~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-clark3oct03,1,2590358.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Clark Speaks Out on New Torture Rules
In an address at UCLA, the retired general lambastes the Bush administration for challenging the Geneva Convention.
By James Ricci
Times Staff Writer
October 3, 2006
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, speaking to UCLA faculty and students Monday,said that observing the Geneva Convention is crucial to America's interestsand its ability to mobilize other countries for collective efforts.
Clark - who was supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizationunder President Clinton and led a coalition of nearly a score of countriesto successfully end Serbian oppression of Kosovo's Albanians in 1999 - saidthe Bush administration's insistence on more leeway in applying GenevaConvention standards to the interrogation of terrorism detainees runscounter to America's history of observing international law.
"We were anti-colonial," he said. "We did not support the French re-conquestof Indochina. We helped force the Dutch out of the East Indies. We did notsupport the invasion of Suez by Britain and France in 1956. We were a nationthat operated selflessly. People saw us as different because we followedinternational law."
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/10/03/back_at_you_santorum?mode=PF
BRIAN MCGRORY
Back at you, Santorum
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | October 3, 2006
Please allow me to offer Senator Rick Santorum a hearty Boston welcome to
the world of the depraved.
It wasn't all that long ago when Santorum, a conservative Republican fromPennsylvania, was blaming our entire city and seemingly every residentwithin it for the Catholic priest pedophile scandal that was unraveling allacross the country.
Those were dark days, here and elsewhere, though we were fortunate enough tohave someone like Santorum shed a little bit of his moralistic light.
Specifically, here's what he wrote:
``When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While itis no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat ofacademic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the centerof the storm."
A Santorum spokesman was kind enough to provide even more clarity last year,telling me, ``It's an open secret that you have Harvard University and MITthat tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases. I think that'swhat the senator was speaking to."
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/03/bush_says_democrats_shouldnt_be_trusted?mode=PF
The Boston Globe
Bush says Democrats shouldn't be trusted
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer | October 3, 2006
STOCKTON, Calif. --President Bush, on a campaign swing in the West, istelling voters that the Democratic Party is weak-kneed on national securityand shouldn't be trusted to hold the reins of Congress.
"If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, itsounds like -- it sounds like -- they think the best way to protect theAmerican people is, wait until we're attacked again," Bush said Monday at a$360,000 fundraiser in Reno, Nev., for state Secretary of State DeanHeller's congressional campaign.
"That's not the way it's going to be under my administration. We will stayon the offense," the president said. "We will defeat the enemy overseas so we do not have to face them here at home."
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/ckincaid/2006/ck_1002p.shtml
Who Protected The Pervert Congressman?
By Cliff Kincaid
October 2, 2006
It's one of the worst congressional scandals ever. A top House Republicanwho denounced sex predators as "animals" stands accused of acting like one. Mark Foley had served as a Deputy Majority Whip in the House and co-chair ofthe House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. His forced resignation,after being exposed as a homosexual pervert who talked dirty to young boys, has done more damage to the GOP than George Soros could ever think of doing.
But it remains to be seen whether the liberal media and the Democrats can successfully exploit this scandal.
Brian Ross of ABC News broke the story and publicized the "sexuallyexplicit" messages Foley sent to former congressional pages. Curiously, Rossnever once used the word "homosexual" in referring to Foley's conduct. Butif Foley acted out his Internet fantasies in real life, he will be exposedas not only a homosexual pedophile but a predator. The messages indicateFoley is extremely sick and demented.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2006/10/02/washington/02legal.html&tntemail0=y
October 2, 2006
Laws Involving Contact With Minors Allow Prosecutors a Broad Range of Discretion
By ADAM LIPTAK
The decision by Representative Mark Foley of Florida to resign after thedisclosure of his sexually explicit e-mail and text messaging exchanges withCongressional pages has been followed by a flood of demands from his formerCongressional colleagues - Republicans and Democrats alike - that he face"the full weight of the criminal justice system."
Legal experts consulted yesterday said that weight could be considerable.
Though the messages made public to date stopped short of soliciting sex orproposing an assignation, some were quite graphic and asked for descriptionsof intimate actions. Several states, including Florida, have laws that make it a crime to transmit communication harmful to minors over the Internet.
