Texas’ Third District Court of Appeals in Austin has ruled that state officials lacked legal authority to remove more than 400 children from the FLDS ranch in West Texas in April.
We have detailed some of the legal problems with Child Protective Services’ seizure of the sect’s children. The AP brief about the ruling is here. We’ll post more details and reaction this afternoon.
Tomorrow, the three Gov. Perry-appointed commissioners will decide whether to approve Waste Control Specialists‘ license for a massive radioactive waste dump in West Texas, 30 miles west of Andrews. (Actually, this is the first of two Waste Control licenses that would authorize disposal of radioactive waste in two adjacent landfills.) The Sierra Club and residents of Eunice, New Mexico - the town closest to the proposed landfill - are calling on the commission to either reject the license or send the dispute to a contested case hearing for a decision by an administrative law judge.
As detailed in the Observer, TCEQ’s own experts have decided that the dump will in all likelihood leak into the groundwater. On a conference call this afternoon, former TCEQ employee Glenn Lewis reiterated the staff’s key finding that the radioactive waste will come within 14 feet of the landfill. “We are talking about contaminating the largest aquifer in the United States,” Lewis said, referring to the Ogallala Aquifer. Lewis added that the staff is uncertain of the exact location of the Ogallala but said a contested case hearing should settle the question. Waste Control maintains that the site is virtually dry and that whatever water is present isn’t connected to the two water tables in the area.
In Andrews, Waste Control has benefited from near-unanimous support for the project in the community. The Sierra Club failed to find a single resident to file for a contested case hearing. But Eunice resident Rose Gardner said today that her town should be taken into consideration by the TCEQ commissioners. “I want to bring awareness to the country,” Gardner said. “We have a nuclear waste issue that needs to be addressed but the solution is not at the site that Waste Control Specialists has chosen. It’s not my problem that they chose the wrong site; it is my problem that I have to fight this.”
In recent decisions on controversial environmental matters, the commissioners have either been unanimous or split 2-1 in favor of industry. (See Asarco smelter and coal plants.)
The commission meets tomorrow at 9:30am in Austin.
Got pot? If so, take comfort that you’re one of an estimated 80 million Americans who’ve at least tried the supposedly dangerous Schedule 1 drug, But do you know where your drug money actually goes? Is it funding terrorists, as the post-9/11 advertising campaign would have you believe?
Well, no, according to American Drug War: The Last White Hope, a compellingly researched new documentary by Austin filmmaker Kevin Booth that does an admirable job of following the money.
In the case of the United States’ war on drugs, the modern incarnation of which was launched by Richard Nixon in 1971, Booth makes the case that the ostensible battle is more accurately an economic incentive program for the private prison industry, funded out of self-interest by the Partnership for a Drug Free America (essentially a front group for legal drug industries, i.e. pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and tobacco) and waged by a series of increasingly ineffective administration-appointed Drug Czars, including current title-holder John Walters. You’ve never heard of him, Booth argues, because the current drug economy is working the way it should: drugs are flowing, prisons are full, and Wall Street is happy.
In painting this ugly picture, Booth traces the connections between the Iran/Contra debacle, infamous Los Angeles street dealer Ricky Ross, controversial CIA-cocaine connection journalist Gary Webb, Oliver North, Panamanian henchman Manuel Noriega, Phoenix’s tough-love anti-drug sheriff Joe Arpaio, pro-pot comedian/martyr Tommy Chong, the PATRIOT ACT, and the equally inscrutable war of terror.
Along the way, Booth questions why Afghanistan’s heroin production actually increased after the American invasion, gives Clinton-era Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey enough on-camera rope to make him look like a self-satisfied and not entirely bright tool, recontextualizes Osama bin Laden as a drug kingpin propped up by prohibition, and makes a convincing case that the drug war is not so much winnable as fund-able. The Office of National Drug Control Policy is budgeted at $18.5 billion for 2008.
