“Edward M. Kennedy – the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply – died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port”

New York Times, August 25th, 2009

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died Tuesday night. He was 77 .

Health reform was the cause of his life

The death was announced Wednesday morning in a statement by the Kennedy family.

“Edward M. Kennedy – the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply – died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port,” the statement said. “We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever. We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all. He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it. He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it’s hard to imagine any of them without him.” More…

New York Times, July 15th, 2009

U.S. Opens Path to Asylum for Victims of Sexual Abuse

The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance on an issue at the center of a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.

In addition to meeting the existing strict conditions for being granted asylum, abused women need to show a judge that women are viewed as subordinate by their abuser, according to a court filing by the administration, and must also show that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country.

The administration laid out its position in an immigration appeals court filing in the case of a woman from Mexico who requested asylum, saying she feared she would be murdered by a common law husband there. According to court documents filed in San Francisco, the man repeatedly raped her at gunpoint, held her captive, stole from her and at one point attempted to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant. More…

Minutemen entered a home in Arivaca and murdered two people.

New Border Fear: Militia Violence

ARIVACA, Ariz. — “Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”

Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call. The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

At 54 years old,she grew up in the South Bronx, is a liberal activist judge who was once a prosecutor for Robert Morgenthau.

Washington Post, May 26th, 2009

President Obama this morning will nominate U.S. appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, White House officials said.

If confirmed, Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Supreme Court justice of Hispanic descent and only the third woman ever to sit on the panel. She grew up in a Bronx housing project, went on to Princeton University and Yale Law School, and has stirred controversy by saying that judges’ legal findings are informed by their own life experiences as well as their legal research.

Obama, too, has said jurists’ life experiences are a key part of their legal makeup. He met Sotomayor in person for the first time Thursday at the White House, administration officials say. After spending the weekend at Camp David, he made his decision to nominate her last night.

The 10:15 a.m. announcement will be made in the East Room of the White House, officials said, before Obama leaves Washington for a two-day trip to California and Las Vegas that will focus mostly on fundraising events. Obama has set a deadline of confirming Sotamayor by the start of the Senate’s five-week recess, slated to begin Aug. 7. More…

Within 15 minutes of the announcement, Powerline.com (a moderate neo-con) called Sonia Sotomayor a “Che Guevera in Robes! Stand by for worse to come; meanwhile we pile up more votes!

McConnell admits Republicans are minority and says this dangerous defection allows the majority to override the wishes of the minority.

Rush Limbaugh says Specter should take McCain and his daughter with him.

Washington Post, April 28th, 2009

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch parties and run for reelection next November as a Democrat, he announced today, a decision that could have wide-ranging consequences for the Senate and President Obama’s agenda.

“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right,” Specter said in a statement released this morning. “Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

The move brings Democrats to 59 seats in the Senate, just one shy of the 60 they need to exert filibuster-proof control over the chamber. In Minnesota, Democrat Al Franken holds a 312-vote lead over former senator Norm Coleman (R), but Coleman has appealed the result to the state Supreme Court. Oral arguments in the case are expected to begin in June. More…

The Obama administration requires that all federal agencies pick “science advisors” and require the use of scientific data in preparing policy proposals.

New York Times, March 9th, 2009

Obama Puts His Own Spin on Mix of Science With Politics

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s directive on Monday to “guarantee scientific integrity” in federal policy making could have a far-reaching impact, affecting issues as varied as climate change, national security, protection of endangered species and children’s health.

But it will not divorce science from politics, or strip ideology from presidential decisions.

Mr. Obama delighted many scientists and patients by formally announcing that he was overturning the Bush administration’s limits on embryonic stem cell research. But the president also went one step further, issuing a memorandum that sets forth broad parameters for how his administration would choose expert advisers and use scientific data. More…

U.S. to open military to temporary immigrants: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military will begin recruiting immigrants with special skills who are in the United States on temporary visas, offering a chance to become citizens in as little as six months, The New York Times reported.

A report on the newspaper’s website on Saturday said it would be the first time since the Vietnam War that the armed forces would be open to temporary immigrants, provided they have lived in the United States for at least two years.

Immigrants with permanent resident status, or “green cards,” are already eligible to enlist in the U.S. military.

A Pentagon spokesman said he knew of the program but had no details.

The Times said the program could help the military fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis. More…

Senate roll vote: Children’s health insurance bill

Washington Post, January 30th, 2009

The Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation yesterday to provide health insurance to 11 million low-income children, a bill that would for the first time spend federal money to cover children and pregnant women who are legal immigrants.

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is aimed at families earning too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance, currently covers close to 7 million youngsters at a cost of $25 billion.

Lawmakers voted 66 to 32, largely along party lines, to renew the joint state-federal program and spend an additional $32.8 billion to expand coverage to 4 million more children. The expansion would be paid for by raising the cigarette tax from 39 cents a pack to $1. More…

Here is a link to MSNBC with a list of Senators and their votes.

Crooks and Liars.com, December 24th, 2008

In Arizona, sheriff turns county meetings into an exercise in fascism

I’m spending my Christmas vacation in lovely Maricopa County, AZ, this week with my in-laws. And I have to tell you that, thanks to Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his gang of thugs deputies, I’ll be somewhat relieved when I leave.

After all, how would you like to live in a place where law enforcement actually arrests you for applauding briefly at a public county council meeting? Where they threaten and intimidate you just for showing up in the first place?

That’s what’s been happening here.

It all has to do with an anti-Arpaio group called Maricopa Citizens for Safety Accountability, which formed last spring in response to investigative reports and studies demonstrating that Arpaio’s insane obsession with illegal immigrants was destroying his office’s ability to actually deal with real law enforcement work.

MCSA’s members have been turning up at meetings of the county Board of Supervisors and trying to speak, but the board refuses to let MCSA do so except for brief comment periods at the end of its meetings. Moreover, the board meetings are now patrolled by a huge contingent of deputies who treat the citizens who attend like criminals. More…

Barack Obama believes that for too long we have used immigration as a wedge issue to divide us rather than fixing what must be repaired. The four primary goals of his immigration plan are:

Create Secure Borders: Protect the integrity of our borders. Support additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry.

Improve Our Immigration System: Fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.

Remove Incentives to Enter Illegally: Remove incentives to enter the country illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.

Bring People Out of the Shadows: Support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.

Work with Mexico: Promote economic development in Mexico to decrease illegal immigration.