The ITT List

End The Prison Industrial Complex. End It Now.

Unnecessary deaths and amputation, grossly inadequate medical care, systematic prisoner beatings.

These are just some of the findings from a 17-month probe of the Cook County Jail by the U.S. attorney’s office.

In one case, an inmate left untreated for a gunshot wound developed sepsis and died. Another inmate went untreated and needed an amputation. Just one dentist serves 9,800 inmates and he only deals in extractions. The U.S. attorney’s office found that 25 percent of the dental procedures result in infection.

It's really loooong past time we start thinking about this:

If the prison boom was indeed produced by a historic collision between the jobless ghetto and a punitive politics of civil rights backlash, retreating from mass incarceration will involve equally fundamental shifts in politics and economics. What would a new politics of criminal justice look like, and what policies would it promote?

Bruce Western's comprehensive look at such policies is, like everything Western writes, an absolute must-read. Do not delay.

Write-in John Quincy Addams

Oh Bruce Bartlett, your logic makes so much sense! Many 23-year old Chicagoans like myself think highly of public education. I think that means we should vote Whig in 2008, no?

Scott Lemieux has more.

Chris Hayes is a machine

Read his 6,000 word opus on MoveOn. He gets at some of the tensions I highlighted in my piece from last year on the intersection between progressive activists and the Democratic Party leadership, but presents it in more interesting and erudite fashion than my little brain is capable of producing. Read it now.

The opposite of a good read

Just when you thought "Plame-gate" couldn't continue, couldn't possibly become a more byzantine saga, simply had to collapse under the massive weight of its own complexity, President Bush and the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee (read: Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.) are still keeping this party going.

I don't mean to say the Plame party should stop (although I stopped tracking it after Scooter walked), or to suggest this particular legislative/executive round is unnecessary or futile. I just want to express my deepest sympathies for the reporters covering this new executive privilege battle; they must know it's only the rarest of all readers who can still get through an entire story about this mess.

What's Next For Guantánamo?

Now that detainees held by the U.S. at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have the right of habeas corpus, members of one congressional body are asking, howwill that work?

While the Supreme Court, with its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, granted prisoners held as enemy combatants at Guantánamo the right to their day in court, many questions remain unanswered -- including whether the Boumediene decision applies to "enemy combatant" prisoners held by the U.S. in facilities other than the famed prison camp in Cuba. The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an entity of Congress also known as the Helsinki Commission, yesterday asked the guidance of three experts in a packed hearing
room.

Both Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., who co-chair the commission, spoke of the damage done to the U.S. image among its European allies by virtue of the fact of Guantánamo, a place where prisoners have been subject to indefinite detentions and interrogation methods classified as torture in international law. Other commissioners spoke of "getting an earful" about U.S. detention and interrogation policies when they travel abroad on commission business.

"[I]n light of the latest defeat for the administration's detention policies at the hands of the Supreme Court..." said Cardin, "I think it is high time to stop tinkering with a failed system and re-open entirely the question of how we handle terrorism suspects."

"The fact that Gitmo is still open is testament to the genuine challenges we face in relocating its residents...," Hastings said, "but it also speaks to a lack of political leadership in fixing the problems there."

The three witnesses who appeared before the commission concurred with Hastings' conclusion that Guantánamo should be closed. The witness list need not have been so stacked, Hastings implied, noting that the commissioners invited representatives from the Departments of Justice, Defense and State. "...in light of the vital implications of this subject for our country," he said, "I sorely regret the absence of administration witnesses." The commission's membership includes representatives from Defense and State, but neither attended the hearing.

Much of the argument against granting full rights under U.S. and international law to those detained as enemy combatants centers on the possibility of that prisoner's "return to the battlefield" if he is released. While that's an acknowledged risk, said Jeremy Shapiro, research director for the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, there's more to consider.

