SC Prog Blog

By Becci Robbins

SC Progressive Network

She’s only been on the scene five weeks, and I’m suffering severe Sarah fatigue. You know which Sarah. The one tapped by the McCain camp in a cynical attempt to shore up the crippled wing of his fundamentalist base. The one who has been winking and obfuscating her way through a tightly scripted campaign that is relying on style over substance, sound bites over sound public policy.

As a woman, I want to see Sarah Palin to do well, knowing that her performance reflects — fairly or not — on all women and our perceived ability to lead. As a feminist, I want to enroll her in a women’s studies program. If she knew her history, she couldn’t so easily impose her anti-choice ideology, wouldn’t presume to know what’s best for all women.

Palin holds an extreme position on reproductive rights, opposing contraception and access to abortion, even for rape victims. And yet she cried foul when reporters dared mention her unmarried pregnant teenage daughter — never mind that Palin’s abstinence-only agenda makes it a legitimate point of discussion. Our government has spent over $1 billion to fund abstinence-only sex education programs since 1996. That approach has failed countless young women, including, apparently, Palin’s own daughter.

Rather than talk about it, Palin simply said that her children should be off limits. But in the vice-presidential debate she repeatedly mentioned her son in Iraq and her special-needs child. She did not mention her pregnant daughter. Apparently it’s okay to talk about her kids as long as they serve the campaign’s interest.

Yes, Palin proudly touts her pro-life credentials. While she sits in her office on a couch covered with a bear skin, the head still attached. While she shows off photos of her and her four-year-old daughter posing with the caribou she shot. While advocating hunting wild game from the safety of a low-flying aircraft.

When Palin talks about life, she is referring to pre-born human life. Not the lives of grown women. Not the lives of children her running mate would deny health care. Not, certainly, the lives of the animals with whom we share this planet. Not even the life of the planet itself, which will continue to suffer the devastating effect of America’s petroleum addiction, which Palin advocates when she gleefully chants, as she did in the debate, “Drill, baby, drill!”

The debate was little more than cheap theater. The McCain camp had negotiated its terms, in effect dumbing down the debate. The contract limited the candidates’ responses to 90 seconds, discouraged the moderator from asking follow-up questions, and prohibited the candidates from asking each other questions. The format helped ward off the sort of embarrassment an unscripted Palin revealed in recent network television interviews.

Instead of an honest debate, we had Sen. Joe Biden biting his tongue — warned by his handlers to play nice — and Gov. Palin ignoring the moderator’s questions and providing instead well-worn one-liners, off topic and sometimes off the wall. She was like a Chatty Cathy doll programmed with conservative talking points. Pull the string, and she spouts a few sentences.

Fortunately, I’m not the only one underwhelmed by her performance. A number of conservative pundits have grudgingly admitted that Palin is not ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Kathleen Parker’s Sept. 26 editorial, in which she suggested Palin pull herself out of the race, garnered the most attention. “If BS were currency,” Parker wrote, “Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.” If she were a man, she continued, we’d be laughing; but since she’s the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket, we can’t say the painful truth.

In earlier editorials, Parker was Palin’s biggest cheerleader. “Palin is everything liberals have always purported to want for women — freedom to choose, opportunities for both career and family, a shot at the top ranks of American political life,” she wrote. “With five children and an impressive resume, Palin should be Miss July in the go-girl calendar.”

In an editorial she wrote after the Republican convention, she gushed, “No one is going to be embarrassed by John McCain’s maverick pick.”

What a difference a few weeks make.

And in a twist of irony, the pundit who has made a career out of skewering the opposition with barbs aimed, more often than not, at women on the Left, got a taste of her own venom. After her editorial pleading for Palin to pull out of the race, she found herself on the receiving end of her party’s most rabidly partisan element. In her latest piece, she writes about being called an idiot, a traitor, about people writing angry and threatening letters.

Surprised and dismayed, she writes, “Anyone who dares express an opinion that runs counter to the party line will be silenced. That doesn’t sound American to me.”

Sadly, that is the America she helped create.

There are lessons here for us all. May we learn them before it is too late.

