The ban on openly gay men and women in the military should be repealed, American voters say 56 - 37 percent, including 50 - 43 percent among voters with family in the military, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. American voters who think being gay is an individual's choice, 36 percent, are generally less supportive of gay rights than those who think people are born gay, 42 percent.

White Catholics say 64 - 29 percent that gays in the military should be allowed to come out, while white evangelical Christians support "don't ask; don't tell" 53 - 40 percent. Voters reject 58 - 35 percent, including 56 - 39 percent in military households, the argument that allowing openly gay men and women to serve would be divisive, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University survey of 2,041 registered voters nationwide finds.

Society is paying too much attention to the needs of gays and lesbians, 49 percent of voters say, while 21 percent say there's too little attention and 22 percent say it's "about right."

Congress amended Section 2 to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose.

...rank-and-file Republicans revolted over provisions that require bilingual ballots in many places and continued federal oversight of voting practices in Southern states.

The district's lawyer, Gregory Coleman, argued that conditions in Texas had changed so radically that "pre-clearance" was no longer needed. Justice David Souter and fellow liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed skepticism.

"The racist boogeyman of the past is just that - a thing of the past," said Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie. "I think most people realize this, but the civil rights special interest lobby has been strong enough to keep this boogeyman alive to the legal detriment of our post-racial society. As we try to move forward, our children will continue to bear the burden of long-rectified mistakes."

In 2006, after 19 hearings and in thousands of pages of testimony and documents, the Senate Judiciary Committee that I now chair found evidence in three critical areas:

> Even with Section 5 in place, covered jurisdictions continue to engage in discriminatory, often subtle, tactics, that play on racially polarized voting to deny the effectiveness of the votes cast by members of a particular race.

> Section 5 provides an effective deterrent against bad practices in covered jurisdictions.

> And Section 5 plays a vital role in preserving the gains minority voters have achieved.

Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told [Organization of Chinese Americans representative Ramey] Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday approved an expansion of federal "hate crime" laws -- an effort that former Republican President George W. Bush had opposed.

On a vote of 249-175, the House passed and sent to the Senate a bill backed by the new Democratic White House to broaden such laws by classifying as "hate crimes" those attacks based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender identity or mental or physical disability.

The bill would lift a requirement that a victim had to be attacked while engaged in a federally protected activity, like attending school, for it to be a federal hate crime.

I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance – legislation that will enhance civil rights protections, while also protecting our freedom of speech and association. I also urge the Senate to work with my Administration to finalize this bill and to take swift action.

"The bill was named after a very unfortunate incident that happened, where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery,” Foxx said on the House floor. “It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him, the hate-crimes bill was named for him, but it's, it's really a hoax, that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”

...a statement McKinney gave to police just days after the killing, in which he referred to Shepard as a “faggot” and a “queer.”

I don’t think it was a hate crime at all. I never did....They just wanted to beat him bad enough to teach him a lesson, not to come on to straight people, and don’t be aggressive about it anymore

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next senator from Minnesota. (Former senator Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)

"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."

He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

Specter sided with the GOP on 62 percent of votes from when he entered the Senate in 1981 through last year, according to a University of San Diego database of votes. His highest party unity score: 81 percent in 2003-2004, when Toomey last challenged him.

Senior officials with the powerful AFL-CIO have privately assured GOP Senator Arlen Specter that they’ll throw their full support behind him in the 2010 Senate race if he votes for the Employee Free Choice Act, a senior labor strategist working closely with the AFL on the issue tells me.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords' switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

I am staying a Republican because I think I have an important role, a more important role, to play there. I think the United States desperately needs a two party system. It is the basis of politics in America.

Voters approve 52 - 33 percent of the job Specter is doing, with a 71 - 16 percent positive score from Democrats and a 41 - 37 percent boost from independent voters, off-setting a 52 - 36 percent disapproval from Republicans. This is Specter's highest approval among Democrats and lowest approval among Republicans since Quinnipiac University began polling Pennsylvania in 2002.

The Obama administration will ask Congress for another $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, Democratic congressional sources said Thursday.

The request is expected to pay for those conflicts for the rest of the 2009 budget year, two Democratic congressional sources said.

The money would bring the running tab for both conflicts to about $947 billion, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service.

A UN survey tallied up 2,118 civilians killed in Afghanistan in 2008, a significant rise over the previous year's figure, of which 828 were ascribed to American, NATO, and Afghan Army actions rather than to suicide bombers or Taliban guerrillas. (Given the difficulty of counting the dead in wartime, any figures like these are likely to be undercounts.) There are, in other words, constant "incidents" to choose from.

