The current debate regarding whether individual pharmacists should have a 'right of conscience' to refuse to sell birth control medications has been almost entirely composed of either straightforward arguments in support or opposition to the proposed 'right' or the discussion of some compromise position that attempts to bridge the gap between customers' rights to buy legally prescribed medication and pharmacists' personal ethical views.
Yet, when one steps back for a moment to look beyond these limited terms of debate, an extraordinary fact quickly becomes apparent -- the proposed extensions of earlier 'conscience' laws to cover pharmacists are profoundly and, in fact, grotesquely elitist. They actually propose nothing less then endowing a small group of Americans with a special class of new legal rights and privileges regarding moral/religious issues -- based essentially on their education -- while denying those same rights to everyone else. As a result, the proposed laws are not only basically unconstitutional in intent but also un-American in spirit and contrary to the egalitarian tenets of sincere Christian faith.
To see why this is so, it is only necessary to compare the proposed extension of the 'right of conscience' to pharmacists with the purpose of the original 'conscience' laws which were designed with doctors and operating room nurses in mind. It was not because doctors or nurses had advanced medical education or knowledge that special provisions were enacted for them, but because the nature of their work might obligate them to personally perform medical procedures they considered immoral, such as abortions or sterilizations, or to personally prescribe and administer abortion-inducing drugs. Granting a doctor or nurse with moral objections to these procedures the legal right to refuse t"
Daily Kos :: US protecting -- Osama's privacy?: "Judicial Watch, the public interest group that fights government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act ('FOIA') in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation ('FBI') has invoked privacy right protections on behalf of al Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden. In a September 24, 2003 declassified 'Secret' FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch, the FBI invoked Exemption 6 under FOIA law on behalf of bin Laden, which permits the government to withhold all information about U.S. persons in 'personnel and medical files and similar files' when the disclosure of such information 'would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' (5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6) (2000)) [...]
'It is dumbfounding that the United States government has placed a higher priority on the supposed privacy rights of Osama bin Laden than the public's right to know what happened in the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks,' said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. 'It is difficult for me to imagine a greater insult to the American people, especially those whose loved ones were murdered by bin Laden on that day.'"
WSJ.com - How Companies Pay TV Experts For On-Air Product Mentions
WSJ.com - How Companies Pay TV Experts For On-Air Product Mentions: "In November, Child magazine's Technology Editor James Oppenheim appeared on a local television show in Austin, Texas, and reviewed educational gadgets and toys. He praised 'My ABC's Picture Book,' a personalized photo album from Eastman Kodak Co.
'Considering what you showed me, kids' games really don't have to be violent,' said the anchor for KVUE, an ABC affiliate and the No. 1-rated television station in its market.
'If...you're not careful, they will be,' Mr. Oppenheim replied. 'That's why I've shown you some of the best.'
There was one detail the audience didn't know: Kodak paid Mr. Oppenheim to mention the photo album, according to the company and Mr. Oppenheim. Neither Mr. Oppenheim nor KVUE disclosed the relationship to viewers. During the segment, Mr. Oppenheim praised products from other companies, including: Atari Inc., Microsoft Corp., Mattel Inc., Leapfrog Enterprises Inc. and RadioShack Corp. All paid for the privilege, Mr. Oppenheim says.
One month later, Mr. Oppenheim went on NBC's 'Today' show, the U.S.'s biggest national morning news program, which is part of NBC's news division. 'Kodak came out with a great idea,' he said to host Ann Curry, before proceeding to talk about the same product he'd been paid to discuss on KVUE. Ms. Curry called it a 'nice gift for a little child.' Kodak says it didn't pay for the 'Today' show mention. But neither Mr. Oppenheim nor NBC disclosed the prior arrangement to tout the product on local TV.
In the 'Today' segment, Mr. Oppenheim talked about products made or sold by 15 companies. Nine were former clients and eight of those had paid him for product placement on local TV during the preceding year.
KVUE says it didn't know about Mr. Oppenheim's business deal. An NBC spokeswoman says the network is looking into what it knew about Mr. Oppenheim's relationship with Kodak and th"
Hullabaloo: "Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn't. For instance, he doesn't say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn't say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn't say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn't put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn't, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.
Moore says conservatives are liars and they are corrupt and they are wrong. But he is not saying that they should die. There is a distinction. And it's a distinction that Time magazine and Howard Kurtz apparently cannot see.
I have long felt that it was important not to minimize the impact of this sick shit. For years my friends and others in the online communities would say that it was a waste of time to worry about Rush because there are real issues to worry about. Likewise Coulter. Everytime I write something about her there is always someone chastizing me for wasting their time. Yet, here she is, being given the impramatur of a mainstream publication of record in a whitwash of epic proportions."
Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Allure of the blank slate
READ THIS!!!!
Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Allure of the blank slate Three months after the tsunami hit Aceh, the New York Times reported that "almost nothing seems to have been done to begin repairs and rebuilding". The dispatch could have come from Iraq, where, as the Los Angeles Times has reported, all Bechtel's allegedly rebuilt water plants have started to break down, one more in a litany of reconstruction screw-ups. It could have come from Afghanistan, where President Karzai blasted "corrupt, wasteful and unaccountable" foreign contractors for "squandering the precious resources that Afghanistan received in aid".
But if the reconstruction industry is stunningly inept at rebuilding, that may be because rebuilding is not its purpose. According to Guttal: "It's not reconstruction at all - it's about reshaping everything." The stories of corruption and incompetence mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. On this front, the reconstruction industry works so efficiently that the privatisations and land grabs are usually locked in before local people know what hit them. Herman Kumara, of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement in Negombo, Sri Lanka, sent an email to colleagues around the world warning that Sri Lanka is facing "a second tsunami of corporate globalisation and militarisation ... We see this as a plan... to hand over the sea and the coast to foreign corporations ... with military assistance from the US marines."
Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, oversaw a similar project in Iraq: the fires were still burning when US officials announced that the country's state-owned companies would be privatised. Some argue that Wolfowitz is unfit to lead the World Bank; in fact, nothing could have prepared him better.
'Post-conflict" countries now receive 20-25 % of the World Bank's lending, up from 16% in 1998. Rapid response to disaster has traditionally been the domain of UN agencies. But today, with reconstruction revealed as tremendously lucrative, the World Bank leads the charge. There are massive engineering and supplies contracts ($10bn to Halliburton in Iraq and Afghanistan alone); "democracy building" has exploded into a $2bn industry; and times have never been better for the private firms that advise governments on selling off their assets. (Bearing Point, the favoured of these firms in the US, reported that revenues for its "public services" division "had quadrupled in five years".)
But shattered countries are attractive to the World Bank for another reason: They take orders well and will usually do whatever it takes to get aid dollars - even if it means racking up huge debts and agreeing to sweeping policy reforms. Even better, many war-ravaged countries are in states of "limited sovereignty" and considered too unstable to manage aid money, which is often put in a trust fund managed by the World Bank - in East Timor, the bank doles out money to the government as long as it shows it is spending responsibly. Apparently, this means slashing public-sector jobs (the government is half the size it was under Indonesian occupation) but lavishing aid money on foreign consultants. In Afghanistan, the World Bank mandated "an increased role for the private sector" in water, telecommunications, oil, gas and mining and directed the government to leave electricity to foreign investors. Few outside the bank knew of these changes, as they were buried in a "technical annex" attached to an emergency-aid grant.
It has been the same story in Haiti. In exchange for a $61m loan, the bank requires that private companies run schools and hospitals - extremely controversial given Haiti's socialist base. The bank admits that, with Haiti under what approaches military rule, there is "a window of opportunity for reforms that may be hard for a future government to undo".
Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its favoured policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost no debt relief, and most of the bank's aid has come in the form of loans, not grants. The bank is pushing for expansion of tourism and industrial fish farms, rather than rebuilding small-boat fisheries. As for roads and schools, bank documents recognise that rebuilding "may strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider privatisation (yes, they have only one idea).
In January Condoleezza Rice horrified many by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us". If anything, she was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for "businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities that had stood in the way of resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms". Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius.
Orcinus: " Wages in the factories average about $3 per hour -- more than $2 less than the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15. No overtime is paid for a 70-hour work week. But that's hardly the worst of it. Far away from the swank beachside hotels, luxurious golf courses and the thousands of Japanese tourists snorkling around sunken U.S. Navy landing craft in the clear waters, some 31,000 textile workers live penned up like cattle by armed soldiers and barbed wire, and squeezed head to toe into filthy sleeping barracks, all of which was documented on film by U.S. investigators last year.
The unhappy workers cannot just walk away, either: Like Appalachian coal miners a generation ago, they owe their souls to the company store, starting with factory recruiters, who charge Chinese peasants as much as $4,000 to get them out of China and into a 'good job' in 'America.' Their low salaries make it nearly impossible to buy back their freedom. And so they stay. The small print in their contracts forbids sex, drinking -- and dissent
The Clinton administration was moving to change these conditions when DeLay and Abramoff sprang into action:
Enter Tom DeLay and his Texas Republican sidekick, Dick Armey. When the Clinton administration sought to yank Saipan's factories into the 20th century in 1994, requiring the workers be paid a minimum wage, overtime and their living conditions improved, the island government hired a platoon of well-connected Washington lobbyists, headed by former DeLay aide Jack Abramoff, to block the plan. Abramoff, in turn, personally or through his family, contributed $18,000 to DeLay's campaign coffers. So far, the island government has paid the firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds $4 million for their efforts, records show. They also treated DeLay and Armey to trips to the island, where they played golf, snorkled and made whirlwind visits to factories especially spiffed up for the occasion, according to several accounts.
"
President Bush has said that 'in a society that is a free society, there will be transparency.' That means that in America, we have a government where the public gets to see as much information as possible about its government.