"The question of whether a returned detainee poses a danger needs to be weighed against the danger that the existence of Guantánamo is doing every day in creating recruits for terrorism," said Shapiro. "It is not simply the case that you will release somebody into a static pool of terrorists. The problem of Guantánamo, the image of Guantánamo, is creating in Europe and the world is, I would argue, on a daily basis adding to our terrorism problem."

Matthew Waxman, now a Columbia Law School professor, served as the Pentagon's chief legal adviser on detainee issues, where he earned the ire of David Addington, the famed enforcer for Vice President Dick Cheney. Waxman's transgression? Insisting that Pentagon guidelines on detainee treatment incorporate language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment. At yesterday's hearing, he advised lawmakers not to seek an easy fix to a complicated problem.

"When I say that there's no simple and ready alternative, what I'm really getting at is there's no easy solution out there that's gonna take care of the whole problem on its own....," Waxman told the commission. "[R]ather than looking for a one-size-fits all solution, such as 'send them all to their home countries,' 'bring them all into the United States', 'prosecute them all,' the solution to Guantanamo
probably lies in a combination of all of those things."

Then he added another option to add to the list, one he conceded was "controversial": "new legislation that might create what's sometimes called administrative detention or preventive detention authority -- to hold somebody inside the United States."

Hmmm...I'm no lawyer, but I'm not sure how that would jibe with the whole rationale for habeas.

Rounding out the panel was Gabor Rona, international legal director for Human Rights First, and former legal adviser for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo. (See Brian's coverage of how Pentagon advisers and Guantánamo officials hoped to evade ICRC detection of cruel and inhumane practices used in prisoner interrogations there.)

Rona took on the very notion of the "enemy combatant" and the standards -- which sounded unconstitutional to me -- of what constitutes "hostile acts" against the U.S.

"The definition of enemy combatant encompasses a huge swath of activities, many of which that have nothing to do with the battlefield -- associating with terrorists, for example," Rona explained. "So when the United States releases [an individual] and declares that they are no longer an enemy combatant, that doesn't mean that they had made the correct decision in the first place that this person had engaged in hostilities against the United States." In one case, Rona said, a detainee was deemed to have engaged in hostilities against the U.S. for having published an op-ed critical of "U.S. policies and practices."

Rona also contended that no new legal architecture is needed in the face of the Supreme Court's decision. "If we continue to look for the perfect, we will never find a solution and it will continue to be the enemy of the good," Rona said. "The good is the federal criminal justice system."

By the end of the two-hour hearing, the once-full room was more than half-empty. Even the two women from the anti-war group, Code Pink -- one sporting a spectacular, hot-pink hair ornament -- had made their exit before the closing gavel.

Obama's Iraq Policy

In today's New York Times, Barack Obama pens an op-ed about his plan for troop redeployment in Iraq:

We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq's stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq's refugees.

This comes after weeks of accusations that Obama has reversed policy on Iraq. The plan in today's op-ed is remarkably similar to Obama's Iraq War De-escalation Act, from way back in January 2007. That plan, according to the Washington Post in January 2007, would...

...begin a troop withdrawal no later than May 1, 2007, but it includes several caveats that could forestall a clean break:

It would leave a limited number of troops in place to conduct counterterrorism activities and train Iraqi forces. And the withdrawal could be temporarily suspended if the Iraqi government meets a series of benchmarks laid out by the Bush administration. That list includes a reduction in sectarian violence; the equitable distribution of oil revenue; government reforms; and democratic, Iraqi-driven reconstruction and economic development efforts. Obama's proposal also would reverse Bush's troop-increase plan.

During those important Senate proceedings on the Iraq War early last year, John McCain was noticeably absent.

Greens Tap McKinney

Greens from all over the country gathered at Chicago's Symphony Hall yesterday to cast their votes for the Green Party's 2008 presidential nominee. Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney received 313 of the 532 votes cast, enough to secure the nomination on the first round. Despite not actively seeking the Party's nod, Ralph Nader received the second highest total, with 78.5 votes.

