No He Can't; or, Why One Black PhD did Not Vote For Obama.
She is Dr Anne WORTHAM.
Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas. Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is cur rently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004 she was awarded tenure
This article by her is something else.
No He Can't
by Anne Wortham
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on w hich your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.
November 6, 2008
Anne Wortham [send her mail] is an individualist liberal who happens to be black and American.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - A double blast from al Qaeda against Barack Obama shows the group is as worried as ever by the persuasive skills of the U.S. president, who makes a speech to Muslims on Thursday.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio recording aired on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television, said Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" towards the United States in the Muslim world and he warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.
A day earlier, the militant network's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egyptians not to be seduced by Obama's 'polished words' when he makes a major address in Cairo seeking to repair ties with the Muslim world.
For some, al Qaeda's concerted attempt to upstage Obama is a propaganda own goal that shows its normally media-savvy operatives in disarray following the departure of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush. They found Bush easy to stereotype as a belligerent, Muslim-hating cowboy.
"Zawahri is right to be worried," said Edwin Bakker, a senior research fellow at the Dutch Clingendael Institute in the Hague.
"Al Qaeda partly lives on anti-Americanism and the 'war on terror'. Now Bush has gone and been replaced by a guy who's second name is Hussein. And they fear his speech really is going to have a positive effect."
Obama has chosen Egypt to make an address to the Islamic world that he had promised for early in his presidency.
He will seek to dispel resentments inflamed by U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by militant Islamists
"Obama and his administration have planted seeds for hatred and revenge against America," the Saudi-born bin Laden declared, saying Obama was treading in the footsteps of his predecessor.
"Let the American people prepare to continue to reap what has been planted by the heads of the White House in the coming years and decades," bin Laden said.
In an audio recording posted on an al Qaeda-linked Islamist website, Zawahri, an Egyptian, said Obama was not welcome in Egypt and urged Egyptians to "stand united in the face of this criminal".
Zawahri's language was somewhat milder than his denunciation of Obama published in November in which he accused Obama of betraying his race and his father's Muslim heritage.
Zawahri then attacked Obama as a "house Negro," a racially-charged term used by 1960s Black American Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe Black slaves loyal to white masters; except, Malcolm did not use the word Negro; he said "N....r".
But Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi, said Zawahri's words showed al Qaeda was panicking.
"They know Obama is popular in a huge part of the Arab and Muslim world because the man is actually trying to address America's record in the region," he said.
9 October 2009 President Barack Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday 9 October for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.
The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. "In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations."
He added that the committee endorsed "Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"
President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.
The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.
Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.
"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given too someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.
Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.
"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.
The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.
She is Dr Anne WORTHAM.
Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas. Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is cur rently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004 she was awarded tenure
This article by her is something else.
No He Can't
by Anne Wortham
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on w hich your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.
November 6, 2008
Anne Wortham [send her mail] is an individualist liberal who happens to be black and American.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - A double blast from al Qaeda against Barack Obama shows the group is as worried as ever by the persuasive skills of the U.S. president, who makes a speech to Muslims on Thursday.
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio recording aired on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television, said Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" towards the United States in the Muslim world and he warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.
A day earlier, the militant network's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egyptians not to be seduced by Obama's 'polished words' when he makes a major address in Cairo seeking to repair ties with the Muslim world.
For some, al Qaeda's concerted attempt to upstage Obama is a propaganda own goal that shows its normally media-savvy operatives in disarray following the departure of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush. They found Bush easy to stereotype as a belligerent, Muslim-hating cowboy.
"Zawahri is right to be worried," said Edwin Bakker, a senior research fellow at the Dutch Clingendael Institute in the Hague.
"Al Qaeda partly lives on anti-Americanism and the 'war on terror'. Now Bush has gone and been replaced by a guy who's second name is Hussein. And they fear his speech really is going to have a positive effect."
Obama has chosen Egypt to make an address to the Islamic world that he had promised for early in his presidency.
