Friday, June 12, 2009
We're Stopping the War Money
AfterDowningStreet.org
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In This Email:
1. Stop the War Supplemental
2. Torture Accountability Action Day: June 25
1. Stop the War Supplemental
Whip list here with contact info and updates. (Help us update the list!)
We have 15 Democrats committed to voting No on the war money, and all the Republicans voting No because of the IMF money that has been included with it.
We have succeeded in getting the ban on releasing torture photos removed from the bill, and we may succeed in having the IMF bailout for European banksters removed too. But we want the bill defeated, and right now, with the IMF funds included, defeating the whole thing is easily within reach.
Look at the promises. 51 Democrats voted No on the same bill when it was guaranteed to pass. 89 have sworn not to vote for any more war money except for withdrawal. 85 have cosponsored a bill requiring an exit strategy for Afghanistan. And 73 have joined an "Out of Iraq" caucus. Is this all for show, or will 40 Democrats vote No when the No votes can actually be decisive, actually make the peace movement a force in Congress, actually create the power to negotiate a compromise, change the public discourse, and begin to bring these nightmares to an end?
Please call your representative today and urge them to vote no: 202-224-3121. And call them every day: as long as they keep delaying the vote, we are winning.
Whip list here with contact info and updates. (Help us update the list!)
2. Torture Accountability Action Day: June 25
http://tortureaccountability.webs.com
June 25th in Washington, DC, and across the USA !
Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Anchorage, Pasadena, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Charlotte
More locations are being added every day !
Details for Washington DC Rally:
Meet at: John Marshall Park - 501 Pennsylvania Ave NW - Washington, DC Directions: Google Maps ( To View the layout of the Park in 3-D go to : http://www.johnmarshallpark.org/index.html )
When: There will be tabling from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and continuing after rally. To reserve a table please contact us at http://tortureaccountability.web.com/contactus.htm
Rally: Speakers from 11 a.m. to Noon
March: Departs from Rally site at High Noon to the Department of Justice.
Some participants may engage in nonviolent civil resistance, risking arrest, if the Attorney General refuses to appoint a Special Prosecutor.
If you wish to sponsor this event or any of the others, or add one to the list of cities participating, please contact us at: http://tortureaccountability.web.com/contactus.htm
Sponsored by:
After Downing Street, Code Pink: Women for Peace, Democrats.com, Indict Bush Now, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Progressive Democrats of America, Torture Abolition & Survivor Support Coalition, Veterans for Peace, Washington Peace Center, Witness Against Torture, World Can't Wait, Amnesty International, US Labor Against the War, Historians Against the War, NJ Peace Action, NJ People's Organization for Progress, National Accountability Network, We Are Change LA, Action Center for Justice, Peace Action, Consumers for Peace, High Road for Human Rights, BuzzFlash, Individuals for Justice.
This Time, We Won’t Scare
Perhaps you've seen those television commercials denouncing health care reform as a plot to create a Canadian-style totalitarian nightmare, and you feel a wee bit scared.
Back in the election campaign, some people spread rumors that Barack Obama might be a secret Muslim conspiring to impose Sharia law on us. That seems unlikely now, but what if he's a covert Canadian plotting to impose ... health care?
Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials of "real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care."
So here's a far more representative "real-life story."
Then one day two years ago, Ms. Tucker was working on her office computer when she noticed that she was having trouble typing with her right hand.
"I realized my hand was numb, so I tried to stand up to shake it out," she remembered. "But I had trouble standing."
A colleague called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital.
"An emergency room doctor met me at the door, and they took me straight upstairs to the CT scan," she recalled. A neurologist explained that she had suffered a stroke.
Ms. Tucker spent a week at the hospital. "The doctors were great, although there were also a couple of jerks," she said. "The nursing staff was wonderful."
Still, there were two patients to a room, and conditions weren't as opulent as at some American hospitals. "The food was horrible," she said.
Then again, the price was right. "They never spoke to me about money," she said. "Not when I checked in, and not when I left."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/opinion/11kristof.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
HASTA LA VISTA, ARNOLD!
What California's Budget Mess Means for America
He was the perfect political superhero, sent to rescue California from spend-happy politicians at just the right time. And yet Arnold Schwarzenegger's reign as governor has turned into a disaster flick that could spell catastrophe for the Golden State—and the whole nation.
