Antiabortion activists see a racial conspiracy

According to a vocal group - and a set of stark new billboards in Atlanta - abortion providers target black women in order to reduce the black population.

By Robin Abcarian

March 2, 2010

It's a campaign designed to shock: Dozens of newly installed billboards in Atlanta feature the cherubic face of a black baby and a stark claim: "Black children are an endangered species."

A joint effort of Georgia Right to Life and the pro-adoption, pro-abstinence Radiance Foundation, the campaign ostensibly calls attention to the fact that black women have a disproportionately high number of abortions. But there is a deeper, more disturbing claim at work as well.

An increasingly vocal segment of the antiabortion community has embraced the idea that black women are targeted for abortion in an effort to keep the black population down.

The billboards direct people to a website called toomanyaborted.com which claims that "Under the false liberty of 'reproductive freedom' we are killing our very future."

Some black antiabortion activists call the phenomenon "womb lynching." One prominent black cleric, the Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. of New Jersey, often says the most dangerous place for a black child is the womb.

No one disputes that black women have more abortions, proportionately, than women of other races. Nationally, African Americans make up about 13% of the population and have about 37% of all abortions, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But abortion rights advocates say that is because African American women have a disproportionate number of unplanned pregnancies, an enduring problem with complex socioeconomic roots, including inadequate insurance coverage.

"The notion that abortion providers are targeting certain groups of people is absurd," said Vanessa Cullins, an African American physician who is vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's using race to undermine decisions that responsible black women are making about whether to terminate a pregnancy or not."

Radiance Foundation founder Ryan Bomberger, a 38-year-old former ad man, came up with the idea for the billboards. Adopted as a baby, he said he was conceived when his white biological mother was raped by a black man.

"I am definitely not a white Southern bigot," he said, alluding to an accusation hurled his way since the ads went up. "I am as black as President Obama."

He has also been accused of shaming black women who seek abortions. Not so, Bomberger said: "It's about exposing an industry that is stealing potential from our community."

Many African American women who support abortion rights find that message patronizing and offensive.

"Ryan is a young advertising executive who has stepped into a food fight that he doesn't quite understand," said Loretta Ross, 56, national coordinator of SisterSong, an Atlanta-based coalition of 80 women's groups that work on reproductive health issues for minorities.

"To be honest, black women aren't fooled by zealots or the church or even the individual men in our lives," Ross said. "We know that the bottom line is you don't have much control over your life when you don't control your body. Should a rapist have the right to choose the mother of his child? That's what Ryan is saying."

But many abortion foes focus on the sheer numbers involved.

Catherine Davis, minority outreach director for Georgia Right to Life, visits black college campuses, bringing the message that abortion is a destructive force for blacks. She often screens a movie called "Maafa 21," made by Texas antiabortion group Life Dynamics, alleging that blacks have been targeted for abortions since the end of slavery by white elites fearful of uncontrolled population growth.

"Let me put it this way," Davis said, "18,870,000 black babies have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade. If those babies hadn't been aborted, we would be 59 million strong -- over 19% of the population."

While the abortion rate among black women is higher than average, so is the birth rate. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006 the black birth rate was 16.5 per 1,000 women of childbearing age compared with 14.2 per 1,000 for all women.

Most black women who have abortions are already mothers or plan to have children later, Cullins said.

The statistics are not persuasive for Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I know for sure that the black community is being targeted by abortionists for the purpose of ethnic cleansing," said King, a Georgia Right to Life board member who had two abortions before a religious conversion in 1983. "How can the dream survive if we are willing to sacrifice the futures of our children?"

In a scenario popularized by abortion foes, the culprit is Planned Parenthood, whose clinics are often located in poor communities where the need for subsidized healthcare is greatest.

The roots of the antipathy toward Planned Parenthood come not just from its role as the nation's largest provider of abortions and other reproductive healthcare, but from questionable social policies embraced by its founder, Margaret Sanger, the mother of the American birth control movement.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Sanger was an advocate of eugenics, a movement that posited the human species could be improved with selective breeding and the forced sterilization of the poor and "feeble-minded." That often was believed to include blacks.

She was not alone, however. In 1927 the Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote about the case's plaintiff, a young white woman who was later found to be of normal intelligence.

Abortion foes use Sanger's own words (often out of context, say abortion rights supporters) to prove that Sanger founded an organization rooted in racism.

"It's a very complicated picture," said Ross of SisterSong. "There was a eugenics movement, and it did target black people. But when Margaret Sanger first started, it was black women who came to her" for help.

