunning to shut down the government over health care reform and other spending.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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A few days ago I posted some thoughts on a talk Joseph Stiglitz gave to AOL Daily Finance last month on the need to reshape the law to toss the folks behind the financial crisis in jail. At the time I mentioned in passing that Stiglitz was reaching for a draconian structural solution -- recasting the laws -- but that he had relatively little to say about reforming regulation. Why was that? It's not that Stiglitz is not familiar with financial regulation at a fairly sophisticated level. But it is as if he has lost faith not only in the regulatory apparatus that currently exists, but also in the entire notion of the administrative state that began to appear in the U.S. early in the 20th century as a counterbalance to enormous corporate interests. He seemed to want to replace regulation with hard and fast legal remedies, which in turn were based on the norms of the community -- that is, on politics.

Stiglitz isn't alone. Much of the discussion since the collapse of Lehman Brothers has swirled around dramatic structural remedies. Not long after Lehman Brothers collapsed, The Wall Street Journal's Dennis Berman suggested shuttering all the big banks and then creating new banks, without the debilitating burden of bad loans. More realistically, there have been proposals to break up the big banks, turn them into utility banks, or to re-impose Glass-Steagall. But behind many of these ideas is a set of assumptions about what exactly happened that is deeply political. In their book "13 Bankers," MIT's Simon Johnson and his blogging partner at the Baseline Scenario James Kwak make two related arguments about size and power. As banks consolidated and grew larger, they assumed greater political power, shaping the laws and regulations to their own greedy ends -- a theme they share with Stiglitz -- and "capturing" regulators in the process. In their view, a takeover of the government took place; an oligarchy of crony capitalists arose not unlike the tight links between ruling families and financial institutions in the emerging markets. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone provided his own gloss on this by placing Goldman, Sachs & Co. not only at the conspiratorial center of this bubble, but of bubbles going back to the Great Depression. Government Sachs became a popular meme.

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1984. Probably during the first months of the year. Jean-Luc Godard was preparing to shoot Je vous Salue Marie (Hail Mary), in which he had offered me the role of Joseph. I met him late one afternoon in what was once the downstairs bar of the Hôtel du Pont Royal where I was in the habit of making dates I wanted to remain outside the Grasset [publishing house] panoptic, held 24 hours a day (or nearly that) at the Twickenham, a bar that no longer exists, once at the corner of the rue des Saints-Pères and the rue de Grenelle. Contrary to what I have read just about everywhere, the meeting went well. Maybe there were even two, very close together, I don't know any more. But the exchange was courteous, interesting, with a real debate on this moment of theological, hence philosophical history, where the prevailing monotheism, that is to say, Judaism, was pregnant with and about to give birth to its heresy, Christianity. I talked a lot. So did he. Contrary to my expectations, I found him at once witty, friendly, and surprisingly knowledgeable concerning these disputes, hesitations of mind and soul, and squabbles of which the life of Christ has been the expression and the theatre. Apart from that, I remember a Joseph as a taxi driver. A discussion concerning the Immaculate Conception in which I told him that it concerned not Mary, but the mother of Mary. Of a strange story of a belly (Mary's, I suppose) that should swell and deflate alternately during the film, in a systolic-diastolic movement. I remember as well a Godard obsessed with Courbet's l'Origine du monde [The Origin of the World], which he said he detested, warning me that he would keep it at great distance from his fable on maternity. I recall a conversation about painting in general during which he explained that, more than literature, it is the art form that is the "cousin" of cinema. And at the end, he left me with, not a script, but notes for a script that would allow me to "form an idea", he said.

I thought it over for a few weeks. At once tempted by the adventure and facing other urgent demands related to my own agenda and my books, I weighed the pros and cons, consulted my habitual "advisors" (Jean-Paul Enthoven, Gilles Hertzog, Françoise Verny) and ended up declining the offer in the letter below. The film was made, with Thierry Rode in the role destined for me. It was, in my eyes, one of the most accomplished of Godard's films during this period. I am only citing this episode and reproducing this first letter for the record, and because it entails, in short, the actual "first scene" of a relationship that would include many others. Already a Jewish scene. The Jewish fact, immediately, in all its metaphysical enormity. A prolog. Here it is.

