By The River

Everyone has seen World War II photos like the one above, which was shot in Sicily. If you're a Baby Boomer, you saw them in history books, in Life Magazine, and in the various photo compilation books about World War II. But if the Bush Administration and the Pentagon has its way, you'll almost never see images like this from the Iraq War. Thanks to the National Archives website for this photo.

In a move which is portrayed by the Pentagon as concern for the privacy of wounded soldiers and their families, photographers must now get advance permission from soldiers before photos showing them wounded can be printed in a newspaper or other print or online publication. Photos of dead soldiers may never be printed under Pentagon rules. The photo I always remember from World War II is the one of two dead American soldiers laying on the beach of a Pacific Island.

Yes, it's being portrayed as concern for privacy, blah, blah, blah, but in fact is just the latest, sure-to-fail effort by Bush and company to keep the reality of the Iraq War from the people of America. It's ugly, it violates our oldest and deepest traditions, and is an abomination in a free society. But that's never stopped Bush. Only impeachment will do that. The Pentagon, which is infested with officers who believe the press lost the Vietnam War, is only too willing to give Bush what he wants.

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Just in time for what would have been her 100th birthday on May 27, famed environmentalist Rachel Carson of Pennsylvania has been targeted by one of the more rabidly anti-environmental Republican U.S. senators, Tom Coburn from Oklahoma.

Coburn put out a press release boasting that he had put a hold on two bipartisan resolutions honoring Carson, one to honor her life and work against the scourge of DDT, the other to name a Post Office for her in Pennsylvania. A hold prevents the resolutions from coming up for a vote.

Why is Coburn so upset about these resolutions? Good question. According to him, it is because she promoted "junk science" with her 1962 book, Silent Spring and thus prevented the wonderful insecticide DDT from continuing to be used around the world. The DDT question is a complex one; it kills malaria mosquitos quite handily but also poisons the environment and harms other species. Carson's book, apart from alerting the world to the dangers of DDT, is considered as much as any book the Genesis of the 20th century environmental movement.

But one has to wonder whether Carson's quiet lesbianism was the real reason for Coburn's outrage at the proposed honors. Coburn is as much a homophobe as he is an anti-environmental zealot. Most notoriously, he made a public statement, for which he received considerable ridicule both inside and outside Oklahoma, that lesbianism was "rampant" in public school restrooms in his home state. Coburn has a long history of opposition to anything that might give gays and lesbians the same rights as everyone else, or to protect them from persecution by people like him.

Meanwhile, atop the Rachel Carson State Office Building in Harrisburg, Pa., you can watch via Web cam a nesting family of peregrine falcons, one of the species saved by the ban on DDT instigated by Carson. The link won't take you directly to the webcam; there is a further link on the right side of the page that brings up the live image. You can see the mother falcon feeding her chicks. It's quite amazing to watch.

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Monica Goodling, the Messiah College graduate at the center of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, will have her immunized moment in the sun tomorrow, Wednesday, beginning at 10:15 a.m. before the House Judiciary Committee. This may be a first for a central Pennsylvania resident. Tune in on C-Span 1 to watch, or online at www.c-span.org. She can't be prosecuted for anything she tells the committee, but can be prosecuted for perjury if she lies.

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The current hatred of immigrants being driven by far-right conservatives in the Republican Party subsided a bit yesterday with the announcement by Congressional Democrats and the White House of a compromise amnesty and guest worker program that may be a start on resolving the issue of illegal immigrants and ending it as a political issue. As I've pointed out before, immigration didn't become the issue it is now until about two years ago, when the conservative lords of the G.O.P. sensed that the gay marriage issue was no longer as good at riling up the know-nothing crowd as it once was.

Here's a true story about how the twin conservative obsessions of immigration and national security have affected one family. I can't give their names, for obvious reasons. Although they've done nothing wrong, the possibility of retaliation by some functionary in the Bush Administration is there. I know them well, have known them for years. He was one of my best friends from college, a fellow leftist and Democrat.

I'll call them Patrick and Elizabeth. Patrick is an American, born and raised in New Jersey. Elizabeth is a Canadian citizen. They met and married in Ottawa, Canada. Both are white, college-educated professionals, employable just about anywhere. Many of you may have fond memories of the easy relationship between the U.S. and Canada, of border guards who waved you across with a smile. Those days are gone.

They moved from Canada to California with their two sons a couple of years ago for Patrick's job. Elizabeth was unable to get papers from the U.S. government to legally work in her profession here, but she was at least allowed to stay in the country. They waited and waited for her "green card"--permanent residency authorization--to come through. It didn't. Patrick sought to use his considerable political connections to help the process along. He was told by a top Democrat that the Bush Administration was the first in memory that wouldn't even return his calls.

So three months ago, Elizabeth's visa "parole" expired. They couldn't get it renewed. She and her sons, who are American citizens, took up temporary residency across the border in British Columbia. "We were naive enough to think that they would grant her anothere, but they didn't," Patrick said. "So she and the boys went to Ottawa once it was clear the U.S. authorities weren't going to let her cross the border at Blaine, Washington."

Patrick is moving to a new job in Pennsylvania. Elizabeth has since gotten a job with the Canadian government, with which she gets an i.d. that will allow her to travel to the U.S. for brief periods. Patrick continues to work to get her permanent residency so the family can be reunited in the U.S., as it ought to be.

