As we put this update together, two pieces of breaking news:
Washington Independent’s David Weigel reports that the Executive Director of Tom Tancredo’s Team America PAC, who is organizing opposition to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds she is “racist,” was arrested in late 2007 in Washington DC for “karate chopping” an African American woman passerby and calling her a racial epithet. The staffer, Marcus Epstein, also works for Bay Buchanan. On the heels of TWI’s story, the University of Virginia School of Law has revoked Epstein’s admission (he was slated to start in the fall). In further developments, Tancredo and Buchanan are struggling to reconcile having a racist on staff who is organizing the charge that Sotomayor is a “racist.”
In the wake of the assassination of Doctor George Tiller this weekend (whose medical clinic performed late term abortions), Iowa Independent’s Linda Waddington was booked on Anderson Copper’s CNN show to discuss the late-term abortion she had 13 years ago. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Waddington wrote an open letter to then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, reacting to his statements made on the campaign trail about late-term abortion in order to foster a more personal discussion about a very personal health decision. During a routine ultrasound, doctors detected anencephaly and informed Waddington that the child she was carrying would die once she gave birth. Waddington detailed the tough, gut-wrenching decision she made to have a late-term abortion, and emotional journey to cross state lines to terminate her pregnancy because a state medical board refused to grant her a waiver to have the late-term procedure. During Waddington’s interview with on”Anderson Cooper 360,” Waddington said:
“I think those who are anti-abortion have been very successful in painting the picture of who I am and who other women are who have late abortions. And it kind of ticks me off because it’s not accurate. I mean, supposedly I’m just a person who woke up one day and had a back pain or a leg cramp and decided to have an abortion. And that definitely wasn’t the case. This was a pregnancy that was planned. A pregnancy that was wanted and loved. And it was tantamount to having a loved one on life support and making that decision whether to end the life support or not.”
More breaking news below.
Best regards,
David S. Bennahum
The Washington Independent (TWI) staff took a critical look at the right-wing attacks on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Legal correspondent Daphne Eviatar pointed out that the same conservatives attacking Sotomayor’s comments on race and the law never had a problem with the racial components of the No Child Left Behind Act. The same day, congressional correspondent Mike Lillis outlined the dilemma the GOP faces with Sotomayor: Allow a liberal justice to be approved or attack a popular Latina figure and risk alienating important voting blocs.
Eviatar’s blogging on Sotomayor’s legal opinions also drove a lot of traffic. In two posts, Eviatar — a former clerk for a federal Appeals Court judge — examined a discrimination case Sotomayor decided and found evidence that the Supreme Court nominee is not the empathetic radical feminist the right is making her out to be. Rather, Sotomayor’s systematic decision led Eviatar to draw the counterintuitive conclusion that liberals may be the ones who end up disappointed with Obama’s pick. The posts received a lot of attention, thanks to links from Salon’s legal blogger, Glenn Greenwald, who litigated the case in question before Sotomayor.
Frequent TWI contributor Elana Schor reported on the many conflicts of interest created by the government’s decision to outsource the nuts and bolts of most of the Wall Street bailout. Schor demonstrated that many of the same investment managers advising the government on when to use taxpayer money to buy stock in struggling banks also work for those same banks. Her analysis of bailout contracts and her interviews with dozens of experts revealed serious questions about whether the bailout will be handled fairly.
John Tomasic noted an interesting development in Colorado State University’s struggle with transparency: The university announced the names of the top three applicants for chief of police, candidates who will have to meet with the university community before one of them is officially selected. Tomasic asks in a blog post: “Has something changed at Colorado State University in the wake of the secretive chancellor search that yielded a sole finalist for the position and suspicions all around of cronyism?”
David O. Williams interviewed Ron Lehr, a former chairman of Colorado’s Public Utility Commission, who warned that Westminster-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission, a co-operative utility, could follow in the footsteps of the now-defunct Colorado Ute Electric Association. Colorado Ute failed, Lehr said, because of the oil shale bust of the late 1980s;it built a coal-fired power plant in northwest Colorado, anticipating a high demand from the oil shale extraction industry that never came. “Tri-State is getting very ready to make that same mistake, which is to build a coal plant that’s going to be a liability rather than an asset and could put themselves out of business,” Lehr told Williams, adding that the utility’s expansion should face tougher scrutiny.
Wendy Norris interviewed former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who was in Denver to discuss health-care reform. Dean has been pushing for a universal “public option” that would allow people to buy into a government-run health-care program, popularly known as Medicare for All.- The plan that was met with cool skepticism by the audience, which favored a “single-payer” plan. “The truth is there is no pure single-payer on the face of the Earth,” Dean told Norris.
