Judge caught with drugs, stripper, guns

In this November 20, 2008 photo, Senior U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp poses for a photo in Atlanta. Camp, 67, was arrested Friday, Oct. 1, 2010, minutes after he handed an undercover law enforcement agent $160 for cocaine and Roxycodone, a narcotic pain medication, that he intended to use with the exotic dancer, as stated in a court document released Monday. (AP Photo / Zachary D. Porter)

ATLANTA -- A 67-year-old federal judge's wild relationship with a stripper started with a lap dance, prosecutors said, and quickly escalated into escapades of prostitution and gun-toting drug deals for cocaine and prescription pills.

Senior Judge Jack T. Camp, a veteran jurist who had achieved a status that allowed him a lighter caseload, now finds himself in a peculiar position, in front of one of his peers, and with lawyers combing through his decisions, wondering whether they have grounds to challenge them.

"I don't know whether the allegations are true or whether they infected the decision making, but it's incumbent upon me to raise these issues," said Gerry Weber, a civil rights attorney who is readying an appeal in a case that Camp ruled on in June.

Camp, a Vietnam War veteran who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, built a reputation for handing out stiff sentences, including for drug convictions. He could face years behind bars on drug and gun charges. The judge's attorney has said he intends to plead not guilty.

The stripper, who previously had a felony drug trafficking conviction, had been secretly working with the FBI since the spring to build a case against the judge. In exchange, prosecutors pledged not to charge her.

Camp's relationship with the dancer, who was not identified in court documents, began earlier this year. A day after receiving his first dance, he returned to the Goldrush Showbar for more dances, and added sex and cocaine to his tab, authorities said.

Over the next few months, the two used cocaine and other drugs together, sometimes at the strip club, and the judge would pay $40 to $50 to join her getting high, according to a sworn statement.

In June, the judge followed the stripper to a house in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta to buy drugs, carrying a semiautomatic handgun with him he later told her he brought to protect her, the affidavit said.

The relationship finally unraveled Friday. Camp told the stripper he would try to help with her criminal record and advised her to tell a potential employer who had rejected her application that "it was a minor offense and that one of the judges on the court can explain that to him," according to the affidavit.

A few hours later, the dancer asked Camp to follow her to the Publix grocery store parking lot in northeast Atlanta to meet a drug dealer. When she said she feared for her safety, authorities said he responded with a dash of bravado: "I not only have my little pistol, I've got my big pistol so, uh, we'll take care of any problems that come up."

Camp, who is married with two grown children, then gave the stripper $160 to buy the drugs from an undercover officer. When the agent, posing as a dealer, told Camp he had given the two a few extra pills, the judge sounded pleased. "We'll call you again," the judge said.

FBI agents swarmed the judge's car about 10 minutes later when he drove to the Velvet Room, a nearby night club. They recovered the plastic bag containing blue pills and a white substance, along with two guns from his front seat.

Not only has the case shocked the legal community, it has created a conflict of interest mess. For Camp's bail hearing, prosecutors were flown in from Washington and a magistrate traveled from Alabama because the local judges recused themselves from the case.

Camp supervised several cases while he was being investigated, including an April trial involving a pilot charged with shipping cocaine for drug traffickers. A jury acquitted the pilot after a trial in which prosecutors carted out 174 kilograms of cocaine in front of the jury several times.

It's unclear whether any of the judge's decisions will be revisited.

"If you could establish that a judge was under the influence of some substance at the time he presided or ruled, then you could conceive of a basis for a challenge," said Pete Donaldson, a criminal defense attorney based in Albany, Ga. "You can envision all manner of circumstances where that might come into play."

The judge grew up on a working farm in rural Coweta County, and he enjoyed talking to colleagues about raising timber, pumpkins and cows on a plot of land he still owns.

During his more than two decades on the federal bench, he hated when attorneys grandstanded and sometimes required them to cite the specific federal code when they dared raise an objection. But he always maintained a cordial relationship, said defense attorney Page Pate.

"He was a true Southern gentleman who was definitely tough with defenders - even more so in drug cases," said Pate.

Camp sentenced two men accused of killing DeKalb County Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown to life in prison without parole in 2004, and gave the personal doctor to a professional wrestler who killed himself, his wife and their 7-year-old son 10 years behind bars for prescription drug-related charges.

At a brief hearing Monday, the judge found himself surrounded by four defense attorneys. He flashed a quick smile to his family before he was released on a $50,000 bond.

William Morrison, who tried several cases before Camp before becoming his attorney, assured the judge's family that he was doing fine, and then told reporters Camp would likely take a leave of absence.

"This is really a case between Judge Camp and his wife. It's not about Judge Camp being a judge. It's about him being a husband," said Morrison, who added: "It is not a case about judging. It's a case about judgment."

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news%2Fnational_world&id=7709589

BP digitally alters press photo, confesses it's a fake

Amateurish use of Photoshop causes yet another BP embarrassment

The image on top is an altered image of BP's Houston command centerThe image on the bottom is the photo that BP released AFTER the alteration was uncovered by a blogger, who spotted it due to poor Photoshop handiwork.
It's been a long season of embarrassment for BP, but leaking oil isn't what the blogosphere is ripping the company for today. A site called Americablog spotted a press photo of BP's Houston command center, ostensibly taken on July 16. The image had quite visibly been Photoshopped — badly — to include more on-screen camera action.

Once word got out — the story was picked up by the Washington Post, where it was then spotted by the tech blog Gizmodo and others — BP 'fessed up. A spokesman admitted that the image was altered, said that a photographer had inserted shots where the TV screens were blank, and provided the original image.

"We've instructed our post-production team to refrain from doing this in the future," said the spokesman in an e-mail to the Washington Post.

Though the command center alteration doesn't seem to be an attempt to hide facts or confuse the public, it heightens skepticism for the company at a time when it should be trying to build trust. As the Americablog reporter John Aravosis wrote, "I guess if you're doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center."

As it happens, the command center shot isn't the end of the issue. Today, Aravosis published evidence of another altered press photo, this one depicting a meeting from the failed "top kill" maneuver. "How many other crisis response photos from BP have been faked?" wrote Aravosis. "Did they fake any videos?"

Please don't tell us that the people in those sucking-it-up-and-taking-responsibilty ads are actually paid models!

Catch up with Wilson (the author of this story) on Twitter at @wjrothman. Fourth-grade Photoshop skills required.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38333456/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/?gt1=43001

"How porn is warping a generation of men"

Today’s porn is not your father’s Playboy. Type porn into Google and you won’t see anything that looks like the old pinups; instead, you will be catapulted into a world of sexual cruelty and brutality where women are subject to body-punishing sex and called vile names.

It’s not surprising how little women really know about porn today, since most women avoid looking at these sites. Not true for the men I meet, especially the college-age and even high-school boys. They have grown up with porn and, for them, this has been their major form of sex education.

In porn, sex is not about making love. The feelings and emotions we normally associate with such an act — connection, empathy, tenderness, caring, affection — are missing, and in their place are those we normally associate with hate — fear, disgust, anger, loathing and contempt. In porn, the man “makes hate” to the woman, as each sex act is designed to deliver the maximum amount of degradation. Whether it be choking her or violent intercourse, the goal of porn sex is to illustrate how much power he has over her. Yet the women are still portrayed as enjoying these scenes. It is images like these that are now commonplace all over the Internet and are shaping the way men think about sex, relationships and intimacy.

The size of the industry today is staggering. Though reliable numbers are hard to find, the global industry has been estimated to be worth around $96 billion in 2006, with the US market worth approximately $13 billion.

Each year, more than 13,000 films are released, and despite their modest budgets, pornography revenues rival those of all the major Hollywood studio films combined. According to Internet Filter Reviews, there are 420 million Internet porn pages, 4.2 million porn websites, and 68 million daily porn search engine requests.

A recent study from Optenet, an online security firm, found that approximately 37% of online pages contain pornographic content. Meanwhile, the number of porn sites increased 17% from last year.

Without a doubt, a key factor driving the growth of the porn market has been the development of technologies allowing users to buy and consume porn in private, without embarrassing trips to seedy stores or video rental shops. These technologies also enable pornography to be viewed anywhere, anytime; even the global cellphone market for porn is expected to reach $3.5 billion this year, according to the Britain-based Juniper Research.

