I’ve got a crazy day, but here are a few short takes to chew on:

*The ACLU just released this video on the Crack/Powder sentencing issue:

*The Nebraska supreme court is hearing a case this week about whether a State Trooper should be allowed to keep his job despite membership in the Klu Klux Klan. Here’s the Omaha Herald story.

*You think good teachers should be paid a six figure salary? This proposed Washington Heights charter school plans to do just that. (Chapeau tip to Eduwonk.)

*And, according to the Washington Post, this Boston area charter high school guru has a radical idea about how to cure the drop out rate—with a sort of drop out savings account. (Just read it.)

AND LAST….AND PROBABLY BEST:

*A new, worthwhile-sounding documentary: Troop 1500: Girl Scouts Beyond Bars Here’s some of the info:

Their mothers may be convicted thieves, murderers and drug dealers, but the girls of Troop 1500 want to be doctors, social workers and marine biologists. With meetings once a month at Hilltop Prison in Gatesville, Texas, this innovative Girl Scout program brings daughters together with their inmate mothers, offering them a chance to rebuild their broken relationships….

An estimated 1.5 million children have incarcerated parents and 90 percent of female inmates are single parents. Their daughters are six times more likely to land in the juvenile justice system. TROOP 1500 poignantly reveals how an inspired yet controversial effort by the more than 90-year old Girl Scouts organization is working to help these at-risk young girls deal with their unique circumstances and break the cycle of crime within families.

Troop 1500 is part of a group of films about women, criminal justice and prison—all of which can be purchased by those looking for a night at the movies that features more in the way of content than say, Jumper.

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It’s been the week of journalism awards. Last Tuesday, the Courage in Journalism event. Then, last night it was PEN USA’s turn to give awards to some brave people in our profession

PEN also gave out a bunch of well-deserved literary awards, and some other special honors. But the heart of the evening has always been the Freedom to Write Award and the First Amendment Award

It’s the wee hours and I’m a bit champagne-addled, so I’ll make this short. But I don’t want to shut down the computer without introducing you to the two people who received those central awards:

This year, the First Amendment prize went to Jerry Roberts, the guy who resigned as executive editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press after the paper was bought by billionaire Wendy P. McCaw, a woman who seemed to believe that, purchasing a newspaper was sort of like purchasing a summer home in the Hamptons. You got to invite all your friends over, then you and they could do whatever you wanted. In McCaw’s case this meant dictating the papers content, as if it was her own private country club newsletter.

The News-Press wasn’t exactly the New York Times but, for years, it had been a fine and feisty paper, and editor Jerry Roberts felt honor-bound to do whatever he could to temper McCaw’s actions.

As Roberts put it: “Newspapers have a duty to honor the extraordinary powers granted them by the First Amendment through the process of exercising those powers in the public interest…” Finding himself in a situation where McCaw continued to demand that the staff violate the most basic of journalistic ethics, Roberts resigned. Then—as she seems to do whenever anyone crosses her—McCaw retaliated by smearing Roberts, linking him to child pornography, and suing him for big bucks.

And then things really started to get ugly.

Yet whatever difficulties might plague American journalists, they pale in the light of the threats and terrors that Freedom to Write winner, Sahal Abdulle, had to face every day to report the news in Mogadishu, Somalia for Reuters.

Here’s Abdulle’s poetic and heartbreaking description of one of the worst of those dark days.

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As I was sitting at my desk, trying to make sense of the story I’ve been working on this week, my thoughts drifted back to Tuesday night’s dinner, and the words of the women who wrestle with all the pesky, run-of-the-mill, day-to-day elements of journalism that the rest of us face: tracking down good sources, organizing the facts you’ve gathered so that they have some kind of meaning, and laying it all down in prose that you hope will will engage reader’s attention for at least a nanosecond.

Yet in addition to those routine tasks, these women who were honored–and journalists like them in countries around the world—- have to worry about whether they’ll make it through the day alive, or will ever see their kids again.

“If we go to jail, or are tortured, or eventually killed for being good journalists,” said Mexico’s Lydia Cacho at the end of her acceptance speech, “because of this award, we have witnesses. And, after tonight, you share the responsibility of knowing.”

I hereby pass that shared responsibility to you, dear WLA readers. Sometimes the fact of increased public scrutiny can protect a journalist who is at risk.

Sometimes, of course, it does not.

For me, the ever-present ghost of Monday’s dinner was the woman who was given the Courage in Journalism award in 2002, Anna Politkovskaya . I met Anna that same year when PEN USA gave her our International Freedom to Write Award for her risky reporting on the war in Chechnya, specifically the effect of the war on ordinary people. I’m on PEN’s board of directors so got to spend a little time with her. I remember thinking that she was one of the bravest people I’d ever met. She had been receiving death threats for a while back then. She didn’t disregard them, but nor did they slow her down. It was impossible not to worry about her.

