tagged w/ Lindsey Graham
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Terrorist Lindsey Graham tells the American people why we need Indefinite Detention without a court trial which grants you a right to prove your innocence, to confront the witnesses against you, to submit affidavits, and to be able to have an attorney to represent you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMCDzrZ2KWITerrorist Lindsey Graham tells the American people why we need Indefinite Detention... more
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Infowars Nightly News
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The latest Infowars.com uncovered document detailing the outline of the FEMA police state as it looks for detainment camp contractors.Infowars Nightly News
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The latest Infowars.com uncovered... more
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Neoconservative and warmonger Lindsey Graham gives Obama some serious cover and defends the "humanitarian mission," suggesting that NATO, the US, France and Great Britian should keep on bombing Trippoli and killing civilians in order to protect them from Gaddafi, who is the next Hitler.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on “Meet the Press” Sunday that “Congress should sort of shut up and not empower Gaddafi.”
Huh?
Graham reasoned that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, and that the Libyan leader needed to be taken down.
“The president’s done a lousy job of communicating and managing our involvement in Libya, but I will be no part of an effort to defund Libya or to try to cut off our efforts to bring Gaddafi down,” he said. “If we fail against Gaddafi, that’s the end of NATO.”
Watch Graham and hear his blunt advice in the clip below, embedded courtesy of MSNBC, originally aired June 19, 2011.Neoconservative and warmonger Lindsey Graham gives Obama some serious cover and... more
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http://dcbureau.org/201101111292/National-Security-News-Service/high-level-nuclear-waste-no-where-to-go.html
Many nuclear power advocates appeared in front of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in Augusta, Georgia, on Friday in support of a permanent repository for nuclear waste and supported the concept of reprocessing nuclear waste.
Environmentalists opposed reprocessing because there is no permanent waste repository and reprocessing creates more waste. They believe reprocessing wastes taxpayer dollars on special interests.
BRAC went to Augusta because the Department of Energy’s massive nuclear facility, the Savannah River Site, and the Southern Company’s two huge new nuclear power plants under construction are nearby.
During a day-long meeting, the 15-person Commission, launched by President Barack Obama last January, heard from an array of speakers. Most of them criticized the Obama administration’s decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, which was designed as a permanent repository for 70,000 tons of spent fuel from the 104 commercial reactors located in the United States. “It was a short-sighted decision with devastating consequences,” said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He added that South Carolina has paid more than $1.3 billion to “build a hole that we are not going to use” so “we either want our money back or we want to use that hole.”
Graham also said that more nuclear power plants could “create new jobs in America that pay very well.” But “to those who wish to have a Nuclear Renaissance, we will not be able to get there until we come up with a waste disposal plan.” The Senator said he supports reprocessing because he believes it “make sense” and “could be achieved in a reasonable period of time.” He did not address the issue of disposal of nuclear waste created by reprocessing.
Graham praised the Obama administration’s support for the multi-billion dollar Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) program at SRS. The goal of this project, authorized in 1999 during the Clinton administration, is to dispose of 36 metric tons of surplus U.S. military weapons grade plutonium by irradiating it and turning it into fuel that can be used in nuclear reactors to produce electricity. Once the plutonium has been irradiated, it can no longer be used in a nuclear weapon without elaborate further reprocessing. This new technology is unproven. Currently commercial reactors in the United States are not designed to use MOX fuel.
“I would say something good about the Obama administration: Secretary Chu has been one of the best Secretaries of Energy I ever have to deal with. The administration, generally speaking, has had a good vision for the development of commercial nuclear power; they have put on the table loan guarantees more robust than under the Bush administration. Secretary Chu has also convinced me that another form of reprocessing, better than what the French, the British and the Japanese do, may be achieved in the next decade,” Graham said. (SRS received one of the largest amounts of Recovery Act funds in the country.) He believes the risk of proliferation from reprocessing is “overstated.”
Speaking on behalf of the Central Savannah River Area Chambers of Commerce, Brian Tucker said, “The federal government’s decision to abandon Yucca Mountain has sent a very bad message” to the local community and has made “SRS a de facto permanent repository.” He also supports the MOX program and believes that “blending down weapons-grade uranium into low enriched uranium suitable for fuel in commercial power reactors” and using it in Tennessee Valley Authority reactors to provide electricity is the “kind of well-executed, innovative, problem-solving technology that we believe can be brought to bear in helping to resolve the pressing issues being addressed by this Commission.”
Manuel Bettencourt, from the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, agreed with the Chamber of Commerce and stressed the fact that SRS has significant resources that could assist in research and development of ways to reprocess nuclear waste. The concept of reprocessing nuclear waste was also supported by Clint Wolfe, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, who explained that coal and gas emissions threaten the world’s water and air while nuclear energy “has the potential to provide a clean alternative” and remains “safe.”
