In a 5-0 Decisions, the Minnesota State Supreme Court has awarded Senator Al Franken the seat all election results showed he won in November 2008. Norm Coleman has conceded, finally, after being petty for half a year and holding his state delegation hostage to his party’s whims.
Give or take Kennedy or Byrd (due to health issues), the Senate Dems have 60. Let’s see what they and the Obama administration can do before midterms.
Governor Clean Hiking Boots is WAY out of pocket:
During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife.
“Extramarital affairs, gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution and sexual pursuit of minors have taken a toll on the GOP.” -Washington Times (h/t TPM)
Outside of sexual pursuit of minors and prostitution, the real problem the GOP has with these committing these vices is that they hold themselves up as paragons of virtue when another succumbs to these vices. The latest case, Gov. Mark Sanford, is a prime example. Damn what the hell he says now. Of course he is contrite, he got caught. Over and Over again. In the Appalachians hiking? No. Driving down the shore in Buenos Aires? Doesn’t seem quite possible to those who have seen the area. He likes solitude? What does Maria [Redacted] have to say about that?
What did he say just over 10 years ago, in 1998? He wasn’t so empathetic to former President Bill Clinton (as Sanford was a strong supporter of the failed bid to impeach) or Bob Livingston (R-SC). Livingston, then slated to be the incoming house speaker had to hear this from Sanford, his fellow Republican: Continue reading
An account from the doctor who attempted to help Neda Agha Soltan.
Joe Sheehan at BaseballProspectus.com wrote an article I am glad to see. He defends MLB Players Association head Donald Fehr as he retires.
… Fehr became a reviled figure, first for not caving in to MLB’s demands in 1994 and leading the players into a strike that lasted through the World Series, then for defending the principle of privacy, the right to refuse unwarranted searches, and the sanctity of collective bargaining, all as the public, management, and a grandstanding Congressional committee looked to trample all three.
Specifically he compares it to the legacy of recently deceased NFLPA head Gene Upshaw and comes to the conclusion that Fehr was the better union head. I completely agree. Their job was to protect the needs and interests of the players. Fehr was unpopular because he did just that. Continue reading
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman has an interview with Josh Silver, Executive Director of Free Press who published a report called “Deep Packet Inspection: The End of the Internet as We Know It”. Which is a ridiculous title. Deep Packet Inspection has many security and reliability applications and yes it can also be used to eavesdrop. The Problem isn’t DPI. The problem is the outdated laws regarding information seizure by telecoms from consumer networks.
To be fair, the main point of Silver’s answers to Goodman are with regards to updating laws governing search and seizure of digital data. It’s just that Silver has chosen to name the report in a way that seems to identify DPI as the boogie man.
The interview is here. H/T CrooksAndLiars.com.
The were afraid of going to the hospitals.
For most of the time McMahon announced for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and I was alive, I was too young to stay up late enough to watch it. During those years, Star Search was appointment TV in my household.
All the articles in memoriam for Ed McMahon list him as “sidekick”. A sidekick is a yes man in corporate America. A contraband mule for a pop music artist. A Presidential running mate who’ll say anything to get on the ticket, but hasn’t done much to deserve being on the ticket (ehem John Edwards). A sidekick is an actress’s personal assistant who can be counted on to spill the beans to a checkout aisle tabloid the minute the “former” appears in front of their job title.
McMahon was a wingman. I think its more than a subtle distinction. Continue reading
Congressman Stephen Cohen (D-TN) and Jim Clyburn (D-SC) appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss the congressional resolution to apologize for slavery and segregation. Matthews seems to think that slavery was neatly isolated to those states below the Mason Dixon line and that no one north of Maryland benefited from the brutal practices of Slave Trading and Slave owning. Slave owners were insured, slaves were used to pay debts and to provide cut rate raw material to. In addition, the apology is not just for slavery. It is for segregation and Jim Crow laws as well. All of this was an American issue, not just an issue of the south.
This apology is long overdue as Rep. Clyburn rightfully points out the US Senate has issued apologies to Native Americans, Hawaiians and the Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
Continue reading
Kerman, Iran. H/T The Daily Dish
Atul Gawande’s Article in the June 1st New Yorker The Cost Conundrum asks why some hospitals “over utilize”:
Sirovich asked doctors how they would treat a seventy-five-year-old woman with typical heartburn symptoms and “adequate health insurance to cover tests and medications.” Physicians in high- and low-cost cities were equally likely to prescribe antacid therapy and to check for H. pylori, an ulcer-causing bacterium—steps strongly recommended by national guidelines. But when it came to measures of less certain value—and higher cost—the differences were considerable. Continue reading
BBC Persia has an interview with Neda’s Fiance Kasamin Makan. I’ve linked to a translated version here.