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Forwarded from Ken's List <Kenneth.Sherrill@hunter.cuny.edu>
To: kenslist@groups.queernet.org
For Election Day - Lest We Forget:
by ----larry gelbart
Iraq
Abu Ghraib
Guantanamo
Unwarranted Phone Taps
Unprecedented Powers
Unmatched Incompetence
Unparalleled Corruption
Governor Bob Taft
Representative Tom Delay
Representative Roy Blunt
Representative Ken Calvert
Representative John Dolittle
Representative Tom Feeney
Representative Katherine Harris
Representative Jerry Lewis
Representative Gary Miller
Representative Marilyn Musgrave
Representative Richard Pombo
Representative Rick Renzi
Representative John Sweeney
Representative Charles Taylor
Representative Curt Weldon
Representative J.D. Hayworth
Representative Don Sherwood
Representative Bob Ney
Representative Duke Cunningham
more.....
Contact us if you would like the complete list - rays.list@comcast.net
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/15664297.htm
Foley's follies not as hot as old political lechery
BY FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@herald.com
Mark Foley has joined an ignominious gallery of congressmen snared in sex scandals with congressional pages, interns, paid staffers, hookers and atleast one Argentine stripper.
But the U.S. rep from Fort Pierce brings something new to the catalog ofdisgraced politicians.
Foley's transgressions were of the ethereal kind.
In 1983, representatives Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Daniel Crane ofIllinois were censured for having actual sexual relations with 17-year-oldcongressional pages, Studds with a boy, Crane with a girl.
But Foley's sins were virtual. His sexual misadventures -- as far as weknow -- were the stuff of the Internet. His lust translated into explicitinstant messages. It is a new twist to a timeless pathology -- a scandal forthe new millennium.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/5min/15664741.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Foley's shame; Congress' stumble
OUR OPINION: SOMEONE DROPPED THE BALL IN PROTECTING PAGES
The public disgrace of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley is a personal tragedy with moral and political consequences that extend well beyond his home district in Palm Beach County.
Mr. Foley. a Republican, was a popular and well-regarded six-term lawmaker.As painful as he and his family may find the controversy that led to hisabrupt resignation on Friday, however, there are larger issues that demandimmediate attention. Above all, the public needs to be reassured thatCongress is doing everything it can to protect the teenagers who work aspages on Capitol Hill.
Inappropriate messages
Yesterday, Mr. Foley's attorney said the lawmaker had checked himself into arehabilitation facility ''for immediate treatment for alcoholism and otherbehavioral problems.'' Neither Mr. Foley nor anyone else has denied that hesent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to some of the pages onCapitol Hill.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-congress-pages,0,5212323.story
Hastert Defends Handling of Page Scandal
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer
October 3, 2006, 3:15 AM EDT
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other GOP leaders aredismissing suggestions that they should have done more to investigate ane-mail from Rep. Mark Foley to a former teenage page that had raised a "redflag" with the boy's parents and his congressional sponsor.
Hastert said his top aides and Rep. John Shimkus, a fellow IllinoisRepublican overseeing the page program, acted appropriately by trying toresolve the matter as an internal GOP problem rather than mounting a moreformal investigation that would have involved Democrats.
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http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20061003&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=610030528&SectionCat=&Template=printart
Blame game grows intense
Foley seeks treatment for alcoholism; Negron selected to run in his place
By JEREMY WALLACE, KEVIN DALE and CORY REISS
STAFF WRITERS
jeremy.wallace@heraldtribune.com
kevin.dale@heraldtribune.com
reissc@nytimes.com
Even as Mark Foley checked into a treatment center to seek help foralcoholism "and other behavioral problems," new allegations emerged Mondaythat the former congressman pressured a former page to meet with him.
"I would drive a few miles for a hot stud like you," Foley said in onemessage reported Monday by ABC News.
While House Speaker Dennis Hastert joined a chorus of condemnation, callingthe messages "revolting" and "vile," it remained unclear whether Foley brokeany laws.
But the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced it would join theFBI in an investigation into whether Foley violated a law that he helpedwrite as co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.
