EarthPortalIn his New York Times column today, Bob Herbert calls for a New Civil Rights Movement. I agree that such a new movement is urgently needed. However, while Herbert says the new movement should focus on the self-inflicted social devastation within black families, I believe that a major focus of the movement should also be the disproportionate suffering in America of blacks and other minorities due to the slavery of environmental injustice. (more…)
For anyone who has been teaching at the college level in the U.S. for any significant amount of time, yesterday’s report in the New York Times describing the decline of literacy in the United States would be of no surprise. Over 10 years ago I first became alarmed at the poor writing skills of some of my graduate students: students who I knew to be quite bright and, until I saw the first drafts of their theses, I had presumed to have acquired basic writing skills in high school and college. (more…)
On the day that the New York Times (finally) reported that President Bush essentially suspended the Fourth Amendment in 2002, a bipartisan group of Senators have blocked the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
Raw Story reports that the New York Times withheld this important story on domestic spying from the American public for a full year.
The filibuster was led by Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho. The cloture vote failed by an amazing 47 Nays to 52 Yeas (60 votes are needed for cloture to end debate in the Senate).
Although the Main Stream Media seems not to have caught on this filibuster by Feingold et al. is an important event for American history.
Four years ago Feingold distinguished himself as the Senate’s leading defender of the Constitution, when he became the sole member of that body to vote against enactment of the Patriot Act. Senator Feingold was also only one of 23 Senators who voted in 2002 against giving Bush authority to start the war in Iraq. (Democratic Senators who voted FOR the war included Biden, Clinton, Edwards, Feinstein, Kerry, Reid, and Schumer). And Four years ago, Feingold distinguished himself as the Senate’s leading defender of the Constitution, when he became the sole member of that body to vote against enactment of the Patriot Act.
Now, by preventing cloture on this Bill, 47 Senators have stood up to President Bush to let him know that they they believe in the importance of the rights granted to citizens by the U.S. Constitution. The Patriot Act and Bush’s secret presidential orders have abridged those rights.
The Senate had passed a compromise version of the Patriot Act renewal that was reasonable. But conservatives in the Senate-House conference committee rejected the compromise. To show you how bad the filibustered Reauthorization Bill was, even Senator John Sununu (with whom I almost never agree with) blasted the bill yesterday.
Unless Congress quickly pulls off some sort of extension, the Patriot Act provisions that will expire on December 31 can be found here.