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Topics - Lanya

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16
3DHS / out of bounds
« on: September 10, 2008, 02:21:40 PM »
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/margaret_talev/v-print/story/52169.html

Posted on Tue, Sep. 09, 2008
Out of bounds! McCain misstates Obama sex-ed record
Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: September 09, 2008 07:44:08 PM

WASHINGTON — Throw the flag against: The McCain-Palin campaign.

Call: Unsportsmanlike conduct.

What happened: A new 30-second TV ad attacks Barack Obama's record on education, saying that Obama backed legislation to teach "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer then says, "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Why that's wrong: This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain's votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12.

But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach "age-appropriate" sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.

Republican Alan Keyes tried to use Obama's vote against him in the 2004 U.S. Senate race. At the time, Obama spoke about wanting to protect young children from abuse. He made clear then that he was not supporting teaching kindergartners about explicit details of sex.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Tuesday of McCain's ad: "It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls."

Penalty: 15 yards for the McCain campaign's deliberate low blow.

Check out McClatchy's expanded politics coverage

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

18
3DHS / Running out of money
« on: September 05, 2008, 08:43:21 PM »
Federal Highway Fund Running Out of Money

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By DAVID STOUT
Published: September 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — An important account in the federal Highway Trust Fund will run out of money this month, which could hamper completion of road and bridge construction projects across the country, Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said on Friday.
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Secretary's Remarks | Trust Fund Fact Sheet (Department of Transportation)

Because the fund is draining away so fast, the Transportation Department will have to delay payments for the local projects, or reduce their amount, Ms. Peters said at a mid-day news conference.

Ms. Peters said her department will begin to dole out money from the fund on a pro-rated basis. For instance, if there are only enough funds to cover 80 percent of the payment requests the department receives for federally financed local projects, the agency will pay only 80 percent of each request.

“Time and again, the president has warned Congress of the pending shortfall and submitted fiscally prudent budgets to close the gap,” Ms. Peters said, in remarks that reflected the political nature of the long-running debate over how to pay for road-building.

State transportation officials reacted to the announcement with alarm. The development will have “grave repercussions for the states, for hundreds of thousands of workers in the construction industry and the driving public,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

“It will worsen the financial crises many states are already facing, and it will delay or halt needed transportation projects and leave contractors and suppliers with I.O.U.’s instead of cash to pay their workers,” Mr. Horsley said in a statement.

Whether Mr. Horsley’s dire prediction will come true, or whether the money shortage will be corrected when Congress reconvenes and the lawmakers hear from their constituents, is anybody’s guess. But at least for the moment, the trust fund’s problems have cast a shadow over highway work from coast to coast.

The trust fund’s highway account is being rapidly depleted because Americans have reacted to the high price of gasoline by driving less, Ms. Peters said. The fund gets its money from federal excise taxes on motor fuel: 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon on diesel. But for months, Americans have been driving fewer miles than before since it has been costing them more.

One possible solution would be to transfer money to the highway account from the separate account that the trust fund maintains to finance mass transit projects. That account is much smaller, though, and in any case, Ms. Peters said such a transfer would merely rob Peter to pay Paul. Lawmakers from large cities that rely on trust-fund aid for their transit systems could be expected to resist a transfer.

In July, the House passed a bill that would use $8 billion of general federal revenue — from income and other taxes, not the dedicated motor fuel tax — to finance highway projects. The measure has not gained much traction in the Senate, and until Friday the White House had been hostile to it. But Ms. Peters said on Friday that the administration now endorses the measure, because “immediate action” is required to ensure that the states do not suffer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/us/06highway.html?hp

19
3DHS / You can teach it. Just won't get credit for it.
« on: August 13, 2008, 05:02:23 PM »
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/12/BAQT129NMG.DTL&tsp=1


Judge says UC can deny religious course credit

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

(08-12) 17:25 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.


Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.
[........]

20
3DHS / Contraception
« on: August 08, 2008, 12:05:19 PM »
HHS chief denies new rule to attack contraception
Fri Aug 8, 2008 5:25am EDT

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A widely circulated draft U.S. regulation that would define many forms of contraception as abortion will not be proposed in that form, if at all, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said on Thursday.