This is a business with considerable political clout, with the capacity to lobby politicians, engage in expensive legal battles, and use public relations to influence public debate. Like the tobacco industry, this is not a simple matter of consumer choice; rather the business is increasingly able to deploy a sophisticated and well-resourced marketing machine, not just to push its wares but also to cast the industry’s image in a positive light. Indeed, one of the key myths that the industry promotes is that porn is harmless fun: that it is all about fantasy and play, and that we should not take it too seriously.

My interviews with college-age men tell a very different story. When I talk to men about their experiences with porn, it is clear that not all are affected in the same way, but affected they are. Remember, this is the generation that grew up with Internet porn, and some studies put the first age of viewing porn at 11 years. Unlike previous generations, these boys and men have an unlimited supply of hardcore porn 24 hours a day.

Many of the men I talk to believe that porn sex is what women want, and they become upset and angry when their sex partner, perhaps their wife, girlfriend or a one night hook-up, refuses to look or behave like their favorite porn star. The women often refuse to perform the sex acts the men have routinely enjoyed watching, and next to the screaming orgasms and sexual gymnastics of porn sex, real sex with real women starts to feel boring and bland.

One student told me that “I love porn and I try out the sex on my girlfriend, but she isn’t interested. I dumped the last girl I was with because she wanted to keep the sex straight. That’s not for me. If women don’t want to try different things, then I am not interested.”

These men have become so accustomed to porn sex that some are disappointed by their own sexual performance. When they compare themselves to Viagra-fortified actors, the guys I talk to often admit to feeling like sexual losers and worry that something is wrong with them. Adam grew up watching his father’s porn and felt that “porn taught me all I know about sex. My parents never mentioned the word sex at home, and sex ed in school was a . . . joke. I had this image of how great sex would be, both of us going at it for hours. So it was kind of a shock the way the real thing turned out . . .”

What troubles many of these men most is that they need to pull up the porn images in their head in order to be satisfied with their partner. They replay porn scenes in their minds, or think about having sex with their favorite porn star when they are with their partners. Dan was concerned about his sexual performance with women. He told me that “I am not really focusing on the girl but on the last scene I watched.” I asked him if he thought porn had in any way affected his sexuality. He said, “I don’t know. I started looking at porn before I had sex, so porn is pretty much how I learned about sex. It can be a kind of problem to think about porn as much as I do, especially when I’m with my girlfriend. It means I’m not really present with her. My head is somewhere else.”

Porn has become so violent and degrading that we ignore it at our peril. We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn and given that images shape the way people think and behave, this is going to have a profound effect on their sexuality and on the culture as a whole. Porn use is one of the major public health issues of our time and one that needs to be tackled now before we bring up a new generation of boys on even harder images.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Parents face a daunting technical challenge to keep porn from their children. With education and growing awareness, we can only hope that eventually society will rebel, to make it socially unacceptable for there to be such easy access to porn, for men to spend so much time looking at it, for our ideas about sexuality to be so warped.

Gail Dines is the author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality” (Beacon Press), out this week.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_porn_is_warping_generation_of_dRhzBsl8CJFGS3ytfeMAqI/1#ixzz0tQQgMvs4

Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_porn_is_warping_generation_of_dRhzBsl8CJFGS3ytfeMAqI

Who Is 'Oakland Riots'?

As the jury deliberates the fate of ex-BART cop Johannes Mehserle, and Oakland braces for potentially disastrous consequences, we've got an interesting little story for you.

About three weeks ago, a Twitter account called "oaklandriots" mysteriously popped up and quickly built a following of several hundred users. The page's design featured a policeman in riot gear, and the content of account -- news stories about potential violence following the trial -- suggested that the creator was ready to rumble.

One of the first stories featured on the Twitter page was an announcement posted on Indybay.org. "Courts are not where we win victories, streets are!" it said.


But it turns out that Mr. Oakland Riots would rather you stay off the streets -- and respect the courts. After all, he's a lawyer. Turns out, the account was created by a tech-savvy attorney from "deep east Oakland." Like most Oaklanders, Kevin Thomason is actually petrified by the the idea of riots -- but not for the usual reasons. He wants to make sure that, should mayhem hit the streets, he can get home in time to care for his dogs -- Sam (German Shepherd) and Blanca (Dogo Argentino).

"I have two dogs that are like my kids," Thomason, told SF Weekly. "I don't want them to get stuck without food and water."

Three weeks ago, Thomasson became seriously concerned about the riots and what it would mean for getting to and from work (and his dogs). He does the marketing for a small law firm in downtown San Francisco, and usually drives a motorcycle to work. He wanted to know immediately if it looked like rioters might shut down the routes to Oakland.

Ideally, he wanted to receive a text message alerting him about potential riots. When he couldn't figure out how to make that happen, he used his technology background to create an alert system for himself via Twitter. First he used the Google search function to collect all stories related to Oscar Grant or Johannes Mehserle or Oakland riots in an RSS feed.

"Then I took that feed, ran it through twitterfeed.com, and linked it to my Twitter account," he said. Presto. He had created a log of everything going on with the trial and possible riot situation.

Thomason had no intention of amassing any followers, but now that he has them, he wants to educate them about what riots really look like. (He witnessed the Oscar Grant riots in 2009, and believes the media failed to relay the extent of the damage.) If violence does erupt, he plans to feed and walk his dogs, then ride into the heart of the chaos to take photographs, which he will post on the feed.

"I just really hope that nothing happens," he said. "I love Oakland. Most of the people in Oakland are good, decent people. All a riot does is destroy Oakland's infrastructure and its reputation on a national stage."

Source: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/07/oakland_riots_twitter_account.php

South African doctor invents female condoms with 'teeth' to fight rape

South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers was on call one night four decades ago when a devastated rape victim walked in. Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse.

"She looked at me and said, 'If only I had teeth down there,'" recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. "I promised her I'd do something to help people like her one day."

Forty years later, Rape-aXe was born.


Ehlers is distributing the female condoms in the various South African cities where the World Cup soccer games are taking place.

The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside and attach on a man's penis during penetration, Ehlers said.

Once it lodges, only a doctor can remove it -- a procedure Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest.

"It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it's on," she said. "If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter... however, it doesn't break the skin, and there's no danger of fluid exposure."

Ehlers said she sold her house and car to launch the project, and she planned to distribute 30,000 free devices under supervision during the World Cup period.



"I consulted engineers, gynecologists and psychologists to help in the design and make sure it was safe," she said.

After the trial period, they'll be available for about $2 a piece. She hopes the women will report back to her.

"The ideal situation would be for a woman to wear this when she's going out on some kind of blind date ... or to an area she's not comfortable with," she said.

The mother of two daughters said she visited prisons and talked to convicted rapists to find out whether such a device would have made them rethink their actions.

Some said it would have, Ehlers said.

Critics say the female condom is not a long-term solution and makes women vulnerable to more violence from men trapped by the device.

I's also a form of "enslavement," said Victoria Kajja, a fellow for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the east African country of Uganda. "The fears surrounding the victim, the act of wearing the condom in anticipation of being assaulted all represent enslavement that no woman should be subjected to."

Kajja said the device constantly reminds women of their vulnerability.

"It not only presents the victim with a false sense of security, but psychological trauma," she added. "It also does not help with the psychological problems that manifest after assaults."

However, its one advantage is it allows justice to be served, she said.

Various rights organizations that work in South Africa declined to comment, including Human Rights Watch and Care International.

South Africa has one of the highest rape rates in the world, Human Rights Watch says on its website. A 2009 report by the nation's Medical Research Council found that 28 percent of men surveyed had raped a woman or girl, with one in 20 saying they had raped in the past year, according to Human Rights Watch.

In most African countries, rape convictions are not common. Affected women don't get immediate access to medical care, and DNA tests to provide evidence are unaffordable.

"Women and girls who experience these violations are denied justice, factors that contribute to the normalization of rape and violence in South African society," Human Rights Watch says.

Women take drastic measures to prevent rape in South Africa, Ehlers said, with some wearing extra tight biker shorts and others inserting razor blades wrapped in sponges in their private parts.

Critics have accused her of developing a medieval device to fight rape.

"Yes, my device may be a medieval, but it's for a medieval deed that has been around for decades," she said. "I believe something's got to be done ... and this will make some men rethink before they assault a woman."

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/06/20/south.africa.female.condom/

David Livingstone letter deciphered at last

LONDON – The contents of a long-illegible letter written by famed 19th century explorer David Livingstone have finally been deciphered, a British university said Friday, nearly 140 years after he wrote of his despair at ever leaving Africa alive.

