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As Washington struggles over debt crisis, Obama stays mum on veto threat

By Major Garrett
National Journal

Washington may have become, as President Obama said on Monday, a place where "compromise has become a dirty word," but in the context of the menacing debt-limit crisis there was a far dirtier word he didn't utter.
Veto.
While Obama warned House Speaker John Boehner not to turn Americans into "collateral damage," he did not vow to veto the bill Boehner's now pushing to lift the debt ceiling by $1 trillion (good for six months). Boehner's two-step process would impose $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and establish a select congressional commission to propose an additional $1.8 trillion in savings by Thanksgiving.
If Republican leaders were sifting through Obama's speech for one word it was "veto." Its absence gives Obama, Boehner, and the Senate room to maneuver if, as now appears likely, Boehner's bill squeaks through the House and arrives in the Senate as a viable, though less-than-optimal, alternative to default.
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Clearly, Obama prefers Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposal to extend the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by $2.7 trillion (enough to last until 2013) with the new credit line financed entirely by spending cuts that spare entitlements and impose no new taxes—even on easy political targets like corporate jets or oil companies. But Obama did not single Reid's bill out as the only option, just a preference. As Obama and every serious player in this tug-of-war knows, the time for preferences is dwindling and the time for least-best options is nigh.
Consider Obama's carefully worded description of the Reid bill and the way forward.
"I think that's a much better path, although serious deficit reduction would still require us to tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform," Obama said of the Reid bill, which may fail on a procedural vote on Wednesday. "Either way, I have told leaders of both parties that they must come up with a fair compromise in the next few days that can pass both houses of Congress—a compromise I can sign. And I am confident we can reach this compromise."

The compromise remains undefined and Obama made one last bid for a so-called "grand bargain," the elusive $4 trillion combination of discretionary and entitlement spending cuts and tax reform that represents the biggest possible down payment on long-term deficit reduction. Obama asked Americans made weary by the partisan strife to prod Congress with e-mails, phone calls, and social-media pokes. 
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"The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn't vote for a dysfunctional government," Obama said in what may be the speech's most durable line. "So I'm asking you all to make your voice heard. If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know. If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message."
Notice that a "balanced approach" and "compromise" are no longer the same thing. By endorsing Reid's spending cut-only bill (even with proposals Republicans deride as gimmicks), Obama has given up on the grand bargain and so-called balanced approach. If the nation rallies behind that and tells Congress as much, it will be lobbying in a vacuum. If it calls on Congress to "compromise" it will be theoretically pushing for Reid's bill.
Either way, Obama's call for outside help to isolate Boehner and pressure Republicans into buckling is classic divide-and-conquer politics. Boehner is struggling to hold his conference together behind a proposal that's a retreat from the cut, cap, and balance bill passed only last week. 
TEXT: Full comments from President Obama, House Speaker Boehner
Boehner's taking flak on his right. Now, Obama's depicting House Republicans as stubborn, small-minded, and willing to risk default, higher interest rates, and stock market volatility just to block higher taxes. Obama must position himself against House Republicans—even if he ultimately has to cut a deal with Boehner.
Why? Because even though Obama retains more public confidence and support in this mess than Hill Republicans, this crisis has not elevated his stature. Last week Obama's Gallup weekly approval rating fell to 43 percent, the lowest level of his presidency and lower than Bill Clinton at a similar stage of his budget standoff with Republicans in 1995. The stalemate, as Obama called it, has taken a toll on all players and now the battle is one of short-term leverage.
If Obama can weaken Boehner so much that he can't pass a bill in the House, Reid's bill has a chance in the Senate. Significantly, the current timing (very fluid, to put in mildly) is for the House to vote late on Wednesday and the Senate to follow on Thursday. But if Boehner prevails and his method becomes a live option in the Senate and Reid's bill can't overcome an expected GOP filibuster, Obama's choices will dwindle to two: sign Boehner's bill or come up with something new on the fly. 
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That Obama didn't promise to veto Boehner's bill signals that Obama may already know the sweet spot between divided government and dysfunctional government. He may not sign the Boehner bill, but the absence of a veto threat is a tell-tale sign that, in the end, Obama may tolerate something much closer to it than Monday night's speech conveyed.
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Bad news for Social Security recipients

