Discovery finally takes off last night

From the Los Angeles Times...

Cape Canaveral, Fla. -- Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven rocketed into orbit Sunday evening, setting off on a mission cut short by launch delays that dragged on for more than a month.

To the moon, Alice. TO THE MOON.

Discovery rose from its seaside pad at 7:43 p.m. EDT just as the sun was setting. As the shuttle sped away from Kennedy Space Center like a brilliant star, part of the launch plume glowed a brilliant mix of pink, peach and gold. Clear skies allowed the shuttle to be visible for several minutes.

A hydrogen leak prevented Discovery from lifting off Wednesday. Before that, the shuttle was grounded for weeks in February as NASA ran tests to determine whether newly installed valves would cause serious damage if they broke during liftoff. Launch pad repairs took care of the leak.

Commander Lee Archambault and his crew, which includes two former schoolteachers, should reach the International Space Station on Tuesday.

Correction: To the International Space Station, Alice. TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION. It just doesn't have the same ring.

Opposition leader: Pakistan's security has collapsed

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — The Sri Lankan cricket team ambush shows the security system has collapsed in Pakistan since the pro-Western government took office a year ago, a leading opposition politician charged Thursday.

Huh?

The fallout from Tuesday's attack is adding to political problems facing the shaky government just as Washington wants it to stay focused on the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Under intense pressure to show progress in the investigation, authorities claimed to have identified the heavily armed terrorists and were questioning several people, but appeared to have made no major arrests. The gunmen escaped into the teeming city of Lahore following the ambush.

The country's cricket chief, meanwhile, dismissed as "totally fabricated" claims by British referee Chris Broad that police abandoned him and other match officials during the ambush by between 12 and 14 gunmen close to a stadium in Lahore in eastern Punjab province.

With a punishing economic slowdown and a looming political showdown on the horizon, some commentators have taken the brazen assault as fresh evidence the nuclear-armed nation is on a path to becoming a failed state.

Opposition parties and other critics used outrage over the ambush as ammunition against the government.

"The security system in Pakistan under this regime has collapsed because this government is too busy doing other things, they are too busy in their quest for power," opposition politician Mushahid Hussain told a televised news conference.

Oh. Well, you do know bin Laden is in Pakistan, right?

Emerson's gay rights activists speak out

Today, Emerson freshman Adriana Guida serves as GLBT Commissioner in student government. The openly gay Writing, Literature, and Publishing major is proud to be going to what the Princeton Review calls the most gay-friendly school in the United States. She also enjoys the contrast between Emerson and her more conservative hometown of Tewksbury, MA.

“When I was growing up and when I was in high school,” said the member of EAGLE - Emerson's Alliance for Gays, Lesbians, and Everyone, “there wasn’t any sort of support for gay rights. Not that anyone was actively homophobic, but nobody was really part of the movement.”

That's can't be said of the active movement for gay rights on this campus.

Fellow freshman Maura Lyons has also been an outspoken gay rights advocate for the last few years, joining her school’s Gay Straight Alliance and taking part in the National Day of Silence for her last few years at Wakefield High School. When assigned a rhetorical analysis in a speech class last semester, she gave a speech praising the rhetoric of gay rights activist Urvashi Vaid. A native of Wakefield, MA, she also finds more tolerance for alternative lifestyles here at Emerson.

“There’s definitely more intolerance there than around here and that’s partly due to intolerance and stereotypes,” she said when contrasting Wakefield and Emerson.

The many gay rights supporters at this school have recently scored a few victories, one being the Student Government Association’s approval of a gender-neutral housing resolution.

“It’s not a matter of whether we want it or if we should have it,” Guida said.

“It’s really more a matter of how to organize it now, the logistics,” Guida said, “and hopefully we’ll see it by 2010, 2011.”

Guida also praised Sean Penn’s victory for his performance as California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, at the Oscars on Sunday. Many observers and gay advocates interpreted the win as the Academy’s declaration of support for gay rights.

“It’s a validation,” Guida remarked.

Guida felt the Academy was saying, “Like, ‘okay, yes, this is a valid movie, you guys have a valid point, and this is a thing you can get recognized for just by its subject matter.’”

The victory of “Milk” is also a win for the opponents of Prop 8, which was passed 51-49 in November. The controversial law changed California's state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Prop 8’s opposition hopes to get the new law reversed, but as Guida said, “Now we have to work backwards because now it’s passed. We have to either get it un-passed or we have to prove that it’s an unconstitutional proposition, and that’s going to be a long court battle in itself.”