In opposition to reprocessing, environmentalist Tom Clements, the Southeast Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from South Carolina on the Green Party ticket last year, told the Commission, “There is really no rush concerning high-level waste. There is time to make the right decision.” According to Clements, “the path forward in a medium term is to secure on-site storage, it’s not recycling or reprocessing. …We are all concerned about future jobs but reprocessing is not a good idea.” Clements raised concerns about proliferation, because reprocessing has been used to create plutonium, the core material for nuclear weapons, and noted that reprocessing will bring more high-level radioactive nuclear waste to South Carolina.
The activist said that the Department of Energy (DOE) is now proposing “a so-called energy park” at SRS and wants to create four experimental nuclear power plants capable of burning radioactive waste for fuel. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the consortium of private government contractors that operates SRS under contract with the DOE, defends the energy park and says that it could be the potential alternative to Yucca Mountain.
Clements said, “The environmental groups have not been involved in the discussion” of the energy park and “there was no discussion with the public.” He said, “Their (DOE) mission is clean up; they need to get back to that mission.” He added that the mission of the MOX plant was never to use the fuel for purposes like producing electricity. “I think it’s more about money going to special interests than anything else,” he said. “It’s going to be a grand battle” if government decides to push forward with reprocessing. “We don’t want South Carolina to become the new Yucca Mountain.”
Charles Utley, from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, told the Commission that they should work toward a nuclear-free future for the nation. He said solar and wind power “have a great potential as clean energy sources” that will help ease dependence on foreign oil.
After the testimonies, the public made brief comments. A long line of witnesses pleaded against nuclear power. A student in environmental engineering came to the podium with her one-year-old sister and asked the Blue Ribbon Commission to take into account her sister’s future when making its deliberations.
At the end of the meeting, co-Chairman Brent Scowcroft noted, “There is a feeling in the country that the government keeps changing the rules with Yucca Mountain” and one of the problems the Commission faces is “how to set a system in which people can have confidence it won’t be changed with the next election cycle.”
The Commission’s next hearings will be in New Mexico January 26 through 28, where members will tour the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and hold public meetings in Carlsbad and Albuquerque. The Blue Ribbon Commission is to publish a draft report in mid-2011 and a final report in 2012.http://dcbureau.org/201101111292/National-Security-News-Service/high-level-nuclear-wast... more
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DADT has been studied more than cancer, yet a majority of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines said, “big whoop”. So did a majority of the general public. Yet Republicans - most notably Lindsey “Rentboy” Graham and the world’s most petulant child, John McThuselah - have said, “Not so fast. There’ll be no whooping in my military.”DADT has been studied more than cancer, yet a majority of the soldiers, sailors,... more
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When British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited the U.S. last week, he placed combating climate change near the very top of the world's To Do list.
"Climate change is perhaps the 21st century's biggest foreign-policy challenge," Hague declared in a New York City speech. "An effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity." The danger was no longer just distant thunder, he suggested, warning that the recent devastating floods in Pakistan heralded the sort of extreme events that will become more common in a warmer world. "While no one weather event can ever be linked with certainty to climate change," he said, "the broad patterns of abnormality seen this year are consistent with climate-change models."
William Hague is not a holdover from the left-leaning Labor Government that British voters ousted last spring. He's not even from the centrist Liberal Democrats who are governing in a coalition with the Conservative Party of Prime Minister David Cameron. Hague is one of Cameron's predecessors as Conservative Party leader.
His strong words make it easier to recognize that Republicans in this country are coalescing around a uniquely dismissive position on climate change. The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.
This change has proceeded in two stages. First came a hardening of Republican opposition to cap-and-trade legislation intended to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change. Most congressional Republicans had always opposed such legislation, but that position wasn't monolithic: In 2005, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and five other Republicans voted for a cap-and-trade bill that he co-sponsored. Several GOP governors also acted on climate-change issues.
This year, when Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spent months negotiating bipartisan cap-and-trade legislation, he could not attract any Republican co-sponsors -- not even McCain. And when National Journal recently surveyed the 21 GOP Senate challengers with a serious chance of winning this fall, each opposed cap-and-trade (including Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who voted for it in 2009).
It is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here.
Even many climate-change activists prefer alternatives to cap-and-trade, such as a carbon tax. But virtually all of the serious 2010 GOP challengers have moved beyond opposing cap-and-trade to dismissing the scientific evidence that global warming is even occurring.