About the day of the incident, Mr. Makan said: “When the clashes were occurring, Neda was far away from the demonstrations, she was in one of the side alleys near Amir Abad. Thirsty and tired or being cooped up for about an hour in the car in heavy traffic with her music instructor, she finally gets out of the car and, based on the pictures sent in by the people, armed forces in civilian clothes and the Basiji targeted and shot her in the heart.”
“It was over in a matter of minutes, the Shariati Hospital was nearby, the people around her tried to bring her to the emergency room by car, but before that could even happen she died in her instructor’s arms.”
Mr. Makan added: “We got her body back finally yesterday with some diffculties. Of course, her body was not at the Tehran Coroner but at a one outside of Tehran. The medical examiners
wanted parts of her body, including a portion of her femoral bone but the chief medical examiner would not say why and no explanations were ever given.”“Finally the family consented just so they could get her body back as soon as possible, since just this issue could have resulted in delaying the reception of the body. We buried the body in a small area in the Zahra Cemetery in the late afternoon of 31 Khordad. Also, they had brought in other people who had been killed in the protests so it seemed that the whole event was scheduled to be such.” Continue reading
Neda Agha Soltan. (Update via Ann Curry on twitter)
A young Iranian girl named Neda is shot in the heart by Basij forces from a rooftop in Tehran. It was uploaded to YouTube on Saturday, June 20, 2009.
From the YouTube user who originally posted the video:
The murder of a young Iranian woman by Basij on the streets of Tehran.
“At 19:05 June 20th Place: Karekar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart.
I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St.
The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me. Please let the world know.”
Crook’s and Liars posts the following Facebook comment:
Facebook, Faranak Zarrinabadi at 6:18pm June 20 – Khameneie!You called yourself,the father of all orphans of Iran-Iraq war,but here you made a father witness the martyrdom of his daughter,in minutes,in his arms.You took away a mans,but Iran’s daughter.He didnt believe it at first,saying:Neda,dont be afraid,dont be afraid..then when blood covered her face,he came to and cried:Neda,stay..Neda,stay….The doctor who was there was helpless as the shot was in the chest.My dear Neda,you are now loved by all more than ever,my tears are nonstop for you,but you died for Iran to be free and Im proud of you,may you rest in peace in heaven.And you Khameneie,you will certainly pay for this and definitely go to hell!
The only reason I believe this should be posted and seen is because Emmitt Till’s mother threw the casket open.
Graphic Content below.
Continue reading
Flickr user .Faramarz shares their photo set of post-election protests in Iran from June 13th to June 20th:
LIFE’s gallery of the election protests in Tehran:
As protests and counter-protests unlike anything seen in Iran since the 1979 Revolution roil the country and captivate the world, LIFE presents photographs taken by an Iranian who is there, in the midst of the action.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Tehran-based photojournalist who made these pictures is now missing. See next caption for details.
The images, videos and messages from the protests and the Iranian government are gripping. Continue reading
The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.
As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.
That…
John “Bomb, Bomb Iran” McCain:
“He should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election and that the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights,” McCain said on NBC’s “Today” show before Obama’s remarks after a White House meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
Here is why MSM sources are failing: they are increasingly of no use by design.
CNN wants us to know that they “[We] share people’s expectations of CNN and have delivered far more coverage of the Iranian election and aftermath than any other network.”
This is like a sports team saying we got close to the championship! CNN is comparing itself to the 3 nets who have news bureaus, MSNBC which specializes in political opinion above all else (from Scarborough to Maddow) and FoxNews which specializes in pushing right wing opinions. Neither of them are full time news stations. CNN really is the news station. They should have been able to cobble together something useful for that Friday evening besides spot updates. And then:
Ombud: WP on its worst days is better than most metro papers on their best days
Better? I would hope so. Most metro papers are going bankrupt. Still doesn’t make it good enough.
Reuters Via Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish
The Obama administration’s State Department requested Twitter delay maintenance so that Iranians could communicate with the outside world. Discrete and effective action, as opposed to the bluster of GWB that Bill Maher loves after the fact, is what a leader needs when dealing with another country’s political turmoil.
My uneducated opinion is that everyone seems to be disproportionately obsessed with this country largely due to the fact that for the past several years we’ve been worried Cheney’s gang would decide to bomb the shit out of it for no particular reason. I personally have no filter that allows me to determine just who actually might have any idea what they’re talking about on the subject.