tucson piggy lets  his equipment get stolen!!!!

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94607.php

Officer's duty equipment stolen

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Some of a Tucson police officer's duty equipment was stolen when his garage was broken into early Tuesday, police said.

Police would not release information on the equip-ment that was stolen because it could compromise the investigation, said Officer Lisa Peasley, a department spokeswoman.

The equipment was stored inside the officer's truck, which was parked in the garage, a police report said.

The officer was not sure if he had locked his truck, but said he locked the garage the night before at 7:30, the report stated.

The officer discovered his garage had been broken into when he went outside at 10:30 a.m. and found that a door had a kick mark and pry marks, the report said.

He told police who went to his East Side home that he heard his dogs barking between 2 and 3 a.m. The officer checked the back yard, but saw nothing and figured it was a snake or a coyote, the report said.

<#==#>

greyhound playing la migra??? or perhaps the feds are threating to cause greyhound problems if they dont act like they are la migra?

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94593.php

Greyhound staffers face job loss if entrants ride

By Michael Marizco

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Greyhound Lines Inc. has been threatening to fire employees who sell bus tickets to illegal immigrants under an internal policy made public earlier this month.

The policy was adopted after a 2001 migrant-smuggling indictment of Golden State Transportation Co. that grew out of an investigation beginning in Douglas two years earlier. Eventually, the bus company admitted to moving more than 42,000 illegal border crossers from Tucson to Los Angeles.

The "Transportation of Illegal Aliens" policy warns Greyhound's customer service employees to beware of people in large groups, moving in single file and traveling with little or no luggage. It says other telltale signs include people "trying to hide or stay out of plain view" or large groups led by a "guide" who holds everyone's tickets.

The policy has been in place since 2002, including in Tucson, where there were 335,000 outbound passengers on Greyhound buses last year, said company spokeswoman Anna Folmnsbee.

Whether Greyhound employees are actually reporting illegal entrants in Arizona is not known.

Folmnsbee said it has "rarely, if ever," actually happened.

One immigrant-rights group said several companies in Tucson have the same policy, while U.S. immigration agencies in Arizona say they have used tips from companies calling in illegal border crossers.

"We have had information provided to us by employees of certain transportation companies," said Russell Ahr, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He said the agency does not keep track of how many times that occurred.

According to Greyhound, other signs of smugglers include: calling bus stations to ask if immigration authorities are present, loitering, repeatedly buying large numbers of tickets for other people and using phrases such as "These guys just crossed the line," "My cargo" and "I've got to move my people."

"This is the anti-immigrant climate going everywhere," said Isabel Garcia, co-chair of Tucson-based Derechos Humanos. "Obviously Greyhound has decided to remove its own liability by putting it on their workers."

She questioned the training that Greyhound workers would receive to ascertain whether to alert a supervisor.

Answers to that question were vague.

Folmnsbee said employees are trained to look for certain types of behavior but that the policy serves as a reminder that there are federal laws against knowingly transporting an illegal entrant.

"We just remind our employees that there is such a law," Folmnsbee said. "This is just a customer-service training."

The policy is the company's way to cover its bases after the 2001 indictment, she said.

"What it's really doing is encouraging racial profiling," said Derechos Humanos organizer Kat Rodriguez. "Which is the same as having state workers trying to enforce immigration laws under Prop. 200. It's not their job, and it shouldn't be."

The company is walking a fine line if it enforces the policy, said Denise Blommel, a labor and employment lawyer in Scottsdale.

Because an illegal entry is a violation of law, it can be tantamount to refusing to allow someone with a gun board the bus. Or it could be construed as racial profiling, she said.

If a Greyhound employee believes the policy violates anti-discrimination laws and complains, that worker is protected from being fired, she said.

The Golden State case prompted another bus company, Sistema Internacional de Transporte de Autobuses Inc., a Greyhound subsidiary, to adopt the same policy. The company owned a 51 percent stake in Golden State, Al Penedo, its chief operating officer, said.

Golden State filed for bankruptcy and pleaded guilty in 2004, paying a $3 million fine and forfeiting a downtown Phoenix terminal.

The Golden State case is still held up in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said Mike Piccarreta, the lawyer representing Golden State's ex-president, Antonio Gonzalez.

In June, the court upheld a Tucson judge's decision not to allow wiretap evidence collected at the corporate offices of Golden State.

The government planted devices at Golden State Transportation Co.'s corporate offices in Los Angeles, seizing telephone conversations at that location that it sought to introduce as evidence.

The United States filed for a rehearing. Piccarreta said he will file a response to that motion.

<#==#>

Court tells police criminals in New Orleans to stop stealing people guns.

Return weapons to law-abiders, judge demands

By BILL WALSH

Newhouse News Service

NEW ORLEANS - Gun rights groups won a temporary restraining order Friday preventing police in New Orleans and a nearby parish from confiscating people's firearms when seeking to evacuate residents.

U.S. District Court Judge Jay Zainey ordered the New Orleans Police and St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office to stop taking weapons from law-abiding people and return any they already took in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

In documents filed in federal court in Baton Rouge, La., New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Police Chief Eddie Compass and St. Tammany Sheriff Jack Strain deny ordering the confiscation of firearms.

But news reports quoted Compass as saying that only law enforcement officials would be allowed to have firearms and Deputy Chief Warren Riley as saying, "We are going to take all the weapons."

Wayne LaPierre, president of the National Rifle Association, said his group documented 30 to 40 cases of people having their weapons taken away after Katrina hit Aug. 29.

"In many cases, it was from their homes at gunpoint. There were no receipts given or anything else at a time when there was no 911 response, and these citizens were out there on their own protecting their families," LaPierre said."The worst thing about it is that it was at a time of complete collapse of the government's ability to protect people."

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, there were widespread reports of looting throughout New Orleans. At the outset, the city ordered the police to ignore looters and focus instead on search and rescue. But within days, crime spiraled out of control and police were directed to restore order.

To gain control of the situation, Gov. Kathleen Blanco issued emergency power orders, which allow the authorities to regulate firearms. But the suit alleged that law enforcement officials overstepped the bounds by taking guns away in violation of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

<#==#>

Laro and Kevin,

I found this creed on the web site of the arizona state prison. the government thugs said it was the evil creed of the aryian brother hood. and seemed to imply that it was bad, bad, bad, .... bad!

despite the fact that i think the aryarian brotherhood is a bunch of racists i read the creed and said wow! that is something libertarian would say and i posted it on a libertarian listserver.

libertarian judge john buttrick read the creed and said sure its the creed of the aryian brotherhood but made the comment that  they stole the creed and it is the creed of the AMERICAN people. judge buttrick went on to say that the last line in the creed said that it was the creed of the aryians and went on to say that it orginally said it was the creed of the americans and that they changed the word american to aryians.

another libertarian powell searched down the original creed and emailed it to the listserver. his email follows. its interesting that the state prison says the creed is evil. i bet they dont know the source.

Interesting.  Thank you to Mike for finding this "creed," and noting its source was questionable.  And thank you John for telling us whom they stole it from, its modifer and its attribution.

Here is the complete text, corrected format with some history on the author based upon your combined information:

"My Creed," by Dean Alfange (1899 – 1989)

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon — if I can. I seek opportunity — not security.

I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done. All this is what it means to be an American. 

Originally published in This Week Magazine. Later reprinted in The Reader's Digest, October 1952, p. 10, and January 1954, p. 122, lacking these words: "I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat" and "to stand erect, proud and unafraid."

The Honorable Dean Alfange was an American statesman born December 2, 1899, in Constantinople (now Istanbul). He was raised in upstate New  York.

He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and attended Hamilton College, graduating in the class of 1922. He attended Colombia University where he received his law degree and opened a practice in Manhattan. In 1942 Alfange was the American Labor Party candidate for governor of New York and a founder of the Liberal Party of New York.

Dean Alfange was also Professor Emeritus at UMass Amherst and a leading figure in various pro-Zionist organizations (between other actions, in November 1943, he appeared before the House of Representatives and addressed them on the rescue of the Jewish people of Europe). He died in Manhattan at the age of 89 on October 27, 1989.

<#==#>

from this article it doesnt sound like being addicted to herion is any worse then being addicted to coffee, tea or cigarettes. as long as you have a cheap supply of your drug of choice it seems ok.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0924iran-heroin24.html

In Iran, despair powering world's top addiction rate

Karl Vick

Washington Post

Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

TEHRAN, Iran - If he could afford it, Ali Nariman would drink beer, he says. But like most Iranians, he is poor, and so takes his solace in the form of a small gray ball of opium.

Swallowed whole for maximum absorption, the ball takes only half an hour to deliver the warm, surging relief that inhabitants of the Persian Plateau have long associated with advanced age. For centuries in Iran, opium was regarded as a privilege of the elderly, a largely medicinal comfort for the pains and worries accumulated over a lifetime of work.

Nariman is 18. And like hundreds of thousands of Iranians turning to harder narcotics at younger ages, he regards drugs as the only alternative to work.

"We should have jobs," he said, standing in the vast cemetery on the southern edge of Tehran. In a routine played out every Thursday, the day families traditionally visit the cemetery, young addicts sweep in afterward to scavenge the cookies and dates left on the graves.

"I sometimes find work," Nariman said, "collecting stale bread in town."

According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest proportion of opiate addicts in the world: 2.8 percent of the population over age 15. Only two other countries, Mauritius and Kyrgyzstan, pass the 2 percent mark. With a population of about 70 million and some government agencies putting the number of regular users close to 4 million, Iran has no real competition as world leader in per capita addiction to opiates, including heroin.

When an earthquake leveled the city of Bam in 2003, among the emergency supplies rushed to the scene were doses of methadone, a synthetic drug used to treat heroin and morphine addicts, for the 20 percent or more of the population believed to be addicted. So many Iranians rely on opiates that an influential government analyst suggests the state itself should consider cultivating poppies.

"Yes," said Azarakhsh Mokri, director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies, "a strategic reserve of narcotics."

But if the utility of narcotics has roots in Iran's ancient culture, and the discount prices (about $5 for a gram of heroin, 50 percent pure) stem from proximity to the poppy fields of neighboring Afghanistan, experts, addicts and government officials agree that addiction has lately emerged as a corrosive new symptom of the country's economic failure, a marker for despair.

"You haven't got a job. You haven't got a family. You haven't got entertainment," said Amir Mohammadi, who at 30 has been an addict for 10 years. "For a few hours, you forget everything."

Heroin, a powerful derivative of opium, is taking hold among young people whose path to addiction typically stems from disappointment in the job market. A government poll indicates almost 80 percent of Iranians detect a direct link between unemployment and drug addiction. Iran's government regularly fails to produce the 1 million jobs needed each year to accommodate the new workers entering the labor force from a baby boom still coming of age.

After Iran's theocratic government came to power in 1979, it displayed zero tolerance for drugs, filling the prisons with addicts.

Having since embraced policies grounded in pragmatism, Tehran has provided surprising freedom in drug treatment, subsidizing needle exchanges and methadone centers. The government also has funded energetic efforts to stanch the flow of opiates on the trafficking routes into the country.

<#==#>

The police are corrupt!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0924taserOLP24a1.html

Taser defends giving stock options to police

Robert Anglen

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

Taser International gave potentially lucrative stock options to six police officers from 2001 to 2003, most of whom promoted Taser's stun guns and, in some cases, urged their cities to buy them.

Court documents released this week show that officers in Arizona, California, Washington, Texas, and Canada received thousands of company stock options, some only weeks after urging police commanders or city officials to purchase Tasers.

All but one of the six officers are now employed by Scottsdale-based Taser International, which is facing state and federal inquiries over the safety of its stun gun and the weapon's involvement in deaths across the country.

The stock options, as well as payments to other officers for Taser training, have sparked concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Critics say Taser paid officers to influence cities to get them to purchase the stun guns.

"We've raised concerns about Taser's options-granting practices since this past January," stock analyst John Gavin of SEC Insight wrote in a report to investors this week.

Other critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, say payments to police officers have created a conflict of interest, with officers promoting the stun gun and repeating Taser's assurances of safety while minimizing risks.

Taser officials issued a news release Thursday defending the police officers and denying any conflict.

"The officers on our (training) board were involved in training operations at their respective departments - not the purchasing departments," Taser Chief Executive Officer Rick Smith said in the news release. "They followed all relevant conflict-of-interest regulations at their departments, and the grant of stock options did not violate Taser's code of ethics nor industry norms."

The information concerning the stock options was released this week after Taser lost a legal challenge to seal documents from a lawsuit against Taser filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Taser asked the court to keep confidential the deposition of company President Tom Smith, arguing that his answers about who received stock options was proprietary. The Arizona Republic and SEC Insight both filed motions to keep the records open, arguing that information about Taser is vital to the public's interest.

The court agreed, and Taser did not appeal.

According to Republic research, medical examiners in 18 cases have said Tasers were a cause, a contributing factor or could not be ruled out in someone's death.

The newly released documents for the first time reveal who outside the company received stock options.

The six active-duty officers who received options were from police departments in Chandler and Glendale, Seattle, Sacramento, Austin and Victoria, British Columbia. Records show all but the Austin officer promoted the effectiveness of the weapons and some urged their cities to purchase them.

Five other individuals also were issued stock options: a retired New York police officer; a former United Airlines employee; Taser's current medical director; a lawyer who did patent work for Taser, and his assistant. New York, Austin and United Airlines purchased Tasers, but it's unclear if the employees played a role in the decision.

The options could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on when they were exercised and sold.

The 11 individuals received a total of 27,671 options. It is not known when each person exercised and sold his options.

In its news release, Taser defends giving options to officers. Rick Smith says the officers were not being rewarded but being compensated for serving on Taser's Master Instructor Training Board, which advises Taser on law enforcement training programs.

"It should be noted that none of the board members were in a position to approve product purchases," Smith said. "Every one of their agencies had already purchased and deployed Taser devices prior to their joining our advisory training board."

Public records show that one of the officers, former Chandler police Officer Jim Halsted, received 500 stock options a year before he urged the City Council to spend $193,000 on Tasers. Halsted, now a regional sales manager for Taser, was later investigated by the city for conflict-of-interest violations and cleared of any wrongdoing.

On March 27, 2003, Halsted made a presentation to the Chandler City Council in which he stressed the importance of buying Tasers and encouraged officials to act that night. Contacted at his office Friday, Halsted declined to comment.

Former Seattle police Officer Steve Ward, who now works for Taser, was issued stock options on Jan. 1, 2001, almost a year before Taser created its training board. In September 2000, Ward co-authored a report that advocated arming officers with Tasers.

Another officer who received Taser stock options is Darren Laur of the Victoria, British Columbia, Police Department. Laur has been a staunch advocate for Taser for years and helped write a report in 1999 that helped usher Tasers into Canada.

According to court documents, Laur was given 750 stock options in 2001 for helping to design a holster for the Taser. Taser said he sold the options in 2003.

"In my view there is an appearance of a conflict of interest, or at least the perception of a conflict," Canadian lawyer Cameron Ward said. Ward represents the family of Robert Bagnell, who died in June 2004 after officers shocked him with a Taser.

In his deposition, Taser President Tom Smith said he did not believe any of the options granted to police officers represented a conflict.

<#==#>

Beating POW's in Iraq is the norm!!!!!  

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0924iraq-abuse24.html

Human rights violations by Army reported

Group assails U.S. military for abuses against Afghan and Iraq prisoners

Josh White

Washington Post

Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Two soldiers and an officer with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have told a human rights organization of systemic detainee abuse and human rights violations at U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, recounting beatings, forced physical exertion and psychological torture of prisoners, the group said.

A 30-page report by Human Rights Watch describes an Army captain's 17-month effort to gain clear understanding of how U.S. soldiers were supposed to treat detainees. He depicts his frustration with what he saw as widespread abuse that the military's leadership failed to address. The Army officer made clear that he believes low-ranking soldiers have been held responsible for abuses to cover for officers who condoned it.

The report does not identify the two sergeants and a captain who gave the accounts, although one of them, Capt. Ian Fishback, has presented some of his allegations in a letter to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. 

"Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees," Fishback wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee and a former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

"I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment." Fishback, reached by phone Friday, declined to comment.

The Human Rights Watch statements included vivid allegations of violence against detainees held at Forward Operating Base Mercury, outside Fallujah, shortly before the notorious abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison began. The soldiers described incidents similar to those reported in other parts of Iraq, such as putting detainees in stress positions, exercising them to the point of total exhaustion, and sleep deprivation.

They also detailed regular attacks that left detainees with broken bones, including once when a detainee was hit with a metal bat. They said that detainees were piled into pyramids, a tactic seen in photographs taken at Abu Ghraib.

"Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid," an unidentified sergeant who worked at the base from August 2003 to April 2004 told the group. "This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement."

Like soldiers accused at Abu Ghraib, these troops claimed that military intelligence interrogators encouraged their actions, telling them to make sure the detainees did not sleep or were physically exhausted.

"They were directed to get intel from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling," the soldier was quoted as saying. Later he described how he and others beat detainees. "But you gotta understand, this was the norm."

Army and Pentagon officials said Friday that they are investigating the allegations as criminal cases and said that they learned of the incidents just weeks ago when the Fort Bragg captain's concerns surfaced. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the Army began investigating as soon as it learned of the allegations.

Lt. Col. John Skinner, a Pentagon spokesman, severely criticized the report and emphasized that the military has taken incidents of detainee abuse extremely seriously since the Abu Ghraib scandal, changing policies and procedures to prevent mistreatment. There have been more than a dozen major inquiries.

<#==#>

Is Greyhound Bus Lines an arm of La Migra??

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0924greyhound.html

Greyhound ticket policy biased, Latino groups say

Daniel Gonzalez

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM

A 3-year-old policy by Greyhound Lines Inc. warning employees that they could be arrested or fired for selling bus tickets to anyone they know or believe is an undocumented immigrant is discriminatory and invites racial profiling, several local and national Latino advocacy groups say.

Immigrants Without Borders, a Phoenix-based advocacy group, is planning a rally today at Greyhound's Phoenix terminal at 24th Street and Buckeye Road to protest the policy.

Greyhound denies the policy is discriminatory.

Organizers are urging passengers not to buy bus tickets on Greyhound, the nation's largest passenger bus company, or its two subsidiary lines, Crucero USA and Autobuses Americanos, until Greyhound changes the policy, group founder Elías Bermudez, said. Crucero shares Dallas-based Greyhound's terminal on Buckeye Road and a small terminal with Autobuses Americanos on East Washington Street in Phoenix.

