**UPDATE:
The event has been moved up to 7:30 pm. Getting there early still remains a good idea.**
Senator Joe Lieberman, former Vice-presidential candidate from Connecticut, will be speaking at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Sunday, Oct. 18. Lieberman is speaking as this year's Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture--named after Stanford alum and newspaper reporter who was killed in Pakistan in 2002--on the topic of "The End of the War on Terror."

While I don't necessarily agree with all of Lieberman's political views, I am very glad to see a political figure speaking on campus. It will be interesting to see whether or not Lieberman steers clear of the most controversial issues surrounding the war, but given that the war itself is pretty controversial, it will be hard for him to avoid.

As the flier notes, there are no tickets; instead, it is first come, first gets seated. So get there early if you want to ensure a good view of the senator's unrivaled jowls.

Today at noon, Stanford students will unexpectedly gather en masse inside Stanford's student union (Tresidder Memorial Union), to protest the passage of Proposition 8 and remind California residents that the passing of Proposition 8 sends a destructive message to the nation's gay youth.

According to one study, one in three queer and questioning youth in America attempt suicide. "On November 4, Florida, Arizona, and California banned same-sex marriage. Arkansas banned adoption by people 'cohabitating outside a valid marriage' after banning same-sex marriage in 2004. With the passage of Proposition 8 and similar legislation across the country, what messages are we sending our youth?" said Amanda Gelender, a student activist on campus and founder of the Stanford Theatre Activist Mobilization Project (STAMP).

The protest hopes to fan the flames of an ongoing revival in student activism on the Stanford campus. There has not been such a level of organized activism on the Stanford campus since the 1970s, observed one Stanford dean. In fact, many students today feel that the fight for marriage equality and related issues are quickly becoming the civil rights movement of their generation. "It is important to send a poignant message to the Stanford community and LGBT youth everywhere, letting them know we not only support but affirm their queer identities and legal rights," said one Stanford graduate student majoring in Political Science.

Today's protest is part of a larger set of activist efforts on the Stanford campus, including on-campus sit-ins and the largest organized "No on Prop. 8" phonebank in all of California so far. Organized by the Stanford Student Coalition for Marriage Equality (SCME), hundreds of students reached out to thousands of undecided voters across the state. On the day before the 2008 Presidential Election, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom spoke to an audience of hundreds outside of Stanford's Old Union building.

Beyond the borders of campus, tens of thousands of American citizens have taken to the streets to protest Proposition 8 and show solidarity with marriage equality activists. Online, nearly five hundred Stanford students have registered on Facebook to attend the nationwide JoinTheImpact.com rally, which will take place simultaneously across the nation on Saturday at 10:30 am PST.

Gavin Newsom speaks to Stanford students in front of Old Union, VINCENT CHEN/The Stanford Daily

Two-hundred and sixty five Stanford students gathered today at the Women's Community Center on campus for a "MEGAPHONEBANK MARATHON to Defeat Prop 8", according to a representative from the Stanford Student Coalition for Marriage Equality (SCME). This makes the effort the single largest phone bank organized this year in California to Oppose CA Proposition 8.

Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution to eliminate the right for same-sex couples to marry, has been a key focus for activism, campaigning, and education this political season. Stanford's White Plaza has been a host to a number of Student rallies, from an early October rally featuring Candace Gingrich to rallies which brought in speakers and celebrities from all over California.

In related news, a Stanford Computer Science student launched an iPhone-based (mobile) Guide to California Propositions [in Plain English].

This iPhone-based guide is intended to help voters quickly read about California Propositions as they face long lines to vote come Election Day, and can be found at http://rspace.stanford.edu/. Users can quickly browse the California propositions, read short summaries of each proposition, and follow web links to find out more information about each ballot measure.

For more information on California Propositions, please see the California 2008 ballot measures on Ballotpedia.org, and rock the vote!

At this point, no one can know the full effects of Sarah Palin. Initial reception was shocked and more than a bit contemptuous; the reception to her speech was as rapturous as the earlier reaction dumbfounded. But, in the end, my guess is that the 2008 election will be the 2004 election run again—for considerably better results this time around.

With the run-up to the Democratic National Convention and Obama’s epic speech (we know it will be that), it’s useful to remind everyone that you should not pour all your hopes in him; he is a weak vessel, as he is human after all.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the separation of Church and state. Even as a young child, I intuitively understood then necessity of keeping religion out of public discourse, even though my parents were evangelical fundamentalists.

I’m a believer in the firm separation of church and state because I’ve had the necessity modeled to me in both my parents family. You see, a couple years before I was born quiet a few of my aunts and uncles converted – to different religions and branches of Christianity.

My parents converted to a Protestant Fundamentalist sect, another couple of uncle’s became a Jehovah’s Witnesses, other became just plain Protestant, a whole branch of my Mom’s family became Mormon, along with one of my Dad’s brothers, while other aunt became a practicing Pagan. On my father’s side his parents were nominally Mexican Catholic while my mother’s mother and stepfather were agnostics.

Fired up with the zeal of their new found beliefs family members began immediately trying to save each other and those who took the live and let live approach. Protestant’s fought with each other and with the Catholics (some declared Catholics weren’t really Christians), then ganged up on the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons (whom they considered to be a different religion). Family gatherings became small religious wars in which each participant was determined to prove the others’ religions false. Individuals (such as my parents) began insisting on prayers over meals, which raised the question – whose prayer would be said. Relationships became strained.

Independently, each set of grandparents arrived at the only set of rules which would keep the peace – there would be no discussion of religion at family gatherings, at all. Those who did so would be asked to stop or to leave.