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So much for making nice Mr. President, the gloves are off as the Republican leadership comes out swinging. These folks don't want to work with you, or your minions or any of us. Just tune into FOX News at any random moment, and the disdain is visceral. And to be blunt, what's to keep them from starting impeachment proceedings as -- a tactic to erode your precious time and focus? Not much, if you listen closely to the Senate Republican leadership, the soon to be Speaker of the House, and all the other hooligans over the last few days, and even on the Sunday morning talk shows. Senator Mitch McConnell's words sure don't sound like a lullaby to me. Do not be fooled, it may be more than making sure that Obama is a one-term President. These are fighting words: "The only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won't veto..."

And if that's not bad enough, there's dissent and discontent (as usual) among our fellow Democrats. The so-called Blue Dog Democrats are acting out by attempting to distance themselves from the prevailing incumbent-rage by attacking now Speaker Pelosi. Have they no shame? This is self-serving hypocrisy at its worst. Not now kids. Go back to your corner and sing "Kumbaya" to keep from shooting off your big mouths at this fragile time. Enough of your ranks have been lost in this recent election. Stop with the posturing, and the "Anti-Pelosi Caucus." These types of shenanigans only fuel the fires, and distract us from our goals. Realize that we are under an unprecedented assault from the rabid Republican leadership. They will attempt to sink the Obama ship at any cost.

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It sometimes amazes me as to how some artists are bigger than others. Is it because of the people they are working with? Because a certain higher ranked artist may plug a rising one? Their label could be spending millions in a massive marketing campaign? It baffles me. I ask this because after what myself and a sold out Terminal 5 witnessed last night, makes those questions come through more and more. Swedish pop princess Robyn returned to New York City and took the town by storm. Robyn is on the road celebrating the release of her epic Body Talk trilogy (Parts 1 & 2 have been released and Part 3 is set to arrive later this month). In what could be one of the greatest performances I have ever seen by a solo artist, Robyn took the stage like an unleashed wild animal and was ready to entertain. Backed by two drummers and two keyboardists, she packs more punch and energy than a case of Red Bull. Opening with "Fembot," and never seeming to let up one bit, she turned the venue upside down and created the best dance party New York has seen since LCD Soundsystem did a string of gigs earlier this year.

Robyn rose to popularity in the mid 90's with the radio hit "Show Me Love," and after disputes with her label and playing radio-friendly, safe pop music, she had enough and cut ties with Jive records and formed her own label, Konichiwa records to create her own vision. She has become an electronic staple through the years but the Body Talk series has transformed and reinvented the once radio-friendly star into a worldwide sensation. The series features various styles of dance music from dancehall to dubstep to new wave and everything in between. The records are inspired by heartbreak and hip-hop showcase a talent that the music world needs right now. Her live shows are just a testament to that notion, that music needs her; especially pop music -- needs her badly. She should be bigger than what she is, Terminal 5 is a good size venue, but it is too small for her.

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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

A year ago, it seemed possible--likely, even--that President Barack Obama would sweep into the international negotiations on climate change at Copenhagen and make serious progress on the tangle of issues at stake. The reality was quite different. This year, the expectations for the United Nations Climate Conference in Cancun are less wild.

The conference will be held from Nov 29 to Dec 10 and the same issues from 2009 are up for debate. Countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany are still contributing an outsize share of carbon to the atmosphere. Countries like India and China are still rapidly increasing their own carbon output. And countries like Bangladesh, Tuvalu, and Bolivia are still bearing an unfair share of the environmental impacts brought on by climate change.

A very different set of expectations are building in the climate movement this year. If last year was about moving forward as fast as possible, this year, climate activists seem resigned to the idea that politicians just aren't getting it. Change, when it comes, will have to be be built on a popular movement, not a political negotiation.

Climate change from the bottom up

Last year, climate activists put their faith in international leaders to make progress. This year, they believe that it's up to them, as outside actors, to marshal a grassroots movement and pressure their leaders towards decreased carbon emissions.

"There's a recognition that the insider strategy to push from inside the Beltway to impact what will happen in DC, or what will happen in Cancun has really not succeeded," Rose Braz, climate campaign director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Making Contact's Andrew Stelzer. "What we're doing in conjunction with a number of groups across the country and across the world is really build the type of movement that will change what happens in Cancun, what changes what happens in DC from the bottom up." (This entire episode of Making Contact is dedicated to new approaches to climate change, at Cancun and beyond, and is worth a listen.)

Fighting the indolence of capitalists

Here's one example of this new strategy. As Zachary Shahan writes at Change.org, La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement, is coordinating a march that will begin in San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Acapulco, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, then converge on Cancun. The march will include "thousands of farmers, indigenous people, rural villagers, urbanites, and more," Shahan reports.

