Monday, January 5, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/edward-brooke-1st-black-man-elected-to-senate-dies-at-95/

Edward Brooke, 1st African-American elected to Senate, dies at 95
CBS/AP
January 3, 2015

BOSTON -- Former U.S. Sen. Edward W. Brooke, a liberal Republican who became the first African-American in U.S. history to win popular election to the Senate, died Saturday. He was 95.

Former Sen. Edward Brooke speaks during a ceremony to honor him with the Congressional Gold Medal Oct. 28, 2009, in Washington.

Brooke died of natural causes at his Coral Gables, Florida, home, said Ralph Neas, Brooke's former chief counsel. Brooke was surrounded by his family.

Brooke was elected to the Senate in 1966, becoming the first African-American to sit in that branch from any state since Reconstruction and one of nine blacks who have ever served there - including Barack Obama.

After Mr. Obama's presidential election in 2008, Brooke told The Associated Press he was "thankful to God" that he lived to see it. And with the president on hand in October 2009, Brooke received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award Congress has to honor civilians.

"Senator Brooke led an extraordinary life of public service," Mr. Obama said in a statement Saturday. "As the first African-American elected as a state's Attorney 

General and first African-American U.S. Senator elected after reconstruction, Ed Brooke stood at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and economic fairness."

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the state's first black governor, said: "I have lost a friend and mentor." Secretary of State John Kerry, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts, said Brooke showed "remarkable political courage."

A Republican in a largely Democratic state, Brooke was one of Massachusetts' most popular political figures during most of his 12 years in the Senate.

Brooke earned his reputation as a Senate liberal in part by becoming the first Republican senator to publicly urge President Richard Nixon to resign. He helped lead the forces in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment and was a defender of school busing to achieve racial integration, a bitterly divisive issue in Boston.

He also lent his name to the Brooke amendment to the federal housing act, passed in 1969, which limited to 25 percent the amount of income a family must pay for rent in public housing.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday recalled his first impression of the newly elected senator when McConnell was a Senate staffer and described Brooke as "a model of courage and honesty in office."

"Even from across the Senate chamber, you could sense that this was a Senator of historic importance," the Kentucky Republican said in a statement. "Indeed, he was."

Late in his second term, Brooke divorced his wife of 31 years, Remigia, in a stormy proceeding that attracted national attention.

Repercussions from the case spurred an investigation into his personal finances by the Senate Ethics Committee and a probe by the state welfare department and ultimately cost him the 1978 election. He was defeated by Democrat Rep. Paul E. Tsongas.

Tsongas' widow, U.S. Rep. Nikki Tsongas, said Saturday that Brooke's career was "as courageous as it was historic."

In a Boston Globe interview in 2000, Brooke recalled the pain of losing his bid for a third term.

"It was just a divorce case. It was never about my work in the Senate. There was never a charge that I committed a crime, or even nearly committed a crime," Brooke said.

In 2008, pioneering newswoman Barbara Walters said she had an affair with the then-married Brooke in the 1970s, but it ended before he lost the 1978 election. She called him "exciting" and "brilliant."

Brooke received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a White House ceremony in 2004. Five years later, when Brooke received the congressional honor in Washington, he cited the issues facing Congress - health care, the economy and the wars overseas - and called on lawmakers to put their partisan differences aside.

"We've got to get together," Brooke said, turning his eyes to Senate GOP Leader McConnell. "We have no alternative. There's nothing left. It's time for politics to be put aside on the back burner."

As Brooke sought the Senate seat in 1966, profiles in the national media reminded readers that he had won office handily in a state where blacks made up just 2 percent of the population - the state that had also given the nation its only Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.

He beat Democrat Endicott Peabody, a former governor who also supported civil rights, by a 3-to-2 margin despite predictions of a "white backlash" against him.

Commenting on Brooke's election and other developments that day, Martin Luther King Jr. said that "despite appeals to bigotry of an intensity and vulgarity never before witnessed in the North, millions of white voters remained unshaken in their commitment to decency."

Brooke had parlayed his probes of local corruption into a successful run for state attorney general in 1962 when he became the highest ranking black elected official in the nation. He won re-election as attorney general in 1964 even though Democrats dominated other races.

Somewhat aloof from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, especially the militant wing, he said blacks had to win allies, not fight adversaries. But he also said of civil rights leaders: "Thank God we have them. But everyone has to do it in the best way he can."

He had refused to endorse Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, commenting later, "You can't say the Negro left the Republican Party; the Negro feels he was evicted from the Republican Party."

The son of a Veterans Administration lawyer, Brooke was raised in a middle-class black section of Washington, attending segregated schools through his graduation from Howard University in 1941. He served in an all-black combat unit in World War II, and later settled in Boston after graduating from Boston University Law School.

Brooke was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and went public the following year, saying he wanted to encourage men to perform self-examinations and advocating that insurance companies cover male mammograms.

