Marshall's Law

" ... Though he couldn't afford it, Marshall still made time for the fight
against segregation. Representing the local NAACP, he negotiated with white
store owners who sold to blacks but would not hire them. He joined John L.
Lewis's effort to unionize black and white steelworkers. And he convinced a
college graduate who wanted to go to law school to apply to the University
of Maryland, which did not accept blacks into its law school program.
Marshall had considered applying to Maryland himself after he graduated from
college but decided it would be hopeless. Now he was taking the law school
to court.

Houston came to Baltimore and helped argue the case. During the proceedings,
Marshall told the court: "What is at stake here is more than the rights of
my client; it is the moral commitment stated in our country's creed." No one
expected Marshall and Houston to win; they were simply trying to set up a
case that could be appealed. "We were hoping to get to the Supreme Court any
way we could," Marshall says. "But Judge Eugene O'Dunne said no. He said we
won right there."

"The colored people in Baltimore were on fire when Thurgood did that"
recalls Juanita Jackson Mitchell, an NAACP activist in Baltimore. "They were
euphoric with victory . . . We didn't know about the Constitution. He
brought us the Constitution as a document like Moses brought his people the
Ten Commandments." ... "

http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/speeches/tmlaw_article.htm

The Army's Other Crisis

Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving

By Andrew Tilghman

 

" ... These problems are of vital concern, and are reasonably well understood in newsrooms and on Capitol Hill. But the top uniformed and civilian leaders at the Pentagon who think hardest about the future of the military have a more fundamental fear: young officers—people like Matt Kapinos—are leaving the Army at nearly their highest rates in decades. This is not a short-term problem, nor is it one that can simply be fixed with money. A private-sector company or another government agency can address a shortage of middle managers by hiring more middle managers. In the Army's rigid hierarchy, all officers start out at the bottom, as second lieutenants. A decline in officer retention, in other words, threatens both the Army's current missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its long-term institutional future. And though many senior Pentagon leaders are quite aware of the problem, there's only so much they can do to reverse the decline while the United States maintains large numbers of troops in Iraq.

 

In the last four years, the exodus of junior officers from the Army has accelerated. In 2003, around 8 percent of junior officers with between four and nine years of experience left for other careers. Last year, the attrition rate leapt to 13 percent. "A five percent change could potentially be a serious problem," said James Hosek, an expert in military retention at the RAND Corporation. Over the long term, this rate of attrition would halve the number of officers who reach their tenth year in uniform and intend to take senior leadership roles. ... "

 

~ Full article ~

 

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms

" ... Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of
life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely
handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch
in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live
and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is
expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet,
and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first
synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others
that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under
construction.

The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and
philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between
biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for
a thing to be alive. ... "

 

~ Read more... ~

 

People & Power - Death of the dollar 2 - 19 Dec 07 - Part 2

People & Power - Death of the dollar 2 - 19 Dec 07 - Part 1

Goldsmith: "Extreme secrecy...led to a lot of mistakes"

In October, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a riveting hearing with
Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department Office of
Legal Counsel.  The record of that hearing has just been published.

As was widely reported at the time, Mr. Goldsmith challenged the
legality of certain aspects of the President's warrantless surveillance
program and raised questions about other policies and procedures in the
"war on terrorism."

"There's no doubt that the extreme secrecy [surrounding the Terrorist
Surveillance Program] -- not getting feedback from experts, and not
showing it to experts, and not getting a variety of views, even inside
the executive branch -- led to a lot of mistakes," he said.

The PDF version of the hearing record includes Mr. Goldsmith's answers
to questions for the record from the Senate Committee members (pp.
38-49).  In most cases, he deflected the Senators' pointed questions.
But several of the exchanges are interesting nevertheless.

Asked about the Administration's refusal to disclose to Congress the
legal memoranda justifying its interrogation program, Mr. Goldsmith
stated:

"I believe it is the President's prerogative not to disclose these
opinions.  And I believe it is the Congress's prerogative to use
political pressure to try to force the Executive to disclose the
opinions."

See "Preserving the Rule of Law in the Fight Against Terrorism,"
hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, October 2, 2007:

     http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/ruleoflaw.html

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2007, Issue No. 125
December 20, 2007

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste

According to Scientific American:

 

Strange but True -  December 13, 2007

By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power
plants produce heaps of radiation.

 

~ Full article ~

 

the 'Denialists' Deck of Cards'

" ... With "Duh!," the denialist deliberately misunderstands, misinterprets, or plays dumb when presented with others' questions or proposals. One is sometimes amazed at how smart an industry lobbyist can be until they're asked a question they don't want to answer!

In the Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandal, this exchange between Rep. Eshoo and Fred Adler, a company investigator, is an excellent "duh" moment:

ESHOO: ...If you say no, then I'll accept your answer.

ADLER: OK.

ESHOO: You said no?

ADLER: No in regard to what?

ESHOO: Well, you know what, you have to be smart to play dumb. So I think I've been pretty direct about my questions. I asked you if rusing has been used. And you asked me to define it. I give it to you, and then..." House Hearing on the Hewlett-Packard Pretexting Scandal, CQ Transcriptions, Sept. 28, 2006. ... "

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/deck.php