Researchers say that the letter — which required state of the art imaging techniques to decipher — helps round out the picture of a man traditionally cast as an intrepid Victorian hero, revealing the self-doubt that tormented the missionary-explorer in one of his darkest hours.

"I am terribly knocked up but this is for your own eye only," Livingstone wrote to close friend Horace Waller in the newly revealed correspondence. "Doubtful if I live to see you again."

Livingstone was a national hero when he set off to find the source of the River Nile in 1866, but by the time he composed his four-page missive he was at the lowest point in his professional life, according to Debbie Harrison, a researcher at Birkbeck University of London.

The explorer was stuck in the village of Bambarre, in present-day Congo, in February of 1871. He was a long way off from his intended goal, most of his expedition either died or deserted him, and he was still suffering the effects of pneumonia, fever, and tropical eating ulcers — a nasty condition that consumes skin and flesh.

Adding insult to injury, Livingstone, a crusading abolitionist, had been forced to seek help from Arab slave traders while he waited for outside support. Bedridden for weeks on end, Livingstone had read the Bible several times over and started hallucinating.

"He'd gone slightly mad by this point, to be honest," Harrison said.

Back home, Livingstone's supporters were going mad with worry. No one had heard from him in years, and as Livingstone recovered, search parties set out into the interior to discover his fate. He was eventually located near the eastern shore of the massive Lake Tanganyika by journalist Henry Morton Stanley, whose memorable quip, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" immortalized their encounter.

But Livingstone refused to leave Africa, continuing his obsessive quest for the source of the continent's longest river. His warning to Waller was prescient: He finally succumbed to illness in May 1873, at Chitambo in what is now Zambia.

It's not clear how Livingstone's letter ever left the continent, although presumably Stanley took it back to Waller. The document disappeared from view for nearly a century before surfacing again at auction in 1966.

By then it was indecipherable. Out of paper and low on ink, Livingstone tore pages from books and newspapers and wrote with a pigment improvised from the seeds of a local berry. A century later, the makeshift ink had nearly faded to invisibility, a problem compounded by the brittle paper and Livingstone's chaotic handwriting.

A team of scientists and academics — including spectral imaging specialists from the United States — analyzed the fragile paper, carefully drawing out Livingstone's original text.

The university said the newly revealed letter projects an image at odds with the fearless hero depicted by Waller, who heavily sanitized Livingstone's writings before they were published posthumously.

"It's an opportunity to rewrite history," said Harrison of Birkbeck, which announced the find. "It's giving us a new way of looking at Livingstone. He got depressed, he did think he'd failed at times. But he never gave up ... It makes him human."

Harrison said that while the explorer was "very politically incorrect in his writings and his ramblings," his friend was "very concerned to maintain that image of Livingstone as a saintly martyr and to suppress anything that might have offended Victorians."

The letter published Friday is part of an 18-month project to produce a new — and unvarnished — edition of the diary Livingstone kept between 1870 and 1871.

___

Online: http://emelibrary.org/livingstoneletter/

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_britain_livingstone_letter

Grad Sues Father for College Tuition and Wins

Arguing over money is nothing new for most families, especially when recent college graduates with massive student loans start looking to their parents for economic assistance in today's tough job market. And things can get tense when parents try to decide how much of that debt they're willing to help out with.

Most of the time, though, that decision isn't decreed in a court of law.

But that's exactly what happened when Dana Soderberg sued her father to force him to fulfill their agreement to pay for her education at Southern Connecticut State University.


Dana didn't take a lawsuit against her own father based on a mere promise, however—she had a legal document to back her up.

When Howard and Deborah Soderberg divorced in 2004, Howard—a property developer—agreed to pay for the education of their three children.

Apparently Dana foresaw that his word wouldn't be enough. In 2005, she convinced her father to sign a written contract that would require him to pay for her college tuition until she turned 25, as well as cover related expenses such as textbooks and car insurance. For her part, she agreed to apply for student loans that her father would cover if she received them.

But Howard stopped paying her tuition just before her senior year, forcing Dana to take out a $20,000 student loan (co-signed by her mother). After graduating as an art major, Dana filed a breach of contract lawsuit against her father with the aid of family attorney Renee C. Berman.

Representing himself in court, Howard contended that his daughter nullified their contract first when she—supposedly—didn't try hard enough to apply for student loans. He even filed a counterclaim alleging that she dropped a few classes and kept the money for herself. In Dana's defense, Berman pointed out that Dana was forced to drop some courses due to the continued tardiness of her father's tuition payments.

"They just don't have a relationship," Berman said about Dana and Howard. "It has to be weak to begin with if you enter into that agreement."

Berman also noted how unperturbed Dana's dad seemed throughout the trial. "Here his daughter's bringing him to court and there's no sadness, no remorse that his daughter was in this situation having to sue him."

After two-day trial, the judge ruled that Dana had indeed fulfilled her part of the contract and awarded her about $47,000 in damages, which covered the initial loan, interest and attorney fees.

If a daughter successfully suing her father for nearly $50,000 to recoup the cost of her college loans sounds unusual, Dana's attorney would be the first to agree. "Nothing that I've researched has shown any cases like this and hopefully there won't be any more, because it's a sad situation," Berman admitted.

As an art major-turned-teacher facing a grim economy (liberal arts majors' salaries' dropped 8.9 percent in the last year), Dana's legal victory should ease some of her monetary concerns. But most college grads can't turn to the legal system to relieve them of their student loan woes. Unlike other types of debt—such as mortgage or credit card—student loans aren't wiped away by declaring bankruptcy.

That means grads who can't afford to make ends meet can end up defaulting on their loans, which effectively ruins their credit. What's worse, defaulting means being turned over to a collection agency—and the fee that incurs can turn an already imposing amount of debt into downright terrifying numbers.

Dr. Michelle Bisutti, for instance, finished medical school in 2003 with $250,000 in student loans. Today, she owes $555,000—and $53,000 of that is just a fee for being turned over to a collection agency.

The New York Times recently shared the story of Cortney Munna, a college grad who was convinced her NYU degree was worth the approximately $97,000 in loans she took out to pay for it. Now almost a third of Munna's income goes to covering the federal and private loans she took out to nab that NYU degree.

While most college grads don't owe money in excess of $100,000 (10 percent of the 2007-08 class owes more than $40,000), at least two-thirds of those who complete a four-year program end up owing an average of $23,000 in student loans.

And that's bad news for people who are slowly finding out a college degree isn't necessarily as profitable as they have been led to believe.

Recent studies indicate that while having a college degree tends to ensure a higher salary than those with a high school diploma, the increase in pay scale isn't as large as society often assumes. According to a study conducted for Bloomberg Businessweek, most of the people who recoup the cost of their higher education and out-earn high school grads by over a million dollars (over the course of their lives) primarily come from elite private schools.

For the majority of Americans who can't afford an Ivy League education, there are plenty of state schools that offer competitive academics at much more reasonable prices. The University of North Carolina recently topped Kiplinger's "Best Value in Public Colleges" list, and UNC grads don't seem to be hit as hard by the student debt crisis. The average UNC grad ends up with $14,936 worth of debt—a full $8,000 less than the national average.

So, for those whose parents aren't legally bound to cover the cost of their education, there's still hope for earning back the money you invest in your education.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/109991/college-grad-sues-dad-to-cover-student-debt?mod=edu-continuing_education

Supreme Court limits local gun bans

Justices rebuff Chicago, which defended ban as reasonable exercise of local power

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" applies nationwide as a restraint on the ability of the federal, state and local governments to substantially limit its reach.

By a 5-4 vote split along familiar ideological lines, the nation's highest court extended its landmark 2008 ruling that individual Americans have a constitutional right to own guns to all the cities and states for the first time.

In doing so, the justices signaled that less severe restrictions could survive legal challenges. The ruling involved a 28-year-old handgun ban in the Chicago area.

The ruling was a victory for four Chicago-area residents, two gun rights groups and the politically powerful National Rifle Association.

It was a defeat for Chicago, which defended its ban as a reasonable exercise of local power to protect public safety. The law and a similar handgun ban in suburban Oak Park, Ill., were the nation's most restrictive gun control measures.

Monday's decision did not explicitly strike down the Chicago area laws, ordering a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling. It left little doubt, however, that they would fall eventually.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states."

Five conservative-moderate justices were in favor of gun rights and the four liberals, opposed.

