High Court Rules for White Firefighters in Discrimination Suit

What did the other four Justices think?

Perhaps that discrimination against white males is perfectly all right? Perhaps that if the law doesn't suit their sense of empathy that the law should be ignored? Perhaps that racism is only racism if the melanin content of the skin is above a certain level?

If Obama gets enough appointees, we will see this decision reversed.

The decision will now go to The Hague to determine if the white fire-fighter has committed crimes of hate against humanity for participating in a situation where laws are used to create "disparate impact."

High Court Rules for White Firefighters in Discrimination Suit

Ruling Reverses High-Profile Decision by Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

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Court Rules for White Firefighters on Promotions

The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

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By Robert Barnes

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 29, 2009; 12:07 PM

The Supreme Court today narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and others that had come to play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court.

This Story

• High Court Rules for White Firefighters in Discrimination Suit
• Ricci Decision Provides Rallying Point for Opposition
• Q&A, Transcript: Supreme Court: Firefighters Decision, and Madoff Sentencing
• From the Archives: Bias Case Looms Large in Debate Over Sotomayor

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The city had thrown out the results of a promotion test because no African Americans and only two Hispanics would have qualified for promotions. It said it feared a lawsuit from minorities under federal laws that said such "disparate impacts" on test results could be used to show discrimination.

In effect, the court was deciding when avoiding potential discrimination against one group amounted to actual discrimination against another.

The court's conservative majority said in a 5 to 4 vote that is what happened in New Haven.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the liberals on the court and said the decision knocks the pegs from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

She read her dissent from the bench for emphasis. "Congress endeavored to promote equal opportunity in fact, and not simply in form," she said. "The damage today's decision does to that objective is untold."

On the last day on the bench for retiring Justice David H. Souter, the court failed to reach a decision on one of its most important cases of the term: whether a conservative group's production of a 90-minute film on Hillary Rodham Clinton amounted to a documentary, or merely a long commercial of the type restricted by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act.

Instead, the court took the unusual action of scheduling new arguments on the case for Sept. 9, before the court's new term begins next October. The court wants new briefings on issues that could lead to the justices declaring unconstitutional that part of the act, formally called the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002.

The court's decision probably will lead Democrats to push efforts to have a vote on Sotomayor's confirmation so she can be in place before the September hearing, although it is unclear whether her replacement of Souter would affect the outcome of the case.

Senate hearings on her nomination are set to begin in two weeks.

The New Haven case, Ricci v. DeStefano, has become the ruling that Sotomayor's critics most point to for evidence that she lets her background influence her decisions, even though her role has been somewhat inflated.

The promotion test results produced a heated debate in New Haven, and government lawyers warned the city's civil service board that if it certified the test results, minority firefighters might have a good case for claiming discrimination under Title VII. Federal guidelines presume discrimination when a test has such a disparate impact on minorities.

The board split 2 to 2, which meant the exam was not certified. Those who opposed using the results said they worried the test must be flawed in some way that disadvantaged minorities. (The test questions have not been made public.)

The white firefighters filed suit, saying their rights had been violated under both the law and the Constitution's protections of due process.

District Judge Janet Bond Arterton dismissed their suit before it went to trial. She said in her 47-page decision that the city was justified under the law in junking the test, even if it could not explain its flaws.

The case then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, where Sotomayor and judges Robert Sack and Rosemary S. Pooler heard the appeal. Oral arguments lasted an hour, with Sotomayor leading the questioning, as is her reputation. But instead of issuing a detailed and signed opinion, the panel said in a brief summary that, although it was "not unsympathetic" to the plight of the white firefighters, it unanimously affirmed the lower court's decision for "reasons stated in the thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned opinion."

Kennedy's opinion referred to the judgment of Sotomayor and the other judges only by noting the short opinion.

Kennedy said the standard for whether an employer may discard a test is whether there is a strong reason to the employer to believe that the test is flawed in a way that discriminates against minorities, not just by looking at the results.

In New Haven's case, "there is no evidence -- let alone the required strong basis in evidence -- that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the city," Kennedy wrote.

The case has drawn considerable attention not just because of Sotomayor's role but because of the sympathetic nature of the claim brought by the firefighters, who said they were discriminated against simply because of the color of their skin.

The lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, is a veteran firefighter who said in sworn statements that he spent thousands of dollars in preparation and studied for months for the exam. Ricci said he is dyslexic, so he had tapes made of the test materials and listened to them on his commute to work.

In Jackson’s Death, Black Ambivalence Fades

It's all about race by people who can't be racist. Why isn't it about looking at Jackson simply as a very popular entertainer whose pedophilia was conveniently overlooked by his adoring fans?

