A woman in Nepal with her child surveys the rubble left over from the Nepal earthquake. (Photo: REUTERS)
The death toll from the 7.9-magnitude Nepal earthquake that struck Saturday passed 6,200 on Friday, as UN officials say more than eight million people have been impacted.
Some 600,000 houses have been destroyed, and aid workers are struggling to recover the bodies of the dead and assess the levels of damage.
Government officials have begun ordering immediate cremations to deal with the overwhelming number of corpses.
“Morgues are full beyond capacity and we have been given instruction to incinerate bodies immediately after they are pulled out,” said Raman Lal, an Indian paramilitary official working with Nepali forces.
Following an international outcry criticizing response times, aide is slowly beginning to reach the more remote areas that were devastated by the earthquake. The UN estimates that some 2 million will need tents, water, food, and medicine in the next three months.
Government officials estimate that Nepal will need at least $2 billion in aid to rebuild homes, hospitals, government offices, and historic buildings. The government has also pledged to provide $1,000 in assistance to the families of those who died, and another $400 for cremation or burial. But Nepalis are increasingly accusing the government of being too slow to distribute international aid, particularly to harder-to-access areas.
Meanwhile, cellphone footage taken by tourists during the Nepal earthquake shows ancient buildings collapsing in Bhaktapur, a city known as the Cultural Gem located appx. 13 kilometres east of Kathmandu.
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A Pakistani journalist tweeted this and other photos on April 18th showing ISIS fighters standing in formation at a new camp set up in eastern Afghanistan. (Photo: Long War Journal)
The presence of ISIS in Afghanistan is growing, as new photos emerge showing an Islamic State training camp that is operated in the eastern Afghan province of Logar. The Islamic State’s “Khorasan Province,” which is named after a Taliban commander who was killed in 2012, is in full promotion and propaganda mode at the Ustad Yasir camp.
Three photographs of Ustad Yasir camp, named after one of 26 senior and mid-level Taliban leaders killed in 2012, were obtained by journalist Saleem Mehsud and initially published on his Twitter account on April 18. The images were emailed to the Pakistani reporter, Mehsud told The Long War Journal. Yasir served as the head of the Taliban’s Recruitment Council before his death.
The camp, which is located near the Pakistani border, is run by the Sa’ad bin Abi Waqas Front, the group named after Sa’ad bin Abi Waqas, an al Qaeda emir in Kunar province who was killed by the U.S. military in an airstrike on April 14, 2011.
The photos were taken in the “Ustad Yasir” camp in the Logar province in Eastern Afghanistan, which is operated by the Sa’ad bin Abi Waqas Front. (Photo: Long War Journal)
The Sa’ad bin Abi Waqas Front is led by Sa’ad Emarati, a former Pakistan Taliban commander who defected to the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province last year along with other disaffected Taliban commanders from Afghanistan and Iraq. But Emarati’s story is hardly unique.
The photos shine a light on the latest expansion of ISIS in Afghanistan, the country used as a launching pad for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and other targets. The Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS or ISIL, have been engaged in efforts
PPD previously reported in January that Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former Taliban commander and prisoner at Guantanamo Bay released by the Obama administration, is currently in charge of recruiting members of the Taliban in a nearby province. Rauf is even tapping tribal leaders that deal directly with the western-backed government.
Mullah Abdul Rauf, a former Taliban commander and Gitmo detainee, has established an ISIS base in the Helmand province in Afghanistan. (Photo: Islamic State affiliated Twitter account.)
“Many tribal leaders, jihadi commanders, some ulema [members of the religious council] and other people told me that Mullah Rauf had contacted them and invited them to join him,” General Mahmood Khan, the deputy commander of the army’s 215 Corps said.
General Khan, the head of the Afghan army unit responsible for the Helmand province, said those recruited by Rauf have been replacing white Taliban flags with the black flag of ISIS, left and right. He said they were trying to win popular support for ISIS among these groups, because they were “preparing to fight” in the spring.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said during his Talking Points Memo that the Baltimore rioting and the fallout is leading to madness in the media and among pols. O’Reilly slammed what he called excuse-making among pundits and some officials regarding the rioters.
