Immigrant Detentions Draw International Fire

Immigration enforcement in the United States is plagued by unjust treatment of detainees, including inadequate access to lawyers and insufficient medical care, and by the excessive use of prison-style detention, the human rights arm of the Organization of American States said Thursday.

The group, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued those findings in a report that also took aim at a federal program that allows county and state law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. The report said the government had failed to ensure that local police were not singling out people by race or detaining illegal immigrants on the pretext of investigating crimes.

The commission recommended that the federal government cancel the program, known as 287(g).

While many of the findings reiterated criticisms that have been made before by immigrant advocates and others, the report appeared to be the first comprehensive review of American immigration enforcement in recent years by an international body of the organization’s stature.

The commission, based in Washington, has no enforcement powers, but it has considerable moral authority and a record of cooperation by member countries, including the United States.

The 155-page report was based on hearings and research that began in 2008, including visits in July 2009 by a team of investigators to six American detention centers in Arizona and Texas.
Since much of the research was completed, however, the Obama administration has begun a major overhaul of the detention system. A month after the commission’s visits, immigration officials announced a sweeping plan to establish more centralized authority over the system and to renovate centers designed for penal detention to make them more appropriate for detainees facing deportation, particularly those accused of administrative violations.

The administration said it would also close centers that were rarely used or failed to meet its standards, and would consolidate the nation’s patchwork of detention centers to meet increasing demand in specific areas, especially near big cities. It also said it would explore alternatives to detention.

Felipe González, president of the commission, acknowledged those plans but said the commission would withhold judgment on the efficacy of the reforms. “According to the information that we have so far, it’s not clear that it’s been implemented or will satisfy the international standards” of human rights, he said in an interview. 
The commission will continue monitoring immigration enforcement to ensure that its grievances were addressed, Mr. González added.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees enforcement, said Thursday that the department would review the report, and made no further comment.
Earlier, however, the Obama administration was given a draft. In their response, according to the report, administration officials pointed out that they had conducted their own comprehensive review of immigration enforcement and made “important changes.”
Still, the commission said it was “deeply troubled by the continual and widespread use of detention in immigration cases,” the report said.

“The Inter-American Commission is convinced that in many if not the majority of cases, detention is a disproportionate measure and the alternatives to detention programs would be a more balanced means of serving the State’s legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with immigration laws,” the report said.
Mr. González also expressed skepticism that the administration would provide less penal settings for immigrants held on administrative, rather than criminal, charges. “It’s not clear to us whether the new system will really mean that the facility will provide migrants in detention with a system that is fully respectful of human rights,” he said.

Mr. González said his commission was inspired to investigate the system after receiving numerous requests from human rights advocates and civil society organizations. The group, he added, is now planning to investigate other immigration detention systems in the hemisphere.

Good Bye NYTimes!?

New York Times Announces Paywall Details

Mark Lennihan / AP Photo

 

The New York Times is cutting off Internet freeloaders after 20 articles per month. Beginning March 28, Times readers will have to subscribe if they want to read more than that. Subscriptions will come in three tiers: $15 every four weeks for access to the Web and a mobile-phone app; $20 for Web access and an iPad app; or $35 for an all-access plan.
 Anyone who subscribes to the print version will still have free access to all digital editions, and readers can still get to full articles through Google searchers or Facebook referrals. In an announcement to Times staff Thursday morning, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times Company, said, “This system is our latest, and best, demonstration of where we believe the future of valued content—be it news, music, games, or more—is going.” Before the paywall is rolled out worldwide, it’s being tested in Canada.

Read it at The New York Times

When it comes to budget cuts, high school football should be first to go SI's Frank Deford

When a school make budget cuts, sports, art and music are often the first to go From a common sense standpoint, schools should eliminate their football programs It'd be a controversial move, but the sport is dangerous and only played by boys

School sports surely mean more in the United States than in any other country. For small-town America, as Buzz Bissinger's revealing book Friday Night Lights, showed, sports teams even become a significant part of a community's identity. In the U.S., we don't have many sports clubs, where children in many other countries participate in athletics.

And now that so many American school districts -- even whole states -- are facing reductions in school funding, more and more, it is athletics that are being cut back. Sometimes now, public school sports survive only by the grace of private donations, from parents and fans. Of course, it's not just sports that are prime prospects for elimination, but also art and music. After all, sports, art and music, the S-A-M of school -- what I call the SAM activities -- are known as extra-curriculars ... emphasis on the extra. They're the logical expenses to slash before you take down the educational basics: readin', writin', arithmetic -- not to mention science ... and maybe history and geography, if anybody cares about them anymore.

