Civil Rights: Breaking Down Barriers

RELIGION — CONGRESSMAN SAYS RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN FEDERAL OFFICE WAS NOT ENVISIONED BY FOUNDING FATHERS: When Idaho State Rep. Bill Sali was running for Congress in 2006, Vice President Cheney visited his state and said, “Bill is ready to make a difference in Washington, and he’s going to be the kind of Congressman who will make you proud.” Now-Congressman Bill Sali (R-ID) is demonstrating his worth by criticizing the new religious diversity embodied in the 110th Congress. “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota,” he said. “They are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.” Sali may want to take a peek at Article VI of the Constitution, which notes that there is no religious test for public office: “[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Sali’s not alone in his bigotry. In Dec. 2006, shortly after Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) was elected as the first Muslim congressman, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warned that “American citizens” need to “wake up” or “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.” Last month, protesters belonging to the Christian Right anti-abortion group Operation Save America loudly interrupted the first Hindu prayer delivered in the Senate. Sali said that when a Hindu prayer is offered, it “creates problems for the longevity of this country.”

HUMAN RIGHTS — BUSH ON TORTURE REPORT: ‘HAVEN’T SEEN IT, WE DON’T TORTURE’: During President Bush’s press conference yesterday, The Washington Post’s Peter Baker asked him if he “had read” a highly confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that “has found an interrogation program in CIA detention facilities, [that] used interrogation techniques that were ‘tantamount to torture.'” Details of the report were revealed recently in the New Yorker. “Haven’t seen it; we don’t torture,” Bush bluntly responded before moving on to another question. Bush’s denial of torture is hardly convincing, considering he is apparently unaware of the allegations coming from the Red Cross, “which is known for its credibility and caution.” The report alleges “that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment” at CIA “black sites” may have committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions. Though Bush claims to have not “seen” the report, others in his administration have, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, and CIA director Michael Hayden. Given the documented abuses at Abu Ghraib, Bush would be wise to actually read reports like the Red Cross’s before definitively declaring “we don’t torture.”

HEALTH — REPORT: TOBACCO TAXES PRODUCED SHARP DECREASE IN SMOKING: A USA Today report “finds that higher state taxes on smokers have produced sharp declines in consumption. The amount of decline in smoking is directly tied to the size of the tax increase.” Cigarette sales fell 18 percent in North Carolina last year after the tax was raised to 35 cents from a nickel. In New Jersey, smoking dropped by 35 percent after the state raised its taxes from 80 cents in 2002 to $2.40, and Connecticut saw a 37 percent drop in consumption after it increased its tax to $1.51 from 50 cents a pack in 2002. Recently, Congress approved an increase in the federal tax on tobacco products to fund the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program(SCHIP). But President Bush has promised to veto the measure. According to economists, “the nation may be about to experience one of the biggest one-time declines in smoking.” “I expect a bigger drop than almost anything we’ve seen before,” says Frank Chaloupka, a University of Illinois economist who has studied the effect of taxes on smoking. “He predicts that smoking will drop 6% if the 61-cent-per-pack tax hike is passed.” 

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said yesterday there are no “defining moments” in Iraq. “I don’t think there is a date on the calendar, whether it’s in September or any other time in which you can say, ‘This is the defining moment. It’s all coming together, or it’s all falling apart.’ It’s an enormously complex situation.”

President Bush said he can’t recall when he learned that Army Ranger Pat Tillman died by friendly fire. Just days before Bush delivered a 2004 speech that made reference to Tillman, a top general had written a memo to Gen. John Abizaid, then head of Central Command, warning that it was “highly possible” that Tillman was killed by friendly fire and making clear that the information should be conveyed to the president.

“The next decade will be a hot one, according to scientists unveiling the first 10-year projection of global warming. �? The significance of the new study is that over the last century, global warming has contributed to about a one-degree rise in average temperatures.”

“Nearly half the people murdered in the U.S. each year are black, part of a persistent pattern in which African Americans are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, according to a new Justice Department study released yesterday.”

“I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers,” said former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani yesterday. “I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I’m one of them.” Battalion Chief John McDonnell, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, responded, “I think he’s really grasping and trying to justify his previous attempts to portray himself as the hero of 9/11.”

The Bush administration on Friday will announce plans to enlist state and local law enforcement in cracking down on undocumented workers, which previously was largely a federal function. The plans call for the administration to “train growing numbers of state and local law enforcement officers to identify and detain immigration offenders whom they encounter in the course of daily law enforcement.”

“A car bomb struck a market in a Kurdish area in the northern city of Kirkuk on Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens, police said. South of Baghdad, the U.S. military said a helicopter was forced down, leaving two soldiers injured.”

The State Department is enlisting baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken for a new diplomatic role. Ripken will travel the world as a public diplomacy envoy to increase young people’s understanding of the United States by sharing with them his “impressive personal history and life experiences.”

And finally: The Senate’s #1 Batman fan gets an appearance on the big screen. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will have a speaking part, though a “small role,” in the new flick The Dark Knight, out next year. Leahy, who “dabbles in Batman culture purely for fun,” had a cameo in the 1997 hit Batman & Robin.