INSTITUTE INDEX
Disenfranchised by design

Estimated number of Americans who have currently or permanently lost their voting rights because of a felony conviction: 5.3 million

Of those, number that are ex-offenders who have completed their sentences: 2.1 million

Number of black men who are disenfranchised as a result of a felony conviction: 1.4 million

Percentage of black men that represents: 13

Number of times by which black men’s disenfranchisement rate exceeds the national average: 7

In states that disenfranchise ex-offenders, percent of black men who may permanently lose their right to vote: 40 

Number of states that permit even inmates to vote: 2*

Number of states that deny voting rights to all convicted felons for life: 2**

Number of Virginians permanently disenfranchised as of 2004 due to felony convictions: 377,000

Of those disenfranchised Virginians, percent who are black: 55

Number of nonviolent felons who’ve had their voting rights restored by Virginia’s two recent Democratic governors: 5,990

Number of Alabama inmates who filled out voter registration forms over the course of two days last month before the effort was halted by the Republican prison commissioner: 80
 
Percent of South Carolina elections officials who answered incorrectly when surveyed last month about ex-felons’ voting rights: 48

Estimated number of ex-felons who were unable to vote in Florida during the 2004 election: 960,000

George Bush’s winning margin over John Kerry in Florida that year: 380,978

* Maine and Vermont

** Kentucky and Virginia
 
All sources on file with the Institute for Southern Studies. For more information, e-mail sue@southernstudies.org.

By Sam Oliker-Friedland 

I need to confess a shameful secret; a sin of omission from last year that I’ve regretted ever since. I didn’t vote.

By most measures, I am a politically engaged college student. I read the news and political blogs every day. Since I was in high school, I’ve organized voter registration drives to help other students vote, and can sit for hours discussing policy and politics with friends and family. But on April 1, 2008, when Wisconsin chose its swing Supreme Court Justice, I was not a part of that decision.

It’s not that I didn’t care — I probably had a stronger opinion about those two candidates than I’ve had in most elections. I wasn’t distracted by an important trip, nor was I refusing to participate in a broken election system. I was away at school. Between term papers and the less academic portion of the college experience, I forgot to send in an application to get my absentee ballot.

I wasn’t alone. I did an informal survey of acquaintances after the 2006 elections to find out who didn’t vote. If they didn’t vote, I wanted to know why. Not a single person told me “I didn’t care.” Not a single person said “I don’t see how the election affects me.” These are the great myths of young people who don’t vote, and its perpetrators will often point out with a concerned frown that voters aged 18 to 25 tend to have a lower turnout rates. However, one further statistic points us toward the real story: Among registered voters, 18- to 25-year-olds turn out at basically the same rate as other age groups.

Unfortunately, the American election system contains hurdles which are particularly serious for young, mobile voters. Not only must we navigate complicated ID requirements to register to vote for the first time, but many of us must also apply for an absentee ballot. If you are from Michigan, Tennessee, or Louisiana, you may be out of luck. If you register to vote by mail in those states, you are required to vote in person for your first election. This is grossly unfair not only to new 18-year-old freshmen in college, but to displaced victims of the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes as well.

For those of us who can vote by absentee ballot, just figuring out how to get one can be a challenge. The request process varies state to state, and often even county to county. We need to figure out whether to contact our state elections board, our county clerk, or our municipal registrar. In some states, we can simply send our election official an email; however, in some, we must send an original form by mail. Oddly, North Carolina requires a signed, handwritten note requesting a ballot.

Particularly frustratingly are Kentucky, South Carolina, and some counties in Illinois, which require that a voter call to have an absentee ballot request form sent, wait for the form to arrive, fill it out, send it back, wait for the ballot to arrive, and send the ballot in time to arrive on Election Day.

Elections in the United States are arcane and a clear nationwide snapshot of any aspect of election administration probably requires different information from each of our country’s thousands of voting jurisdictions. The challenge is assembling that information in a way that is easily accessible to voters, especially new voters who may be less familiar with the process.

Luckily, the Internet gives us simple and powerful tools for managing and accessing large amounts of data. Those of us who have grown up with technology expect and demand information in a few clicks. We don’t like clicking through unwieldy websites, or needing to visit multiple sites.

Providing easy-to-follow guidance through a complicated process should be a first step. That is why some friends and I founded www.govoteabsentee.org. It is an online resource that takes those who must vote absentee step-by-step through the voting process for their county or municipality, providing forms, procedures, contact information, and easy-to-follow instructions.

We must work to change the process to make it easy and fair. The more transparent these mechanisms of democracy are the more voices will be heard on Election Day. As with any election, there will be a significant number of new voters. A lot of them will be 18. We need to ensure that they and all registered voters can vote easily — and if necessary — vote absentee.