Howard Dean also attended a health-care reform town hall meeting in Des Moines, where he praised the Democratic leaders of the Iowa legislature – Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy and Sen. Majority Leader Mike Gronstal – for blocking Republican attacks following the state Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the state’s ban on gay marriage. “We have to make sure they get re-elected,” Dean said of the party leaders. “If they lose, this sets back the movement.” Murphy and Gronstal vowed that the Legislature would not take any action on gay marriage as long as they were in power.
Lynda Waddington re-examined health-care problems faced by many Iowans due to the state’s doctor drain. In the most recent installment of her investigation, Waddington looked at the social stigma that comes with rural health-care access, especially in some conservative areas where seeking reproductive-health services can be frowned upon. Waddington interviewed Christie Vilsack, the former first lady of Iowa, whose organization, the Iowa Initiative, has noted that among the states, Iowa comes in 48th in regard to access to reproductive-health services, including abortion.
Waddington also profiled how low milk prices are impacting dairy farmers in Iowa and the Midwest, and scrutinized the lack of any broad-based plans to help struggling dairy farmers. In a one-on-one interview with Waddington, Rep. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley was blunt about the problem, saying that although there are some programs in place to ease the pain, “I’ve got to be candid with you: It’s not going to be enough to make up the cost difference that farmers are now experiencing.”
Eartha Jane Melzer attended the first domestic post-presidential talk by George W. Bush, who spoke to the Southwest Michigan Economic Development Club in Benton Harbor, one of Michigan’s poorest cities. While the former president stayed away from any commentary about his successor, he defended his record as commander-in-chief, referring repeatedly to “the fog of war.” The former president also steered clear of the word “torture,” but was steadfast in his defense of intelligence practices used during war on terror: “I will tell you that the information gained saved lives,” he said.
Bush took questions from the audience, and Melzer observed a curious practice: the former president called only on women wearing cherry-red blazers. At one point Bush called for the microphone to be given to “the woman in red, the woman in red” even though no woman was standing. Gawker picked up Melzer’s post and satirized that Bush has a “new ‘ladies in red blazers fetish.’”
Melzer also reported on big news from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose administrator, Lisa Jackson announced that the agency would take “expeditious action” to address the dioxin contamination in the Saginaw River. She pledged to force Dow Chemical to clean up its contamination or charge the chemical giant for the cost of the clean-up. The cash-strapped state has seemed unable or unwilling to enforce its agreements with Dow, including one that compels the company to fund fish-advisory signs along the rivers it has polluted.
Advocates of same-sex marriage gathered at a rally at the state Capitol, where leaders of the gay community, protesting the California Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the state’s Proposition 8, declared that the ban on same-sex marriage in Michigan would be overturned by 2012.” In response to Todd A. Heywood’s reporting, Gary Glenn of the Michigan chapter of the American Family Association quickly sent out an “action alert” that called same-sex marriage advocates “delusional.”
Chris Steller netted last week’s top traffic with his reporting on Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of all three election-reform bills stemming from the legislative session. Pawlenty vetoed motor-voter and felon-notification bills, along with the Legislature’s big omnibus-elections bill, because the measures didn’t meet Republicans’ demand for new photo-ID requirements. Government-reform advocates called the move “disappointing and disingenuous,” noting that the state has now enacted no legislative response to the flaws revealed by the Coleman-Franken fracas.
Paul Demko continued to forecast the 2010 mid-term elections, this time analyzing Rep. U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen’s vulnerability in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District. Political experts told Demko they view Paulsen’s district as one of the state’s two most competitive House seats, but whether the district attracts significant attention – and money – from Democrats will hinge on how strong a challenger emerges. None of the likely DFL contenders Demko contacted said they plan to challenge Paulsen.
Gov. Bill Richardson refused to answer Trip Jennings’ questions last week about whether he had met with the son of a friend to discuss an investment prior to the state’s decision to sink $90 million into the deal. An attorney for Marc Correra, the son of the governor’s friend and the man who marketed the investment in question, also declined to reply. It was the third time the Independent has tried to get an answer from the governor or his press office about whether the two men had met to discuss the investment prior to the state’s decision.
Gwyneth Doland took the week’s top traffic with her coverage of the underreported battle surrounding the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District board election. Residents in Albuquerque’s North Valley have been pushing for years for a system of recreation trails along the city’s irrigation ditches, an idea the current board has unanimously rejected. Supporters of the trail plan said they hope electing new board members will pave the way to change.
Department Of Good News
State lauds 14 percent increase in adoptions in 13 counties
The Michigan Department of Human Services and the Michigan Supreme Court are hailing a study released Thursday that shows thata special focus on addressing the barriers to successful adoption in 13 counties has resulted in a 14 percent increase in adoptions in those counties.