"We are protesting the fact that they are doing racial profiling," Bermudez said. He is also director of Centro de Ayuda, a Phoenix business that helps immigrants prepare immigration and tax documents.

Two national civil rights groups, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Council of La Raza, asked Greyhound to reconsider the policy, saying it is unwarranted.

"The whole policy screams out discrimination," said John Trasviña, senior vice president for law and policy at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It puts a lot of pressure on employees to go overboard and exclude undocumented immigrants when there is no legal reason to do so."

The policy could lead to racial profiling, he said.

"There is no way of telling by looking at someone whether they are here legally," he said.

Kim Plaskett, a Greyhound spokeswoman, said the company is open to reviewing the policy. She denied it is discriminatory. Employees are trained not to engage in racial profiling, she said.

"We don't target individuals. We are targeting smugglers. We are targeting groups. We are targeting behaviors," she said.

The company transports 22 million passengers a year. It has denied tickets only a few times.

"It's a very rare occurrence and we have not received any complaints," she said.

The policy was revised in 2002 after Golden State Transportation was indicted on charges of conspiring with smugglers to illegally transport thousands of undocumented immigrants to destinations throughout the country, including Arizona. The company was fined $3 million in 2004. The company was operated by a subsidiary of Greyhound.

The company's three-page "Transportation of Illegal Aliens" policy informs employees, agents and contractors that it is a federal crime to knowingly provide transportation to people who are in the United States illegally. A violation could lead to the employee's arrest or termination.

Under the guidelines, employers are warned not to sell tickets to anyone they know or believe is an immigrant smuggler or an undocumented immigrant, especially groups of undocumented immigrants.

The company says undocumented immigrants are recognizable by certain characteristics: large groups of people traveling together, led by a "guide, and guides holding tickets without giving them to passengers."

The company also instructs employees to be wary of passengers traveling with little or no luggage or trying to hide or stay out of plain view.

Reach the reporter at daniel .gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8312.

<#==#>

So you trust the government to protect you from criminals? And you think forcing people to register guns will keep criminals from getting guns?

http://www.channeloklahoma.com/news/5003765/detail.html

6,000 Weapons Missing From Museum

Museum Denies Any Guns Missing

POSTED: 4:28 pm CDT September 21, 2005

UPDATED: 4:42 pm CDT September 21, 2005

CLAREMORE, Okla. -- State auditors said some 6,000 weapons are missing from the J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum in Claremore and some have been found at crime scenes.

State Auditor Jeff McMahan said when the state-owned museum was founded in the 1960s its inventory listed more than 20,000 firearms and related items. He says there are now only about 14,000.

McMahan said he's heard one missing gun was found at a crime scene in New York and another at a crime scene in Muskogee. Claremore Police Chief Mickey Perry said a machine gun from the museum was found in Maine in November.

Museum director Duane Kyler denied any guns are missing.

The museum's Web site said its collection includes a 500-year-old Chinese hand-cannon, the world's smallest automatic pistol and guns used by Jesse James, Pretty Boy Floyd, Emmett Dalton and Cole Younger.

http://www.claremoreprogress.com/archive/article22089

Files seized from Davis Museum

Originally published on Wednesday, September 21  

By TOM FINK and LINDA MARTIN

Staff Writers

Responding to a letter from Rogers County District Attorney Gene Haynes, law officers seized an estimated 20 boxes of records and computers on Tuesday from the J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum in Claremore.

In Haynes’ letter to Jeff McMahon, Oklahoma state auditor and inspector, he wrote about the Claremore Police Department’s recent response to a security alarm at the museum, owned by the State of Oklahoma.

From the police investigation, the burglar was identified as the son of a museum employee, Linda Slatton, Haynes said.

According to Haynes’ letter, it was learned through interviews of museum employees that Slatton had allegedly embezzled money from the museum several years earlier, but the alleged embezzlement had never been reported to law officials.

“Allegedly, the current director of the Museum, Duane Kyler, allowed Slatton to pay the money back and continue her employment,” Haynes’ letter said. “The police were also told that Kyler had told current employees not to provide the police information about the burglary, but let them ‘figure it out for themselves.’”

According to police information, in 2004, a fully automatic weapon which was registered to the gun museum was recovered at a crime scene in New York.

Haynes said that in light of these facts, police were “very concerned” about the possibility of other embezzlements of both funds and inventory, indicating that the recent burglary “could be used as an excuse to account for missing inventory.”

When reached for comment, Claremore Police Chief Mickey Perry said it was uncertain how many weapons were suspected missing.

“At this point, we don’t know how many guns may be missing from the museum,” Chief Perry said. “We just know that there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.”

“Since this is an ongoing investigation, there’s not much that I can comment on,” said Duane Kyler, executive director, J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum. “We did have a break-in and it is under investigation — we are going to get to the bottom of this.”

The J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum, which showcases historical guns from outlaw Jesse James and others, is remaining open during the investigation.

<#==#>

Do you think it is fair for someone to punish a child for the crime the childs parents commit? I don't. Thats why I think the christian god is a real mean spirted asshole for punishing the millions of children for the crime of adam and eve. but that seems to be a christian tradition. in this article a child is kicked out of a church school for the crimes of the childs parents. Christians confuse the krap out of me. They claim to have better morals then atheist but they do mean spirted stuff like this all the time. I guess the good news is the child wont be forced to learn a bunch of superstitious rubbish.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94791.php

Christian school expels lesbian pair's daughter, 14

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ONTARIO, Calif. - A Christian school expelled a 14-year-old student because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter.

Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday.

"Your family does not meet the policies of admission," Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, Shay's biological mother.

The school's policy states that at least one parent cannot engage in practices "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship," Stob wrote.

Shay and her parents said they will not fight the ruling. Shay will attend public school next week.

Stob could not be reached for comment.

School administrators learned of the parents' relationship this week after Shay and another cheerleader were reprimanded for talking to the crowd during a Sept. 16 football game, according to Clark and her partner, Mitzi Gray.

After school officials told Clark that her daughter could no longer attend the school, the mother was ordered to remove Shay from cheerleading practice, collect the girl's belongings and leave the property.

The district refunded Clark and Gray $3,415 - Shay's tuition for half the year plus an art fee.

Clark and Gray, who have been together 22 years, have two other daughters age 9 and 19.

Two weeks ago, a lesbian student filed a lawsuit against the Garden Grove Unified School District, alleging officials suspended her several times and forced her to temporarily transfer to another campus after she defied orders to stop hugging and kissing her girlfriend on school grounds.

<#==#>

Homeland Security a dismil failure and huge waste of money!

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94776.php

Panel slams federal passenger screening system

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - The government has spent millions since Sept. 11, 2001, developing a system to ensure terrorists don't board planes. But they still can't get it right - and shouldn't do any more work on it until they do, an oversight panel said Friday.

The project, called Secure Flight, sounds simple: Match passenger names against terrorist watch lists.

But it isn't so simple. Secure Flight and its predecessor, CAPPS II, ran into repeated trouble since the Transportation Security Administration started work on them shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Government auditors gave the project failing grades - twice - and rebuked its authors for secretly obtaining personal information about airline passengers and then not telling the truth about it.

"They didn't know what they were doing," said James Dempsey, a member of the oversight panel and executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

A big part of the problem is that many people have the same or similar names. For example, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was told he couldn't board a plane because his name matched that of a member of the Irish Republican Army.

The TSA hoped to remedy that problem by getting more information about passengers to verify their identities.

Critics who viewed Secure Flight as a secret project to spy on Americans stalled its progress, but the authors of Friday's report said the project's problems run deeper than that.

"It's not a privacy problem," Dempsey said. "It's a mission, goals and methods problem."

The oversight panel said it wasn't sure Secure Flight could ever work.

<#==#>

good government??? kicking homeless people out of town????

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HOMELESS_DUMPING?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 24, 5:23 PM EDT

Police: Suburbs Dropping Homeless in L.A.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- At least four suburban law enforcement departments have been spotted dropping off people who appeared to be homeless on the city's downtown streets, authorities said.

Capt. Andrew Smith said he and his partner saw sheriff's deputies drop off a man Tuesday in a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood where many homeless shelters are located.

Police and downtown officials have long suspected that law enforcement agencies from outside the city were using the downtown neighborhood as a dumping ground for homeless people. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Police Department ordered officers to stop out-of-area police cars they spotted dropping people off.

"The bottom line is, the service providers in downtown and the skid row area cannot accommodate all the intoxicated, drug-addicted and homeless individuals from all over the county," Smith said.

Officials from three of the departments - El Monte, El Segundo and Pasadena - said dumping was common years ago but is now banned. They offered to investigate if the LAPD would provide details.

Officials from the fourth suburb, Burbank, declined to comment.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has defended the deputies who tried to leave a homeless man downtown Tuesday, saying they were only trying to help the man get social services.

The department's Office of Independent Review will nonetheless begin an investigation "to find out what happened here," said Michael Gennaco, head of the review office.

<#==#>

They like to call themselfs "public servents" but they often think they are royal rulers.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AZ_OPEN_MEETING_AZOL-?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 24, 3:24 PM EDT

State warns Bisbee council on meeting law

BISBEE, Ariz. (AP) -- The Arizona Attorney General's Office has warned the City Council that the state's open meeting law doesn't it can't oust a person from a public meeting unless the person is disruptive or ignores an official directive.

The office issued the warning in a letter in response to a complaint filed by resident Jacqueline O'Connor in connection with her removal from a June 14 council meeting.

The acting mayor had the police chief remove O'Connor after the acting mayor told O'Connor she was out of order in attempting to question the council about the hiring of a dogcatcher.

The Attorney General's Office said a warning must be given before such action can take place but that no warning apparently was given O'Connor.

"While the conduct of the City Council does not rise to the level of a violation that warrants formal enforcement action, it does warrant a letter of concern to inform the council that the continuation of such practices could result in enforcement action in the future," Assistant Attorney Genral Victoria Mangiapane wrote.

City Attorney John MacKinnon said he thought the council followed the proper procedures, but Councilman Jack Porter said the council erred.

"We are inexperienced," Porter said. "We didn't know."

O'Connor said she was pleased with the result.

"Even small cities have to obey the law," she said. "The council does not have to agree, but they do have to listen to the public."

<#==#>

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jul-31-Sun-2005/opinion/2503702.html

Jul. 31, 2005

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Sexual assault victim could go to prison

Out of Green Bay, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, "A woman who was upset over being searched bodily at an airport was convicted Tuesday of assaulting a security screener by grabbing the federal officer's breasts."

A federal jury heard the case against retired teacher Phyllis Dintenfass, who also allegedly shoved the screener during the search at the Outagamie County Regional Airport in Appleton, Wisc. in September 2004. Dintenfass, 62, faces up to a year in federal prison and $100,000 in fines. The judge set sentencing for Nov. 1.

On July 25, The AP reported, Transportation Security Administration screening supervisor Anita Gostisha testified that Dintenfass activated metal detectors at a checkpoint. Gostisha said she took the woman to another screening area, where she used a handheld wand. Gostisha said she was following protocol when she then further performed a "limited pat-down search." Gostisha said she was using the back of her hands to search the area underneath Dintenfass' breasts when the woman lashed out at her.

Dintenfass responded that she acted in self-defense. "I was reacting to what felt like an absolute invasion of my body," she said.

Now, how much do you suppose we would be safe in wagering that said judge in this case lied to those jurors, telling them they had no right or power to throw out the case if they felt the law or its enforcement was absurd and unconstitutional -- and that the judge further refused to seat any juror who declined to perjure himself of his verdict in advance by swearing to "enforce the law as given to you by the court"?

Before the apologists for consolidated state tyranny limber up their keyboards, let us review:

1) The most vital precedent in establishing trial by jury as a vital safeguard against state usurpation was the Bushell case, which found William Penn (yes that William Penn) on trial in London in 1670 for preaching an illegal Quaker sermon. The judges ordered the jury to convict, but refused to let them read the actual statute. The jury refused to convict, since they couldn't figure out why this should be a crime in the first place. The jurors themselves were fined and imprisoned without food, water, or bathroom facilities until they would relent.

Four refused, brave souls. And the English Court of Common Pleas finally came to their rescue, ruling that a jury could refuse to enforce a law if it offended their conscience or if they weren't allowed to read it for themselves, and that no one could punish them for doing so.

2) Our own American freedom of the press is widely traced to the trial of colonial printer John Peter Zenger in New York in 1735. Zenger was accused of printing seditious libel against the king. He admitted to having done the printing, and truth was no defense under crown law. But defense attorney Andrew Hamilton cited the Bushell case, asking the jury to ignore the judge's instructions and throw out a prosecution under an offensive law. The jury "judged the law" and acquitted, ignoring the judge's instructions.

3) John Jay, first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, said in charging the jury in Georgia vs. Brailsford, 1794, "You (the jurors) have, nevertheless, a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy."

4) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase agreed, stating in 1804, "The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts."

5) What's that? All this magically changed at some point in the 20th century, when this safeguard of our other liberties quietly expired? Actually, the D.C. Court of Appeals held in U.S. v. Dougherty in 1972: "The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions from the judge. Most often commended are the 18th century acquittal of John Peter Zenger of seditious libel [the case that gave Americans our freedom of the press] and the 19th century acquittals in prosecutions under fugitive slave laws."

Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or a liar, and should be promptly searched for a concealed law degree.

At the conclusion of the kangaroo trial of uppity groping victim Phyllis Dintenfass, U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic said TSA officers perform a vital service and are entitled to protection from assault.

In fact, these traitorous scum, who daily violate their sacred oaths to protect and defend our Constitution, do not perform a vital service, or even a marginally useful one, unless it's a "vital service" to condition an entire people to abandon our rights to privacy, dignity and to be free of unreasonable, warrantless searches. Most of this rigmarole was already in place on Sept. 11, 2001, and it stopped not a single intended hijacker -- not a one. It would not stop them today, since metal detectors do not pick up plastic box cutters.

The American populace is being conditioned with incredible speed to accept the conditions of a de facto police state with no regard to our privacy or dignity, let alone the solemn guarantees of the Fourth Amendment.

About the only criticism of sexual assault victim Dintenfass' actions that I can summon up is that it lacked a certain panache. Next time, dear, try moaning loudly, then breaking into uncontrollable sobs and panting, "Oh yes, baby. This is even better than at home with the baby powder. The whips! The whips!"

Vin Suprynowicz is the Review-Journal's assistant editorial page editor. His column appears Sunday.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0925war-protest25.html

Anti-war rally calls for Iraq withdrawal

Josh Kelley

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 25, 2005 12:00 AM

Horns were honking and war protesters marching along Camelback Road in Phoenix where hundreds of people gathered Saturday afternoon to lambaste President George Bush for going to war and call for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Organizers said they counted more than 2,000 people at the protest, one of several held Saturday across the nation and worldwide, including a rally in Washington, D.C.

Protesters marched across Camelback from 24th Street to 22nd while carrying white crosses representing the soldiers from Arizona who have died in Iraq since the war began.

The energetic but orderly crowd stopped outside the office of Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, and protesters posted two copies of a letter that called on Kyl to "Support Our Troops and Bring Them Home" on the front door of the building.

A spokesman for Kyl could not be reached for comment late Saturday.

In an editorial article written by Kyl and Sen. John McCain that was published in The Arizona Republic earlier this month, the senators acknowledged people's doubts about how the war has been conducted and that mistakes have been made.

But they warned that "the consequences of premature American withdrawal" from Iraq "would be cataclysmic."

"If we were to leave, it would create a power vacuum that the extremists might easily fill," the senators wrote. "The current Iraqi government . . . could see itself overrun, leaving a failed state in the heart of the Middle East. The resulting terrorist sanctuary would pose a direct threat to America's security, just as Afghanistan did when it sheltered al-Qaida, and extremists would have free rein to train and plan against our country. Iraq might even erupt in civil war."

That's an argument that Michael Lopercio, 53, one of the organizers of the Phoenix protest, said he doesn't buy.

"No matter what we do or how long we stay, the end result will be the same," said Lopercio, who traveled to Iraq in December 2003 to visit his son serving there with the Army.

Protesters ranged from people in motorized wheelchairs to families with young children holding up signs criticizing Bush.

Outside Kyl's office, protesters read the name, residence and age of each Arizonan who died in Iraq.

After each name, the crowd chanted, "One death too many" to the roll of a drum.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=48921

Hundreds voice feelings on Iraq 

By Emily Gersema, Tribune

September 25, 2005

Horns were honking, protesters were shouting and feet were marching on Saturday as hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the corner of Camelback Road and 24th Street in Phoenix to call for an end to the war in Iraq.

"Make Levees Not War," read a neon-green sign held by Roger Wilkes.

Wilkes of Mesa said he was a disenchanted Republican. He said he was a supporter of the party until Bush came out and said, "Bring it on" — a challenge to Iraqi insurgents in July 2003.

"I realized then we’ve got a guy (for president) that doesn’t look so good," said Wilkes, 46.

Many of the 700 protesters shared Wilkes’ opinion, waving signs, such as "United Against Bush War for Oil" and "War is not the answer," directing their displeasure at the president.

The crowd included Vietnam veterans such as Fred Hairstone of Gilbert.

He likened the Iraq situation to the Vietnam War and said the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made him even more concerned about where the country was headed.

"The country’s gone crazy," Hairstone said, shaking his head. "There’s a lot of fear in the air."

Bush has been losing support for months over the war and other issues. His approval ratings, 42 percent in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, have never been lower. But some are sticking with the president, and a few of them in Phoenix declared their support for him through their car windows as they drove by the protesters.

"I love Bush!" a driver shouted as he rolled by.

Dan Feeley, a freshman at Arizona State University, watched the demonstration quietly, sporting a gray Coast Guard T-shirt that he covered with a red Hawaiian buttondown shirt.

"I’m not exactly sure if this is supposed to be anti-war or anti-Bush," said Feeley, 23.

Feeley spent four years with the Coast Guard. He believes that sometimes war is necessary. "In order to have peace, freedom of speech, freedom of press, sometimes (violent) things have to happen," he said.

A small group of protesters dressed in suits and top hats, and sporting costume jewelry, showed up as comic relief at the anti-war gathering.

Posing as a Republican group, "Billionaires for Bush," the group of satirists chanted "Five, six, seven, eight, Halliburton’s really great!" while holding signs that said, "Support Crony Capitalism, It Works For Me."

