Jerusalem ~worse to come ~ Shulman // NYRB

Jerusalem: Why should things not get worse?

by David Shulman  // New York Review of Books Blog

These days Jerusalem is a sad and scary place. The city center has largely emptied out. Whether you are Jewish Israeli or Palestinian, there is a sense of lurking danger, random, episodic, entirely unpredictable. Although the number of stabbing incidents has decreased over the last few days, in the street you still sometimes look over your shoulder. People, even in extreme situations, manage to create a veneer of normalcy, easily torn away by the next explosion. But the police report a 2,000 percent increase in the public’s demand for handguns, and the government is easing the process of obtaining one. Once people have guns, they tend to use them.

Fear, also hate, makes for a light finger on the trigger, especially in an atmosphere of rabid nationalism that is deliberately fanned by government spokesmen and the prime minister himself. Army intelligence predicts the current violence will get worse; already, Hamas is said to have directed its forces on the West Bank to carry out suicide bombings. And why should things not get worse? As many of us have been saying for years, this situation is the natural and inevitable result of the Netanyahu world.

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Quid pro quo? MD testifying in Silver Corruption Trial //NY Times

Quid pro quo...or no?
Doctor at Sheldon Silver Trial Tells of Elaborate Arrangement, Years in Making 

by Benjamin Weiser and Susanne Craig

New York’s ornate Capitol building in Albany, a plan two years in the making was taking root. Everyone would benefit: Victims of mesothelioma, a rare but deadly form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, would be sent to a reputable law firm; the firm would pick up new clients; and a well-regarded cancer research clinic would receive funds.

And at the center of all this was Sheldon Silver, then the State Assembly speaker, prosecutors say.

The alleged arrangement, which has become the heart of the corruption case against Mr. Silver, came into focus at his trial on Wednesday, as Dr. Robert N. Taub of Columbia University testified in federal court in Manhattan as a government witness. Prosecutors charge that Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side, traded official actions for $3 million in an illegal kickback scheme.

Albany on Trial

In the past decade, the state capital has been rocked by a seemingly endless barrage of scandals and arrests involving officeholders. This month, the corruption trials begin for two former legislative leaders.

• Jury Selected in Sheldon Silver Corruption TrialNOV 3

• Jury Selection Begins in Sheldon Silver Corruption TrialNOV 2

• Potential Jurors in Sheldon Silver Trial Face Questions About BiasNOV 2

• Q. and A.: The Trial of Sheldon SilverNOV 1

• Inside the Trial of Sheldon SilverNOV 1

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Dr. Taub, who testified under a nonprosecution agreement,ran a clinic at Columbia dedicated to mesothelioma research. The clinic long relied on government grants, wealthy donors and even gifts from law firms and their foundations to fund his research.

Continue reading the main story

From the Courthouse

Benjamin Weiser · @BenWeiserNYT

“I was terrified and panicked,” Dr. Robert Taub of Columbia U testified about why he first lied in the Silver probe.https://t.co/DVJOchImGR

12 hours ago·ReplyRetweetFavorite

But Weitz & Luxenberg, a major personal injury law firm that represents victims of mesothelioma, had not been a donor to Dr. Taub’s research, and he testified on Wednesday that he wanted to change that.

Proskauer conflict voids Nationals' Arbitration Win ~ NY Judge Rules

http://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/723406?nl_pk=f3937dfc-fb25-4034-80ee-484ceff18f92&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=legalethics

Doctor at Sheldon Silver Trial Tells of Elaborate Arrangement, Years in Making - The New York Times

Doctor at Sheldon Silver Trial Tells of Elaborate Arrangement, Years in Making - The New York Times

Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century | Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Here is the study on which the Times article was based.  It tells the grim story of the fate of middle-aged working class white people.  Oxycodone and alcohol have led to markedly increasing death rates among  those 40 - 55.  This is of course related to the economic decline of the working class in America thanks to technological changes, downsizing, the destruction of the unions, and the refusal to expand Medicaid in states where Republicans hold sway. - gwc
Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century | Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Quiet ‘Epidemic’ Has Killed Half a Million Middle-Aged White Americans

Despite advances in health care and quality of life, white middle-aged Americans have seen overall mortality rates increase over the past 15 years, representing an overlooked "epidemic" with deaths comparable to the number of Americans who have died of AIDS, according to new Princeton University research.

The results are published in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Anne Case, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, and Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs and professor of economics and international affairs.

