Here's the link to Wednesday's live blog.

5:26 pm PDT: We couldn't leave for the day without first reporting on this development.

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Washington — The complex, highly partisan closing push for healthcare reform is, in many ways, coming down to two Washington institutions whose devotion to nonpartisanship and a mastery of the arcane make them virtually inside-the-Beltway priesthoods: the Congressional Budget Office and the Senate Parliamentarian’s Office.

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Washington - In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.

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Joseph Goebbels, the leading propagandist of the Third Reich, believed in the power of the lie; the greater the lie, the greater the power. Goebbels would have loved Karl Rove's "Courage and Consequences: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," a pastiche of lies, fabrications and distortions designed to rehabilitate the record of the Bush-Cheney years. There are too many lies to treat in this one column, but his greatest lie is that the Bush administration would not have invaded Iraq if it had known there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there.

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If you keep heckling the Israeli ambassador to the US during a talk at UC Irvine, the school has a right to throw you out of the room. And if you violate school standards, they have a right to take you to task on such violations as long as they consistently apply the standards to all students.  Any student protester knows this and makes the choice to risk those outcomes when they choose disruption over, say, really uncomfortable questions.

But do they have the right to arrest you?

Amazingly, 11 Muslim students at UC Irvine weren’t handed the usual disciplinary action for violating student codes (they each got up, made a statement and then would walk to the door to be escorted out by police). NO, they were actually arrested.

I remember doing almost the exact same thing when I was that age- a bunch of liberal students repeatedly interrupted former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft at a campus talk-only we weren’t so mad. People we knew hadn’t been killed or imprisoned. We recited Jabberwocky and got hauled out. Our punishment? Nothing.

Just change the names: “11 members of the Young Israel Alliance were arrested for heckling the Palestinian ambassador at UC Berkeley today.” No matter who it is, there’s something not right here and the answer to the over-reaction is likely outside pressure (which students who are genuinely concerned about Jewish-Muslim relations report tends to polarize and hinder, not help.)

Apparently, conservative students who committed a similar disruption last year got very different treatment. No arrest for them.

LA Jewish Journal reports in: UC Riverside Faculty Voice Support for Protesters Against Oren

Faculty at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), joined voices at UC campuses statewide in support of 11 students arrested for heckling Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren during his Feb. 8 speech at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

Thirty-one professors and graduate students from several UCR departments signed a “Statement on Free Speech, Palestine and the ‘UC Irvine 11,’ ” drafted by Dylan Rodriguez, chair of the university’s Ethnic Studies department.  The March 11 pronouncement calls on the UC administration and the Orange County district attorney’s office to drop disciplinary and punitive action against eight UCI and three UCR students, which it calls “discriminatory, cynical, and politically and intellectually repressive.”

The UCI students have been charged with violations of the student codes of conduct.  Officials at UCR could not confirm whether action would be taken against their students.

“We believe that this is a cynical and opportunistic attempt at political repression that reflects the racial criminalization of young Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim men and women as actual or potential ‘terrorists.’  By way of contrast, Ethnic Studies faculty have taught courses in Ethnic Studies in which classroom proceedings were disrupted by students with opposing views, and the university administration did not pursue any disciplinary or punitive measures against them.  In fact, we have sometimes been told that such disruptions are an expression of academic free speech,” the statement said.

Rodriguez said the statement was intended to take issue with the tendency, since at least 2001, to affiliate Muslim men with terrorism within popular discourse, as well as to challenge what he sees as selective enforcement of codes of conduct by university administrators.

“People protesting is something to be expected,” he said, noting that UCR administrators did not take disciplinary action against what he called “conservative” student protesters following a similar incident last fall.  “When people get selectively subjugated to enforcement of codes of conduct, it has a chilling affect on political discussion and freedom.”

It remains to be seen whether UC Irvine administrators can prove that this is a routine response to such disruptions, or exceptional treatment consistent with our undeniable and absolutely shameful criminalization of Muslims and Arab Americans.

Meanwhile, to his credit, Michael Oren has offered to come back and have a dialogue with students. I hope the arrested students, some of whom lost close relatives during the attack on Gaza, will take him up on his offer. I really do.  It would take an incredible amount of courage and character to sit down face to face with a man who defends a massive military attack that killed your family members and destroyed schools and hospitals. If I were in their place, I’m not sure I would have that kind of inner strength. But what a meeting it could be.

Related articles

• Israeli ambassador offers to return to UC Irvine (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Zionist group asks donors to avoid UC Irvine (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• 11 arrested during Israeli ambassador’s talk (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

It may be unsettling to some that the man most responsible for overseeing coal ash regulation within the Obama administration has a track record of siding with polluters instead of the people most affected by toxic waste.

His name is Cass Sunstein

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The Commonwealth Club of California

January 22, 2010 

Take a moment with this.

That is the cover of Newsweek from the first week of March, the month in which we will mark the seventh anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was 2,555 days ago this Saturday, in fact, when televisions all across America lit up with the pyrotechnic images of "Shock and Awe," when explosions and fire roared over the city of Baghdad, when men, women and children were incinerated, when we all became war criminals whether we liked it or not.