Two years ago, the court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess guns, at least for purposes of self-defense in the home.

That ruling applied only to federal laws. It struck down a ban on handguns and a trigger lock requirement for other guns in the District of Columbia, a federal city with a unique legal standing. At the same time, the court was careful not to cast doubt on other regulations of firearms here.

Gun rights proponents almost immediately filed a federal lawsuit challenging gun control laws in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence says those laws appear to be the last two remaining outright bans.

Lower federal courts upheld the two laws, noting that judges on those benches were bound by Supreme Court precedent and that it would be up to the high court justices to ultimately rule on the true reach of the Second Amendment.

'Freedom'

The Supreme Court already has said that most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights serve as a check on state and local, as well as federal, laws.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, told MSNBC that the ruling reiterated that gun ownership was a "constitutional freedom ... for every American citizen."

"It's a landmark decision," LaPierre said. "The Second Amendment as an individual right now becomes a real part of American Constitutional law.

"The question before the court was 'can law-abiding citizens go out and buy and own a firearm?' And the court said, 'Yes, anywhere they live.'"

The ruling on gun rights and three other cases came in its last meeting until the fall and the final day of Justice John Paul Stevens' long service.

The Supreme Court also rejected appeals by the Obama administration and the nation's largest tobacco companies to get involved in a legal fight about the dangers of cigarette smoking that has stretched more than 10 years.

The court's action, issued without comment Monday, leaves in place court rulings that the tobacco industry illegally concealed the dangers of smoking for decades. But it also prevents the administration from trying to extract billions of dollars from the industry either in past profits or to fund a national campaign to curb smoking.

Retirement

The court met Monday morning just a couple of hours before high court nominee Elena Kagan goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing.

The 90-year-old Stevens announced his retirement in April, paving the way for President Barack Obama to nominate Kagan to replace him. Kagan's hearing begins early afternoon in Washington, in a Senate hearing room a short walk from the court.

Stevens will retire as the second-oldest justice, after Oliver Wendell Holmes, and tied for second-longest tenure with Stephen Field, whose service began during the Civil War. Stevens' retirement will take effect on Tuesday, after 34 years, six months and 11 days as a justice.

William Douglas has the record, with more than 36 years on the Supreme Court.

Supreme court rules that the "right to bear arms" applies nationwide casting doubt on a Chicago-area handgun ban that has been in place since 1982. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37972148/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/?GT1=43001

Judge: Bush overstepped wiretapping authority

A federal judge has rejected the Bush administration's justification for warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists and ruled that federal agents had eavesdropped illegally on a U.S.-based Islamic charity.

The ruling Wednesday by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco focused on the surveillance of a single organization, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation - the only plaintiff in dozens of wiretapping lawsuits around the nation that had evidence its calls were intercepted.

But Walker's reasoning struck at the heart of the program President George W. Bush authorized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, allowing agents to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant.

When Bush acknowledged the surveillance in December 2005, he claimed the power to override a 1978 law, passed in response to revelations of wiretapping of political dissidents, that required the government to obtain advance court approval for each act of eavesdropping.

Walker said Wednesday that Bush lacked that authority.

Under the argument advanced by the Bush administration, "executive branch officials may treat as optional ... a statute (the 1978 law) enacted specifically to rein in and create a judicial check for executive-branch abuses of surveillance authority," the judge said.

That "theory of unfettered executive-branch discretion" holds an "obvious potential for governmental abuse and overreaching," Walker said.

Al-Haramain's lawyer, Jon Eisenberg, said the decision amounted to a finding that the entire program was illegal.

"Inherent in what Walker has done in this case is a determination that President Bush's program of warrantless surveillance was unlawful," Eisenberg said. "Everybody has to follow the law, including the president."

The Bush administration said it ended the program in mid-2008 and allowed a special court, created by the 1978 law, to review the wiretaps. The administration did not disclose the scope of that review, and neither Bush nor President Obama has revealed the extent of any continuing surveillance.

The ruling was also a rebuff to Obama. Although he had criticized Bush's surveillance program while running for president, Obama's Justice Department has repeatedly sought to dismiss the Al-Haramain suit and fought any judicial review of the wiretapping program.

Secret evidence

The department argued that courts lacked the power to decide whether any alleged surveillance was legal because all evidence related to wiretapping was a secret whose disclosure would aid the nation's enemies. Department lawyers refused to tell Walker whether they thought the overall program was legal.

Walker described the Justice Department's arguments as "nit-picking" and "acrobatics." He said the government had spurned every offer to justify its conduct in closed-door proceedings that could have protected any state secrets.

The Obama administration now must decide whether to appeal the ruling and invite the first decision by a higher court on the validity of the surveillance program.

The Justice Department was noncommittal about an appeal and instead issued a statement stressing Attorney General Eric Holder's recent restrictions on government claims of secrecy. The new rules require a high-level Justice Department committee to review all such claims, with the attorney general having the last word.

Paper trail

Other lawsuits challenging the wiretapping program have stumbled over a judicial requirement that the plaintiffs show evidence they were wiretapped. But the government inadvertently sent a classified document in 2004 to Al-Haramain, a now-defunct charity that was based in Oregon, reportedly showing that two of its lawyers had been wiretapped.

Several months after the surveillance began, the government classified Al-Haramain as a terrorist organization, a description its leaders called false.

The group returned the document at the government's request and was barred from using it as evidence. But Walker said Al-Haramain had established - through public statements by an FBI official, other nonclassified evidence and the timing of its lawyers' phone calls and the terrorist designation - that it had been illegally wiretapped.

Eisenberg said his clients, Al-Haramain and the two lawyers, would ask for the damages the law allows - $20,200 each, or $100 for each day of illegal surveillance - plus punitive damages and attorneys' fees.

Source: http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-04-01/bay-area/20830512_1_wiretapping-warrantless-al-haramain-islamic-foundation

U.S.: Oil spill of ‘national significance’

A boat works to collect oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon
wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico on April 28, near New Orleans.


Obama steps up efforts, sends top aides to Gulf region

VENICE, Louisiana - The Obama administration pledged an all-out response Thursday to the massive oil spill now expected to reach the Gulf Coast within a day and dispatched top officials to the region to help coordinate defenses against the potential environmental disaster.

"We are being very aggressive and we are prepared for the worst case," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said at the White House. Federal officials announced inspections would begin immediately of all oil rigs in the Gulf and subpoena powers would be used in the gathering investigation. But the priority was to support the oil company BP PLC in employing booms, skimmers, chemical dispersants and controlled burns to fight the oil surging from the seabed.

The administration rejected suggestions that the federal government was slow to act in dealing with the spill and expressed frustration with BP's inability to seal the ruptured well head. The government approved the start of drilling for a relief well and was considering approving a second one as industry and government officials worked on multiple fronts to contain the slick.

Brice-O'Hara said officials expected the leading edge of the spill to reach the Mississippi Delta sometime on Friday. Workers were racing from six staging areas to deploy more booms to try to hold off the slick and protect sea life and fragile wetlands. Winds and sea conditions Thursday prevented another controlled burn of the kind tried successfully a day earlier with a small test section of the slick.

Top Homeland Security, Interior and Environmental Protection Agency officials were going to the region. Officials emphasized at a White House briefing that all costs of the defense and recovery will ultimately fall on the industry, not taxpayers.

President Barack Obama spoke Thursday with five Gulf state governors from Florida to Texas.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared the spill to be one of national significance, a designation that eases the transfer of personnel and equipment to the region from all parts of the country.

"Our key focus is to make sure that people know what is going on and what relief efforts are under way," Napolitano said.

'This thing gives me concerns'
Michael Sole, chief of Florida's Environmental Protection Department, said governments are digging in for a long struggle and it's too soon to know what his state will need from Washington.

"It's only been a week now," he said. "It may be two or three months before they can stop the discharge. The magnitude of this thing gives me concerns as to whether they're going to be able to address the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico."

So far, he said, the federal government has acted aggressively and cooperatively.


In earlier developments, a third leak was discovered at the site, which government officials said is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels a day coming from the blown-out well 40 miles offshore.

"We'll take help from anyone," Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP's exploration and production unit, said on NBC's TODAY show.

"We're not interested in where the idea comes from, what we're interested in is how do we stop this flow and how do we stop it now?" Suttles said.

Suttles had initially disputed the government's estimate, or that the company, BP PLC, was unable to handle the operation to contain it.

