Analysis

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Alyssa Morin

In a landmark decision that promises new rights to the gay, lesbian, and transgender populations of India, the Delhi High Court ruled today to abolish a 150-year-old law criminalizing homosexual sex.

The law in question was Indian Penal Code Section 377, a leftover from British colonial rule that deemed sexual acts between members of the same sex "against the order of nature." The high court today determined that criminalizing sex that occurs between consenting adults in private violates the Constitution in the areas of equality, privacy, and protection against discrimination.

While Section 377 has rarely been used to prosecute homosexuals in modern times, it was often used as a tool for blackmailing and intimidating those considered "sexual deviants." The law also provided legitimacy to the social stigma against homosexuality and impeded efforts to prevent the spread of HIV in India, where over 2.5 million are thought to be infected by the virus. It was this latter concern, in particular, that led the Naz Foundation, an NGO focusing on HIV/AIDS awareness, to take up the suit to amend Section 377 in 2001.

That year four Naz workers were arrested in Lucknow, a northern city in India, for distributing educational materials about the prevention of AIDS. The government deemed the literature "obscene" and charged the men with "conspiracy to commit sodomy" under Section 377. The Naz foundation responded by filing a petition to decriminalize consensual gay sex amongst adults and the high court has been deliberating since.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

I spent my day refreshing the Justice Department's online press room every few minutes, waiting for the promised CIA torture report, which meant all day I was staring at these pressing announcements, among others:

United States Settles False Claims Act Allegations Against National Home Builder and Mortgage Lender

Attorney General Appoints New Chief Immigration Judge

Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich Announces Leadership Team in the Office of Legislative Affairs

But no CIA report. The Department of Justice was supposed to release a 2004 report from the CIA's Inspector General's Office Wednesday. The highly-anticipated document was rumored to contain scathing criticism of the Bush Administration's torture policy. So far there's been no news from the Justice Department, but apparently White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs addressed the issue at today's briefing. I guess we're supposed to get a look at it tomorrow, or in three days or some other time in the future, maybe.

This is the third delay on this report, apparently because of inter-agency fighting over how much is to be un-redacted.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Rebecca Freitag

Although he has been in the spotlight for a handful of things over the years, and worn a lot of different hats, there's not much we know about Al Franken, the politician. In the next five and a half years, we'll all find out if he walks the walk.

Franken is the 60th member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate now, something that hasn't happened since 1978, giving them the mythical filibuster-proof supermajority. Democratic lawmakers will have, ideally, no hassles in getting the legislation passed that they're most interested in.

However, there are still two senators, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), that haven't been able to attend many sessions lately due to illness, as well as some senators who occasionally cross party lines on votes.

The Republican Party may have spent millions of dollars on Norm Coleman's case against Al Franken, but enough was enough Tuesday when the Minnesota Supreme Court announced unanimously that Al Franken defeated Coleman by more than 300 votes. Coleman conceded hours later, deciding not to prolong the inevitable anymore, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) swiftly signed the papers to make it official.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Rebecca Freitag

The timespan covered all four seasons and almost eight months -- the Norm Coleman-Al Franken circus of recounts. We may be at the end. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled 5-0, declaring Al Franken the winner in his contested U.S. Senate race against Norm Coleman.

The justices said Coleman's appeal had "not shown that the trial court's findings of fact are clearly erroneous or that the court committed an error of law or abused its discretion."

Now that the courts have decided, it would seem that the GOP has wasted close to $2 million trying to fight the possibility of a Democratic majority in the Senate. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that he didn't think anything was wrong with the GOP funding Coleman's eternal quest for a recount, and it wouldn't affect the 2010 elections.

The Republican National Committee and fellow GOP Senators have given Coleman hundreds of thousands of dollars to challenge Franken. In the past three months, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has also given him more than $1 million for legal expenses. The Federal Election Commission gave Coleman permission last week to use campaign funds in two separate legal battles he is involved in outside of the recount.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

When I went to study Spanish in Guatemala in 2002, I only had a basic knowledge of the 36-year civil war that had, until recently, ravaged the small Central American nation. My instructor -- in the process of explaining reflexive verbs, strangely enough -- told me that Guatemala invented a special use of the word "disappear." In Guatemala, the government could "disappear" you, and no one would ever hear from you again.

But my instructor was wrong. The U.S. military "invented" that. They taught Guatemalans, Chileans, Salvadorans and even Hondurans how to disappear people who were considered a threat to their power.