Brooke is survived by his second wife, Anne Fleming Brooke; their son Edward Brooke IV; his daughters from his first marriage, Remi Goldstone and Edwina Petit; stepdaughter Melanie Laflamme, and four grandchildren.



http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html

The Journal Of Blacks In Higher Education
Black Student College Graduation Rates Remain Low, But Modest Progress Begins to Show

Nationwide, the black student graduation rate remains at a dismally low 42 percent. But the rate has improved by three percentage points over the past two years. More encouraging is the fact that over the past seven years the black student graduation rate has improved at almost all of the nation's highest-ranked universities.

On page 11 of this issue of JBHE we report the encouraging news that African-American enrollments at the vast majority of our nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities have shown significant improvement over the past quarter-century.

But a more important statistical measure of the performance of blacks in higher education is how many black students throughout the nation are completing school and earning a college degree. Department of Education data reveals that, as expected, black students who earn a four-year college degree have incomes that are substantially higher than blacks who have only some college experience but have not earned a degree. Most important, blacks who complete a four-year college education have a median income that is near parity with similarly educated whites.

According to the most recent statistics, the nationwide college graduation rate for black students stands at an appallingly low rate of 42 percent. This figure is 20 percentage points below the 62 percent rate for white students. Here, the only positive news we have to report is that over the past two years the black student graduation rate has improved by three percentage points.

Black Women Outpace Black Men 
in College Completions

In each of the three years from 1998 through 2000 there was a one percentage point decline in the graduation rate for black men. But for the past four years the graduation rate for black men improved by one percentage point and now stands at 35 percent. Over the past 15 years black men have improved their graduation rate from 28 percent to 35 percent.

This year the college graduation rate for black women rose by one percentage point to 46 percent. And over the past decade and a half, the graduation rates for black women have shown strong and steady gains. Turning in a powerful performance, black women have improved their college completion rate from 34 percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 2005.

Graduation rates play an important role in measuring the success of affirmative action programs. Many opponents of affirmative action assert, often without even looking at the actual data, that black student graduation rates are damaged by race-sensitive admissions. It is critical to review the statistics to see if this is true. In this report we emphasize the graduation rates of black students at the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. The reason is that almost always these are the institutions that have the strongest commitments to race-sensitive admissions.

For many years Harvard University, traditionally one of the nation's strongest supporters of affirmative action, has produced the highest black student graduation rate of any college or university in the nation. But for some unexplained and possibly immaterial reason, Harvard slipped to second place in 2004. But now Harvard's black student graduation rate has increased to 95 percent, once again the highest among U.S. colleges and universities.

Amherst College, a small liberal arts college in western Massachusetts, now has a black student graduation rate of 94 percent, the second highest in the nation. Last year Amherst had bested Harvard by two percentage points. Princeton University ranks third in the nation with a black student graduation rate of 93 percent. Six other highly ranked colleges and universities in the United States posted a black student graduation rate of 90 percent or above. They are Wellesley College, Brown University, Northwestern University, Washington University, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.

Eleven other high-ranking institutions have a black student graduation above 85 percent. They are Stanford University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, Davidson College, Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Smith College, Swarthmore College, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University.

Academically selective institutions are almost always strongly committed to affirmative action in admissions, yet at the same time they tend to deliver a high black student graduation rate. Obviously, this undercuts the assertion made by many conservatives that black students admitted to our most prestigious colleges and universities under race-conscious admissions programs are incapable of competing with their white peers and should instead seek admissions at less academically rigorous schools. The fact that almost all entering black students at Harvard, Amherst, Princeton, and several other highly ranked colleges and universities go on to earn their diplomas shows that African Americans do compete successfully at our nation's most prestigious institutions of higher learning.

FOR MORE ON THIS ARTICLE, SEE THE WEBSITE ABOVE.




“Brooke earned his reputation as a Senate liberal in part by becoming the first Republican senator to publicly urge President Richard Nixon to resign. He helped lead the forces in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment and was a defender of school busing to achieve racial integration, a bitterly divisive issue in Boston. He also lent his name to the Brooke amendment to the federal housing act, passed in 1969, which limited to 25 percent the amount of income a family must pay for rent in public housing.... Somewhat aloof from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, especially the militant wing, he said blacks had to win allies, not fight adversaries. But he also said of civil rights leaders: "Thank God we have them. But everyone has to do it in the best way he can." He had refused to endorse Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, commenting later, "You can't say the Negro left the Republican Party; the Negro feels he was evicted from the Republican Party."... The son of a Veterans Administration lawyer, Brooke was raised in a middle-class black section of Washington, attending segregated schools through his graduation from Howard University in 1941. He served in an all-black combat unit in World War II, and later settled in Boston after graduating from Boston University Law School. Brooke was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and went public the following year, saying he wanted to encourage men to perform self-examinations and advocating that insurance companies cover male mammograms.”

Brooke got his college degree at Howard and then went on to law school at Boston University in 1941 and the years afterward. His service in the Senate occurred between 1966 and 1978, during the period of turmoil from the Nixon administration. According to Wikipedia, he then joined a law firm in Washington, DC and was a member of the board of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Though he was a Republican, he was a liberal, and was instrumental in many important bills on civil rights and social issues including school busing to achieve racial equality. I don't think there is even one remaining moderate to liberal Republican in political office today. It is our country's loss.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/prince-andrew-on-defensive-after-allegations-of-sexual-impropriety/

Prince Andrew on defensive after allegations of sexual impropriety
APJanuary 4, 2015

LONDON - Buckingham Palace on Sunday stepped up efforts to defend Prince Andrew after the British royal was embroiled in claims of sexual impropriety with an underage woman.

