ThinkProgress Logo

NEWS FLASH

BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Grants Stay of Execution To Duane Edward Buck | The U.S. Supreme Court just issued a brief order granting a temporary stay of execution:

The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to the Court is granted pending the disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari. Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.

A “petition for a writ of certiorari” is a request for the Supreme Court to hear a case, so this stay lasts until the Court either decides Buck’s case on the merits or decides not to decide his case at all. As Marie Diamond reported earlier today, Buck, who is black, was sentenced to die after a psychologist testified that African-Americans are more likely to be violent.

Climate Progress

Ten Things Obama Must Do to Help Slow the Rise of the Oceans and Heal the Planet – Without Waiting for Congress

By Joe Romm on Sep 15, 2011 at 8:32 pm

When Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, he declared that future generations would remember it as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” More than three years later, the oceans are still rising and our planet has done more howling – in the form of extreme weather – than healing. In fact, the current political climate is actually headed in the wrong direction….

It’s not all Obama’s fault: His plans to rebuild America’s energy infrastructure have been hampered by the recession, and his efforts on global warming have been stymied by Tea Party wackos and weak-kneed Democrats in Congress. But the president has spent far too much time blaming others, when he could have been taking action on his own. Here are 10 things Obama could do right now – without any say-so from Congress – to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. All it takes is the will – and some political courage.

Jeff Goodell has a good piece in Rolling Stone on 10 steps Obama can take on climate without any Congressional approval.

He interviewed me, and you can probably guess what I said.  My suggestion is number 10 on the list.  I won’t reprint the whole piece, just the specific suggestions along with some excerpts.

What did Rolling Stone miss?

Read more

Security

Iran Hawks Rattle Sabers; Ignore Incremental Signs Of Progress

By Eli Clifton on Sep 15, 2011 at 7:20 pm

Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili

The past week offered numerous opportunities for neoconservatives and their hawkish allies to defend the Bush foreign policy and push for a continuation of the adventurist foreign policy pursued since 9/11. As always, Iran tops the list as the next Middle Eastern country ripe for U.S. military induced “regime change.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz claimed sanctions have failed because they didn’t provide “material support for the millions of Iranian dissidents who could overthrow the regime,” something the sanctions architects have never claimed to accomplish. Mitt Romney misrepresented Obama’s implementation of Iran sanctions and claimed the U.S. wasn’t communicating a “credible military threat.” Dick Cheney expressed his support for military action against Iran and neoconservative pundit Lee Smith opined that Israel is dissapointed in the U.S. as an ally because Obama hasn’t ordered a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

But buried under all the hawkish rhetoric are a series of interesting news accounts with implications for Washington’s Iran watchers.

  • Ali Vaez and Charles Ferguson wrote in The Atlantic that the September IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program has been falsely interpreted by both Iran’s boasting and Washington’s hardline rhetoric. Instead, they argue, the report shows that Iran is still having serious difficulty in operating their centrifuges and the pace of uranium enrichment hasn’t increased since May. They observe, “Five years after Ahmadinejad promised to deploy a new generation of indigenous centrifuges, Iran has yet to set up a complete cascade of the new devices.”
  • A day after Ahmadinejad announced the release of the two U.S. hikers, Iran’s judiciary sent out a very different message saying that it was still examining the pleas by the hikers’ lawyers. Ariel Zirulnick at the Christian Science Monitor examined this series of events and concludes the move was a “clear jab” at Ahmadinejad and the Iranian president is facing unprecedented domestic political opposition.
  • Yesterday, the Associated Press ran an exclusive report on a new Iranian offer to meet with world powers without the the usual set of preconditions. Interestingly, and contrary to previous offers to negotiate, the letter authored by Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili suggested that Tehran might be ready to discuss some nuclear issues which were previously off the table. While Iran has yet to act, Jalili writes that Iran is “ready to cooperate in … nonproliferation and peaceful nuclear cooperation.”

