The Scandal Scorecard Update

It just keeps going and going and growing....

Among the things I don't focus on much (or really, enough) here is my interest in American Indian/Alaska Native issues. I've been involved in them both as a matter of personal and professional interest for a number of years, and currently serve as a Commissioner with the Seattle Indian Services Commission, which puts me in contact with the urban Indian population of the northwest. While tribal politics really falls outside my realm of influence, there's enough traffic back and forth between the rez and the city that I have some insight into the issues that affect each.

Which leads me to this weeks entry to the Upper Left Scandal Scorecard. While the celebrations for the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian are underway, there are many Indians with little to celebrate, as a Senate hearing this week revealed.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Indian prisons are "a national disgrace" in which 11 people have died and hundreds have tried to kill themselves or escaped over the past three years, government officials said Tuesday.

Senators said they were deeply troubled by the report of the situation from the Interior Department's top watchdog and likened the jails to the U.S. military's mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Earl Devaney, the department's inspector general, painted a grim picture for the Senate Finance Committee. His report, capping a year of investigation, found at least 11 fatalities, 236 suicide attempts and 632 escapes since the Bush administration took office in January 2001.

"...likened the jails to...Abu Ghraib..."

We're talking about US government jails holding American citizens. Our first, and in many cases our most fragile, citizens.

And it's a scandal. #61 on a list that just keeps going and going and growing...