Ladies and Gentlemen.....We Got Him!

By Billy Tucker
It might be early, but Tim Brewster is certainly off to a great start on the recruiting trail in '09 and building off his surprising No. 23 class from a year ago. The second year head coach with a reputation as a fierce recruiter has landed another talented offensive prospect who by most accounts, was a reach for the Golden Gopher program that went 1-11 in 2007.

Running back Hasan Lipscomb (Houston/Cypress Ridge) chose Minnesota over Nebraska, LSU and Iowa State and has the physical makeup in our opinion to be a very productive college running back, a guy who could potentially carry the load for the Gophers. Lipscomb has the lateral quickness and perimeter speed to hurt a defense on the outside and we feel he will develop into a great runner who can become a one cut and go downhill runner at the next level. With great upside, he forms a great offensive nucleus with Under Armour All-American quarterback Moses Alipate (Bloomington, Minn./Jefferson).

Aside from his impressive skills as a running back, Lipscomb is a significant land out of the talent rich state of Texas. Minnesota went the extra mile to snag the ESPN 150 Watch List back, and it made quite an impression on him while doing so.

"They told me I can come in and start like every school tells recruits, but I believe them," Lipscomb explained. "At some of those other schools like LSU I would be like the third running back -- in just the freshmen class alone."

A victim of Hurricane Katrina when living in New Orleans, Lipscomb fell behind in his school credits. He said the effort Minnesota's staff has put forth in getting the gifted running back on the right track to be eligible for college, was one of the deciding points as well. Some schools in Lipscomb's eyes were scared off by the challenge, but Minnesota hung with him, and now the back who rushed for over 1,600 yards and 26 touchdowns while playing in the shadow of Under Armour All-American athlete Russell Shepard (Houston/Cypress Ridge) is doing some solid recruiting of his own.

"I am calling and texting other recruits Minnesota has offered," Lipscomb said. "There are not going to be as many scholarships this year so I want to make sure we get great players."

3 jr. high kids suspended for sitting during pledge

By PAUL WALSH, Star Tribune

Three small-town eighth-graders were suspended for not standing at the start of the school day Thursday for the Pledge of Allegiance.

"My son wasn't being defiant against America," said Kim Dahl, mother of one of the students, Brandt, who attends Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in western Minnesota. She said her son offered no reason for sitting.

Brandt told the Fargo Forum that Thursday's one-day in-school suspension, "was kind of dumb because I didn't do anything wrong. It should be the people's choice."

Kim Dahl said the "punishment didn't fit the crime. If they wanted to know why he didn't stand, they should've made him write a paper."

She said that Brandt has not been standing all year, and "all of a sudden it became an in-school suspension."

The district today is defending the punishments. The school's handbook says all students are required to stand but are not obligated to recite the pledge. The same is true for all four schools in the district, a school official said.

"These three [students] didn't, and they got caught," said Mel Olson, the district's community education director. He said he backs the punishment, "being a veteran and a United States of America citizen, absolutely." Olson served in the Marines in Japan during the Vietnam War.

The head of the Minnesota American Civil Liberties Union said that the school's actions against the students are unconstitutional.

"The school can't do that; that's illegal," said Chuck Samuelson, the civil liberties group's executive director. "Wow."

Samuelson said that numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings dating to the 1940s say that "students who refuse to participate in the pledge cannot be punished for refusing to participate."

Samuelson said he's surprised that any public school district would have such a pledge requirement. In St. Paul, said district spokesman Howie Padilla, "Students can respectfully not participate in the Pledge of Allegiance."

Olson said this morning that a "very nice announcement" was made at the start of the junior high's school today reminding the students that they must stand for the pledge.

Principal Colleen Houglum said that all students this morning were "involved in some fashion" during the pledge, adding that no additional suspensions were needed.

"Our social studies teacher led the pledge, and that was kind of a nice change of pace," Houglum said.

Kim Dahl asked Brandt why he has remained seated all school year, but "he didn't have an answer ... he doesn't get in trouble; he's just a normal 13-year-old."

As for today, she told Brandt to take his cell phone with him to school and text her should he run into trouble again.

"I said you should probably just stand if you're not protesting something."

John McCain Is the Moonwalking Bear

McGovern, former Clinton backer, urges her to drop out

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Former Sen. George McGovern, who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race.

McGovern said Wednesday he has decided to endorse Barack Obama.