The voting process got off to a slow start as technical problems arose with the big-screen scoreboard. But after a half-successful attempt by restless delegates to initiate "the wave" and chants of "turn the White House green," things eventually got back on track and voting continued.

Along with the state delegations, the Green Party also recognizes delegates from handful of caucuses, including the Women's, Black, and Lavender (LGBT) caucuses, all of which cast their own votes.

Each delegation had a chance to say a few words about their state and its successes and/or failings on Green issues. One state delegation, Hawaii, expressed its displeasure with being a state, and another, the District of Columbia, expressed its desire to become a state.

McKinney is the first African-American woman nominated for president by the Green Party. She served twelve years in the U.S. Congress as a Democrat. In 2006 she lost her bid for reelection.

The new nominee used her acceptance speech to stress the importance of building a nation-wide movement. Her goal, she said, is to earn 5% of the national vote.

"A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country right-side-up again," she said.

Turning the Grassroots Green

The Green Party is holding their national convention this weekend in Chicago.

Former Georgia Congresswoman (and former Democrat) Cynthia McKinney is favored to beat out three other candidates to win the presidential nomination. Earlier this week she tapped community organizer and Hip-Hop activist Rosa Clemente to be her running mate.

Despite the quixotic vibe running through the halls at the historic Palmer House Hotel, I don't think anyone has any illusions as to the Greens' presidential chances this November. The real action in the Greenosphere, however, is happening on the local level.

"It's the grassroots where we make a difference," said Scott Summers, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois.

The Green Party boasts 231 elected officials across the country, from mayors to school board representatives. I talked to a few of the Greens who are running on local tickets this year. There was a common theme of Greens stepping up to act where Democrats are falling short.

Farheen Hakeem is a Green running for state representative in Minnesota. (Hakeem is also a Muslim woman who wears the hijab.) In 2005 she ran as a Green for mayor of Minneapolis and received 14% of the vote, coming in third out of twelve candidates. Then in 2006 Hakeem ran for a county commissioner seat. Even though she lost, Hakeem garnered 33% of the vote as a relative unknown in a race that pit her against a long-time Democratic machine candidate.

That impressive showing caused the Minnesota Democratic Party to take notice. They came calling and tried to convince her to run for state representative as a Democrat. I asked her why she decided to snub the Dems and stay a Green.

"Mostly it's their corporate agenda," she said, expressing frustration with what she sees as pressure from the Party to protect the wrong interests. Hakeem went on to recount an instance where the county board authorized a new sales tax to pay for a baseball stadium without the necessary referendum that the law requires. The Democrats on the board, she said, were forced by the Party establishment to approve the measure. Such episodes reinforce her belief that being a Green affords a level of independence that she would otherwise not have as a Democrat. "No matter how much [the Democrats] try to woo me, they're not gonna get me away from [the Greens]," she said.

Hakeem says that she is now favored to win the state representative race.

More coverage from the convention to come...

More Women Troubles for McCain

As if John McCain hadn't already established himself as woefully unsympathetic to women's issues, yesterday brought another illuminating episode.

A reporter asked McCain about health insurance companies that cover Viagra but not birth control. Earlier this week, McCain adviser Carly Fiorina said that she thought the practice was unfair.

Not only did McCain dodge the question, but it was clear that had never even thought about the issue:

When McCain was asked for his position on the issue, he said—with a nervous laugh–“I certainly do not want to discuss that issue.”

The reporter pressed. “But apparently you’ve voted against—“

“I don’t know what I voted,” McCain said.

The reporter explained that McCain voted against a bill in 2003 that would have required health insurance companies to cover prescription birth control. “Is that still your position?” she persisted.

During the awkward exchange, with several lengthy pauses, McCain said he had no immediate knowledge of the vote. “I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate,”

McCain said, then continued: “I will respond to—it’s a, it’s a…”

“Delicate issue,” the reporter offered, to a relieved laugh from McCain.

