How is it that one can not be cynical? Hm. Must have something to do with being utterly and totally naive. Or maybe stupid. Whatever: I can remember the hearings about whether or not Roberts was material for the SCOTUS. I can also remember the terrible sinking feeling in my stomach. Of course the man is not a conservative: he's a fucking reactionary, for god's sake!
Report: Reid Says Roberts 'Didn't Tell Us the Truth'
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggests Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts misled senators into believing he was not too conservative.
FOXNews.com
Friday, March 27, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts did not "tell us the truth" during his 2005 confirmation hearings, suggesting Roberts misled senators into believing he was more moderate than he really was.
According to Politico.com, Reid complained about Roberts during a discussion hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
"Roberts didn't tell us the truth. At least (Samuel) Alito told us who he was," Reid said, according to the article.
"But we're stuck with those two young men, and we'll try to change by having some moderates in the federal courts system as time goes on -- I think that will happen."
According to Politico.com, while Reid said Democrats will try to bring more moderates to the bench, he said they will not try to block Republicans' ability to filibuster nominees.
Here's something worth reading, esp. if you're involved with young people and concerned about the world they're inheriting:
Rise in US teen pregnancies proves information beats abstinence.
Published: March 25, 2009
TheTyee.ca
New U.S. government stats reveal that teen births are up for the second year in a row. But when Bill Maher, on his show Real Time last Friday, asked his guest panel why that might be the case, or what could be done about it, the trio became suddenly mute. Only one panel member, Carrie Washington, murmured something about Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin's not-so-abstinent daughter who is now a teen mother, not finding much success with abstinence-only education.
All they had to do was ask a Canadian. Despite Canadian and American women aged 15 to 44 declaring that they want the same number of kids (about 2.2), American women end up having 2.09 and Canadian women have about 1.6, and 30 per cent of that difference is due to teen births in the U.S., almost 90 per cent of which are unwanted.
What's going on? Are Canadian teens just more inhibited -- did the girls-gone-wild craze not get this far north? Or is it just too much effort to get the parkas off up here?
It turns out, when it comes to both banking and babies, Canada's more comprehensive policies might actually be beacons of sustainable light, not dull, lead weights.
Abstinence failing? More Abstinence!
First, here's the situation. In the U.S., the overall birth rate for those aged 15 to 19 rose for the second year in a row, from 41.9 births per 1,000 last year to 42.5 this year. That's not a huge jump, but it's still significant because until two years ago, it had declined every year for 14 years.
Predictably, many on the far right like Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, are calling for even more abstinence-only education that would "provide skills for teens to avoid sex," even though scientific study, and Bristol Palin, have both proved that doesn't work. (And I'm not sure what they teach in abstinence classes that could be characterized as "skills.")
As Bristol Palin told Greta Von Sustren just a few weeks ago, "I think abstinence is like... everyone should be abstinent, but it's not realistic at all... [Sex] is just more and more accepted now among kids my age."
After a decade and $1.5 billion U.S. federal dollars spent on abstinence-only programs, a Congress-authorized, rigorous scientific study reported no real difference in the age at which program participants first had sex, whether they had sex before marriage, or in their number of sexual partners.
I might actually have to use the "duh" word here. Abstinence-only education is about as effective at decreasing teen pregnancy rates as creationism education is in raising scientific knowledge levels. Abstinence is a legitimate religious doctrine, and sometimes an individual personal choice, but it's not sex ed.
C. Everett Koop: more than just a great beard
Some U.S. experts are being quoted this week saying that the funding should be shifted to programs that include educating young people about contraceptives -- efforts that have been shown to be highly effective. Like those Canada has had for decades, and like some programs that were in place in the U.S. during C. Everett Koop's tenure as surgeon general (1982-1989), which lead to the 14-year decline in teen pregnancy. After the first reported cases of the virus in the early 1980s, Koop promoted HIV education, which led to a big increase in condom use. Then during the Clinton years, abstinence-only programs started, promoting the virtues of chastity. And voila, teen births.
This week, Salon interviewed a Texan-chastity-pledge-devotee-turned-sex-ed-youth-advocate Shelby Knox, who said, "If you spend $1.5 billion to spew shame-filled garbage to young people and then pass laws that limit their access to good information, contraception, emergency contraception and abortion, then you shouldn't be surprised when the health outcomes aren't to your liking."
Knox indirectly outlines Canada's approach. According to StatsCan's comparative study of fertility trends in Canada and the U.S., no other industrialized country has juvenile birth rates as high as those observed in the United States. The birth rate of American teenage girls is more than double that in other industrialized countries, including Canada, and 10 times greater than in Japan and the Netherlands.
The difference is not solely due to the ethnic composition of the U.S. population: the white population also has higher birth rates than other countries.
