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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

If You Think Monday Was Bad at the Supreme Court ...

By Andrew Cohen
Jun 26 2012, 10:47 AM ET  ...you're in for a good show. Yesterday's gulf of opinions on the juvenile-sentencing case is just a warning tremor for the deep fractures that are sure to divide the Court on Thursday.
kaganroberts.jpg 
Left: AP; Right: Reuters
So this is what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg alluded to a few weeks ago when she said that the current United States Supreme Court term was "more than usually taxing" because of its blend of deep ideological division mixed with a politically charged docket. As we wait for the term's final day on Thursday, a day of drama the Court has not seen since Bush v. Gore on December 12, 2000, get a load of the seething tone of some of the dissents written and read Monday in cases involving immigration and prison sentencing.

By 10:30 a.m Monday, with the health care ruling on hold, the big decision everyone wanted to talk about instead was Arizona v. United States, an election-year case about states' rights and federal immigration policy. By a 5-3 vote, the Court struck down three of Arizona's controversial measures and limited the scope of the fourth. In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wondered aloud whether we should, as a result of Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, "cease referring to [Arizona] as a sovereign state."

Folks, this is how fellow Reagan appointees were ragging on each other's work Monday. Meanwhile, in the only other decision of the day, a case in which the Court by an even closer 5-4 vote banned mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders, the Court's conservatives were free to unleash themselves upon the newest justice, Elena Kagan. The Obama appointee wrote the majority opinion in Miller v. Alabama with the help of the aforementioned Justice Kennedy.

The bad vibe was so pronounced in court on Monday, as the justices were reading various portions of their rulings, that Dahlia Lithwick, over at Slate, suggested (jokingly, I think) that cameras inside the courtroom perhaps aren't such a good idea after all. Here's my latest bright idea: If the Supreme Court broadcast Thursday's announcement of its decision over the Affordable Care Act, and if it made the broadcast Pay-Per-View, perhaps the national debt and deficit could be wiped out in a single hour.

KIDS AND CRIME

It is a shame on many levels that Miller came down on a day when it was overshadowed by other news from the Supreme Court. For in Miller v. Alabama, we see both the clear continuation of a trend on the Court -- and the passing of a torch. Even though Justice Kagan wrote the majority opinion in Miller, it was largely Justice Kennedy's precedent that she was following. More than that, it was Justice Kennedy (as senior member of the majority) who assigned the opinion to Justice Kagan to write.

Justice Kennedy is central to this story because he's literally written the law upon which Miller is based. In the beginning, there was Atkins v. Virginia, a 2002 case in which Justice Kennedy signed on to Justice John Paul Stevens' 6-3 ruling outlawing the execution of mentally retarded capital defendants. Next came Roper v. Simmons, in 2005, in which Justice Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, outlawed capital punishment for murderers who committed their crimes before age 18.

Next came Graham v. Florida in 2010, in which Justice Kennedy, writing for another slender majority, outlawed life sentences for juvenile offenders who committed non-homicide crimes. "By denying the defendant the right to reenter the community," Justice Kennedy wrote, "the State makes an irrevocable judgment about that person's value and place in society. This judgment is not appropriate in light of a juvenile non homicide offender's capacity for change and limited moral culpability."

The Miller case was designed to explore one step further -- could mandatory life sentences for convicted murderers also run afoul of the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment? When I wrote a piece about the oral argument in the case back in March, I was struck by how many of the justices have children. I wondered at the time whether, in some way, their roles as parents would impact their perceptions of the issues raised in the case. Now I have my answer.

MILLER v. ALABAMA

The essence of all these cases, including Miller, is that criminal defendants, especially those who are mentally, intellectually, and emotionally vulnerable, ought to be afforded a level of "individualized sentencing" that eschews "mandatory'' sentences. It's neater and more politically popular for state legislators to sentence offenders in broad categories. But as we have seen in so many capital cases, as we have seen in so many other cases, just because these classifications are convenient doesn't make them constitutional.

For the majority, Justice Kagan looked at two horrific crimes, two profoundly disturbing murders, involving two deeply troubled young people who ended up caught up in two mandatory life sentencing schemes in Alabama and Arkansas. Citing the precedent noted above, and dispatching with the dissents in a footnote that suggested there was no use in "re-litigating" those cases, she declared that "youth matters in determining the appropriateness of a lifetime of incarceration without the possibility of parole."