NYC boy's gruesome killing shocks community

NEW YORK (AP) — Walking home alone from day camp for the first time, 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky disappeared.
A day-and-a-half search led police to the Brooklyn home of a man seen on a surveillance video with the young Orthodox Jewish child. They asked: Where is the boy?
The man nodded toward the kitchen, authorities said, where blood stained the freezer door. Inside was the stuff of horror films — severed feet, wrapped in plastic. In the refrigerator, a cutting board and three bloody carving knives. A plastic garbage bag with bloody towels was nearby.
"It is every parent's worst nightmare," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday, following the arrest of 35-year-old Levi Aron on a charge of second-degree murder.
Leiby disappeared Monday afternoon while on his way to meet his mother on a street corner seven blocks from his day camp, the first time the young Hasidic child was allowed to walk the route alone. Authorities said he had evidently gotten lost after missing a turn, and had reached out to Aron, a stranger, for help.
The gruesome killing shocked the tight-knit Hasidic community in Borough Park, in part because it is one of the safest sections of the city and because Aron is himself an Orthodox Jew, although not Hasidic. The Hasidim are ultra-Orthodox Jews.
"This is a no-crime area," said state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes the area. "Everybody is absolutely horrified," he said. "Everyone is in total shock, beyond belief, beyond comprehension ... to suddenly disappear and then the details ... and the fact someone in the extended community ... it's awful."
While the medical examiner's office said it was still investigating how the boy was killed, the body was released so that the boy could be buried Wednesday evening according to Jewish custom.
Thousands gathered around a Borough Park synagogue for the funeral service. Speakers broadcast over a loudspeaker, chanting and speaking in Yiddish and Hebrew. They stressed the community's resilience and unity after what one called an unnatural death.
"This is not human," said Moses Klein, 73, a retired caterer who lives near the corner where the boy was last seen.
The break in the case came when investigators watched a grainy video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, getting into a car with a man outside a dentist's office. Detectives tracked the dentist down at his home in New Jersey, and he remembered someone coming to pay a bill. Police identified Aron using records from the office, and 40 minutes later he was arrested, shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday.
Aron told police where to find the rest of the body; it was in pieces, wrapped in plastic bags, inside a red suitcase that had been tossed into a trash bin in another Brooklyn neighborhood, Kelly said.
Police said there was no evidence the boy was sexually assaulted, but they would not otherwise shed any light on a motive except to say Aron told them he "panicked" when he saw photos of the missing boy on fliers that were distributed in the neighborhood. Police were looking into whether Aron had a history of mental illness.
Police said Aron, who is divorced, lives alone in an attic in a building shared with his father and uncle.
Kelly said it was "totally random" that Aron grabbed the boy, and aside from a summons for urinating in public, he had no criminal record. A neighbor told authorities her son had said Aron had once tried to lure him into his car, but nothing happened and she didn't think much of it until the news of the killing, police said.
He lived most of his life in New York and worked as a clerk at a hardware supply store around the corner from his home, authorities said. Co-workers said Aron was at work on Tuesday.
"He seemed a little troubled," said employee Chamin Kramer, who added Aron usually came and went quietly.
Aron lived briefly in Memphis, Tenn., and his ex-wife, Deborah Aron, still lives in the area. She said he never showed signs of violence toward her two children from a previous relationship.
"It's utter disbelief," she said from the toy-littered backyard of her home in the Memphis suburb of Germantown. "This ain't the Levi I know."
Deborah Aron said the couple divorced about four years ago after a year of marriage. She described Levi Aron as a person who was shy until he got to know you and said he enjoyed music, karaoke and "American Idol." She said he attended Orthodox Jewish services in Memphis.
He was "more of a mother's boy than a father's boy," who lived at home until he met her, she said.
She said Levi injured his head when he was hit by a car while riding his bike at the age of 9 and suffered problems stemming from that accident.
___
Associated Press Writers Karen Matthews and Karen Zraick in New York and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tenn., contributed to this report.

Mila Kunis Accepts Marine's Invite to Corps Ball

Mila Kunis, reporting for duty!
When Sgt. Scott Moore posted a YouTube video last week inviting the Black Swan actress to accompany him to the Marine Corps Ball on Nov. 18, it probably seemed like a long shot. But at the urging of her Friends With Benefits costar, Justin Timberlake, Kunis agreed to head to Greenville, North Carolina to be Moore's date!
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In the video, Moore addressed the actress directly from Afghanistan. "Hi Mila, I just want to take a moment out of my day to invite you to the Marine Corps Ball with yours truly," he said. "So take a second to think about it, and get back to me."
When FOX411 asked the actress if she knew about the invitation, Timberlake, 30, made certain that Kunis would go. "Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?" he asked her. "You need to do it for your country!"
"I'm going to work on this, man," he said in a message to Scott. "This needs to go down!"
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"I'll go. I'll do it for you," Kunis said, before asking Timberlake if he was going to attend as well.
"They don't want me!" he exclaimed. "They want you."
Check out Sgt. Scott Moore's invitation below:

Why Gas Prices Should Be Lower Soon

Oil markets were roiled today when the United States and the International Energy Agency jointly announced that they would release a combined 60 million barrels of oil into international markets over the coming month.
Where is the oil coming from?
The U.S. said it will sell 30 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, while other countries that are members of the International Energy Administration will provide the rest from their reserves.
But didn't President Obama tell you just a couple of weeks ago that he wasn't planning to do this?
Indeed he did. At a meeting with finance journalists on June 8, I specifically asked whether he was considering releasing oil from the SPR.  His response:

"I won't make any news on that today. I will say that my general view is that the SPR is to be used where you don't have just short-term fluctuations in the market, but a significant disruption event. Libya has taken 1.25 m barrels per day off the market. We're examining broadly what that means in terms of the oil market."

