Friday, June 30, 2006
TIME	HOME		AWAY	MATCH	VENUE
Jun 30 11:00 ET	Germany	v	Argentina	Match 57	Berlin
Jun 30 15:00 ET	Italy	v	Ukraine	Match 58	Hamburg

THIS World Cup may well be defined not by a goal scorer with flashing feet but by a man who was found broken in a driveway in Italy, clutching rosary beads. Nothing that happens on the 12 playing fields of Germany in this tournament may compare with the sad story of Gianluca Pessotto, a world-class player for Italy, apparently leaping out of the office of his club, Juventus, on Tuesday.

Pessotto was in serious condition in Turin yesterday, his life in doubt, according to hospital officials. Italian soccer is also in serious condition, plagued by a scandal involving the possible fixing of matches, including those of Juventus.

There is no suspicion that this World Cup, involving national teams, is dirty, but with one of the great leagues being investigated, the entire sport is under a pall, even as the Italians play Ukraine tonight in Hamburg and host Germany plays Argentina in Berlin, in the quarterfinals. If the Italian scandal is really that bad, what can we think about any league?

The trial began yesterday in Rome, but was adjourned until Monday, not in deference to Pessotto but to give people more time to prepare. The trial is to be held in a conference room in Olympic Stadium, the beautiful arena used for many of the 1990 World Cup matches, including the grim final between West Germany and Argentina. The stadium they call Olimpico is in a beautiful setting, above the Tiber River, with gardens and pools and marble patios. Now it is the scene of an inquisition.

Pessotto is not under investigation in this scandal, but his apparent suicide attempt is a symbol of the dark side of soccer. After retiring as a player last year, Pessotto, 35, was elevated to the job of team manager in the wake of the departure of Luciano Moggi, known as Lucky Luciano to Italians who are into English-language alliteration.

Moggi resigned amid allegations that he had sought favorable referees to work matches of Juventus, the team of the Agnelli family, the team of Fiat, the team of 29 Italian championships. I have been watching Serie A on Sunday mornings since the late 1980's, when civilization (that is to say, Italian soccer) finally arrived, all fuzzy and scratchy, on my UHF channel, before cable made it all clear how marvelous European soccer is.

•On some of those Sunday mornings, I saw strange sights. Juventus often seemed to get one extra break a match — a dubious offside call, a phantom foul, an inexplicable out-of-bounds decision. Yankee Luck, we used to call it back in Brooklyn.

There are prosecutors who think they have evidence, some of it on wire tap, that Juventus — and maybe A.C. Milan and Lazio and mercurial Fiorentina — had an edge in some of their matches.

It isn't hard for the lone ranger of a referee to have an impact on a match. Assuming the best of motives, we've seen some strange calls in this World Cup: One ref couldn't process the three yellow cards he had shown to the same player, one more than the normal limit. Another ref handed out 16 yellow cards because he had lost control. Another ref called a highly marginal penalty kick against an American defender. (I recalled Casey Stengel's famous explanation about why the umpires called plays against his dreadful Mets: "They stick it to us because we are rotten," Casey said, sort of.) Another ref called for a penalty kick against an Australian defender who was sprawled on the ground — a call that gave Italy a 1-0 victory and a spot in the quarterfinals.

posted by Steve @ 10:53:00 PM

There are few places on earth, as far as I'm concerned, where the light, especially in late afternoon, in summer, is more beautiful than on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It's a river light, soft and gently diffused. It gets delicately soaked into the sides of buildings, splashes the windshields of the yellow cabs coasting down Broadway, washes up against the green wall of the park that runs along the Hudson.

Come evening, everyone pours into Riverside Park from the Upper West Side's hybrid neighborhoods: older couples from the squat elegant buildings on West End Avenue, students from Columbia's carefully patrolled Morningside Heights, Hispanic kids and young couples from Amsterdam Avenue's brightly awned streets, young professionals recently moved into the new luxury high-rises that have sprouted up along the Upper West Side's left-liberal alley--the glassy new buildings like lost guests who've wandered into a noisy party meeting instead of the stiff, reserved dinner party they were headed to. And everyone covered in golden light in the green park. You feel the possibility of naturalness in humanity, and of humanity in nature. You feel at ease.

And then you go to a nice restaurant and sit down next to some troglodyte wearing... A BASEBALL CAP.

Oh how I hate these things. I didn't mind them when a few people wore them. Then it served as the rudimentary expression of taste, or as the vague outline of identity. But soon everyone began putting them on their heads. It's gotten so black kids from the ghetto have to wear them with the bill pulled down over their eyes just so they won't be mistaken for yuppie bankers

posted by Steve @ 11:44:00 AM

A second career teacher with a M.A. from Teachers’ College, Nichole taught English for the last two years at the Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn. She received laudatory evaluations and recommendations from the principal, from the school’s director of instruction and from the school’s director of special needs and academic support. They commended her “hard work and dedication,” and described her as “a passionate, high energy teacher” and “a dedicated and caring teacher.” They praised her work with “special needs students to help them make great gains in their reading and writing ability.”

Students were no less lavish in their praise. Formal student evaluations placed in Nichole’s personnel file describe her as a “great,” “very good,” and “wonderful” teacher. “She is always on task and keeps us interested in our lessons,” one student explained. “She is so organized and helps us to do better in class,” wrote another student. “She always has everything planned out so well and everyone is able to pass the class.”

“Your relationship with the students is what is really stellar,” Principal Marsha Spampinato wrote to Nichole in a year-end evaluation. “Students know when people care for them and are not paying ‘lip service’. They understand that you are interested in them as individuals as well as students. This helps greatly in the rapport that you have with your classes…”

Nichole’s supervisors at the Williamsburg Charter High School thought so highly of her work, that when Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein came to visit this spring, they showcased her class. In his March newsletter to New Yorkers, Klein wrote about a lesson Nichole taught to her ninth grade English class on Homer’s Odyssey which engaged the students to think critically about the gods of Greek mythology.

But that was March. Shortly thereafter, Nichole shared with other teachers in the school the salary schedule for teachers in the New York City Department of Education. Although teachers at Williamsburg had many more teaching contact hours, and far less preparation time, than NYC school teachers, they found that they earned considerably less than their public school counterparts. Nichole reached out to the UFT, through this blog, asking what her rights were and how she might secure them. She and a second teacher asked Eddie Calderon-Melendez, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Williamsburg Charter High School, how salaries were set, and if there was a schedule for the school. A third teacher began to ask questions about why the quarterly reports of teachers’ 401-K plans did not show that the school was depositing the funds that were part of their remuneration for their work.

The response to these inquiries came in the form of a June 8th memorandum from Calderon-Melendez to all Williamsburg staff on the subject of “Personnel Policies.” He wrote: “I am resolute on the vision and mission of the school as designed, developed and articulated by me. It is particularly important to understand that this requires a clear understanding of what the school is, will be and what it will and won’t be as articulated by Myself and the Founding Principal.” [Capitalization and syntax from original.] “Feel free to make an appointment to see me,” he went on, “if there any questions or concerns you have in regards to anything involving your employment or the school.”

Shortly before the issuance of this memo, Calderon-Melendez began a series of meetings with school staff. In the meeting with Nichole, he told her that he was ending her employment at the school. She asked for a reason. He replied that he did not have to give her a reason, as she was an “at will” employee who could be let go for any reason whatsoever. He did allow, however, that it had nothing to do with her teaching. [Charter school management who oppose unionization often argue “at will” employment is essential for ensuring the quality of their teaching staff.] “I was devastated,” Nichole says. The teacher who had inquired about the missing 401-K contributions was also dismissed.

UFT President Randi Weingarten has written letters to Calderon-Melendez, Chancellor Klein and the Associate Commissioner of the New York State Education Department, Sheila Evans-Tranumn, condemning the firings and calling for a full investigation of improprieties at Williamsburg Charter High School. [The State Education Department has responsibility for the oversight of charter schools.] “As president of the New York City teachers union, a labor leader and an educator, I am appalled by what you have done,” Weingarten told Calderon-Melendez, “and will do everything in my power to both publicize and right this wrong.”

Nichole applied for a position teaching English at one of New York City’s very best public high schools, Brooklyn Tech, which hired her last week. Having quickly landed on her feet, Nichole now says “I will never again work in a school where I don’t belong to a union.” Her dismissed colleague was hired at a top private New York City school.

Today, all of the New York City daily newspapers have reports on her firing. See the New York Times article, the New York Daily News article, the New York Post article and the New York Sun article.

For the most part, Calderon-Melendez ducked reporters’ calls on the firings. But he did speak to New York Daily News reporter Erin Einhorn, and engaged in the type of gutter smear that says everything about the sort of person who makes it. “She hates children and she’s a racist,” he said by way of explanation for his actions. [A later print edition of the Times also carried the accusations.]

Amazing, isn’t it, that the same person who was highly praised by both her supervisors and her students for her caring, her dedication and her relationship with her students, could “hate children” and be “a racist”? Just as amazing, isn’t it, that students would hand in a petition with four pages of signatures demanding the re-hiring of a teacher who “hates” them? Nichole, who is a Quaker that feels so strongly about opposing bigotry that she agreed to be the unpaid faculty advisor for Williamsburg’s Gay-Straight Alliance, said she “was floored” by Calderon-Melendez’s slander.

But we have to admit that having seen what had already taken place, we at Edwize were not surprised. There are reasons why the Calderon-Melendezes of the charter world don’t want their teachers represented by unions. Those reasons have nothing to do with the quality of teaching the students receive, and everything to do with the exercise of absolute, unquestioned authority by Those In Power.

That is why teachers in charter schools, like teachers in other public schools, need unions. And it is also why, as the case of Nichole Byrne Lau so pointedly illustrates, students in charter schools need to have their teachers protected by unions. If there was a union at the Williamsburg Charter High School, the students in that school would still have one great, wonderful teacher of English.

posted by Steve @ 10:08:00 AM

REENBURGH, N.Y., June 29 — Isiah Thomas the coach surveys the roster assembled by Isiah Thomas the president and likes what he sees — so much so that the Knicks might be unusually quiet this summer.

The Knicks won just 23 games last season, and their two draft picks — forward Renaldo Balkman and guard Mardy Collins — are not expected to make a major impact. Yet Thomas, the man with two job titles and a one-year ultimatum, said he was satisfied with his team.

"If we have to open the season today, I'm pretty comfortable with what we have," Thomas said Thursday, after the Knicks introduced their two rookies.

It was a curious assessment, or maybe just a spectacular smoke screen. For months, N.B.A. executives have speculated that the Knicks were collecting chips — big-name players, expiring contracts and prospects — to make a blockbuster trade. The names of Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O'Neal, Allen Iverson and Al Harrington have been floated as potential targets.

"And my job still is to check into those names that have been floated about," Thomas said. But, he added later: "I'm not here waiting for Santa Claus to come save us. I was told early on, we didn't have any money and there was no Santa Claus. And I'm not looking for this great player to come save the day for us. The guys that we have, we'll make them better and we got a job to do. Nobody's coming to save us."

posted by Steve @ 1:05:00 AM

The Republican candidate for the United States Senate in New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., intends to make a campaign film that accuses his Democratic opponent, Robert Menendez, of "being wrapped up in the rackets for 30 years" despite public records and statements by former federal prosecutors that contradict Mr. Kean's most serious charges.

Mr. Kean's chief campaign consultant, Matt Leonardo, a strategist for Republican candidates, disclosed the plans in an interview and said the film would be "very similar" in purpose to the commercials used to attack the military record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential race.

Kean campaign officials have sought to erode their opponent's public biography, charging that virtually every moment of Mr. Menendez's career has been mired in graft and bossism. That includes his early days in Union City, where Mr. Menendez has said that he acted to thwart a racketeering scheme involving his own political associates and organized crime figures — a claim that is documented in public records and corroborated by independent authorities.

Nevertheless, the Kean campaign will challenge that biography in "a long-form film," Mr. Leonardo said, just as commercials broadcast in 2004 attacked Mr. Kerry's military record. Those commercials, relying on claims by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, purported to expose Mr. Kerry's military decorations as exaggerated or fraudulent. Although the premise and many elements of the Swift boat advertisements were strongly disputed, as a whole they were seen as successful in hobbling the Kerry campaign.

"The similarity between the Swift boat ads and this movie — you have two individuals who have told stories for a political purpose and the facts just don't jibe," Mr. Leonardo said. "And these two individuals were able to get away with telling it their way for more than a decade and a half. I would say it's very similar in that way."

Mr. Kean's most serious charge is that Mr. Menendez was "part of a massive illegal kickback scheme" as a Union City official in 1978, and not the courageous truth teller depicted in his résumé. Mr. Kean charges that Mr. Menendez cooperated with prosecutors to keep himself out of jail.

Mr. Kean's charges are not, however, supported by the public record and were repudiated by independent authorities including the four assistant United States attorneys who prosecuted Union City officials of that era for racketeering and corruption. There is no truth, those former officials say, to the Kean campaign's charge that Mr. Menendez made a deal to keep himself out of prison.

The prosecutors said the actions of Mr. Menendez, as the secretary of the Union City Board of Education from 1978 to 1982, were "gutsy" and "courageous." They said he was never in legal jeopardy. During a four-month trial in 1981 and 1982, the corrupt contractor at the center of the scheme testified that Mr. Menendez created headaches for the plotters when he balked at processing fraudulent paperwork needed for a kickback scheme.
...........................

He said that the film would not rely on money from a 527 committee, the type of tax-exempt but politically active organization that financed the Swift boat commercials attacking Mr. Kerry.

Both he and Ms. Hazelbaker said that the source — campaign money as opposed to a 527 committee — was the primary distinction between the Swift boat commercials and the planned film on Mr. Menendez.

"They're similar," Ms. Hazelbaker said, "in the sense both intended to expose facts about biography."

The Menendez campaign said the film would damage Mr. Kean.

"A lie is a lie, no matter how many times Tom Kean Jr. repeats it," said Matt Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Menendez. "He already has been exposed as a fraud. He has destroyed his credibility, and he is on a fast track to ruining a respected family name."

posted by Steve @ 12:43:00 AM

If Bernard B. Kerik admits today, as expected, that he failed to report a gift that investigators say came from a city contractor with ties to organized crime, it will likely settle a criminal inquiry that has trailed the former police commissioner.