Never dropping the act, Alex Zautra, the leader of the half-dozen, declared that he’s "one of 50 billionaires" in the Valley who support Bush.

"The more war, the more cheap the oil is," Zautra said.

Contact Emily Gersema by email, or phone (480) 898-6568  

<#==#>

puppet government gets out of hand!!!!

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0925iraq25.html

Iraqi judge orders Brit soldiers' arrest

Wire services

Sept. 25, 2005 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - An Iraqi judge said Saturday that he reissued arrest warrants for two British soldiers who, with the help of the British military, escaped Iraqi custody.

Their escape sparked widespread rioting in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and considered one of the safest until last week. The conflict highlighted Iraqis' growing restiveness under foreign occupation.

Also, suicide car bombers killed five Iraqis in and near the capital, and the U.S. military said a soldier died in a roadside bombing Friday night in Baghdad. The death raised to 1,913 the number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The British soldiers, working undercover in Basra, were arrested Monday after reportedly firing at two Iraqi officers trying to detain them. One of the Iraqi officers reportedly died. Later that day, British military vehicles surrounded the jail and broke down walls to rescue the soldiers.

Judge Raghib al-Mudhafar, chief of the Basra anti-terrorism court, said Saturday that he charged the two soldiers with homicide.

But it's unclear whether the Iraqi courts have jurisdiction over the soldiers. Shortly before leaving Iraq in June 2004, Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, signed an order giving multinational soldiers immunity from prosecution.

British officials said they believed that order still applied.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, top Shiite leaders denounced Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal for saying last week that Iraq was disintegrating. They said Iraq's undemocratic neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, were threatened by Iraq's burgeoning democracy.

Some noted that the Sunni-led Saudi government fears a Shiite-led government in Iraq. Others expressed anger that Saudi Arabia chose to criticize Iraq now and not during Saddam Hussein's regime.

At a remembrance of the 1991 uprising against Saddam attended by top Shiite religious and political leaders, Abdel Aziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, referred to Faisal's statement:

"You stood beside Saddam while he was oppressing. You knew it was happening because it was on your borders. We expect from you to stand beside the Iraqi people, with the constitution and with those elected by the Iraqi people."

The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers contributed to this article.

<#==#>

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_RALLY?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 25, 2:49 PM EDT

Praise, Anger at Pro-War Rally in D.C.

By ELISABETH GOODRIDGE

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Support for U.S. troops fighting abroad mixed with anger toward anti-war demonstrators at home as hundreds of people, far fewer than organizers had expected, rallied Sunday on the National Mall just a day after a massive protest against the war in Iraq.

"No matter what your ideals are, our sons and daughters are fighting for our freedom," said Marilyn Faatz, who drove from New Jersey to attend the rally. "We are making a mockery out of this. And we need to stand united, but we are not."

About 400 people gathered near a stage on an eastern segment of the mall, a large photo of an American flag serving as a backdrop. Amid banners and signs proclaiming support for U.S. troops, several speakers hailed the effort to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan and denounced those who protest it.

Many demonstrators focused their ire at Cindy Sheehan, the California woman whose protest near President Bush's Texas home last summer galvanized the anti-war movement. Sheehan was among the speakers at Saturday's rally near the Washington Monument on the western part of the mall, an event that attracted an estimated 100,000 people.

"The group who spoke here the other day did not represent the American ideals of freedom, liberty and spreading that around the world," Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, told the crowd. "I frankly don't know what they represent, other than blaming America first."

One sign on the mall read "Cindy Sheehan doesn't speak for me" and another "Arrest the traitors"; it listed Sheehan's name first among several people who have spoken against the war.

Melody Vigna, 44, of Linden, Calif., said she wants nothing to do with Sheehan and others at nearby Camp Casey, an anti-war site set up to honor her son, Casey, who was killed in Iraq.

"Our troops are over there fighting for our rights, and if she was in one of those countries she would not be able to do that," Vigna said.

Parnell says anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan isn't the voice for all military families.

The husband of Sherri Francescon, 24, of Camp Lejeune, N.C., serves in the Marine Corps in Iraq. One of the many military wives who spoke during the rally, Francescon said that the anti-war demonstration had left her frustrated.

"I know how much my husband does and how hard he works, and I feel like they don't even recognize that and give him the respect he deserves," Francescon said. "I want him to know and I want his unit to know that America is behind them, Cindy doesn't speak for us, and that we believe in what they are doing."

Organizers of Sunday's demonstration acknowledged that their rally would be much smaller than the anti-war protest but had hoped that as many as 20,000 people would turn out.

On Saturday, demonstrators opposed to the war in Iraq surged past the White House in the largest anti-war protest in the nation's capital since the U.S. invasion. The rally stretched through the night, a marathon of music, speechmaking and dissent on the mall.

National polls have found steadily declining support for the war in Iraq, with a majority of Americans now believing the war was a mistake.

In an AP-Ipsos poll this month, only 37 percent approved or leaned toward approval of how Bush has handled the situation in Iraq; strong disapproval outweighed strong approval by 2-1, 46 percent to 22 percent.

On the Net:

ANSWER Coalition: http://www.answercoalition.org

Gold Star Families for Peace: http://www.gsfp.org

Families United for our Troops: http://www.unitedforourtroops.com

<#==#>

this government ruler says f*ck the 1st amendment! its time for goverment to force jesus on the citizens of america

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0923SundaySpat23-On.html

Park could ban Sunday morning games to spur worship

Associated Press

Sept. 23, 2005 08:49 AM

WHITE HOUSE, Tenn. - Play ball! As long as it's not Sunday morning.

Alderman Darrel Leftwich is proposing that the city establish new Sunday hours for White House Municipal Park so sporting events could only be held in the afternoon.

"I am concerned that we are not sending the right message to the community by having tournaments and league play during worship hours," Leftwich said.

Leftwich said that he drove by the park Sunday morning on his way to services at Temple Baptist Church and saw that it was full of people at a soccer tournament.

"God our Father intended the seventh day to be one of rest and worship," Leftwich said during this week's city board meeting. He asked the city manager to draft an ordinance that would restrict Sunday hours at parks in the town, about 20 miles north of Nashville.

Alderman Farris Bibb Jr. said the city should go slow before enacting a change. "With all due respect to Alderman Leftwich, the seventh day of the week is Saturday," Bibb said.

The matter is scheduled for discussion on Oct. 25.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0925iraq-protest25.html

Thousands in D.C. protest Iraq war

Rally among many in U.S., overseas

Jennifer C. Kerr

Associated Press

Sept. 25, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Crowds opposed to the war in Iraq surged past the White House on Saturday, shouting "Peace now" in the largest anti-war protest in the nation's capital since the U.S. invasion.

The rally stretched through the day and into the night, a marathon of music, speechmaking and dissent on the National Mall. Police Chief Charles Ramsey, noting that organizers had hoped to draw 100,000 people, said, "I think they probably hit that."

Speakers from the stage attacked President Bush's policies head on, but he was not at the White House to hear it. He spent the day in Colorado and Texas, monitoring hurricane recovery.

In the crowd: young activists, nuns whose anti-war activism dates to Vietnam, parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for the first time to protest.

Connie McCroskey, 58, came from Des Moines, Iowa, with two of her daughters, both in their 20s, for the family's first demonstration. McCroskey, whose father fought in World War II, said she never would have dared protest during the Vietnam War.

"Today, I had some courage," she said.

While united against the war, political beliefs varied. Paul Rutherford, 60, of Vandalia, Mich., said he is a Republican who supported Bush in the last election and still does - except for the war.

"President Bush needs to admit he made a mistake in the war and bring the troops home, and let's move on," Rutherford said.

His wife, Judy, 58, called the removal of Saddam Hussein "a noble mission" but said U.S. troops should have left when claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction proved unfounded.

"We found that there were none and yet we still stay there and innocent people are dying daily," she said.

"Bush Lied, Thousands Died," said one sign. "End the Occupation," said another. More than 1,900 members of the U.S. armed forces have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

Thousands attended smaller rallies in cities on the West Coast, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

In Washington, a few hundred people in a counter demonstration in support of Bush's Iraq policy lined the protest route near the FBI building. The two groups shouted at each other, a police line keeping them apart.

By early evening, police reported three arrests, all for minor offenses.

"They're vocal but not violent," Ramsey said.

The protest in the capital showcased a series of demonstrations in foreign and other U.S. cities. A crowd in London, estimated by police at 10,000, marched in support of withdrawing British troops from Iraq. Highlighting the need to get out, protesters said, were violent clashes between insurgents and British troops in the southern Iraq city of Basra.

In Rome, dozens of protesters held up banners and peace flags outside the U.S. Embassy and covered a sidewalk with messages and flowers in honor of those killed in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who drew thousands of demonstrators to her 26-day vigil outside Bush's Texas ranch last month, won a roar of approval when she took the stage in Washington. Her 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year.

"Shame on you," Sheehan admonished, directing that portion of her remarks to members of Congress who backed Bush on the war. "How many more of other people's children are you willing to sacrifice?"

<#==#>

tucson cops shoot and kill unarmed man.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/94916.php

Man shot by cops invaded two homes

Daniel Mejia is officer involved. 

He didn't have a gun but was holding object that resembled one

By Alexis Huicochea

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The man who was shot and killed by an officer Friday night had invaded two neighboring homes, frightening a woman in her kitchen while her husband armed himself as he heard her screams.

The suicidal man, a prescription-drug abuser, wrote a message in his own blood at the next home before police caught up with him, police said.

He did not have a gun, but was holding an object that resembled one, police said Saturday.

Randy L. Helton, 43, was shot by Tucson Police Officer Daniel Mejia after pointing an L-shaped, black wooden plate-display holder, folded in half, at police and at his own head, said Sgt. Mark Robinson, a department spokesman.

Robinson gave the following account:

Officers were called to Helton's home in the 2800 block of North Swan Road after receiving a call about a domestic violence disturbance just after 5:40 p.m. Friday.

During the investigation, police learned that Helton had assaulted his wife, Kathleen Hanin, 45, with a wooden closet rod. Hanin's son, Paul Bozeman, stepped in. Helton then assaulted Bozeman, 21, with the closet rod.

When police arrived at the home, Helton was gone and Bozeman was taken to a hospital for treatment of a head injury.

Helton returned to the home while police were there, but ran away and unsuccessfully attempted to get inside a neighbor's home.

He went on to another home, where June and Lee Sullivan live.

"He came to our door and was saying, 'My wife needs medication, I need money,' " June Sullivan said Saturday. "He was shaky and my husband told me to close the door, so I did."

Lee went and got his gun, but Helton had gone around the side of their home, jumped the wall and entered the kitchen - where June was - through a back door.

"I just saw him standing in the middle of the kitchen and I started screaming," she said. "He told me, 'Don't scream, I just need money.' "

Lee Sullivan was outside looking for Helton when he heard his wife scream, so he ran back inside and saw Helton running out the back door, he said. Helton ran to the end of their back yard and then jumped the wall into another neighbor's yard.

Police are not sure when, but Helton managed to get into another home, directly next to his, that was being renovated. No one was home at the time.

There was blood all over the home from self-inflicted cuts on Helton's arms, Robinson said.

In one of the bedrooms, there was a book, "The Agony and The Ecstasy," by Irving Stone. Helton had written a note on the book cover in his blood.

It read:

"R H KAT I (LOVE) YOU"

It was in the front yard, which was surrounded by a 4-foot-wall, of that home where officers finally found Helton. He was sitting in a chair, holding the object that officers believed to be a gun, Robinson said.

As police were arriving to close in on Helton, officer Mejia was driving by on his way to an off-duty job in uniform. He heard on his police radio what was going on and decided to help.

Officers surrounded the outside of the walled yard. Helton was holding the display stand in his hand, like a gun, and pointing it at officers, even though they asked him to put it down, Robinson said.

When Mejia saw Helton get up from the chair and begin walking toward a gate that would have allowed him to escape into an area where the public would have been in danger, he fired once, striking him in the torso, Robinson said.

"Helton dropped the plate holder, but even as he was on the ground, he was trying to reach for it," Robinson said. "It was only after he was shot that we learned it was not a gun."

Helton had been depressed and discussed ending his life earlier in the day, the police spokesman said.

He had a history of abusing prescription medication and spent the previous night in jail on a domestic violence charge, he added.

After being released from the Pima County jail Friday morning, Helton was arrested again on prescription fraud charges, but was cited and released, Robinson said.

The owner of the home where the note written in blood was found said he did have a black plate holder, but was unable to find it on Saturday.

Many items inside the home had been broken, and the gas stove had been turned on but the pilots were not lit.

Mejia, an 11-year-veteran, has been placed on administrative leave, standard procedure in a shooting.

A shooting review board has been convened to review the incident, the third fatal officer-involved shooting this year.

Less-than-lethal force would not have been effective in this situation, Robinson said, because of the wall that acted as a barrier between police and Helton.

"The police begged him to come out of the yard and I heard them telling him to 'drop it,' " Lee Sullivan said of the standoff between Helton and police. "They were pleading with him for maybe 10 minutes. They told him, 'We don't wanna hurt you,' and then I heard one shot."

&#9679; Contact reporter Alexis Huicochea at 629-9412 or ahuicochea@azstarnet.com.

<#==#>

i went to the tucson one by accident. i was going to the post office on speedway to make a letter to kevin and saw all these protesters. they were at the recruiting office where the raging grannies got busted when they tried to join the army.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94899.php

Throngs in D.C. protest Iraq war Tucson anti-war gathering attracts about 500

By Eric Swedlund

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARIZONA DAILY STAR

WASHINGTON - Crowds opposed to the war in Iraq surged past the White House on Saturday, shouting "peace now" in the largest war protest in the nation's capital since the U.S. invasion.

The rally stretched through the day and into the night, a marathon of music, speechmaking and dissent on the National Mall. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, noting that organizers had hoped to draw 100,000 people, said, "I think they probably hit that."

Speakers from the stage attacked President Bush's policies head on, but he was not at the White House to hear it. He spent the day in Colorado and Texas, monitoring hurricane recovery.

In the crowd: young activists, nuns whose anti-war activism dates to Vietnam, parents mourning their children in uniform lost in Iraq, and uncountable families motivated for the first time to protest.

Connie McCroskey, 58, came from Des Moines, Iowa, with two of her daughters, both in their 20s, for the family's first demonstration. McCroskey, whose father fought in World War II, said she never would have dared protest during the Vietnam War.

"Today, I had some courage," she said.

While united against the war, political beliefs varied. Paul Rutherford, 60, of Vandalia, Mich., said he is a Republican who supported Bush in the last election and still does - except for the war.

"President Bush needs to admit he made a mistake in the war and bring the troops home, and let's move on," Rutherford said. His wife, Judy, 58, called the removal of Saddam Hussein "a noble mission" but said U.S. troops should have left when claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction proved unfounded.

"Bush Lied, Thousands Died," said one sign. "End the Occupation," said another. More than 1,900 members of the U.S. armed forces have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

Thousands of people attended smaller rallies in cities on the West Coast, including Tucson, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Franciso and Seattle.

In Washington, a few hundred people in a counterdemonstration in support of Bush's Iraq policy lined the protest route near the FBI building. The two groups shouted at each other, a police line keeping them apart. Organizers of a pro-military rally today hoped for 10,000 people.

Ramsey said the day's protest unfolded peacefully under the heavy police presence. "They're vocal but not violent," he said.

By early evening, police reported three arrests, all for minor offenses.

Folk singer Joan Baez marched with the protesters and later serenaded them at a concert at the foot of the Washington Monument. An icon of the 1960s Vietnam War protests, she said Iraq is already a mess and the troops need to come home immediately.

The protest in the capital showcased a series of demonstrations in foreign and other U.S. cities. A crowd in London, estimated by police at 10,000, marched in support of withdrawing British troops from Iraq.

Calling for an end to the U.S. war in Iraq, about 500 people rallied at a park northeast of Downtown Saturday, then marched nearly two miles to picket the military recruitment office on East Speedway.

With signs varying from the simple "No War" and "Paz" ("Peace") to the more creative "Frodo failed, Bush has the ring," protesters chanted and sang, with cars honking approval along the march.

Erin Whitfield, whose 19-year-old daughter joined the Army this summer and is training at Fort Huachuca with expectations to ship out for Iraq early next year, was one of the speakers at the rally at Catalina Park, North Fourth Avenue and East Second Street.

"I thought I was going to get to armchair this war," she said. "Outraged, but from a distance. And then this past June, the war in Iraq came home to my front door."

Whitfield said she'd be outraged at the war just for ethical, philosophical and political reasons, but on top of all that she's afraid for her daughter.

"I am afraid of her death, I am afraid she will come back maimed or injured or mentally incapacitated," she said. "I'm afraid war will change her in ways no human being should be changed."

Joe Bernick, one of the protest organizers, said he counted 520 people midway through the march, with more waiting at the Armed Forces Recruiting Center at 2303 E. Speedway.

Pancho Medina said the march could re-energize the anti-war movement, which received greater attention with California mother Cindy Sheehan's protest outside President Bush's ranch in Texas and U.S. deaths nearing 2,000 and injuries close to 15,000. He's encouraged by recent polls showing more than half of Americans' saying the U.S. made a mistake in invading Iraq, he said.

"We were right in the beginning about the invasion and we're still right," he said. "Everything that's happened we've predicted."

&#9679; Contact reporter Eric Swedlund at 573-4115 or eswedlund@azstarnet.com.

<#==#>

and if you dont beleive this your going to roast in hell for eternity!! honest :)

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94888.php

Creationists make stand vs. evolution in science museum

THE DENVER POST

Denver - God made dinosaurs on the sixth day of creation, the same day he made people, in Rusty Carter's interpretation of the Bible.

"The word dinosaur was not invented back then, but in Job 38, there's two large creatures, behemoth and leviathan," said Carter, director of Biblically Correct Tours in Littleton, Colo., as he prepared to give his first tour of this school year.

Either or both creatures were probably dinosaurs, he said.

Nineteen 10- and 11-year-olds trailed behind Carter Saturday morning at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, most of them nodding knowingly as their tour guide pointed out flaws in exhibits.

"What do you guys think? Is the world really 4.5 billion years old?" Carter asked.

"Nonsense!" one girl called out, and the adults in the group smiled.

Demand for tours continual

Carter said demand for his religious tours of secular sites has been continual since the company's founding in 1988, but the media's attention has exploded recently as school boards across the country debate how to teach evolution.