Senate nominees with tea party roots, such as Nevada's Sharron Angle, have expressed these views most emphatically. But the pattern of repudiation extends to more-measured nominees such as Ohio's Rob Portman and California's Carly Fiorina who pointedly insisted, "I'm not sure," when asked whether climate change was happening. Of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers who have taken a position, 19 have declared that the science of climate change is inconclusive or flat-out incorrect. (Kirk is the only exception.) With sentiments among rank-and-file Republicans also trending that way, it's no coincidence that two Republicans who affirmed the science -- Rep. Michael Castle in Delaware and Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska -- were defeated in Senate primaries this year.
Just for the record, when the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences last reviewed the data this spring, it concluded: "A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." Not only William Hague but such other prominent European conservatives as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have embraced that widespread scientific conviction and supported vigorous action.
Indeed, it is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that although other parties may contain pockets of climate skepticism, there is "no party-wide view like this anywhere in the world that I am aware of."
It will be difficult for the world to move meaningfully against climate disruption if the United States does not. And it will be almost impossible for the U.S. to act if one party not only rejects the most common solution proposed for the problem (cap-and-trade) but repudiates even the idea that there is a problem to be solved. The GOP's stiffening rejection of climate science sets the stage for much heated argument but little action as the world inexorably warms -- and the dangers that Hague identified creep closer.
http://current.com/1s1r34cWhen British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited the U.S. last week, he placed... more
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WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday the United States must be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon – and said that the last resort should be overthrowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Graham, a military lawyer and a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the first senator to support direct U.S. military intervention in Iran, saying it shouldn't involve ground troops but be launched by U.S. warplanes and ships.
“If you use military force against Iran, you’ve opened up Pandora’s Box,” Graham, of South Carolina, told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “If you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, you’ve emptied Pandora’s box. I’d rather open up Pandora’s box than empty it.”
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/20/100853/graham-us-must-consider-military.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz107LSUH14WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday the United States must be prepared... more
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In a move reflecting apparent frustration over stalled talks with the White House on Guantanamo and detainee issues, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is moving forward — without the Obama administration’s blessing — with legislation to address a series of thorny legal questions raised by the long-term detention of terrorism suspects.
A bill Graham quietly introduced last week would set standards and rules for legal challenges brought by prisoners at Guantanamo as well as other suspected enemy fighters whom U.S. forces may capture in the future.
The bill would apply to anyone whom the federal government seeks to detain as an “unprivileged enemy belligerent” — including U.S. citizens. It could also apply to anyone apprehended on U.S. soil, since there is no geographic limitation
A prominent lawyer for Guantanamo detainees, Sabin Willett, said he is most troubled by an aspect of the bill that allows the president to detain anyone who belongs to groups he determines are “associated forces” of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. The bill says courts must grant “the utmost deference” to the president on that point, which means courts are unlikely to challenge it.
“That’s pretty scary and ought to be pretty darn objectionable to Congress as an institution. Congress is lodged in the Constitution with the power to say who we’re at war against,” Willett said. “Embedded in this thing is a perpetual declaration of war that’s pretty astonishing. How far from ‘1984’ is this? We’re always at war and always at war against whoever the president says we’re at war against?”
Follow the link... there is more.In a move reflecting apparent frustration over stalled talks with the White House on... more
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So the Party of No is now the party of simpering “Judicial Activists”. Those paragons of the rule of law - represented by their Sharia-like interpretation of the Constitution – Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Nelly Bottom) and Jon Kyle (R-Independent Duchy of Arizona), are yapping about repealing the 14th Amendment.So the Party of No is now the party of simpering “Judicial Activists”.... more
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After being ditched by her former lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley , Lindsey shopped around but couldn't find the seasoned legal advisor she needs . Welcome to Tiffany Esther Feder-Cohen , Lindsay's new legal counsel and recent graduate from West LA Law School known mostly for it's trouble with accreditation. The four named attorney passed the bar exam in November and has shocked everyone familiar with celebrity criminal defense , Lohhan probably has more legal experience and has seen the inside of a courtroom more then her new council . Some speculate it's a money factor and at least for her current issue of serving 90 days in jail no lawyer would likely be able to change that sentence .
http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/After being ditched by her former lawyer Shawn Chapman Holley , Lindsey shopped around... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user -Snugg-, via Creative Commons licenseSen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), though down one man, finally released their stab at climate legislation this week. One of the most crucial sections in the bill covers off-shore oil drilling, an issue that was supposed to help solve the tricky math of reaching 60 votes. But since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling has become a wedge issue.
Just a few weeks ago, off-shore drilling could have been a point of compromise around which Senators could rally votes to pass the climate bill; now the bill had to strike a new balance to mollify both potential allies who oppose drilling, like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and those who support drilling, like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). The draft that Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman released this week allows for expanded drilling but gives states veto power over new projects.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who worked on the bill, said that he had not seen the changes his two colleagues had made since he dropped out of the drafting process—but he looked forward to reviewing their work. Although Sen. Kerry says he thinks the bill can pass, without support from Sen. Graham or another Republican, chances are slim.
