Don't eat your spinach

By Nancy Jane Moore

The Food and Drug Administration has recalled baby spinach.

It sounds like the beginning of a joke routine, but the problem is real: At least some of the spinach sold in the US -- most likely the prewashed, bagged kind -- is contaminated with E. coli.

The Washington Post reports that at least some of the contamination has been traced back to Natural Selection Foods, a California farm company that the Post said sells organic produce in 74 percent of US food stores. The article lists affected brands, but the FDA warned that other sources may also be contaminated.

So for now, skip the fresh spinach.

The New York Times points out illness caused by contaminated fresh produce is a growing problem. It quoted Richard H. Linton, director of the Center for Food Safety Engineering at Purdue:

In the last 20 years, the incidence of produce-related food-borne illness has increase two and a half to three times.

The Times article provided detailed instructions on how to clean and prepare your produce, and also included this depressing bit of advice:

Young children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems may want to eat cooked or canned fruits and vegetables.

So why is fresh produce, which should be one of the prime choices for healthy eating, becoming a problem? None of the news reports I've seen on the current recall hazards a guess.

But the Center for Science in the Public Interest says that contamination can occur at several stages in the process of getting food from farm to table. The group suggests that lack of a single food safety regulator makes it easier for contaminated products to fall through the cracks. In a press release that praised the FDA for moving quickly to pull spinach off the shelves, CSPI said:

Contamination can come from use of untreated manure used as fertilizer, irrigation water contaminated with waste from animal agriculture, or cross-contamination during processing. It is vital that the federal government ensure the safety of fresh fruits and vegetables, especially since we want people to eat more of these healthy foods, not less. But regrettably, food-safety responsibilities are divided among the FDA, USDA [Department of Agriculture], and other agencies, with no single agency having primacy from farm to fork.

Nutritionist Marion Nestle, in her excellent book What to Eat, is even more blunt:

Mind you, nobody in government is really paying close attention to food safety or figuring out which foods cause what illnesses. ... Given the lack of real government leadership, the food safety system relies largely on faith that food producers, processor and handler do not want to make anyone sick and are doing what they can to prevent illnesses transmitted by food. ...
But produce seems especially worrisome because fruits and vegetables are grown in what the FDA charmingly refers to as "non-sterile environments" (translation: in contact with animal manure), and because they are so often eaten raw.

Nestle thinks better regulation would help. She also points out the real scope of the problem: In the US every year, there are 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths from bacteria, viruses, and parasites in food.

When she contrasts these numbers with the number of chances that you might get poisoned -- close to three hundred million people eating multiple foods several times a day 365 days per year -- they seem more reasonable.

But still: 5,000 deaths from bad food. It's not an insignificant number. Surely we can do better.

But for right now, don't eat your spinach.

Don't be a beta tester for the government: Get a new passport now

If you don't have a passport, go apply for one right now. If you have one that's more than a few years old, renew it.

That's advice from security expert Bruce Schneier in an opinion piece in today's Washington Post.

This isn't because things are getting so bad you may want to leave the country fast, or even because you now need your passport to enter countries that used to let you in with a driver's license.

It's because most countries are about to start putting radio frequency identification chips -- usually called RFIDs -- in their passports. The US is already putting them in passports issued through the Colorado passport office and expects to have them in all passports by the end of the year. Other countries are following suit.

According to Schneier, you don't want to be a beta tester for RFIDs.

The problem isn't that border crossing officials can read all the data on your passport without even looking at it -- after all, you're required to show the passport to those people anyway.

The problem is that anyone equipped with a reader can collect all that information -- and you'll never know it happened. As Schneier explains:

RFID chips don't have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.

Plus, RFIDs are electronic devices, meaning someone will figure out how to hack them. (One researcher has already cloned a chip.) Passports are good for ten years, so the chips need to last that long and remain secure. As Schneier puts it:

It is as ridiculous to think that passport security will remain secure for that long as it would be to think that you won't see another security update for Microsoft Windows in that time.