So what's changed in the past two weeks?
A couple of things. First, the administration has apparently concluded that the situation in Libya isn't going to improve in the short term. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu put it today: "We are taking this action in response to the ongoing loss of crude oil due to supply disruptions in Libya and other countries, and their impact on the global economic recovery," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. While Libya accounts for only a tiny portion of global oil production, its oil is the most cherished (and easy to process) light, sweet crude.
Second, an OPEC meeting two weeks ago ended in disarray, with members disagreeing about higher production. That suggests that the production we're losing from Libya won't be replaced anytime soon.
But why release the oil now? After all, oil prices have been falling since May.
It's true that oil prices have been falling. Since peaking at $114 per barrel in May, oil prices had fallen about 16.7 percent before today's announcement.  (For a longer term chart, go here) Meanwhile, gasoline prices have fallen in the last two weeks, from a nationwide average of $3.78 per gallon to $3.65 per gallon. But that's still up 91 cents per gallon from a year ago, and the peak summer driving season is about to begin. Simply put, higher gas prices hurt the economy more in the summer than they do in the spring.
Cynics would say that politics are also coming into play.
As I discuss with my colleagues Aaron Task and Jeff Macke in the accompanying video, you don't have to be cynical to think that. While the economy is slowing, there seems to be little hope of further aid or stimulus. In his press conference yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated that the central bank was pretty much done with its efforts to boost demand.  On Capitol Hill, talks are centering on anti-stimulative spending cuts and tax increases. And so releasing oil from the SPR is one way President Obama can stimulate the economy without action from the Fed or Congress. In theory, greater supplies of oil bring down the price. And cheaper oil functions as a tax cut for businesses and consumers.

Will gas prices come down as a result?
Yes. Crude oil prices have fallen more than 20 percent from their May peak. But don't expect a sharp decline in the price at the pump in the next few weeks. Gasoline station owners buy new supplies every couple of days. So when their costs rise, they feel compelled to pass along the higher prices to consumers instantly — as a matter of survival. The opposite dynamic takes hold when oil prices are falling.  As wholesale gas falls in price, profit margins expand, and station owners are in no rush to ratchet down the price at the pump.
Of course, in the scheme of things, 60 million barrels isn't much. In 2010, the U.S. consumed about  19.15 million barrels per day, and the world ran through about 85.3 million barrels per day. Put another way, this 60 million barrels is about what the U.S. consumes in three days, or what the world consumes in 17 hours.
Even though it's a small amount, it seemed to have a big market impact. Why?
Right after the announcement, the price of oil fell about five percent, to below $90 per barrel.That's a pretty dramatic move. And it can be explained by a few factors. This represents new supply and takes away some of the worries about disruptions. In addition, speculation has played a role in keeping oil prices high. And some investors and analysts believe that this may be part of a concerted effort to fight speculators. The 30 million barrels the U.S. is releasing is equal to 4.2 percent of the total in the SPR, so there could be more to come. In addition, other economic news — the Fed ratcheting down its projection for economic growth in the second half of 2011 yesterday, and general concerns about a slowdown in China — point to lower prices.
Is this unprecedented?
No. When there are disruptions — a barge accident, a refinery explosion — the SPR lends out small amounts of oil to refineries, as it did in 2006. After Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, the SPR offered to sell up to 30 million barrels to help keep the industry supplied. Ultimately, 11 million barrels were sold.
Will this move alone bring oil prices back to earth?
All things being equal, additional supply should lead to lower prices. But in the oil market, all things are never equal. The strength of the dollar, the pace of growth in China, politics in Iran, instability in the Middle East, new finds, OPEC decisions and more play into the ultimate price of oil.
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His most recent book is Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation.

