Rev. Danny Fisher

Regarding the resignation of Alberto Gonzales from the post of Attorney General, Aziz Huq says it best at The Nation:

Gonzales leaves the Justice Department tarnished in two ways. First are the allegations of politically motivated firings of US Attorneys and concerns that criminal prosecutions and dubious charges of “voter fraud” have been timed to influence the results of close federal and state elections. Second, less noticed and perhaps more serious, Gonzales has presided over a wrecking of the rule of law. The Gonzales Justice Department has consistently taken the position that bedrock laws enacted to protect Americans’ liberty and constitutional rights–and the nation’s standing in the world–can be shrugged off at a moment’s notice–in secret and without public debate or even notice to Congress.

Thanks to Gonzales and his allies, too many citizens of the world know America as a country that treats international law as “quaint,” that recklessly and lawlessly spies on its own citizens and that engages in torture. If we are lucky, that is the America of yesterday; it need not be the America of tomorrow.

Yet, Gonzales’s resignation will do nothing to repair the deep wounds inflicted on the Justice Department: It will not repair the harm done by politicization. It will not undo the wildly flawed legal opinions licensing torture and warrantless spying. It will not restore the rule of law.

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Like Libby and Tenet, Alberto Gonzales rides off into the sunset just in time to evade a full accounting for his actions. Like Libby and Tenet, he leaves behind a government that knows how to scare Americans by invoking the threat of a dirty bomb or a mushroom cloud, but that seems to possess insufficient capacity to accurately target those who present a real threat. What remains in place is a government good at fostering the impression of toughness but dangerously incompetent at delivering the goods…

The Senate Judiciary Committee can use the confirmation process for a new Attorney General to force disclosure of the legal opinions and mandates by which law has been distorted and justice turned from its proper course. It should make plain for the public record what, we hope, has been a low watermark for Justice.

But that is only a beginning. The Gonzales resignation can mark a rising tide for the rule of law. For that to occur, the next Attorney General–and the next President–must vigilantly repair the corrosion of, and the disrespect for, the rule of law, that Gonzales leaves behind.

In November 2008, let the people choose accordingly.

The text of the open letter to ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN, is as follows:

“My station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at FOX News.”

That is CNN’s Christiane Amanpour explaining why the major television networks failed to accurately inform the public in the lead-up to the Iraq war, choosing instead to follow FOX’s lead.

Now, FOX is beating the drums for war with Iran. Robert Greenwald’s short film, “FOX Attacks: Iran”, outlines the evidence from the station’s own broadcasts, comparing their reporting before the Iraq war with what they are saying now about Iran.

You have a sacred responsibility to the American people to provide accurate and reliable information so we can best make the decisions which affect our lives. We urge you to accurately and thoroughly report all sides of this important story.

Please do not blindly follow FOX down the road to another war.

To sign the letter, visit http://foxattacks.com/iran.

The Washington Post published an important story today about children who serve as caregivers for chronically ill or disabled relatives.

As many as 1.4 million children in the United States from age 8 to 18 care for a chronically ill or disabled relative, according to a 2005 survey by the United Hospital Fund and the National Alliance for Caregiving. Children provide companionship, run errands and balance checkbooks. Some change feeding tubes or adult diapers.

Mood swings and antisocial behavior are more common among teenage caregivers than their peers, the study found. And one in five young caregivers misses a school or after-school activity to help a family member. Still, there is little recognition of the adult-size jobs so many youths perform throughout the United States, and there are few public services to assist them.

The population of young caregivers will probably grow as Americans start families later in life and as medical advances enable patients to live longer and at home, according to demographers and caregiving experts. Single parents rely on children more, as do immigrant parents who count on the younger generation to help with translation and navigate the health-care system. Children from low-income families are most likely to provide unpaid medical care, experts said.

Multiple sclerosis, typically diagnosed in young or middle-age adults, has long been recognized as a disease with a profound impact on children. But children also help parents or grandparents with Alzheimer’s disease, drug addictions, mental illness, HIV, brain injuries and cancer.

Among other things, the story highlights the lack of support available for American child forced into the role of caregiver.

Many who work with young caregivers say it’s common to avoid seeking outside help, even in desperate situations, because they fear they will be scrutinized for neglect or abuse.

“The thing that younger children fear most of all is being taken away from their families,” said Carol Levine, director of the families and health-care project at the New York-based United Hospital Fund. “In general, the answer is not to take them out of the family, but to provide support for the family and for them.”

But few support programs exist. Some disease-specific groups, such as the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, offer counseling or social activities for caregiving children, but at the school or county level, youth caregiving “is practically not recognized,” Levine said.

In contrast, England’s young caregivers are acknowledged in the census and by law entitled to a needs assessment and a number of services. About 350 English organizations help 30,000 youths with counseling, homework and social activities, said Saul Becker, a social policy professor at the University of Nottingham who has studied caregiving youths.