In a second statement since the claims surfaced, officials "emphatically denied" allegations by an unidentified woman who said she was forced to have sex with the royal when she was under the age of 18.

The woman named 54-year-old Prince Andrew, known as the Duke of York, in papers filed with a Florida court last week. The filing was submitted as part of a lengthy lawsuit against American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who the woman claims forced her to have sex with prominent people, including Prince Andrew. The woman was only identified as "Jane Doe Number 3" in the papers.

She has also claims she was forced to have sex with Alan Dershowitz, a high-profile, 76-year-old lawyer who has represented clients including O.J. Simpson.

"I categorically and unequivocally, without any reservations, deny that there was any sexual contact of any kind between me and any of the Jane Does connected with Jeffrey Epstein, whether underage or not," Dershowitz told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said he is filing a disbarment complaint against the attorneys who filed the motion in the lawsuit as well as an affidavit denying the allegations.

"I am challenging the woman to come forward and state it publicly and to file criminal charges against me." He said he has agreed to waive the statute of limitations and to waive immunity, which he said no guilty person would do.

"I have no fear. I have nothing to hide," Dershowitz said.

Royal officials on Friday denied "any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors" by Andrew, and strengthened that stance Sunday after two tabloid newspapers published details of interviews with the alleged victim. The controversy has dominated British news coverage since Friday.

"It is emphatically denied that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with (the woman)," Buckingham Palace said in a statement. "The allegations made are false and without any foundation."

The statements are unusual because royal spokespeople typically refrain from commenting on most media reports.

The woman claims she was forced to have sex with the royal in London, in New York and on a private Caribbean island between 1999 to 2002.

Those claims were filed with a court on Tuesday as part of a lawsuit centering on Epstein. The billionaire financier was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008 after pleading guilty to child sex offenses, but several women want authorities to reconsider a plea deal that they said allowed Epstein to avoid more serious federal charges. Dershowitz represented Epstein in that case.

Dershowitz and Andrew are not named as defendants in that case, and no criminal charges or formal allegations have been made against them.

The prince, who is Queen Elizabeth II's second son and fifth in line to the throne, has been dogged for years over his relationship with Epstein. In July 2011, the royal stepped down from his role as a U.K. trade ambassador following controversy over his links with the billionaire.



Jeffrey Epstein
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jeffrey Edward Epstein (born January 20, 1953) is an American financier.[1] He worked at Bear Stearns early in his career and subsequently formed his own firm.

Epstein is known for funding eminent scientists around the world, some of whom have won the Nobel Prize; much of this research is geared towards discovering new medical treatments.[2] He is responsible for founding The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University, one of the first academic departments to study the mathematics of evolution.[3][dead link]

In 2008 he was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, and is a registered sex offender.[4][1

Epstein is a major financial supporter of the sciences. In 2000 he established the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, which funds science research and education around the world.[12] In 2003, Epstein donated $30 million to Harvard Universityto set up the university's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, a graduate department which studies evolution and the evolution of microbiology from a purely mathematical point of view. Under the direction of Martin Nowak, Epstein was solely responsible for financing the Program's research such as the first mathematical model of cancer cell evolution and one of the first models of virus growth, including HIV and HIV resistance to anti-retroviral drugs.[13] Such models led to novel approaches to treating genetic resistance to inhibitor drugs, notably reinforcing the need for a cocktail approach towards cancer as well as HIV. Epstein also funded Nowak's original research on the origin of life, RNA replication on Earth and the evolution of language.[3] Prior to 2003, Epstein's foundation funded Nowak's research at theInstitute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.[2][14]

Epstein has provided millions of dollars to scientists such as Gerald Edelman, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Hawking,Kip Thorne, Marvin Minsky, Lawrence Krauss, Lee Smolin and Gregory Benford.[2][19][20] In 2006, Epstein's foundations sponsored a conference on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands with Hawking, Krauss, and Nobel laureates Gerard 't Hooft, David Gross and Frank Wilczek, covering such topics as unified gravity theory, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, the origins of language and global threats to the Earth.[20]

Solicitation of prostitution[edit]

In March 2005, a woman contacted Palm Beach police, concerned that her 14-year-old daughter had been taken to Epstein’s mansion by an older girl and paid $300 after stripping and massaging him.[11] She had undressed but left on her underwear.[24]