FDA Unveils Graphic Images for Cigarette Packs

TUESDAY, June 21 (HealthDay News) -- In a dramatic bid to get more Americans to quit smoking, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday released nine graphic warning labels that will appear on all packs of cigarettes by no later than September 2012.
One image shows a man's face and a lighted cigarette in his hand, with smoke escaping from a hole in his neck -- the result of a tracheotomy. The caption reads "Cigarettes are addictive." Another image shows a mother holding a baby as smoke swirls about them, with the warning: "Tobacco smoke can harm your children."
A third images depicts a distraught woman with the caption: "Warning: Smoking causes fatal lung disease in nonsmokers."
A fourth picture shows a mouth with smoked-stained teeth and an open sore on the lower lip. "Cigarettes cause cancer," the caption reads.
In addition to the images, the label on packs of cigarettes will include a phone number -- 1-800-QUIT-NOW -- so smokers will know where to go for help quitting.
By law, the labels must appear on every pack of cigarettes sold in the United States and on all cartons and in all cigarette advertising. The campaign marks the first major change to cigarette packaging in the last 25 years, the FDA said.
"President Obama is committed to protecting our nation's children and the American people from the dangers of tobacco use. These labels are frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking and they will help," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a news release. "These labels will encourage smokers to quit, and prevent children from smoking. President Obama wants to make tobacco-related death and disease part of the nation's past, and not our future."
Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called the new warnings the "most dramatic change in cigarette warnings in the history of the United States. For the first time the warnings are large enough to be seen and graphic enough to catch the attention of consumers."
The labels will fill the top half of all cigarette packs.
Myers said the images on the labels are exactly the kind of measure that has been shown to be effective in encouraging children not to smoke and getting adults to quit. But, to keep the message vibrant, the images need to be changed regularly because as people get used to them, the impact of the warning weakens, he added.
"For the first time we have labels that not only tell people that smoking is dangerous, but provide them the kind of information they need to now how dangerous it is," he said. "The warning labels have the potential to dramatically reduce the number of our kids who start, but they will be most effective if they are complemented by comprehensive tobacco-control programs in every state."
Many such programs have been curtailed in recent years as cash-strapped states have diverted funding from tobacco-control efforts to pay for constituent services or to hold down tax increases. In states that have maintained funding, the number of smokers continues to drop, Myers said.
The new labels are a part of the requirements of the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed into law in 2009 by President Barack Obama, who has struggled for many years to quit smoking. For the first time, the law gave the FDA significant control over tobacco products.
The FDA hopes these new warnings will have a "significant public health impact by decreasing the number of smokers, resulting in lives saved, increased life expectancy, and improved health status."
The agency said it chose the nine images from 36 originally proposed. The agency also said it reviewed the relevant scientific literature, analyzed the results from an 18,000-person study and reviewed more than 1,700 comments from a variety of groups, including the tobacco industry, retailers, health professionals, public health and other advocacy groups, state and local public health agencies, medical organizations and consumers.
Dr. Jonathan Whiteson, director of the Cardiac and Pulmonary Wellness and Rehabilitation Program at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, is concerned that the images may be too graphic.
"The 'fear factor' of the negative message can lose its potency -- we become immune to the negative warnings over time, and if too graphic, we often hide behind the denial wall stating, 'This just can't possibly happen to me.' The more graphic the image, the more likely the message will become marginalized and thrown out as too wild and extreme a possibility for the smoker," he said in a statement."
Whiteson thinks that to get kids not to take up smoking, messages have to convey the idea that smoking isn't cool.
Smoking is the leading cause of early and preventable death in the United States, resulting in some 443,000 fatalities each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and costs almost $200 billion every year in medical costs and lost productivity.
Over the last decade, countries as varied as Canada, Australia, Chile, Brazil, Iran and Singapore, among others, have adopted graphic warnings on tobacco products. Some are downright disturbing: in Brazil, cigarette packages come with pictures of dead babies and a gangrened foot with blackened toes.
Currently, the United States has some of the weakest requirements for cigarette package warnings in the world, David Hammond, an assistant professor in the department of health studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, told HealthDay. The text-only warnings on packages have changed little since 1984.
Elsewhere, graphic warnings seem to be helping to drive down smoking rates. In Canada, about 13 percent of the population smokes daily, a 5 percent drop since graphic warnings were adopted in 2000, according to Hammond.
More information
For more on the warning labels and to see the images, visit this FDA website.

U.S. intensifying covert war in Yemen: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has intensified air strikes on suspected militants in Yemen in a bid to keep them from consolidating power as the government in Sanaa teeters, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. strike last Friday killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel al Qaeda operative, which followed last month's attempted strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Citing U.S. officials, the Times said a U.S. campaign using armed drones and fighter jets had accelerated in recent weeks as U.S. officials see the strikes as one of the few options to contain al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
With the country in violent conflict, Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to Sanaa, the newspaper said.
Yemen's authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was wounded on Friday and is being treated in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. He appears to have been wounded by a bombing at a mosque inside his palace, not a rocket attack as first thought, U.S. and Arab officials told Reuters.
There were conflicting reports about his condition -- ranging from fairly minor, to life-threatening 40 percent burns.
There had been nearly a yearlong pause in U.S. airstrikes after concerns that poor intelligence had resulted in civilian deaths that undercut goals of the secret campaign.
U.S. and Saudi spy services have been receiving more information from electronic eavesdropping and informants about possible locations of militants, the newspaper said, citing officials in Washington. But there were concerns that with the wider conflict in Yemen, factions might feed information to trigger air strikes against rival groups.
The operations were further complicated by al Qaeda operatives' mingling with other rebel and anti-government militants, the newspaper said, citing a senior Pentagon official.
The U.S. ambassador in Yemen met recently with opposition leaders, partly to make the case for continuing operations in case Saleh's government falls, the newspaper said.
Opposition leaders have told the ambassador that operations against al Qaeda in Yemen should continue regardless of who wins the power struggle in the capital, the Times said, citing officials in Washington.
Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has been linked to the attempt to blow up a transatlantic jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 and a plot last year to blow up cargo planes with bombs hidden in printer cartridges.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; Writing by Vicki Allen; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Plessy and Ferguson: Descendants of a divisive Supreme Court decision unite

