by Pat Hosken

Last week, Texas prison officials decided, after executing 475 people since 1976, its death row prisoners no longer deserve a last meal. You’re already taking away their lives, Texas. Don’t take away their dignity, too.

State Senator John Whitmire said the decision has nothing to do with cost, despite a tight Texas budget. The soon-to-be executed don’t deserve a last meal because they didn’t give their victims a chance for one, either, Whitmire said.

Yes, these inmates have killed or at least have been convicted of killing. But don’t dehumanize them; don’t say they don’t deserve their final nutrition intake.
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by Chip Ainsworth

When things go bad, people will use the word dysfunction without knowing its meaning. They know it’s not good and that’s about it. Dysfunctional is something that functions, but functions in pain.

This year’s Red Sox team is a good example of dysfunction. So was the year after the Red Sox won the World Series in 2005. That’s when the Red Sox had become, in the words of a Red Sox executive quoted by author Seth Mnookin, “The biggest bunch of prima donnas ever assembled.”

It was the season that Curt Schilling had nine saves and a 5.69 ERA as the team’s closer, pitcher Matt Clement was hit in the head by a line drive, and pictures of pretty coeds sitting in the laps of Derek Lowe and Bronson Arroyo were making the rounds on the Internet.

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Every once in awhile a new term/catchphrase/buzzword/meme catches fire here in the US. Sometimes it’s a function of the fact that our incredibly plastic language, with its myriad dynamic influences (everything from media to subcultural to ethnic to technological) sort of inherently generates new words. Other times the term is a result of political or PR craftiness, as was the case with “Japan-bashing” (and subsequently, any more generalized iteration of “______-bashing”). The lobbyist who made the phrase up later famously said ”Those people who use (the term) have the distinction of being my intellectual dupes.” Full story »

On Sunday at midnight, October2011′s Stop the Machine permit for occupying Freedom Plaza expired. While some, like our group from the Tulane School of Social Work, had to return to our respective cities, many held strong on the Plaza. Instead of leaving the grounds at midnight, remaining demonstrators threw a dance party. They announced that 99 percent of the U.S. population were invited to join. In return, park police proposed extending Stop the Machine’s permit for four additional months. The dance party won us the Plaza.

Dr. Margaret Flowers, Stop the Machine Organizer, speaks in low lighting at Sunday’s dance party on the Freedom Plaza permit extension and Smithsonian Air and Space Museum protest

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When I first moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1993 there were three big local bands: Big Head Todd & the Monsters, The Samples and The Reejers. BHTM were and still are an outstanding blues/rock band. The Samples were an alt act that reminded me at times of The Police and at other times of Johnny Clegg & Savuka (although both comparisons are misleading – Sean Kelly’s voice had a sort of Stingish quality about it and the Savuka reference is mainly about Jeep MacNichol’s drumming). The Reejers were a hard, noisy industrial-edged grunge act, I guess you’d say. All three of these were, in my view, outstanding bands, and they represented a broad diversity of sound. I was in heaven.

But then Boulder went 100% hippie on us and has since been defined by bands like Leftover Salmon, The String Cheese Incident and Yonder Mountain String Band.  Full story »

Some months back I submitted a long “poem” to a new publication called Uncanny Valley. (I quote-mark the word “poem” for reasons that are quickly evident to the reader. It’s part poem, but it’s also comprised of elements that are’t poetry at all – snips of drama script, blog entries, actual e-mail exchanges, photographs, newspaper clippings, playbills, and so on.) I was stunned when it was accepted – honestly, I never figured something that long and experimental had a chance anywhere.

But UV is different. Very different. They set themselves a mission to provide a forum for the unconventional. As the editors explain, “Other magazines make the words they publish fit their format. We make our format fit the words.”

Now, a few months later, Issue 0001 has dropped. My copy arrived in the mail today, and I can’t tell you how honored I am to be included in something this damned cool. Full story »

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

When a Hellfire missile fired from a drone aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency struck ground in Yemen last month, it killed two American citizens. One was New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, 40; the other was Samir Khan, 25, who publishes media for Al Qaeda promoting terrorism.

Al-Awlaki, says the American government, is a terrorist. Officials say he had crossed the line between propagandist and operations planner. That earned him a spot on a kill-or-capture list nearly two years ago. Is he a bad guy? Probably. Did he deserve to die? Perhaps. But neither “probably” nor “perhaps” is the standard for conviction in American criminal trials — beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, reports Charlie Savage of The New York Times, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel more than a year ago crafted a 50-page memorandum. Full story »

Two main topics consume the conversations of Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza today. Whether through announcements, group assemblies or personal chatter, most cannot help but consider two large issues: moving forward from an unsuccessful protest at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and action plans after midnight.

Yesterday afternoon marked the weekend’s largest October2011 protest march through Washington, which ended with an attempted entry into the National Air and Space Museum. Though security guards and pepper spray stopped demonstrators, the mission aimed to highlight the Museum’s drone exhibit and its glorification of military executions at a public institution. Full story »

God, did Mrs W and I hate the 1980s. This was the most horrible decade of our lives. Not personally, actually–our kids were growing up, and that certainly kept us busy and delighted. I accidentally became an elected public official of the State of New Jersey, which was a hoot for a while until we moved to Massachusetts. I changed careers as I was approaching 40, leaving academics to go into finance, and it pretty much worked out personally. But the decade was just a complete loser. No, worse—it actually set us back as a country and a society. Milton Friedman, Ronald “evolution is just a theory” Reagan, the gutting of anti-trust enforcement, the endless fascination with the wealthy, the Tisch-Steinberg wedding, the rise of Donald Trump, Oscar de la Renta and his “Living well is the best revenge” motto, Nancy Reagan, the trashing of the unions, Madonna, the rollback of sensible environmental enforcement, Barbara Bush, the elimination of all the measures that would have probably made us energy self-sufficient by now, James Watt, Studio 54, the cocaine epidemic on Wall Street, “cocaine chic” brought to us by Calvin Klein advertising, the fact that there was barely any music to listen to…the list goes on.

And then there was the art.
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It’s a beautiful Saturday morning on Freedom Plaza. Colorful signs, banners and tents fill the square as dedicated campers emerge from sleeping bags and prepare for another day advocating for change. I sit at our “base camp” with a group of social workers from Tulane University. Many have come to know us as the “Mardi Gras crowd.”

This is my first protest, but that’s not the case for many participating in October2011. We have met activists from places like Florida, Wisconsin, California Arizona, and New York. As more activist groups form in cities nationwide, we begin uniting through one single word: Occupy. Full story »

Let’s listen to a song first.

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Bert Jansch, guitarist extraordinaire, died two days ago, the same day as Steve Jobs. While both changed my life in positive ways, I’d have to say that Jansch’s influence was better. And I say that even as I sit here tappping away on my MacBook, charging up my iPod. Jobs gave me more interesting tools to live my life. Jansch gave it a bit more meaning than it would otherwise have had.

Jansch was in the forefront of the great British folk revival of the 1960s. This has been admirably described in Colin Harper’s excellent biography of Jansch, Dazzling Stranger. Full story »

Check this one out.

Topeka, Kansas City Council Considers Decriminalizing Domestic Violence To Save Money
Faced with their worst budget crises since the Great Depression, states and cities have resorted to increasingly desperate measures to cut costs. State and local governments have laid off teachers, slashed Medicaid funding, and even started unpaving roads and turning off streetlights.

But perhaps the most shocking idea to save money is being debated right now by the City Council of Topeka, Kansas. The city could repeal an ordinance banning domestic violence because some say the cost of prosecuting those cases is just too high: Full story »