Next steps
Now that the two Senators have released the bill, the only work that remains is to pass it.
“I think climate change legislation is dead,” writes Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. His explanation:
“There’s not enough time for a bill to go through the committee process, get passed by the Senate, sent to conference, amended, and then passed by the full Congress before the midterms, and after the midterms Democrats will probably be reduced to 53 or 54 members in the Senate.”
Not everyone agrees that the bill’s chance are so dire, though.
“I think the chances are roughly as good as they’ve ever been in the Senate: low but non-trivial,” says Grist’s David Roberts.
Kerry’s argument
But should green-minded politicos root for the bill’s passage at all? Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman worked closely with energy companies while drafting the bill, and the resulting legislation balances the need to reduce carbon emissions with the interests of prime polluters. The bill includes incentives for old energy industries like coal and natural gas, for instance, and exempts farmers from carbon caps.
On Wednesday, Sen. Kerry made his case to left-leaning environmentalists. “A comprehensive climate bill written purely for you and me — true believers — can’t pass the Senate no matter how hard or passionate I fight on it,” he wrote for Grist. The bill they have, he wrote, can pass, and that victory outweighs the compromises in the legislation.
Responses from the left
On Democracy Now!, Phil Radford, the executive director of GreenPeace USA, said that most environmental groups have given the bill little more than a “tepid endorsement.” Radford squared off on the show with Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress, who supports the bill.
“This will be the first bill ever passed by the Senate, if it were to pass, that would put us on a path to get off of fossil fuels,” Romm said.
The two men were also divided over issues like the impact the climate bill could have on international negotiations.
They agreed, though, there is room for improvement; the only question is whether the politics of climate change will allow for the passage of a stronger bill any times soon. As Kevin Drum wrote, “If you think this year’s bills are watered down, just wait until you see what a Congress with a hair-thin Democratic majority produces.”
Coal and natural gas
Tripping up environmentalists now, though, are the hand-outs to dirty energy industries. The coal and natural gas industry could both benefit from the provisions of the Senate bill, for instance.
On GritTV, Jeff Biggers, a writer and educator who covers the coal industry, explained his frustration:
“The climate bill is a nice first step and a very well meaning effort for someone like Sen. Kerry who’s been working on this issue for 20 years. But at the same time, because of the massive big coal lobby that has poured millions of dollars into lobbying congress on this climate legislation…there are all sorts of little panders and loopholes and exemptions.”
“What we see in this bill is that Sen. Kerry and Lieberman want to ensure coal’s future,” he said.
The booming natural gas industry also had a hand in shaping the bill and benefited from it. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club favor natural gas as an energy source over coal, and as Kari Lydersen reports in Working In These Times, the industry is driving job growth at a time when the economy needs a boost.
But as Alex Halperin reported last month for The American Prospect, in the places where drilling is occurring, like Ithaca, NY, activists are arguing that the environmental risks could outweigh those economic benefits.
Drill or be drilled
That devil’s bargain—risking natural resources for jobs in the energy industry—went the wrong way for the Gulf Coast, and states like Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida are paying the price even before the oil hits shore.
As I report in AlterNet, the Gulf’s economy could lose billions of dollars and is suffering already from the misconception that its beaches are tarred with oil. With this catastrophe still fresh in voters’ minds, the Senate climate bill proposes pushing new drilling initiatives 75 miles offshore and giving affected states veto power over these projects.
Depending on how long the memory of the Deepwater Horizon spill lasts, politicians could have a good reason to veto drilling. Public News Service reports that 55% of Floridians now oppose off-shore drilling, “almost a complete reversal from one year ago.”
Blame game
Certainly no one is stepping up to take responsibility for the explosion off the coast of Louisiana, as the Washington Independent reports. At a hearing this week, officials from British Petroleum, which was operating the well, Transocean, which owns it, and Halliburton, which was doing contract work that may have caused the problem, all denied wrongdoing and pressed the blame on each other.
It’s starting to look Halliburton played a key part. “The focus is increasingly shifting to the role of Halliburton, which poured the cement for the rig, as well as for another operation that spilled oil off the coast of Australia last August,” writes Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. The company apparently did not place a cement plug that would have kept gas in the well before emptying it of the mud that was holding in the flammable gas.
Anyone living in a state that could have new drilling off their coast should keep this catastrophe in mind if their politicians are given the option of vetoing new projects.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user -Snugg-,... more
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by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user Bebopsmile, via Creative Commons license.Anti-immigrant fervor could be more costly than Arizona lawmakers expected. Thanks to SB 1070, a new law that requires immigrants to carry papers at all times to prove their legal status, the state has become the focal point of the national immigration debate. The bill and the buzz surrounding it illustrates a desperate need for a federal fix to the broken immigration system.
