Todd Huffman

Of Congress And Camels

Todd Huffman — 2006-05-18T19:25:00Z

So many worries flit about my brain late at night like moths to a porch light. So many things I struggle at the cost of insomnia to understand.

Take, for instance, Congress. In the midst of a half trillion dollar war, in an age of stagnating wages and skyrocketing health care, fuel and housing costs, and in the face of exploding deficits and entitlements, the Republican-controlled Congress recently passed yet another multibillion dollar tax cut, nearly ninety percent of which will go to the richest fifteen percent of Americans. (...)

Stem Cell Funding Ban Is Turning Five

Todd Huffman — 2006-05-13T22:14:00Z

Few branches of science have ever grown as rapidly and generated as much promise for improving the human condition as the field of biomedicine. Over just the past decade, biomedicine has produced such extraordinary scientific breakthroughs as the mapping of the human genome, and the successful isolation and cultivation of human stem cells. And yet no branch of science is so deeply fraught with ethical concern and debate within and outside of government. (...)

Making Sense of Sensible Immigration Reform

Todd Huffman — 2006-04-29T11:13:09Z

(The Second of Two Parts. Part 1 Posted on April 22nd)

No one is debating whether illegal immigration is, well, illegal. The unauthorized migration of people across borders is restricted in some manner by the laws of every nation on earth, which is as it should be. Every nation has the right to control its borders.

With the population of undocumented immigrants in the United States growing by a half-million people per year, everyone agrees the status quo is simply untenable. The last two decades have seen the largest cross-border migration in human history, as millions of Mexicans, and Central and South Americans left countries where wages were a fifth or a tenth as high, and pushed northward for a shot at a better life. Others came as refugees or asylum-seekers, fleeing violence and persecution in their homelands. No doubt yet others came as criminals, fleeing arrest. (...)

Lifting Our Lamps, Or Putting Them Out

Todd Huffman — 2006-04-22T08:18:39Z

There have always been two Americas: that of rich and of poor, of inclusion and of exclusion. For many of us, the America of inclusion has found expression in the voices of Martin Luther King Jr., who had an incredible dream, and Emma Lazarus, whose poem “The New Colossus” inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty has for more than one hundred years beckoned the world to give America its tired, its poor, and its huddled masses yearning to breathe free. (...)

Here We Go Again

Todd Huffman — 2006-04-14T00:52:00Z

Haven't we heard all this before? The dire warnings? The talk of “regime change”? The leaked intelligence reports about nuclear weapons programs? The vice president threatening “monumental consequences”? The “madman” in the Middle East who threatens our very way of life.

Make no mistake. The current posture and policy of the Bush administration is leading our nation inexorably toward a ruinously self-defeating conflict with Iran, a conflict that will have grave consequences for the Middle East, the United States and the world. And once again, everyone is busily pretending that it is not happening. (...)

If You Don't Mind, Why Don't You Mind?

Todd Huffman — 2006-03-31T17:40:00Z

A favorite line of song, penned by the Canadian band The Magnetic Fields, poses the question: If you don't mind, why don't you mind? Where is your sense of indignation? To anyone who isn't yet appalled by the extent of the disaster that is the Bush presidency, I could not think of how better to ask it: Why don't you mind?

Not a day goes by without some new disclosure, some new bit of headline evidence that the Bush presidency is the most catastrophic presidency in the history of our great country. The consequences of this fact will effect not only yours and my personal future and fortunes, but those of our children and theirs. Where is your sense of indignation? (...)

George's War: Three Years On

Todd Huffman — 2006-03-04T18:00:00Z

Anniversaries are forced remembrances of events our busy lives otherwise leave forgotten. Past events rush forward through time to spend one day with us in the present, incessantly tapping our shoulders and asking: Remember me? Remember what happened on my day, and what has happened since because of me? Sometimes we stop and consider; more often we simply walk on.

The third anniversary of the aerial “shock and awe” campaign that launched the U.S led war on Iraq will tap our shoulders this month. It will remind us that a fourth year of war stands raving and eager to follow the same terrible path down which this country has been misled for three. War, such as it is, always stands ready and willing, always prepared to gather up its victims from the land of the living, and set them down in their early graves. (...)