It's impossible not to argue with this rational, but it's also true that when children who are artistic or musical are denied that opportunity in school, it not only robs them of developing their talent, but diminishes us as a culture. And to knock out athletic exercise at a time when childhood obesity is an absolute epidemic could be just as damaging for the health of the nation. In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks notes that administrators who cut the SAM activities are deluding themselves, because in the long run, these are interests that "[quote] keep kids in school and build character [unquote]." Children need a little dessert with their academic vegetables.

Ironically, the most sensible extracurricular activity to be eliminated would be the most controversial ... Football. Yes ... it's excessively expensive compared to other sports, it's played only by one sex -- boys -- and the evidence grows regularly now that it is a terribly dangerous sport, rife with concussions, which can damage young brains. There must be a good reason why virtually nowhere else in the world is what is distinctively called "American football" played.

Now, the hue and cry that would go up if schools started trying to drop our favorite sport would be at the mega-level. It would, in fact, be called "un-American" -- and would probably produce more hysteria than raising taxes would. But from a strictly realistic, cost-effective, health-effective, culture-effective point of view, it would make the most sense to drop football. That would allow art and music to remain in school, and divert boys into safer athletic exercise.

Or look at it this way. If administrators actually threatened to eliminate football, the football people might finally have to try and take the deadly violence out of the game.

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Why Qaddafi Has Already Lost By ALI ABDULLATIF AHMIDA

THE fight is not over. Whether or not Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi defeats the rebels in eastern Libya, any legitimacy he once had has been extinguished. He has weapons, tanks and planes, but he has lost the allegiance of even those elements of Libyan society that had once been willing to wait and hope for political reform. His base of support is now only diehard allies and foreign mercenaries. They might win on the battlefield, but they will lose in the end.

The uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt were precipitating events, but the resistance has drawn its core motivation from Libya’s brutal experience of colonialism. What is most striking about the rhetoric of the rebellion is how the anticolonialist theme that Colonel Qaddafi once deployed has now been turned against him and is being used on Twitter and Facebook. Even as they are assaulted by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, the rebels have resisted calling for forceful Western intervention, though they support the imposition of a no-flight zone.

Libya’s history explains why. From 1911 to 1943, half a million Libyans died under Italian rule, including 60,000 in concentration camps run by the fascists. Colonel Qaddafi’s nationalist populism is rooted in the traumas of the colonial era, which were papered over during the modernizing but out-of-touch monarchy that ruled from 1951 to 1969.

The regime that came into existence in a bloodless coup in 1969 was led by officers who came from lower-middle-class backgrounds, represented all three regions of Libya and had the backing of a population that was largely rural. Although it was anticolonialist and anticommunist and advocated Arab nationalism and Islamic cultural identity, the new government did not have a clearly delineated political agenda; instead it looked for guidance from the 1952 Egyptian revolution. To this ideological mix the Qaddafi faction, which consolidated power in 1976, added its vision of an indigenous, pastoral, socialist society supported by oil revenues and the labor of workers from abroad.

Western analysts focused on the leader’s cult of personality and eccentric style have often misinterpreted his regime as a historical aberration. In fact, it was rooted in the hinterland of south-central Libya, with its pan-Islamic culture, kinship networks, fear of the central state and mistrust of the West. Colonel Qaddafi transformed anticolonialism and Libyan nationalism into a revolutionary ideology, using language understood by ordinary Libyans. He employed his charisma to mobilize Libyans and attack his opponents. He spoke, ate and dressed like a rural tribesman.

But “tribalism,” so frequently mentioned in coverage of the revolt, is not a timeless feature of Libyan society. It was merely one facet of Colonel Qaddafi’s divide-and-conquer style of rule. To weaken opposition from students, intellectuals and the middle class, the regime pursued a policy of “Bedouinization,” attacking urban culture; promoting rural dress, music, festivals and rituals; and reviving institutions like tribal leadership councils. Tripoli, the capital, lost much of its cosmopolitan character even as it grew.

In its first two decades, the revolution brought many benefits to ordinary Libyans: widespread literacy, free medical care and education, and improvements in living conditions. Women in particular benefited, becoming ministers, ambassadors, pilots, judges and doctors. The government got wide support from the lower and middle classes.

