Fear of Obama Health Care

There are some opposed to health care reform who are equating President Obama to Hitler and they mis-quote a German theologian when they say that "..when they came for the Jews I didn't complain because I wasn't Jewish. When the came for the Catholics I didn't complain because I wasn't Catholic..." and so on. This source prints the exact quote from Martin Niemoller and it goes as follows. "First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. Then the came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me".

(Source: "Hitler, Obama and Malthus" by Lou Dubose editor of The Washington Spectator from Sept 1, 2009.

The Court and forced confessions

Some preliminary notes on this subject follow. Question: What Supreme Court cases exist that deal with the issue of forced confessions and do they apply to the alleged torture of terror suspects being held today in US military prisons.

Williams v. US 1951: A robbery suspect was beaten and tortured by a private detective who was also a "special police officer". The confession obtained was ruled to be a violation of the suspects constitutional rights and legal action was taken agains the police officer. I do not know the outcome of the robbery case.

Screws v. US

Gardner v. NJ

US v. Classic

Brown v. Mississippi

Chambers v. Florida

This information taken from on line at "Justia.com" from the US Supreme Court Center.

THIS INVESTIGATION IS ON GOING. IF ANY ONE READING THIS HAS ANY SUGGESTIONS PLEASE ADD TO COMMENT SECTION.

Interrogations and the CIA

I will enter this post directly from the newspaper I found it in. "The CIA's interrogations are likely to have damaged the brains of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.

The paper, published Monday in the scientific journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, scrutinizes the techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology and determines the methods to be counterproductive, no matter how much the suspects might have eventurally talked". (If correct, this would argue against the use of torture to get useful information from detainees).

(Source: "Report: Interrogations of terror suspects are counterproductive" in a section entitled "nation & world at a glance". No author is listed. The Virginian Pilot on 9/22/09)

Mid East Peace

Former President Jimmy Carter believes that "Israel must stop building settlements in Palestinian territories if peace is ever to be achieved in the Middle East". The Israeli settlements in Palestine have been established by "...a determined minority of Israelis who desire to occupy and colonize east Jerusalem and the West Bank". Carter notes that all 22 Arab countries "...have offered diplomatic recognition and full trade and commerce...". if Israel would give up the occupied territories. He says the only solution to a "two state" arrangement would be a one nation in which Arabs would outnumber Israelis resulting in the "...end of the Jewish state or else an apartheid system..." with the majority population oppressed and denied equal rights. He made his comments at James Madison University while receiving an award for his humanitarian work. Carter has made a life-long concern of the Middle East problem since the Camp David Accords reached while he was president. (This, of course, is Carter's opinion. Some will disagree and some will dismiss it. He does, however, have some knowledge of the issue).

(Source: "James Madison center honors the Carter's efforts for peace" by Sue Lindsey of the AP. In The Virginian Pilot on 9/22/09).

Congress Votes

This post will start a new category with information taken from The Virginian Pilot and The Record.

The House voted to "repremand" Joe Wilson of S. Carolina for yelling "you lie" at President Obama during an address before a joint session. The vote was 240 in favor and 179 opposed. "The disapproval measure ...was the mildest punishment the House could give..." (and there were still 179 votes against it).

The House voted to deny funding to ACORN (345 to 75) and the Senate did also (83 to 7). The voter registration group was video taped "urging illegal activity".

The Senate voted to "...require Amtrak to allow passengers to stow handguns in checked luggage..." by a vote of 68 to 30.

The House approved $ 2.43 billion in funding thur 2014 to "...develop clean-vehicle technologies". The vote was 312 to 114.

(Source: "How they voted". The Virginian Pilot on 9/21/09)

Nobel Prize Winners

This post may be more useful for English teachers but I thought it worth noting here. The US has had only 11 winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature from 1901 until 2007. They are as follows: Toni Morrison in 1993, Joseph Brodsky in 1987, Czeslaw Milosz in 1980, Isaac Bashevis Singer 1978, Saul Below in 1976, John Steinbeck in 1962, Ernest Hemingway in 1954, William Faulkner in 1949, Pearl S. Buck in 1938, Eugene O'Neill in 1936, and Sinclair Lewis in 1930.

(Source: Internet "Powells.com/prizes/nobel.html".