Recently, for instance, there was an attack by a CIA drone in the Pakistani borderlands that Pakistani sources claim may have killed up to eight civilians; or there were the six civilians, including a 3-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, killed by an American air strike that leveled three houses in Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Sixteen more Afghans, including children as young as one, were wounded in that air attack, based on "multiple intelligence sources" in which, the US military initially claimed, only "enemy fighters" died. (As a recent study of the death-dealing weapons of the Iraq War, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, indicates, air strikes are notoriously good at taking out civilians. Eighty-five percent of the deaths from air strikes in Iraq were, the study estimated, women and children; and of all methods, including suicide and car bombs, air power "killed the most civilians per event.")

In the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work to end poverty, racism, and war, we, the people of the United States, call on the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress to end the U.S. wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to address the economic and environmental crises by cutting military spending by 25% in 2010 and redirecting our tax dollars to housing, health care, education, green jobs, and clean energy.

I would have done exactly what Bush did. Exactly. I would have dumped that guy in the water 1000 times to save your life. You.

The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms

The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."

"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.

Last December, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't believe that intelligence gleaned from abusive interrogation techniques had disrupted any attacks on America.

"The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology," says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. It was the team led by Major Alexander [a named assumed for security reasons] that obtained the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Zarqawi was then killed by bombs dropped by two US aircraft on the farm where he was hiding outside Baghdad on 7 June 2006. Major Alexander said that he learnt where Zarqawi was during a six-hour interrogation of a prisoner with whom he established relations of trust.

Major Alexander's attitude to torture by the US is a combination of moral outrage and professional contempt. "It plays into the hands of al-Qa'ida in Iraq because it shows us up as hypocrites when we talk about human rights," he says. An eloquent and highly intelligent man with experience as a criminal investigator within the US military, he says that torture is ineffective, as well as counter-productive. "People will only tell you the minimum to make the pain stop," he says. "They might tell you the location of a house used by insurgents but not that it is booby-trapped."

This is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable. This is an occasion for the world to speak up against the unspeakable. It is long overdue that a day be dedicated to remembering and supporting the many victims and survivors of torture around the world. - Kofi Annan

The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand. - Joan Baez

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world. - James Baldwin

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. - James Madison

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - Thomas Paine

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. - Albert Camus

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.

Charles Grodin: You're for torture, right?

Sean Hannity: I am for enhanced interrogation. I don't believe that waterboarding is torture.

Grodin: But you don't believe it's torture. Have you ever been waterboarded?

Hannity: Ollie North has and I've talked to him about it.

Grodin: Would you consent to being waterboarded so we can get the truth out of you?

Hannity: Yeah. Sure.

Grodin: We can waterboard you?

Hannity: Sure.

Grodin: Are you busy on Sunday?

Hannity: I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families.

I would have done exactly what Bush did. Exactly. I would have dumped that guy in the water 1000 times to save your life. You.

We are America, we don't torture! And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train! This government is of, by, and for the people -- that means it's mine. That means they tor- I'm not saying what is torture, and what is not torture, but I'm saying, whatever it is, you don't do it for me! I want off the train when the government starts. I want off. Next stop, now!

We are America! I don't give a rat's ass if it helps. We are America! We do not fucking torture!

The argument goes like this:

1. Waterboarding is a deliberate torture technique and has been prosecuted as such by our judicial arm when perpetrated by others.

2. If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens. It is a method of putting American prisoners in harm’s way.

3. It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. (Mr. Nance told me that he had heard of someone’s being compelled to confess that he was a hermaphrodite. I later had an awful twinge while wondering if I myself could have been “dunked” this far.) To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” Just put a pencil line under that last phrase, or commit it to memory.

4. It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack.

Thousands of people were held against their will. Pleading didn't work, neither did shouts or tears. Penned in for hours, some were forced to urinate in public. Others phoned spouses and bosses in mounting frustration as police ignored their requests to be allowed to leave.

One man, a newspaper vendor who hadn't taken part in the demonstrations, died of internal bleeding shortly after being knocked to the ground by an officer. Other video showed a young woman being struck across the legs by a police baton -- she likened it to being "whipped by the Taliban" -- and another being smacked on the back of the head by a riot shield.

A top government official said Tuesday that some officers had acted in an "utterly unacceptable" manner by concealing their badge numbers during the demonstrations. Worse, several amateur photographs and videos have surfaced showing police officers apparently knocking down and beating mostly peaceful participants.

“Rhetorically, Republicans are having a very hard time finding something that raises the consciousness of the average voter,” said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who recently lost a bid to became national party chairman...

...So Mr. Anuzis has turned to provocation with a purpose. He calls the president’s domestic agenda “economic fascism.”