Oliker-Friedland is a senior at Brown University and the co-founder of www.govoteabsentee.org.

By Laura Flanders

This article is part of “Election Protection Investigation Week, a project of The Media Consortium which will culminate with Live - From Main Street Columbus - a virtual town hall exploring how the issues of voting rights and election security affect every day Americans. This is a one-of-a-kind, week-long media collaboration that kicks off today. For more information, click here.

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Voter registration deadlines are just over a week away in many states. Polls open in just over a month. In an election that could well be decided by new voters, voter registration efforts are in overdrive. But signing people up might be the easy part: after that, there’s voting. As the last two elections have shown, just showing up at the polls isn’t a guarantee of a smooth ride to the ballot box.

In 2000 and 2004, all across the country, thousands of voters were removed from the rolls, without their knowledge, in official purges of voter lists. On Election Day in 2004, boxes of registrations remained unprocessed in at least two cities we know about - Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio. On the radio that election night, I received calls from Columbus voters who had stood for hours in line because of a shortage of voting machines in the inner city, even as, in nearby wealthy suburbs, voters were able to cast their votes in a matter of minutes. As one caller put it, “Jim Crow isn’t dead.”

Election protection and voting rights should be central to any conversation about the ‘08 vote. But a lot of tough questions are getting lost in horse-race coverage. And many voters are wondering - again - if their vote will be counted.

In contrast to most advanced democracies, the right to vote isn’t conveyed automatically with citizenship or coming of age in the United States. Voters have to prove themselves and there are no end to the challenges, from felon disenfranchisement laws to monolingual ballots and a myriad of ever-changing rules which differ from election to election and district to district. Come voting day, voters rely on minimally-trained poll-workers overseeing a myriad of voting systems. Disturbing doubts remain about the security of electronic voting and the privately-owned technology many districts rely on to tally votes.

Fed up with waiting for officials or Parties to do the work, this year, as never before, citizens’ groups, and voting rights organizations are taking early action to protect the vote. A few months back, national voting rights groups charged officials in Kansas, Michigan and Louisiana of illegally purging voter lists. Voters whose homes are in foreclosure are also concerned that their status might be used at the precinct to challenge their right to vote. The states with the highest foreclosure rates, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Colorado, are also swing states where the election could hinge on tiny margins. Meanwhile, in Michigan, the ACLU has just filed a federal lawsuit against state electoral officials over statewide voter purge programs they claim would “disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Michigan voters” - many of them college students.

Thanks to independent reporting and activist organizing, the Department of Veterans Affairs was recently forced to reverse its policy that would have stopped voter registration drives at hundreds of VA hospitals serving injured and homeless vets.

While the media focus on the candidates, voting rights advocates are focusing on the future of our democracy. It’s falling to nonprofit outfits like the Advancement Project to distribute state-specific “know the facts” palm cards to poll workers in many states. And organizers are fanning out. Twenty-three states allow early voting. Ohio has a “golden week” - Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 - in which people can register and vote all in the same day. The organizers recommend voting early. Avoid the lines and the worst of the chaos.

Will citizen activism decide an election? It just might.

Laura Flanders is host of GRITtv and Live From Main Street.

By Joan Lamunyon Sanford
Executive Director, NM Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Much has been said about 17-year-old Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and the so-called “right” decision she made to choose parenting over abortion. But we should remember that what is the right decision for Bristol may not be the right decision for all young women with an unplanned pregnancy.

Bristol is fortunate to have loving parents who support her decision, and all of our youth deserve the same. Loving parents who will support them in whatever decision they make. Sadly, this is not always true.

The decision about how to resolve an unplanned pregnancy, whether through abortion, adoption or parenting is a deeply personal decision for a young woman. Most talk to their parents or other trusted adults, including their clergy. Many seek prayerful guidance from their own religious or spiritual traditions. The notion that their religious tradition would insist that they continue their pregnancy is inaccurate. The mainline Protestant and Jewish denominations that are members of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice support a woman in making what ever is the best decision for her, including abortion, according to her faith and her life circumstances.

Bristol is also fortunate that she has access to affordable pre-natal care, and that her family has the resources to make sure she has the support she needs to finish high school. Again, not all of our youth have these options, especially in primarily rural states like Alaska or New Mexico.

