Hallandale High closed after swine flu case is found by HANNAH SAMPSON, MARC CAPUTO AND JENNIFER LEBOVICH TALLAHASSEE -- Two cases of H1N1 flu were confirmed in Florida Friday, and Hallandale High School, home school of an 17-year-old female student who tested positive, will be closed Monday through Wednesday as a result.Miami-Dade County was still free of confirmed cases, as 20 suspected cases it sent to state labs on Wednesday tested negative.
Farewell, the American Century by Andrew J. Bacevich In a recent column, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "What Henry Luce called 'the American Century' is over." Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce's pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing.
Justice Souter's Jurisprudence by Aziz Huq One of the diminishing pleasures of hearing that the Supreme Court has issued a new opinion is the hope and anticipation that a majority--or, better yet a dissent--has been written by Associate Justice David H. Souter. The prospect--so far not wholly definitive--that Justice Souter plans to retire at the close of the Court's term this summer robs Court-watchers of a special consolation and quiet joy of that reading. It takes from the Court a Justice who has quietly and diligently mined the law to return history and humanity to a constitutional jurisprudence increasing bereft of these qualities. I, for one, hope not for an exciting confirmation process; I hope, against reasonable expectation, that the Justice changes his mind.
More Mortgage Madness by Kai Wright Veronica Gallon went and got her gun. This was just the kind of thing she and her husband, George, had left the north Jacksonville ghettos to avoid: some guy banging and rattling the door in the middle of the night, like a crazed killer or God knows what. Veronica wasn't having it. So she grabbed her gun and plopped down on the front room rug.
Better Living Through Torture by Katha Pollitt I should have been a torturer. You too, reader. Well, maybe not an actual physical torturer, because then there'd be a small chance I'd go to prison like Lynndie England or Charles Graner. My picture might be in the paper doing nasty things to naked men with a goony smile and a thumbs-up. I might even have disturbing memories and bad dreams, because surely, unless one is a sociopath, throwing people into walls and hanging them from the ceiling all day is likely to have its troubling moments. What I mean is, I should have been a member of the torture creative class--a conceptual torturer, a facilitator of torture, perhaps an inventor of torture law, an architect of the torture archipelago, a dissimulator, concealer, denier, rationalizer, minimizer and pooh-pooher of torture. As a word person, I could have come up with circumlocutions to confuse the media, bureaucratic phrases like "special methods of questioning" and "enhanced interrogation techniques." According to New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt, just figuring out whether to call a given action "harsh" or "brutal" has kept editors busy for years! Or I could have written copy for the CIA. For example, I could have suggested they call putting people in coffinlike boxes full of insects "studio picnics," because studio apartments are small and picnics have bugs, and I could have nicknamed waterboarding "drinking tea with Vice President Cheney," although come to think of it, waterboarding is a euphemism already. Maybe that's why people didn't catch on that it was the same thing we prosecuted Japanese interrogators for doing in World War II. In the Tokyo trials it was called "the water treatment," or "the water cure," or just plain "water torture." Calling it "water torture" was probably what got those Japanese into trouble. That, and losing the war.
Fighting the Flu on the Job by Heather Boushey With more than 400 schools closed today due to the H1N1 flu virus, the Obama administration has yet to tell employers they should let parents stay home with their children without suffering pay loss or other penalties. What do we expect these parents to do? Most parents work--just three children in ten have a stay-at-home parent--and many do not have the right to paid sick days. Yet we keep hearing that if people don't feel well, they shouldn't go out and potentially give others H1N1.
Analysis: Court opening may animate liberal causes by Charles Babington WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has tried to hold off debate on contentious social issues such as abortion, immigration and gay rights as he focuses on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Supreme Court vacancy will make that harder to do.
Paying the Price for Cheap Meat by Johann Hari Modern factory farms have created a 'perfect storm' environment for powerful virusesA swelling number of scientists believe swine flu has not happened by accident. No: they argue that this global pandemic - and all the deaths we are about to see - is the direct result of our demand for cheap meat. So is the way we produce our food really making us sick as a pig?
US to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists by Neil A. Lewis WASHINGTON - The Obama Justice Department moved Friday to drop all charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists who had been charged under the Espionage Act with improperly disseminating sensitive information.The move by the government came in a motion filed with the federal court in Alexandria, Va. which was to be the site of the trial that was scheduled to begin June 2.
Abu Ghraib Guards Say Memos Show They Were Scapegoats by Josh White When the photos of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced in 2004, U.S. officials portrayed Army Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr. as the ringleader of a few low-ranking "bad apples" who illegally put naked Iraqi detainees in painful positions, shackled them to cell doors with women's underwear on their heads and menaced them with military dogs.
An Affordable Salvation by Paul Krugman The 2008 election ended the reign of junk science in our nation’s capital, and the chances of meaningful action on climate change, probably through a cap-and-trade system on emissions, have risen sharply.But the opponents of action claim that limiting emissions would have devastating effects on the U.S. economy. So it’s important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics.