In Jackson’s Death, Black Ambivalence Fades

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

In Brooklyn, fans gathered at the Malcom X Pizzeria to remember Michael Jackson.

By MARCUS MABRY

Published: June 28, 2009

Jamie Foxx, the host of the Black Entertainment Television music awards, was unequivocal on Sunday night.

“We want to celebrate this black man,” Mr. Foxx said of Michael Jackson. “He belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else.”

Around the world, Mr. Jackson was celebrated Sunday, but there was a special fervor in black neighborhoods and churches.

At the First African Methodist Episcopal church in South Los Angeles, the 10 a.m. service opened with the strains of “I’ll be There” by the Jackson 5, over a video tribute to Mr. Jackson. The congregation clapped and cheered.

“He may not be the king of kings,” the Rev. Carolyn Herron said, “but he’s the King of Pop.” He was, Ms. Herron said, “a gift from God.”

Mr. Jackson was to music what Michael Jordan was to sports and Barack Obama to politics — a towering figure with crossover appeal, even if in life some of Mr. Jackson’s black fans wondered if he was as proud of his race as his race was of him.

But since his death on Thursday, many African-Americans have embraced Mr. Jackson without ambivalence. In scores of interviews across the country over the weekend, few expressed the kind of resentment some once had for his strangeness, his changing appearance, his distance from the cherubic Michael of the Jackson 5.

Darrell Smith, 40, a filmmaker in Brooklyn, recalled that “when his skin started getting lighter,” many black people said Mr. Jackson did not want to be black.

Now, he said: “I honestly feel like I lost a brother. It’s a pain inside me.”

Some African-Americans said those most determined to discuss Mr. Jackson’s failings were white.

“The system likes to take black men down,” said Stan Jamison, a 61-year-old house painter, leaning against a fence on Sunday outside the old Jackson home in Gary, Ind. “They did it to Ali. They did it to Tyson.”

When Mr. Jackson was accused of child molesting, many African-Americans leaped to his defense because they felt he was being persecuted.

But even some blacks acknowledged that Mr. Jackson, like many African-Americans, had issues with his identity.

Gerald L. Early, a professor of African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, pointed to Mr. Jackson’s self-image as an adolescent who hated the fact that he had a broad nose. In some reports, his father was said to have told Mr. Jackson he was ugly.

“If blacks were not, in some degree, emotionally and psychologically scarred from their oppression,” Professor Early said in an e-mail message, “they would hardly have needed the Black Power and the Black is Beautiful movements of the 1960s, efforts to restore their mental health.”

“Jackson reminds me of Sammy Davis, Jr.,” he added. “Davis was a singer and dancer, like Jackson, and a man who felt inferior about his looks and who wanted to fit in with the white Hollywood environment in which he found himself.”

Still, it was Mr. Jackson’s changeability that, in part, allowed him to resonate with millions of people around the world.

“His race was very blurry,” said Ning Liu, 28, an electrical engineer who moved to the Chicago suburbs from China four years ago.

Mr. Liu, who went to Gary to place flowers outside Mr. Jackson’s childhood home, said: “His voice, his look, the way he did things — it didn’t fit the stereotype people had of black people. People were not afraid of him.”

Amy Whitlock, 38, and her husband, Dave, 42, who are white, drove 100 miles to Gary to pay their respects to the pop star. They described how a young Mr. Jackson had transformed the way white children saw race.

“I was from a small town in Illinois where there weren’t any black people,” Ms. Whitlock said, tears splashing down her cheeks. “There was prejudice in our town.

“The older people, they saw just some black guy dancing. But we saw someone who was extraordinary, someone who made us want to dance. Michael was for unity. And he made people my age want to be for unity.”

Meighan Maheffey, 27, who is white and grew up in North Carolina, said the Jackson 5 was the only black group her grandmother allowed her mother to listen to. “It was very nonthreatening to her,” Ms. Maheffey said.

But Mr. Jackson also staked out new terrain for black performers.

“He dubbed himself the King of Pop, which was a pretty daring act,” Professor Early said. “Previously in our culture, the King of Jazz was Paul Whiteman and the King of Swing Benny Goodman and the King of Rock and Roll was Elvis Presley, all white men.

“This, in a way, radically redefined the black performer’s relation to music, made Jackson an auteur. In this way, Jackson may have paved the way for Obama in the sense of black man as auteur and self-mythmaker.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has been acting as a family spokesman in the past few days, said Mr. Jackson — like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, James Brown and Josephine Baker — had redrawn the boundaries of black possibility by showing whites, and blacks, that the race was capable of more than had been previously acknowledged.

“The light cast by these luminaries was great and shined on the whole race, even when they did not intend to be ‘political,’ ” Mr. Jackson said.