He said the draft, which was denounced by family planning groups, was circulated before he had seen it and would be rewritten.

"The Department is still contemplating if it will issue a regulation or not. If it does, it will be directly focused on the protection of practitioner conscience," Leavitt wrote in his blog, posted at secretarysblog.hhs.gov/ .

The proposed regulation as written would have cut off federal funds to hospitals and states that attempt to compel medical providers to offer legal abortion and contraception services to women.

The part that many groups objected to most strongly was the definition of abortion, which would include most birth control pills and intrauterine devices, or IUDs.

"The Department proposes to define abortion as 'any of the various procedures -- including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation,'" it said.

Leavitt said the intention was not to define contraceptives as abortion.

"An early draft of the regulations found its way into public circulation before it had reached my review. It contained words that lead some to conclude my intent is to deal with the subject of contraceptives, somehow defining them as abortion. Not true," he wrote.

"The Bush Administration has consistently supported the unborn. However, the issue I asked to be addressed in this regulation is not abortion or contraceptives, but the legal right medical practitioners have to practice according to their conscience, and patients should be able to choose a doctor who has beliefs like his or hers," Leavitt added.

Leavitt said he had asked for a draft regulation after writing to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology asking them not to force professionals to refer women for abortions.

"Several months ago, I became aware that certain medical specialty certification groups were adopting requirements which potentially violate a physician's right to choose whether he or she performs abortion," Leavitt wrote.

"I asked that regulations be drafted which would enforce these long-standing laws protecting a medical practitioner's conscience rights."

Leavitt is the only U.S. cabinet secretary with a blog.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Patricia Zengerle)
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0734863820080808?sp=true
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

21
3DHS / 'The Jungle' all over again
« on: August 02, 2008, 02:11:22 AM »
Editorial
‘The Jungle,’ Again

Published: August 1, 2008

A story from the upside-down world of immigration and labor:


A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develops an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group shows workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand tells a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor experts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called “a kosher ‘Jungle.’ ”

The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.

In May, the government swoops in and arrests ... the workers, hundreds of them, for having false identity papers. The raid’s catch is so huge that the detainees are bused from little Postville to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo. The defendants, mostly immigrants from Guatemala, are not charged with the usual administrative violations, but with “aggravated identity theft,” a serious crime.

They are offered a deal: They can admit their guilt to lesser charges, waive their rights, including the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, spend five months in prison, then be deported. Or, they can spend six months or more in jail without bail while awaiting a trial date, face a minimum two-year prison sentence and be deported anyway.

Nearly 300 people agree to the five months, after being hustled through mass hearings, with one lawyer for 17 people, each having about 30 minutes of consultation per client. The plea deal is a brutal legal vise, but the immigrants accept it as the quickest way back to their spouses and children, hundreds of whom are cowering in a Catholic church, afraid to leave and not knowing how they will survive. The workers are scattered to federal lockups around the country. Many families still do not know where they are. The plant’s owners walk freely.

This is enforcement run amok. As Julia Preston reported in The Times, the once-silent workers of Agriprocessors now tell of a host of abusive practices, of rampant injuries and of exhausted children as young as 13 wielding knives on the killing floor. A young man said in an affidavit that he started at 16, in 17-hour shifts, six days a week. “I was very sad, and I felt like I was a slave.”

Instead of receiving merciful treatment as defendants who also are victims, the workers have been branded as the kind of predator who steals identities to empty bank accounts. Accounts from Postville suggest that that’s not remotely what they were. “Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served,” said Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language interpreter for many of the workers. “This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write Spanish, let alone English.”

The harsh prosecution at Postville is an odd and cruel shift for the Bush administration, which for years had voiced compassion for exploited workers and insisted that immigration had to be fixed comprehensively or not at all.