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http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/opinion/03tierney.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
October 3, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Your Page, M'Lord
By JOHN TIERNEY
Suppose Nike's founder, Phil Knight, asked taxpayers to subsidize a program for 16-year-olds to leave their homes to become "squires" running errands at Nike headquarters. Or suppose, before his death, Sam Walton had asked Congress to build a dormitory in Arkansas to house teenage "serfs" spending a semester away from their schools to work on a Wal-Mart loading dock.
These executives would become national jokes. They'd be denounced for trying to revive 19th-century child-labor practices and 12th-century feudalism. There would be no public money appropriated for Knight's Squires or Sam's Serfs.
Yet Congress sees nothing strange about dragging teenagers from their families and schools to become pages, one step below a squire in the feudal food chain. They're not being forced to wear Prince Valiant haircuts, but they have to do scut work that's probably even less useful than what they could learn at Nike or Wal-Mart.
Congressional pages spend much of their time hand-delivering documents, a job that's done electronically in most 21st-century institutions. When educators talk about preparing youth for jobs in the Information Age, they're not talking about training messengers.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/opinion/03tue3.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
October 3, 2006
Editorial
The Chair Out From Under Them
Wal-Mart is famous for trimming, squeezing, and slashing costs relentlessly. While the company would like the world to focus on the benefits derived from its low prices, we cannot ignore how the nation's largest private employer often grinds up its hourly workers in the same machine.
There are distressing signs that Wal-Mart may be acting on many of the ideas outlined in an internal document - leaked last year - to rid its payroll of full-time and less-healthy employees who are more expensive for the company to retain. For instance, Steven Greenhouse and Michael Barbaro reported yesterday in The Times that employees at several Florida stores say that managers are barring older employees with back and leg problems from using stools they had sat on for years.
Other employees are complaining of sudden scheduling changes they say are skewed to chase out long-term employees, and wage caps that act as a disincentive for those longer-tenured workers. In a stunning deployment of corporate doublespeak, a memo to store managers describes the wage caps as a way to maintain "internally equitable pay levels." It is true that if everyone is making the same everyday low wages, a perverse form of equality is established among them.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/opinion/03tue1.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times
October 3, 2006
Editorial
The Foley Matter
History suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping power, it will only be a matter of time before the power becomes the entire point. Policy, ideology, ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a political machine that exists to win elections and dispense the goodies that come as a result. The only surprise in Washington now is that the Congressional Republicans managed to reach that point of decayed purpose so thoroughly, so fast.
That House leaders knew Representative Mark Foley had been sending inappropriate e-mail to Capitol pages and did little about it is terrible. It is also the latest in a long, depressing pattern: When there is a choice between the right thing to do and the easiest route to perpetuation of power, top Republicans always pick wrong.
The news about Mr. Foley should have set off alarm bells instantly, even if the messages the leaders saw were of the "inappropriate" variety rather than the flat-out salacious versions that surfaced last week. But there was certainly no sense of urgency in their response, which seemed directed at sweeping the matter under the rug rather than finding out precisely what was going on.
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http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/10/03/kennedy
What Spellings Got Right
and Wrong
What Spellings Got Right and Wrong
By Edward M. Kennedy
Last week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings laid out a promising agenda to keep our colleges and universities strong in this demanding age. As she rightly noted in her comments on the report of Commission on theFuture of Higher Education, America's public and private institutions ofhigher education are the envy of the world.
But as we work to deal with the immense challenges of this rapidly changingtime, it's vital for our colleges and universities - fine as they now are - to be open to change, and Congress, the Department of Education, and thehigher education community will need to work well together to find the wayforward.
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The Washington Post
http://www.alternet.org/rights/42344/
This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like
By David Corn, DavidCorn.com
Posted on September 29, 2006, Printed on October 2, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/42344/
As Congress has debated legislation that would set up military tribunals and govern the questioning of suspected terrorists (whom the Bush administration would like to be able to detain indefinitely), at issue has been what interrogation techniques can be employed and whether information obtained during torture can be used against those deemed unlawful enemy combatants. One interrogation practice central to this debate is waterboarding. It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning." But what does waterboarding look like?
Below are photographs taken by Jonah Blank last month at Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities. Blank, an anthropologist and former Senior Editor of US News & World Report, is author of the books Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God and Mullahs on the Mainframe.