But starting in the 1980s, excessive centralization, greater repression by security forces and a decline in the rule of law undermined the experiment in indigenous populism. Institutions like courts, universities, unions and hospitals weakened. Civic associations that had made Libyan society seem more democratic than many Persian Gulf states in the 1970s withered or were eliminated. A hostile international climate, and fluctuations in oil revenues, added to the pressures on the regime.

It responded by transforming its rituals of hero-worship into a rhetoric of pan-African ideology. It also turned to violence. After repeated coup attempts, it beat, imprisoned and exiled dissidents. It staffed security forces with reliable relatives and allies from central and southern Libya. During the 1990s, as economic sanctions took their toll, health care and education deteriorated, unemployment soared, the economy became ever more dependent on oil and the regime grew increasingly corrupt.

But what has escaped notice since the rebellion began in mid-February is the demographic transformation that made it possible. About 80 percent of Libyans now live in urban areas, towns and cities. Libya today has a modern economy and a high literacy rate. The leaders of the uprising include lawyers, judges, journalists, writers, scholars, women’s rights activists, former army officers and diplomats — a sizable urban elite that is battered and restive.

Had Colonel Qaddafi responded with openness to the calls for reform and not overreacted to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the urban elite might have been placated, and the violent rebellion avoided. He blew it. Once his army and police shot at protesters, the pent-up disaffection of Libyan society was unleashed, and it is too late for the regime to bottle it up.
 In recent weeks the revolt has even gained support from the historically pro-Qaddafi rural populace. No matter how much blood is shed today, the uprising will not be stopped.

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, a professor of political science at the University of New England, is the author of “The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization and Resistance, 1830-1932.”

The Court’s Recusal Problem

Supreme Court justices have life tenure to assure their independence and impartiality. The court’s lack of a recusal policy leaves each justice to decide whether he or she is meeting that standard. That plainly violates the age-old legal principle: Nemo iudex in causa sua — no one should be a judge about his or her own case. It damages the justices’ credibility and the court’s authority.

The court is still not addressing the issue despite months of questions about possible cozy friendships, suspected political biases and family ties. Last week, Justice Antonin Scalia was asked to recuse himself from an upcoming case about alleged gender bias at Wal-Mart Stores because his son is co-chairman of the labor and employment practice at the law firm representing the company.

A bipartisan group of 107 law professors from 76 law schools have made their own proposal for how the court should solve its recusal problem. They argue that justices should follow the ethical code that applies to other federal judges. (Under the rule about avoiding the appearance of impropriety and not letting others “convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge,” Justice Antonin Scalia would not have been able to go duck hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 after the court agreed to hear a case involving Mr. Cheney.)

If a justice denies a motion to recuse, he or she should have to issue an opinion explaining why and that could be reviewed by some as yet unspecified group.

The professors’ proposal is a good start. Representatives Chris Murphy and Anthony Weiner are working on a bill based on it. It would be better for the justices to come up with their own similar proposal and adopt it — including a review process by a committee of justices to ensure accountability. That would not interfere with the court’s independence and would strengthen its credibility.

If the justices don’t act, Congress may have to require them to adopt a more transparent recusal process. That’s not our first choice. But the questions about the court’s impartiality are too serious to ignore.

Palin’s ratings among Republicans sliding

Sarah Palin’s ratings within the GOP are slumping, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll — a potentially troubling sign for the former Alaska governor as she weighs whether to enter the 2012 presidential race.

Nestle Recalls Lean Cuisine Meals

Aren’t those Lean Cuisines dinners supposed to be a healthy alternative? Nestle Prepared Food Co. announced Tuesday a voluntary recall of frozen spaghetti and meatball dinner after reports of red plastic being found in the meatballs. The recall applies to packages of the dinners manufactured during a one-hour period in October 2010 with the production code 0298595519 P, a release by the company said. The company said no other products were affected by the possible contamination. Nestle advised customers to read the “proof of purchase” panel to find out the product code before contacting them.

Read it at CNN

Japan Nuclear Nightmare: Tokyo Fears Radiation

The latest blast at Japan's most crippled nuclear reactor is the worst yet, and raises the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe to uncomfortable levels, according to worried industry experts. The explosion, at the Fukushima Daiichi plant 150 miles from Tokyo, damaged the integrity of the reactor’s steel containment structure, and nearby radiation levels spiked after. Emergency workers were evacuated due to the threat of radiation exposure, meaning that they will not be around to help avert the possible nuclear meltdown.

