Executing The Innocent

Carlos deLuna

"No one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn't execute innocent men. No one."  -- Andrew Rosenthal, The Atlantic

Carlos DeLuna was executed in 1989 for the 1983 stabbing death of a gas station clerk in Corpus Christi, Texas.  The Columbia University Human Rights Review has just published its Spring 2012 issue devoted entirely to demonstrating that De Luna was innocent and that it was another Carlos - Carlos Hernandez -- who committed the murder.  The book-length article, entitled "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution," was authored by Columbia law professor James Liebman and his team of students.

Rosenthal's piece in The Atlantic and Michael McLaughlin's at Huffington Post provide excellent summaries of the details of this deeply troubling case.

 McLaughlin cites some of the key findings of the investigation:

• The eyewitness statements actually conflict with each other. What witnesses said about the appearance and location of the suspect suggest that they were describing more than one person.
• Photos of a bloody footprint and blood spatter on the walls suggest the killer would have had blood on his shoes and pant legs, yet De Luna's clothes were clean.
• Prosecutors and police ignored tips unearthed in the case files that Carlos Hernandez, an older friend of De Luna, who had a reputation for wielding a blade, had killed Lopez. The defense failed to track down Hernandez, who bore a striking resemblance to De Luna.

This was a case of "epic malfeasance and misfeasance," Rosenthal writes, in which the police, prosecutor, defense lawyer and judge all contributed.

The execution of an innocent man over two decades ago cannot be dismissed, however, as an isolated case from a time when procedural safeguards were not as rigorous as they are today.  Indeed, Rosenthal cites to several recent capital cases in which there remain serious and substantial questions of innocence.

But this well-investigated, extensively documented report, as Rosenthal writes, "ought to end all reasonable debate in this country about whether an innocent man or woman has yet been executed in America since the modern capital punishment regime was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1976."

Mitt Romney's Commencement Advice: WWCCD (What Would Charles Colson Do)?

Mitt Romney, in an attempt to assure the Religious Right of his social conservative bona fides, delivered the commencement address at Liberty University, the Evangelical Christian University founded by Jerry Falwell.

The reviews are in and it appears that he was a hit with the white Evangelicals he was trying to win over.  As the Christian Science Monitor reports, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, praised Romney's "well-delivered speech," which "accentuated the core values issues that are essential to a strong nation and of great importance to evangelicals . .  that America's financial greatness is directly tied to moral and cultural wholeness.”  And Richard Land, the Baptist pastor from Tennessee who heads The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, agreed, finding shared "values and a similar worldview" on marriage and abortion.

It was this common worldview which Romney stressed in trying to bridge the gap between his Mormon faith and that of these conservative Christians:  

People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview. The best case for this is always the example of Christian men and women working and witnessing to carry God’s love into every life - people like the late Chuck Colson.

Yes of course, "always the example" of the late Charles Wendell Colson, former hatchet man for Richard Nixon, whose ruthlessness was captured by his oft-quoted remark that he would "walk over my own grandmother" if it would help Nixon get re-elected.  H.R. Haldeman wrote that Colson “encouraged the dark impulses in Nixon’s mind and acted on those impulses instead of ignoring them and letting them die.”  Among his many dastardly acts was compiling Nixon's infamous "enemies list," orchestrating the effort to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, and hiring E. Howard Hunt, who later led the Watergate break-in.

Hunter S. Thompson described Colson as "the guiding light behind Nixon's whole arsenal of illegal, immoral, unethical 'black advance' or 'dirty tricks' department."  (See Fear and Loathing at the Watergate, where HST writes about his "abortive plot" to "seize Colson out of his house and drag him down Pennsylvania Avenue tied behind a huge gold Oldsmobile Cutlass" and "cutting him loose in front of the White House Guard Gate," an idea hatched out of frustration that Colson -- at that time -- appeared to be "the only one of Nixon's first-rank henchmen who would probably not even be indicted."  But I digress.)

Turns out Colson was indicted on obstruction of justice charges for leaking information to the press about Ellsberg, for which he served seven months in federal prison.  By then he had become an Evangelical Christian, and while serving time founded a prison ministry.

He thus became, as Sarah Posner writes, "the original culture warrior," who "helped forge the Catholic-evangelical alliance against abortion."

He was nothing short of a battle commander in the cosmic culture wars, the manufactured showdown between the “Christian worldview” — the only “true” way to see things — and other “worldviews” he insisted were antithetical to it.

Put another way, as Ed Kilgore does, Colson

was for many years the chief advocate among conservative evangelicals of a “united front” with other conservative Christians (notably Catholic “traditionalists”) to pursue an aggressive cultural agenda wrapped in claims that those enemies of the “Christian worldview” were threatening religious liberty, which happens to have become the battle-cry of Christian Right opposition to Barack Obama. 

So what better role model could young conservative Christians have than Chuck Colson because, as Hunter at Daily Kos writes

when you think about how to be a good, upstanding Christian, you should be thinking about convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who did nasty things for partisan political gain, got caught, got sent to prison, and then discovered that mentioning Jesus was a fine way to make a generation of religious conservatives consider your own felon-for-your-party path through life as a decent career choice. Be like Chuck!

JP Morgan: Bank Or Casino?