After they arrive in Cancun, the organizers are planning an "Alternative Global Forum for Life and Environmental and Social Justice" for the final days of the negotiations, which they say will be a mass mobilisation of peasants, indigenous and social movements. The action extends far beyond Cancun, though. Actually, they are organizing thousands of Cancuns around the world on this day to denounce what they see as false climate solutions.

These actions echo the strategy that environmentalist and author Bill McKibben and other climate leaders are promoting to push for climate change policies in the U.S. All this talk about building momentum from the bottom up, from populations, means that anyone looking for change is now looking years into the future.

The U.S. is not leading the way

Of course, ultimately, politicians will need to agree on a couple of standards. In particular, how much carbon each country should be emitting and how fast each country should power down its current emission levels. The U.S. is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to agreement on these questions, especially due to the recent mid-term elections. As Claudia Salerno, Venezuela's lead climate change negotiator wrote at AlterNet:

Unlike what many suggest, China is not the problem. China, along with India and others, have made considerable commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are already working to realize them. Other developing countries have done the same, although we only generate a virtual drop in the bucket of global carbon emissions. The key player missing here is the U.S.

China, the U.S. and Clean Coal

The most interesting collaborations on clean energy, however, aren't happening around the negotiating table. This week, The Atlantic's James Fallows wrote a long piece about the work that the U.S. and China are doing together on clean coal technology, the magic cure-all to the world's energy ills.

In the piece, Fallows recognizes what environmentalists have long argued: coal is bad for the environment and for coal-mining communities. But, unlike clean energy advocates who want to phase coal out of the energy equation, Fallows argues that coal must play a part in the world's energy future. Therefore, we must find a way to burn it without releasing clouds of carbon into the atmosphere. That's where clean coal technology comes in. So far, however, researchers have had little luck minimizing coal's carbon output.

A few progressive writers weighed in on Fallows' piece: Grist's David Roberts thought Fallows was too hard on the anti-coal camp, while Campus Progress' Sara Rubin argued that the piece did a good job of grappling with the reality of clean energy economics. And Mother Jones' Kevin Drum had one very clear criticism--that the piece skated over the question of progress on carbon capture, the one real way to dramatically reduce carbon pollution from coal. He wrote:

All the collaboration sounds wonderful, and even a 20% or 30% improvement in coal technology would be welcome. But that said, sequestration is the holy grail and I still don't know if the Chinese are doing anything more on that front than the rest of us.

On every front, then, the view on climate change is now a long one.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger

For the past several months, the Obama administration has relentlessly professed its commitment to targeting only the most dangerous "criminal aliens." But a new report released this week by the Immigration Policy Center suggests that misguided Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) polices render the administration virtually powerless to fulfill its promise.

As Braden Goyette at Campus Progress reports, ICE's practice of outsourcing immigration enforcement to local police through the 287(g) and Secure Communities programs undermines the administration's stated priority of deporting "the worst of the worst." She writes:

By using these partnerships to increase its deportation figures, the federal government gives up control over front-line enforcement to local police, opening up the door to subjective judgment calls--essentially, all of the problems that plague everyday policing.

Law enforcement charged with enforcing immigration laws--particularly in areas where heavy enforcement is politically popular--routinely make discretionary arrests in direct defiance of the Obama administration's stated priorities. As a result, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants have been deported because of minor crimes, such as traffic offenses.

A bigger issue, though, is that ICE's enforcement programs are fundamentally out of line with the Obama administration's avowed commitment to targeting criminals. The Secure Communities program, which requires local law enforcement agencies to share fingerprints with ICE, is a key example of this disconnect. The program routinely nets even the victims of violent crime. Secure Communities is expanding rapidly, despite its deviance from the agency's stated objective of pursuing criminals.

ICE programs target domestic violence victims

Elise Foley at the Washington Independent reports that one issue arising with Secure Communities is the detention and deportation of undocumented victims of domestic violence, whose fingerprints have been entered into police records.

Foley notes that, in response to one such incident, ICE officials told the Washington Post that they would pursue action on all undocumented immigrants brought to their attention, in spite of agency directives:

ICE cannot and will not turn a blind eye to those who violate federal immigration law," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Brian Hale. "While ICE's enforcement efforts prioritize convicted criminal aliens, ICE maintains the discretion to take action on any alien it encounters.

