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• Louisiana businesses say BP negligent on payment for services
• AK Senator Lisa Murkowski concedes Republican nomination
• More lawmakers accused of ethics violations
• Federal court temporarily blocks Orlando ordinance banning the public feeding of homeless people
• Cross-border skirmish between Azerbaijan and Armenian troops threatens delicate peace
• Alleged WikiLeaks source undergoes mental evaluation

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Last night, President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office for just the second time. He declared an end to the combat mission in Iraq and at the same time outlined a plan for continued war in Afghanistan. Analysts say that in trying to walk this line, Obama may have difficulty appeasing any side with his speech. Tanya Snyder has more.

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Labor Day Weekend provides a great opportunity to recharge yourself and do some serious thinking. Here are tips on how to get the most benefit from the time.

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, predicts that Democrats will defy conventional wisdom and keep control of the Senate and House in November. But if Republicans take over even just the House, 'any chance of progress will be ended,' says the union leader.

Such is the political hysteria over 'illegal aliens' that legislative reform is paralysed. Only President Obama can break the logjam

A month after a federal judge struck down most of Arizona's tough new immigration law, the White House campaign to stigmatise the GOP as the party of bigotry and intolerance has backfired. Rather than rally independents, it's further polarised white swing voters against the Democrats.

And its real purpose to galvanise disaffected Latino voters hasn't borne fruit either. It's time for Obama to change course.
 
With Republicans still hostile to comprehensive immigration reform, Democrats prefer to punt on immigration until after the mid-terms. But with the GOP surging fast, that's likely to delay further progress until after the 2012 elections and perhaps even longer.
 
America, already convulsed by nativism on a scale not seen since the 1920s, can't afford to wait that long. And neither can the president's restive Latino base. We need to act now.
 
As the nation's chief executive, Obama has the power to institute policy action on immigration that does not require a formal vote by congress. It's not a power he should use lightly, but it's there, and current circumstances warrant its use. There are two areas of executive action on immigration that the president should consider.
 
First, in deference to those seeking a legalisation program, Obama should issue an executive order to temporarily suspend the deportation of certain classes of illegal aliens. "Deferred enforced departure", or DED, as it's known, wouldn't give aliens green cards, but it would protect them from deportation for a set period. It could also serve as a prelude to full-scale legalisation, if congress so chooses.
 
Two obvious candidates for DED are the children of illegal aliens who migrated when they were still minors, and the illegal alien spouses of US soldiers in uniform. Their numbers are less than 9% of the total illegal alien population. Many in both groups have lived in the US for years.
 
The GOP has labeled DED and other similar options an "executive amnesty". It accuses Obama of threatening an end-run around congress. But it doesn't and shouldn't apply to all 11 million illegals. And aliens who qualify don't necessarily have the right to stay in the US permanently; it's only a temporary, but sustained, reprieve.
 
Ironically, a handful of defence hawks including vocal "amnesty" opponents like representatives Mike Pence (Republican, Indiana) and Sam Johnson (Republican, Texas) have already pressed Obama to grant DED to military spouses. But they still view illegal alien minors about 800,000, currently as simply "law-breakers".
 
Senators Richard Durbin (Democrat, Illinois) and Richard Lugar (Republican, Indiana) have co-sponsored the so-called Dream Act to allow these minors to get green cards right away. To qualify, they would have to go to college or enlist in the US military. The Pentagon, in search of fresh recruits, strongly supports this bill. But the bulk of the GOP isn't budging and probably won't, unless pushed.
 
As a stopgap, Obama has already sent word to the department of homeland security not to target illegal aliens guilty of only minor crimes. But with so much GOP hostility, he's been reluctant to protect specific classes of illegal aliens, like the Dream kids. It's time to take that step now.
 
Presidents in both parties Ronald Reagan, no less than Bill Clinton have previously extended DED or "temporary protected" status to large classes of illegal aliens, including Central American and Liberian asylum-seekers. Arguably, these quasi-refugees faced danger back home, had they been deported. But everyone knows this was largely a fiction in the Central American case. It simply made sense, politically, to grant them a temporary stay.
 
It's important, however, that Obama couple any concession of this kind with continued efforts to tighten immigration enforcement. The president, under GOP pressure, has already signed a bill to beef up border enforcement. Now, on his own initiative, he should take similar action at the workplace to deter illegal hiring.
 
How? By ordering that "E-Verify", the workplace verification system that's currently in restricted use, be extended nationwide and made mandatory for all employers. A dozen states, including Arizona, have already mandated use of E-Verify. And congressional Republicans, as well as Blue Dog Democrats, are among its staunchest supporters. They'd be hardpressed to oppose the president for taking up their cause.
 
Executive action is risky. But it's far less risky, politically, than convening a "lame-duck" session of congress, as some Democrats like senate majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) now propose, to try to ram through the Dream Act or other broader immigration measures, much as they did with healthcare reform.
 