But the legal proceeding in State Supreme Court in the Bronx is likely to leave one major question unanswered:

Did city investigators, who knew of Mr. Kerik's relationship with the contractor, ever raise it as an issue in 2000 when they were asked to check his background?

At today's proceeding, Mr. Kerik is expected to acknowledge that while serving as correction commissioner, he paid only a fraction of the cost of a $200,000 renovation to his Bronx apartment that was started in 1999 by associates of the contractor, Interstate Industrial.

While the renovation has come to light only recently, the city's Department of Investigation had long known of Mr. Kerik's relationship with Interstate.

City records show that two months before he was made police commissioner by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, city investigators knew that Mr. Kerik was friendly with the owner of Interstate, a New Jersey construction company that was seeking a license from the city. And investigators knew the company had recently hired both Mr. Kerik's brother and the friend who was best man at his wedding.

Mr. Giuliani has said that none of this information was brought to his attention before he made his decision to appoint Mr. Kerik.

Most of the information did not surface until 18 months ago, when Mr. Kerik's nomination as Homeland Security secretary unraveled in a swirl of questions. At the time, city investigators said they would review the way Mr. Kerik's background check was conducted when Mr. Giuliani promoted him.

After the court proceeding today, the city's investigations commissioner, Rose Gill Hearn, is scheduled to join the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, at a news conference, where they may well address some of the remaining questions.

Mr. Kerik plans to plead to two misdemeanor charges, and is expected to admit failing to report accepting the renovation, a person with information on the agreement said yesterday.

He is also expected to admit failing to report a $29,000 loan from a friend, a real estate developer, that he used as the down payment on the apartment, the person said.

The Bronx grand jury that investigated the matter originally reviewed possible felony bribery and corruption charges.

Under the arrangement, Mr. Kerik would not serve any time in jail and would keep his private investigator's license and his pistol license.

Nonetheless, the criminal inquiry has been a considerable setback to Mr. Kerik, a former police detective who rose quickly in city government under Mr. Giuliani. His service in the police post, during which he directed the city's response to the World Trade Center attacks, was the basis for President Bush's decision to nominate him for the Homeland Security job in 2004.

Mr. Kerik quickly withdrew from consideration for the federal job, citing possible tax and immigration problems involving his family's nanny. His withdrawal was followed by a stream of accusations about personal, financial and ethical improprieties, as well as disclosures about his relationship with one of the owners of Interstate, Frank DiTommaso.

posted by Steve @ 12:36:00 AM

WASHINGTON, June 29 — The government has recovered a stolen laptop computer and external hard drive that contains the birthdates and Social Security numbers for millions of veterans and military personnel, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Thursday.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement from its Baltimore field office that it appeared that the data had not been copied or misused.

"A preliminary review of the equipment by computer forensic teams has determined that the database remains intact and has not been accessed since it was stolen," the statement said.

Michelle Crnkovich, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Baltimore, said the computer was turned over to agents there on Wednesday. The person who delivered the laptop has not been charged, Ms. Crnkovich said. A $50,000 reward had been offered for information related to the computer.

Ms. Crnkovich said the United States Park Service had helped in the recovery of the equipment, which will be further tested by F.B.I. officials in Washington.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said on Capitol Hill on Thursday that there were no reports that the stolen data had been used for identity theft. But he acknowledged that the situation had "brought to the light of day some real deficiencies in the manner we handled personal data."

The laptop computer and a detachable hard drive were stolen in a burglary on May 3 from the home of an agency employee in Aspen Hill, Md. Some officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs learned of the theft almost immediately, but Mr. Nicholson said he was not notified until May 16.

Because of the delay, the F.B.I. did not find out about the theft until about two weeks after the burglary, which was under investigation by the police in Montgomery County, Md.

Officials at the veterans agency have said the employee violated department procedure by taking the information home. But The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that agency documents showed that the employee had approval to work on his laptop from home.

A spokesman for the agency, Matt Burns, said the employee had been put on administrative leave while the agency sought his dismissal. Mr. Burns declined to comment on the report by The A.P. "because it is an ongoing personnel matter."

Mr. Nicholson has said he wanted to dismiss the employee outright but was told he could not because of federal job-protection rights.

The records included names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers for millions of people, although the exact number has not been clear. At first, the department said information on 26.5 million veterans was affected. Later, it said the number included forces on active duty, as well as veterans.

posted by Steve @ 12:25:00 AM

First off in this series, I want to send those who followed my previous series toward Lockse's 'In Response to Strip-mining the Grassroots.' Lockse was an upper-level director for Grassroots Campaigns, Inc's 2004 Democratic National Committee fundraising canvass, and 'In Response...' is an essential counterpoint to 'Strip-Mining the Grassroots.'

Though the post doesn't draw any conclusions, it does corroborate the fundamental critique made by myself and others: this model might be a cost-effective way to fatten the donor rolls of its clients, but its hidden costs are anathema for the progressive movement. Rather than cultivate the grassroots, it burns through the grassroots like cheap fuel. (This critique is specific to GCI's DNC campaign, but its implications run wide--as GCI is merely the newest branch of the Public Interest Research Groups/Fund for Public Interest Research network, a corporate family that dominates the bottom-most level of the activist industry.) I want thank Lockse for speaking with both experience and a willingness to engage with criticism from below. I also want

A number of times in the course of the series, defenders of the GCI/PIRG/Fund model tried to dismiss my posts as the axe-grinding rants of an ex-employee who 'had a bad experience.' Now, it is true that 'Strip-Mining the Grassroots' was born of my experience working for GCI. And yet, I only raised money for the DNC for three weeks -- they were intense weeks, but ultimately not enough to leave a lucid impression of systemic failure. Rather, my 'bad experience' with GCI and its model was in doing Get Out the Vote for MoveOn PAC.

Now, as I take off my calm, methodical armchair-analyst hat and put on the hat of a young, idealistic progressive who is telling the story of his first intensive experience with political activism, I hope (perhaps in vain) that the impact of the following qualification is not lost amid the din of the blogosphere: the 2004 MoveOn PAC Leave No Voter Behind was not just a 'bad' experience. It was a soul-crushing experience.

-/-

I'll have to back up.

Like many others, I originally came to work for GCI by responding to an advertisement for its MoveOn field organizer jobs. It's hard to overstate how potent those ads were in the summer of 2004: 'Get paid to do GOTV for MoveOn!? Where do I sign up?'

At the time I was hired on, the MoveOn campaign wouldn't begin for several weeks yet -- until then, all new recruits were to work as Assistant Directors in the DNC canvass office. (This wasn't mentioned until well into our interview, and at that point, like most people, I was already sold.)

During those three weeks raising money for the DNC, I experienced the same cycle that the vast majority of PIRG/Fund canvass veterans will describe: intimidation followed by exhiliration, hard work increasingly beset by frustration, and then finally (as the priorities of our operation came into starker relief) disillusionment. If for some unlikely reason I had taken that job on its own, without the MoveOn campaign dangling in front of me like a lure, I would probably have lasted the average career span of a PIRG/Fund/GCI canvasser--two weeks--and then I would have walked out, brushing my hands of it, probably writing a sardonic little essay about the experience.

But I stuck out that long extra week for the MoveOn campaign. I could see that GCI was ruthlessly effective at getting to the bottom line -- and if it was this good at raising money, I figured, it would be able to use us to turn out some serious votes. When we finally got to the swing states as MoveOn organizers, I already had misgivings about GCI, but I was thrilled at the opportunity to work a hundred hours a week or more on the true 'frontline.' I figured that three weeks in the canvass trench had prepared me for it. I was mistaken.

Things went wrong, as things always will in a campaign. Then things got worse, as things often will in a campaign. But what happened next was a breakdown that went beyond miscommunication, disorganization, and Acts of the Campaign God. What happened next was a deliberate top-down action, and our campaign fell apart beneath it. Crucial objectives were abandoned; efforts to fix the problems were thwarted; those organizers who tried to independently rescue their own operations were intimidated and threatened. The human infrastructure was so poorly treated that virtually none of it lasted two days beyond the election. Altogether, it was a profound crisis of leadership.

Before anyone goes skipping down, torch aflame, to the comment box, I'm going to get further into the details in my next posts. Of course, I hope that veterans share the nature of their experience, good and bad -- each office has a different story, after all. But I'm quite secure in making this generalization.

After the election, I spoke with as many of my acquaintances (from both the DNC and MoveOn campaigns) as possible. Then I spoke with their acquaintances. I worked far enough into our network to confirm that the experience of my office was typical -- if anything, in fact, ours was one of the better units. Other offices saw up to three quarters of their staff quit -- at least one major office was summarily disbanded -- and only a handful of people (less than one in ten) reported that their experience had been positive on the whole. Some were still proud of what they had personally accomplished, though not one person believed that our campaign had turned out a significant number of votes (let alone the 476,000 voters who, according to GCI and MoveOn leadership, 'checked in' with us at the polls on election day). The general conviction fell somewhere between two points: the people charge of the operation were either wholly incompetent, or they were frauds.

But that was an unsatisfying conclusion for me. After a long 18 months spent trying to reach a better understanding of the philosophy and history (short- and long-term) behind Grassroots Campaigns, Inc, I don't think that either of those characterizations are accurate. I don't question the commitment of the people in charge, and I don't believe they were profiting off of our labor; I even believe that they are quite capable. In much the same way that GCI 'succeeded' for the DNC, the company crashed 'Leave No Voter Behind' right into the bottom line. But the crisis of leadership erupted because that bottom line wasn't votes -- the bottom line was the model, which was protected at the expense of the soured efforts of hundreds of organizers and tens of thousands of volunteers.

Why didn't I try to make this story public by blogging about this earlier? By the time I had pieced together enough of what happened, GCI was neck-deep in a post-election struggle for its life. 2005 was a scarce year for work--since after all, most of this sort of business (non-electoral, at least) is already dominated by its big sister, the Fund. With GCI on the verge of collapse, this story would have been hardly more relevant than the many sites already devoted to exposing the hypocrisies of its sister organizations.

In 2006, things changed: both the DNC and, to my surprise and disappointment, MoveOn PAC renewed their contracts with GCI. These new campaigns aren't near the massive scale of 2004, and one would hope that the company learned from its mistakes. But one cannot learn from mistakes if one will not recognize that mistakes were made. Regardless of how many people it burned along the way, GCI implemented the model -- and internally, that was considered a success. Apparently, its clients were also satisfied.

Does that sound familiar? It's the Cycle of Shrum. The experts run campaigns that lose -- but they're experts, and it's always those dastardly Republicans who out-spend and dirty-trick us, so the experts keep getting more campaigns to run. That system of self-preservation-through-unaccountability is now being threatened by the nascent progressive movement. This system must be threatened as well.

This series will look back at the failures of 2004 in order to better understand why this model needs to be checked going forward, to November 2006 and beyond. In my next post, I will describe the structure of the model in 2004, detail its initial failures, and provide some insight into what might be different now (and what hasn't changed)

.The PIRG model for raising money sucks ass. Having adults beg for money in the street? This is ridiculous in the extreme. This kind of thing should be professional and not leaving the workers feel screwed.

posted by Steve @ 12:11:00 AM

So it was established earlier that New Hampshire rubber stamped the Iowa results in 2004, laying waste to the claim that Granite Staters were somehow better able to make decisions based on their up-close access to candidates, the so-called "retail politics" that romantics think drive decisions in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But what about Iowa? This says it all:

Iowa had roughly 2.2 million voting eligible adults in 2004, of whom (as of last month) approximately 1.9 million are considered "active" registered voters by the Iowa Secretary of State. But only 124,331 participated in the 2004 Democratic Caucuses for President (according to the subscription only Hotline). That number amounts to roughly 6% of all registered voters [...]

Six percent. Six. And we're supposed to trust Iowa with this decision because they are "more engaged" and have "experience" vetting candidates? Six percent seems to be the opposite of "engaged". Those arguments are utter bunk.

Iowa didn't decide our nominee. Six percent of registered voters in Iowa decided our nominee, a decision then rubberstamped by New Hampshire.

Put another way, 124,000 people in Iowa decided for 60 million or so Democrats who the nominee would be.

That's not a fair system. It's not a democratic system. And even though the DNC is just tinkering around the edges for 2008, it's a system that needs to be changed in subsequent cycles.

Update: Larry Sabato has a solution. There are many possible solutions, so I don't want to focus on that. What I do like is how he identifies the problem:

Why should two small, heavily white, disproportionately rural states have a hammerlock on the making of the president? Together, Iowa and New Hampshire are a mere 1.4 percent of the US population, and about 40 percent of their residents are rural—double the national proportion. Their average population of African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos is 3.6 percent, while the nation as a whole is 24.6 percent minority. Even if one assumes, incorrectly, that the two states are somehow representative of their Northeast and Midwest regions, the South and West (containing 55 percent of the country’s people) are left entirely out of the critical opening window of presidential selection [...]

posted by Steve @ 12:00:00 AM

Thu Jun 29, 2006 at 07:40:08 AM PDT

In a 5-3 decision this morning (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld), the United States Supreme Court ruled that neither Congress's post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), nor the inherent powers of the President gave the President the authoirty to establish military tribunals on Guantanamo Bay to try and convict alleged enemy combatants in the war on terror. The Court found the commissions illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention.

Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion, supported in its entirety by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter. In a separate opinion, Justice Kennedy joined enough of it to count. Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas all dissented, with the Chief Justice sitting out because he ruled in this case when it was previously heard by the D.C. Circuit.

I will update this space once the written opinions are available online, but wanted to open up the discussion now. You can read some background about the case via this link, and read the oral argument transcript here.

[first update]: Read about what the Geneva Convention ruling apparently means for interrogations and torture.

[second update]: The Opinion of the Court is now online. It is 185 pages long.

posted by Steve @ 11:17:00 AM

There has been a lot of recent controversy over bloggers that take on different roles. For example, bonddad, Chris Bowers, and thereisnospoon have recently launched a consulting firm called NetRoots Research, Strategy & Analysis. Peter Daou has taken a job with Hillary Clinton. Obviously, Jerome Armstrong's role within the Warner campaign has been a hot topic recently. The cold hard reality of political blogging is that it doesn't pay very well. Only Duncan Black and Markos Moulitsas make what I would consider a decent living off their websites. The rest of us struggle to pay the rent. (This is a reminder that you can help me pay my bills by visiting the Booman Tribune store).