The Black Entertainment Television music awards were not originally intended to be a tribute to Michael Jackson, whose hits dried up long ago. But plans were rushed through to change the program once he died. Over the course of the evening, Mr. Foxx wore different costumes from Mr. Jackson’s long career.

On Saturday, at the Malcolm X Blvd Pizzeria in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of New York, an impromptu dance party and memorial service for Mr. Jackson was set up. Just steps away from the oven, two dozen or so people danced to the blaring Michael Jackson marathon on the sidewalk outside, holding black, white and red balloons, some clutching candles and wiping away tears. Some wore T-shirts with Mr. Jackson’s face.

Eric Smith, 50, a social worker, snapped his fingers and stepped back and forth to the beat. “He was more than a musician,” Mr. Smith said. “He was a worldwide ambassador for love and peace.”

But Mr. Jackson may have helped bring about a world of multiracial acceptance that no longer understands his own obsession with his skin color.

The night that news of Mr. Jackson’s death came, Ingrid Deabreu, 49, a patient care and dialysis technician from Guyana who lives in Brooklyn, stayed up watching a marathon of his videos with her 7-year-old daughter Kimberly.

When the video of Mr. Jackson’s “Black and White” came on, her daughter turned to Ms. Deabreu and asked: “Mommy, he said it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. So why’s he trying to make his skin white?”

Reporting was contributed by Ana Facio Contreras from Los Angeles; Jon Caramanica and Karen Zraick from New York; Malcolm Gay from St. Louis; Dirk Johnson from Gary, Ind.; and Janie Lorber and Ariel Sabar from Washington.

Rent Getting Harder To Pay

The government is taking steps to ensure that rent and utilities will not continue to cost half of the income of renters. It is taking steps, through the new Climate Bill, to ensure that rent and utilities will cost much more than half.

Rent is getting harder to pay in U.S.

Little money left for basics, study shows

BY J.W. ELPHINSTONE • ASSOCIATED PRESS • June 27, 2009

The financial plight of the nation's 34 million renters has deteriorated rapidly since the beginning of the decade, yet they are rarely included in conversations about housing affordability.

Half of all renters now spend at least 30% of their before-tax income on rent and utility payments. That's up from about 40% of all renters in 2000, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. One in four shell out more than half of their income to cover those expenses, up from one in five, with Michigan at the top of the list.

And the AP's analysis of census data through 2007, the latest available, doesn't include the effects of the recession, which hammer renters harder than homeowners. Tough economic times also disproportionately affect minorities and the less educated -- both groups are more likely to be financially burdened renters.

"In the next year or so, we're going to see growing numbers of people who are literally homeless because they can't afford their own home," said Sheila Crowley, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The median rent, including utilities, rose 7% to $775 between 2000 and 2007. But the increase felt worse because renters saw their median income drop 7% to $29,000 during that time.

After paying the landlord, what's left for severely cost-burdened renters is a scant amount for the other basics of living like food, health care and clothing. Forget luxuries like transportation, retirement accounts, let alone a down payment on a house.

"They sacrifice basic household stuff you and I take for granted like hygiene products and detergent. Money for laundry," said Cicely Dove, director of family housing at Crossroads, an emergency housing shelter in Providence, R.I.

Government funding for renter assistance has been stagnant since 2000. At the same time, the number of affordable apartments has been shrinking, and the cost of building new ones rarely adds up.

During the past six years, about 3 million affordable apartments were destroyed, converted to for-sale condos or upgraded to higher-priced rental units, according to census data released this week.

The waiting lists for Housing Choice vouchers, formerly known as Section 8, are years long in many cities.

Renters in this program put 30% of their income to rent and the voucher makes up the difference.

As the economy worsens, voucher recipients are contributing less money. The program must make up the difference, which means reducing the number of new recipients, said Donna White, spokeswoman at the Housing and Urban Development Department.

Fewer are moving on to self-sufficiency too, White said.

The federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which encourages developers to build affordable housing, has little funding because investors who buy these tax credits have disappeared, said Eric Belsky, executive director of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The National Housing Trust Fund created last July to increase the supply of affordable housing remains empty. Funds were supposed to come from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the government seized control of the companies five weeks later and have so far pumped $85 billion into them to keep them afloat.

"The problems here are costly to address. We're going to see it get worse and create more hardships with renters spending less on pensions, savings and health care," Belsky said. "These things cost us down the road."

Hints of hope, however, are emerging as the country moves away from the homeownership mantra and recasts its housing priorities. President Barack Obama's recent budget includes $1 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund and another $1.6 billion for 200,000 new housing vouchers.

