A gathering of more than one-third of all full-time faculty members at West Virginia University voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to call on their institution’s president, Michael S. Garrison, to resign over his involvement in the awarding of an unearned executive M.B.A. degree to the daughter of the state’s governor.
The motion calling for Mr. Garrison’s resignation, which is nonbinding, was passed by 565 faculty members. Thirty-nine faculty members voted against the motion, and 11 abstained.
The measure considered at Wednesday meeting, which was open to all faculty members, was identical to a motion that passed last week by a wide margin in the university’s Faculty Senate (The Chronicle, May 6). The motion includes a vote of no confidence in Mr. Garrison, and calls on him to resign “for the good of the institution and for the benefit of our students.”
Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann (D), who, during his race for AG in 2006 named Eliot Spitzer as his role model, has refused twice to acquiesce to multiple calls to step down in the wake of admitting last week that he had a romantic relationship with his former scheduler (Dann is married with three children) and firing two of his top aides.
As a result of this refusal, the Ohio Democratic Party has made their intentions to force Dann out extremely clear. From the Columbus Dispatch:
The Ohio Democratic Party, which strongly backed Dann’s come-from-behind campaign in 2006, is preparing to sever its ties with Dann. Chairman Chris Redfern said he expects the party’s executive committee to rescind its 2006 endorsement of Dann when it meets Saturday, which Redfern said would make Dann an independent officeholder. Democrats also are prepared to lead the impeachment drive, Redfern said.
“Pending Saturday’s events, he’ll be holding office as an independent who was elected as a Democrat,” Redfern said. “We will distance ourselves both figuratively and literally from Marc Dann until he makes the right decision, which is to step down.”
Ohio Daily Blog reports that one of Dann’s hometown papers says that the Ohio House Democratic Caucus had a conference call this afternoon and will begin impeachment proceedings tomorrow if Dann doesn’t step down tonight.
Plunderbund writes about the removal of information about Dann from the ODP website and also has a video of Gov. Strickland in which he says that they’ll use “whatever action is necessary” to remove Dann.
Pho writes about the legal provisions related to replacing Dann.
This article from ePluribus Media includes most of the key information from today and last week, but the situation is developing minute by minute, as it has been all day today. And it’s been exhausting.
I’m somewhat restricted from saying too much (code words on my blog entries are “mmmumbble mummmble damn packing tape”) because my SO is in the same law firm as an attorney whom Dann has asked to help clean up the AG’s office. Although it’s a voluntary role, and I’ve been told my right to express myself is being respected, I don’t feel comfortable writing about this situation in as an unbridled manner as I might.
I can say that I’ve had off the record conversations with the Ohio Democratic Party stating my intense upsetment about the hostile work environment that came to exist in the AG’s office and my belief that it must not be tolerated, not only because of the women who were subordinates but for the sake of the entire 1400 person “law office” that is an AG’s office.
Obviously, I wasn’t and still am not the only one saying that this is an intolerable situation that demands dramatic and obvious attention.
But as a Democrat in Ohio, who wanted to believe in Marc Dann, even when I wasn’t the most certain, it’s also just a very very, as another Democrat expressed to me, profoundly sad experience.
St. Joseph’s in Paterson would lose millions for charity care under Governor Corzine plan that would force some hospitals to close.
There is no question that America’s health-care system is in crisis and that extends to all 50 states. But if you want to see where U.S. hospitals may find themselves sooner or later, consider the number of hospitals in New Jersey that have closed or are on life support and how Democratic politicians have put themselves in a straightjacket that is exacerbating this perilous situation.
New Jersey, the most densely populated and second wealthiest state, had 112 hospitals 20 years ago. Today it has 74 after six closed in the last 18 months. Meanwhile, four others have announced plans to close and five filed for bankruptcy protection, with about half of the others losing money like an ER patient hemorrhaging blood because of gunshot wounds.
