Voter Suppression, the New Black

It’s kind of sad that we, as Americans, are basically forced to go outside of our traditional media outlets for alternative viewpoints. Something tells me you’d only find a story like this in American media AFTER an election, or in a MoveOn spam. Anyway, I think it’s interesting what people can get away with, legally, in the name of democracy. Same ole sh!t, though, basically.

I like the historical slant…

In the 1964 presidential elections, a young political operative named Bill guarded a largely African-American polling place in South Phoenix, Arizona like a bull mastiff.

Bill was a legal whiz who knew the ins and outs of voting law and insisted that every obscure provision be applied, no matter what. He even made those who spoke accented English interpret parts of the constitution to prove that they understood it. The lines were long, people fought, got tired or had to go to work, and many of them left without voting. It was a notorious episode long remembered in Phoenix political circles.

It turned out that it was part of a Republican Party strategy known as “Operation Eagle Eye”, and “Bill” was future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. He was confronted with his intimidation tactics in his confirmation hearings years later, and characterised his behaviour as simple arbitration of polling place disputes. In doing so, he set a standard for GOP dishonesty and obfuscation surrounding voting rights that continues to this day. #read the rest at Al Jazeera

WTC on Mars

Tom Myrick, an engineer at Honeybee, figured out a way of machining the aluminum into cable shields for the rock abrasion tools. He hand-delivered the WTC material to the machine shop in Texas that was working on other components of the tools. When the shields were back in New York, he affixed an image of the American flag on each. The Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on June 10, 2003, with Opportunity’s launch following in July. Nobody on the rover team or at Honeybee spoke publicly about the source of the aluminum on the cable shields until later that year. #

9/11 Photo Retrospective

It’s hard to believe that 10 years have passed since what is sure to be remembered as one of the biggest world events that our generation (20-30 somethings) will ever witness.  For a retrospective through pictures, check out The Atlantic.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians have lost their lives at a cost of trillions of dollars, and western military forces remain in both countries. A third war, the War on Terror, has driven changes in the U.S. that have pushed against the limits of what American society will accept in return for security — measures such as pre-emptive military strikes, indefinite detentions, waterboarding, wiretapping, and invasive airport security systems. As we remember those lost on September 11, 2001, and construction of the new skyscrapers in Manhattan nears completion, most U.S, troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of this year and Afghanistan by 2014. .::link

The Encyclodpedia of

Check out a thorough collection of articles about 9/11 via NYMAG‘s Encyclopedia of 9/11.

What Dinh didn’t anticipate was a profound shift in liberalism and, therefore, in the politics of the country. Even with a Democrat now in the White House, the liberalism that protects the right of the individual against the majority—the politics of civil rights and abortion and gay marriage—has diminished, in favor of one that aims to improve the lot of the median man. Obama’s liberalism is for the majority, not against it. This spirit, and the unlikely endurance of the Patriot Act, owes something to the central psychological events of the decade: the vitality and threat of new economic competitors, the social violence initiated by the authors of obscure financial instruments, but first and most of all September 11—each of which evoked a particular feeling, that we were all together, under attack. .::Patriot Act