A decision to use the skills and influence we have gained as bloggers to make some income is one that must be weighed against the loss of independence that comes with creating a conflict of interest. Peter Daou now has the job of making Hillary Clinton palatable to the netroots (no enviable task) and no amount of disclosure will restore his prior freedom to tell it like he sees it. Yet, anyone that would be critical of Peter for taking a job with the former first lady that actually pays real money and (hopefully) comes with medical benefits, is being grossly unfair. As long as everything is disclosed, we should be happy that Peter has this opportunity.

If we want bloggers, particularly community bloggers, to maintain their independence we need to make sure they can make a living. When I was down in DC for the Take America Back 2006 conference, I was talking to Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla about our financial woes. We started brainstorming ways that smaller bloggers can increase their income, and we came up with the kernel of an idea.

If you have ever visited Salon.com you've noticed that they require you, if you want to read an entire article, to either pay for a subscription or watch an advertisement. We thought, eureka, can't we create a monthly e-zine of some of the more popular bloggers where bloggers can contribute exclusive material not available at their own websites?

One of the problems with the diary format is that it is quite limiting. We have to make our points in no more than about 1500 words or people will lose interest and not make comments in our threads. But, a lot of us would like to do more comprehensive and well researched pieces that are not designed to encourage lively feedback. Without the pressure to constantly provide fresh content, we can put our writing, reasoning, and research skills to greater use and do more wonky or hacky pieces.

We could create a kind of co-operative, where the contributors would make an equal share of the proceeds each month from the proceeds of subscriptions and advertisements. The model would be salon.com. Do you think that we could succeed with such a model? Would you be interested in reading longer exclusive pieces from your favorite bloggers on a monthly basis? Would you subscribe to such a publication? If it helps more bloggers maintain their independence, would that be something you see as desireable? Do you have any ideas for how to improve the business model? Would you volunteer to help write the software or sell subsciptions and advertising? What bloggers would you like to see in such a publication?

posted by Steve @ 2:23:00 AM

Although many of us may have forgotten, we don't need to hear from a judge and jury to know that Republican operative Carey Lee Cramer is a lowlife right-wing monstrosity who has long ago earned what's in store for him. But a judge and jury did speak today and they found the Republican consultant guilty, very guilty. A typical example of the Republican Party's family values in action, Cramer has become something on a posterboy for the GOP's "Leave No Child Untouched" policies.

I'll get into the specifics of Cramer's child molesting trial in a moment. First I want to remind everyone of the last time we ran into this Republican sack of dung. Think back to 2000 when Karl Rove's and George W. Bush's team was throwing every lie they could at the Clinton-Gore Administration. Rove's close friend Cramer became very wealthy as a Republican Party consultant who came up with a made-for-television lie claiming Clinton and Gore were secretly selling nuclear technology in return for Gore campaign contributions. Remember now? Obviously only insane people believed this silliness-- but that's the Republican base, the 29% of Americans who still insist that the absolute worst "president" in American history is doing an acceptable job.

Cramer’s repugnant TV ad showed a young girl picking daisy petals and ends with a nuclear blast, a remake of a 1964 ad that helped focus attention of what a kook and extremist Barry Goldwater was when he ran for president. Cramer’s ad made national news, though he refused to admit that he got the money for the commercial from Rove and Bush.

Interestingly, one of the girls he used in the ad was one of his rape victims. She lived with Cramer and his ex-wife for 8 years in Mercedes and McAllen in Texas. Cramer started molesting her when she was only 8 years old. (Do you know what they do in prison to dirty Republican men who molest little children?) Anyway, the inappropriate touching escalated to all sorts of Limbaugh/O'Reilly-like perversions and, finally, serial rape. On top of that, a second young girl, a 15 year old, came forward and also testified that the Republican slime bucket also molested her.

The jury found him guilty and Cramer faces up to 149 years in prison. He was taken into custody on a $4 million appeal bond after the verdict. All 29% of Americans who are still Bush supporters are going to need to pray that Cramer makes it through his first month in the pen.

posted by Steve @ 2:07:00 AM

SAN FRANCISCO, June 28 — In a sharp rebuke, the City Council of San Jose, Calif., formally asked the city's mayor to resign Wednesday, just days after he was arraigned on fraud, bribery and conspiracy charges.

The mayor, Ron Gonzales, rejected the request for his resignation, which came on an 8-to-3 vote of the Council. "I plan to complete my term as your mayor," Mr. Gonzales said to a smattering of boos from audience members in the Council chambers. "I say this because I am innocent."

Mr. Gonzales, 55, was arrested Thursday, along with his top budget aide, Joseph Guerra, on charges of secretly arranging an $11.25 million contract with Norcal Waste Systems to provide garbage services for the city, and lying to cover up the deal. Mr. Gonzales has repeatedly denied the charges, though he previously apologized to the City Council for arranging the deal without consulting it.

The Council censured the mayor in December. On Wednesday, members went a step further, quizzing the city attorney, Richard Doyle, about ways it could punish the mayor, including limiting such things as travel expenses and freezing the hiring of any staff members.

In an odd twist, Mr. Gonzales presided over the meeting and also spoke, asking his family and staff members to stand and thanking them for their support. "This afternoon is not about Ron Gonzales," he said. "This is about our family name."

Mr. Doyle cautioned the Council that it could open itself up to accusations of violating Mr. Gonzales's civil rights if it tried to remove him from office before he is convicted of anything. "The Council has to establish grounds, and grounds have not been established," Mr. Doyle said.

...................
On Wednesday, some of those residents rebuked the Council for rushing to judgment. "Council members, please stop," said Bill Chew, a former fringe candidate for mayor. "Today's actions make you look like a lynch mob."

posted by Steve @ 1:57:00 AM

Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, is close to reaching an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to having accepted improper gifts totaling tens of thousands of dollars while he was a city official in the late 1990's, two people with information on the plea negotiations said yesterday.

Under the proposed agreement, Mr. Kerik would plead guilty to failing to report accepting roughly $200,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment — a violation of the city's administrative code. The work, officials have said, was paid for by a New Jersey construction company that the city had long accused of having ties to organized crime.

Mr. Kerik, 50, who accepted the gift when he served as correction commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, will not face jail time, but is expected to pay a substantial fine, those with information about the case said. He is also expected to admit having failed to report receiving a loan.

A guilty plea would represent a further fall from grace for a public official whose dazzling ascent in city government took him from the rank of third-grade police detective in 1993, when he served as a volunteer campaign bodyguard and chauffeur for Mr. Giuliani in his mayoral campaign, to becoming the city's police commissioner in 2000, a post he held at the time of the Sept. 11 terror attack.

Mr. Kerik nearly rose higher still, to the rank of cabinet secretary, when President Bush nominated him to head the Department of Homeland Security in December 2004. But he was forced to withdraw a week later, citing possible tax problems involving his family's nanny.

A lawyer for Mr. Kerik, Joseph Tacopina, would not say whether an agreement had been reached. Steven Reed, a spokesman for the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, whose office conducted the inquiry along with the city's Department of Investigation, declined to comment.

Both people who spoke about the plea negotiations cautioned that some issues remained unresolved, but they said Mr. Kerik could enter his guilty plea before a Bronx judge as early as tomorrow. The two people demanded anonymity because the case involved grand jury proceedings

.......................
Mr. Kerik, who withdrew from Mr. Giuliani's consulting firm in the days after his failed Homeland Security nomination, has been doing security consulting work in Jordan. He was expected to return to the United States last night.

posted by Steve @ 1:46:00 AM

I'm 26 years old and I recently left a doctorate program in clinical psychology abruptly after only one semester. I quit school for several reasons but primarily I was feeling burnt out (I had recently completed a two-year master's degree in the field), I no longer felt excited enough about the field to justify 10 hours of work per day, and I hated that I was going to be spending five to six years of my life in a part of the country (typically referred to as the "armpit") that I absolutely hated.

I moved to New York City and searched for jobs outside of psychology to no avail. I thought I could go into ad copywriting, perhaps to use my psychology training for evil instead of good. However, after two months spent without work, school, or any friends to speak of, I became desperate. I eventually had to swallow my pride and ask my father for help; so when he put me in touch with an old business friend who offered me a job, I jumped at the chance. Fast-forward three months and I am utterly miserable here. The job is not challenging, the office environment is lonely, and frankly, I feel diminished working in a position that doesn't technically require a college degree. The icing is that it pays so poorly I have to get financial help from my parents, which truly bothers me.

I am in an existential panic -- I have no idea what field or career I would like to pursue at this point and yet I want to be there already. I went to college for film and media studies but I have absolutely no faith in my ability to become any kind of writer. In fact, I entered into psychology because it appeared to be a safe and secure career path (as opposed to trying to make it as a creative). My girlfriend is trying to convince me to go to law school so that I will have more career options, but I can feel the same forces of practicality that sent me into psychology pulling me toward that decision. I'm not OK exploring lots of different careers at this point in my life; I feel like I had that opportunity and I used it on psychology. So I guess my question is: How do I even begin to figure out what to do with my life ... simple, right?

Ph.D. Dropout

posted by Steve @ 1:23:00 AM

Webb Campaign Blasts Allen Campaign for “Weak-Kneed Attacks” Against Men and Women in Uniform


Arlington – The campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb today called the attacks on Webb’s patriotism by Allen’s campaign, “weak-kneed attacks by cowards” and demanded that Allen and his campaign apologize.

“George Felix Allen Jr. and his bush-league lapdog, Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb’s position on free speech and flag burning. Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run. When he and his disrespectful campaign puppets attack Jim Webb they are attacking every man and woman who served. Their comments are nothing more than weak-kneed attacks by cowards. George Felix Allen Jr. needs to apologize to Jim Webb and to all men and women who have served our nation,” Webb spokesman Steve Jarding said.

On Tuesday, George Felix Allen Jr. and his campaign issued a press release in which the Allen campaign, through Wadhams, implied that Webb’s position in support of the Free Speech Amendment to the U.S. Constitution amounted to a political act and not a defense of our Constitution, which Webb fought for and for which he was highly decorated. George Felix Allen Jr. did not serve.

“I believe it is precisely because of bush-league attacks like this that John Zogby, a highly respected, independent polling expert just this week said that Dick Wadhams is not fit to serve as a campaign manager and that George Allen should find a new manager,” Jarding said.

“While Jim Webb and others of George Felix Allen Jr.’s generation were fighting for our freedoms and for our symbols of freedom in Vietnam, George Felix Allen Jr. was playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada. People who live in glass dude ranches should not question the patriotism of real soldiers who fought and bled for this country on a real battlefield,” Jarding said.

“Is Dick Wadhams willing to publicly say that Colin Powell, John Glenn and Bob Kerrey are unpatriotic for having the same position on the flag burning amendment that Jim Webb has? Ask him,” Jarding said.

Jarding continued, “The following is why George Felix Allen Jr. has not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb in his support of our Constitution and its free speech provisions:

Jim Webb was first in this class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officer’s Basic School in Quantico, Virginia.

--Jim Webb served with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam, where as a rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous An Hoa Basin west of Danang.

--Jim Webb was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals and two Purple Hearts while fighting in Vietnam.

--Jim Webb served as a platoon commander and as an instructor in tactics and weapons at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School.

--Jim Webb served in the US Congress as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981, becoming the first Vietnam veteran to serve as a full committee counsel in the Congress.

--In 1982, Jim Webb first proposed, then led the fight for including an African American soldier in the memorial statue that now graces the Vietnam Veterans memorial on the National Mall.

--In 1984, Jim Webb was appointed the inaugural Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, where he traveled extensively in, and worked closely with, our NATO allies. As Assistant Secretary, Webb directed considerable research and analysis of the U.S. military’s mobilization capabilities.

--In 1987, Jim Webb was appointed Secretary of the Navy becoming the first Naval Academy graduate in history to serve in the military and be appointed Secretary of the Navy.

In addition to his wartime medals, Jim Webb has been awarded the following medals and citations:

-The Department of Defense distinguished Public Service Medal

-The Medal of Honor Society’s Patriot Award

-The American Legion National Commander’s Public Service Award

-The VFW’s Media Service Award

-The Marine Corps League’s Military Order of the Iron Mike Award

-The John Russell Leadership Award

-The Robert L. Denig Distinguished Service Award.

posted by Steve @ 8:27:00 AM

THEY were the youngest ones there but the respect and awe for Private Johnson Beharry and Lance Corporal Christopher Finney was none the less undiminished.

The pair were among Britain’s most courageous men and women who gathered at Westminster Abbey yesterday to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Cross and the 50th anniversary of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association.

The service was in honour of their outstanding courage but, as the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, put it, acts of selfless gallantry were often performed by ordinary people. He said that the medal instituted by Queen Victoria in January 1856 and described by The Times as “plain” suited “the modesty that often accompanies great courage”.

The service and the reception at St James’s Square were attended by 8 of the surviving holders of the VC and 22 of the 24 surviving holders of the GC. They were joined by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall and families of medal holders who had died or been killed in action.
...............
Private Beharry said: “When we all meet, I don’t ask what they did (to get the VC) and they don’t ask what I did, but they are all great people and they give me good ideas about how to deal with things.” He admitted that winning the VC had changed his life.

Private Beharry and Lance Corporal Finney carried a wreath down the aisle of the Abbey and handed it to the Prince, who laid it on the VC, GC memorial. At the reception in St James’s Square, the Prince met all the VC and GC holders.

“Circumstances may change, technology may change, but the capacity for some very rare human beings to act in an utterly exceptional and selfless way remains unchanged by the passage of time,” he said in an address to the 1,600 guests.

NONE BUT THE BRAVE: THE SURVIVING 12

Private Johnson Beharry, of the 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, who saved the lives of 30 comrades in two individual acts of heroism in al-Amarah, southern Iraq, in May and June 2004

Havildar Bhan Bhagta Gurung, of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles, who cleared four enemy foxholes on his own in Burma in March 1945

Flight Lieutenant John Cruickshank, of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, No 210 Squadron, who attacked a German U-boat in July 1944, while piloting a Catalina flying boat, persisting with the assault despite being seriously wounded.