Robbie Conal

The New York Times reports that JP Morgan, "which emerged from the financial crisis as the nation’s biggest bank, disclosed on Thursday that it had lost more than $2 billion in trading, a surprising stumble that promises to escalate the debate over whether regulations need to rein in trading by banks."  Its CEO, Jamie Dimon, blamed “errors, sloppiness and bad judgment” for the loss, which stemmed from "a hedging strategy that backfired."

Surprising?  Hardly.  As Travis Waldon writes at ThinkProgress, these are the kind of errors that "could have been prevented were it not for extensive lobbying efforts from banks like JPMorgan, which has spent nearly $10 million on lobbying since the beginning of 2011 (including nearly $2 million already this year)."

Robert Reich reminds us that Dimon has incessantly argued against government regulation of Wall Street:

Last year he vehemently and loudly opposed the so-called Volcker rule, itself a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate commercial from investment banking before it was repealed in 1999, saying it would unnecessarily impinge on derivative trading (the lucrative practice of making bets on bets) and hedging (using some bets to offset the risks of other bets).

And since then, Reich continues, "J.P. Morgan’s lobbyists and lawyers have done everything in their power to eviscerate the Volcker rule — creating exceptions, exemptions, and loopholes that effectively allow any big bank to go on doing most of the derivative trading it was doing before the near-meltdown."

As Waldon writes, "Thursday’s events prove that Wall Street hasn’t learned its lesson from the last crisis, and that America’s 'too big to fail' institutions are too irresponsible to avoid failure. The Volcker Rule, watered down as it may be, is aimed at preventing that. Unfortunately, Dimon and his Wall Street colleagues remain committed to making sure it won’t."

Matt Taibbi explains why we should care "if some idiot trader (who apparently has been making $100 million a year at Chase, a company that has been the recipient of at least $390 billion in emergency Fed loans) loses $2 billion for Jamie Dimon."

Because J.P. Morgan Chase is a federally-insured depository institution that has been and will continue to be the recipient of massive amounts of public assistance. If the bank fails, someone will reach into your pocket to pay for the cleanup. So when they gamble like drunken sailors, it’s everyone’s problem.

Taibbi concludes:

 If J.P. Morgan Chase wants to act like a crazed cowboy hedge fund and make wild exacta bets on the derivatives market, they should be welcome to do so. But they shouldn’t get to do it with cheap cash from the Fed’s discount window, and they shouldn’t get to do it with money from the federally-insured bank accounts of teachers, firemen and other such real people. It’s a simple concept: you either get to be a bank, or you get to be a casino. But you can’t be both. If we don’t have rules to enforce that concept, we ought to get some.

Today's GOP: Nothing In Moderation

Long-time Senator Richard Lugar was crushed in the Indiana Republican primary by State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party favorite.  The media has focused on whether Mourdock's extreme views gives the Democrats an opening in a traditionally Republican Senate seat.  Taken for granted in the analysis is the characterization of Dick Lugar as a "moderate."

It seems that all a Republican needs to do these days to be considered a moderate is to not demand Barack Obama's birth certificate and occasionally reach across the aisle in the spirit of bi-partisanship.  

It is true that over the years, Lugar occasionally broke with his Party by voting, e.g., for the Brady Bill, for the Dream Act, and for Obama's Supreme Court nominees.  But overall his record is one of a true conservative.

As David Karol at Monkey Cage puts it, "Lugar’s career is a striking illustration of how the definition of 'moderate has changed as the GOP has marched rightward." 

Throughout his career Lugar has gotten very low ratings from organized labor and environmental groups and high marks from business lobbies.

Lugar has generally voted anti-abortion and, once the issue got on the agenda, anti-gay rights, opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell despite polls showing the public favored that move. Lugar supported the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq War. He opposed the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform. He voted to put Robert Bork and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. Lugar voted for the Gulf War, the death penalty, oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refugee and removing President Clinton from office.

Lugar obtained his reputation as a "moderate" because the Republicans around him veered farther and farther to the right.  As Karol concludes, "in politics you can move by standing still."

Obama's Evolution

It was inevitable.  President Obama has evolved.  Whether his recalcitrance threatened to become too much of a distraction, particularly after his Vice President got ahead of him, or whether he ultimately realized it was no longer politically risky to do so, Obama has finally endorsed same-sex marriage:  “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

As Greg Sargent put it, despite the fact that he had to be pushed into taking this step, it is an historic one -- a civil rights milestone:  "Obama has become the first — and only — sitting president to come out for full equality for gay and lesbian Americans."

This is huge.  Frank Bruni:  "Our highest elected official, our president, said that same-sex couples should have the right to marry, something that none of his predecessors had done, something that he had refused to do since becoming a national political figure. There’s a powerful message in that."

But -- and there's always a "but" with Obama -- the President made sure to emphasize that his position on same-sex marriage reflects his "personal" belief and he "still supports the concept of states deciding issue on their own."  Indeed,  his Administration made sure to clarify that "President Obama believes marriage is a state issue and the federal government does not have a role."  (I'm not sure who he is trying to appease with his states' rights hedge given that the right wing will skewer him anyway.  Indeed, FOX News is already out with its "Obama Declares War On Marriage" headline.)

As a practical matter, until there is a progressive sea change in Congress or the Supreme Court, it is up to the states, not the federal government to regulate marriage and civil unions.  And with the vote in North Carolina yesterday, there are 31 states (including the entire south) that don't allow same-sex couples the rights heterosexual couples take for granted.    

