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The Dream Act is Dead

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The Dream Act is Dead

The U.S. Senate has failed us again. In a 55-41 vote, the Dream Act, an immigration reform measure aimed to grant citizenship to undocumented youth who attend college, has effectively been killed. The “yea” votes failed to surpass the 60 that would topple a Republican filibuster. Keep in mind that many Democrats also broke rank to voted against the bill, including Senator Max Baucus and Senator Kay Hagan. Proponents of the bill suggest that the Dream Act will be a key campaign issue in the 2012 election. The New York Times: The Senate on Saturday blocked a bill that would create a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrant students who came to the United States as children, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements including passing a criminal background check. The vote, 55-41 in favor of the bill, effectively kills the measure for this year, and its fate beyond that is uncertain. Most immediately, the measure would have helped grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students and recent graduates whose lives are severely restricted because they are illegal residents, though many have lived in the United States for nearly their entire lives. Young Hispanic men and women filled the spectator galleries of the Senate, many of them wore graduation caps and tassels in a symbol of their support for the bill. And they held hands in a prayerful gesture as the clerk called the roll. Read more Related Entries December 17, 2010 Tales From the Clink With Julian Assange December 17, 2010 Facebook Finds Your Face

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By Asgard’s Hammer! Far-righty whities mighty uptighty about black actor playing Norse god

enlarge Hey, fellow white guys — don’t these characters make you feel proud ? After all, that’s what they’re supposedly about — “white pride”: A US white supremacist group has called for a boycott of the Kenneth Branagh-directed superhero movie Thor on the grounds that a black actor has been cast in the role of a Norse god. The Council of Conservative Citizens is upset that London-born Idris Elba, star of The Wire and BBC detective series Luther as well as a number of Hollywood films, is to play deity Heimdall in the Marvel Studios feature. The group, which opposes inter-racial marriage and gay rights, has set up a website, boycott-thor.com to set out its opposition to what it sees as an example of leftwing social engineering. “It [is] well known that Marvel is a company that advocates for leftwing ideologies and causes,” the site reads. “Marvel frontman Stan ‘Lee’ Lieber boasts of being a major financier of leftwing political candidates. Marvel has viciously attacked the Tea Party movement, conservatives and European heritage. “Now they have taken it one further, casting a black man as a Norse deity in their new movie Thor. Marvel has now inserted social engineering into European mythology.” The CofCC post [warning: hate site] goes on in this vein: It’s not enough that Marvel attacks conservative values and promotes the left-wing, now mythological Gods must be re-invented with black skin. It seems that Marvel Studios believes that white people should have nothing that is unique to themselves. Considering that a number of outright neo-Nazi organizations have adopted Asatru and other “Nordic” neo-paganisms as their official religions (most famously, perhaps, The Order among them), it’s not surprising, perhaps, that they would get all worked up at the prospect of a black face spoiling their long-awaited screen rendition of the Lords of Asgard. Especially since Heimdall is known as the “white god” and “whitest of the aesir” . It’s enough to make one rend their Klan robes. You all may recall that the CofCC was at one time a favorite cause of Trent Lott’s , and was a big supporter of Haley Barbour’s run to the Mississippi governorship . Then there was Ann Coulter, claiming in her latest screed that the CofCC had been unfairly defamed and mischaracterized: In her latest foaming-mouth tome — Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, released on Jan. 6 — Coulter spends the better part of three pages defending a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which The New York Times had described as a “thinly veiled white supremacist organization.” Coulter begs to differ. The CCC, Coulter opines, is “a conservative group” that has unfairly been branded as racist “because some of the directors of the CCC had, decades earlier, been leaders of a segregationist group.” “There is no evidence on its Web page that the modern incarnation of the CCC supports segregation,” she says. “Apart from some aggressive reporting on black-on-white crimes — the very crimes that are aggressively hidden by the establishment media — there is little on the CCC website suggesting” that the group is racist. Indeed, its main failing is “containing members who had belonged to a segregationist group thirty years earlier.” … [T]o Ann Coulter, there is “no evidence” on its website that the CCC “supports segregation.” Mostly, she says, the group — which was formed from the debris of the White Citizens Councils that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once called “the uptown Klan” — is about “a strong national defense, the right to keep and bear arms, the traditional family, and an ‘America First’ trade policy.” Indeed, she says, The New York Times and other critics of the CCC are simply liberals “who have no principles.” In reality, this is only the most recent confirming example of the CofCC’s naked white-supremacist ideology: The CCC’s columnists have written that black people are “a retrograde species of humanity,” and that non-white immigration is turning the U.S. population into a “slimy brown mass of glop.” Its website has run photographic comparisons of pop singer Michael Jackson and a chimpanzee. It opposes “forced integration” and decries racial intermarriage. It has lambasted black people as “genetically inferior,” complained about “Jewish power brokers,” called gay people “perverted sodomites,” and even named the late Lester Maddox, the baseball bat-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, “Patriot of the Century.” One day, the CCC ran photos on its home page of accused Beltway snipers John Muhammad and John Malvo, 9/11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui and accused shoe-bomber Richard Reed. “Notice a Pattern Here?” asked a caption underneath the four photos. “Is the face of death black after all?” On another occasion, its website featured a photo of Daniel Pearl, the “Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter” who had just been decapitated by Islamic terrorists. In the photo, Pearl was shown with his “mixed-race wife, Marianne.” The headline above the couple’s picture was stunning even for the CCC: “Death by Multiculturalism?” The CCC Arkansas chapter ran an essay waxing nostalgic for the days “when racial separation was the norm.” And we wax nostalgic for the days when apologizing for white supremacists meant the death of your mainstream career.