And it's not due to a higher abortion rate in Canada. In fact, unwanted pregnancies and births are more frequent in the U.S., as is the use of abortion.
Good information = informed choices
No, the main reason is that Canadian teens of all social classes get comprehensive information about contraception and about how to avoid unwanted pregnancies. They get more sex ed in school, and can access high-school-based family planning counselling though the nurse. They can also always access universally free medical services, including visiting family doctor and special health clinics. And at all levels, there's a more positive attitude towards the pill, and either cheap or free prescriptions for it.
As a result, young Canadian women use more effective pharmaceutical methods (i.e. birth control pills) rather than less effective ones (condoms, or the so-called withdrawal method).
The Washington Post reported the story of one teenager, Yasmin Herrera, 19, who learned a month ago that she is pregnant with her second child, an unwanted pregnancy. She had a new prescription for birth-control patches but not enough money to fill it. That kind of case is avoidable here.
It's important to point out there are other factors involved: the U.S.'s earlier average marriage age and higher levels of religious practice (which can bring more traditional, pro-abstinence-only ideas) also contribute to the higher rate. But there are no policy implications for either of those.
So the role institutions can play is one of providing information about the pill and condoms, rather than telling kids they shouldn't have sex.
And really, who can blame kids who do? Adult culture glorifies and even flaunts sex, then educators tell kids they shouldn't try it because of the consequences: both social and moral. I don't know about you, but when I hear that kind of double standard, age-ist nonsense, I almost feel a teenage-style huff and coming on.
And it's not just me. When adults treat teens as intelligent beings capable of making informed decisions when armed with good information, then they do. That's backed not just by belief, but by actual numbers and science.
Related Tyee stories:
Tyee contributing editor Vanessa Richmond writes the Schlock and Awe column about popular culture and the media.
I know, I know. I'm inconsistent. Lazy, too. One bad side effect is that stuff I consider worth blogging about backs up on my desktop, an article jam that may flood central Oregon unless I do something about it.
Where to start, yeah, always
the question. A somewhat local, kid, from up in Madras, about 45 minutes north of here, is in a coma because of head-shots he took in a Golden Gloves fight. He and his family are poor; prize-fighting, he thought, was a way to support his folks. He probably isn't going to recover, according to today's news. Subdural hematoma: several parts of his brain are dead and he's likely to require full-time care. He's 19 years old. That's awful, I agree. People cannot take repeated blows to the head or concussions without paying a dreadful price. Football, boxing, war. What a trio of guaranteed ways to turn people into semi-ambulatory cabbages. But it goes on and on. With lots of social approval.
Rare good news: the new attorney general has announced the DOJ is going to back off on busting medical marijuana clinics. It's an idea who's time has come—in fact, has been here for years, standing around like yet another elephant in the living room. Thousands and thousands of people, in fact, not just those ill enough to have truthful claims to needing medical maryjane, have been persecuted for smoking or possessing weed. The government spends...yeah, a lot of money on busting potheads and pot farms. They don't seem to be winning this aspect of the war on drugs. The best thing you can say about it is that it gives jobs to a lot of people: judges, lawyers, cops, jailers, stenographers...
AlterNet
The Drug War's Latest Tally: 872,721 Pot Arrests, an All-Time High
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Posted on September 16, 2008, Printed on September 16, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98952/
If denial is the first sign of addiction, then Drug Czar John Walters is hooked to the gills. He's addicted to targeting and arresting marijuana consumers, and he'll do and say anything to keep this irrational and punitive policy in place.
Speaking earlier this month on C-Span, the reigning Czar stretched his usual deceit to outrageous new heights. Responding to a question from the Marijuana Policy Project's Dan Bernath, Walters flatly denied the charge that over 800,000 Americans are arrested annually for violating pot laws.
"We didn't arrest 800,000 marijuana users," Walters proclaimed. "That's [a] lie."
If only it were.
According to data released yesterday in the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, police in 2007 arrested over 872,000 US citizens - that's nearly one out of every two Americans busted for illicit drugs -- for weed. (The raw data is available from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation here and here.) That figure is a five percent increase over the total number of Americans busted in 2006. It's more than three times the number of citizens charged with pot violations sixteen years ago.
Of those arrested in 2007, 89 percent - some 775,000 Americans -- were charged with simple pot possession, not trafficking, cultivation, or sale. (By comparison, 27 percent of those arrested for heroin and cocaine offenses were charged with sales.) Three out of four were under age 30; one in four were 18-years-old or younger.
The FBI's tally is the highest marijuana arrest total ever-reported in law enforcement history. If this pace continues, annual arrests for pot will surpass one million per year by 2010.
But to hear America's top drug cop tell it few, if any, citizens are ever arrested for pot possession, and absolutely no one goes to jail for breaking marijuana laws.