President Barack Obama publicly condemned the measure shortly before Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill on April 23, while human rights groups and immigration reform supporters are threatening national boycotts and lawsuits.
SB 1070 makes it possible for local police to racially profile Latinos by allowing them to check a person’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they might be undocumented. It elicits memories of South Africa under apartheid, when blacks were forced to carry passbooks or otherwise risk incarceration. For a good historical perspective of immigration in Arizona, check out Jessica Pieklo’s blog for Care2.
Hidden costs
Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, joins many bloggers and immigrant rights supporters in calling for a boycott. “Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva is urging a boycott of his own state. San Francisco has already announced its intentions to boycott Arizona,” Rothschild writes. “The response from the Latino community has been instant and outraged. And the upcoming May Day rallies are sure to be huge.”
If threats to boycott simmer down, lawsuits could overturn the bill. At RaceWire, Julianne Hing writes that “Legal challenges to Arizona’s [new immigration law] are coming from all sides. Both the [American Civil Liberties Union] and [the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund] are planning legal action.”
Hing adds that “Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon announced on Friday that his city would bring a lawsuit against [the law]” and that he is joined by “Sara Presler, the mayor of Flagstaff, whose city is exploring its legal options as well.”
Arizona will need to amp up its law enforcement arm to put the bill in action. That won’t be cheap—the state budget is facing a $2 billion shortfall. As William Fisher reports at the Inter Press Service, “In one Arizona county alone, Yuma County, the sheriff estimates that law enforcement agencies would spend between $775,880 and $1,163,820 dollars in processing expenses. Jail costs would run between $21,195,600 and $96,086,720 dollars, and attorney and staff fees between $810,067 and $1,620,134 dollars.”
The ripple effect
Ironically, Arizona lawmakers’ attempts to crackdown on immigrants have galvanized Latinos and immigration reform supporters on a national level. As Suzy Khimm reports in Mother Jones, “In light of the passage of Arizona’s draconian immigration law, advocates have been ramping up the pressure on the Democratic leadership to demonstrate some concrete sign of progress by May 1, when nationwide immigration reform rallies are scheduled.”
At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes how SB 1070 has also created a political quandary for Republican lawmakers in Congress. “So far, only two GOP members — Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — have been willing to criticize the state law,” writes Benen. “If the issue is a test of Republicans’ political and moral seriousness, it appears most of the party caucus on the Hill is content with an ‘incomplete.’”
The anti-immigrant backlash
Immigration reform supporters also know that punitive laws won’t go away until Congress moves to pass reform. Already, as Jason Hancock at the Iowa Independent reports, “a Republican candidate for congress in Iowa’s 3rd District calling for microchips to be installed in immigrants.”
Pat Bertroche, the candidate, is quoted by Hancock comparing undocumented immigrants to “dogs,” saying “I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going. I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?”
Meanwhile, the National Radio Project reports on the lives of gay and lesbian immigrants who live in the United States without papers. Un Jung Lim, a U.S. citizen whose partner was deported after living in the United States for 18 years on a worker visa, tearfully said “We’ve been separated for five months and we hope to be reunited soon, but we don’t know when that’s going to be.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user Bebopsmile,... more
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Republican Senator Lindsey Graham withdrew his support from a climate bill because he disagreed with Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid's handling of immigration. Then he accused Reid of playing election-year politics. Wait... Who's playing political games here?Republican Senator Lindsey Graham withdrew his support from a climate bill because he... more
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by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
While federal lawmakers cautiously mull over the possibility of dropping a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year, legislators in Arizona have passed yet another law that criminalizes undocumented immigrants. What’s more, the Arizona House is advancing a bill that would require the Arizona Secretary of State to review President Barack Obama’s birth certificate before his name is allowed on any ballots.
The Arizona crackdown
Arizona lawmakers just passed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighbourhood Act, which is arguably the toughest immigration law in the country. It forces local police to check the immigration status of people if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they might be undocumented. The bill is an invitation to racially profile residents.
The bill, which now goes the states’ Republican Governor Jan Brewer for final approval, has sparked an organized campaign to defeat the measure over concerns that the bill is inhumane would discriminate against Latinos.
Valeria Fernández with the Inter Press Service reports on the bill, which “includes a number of provisions that go beyond authorizing the arrest of undocumented immigrants on ‘reasonable suspicion.’ It targets day laborers by making it a crime to look for work on the street, and would fine anyone who harbors or transports an undocumented immigrant, including family members.”
Outbreaks of civil disobedience have accompanied the bill. “On Tuesday, nine students were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct after they chained themselves to the entrance doors of the capitol building in an act of civil disobedience against the proposed law.” Fernández reports. “Authorities arrested them as soon as they said they wouldn’t leave until the governor took action on the law.”