Now it has abandoned mercy and proportionality. It has devised new and harsher traps, as in Postville, to prosecute the weak and the poor. It has increased the fear and desperation of workers who are irresistible to bottom-feeding businesses precisely because they are fearful and desperate. By treating illegal low-wage workers as a de facto criminal class, the government is trying to inflate the menace they pose to a level that justifies its rabid efforts to capture and punish them. That is a fraudulent exercise, and a national disgrace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01fri1.html?em

22
3DHS / military detentions of civilians
« on: July 16, 2008, 07:41:03 PM »
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/washington/16combatant.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions

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By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: July 16, 2008

President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.
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Ali al-Marri
Related
Blurry Peek at Questioning of a Guantánamo Inmate (July 16, 2008)
In War of Vague Borders, Detainee Longs for Court (January 5, 2007)
Times Topics: Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri
Text of the Decision (pdf)

But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.

The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States.

The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members, which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians legally in the United States as enemy combatants. That panel ordered the government either to charge Mr. Marri or to release him. The case is likely to reach the Supreme Court.

How helpful the decision will be to Mr. Marri remains to be seen, as the majority that granted him some relief was notably vague about what the new court proceeding should look like. In that respect, Tuesday’s decision resembled last month’s decision from the United States Supreme Court granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.

Mr. Marri is the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant. The government contended, in a declaration from the defense intelligence official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, that Mr. Marri was a Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the United States to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.

Mr. Marri was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his family and studying computer science. He was charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents, and was on the verge of a trial on those charges when he was moved to military detention in 2003.

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said the decision properly recognized “the president’s authority to capture and detain Al Qaeda agents who, like the 9/11 hijackers, come to this country to commit or facilitate warlike acts against American civilians.”

Mr. Roehrkasse added that while the department believed that Mr. Marri “had already received all the process he was due,” its lawyers were “studying the court’s decision and will respond to Mr. Marri’s contentions” before the trial judge.

Jonathan L. Hafetz, a lawyer for Mr. Marri with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, called the Fourth Circuit’s decision deeply disturbing.

“This decision means the president can pick up any person in the country — citizen or legal resident — and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial,” Mr. Hafetz said.

The 216-page decision included seven opinions, none of which commanded a majority. The only common ground was four unsigned paragraphs at the beginning of the decision summarizing the result.

The Fourth Circuit is generally considered the nation’s most conservative federal appeals court. The closely divided and complex decision in a major terrorism case therefore came as something of a surprise.

Mr. Marri’s unusual situation played a role, said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University. Mr. Marri “was lawfully present in the U.S. and then arrested and held here, as opposed to being a noncitizen captured in a foreign land,” Professor Chesney said. “This consideration makes his case more difficult even in the eyes of relatively conservative jurists.”

The five judges who ruled that the president has the authority to detain people captured in the United States offered differing criteria for who might be subject to such detention.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the president might detain members of organizations or nations against which Congress had authorized the use of force who mean to harm people or property to further military goals.

To reverse the trial judge’s decision allowing Mr. Marri’s detention to continue “because he was not captured on a foreign battlefield or foreign soil,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “is akin to a judicial declaration that Congress and the executive may fight only the last war.”

Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for herself and three other judges, disagreed, saying that Mr. Marri was at most a civilian criminal who may be prosecuted in the courts but not detained by the executive branch.

“This does not mean that al Marri, or similarly situated American citizens, would have to be freed,” Judge Motz wrote. “Like others accused of terrorist activity in this country, from the Oklahoma City bombers to the convicted September 11th conspirator [Zacarias Moussaoui] they could be tried on criminal charges and, if convicted, punished severely. But the government would not be able to subject them to indefinite military detention.”

Judge William B. Traxler Jr. was the swing vote. He agreed that Mr. Marri was subject to detention if what the government said about him was true. But Judge Traxler broke with the judges who voted against Mr. Marri across the board. Those judges said Mr. Marri had already had an adequate opportunity to challenge his detention in court, in the proceeding based on Mr. Rapp’s statement. Judge Traxler said that Mr. Marri must be given a fair and meaningful opportunity to see and refute “the most reliable evidence” against him, subject to national security and other concerns.