Capital Punishment

Question: Can a felon be executed if the first attempt fails? Ohio will re-execute a convicted rapist murderer next week after an unsuccessful two hour attempt to find a vein in the felon to insert a lethal injection. His lawyer claims that this was torture and he should not be executed. The only US case dealing with this issue was from 1946 in Louisiana when an electric chair failed. The US Supreme Court ruled that to execute a "...prisoner in the wake of a failed first attempt was constitutional" (name of case unknown at this time).

(Source: "Ohio to try again after execution effort fails" from the NY Times re-printed in The Virginian Pilot on 9/17/09)

Update: A federal judge has ordered a delay-of ten days- in the second attempt to execute this convicted murderer. Romelli Broom's lawyers say the failed attempt at letha injection amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment", a violation of the 8th Amendment. Lawyers for the state "consented to the request for a delay". (Source: "Ohio: 2nd execution attempt is halted" from wire reports in The Virginian Pilot on 9/19/09)

Obama Speech

President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to speak on the health care issue. At one point he stated that illegal immigrants would not be covered by the health care plans being discussed. A republican-conservative congressman from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, yelled out "You Lie". This outburst brought a momentary silence to the chamber and a pause by the President. Wilson was elected in 2001 and is up for re-election in 2010. (For all the congressional speeches I have listened to over the last 35 years this was the first such disrespectful comment aimed at a sitting president).

(Source: http://online wsj.com on 9/10/09)

Follow up: There are other examples of "heckling" that have occured in the US congress over the years. In 1838 two congressman fought a duel over "...words spoken on the House floor"; one died. Of course, we all know of the 1856 attack on Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks. However, this article makes the following statement regarding the statement by Wilson. "Yet there's little if any historical precedent for a US congressman individually challenging a president during a speech to Congress-let alone accusing him of lying...".

(Source: "A history of heckling" by Jocelyn Noveck of the AP. In the Virginian Pilot on 9/12/09).

Ike's Warning

No, it's not the "military-industrial-complex" warning. Ike responds to a fellow soldier about the "...danger posed by those seeking freedom from the 'mental stress and burden' of democracy". He suggested reading The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer writes that "...dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems-freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions". One who might support a dictatorship "...desire nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society". Eisenhower's added that his experience taught him "...that the rise of extreme movements and authoritarianism could take root anywhere-even in a democracy".

(Source: "Ike's other warning" by Max Blumenthal, author. Op-ed article in The Virginian Pilot on 9/8/09)

Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights leader T.R.M. Howard has been overlooked as a force in the modern civil rights movement. He was a wealthy, black, republican businessman and major property owner in Mississippi who supported the activities of Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Medgar Evers. It was the brutal murder of 14 year-old Emmet Till that "moved Howard to even greater efforts". He gave a speech at on Nov 27, 1955 at the Dexter Avenue Baptist church of M.L. King Jr; Rosa Parks was in the audience. It was four days later that Parks decided to keep her seat on the bus in Montgomery. She was supposedly thinking of Emmet Till when she remained seated. (Many other sources said "she was just tired from a long day of work"). Howard was a "staunch republican and ally of Eisenhower...a committed feminist whose clinics offered safe abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade".

(Source: "Unsung hero of civil righs movement" by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, both college professors in Alabama. In The Virginian Pilot on 9/6/09)

Bataan Death March

A new book on the events in the Philippines at the start of WWII for the US has been published. The death march began on April 10, 1942 and involved an army of 76,000 mostly Filipinos who were made to walk 66 miles to a labor camp. Some 11,000 died along the way (how many died in the labor camps the article did not say). The commanding officer of the Bataan army was Major General Ned King who did survive the war. I had always thought that Lt. Gen Jonathan Wainwright was the commanding officer but he surrendered the forces on the island of Corregador one month after King did so. King surrendered on April 9, 1942 while Wainwrighs did so on May 6, 1942. JW also survived the war. (Check the dates here. Did Wainwright's force join the death march or was it a separate event? I guess not a major issue, but only Wainwright was awarded a congressional medal of honor at the end of the war). The authors of this book "...reserve their scorn for..." General Douglas MacArthur "...whom they accuse of not leading from the field and later abandoning his men there". (A learned colleague referred to him as "dugout Doug").