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A law that provides blanket immunity and pardons former members of Afghanistan’s armed factions for war crimes and human rights abuses committed prior to December 2001 was quietly enacted three years ago by parliament, despite previous assurances by President Hamid Karzai that he would not sign it or allow it to take effect.

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Although the global recession has had a serious impact on working men and women alike, two new reports make clear that women in the United States and throughout the world have suffered most because of long-standing discrimination.

The findings come from two highly regarded sources the United Nations' International Labor Office (ILO), and the New Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff for President Clinton.

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As I was reading recent editorials by mainstream journalists, I was struck by their inability to transcend Old School political logic. Their thinking appears to be stuck in the 1990's peak of the neoliberal political order, which is currently writhing in its final death throes.

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The greed and selfishness that the free market capitalist economy inspires seem to impact every area of social and commercial interaction in consenting societies. It's not just Wall Street and government leaders caught in the trap. It's the entire system that is set to keep moving ever more money to the top economic tier by siphoning it from the bottom and middle ones.

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We get an update on the investigations into a spate of police shootings in New Orleans that took place in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In recent weeks, two former members of the New Orleans police have admitted to participating in a cover-up of the Danziger Bridge shootings of September 4, 2005, when police SWAT units opened fire on a group of unarmed civilians, killing two and wounding four. Meanwhile, federal investigators have widened their probe into the New Orleans Police Department and are now looking into the circumstances surrounding four other incidents that include three deaths and one non-fatal shooting. [includes rush transcript]

Veteran military and foreign affairs analyst and author Mark Perry reports that CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus dispatched a team of senior military officers in January to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perry reports that the briefers told Mullen that “Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing US standing in the region.” [includes rush transcript]

With the Democrat-led push for healthcare reform in its final stages, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduces “The Public Option Act,” a measure that would allow people under sixty-five to buy into Medicare. The bill has attracted fifty co-sponsors. Grayson joins us to discuss the measure and healthcare reform overall, his own family’s experience with private insurance companies and more. [includes rush transcript]

• 10 Palestinians Seriously Wounded in Israeli Crackdown on Jerusalem Protests
• Rejecting US Criticism, Israel Announces New Settlement Construction
• Palestinians Name Ramallah Street After Slain US Activist Rachel Corrie
• 9 Killed in US Drone Attacks in Pakistan
• ACLU Sues US for Disclosures on Drone Attacks
• Report: US Sending "Bunker Buster" Bombs to Diego Garcia
• Ex-PM Holds Slight Lead in Iraqi Elections
• Ban: Haiti in "Race Against Time" Before Rainy Season
• Afghanistan Confirms Amnesty Law for War Crimes
• NZ Peace Activists Acquitted for Antiwar Protest
• 5 Dems Announce Opposition to Healthcare Bill
• Penn. Nearly Doubles Cost of Low-Income Insurance Program
• Top Economic Officials Foresee "Elevated" Unemployment Rate
• Admin Threatens Veto of Intel Funding over Oversight Provisions
• US Military: Sexual Assaults Up 11% in 2009
• University of Florida Students Protest Police Shooting of African Graduate Student
• Irish Activist, Rendition Critic Has US Visa Revoked

In the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, a US consular employee and her husband were shot dead on Saturday while driving in their SUV. In a separate incident nearby, the husband of a Mexican employee at the US consulate was shot dead. The shootings are believed to be the first deadly attacks on US officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. We go to the US-Mexico border to speak with reporter Charles Bowden. “There is no serious War on Drugs,” Bowden writes. “Rather, there is violence, nourished by the money to be made from drugs. And there are U.S. industries whose primary lifeblood comes from fighting a war on drugs.” [includes rush transcript]

The Democrat-led push for healthcare reform is in its final stages as lawmakers prepare for a congressional vote as early as this weekend. On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she is considering using a tactic that would avoid a direct House vote on the less popular Senate version of the healthcare bill. We speak with Ryan Grim, senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post. [includes rush transcript]

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled the New York City Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn by forcing her to resign in 2007. In a non-binding ruling, the commission said the city had discriminated against the principal, Debbie Almontaser, “on account of her race, religion and national origin.” We speak with Almontaser and her attorney, Alan Levine. [includes rush transcript]

• US Raid Kills Two Pregnant Women and Teenage Girl in Afghanistan
• Federal Auditors Block New Blackwater Contract
• House Might Pass Healthcare Bill Without Direct Vote
• Dodd Unveils Financial Reform Legislation
• Mitchell Delays Trips to Israel over Settlement Dispute
• Israel to Close Off Palestinian Village on Days of Wall Protests
• UN Munitions Team Finds 84 Unexploded White Phosphorus Shells in Gaza
• UN: More Money Needed for Haiti Humanitarian Aid Fund
• Thai Protesters Plan to Splatter Blood on Thai Gov't HQ
• Ex-Sri Lankan Military Chief Faces Court-Martial
• Six More Iranian Protesters to be Executed
• German and Irish Churches Face Sexual Abuse Scandals
• Study: Black and Latinos Face Longer Prison Sentences
• Officials Urge Participation in 2010 Census
• Hundreds of Students Protest Cuts in Atlanta
• 23,000 California Teachers Receive Layoff Notices