when cops and government buerocrats commit crimes they almost never get punished like us civilians do.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0129ross29.html

Ross gets no jail, loses real estate license
Ex-county assessor guilty of using office for own gain

Christina Leonard
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

A judge on Friday spared former Maricopa County Assessor Kevin Ross from serving jail time but stripped him of his real estate license and ordered him to serve three years of unsupervised probation. A jury found Ross guilty of a felony conflict-of-interest charge in December. At his sentencing Friday, Judge Thomas O'Toole of Maricopa County Superior Court refused to reduce that charge to a misdemeanor.

"He did an admirable job as the county assessor until the dollar signs got in the way, and he took advantage of his position of trust and engaged in this attempt to profit himself," the judge said.

O'Toole also ordered Ross to pay $18,000 in fines and surcharges.

Ross, who was accused of illegally using his office for personal profit, declined to comment Friday. Defense attorney John Hannah said Ross was disappointed by the sentence and will appeal.

A state grand jury in May indicted Ross on two felony counts of conflict of interest and one of obstructing a criminal investigation.

Ross admitted providing Gary Graham of Colonial Mortgage & Investment Inc. with names and addresses of about 15,000 low-income seniors enrolled in a valuation-freeze program.

Graham used the list to solicit reverse mortgages, and Ross expected 40 percent of Graham's commissions for any successful loans, according to court documents.

The prosecution claimed Ross took a shortcut through public-records procedures and told Graham to "act stupid" if asked about the list.

One count tossed

The judge tossed out one conflict-of-interest charge, ruling that the list was a public record. The jury also found Ross not guilty on the obstruction-of-justice charge but did convict Ross of a Class 6 felony, the least serious felony charge possible.

"I do deeply regret my actions for not allowing my staff to handle this, recusing myself from it and not filling out the proper public records requests for it," Ross told the judge Friday.

"It was a lack of judgment, and I have paid dearly for it."

Hannah tried to persuade the judge to reduce the felony charge and let Ross keep his real estate license.

He painted Ross as an exemplary citizen who simply took information for free without filling out the proper paperwork.

"What happened was a good person, a good public servant, made a bad choice," Hannah told the judge, adding that Ross will pay the price for his crime.

"He'll have a criminal record. He's been convicted of a crime. He's been humiliated. He's lost his life savings."

Pleased with result

Assistant Attorney General E.G. Noyes Jr. had asked the judge to impose a short jail sentence, but he was pleased with the outcome.

"That was a good sentence from a good judge," Noyes said. "Other than that, I think the community can interpret from that sentence the serious treatment that was given to this offense."

After the jury verdict, the judge ordered the 42-year-old Gilbert resident to leave the Assessor's Office.

Keith Russell, who was elected county assessor in September, took over the position on January.

Ross had previously said he will get back into the business of real estate, but his plans were unclear Friday.

Court records said Ross has been offered a job as an operations manager for a mortgage company.

Reach the reporter at christina.leonard@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-4845.

<#==#>

hey guys make sure this holy priest doesnt share a cell with you. he likes boys

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0129mesapriest29.html

Priest given 1 year in jail
Ex-pastor sexually abused teen

Jim Walsh
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

Supporters of a priest gasped Friday as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge sentenced Father Karl LeClaire to a year in jail for sexually abusing a former parishioner.

Judge Sherry Stephens imposed the maximum sentence possible under LeClaire's plea agreement over the objections of supporters jamming a Mesa courtroom and pleading for leniency. LeClaire must serve the entire sentence without opportunity for early release.

Anthony Chacon, 24, said he was disappointed in the sentence, which also requires LeClaire, 48, to register as a sex offender. The former pastor of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Mesa also got three years' probation.

"He's a great friend. There's no doubt in my mind this didn't occur," Chacon said.

But Joe Baca of Chandler, a member of SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, said LeClaire's supporters are in denial. "In that one incident, he took that child's faith and murdered his soul," Baca said.

