Disgruntled Progressive

US to Station Diplomats in Iran

2008-07-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

By Farol

Well, this is a genuinely unexpected turn of events. From The Guardian:

The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.
The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section - a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.
The news of the shift by Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his tenure comes at a critical time in US-Iranian relations. After weeks that have seen tensions rise with Israel conducting war games and Tehran carrying out long-range missile tests, a thaw appears to be under way.
The White House announced yesterday that William Burns, a senior state department official, is to be sent to Switzerland on Saturday to hear Tehran's response to a European offer aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff.

Futher, Ahmadinejad is not opposed to the idea of talking with the U.S.

It seems, on the surface at least, that the more "rational" factions of the administration and the military (Gates, Rice, Mullen, etc.) have won a significant victory over the bloodthirsty-deranged faction led by Cheney.

How will this play out? In one of two ways: either this is a genuine diplomatic overture that will lead to a "thaw" in relations with Iran in the near future, or it's a complete front designed to silence those critics who have called for more diplomacy with Iran (Iran will inevitably refuse to meet some kind of unattainable "demand" set by the U.S., Bush and company will say "I told you so", and then tell us that war is now the only option).

It's almost impossible not to be cynical about anything Bush does, but we can at least hope for the best. Actually, at this point, that's pretty much all we can do.

U.S. Derived Torture Techniques From Communist China

2008-07-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

By Farol

Torture is once again on the front page today, as the New York Times reveals that the "coercive methods" (including sleep deprivation, stress positions, and exposure to extreme temperatures) currently used on "terrorism suspects" at U.S.-controlled secret prisons around the world were "copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners."

(Note to the NYT: when the Chinese did these things, I'm pretty sure they were called "torture", not "coercive methods". And a significant number of U.S.-held detainees are not "terrorism suspects" at all. Many, in fact, have no credible evidence against them.)

There's sure to be a lot of hand-wringing about this (how low we've fallen!), but one important aspect that will probably be missed is that, according to the Air Force article, the Chinese torturers who first implemented these techniques were FULLY AWARE that they were eliciting false confessions. Therefore, it's fair to conclude that the higher-ups who initiated these techniques in U.S.-controlled prisons knew they were bound to produce, uh, bullshit.

Why would the U.S. government want to deliberately extract false confessions from its detainees? To create the impression of a vast horde of terrorists who are out to get us, thus justifying ongoing war and occupation all over the Middle East, perhaps?

House Caves on FISA

2008-06-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

By Farol

The House just passed the Hoyer/Bush FISA "compromise" bill by a whopping 293-129.

Since this bill is a clear violation not only of the Fourth Amendment, but of the whole principle of equality under the law, I expect to see some real outrage on the part of all the visible "good liberals" out there. How about it, Obama? What about a rousing speech on the Senate floor decrying the violation of the Constitution, plus a vow to block this legislation with a filibuster? How about you, Frank Rich? Surely you're going to use your influential voice to incite your readers to mobilize on this issue?

All kidding aside, it's worth noting that the people who called in to C-Span as I was watching the House vote on this were almost all infuriated and saddened in equal measure. The disconnect between the words of these angry citizens and the spectacle taking place on the screen was shocking. (One woman reported that her representative's office hung up on her). It was enough to make you feel that democracy in this country is dead and buried.

It's Baaaaaaaaack

2008-06-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

By Quill

Remember that abortion ban that got defeated by the people in South Dakota in 2006? The one without an exception for women's health? Well, like the creepiest of psycho-killers in your dreams, it's come back!

It's new name is Initiated Measure 11. Although the sponsors included exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and risk to the woman's health (so generous of you, folks!) make no mistake: this ban is about controlling women and it will put many, many of their lives at risk if it passes.

Fortunately for women everywhere, Planned Parenthood is organizing a HUGE grassroots movement against Measure 11. Head over to their blog at www.standupSD.blogspot.com, where you can sign a pledge to fight the ban, learn ways to help out (even if you don't live in SD), submit slogans for the campaign, and respond to anti-choicers in the media.

If we're going to defeat this reprehensible measure, we'll need everybody in the pro-choice community to pitch in, so please do so.