Lieutenant-Commander Ian Fraser, of the Royal Naval Reserve, who commanded a midget submarine in a daring raid on the Japanese cruiser Takao in July 1945

Private Edward Kenna, of the 2/4th Battalion Australian Imperial Force, who, under fire, destroyed a Japanese machinegun post in New Guinea in May 1945

Havildar Lachhiman Gurung, of the 8th Gurkha Rifles, who single-handedly fought off wave after wave of enemy attacks on his position in Burma in May 1944

Warrant Officer Class 2 Keith Payne, of the Royal Australian Infantry Regiment, who defended his men and rescued wounded while under fierce attack by North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War in May 1969

Captain Rambahadur Limbu, of the 10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles, who saved his men during an enemy attack in Sarawak, Malaysia, in November 1965

Private William Speakman-Pitts, of The Black Watch, who led a grenade charge against the enemy in the Korean War in November 1951

Lieutenant Tulbahadur Pun, of the 6th Gurkha Rifles, who charged a Japanese position on his own in June 1944 in Burma

Lieutenant Sir Tasker Watkins, of The Welch Regiment, who charged two enemy posts in August 1944

Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson, of The East Surrey Regiment, attached to the Somaliland Camel Corps, who managed to beat off an enemy attack in Somaliland in August 1940

posted by Steve @ 8:12:00 AM

Peter Daou is one of the most astute and aggressive bloggers in the country. Senator Hillary Clinton is the poster child for equivocation and triangulation. So, it was interesting news when we found out that Senator Clinton has hired Peter Daou to be her web consultant. Hillary hiring Peter Daou is a little like Nixon going to China.

I know Peter and consider him a friend. I know for a fact that he understands the problems with the Democratic establishment and what needs to be done to fix it. And as much as anyone, Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party establishment.

So, that sets up an interesting question. Will Mohammed go to the mountain or will the mountain come to Mohammed?

There are three possibilities:

1. Hillary will actually listen to what Peter has to say and adjust her views and actions.

2. They will not be able to see eye to eye and Peter will be ignored and then will eventually leave the job.

3. Peter will become an apologist for Hillary’s current stances on things like Iraq, which are hideous and morally repugnant.

I would be really disappointed if option number two were to happen. I would be crushed if option three did. I was thinking of talking to Peter before writing this, but decided it would be better just to write it because I would feel bad even writing option number three down after I talked to him personally.

But that possibility must be mentioned because it is a critical question that is likely to face a lot of the prominent bloggers soon – how much do you accommodate the establishment without being co-opted by them?

There will be a struggle. The establishment won’t simply lay down their arms and run into the waiting arms of the netroots and ask for forgiveness. It is hard to get people out of a pattern they’re used to. On the other hand, there will be a lot of pressure on the bloggers hired by campaigns to serve their new employers faithfully.

It’s an interesting tightrope. I think it’s a phenomenon that should be tracked. Will the bloggers be co-opted or will the establishment finally see the light? Who doesn’t love a fun drama like that?

So, I propose The Daou Index. The scale of the index will be 0-100. 100 is when the Democratic Establishment understands the concerns of the netroots perfectly and does their best to faithfully address them. 0 is what we had when the Kerry campaign sat Peter Daou in a corner and didn’t listen to a word he said during 2004.

I believe the index has already risen from that 0 point in 2004. Presidential candidates came to Yearly Kos (the first bloggers convention held earlier this month) in droves. John Kerry and Russ Feingold frequently go out of their way to meet with bloggers now. Mark Warner is famously courting Jerome Armstrong of MyDD and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. And now Hillary has hired Daou.

So, by my estimation, we’re at about a 10 out of a 100 right now.

Of course, the score can also go down if there are signs that bloggers turned consultants have been co-opted or Democrats backtrack on the issues. Another confirmation proceeding like Sam Alito's or General Hayden's can bring the score back down to zero. Issues and action matter most.

Hiring bloggers as consultants isn’t a panacea that automatically boosts your score. That’s not the end of the job, that’s the beginning.

Remember, bloggers aren’t the netroots, they’re the rough representatives of the netroots. The netroots are actual people all across America that are sick of the way the Democratic Party has been handling itself over the last five years.

But talking to people who talk to the netroots every day is a positive first step. The next step would be to listen to them.

If you listen to them you could understand what their real concerns are. A good starting point is to stop buying into the hype that people who are active on the blogs want Democrats to be more leftist. Understand that their primary concern is that you learn to stand up and fight. And fighting doesn’t mean pounding your chest over how many wars you supported. It means standing up for principles you and your voters believe in.

No one understands this better than Peter Daou. If you asked me to pick one person to send into the teeth of the Democratic establishment to deliver this message, I couldn’t name anyone better than Peter. If Hillary doesn’t listen to him, then there’s no hope for her and no chance for reconciliation.

We’re not looking for a pat on the head or an acknowledgment of our relevance. We are looking for actual action. We know the job is done when Democrats start fighting for what’s right rather than calculating what is expedient (and often grossly miscalculating it at that).

That would be when The Daou Index hits a 100. But we have long way to go to get there. But to her credit, Hillary’s taken the first step.

posted by Steve @ 7:38:00 AM

REUTERS/Pilar Olivares(PERU)

posted by Steve @ 3:15:00 AM

In May, Nichole Byrne Lau received an evaluation saying that her students at the Williamsburg Charter High School were "lucky to have you as their teacher." This month, she was fired.

Ms. Byrne Lau, 33, said she had been singled out for distributing copies of the pay scale for teachers in New York City's traditional public schools and organizing her colleagues to press for better salaries and benefits. "I'm devastated," she said yesterday.

Eddie Calderon-Melendez, chief executive of the school, in Brooklyn, did not respond to several telephone messages seeking comment. Kelly Devers, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Education, said it would investigate.

Charter schools are supervised by the state and receive public financing, but are run by outside groups. Under state law, new small charter schools are not bound by teachers' union contracts. To unionize, charter teachers must go through a multistep process and a formal vote.

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, has taken up Ms. Byrne Lau's case, saying it illustrates the obstacles to unionizing in charter schools. Ms. Weingarten's position was central to the State Assembly's recent refusal to allow more charter schools in New York State, against the wishes of the governor and the mayor.

........................

Ms. Byrne Lau said she had tried to organize a forum for teachers to share their grievances and push for a public and consistent pay scale to replace what she described as a hodgepodge of individually negotiated salaries, some comparable to public school pay, and some below. In fact, the school recently released a pay scale for 2006-7.

When she met with Mr. Calderon-Melendez on June 5, Ms. Byrne Lau said, he said that whoever distributed the city's teacher pay scale "obviously doesn't know how to run a school." He then told her he would not renew her contract, Ms. Byrne Lau said, but refused to say why, saying the school, an at-will employer, did not need to give a reason.

posted by Steve @ 2:58:00 AM

Listening to Bill Mahr deride United States leadership about war, I heard him state that the 20th century World Wars were "necessary". Perhaps.

It takes very little imagination to twist history slightly and remove any involvement of the United States from major war in the 20th century. Of course if history is changed in the slightest, a whole series of unforeseen consequences begin, but I will assume that none of these would be worse than the actual history.

WWI began over the assassination of a royal heir, in an unstable European environment created over the previous forty years, then rapidly became a savage stalemate in northern France and Belgium. Ignorant Generals persisted with a casualty producing strategy of artillery barrages and mass human charges against entrenched machine guns. With truly lethal tanks and airplanes too far in the future to make an impact, without United States involvement (with 53,400 killed) it is very likely one side or the other would have sued for peace and everyone would have gratefully gone home.

Or not. Too many people have an incomplete knowledge of history. After the 1918 Michael offensive, it was likely that the two sides would have staggered into a stalemate lasting into 1919 or 20. After the Nivelle mutinies, which nearly saw the French Army collapse in the field, the French couldn't attack, but wouldn't surrender. Turkey was also likely to collapse after the successful offensive from Arabia and up the Levant.

Germany had also held off the British in East Africa. What is most likely, is that colonies would have been traded and the internally weak Germany would have collapsed into revolution. The American Army forced a surrender to a Germany unlikely to accept one without it.

If the United States had shown patience and kept their ships out of harms way, this was the probable outcome. Russia would still have been drained over the fighting which paved the way for their revolution, but this would hardly have affected the United States. The largest impact of no clear winner would be the lack of the brutal restitution imposed on Germany, creating the environment necessary for the rise of Adolph Hitler to power. No Hitler, no European WWII.

But the fact was that Hitler came at the end of a violent process of political change, which led to rioting in the streets and armed mobs. Hitler didn't come from air, he came out of a right wing political structure backed by the army and police. It easily could have been any number of rightwingers. Or there could have been a full-blown civil war between the right and the left. The potential was certainly there.

A revolutiionary Russia was an aggressive promoter of exporting it's ideology as well.

The European WWII quickly enveloped France, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia because France lacked any resolve in stopping Hitler's invasion of the Rheinland. Hitler's army and political position so weak in comparison to France's that any resistance at all would have toppled Hitler's regime. Britain probably could not have reacted to topple Hitler's regime before they were strong, but nevertheless were safe from an invasion as Germany lacked the naval capability and logistics to move an army across the channel for a successful campaign. But for vengeful reactions on both Britain's and Germany's parts in the air bombing campaign, it is very likely that Britain's remaining air defenses would have been crushed and they also would have surrendered.

Again, this is a gross simplificiation of what happened. France was politically weak and divided, with a great deal of support for the fascists. There was no political will to stop Hitler. Once Churchill became prime minister, a deal labour forced on the government, surrender was unlikely. Britain had three massive colonies, India, Canada and Australia, which all ultimately suppled forces to them in Europe

Without possibility of a second front in Europe, Stalin would have been on his own against the ruthless Nazis. Once mobilized, Russia had the manpower and natural resources to outlast Germany. Germany was rapidly trying to perfect their rockets or invent a nuclear bomb, but it would be unlikely that a rocket would be perfected that could deliver the payload required for a nuclear bomb (early bombs were 9 to 10 thousand pounds), and neither side possessed a heavy bomber. It also would be unlikely that Germany could produce enough nuclear bombs to have changed the outcome, as Stalin would be unlikely to surrender regardless of the loss of life.

All of this came late in the war. Germany was unlikely to develop an atomic bomb because the talent had gone to the US and UK, being Jews and all. Russia nearly collapsed. Without the Arctic convoys, Russia couldn't have fed their troops or mechanized their army. Stalin reportedly wanted to make a deal in 1943, but the German territorial demands were excesive. Again, it was US industrial production which provided the cushion for both the UK and Russia.

Once the Nazi regime fell, Britain and France probably would have survived the war significantly weakened by the loss of foreign colonies. The lack of a West Germany would not have impacted the United States in any manner, other than a base for the cold war, also unnecessary as Stalin and his successors would not have viewed the United States as a threat.

Which is it? Surrender or survival. Why wouldn't Stalin view the rich, powerful US as a threat? West Germany provided millions of pounds of chemicals for US industry after WWII per year, including pharmacuticals. It served as a major market for US goods. It allowed the US a window into the east becauseRussia was still an aggressive power.

WWII in the Pacific was a much different war. Japan's territorial conquests were aimed at China (Manchuria), and France's and Britain's colonies, recognizing Britain's occupation with the war in Europe. With half of Japan's army engaged in China, the United States imposed an oil embargo on Japan which as we discovered was an unacceptable circumstance, which provoked a desperation attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor and drawing us into the war.

Actually, the Japanese had seen the US as their main rivals since 1922 and the Washington Treaty. China was a long standing ally of the US. We supported their government and gave them aid, which included military training.

The United States could have sat this one out without putting the embargo in place, however a bitter pill it would have been. Recognizing that Britain and France were unable to defend their Pacific colonies and having to give them up would have been nothing more than for-sidedness based on history. It certainly isn't clear how things would have shaken out, as China wouldn't have been able to mobilize the way Russia did, but perhaps when Russia collapsed the Nazis they would have turned against Japan, as they also claim Manchuria?

Uh, the Japanese would have controlled vast natural resources which the US needed, like rubber. And the Russians did turn on Japan.

Here again, without Hitler's rise to power the European WWII would not have existed and Britain and France could have dealt with Japan without involvement from the United States (with 291,500 killed in Europe and the Pacific).

Really? The British barely held on to India as it was. They faced an open rebellion in 1942, the Quit India campaign

The Korean War? 33,700 killed, and for what? No one knows any reason for this one.

Uh, because South Korea was attacked by the North is the reason for the Korean war.

Where in all of this would have been Ho Chi Mihn? The United States didn't like Ho because of his shoulder rubbing with communism in Europe, but Ho approached President Roosevelt for support and modeled a constitution after that of the United States. Roosevelt opposed any colonialism in the Pacific which put him at odds with Churchill, and unfortunately Roosevelt died leaving an ambiguous President Truman to let Churchill have his way. Granted, Ho would have to have beaten two other political parties to install a democracy in Vietnam, but standing by and then funding France's effort in installing a puppet government and hauling out the natural resources was only the way to get sucked into another 58,200 dead.

No, it was the labor government of Clement Atlee which perpetuated the colonial regimes after WWII. After the Red Fort trials of 1946, they were forced into negotiations to leave India, but still launched a 12 year colonial war in Malaya and by the UK 1953 was fighting a brutal war in Kenya.

Truman was afraid of the influence of Mao and the Chinese communists on Vietnam, which is why he allowed the French back into Indochina.

Since no United States involvement in WWII would by default mean that the United States would not have developed a nuclear weapon, it may very well have been that nuclear weapons were not developed at all. It seems logical that without nuclear weapons, world policy would have remained regional, where "you stay out of my yard and I'll stay out of yours" would have eliminated the cold war.

Uh, there was already a great deal of academic development towards an atomic bomb, the war just sped up development of nuclear weapons. Most of the major powers had a nuclear development program.

A weakened Britain and France doesn't appear to have a downside, viewing the mayhem caused by colonial territorial division in both Africa and the Middle East. Arbitrarily drawing a country's borders without regards to the tribal implications has proven to be a recipe for genocide and war. A prime example is Kuwait, carved out of Iraq and always disputed territory, the without British backing the takeover and subsequent 1991 conflict would never have happened.

A weakened Britain and France is what led to the colonial wars of the postwar era. Their inability to control their colonies led to war.

Need I go on?

posted by Steve @ 12:18:00 AM

PIKEVILLE, Ky. - A Marine who was dubbed the Marlboro Man after appearing in an iconic photograph from the Iraq War has filed for divorce less than a month after dozens of Americans contributed to a dream wedding for him and his bride.

.....................

Miller and his wife, Jessica Holbrook, were initially married at a county building in June 2005, but Miller had said in a Jan. 29 story in the San Francisco Chronicle that he wished he could give his wife the wedding she always wanted. Readers responded by helping pay for a $15,000 wedding June 3 at a golf course clubhouse near his hometown of Pikeville.