Here, judge for yourself whether you agree with Justice Kagan's assessment. She wrote:
In light of Graham's reasoning, these decisions too show the flaws of imposing mandatory life-without-parole sen­tences on juvenile homicide offenders. Such mandatory penalties, by their nature, preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender's age and the wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it. Under these schemes, every juvenile will receive the same sen­tence as every other -- the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, the shooter and the accomplice, the child from a stable household and the child from a chaotic and abusive one.
And still worse, each juvenile (including these two 14­year-olds) will receive the same sentence as the vast ma­jority of adults committing similar homicide offenses -- but really, as Graham noted, a greater sentence than those adults will serve. In meting out the death penalty, the elision of all these differences would be strictly forbidden. And once again, Graham indicates that a similar rule should apply when a juvenile confronts a sentence of life (and death) in prison.
And then, because Justice Kagan knows she is writing for an audience beyond the Court, she added:
To recap: Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features -- among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences. It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him -- and from which he cannot usually extricate himself -- no matter how brutal or dysfunctional. It neglects the circumstances of the homicide offense, including the extent of his participation in the conduct and the way familial and peer pressures may have affected him.
Indeed, it ignores that he might have been charged and convicted of a lesser offense if not for incompetencies associated with youth -- for example, his inability to deal with police officers or prosecutors(including on a plea agreement) or his incapacity to assist his own attorneys.
This is the rationale upon which the dissenters focused their ire.

THE DISSENTS

First up to the plate was the "umpire" himself, Chief Justice John Roberts, the man whose legacy (let's face it) will be largely determined Thursday by what happens to the Affordable Care Act. In Miller, the chief justice wrote that there is no viable Eighth Amendment problem if there is nothing "unusual" about the punishment. About 2,000 juvenile offenders are currently serving mandatory life sentences, the Chief Justice wrote -- hardly an unusual occurrence.

Next came a remarkably philosophical passage from the chief justice about the distinctions between decency and leniency in sentencing. I don't know that I've ever read a passage from John Roberts that had as much esoteric passion in it. This is what umpiring would be like if (fill in your favorite philosopher here) were behind the plate:
Mercy toward the guilty can be a form of decency, and a maturing society may abandon harsh punishments that it comes to view as unnecessary or unjust. But decency is not the same as leniency. A decent society protects the innocent from violence. A mature society may determine that this requires removing those guilty of the most heinous murders from its midst, both as protection for its other members and as a concrete expression of its standards of decency. As judges we have no basis for deciding that progress toward greater decency can move only in the direction of easing sanctions on the guilty.
And then the Chief Justice trotted out a parade of horribles:
This process has no discernible end point -- or at least none consistent with our Nation's legal traditions. Roper and Graham attempted to limit their reasoning to the circumstances they addressed -- Roper to the death penalty, and Graham to non homicide crimes. Having cast aside those limits, the Court cannot now offer a credible substitute, and does not even try. After all, the Court tells us, "none of what [Graham] said about children ... is crime- specific."
The principle behind today's decision seems to be only that because juveniles are different from adults, they must be sentenced differently. There is no clear reason that principle would not bar all mandatory sentences for juveniles, or any juvenile sentence as harsh as what a similarly situated adult would receive. Unless confined, the only stopping point for the Court's analysis would be never permitting juvenile offenders to be tried as adults. (citations omitted)
Then it got worse. Justice Clarence Thomas, as is his wont, made sure the world was reminded of his distaste for the entire line of legal precedent upon which Justice Kagan and the majority had relied. At times, he mocked the majority. Nothing in the Constitution had changed in the decades since the Court had refused to recognize age as a component in sentencing, he wrote. "What has changed (or better yet, 'evolved') is this Court's ever-expanding line" of cases.

Batting third was Justice Samuel Alito, writing for himself and Justice Antonin Scalia (who likely was tuckered out by his dissent in Arizona v. United States). Bemoaning what he perceives as the Supreme Court's abandonment of the "original" meaning of the Eighth Amendment, and predicting that the Court would go even further in reducing sentences for juvenile murderers, he unloaded, for page after page, upon the majority's rationale. For example, he wrote:
What today's decision shows is that our Eighth Amendment cases are no longer tied to any objective indicia of society's standards. Our Eighth Amendment case law is now entirely inward looking. After entirely disregarding objective indicia of our society's standards in Graham, the Court now extrapolates from Graham. Future cases may extrapolate from today's holding, and this process may continue until the majority brings sentencing practices into line with whatever the majority views as truly evolved standards of decency.
POSTSCRIPT

This is your Supreme Court, folks. Sure, there is collegiality on some levels. These people are stuck with one another, after all, so they have to get along to a certain extent. But there is no center of gravity. There are, instead, two bitterly divided sides, with Justice Kennedy alternating from one to the other depending upon his own jurisprudence in any given case. This dynamic has occurred before since the Court was formed. And it will likely occur again.

In the meantime, get ready for Thursday and the Affordable Care Act. Get ready for hundreds of pages of opinions and dissents and very pointed disagreements about fundamental concepts in American law. If Monday's cases are any indication, Thursday is shaping up to be one of the ugliest days in the long history of the fabled institution.
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Elite Women Put a New Spin on an Old Debate

June 22, 2012 1:04 pm
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By JODI KANTOR / The New York Times
If a woman has a sterling résumé, a supportive husband who speaks fluent car pool and a nurturing boss who just happens to be one of the most powerful women in the world herself, who or what is to blame if Ms. Supposed-to-Have-It-All still cannot balance work and family?

