Jonathan Kantrowitz

A new report identifies the technical steps that will help the U.S. achieve its goals to downsize the nuclear arsenal, prevent the spread of atomic bombs and keep the stockpile safe and secure.

“There are no technical showstoppers,” said Jay Davis, a lead study participant, founder of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. “The technologies are at hand to substantially reduce the size of nuclear arsenals; no great inventions are required. The good news is we can do it. The bad news is it will take a long time. But, if Congress follows the report’s recommendations, downsizing the nuclear arsenal can be done safely and securely.”

As part of its nuclear non-proliferation efforts, the Obama Administration recently began discussions with Russia on a successor agreement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history. The Administration is also scheduled next month to provide Congress with an assessment of its nuclear forces and will host 44 nations during a Nuclear Security Summit in April with a goal of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.

Consistent with the President’s vision to support nuclear arsenal downsizing and non-proliferation, the U.S. should take the following steps, according to the APS report:

1) To support the goal of verifiable downsizing and dismantlement:

* Declassify the total number of U.S. nuclear weapons — deployed, reserve and retired — and encourage other nuclear-armed countries to do the same.
* Establish centers for verification research and validation to serve as test beds for assessing technologies and methodologies.
* Support nuclear archeology — research and development and demonstrations as a step to developing an internationally accepted capability to validate nuclear materials declarations

2) To support the goal of sustaining the capability and expertise:

* Refurbish elements of the U.S nuclear weapons infrastructure needed to sustain a smaller nuclear weapons stockpile.
* Encourage the National Nuclear Security Administration and its laboratories to adapt to a broader nuclear security mission that stockpile reduction will bring and for the national nuclear security roles that they will play.

3) To support the goal of ensuring peaceful uses of nuclear material:

* Strengthen federal investments in key programs, including those to enhance safeguards, detect undeclared nuclear materials facilities, and address potential risks associated with global growth of nuclear expertise.
* Elevate the priority of non-proliferation in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process.
* Establish a program of information sharing among nuclear-related industries.

Taken together, these steps will provide a strong science and technology foundation for nuclear arms reduction proposals and nuclear non-proliferation goals. They will also support numerous treaties, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the proposed treaty to ban the production of nuclear materials for weapons.

Jim Himes tells a funny story about the picture above:

Hat Tip: Connecticut Man1 at ePluribus Media

Story behind video at MyLeftNutmeg

A new report by the Department of Health and Human Services, Insurance Companies Prosper, Families Suffer: Our Broken Health Insurance System, was released today. It examines recent increases in health insurance premiums across the country. As Congressman Jim Himes (CT-4) the reminds us, last year, Anthem of Connecticut attempted to increase premiums by 24%. He points out that while that increase was rejected by state regulators, skyrocketing health care costs continue to plague families and businesses across the Fourth District:

The system is broken and will only continue to get worse if we don’t enact real health care reform that reduces costs. This study is one more indication that America cannot afford to wait any longer to pass health care reform.

The following, with which I agree wholeheartedly, is by Patrick Radden Keefe. Keefe, a program officer and fellow at The Century Foundation and author of “Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping.”

One much-reviled political tactic famously employed by President George W. Bush and his surrogates was to play offense against critics by implying that the very act of questioning administration policy was somehow unpatriotic (http://www.slate.com/id/2106109/). I never thought I’d say this, but as the Republican hysteria over the prospect of trying terrorists in federal courts intensifies and weak-kneed Democrats show real signs of folding on what history may judge to be a make-or-break issue for the Obama administration, the president and his advisers need to take a page from the Bush play-book, go on the offensive, and call the increasingly craven rhetoric of Dick Cheney, Lindsey Graham and others what it is: a politically-driven, deeply unpatriotic suggestion that the American system of federal justice spelled out in Article III of the Constitution is simply not up to the task. (See http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32998.html#ixzz0feO3RAMa , http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/02/bond-says-brennan-needs-to-go.html?wprss=44 , and http://online.wsj.com/article/SB30001424052748704022804575042112185849380.html).

Rather than focus on the rank hypocrisy of conservatives who cheered the Bush administration’s handling of the Richard Reid case in 2001 but decry the Obama administration’s decision to Mirandize Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day, let’s focus instead on the sheer cynicism of the attacks currently being aimed at Eric Holder’s justice department. (See http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32399.html , http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/11/18/2130565.aspx , and http://mobile.salon.com/politics/war_room/2010/02/04/bond/index.html .)