By Robert Barnes | The Washington Post – Mon, Jun 6, 2011

When Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson decided to start a new civil rights education organization that would bear their famous names, they sealed the deal in a fitting local spot: Cafe Reconcile.
They represent the opposing principals in one of the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions, Plessy v. Ferguson , which upheld the constitutionality of Jim Crow laws mandating segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. It stood from 1896 until the court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.
The descendent of the man who tested Louisiana’s law requiring separate railroad cars for whites and blacks and the great-great-granddaughter of the judge who upheld it met in 2004.
The truth is, no reconciliation was required.
“The first thing I said to her,” recalled Plessy, “was, ‘Hey, it’s no longer Plessy versus Ferguson. It’s Plessy and Ferguson.’ ”
Her first reaction was to apologize.
“I don’t know why,” she said in an interview. “It’s just that I felt the burden of it, this great injustice.”
Plessy’s response?
“I said, ‘You weren’t alive during that time. I wasn’t either. It’s time for us to change that whole image.’ ”
So the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation was born, and on Tuesday it will celebrate another anniversary of Homer Adolph Plessy’s decision to buy a railroad ticket for the June 7, 1892, train trip from New Orleans to Covington, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain.
The organization seeks to highlight the historic moments in New Orleans’s struggle for racial equality and hopes to remind the public of the story behind the famous case. It was, Plessy and Ferguson said, a forerunner of the legal strategies and civil disobedience that took root in the civil rights struggles of the 20th century.
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It was a setup from the start. New Orleans historian Keith Weldon Medley, in his book “We as Freemen,” describes how the Comite des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens), an organization of freemen of color, planned the legal strategy for more than a year. They meant to challenge the segregation law using the post-Civil War 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause.
Plessy, a shoemaker from the Treme neighborhood, volunteered for the job and was the perfect candidate. Seven-eighths white, he was “colored” in the eyes of the law. He bought a first-class ticket, sat in the white rail car, answered that he was colored when asked, refused to leave and was arrested by a private detective. It had all been worked out in advance.
John Howard Ferguson was a carpetbagger from New England, schooled by an abolitionist lawyer in the north and married into an abolitionist New Orleans family. He had been on the bench only months when the Plessy case arrived on his docket.
Despite his background, Ferguson upheld the segregation law. Plessy wasn’t deprived of equal accommodations, Ferguson wrote, but “simply deprived of the liberty of doing as he pleased.”
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The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed, and so eventually did the U.S. Supreme Court, 7 to 1.
“We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority,” wrote Justice Henry Billings Brown. “If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
The lone objection came from Justice John Marshall Harlan, whose “Great Dissent” predicted the decision would join the infamy of the court’s Dred Scott ruling.
“Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” Harlan famously wrote.
The Comite des Citoyens closed shop; Plessy paid a $25 fine in lieu of jail time.
Phoebe Ferguson and Keith Plessy were both born in New Orleans generations later, in the year Brown was decided.
The daughter of a conservative Tulane-grad father and a “radical feminist” Sarah Lawrence mother, Ferguson said she had no idea she was connected to the case.
“If my mother had known, she certainly would have talked about it,” said Ferguson, who moved north and got the news years later when a man who had bought John Ferguson’s house tracked her down.
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She returned to New Orleans from New York “after the storm” — Hurricane Katrina — first with a 17-foot truckload of supplies and then later for good. She completed a film about the city’s oldest African American social club called “Member of the Club” and lately has become involved in the city’s schools.
“I’m a completely different person than I was in New York,” she said.
Plessy, whose great-grandfather was Homer Plessy’s first cousin, knew of his connection because of his fairly rare French name. He remembers grade school teachers calling him to the front of the class during a discussion of the case.
And his name has attracted attention from visiting civil rights luminaries who have passed through the downtown New Orleans hotel where he has made a career. He spoke with Muhammad Ali and was once called upstairs to meet Rosa Parks.
Plessy recalls rushing in to find Parks sitting in a chair, and he knelt before her.
“She said, ‘Get up, boy. Your name is Plessy. You got work to do,’ ” he said.
He said he found that work after meeting Medley, and because of the revival of interest around the centennial of the Plessy decision. The city and state first recognized “Homer A. Plessy Day” in 2005.
“I was not a great leader or a great scholar or any of those things,” Keith Plessy said. “I’ve been a 30-year employee of Marriott as a bellman and happy with that job.
“But I have an obligation and a privilege to keep my ancestor’s history alive. What my ancestors dreamt about, I’m able to live.”

More from the Washington Post:

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The African-American garments that are slated for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Unearthing African American history in Timbuctoo.