Last Thursday's Faith and Feminism program hosted by the Stanford Women's Community Center and the Office for Religious Life got us thinking about how underrated moderates are in our society. The gist of tonight's program was about how people negotiate the sticking points between feminism and religious traditions, which made us think about how needlessly polarizing the rhetoric on this topic is. Feminists are still largely portrayed as crazed man haters and much of the stories related to religion are about terrorists or abortion clinic bombers or, at the very least, about people whose views are so reactionary that they could easily be characterized as hate speech. It seems to us that the people who garner the most attention in our world are those whose words are the least helpful in creating much needed understanding, tolerance, and mutual respect. People who try to navigate the sometimes contradictory points of concepts such as faith and feminism are often chided for not "taking a stand." Despite what you think of John Kerry, it was disheartening to us when the media mocked him for being "wishy washy" for trying to sort out complex issues with some balance and nuance. Yet think how different the world might be if we had spent the last four years under a leader who did not take a "for us or against us" view of the world. Maybe it doesn't make for good sound bytes and maybe it's even not sexy to stand up for moderates, but moderation is precisely what it is going to take for all of us to live together in an increasingly complex world. Instead of getting caught up in "us and them" type language, moderates take a rational, problem-solving approach that allows for multiple realities to co-exist. In our view, people committed to this kind of logic deserve more praise, more power, and less ire from all of those interested in making actual progress on the issues that divide us.

I recently heard a report on NPR about the role Yahoo played in China helping the Chinese government track down and imprison a political dissident Shi Tao-
Shi Tao’s political offense was contacting the Asia Democracy Project through his Yahoo email account to tell them about an order the Chinese Government gave to all journalists: not to report on any democratic protesters on the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square (June 4, 2004).

The Chinese government found out about this email, and demanded that Yahoo provide the user’s private information, which Yahoo did without asking why. This became a US scandal when the US Yahoo representatives told the US Senate that Chinese Yahoo had done no such thing, which it later retracted, claiming that it had made this claim on the grounds of an inaccurate translation from the Chinese Yahoo office.

According to the New York Times, people at Stanford are angry about Rummy's appointment to the Hoover Institution as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow.

Get out.

Protesting profs, including Eric Roberts, Charlotte Fonrobert, and Phil Zimbardo.

From the Times:

Some 2,100 professors, staff members, students and alumni have signed an online petition protesting Mr. Rumsfeld’s appointment, which will involve advising a task force on ideology and terrorism. Faculty members say he should not have been offered the post because of his role in the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war.

“We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed,” the petition reads.

The university is taking a "free speech" stance on the issue because, you know, it's not like he's a war criminal or something. Either way, I think it's going to be fun to have Rummy on campus. Imagine the creative protests that will come out of this experience. And maybe if we're nice (you know, if we actually let him walk into his office), he'll want to talk to us.

I have to admit, I'm kind of curious.

For the second time in two years, the California legislature voted to legalize marriage between same-sex couples. This time, the bill received more votes and was co-authored by 29 Assemblymembers and 14 Senators, who were led by Assemblyman Mark Leno. A broad coalition of more than 250 civil rights organizations and leaders support the measure, including the NAACP California State Conference, United Farm Workers, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Chinese for Affirmative Action, California Teachers Association, ACLU, California Nurses Association, Lambda Legal, Anti-Defamation League, California National Organization for Women, California Church Impact, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

It's unlikely, but we'll see if Governor Schwarzenegger has the balls to sign it this time (October 14th is his deadline). Props to our courageous legislators.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633

I thought this was pretty cool: all but two of the 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls appeared one-by-one at an event hosted by the Human Rights Campaign and televised by Logo to discuss their views on issues affecting the gay community. First of all, it's cool that these candidates showed up. Even cooler was that, with the exception of Barack Obama (who seemed to be straining), most of the candidates really seemed to embrace the LGBT community, and the discussions came off as candid and intimate. The chat with Mike Gravel and his wholehearted acceptance of homosexuality was a special treat, simply given the generation he hails from.

Also, I hate to sound promotional, but I keep walking away from watching Hillary Clinton talk feeling really impressed and almost reassured by her command of the issues. LGBT issues seem to be no exception, and I found her ability to speak frankly and with empathy on the politics of homosexuality, in short, moving. Check out this scene with Melissa Etheridge:

For more, watch more of the debate, or read the Washington Post's coverage.

I know a lot of Stanford liberals support Barack, but I'm afraid a President Obama would be just another President Bush. This is based on reading Barack's recent article in Foreign Affairs: I urge you, read the **whole** critique of Obama's Foreign Affairs article by Pierre Tristam-- and read the foreign affairs article itself. See if you want another President who believes in American exceptionalism, the need for a larger military, and a continued presence in Iraq at our "facilities" (aka permanent military bases).

I do appreciate his stance on nuclear weapons (ratify the CTBT and ban new weapons technology) but he "leaves the option on the table" to use military force against Iran to prevent a nuclear Iran. This threatening rhetoric does nothing to solve the problems between the US and Iran, and if the US actually destroyed an Iranian nuclear reactor, it would set back the Iranian program for a couple of years at most. More significatly, it would make the United States and our embassies around the world a viable target for the strongest terrorist network in the world: Iranian funded Hezbollah. Attacking Iraq was clearly a mistake, given the quagmire we're in today, but Iran would be much much worse; we would very likely face immediate retaliation on the scale of another 9/11.