The four judges who would have ordered Mr. Marri’s release from military custody — Judges Motz, Roger L. Gregory, M. Blaine Michael and Robert B. King — agreed to join an order returning the case to the trial court based on Judge Traxler’s middle ground. They did so, Judge Motz wrote, “to give practical effect to the conclusions of the majority of the court who reject the government’s position.”

But Judge Gregory expressed frustration over the net effect of the exercise. “There is no concrete guidance as to what further process is due” Mr. Marri, he wrote.

All of the judges who would have denied Mr. Marri any relief — Judges Wilkinson, Karen J. Williams, Paul V. Niemeyer and Allyson K. Duncan — were appointed by Republican presidents; all who would have granted him full relief were appointed by Democrats. Judge Traxler was appointed to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton.

In the conclusion of his long opinion, Judge Wilkinson said terrorism cases presented courts with special challenges.

“We may never know,” he said, “whether we have struck the proper balance between liberty and security, because we do not know every action the executive is taking and we do not know every threat global terror networks have in store.”


23
3DHS / War on American ideals
« on: July 12, 2008, 01:47:10 PM »
Collateral Damage
According to Jane Mayer, the United States has succeeded in creating an American gulag.

Reviewed by Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, July 13, 2008; Page BW03

THE DARK SIDE

The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
This Story

    *
      COVER REVIEW: Collateral Damage
    *
      Tuesday, July 15, 3 p.m. ET: Book World: 'The Dark Side'
    *
      INTELLIGENCE: Abu Ghraib: The Back Story

By Jane Mayer

Doubleday. 392 pp. $27.50

With the appearance of this very fine book, Hillary Clinton can claim a belated vindication of sorts: A right-wing conspiracy does indeed exist, although she misapprehended its scope and nature. The conspiracy is not vast and does not consist of Clinton-haters. It is small, secretive and made up chiefly of lawyers contemptuous of the Constitution and the rule of law.

In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. Her achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces. Recast as a series of indictments, the story Mayer tells goes like this: Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers.

Under the guise of "enhanced interrogation techniques," it has succeeded, in Mayer's words, in "making torture the official law of the land in all but name." Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government.

To dismiss these as wild, anti-American ravings will not do. They are facts, which Mayer substantiates in persuasive detail, citing the testimony not of noted liberals like Noam Chomsky or Keith Olbermann but of military officers, intelligence professionals, "hard-line law-and-order stalwarts in the criminal justice system" and impeccably conservative Bush appointees who resisted the conspiracy from within the administration.

Above all, the story Mayer tells is one of fear and its exploitation.

That fear should trump concern for due process and indeed justice qualifies as a recurring phenomenon in American history. In 1919, government-stoked paranoia about radicalism produced the Red Scare. After Pearl Harbor, hysteria mixed with racism led to the confinement of some 110,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps. The onset of the Cold War triggered another panic, anxieties about a new communist threat giving rise to McCarthyism. In this sense, the response evoked by 9/11 looks a bit like déjà vu all over again: Frightened Americans, more worried about their own safety than someone else's civil liberties, allowed senior government officials to exploit a climate of fear.

Although Mayer does not dwell on this historical context, her account suggests implicitly that the present period differs in at least one crucial respect. Whereas the earlier departures from the rule of law represented momentary if egregious lapses in democratic practice, the abuses orchestrated from within the Bush administration suggest that democracy itself is fast becoming something of a sham. From Mayer, we learn that in George W. Bush's Washington, the decisions that matter are made in secret by a handful of presidential appointees committed to the proposition that nothing should inhibit the exercise of executive power. The Congress, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the "interagency process" -- all of these constitute impediments that threaten to constrain the president. In a national security crisis, constraint is intolerable. Much the same applies to the media and, by extension, to the American people: The public's right to know extends no further than whatever the White House wishes to make known.