But that doesn't mean the President cannot play an important role as a leader -- the leader -- in the continued struggle for equal rights.  And so, Obama needs to evolve just a little more.  He needs to unequivocally state, as President of the United States, that the deprivation of rights based on sexual orientation is wholly unacceptable -- just as it was wholly unacceptable to deny such rights based on race.  This is not a states rights issue and it is not merely a matter of personal preference.  This is about the fundamental principle of equality.

Another Trial On Steroids

After an earlier mistrial, Roger Clemens is being tried in federal court on perjury charges based on his testimony before Congress in 2008, in which he stated that he never used steroids or human growth hormone. 

I have long despised Clemens for his petulance, his arrogance and not least, his beaning of Mike Piazza in 2000, followed in the the World Series of that year with his inexcusable heaving of a piece of  broken bat at Piazza after it was shattered by a pitch.   Nevertheless, for the reasons I explored in a piece re-posted below on the Barry Bonds trial, the case serves no purpose and is a colossal waste of resources.

Trial On Steroids

So many people in and out of baseball hate Barry Bonds passionately.  He was a selfish player who focused unduly on his own statistics.  He is arrogant and unapologetic.  He has always treated the press with great disdain.  He had his own Barcalounger in the Giants' clubhouse.  Unlike, perhaps, more sympathetic marginal or fading players, he was a brilliant player in his prime when he felt compelled to cheat by using steroids.  He is a petty man who cheated because he was jealous of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, and wanted to become not just the best all around player, but the home run king.  And it worked; he not only broke McGwire's single-season home run record, even more egregiously, he eclipsed the hallowed career home run mark of the beloved Hank Aaron.  Have I missed anything?  Oh, and he denied knowingly taking steriods when forced to testify under oath before a grand jury.

For the last of these, Bonds is on trial, charged with lying to the grand jury and obstruction of justice.  It seems, however, that those who hate Barry Bonds hope he is humiliated, found guilty, and sentenced to a long prison term for his many other other non-criminal offenses.


I am not one of the Barry Haters.  Watching Barry Bonds play for the Giants, both pre- and post-alleged steroid use was one of my greatest thrills as a baseball fan.  Every time I went to the ballpark I felt it was a privilege to be able to see one of the most amazing players to have ever played.  In 2001, the year he hit 73 home runs, he hardly ever got a decent pitch (he walked 177 times that year), but when he did he crushed it.  Maybe steroids added some distance to these blasts, but the discipline, focus, timing and beauty of these at bats can't be credited to drugs.  The dude could flat out hit.

OK, with that disclaimer out of the way, I think the issue is less about Bonds and more about whether the United States Government should be expending so many resources on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball.  We now know that steroid use was rampant for about a decade, beginning roughly in 1995.  During that time, offensive numbers (and players’ heads) were suspiciously inflated, fueling a welcome fan resurgence after the devastating baseball strike of 1994.  Attendance soared and baseball ownership gleefully looked the other way.  While all other major sports put policies into place banning steroid use, baseball management did nothing.

I strongly believe that the federal government can play an important role in investigating and remedying many of our social ills, including, for example, poverty and hunger, discrimination, deceptive practices of financial institutions, unsafe food production, inhumane working conditions, environmental hazards and climate change. Steroids in baseball does not come close to making this list.  Nevertheless, we have had federal investigations, grand juries, and even Congressional hearings to address an issue that should have been -- and eventually was -- handled by baseball itself.  (Roger Clemens, for whom I have no warmth in my heart, will be tried this summer on allegedly lying to Congress; I take the same position on Clemens as I do on Bonds.)

In 2002, a federal investigation began into whether BALCO labs was providing steroids to athletes, including baseball players.  Barry Bonds and others testified before a grand jury which, in 2004, issued a 42-count indictment charging BALCO-related figures with running a steroid-distribution ring.  40 of these charges were eventually dropped.  The main target, Victor Conte, BALCO's founder, pleaded guilty to one count of money-laundering and served only 4 months in prison followed by 4 months' home confinement.  BALCO's vice president James Valente received probation.  Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer, received 3 months in prison and 3 months home confinement, although he served additional time for refusing to testify against Bonds.

Given the relatively light sentences received by the major players in the scandal it is hard to see the dogged pursuit of Barry Bonds by federal prosecutors as anything more than vindictive, ego-driven and an attempt to justify the enormous waste of time and resources.  The scandal derailed the end of his career, when no team was willing to sign him.  His legitimate claim to being one of the greatest ballplayers of all time, even before his alleged steroid use, and all his remarkable records are considered tainted by many.  And, as I started this piece, he is reviled by all but the most die-hard Giants fans (and me).  Isn't that enough?

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot At 10

I've previously written that Wilco is one of the truly great rock bands and their front man, Jeff Tweedy, is the most compelling singer/songwriter of his generation.  (See Wilco Rocks -- And Not Just For Dads.)

Tweedy is an elegant lyricist who crafts deeply effecting, unsparingly honest songs, often about pain and loss, self-doubt and self-destruction, and sings them with his nasally but soulful and quite captivating voice.  I don't think it is too much of a stretch to consider putting him in the pantheon of older (North) American rock musicians who have not only captured the spirit of their time but have left a legacy well beyond, a group that includes Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is now ten years old, but it remains for me one of the greatest rock 'n roll albums of all time.  As the notoriously stingy Pitchfork beams:  "Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene" it is "simply a masterpiece."