Obama's reference to global warming and the need for renewable energy is heartening, if not substantive. First, he talks about using Biofuels, which are not a solution at all. He mentions renewable energy, but will there be tax incentives for people to install solar panels on their houses? Or incentives for coal-burning energy plants to shut down to make way for wind farms? Despite the considerable length of the Foreign Affairs article, it is very slim on details, making Barack seem all talk and no direction.

All in all, Obama does not have my vote for the Primary.

One of the most interesting aspects of the 2008 presidential campaign to me is observing the ambitions of the different candidates. Each of them, it seems, has this overbearing desire, an ambition, to be the President of the United States (POTUS). This sounds banal. What I mean, however, is the desire for the presidency seems to be rooted in personal psychology rather than position papers. It's all about being the POTUS.

Like, for example, Mitt Romney. He can't stop talking about his father, George Romney, a popular governor of Michigan who lost the 1968 Republican nomination to Tricky Dick himself, Richard Nixon. G. Romney was leading in polls until he doomed himself by opposing the Vietnam War. Would Romney be running if his father never made the attempt? It's hard to say. How much of a father-son dynamic is there?

I haven't been out in the world for a few weeks due to finals and papers and such. But I just now saw that last week, Newsweek declared the Bush Administration officially dead:

Read Fareed Zakaria's fantastic piece on how we can restore America's place in the world. Really, if you haven't read it, go click on the link and read it. It'll make you sad, but also hopefully it will make you feel like we can do better.

...and then tune in to the next Democratic debate to help determine who will get to clean up Bush's mess. This one's unique because it is co-sponsored by YouTube and CNN, meaning that all of the questions asked will come from YouTube user video submissions. The New York Times has the latest on why this could be huge. I would say it might be entertaining, but I can't picture CNN letting anything truly unpredictable happen. We shall see.

Dick Cheney’s former aide, “Scooter” Libby has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for obstruction of justice and perjury. Since the Libby trial began was so long ago, I’ve had a couple of my friends ask me what it was all about- so here’s a bit of a review:

Back in 2002, the CIA wanted to check out the facts regarding a memo that they had- this memo documented that Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq in the late 1990s- this was part of the proof that Iraq had a WMD. The CIA asked Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to travel to Niger and verify this information. Once he got to Niger, it seemed clear that this particular memo had been forged- the people who signed it were no longer in office, the Niger government formally denied it, and it would have been very difficult to get the uranium out of the country because of the IAEA oversight.

Then, later in 2002, Britain started citing the Nigerian yellowcake as justification for the war in Iraq, and in early 2003, the Bush Administration also started using this as justification. After Ambassador Wilson realized that the Bush Administration was disregarding his findings in Niger, he started voicing his dissent and the facts, as he knew them. Finally, he wrote an op-ed to the New York Times on July 6 2003. This piece clearly explains his findings in Niger and the inaccuracy of this connection between Niger and Iraq.

The Washington Post has the fix on the debates last night. I agree with them that Clinton is emerging from these debates as the most impressive among the field. She's also the clear leader in the latest polls on the Democratic side, with 42% compared to Obama's 27% and Edwards' 11%.

But get this, folks: When you add non-candidate Gore into the mix, he places third with 17%, and takes a 7-point chunk out of Hillary. Obama falls to 23% and Edwards to a paltry 8%. Furthermore, Al Gore wins on intensity. Sixty percent of his supporters do so "strongly," compared to 53% for Hillary and a continually-softening 43% for Obama. Crazy.

Here he is on the Daily show, in case you missed it (from two Thursdays ago):

Part 2 here.

First, New York's profile of the graduating West Point class. You know, a few weeks ago, I remember an ROTC guy and someone else discussing the Army. I forget the specific topic about that, but the other guy kept on referencing his video game knowledge. Which was kind of a funny, tragic and absurd moment all at once: the main way the vast majority of Stanford students know of the military is via a) video games and b) movies and TV. This has two effects: one, we have no idea about the military's problems and struggles; and two, we tend to idealize the military. These two things are probably related and highly unfortunate. Well, I won't claim that this article will solve all our problems, it's certainly very good.

Today's Daily front cover prominently features a very interesting story about Azia Kim's involvement in ROTC, but the biggest news of the day--that Stanford is joining the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA)--received no notice on the news pages, and was relegated to a long op-ed by President Hennessy.

The WRC is a consortium of colleges pledging to ensure sweatshop labor is not used to produce licensed apparel with their logos, with a governing board split evenly among university administrators, representatives of United Students Against Sweatshops, and human and labor rights experts. Their website has a list of useful FAQs. (One thing to note, in particular, is that the WRC requires participating colleges to pay 1% of their gross licensing revenues up to a maximum of $50,000. I'd be curious to know how much that would end up being for Stanford.) The FLA, by contrast, is an organization with more corporate influence; according to its website, it's a "multi-stakeholder coalition" of corporations, universities, and NGOs. Hennessy makes a good point in his op-ed that an optimal solution would have both labor activists and corporations working together in one organization; I imagine that either side would be very distrustful of an organization dominated by the other side.

Notably, Hennessy said that Stanford will not join the DSP, or Designated Suppliers Program, an additional program of the WRC that takes a significantly more activist role in ensuring sweatfree labor. In this program, universities are obligated to shift their licensed apparel (over a several year period) into factories which primarily produce college apparel. The argument is that doing so ensures that the colleges will have significant negotiating power. (Technically, the DSP will allow factories in which less than 50% of the apparel is from colleges, so long as the rest of the apparel comes from makers that will abide by the DSP's standards, but that seems unlikely.)