But by June 12, the Millers were living apart, according to court papers. He filed for divorce June 20, saying the marriage was "irretrievably broken."

"I'm just sad for them," said Eunice Davis of Pleasanton, Calif., who spearheaded the contributions. "It must be a very difficult time and a very difficult decision."

posted by Steve @ 12:07:00 AM

Tuesday, June 27, 2006
TIME	HOME		AWAY	MATCH	VENUE
Jun 27 11:00 ET	Brazil	v	Ghana	Match 55	Dortmund
Jun 27 15:00 ET	Spain	v	France	Match 56	Hanover

BERGISCH GLADBACH, Germany -- The view from Paffrather Strasse down into Belkaw Arena is not very good. A metal fence, a line of trees and a row of portable toilets stand between the street and the small stadium in this suburb of Cologne, but that does not deter the dozen or so fans trying to catch a glimpse of the Brazilian national team.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, the world's most entertaining and recognizable soccer players were doing nothing more than jogging -- some rather lazily -- around the field. But every time the group of forwards trotted down the sideline closest to the street, the squeals began: "Ronaldiiiiiiiinho!" "Roooooonaldo!" This continued for nearly 25 minutes: Ronaldinho and Ronaldo circled the field, the fans shrieked and occasionally one of the stars would briefly wave or smile.


Such is life for the defending World Cup champions. The players arrived at their training session in a bus with "Vehicle monitored by 180 million Brazilian hearts" splashed across the side, and on this day it appeared as if they were being monitored by 180 journalists, including several international television crews.

Brazil came to Germany as the heavy favorite to win its sixth title. A victory over Ghana in a second-round game Tuesday in Dortmund would be the Brazilians' 11th in a row and would extend their World Cup record for consecutive wins. In their first three games, they have given up just one goal and scored seven.

"These are numbers we are proud of," said Cafu, the team captain.

But until Brazil's third group-play win over overmatched Japan, the players weren't necessarily happy with their play. Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, who guided Brazil to the 1994 title, has been criticized for being overcautious and predictable. Ronaldo appeared slow and unfit, and observers questioned why Parreira insisted on keeping him in the lineup. Even Ronaldinho, the world player of the year, seemed to struggle. Brazil was winning, but without its usual panache.

"People were disappointed, because this is not the Brazil we expected," said Valmir Jorge, who works for Radio Transamerica in Sao Paulo. "It was not compelling. The last game against Japan, we started to play like Brazil.

posted by Steve @ 12:28:00 PM

posted by Steve @ 12:39:00 AM

The video game publisher Take-Two Interactive said yesterday that it had received a grand jury subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney's office, seeking information about a range of its business practices dating back to 2001 and the inclusion of sexually explicit material in one of its games.

Edward Nebb, a company spokesman, said the district attorney had not told Take-Two whether it or any of its executives or directors were targets of the grand jury investigation. A spokeswoman at the district attorney's office declined to comment last night.

If Take-Two is the focus of the investigation, as the depth and nature of the questions it is being asked by prosecutors suggests, it would be the first time that a criminal inquiry into the activities of the company and its directors and executives had come to light. The company, which is based in New York, said it was cooperating with the investigation.

The company's announcement, which came after the stock market's close, prompted a plunge in its shares in after-hours trading. The stock was down nearly 19 percent, to $10.44, a 52-week low.

Take-Two, publisher of the hit video game franchise Grand Theft Auto, has for years operated under a cloud, having been the subject of inquiries by the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission and the focus of debate among politicians in Washington.

It has also been something of an industry darling, with a bad-boy reputation that was buoyed by the success of Grand Theft Auto. The game popularized the idea of allowing players to roam freely in a virtual world and rewarded them for completing missions that often involved violent and antisocial behavior.

Since its introduction in 1998, Grand Theft Auto and its sequels have sold around 50 million copies, the company says.

Evan Wilson, a video game industry analyst for Pacific Crest Securities, said that the latest inquiries indicated that Take-Two's problems had not gone away.

"At one point it appeared that all of these issues were behind the company," he said. Now, he added, "it appears there is a fresh round of concerns."

In a press release, Take-Two said that on June 19, it received subpoenas requesting documents "covering various periods beginning Oct. 1, 2001." It said the requested documents pertained to a wide range of issues, including disclosures and presentations by the company about its partnerships, earnings and acquisitions.

In early 2002, Take-Two said it had to restate seven quarters of financial returns, for the entire year of 2000 and the first three quarters of 2001. Trading in its stock was halted for three weeks.

Take-Two also said yesterday that the district attorney had specifically asked for documents pertaining to its acquisitions in 2005, when it bought four independent video game studios.

The company said further that prosecutors were seeking information about hidden scenes included in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the latest installment in the franchise. A program that became available over the Internet allowed players to unlock sexually explicit scenes that had not been disclosed when the game was given its age rating.

The scenes prompted debate in Congress about the violent and, in particular, sexual content in video games. Take-Two withdrew the game from the market last July and reissued it a month later without the graphic material.

posted by Steve @ 12:13:00 AM

The squat, bunker-like building in a south Topeka suburb does not look like a place to turn American politics on its head. Nor does Mark Parkinson, a tall, affable man, look too much like a revolutionary. But here, deep in the American heartland, are the warning signs of a political earthquake.

The two-storey office block is Parkinson's campaign headquarters as he runs as Democrat candidate for deputy governor. So far, so normal. Except that only a few weeks ago Parkinson was a Republican. In fact, he was Kansas Republican party chairman.

His defection to the Democrats sent shockwaves through a state deeply associated with the national Republican cause and the evangelical conservatives at its base. Nor was it just Parkinson's leave-taking that left Republicans spluttering with rage and talking of betrayal. It was that as he left Parkinson lambasted his former party's obsession with conservative and religious issues such as gay marriage, evolution and abortion.
Sitting in his headquarters, the new Democrat is sticking to his guns. Republicans in Kansas, he says, have let down their own people. 'They were fixated on ideological issues that really don't matter to people's everyday lives. What matters is improving schools and creating jobs,' he said. 'I got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.'

This is music to Democratic ears and has profound potential implications for November's mid-term elections. Kansas has been an iconic state for the Republican right, a symbol for issues such as teaching creationism in schools and fighting abortion rights. The modern Republican party, masterminded by political guru Karl Rove, has harnessed fury over such topics to allow the Republicans to dominate US politics since 2000. This was the topic of Thomas Frank's hit book of the 2004 presidential election campaign entitled: What's The Matter With Kansas? It used the state's falling under the spell of conservative Republicanism to explain national American politics.

But in a swath of heartland states such as Kansas, Democrats are seeing the first signs of their party's rebirth. Parkinson is not alone in switching sides. In Virginia, Jim Webb, a one-time Reagan official, is seeking to be a Democrat senator. In South Carolina, top Republican prosecutor Barney Giese has defected after a spat with conservatives. Back in Kansas another top Republican, Paul Morrison, also joined the Democrats and is challenging a Republican to be the state attorney-general.

Democrats are hoping that the Republican party of President George W Bush has passed its high-water mark. That, faced with disaster in Iraq, a host of domestic troubles and terrible opinion poll ratings, they can start to retake power in November. From there they can start to take aim at the White House itself. They hope the powerful conservative movement born in states such as Kansas will also die there.

posted by Steve @ 12:10:00 AM

As Holly Wren coped with her 6-month-old son and the sorrow of losing her husband in Iraq last November, she assumed that the military's sense of structure and order would apply in death as it had in life.

After Lt. Col. Wren was killed in an auto accident in Iraq in November, Mrs. Wren, with her 1-year-old son, Tyler, in their Lorton, Va., home, had a hard time getting her survivor benefits, partly because the military had his personal information listed all wrong.

Instead she encountered numerous hurdles in trying to collect survivor benefits. She received only half the amount owed her for housing because her husband, one of the highest ranking soldiers to die in Iraq, was listed as single, childless and living in Florida — wrong on every count. Lt. Col. Thomas Wren was married, with five children, and living in Northern Virginia.

She waited months for her husband's retirement money and more than two weeks for his death benefit, meant to arrive within days. And then Mrs. Wren went to court to become her son's legal guardian because no one had told her husband that a minor cannot be a beneficiary. "You are a number, and your husband is a number" said Mrs. Wren, who ultimately asked her congressman for help. "They need to understand that we are more than that."

For military widows, many of them young, stay-at-home mothers, the shock of losing a husband is often followed by the confounding task of untangling a collection of benefits from assorted bureaucracies.

While the process runs smoothly for many widows, for others it is characterized by lost files, long delays, an avalanche of paperwork, misinformation and gaps in the patchwork of laws governing survivor benefits.

Sometimes it is simply the Pentagon's massive bureaucracy that poses the problem. In other cases, laws exclude widows whose husbands died too early in the war or were killed in training rather than in combat. The result is that scores of families — it is impossible to know how many — lose out on money and benefits that they expected to receive or believed they were owed, say widows, advocates and legislators.

"Why do we want to draw arbitrary and capricious lines that exclude widows?" asked Senator Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, who has sponsored legislation to close some of the legal loopholes that penalize widows. "It seems to me we ought to err on the side of compassion for families."

Mr. DeWine said Congress sometimes passes these loopholes without considering the ramifications. But money also plays a large factor, and Congress is sometimes compelled to keep down costs associated with the war. "That's what you hear behind the scenes," Senator DeWine said.

The Army is also trying to address the problem, for example, with new call centers intended to help survivors navigate the bewildering bureaucracy. "As we always have, we constantly re-evaluate how we conduct our business to see if we can improve," said Col. Mary Torgersen, director of the Army casualty affairs operations center.

But legislators and advocates working with widows say the problems are often systemic, involving payouts by the mammoth Department of Defense accounting office and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A few widows simply fall through the cracks altogether. The consequences are hard felt: they run up credit card bills, move in with relatives to save money, pull their children from private schools, spend money on lawyers or dedicate countless frustrating hours to unraveling the mix-ups.

posted by Steve @ 12:03:00 AM

posted by Steve @ 11:55:00 PM

TIME	HOME		AWAY	MATCH	VENUE
Jun 26 11:00 ET	Italy	v	Australia	Match 53	Kaiserslautern
Jun 26 15:00 ET	Switzerland	v	Ukraine	Match 54	Cologne

The hospitality and organisation of this World Cup for visitors without match tickets has been well documented.

But such was the enthusiasm to watch Germany play Sweden in Munich on Saturday that both were stretched close to breaking point.

Umpteen thousands showed up at Munich's magnificent Olympic stadium and park to watch the match on two big screens - and that was several thousand too many.

Ninety minutes before kick-off the trains ceased to run because police had shut the stadium. A steward deliberately shepherded us onto a bus going in the opposite direction before we cottoned on.

When I eventually made it to the gate, the police were apologetic but firm. While some desperate fans scanned the perimeter for a hole in the fence, some rushed around aimlessly and others wandered confused.


Some proffered weeping children - others press passes - and in a few cases the police hustled us in.

The queue for bratwurst and beer would have made a glacier seem impatient, so those gasping in the heat turned to the ice cream stall, where cola ice lollies were being sold by the litre.

In the stadium people sat on steps, in gangways and on laps - the fanfest has become a throwback to the days before stadiums were super-policeWod. But there was no anarchy here, just a single-minded force of will behind Germany.

posted by Steve @ 10:46:00 PM

The fundraiser thrown for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele on Thursday night, while ordinary in most ways, struck some African American leaders as notable because of the host.

Unlike the dozens of high-dollar events across the country in his U.S. Senate bid, this event was thrown by the producer of the famous "Willie Horton" ad, the 1988 commercial that came to symbolize the cynical use of skin color as a political wedge.

It seemed a most unusual choice for Steele, the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland and a Republican whose strategy for winning a Senate seat in a state dominated by Democrats has involved the aggressive courtship of black voters.

"Why would he go for money to those who have done us harm?" asked Elbridge James, a former leader of the NAACP's Montgomery County branch.

Steele said he sees nothing unusual about getting help from Floyd Brown's Citizens United Political Victory Fund. Brown produced the Willie Horton ad, which helped torpedo Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign by drawing attention to a weekend furlough program that released a black convicted murderer serving a life sentence.

Nor, Steele said, was there anything incongruous about donations he took from others who have offended black audiences in the past, including Republican Sens. Trent Lott (Miss.) and Conrad Burns (Mont.) as well as Alex Castellanos, the man behind the racially charged "White Hands" ad that then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) used to attack his black challenger.

It featured a close-up shot of a pair of white hands crumpling a letter as the narrator says, "You needed that job . . . but they had to give it to a minority."

In an interview, Steele said, "I appreciate all the support I get from members of my party."

The donations underscore a political quandary for Steele and the handful of other black Republicans seeking national office this year: As they look for financial help from GOP stalwarts, they risk forging relationships with people liable to turn off black voters.

Steele said the donations are not a problem. "The way I look at it, if I am in the United States Senate, I'll be a voice at the table that's probably not been appreciated that much in the past," he said.

The national GOP has touted Steele as a symbol of its drive for inclusiveness, giving him a prominent speaking role at its 2004 convention and aggressively courting him to enter this campaign. Steele has predicted he will need to peel away 25 percent of Maryland's large African American voting population to give him the edge over his eventual Democratic opponent. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Baltimore area congressman, and Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and NAACP president, are among those seeking the Democratic nomination.

Democrats said there are several names on Steele's donor list that won't help him. It includes Lott, who lost his leadership post for seeming to endorse Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential candidacy, and Burns, who drew sharp criticism for saying he found it "a hell of a challenge" to live among all the blacks in Washington, D.C.

Steele also has received support from former Reagan administration education secretary William J. Bennett, who was criticized for suggesting that aborting black babies would help reduce crime, and former first lady Barbara Bush, who turned heads when she mused that mostly African American evacuees from Katrina living at a Houston shelter "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Steele accepted $1,000 from Castellanos, the man behind the "White Hands" ad.

posted by Steve @ 12:33:00 PM

Steve Gilliard claims that he did not write the email I attributed to him in this post. After doing some further investigating, I'm afraid to say that he is correct. He did not write that email. I apologize to Gilliard for not checking with him before publishing my post, and I regret the error.