In 2003's historic recall election, the former Mr. Olympia pummeled dozens of candidates—from incumbent Gray Davis to former child actor Gary Coleman to porn star Mary Carey—on the road to Sacramento. He promised to abolish the odious car tax hike implemented by Davis. And to balance the budget, cut taxes and spending, and make California more business-friendly.
"He promised to stop the crazy deficit spending, cut up the credit cards, live within our means. And he did exactly the opposite. Schwarzenegger increased spending faster than we saw under Gray Davis," says Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), who was a state senator—and one of Arnold's challengers—six years ago.
Now the Golden State faces yet another spending-induced catastrophe. California could simply go broke by July. Sacramento reacted to the latest crisis by passing a massive tax increase in February, squeezing another $1,100 from the average family. Even the dreaded car tax, the issue that catapulted Arnold to office, is back.
How could it all have gone so horribly wrong, especially after it looked so wonderfully right? Well, it turns out there's a force in California politics that's much more powerful than the Governator: a culture of spending pushed by public-employee unions, money-grubbing corporate-welfare cases, and more.
Sadly, California and Schwarzenegger are hardly alone in spending well beyond their means. As many as 40 states face whopping deficits that are only going to get worse as the recession continues.
If country-wide trends do start in California, Rep. McClintock worries about what's in store for our nation. "As high taxes, high borrowing and high spending destroy California's economy, Californians are moving to those 49 other states. If we allow the same policies to destroy our country where are we going to go?"
"Hasta La Vista, Arnold" is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Director of Photography is Alex Manning and Associate Producer is Paul Detrick.
WHAT IF VON BRUNN HAD BEEN A MUSLIM?
I think Paul Campos' response to the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday is worth pondering.
If radical Muslims had carried out terrorist attacks in Kansas and Washington DC over the past five days, we might be trying to pass legislation giving the president the legal authority to place people in preventive detention, and Daniel Pipes would be implying that we need to round up Arab-Americans (correction: Muslims) and put them in relocation camps.But it was only a couple of old white guys, so our civil liberties remain unthreatened.
There's been a startling trend of fringe-right violence recently, from Richard Poplawski to Scott Roeder and now James Von Brunn. But we view these instances of violence as the acts of deranged individuals rather than of groups because they are white men. Campos' hypothetical isn't mere snark, Michelle Malkin wrote an entire book defending the internment on the basis of race in the case of Japanese internment during World War II. Cliff May argued that torture is justified against Muslims because they're Muslim. Republicans have opposed the transfer of terrorists to American prisons on the grounds that our prison facilities might not be able to hold them, and Ed Morrisey is apparently planning his vacation around avoiding the recently relocated Chinese Uighurs. Imagine what attempting to close Gitmo, banning torture, or even withdrawing from Iraq would look like in the aftermath of three attacks perpetrated by Muslim rather than right-wing extremists.
Campos' post implies an unsettling question. How much of the call for "extraordinary measures" in fighting terrorism has to do with the unique challenges of fighting global terrorism, and how much of it has to do with an irrational, orientalist fear of all things Arab and Muslim?
Night Flight Shines
Threadbare production values still look pretty good in Night Flight
Book-it Repertory Theatre's latest production, Night Flight, based upon a short story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (best known for The Little Prince), is their first operetta, and a ground-breaking moment in the history of novel and theater. It's not quite a musical. Unlike Les Miserable, there are no stirring Broadway numbers to go out humming. Strictly speaking, there aren't any "songs" at all. There are no verses or choruses. It isn't poetry set to music, it's prose set to music. They literally just "sing" the book to you in a sort of endless recitative, those musical moments in operas in between the songs where people "speak" in music. Traditionally, these are the most boring parts of an opera where you're just waiting for the next aria, but thanks to the extraordinary adaption by Myra Platt and Rachel Atkins, this production takes you places unique both to theater and the written word, a hybrid that's uniquely satisfying. If you don't want to read a book, you may as well have someone sing it to you.
The story is nothing particularly exciting, a footnote in the history of airmail delivery in South America, with bureaucrats trying to keep the mail on schedule while wives wait for their husbands to return through the storms. The production is small, with pilots simply on top of ladders or scaffolding to signify flight. It all shifts the focus to the purity of the technique, the music and performances, which are all top notch. Every member of the singing ensemble has a moment to shine. The music from the Degenerate Art Ensemble's Joshua Kohl is impressionist tango, Ravel and Debussy filtered through the dance of Buenos Aires. It's melodic and soulful, the band and voices excellent, and one wishes for some repeats of phrases that would be catchy if you could only hear them more than once.