He will seek to dispel resentments inflamed by U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by militant Islamists
"Obama and his administration have planted seeds for hatred and revenge against America," the Saudi-born bin Laden declared, saying Obama was treading in the footsteps of his predecessor.
"Let the American people prepare to continue to reap what has been planted by the heads of the White House in the coming years and decades," bin Laden said.
In an audio recording posted on an al Qaeda-linked Islamist website, Zawahri, an Egyptian, said Obama was not welcome in Egypt and urged Egyptians to "stand united in the face of this criminal".
Zawahri's language was somewhat milder than his denunciation of Obama published in November in which he accused Obama of betraying his race and his father's Muslim heritage.
Zawahri then attacked Obama as a "house Negro," a racially-charged term used by 1960s Black American Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe Black slaves loyal to white masters; except, Malcolm did not use the word Negro; he said "N....r".
But Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi, said Zawahri's words showed al Qaeda was panicking.
"They know Obama is popular in a huge part of the Arab and Muslim world because the man is actually trying to address America's record in the region," he said.
9 October 2009 President Barack Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize.
OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday 9 October for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.
The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.
The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. "In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations."
He added that the committee endorsed "Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"
President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.
The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.
Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.
"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given too someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.
Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.
The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.
"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.
The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.
Labels: Black American Firsts
posted by ichbinalj at 2:42 PM
24 Comments:
12/15/2008
President Bush's aides have turned down a request from President-elect Barack Obama to move from Chicago into Blair House, the official guest residence across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, in time for Mr. Obama's daughters to start school in Washington on Jan. 5.
"The Obamas were told that they could move into Blair House on Jan. 15, but no earlier, because it is booked, an Obama transition official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity...
"White House officials declined to disclose specifically who is using Blair House during that period, for what purpose or how they could take precedence over the president-elect of the United States when it came to government housing; one White House official would say only that it had been booked for 'receptions and gatherings' by members of the departing Bush administration. Those receptions, the official said, 'don't make it suitable for full-time occupancy by the Obamas yet.'"
A stranger was seated next to a little Black girl on the airplane when the stranger turned to her and said, “Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”
The little girl, who had just opened her coloring book, closed it slowly and said to the stranger, “What would you like to talk about?”
“Oh, I don't know,” said the stranger. “Since you are a Negro, do you think that So-called President Elect Barak Obama is qualified for the job?” and he smiles.
“OK”, she said. 'That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff -- grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?”
The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, “Hmmm, I have no idea.”
To which the little girl replies, “Do you really feel qualified to discuss President Barak Obama... when you don't know sh_t?”
Illinois Attorney General Ronald Burris, 71, the state's first Black attorney general and also a former state treasurer, is now legally a U.S. senator, he says, after Governor Blagojevich picked him to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, 71, the state's first Black attorney general and also a former state treasurer, is now legally a U.S. senator, he says, after Governor Blagojevich picked him to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
Legal experts say that the Illinois governor has not been convicted or indicted, and his public treatment -- even at the hands of his fellow Democrats -- raises questions about whether Blagojevich is unfairly being viewed as guilty out of the gate.
"It's really disheartening. ... Nobody is willing to give him the presumption of innocence," defense attorney Gerald Lefcourt said. "Particularly disappointing is my fellow Democrats who are acting as if the guy has been convicted and serving time."
Efforts to strip the governor of his power started quickly after federal prosecutors unveiled the criminal complaint against him on Dec. 9.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan tried, unsuccessfully, to get the state Supreme Court to remove him from office.
Then impeachment proceedings got under way in the Illinois House. Illinois legislators shelved an effort to hold a special election as a way to fill Obama's seat -- but after Blagojevich appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris on Tuesday, U.S. Senate Democrats said they would hold up the appointment anyway.
Lefcourt said the senators, while within their right to criticize Blagojevich, should "butt out" when it comes to taking action against Burris.
"I don't think they're serving our Constitution and our system well," he said.
Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, said the Senate was jumping the gun by threatening to block an otherwise legal appointment.
"He has been neither convicted nor impeached," he said.