For instance, MSNBC host Alex Wagner slammed President Obama for only being “half-black” and using the term “thug,” which she claims further incites “protestors” with a real grievance.
Over a dozen police officers from the Baltimore City Police Department, background, were injured in riots following the funeral for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died last week from a severe spinal cord injury he suffered before or during an arrest.
In the wake of the Baltimore riots, new polls show Americans continue to support police over activists claiming rampant police brutality is a reality in the country. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey finds just 25 percent of American adults believe the Baltimore riots were sparked by legitimate grievances, while 63 percent said it was predominantly the criminal actions of people taking advantage of a tragic situation.
Americans in their wisdom say that the recent and destructive actions carried out shortly after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died as a result of a spinal injury suffered before or while in police custody, will only serve to worsen the criminal justice situation in Baltimore City, Maryland.
This is in line with polling PPD examined after the riots in Ferguson, Missouri last August, following the justified police shooting of a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown. While there was a significant difference between the sentiments of white and black America — or more accurately characterized, white and urban black America — just 25 percent said the mob protests were primarily legitimate outrage.
However, 52 percent saw it mostly as criminal behavior, or 11 percentage points less than those polled over Baltimore. A majority of American adults in most all demographic groups believe the mob violence in Baltimore was primarily criminal. Interestingly, women and adults under 40 are slightly more likely than men and older Americans to see it as mostly legitimate outrage.
Americans are clearly more concerned about order and property than the rights of protesters involved in the anti-police movement in Baltimore. While a sizable 43 percent are concerned that efforts by authorities to prevent violence and property destruction in situations like the one in Baltimore may violate the First Amendment rights of some protesters, 52 percent don’t share that concern. The intensity is also against the anti-police movement, as 20 percent say they are “Very Concerned” and 25 percent say they are “Not At All Concerned.”
This represents less sympathy for the situation in Baltimore than we saw in Ferguson.
There may be something to say for the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” narrative being taken as Gospel by allegedly mainstream media outlets during a period of several months before the Department of Justice confirmed what PPD had reported — it was a lie. In fact, several prominent anchors and TV personalities refused to admit it was a lie even after the DOJ report.
Regardless, 70 percent of likely voters say the level of crime in low-income inner city communities is a bigger problem in America today than police discrimination against minorities. Further, 61 percent of all voters think the media overhypes incidents in which blacks are shot by white police officers, and a slightly higher 63 percent say this coverage is putting police officers in harms way.
There is also, unsurprisingly, a difference of opinion based upon the racial makeup of the respondents. Fifty-five percent (55 percent) of black adults view the mob violence in Baltimore as mostly legitimate outrage (again, more so among urban blacks), while 68 percent of whites and 64 percent of other minority American adults disagree.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has come under fire for her comments and lack of leadership prior and during the rioting, and Americans are equally critical of her performance and ideology. PPD broke the story Wednesday that Rawlings-Blake twice told Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Monday that a National Guard presence was unnecessary — or, one might even say unwanted — and that she had in fact given a stand down order to the police believing Ferguson reacted too forcefully in the wake of the violence over Micheal Brown.
A majority of Americans believe mob violence only gets worse when officials do not act decisively, while only 34 percent disagree. A significant number — 16 percent — are not sure as of yet. However, specifically regarding the performance of Mayor Rawlings-Blake, only 29 percent rate her response as good or excellent. This is even more critical than the sentiment measured toward officials’ responses in Ferguson.
So, clearly, the anti-police movement has some fundamental challenges to overcome in the court of public opinion. For the most part, Americans across the nation respect and have faith in the police and see them as a force for good.
Overall, 67 percent of American adults rate the performance of the police in their region or community as “good” or “excellent,” while just 9 percent say they are doing a “poor” job.
A closely-watched survey of Midwest manufacturing activity clocked in at its highest level since January, but barely crossed the point of expansion. The Chicago Business Barometer, commonly known as the Chicago PMI, on Thursday climbed by 6.0 points in April to 52.3 from 46.3 in March.
