Mr. Jackson is just the latest in a long line of Bush appointees who has resigned to go spend more time with his family. He may need that time, as the DOJ is investigating him for giving out contracts to friends. Yes, the culture of curruption is alive and well and living in the Bush Administration still. Here’s the skinny from the New York Times:

“There comes a time when one most attend more diligently to personal and family matters,” Mr. Jackson said. “ Now is such a time for me.”

“Seven years ago, President Bush gave me an extraordinary opportunity to serve HUD and the nation,” said Mr. Jackson, who first joined the department as deputy secretary in 2001. “As the son of a lead smelter and nurse midwife, and as the last of 12 children, never did I imagine I’d serve America in such a way. I am truly grateful for the opportunity.”

Mr. Jackson said that he had worked hard to keep families in their homes, to revitalize public housing and to preserve affordable housing. “During my time here, I have sought to make America a better place to live, work and raise a family,” he said.

He left the room without taking any questions.

Well, that didn’t tell us anything, did it? The Times was going to quote Mr. Jackson, which is fair, but they led off with the charges. They’re a bit exotic. Contracts in sweet places going to friends, threats to the Philadelphia Housing Authority if they won’t sell land they own to politically connected friends of Jackson. This seems a bit bald-faced, on the surface:

Housing secretary Alphonso R. Jackson resigned on Monday, saying that he needed to devote more time to his family. The announcement came as federal authorities were investigating whether he had given lucrative housing contracts in the Virgin Islands and New Orleans to friends.

His resignation, effective April 18, also comes as the Bush administration is increasingly relying on the department’s Federal Housing Administration to help stanch the widening foreclosures.

In recent weeks, Mr. Jackson had faced mounting pressure to leave his post. The FBI has interviewed several of his employees, and two senior Democratic senators called on him to resign, saying the allegations of wrongdoing had undermined his leadership. Lawmakers have also raised concerns about accusations that Mr. Jackson had threatened to withdraw federal aid from the Philadelphia Housing Authority after its president refused to turn over a $2 million property to a politically connected developer.

I’m thinking Mr. Jackson is a prime candidate for a pardon come January 19th, 2009, so he may not even get indicted. (Can he get pardoned if he’s not charged until after Bush leaves office?) As a result, we’ll probably miss out on the usual fun of watching a Republican make the kinds of whiney excuses they normally make when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, or in some male prostitute’s pants, or playing footsy in a restroom stall, or . . . etc., etc., etc.

There’s an article in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer about how both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are courting the gay vote in PA as they square off for the primary here in just three weeks. It mentions how both campaigns value that voting bloc, and how Chelsea extended her campaign visit to Woody’s, a major gay bar here, in order to visit with the largely gay and lesbian crowd. I’m thinking this is a good thing. Neither Clinton nor Obama seems to have a lock on this segment of the voting population, but they sure are energizing the gay and lesbian voters here in Philly. Here’s a little of the piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

You don’t see many women at Woody’s, but Chelsea Clinton popped in last week.
To a packed house of screaming supporters, the 28-year-old former first child led a presidential pep rally for her mother at one of the oldest gay bars in Philadelphia.

“We love your highlights!” a man yelled from the crowd, referring to Chelsea’s tresses. “Wow,” she said, temporarily bumped off message, “that’s something I never heard before.”

At the end of an exhausting day of nonstop events, Chelsea was supposed to leave after 10 minutes. She ended up staying 25.

A few years ago, such a scene would have been unthinkable. But with an eye on the April 22 Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are fervently courting the gay vote.

In Philadelphia, gays constitute an estimated 5 percent of voters, according to Malcolm Lazin, president of Equality Forum. That is not an inconsequential percentage in a race as tight as this one.

. . .

For gay Philadelphians, Clinton-Obama is a win-win.

The candidates are so closely - and positively - aligned on key gay and lesbian issues, either would make a strong presidential nominee, say numerous members of the community.