But housing experts say that is nowhere near enough to make a dent in the problem:

Sixty percent of single parents and senior citizens who rent spend at least 30% of their income on housing costs, while a third pay at least half.

Blacks and Hispanics face similar challenges. The unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics are both outpacing the national rate, and 30% of black renters and 27% of Hispanic renters spend half or more of their income on housing.

Indiana is the least affordable for black renters, where 43% pay at least half their income to housing expenses. And a third of Hispanic renters in Massachusetts spend 50% of their income on rent and utilities, the worst showing in the country for Hispanics.

The least affordable areas for renters are the deep South, the once red-hot housing states like California and Florida, and the beleaguered Midwest manufacturing states.

Student discipline shows racial trend

Let's get this straight. Minority [black] students want quotas for punishment? Apparently so. This article in the Detroit Free Press indicates that because the conduct of black students leads to more disciplinary action toward those black students than other students, the system should be changed so that more of the black student conduct becomes acceptable... until, presumably, the percentage of disciplinary actions equals the percentage of black students in the school system.

Student discipline shows racial trend

Blacks punished out of proportion, report says

BY LORI HIGGINS • FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER • June 25, 2009

A disproportionate number of African-American students in some Michigan school districts are being suspended and expelled, according to a report released Wednesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan report recommends the state loosen its zero-tolerance policy to give local educators more discretion in disciplining students. They also suggest schools use a range of other methods to deal with students who have discipline problems. The report's authors say students who are suspended or expelled drop out in greater numbers and more often end up in prison.

"Everyone should be disturbed about the results of the report," said Mark Fancher, a staff attorney for the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Michigan.

In Ann Arbor Public Schools, for instance, black students make up 18% of the population, but they received 58% of the suspensions. By contrast, white students make up about 62% of the population and received about 24% of the suspensions.

The ACLU reports similar results for Van Dyke Public Schools in Macomb County, where black students make up 32% of secondary students but received 58% of short-term suspensions. White students make up about 58% of the population but made up about 35% of short-term suspensions.

Van Dyke Superintendent Kathleen Spaulding questions the numbers cited in the report, saying administrators need to review them for accuracy. But she said the district follows its student code of conduct and follows the Michigan law regarding automatic expulsion for certain events.

"We enforce it uniformly and fairly, regardless of the ethnicity of the students," Spaulding said.

She does agree that the state should loosen its zero-tolerance policies. State law treats a toy weapon the same as it does an actual dangerous weapon.

"It doesn't really give us much latitude," Spaulding said.

Contact LORI HIGGINS: 313-222-6651 or lhiggins@freepress.com

Is the recession over?

Yes, we're just not in a recovery....

Is the recession over?

Some experts point to stabilization in the housing and job markets as signs the recession has ended. Others continue to see weeds - not green shoots.

By Paul R. La Monica, CNNMoney.com editor at large

Last Updated: June 20, 2009: 8:09 AM ET

About the author

ROAD TO RESCUE

After a brutal start to the year, stocks have surged since March. Some think it's a typical bear market rally while others claim investors are correctly anticipating an economic recovery.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The recession began in December 2007. Did it end sometime this spring?

It's a provocative question that's tough to answer. It's tempting to say the recession is over when that seems to be what the stock market is telling us.

But Wall Street hardly has a perfect track record: There were numerous bear market rallies during the Great Depression, for example.

Stocks also enjoyed a nice run last spring after Bear Stearns almost imploded, even though the collapses of Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500), Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500), Lehman Brothers and AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) were still yet to come.

"With all due respect to Mr. Market, it is highly fallible as a forward looking barometer," said David Rosenberg, chief economist & strategist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates, a Toronto-based wealth management firm.

The bear case: 'Less bad' does not equal good

The jump in stocks also poses another chicken-versus-egg question: Is the market rallying because people think the recession is over or do people think the recession is over because the stock market is rallying?

If it's the latter, that's not necessarily great news. Rosenberg said he thinks it's "beyond bizarre" to say the recession is over. The economy may have pulled out of the free fall that took place from September through February, he said, but that shouldn't be confused with a bottom.

"We're still in a recession. Are we past the worst point of it? 100% yes. But is the downturn over? It's far too premature to make that assessment," he said.

Talkback: Is the recession over? If so, why do you think that's the case? If not, when will it finally end? Leave your comments at the bottom of this story.

Jim Keegan, chief investment officer of Seix Investment Advisors, which manages the RidgeWorth Intermediate Bond fund, agreed that the recession may not be over yet. He said that even though the pace of decline may be slowing, it's still a decline.

"The green shoots everybody's talking about look more like dandelions. 'Less bad' is not good," he said.

