Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely?

As I mentioned yesterday weather - or perhaps I should say natural phenomena - played a big role in so many of our lives yesterday. One of our staffers houses sustained serious flooding, another had a tree fall on her roof.

But that was minor stuff compared to tornadoes in the Midwest and south that left about 20 dead. Then there was the earthquake in China. Some 10-12,000 people are believed to have died there. We have a team of reporters there who've been doing some amazing reporting ... but how well I remember how hard it is. They actually lived through the earthquake and were right on the scene (we are glad to know they are all safe) . When I reported on natural disasters for Nightline there was always the time lag - we had to get to where the story was - and that could take 5-10-12 hours at least. You had half a day to collect yourself and to prepare yourself for what you were about to see and do and even then it's hard. For them, one minute they're doing stories about whatever and then you're out in the street watching women clutching babies wondering if their families are still alive under an apartment building rubble. And we cannot forget the ongoing crisis in Myanmar (Burma) where as many as 100,000 people might have died and hundreds of thousands more at risk because of the cyclone last week and then their military junta's reluctance to accept international aid. Hard to wrap your head around that, but perhaps it is simple after all: who was it who said that absolute power corrupts, absolutely?

Today, speaking of power, we wanted to talk about the whole issue of the kind of medical care that people receive while in immigration detention. Now I know some people are going to say that these people are illegal so what do they expect? But it's important to remember that administrative detention exists so that the question of status can be adjudicated. Some might be asylum seekers and some might be criminals. The issue is what standard of care is appropriate? Is there any standard? We would like to have had a representative from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to talk about this; they declined. But they did send over a statement, it is mainly a response to a New York Times piece about deaths in detention. Here's the article. And here's the ICE statement in response, point by point.

And finally ... ok, not final final, sort of final:

The Mocha Moms. I am already sensing that some of you want to weigh in on the whole question of giving kids more freedom. Lenore Skenazy wrote about this for the New York Sun. But a lot of people's attitude was: she's nuts! What do you think? When you had a chance to hear her logic? Does it make sense? Or do you still think ... she's nuts! She's actually starting an organization to promote the idea of giving kids more independence, here's that link.

And INVESTMENT 101. Believe me I KNOW that this is going to be way too basic for some of you. But it isn't for some of you, and in trying to figure out how to be helpful we decided we would think about the new college grads out there just starting out and perhaps knowing a very great deal about their areas of study but very little about how to invest that hard earned cash.

Trust me, we will take it up a notch later. But we can all use a basic set of references. Consider this our graduation gift. We're proud of all of you.

No politics today, people are voting. Tomorrow we'll talk more about West Virginia and whatever happens next.

Michel Martin

1:18 PM ET | 05-13-2008 | permalink

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1:18 PM ET | 05-13-2008 | permalink