Schneier knows his stuff. He's one of the most respected security experts in the business. His bio is here. To get a sane, professional take on the security issues of the day, check out his blog or subscribe to his free Crypto-Gram email newsletter.

Double Whammy of Hope: Progressive Muslim wins in Minneapolis

By Pamela K. Taylor

Tuesday's primaries in Minneapolis's fifth Congressional district delivered up a double whammy of hope. In a district that is overwhelmingly Democratic, the winner was Keith Ellison, a progressive politician and a progressive Muslim.

Mr. Ellison, who received endorsements from environmental, feminist, labor, latino, jewish and GLBT groups, is expected to be a shoe-in this November.

Needless to say, as a political activist and a progressive Muslim, I couldn't be happier. We need more progressive politicians in our system. Lots of them. Preferrably a majority of them so we can turn our country back in the right direction (or should I say left direction *wink*).

We need to start implementing policies and programs that serve our needs like creating an excellent public education system for all children, no matter how rich or poor their districts; implementing univeral healthcare; creating a sane energy policy and incentives for developing alternative fuels.

We also need more progressive Muslim voices.

Mr. Ellison is not afraid to aver that his faith inspires his values. This is particularly refreshing when it comes from a man who has a reputation as a progressive politician, and who has won endorsements from groups that most Americans think Islam discriminates against like women, Jews and gays, or that most Americans think Islam ignores like environmentalists, the working class, and farmers.

I hope that with a Muslim representative, some of the more vocally anti-Muslim congressmen will take some time to learn something about Islam and Muslims, rather than base their understanding on CNN, FOX, and the testimony of "expert" witnesses.

In my most hopeful of moments, I dream that our foriegn policy, homeland security, and airport procedures will stop being so prejudicial against your average Muslim, and start implementing strategies that might actually make us safer.

I have to admit I feel sorry for the mainstream (read: conservative, mosque based) Muslim community. They will be delighted that there is at long last a Muslim representative in Congress, but I'm pretty sure they will disagree with many of Mr. Ellison's positions. It will be interesting to see if they bring him to address their conventions and conferences.

By all rights, they should be trumpeting this man. I wonder if they will.

Taking Back Kansas: New poll shows central battle with Religious Right is too close to call

By Diane Silver

The struggle for the political soul of Kansas is being played out this year in the race for attorney general. According to a new poll that battle between the darling of the Religious Right, incumbent Republican Phill Kline, and moderate Democrat Paul Morrison is already neck and neck.

The Wichita Eagle reports:

Kline edged Morrison 51 percent to 48 percent in Survey USA's poll of 583 likely voters across the state. But the result was well within the poll's 4.1-point margin of error.
...

Kline holds a 59 percent to 39 percent lead in the city (of Wichita), according to the poll. And he enjoys a 63-35 lead in western Kansas.

Morrison holds a 56-43 lead in the eastern part of the state.

The poll also disclosed a substantial gender gap. Kline leads 55-43 among men, while women were 52- 46 in Morrison's favor.

The race is likely to hinge on the "ground game" -- which candidate can get more supporters to the polls on Election Day, said Jay Leve, editor of the poll.

The poll illustrates once again that the Religious Right CAN be beaten -- even in Kansas. I think the poll is also significant because it shows Morrison's strength as the campaign is just beginning. Morrison is not a well known figure in Kansas. He has never run for statewide office and is little known outside of his home county.

To be running neck and neck with a well-known incumbent says something about Morrison and says even more about how much the average Kansan is running out of patience with Kline and his ideas.

The key to victory in this race is to get out and get involved. Give money. Give time. Vote. Get your friends to vote.

Remembering Ms. Ann -- A great leader, an inspiring feminist, and a good ol' gal

By Nancy Jane Moore

Ann Richards died yesterday. We've all suffered a great loss.

I got to vote for her the very first time she ran for office in 1976 -- for county commissioner in Travis County, Texas. She won. And she did a great job.

