In a weak effort to shift searing public critique of the Republican and Bush administration’s inadequate, incompetent, and racist response to the Katrina disaster, President Bush announced over the weekend that he was amending his nomination of John G. Roberts to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

The unprecedented New Orleans disaster is reverberating through the world. After a generation of demagoguery about “reverse racism,” equating poverty with sin, and condemnations of activist big government, the Bush administration has no foreign power or ideology to blame for the fact that thousands of overwhelmingly poor and African American people are dead or in life-threatening situations because of a generation of right-wing rule.

The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Forewarned that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market.

"I hate the way they portray us," said hip-hop star Kanye West Friday evening on a NBC telethon to raise money for the Red Cross relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina. "They show a white family and they say they are looking for food. They show a Black family and say we’re looters."

Hurricane Katrina has inflicted an immense and unspeakable tragedy on the people of the Gulf Coast. The situation grows worse by the hour. The Mayor of New Orleans estimates that thousands have died and as many as 100,000 may still be trapped in the flooded city. Without food or drinkable water, time is running out for these men, women and children.

LA Dodgers Outfielder, and anger management class alumnus, Milton Bradley has been called everything from "perennially enflamed" to "certifiably insane." But his voice was as calm as the Dead Sea when he addressed reporters last week. Bradley sounded almost weary as he lobbed accusations of racial insensitivity at teammate Jeff Kent.

As the 2006 election draws nearer, Congress is becoming the battleground for Bush administration policies. The President’s loyalists continue to support the war drive and privatization of Social Security, but more than a few are jumping ship. The shifts within Congress, and breaks in the Republican stronghold, provide an important opening to mobilize voters, blunt the attacks, and build support for bold pro-worker legislation.

The old Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once compared religious leaders who attacked the Soviet Union as comparable to the priests who threw holy water on the weapons of the Czar’s armies. But Pat Robertson has gone Nikita once better, advising the U.S. government on National Cable Television (actually the Family Channel, formerly the Christian Broadcasting Network) to murder Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory ...of directing employers to pay women the same as men ... was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

Groups demand that the Bush administration condemn right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson's call to assassinate Hugo Chávez. States revolt agains the No Child Left Behind school privatization scheme. Students demand real financial aid. Faith communities step up their role in the peace movement.

“There have been almost daily revelations that Roberts was a charter member of the Reagan-Bush legal policy team that attempted to dismantle the civil rights remedies,” including affirmative action, previous presidents backed, said Ralph Neas, executive director of People for the American Way.

One lawyer is a smooth, handsome corporate attorney whose political loyalties, partisanship, and ideological moorings earned him a seat on the fast track to the top positions in corporations and now in judicial branch of the US government.

As more information about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ record is made available, it is increasingly clear that the Senate judiciary committee would be well within its rights to block confirmation. The White House packaged Roberts as a non-controversial, non-ideological nominee and announced its expectation of confirmation quickly, as early as next month.

After revelations that Judge John Roberts misrepresented his membership and role in the extremely conservative, judicially activist Federalist Society, the White House continues to withhold key documents related to his ideological views on overturning key legal principles considered settled by most Americans.

“No person is entitled to a seat on the Supreme Court,” said Damien Goodmon, a spokesman for StopJohnRoberts.com. “Its John Roberts’ burden to convince the Senate and the American people that his long tenure on the bench would be used to continue protecting the hard earned rights guaranteed in the constitution, not turning back the clock to a dark time without personal liberties and workplace protections. The country deserves no less.”

Just one day after the President’s announcement of his nomination of Judge John Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, grassroots activists opposed to Roberts’ confirmation launched the Stop John Roberts campaign.

From "troubling" and "concern" to outright opposition, civil rights and liberties organizations expressed immediate disapproval of President Bush’s nomination of ideologically conservative John G. Roberts to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the high court.

According to Steven P. Martin, Ph.D., ... who just released a monumental study of divorce in America over the last 30 years, the divorce rate is directly correlated to a lack of education, especially among women...But accusing gay marriage advocates of contributing to the demise of the cultural institution of marriage is misguided.

Since the resignation announcement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, various reporters and pundits have concluded that whomever President Bush nominates will win confirmation. Last week, a reporter for The Washington Post told listeners of National Public Radio that since Republicans control the Senate, Mr. Bush’s nomination would be essentially guaranteed. However, if history is any indication, this is far from certain.