Most outgoing Democrats aren't going to play ball, especially if they have to vote to expand enforcement. And even those who survive the mid-terms still have to face the voters in 2012. Supporting legalisation in a GOP-controlled congress could well cost them their seats.
 
As president, Obama is uniquely placed to step in and exercise Solomon-like leadership on behalf of Democrats and Republicans alike. Recent polls show that a majority of voters including a majority of GOP voters support expanded enforcement coupled with some kind of legalisation.
 
At a time when the public discourse on immigration is degenerating into near-hysteria, and congress remains paralysed, even-handed executive action can point the country forward. It sends a powerful signal to voters that the president still has the courage to stick his neck out, even when a nervous and recalcitrant congress, including members of his own party, won't.
 
The entire country Democrats, Republicans and independents alike would stand up and cheer.

Our dear Appalachian-Lukacsian-Burnettian comrade (did I forget anything?) known by the initials VM certainly piqued my interest this morning with that business in the comment thread about the State Department and Arizona and the UN. So I looked into it, and yes it's true, but...

The UN used to have a high commission on human rights. That's the one Libya chaired. Thus discredited, the high commission was replaced by a new body called the UN Human Rights Council in 2006. Under its rules, apparently all member nations are required to submit evaluations of their own human rights records. As nearly as I could find out this morning, this is to be done quadrennially, so this seems to be the first one conducted by the US (i.e., the Bush administration wasn't obligated to do one). It's officially called a universal periodic review, or UPR.

The UPR process (more than you need to know, but...) involves a series of public discussions and consultations held over the previous year, arranged by State in conjunction with local nonprofits, churches and universities. Eleven were held. Here's the list.

The result of these meetings is the report itself, a 29-page document that list the US human-rights record on a number of fronts: freedom of speech, assembly and worship; fairness and equality; et cetera. It's broken into six sections, the fifth of which is entitled "A commitment to values in engagement across our borders," which is broken into three sections: national security, immigration and trafficking.

In the immigration section there are five paragraphs. The first is glorious-history boiler plate. The second is about immigration detention. The third describes the so-called 287(g) program, under which the federal government may delegate to states and localities immigration enforcement. Then the fourth graf says in its entirety:

A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.

And that's it. Three sentences that are as objective and straightforward as they could possible be, just describing a situation. There is no appeal to the UN to do anything. There is no assertion that this is a major problem. There isn't even an adjective describing the law as bad. It's the 95th out of 100 numbered paragraphs, and it's actually one of the shorter grafs in the report.

As fate would have it, this morning I was emailed a write-up of the UPR by Barbara Crossette, the excellent former New York Times journalist who covered the UN and diplomacy for many years and now writes syndicated pieces. I don't have a link, since I got it in an email. Maybe you can find it somewhere. In what reads to me like about a 1,300-word piece, she doesn't even mention the fact that the UPR mentions Arizona.

She focuses on what any reasonable news person would focus on reading it, which is the language about gay rights in America, which is clearly the most newsworthy language and something that, if those kind of people want to get mad about something, maybe they should focus on.

Crossette describes what the US's participation in this process actually means:

A periodic review "package" consists of not only the country's own assessment of how it thinks it has met its obligations under various international and national laws and conventions, but also input from nongovernmental organizations or other interested parties, the office of the high commissioner and finally experts from three other countries -- in the case of the United States, those will be Cameroon, France and Japan. The US review will be on the agenda of the Human Rights Council in November. The council has no enforcement powers; it can merely pass resolutions and make statements. But its actions have a large international audience. And this will be the first appearance by the United States in such a review process. The Obama administration joined the Human Rights Council last year, reversing the Bush administration's hostile policy toward it and global human rights monitoring in general as it affected the United States. In preparing its first review, the Obama administration met with human rights activists and community groups around the country.

In other words, the Bush administration shunned this process, and the Obama administration is participating in it. That's a change. If you think that's a bad change, fine. If you think it's a good one, fine. Let's debate that.

But that's not what's going to happen over the next few days, if our Misanthrophic friend and some of the rest of you are right, which you might well be. By next week, half of America might believe that Obama - not some State Department functionary, not even Hillary C., but Obama himself - wants to "force" Arizona's law to undergo review by the UN or something. And we'll be off to the races again.

Having said all this, I still think it was unwise to include a mention of the law in there. But having now read the report, I can't honestly say that if I'd been in the room, reading that brief and anodyne language, I'd have seen any political red flags. I might have, I might not have.

PHOENIX - The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

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Hours before peace talks were set to begin in Washington, Jewish settlers defiantly announced plans on Thursday to launch new construction in their West Bank enclaves in a test of strength with Palestinian Islamists.

Naftali Bennett, director of the settlers' Yesha council, said settlers would begin building homes and public structures in at least 80 settlements, breaking a partial government freeze on building that ends on September 26.

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