Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Don’t Hold Your Breath (12:24 pm)

The Supreme Court has announced it will be taking up a case concerning the Second Amendment. This is the one where a Federal Appeals Court struck down Washington D.C.’s thirty year old law prohibiting the ownership of handguns within city limits. The decision was appealed and I can imagine certain members of the Court fell over themselves to scoop it up. For a primer on the Second Amendment and the contentiousness over it, read some Lithwick.

Considering how unabashedly right-wing the Supreme Court has become, I really don’t think we need to wonder privately or aloud how this one’s gonna play out.

This upcoming election is not just about the next 4-8 years. It is about the health of American law and democracy for the next 50 years. It concerns whether we are to see the total dismantling of almost every progressive legal victory achieved in the last 50 years or if we are to move forward and build upon those achievements. To this writer at least, it is one of the most important factors in my resolve to organize for and vote for whomever becomes the Democratic nominee next year.

posted by Jarrett | 3 comments

Friday, November 16, 2007

I’m Wincing Instead of Laughing (6:39 pm)

Good god. Check out Glenn Greenwald’s piece on the latest bit of bizarro oratory from our Doofus-In-Chief. It seems the bonehead gave a speech to the Federalist Society on, of all things, the importance of checks and balances and the separation of powers in government. What’s next? Speechifying on the importance of the separation of church and state?

Shaking my head on my way out of the office this cold Chicago Friday, shaking my head.

posted by Jarrett | start the discussion

Students Suspended for Peaceful Protest (2:31 pm)

Students who participated in a November 1st rally for peace at Morton West High School in Berwyn, IL were suspended and may even face expulsion.
The students began their protest in the school’s cafeteria, and eventually moved it to the area designated by Superintendent Ben Nowakowski specifically for the protest. According to a statement released by Nowakowski, “[The protesters} were afforded the opportunity to take their protest outside where they would not be impeding the educational process and, if they did so, the would face no disciplinary action. Several members of the group elected to return to their classes.”

Though some students locked arms, fearing police action, they all eventually moved on. However, the punishments being dolled out are extreme and unfair. Reports say, “some students with lower grades were given 10-day suspensions and face expulsion, while students favored by officials were given only five-day suspensions and do not face expulsion.”

Here’s the kicker: These students weren’t just protesting the War. According to a CLTV/Tribune report “students say recruiters come to that school several times each week, hold competitions, tell them they should join the army—That’s what they were protesting.”

These students were not just protesting the Iraq war, they were protesting the recruiters that impede their educational process—the same thing these students are being punished for. Let me quote Superintendent Ben Nowakowski again, “The incident that led to the suspensions had everything to do with disruption of the school day. While we respect the rights of students to express... read more

posted by Intern | 10 comments

Tasers aren’t fun (11:16 am)

News from up north that the four Mounties involved in the Taser death of a Polish immigrant at a Vancouver airport broke numerous rules of how the weapon should be used, as laid out in a 2005 report by the British Columbia police complaint commissioner.

Let’s review.

“Tasers should be used only against a subject who is actively resisting arrest or posing a risk to others, not someone who is “passively resisting.”
In this case, Dziekanski, who did not speak English, appeared not to be resisting and there were no other people in the area who could be hurt by his actions.

“Officers should avoid shocking a subject multiple times.”
Dziekanski was shocked twice within a matter of seconds.

“Following a Taser shock, a subject should be restrained in a way that allows him to breathe easily.”
At one point four officers were on top of Dziekanski. Two officers knelt with their full weight on his neck and back.

This news comes on the heels of a story from Chicago, where an 82-year old, mentally ill, GRANDMA was tasered without provocation. If you’d like to get more riled up about unnecessary police brutality, check out ITT Senior Editor Silja Talvi’s November 2006 cover story on taser-related deaths and a short essay about tasers and guns in Colorlines’ excellent new package on police killings, published, eerily enough, the same day an 18-year old Brooklyn resident was shot to death for holding a comb.

posted by Adam Doster | start the discussion

Ridin’ With A Touch of Class (10:50 am)

Chris Hayes beat me to the punch, but The ITT List is now rolling deep with an official prize winner.

Adam Doster bested more than 400 other writers— some good ones too—to win the College Affordability Essay Contest. Adam’s winning piece, “After College Ends, So Does Activism,” can be read here.

And, as coincidence would have it, Adam’s piece on another relatively new and unsavory aspect of campus life is gracing our site’s main page today. I believe it is also what the kids call a “must-read.”

Anyway, congratulations Adam. The honor is well deserved.

posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion

Thursday, November 15, 2007

“Appropriately Venomous” (2:29 pm)

That’s how I described Daniel Brook’s prose style in my review of The Trap.

I’d say the same description applies to his review of Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms in the latest Nation. Go read it. It’s priceless.

posted by Brian Cook | 1 comment

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

UHC and innovation (9:21 pm)

In the cover story for this week’s The New Republic, health care whiz Jonathan Cohn does a solid job of deconstructing one of the more convincing reasons one might oppose universal health care: namely, that it stunts medical innovation. My mom, who worked in a hospital as a social worker for many years, subscribes to this school of thought. I’d question why so many Americans are riding over the Ambassador Bridge to obtain pills and primary care, she’d ask why so many canucks are on the other side of the road headed to the Mayo Clinic. Well, if you believe that the market doesn’t dictate all human behavior, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

The great breakthroughs in the history of medicine, from the development of the polio vaccine to the identification of cancer-killing agents, did not take place because a for-profit company saw an opportunity and invested heavily in research. They happened because of scientists toiling in academic settings. “The nice thing about people like me in universities is that the great majority are not motivated by profit,” says Cynthia Kenyon, a renowned cancer researcher at the University of California at San Francisco. “If we were, we wouldn’t be here.” And, while the United States may be the world leader in this sort of research, that’s probably not—as critics of universal coverage frequently claim—because of our private insurance system. If anything, it’s because of the federal government.

Read the rest here.

posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment

Read Tom Hayden on Obama (8:54 pm)

Sure, his thinking is often buttressed with a heavy dose of nostalgia, but man can he write. Must have been something he learned in Ann Arbor.