This production is at the incredibly beautiful Moore Theater, just up the block from the Pike Place Market, for a mere ten days. Fans of books and musical theater miss it at their peril as it genuinely breaks new ground. It's such a good idea that one cannot help but imagine a Kindle that not only reads but sings to you. Pick a book. Night Flight. Pick a voice. Mixed baritone and soprano. Pick a musical style. Tango. Go.
Tickets are available online at www.book-it.org or by calling 206.216.0833. Prices range from $15 to $35; opening night, all seats are $40 (includes party). Box office hours are Tues. through Fri., Noon – 6:00 p.m. (Tues. – Sat. during production). Tickets are also available online at www.book-it.org. Showtimes are 7:30 evenings, 2:00 matinees; performances of Night Flight are held in The Moore Theatre in downtown Seattle.
Posted By Michael Dare to The Seattle Diaries
Rock Art by the Bay
TRPS PRESENTS THE ANNUAL
~ and ~
AMERICAN ARTIFACT MOVIE PREMIERE
JUNE 20, 2009 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Make sure you mark down Saturday June 20th on your calendar. It's going to be a big day for poster fans everywhere! We will be presenting our annual Rock Art By the Bay poster artists show, once again at Fort Mason in San Francisco. We always look forward to this show. It's free to all, and we expect to have an outstanding lineup of some of the best rock poster artists in the business.
We've got a great graphic being designed for the show by none other than John Van Hamersveld. We'll have a limited number of silkscreen prints of the show poster (printed by The Firehouse). The graphic will also be featured on our new TRPS t-shirt.
Here's the part we're really excited about. That evening TRPS will be sponsoring the world premiere of the long-awaited documentary film American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art. This is the first public screening of the film, portions of which were filmed at our Hall of Flowers show in 2007. The film features interviews with your favorite poster artists from the 60's to the present, and chronicles the history and rise of the art form. We're especially pleased to have filmmaker Merle Becker joining us for the premiere, as well as many of the artists in the film.
The buzz about this film has been building for some time, fueled by the release of the trailer last fall. We feel that this is a historic event for the poster community, and are thrilled to be presenting it for the first time. Big thanks to Merle for giving us that privilege.
It's fitting that the film will be presented at The Red Vic Theater in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury, Ground Zero of the rock concert poster movement in the 60's (it's across the street from the old Straight Theater). Tickets can be purchased in advance, and we recommend you do so. The Red Vic's not that big, and we can't guarantee ticket availability at the door on the night of the show. Ticket purchasing info is listed below.
So, any movie about posters has got to have, well, posters.......right? We've been helping coordinate a series of posters for the movie, all done by artists featured in the film. Most of these are signed and numbered silkscreens, some will be lithos, and there's even a letterpress number from Hatch Show Prints. Artists featured include Stanley Mouse, Dennis Loren, Leia Bell, Chris Shaw, Ron Donovan, Chuck Sperry, Lindsey Kuhn, Justin Hampton, Gary Grimshaw, and others. Most will be available at Rock Art By the Bay, or you can check Merle's website for availability.
Okay, here's the info you need:
~ and ~
AMERICAN ARTIFACT MOVIE PREMIERE
JUNE 20, 2009 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Make sure you mark down Saturday June 20th on your calendar. It's going to be a big day for poster fans everywhere! We will be presenting our annual Rock Art By the Bay poster artists show, once again at Fort Mason in San Francisco. We always look forward to this show. It's free to all, and we expect to have an outstanding lineup of some of the best rock poster artists in the business. We've got a great graphic being designed for the show by none other than John Van Hamersveld. We'll have a limited number of silkscreen prints of the show poster (printed by The Firehouse). The graphic will also be featured on our new TRPS t-shirt.
Here's the part we're really excited about. That evening TRPS will be sponsoring the world premiere of the long-awaited documentary film American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art. This is the first public screening of the film, portions of which were filmed at our Hall of Flowers show in 2007. The film features interviews with your favorite poster artists from the 60's to the present, and chronicles the history and rise of the art form. We're especially pleased to have filmmaker Merle Becker joining us for the premiere, as well as many of the artists in the film.
