Week in Headlines

Sphere: Related Content Texas Politics
Republicans Entering Twenty-First Century
Texas Republicans are attempting to enter the twenty-first century, by holding workshops on Facebook. The Harris County Republican Party recently held a workshop in which party members learned how to use Facebook, and how to use the social networking site for grassroots organizing. Although the focus is less on expanding the base of the party and more on bringing the older generation of the party into the twenty-first century.

Politics
Ensign's Chief of Staff Quits
Embattled Senator John Ensign’s chief of staff is resigning; John Lopez has worked with the Senator since the mid-1990, and was named chief of staff in 2006. Lopez reportedly split his chief of staff duties with Doug Hampton, the husband of the Senator’s mistress. Much of the speculation around the chief of staff’s departure includes the involvement with Ensign with the religious group known as “the Family.”

Media
New Attacks on the Web Commons
The corporation media is perusing outlawing unauthorized Web links, charging news aggregators, and neutering search engines. Media companies want to convert the sharing culture of the Web into a regimented marketplace; European publishers are calling upon the European Union to ramp up copyright protection for the internet.

War and Peace
Senate Votes 58-40 to End Production of the F-22
The Senate voted earlier this week by a 58 to 40 margin that more F-22s are not needed for the nation's defense and would be a costly drag on the Pentagon's budget in an era of small wars and counterinsurgency efforts. The Senate's decision came on an amendment to reverse the Armed Services Committee's vote last month to spend an additional $1.75 billion for more planes; the program will be halted at 187 planes, less than a third of what the Air Force sought at the program's inception.

Foreign Policy
The Ten Commandments for Ambitious Policy Wonks

What are the topics or policy positions that a smart young foreign policy analyst should stay away from, especially if she is worried about getting elected, surviving a confirmation hearing, or landing a big job inside-the-Beltway?

Health Care
The Censored Health-Care Option
The big U.S. news media, which helped legitimize George W. Bush’s “election” in 2000 and paved the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, is now taking sides with “centrist” forces that want to limit the scope of any health-care reform. Indeed, the most shunned aspect of this debate is the most practical way to cover everybody at the lowest cost, the dreaded single-payer idea.

Human Rights
Rights Group Accuses Saudi Arabia of ‘Gross’ Abuses
The human rights group Amnesty International accused Saudi Arabia on Wednesday of using its campaign against terrorism as a facade for “a sustained assault on human rights” and said the rest of the world had failed to hold the authorities to account for “gross violations.” Its report said thousands of people had been arrested and detained in virtual secrecy “while others have been killed in uncertain circumstances.” It accused the Saudi authorities of using torture to extract confessions and of using their “powerful international clout to get away with it.”

Reproductive Rights
What's Wrong With the New Pro-Lifers
Each side in the abortion debate has its Achilles' heel. For advocates of choice it's the fetus; those opposed to abortion suffer from a cavalier attitude toward the woman who carries the fetus. Amid proclamations that common ground has been reached on abortion, a new set of anti-abortion actors has claimed leadership of the movement. They are no longer ultra-fundamentalist Catholics and Evangelicals but anti-war, anti-capital punishment, pro-environment "pro-lifers."

GLBT Issues
King's Accused Killer to Be Tried
A California judge ruled Wednesday that probable cause exists to try 15-year-old Brandon McInerney, accused slayer of gay classmate Larry King, for premeditated murder with hate crime and “lying in wait” special circumstances.

Race and Racism
Black Male Faces More Likely to Be Seen As Threatening
A research team from the University of California, conducted a preliminary study and three experiments to determine whether whites are more likely to perceive facial expressions as threatening if the face in question belongs to an African-American male. White participants failed to reduce their judgments of threat when a (neutral) black male face followed an angry black male face, the study suggests that for whites, the stereotype of the threatening black male is easy to activate.