Here's how the error happened: A source forwarded The New Republic three emails purportedly written by members of the "Townhouse" list--Glenn Greenwald, Mike Stark, and Steve Gilliard--expressing concern about the Armstrong-SEC story. The emails lacked timestamps and headers, so TNR checked the emails with two other sources who belonged to "Townhouse." Both of these sources vouched for the authenticity of all three emails (and two of the emails, Greenwald's and Stark's, are indisputably authentic). After returning to these two sources this weekend, TNR learned that when initially shown the three emails, both sources immediately recognized the 181-word Greenwald email and the 389-word Stark email; having determined that those two emails were authentic, the sources just assumed the 22-word Gilliard email was authentic, as well. We now know it wasn't. These were clearly honest mistakes on the parts of the second and third sources; and TNR has been unable to determine why the first source--who has not responded to messages--included this one piece of incorrect information along with the accurate information the source sent us. Therefore, I won't abide by Glenn Greenwald's demand to disclose the identities of these sources. If Greenwald thinks that makes me, as he's hyperventilated, "a new Stephen Glass," then he can take that up with my editor Frank Foer, who knows the identities of the sources and has reviewed all the relevant materials they provided.

I believe that this error is of a relatively minor nature--I did not, as Matt Stoller has maliciously alleged, "fabricate" anything--but any error is of course unacceptable. I sincerely regret not checking with Gilliard before quoting his purported words, not only because this was unfair to Gilliard--who has behaved more responsibly than anyone involved in this particular matter, myself included--but because the mistake that resulted from this failure has allowed Greenwald and others to try to use this minor error to distract people from much larger issues. Those issues are: Armstrong's troubles with the SEC; Armstrong's relationship with Moulitsas and Moulitsas's pattern of supporting politicians who hire Armstrong as a consultant; Moulitsas's attempts to silence liberal bloggers from commenting on these matters; the seeming acquiescence of so many of these liberal bloggers (including Greenwald) to Moulitsas's demands; and now, strangely, stuff like this.

--Jason Zengerle

posted by Steve @ 3:45:00 AM

MASHANTUCKET, Conn., June 20 — To mark the release of the 13th novel in her best-selling Stephanie Plum mystery series, the author Janet Evanovich hired a Tom Jones impersonator, brought her future son-in-law on stage in drag to act as one of her characters, and gave away 500 balloons, fortune cookies and stickers.

It was not your standard book reading. But then again, the location — Foxwoods Resort Casino — was also far from standard. Just outside the theater where Ms. Evanovich addressed more than 1,200 ardent, hooting fans, were the vast halls filled with more than 7,000 slot machines, clanging and flashing 24 hours a day. The nearby Fuddruckers was advertising a "25 lb. party burger."

To the roster of musicians, comedians and magicians appearing at casinos these days, add your favorite author. Next month, Foxwoods, which began offering book signings last fall, will bring in Augusten Burroughs, author of "Running with Scissors" and "Possible Side Effects." A few miles away, Erica Jong and Robin Cook will be appearing this summer at the Mohegan Sun casino, where best-selling thriller writers including Nora Roberts and Sue Grafton have done readings over the past three years.

In Las Vegas, a bookstore in Mandalay Place, the mall connected to the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, averages about four author signings a month, with writers including Mary Higgins Clark and the celebrity chefs and cookbook authors Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger.

It is one thing to see Siegfried & Roy or even Cirque du Soleil between playing the slots, but an author? For casinos, which are trying to attract visitors interested not so much in gambling as in a broad range of entertainment, it can make sense.

"Casinos historically limit themselves to the types of activities that they think their customers will be interested in — boxing, rock concerts or sporting events," said Mitchell Etess, chief executive of Mohegan Sun, which has worked mostly with Penguin Group USA, the publisher, to bring in authors over the past three years. "But obviously, many people read books and everybody has got their favorite authors, and it just seemed like it would be a logical extension of our program offering."

posted by Steve @ 2:14:00 AM

ELMONT, N.Y. — The streets where Patrick Nicolosi sees America unraveling still have the look of the 1950's. Single-family homes sit side by side, their lawns weed-whacked into submission to the same suburban dream that Mr. Nicolosi's Italian-American parents embraced 40 years ago when they moved to this working-class community on Long Island.

But when a school bus stops at the white Cape Cod opposite his house, two children seem to pop up from beneath the earth. Emerging from an illegal basement apartment that successive homeowners have rented to a Mexican family of illegal immigrants, they head off to another day of public schooling at taxpayer expense.

.............................

"Two children are in school, and one is handicapped — that's $10,000 for elementary school, $100,000 a year for special education," he said. "Why am I paying taxes to support that house?"
............................
Instead, unlike most people, Mr. Nicolosi joins the civic fray. A self-appointed watchdog, he tries to get local officials to investigate houses that he and his allies suspect of violations, and to crack down on day laborers spilling into front yards.

But this spring, as the immigration debate ignited nationally, the results of his crusade unfolded like a parable about being careful what you wish for — leaving the Mexican family uprooted, neighbors unhappy, and Mr. Nicolosi himself more frustrated than ever.

Elmont, just over the Nassau County line from Queens, has always drawn immigrants or their children. In the decades since Mr. Nicolosi's father, a bus driver, moved his family here from the city, families from every continent have joined the Italian and Central European generations who settled the first subdivisions. Its population of 33,000 is about 46 percent white, 35 percent black and 9 percent Asian, and 14 percent of its residents are Hispanic.

Mr. Nicolosi, a compact, animated man, says he is fighting to save the modest suburban lifestyle that these families seek, regardless of ethnicity.

....................

Recently, for example, to the dismay of his wife, a police crossing guard, he publicly cited their children — a doctor, a teacher and a law school applicant — as examples of a generation that is being priced out of Long Island by soaring property taxes.

........................

But even among those who echoed Mr. Nicolosi's concerns, many called him a busybody and a troublemaker. There was sympathy for the family in the basement, and for their landlords, the Cervonis, a young couple with a baby and a construction business who bought the house from an absentee landlord in 2004 and moved in.

"What could we do, throw them out?" asked Luciana Cervoni, who called the tenants hard-working and quiet. "They've lived here for six, seven years now."
.............

"If that were the case, we would have moved a long time ago," said the mother in the basement, Ariana O., 30, allowing a glimpse of its two-bedroom finished interior that showed how homey the couple had made it for their three children: a boy of 10, a developmentally disabled girl of about 6, and a year-old baby — the last two born in the United States.

.....................

"They will never, ever better themselves," he said of the Mexican family.

And as he drove his black S.U.V. through a neighborhood where garden shrines outnumber basketball hoops, his world view darkened what he saw. Passing a small house, he shared his suspicion that it illegally harbored multiple immigrant families, because a dozen children regularly played out front.

But the homeowners later set the record straight. "We're a family here — we're no immigrants," declared Fanny Echeverria, 40, quickly adding, "What makes him better than immigrants?"

She and her husband, George, have five children between them, and their yard is a magnet for neighbors' children. Ms. Echeverria is a native New Yorker of Greek and Dominican heritage, her husband a naturalized United States citizen born in Chile. And they own one of Long Island's most highly rated French restaurants, Soigné, in Woodmere.

......................

From the basement, what struck the Mexican couple, however, was that Mr. Nicolosi did not work.

"The man has nothing to do except look," the wife said in Spanish as her husband cooked dinner. Recalling the Latino workers she saw renovating his house, she added, "If we weren't here, who would do the work?"

....................

But upstairs that day, their landlords were deciding to evict the family. An official had called, alerting them to a new complaint by Mr. Nicolosi, the Cervonis said. This time, with heightened public attention, it would lead to hefty fines unless the basement was vacated.

Joseph Cervoni broke the news to the tenants the night President Bush spoke to the nation about immigration. As word spread, neighbors blamed Mr. Nicolosi. Carolyn Gilbert, a retired secretary who advocates an electrified fence at the Mexican border, said he had no conscience. "People forget the human dimension," she said.

Louise Cerullo, 84, a registered Republican like Mr. Nicolosi, protested: "They're human beings. If they can work and pay their rent, what's wrong with that?"

posted by Steve @ 1:54:00 AM

Warren E. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and one of the world's wealthiest men, plans to donate the bulk of his $44 billion fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four other philanthropies starting in July.

The donations, outlined in a series of letters that Mr. Buffett released yesterday and will execute today, represent a singular and historic act of charitable giving that vaults him into the top tier of industrialists and entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller Sr., Henry Ford, J. Paul Getty, W. K. Kellogg and Mr. Gates himself, all men whose fortunes have endowed some of the world's richest private foundations.

Mr. Buffett plans to give away 85 percent of his fortune, or about $37.4 billion, all in Berkshire stock. Of that amount, he will channel the greatest share, about $31 billion, into the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation, dedicated to improving health and education, especially in poor nations, is already the United States' largest grant-making foundation, with current assets of almost $30 billion. Mr. Buffett's huge contribution may permanently solidify that philanthropy's standing as the biggest and most influential organization of its kind. Mr. Buffett will join Mr. and Mrs. Gates as a trustee of their foundation.

The immense size of the assets at the disposal of the Gates Foundation as a result of the partnership is apparent when compared with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, which had a budget of $610 million for 2004-05. The Gates Foundation made $1.36 billion in grant payments in 2005; at a minimum, Mr. Buffett's contribution may eventually allow the foundation to more than double that amount annually once he transfers all of his stock.

Mr. Buffett's contribution will not be made all at once, but rather in smaller annual increments. Moreover, the distribution could change in an as-yet unspecified way if Mr. Buffett dies before the entire sum is paid. The terms of the donation also require the continued active participation of at least one of the Gateses for the payments to continue.

posted by Steve @ 1:44:00 AM

(AFP/Martin Bureau Sunday, June 25, 2006
TIME	HOME		AWAY	MATCH	VENUE
Jun 25 11:00 ET	England	v	Ecuador	Match 51	Stuttgart
Jun 25 15:00 ET	Portugal	v	Netherlands	Match 52	Nuremburg

LEIPZIG - As Fletch and I approached Leipzig city centre via tram this afternoon we thought it unusually quiet, assuming tonight's game here between two American teams was not accompanied by many travelling fans.

That illusion was soon shattered as the Hauptbahnhof honed into view - thousands of fans were spilling out of the main station and into the city's pedestrian district.

There were many wearing the light blue and white of Argentina, many more wearing the green and sombreros of Mexico, but today Leipzig was painted black, red and gold.

The German's enthusiasm for the tournament has steadily grown since their opening win over Costa Rica.

They had waited so long for it to roll around and doubts surrounded Juergen Klinsmann's team's capabilitiy.

All the aprehension and doubt is now gone and following the World Cup is now national obsession number one.

The newspapers are overflowing with stories about the tournament and the bars are overflowing with fans trying to catch a glimpse of the games.

A feature of the tournament, and something which has been praised to the hilt, is the host's willingness to invite ticketless fans to come along and enjoy the football on a big screen in the centre of almost every town of any size.

Today, Leipzig's Augustusplatz had to be closed more than an hour before the start of Germany v Sweden due to overcrowding.

Thousands were crammed in, in front of two massive screens and a stage with live music and cheerleaders going through their routines.

Thousands more were left outside, unable to see the screens due to some strategically placed trees and monuments, with police trying to direct them, in three languages, to a stadium 20 minutes out of town with it's own big screen.

Our experience of the Fan Fests has varied, from seeing only half a screen in Dortmund to partying the night away with the Dutch in Stuttgart - but it seems they are very much the place to be.

After trying to persuade the staff at the hotel opposite to let us on their roof, or at least up to a higher floor so we could shoot some video, we were lucky enough to stumble across the local press club.

After a quick flash of Fletch's accreditation, and a quick bluff from myself, we were on a balcony overlooking the Fan Fest.

Mind you we weren't the only ones.

It seemed every press man from around the region had targetted this terrace and was enjoying a free bottle of beer in the sun - well you would, wouldn't you?

It's my first experience 'behind the scenes' in Germany, so I felt perfectly justified enjoying the game as much as the locals.

The streets are still packed with celebrating Germans, and hopeful Mexicans, all singing the same refrain: "Berlin, Berlin, we're going to Berlin!"

That's true enough, for a quarter-final against this evening's winners, but I'll have more on their aspirations tomorrow.

posted by Steve @ 12:48:00 PM

posted by Steve @ 11:50:00 AM

FAIRFIELD, Conn., June 22 — Soccer seemed a simpler game when Jay Skelton coached his eldest son's kindergarten team nine years ago. This was before 5-year-olds went to goalie clinics, before teams took two-week trips to Europe, before the world's most popular game consumed his suburban life.

Jay Skelton is president of the Fairfield United Soccer Association, which has 45 teams that travel around the state and beyond.

Today Mr. Skelton is president of his son's league, the Fairfield United Soccer Association, and he presides over a far more complex enterprise. Its 45 elite teams travel across the state and beyond for tournaments, training rigorously with paid college-level coaches. And its budget has boomed, with the group raising $392,000 in dues in 2004, according to tax returns.

The Internal Revenue Service has taken notice.

For the past two years, the association has been grappling with an I.R.S. audit that found the association failed to withhold taxes for a dozen paid coaches and scores of referees in 2003 and 2004. The I.R.S. assessed the association $334,441 in back taxes and fines, an amount Mr. Skelton says will drive the nonprofit league out of business.

The audit, which became public this month and is now under appeal, was not just a rude awakening for the association. It has raised this deeper, almost theological question relevant to many youth sports clubs across the country: Are they growing too fast for their parent managers to keep up?

"We didn't do anything wrong; we're volunteering to help our kids," said Mr. Skelton, a 46-year-old lawyer from Fairfield. "I'm not Joan of Arc, I'm not Rosa Parks; I'm just trying to get through this without losing my mind."

The Fairfield case — which centers on a dispute over whether coaches and referees are employees or, as the league contends, independent contractors — is not the first time the I.R.S. has fined a nonprofit youth sports league. But the penalty is one of the largest, and it has sent worried sports officials from Connecticut and other states scrambling to review the finer points of the tax code.

"A lot of clubs are going through the same type of audit situations, and they're watching our case to see how it turns out," Mr. Skelton said.

Indeed, youth sports clubs, literally once mom-and-pop operations, have grown so large and sophisticated that they now require payrolls, registrars and 1099 forms. Some boards have hired accountants and lawyers. United States Youth Soccer, a nonprofit umbrella group, even offered a seminar on the use of independent contractors at its national convention in Houston in February, run by an I.R.S. representative.

Soccer may have run afoul of the I.R.S. partly because of its immense growth, from a pickup sport 30 years ago to a national phenomenon today, as judged by the avid interest in the World Cup this month.