But despite the overwhelmingly publicity, and torrent of official statements condemning Blagojevich's actions, Turley said the governor still can expect a presumption of innocence where it matters most -- in court.
Jan. 5: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his nomination as President-elect Barack Obama’s commerce secretary citing an investigation involving one of his political donors. Obama picked the New Mexico governor early in Dec 2008 to be his commerce secretary.
Leon Panetta, chief of staff in President Clinton's White House, will be President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be CIA director, two Democratic officials told CNN on Monday.
Leon Panetta was chief of staff for President Clinton.
The officials also said that retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who formerly headed the U.S. Navy's Pacific Command, will be tapped as director of national intelligence.
Panetta, 70, has had a long political career, beginning in 1966 when he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, R-California.
Panetta was elected to the House of Representatives in 1977, serving California's 16th (now 17th) Congressional District until Clinton appointed him to head the Office of Budget and Management in 1993. He was chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.
JUSTICE DEPT. PICKS ANNOUNCED
President-elect Barack Obama further signaled that he intends to roll back Bush administration policies authorizing torture and warrantless spying in filling four senior Justice Department posts Monday.
Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen, who has publicly assailed "Bush's corruption of our American ideals," is Obama's pick to take charge of the Office of Legal Counsel.
Obama also will nominate:
•David Ogden, a top Justice Department official during the Clinton administration, as deputy attorney general.
•Elena Kagan, the dean of the Harvard University Law School, as solicitor general.
•Tom Perrelli , former counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno, as associate attorney general overseeing civil matters.
Leon Panetta
Born: Monterey, June 28, 1938.
Education: Monterey Union High School, Monterey, 1956; bachelor's degree, University of Santa Clara, 1960; law degree, Santa Clara Law School, 1963.
Military service: Army first lieutenant, 1964-66, received Army Commendation Medal.
Professional experience: Legislative assistant, U.S. Sen. Thomas Kuchel, R-Calif., 1966-69; director, Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1969-70; executive assistant to mayor of New York City, 1970-71; attorney, Panetta, Thompson & Panetta, 1971-76.
Political experience: U.S. representative, D-Monterey, 1977-93; chairman, House Committee on the Budget, 1989-93; director, Office of Management and Budget, 1993-94; White House chief of staff, 1994-96.
Additional experience: Co-director of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University, Monterey Bay; member, California Council on Base Support and Retention, 2004; member, Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future, 2005; Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of the California State University system; member, Iraq Study Group, United States Institute of Peace, 2006.
Sources: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy
Admiral Dennis C. Blair has been named as Director of national intelligence
He will bring to the job: Intimate experience with intelligence during a 34-year Navy career. A brainy retired four-star admiral whose jobs included commander of the United States Pacific Command, he is also an Asia expert who is considered adept at running sprawling organizations, seemingly a prerequisite for heading an office that is still grappling with the task of fusing 16 spy agencies.
Is linked to Mr. Obama by: Slim ties.He was an occasional adviser to Mr. Obama in the Senate, but does not have a long relationship with him and was not a close adviser to the campaign. He does, however, have close ties to the Clinton family, and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford with Bill Clinton.
In his own words: ''The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived.'' (Congressional testimony, Nov. 7, 2007)
ADM Dennis Blair used to work as: The CIA's first associate director of military support, and served a tour on the NSC. He was also director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and commanded the Kitty Hawk Battle Group and the destroyer Cochrane. In civilian life, Mr. Blair was president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit largely financed by the federal government to analyze national security issues for the Pentagon, from 2003 to 2006.
Carries as baggage: Had to step down as president of the Institute for Defense Analyses amid concerns that his positions on several corporate boards constituted a conflict of interest. The Pentagon's IG later concluded that he had violated the institute's conflict-of-interest standards by serving on the board of a military contractor working on the Air Force F-22 jet while the institute was evaluating the program for the Pentagon. The IG found, however, that Mr. Blair did not influence the organization's analysis of the F-22 program. Another possible hindrance: The selection of a retired admiral to the national intelligence post could fuel worries about the militarization of intelligence.