This is a must-read article, especially for healthcare chaplains, who can offer support and counsel to these young people contending with an enormous amount of responsibility and pressure.

Such children share feelings of “stress, isolation and fear, thinking they are the only ones,” said Connie Siskowski, a registered nurse who started what is believed to be the nation’s first program to identify and assist caregivers in public schools, in Boca Raton, Fla.

“When there is a serious illness, there’s also the fear of not only what’s going to happen to that person but what’s going to happen to me,” she said.

See also the Post‘s accompanying photo essay “A Young Caregiver’s Burden”, which explores the day-to-day life of Aleyna Castillo, an 18-year-old University of North Carolina-Greensboro freshman featured in the article, who cares for her ill mother and 9-year-old cousin.

Sujatin Johnson, a fellow Buddhist chaplain and author of the great lotusinthemud blog, recently posted a news item from the BBC on her Facebook profile about the sudden and quite tragic death of Reverend Gyosei Handa.

One of Britain’s leading Buddhist monks has died in a freak accident cutting lawns at his temple in [Milton Keynes, England].

Reverend Gyosei Handa was killed while using a ride-on lawnmower. Rev Handa was the chief monk at [Nipponzan-Myōhōji Dai Sangha] Buddhist temple in Willen.

For those who don’t know, the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist Order is a religious movement rooted in Nichiren Buddhism and founded by the late Nichidatsu Fujii. The movement is distinguished by its indefatigable participation in the global peace movement, especially in the area of nuclear disarmament. Followers of Nipponzan-Myōhōji have so far constructed 80 peace pagodas throughout the world. (In my own travels, I have been fortunate enough to visit four of them.)

The pagoda that stands at Rev. Handa’s temple was the first of many built in the western world.

The Milton Keyes Citizen notes that Rev. Handa dedicated his life to “campaigning tirelessly for peace,” even spending twelve months in the 1980s on a walking pilgrimage through Asia.

He was also closely involved with bringing the Peace Pagoda to Milton Keynes, which was the first in the Western Hemisphere.

Rev. Sister Yoshie Maruta, the chief nun at the temple who had known him for 30 years, said: “He was a really devoted man. He was never angry at anything. He was really compassionate. He was really dedicated to peace.”

Dr. Ajit De Silva added: “The one word I would use to describe him would be ‘energy’. Where ever there was an peace activity anywhere in the world, from Russia to America, he would be there.”

The MK News adds:

Rev. Handa, who was born in Japan and became a monk in Sri Lanka aged 20, had been arrested in the past for his peaceful protests against nuclear activity.

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[Rev. Sister Maruta said,] “He would never ask people to do things, but always worked so hard himself. He was always trying to save money. This is why he was cutting the grass himself. If the lawnmower needed fixing, he would do it himself.”

Funeral services are scheduled for this coming Sunday. The Citizen notes that “Buddhists from all over the world are due to visit the temple to pay tribute to Rev. Handa.”

“When sorrows invade the mind, we discover Dharma
And find lasting happiness. Thank you, sorrows!

[...]

We dedicate our merit to you all, to repay your kindness.” – Gyalwa Longchenpa

The Associated Press is reporting that U.S. District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled yesterday that the Bush administration has violated a 1990 law by failing to meet deadlines for providing an updated national climate change research plan and impact assessment.

The ruling is a victory for the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace, who jointly sued the White House for not producing these reports.

Armstrong set a March 1 deadline for the administration to issue the research plan, which is meant to guide federal research on climate change. Federal law calls for an updated plan every three years, she said. The last one was issued in 2003.

The judge set a May 31 deadline to produce a national assessment containing the most recent scientific data on global warming and its projected effects on the country’s environment, economy and public health. The government is required to complete a national assessment every four years, the judge ruled.

The last one was issued by the Clinton administration in 2000.

The administration had claimed that it had discretion over how and when it produced the reports–an argument the judge rejected Tuesday.

“The defendants are wrong,” Armstrong wrote in the 38-page ruling. “Congress has conferred no discretion upon the defendants as to when they will issue revised Research Plans and National Assessments.”

The plaintiffs–the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace–said the ruling was a rebuke to an administration that has systematically denied and suppressed information on global warming.

“It’s a huge victory holding the administration accountable for its attempts to suppress science,” said Kassie Siegel, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs that filed suit in Oakland federal court in November.

In a post yesterday, I mentioned one recently discovered and particulary shameful instance of someone with close ties to the administration attempting to “supress science”: the news that former U.S. Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz during his scandalous tenure as World Bank president “personally intervened to remove the words ‘climate change’ from the title of a bank progress report and ordered changes to the text of the report to shift the focus away from global warming.”

I’ve happy about this ruling, and I am grateful to the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace for doing the hard work of holding this adminstration accountable for its irresponsibility on this particular issue. You can show your apprecation by joining these organzations–just follow the hyperlinks.