Full coverage of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

.Libya's Gaddafi: I will not leave my country

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi is emphatic he will not leave Libya, South African President Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday after talks with the Libyan leader that left prospects for a negotiated end to the conflict looking dim.
But new questions emerged over how long Gaddafi could hold on after a senior United Nations aid official said shortages of food and medicine in areas of Libya controlled by Gaddafi amounted to a "time bomb."
Within hours of Zuma's departure from Tripoli late on Monday, Libyan television reported that NATO aircraft had resumed attacks, striking what it called civilian and military sites in Tripoli and Tajoura, just east of the capital.
Zuma was in Tripoli to try to revive an African "roadmap" for ending the conflict, which started in February with an uprising against Gaddafi and has since turned into a war with thousands of people killed.
The talks produced no breakthrough, with Gaddafi's refusal to quit -- a condition the rebels and NATO have set as a pre-condition for any ceasefire -- still the sticking point.
"Col. Gaddafi called for an end to the bombings to enable a Libyan dialogue," Zuma's office said in a statement. "He emphasized that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties."
Zuma also said Gaddafi's personal safety "is a concern" -- a reference to NATO strikes which have repeatedly hit the Libyan leader's Bab al-Aziziyah compound and other locations used by the Libyan leader and his family.
Now in its fourth month, Libya's conflict is deadlocked on the ground, with anti-Gaddafi rebels unable to break out of their strongholds and advance toward Tripoli, where Gaddafi appears to be firmly entrenched.
Rebels control the east of Libya around the city of Benghazi, Libya's third-biggest city Misrata, and a mountain range stretching from the town of Zintan, 150 km (95 miles) south of Tripoli, toward the border with Tunisia.
Western powers have said they expect Gaddafi will be forced out by a process of attrition as air strikes, defections from his entourage and shortages take their toll.
Panos Moumtzis, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Libya, told Reuters in Tripoli that some food stocks in areas under Gaddafi's control were likely to last only weeks.
"I don't think there's any famine, malnutrition. But the longer the conflict lasts the more the food stocks supplies are going to be depleted, and it's a matter of weeks before the country reaches a critical situation," Moumtzis said in an interview.
"The food and the medical supplies is a little bit like a time bomb. At the moment it's under control and it's ok. But if this goes on for quite some time, this will become a major issue," he said.
MISRATA FIGHTING
Gaddafi says his forces are fighting armed criminal gangs and al Qaeda militants, and has described the NATO intervention as an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya's plentiful oil reserves.
Libyan television broadcast footage of Gaddafi welcoming Zuma, his first public appearance since May 11. Speculation had been swirling in the past few weeks that Gaddafi was injured in a NATO strike or had fled Tripoli.
A Reuters photographer in Misrata said there was heavy fighting in the suburb of Dafniyah, in the west of the city, where the front line is now located after rebel fighters drove pro-Gaddafi forces out of the city.
Speaking from a field hospital near the front line, she said 14 rebel fighters had been injured so far on Tuesday, one of them seriously.
"Gaddafi's forces are firing Grad rockets," she said. "The rebels tried to advance, and Gaddafi's forces pushed back."
Rebel fighters, out of their familiar urban battleground and now in open ground, were being outgunned, one of their spokesmen said.
"The situation is getting more difficult for the revolutionaries because fighting is going on in open places. They do not have the same heavy weapons as the (pro-Gaddafi) brigades," the spokesman, Abdelsalam, said from Misrata.
There were reports too of clashes between rebels and forces loyal to Gaddafi in the Western mountains.
A rebel spokesman in the town of Zintan told Reuters by telephone: "Fighting took place last night in (the village of) Rayayna, east of Zintan ... It continued until the early hours of this morning. Both sides used mortars."
"The revolutionaries do not want to intensify attacks in the area for fear of harming civilians still living there," said the spokesman, called Abdulrahman.
He urged NATO to take a more active role by targeting pro-Gaddafi forces from the air.
Using a makeshift system of citizens' band radios and Skype, local rebels have been passing on the positions of government forces to NATO via the rebel headquarters in Benghazi, eastern Libya.
"NATO's performance is still very weak. Its operations are very slow despite the fact that the local (rebel) military council has provided it with all necessary information about the brigades' positions," said Abdulrahman.
(Additional reporting by Zohra Bensemra in Misrata, Matt Robinson in Zintan and Marius Bosch in Johannesburg; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Beneath Jerusalem, an underground city takes shape

JERUSALEM – Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.
At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.
Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.
Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem's main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.
But many Palestinians, who reject Israel's sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history.
A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusalem without seeing the sky.
On a recent morning, a man carrying surveying equipment walked across a two-millennia-old stone road, paused at the edge of a hole and disappeared underground.
In a multilevel maze of rooms and corridors beneath the Muslim Quarter, workers cleared rubble and installed steel safety braces to shore up crumbling 700-year-old Mamluk-era arches.
Above ground, a group of French tourists emerged from a dark passage they had entered an hour earlier in the Jewish Quarter and found themselves among Arab shops on the Via Dolorosa, the traditional route Jesus took to his crucifixion.
South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.
The sewer leads uphill, passing beneath the Old City walls before expelling visitors into sunlight next to the rectangular enclosure where the temple once stood, now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-capped Dome of the Rock.
From there, it's a short walk to a third passage, the Western Wall tunnel, which continues north from the Jewish holy site past stones cut by masons working for King Herod and an ancient water system. Visitors emerge near the entrance to an ancient quarry called Zedekiah's Cave that descends under the Muslim Quarter.
The next major project, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, will follow the course of one of the city's main Roman-era streets underneath the prayer plaza at the Western Wall. This route, scheduled for completion in three years, will link up with the Western Wall tunnel.
The excavations and flood of visitors exist against a backdrop of acute distrust between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, who are suspicious of any government moves in the Old City and particularly around the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Jews know the compound as the Temple Mount, site of two destroyed temples and the center of the Jewish faith for three millennia.
Muslim fears have led to violence in the past: The 1996 opening of a new exit to the Western Wall tunnel sparked rumors among Palestinians that Israel meant to damage the mosques, and dozens were killed in the ensuing riots. In recent years, however, work has gone ahead without incident.
Mindful that the compound has the potential to trigger devastating conflict, Israel's policy is to allow no excavations there. Digging under Temple Mount, the Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg has written, "would be like trying to figure out how a hand grenade works by pulling the pin and peering inside."
Despite the Israeli assurances, however, rumors persist that the excavations are undermining the physical stability of the Islamic holy sites.
"I believe the Israelis are tunneling under the mosques," said Najeh Bkerat, an official of the Waqf, the Muslim religious body that runs the compound under Israel's overall security control.
Samir Abu Leil, another Waqf official, said he had heard hammering that very morning underneath the Waqf's offices, in a Mamluk-era building that sits just outside the holy compound and directly over the route of the Western Wall tunnel, and had filed a complaint with police.
The closest thing to an excavation on the mount, Israeli archaeologists point out, was done by the Waqf itself: In the 1990s, the Waqf opened a new entrance to a subterranean prayer space and dumped truckloads of rubble outside the Old City, drawing outrage from scholars who said priceless artifacts were being destroyed.
This month, an Israeli government watchdog released a report saying Waqf construction work in the compound in recent years had been done without supervision and had damaged antiquities. The issue is deemed so sensitive that the details of the report were kept classified.
Some Israeli critics of the tunnels point to what they call an exaggerated emphasis on a Jewish narrative.
"The tunnels all say: We were here 2,000 years ago, and now we're back, and here's proof," said Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist. "Living here means recognizing that other stories exist alongside ours."
Yuval Baruch, the Antiquities Authority archaeologist in charge of Jerusalem, said his diggers are careful to preserve worthy finds from all of the city's historical periods. "This city is of interest to at least half the people on Earth, and we will continue uncovering the past in the most professional way we can," he said.

