Olmert invites Jordan's King Abdullah II to visit Israel

From Haaretz :

[Jordan's King] Abdullah said [to an Israeli delegation] Thursday that Israel must accept the Saudi peace initiative.

The king called on Israel to 'adopt the Arab initiative as the basis for negotiations with the Palestinians and not to miss this historic opportunity for recognition by all the countries of the region and true integration into the region.' He added: 'I worry about the generations to come. This is an unparalleled opportunity and I have taken it upon myself to influence the people of Israel.'

Many Israeli opinion leaders are calling on Olmert's (very) shaky government to take up the Saudi/ Arab League initiative as the basis for serious negotiations. The American Jewish leadership is far behind on this one.

Presidential Catch 22

Matt Renner | White House Wants First Crack at RNC Emails:

According to Peter Shane [my Yale LS classmate and class secretary who refuses to advertise my blog to our class], an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in separation of powers issues, executive privilege is 'subject to balancing,' meaning that the right to withhold information from Congress is not absolute and would have to be determined by the Supreme Court. Documents or communications regarding state secrets or national security are considered to be the 'most privileged,' and the hardest for Congress to gain access to. State secrets are not at issue in this situation. Instead, the White House would rely on the less-weighty 'Presidential Privacy Privilege,' which is meant to allow presidential advisers to communicate freely, without fear of their statements being made public.

Shane says that the president's privacy privilege is outweighed in this case by the Congressional need to conduct investigations. Also, a claim to executive privilege in this case could backfire as it would be an admission that privileged communications were made using an email system under the control of an outside agency. According to Shane this would be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

'This is the Catch-22 the Bush administration is caught in,' Shane said. 'If they say that the subject matter of these communications makes them susceptible to executive privilege claims, then they should have been been sent through official government channels, not through unofficial emails. If these communications are of this kind, the Bush administration is clearly in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

HELLUVA JOB, BUSHIE.

From The New York Times:

The White House said Thursday that Mr. Gonzales retained President Bush’s “full confidence,” adding that Mr. Bush “was pleased with his testimony.”

Lest we forget: Gonzales, Rumsfeld, "Brownie", Alito, etc. are, in the first and most important instance, the responsibility of George W. Bush.

And ultimately, it should be added, of those who (s)elected him, and who continue to support him.

I don't recall...the Constitution?

David Bromwich: From The Huffington Post:

Perhaps the best one can say about Alberto Gonzales is that he sees himself as a steward of the president's excellence. Cast such a man as attorney general, the highest officer of the law of the United States, and the visible touch of servility will naturally expose him to ridicule as a toady. The sadder truth is that Gonzales underrated the dignity of his job.

As he understands his position, he is essentially an emanation of the will of the president. And our boyish president never developed morally (he developed religiously, but that is not the same thing) beyond the aristocratic reprobate who divides the world into friends and enemies and who thinks the rules don't apply to him. But laws, too, are rules. The doctrine that the chief executive is above the law, that everything he says becomes law as soon as he says it, was hammered out by Gonzales with the help of ingenious assistants recently out of law school. There is no transgression, provided only that the president be the transgressor, which this doctrine will not lower itself to justify....

It seems highly improbable that Gonzales will now come into the courage and clarity that would allow him to press his resignation into the president's hand with conviction. He will try to stay on, because the president wants him to. In the days to come, there will have to be acts of civic courage by others; actions like those of Senators Byrd and Feingold in earlier moments of constitutional resistance to this anti-constitutional administration. And some of that courage will have to be shown by lawyers.

What to call Paul Wolfowitz's special lady friend.

By Ben Yagoda - Slate Magazine:

At this point, my best guess is that the [term] "girlfriend" that made its way into this week's Times article was a slip. As the [NYT] style guide sniffs about girlfriend and boyfriend, 'The terms are informal and best reserved for teenagers.' The very next day the paper went back to companion. But who knows? Maybe this is the forward flank of a semantic shift. The Oxford English Dictionary's first citation of girlfriend to refer to a romantic partner is the 1926 Broadway musical The Girl Friend, which featured a Rodgers and Hart song with the same title. In early feminist days, of course, girl was disparaged as infantilizing, an animus that led to the classic 'Doonesbury' caption, 'It's a baby woman!

N.H. governor to sign civil unions bill

From MSNBC.com:

CONCORD, N.H. - Gov. John Lynch told The Associated Press on Thursday he will sign legislation establishing civil unions in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire thus will become the fourth state to adopt civil unions and the first to do so without first having a court fight over denying gays the right to marry.

'I believe it is a matter of conscience, fairness and preventing discrimination,' Lynch said in an interview.

Connecticut became the first state to legislate civil unions without court intervention two years ago. A lawsuit challenging Connecticut's marriage law was pending, but legislators said they were not influenced by it.