In the Abdulmutallab case, and in the controversy over whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in federal court, the rather novel argument put forth by administration critics is that the American judiciary is somehow ill-equipped to administer justice in terrorism cases. Never mind that these very courts have been used repeatedly, both prior to 9/11 and in the years since, to prosecute and convict terrorists, securing nearly two hundred convictions since 2001 (http://www.lawandsecurity.org/publications/TTRCFinalJan142.pdf). Leave aside that by contrast, the military tribunal system favored by Graham and others has seen the adjudication of only three cases at Guantanamo (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/15/100215fa_fact_mayer) — and two of those suspects are now walking free. What’s most disturbing about those who criticize the administration for having the nerve to try terrorists in our courts is the plainly nihilistic lack of faith in the American system of government to administer justice and keep the country secure — an attitude that longtime FBI interrogator Ali Soufan justifiably calls a “smear” on the FBI agents and federal prosecutors on the front lines of the legal effort to disrupt and dismantle al-Qaeda (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/opinion/12soufan.html). The Republican (and some Democratic) lawmakers who are currently attacking Holder have all sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. Yet they’re betraying an astonishing indifference to the document itself (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32840.html).

“I have to be more forceful in advocating for why I believe these are trials that should be held on the civilian side,” Holder told the New York Times this week (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/us/politics/15holder.html), and it is certainly true that the administration’s handling of the terror-trial issue has been an out-and-out failure of messaging. Part of the problem is that Holder’s announcement, in November, that he intended to try Mohammed and four other 9/11 conspirators in New York was accompanied by the news that the administration would try other Guantanamo detainees in military tribunals. This meant that Holder couldn’t do something that he needed to, politically, which was explain to the American people the utter lousiness (and potential lawlessness) of military tribunals.

But an even larger problem has been efforts by the White House, and particularly, as documented in the Times and the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/15/100215fa_fact_mayer), by Rahm Emanuel, to allow political pressure from congressional Republicans to pervert the decisionmaking process at Justice. (Emanuel recently earned a commendation for his efforts from no less than Bush veterans Dana Perino and Bill Burck (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjkwMjViZmVjYjIwMmY5YTYyNzczZTUyZmMxZTA1MTA). The chief of staff worried that “political fights over national security could hamper progress on the administration’s fundamental goals, like overhauling healthcare,” the Times suggests. But to judge by Obama’s campaign rhetoric, inaugural address, and early months in office, restoration of the rule of law was also a fundamental — perhaps the fundamental — goal.

Assuming that Holder can hold on to his office, and isn’t squeezed out for his adamant commitment to constitutional principles, the justice department and the White House need to bring the argument for terror trials in Article III courts to the American people. And they shouldn’t be afraid to take the gloves off, singling out dangerously obstructionist gestures like Graham’s bill to block funding for a civilian trial of KSM (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/national-security/story/83468.htm), and forcefully articulating the rationale for trying terrorists in federal courts.

This shouldn’t be so hard to do. It’s a pretty persuasive rationale.

The suggestion that Abdulmutallab or any other terrorist detained on American soil should not be read his Miranda rights should be dismissed as recklessly shortsighted. As Holder observed in a letter to Mitch McConnell, “There is no court-approved system currently in place in which suspected terrorists captured inside the United States can be detained and held without access to an attorney.” (http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2010/02/03/eric-holders-response-to-mitch-mcconnell) That “court-approved” bit should give pause not just to those among us who don’t want our government to violate the law, but also to anyone who wouldn’t want to see Abdulmutallab raising his denial of process as a defense in some subsequent trial — be it civilian or military.

The Constitution extends not just to U.S. citizens, but to anyone inside the United States, and as Jane Mayer pointed out in the New Yorker, the two instances in which the Bush administration transferred suspected terrorists arrested in the U.S. into military custody were each overturned on appeal. In both cases, the suspects were returned to the civilian system. The debate on these issues has tended, in recent weeks, to be characterized as a clash between rule-of-law sticklers, on the one hand, and “pragmatists” on the other. But from either point of view, terrorists arrested on U.S. soil should be read their Miranda rights and prosecuted in federal courts, as that is the surest route to a solid conviction and a lengthy sentence.

This pragmatic argument can also be applied to the need to try the 9/11 conspirators in federal court. If the desire is to see justice applied as swiftly and surely as possible, civilian courts are the only option, because they have the institutional experience and the actual laws and procedures that are required in a case of this magnitude. Military tribunals of the sort endeavored at Guantanamo are a comparatively recent innovation, and they remain by-and-large untested — both in terms of their capacity to try complex cases, and in terms of the baseline legality of the justice they administer. According to the Times, the prosecutors and judges in the military system are “less experienced” than their counterparts in the federal court system, and the rules by which military tribunals operate remain “a work in progress.” The tribunal system has never been used to try a murder case, and there is a strong possibility that the innovative conspiracy and material support charges that have resulted in many terrorism convictions in civilian court might be overturned on appeal if they were brought in a military tribunal, because they have not traditionally been considered crimes of war (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/11/132249/694).