With data from a variety of surveys and reports, the paper reports a sharp increase in the death rate for middle-aged whites after 1998, which the researchers tie to drugs and alcohol, suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. This turnaround in mortality reverses decades of progress, the researchers write, and the same pattern is not seen in other rich countries, nor is it seen among African Americans or Hispanics in the United States.

Anne Case, Princeton University

Although death rates related to drugs, alcohol and suicides have risen for middle-aged whites at all education levels, the largest increases are seen among those with the least education, the researchers found. For those with a high school degree or less, deaths caused by drug and alcohol poisoning rose fourfold; suicides rose by 81 percent; and deaths caused by liver disease and cirrhosis rose by 50 percent.

All-cause mortality rose by 22 percent for this least-educated group. Those with some college education saw little change in overall death rates, and those with a bachelor's degree or higher actually saw death rates decline.

In terms of lives lost, had the white mortality rate held at its 1998 value, 96,000 lives would have been saved between 1998 and 2013. If it had continued to fall at the rate of decline seen from 1978-1998, 488,500 deaths would have been avoided between 1999 and 2013. This figure is comparable to the number of deaths caused by the AIDS epidemic in America.

Angus Deaton, Princeton University

- See more at: http://wws.princeton.edu/faculty-research/research/item/rising-morbidity-and-mortality-midlife-among-white-non-hispanic#sthash.frODIEsT.dpuf

Obamacare Politics: Lessons From The Kentucky Governor’s Race

Obamacare Politics: Lessons From The Kentucky Governor’s Race
by David K. Jones

Republican Matt Bevin’s dominant victory in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race is a blow for Obamacare, but is probably not as damaging as it seems. Kentucky will become a test case for what happens when a newly elected conservative comes into office after promising to undo the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) coverage expansions: Bevin is likely to quickly confront the practical and political realities of taking away insurance from 400,000 people. Republicans in DC might learn from either his softening or the ensuing mess following cuts and could well think twice before trying to repeal the ACA nationally.

What Happened

Attorney General Jack Conway (D) led in the most recent polls and was expected to win this race. Kentucky has had a Democratic governor in 40 of the last 44 years. Bevin was not an especially strong candidate, winning the Republican nomination by just 83 votes after being soundly defeated by Mitch McConnell in the 2014 Senate primary.

Obamacare was a major issue throughout the campaign because Kentucky has been the poster child for ACA implementation. Mitt Romney won the state by 22 percentage points in 2012, but it was still the only state in the southeast to build its own exchange and to expand Medicaid. President Obama praised Democratic Governor Steve Beshear during his 2014 State of the Union speech, inviting him to sit in the First Lady’s box.

The launch of Kynect, the state’s exchange website, went smoothly while the federal website healthcare.gov was riddled with problems. The state expanded Medicaid and more than 400,000 people signed up. These factors combined to make Kentucky the state with the second largest decrease in the proportion of residents without insurance, decreasing from 20.4 percent in 2014 to 9 percent in 2015.

However, this progress is particularly vulnerable in Kentucky given how the ACA was implemented by Governor Steve Beshear. He could not convince the legislature to create an exchange or expand Medicaid, so he did both using executive powers. As a result, Bevin does not need a legislative vote or a prolonged fight to undo these core elements of the ACA. He can get rid of them with the stroke of a pen.

This is exactly what Bevin has said he would do. His campaign website calls for immediately “freezing and disbanding” the state’s exchange website, instead transitioning to healthcare.gov. He said early in his campaign that he would reverse the Medicaid expansion immediately

Legal Certainty - China scores well in French study

People often ask me `Is there law in China?'  They have in mind the Cultural Revolution, or Communist rule by terror and decree, or a sense that things are out of control there - images of Beijing smog come to mind.

But China of course has a long tradition of order, both ethical (Confucian) and governance (Emperors and the educated Mandarinate).  Business planners wnat to know whether you can predict how you will fare.  for that the concept of : legal certainty" has developed.  French scholars have developed an Index of Legal Certainty (link above).  Norway is followed by Germany, with China at five and the U.S. just above Brazil at twelve and thirteenth positions. - gwc
Index of Legal Certainty - Civil Law Initiative - Universite Pantheon Assas II - Paris
No system of law would claim insecurity as a base and objective. But while every legal system aims at security, such security is social, political and economic. Legal certainty is from this viewpoint a term used exclusively by legal specialists, mainly from the civil law tradition, to describe the basis and objective of a legal system. Under these conditions it would seem difficult to try to conceptualise legal certainty and give it an unequivocal “purely” legal definition. But although the definition and scope of legal certainty are difficult to establish, its components do not seem impossible to grasp nor its measure impossible to take despite its extent, which is necessarily partly subjective, and despite the fact that it relates to values that may not all be measurable.