Leading up to the primary, there doesn’t appear to be a clear front-runner among gay voters in what is affectionately known as the City of Brotherly and Sisterly Love.

So what are the Republicans doing to get out the gay vote? Well, McCain is courting the endorsements of all sorts of pastors who have one time or another, if it isn’t their chief concern, advocated less that citizen status for gay and lesbian citizens. McCain himself isn’t willing to talk about any legislation ensuring that gay and lesbian citizens are protected from descrimination of any kind, and while he doesn’t support a federal marriage amendment, he’s not spoken out against such amendments to state constitutions.

Meanwhile, the Log Cabin Republicans are having a convention of sorts in DC, and they’ve got their speaker all picked out. Get this — it’s former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Yeah, right, he’s going to get those folks all fired up and out to the polls. Maybe he’s going to suggest they have a waterboarding booth at the convention or something? Sheesh!

As the Inquirer piece notes, it’s a great year to be a gay Democrat, but as is usual, it’s a sorry, sorry time to be a gay Republican.

George Bush, the former owner of a baseball team, was roundly booed by the crowd at the opening of the Washington Nationals season and new stadium yesterday. Yeah, all those fans were in awe of the new stadium, were hopeful about their team, as all baseball fans are at the beginning of the year, but they saw Bushie up there throwing out the first pitch and they let out a chorus of boos. Smart folks those baseball fans!

The story and video are at RawStory. Go Phillies!

I was first exposed to both the notion of Florida land speculation and to Tom Monaghan back in the early 1980’s when I was a student at Eastern Michigan University. Ypsilanti is where Monaghan built the first store in his Domino’s Pizza empire, eventually selling the chain for about a billion dollars. The corporate headquarters is a Frank Lloyd Wright complex near the border of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. I remember thinking at the time that a CEO’s interest in a nicely designed complex was a good thing, but that Frank Lloyd Wright was very much the day before yesterday. I also remember that Tom Monaghan was an extreme right-wing Catholic who raised millions of dollars for anti-abortion crusaders, and I remember thinking it’s folks like him who give the whack jobs the courage to wreak the havoc of clinic bombings and murders — but that’s another article, I suppose.

At the time in a literature class my professor also has us read Frank Conroy’s “Stop-Time,” a memoir about a growing up in Florida in a subdivision that had been abandoned during a housing bust a while back, a phenomenon Florida has experienced many times over. Well, Florida is experiencing a lhousing bust now, and Tom Monaghan’s project, in concert with the developer Barron Collier and Pulte homes, is in the Naples area, one of the worst areas hit by the housing bust we’re currently experiencing.

I like the way the article in the Decomber 2007 issue of Conde Nast’s Portfolio begins concerning the future of Monaghan’s planned community and University, Ave Maria. Here’s a little bit from the article by Dan Winters:

he soil of southwest Florida is loose and sandy, and it absorbs rich men’s fortunes as readily as the summer rains. Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza, has poured at least $285 million into a stretch of rural land about 45 minutes from downtown Naples where he is building a new town and university, both named Ave Maria, which are designed to exemplify his conservative Catholic worldview. What has Monaghan’s investment brought him in return? A picturesque vaulted church and a copper-roofed campus (see slideshow) for his 600-student school, which espouses an orthodox strain of his faith; attacks by civil libertarians, who accuse him of aspiring to create a veritable papal state at the edge of the Everglades; and so far, after years of publicity and months of intense marketing, just 73 completed home sales—a fraction of the 600 he expected by the end of the year.

Monaghan and his partners—the Barron Collier Co., a major Florida real estate firm, and Pulte Homes, the country’s third-largest residential builder—say it’s too early to judge the viability of the project, which, after all, is still in its infancy. But the circumstances of Ave Maria’s birth could not be more challenging. It was conceived in 2001, at the onset of the real estate boom, during which the median home price in Naples would double in just five years. The developers were originally hoping to construct 1,000 houses a year at Ave Maria, reaching a goal of 11,000 over the next decade, while also creating parks, shops, restaurants, and 500,000 square feet of office space. That’s not going to happen, at least not at the pace the developers had hoped, for reasons that are both symbolic of wider market conditions and peculiar to the unique—and controversial—nature of Monaghan’s project.