In fact, that's one of the really important things about Ann Richards. She wasn't just a good politician with a gift for public speaking and great wit; she was also a very competent, hard-working public servant. Her records as Travis County Commissioner, Texas State Treasurer, and Governor of Texas speak for themselves.

There are a thousand funny stories about Ms. Ann. You'll find a bunch of them in the obituaries out there. I'm waiting to see which ones Molly Ivins will tell when she does a remembrance column.

But she wasn't just funny; she also stood for something. And she was a feminist who made sure other women got a hand up -- she was never just out for herself. I don't think it's any accident that her first political job was as a campaign manager and then administrative assistant to Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade, when Weddington was in the Texas House of Representatives.

In the Austin American-Statesman's fine obituary, they include the following quote from Richards:

Naturally, I want it to be easier for women to get involved in politics. I want them to think of politics and public service as a good place for them, as something honorable and something worthwhile for them to pursue. And the way they are going to do that is to say, 'If she can do it, I can do it.'

I think she'd like to be remembered for that.

John Burnet of NPR did a great obituary on Morning Edition today. If you didn't hear it live, the audio will be available after 10 AM ET here.

The Washington Post also has a good obituary.

I won't link to The New York Times obituary, because it has at least one obvious error in it (hint to The Times copy desk: You don't have to look anything up; if you read the whole obituary, it'll be obvious that Richards wasn't a lawyer even if she did do some work for a law firm after she left office). But The Times does provide a transcript of her great keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.

The speech is pure Ann. Go read it and enjoy remembering her.

Note: The photo is from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. You can find a series of pictures of Richards on their website.

Taking Back Kansas: Two more Republican defections

Had enough? Two more GOP stalwarts in Kansas are saying they most decidedly have. This time the two aren't leaving the Republican Party, but are endorsing the Democrat running for the 39th District seat in the Kansas House of Representatives.

Retiring state Rep. Ray Cox, R-Bonner Springs, told the Lawrence Journal-World that he couldn't stand the idea of the nominated Republican candidate -- ultra-conservative Owen Donohoe -- winning his old seat.

"You don't run the state on a few little social issues," Cox told the newspaper.

The Republican candidate Donohoe defeated in the primary, Quentin Brewer, is also endorsing Democrat Corey Mohn for the seat. The Journal-World reports:

Cox and Brewer said they endorsed Mohn because he works harder than Donohoe and is less partisan.

The Journal-World goes on to quote University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis as noting that this election might create a "new political landscape."

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline uses his office to ask for money

By Diane Silver

One day after the story broke about Phill Kline's church-based fund-raising strategy comes news that Kline is using his office as attorney general to harvest e-mail addresses for his re-election effort. The hapless Kansans who had merely asked for information about a new law are then sent emails pressing them to donate to the Kline campaign.

The Hutchinson News reports today:

The attorney general's state Web site allows individuals to submit their e-mail address to receive information about the office's activities and its implementation of the concealed gun license program.

Citizens who signed up to receive these electronic news updates from Kline's office were also sent e-mails last week from kline forag.com, the attorney general's campaign Web domain.

One of the messages requested campaign contributions and included an Internet link to a secure site where donations to Kline's campaign could be made by credit card.

Another listed critical issues Kline believes are a problem in the state, such as "weak sentencing laws," and promised updates on them from Kline's office.

Kansas' campaign finance law was written before email became a major campaign tool and does not consider this tactic to be illegal.

I'm not certain it passes the "smell test," though.

Taking Back Kansas: We need your help!

By Diane Silver

As we hurtle towards the Nov. 7 election, it's worth noting that we in Kansas have a chance to add a bit of blue -- not to mention a bit of sanity -- to this reddest of red states. To succeed we need to work together.

We have a good chance of keeping our Democratic governor in office, and we could well throw out our Republican attorney general whose idea of campaigning is to go from church to church to church. And then, of course, there's the continued work to add to the newly minted moderate majority on the state Board of Education. (hoorah!)

What has been getting lost in all of this, though, are some campaigns that may be more important, or at least as important, as these high profile races. I'm talking about the fact that all the seats in the Kansas House of Representatives are up for a vote in November.