Sen. Robert Byrd: The President's Veto Threat Does Not Dictate the Law of Our Land

From The Huffington Post:

Members of Congress are elected to make laws based on sound public policy, not to capitulate to presidential threats. The Senate must never become a rubberstamp for any president. Certainly, the Congress should carefully consider the announced reasons for a presidential veto, but the Congress has a duty, if the president's reasons are not credible or do not reflect the will of the people, to overturn presidential vetoes. The vote on the override is a healthy public opportunity for Members of Congress to consider the reasons offered by the president for his veto. Just as the president is held accountable for his veto, Senators are held accountable for their votes on bills that are sent to the president, and, if applicable, a subsequent veto override vote.

So let us hear no more about measures that the president has threatened to veto being not worthy of the Senate's consideration. Let the president issue his veto threats, but also let the Congress dutifully represent the will of the people.

Teaching Doctors to Teach Patients About Lifestyle

From The New York Times:

To what extent does lifestyle cause or contribute to disease and disability? And what exactly is a healthy lifestyle anyway? There is much confusion about what type of diet or exercise is best, not to mention how much sleep, stress or sex is ideal. Nor is it clear how best to motivate people to change their habits.

This lack of clarity has inspired a growing movement to inform health professionals and patients about the importance of lifestyle in preventing and treating disease. Its aims are to disseminate scientific research about what it means to live well and to encourage doctors and other providers to incorporate this knowledge into their practices.

Two years ago, a group of doctors founded an organization with the goal of making lifestyle medicine a credentialed clinical specialty and a part of basic medical training. Symptomatically treating disease without assessing patients’ lifestyles or offering them guidance on how to change is “irresponsible and bordering on neglect..."

Still, he acknowledges that there are significant obstacles, because lifestyle counseling is time-consuming and is seldom compensated by Medicare or health insurers.

Reimbursement is a chief concern of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. The group plans to lobby Congress to that end. And it wants Congress to require that patients be informed about the relative effectiveness of lifestyle changes before receiving certain medications — including blood pressure, acid reflux and cholesterol drugs — and before undergoing procedures like back surgery, bypass surgery and stent placement.

But first, Dr. Kelly said, patients and insurers need to be assured of the professionalism of lifestyle medicine providers.

The group seems overly focused on distinguishing itself from alternative and complementary medicine, which I understand but find unfortunate. Then again, many practitioners of alternative medicine are less hung up on reimbursement, and considerably more willing to spend time with, and listen to, their patients than most conventional practitioners. As I have learned. (And my conventional physicians have mostly been excellent.)

Conflicting interests within Universities

From The New York Times:

With Congressional hearings on the student loan scandal scheduled for next week, lawmakers are looking around for ways to root out the kinds of corruption uncovered in recent investigations by New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo. A good start would be to pass the Student Loan Sunshine Act, an important bill that was introduced months ago.

The Sunshine Act would make it a federal crime for lenders to offer college officials anything of value in exchange for the right to do business at a given school. The new law would require the colleges to explain publicly why they had placed a given lender on the school’s “preferred lender” list and would force the institutions to disclose any special deals that had been made behind the scenes.

Defying a Clan Code of Silence on Unspeakable Crimes

From The New York Times:

So-called honor killings among Muslims are a phenomenon across the Middle East, including in Israel, where Arabs, most of them Muslim, make up almost 20 percent of the population. The Israeli police and courts have caught and convicted some of the killers; unlike the laws in some Arab societies, Israel’s do not make allowances for such acts.

Yet among the Abu Ghanem clan here in Ramla — where family honor can be tainted by a woman’s desire to go study at a university or her use of a telephone — the bloodletting has carried on. Some women’s advocates have accused the police of a dismissive attitude toward Arabs, while a Jewish district police official speaks of the “ambivalence” of Israel’s Arab citizens, who do not always want to cooperate with investigations “for nationalist or local reasons.” So far, the Abu Ghanem cases have ended without convictions, the police say, mainly because relatives maintained a conspiracy of silence and washed all the evidence away.

Then in January, after the last killing, of Hamda Abu Ghanem, 18, female relatives decided to speak up. Twenty of them.

Andy Borowitz on the Gonzales hearing

A smoldering pile of ashes found on a chair in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room is believed to be the remains of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, officials confirmed today....

At the White House, President Bush gave Mr. Gonzales’ a vote of confidence, telling reporters, “I believe that Alberto can continue to be an effective Attorney General, even if he is a smoldering pile of ashes.”

Can someone teach me how to link properly to the Borowitz site? For those who don't know it, get it! Great way to start the day.

Despairing over Justice

C-Span is running the hearings tonight.
I'm thinking W should recall Brownie to head Justice.
He's more experienced in swimming in waters way over his head.

Is this guy really in charge of running the Department of Justice?
What a scandal.