Readings above the 50-point threshold indicate expansion, while readings below indicate contraction.
“The bounce back in activity at the start of Q2 is consistent with a resumption of normal activity following the poor weather and port strikes earlier in the year,” Chief Economist of MNI Indicators Philip Uglow said. “In percentage terms, the April jump is similar to last year, although the level of activity is lower overall.“
Four of the five sub-catetgories in the index increased, including a double-digit gain in new orders. Order backlogs made gains, but remained below the 50 percent break-even point.
Meanwhile, only the prices-paid subindex declined.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that weekly jobless claims declined 34,000 to a seasonally adjusted 262,000, the lowest level since April 2000. However, whether the numbers truly suggest the drop off in economic growth and labor market conditions was temporary or not, isn’t yet clear.
Claims for the prior week were revised up by 1,000 more than previously reported, but it was the eighth straight month that claims remained below 300,000.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to a still-high 290,000 last week.
A Labor Department analyst said the government had estimated claims for Louisiana because of a power outage in the state. However, the final numbers had little impact on the claims data as the estimate was close to the figure that Louisiana finally provided.
The four-week moving average of claims — which is widely considered a better measurement of labor market conditions as it irons out week-to-week volatility — fell by only 1,250 last week to 283,750. The discrepancy is somewhat explained by the recent change in the government’s method for determining the number of weekly jobless claims.
The number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of claim benefits fell 74,000 to 2.25 million in the week ended April 18. Worth noting, the so-called continuing claims covered the period during the survey of households reflecting April’s unemployment rate. Continuing claims fell by 160,000 from the March to April survey periods, which considering the weak labor force participation rate, indicates another decline in the jobless rate from the 5.5 percent measured in March.
A shopper organizes his cash before paying for merchandise at a Best Buy Co. store in Peoria, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, Nov. 23, 2012. (Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty)
The Commerce Department Thursday said U.S. consumer spending rose by 0.4 percent in March, but personal incomes remained flat. The increase fueled by purchases of durable goods, and up from 0.2 percent in February. While households increased purchases of automobiles, spending on utilities decreased.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, gaining 0.5 percent last month.
When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending rose by just 0.3 percent in March after being flat the prior month. However, the gain was included in Wednesday’s abysmal first-quarter gross domestic product report, which showed the economy grinding to a near complete halt. GDP grew at only a 0.2 percent annual pace after a mediocre 2.2 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday acknowledged the first quarter stall, but publicly tried to dismiss the report as an anomaly. Yet, actions speak louder than words, and the timing and trajectory of interest rate hikes are expected to be postponed to a later date.
Meanwhile, despite the gains in spending, Americans’ personal incomes remained flat. Because savings slipped, it is clear they were tapped to account for the increase in spending. The savings rate remained at high levels, which economists hope will fuel future consumer spending.
Excluding food and energy, prices rose 0.1 percent for a third straight month. The so-called core PCE price index increased 1.3 percent in the 12 months through March.
Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died last week from a severe spinal cord injury he suffered before or during an arrest.
Reports have been circulating on the Internet suggesting Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who died last week from a spinal cord injury suffered either before or while in police custody, had a pre-existing injury. The initial report from the New Republic — which PPD found serious discrepancies with — cites Howard County court records as proof that a pre-existing injury “may have possibly” led to his death in April 19.
The Baltimore Sun first pushed back on the report citing court records examined Wednesday, showing the case had nothing to do with a car accident or a spine injury.
“Instead, they are connected to a lawsuit alleging that Gray and his sister were injured by exposure lead paint,” The BS report said (yes, pun intended).
However, according to a PPD investigation into the claims made in both reports, there are a number of relevant questions still unanswered. Further, both reports from The Baltimore Sun and the New Republic missed a larger, imperative element to this very unfortunate story.
The Baltimore Sun did not address why in his documents, Freddie Gray checked “work injury, medical malpractice and auto accident,” while his sister Fredericka Gray checked “other” when asked to describe the type of accident. Gray’s writing is completely unreadable in the explanation box, but let’s assume that was a complete mistake and there was no pre-existing trauma involved.
