On Thursday night, the Vanguard had 285 people show up to our wildly successful event. Despite that showing, we had a massive amount of leftover food that we could not store. So my wife decided it was a good idea to donate it to those more needy than ourselves.
She posted on Facebook: “Just took 2 trays of delicious tortellini to Occupy folks so they could have a delicious lunch/dinner tomorrow.”
“Welcome to the occupation. Here we stand and here we fight, all your fallen heroes. Held and dyed and skinned alive, listen to the Congress fire,” sang REM back in 1987 in words that probably resonate more today than then.
I try not to put my personal life into the view of the community, though several people have suggested I do so to perhaps make things more personal, to allow this community to see what I am about, over and above the Vanguard, which is a creation that everyone who knows me, knows I take tremendous pride in.
by Dan Aiello – Following today’s press conference timed to coincide with the visit of President Barack Obama to San Francisco, the City’s Democrat Assemblymember Tom Ammiano says he’s “pretty pissed off about this unwarranted attack,” referring to the multitude of federal raids orchestrated by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries, their landlords and patients.
The aggressiveness and scale of the federal law enforcement’s raids surprised many local authorities and frightened the state’s dispensary operators, growers, patients and advocates for medical marijuana use. The raids angered at least two state officials who saw the crackdown by the Department of Justice as an unwarranted infringement on the rights of the state and its citizens to govern the use and distribution of the drug.
My typical 9/11 column has focused not simply on the horrific attack on innocent Americans, but also on the US response to those attacks. I usually recount the horror I felt, now ten years ago, watching those towers come down, the fear I felt as I attempted to go about my day as though business were usual, and the despair I felt knowing that business would never be usual again.
The Great Recession has had a disproportionate impact on the net worth of households depending on their race, according to a new extensive report from the Pew Research Center which analyzes newly-available government data from 2009.
James Pavle, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Virginia, writes a pretty strong indictment regarding the issue of treatment for mental illness in The USA Today. He calls it the “criminalization of mental illness.”
The ink was barely dry on the Governor’s signature on SB 48 when a group of conservatives announced that has filed papers to put an initiative on the ballot to repeal the law that amends the education code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, as well as of people with disabilities and members of other cultural groups.
The effort to repeal the law is being led by the Pacific Justice Institute and an arm of Capitol Resource Institute.
By E. Roberts Musser –
Hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. have been hurriedly convened, as public outcry has mounted over the latest Transportation Security Administration (TSA) outrage at a small Florida airport security checkpoint. A 95 year old woman, battling the final stages of leukemia, was given an extensive 45 minute pat down. What happened next is still somewhat in dispute, but does not reflect well on the TSA. According to the victim’s daughter, “My choices were to remove the Depends [adult diaper] or not have her clear security.” A spokesman for the TSA insists upon review of the incident their agents acted “professionally, and according to proper procedure and did not require this passenger to remove an adult diaper“.
Last week many applauded and some lamented the decision by Governor Jerry Brown to sign what amounts to landmark legislation, to amend the education code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, as well as of people with disabilities and members of other cultural groups.
SB 48 is the FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) Education Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno. Supporters of the legislation claim that the bill ensures that the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and disabled individuals are accurately and fairly portrayed in instructional materials, by adding these groups to the existing list of under-represented cultural and ethnic groups already included in the state’s inclusionary education requirements.
Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed the FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) Education Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno. Supporters of the legislation claim that the bill ensures that the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and disabled individuals are accurately and fairly portrayed in instructional materials, by adding these groups to the existing list of under-represented cultural and ethnic groups already included in the state’s inclusionary education requirements.
“History should be honest,” Governor Brown said in a written statement on Thursday. “This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books. It represents an important step forward for our state, and I thank Senator Leno for his hard work on this historic legislation.”
While California may be trailing other states in recognizing same-sex marriage, the state is poised to become the first state that would require public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in social studies curriculum.
SB 48, dubbed the “FAIR (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) Education Act,” authored by Senator Mark Leno, would “amend the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.”
Reflecting again on the momentous occasion in New York shows us both how far we have come, and yet how far we have to go. Embroiled in this debate are deep divisions over the role of faith in Government, the separation of church and state, and over who gets to set the country’s morality.
In a way, this debate played out this weekend within my own extended family.
Late last night, the New York State Senate narrowly passed the bill that will allow same-sex couples to wed. Four Republicans joined all but one Democrat, to pass the measure 33-29.
The New York Times reported on a key Senate Republican from Buffalo who had “had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage,” and “told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.”
This week in California the issue of same-sex marriage has re-surfaced, due to the ruling that Judge Vaughn Walker was not conflicted out due to his own sexual orientation.
Regardless, in 2008, the state voters narrowly passed a ban on same-sex marriage. However, that ban is now in question as a federal court has already ruled it unconstitutional. Emerging in the last couples of years, also, is opinion polling that shows an increasing number of California voters more and more inclined to support same-sex marriage.
Can an openly gay judge rule on the constitutionality of a same sex marriage ban? That was the question that supporters of Proposition 8 posed before a federal court.
The court, in a 21-page opinion, denied the motion to vacate the judgment. The movers in the suit argued that Judge Walker should have been disqualified from presiding over this case based on “statutes require a federal judge to recuse if, inter alia, the judge has a substantial non-pecuniary interest in the case, or if there is some fact that brings the impartiality of the judge reasonably into question. If the judge does not recuse, a motion for disqualification may be made by a party.”
AB 40 ensures law enforcement will know about crime in long-term care facilities By Assemblymember Mariko Yamada –
The California State Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes recently exposed “deep flaws in California’s system for detecting and responding to elder abuse and neglect” in long-term care facilities in their report California’s Elder Abuse Investigators: Ombudsmen Shackled by Conflicting Laws and Duties. The report’s findings are verified by hearings I conducted as Chair of the Assembly Aging and Long-term Care Committee last August and in a joint hearing with the Assembly Committee on Public Safety in February. During these hearings, district attorneys, law enforcement, and the Attorney General’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud testified that the state has made a “de facto” choice to obscure the extent of criminal abuse and neglect in long-term care facilities by statutorily handcuffing dedicated, unpaid volunteers of the Office of the Long-term Care Ombudsman.
Use of National Security Letters Greatly Expanded under the Obama Administration – Ross Douthat writes, “For those with eyes to see, the daylight between the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama has been shrinking ever since the current president took the oath of office. But last week made it official: When the story of America’s post-9/11 wars is written, historians will be obliged to assess the two administrations together, and pass judgment on the Bush-Obama era.”
I do not know what was more stunning last night, the news that Osama Bin Laden was killed finally or the realization that the attacks on September 11 occurred nearly ten years ago.
To drive home the point, as we watched transfixed yet again to the TV, we had to explain to my seven-year-old nephew why this was so important and why he would remember this for a long time. Indeed, it sunk in that the attacks occurred before he was even born.