They taught soldiers all over Latin America how to assassinate, torture, imprison without charge, and carry out mass murder. They organized these soldiers into death squads. And the school in which they taught all of this is still around today, albeit with a little name change. It's known as the School of the Americas (although the U.S. military renamed it the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), and its fingerprints are all over the recent coup d'etat in Honduras.

This excellent mini-documentary on the School of the Americas (SOA) put together by the Real News Network (watch part two here) features declassified training manuals from the school and testimonials from a former instructor that confirm that soldiers were taught to view rural people, students and union members as the enemy under an antiquated Cold War mantra known as "national security doctrine." These enemies of the state are identified in the training materials as using legal, constitutional means such as voting to create an unwanted change in status quo.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

The U.S. Supreme Court's conservatives -- Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, joined by swing-voter Kennedy -- have almost certainly added fuel to the white-supremacist, right-wing, entitled-male fires Monday by overturning an earlier ruling by Judge Sonya Sotomayor and others on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That means the Roberts Court is standing now with the forces that have always said, since enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that white men are just not getting a fair deal.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Rebecca Freitag

Tuesday marks the day that U.S. combat troops have been ordered to withdraw from most Iraqi cities, villages, and towns, leaving the Iraqi military virtually on their own.

Well, not quite.

Right now, there are about 131,000 troops in Iraq, including 12 combat brigades. After the troops leave Tuesday, the number gets reduced all the way down to -- about 128,000, until January when the national election takes place.

The support troops that remain will continue to advise and assist Iraqi soldiers, and provide intelligence and much needed air support. Their presence will be more low-profile as they gradually transfer power to the Iraqi military, but is the Iraqi military ready for such responsibility?

The Status of Forces Agreement that was signed under the Bush Administration addresses the framework of how the military would operate while occupying Iraq, including what they do and when they leave. The agreement originally stated that U.S. combat troops would leave once an Iraqi government was formed. However after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was elected in 2006, it was regularly renewed, even after an Iraqi constitution was made. The final agreement was that most "combat troops" will be out by June 30, with another major withdrawal in August 2010, and a complete withdrawal by the end of 2011.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Chad Rubel

One of the overlooked elements to the death of Farrah Fawcett was that she and long-time love Ryan O'Neal wanted to get married at the very end, but unfortunately, they ran out of time. Even though they had been mostly together for almost three decades, they decide that getting married was something they wanted to do.

But a marriage that would have lasted hours or even days -- even that kind of marriage isn't an option for gay couples in over 40 states.

We have seen strongly committed gay couples wanting desperately to get married. It is the public face to put on for those who are unsure about gays and lesbians getting married. Show the strong couples, the committed couples, the ones that have been waiting a long time and desperately want to get hitched.

But behind this face are gay and lesbian couples who will want to get married for the reasons that some straight couples tie the knot: for money, professional advancement, on a whim, drunken and in Las Vegas, and even as a sweet gesture as one of them lays dying.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

When two upsets of democratic order happen in succession on different sides of the world, they invite comparison. The coup over the weekend in Honduras occurred in a different manner and under different circumstances than the unrest following the clearly flawed Iranian election a few weeks ago, but the protests and subsequent crackdown from authorities (as well as the repression of media and communications) certainly have a familiar ring.

Why then, is the media coverage of the two events so disparate?

Certainly there are some poignant cultural reasons for different treatments of the two situations. The fact that the leader of the coup in Honduras was educated at the School of the Americas (now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), a notorious U.S. military training center that teaches torture and paramilitary techniques to Latin American soldiers, likely makes some uncomfortable. The institution has turned out tens of thousands of death squad soldiers all over Latin America and has a long history in Honduras.

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A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

In a truly offensive and duplicitous editorial run Friday in the Wall Street Journal concerning the fight for a new energy bill centered on the cap-and-trade idea, there is one line worth remembering:

"The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change."

They actually say that -- right after having cited cost estimates for climate legislation from the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

The Journal's editors were certainly unhappy with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that cap-and-trade would cost American households only $175 each, so they went out and found some numbers they liked better. Mocking the CBO for developing short-term figures (much easier, of course, to keep honest than long-term forecasts that are more subject to an array of unknowns), the editors praise the Heritage Foundation report which "broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax." "Broadly"? That's old-time propaganda. It brings to mind the old ads that used to claim, "More doctors prefer Camels." Just throw out some statistics and hope some dopes buy your pitch.

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