Local gay rights supporters are also speaking out off campus. They will be protesting an upcoming display of intolerance in the suburb of Reading. On March 13 Reading will stage “The Laramie Project”, a play based on Matthew Shepard, a gay man killed in a hate crime, and as they have with previous productions, the Westboro Baptist Church plans to travel to Reading and protest the production. Local students are planning a counter-protest against the church.

“You have the right to voice your opinion,” Lyons said of the controversial church. “We’re not telling you ‘you can’t’, but I feel like what they do is just stomping on people, and basically…it’s a group of people who just hate. Religion should be about loving your God, God loving you, and that’s how the relationship should go, at least that’s how I feel anyway, and if your God is telling you to hate people, why would you follow that?”

US to send envoys to Syria

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday the Obama administration would this week send two senior U.S. officials to Damascus to work on bilateral ties, in a further sign of thawing U.S.-Syria relations.

Syria, huh?

"We're going to dispatch a representative of the State Department, a representative of the White House, to explore with Syria some of these bilateral issues," Clinton said, announcing another step that could help Damascus improve its standing in the West after years of tensions.

"We have no way to predict what the future with our relations concerning Syria might be," she told a news conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

U.S. officials said the two emissaries would be Jeffrey Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon and now acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Dan Shapiro of the White House's National Security Council.

The administration of President Barack Obama has been reviewing U.S. policy toward Syria, including whether to return an ambassador to Damascus, a move the former Bush administration had been considering in the final months in office.

The move also indicates a wish to lessen Iran's influence over Syria as part of broader regional peace plans and follows up on a campaign promise by Obama to talk to U.S. enemies rather than isolate them.

Oh. Iran. That's what this is about.

Democrats optimistic on health care summit

From TIME...

As President Barack Obama prepares to convene a health-care summit at the White House later this week, Administration officials are signaling that he intends to pursue a very different strategy for getting reform passed from the one used by his Democratic predecessor in office. Unlike the failed effort of 1994, when Bill and Hillary Clinton presented Congress with a detailed blueprint for reform — and never saw a bill reach the floor of either the House or Senate — Obama is outlining broad principles, with a bottom line of universal coverage, and leaving it up to lawmakers to fashion a plan for meeting them.

What this means is that the next few months will see a wide range of options under consideration, including ideas that go well beyond the health-care plan Obama proposed in his campaign, which centered on effort to expand coverage by requiring employers to provide health insurance to their workers. "Everything has got to be on the table — everything," says Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, who will be one of the key figures leading the effort on Capitol Hill. (See who's who in Obama's White House.)

At a breakfast with reporters on Tuesday morning, Baucus predicted that his committee could have legislation on the Senate floor as early as June, adding, "The conversation is going great guns." Among the ideas the six-term Montana Senator said he is willing to consider is one that has significant support among Republicans: changing the tax treatment of employer-provided health benefits, so that they might not be fully deductible for companies that provide them, and would be treated as income for the workers who receive them. Health-care experts say this would have the effect of encouraging more people to buy their insurance individually, rather than getting it where they work. This approach has been criticized by many Democrats — including Obama, when John McCain embraced a version of it during the election campaign — who contend that relying on the individual market would put health-care consumers at a disadvantage to big insurance companies.

But one proposal apparently not on his table is the dream of many liberals — a government-run system known as single-payer.

I'm split on Obama's health care stance just as I am on his economic policy. "Sicko" made a great argument for universal health care, but there are also arguments out there for keeping the system we have, or for other alternatives.

Darfur update

From TIME...

If the prognosticators are correct, the International Criminal Court will issue its first arrest warrant for a sitting head of state on Wednesday afternoon. That's when the court will announce whether Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir ought to be brought to trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for his alleged role in orchestrating the Darfur conflict. Regardless of what one makes of the idea of international justice, the arrest warrant, if it comes, will be a historic move that many human rights experts believe will further erode that sense of impunity shared by dictators the world over.

As a result, it is perhaps no surprise that Sudanese officials have become more bellicose about the prospect of an arrest warrant.

Clinton goes to Israel, promises support

From The Christian Science Monitor...

JERUSALEM - Embarking on her first trip to the region as secretary of State, Hillary Clinton pledged that the Obama administration will unshakably support Israel's security and vigorously pursue the creation of a Palestinian state.

I'm sure the administration will do just that...once it takes care of its priorities.