Spencer Kornhaber recently wrote a piece in the Atlantic to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this legendary album, what he refers to as the "best rock record of the new millennium."  As Kornhaber writes, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot comes freighted with a mythology that can overwhelm the music:

The way it was rejected by one Warner Bros. subsidiary only to be bought by another; the fact that it was streamed online at a time when doing so was unheard of; the acclaimed documentary about its creation; and the spookiness of the fact that its songs—replete with references to falling buildings, charred flags, and nameless dread—were originally set for a Sept. 11, 2001 release.

 But it is the music that endures:

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's triumph was in how it captured a facet of human nature: the way we all send signals, hoping that someone will understand them but also anxious about what happens when someone does. You'll sometimes hear the album get called cryptic, or self-conscious, or difficult. And that's fine. It's really a soundtrack for the ways in which people ask to be misunderstood. 

Don't believe me?  Check it out:

Getting Away With Torture

DonkeyHotey

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was arrested in 2002, at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on suspicion of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb.  He was designated by President Bush as an "enemy combatant," denied a civilian trial, and held in a military prison for three-and-a-half years where he was tortured.  As an editorial in the New York Times states:

[He] was denied contact with his lawyer, his family or anyone else outside the military brig for almost two years and kept in detention for almost four. His jailers made death threats, shackled him for hours, forced him into painful stress positions, subjected him to noxious fumes that hurt his eyes and nose and deafening noises at all hours, denied him care for serious illness and more.

Padilla was eventually tried in federal court on criminal conspiracy charges and found guilty in 2007 for conspiring to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism. He was neither charged or convicted of planning to detonate a dirty bomb. He was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison.

Padilla sued John Yoo, the former Bush Administration official who authored the infamous torture memos. (Padilla sought damages of $1.)   In case you've forgotten:

A Yoo memo from 2001 advised that the military could use “any means necessary” to hold terror suspects.

A 2002 memo to then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised that treatment of suspected terrorists was torture only if it caused pain levels equivalent to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.”

Yoo also advised that the president might have the constitutional power to allow torturing enemy combatants.

Most famously, Yoo was the principal author of a memo sent to the CIA in August 2002 authorizing “waterboarding,” in which water is poured over the face of a bound detainee and simulates drowning.

The Ninth Circuit reversed a 2009 ruling by federal district court judge who had held that the lawsuit could go forward.  According to the Ninth Circuit, Yoo was not personally liable because "regardless of the legality of Padilla's detention and the wisdom of Yoo's judgments, at the time he acted the law was 'not sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he was doing violated' [Padilla's] rights."

The Court assumed that Padilla was tortured but found that Yoo had qualified immunity for two reasons:

First, . . . it was not “beyond debate” at that time that Padilla .   — who was not a convicted prisoner or criminal defendant, but a suspected terrorist designated an enemy combatant and confined to military detention by order of the President — was entitled to the same constitutional protections as an ordinary convicted prisoner or accused criminal.

Second, although it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla’s alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03.

This nearly insurmountable burden, of having to establish that a government official's violation of a citizens rights was "beyond debate" stems from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year, in Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd.  The Times explains why this standard is unworkable:

The Bush administration manufactured both “debates” — about torture and enemy combatants. Any future government can rely on this precedent to pull the same stunt as cover for some other outrage.

By using the “enemy combatant” category, the Bush administration stirred debate that had not existed about whether rights of an American citizen in custody depend on how he is classified. By coming up with offensive rationalizations for torturing detainees, it dishonestly stirred debate about torture’s definition when what it engaged in plainly included torture.

Yoo, minimizing his role as limited to providing "legal advice that the Constitution allows the military detention of Americans who join al Qaeda," complains in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration failed to defend him in the lawsuit.  He is concerned that "worrying about future lawsuits will distort official decision-making, which should balance the costs and benefits to the national interest and not worry about personal liability."

As an amicus brief filed by law professors explained, “Yoo did not merely give ‘wrong’ advice in performing customary legal duties," rather "he acted outside of his legal role altogether by participating directly in the formulation of policy that gave rise to the deprivation of [Padilla’s] constitutional rights and by creating legal cover for unlawful detention and interrogation policies.”

As the Times concludes, the Ninth Circuit was wrong to "dwell on whether Mr. Padilla’s mistreatment was torture. Even if somehow it did not qualify, its cruel, inhumane and shocking nature badly violated his rights as a citizen — and international law on the treatment of detainees. Even at the time, the issue was beyond debate, and Mr. Yoo should have known that."

Americana That Still Resonates

Hey, Hey, My My.  Neil Young first started playing with the "garage" rock band Crazy Horse in 1968, and they have backed him on several of his greatest albums, including Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, Zuma, and Rust Never Sleeps.   Americana, which is due out next month, will be Neil's first recording with the full Crazy Horse line-up since 1996.  

Rolling Stone reports that the songs on the album are all classic American folk songs, including "This Land Is Your Land," "Gallows Pole," "Tom Dooley" and "Clementine."  "They're songs we all know from kindergarten," Neil said, "but Crazy Horse has rearranged them, and they now belong to us."

The press release explains the concept behind Americana:

What ties these songs together is the fact that while they may represent an America that may no longer exist, the emotions and scenarios behind these songs still resonate with what’s going on in the country today with equal, if not greater impact nearly 200 years later. The lyrics reflect the same concerns and are still remarkably meaningful to a society going through economic and cultural upheaval, especially during an election year. They are just as poignant and powerful today as the day they were written.

