By Ray McGovern
July 14, 2009

So far the summer has been mild in the Washington, D.C., area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why.

Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance — to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off into the sunset.

Cheney has complained bitterly that his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby should have been pardoned, rather than simply having his jail sentence “commuted.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has urged Congress to investigate growing evidence that racial extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

In a letter to committee chairpeople with oversight over homeland security and the armed services, the SPLC said it recently found dozens of personal profiles on a neo-Nazi website where individuals listed "military" as their occupation — the latest evidence of extremist infiltration gathered by the SPLC. It also cites FBI and Department of Homeland Security reports supporting the SPLC's concerns.

Nevada -- At the gates of the Creech Air Force Base, where American soldiers inside use advanced technology to aim and fire pilotless drones at human targets thousands of miles away in Afghanistan or Pakistan, peace activists from several organizations will rallyt next Monday to stop the use of these drones, violations of international law and fuel for Taliban and Al Qaeda.

"These are war crimes being committed from our own backyards," said local rally participant Father Louis Vitale, a Franciscan friar for 49 years and peace activist. "It's unbelievable that from thousands of miles away, we're dropping bombs on people's houses."

Banished from Iraq and barred from its neighbours, Palestinian refugees languish along Syrian frontier.

By Abu Mohammed for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting

The temperature in our tents rises with the sun every morning and plummets at dusk. The days are blazing hot, the nights are freezing cold and time feels like a dead weight in the desert.

We have to be creative to defeat boredom otherwise every moment becomes a burden. Children go to the makeshift school. Husbands help their wives with the endless task of cleaning or repairing the tents.

San Francisco, CA—Families of murder victims have joined with families of persons with mental illness who have been executed to speak out against the death penalty.

Double Tragedies, a report released at the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), calls the death penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for people with severe mental disorders and "a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even directly lead to tragic violence."

The report calls for treatment and prevention, not execution. It is available online at www.nami.org/doubletragedies.

Tiffany Ten Eyck for Labor Notes

Just because a job’s green doesn’t mean it’s good.

With everything going green—if it really is—what does that mean for our workplaces? A union-backed report by Good Jobs First cautioned that job creation in the new “green economy” often means more low-wage, low-benefit work with companies hostile to unions.

The warning could apply to thousands of new jobs that will be created with $5 billion of February’s $787 billion stimulus package tagged for home-weatherizing programs to help low- and moderate-income families save energy—and money. While some funds already existed for these programs, the Department of Energy said states could receive up to 30 times more money for home retrofitting.

Fort Worth – On Sunday, July 12th 2009 at 7:00 PM at the Tarrant County Courthouse, 100 E Weatherford, the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) community of North Texas will rally against police harassment of LGBT people.  This rally is in response to the check of the liquor license of the Rainbow Lounge by the Fort Worth Police Department
and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) which turned violet against the patrons of this establishment.  
 
Reports indicate that in the early hours of June 28th, 2009 the Fort Worth Police Department along with TABC entered the Rainbow Lounge, allegedly to carry out a routine liquor license check.  The police began making arrests using excessive force.  Some twenty customers were taken outside for questioning with seven arrests being make.  One victim of this raid

Kerry Taylor for Labor Notes

Sanitation workers in Charleston, South Carolina, are knocking on doors to drum up support. Photo: Ajamu Dillahunt.

On April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination during a 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, the Charleston workers launched a door-to-door petition drive to raise awareness of their struggle and pressure the City Council to recognize the union.

from the Death Penalty Information Center

Attorneys for Ohio death row inmate Kevin Keith have presented new evidence casting doubt on his original conviction in briefs filed with  the Ohio State Supreme Court.  The Ohio Innocence Project has also asked for a new trial for Keith, supporting the claim that suppressed evidence points to another suspect who said he was paid to $15,000 to “cripple” the drug informant who was the victim of the shootings for which Keith was condemned to death.  Additionally, Keith's public defenders claim the prosecution knowingly used false evidence about an eyewitness identification that was used to link Keith to the murders.