Does This Abortion Decision Matter? - The Opinionator - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Here is a collection of blog commentaries on the recent abortion decision. One theme:

It matters who is on the Court - 5 Catholic men voting against Roe? How could anyone be surprised, they are doing what they were put there to do.

Does This Abortion Decision Matter? - The Opinionator - Opinion - New York Times Blog:

Is it time for Gonzales?

The political case for an anti-Roe justice. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
Here is a piece from the July 6,2005 Slate, discussing a potential Supreme Court nomination for Alberto in light of the Court's abortion jurisprudence. The piece concludes, "Timing is everything."
It makes for particularly ironic reading today.

Gonzales hearing--continuing

I've found an erratic online audio feed (streaming video not working) at c-span.org.
Gonzales is beyond incompetent--he is pathetic.

Highly variable performances by the Senators--nothing new there.

What a government.

More awful news (?) judgment

C-SPAN 2 is now "showing" a Senate quorum call. Nice classical music.
No one has the Gonzales hearing.

What are the rules and policies on C-Span coverage? Is this an exercise of judgment, or just an (idiotic) adherence to mechanical, very dumb rules requiring floor coverage?

News junkies of the world, unite!

GAH! news(?) judgments

Trying to follow the Gonzales hearings on TV. C-SPAN 1 just cut away from live coverage so we could watch the House recite the Pledge of Allegiance! (We don't get C-Span 3 on our local cable outlet.) C-Span 2 is covering something forgettable on the Senate floor. The cable news networks are preoccupied with Va. Tech. I am not a happy camper.

Gonzales came out aggressive and self justifying. The man is incompetent. May he get what he deserves.

Troubled Students: What is a university to do?

From The New York Times: "Laws Limit Options When a Student Is Mentally Ill
By TAMAR LEWIN

Federal privacy and antidiscrimination laws restrict how universities can deal with students who have mental health problems.

For the most part, universities cannot tell parents about their children’s problems without the student’s consent. They cannot release any information in a student’s medical record without consent. And they cannot put students on involuntary medical leave, just because they develop a serious mental illness.

Nor is knowing when to worry about student behavior, and what action to take, always so clear. ...

Universities can find themselves in a double bind. On the one hand, they may be liable if they fail to prevent a suicide or murder. After the death in 2000 of Elizabeth H. Shin, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who had written several suicide notes and used the university counseling service before setting herself on fire, the Massachusetts Superior Court allowed her parents, who had not been told of her deterioration, to sue administrators for $27.7 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

On the other hand, universities may be held liable if they do take action to remove a potentially suicidal student. In August, the City University of New York agreed to pay $65,000 to a student who sued after being barred from her dormitory room at Hunter College because she was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

Also last year, George Washington University reached a confidential settlement in a case charging that it had violated antidiscrimination laws by suspending Jordan Nott, a student who had sought hospitalization for depression.

“This is a very, very difficult and gray area..."

Judges for Sale - Sound familiar, fellow Wisconsinites?

From The New York Times:

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Special interests have long targeted candidates for executive offices, like president and governor, and legislative offices, like Congress and state legislatures. It was just a matter of time before well-heeled business and other interests would expand their influence-peddling efforts, and begin pouring large amounts of money into previously sleepy judicial campaigns.

Several years ago, it started happening — first in just a few states, then spreading to a lot more. The unwholesome result is the dawn of a new era of raucous million dollar-plus campaigns for key state judgeships that is forcing more and more would-be jurists to bond with special interest backers, and invest in cheesy 15- and 30-second TV spots, if they want to get on the bench, and stay there.

THE ISRAELI DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom. Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, immigrants and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country. This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations. Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.

In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations. On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY WE, THE MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.


WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel".


THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.


THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel. WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the community of nations. WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the up-building of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.


WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and up-building and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of Israel. PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ALMIGHTY, WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).


David Ben-Gurion , Daniel Auster , Mordekhai Bentov , Yitzchak Ben Zvi , Eliyahu Berligne , Fritz Bernstein , Rabbi Wolf Gold , Meir Grabovsky , Yitzchak Gruenbaum , Dr. Abraham Granovsky , Eliyahu Dobkin , Meir Wilner-Kovner , Zerach Wahrhaftig , Herzl Vardi Rachel Cohen , Rabbi Kalman Kahana , Saadia Kobashi , Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin , Meir David Loewenstein , Zvi Luria , Golda Myerson , Nachum Nir , Zvi Segal , Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman David Zvi Pinkas , Aharon Zisling , Moshe Kolodny , Eliezer Kaplan , Abraham Katznelson , Felix Rosenblueth , David Remez , Berl Repetur , Mordekhai Shattner , Ben Zion Sternberg , Bekhor Shitreet , Moshe Shapira , Moshe Shertok