In 1974, United States Youth Soccer counted 100,000 players; today it says there are over 3 million. Fairfield United, which had 350 players a decade ago, today has 800. And while many of its coaches were parent volunteers back then, today it pays $2,500 a season to 25 skills coaches.

posted by Steve @ 1:33:00 AM

Oprah has refused to bring Ice Cube and Ludacris on her show. But it's not their music she hates -- it's their message of contempt for black women.

Ludacris was the first rapper to complain about Oprah. In the May 2006 issue of GQ, he said that Oprah only grudgingly invited him to her show because of his role in the Oscar-winning film "Crash." Ludacris called Oprah "unfair" and said that she edited his comments and lectured him about his music.

Then 50 Cent -- the infamous crack dealer turned rap artist -- joined the fray, telling the Associated Press that Oprah rarely invites rap artists on her show. Revealing his disdain for what he characterized as Oprah's older, female, and primarily white audience, he said, "[I] couldn't care less about Oprah or her show."

And now Ice Cube, the former frontman for controversial rap group N.W.A, has expressed his displeasure with Oprah. He told FHM magazine that he's been involved with three projects that were pitched to Oprah but has yet to receive an invite. "Maybe Oprah's got a problem with hip hop," Ice Cube said.

But contrary to what Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube have implied, Oprah has had rap artists on her show, but her tastes lean more toward John Legend and Alicia Keys than to Lil Wayne and Trina. To promote the film "Barbershop," Oprah invited rapper-actress Eve and comedian Cederic the Entertainer. Sean "P-Diddy" Combs was on before he ran the New York City marathon to raise money for local public schools. Incendiary rap artist-producer Kanye West, whose religious anthem "Jesus Walks" stirred up controversy among church folks, has also appeared on her show. Queen Latifah and LL Cool J have sat on Oprah's stage. More importantly, rap artist-producer Missy Elliott and "queen of hip hop" Mary J. Blige were both part of Oprah's Legends Weekend celebrating accomplished black women.

Earlier this month Oprah responded to her critics, explaining to MTV: "I respect other people's rights to do whatever they want to do in music and art. ... I don't want to be marginalized by music or any form of art. ... I feel rap is a form of expression, as is jazz. I'm not opposed to rap. I'm opposed to being marginalized as a woman."

In case Oprah's comments need some decoding, what she's saying is she believes rap artists should be free to record songs that call women "bitches" and "hos," and she should be equally free not to invite them on her show. Oprah does not have a problem with rap music -- she has a problem with rap that degrades women.

There's a particular arrogance that permeates Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube's statements, as if Oprah owes them a spot on her show. It's Oprah who has issues by refusing to celebrate black men who've made millions by demeaning black women?

If songs such as Ludacris' "Move Bitch" or NWA's "A Bitch Iz A Bitch" are not Oprah's cup of tea, then why should she be obligated to give them a platform? It doesn't seem to occur to these black men (or their supporters) that Oprah has the right not to use her show -- which is seen by 21 million viewers a week in 105 countries -- to promote performers whose work she feels is misogynistic or offensive. Oprah may not be kicking any black feminist credentials, but rather than blindly using her influence to "help the brothers," she is choosing not to support black entertainers whose work denies the humanity of black women.

.........................
In his FHM interview, Ice Cube claims he deserves an invite to Oprah's show because of his "rags-to-riches story." Sure, Ice Cube has made millions -- but his success was founded on songs like NWA's "One Less Bitch," and the extremely raunchy "Giving Up the Nappy Dugout" (a solo release).

What Ice Cube fails to understand is that Oprah herself is the prototype for the "rags to riches" stories she highlights on her show; her life has been much more dramatic than those of many rap artists. She grew up dirt-poor in rural Mississippi to unwed parents. At age 9 -- and repeatedly thereafter -- she was sexually abused by a relative. She endured years of bad relationships, drug addictions, weight problems, and a career-changing demotion that moved her from her news anchor seat to co-hosting a morning talk show.

Oprah credits her fortune to education and faith; her shows reflect her strong belief in self-transformation. For over 20 years, Oprah has featured "success" stories on her show. Most of these have been women who became influential through perseverance and creativity, as well as people who have overcome adversity, tragedy or abuse to create richer lives for themselves, their families or communities. For Oprah, success is not predicated on amassing large sums of money; it is based on the contribution a person makes to improving his or her world.

Oprah has her detractors, mainly because she uses her show to promote the subjects she cares about. Implicit in all of the criticism from rap artists is the idea that because Oprah is black, she is expected to push every black entertainer's latest film or album, regardless of her opinion. The underlying sentiment is that if she is unwilling to set aside her values, then she can't be down for black people.

This position assumes that what is good for black entertainers is good for all black folks -- a highly arguable notion. There are many media outlets that expose U.S. rap artists to the global marketplace. But Oprah is virtually alone in her ability, through her selection of guests, to provide the world with a broader view of black Americans and their achievements. For black women, who are so commonly equated with the stereotypes of half-naked, gyrating women found in rap music videos, an opposing portrayal is welcome.

If the brothers feel they need more media visibility, they should use their millions to finance their own talk shows, instead of jocking Oprah Winfrey.

posted by Steve @ 12:51:00 AM

IRAQ’S main insurgent groups intend to reject a peace plan that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, will present today in an attempt to halt the country’s spiral of violence.

Maliki is expected to go before parliament with a 28- point plan for national reconciliation aimed at defusing the Sunni insurgency and sectarian conflict in which thousands of people have died.

The prime minister is believed to be ready to offer the Iraqi insurgent groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for prisoners who renounce violence and give up their weapons.

His package of measures is also reported to include the promise of a United Nations- approved timetable for withdrawing the coalition forces and action to curb Shi’ite death squads.

Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government.
A senior commander authorised to speak on behalf of other groups warned that they would continue to fight. “As long as there is an occupation and an illegitimate government, the resistance and insurgency will continue,” he said.

Maliki’s plan follows talks involving Jalal al-Talabani, the president, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, and seven Sunni insurgent groups.

However, the groups that have taken part in the negotiations are understood to be relatively small. Those rejecting the peace offer include larger organisations such as the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.

These bodies have drawn up a separate set of demands. They want a more rapid withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of all prisoners from American and Iraqi jails and compensation from the United States and other coalition countries to fund the rebuilding of infrastructure and homes destroyed in the war.

The 11 groups have indicated that any future talks should be conducted with American officials under UN or Arab League supervision, but not with the Iraqi government.

posted by Steve @ 12:12:00 AM

WEALTHY Mexicans are nervous that next Sunday’s presidential election will be won by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist who proclaims himself a champion of the poor and whose supporters dress as cockerels. They are equally nervous about what might happen if Lopez Obrador loses.

After a hard-fought race against Felipe Calderon, his main conservative rival, Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, enters the final week of campaigning with a two-point opinion poll lead.

The closeness of the campaign and the passions it has aroused have raised the spectre of an inconclusive result that could lead to paralysis if Lopez Obrador claims he is being cheated of victory.

The threats of mass demonstrations and court challenges are complicating the outlook for the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country.

Concerned that delays in the counting process might inflame accusations of fraud, the local election commission promised last week to announce the result within hours of the polls closing. One aide to Lopez Obrador forecast that the candidate would not call on his supporters to “shut down offices, cause chaos or problems” if Calderon emerges the winner: “We will go to the courts instead.”

Yet all the evidence suggests that Mexico is split down the middle about the charismatic 52-year-old candidate whose critics have likened him to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who is attempting to build an anti-US alliance across Latin America.

With the tropical sun beating down last week Lopez Obrador appeared at a raucous rally in Salina Cruz, southern Mexico, wearing a straw hat and a garland of flowers. Shrugging off criticism from President Vicente Fox, who has described him as a “dangerous populist”, the man universally known by his initials, Amlo, brought the house down with a sharp riposte: “I say to Fox: shut up, chachalaca.”
.....................

posted by Steve @ 12:10:00 AM

It is a hidden reality of the New York City subway system, and perhaps mass transit systems everywhere since the first trolley car took to the tracks. It begins with a pinch or a shove, someone standing too close. But it can be much worse.

This week, as the Police Department announced the arrest of 13 men charged with groping and flashing women in the subways, women around the city nodded. Yes, they said, this had happened to them. Yesterday. Last month. Last fall. Twenty years ago.

"Every girl I know has at least one story," said Barbara Vencebi, 23, a studio photographer standing outside the No. 6 train station at 116th Street in East Harlem yesterday.

It is a crime abetted by the peculiar landscape of the underworld that is the subway system, by the anonymity of a crowded car where everybody is avoiding eye contact. And by the opportunity for a quick escape at the next stop, to disappear behind a pillar, into a tunnel, up an escalator.

An impromptu survey of riders during the morning rush yesterday found that, for many women who have experienced it, the worst part of the crime is the sense of helplessness. What is the right way to react to a humiliating, but not life-threatening, situation? Should you announce to an entire car of strangers that you have just been violated?

Most of the time, the women said, they seethe inwardly but say nothing.

"I looked back and I couldn't do anything because a lot of people were behind me," said Suany Baca, 32, a waitress who was going up the stairs at 86th Street in the No. 6 train station last November, when she was groped by a man who passed her going down.

"I pretended like it didn't happen," she said. "I don't know what they get out of it."

Those who single out women on the subways do not care about race, if yesterday's interviews were any indication — black, Asian, Hispanic and white women all had stories to tell. But they do seem to discriminate by age.

Most of the women who reported recent incidents were in their 20's and younger. But the experience, women said, is so universal, and so scarring, that they continue to feel paranoid and to put on their body armor — the big bag, the bad face — no matter how old they get.

Women know the drill. Just as some men reflexively check to see if they have their wallets on a crowded train, women check their bodies.

Pull in your backside and your front. Wedge a large bag for protection between yourself and the nearest anonymous male rider, who might, just might, be planning something. Put on your fiercest face, and brace yourself for contact that seems too deliberate to be accidental, too prolonged to be random.

And not just in New York. Mexico City and Tokyo have reacted to subway gropers by instituting all-female subway cars. But as one New York woman said yesterday, wouldn't that make a nice target?

The crackdown in New York followed a number of highly publicized cases in which women helped the police arrest flashers by snapping pictures of them with their cellphone cameras.

Some women said yesterday that they did not expect the police effort — 13 suspected gropers and flashers were arrested over 36 hours last month — to make a big dent in the problem. But, they added, it was a start.

posted by Steve @ 12:09:00 AM

It's both a sad and happy day here at BlogNYC. My official reign of pretending to be my own lawyer has officially come to an end. My parents were so proud of my time as my own fake attorney. Alas, I have passed on the baton to a real attorney, One Mr. Neal Johnston of Johnston & Johnston LLP.

Here is the official BlogNYC response to Martin Siegel from the official attorney of BlogNYC (btw, that picture above is of me personally serving Martin Siegel with our response):

Martin S. Siegel, Esq.
Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP
7 Times Square
New York, NY 10036

RE: Adams V. Poling

Dear Mr. Siegel:

I enclose a Notice of Appearance in connection with the above litigation. Please get me the Complaint as soon as you can.

In your letter to Mr. Poling you state that if he should fail to accept receipt of your email "summons" you "would have no choice but to ask [your] process server to serve [him] personally."

That statement is not exactly true. You have a number of other choices. You could serve him by mail, CPLR §312-a. You could whistle Dixie. Or you could swallow the $210 cost of the Index Number and turn your attention to something of slightly greater relevance to some issue of substantive justice.

I'm quite serious about the latter point. If you actually do come up with a complaint, I suspect it will be the most embarrasing single document to come out of Brown Rudnick this year - and the year is no longer young. I am reasonably confident that your firm will wind up looking considerably more foolish than does your client, and, unlike your client, you will not have the excuse of not knowing any better.

Sincerely yours,

Neal Johnston

Mr Johnston has taken pity on us and taken on our case pro bono and has been very supportive. There are however certain costs that we will have to come up with so don't be afraid to throw a few bucks in the defense fund to help us defend our right to free speech. And just in case Mr. Johnston needs any help, which I doubt, there are a few lawyers chomping at the bits to take on this case for free who have all said they more than willing to out in any way they can.

posted by Steve @ 12:08:00 AM

A few days into the campaign for United States Senate in New Jersey, the Republican candidate, Thomas H. Kean Jr., called a news conference in Newark to declare that the integrity of his opponent, Robert Menendez, was a nail he would hammer.

For starters, he scoffed at a claim of early civic virtue by Mr. Menendez, the current senator and the Democratic nominee.

In particular, Mr. Kean said that Mr. Menendez had distorted his own role in the political corruption of Union City, the Hudson County community where Mr. Menendez came to public life 30 years ago as a protégé of an old-fashioned political boss, William V. Musto.

Mr. Kean said that while Mr. Menendez now poses as a brave truth teller who helped topple a regime of political crooks, he had actually issued $2 million in public money to a corrupt contractor "as part of a massive illegal kickback scheme." Had Mr. Menendez not cooperated with prosecutors, aides to Mr. Kean said, he might have gone to jail himself.

To a depth unusual for events that are decades old, the Kean campaign's accusations can be measured against a robust historical record — including F.B.I. tapes and volumes of trial testimony — of a roiling human and legal drama between 1978 and 1982 in Union City.

The Kean accusations find no support in those records or from independent authorities of that era.

The four former federal prosecutors who prosecuted senior Union City officials say that, in fact, Mr. Menendez did nothing wrong and much that was right under difficult circumstances.

"It's a sad commentary that Menendez's role in the trial is being used against him," said Samuel Rosenthal, one of the prosecutors, "when it was certainly an act of courage for him to testify against the entire city government, as well as an influential state senator, and people who are accused of being members of organized crime."

Mr. Kean's aides say they continue to see in Mr. Menendez's conduct today echoes of the gamy political culture of Union City in his early years. A film about Mr. Menendez is being made with guidance from a Kean campaign contractor; that contractor, without disclosing his affiliation or the nature of the project, asked for help from this reporter, who covered Union City 26 years ago.

From the public records, Mr. Menendez emerges as a young man who plainly thrived from his first moments in public life, thanks to the backing of a political machine; just as plainly, the full record shows that he helped thwart a group of politicians and organized crime figures who ran that machine and were looting public funds.