Black leaders of the day -- including W.E.B. Du Bois and Adam Clayton Powell -- supported Sanger. "All these people wanted her to put clinics in African American communities because we then, as now, see fertility control as part of the racial uplift strategy," Ross said.

Historian Ellen Chesler, a Planned Parenthood board member and Sanger biographer, said that Sanger's eugenics views were applicable to sterilization, not abortion, which she generally opposed.

In 1920, Sanger wrote, "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion is justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization."

"To say she is racist is counterfactual, it's inventing history," said Chesler, a professor at Hunter College.

Also, Chesler noted, eugenics is still with us: "Its most enduring legacy is IQ testing," she said. "Every woman who has amniocentesis is a eugenicist."
In Atlanta, the billboards are to remain up through March. "We are really drawing people into the history of abortion and the birth control movement," Bomberger said. "My hope is that people begin to wake up."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-billboards2-2010mar02,0,3281666,print.story

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Search continues in San Diego County for missing 17-year-old girl

San Diego County investigators continued their search Monday for a missing 17-year-old girl after a man was arrested in connection with her disappearance.

John Albert Gardner III, 30, was arrested Sunday afternoon outside a business in Escondido after investigators uncovered evidence linking the registered sex offender to the disappearance of Chelsea King from the Lake Hodges area, authorities said in a statement.

“During the search the last three days we have obtained numerous pieces of physical evidence in the search scene,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said Monday in an interview with ABC's “Good Morning America.” “One of those pieces of evidence we were able to tie to John Gardner.”

Gardner, of Lake Elsinore, was convicted in a previous incident of one count of lewd acts with a child under 14, according to state records.

King disappeared Thursday after failing to return from an afternoon run near Lake Hodges, investigators said. Helicopters scoured the area and volunteers waded chest-deep in the murky water looking for signs of the Poway High School senior.

Friends set up a Facebook page and website to help the search effort. The case is being handled by homicide investigators.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/search-continues-in-san-diego-county-for-missing-17-year-old-girl.html#more

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Schwarzenegger condemns 'intolerable acts of racism' at UC San Diego, other campuses

A series of racial and religion controversies involving UC campuses -- including the "Compton Cookout" party and a noose found at UC San Diego -- has been met with concern by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I am deeply troubled by the horrific incidents that recently took place on various campuses of the University of California system," the governor said in a statement. "The acts of racism and intolerance that we have witnessed are completely unacceptable and I join with the University of California President, Chancellors and student leaders in condemning these terrible incidents."

A UC San Diego student admitted Friday to hanging a rope noose from a campus library bookcase in an act that triggered more protests at a school already roiled by recent racially charged incidents.

Angry students stormed and occupied the office of UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox.

On Feb. 15, an off-campus party, described as a "Compton Cookout," mocked Black History Month, leading to large student protests. A few days later, a campus satirical group defended the party and used a derogatory term about blacks on a campus television show.

At UC Irvine, 11 students were arrested last month for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador. A New York City-based Zionist group quickly urged college-bound students to drop UC Irvine as a consideration and asked donors to rethink their pledges. A leading Muslim civil rights group asked that charges be dropped against the protesters -- even though charges have not been filed.

In his statement, Schwarzenegger did not cite specific incidents but said he was "condemning the intolerable acts of racism and incivility that recently occurred on multiple campuses in the University of California higher education system."

"There is no excuse for this kind of behavior in our system of higher education or anywhere else and it will not be tolerated," he said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/03/schwarzenegger-condemns-intolerable-acts-of-racism-at-uc-san-diego-other-campuses.html#more

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EDITORIAL

Beyond a 'Compton Cookout'

UC San Diego's racial problems are not limited to one incident. And other UC campuses show troubling signs of intolerance.

March 1, 2010

Now we know the truth. The infamous "Compton Cookout" at UC San Diego, where members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity invited guests to celebrate Black History Month dressed as their favorite ghetto stereotypes, was not an isolated incident. Nor can it be chalked up to standard-issue frat behavior, in which a degree of misogyny, bigotry and drunken insensitivity is often shrugged off as normal college hijinks.

Days after the cookout, the editor of the Koala, a campus publication known for mocking Muslims, Latinos and Asians, appeared on the university's student-run TV station to defend the event. While on the air, he referred to offended black classmates as "ungrateful niggers." The following day, a sign with the words "Compton Lynching" was found at the TV station. And on Thursday, a noose was hung in the Geisel Library.