One day—it was a year ago this October 6—the worst of the worries came to pass; Anna did not make it home. She was shot to death, execution style, in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. It is taken for granted that she was murdered specifically because of her work. In fact, the day of her death she had planned to file a major story on the torture practices of Chechen security forces.

Yet, while those who killed her could take away Anna’s life, her future work, and her abitlity to be a mother to her now-grown children, they could not take away her power as a witness, a power that, because of her writing, she passed along to the rest of us.

On the first anniversary of her death, 2000 Russians braved a cold Moscow day to make it clear that they heard, they knew, and they weren’t going away.

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Mexican journalist, Lydia Cacho

Last night I went to an event called the Courage in Journalism Awards where the International Women’s Media Foundation honored eight women journalists who have risked everything to report the truth they saw around them.

Since awards nights like this inevitably function also as fundraisers, the affair was suitably glitzy, featuring a dinner held in one of the ballrooms at the Beverly Hills Hotel, with actresses Meg Ryan and Angelina Jolie somewhat incongruously introducing several of the awardees. Yet none of the Hollywood flash could obscure the heart of what took place.

The women celebrated included a fresh-faced 27-year-old Ethiopian reporter and newspaper publisher named Serkalem Fasil, who was arrested, beaten and charged with treason for criticizing the government’s conduct in the 2005 parliamentary elections (she has since been released).

Also honored was a particularly remarkable Mexican woman journalist named Lydia Cacho who now is followed everywhere by four bodyguards because of the very credible threats made against her after she wrote a meticulously documented book alleging that certain wealthy and prominent Mexican politicians and businessmen were pedophiles involved in a ring of child pornography and prostitution. (Her description of things confided in her by some of the six and seven year old little girls who are among the victims made it clear why she does the work despite the risk.)

Yet, the most vivid moment of the night was when the award was presented to six Iraqi women journalists who work in the Baghdad bureau for McClatchy news service.

Right now Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world for reporters. 32 journalists and staff have been killed last year alone. Since the beginning of the war in 2003, 153 reporters and news personnel have been killed—80 percent of those Iraqis. Yet, still women like these six who continue to go the places that the Americans and the rest of the international news corps can’t go, and do the bring back the interviews and stories that the Americans and the internationals can’t touch.

We were forbidden to photograph the Iraqi women, four of whom were present at the dinner, because if anyone in Baghdad got hold of the photos their lives and the lives of their families would be in grave danger. One of them has already had her husband, daughter and mother-in-law killed by insurgents. A second woman was herself nearly killed by an IED. A third, Sahar Issa, has had her son killed in a crossfire, her nephew killed in a market bomb.

Here’s a fragment of what Issa wrote for a McClatchy story about the experience:

“We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed. From the waist down was all they could give us. ‘We identified him by the cell phone in his pants’ pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourself. We don’t know what he looks like.’ Now begins the horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned.” – Sahar Issa

It was Issa, a head-scarved woman with an elegant bearing, who acted as the spokesperson for the other three when they stood up to accept the award:

“We live double lives,” she said….

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As you go into the weekend, this is a wild ride of a story that is definitely worth reading. Most of the events have occurred in the last 48-hours. Here are the high points:

On Thursday, night the two chief execs of Phoenix New Times, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin—guys whose company, New Times Media, also happens to own the LA Weekly, OC Weekly, and the Village Voice—were arrested in Phoenix by the Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies on charges of revealing grand jury information.

But, before we get to the grand jury info and the arrest, a little back story:

In 2004 and 2005, New Times did several articles investigating the famously colorful Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio.

And Joe really, really, REALLY didn’t like that.

For those of you unfamiliar, Joe Arpaio has long been a media darling for his quirky “tough-on-crime” methods, which include making jail prisoners wear pink underwear, putting them on stripe-suited “chain gangs,” having them sleep in tents in inclement weather, making them eat outdated and green-tinged bologna, and so on. If Joe Arpaio didn’t exist, someone would make him up.

Yet, although Arpaio presents himself as an amusing and eccentric tough dude able to give the bad guys what they deserve, there have been far darker stories of abuses, injuries and deaths at the hands of deputies in his jails, political dirty tricks, plus a string of curious financial dealings—all of which the alternative newspaper dutifully and rightly dug into. Here’s how former Phoenix New Times reporter (now Village Voice editor) Tony Ortega explains it:

Taking advantage of post-9/11 privacy statutes, for example, Arpaio had convinced the county to remove from public view records of the million-dollar commercial real-estate transactions he was making. How,[New Times reporter] Dougherty wondered, was a modestly paid county sheriff making those kinds of deals?

The issue that triggered the grand jury and the appointment of, in all seriousness, a special prosecutor (a person named Dennis Wilenchik who was supposedly hand chosen by Sheriff Joe, and is incidentally under investigation by the Arizona Bar) is the fact that the Phoenix New Times published Joe’s home address in one of their articles.