After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern says it's virtually impossible for Clinton to win the nomination.

McGovern says he is calling former President Clinton to tell him of the decision and adds that he remains close friends with the Clintons.

Hillary's Been Up All Night Moving the Goalposts

North Carolina: Sit-in against UNC's ties to sweatshops ends with 5 arrests

By Kosta Harlan

Chapel Hill, NC - A 16-day sit-in at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) administration building came to a dramatic close on Friday May 2, when Chancellor Moeser ordered UNC police to arrest five of the protesters. It was the longest sit-in protest in UNC's history. Dozens of students had occupied the lobby of South Building, the administrative headquarters at UNC, in a protest against the university's use of sweatshops for the manufacture of UNC apparel.

The students, members of the Carolina Sweatfree Coalition, had demanded that Chancellor Moeser and the UNC Licensing Labor Code Advisory Committee sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program, which would ensure that university apparel is manufactured in factories where workers earn a living wage and have the right to organize. In contrast, most UNC apparel is currently manufactured in Central American and South Asian sweatshops, where workers are routinely harassed on the job, denied the right to organize and earn pitiful wages that fall short of what is needed to support a family.

After 16 days of sitting in, members of the Carolina Sweatfree Coalition were granted a meeting with the licensing committee and the Chancellor. Commenting on what took place at the meeting, Student Action with Workers member Salma Mirza said, "Chancellor Moeser demonstrated at that committee meeting that he had no intention of taking any moral leadership on the fact that our apparel is manufactured under sweatshop conditions."

After the meeting, the Carolina Sweatfree Coalition held a press conference in South Building. A dozen students then entered Chancellor Moeser's office to inform him that they would continue to occupy the administration building until he entered into a genuine dialog with the Coalition. In response, Moeser ordered the students arrested. The police arrested one student without warning, and then told the others to leave if they did not want to be arrested. Four remained and were arrested on charges of failure to disperse, while one student was charged with resisting arrest.

"We knew our arrests would join with the 46 others that have taken place across the U.S. around this campaign, and that we would be contributing to the deep history of struggle at UNC," said Tim Stallmann, a graduate student at UNC and a member of Student Action with Workers. "This was an anti-sweatshop fight, but we were putting our bodies on the line for all workers involved at UNC: the clerical and campus workers, the student workers and the workers manufacturing UNC apparel in sweatshops around the world."

The statement from the Coalition on the arrests said, "The Chancellor stated that he was disappointed by our actions. We cannot begin to express our disappointment in the Chancellor of a university that calls itself the 'university of the people,' who would prefer to arrest peaceful student protesters instead of ensuring that there is justice for the workers who make this university run."

Members of the Coalition and Student Action with Workers, the group that led the protests, promise to continue the struggle the next year. "The campaign for justice for all workers in the Carolina community will not end with the arrests of peaceful student protesters," explained Salma Mirza. "Though we were the ones arrested, we must ask - which is more criminal, our act of peacefully occupying an office of a public institution that our tuition pays for, or Chancellor Moeser allowing our Carolina apparel to be made under sweatshop conditions that violate international and domestic law?"

For more information, and to support the campaign, please visit: http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/uncsitin

Size matters

Iowa was The Biggun.

Then New Hampshire was The Biggun.

Michigan was supposed to be The Biggun but state party officials interfered and made it a wee'un.

Then Nevada and South Carolina were The Bigguns.

Florida played Michigan's game and ended up another wee'un.

Then...Super Tuesday, baby! Now that was The Biggun.

The Potomac Primary? The real Biggun!

Then Texas and Ohio were The Biggest Bigguns of all.

Until Pennsylvania came along. It wasn't just The Biggun, it was THE BIGGUN.

Now Indiana and North Carolina are The BIGGEST BIGGUNS IN ALL BIGGUNLAND.

Clinton Camp Says It Will Use The Nuclear Option

UPDATE | May 5, 11am ET : Hillary Clinton's campaign today acknowledged plans to try to win seating of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations to the Democratic Nation Convention at a meeting of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31.

In a statement issued in response to a story on The Huffington Post ("Clinton Camp Considering Nuclear Option," see below), the campaign declared:

"There is no secret plan.... The Clinton campaign has been vocal in stating that the votes of 2.5 million people must be respected. Hardly a day goes by when a Clinton official doesn't publicly declare that the votes of Michigan and Florida count and that the delegations from those states should be seated."