Police started an 11-month undercover investigation of Epstein, followed by a search of his home. Subsequently, they alleged that Epstein had paid several escorts to perform sexual acts on him. Interviews with five alleged victims and 17 witnesses under oath, phone messages, a high school transcript and other items they found in Epstein's trash and home allegedly showed that some girls were under 18, although some maintained to him at the time that they were of ″proper″ age.[25] A search of Epstein's home found numerous photos of girls throughout the house, some of whom had been interviewed earlier by the police.[24] He had set up a system of young women recruiting other women for his massage services.[11] Two housekeepers stated to the police that Epstein would receive "massages" every day whenever he stayed in Palm Beach.[24] In May 2006, Palm Beach police filed a probable cause affidavit saying that Epstein should be charged with four counts of unlawful sex with minors and one molestation count.[24] His team of lawyers included Gerald B. Lefcourt, Alan Dershowitz and later also Kenneth Starr.[11] Epstein passed a lie detector test in which he was asked whether he knew of the under-age status of the girls -- though lie detector tests are not based on sound scientific principles.[26][27]

Instead of following the recommendation of the police, the prosecutors considered the evidence weak[26] and presented it to a grand jury, an uncommon procedure in non-capital cases. Former chief of Palm Beach police Michael Reiter later wrote to State Attorney Barry Krischer to complain of the state's "highly unusual" conduct and asked him to remove himself from the case.[11] The grand jury returned only a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution,[28] to which Epstein pleaded not guilty in August 2006.[29]

In June 2008, after pleading to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution, Epstein began serving an 18-month sentence. He served 13 months in jail of his 18-month sentence for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. He is a registered sex offender.[4][30]

After the accusations became public, several parties returned donations they had received from Epstein, including Eliot L. Spitzer, Bill Richardson,[14] and the Palm Beach Police Department.[25] Harvard announced that it would not return any money.[14]




"I categorically and unequivocally, without any reservations, deny that there was any sexual contact of any kind between me and any of the Jane Does connected with Jeffrey Epstein, whether underage or not," Dershowitz told The Associated Press on Sunday. Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said he is filing a disbarment complaint against the attorneys who filed the motion in the lawsuit as well as an affidavit denying the allegations. "I am challenging the woman to come forward and state it publicly and to file criminal charges against me." He said he has agreed to waive the statute of limitations and to waive immunity, which he said no guilty person would do.... Dershowitz and Andrew are not named as defendants in that case, and no criminal charges or formal allegations have been made against them. The prince, who is Queen Elizabeth II's second son and fifth in line to the throne, has been dogged for years over his relationship with Epstein. In July 2011, the royal stepped down from his role as a U.K. trade ambassador following controversy over his links with the billionaire.”

“After the accusations became public, several parties returned donations they had received from Epstein, including Eliot L. Spitzer, Bill Richardson,[14] and the Palm Beach Police Department.[25] Harvard announced that it would not return any money.[14]” The Palm Beach Department received a “donation” from him, but returned it. Sex and corruption among the wealthy goes on constantly, apparently. It's interesting that the arch Republican Kenneth Starr is one of those who defended Epstein. Having Bill Clinton's name linked with a sexual scandal isn't new, and Prince Andrew has also been in the news for that reason. I'm sorry to see that most of these people are liberals politically. I do hope Obama's name doesn't show up in any such scandal. I want to continue thinking he's a good man. A commenter on my Google Plus site said in regard to this news clip “He's a man.” While I acknowledge the basic truth of the statement, I still don't like it. A man once said to me, “All men are dogs.” I found a book under that search term on Amazon just now – “Men Are Dogs: A Woman's Guide to Choosing Her Breed of Man,” By Jeannette Wright, Paperback – October, 2003.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-worker-under-observation-for-ebola-exposure/

Health worker under observation for Ebola exposure
APJanuary 4, 2015

OMAHA, Neb. - An American health care worker who experienced high-risk exposure to the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone arrived at a Nebraska hospital Sunday for observation.

The patient landed in Omaha on Sunday afternoon. Paramedics wearing full-body protective gear drove the patient to the Nebraska Medical Center, which has a specialized biocontainment unit.

Dr. Phil Smith, who leads the unit, said the patient is neither ill nor contagious. He said the patient will be observed for any signs of Ebola throughout the virus' 21-day incubation period, and that "all appropriate precautions" will be taken.

Hospital spokesman Taylor Wilson added that doctors and nurses are wearing full protective gear and taking the same precautions they did when treating patients with Ebola, even though this patient hasn't tested positive.

The Omaha hospital treated three patients with Ebola last fall. Dr. Rick Sacra, who worked at a Liberian hospital, and freelance video journalist Ashoka Mukpo, who also worked in Liberia, both recovered from Ebola after being treated at the hospital. Dr. Martin Salia, who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone, was much more ill when he arrived in Nebraska and he did not survive.

Doctors have said early treatment increases the chances of surviving the virus.

Few details have been released about the latest patient. Hospital officials said he or she would have to agree to disclose any information.

The World Health Organization estimates that roughly 8,000 people have died from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa that began about a year ago. The epidemic has been centered in the countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.




“An American health care worker who experienced high-risk exposure to the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone arrived at a Nebraska hospital Sunday for observation. The patient landed in Omaha on Sunday afternoon. Paramedics wearing full-body protective gear drove the patient to the Nebraska Medical Center, which has a specialized biocontainment unit. Dr. Phil Smith, who leads the unit, said the patient is neither ill nor contagious. He said the patient will be observed for any signs of Ebola throughout the virus' 21-day incubation period, and that "all appropriate precautions" will be taken.”

