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[Editor’s Note: Mark Neumann shared this letter he recently got published in The La Crosse Tribune. He read it at a rally of support for immigrant families in LaCrosse last weekend. I aksed him to share it with Commoner Call readers. — Mark L. Taylor] On Father’s Day, as Americans across our land took a moment to celebrate our appreciation for fathers, I was dismayed beyond words by my government’s treatment of children at our southern border. What can possibly strike deeper in a father’s fiber than a man’s drive to seek security and protection for his family, for his…

  By Zach Carter The HuffPost (6/29/18) n his brief concurring opinion to Trump v. Hawaii, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy seemed to be pleading with posterity. Yes, it was true that Kennedy, long understood to be a moderate swing vote on the court, was voting to uphold President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban. But he did not want the world to see him as a bigot, a racist or an ally of international fascism. “There are numerous instances in which the statements and actions of Government officials are not subject to judicial scrutiny or action,” Kennedy wrote. “That does…

  Open Source / WBUR (6/28/18) The shock of migrant kids-in-cages on our border with Mexico is surfacing tough questions if you’re willing to look back at our history and ahead to an emerging world disorder. The issues run deep: why borders in the first place?  Borders that our investment money and military power fly over anyway, often to extract the resources of poor countries and make sure the poor people stay put? Why is citizenship in country X an inherited privilege that can’t be distributed, in the country a burden that can’t be escaped?  When finance and Facebook, food,…

  CREDO Action (6/30/18) We already knew that AT&T is in bed with the NSA and its domestic spying program.1,2 But this week, an investigative report revealed the eight cities where AT&T hosts “wiretap rooms” for the NSA to skim our data as it passes through their networking equipment.3 In each of these eight locations, AT&T provides the NSA with access to a special facility designed to transport vast quantities of our internet traffic. Even if you are not an AT&T customer, these facilities may sometimes transport your emails, phone calls and online chats. Violation of privacy rights affects all, not just…

  By Caroline Chen ProPublica (6/26/18) Nuplazid, a drug for hallucinations and delusions associated with Parkinson’s disease, failed two clinical trials. In a third trial, under a revised standard for measuring its effect, it showed minimal benefit. Overall, more patients died or had serious side effects on Nuplazid than after receiving no treatment. Patients on Uloric, a gout drug, suffered more heart attacks, strokes and heart failure in two out of three trials than did their counterparts on standard or no medication. Nevertheless, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved both of these drugs — with a deadly aftermath. Uloric’s…

Let’s Get Together For Alicia’s 50th Birth Celebration & Celebrate Like It’s 1968 Then Send Her To The State Capitol To Work For Us In 2018! This Saturday, June 30 at the Rooted Spoon /219 South Main / Viroqua 7-10 p.m. Light snacks and cash bar.   (Authorized and paid for by Mark L. Taylor, Genoa, WI and not a campaign committee.)

A little harsh truth… By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams (6/22/18) Noted consumer advocate and author Ralph Nader on Friday offered a sharp retort to Laura Bush and Michelle Obama in response to the former first ladies levied criticism at the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policy that separated immigrant children from their families. “Would be nice if Laura Bush and Michelle Obama had expressed similar heartfelt concern for the tens of thousands of children killed or seriously maimed by the wars of their husbands in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere,” he tweeted. As it’s signed “-R,” it was written by Nader himself, rather than his…

  By Jonathan Blitzer The New Yorker (6/18/18) A few days ago, Emily Kephart, a program coördinator at an immigrant-rights group called Kids in Need of Defense, set out to try to find a six-year-old Guatemalan girl who had been separated from her father after arriving in the United States, in May. The pair had been split up as a consequence of the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy at the border, which calls for the criminal prosecution of all migrants, including asylum seekers, who cross the border without turning themselves in to officials at so-called ports of entry. Now the father was in…