By Gail Collins (NY Times) The cities that want to be a convention site create committees, which promise to raise copious cash if chosen. The host committee in Charlotte, for instance, is pledged to raise $36.65 million.
This is turning into something of a struggle, particularly since the Democrats, in a little-noted reform effort, prohibited the host committee from accepting donations above $100,000, or money from lobbyists or corporations. The Republicans will pretty much take anything from anybody. Instantly, like a daffodil in spring, a new committee popped up in Charlotte, called New American City. Its mission is to “showcase all that the city and region has to offer” during the convention and, of course, it has none of those irksome limitations.
While they were banning corporate contributions, the Democrats also reduced this year’s convention to three days from the usual four. However, the eliminated day will be turned over to a celebration at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, during which viewers will have the opportunity to note the close ties between the Democratic Party and Nascar dads. And since it is happening before the official opening gavel, it can be paid for by New American City.
Do not tell me that this country has lost its capacity for innovation.
via It’s Their Party – NYTimes.com.
(McLean Hospital) An extract of the Chinese herb kudzu dramatically reduces drinking and may be useful in the treatment of alcoholism and curbing binge drinking, according to a new study by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers.
“Our study is further evidence that components found in kudzu root can reduce alcohol consumption and do so without adverse side effects,” said David Penetar, PhD, of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and the lead author of the study. “Further research is needed, but this botanical medication may lead to additional methods to treat alcohol abuse and dependence.”
By Richard Winton (Los Angeles Times) On the ground and screaming that he was “sorry,” a shirtless Kelly Thomas is shown being hit again and again with fists, a baton and finally the butt of a stun gun by Fullerton police officers in a dramatic video that was shown for the first time Monday in an Orange County courtroom.
The grainy black and white video of Thomas violent encounter with police outside a bus depot is the centerpiece of the prosecutions case against two officers accused of escalating a standard police encounter with a homeless man into a fatal beating.
At one point, Thomas — a 37-year-old mentally ill homeless man who was a familiar face in the city’s downtown — screams out: “Dad, they are killing me!”
The video and the sound of fists and a baton striking Thomas were so graphic that several spectators left the courtroom and the judge paused the video at one point after some people in the audience began to groan. He cautioned that those who couldn’t stomach the video should leave.
via Video portrays violent death of Kelly Thomas – latimes.com.
By Gene Weingarten (Washington Post) It is said that everyone has a price, a sum of money large enough to corrupt his moral integrity. I always suspected that I might have a price, too, but was a little alarmed recently to discover it is $125.
That was the price of the speed-camera ticket that arrived in the mail, together with a photo of a car in flagrante, doing 40 mph in a zone designated for 25. The car was the make, model and color of my car, and the infraction occurred at a place and time consistent with my routine. So, let’s face it, it was my car. However — here is where complex moral mathematics begin to intrude — the close-up photo of the license tag was a little blurry. With a little creative squinting, those two zeroes on the tag might be seen to resemble 6s or 8s. Which would mean this law-breaking vehicle belonged to someone else entirely.
My family looked and squinted, informed me those were clearly zeros, and advised me to just pay the ticket. “Not so fast,” I said. (Ha-ha.) There were complicating moral factors here, I explained, such as the inherent unfairness of a system that places the word of a soulless machine over that of a human.
via Gene Weingarten: Trial by perjury – The Washington Post.
By Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman (AlterNet) Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S formerly Wackenhut, two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.
These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside. All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.
By Rania Khalek (Salon) As the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the failure of authorities to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman, continues to grab headlines, many conservatives and gun rights advocates insist that race has nothing to do with it. Some have also rallied to the defense of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the self-defense legislation under which Zimmerman was able to avoid arrest. Yet not all stand your ground claims are so successful. Not too far from Sanford, Fla., a black man named John McNeil is serving a life sentence for shooting Brian Epp, a white man who trespassed and attacked him at his home in Georgia, another stand your ground state.
The McNeils weren’t the only ones who felt threatened by Epp. David Samson and Libby Jones, a white couple who hired Epp to build their home in 2004, testified that they carried a gun as a “precaution” around Epp because of his threatening behavior. According to Jones, Epp nearly hit her when she expressed dissatisfaction with his work at a weekly meeting. The couple even had a lawyer write a letter warning Epp to stay away from their property. Samson testified that after they fired him, Epp would park his car across the street and watch their house, saying “it got to the point where my wife and I were in total fear of this man.”
After a neighbor across the street who witnessed the encounter corroborated McNeil’s account, police determined that it was a case of self-defense and did not charge him in the death. Nevertheless, almost a year later Cobb County District Attorney Patrick Head decided to prosecute McNeil for murder. In 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
By Kim Murphy (Los Angeles Times) “Prior to the Iraq war, soldiers could not go into combat on psychiatric drugs, period. Not very long ago, going back maybe 10 or 12 years, you couldn’t even go into the armed services if you used any of these drugs, in particular stimulants,” said Peter Breggin, a New York psychiatrist who has written widely about psychiatric drugs and violence.
“But they’ve changed that…. I’m getting a new kind of call right now, and that’s people saying the psychiatrist won’t approve their deployment unless they take psychiatric drugs.”
Military doctors say most drugs’ safety and efficacy is so well-established that it would be a mistake to send battalions into combat without the help of medications that can prevent suicides, help soldiers rest and calm shattered nerves.
via For Army troops, prescription drugs may add to fog of war latimes.com.