This is the way Ebola cases should be handled. The nurse a few months ago who complained so much about being under quarantine was not, in my viewpoint, either logical or acting in the best interests of society. As a medical professional she should have known better. That kind of thing is how the Ebola epidemic got so far out of hand in Africa – people continuing to eat “bush meat” including fruit bats and those who developed symptoms running away as though they could escape the illness. It's very highly irrational.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-john-boehners-reelection-as-house-speaker-in-jeopardy/

Is John Boehner's re-election as House speaker in jeopardy?
By REBECCA KAPLAN CBS NEWS
January 5, 2015

With just two days until the House will elect their next leader, the man who holds the post, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, has found he has a little competition.

Boehner had been cruising toward a drama-free re-election this Tuesday after successfully winning re-election among his Republican colleagues in November. But over the weekend, a handful of conservative members of the House announced they would not support Boehner, and Reps. Ted Yoho, R-Florida, and Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, have said they might make a run to unseat Boehner.

The lame-duck session of Congress didn't sit well with several members who objected to the $1.1 trillion spending bill (also known as the "CRomnibus") that squeaked through Congress during December, averting a potential government shutdown.

"Republicans gave away the best tool available to rein in our liberal activist President: the power of the purse," said Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma, last Friday, the first member to announce he would not be voting to re-elect Boehner. Bridenstine called the measure a failure because it did not defund President Obama's Affordable Care Act or try to block him from deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.

Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, and Ted Yoho, R-Florida, followed with their own announcements that Boehner had lost their votes for speaker. Massie also pointed to the spending bill, which he said the GOP leadersip introduced at the last minute as a way to coerce members to vote for it. Yoho wrote on Facebook Saturday night that there needed to be a change in leadership, though he was otherwise less critical of Boehner. In a follow up statement, Yoho said that "if needed" he would be willing to run to give members another option for leadership.

"This is not a personal attack against Mr. Boehner, however, the people desire and deserve a choice. In November, they resoundingly rejected the status quo," he said.

But it was Gohmert who said he would definitely challenge Boehner, first saying on "Fox and Friends" Sunday that "a lot of Republicans" had told him they would vote for a Boehner alternative. Later, he released a statement announcing his own candidacy.

"There have been numerous examples of problematic Republican leadership, but we were hopeful our leaders got the voters' message. However, after our Speaker forced through the CRomnibus by passing it with Democratic votes and without time to read it, it seemed clear that we needed new leadership," Gohmert said. Though he applauded Yoho for putting his name forward, Gohmert said he had also been encouraged to run by friends and supporters.

By Sunday afternoon, Bridenstine's political organization, Friends of Jim Bridenstine, had established gohmertforspeaker.com in support of Gohmert's candidacy. It bears endorsements from both Bridenstine and Massie.

Boehner's office has responded coolly to the challenge.

"Rep. Boehner was selected as the House Republican Conference's choice for Speaker in November, and he expects to be elected by the whole House next week," spokesman Michael Steel said.

A Republican strategist and former top congressional aide, John Feehery, also predicted the opposition "won't amount to a hill of beans."

"Boehner will be reelected overwhelmingly. There is no precedent in the history of the House of a Speaker's party exceeding expectations in the election and then dumping its Speaker," Feehery told CBS News. "All of these guys who are complaining about Boehner have nothing to lose because the Speaker has made clear there will be no retribution. So, he is giving them a free shot."

In all likelihood, Boehner will survive this latest challenge. He faced a similar conservative insurrection in 2013 when morale among the GOP was far lower, fresh off Mr. Obama's re-election. Boehner won his 2013 election for speaker with 220 votes, six more than he needed. The next-closest candidate was then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, who received three votes.

Each of the conservatives who oppose Boehner this time also opposed him then: Bridenstine and Yoho supported Cantor, Gohmert backed former Rep. Allen West, R-Florida, who had just lost his re-election bid in November, and Massie voted for Rep. Justin Amash, R-Michigan.

Two of Boehner's other detractors from that election are no longer in Congress, and a third, Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mexico, voted in favor of the spending bill that has caused such discontent.

Five lawmakers who didn't back Boehner in 2013 could still vote against him, but the Republican majority also grew by 12 members during the 2014 midterms, giving Boehner a few more potential supporters and some breathing room.

That's not to say it will be all smooth sailing ahead for Boehner. Even though he is now working with a Senate Republican majority, there are sure to be showdowns with the president over the next year as conservative members push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, approve construction of the Keystone pipeline, block the president's efforts to limit deportations, and more. Many of those agenda items will prompt presidential vetoes, and Boehner may again find himself searching for ways to convince his conference that the most extreme responses--like shutting down the government--do not necessarily serve the party well in the long run.