The Most Dangerous Cities in America

Earlier this week, the FBI trumpeted the news that violent crime dropped 5.5% in 2010 while reported property crimes fell 2.8% during the depths of the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression. The news, though, is far from positive.

Though most regions of the U.S. saw declines, the Northeast saw an increase in murders (8.3%), forcible rapes (1.4%) and aggravated assaults (0.7%). Why that region was affected by crime more than others isn't clear. Perhaps it was because of the grinding poverty found in some of the area's cities and their high cost of living

The Police Executive Research Forum polled 233 local law enforcement agencies in 2009, and found that the link between poverty and crime was inextricable. A prolonged recession would only make matters worse, the research showed. After reviewing the data, PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler told Reuters, "We are not saying there is going to be a crime wave, but we are saying this is a wake-up call and we anticipate the situation will continue to deteriorate."

A 24/7 Wall St. review of 2010 FBI crime datashows violent crime rose in several of the largest and poorest cities in the U.S., particularly those which have been in decline for some time. Even when crime rates dropped, older urban areas still had more violent crime than other cities. Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo and Hartford finished high on the FBI's list but failed to make the final 24/7 Wall St. ranking.

The crime problem is not completely explained by crimes committed. Police forces are supposed to keep crime rates down, but officers have begun to disappear from the streets of some large cities. Pontiac, Mich., part of the corridor of high crime cities that runs from Detroit to Flint, recently turned over its police operations to the sheriff's office of Oakland Country, where Pontiac is located. Old industrial towns need to cut costs as populations fall and tax receipts recede, but the money trouble almost makes it certain that criminal activity will grow because it is mostly unchecked.

24/7 Wall St. looked at the ten most crime-plagued cities in the U.S. with populations of more than 100,000. We used a measurement of crimes per thousand people which is part of the new FBI database to determine the order. We compared these figures to unemployment rates and median income. The recession may have ended, but crime has not eased in these troubled cities nor will it anytime soon.

Our list is dominated by towns like Detroit, New Haven, and Baltimore. Parts of these cities are fortresses of crime. Much of the violent crime in Detroit is committed in the old Palmer Avenue section of the city, which is far from the shiny skyscrapers where GM has its headquarters. Baltimore's Front Street neighborhood is a world away from the new office towers of companies like financial giant T Rowe Price on Pratt Street. The crime-plagued Lamar Avenue section of Memphis is also far from the city's ritzy neighborhoods.

Unemployment will inevitably improve in these cities. The most hard-hit sections, however, may never completely recover. They failed to do so after the last economic upswing -- and the one before that. Some part of all the cities on this list will be home to high levels of violent crime permanently. And, if the money used to keep police on the streets falls in most of these municipalities, containing the problem to a few neighborhoods will be hard. It would be nice to believe that criminals sit out a recovery, but they don't.

These are America's 10 Most Dangerous Cities:

1. Flint, Mich.

Population: 109,245
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 22 
2010 Murders: 53 
Median Income: $27,049 (46.1% below national average) 
Unemployment Rate: 11.8% (2.8% above national average)

The number of violent crimes committed in Flint increased for all categories considered for this list between 2009 and 2010. Perhaps most notably, the number of murders in the city increased from 36 to 53. This moves the city from having the seventh highest rate of homicide to the second highest. The number of aggravated assaults increased from 1,529 to 1,579, a rate of 14.6 assaults per 1,000 residents, placing the city in the No. 1 rank for rate of assaults. Flint police chief Alvern Lock stated late last year that he believed the city's violence stemmed from drugs and gangs. Flint has a relatively small median income of about $27,000 per household. The city also has a poverty rate of 36.2%.

2. Detroit

Population: 899,447
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 18.9
2010 Murders: 310
Median Income: $26,098 (48% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 12.7% (3.7% above national average)

The city crippled the most in America's post-industrial era is almost certainly Detroit. The Motor City has suffered from high rates of unemployment, homelessness, and crime. The city has one of the ten highest rates for three of the four types of violent crime identified by the FBI. Detroit has the sixth highest murder rate, the fifth highest robbery rate, and the second highest rate of aggravated assault. In 2005, a major reorganization of the city's police department took place after a federal investigation identified inefficiencies within the system. According to an article in The United Press, opponents of Detroit Mayor David Bing called for further intervention by the Justice Department in several shootings that occurred last year.

