After two employees in the Ohio attorney general’s office filed sexual-harassment complaints against the office’s director of general services in March 2008, Attorney General Marc Dann assigned two top lawyers in the office to investigate. The accused director, Anthony Gutierrez, was a longtime friend and former roommate of Dann.

The investigation concluded that Gutierrez had subjected the women to “a hostile work environment” of sexual harassment. He was immediately fired. Two other managers who were also longtime friends of Dann were forced out for allegedly mishandling the complaints. Dann himself admitted to a consensual affair with his scheduler, who then resigned.

During the Ohio media’s frenzy over the story, Gov. Ted Strickland and other state Democratic officials hastily called for fellow-Democrat Dann to resign or be impeached. Democrats in the Ohio House of Representatives soon introduced an impeachment resolution.

In the past I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors—the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.” http://tinyurl.com/my4jc5

Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation—as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all—the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. Panetta is even older than I, and I am aware that hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”

SUMMARY

There are solutions to the climate crisis. What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all peoples and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to future generations.

We, participating peoples, communities, and all organizations at the Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, call upon every person, organization, government, and institution, including the United Nations (UN), to contribute to this necessary transition. It will be a challenging task. The crisis of today has economic, social, environmental, geopolitical, and ideological aspects interacting with and reinforcing each other as well as the climate crisis. For this reason, we call for urgent climate action:

. A complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every 5-year period. We demand an immediate cut in GHG of industrialized countries of at least 40% compared to 1990 levels by 2020.

. Recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of

After two stolen elections by Bush-Cheney, an election of Grandpa John "Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain and his sorority president sidekick -- whether honest or blatantly stolen and tolerated -- would have said something hugely depressing and debilitating about the American people. But arguably it could have saved a great many lives around the world. Here's how.

Premise number 1: Presidents will fight as many and as large wars as they possibly can. Presidents have always loved wars, which they have used to seize greater powers and strip away civil liberties. As the military industrial presidential complex has grown, so has the financial and institutional pressure for wars. President Obama is expanding the U.S. empire of bases, escalating wars, and toying with possible new wars to the extent that he has the weapons, troops, and mercenaries available to do it with. No more, no less. McCain-Palin, left to their own devices, would have done very nearly the same thing. Therefore, any major change in war policy effected by the 2008 presidential election would have had to be indirect.