Update from the Chronicle of Higher Education (5/30/2007): "Teaching hospitals that stood to lose at least $1.8-billion in Medicaid funds from a regulatory change proposed last week received a one-year reprieve on Friday in budget legislation approved by Congress." (article in the CHE is by K. Mangan)

Hopefully the AMA, AAMC, and others will make their voices heard on the issues.-EB

=========================================================================
From the Federal Register May 23, 2007:
This proposed rule would clarify that costs and payments associated with Graduate Medical Education programs are not expenditures for medical assistance that are federally reimbursable under the Medicaid program

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), US Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) have released a new rule proposal which would disallow Graduate Medical Education (GME) as an expenditure that is federal reimbursable by Medicaid.

Medicaid is a federally and state funded program designed to provide a safety net to low income parents, children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities.

"So what?" you may be asking.

Many medical schools and hospitals, including Stanford Med School and Stanford Hospital, are dependent on direct and indirect federal reimbursement of graduate medical education (the training of interns and residents) from both Medicaid and Medicare to help pay for the costs of running a teaching facility.

Last night, Wesley Clark speculated that the issue that defines our generation will be the way we deal with economic inequality. Do we accept the growing disparity as the natural evolution of society and do nothing or do we enact policies to combat this disparity. I tend to agree and would even extend this to whether or not we accept dramatic inequalities on a global scale.

I won't go into my views, but point you to a study over at the Economic Mobility Project. (Via Kevin Drum.) As you can see from the chart above, men in their 30s are doing less well, in an absolute sense, then their father's generation. If you read the report, you'll see we aren't doing so well in terms of relative mobility.

The question is, how are we going to address this issue--if we are going to address it at all? I'm fond of talking about the powerful, transformative potential of our generation (those under thirty) and believe we can deal with it if we choose to and make it a priority. But will we?

Wes Clark (whom I support for President even though he's not an official candidate) will be giving a lecture on campus today at 7:30 in Room 200 of the Hewlett Teaching Center. I don't know exactly what he'll be talking about today specifically, but he has been discussing for many years now about ways the US should be working internationally to build its legitimacy.

I was able to meet Wes Clark earlier this year and can say he's very knowledgeable in a variety of areas: he's edited books on military history and taught economics at West Point. He's also quite engaging. It will be worth attending if you want a more thorough discussion than we're getting from the current crop of presidential candidates.

I should also point out that, back in December of 2003, Stanford hosted John Kerry while he was trailing most of the Democratic candidates and then Kerry went on to win the nomination. I always tell people that it was his appearance at Stanford which launched Kerry to the Democratic nomination. We might see the same with Wes Clark.

The Raw Story has the clip, where Lisa asks, "How can Fox News be so conservative when the Fox Network keeps airing raunchy shows? They don't fit together." Check it out:

In other news, a recent study at Indiana University found that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly calls “a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.” Think Progress has other highlights from the study.

At around 11:30 this morning, eleven students from the Stanford Sweat-Free Coalition began a sit-in in President Hennessy's office to protest what they call "Stanford's inaction on sweatshops."

As of 3:30pm this afternoon, all the students were still sitting there, accompanied by moral supporters outside the office building.

According to an article on the San Francisco Chronicle's website, University officials today said they "agreed" with the students' point and were "working on a plan to ensure Stanford gear is produced in responsible factories."

According to the group's website, the students have been prevented from using the private bathrooms in the Office: "The cops are going upstairs to pee, while we are forced to hold it. They told us that there are public toilets outside, but we cannot be let back in. We are prepared to pee in our pants."

Did this officer get to pee inside?

Emails circulated on various Stanford lists say Sweat Free's schedule for the rest of the day includes a Solidarity Rally at 4:30pm in the Main Quad and a "Sweat-Free Teach-In" at 6pm in Bldg. 240.

Two of their signs:

Materials for a protest

Everyone needs to see this BBC video clip about the shady election process in Florida during the 2000 elections. It is sickening how manipulative Bush and the gang were, and how racist sentiments and attitudes still subtly pervade our society.

An interesting story to read, on the subtlety of modern racism, is "Gold Coast" by James Alan McPherson. I encourage everyone to read it.

Everywhere Al Gore goes, people implore him to run for President. "We have dug ourselves into a 20-ft. hole, and we need somebody who knows how to build a ladder. Al's the guy," says Steve Jobs of Apple. "Like many others, I have tried my best to convince him. So far, no luck."

"It happens all the time," says Tipper Gore. "Everybody wants to take him for a walk in the woods. He won't go. He's not doing it!"

Jessica Usborne, an audience member at one of Gore's talks, stood up and asked The Question. "Given the urgency of global warming, shouldn't you not only educate people but also help implement the changes that will be necessary—by running for President?"

Gore understands deeply the damage done to America's institutions and reputation by the Bush Administration, and has faith that the American public sphere that has permitted Bush to ride roughshod over our Constitution will be restored gradually by the Internet, regardless of who the next several Presidents will be. But there's nothing like a true leader, and I believe there is no one more up to the huge challenges facing the next President than Al Gore.

I wish he would run. Not Hillary. Not Obama.

Al Gore.

Gosh, two entries about Harvard in one day. This one's big, though, too.

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an ad from 56 members of the 1982 Harvard Law School class, of which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was a member, chastising him for his "failure to stand for the rule of law" by "sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions in order to justify torture," "reading Habeas Corpus out of our Constitutional protections," "claiming inherent power to wiretap American citizens without warrants," and for dismissing "the troubling firings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with others more 'loyal' to the President's policies, as merely 'an overblown personnel matter.'" This follows a recent class reunion, which was disrupted by student protesters dressed much like ours a few days ago.