That doesn’t at all put to bed the issue of the existence of a pre-existing injury, and here’s why.
While it is true that the case referred to in the initial New Republic report was dismissed on April 2, it was Gray family attorney William H. “Billy” Murphy who confirmed that the Howard County case was connected to the lead paint lawsuit.
Putting aside the illegible document, The Baltimore Sun relied upon the confirmation by and information from attorney Billy Murphy, who as far as PPD can tell, has already told one lie on the issue of pre-existing injuries.
Mr. Murphy was asked point blank by Sean Hannity Tuesday night whether Gray had “any pre-existing conditions or injuries” prior to his fatal encounter with the police.
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“None that we (the Gray family and lawyers) know of,” Mr. Murphy told Hannity when asked if he could put the rumors to rest regarding pre-existing conditions. “Absolutely, we have no such information.”
Whether Mr. Gray was in a car accident or not — and, for the record, we do not believe there is currently enough evidence to support such a claim — he still in fact had by his own admission, several “pre-existing conditions.”
According to a lawsuit filed in 2008 against the owner of a Sandtown-Winchester home they rented for four years, Freddie Gray and his two sisters had poisonous lead levels in their blood. The lawsuit cited educational, behavioral and various medical problems as a result of severe exposure to lead. The property owner unsurprisingly argued that other factors likely contributed to the various deficiencies, including poverty and their mother’s heroin abuse.
Regardless, when examining the case and weighing the evidence against the known effects of lead on the body, then it becomes pretty clear why Mr. Murphy would not want a media or legal spotlight to be shined on the case.
While the case was settled before going to trial in 2010 and the terms of the settlement are not public, medical experts say both lead levels and the circumstances surrounding Mr. Gray’s medical conditions from the time of his premature birth, cannot be ignored when examining the case.
“Regardless of where lead comes from, once inside the body, it can be delivered to the skeleton and incorporated in new cells produced in bone tissue,” according to researcher Marjorie Peraza. “Lead in blood and other soft tissues has a half-life of 35 days; but lead in bone has a half-life of 5 to 20 years.”
Lead competes with calcium in the body and, in what becomes a vicious biological cycle, calcium deficiencies further promote lead absorption. For decades scientists have known that the skeleton stores roughly 95 percent of lead in the human body.
So, the question remains if Freddie Gray was exposed to high enough lead levels to be of concern and relevance to the case. Remember the police pursuit of Freddie Gray went on over a period of 45 minutes, an exhausting and strenuous activity for someone who exhibited symptoms of severe health problems. A prominent Baltimore doctor told Geraldo Rivera that an asthmatic seizure may have played a role in the young man’s death, one of several new claims that will become significantly more credible if Gray was indeed suffering from lead exposure.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has set the standard elevated blood lead level for adults to be 10 µg/dl of the whole blood. For children the number is obviously much lower at 5 µg/dl of blood as of 2012, down from a previous 10 µg/dl, because children are especially prone to the health effects of lead. However, the CDC and the World Health Organization state lower lead levels have harmful health effects and there is no known safe exposure level.
Freddie Gray, according to court documents, was tested as having between 11 mg/dL and 19 mg/dL in six tests conducted between 1992 and 1996. Test results from all three siblings found all of them had lead levels above the 10 micrograms per deciliter (mg/dL), which is the level that state law set as the threshold for lead poisoning. Among lead’s well-known developmental health effects is stunting and weakening of skeletal growth in children. Lead is also known to delay fracture healing in young adults and contribute to osteoporosis later in life.
If Gray’s mother had also been exposed during pregnancy, as the family claimed, then the effects from both drug use and lead exposure during fetal development could have have had a terribly negative impact on Mr. Gray’s health as a child. The effects from that exposure would’ve continued to plague him at 25, whether he knew it or not.
“Because the early embryo makes a cartilage model of the skull, spine, and limbs, chondrogenesis is vital to full skeletal development,” Valerie J. Brown found during her research in the National Institute of Environmental Health Science. “Lead triggers the formation of too much cartilage at the wrong time, or prevents its further maturation into bone,” the research found, helping to “explain lead’s crippling effects on the skeleton.”