The bull case: The decline is slowing

But Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist with Charles Schwab & Co., believes that the recession ended sometime in the past two months and that the market is doing what is usually does, heading higher before it's common knowledge that the economy is recovering.

Sonders noted that the Leading Indicators Index, a report that looks at consumer goods orders, stock prices, building permits and seven other key economic data points, rose sharply in May for the second consecutive month.

The report, released Thursday, showed a 1.2% increase last month, following a 1.1% rise in April. Sonders thinks this is significant because it's the largest two-month consecutive jump since November and December 2001 -- the first two months that followed the end of the 2001 recession.

0:00 /5:20Geithner: Recovery will be slow

Dan North, chief U.S. economist with Euler Hermes, a leading credit insurer, said he's encouraged by signs of life in the housing market.

"You have record affordability with home prices and even though people are wringing their hands about mortgage rates rising lately, they are still historically cheap," he said.

North added that he thinks the decision by homebuilder Pulte Homes (PHM, Fortune 500) to buy rival Centex (CTX, Fortune 500) in April could be a sign of a bottom in housing since it could represent renewed confidence.

Kathy Lien, director of currency research at GFT, a foreign exchange and futures brokerage firm, also thinks that the recession has just about run its course.

She said that declines in the average number of jobless claims from their peak a few months ago is an encouraging sign, as are reports of improving home sales and stabilization in the manufacturing sector.

"There are signals indicating that the areas of the market that suffered the most in the recession are turning around, such as housing, manufacturing and the labor markets," she said. "All this, in combination, sends a strong message to us that the worst is behind us."

Housing and jobs key to recovery

Still, Rosenberg counters that the labor and housing markets remain weak and should stay so for the foreseeable future.

He notes that jobless claims may only be declining because of the surge in the number of people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits. Plus, the unemployment rate has continued to rise sharply in recent months.

And even though many economists point to unemployment as a so-called lagging indicator -- i.e. it probably won't peak until after the recession is over -- Rosenberg disagrees. In many previous recessions, especially those led by downturns in business spending, it was true that the broad economy could recover before the job market.

But Rosenberg said this is a different kind of recession since it was caused by a credit bubble. So he believes that unemployment is no longer a lagging indicator, but one that is coincidental and perhaps even leading.

"There is a perfect link between unemployment and consumer delinquencies," he said.

He added that home sales may be improving, but prices continue to fall in many markets. He is also worried that rising unemployment could cause many borrowers who have so-called alt-A loans that are about to reset to default on their mortgages.

"We've got another leg down in housing and foreclosures. We need stabilization in home prices and the unemployment rate and we might be a year away from that," he said.

Who cares when it ends? When will we feel better?

Of course, the debate about whether the recession is or isn't over should not overshadow the fact that the whole notion of a recession is largely a case of semantics.

Contrary to popular belief, a recession is not defined as two consecutive quarters of declines in the nation's gross domestic product; a group known as the The National Bureau of Research makes the official call on recessions by looking at various economic trends beyond GDP.

And the NBER is notoriously slow in deciding when recessions begin and end. It didn't declare until July 2003 that the 2001 recession ended in November of that year. The NBER also waited until last December to announce that the current recession started in December 2007.

Sot his might be a more important question to ask: When will the economic pain actually end?

Sonders conceded that even though she thinks the recession is over, she's not a blind-eyed optimist. "I'm not telling clients to do anything differently. It doesn't feel great now. I understand that."

Lien also said that no matter what happens on Wall Street, it's not going to look good on Main Street for a while longer.

"There's a big difference between the recession being over and increased growth. It's probably going to be a slow, painful recovery," she said.

With that in mind, it may not really matter all that much when the NBER says the recession is over.

"The end of the recession won't be like a hammer hitting you in the head," North said. "There are signs that the economy is turning the corner but it won't feel good for months and months yet. If you don't have a job, you don't care if GDP is going up. You care that you don't have a job."

Talkback:What do you think? Is the recession over? If so, why do you think that's the case? If not, when will it finally end?

Crops under stress as temperatures fall

As long as the cows and chickens are getting some food, we can still have frozen custard. Meanwhile our givernment will try to give away our resources in the name of the popular myth... global warming. They can't say climate change in lieu of global warming now that the change is cooling.

Crops under stress as temperatures fall

Our politicians haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, observes Christopher Booker.

By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:04PM BST 13 Jun 2009

Waterworld: Floodwater surrounding a farm near Fargo, North Dakota, in March 2009 Photo: Reuters

The Briarwood neighborhood of Fargo, North Dakota Photo: REUTERS

North Dakota's Red River Valley prepares for flooding Photo: GETTY

A person walks with a dog on a dike near the Red River south of Fargo, North Dakota Photo: REUTERS

For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.