Legal certainty represents the qualitative value of a legal system resulting from demands “in terms of the quality of standards and the quality of the interpretation judges give them” .
The many studies devoted to legal certainty (which remains an expression used more in systems in the civil law tradition), like the work  undertaken to establish the vocabulary, tend to explain legal certainty in terms of four virtues. Legal certainty implies that laws should be at least accessible, intelligible and stable and have predictable effects, i.e. both knowledge of the legal rule and its control over time

Voters give Dems control of Pennsylvania Supreme Court - New Jersey Herald

Somehow I find that this does not spark in me the revulsion that Iowa voters did when they turned out three members of the state Supreme Court in retaliation for recognizing same sex marriage.  Especially important is the ability to get control of legislative redistricting after the 2020 census.  - gwc
Voters give Dems control of Pennsylvania Supreme Court - New Jersey Herald
by Peter Jackson /AP

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Democrats on Tuesday won all three open seats on Pennsylvania's Supreme Court, securing a majority on the high court for at least a decade, after a campaign that drew a record $11.5 million in contributions.

The winners were Philadelphia Judge Kevin Dougherty and Superior Court judges David Wecht and Christine Donohue of Allegheny County.

It was the first time three seats were open in an election for the seven-member court.

When the new justices take their oaths in January, they will round out a 5-2 Democratic majority.

Democrats also Tuesday won two other appellate court races - seats on the Commonwealth Court and on the Superior Court.

Justice Debra Todd, a Democrat now on the Supreme Court, is all but guaranteed a second 10-year term in 2017, when she'll stand unopposed in a yes-or-no vote on whether to retain her through 2027. That would give the Democrats an opportunity to shape the legislative redistricting following the 2020 census.

Republicans have controlled the court for six years and have a 3-2 advantage with an interim justice filling one open seat until a new justice is seated in January.

But organized labor and Philadelphia trial lawyers helped the Democrats raise three times as much money as the Republicans in this year's election.

China's coal production 17% greater than previous estimates // NY Times

As I prepare for my December trip to Beijing I check nervously the air quality reports.  At this moment at the Beijing Olympic Sports Center the AQI is 260 "very unhealthy".  At the same moment in New York it is "moderate" - AQI 51 - 100 in the region.  - gwc
China's coal production 17% greater than previous estimates // NY Times
by Chris Buckley

BEIJING — China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal, is burning far more annually than previously thought, according to new government data. The finding could vastly complicate the already difficult efforts to limit global warming.
 

Even for a country of China’s size and opacity, the scale of the correction is immense. China has been consuming as much as 17 percent more coal each year than reported, according to the new government figures. By some initial estimates, that could translate to almost a billion more tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere annually in recent years, more than all of Germany emits from fossil fuels.

Officials from around the world will have to come to grips with the new figures when they gather in Paris this month to negotiate an international framework for curtailing greenhouse-gas pollution. The data also pose a challenge for scientists who are trying to reduce China’s smog, which often bathes whole regions in acrid, unhealthy haze.

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds - The New York Times

High school graduates suffer disproportionately under the weight of downsizing, technological change, the gutting of the unions, and the relentless drive to cut government benefits.  The grimmest news is that their death rates have been climbing in an epidemic of suicide, alcohol, and opioid drugs.  - gwc
Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds - The New York Times
by Gina Kolata
Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.

That finding was reported Monday by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton, who last month won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and Anne Case. Analyzing health and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from other sources, they concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse: alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.

The analysis by Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case may offer the most rigorous evidence to date of both the causes and implications of a development that has been puzzling demographers in recent years: the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated American whites. In middle age, they are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case found.

The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” wrote two Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, in a commentary to the Deaton-Case analysis that was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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The deep, lasting financial cost of sex abuse | National Catholic Reporter

 The Catholic Church in America faced a daunting challenge: as immigrants assimilated,and communities dispersed, how could it retain the bonds between people and Church. Unfortunately the Church made two profound errors: it rejected modern birth control methods that married couples found necessary to plan their family lives, doing deep damage to the teaching authority of the priesthood.  Then the Episcopate failed the great moral challenge: to clean their own house of the sexual abusers and manipulators that seemed to be the product of the demands of celibacy during a global sexual revolution.