The letter also comes during a series of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the US attorney dismissals. In addition, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced yesterday that he would resign.

Check it out.

Following up on the Daily's criticism of John McCain today, I thought I would add my own two cents, and put it a little more bluntly: he's a douchebag. Or perhaps "sell-out" is a better word. Even Jon Stewart, who once genuinely admired the Senator, seems to have lost faith. Frankly, it's easier to be a sell-out when no one believed in you to begin with, but when you trumpet your credentials as a "maverick," and then cozy up to agents of intolerance, people start calling you things like, well, douchebag. Strolling through an Iraqi market with 100 bodyguards to show people how "safe" Iraq has become doesn't help, either.

For some reason, I was able to get over these and other douchebaggy things that McCain has done since deciding that he no longer has any integrity. But his professed ignorance at a recent town hall as to whether or not condoms help stop the spread of HIV really got me angry. How can a man who claims to be an internationalist (and marches to Stanford to promote himself as one) not know whether condoms can help stop the transmission of HIV? How can he not know whether condoms should be a crucial part of the fight against AIDS in Africa?

Of course, the truth is, he does know, and he's being completely disingenuous. Now that he has decided to chuck his integrity out the window and court Christian fundamentalists, he has to pretend he's ignorant.

Because they certainly are. And if you're going to court voters, you've got to tell them what they want to hear, and leave them in the dark about the truth. In the 2000 election, I thought McCain showed real integrity. In 2008, McCain is just showing us how to get elected.

The conference Feminicide = Sanctioned Murder: Race, Gender and Violence in Global Context will examine the murders and disappearances of women in Mexico, Guatemala and Canada that are occurring on an epidemic scale, and interrogate closely the gender, class, sexual and ethnoracial components of this violence against women. The aim and purpose of the conference is to stop the violence and map out ways to bring about justice.

Distinguished participants include Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico’s most eminent writers, whose innovative writing advocates for women and the poor in their struggle for social and economic justice, and Lydia Cacho, who recently received the 2007 Ginetta Sagan Award for Women and Children's Rights from Amnesty International for exposing a net of pederasts linked to the government and big business, and for creating a shelter for the children, victims of trafficking and abuse in Cancún, Mexico.

The conference, presented by Chicana and Chicano Studies of The Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University, brings together the most knowledgeable experts on the subject of feminicide in recent years, including mothers of murdered and disappeared women, activists, academics, writers and journalists, human rights lawyers, artists and filmmakers.

According to The Stanford Dems Poll everyone loves Obama, except perhaps me and one or two others. (Note: I happily consider myself a Stanford Dem.) But I'm not impressed. For that matter, I'm not as impressed with any of the presumed front runners as I am with some of the ignored candidates. Perhaps that makes me cynical. Who knows. But if you're like me and are tired of hearing only about the top three candidates, C-E-O, then you should check out Bill Richardson's new YouTube video:

Last week, Stanford Law School professor and Net activist Lawrence Lessig (who also founded Creative Commons and Stanford's Center for Internet and Society) wrote an open letter to the chairs of the Republican National Convention (RNC) and Democratic National Convention (DNC), asking that video footage from party presidential debates able to be "shared, re-used, and freely blogged about without the uploader of the video being deemed a lawbreaker."

Lessig, along with 75 other Internet VIPs such as Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Ariana Huffington of The Huffington Post, is now joined by big-timers from both sides of the Red-Blue divide.

Republican bloggers like Matt Margolis, who operates "Blogs for Bush" have sent letters to the chair of their National Convention. Recently, presidential hopefuls John Edwards and Barack Obama, too, have shown their support for free distribution of debate content.

Scandal was born after MSNBC's live internet stream of the Democratic presidential debates last week. MSNBC claimed that no footage could be distributed on the Internet and that no one was allowed to use excerpts after May 26, 2007, and could not archive them, either. Outrage in the online community sparked Lessig's letter, and now has taken a prominent role in discussion of the debates.

As Obama points out in his letter to DNC Chair Howard Dean, open video access engages youth (I, for one, watched the debates online) and promotes a political dialogue in the form of bloggers, et al.

Last Wednesday, MySpace and the creator of Survivor announced a new American Idol-style interactive political reality TV show/internet hybrid that will select a candidate for the 2008 Presidential campaign. Naturally, it's going to be called Independent.

More press coverage here and here.

Here's what we know: the "primary," so to speak, will take place on the internet, where hundreds of self-anointed candidates will submit video to enter and compete via specialized pages on MySpace.com. Web voters will then narrow the slate down to 100 (or so) candidates, who will then appear on national television (presumably on Fox, although the creators haven't secured a deal yet), where they will debate every week, followed by more voting (both on- and offline) and feedback from web users, who will also determine the topics to be debated. The winner of the show will receive $1 million toward his or her actual Presidential campaign (or, if the winner is too young for President, toward some lesser public office, or charity).

Depending on how the show is designed and received, it has the potential to be extremely disruptive to our political system, involving a generation of young viewers in a political process they can understand and really feel a part of. The base of legitimacy this might lend to the winning candidate (or perhaps some runners up!) could be very powerful, to say the least.

