Generation Spears

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By Cristina Page

The Spears family can’t be shocked by much these days, not with Britney in every tabloid. Still the recent news seemed to unsettle them. Their 16-year-old daughter Jamie Lynn is pregnant. And while no bad news is unprofitable for the Spears (it is rumored Jamie Lynn, a TV star in her own right, was paid one million dollars to break the news in OK! Magazine), this particular note of fame does appear to have taken the family aback. (“I was in shock. I mean, this is my 16-year-old baby,” her mother told OK!) It seems that no matter how well-to-do, (or bizarre) the family, it’s always a tragedy to have one’s child’s adolescence taken away by pregnancy. While Jamie Lynn Spears is not your average teen, her situation is becoming a more common experience for many girls of her generation: premature parenthood.

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A Center for Disease Control (CDC) report released this month reveals that in 2006 there was a dramatic rise in teen births among 15 to 19 year olds in the United States bringing to a grinding halt a steady 14-year decline. In fact, Jamie Lynn’s situation exemplifies a reversal of many positive trends that began in the 1990s. Specifically there was a steep drop in abortion and unwanted pregnancy rates. During this period even sexual activity among high school students declined significantly. And those teens who were having sex — as would an average of half of them would before graduating high school – were more likely to use protection.

Now these gains are slowing or reversing. Sadly, these reversals seemed inevitable. After all, since 2000 we have turned away from using every strategy that the previous decade proved effective.

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NOW’s naughty list: stereotyping toys

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by NOW President Kim Gandy

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For what I hope is the last time in 2007, I find myself asking: What year is this again?

I’m not talking about abstinence-only education, or Bush’s appointment of birth control opponents to high ranking reproductive health positions, or even “purity balls” (although I may have to get to those someday soon). No, I’m talking about toys.

‘Tis the season for abundant toy advertising and shopping, so naturally the NOW office has been abuzz about the ubiquitous “Rose Petal Cottage” TV commercials. If you haven’t seen these ads, count yourself lucky. Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I would think they were beamed in from 1955, via some lost satellite in space. Or maybe it’s a deeply subversive parody that a clever (and rich) band of feminists snuck onto the airwaves in heavy rotation.

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No wonder young people don’t vote

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By Tom Hanson

I wonder if anyone recalls the original campaign promises. Back when George Bush would raise his right hand as if taking a solemn vow and announce he would restore “honor and integrity” to the White House if elected. Sometimes he would alter the phrase ever so slightly, making it “dignity and honor” or other variations of the same three words.

With today’s Internet, we can easily check on some of the original statements. How about Vice President Dick Cheney, Aug. 2, 2000, offering:

“On the first hour of the first day, he will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office. They will offer more lectures and legalisms and carefully worded denials. We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth.”

Those were followed by the words of President Bush himself dated Sept. 23, 2000.

“Just because our White House has let us down in the past, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in the future. In a campaign that’s going to restore honor and dignity to the White House……”.

Lack of Ethics 101

By the time 2005 rolled around, those words seemed a distant memory. At that time, the indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice charges had seriously tarnished the view point that Bush might bring a higher level of ethics to the Oval Office. One poll taken at that time indicated that by a three-to-one ratio, Americans felt that honesty and integrity had declined under the Bush administration and the president’s 34 percent rating for ensuring high ethics in government was actually lower than that of Bill Clinton when he left office.

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The Padilla tapes

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by Ralph Lopez

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Fox News recently refused to air an ad that criticizes the Bush administration for “destroying the Constitution” by the use of torture and other tactics. The ad, “Rescue the Constitution,” is narrated by actor Danny Glover.

In a response to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which produced the ad, Fox News wrote that it could not approve the ad “with it being Danny Glover’s opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution.” Fox said “If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that.”

If the Constitutional “documentation” against “cruel and unusual punishment” doesn’t float Fox’s boat, how about more? The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, the “Bill of Rights” states: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused, shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State.”

On May 8, 2002, the government seized an American citizen, Jose Padilla, on American soil on allegations, but not formal charges, of terrorism. George Bush ordered the military to take custody of Padilla as an “enemy combatant” in the June 9, 2002, Presidential Order to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which said:

“I, GEORGE W. BUSH, as President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces, hereby DETERMINE for the United States of America that…Jose Padilla, who is under the control of the Department of Justice and who is a U.S. citizen, is, and at the time he entered the United States in May 2002 was, an enemy combatant…you are directed to receive Mr. Padilla from the Department of Justice and to detain him as an enemy combatant. “

Dry words, but important. In military detention, Padilla was made to sleep on a metal cot, subjected to hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution, and the administration of “truth serums,” according to his lawyer. Padilla was not even allowed a lawyer until two years after his arrest. When the government released him to the civilian courts three-and-a-half years later, Padilla was docile, and did little to assist in his own defense. The charges against him bore no resemblance to the original allegations.