The closed world of the Church hierarchy prevented calculation of the third level: the financial damage.  National Catholic Reporter (long in the vanguard) reports that the financial losses have now been calculated in at least rough approximation.  And it is enormous. - gwc

Editorial: The deep, lasting financial cost of sex abuse | National Catholic Reporter

The Catholic church has been deeply wounded by the abuse of minors by clergy and its cover-up. The personal tragedy of damaged individuals, lost lives and lost faith has been well-documented by NCR. The subsequent loss of trust in the institution has been documented here, too. But documentation about the actual financial cost of this crisis has been elusive.

With the publication of research by Jack Ruhl and Diane Ruhl, we have a dollar figure that we can pin on the crisis: $3.99 billion -- at least. The Ruhls call their numbers "solid" but also "a very conservative estimate."

Since 2004, the U.S. bishops' National Review Board and their office of Child and Youth Protection have issued annual reports that capture some of that data, but we were never convinced those told a complete story. As the story points out, data from the bishops is self-reported and unaudited, and cooperation with the reports has never been 100 percent, especially in the early years and especially from religious orders. The Ruhls believe they have identified a gap of nearly a billion dollars between what they found and what the bishops have reported.

Their research also turned up reports of documents destroyed and hidden costs of the crisis. How much, for example, have bishops spent through their various state Catholic conferences lobbying against extending statute of limitations laws in childhood sex abuse cases? Those kinds of figures are nearly impossible to find.

One cannot help but wonder how many homeless people have not been housed and how many hungry people have not been fed because of this crisis.

Jack Ruhl, who teaches accounting, also notes that it's impossible to calculate the "opportunity costs incurred" as diocesan leadership turned their attention to these matters instead of tending the flock. Schools and parishes have been closed, ministries shuttered, staff laid off and education programs stopped.

The Ruhls' research coupled with the work of Nicolas L. Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Truglia shows the deep and lasting damage the abuse crisis has cost us: not just $3.99 billion in direct payouts, but a loss in charitable giving of $2.36 billion a year over the 30-year* period Bottan and Perez-Truglia studied.

They also found a 23 percent decline in Catholic school enrollment and a 9 percent to 14 percent decline in church affiliation. Some church leaders have said drops in donations and church attendance were short-term followed by recovery. Bottan and Perez-Truglia found this not to be true, instead reporting: "These effects are long-lasting, meaning that even 10 years after the scandals took place we do not see any recovery."

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Prices, Politics Challenge Health Law's 3rd Sign-Up Season

Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan voted to permit states to opt out of Medicaid expansion.  The late, lamented folk singer Phil Ochs (I ain't marchin' anymore) wrote "Love Me, I'm a liberal...that's why I'm turning you in".  That's how I feel about the two liberal justices. - gwc
Prices, Politics Challenge Health Law's 3rd Sign-Up Season

The 2012 Supreme Court decision that upheld the law's individual coverage requirement also gave states the choice to decline expanding Medicaid. Across the South, Republican-led states have turned down the Medicaid option, leaving millions uninsured.

Many are trapped in what's called the "Medicaid gap." They cannot get health insurance through HealthCare.gov because the law prevents people below the poverty line from using the insurance exchanges. So the private insurance alternative is closed to them, even as their states refuse to expand public coverage.

Among them is John Davis of Port Charlotte, Florida, a 49-year-old construction worker unemployed because of health problems. A doctor at a free clinic is monitoring a suspicious spot on his lungs. "They won't biopsy it. Nobody will touch it because I don't have insurance," Davis said. "I feel like I'm walking around with a time bomb on my back and I can't see the timer."

What it means to be business-friendly - Koppelman //Balkinization:

As a lawyer John Roberts was an architect of the strategy to force consumers into dead-end arbitration.  As Chief Justice he cast the deciding vote against consumers and employees, stripping the courts of jurisdiction. An umpire rewriting the rules, he might say in another context.  - gwc
Balkinization: What it means to be business-friendly

by Andrew Koppelman

It is now well established that the Roberts Court isextremely business-friendly, but this way of putting it masks the fact that there are different ways of being business-friendly. Some of these subvert what is valuable and honorable about business.