John Tomasic with the Colorado Independent also notes that “On Capitol Hill, Prominent Latino Reps. Luis Gutierrez [(D-IL)] and Raul Grijalva [(D-AZ)]denounced Arizona’s controversial immigration bill and urged [Brewer] to veto the legislation. “
Eyes on Washington
While anti-immigrant legislation passes in Arizona, optimism for federal immigration reform this year is growing dimmer. While a proposal has already been introduced in the House of Representatives, the issue of citizenship for an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants could be shelved indefinitely if a bill isn’t introduced in the Senate soon.
The Senate will need time to debate the issue, and if it isn’t introduced in the next few weeks, potential fallout from the upcoming Congressional elections may make passing reform even more difficult.
ALIPAC attacks
As Kai Wright notes over at RaceWire, the congressional debate is not off to a civil start. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the only Republican Senator openly working on a bipartisan immigration reform bill, was verbally attacked by anti-immigrant groups this week.
“The rabidly anti-immigrant group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) has launched a campaign professing to out Graham as gay,” reports Wright. “In a speech to a Tea Party rally — which is making the web rounds via YouTube — the group’s leader, William Gheen, speculated that Graham’s being blackmailed into participating in immigration reform because of his ’secret.’ ‘I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen and I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it,’ Gheen said.
McCain veers right
Mother Jones reports that ALIPAC is also targeting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a lawmaker who co-sponsored a immigration reform bill in 2007 with the late Ted Kennedy. The 2007 bill didn’t pass, and since then McCain has backed away from vocally supporting reform now that he’s facing a primary challenge to his Senate seat.
“The motivation for McCain’s rightward shift is obvious,” Suzy Khimm writes. “The Arizona senator authored the Senate’s last comprehensive reform bill, which included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. His Tea Party-backed primary opponent, J.D. Hayworth, has attacked him relentlessly for doing so. Hayworth has been endorsed by [ALIPAC], a right wing anti-immigrant group that’s trying to stir up Tea Partiers to revive the conservative crusade against ‘amnesty.’”
Just this week, McCain introduced a bill in the Senate that would 3,000 National Guard troops to patrol the border, “an intervention that critics say would be both costly and ineffective,” according to Khimm. McCain also come out in support of Arizona’s news anti-immigration law.
But despite vicious attacks from the right, there is still hope. Immigration reform supporters are planning rallies in dozens of states on May 1 to keep pressure on the Senate to propose a bill. To organizers working on the ground to pass reform, Arizona exemplifies why the broken immigration system needs to be fixed on a national level, and now.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
While federal lawmakers cautiously mull over... more
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With all the sign waving, no saying, and anti-regulating, Republicans are working up an appetite so fierce they're eating their own. The baggers have brewed a nice strong pot of orange pekoe and proceeded to dig into a rump roast ala Lindsey Graham.With all the sign waving, no saying, and anti-regulating, Republicans are working up... more
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By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), started a hubbub among comprehensive immigration reform advocates last week when he expressed to members of the Capitol press corps that progressive immigration legislation was “dead” for 2010 due to the contentious passage of health care reform. But the battle isn’t over yet. In an interview with Sandip Roy at New America Media, Frank Sharry, the executive director of DC-based immigration organization America’s Voice, says, “I think we have a good chance of seeing a bipartisan bill being introduced in April.”
Graham’s declaration mirrors similar antics that happened around the health care debate—where insurance reform was pronounced dead countless times by a wide array of pundits and lawmakers. In fact, Seth Freed Wessler of ColorLines reports that Graham, who has been working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on an immigration reform bill for a year later changed his tune, stating that he would continue to craft a bipartisan bill.
The Battle in the Senate
Gabriel Arana with The America Prospect questions just how the GOP lawmakers will react to the upcoming immigration debate, arguing that, “Even for those Republicans who are willing to publicly support immigration reform, partisan rancor all but ensures it won’t go anywhere.”
And outside the Capitol? As Laura Flanders of GRITtv points out, the immigration debate, “has the potential to be far, far messier—and more violent—than the health care battle,” and will likely galvanize those with xenophobic tendencies on the far Right to become even more unhinged.
On top of that, providing a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States will most likely be dead in 2010 if a bill isn’t proposed in the Senate this Spring. There needs to be time to debate the issue before the end of the year, and more importantly, before election season kicks off in the Fall. While there’s already an immigration bill in the House of Representatives, a timeline for when one will actually be introduced in the Senate is unknown.
Immigration agents go rogue
Combined with the uphill battle for immigration reform, AlterNet reports on a government memo revealing that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has set quotas to initiate more deportations of undocumented immigrants, targeting those who had committed no crimes. The memo was in stark contrast to the Obama administration’s stated goal to focus on deporting criminal offenders with violent histories, and prompted immigration rights groups to question the White House agenda.