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Torturing the language of torture

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by Sheldon Richman

Is waterboarding, known during the Spanish Inquisition as tortura del agua, really torture or not? The question seems to answer itself, but the Bush administration says No. Its critics disagree, noting that the “interrogation technique,” which makes a subject physically and mentally react as though he is drowning, has long been regarded as torture by international agreements and outlawed in the United States.

The Washington Post reports that the Army investigated U.S. forces for using the method on a North Vietnamese in 1968. Moreover, “Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian,” the Post reported. Asano was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor.

Despite all this, the Bush administration and its knee-jerk supporters incoherently maintain (1) that waterboarding is not torture, and (2) that it’s effective at getting hardened terrorists to spill their guts with useful information that enables the U.S. government to save innocent lives.

Which is it?

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New poll shows SC voters cool on nukes

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More than two-thirds of likely Republican and Democratic primary voters in South Carolina want the United States to lead the world in reducing the number of nuclear weapons globally and believe that those reductions would make the United States safer, according to a new public opinion poll commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Majorities in both parties further agreed that current U.S. policy makes it more likely that other countries will try to acquire their own nuclear weapons, because that policy includes the option of using nuclear weapons against countries without nuclear weapons. Likewise, majorities oppose the U.S. policy option of using nuclear weapons first in a conflict, and believe the United States should only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack, or should never use them. (For a brief overview of the poll, click here.

“These poll results demonstrate that there is bipartisan support for a new U.S. nuclear weapons policy,” said Dr. Lisbeth Gronlund, co-director of UCS’s Global Security Program. “Voters in South Carolina, like those throughout the country, consider U.S. words and actions to be critical to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.”

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Loose Lips

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They’re Back…

The state legislature, adjourned since June, came back to life Dec. 5 and with the early filings for the next legislative session Jan. 8. Much of the prefiled legislation is pandering to the squeekiest wheel in what’s known as “special interests.” For example:

Rep. Ted Pitts (R-Lexington) has proposed (H-4329) a Second Amendment Weekend that calls for the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving to be an opportunity to by guns with no sales tax.

S 3873 is Jakie Knotts’ (R-Lexington) bill to reduce the fees for hunting licenses for the military.

The Big Kahuna of the legislature, Glenn McConnell (R-Charleston), has a bill for English Only (S 857) when you are dealing with the state government.

Rep. Chip Huggins (R-Lexington) has a bill to require picture voter IDs ( H 4352) , in spite of the fact that individual vote fraud is nill here. Why make it harder to vote when, already, fewer South Carolinians vote than citizens in 136 other nations?

Rep. Carl Gullick (R-York) wants legislation (H-4381) that would allow people you owe money to to garnish your wages.

We are clearly safer when these guys are on vacation.

Twenty years ago…

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By Kevin Alexander Gray

When I’m out in public inevitably someone will ask me whom do I support in the presidential race. When I say nobody, it’s often met with skepticism. Yet according to the latest poll of likely Democratic primary voters, many of us are still in the undecided column. I suppose the disbelief in my case stems from my somewhat ongoing involvement in politics for over twenty years. I was a volunteer with Jesse Jackson’s 1984 campaign. Four years later, I coordinated his ‘88 South Carolina bid under the tutelage of the late Dr. Walker Solomon, who served as the campaign’s chairman.

Jackson won the South Carolina Democratic caucus in 1988, garnering 64% of the vote. It was Jackson’s first and biggest percentage victory. Jackson won 11 states and 7 million votes. He won most of the South, picking up 90% of the black vote along the way.

The Rainbow experience is a constant factor in my political calculations. Jackson’s 1984 Democratic National Convention speech energized me. Our mission, he said, was “to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to house the homeless; to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.” His constituency was “the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief…”

That’s what I believe, and it’s where I’m from. It’s where Jackson came from, which is why he connected to people in a genuine way. I’m not suggesting that a candidate be like Jackson. Still, I want to hear someone who takes on the needs of the poor and working class not as an afterthought, but from the beginning of the journey.

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