Today’s New York Times reports the increasingly widespread use of arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, with the Supreme Court’s encouragement, to insulate businesses from class action suits. The consequence is that the misbehavior that such suits target – small thefts and abuses that affect large numbers of consumers, producing millions of dollars in illicit profits – is insulated from any legal remedy.

Among the lawyers who devised this clever trick was one John G. Roberts. He later provided the crucial vote to interpret the Federal Arbitration Act to shut down consumer and employment discrimination suits, in defiance of the intentions of the act’s authors.

Doubtless class action suits can be a nuisance for businesses, and sometimes they’re not meritorious. But when they are entirely blocked, really nasty business practices can be conducted with impunity.

Arbitration Everywhere - Stacking the Deck // NYTimes

As I prepare to teach American tort law in Beijing I look wistfully at my explanations of the roles of judge and jury as characteristic of our system of justice.  Industry has been very successful at reducing jury trials.  Fewer civil cases than ever are tried.  But now with the help of the United States Supreme Court they have taken a giant step.  Through the thin consent of the shrink-wrap, now the quick click contract of adhesion they have removed themselves from courtroom challenges by disappointed customers and employees. - gwc

Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice - The New York Times

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and ROBERT GEBELOFFOCT. 31, 2015


On Page 5 of a credit card contract used by American Express, beneath an explainer on interest rates and late fees, past the details about annual membership, is a clause that most customers probably miss. If cardholders have a problem with their account, American Express explains, the company “may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.”

Those nine words are at the center of a far-reaching power play orchestrated by American corporations, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

ConocoPhillips ordered to pay 1.7m yuan over damages in oil spill |Companies |chinadaily.com.cn

ConocoPhillips ordered to pay 1.7m yuan over damages in oil spill |<!-- ab 22327704 -->Companies<!-- ae 22327704 --> |chinadaily.com.cn

BEIJING - (Xinhua) A court in North China's Tianjin municipality ordered American oil giant ConocoPhillips (China) to pay 1.68 million yuan ($265,000) to 21 fishermen on Friday, who claimed their fishing interests and livelihood were severely damaged by the 2011 Bohai Bay oil spill.

The verdict temporarily ends nearly four years of haggling between the fishermen and ConocoPhillips, who, along with Chinese State-owned oil giant China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), were held responsible for the contamination of more than 6,200 square km of water in the Bohai Bay after a large spill in the area's oilfields.

The Tianjin Maritime Court exempted CNOOC's liability to compensate the fishermen, saying CNOOC was not the operator of the oilfield and did not control the source of the spill.

In 2012, Chinese authorities reached a settlement with the two companies granting affected fishermen 1 billion yuan in total. The State Oceanic Administration also levied a 1.68 billion yuan penalty for the damage caused to the maritime eco-system.

Most of the fishermen accepted the compensation. The 21 fishermen in the most recent case did not join the settlement process and filed their litigation on Dec 30, 2011. Last December, the court conducted a two-day hearing of the case but did not deliver a verdict. ConocoPhillips did not say whether they will appeal the most recent verdict.

This is not the only litigation the American oil giant is facing.

A landmark lawsuit was filed against the two companies in a maritime court in Qingdao in July. Details of the case have yet to be released, but it is the first case brought by a social organization over maritime pollution since China changed its law to allow registered non-profit organizations who have been dealing with environmental issues for at least five years to sue heavy polluters.

China Court Rules in favor of NGO on Environmental Claim// JURIST

JURIST - China court finds in favor of NGOs under new environmental law

by Ashley Hogan

[JURIST] The Nanping Municipal Intermediate People's Court of Fujian found in favor [Xinhua report] of two environmental groups on Thursday under a new environmental law. The court ordered defendants to restore destroyed vegetation and pay compensation for the damage that resulted from of an illegal mining expansion. This was the first environmental protection case decided since the Environmental Protection Law[text, PDF; LOC backgrounder] took effect on January 1. The law allows NGOs to directly sue polluters in the public interest, and the victory by Friends of Nature and Fujian Green Home[advocacy websites] suggests that other environmental groups will have more power to combat pollution under the new law.