Ave Maria looks a bit “misconceived,” if not “ill-conceived,” in this real estate climate, but what do I know? Well, I do know a bit about Florida real estate, having lived there when I first started writing for ASZ lo those many years ago. I’ve seen the skeletons of land speculation lying down roads with encroaching sea grapes and palms, decaying houses half-built, abandoned slabs bleached in the Florida sun. Such aborted tracts in the swamps of the interior of Florida just might be the state’s biggest crop. But this isn’t about Florida-bashing. It’s about Monaghan, a man who has by all accounts been a darned good businessman, until he let his faith get in the way.

I should also note that there’s a lot of other articles critical of Tom Monaghan’s vision of an insular and conservative catholic community on the border of the Everglades. Bill Berkowitz writes about Monaghan and the fear that civil rights in Ave Maria will not conform to those in our society as a whole. Berkowitz also calls Ave Maria “Monaghan’s Big Box Church” in an article in 2005. Yeah, critiques of Monaghan’s “vision” have been around for a while (here and here and here, for instance), and most of them speculate on the mix of business and religion it represents. For instance, the Conde Nast article tries to figure out whether Pulte and Barron Collier, legends in powerhouses in hombuilding and Florida land speculation respectively, are working at cross-purposes with Monaghan with their marketing for the town of Ave Maria. Sure, the university is already there, but it appears Monaghan has sunk a great deal into a conservative catholic version of utopia there, and the Barron Collier/Pulte marketing of the community on billboards throughout Southwest Florida are not mentioning Monaghan’s vision except by the inclusion of the Ave Maria name. Will people of other faiths who move there be comfortable?

I’m not an expert on whether the Barron Collier company can pull off a community with such a narrow cultural appeal to the market of homebuyers that has dramatically shrunk in Southwest Florida, but I’m suspecting they’re going to have big troubles. These people are going to need jobs, after all, and Southwest Florida’s industries are citrus and tourism and retirement. The citrus workers likely can’t afford homes in Ave Maria, and the town itself is far from the beach, the major tourist attraction. But they surely aren’t marketing this to retired catholics are they? And what of the retired Baptists and Methodists, not to speak of athiests, who might want their little piece of the consecrated swamp? Yeah, I’m thinking this place is a long, long way from making money, if it ever does. Indeed, I’m wondering if Ave Maria, the town and the university, might just be a bunch of abandoned slabs and shells of buildings in ten years, a ghost town with a monstrously large cathedral.

I’m also a little curious. The articles here say that Tom Monaghan wants to market to conservative catholics, people who will feel comfortable in the community. But isn’t that against the Fair Housing Act? I sure know when I visited a Pulte Home community recently any question that came near asking about the “character” of the community was met with silence by the realtor. Pulte’s folks here in Pennsylvania aren’t about to be caught violating the Fair Housing Act. And, yes, religion is covered under the Fair Housing Act. I envision fines if Monaghan gets his way in his dispute over marketing with his partners Barron Collier and Pulte. That’ll put a dent in his pocket above and beyond the huindreds of millions of dollars he’s already sunk into this community which might very well fail miserably.

Hey, at least he’s not giving all that money to political candidates. Though I’m pretty sure Tom Monaghan and Rick Santorum are tight. Whack jobs both.

In the aftermath of my sisters serious illness this past week, I couldn’t help but share my contemplations on life’s strange relationship with death. While we often do our best to avoid the subject, it consistently finds the means to inject itself into our consciousness. As she continues to recover, those of us who know and love her are forced to confront our fears.