Here's the video for "Oh Susannah." 

R.I.P. Michael Selsor

Roman Colosseum lit to protest an execution

Oklahoma executed Michael Selsor on May 1, 2012, for the 1975 murder of Clayton Chandler during a robbery of a convenience store.  Selsor's accomplice is serving a life sentence.
  
What is particularly unusual about this case is that Selsor's original death sentence was reduced to life when the Oklahoma death penalty law was found unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1976.  However, Selsor continued to challenge his conviction, which was eventually overturned by a federal appeals court in 1996, and a new trial was ordered.  Selsor was convicted of first-degree murder at his retrial and sentenced to death.
 
This is the 18th execution in the United States this year, and the third in Oklahoma.

Obama Plays The Republican "Macho" Game

As Peter Bergen reported in the Sunday Times, President Obama is "one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades."

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Nevertheless, the "American public and chattering classes continue to regard the president as a thinker, not an actor; a negotiator, not a fighter."  So, I understand why Obama believes that he needs to tout his national security chops.  And the one-year anniversary of bin Laden's death provides the perfect opportunity to do so.  This may be good politics, but it is nonetheless distasteful.

As Digby puts it:

I get why the Democrats are doing it. I'm sure it's extremely satisfying to land those punches on the right wing blowhards after all the years of taunting and jeering about liberal cowardice. To be able to say they killed the evil mastermind where the swaggering codpiece failed is probably too much of a temptation for them to pass up. I get it.

But I hate it. I hated it when the Republicans did it and I hate it now. I don't believe the most powerful nation on earth should be running its democracy via schoolyard power plays. This is how we ended up stuck in Vietnam and how we have found ourselves floundering about in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's why we can't stop spending trillions on useless weapons systems, why we "have" to continue to fund ridiculous programs like Star Wars and why everyone in the political establishment assumes that the only answer to budget problems is to cut the so-called "entitlements."

I know we live in a dangerous world. But this nation is extremely rich and extremely powerful and its most important assets are morality and mystique. I'm not going to argue about the morality of killing Osama bin laden, but it should be remembered that our unilateral wars,torture regimes and insistence on imperial prerogatives have already taken a toll on America's reputation for moral behavior.

As for mystique, well let's just say that schoolyard taunts and manly chest beating doesn't leave much to the imagination. I don't expect the macho worshiping conservatives to ever change this. It's fundamental to their very identity. I was hoping for something a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit more mature from the so-called "reality-based community."

That said, Romney's response -- that he or any other President, even Jimmy Carter for Gawd's sake, would have done the same thing with regard to bin Laden -- was not only asinine but contravenes earlier remarks that he wouldn't focus on hunting down bin Laden and that candidate Obama was misguided in asserting that he would unilaterally go into Pakistan to get bin Laden.

And hey, shouldn't the media be all over Romney for criticizing our foreign policy successes?  Shouldn't they be asking why he hates America? 

As Greg Sargent points out:

Back in 2004 and 2006, when Republicans were showcasing George W. Bush’s war-on-terror routine as central to their case for reelection, and Dems were responding by attacking Republicans for politicizing national security and pointing to Bush’s failures, Dems were widely described as the ones taking the big political risk then, too.

We were told again and again during the 2004 and 2006 campaigns that Dems risked coming across as not rooting for American military success; there was little discussion of any danger for Republicans in playing up Bush’s “war president” routine. Now the situation, roughly, is reversed — and this time we’re talking about the Obama administration’s successful targeting of America’s number one global arch-enemy — yet again it’s Dems who are seen to be playing with political fire here.

This remains the Republican's game.  As Sargent concludes, "there’s still a strong built-in presumption of political dominance for Republicans on national security, and [] any gains Dems have made on the issue are not deeply felt by Beltway establishment types."

For better or worse, that's not going to prevent Obama from trying.

Cooler Still

The New Yorker has a Talk of the Town piece about Walt "Clyde" Frazier, the former New York Knicks star, and his new restaurant "Clyde Frazier's Wine and Dine," at which he arrived for a menu tasting "wearing shoes of lizard skin and lapels a shade brighter than a legal pad."

Some things never change.  Here's the piece I wrote about Frazier last year:

Still Cool

"Everyone has a certain rhythm that he dribbles to."  -- Walt Frazier

One of the great things about growing up on Long Island was the ability to ride the LIRR with friends to Penn Station at a relatively young age, go upstairs to Madison Square Garden, and watch a Knick game.  When I was a kid, in the late 60s-early 70s, the Knicks were an amazing team, and going to the Garden was truly magical.  The Knicks won two World Championships (1970 and 1973), and revolutionized the game by emphasizing the importance of team play and defense ("Dee-Fence").  The team included some remarkable personalities -- Dollar (later Senator) Bill Bradley, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Willis (The Captain) Reed, Dave DeBusschere, and my all-time favorite player, Walt "Clyde' Frazier.

Clyde was one of the greatest defensive players in basketball history, often dramatically stealing the ball while the opposing player appeared to be dribbling past him.  But he was an offensive force as well, a great passer and a clutch scorer.  His greatest performance was probably Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals.  While an injured Willis Reed made his iconic, inspirational appearance, it was Frazier who took control of the game, scoring 36 points with 19 assists, to lead the Knicks to their first World Championship.

