Get the Facts Newsletter, March 2006

Volume 2, Issue 3

YOUR GLOBAL-WARMING STORIES
Ask and you shall receive! Last month, I asked you to share your eyewitness accounts of the negative effects of global warming on our planet. And you shared eagerly. While I was not at all surprised by your responsiveness and passion, I was nonetheless impressed—and, admittedly, a little depressed—by extent of deterioration you all have witnessed.

Here are a few of the more telling observations you sent me:

• "When I first arrived in Seattle in June 1950, it rained all the time. . . . in my neighborhood a half-dozen old evergreen trees in the yards of my neighbors died and had to be removed. Each day of the very hot past two summers, they became more and more brown, until finally, they were all brown. . . . it is the rainfall that we have year round that permits these evergreens to live." —Virginia M. Paulsen, Seattle
• "When I was younger, Phantom Lake always used to freeze over. I can't remember the last time that happened!" —Philip Lloyd, Seattle
• "At Kivalina, in an Inupiat Eskimo village north of Kotzebue, a summer berry-picking-camp thermometer reached 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and the cloudberries had cooked on the stem." —Lesley Thomas, Seattle

That last observation is just one of a distressingly long list Lesley Thomas sent me. Her e-mail could've made an entire newsletter unto itself. I've posted her entire message on my Web site so that you can read more of the cautionary tales she tells. Turns out Lesley is also a published author. Her book, Flight of the Goose, is a literary "eco-novel" set in a modern Inupiat village. You can find out more about it, and her, on the Far Eastern Press Web site.

Those of you following the Mariners' spring training in Arizona might be interested to read a recent column by Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in which he outlines the devastation that global warming has wrought there and in other Western states.

It seems absurd that we should still be at the phase of gathering scientific evidence when we see the Earth withering all around us. The Bush Administration's lack of corrective action and efforts to overturn our most cherished environmental protection laws make a Democratic victory in November more urgent than ever.

Sincerely,

FEEDBACK
Your feedback on the issues—and this newsletter—is very important to me. Send your thoughts to: emailsignup@mcdermottforcongress.com

NEWS ITEMS OF NOTE
IMMIGRANT DETENTION: AMERICAN GULAG
Daily Kos blogger "ivorybill" had another great posting recently. In it, he examines the Bush Administration's regular denial of due process to immigrants it deems to be potential threats to our nation's security and how little most Americans know about what's going on behind closed prison doors.

He writes: "The Bush Administration and [its] allies in Congress have taken it upon themselves to remove judicial oversight abroad in Guantanamo and in the gulag of secret prisons our nation has established in Eastern Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. While we were sleeping, they have started to do the same thing right here at home. The Department of Homeland Security detains more than 200,000 persons per year. Nobody knows exactly how many people are being detained, where, or under what conditions. And now, Congress is stripping federal circuit court oversight from the detention system right here in the U.S. . . ."

If you want to hear more horror stories about how our government has been denying basic civil rights of detainees in the U.S., you should see a great 2004 documentary called Persons of Interest. It profiles a handful of the more than 5,000 non-U.S. nationals of South Asian or Middle Eastern origin who were arrested in the months following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

• Read ivorybill's full posting
• Learn more about the film Persons of Interest

U.S. HOUSE AS ITALIAN CAMPAIGN BACKDROP
I recently wrote a blog posting on Daily Kos that rippled across the Atlantic and spilled over into some European blogs. It was about a bizarre appearance by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi before Congress. Here's a snippet:

Wednesday, March 1, the Congress convened in joint session to hear an address by the leader of a major ally—an infrequent and usually solemn occasion. Instead, I think we were cast as extras in an orchestrated political event for Italian TV.

We set aside legislative business and filed into the House Chamber only to hear right-of-center media billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speak in Italian with no interpreter. Organized applause was prompted at certain points from the uncomprehending crowd. C-SPAN snubbed the event—a joint session of Congress! (Doesn't C-SPAN cover everything?) But the rousing reception aired live overseas, on Berlusconi's own TV stations, skirting his country's equal-time laws in a tough election cycle.

• Read my full blog posting
• Read my letter of inquiry to House Speaker Dennis Hastert

EYE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
THIS MONTH'S FOCUS: CHAD
For decades, the government in Sudan has been waging a war against its own citizens, with the latest wave of violence culminating in an ethnic cleansing of the residents of Darfur. Since those attacks began in 2003, these civilians have been fleeing to the relative safety of refugee camps in neighboring Chad. While conditions in these camps have never been great, they recently went from bad to worse because the Chadian government removed the army troops that had protected the camps from attack. Now the same ethnic Janjaweed militiamen who have been murdering people in Darfur are staging cross-border raids into Chad, attacking Darfurian refugees and Chadian villagers alike, seizing their livestock, and killing those who resist.

Human Rights Watch reports: "The government of Sudan is actively exporting the Darfur crisis to its neighbor by providing material support to Janjaweed militias and by failing to disarm or control them, by backing Chadian rebel groups that it allows to operate from bases in Darfur, and by deploying its own armed forces across the border into Chad."

World leaders must call on Chad's government to prevent the spread of ethnic cleansing and demonstrate that it will not support the Sudanese government's continued cross-border attacks on Darfurian refugees and Chadian civilians.

• Learn more about recent cross-border violence in Chad
• Read Today Show reporter Ann Curry's dispatch from Chad
• Q&A: Get fast facts about the crisis in Darfur and Chad
• Get news updates on Chad

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATFORM
ON THE AGENDA: PROTECTING CHILDREN
The latest budget reconciliation process has really been trying my patience. Deep cuts to human services to protect tax cuts for the wealthy are going to be painful for all Americans, but none more than our children.

In the current Budget Reconciliation Act, Republican leaders cut funding from child support enforcement, which will result in reducing child support collections by $8.4 billion. This misguided policy gives dead-beat parents an opportunity to abandon their responsibility, even after they have abandoned their children. Across America, 16 million children rely on money collected through enforcement for basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter.

That's why I have joined with Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D–IL) to introduce the Child Support Protection Act of 2006, which, if passed, would repeal the cuts to child-support enforcement. Protecting children has always been one of my top legislative priorities. Seeing the Bush Administration imperil our most vulnerable citizens just motivates me even more.

• Read my Child Support Protection Act
• Learn about another of my child-protection bills: Leave No Abused or Neglected Child Behind

WEB SITES I LIKE
Here are just a couple of the Web sites I rely on to get the facts:

• Save Darfur: http://www.savedarfur.org/home.php

• The Federal Trade Commission's Anti-Spam Site: http://www.democrats.org/blog.html

• The Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets Site: http://www.opensecrets.org/

Revision date: April 15, 2006