There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.

None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.

In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."

In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.

There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.

Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.

It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.

It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week.

Miranda Rights for non-American Terrorists

Choke! Sorry I just swallowed the last bit of credulity regarding the Obama administration's ability to govern that I had.

Miranda Rights for non-American Terrorists

June 10, 12:31 PM

In a story by Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard, The Obama Administration has ordered the FBI and CIA to give terrorists anywhere in the world the Rights of an American Citizen, they must be read their Miranda rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

1) They have no Rights under American Law. They are not American. 2) This means that the FBI and CIA in Afghanistan are now fighting a law enforcement action, not a war under Combat Conditions.

To say that this literally hamstrings US. Intelligence operations worldwide is an understatement.

Quoting directly from Hayes article:

“Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.”

This is a paradigm shift in US Policy. The rights you enjoy as a citizen of this Nation will now be applied to those who wish to deprive you of your life. No longer does the United States consider itself at war with those planning to murder our citizens.

It is now a law enforcement action.

The people we are talking about are the same type that used box cutters to slit the throats of Aircraft Crew on 9-11 in order to take over those flights. Does anyone seriously expect that people like this will not be absolutely emboldened to know that they will now have all the rights of an American citizen? Including the right to remain silent? It didn’t work to save lives after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Because the Clinton Administration took the exact same path the short sighted Obama Administration is now, terrorists know they can act with impunity. All they have to do is to look at what happened to those responsible for the first World Trade Center Bombing. Worst case scenario, they will end up in an American jail with better food, housing and “rights” then they enjoyed while planning their murder. Such a deterrent is certain to cost American lives. This is foolhardy, nay stupid. This is guaranteed to cost the lives of American Citizens.

People will die because of this policy change. Just as Clinton’s policies cost the lives of 3000 Americans on September 11th 2001.

For more info: Weekly Standard, Los Angeles Times

Perhaps the best solution here is for soldiers to proclaim, "You have the right to die quickly," and then shoot them on the spot.

U.S. eyes remote island for Gitmo detainees

What's $0.75 from every man, woman, and child in the U.S. to keep us safe from 17 possible terrorists. Seems like a bargain, eh? Wait, $200 million?! Doesn't that work out to more than $10 million each?

Here is a better idea. We offer $200,000 to any gang in Detroit or Los Angeles who will take care of the problem for us... no holds barred. No, that's too messy.

How about we give each of the 17 $1 million each and drop them off at the border between Pakistan and China. The only provision is that they have a tracking device implanted in their skull that can't be removed without death. As long as they stay outside of the U.S., no problem. Let them figure out whether they want to be martyrs or playboys.

U.S. eyes remote island for Gitmo detainees [MSNBC.com]

Officials say South Pacific's Palau a candidate for group of Chinese Muslims

In a photo reviewed by the U.S. military, Chinese Uighur detainees at Guantanamo Bay's detention facility, show a home-made note to visiting members of the media on Monday, June 1.

Updated 2:29 p.m. ET, Tues., June 9, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is in talks with the remote South Pacific island nation of Palau to resettle a group of Chinese Muslims now held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, The Associated Press has learned.

As they attempt to fulfill President Barack Obama's order to close the Guantanamo facility by early next year, administration officials are looking to Palau to accept some or all of the 17 Uighur detainees, officials said. There has been fierce congressional opposition to releasing them on U.S. soil.

A federal judge ordered them released, but an appeals court halted the order, and they have been in legal limbo ever since. Thus far no country has agreed to take any of the 17 individuals.

Three U.S. officials familiar with the situation said, however, that Palau is now a prime candidate for their relocation.

Asked about the status of the Uighurs, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly declined to comment beyond saying the U.S. is "working closely with our friends and allies regarding resettlement" of detainees at Guantanamo. He said the department would not comment on talks with individual countries.

500 miles east of the Philippines
Palau, with a population of about 20,000, is an archipelago of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets that is best known for diving and tourism and is some 500 miles east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.

"We have spoken with the Palauans, but neither they nor we have made any decisions," said one senior official. That official and two others spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.

Two of the officials said the U.S. was prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in development, budget support and other assistance in return for accepting the Uighurs.

The third official did not deny that a significant amount of money would be involved. But the official denied it would be a direct transfer to the Palau government.

The U.S. will not send the Uighurs back to China for fear they will be tortured or executed. Beijing says Uighur insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in China's far west and wants those held at Guantanamo to be returned to China.