No doubt, depending on how the show is designed, it has the potential to put our political system to shame. A whole hour every week on primetime TV devoted to political discourse among actual candidates? Wow. A common forum on the internet for voters to hash out what's most important to them and give feedback to candidates who are actually listening? Holy cow! A no-party system where candidates don't have extreme elements to cater to? Keep in mind that the party primary system we have today means that primary candidates have to run to the center of their party in order to be elected their party's Presidential nominee, which means each candidate ends up being far away from the center of America's political preferences as a whole. With no party primary, this show could eliminate that bias and force candidates to run for and be accountable to the center.

The recent Stanford Democrats presidential straw poll had Barack Obama garnering 50% of the vote. If you combine the numbers for Obama, Clinton, and Edwards--the top three vote getters--they received 88% of the votes cast. If you are like me, then you're one of the lonely 12%. Or, if you don't support a certain candidate, then you are one of the cynics. Well, I'll come out and say it: I'm a cynic!

A recent piece at the Columbia Journalism Review should be something us cynics keep reminding people:

2008 is supposed to be the most "wide open" presidential race Americans have seen in eighty years. This election is of crucial importance -- the winner will have to deal with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, massive environmental issues, a staggering deficit, etc. But the country will only get the kind of national debate it desperately needs if the political press resists the time-honored temptation to put the horserace above all else.

It just so happens that Bill Richardson is not my top choice. (That spot currently belongs to Wes Clark, who wasn't even in the poll!) But why should we listen to the pundits and others who want to make this election about "rock stars" and ignore a candidate who has already done much of what the next president will need to do. I'll save Joe Biden for another day, but he has a fascinating history as well. Don't be afraid to be a cynic like me. Our country faces a lot of serious problems and we shouldn't have to rush in our decision. Nor should we be forced to accept the inevitability of 28 years of Bush-Clinton rule or a third year senator (both of whom I actually like). Don't be afraid to brush me off, I didn't even mention some of the other Democratic candidates!

In an effort to get students excited about the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries, the Stanford Democrats conducted straw polling in White Plaza last week and during the Admit Weekend Activities Fair to see which contender is most popular among the students here. Sneakily, the group included Al Gore among the potential candidates even though he has not done much to move in that direction. Probably a little bit of wishful thinking on their part (and what can I say? I'm a fan too). They also excluded the several other Democratic contenders, including Dennis Kucinich, who should at least get some of the sympathy vote. But for what they're worth, the results are pretty interesting (150 total votes):

Senator Barack Obama -- 50%
Senator Hillary Clinton -- 27%
Fmr. Senator John Edwards -- 11%
Governor Bill Richardson -- 7%
Fmr. Vice President Al Gore -- 5%

In their ProFroPo (that's "Prospective Freshman Poll") during the Activities Fair, Senator Obama scored an astounding 68% among the ProFros, compared to 9% each for Clinton, Edwards, and Gore. Wow.

As we mull over a possible federal shield law and in the wake of the jailing of Josh Wolf (who is now free after 226 days), the question of whether a “blogger” or a “citizen journalist” is actually a Journalist -- with a capital "J" -- has taken front and center.

I asked that question (via email) to Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He succinctly responded, “Yes. A blogger is a journalist if they are doing journalism.”

The answer is an interesting one in the context of defining a journalist either through statute or case law. Many have qualms about the very prospect of inviting the government to define who is or isn’t a journalist. To them, the act is a form of licensing and an affront to the First Amendment.

However, Bankston’s answer shifts the focus from who is a journalist, to what is journalism.

According to Stanford Journalism Professor Ted Glasser, defining what is journalism is the lesser of the two evils.

When some people ask themselves "What Would Jesus Do?" in this modern age, some respond, "He would certainly carry big signs that say 'God Hates Fags' to soldiers' funerals!" Others respond, "Jesus would drive to Stanford and tell the students that homosexuals are going to hell!"

The latter response is, in fact, what three older men decided to do today. They stood outside the Spring Career Fair with big signs that read "The sin and the sinner go straight to hell together," and "Warning: Pornicators, Drunkards, Thieves, Adulterers, God Haters, Liars, HOMOSEXUALS - JUDGMENT."

Fortunately, Stanford students wouldn't have any of it. While it would've been preferrable to have the men carried off by campus security, the students made the best of the situation by calling on the men to cite Bible verses to support their claims of God's hate and by cheering on two gay students who made out in front of the demonstrators.

Fortunately, this nice little scene was caught on video (makeout session is at the end).

I've participated in several voter registration and GOTV efforts on campus and elsewhere because I believe strongly that active participation in government is integral to the health of our democracy. It is vital that young people speak up and have their voices heard. The actions of our leaders today are going to greatly impact the actions we can take in the future, especially when it comes to the dire fiscal calamity that they are leaving behind (but that's a story for another day).

You may or may not have been following the recent uproar over the firing--"purging" if you want to use the more alarmist tone--of the US Attorneys. But you should be. It has implications for young people's ability to vote.

On April 10, American Studies will be a leading co-sponsor of an event organized by Stanford Beyond Bars, an organization dedicated to sparking dialogue and consciousness of the issues surrounding incarceration. The event will be organized by American Studies major Jacqueline Gauthier, who is the coordinator of Stanford Beyond Bars. Since SBB's official inception in the fall of 2004, they have started a tutoring program with the San Francisco County Jails in association with the Northern California Service League and volunteered with prison activist organizations such as the Prison Activist Resource Center in Oakland.

In the midst of all the flyers and banners on campus, and all the other miscellaneous advertisements (indeed, this is the...5th post of a Senate candidate advertising on the Blog), you might be overwhelmed or increasingly indifferent to more publicity. But, still, I feel compelled to display my reasons for running and try to convey the type of person I am.
Now I know some of you simply might not care about the Senate, and don't want your blog polluted by these ad's. So I'm not going to say any more, on this main page.
If you are interested in my campaign, click the "view more" button below".