I'll keep you updated.

The Second Coming of the FISA Flood

2008-06-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

By Farol

The fact that Democratic leaders in Congress are utterly desperate to give amnesty to telecoms that broke the law by spying on Americans without a warrant should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying even the slightest bit of attention to this issue. The only thing that's been preventing them from caving for this long has been intense grassroots activism. And no grassroots activist has pursued this issue with more dedication, passion, and knowledge than Glenn Greenwald.

In an amazingly short amount of time, Greenwald has assembled a diverse group of bloggers and activists to run ad campaigns against "blue dog" Democrats who support amnesty (and other destructive Bush policies). The group's short-term goal is to stop the sham "compromise" bill which the House Democratic leadership is now trying to force through Congress as quickly and quietly as possible (and which would guarantee immunity for the telecoms). The long-term goal is to create an organized, efficient grassroots movement devoted to civil-liberties issues. This is particularly important considering that, as Greenwald notes, Barack Obama has yet to take serious action on these issues. There is no guarantee that he will live up to his rhetoric should he become president.

I encourage everyone to head over to Greenwald's blog now to get all the details. The relevant posts are here, here, here, and here.

We're Back!

2008-06-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

At long last, we're back.

We're both very sorry we haven't been around for the past few months, but the end of the school year and the beginning of summer (never the easiest time of year) has been even more hectic than usual this time around.

Still, though it may seem like we did, the truth is we never really went away. In between all the traveling and working we've been doing, we've kept up with the news and the blogosphere to the best of our ability, and it was only a matter of time before we were settled in enough to do more writing. That time has finally arrived.

Stuff We Wanted to Blog About This Week But Just Couldn't

2008-04-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

America has an alarmingly high amount of prisoners in comparison to other Western nations. (Of course, the majority of them are minorities.)
Rupert Murdoch is trying to add Newsday to his media empire, but is running into complications with the FCC, since he already owns two print publications and two local TV stations in the New York metropolitan area, and a buying a third publication would be illegal. We expect the FCC to cave any day now.
The three New York City detectives that pumped 50 bullets into city resident Sean Bell, an African-American man, the night before his wedding day got acquitted of all charges. It's so nice to see justice prevail.
The Senate passed a bill banning genetic discrimination, because unlike sexism and racism, it affects all of them.
A record number of people across the country have applied for emergency energy assistance grants to help pay electric and oil bills that they couldn't afford this winter.
Taliban-style laws appear to be making a comeback in Afghanistan.

Scariest Picture of Dick Cheney, Ever.

2008-04-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

Via Winter Patriot.

Let's Not Forget What the Pentagon Really Wants

2008-04-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

By Farol

As I was cruising the blogosphere, I came across an old piece by Chris Floyd, which was #4 on Project Censored's "Top 25 Stories of 2002/2003": "Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism." Floyd is always a must-read, but this piece, in particular, is essential for anyone who wants to understand the true goals of the "Terror War."

Guilty Pleasures...

2008-04-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

By Quill

While I believe that engaging war-crazy egomaniacal douchebags such as Thomas Friedman in logical dialog is ultimately more damaging to their ilk than throwing pie in their face, how could you not love seeing Friedman look so pissed-off as he shuffles around the stage at Brown, covered in whip cream?

p.s. For an excellent post on Thomas Friedman's idiocy and blood-lust, please go here.

Is Asking that You Ask Questions too Much to Ask?

2008-04-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Quill

Glenn Greenwald has a recent post that questions the Colin Powell-with-the-jar-of-anthrax-like "evidence" behind the Bush administration's latest claim that North Korea is helping Syria to develop a plutonium-producing nuclear facility.

The only scary thing about this news is how eerily similar it sounds to the sketchy arguments made by the same administration five years ago about the relationship between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, as Greenwald points out, very, very few media outlets are actually getting a second opinion on the validity of this relationship, and are simply parroting the administration's talking points without questioning them.

Is it too much to ask "respectable" news organizations like the Associated Press, The Washington Post and Reuters to question these claims? It can't be that hard to find critical voices on the subject, as the The New York Times has managed to dig up a few. Instead, they're just giving Bush and his sycophants a free pass to spew highly questionable allegations similar to the ones that led to a disastrous, ongoing war.