In 2006, Albania accepted five Uighur detainees from Guantanamo but has since balked at taking others, partly for fear of diplomatic repercussions from China. Palau is one of a handful of mainly Pacific island, Latin American and African countries that does not recognize China and maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Diplomat visited Palau
The State Department said last week that Daniel Fried, the career diplomat who was named earlier this year by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to oversee Guantanamo's closure, had visited Palau but offered no details on his mission. Fried has been negotiating with third countries to accept many of the Guantanamo detainees.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Fried had visited Australia and Palau as part of a tour of the Pacific. The three officials said Fried had been discussing the disposition of Uighurs.

Australia has already twice rejected U.S. appeals to resettle the Uighurs, but its foreign minister said late last month it would consider a new request to take in 10 Uighurs. The previous requests were turned down on immigration and security criteria and it is not clear if a new Australian review of the Uighurs would have different results.

Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller declined to comment and an official at the Embassy of Palau in Washington said he had no information about the negotiations.

A former U.S. trust territory in the Pacific, Palau has retained close ties with the United States since independence in 1994 when it signed a Free Compact of Association with the U.S.

While it is independent, it relies heavily on U.S. aid and is dependent on the United States for its defense. Native-born Palauans are allowed to enter the United States without passports or visas.

Pelosi Hopeful About Climate Change Cooperation with China

Climate Change... no longer Global Warming... is now the way that money and power will be redistributed.

Pelosi Hopeful About Climate Change Cooperation with China
By Stephanie Ho Beijing 28 May 2009

Members of a U.S. congressional delegation have expressed widely divergent views on prospects for US-China cooperation to combat climate change - an issue they all agree is urgent. Meanwhile, although climate change topped the agenda, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi says she raised the issue of human rights in her meetings this week with top Chinese leaders.

Nancy Pelosi speaks at Tsinghua University in Beijing, 28 May 2009

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told journalists in Beijing her meetings with Chinese leaders this week focused mainly on the urgent issue of climate change.

"The impact of climate change has a tremendous effect, in the United States, in China and throughout the world," Pelosi said. "[1] We do not have that much time or margin for error. [2] We must come to agreement. [3] We must act."

One of the key elements in combating Climate Change will be to regulate solar activity, including sunspots, shown to be a major driver of climate variation.

Past studies have shown that sunspot numbers correspond to warming or cooling trends. The twentieth century has featured heightened activity, indicating a warming trend. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The EPA will be establishing regulations that mandate an upper limit in solar [sunspot] activity with specific penalties for excess sunspot activity. The U.S. is negotiating with China to determine the extent of payments the U.S. will make to China in the event that sunspot activity exceeds the levels established by the EPA. The U.S. is hoping that China will agree to a partial offset based on increased truck mileage beyond the 2016 standard of 30 mpg.

General Motors and Chrysler have already promised to meet whatever standards the EPA sets as long as the U.S. Treasury continues to provide at least $10 billion per quarter in operating capital. "We believe that it is important to the health of the planet to meet EPA standards. What is good for the planet is good for General Motors and vice versa," said a General Motors spokesperson.

Sotomayor Speeches Woven With Ethnicity

As a white man who is educated and has an ethnic history of cultural and intellectual accomplishment, it pains me that certain other cultures with less spectacular records should question me.

Oh, wait. I can't say that.

But she can. After all, she comes from a deprived ethnic group... not some rich Irish potato farmers or Polish factory workers or Vietnamese Hmongs. And it is certain important that her ethnic group remain strongly unassimilated. That is a source of personal and political strength.

Sotomayor Speeches Woven With Ethnicity

High Court Nominee Criticized Stereotypes

By Alec MacGillis, Amy Goldstein and Robert Barnes

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 5, 2009

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor once told a group of minority lawyers that she believed a delay in her confirmation as a federal appeals judge a decade ago was driven partly by Republican lawmakers' ethnic stereotypes of her, suggesting that the tensions surrounding her current nomination are hardly new to the New York jurist.

"I was dealt with on the basis of stereotypes . . . and it was painful . . . and not based on my record," she told the lawyers in New York in 1998. "I got a label because I was Hispanic and a woman and [therefore] I had to be liberal."

The remark was one piece of a portrait that emerges in scores of Sotomayor speeches released by the White House yesterday, showing a strong-willed jurist who has exacting expectations of herself and those who come before her -- and who is driven by a powerful ethnic pride and a belief that she has an obligation to lift up fellow people of color.

"The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever," she told Hispanic law students at Hofstra University in 1996.

The 84 speeches also shed more light on the personal side of the 54-year-old appeals court judge, who was raised in a Puerto Rican family in the Bronx and has been cloistered from the public since her nomination to the Supreme Court nine days ago. She has little patience for long-winded lawyers and bad grammar -- "each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister."

