The Senate is set to vote soon on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – but a right-wing barrage of emails and calls opposing repeal is already well underway.

We need your help to drown them out and show that a majority of Americans wants this discriminatory law repealed – once and for all.

We have a chance to make history here. Please, send your message today.

Click here to act now.

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Accused of throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and participating in a terrorist conspiracy beginning when he was only 10 years old, Khadr literally has grown up at Guantánamo. Now 23, the full beard Khadr has grown since his imprisonment in 2002 obscures the fact that he was only 15 at the time he was shot and captured by U.S. forces.

Khadr has now spent a third of his life at Guantánamo, and after five years in the discredited military commissions, his trial began today. Khadr faces charges of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support to terrorism, and spying. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted.

Khadr’s is the first trial in the illegitimate military commissions under President Obama. The trial of an alleged child soldier who was abused in U.S. detention is a terrible case for the administration to open with, and yet here we are, in the middle of jury selection.

Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner, Khadr is the only one of the 176 remaining detainees who was a juvenile when transferred here. A Canadian, he’s also the only Westerner remaining at Gitmo. Khadr’s case is also unique because it will be the first prosecution in history for murder in violation of the laws of war (murder isn’t a recognized war crime; like the charges of spying and material suppport for terrorism that Khadr also faces, the charge was fashioned out of whole cloth for the purposes of the military commissions).

Omar Khadr’s trial flies in the face of international law and policy that recognizes child soldiers as victims and candidates for rehabilitation. The U.N. Special Representative on Children in Armed Conflict said in a statement today that Khadr’s trial sets a dangerous precedent that could endanger child soldiers around the world. She also said “juvenile justice standards are clear—children should not be tried before military tribunals.”

Since World War II, there hasn’t been a war crimes prosecution of a child soldier—until today. And that’s not because children don’t commit war crimes. Children committed some of the most heinous abuses of the Sierra Leonean civil war in the 90′s, including murder, rape, and amputation of limbs. But the U.N. war court convened to prosecute those responsible for wartime atrocities chose not to prosecute anyone under 18 at the time of their crimes, and instead entered these child soldiers in rehabilitatation programs and used them as witnesses in the war crimes trials against the adults who recruited or used them during the war.

The former chief prosecutor of the Sierra Leonean war court, former Defense Department official David Crane, has said that Khadr’s trial is “morally and legally wrong.” Author Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone who, like Khadr, was captured when he was 15, has also criticized Khadr’s prosecution. Beah admits that during the civil war he killed “too many people to count,” but since a stint in a rehabilitation center he has written a best-selling memoir, graduated from Oberlin, and served as a UNICEF ambassador. Beah has said he struggles to understand the dramatic difference between the compassion shown him and the lack of compassion shown Khadr.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

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The US participated in the “Ottawa Process” that created this international treaty, but the Clinton administration decided at the last moment against signing and instead set 2006 as the objective for the US to join. In February 2004, the Bush administration reversed course and announced that it did not ever intend to join the Mine Ban Treaty.

The United States is already compliant with the key provisions of the Mine Ban Treaty. It has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991, has had an export ban in place since 1992, and has not produced since 1997. The US is already the world’s largest contributor to global mine clearance and victim assistance programs. Acceding to the treaty would reinforce President Obama’s stated commitment to international humanitarian law, protection of civilians, arms control and disarmament, and multilateralism.

Tell President Obama that you support the landmine ban and want to see the United States join the Mine Ban Treaty without delay.

Photo: Angola’s four-decade war ended in 2002. Parties to the conflict mined roads, high-voltage electricity pylons, reservoirs and dams. © Gervasio Sanchez

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According to a front-page New York Times story, the deal would allow “Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.”1

It would create fast Internet lanes for the largest corporations and slow lanes for the rest of us.

That is why CREDO is joining MoveOn, Free Press, and Color of Change in rallying Google users to tell Google, “Don’t be evil.”

Speak up for a free and open Internet by signing this petition. With massive amounts of public pressure, we can stop this deal.

From the beginning, the Internet has been a level playing field that allows everyone to connect to one another and to the world of content available online — whether it’s Daily Kos or FOX News.

This deal would change all of that by allowing Google and Verizon to pick what websites you can see over others. It would undermine the open Internet upon which hundreds of millions of people rely.

Our Internet connection should be free of corporate gatekeepers — there’s only one Internet, and it shouldn’t matter who your provider is or whether you’re logging on from home or your cell phone.

Sign this petition to tell Google, “Don’t be evil.”

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google to make information freely available to everyone online.

But this deal is a complete reversal that abandons their core principles. It’s evil and Google must walk away from it.

Sign this letter and tell Google’s founders: “Your Verizon deal IS evil, and it must be stopped.”

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If this sounds unnatural, it’s the reality for many young girls of color who experience early signs of puberty at alarming rates. The latest research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that an array of social and environmental factors may be causing girls’ bodies to develop prematurely. Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers–looked at 1,239 girls screened in Manhattan, Cincinnati and San Francisco. It reveals stark racial disparities.

The girls who developed breasts early, as young as age seven, were disproportionately Black and Latina. Black 8-year-olds were more than twice as likely as white girls to develop breasts. As the NYT reports:

At 7 years, 10.4 percent of white, 23.4 percent of black and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls had enough breast development to be considered at the onset of puberty.

At age 8, the figures were 18.3 percent in whites, 42.9 percent in blacks and 30.9 percent in Hispanics. The percentages for blacks and whites were even higher than those found by a 1997 study that was one of the first to suggest that puberty was occurring earlier in girls.

As Susan Shane explained in a 2008 Colorlines essay, early puberty tends to produce complicated dilemmas. Girls often find themselves physically maturing at a faster pace than they learn how to deal with sexual contact, and may face certain cancer risks later in life.

The findings dovetail with earlier research by the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, which has tracked elevated exposures to environmental toxins in mothers in low-income New York neighborhoods. The data reflect a disturbing prevalence of chemicals known to be endocrine disruptors, including common plastic ingredients known as pthalates.

The Obama administration has begun taking environmental health risks more seriously, beginning with a groundbreaking report from the Presidential Cancer Panel which highlighted the threats of environmental carcinogens.

Meanwhile, the White House is campaigning to reduce childhood obesity, another health problem tied to early-onset puberty, which may expand poor kids’ access to healthy foods and recreation.

As the budget battle shakes out, it’s too early to tell how comprehensively the administration will address the link between health and environment. The research is clear, however: the risk to youth isn’t just about “lifestyle,” but justice, especially for the young girls of color who carry an unequal burden as they step suddenly into adulthood.

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