"Republicans gave away the best tool available to rein in our liberal activist President: the power of the purse," said Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma, last Friday, the first member to announce he would not be voting to re-elect Boehner. Bridenstine called the measure a failure because it did not defund President Obama's Affordable Care Act or try to block him from deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.... "There have been numerous examples of problematic Republican leadership, but we were hopeful our leaders got the voters' message. However, after our Speaker forced through the CRomnibus by passing it with Democratic votes and without time to read it, it seemed clear that we needed new leadership,"... "Rep. Boehner was selected as the House Republican Conference's choice for Speaker in November, and he expects to be elected by the whole House next week," spokesman Michael Steel said. A Republican strategist and former top congressional aide, John Feehery, also predicted the opposition "won't amount to a hill of beans."... Many of those agenda items will prompt presidential vetoes, and Boehner may again find himself searching for ways to convince his conference that the most extreme responses--like shutting down the government--do not necessarily serve the party well in the long run.”

Is Boehner the next Republican who is “too liberal?” He's rational, but he's surely not liberal. Too many of those Republicans want a mindless group of members who will speak, think and move in unison. I couldn't stand to live under that sort of control. The difference between liberals and conservatives is getting greater by the moment. Yesterday the Hawaiian Senator left the part over that very issue. Hopefully other Republicans who have a mind of their own and who value the most basic American freedoms will leave the party as well. See the article below on “liberal Republicans.”

The Revolt Of The Elites, below, states: “The reason this revolt of the elites happened is pretty simple: national Republicans understand that the party's image as a bunch of intolerant, vindictive right-wing nuts—in other words, the idea that the Tea Party is the GOP—is bad for its electoral prospects, and makes it more difficult to win every future election.” It also says, “On many issues, there are between a quarter and two-fifths of Republicans who disagree with the party's position. 34 percent think marijuana should be legal, 33 percent think gun laws should be more strict, 28 percent support federally funded universal pre-K, 24 percent think global warming is caused mostly by human activity, 36 percent support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, 40 percent support same-sex marriage, and 37 percent think the distribution of wealth should be more fair.” Could it be that some of those people voted for Obama?

I remember from my younger years in the South, when Nelson Rockefeller was in the Senate, that the most right-wing, heartless SOBs were Southern Democrats or “Dixiecrats.” Those guys left the Democratic Party with the passage of the Civil Rights Act under Johnson and joined the Republicans. They have now come to the fore of the party as the Tea Party, and are becoming a thorn in the Republican flesh as they demand more and more things to go their way. I think, if these two articles are true, that a turn among Republicans toward a more actively moderate position is occurring. At least I hope so. Read these two American Prospect articles.



http://prospect.org/article/liberal-republicans%E2%80%94theyre-alive

The American Prospect
Liberal Republicans—They're Alive!
PAUL WALDMAN
MAY 15, 2014

The fractures in the GOP aren't just about tactics, they're also about issues.

Until not long ago, we tended to think of Republicans as unified and focused, and Democrats as inherently fractious (see, for instance, the evergreen "Dems In Disarray" headline). These days the opposite is true—or at least it's the case that Republicans have become just as divided as Democrats. But how much of that is about Washington infighting and intraparty struggles for power, and how much is actually substantive and matters to voters? This post from The Upshot at theNew York Times has some provocative hints. Using polling data from February that tested opinions on a range of issues, they found that Republicans are much less unified than Democrats when it comes to their opinions on policy:

On these seven issues, 47 percent of self-identified Democrats agree with the party’s stance on at least six of them. And 66 percent agree with at least five. Republicans were less cohesive, with just 25 percent agreeing on six or more issues, and 48 percent agreeing on five.

Piling on more issues showed similar results. To check our results, we also created an 11-issue index that added four topics: federal funding for universal pre-kindergarten, the distribution of wealth in the United States, the minimum wage and abortion. A majority of Democrats—61 percent—agreed with at least eight Democratic positions, compared with 42 percent of Republicans who agreed with eight or more Republican positions.

Even though you have a relatively large number of issues being tested, it could be a function of the particular ones we're talking about. For instance, minimum wage increases are hugely popular and always have been, so it isn't surprising that plenty of Republicans break with their party on that, and it doesn't necessarily signify a fundamental and meaningful fracture. So I went over to the original poll, which has a nice interactive graphic you can use to see crosstabs on each question, and there are some interesting signs of dissent within the GOP. For instance:

20 percent of Republicans say their party is nominating candidates who are too conservative, compared to only 9 percent of Democrats who say their party's candidates are too liberal. At the same time, 32 percent of Republicans say their party's candidates aren't conservative enough, compared to 18 percent of Democrats who say their party's candidates aren't liberal enough.

29 percent of Republicans say they have an unfavorable view of the Republican party, compared to 14 percent of Democrats who have an unfavorable view of the Democratic party.

On many issues, there are between a quarter and two-fifths of Republicans who disagree with the party's position. 34 percent think marijuana should be legal, 33 percent think gun laws should be more strict, 28 percent support federally funded universal pre-K, 24 percent think global warming is caused mostly by human activity, 36 percent support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, 40 percent support same-sex marriage, and 37 percent think the distribution of wealth should be more fair.

The Tea Party gets all the press, and not without reason, but there is obviously a significant bloc of Republicans who are displeased with their party's right turn in the last few years. We're talking about more than just a few disgruntled Rockefeller Republicans bemoaning it after 18 holes at the Greenwich country club. We're talking about as much as a third of the party's voters.