In the Bush administration, the task of sweeping aside impediments to the exercise of power fell to a small group of lawyers styling themselves the "War Council." Led by David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and including Alberto Gonzalez, then serving as White House counsel, and John Yoo, at the time deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the War Council seized upon 9/11 as a pretext for establishing what Addington himself referred to as a "new paradigm" of vastly expanded presidential authority. As the administration embarked upon its war on terror, Mayer says, the American legal system "was instantly regarded as a burden." To shed that burden, members of the War Council issued (in secret, of course) what she describes as "error-prone legal decisions whose preordained conclusions were dictated by Addington." In the view of the War Council, Mayer writes, when it came to matters of national security, presidential authority was "not limited by any laws"; indeed, the president "had the power to override existing laws that Congress had specifically designed to curb him." The net effect was to declare the concept of checks and balances inoperable.

Mayer recognizes but does not dwell on the intimate relationship between the global war on terror and Addington's new paradigm. The entire rationale of the latter derived from the former: no war, no new paradigm. Hence, the rush to declare that after Sept. 11, 2001, everything had changed. The insistence that the gloves had to come off, that the so-called law enforcement approach to dealing with terrorism had failed definitively, that only conflict on a global scale could keep America safe: These provided the weapons that Addington's War Council wielded to mount its assault on the Constitution -- all of course justified as necessary to keep Americans safe.

Matthew Waxman, who in 2001 was serving as special assistant to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, told Mayer that the decision to frame the U.S. response to 9/11 as a war was taken with "little or no detailed deliberation about long-term consequences." Yet the decision was a momentous one, he continues, setting the United States on "a course not only for our international response, but also in our domestic constitutional relations."

Little deliberation occurred because none was deemed necessary. As Mayer makes clear, the White House seized upon the prospect of open-ended war with alacrity. And why not? In the near term at least, going to war almost invariably works to the benefit of the executive branch. War elicits deference from Congress and the courts. As a wartime commander-in-chief, the president wields greater clout. In this particular case, war also helped deflect demands for accountability: Despite what Mayer describes as "the worst intelligence failure in the nation's history," the aftermath of 9/11 saw not a single senior official fired. (Earlier this week a bipartisan commission headed by former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher proposed new legislation to govern the war-making powers of the president and Congress.)

Whether the prospect of war stretching for decades actually would serve the country's true interests received comparatively less attention. The issue was not one that troubled the War Council, obsessed as it was about ensuring that when it came to national security, nothing should encroach upon the prerogatives of the chief executive. "What was missing," Mayer says, "was a discussion of policy -- not just what was legal, but what was moral, ethical, right, and smart to do." Such matters remained on the periphery because "fundamentally, the drive for expanded presidential authority was about power."

The extremists of the last century, both on the far left and far right, would have seen much to admire in Addington and his War Council. They too had an appreciation for how war concentrates power and removes constraints on its use. For this very reason defenders of democracy once viewed war warily.

The Bush administration has rendered such thinking obsolete: In Washington, the concept of the global war on terror continuing for generations has become widely accepted. This ranks as a considerable -- if almost entirely noxious -- achievement. The Dark Side allows us a glimpse of what that achievement signifies. ·

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/10/AR2008071002373.html?hpid=features1&hpv=local

24
3DHS / Rubber Ducky, you're the one
« on: June 30, 2008, 10:26:46 PM »
[...no Rubber Ducky? How come?]
 February 19, 2008,  5:55 pm
Will Rubber Ducky Ever Be Enshrined?

By Jennifer 8. Lee
Toy fair Tim George, right, a k a Mr. Etch A Sketch, at the Javits Center. Mr. George, 57, is an Etch A Sketch artist from Columbus, Ohio. Toy Fair runs all week. (Photo: Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

Tucked down Aisle 900 of Toy Fair (just Toy Fair, mind you, not ?the Toy Fair?) at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center ? amid the newest whirring, glowing, hovering, shrinking playthings clamoring to be the hit product this year ? is a space reserved for the elite of the elite, the toys that don?t have to prove themselves anymore to anybody. They are the inductees to the National Toy Hall of Fame.