Nevermind that the thing is easily available online. (I found it here in less than three minutes. The property is listed under his wife Ava’s name. And a quick cross-check turned this up to verify it.)

Reality be damned, Jumping Joe persuaded the Maricopa County Attorney to charge New Times and reporter Dougherty with a felony for listing the address. And then came the Grand Jury and the subpoena delivered to New Times.

And what a subpoena it was!

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Today, the House of Representatives will vote on the bill called The Free Flow of Information Act of 2007—or what most of us know as the Journalists’ Shield law.

It’s about time.

In 1972, in Supreme Court case of Branzburg v. Hayes, SCOTUS opined that “news gathering is not without First Amendment protections.” The Supremes, however, could not agree about the form or breadth of those protections. As a consequence, journalists, editors and others have pushed for a national shield law for years, without success—although 33 states plus DC have passed their own journalistic shield laws.

That isn’t enough. In the last year alone, around two dozens journalists have subpoenaed or questioned about their confidential sources in Federal court.

Today, the LA Times has an editorial that lays out many of the issues surrounding this possible shield law.

Contrary to what critics claim, this proposed “shield law” isn’t a concession to special pleading by the news media. Its ultimate beneficiary is the public. Without confidential sources, the American people wouldn’t have known about misconduct in the Nixon administration, the secret history of the war in Vietnam or excesses in the war on terror such as the wiretapping of Americans by the National Security Agency. Locally, the historic abuses of the LAPD — from spying on its enemies to its destructive use of force against minorities — came to public light because sources shared facts with reporters who kept their identities secret.

By the way, the law doesn’t include bloggers.

And it does have exceptions, which have mollified some critics: For instanced, in certain cases where prosecutors consider the information crucial to their case, a court will decide if the shield applies or not. Also, in cases of national security the shield would not reply,

Several newspapers around the country have pushed for the bill’s passage. Here’s how the Buffalo News Opinion puts it:

As we have frequently been reminded in recent months, if we, the people of the United States, want to know what our government is doing, in our name and with our money, we cannot always count on our government to tell us. We are often going to have to read it in the newspaper.

Or find it on a blog.

(Graphic from the Society of Professional Journalists)

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For four straight years, the well-regarded Justice and Peace Studies program at Saint Thomas University in Minnesota has sponsored high-profile events featuring four different Nobel laureates such as Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Shirin Ebadi.

In keeping with the trend, the program’s heads decided to invite Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu to speak at the university in the Spring of ‘08. They were overjoyed when he accepted.

But when the justice and peace folks shared their good news with St. Thom’s administration, instead of expressing delight at the coup, the administration spiked the idea altogether saying that Desmond Tutu had been critical of Israel’s policy with the Palestinians and so was not welcome as campus-sponsored speaker.

The controversy hit the Minnesota papers last week then, on Friday, was picked up internationally when St. Thom’s admin received nearly 2000 emails asking it to reconsider.

Here’s a report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at St. Thomas, said the Rev. Dennis Dease, St. Thomas’ president, made the final decision not to invite Tutu after consulting with his staff.

“He [Tutu] has been critical of Israel and Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians, so we talked with people in the Jewish community and they said they believed it would be hurtful to the Jewish community, because of things he’s said,” Hennes said.

To further complicate matters, when the head of the Justice and Peace Studies program, a woman named, Cris Toffolo, sent a letter to Archbishop Tutu, informing him of the decision (and also expressing her dismay and disagreement), the administration honchos removed her from her position as head of the program. ( Professor Toffolo is still teaching at the university. I’m betting that she’s tenured.)

The whole snatched-away-invite issue has to do with a speech that Tutu gave at a 2002 conference in Boston. A version of the speech may be found here.

Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor within the Justice and Peace Studies program, was one of those appalled by the U’s decision.

“I am Jewish, and stifling debate and dissent [and] criticism of Israel is a disservice to all Jews, the state of Israel and the American people,” he said.

Precisely.

So here’s the big question: Is criticism of Israel’s government, or our own government (or any other government, for that matter) now a disqualifying factor for speaking to America’s university students? Is that really what we’ve come to?

Like his speech or hate it, Desmond Tutu is a world-renowned and beloved figure who expressed an impassioned and reasoned opinion—with which reasonable people might disagree (or even, God forbid, agree, if that sort of thing’s still permissible). But, now St. Thomas students and faculty won’t have the opportunity to agree OR disagree, or anything in between—BECAUSE TUTU’S NOT COMING TO THE SCHOOL!!!

Oh, and has anyone mentioned the teensy-weensy fact that retired Archbishop Tutu has not said anything about Israeli policy that former President Jimmy Carter has not said too, and at far greater length.