Hospitals should be no more immune to the effects of bad business practices than any other enterprise, and indeed some of the closings are the result of lousy management, including a failure to remain competitive, as the industry lurches away from community-based facilities to those where making profits for shareholders trump all other concerns.
New Jersey hospitals are not merely just another business, but are the key component of a health-care system that is deeply stressed because of, among other things, a growing nursing shortage, rapacious insurance companies and an economy that has forced more people to rely on hospitals because they cannot afford to go to family physicians for even the simplest ailments.
But the biggest reason for New Jersey’s hospital crisis is that the state is cutting way back on funding for them.
A year after the massacre at Virginia Tech by the troubled Cho Seung-Hui, what has been done to address the root causes of that event - the worst at any American educational institution? Dietmar Ostermann writes for Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, “The debate over gun control erupts loudly and often, yet it’s a discussion without consequences. The way people with psychological problems are handled, however, is a silent scandal. Even after Blacksburg, American society is so uncomfortable with the topic that it was quickly suppressed.”
Ostermann goes on, “Even more than the U.S. mania for weapons, this bloody killing spree represents the often tragic consequences of a system in which mental suffering is not only ignored - it is criminalized.” Read the rest of this entry »
DOTTED LINE SHOWS WACKY DELAWARE-NEW JERSEY BORDER
In a huge victory for environmentalists and my fellow First State citizens, Delaware won an historic Supreme Court fight with New Jersey today, probably killing a proposed nearly half-mile-long liquefied natural gas terminal on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.
The justices, in a surprising 6-2 decision, said Delaware can block the project even though it was proposed by energy giant BP for the other side of the river.
Associates of mine who had attended oral arguments on the case said that a majority of justices, as has been the high court’s wont in recent decisions, seemed to be leaning toward the pro-business arguments proffered by New Jersey.
Delaware, which owns the river bottom most of the way across the waterway, including the land on which a 2,200-foot-long pier would be built, sought to block the massive project because of safety concerns.
The terminal also was a violation of Delaware’s pioneering Coastal Zone Act, which bans new heavy industry along the river.
Both states agreed that Delaware owns the land, but New Jersey argued that a century-old agreement allows each state to control piers on its side of the river.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said Delaware cannot block ordinary projects from going forward. The proposal at issue, however, “goes well beyond the ordinary or usual,” she said. Read the rest of this entry »
I had been trying to get up with Ed Rendell for days for his reaction to the report by a blue-ribbon panel that found the Philadelphia Police Department had poor leadership, was soft on bad cops and well behind the times in how its officers were deployed and the equipment they were given. In other words, business as usual.
The mayor, despite his considerable accomplishments, had never screwed up the courage to confront the perennial but politically sensitive mess at the Roundhouse, the police headquarters. He was ducking my phone calls so I went to his public appointment calendar and found that he was speaking at a luncheon meeting of a business group at a Center City hotel.
I staked out the hotel lobby and there came the mayor, as usual a good half hour late and as usual without a security escort. As he stepped into an elevator I slipped in behind him. The doors closed and I pounced.
In typical Rendell fashion, he first refused to address the report. But with some gentle prodding as the elevator zipped upwards, he acknowledged that there were indeed big problems and, after we stepped out onto the top floor, he positively warmed to the subject and spoke to me at some length.
It was classic “Fast Eddie” Rendell, an eminently likable man who through two terms as Philadelphia district attorney, then two terms as mayor and now in his second term as Pennsylvania governor with time out to be Democratic National Committee chairman during the 2000 presidential election, has made a habit of speaking uncomfortable truths, as well as saying the right thing at the wrong time — a rare trait for a consummate politician.
The voluble 64-year-old Rendell is at the top of his game and will be very much in the news as the point man in Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the run up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, a contest that she must win by a substantial margin as she falls further behind Barack Obama in the delegate and superdelegate count.
It is a job for which the arm twister and deal maker is especially well suited, but he is bound to give the Clinton campaign chest pains.
