I hope Ambassador Susan Rice wins this debate.

A dispute over policy toward Sudan has exposed a significant rift between two of President Obama’s closest advisers.

The clash – one of the first to become public in the new administration – came into the open Thursday when the president’s special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, told Congress that he did not think there was any evidence to support the continued designation of Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism.

The retired Air Force major general told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he has been having an “honest debate” with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, who served as coordinator for foreign policy in Mr. Obama’s election campaign. Continue reading

News Corp and G.E. deserve scrutiny for a variety of reasons. Any “truce” that neuters a news organizations editorial prerogative is bad news.

Shortly after, Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, said in a daily conference call with producers that he wanted the channel’s other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann’s lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to “be fair” to G.E.

via Fox and G.E. Reach Deal to End O’Reilly-Olbermann Feud – NYTimes.com.

2008 Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics Study has been released. The Atlantic’s James Warren parses the reactions:

The most significant racial disparity involves consent searches. While the total number of such searches has dropped sharply —by 33 percent—since 2004, they are applied disproportionately: an African-American driver is about three times as likely to be the subject of a search as a Caucasian driver, with a Hispanic driver 2.4 times as likely to be the subject of a search. But when vehicles are searched, whites are more often found to be hiding contraband. Police found contraband 24.37 percent of the time when a white agreed to a search, but just 15.14 percent of the time with a minority driver. This finding is consistent with other studies nationwide.

Some are convinced that this evidence points to a clear pattern of discrimination. As Harvey Grossman, director of the Illinois ACLU asserts, “The five years of data show a pattern of continuing disparate treatment based on race, particularly with consent searches.” In light of this view, when the 2008 report came out, Grossman urged then-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (remember him?) and Blago’s post-impeachment successor, Gov. Pat Quinn, to ban all consent searches by the Illinois State Police.

Others are less convinced that the data shows bias. Kwame Raoul, who succeeded Obama in the Chicago South Side state senate seat and is a former prosecutor, notes that one explanation for the disparity in consent searches may simply be that “whites are more tuned in to their constitutional rights, so they decline more often.”

via Driving While Black – The Atlantic (July 30, 2009) .

Raoul’s assertion doesn’t really bear out in the numbers. Continue reading

The Obama Administration seems like it will be putting out fires started by the Bush Administration’s disregard for international law, our allies’ law and our constitution well into the future. Being that then Senator Clinton voted for the Iraq War and Senators Clinton & Obama voted for reauthorization of the Patriot Act, they reap what they sow. Continue reading

Old news, but Jeffrey Toobin writes a profile of US Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and shows that he is a jurist who sides with those in power over the liberties of the general citizen. Nominated by President Bush in 2005, the relatively young justice will serve for years to come:

And this, ultimately, was the source of Roberts’s frustration—and not just in this case. In a series of decisions in the past four years, the Chief Justice has expressed the view that the time has now passed when the Court should allow systemic remedies for racial discrimination. Continue reading

Some folks just continue to cherry pick the President’s speeches. These two senior Obama administration officials bring up some very important points:

“The President went before a Cairo audience in a speech co-sponsored by Al-Azhar with Muslim Brotherhood members in the audience and spoke of America’s strong, unshakable support for Israel,” one of the officials said. “He could have gone to a million different venues to say this, but he went to Cairo, and it wasn’t exactly an applause line. Isn’t it more important to say this to the Muslim world than it is to say it to an audience of Israelis or American Jews?” Continue reading

Katrina vanden Heuvel attacks the notion that the “Blue Dog” congressman are centrists or moderates. She rightly points them out as right of center.

At this moment — when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day — the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform.

So why does the media keep ceding them the label of “centrist” or “moderate” as if they are the guardians of mainstream values? In a recent profile on reform slayer Max Baucus — Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and creator of his majority Republican “Coalition of the Willing” — Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen refers to Baucus as “a longtime centrist in the Democratic caucus.”

via Katrina vanden Heuvel: Nothing Centrist About Them. Continue reading

Introducing foreign wildlife into our native ecosystems.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Owning and selling these should be illegal and there should be stiff prosecutions for folks who own these outside of zoos or certified/licensed holding tanks. I think the “Catch and Kill” bounty for dead pythons is a good program, but its too late.

Well, let’s wait and see where this goes:

Gordon, 41, detailed a number of “vile and repulsive comments” he attributed to Rosenberg, stretching back to last summer. In the July 22 letter, Gordon alleges that:

— While watching Sept. 11, 2001, co-defendant Mustafa al-Hawsawi seated on a pillow in court last year, Rosenberg told Gordon: “Have you ever had a red hot poker shoved up your [butt]? Have you ever had a broomstick shoved up your [butt]? . . . How would you know how it feels if it never happened to you? Admit it, you liked it.” Continue reading

ZBig with a moment of clarity with regards to nuclear Israel, a possible nuclear Iran and USA’s possible strategies for the region.

The Lewin Group? Independent fact finding consultancy? Not quite. Ed Schultz called this garbage out on his show. It goes to show that there is a problem with so many talk shows accepting this “Lewin Group says healthcare is fine the way it is” GOP party line without asking “what is this ‘Lewin Group'”?

To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is “the nonpartisan Lewin Group.” To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an “independent research firm.” To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is “well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country.”

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest insurers. Continue reading

New product, same drug, same effects…

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that an analysis of leading brands of electronic cigarettes, a new type of “smokeless” nicotine product, detected carcinogens and a chemical used in antifreeze that is toxic to humans.

Officials at the FDA and other public health experts cautioned consumers against using the products, saying that the health effects of electronic cigarettes are unknown.

“The FDA is concerned about the safety of these products and how they are marketed to the public,” said Margaret A. Hamburg, the agency’s commissioner.

[via FDA Cautions Public About Electronic Cigarettes – Lyndsey Layton – washingtonpost.com]