My question is, has the press corps simply not learned its lesson, or do they just not give a shit?

The Daily Show's Take on the "Military Analysts" and the GAO's Report on America's Progress in the "War on Terror"

2008-04-24T13:35:00.001-07:00

Genius.

Update: The Weasely Republican Mind Continues to Know No Shame

2008-04-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

By Quill

(UPDATED BELOW)

I got the answers to my questions about the failed vote on the Lily Ledbetter Act.

Apparently, Harry Reid voted "no" on the act as a tactical move that would allow him to bring the bill of for cloture at a later time (and let's make sure that he does, folks).

Also, I found out why the Republicans wanted to block the bill from coming to a vote in the first place.

Via CNN.com:

The bill that stalled Wednesday would have reset the clock with every paycheck, with supporters arguing that each paycheck was a discriminatory act. But Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, said the bill would allow retirees drawing pensions to sue their old companies over allegations of discrimination that happened decades ago.

"We're about having integrity in the system, so we have timely complaints, we have timely evidence, and the parties that are there can quickly be remedied," Isakson said.

Republican logic never ceases to boggle the brain. A retired employee who has been discriminated against for years of hard work and now has to live off a smaller pension and social security benefits than their former co-workers due to discrimination should have every right to sue their employer for back pay owed to them. That's their basic right, assholes.

Also, how else to you expect to hold corporations responsible for their illegal actions if they can't be brought to court? Sure, there's a time period in which you can (180 days after your first unequal paycheck), but that is totally unrealistic. In Lily Ledbetter's case, it took almost 20 years for her to discover that she was getting shafted.

The paltry excuse the Republicans offer only further reveals their true motives:

1)Protect the corporations.
2)Keep women in their place.

I guess they saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone Wednesday night.

Update:

Echidne of the Snakes has a very informative, insightful 3-part-series on the "gender gap" here. It's definitely worth your time.

Thanks to the amazing m for the tip.

Guantánamo Detainees Allege Being Drugged Against Their Will

2008-04-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

By Farol

Here's another nugget for all of you Gitmo fans out there. From the Washington Post:

Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle.

"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.' "

Nusairi, now free in Saudi Arabia, was unable to learn what drugs were injected before his interrogations. He is not alone in wondering: At least two dozen other former and current detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere say they were given drugs against their will or witnessed other inmates being drugged, based on interviews and court documents.

Like Nusairi, other detainees believed the injections were intended to coerce confessions.

The Defense Department and the CIA, the two agencies responsible for detaining terrorism suspects, both deny using drugs as an enhancement for interrogations, and suggest that the stories from Nusairi and others like him are either fabrications or mistaken interpretations of routine medical treatment.

Yet the allegations have resurfaced because of the release this month of a 2003 Justice Department memo that explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees.

Written to provide legal justification for interrogation practices, the memo by then-Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo rejected a decades-old U.S. ban on the use of "mind-altering substances" on prisoners. Instead, he argued that drugs could be used as long as they did not inflict permanent or "profound" psychological damage. U.S. law "does not preclude any and all use of drugs," Yoo wrote in the memo. He declined to comment for this article.

The memo has prompted new calls for the Bush administration to give a full accounting of its treatment of detainees, and to make public detailed prison medical records. Legal experts and human rights groups say that forced drugging of detainees for any nontherapeutic reasons would be a particularly grave breach of international treaties banning torture.

"The use of drugs as a form of restraint of prisoners is both unlawful and unethical," said Leonard Rubenstein, an expert on medical ethics and the president of Physicians for Human Rights. "These allegations demand a full inquiry by Congress and the Department of Justice."

Scott Allen, a physician and co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights in Providence, R.I, noted that there are no accepted medical standards for the use of drugs to subjugate prisoners. Thus, any such use in interrogations "would have to be considered an experimental use of medicine."

Yes, that's right: Your government has authorized the illegal forced drugging of illegally held prisoners. And not only that, but the use of these drugs was experimental by its very nature.