Psychology Professor Emeritus Phil Zimbardo put in a funny and enlightening performance with Jon Stewart in last night's The Daily Show. They start with a cute exchange wherein Jon notes that he was once a Psychology major himself:

Zimbardo: "What'd you get in introductory psych?"

Jon: "Introductory Psych 101? I got... uhh... 'Yes, your essay was long enough.'"

The very popular and notorious Stanford Psychology professor gave his farewell lecture at Stanford three weeks ago and is now making the rounds to promote his new book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, which discusses, in detail for the first time, the famed Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, and then draws parallels to the modern-day events of American prison abuses in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Watch the video online here.

(Photo from www.cnn.com)

In the past week, I've noticed two major news stories about terror suspects, currently being held at Guantanamo, confessing to major roles in 9/11 and the bombing of the USS Cole, respectively.

It struck me as odd that these two confessions should happen within the span of less than a week and 4-5 years after their respective events, especially since both confessions are quite weighty and come from supposedly high-up suspects. They are currently trying 14 "high-value" prisoners at Guantanamo, these two men included, but should we rationally expect this much candor from those on trial, after all these years? Honestly? Then, I remembered reading this little gem.

Usually, we try to set a pretty high standard for the kinds of videos we post to the blog, limiting ourselves generally to videos produced by Stanford students, or with some redeeming cultural or political value. This time, the cultural and political satire is just too good to pass over. It's an ironic merger of two well-known megalomaniacs who many believe are intent on taking over the world. And the satire ends with the introduction of another "i" product that is simply all-too-real a possibility for the US.

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." --Andrew Card, Former Chief of Staff to President Bush, on why the administration waited until after Labor Day to try to sell the American people on military action against Iraq in 2002.

Like Ingrid Newkirk, but not as scary: Stanford’s loudest animal rights activist talks about Stanford’s animal research facility, famous vegans in history, and why he frequently foregoes footwear.

[Blog for Stanford]: Can you tell me what ARF is about and what your goals are as an organization?
[Jack]: ARF stands for Animal Rights on the Farm, and we exist to promote animal rights. Interestingly, we’re also Stanford’s only undergraduate and graduate student group that focuses on animal rights. Our main goal is to extend compassion to all sentient beings because we think that any being that has interests or can feel pain deserves respect. Just because they happen to belong to a different species doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect their interests. That’s bigoted, I think.

[BFS]: I’ve heard the speciesist argument before. Is that sort of what you guys are getting at?
[Jack]: Yeah, it is. The most widespread form of disregarding members of other species is eating them, and so we’d like to promote vegetarianism and veganism among all people, but especially students on campus, since we’re a Stanford group. Another activity that uses animals in painful ways is research, and there’s an animal research facility on campus. They don’t release any information to the public about what animal research is going on. We’d like to find out more about what’s happening at the animal research facility and be able to hold a public debate about what types of animal research people might feel are acceptable or unacceptable. Because we feel that when you’re doing research on an animal, you’re harming him or her, and you need to ask whether the benefits outweigh the harms. And if you don’t have any information, you can’t ask those questions. We are doing a disservice to the animals and to ourselves as ethical people.

[BFS]: Is it a medical research facility?
[Jack]: The research facility is in the medical school; it’s in the basement of the medical school.

[BFS]: Oh, so you know where it’s located. Very key.

State transportation planners have nearly finished designing a high-tech bullet train system that would take passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just over two-and-a-half hours at 220 mph -- faster than a Ferrari. The electric train, which would extend from San Diego to the Bay Area and Sacramento, is slated to be put before voters in 2008 at a price tag of $30 billion. Given California's population growth rate -- we effectively add another San Jose to our population every two years -- the ensuing commuter flood will jam our highways and airports. An electric high-speed bullet train would be significantly more environmentally- and aesthetically-friendly, not to mention cheaper, than building more highways and/or expanding our airports.

Though the rest of the industrialized world has had high speed trains like this for as much as 43 years (in the case of Japan), America has yet to construct even one truly high-speed train (i.e. over 200 mph).

As always, California will show the way.

Visit the California High Speed Rail Authority Website for more >>

Feel like the only one who hasn't chosen a presidential candidate for 2008? Well, you're not alone. Gallup has a new poll that shows only 15% of registered voters saying they made up their minds about who they will support and only 22% have a "good idea" who they will support.

If you're a tired of hearing about how great Clinton, Obama and Giuliani are, you are not alone. The rest of the country is taking their time. So should you. Get to know the candidates and look at their record. Some may be surprised to learn that one of the candidates got into some trouble for helping to get the Pentagon Papers out, that one of the candidates is a former ambassador to the UN, or that one of the candidates lost a lot of weight and has become a big advocate of preventative health care (hey, it's a Republican so, yeah, that's news).

We usually think of peace as coming from a macro-level: a treaty between two nations, a peace accord, UN intervention, or a cease-fire. But to what degree can the reality at the micro-level influence peace between governments?

There are numerous projects working towards this effect in the Middle East. A version of Sesame Street for the region has Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully in the same neighborhood, and for adults there are groups such as Arabs for Israel and Coalition of Women for Peace. A number of other groups work to foster dialogue and exchange between Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps these groups can succeed where governments have failed.