“We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago,” Mr. Anuzis said. “Fascism — everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.”

It would be easy for us to cordon Poplawski off, pretend that his ugly and paranoid worldview had nothing to do with the Obama hatred spouted by the American right. But the truth is that Poplawski's hateful views cannot be separated from the increasingly extreme ideology and rhetoric that characterize the contemporary American conservative movement. As his friend, Edward Perkovic, told the Associated Press, Poplawski feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

...he will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he'll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax you gun or take your gun away one way or another.

Due to hoarding of ammunition, you consumers have managed to raise the prices of ammunition and components 50 to 500 percent. You didn't even need the Government to impose taxes or bans. You did it all yourself.

George Caylor: The next American revolution begins here and begins tonight. […] Yesterday a friend of mine gave me a report from Homeland Security telling the FBI that people who are unhappy with government spending, the tax code, the general dismantling of our country, with supporting illegal immigrants with tens of millions of tax dollars, that you may be dangerous people.

Random Audience Member: We might be!

George Caylor: I pray to God you are.

Mr. Anuzis noted that the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck had picked up the theme, as did some participants at the antitax “tea party” rallies last week. Mr. Anuzis spreads the word on Facebook and Twitter.

“It’s politically very incorrect only because we’re not used to it,” concluded Mr. Anuzis, who recently joined American Solutions for Winning the Future, a group led by Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker. But he acknowledged, “You’ve got to be careful using the term ‘economic fascism’ in the right way, so it doesn’t come off as extreme.”

During World War II, domestic hemp production became crucial when the Japanese cut off Asian supplies to the U.S. American farmers who grew hemp were even exempt from military duty. A 1942 U.S. Department of Agriculture film called "Hemp For Victory" extolled the agricultural might of hemp and called for hundreds of thousands of acres to be planted for the war effort.

*Hemp has been grown for at least the last 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food. It has been effectively prohibited in the United States since the 1950s.

*George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper.

*Hemp fibers are longer, stronger, more absorbent and more mildew-resistant than cotton.

*Fabrics made of at least one-half hemp block the sun's UV rays more effectively than other fabrics.

*Hemp can be made into fine quality paper. The long fibers in hemp allow such paper to be recycled several times more than wood-based paper.

*Hemp grows well in a variety of climates and soil types. It is naturally resistant to most pests, precluding the need for pesticides. It grows tightly spaced, out-competing any weeds, so herbicides are not necessary. It also leaves a weed-free field for a following crop.

*Hemp can displace cotton which is usually grown with massive amounts of chemicals harmful to people and the environment. 50% of all the world's pesticides are sprayed on cotton.

*Hemp can displace wood fiber and save forests for watershed, wildlife habitat, recreation and oxygen production, carbon sequestration (reduces global warming), and other values.

*Hemp can yield 3-8 dry tons of fiber per acre. This is four times what an average forest can yield.

Liberal Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who made a fine show in the GOP presidential primaries last year, find common ground today on hemp farming:

Their new bill, "The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009 otherwise known as HR 1866, would remove restrictions on the cultivation of non-psychoactive industrial hemp. They claim nine other sponsors, nearly equally divided between the parties.

It shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question. But it’s that kind of thing, somebody who doesn’t think that we should have abortion on demand, is suddenly labeled a terrorist! It’s outrageous!

[Robertson now gives out the number for dept. of homeland security]

And if you jam up their telephone lines, good for you.

The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled “one world government.

There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

George Caylor: The next American revolution begins here and begins tonight. […] Yesterday a friend of mine gave me a report from Homeland Security telling the FBI that people who are unhappy with government spending, the tax code, the general dismantling of our country, with supporting illegal immigrants with tens of millions of tax dollars, that you may be dangerous people.

Random Audience Member: We might be!

George Caylor: I pray to God you are.

The Democrats! The Democrats have done everything they can do to tie out hands in this War on Terror. They’re all a bunch of traitors. They want America to loose this war for reasons I can not understand. It makes me soooo mad!

n a parallel train of thought, it saddens me to think back on all the bad things that Liberalism has done to this country. The worst problem America faces today is Liberalism. They have dumbed down education, they have defined deviancy down. Liberals have attacked every major institution that made America great. From the Boy Scouts to the military, from education to Religion, the major news outlets have become the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they’re Marxist, socialist, communists.

...I hate the damn left-wing Liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the Nation, trying to turn the country into a communist state. Shame on them.

...Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the Mainstream Media. But I know these people were inaccessible to me. I couldn’t get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chicken shit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same, it’s the only way we can rid America of this cancer this pestilence.