Of course, ICE can exercise discretion by refusing to take action against victims of violent crime--particularly since doing so defies the administration's stated goals--but chooses not to. And, without laws in place that clearly limit the scope of ICE's immigration enforcement programs, the Obama administration's "priorities" amount to little more than empty rhetoric.

Family fights deportation of son with Down Syndrome

"Discretion" is a word that arises again and again in immigration discourse. A common criticism of the dysfunctional immigration system is that overcrowding and under-staffing discourages officials from exercising their discretion in favor of undocumented immigrants who might have legitimate grounds to remain in the country.

Some of these individuals include legal residents who are deported on a technicality and immigrant soldiers who deported after serving in the U.S. military.

One such individual, whose story is detailed by Change.org's Prerna Lal, is Hee Chun Kang, a Korean immigrant with Down Syndrome who awaits deportation on a technicality:

Hee Chun and Hyo Chun were 10 and 7 years of age, respectively, when their parents brought them to the United States in 1993. They overstayed their tourist visas, but due to a family petition filed on their behalf, the parents became legal residents last year. However, Hee Chun and Hyo Chun were both over 21 by the time a visa was available, so they aged-out and now await deportation from the United States, away from their parents.

Lal cites several reasons that Kang's deportation is unnecessary, most of which boil down to the fact that immigration officials have the power to defer the deportation order due to Kang's highly irregular situation.

Children deported without parents become fodder for drug cartels

ICE's demonstrated enforcement priorities--as evidenced in the cases mentioned above--hint at the lack of humanity inherent in deportations. But a Texas Observer investigation by Melissa Del Bosque underscores the brutality of a system that relentlessly pursues deportation quotas at the expense of the most vulnerable--children.

Every day, scores of children attempt to cross the border in the U.S., either with family members, or in an effort to reunite with family on the other. These children often end up alone and in the custody of the Border Patrol, which sends them back to Mexico, where they are housed in shelters until they are claimed. According to Del Bosque's sources, 90,000 children have been deported to Mexico without parents and 13,500 have not been claimed. Of the unclaimed, many fall into the hands of drug cartels and smugglers.

It's a humanitarian crisis that, according to Del Bosque, could easily be reversed if government officials on both sides of the border abandoned their politics for the sake of protecting thousands of lost children:

Mexico and the United States have binational accords and a repatriation program to protect migrant children, yet neither country ensures they're safely returned home. The U.S. Border Patrol and [Mexico's social service agency] could set up a database to monitor children at risk to prevent them from ending up on the streets. The U.S. Congress could also pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes a family reunification process to prevent children from being dumped in Mexican shelters. The Border Patrol already has a congressional mandate to screen for vulnerable kids and refer them to U.S. agencies that can help, yet advocates say it's not being done.

Evidently, good intentions and high-minded priorities mean little when it comes to enforcement. The Obama administration needs to pull its immigration practices into line with its professed priorities--or children, victims, and other innocents will continue to slip through the cracks for the sake of meeting quotas and breaking records.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse<. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Republicans don't have the votes to repeal health care reform, but they are determined to use their newly-won control of the House to fight it every step of the way. Marilyn Werber Serafini gives Truthout readers a sneak-peek at the GOP playbook to attack healthcare reform in 2011.

Who are some of the top contenders in this coming battle? Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is a leading candidate to chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Barton is vowing, if elected chairman, to use the oversight powers of the committee to hold a flurry of hearings on alleged misconduct in the crafting of the Affordable Care Act. Barton plans to show that budget experts "covered up" the true projected costs of health care reform. In Barton's world, the fact that there's no evidence to support this allegation is all the more reason to investigate.

Other key players include James Gelfand, the director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who has already compiled a wishlist of 31 investigations that he wants the newly Republican-controlled House to undertake. The Chamber spent millions to elect Republicans this cycle. Barton's hearings will have to compete for political oxygen with those of Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), the chair apparent of the Investigations Committee, who is promising to gum up the works of government with at least to seven hearings a week for 40 weeks, a projected rate nearly triple that of his predecessor Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Ca).

Health care freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

If they can't undo health reform in the corridors of Washington, conservatives are looking to the states and the federal courts. In The Nation, Nicholas Kusnetz reports on how a coalition of hard right groups are organizing against health care reform at the state level.