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The Perfect Garden Shed For America: Vostok Cabin

Images Credit Atelier Van Lieshout I have often mused that the shedworking movement would never really catch on in America because people are so obsessed with security and wouldn’t leave all that expensive stuff out in a the garden. Dutch design studio Atelier Van Lieshout provides the answer with what Dezeen calls “a mobile, indestructible dwelling with an armoured shell.” It is made from recycled steel plates reclaimed from… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Verizon’s Palm Pre 2 shown briefly in pulled eBay auction?

Still in disbelief that Big Red will one day be home to Palm’s Pre 2 ? Can’t say we blame you, but the evidence is certainly building. Just three months after taking a peek at inside information hinting at the smartphone’s arrival on Verizon, along comes an eBay auction for a nondescript P102EWW — known amongst the FCC hounds as a CDMA Palm Pre 2 . After the folks at Pre Central started questioning the seller, the auction was mysteriously yanked, possibly due to worry from the sudden stroke of enlightenment. It’s obviously impossible to know if the phone up for sale was indeed an early build meant for America’s largest carrier, but the photos capped before the auction was pulled sure are hard to discredit. So, can we just get this out in the open now, or what? Verizon’s Palm Pre 2 shown briefly in pulled eBay auction? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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Harry Reid gets vote on DREAM Act for Saturday. Push shaky Dems to support it

