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Lindsay Lohan (originally aired May 21, 2005)
- Hardball: Newsweek, Saddam Hussein photos
- The Divertor: deficit, gas prices
- Weekend Update: same-sex marriage anniversary, energy bill, Vicente Fox, "The Case of the Female Orgasm," Mary Kay Letourneau
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| > | * Hardball. A recent Newsweek story and the publication of photos of Saddam Hussein have raised questions about the media, about the United States' treatment of prisoners, and about whether such incidents will galvanize anti-U.S. sentiment.
Newsweek has retracted a story from its May 9 issue in which it was reported that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Koran on toilets and at least once "flushed a holy book down the toilet." Subsequent riots in Afghanistan have been attributed to this report. Newsweek editor-in-chief Richard Smith wrote in the May 30 issue that Newsweek no longer stands by its story given the Pentagon's denials and its original source's "changing position on the allegation." According to Smith, reporter Michael Isikoff "relied on a well-placed and historically reliable government source," and Newsweek provided the entire story to a senior Defense Department official who disputed one part of the story but not the part of the charge of abusing the Koran. In the wake of the retraction, Newsweek has announced that it will change its policy towards using anonymous sources.
As of March 2005, there were about 540 detainees from 40 countries at Guantanamo Bay, where the United States has been holding detainees since late 2001. In a March 29, 2005 update (on-line here), the ICRC noted that many detainees have been held for more than two and a half years without being charged with a crime, and that it believes that "uncertainty about their fate has been a contributing factor to the mental and emotional health problems among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay observed by [the ICRC's] delegates and reported by other sources." The ICRC also noted that its observations regarding "certain aspects of the conditions of detention and treatment of detainees" at Guantanamo and another facility "have not yet been adequately addressed."
Newsweek reported in its May 30 issue that the ICRC had provided the Pentagon with reports about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling copies of the Koran in 2002 and 2003. A Defense Department spokesman reportedly responded that such allegations could not be substantiated.
The British Sun and the New York Post, two tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch, published photographs of a disrobed Saddam Hussein on May 20. The U.S. government condemned the publication of the photographs and suggested that they may have violated Geneva Convention provisions for the treatment of prisoners. Hussein was captured by US forces in December 2003 and was transferred to Iraqi control in June 2004 for eventual trial.
When asked on May 20 whether such stories would inflame anti-U.S. sentiment, President George W. Bush said that he did not think so. "I don't think a photo inspires murderers. I think they're inspired by an ideology that is so barbaric and backwards that it's hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how they think," he said (transcript on-line here).
| | > | * TV Funhouse: The Divertor. The federal government has been running budget deficits for several years, and President George W. Bush's budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning in October 2005 (FY 2006) called for $2.57 trillion in spending that would result in a $390 billion deficit, roughly 3.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. However, the deficit is likely to grow even more because of ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of the $2.57 trillion budget proposed on February 7, 2005, Bush only has discretion over a third of it; most of the annual budget goes to mandatory programs such as Social Security. Of the $840 billion over which Bush has discretion, he allotted about half to defense spending. The budget calls for $448 billion for national defense, $545 billion for Social Security, $346 billion for Medicare, and $211 billion in net interest payments on the federal debt.
U.S. retail gasoline prices (info on-line here) have increased dramatically in recent years, with retail gasoline prices increasing from about $1.00 a gallon in January 2002 to $2.20 in April 2005. Prices were relatively stable in the early and mid 1990s, but have fluctuated more since 1999. Prices are not record-highs when inflation is taken into account; gasoline in the 1970s cost around $3 per gallon when adjusted.
| | > | * Weekend Update: Same-Sex Marriage. Since May 16, 2004, Massachusetts law permits same-sex couples to be married. The change resulted from a November 2003 ruling by the state's highest court that denying same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples would violate that state's constitution and a subsequent February 2004 ruling that same-sex couples are entitled to "marriages," rather than just "civil unions" as have been allowed in Vermont since 2000.
In the wake of the Massachusetts decisions, President George W. Bush called for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as an institution only between a man and a woman; this measure did not get sufficient support in the Senate in July 2004 to advance. Still, voters in 11 states (Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah) approved measures in November 2004 amending their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage either by defining marriage as between a man and a woman or by going further and stating that legal equivalents such as civil unions may not be recognized.
| | > | * Weekend Update: Energy Bill. President George W. Bush has long promoted passage of an energy bill that might, among other things, allow for possible drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Bush promoted such legislation on May 16 in an appearance at the Virginia BioDiesel Refinery in West Point, Virginia, where he hailed that facility's use of soybean oil to produce biodiesel fuel and said such alternative fuel sources were a part of the solution to the United States' energy problems (transcript on-line here). Biodiesel fuel currently represents a very small part of the fuel used for transportation in the United States; it represented 0.016 percent of the transportation fuels used in 2001, compared to gasoline, which represented 77 percent (data on-line here.
The House of Representatives recently voted to allow oil-drilling in ANWR as part of a broader energy bill, but Senate Democrats plan to oppose the measure. A 1998 geological study by the U.S. Geological Survey of the Interior Department (on-line here) estimated that a 1.5 million acre coastal plain (known as the "1002 Area") within ANWR contains somewhere between 5.7 and 10.6 billion barrels of oil, of which about 75 percent is thought to be extractable after about seven to ten years of development. President Bill Clinton vetoed a 1995 budget resolution that would have allowed drilling in the 1002 Area.
| | > | * Weekend Update: Fox Comments. Mexico President Vicente Fox has been criticized by some for comments he reportedly made on May 13 that Mexicans were "doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States." Fox reportedly made the comments in the context of criticizing U.S. efforts to restrict or penalize illegal immigrants. Fox met with Rev. Jesse Jackson privately about the comment on May 18 and said on Jackson's May 22 radio program that he regretted his comments and defended his commitment to minorities. Fox was scheduled to meet with Rev. Al Sharpton on May 23.
| | > | * Weekend Update: Female Orgasm. Indiana University Professor Elisabeth A. Lloyd argues in her new book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," that the female orgasm has no evolutionary function and that it exists as a "byproduct of embryological development," similar to how female nipples serve a function but male ones do not. Source: Dinita Smith, A Critic Takes on the Logic of Female Orgasm, The New York Times, May 17, 2005.
| | > | * Weekend Update: Mary Kay Letourneau. Former teacher Mary Kay Letourneau served more than seven years in prison on statutory rape charges for a sexual relationship with a student that began when she was 34 and he was 12. She reportedly married that student, Vili Fualaau, on May 20.
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