Monthly Archive for December, 2004

According to the NYT‘s this morning, House Republicans are “planning” to shore up Hastert’s goal of removing Republican Joel Hefley from his chairmanship of the ethics committee, and will be introducing a package of rule changes to stymie the pursuit of such investigations in the future.

What they’re planning in Texas, according to the article, is just another example of the GOP’s abuse of the system and further evidence that instead of restoring ethics or morality to gov’t they are going out of their way to expose themselves for the hypocrites they are.

One proposal would take authority for prosecuting the campaign finance case away from the Democratic district attorney in Austin and give it to the state attorney general, a Republican. Another possible move would legalize corporate campaign contributions like those that figure into the state case.

They should all be made to visit this piece by Jacob Hornberger, and to commit the following, to memory:

“When laws are not enforced equally on everyone, people tend to lose respect for the law in general.”

Statement of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer on Possible Removal of Rep. Joel Hefley as Chairman of the House Ethics Committee

According to published reports House Speaker Dennis Hastert is considering removing Representative Joel Hefley as Chairman of the House Ethics Committee.

Such an action would clearly be seen as retaliation against Chairman Hefley for simply doing his job and leading the bipartisan Ethics Committee efforts that held Majority Leader Tom DeLay accountable for his multiple ethics transgressions.

The removal of Representative Hefley as Chairman of the Ethics Committee would constitute a flat out declaration of war by Speaker Hastert against ethics in the House.

via www.democracy21.org

Jonathan Fishbein, a clinical research specialist at the National Institutes of Health, is appealing his firing from that organisation for what they term his “poor performance.”

Fishbein, according to the article, is in a two-year probationary period but doesn’t get into specifics about his performance to date or how long he’s been employed there. He contends that his refusal to “to overlook shortcomings in research practices, including failure to obtain proper informed consent, in NIH-sponsored studies of the drug nevirapine on African research subjects,” is the reason for his dismissal.

His lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, has filed an appeal in response to a 6-page decision written by Judge Raphael Ben-Ami of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which argues “that Jonathan Fishbein, a clinical research specialist at the National Institutes of Health, could not seek whistle-blower protection before the board because he was employed as a “special consultant” outside regular civil service laws.”

Is Fishbein the whistle-blower behind the nevirapine scandal? If he is, he should be given a raise, not a pink slip.

While searching Reuters‘ AlertNet for news and assistance links for Indonesia’s devastating earthquake which spread tsunami disaster from India to Malaysia and is producing sea surges in East Africa, I happened to see this article about Bush’s signing of a bill, on Dec. 23rd, calling for sanctions amd military assistance in the Sudan.

The so-called “Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act of 2004,” which is mostly nonbinding, calls for the United States to assist in the deployment of additional African Union forces to the region.

It says Bush should “encourage” U.N. members to stop importing oil from Sudan.

It also says Bush should impose targeted sanctions, including a ban on travel and the freezing of assets, on government and military officials, as well as businesses controlled by the government or the National Congress Party.

The bill says Bush should encourage U.N. members to take similar actions.

It’s being reported that the Sudanese gov’t and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army have “pledged to finalize an agreement to end Africa’s longest-running war by Dec. 31“, but this doesn’t cover the Darfur region.

The peace talks in Kenya do not cover a separate conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, where rebels took up arms last year. That conflict has created what the United Nations calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Southern rebels began fighting in 1983, when Khartoum tried to impose Islamic sharia law on the mainly animist and Christian south. Oil, religion and ideology have complicated the war that has driven 4 million people from their homes.

Both parties have signed key accords over the past 15 months on security arrangements, power-sharing, wealth-sharing and the status of three disputed areas during a six-year interim period.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere, on a visit to Khartoum earlier this month, had also expressed optimism over a deal to end the fighting that has killed 2 million Sudanese.

The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) released a statement on the same day that Bush signed the “Comprehensive Peace in Sudan Act of 2004.” The rebel group is refusing “to return to African Union-sponsored peace talks and rejected the pan-African body as lead mediator to end the 22-month-old conflict.“

According to Reuters and the leader of JEM, Khalil Ibrahim:

A U.S. State Department spokesman said: “Our understanding from the JEM that were represented at Abuja was that they are coming back to another round in January. That continues to be our understanding.”

But Ibrahim insisted the talks be headed by the United Nations. “The government has defeated the AU and the AU don’t have any guarantees for any future agreement or political solution,” he said.

He said the AU could participate as observers in talks, and in a peacekeeping mission on the ground, but the JEM would not accept anything less than U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

“We are asking to replace the AU with international troops — U.N. peacekeepers,” he added.

You can read more about JEM here, which was formed by African Muslims from Darfur following the purging of supporters of National Islamic Front of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi from gov’t, as payback for Turabi’s introduction of a bill into the general assembly calling for a reduction in the powers of President Omar al-Bashir.

The question seems to be, will all of this result in the replacing of one dictator with another, and how will a lasting peace ever be achieved if this occurs?

via Anthony Gregory at Lew Rockwell’s Blog:

An Open Letter from Martha Stewart

Dear Friends,

When one is incarcerated with 1,200 other inmates, it is hard to be selfish at Christmas — hard to think of Christmases past and Christmases future — that I know will be as they always were for me — beautiful! So many of the women here in Alderson will never have the joy and wellbeing that you and I experience. Many of them have been here for years — devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family.

I beseech you all to think about these women — to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate, no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for life “out there” where each person will ultimately find herself, many with no skills and no preparation for living.

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