The Palin family has requested privacy for themselves and Bristol during this difficult time, something we all should have, even though Governor Palin has chosen to put her family and their values under a spotlight. Bristol and her future husband should be treated respectfully, but we as a nation now have the opportunity to learn more about an issue that most of us and most candidates would rather not face, our country’s high teen pregnancy rate, the highest for all industrialized nations.

So before you make your decision about any candidate, state or federal, ask them if they support medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education for our youth. We have a moral obligation to provide our youth with the best and most accurate information so that if they become sexually active, they can make an informed decision to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Punitive, mandatory parental notification or consent laws do not reduce abortion and teen pregnancy; they only drive youth without loving, supportive parents to desperate measures when they are facing an unplanned pregnancy. Young women who do not inform their parents may have very sound reasons. Often they fear physical abuse or abandonment, or their pregnancy may be the result of incest. Compassion demands that we not subject them to more trauma.

We should all work to provide our youth and their families with all of the resources they need to make their best decisions regarding sex and sexuality, in keeping with their own faith and values.

Sanford is the executive director of NM Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

By Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas

I was one of 16 interpreters who served both weeks of the Postville [ICE raid] hearings. Unlike judges, prosecutors, or attorneys, I was present at every step of the process. It is my duty as an impartial expert witness and officer of the court to ensure that the court is not misled, and to bring to its attention any impediments to due process.

I have done so in the best interest of the Federal Court I am proud to serve, and with the conviction that if our honorable judges had known how this judicial experiment would turn out, they would have never allowed it.

During these two weeks in May I observed these flaws:

• Detainees’ quarters were not certified.

• The court failed to maintain physical and operational independence from ICE prosecution, and a level playing field for the defense.

• There was inadequate access to counsel.

• No meaningful presumption of innocence.

• Defendants appeared not to understand their rights and charges.

• Bail hearings and other due process rights were denied.

• The charge of identity theft, used to force a plea, lacked foundation and was never tested for probable cause.

• Defendants did not know what a Social Security Number was, and were not guilty of “intent” crimes.

• Guilty pleas were obtained under duress.

• Judges had no sentencing discretion, pursuant to a binding plea agreement.

• Sole providers, whose families are in jeopardy, now endure a cruel and unusual psychological punishment, the foreseeable effect of prison time on common parents.

Abridgement of process produced wholesale injustice at the other end:

• Parents, begging to be deported: put in jail at public expense.

• Proud working mothers: branded like cattle with the scarlet letter of an ankle monitor, dehumanized, and reduced to begging at the doors of the church, as they were released on “humanitarian grounds.”

• The town of Postville devastated; and the kinship ties our noble people are quick to forge with all newcomers, painfully severed.

• Families and friends separated.

I saw the Bill of Rights denied and democratic values threatened by the breakdown of checks and balances. And it all appeared to be within the framework of the law, pursuant to a broken immigration system.

Postville lays bare a grave distortion in the legal structure of government.

Post 9/11, ICE was granted power to wage the war on terror. But since 2006, it has diverted resources, even from disaster relief, to an escalating and unauthorized war on immigration.
The fact is our laws have not kept up with the growth in enforcement. Congress failed to pass immigration reform and ICE has filled the legal void by enacting its own version of it.
Now, we have a serious contradiction: the growth of authoritarian rule inside a democratic government. This entity can simultaneously wield immigration and criminal codes, plus issue administrative rules; leaving no room for constitutional guarantees. It co-opts other branches of government: Social Security, U.S. Attorney, Federal Court…and uses appropriations to recruit local police for immigration enforcement: setting neighbor against neighbor, and dangerously dividing the nation.

With the help of local sheriffs, Postville repeats itself daily, while the harshness of border enforcement is reenacted in the American Heartland, with great collateral damage to our citizens and communities. It is a rush, to raid as much as possible, before Congress regains the vision and courage of the Founding Fathers to restore the law of the land. Part of immigration reform is redefining ICE jurisdiction over immigration and criminal matters, without impairing the agency’s ability to defend us from terrorist threats.

Our national unity requires not just comprehensive, but compassionate immigration reform, to befit the dignity of this great country, built upon the shoulders of immigrants, by their children.

Camayd-Freixas is a professor of modern languages at Florida International University. This article was provided by The American Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational organization that provides the media with the views of state experts on major public concerns in order to stimulate informed discussion.

Equal Justice Initiative has released a short preview of the upcoming film Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison.