Clearly, the administration is in something of a trick box on this issue. Just as Joe Biden was forced, on “Meet the Press (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/),” to insist that while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should receive a fair trial in civilian court, in the unlikely event of his acquittal, he will not be set free, the administration is unable to fully embrace the civil court system and malign military tribunals — because it has elected to try other detainees in the tribunals as well. Still, unless President Obama and his advisers present a uniform face on this issue and bring the argument to the American people, there is a real danger that they will not find the political and popular support to hold a civilian trial for KSM in any jurisdiction in the United States. If that happens, it will signal a huge victory for congressional Republicans, and a resounding vote of no-confidence in our federal courts. Graham and his cohort will only grow emboldened, and may insist, eventually, that the judiciary is never the right venue in which to try terror suspects. The end result could be a perverse departure from Obama’s stated creed and an irony for historians to chew on: the Bush justice department may well end up having tried more terrorists in civilian courts than the Obama justice department ever will.

“The coming weeks could determine the ultimate shape of Obama-era detainee policy,” the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/us/politics/15holder.html) suggests, and that’s true. But there’s more at stake here than detainee policy. What lies in the balance is nothing less than our collective faith in the efficacy of our system of government, as enshrined in the constitution. Overhauling health care may well be the administration’s fundamental goal right now. But Obama’s next steps on detainee policy will fundamentally shape his legacy.

Millions of Americans Caught Swine Flu from Ill Co-Workers

A new study published by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) draws a connection between the lack of paid sick days and the spread of H1N1, the so-called “swine flu’ virus.

The report, “Sick at Work: Infected Employees in the Workplace During the H1N1 Pandemic” made the following findings:

• An estimated 8 million American employees came to work while infected with H1N1.
• An estimated 7 million people contracted the illness from a sick co-worker.
• The study suggests workers without paid sick days were far more likely to come to work while infect with H1N1.

At the start of the H1N1 outbreak, which was responsible for the death of 24 Connecticut residents, public health officials, as well as Governor Rell and President Obama urged people to stay home if they caught H1N1. But as the new study reveals, many workers couldn’t follow that advice.

“This study seems to reinforce our impression that when employees lack paid sick days they go to work sick,” said Dr. Bruce Gould, Associate Dean for Primary Care, UCONN School of Medicine and Medical Director at the Bergdorf Medical Center and Medical Director, City of Hartford Department of Health and Human Services. “This spreads disease to co-workers and the public. It is a serious public health threat. We shouldn’t wait until the next pandemic to make sure employees have the ability to stay home when they are sick.”

“It’s no surprise Wal-Mart and McDonalds would jeopardize our health for the sake of a few extra pennies, but that doesn’t make it right,” said Lindsay Farrell, legislative director of CT Working Families. “This study should be a wake up call to legislators. It’s naïve to think people aren’t forced to come to work sick every day, especially in this economy.”

A bill that would create a basic workplace standard for paid sick days has recently been introduced by the Labor Committee. The bill, SB 63, would allow workers at business with more than 50 employees to earn paid sick time – up to 5 days per year. A similar bill passed in the House of Representatives last year.

The blog MyLeftNutmeg is running a poll for or the Democratic candidates for Governor. So far Ned Lamont is way ahead, while his principal rival, Dan Malloy is barely beating a virtual unknown, Rudy Marconi.

The candidates are:

Juan FIGUEROA, former 5 term State Rep

Mary Messina GLASSMAN, 2006 Democratic candidate for Lt. Gov. & 6 term 1st Selectman of Simsbury

Ned LAMONT, 2006 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

Dan MALLOY, former 4 term Mayor of Stamford.

Rudy MARCONI, long term Democratic 1st Selectman of Ridgefield

A total of 67 votes have been cast so far. The results:

Whom do you favor for the Democratic nomination?
* Lamont – 30 votes (44.78%)
* Malloy – 15 votes (22.39%)
* Marconi – 13 votes (19.4%)
* Figueroa – 7 votes (10.45%)
* Glassman – 2 votes (2.99%)

President Barack Obama has pledged to support urban America through policy initiatives, and has created a White House Office of Urban Affairs which reports directly to the President. He plans to implement the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative, which will be patterned after the Harlem Children’s Zone, HCZ. In recent years, a lack of federal resources (mass transit, social service, public works, education, job training) designed to help disadvantaged individuals gain financial security have aggravated problems in inner-city neighborhoods.

The HCZ is a ninety-seven block laboratory in central Harlem that combines two reform-oriented and public charter schools with a web of community services designed to help children from birth to college graduation. The program is meant to provide a supportive and positive social environment outside the schools and create a community partnership fit to survive ups and downs in the urban community. The charter schools have effectively reversed the black-white achievement gap in math (HCZ students outperform the typical white student in New York City) and significantly reduced it in English Language Arts.

The Obama Administration has dedicated ten million dollars to 2010 fiscal planning for the proposed Promise Neighborhoods in twenty cities, but more funding may be needed from philanthropy organizations and businesses

He’s not sure he would vote for the Senate Health Bill, he opposes civilian trials for attempted terrorists activities in the U.S., he supports expanding the war in Afghanistan, he favors the death penalty. Sounds like another Independent, doesn’t he?