"There's a lot of people asking questions about science," Carter said.

Tour leaders say they're trying to point out flaws in the "so-called science" of evolution, which contradicts their understanding of creation.

Many scientists say they have deep concerns about the "inaccurate" way creationists are portraying science.

"Science ... helps us to frame our thoughts into a logical structure," said Richard Stucky, vice president for research and collections at the Denver museum.

For example, evolutionary science is the only way to study how bacteria come to evade antibiotics, a critical problem in medicine today, he said.

Evolution's proof? "The millions of fossils that occur in layered sequences in rocks that show changes and adaptations over time," Stucky said. Stucky, a paleontologist who studies vertebrate evolution, has seen BC lead groups through the museum many times, he said. He appreciates their work, not only as a matter of free speech.

"I think it's great that a lot of these students are exposed to evidence from the fossil record," Stucky said.

Stucky, who himself grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home in Kansas, said: "Spiritual beliefs are something only the individual can decide. Science, on the other hand, is a collective enterprise."

Dating of rocks challenged

Most of the children on Saturday's tour attend Foothills Bible Church in Littleton. About half go to public school, the rest to Christian or home schools.

Many of them already knew the creationist critiques of evolution. That scientists' methods of dating rocks are inaccurate, for example.

For Tanner Cameron, a fifth-grader at a Littleton public school, life's history finally began to make sense Saturday.

"Ohhhh," he said as Carter's colleague Tyson Thorne explained how fossils form. Thorne's story included water, mud, sudden catastrophe....

Neither Carter nor his colleagues make a living off the tours, which cost $5 per person. Carter, for example, runs a flooring business.

The Museum of Nature and Science accommodates the biblical groups graciously, Carter said, although museum volunteers have occasionally confronted tour leaders.

"I can understand," Carter said. "It's offensive to them. We're kind of attacking what they believe."

<#==#>

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94846.php

U.S. troops kill 2 officials in Sunni city

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

BAGHDAD - U.S. troops killed a City Council member and a police captain in the north-central city of Duluiyah after the soldiers came under small-arms fire from the two men, the U.S. military said Saturday.

The attack occurred late Friday, when soldiers assigned to Task Force Liberty were traveling through the city to follow up on a tip that occupants of a house were involved in an earlier attack on a U.S. convoy.

Three men - including the City Council member, Jabbar Ateiya Saud, and the police captain - ambushed the troops as they were en route to the home, a Task Force Liberty spokesman said.

The other man was detained. No U.S. troops were injured in the incident, and on Saturday the city was temporarily placed under curfew from 7:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Maj. Anton Alston, a Task Force Liberty spokesman in Tikrit, said that Duluiyah has been volatile for several days and that the curfew was agreed upon by local leaders and Iraqi and U.S. forces in an attempt to restore order.

On Tuesday, four private contractors were killed and two others injured in an ambush on their convoy as they passed through the city, Alston said.

"It's been pretty violent for the last several days," said Alston, who did not know the nationality of the contractors.

Duluiyah, a majority Sunni city some 50 miles north of the capital along the Tigris River, has long been a trouble spot for coalition forces: U.S. and Iraqi troops have often been struck by roadside bombs there and come under insurgent gunfire.

<#==#>

religon making the world a better place to live?

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94838.php

Violence against women dogs leader of Pakistan

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Leader in the war on terror, survivor of al-Qaida assassination attempts, advocate of moderate Islam: Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has emerged as a darling of the West since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

He has won little praise, however, for his response to another blight facing his country: rape and other violence against women.

Hundreds of attacks - including gang rapes, "honor killings" of wives accused of having affairs and brides murdered for marrying without family consent - are reported each year. Most go unpunished.

In two recent cases, two men killed their sister and her suspected lover by slitting their throats, while another man beat his sister to death for refusing an arranged marriage. Both killings happened Friday near the eastern city of Multan and were announced by local police.

Last week, Musharraf returned from a U.S. visit marred by controversy over his reportedly telling The Washington Post that many Pakistanis see rape allegations as a way for women to make money and get visas to leave the country. He later denied saying that, but the newspaper said the recorded interview proved he was correctly quoted.

During his trip, the military leader also said Pakistan is unfairly censured over rape and denounced activists he said profit from making such accusations "to malign Pakistan, the government and me."

Rights workers retort he is more concerned about shielding the nation's reputation overseas than taking action at home.

Musharraf, who advocates "enlightened moderation" to tackle Islamic extremism, has repeatedly condemned violence against women. But like preceding governments he has failed to reform a harsh penal code introduced in 1979.

<#==#>

let me ask a question. how can a country thats run by a bunch of police state thugs bring freedom to iraq?????

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/94875.php

Navy hired 33 planes for 'renditions'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO - A branch of the U.S. Navy secretly contracted a 33-plane fleet that included two Gulfstream jets reportedly used to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

At least 10 U.S. aviation companies were issued classified contracts in 2001 and 2002 by the obscure Navy Engineering Logistics Office for the "occasional airlift of USN (Navy) cargo worldwide," according to Defense Department documents the AP obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Two of the companies - Richmor Aviation Inc. and Premier Executive Transport Services Inc. - chartered luxury Gulfstreams that flew terror suspects captured in Europe to Egypt, according to U.S. and European media reports. Once there, the men told family members, they were tortured. Authorities in Italy and Sweden have expressed outrage over flights they say were illegal and orchestrated by the U.S. government.

While the Gulfstreams came under scrutiny in 2001, what hasn't been disclosed is the Navy's role in contracting planes involved in operations the CIA terms "rendition" and what Italian prosecutors call kidnapping.

"A lot of us have been focusing on the role of the CIA but also suspecting that certain parts of the armed forces are involved," said Margaret Satter-thwaite, a New York University School of Law researcher.

The Navy contracts involve more planes than previously reported - other news outlets totaled 26 planes; the AP identified 33 planes.

Italian judges have issued arrest warrants for 19 purported CIA operatives who allegedly snatched a Muslim cleric from Milan in 2003 and flew him to Cairo, according to FAA records cited by the Chicago Tribune, aboard Richmor's Gulfstream IV. The jet belongs to a part-owner of the Boston Red Sox, who told The Boston Globe that the team's logo was covered when the CIA leased the plane. Another case involves two men taken from Sweden to Egypt in 2001 aboard Premier's Gulfstream V.

Neither the CIA nor a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon would comment for this story. Officials at the Navy Engineering Logistics Office, or NELO, in Arlington, Va., didn't respond to requests for comment.

Joseph P. Duenas, counsel for the logistics office, declined to provide the contracts, saying they "involve national security information that is classified."

The secrecy surrounding the deals makes it unclear why NELO issued them, but one reason may be the office's anonymity - the agency is so buried in the Pentagon bureaucracy that some career Navy officials have never heard of it.

John Hutson, a retired rear admiral who was the Navy's Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000 and is critical of the Bush administration's detainee policies, said he was not familiar with NELO. Told of its activities, Hutson said NELO employees could be held liable if they knew the planes would be used for renditions. Human rights lawyers say rendition flights violate criminal law.

The office has been around since the mid-1970s, according to a former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because NELO's activities are secret. NELO operates under different names: it's also known as the Navy's Office of Special Projects and its San Diego location is called the Navy Regional Plant Equipment Office.

<#==#>

The federal government nevers stops thinking of ways to steal our money with taxes. In an article  called "Ask Down Jones" by Tom Herman in the Sunday Sept 25 issue of the Arizona Star  it says:

The IRS is required by law to revise its tax tables ... every year to reflect inflation. New numbers for 2006 are based on an inflation report released by the U.S. Labor Department on Sept 15.

<#==#>

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=48921

Hundreds voice feelings on Iraq 

By Emily Gersema, Tribune

September 25, 2005

Horns were honking, protesters were shouting and feet were marching on Saturday as hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the corner of Camelback Road and 24th Street in Phoenix to call for an end to the war in Iraq.

"Make Levees Not War," read a neon-green sign held by Roger Wilkes.

Wilkes of Mesa said he was a disenchanted Republican. He said he was a supporter of the party until Bush came out and said, "Bring it on" — a challenge to Iraqi insurgents in July 2003.

"I realized then we’ve got a guy (for president) that doesn’t look so good," said Wilkes, 46.

Many of the 700 protesters shared Wilkes’ opinion, waving signs, such as "United Against Bush War for Oil" and "War is not the answer," directing their displeasure at the president.

The crowd included Vietnam veterans such as Fred Hairstone of Gilbert.

He likened the Iraq situation to the Vietnam War and said the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made him even more concerned about where the country was headed.

"The country’s gone crazy," Hairstone said, shaking his head. "There’s a lot of fear in the air."

Bush has been losing support for months over the war and other issues. His approval ratings, 42 percent in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, have never been lower. But some are sticking with the president, and a few of them in Phoenix declared their support for him through their car windows as they drove by the protesters.

"I love Bush!" a driver shouted as he rolled by.

Dan Feeley, a freshman at Arizona State University, watched the demonstration quietly, sporting a gray Coast Guard T-shirt that he covered with a red Hawaiian buttondown shirt.

"I’m not exactly sure if this is supposed to be anti-war or anti-Bush," said Feeley, 23.

Feeley spent four years with the Coast Guard. He believes that sometimes war is necessary. "In order to have peace, freedom of speech, freedom of press, sometimes (violent) things have to happen," he said.

A small group of protesters dressed in suits and top hats, and sporting costume jewelry, showed up as comic relief at the anti-war gathering.

Posing as a Republican group, "Billionaires for Bush," the group of satirists chanted "Five, six, seven, eight, Halliburton’s really great!" while holding signs that said, "Support Crony Capitalism, It Works For Me."

Never dropping the act, Alex Zautra, the leader of the half-dozen, declared that he’s "one of 50 billionaires" in the Valley who support Bush.

"The more war, the more cheap the oil is," Zautra said.

Contact Emily Gersema by email, or phone (480) 898-6568

<#==#>

i guess the DPS and phoenix pigs rate a lot better then us government serfs. they get BMW's.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0926motorcycles25.html

DPS, police rev up BMW motorcycles

Michael Ferraresi

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 26, 2005 12:00 AM

Motorcycle cops patrolling cities and highways are getting an upgrade in the form of new BMW motorcycles.

While the BMW bikes might seem extravagant, some Valley agencies say their flashy new rides will help bring them into the 21st century.

Known for its high-performance luxury sports cars, BMW is also a leading patrol motorcycle contractor for U.S. police departments. The Arizona Department of Public Safety will buy about 35 BMW RT 1150P models by next summer, while the Scottsdale Police Department is expected to add 18 bikes. Phoenix police will consider similar upgrades to its motorcycle fleet.

The agencies are swapping out their durable Kawasakis after the company stopped building police motorcycles.

At $18,000 per bike, BMW was the next-best choice, both for updated technology and cost, officials said.

"The BMW is a beautiful piece of equipment, and it's going to be fun for us to ride," said Lt. Tim Lane, a district commander for the DPS motorcycle program.

"It will be an easy transition," he said. "We bought the safest motorcycle on the market."

Some motorcycle fleet supervisors claim the BMW is a more efficient option to similar models made by Harley-Davidson and Honda.

For Valley police, it's a matter of catching up on technology. The DPS, Scottsdale and Phoenix have long used a Kawasaki model first released in 1978.

The BMW model has anti-lock brakes and a liquid cooling system, two features DPS patrol officers struggled without on their air-cooled Kawasakis - a burden, especially in the Arizona summer.

The name BMW might conjure images of high-flying, fully loaded sports cars, especially in Scottsdale.

The bikes that Scottsdale is adding are not quite as flashy. More than 8,000 are in service nationwide.

Phoenix used some BMWs in the 1990s but, like the DPS and Scottsdale, has used the Kawasaki for so long because it cost less than other models.

While the Kawasaki lasted up to six years for some agencies, the BMW bikes could last longer.

Lt. Wayne Lorch, of Phoenix Police Department's Traffic Bureau South, said the department bought their last Kawasakis in March 2004.

Lorch said Phoenix motorcycle officers, like those at other agencies, have reported few problems with the Kawasaki but is forced to change because of the shift in the law enforcement motorcycle market.

"The problem that Scottsdale and everyone else is having is that (Kawasaki) just doesn't make those anymore," Lorch said.

"It's just like having only a few choices with police cars," he said.

Scottsdale and the DPS recently sent motorcycle patrol supervisors to train in an intense BMW program with the California Highway Patrol in Sacramento.

Sgt. Jim Butera, a motor supervisor for Scottsdale police, said the California Highway Patrol uses its BMWs for up to 100,000 miles.

On the other hand, Scottsdale police officers used their old Kawasakis for up to 60,000 miles.

Butera said the public misconception that BMW motorcycles are expensive, excessive additions to the Scottsdale Police Department will likely change with time.

"There's that perception of Scottsdale throughout Arizona," Butera said.

"Fortunately, we have the means to buy the best equipment out there," he said.

Reach the reporter at michael .ferraresi@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-6843.

<#==#>

what a nice thing to say to get re-elected. imagine that war monger john mccain wants to end the torture that is endorsed by the american empire.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0926iraq-mccain26.html

McCain wants end to torture of prisoners

Senator supports bill to stop abuse

Richard A. Serrano

Los Angeles Times

Sept. 26, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., decrying new allegations of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers, on Sunday backed a bill to force the American military to live up to its obligations under the Geneva Conventions and "not engage in torture" of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain was responding to new allegations from Army Capt. Ian Fishback and two sergeants who served with the 82nd Airborne Division. Their description of routine harsh treatment of Iraqi captives parallels the abuse caught in photos at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and was contained in a Human Rights Watch report issued by the group Friday.

"We've got to have it stopped. It is hurting America's image abroad," McCain said on ABC's This Week news program.

The senator announced that his staff on the Armed Service Committee is investigating the allegations in tandem with a criminal felony probe at Fort Bragg, N.C., by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command and a review by the Inspector General's Office.

"I don't know if these allegations are true," McCain said. "But they have to be investigated.

"We've got to make it clear to the world that America doesn't do it. It's not about prisoners. It's about us."

McCain, a victim of torture as a POW in Vietnam, made it clear Sunday that he does not believe the military has gotten the message that the United States must obey the Geneva Conventions.

<#==#>

why does this scare me????

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0926bush26.html

Bush pushes putting military in charge

President wants to take authority from local officials in responding to disasters

Ken Herman

Cox News Service

Sept. 26, 2005 12:00 AM

SAN ANTONIO - President Bush on Sunday advanced his call for putting the military in charge of responding to catastrophic disasters now under state and local control, a change some critics contend could have dangerous implications.

During a Randolph Air Force Base briefing at which military leaders detailed problems in the Hurricane Katrina response, Bush said a key part of his weekend trip, which included a Saturday briefing at U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, was to find out if there is "a circumstance in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency."

"Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a natural disaster . . . of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort?" Bush said. "That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about."

Such a change could require revision of an 1878 federal act that bans the use of the military for law enforcement.

Military expert Gene Healy of the Cato Institute, in an analysis published Sunday, warned against tinkering with that law.

"Having already wrecked a legendary American city, Hurricane Katrina may now be invoked to undermine a fundamental principle of American law," Healy wrote, concluding that "when it comes to domestic policing, the military should be a last resort, not a first responder."

In addition to shifting authority away from local officials, the change contemplated by Bush would take power away from the much-maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA was established in 1979 by President Carter after the National Governors Association asked for an entity that would streamline the state-federal links during emergencies. At the time several agencies were folded into FEMA, including the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration activities of HUD. FEMA itself was folded into the Department of Homeland Security when that agency was created in March 2003.

Bush's comments came as he wrapped up a two-day swing ostensibly planned to watch response to Hurricane Rita but largely orchestrated to help Bush make his case about increased military authority over disaster response.

In Baton Rouge on Sunday, Bush visited the FEMA Joint Field Office for an update on Rita-related damage in Louisiana, including the new round of flooding in New Orleans.

<#==#>

we are from the government and here to help you!!!! yea sure!!!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GUANTANAMO_LAWSUIT?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 26, 7:42 PM EDT

Gitmo Judge Rejects Claim He's Interfering

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal judge Monday rejected a government argument that he was interfering with the president's constitutional authority to wage war by insisting that Guantanamo Bay detainees be asked if they want their names to be made public.

The government raised the objection after U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff last month ordered the Defense Department to pose the question to detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base.

The judge wrote that the argument was without merit, and that it was offered improperly after he had already rejected the government's other reasons for insisting that the information not be released to The Associated Press.

In April, the AP filed a lawsuit asking for transcripts of 558 tribunals conducted in the last year to give detainees a chance to challenge their incarceration. The government released the documents but redacted facts about each detainee's identity.

In his ruling last month, Rakoff noted that the government had argued the identities should be kept secret to protect the privacy of the detainees rather than for national security reasons.

The judge said each detainee could answer "yes" or "no" to the question of whether he wanted his identity revealed.

"One might well wonder whether the detainees share the view that keeping their identities secret is in their own best interests," he wrote last month.

In its new argument, the government said the "questionnaire approach somehow encroaches on the president's constitutional authority to wage war as commander in chief," Rakoff said.

The government had argued that the question "intrudes on the relationship between the military and the captured enemy combatants."

The judge said the argument was "wholly unpersuasive" and that the Supreme Court had approved far more intrusive judicial involvement concerning detainees.

The judge gave the government until Oct. 14 to submit the question to detainees and until Oct. 28 to summarize the responses for the court so it could decide what to do with the AP's request.

Government spokeswoman Bridget F. Kelly had no immediate comment.

David A. Schulz, an attorney who argued the case for the AP, said he was pleased that the judge had rejected the new argument.

"We hope this will move us one step further to getting the withheld information about the detainees," he said.

In August 2004, the government began combatant status review tribunals to let detainees rebut their classification as "enemy combatants" after the Supreme Court ruled the detainees may challenge their imprisonment.

Guantanamo holds 520 prisoners; more than 230 others have been released or transferred to the custody of their home governments. Most were captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. Only a few have been charged with crimes.

The Bush administration designated them enemy combatants, a classification that includes anyone who supported the Taliban or al-Qaida and which does not afford as many legal protections as prisoners of war have under the Geneva Conventions. The designation also allows indefinite detention without charges.