At the same time, anti-immigration activists are also trying to label all immigrants as criminals. As the Colorado Independent documents, the shooting death of an Arizona rancher near the Mexican border has influenced former Colorado lawmaker Tom Tancredo and his followers to demand that the National Guard be sent the border—even though the death has not even been tied to an undocumented immigrant at this time. (The Department doesn’t have jurisdiction over the National Guard to begin with.)
The Inter Press Service also reports on the results of such criminalization, as human rights abuses in immigration detention continue to increase each day. “More abuses in the U.S. immigration detention system came to light last week,” notes the media outlet, writing that “It was revealed that two mentally disabled men continue to be held in detention while facing possible deportation for criminal assault convictions, despite having already served their time.” The inmates were later released after the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed legal petitions against federal government.
For more links on immigration check out:
* On how I became an American – Feministing
* How Health Care Reform Affects Immigrants – New America Media
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), started a hubbub... more
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By Alison Hamm, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user **Mary**, via creative commons license.Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) met with industry groups Wednesday evening to discuss their much anticipated tripartisan climate legislation. Based on leaks from the meeting, it sounds like the climate bill will be incredibly industry friendly, which may mean that the bill does little to help the environment.
A syncing feeling
According to reports from sources in the meeting room, the bill calls for greenhouse gas curbs across multiple economic sectors, with a 2020 target of reducing emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. Power plant emissions would be regulated in 2012, other major industrial sources will be phased in during 2016.
But the bill contains major concessions to the industry, according to Aaron Wiener at The Washington Independent. The senators’ proposal would halt dozens of state climate laws and regulations and preempt U.S. EPA climate regulations under the Clean Air Act.
As Kate Sheppard reports for Mother Jones:
The head lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Bruce Josten, told reporters after the meeting that he believes the bill will be ‘largely in sync’ with what most industry types would like to see. The Chamber, of course, has been one of the most formidable foes of climate legislation to date. In addition to the Chamber, the senators also met with the Edison Electric Institute, American Petroleum Institute, and Portland Cement Association.
A climate bill that syncs up with organizations opposed to climate legislation. Really? But, like Sheppard writes, although these leaks from the meeting don’t sound too great in terms of climate, “Kerry had already scaled back expectations on that front.”
The fears
Kerry, Graham and Lieberman have argued that an “energy-only” bill, which would focus on wider financial support for low-carbon energy projects, a national renewable electricity mandate, and allows wider oil-and-gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, among other measures, would be easier to pass than a comprehensive bill.
As David Roberts writes for Grist, this refers to the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA), which passed last year. But unlike the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) that passed the House, with substantial parts devoted to directly supporting clean energy and boosting energy efficiency, ACELA “sucks,” according to Roberts. He writes:
As a standalone bill, it does virtually nothing for renewables, boosts efficiency a middling amount, and dumps a bonanza of subsidies on offshore drilling, nuclear power, tar sands, oil shale, and natural gas. It also weakens the Renewable Fuel Standard. It’s a minor deviation from the awful energy status quo and would be a depressing end indeed to the year-long Obama-era effort to finally address America’s energy problems.
The real bill
Many details of the forthcoming legislation are still unclear, and the real bill isn’t expected to be released for another few weeks. Environmental groups who attended a meeting with Kerry yesterday to discuss details of the bill were close-mouthed about their reactions, and stressed that the bill is still in draft stages and may change significantly, as Sheppard writes at Mother Jones.
Let’s hope the final bill will offer real solutions to fight global warming and curb greenhouse gas emissions. National Radio Project talked with several climate change activists who discussed the steps needed to make significant change following the less-than-concrete outcomes from Copenhagen. It’s definitely worth a listen.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Alison Hamm, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user **Mary**,... more
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http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/03/05/weekly-mulch-new-bills-and-old-money/
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user tellytom, under Creative Commons license.Climate legislation is returning to the Senate’s docket, and leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping that this version, a compromise bill spearheaded by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), can pass without getting caught in the morass of money and politics that has delayed action so far.
A long, long time ago…
Remember, there was a time when Congress was going to pass climate legislation before the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama was going to show up with a bill in hand and lead the world towards a better climate future. After the House passed its climate bill in June 2009, the Senate began discussing climate change, and a first stab by Sen. Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) went nowhere. Now, Kerry has turned to less liberal colleagues to draft an alternative that would appeal to moderates and even Republicans.
Now the Massachusetts senator is promising that climate change isn’t dead. A new bill is coming—more information may be in the offing as early as today, as Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones.