"The fact is today, people don't go to jail for the possession of marijuana," Walters alleged on C-Span. "Finding somebody in jail or prison for possession of marijuana is like finding a unicorn. It doesn't exist."
Not true says the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, which reported last year in black and white -- perhaps the Drug Czar is reading impaired - that 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug abuse violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that, at a minimum, there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. (The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county or local jails for pot-related offenses, nor did it take into account the number of inmates serving time for violating the terms of their marijuana-related probation, such as those who submitted a 'dirty' urine to their parole officer.)
No matter how one slices it, that's a lot of unicorns.
It also begs the question: Why does the Drug Czar feel the need to go to such absurd lengths to hide this overt outgrowth of American drug policy? After all, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy typically issue chest-thumping press releases when they achieve record busts for offenses involving cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine? Why then do they shy away from making similar proclamations for pot?
Perhaps it's because, deep down, even the Drug Czar knows that the use of cannabis does not pose anywhere near the health and safety threat as does the use of other intoxicants, including alcohol, and that most Americans - rightly - would be outraged to learn that our nation's so-called war on drugs is really just an assault on young adults caught with small bags of weed.
Paul Armentano is the Deputy Director of NORML and The NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/98952/
AlterNet
The Drug War's Latest Tally: 872,721 Pot Arrests, an All-Time HighBy Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Posted on September 16, 2008, Printed on September 16, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98952/
If denial is the first sign of addiction, then Drug Czar John Walters is hooked to the gills. He's addicted to targeting and arresting marijuana consumers, and he'll do and say anything to keep this irrational and punitive policy in place.
Speaking earlier this month on C-Span, the reigning Czar stretched his usual deceit to outrageous new heights. Responding to a question from the Marijuana Policy Project's Dan Bernath, Walters flatly denied the charge that over 800,000 Americans are arrested annually for violating pot laws.
"We didn't arrest 800,000 marijuana users," Walters proclaimed. "That's [a] lie."
If only it were.
According to data released yesterday in the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, police in 2007 arrested over 872,000 US citizens - that's nearly one out of every two Americans busted for illicit drugs -- for weed. (The raw data is available from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation here and here.) That figure is a five percent increase over the total number of Americans busted in 2006. It's more than three times the number of citizens charged with pot violations sixteen years ago.
Of those arrested in 2007, 89 percent - some 775,000 Americans -- were charged with simple pot possession, not trafficking, cultivation, or sale. (By comparison, 27 percent of those arrested for heroin and cocaine offenses were charged with sales.) Three out of four were under age 30; one in four were 18-years-old or younger.
The FBI's tally is the highest marijuana arrest total ever-reported in law enforcement history. If this pace continues, annual arrests for pot will surpass one million per year by 2010.
But to hear America's top drug cop tell it few, if any, citizens are ever arrested for pot possession, and absolutely no one goes to jail for breaking marijuana laws.
"The fact is today, people don't go to jail for the possession of marijuana," Walters alleged on C-Span. "Finding somebody in jail or prison for possession of marijuana is like finding a unicorn. It doesn't exist."
Not true says the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, which reported last year in black and white -- perhaps the Drug Czar is reading impaired - that 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug abuse violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that, at a minimum, there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. (The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county or local jails for pot-related offenses, nor did it take into account the number of inmates serving time for violating the terms of their marijuana-related probation, such as those who submitted a 'dirty' urine to their parole officer.)
No matter how one slices it, that's a lot of unicorns.
It also begs the question: Why does the Drug Czar feel the need to go to such absurd lengths to hide this overt outgrowth of American drug policy? After all, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy typically issue chest-thumping press releases when they achieve record busts for offenses involving cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine? Why then do they shy away from making similar proclamations for pot?
Perhaps it's because, deep down, even the Drug Czar knows that the use of cannabis does not pose anywhere near the health and safety threat as does the use of other intoxicants, including alcohol, and that most Americans - rightly - would be outraged to learn that our nation's so-called war on drugs is really just an assault on young adults caught with small bags of weed.
Paul Armentano is the Deputy Director of NORML and The NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
Someone was telling me, the other day, about "Slumdog Millionaire" and what a great movie it is. Uh-huh. It's Another Great Movie I think I'll Miss. A guy just happens to win a kajillion rupees on on a millionire TV show, after coming out of one the world's worst slums. Just like real life. A virgin whore becomes a virgin over and over again, courtesy of miracle surgery. Sure, happens all the time. A big happy Bollywood dance number and Everyone lives happily ever after. Yup, I see it happen around me all the time. Happiness is only a few dollars away.
Are they fucking serious? This is like the whore with the heart of gold; the lesbian who goes straight after meeting just the right guy; the god descending from heavenly thrown and making everything just dandy. It ain't the way things work. No.
Can you, by the way, imagine how those slums smell? No, the theatres don't give you scent-o-rama. Just bullshit-o-rama.