    • None of these reports alone should serve as indication that a major breakthrough is imminent in bringing Iran back in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But the events of the past week suggest interesting movement on a number of important fronts in the Obama administration’s efforts to apply pressure to Ahmadinejad and Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

    While Cheney and Romney’s saber rattling got played on Fox News, progress in the right direction might be occurring in incremental steps and under the mainstream media’s radar.

    Yglesias

    The Zombie War In Iraq

    By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 15, 2011 at 7:15 pm

    Japan’s “lost decade” of the 1990s gave the world “zombie banks.” A zombie bank is, in effect, bankrupt. It’s made loans to companies that aren’t going to be able to pay them back, and the total value of those bad loans exceeds its equity. Normally, a bank in that position has gone bust. Sometimes, when the government doesn’t want to let the bank fail but also doesn’t want to pay to bail it out, it simply agrees to pretend that the bank is still sound. A bank in that situation faces unusual incentives. The smart strategy is to just double down on bad bets and hope for the best. Writing about the European Central Bank, Berkeley economist Brad DeLong recently extended the concept to political elites with zombie reputations who double down on past bad calls because to implement smart policy now would require embarrassing admissions of error.

    It’s a cute idea with broad applicability. For example, Brookings Institution fellow and noted hawk Michael O’Hanlon published an op-ed Monday critiquing the joint agreement between the American and Iraqi governments to end the U.S. troop deployment there. He wants to extend our presence there, and argues that an additional “$30-40 billion” in Iraq War spending would be “a small price to solidify the gains of what has already been a trillion dollar investment in one of the Middle East’s most pivotal states.”

    Read the rest at TAP Online.

    When I was working on the column, I hadn’t yet seen that the PNAC Redux crowd known as “The Foreign Policy Initiative” even got the band back together to write a letter in favor of endless war.

    Climate Progress

    LIVE: Watch Al Gore’s Conclusion To 24 Hours Of Climate Reality

    By Brad Johnson on Sep 15, 2011 at 6:56 pm

    ThinkProgress Green is covering the Climate Reality Project’s 24 Hours of Reality live from New York City.

    A day which began 23 hours ago in Mexico City at 7 PM local time on Wednesday has wrapped around the world, reaching New York City. Former Vice President Al Gore is leading the ultimate presentation of how greenhouse pollution is making our weather more dangerous and deadly, and leading the global discussion on how humanity can rise up to take back our future from the fossil-funded deniers.

    Watch here:

    Alyssa

    Filmed In Front Of A Live Studio Audience

    By Alyssa Rosenberg on Sep 15, 2011 at 6:38 pm

    One function of not watching much television as a kid, or perhaps just my general weirdness, is that I’ve never particularly liked watching comedies that are taped before a live studio audience. For me, trying to figure out if what I think is funny is the same as what that audience thinks is funny (or what the laugh track is telling me I should think is funny) has always made me feel more alienated than at home. But Todd VanDerWerff, who I would like to be when I grow up, has an interesting defense of the form centered around a taping of 2 Broke Girls (about which more to come):

    But in comedy especially, the need to suggest that a community is watching the show has become less and less important. In some respects, this is an outgrowth of our growing sophistication as an audience. My generation is only the second to grow up with television always present in the home; we’ve been raised on setup-punchline humor, so it’s essentially impossible for us to be surprised by it anymore…It might also have something to do with the fact that the Internet provides an instant community for viewers. A relatively small audience may watch Community every week, but the Internet makes it easy for fans to find each other. We don’t need ghost voices to laugh with us when we have our friends online spitting out LOLs…

    I couldn’t honestly tell you if the episode I saw being filmed was funnier than the pilot, simply because the atmosphere of the event had me primed to laugh at every little thing that happened. The comedian was an expert at getting the audience just revved up enough to be ready to laugh uproariously without exhausting us. The DJ was great at picking just the right song (or sound clip) for just the right moment. And down on the floor, the people making the show worked diligently to pull the whole thing together, tweaking lines we weren’t laughing at quite as hard as other lines, and figuring out ways to zip the performances along even better.