“I don’t usually duck an issue, but I’m—I’ll try to get back to you,” he explained.

Apparently hoping to redeem his image as a misogynist, McCain is holding a "women-only" town hall meeting in Wisconsin Friday. Maybe by then this "maverick" will have had a chance to consult his handlers for a position.

Of course McCain has a history of hostility towards the opposite sex. To learn the full extent of McCain's anti-women positions, make sure to check out Kate Sheppard's report, "McSexist: McCain's War on Women" in the new issue of In These Times.

"A full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country"

Greenwald's final summary on George Bush's total victory (achieved with the total complicity of our Democratic-led Congress) on FISA today.

Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow:

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country.

What is most striking is that when the Congress was controlled by the GOP -- when the Senate was run by Bill Frist and the House by Denny Hastert -- the Bush administration attempted to have a bill passed very similar to the one that just passed today. But they were unable to do so. The administration had to wait until Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress before being able to put a corrupt end to the scandal that began when, in December of 2005, the New York Times revealed that the President had been breaking the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.

Shame of the nation.

Late Day Links

1) The big news out of the Senate today is that Ted Kennedy showed up to cast what was essentially the deciding vote on a bill to make sure that doctors who treat Medicare patients don't receive an 11 percent pay cut. (Once Kennedy provided the sixtieth vote, the Republicans allowed some of their members to cross sides and vote for this popular bill.)

Kennedy's return will, rightfully, dominate the coverage on this issue, but it's also important to note that not only did McCain not show up for the vote (he was busy campaigning), but he says that if he was there, he would have voted against it. Eighteen Republican senators ultimately voted for it, putting McCain squarely in the camp of the most far-right knuckledraggers and mouth-breathers. Something to keep in mind in November.

2) Scott McLemee on Wall-E, Kenneth Burke, and the sci-fi dystopian nature of bottled water is a must read. Here's a taste:

At the very start of the Great Depression, Burke published a Jonathan Swift-like essay in The New Republic calling for his fellow citizens to destroy more of their natural resources. This was, he wrote, the key to prosperity. The old Protestant ethic of self-control and delayed gratification was a brake on the economy. “For though there is a limit to what a man can use,” he wrote, “there is no limit to what he can waste. The amount of production possible to a properly wasteful society is thus seen to be enormous.”

And if garbage was was good, war was better. “If people simply won’t throw things out fast enough to create new needs in keeping with the increased output under improved methods of manufacture,” suggested Burke, “we can always have recourse to the still more thoroughgoing wastage of war. An intelligently managed war can leave whole nations to be rebuilt, thus providing peak productivity for millions of the surviving population.”

Not everyone understood that Burke’s tongue was in cheek. A newspaper columnist expressed outrage, and the letters of indignation came pouring in. Burke’s editor at The New Republic told him that this invariably happened with satire. Some readers always took it seriously and got mad.

Four decades later, though, Burke saw an even greater problem. The joking recommendation he made in the 1930s to stimulate the economy via waste was, by the 1970s, an policy known as “planned obsolescence.” The idea of war as economic stimulus package evidently has its enthusiasts, too.

Read the whole thing.

What is the point in a Democratic majority when they vote this way?

The following Senators, judging by their vote today against removing telecom immunity from the FISA bill, have demonstrated that they believe that corporations and private industry are above the law. These Senators have proven that they themselves have very little regard for our nation's Constitution, particularly the 4th amendment. They believe in the rules of Bush and Cheney. They are cowards.

Bayh - Carper - Conrad - Feinstein - Innouye - Johnson - Kohl - Landrieu - Lincoln - McCaskill - Mikulski - Nelson (FL) - Nelson (Neb.) - Pryor - Rockefeller - Salazar - Webb.

Remember how excited we all were when Salazar, McCaskill, and Webb won their Senate seats a couple years ago?