enlarge Harry Reid has been very vocal in his support for the passage of the DREAM Act and is vowing to keep the Senate around until they finish the work that they started. Republicans have demanded a vote on tax cuts precede the other issues before the Senate. Among those issues pushed to the back burner are the New START treaty and the DREAM Act. Reid wouldn’t commit Monday to adjourning on Friday; he’d said last week that no senators were interested in working all the way until Christmas Eve, as the Senate did last year to pass the healthcare reform bill. “We need to stay here until we finish,” Reid said Monday. Maybe the Senate can take a cue from the state of Texas — that’s right, Texas of all places — and see how passing the DREAM Act has helped their state. Texas law currently provides that all students, regardless of immigration status, may qualify for in-state tuition at Texas colleges or universities provided they have lived in Texas the three years leading up to high school graduation and resided in Texas the year prior to their enrollment in higher education. The Texas Dream Act thus recognizes that immigrant students who have been educated in our Texas public schools have strong family, community and economic ties to the U.S. The state then follows through on the investment taxpayers have made in their education by allowing them to pay the same tuition rate as other Texans who meet the residency timeline requirements. These students have been admitted to colleges and universities based on their merit and despite the many obstacles with which they are confronted — a principle every Texan can appreciate. The law is both successful and popular because it reduces dropouts, encourages access to college and comes at little expense to the state… read on Via email from Jackie I found out that big-time Spanish-language newscaster Jorge Ramos , who has 76.6k followers, has gotten behind the current push. You may have seen this tweet: Last count, we are 4 votes short in the Senate for the #dreamact. I can’t believe that 4 Senators will deny thousands so much There is plenty that can still be done and I think the best use of our time is getting squishy Democrats to stand up and do the right thing. And these Dems remain shaky or lean no’s: Baucus (MT) Conrad (ND) Manchin (WV) Nelson (NE) — currently a no Pryor (AR) Tester (MT) — currently a no Folks can call this line to randomly route to key Senate targets (both GOP/Dem): 866-587-6101 Including: McCaskill, Landrieu, Hagan, Bennett (UT), Murkowski, Voinovich, Collins, Snowe, LeMieux, Hutchison Jackie also passed along this op-ed by a Republican saying that the GOP puts itself in peril if it opposes the DREAM Act. That is true, but the nativists are running the GOP now and they will not see the sense and compassion needed to support the DREAM Act. Under Bush, hate-wing talk radio helped derail immigration reform. Karl Rove understood that the Latino community represents a huge new voting bloc in America and wanted to capitalize on it, but he obviously wasn’t paying attention to his own base — a base that usually marches in lockstep with the party elders, but racism and nativism are much more powerful elements in the GOP since movement conservatism began to dominate the GOP, because it intentionally enabled so much of the ugliness, and now has unleashed it and cannot control it. Add the Tea Party Birchers into the GOP stew along with an African American president and well, it gets very ugly. Please place calls into Democratic offices that are needed to move this legislation along. It still can be passed if Democrats do the right thing. Also join with the NCLR, America Ferrera, Janet Murguía, and Ozomatli in Asking the Senate to Pass the “DREAM Act” UPDATE: Harry Reid pushed for cloture last night on DREAM and a vote will be held on Saturday along with hopefully DADT. On the Senate floor just now, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the Senate will begin to vote as soon as Saturday on a bill to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That puts it ahead of the START treaty, as proponents of repeal had requested. “We’ve got to move this all along,” Reid said from the floor. Reid will also file for cloture on the DREAM Act. That means both bills should come up for a procedural vote on Saturday. The vote on the DREAM Act will come first, followed by the vote on DADT. DKos lists the names and numbers again for you to call. See below the fold. Update: As you know, getting 60 votes for cloture on the DREAM Act is going to be a nail biter. Please take a few minutes and call these Democratic Senators who are leaning no or have said they’ll vote against it: Max Baucus (MT) – (202) 224-2651 Kent Conrad (ND) – (202) 224-2043 Joe Manchin (WV) – (202) 224-3954 Nelson (NE) – (202) 224-6551 Mark Pryor (AR) – (202) 224-2353 Tester (MT) – (202) 224-2644 Kay Hagan (NC) – (202) 224-6342 Claire McCaskill (MO) – (202) 224-6154 Mary Landrieu (LA) – (202) 224-5824 Or you can call this number from Reform Immigration For America, that routes automatically to key targets: 866-587-6101

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Barney Frank Speaks Out on Repeal of DADT — The Distraction is the Policy

Click here to view this media Barney Frank responded to critics of the repeal of DADT, calling it a distraction that could cost lives. As Frank Rightfully pointed out, “The maintenance of this policy is the distraction.” ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ passes handily in House of Representatives : Wednesday’s overwhelming vote for repeal had been expected. In May, the House, by a 40-vote margin, successfully attached repeal language to a broader defense bill that eventually cleared the chamber. Republicans, led by repeal critic Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have twice blocked that bill from heading to the Senate floor, most recently last week. But gay rights activists cheered the vote, saying the House is aligned with President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a majority of troops and most Americans, who all believe openly gay men and women should be allowed to put on the uniform. A Washington Post/ABC News poll out Wednesday found 77 percent of Americans favor allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military. The results mirror previous polls that have shown overwhelming public support for ending the “don’t ask” law. “Momentum is solidly on the side of ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Now it is up to the Senate to consign this failed and discriminatory law to the dustbin of history.” It looks like they have the votes in the Senate if Reid doesn’t let the Republicans run out the clock.