But early Thursday, he acknowledged on TODAY that the leak may be as bad as the government says. He said there was no way to measure the flow at the seabed and estimates have to come from how much oil makes it to the surface.

Federal officials have said BP, which was operating the well, is responsible for funding the cleanup.

If the well cannot be closed, almost 100,000 barrels of oil, or 4.2 million gallons, could spill into the Gulf before crews can drill a relief well to alleviate the pressure. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, leaked 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

‘Give us the worst-case scenario’
As dawn broke Thursday in the oil industry hub of Venice, about 75 miles from New Orleans and not far from the mouth of the Mississippi River, crews loaded an orange oil boom aboard a supply boat at Bud's Boat Launch. There, local officials expressed frustration with the pace of the government's response and the communication they were getting from the Coast Guard and BP officials.

"We're not doing everything we can do," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, which straddles the Mississippi River at the tip of Louisiana.

"Give us the worst-case scenario. How far inland is this supposed to go?" Nungesser said. He has suggested enlisting the local fishing fleet to spread booms to halt the oil, which threatens some of the nation's most fertile seafood grounds.

Louisiana has opened a special shrimp season along parts of the coast so shrimpers can harvest the profitable white shrimp before the spill has an effect.

Michael Nguyen, 58, was aboard his 82-foot shrimp boat, the Night Star III, waiting for news Thursday morning on what has happening with the slick.

"My boat is ready: New nets, did repairs. I'm ready to go," he said.

He wasn't panicking, but was clearly worried.

"The oil come in everywhere, the shrimp die, the crabs die, the fish die. What do I do? Stay home a long time?"

The spill has moved steadily toward the mouth of the Mississippi River and the wetland areas east of it, home to hundreds of species of wildlife and near some rich oyster grounds.

Lawsuits
A federal class-action lawsuit was filed late Wednesday over the oil spill on behalf of two commercial shrimpers from Louisiana, Acy J. Cooper Jr. and Ronnie Louis Anderson.

The suit seeks at least $5 million in compensatory damages plus an unspecified amount of punitive damages against Transocean, BP, Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Cameron International Corp.

Jim Klick, a lawyer for Cooper and Anderson, said the oil spill already is disrupting the commercial shrimping industry.

"They should be preparing themselves for the upcoming shrimp season," he said. "Now they're very much concerned that the whole shrimp season is out."

Mike Brewer, 40, who lost his oil spill response company in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, said the area was accustomed to the occasional minor spill. But he feared the scale of the escaping oil was beyond the capacity of existing resources.

"You're pumping out a massive amount of oil. There is no way to stop it," he said.

The rig Deepwater Horizon sank a week ago after exploding two days earlier. Of its crew of 126, 11 are missing and presumed dead. The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said BP is responsible for bringing resources to shut off the flow and clean up the spill.

"It has become clear after several unsuccessful attempts to determine the cause" that agencies must supplement what's being done by the company, she said.

A fleet of boats working under an oil industry consortium has been using booms to corral and then skim oil from the surface.

Landry said a controlled test to burn the leaking oil was successful late Wednesday afternoon. BP was to set more fires after the test, but as night fell, there were no more burns. No details have been given about when more were planned were given during the news conference.

The decision to burn some of the oil came after crews operating submersible robots failed to activate a shut-off device that would halt the flow of oil on the sea bottom 5,000 feet below.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36800673/ns/us_news-environment/?GT1=43001

Does having more sex - like Brazilian health official recommended - actually improve your health?

Get busy, get happy! Sex may not be the equivalent of a cardio workout,
but it does release mood-boosting hormones.


Is "sexercise" a prescription for good health? Brazil's Minister of Health suggested that his country's citizens have sex five times a week as a solution to chronic diseases there like diabetes and hypertension (nearly one quarter of Brazilians have high blood pressure, according to The Associated Press).

While sex may not cure chronic illnesses, it does have some health benefits, experts say. But it's not the same as an intense workout at the gym.

"You're not going to get the same [physical health] benefit as going out for a 2-mile jog," Jamie Feldman, associate professor at the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, told ABC News. "Sexual activity provides some degree of modest exercise. But it's not the same as getting moderate exercise for 30 minutes a day."

It can, however, lower the blood pressure over time, says Israel Helfand, sex therapist and marriage counselor. "But for this to happen, it must be done vigorously," he adds.

Sex also increases the body's "happy" hormones such as dopamine and cortisol, Helfand says. "And it counteracts depression, improves energy and improves people's mood," he adds.

Consultant sexologist Eric Garrison points out its calorie-reducing benefits, too. "And studies show that sex is known to relieve headaches and sinus pressure since it increases blood flow in the head," he adds. "So the ‘not tonight, I have a headache,' excuse doesn't really work."

Sex also can strengthen the immune system, help you have a better relationship with your partner, and make you feel more connected to your partner, says Ian Kerner, Ph.D., a certified clinical sexologist.

"But it works two ways," he says. "People who have healthy sex lives are likely to have healthier lives overall. People who have sex more often are more likely to go to the gym, eat healthy and take care of themselves. But if you are sedentary and have high blood pressure, this definitely has an effect on libido."

A recent study in the British Medical Journal of 6,000 Americans ages 25 to 84, as reported by ABC News, found that those with an active sex life lead healthier and longer lives.

"Really what they found was that sexual activity, quality of sex life, and interest in sex were positively associated with good health in middle age and later in life," Feldman told ABC News. "Men and women who were reporting good physical health were more likely to report good sexual health."

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2010/04/28/2010-04-28_does_having_more_sex__like_brazilian_health_official_recommended__actually_impro.html

Suicide in South Hadley

Nine teenagers have been charged with bullying Phoebe Prince. What about the adults who knew it was going on?

Phoebe Nora Mary Prince, 15, committed suicide on Jan. 14

The criminal charges filed against nine students Monday in connection with the bullying of the 15-year-old high school student Phoebe Prince, who killed herself in January, took the town of South Hadley, Mass., by surprise. Six teenagers were charged with felonies and saw their names and photos on the evening news. Three more were charged as juveniles. That's a price for bullying that kids almost never pay. These charges will reverberate in this small town for a long time to come. For many people who live here, the charges challenge a fundamental conception of South Hadley as a nice, ordinary, middle-class small town. As such, some residents were willing to work with school administrators to prevent further bullying in the future but were also ready to move on without assigning blame for Phoebe's death. To others, who have criticized the high school's handling of the case, the tough prosecutorial stance toward these bullies is unexpected vindication. They think the town isn't ready to just move on. Now it won't.

I've been reporting in South Hadley in the months since Phoebe's death, because I'm interested in how communities recover from such an event and in how schools tackle the problem of bullying that precipitated it. After Phoebe died, there was an outpouring of grief for her. But from a smaller segment of the community, there was also a groundswell of rage. At public meetings, parents like Luke Gelinas stood up and berated school administrators for not responding to previous episodes of bullying involving their own kids.

In the initial uproar over Phoebe's death, there was also pressure on the high school and the school district from the press: in the Boston Globe, where columnist Kevin Cullen expressed outrage over South Hadley's "mean girls"; in People magazine, which ran an article sympathetic to the Prince family; and on Facebook, where a group called "expel the three girls who caused Phoebe Prince to commit suicide" has 25,841 fans. For a moment, at least, South Hadley was portrayed as the bullying capital of America. To some people in town, that's a monstrous, unrecognizable image. In February, I talked to high school principal Dan Smith before an evening meeting about forming a task force to fight bullying (a meeting that had been planned before Phoebe's death and then postponed for a few weeks in its wake). Some angry parents were calling for his resignation, and that of Superintendent Sayer, the main target of their anger. Smith's inbox was overflowing with e-mails from around the world. There was talk of protestors showing up before that night's meeting. "I've almost seen this like an earthquake, and we've been dealing with the aftershocks," Smith said.

In the midst of those aftershocks, Smith had been trying to figure out where the school had gone wrong. While he and other administrators knew about many day-to-day conflicts, "we'd been looking at bullying, and we were missing types of aggressions, relationship aggression, which we know happens. It can be nasty."