The buzz about this film has been building for some time, fueled by the release of the trailer last fall. We feel that this is a historic event for the poster community, and are thrilled to be presenting it for the first time. Big thanks to Merle for giving us that privilege.
It's fitting that the film will be presented at The Red Vic Theater in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury, Ground Zero of the rock concert poster movement in the 60's (it's across the street from the old Straight Theater). Tickets can be purchased in advance, and we recommend you do so. The Red Vic's not that big, and we can't guarantee ticket availability at the door on the night of the show. Ticket purchasing info is listed below.
So, any movie about posters has got to have, well, posters.......right? We've been helping coordinate a series of posters for the movie, all done by artists featured in the film. Most of these are signed and numbered silkscreens, some will be lithos, and there's even a letterpress number from Hatch Show Prints. Artists featured include Stanley Mouse, Dennis Loren, Leia Bell, Chris Shaw, Ron Donovan, Chuck Sperry, Lindsey Kuhn, Justin Hampton, Gary Grimshaw, and others. Most will be available at Rock Art By the Bay, or you can check Merle's website for availability.
Okay, here's the info you need:
US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
by Tom Loudon
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.
On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.
In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."
Coleman ordered to pay Franken $95,000 in legal fees
The panel's order comes as both sides are still waiting for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule on Coleman's appeal.
The panel found that Franken received 312 more votes than Coleman in last November's election.
Franken had originally asked the court to force Coleman to pay $160,000 in costs. Coleman had asked the panel to delay a decision until the Supreme Court finishes its review.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/10/coleman_franken_legal_fees/
North Korea experts say U.S. can negotiate reporters' release
By Stephen Magagnini
California journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee — sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against North Korea — could be home by the end of the year.
Experts on the world's last Stalinist state said U.S. officials historically have been able to negotiate the release of citizens and soldiers held by North Korea. The price generally has been public apology and the promise of humanitarian aid and other political concessions.
The timing is ripe for a good will gesture by North Korean leaders since their rocket and nuclear tests this spring brought heated calls for international sanctions.
"Given all the provocations they've committed, they realize the tensions with the outside world — even with erstwhile ally China — have reached a breaking point," said Dr. Chaibong Hahm, North Korea specialist at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. "I think they would be looking for some way to defuse the tension, and releasing the journalists might do that."
Scholars and activists describe negotiations over the release of the California journalists as a no-limit poker game between North Korea and the United States. They say U.S. negotiators will have to put something on the table without looking as if they're rewarding bad behavior.
Why God Invented C-SPAN
Posted by Karen Tumulty
This morning's House debate on tobacco legislation brought us this argument:
Which was followed by this one:
Public Service Announcement: "The Swampland Surgeon General has determined that smoking lettuce could be harmful to your health."
(H/T to our friends at the C-SPAN Video Library)
The Fiat-ization of the American male
Can a nation of dudes whose sexual self-image was built on macho Jeeps survive the rise of the Little Mouse?
By Gary Kamiya
Whether or not this deal makes business sense for Chrysler's employees and shareholders — who now include the American people — is not within my area of expertise. But a much more serious problem looms: the potentially deflating effects on 100 million American men of outsourcing their sexual self-image to a company whose most famous product was known as the "little mouse."
Ever since the first American car clanked off an assembly line, American males have been programmed to associate virility with large, overpowered steel-and-chrome automobiles, preferably adorned with tumescent hood ornaments and protruding, D-cup-size bumper boobs. Buffeted by divorce, feminism, potbellies, a useless repertoire of lame pickup lines and the thousand other natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the long-suffering American male has always known he could find solace in the long, rigid-chassis object reposing in his garage. Indeed, only their function as a kind of auxiliary national phallus can explain why Detroit's gas-guzzling dinosaurs have survived as long as they have.
Dueling protests square off near Bush's Dallas home
Sitting at his friends' lemonade stand across the street from former President George W. Bush's new home, he watched anti-war protesters and Bush supporters square off with only a city street dividing them.
Front and center in the sweltering 90-degree heat was Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who drew national attention in recent years with her protests near Bush's Crawford ranch as she demanded to speak to him about her son's death in Baghdad.
"George Bush and his administration are mass murderers," she told the crowd, using a loudspeaker. "People say, 'Cindy, get over it.' Well, there are still two wars raging. I don't have an option of getting over it. . . . We have to keep it up so things like this don't happen again."
