Monday, July 28, 2008

"What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?"

Slowly but surely the tide of justice comes in.

Justice Officials Repeatedly Broke Law on Hiring, Report Says

Excerpt:

Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party, said investigators, who interviewed 85 people and received information from 300 other job seekers at Justice. Sampson developed a system to screen immigration judge candidates based on improper political considerations and routinely took recommendations from the White House Office of Political Affairs and Presidential Personnel, the report said.

Goodling regularly asked candidates for career jobs: "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" the report said. One former Justice Department official told investigators she had complained that Goodling was asking interviewees for their views on abortion, according to the report.

In one case, Goodling refused to extend the temporary assignment of a prosecutor because of her "perception of the [lawyer's] sexual orientation," according to the report.

Monday, July 21, 2008

New term: E. coli conservatism


What's clear, though, is that imports of agricultural products have increased by 78% since 1973, but inspections of those products have decreased by 78% over the same period, according to the Coalition for a Stronger FDA, whose membership includes former chiefs of the Department of Health and Human Services, of which the FDA is a part.That's a problem because the FDA itself says pesticide violations or infectious disease occur three times more often in imported foods than in domestic foods. In 1991, there were 1.5 inspections for each $1 million worth of imported agriculture commodities; in 2006 there were only 0.4.


Please read the rest of the LA Times opinion piece by Eric Lotke at:

Downsizing government to death

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Petition Fraud in Arizona

A national anti-affirmative action group is raising over $1 million in Arizona in order to hire clueless surrogates to fraudulenty collect signatures for a petition to change the Arizona constitution.

Petition Fraud in Arizona

I've met the attorney leading the fight against this. She is truly amazing and an inspiration. She has done Arizona a great service by bringing her small but committed group to help uncover the corruption going on here. Please give her group, BAMN, support!

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Universal Healthcare for Women

Hopefully I'll get around to writing more about this later, but here's the idea:
Universal Healthcare too big of a pill to swallow for the U.S. all at once? Start out with Universal Health insurance for women only.

This has many facets of advantage, both in terms of political feasibility (due to leveraging psyche of those ideologically opposed to universal healthcare) and in terms of righting innate economic barriers due to life cycle issues.