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‘Terror Babies’ Louie Gohmert Predicts Doom for America and the Military From Repeal of DADT

Click here to view this media It appears fear mongering flame thrower Rep. Louie Gohmert has found himself a new target other than those “terror babies” he warned us about . This week it’s “teh gays” that are going to literally destroy our military if they’re allowed to come out with the possible repeal of DADT, or worse yet, allowing gay members of the military to serve openly might just mean the end of America’s “existence as a great nation.” Right Wing Watch has more — Gohmert: Without DADT, Military Stands to Lose Thousands and US Will Reach the “End of its Existence as a Great Nation” : While debating the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), of “terror-baby” fame, claimed that the policy’s repeal may doom the military and the nation as a whole. Gohmert blasted the recent Pentagon study , which showed that an overwhelming number of military service members do not oppose repealing DADT, and said that the military could potentially lose “many thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands” if the policy is repealed. Gohmert uses no scientific evidence of his own to back up his claim that “hundreds of thousands” of troops could leave, even though the Pentagon’s own polling found that the vast majority of troops do not have problems serving alongside gays and lesbians, and 92 percent of those who believe they have already served alongside gays did not believe that their “units functioned poorly as a result.” Gohmert went on to suggest that the House, which today voted to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell 250-175, is opening up the floodgates to a disorganized and ineffective military. According to the Congressman, “when militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy that it’s fine for homosexuality to be overt…they’re toward the end of its existence as a great nation.” Here’s the transcript of Gohmert’s remarks from Right Wing Watch and as they noted, he’s just channeling the remarks of The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins who just earned a spot on the SPLC’s list of hate groups for their anti-gay rhetoric. You want an accurate poll? Take one where military members can answer privately with no ability of the commanders to figure out who answered where. And then let’s find out how many thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands we can lose with this activity. That’s important. Now we were told Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is inconsistent with American values, I would submit the military is inconsistent with American values. It does not have freedom of speech, it does not have freedom of assembly, it does not have the freedom to express its love to those in the military the way you can out here because it’s an impediment to the military mission. You can’t do that. Can you imagine military members being able to tell their commander what they think of him using freedom of speech or assembling where they wish? It doesn’t work. This is one of those issues that is so personal to the military; we need to have an accurate poll. And to my friend who said history would judge us poorly, I would submit if you look thoroughly at history, and I’m not saying its cause and effect, but when militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy that it’s fine for homosexuality to be overt, you can keep it private it’s fine if you can’t that’s fine too, they’re toward the end of its existence as a great nation.

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Clearly, there’s a lot of anger in America right now. Much of it justified, as some can afford shower curtain rings that would dwarf others’ weekly wages (and the latter are the ones who are lucky enough to have jobs). When you take this fact, combine it with the Orwellian “Newspeak” so pervasive in our media (which David Neiwert has written so articulately about ), and multiply that by the NRA’s mission to fight for the rights of criminals, the mentally ill and even terrorists to have access to guns , you have a toxic stew, ready to erupt. Scene: Panama City, Florida. A school board meeting is interrupted by a man with a criminal record of assault (with a gun) waving a gun, and furious that his wife lost her job, his benefits have run out and the board members were unwilling to raise sales taxes so she and others like her wouldn’t be fired (it should be noted that reports are still sketchy, so not all of what he says about his wife and himself during the 5 minutes when the board members try and talk him down can be confirmed yet). We don’t yet know where he got his gun — but we do know his criminal record and history of mental illness made it illegal for him obtain a gun of any kind. We also know that you can walk into a gun show in many states, such as Virginia, and buy any weapon, no background check necessary . The Governor of Virginia thinks that this is a-ok. No matter that everyone from members of Hezbollah to the Columbine killers to the Pentagon shooter got their guns in this manner. Apparently, to make an omelette, you have to shoot a few eggs. But the gun lobby marches on: Much harm, no foul. The NRA has spent years trying to destroy and delegitimize the ATF , such that nobody has been leading this important law enforcement agency for the past 4 years. Why? Because they try and track where guns come from when they kill people . Crazy. right? And of course we know that we are creating our very own Bonus Army, as millions are filled with despair and anxiety as we give them a pittance while extending tax cuts for people who make Richie Rich look like Oliver Twist. So is this our future? Videos of killers wielding illegal guns and holding innocent people hostage — or worse. Reality TV, gone very, very wrong. Unless/until we decide that gun safety, economic equality, and preventing pundits from inciting riot/slandering whole groups of people on air are reforms worth fighting for. Stay tuned on this one. In the meantime, sadly, I can promise you one thing: Many mini-revolutions such as this will be televised. And it will be ugly.