Is otherwise known for: Being a cerebral and intense workaholic. Yet he also tried to water ski behind a Navy destroyer while commanding the ship in Japan. An avid fisherman who speaks Russian, he was in the same Naval Academy graduating class as Oliver North and Senator Jim Webb of Virginia. He was passed over for chairman of the Joint Chiefs by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who considered him too independent and was wary of his views on engagement in Asia.
Biography: Born Feb. 4, 1947, in Kittery, Me. ... graduated from Annapolis with Oliver North, earned a master's degree at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship while Bill Clinton was there ... Married, with two grown children, a son and a daughter.
The Bloody Career of Admiral Dennis C. Blair
Human rights supporters are right to be worried that Dennis Blair will hardly lead the charge for reform in the nation’s intelligence community after the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture, rendition and other crimes. For in the period leading up to and following East Timor’s August 1999 referendum on independence from Indonesia Blair, from his perch as US Commander in Chief of the Pacific (CINCPAC) from February 1999 to May 2000, ran interference for the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) as they and their militia proxies committed crimes against humanity on an awesome scale.
Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/simpson12262008.html
(MORE ON ROLAND BURRIS) 8 Jan 2009
Senate Democrats who thought they could push away Roland Burris appears to have misjudged the racial fallout, underestimated public reaction and wound up on shaky legal ground. Now it is expected Burris will be seated in the U-S Senate as Illinois' Junior Senator. Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, had first insisted they would not seat Burris because his appointment came from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell Obama's former seat. But today, they praised Burris and suggesting he soon will be a senator. That followed a meeting with Burris, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. Reportedly, President-elect Obama had talked privately with Reid on Tuesday...urging him to find a way to end the controversy over the appointment. Roland Burris says he expects ``very shortly'' to represent the state of Illinois in the U.S. Senate. The Senate laid blame on Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White for refusal to sign the election certificate.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers is circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter in Congress asking for help to discourage President-elect Barack Obama from nominating Novi native, and neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta to be his surgeon general.
There have been some rumblings suggesting he might not be the right person. One such critique, from New York Times economic columnist and recent Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, took Gupta to task for accusing filmmaker (and Flint native) Michael Moore of “fudging his facts” in the movie “Sicko,” about the problems with America’s health care system.
In his letter, Conyers cited Krugman’s opposition and said there are “highly experienced medical professionals who question whether Dr. Gupta has the necessary experience or even the medical background to be in charge of some 6,000 physicians or more who work in the United States Public Health Service.”
The surgeon general is the top public health spokesman for the nation and oversees the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which helps deliver health services and responds to public health crises.
Gupta went to college and medical school at the University of Michigan and is a neurosurgeon in Atlanta and on the faculty at Emory University’s medical school as well as being CNN’s medical correspondent.
Federal prosecutors in West Tennessee say two men charged with threatening President-elect Barack Obama are wasting time with claims they were improperly indicted. The two contend they were indicted by a federal grand jury with too few white people on it and that the charges should be dropped. In a filing on 5 Jan 2009, prosecutors said the men have no legal grounds for their claim and that holding a hearing on their arguments would be a waste of time.
(BACK 2 ROLAND BURRIS) The Senate has refused to seat Roland Burris, setting up the possibility of a constitutional showdown.
The former Illinois attorney general said he would take legal action, the Chicago Tribune reports. His quest to become the next U.S. senator from Illinois may be helped by a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
Burris was appointed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused by federal prosecutors of seeking to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had vowed to deny the post to Burris, citing the refusal of the Illinois secretary of state to sign Burris’ appointment papers.
Burris said the law is on his side. “As I read the U.S. Constitution," he said, it says the "governor shall fill a vacancy, and as a former attorney general of my state, I have no knowledge of where a secretary of state has veto power over a governor carrying out his constitutional duties."
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, agrees with Burris. In an opinion column published by the Los Angeles Times, Chemerinsky says senators seeking to deny a seat to Burris are on “weak constitutional ground.” Their claim to have the power to exclude Burris could create a dangerous precedent, he asserts.