The campaign's public assertions stand in contrast to its response to inquiries prior to publication of the story. At that point, Clinton aides insisted on keeping all comments either off the record or on deep background, or did not respond to questions at all. The campaign statement appeared to be designed to try to reduce the significance of the story.

In a more typical reaction to the story, political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said: "Wow. The nuclear option will yield nuclear winter for the Democratic Party."

---

Hillary Clinton's campaign has a secret weapon to build its delegate count, but her top strategists say privately that any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives. The Obama campaign has declined to give an estimate.

Using the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the seating of two pro-Hillary delegations would provoke a massive outcry from Obama forces. Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:

First, this coming Tuesday, Clinton would have to win Indiana and lose North Carolina by a very small margin - or better yet, win the Tar Heel state. She would also have to demonstrate continued strength in the contests before May 31.

Second, and equally important, her argument that she is a better general election candidate than Obama -- that he has major weaknesses which have only been recently revealed -- would have to rapidly gain traction, not only within the media, where she has experienced some success, but within the broad activist ranks of the Democratic Party.

Under that optimistic scenario, some Clinton operatives believe she could overcome several massive stumbling blocks:

-- Clinton loyalists on the Rules Committee would have to be persuaded to put their political futures on the line by defying major party constituencies, especially black leaders backing Barack Obama. Committee members are unlikely to take such a step unless they are convinced that Clinton has a strong chance of winning the nomination.

Former DNC and South Carolina Democratic Party chair Donald Fowler -- a Hillary loyalist -- would, for example, face an outpouring of anger from South Carolina Democrats if he were to go along with such a strategy.

-- A controversial decision to seat the two delegations, as currently constituted, would be appealed by the Obama campaign to the Democratic National Convention's Credentials Committee.

The full make-up of the Credentials Committee will not be determined until all the primaries are completed, but the pattern of Clinton and Obama victories so far clearly suggests that Obama delegates on that committee will outnumber Clinton delegates. Obama will not, however, have a majority, according to most estimates, and the balance of power will be held by delegates appointed by DNC chair Howard Dean.

For the scenario to work, then, Dean would have to be convinced of Clinton's superior viability in the general election, and that she has a strong chance of defeating McCain next November.

One of the arguments the Clinton campaign is privately making to autonomous "super" or "automatic" delegates, as well as to delegates technically "pledged" to Obama as a result of primary and caucus results, is that the campaign shifted dramatically in roughly mid-February. At that point, Clinton supporters contend, the economy replaced Iraq as the dominant issue among primary voters, and that transition led to Clinton's successes in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

Clinton people also make the case that the past six weeks have seen examples of Obama's political vulnerabilities: his wife's "proud to be an American" remarks, the emergence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, wider coverage of Obama's ties to 1960s radicals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, "bittergate," the flag pin imbroglio, and "hand on the heart" accusations -- all impugning Obama's patriotism.
* * *

The controversy over Michigan and Florida grows out of the decision of both states to flout national party rules prohibiting all but a few states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- from holding primaries or caucuses before February 5, 2008. Michigan held its primary on January 15 and Florida on January 29.

On December 1, 2007, well before the contests were held, the Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to refuse to seat either state's delegation at the August 2008 convention in Denver.

When the contests were actually held, none of the candidates actively campaigned in either state. In Michigan, Obama had his name taken off the ballot. Clinton "won" both contests.

The Obama campaign contends that the primaries in the two states were not legitimate, especially in Michigan where voters could not cast a ballot for Obama. Clinton "won" the Michigan contest with 55 percent, while 40 percent voted "uncommitted" and the remainder went to minor candidates.

Obama manager David Plouffe has argued that the only way to seat the Michigan delegation would be to divide the delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama: "A 50-50 split would be fair."

Many Democrats, including DNC chair Howard Dean, believe it is critically important to reach some kind of compromise to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations in order not to alienate voters in the two battleground states, each of which could be pivotal in the November general election.

In the case of Florida, there are a number of proposals under consideration. One would be to seat the delegation as is, but give each delegate only one half a vote. Another would be to cut the number of Florida delegates in half.

Spokesmen for the Obama campaign declined to discuss their strategies for dealing with the May 31 Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, or to speculate on what they think the Clinton forces with try to do.

The Long Flat Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March to the Whitehouse