By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t

Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. But the nation is trying to fight wars in several countries and is dealing with economic crisis. The attention of the president wandered away. As a result, this is what New Orleans looks like today.

0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

.008. Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.

4. Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.

10. Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.

11. Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.

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Today marks the anniversary of women’s securing the right to vote, in 1920, after 72 years of struggle.

We’ve come a long way. But we have a long way to go. Consider:

• Women lack equal pay, making $.77 for every dollar men earn.

• The US has no guaranteed medical leave for childbirth. (168 countries do.)

• The US is near the bottom of the list in our public support for quality child care for children of working parents.

• Access to affordable birth control is under attack.

• Reproductive rights are threatened.

• Women make up 16 percent of representatives in Congress.

By Jamison Foser
Media Matters

Coverage of candidates’ ability to relate to voters ignores their policy positions

With Barack Obama and John McCain each trying portray the other as an out-of-touch, wealthy elitist, there’s one thing missing from media coverage of the skirmish: an assessment of what the two candidates’ policy positions say about how well they understand and care about the needs of average Americans.

The latest imbroglio was sparked by John McCain’s admission on Wednesday that he does not know how many houses he owns. That statement came on the heels of McCain’s initial refusal last weekend to define “rich,” after which he indicated a yearly salary of $5 million is the threshold for being rich, a comment he then suggested was a joke. But McCain never did define the term, even though he has in the past based his opposition to tax cuts he now supports on the fact that they disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The Obama campaign quickly responded with an ad pointing out that McCain didn’t know how many homes he owns, and answering the question for the Arizona senator: seven homes worth a total of $13 million, according to the Obama campaign.

McCain’s camp responded angrily, with spokesperson Brian Rogers defending McCain: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison” and saying Obama’s house is “a frickin’ mansion.” Apparently forgetting that just a few days earlier, their candidate suggested that you aren’t rich unless you make $5 million a year, McCain’s campaign also mocked Obama for making $4 million last year.

Naturally, the news media rushed to cover the fight. Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post explained the importance:

In politics, there is nothing worse than appearing out of touch.

From time immemorial, a candidate who is effectively portrayed as forgetting about the “little” people, of having “gone Washington,” of living higher on the hog than voters, loses.

Class remains a powerful motivator for many voters in the country. Politicians are forever trying to cast their candidacies as closely rooted in the communities from which they sprung — a purposeful attempt to ensure that voters know that the candidate “understands the problems of people like you.” Put simply: The worst thing you can call a politician is an elitist.

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By Morgan Strong
Consortium News

The Russia-Georgia clash has generated heated anti-Moscow rhetoric from John McCain and U.S. neoconservatives about a new Cold War, a prospect that most people might see in a negative light but which many military contractors surely view as a financial plus.

One unstated reality about revived tensions between Washington and Moscow is that it will mean a bonanza in military spending – billions of additional dollars for anti-missile weapons systems, larger armies, construction of new bases in Eastern Europe, etc.

Indeed, the spending on Cold War II could dwarf what military contractors are now making on the “war on terror” – and the prospect of spending on both conflicts simultaneously should make arms industry executives drool.

Others who stand to profit grandly from a new East-West showdown include tough-talking politicians and their friends in Washington think tanks – like Heritage, AEI and CSIS – that have long fattened up on contributions from the defense industry and related corporations.

There would be losers, too, like taxpayers who would see more of their dollars go to “national security” and less to domestic needs, from repairs to the crumbling infrastructure to the costs of health care, education, the environment and Social Security.

But, in many ways, the exploitation of Cold War fears – to divert money away from domestic needs to the coffers of what Dwight Eisenhower dubbed “the military-industrial complex” – is nothing new.

Arguably, the original Cold War ended under Eisenhower’s former Vice President, Richard Nixon, who as President returned from Moscow in 1972 carrying a strategic agreement that he had reached with what was already a rapidly decaying Soviet Union.

“In Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945,” Nixon said. “With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear, our two peoples, and for all the peoples of the world.”

Nixon unveiled a new era of realpolitik cooperation between Washington and Moscow that he called “détente.”

However, while reducing fears and lowering tensions might be good news for many people, it wasn’t welcomed by the corporations that profited from the fears and the tensions, nor by the intellectual hired guns who had built lucrative careers in politics, media and academia by exaggerating those fears and exacerbating those tensions.

