Alcohol, the brain and murder

By Ellen Ratner
Last Thursday's Science Times section of the New York Times presented stunning evidence that, if acted upon, will put a cork in teen drinking and hopefully change the way we think about brains.

The article was based on a recent study that proves what anyone who has shared living space with a teenager knows all too well—teenagers are, in a word, different. They are even different when it comes to how alcohol affects their brains. Many parents have a love/hate relationship with alcohol. They love it, but they hate for their kids to love it. Many parents take a ''do as I say, not as I do'' approach. Parents lose sleep waiting for their offspring to make it home safely. School health and driver education classes are famous for their ''scare'' movies that show slow reaction times and the increase in accidents and fatalities as a result of driving while intoxicated. But only recently has there been the technology to show exactly what drinking (and other drugs) can do to the young brain.




The Science Times article summarizes the body of research. The Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine shows 47% of teens that begin drinking before the age of fourteen become alcohol dependent and that verbal and non-verbal learning and memory are affected ... and not in a good way. The data on brain damage is most startling. Dr. Scott Swatzwelder of Duke University found there was damage to the brain of adolescent drinkers in the frontal areas of the brain. That's the part of the brain that is crucial for controlling impulses and thinking through the consequences of intended actions. This may help explain some teen ''alien-like'' behavior.

For those of you who frequently read my weekly column, you may be a bit confused right now. After all, my motto is, ''Liberal and Proud,'' which some believe is code for ''live and let live,'' no matter the age.

I don't want to disappoint.

This body of evidence is another compelling reason to ban the death penalty. While I don't believe the death penalty is a liberal or conservative issue – it is, in a word, a moral issue; my beloved Science Times has once again, illuminated what most of us know about brains. They are different, and these differences can be a handicap, a horrible handicap.

The brain chemistry and anatomy of most of those who commit murders is different, very different. Take for example, Karla Faye Tucker. The facts of her early life were cited as mitigating circumstances. She began using drugs when she was eight years old. Her mother was a drug addict and prostitute. Karla Faye Tucker was encouraged into prostitution when she was fourteen and given drugs and alcohol to encourage her entry into street life. She had been on a three-day drug/alcohol high when she took part in two murders.

Karla Faye Tucker was 23 years old when she committed the murders, and there was never any sustained period in her life, since she became a teenager, when she was not on drugs. Her first period of sobriety was in prison when she read the Bible, attended Alcoholics Anonymous and became a born-again Christian. Her brain had never been given a chance.

These were mitigating circumstances, and George W. Bush, the ''compassionate conservative,'' knew all this when he decided to let her execution go through. He also knew first hand about alcohol's numbing effect on judgment given his charge for driving while intoxicated in the state of Maine.

The Supreme Court has made it unconstitutional to execute anyone who is mentally retarded or under the age of 18 when they commit a crime. What about those who are chronologically an ''adult,'' but whose brains are those of a young adolescent?

Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith Wiley's, ''Ghosts From The Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence,'' was published seven years before the current brain research. Yet, it is a compelling study of murder and the brains of those who commit murder. The backgrounds of those in prison for murder are as moving as those of Karla Faye Tucker.

I asked the newly elected President Bush in May of 2001 whether he would be willing to put money in the National Institute of Health's budget to study violence and the brain. He seemed genuinely surprised that it was not already in the budget.

The state-sponsored murder of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas, under then-Gov. Bush, has always haunted me. She, along with Christian supporters who had seen her jailhouse transformation, pleaded for her life. Then-Gov. Bush laughed about her statement, ''Please don't kill me.'' Sister Helen Prejeen, commenting on the night of Karla Faye Tucker's execution said about Gov. George Bush: ''A hammer, when presented with a nail, knows only one thing.'' We now know for sure a brain under the influence of alcohol has as little choice as that hammer. Karla Faye Tucker's brain had no choice or chance at the time of the murders, George W. Bush's brain did.

'Desecration' of the American worker

By Ellen Ratner
This Fourth of July, the 230th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is the appropriate time to examine exactly what is meant by the flag desecration amendment that was recently narrowly voted down by the U.S. Senate.



The proposed amendment stated, "The Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." If it had passed, it would be well on its way to being the 28th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Dictionary.com says that the word desecration means "blasphemous behavior, the act of depriving something of its sacred character."