Clyde defined what it meant to be cool.  On the court he couldn't be ruffled, he never showed emotion, he was cool.  Off the court, he was completely different -- outrageous and flamboyant -- but that was also cool because of his complete confidence in expressing who he was.  He was nicknamed "Clyde" because of his wide-brimmed hat which looked like one Warren Beatty wore in Bonnie and Clyde.  He drove a Rolls Royce, wore full length mink coats and flashy suits.  

In 1974, he published a book which I still cherish:  "Rockin' Steady:  A guide to basketball and cool."

It was mostly about basketball, but also included his wardrobe inventory (with such categories as knots, kicks and lids) and had "a general guide to looking good, and other matters," in which he revealed grooming secrets, demonstrated how to catch a fly (with techniques for when the fly "is in a sitting position" and in midair), and stressed the importance of "being your own man." All things a 14 year old needed to know.

And, of course, there were the sneakers:  "Puma Clydes"










The New York Times' just published a profile on Frazier, who is currently an announcer for the Knicks.  (Walt Frazier -- Always in Style.)  It is wonderfully reassuring that after all these years, Walt Frazier has a "menagerie of 100 or so suits that hang on five racks and with patterns of tiger stripes and leopard spots; designs of bold plaids and checks; and colors of yellow, red, salmon and orange," including the one pictured above, a polyester cow-print suit with brown-and-black splotches.

Stephen Colbert's Iconic Influence

I've written before about Stephen Colbert's subversive brilliance.  In 2006, at the height of George W. Bush's popularity, Colbert literally spoke truth to power at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.  Staying in character, he courageously and hilariously skewered the President and mocked the all-too-compliant national press.

And this preposterous election season he has demonstrated like no one else the destructive consequences of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision by creating his own Super PAC without much trouble.  During his very brief run for the presidency, he gave up control of the Super PAC, on the air, legally transferring it to his close friend and Comedy Central cohort, Jon Stewart, and renaming it "The Definitely Not Coordinated with Stephen Colbert Super PAC."  Among other things, this bit of political theater demonstrated how the rules which prohibit coordination between the candidates and their Super PACS are so transparently ineffectual.

Last week, at the gala celebrating TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people, at which he was so honored as an "icon," he lit into David Koch, one of his co-nominees, as only Colbert can -- with biting irony laying bare the destructive influence of money in politics -- especially Koch Brothers money.

Of course, all of us should be honored to be listed on the TIME 100 alongside the two men who will be slugging it out in the fall:  President Obama, and the man who would defeat him, David Koch.
Give it up everybody.  David Koch.

Little known fact -- David, nice to see you again, sir.

Little known fact, David's brother Charles Koch is actually even more influential.  Charles pledged $40 million to defeat President Obama, David only $20 million.  That's kind of cheap, Dave.
Sure, he's all for buying the elections, but when the bill for democracy comes up, Dave's always in the men's room.  I'm sorry, I must have left Wisconsin in my other coat.

I was particularly excited to meet David Koch earlier tonight because I have a Super PAC, Colbert Super PAC, and I am -- thank you, thank you -- and I am happy to announce Mr. Koch has pledged $5 million to my Super PAC.  And the great thing is, thanks to federal election law, there's no way for you to ever know whether that's a joke.

By the way, if David Koch likes his waiter tonight, he will be your next congressman.

While the mainstream media focuses on the horse race -- who is ahead in the polls and whose rhetoric is scoring the most political points -- we have come to rely more and more on comedians like Colbert to bring to the fore meaningful issues that have real influence on our national well being.

R.I.P. Thomas Kemp

Roman Colosseum lit to protest an execution

On April 25, 2012, Arizona executed Thomas Kemp for the kidnapping and murder of Hector Soto Juarez in 1992.

Several states are changing their lethal injection protocol from a 3-drug "cocktail" to use of one drug -- pentobarbital -- due to the shortage of one of the three drugs as well as concerns that the combination, which includes a paralytic, may mask excruciating pain.  Arizona has gone to the one-drug procedure without adequate testing or analysis, and there are serious issues surrounding this method, which will be revisited after Kemp's execution, in which he began to "shake violently" when injected with pentobarbital.

This is the 16th execution in the United States this year, and the third in Arizona.

Happy 95th Anniversary Of Ella Fitzgerald's Birth

Ella Fitzgerald was born 95 years ago today (she died in 1996).  The rap on Ella was that she couldn't sing the blues.  Maybe not, but she was probably the greatest interpreter of what has come to be known as the Great American Songbook.

Here's some proof:



:  



This is what I wrote about Ella a while back when I was doing profiles of fifty jazz albums:

The Songbook series of recordings is essential listening; her live albums are remarkable, especially the classic Ella in Berlin, and the albums in which she is paired with Louis Armstrong are fun.  But when I feel like listening to Ella, my go-to album is Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie.  In a small combo setting (piano, guitar, bass, drums), she swings, scats, and settles down for some lovely ballads too.  Highlights include, but are definitely not limited to, A Night in Tunisia, Stella By Starlight, Jersey Bounce and The Music Goes Round and Round.

 Enjoy!

Jamming Too Slow On Student Loans

"I'm President Barack Obama, and I too want to slow jam the news."

You've probably seen this already -- President Obama's appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon during which they "slow jam the news" on the need for Congress to prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling (Congress must do so by July 1, or rates will go up from 3.4 to 6.8%):



At this point Republicans are predictably against extending the current rates, and their presidential candidate, Mr. Etch-a-Sketch, used to be with them.  Remember when he said students shouldn't count on the government's help:  “It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that . . .  And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”

But Romney is beginning to understand how potent an issue this is, and this week conceded that he would support an extension of the current interest rates on Stafford-loans, although as Amy Davidson points out, "there was no musical component to the announcement."