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Tim Pawlenty Attacks Public Sector Unions – Calls Their Benefits and Pensions a Ponzi Scheme

Click here to view this media Greta Van Susteren asks Tim Pawlenty about this nasty little screed he wrote recently attacking public sector unions and their benefits. Here’s the opening. Tim Pawlenty: Public-sector unions burden the taxpayer : When Americans think of organized labor, they might think of images like I saw growing up in a blue-collar meatpacking town: hard hats, work boots, tough conditions and gritty jobs. While I didn’t work in the slaughterhouses, I did become a union member when I worked at a grocery store to help put myself through school. I was grateful for the paycheck and proud of the work I did. The rise of the labor movement in the early 20th century was a triumph for America’s working class. In an era of deep economic anxiety, unions stood up for hardworking but vulnerable families, protecting them from physical and economic exploitation. Much has changed. The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or “strong back” jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming “industry” left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs, while local, state and federal governments have added 590,000. Pawlenty apparently thinks if you don’t wear a hard hat or steel toed boots as part of your job, you don’t deserve the protection of a union. I guess he also thinks that no one who’s drawing a check from the government does physical labor. Transcript and a response from the Minnesota Nurses Association below the fold. VAN SUSTEREN: All right, you have an op-ed piece in which you talk about government employees. And you say that according to your op-ed piece, government employees have an average income of $123,000, which is twice the average pay, according to you, of the private sector. And you go after the unions. You used to be a union guy. What happened? PAWLENTY: Well, I grew up in a meat-packing town, Greta, and for seven or so years of my life, I was in a union. I come from a lunchbucket union family. My dad was a truck driver. My mom died when I was 16. These unions played a role when the workers were being exploited in places like coal mines and meat-packing plants and other dangerous circumstances. But now you have the biggest growth in unions in government employees, government unions, the public employee unions. They are some of the most protected, secure employees in the country. And they have pay and benefits that are better, in most instances, than the taxpayers who are actually paying the bill. It’s unsustainable. It’s unfair. This — I call it a silent coup in some ways. But obviously, this has to be taken head on. We’ve done this in Minnesota and made some good steps. We’re getting sued over it, by the way, in a case that’s probably going to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. But if we don’t get this fixed, it is going to go a long ways towards taken down California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and places like that, and many other states won’t be far behind. But we’ve got to make sure that we get people more aware of, really, the scandal that is the public employment pension and benefit Ponzi scheme. MN Nurses Respond to Tim Pawlenty’s Attack on Unions, RNs : Soon-to-be-former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty recently penned a blistering attack on state employee unions, including state-employed nurses. Below is MNA President Linda Hamilton’s official response, which has been sent to the Star Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, which originally published Pawlenty’s Op-Ed on December 13th. Here is the response: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s recent opinion piece (“Public Sector Unions a Burden”) was filled with the political rhetoric that our soon-to-be-former Governor has been using to start his 2012 Presidential bid instead of serving the people of Minnesota. According to Mr. Pawlenty, government employees who care for our sick, plow our streets and teach our children should feel ashamed and embarrassed to be part of a union. Apparently, it is our state-employed nurses, snowplow drivers, janitors and teachers that are responsible for Minnesota’s nearly $6 billion budget deficit – not Tim Pawlenty’s failed leadership. Perhaps the most absurd part of Mr. Pawlenty’s feeble attack on the working class is his contention that we should strive to rely on “predictable” retirement benefits such as 401(k) plans. Maybe our Governor missed the recent financial collapse where these “predictable” 401(k) plans of countless Americans evaporated into thin air? Maybe he thinks unemployed workers are able to save for their retirement? Speaking as a nurse who spends her time working here in Minnesota rather than campaigning for higher office all across the country on the state’s dime, I can say without reservation that Tim Pawlenty’s true legacy is one of trying to pin our state’s budget woes on the backs of the working class while doing everything in his power to protect and reward those private sector, multimillionaire CEOs who continue to bankroll his political platform. Sincerely, Linda Hamilton, President Minnesota Nurses Association

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Accused WikiLeaker Bradley Manning’s Torture By Isolation

Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking sensitive material to WikiLeaks, has been held for 7 months in what Glenn Greenwald reports are “inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions.” Greenwald argues that Manning is being punished without first being convicted, and he speculates that the treatment is meant to intimidate and discourage other would-be whistleblowers. Greenwald explains that Manning is held in solitary confinement, unable to leave his cell for 23 hours a day. He is not permitted to exercise in his cell. He is not allowed a pillow or blanket. Greenwald says Manning spends most of his day sleeping, and is now given antidepressants “to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.” Glenn Greenwald on Salon: From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement.

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