(Source: "Bataan Revisited" by Dwight Garner. A review of the book Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath by Micheal and Elizabeth Norman. In the Virginian Pilot on 9/6/09)

Iraq War

George Will writes in a op-ed article for the Washington Post about the continuing war in Iraq. He says that the war has been going on now for 6 and a half years, with 4327 US troops killed, 31,483 wounded and the US has been "nation-building" which is the "worse use of the US military". As of June of this year US troops have been removed from all cities, and by a year from now all combat troops should be out of the country leaving only 50,000 "advisors" to the Iraq government. Those advisors are to be removed from Iraq by the "end of 2011". He makes and interesting observation. "If...the US surge permanently dampened sectarian violence, all US forces can come home sooner than the end of 2011. If, however, the surge did not so succeed, US forces must come home sooner".

(Source: "Time to leave Iraq, too" by George Will of The Washington Post. In the Virginian Pilot on 9/5/09).

Racism in the US

I am always amazed-and depressed-to read about another example of race prejudice in the US. The lastest one is from a golf magazine; a sport of "gentlemen" I've been told. The first African American to win a "...championship conducted by the USGA" was Bill Wright in 1959. This article recounts the problems he and other black pro golfers faced playing this "gentlemen's game". In 1952 four black golfers-Joe Louis was one-and Charlie Sifford qualified to play in the Phoenix Open. The four were grouped together because none of the white players would play with them. The four teed off first and when they got to the first green they found "...that the cup had been filled with human excrement". Another incident involved Charlie Sifford, who in 1961 took the first round lead in the Greater Greensboro Open. On the second day he was followed by a "...drunken mob of a dozen young white men" who taunted him while swinging and placing beer cans around his golf ball. It took police 14 holes to remove the mob from the course. Wright recalls playing with white golfers "...who wouldn't shake your hand...".

It wasn't until 1961 that the PGA dropped their "caucasians only rule". I knew that baseball had a separate league for black ballplayers and this source says the UGA had one to for golfers. Wright recalls that he went to college at a small state school in Washington state and in the 1950's he remembered an incident where a group of African Americans were moving to Canada to "relocate" but were "...arrested in Bellingham for simply looking in shop windows". The article talks about death treats, locker rooms blacks couldn't use and golf balls being kicked onto the road by spectators. (Some say things have changed. But a protest arose when a black president wanted to give a graduation speech at a major US university and now his speech on the opening day of classes to the Virginia public school system is also being protested.)

Source: "Wright and Wronged" by Caryl Phillips. Golf Magazine Sept 2009)

Exculpatory Evidence

The US Supreme Court ruled in the Brady v. Maryland case-in 1963-that the state must give to the defense "any and all exculpatory evidence" even if the evidence may not prove innocence. To do otherwise, the court said, is a violation of the "due process clause" of the US Constitution. In this case the evidence may not have been material to the question of guilty or innocence but it was to the issue of punishment. The ruling also holds that the defense must be told if a police officer testifing has a "...sustained record for knowingly lying in an official capacity". Police that fall into this category are referred to as "brady cops".

(Source: Guardian of Lies novel by Steve Martini and Wikipedia under Brady v. Maryland).

Cuban Missile Crisis

In a novel by Steve Martini-Guardian of Lies-the author includes a "note" at the end of the book about Soviet missiles remaining in Cuba after the "crisis" was resolved. It was believed at the time that all the missiles were removed but Martini says "...that there were also approximately 100 battlefield nuclear weapons on the island, each one capable of destroying a good-size city". He reports that even the US government was unaware of their presence and only with the collapse of the Soviet Union did this information become known. Martini suggests that if Kennedy had ordered an invasion of Cuba in 1962 these battlefield weapons might have been used. He describes the weapons as FKR warheads that could be delivered as a cruise missile "with an effective range of a 100 miles". Guantanamo Bay would most likely been a target. Nikita Khrushchev-Soviet premier at the time-was afraid Castro would have used the weapons and in the process drawn the Soviet Union into a nuclear war with the US. Castro had urged NK to "...launch a preemptive strike against the US..." with the thought that the first to strike would win. At the "end" of the crisis JFK wanted an "...on-site verification plan..." with Cuba but it never happened. The US could only use aerial surveillance to look for any remaining missiles.

(This is a novel, but is the "author's note" accurate? I have no way-at present-of knowing).(Source: "Author's Note" page 439 of the HarperCollins Publishers edition. Guardian of Lies by Steve Martini 2009_