His fellow Republicans in Congress obscure their opposition to having the government assist students with their debt by claiming they don't object to extending the lower interest rates (although the Ryan Budget that passed the House doesn't do so) but are concerned with how to pay for it.  As Greg Sargent points out they are floating various ways to pay for the extension that seem likely to get shot down by the Democrats.

And while Democrats are merely trying to maintain the status quo, it is worth making the important point, as Robert Borosage does, that they should be building the groundwork for more progressive reforms to help students, such as 0% loans and/or free tuition at public colleges.

It's Official! The Initiative To Replace California's Death Penalty Qualifies For The November Ballot

The SAFE California Act, the initiative to replace California's multi-billion dollar death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of parole, has qualified for the November ballot.  This is epic.

With a death row population over 720, it is undisputed that California's death penalty system is broken beyond repair.  Despite over 30 years of sentencing more and more people to death, only about 1% of them have actually been executed –  a total of 13 executions since 1978, and none since 2006. It is a costly (an exhaustive study concluded that "California taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion), time-consuming, unreliable and unworkable system that serves no useful purpose. Meanwhile, it drains judicial resources and diverts much-needed funds from truly effective public safety programs.

When it passes, SAFE California will require those convicted of murder to work and pay restitution to victim families through the victim compensation fund. And it sets aside $100 million in budget savings for local law enforcement for the investigation of unsolved rape and murder cases. Because while we spend time and resources on those already tried and convicted, in an average year, 46% of murders cases in California remain unsolved and 56% of reported rapes.

Recent polls show California voters are ready to replace the death penalty, and join a nationwide trend.  (Connecticut is on the verge of becoming the fifth state in five years to replace the death penalty, following Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York.)  Both the Public Policy Institute of California and Field Poll have found that when given the option, more California voters opted for life in prison without the possibility of parole over the death penalty.

As Jeanne Woodford the former Warden at San Quentin State Prison, and current Executive Director at Death Penalty Focus, put it, this is a "game-changer of massive proportions."

SAFE California is a historic campaign that will change California forever – for the better. Once we replace the death penalty in November, we will save millions in public safety dollars and California will never again risk executing an innocent person. We’ll soon have the opportunity to use  hundreds of millions of dollars in budget savings to improve personal safety for families across our state.

Graphic Of The Day

Mitt Romney has been running for President for so long that it is easy to forget how little actual experience he has working in government -- one term as governor of Massachusetts.   Steve Benen created a graphic documenting the years of experience in public office or active-duty military service for all of the recent major-party nominees, which shows that "Romney has less experience in public service than any modern presidential candidate."

(Purple = active-duty military service; red = state executive; green = mayor; gray = state legislator; light blue = U.S. Congress; orange = presidential Cabinet or in a cabinet-level position; dark blue = president or vice president.)

Happy 100th Birthday To Fenway Park

One of the charming things about baseball is that, unlike other major sports, no two fields are alike.   Every football field is 100 yards long and basketball courts have precise measurements, but baseball parks are all different from each other.  There must be 90 feet between the bases and the pitching rubber has to be 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate, but otherwise the dimensions of each one only has to conform to whatever space it happens to inhabit with its own signature characteristics and quirks.  Fans hope to visit as many baseball stadiums as possible (see below) but you don't hear that from fans of other sports.

Whether you love or hate the Boston Red Sox, you've got to admit that Fenway Park, which opened on April 20, 1912, and is the oldest stadium in the Big Leagues, is uniquely special with the Green Monster (the massive 37-foot high wall in left field, only about 310 feet from home), Pesky's Pole (the right field foul pole named after 1940s infielder Johnny Pesky), and 100 years of history.

My first game at Fenway, in September 1981, gave me plenty of time to take it all in as it turned out to be the longest game in Fenway Park history.  I was so excited to be there and loved the first few hours.  But the game was tied after nine innings and then neither team scored for another ten, and I must confess my relief when the game was mercifully suspended at 1 o'clock in the morning, after 19 innings, so we could go home.  (We didn't make it back the next morning for the completion of the game, and therefore didn't see the Sox lose to Seattle in the 20th inning.)

Last summer, you may recall, my friends Farnaz and Paul embarked on a two-month long road trip, stopping at major- and minor-league ball parks and writing about their experiences.  To celebrate Fenway's 100th birthday, I am re-posting Paul's piece about their visit there, originally posted on May 22, 2011:

Double Header

I. Bleachers

Boston for two days. Tigers lose to Red Sox 4-3, Chicago loses to Boston 15-5. That's seven games in a row the Red Sox have won. They've moved up to second in their division, 1/2 game behind Tampa Bay after an awful start that had the Red Sox nation howling about the apocalypse. We see Beckett v Verlander, and then Lester v Doug Davis. Beckett and Lester are off their game, but good enough: they get men out when they need to. Lester gives up 12 hits and 5 runs (not all earned), but the Cubs are awful. Soriano makes one of his classic Sorianos, letting a routine single bounce by his outstretched glove to the wall for a double. The Cubs leave 10 men on base in the first 7 innings. Maybe 10,000 Cubs fans are at the game, wearing regalia, cheering on their flatfooted warriors. The huge screen in Fenway's center field periodically declares the park "the most beautiful in baseball," and in the team store you can buy a green t-shirt that declares: "No ivy grows on our walls."