A group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is at the forefront of the drive to pass so-called "health care freedom acts" in the states to preemptively outlaw federal health reform before it can be implemented. ALEC claims to have filed or pre-filed bills in 38 states and passed 6 so far. Few expect these laws to stand up in court, if challenged, but they are part of ALEC's long term strategy to fight health reform itself in the federal courts. A Virginia judge recently ruled that an ALEC-sponsored "freedom" law gave the state standing to challenge federal reform.

Kusnetz shows the close ties between ALEC officials and Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and other Koch-Industries-funded conservative activist groups that are campaigning against health care reform in various capacities.

What about Medicare?

At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes that many Republicans, including Senator-Elect Rand Paul (R-KY) successfully campaigned on a platform of repealing health care reform to save Medicare. Benen explains that repealing the Affordable Care Act would actually put Medicare in worse financial straights than staying the course. The Republican rhetoric of defending Medicare and railing against socialized medicine is a flagrant self-contradiction. It's not hard to see which of these two projects they are more committed to.

As Brie Cadman points out at Change.org, the self-proclaimed "Young Guns" of the Republican Party are keen to privatize Medicare all together.

Government cheese: Corporate welfare edition

The USDA is scheming to make you eat more cheese. Tom Philpott of Grist explains how it works. Big Dairy produces more milk than Americans care to drink. Plus, consumers are increasingly demanding reduced-fat milk. That leaves a lot of milk left over to make cheese, but Americans aren't eating enough cheese to make a dent in the national milk fat surplus.

Unsold milk fat could become a toxic asset on the books of Big Dairy. So, the USDA created a non-profit corporation called Dairy Management (DM) to convince fast food companies to spike their products with millions of tons more cheese every year. With the help of DM, Domino's Pizza created a line of "Legend" pizzas with 40% more cheese. Who can forget the epic 2002 "Summer of Cheese" when DM teamed up with Pizza Hut to boost cheese consumption by an astonishing 102 million pounds? The average American now eats 33 pounds of cheese per year, three times as much as in 1970.

Officially, the USDA is supposed to help Americans eat better and support the agriculture industry. Cheese can be part of a healthy diet, but not in ever-increasing quantities. In practice, supporting the profits of Big Agra should not take precedence over preventing obesity or reducing the incidence of heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

CPCs: Incubators for anti-choice violence

In Ms. Magazine, Kathryn Joyce explores the shadowy world of "crisis pregnancy centers," anti-choice ministries that pose as full-service reproductive health clinics, but offer no real health services. CPCs have a business model built on deceit. They seek to prevent abortions by tricking women seeking comprehensive reproductive health care, which might include abortion.

Activism rooted in such deceit and contempt for women's autonomy can flare into violence. Joyce reveals that CPCs also serve as incubators for radical anti-choice activism. Radical groups like Operation Rescue encourage their supporters to volunteer. Scott Roeder, the assassin of Dr. George Tiller, got his start accosting women on the street outside abortion clinics as a volunteer "sidewalk counselor" for a crisis pregnancy center.

Just the presence of a CPC near an abortion clinic is correlated with increased violence against the clinic, as Joyce reports:

A recent survey by the Feminist Majority Foundation of women's reproductive-health clinics nationwide found 32.7 percent of clinics located near a CPC experienced one or more incidents of severe violence, compared to only 11.3 percent of clinics not near a CPC. (Severe violence includes clinic blockades and invasions, bombings, arson, bombing and arson threats, death threats, chemical attacks, stalking, physical violence and gunfire.)

Doctors on the front line see the overlap between CPCs and more virulent forms of anti-choice activism every day. "[CPCs and violent anti-choice activists] have two different spheres," OB-GYN Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the nation's last remaining specialists in late-term abortions, told Joyce. "The underlying theory of both is never let the truth stand in the way of getting your point across. If you distort facts to women, there is no difference."

Flip Benham's slap on the wrist

One of the activists Joyce interviews in her piece is Rev. "Flip" Benham, director of Operation Save America/Operation Rescue. Robin Marty of RH Reality Check reports that Benham was found guilty of stalking an abortion provider and posting "Wanted" posters with the doctor's picture on them, accusing him of being a baby killer. Benham was sentenced to 24 months probation.

