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Big Tobacco's Racial Profiling Challenged in Court

Gloria Tucker's mother and grandmother both smoked cigarettes. Both died from smoking-related health problems. An African American woman, Tucker believes that her loved ones' deaths were due to "racial profiling" by big tobacco companies. And she's got the documents to prove it.

On June 7, Miami attorney J.B. Harris filed a lawsuit on Tucker's behalf. The suit seeks $1 billion in punitive damages collectively from Philip Morris USA, Lorillard Tobacco, R.J. Reynolds, and Liggett Group. It accuses the companies of using predatory marketing techniques to target African Americans. Central to the case are hundreds of tobacco industry documents that detail how companies designed cigarettes especially for African Americans; tailored marketing campaigns to lower-income, less-educated African Americans; and continued to do so long after the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 declaration that cigarettes are hazardous to health.

UPDATE: Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) Dies

Update: Sen. [[Craig Thomas#Illness and death|Craig Thomas]] (R-Wyo.) died late on Monday, June 4 at the age of 74. Our condolences go out to his family.

[[Congresspedia]] is currently following two recent developments pertaining to members of Congress.

After a lengthy investigation, Rep. [[William Jefferson#Indictment|William Jefferson]] (D-La.) was indicted today on sixteen criminal counts which include racketeering, money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy to solicit bribes by a public official. Jefferson allegedly accepted bribes ($90,000 was found in his freezer) to promote high-tech business ventures in Africa. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

In other news, Sen. [[Craig Thomas#Illness and death|Craig Thomas]] (R-Wyo.) is in "serious condition" at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Thomas, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006, is undergoing a second round of chemotherapy, but his blood cancer has rejected treatment and he is suffering from an infection. He was elected to his third Senate term last November. If Thomas were to die or leave the Senate, the state Republican Party would select three candidates and forward those names to Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who would pick one as his replacement.

Congresspedia has more info on both [[William Jefferson#Indictment|Jefferson]] and [[Craig Thomas#Illness and death|Thomas]] on their respective profile pages. I encourage you to visit them, and improve them with further details.

Coming Up This Week in Congress: Immigration, Stem Cells and Afghanistan

Both the House and Senate are in session this week, with each chamber expected to debate and consider several important bills and resolutions. Highlights include:

  • The Senate will continue to debate a comprehensive immigration bill. Amendments expected to be introduced include several making it easier for employers or family members to sponsor green card applicants and one which would permanently ban immigrants who have received deportation notices from obtaining visas.
  • The House is expected to consider a Senate-passed bill which would lift President Bush’s 2001 ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. The House passed a similar stem-cell bill in January, but the Senate version includes additional language promoting alternative types of stem-cell research.
  • The House will take up the 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act, which would authorize the National Science Foundation (NSF) to award grants to higher education institutions that develop and offer educational and training programs for healthcare workers and professionals in new medical information technologies.
  • The House will consider the Afghanistan Freedom and Security Support Act (AFSSA), which would authorize $1.6 billion per year over the next three years for economic and security assistance programs in Afghanistan.

After the jump is a full listing of this week's Senate hearings, courtesy of GovTrack. The House is not in session until Tuesday (June 5), so hearings have not yet been made available.

Guest Blog: The Sunlight Foundation's Paul Blumenthal on Sen. Mitch McConnell & The Blocked Transparency Legislation

Managing Editor's note: This is a guest blog by Paul Blumenthal, one of SourceWatch's citizen editors and a staffer for the Sunlight Foundation who blogs at In Broad Daylight. It does not necessarily represent the views of the Center for Media and Democracy. We welcome all informative, quality submissions related to Congress and Congresspedia articles, regardless of the point of view.

SourceWatch Editor Beth Wellington on Gun Control Legislation

Managing Editor's note: This is a guest piece by User:Beth Wellington, one of SourceWatch's citizen editors who writes at The Writing Corner. It does not necessarily represent the views of the Center for Media and Democracy or the Sunlight Foundation. We welcome all informative, quality submissions related to Congress and Congresspedia articles, regardless of the point of view. If you'd like to submit a post for publication on the front page, see the guest writing info page. An interesting note about the Congresspedia article on U.S. gun control legislation: It was started by User:Elliott Fullmer when he was working with User:Kd7one, who strongly opposes gun control and added sections to the profiles of dozens of members of Congress who had sponsored such legislation. Beth found the article and expanded it because she supports much gun control and wanted to document the current legislation in light of the focus on the issue after the April killings at Virginia Tech. To borrow from the late Sen. Patrick Moynihan, we're all entitled to different opinions, but it's nice to have a place where we can work together on gathering the same facts.

Cho Seung-Hui bought two semi-automatics – a Walther P-22LR February 2, 2007 from thegunsource.com in Green Bay, Wisc. and a Glock 19 with 50 rounds of ammo March 13 at Roanoke Firearms. Then, on April 16, the Virginia Tech senior murdered thirty-two fellow students and faculty members in Blacksburg before killing himself.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), one of the House's strongest gun control advocates, introduced that day the Anti-Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act of 2007 (H.R.1859). The bill seeks to reinstate and strengthen the prohibition on possessing or transferring such devices, which were illegal until the expiration of the 1994 assault gun ban in 2004. McCarthy has garnered no co-sponsors to date, although early speculation that Cho had used high capacity magazines proved true. As reported April 19, State Police told NBC correspondent Pete Williams they had found 17 magazines, some of which held 33 rounds of ammunition each.

Nigeria Strikes Back at British American Tobacco

Tobacco companies target Nigerian youth (Photo by Essential Action)If you think the U.S. tobacco industry is bad, you'll find the behavior of many of the same companies overseas to be truly shocking.

Happily, the industry is beginning to be held accountable for its operations in the Global South. Nigeria's two largest states are following the lead of U.S. states, in suing British American Tobacco (BAT) of Nigeria, its U.K. parent company and Philip Morris International for the health care costs of treating sick smokers, The Times of London reported this week.

The new lawsuits demonstrate the importance of the online public databases of previously secret tobacco industry documents. The 1998 U.S. Master Settlement Agreement required major tobacco companies to reveal millions of pages documenting unethical -- and even illegal -- marketing, public relations and lobbying campaigns. A lesser-known treasure trove is the British American Tobacco Documents Archive, which has made some seven million pages of BAT documents freely available. These documents are of particular importance to countries like Nigeria.

Democratic Spin Won't End the War in Iraq

After several months of empty posturing against the war in Iraq, politicians in Washington have made what Democratic congressman James P. Moran called a "concession to reality" by agreeing to give President Bush virtually everything he wanted in funding and unrestricted license to continue waging the increasingly detested war that has made Bush the most unpopular president since Richard Nixon.

This is the outcome that we warned against two months ago when we wrote "Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?" In it, we criticized MoveOn for backpedaling on its previously claimed objective of ending the war in Iraq immediately. Anti-war sentiment was the main factor behind last year's elections that brought Democrats to power in both houses of Congress. Once in power, however, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through a "compromise" bill, supported by MoveOn, that offered $124 billion in supplemental funding for the war. To make it sound like they were voting for peace, the Democrats threw in a few non-binding benchmarks asking Bush to certify progress in Iraq, coupled with language that talked about withdrawing troops next year.

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