The New York Times: Spitzer Resigns, Citing Personal Failings - Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson Set to Succeed Him
Gov. Eliot Spitzer, reeling from revelations that he had been a client of a prostitution ring, announced his resignation today at his headquarters in Manhattan.
According to the New York Times, it is likely that Gov. Spitzer will resign:
Top aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Tuesday morning that they expect the governor to resign his office, although the timing of the resignation remains uncertain.
Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson and his staff have begun laying the groundwork for him to take over as governor and are reaching out to members of the Legislature, the aides said.
As Gov. Eliot Spitzer faced mounting calls to resign, Republican legislators indicated they will seek to impeach him if he doesn’t quit within 48 hours, a spokesman for a leading New York assemblyman said Tuesday.
“The governor has 48 hours to resign or articles of impeachment would be introduced,” Josh Fitzpatrick, spokesman for Assembly Republican Minority Leader James Tedisco, told Reuters.
How does this affect the presidential race? Not much. According to MSNBC First Read, Gov. Spitzer and Lt. Gov. Paterson are both superdelegates committed to Hillary Clinton. If Gov. Spitzer resigns, there will simply be one less superdelegate.
January 3rd, 2008 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
The State Senate special election here still remains really tight. Republican Ray Cox currently holds a 220 vote lead with 66% of precincts reporting (42 of 63)
RAY COX (R) 3556 50.08
KEVIN DAHLE (D) 3333 46.94
However, Northfield still largely hasn’t reported in. Northfield has nine precincts, eight of which still are yet to report (the one that is in went for Dahle 143 to 106 [56.75% - 42.06%]). Even beyond the college students, Northfield is considered at least liberal leaning, so it’s fertile ground for Dahle.
More importantly, my precinct specifically (which includes most, but not all, Carleton students) isn’t in yet. Why does that matter? Simple. Turnout hasn’t been very high this election. I’ve seen precincts with as few as four votes cast. Most have been around 100 cast. When my roommate voted at about 6 PM tonight (two hours before polls closed), he told me 820 people had voted in my Northfield precinct. This is an overwhelmingly liberal precinct, with a lot of voters coming in. Once Northfield reports, we’ll see where this race ends up.
January 3rd, 2008 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
You Iowans think you’ve got all the attention. Well I voted in the special election to fill Minnesota’s 25th State Senate seat. And with one precinct reporting, my candidate, Kevin Dahle is winning with a whopping 60% of the vote (out of 23 cast).
His Republican opponent, Ray Cox, is reasonably moderate. In fact, I almost voted for him in 2004 — I was undecided until I was in the voting booth. He does, however, have a significant tendency to talk about moderation on election day far more than he walks it in office. (he was our State Representative until — in a major upset — he was knocked off by David Bly in 2006 by less than 50 votes).
And believe it or not, this race actually matters. The 25th is a competitive district, and a Democratic win would give them a veto-proof majority in the state senate (something Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty does not want to have to deal with).
Yes, I will be updating this race too throughout the night.
I can’t claim to know much about Mauritania, but I just read an extremely interesting article about the country in the latest edition of the Arab Reform Bulletin. In it, author Salma Waheedi demonstrates that not all news coming from the Arab world is bad news:
Mauritania, an often-ignored country in the western periphery of the Arab world, surprised observers two years ago by undertaking one of the most forthcoming advances toward democracy in the region. Democratic reforms came as a result of a 2005 bloodless military coup led by Colonel Ely Ould Muhammad Vall. Vall demonstrated enlightened leadership by pledging to restore democracy and ensure a constitutional transfer of power through free and fair elections. A swift political transition process culminated in credible legislative and presidential elections. President Sidi Muhammad Ould el-Sheikh Abdullahi, an independent, formerly exiled economist who served in previous cabinets, was elected in March 2007 in the country’s first peaceful transfer of power. Abdullahi pledged to fight corruption, guarantee freedom of speech, alleviate poverty, eliminate slavery, and promote justice and national reconciliation.