In his defense, Benham claimed that this was a harmless gesture that never killed anyone. In fact, "wanted" posters for abortion doctors are a time-honored intimidation tactic that has been used repeatedly before the murders of abortion providers. Benham is deliberately cultivating a climate of fear and rage is conducive to violence.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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One of the most dominant kinds of conventional wisdom among Democrats in a cycle which is moving against them is to not "nationalize the election". The thinking by the political consultants and high level staff people, which can seem very compelling when you are being battered by a rising tide, is that your best path is to run on local issues and/or to attack your opponent on whatever personal or political weaknesses they might possess. I understand the sentiment, and am very sympathetic to candidates who feel alone in a year when the narrative and frame is all running against you. I also fully recognize that a lot of the candidates such as Tom Perriello and Mary Jo Kilroy who courageously defended national Democratic issues and themes did not save themselves from getting swept away.

Having now lived through two massive meltdowns in national Democratic politics, 1994 and this stinker, I have become convinced that while it doesn't always make sense to push the national party brand in each individual district/state in this kind of year, that for the national Democratic party to not run a national campaign and make a full throated defense of the Democratic brand and accomplishments is a big mistake that only helps build the tide against us. I think this race-by-race, no national message strategy helps explain why 1994 and 2010 were such complete blowouts for us, whereas in the good years Democrats have had in the past couple of decades- which include 1990, 1992, 1996, 1998 as well as even the last two cycles before this one- our gains have been relatively modest compared to the butt-whipping we experienced in '94 and this time. Republicans and their conservative allies always defend their small government/low taxes/strong on national security/traditional values brand and accomplishments. Even when they are critical of their party, their criticism always revolves around stuff like "we drifted from our small government roots"- in fact, they reinforce their brand even while creating some distance from an unpopular national party.

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The new Gallup survey can't get much more galling. It shows that more Democrats would be more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate for office if Bill Clinton pitched the candidate than if President Obama did. Even more galling than that is that independents say that they would be far less likely to vote for a candidate that Obama pitched than one that Clinton pitched. So what does Bill have that Obama doesn't have for far too many Democrats and just about all independents?

To start with he's not a sitting president who has been pounded from pillar to post from the instant that he put his toe in the White House. Clinton has the luxury of not just the time and distance he's been removed from the White House, but the image and embrace as a wise, elder statesman who has much to offer Democrats on winning elections. That's just the start. The even tougher truth to swallow for the White House is that Clinton is still fondly even rapturously regarded as the Democrat who got things done. He was not embroiled in a major war, the economy hummed, be beat back every major political and legal challenge from the GOP Clinton loathers and baiters, he was a cash cow for Democratic candidates and incumbents, he did a course correction with the Democratic Party that transformed it from a party stigmatized as one that pandered to minorities, and thumbed its nose at the White middle class, to one that championed their interests. He was and obviously is still seen by Democrats as the consummate professional, charismatic, Democrat that can deliver the goods. It's the Clinton mystique all over again, and it hasn't lost one bit of allure.

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Perhaps the greatest reward of travel is that whenever our bodies are in motion, so are our minds. I've just written a book about the strengths of this built-in link: In Motion: The Experience of Travel. Along the way I've found that the "inside" of travel can be even more fascinating than its "outside." Wherever we go, as I've been discovering -- around the block or across the globe -- we all carry within us a largely unsuspected capacity that, when activated, produces more vivid and more memorable trips. This holds true both for routine travel -- the "have-to" trips of every day -- and for more extraordinary "want-to" travel, whether that involves a quick getaway or a dream vacation.

For some people, who can see no other solution, enduring the routine and boredom of daily "have-to" travel has been made more tolerable by looking forward to long-planned "want-to" trips -- almost as if pain accumulated now can at some point be exchanged for pleasure. Such a strategy is, unfortunately, increasingly less viable. Although the available statistics are probably already outdated (and, when it comes to commuting, that generally means that things only have "dis-improved" in the meantime), according to a 2005 ABC poll, American workers spend an average of 87 minutes a day driving to and from their jobs and running errands. Aggregate these numbers and the "have-to" part of travel already outweighs the "want-to" part, since 87 minutes a day amounts to more than two-and-a-half weeks out of each year, already overshadowing the standard two-week vacation.

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Solomon Burke was not only one of the most soulful singers in history; he was quite possibly the single most soulful man who I ever met. I had the honor of sharing time with this timeless soul giant and inspiring preacher twice. The first was a short interview for Rolling Stone sometime in the midst of his inspiring professional revival that followed the release of his stunning 2002 comeback album Don't Give Up On Me. I'd been a fan of the man's body of work for years, but what struck me about the man was how singularly warm, wise and funny he was one to one. A father of many children himself, Solomon asked about my kids with what felt like genuine and caring interest. I felt like he turned our conversation into some kind of soulful conversion. As a singer and as a man, he put out a lot of love into the world and made you feel a spirit, if not the spirit.