Of course, issues aren't everything, and these days, conservatism is defined in many ways. It's a set of policy positions, but it can also be measured by the depth of your loathing for Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular, or by the kinds of political tactics you embrace. But this is a good reminder that there are significant numbers of Republicans out there who, if you just look at what they think about issues, actually look pretty liberal.



http://prospect.org/article/revolt-elites

The American Prospect
The Revolt of the Elites
PAUL WALDMAN
FEBRUARY 27, 2014

The Republican establishment beats back the Tea Party on Arizona's anti-gay bill. So how important is this event?

For the longest time, Democrats were the party of infighting and disunity, whose squabbling never failed to find its way into the news. It's a grim inside joke among liberals that the most common headline in the political media is "Democrats in Disarray." But it hasn't been that way for a while. In fact, perhaps the most important political dynamic of the current era is the conflict within the previously monolithic Republican party. Not that there wasn't always tension between the Republican establishment, whose primary concern was laissez-faire economics, and the conservative foot soldiers spread across the country, who cared much more about social issues. But open warfare between the two was rare.

Not these days, though. And after a couple of years of the establishment running scared, today they can celebrate (if that's the right word) a momentary victory. Yesterday, Arizona governor Jan Brewer vetoed the bill passed by the legislature there that would have made it legal to deny services to gay people as long as the one doing the discriminating cited their religious beliefs. The veto itself wasn't really a shock—Brewer is much more a malleable politician attuned to public opinion than a Tea Party true believer. But the pressure she was under was truly remarkable.

It was only a few years ago that Republicans saw gay-bashing as the ticket to electoral victories on every level. And "religious liberty" was supposed to be a fabulous way for them to undermine liberal policy making. But just look at who came out against the Arizona bill. Both the state's Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake. Mitt Romney. D.C Comics supervillain and Florida governor Rick Scott. All kinds of Arizona businesses. The NFL. Newt Gingrich, for pete's sake.

The reason this revolt of the elites happened is pretty simple: national Republicans understand that the party's image as a bunch of intolerant, vindictive right-wing nuts—in other words, the idea that the Tea Party is the GOP—is bad for its electoral prospects, and makes it more difficult to win every future election. Much more urgently, there's a mid-term congressional election coming up in nine months, and the last thing they want is to have it turn on issues like gay rights and immigration. The plan is just to hope the economy doesn't improve and keep  saying that Obamacare is a disaster. Combined with their baseline advantage (the opposition party usually does better in off-year elections, and Republicans, with their older and wealthier voters, have a turnout advantage in those elections as well), that could be enough to enable them to win back the Senate.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the last few days, Brewer got a couple of quiet phone calls from GOP bigwigs, explaining that this law was a headache the party didn't need. Combined with the evidence that it would do damage to her state, it wasn't a tough decision. But at the same time, it would be a mistake to make too much out of this one case. It isn't as though the Republican elites have routed the Tea Party once and for all. There are still Tea Party primary challengers striking fear in the hearts of incumbent Republicans. That tension still simmers, and it's going to keep simmering for some time.

Just today the New York Times is out with a poll showing that a hefty 42 percent of Republicans say they're "mostly discouraged" about the future of the Republican party. The numbers are almost the same among Republican moderates and Republican conservatives, though I suspect for opposite reasons: the conservatives are discouraged because the party isn't giving them everything they want, and the moderates are discouraged because the party is giving the conservatives too much.

In a rather vivid contrast, only 20 percent of Democrats say they're mostly discouraged about the future of their party. A few years ago, you could never have imagined such a thing.





http://www.npr.org/2015/01/03/374629580/a-young-generation-sees-greener-pastures-in-agriculture

A Young Generation Sees Greener Pastures In Agriculture
JENNIFER MITCHELL
JANUARY 03, 2015

America's heartland is graying. The average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58.3 — and that number has been steadily ticking upward for more than 30 years.

Overall, fewer young people are choosing a life on the land. But in some places around the country, like Maine, that trend is reversing. Small agriculture may be getting big again — and there's new crop of farmers to thank for it.

Fulfilling Work, Noble Work

On a windy hillside just a few miles from Maine's rocky mid-coast, it's 10 degrees; snow is crunching underfoot. Hairy highland cattle munch on flakes of hay and native Katahdin sheep are mustered in a white pool just outside the fence. Not far away, heritage chickens scuttle about a mobile poultry house that looks a bit like a Conestoga wagon.

Marya Gelvosa, majored in English literature and has never lived out in the country before. "Just a few years ago, if you'd told me that I was going to be a farmer, I would have probably laughed at you," she says.

But Gelvosa and her partner, Josh Gerritsen, a New York City photographer, have thrown all their resources into this farm, where they provide a small local base of customers with beef, lamb and heritage poultry. Gerritsen says their livelihood now ties them to a community.

"Living in the city, you commute by subway, you buy your food at the supermarket, you work in a cubicle all day," he says. "You're not intimately tied to anything."

