Arab Winter:

Poli-sci blogger Matthew Yglesias offers a searing indictment of the faux-centrist, neo-liberal thought at The New Republic that cheered the war in Iraq, and their mealy-mouthed mea culpa. Quite the season for those.

The Next Act:

More terrifying tales from Seymour Hersh, this time on whether the newly-rebuffed Bush administration is more likely to attack Iran. More Hersh here on the Democracy Now! Web site, where you can download his appearance on yesterday's show.

Toby Futrell: Her first home was a real killer
By Wells Dunbar
TOTALLY SPECIAL TO THE CHRONIC-STATESMEMBER
Monday, Nov. 20, 2006

Part of an ongoing holiday series.

When the workload piles up at City Hall, all Austin City Manager Toby Futrell has to remember is her first house. And all the people – parts of people, really – that are buried under the basement.

It always puts things in perspective when one recollects installing their own siding – working in winter jackets to protect you from the cold. Or the fun of hosing off outdoors after a fevered, animalistic dismemberment has left you soaked in gallons of a stranger's blood.

Regarding the earlier post about wingnut par-excellence Eric "Contraceptives are Demeaning to Women” Keroack getting paid with your tax dollars to push his hardline views on sex, the tireless bloggers over at at Digby's Hullabaloo point to a PowerPoint of the infamous "oxytocin" presentation here.

Wow.

Kelly White can say "mission accomplished" without having to eat her words. The executive director of Annie's List is leaving her post after breathing new life into the group in less than a year's time. White, the former E.D. of SafePlace, took over the reins of Annie's List in early 2006, replacing former director Sherry Boyles, who left the organization under a cloud of controversy. White and her staff rebuilt Annie's List from the ground up through fundraising, training, and recruiting pro-choice Democratic women to run for legislative seats. This year, the group focused its resources on five competitive House races and won all five, including Travis Co.'s HD 47 seat won by Democrat Valinda Bolton. In a special election earlier this year, the group helped Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, win a special election in HD 47 to replace former GOP Rep. Todd Baxter. White, who narrowly lost to Baxter in 2004, says she will enjoy some down time with her family before deciding her next mission.

The first federal prosecution of a California medi-pot patient-caregiver in three years began last week in federal court in Fresno, Calif., with the trial of 60-year-old former Marine Dustin Costas, former president of the Merced Patients Group, a private cannabis club formed in the wake of the 1996 passage of California's Proposition 215, which legalized medi-pot use, cultivation, and possession by seriously ill patients. Costas was arrested and charged in 2004 on state marijuana trafficking charges, but the case was handed over to the feds for prosecution since under state law Costas would be able to use medi-pot law in his defense. Under federal law, however, Costas will be barred from doing so - to the feds, marijuana use, possession, and cultivation is always illegal. Indeed, U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii ruled that Costas may not use the state's medi-pot law as part of his defense, reports the Fresno Bee, unless Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Escobar raises the issue first - and that ain't likely to happen.

Troubling news out of Dallas this weekend (like there's any other kind):

"For years, it was an open secret at North Dallas' Preston Hollow Elementary School: Even though the school was overwhelmingly Hispanic and black, white parents could get their children into all-white classes. And once placed, the students would have little interaction with the rest of the students.

The result, a federal judge has ruled, was that principal Teresa Parker "was, in effect, operating, at taxpayer's expense, a private school for Anglo children within a public school that was predominantly minority."

Not to belittle these findings, as they're obviously cause for concern, but we also noticed this story linked on the same page:

"The teacher's all-girls class and 13 other single-sex courses at Lowery Freshman Center in Allen ISD are a rare find.

Less than 1 percent of public schools offer such classes. In North Texas, the Dallas Independent School District runs an all-girls high school. And students can take single-sex classes at DeSoto West Junior High.

But new federal rules set to go into effect this week could bring them to every school district in the country.

The U.S. Department of Education just cleared rules that allow officials to separate by sex if they have a specific goal, such as boosting performance. The programs must be voluntary."

So race-based discrimination is bad, but gender-based discrimination is OK, according to Bush's lackeys at the Education department.

In a bold screw-you move, made either in ignorance of or despite of the recent elections that saw a spate of extremist legislators tossed out of Washington, D.C., on their self-righteous cans, President George W. Bush announced on Nov. 16 that he had chosen pro-lifer Dr. Eric Keroack as his new appointee to oversee the nation’s family-planning program at the Department of Health and Human Services – from where nearly $300 million in federal funds is distributed annually among the states to fund, in large part, the providing of reproductive health care – notably, including access to contraceptives – to poor and uninsured women. While one might think that appointing someone expert at providing these critical health services would be a good choice to head up that office, Bush has tossed logic to the wind and has instead tapped Keroack for the job – an ob/gyn best known for his staunch support of abstinence-only education and as the medical director for the outfit A Woman’s Concern, which operates a string of crisis pregnancy centers in Boston – a group that, amazingly, openly espouses the notion that widespread use and distribution of birth control is actually “demeaning to women.”

The ongoing legal battle that will decide the fate of the Bexar Co. animal sanctuary Primarily Primates Inc. and its hundreds of animal inhabitants heated up Nov. 16 over a decision to move seven Ohio State University chimpanzees that were brought to PPI earlier this year to the federally funded primate sanctuary Chimp Haven in Louisiana. The decision to temporarily relocate the chimps caused a stir at PPI Thursday morning, says PPI President Stephen Tello. Tello told the Chronicle that he got a phone call that morning from PPI employees who told him receiver Lee Theisen-Watt and a handful of others – including attorneys from the controversial group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, whose involvement in the PPI controversy seems to be fueling distrust between the sanctuary and the state – were preparing to move the chimps. The employees told Tello they feared the move was being done in violation of a court-ordered stay requiring Watt to receive court permission before undertaking any action to permanently move or to euthanize any of the animals living at the 75-acre sanctuary, he said.

While we couldn't attend the Community Action Network's Homeless Educational Forum today, we were fortunate enough to procure a copy of CAN's most recent report and FAQ about homelessness in Austin. Aside from being filled with useful information about how to help, it also contains some sobering numbers:

Over a 12 month period, there were over 6,200 homeless people in the Austin area. Between September 12, 2005 and September 12, 2006, 6,242 unique individuals received services from Austin area homeless service providers. (Homeless Management Information System - HMIS)

On any given day, there are approximately 4,000 homeless individuals of which 1,900 are downtown. (Homeless Count 2004)

Over 1,500 children are affected by homelessness in the Austin Independent School District. In the 2005-2006 school year, AISD Project Help served 1,556 homeless students. (AISD Project Help)

High Cost of Living Contributes to Homelessness. Austin has the highest housing costs for an urban area in Texas (Texas A&M Real Estate Center Report 2005)

Low Wages Contribute to Homelessness. Of the top ten occupational categories in the Austin area, nearly 30% of those jobs have a median wage of less than $10/hour. (WorkSource)

Click here to download the report.