Races for the House are often overlooked, but the people elected to these seats can have a greater impact on my life and yours than even the governor.

Case in point: If only a few members of the House had been different in 2005, the ban on gay marriage, civil unions and any other legal right for same-sex couples would have never made it onto the statewide ballot and would never have been voted into the Kansas Constitution. Because that proposal was a constitutional amendment, it did not require the signature of the governor.

The problem, though, with House campaigns is that they are seldom well funded, and often, voters have little information about the candidates.

That's where you come in. I need your help to get a better idea of where House candidates stand on moderate and progressive issues.

If you know anything -- and I mean anything -- about a candidate for the Kansas House from a district anywhere in the state, please reply to this post or email me directly at hopeandpolitics@yahoo.com I'll make certain the information gets out either on this blog or through my Liberty Press column.

Let's bring common sense back to the Heartland!

The decisive struggle of the 21st Century? Hint -- it's not terrorism

By Nancy Jane Moore

Bush missed the point -- as usual -- in his Sept. 11 anniversary speech (text here) when he said the struggle with radical Islamists "is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation."

In The Washington Post report on the speech, he is quoted as saying that this situation -- in which he clearly includes the civil war in Iraq as well as terrorist attacks -- is "a struggle for civilization."

He's wrong. The struggle between the US and those Bush described as driven by a "perverted vision of Islam" will be a mere blip in the history of the 21st Century. That will be true even if Bush starts a war with Iran.

Even if terrorism is defined more broadly to include every person and group who uses murder to further a political or religious cause -- a much larger group than Islamic fundamentalists -- addressing it isn't even close the most important challenge we face.

Not that dealing with terrorism isn't important. But as security expert Bruce Schneier points out, "Terrorism is a law enforcement problem, and needs to be treated as such." He goes on to say, "Intelligence and investigation have kept us safe from terrorism in the past, and will continue to do so in the future."

Terrorism is scary, to be sure -- who wants to die for someone else's crazy political or religious goals? We all still feel the losses from Sept. 11. And there will be other terrible attacks -- there are far too many people in this world who think violence is the answer. But ultimately terrorism isn't all that different from other forms of war or crime or pandemics or many of the other difficulties we face regularly. It's important, and it's something we must address, but it's not the ultimate issue facing us.

And neither are a number of other important issues: human rights, civil liberties, the growing economic gap between rich and poor, the Bush administration's disastrous foreign policy and unnecessary wars, the struggle to control the world's oil, even genocide. All things we need to deal with, yes, and all quite crucial, but none of these qualify as the most decisive struggle of our times.

The most decisive struggle of the 21st Century will be over how we handle global warming. In fact, it may well be the most decisive struggle in human history.

Note that I didn't say "ideological struggle." Our various ideologies will come into play (surely in a world this large we can have more than one good ideology), but ultimately dealing with human-caused climate change is a practical problem -- and the ultimate test for the human race: Pass this one and we continue forward to true civilization. Fail it and we could tumble back to primitive times, if we survive at all.

I'm not going to go into detail about the science here. If you want more information, check out Real Climate, which is written by climate scientists, or the website for Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." Suffice it to say that we are putting excessive amounts of greenhouse gases -- primarily carbon dioxide -- into the atmosphere, and the world is getting hotter as a result. Human beings are generating those gases. Despite what you may have read, this isn't a matter of scientific dispute.

To a great degree, we ended up in this mess because things changed too rapidly. We've gone through about 150 years of rapid technological change and population explosion (our population of 6.5 billion is more than five times what it was in 1850, and double what it was in the 1960s). Human life is short, so I don't think it's surprising that most people didn't realize what was going on for quite some time. 150 years is a mere blip in terms of life on Earth, but to individual humans it represents five or six generations. And much of the science that we now use to calculate historical weather is relatively new -- we have dramatically increased our understanding of how the world works in the past 50 years.