A magazine article by a former Obama administration official has blown up into an instant debate about a new conundrum of female success: women have greater status than ever before in human history, even outpacing men in education, yet the lineup at the top of most fields is still stubbornly male. Is that new gender gap caused by women who give up too easily, unsympathetic employers or just nature itself?

The article in The Atlantic, by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor who recently left a job at the State Department, added to a renewed feminist conversation that is bringing fresh twists to bear on longstanding concerns about status, opportunity and family. Unlike earlier iterations, it is being led not by agitators who are out of power, but by elite women at the top of their fields, like the comedian Tina Fey, the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and now Ms. Slaughter. In contrast to some earlier barrier-breakers from Gloria Steinem to Condoleezza Rice, these women have children, along with husbands who do as much child-rearing as they do, or more.

The conversation came to life in part because of a compelling face-off of issues and personalities: Ms. Slaughter, who urged workplaces to change and women to stop blaming themselves, took on Ms. Sandberg, who has somewhat unintentionally come to epitomize the higher-harder-faster school of female achievement.

Starting a year and a half ago, Ms. Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, injected new energy into the often circular work-or-home debate with videotaped talks that became Internet sensations. After bemoaning the lack of women in top business positions, she instructed them to change their lot themselves by following three rules: require your partner to do half the work at home, don't underestimate your own abilities, and don't cut back on ambition out of fear that you won't be able to balance work and children.

The talks transformed Ms. Sandberg from little-known executive to the new face of female achievement, earning her untold letters and speaking invitations, along with micro-inspection of her life for clues to career success. She hired a sociologist, Marianne Cooper, to help her get the research and data right. When Ms. Sandberg confessed in a recent interview that, contrary to her work-hound reputation, she leaves work at 5:30 p.m. to eat dinner with her children, and returns to a computer later, she earned yet another round of attention, and her words were taken as the working-mom equivalent of a papal ruling.
But her advice also spurred quiet skepticism: by putting even more pressure on women to succeed, was she, even unintentionally, blaming the victim if they did not?

Enter Ms. Slaughter's article, posted Wednesday night, in which she described a life that looked like a feminist diorama from the outside (a mother and top policy adviser for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton) but was accompanied by domestic meltdown (workweeks spent in a different state than her family, a rebellious teenage son to whom she had little time to attend). As she questioned whether her job in Washington was doable and at what cost, she began hearing from younger women who complained about advice like Ms. Sandberg's.
"Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with ... because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation," Ms. Slaughter wrote. "But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating 'you can have it all' is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk."

"Although couched in terms of encouragement, Sandberg's exhortation contains more than a note of reproach," Ms. Slaughter continued, an insinuation of "What's the matter with you?'"

Instead, Ms. Slaughter said, the workplace needs to adapt, and women who opt out have no need to apologize.

In an interview, Ms. Slaughter added that she was motivated to write in part by her concern about the number of women serving in high posts under President Obama -- and now that the first round of female appointees is leaving, she said, they are mostly being replaced by men. "I don't think there is sufficient appreciation across the administration as a whole of the different circumstances facing women and men," she said.

Unlike in earlier eras, when Germaine Greer would publish one book and then Betty Friedan would weigh in months later, a new crop of feminist bloggers and writers now respond instantaneously. The women they were writing about followed along in real time on Thursday as well, reading the debate as they were living it, inhaling Ms. Slaughter's article and the responses as they stole a few minutes from work or raced off to pick up their children. By Thursday afternoon, Ms. Slaughter's confession-slash-manifesto was breaking readership records for The Atlantic's Web site, according to a magazine representative.

Many responded with enthusiasm for Ms. Slaughter's recommendations (more latitude to work at home, career breaks, matching work schedules to school schedules, even freezing eggs). Some defended Ms. Sandberg or expressed solidarity with their husbands, who they said feel just as much work-life agita as they do. More than a few said they were irritated by what they called outdated language ("having it all") and a clichéd cover illustration (Baby, check. Briefcase, check).

"Irresponsibly conflating liberation with satisfaction, the 'have it all' formulation sets an impossible bar for female success and then ensures that when women fail to clear it, it's feminism -- as opposed to persistent gender inequity -- that's to blame," Rebecca Traister wrote in an article on Salon.com.

For her part, Ms. Sandberg remained silent, declining a request to address the Atlantic article. But Ms. Slaughter said in an interview that the Silicon Valley executive was one of the many readers who e-mailed her as soon as the article came out. Her message: they had to talk more about this, and soon.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
First Published June 22, 2012 1:01 pm

    • Terry McKenna
    • Dover, N.J.
    NYT Pick
    as a 60 year old man, i stand somewhat aside from all this. yet i still see that it is the young women in my office who bear the babies and take leave. i do see more attention from the young men to household duties, but never hear the angst.

    much of what might make things easier are social programs/supports that we Americans are not likely to pass or pay for.

    so it seems that women still have a dilemma and that it is absurd for those who are aggressive and successful to disparage less agressive and more family oriented lifestyles.
    • AB
    • Maryland
    NYT Pick
    Wow. These young, aggressive working mothers think they're saying something new?

