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Hang in there, Texas Eleven

AUSTIN, Texas -- Hang in there, Texas Eleven. You are not forgotten.

            Gov. Goodhair Perry says the AWOL senators are holding up "issues of great importance to the people of Texas." That's funny. There has been one and only one item of business on the agenda for both special sessions called by the guv (at a cost of $1.7 million each): the crass rejiggering of congressional distric lines in order to elect more Republicans out of Texas. Using taxpayer money for partisan political purposes, period.

            Really Bad Idea of the Week: Attorney General John Ashcroft is now investigating judges. He is requiring prosecutors to report cases where the judge hands down sentences that are less than the federal guidelines suggest. This is part of a concerted effort by both Congress and the Justice Department (part of the executive branch) to pressure judges to follow rigid sentencing guidelines. When last consulted, the Constitution still said there are three co-equal branches of government -- the executive is not assigned to intimidate the judiciary.

            Federal guidelines establish a range of sentences for particular

That "Anti-Semite!" slur

The famous British philosopher Ted Honderich is threatening to sue the head of the Holocaust museum in Frankfurt, Germany, for calling him an anti-Semite. The director, Micha Brumlik, leveled the charge last week after Honderich's book, "After the Terror," was published in Germany in July. Suhrkamp, the publisher, has said it is taking the book off the market, though in practice this appears to mean Suhrkamp won't order a reprinting when the first printing of 3,000 is sold out. Germany's most eminent philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, has said he can find nothing anti-Semitic in the book, though he regrets any offense that may have been caused. Honderich is a resolute supporter of the Palestinian struggle for nationhood. But, as he emphasizes, he is in no way an anti-Semite, has a Jewish wife and stepchildren, and has always refused to lecture in Germany because of the Holocaust.

The fact of the matter is that anyone putting in a good word for the Palestinians learns swiftly to await the "anti-Semite" slur. Over the past 20 years I've learned there's a quick way of figuring out just how

Closure

Time's running out on death row
The masses need appeased
Appeals and pleas have all run out
The family's running out of sweet money
Money greases the wheels of justice
That's how so many guilty rich slip away
But if you're innocent or poor
There's a higher price you'll have to pay
As the people line up outside the prison
As they wait for the lights to go dim
They say

We got have some closure
Gotta get it anyway we can
Got to find some closure
Got to go kill another man

Life in prison is not good enough
Now we need to see them die
It's been this way since time began
Another eye now for an eye
It doesn't matter that they may be innocent
As long as they are strapped to the bed
As long as they have a vein to shoot up
As long as they end up dead
The death supporters are screaming at the protesters
The facts of the case get lost in the fray
They yell

We got to find some closure
Gotta get it anyway we can
We got to find some closure
Got to go and kill another man

Faith Fippinger

The U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a March letter to Faith Fippinger that she broke the law by crossing the Iraqi border before the war. This is a direct quote from the CNN.com website, first paragraph. I wonder how much of a fine or prison time we should give George Bush and his little gang of warriors on lying to the American people about Weapons of Mass Destruction that are nowhere to be found? What is the justification in how our government handles those who do not agree with them? This administration moves quickly on those individual’s who disagree and usually act out on these people with such fervor that it just scares the hell out of the rest of us. Of course the monster that is our news doesn’t help.

God's Promise MCC Will Be There at the OHIO Lesbian Festival, Will You??

Lesbian Festival is on SEPTEMBER 13, 11 am to 11 pm, at the Frontier Ranch in Kirkersville as it has been for thirteen previous years. Kirkersville is 30 miles east of Columbus in a natural, private setting.

Our MCC (God's Promise of Granville, OH) is sponsoring two workshops.  The first is with presenter and writer Donna Brooks on being single and staying sane . There will be an opportunity to meet all the other singles who come to this!  We also will have a "singles' dating service," for the day at our booth!  The other workshop is for people already in relationships. Believe it or not, we will learn about  the support for, and healing of, our relationships,  found in the Bible, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Was the White House Behind the California Recall Effort and the Candidacy of Arnold "The Groper" Schwarzenegger?