That process brought down Mr. Musto, the mentor and surrogate father whom Mr. Menendez publicly beseeched to abandon his corrupt associates. He ended up going to federal prison. So did six other people, all of them convicted of racketeering in one of the longest criminal trials in New Jersey's history.

posted by Steve @ 12:02:00 AM

Over the last few days, Jason Zengerle of The New Republic has been engaged in a bizarre crusade to depict "liberal bloggers" as a bunch of mindless, obedient zombies who take orders about what to write from Markos Moulitsas, all in order to ensure that they can continue to enjoy the great financial wealth lavished upon them by virtue of their participation in the "Advertise Liberally" network, which Markos founded but does not operate. To prove this "point," Zengerle published what he purported to be various e-mails regarding recent accusations against Jerome Armstrong, which Zengerle claimed were sent to the "Townhouse" Google group -- comprised of 300 or so journalists, political operatives, bloggers, advocacy organizations, and others designed to facilitate communication between these usually isolated groups. To the extent the "substance" of Zengerle's accusations are worth responding to, Ezra Klein and Max Sawicky (among many) have done so quite thoroughly, respectively here and here.

But in spinning his laughable conspiracy, Zengerle published -- based on what Zengerle said was "three sources" -- what appears to be a completely fabricated e-mail, which Zengerle falsely claimed was sent to the "Townhouse" list by blogger Steve Gilliard. Yesterday, Zengerle wrote:

At the risk of engendering more charges that I'm violating the off-the-record nature of "Townhouse" (which, by the way, I'm not, since I am not a member of "Townhouse" and therefore am not bound by any off-the-record agreements, in the same way that any reporter who's leaked "confidential" documents is not bound to protect their confidentiality), let me reprint some of the e-mails that were going to the "Townhouse" list, according to three sources, before Kos sent out the e-mail I quoted in my original post on this topic. . . .

Also on the same day [June 18], the blogger Steve Gilliard wrote to the "Townhouse" list:

I dont see how this can be ignored. We should all write in defense of this once we know the facts. Jerome?

That e-mail is completely fictitious. Gilliard never sent any such thing to the Townhouse list, nor did anyone else do so. Nor, according to Gilliard, did he ever write any such e-mail at all, to Townhouse or anyone else. Zengerle caused The New Republic to print a completely fabricated e-mail and then falsely attribute it as one Gilliard sent to the Townhouse list. How and why did that happen?

Only problem: I have no record of sending such an e-mail to the Townhouse list, Kos, Armstrong, who did not participate in any of the discussions, or anyone else. I didn't send any e-mail with that phrase at all. There's a similar phrase sent to Hubris Sonic a month before on an entirely different topic, and the Greenwald e-mail

To be fair, I told Glenn I disagreed with the characterization of it being false, because I may have express some kind of sentiment close to that. The issue to me is not that Zengerle created it out of whole cloth, but if he got it from a source that he was too lazy and sloppy to confirm it with me. Let me be clear, I didn't deny writing the e-mail. I said that I had no record of writing such an e-mail with that phrase, to the list on that day.

I told Zengerle the same thing and that he needs to provide the provenance of the e-mail so I can confirm or deny it. If it turns out I didn't write those words, I'm going to write Franklin Foer, the editor of the New Republic and demand a retraction and an apology.

I write thousands of words a day between e-mails, IM, posts and comments. It is easy to lose a phrase or e-mail in that, which I why I can't call it a fabrication. It may be taken from another e-mail, or a post, but I cannot find those words in my mailbox

This means he needs to provide me with the entire e-mail in context.

Now, I could have claimed to have not written it, and then say I forgot if it came up, but I'm not going to play that way. I was taught journalistic ethics at NYU, and I still practice them. I told Zengerle I couldn't find the words, and that Greenwald had a piece up, because I'm not going to sandbag anyone, I'm not going to make shit up and I'm not going to leave anyone unable to respond. Greenwald is unable to post now, so I may not hear from him until tomorrow

Why? Because unlike the New Republic, I'm not going to take cheap shots. I can treat them fairly, ethically and responsibly because that's what I have always done.

Zengerle sent me a list of questions, which I will answer publicly when this is resolved. After all, with a massive breach of journalism ethics in the air, I need a resolution before answering any of his questions.

But even if Greenwald goes farther than I would, the question remains why didn't Zengerle do any interviews for his pieces. Why didn't he extend the basic journalism courtesy of asking if these were my words and if they were sending to the Townhouse list? I mean that's basic shit, Reporting I stuff.

The whole TNR jihad has bordered on reckless. Accusations based on e-mails and assumptions, not even the courtesy of an interview or even an e-mail, all to prove that the left blogs are Kos's slaves.

I don't think anyone at TNR has met Kos. Because if they did, they would probably like him. Yeah, he has his politics, but on a personal level, he's a really sweet, considerate guy. He was at the DMI benefit being honored last night, which Jen and I and a bunch of other bloggers attended. We were filled with booze and tiny bits of food. But Kos was gracious, funny, and especially nice to Jen.

If you wanted someone to give orders, he's not the guy. He's much quieter than Matt Stoller, Big Media Matt, Tom Mazzie, Chris Bowers or a bunch of other people I've met. He can make a case, but he's not bullying anyone. And the traditional media makes a massive mistake in trying to turn him into some kind of villain. He's a freaking vegan, I mean, that's a pretty hefty set of ethics to live by. The idea of him being on the make is a joke, a cheap attack.

Now, some people may wonder why I didn't hammer Zengerle up and down the blog and call him a bald faced liar.

Let me explain something: presenting something false as something real and attributed to a person is a firing offense. This is not a game, if he was misled by a source; he deserves the chance to prove it. If he just pulled it out of his ass, I expect Frank Foer to fire him

Because this would be the third major breach of ethics for TNR. Before I lead a charge to ruin a life, I need evidence I was done a wrong, and I can't say that exists yet. It may not. It may.

But as of now, I can't say either way.

That doesn't mean I am not appalled at the sloppy, underhanded and unprofessional way this was handled. If you are going to accuse people of being corrupt, they need a chance to respond. If you're going to quote me, and imply something, you need to ask me what I meant. This all could and should have been done.

And it wasn't.

posted by Steve @ 5:03:00 AM

Saturday, June 24, 2006
TIME	HOME		AWAY	MATCH	VENUE
Jun 24 11:00 ET	Germany	v	Sweden	Match 49	Munich
Jun 24 15:00 ET	Argentina	v	Mexico	Match 50	Leipzig

The issue of republicanism may have divided Australia in recent years, but on Thursday night the country hailed a new king.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard dubbed Harry Kewell "King Harry" after his equalising goal in their 2-2 draw with Croatia, and few people in Australia would have disagreed.

The sight of Howard watching football in the early hours of the morning and jumping out of his chair with excitement summed up how Australia has fallen in love with football. And things may never be the same again.

For years, football was the poor relation in the sports-mad country.

Despite a steady stream of talented individuals, fate seemed to conspire against the Socceroos, with just one appearance at the World Cup finals - in 1974 in West Germany - to show for years of effort.

Former Liverpool striker Craig Johnston was one of those voices in the footballing wilderness, so he is relishing seeing football finally take centre stage.

"The World Cup has completely galvanised Australian society," he told BBC Sport.

"There was always a great prejudice against soccer when I grew up.

"You were made to feel you were playing an immigrant game, but now all those years of hurt have been swept away because the other sports can't match the global nature of football.

"We've waited 32 years to qualify. It's been a long wait by what we call the Soccer Tragics - of which I'm one."

In the 1980s Johnston played in England for Middlesbrough and Liverpool and remains the only Australian to have scored in an FA Cup final, as Liverpool beat Everton 3-1 in 1986.

He was a standard bearer for Australian football in an era when Australian Rules Football, the two rugby codes and cricket were dominant back home.

But Johnston says Australia's success at the World Cup has changed all that - and the other sports are worried.

"The other codes have always been terrified of Australia having a good World Cup," he said.

"That would mean the sport having Australian heroes for kids to look up to."

posted by Steve @ 2:02:00 AM

\

At a joint press conference today in Washington, White House adviser Karl Rove said that he would be plotting the Republican Party’s fall election strategy with his longtime comrade-in-arms, Satan.

The Prince of Darkness, wearing his traditional red horns and cape and carrying a smoldering pitchfork, appeared to beam as Mr. Rove, his protege, talked about how much he was looking forward to working with him on the fall campaign.

“Every time Satan and I get together, good things happen,” Rove said, adding, “Or should I say - bad things happen!”

The two of them then dissolved in laughter, demonstrating an easy collegiality that has made them an unbeatable team in past GOP campaigns.

Satan’s partnership with Rove goes back to 1994, when the two of them teamed up to orchestrate George W. Bush’s first election as governor.

But their work together reached its apogee, perhaps, during the 2004 presidential election, in which Rove and Satan devised the infernal “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” campaign.

While Satan let Rove have most of the spotlight in the hour-long press conference, he did take the microphone to say that he had been “relieved” recently when the White House advisor was cleared of all charges in the CIA leak investigation.

“I can’t imagine running a Republican campaign without my buddy here,” he said, giving Rove a bear hug. “There are plenty of Satans out there, but there’s only one Karl Rove.”

Elsewhere, Dan Rather retired from CBS after 44 years there but said that he would remain active in news and misinformation.

posted by Steve @ 1:58:00 AM

Watchers of right-wing Christian groups in the States say a new apocalyptic videogame released by cultish Revelations-based fiction series Left Behind is riddled with spyware.

Developers have incorporated software from an Israeli firm called Double Fusion. It incorporates video advertising and product placement into the game, and reportedly records players' behaviour, location, and other data to be uploaded to Left Behind's Bible-powered marketing machine.

Aimed at 13 to 34-year-old males, Left Behind: Eternal Forces casts the player as a director of God's Earthly militia, left behind in the Rapture to roam the streets of New York, battling Satan's minions and shooting unbelievers.

....................

One reviewer noted: "The only way to accomplish anything positive in the game is to 'convert' nonbelievers into faithful believers, and the only alternative to this is outright killing them

posted by Steve @ 1:55:00 AM

GILFORD, Mich. - A teenager who flew to the Middle East to be with a man she met on MySpace.com said Friday she intends to marry him.

"I love him very much," 17-year-old Katherine Lester said of Abdullah Jimzawi, 20, who works in his father's business delivering goods to
West Bank convenience stores.

Lester appeared on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America" with her father and stepmother. Jimzawi also spoke with ABC during a taped portion of the segment, describing how the pair "can't live without each other."

After hearing what Jimzawi said, Lester began weeping.

"It's true," she said. "I love you. That's all I can say."

The two first encountered each other about seven months ago on the social networking web site but have never met face to face.

posted by Steve @ 1:54:00 AM

Lovely:

Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, caused an international stir this week when EFE, a Mexican news service, quoted him as saying he wanted to hold undocumented immigrants in camps to use them "as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting."

The article described Goldwater's plan as a "concentration camp" for migrants.

While I'm sure Michelle Malkin is on board with this, Goldwater seems to have gone a couple of bridges - or walls - too far, even for fellow conservatives. John McCain and Rep. Jim Kolbe heartily condemned the Arizona gubernatorial candidate's statement, with Kolbe calling for an outright rejection of his candidacy.

While Goldwater complained that his remarks were taken out of context, this isn't the first time he's shot his mouth off in such a manner:

Goldwater made a similar comment at an April anti-immigration rally.

"Build us that wall _ now!" Goldwater said, referring to a proposal to add 700 miles of fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. He promised then that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall.

Fanning the flames of rhetoric over such a complex economic and social issue as immigration may have seemed a good idea to the Bush administration a few months ago when this "crisis" was suddenly pushed front and center in an election year. When high-profile candidates think they've been given a green light to suggest forced labor and concentration camps, something has gone seriously wrong in our discourse.

This country needs a serious, calm, informed discussion about American workers' rights, immigration needs, business interests, enforcing current laws and streamlining the status of those who are trying to wend their way through an archaic and frustrating legal process. Unleashing rhetoric seriously close to advocating slavery may not be the most heinous crime of this administration, God knows. But it sure is one of the ugliest.

posted by Steve @ 1:52:00 AM

Friday, June 23, 2006
TIME	HOME		AWAY	MATCH	VENUE
Jun 23 15:00 ET	Switzerland	v	South Korea	Match 46	Hanover
Jun 23 15:00 ET	Togo	v	France	Match 45	Cologne
Jun 23 10:00 ET	Saudi Arabia	v	Spain	Match 47	Kaiserslautern
Jun 23 10:00 ET	Ukraine	v	Tunisia	Match 48

I went on holiday to Ghana last year and I loved the place to bits - even more so the people.

So this afternoon at the stadium in Nuremberg I was desperately hoping they would beat the USA and ensure that their first World Cup resulted in at least qualification fron the group stage.

What I was not expecting was a call from a Ghanaian friend of mine 90 minutes before kick-off asking if I could influence the music played over the PA system at the stadium.

nurembergusaspikeday16-003.jpg Highlife is a popular type of music in Ghana and John called me up to ask whether I could ensure some would be played before the match.

Clearly he has a very exaggerated sense of my importance.

As with a few of the African teams that I have seen, Ghana's numbers were swelled by support from elsewhere and plenty of Germans became Ghaniains for the day - wearing shirts, scarves and flags as though bona fide children of the fair city of Accra.

The actual Ghanaians in the crowd were understandably small in number but vocal, colourful and a credit to the tournament.

To be fair, the Americans were greater in presence and really did try to get behind their team - but without question the day belonged to the wonderful people of Ghana.

Afterwards in the mixed zone - the area where the press meets the players - the Ghana players were thrilled with their achievement.

In addition to the actual squad several prominent members of the Ghana government passed through the mixed zone - the Minister for Education, Sciences and Sports, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, for example, was more than happy to discuss his country's achievement.

Michael Essien, banned for the Black Stars match against Brazil, gave several interviews in an incredibly softly-spoken voice that contrasts starkly with his playing style.

Afterwards I bumped into a old friend who works for Metro TV in Ghana and ended up giving an interview on how I thought the Black Stars would fare against Brazil.

"Should Ghana just go for it against Brazil," asked Yaw.

"Umm, easier said that done," I replied.

As I left the ground I grabbed a quick word with Ghana football legend Adebi Pele. He is a great bloke and happily signed a 'Fletch and Ricco' Sport relief T-shirt.

He looked thrilled at his side's progress. No question, it was a great day for Ghana.

posted by Steve @ 11:44:00 AM