For most of us, life is an orderly procession towards death. When we’re young, death is barely a blip on our radar…and one that we’re able to ignore with ease. During our youth, the world seems limitless and time is bountiful. Each day is an adventure with potential and the promises of the future appear to be endless.

As the years pass, the distant drum of death grows more pronounced. Like a surreptitious riff in each song of life, eventually death demands its due and it becomes increasingly unlikely that we can deny its presence. Sometimes it’s the untimely death or the unexpected illness of a loved one or a family friend that awakens us to the fragility of life and the indiscriminate nature of dying. Whatever it may be, our introduction to immortality opens a door that can never again be closed.

For some of us, death walks nearby on a daily basis. In fact, for the gay community, even the most basic of acts has become an untoward dance with death. From the moment a gay teenager imagines his first romance, he must also ponder its potential to shorten his life. We are a community that is denied the opportunity to become brides and grooms, yet we live life forever wed to the possibility that a demonstration of love may set the stage for the final act.

Giving oneself to another has always contained an element of vulnerability. However, when catching the love bug has the potential to be accompanied by an infectious interloper, this innocent act of vulnerability is suddenly transformed into a calculation of calamitous consequences. Though passion is an inevitability; vigilance becomes a necessity. Hence, the pleasure of intimacy can be forever shadowed by the fear of fatality.

HIV isn’t exclusive to the gay community, but it is an undeniable adjunct. Every parent of a gay son is torn between their hopes for his happiness and their desire to postpone his pursuit of it. In that difficult dichotomy, one could easily conclude that the risks outweigh the rewards and that the lives of gays are forever filled with trepidation. That would be a reasonable assumption…but it would also be wrong.

In fact, it is in witnessing the loss of those who chose to live life large…in spite of the obstacle of AIDS…that has given the gay community much of its resolve and its resiliency. Truth be told, what unites my memories of those I have lost to HIV was their unflinching desire to live. For each of them, life was not measured in years. Instead, their lives were never allowed to be overshadowed by the fear of death. They knew that all lives end in death…and they rejected the deception that believes one can be enriched by purchasing more years at the expense of less living. The richness of the memories they left behind affirms both the quantity and the quality of the living they did.

In that knowledge, my own view of life has been forever altered. While illness and death still give me pause; I refuse to let them dictate life. Death is not negotiable and attempts to barter with it are far more beguiling than beneficial. Death is undoubtedly an endpoint but it needn’t be a constantly constricting continuum. Death may be our final visitor but we mustn’t feed it by granting it a place at the table of life. Death will kill us but it needn’t prevent us from feasting on life. Death is final; it needn’t be preceded by famine.

When life is at risk of being overcome by death, we can cease living in order to watch the monitor…hoping for the slightest of movements to assure us that we still reside in the here and now…or we can turn away from the monitor and place our trust in the heart that has sustained us during our darkest of hours. The former adds a flawed footnote; the latter an exclamation mark.

I accept that death will ultimately prevail…but I refuse to let it dictate that the ending must be a slowly measured fade to black. If life is like theater, I prefer to be an actor on the bright and colorful stage of life…in full regalia…when the final act goes dark with the sudden flip of a switch.

When that moment arrives, I’ll stop and silently thank my many mentors for teaching me the merits of living…and for the guidance to make a gracious exit.

Cross-posted at Thought Theater

You make the call. First up is the woman airline passenger from Texas whose sole problem was she tried to get on an airplane with jewelry on. On her nipple, sure, but it was merely jewelry. They made Mandi Hamiln remove the mipple ring with pliers. From the AP wire:

A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.

“I wouldn’t wish this experience upon anyone,” Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference. “My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.”

Hamlin, 37, said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin’s chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings. The women then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the jewelry, Hamlin said.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was out, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

“Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her,” said Hamlin’s attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties.

The guards, evidently the male ones, ended up snickering as Ms. Hamlin was forced to remove the nipple ring with a pair of pliers in order to board the flight. This is America in the age of Bush — no civil rights, and snickering while you endure pain if you decide to protest that you have rights. We should be surprised that they didn’t try to waterboard the woman.