Nothing in human history has prepared us for this situation. We're still very much the same agrarian people we've been for millennia, but now we need to change very rapidly to save ourselves and our planet. We don't have the luxury of adapting to this new way of living over time, through evolution; instead we must use our not inconsiderable brainpower to change course.

I don't think moral error got us into this problem, but I agree with Gore that refusing to deal with it now is immoral. It's not just that our children and grandchildren will have to pay for this -- as they will have to pay for our unnecessary wars and profligate tax cuts -- it's that they may well inherit a planet they can't live on.

And morality will come into how we deal with it, as will all those other problems facing us today: human rights, civil liberties, terrorism, pandemics, war, famine. Will we end up following China's lead and penalizing people for having more than one child or is there a better way to slow down population growth? Will we deal with famine by letting a billion people starve? Will the rich shut themselves up in enclaves and leave the rest to fend for ourselves? There are ways we can pass this test -- survive as a species -- that will be cruel beyond belief.

But it might be that we won't be able to pass it without developing true compassion.

Both the enormity of the challenge and the way it affects all of human life make this our ultimate challenge as an intelligent species.

That's why we need to stop obsessing about terrorism. Deal with it -- yes -- but don't blow it out of proportion. We've got bigger fish to fry.

How George W. Bush helped Osama Bin Laden win the war on terror

By Diane Silver

I don't always agree with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, but Cohen did a magnificent job today of stating the obvious: Osama bin Laden has won the war on terror, and George W. Bush is the person who made that victory possible.

The War on Terror -- or the WOT as Fox News likes to call it -- is not just a battle of bombs. It's a battle of ideas, and so far, Bush has played right into Bin Laden's hands. I agree with Cohen that Bin Laden couldn't have created a better situation for himself, then the one Bush has created.

There are so many ways that Bush has helped Bin Laden that to list them all, I'd have to quote Cohen's entire column, but I'll make do with just a couple of paragraphs. Cohen writes:

It is not merely that bin Laden has not been captured or killed and that videotapes keep coming out of his hideout like taunts. It is, rather, that his initial strategy has borne fruit. It was always his intention to draw the Americans into Afghanistan, where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the United States responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day....

How did bin Laden get so lucky? How did he get so fortunate in his choice of enemies? The Bush administration not only validated his wildest dreams -- dreams that even some of his aides thought were unrealistic -- but went even further. By using torture, by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, by employing "extraordinary renditions" of suspects to countries where they could be tortured, by insisting on going it almost alone in Iraq, by telling the international community to shove it, by declaring a war for an idee fixe -- this fierce obsession with Hussein goes back a long way -- the United States has made itself reviled in much of the world.

Isn't it time we walked away from this madness? We can't vote Bush out of office, but we can cripple him by getting at least one Constitutional check back in place. That's why a Democratic victory in the Congressional elections is so important in November.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline appears in pulpits and then presses congregations for cash

By Diane Silver

The state's top law enforcement official apparently thinks the way to re-election is to bring the church as close to the state as possible, according to a memo leaked from Attorney General Phill Kline's campaign.

Reported this morning by Scott Rothschild of the Lawrence Journal-World, the memo was verified as authentic by Kline's campaign. The memo details the Republican's plan to use churches as a fund-raising platforms.

The Journal-World reported:

Kline is a frequent visitor to Kansas churches, often appearing as guest preacher. But the memo makes clear Kline is out to spread more than the Christian message when he takes the pulpit. And he wants to hit as many churches as possible.
...

(Sherriene Jones, a spokeswoman for the Kline campaign) said none of the fundraising occurred during actual church services, but at later receptions. Under federal tax laws, churches must maintain arm's length from political candidates or risk losing their tax-free status.

The memo names anti-gay pastors Terry Fox and Joe Wright as targets of Kline's fund-raising efforts.

All of this shows why the race for attorney general should be watched closely by progressives and queer Kansans. The campaign between Kline and Democrat Paul Morrison, in many ways, is a surrogate battle between the Religious Right and the moderate heart of Kansas.