At parties, on air, in public -- anything goes, it seems. It turns out the problem wasn't just a single party but an all-too-permissive culture in which some UCSD students apparently feel free to express racial malice with a breezy, unconcerned openness.

On Monday, the university announced a plan to address the growing racial tensions. It includes making greater efforts to recruit minority faculty, forming a commission to address the campus climate, ensuring ongoing funding for the chancellor's diversity office, creating an African American Resource Center and establishing quarterly meetings between the administration and members of the Black Student Union. Many of these recommendations are not new. They were put forward by the Black Student Union as far back as 2006, when students warned they were becoming increasingly uncomfortable, alienated and even fearful on campus.

Better late than never. But there is a reason students at other UC campuses are also holding sit-ins, demanding accountability from their chancellors and calling emergency meetings in solidarity with UCSD students. In interviews with The Times, minority student leaders up and down the state said the racial atmosphere on their campuses is little better. Students at UC Berkeley and UCLA, for example, spoke of "border parties" that require attendees to hop a fence or cross a "border" to gain admittance.

In 1996, many posited that racial tensions would increase after passage of that year's Proposition 209, which barred California's public universities from considering race and other factors in admissions; indeed, the number of black and Latino students quickly plummeted, and it seems, in retrospect, that the skeptics may have been right. If more chancellors sit down with their students in the coming weeks, they may be surprised to learn of the "Compton Cookouts" in their own backyards.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-ucsd2-2010mar02,0,7799044,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Drug gangs taking over US public lands

SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST - Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.

Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.

"Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they've gone to mega, monster gardens," said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have "supersized" the marijuana trade.

Interviews conducted by The Associated Press with law enforcement officials across the country showed that Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the last several years.

Local, state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities say an estimated 75 percent to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.

In 2008 alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, police across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from about 20,000 outdoor plots.

Growing marijuana in the U.S. saves traffickers the risk and expense of smuggling their product across the border and allows gangs to produce their crops closer to local markets.

Distribution also becomes less risky. Once the marijuana is harvested and dried on the hidden farms, drug gangs can drive it to major cities, where it is distributed to street dealers and sold along with pot that was grown in Mexico.

About the only risk to the Mexican growers, experts say, is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.

The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Park, or hidden high in the rugged-yet-fertile Sierra Nevada Mountains. Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranch land.

All of the sites are far from the eyes of law enforcement, where growers can take the time needed to grow far more potent marijuana. Farmers of these fields use illegal fertilizers to help the plants along, and use cloned female plants to reduce the amount of seed in the bud that is dried and eventually sold.

Mexican gang plots can often be distinguished from those of domestic-based growers, who usually cultivate much smaller fields with perhaps 100 plants and no security measures.

Some of the fields tied to the drug gangs have as many as 75,000 plants, each of which can yield at least a pound of pot annually, according to federal data reviewed by the AP.

The Sequoia National Forest in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, most of which are hidden along mountain creeks and streams, far from hiking trails. It's the same situation in the nearby Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood national parks.

Even if they had the manpower to police the vast wilderness, authorities say terrain and weather conditions often keep them from finding the farms, except accidentally.

Many of the plots are encircled with crude explosives and are patrolled by guards armed with AK-47s who survey the perimeter from the ground and from perches high in the trees.

The farms are growing in sophistication and are increasingly cultivated by illegal immigrants, many of whom have been brought to the U.S. from Michoacan.

Growers once slept among their plants, but many of them now have campsites up to a mile away equipped with separate living and cooking areas.

"It's amazing how they have changed the way they do business," Wood said. "It's their domain."

Drug gangs have also imported marijuana experts and unskilled labor to help find the best land or build irrigation systems, Wood said.

Moyses Mesa Barajas had just arrived in eastern Washington state from the Mexican state of Michoacan when he was approached to work in a pot field. He was taken almost immediately to a massive crop hidden in the Wenatchee National Forest, where he managed the watering of the plants.

He was arrested in 2008 in a raid and sentenced to more than six years in federal prison. Several other men wearing camouflage fled before police could stop them.

"I thought it would be easy," he told the AP in a jailhouse interview. "I didn't think it would be a big crime."

Scott Stewart, vice president for tactical intelligence at Stratfor, a global intelligence company in Austin, Texas, said recruiters look for people who still have family in Mexico, so they can use them as leverage to keep the farmers working - and to keep them quiet.

"If they send Jose from the hometown and Jose rips them off, they are going to go after Jose's family," Stewart said. "It's big money."

