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July 12, 2005
100 days for Darfur
100 Days of Action is a campaign to “commemorate the 100 day long Rwandan genocide of 1994 in which 800,000 Rwandans were killed.’ Your help is needed to bring attention to Darfur. Many politically minded and socially conscious students will be in Washington DC this week for the Campus Progress conference to educate student leaders. The following day, July 14th will be a day of action to bring the situation in Darfur to our representatives. Groups will be meeting with representatives to lobby for support of the African Union’s work in Darfur. Letters from constituents will be hand-delivered so start writing if this issue is important to you. There are many ways to get involved and educate yourself about the issue too by checking out the Be A Witness campaign and the Genocide Intervention Fund. The Genocide Intervention Fund is a group started by students and alumni Swarthmore College to raise awareness about genocide, specifically fundraising to support African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, Sudan.
http://genocideinterventionfund.org http://BeAWitness.org/splash/ http://www.campusprogress.org/
Posted by Neil Rodrigo-Kelley at 11:47 PM | Comments (257)
July 03, 2005
One Live Cafe
Live 8 isn't the only way that celebrities are trying to influence the July 8 meeting of the Group of Eight wealthy industrial nations who will influence the future of Africa. Anyone following the MTV coverage will see the numerous ads for the One Campaign's celebrities snapping their fingers every three seconds for each African child who dies. Last weekend HBO premiered Girl in the Cafe, which imagines the upcoming summit from the British perspective, with the addition of a "common woman" played by Kelly Macdonald who sits in on the G8 dinners and snaps her fingers as well as Tom Hanks.
All of these efforts are aimed to raise awareness for the plight of Africans--at this point the severity of the poverty is apparent, but will awareness or even significant support from the G8 be enough to make a real improvement?
Posted by Mandy Smithberger at 11:50 AM | Comments (12)
Depressed yet?
Think back to the 2004 Presidential debates. When President Bush was asked who he would nominate to the Supreme Court, should there be a vacancy, he answered:
...I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.
So he lost the vote of David Duke and friends, right?
Timothy Noah probed a bit deeper into the issue. In anti-abortion circles, the Dred Scott decision is code for Roe v. Wade. The two sentence version: Dred Scott is based on the premise that he had no legal standing, not being a full citizen. Roe is based on the premise that a fetus, in the first trimester of a pregnancy, has no legal standing, not being a full citizen.
To do:
Read the article.
Google 'Roe' and 'Dred Scott.'
Panic.
Posted by Maura Spiegelman at 11:20 AM | Comments (20)
July 01, 2005
Sandra's Day
In 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court. While there's a lot of posturing to come over the nomination, and it's extremely doubtful that there will be a happy ending, let no one forget that a woman rose to one of the most honorable positions in our government and she did a job we can all be proud of. Best wishes for her retirement.
Celebrate by heading to OYEZ.org to listen to some of the latest Supreme court cases, or browse their archives for excellent summaries of just about every case the Court has ever handled.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 11:23 PM | Comments (12)