A joint investigation between state and federal officials is underway to determine whether police brutality occurred during the arrest of Freddie Gray. Unfortunately, officials said Thursday the report will not be made public, making it impossible to know whether they failed to consider all elements of the case.
A review by USA Today, published in Dec. 2014, found that, in fact, Obama has issued more memoranda than any U.S. president in history.
Thomas Cromwell was the principal behind-the-scenes fixer for much of the reign of King Henry VIII. He engineered the interrogations, convictions and executions of many whom Henry needed out of the way, including his two predecessors as fixer and even the king’s second wife, Queen Anne.
When Cromwell’s son, Gregory, who became sickened as he watched his father devolving from counselor to monster, learned that an executioner for the queen had been sent for from France a week before her conviction, he asked his father what the purpose of her trial was if the king had preordained the queen’s guilt and prepaid the executioner. Cromwell replied that the king needed a jury to give legitimacy to her conviction and prevent the public perception of “the tyranny of one man’s opinion.”
In America, we have a Constitution not only to prevent the perception but also to prevent the reality of the tyranny of one man’s opinion. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment makes clear that if the government wants life, liberty or property, it cannot take it by legislation or executive command; it can do so only by due process — a fair jury trial and all its constitutional protections.
The constitutional insistence upon due process was the result of not only the Colonial revulsion at the behavior of Henry and his successors but also the recognition of the natural individual right to fairness from the government. If one man in the government becomes prosecutor, judge and jury, there can be no fairness, no matter who that man is or what his intentions may be. That is at least the theory underlying the requirements for due process.
President Barack Obama has rejected not only the theory but also the practice of due process by his use of drones launched by the CIA to kill Americans and others overseas. The use of the CIA to do the killing is particularly troubling and has aroused the criticism of senators as disparate in their views as Rand Paul and John McCain, both of whom have argued that the CIA’s job is to steal and keep secrets and the military’s job is to further national security by using force; and their roles should not be confused or conflated, because the laws governing each are different.
Theirs is not an academic argument. The president’s use of the CIA is essentially unlimited as long as he receives the secret consent of a majority of the members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The secret use of these 37 senators and representatives constituting the two committees as a Congress-within-the Congress is profoundly unconstitutional because Congress cannot delegate its war-making powers to any committee or group without effectively disenfranchising the voters whose congressional representatives are not in the group.
Moreover, the War Powers Resolution regulates the president’s use of the military and essentially precludes secret wars. It requires the public consent of a majority of the full Congress for all offensive military action greater than 90 days. That, in turn, brings about transparency and requires a national political will to use military force.
President Obama has formulated rules — agreed to by a majority of the 37, but not by a majority in Congress — that permit him to kill Americans and others overseas when he believes they are engaging in acts that pose an imminent threat to our national security, when their arrest would be impracticable and when personally authorized by the president. This is not federal law, just rules Obama wrote for himself. Yet none of the Americans he has killed fits any of those rules.
Last week, the White House revealed that in January, the government launched its 446th drone into a foreign land, and this one killed three Americans and an Italian, none of whom had been targeted or posed a threat to national security at the time of his murder. The drone, which was dispatched by a computer in Virginia, was aimed at a house in Pakistan and was sent on its lethal way without the approval of the Pakistani government or the knowledge of President Obama.
The use of drones is not only constitutionally impermissible but also contraindicated by the rules of war. Drones pose no threat and little danger to those doing the killing. Except when the intelligence is bad — as it was in the January case revealed last week — deploying drones is a low-risk endeavor for the country doing so. But Obama’s wars by robots produce more killing than is necessary. War should be dangerous for all sides so as to limit its lethality to only those venues that are worth the risk — those that are vital for national security.
If war is not dangerous, it will become commonplace. By one measure — the absence of personal involvement by decision-makers — it has become commonplace already. A mere three years after his self-written rules for the deployment of drones were promulgated, the president has delegated the authority to order drone killings to his staff, and the members of the congressional intelligence committees have delegated their authority to consent to their staffs.