When the harvest is complete, investigators say, pot farm workers haul the product in garbage bags to dropoff points that are usually the same places where they get resupplied with food and fuel.

Agents routinely find the discarded remnants of camp life when they discover marijuana fields. It's not uncommon to discover pots and pans, playing cards and books, half-eaten bags of food, and empty beer cans and liquor bottles.

But the growers leave more than litter to worry about. They often use animal poisons that can pollute mountain streams and groundwater meant for legitimate farmers and ranchers.

Because of the tree cover, armed pot farmers can often take aim at law enforcement before agents ever see them.

"They know the terrain better than we do," said Lt. Rick Ko, a drug investigator with the sheriff's office in Fresno, Calif. "Before we even see them, they can shoot us."

In Wisconsin, the number of confiscated plants grew sixfold between 2003 and 2008, to more than 32,000 found in 2008.

Wisconsin agents used to find a few dozen marijuana plants on national forest land. Now they discover hundreds or even thousands.

"If we are getting 40 to 50 percent (of fields), I think we are doing well," said Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Dave Peltomaa. "I really don't think we are close to 50 percent. We don't have the resources."

Vast amounts of pot are still smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico. Federal officials report nearly daily hauls of several hundred to several thousand pounds seized along the border. But drug agents say the boom in domestic growing is a sign of diversification by traffickers.

Officials say arrests of farmers are rare, though the sheriff's office in Fresno did nab more than 100 suspects during two weeks of raids last summer. But when field hands are arrested, most only tell authorities about their specific job.

When asked who hired him, Mesa repeatedly told an AP reporter, "I can't tell you."

Washington State Patrol Lt. Richard Wiley said hired hands either do not know who the boss is or are too frightened to give details.

"They are fearful of what may happen to them if they were to snitch on these coyote people," Wiley said of the recruiters and smugglers who bring marijuana farmers into the U.S. "That's organized crime of a different fashion. There's nothing to gain from (talking), but there's a lot to lose."

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14495133

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Should inaction be a crime? Question of the week

SEE a crime. Don't report it. Go to jail.

That's what could happen to Californians who witness a crime but fail to report it under proposals by state legislators hoping to spur bystanders into action.

The proposals stem from a brutal gang-rape a 16-year-old girl outside a high school homecoming dance in Northern California last year. During the two hours the crime occurred, as many as 20 people stood by and watched for nearly two hours, according to police.

But while the witnesses might be guilty of bad behavior, under current state law, they aren't guilty of a crime. Witnesses are required to report murder or rape only when the victim is younger than 14.

As simple as this new law sounds, the debate surrounding it has brought up some troubling and complex arguments. For one, some say it could make it harder to convict rapists because witnesses might not come forward if they could be charged with a crime. As well, others suggest that changing the law could, in some cases, scare people away from stopping crimes because of worries of getting prosecuted.

Others say that such requirements would encourage people who stand aside idly to do something rather than pay a fine. For example, under proposed legislation, bystanders in the Richmond case would have been guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by six months in jail and a $1,500 fine.

What do you think?

Will making it a crime to witness a crime and not report it make us a safer society? Or will it just make it more likely that people will purposely turn away from crimes in process and lie about whether they saw anything?

Send your responses to opinionated@dailynews.com. Please include your full name, the community or city in which you live and a daytime phone number. We'll print as many as we can in Sunday's Opinionated section.

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_14494967

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Suspect in Smart Case Found Competent for Trial

SALT LAKE CITY—The man charged with snatching Elizabeth Smart from her Salt Lake City bedroom nearly eight years ago could finally face a jury after a federal judge ruled Monday he is competent to stand trial.

Brian David Mitchell's hallmark disruptive singing in court—evidence he's mentally incompetent, his attorneys say—is a "contrivance" the suspect uses to give the impression he can't control his behavior, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball wrote in a 149-page ruling issued Monday.

"The evidence proves that Mitchell has the capacity to assist his counsel in his defense and the ability to behave appropriately in the courtroom," Judge Kimball wrote. "Although the defense has suggested that Mitchell's singing is a psychotic response to stress, Mitchell has repeatedly demonstrated that he has the capacity to be composed and in control, even in stressful situations."

Monday's ruling is a leap forward in a case that languished in state court as a judge twice ruled Mr. Mitchell incompetent and refused to force him to be medicated. The U.S. attorney's office intervened in 2008, indicting Mr. Mitchell in federal court on charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines.