One of the important things to note here is that the confessions extracted from prisoners using these coercive methods were almost certainly false ("Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.") Yes, I'm sure glad the Pentagon and the CIA are keeping us safer by tormenting people until they make shit up.

Well, all that remains to be done now is arrest those who authorized and carried out these illegal acts. Pretty clear-cut case of lawbreaking. I'm waiting....

(A note about the Post's article: Like all mainstream media pieces dealing with the abuse of government detainees, it automatically assumes the detainees are "terrorism suspects". In fact, many of the people held by the U.S. in Gitmo and elsewhere were turned in for the flimsiest of reasons—personal grudges, bounties, etc. To refer to all these people as "terrorism suspects" simply because they are held by the U.S. is fundamentally misleading.)

Show Some Gratitude, for Once!

2008-04-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

By Quill

It is all too rare that we get the chance to praise one of our congressional representatives for actually showing leadership and doing something good for the constituents who aren't owners of multi-million dollar corporations.

Therefore, I think we should take this chance to thank Senator Bob Casey Jr. (D-PA) for stepping up and joining the fight against the skyrocketing prices of birth control on college campuses (caused by a congressional oversight last year) by supporting the Prevention Through Affordable Access Bill. Sen Casey represents an interesting concept: An anti-abortion Senator who actually recognizes that one of the best ways to reduce abortion is to provide affordable contraception.

Whether you're from Pennsylvania or not, please head over here to Planned Parenthood to take a minute to encourage Sen. Casey to keep up the good work.

Food for Thought

2008-04-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

By Quill

Via The Guardian:

The UN is to halt food handouts for up to 800,000 Palestinians from tomorrow because of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza brought on by an Israeli economic blockade.
John Ging, the director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, said there had been a "totally inadequate" supply of fuel from Israel to Gaza for 10 months until it was finally halted two weeks ago. "The devastating humanitarian impact is entirely predictable," he said.
A shortage of diesel and petrol means UN food assistance to 650,000 Palestinian refugees will stop tomorrow, and aid from the World Food Programme for another 127,000 Palestinians due in the coming days will also be halted.

Of course, the negative effects of Israel's blockade is not appearing in any of the mainstream U.S. papers, a point we have made before here at DisPro.

And of course, this collective punishment of the Palestinian people on the part of Israel is completely illegal under international law, not to mention that the entire logic behind the blockade is a tad off. By not feeding bellies, Israel is inevitably feeding Hamas' ranks with thousands of hungry, angry new supporters. A quote taken from a Palestinian makes this clear:

For nearly three weeks, the fuel distributors have effectively been on strike in protest at the shortages. "We ask Israel to declare they will send the right amount of fuel into Gaza that is necessary for our needs," said Mahmoud Khazendar, vice-president of the distributors' association. "If they want to punish Hamas then OK, but not 1.5 million people."

Violence doesn't justify more violence, especially when it's being committed against many for the deeds of a few. Where is the moral authority in that?

The Ultimate Result of the PA Primaries

2008-04-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

By Quill

No one has summed it up better than AngryBlackBitch:

Anyhoo, a bitch suspects Pennsylvania is glad to see that donkey’s ass crossing the state line.

Indeed, ABB. Indeed.

Tell Congress to Investigate the Pentagon's Propagandizing

2008-04-23T20:16:00.001-07:00

(UPDATED BELOW)

Freepress.net has launched a campaign to urge Congress to investigate the Pentagon's co-opting of the media for propagandistic purposes. Head over there now, and tell your representatives to take action. Check this out, too:

(Our favorite Rumsfeld talking point: "You go on O'Reilly, and he's eating out of your hand, because you're smart.")

UPDATE: The Senate Armed Services Committee has called for the Pentagon to conduct an internal probe. This is not enough—Congress needs to appoint an independent investigator. Asking the Pentagon to investigate itself is sort of like asking Bush's Justice Department to do the same.

Finally, Conclusive Proof that Republicans Are the Sexist Pigs We Always Suspected They Were

2008-04-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

By Quill

UPDATED BELOW

The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act failed to pass cloture in the Senate today, which means that the senate isn't going to vote one way or the other on this bill for now.