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

"Many voters did not choose Stevens because they were told he was guilty, and now, after the election we see there was improper conduct in his trial, so how fair an election was that?" asked Palin, in an email to an Alaska Public Radio reporter. CNN has confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail.

"I agree with other Alaskans who would like to see an election that's free from improper influence, and I can't imagine how Mark Begich could argue that," she continued.

Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she does not want to "split hairs" on whether Begich should resign, while agreeing with state Republican party officials calling for a special election.

In a ballsy move, despite being down by 178 votes at last count, Republican Jim Tedisco has petitioned Dutchess County Supreme Court to declare him the winner of the NY-20 Congressional post-election.

Tedisco is also asking the court to authorize recanvasing of all machine ballots to acquire the “proper” tallies. He would like them to reassess the validity of absentee votes already counted, and keep ballots challenged by Tedisco unopened.

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts. - James Madison

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrations and revolutionists. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

There was a time when we [the U.S.] had completely unrestricted immigration, when anybody could come to these shores and the motto on the Statue of Liberty had some real meaning. This was a country of hope and of promise for immigrants and their children, and as many as a million immigrants a year came in 1906 and '07 and '08. By 1914, roughly a third of the population was foreign-born or the immediate descendants of foreign-born...The fact that year after year hundreds of thousands of people left the countries of Europe to come to this country was persuasive evidence that they were coming to improve their lot, not to worsen it. - Milton Friedman

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens. - Thomas Sowell

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. - Jack Paar

All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian. - Pat Paulsen

To the contrary, workers have a greater incentive to work in order to make MORE money, plus improve their families' and the society's well-being. In addition, they participate in setting criteria, determining the production and distribution of the products and services, and thus participate in such a democratic fashion that they feel a part of the outcome. They now, for the first time, like owners, take pride in their work, because they are the real owners. They can see the result of their labors, and know they had a full participatory role.

The doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, serious small-business owners, top salespeople, and other professionals and entrepreneurs who make this country run work considerably harder than pretty much anyone else (including most of the chattering class, and all politicians).

In a socialist system the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups The primary goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, healthcare, education, childcare, cultural opportunities, and social services.

These social services include care for the chronically ill,persons with mental disabilities, the infirm and the aging. Planning takes place at the community, regional, and national levels, and is determined democratically with the input of workers, consumers, and the public to be served.

CEO perks alone grew in 2008 to an average of $336,248—or nine times the median salary of a full-time worker.

According to the Future of Freedom Foundation, any government-owned, -funded, or -subsidized operation is considered to be a socialist program.

...However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments.

Today, when the bottom line is touted as the answer to every question, Americans are imprisoned in a mental world shaped by economic trends. Ironically, its ideologists have become pitchmen for a capitalist caricature of Marxism--promulgating a crude economic determinism in which the market rules every social, mental and geographic space. Since the fall of Communism, market-oriented ways of thinking, feeling and seeing have permeated our lives and our culture to a degree that Marx never dreamed of.

Yet the real Marxism, although no longer embodied in movements or governments, has never been truer or more relevant: Most of the world's main problems today are inseparable from the dynamics of the capitalist system itself. With corporate capitalism everywhere in command, the outlook is for increased poverty, more environmental degradation, ever more uneven distribution of resources and the undermining of traditional societies and ways of life, for a culture dominated by marketing, advertising and uneven global development.

Gov. David Paterson introduced a bill Thursday to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, comparing the effort to the fight for the abolition of slavery.

Gay marriage is a crucial issue of equal rights in America that cannot be ignored...

Diaz said it was disrespectful of Paterson to introduce the legislation in the same week that Catholics celebrated the installation of New York City Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

"I think it's a laugh in the face of the new archbishop," Diaz said Thursday before the start of his meeting. "The Jews just finished their holy week. The Catholics just received the new archbishop. The evangelical Christians just celebrated Good Friday and resurrection. He comes out to do this at this time? It's a challenge the governor is sending to every religious person in New York and the time for us has come for us to accept the challenge."

John Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Joe T. Hansen, a leader of the rival Change to Win federation, will present the outlines of their new position on Tuesday in Washington. In 2007, when Congress last considered comprehensive immigration legislation, the two groups could not agree on a common approach. That legislation failed.

The accord endorses legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already in the United States and opposes any large new program for employers to bring in temporary immigrant workers, officials of both federations said.

“The labor movement will work together to make sure that the White House as well as Congress understand that we speak about immigration reform with one voice,” Mr. Sweeney said in a statement to The New York Times.

But while the compromise repaired one fissure in the coalition that has favored broad immigration legislation, it appeared to open another. An official from the United States Chamber of Commerce said Monday that the business community remained committed to a significant guest-worker program.