Third time’s the charm
Sen. Kerry is trying a new tactic to pass climate legislation. He’s waiting to release his plan until he knows the bill has the 60 supporters it needs to circumvent a filibuster. The details have not been hammered out yet, and even the Senators who’ve been in talks with Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman don’t seem to have a clear sense of what will be in the version that will emerge.
In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released an ambitious draft of the legislation, let lobbyists and members of Congress fight over it, and passed a much-changed edition months later. Sen. Kerry tried a similar plan on his side of Capitol Hill (that was the Kerry-Boxer bill), but it did not work.
With this piece of legislature, Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are working out the compromises before they release the legislation. Both reporting and speculation about their bill say that it will abandon the cap-and-trade system passed in the House. Cap-and-trade restricts carbon emissions across the economy; a variation on that policy that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill may favor will limit the system to a few sectors.
Will it work?
Kerry’s expected bill may be a much weaker plan than any proposed so far, yet it is still not certain that the Senate will support it. The lead authors of the bill have been meeting with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, as Sheppard reports, but those targets have not promised support yet. Coming out of a meeting, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told reporters: “There were some interesting things that were discussed in there and like everything else in the United States Senate, the devil is in the details.”
From a distance, banner-day climate legislation still seems possible. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Foundation, and the National Resources Defense Council believe that they will see a bill this year that caps carbon. These green groups would be able to live with the incentives handed to industry groups so far, according to Campus Progress’ Tristan Fowler.
“There are compromises [that can go] too far. Fortunately, I don’t think we’re getting near that territory at the moment,” Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told Fowler.
Sickly green
Before getting too excited about stamping a green seal of approval on Congress’ legislation, consider Johann Hari’s testimony in The Nation about the relationships between environmental groups and the industries that they oppose.
Hari has reported on climate change issues for years, and at first, he “imagined that American green groups were on these people’s side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path—one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.”
Hari argues that as environmental groups began to reach out to polluters, handing them awards for green behavior and accepting support from their deep pockets, they learned to compromise too readily and accept political excuses for delaying action on climate change. While in other realms these compromises might fly, when the stakes are as high as they are on environmental issues, that behavior turns the stomach.
“You can’t stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, ‘Sorry, the swing states don’t want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years,’” Hari writes.
The green future
When Kerry, Lieberman and Graham do release the compromised bill, watch for a tsunami of money and influence that could pack the bill with prizes for specific industries—or derail it altogether. Just this week, the natural gas industry’s lobbyists told The Hill, a D.C.-based newspaper, that they were ready to fight with the coal industry over incentives in the Senate bill. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman writes that the nuclear industry spent $645 million in the past decade to get back into the energy game, according to a new report from American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop. (Hint: that $645 million is working in their favor.)
In the Senate, the influence of oil companies will play an important role, according to David Roberts at Grist.
“While coal has a lot of power in the House, oil has enormous power in the Senate, particularly over the conservadems and Republicans needed to put the bill over the top,” Roberts explains.
No matter what legislation passes and what incentives it contains, environmentalists need to continue putting pressure on their representatives in Congress and on national environmental groups to push back against polluting industries and work to fix the world’s climate.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.http://www.themediaconsortium.org/2010/03/05/weekly-mulch-new-bills-and-old-money/... more
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For much of President Obama’s first year in office, his national security team worked to devise a secure plan to send dozens of Yemeni detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the largest single group at the prison camp — home to Yemen, perhaps to a rehabilitation program.
Then came the Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt, which was planned in Yemen, and the president put all transfers there on hold.
Read rest of story at link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/us/31trial.html?ref=todayspaperFor much of President Obama’s first year in office, his national security team... more
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For the second time in the last few months, conservative Republicans in one of South Carolina’s counties have voted to censure Senator Lindsey Graham for his congressional votes.
In November, members of the Charleston County G.O.P. voted to rebuke the senator for his vote on bailing out the nation’s banks and his sentiments on immigration overhaul and cap-and-trade climate change legislation.
On Monday night, members of the Lexington County Republican party voted 13-7 to censure Mr. Graham, citing in part his support for government intervention in the private financial sector, according to The State newspaper. The county party used fairly strong language in its resolution, accusing Mr. Graham of “debasing” longstanding Republican beliefs in economic competition and and showing “contempt and belligerence” toward other Republicans.
Senator Graham has long rankled more conservative members of his party, because of his efforts to work with Democrats and some of his breakaway votes from the party. The State notes, correctly, that the bank bailout, as well as immigration proposals, both were supported by former President Bush.
In October, Mr. Graham and Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, were co-authors of an Op-Ed article in The Times that favored climate-change legislation. And even though he voted last summer to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the senator more recently opposed seating Judge David Hamilton of Indiana on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/senator-graham-censured-again/For the second time in the last few months, conservative Republicans in one of South... more
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