    My husband and I were fighting this battle 20 years ago.     Divvying up a hectic schedule of daycare/preschool drop-offs and pick-ups, having kids nap under our desks after school when there was no other alternative, etc. Workplaces were supposed to become family-friendly back then too. It was all a pipe dream. Here's a newsflash. The women bosses I've had in the past and the women running the company I work at now are the least likely to support flexibility in the workplace. Explain that? Those times I was able to fight for and win a job-share or a work-at-home arrangement (usually granted with conditions) male bosses were most supportive.

    You mean to tell me that the modern six-figure husbands of today still expect their driven, seven-figure wives to iron their shirts?

    We need perspective here. The women profiled in this article are laughable. These are the women who make hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year. We're supposed to believe that they're cleaning their own toilets and helping little Brandon with his homework. This is the crowd that overschedules their children and has live-in help. They ALREADY have it all. What more could they possibly want?

    They should be advocating for regular women who hold done one, two, or three low-five-figure jobs and work in hostile, inflexible workplaces.
    • guudbears
    • Hudson Valley, NY
    NYT Pick
    There is no doubt that corporate America needs to become more family friendly in terms of maternity leave/childcare for men and women.
    My main complaint of feminism is that it seems to push women to be more like men and I feel that it fails to push men to be more like women as well. 

    There is anecdotal evidence that many women who make it to the top in the competitive business world find the rewards not all that worth it. A kind of "Is this all there is?" feeling. The rewards of family and friends should not have to take second place to being succussful. People who are narcissitic and highly competitive don't find ignoring family and friends a sacrafice at all. Let's not sink to the lowest common denominator and confuse greed with being truly succussful in life.
    •  "Having it all" is a trite, Madison Ave. like phrase for living a well rounded life on one's own terms not those imposed by others.
    • jake
    • NYC
    NYT Pick
    Why is this always depicted as the failure or success of women? If the woman wants to have a successful career but cannot, why isn't that a failure of two people as parents and spouses to see their way through to that success? The whole model of success for women as someone who can do 80% of the child rearing and 100% of her own work is ridiculous. Men are not held to the same standards in the slightest. But they are also penalized. I would argue that men are more heavily "marked down" in the je-ne-sais-quoi category of workplace evaluations for spending extra time with their children instead of working 50-60 hour weeks. What man feels comfortable saying "I am going to take off time to be with the new baby." So the workplace imprisons men and separates them from their families, while it bars women from full membership by creating insurmountable measurements of success.

    What's more, the rest of the country is working for lower and lower paying jobs that leave less and less time for almost any humane and decent aspect of life.

    Something has to break. We have to find a new way of doing things. The old recidivist answers of a return to family values and all that palp are just reinscriptions of the same old prison bars.
    • LT
    • Boston
    NYT Pick
    I'm about a decade younger than Ms. Sandberg, have a successful career that I love and two young children whom I adore, and I agree with Ms. Sandberg completely that the two are not mutually exclusive. But there are a few issues to that balance that are getting glossed over. A lot of the difference in success can be attributed to the professional field. In my experience, the government gives the most lip service to equality but in reality are the most biased of any type organization with which which I've worked by far. Contrary to outside assumptions, lot of traditionally male fields have the best work life balance although they don't pay lip service to it, which is part of what Ms. Sandberg is reflecting. I don't want to gloss over other issues for women but I work in a different overwelmingly male dominated field than Ms. Sandberg and I learned early on about the culture of work ending at 5:00 to have dinner with the family. This is because importance of family is a people issue not a women's issue. Watch what your bosses do not what they say. Men often handle family differently than women but if you pay attention you'll realize that meeting out of the office every Tuesday at 4pm is to coach his daughter's soccer team. Finally, choose a field where success is based on results not billable hours or political face time. It makes it easier to leave for the school event and catch up on the work later because if you're hitting your targets no one will care.
    • Fiona
    • New York
    NYT Pick
    I may not have had it all, but thanks to a supportive family and a specific career choice, I have had most of it, whatever that "it" is. I do not, however, think that the problem of balance is confined in any way to women. Work itself and the way all of us, employers and employees, male and female, think about work have to change. Or at lease they must change if we are not to lead lives of quiet desperation and are not to squander the talents and energy of so many.

    In a phone conversation recently, my older son commented: "I love being a husband. I love being a father. I love the science I do. I love the management role I have and helping people develop their skills and further their projects. I have even come to love the business aspect of what I do. I just can't seem to make it all fit."

    My son and his wife both work for their living, and both have positions of significant responsibility. They live simply, by choice. They share household and maintenance chores and the care and fun of their daughter equally. They each attend work days at their daughter's school. and PTA meetings.I have watched them, with apparent good humor, juggle a myriad of responsibilities.