The honored toys include the sophisticated but obsolete (Atari 2600, inducted in 2007) and the humble (cardboard box, 2005), the trademarked (Scrabble, 2004) and the generic (kite, 2007), the domestic (Easy Bake Oven, 2006) and the militaristic (G. I. Joe, 2004).

The gatekeeper for the exalted status is the Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, which acquired the rights to the Toy Hall of Fame from A. C. Gilbert?s Discovery Village, in Salem, Ore., which started the hall in 1998. Who knew that the rights of the halls of fame could be bought and sold? (Mr. Gilbert, by the way, is best known as the inventor of the erector set.)

To be considered for the hall, toys must have promoted learning, creativity and discovery; be innovative; and proved their longevity (for at least 20 years).

To highlight their favorites, the museum had brought Tim George, an Etch A Sketch artist from Columbus, Ohio, to show off his skills. Mr. George, who sketches elaborate images of animals and scenes with the mere twisting of his wrists, has been playing with the Etch A Sketch since around 1960. At Toy Fair, he even had one of his original Etch A Sketches from his childhood (the only main difference from today?s model is that the white knobs were smaller then).

In the age of Nintendo Wiis and Webkinz, do children still play with Etch A Sketch? Oh yes, he said, when he goes into schools to show off his sketching, he always asks the students if they have ever played with an Etch A Sketch. ?Even today, everyone raises their hands ? every one of them,? he said. He gets a similar enthusiastic response in retirement homes, he said, adding, ?It?s cross-generational.?

Since it took over the hall, the National Museum of Play has been much more selective in its induction process, adding only two or three toys a year. The opening class of inductees in 1998-99 was a long list of 18 toys. ?They did whatever they wanted back then,? said Susan Trien, the spokeswoman for the museum.

Now, the nominations are narrowed down to finalists, which are then ranked by a panel of judges to come up with the final inductees. Of course, the museum is hardly above the influence of lobbying, especially by well-organized groups. The Raggedy Ann Museum had a multiyear campaign to get Raggedy Andy into the hall to rejoin his sister, who had been inducted five years earlier. (Will Ken, likewise, join Barbie? Students at Williamette University have protested his omission.)

And G. I. Joe received 1,200 nominations from fans before he was inducted, overwhelming the poll by Playthings magazine. Of course, not everyone has such clear constituencies (the cardboard box was really considered an underdog.)

Among the glass display cases in the exhibit were several familiar yellow figurines on display: rubber duckies.

Is Rubber Ducky in the hall? City Room inquired.

?No, it?s not,? Ms. Trien said.

Your City Room reporter was stunned for a second. After all, how many other toys have a song devoted to them, much less a memorable serenade from th ?Sesame Street? show? After gathering her composure, she pressed. ?Could Rubber Ducky make it??

Ms. Trien hesitated, then added: ?It?s possible. It was nominated. I can?t rule it out.?

Aside from Rubber Ducky, other omissions are notable: Rubik?s Cube, skateboard, pogo stick.

Here are the current 39 (or 38, if you count Raggedy Anne and Andy as one unit) inductees into the National Hall Toy of Fame.

Original 1998-99 inductees:

    * Barbie
    * Crayola Crayon
    * Erector Set
    * Etch A Sketch
    * Frisbee
    * Hula Hoop
    * Lego
    * Lincoln Logs
    * Marbles
    * Monopoly
    * Play-Doh
    * Radio Flyer wagon
    * Rocking Horse
    * Roller Skates
    * Teddy Bear
    * Tinkertoy
    * View-Master
    * Duncan Yo-Yo

2000

    * Bicycle
    * Jacks
    * Jump Rope
    * Mr. Potato Head
    * Slinky

2001 (when it switched over to the National Museum of Play)

    * Silly Putty
    * Tonka Trucks

2002

    * Jigsaw puzzle
    * Raggedy Ann

2003

    * Alphabet Blocks
    * Checkers

2004

    * G. I. Joe
    * Scrabble

2005

    * Candy Land
    * Cardboard box
    * Jack-in-the-Box

2006

    * Easy Bake Oven
    * Lionel Trains

2007

    * Atari 2600
    * Kite
    * Raggedy Andy

Anything missing?

