On Thursday, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) returned to her all-female alma mater, Wellesley College, “after being buffeted by male Democratic rivals” in Wednesday’s Democratic Presidential Debate in Philadelphia. At Wellesley, Clinton launched her new youth initiative, Hillblazers, and reminisced on how her days as a “student activist at Wellesley College in the 1960s had helped pave her path to a White House bid.”

Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s campaign manager, described Clinton as “one strong woman” and observed that “on that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one” as Clinton’s “opponents tried a whole host of attacks on Hillary.” Clinton stressed the importance of her alma mater:

In so many ways, this all-women’s college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics.

But unfortunately, Clinton’s great pride in Wellesley women was not reflected in the students who stood on the stage behind her. Male students from surrounding schools were imported, while Wellesley students active in the Clinton campaign and the College Democrats were denied seats on stage.

If Clinton believes that Wellesley prepared her for the tough battles against sexism, why were Y chromosomes featured so prominently behind her at Thursday’s event?

Editor’s note: Ona Keller is the co-president of the Wellesley College Democrats.

Earlier this week, Rep. Henry Waxman accused the State Department of obstructing an investigation into Blackwater USA’s actions in Iraq. Providing yet another indication of the State Department’s willingness to stick its neck out for the shadowy security contractor, the Washington Post reports today that two career investigators in the office of the State Department Inspector General were threatened with firing if they cooperated with Congressional investigations into Blackwater. The whistle-blowers allege that State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard “has repeatedly thwarted investigations into alleged contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan…and weapons smuggling allegations against Blackwater USA.” These new allegations bring up a disturbing question: why does the State Department continue to defend Blackwater at the expense of America’s security?

UPDATE: From Think Progress: “the Pentagon had issued a new list of contracts, including one worth $92 million to Presidential Airways, the “aviation unit of parent company Blackwater.”

UPDATE II: From Newsweek: “an extensive evidence file put together by the Iraqi National Police and obtained by NEWSWEEK—including documents, maps, sworn witness statements and police video footage—appears to contradict the contractors’ version of events. A confidential incident report, which has been provided by Iraqi National Police investigators to American military and civilian officials, concludes that the Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

While the Supreme Court delivered many 5-4 decisions last term that dealt blows to women’s rights, the environment, and minority rights, perhaps no decision was more stunningly illogical than that of Ledbetter v Goodyear. Lilly Ledbetter was a manager at a Goodyear Tire plant in Alabama who received smaller pay raises than her male co-workers. After 19 years of discriminatory pay practices, Lebetter was making 15-25% less than her male co-workers — even those with far less experience. In 1999, Ledbetter sued Goodyear for violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which allows employees to file suit within 180 days after their employer commits an act of racial or sexual discrimination.

In Ledbetter v Goodyear, the Supreme Court decided that employees may sue employers “within 180 days of the original discriminatory action — not within 180 days of their last paycheck.” However, employees may not even know about the pay discrimination until long after the first discriminatory paycheck is cut. The Supreme Court’s ruling means that if a woman learns 181 days after her first paycheck that she is being paid less than a male co-worker, she cannot sue her employer.

In order to remedy this situation, the House passed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which treats “each and every discriminatory paycheck as a new discrimination, thus re-starting the 180-day clock” after every paycheck. The Senate version of this bill, the Fair Pay Restoration Act, will be coming to a vote later this month.

Please contact your Senator and tell him or her that you support equal pay for women!

Equal pay for men and women still has a long way to go; women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man is paid. The Fair Pay Restoration Act will give women the tools they need to get the money that they deserve.

Though Mitt Romney says that he wants to bring “innovation and transformation” to Washington, it seems as though he’s perfectly content to stick with the insiders.

Consider Cofer Black, a former senior CIA official who was criticized by the 9/11 Commission for not passing on vital intelligence to the FBI. Today, Black serves as the Vice President of Blackwater USA and as Romney’s senior counter-terrorism adviser and chair of his Counter-Terrorism Advisory Group.

Cofer’s company is the largest private security contractor in Iraq with “close personal and political ties” to the Bush Administration.” Last week, Blackwater contractors were involved in a shooting incident that left eight Iraqis dead, but Cofer shouldn’t worry about hiring a lawyer just yet. An obscure 2004 edict from the Coalition Provisional Authority keeps Blackwater immune from prosecution in Iraq, and the US government has refused to punish Blackwater for its actions (though this might change due to the Iraqi government’s anger about the situation).