    If an extremely well-educated couple with one child, with a seemingly endless capacity for hard work, and with a tested willingness to share the labor has such feelings, then we, as a society are doing something wrong. It is time for a change, time for us to be specific and clear about what we need and want.
    • Kurt
    • NY
    NYT Pick
    Anybody, man or woman, with a demanding job cannot possibly have enough time or energy to give full attention to family matters. That women (or some women) may feel that lack more deeply than their male counterparts does not dispel that fact. In either case, it becomes a matter of personal priorities and where you choose to spend your time.
    The women you cite in your article are all successful to a degree to which few men attain. One assumes that they also enjoy a level of compensation appropriate to that status (ok the State Dept doesn't pay all that well, but still). So, under the premise that money can't buy you everything but you can pick your own misery, we should question how that affects the vast majority of women who will never reach that rarefied level of success and financial resources.

    To what degree is this an issue with all women, as opposed to pertaining to a subset of high achievers hitting the same constraints which always existed for men in those positions, but who feel guiltier about it? Yes, wives make it possible for male executives, but they don't spend all that much time with their families either. If these women had the male equivalents of those wives, would that change the situation or is this being driven by something else, something perhaps more personal or primal?

    Thing is, no one has the right to tell a woman what she is supposed to do or feel. Everyone has to figure out their own priorities and live with the implications. We can't have it all.
    • KOB
    • TH
    NYT Pick
    I think framing this debate in a one-size-fits-all context leads to misleading conclusions. Some women will thrive in demanding careers and have children who are independent-minded from an early age so can handle the associated challenges. Other women will have children who need more nurturing and may have less supportive partners.

    Not everyone wants or needs to be CEO and I think it's most unfair make stay-at-home mothers feel somehow inferior to those who strive to lead.
    • Patricia
    • KC
    NYT Pick
    I have a different perceptions of "having it all".

    To my view, Ms. Slaughter has it all now, and did before moving to Washington. She (and I) are both lucky enough to have an interesting, full-time, profession which she enjoys, and a family, including a wonderful supportive husband. Where we disagree is the expectation that she could commute, only see her kids on weekends but still feel satisfied. When did feminism say you could be a long-distance parent?

    Ms. Slaughter had it all but had the opportunity to do something extraordinary, so sacrificed family for 2 years in service to our country. Just as a member of the armed service has to sacrifice family while deployed, so did Ms. Slaughter. To exaggerate, an astronaut can't be a good parent while away but I doubt we would use that example as a slam on feminist expectations and feminism itself.

    You can't achieve work/life balance with every job without any compromises. The nature of the job and the compromises change, depending on the circumstances. This is not specific to women.

    I think a meaningful yardstick is to compare the work/life balance of women and men in similar, 80+ hr/wk high-pressure jobs, especially out of town. There is none, for either gender. Why would women expect something which has never been available to our male colleagues?

    Both women and men can have careers and families. There are always compromises involved. Feminism is neither to blame for the compromises nor the unrealistic expectations.
    • Cee
    • District of Columbia
    NYT Pick
    As a professional woman with a busy career in management consulting for a top tier firm, I am well aware that life is a myriad of choices. There is no such thing as "having it all." I really, really like my work and I'm good at it. But I also recognize that because I enjoy my work to the extent that I do, that requires a certain amount of commitment from me to sustain that level of success and enjoyment. Thus there are trade offs I must make. One of them is that I choose not to have children.

    The feminist mantra that I'm tired of is the one that notes that if you make the conscious decision not to try and "have it all," you are somehow incredibly selfish. I would call it rational prioritizing. Raising children is a huge commitment and requires investments of time, energy, and enthusiasm that will have to be shared across the parenting partnership. Even with a supportive partner, I recognize that my work and my lifestyle would leave a child shortchanged.

    We have to stop the nonsense that accompanies the "having it all" mindset - it doesn't apply to either females or males. We all have to make choices about what is important to who we are and want to be as individuals.
    • PB
    • Manlius NY
    NYT Pick
    Why is this being presented as a conflict, a battle between two "successful" women? Why is it either we do this as women or we do that? Then we carp away at each other for being just myopically wrong, too rich to grasp reality, and "who" are you as a woman to tell "us" what is right for all women ("who died and left you boss?").

    There is lots of cognitive dissonance for women who are working and raising a family, much more if you have to do it on minimum/low wages, by yourself or with an uncooperative partner. According to cognitive dissonance theory, you can't have it both ways--eventually you are doing to have to choose when you are between a rock and a hard place. Which I did at one point in my career, and then I breathed much easier. The choice is personal one.

    BUT, while we women are flailing away at each other about 'having it all," we should be directing our energy at creating a healthier workplace for everyone. Americans are highly productive and killing themselves (afraid to take a day off or vacation for fear it may hurt us--and in our business environment it will, unfortunately). Take a look at how the Scandinavian countries handled work and family. There is a balance, but the business culture and right-wing political trend in the US works against women, families, and simple kindness--really not your "family values" people, despite what they say.