Now our next example, a Bush aide, Felipe Sixto, who has had to resign in the last day due to some financial improprieties that he’s going to be charged for. No, he didn’t commit these alleged crimes while working for Bush. That isn’t alleged. The Bush people are merely incompetent in screening their workers. Again, this is from the AP story:

An aide to President Bush has resigned because of his alleged misuse of grant money from the U.S. Agency for International Development when he worked for a Cuban democracy organization.

Felipe Sixto was promoted on March 1 as a special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and stepped forward on March 20 to reveal his alleged wrongdoing and to resign, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said on Friday. He said Sixto took that step after learning that his former employer, the Center for a Free Cuba, was prepared to initiate legal action against him.

The alleged wrongdoing occurred when Sixto was chief of staff at the center, where he worked for more than three years before moving to the White House.

The matter has been turned over to the Justice Department for investigation, Stanzel said. He said Bush was briefed on the case and felt that the appropriate action was being taken.

The Center for a Free Cuba describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan institution dedicated to promoting human rights and a transition to democracy and the rule of law in Cuba. Frank Calzon, the center’s executive director, said it receives “a couple million dollars” a year from USAID for rent, travel and equipment such as shortwave radios and laptops. He said the center welcomed the investigation and pledged complete cooperation.

Mr. Sixto will likely not have to subject himself to the painful application of pliers to his private parts in order to board a commercial flight, but it seems obvious that he’s the only criminal mentioned in this article.

It’s hard to tell what this means, but after a week’s worth of bloodshed, it appears that cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has instructed his militia to fade into the background once again. This comes on the heels of apparent concessions by the toothless administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki:

… a top aide to Sadr, Hazem al-Araji, said Mehdi Army fighters would not hand over their guns. He also said that Sadr’s followers had received a guarantee from the government that it would end “random arrests” of Sadr followers.

“As the government of Iraq we welcome this statement,” Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in response to Sadr’s comments. “We believe this will support the government of Iraq’s efforts to impose security.” …

So, what’s the end game here? It’s difficult to say, but it’s probably safe to assume that there were pallet loads of American hard currency involved. And, al-Sadr’s crew made their point: they can disrupt the situation in Iraq anytime, anywhere, on basically a moment’s notice.

Update: Cernig at Newshoggers has been following the developments in Iraq and is providing running commentary. There’s a lot of weirdness in the interpretation (and implementation) of al-Sadr’s demands. The bottom line is that he seems to be negotiating from a position of strength, rather than weakness.

It also occurred to me that Darth Cheney met al-Maliki for tea at the Green Zone Bar and Grille about a week before the Iraqi military offensive started in Basra. Could all of this have anything to do with the fact that Basra is the center of Iraq oil production and exporting? Did Cheney bring instructions with him on his visit? Of course, we’ll never know, but it’s certainly plausible.

If the Democratic Party nominating fight goes all the way to the convention floor, one scenario that’s emerged involves President Al Gore. The U.K. Telegraph is reporting this morning that discussions are apparently taking place at high levels in the party to, if neither Clinton nor Obama have enough delegates going into the convention, offer Gore as a compromise candidate:

Plans for Al Gore to take the Democratic presidential nomination as the saviour of a bitterly divided party are being actively discussed by senior figures and aides to the former vice-president.

The bloody civil war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has left many Democrats convinced that neither can deliver a knockout blow to the other and that both have been so damaged that they risk losing November’s election to the Republican nominee, John McCain.

Former Gore aides now believe he could emerge as a compromise candidate acceptable to both camps at the party’s convention in Denver during the last week of August…

Now, frankly, I don’t think there’s much of a chance of this scenario coming to pass. In fact, it’s likely that the Democratic Party would have to be going up in flames for President Gore to allow his name to be offered. And I don’t see how the selection of Gore by party elders would begin to salve whatever open wounds would have to exist for this scenario to even be considered plausible.

