Author: Eric Garris

By a strong 60-40 margin San Francisco voters approved Proposition I, which bans military recruiters from public schools. The measure also asks the city government to consider funding scholarships for education and training that could provide an alternative to military service (but doesn’t mandate any such funding).

Helping to ensure passage of the Iraqi Constititution, the Iraqi government has failed to put any voting stations in the Sunni cities of Haditha, Hit, Rawa, Qaim, Ana, Baghdadi and the villages around them.

“There aren’t actually any voting centers or even voting sheets in these cities … Nobody knows how and where to vote if they decide to,” said Mahmoud Salman al-Ani, a human rights activist in Ramadi.

In Ramadi, a group of residents said they had walked around their neighborhood looking for a voting center and not found one.

We have finally got a new mail program working after the demise of our third-party email list vendor. Many of you may have been inadvertently dropped from the daily reminder mailings, set to resume tonight.

If you need to sign back up, go to this form and fill in your email address.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and feel free to email me with any questions.

After spending almost three months in jail, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released from jail today.

She was released after she had a telephone conversation with the Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, sources said. In that conversation, Libby reaffirmed that he had released Miller from a promise of confidentiality more than a year ago, sources said.

Of course, readers of Antiwar.com read almost two years ago that Libby was the source of the Plame leak.

Between this and Larry Franklin’s plea bargain in the AIPAC case, this has been quite a news day for the war party. Of course there were a few other Iraq-related stories today.

Cindy Sheehan was just arrested during a sit-down protest on the sidewalk in front of the White House.

From an Associated Press report:

Police came through commandeering drivable vehicles and siphoning gas. Officials took over a hotel and ejected the guests.

An officer pumped his shotgun at a group trying to return to their hotel on Chartres Street.

“This is our block,” he said, pointing the gun down a side street. “Go that way.”

WWL-TV 4 of New Orleans showed a video of the confrontation. The “police” seemed official but didn’t show badges.

Some better news from this report:

In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming “tribes” and dividing up the labor.

As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.

While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods – humanity.

“Some people became animals,” Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White’s Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. “We became more civilized.”

…

Tired of waiting for trucks to come with food and water, residents turned to each other.