---

On the Net:

Documents from court proceedings for many of the detainees are available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/detainees/list.html

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0927prisonerabuse-england27-ON.html

Lynndie England gets 3 years for Abu Ghraib abuses

Associated Press

Sept. 27, 2005 05:44 PM

FORT HOOD, Texas - Army Pfc. Lynndie England, who said she was only trying to please her soldier boyfriend when she took part in detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, was sentenced late Tuesday to three years behind bars.

England's sentencing wrapped up the last of nine courts-martial of low-level soldiers charged in the abuse scandal, which severely damaged America's image in the Muslim world and tarnished the U.S. military at home and abroad.

The jury of five Army officers needed about 90 minutes to determine their sentence for England, a 22-year-old reservist from rural West Virginia.

The charges carried up to nine years, but prosecutor Capt. Chris Graveline asked the jury to imprison her for four to six years. The defense asked for no time behind bars.

England sat with her eyes forward as the verdict was read, occasionally looking down.

England, the most recognizable of the reservists charged after the graphic abuse photos became public, was convicted Monday on six of the seven counts against her.

She apologized Tuesday for posing for the photos, saying she did so at the behest of Pvt. Charles Graner Jr., the boyfriend who she said took advantage of her love and trust while they were deployed in Iraq.

"I was used by Private Graner," England said. "I didn't realize it at the time."

She appeared in several of the best-known photos taken by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib in late 2003. In one image she held a naked prisoner on a leash, while in others she posed with a pyramid of naked detainees and pointed at the genitals of a prisoner while a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth.

<#==#>

what else is new? mccain has been a war monger since he dropped bombs on woman and children in vietnam!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0927az-sheehan-mccain27-ON.html

Sheehan, McCain meet, still at odds on Iraq war

Associated Press

Sept. 27, 2005 04:22 PM

WASHINGTON - A 20-minute meeting Tuesday afternoon left peace activist Cindy Sheehan and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., still at odds over the Iraq war.

"He is a warmonger, and I'm not," said Sheehan, a Californian whose son's death in Iraq prompted her to hold a 26-day vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch this summer. "I believe this war is not keeping America safer."

"She's entitled to her opinion," said McCain, who also disapproves of Sheehan's anti-war campaign. "We just have fundamental disagreements."

Sheehan's conference with McCain was one of several scheduled this week as part of her campaign to get members of Congress to explain the reasons for the Iraq war.

Since her 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed last year in an ambush in Sadr City, Iraq, Sheehan has attracted worldwide attention. Her protest in Texas made her the face of the anti-war movement. Monday, she was arrested during a rally in front of the White House.

Sheehan said she is meeting with elected officials because she wants answers to specific questions, among them, "How many other people's children are you willing to risk for this?" and what are elected officials doing to end the war.

Sheehan also was scheduled to meet with Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl last week, but she was unable to attend.

Tuesday, she thanked McCain for meeting with her, but she came away disappointed in his answers.

"He tried to tell us what George Bush would have said," she said. "I don't believe he believes what he was telling me."

Although he has criticized the handling of the Iraq war, McCain, who was held prisoner during the Vietnam War, has defended the president's call to stop terrorism abroad before it reaches U.S. shores.

McCain said he had agreed to meet with Sheehan because he believed she was coming with a group of Arizona constituents.

But on Tuesday, the only Arizonan in her small group was her congressional liaison, who grew up in Sedona but moved away when he went to college.

"It was a misrepresentation," McCain said afterward. Asked if he would have met with her if he had known she was not with constituents, he said: "I may not have."

He described the meeting in his Senate office as "basically a rehash of my views, which I've articulated many times, and her views, which she has articulated many times."

McCain and Sheehan met once last June, shortly after Casey's funeral.

On Tuesday, Sheehan said she remembers McCain then saying Casey's death was "like his buddies in Vietnam" and that he was afraid their death was "for nothing."

McCain said he doesn't remember saying that. "That's ludicrous, I've never said anything like that," he said. "I not only have not encouraged Ms. Sheehan, I have expressed my strong disagreement with her views on the war."

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0927schoolscandal27.html

Taxpayer ripoff

Schools chief admits theft of millions at N.Y. district

Frank Eltman

Associated Press

Sept. 27, 2005 12:00 AM

MINEOLA, N.Y. - For years, ex-Roslyn schools chief Frank Tassone admitted, he stole millions of dollars in taxpayer money to finance everything from his breakfast bagels to European jaunts on the Concorde.

His next big journey on the taxpayers' dime will be to prison.

Tassone, 58, of Manhattan, pleaded guilty Monday to first- and second-degree grand larceny before Nassau County Judge Alan Honorof in a scandal that state Comptroller Alan Hevesi has called "the largest, most remarkable, most extraordinary theft" from a school system in American history.

Tassone will spend four to 12 years in prison and pay back $2 million. If convicted at trial, he could have faced 25 years.

Four other people have been charged. Further arrests are anticipated. An audit earlier this year found that $11.2 million had been pilfered from 1996 to 2004, although prosecutors have been able to link less than $7 million to the current defendants.

<#==#>

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AZ_EXONERATED_MAN_LAWSUIT_AZOL-?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 27, 9:32 PM EDT

City approves $3 million settlement for wrongfully convicted man

By BETH DeFALCO

Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX (AP) -- The city of Phoenix has agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was twice wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death, city officials said.

It's the second settlement Ray Krone has received this year from the government. In April, Maricopa County agreed to pay Krone $1.4 million in compensation.

"I'm just glad for it to be over," said Krone, who spent more than a decade behind bars, including two years on death row. "I hope I won't ever need lawyers again."

Phoenix City Council members approved the settlement last week, said city spokeswoman Toni Maccarone.

Krone was a postal worker when he was arrested in 1991 in the killing of Kim Ancona, a bartender who worked at a Phoenix lounge where Krone played darts.

He was convicted in 1992 and sentenced to death, based largely on expert testimony that supposedly matched his teeth with bite marks found on Ancona.

His conviction was overturned in 1994 on procedural grounds. A new trial was ordered, and Krone was convicted a second time in 1996.

In sentencing him the second time, the judge in the case said he wasn't sure that Krone was the killer. He spared Krone the death penalty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

In 2002, new DNA testing proved Krone wasn't the killer. Using an FBI database, DNA from the crime scene was linked to a man already in prison for another crime. A trial for the new suspect is pending.

Krone was freed that year, but his wrongful conviction lawsuit dragged on.

In his lawsuit, Krone alleged that Phoenix police did a shoddy job of investigating the murder and didn't look at other suspects closely enough. His lawsuit alleged the county used "altered and manufactured evidence" and that a bite mark expert "gave false testimony which he knew to be untrue."

In addition to his mental anguish, Krone said he sued Arizona agencies for the physical pain and suffering he endured. Krone said he was stabbed, had his arm broken and contracted hepatitis C while in Arizona prisons.

Neither the city nor county admitted wrongdoing by settling the lawsuit, said lawyers in the case.

Krone won't see all the $4.4 million from the lawsuit. He said some of the money will go to his parents, who spent upward of $300,000 and mortgaged their home to pay for his defense. Krone said he also owes around $500,000 in attorney's fees.

Also this year, Krone got a new look from the ABC reality show "Extreme Makeover." Once dubbed the "snaggletooth killer" for his crooked smile, Krone now flashes a straight row of pearly whites.

The 48-year-old lives in Dover Township, Pa., near his family. He's spent the past few years traveling, speaking out against the death penalty and advocating DNA testing. He currently serves on the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons.

<#==#>

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AZ_TASER_INVESTIGATION_AZOL-?SITE=AZMES&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Sep 27, 5:42 PM EDT

SEC now formally investigating Taser

By BETH DeFALCO

Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX (AP) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission's inquiry into stun-gun maker Taser International Inc. is now a formal investigation with an expanded scope, the company said Tuesday.

Shares tumbled more than 13 percent following the announcement.

The company had previously said the SEC was looking into claims Taser has made about safety studies for its stun guns and has also been looking into a $1.5 million, end-of-year sale of stun guns to a firearms distributor in Prescott. Some stock analysts have questioned the deal because it appeared to inflate sales to meet annual projections.

The formal probe is now also examining the possibility that outsiders acquired internal company information to manipulate the stock price, Taser said in a news release.

A formal investigation gives the SEC subpoena power to obtain documents and testimony.

"We were kind of surprised that it went to this level at all," Taser President Tom Smith told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "We've given them everything they've asked for. We can only speculate that (the formal investigation) was needed to go outside the company" to require testimony from outsiders.

Smith said that neither he nor Taser CEO Rick Smith, his brother, had received subpoenas. Smith also said that, to his knowledge, the company as a whole hadn't been subpoenaed.

Smith said the company couldn't disclose when the investigation became formal.

The investigation was still an informal inquiry as of mid-August, according to a quarterly reported filed last month with the SEC.

An SEC spokesman said that as a matter of policy, the agency would neither confirm nor deny any investigation.

Taser began marketing police stun guns in 1998 as a way to subdue combative people in high-risk situations. Now, more than 7,300 law enforcement agencies and military installations use them worldwide.

But critics say the stun guns have been used too liberally by police and have contributed to scores of deaths. Amnesty International has compiled a list of more than 100 people the group says have died after being shocked in scuffles with lawmen.

A letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month suggested that officers who deploy Tasers should also consider carrying heart defibrillators. The letter was authored by two doctors at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago who documented a known case of ventricular fibrillation - a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia - in a teenager who was shocked with a Taser.

Members of Taser's Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, which includes physicians specializing in cardiac arrhythmia and electrophysiology, reviewed the case and "object to the implication that the Taser caused a cardiac arrest in this individual," according to the board's response to the letter.

Shares of Taser sank 96 cents, or 13.1 percent, to close at $6.35 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, slipping below its 52-week range of $7.11 to $33.45.

---

On the Net:

Taser: http://www.taser.com

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/0928sr-jameson28-ON.html

Porn producers in Babe's partnership with Jameson

Casey Newton

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 28, 2005 03:11 PM

SCOTTSDALE - In addition to adult-film star Jenna Jameson, the partnership that recently acquired Babe's Cabaret includes the president and chief executive officer of one of the world's largest pornography producers.

Steven Hirsch, CEO of Los Angeles-based Vivid Entertainment, and William Asher, Vivid's president, own 25 percent of 2011 Scottsdale Entertainment Acquisition Group, which owns Babe's, 2011 N. Scottsdale Road.

Jameson, who filed paperwork using her given name of Jenna Massoli, also owns 25 percent.

The fourth partner is New Jersey-based adult-film producer Frank Koretsky, who shared Babe's with club co-owner Ann Rothstein before Jameson's partnership bought Rothstein out earlier this year.

The information surfaced in paperwork filed this month with the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control. Jameson's partnership is seeking to change Babe's liquor license to reflect the new owners.

The Scottsdale City Council will hear the request Nov. 1, city officials said.

If they find the new owners unreliable or incapable of holding the license, Scottsdale can file a protest with the state liquor board.

Because the liquor license already has been granted, and the partnership is simply requesting an ownership change, council members have few grounds for legal protest, officials said.

"This is very limited," said Connie Padian, chief customer service officer for Scottsdale. "We can look at their capability, their reliability, or their qualifications to have a liquor license."

The Babe's partnership will come before the council as officials work to update Scottsdale's sexually oriented business ordinance, which Scottsdale recently began enforcing again after quitting for two years due to uncertainty about the ordinance's legality.

<#==#>

and president bush is their number one recuriter!!!!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0928iraq-assess28.html

Al-Qaida, not Saddam's men, leading insurgency

Iraq's No. 2 terrorist killed in gunbattle

Washington Post

Sept. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates have essentially commandeered the insurgency, becoming the dominant opposition force and the greatest immediate threat to U.S. objectives, the top U.S. military intelligence officer in Iraq says.

The remarks, on a day that Iraqi and U.S. forces claimed a major blow against Zarqawi by killing his No. 2 leader, underscored a shift in view among senior members of the U.S. military command here since the spring.

As violence has claimed nearly 700 civilian lives in Baghdad since April, Zarqawi's group, known as al-Qaida in Iraq, has replaced Iraqis loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein as the insurgency's driving element.

"I think what you really have here is an insurgency that's been hijacked by a terrorist campaign," Army Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner said in an interview. "In part, by al-Zarqawi becoming the face of this thing, he has certainly gotten the funding, the media and, frankly, has allowed other folks to work along in his draft."

The al-Qaida in Iraq No. 2, Abdullah Abu Azzam, was killed in a gunbattle that broke out when he opened fire on troops raiding his hide-out in a high-rise apartment building in Baghdad early Sunday, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said.

Al-Qaida in Iraq issued an Internet statement denying Abu Azzam was the group's deputy leader, calling him "one of al-Qaida's many soldiers."

U.S. and Iraqi officials said Abu Azzam led al-Qaida's operations in Baghdad, personally planning a stepped-up wave of suicide bombings that hit the capital since April, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

Even with the growing significance of Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq, Zahner and other officers stressed that Iraq's insurgency remains a complex mix of elements. It includes a variety of factions, often with differing political, religious or tribal aims and sometimes with simply criminal intentions.

"While al-Zarqawi is the overarching bad guy, the one everyone loves to hate, there are a lot of other bad guys operating as well," said Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which has responsibility for the Baghdad area.

But the Saddam loyalists - including former Baath Party members, onetime military and intelligence officers and other Sunni Arab associates of the ousted Iraqi leader - have clearly receded in the U.S. command's view. Labeled "Saddamists" in U.S. military reports, they are now considered less an immediate military danger than a longer-term political concern, given their desire to return to power and their potential to infiltrate and subvert efforts to establish democracy.

Once the primary names on the list of most-wanted insurgents in Iraq, they now rank behind those identified with al-Qaida in Iraq.

By contrast, Zarqawi's network, although numerically still a small fraction of the insurgency, is said to be behind a disproportionately large share of the violence. .

Associated Press contributed to this article.

<#==#>

and if you will read it closely you will see the cops were not punished for fired for framing ray krone. nor did the city admit it is guilty of anything. the systems is corrupt to the core!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0928krone28.html

Phoenix OKs $3 mil Krone settlement

Man was twice wrongfully convicted in 1991 death of bartender at lounge

Beth Defalco

Associated Press

Sept. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

PHOENIX - The city of Phoenix has agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was twice wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death, city officials said.

It's the second settlement Ray Krone has received this year from the government. In April, Maricopa County agreed to pay Krone $1.4 million in compensation.

"I'm just glad for it to be over," said Krone, who spent more than a decade behind bars, including two years on death row. "I hope I won't ever need lawyers again."

City Council members approved the settlement last week, city spokeswoman Toni Maccarone said.

Krone was a postal worker when he was arrested in 1991 in the killing of Kim Ancona, a bartender who worked at a Phoenix lounge where Krone played darts.

He was convicted in 1992 and sentenced to death, based largely on expert testimony that supposedly matched his teeth with bite marks found on Ancona.

His conviction was overturned in 1994 on procedural grounds. A new trial was ordered, and Krone was convicted a second time in 1996.

In sentencing him the second time, the judge in the case said he wasn't sure that Krone was the killer. He spared Krone the death penalty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

In 2002, new DNA testing proved Krone wasn't the killer. Using an FBI database, DNA from the crime scene was linked to a man already in prison for another crime. A trial for the new suspect is pending.

Krone was freed that year, but his wrongful-conviction lawsuit dragged on.

In his lawsuit, Krone alleged that Phoenix police did a shoddy job of investigating the murder and didn't look at other suspects closely enough. His lawsuit alleged the county used "altered and manufactured evidence" and that a bite mark expert "gave false testimony which he knew to be untrue."

In addition to his mental anguish, Krone said he sued state agencies for the physical pain and suffering he endured. He said he was stabbed, had his arm broken and contracted hepatitis C while in Arizona prisons.

Neither the city nor county admitted wrongdoing in settling, lawyers in the case said.

Krone won't see all the $4.4 million from the lawsuit. He said some of the money will go to his parents, who spent upward of $300,000 and mortgaged their home to pay for his defense. Krone said he also owes around $500,000 in attorney fees.

Also this year, Krone got a new look from the ABC reality show Extreme Makeover. Once dubbed the "snaggletooth killer" for his crooked smile, Krone, 48, now flashes a straight row of pearly whites.

He lives in Dover Township, Pa., near his family. He's spent the past few years traveling, speaking out against the death penalty and advocating DNA testing. He serves on the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons.

<#==#>

you certainly cant count on the police to tell you the truth!!!

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0928katrina-legends28.html

Rapes, murders likely exaggerated

Michelle Roberts

Associated Press

Sept. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

NEW ORLEANS - On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."

Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

The ugliest reports - children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement - soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.

But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.

Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.

To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine.

Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun.

A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans quoted an Arkansas National Guardsman as saying that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.

Lt. Col. John Edwards, the staff judge advocate for the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard, said Tuesday that Brooks told the Times-Picayune reporter only that he had heard rumors of bodies in the freezer, not that he had actually seen them.

"We have never found anybody who has any first-hand knowledge of dozens of bodies in the refrigerator," Edwards said. He said Brooks was unavailable for comment.

Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape.

New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape.

Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0928taser28.html

Taser set to change marketing, state says

Firm discloses federal inquiry

Robert Anglen

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

On the same day Taser International confirmed federal regulators are investigating the company, Arizona's attorney general said the stun gun manufacturer has agreed to change the way it markets its gun.

Attorney General Terry Goddard's office said Tuesday that Taser has offered to increase product warnings, change some of its broad claims of safety and limit the use of the word "non-lethal."

"Our primary concern has been Taser's safety claims that we felt may have understated the risks of serious harm," Goddard said in a statement to The Arizona Republic. "We are encouraged that the company has agreed to make many changes that reduce or qualify these claims. We are now reviewing these proposed changes."

Scottsdale-based Taser has armed nearly a fifth of America's law enforcement agencies with the electric stun guns. Company officials contacted Tuesday said they did not wish to comment on the marketing changes or on any meetings with Goddard's office.

His office has been looking into Taser's safety claims since January, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was launching an informal inquiry into Taser's safety claims and into a sale last year that bolstered company earnings at the end of the quarter.

On Tuesday, Taser disclosed that the SEC had turned its informal inquiry into an investigation that will give federal regulators subpoena powers.

Taser has known about the investigation for a least a week. It disclosed the probe in a news release after being questioned Monday by The Republic. Taser's disclosure had an immediate impact on Taser stocks, sending the price of shares to their lowest level since November 2003.

Taser Chief Executive Officer Rick Smith said Tuesday that the company will cooperate with federal regulators.

