Blood, prepare to boil. According to the NBC affliate in Philadelphia, the Valley Swim Club booted a day camp of inner city kids—which had paid $1900 for summer swimming rights—after members refused to swim with black kids. Really.

"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor....

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded....

The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.
 
"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

In a statement! Wow. The mind reels. First at the racism. And then at the PR bungling. When I posted this to Facebook, a got a note from a (white) friend who grew up in that part of Philly. It didn't surprise him, he said; racism in that neighborhood is entrenched. Worth noting that the comments on the NBC site, many of which were horrifc a hour ago, have been disabled.

You can follow this link to let Valley know what you think.

The Chris-Dodd-is-no-K-Street-pawn campaign is ramping up. I just received an email from Colleen Flanagan, communications director for the Connecticut Democratic Party. She'd seen my blog item commenting on today's Roll Call story on the senator's recent efforts to "distance himself from K Street" and wanted to direct my attention to a press release the party issued earlier today defending Dodd's record.

It’s tough being a lobbyist in Washington these days, and Senator Chris Dodd isn’t making it any easier. Yet another story today in the DC press features unnamed lobbyists, who will speak only on the condition of anonymity, whining that they aren’t getting their way with the Banking Committee Chairman and Senator Kennedy’s top deputy on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

The release goes on to list a series of quotes in which lobbyists whine that Dodd's shutting them out and ends with a quote from Flanagan:

“It speaks volumes that these industry insiders aren’t willing to be named, yet they continue to peddle their stories to anyone who will listen, trying to gain sympathy and a leg up on these critical legislative measures. The only sympathy these unnamed sources deserve to get is that they sound so silly in article after article complaining that Main Street has Dodd’s ear and not K Street.”

In a separate email, Flanagan told me: "The point is that advocating on behalf of consumers is nothing new for Sen. Dodd, and the people who say otherwise are ignoring close to 30 years of his track record on these issues."

As I noted earlier, Dodd has indeed been a champion of consumer causes. But his image problems are largely of his own making. And he's placed himself in a position where it's easy to call his motives into question. For years, he's raised huge amounts of campaign cash from lobbyists and finance industry players. As Jonathan Stein and I detailed back in April, almost a third of Dodd's first quarter receipts came from financial execs and interests, whose industry Dodd holds great sway over as Senate banking committee chairman. (That doesn't take into count sizable contributions from K Streeters or the insurance or health care industries.)

Dodd's campaign machine clearly sees an opportunity here to rehabilitate the public's perception of the embattled senator. While publicly they are expressing outrage about lobbyists "peddling stories" about their lack of access to the senator, privately they must be thinking that any press that puts Dodd on the wrong side of K Street is just the type of PR they're looking for. After all, without stories like that, there wouldn't be ads like this:

For weeks, I have been reading Twitter messages from Iran with reports of opposition supporters being detained and beaten to extract forced confessions. Now Human Rights Watch confirms these accounts. From a statement accompanying a report it has released:

The Iranian authorities are using prolonged harsh interrogations, beatings, sleep deprivation, and threats of torture to extract false confessions from detainees arrested since the disputed June 12 presidential election, Human Rights Watch said today. The confessions appear designed to support unsubstantiated allegations by senior government officials that Iran's post-election protests, in which at least 20 people were killed, were supported by foreign powers and aimed at overthrowing the government.

One detail:

A 17-year-old boy who was arrested on June 27 and released on July 1 told Human Rights Watch how his prison interrogator forced him and others to sign a blank statement of confession:

"On the first day, while blindfolded, the interrogator took me to a parking garage. They kept everyone standing for 48 hours with no permission to sleep. On the first night, they tied up our hands and repeatedly beat us and other prisoners with a baton. They kept cursing at the prisoners. The atmosphere was very frightening. Everyone had wet themselves from fear and stress. There were children as young as 15 and men as old as 70; they'd be begging and crying for mercy, but the guards didn't care.

"After two days of interrogation while blindfolded, we were asked about everything: where we had studied, what our parents do, who we voted for, who is educated in the family, if anyone in our family is part of the military. We were forced to give the names of everyone. It was a scary situation because they were threatening us and were very harsh. All we could hear were other people crying and screaming.

