By Rebecca Solnit
TomDispatch.com

I still don’t know why Sallie and I bothered to go to that party in the forest slope above Aspen. The people were all older than us and dull in a distinguished way, old enough that we, at forty-ish, passed as the occasion’s young ladies. The house was great – if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets – a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave, when our host said, “No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you.” He was an imposing man who’d made a lot of money.

He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, “So? I hear you’ve written a couple of books.”

I replied, “Several, actually.”

He said, in the way you encourage your friend’s seven-year-old to describe flute practice, “And what are they about?”

They were actually about quite a few different things, the six or seven out by then, but I began to speak only of the most recent on that summer day in 2003, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, my book on the annihilation of time and space and the industrialization of everyday life.

He cut me off soon after I mentioned Muybridge. “And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?”

So caught up was I in my assigned role as ingénue that I was perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that another book on the same subject had come out simultaneously and I’d somehow missed it. He was already telling me about the very important book – with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority.

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Diann Rust-Tierney
Executive Director
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

As I write this today, the cherry blossoms are fading, but the machinery of death is lumbering along with renewed authority and conviction.

This morning, the Supreme Court ruled in Baze v. Rees that lethal injection posed no risk of unnecessary pain and suffering for the more than 3,200 who still face execution. It is ironic that while this decision was being announced, just a few blocks away people of faith in Washington, DC welcomed Pope Benedict XVI, who shares our belief that capital punishment is an affront to humanity and has no place in modern society.

At the same time that the Baze decision was being announced, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a second death penalty case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which challenges that state’s law that expands the death penalty to crimes other than murder.

Today we are reminded just how far we have to go in our fight to achieve abolition.

Those of us in the anti-death penalty movement know we have a tough, but lifesaving, task ahead. To end the death penalty we have to overturn capital punishment state by state.  I’d like to tell you what NCADP is doing to get us closer to abolition and why.

A new Harris poll confirms what we’ve all believed to be true – support for the death penalty in the United States is weakening. Fifty-two percent of Americans say the death penalty is no deterrent to murder. An astonishing 95% of those polled are convinced innocent people have already been convicted of murder. These figures are supported by earlier polls that indicate that three-quarters of Americans believe that an innocent person has already been executed in this country. Fifty-eight percent of recent respondents said they would oppose the death penalty based upon the knowledge that innocent people are sometimes convicted of murder.  

While the poll numbers are encouraging, we must do more to build the constituency for death penalty abolition across the nation. The stronger our movement is in America’s towns, cities and states, the more we can shape the public opinion that influences state legislators. Ultimately, they will respond if the voters say enough costly, state-sponsored killing is enough. And then we can rightly declare, “Mission accomplished.”

Most NCADP affiliates are small, headed by a few highly committed activists leading anywhere from a dozen to several thousand members. NCADP provides training, materials and advice that helps them build their membership, educate state legislators and encourage local citizens to shout out, “No!” to the death penalty.

Our immediate goal is to reduce the number of states with the death penalty from today’s 36. NCADP is uniquely experienced in waging these state battles – our staff includes veterans of the historic death penalty abolition victory in New Jersey as well as individuals who fought successfully to prevent capital punishment from being reintroduced in Wisconsin.

By Louisa Pyle
RH Reality Check

As recently as six or seven years ago, abortion was included in my medical school’s curriculum, but no longer. The comprehensive curriculum I naively expected that would provide medical students with the knowledge to meet the common needs of their female patients simply does not exist. At a party last weekend I asked a few second years, four twenty-three-year-old men, to report back to me if they hear the “A” word at any time this semester. They gleefully dubbed themselves the “Medical Student Moles for Choice.” Abortion is a shadow that wisps in and out of medicine, much like the quiet shadow of abortion in many women’s lives, not addressed directly, not discussed in coffee shops or over family dinner.

Medical school is, in many ways, a language school. Someone told me once that a medical student learns over 20,000 new words in their first two years of school, and in addition to the new vocabulary, I soon became capable of saying things over dinner that one should never say. “Rectum” no longer induces giggles and “vagina” is boring, not sexy or empowering. And yet, the word “abortion” is still said with a pause, a nod, a little quieter than the rest of the sentence. I’m happy when we talk about it at all: for me, the problem is the deafening silence. That a procedure more common than an appendectomy would never be named: In the halls of science and healthcare, that to me is an abomination.

At one time at my medical school, a state institution of strong reputation in the Deep South, the physician responsible for the classroom teaching in women’s reproductive health, “Dr. L,” included a full hour lecture on the medicine and science of abortion care in the OB/Gyn curriculum. She included her own stories of patients, the hooks on which we medical students hang all this physiology and chemistry in our overtaxed memories.