"We recognize that this has been a difficult process for our employees and shareholders," Smith said in a prepared statement. "We continue to make all efforts to assist the SEC in completing their investigation as expeditiously as possible."

Smith also said the SEC is expanding its investigation, examining the possibility that internal documents have been leaked to unspecified parties in an attempt to manipulate Taser's stock price.

"We are hopeful that the expanded SEC investigation will address all pertinent issues," Smith said.

For months, Taser officials have maintained that they did nothing wrong. In January, Smith predicted the federal inquiry would come out in the company's favor.

The SEC's action is the latest challenge for the company, which has seen sales of its popular stun gun slow this year after a number of deaths that left police agencies across the country rethinking Taser purchases and, in some cases, taking the gun off the street.

Goddard's office said Taser's proposed marketing changes include an 18-point "product warning" that stresses the Taser should be used only by trained individuals and acknowledges the gun's potential danger.

In a memo to Goddard's office, Taser agreed to change the ways it promotes its gun in both training materials and on its Web site. Among those changes:

• Minimizing the use of the term "non-lethal" to describe the weapon. As part of its proposal, Taser also has agreed to include a disclaimer that the company is taking the term "non-lethal" from the Department of Defense and does not mean the weapon can't be fatal.

• Acknowledging much more prominently that the stun gun can be dangerous.

• Changing the way it uses the term "safe." A description that describes the stun gun as a "safer, effective device" will be changed to "safer use-of-force alternative."

• Limiting medical claims. Materials that say "medical experts confirm Taser is safe" will be changed to "medical experts confirming the lifesaving value of Taser technology."

• Changing descriptions that suggest Taser is harmless. Materials that say Tasers "leave no lasting after-affects" will be changed to "are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options."

One of Taser's chief critics, Amnesty International, said the changes suggest more scrutiny is being given to the firm.

"Amnesty has long held that there have been a number of very serious questions about the safety of this product that remain unanswered," Amnesty spokesman Edward Jackson said. "Now, it seems like the tide is turning and more and more credible bodies are weighing in on the issue."

Jackson said he is concerned that changes to Taser's marketing should have been made long before the weapon was put into the hands of police officers.

A Taser, which resembles a plastic gun, uses electricity to override the nervous system and incapacitate a suspect.

It normally works by firing two darts from distances of up to 21 feet.

Although the company has repeatedly said its stun guns have never caused a death or serious injury, The Republic has linked them to 18 deaths and to the injuries of several police officers. The officers say the injuries occurred when they were shocked during mandatory training exercises.

Since 1999, there have been at least 144 deaths following police Taser strikes in the United States and Canada.

Of those, medical examiners cited Tasers as a cause of death in four cases and a contributing factor in 10 others. In four other cases, medical examiners said Taser could not be ruled out as a cause of death.

Taser has gone from a family business to the nation's largest supplier of stun guns. It has armed nearly 8,000 U.S. police agencies with Tasers and has made millions for investors.

But news of the initial SEC inquiry caused stock prices to drop in January and resulted in a flurry of shareholder lawsuits.

Last year, Taser stock rose 361 percent and split three times, peaking in November at more than $30 a share.

On Tuesday, stock prices fell to $6.35.

When the SEC inquiry was first announced, Taser President Tom Smith said regulators questioned the release of a statement in 2004 touting an independent Defense Department study that purportedly found Tasers were safe.

Taser's statement seemed to increase stock prices just before executives and directors sold $68 million in shares in November.

When the full Defense Department study was released this year, it was revealed that Taser was involved in nearly every aspect of the study, raising questions about its independence. In addition, government researchers involved in the study said they never looked at safety.

Smith said the SEC was also looking into the sale of 1,000 consumer model stun guns to a Prescott firearms company. Taser announced the sale on Dec. 20, just 11 days before the end of Taser's quarter. The sale appeared to help the company meet its projected earnings.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0928roberts28.html

Homeowners beware: Crooks spraying weeds

Sept. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

Attention fellow citizens: There is danger among us, a menace that lurks not in the mean streets but in our front yards. A pair of killers who operate in broad daylight, wielding their weapon of choice right there before God, country and the crab grass.

Fortunately, the state of Arizona has tamed these outlaws, ripping the instrument of destruction out of their hands and in so doing sending a message to other lawless sorts who may be lurking in the brush.

To wit: Drop the Roundup and Back Away from the Weeds.

Now, however, the guys with the weed killer are fighting back. Today, the Institute for Justice plans to sue the state on their behalf. Its attorneys say regulators are not so much looking out for the public as for the big pest control companies, the ones looking to corner the market on weeds.

The instigators of all this trouble are Gary Rissmiller and Larry Park, both of Tucson. Rissmiller owns his own landscaping company, one he built literally from the trunk of his car. Park is groundskeeper for a retirement community in Marana.

Between them, the two men have better than four decades of experience trimming bushes, mowing grass and, yes, dispatching weeds. Illegally, as it turns out.

Last year, both men were popped by state investigators, cited for using Surflan and Roundup without the proper array of state licenses issued by the Structural Pest Control Commission.

You remember the commission, that intrepid agency that zeroed in on a 17-year-old last year after he launched a business covering vents to keep roof rats out of his neighbor's houses. After the story got out, the commission decided the kid didn't need a license after all. These days, the agency is onto more serious threats. Like weeds.

So what, you might ask, does killing weeds have to do with pest control?

Well, for those who don't appreciate the excruciating art of bureaucratese, a weed is a pest and as such comes under the ever-watchful eye of the Structural Pest Control Commission. Under the law, a person cannot kill any but his own weeds unless he has a qualifying party license, an applicator's license and a Pest Control business license. And only then, if said person actually owns and occupies the land on which said weeds appear.

Folks, I don't make this stuff up.

Lisa Gervase, the commission's executive director, says it's for the public's protection. "It goes back many years ago, way before my time," she said. "The Legislature required licensing for anyone using pesticides and the basis for that would most likely be to protect the health of people as well as pets and the environment."

It used to be that there were exemptions in the licensing law for gardeners, landlords and renters. But those exemptions were eliminated in 2003, making it illegal for any but the holder of that trio of licenses to squirt weed killer that any 12-year-old can buy at Wal-Mart.

Park has an applicator's license, which requires knowledge of herbicide use. To get a qualifying party license, he'd have to spend 18 months spraying weeds full time for a firm that has a qualifying party. In other words: a big pest control company.

"The only way I can get 3,000 hours of spray time is to quit landscaping and go to work for a pest control company," he said.

Which is possibly the point. Oh, not so much to get him to quit his job, but to get him and all the mom-and-pop landscapers like him to quit spraying Roundup.

Or else says the state, making me wonder if weeds are really the pests we should be worrying about.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8635.

<#==#>

i didnt grab this on my own. jim a new yorker placed it on the arizona libertarian listserver

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

The Times September 27, 2005

The Times

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

<#==#>

why is the city of phoenix giving our money to the state of  arizona???????

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0929phxbond.html

ASU, UA vying for city funds

Phoenix panel can't satisfy both

Ginger D. Richardson

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

Arizona State University wants $198 million in funding for a new downtown Phoenix campus.

The University of Arizona is asking for $90 million for a new building for its downtown medical school.

There isn't money for both.

A panel of Phoenix residents will decide who gets how much in the city's upcoming $850 million bond program, a process that is billed as completely citizen-driven. But in many ways, the volunteers' ability to make a truly impartial decision has already been compromised.

The city determined how much money the Education Subcommittee would have to dole out among all the applicants who submitted proposals. The pool that the subcommittee was given came to $198 million - the same amount ASU wants.

Combine that with the tremendous publicity the ASU proposal has received, and subcommittee members say they are feeling the heat.

"I found out what we had to work with at the kickoff meeting," member Michelle Frediani said. "It is pretty coincidental, and it's obvious that ASU is the 800-pound gorilla."

The Education Subcommittee is only one of about a dozen panels weighing hundreds of proposals for eventual inclusion in Phoenix's massive bond issue. The program, which will go before voters in March, is funded by secondary property tax dollars. Passage of the program will not result in a change in Phoenix's overall tax rate.

In many ways, the real challenge isn't getting the bond proposal approved at the polls: Phoenix residents have historically been generous in that area, passing $2.7 billion of the $2.9 billion in projects put to them since the 1950s. The true battle occurs earlier, when groups lobby the citizen committees that will dole out the money.

And in no place is that more evident than the Education Subcommittee. The panel has $332 million in proposed projects before it. Fully funding ASU would leave no money for anything else. Not funding the ASU project would seriously impact the university's ability to move forward with its campus plans, which call for as many as 15,000 students in downtown by 2015.

"This cannot go forward at any level of funding but this," ASU President Michael Crow said. "It's a must-have."

The panel's task was no doubt made more difficult Wednesday when the University of Arizona made a pitch for $90 million in funding so that it could seat more students at its planned Phoenix medical school.

In July 2007, the university will begin holding classes at the old Phoenix Union High School campus between Fifth and Seventh streets, north of Van Buren Street.

But the buildings have enough room only for two classes, of 24 students each.

"Take a look at this, don't blow this off," Councilwoman Peggy Bilsten said of the UA proposal. Later, she added: "It shouldn't be a given that ASU is going to get all the money."

Several other groups are asking for help. The Arizona School for the Arts wants to build new classroom space. The city hopes to help finance the renovation of the old Phoenix Union High School Auditorium building.

Mernoy Harrison, vice president and provost of the ASU downtown Phoenix campus, admits to feeling uneasy but remains optimistic.

Marty Shultz, chairman of the Education Subcommittee, said he doesn't feel pressure to approve the ASU proposal although he admits that it is "an obvious priority." Other panel members said the pressure is real.

<#==#>

the stupid drug war now targets diabetic kids in schools?????

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0929evschoolsuit29.html

Tempe Union district sued over diabetic-tester ban

Geri Koeppel

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday on behalf of a diabetic student at Mountain Pointe High School in Ahwatukee who was told he could not carry his glucose testing equipment on campus.

Alex Lagman, 17, of Chandler, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes on his 12th birthday and has been self-monitoring his blood sugar using small lancets to prick his finger four to 10 times a day. The Arizona Center for Disability Law filed the suit against Tempe Union High School District in federal court on his behalf.

The school wants Alex to visit the nurse's office for testing, said his father, Bruce Lagman. But that's not practical, he said, because if his son's blood sugar is very low he might not make it without passing out. Also, he said, the nurse is not always available, and the trips would cause his son to miss class.

There can be long-term risks, too, if blood sugar gets too high or low, Lagman added.

School district officials refused to answer questions about Lagman or whether this policy is being applied to other diabetic students.

Shereen Arent, managing director of legal advocacy with the American Diabetes Association, said it's a major issue.

"We see families having problems with diabetes care in school," she said.

The trouble is often resolved with education and negotiation with schools before it gets to court, Arent said.

John Wright, president of the Arizona Education Association, said students' needs should be examined on a case-by-case basis. "I think what we have in a very-well intentioned manner is a blanket policy that's being applied that doesn't meet the standards of common sense."

Lagman said Mountain Pointe Principal Brenda Mayberry called his son into the office Sept. 7 after someone turned in Alex's emergency backup pack, which includes lancets and injectable needles.

He accidentally left the kit in his locker at the end of the school year in May and someone found it there in August when school resumed, Lagman said.

"I forgot the combination," Alex said. "I knew there was nothing in there, and I was wrong."

Leaving the needles in the locker was a mistake, Alex said, but added: "Carrying around my tester could save my life."

After confiscating his tester, the school called his mother, Liz Lagman, to say he wasn't allowed to have lancets on campus.

"My wife went down to the school and said she wasn't going to allow our son to stay in school without a tester because it's not safe," Lagman said.

Jerri Katzerman, attorney for the Arizona Center for Disability Law, said the school told the Lagman family there is a district policy against needles on campus, but has not produced the document.

Janet Seegren, assistant superintendent for human resources at the district, said they couldn't comment on the incident or the lawsuit. She referred to a policy on the district Web site, but it didn't address needles or lancets.

The Arizona Department of Education does not set guidelines on bringing diabetes kits to schools but leaves it up to individual districts, said project program specialist Melanie Ragone.

Even if there is a policy, Katzerman added, a district must make accommodations.

Alex has continued to attend school and carry his testing kit. Teachers have been supportive and said they'd "look the other way" when Alex had to use his tester, his father said.

"I just think it's kind of awkward," Alex said. "It's almost like I'm hiding in a corner.

"I don't think I should get in trouble for trying to live healthier."

<#==#>

isnt that nice. the govenrment is allowing people to enter their own homes??? i guess the government thinks it owns your home

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0929neworleans29.html

Returning evacuees find bodies of La. loved ones

Shaila Dewan

New York Times

Sept. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

BATON ROUGE, La. - A few residents returning to their homes in this devastated region have found the bodies of their loved ones, even in houses that have been searched and marked, and the state emergency medical director warned Wednesday that more families could be in for similar shocks.

Dr. Louis Cataldie, medical director for emergency response, made his remarks after a news conference about the effort to retrieve and identify bodies, saying he had arranged for a rapid response if families called 911.

Four bodies were found Wednesday in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans.

"I'm very concerned about people going back to their homes," Cataldie said. The statement came just before Mayor Ray Nagin laid out plans to open most of New Orleans to residents over the next week.

Speaking to state legislators at the Capitol, Nagin said residents will be allowed to return to all neighborhoods except the Lower Ninth Ward, which he said is still flooded.

They will be allowed to inspect their property or, if they want, to stay in the city, he said.

Officials said it was inevitable that a few returning residents would face not only the trauma of seeing their homes and possessions destroyed, but also the bodies of family members.

Although search-and-rescue teams from various law enforcement agencies have done grid searches, they entered homes only if there was reason to believe that they might find a living person or human remains, Cataldie said.

Dr. Bryan Bertucci, coroner in St. Bernard Parish, which was opened to residents on Saturday, said that even in houses that had been entered, conditions might have prevented a thorough search.

"I've been in my own house five times, and I still can't get into the bathroom," Bertucci said.

In many rooms at St. Rita's nursing home, where 32 died, he said, "if you looked in the room numerous times, you wouldn't know somebody was there unless you moved furniture around."

Bertucci said that three of the four bodies found Wednesday had been discovered by families or friends.

In the fourth case, the family was on its way home but called ahead to report that they had not heard from one relative. Kenyon Worldwide Disaster Management, which has been contracted to retrieve bodies, was able to find and remove the body before the family arrived.

"All of us felt that this would be the worst scenario that could happen, and it is happening," Bertucci said.

"People are coming back to find their loved ones."

<#==#>

you can always trust the govenment to protect you?? yea sure!!!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0929rita29.html

Heat, crowd shut relief center early

FEMA officials weren't ready for the 1,500 in line

Juan A. Lozano

Associated Press

Sept. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

HOUSTON - Saying they were caught off-guard by the number of people in need, FEMA officials closed a relief center early Wednesday after some of the hundreds of hurricane victims in line began fainting in triple-digit heat.

The midday closing of the Houston disaster relief center came as officials in areas hit hardest by Hurricane Rita criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the storm, with one calling for a commission to examine the emergency response.

Across southeastern Texas, FEMA delivered ice, water and packaged meals to residents who rode out last week's hurricane, which blew ashore at Sabine Pass in eastern Texas early Saturday.

But the agency was not ready for the roughly 1,500 people displaced by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina who sought help at the Houston center when it reopened Wednesday.

The center, offering help from a variety government and private organizations, initially opened for Katrina refugees. It closed last week when Houston was evacuated before Rita.

The line started forming Tuesday night, and as temperatures reached record highs, some people fainted and had to be carried off by police and other refugees.

FEMA spokesman Justin Dombrowski said the agency closed the center for the day because of the heat and the unexpectedly large crowds. Those already in line were allowed to enter.

FEMA said it would reopen the center this morning and keep it operating into the evening seven days a week. .

Frances Deculus, 65, of Beaumont, got in line at 3 a.m. and emerged shortly before the center shut down. She said that all she was able to do was register for FEMA assistance and that she will have to return to actually get any help.

"We don't know what to do. It's frustrating. We have five small children," said Deculus, who is staying in a Houston hotel with 12 other relatives.

Local officials, including Port Arthur Mayor Oscar Ortiz and Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith, whose county includes Beaumont, said FEMA's response has been inadequate.

FEMA spokesman Ross Fredenburg in Austin said communications between Austin and rural eastern Texas have been troubled, in part because of power problems. But he said FEMA had set up 27 distribution points in 27 southeastern Texas cities.

"I don't know what could have been done better since the materials were in place before the hurricane," Fredenburg said. "We're doing everything we can to get water and ice to whomever remains."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, issued an emergency order allowing the utility Entergy to immediately erect temporary lines and plug into the Houston area's power supply to get electricity flowing.

But it could take three to four weeks to restore power to those areas of southeastern Texas where nearly all transmission lines are down and homes are so damaged they can't safely receive electricity, said Paul Hudson, chairman of the state's Public Utility Commission.

Ortiz said he expects to allow residents back into Port Arthur by the weekend, even though as of Wednesday, the industrial town of about 58,000 had no power, water or sewer service. Ortiz said it could take three to five weeks to fully restore electricity.

<#==#>

when cops are accused of looting bring up the question of "what is looting" like clinton brough up the questions of what is sex.

clinton said that even though monica had her mouth and hands around his thing and that monica helped clinton ejaculate on her blouse that wasnt really sex. these new orleans cops say they were not looting because they were only stealing useful items such as food and jeans and not stealing luxuries such as jewelry.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0930neworleans30.html

Police accused of looting

Officials launch investigation in New Orleans

Adam Nossiter

Associated Press

Sept. 30, 2005 12:00 AM

NEW ORLEANS - The Police Department said Thursday that it is investigating a dozen officers in connection with looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 923 on Thursday, up from 896 the day before, the state health department said.

News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, at the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses, including a Times-Picayune reporter, said police were taking items from shelves.

"Once we actually got the video, we started our investigation," acting Police Superintendent Warren Riley said at a news conference. "The investigation does in fact show police officers with some items."

Of the 12 officers under investigation, four have already been suspended for failing to stop looting, Riley said.

"It was not clear that they in fact looted," Riley said of the four suspended officers. "What is clear is that some action needed to be taken and it was not."

Looting exceptions

Riley drew a distinction between taking useful items such as food and jeans, which he contended didn't amount to looting in a crisis, and taking luxuries such as jewelry.

He said incidents in which officers took Cadillacs from a dealer's lot were not looting because the officers patrolled in the cars.