Is this the kind of America we want?

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I never thought I would appreciate Pennsylvania's abysmal open records law, one of the worst in the country, until I read this Associated Press story about how a news website in Pasadena, Calif., is trying to hire a reporter in Bangalore, India, to cover city council doings--from India.

Even when I heard that Reuters had outsourced coverage of certain financial news, especially routine earnings reports, to Bangalore at a fraction of a cost of hiring an American to do it, I rationalized that basic financial news was a special category of journalism, where everybody works off the same disclosure documents. But when you can dump an American and improve your company's bottom line, by golly, a little good old American ingenuity will make it possible to hire an Indian in India to cover municipal government news in your own American city.

It seems that California requires nearly all municipal government doings to be online, often in video form. I once watched a video of Apple CEO Steve Jobs appearing before the city council of Cupertino, Calif., on a zoning issue. The problem in covering city government, though, is understanding the nuances of what you are seeing.

For example, what would happen if a reporter in India witnessed a typical shoving match between two members of Harrisburg City Council, or a fistfight over a parking place? Would they lead with that, or with a debate over the incinerator? Or Mayor Reed's smoking habits? My guess is, horrified by the behavior of our elected officials, they'd write a responsible, dull story about the incinerator, and then we'd never know who punched whom.

But thankfully, most municipalities in Pennsylvania can barely run the copier to print agendas for the meeting, let alone videotape the proceedings and upload them to the Internet. No, sometimes being backward has its advantages. Like keeping your job.

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Anyone who wonders in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy whether the state of Virginia seriously wants to stop illegal guns sales should consider this story in today's Washington Post. Virginia's Republican attorney general has issued a cease-and-desist letter of sorts to police in New York City. Why, you ask? New York police were conducting gun stings at Virginia gun shops, hoping to make a dent in the "straw purchase" market.

It's easy to buy a gun in Virginia, as the murderous rampage at Virginia Tech showed. But far less publicized violence involving guns purchased illegally in Virginia occur nearly every day on the streets of New York and elsewhere on the East Coast. What New York undercover investigators did was send a man and a woman into the gun shop armed with hidden cameras. The man picked out a gun, then the woman filled out the paperwork in her own name. Then the man paid cash for the gun and carried it out of the store. That's how a straw purchase works. Someone without a criminal record buys guns in an easy-gun state like Virginia then resells them or turns them over to the bad guys in states and cities where gun laws are much tougher.

New York used the evidence in civil suits against Virginia gun dealers, and some of them signed consent agreements to stop. Howls of outrage from the gun lobby when the New York stings became known led the Virginia legislature to pass a law requiring an officer from a Virginia police organization or the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to be present when the sting went down. Everyone knows that those officers just 'wouldn't be available' at the proper time. Violations would be a felony. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office suggested that if Virginia would enforce it's gun laws, such stings wouldn't be necessary.

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The midstate's own Monica Goodling appears likely to get an immunity deal to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on her role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and political vetting of assistant U.S. attorneys and lower-level Justice Department lawyers, something that isn't supposed to happen under Civil Service rules.

York Haven native, Messiah College graduate, life guard at the West Shore Country Club in Camp Hill, White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, immunity deal to avoid being prosecuted for anything she tells Congress. It's been a busy life for this young Republican, who wailed that all she wanted to do was serve George W. Bush. Now she gets an opportunity to finger Gonzales, and perhaps contribute some information to the growing Impeachable Offenses collection for Bush himself.

By the way, it seems that Messiah College is getting a tad bit defensive about its role in the education of young Monica, who was president of the Student Government Association her senior year. Richard T. Hughes, a Messiah professor, wrote an op-ed piece for the Sunday Patriot-News that extols the academic achievements of Messiah graduates. Of that, I have no doubt--I've known both graduates and professors there. Hughes says it's just like Pepperdine University in California, where he taught for 24 years. And just like Pepperdine, where former Bill Clinton persecutor Kenneth Starr is dean of the law school, Messiah attracts more than its share of students and faculty who have a warm and fuzzy relationship with the religious right.

When you read Hughes' piece, see if you can catch the diss of Pat Robertson's Regent University Law School, where Monica Goodling got her law degree.

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A hat tip to Bridget Whitley, who stood up bravely Saturday in front of a rightwing pro-war rally on the state Capitol steps organized by Clear Channel station WHP 580 in Harrisburg, Pa. She displayed a sign calling for support of our troops by bringing them home, and was set upon by some of the thugs these rallies tend to attract. They ripped up her sign. The whole thing was witnessed by a Patriot-News reporter, who wrote about it in Sunday's paper.

Rallies like this change nobody's mind. They are ultimately built on the lie that the Vietnam antiwar movement was "against" U.S. troops, or that hippies spat on returning veterans. Read Jerry Lembcke's book, The Spitting Image, for the truth on that one. There is no verified case of it ever happening. But myths are powerful. John Kerry's campaign for President in 2004 was thrown off track, probably fatally, by the so-called "Swift Boat veterans," who were consumed by the myth that Kerry was "against" the U.S. troops in Vietnam because he helped expose real atrocities committed by a minority of American soldiers there.

These rallies are really aimed at burnishing Clear Channel's bonafides with the right. By the way, for an entertaining read, go to this site and read Clear Channel's responses to every bad thing anyone has ever accused them of doing. Methinks they doth protest too much.

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