The new government has taken some positive political steps, including passing a law that criminalizes slavery, requiring senior officials to declare their assets, and requiring 20 percent female representation in electoral lists. Freedom of speech and the press have also registered significant improvements. Mauritania ranked fiftieth out of 169 countries in Reporters without Borders’ Press Freedom Index 2007, the highest among Arab countries.
Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who was forced to step down as majority leader in 2002 after making a remark that seemed to support segregation, announced today that he will resign by the end of the year.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters at a televised news conference in Pascagoula, Miss., Mr. Lott said he and his wife, Trish, had decided that they still had enough “time left to do something else” after his 35 years in the House and Senate.
He said he had “nothing definite at this time,” but suggested he might want to teach. He said he had called President Bush and Vice President Cheney last night to notify them of his decision.
He was re-elected in 2006 to his fourth Senate term and had rebounded to become the No. 2 Republican this year after his party had lost its majority in the Senate. But in recent months, Mr. Lott, 66, has made no secret of his deepening frustration in the Senate, not only because his party is in the minority but also because an increasingly bitter partisan divide this year has left little use for his skills as a deal-maker.
After the news conference, he said the frustration was not the sole motivation for his decision, but admitted it was a factor. “I’ve switched back and forth six times, and the majority is better,” he said. “I like to get things done.”
By resigning before the end of the year, Mr. Lott would beat the effective date for new ethics rules that double to two years the amount of time former Senators must wait before they can join a firm to lobby former colleagues. The new rule applies to those who leave office “on or after” Dec. 31.
Lott’s move shocked Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have seen a wave of veterans announce their decision to retire next year as the GOP looks increasingly certain to remain in the minority.
But Lott is the most senior Republican to announce he is leaving office, and his decision comes barely a year after he won re-election to a six-year term.
Lott’s departure is equally stunning because, after cruising to his re-election last year, he completed a political rehabilitation from allegations of racial insensitivity because of remarks he made at a 100th birthday party for Strom Thurmond in December 2002, which led to his banishment from GOP leadership. Last November, after four years as a back-bench Republican who burnished his image as a deal-maker, Lott won a narrow race to become GOP whip, the No. 2 post in leadership.
Lott said that he was going to move into the private sector after 35 years in Congress, but denied that he was getting out before a new two-year “cooling-off” restriction takes effect on Jan. 1. The restriction bars lawmakers from taking lobbying jobs for two years after they leave public service. Lott also denied that health issues were the cause. “Let me make it clear: There are no problems, I feel fine,” he said.
Sen. Lott’s shameful record of opposing and working against GLBT civil rights during his 35 years in Congress, including being a key sponsor of anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments in 2004 and 2006 and recent vote against hate crimes, has earned him a lineup of zeroes on HRC’s congressional scorecards from 2002 - 2006.
Appearing before supporters in Pascagoula, Miss., the senator said his 35 years in Congress – 16 in the House and 19 in the Senate – were “quite a wild ride, a very enjoyable one.” The Senate minority whip said, “Let me make it clear. There are no problems.” He added, “This is not a negative thing. There is no malice and no anger.”
In explaining the timing of the decision, Lott said that he and his wife, Tricia, recently attended a service at a Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss. The preacher cited the verse from Ecclesiastes about there being “a time to every purpose under heaven.” The senator said, “It seemed to be speaking to me and to us.”
Lott also said that new restrictions on lobbying that take effect Dec. 31 “didn’t have a big role” in his decision. The new regulations extend the “cooling off” period for former members of Congress from one to two years.
So is Trent Lott insufficiently venal to quit his term early to avoid lobbying restrictions? Or is he venal enough to do just that and then complain when anyone takes note of it? You be the judge.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) plans to resign his seat effective at year end according to sources in Congress and the Bush administration. Those sources aren’t giving any reason for his resignation other than to say it has nothing to do with his health. He’s going to pursue “other opportunities”. Hmmm. Lott was elected to a fourth Senate term in 2006, and he’s leaving now? Curiouser and curiouser. He’s the sixth Republican to resign this year.