Earlier this week, the city's police superintendent, Eddie Compass, resigned after weeks of criticism about the department's conduct during Katrina and its aftermath. On the same day, the department said about 250 police officers could face discipline for leaving their posts without permission during the crisis.

Meanwhile, business owners started streaming back into newly reopened sections of the city Thursday morning at Mayor Ray Nagin's invitation, some vowing to rebuild, some saying they were pulling out.

The areas thrown open to business owners were: the French Quarter; the central business district; and the Uptown section, which includes the Garden District, a leafy neighborhood of antebellum and Victorian mansions. The neighborhoods escaped major flooding during Katrina.

Under the mayor's plan, residents of those neighborhoods will be allowed to return today, a move that could bring back about one-third of the city's half-million inhabitants.

At Igor's, a pub and coin laundry in the Garden District, owner Halina Margan returned after Katrina and never left, despite Hurricane Rita's threat last week. She was ready to open for business on Thursday.

"It's lonely here. We need people," she said.

The mayor is pushing aggressively to reopen the city despite concerns raised by state and federal officials.

Serious health hazards remain because of bacteria-laden floodwaters, a lack of drinkable water and a sewage system that still does not work, said Stephen L. Johnson, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Federal officials said it would take at least another year to clean up all the hurricane debris in Louisiana.

<#==#>

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cia30sep30,0,4417604.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews

September 30, 2005

Italy Seeks Former U.S. Diplomat in Kidnapping

The warrant links an imam's abduction to the Rome embassy. A total of 22 people are sought.

By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer

ROME — Italian authorities have ordered the arrests of a former U.S. Embassy official here and two other people in connection with a "rendition" case in which CIA operatives allegedly kidnapped a radical Muslim cleric from Milan and flew him to Egypt, where, he has said, he was tortured.

The new arrest warrants bring to 22 the number of people sought on suspicion of planning and executing the plot and apparently are the first direct connection to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. U.S. intelligence officials in Washington, though refusing to acknowledge the operation publicly, have sought to portray it as conducted by the spy-world equivalent of contractors.

The warrants were signed by a judge this week in response to a petition from prosecutors Armando Spataro and Ferdinando Pomarici, an Italian judicial official said Thursday. Details are contained in court documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

As with earlier orders in the same case, the named Americans are believed to have long since departed Italy, and no arrests appeared imminent.

An imam known as Abu Omar was seized in February 2003 in a so-called extraordinary rendition, a controversial practice in which the U.S. snatches suspected terrorists and transports them to other countries without judicial permission.

Italy, however, stunned Washington during the summer by attempting to prosecute 19 people, including a man identified in arrest warrants as the former CIA station chief in Milan, who are alleged to have taken part in the abduction. It is believed to be the first time that an ally has attempted to bring U.S. operatives to justice in such a case.

Italian investigators said their review of telephone traffic among those who abducted the imam in Milan 2 1/2 years ago led them to the former U.S. Embassy employee. She is believed to have made or received a number of calls aimed at coordinating and organizing the abduction and to have participated directly in the operation, according to papers filed in court by prosecutors.

Investigators found evidence that she checked into a Milan hotel 24 days before the kidnapping and traveled with the other suspects to the U.S.-run Aviano Air Base in northern Italy, where Abu Omar was bundled onto a private jet bound for Egypt via the U.S. military's Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Italian prosecutors said.

The prosecutors maintain that the participation of the woman is especially egregious given the diplomatic position she held at the embassy. According to public records, she served in the U.S. Embassy in Rome until this year, when she was transferred to Latin America.

The Italian court file does not identify her as a CIA officer, though previous Italian court documents have said the team of agents worked under the former CIA station chief in Milan.

The Times is not naming the former Rome embassy official. The paper generally avoids naming undercover intelligence operatives unless their names are put into public record.

CIA officers often work overseas as U.S. Embassy officials with the status of diplomats, even though they do not work for the State Department.

Asked whether the former embassy employee was a CIA officer, agency spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise said: "We are not going to comment on this story."

Efforts to speak to the former Rome embassy worker at her posting in Latin America were not successful. In a brief conversation, a person answering the phone initially identified herself as the woman; when told she was speaking to a reporter, however, she immediately said she had no idea who the woman was and refused to respond further.

At the request of the prosecutors, Italian police asked the domestic secret service to detain her in March, but the agency reported that it could not find her, the court documents state.

In Rome, the U.S. Embassy said it had no comment on the matter, the position it has taken since the scandal erupted early this year.

Two men are also named in the new warrants, but those names appear to be aliases.

The imam's suspected captors appear to have been sloppy, leaving behind copies of their passports and credit card numbers and speaking openly on cellphones that can be easily tracked by law enforcement officers, which is how Italian authorities identified their suspects and built their case.

The names of the former embassy official and the former Milan station chief thus far are the only apparently authentic names to have emerged in the investigation.

The former station chief named was Robert Seldon Lady, who has since retired. Lady, a 51-year-old American born in Honduras, served in the Milan consulate and, by Italian accounts, directed Abu Omar's abduction and transfer to Egypt. His name has been widely reported in connection with this case.

When he vanished, the Egyptian-born Abu Omar, whose real name is Hassan Osama Nasr and who had been granted political asylum by Italy, was being investigated by Italian police, who suspected him of organizing a network of Islamic fighters being dispatched to Iraq. Italian authorities were furious at the Americans for allegedly snatching him under their nose, contending that it hurt their broader efforts to prosecute terrorism cases.

Abu Omar eventually was able to make contact with his wife in Milan, whom he telephoned during a brief period out of prison. He told her he had been tortured and beaten. Italian authorities believe that Lady was present in Egypt at the time and may have known what was happening.

At last report, Abu Omar remained jailed in Egypt without charge. He has told associates that Egyptian authorities tried to persuade him to spy on Islamic radicals for them, but he refused.

Since retiring, Lady has bought a home near the northern Italian city of Turin. Italian police raided the home in June after the first warrants were executed.

New details emerged in court papers this week about what the inspectors found in the raid. In addition to a surveillance photo of Abu Omar taken a month before his disappearance, police found on Lady's computer hard disk information indicating he traveled to Cairo four days after the abduction last year. He left Cairo on March 7. Investigators also discovered research for determining the best way to travel from Milan to the Aviano base.

The decision of the Italian judiciary to attempt to prosecute alleged CIA operatives was previously unheard of in the world of renditions, a tactic in which the U.S. government sends suspected terrorists to nations that use coercive interrogation methods that would not be available otherwise. The practice, which has grown in use since the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., has been denounced as illegal by human rights groups.

Italy's judiciary is highly independent of the central government of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch ally of the Bush administration. He has denied advance knowledge of the Abu Omar capture. But many Italians presume that the government secretly approved the operation, and former agents in the U.S. have also said it could not have been conducted without official Italian permission. Thinking they had Italian government approval may also explain the evidently reckless nature of the actions by the purported CIA operatives.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this report.

<#==#>

i bet this will make a lot of hardend cons cry. why did the idiot let his ammo get wet????

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/95734

Updated: Undercover narcotics officer uninjured after shooting on Northwest side

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Detectives all across the city are searching for two suspects who tried to kill a DPS officer early this morning, police officials said.

Detectives from the Counter Narcotics Alliance have been investigating a group of drug traffickers for the past 24 hours. The case started with a kidnapping, and the adult victim of that kidnapping has not yet been found, said Capt. Brett Klein, the Tucson Police Department's chief of staff.

While the DPS officer was in a truck conducting surveillance at a house near North Silverbell Road and West Sweetwater Drive, a man surprised him at the window. The man said something to the effect of, “I know you’re a cop.” Then he put a gun to the officer’s head and pulled the trigger twice, Klein said.

The officer heard two clicks, but the gun didn’t fire. Police officials are saying he is lucky to be alive. The officer bailed out of his truck and fired back and he and the man engaged in a gun battle, shooting over and around the truck.

The officer ran into the desert seeking cover and the man took off in his truck.

Police found the truck not too far from the shooting scene around 8:25 a.m. Friday.

Police are not releasing any information about the suspects, but say they are violent and dangerous criminals who are connected to drug trafficking and Thursday's kidnapping.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety officer was working with the Counter Narcotics Alliance at the time of the shooting. The Tucson Police Department is investigating.

<#==#>

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95682.php

Cops kill subject of domestic violence call

Jim Johnston

By Becky Pallack

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

In the middle of the night, a usually quiet and loving family faced a suddenly volatile situation.

Miguel Angel Kovrig, 40, was drunk, angry and violent, his daughter quietly told a 911 dispatcher. He had slapped her mother and then left the house.

When he returned, neighbors told police he was waving a handgun and making threats to hurt his family. Minutes later, he was dead, killed by two Tucson Police Department officers who said he wouldn't obey their commands to put down the weapon.

The shooting, in the 700 block of West Harlan Street, near South 12th Avenue and West Los Reales Road, marked the fourth time this year that a Tucson Police officer has fatally shot someone, said Sgt. Mark Robinson, an agency spokesman. It was the third related to domestic violence.

Department officials are reviewing the case but say it was a dangerous situation that seemed to escalate with their presence. Officers focused on making the situation safer had to use deadly force, they said.

For the Kovrig family, it is the second violent death in a year's time. It was just Saturday when the family gathered to say a rosary on the anniversary of the killing of Kovrig's nephew. They are again left with a question that may not have an answer: Why did this have to happen?

Family fight ends in death

Miguel Kovrig worked hard in his business. He was proud to own his own dump truck and liked to take hauling jobs and other handyman work.

When Martha Kovrig saw that her husband was drunk and angry around 2:30 a.m., she told her 13-year-old daughter to call police, she said. Miguel Kovrig had slapped her face, she said.

The girl told police her father was drinking and arguing with her mother, but Robinson said someone took the phone away from her.

By the time police called back, Miguel Kovrig had left the home and Martha Kovrig felt like she had control of the situation, she said. A dispatcher called to ask if she was OK and said an officer would come by to check on her when time allowed.

An hour later, police received a second call from a neighbor, who said Kovrig had returned home and was in the street waving a gun. The caller told police that Kovrig had threatened to shoot his family if anyone called the authorities, Robinson said.

In front of the house, three police officers confronted the armed man and ordered him to drop the gun, commanding him in English and in Spanish, Robinson said. Kovrig's wife and 18-year-old son were yelling that the gun was not loaded and that the fighting should stop, Kovrig said.

But when Kovrig refused to put down the gun, two officers fired, fatally wounding Kovrig. He died at the scene.

The officers are Jim Johnston, 33, a seven-year Tucson Police Department veteran, and Jeff Stover, 35, an 11-year veteran. They will be on paid leave until the department and prosecutors review the case, as is standard in officer-involved shootings.

Domestic violence calls stressful

This was the third time this year that a man has been shot to death by police following a domestic violence situation.

Domestic violence calls are very stressful for victims, suspects and police officers, Robinson said.

"They're very dangerous calls for the officers," he said. "They respond with the utmost caution."

Domestic violence charges mean mandatory jail time, with no police discretion, he said.

"The officers' main concern is to immediately secure the scene by de-escalating the violence and seeking medical treatment for anybody that's been injured, and then working to help people in these situations resolve their problems," Robinson said.

The Kovrigs, who were married for 23 years, liked to laugh and have a good time, Martha Kovrig said.

"He was a wonderful husband and a good dad except for the moments when he was drunk," she said. "He was so angry."

On Saturday, the couple attended a rosary for their nephew, Johnny Urquidez, who was shot to death in September 2004 when he was caught in a gunfight between his friend and another young man. The whole family gathered again Thursday to support Martha and her children, and to mourn the loss of Miguel Kovrig.

"He had a heart of gold," said Maria Kovrig, Miguel Kovrig's sister and Urquidez's mother. "We're all shocked."

She said police could have come up with another way to handle the family fight, but Robinson said other options are not appropriate for confronting a violent person armed with a gun.

The family is considering burying Kovrig next to Urquidez at the South Lawn Cemetery, Maria Kovrig said.

"I just hope that something positive comes out of this and they take some action against the officers that did this," she said.

Robinson said it has been hard on the officers involved and the detectives investigating the case, too. Police knew the family only in a short time charged with stress and violence. It's impossible for officers, he said, to know "the love and family life they've known for more than 20 years."

10 shootings by officers in '05

There have been 10 officer-involved shootings this year, including the four fatal shootings. By this time last year, there had been eight shootings, including two fatalities. The total number of officer-involved shootings last year was 11, including four fatalities.

One of the officers involved in the shooting Thursday has been disciplined several times throughout his 11 years at the Tucson Police Department.

Stover, who joined the police force in June 1994, was fired in 1996 after a grand jury indicted him on felony aggravated assault charges in a case in which Stover kicked and punched a restrained man during an arrest on the South Side following a high-speed chase.

Stover pleaded not guilty to the aggravated assault charge and the criminal case was dismissed. It was unclear Thursday how and when he returned to the force.

&#9679; Contact reporter Becky Pallack at 629-9412 or at bpallack@azstarnet.com.

<#==#>

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95627.php

A thorn to Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal for keeping as much as $85,000 in public campaign financing though he faces no opposition. Without a real campaign to deal with, Leal has invented one: He'll find a way "to help define and shape" the issues before the city, as he told the Daily Star's C.J. Karamargin.

It is especially distressing to hear this news the same week that Leal was held up as an example of what's right with Tucson's pioneering public campaign financing system. The praise came in a Guest Column for the Star by former Mayor Tom Volgy, a champion of the public campaign financing law, who credits the system with helping people get elected even if they don't have access to wealthy donors.

Now, his own pockets deep with public money, Leal's risible justification for keeping the cash makes a mockery of the system.

There are better uses for $85,000 from the city general fund - say, starting up a registry of pseudoephedrine buyers at pharmacies to help track meth manufacturing, or restoring cuts from this year's $1 billion city budget in recreation programs and other services to children and families.

SNIP

- D.J.

<#==#>

New Orleans cops say it is ok for the police to steal stuff as long as they dont steal luxuries. Don't your will us normal citizens got such sweat deals.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95664.php

12 cops are investigated in New Orleans looting

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW ORLEANS - The Police Department said Thursday that it is investigating a dozen officers in connection with looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Hurricane Katrina.

News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, at the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses, including a Times-Picayune reporter, said police were taking items from shelves.

"Once we actually got the video, we started our investigation," acting Police Superintendent Warren Riley said at a news conference. "The investigation does in fact show police officers with some items."

Of the 12 officers under investigation, four already have been suspended for failing to stop looting, Riley said.

"It was not clear that they in fact looted," Riley said of the four suspended officers. "What is clear is that some action needed to be taken, and it was not."

Riley drew a distinction between taking useful items such as food and jeans, which he contended didn't amount to looting in a crisis, and taking luxuries such as jewelry.

He said incidents in which officers took Cadillacs from a dealer's lot were not looting because the officers patrolled in the cars.

Earlier this week, the city's police superintendent, Eddie Compass, resigned after weeks of criticism about the department's conduct during Katrina and its aftermath. On the same day, the department said about 250 police officers could face discipline for leaving their posts without permission during the crisis.

Meanwhile, business owners started streaming back into newly reopened sections of the city Thursday morning at Mayor Ray Nagin's invitation, some vowing to rebuild, some saying they were pulling out.

The areas thrown open to business owners were the French Quarter, the central business district and the Uptown section, which includes the Garden District, a leafy neighborhood of antebellum and Victorian mansions. The neighborhoods escaped major flooding during Katrina.

<#==#>

It always amazes when people are so stuck up that they thing humans are the only organisms on the planet who can use tools. These people think that all the other species are simply too dumb to use tools. And that us humans are the only enlightened things that are capable of using tools.

I think a lot of this comes from religion. I know when I was in catholic school they taught us rubbish like that. Something to the effect that god put all the other things on the planet there for the use of us humans.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95671.php

African insight is called 'truly astounding'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

For the first time, biologists have documented gorillas in the wild using simple tools, such as poking a stick into water to check its depth.

Until now, scientists had seen gorillas use tools only in captivity. Among great apes, tool use in the wild was thought to be a survival skill reserved for smaller chimpanzees and orangutans.

The research in the Republic of Congo's rain forests was led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, which released details of his study. Breuer is in Africa and was not immediately available for an interview.

"This is a truly astounding discovery," he said in a statement. "Tool usage in wild apes provides us with valuable insights into the evolution of our own species and the abilities of other species."

Other scientists said the observations were important but not surprising.

Breuer's observations were made late last year in a marshy clearing in Nouabal De-Ndoki National Park, where monitoring has been ongoing since February 1995.

The first instance was observed last October when a female gorilla, nicknamed Leah, attempted to wade through a pool of water created by elephants, but found herself waist- deep after only a few steps. Climbing out of the pool, she retrieved a branch from a dead tree and used the stick to test the depth of the water.

In November, a second female gorilla, named Efi, used a detached tree trunk to support herself with one hand while digging for herbs with the other hand. She also used the tree trunk as a bridge to cross a muddy patch of ground.

Fairly or not, gorillas have been considered less capable than other great apes, in part because they have not been as extensively studied.

<#==#>

religious police thugs or just your normal run of the mill police thugs?

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1001b1-talker01.html

Goddard asks U.S. help with Colo. City police

Oct. 1, 2005 12:00 AM

Arizona's attorney general is asking for a federal civil rights review of the police department in Colorado City, saying officers there are acting as agents of a polygamous church instead of serving the law.

Terry Goddard said many complaints from other law enforcement officials and citizens prompted him to ask U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to have the Justice Department conduct a preliminary inquiry, a step that could lead to a formal investigation and possible legal action.

"I believe that the officers of the Colorado City Police Department have engaged in a pattern of practices of conduct that deprives individuals of their constitutional and civil rights," Goddard wrote in a letter to Gonzales.

The state has moved to strip some of those police officers of their law enforcement certification in the isolated town on the Arizona-Utah line, where most of the residents belong to a Mormon sect headed by self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs.

Colorado City Police Chief Fred Barlow did not return a call for comment Friday.

But Gary Engels, special investigator for the Mohave County attorney, whose work over the past eight months has led to indictments of Jeffs and eight other leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said a federal investigation would be welcome news.

"I think it is a darn good idea," Engels said.

- Staff and wire reports

<#==#>

Pima county spending $66,000 to solve a $50,000 problem. dont think of it as wasted money but as a jobs program for high paid cops.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95808.php

Clogging the system: County plans to hire sewer sleuth to ID dumpers

By Erica Meltzer

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Engine blocks and bowling equipment don't belong in the sewers.