In Phoebe's case, we now know from Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, who outlined the criminal charges on Monday, "relationship aggression" means that a group of girls turned on Phoebe after she "briefly dated" a 17-year-old named Sean Mulveyhill. Sean is a star on the high school football team, and was the boyfriend of Ashley Longe, 16, one of the girls who was charged yesterday. Phoebe also became involved (even more briefly, I've been told) with another boy, 18-year-old Austin Renaud, whose 16-year-old girlfriend, Flannery Mullins, was also charged by the DA. Scheibel says that the nine students she charged participated in "a nearly-three-month campaign" of verbal assaults and physical threats against Phoebe. Phoebe's picture was scribbled out of a student-body photo hanging on a classroom wall. The bullies slammed her on Facebook and sent her mean text messages. The attacks culminated on the day of her death in a "torturous day" during which Phoebe was harassed in the library, in the hallways, and walking down the street on her way home. On the afternoon of her death, a few of them reportedly drove by her while she walked home, shouted "Irish slut" and "Irish whore," and threw a soda at her.

Scheibel says that the conduct of the nine students she charged "far exceeded the limits of normal teenage relationship-related quarrels." That interpretation of the student behavior is shared by some, though not all, in the town. Teachers at the school are aghast at how it's being treated in the media. "I wouldn't teach here if the climate truly was as it's being portrayed," one told me. When I talked with a group of South Hadley students earlier this month, the prevailing sentiment was that, yes, Phoebe had been mistreated but not in some unprecedented way. "A lot of it was normal girl drama," one girl told me. "If you want to label it bullying, then I've bullied girls and girls have bullied me. Her history made it affect her more. It wasn't the school being terrible. It was really bad, it was one of the worst things I've heard of some girls doing to another girl. But it wouldn't have hurt most people that much."

This is not, obviously, how Scheibel came to see it. The DA isn't slapping wrists. These kids are facing felony charges that carry hefty penalties. Sean and Austin were each charged with statutory rape, presumably for having sex with Phoebe. She was 15, and they were 17 and 18, respectively, and under Massachusetts' broad statutory rape law, that's apparently all it takes, because a teenager under the age of 16 cannot legally consent.

Five of the teens—Sean, Ashley, Flannery, and two other girls, Kayla Narey and Sharon Channon Velazquez—were also charged with "violation of civil rights, with bodily injury resulting." That's another broad statute, with a maximum 10-year sentence. "You have to show force or threat of force in violation of a secured right—here, the right to an education," explains Richard Cole, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who consults on school safety and civil rights. While the text of the statute doesn't explicitly limit its reach, Cole said that prosecutors traditionally use it in cases that involve a threat based on a protected status—race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation—or for a First Amendment violation. Here, the tie-in could be the "Irish" part of the epithets shouted at Phoebe. Cole told me about one previous case of school-based harassment in which the charge of violation of civil rights was brought: In 2000, 17-year-old Joseph DeGrazia was prosecuted for beating up Jason Hair, 18, in the school cafeteria after harassing him for months about being gay.

The charges against the South Hadley teenagers raise another question: What about the adults? Scheibel said Monday that the harassment in the library "appears to have been conducted in the presence of a faculty member and several students but went unreported to school administrators until after Phoebe's death." And, more damningly, "The investigation has revealed that certain faculty, staff and administrators of the high school also were alerted to the harassment of Phoebe Prince before her death." Phoebe's mother, Anne Prince, spoke to staff members, the DA said.

To a degree, this matches what Dan Smith told me in February: "There were instances of name-calling, with Phoebe, the week before she died. These were brought to our attention, we dealt with those kids right away. We also talked to her, we had her working with a school counselor, we talked to her mom."

But the timeline doesn't entirely line up: The DA said the bullying campaign went on for three months; school officials said they only learned of it in the last week before Phoebe's death. Nor do the results of the district attorney's investigation jibe with the consequences of school's internal probe. Because of privacy laws, it's not clear which students were disciplined or how seriously. A few left the school, according to Superintendent Sayer. At least one has reportedly transferred to another high school. A couple of others were being homeschooled. But several of the teens whom Scheibel charged had been attending classes at South Hadley this week, I'm told by parents who didn't want to give their names because of anger in the town about talking to the press. How to explain the discrepancy between the criminal charges that came raining down and the back-to-normal feeling at the high school, where the anti-bullying taskforce was dutifully meeting, but with dwindling numbers, and without the guidance of an outside expert, to the frustration of the school's critics?

Recall that taskforce meeting in February. Protesters were expected to call for the superintendent and the principals' resignations. Instead, the school district's supporters came en masse. They handed out "I Support Dan Smith" stickers and gave the principal a standing ovation. Some people sat stony-faced, but the majority clapped. When Smith rose to speak, he choked up. "What's been happening has to stop in our community," he said. "I look around and see a lot of soldiers tonight, which is good. We need you." He described how the anti-bullying taskforce would organize itself going forward, and asked for volunteers. He concluded, "I'm really hopeful for our kids—for their good, which so many of you are here about, and that it's time to move on."

The criminal charges mean that South Hadley won't be moving on. Like it or not, the town will be taking a long, deep look back as its critics have wanted since Phoebe's death. The charges alone, however, won't solve the problem of bullying going forward: Every expert I've talked to says that fighting bullying is never as simple as merely identifying the out-of-control kids. And it's hard to see how only a bunch of teenagers can take the fall for what Scheibel has identified as a broader school failure. She said on Monday that she doesn't think the staff, teachers, or administrators committed a crime. She also said, "nevertheless, the actions, or inactions, of some adults at the school are troublesome."

That's a call for asking a lot more questions about which adults knew what, and when, in South Hadley. Elizabeth Scheibel is herself a product of South Hadley—according to her online bio, "she worked at a local restaurant, sold sweaters in a local clothing store, graduated from South Hadley High School"—and she clearly is in the camp that thinks the town can move forward only when it has held those who bullied Phoebe Prince accountable for their actions. Another bit from her bio that resonates: "A lawyer friend who has known her since kindergarten remembered how she beat up a bully who was picking on her younger brother, commenting, 'Even in her youth she wasn't afraid to hold her position and pursue justice as she saw it.' "

Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2249307/pagenum/all/#p2

Lesbian teen sues to force school to hold prom

JACKSON, Miss. – A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn't host the April 2 prom.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year,'" McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.

Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba County Agricultural High School, is photographed Thursday, March 11, 2010, in Fulton, Miss., a day after the high school announced they wouldn't hold the senior prom April 2. McMillen wanted to bring a same-sex date and wear a tuxedo. (AP Photo/Matthew Sharpe)
The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who is a fellow student, and wear a tuxedo, which the school said also violated policy.

The district's decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students' rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen's free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.

McMillen said she never expected the district to respond the way it did.

"A lot of people said that was going to happen, but I said, they had already spent too much money on the prom" to cancel it, she said.

McMillen said she didn't want to go back to the high school in Fulton the morning after the decision, but her father told her she needed to face her classmates.

"My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I'm still proud of who I am," McMillen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "The fact that this will help people later on, that's what's helping me to go on."

The school board statement said it wouldn't host the event "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events" but didn't mention McMillen. District officials didn't return calls seeking comment Thursday.

At least one supporter has offered to help McMillen and her classmates hold an alternate prom.

New Orleans hotel owner Sean Cummings told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson he was so disappointed with the school board's decision he offered to transport the students in buses to the city and host a free prom at one of his properties.

"New Orleans, we're a joyful culture and a creative culture here and, if the school doesn't change its mind, we'd be delighted to offer them a prom in New Orleans," he told the newspaper. "Concluding your high school experience should be a joyful one. One shouldn't conclude that experience with all their friends on a negative note."

Same-sex prom dates and cross-dressing are new issues for many high schools around the country, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a Washington-based advocacy group.

"A lot of schools actually react rather than do the research and find out what the rights of these students are," said Presgraves.

McMillen says she hopes her fight will make it easier for gay students at other schools facing discrimination.

"I want other kids to know that's it not right for schools to do that," she said on CBS's "The Early Show."

In 2002, a gay student sued his school district in Toronto to allow him to attend a prom with his boyfriend. A judge later forced the district to allow the couple to attend and stopped the district from canceling the prom.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., said a bill he's introduced in Congress would make it illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian school students. He said at least 10 states have such laws, and his bill is modeled after those.

"This situation with the prom is a perfect example of why we need to protect students from discrimination. In this case it's a prom. It other cases, it's getting beaten up or killed," Polis said.

The school district had said it hoped a privately sponsored prom could be held.

Southside Baptist Church Pastor Bobby Crenshaw said he's seen the South portrayed as "backwards" on Web sites discussing the issue, "but a lot more people here have biblically based values."