Even though it got the clear majority of votes, it needed 60 to pass. You know what that means? That means that the Republicans pulled one of their little "silent filibusters" against a law that would end discriminatory pay practices against women who make 77 cents or less for every $1 dollar a man makes. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid let them get away with it by caving in to their demands for a 60 vote filibuster. To prove just how collectively sexist the Republicans in the Senate are, here's the stats from the vote:

All 49 of the Democrats* and the 2 Independents voted "Yes"
All but 4 of the 49 Republicans voted "No"
2 of those four Republicans were women from Maine: Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Props to you.
The only two female senators to vote "no" were both Republicans: Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
Props also go out to the only 2 male Republicans to vote "Yes": Gordon Smith (R-OR) and John Sununu (R-NH)

Way to go Republicans! Once again you've put corporate interests before basic human rights, and have decidedly demonstrated that you as a group don't give a flying shit about women.

Because, well gosh-gee-gollickers, it doesn't really matter what women get paid because they should just be stay-at-home-moms as soon as they pop out a kid, and let the Man of the House bring home the bacon every night, right? And if those bleeding-bag-o'hormones called women can't figure out that they're being "discriminated" against in 180 days of their first unequal paycheck, they shouldn't be paid as well as their more deserving, superior male colleagues anyways, right?

Fuck you. Fuck you for filibustering a piece of legislation that would have protected half of your constituents from unlawful discrimination. Fuck you, Harry Reid, for being a tool to the Republican party. And fuck you, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) for being tools of the patriarchy.

Although fumes may indeed be spewing forth from my head, fear not, all those who would see the Lily Ledbetter Act passed, for the fight is not yet over. Over at the National Women's Law Center, they have pledged to force the Senate to bring the bill up again and again until it passes. But in order for this strategy to be successful, they need your help and the help of everybody you know who wants to stop women from being treated as second class citizens.

Please take two minutes of your time to see how your Senators voted here , and then call them with the appropriate "Thank You" or "Please reconsider your vote" message. It's up to us now to demand our basic rights as human beings and citizens of the United States of America, because it's obvious that no one else is going to stand up for us.

*Note: According to the National Women's Law Center, although Harry Reid supports the bill he had to vote "no" for some ridiculous technical reason that is still not clear. I will update you when I find out what that is, although I strongly suspect it was because as the tool of the Republican party, he's "technically" supposed to vote how they do.

UPDATE:

Here's Lily Ledbetter herself, explaining why she decided to go to court:

Quick Hit: A Brand-Spanking New Blog that is Really, Really Funny

2008-04-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

One of Glenn Greenwald's most insightful commentators, a lawyer form the D.C. area, has just started his or her own blog called Inside-Out the Beltway. It should prove worthy of your daily reads. Check it out!

Noteworthy News of the Week

2008-04-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

This is out latest feature here at DisPro, where we'll collect some of the news from the past week that's actually worth noting and put it together for you in a convenient, streamlined format. We slave for you.

The Guardian has an excellent, must-read excerpt from Philip Sands' new book, The Torture Team.

Chris Floyd has an incredibly sad/funny post about the blind spot Americans have for the unfolding Somalian tragedy.

The New York Times finally got around to "uncovering" the fact that the Pentagon and Bush Administration have used Generals working as "analysts" for major news broadcast companies as part of the government's pro-war propaganda machine. Glenn Greenwald has a very insightful post about the article here.

The new trailer for Juno II is already out.

Hillary Clinton is a Bloodthirsty Psycho

2008-04-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

By Farol

OK, that's debatable. Still, even knowing that Clinton is in the middle of a tough campaign and will say practically anything at this point to inch up in the polls, this shocked me:

(From ABC news)

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Even John "Bomb-Bomb-Bomb Iran" McCain hasn't, to my knowledge, said anything this baldly aggressive. Clinton isn't merely saying that "no option is off the table" (the position held by McCain and Obama, and dangerous enough in its own right). And, despite the generous framing of the ABC article ("Hillary: If Iran Attacked Israel With nukes 'We Would Be Able to Totally Obliterate Them'"), she isn't saying that an attack on Iran would be contingent upon their attacking Israel with nuclear weapons. She's saying, with terrifying certainty, that Iran WILL be attacked if she becomes president—period.