    So when women are in positions of authority at work they can push to make it happen--but most don't/won't.
    • t-bone
    • atlanta, ga
    NYT Pick
    I read the Atlantic article as a print subscriber not on line since I am old school. The unspoken indictment is not of women, but of men who for generations have unblinkingly gone off to work leaving the kids as someone else's worry. For example if you are in sales you do not see your kids during the week. Some of us said "no" to that idea by dropping out, hanging out a shingle, or lowering expectations. Many of us paid a price for being able to coach the little league team. So what's the answer? Life is full of choices, or at least it should be. Make a choice. If you want to be a high achiever then go for it. If you want to spend a lot of time with your kids then you might have to make some adjustments. But in the process please don't blame others for the choices you made.
    • Maria H.
    • Boston MA
    NYT Pick
    I, too have been trying to understand why these stories never involve women of color and I think the reason is two fold: first, there are very few black or Latina women at Ms. Slaughter's level; and second (but more important) the few of us that exist know we would be roundly condemned by family and close friends for putting our (relatively) minor concerns on display while millions of our sisters worry about lack of health insurance, low wages and zero flexibility at work. Complaining under these circumstances is wildly inappropriate..... Why don't successful women worry about poor women more often--this would make feminism of the sort practiced by Ms. Slaughter and Ms. Sandberg a force for positive change in the world instead of a never ending exercise in self absorption. Here is the test: if Ms. Sandberg or Ms. Slaughter were to discover (God forbid) that they had a life threatening illness (e.g., brain tumor, serious cancer) and needed surgery followed by months off to recover, NEITHER would worry about losing their jobs; NEITHER would struggle to survive on a drastically reduced income and/or risk losing their homes; and BOTH could return to work whenever they were ready. Very few women (and men) can say that. The fact that both these women cannot recognize that they already enjoy the best of the best is proof of how dumb allegedly smart people can be.
    • CathyF
    • Robesonia, PA
    NYT Pick
    No one can have it all. It doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man. Life is a series of necessities, compromises, and trade-offs, and nothing ever turns out like we plan it to. If you think you have complete control over your life, you're living in a dream world.

    Society can and should change and offer more help to both women and men, such as affordable, safe day care for parents and more employment opportunities with flexibility, but there will always be situations and jobs which will require decisions and trade-offs to be made. I made choices and trade-offs on the way to becoming a partner at an accounting firm while raising two sons. I had a wonderful male boss/mentor who was a parent himself and he allowed me some flexibility. But my husband had his own job and did not do much at home, which meant I killed myself at times working 60 to 80 hour work weeks while raising my sons and keeping the household afloat. Flexibility at work only goes so far, but I was lucky to have choices and I made them.

    I retired last year. Shortly afterwards, while cleaning a closet, I found some high school papers my sons had saved. I cried when I read in my son's autobiographic essay that his mother was "a nice lady, and she's always there, but she's never really there, if you know what I mean." Choices were made.
    • Pat
    • PEI
    NYT Pick
    I am a 61-year-old high-achieving woman. I don't regret the sacrifices I have made (for example, no children) -- but they WERE sacrifices. At my present age, I realize that much of the work that gratified me when I was young was in fact a waste of time. Young women, I advise you, be sure of what you want in this life. Do not be swayed by the ideologies of your generation.
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Sadly, cruel is not always unusual

Wednesday June 27, 2012 5:37 AM

In the 1790s, a Tennessee man convicted of horse theft got off easy. Instead of being hanged, as horse thieves often were, he was sentenced to “stand in the pillory one hour, receive thirty-nine lashes upon his bareback well laid on, have his ears nailed to the pillory and cut off, and that he should be branded upon one cheek with the letter H and on the other with the letter T, in a plain and visible manner.” Tennessee could not do that today because of what the Supreme Court has called “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
The Eighth Amendment, ratified in 1791, forbids “cruel and unusual punishments.” Originalism holds that the Constitution’s language should be construed to mean what the words meant at the time to those who wrote and ratified the Constitution. On Monday, a Supreme Court ruling about punishment vexed the four justices (John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) most sympathetic to originalism, who dissented. The majority held that sentencing laws that mandate life imprisonment without possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders violate the Eighth Amendment.
In 1999, Kuntrell Jackson, 14, and two others, 14 and 15, robbed a video store in Blytheville, Ark. The 15-year-old fatally shot the store clerk. Jackson, who had a juvenile arrest record, was tried as an adult for aggravated robbery and felony capital murder. He was sentenced to life without parole.
By 2002, Evan Miller, 14, a victim of serious domestic abuse, had tried to kill himself five times. He and another youth, after drinking and smoking marijuana with a 52-year-old man whose trailer was next door to the Millers’ in Lawrence County, Ala., tried to rob him while he slept. He awoke, they beat him with a baseball bat and set fire to his trailer, and he burned to death. Miller was sentenced to life without a possibility of parole.
Both Jackson and Miller were automatically tried as adults. Both were sentenced under mandatory sentencing laws.
On Monday, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits such sentences when they are mandatory. Previously, the court had held that, regarding children, such sentences are akin to the death penalty, which the court said requires consideration by sentencing authorities of each defendant’s characteristics and crime.
This ruling extends two others, one holding that the Eighth Amendment bars capital punishment for children under 18, the other that it bars life without parole for a juvenile convicted of a nonhomicide offense. These decisions held that regarding culpability, and hence sentencing, children are constitutionally unlike adults. The decisions came in the context of accumulating scientific evidence about increased impulsivity and diminished responsibility because of adolescent brain development.
Joined by Scalia, Thomas and Alito, Roberts noted that the majority conceded that almost 2,500 persons are serving life sentences without parole for murders committed before age 18, and that more than 2,000 of these sentences were mandated by law. Therefore, such sentences are not unusual. Hence they are not cruel and unusual. Furthermore, the court discerns society’s standards largely in its laws and practices, and the sentences the court overturned Monday are mandated in 29states.
Alito wrote: “Is it true that our society is inexorably evolving in the direction of greater and greater decency? Who says so, and how did this particular philosophy of history find its way into our fundamental law?” Besides, he said, aren’t elected representatives better than judges at gauging society’s standards?
The dissenters were right that a practice can be both constitutional and reprehensible. Even if sentencing 14-year-olds to die in prison is the latter — and it is — whether it is the former depends largely on the infrequency of such sentences. It is, however, to be hoped that the case the court decided Monday might prompt changes in social thinking that will give other cruel punishments, such as protracted solitary confinement, the infrequency requisite for making them sufficiently unusual as to be unconstitutional.
George F. Will writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
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A Cruel and Unusual Record