Obama apparently doesn’t care about the Constitution he swore to uphold, but he should care about the deaths of innocents. Obama’s drones have killed more non-targeted innocents in foreign lands than were targeted and killed in the U.S. on 9/11.
And the world is vastly less stable now than it was on 9/11. The president’s flying robots of death have spawned the Islamic State group — a monstrosity far exceeding even Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in barbarity.
The Ohio National Guard fire tear gas to disperse the crowd of students gathered on the commons on May 4, 1970. (Photo: Kent State University)
As a ’79 graduate of Kent State University, I was eager to watch PBS’ new documentary on the 1970 campus shootings, which killed four students and wounded nine others.
By the time the program was scrolling final credits, I was reeling from a sense of the all-too-familiar.
“The Day the ’60s Died” debuted Monday night and is now available online at http://www.pbs.org/program/day-60s-died. I recommend it, not just for its clarity of perspective on a devastating time in our country but also for its cautionary message for the here and now.
Change the focus (to recent police brutality) and the cause (to racial justice) and we are forced to consider yet again what happens when our government fails to heed the warning signs of growing unrest.
From the documentary, cast in white letters against a black background:
“By 1970, a majority of Americans believe sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake.
“But many are also critical of the student anti-war movement.”
In 2015, a growing number of Americans believe that too many police officers use excessive force, particularly against citizens of color.
But many are also critical of those who protest, even when they are peaceful.
Lately, I worry that too many of us abhor injustice as long as we’re not inconvenienced by efforts to change it. I was disheartened, for example, by the flood of complaints on social media after peaceful protesters in Cleveland blocked a major artery at rush hour on a single day in November. They were there because police had shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing in a city park with an air gun. You would have thought by the grousing that everyone was delayed from rushing dying passengers to the hospital.
“How does holding up my commute bring justice?” they demanded. Or, as President Richard Nixon put it after he’d already deceived the country about his plans to escalate the Vietnam War by invading Cambodia, “There is nothing new we can learn from the demonstrations.”
Awareness can be so annoying.
Some of the student protesters at Kent State had turned violent on the weekend before the May 4 shootings. No elected officials expressed a desire to get to the heart of why. Instead, Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes attempted to dehumanize them, casting them as “worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America.”
These days, we’d call them animals and thugs, I guess. I do not condone violence, but the name-calling always telegraphs such an unwillingness to consider the long-fermenting reasons behind the growing unrest. That is as true today as it was in 1970.
The PBS documentary offers a vivid contrast between two worlds of Americans, repeatedly shifting from scenes of protest in the U.S. to combat in the fields of Vietnam and Cambodia. Through interviews, we learn that our young men fighting in Cambodia knew that the Ohio National Guard had shot and killed students at Kent State.
Army veteran Ron Orem was one of them. “I remember feeling real anger that a bunch of National Guard guys would shoot down college students,” he says. “If some kid’s throwing a brick at me and I’ve got a loaded rifle, I don’t feel intimidated.”
Veteran Terry Braun was another, and he speaks directly to why he appreciated the student protests: “As we got deeper into Cambodia, we made contact every single day. … I knew that there was a peace movement going on, and I was kind of glad there was. I believe if people weren’t demonstrating, we would still be there.”
Eleven days after the Kent State shootings, police opened fire at protesters on the campus of Jackson State, killing two students and injuring 12 others. A snippet of footage in the aftermath shows a young black man holding a sign that reads, “Shoot me, my back is turned.”
A haunting moment in the documentary shows Arthur Krause reading a statement about his 19-year-old daughter, Allison, who was killed at Kent State:
“She resented being called a bum” — he pauses — “because she disagreed with someone else’s opinion. She felt the war in Cambodia was wrong. Is this dissent a crime? Is this a reason for killing her? Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government?”
That was then, and this is now, in the words of Tamir Rice’s mother, Samaria:
“I have … not received an apology from the police department or the city of Cleveland in regards to the killing of my son.” She pauses. “And it hurts.”
Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate.
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