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Sean’s Last Wish founder Elke Kennedy is featured in the soon to be released book CRISIS, 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. It is edited by Mitchell Gold, founder of Faith in America, with Mindy Drucker.

CRISIS is an expose of the fear, isolation, depression, and even suicidal feelings young gay people face from the time they realize they are gay until they have a healthy coming out. For many gay adults, the traumatic teenage years are buried in memory as a painful time to be left behind and forgotten. But, those who bravely recalled and contributed their stories to CRISIS describe experiences that are unfortunately universal for gay youth. 

Well-known successful members of the gay community, such as Bishop Gene Robinson, actor Richard Chamberlain, ambassador Jim Hormel and US Reps Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank, share what it was like to live a lie every day, without support from family, friends, church, or school-and how they triumphed over the challenges. And a number of young people detail personal experiences that make clear the same challenges unfortunately continue today.

CRISIS is designed to make parents, clergy, teachers, politicians, and the media aware of the ongoing crisis young gay people experience in our culture today and understand how to stop it.

In addition to being an inspiring and helpful personal resource, it is an excellent gift for that someone you know whose heart and mind you’d like to transform from hostility to love and from rejection to acceptance. 

CRISIS will be published in mid-September. Pre-orders are available now at Amazon.com and CrisisBook.org.

On Sunday, Aug. 10, at 7pm the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Columbia will hold a panel discussion about the proposed South Carolina “I Believe” license plates, which has resulted in a lawsuit. (See earlier post for background on the controversy.)

The panel will include Kevin Hall, an attorney with Nelson Mullins, the law firm that will be defending the Dept. of Motor Vehicles in the lawsuit. He will join the Rev. Michael Frisina, pastor of Calvary Chapel, and one of his parishioners, Carl Sohm, in defending the constitutionality of the plate. Speaking in opposition to the plate will be two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit: the Rev. Dr. Tom Summers, a retired United Methodist minister, and the Rev. Dr. Monty Knight, pastor of the First Christian Church of Charleston and president of the Charleston AU chapter.

The UU Fellowship is at 2701 Heyward St., corner of Heyward and Woodrow in Shandon.

Alabama death row inmate’s fate hangs in the balance
Equal Justice Initiative

The State of Alabama has revealed that it lost DNA evidence that could exonerate death row inmate Tommy Arthur. Convicted for the 1982 murder-for-hire of Troy Wicker, Mr. Arthur has for years asked the state to test DNA evidence he says would prove his innocence. The state has refused to conduct the tests.

This week, just days before Mr. Arthur’s execution date, Bobby Ray Gilbert, a convicted killer serving life without parole, signed a sworn statement in which he confessed to the crime. After Mr. Arthur’s lawyers filed the confession in court, the Alabama Supreme Court stayed his execution, which was scheduled to take place today.

Judy Wicker, an admitted conspirator in the murder of her husband, said in an affidavit that Mr. Arthur, not Gilbert, committed the crime. She also accused Mr. Arthur’s daughter of trying to bribe her to clear her father. Mr. Arthur’s daughter, Sherrie Stone, denied the allegation.

DNA testing of the evidence might have exonerated Mr. Arthur or eliminated the need for a stay of execution. The State’s claim that it has now lost the DNA evidence raises more troubling questions about the propriety of executing Mr. Arthur.

Feds tell Westinghouse its design is off track; doubts over new nukes grow

Federal regulators now say a nuclear plant design touted as “certified” in 2004 remains years from completion, more delays in the design approval process are likely, and problems involving major components and plant systems persist. In response, public interest groups in North and South Carolina today filed legal motions calling for revocation of $230 million in preconstruction costs approved by both states’ electricity regulatory commissions in May and June for two new Duke Energy reactors.

Friends of the Earth and NC WARN told utilities commissioners in both states today that escalating design problems threaten Duke Energy’s chances of ever completing two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors it wants to build near Gaffney, SC. They also say the delays mean Duke cannot provide a firm project cost estimate for the Lee Nuclear Station by year-end, a commitment the company made to both commissions during hearings over the preconstruction costs.

“The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has served notice that the ‘nuclear revival’ is in trouble,” Tom Clements, of Friends of the Earth’s Columbia, SC, office said today.  “Duke Energy’s customers should not be stuck holding the bag if the company keeps pouring millions into that risky project.  The state regulatory agencies must now reverse their earlier decisions to approve Duke’s reactor project and require that the company not come back for reconsideration until the reactor design is finalized.” 

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