But as the record shows, Bush is anything but pro-transparency. A careful look shows the Bush White House has systematically tried to stop publishing government information that it finds embarrassing or disagrees with - the opposite of 'transparent.' See the record for yourself:
- Knight-Ridder reports today that the Bush administration announced yesterday that it has 'decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.'
- When unemployment was peaking in Bush's first term, the White House tried to stop publishing the Labor Department's regular report on mass layoffs.
- In 2003, when the nation's governors came to Washington to complain about inadequate federal funding for the states, the Bush administration decided to stop publishing the budget report that states use to see what money they are, or aren't, getting.
- In 2003, the National Council for Research on Women found that information about discrimination against women has gone missing from government Web sites, including 25 reports from the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.
- In 2002, Democrats uncovered evidence that the Bush administration was removing health information from government websites. Specifically, the administration deleted data showing that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer. That scientific data was seen by the White House as a direct affront to the pro-life movement."
"I stopped into Larry's Gas 'n Grubs for my regular morning commuter coffee mug refill and lo and be damned! There was my hirsute 300-pound friend Poot working at the counter. I said, 'What the hell are you doing ringing up my coffee at this crap stand? You're supposed to be a welder, fat boy!''
It turns out that Poot, who'd lost his job with a metal fabricator, took on a little private contracting work. However, he couldn't afford to get his contractor's license and was busted for working without one. And got thrown in jail for it, too. Somehow I would have thought it was a lesser offense than that.
Now he is on jail work release to work at Larry's Gas 'n Grubs, an area 6-location chain of convenience stores that regularly hires work release labor at super cheap rates. By court order Poot must work there at least until August and pay the great state of Virginia a big chunk of his wages for the privilege.
This represents nothing less than chattel slavery under the local judicial system, impressments of the same sort as have always practiced on blacks and poor whites here in the slave states. Throw them in jail, and then farm them out on work release to local industry and businesses in cahoots politically with local law officials and courts. In fact, in a new twist on the game, the masters of our little Virginia banana republic brought in a huge regional jail. It is now a provider of cheap local work release labor, even as the taxpayers foot the bill for housing and feeding the jailbirds, and the jailbirds seldom return to their hometowns up nawth, choosing instead to shack up with the fetching local wenches. You Yankees have no idea what Bush's election has kicked off in the American South. Our congenital penchant for punishment and press gang labor has ushered in a new era of prison building unseen since the days of Uncle Joe Stalin. Down here we know what to do with uncooperative folks like the hapless Po"...
The Smirking Chimp:
Pandagon: Thanks for the help and sorry about that knife wound in your back
I liked this line:
Pandagon: Thanks for the help and sorry about that knife wound in your back: "Finkelstein characterizes himself as 'libertarian'--a label that lately only means 'conservative who has personal peccadillos he doesn't wish to see outlawed'. Most 'libertarians' I know of are straight men who like to fuck without making babies and therefore oppose the wingnut push to legislate the bedroom. But they don't oppose it in any meaningful way, such as supporting politicians who, you know, agree with their beliefs about personal freedom. Instead, they keep supporting wingnuts and relying on liberals to do their fighting for their civil rights for them."
One thing that has been talked about in the past is how religious conservatives help Republicans win elections and those same Republicans conveniently ignore them once they are in office (in which case, they are much like any constituency). They don't want to actually outlaw abortion or do anything that would actually make the fundamentalists happy because it would be political suicide.
Recently, though, some of the more powerful Republicans ARE the crazy religious right. They also have a common interest in the issue of pushing through bat-shit crazy judges.
Eschaton
Christian conservatives and a core group of congressional supporters are launching a significant new push to restructure the federal judicial system to reflect a more explicitly biblical world view, in the hopes that these changes will pave the way for broader social and political changes, leaders of the movement said.
Some of the most prominent conservative leaders in the country -- including Vision America's Rick Scarborough, Coral Ridge Ministry's James Kennedy and the Free Congress Foundation's Paul Weyrich -- launched the effort Thursday in Washington.
Members of the new coalition said they would immediately focus on bringing an end to Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees before pushing Senate Majority Leader Frist to enact sweeping changes in the judiciary.
They also warned that Frist and other politicians who have thus far been reluctant to force a confrontation with Senate Minority Leader Reid over the nominations would be held accountable if Democrats continue to block conservative judges.
Participants at this week's Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration meeting said the group also will focus on forcing Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against any judge who does not conform with their biblically based interpretation of the Constitution, as well as permanently curb judicial authority over matters of church and state, marriage and governmental acknowledgement of a Christian deity.
"What it is time to do is impeach justices," Texas Justice Foundation President Allan Parker extolled a crowd of a hundred or so conservative lobbyists, attorneys and activists. "The standard should be any judge who believes in the 'living constitution' should be impeached."
I'd tell you how I think this is going to play out, but I haven't picked an election or a Superbowl right for probably the last decade, so I'll resist.