Gelvosa and Gerritsen are part of a generation for whom global warming has been hanging overhead like the sword of Damocles. In fact, all the young farmers interviewed for this story mentioned environmental health and climate change as factors in choosing a life on the land.

It's a generation that has grown up in the digital age, but embraced some very old-school things: the farmers market, craft beer, artisan cheese. The point, they say, is to find a way to live high-quality, sustainable lives, and help others do the same.

"It's very fulfilling work," Gelvosa says, "and noble work."

A Cultural Shift Towards Valuing Agriculture

In Maine, farmers under the age of 35 have increased by 40 percent, says John Rebar, executive director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension: "Nationally, that increase is 1.5 percent."

And young farmers are being drawn to other rural Northeastern states as well, he says. Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were all hotbeds of activity during the previous back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. Many of those pioneers stayed and helped create farming and gardening organizations that now offer support and encouragement for new farmers.

The social climate now is very different than the one Rebar encountered 30 years ago when he himself was an aspiring producer of cattle and sheep.

"I was called 'Farmer' by my classmates in high school. That was okay with me, but you could tell it wasn't a term of endearment," he says. "There was a lot of negativity about encouraging young people to go into farming.

"So it's a cultural shift that says we value this as part of our society. We want this to be part of our social fabric, so we're going to figure out ways to make it work."

Part of making it work means access to land. On their coastal farm, where acreage is more expensive than it is inland, Gelvosa and Gerritsen say they're luckier than most; Gerritsen's parents had bought the property years before, which made starting up for the couple a lot easier.

In Iowa, farmland prices are inching toward $9,000 per acre, which has some financial experts talking about a farmland bubble. But sparsely developed states like Maine still possess affordable lands, which savvy young farmers with a little money — and a lot of elbow grease — are starting to acquire.

The New Face Of The Farmer

Gene and Mary Margaret Ripley are just such a pair. In what's often cited as one of the poorest counties east of the Mississippi, they paid less than $200,000 for a full house, barn, eight acres of hay fields and enough land for their organic vegetable business.

The whole property amounts to 38 acres, Mary Margaret Ripley says, mostly woods. They planted 2.5 acres of cash crops in the most recent year.

"We are getting to the point where demand is outstripping our supply and so this year we cleared a one-acre section of woods right here," Gene Ripley says. "Just last week, which is really exciting, we just hired our first full-time employee, who is going to be starting in the spring."

Twenty- and 30-somethings like Gelvosa and Gerritsen and the Ripleys represent the new face of the farmer, Rebar says. They're college-educated and concerned about quality of life, and they've cashed in the usual benefits of a professional life — such as a medical plan, a retirement scheme and even a guaranteed paycheck — for something else:

"This is about creating something. This is about building something themselves. This is about using their two hands to make a difference," Rebar says.

And, he says, this new generation of farmers have made farming cool again.



http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/food-agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture#.VKsFNoFdVkk

Union of Concerned Scientists
Industrial Agriculture
The outdated, unsustainable system that dominates U.S. food production.

Today, the majority of American farmland is dominated by industrial agriculture—the system of chemically intensive food production developed in the decades after World War II, featuring enormous single-crop farms and animal production facilities.

Back then, industrial agriculture was hailed as a technological triumph that would enable a skyrocketing world population to feed itself. Today, a growing chorus of agricultural experts—including farmers as well as scientists and policy makers—sees industrial agriculture as a dead end, a mistaken application to living systems of approaches better suited for making jet fighters and refrigerators.

The impacts of industrial agriculture on the environment, public health, and rural communities make it an unsustainable way to grow our food over the long term. And better, science-based methods are available.

Industrial agriculture practices: monoculture

At the core of industrial food production is monoculture—the practice of growing single crops intensively on a very large scale. Corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice are all commonly grown this way in the United States.

Monoculture farming relies heavily on chemical inputs such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The fertilizers are needed because growing the same plant (and nothing else) in the same place year after year quickly depletes the nutrients that the plant relies on, and these nutrients have to be replenished somehow. The pesticides are needed because monoculture fields are highly attractive to certain weeds and insect pests.




As one who always enjoyed helping my father in the garden, I am glad to see this trend. I had been discouraged when I read about “the death of the family farm,” and the growth to power of the industrial farm. Farming used to be an emotionally satisfying way to make a living, and one or more of the kids in a farm family would join their parents in farming the land themselves. It was a time-honored way to live. Then it came to be viewed scornfully in some circles, and a sure sign of poverty and a lack of education. Jokes about ignorant farmers were rampant.

That really is a shame, because running a small farm is a well-rounded set of activities in a calming and peaceful environment and my experience with farmers proves them to be far from uneducated. Rural people are more likely to be conservative socially and politically, but even that isn't always true of them. Everyone should go out into the country, get out of the car and just listen, look and smell the air. If you're in NC you will smell pine trees and hear their gentle rustling in the breeze. I wish I could have lived in the country. Of course, I had to make a living in the city. I enjoy that, too, but I remember my Grandmother's farm with great fondness, and sitting on the back porch listening to whip-poor-wills calling to each other at dusk.