By JIMMY CARTER

Published: June 24, 2012

,,,
THE United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.
Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.
The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.
In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.
Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.
These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.
Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either.
At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.
As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.


Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

NY Times: A Cruel and Unusual Record

June 25, 2012 by cillamccain

Photo Credit: ABC News
This is an important Op-Ed piece by Former President Jimmy Carter for the New York Times. It stands in direct correlation with the ideals presented by the Bill of Rights for Bereaved Military Families.
Please take note. This is not a Partisan issue, and although he barely mentions that American’s are targeted, it is an American Human Rights issue.


- The RSN Team
+18 # epmorgan 2012-06-26 10:51
Er, not sure when the US BEGAN to fill that role, Jimmy!?
+41 # John Locke 2012-06-26 12:58
The US has always pretended to be the protector of Human Rights and then sold other countries out to dictatorships!
+33 # Stephanie Remington 2012-06-26 14:31
John -

I assume neither you nor epmorgan are arguing that the trend isn't substantially worse now -- both in magnitude and the fact that high-level officials can now openly admit to war crimes and other human rights abuses without the slightest fear of being held accountable.
+18 # Harold R. Mencher 2012-06-26 16:13
Mr. Locke, is anyone aware of what's going on in Latin America since Obama took office? Your statement that the U.S. has sold other countries out to dictatorships is exactly what happened in Paraguay.

As much as I hated GWB & Dick Cheney, in the 8 years that we all had to endure GWB as dictator, not one Latin American country was overthrown by a coup, not one. The Bush admin left Latin America alone.

Since Obama took office in Jan of 2009, we've so far had two successful coups in Latin America in which dictatorships have replaced a democratically-elected leader, & an attempt at a 3rd coup is now being made in Bolivia to overthrow Evo Morales.

It's my contention that the Obama admin is behind these coups, having full knowledge of them before they actually take place & giving whatever support it can towards their fruition. It's my contention that the successful coup that took place in Honduras was fully known & supported by the Obama admin before it actually was carried out, that the theatrics by the Obama admin that took place immediately following the Honduran coup, initially condemning it, was strictly for public consumption.

Now we have DEA agents in Honduras murdering innocent people, a situation that never would've existed under Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected leader that was overthrown. If Evo Morales is overthrown, the U.S. will have control of our lithium deposits under Bolivia's soil.
+6 # paulrevere 2012-06-26 18:30
the 0 is culpable for sure. There is NOTHING political or financial that goes on in the OAS contries that the US does not okay, orchestrate, rubberstamp, facilitate and know fully about.

Ruthless elimination of the opposition has been going on south of the US border for over a century...in all countries.

0 is a criminal and head of a criminal organization...without doubt.
+1 # Stephanie Remington 2012-06-26 23:12
Mr. Mencher,

I don't know if U.S. involvement in the coup attempt against Hugo Chavez was ever proven, but at the very least the Bush administration likely knew about it and approved of it.
0 # sandyclaws 2012-06-27 04:18
"It is my contention" That means the same as "I believe" doesn't it? A person so worried about injustices certainly wouldn't make such outlandish comments without any proof. But, you seem to have ommited those very important items from your comments. I'm certainly glad you are not a judge. Maybe you might make a seat on the supreme court though.
0 # Harold R. Mencher 2012-06-27 07:06
Evidence did come out after the coup in Honduras that the Obama administration knew that it was going to happen before it happened. It came out on news programs that are not considered part of the mainstream news media, programs like Democracy Now as well as news articles that Hillary Clinton was part of a meeting well before the coup occurred in which this planned coup was discussed.

