The Washington Post has conducted an investigation into medical care at U.S. detention centers housing immigration violators. Its conclusion:

Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse. Actions taken -- or not taken -- by medical staff members may have contributed to 30 of those deaths, according to confidential internal reviews and the opinions of medical experts who reviewed some death files for The Post.

According to an analysis by The Post, most of the people who died were young. Thirty-two of the detainees were younger than 40, and only six were 70 or older. The deaths took place at dozens of sites across the country. The most at one location was six at the San Pedro compound near Los Angeles.

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Pretty effective:

[Hillary Clinton] held a “Mother’s Day Celebration” in . . . the so-called “Home of Mother’s Day.” Clinton told the crowd that she drew inspiration from the example of women who came before her, be they historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Sally Ride or her own mother and grandmother. “Women have been standing up for what we believe in, defying convention and going forward for a long time,” she said.

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Good on Rahmbo:

[Rahm] Emanuel called to assail Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, for remarks he made when asked about the possibility of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois choosing Mrs. Clinton, of New York, as his running-mate. “I have a lot of respect for Ted Kennedy, but I don’t know how the hell he comes off saying that,” said Mr. Emanuel, who has ties to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama and has not endorsed in the race. “The gratuitous attack on her is uncalled for and wrong. He is a better senator than that comment reveals.

(Emphasis supplied.) Good on Rahmbo. and I think probably good on the Obama campaign who might have spurred Rahmbo to do this.

Barack Obama was right and courageous to oppose the Iraq Debacle in 2002. No one should ever try and diminish that. What he did once he became a Senator, well that is a different story. But his 2002 speech struck the right chord with me. The estimable Susie Madrak cites a NYTimes article where some are quoted as taking issue with one passage of the speech:

Pundits ignore facts when they do not fit their narrative. First it was Frank Rich. Now it is Jonathan Alter (via Yglesias selling the nonsense):

It was the "Grandma Primary." Barack Obama lost Pennsylvania mostly because white working-class women over 60 dominated the contest to an astonishing degree, and they backed Hillary Clinton by more than 2-1. The big question is what that means for November. Obama carried men and younger and middle-aged voters, but that wasn't nearly enough.

This is false in every particular. [More...]

A friend of mine writes this comment:

At one point in time Armando was one of this site's most passionate and articulate voices about ending racism and empowering people of color. As well as promoting a "politics of contrast." . . . Armando used to speak of a Lincoln 1860 strategy, but Hillary has been playing a Harrison 1840 strategy instead ("look at me! i can play the strong warrior champion of the white working class too!").

Short answer - Hillary Clinton is not a Politics of Contrast candidate. I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton's campaign. I defy anyone to find a post where I extol Hillary Clinton's candidacy or campaign. There are no such posts. And when racial comments were made by Clinton surrogates, I severely criticized those comments, including those by Bill Clinton.

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Scott Lemieux (Lemieux responds here) misunderstands politics imo. I know he misunderstands my argument for a Unity Ticket.

He writes that "some people in the Clinton Hackosphere [meaning me, thanks for the kind words Scott] are trying to set up the argument that a decision by Obama to choose anybody but Clinton must be motivated by personal animus, because there simply can't be any rational argument . . . against it." Um no, I assume that, unlike people like Scott Lemieux, there are enough mature adults in the Obama camp who will make a rational mature decision on this issue. It so happens that the signals I am seeing are that the decision they seem to be approaching is a very bad one that is NOT directed at unifying the Party. I think that would be wrong. I think party unity is the most important criteria now. Apparently Scott Lemieux does not care about the unity issue. Or perhaps Scott Lemieux thinks Ted Kennedy's statement was helpful and unifying. On that, we would disagree.

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I think Barack Obama's greatest contribution to America would be as Attorney General in a Hillary Clinton administration.

• He be terrific as head of its civil rights division.
• He'd go after crooked lobbyists and big time corporate offenders.
• He'd have the ability not to charge non-violent drug possessors with mandatory minimum offenses, while pushing Congress to change the law.
• He'd be the best advocate for a congressional end to the unfair disparity in crack-powder cocaine sentences.
• He could refrain from prosecuting federal death penalty cases until an independent commission has established that the death penalty is no longer applied in a racially disparate manner -- and in any case in which DNA evidence does not conclusively prove guilt.

In accordance with his expressed beliefs,

• He'd direct federal prosecutors not to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries or users in states that have passed medical marijuana laws.
• He'd charge and prosecute suspected terrorists in federal courts, eliminating the need for unfair military commissions.
• He could stay tough on meth labs, an issue he's made a priority.

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Thanks to a TL reader who left this in the comments on the Mother's Day Thread: Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily's List, has an op-ed in Saturday's Washington Post, Quitters Never Win. A snippet:

It's not surprising that low-income working women are the cornerstone of Hillary's success. Many of these women live on the edge of disaster. A pink slip, a family member's illness, a parent who can no longer live alone, a car that won't start or a mortgage rate that goes up -- all are threats that could devastate the family. And yet these women do what women have done for ages. They put on a confident face, feed their children breakfast and get them off to school. They don't quit. They suck it up and fight back against whatever life throws their way....

....Hillary Clinton certainly has the right to compete till the end. But I believe Hillary also has a responsibility to play the game to its conclusion. For the women of my generation who learned to find and channel their competitiveness, for the working women who never falter in the face of pressure, for the younger women who still believe women can do anything, Hillary is a champion. She's shown us over and over that winners never quit and that quitters never win.

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that Democratic Presidential candidates carried West Virginia in every recent election except the last 2?

I found this relevant question:

Why could Jimmy Carter carry West Virginia TWICE, even in the 1980 Reagan landslide, Michael Dukakis could even carry West Virginia, Bill Clinton carried it twice by huge margins both times, yet Al Gore and John Kerry lost there? . . . [W]hat can Dems do to win it again?

Any answers?

By Big Tent Democrat

If ever you wanted to see how clueless the Beltway Gasbags are, watching them discuss the Presidential election and potential VP choices today will convince you. They have no clue about the depth of the commitment of Clinton supporters to Hillary Clinton. They live in their DC bubble and have no idea what happens outside of it.

On the Unity ticket issue, I recommend Jerome Armstrong's fine post on the subject.

This is an Open Thread.[ More...]

It's Mother's Day.

I'm thankful my mother is still alive. Although, after 3 years in a nursing home and 5 years in assisted living before that, it's a greater struggle each year to help her enjoy this special day given her rapidly advancing dementia and the physical toll of Parkinsons's Disease. She still laughs, enjoys corned beef sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and lights up like she won the lottery when I bring her any kind of chocolate or ice cream. She loves the white orchard plant I bring every Mother's Day and the flowers my sister sends from 2,000 miles away, as well as the nightgowns. Another of her favorites is having me read her mother's day cards aloud over and over.

Then it's time for my mother's day with the TL kid. [More...]