Sincere promise or cynical political move? Who knows. But here's the main point: It is now considered perfectly normal for an American presidential candidate to advocate for aggressive, unprovoked war against—and the "total obliteration" of—another country. In an even slightly less insane political landscape, a statement like this would be enough to consign a politician to the fringe. How is it any different, really, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying Israel should be "wiped off the map"?

But the horrifying truth is that this call to mass murder will probably gain no more attention than Clinton's Passover address. That's where we are. Think about that.

Juicy

2008-04-18T23:29:00.001-07:00

ABC's lost promo to Wednesday's Democratic debate.

Barack Obama's Cowardice

2008-04-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

By Farol

(Updated Below)

So much for hope and change: Via Will Bunch, it seems as though Barack Obama won't do jack shit to prosecute Bush administration officials who have broken the law. (Watch the video here).

Obama starts off by saying he'd have his Justice Department thoroughly review the information we already have before doing anything. Fair enough. But he never actually says that any criminal wrongdoing should be prosecuted (they should be "investigated"). He claims that there needs to be a distinction between criminal lawbreaking and "very bad" policies. True—but the evidence of criminal lawbreaking is already ample. He says he wouldn't want to do anything that congressional Republicans would "perceive" as a "partisan witch-hunt." (The "perceptions" of a bunch of slimy dirtbags are more important than prosecuting a president who repeatedly broke the law.) Then, most absurdly, he claims that impeachment "wouldn't be a fruitful policy to pursue" because it should be reserved for "exceptional circumstances."

So starting a war under false pretenses, explicitly authorizing the torture of prisoners who have been denied their legal right to due process, spying on Americans without a warrant, creating a worldwide system of secret prisons, erecting a wall on the Mexican border that violates environmental and property laws, allowing your underlings at the DOJ to fire attorneys for political reasons, asserting your right to bypass any law you please—not a single one of these things, apparently, constitutes an "exceptional circumstance" for the hope-monger.

It is the height of naivete that the monstrous abuses of the Bush administration will simply go away when the prick leaves office. Because they have not been prosecuted, they have been accepted into the mainstream. If Bush can get away with this stuff, what's to stop the next president from doing the same? Nothing, because nobody—not even the benighted Obama—will do anything to enforce the law.

Many liberal bloggers complain, rightly, about the media's obvious and overwhelming bias in favor of John McCain. But they themselves are guilty of Obama-worship. They have tolerated his pandering and cowardly centrism for much too long. Time to take up arms and start demanding real change, along with real justice.

Update: Let's not forget about preventing states from providing health insurance to middle class children.

Blogging for Fair Pay

2008-04-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

By Quill

So, as promised, here is my contribution to "Blog for Fair Pay for Women" on Equal Pay Day. As the statistics show, women (especially women of color) have a long way to go before they earn as much as men for the same amount of work:

Women are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
African-American women are paid 63 cents for every dollar paid to white men.
Latinas are paid 52 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

And thanks to last year's Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, it is now even harder, if not impossible, to file suit against your employer if you are the victim of pay discrimination based on gender, race, sexuality, etc. if you do not figure out that you're being discriminated against within 180 days of being given a lower raise than your co-workers. That's right. Along with a slew of other recent shocking and questionable cases, the grand court of the land has taken another legal course away from people seeking to defend their basic rights.

In Lily M. Ledbetter's case, she did not discover that she was making less than her male co-workers - even those with less seniority - until someone slipped her an anonymous note about the matter, after nearly 20 YEARS of service at the Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama. She was the only woman out of 17 employees at the same management level at the plant.

In response to the court's dubious decision, Congress is voting on the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act next week, as early as Wednesday. This bill would allow people to prosecute their employers for pay discrimination without a 180-day time limit by designating each discriminatory paycheck as an ongoing violation of the law.

I encourage you to sign the petitions (here and here) being collected by the National Women's Law Center and the ACLU to encourage your congress members to vote for this legislation.

If you want to find other ways to get involved, check out the websites of the two previously mentioned organizations as well as MomsRising.org, an organization dedicated to making American corporate culture more family-friendly.

Donating your name and two minutes of your time will help make America a more just place for everybody.