You Bet.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

BuzzFlash is a little bit tired of the press hedging about whether or not the White House is behind the recall effort and Arnie "The Groper's" candidacy for governor of California. According to Molly Ivins, when BuzzFlash interviewed her, one of Karl Rove's few strategic mistakes against the Democrats was backing former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan in the Republican primary. But, the right wing Republicans in California revolted and supported William Simon.

So the way BuzzFlash sees it is that Rove was planning the recall initiative probably within days after Davis beat Simon last November. They got a multi-millionaire California Grand Hypocrisy Party (GHP) Congressman (are there any other kind?) to pay petition gatherers for a recall less than a few months after the actual election!

Not In Our Name protester arrested

Greetings,

  As you may know, I was in court yesterday for the start of my anti-war trial. I face a year in jail for participating in an anti-war protest in Cleveland on March 28, 2003.  I wanted to give you an update on what happened. For background info, get the current "Free Times" and read my Statement on page 9.  

  A spirited march and rally took place outside the Justice Center before we went into the court.  There was a lot of interest among passersby, with people eagerly taking fliers.  Stationed nearby was the crew of plainclothes cops that have been following peace activists for months.  I was interviewed by channel 19/43 and WCPN.  

  As people entered the courtroom, the bailiff immediately announced that no one wearing shorts would be allowed in!  Huh?  This was just the beginning of an atmosphere of arbitrariness and hostility from the City that would mark this day.  It's a good thing for the plainclothes cops that followed us into the courtroom that they weren't wearing shorts.

National credulity fitness

DUBLIN, N.H. -- What a summer for national credulity fitness. My credulity gets a lot of exercise, since I cover Texas politics. Like Alice in Wonderland's White Queen, years of practice have enabled me to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. But here we are with a perfect feast of mind-bogglers, everyone's credulity stretching and straining in a giant national workout session.

            Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. Well, sure, I can handle that one. Manna from heaven for political humorists of all stripes. I'm afraid the joke will begin to wear thin, however. I know we all like to make fun of California as the epicenter of nuttiness, but in fact that big, beautiful state is in terrible trouble. A $36 billion deficit is not amusing. Teachers are being fired, programs to help the most helpless -- the oldest, the youngest, the most frail -- are being cut.

            The state's economy took a terrible blow in the artificially created energy crisis of 2000-2001. Enron and the other corporate thieves -- empowered by years of the Republican mania for deregulation -- drained as

Democracy Is Under Attack -  Let's Take it Back

Harlem, N.Y. - July 31, 2003

                      How proud I am to stand at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem USA!

Thank you Reverend Butts, Bob, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sonia Sanchez, Ralph Carter, Hakim, the Coalition of Artists and Activists, and all who worked hard to put this rally together.  And thank you for inviting me.

How appropriate that we gather here at this Church, with all its rich history of proud resistance and indignant defiance of a social order that relegated the giants of their day to second class citizenship.

And what an honor for me, to stand among the giants of our day, if only for a moment, and see America's landscape from their gaze.

What this rally means, is that America's vista has now become as ravaged in its pristine hillside villas as it has always been for those of us who muddle behind the cities' shadows.

Our people are dying.

On the streets of America our people are dying.

Gathered tonight in this room are people from all walks of life; and for that reason, this is a very dangerous meeting for the powers that be.

A question almost unthinkable

Did President George W. Bush and his governing consortium know of the impending attack on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon and intentionally allow it to occur?  

This question seems almost unthinkable, yet it is so obviously in need of an answer that it may as well be written across the sky.  The report of the House and Senate intelligence committees does not address the question, which now belongs to the National Commission on Terror Attacks Upon the United States, chaired by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, to report by May 2004.  The following narration is meant to enable the reader to understand the situation giving rise to the question.

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