Mississippi’s Republican governor will appoint a replacement who will serve until a special election in 2008. Former Rep. Chip Pickering, who recently retired from the House, is considered the top pick. Stay tuned.
Of course, this is still just a rumor. I couldn’t imagine, after all, a Republican Senator paying someone for sex, after all. Surely *cough* Vitter and Craig *cough* were the only Republicans who would do such a thing, weren’t they?
By his own account, Trent Lott was the “first pelt” of the blogosphere. Although Lott’s political career was revived somewhat last year with his elevation to Senate minority whip, the Mississippi Republican has been a bit player on the Washington scene since bloggers helped force him from the Senate majority leader’s post five years ago next month.
With that in mind, you can expect a lot of celebration today if, as expected, Lott announces that he will be resigning from the Senate at the end of the year. The good-riddance blogging already has begun, in fact….
APPALACHIA: Southeast Ohio and south-central Ohio will once again determine our nation’s and the free-world’s future. How will two New Yorker’s fit in to Appalachia – and will Ted Strickland and Bill Clinton’s popularity in the area have coat-tails.
The news from bloody Philadelphia just gets more and more horrifying.
I note that the city’s TV newscasts are cast in the “If It Bleeds It Leads” mold, but the mayhem one day this week was so bad that it soaked up 18 minutes of the 30-minute evening newscast on one station, barely leaving any time for really important stuff like the weather and sports.
The mayhem included incidents in which police Officer Charles Cassidy was shot in the head outside a previously robbed Dunkin’ Donuts by a perp who then stole his service revolver, another incident in which four people were wounded, including another officer, by an ex-con who drowned trying to escape his dragnet, and a lock-down at one of the city’s largest high schools.
Officer Cassidy, a 25-year veteran, has died. He was the fourth Philadelphia police officer shot this year, the third this week, and the second in just 12 hours in a city that is chronically poor, undereducated and violent — and shows no sign of coming to come to grips with its demons.
Mayor John Street led the Greek chorus that chimed in on cue after these latest war-zone convulsions in calling for stronger gun laws in a state where local jurisdictions are at the mercy of an adamantly pro-gun majority in the Legislature.
“Unless we can get control over the proliferation of illegal guns, then the people who are most at risk are, of course, the members of the Police Department,” Street said with practiced angst.
Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson belabored the obvious in saying that his officers are being “basically assassinated” by armed and violent criminals.
“The availability of weapons in our city . . . the availability of guns are really completely out of hand here in the city of Philadelphia,” he said. “Legislators have to realize that we have a gun problem.”
That “problem” has resulted in 325 murders in the first 10 months of the year, the highest big-city homicide rate per capita in the U.S., although the pace recently has slowed slightly from the 2006 rate, which resulted in 406 murders.
Meanwhile, New York City, with five times Philadelphia’s population and once America’s murder mecca, has had “only” 220 murders. Chicago and Los Angeles also lag far behind.
Much of the growing sense of inevitability about Hillary Clinton’s bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination revolves around the issue of electability. Polls show her running well these days against prospective Republican opponents, which she buttresses with references to the breadth of her own landslide Senate reelection victory last fall in New York.