Itawamba County is a rural area of about 23,000 people in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. It's near Pontotoc County, Miss., where more than a decade ago school officials were sued in federal court over their practice of student-led intercom prayer and Bible classes.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lesbian_prom_date

Defaulted Loans May Haunt Seniors

A little–noticed law could soon result in smaller Social Security checks for hundreds of thousands of the elderly and disabled who owe the U.S. money from defaulted loans and other debts more than a decade old.

Social Security benefits are off–limits to creditors, such as credit–card companies and banks. But the U.S. can collect debts to federal agencies by "offsetting," or withholding Social Security and disability payments.

The Treasury currently withholds benefits of 3.1 million Social Security recipients to recover defaulted student–, farm– and small–business loans, unpaid income taxes, amounts veterans owe for health care, and other debts to the government.

Previously, the U.S. hasn't been able to withhold Social Security payments to recover most debts delinquent for more than ten years.

But a provision in the 2008 Farm Bill lifted the ten–year statute of limitations on the government's ability to withhold Social Security benefits in collecting debts other than student loans—for which the statute of limitations was lifted in 1997—and income taxes, where the limit remains 10 years.

This means that a person who defaulted on a small–business loan in 1995, for example, and who is receiving Social Security could be notified that his benefits may be reduced each month until the debt, with interest, fees, and penalties, is paid. The Treasury can withhold 15% of the benefit, though it can't be reduced to below $750. Tax debts have no floor.

The change will add more than $6 billion to the $75 billion in delinquent debt individuals owe the government, according to the Financial Management Service, the Treasury's debt collection unit.

A Treasury spokesman says the new legislation "allows Treasury's Financial Management Service to collect older debts and levels the playing field so that all eligible debts, regardless of age, are subject to debt collection. Treasury expects this legislation will result in increased collections of $10 million per year in delinquent federal non–tax debt."

Though no one argues that people shouldn't repay their debts, the change is coming at a challenging time for older Americans already pinched by mortgage woes, pension cuts and spiraling medical costs.

The shift applies to debtors of all ages, but Social Security recipients will bear much of the brunt. A Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury Department data shows that Social Security recipients comprise a large and growing percentage of people from whom the Treasury recovers debts.

For years, most debt the Treasury collected through its "Offset Program," came from withholding income–tax refunds. But with an aging population and growing unemployment, roughly 10% of the $4.3 billion in debts collected by the Treasury came from Social Security benefits in 2008, the latest figures available. That's up from 1.6% in 2001, according to Journal computations that the Treasury confirms.

Though the law has expanded the age of debts that can be recovered, it hasn't addressed the sometimes–Kafkaesque process debtors can face when challenging the validity of a claim.

Consider the predicament of Dr. Robert Steinberg, the founder of Scharffen Berger chocolates, who spent more than six years and thousands of dollars in legal fees appealing the Social Security Administration's claim that he owed it more than $28,000.

Dr. Steinberg received disability benefits in the early 1990s while undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, a condition that ultimately claimed his life. Dr. Steinberg returned to work sporadically at a free clinic before co–founding the chocolate company.

Year later, the Social Security Administration notified Dr. Steinberg he was overpaid in the 1990s. In May 2002, with the matter still unresolved, the agency turned the debt over to the Treasury for collection.

In Oct. 2002, administrative law judge Gary Lee found that the Social Security Administration had never established the amount of the overpayment; had dismissed an earlier appeal "for spurious reasons"; had misinformed Dr. Steinberg and mishandled his later appeals; and had lost his file. He noted that Dr. Steinberg was "without fault," and told the agency to stop its collections efforts.

Dr. Steinberg died in 2008, at 61. His lawyer, Peter Young, a former staff attorney for the Social Security Administration, has handled more than 100 overpayment cases, "very few of which were accurate," he says. "Most people can't find or afford help, and give up very quickly and end up with painful offsets on a fixed budget."

An agency spokeswoman says mistakes can happen, but "over all, the process works."


A Treasury spokesman says the new regulations require agencies seeking to recover debts more than a decade old to give debtors the right to review and copy their files, make payment arrangements, and apply for disability and hardship waivers.

But a recent dispute about a student loan shows that even with these rights, a person challenging an old debt can face hurdles similar to homeowners in foreclosure trying to modify a loan that has been resold.

In 2003, the U.S. began withholding $173 a month in Social Security benefits from Annie Brown, a paralyzed 75–year–old widow living in a nursing home to repay a defaulted $8,823 student loan the Education Department says she took out in 1989. The offset reduced Mrs. Brown's benefit to about $980 a month.

Mrs. Brown said a granddaughter had forged her signature on a loan application. Her daughter and a lawyer spent more than four years disputing the debt with the owner of the loan, United Student Aid Funds, a student–loan guarantor that also was acting as one of the Education Department's 21 debt collectors. USA Funds itself farms out various debt–collection activities to others, which it did in Mrs. Brown's case.

Between 2003 and 2008, Mrs. Brown's daughter and Lynn Drysdale, a legal–aid lawyer in Jacksonville, Fla., corresponded numerous times with USA Funds and two other debt–collection companies it hired. One letter from USA Funds warned that unless documents were received "within 30 days from the date this letter was generated...your case will be closed." The letter was undated. Another letter required Mrs. Brown to refer to an attached document. There was no attachment. "I don't know how a lay person could maneuver through this process," says Ms. Drysdale. "Nobody seemed to know what was needed."

In 2007, USA Funds denied Mrs. Brown's claim, citing a recently passed federal rule requiring people claiming identity theft on student loans to obtain a criminal court verdict of the crime. That was impossible for Mrs. Brown; a statute of limitations for bringing a case had passed years earlier. In any case, she wasn't alleging identity theft, but forgery.

Robert Murray, a spokesman for USA Funds, agrees that Mrs. Brown's signature was forged. "It's absolutely a forgery," he says, "It \[the loan\] should never have been made."

But he says that USA Funds couldn't discharge the loan as a forgery because Mrs. Brown didn't return a required form in 2005, and that USA Funds must rigorously defend claims. "There are borrowers who want to get out of a legitimate debt," he says. "By the same token, we want to work with individuals who have a legitimate issue."

Ms. Drysdale, the legal–aid lawyer, finally sought to obtain a disability waiver for her client. That process took more than a year, and was achieved only after Ms. Drysdale asked for help from the Social Security Administration's ombudsman, who declined to comment.

In August 2009, the Education Department agreed that Mrs. Brown is permanently disabled, and discharged her obligation to repay the loan she never took out. The Treasury returned her withheld benefits in December.

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/109011/defaulted-loans-may-haunt-seniors?mod=retire-planning

Sacramento accountant pleads guilty to Ponzi scheme

William Murray, a Sacramento accountant who stole more than $13 million from 52 clients between 2001 and 2009, pleaded guilty today in federal court to mail fraud and interference with tax administration.

U. S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia ordered Murray to immediately be taken into custody by deputy U. S. marshals. The judge set sentencing for May 28.

Murray, 55, told clients to write checks to accounts under his control so he could pay taxes or make investments on their behalf. Much of the money went to support his extravagant lifestyle, including the purchase of real property, a classic car, a fleet of limousines, expensive jewelry and rugs, and fine wines.

He changed his clients' addresses to his own so they would not receive the IRS' delinquent tax notices.

As demands for payment arrived from clients and the IRS, Murray's fraud became a Ponzi scheme that he perpetuated by using more than $3.5 million in recent client receipts to pay off demands stemming from earlier theft.

Before the house of cards collapsed, Murray was a man of some prominence. He was a certified public accountant with a solid client base.

He regularly offered tax advice on a local television channel. He was used as an expert witness in courts in five counties.

He served as a federal tax agent between 1976 and 1980, when he moved to Sacramento to join a former IRS colleague in private practice.

Murray's plea agreement calls for the forfeiture of all his remaining assets to the government, victim restitution, and full disclosure of his finances to the victims.

Source: http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/crime/archives/2010/03/sacramento-acco.html

Prius with stuck accelerator glides to safe stop

EL CAJON, Calif. – A California Highway Patrol officer helped slow a runaway Toyota Prius from 94 mph to a safe stop on Monday after the car's accelerator became stuck on a San Diego County freeway, the CHP said.

Prius driver James Sikes called 911 about 1:30 p.m. after accelerating to pass another vehicle on Interstate 8 near La Posta and finding that he could not control his car, the CHP said.