Both Chemerinsky and an article in the Washington Times cite a 1969 Supreme Court decision involving former Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was re-elected despite allegations that he misappropriated funds from a House committee. The decision, Powell v. McCormack, said the House could not exclude a member-elect who meets the constitutional requirements for membership.
In the case of a senator, Article 1 sets out the requirements, and Burris meets them, Chemerinsky writes. They require a senator to be at least 30 years old, a citizen for at least nine years, and a resident of the state he or she represents. Chemerinsky also cites the 17th Amendment and Illinois law, which gives the state governor the power to fill Senate vacancies.
“The taint of Blagojevich's alleged crimes does not justify ignoring the Constitution,” Chemerinsky writes. “For the last eight years, the Bush administration has ignored or twisted the Constitution to serve what it believed were higher ends. It would be an enormous mistake, as a new administration prepares to take charge, for Democrats to send the Senate down that same path.”
21 Jan 09: After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again.
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House -- a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday's inauguration stumble, when Roberts mangled the words of the oath, prompting Obama to do so too.
The presidential oath is set by the Constitution and reads:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Tuesday's flub was particularly surprising because Obama and Roberts are graduates of Harvard Law School, where they presumably studied the Constitution.
After the first swearing-in on Tuesday, Roberts could be seen on camera telling the president that the mistake was "my fault."
A military judge at Guantanamo today rejected a White House request to suspend a hearing for the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, creating an unexpected challenge for the administration as it reviews how America puts suspected terrorists on trial.
The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said his decision was difficult but necessary to protect "the public interest in a speedy trial." The ruling came in the case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The bombing of the Navy destroyer in 2000 in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, killed 17 U.S. sailors.
It seemed to take the Pentagon and White House completely by surprise.
"We just learned of the ruling ... and we are consulting with the Pentagon and the Department of Justice to explore our options in the case," said White Press secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that he doubted the decision would hamper the administration's ability to decide how to move forward from Guantanamo.
(AP) 1/29/2009
Several Tennessee lawmakers have signed onto a legal action intended to force President Barack Obama to turn over his birth certificate and other documents to prove his citizenship, an effort already rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in another case.
Tennessee Reps. Eric Swafford, Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada and Frank Nicely have all agreed to be plaintiffs in future legal action from a Russian immigrant in California who has challenged whether Obama meets constitutional criteria to be president.
The lawsuit from the Defend Our Freedoms Foundation, which has not yet been filed, will be among several court challenges to Obama's citizenship.
One of the cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court late last year, and the court declined without comment to take it up, a move many interpreted as meaning the issue was dead. The campaign posted a copy of his certificate on a page intended to counter rumors about Obama.
Concerning prison statistics! A new report from the Pew Center on the States paints a predictably un-rosy picture of our national corrections systems. (Incidentally, don't we need to start putting "corrections" in quotes? Really—who or what is being "corrected"?) According to the report, one in 32 adults in Hawaii is "under correctional control," meaning they're either incarcerated or on probation or parole. That's actually slightly lower than the nationwide figure of one in 31, and significantly lower than Texas, where one in 22 adults is in the process of being "corrected."
Speaking of racially skewed statistics, here's the most disturbing part of the Pew Center's findings, and an excellent way to refute the claims of anyone who believes the election of Barack Obama ended racism in America: one in 9 Black males age 18-34 is in prison in the United States. Pause for a moment to let that sink in.
(April 7, 2009) Americans have grown more optimistic about the economy and the direction of the country in the 11 weeks since President Obama was inaugurated, suggesting that he is enjoying some success in his critical task of rebuilding the nation’s confidence, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
These sometimes turbulent weeks — marked by new initiatives by Mr. Obama, attacks by Republicans and more than a few missteps by the White House — do not appear to have hurt the president. Americans said they approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, foreign policy, Iraq and Afghanistan; fully two-thirds said they approved of his overall job performance.
By contrast, just 31 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest in the 25 years the question has been asked in New York Times/CBS News polls.
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