It should be noted that the Senators who voted against removing telecom immunity, and the Senators who voted to defeat the subsequent Specter amendment (banning immunity if a court finds that the spying was unconstitutional), and the Bingaman amendment (delaying a vote on immunity until the IG report which will make public the extent of the FISA program's activities under Bush - "a true compromise," according to Greenwald), have made their votes without knowing just how extensive the spying was and is, without ascertaining whether or not this program of warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional. They do not care about Constitutional rights. And yet, they serve as our representatives in our American government.

MId Day Links

1) From his hospital bed, Brian Beutler interviews Sen. Russ Feingold over the Dems' cave-in on immunity for spying telecoms.

(I'm kidding about the hospital bed; Brian actually did the interview before he got shot. Good news on that front, however. I hear from his TMC editor Adele Stan that he might be released from the hospital today. Hizzah! Keep sending him your good vibes, though, please.)

2) Health Care for America NOW hits the scene, demands to know "Which Side Are You On?". Read Ezra Klein on why this campaign is a big step in the right direction in order to get universal health care passed.

3) One of ITT's favorite oilmen releases a wind-power plan that Grist calls "half brilliant, half dumb." You should read the whole thing, but the short version is: Expanding our windpower capacity--Good. Doing so in order to free up natural gas for cars--Moronic.

Telecom Immunity Remedy Fails in Senate

Attempts in the Senate to retool the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act featured this week a two-day debate on an amendment sponsored by Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Russell Feingold, D-Wisc., that would have stripped legislation for the Protect America Act of immunity for telephone and internet providers who complied with government requests for information on consumers' calls and e-mails in violation of privacy law. That amendment just failed, 32-66.

(My colleague, Brian Beutler, who usually covers intelligence matters, is on leave this week. Last week, he interviewed Feingold about FISA.)

In one of the last speeches before the vote, Dodd forcefully argued against the "false dichotomy" put forward by his amendment's opponents between "security and civil liberties." Dodd added, "It's a false
dichotomy. Previous generations have made it; we should not."

Both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton voted for the Dodd-Feingold amendment. (Obama, to much consternation, has indicated that he will vote for the Protect America Act even without the telecom
immunity provisions, because of compromises made in other areas of the bill.)

Two senators who are often talked up as potential veep candidates on the Obama ticket -- Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri -- voted against the amendment. In other words, they voted
to protect the telecoms. (Note: Webb yesterday seemed to take himself out of the contest for running-mate.)

Other Democrats voting against the amendment were Barbara Mikulski, Md.; Jay Rockefeller, W.V.; Blanche Lincoln, (Ark.); Mary Landrieu, La., and Dianne Feinstein, Calif.

Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who Republicans love to hate, after voting against Dodd-Feingold, offered his own, more narrowly drawn, amendment, which also failed, 37-61.

Witness The Uprising

In These Times Senior Editor David Sirota's new book is a bestseller. Entitled "The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington," it's about "the re-emergence of populist politics on both the Right and Left in America." Sirota reports on groups as disparate as the Minutemen and progressives in Montana, groups who have been left behind by Washington and our political and media elite, groups who are organizing to take power back into their own hands, to remind our "leaders" just who it is they report to. It's a great read.

Today, Glenn Greenwald reports on a consortium of civil-liberties-minded political groups - on the Right and the Left - who are organizing to beat back efforts to immunize telecos from prosecution. This is precisely what David's book is about: where the Democratic-led Congress has fallen down and capitulated on telecom immunity, thus, bafflingly, handing Bush and Cheney precisely what they desire at the very end of their term - immunity from prosecution for flagrant law-breaking, (isn't "bi-partisanship beautiful?) - ordinary, galvanized citizens who respect our country's Constitution, our country's ~~former~~ rule of law, are collectively taking action against this abysmal state of affairs.

The political class has made as clear as can be that it is intent on supporting a limitless erosion of core constitutional liberties and the creation of a two-tiered justice system that exempts the political elite from the rule of law. Neither the "opposition party" nor the establishment media are the slightest bit interested in, or capable of, stopping any of that. Battling against that is the responsibility of citizens who find these political trends dangerous and intolerable.