The Daily Beast's Lennox Samuels and Takashi Yokota report from Tokyo on the alarm over radiation in the city. Plus, full coverage of the Japan quake and tsunami.
Tokyo and other cities have watched the unfolding tragedy in Japan’s northeast with concern but a sense of distance, even insulation. Until now. A mood of foreboding and alarm began to creep across the nation Tuesday as authorities made it clear that all six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are beset with serious ailments, ranging from partial meltdowns to radiation levels harmful to human health to rising pressure, that could combine for a nuclear disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Photos: Japan’s Earthquake and Tsunami

As frantic workers struggled to contain the effects of a third explosion at the nuclear plant—which may have actually damaged the containment system—the government said the resulting radiation leak is potentially harmful. Moreover, if the containment system is indeed breached, the result could be a radiation spike to levels not seen so far. Authorities have had to confront explosions at three reactors, Units 1, 2, and 3; are battling a fire at Unit 4; and have now announced that pressure is rising at Units 5 and 6, and according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, “must be monitored and carefully studied.”

NEWSWEEK/The Daily Beast's Lennox Samuels reports from Japan

Officials evacuated 750 workers from the plant in Fukushima Prefecture, leaving 50 on hand, the minimal number needed to handle the situation. Prime Minister Naoto Kan reiterated that all residents within 20 kilometers of the plant must evacuate and everyone 10 kilometers outside that zone must stay indoors. He said Tokyo Electric Power Co, the plant operator, is “working hard” to cool the reactors, whose cooling systems were damaged in the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck the region Friday.
Residents in Tokyo and its surrounding areas are increasingly nervous about the radiation levels, as traces of radiation have now been detected in even the downtown section of the city. Officials detected radiation levels 20 times higher than usual in the capital’s popular Shinjuku district, though they say the level poses no health risks, at least at the moment. Despite such assurances, Japanese are increasingly uneasy about the nuclear situation. The radiation threat has already prompted several foreign companies, including an international financial-news service, to consider pulling employees out of the city. A number of European investment banks are considering closing shop here and transferring their staff to other Japanese cities as well as outside the country.
Frustration with the Kan administration continues to build, and more people and officials are questioning whether the central authorities are sufficiently clear in the directions they are sending out, especially to local governments.
Katsunobu Sakurai, mayor of the city of Minamisoma, 50 to 60 kilometers north of Fukushima Daiichi, complained that orders from the central government have been “confusing.” He said most residents had left the prefecture, or state, voluntarily, although it was difficult to give instructions to people and that “it’s been worrying to the residents when they listen to the prime minister.” He added that residents cannot leave their damaged homes or drive anywhere. “We are not even able to look for our dead,” he said. Regarding evacuation orders, he noted that people are being asked to walk when there’s radiation in the air. “We would like to ask the central government to help us by providing clear direction,” he said.
Fueling the growing consternation is TEPCO’s less-than-stellar handling of public relations. In response to media questions about the explosion and radiation leakage at Fukushima Daiichi, the best answers the utility has been able to muster are frequently: “We don’t know” and “Let us check on that.” Kan is reported to have admonished—even yelled at—TEPCO officials for failing to keep the government properly informed. Asahi Shimbun quoted Kan shouting: “An explosion is shown on television, and it took you people an hour to report this to the prime minister’s office… What’s going on?”
And when former chief cabinet secretary Yoshito Sengoku called TEPCO to ask how planned rolling blackouts would affect hospitals and vehicular traffic situation, TEPCO responded with a fax saying: “For details, please contact our customer center,” according to the Jiji news wire. An infuriated Sengoku reportedly barked, “Who the hell do you think I am?” To be fair, TEPCO officials at ground zero in Fukushima have gone to heroic lengths to prevent a nuclear meltdown. One veteran TEPCO official—even with the protection of a special moon suit—was exposed in 10 minutes to 100 times the radiation a person should be exposed to in an entire year.
Some critics had also questioned whether the government has enough staff on hand to cope with the demands of preventing a meltdown, especially given the 50 other reactors that must be monitored around the country. Nuclear experts expressed concern about human error and fatigue. “One wonders about a small group of people working nonstop in a situation like this,” MIT security analyst Dr. Jim Walsh told The Daily Beast. “How deep is that staff; how fresh are they? There’s a human dimension to this that could lead to mistakes.”
On Monday, the water level in the Unit 2 reactor dropped, and fuel rods were eventually exposed, raising radiation levels and possibly damaging some of the rods. That all occurred when the employee charged with monitoring the pump that was bringing in seawater to cool off the fuel rods had stepped away.
Lennox Samuels is a Newsweek/Daily Beast editor based in Bangkok. He covered the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Takashi Yokota is Newsweek’s correspondent in Tokyo

Why is America the only FREE SOCIETY to have BLOODSUCKER HEALTH CARE?