Judge Kimball's ruling sets up a March 26 hearing to determine a trial date.

Ms. Smart was 14 when she was kidnapped from her home in 2002. She was found nine months later, in March 2003, walking a suburban Salt Lake City street with Mr. Mitchell and his now-estranged wife, Wanda Barzee.

Ms. Smart, now 22, testified for the competency hearing in October, saying she was raped after a marriage ceremony staged by Mr. Mitchell and throughout her captivity.

Experts who testified during a 10-day hearing last year split in their opinions about Mr. Mitchell's competency.

The prosecution's expert, New York forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner, concluded Mr. Mitchell suffers from a range of disorders, including pedophilia, anti-social and narcissistic personality disorders, but said he was not psychotic or delusional.

The key expert for the defense, Dr. Jennifer Skeem, diagnosed Mr. Mitchell with a delusional disorder and said he was incompetent.

But the judge agreed with Dr. Welner, who said Mr. Mitchell was faking mental illness to avoid responsibility for wrongdoing. Dr. Welner described Mitchell as an "effectively misleading psychopath" who has duped those around him into thinking he is incompetent.

Mr. Mitchell's court-appointed attorney, Robert Steele, did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press on Monday.

Carlie Christensen, the acting U.S. attorney for Utah, applauded the ruling Monday, calling it a significant step in holding Mr. Mitchell accountable. Elizabeth Smart's father, Ed Smart, said he was thrilled Mr. Mitchell was found competent.

"Because he is competent; he's crazy like a fox," Ed Smart said.

Ed Smart said he didn't think his daughter, who is serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Paris, had heard the news yet.

Ms. Barzee, 64, pleaded guilty to federal charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines in November. Last month she pleaded guilty in state court to a charge related to the attempted kidnapping of Ms. Smart's cousin. Prosecutors dropped other state charges against her.

Ms. Barzee's lawyer, Scott Williams, told The Associated Press on Monday that Ms. Barzee has agreed to testify at Mitchell's trial.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703431604575095782171327958.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5#printMode

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Guns and the States

The Supreme Court takes up another Second Amendment case.

The Supreme Court today is the scene of a Constitutional duel in a case that will decide if the Second Amendment's guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to the states. The answer will determine whether the Court's landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a hollow legal anomaly, or if it extends nationwide.

In McDonald v. Chicago , the Justices will consider whether the Windy City's ban on handguns is Constitutional. Brought by plaintiffs including 76-year-old Otis McDonald, who wants to keep a handgun in his South Side home to protect himself from gangs, the question is similar to that in Heller , which challenged a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.

However, unlike Washington, D.C., which is governed directly by federal law, the challenge to Chicago's gun ban comes to the Court under the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which protects fundamental rights against infringement by the states.

In a basic sense, it's hard to believe the Court won't apply the Second Amendment to states. Over the past century, the Court has said that part or all of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments apply to the states. It would be bizarre for the same majority in Heller to now say that the Second Amendment is the Bill of Rights exception.

One important question, however, is the reasoning the Court decides to use. The traditional path for applying the Bill of Rights to the states has been the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, and that is what the National Rifle Association is mainly arguing in its brief in this case.

But some conservatives—including Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas—have been highly critical of the legal doctrine known as "substantive due process," a contradiction in terms that can be a vehicle for judicial activism and inventing rights not found in the Constitution.

We share their skepticism when this means inventing new "substantive" rights. But the Second Amendment is not new. By now the Court has spent a century using the Due Process Clause to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, so this is hardly activist legal territory or some great expansion of due process law. This is the judicially restrained path to applying Heller to the states.

Meanwhile, some supporters of Mr. McDonald want the Court to go further and use the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment to apply Heller to the states. That clause states that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

In the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases , the Court ruled that the clause did not safeguard the Bill of Rights against state laws. That decision has long been criticized on the right and left, and many libertarians would like to rehabilitate that clause as a way to protect property rights against overreaching state laws. We also wish the Court protected property rights more than it has in the likes of the notorious 2005 Kelo decision, but the Justices don't need the Privileges and Immunities Clause to do so. They can use the Takings Clause, among others.

If the Privileges and Immunities Clause does become an engine to discover rights in the Constitution, liberals are likely to use it for far more than protecting property. A liberal majority could soon cite it as a precedent to assert a "right" to health insurance, or welfare, or a certain level of income. No less a legal activist than President Obama has lamented that such a right to economic redistribution has not been heretofore located in the Constitution's text.