Anti-war protesters say they want Bush and his administration investigated and prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sheehan has also demonstrated against President Barack Obama because the Democrat has continued the wars.
During the more than half-hour protest, which included a nearly mile-long march to the neighborhood, protesters yelled, "Don't wait, investigate." Pro-Bush supporters chanted "USA" for the former president whom they say did a good job.
Bearing signs with slogans ranging from "No war criminals in my neighborhood" and "W = War Crimes" to "Don't Mess with Bush" and "They did not die in vain," more than a hundred people turned out on both sides of the issue.
Dozens of police officers and Secret Service agents blocked the entrance to the Bush neighborhood and patrolled the area. An officer who declined to give his name said there had been no arrests and no problems.
Warren: Banks Returning Money Are Still Part of A Troubled Industry
By Susie Madrak
I can't imagine the thinking behind this. We lend them the money and then let them pay it back - before we've fixed the problems that lead to the crash in the first place? And it won't do much for consumers, since half of them are investment banks.
Elizabeth Warren is skeptical, and wants to hear the terms of repayment. She also warns that the stress tests were not as strong as they should have been. Stay tuned:
... The decision to allow the banks to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, also ushered in a new, and potentially risky, phase of the banking crisis. Letting the lenders out now — earlier than many had envisioned, and without the industry reforms some consider necessary to prevent future crises — raises many sobering questions for policy makers, bankers and taxpayers.
The program was aimed at purchasing assets and equity from banks to strengthen them and encourage them to expand lending during a tightening credit squeeze. But after banks return the TARP money, the administration will forfeit much of its leverage over them. With that loss goes a rare opportunity to overhaul the industry. The administration's ability to push institutions to purge themselves quickly of bad assets and do more to help hard-pressed homeowners will be diminished.
Of even deeper concern is the running trouble inside the banking industry. Despite tentative signs of revival, many banks remain fragile. Four of the nation's five largest lenders, including Citigroup and Bank of America, were not allowed to return their bailout funds.
Some analysts worry that financial institutions that repay bailout money now may turn to Washington again if the economy worsens and losses overwhelm banks. One of the most vexing problems of the credit crisis — how to rid banks of their troubled mortgage investments — remains unresolved.
Which, of course, is why so many experts were urging the administration to nationalize the banks. Those bad mortgages have to be dealt with sooner or later, and the bailout program simply postponed the day of reckoning.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/banks-returning-money-are-still-facin
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Barr's Mitzvah
Bob Barr on Troy Davis. A death penalty supporter, ex-Congressman Barr lives to regret a bill he co-wrote that blocks appeals and gets down to the killing. Under this law courts are refusing to hear witnesses who now recant their testimony. In this recent Times column he mourns the foolish application of this bill in the rush to execution of Davis, very probably an innocent man. As a result the state of Georgia can schedule his execution at any time now.
By BOB BARR
Published: May 31, 2009
THERE is no abuse of government power more egregious than executing an innocent man. But that is exactly what may happen if the United States Supreme Court fails to intervene on behalf of Troy Davis.
Mr. Davis is facing execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga., even though seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony against him. Many of these witnesses now say they were pressured into testifying falsely against him by police officers who were understandably eager to convict someone for killing a comrade. No court has ever heard the evidence of Mr. Davis's innocence.
After the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit barred Mr. Davis from raising his claims of innocence, his attorneys last month petitioned the Supreme Court for an original writ of habeas corpus. This would be an extraordinary procedure — provided for by the Constitution but granted only a handful of times since 1900. However, absent this, Mr. Davis faces an extraordinary and obviously final injustice.
This threat of injustice has come about because the lower courts have misread the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a law I helped write when I was in Congress. As a member of the House Judiciary Committee in the 1990s, I wanted to stop the unfounded and abusive delays in capital cases that tend to undermine our criminal justice system.
With the effective death penalty act, Congress limited the number of habeas corpus petitions that a defendant could file, and set a time after which those petitions could no longer be filed. But nothing in the statute should have left the courts with the impression that they were barred from hearing claims of actual innocence like Troy Davis's.
It would seem in everyone's interest to find out as best we can what really happened that night 20 years ago in a dim parking lot where Officer Mark MacPhail was shot dead. With no murder weapon, surveillance videotape or DNA evidence left behind, the jury that judged Mr. Davis had to weigh the conflicting testimony of several eyewitnesses to sift out the gunman from the onlookers who had nothing to do with the heinous crime.