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/will-rubber-ducky-ever-be-enshrined/

26
3DHS / Be very afraid
« on: June 27, 2008, 10:48:21 AM »
School locked down after 'ninja' sighted in woods


Jun 25, 2:57 PM (ET)

BARNEGAT, N.J. (AP) - It's the case of the nonexistent ninja. Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

Police tell the Asbury Park Press the man was late to a costume-themed day at a nearby middle school.

The lockdown began shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday and lasted until 9:30.

---

Information from: Asbury Park Press, http://www.app.com

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080625/D91H9BIO3.html



27
3DHS / Stimulating the economy
« on: June 22, 2008, 01:16:07 PM »
http://www.newsweek.com/id/141848

Feeling the Pinch

Nevada's brothels hit hard times

They've been banished to remote stretches of desert, some have been raided, others shut down and one even sold on E-bay. Nevada's legal brothels have managed to survive through some tough situations. Their latest problem, however, could prove to be too much. According to George Flint, Director of the Nevada Brothel Owners' Association, revenue for the 25 businesses in his membership organization is down by as much as 45 percent. The reason: Sex for money may be recession resistant but it's not recession proof. "Business is in a lower slump than I've ever seen it before," Flint says.
[...........]
Media exposure certainly has its benefits. Featured in the ongoing HBO reality series, Cathouse, Hof's Bunny Ranch is going strong. While others brothels saw a slump in revenues, Hof experienced a 30 percent jump in May. But he's not resting on his laurels. Last week he began offering a recession special: The first 100 customers who show up with their tax rebate checks receive twice the "services" for the price of one. "We always give our customers the most bang for the buck," he says. "You bring your $600 check in, and we give you the $1,200 George Bush party--three girls and a bottle of champagne." That's one way to stimulate the, um, economy.

? 2008


28
3DHS / Rewrite the evidence
« on: June 20, 2008, 11:42:10 PM »


APNewsBreak: US asks to rewrite detainee evidence

APNewsBreak: US asks to rewrite evidence against Guantanamo detainees ahead of court review

MATT APUZZO
AP News

Jun 20, 2008 12:49 EST

The Bush administration wants to rewrite the official evidence against Guantanamo Bay detainees, allowing it to shore up its cases before they come under scrutiny by civilian judges for the first time.

The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed.

Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes.

The decision follows last week's Supreme Court ruling, which held that detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court, not just before secret military panels. At a closed-door meeting with judges and defense attorneys this week, government lawyers said they needed time to add new evidence and make other changes to evidentiary documents known as "factual returns."

Attorneys for the detainees criticized the idea, saying the government is basically asking for a last-minute do-over.

"It's sort of an admission that the original returns were defective," said attorney David Remes, who represents many detainees and attended Wednesday's meeting. "It's also an admission that the government thinks it needs to beef up the evidence."

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin declined to comment on the plan. The discussions were confirmed by several attorneys and officials who attended or were briefed on the meeting with the judges and defense lawyers.

"It's a totally fishy maneuver that suggests that the government wants, at the 11th hour, to get its ducks in a row," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney representing several detainees. He was briefed on the plan.

The documents include the government's accusations and summaries of the evidence that was presented to the military review panel. The records were filed in federal court in many detainee cases in 2004 and 2005, before Congress stripped those courts of the authority to hold hearings.

Detainees' attorneys who have reviewed the records criticized much of the evidence as hearsay cobbled together from bounty hunters and border guards who accused people of being terrorists in exchange for reward money.

At Guantanamo Bay, the traditional rules of evidence do not apply in trials run by the military. In a Washington federal courtroom, they would.

The government wants to submit new records, which would allow it to add new intelligence and expand its reasoning for holding the detainees. Since the hearings will decide whether the detainees are lawfully being held now ? not whether they were lawfully being held over the past several years ? the government wants to provide the court its newest, best evidence.

It will be up to federal judges to decide whether the Justice Department can rewrite those documents.