From a clinically neutral standpoint, it would certainly be interesting to see something like a Gore / Dean ticket emerge from such a fight. From a perspective of national self-interest, however, it would be devastating. John McCain would likely coast to an easy victory in November. Down-ticket congressional races (arguably even more important than the presidency) would be in jeopardy. It wouldn’t be pretty.

Please, Al, put this possibility to rest immediately.

It’s not a long trip down the road to drive me absolutely insane, but these kind of reports are simply too prevalent in 21st century America:

The mother of an 11-year-old rural Weston girl who died of untreated diabetes says she didn’t know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better instead of taking her to the doctor.

Madeline Neumann died Sunday from an undiagnosed and treatable form of diabetes.

Her mother, Leilani Neumann, tells The Associated Press her daughter’s condition worsened suddenly, and the parents stayed in prayer, believing she would recover…

I have no problem with the parents of this young lady being religious, or even bringing up their child as such. That’s a personal decision that people make when they’re raising their kids. In fact, it’s quite possible that Madeline was cognizant of her own illness, and due to her faith, thought that her parents were doing the right thing.

However, when a child’s medical condition worsens, it is incumbent on the parents to seek appropriate care for the child. Failure to do so is nothing short of child abuse, and in this particular case, the authorities should be investigating such an angle.

A simple trip to a doctor, and a prescription for insulin, would have saved the girl’s life. We are not living in an era of witch doctors and the letting of blood to drain evil spirits.

Here’s a link to another report that provides even more disturbing details. Should the parents be charged?

Donald Siegelman has been freed from jail. As many know, Siegelman was Governor of Alabama and was prosecuted for giving a position on a Board in the state to a major contributor, Richard Scrushy. I suppose if we were doing a tit for tat thing, that would mean every major contributor President Bush appointed to Ambassadorships is up for investigation, but that’s not how the US DOJ was working under President Bush and Alberto Gonzales. Nope, they prosecuted only Democrats for that sort of thing, even when Senior preosecutors in their office counseled otherwise. Scott Horton in Harpers, over a year ago, noted, basically, that miscarriage of justice should be seen as obstruction of justice on the part of the Bush appointed US Attorneys.

A couple of interesting things here. First, Siegelman would not be released unless there were a strong possiblity his appeal would go through. From the Birmingham News:

The judges wrote that Siegelman met both requirements for an appeal bond: He is not a flight risk and his appeal raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal or an order for a new trial.

“After thorough review of this complex and protracted record, we conclude Siegelman has satisfied the criteria set out in the statute, and has specifically met his burden of showing that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact,” the judges wrote.

It’s going to be overturned, and we should have an investigation, a real one, into the role of the Bush Administration, Karl Rove in particular, in the prosecution here. I’m guessing the motive behind this selective prosecution was that the GOP felt threatened in their electoral bastion, the deep south. Be that as it may, the GOP claims they had not political role here, that Siegelman was prosecuted on the merits. Then why the heck do they have to act as if this is so godalmighty important to them, to the extent that they’re protesting the judge’s order? They’re protesting a whole whale of a lot for folks who claim they had no interest in the case. From WSFA in Alabama:

The Alabama Republican Party is disappointed in today’s ruling by the 11th Circuit Court and their decision to release former Governor Don Siegelman pending his appeal of the 6 counts of bribery and the 1 count of obstruction for which he was convicted.

Representative Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn), Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party stated “the former Governor’s release pending appeal does not change the conviction by a jury of his peers. It would be premature to turn this development into anything other than a formality.”

Hey, the smart move here, in a case where the GOP claims no political involvement, is to make no comment period. Nobody claimed the GOP in Alabama is smart. Notice, Mr. Hubbard, Karl Rove is sitting there with his mouth zipped, hoping to hell that no emails surface that show his involvement. You should do the same, Mr. Hubbard.