    I think the bit about the Internet is exactly it; instead of checking to see if I’m in synch with an anonymous community, I can find out for sure with a clearly defined community that I’m invested in. Watching True Blood this season, checking in with my Twitter pal BabylonSista helped me confirm that I wasn’t losing my mind with rage. I check in with folks about quotations and nuances as I watch Thursday night’s NBC comedy block. In an age of niche television, the whole point is that you aren’t part of an ephemeral, but low-engagement community; it’s that you can find a concrete, high-engagement one who loves the things you love.

    Economy

    GOP Rep. Calls Labor Law The ‘Economic Death Penalty’ As House Votes To Protect Union-Busting

    By Pat Garofalo on Sep 15, 2011 at 6:35 pm

    Today, the House approved a bill that, if it were ever signed into law, would stop the National Labor Relations Board from enforcing the portion of the National Labor Relations Act that prevents corporations from retaliating against workers by moving production to another location. The catalyst for the bill was the NLRB’s case against mega-manufacturer Boeing, which moved a production line from Washington state to South Carolina because, by the company’s own admission, it didn’t want to deal with workers in Washington striking.

    Before the bill passed, one of the NLRB’s most vociferous critics, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) took to the Senate floor to declare that enforcing labor law and protecting workers from corporate retaliation is the equivalent of the “economic death penalty”:

    Boeing is the most glaring example of their overreach but it is not the only one. At a time when union membership is at an historic low, the NLRB seeks to give big labor a historically high level of influence with this administration. Whether it’s quickie elections or mandating advocacy posters in the workplace, or this, the economic death penalty, the NLRB is out of control.

    Watch it:

    According to the National Labor Relations Act, which the NLRB enforces, it is illegal to retaliate against workers for striking by moving production, which seems to be what Boeing did. After all, one of the company’s executives clearly said, that “the overriding factor [in moving to South Carolina] was not the business climate. And it was not the wages we’re paying today. It was that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years.” Another said that the company decided to move its production line due to “strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound.”.

    As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote, “there is ample precedent for the argument that threatening to move facilities because of strikes is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.” The Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein wrote that, “given the public statements of Boeing officials, there is nothing radical about the NLRB’s decision.”

    American workers already enjoy the weakest labor protections in the developed world, and if the GOP gets its way, that dubious honor is going to become even more true.

    Politics

    Despite Romney’s $100K Boeing Stock Holdings, Spokesman Denies Possible Conflict Of Interest In NLRB Criticisms

    By Scott Keyes on Sep 15, 2011 at 6:25 pm

    ThinkProgress filed this report from the Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Florida.

    As Mitt Romney steps up his attacks on the National Labor Relations Board for its decision to block Boeing from retaliating against striking workers by building a new plant in South Carolina, a new report from Bloomberg notes that the former Massachusetts governor owns a significant amount of stock in the Seattle-based aerospace corporation.

    According to his recently-released personal financial disclosure form, Romney owns up to $100,000 in Boeing stock. Though Romney’s personal assets, which total between $190 million and $250 million, are managed by a blind trust which he does not control, its contents are listed on the Massachusetts Republican’s disclosure forms and are easy for anyone to find with a simple Google search.

    Given the potential for a conflict of interest, ThinkProgress spoke with Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom about the Boeing matter. Ferhnstrom denied any possibility of impropriety, telling ThinkProgress that “[Romney's] personal investments are all in a blind trust. Those are investment decisions that are made by a trustee.” Fehrnstrom sidestepped the fact Romney doesn’t have to manage his own investments to know what’s in them, maintaining simply that there was “no” conflict of interest.

    KEYES: One of the companies that [Romney] is actually largely invested in is Boeing. Do you think there’s a conflict of interest, given how outspoken he’s been about the NLRB decision in South Carolina?

    FEHRNSTROM: […] His personal investments are all in a blind trust. Those are investment decisions that are made by a trustee.

    KEYES: But they’re easily Google-able. He can look up what’s in them.