Meanwhile, the burgeoning private prison industry finds itself a beneficiary of the million-plus nonviolent drug offenders currently behind bars in the U.S.
Observer fans will be curious to see reference to staff reporter Forrest Wilder’s Daily Texan reporting on the for-profit prison industry, and yet another examination of the drug war gone awry in Tulia, told through interviews with lawyer Jeff Blackburn and recently deceased fall-guy Joe Moore.
Booth’s narrative is hardly subtle (though he does manage to make it personal by including the legal and illegal drug-related deaths of his brother and friend), and the slightly ham-handed approach (Booth would have you believe that the solution to all these problems is to be found in Amsterdam-style decriminalization of “organic” drugs like marijuana and mushrooms) does a good job of hammering home the essential point: America’s war on drugs is incredibly costly, appallingly ineffective, and irretrievably entrenched.
American Drug War is strong medicine, impeccably sourced, and the DVD — which recently took top honors in four consecutive film festivals —is due to hit stores May 27. If you already agree with its premise, you’ll find further ammunition for your next argument. And if the film’s hypothesis sounds to you like just another round of paranoid conspiracy-theorizing, you just might learn something from it.
Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada has been embroiled the past year in a very contentious disagreement with his city commissioners over the construction of the border fence. In October 2007, the commissioners overruled him and allowed Department of Homeland Security officials to begin surveying city owned land for a fence. Since then, the Mayor Pro-Tem Charlie Atkinson has had some choice words for the mayor. This was reported in a Rio Grande Guardian story in April:
“Basically, he (Ahumada) is using the media for his own propaganda, because the bottom line is he is a deadbeat mayor, (and) he’s not going to get anywhere locally or nationally,” Atkinson said. “The commissioners are doing their hardest to make sure that they are communicating with DHS, and DHS is communicating with Brownsville staff.”
Last week, the Texas Border Coalition, an alliance of border mayors up and down the Texas-Mexico border filed a class-action lawsuit in Washington D.C. against Secretary Michael Chertoff and DHS over the border fence. One issue brought up in the lawsuit is equal protection guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment. The mayors argue that some politically well connected individuals are not getting the border fence while others less fortunate are. For example, as first mentioned in Holes in the Wall in the Observer, Dallas billionaire Ray L. Hunt escaped the fence on his 6,000-acre property while on either side, the tiny town of Granjeno was slated for destruction by the fence.
Mayor Ahumada said joining the lawsuit was not brought before the city commissioners, but that the city was on board. “We hope that it will force DHS to have a dialogue with us and consider a virtual fence,” he says.
Atkinson said he read about the lawsuit in the local newspaper. “It never went before the city commissioners,” he confirms.
Atkinson, who works for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said he wasn’t supposed to get into discussions about the border fence. However, he said he imagined something like the lawsuit would be considered by the commissioners first. “The city commissioners would want to have that input,” he says.
Nevertheless, Atkinson took a much milder tone toward the Mayor than he did in the April Guardian story. He said he didn’t know how the commissioners felt about the filing of the lawsuit. “This is just something the Mayor is doing with the coalition,” Atkinson says.
Update (see below)
NARAL Pro-Choice America endorsed Barack Obama for president today. “Sen. Obama has a fully pro-choice record, and we are confident that as president he will be a champion for women’s reproductive rights,” the organization formerly known simply as NARAL wrote on its Web site (you can view a video explaining the endorsement on the site as well).
The endorsement elicited an immediate rebuke from Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY’s List, which supports women candidates.
“I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton - who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade - to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process,” Malcolm said in a statement. “It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them.”
EMILY’s List has, not surprisingly, endorsed Clinton. The group has given her campaign $323,567; Clinton’s fifth-biggest donor. And Malcolm stumped for Clinton around the state before the Texas primary.