If this is news to you, watch out.

Pima County plans to hire an investigator to track down the people who would rather dump their bulky trash in the sewers than take it to the landfill.

Like any law enforcement officer, the investigator will carry a badge and a gun and have the authority to arrest violators.

Illegal dumping in the sewers accounts for a third of all sewer overflows, said Mike Bunch, deputy director of conveyance and development services at Pima County's Wastewater Management Department.

At least twice a month, workers pull unlikely items from the sewers, among them beer kegs, an entire load of landscaping waste, engine blocks and equipment from a bowling alley.

"If it can fit down a manhole cover, we've seen it," Bunch said.

Cleaning up after illegal dumping in the sewers costs the county at least $50,000 a year in labor and chemicals, Bunch said.

More important, trash that doesn't belong in the sewers blocks the pipes, causing overflows.

That exposes the public to the dangers of raw sewage and the county to the additional cost of large fines, Bunch said.

That's why the wastewater department is prepared to pay $66,000 a year for an investigator who will work out of the County Attorney's Office and hunt down violators.

"We're going to hold accountable the people who are damaging our sewer system and endangering the public health and safety," Bunch said.

The County Board of Supervisors must approve the hiring at its meeting Tuesday, at 9 a.m., at 130 W. Congress St.

&#9679; Contact reporter Erica Meltzer at 807-7790 or emeltzer@azstarnet.com.

<#==#>

spending $66,000 to solve a $50,000 problem. dont think of it as government rulers wasting your money! think of it as a jobs program for over paid cops.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95808.php

Clogging the system: County plans to hire sewer sleuth to ID dumpers

By Erica Meltzer

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Engine blocks and bowling equipment don't belong in the sewers.

If this is news to you, watch out.

Pima County plans to hire an investigator to track down the people who would rather dump their bulky trash in the sewers than take it to the landfill.

Like any law enforcement officer, the investigator will carry a badge and a gun and have the authority to arrest violators.

Illegal dumping in the sewers accounts for a third of all sewer overflows, said Mike Bunch, deputy director of conveyance and development services at Pima County's Wastewater Management Department.

At least twice a month, workers pull unlikely items from the sewers, among them beer kegs, an entire load of landscaping waste, engine blocks and equipment from a bowling alley.

"If it can fit down a manhole cover, we've seen it," Bunch said.

Cleaning up after illegal dumping in the sewers costs the county at least $50,000 a year in labor and chemicals, Bunch said.

More important, trash that doesn't belong in the sewers blocks the pipes, causing overflows.

That exposes the public to the dangers of raw sewage and the county to the additional cost of large fines, Bunch said.

That's why the wastewater department is prepared to pay $66,000 a year for an investigator who will work out of the County Attorney's Office and hunt down violators.

"We're going to hold accountable the people who are damaging our sewer system and endangering the public health and safety," Bunch said.

The County Board of Supervisors must approve the hiring at its meeting Tuesday, at 9 a.m., at 130 W. Congress St.

&#9679; Contact reporter Erica Meltzer at 807-7790 or emeltzer@azstarnet.com.

<#==#>

i didnt know that bush has never vetoed anything.

i once read in some government propaganda published by the arizona house and senate that the really sucessfull politicians have to know how to compomise to get stuff passed. i guess in normal english that means that if you want somebody to vote for YOUR pork then you have to vote for THEIR pork. maybe thats what bush is doing. he doesnt veto their pork and they pass his pork?

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95780.php

My opinion Tony Snow: Time to pull presidency out of tailspin

George W. Bush must wonder what's next - a plague of locusts? Within the span of five weeks, he has faced political blowback from two hurricanes, attacks by swarming Democrats, a Supreme Court nomination semi-battle, a conservative rebellion against his profligate spending and the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Begin with the wimp factor. No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives. Nearly 57 months into his administration, Bush has yet to veto a single bill of any type. The only other presidents never to issue a veto - William Henry Harrison and James Garfield - died within months of taking office.

The budget has grown nearly 50 percent on his watch, and he is vying to become the most free-spending president ever. He has not asked Congress to rescind even a penny in profligate spending (even Bill Clinton requested more than $8 billion in rescissions).

When he drew a line in the sand earlier this year on transportation spending, Congress boldly appropriated an additional $30 billion. He approved the bill, effectively placing a "kick me" sign on his backside.

There's more. He infamously signed the campaign-finance-reform bill that has made a mess of national politics, hoping the courts would issue the veto for him. He defended himself against baseless charges of racism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by whimpering, "Guilty," during a nationally televised speech from Jackson Square in New Orleans.

This kind of behavior has given the impression that Bush is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor - now!

Harry Reid, who has routed tens of thousands of acres of federal lands to himself, his family and companies for which his children work, brashly complained of cronyism in post-Katrina federal contracting. Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed oil and gas price controls, even as oil prices were tumbling - and industry analysts were predicting $40 a barrel for oil in the foreseeable future.

It is almost as if Bush were playing rope-a-dope, waiting for his political opponents to render themselves permanently ridiculous. But all good things come to an end, and the tactic of waiting for Democrats to choke on their bile may have run its course.

World events since Sept. 11, 2001, let Bush define his presidency through vigorous and aggressive reaction - fighting a war on terror. Now, he must do something even more difficult. He must lead without having a crisis determine which issues he must address.

It all comes down to how he defines "compassionate conservatism." Does it mean he intends to spend like a Democrat and tax like a Republican or that he plans to unveil a free-market alternative to the cruel philosophy of welfare-state liberalism?

Does he believe conservative policies can do a better job of rooting out material and spiritual poverty or that limited-government conservatism is a flint-hearted scam?

Critics in both parties are forcing him to declare himself - Democrats assailing his left flank; Republicans blasting his right. The next four months will determine whether he will ignite a Bush Revolution in domestic policy or whether he has completed all his significant executive work.

His presidential report card shows that, with the exceptions of tax policy and judicial selections, he remains a domestic-policy cipher. It's now up to him to decide whether he will complete his term by earning an A an F or an incomplete.

Tony Snow, broadcast news host and nationally syndicated columnist, appears Saturdays in the Star. Contact him at tonysnow@foxnews.com.

<#==#>

an easy way to get american citizenship? become a hired killer for the american goverment!

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95833.php

15 in military gain citizenship

Enlistment lets immigrants get that status faster

By Lourdes Medrano

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Thailand native Dary Sok Van, who has lived in this country since he was 3, had long desired to become a naturalized citizen.

Joining the U.S. military allowed Van, who became a U.S. citizen Friday, a quicker path to citizenship while he serves his adopted country.

"I wanted to join for the college benefits," Van said. "But citizenship was definitely a factor."

He was among 67 people who took the oath of citizenship at the first naturalization ceremony held at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Fifteen of the new citizens were uniformed service men and women, clearly the stars of the event.

"The services are really the strength of our country, and what you do should never be far from the minds of Americans," U.S. District Judge John Roll told the military personnel.

Roll presided over the ceremony, which included a videotaped message from President Bush.

"We welcome not only immigrants like you, but the many gifts you bring and values you live by: hard work, entrepreneurship, love for family and love of country," the president said.

D-M commander Col. Michael Spencer said 250 naturalized citizens are stationed at the base alone.

"As citizens of the greatest country on Earth, we see the effect of our diverse mix of culture, race and ethnicity," Spencer told the group. "This diversity yields strength and ingenuity that makes our nation what it is today, a world power."

Van, 23, listened intently from his front-row seat. The army sergeant, stationed at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, later said obtaining his citizenship certificate was a momentous occasion. "It feels really good," he said.

Personal obstacles and bureaucratic red tape had kept him from becoming a citizen, said Van, who has had a legal permanent residency card for two decades.

He joined the Army in 2000, and applied again for citizenship about a year ago, after a 2002 executive order signed by Bush speeded up the citizenship process for members of the armed forces serving since Sept. 11, 2001.

Van is one of roughly 33,000 service men and women who have applied for citizenship since July 2002. Of that number, 20,000 have become naturalized citizens, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, D.C.

Additional legislation enacted last year boosted existing benefits for those on active duty or recently discharged, including the elimination of cost and residency requirements.

Noncitizen civilians must live in the country as legal permanent residents for five years before being eligible to apply for citizenship - three years if married to a citizen. Members of the armed forces can turn in their citizenship application as soon as they enlist, Bentley said.

"We're going to move them into the front of the line, and get their citizenship as quickly as possible."

For some immigrants, Bentley said, the prospect of citizenship - along with such benefits as a subsidized college education - is just another incentive to join.

There are about 40,000 immigrants from all over the world in the U.S. military, he said. Most come from Mexico.

For service men and women, citizenship "opens up a wealth of potential as far as where they can go with their career," Bentley said.

Legal permanent residents in the military cannot get security clearance, Bentley said, and they are unable to re-enlist. They also can help family members to attain legal status, even if they die in combat. Sixty-four legal permanent residents who have died since early 2002 have been granted citizenship posthumously, Bentley noted.

The prospect of dying didn't deter Tucsonan Manuel Rios, who also became a citizen at Friday's ceremony, from enlisting in the military 14 years ago.

"As a soldier, that's not a concern. We've got a duty, a mission to complete," said the Mexico-born Rios, a 31-year-old Army staff sergeant who returned to Tucson in 2004 after one year in Iraq.

Rios, now a reservist, said becoming a citizen was additional motivation to stay in the military.

"There are definitely more opportunities for a citizen," he said. "And just the act of becoming an American, to call this country own - it's the greatest honor that we can get."

&#9679;Contact reporter Lourdes Medrano at 573-4347 or lmedrano@azstarnet.com.

<#==#>

opps!!! FBI often wiretaps the wrong phone.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95834.php

FBI: Wiretaps sometimes on wrong line

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - The FBI says it sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations, an admission critics say underscores a need to revise wiretap provisions in the Patriot Act.

The FBI would not say how often these mistakes happen. And, though any incriminating evidence mistakenly collected is not legally admissible in a criminal case, there is no way of knowing whether it is used to begin an investigation.

Parts of the Patriot Act, including a section on "roving wiretaps," expire in December. Such wiretaps allow the FBI to get permission from a secret federal court to listen in on any phone line or monitor any Internet account that a terrorism suspect may be using, whether or not others who are not suspects also regularly use it.

The bureau's acknowledgment that it makes mistakes in some wiretaps - although not specifically roving wiretaps - came in a recent Justice Department inspector general's report on the FBI's backlog of intercepted but unreviewed foreign-language conversations.

The 38,514 untranslated hours included an undetermined number from what the FBI called "collections of materials from the wrong sources due to technical problems."

Spokesman Ed Cogswell said that language describes instances in which the tap was placed on a telephone number other than the one authorized by a court.

"That's mainly an instance in which the telephone company hooked us up to the wrong number or a clerical error here gives us the wrong number," Cogs-well said.

He had no estimate of how often that happens, but said that when it does the FBI is required to inform the secret court that approved the intercept.

The FBI could not say Friday whether people are notified that their conversations were mistakenly intercepted or whether wrongly tapped telephone numbers were deleted from bureau records.

Privacy activists said the FBI's explanation of the mistaken wiretaps was unacceptably vague, and that in an era of cell phones and computers it is easier than ever for the government to access communications from innocent third parties.

<#==#>

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95821.php

GAO calls 'No Child' PR 'propaganda'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - The Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" when it paid columnist Armstrong Williams to promote Bush administration policies and when it produced a video that seemed to be a news story, congressional investigators concluded Friday.

The Government Accountability Office said the public relations efforts violated the government's "publicity or propaganda prohibition" because the department did not clearly disclose its role to the public. The department was ordered to report the violations to Congress and the president.

The investigation was requested by Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., after it was revealed late last year that the department had hired Williams, a syndicated conservative columnist and TV personality, to promote Bush's "No Child Left Behind" law.

In light of the GAO findings, the senators immediately sent a letter to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings urging her to abide by the law, recover the misspent dollars and meet with them on Capitol Hill.

"The Bush administration took taxpayer funds that should have gone toward helping kids learn and diverted it to a political propaganda campaign," Lautenberg said in a statement. "The administration needs to return these funds to the treasury."

The PR effort unfolded before Spellings took the helm of the department early this year. Her spokeswoman, Susan Aspey, said, "Under Secretary Spell-ings' leadership, stringent processes have been instituted to ensure these types of missteps don't happen again."

At issue was a $240,000 contract to have Williams, who is black, inform minorities about Bush's law by producing ads with then-Education Secretary Rod Paige. Williams also was to provide media time to Paige and to persuade other blacks in the media to talk about the law.

Nancie McPhail, Williams' chief of staff, said Friday he would have no comment until he had a chance to review the GAO findings. Williams previously has apologized and said that he "exercised poor judgment."

<#==#>

these government buerocrats want to ban "jack in the box" and mcdonalds.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/95806.php

Maine shore town will decide whether to ban chain eateries

Voters are asked to join handful of other cities

By Clarke Canfield

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OGUNQUIT, Maine - You won't find McDonald's golden arches or pink-and-orange Dunkin' Donuts signs in this seaside town. And it'll stay that way if voters approve a proposed ordinance that would outlaw chain restaurants.

Ogunquit is the latest town nationwide to consider a law over so-called "formula" businesses. From Maine to California, more than a dozen municipalities now have laws that ban or restrict chain restaurants, motels, retailers and other establishments.

Supporters of the chain restaurant ban say they don't want their seaside town to turn into just another congested strip of Subways, Applebee's and Burger Kings.

"This is a pristine and special community that we are stewards of," said Mary Breen, the owner of a high-end bakery who spearheaded a petition drive to get the question on the Nov. 8 ballot. "It's not about finance and marketing, it's about preserving this small fishing and arts community."

Opponents say Ogunquit's existing ban on drive-throughs and its design review process are enough to help the town maintain its character.

Market forces - not government regulation - should determine which restaurants locate in town, said Brian Aromando, who owns Art and Soul art gallery with his wife.

"I think an anti-formula ordinance goes too far and isn't necessary to address the problem," said Aromando, who is on the town planning board.

Carmel was first

As chain stores have spread in recent years, so has the movement to control them on the local level, said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

In the mid-1980s, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., became the first city to enact a formula restaurant ban. Since then other communities in0 California, Washington, New York, Florida, Rhode Island and Maine have passed similar laws, she said.

Local communities are given a lot of leeway over local zoning and land-use issues, and there have been few challenges of the laws. In Coronado, Calif., landowners sued over a formula retail ordinance but lost in a state court, Mitchell said.

In New England, Bristol, R.I., last year adopted an ordinance restricting formula businesses in the town's historic downtown. York, Maine, which is next to Ogunquit, last year banned formula restaurants.

The issue is about more than just signs or drive-throughs - it's about economics, Mitchell said. Studies show that more money stays within a community when it is spent at locally owned businesses, she said.

A 2003 study in Maine, for instance, showed that 45 cents of every dollar spent at local businesses in three midcoast towns stayed in the communities and another 9 cents stayed in Maine. By contrast, the study found that only 15 cents of every dollars spent at national big-box retailers stayed in the state, she said.

While Mitchell supports the free market concept, she also thinks communities have a responsibility to plan.

"This isn't a free-for-all, because there are costs and benefits borne by the community as a whole," she said. "There is a point where the community has to say, 'What direction are we going?' "

Dunkin' Donuts alarm

Ogunquit, a community of 1,200 year-round residents on the southern Maine coast, is a popular summer destination known for its quaint bed and breakfasts, art galleries, restaurants, summer playhouse and white-sand beaches.

Breen, who started the Bread and Roses Bakery in 1989, became alarmed last spring when rumors spread that a Dunkin' Donuts was coming to town.

She and others circulated a petition and collected 125 signatures to force a vote on whether to ban formula restaurants, defined as establishments with the same name, employee uniforms, color schemes, architectural design, signage, or similar standardized features as another restaurant regardless of location or ownership.

While chains might be appropriate elsewhere, Breen said they don't belong in Ogunquit.

"Once you have a Dunkin' Donuts, you're going to have a TCBY, a Subway and a McDonald's," she said.

Dick Grotton, president and chief executive officer of the Maine Restaurant Association, said if people don't want chain restaurants in town, they won't support them.

"It doesn't get done by the ballot box. People vote with their feet," he said.

But if the town doesn't approve the ban, Ogunquit could end up looking like just any other place, Breen said. On a recent bike ride from Boston to the Cape Cod Canal, she said she counted 54 Dunkin' Donuts signs.

"It's changing the whole color of our landscape," she said. "I don't have anything against Dunkin' Donuts or other restaurants, but where are the local flavors?"

<#==#>

scottsdale cops shake down homeowner who has humping reindeer display on his roof. dont these pigs have any real criminals to chase down?

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0930sr-reindeer30-ON.html

Reindeer display stirs complaints

Elias C. Arnold

The Arizona Republic

Sept. 30, 2005 05:00 PM

SCOTTSDALE It's still 85 days until Christmas, but two reindeer already are causing a stir in a neighborhood near downtown Scottsdale.

The Christmas lawn ornaments - the kind you would expect to see with other decorations in December - first appeared Sunday on a rooftop near Thomas and Scottsdale roads.

Neighbors probably wouldn't have minded the early display, but there was a problem - the reindeer appeared to be making love.

"It's a little humorous in a way," said Al Sayler, who lives across the street and whose son called police about the display. "I can understand them having a little fun like that. But it's really not appropriate for the little kids that come by here (to meet the school bus) every morning."

Scottsdale police went to the house and talked to its residents, but there are no city codes to make them take it down, Sayler said.

"The city of Scottsdale was really nice about it," said Marc Veneziano, an Arizona State University student who rents a room in the house. The reindeer were a joke and posting them on the rooftop helped mark the house for a Christmas-theme party Friday night, he said.

People honking as they drove by showed "a lot of positive feedback," Veneziano said of the neighborhood's response.

He and his roommates separated the figurines when the neighbors asked them to, but they weren't afraid to put them back up when it was time for the party.

Even so, Veneziano said, they planned to take down the display, along with the lights strung across the front of the house, as they clean up after the party.

Kevin Toscano, who lives down the street from the reindeer display, said a brief joke is fine, but it would be inappropriate for it to stay up for very long.

Toscano said he is concerned about having the connotations of the display out where neighborhood children can see, even though his 7-year-old daughter didn't understand what it meant.

"(She) just had the blankest look on (her) face," Toscano said.

<#==#>