    FEHRNSTROM: What I will say about Boeing and the ruling of the NLRB with respect to the South Carolina plant is that this is another example of how the Obama administration is depressing job creation in this country and discarding the rule of law. […]

    KEYES: So no conflict of interest on Romney’s end here?

    FEHRNSTROM: No. All of his investments are in a blind trust. He does not personally manage those. Those are managed by a trustee.

    Watch it:

    Yglesias

    Should We Let People Die If Unrelated Government Policies Tend To Drive Up The Costs Of Health Care?

    By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 15, 2011 at 6:14 pm

    One of the more interesting questions in the most recent GOP debate came when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul what thought about a scenario in which a health 30-year-old man with a decent job decides to go without health insurance and then is hit by a terrible misfortune and finds himself in need of medical attention: “Who’s going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?”

    The audience, because they’re moral monsters, screamed out that we should let the man die. Paul, because he has a modicum of decency, basically hemmed and hawed and looked like he didn’t have a persuasive response. Roderick Long, however, thinks that the savvy libertarian way to answer the question is to totally avoid confronting it:

    The right way to answer a question like Blitzer’s is to proceed in precisely the opposite order. Start by asking what causes people like the hypothetical patient to be in the plight they’re in. In other words, lead with stage three. Why didn’t the patient buy insurance? Because the price was too high. Why is it so high? Talk about the specific ways in which corporatist policies drive up medical costs (and disempower the poor in other ways too).

    This is nonsense. The government has a lot of policies. Many of them are bad ones. Many of those policies increase the price of this or that. Then over and above that, situations occur that require responses. For example, an uninsured person may be struck by some terrible misfortune and require medical attention. At which point we can let him die, or we can pay for his treatment. The question at hand is which should we do. Once we concede that in practice we’ll pay for his treatment, we now have a strong prima facie case for some kind of mandatory minimum level of health insurance coverage which is where Blitzer was leading. It’s all well and good to say that there are some other changes we could (and quite possibly should) make, but leading with that answer just shows how weak the anti-mandate case really is.

    Climate Progress

    Exclusive Look Behind Climate Reality: Maggie Fox On Glaciers, People, And Climate Action

    By Brad Johnson on Sep 15, 2011 at 5:58 pm

    ThinkProgress Green is reporting live from New York City, headquarters of the Climate Reality Project’s 24 Hours of Reality event. The event is nearing its conclusion, with this hour’s presentation from Rio de Janeiro.

    In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress Green, Climate Reality Project CEO Maggie Fox explains why her fight against climate change is more than just a job — it’s personal. A lifelong expeditionary mountaineer, Fox spent years leading Outward Bound trips for teens and adults, exploring some of the most remote and beautiful places on the planet, from Alaska to the Himalayas. A lot of the time was spent climbing and teaching in Glacier National Park, learning to survive amid some of the biggest glaciers in North America.

    Recently, she returned to Glacier National Park, flying over the park with reporters. The impact of what she saw left her almost unable to speak:.

    Glaciers are bigger than big. Glaciers are worlds. The notion that a glacier could disappear in my adult life was incomprehensible to me. The vastness of them. The depth. The huge massifs they encompass. To be able to not just go back into the Himalayas but also here in the United States and actually fly over a national park whose name will have to be changed very shortly, because there are almost no glaciers left, and to see things that I climbed, and was fearful of my life in, are gone, virtually gone — had an impact on me that’s hard to describe.

    Watch it:

    Fox explained that what happens to the glaciers isn’t just an unfortunate consequence of our actions, but is also connected — like the rest of the natural world — to our fate as humanity.

    “We inhabit the natural world,” Fox said. “We are of the natural world. It is a source of unbelievable joy and connection.”

    “It doesn’t really matter if you don’t care about a particular finch or a glacier,” Fox concluded. “There are parts of the natural world that connect to all of us. Our connection to our planet is part of who we are as a people. Changing our planet is also changing us.”

    Related Posts

    Older

    Switch to Mobile
    ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

    Sign Up