What I find very interesting is that whenever a coup occurs in a nation that is not in our so-called hip pocket, and Honduras wasn't in our hip pocket when Manuel Zelaya was president of Honduras, the U.S. either doesn't condemn the coup or acts in a completely lukewarm manner to it as occurred after the Honduran coup. If, by chance, a coup occurs in a country that we do have in our hip pocket, Godforbid, the U.S. will make the biggest stink about it and do everything in its power to undo it, at times even threatening to send in U.S. (or U.N.) forces.

The people in Honduras have the legal right to overthrow the current illegal government running their country, but, if they do, watch the difference in how the U.S. reacts.

In any case, what happened in Honduras was not only illegal by international law, but by agreement of all the OAS member countries. The U.S. should've never recognized the new government, but we did. Why?

There will be many more coups happening in Latin America unless the leaders in the region wake up to reality.
0 # Harold R. Mencher 2012-06-27 07:10
Quoting
"It is my contention" That means the same as "I believe" doesn't it? A person so worried about injustices certainly wouldn't make such outlandish comments without any proof. But, you seem to have ommited those very important items from your comments. I'm certainly glad you are not a judge. Maybe you might make a seat on the supreme court though.


By the way, sandyclaws, there is hard evidence that the U.S. did make an attempt to overthrown Evo Morales via the big land owners in Bolivia and through the U.S. embassy in that country. Evo Morales ordered high ranking members of the U.S. embassy to leave his country.

I believe that this happened during the GWB administration. I forgot about that one.
0 # Granny Weatherwax 2012-06-27 06:20
Actually the 2002 coup against Chavez failded by sheer luck on his side.
Obama was not in the oval office at the time.
0 # Harold R. Mencher 2012-06-27 06:50
Actually, you're right. There was a failed coup against Chavez when Bush was president. I do have to apologize on that one.
+100 # toma8012 2012-06-26 10:51
This article is based on the false premise that the US was ever a global champion of human rights. It never was, and it never will be. It's one of the great myths propagated in our culture, with full complicity from the corporate media and our educational institutions, that somehow the US has always been the good guy, racing to the rescue of the global underdogs. In reality, US foreign policy has always been strictly motivated by naked economic and political self-interest, and to suggest otherwise is to fan the flames of self-delusion and lead us further and further from the truth. It's time to let of these comforting myths and face the uncomfortable truths about who we have been, and who we are. Only then can we honestly determine who we will become.
+40 # wantrealdemocracy 2012-06-26 11:38
Another false premise is that we have strayed from respecting human rights since we were attacked by terrorists on 9/11. We were attacked by terrorists on that day but they were not foreigners, but there is evidence that the CIA and the military were working with our best ally (Israel) were involved with the controlled demolition of those buildings. Two of our Presidents have received the Nobel Peace Prize, one of them, Carter, deserved it.
+13 # Annalois 2012-06-26 12:53
Dick Cheney was in control of NORAD and had the planes that would have intercepted ones attacking the WTC on some kind of exercise mission. I agree that no foreigner would have had access to the building to plant the bombs; their clothes would have made them look suspicious.
+22 # KittatinyHawk 2012-06-26 13:23
We are the terrorists
-25 # Kiwikid 2012-06-26 14:08
More conspiracy nonsense! A superb 45 minute documentary produced by the BBC goes into great detail to examine the design faults in the twin towers which made their collapse under the assault of two fueled up 757s inevitable. This was an Islamic terrorst attack - pure and simple.
+8 # DrBobHacker 2012-06-26 16:02
I believe you are either totally uninformed or maybe incapable of critical thought. Perhaps you are a CIA stooge or one of the Republican Fascists attempting to establish the royal bush family. Go read a little history, especially a bit from our former royal friends in England. We don't need no stinking royal bush family, no matter how many CIA stooges they have left!
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Tens of thousands evacuated in Western wildfires


Jerilee Bennett / The Gazette via AP
Homes are destroyed by the Waldo Canyon fire in the Mountain Shadows area of Colorado Springs, Colo., on June 26, 2012.

Rick Wilking / Reuters
A monster Colorado wildfire raging near some of the most visited tourist areas in the state took a turn for the worse on Tuesday as hot winds pushed flames north, prompting the evacuation of 7,000 more people, officials said.

Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez / AP
In this aerial photo, the Bear Trap fire burns near Ennis, Mont. Tuesday, June 26, 2012.
msnbc.com staff and news service reports: Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes around Colorado Springs, Colo. as the Waldo Canyon Fire consumed more than 5,000 acres, the Denver Post reported. High winds and 100-plus-degree temperatures have worked against firefighters.
The El Paso County sheriff told reporters Tuesday night that 32,000 people were evacuated in the area.
The U.S. Air Force Academy installation commander also issued an evacuation order for residents on the complex, an Air Force statement said. Continue reading the full story.

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Rick Wilking / Reuters
Evacuated residents and others listen to a briefing as smoke rises from the Waldo Canyon fire west of Colorado Springs, Colorado June 26, 2012.
Wildfires have devastated the Mountain Shadows neighborhood of Colorado Springs, destroying many homes. KUSA's Chris Vanderveen reports.
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