We only have a couple of weeks left in this legislative session and rather than attempting to impress voters with a long record of accomplishment, the strategy of the Senate leadership seems to be to avoid doing much of anything. That said, it is an Albany tradition to always seem to save most of the legislative work – for better or for worse – for the last few days, so I haven't completely given up hope that we can still get some important legislation passed.

Before the session began, I outlined a number of key priorities – issues that I hoped the pressure of a hotly contested election season might prompt action on – one of which was the Healthy Teens Act (S1342). This year the bill passed the Assembly on March 17 by a vote of 130 to 14, and passed the Senate Health Committee May 20 by a vote of 13-4. This is the farthest the Healthy Teens Act has ever come in the legislative process.  read more »

The worst part of the whole "Spitzer Can't Keep it in His Pants" story is not that Spitzer slept with a prostitute, or that he paid huge sums of money for it, or that he got caught, or that his actions may for now derail reform in New York State. The worst part is the hypocritical, self-rightous chest thumping that Republican politicians and their media friends are engaging in.

Somehow, normal sex sets the right wing fanatics off in a fit of hysteria that would give Freud wet dreams. But if one of their own commits pedophilia, what do you hear from these people? Nothing! They cover it up if they can and circle the wagons if they can't. Let's keep this whole thing in perspective. Bill Clinton got a blow job, an act of consensual sex between adults, and the Republicans demanded impeachment. Eliot Spitzer hired an expensive sex worker and the Republicans are threatening impeachment. But a whole slew of Republicans on all levels of government engage in pedophilia and you hear nary a peep from the Republican noise machine. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?  read more »

I always take with a grain of salt studies involving latinos in the United States. I always feel the frame of reference in a lot of polls is not based on the diverse cultural dynamics of US latinos. When I read polls focused on Latinos, they strike me as being based on assumptions of cultural and political assimilation made by both the pollsters and the media outlets reporting on the data finding.

The Associated Press is one of those media outlets making tons of assumptions about minority politics in the US. Check out their latest crapping on minority in this article reprinted by Newsday.

This is what they've republished :

The study, which was based on a 2005 survey of teens in grades 9 though 12, drew no conclusions as to why New York's teen girls were less likely to be on the pill than girls elsewhere, but the data suggested that cultural differences might play a role in some birth control choices.

Teen girls in the city's poor, predominantly Hispanic South Bronx neighborhood were nearly twice as likely to have had recent unprotected sex as girls nationwide. Black teenage girls in New York, on the other hand, were no more or less likely to have used birth control during their last sexual encounters than the average U.S. teenage girl.

I immediately went into a rage because there is no social, cultural or political context whatsoever to the data findings --and the AP doesn't care a bit to question those findings. On the contrary, they've taken the NYC Health Department's press release and highlighted all the negative aspects (percentages of teen pregnancy, unprotected sex) while downplaying the positives (69% teens used condoms).

Yet the biggest omission is the only direct statement by NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden that appears on the report.

It's as if at the last minute the abstinence-only police demanded to put in the obligatory piece of propaganda that "compassionate conservatism" has imposed on this country's health and education systems.

This is what appeared on the report :  read more »

I, Liza Michelle Sabater-Tirado, am the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, Dannielynn.

It was a freak accident of telepathic autogenesis that made me the father of Anna's daugher. Seriously. Since the father of my children doesn't want more kids, I was using all my mental abilities to immaculately conceive the baby girl I want so much. Unfortunately my powers got transferred to Anna Nicole.  read more »

I all seemed so perfect! How could it possibly go wrong? You get Bernie Kerik's lover, Judith Regan, to edit a thinly veiled tell all book by OJ Simpson and get Rupert Murdoch and Fox to market it to sleaze crazed Americans. Perfect!

You had the tough Bernie Kerik...the sleazy Judith Regan...and of course you had Rupert Murdoch trying to create a new wave of OJ hysteria for his own profit. Clearly it is right-wing Republican family values at it's best, right?

But somehow, this went too far for most Americans...and even for anti-Semitic, lying, splotchy old Bill O'Reilly. There was a mini rebellion at Fox that led to Murdoch backing out, leaving Regan high and dry to once again look like the sleazy one. (And for those who don't know about it, Judith Regan is the woman Bernie Kerik had a year-long affair with, kicking Ground Zero workers out of an apartment overlooking Ground Zero so they would have a place to meet).

So what does Regan do? She takes the Mel Gibson/Saudi Arabia defense: Blame the Jews.

Now, at the risk of fueling her paranoia, since I am Jewish, I just want to say that blaming a "Jewish Cabal" for the collapse of the Kerik-Regan-Murdoch-Simpson Sleaze Scheme and for Regan's getting fired from Harper Collins is just plain insane. At least Mel Gibson had the decency to admit he was drunk and stupid when he blamed Jews for his getting arrested. Regan is just plain nuts and yet this is the woman Kerik and Murdoch loved so much.  read more »