"They provided us with a big piece of bread once, but no water. On the last day, they took away the blindfold to force us sign a paper that was blank on top but said at the bottom: ‘I agree with all of the above statements.'"

While many Americans have been obsesing over Sarah Palin or Michael Jackson, there have been a series of Stalinesque confessions broadcast on Iranian television:

State-backed media already have broadcast the confessions of some detainees. Amir Hossein Mahdavi, editor of reformist newspaper Andishe No, confessed on Iranian TV on June 27 that reformist groups had laid plans to create unrest before the June 12 elections. Friends of Mahdavi who saw his confession told Human Rights Watch that it was clear from his demeanor that he confessed under duress.

All of this violates Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party. And the UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment states, "No detained person while being interrogated shall be subject to violence, threats or methods of interrogation which impair his capacity of decision or judgment." (The Bush administration clearly did not hold this accord dear.) Is any government going to raise Iran's treatment of opposition supporters at the UN?

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

Staff Sgt. Ronal Cantarero (right), from Belton, Texas, and Chief Warrant Officer 4 James Snyder, from Pontiac, Mich., sit down and watch their children's high school graduation live in Belton, Texas, through a video teleconference from Camp Taji, Iraq. (Photo courtesy army.mil.)

When Chris Dodd's first quarter campaign disclosures were released this spring, revealing that just five of the hundreds of donors to the veteran senator's reelection bid were residents of his homestate of Connecticut, the political attack ads basically made themselves. One, released by one his Republican challengers, features a map showing the home states of his out-of-town contributors and the amounts derived from each locale: $90,000 from Massachusetts, $100,000 from Maryland and New York, $81,000 from Texas. And then, as game show style music plays, the zinger: just $4,250 from residents of the Nutmeg State.

Here at Mother Jones, Jonathan Stein and I focused on another aspect of Dodd's first quarter disclosures: the fact that, with his political future in jeopardy, the five-term senator and chair of the powerful Senate banking committee appeared to be receiving a personal bailout from his friends in the finance industry.

Despite his waning appeal in Connecticut, Dodd's fundraising effort picked up steam in the first three months of 2009. He raised just more than $1 million during the quarter, according to federal campaign disclosure records. Almost a third of that money—at least $299,000—came from banking and investment executives, financial industry trade groups, and finance-oriented political action committees (PACs). An additional $68,000 came from lobbyists, many with clients on Wall Street. And that doesn't count the formidable financial support Dodd has received from insurance and health care interests.

Dodd's spokesman, Bryan DeAngelis, insisted at the time: "Campaign contributions do not and never have influenced Senator Dodd's agenda and priorities. As his record reflects—from working to stop abusive credit card practices and predatory lending to opposing industry-friendly bankruptcy reform and tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas—Chris Dodd's priorities are not determined by the financial industry. His work is always and has always been about representing the interest of the people of Connecticut." Well, there are at least five Connecticut residents who think so.

It's certainly true that Dodd has been a standout consumer advocate in the Senate. Recently, he shepherded credit card reform legislation that reined in some of the industry's more abusive practices. But he hasn't been able to escape the perception that he's way too cozy with K Street and the industries he oversees and out of touch with his own constituents. Not that Dodd has done much to dispel that image. Until now, that is. According to Roll Call, Dodd "has tried to distance himself from K Street by taking an increasingly pro-consumer, anti-industry tack." This shift understandably has K Streeters and finance industry execs worried and, yes, a bit angry too. After all, they've been quite generous to his campaigns, including his failed presidential run, and they expect something in return. This isn't charity after all.

“He is taking positions to prove that he’s not bought and paid for, almost to prove to voters in Connecticut that he has not lost his way,” one finance industry lobbyist told the paper. “If he’d won his election and he was looking at these issues with a full six-year term in front of him, he’d be taking different positions. It’s a scary thing for lobbyists and for the industry in general.”

Dodd may be banking on the fact that he can have it both ways. He can rehab his too-close-to-K-Street image, while continuing to pull in industry campaign cash to give him a fighting chance in what's projected to be a very tight 2010 election. As another lobbyist pointed out to Roll Call, Dodd can snub K Street and Wall Street and still “raise money from the traditional donors because he’s chairman of the Banking Committee.”

The real question for Dodd is, if he prevails in 2010, is it just back to business as usual?