I am against the flag amendment. I think it is a waste of time, impinges on free speech and would take up the Supreme Court's valuable time, as they would need to endlessly debate what would constitute "desecration." Is wearing a flag bikini "desecration?" I suppose it would depend on who was wearing it. The flag bikini, along with all of the other flag cups, plates, napkins, toilet paper and yes, even flag contact lenses, (seen at Rodger Hedgecock's, "Hold Their Feet to the Fire," anti-immigration Radio Row), would be subject to banning by the Flag Desecration Police.

The United States Flag Code states that, "No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform . . . should not be embroidered on articles such as cushions or handkerchiefs." Would any breach of flag etiquette be considered a desecration? The Supremes would have to decide.

Passing a symbolic amendment to protect a symbol of a nation's character is just a smoke screen for a government that has allowed the nation's livelihood to be desecrated. The New Yorker magazine pointed out an ironic twist to the recent flag political football in its cover illustration. Stereotypical Chinese workers are intently sewing American flags as though they are working against the clock. Demand is high for their labor, as the Internet is filled with Chinese import companies willing to make flags for Americans in any size and quantity wanted. Somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of United States flags are made in China (the statistics vary). This means that considerable numbers of Old Glory are made in sweatshop conditions in China.

Is that a desecration? You bet. To the members of Congress who would like to ignore free speech, as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, having a flag sewn in China would deprive the flag of its scared character. Flag imports cost the United States 5.5 million dollars last year, and that doesn't include all the cups, napkins, plates, ties, scarves and other items. Add to that the $200 million of imported Chinese fireworks and you have a real Chinese-made Fourth of July.

So why not make it an amendment to make sure all flags and related items are manufactured in the United States? With a negative "balance" of trade being a staggering $200 billion, we are seeing American manufacturing being burned up a lot faster than flags.

We could use the 5.5 million that we buy in wholesale flags to restore some of the 12 million in counterterrorism money to the cities; we could fund many college tuitions with the amount of fireworks we buy from China. We could fund all of the Katrina costs with the $200 billion trade deficit to China.

So, we should name the true subject of desecration. The American economy has been desecrated by moving manufacturing to China, thereby desecrating the American worker. Let's add an amendment to the Constitution that really addresses the burning here, the burning of the hope of the American worker.

Rove creates the Democratic Straw Men

By Ellen Ratner
Bush advisor Karl Rove's brilliant doll-making abilities were on display this week as Congress helped him build the latest version of the Democratic Party Straw Man Model Scarecrow for this November's congressional elections. Wikipedia defines a straw man as ''a dummy in the shape of a human created by stuffing straw into clothes. Straw men are used as scarecrows, combat-training targets, effigies to be burned, and as rodeo dummies to distract bulls.'' In Rove's politics, Democrats are the rodeo dummies and voters are the distracted bulls.



I'm referring to this week's House vote, engineered by the Republicans, that sought to force Democrats to approve a nonbinding resolution that declared that ''an arbitrary date for the withdrawal of or redeployment'' of U.S. troops from Iraq is against our country's interest. Earlier, the U.S. Senate opposed withdrawing troops from Iraq and now the House followed suit, predictably along party lines, 256 mostly Rove Republicans voting to approve the resolution and 153 mostly Democrats voting to oppose.

My right-wing friends might say that such a vote seems straight forward enough — so what's the problem?

Here's the problem: The vote was a rank manipulation by Republicans to stifle legitimate criticism of a war that's been badly managed, and in the process create a phony issue (hence, the straw man) to cast the Democrats as — what are the current right-wing phrases? — ''cut and run,'' or ''bug-out'' liberals, a party that, in one Republican's words is ''there for the first bullet but not for the last'' — as if dodging fire was somehow stupid.

It also proves the great Dr. Johnson's observation that ''Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'' For years, Republicans have assured the country — I hear it every day on the radio — that criticizing the Iraq war is in the best traditions of political dissent (Republicans ought to know, there are plenty of them who oppose the war and have opposed it) and makes for a stronger war effort. Think of the U.S. lives saved when public pressure was put on the Pentagon to supply better armored vehicles and more Kevlar vests. Or how Democratic doubters lit a fire under the feckless Bush administration and made the latter force the Iraqis to finally create a civilian government.