This is an historic event: the first time Chicago has played a game in Fenway Park since the 1918 World Series, 93 years ago. Fenway and Wrigley Field are the touchstones of old school ball: Fenway opened in 1911, Wrigley in 1914. Until 2004, both teams were the perennial almosts, victims it seemed of their own frustration as they struggled to win a World Series. Both are spendthrifts, though Boston seems to use its money more wisely. It's fun to be here, out in the bleachers surrounded by disappointed Cubs fans; fun to go back to our hotel and sit at the bar beside more Chicagoans, in town for this once-in-a-century event.

We sit in Section 41; in the next section over, one of the seats is painted bright red instead of green, and remains empty: a monument to Ted Williams' 502 foot home run on June 9, 1946. Boston bathes in nostalgia, from the slatted, flat-backed seats squeezed together in the grandstands to the between-innings videos on the screen; from honoring an old vet each night (Carlton Fisk last night) to singing "Sweet Caroline" in the 8th (fans wait to sing before streaming out). It's easy to be snide about all this luxuriating in the past. The Boston Nation identification drives me crazy when they assemble for a game at Oakland. But there's something sweet about sitting in the park, surrounded by fans who scream their appreciation for every out, every safe call. There's something to those remembrances, the old black and white films of Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Williams, Yastrzemski; color shots of Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens. I sit in these stands, some of the seats older than my long-dead father. I feel the kid in back of me banging my seat with his feet; I'm unable to find a place for my arms; I'm struggling to keep my knees from straying to left or right or into the back of the man in front of me; I'm twisting my head from side to side to see the batter. And I'm reveling in the energy of this dinosaur of a stadium that makes me feel a part of something older, deeper, more sustained than today's game. It's seductive, that pull to identify with this rewritten baseball past where all is glory, Green Monster style.


II. The Agony and the Annoyance.

We return to our hotel from the Boston game, have a drink at the bar downstairs, go up to our room, listen to the A's/Giants' game on the iPad. This keeps us up until nearly 1 a.m., when we both give up as the game heads into the bottom of the 9th tied 1-1. I say the A's will lose in the 9th; F says they'll lose in the 12th. Instead they lose in the 10th.

During the game we hear that McCarthy and Ross have gone on the disabled list. Along with Dallas Braden, lost for the season, that makes three of the six pitchers who have started games for the A's so far this year on the DL. It happens. Fuentes, who lost a closer job with the Angels, gives up the winning run to the Giants on two hits and a walk, giving him a 1-5 record so far. It happens. The regular closer, Bailey, is still a couple weeks away from returning to his closer role. The A's starting lineup for most games features one hitter out of nine with a batting average over .250, and none over .275. The A's are 7-10 in one run games, which means that 17 of the 45 games they've played so far have been one run games. We could do a more detailed analysis and learn that 13 of those 17 games were low-scoring: 4-3 and under. But bad as these numbers are, they don't tell the whole story. The A's play lackluster baseball. They don't believe in themselves, in that impossible to define way that makes teams potential winners and not. They are stagnant, haven't put together more than three wins in a row. They are a majestically dull, solid .500 ball club, which keeps them from being an embarrassment and denies them the pride of being a winner. We listen to their games with that fan's fatalism that we've learned in the last five years. We watch Carlos Gonzales win games for Colorado. We see Andre Ethier win games for Los Angeles. And we wonder what we got in those trades. We hear manager Bob Geren's cliched comments and we shake our heads from side to side in despair. We see one outfielder, Sweeney, sitting in the dugout with his .317 average and skills in the field. We watch free agents refuse offers from the A's. We see Curt Young the pitching coach desert to Boston, Ron Washington manage the Rangers into the World Series. And we sigh.

Surely part of the baseball fan's psyche is drawn to suffering. And being an A's fan doesn't even qualify for the Suffering Finals next to fans in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Chicago (the north side of town). What hurts this year is the way the starting pitching is so good we could win with just a little more hitting. What hurts this year is that we lose so many games we might have won with just a . . . or a . . . . What hurts this year is that the Angels and Rangers are, so far, lackluster too, so we hover near the top of our division even with this ineptitude. But what hurts most is the feeling that we're paddling water, circling the airport, twiddling our thumbs, going nowhere. Of course "we're" not doing any of those things: the players and coaches are. But once you settle into that passion for a team, you're in it, stuck with your body in the stands, in front of the TV, listening to the radio, poring over statistics online and in the newspaper down to the last out, even if you're as asleep as the players seem to be by the time the game ends.

R.I.P. Shannon Johnson

Roman Colosseum lit to protest an execution

On April 20, 2012, Delaware executed Shannon Johnson for the murder of Cameron Hamlin in 2006.  Johnson was permitted to waive his appeals, and thus was executed without full review of the fairness of his trial or the reliability of his death sentence.   

A district court judge had stayed the execution to consider arguments by the Federal Public Defender that Johnson was mentally incompetent to waive his appeals and that his sister should be allowed to argue the issue on his behalf.  Federal public defenders also argued that there was overwhelming evidence that Johnson suffered from an intellectual disability making him ineligible to be executed.  The court of appeals lifted the stay and Johnson was executed minutes before a 3:00 a.m. deadline. 

This was the 15th execution in the United States in 2012 and the first in Delaware.