“If the unions think they’re going to push a bill through without the support of the business community, they’re crazy,” said Randel Johnson, the chamber’s vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits. “There’s only going to be one shot at immigration reform. As part of the trade-off for legalization, we need to expand the temporary worker program.”

In the new accord, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win have called for managing future immigration of workers through a national commission. The commission would determine how many permanent and temporary foreign workers should be admitted each year based on demand in American labor markets. Union officials are confident that the result would reduce worker immigration during times of high unemployment like the present.

The Socialist Party works to build a world in which everyone will be able to freely move across borders, to visit and to live wherever they choose.

We oppose "guest worker" programs. We call for full citizenship rights upon demonstrating residency for six months.

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.

A recent example of the potential violence associated with a rise in rightwing extremism may be found in the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009. The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled “one world government.”

Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.

Hundreds of us will take to the streets next week and join the nation-wide Tea Party. This is excellent for WN. If the history of revolutions teaches us anything, is that they begin as one thing and ultimately morph themselves into another...

...Remember that “taxes” are merely a symptom. Yeah, Americans are angry about taxes . . . but then what? What happens on April 16th? Where do we go from here?

It's up to us, WN, to provide those answers. We do it by simple prodding of accepted dogma. Remember . . . these are brainwashed people we're dealing with. For years, they've though that everything was "O.K." Suddenly, just like Neo . . . they take the red pill . . . and now they're realizing that it's all lies.

You . . . my fellow WNs . . . are that red pill.

Ask questions that will challenge Americans to look beyond the symptoms they easily see. Only when they begin to question the dogma most have accepted since high school (which is no easy task) will they begin to understand the need for a true white revolution.

My advice: Don't even mention "race" or "jew" or even "white." Keep it simple. The point is taxes . . . so stay on point.

Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members. Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’s opposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly those with Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage. During the 1990s, these issues contributed to the growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.

What do you think of that interpretation, especially coming from a guy that started his political career in the home of an unrepentant terrorist who bombed our Pentagon and Capitol and sat in Rev. Wright's church for 20 years?

The New York Times Company, owner of The New York Times and The Boston Globe, has taken the gloves off (and put on a pair of brass knuckles) in hard-line negotiations with its unions. The company is threatening to close The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions quickly agree to $20 million in concessions, the Globe reported on Friday, quoting union leaders.

Forbes.com reports that The New York Times Company CEO Janet L. Robinson raked in $5,578,451 in compensation for 2008. This includes $1,552,603 in restricted stock awards, as well as a salary of $1 million.

In 1997, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote that he wanted workers “to believe in their hearts that management trusted them and treated them with respect...If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn’t need a union.” Whole Foods’ avowedly libertarian CEO, John Mackey, has compared the prospect of having unions at his stores to “having herpes.” An internal Whole Foods document listing “six strategic goals for Whole Foods Market to achieve by 2013,” obtained by Mother Jones, includes a goal to remain “100% union-free.”

Shortly before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the manager of a Whole Foods grocery store in the San Francisco Bay Area gathered his employees in a conference room for a chat about labor organizing. “This is not a union-bashing thing whatsoever,” the manager began, adding, however, that he’d called the meeting because Whole Foods believed Obama would sign the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation intended to ease unionization that was opposed by the company’s lobbyists. According to a tape of the meeting obtained by Mother Jones, the manager went on to imply that joining a union would lead to reprisals: “It’s interesting to note that once you become represented by the union,” he said, “basically everything, every benefit you have, is kind of thrown out the window, and you renegotiate a contract.”

In December, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled that Seattle-based Starbucks Corp. violated federal labor law by trying to stop union organizing at four Manhattan cafes. Starbucks is appealing the decision.

That trial, which took place between July and October 2007, produced a decision that reads at times like a reality-TV script, revealing Starbucks baristas and managers yelling at each other, mishandling blenders and cursing.

The National Labor Relations Board found on Dec. 23 that Starbucks had illegally fired three New York City baristas as it tried to squelch the union organizing effort.

In 1997, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote that he wanted workers “to believe in their hearts that management trusted them and treated them with respect...If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn’t need a union.”

Starbucks' and Whole Foods’ anti-union, pro-worker stance "is the essence of benevolent paternalism," says Kim Fellner, whose book, Wrestling With Starbucks: Conscience, Capital, Capuccino, praises many of the company’s other employment practices. “These are companies that want to do good by their workers, but want to decide what that good is, rather than letting the workers decide for themselves. And that’s a problem.”

In a survey conducted in December 2006 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 58% of non-managerial working Americans indicated that they would join a union if they could.