Now, with this phony resolution, Republicans not only seek to stifle dissent, they are trying to re-run the election of Joe McCarthy to the Senate — only this time, critics aren't communists, they're first cousins of Al-Zarqawi. In Republican propaganda, all that's missing is some B-roll of Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, sighting an anti-aircraft gun ala Jane Fonda in Hanoi, circa 1968. If the Democrats are sometimes accused of still living in the '60s, it's the Republicans who are doing their level best to keep them there.

Bush received some good publicity recently; a new government has been formed in Baghdad; the monster Zarqawi was killed and Karl Rove will not be indicted. It's been just enough good news to push off the front page the fact that U.S. deaths reached the awful benchmark of 2,500 killed and that Iraqi deaths are often measured in batches of 50 or more per day, usually dispatched by random car bombs. While the media celebrated Bush's secret trip to Iraq to confer with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, fewer noted that three years after conquering the country, the president was forced to sneak in during the dead of night and so distrusted the new government on whose fortunes he's spent considerable American blood and treasure, that the Prime Minister got exactly five minutes notice that Bush would pay him a visit.

But to criticize the war is supposed to be un-American, which, according to Rove's logic, makes the over 60% of Americans with serious questions about the war somehow un-American. You wouldn't think that a proposition so stupid could be labeled ''brilliant,'' but it has been because it is. Rove has helped recast the Democrats as ''cut and run'' when in fact, the truth is the opposite. Only a tiny minority of the party (including me) has proposed a withdrawal of some type or another. Most Democrats want to stay the course, but stay it better, smarter, and wiser. Instead, Rove's strategy offers more of the same, a failed war supported by misinformed voters and Democratic politicians cowed by his cynical tactics and too frightened to raise their voices in opposition.

It's really too bad, not just for us, but for the hundreds of young Americans and thousands of Iraqis who are destined to die in the months and years ahead.

Same-sex marriage and Emperor Bush

By Ellen Ratner
Given the events of last week, if I were a conservative, I'd be feeling mighty insulted by President Bush. After all, the right has supported Bush through thick and thin. They have strained every nerve in standing behind his Iraq disaster, even after no WMDs were found and Rumsfeld's obviously incompetent all brain and no muscle strategy left the country in chaos; conservatives closed their eyes to this administration's massive government spending, the opposition to which once defined the main difference between themselves and liberals.




Then came the immigration issue, and suddenly, the scales fell from conservatives' eyes. Emperor Bush appeared to be wearing no clothes. His ''path to citizenship'' proposal was seen as an amnesty dressed up in empty patriotic rhetoric designed to trick his right-wing base into believing it was something else. Within hours, his tough talk about high-tech border security was exploded for the myth it was. Moreover, Bush was on the phone with Mexican President Vicente Fox telling him the truth while at the same time the president's speechwriters were concocting soothing lies to tell the public during his televised speech to the nation several weeks ago. And what was that truth? That President Bush might as well be president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, because his entire immigration policy is a sop to those businesses needing cheap, exploitable labor. That his ''temporary guest-worker program'' is a crime against American workers whose only fault was to insist on wages that included those benefits necessary to survive, such as health insurance. That the president, after hyping the public for years about national security and the flag, in fact could care less about sovereignty issues such as border security.

To many conservatives, Bush's indifference about this last issue exposes his entire war on terror as a fraud, much like a home security company that sells expensive alarms but then suggests that the back door be kept wide open.

And then came last week, the crowning insult – Bush and Rove, having spit on their conservative base, looked around and probably had a conversation that resembled the following: ''Looks like our base woke up about immigration, and our poll numbers continue to skid. We have to distract them. After all, there are elections in '06, and if churches don't turn out those Bible thumpers and morons to the polls, the Democrats might take the House and/or Senate and we might be looking at impeachment proceedings. Why not fire 'em up about gay marriage? Maybe we can't win the war, can't control spending, and can't secure the borders – but we sure can bait 'em about this red-meat issue! Grrrrr!''

And so the president, doubtless on advice from pollsters, levied his final insult to his own base – ''You're so stupid,'' he said in effect to his (former) right-wing friends, ''that I can derail your serious concerns with some nonsense about marriage.''