He is a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has taught at Harvard and Georgetown. He currently is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic staff in the Senate, but the views expressed here are his own observations.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201280_pf.html
Feeling 'Slap in the Face' After Fastow's Sentence
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; D01
When a federal judge took four years off the prison sentence of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew S. Fastow last week, he surprised legal analysts, angered onetime employees and sparked anew a debate about just punishment for white-collar criminals.
In a much-heralded 2004 plea deal, Fastow admitted to a pair of conspiracy charges that carried a maximum penalty of 10 years. He also agreed not to seek a reduction in his prison term. But one week ago, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt granted some mercy to the architect of the era's biggest accounting fraud and sent him to prison for just six years.
That means Fastow, who improperly took more than $45 million from the coffers of the Houston energy-trading company, could spend closer to 3 1/2 years in prison if he gets credit for completing a drug-treatment program and for good behavior.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100200187.html
Tenet Recalled Warning Rice
Former CIA Chief Told 9/11 Commission of Disputed Meeting
By Dan Eggen and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A03
Former CIA director George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that he had warned of an imminent threat from al-Qaeda in a July 2001 meeting with Condoleezza Rice, adding that he believed Rice took the warning seriously, according to a transcript of the interview and the recollection of a commissioner who was there.
Tenet's statements to the commission in January 2004 confirm the outlines of an event in a new book by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward that has been disputed by some Bush administration officials. But the testimony also is at odds with Woodward's depiction of Tenet and former CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black as being frustrated that "they were not getting through to Rice" after the July 10, 2001, meeting.
Rice angrily rejected those assertions yesterday, saying that it was "incomprehensible" that she would have ignored such explicit intelligence from senior CIA officials and that she received no warning at the meeting of an attack within the United States.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201463_pf.html
After Foley, New Fears For the GOP
Some Say Party Could Lose House and Senate
By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A01
Republican strategists said yesterday that public revulsion over the sexually graphic online conversations between Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and former House pages could compound the party's problems enough to tip the House to the Democrats in November -- and could jeopardize the party's hold on the Senate as well.
As House GOP leaders defended their role in handling revelations that forced Foley on Friday to give up his House seat, party strategists said the scandal threatens to depress turnout among Christian conservatives and could hamper efforts to convince undecided and swing voters that Republicans deserve to remain in the majority.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201302.html
The Redder They Are, The Harder They Fall
Republicans More Damaged by Scandals
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; C01
Sex scandals involving politicians are as old as Thomas Jefferson, but the outcome seems to depend on which party you represent. In recent years, for the most part, Democrats have been able to survive their sordid escapades while Republicans have paid with their political lives.
The latest example: Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida, who abruptly became an ex-congressman from Florida last week amid revelations that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to teenage boys who were serving as House pages.
Foley's creepy behavior might have done him in even if he'd been the most liberal of Democrats. But that's not assured. With a Republican at the center of the seamy scandal, however, it was almost a slam-dunk that Foley would have to quit.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100200937_pf.html
The Washington Post
No Spinning Past This Scandal
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A17
Even when damage control seems a lost cause, I suppose you have to follow the playbook. So Mark Foley resigns his House seat in a nanosecond, then explains those creepy electronic messages to young congressional pages by declaring himself an alcoholic, effectively blaming it all on demon rum. House Speaker Dennis Hastert promptly calls for a really thorough -- meaning really slow -- investigation. The rest of the Republican leadership declares itself shocked and/or saddened, but agrees that the time has come to move on, folks, nothing to see here.
These practiced responses have long served politicians, but you don't get the sense that anyone thinks they'll work this time. There's really no effective spin you can put on the Foley scandal, no way that even the Republican Party's image-making geniuses can make people feel good about a 52-year-old man discussing masturbatory techniques with a male teenager via instant message.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/us/03foley.html?hp&ex=1159934400&en=e2e0c2ba5b921fdf&ei=5094&partner=homepage
October 3, 2006
Pressure Grows for G.O.P. Over Foley Scandal
By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 - Speaker J. Dennis Hastert faced intensifying questions on Monday about why Republicans had not reacted more assertively to Representative Mark Foley's messages to a teenage page, as members of his party, fearing a political debacle, demanded a strong response.