So will the 39th President of the United States be the next dis-invitee at college commencement time?

Just curious.

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I really, really, REALLY don’t have time to post today as I’m neck deep in researching a story…BUT….there are moments when one’s choices are to post….or scream. (And the latter tends to alarm the dog and the neighbors.)

Today’s Senate vote created one of those moments—especially when paired with this Senate vote.

Now a lot of you conservative readers and commenters likely loathe MoveOn. Fine.

But, when lawmakers spend the time that they should be using to discuss issues surrounding the Iraq war, or the…..oh….one or two domestic policies that could use a little, you know, work, and instead use their taxpayer-funded sessions to have a grand-stander-friendly floor debate about the freaking MoveOn ad…I say we just shoot the lot of them. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

Listen, I thought the ad was incredibly ill considered, mainly because it distracted from the very real issues surrounding General Petraeus’ testimony, which fronted for a mind-bogglingly disastrous and dangerous war policy.

(The MoveOn ad made a play on Petraeus’ name — “Betray Us” — as he prepared to testify before Congress.)

In my book, MoveOn behaved with all the intelligence and maturity of pre-adolescents writing off-color slogans on school lockers to piss off the grown-ups. It was not effective as a political action —or or as political theater.

But it’s a political ad, people. And not even vaguely close to the worst one we’ll see this season.

I mean, do I really need to list some of the truly awful campaign ads we’ve seen in the last eight years? (In addition to the famous ones, how about these charming items by America’s Pac during the midterms that suggested that Democrats don’t like black babies.) And let me get this straight: It’s okay for Ann Coulter to say of 9/11 widows, ““I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” But NOT okay for MoveOn to say they feel betrayed by Petraus’ testimony?

Lawmakers are certainly free to give opinions on such things. In fact, we welcome real opinions (real being the operative word here, which sadly all but precludes most lawmaker comments).

But, instead, it was Dumb meets Dumber, as the Senate actually took time out to pass resolution condemning the MoveOn ad. (It passed 72-25)

The AP, in a rare moment of insightful political commentary, got it exactly right:

The ad became a life raft for the Republican party as the war debate kicked into high gear. With several Republicans opposed to President Bush’s war strategy, GOP members were able to put aside their differences and rally around their disapproval of the ad.

And there was also this:

Sen. Gordon Smith, one of the few Republican senators who supports legislation ordering troop withdrawals, told reporters Thursday he thought Petraeus’ testimony and the MoveOn.org ad were the two biggest factors in keeping Republicans from breaking ranks with the president: Petraeus’ testimony because it was persuasive and the MoveOn add because it went too far by attacking a popular uniformed officer.

Well, doesn’t that say swell stuff about the pathetic non-ability of said Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) to hold on to the smallest shred of moral, ethical, and/or intellectual conviction—on anything!

A pox on all their houses.

Okay, that’s it. I’m off to go talk to some LA cops. (Maybe it’ll calm me down. And if it doesn’t…hey, the 101 freeway is a great place for screaming.)

PS: Regular commenter/blogger, Richard LoCicero has his own good take on the issue.

(Photo of Senator John Cornyn, R- Texas, by Alex Wong, Getty Images)

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Deals have been struck. Kisses have been exchanged. Troths have been plighted. Mutual non-proliferation treaties have been signed. Drake and Chemerinksy are NBFs, reports the LA Times.

Drake traveled over the weekend to Durham, N.C., where Chemerinsky is a professor at Duke University, and the two reached an agreement about midnight Sunday, the sources said.

Cool. All’s well that ends well.

(photo, Duke Law Magazine)

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More comes out about the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing to get Chemerinsky dumped, courtesy of the LA Times and the SF Chron.

Making Chemerinsky the head of the law school “would be like appointing al-Qaida in charge of homeland security,” Michael Antonovich, a longtime Republican member of the county Board of Supervisors, said in a voicemail left with The Associated Press.

Now, as the Times reports, there’s a whole new round of wheeling and dealing to maybe get him back:

UC Irvine officials on Friday were attempting to broker a deal to once again hire liberal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of its fledging law school, just three days after its chancellor set off a national furor by dumping him….

And, if that wasn’t enough, there’s the strange matter of the fact checking snafu, which may or may not have played a part in some of the above wheeling and dealing.

(This is also in the Times article, and is complicated issue having to do with whether Chemerinsky was correct in writing in his August 16 op ed that California doesn’t pay for lawyers at the habeas stage of…… Oh never mind. Just read it. )

(Heaven knows you certainly don’t want to get behind with this story, as there will clearly be new installments to come. And otherwise you’ll have to focus on other unpleasant issues—like, say, the high cost of health insurance….or when Bush is going to bomb Iran.)

And here, in case you’re curious, is the link to the open letter to Chancellor Drake signed by various members of UCI’s faculty and students.

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