The Justices needn't go this far afield to find that the individual right to bear arms that they correctly upheld in Heller applies to the entire country. If the First Amendment's right to free speech applies to the states, then so does the Second Amendment.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704479404575087381597040268.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop#printMode

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From the White House

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Apply to the U.S. Service Academies - Now Online

The Vice President is now accepting applications to the United States service academies online. Starting today, potential Cadets and Midshipmen will be able to apply through a more efficient, paperless process. The Vice President is authorized to nominate individuals to the United States Military, Naval, and Air Force Academies, and is the only nominating authority who can nominate U.S. citizens without geographical restrictions.

For additional information, and to apply online, visit the Vice President's website.

Kevin Westberg works in the Military Aides Office in the Office of the Vice President

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/03/01/apply-us-service-academies-now-online

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Announcing the White House Urban Affairs Website

I'm happy to announce that today we launch the White House Urban Affairs website. This effort is an important addition to our ongoing conversation on the Future of America's Cities and Metropolitan Areas. We have already met with many urban stakeholders, elected officials, and academics; and we've been around the country visiting places that are on the cutting edge of urban innovation. But today we are establishing a more direct relationship with you - the American people. You are the ones that are innovating every single day – you are the innovators. You tackle government bureaucracy with creativity and leadership; you overcome a slow economy with public-private partnerships; and you turn distressed neighborhoods around with determination, hope and, above all, hard work.

The President knows that government doesn't have all the answers. He knows that the best solutions come from you in places like Auburn Gresham in Chicago, South Lake Union in Seattle, and the small city of Flagstaff, Arizona - just to name a few. We know there are many more out there and we want you to share them with us.

This website is guided by the principles articulated in the President's Executive Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government :

• Transparency promotes accountability;
  
  
• Participation strengthens decisions; and,
  
  
• Collaboration enables other to help.
  

Here's how the website works: on our Initiatives page, you get a glimpse of the work we are doing to align Federal urban policy, like our Urban Tour and our Inter-Agency working group on urban policy. At our Innovation and Ideas page, you'll have a chance to submit your ideas and best practices. And of course, you can find my staff and I blogging on the work that we're doing, and you can learn more about our office in the About Us section.

In the coming weeks and months we will continue to update and improve our site so that we are able to have a productive and efficient conversation on the Future of America's Cities and Metros.

Adolfo Carrión, Jr is the Director of the Office of Urban Affairs and Deupty Assistant to the President

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/24/announcing-white-house-urban-affairs-website

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Helping America Become a Grad Nation

My wife Alma and I are honored to have President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joining us today to announce a new multi-year campaign to mobilize all Americans to help end the high school dropout crisis. We call this work Grad Nation. For the past two years, America's Promise Alliance has been traveling the country, raising awareness about how high dropout rates and low readiness for college and work undermine our nation's future. In nearly all 50 states and 55 cities, we have convened high-level Dropout Prevention Summits that brought together nearly 30,000 mayors and governors, business and community leaders, school administrators, students and parents. They have committed to concrete action plans to improve graduation rates in their states and communities.

To that end, the time for talking and planning has ended. Now we must turn our attention to solutions. This means acting on all the lessons we've learned at our summits, and more importantly, making sure all Americans see their stake in this and join us to reach an important goal, which is to see that 90 percent of today's fourth-graders graduate from high school on time. If we achieve this, we will not only be a more healthy and prosperous nation, but we can also help realize President Obama's goal of making the United States the global pacesetter of college graduation by 2020.

The simple proposition is this—improving graduation rates is not just an education issue; it's a community issue. We cannot expect more from our schools and young people until all Americans are prepared to be more involved, because so many of the building blocks that make for success in school involve effort outside of the classroom.

Grad Nation is the way for us to mobilize to win this battle.

Much like the Olympic athletes we've been inspired by recently, we all need to push past our comfort levels and make our work benefit something greater than ourselves — our country. Whether it is through City Year's “In School and On Track” initiative or The First Tee's National School Program, our nearly 400 national Alliance partners and their local affiliates are stepping up to lead the way. We're already seeing the impact of this type work in cities like Philadelphia and Tucson, which have improved their graduation rates by more than 20 percentage points in a decade.

So the question remains: What will you do? How can you help? The choice is simple. If we are to remain a great nation, we must be a Grad Nation .

To learn more about America's Promise Alliance and Grad Nation, visit: www.americaspromise.org

General Colin Powell is founding chairman of America's Promise Alliance

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/03/01/helping-america-become-a-grad-nation

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