3. St. Louis

Population: 355,151
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 17.5
2010 Murders: 144
Median Income: $34,801 (30.7% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 9.3% (0.3% above national average)

Violent crime in St. Louis fell dramatically between 2009 and 2010, and has decreased since 2007. Despite this, crime rates remain extremely high compared with other cities. In 2010, the city's murder rate and rate of aggravated assault were each the third worst in the country. With regards to both violent and nonviolent crime, St. Louis was rated the most dangerous city based on FBI data released six months ago. As of December 2010, the murder rate in St. Louis was 6.3 times that of the state of Missouri. The city's gunshot murder rate for residents between 10 to 19 years old is also the second highest in the country, behind only New Orleans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

4. New Haven, Conn.

Population: 124,856
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 15.8
2010 Murders: 22
Median Income: $38,279 (23.8% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 9.6% (0.6% above national average)

New Haven has historically had the highest rate of violent crime on the east coast. The impoverished, crime-ridden parts of the city stand in stark contrast to affluent Fairfield county to the West, and elite Yale University, which is located within the city itself. The number of murders in the city doubled last year. New Haven has the eighth highest rate of robbery and the fourth highest rate of assault in the U.S. The New Haven Police Department is considering adding cameras at every intersection in one of the neighborhoods where shootings are the most common.

5. Memphis, Tenn.

Population: 673,650
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 15.4
2010 Murders: 89
Median Income: $34,203 (31.8% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 9.9% (0.9% above national average)

Memphis has high rates for all the violent crimes considered for 24/7 Wall St.'s rankings. It has the sixth highest rate in the country. Incidents of violent crime in the city dropped slightly less than 15% between 2009 and 2010 though. Memphis Mayor AC Wharton attributes this decrease to Operation Safe Community, a citywide plan developed in 2005. The plan consists of a number of strategies meant to increase crime prevention, through toughening punishments for criminals, and the effectiveness of the city's legal system, through changes such as expanding court programs so that they operate consistently and at full capacity.

6. Oakland, Calif.

Population: 409,723
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 15.3
2010 Murders: 90
Median Income: $51,473 (2.4% above national average)
Unemployment Rate: 11% (2% above national average)

Oakland's violent crime dropped about 5.5% between 2009 and 2010, from about 6,800 to 6,260. The city nevertheless has the tenth-highest rate of rape, the ninth-highest murder rate, and the second highest robbery rate in the country. In 2010, there were 7.12 robberies for every 1,000 Oakland residents. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mayor Jean Quan has attempted to combat break-ins and theft by creating programs to keep potential wrongdoers off the streets by starting late-night basketball programs. It it unclear if these policies have worked.

7. Little Rock, Ark.

Population: 192,922
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 15.2
2010 Murders: 25
Median Income: $38,992 (22.3% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 6.8% (2.2% below national average)

Little Rock has one of the highest rates of aggravated assault and forcible rape in the country. Since 2009, reported assaults has increased while reported forcible rapes have decreased. According to Lt. Terry Hastings of the Little Rock Police Department, quoted by local station FOX16, Little Rock was "down almost 12 percent across the board on crime" in 2010. This may be accurate for many crimes, and especially nonviolent crimes, however, according to FBI data, violent crime increased from 2009 to 2010.

8. Baltimore

Population: 639,929
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 14.6
2010 Murders: 223
Median Income: $38,772 (22.7% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 7.4% (1.6% below national average)

Baltimore had the eighth-highest rate of violent crime per capita in 2010 among cities with 100,000 or more residents, and the second-highest east of the Mississippi. The number of violent crimes has dropped slightly in the past year -- from 9,600 to 9,300 -- but the Maryland city has some of the worst rates of dangerous offenses in the country. This includes the tenth-worst aggravated assault rate -- and the fourth-worst murder rate in the country.

9. Rockford, Ill.

Population: 156,180
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 14.5
2010 Murders: 20
Median Income: $36,990 (26% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 13.3% (4.3% above national average)

Rockford has unusually high violent crime rates for a city of its size. Most notably, the city has the fourth highest rate of aggravated assault in the country, with 10.5 cases for every 1,000 citizens in 2010. During the same period, 20 murders occurred, almost double the number in 2000. Quoted by the Rockford Register Star in 2007, Winnebago County Sheriff Dick Meyers said that he believed the city's "location worked against [it,]" as Rockford receives traffic from the drug markets in Madison, Chicago, and Milwaukee, resulting in heightened rates of violence.

10. Stockton, Calif.

Population: 292,047
Violent Crime Per 1,000: 13.8
2010 Murders: 49
Median Income: $45,730 (8.9% below national average)
Unemployment Rate: 18.4% (9.4% above national average)

With a jobless rate of 18.4%, up from 18.1% a year ago, Stockton, California has one of the worst unemployment problems in the country. The huge percentage of unemployed residents may have contributed to horrible crime rates in the city, which is located 40 miles east of Oakland and San Francisco. Stockton was rated one of the most miserable cities to live in the country by Forbes in March, 2010. Violent crime was one of the chief measurements for its ranking. Of the 267 cities with populations over 100,000, Stockton has the 27th highest number of murders per 1,000 people and the 12th most aggravated assaults per 1,000. Last year, recognizing the crime problems in the city, the state temporarily diverted hundreds of California Highway Patrol officers to aid the city's overwhelmed police department