Here at Stanford there's a new group called the Stanford Project for U.S.-China Dialogue. The goal here is to cultivate cultural and political understanding between the U.S. and China, by posting articles on various topics by American and Chinese university students. While the two countries are not at war, the group aims to prevent the sort of misunderstandings that have lead to conflict in the past. You can check out the website at: http://dialogue.stanford.edu/

So what do you think? What are other opportunities for cultural bridge-building? Is this the future of peace?

Lost amidst the top Democratic presidential candidats' Iraq war one-upmanship (or womanship), is the looming threat that the US is about to embark on another adventure: Iran. It's easy for the very real possibility of an attack on Iran to be downplayed as presidential candidates fiddle vocally with details of troop deployment and funding levels for the war in Iraq. However, the threat of strikes against Iran is very real.

In January, I met with retired General Wesley Clark who was very concerned about the current situation in the middle east. (Disclaimer: he's my candidate of choice in '08.) The increasing possibility of strikes against Iran has become great enough that General Clark has made stopping such actions his top priority--at the expense of a possible presidential campaign. Together with VoteVets.org, General Clark has set up a website, StopIranWar.com, aimed at bringing attention to the situation and to push diplomatic efforts in Iran. The rush to war in '03 couldn't be stopped, but there are avenues available in the Democratically controlled Congress that can be used to push diplomacy over war. I'll be discussing upcoming legislation later here and elsewhere. For now, you can sign the petition. (Bill Richardson has a petition as well as Hillary Clinton)

YouTube's new channel for the 2008 Presidential Candidates now makes it dead-simple for voters to get in touch with the men and woman who have entered the race. The posted videos are exactly -- and only -- what the candidates want you to see, but they do several democracy-enhancing things.

First, the channel allows voters to see all of the candidates at once and get a sense of (and compare) what each of them is saying, both Democrat and Republican.

Second, it is currently -- and will likely remain -- an attack-ad-free zone, so you don't feel like shit every time you simply wade into the election. If a candidate wants to make a jab at another, he or she pretty much has to own up to it, at least here.

Libby was found guilty today in his Valerie Plame-related trial for perjury and obstruction of justice. According to the Associated Press, “Libby is the highest ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid 1980s.”

This is obviously a big break, as we’ll finally, finally see someone get punished significantly for this Valerie Plame scandal, which, by exposing a covert agent, damaged our national security.

Of course, Mr. Law and Order man, Fred Thompson, assures us that “it was not a crime.” (I actually enjoy his Law and Order work, he should stick to that.) This attitude is typical of Republicans. To wit, then, this is the conservative mentality on crime:

An individual lies about having sex with a woman: he should be thrown out of office, possibly immolated, and is a threat to the nation’s dignity.

On the other hand, if an individual attempts to cover up for an investigation about an administration exposing a covert agent as a dirty trick: no biggie, dude.

This will serve rational analysis well when we deal with the next Republican scandal, the Department of Justice Massacre. Essentially, after pressuring their own prosecutors to give Republicans favorable treatment, the Department of Justice fired eight prosecutors and replaced them with their own cronies.

The Democrats will be holding hearings.

The recent cratering of stocks caused a lot of panic amongst the chattering classes. Fueling this panic was not just “Black Tuesday in Shanghai” but also everyone’s favorite former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan. He reportedly claimed that a recession was “possible,” and investors, who treat Greenspan as some kind of mystic oracle, panicked.

Leaving aside the weird messiah-seeking tendencies of investors (if it ain’t a CEO or Mad Money, it’s Greenspan), the whole question is why Greenspan continues to meddle with the economic matters that aren’t his job to do.

In an ongoing effort to prove Ralph Nader fantastically wrong (re: “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” and “it being impossible to tell the difference between the two parties”), to silence those who don’t think government responds to progressive concerns anymore, and to pass good legislation, the House passed the Employee Free Choice Act today. This bill is relatively obscure, but a great move.

The Employee Free Choice Act allows card check organization of unions, rather than the current election system. Card check means that as soon as a majority of workers sign cards and ship them off to the NLRB, an accredited union that can engage in collective bargaining with an employer pops up instantly.

The tenor of tonight's speech and Q&A with Ralph Nader, I think, can be best illustrated by describing three of the more distinct moments in what was a very compelling evening:

• Alan Morrison's introduction of Nader came with a telling admission: that even he, who has argued more than 20 cases in front of the Supreme Court and is now on faculty at the Law School, feels that Nader demands more of him than he is 'capable' of providing.


• When Nader asked the audience, mostly Law students and undergraduates, how many of us will devote our post-graduation lives to the pursuit of justice (however we define it), far less than half of us raised our hands.


• The very first question Nader received during the Q&A went something like this: "Ralph Nader, given your assertion during the 2000 election that there is no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore, has your thinking at all changed, seven years later, when we're stuck in the war in Iraq and Al Gore is the leading advocate for confronting global warming?"

Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for president today at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where, symbolically, Abraham Lincoln once declared that "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I was moved, as I always am, by his soaring words, his intelligence, his integrity, and his eloquence. But aside from reinforcing in me that Obama is someone I want to and think I can believe in, the speech also reinforced for me that I need substance. Beyond the sweeping rhetoric, Obama's speech left me feeling flat.

Unfortunately, Obama's campaign seems to eschew the substance in favor of vague notions of hope and generational responsibility. Those are powerful notions, but I can't think of a presidential candidate in recent history who hasn't invoked them. Even worse is that Obama explicitly suggests that people who want to hear plans and specifics somehow "don't believe in talking about hope":

"There are those who don't believe in talking about hope," Obama told the crowd. "They say, 'Well, we want specifics, we want details, and we want white papers, and we want plans.' We've had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we've had is a shortage of hope."