A litany of affidavits from prosecution witnesses now tell of an investigation that was focused not on scrutinizing all suspects, but on building a case against Mr. Davis. One witness, for instance, has said she testified against Mr. Davis because she was on parole and was afraid the police would send her back to prison if she did not cooperate.
So far, the federal courts have said it is enough that the state courts reviewed the affidavits of the witnesses who recanted their testimony. This reasoning is misplaced in a capital case. Reading an affidavit is a far cry from seeing a witness testify in open court.
Because Mr. Davis's claim of innocence has never been heard in a court, the Supreme Court should remand his case to a federal district court and order an evidentiary hearing. (I was among those who signed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Davis.) Only a hearing where witnesses are subject to cross-examination will put this case to rest.
Although the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution last fall, the court declined to review the case itself, and its intervention still has not provided an opportunity for Mr. Davis to have a hearing on new evidence. This has become a matter of no small urgency: Georgia could set an execution date at any time.
I am a firm believer in the death penalty, but I am an equally firm believer in the rights and protections guaranteed by the Constitution. To execute Troy Davis without having a court hear the evidence of his innocence would be unconscionable and unconstitutional.
Medical Marijuana's Whipping Boy, Charlie Lynch, To Be Sentenced today
Faces five years for legally operating a dispensary in California
Charlie Lynch is the medical marijuana dispensary owner whose business, fully legal under California state law, was raided by federal agents in 2007.
At his federal trial last year, Lynch was not allowed to mention the legal status of medical marijuana under California state law while conducting his defense. The predictable—and outrageous—verdict? Lynch was found guilty of distributing pot and faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.
After several delays, Lynch's sentencing is scheduled for 10A.M. Pacific Time on Thursday, June 11.
Will justice be served? Or will an innocent man pay for the crimes of a government that is out of control? President Barack Obama has said he will stop federal raids against dispensaries in states that have made medical marijuana legal. Will that pledge make a difference in Lynch's sentencing?
Reason.tv has been covering the Lynch saga since it began. For more videos and information on the case, go here now.
This video was edited by Alexander Manning; additional footage provided by Rick Ray.
Approximately 3.20 minutes. Scroll down for audio, iPod, and HD versions.
The song "Whipping Boy" was written and performed by Chris Darrow. Courtesy of Everloving Music.
Go here for Reason's extensive and continuing coverage of Lynch's case.
And come back here on June 11 for an immediate report on the Lynch sentencing.
Israeli military developing battlefield robot snake
According to a Channel 2 report - click here to watch the clip - the spying robot, which is about two meters long and covered in military camouflage, mimics the movements and appearance of real snakes, slithering around through caves, tunnels, cracks and buildings, while at the same time sending images and sound back to a soldier who controls the device through a laptop computer.
Able to bend its joints so well that it can squeeze through very tight spaces, the new device will be used to find people buried under collapsed buildings. The snake is also able to arch its body, allowing it to see over obstacles through its head camera.
Researchers studied the movements of live snakes in order to create the most natural and realistic robotic version.
The snake's cost has yet to be determined, as it is still being developed; however, according to Channel 2, the IDF plans to provide combat units with these devices.
Besides recording multimedia, the snake may also be used to carry explosives.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1244371047887&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
US behind Kunar blast, says senator
An Afghan senator in charge of an investigation into the bomb blast that left three Afghan civilians dead says US troops were behind the explosion. Senator Saleh Mohammad made the remarks a day after an explosion among a crowd of people around a US military convoy in Kunar province left 58 civilians wounded.
"I went to the hospital, I spoke to the wounded, I went to the site and spoke to the witnesses and now can say that the bomb was not thrown by the opposition but it was thrown by American forces," he was quoted by AFP as saying.
However, the US military denied the allegation, releasing a video to prove its troops were not responsible for the blast.
The US military also issued a statement, claiming that the blast was caused by a Russian-made grenade, a type of grenade the US forces do not use.
The Afghan official, however, said he had seen the video but "couldn't believe it".
Afghans are outraged at repeated US air strikes which have so far killed hundreds of civilians.
Last month, an air raid by US forces killed 140 civilians in one of the deadliest attacks since foreign troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001.
Admitting its forces failed to follow procedures, the US claims that the toll was only 20-30 civilians.
An investigation is underway over the murder of Afghan civilians by US troops.
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