Straining to hold the party together five weeks from Election Day amid unfolding revelations about the case, Mr. Hastert and his leadership team held a conference call with House Republicans on Monday night and heard blunt advice and criticism from participants who pressed for further action to reassure voters.
"This is a political problem, and we need to step up and do something dramatic," Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois said afterward, adding that he had proposed abolishing the Congressional page program.
Mr. Foley, 52, who resigned Friday after being confronted with sexually explicit instant messages he had sent to pages, released a statement saying he had entered a rehabilitation clinic for treatment of "alcoholism and related behavioral problems."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/us/politics/03foleycnd.html?ei=5094&en=565a7f4938fee423&hp=&ex=1159848000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
The New York Times
October 2, 2006
G.O.P. Tries to Limit Damage in Foley Case
By MARIA NEWMAN
Former Representative Mark Foley of Florida has checked himself into a rehabilitation facility for alcoholism treatment, as Republican leaders in Florida and Washington spent today trying to contain the political damage of reports that the congressman engaged in sexually explicit communications with Congressional pages.
In Washington, House Speaker Dennis Hastert called instant messages that Mr. Foley exchanged with a page in 2003 as "vile and repulsive," and he said he first saw those messages on Friday.
"I repeat again: The Republican leaders of the House did not have them," the speaker said about those particular messages. "We have all said so and on the record. But someone did have them, and the ethics committee, the Justice Department, the news media - and anyone who can - should help us find out who." Mr. Foley, a Republican who represented South Florida, resigned abruptly on Friday after ABC News confronted him with a series of Internet messages he exchanged with pages.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/opinion/15642515.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
When devil enters debate, tempers rise
So what's the deal with the devil anyway? First, Hugo Chavez, the sulfur-sniffing president of Venezuela, calls President Bush the devil. Thenbefore the air even clears, Jerry Falwell is cheerfully and unfavorablycomparing Hillary to Lucifer.
At a summit of so-called "values voters," Falwell handicapped a presidentialrace between Hillary and the devil. Nobody, he said, could energize the baselike Hillary Clinton: "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."
Falwell insists this was said "totally tongue-in-cheek," or maybeforked-tongue in cheek. I believe him, although I remember when he blamed"the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and thelesbians" for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But have you noticed that when we talk about demonizing our enemies, it's getting awfully literal?
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000928_pf.html
Executives Sentenced in Church Fraud
Investors Lost Millions to Southern Baptist Foundation Scheme in Arizona
By Terry Greene Sterling
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 1, 2006; A08
PHOENIX -- In 1999, Richard Kimsey and his wife, Susan, deposited $100,000 with a Phoenix-based Southern Baptist agency that promised to do the Lord'swork. A few days later, the Kimseys' money had all but vanished. And whenRichard Kimsey, a Southern Baptist pastor, spoke out against the foundationthat had defrauded him, he received death threats, the words "white trash"were painted on his house, and half his congregation abandoned him.
"Money is not the issue," Susan Kimsey said. "This has been a black mark onChristianity as a whole."
The Kimseys were among the approximately 75 fraud victims who testified atthe sentencing hearing last week of two Baptist Foundation of Arizonaexecutives accused of fraudulently conducting a mammoth real estate Ponzischeme while claiming to do God's work.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/2006-10-01-bank-fees-usat_x.htm
Schools give student data to banks
Updated 10/2/2006 10:01 AM ET
By Kathy Chu, USA TODAY
Despite rising concern about college students' debt loads, the nation'slargest four-year colleges are disclosing students' contact information tocredit card-issuing banks and earning up to millions each in annual fees by giving the banks the right to market on campus.
A USA TODAY survey reveals that each of the largest 10 universities - through its alumni or athletic association - now partners with a bank toissue co-branded cards to alumni and students. The deals exist at hundredsof colleges.
"They're getting less revenue from state governments and looking ateverything they can to raise revenue," says the American Council onEducation's Jacqueline King.
STORY: Easy credit can mean long-term hardship for college students
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/02/2homework.html
Overworked, in kindergarten?
Studies say today's youngest students see more homework
By Laura Heinauer
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, October 02, 2006
Homework at Joanne Foote's house normally goes pretty smoothly.
Except for the time she and her first-grader encountered the house with nodoors.