A few years later, in 2007, I got to spend a day or two with the great man in the flesh when I was asked to co-write the script for what became an extraodinary Ahmet Ertegun memorial at Jazz At Lincoln Center along with Taylor Hackford, a soul scholar who loved Solomon too. Solomon had agreed to serve as our MC, along with another strong force of nature, Bette Midler. Even though getting around was not particularly easy for Solomon even then, there was no doubt that he remained a beautiful, powerful and profound presence, onstage and off. Yes, he was a "Big Soul" and he was "The King of Rock 'N Soul." But as I saw it, he was also one soulful and lovable mensch.

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Excuse the sensationalistic head: the subject lends itself to hyperbole both because of its urgency and the imperative to draw reluctant readers. Of course, the "What if" doesn't actually figure to materialize any time soon. Still, it hints at what a Pandora's box the development of nuclear weapons has been for over six decades. Actually, it's starting to look more like a clown car -- an evil-clown car.

At Politico, Laura Rozen monitored the engineering failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that knocked 50 nuclear ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) offline. She referred us to fellow Politico reporter Gordon Lubold, who wrote:

Tony Cordesman of CSIS told Morning Defense that, based on preliminary reports, there was not a crisis: "Unless something is released that somehow indicates that you broke through every known barrier to a system that is not connected to the Internet or outside command-and-control, it is a warning that you need to look at the particular system failure, but that is as far as it goes,"

Cordesman's words that we've highlighted are an allusion to hacking. Ms. Rozen also cites Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic Monthly:

It is next to impossible [emphasis mine] for these systems to be hacked, so the military does not believe the incident was caused by malicious actors.

However reassuring it is to hear that a nuclear launch system can't be hacked, it nevertheless plants the seed of a fear in us that most never knew existed. The worm Stuxnet that infiltrated Iran's nuclear program is considered a state-supported project. But what if a terrorist group were to take a shot at the impossible and attempt to hack into a nuclear launch system?

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Weekly Audit: Your Vote, Your Economy--Why Today's Election Matters to Your Pocketbook

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Election Day is finally here, and control of the House and the Senate hangs in the balance. The differences between parties could not be more stark. Republicans have promised to repeal health care reform and slash government spending for social programs, all while preserving tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Some of the more radical ideas bandied about this election season--by conservative candidates with a decent shot at winning--include privatizing social security and eliminating the Department of Education.

Anti-tax ballot measures

Josh Holland of AlterNet runs down the most economically important ballot initiatives facing the electorate today. Some of these measures could cripple states for decades to come.

For example, Coloradans are voting on a spate of radical anti-tax amendments including Amendment 60, which would eliminate all property tax increases passed since 1992 and halve property taxes over the next decade. If Initiative 1053 passes in Washington State, any future hikes in taxes or fees would have to be approved by a 2/3rds majority of legislators or by voters. In tough times, the promise of preempting tax increases may seem attractive, but those entranced by the 2/3rds rule should look to California as a cautionary tale. The state is structurally in the red because legislators can pass spending bills by simple majority but they need a 2/3rds majority to raise taxes.

Holland writes:

If you could create a political party that convinced a large number of people that by electing you they could eat all the ice-cream they want, and then sit on their butts watching TV all day and never put on an ounce, you'd have a pretty good chance at gaining power. That's what the conservative movement has done in terms of taxes and spending.

In other words, it's easy to say no to tax increases when you don't stop to think what those taxes pay for. Everyone's in favor of "limited government" in the abstract, but everyone likes roads, schools, firehouses, clean water, and other publicly-funded amenities.

Union-busting at the ballot box

Speaking of dubious ballot initiatives, at Working In These Times, Michelle Chen reports on several anti-union ballot measures that are designed to kill the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) before it's even passed. EFCA is (currently moribund) proposed federal legislation that would make it easier for employees to form unions.

Voters in Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah are grappling with ballot initiatives that would make it impossible to implement EFCA at the state level, should it ever come back to life at the federal level. For example, Utah's proposed Amendment A would rewrite the state's constitution to guarantee a secret ballot for unionization votes. These ballot initiatives are touted as a defense of workers' privacy, but the real goal is to institutionalize as many barriers to unionization as possible.

All working people should be concerned about restrictions on their right to organize because unionization is a proven path to higher wages and greater job security. Even people who don't belong to a union should care because high union density in an industry tends to increase wages for the industry as a whole, non-union workers included.