But that race is a story with two sides. There is no doubt that a case for “Hillary the Vote Getter” can be made with cold, hard facts. She was reelected in 2006 with 67 percent of the vote, 12 percentage points better than her first run in 2000. She won 58 of the Empire State’s 62 counties (after carrying only 15 six years earlier). And she swept every region of the state, most notably the vast Republican-oriented upstate sector, by comfortable margins. The latter is a clear demonstration, her proponents say, of her ability to make inroads in “Red America” on a wider scale in 2008. MORE
October 26th, 2007 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
I’m not surprised that White Jena residents are beginning to push back against the narrative that the Jena Six is proof of racism. I am surprised that anybody is giving their wildly biased accounts even the remotest credibility. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of the history of the American South would recognize these pieces for what they are. Historically, White southerners have been near-pathological in their denial of racism in their midst — secure in the knowledge that any account they gave would be accepted because the alternative meant believing Black people. This is how we are supposed to believe (among other things) that a high school student in Louisiana wouldn’t know that a noose has racial history, that Blacks and Whites have “always been” living together in harmony (before outside rabble-rousers began making trouble, presumably). This is why we are supposed to accept the well-publicized threat the DA gave to Black students as a “myth”, simply because the DA denies it! It’s White privilege stripped bare, nothing more.
You know that America’s drug policy is totally cattywampus when farmers in North Dakota go to court to try to force the Drug Enforcement Agency to lift its ban on industrial hemp, a harmless lookalike cousin of the Evil Weed.
The feds call industrial hemp (photo) a controlled substance — the same as marijuana, heroin and LSD — but it is in fact a harmless and renewable cash crop with thousands of applications that are good for the environment.
In one of several legal actions that cut to the core of the principle of states’ rights in challenging the federal government’s authority to prohibit states from legislating limited use of a comparatively harmless substance like marijuana and a completely harmless substance like industrial hemp, North Dakota farmers Wayne Hauge and Dave Monson filed filed a lawsuit against the DEA.
The federal agency says that it’s merely enforcing the law.
The farmers say comparing industrial hemp to marijuana is like comparing pop guns and M-16s. They’ve successfully petitioned the state legislature — of which Monson is a member — to authorize the farming of industrial hemp.
Marijuana and industrial hemp are members of the Cannabis sativa L.species and have similar characteristics. But hemp won’t get you high because it contains only traces of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the compound that gets pot smokers stoned. However, the Controlled Substances Act makes little distinction, banning the species almost outright.
Efforts to decriminalize marijuana to ease pain and nausea in critically ill people have succeeded through public referenda in 12 states, but the DEA and Department of Health and Human Services continue to claim that it has no currently accepted medical use.
A nonprofit group, Americans for Safe Access, is challenging the government’s position in a lawsuit. An earlier effort by two terminally ill women to challenge Washington’s active opposition to California’s medical marijuana law in the Supreme Court in the fascinating Gonzalez v. Raich case was rejected by a majority of justices because of their view that federal drug law trumped local law.
Meanwhile, for the fourth year in a row, marijuana arrests in the U.S. set an all-time record in 2006, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
Arrests totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. Similar to previous years, 738,916 or 89 percent were for possession, not sale or manufacture, and marijuana possession arrests again exceeded arrests for all violent crimes combined.
For more on my take on medical marijuana and to learn why my parents and I engaged in what the federal government considers to be criminal behavior, please click here.
October 20th, 2007 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
In several states, the Republican Party is stuck in a cycle of destruction, with an electorate trending toward the middle paired against a Party controlled by its right flank. Virginia, Kansas, Arizona, and Colorado are all, to varying extents, exhibiting this trend. And unless the ever-vanishing GOP moderate can reassert itself, all four states will be prime targets for a Democratic resurgence (where they haven’t taken control already, as they have in Colorado).
October 12th, 2007 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
As the Democratic ascendancy continues, many Republicans are beginning to defect across the aisle to join the new majority Party. Many of these are excellent, devoted public servants who recognize that their Party has left them behind. But not every person who joins our side is worth welcoming, as a recent Colorado state representative’s switch exemplifies.
There is no question that America’s health-care system is in crisis and that extends to all 50 states. But if you want to see where U.S. hospitals may find themselves sooner or later, consider the number of hospitals in New Jersey that have closed or are on life support and how Democratic politicians have put themselves in a straightjacket that is exacerbating this perilous situation.