The Supreme Court and the health-care mandate muddle


When the Supreme Court considers whether Congress has the constitutional power to compel individuals to buy health insurance, the argument supporting Congress may rest on a non sequitur and a semantic fiat. A judge’s recent ruling argues that the insurance mandate must be constitutional because Obamacare would collapse without it. A forthcoming law review article agrees with this and with the judge’s idea that, regarding commerce, being inactive is an activity.

Obamacare does indeed require the mandate: Because the law requires insurance companies to sell coverage to people regardless of their preexisting conditions, many people might delay buying insurance until they become sick. But is the fact that the mandate is crucial to the law’s functioning dispositive?

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler’s ruling that the mandate is constitutional conflates moral, policy and constitutional considerations. She says that people who choose “not to purchase health insurance will benefit greatly when they become ill, as they surely will, from the free health care which must be provided by emergency rooms and hospitals to the sick and dying who show up on their doorstep.” So “those who choose not to purchase health insurance will ultimately get a ‘free ride’ on the backs of those Americans who have made responsible choices to provide for the illness we all must face.”

Her disapproval is neither a legal argument nor pertinent to one. The question remains: Does Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce entitle it to create a health-care regime that requires the mandate?

Mark Hall of Wake Forest University, in an article for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, says there would be constitutional “uncertainty over the mandate in isolation.” But it is “inextricably intertwined” with Obamacare’s “other insurance regulations” — e.g., those pertaining to preexisting conditions — “which indisputably are constitutional.” So the “strongest defense” of Congress’s power to enact the mandate is “the acknowledged undesirability, if not impossibility” of the regulations regarding preexisting conditions, absent the mandate.

Hall says that the mandate “meets a high threshold of necessity to accomplish the overall reform scheme, clearly within congressional power, to create a market structure in which no one is ever again medically uninsurable.” But unless we postulate that Congress has whatever power is required to create such a market structure, this question remains: Does the fact that Congress has the constitutional power to do X — say, guarantee universal access to insurance — make Y constitutional merely because Y is necessary for doing X?

Congress has the constitutional power to combat political corruption, the “appearance” thereof and the “circumvention” of laws for this purpose. But suppose Congress, exercising this power by regulating campaign finances, decides that abridging freedom of speech is necessary for its anti-corruption measures. This necessity, defined by this preference, does not make such abridgement constitutional. The Supreme Court said as much concerning McCain-Feingold.

The mandate’s defenders note that the Constitution says Congress has the power to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its enumerated powers, one of which is to regulate interstate commerce. “Necessary and proper.” An unconstitutional law is improper.

Does the mandate acquire derivative constitutionality merely by Congress making the mandate necessary for something Congress wants to do in the exercise of the enumerated power of regulating interstate commerce? If so, what would not acquire such constitutionality?

Madison’s constitutional architecture for limited government will be vitiated unless the court places some limits on what constitutes commerce eligible for regulation. So the question becomes: Is the inactivity of not buying insurance a commercial activity Congress can proscribe because it has economic consequences?

Hall says it is unclear what constitutes “pure inaction.” But virtually nothing qualifies as “pure” inactivity if, as he says, “the passivity of non-purchasing decisions does not rob them of their inherently economic nature.” Judge Kessler disdains the distinction between activity and inactivity as “of little significance.” Her Orwellian theory is that government can regulate the activity — the mental activity — of choosing not to participate in a commercial activity.

Hall perfunctorily says that “some limit” on Congress’s commerce power “is necessary” but then says “democratic electoral constraint” — trusting “the political process itself to set limits” — will suffice to restrain government.

The question about the mandate is, however, whether a political institution has traduced constitutional limits placed on it. Because the Framers prudently doubted the sufficiency of “democratic electoral constraint” — because they were wary about “the political process” policing itself — the Constitution was written.
georgewill@washpost.com
George Will Washington Post