Wage equality and the social contract

Election day is a good time to reflect on the big questions: What do we owe each other as a society? What would a just economy look like? Mikhail Zinshteyn of Campus Progress argues that one of the basic tenets of the social contract in a capitalist system is that rewards should be proportional to production. If you produce more, you should get paid more.

Yet the widening gap between productivity and real wages in America shows that that our economy is not delivering on this basic tenet of fairness. Workers are more productive than ever, and in a just world, you'd expect they'd share in that extra wealth. Yet real wages have remained largely stagnant. The extra wealth is going overwhelmingly to those who own the companies. The people who actually create the wealth are being left out in the cold.

Stakes are high for working families

Sarah van Gelder explains in Yes! Magazine why it is so important for working families to turn out this season and vote their financial interests:

The Great Recession is creating hardship for families in every part of the country. More than 6 million Americans fell below the poverty line in the last two years, and nearly a quarter of all children under the age of six are living in poverty. Unemployed workers are typically going jobless for six months, nearly twice as long as they have during any time since World War II. Median household wealth fell by 20 percent since 2007, retirement savings have evaporated, and now some are talking about dismantling Social Security. This is not the year to stay home. Our families can't afford it.

In tough times, domestic violence on the rise

In ColorLines, Julianne Hing reports that rates of domestic violence tend to increase as the economy deteriorates. The category of economic abuse becomes more salient as money becomes more scarce. The abuser can either extort money from the victim, and/or use their own money as a weapon to dominate the victim. Sadly, as the need for programs to protect the victims of domestic violence is rising, state budgets are shrinking.

When voters look at their tax cut ballot initiatives today, they should consider the services their taxes underwrite, including programs for the most vulnerable, like battered women's shelters. It's easy to say no to taxes. It's hard to tell a battered woman that she has nowhere to go because the shelter was shut down.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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Just in time for Halloween, the financial services firm Standard and Poor's offers a "study" designed to scare us into raising the Social Security retirement age. "Global Aging 2010: An Irreversible Truth", warns that age-related public spending is "Unsustainable without policy change." The report declares that "No other force is likely to shape the future of national economic health, public finance and policymaking as the irreversible rate at which the world's population is aging . . . By the middle of the century, about 1 billion over 65s will join the ranks of those classified as of non-working age." The ratio of that group to "those classified as of working age" (18-54) produces the "aged dependency ratio" that panics so many.

Almost everyone has heard the litany of worsening ratios: in 1950, 16 people at work for each person drawing benefits declining to the current (2010) 3.3 at work for each one drawing benefits with the prospect of 2.2 to one by 2020. That decline persuades many that Social Security cannot survive. But in the real world, the crucial factors for Social Security funding are the number of people at work, what they earn and how much of those wages are taxed. Since World War II, we have seen repeatedly that in a tight labor market, employers put aside prejudice and hire more women, minorities and older people to fill their needs and offer higher wages and arrangements, like child care, to make work more feasible.

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On the bus ride home to the Shenandoah Valley with some of the nearly two hundred people who made the hours-long journey to the Rally for Sanity, October 30, we were fired up. We were talking politics, the Democratic Party, The Tea Party, Republicans, and, well, passion. Mostly where the passion of two years ago went. Many of those on the bus had campaigned heartily and heavily for the president. Some were disappointed. But none were willing to switch party affiliation or fail to vote. Most were on the same page. Except for one thing. There seemed to be disagreement as to the question of "marketing," for want of a better word ,the message that the president had actually done a lot of what he had promised and why so many people were unable to grasp some of the historic legislation he had ushered in.

I agree with Obama's statement on the Daily Show recently that the health care bill, while far from perfect, shared many similarities with social security. It also shares the same similarities with early civil rights legislation: it's a great first step that can be built upon. And I also disagree with the many pundits (including Maureen Dowd in the New York Times) that putting so much energy into health care instead of jobs was a mistake. In fact, most people on my bus thought that Obama should have pushed through health care (and an even more comprehensive bill at that) in the early months of his administration, rather than trying to make nice with the Republicans. The argument came in the form of whether people knew exactly what was in the health care bill, or, for that matter, the financial legislation bill. And that is when the conversation turned to marketing and public relations, or, as more than one writer recently has put it, politics. Where is Obama's political savvy? People want to know. Why isn't he making sure the American public understands what he's done for us?

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