The question is part of a broader dispute over what the upcoming hearings will look like. Attorneys for the detainees want judges to review all the evidence and decide whether each prisoner should be released. The government believes the judges should look only at limited evidence prepared by officials at Guantanamo Bay.

That's why defense attorneys are troubled by the idea that authorities now want to rewrite that evidence. If the court limits arguments to just the government's record, and gives the government a chance to improve that record, they believe the detainees' chances will be hurt.

"They're not just talking about making a little supplement where they've learned something new," said attorney Charles H. Carpenter, who was in the meeting. "They're talking about possibly amending every single one."

Source: AP News
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/06/us_asks_to_rewrite_detainee_ev.php

30
3DHS / Temporary condition
« on: June 18, 2008, 05:44:29 PM »
Page 2 of 2   < Back     
Abu Ghraib? Doesn't Ring a Bell.
   

"And that's all you remember?"

"Correct," Haynes repeated.

Luckily for the witness, they don't allow naked pyramids and simulated electrocutions in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

It was the most public case of memory loss since Alberto Gonzales, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, forgot everything he ever knew about anything. And, like Gonzales, Haynes (who, denied a federal judgeship by the Senate, left the Pentagon in February for a job with Chevron) had good reason to plead temporary senility.

A committee investigation found that, contrary to his earlier testimony, Haynes had showed strong interest in potentially abusive questioning methods as early as July 2002. Later, ignoring the strong objections of the uniformed military, Haynes sent a memo to Donald Rumsfeld recommending the approval of stress positions, nudity, dogs and light deprivation.

Before Haynes took his seat at the witness table yesterday, a parade of underlings pointed the finger at him. The former top lawyer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified that Haynes "was aware that the services had concerns." The woman on whose legal reasoning Haynes relied for his judgment on torture testified that she was "shocked" that he did so. And the former general counsel for the Navy said he had warned Haynes that the legal reasoning was "inadequate."
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Haynes knew he was in for some cruel and unusual treatment. He took a swig from his Diet Pepsi bottle, put on his reading glasses and announced: "I don't have a formal opening statement." He then read his formal opening statement, in which he defended all those things he couldn't remember doing by saying that "we all rightly fear another assault on our country, one perhaps even more horrific than the last."

He then rested his elbows on the witness table, revealing a big gold watch on his wrist, and allowed the amnesia to wash over him.

Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked when he became aware of a Justice Department memo justifying torture. "I don't know when I became aware of that," Haynes replied.

Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) asked about other legal opinions objecting to the techniques. "I do not recall seeing the memoranda," Haynes answered.

Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked why Haynes didn't request the opposing viewpoints. "I don't know that I was aware of those," he said. "I don't recall being aware of any particular memoranda."

Haynes mixed his forgetfulness with a dash of insolence. He suggested to McCaskill that "it's important that you understand how the Defense Department works." He cut off Reed with a "Let me finish, Senator!" and disclosed that he had been too busy to give more attention to the Geneva Conventions: "I mean, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of decisions made every day. This was one."

Reed, a West Point graduate, was enraged. "You did a disservice to the soldiers of this nation," he said. "You empowered them to violate basic conditions which every soldier respects, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Convention. . . . You degraded the integrity of the United States military."

Haynes, wisely, retreated to his default position. In the span of just a few minutes, he treated the chairman to a whole new level of forgetfulness:

"I don't recall seeing this memorandum before and I'm not even sure this is one I've seen before. . . . I don't recall seeing this memorandum and I don't recall specific objections of this nature. . . . Well, I don't recall seeing this document, either. . . . I don't recall specific concerns. . . . I don't recall these and I don't recall seeing these memoranda. . . . I can't even read this document, but I don't remember seeing it. . . . I don't recall that specifically. . . . I don't remember doing that. . . . I don't recall seeing these things."

In two hours of testimony, Haynes managed to get off no fewer than 23 don't recalls, 22 don't remembers, 16 don't knows, and various other protestations of memory loss.

It was an impressive performance, to be sure. But let's see him try to do that with a hood over his head, standing on a crate with wires attached to his arms.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/17/AR2008061702673_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

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