Even so, the students of this relatively conservative locale responded with powerfully reproachful marks on the course feedback forms. As student feedback influences not only the next year’s teaching of any course but also the tenure and performance assessment of the teachers, physicians, themselves, Dr. L. was forced to remove the lecture. During the following few years, including my turn with her, she managed to sneak in ten minutes on abortion safety when discussing contraception. “Abortion is safe,” was the message I heard, “but if you have a problem with it, you better be sure you know how to offer your patients appropriate birth control.”

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By Michael Winship
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

“John Adams,” that entertaining and instructive TV mini-series based on David McCullough’s biography, is a reminder that, in some respects, nations are created as much from rancor and ego as they are from hope and goodwill.

In the television version of the irascible Mr. Adams’s saga, democracy triumphs. Still, while watching it, I can’t help but be a little depressed by the thought that while the Founding Fathers sought to build a government of laws rather than men and were crafting such worthy documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the current administration’s legacy to history will be a series of documents that chose to subvert the very Constitution that Adams, Jefferson, and the others battled so hard to create.

These documents reveal themselves slowly and reluctantly, as if to acknowledge that those who wrote them know deep in their souls what they have done is wrong and antithetical to the ways of a republic.

The latest to ooze its way to the surface, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act suit by the ACLU, is the March 14, 2003, memo written by John Yoo, former deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), an acolyte of David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and former Cheney legal counsel.

Contrary to claims the abuses at Abu Ghraib and other prisons were contrived by subordinates on the ground – i.e., “hicks with sticks” – Yoo’s 81-page memo rationalizes motive and establishes the bar for virtually every human rights violation that has taken place in the name of fighting the global war on terrorism.

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(but probably don’t):

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3

4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”4

5. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.5

6. He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.6

7. Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”7

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”9

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10

Sources:
1. “The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day,” ABC News, April 3, 2008

“McCain Facts,” ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008

2. “McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq,” Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008

“Buchanan: John McCain ‘Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,'” ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008

3. “McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill,” ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008

4. “McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned,” MSNBC, February 18, 2007

5. “2007 Children’s Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard,” February 2008

“McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion,” CNN, October 3, 2007

6. “Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady,” Associated Press, April 3, 2008

“McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,'” Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008

7. “Will McCain’s Temper Be a Liability?,” Associated Press, February 16, 2008

“Famed McCain temper is tamed,” Boston Globe, January 27, 2008

8. “Black Claims McCain’s Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: ‘I Don’t Know What The Criticism Is,'” ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008

“McCain’s Lobbyist Friends Rally ‘Round Their Man,” ABC News, January 29, 2008

9. “McCain’s Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam,” Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008

“Will McCain Specifically ‘Repudiate’ Hagee’s Anti-Gay Comments?,” ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008

“McCain ‘Very Honored’ By Support Of Pastor Preaching ‘End-Time Confrontation With Iran,'” ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008

10. “John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record,” Sierra Club, February 28, 2008

List compiled by MoveOn.org.

By Sara Robinson
The Campaign for America’s Future

Can we progressives – who won’t be caught dead these days calling ourselves liberals – can we stop serving as a punching bag for the right? And speak with depth and conviction about the things that really matter to us? Once and for all, can we break through the false and humiliating charade that they and they alone are the arbiters of family values, morality, patriotism, the flag, the life of the spirit, God-talk? And that they alone have the credibility to speak to these subjects and concerns? The search for meaning that defines us as humans is the greatest conversation going, and I want IN.

“Born-Again American” Norman Lear at the Take Back America conference last week.

Ever since the overlong election season first kicked off last summer, I’ve been feeling deep gratitude for the happy fact that, for the first time since 1988, we’re finally having a presidential election that does not involve re-fighting the Vietnam War. To everyone’s profound relief, there’s nary a draft dodger, National Guardsman, Bronze Star recipient, or Swiftboater in sight. Nobody’s service records are under investigation. Not a single public conversation has devolved into an ugly he said/he said over who did what in some swamp somewhere in 1969. I think I speak for an entire grateful nation when I say: It’s been nice.

I must confess, however, that I’m just about ready to take it all back. Because this time, instead of military exploits two-thirds of the country is too young to remember, this election is being fought over religion – which is, apparently, the new battlefield on which candidates must try themselves and not be found wanting. Obama’s pastor of 20 years is being trotted out to whip up white voters’ latent terror of Angry Scary Black Men (and, as a twofer, also undercut the resonance of his strong moral voice). McCain is proudly advertising his bizarre affiliations with John Hagee, Richard Land, and Rod Parsley – religious ideologues so extremist and creepy that most straight-thinking Evangelicals won’t have anything to nd actually find myself longing wistfully for the good old days when we were merely obsessed with re-hashing the details of a 40-year-old war.

How on earth did we get here? Why are Americans suddenly so engrossed with religion (and some pretty excessive religion at that)? Are there deeper reasons that the 2008 election is turning into a referendum on whose God will prevail?

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