According to many experts, climate change [JURIST backgrounder] as a result of global greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most pressing and controversial environmental issues [JURIST report] facing the international community today. China has long come under international criticism for lax environmental laws and enforcement, but has taken more proactive steps in recent years. In July China's Qingdao Maritime Court ruled [JURIST report] that a lawsuit against ConocoPhillips China and China National Offshore Oil relating to a 2011 oil spill could proceed under the new environmental law. Also in July China set a 60 percent per capita carbon dioxide emissions reduction goal [JURIST report] for 2030. The announcement followed a November agreement with the US to cut its greenhouse gas emissions [JURIST report].

How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Osama bin Laden - The New York Times

How 4 Federal Lawyers Paved the Way to Kill Osama bin Laden - The New York Times
by Charlie Savage

WASHINGTON — Weeks before President Obama ordered the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May 2011, four administration lawyers hammered out rationales intended to overcome any legal obstacles — and made it all but inevitable that Navy SEALs would kill the fugitive Qaeda leader, not capture him.
Stretching sparse precedents, the lawyers worked in intense secrecy. Fearing leaks, the White House would not let them consult aides or even the administration’s top lawyer, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. They did their own research, wrote memos on highly secure laptops and traded drafts hand-delivered by trusted couriers.
***
The legal analysis offered the administration wide flexibility to send ground forces onto Pakistani soil without the country’s consent, to explicitly authorize a lethal mission, to delay telling Congress until afterward, and to bury a wartime enemy at sea. By the end, one official said, the lawyers concluded that there was “clear and ample authority for the use of lethal force under U.S. and international law.”

A Party’s Strategy to Ignore Poverty - The New York Times

A seven year old scavenger in Arizona
A Party’s Strategy to Ignore Poverty - The New York Times
by Eduardo Porter
Arizona, where I was born, in July became the first state to cut poor families’ access to welfare assistance to a maximum of 12 months over a lifetime. That’s a fifth of the time allowed under federal law, and means that 5,000 more people will lose their benefits by next June.
This is only the latest tightening of the screws in Arizona. Last year, about 29,000 poor families received benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, 16,000 fewer than in 2005. In 2009, in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Depression of the 1930s, benefits were cut by 20 percent.

And if Paul Ryan, the Republican lawmaker from Wisconsin who is expected to become speaker of the House, has his way, poor people in many other states can expect similar treatment in the years ahead.

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Yitzhak Rabin - in memoriam

Twenty years ago Yitzhak Rabin was murdered - two years after signing the Oslo accords - which held out a road to  peace not taken.  Historical`what ifs' are always of uncertain reliability, especially if you shy away from great man theories of history and lean toward structural explanations.  And yet....  I wrote this editorial which was published shortly after the Prime Minister's assassination by New Jersey Lawyer - the State Bar Association weekly on who Editorial Board I served.  - gwc

Yitzhak Rabin

Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, was a law student.  That he claimed the law of the torah and the bible as authority shows how little he understood about the law.
We in the United States have seen other assassins, acting under vague claims of right, strike down our leaders.  Most recently ordinary citizens working for the government in Oklahoma City and at work in New York City's World Trade Center have been viciously assaulted by terrorists.
The assassins see the law only as an instrument of domination.  But the sight of Yasir Arafat, making a shiva call at the home of Leah Rabin, reminds us that the law's heart is not domination but agreement.  Yitzhak Rabin wanted to reach agreement more than he wanted to denounce his enemy.  He learned to seize upon what was positive in the adversary's initiative rather than focus on its shortcomings.  
 Agreement is the heart of peace, of law, and of democracy.  It often requires compromise of what is dear.  The courage to compromise is rarer and harder to muster than is exultation at the storm that destroys our enemies' house.  The wisdom to reach agreement was bought with all that Yitzhak Rabin had - his life.  This week, at Thanksgiving, we should recall the withered fields and the seasons of war that preceded the season of peace and accord that Yitzhak Rabin's peacemaking has made possible.

Clinton: I really loved Rabin, and he would have reached a final peace deal | The Times of Israel

Clinton: I really loved Rabin, and he would have reached a final peace deal | The Times of Israel

Had he lived, Yitzhak Rabin would have been able to reach a peace deal within three years, because “the Palestinians trusted him,” former president Bill Clinton said in an interview aired Monday night. “They were absolutely convinced that he… would do what he promised to do.”

Rabin, said Clinton, had a sort of “psychological hold on the Palestinians,” and particularly on Yasser Arafat.” Rabin “was very tough,” said Clinton, and “in a funny way that’s the reason the Palestinians trusted him as well as the Israelis: Arafat was almost a little intimated by him because of his record as a military man and as a politician.”

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