One of our favorite singers and songwriters, Jackson Browne, takes on the Bush Administration's Cuban policy in an op-ed in today's New York Times, Songs of Cuba, Silenced in America. First, the context:

Carlos Varela, the great Cuban singer-songwriter, applied for a visa to come to the United States to sing his powerful, amazing songs. He had concerts planned in Miami, New York and Los Angeles. Our government turned him down.
Visas have been denied to other Cuban artists because their visits are "detrimental to the interests" of our country. In essence, the government says that if Carlos Varela plays concerts in the United States, the money he makes would go to Fidel Castro. This is untrue. In Cuba, renowned artists keep much of what they earn, because the government does not want them to leave the country and live somewhere else. Yet, the Bush administration used the same reasoning to keep Ibrahim Ferrer, of the Buena Vista Social Club, and Manuel Galbán from attending the Grammy award ceremony in Los Angeles last month. (Both men won awards.)

Browne progresses to Bush's Cuban policy in general:

United States foreign policy toward Cuba is unpopular in America, and for good reason. It stops Americans from traveling to Cuba and Cubans from coming into the States. It stops us from sharing medicine with the ill and restricts our ability to sell food to the hungry. This policy is an outdated relic of the cold war and exists only as a political payoff to Republican-leaning Cuban-American voters in Miami.

I believe in justice and human rights in the United States and abroad. I am saddened by the treatment by the Cuban government of the political dissidents in their country. I long for the day when there is freedom for both Cubans and Americans to travel in both directions across the Straits of Florida without undue interference by their governments. I want this freedom not just for artists but for all people, American and Cuban, who live each day in the hope for a just and prosperous future. Giving Carlos Varela a visa to sing in America would be a good way to begin.

Former President Jimmy Carter is the latest critic of the War in Iraq. From an interview with London's Independent:

"There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'."

[link via Political Wire.]

by TChris

If the late night talk show hosts either shape or reflect the mood of the country, John Kerry can take comfort in the fact that he is ridiculed less than the President.

In Washington, of course, everything must be studied and scrutinized. So the Center for Media and Public Affairs has divined that Bush remains the biggest late-night target -- the butt of 213 jokes from Jan. 1 through March 9 -- compared with 53 for Kerry (who barely beat the 43 jibes aimed at Dennis Kucinich). Even in February, when Kerry was surging to the nomination, it was Bush hands down, 121 to 25.

Even Jay Leno is taking hard shots at Bush.

"President Bush admitted that his prewar intelligence wasn't what it should have been," Jay Leno said. "We knew that when we elected him."

Ouch!

Leno and the other late night comedians make fun of Kerry's hair, appearance, and alleged flip-flopping, but 94 percent of the jokes about intelligence, and 89 percent about honesty, have been told about Bush. It will be a long campaign season for the President if the trend continues.

by TChris

The tranfer of power to the people of Iraq, scheduled to occur on June 30, will be largely symbolic, as the United States will still exercise the real power in the country.

The fledgling Iraqi government will be capable of tackling little more than drawing up a budget and preparing for elections, top U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

Since the U.S.-led occupation regime will have a hand in choosing Iraq's next government, the body will lack a mandate for anything but administrative tasks. Many envision a team of nonpartisan Iraqi technocrats who concentrate on keeping the country functioning.

The interim government is not expected to enact any laws or enter into significant contracts. Rather, the government will try to create a budget while preparing for elections. In the meantime, the U.S. government will direct spending of much of the U.S. aid package, giving the U.S. "a huge tool with which to influence Iraq's affairs."

The U.S. influence on Iraqi affairs is expected to last beyond the formation of a democratically elected government. For example, Paul Bremer is appointing inspectors general for Iraq's ministries that, according to current rules, can't be replaced by an incoming Iraqi government.

by TChris

Is President Bush foregoing pragmatic solutions to terrorism, instead locking the country into an unending and unwinnable conflict that creates more enemies than it can destroy? Robert Parry asks why the alternative strategy -- "to reduce tensions, resolve political differences and gradually ease the hardliners to the sidelines" -- has been so little debated. While many of the President's supporters contemptuously label pragmatic solutions as "appeasement" or warn that "the terrorists win" if western nations recognize and address legitimate grievances that breed terrorism, Parry argues that Bush's approach is almost certain to fail, with drastic consequences.

Taken in its totality, Bush’s vision carries logical consequences of the gravest order: Military strategy will overwhelm diplomacy; root causes of Middle Eastern terrorism, such as the plight of the Palestinians, will go unattended so as not to “appease” the terrorists; civil liberties at home and abroad will be set aside in the name of security; Bush’s allies, no matter how brutal and autocratic, will be hailed for their moral virtues; critics of Bush, including longtime Western allies such as France, Germany and now Spain, will be derided as “soft on terror”; lying, spin and intimidation will be the currency of the U.S. public debate.

Parry argues that the consequences of Bush's approach will lead to a long-term victory for terrorists -- "one that is looming if the United States can’t figure out how to have a realistic and honest debate about terrorism."