She loves talking about Puerto Rican delicacies. And she has a sense of humor that borders on the salty. Lamenting her big caseload as a federal trial judge, she told law students in 1994 that she admired a colleague who went to work at 7 in the morning but that she could not do the same: "I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 am is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it."

The speeches were accompanied by a voluminous questionnaire that, among other things, confirm Sotomayor's status as a front-runner for the nomination from the beginning. She said White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig contacted her on April 27 about an opening on the court, though news reports that Justice David H. Souter was retiring did not air until three days later.

Sotomayor said she has had nearly daily contact with the White House staff since Craig's call; the White House would not comment on whether others on President Obama's list were called that early or had such intensive contact with the president's staff, along with her meeting with Obama on May 21.

The speeches hint at the breadth of Sotomayor's experience, and touch on sentencing guidelines, intellectual property law and the differences between trial and appeals court judging. She appeared before many law schools, as well as groups as eclectic as the American Bankruptcy Institute, corrections officers in Brooklyn and a New Jersey Boy Scout troop.

Many of her speeches were to members of the Hispanic legal community in which she has been active and touch on some of the same topics of ethnic identity that have arisen around her nomination. One of the most frequent criticisms of Sotomayor since her nomination cites a speech she gave at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001 in which she said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Obama has said that she regretted the wording in hindsight, but the speeches released yesterday suggest that while she had not used the precise words before, the sentiments behind the remark were hardly isolated.

In a 1999 speech to the Women's Bar Association of New York State, Sotomayor invoked "sister power," called for the selection of a third woman Supreme Court justice -- which she would now be -- and used phrasing similar to that in the Berkeley speech. "I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion," she said.

White House adviser Stephanie Cutter said: "Efforts by critics to point to a handful of clauses in speeches are misguided. Judge Sotomayor's record on the bench, and her speeches and writings as a whole, speak to her fairness and her dedication to the rule of law."

More generally, Sotomayor's speeches display an abiding ethnic pride and exhortations of Latino self-help, usually coupled with statistics showing the extent to which Hispanics trail non-Hispanics in education and income.

Her ethnic consciousness was strengthened in her undergraduate years at Princeton, she said in a 1996 speech there. After being taught by her family in New York City to "love America," she arrived at Princeton and felt so out of place that she was initially scared by the sound of crickets. And she discovered "that in this society . . . people of color are different from the larger society, that we must work harder to overcome the problems our communities face, and that we must work together as people of color to achieve changes."

Her calls to ethnic solidarity were often coupled with critiques of America's "deeply confused" tendency to boast of its diversity while seeking to assimilate minorities.

"We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence," she told the National Puerto Rican Coalition in 1998. "Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race- and color-blind way that ignores those very differences that in other contexts we laud."

But Sotomayor also refers to the need for judicial dispassion. "It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That's what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona," she said in 2000.

In one speech, she pointedly recalled her experience in 1998 when Senate Republicans delayed for more than a year her confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. In the speech to the Cervantes Society just after the confirmation, she described what it had been like to have her nomination be targeted by Rush Limbaugh, the radio host who is now also leading the charge against her nomination. She said her nomination to the appellate bench had been pushed through in part because Hispanic organizations vocally supported her.

Sotomayor's submission to the Senate Judiciary Committee states that in many cases, she no longer has copies of her remarks. She provided text for 83 of the 187 speeches she says she can document having given from 1993 until April of this year.

The document submitted to the committee catalogues all of Sotomayor's decisions in 17 years as a federal judge, awards she has received and groups of which she has been a member. In detailing her finances, Sotomayor listed a net worth of $740,000, consisting primarily of equity in a $1 million condo in New York's Greenwich Village. She reported having $32,000 in cash and bank accounts, and personal property worth $108,000. Sotomayor reported that she owned no stocks, bonds, mutual funds or other non-real-estate investments.

Under liabilities, she listed a $381,000 mortgage, $15,000 in credit card bills and a $15,000 dentist's bill.

In her speeches, Sotomayor takes particular pride in the strides she made with English -- after arriving at Princeton, she found that her years speaking Spanish had left her with bad habits in English. She describes how she managed to overcome this by rereading books such as "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Pride and Prejudice" to the point where, despite considering herself "merely an average writer," she became a stickler for good prose.

But she also speaks often about the nagging self-doubt that she says is familiar to many Latinos. "As accomplished as I have been in my professional settings, I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up and always concerned that I have to work harder to succeed," she said in a 2002 speech at Cardozo School of Law. "This is a pathology of successful Latinos and other accomplished individuals who come from economically deprived populations."

Staff writers Jerry Markon, Michael D. Shear and Joe Stephens; research director Lucy Shackelford; and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.