It was the ultimate declaration of Bush's political weakness. This president is on his petard, hoisted so high by his incompetence and dishonesty that even his base now sees him for what he is. This week's move against gay marriage was such a transparent move to shore up his base by using the ultimate red-herring issue – gay marriage, a fact in Massachusetts and an issue that is ultimately, pro or con, being decided at the state level. I predict Bush's attempt to exploit this issue will become yet one more failure in a long list of failures by this administration.

One doesn't have to look too far to understand why. Bush has more contempt for conservatives than most liberals. The truth is the right-wingers I know are not ''Bible thumpers'' or ''morons.'' They're mostly thoughtful people with whom I may happen to disagree but whose stand on issues is as principled as that of any liberal. And the issue of gay marriage – something I support – will ultimately be decided in the hearts of each citizen and at the state level, not by ''too smart by half'' politicians from the White House Rose Garden.

A leftist's defense of war

By Ellen Ratner
Today is Memorial Day, once called Decoration Day and set aside after the Civil War as the occasion to place flowers and other remembrances on the graves of those who died during that conflict. Since that time, it has been a day set aside for such remembrances of both the living and the dead of all American wars. On this Memorial Day, with conflicts continuing to threaten American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems like an appropriate occasion for this liberal to honor our veterans, and in the process, shed some light on what being ''anti-war'' is – or should be – about.




First, it is not anti-soldier, sailor, or airman or airwoman. Those who volunteer, or in the past, who have been conscripted to serve this country, deserve the highest respect, as well as unlimited public support in terms of both morale and supplies. Thus, to be anti-war is not to be anti-military.

Second, to be anti-war is not to oppose all wars, at all times. Most folks, like myself, who oppose Bush's ill-considered invasion and disastrous occupation of Iraq, evaluate their wars one at a time. Our Revolution eventually planted a democracy on our shores whose existence has been – and still might be – the beacon of the world. The War of 1812 expelled British invaders, the Civil War ended the monstrosity of slavery, and World War II finished the specter of worldwide fascism. Likewise, our overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after it refused to turn over or evict Osama bin Laden began as justified.

However, one can object to the 1898 war against Spain and our entry into World War I as unnecessary, with the former conflict being little more than rank U.S. imperialism. One can also object to Vietnam as wasteful of life and treasure in the service of a flawed theory of the militarized containment of Communism everywhere, all the time. One can also object to the overdone action against Panama to arrest Noriega and the idiotic, trumped-up ''war'' against Grenada, the main purpose of which seemed to have been to deflect public disgust with an incompetent deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon that resulted in the deaths of over 200 men. One can – and I do – object to U.S. entry in these wars as foolish and myopic, and one can do it without being any less patriotic than those who stupidly cheer on the Bush administration's stupidity; which, because of some of the worst occupation policies in world history, has resulted in the unnecessary deaths and maimings of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

Granted, there are those on the left who do oppose all wars at all times, without ever answering the questions of how they would have ended slavery or stopped Hitler. But most liberals are not in this group. Rather, I would ask my right-wing friends (those who still back the U.S. presence in Iraq – a diminishing number) a few questions of my own: who is the better general? The one who expends life to secure unworthy objectives, or the one who conserves power and expends it only when necessary? Who is the better commander in chief? The one who leads in front, holds his fireside chats and press conferences, makes it a priority early and often to publicly justify a war's cost in blood and treasure, or the one who arrogantly assumes that, without so much as a declaration of war, he can lead by hiding under his desk?

Quite frankly, a few on the left who declare that ''dissent is the highest form of patriotism'' aren't always right. I'm not sure the German-American Bund during World War II or the Copperheads during the Civil War were my kind – or anybody's kind – of patriots. But what do you call those like Rep. John Murtha, whose patriotism, public service and heroism in uniform are beyond question, when he criticizes the Iraq disaster? Unpatriotic? A traitor? I don't think so. Rather, I think the courage, devotion to country and discipline he learned during 30 years in the United States Marine Corps are paying off now – once again, on behalf of all Americans.

So this Memorial Day, I urge all of my readers, whatever your views, to remember there are times and places where criticisms of wartime presidents may in fact be the highest duty.

The thousands upon thousands of white stones that dot the hills at Arlington represent sacrifices by men and women most of us will never know – but they were Americans who thought enough of duty to die for future generations they would never know. In their memory and in their honor, we owe it them, as well as to ourselves, to be straight about which causes are worth dying for.