Update:
Some of NARAL’s state affiliates are angry about the Obama endorsement. The Texas affiliate is among those backing away. Here’s the statement form NARAL Pro-Choice Texas: “This decision was made internally by NARAL Pro-Choice America, based in Washington D.C., and without the consultation of the NARAL state affiliates across the country, including NARAL Pro-Choice Texas…..we will not be issuing an endorsement of a Presidential candidate. When a pro-choice nominee for President is named, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas will stand proudly with that pro-choice candidate.”
Today’s papers delivered the sad news that artistic innovator Robert Rauschenberg died Monday night of heart failure at his home on Captiva Island, Florida. Rauschenberg was 82. The New York Times‘ take is here.
Rauschenberg was best known as a hybridizer of artistic forms, working at different points in modes as varied as choreography, set design, and musical composition. Even making his name as a visual artist in the 1950s, he often blurred the lines between painting and sculpture. Critics considered him a link between abstract expressionists and the pop artists that followed. His work, however, regularly obliterated such boundaries.
Rauschenberg was born in 1925 in Port Authur, an unlikely crucible of Texas talent that also spawned Janis Joplin (born 1943). Neighboring Beaumont produced painter John Alexander (born 1945), currently enjoying a career retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Rauschenberg briefly studied pharmacology at the University of Texas before being drafted into WWII. Stationed in San Diego, he saw his first paintings at a gallery there and began to consider becoming an artist. He subsequently went to Paris on the G.I. Bill and began an artistic journey encompassing stints at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, collaborations with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, travel with Cy Twombly, and loft-sharing with Jasper Johns.
Rauschenberg’ work is viewable in his home state. It can be seen most prominently at Houston’s Menil Collection, which houses many early Rauschenberg works, and where the artist’s drawings are on display as part of the Menil’s “How Artists Draw: Toward the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center, a show coming to the end of its run May 18, so hurry. The Dallas Museum of Art owns more than 50 Rauschenberg works, and Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts also owns major works by the artist.
The Obama campaign held a conference call this morning to echo what even most pundits said last night — that their candidate has all but sealed up the nomination.
Obama Strategist David Plouffe said Obama netted 13 delegates last night. He gained 17 in his sweep of North Carolina and limited Hillary Clinton to a win of four delegates in Indiana. That more than erases Clinton’s haul from Pennsylvania. Plouffe said Obama now leads Clinton by 172 pledged delegates (that’s the non-superdelegate kind) — the biggest advantage of the campaign. “A high water mark,” he termed it. Obama is within 172 delegates of clinching the nomination (ahem, superdelegates, please pick up the white courtesy phone).
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, one of five prominent elected Democrats who joined Plouffe on the call, described Obama’s performance last night a “giant and decisive step” toward the nomination.
One reporter asked if the campaign expected Obama to be “Swift Boated” in the fall. This seems to be a recurring fear among Democrats — that Obama will wilt under GOP attacks. Plouffe responded that Obama’s better-than-expected performance last night following a month of controversy shows that “Sen. Obama has a toughness and an ability to deal with adversity that will serve him well in the general election.”
Kerry, Mr. Swift Boat himself, chimed in with an important and oft-forgotten fact of 2004: that the Kerry campaign didn’t have the resources in August of 2004 to respond to the Swift Boat attacks. Because the Democratic National Convention was so early and the GOP’s so late, the Kerry campaign faced five weeks in which it had to conserve general election funds for October. This time, not only will Obama — like “all Democrats everywhere” — learn from Kerry’s mistakes and respond quickly, but Obama also won’t have the financial constraints of his predecessor.
Earlier this morning, the Clinton campaign held its own conference call in which they disclosed that Clinton had lent her campaign $6.4 million. Nonetheless, Howard Wolfson, her campaign spokesman said there had been zero discussion about whether to drop out. Asked if Clinton should end her campaign, the elected officials on the Obama call demurred. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said, “There is a sincere respect for Hillary Clinton in this campaign… This is her decision.”
McCaskill then added, “We’re confident that she is going to do the right thing for the Democratic Party.”