Darfur: Past Time We Pay Attention

Todd Huffman — 2006-01-29T05:21:00Z

An arid and profoundly impoverished region in western Sudan known as Darfur is home to what continues to be, even after the catastrophic December 2004 tsunami in South Asia and the October 2005 earthquake in Kashmir and Pakistan, the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Since February 2003, over 400,000 men, women and children have been killed or have died from disease while another three million civilians - half the population of Darfur - have been forced to flee their destroyed homes and villages. Most have sought safety in squalid and overcrowded refugee camps, where severe shortages of shelter, food, water, and medical care place hundreds of thousands at risk of disease and a cruel and slow starvation. (...)

Viewer Discretion Advised: The State of the Union Address

Todd Huffman — 2006-01-24T19:55:00Z

Next Tuesday, President Bush will deliver to Congress and the American people his sixth State of the Union address. Viewer discretion is advised — viewers not seated while watching may find themselves experiencing acute vertigo as a result of the hurricane of spin swirling out from their television sets. The White House has taken its usual precaution of avoiding any and all responsibility by announcing that it will not be held responsible for any concussions or broken limbs. And don't count on FEMA — it'll be doing a heckuva' job just to come to your aid days later. (...)

Health Care As An Essential Human Right in Oregon

Todd Huffman — 2006-01-21T20:05:00Z

It is news to no one that our nation's health care system is broken. One could wonder whether our health care system even deserves to be called a "system" at all, when, in truth, health care in America is little more than a patchwork of public and private Band-Aids superficially applied over the past half-century to a patient dying for need of major surgery. (...)

Take Back Your Time

Todd Huffman — 2006-01-15T01:03:00Z

Are you often asking yourself "where did the time go?" Do you find yourself endlessly amazed that another month, another season, another year has passed by seemingly in a blur? Do you often worry whether you are spending enough time with your children, or your partner? Does your family schedule feel like a road race? Do you often tell yourself of new activities "I just don't have the time"? You are not alone. You are, in fact, a part of the majority of Americans who are working more and enjoying life less. (...)

On Martin Luther King Day: Giving Ourselves To The Struggle

Todd Huffman — 2006-01-07T01:10:00Z

Today the mail will stop, the banks will close, and schoolchildren will delight in an extra long weekend all in honor of Martin Luther King, a man whose legacy the lessons of which Americans seem slowly to be forgetting.

Network news programs will show footage of King "the slain civil rights leader" telling the world from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 of his dream of racial harmony. Viewers will be reminded of King the great and nonviolent warrior fighting Bible in one hand and Constitution in the other against desegregation and for voting rights in Jim Crow Alabama. And the obligatory sixty-second homage to this great man on his national day will conclude with the familiar images of King lying dead on a motel balcony in Memphis. (...)

Teach Our Children Well

Todd Huffman — 2005-11-21T05:02:47Z

In early January, US District Judge John Jones III is expected to deliver his decision in a lawsuit filed by eleven parents, with the help of the ACLU, against the school board of Dover, a sleepy Pennsylvania town outside the capital, Harrisburg. His decision could establish the basis for how American public school students are taught the origins of life for years to come. (...)

Giving The Gift Of Child Survival

Todd Huffman — 2005-11-07T04:47:00Z

In this ever-changing world, there are few constants. Yet consistently, among the poorest of the poor, the most frequent victims of preventable death are children.

Every minute of every day, 20 children die somewhere in the world. Each year, one in seven children in developing countries - nearly 11 million children - die before the age of five. Would it surprise you to know that fully two-thirds of these deaths are avoidable? (...)

Intelligent Design Trumps Evolution...But Only When It Comes To Politicians

Todd Huffman — 2005-10-28T03:00:00Z

These are heady days in the world of science. Rapid advances in robotics, computers and nanotechnology all promise less work and better living. Genetic engineers tell us we can expect designer children and designer pets within the decade. And perhaps best of all, scientists are offering cautious hope of designer politicians.

Can you imagine? No more having to choose between Evil and his twin Lesser. No more will politicians be ruled by narrow ideology and short-term self-interest. No more will, as Henry Kissinger once observed, ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad name. Those days will be over. A new age is dawning. (...)