On '60 Minutes' tonight: Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator, whose book Against All Enemies : Inside the White House's War on Terror--What Really Happened is being released tomorrow. Background is here and here.

Reactions? Here's an open thread to discuss it.

by TChris

As TalkLeft recently reported, Air America Radio, a network with a progressive perspective, will go on the air March 31. One of its key ingredients is Al Franken -- the left's answer to Dennis Miller. This in-depth profile of Franken in The New York Times Magazine gives an overview of the network and of Franken's prospects for success as a talk radio host.

by TChris

A new book by Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett (reviewed here), examines the problem of society's relationship with ex-convicts from the perspective of a woman who received a sentence of 20 years to life for her first offense -- selling cocaine in Albany, New York, exposing her to the unbelievably harsh Rockefeller sentencing laws. Elaine Bartlett was a young woman in Harlem "hoping for a quick score of $2,500, perhaps to buy some furniture and hold a nice Thanksgiving dinner for her family." Instead, she was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover cop, having been set up by George Deets, an informant who was allowed to continue his own drug dealing so long as he supplied the police with people who were easy to arrest.

[Deets] waltzed down to New York and lured the mark up to Albany County, making sure there was enough drug present for an A-1 bust. The mark sold the drugs to the cops, who were grateful for the collar, and Deets lived to traffic another day.

The book discusses Bartlett's sixteen years in prison (when she was finally pardoned), including her prison visits with her four children. Bartlett's experience exemplifies the sad reality that children of imprisoned parents often come to accept imprisonment as a normal part of life.

Her worst nightmare comes true when her teenage son, Jamel, who grew up in the visiting room, follows in his mother's footsteps and goes to jail himself. Jamel is visited inside by a 15-year-old girlfriend who is too young even to enter the gates but gets in with a fake ID. The girl becomes pregnant by Jamel, who has left jail briefly only to return, and the cycle begins anew.

But the book's focus in not on life behind bars, but on the new version of imprisonment that inmates face after their release.

Ex-cons are marooned in the poor inner-city neighborhoods where legitimate jobs do not exist and ... are commonly denied the right to vote, parental rights, drivers' licenses, student loans and residency in public housing -- the only housing that marginal, jobless people can afford. The most severe sanctions are reserved for former drug offenders, who have been treated worse than murderers since the start of the so-called war on drugs.

The book offers further proof that sentencing laws need radical reform, but reform can't end there. We need to return to the philosophy that people who have done their time are entitled to a fresh start; that having been punished, ex-offenders deserve a chance to reform their lives and to make better lives for their children. With almost 7 percent of our adult population having spent time behind bars, and with 600,000 "angry, unskilled people" being released from prison each year, society's unwillingness to help ex-offenders become productive will only perpetuate cycles of crime.

Our pick for inspirational story of the day....volunteers in Berkeley gather weekly to wash the feet of the city's young homeless.

The service is part of a youth clinic program run primarily by UC Berkeley undergrads near campus with funding from the university and other sources. ...The 4-year-old clinic also provides counseling, acupuncture and legal advice. No one is sure how the foot-washing started, but Ryan Houk, 20, a Cal student who helps coordinate the clinic, said he thought it probably started for religious reasons (in the Bible, Jesus washes his disciples' feet as a gesture of humility) but evolved into simply a nice thing to do for people who are out on their feet all day.

There are about 500 homeless kids in on the streets in Berkeley. The interviews with some the kids and their responses to the footwashing really make the article. Here's a few of them:

On another night, I met a 23-year-old guy who gave his name as Spencer. He wore black, a silver ring through his nose, a gigantic safety pin dangling from one of his belt loops. He said besides the obvious pleasure of having a beautiful woman like Cal student Birdie Nguyen wash his feet, the ritual made him feel homey and safe, the way you sometimes feel when you're taken care of as a little kid. ''It relaxes me completely. It makes me feel a lot better.''

Six U.S. soldiers have been charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

It's "the kind of cancer that you have to cut out quickly. You've got to address it very, very quickly," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's deputy director of operations.

17 soldiers have been suspended for abusing prisoners at the prison. As to these six,

The probe of the six MP's is being handled by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division Command. They face an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury, which will decide whether there is enough evidence to prosecute them, Kimmitt said.

TBogg analyzes the new "movement" of conservativepunks for Bush working to get out the vote.

Taking an in-depth look at cases in New York, the New York Times reports that awareness of prosecutorial misconduct is on the rise.

Misconduct by prosecutors has become a national concern in recent years, highlighted last month in a United States Supreme Court decision to throw out a Texas inmate's death sentence because prosecutors had deliberately withheld critical evidence. In a study last year, the Center for Public Integrity, a group that monitors government ethics issues, reported that since 1970, there have been more than 2,000 cases of prosecutorial misconduct in the United States that resulted in dismissed charges, reversed convictions or reduced sentences.

....The greatest crime of all is an unjust conviction," Judge John P. Collins said. "It is truly a scandal which reflects unfavorably on all participants in the criminal justice system."

[hat tip to Ted in Chicago]