"I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny... it jumped and it just stuck there," the 61-year-old driver said at a news conference. "As it was going, I was trying the brakes...it wasn't stopping, it wasn't doing anything and it just kept speeding up," Sikes said, adding he could smell the brakes burning he was pressing the pedal so hard.

A patrol car pulled alongside the Prius and officers told Sikes over a loudspeaker to push the brake pedal to the floor and apply the emergency brake.

"They also got it going on a steep upgrade," said Officer Jesse Udovich. "Between those three things, they got it to slow down."

After the car decelerated to about 50 mph, Sikes turned off the engine and coasted to a halt.

The officer then maneuvered his car in front of the Prius as a precautionary block, Udovich said.

In a statement, Toyota said it has dispatched a field technical specialist to San Diego to investigate the incident.

Toyota has recalled some 8.5 million vehicles worldwide — more than 6 million in the United States — since last fall because of acceleration problems in multiple models and braking issues in the Prius.

Toyota owners have complained of their vehicles speeding out of control despite efforts to slow down, sometimes resulting in deadly crashes. The government has received complaints of 34 deaths linked to sudden acceleration of Toyota vehicles since 2000.

One of the crashes claimed the life of a CHP officer last August.

Off-duty CHP Officer Mark Saylor was killed along with his wife, her brother and the couple's daughter after their Lexus' accelerator got stuck in La Mesa.

The Toyota-manufactured loaner vehicle slammed into a sport utility vehicle at about 100 mph, careened off the freeway, hit an embankment, overturned and burst into flames.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_runaway_prius

Pa. man dies during storm when 911 calls unheeded

PITTSBURGH – With her boyfriend in severe abdominal pain, Sharon Edge called 911 for an ambulance in the early morning hours of Feb. 6. Heavy snow was falling — so heavy it would all but bring the city to a standstill — and Curtis Mitchell needed to go to a hospital.

"Help is on the way," the operator said.

It never arrived.

Nearly 30 hours later — and 10 calls from the couple to 911, four 911 calls to them and at least a dozen calls between 911 and paramedics — Curtis Mitchell died at his home. His electricity knocked out, his heat long off, the 50-year-old former steelworker waited, huddled beneath blankets on his sofa.

"I'm very angry, because I feel they didn't do their job like they supposed to," said Edge, 51. "My man would still be living if they'da did they job like they was supposed to ... They took somebody that I love away."

Mitchell, on disability for depression, had a history of pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas, Edge said, and had spent nine days in a hospital in late January. He had been home about a week when he was overcome with pain. Autopsy results are pending, awaiting toxicology test results, authorities said.

Now Pittsburgh officials have ordered an investigation and reforms of the city's emergency services system as Mitchell's case highlighted key shortcomings:

• Details of Mitchell's calls weren't passed on from one 911 operator to another as shifts changed, so each call was treated as a new incident.

• Twice, ambulances were as close as a quarter-mile from Mitchell's home but drivers said deep snow prevented the vehicles from crossing a small bridge over railroad tracks to reach him. Mitchell was told each time he'd have to walk through the snow to the ambulances; in neither case did paramedics walk to get him.

• Once, an ambulance made it across the bridge and was at the opposite end of the block on the narrow street where the couple lived — a little more than a football field's length. Again, paramedics didn't try to walk.

"We failed this person," said Michael Huss, the city's public safety director.

To be sure, Mitchell's ordeal unfolded as the storm dumped nearly two feet of snow on Pittsburgh; the 911 system was swamped with more than twice as many calls as usual and overall emergency response was hampered.

Regardless of how deep the snow was, Huss said it was unacceptable that paramedics didn't walk to help Mitchell. If they had, Huss believes Mitchell may have survived.

"... You get out of that damn truck and you walk to the residence," Huss said. "That's what needed to happen. We could have carried him out."

The six paramedics on the three ambulances could be disciplined, Huss said. He declined to say what that might be.

Paramedics or firefighters will now be required to go to a caller's door.

"Everyone needs to get a response," Huss said Thursday.

That Mitchell died waiting to get to the hospital is a cruel coincidence.

Edge and Mitchell met eight years ago in an emergency room. Both were getting their medications under control for their mental illnesses, she said. He was being treated for depression; she has bipolar disorder.

"We've been stuck together ever since, like glue," Edge said.

Several years ago, they moved into a small red brick rowhouse in Hazelwood, the riverside neighborhood that was home to Pittsburgh's last working steel mill, which shut down a dozen years ago.

Sitting on the tan and blue fabric sofa where Mitchell died, Edge described him.

He enjoyed watching TV, particularly westerns. They hoped to get married by a justice of the peace in April, then celebrate with a little party.

"He did for his friends," she said. "He looked out for other people when they needed stuff. He was there to help."

They didn't have a car. During the storm, a neighbor offered to drive them to a hospital but he couldn't get his car shoveled out.

Edge is a little sketchy on details of Mitchell's worsening condition and death. Then again, she didn't think she'd need to relive them. She thought they first called 911 on the night of Feb. 5, but records indicate the first call was made about 2 a.m. on Feb 6. Sometime Friday night, the storm knocked out their power and the couple sought warmth under blankets as the house got colder.

Edge said Mitchell had begun to feel stomach pains during the week, but he tried to deal with it. By Friday morning, he woke up in pain. Still, he tried to manage with medication, she said.

A review of the 911 calls by the Associated Press shows no anger in Mitchell's or Edge's voices. There was no screaming. Conversations with operators were cordial and the couple seemed to understand the difficulties the snow posed.

Still, Mitchell and Edge let them know he was in pain.

"My stomach man, it's real messed up. It's killing me," he tells a 911 operator about 11:15 a.m. on Feb. 6.

About 8 p.m. that night — in the eighth call to 911 — Edge tells an operator: "My boyfriend called for an ambulance. He's in a lot of pain and we've been waiting for a couple hours now."

At one point, Mitchell can be heard exclaiming "Oh man, what?" when Edge relayed to him that they would have to walk to the ambulance because of the snow. It was not clear when that conversation took place.

In all, three ambulances were dispatched at separate times. In each case, Mitchell was told he'd have to walk to them — and he canceled the calls.

As the hours went by, Mitchell's pain intensified and he began to have shortness of breath. Because he complained of abdominal pain, which is generally not considered life-threatening, he was initially ranked as a medium priority. About 11:20 a.m. Saturday, his priority level was upgraded, but not as an emergency.

Mitchell tried to sleep. He took his prescriptions — oxycodone for pain and sleeping pills for his insomnia. Edge gave him the medication and closely followed the dosage, she said.

"All that time, he was dying and I didn't even know it," Edge said.

Shortly before 8 a.m. on Feb. 7, Edge made her last 911 call.

"I think my husband's dead. Oh God, oh God," she sobbed.

The 911 operator told Edge to calm down and asked for the address and phone number.

"I've been trying to get an ambulance here for three days. He's been having stomach pains," Edge said.

The operator talked Edge through a check to see if Mitchell was breathing. Try to get him onto the floor on his back, the operator said.

But Mitchell's body was cold. Edge couldn't wake him.

"Oh God, he can't leave me ... Curtis? Curtis?" Edge said, struggling to move him.

The operator assured Edge that paramedics were on the way.

"He's dead," Edge said.

"No, no, no. You're going to stay with me," the operator said, continuing the checks on Mitchell.

Finally, someone came to the door.

"Who is it?" asked Edge. "Is it the medics?"

"Yes."

"All right," said the operator. "You did a good job. I'm going to hang up now. Let them in. Good bye."

The snow had long since stopped falling. It took firefighters two minutes from being dispatched to reach the couple's home.

They checked for a pulse, but it was too late.

"They said he was gone," Edge said.

It would be five more hours before workers from the medical examiner's office came for Mitchell's body.

A police officer waited with her. Edge sat on the sofa with the body.

"I kissed and hugged him," she said of Mitchell. "But it was all I could do."

In this photo made on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010, Sharon Edge stands on the porch of the row house where she and her late boyfriend, Curtis Mitchell, lived in Pittsburgh's Hazelwood neighborhood. They first called 911 for help in the early morning hours of Feb. 6 during a snowstorm. Mitchell was in pain and needed an ambulance. Nearly 30 hours later, and after more than a dozen calls involving the couple and 911 operators or ambulance crews, Mitchell, 50, died at his home in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_on_re_us/us_snow911_death