Is Romney serious about “change” and “putting our own house in order?” Hiring a counter-terrorism adviser who is a senior executive at a shadowy and corrupt private security contractor seems to indicate that Romney will be more of the same.

The invasion of Iraq seems to have made the US more vulnerable to the horrors of nuclear weapons.  On August 29, US airmen accidentally flew nuclear warheads across the country for 36 hours, “the first known flight by a nuclear-armed bomber over U.S. airspace, without special high-level authorization, in nearly 40 years.”  The incident “provoked new questions inside and outside the Pentagon about the adequacy of U.S. nuclear weapons safeguards while the military’s attention and resources are devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Tomorrow, “tens of thousands of demonstrators, rallied by bloggers, newspapers and black radio hosts” including Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III will descend on Jena, Louisiana to protest the town’s Jim Crow-like justice system ”

The trouble began last fall, when Justin Purvis, an African American high school student “asked if he could sit under the schoolyard tree, a privilege unofficially reserved for white students.” The next morning, nooses were found hanging on the tree.

African-American students protested and racial tensions mounted “in this 85 percent white town of 4,000.” The white students were assigned three days of suspension, the six black students were expelled and charged with second-degree attempted murder.

The Jena 6, as the six black teens are now known, sat in jail for months, while their parents collected bail money. One of the students, Mychal Bell, has had his conviction overturned, yet he remains in jail. “Charges for three others have been reduced to aggravated battery.”

The egregiously harsh and unwarranted charges against the Jena Six have lit a fire within students and social justice activists across the nation. Click here to “take action in your own community to support the Jena 6″ and sign this petition asking the District Attorney to enforce the law fairly and equally.

UPDATE I: The Washington Post is reporting that “Mychal Bell’s request to be freed while an appeal is being reviewed was rejected at a juvenile court hearing, effectively denying him any chance at immediate bail.”

UPDATE II: “FBI agents are looking into a neo-Nazi Web site, which has listed the home addresses and phone numbers of the six black teenagers charged in the beating of a white schoolmate in Jena, La., a bureau spokeswoman said last night. The Thursday posting on the site that lists the information also encourages readers to “get in touch, and let them know justice is coming.”

Wichita, Kansas physician, Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers, is facing trial next month on 19 misdemeanor charges. “The charges — which he vigorously disputes – accuse him of aborting viable fetuses without first consulting an independent physician as required by state law.”

Tiller was previously prosecuted by former Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline. Kline’s charges against Tiller were dismissed less than a day after they were filed.

UPDATE: Tiller’s “clinic was bombed in 1986 and blockaded for six weeks in 1991. In 1993, an antiabortion activist shot Tiller through both arms; he was back at work the next day.”

Six weeks after the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak called for an investment in the nation’s infrastructure during a meeting of the US Conference of Mayors. “There’s something deeply wrong with a country that spends billions to destroy infrastructure halfway around the globe and billions to try to repair it and doesn’t stop a war that’s sucking cities dry across this country,” he said Friday.

According to VoteLaw, an employee of the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has filed a lawsuit alleging that she was wrongfully terminated for “making comments to a reporter that embarrassed [Karl] Rove and other Republicans.”

Robert Greenwald, producer of Outfoxed, Iraq for Sale, and other outstanding progressive movies, is now working on a movie about Rudy Giuliani. On a promotional website for the film, Greenwald asks visitors to vote for Rudy’s Biggest Mistake. Watch the video.

Unfortunately, the video fails to mention aspects of Giuliani’s record that are much worse than a love for lipstick, wigs, and marrying close relatives. Giuliani has a troubling record on one of the most important issues the next president will face: the war in Iraq. Giuliani resigned from his position on the Iraq Study Group after he failed to attend a single meeting of the ISG. His absences from the ISG meetings were due to lucrative speaking engagements that ” garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.” Giuliani’s lack of interest in or knowledge about Iraq is reflected in his misguided Iraq plan. He does not support any time-table for withdrawal and would actually support a further escalation of troops.

Hopefully, the full movie will include more about Giuliani’s policy than his personal life. Instead of focusing on Giuliani’s estranged children, the usually impressive Greenwald should be focusing on Giuliani’s estrangement from the 70% of Americans who disapprove of the war in Iraq.