Join up. And don't let charges of "fringe" and "radical" (because you value our nation's 4th amendment) slow you down.

Someone please ask him this question!

Adam Blickstein with the catch of the month. From a 2004 Council on Foreign Relations Q and A:

Question: "What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?"

McCain's Answer: "Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it's obvious that we would have to leave because -- if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we've been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people."

So, what's he think now?

(h/t Digby)

Obama the reader

Salon has a fantastic article on Obama's literary tastes and what they might mean about him and how he'll govern. Check it out.

Wal-Mart - venemous snakes, yes; HIV-awareness, no

Two bits of Wal-Mart news to start your day:

1. Rattlesnakes enjoy the Garden Center area of the store - and occasionally bite people there.

2. You're not allowed to educate people about HIV on the premises.

Happy Illusion of Independence Day!

Last Wednesday, as many, if not most of us, were preparing the brats and brisquet and cooling the Coors, media and non-profits of all shapes and sizes were reporting on a spate of varying stories, the general gist of which can be summed up thusly: privacy in America is (approaching) dead. Having all been reported right before Independence Day, I'm sure they've faded away like tracers in the sky from our collective consciousness, so let's review:

* The BBC reported that a U.S. Court has ruled that "Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube," a decision that has the good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation up in arms.

*Value the privacy of your relationship with your doctor? Well, if you're a woman and you live in South Dakota (or any of the surrounding states) you can kiss that luxury goodbye. Slate reported on "South Dakota's unbelievable new abortion law," wherein the government provides an inaccurate, emotionally manipulative, albeit clever, statement that abortion providers in SD must give to any patient seeking an abortion before the procedure begins. You see, women are little children who can't make private, serious medical and moral decisions on their own - they need to be lectured, belittled, humiliated, and condescended to, as required by state law.

*Who needs warrants? "Tentative Justice Department guidelines, to be released later this summer, would let agents investigate people whose backgrounds — and potentially their race or ethnicity — match the traits of terrorists," reports AP news (via TPM).

*One million people are potential terrorists.

*Glenn Greenwald is basically the fiercest, most trustworthy source of criticism and reporting regarding Obama's cave-in on telecom immunity (and the attendant shamelessly hypocritical moves by adulating Obama fans in the media to excuse him). Also, TPM's got a good timeline that starkly lays out the evolution of Obama from steadfast protector of the Fourth Amendment to Bush-enabling invertebrate. Greenwald: "It isn't that difficult to keep the following two thoughts in one's head at the same time -- though it seems to be for many people:

(1) What Barack Obama is doing on Issue X is wrong, indefensible and worthy of extreme criticism;

(2) I support Barack Obama for President because he's a better choice than John McCain."

OK, time for bed!

America: Hugest. Country. Ever.

As we unfurl the patriotic bunting under the 2nd story windows and over-decorate the driveway with our miniature American flags this 4th of July, let us keep in mind that the act of decorating is a good thing, for it is, in its small way, an act of physical exercise. And holy crap does America need it.

The Consumerist reports today on the 2008 state-by-state obesity ratings calculated by CalorieLab, a website that "supplies a calorie calculator for generic foods, nutrition facts for brand name foods, a calorie counter for fast food chains, and nutritional information for table service restaurants." And the most obese states in the Union are? All deep-fried Southern with a sizable side of Rust-Belt. But that doesn't mean the rest of the country's off the hook. See for yourself:

(Chart courtesy of CalorieLab).

Save for Colorado, home of the quite trim David Sirota, and a few others, 1/4 or more of the population of almost every state in our country is obese. I don't think epidemic is too strong a word.

By the way, in case you're looking for a way to burn calories that's a helluva lot more enjoyable than building a float, CalorieLab provides another chart calculating the amount of calories you can burn without ever leaving your bedroom.