For his homework, her son Ariston, now in second grade, had to write ashortstory. He had spent the previous few nights formulating a plot. Thecharacters, he told her, were in a house without doors and wanted to getout.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000749_pf.html
Justices to Hear Abortion, Integration Cases
'Partial-Birth' Procedure and Schools' Race Policies to Dominate Court's Agenda
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 1, 2006; A06
Abortion and race dominate the Supreme Court's agenda for the term thatbegins tomorrow, with the Bush administration and its conservative alliesurging the justices to put limits on abortion rights and affirmative action.
Conservatives want the court to uphold a 2003 federal law banning theprocedure opponents call "partial-birth" abortion, and to strike down localintegration policies that distribute students by race. They are asking thecourt not only to rule in their favor, but to limit -- or, possibly,overrule -- recent constitutional decisions that have drawn heavy fire fromthe right.
The conservative push on social issues is just what Democrats and liberals,concerned about the future of Roe v. Wade , the 1973 case that recognized aright to abortion, warned against during confirmation hearings for the twoBush appointees now on the court -- Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. andJustice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/42339/
Posted on September 29, 2006, Printed on October 2, 2006
Buried deep within the torture bill is this:
... no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or considerany other action against the United States or its agents relating to anyaspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien detained by the United States who--
`(A) is currently in United States custody; and
`(B) has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendments made by subsection (a) shall take effecton the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases,without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Actwhich relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, orconditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States sinceSeptember 11, 2001.
In English: Any war crime committed by the Bush administration since 9/11 cannot be prosecuted.
Nice job congress.
Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.
=
Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/49986.html
Disabled woman fights against rules that keep her from getting married
By LEANN HOLT | Albuquerque Journal via AP
September 29, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - In many ways, Marilyn Martinez is living theAmerican dream. She owns her own home, has a weekly television show and isfinishing her autobiography. Martinez is also in a long-term, lovingrelationship.
But Martinez's life is bound by constraints most people will never experience.
She can't have more than $2,000 in the bank. Chances are, she will never beable to marry the man in her life, Monty Fife. He will probably never evenget to share Martinez's house with her.
Martinez and Fife are subject to a different set of rules than most peoplebecause they are developmentally disabled.
If they marry or save more than $2,000, they will lose all or part of theapproximately $640 monthly Social Security disability income each of themreceives. Living together isn't an option, either, because the rules for thelow-income housing where they both live would make it prohibitivelyexpensive.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/shared-gen/ap/US_Supreme_Court/Scotus_Sex_Toys.html
Supreme Court Rejects Texas Sex-Toy Case
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether a Texaslaw making it a crime to promote sex toys shaped like sexual organs is unconstitutional.
An adult bookstore employee in El Paso, Texas, sued the state after his arrest for showing two undercover officers a device shaped like a penis and telling the female officer the device would arouse and gratify her.
The employee, Ignacio Sergio Acosta, says a Texas law outlawing themanufacture, marketing or dissemination of an "obscene device" includingthose shaped like sex organs is unconstitutional because it preventsindividuals from using such devices, violating their right to sexualprivacy.
Colorado, Kansas and Louisiana have held such laws unconstitutional, whileGeorgia, Mississippi and Texas have upheld them, said Acosta's lawyer inurging the Supreme Court to take the case.
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Forwarded from Victoria Lavin
Daily Queer News
dailyqueernews@yahoo.com
http://ap.lancasteronline.com/6/congress_incomplete_glance
What Congress Did and Did Not Accomplish
By The Associated Press
Published: Sep 30, 2006 11:42 AM EST
(AP) - A look at what Congress did and did not accomplish before lawmakers left Saturday for five weeks of campaigning before the Nov. 7 elections:
Accomplishments:
-Passed a bill allowing military commissions to prosecute suspectedterrorists. The legislation also spells out violations of the GenevaConventions.
-Passed a $448 billion defense spending bill that includes $70 billion formilitary operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
-Passed a nearly $35 billion homeland security spending bill that overhaulsthe Federal Emergency Management Agency and includes $1.2 billion forincreased border fencing to discourage illegal immigration.
-Senators authorized a $1.5 billion program to create national heritage areas and tourism projects.
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