LeClaire was accused of touching the boy's genitals when he was 14 and 17 years old. He was originally charged with child molestation and sexual conduct with a minor and faced a potential 12- to 24-year prison sentence.

LeClaire's case went to trial, but he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with sexual motivation.

The priest apologized Friday to the victim and to his supporters from Queen of Peace but never admitted sexually abusing the boy.

"It's been a nightmare - the loss of my priesthood, the loss of my friends," he said, pleading with Stephens to let him care for his sick mother. LeClaire was relieved of his duties when the allegations arose but remains a priest.

The victim, now 23, attended but did not speak at LeClaire's sentencing. He told a probation officer that he feels sorry for LeClaire because of his "dangerous sickness," according to court records. He also despises LeClaire and is scared of him.

The victim, who hopes to join the Navy Seals, also said he doesn't trust anyone.

The probation officer recommended the jail sentence after LeClaire told her that "no harm was done."

<#==#>

isnt that odd the bible says homosexuals should be stoned to death, but there are so many priests and holy men who are homosexuals and like to play with boys

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0129fushek29.html

Life Teen chief on leave in abuse case

Michael Clancy and Joseph A. Reaves
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

The president and co-founder of Life Teen youth ministry was placed on administrative leave by the organization's board of directors on Friday, a day after a lawsuit alleged that he and two others engaged in sexual misconduct with a teenager in 1985.

Phil Baniewicz, who has spent most of his adult career in the ministry to Catholic youth, was "devastated" by the news, said Mary Jo West, public information officer for the Diocese of Phoenix.

Baniewicz was accused in the lawsuit of abusing William Cesolini, a minor at the time, on more than one occasion. advertisement

Others named in the suit were the Rev. Mark Lehman, who already has served a 10-year prison term for abuse; and Monsignor Dale Fushek, pastor of St. Timothy parish in Mesa, who is accused of watching as Lehman abused Cesolini.

The diocese has asked the Vatican to defrock Lehman. Fushek was suspended Dec. 29, when the lawsuit's allegations first surfaced.

Baniewicz remained clear of the allegations until Thursday.

Married, with three children, he joined Fushek as a youth minister in 1984. They moved to St. Timothy parish in Mesa and began Life Teen in 1985. It since has grown to 950 parishes in 19 nations.

Jennifer Swanson, publicist for Life Teen, said an internal investigation would be conducted by board members, led by James Whalen, a former FBI agent.

She said a legal affairs team would be set up, too, to defend the organization, also named in the lawsuit.

Frank Verderame, attorney for Cesolini, said his client does not want to put Life Teen out of business.

"We're looking for change," he said. "And we're looking for justice. And we're looking for this not to ever happen again."

A statement from Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who also is named in the lawsuit, makes no mention of LifeTeen, which is independent of the diocese.

Instead, Olmsted expressed sadness about the lawsuit and called Fushek "one of the most talented and gifted priests in our diocese."

"We look forward to a rapid conclusion of this painful situation," the bishop said.

Based on other civil lawsuits filed by victims of sexual abuse, the only path to a rapid solution would be through a settlement of the case.

Reach the reporter at mike.clancy@arizonarepublic.com at (602) 444-8550.

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the city of phoenix doesnt have enough money to pay its bills but it is hiring more cops and instead cutting back on services like the library and trash collection.

phoenix is already a police state and phil gordon is just turning it into a bigger police state by hiring more cops.

write the government rulers at the city of phoenix and tell them you dont want no more stinking cops!!

    doug.lingner@phoenix.gov
    csr@valleymetro.org
    peggy.bilsten@phoenix.gov
    cdist1@phoenix.gov
    council.district.2@phoenix.gov
    peggy.bilsten@phoenix.gov
    council.district.4@phoenix.gov
    council.district.5@phoenix.gov
    greg.stanton@phoenix.gov
    michael.johnson@phoenix.gov
    phil.gordon@phoenix.gov

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0129phxbudget.html

Phoenix must cut $68.7 million
7% slice in budget needed as revenue shrinks

Ginger D. Richardson
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

Phoenix officials will have to cut $68.7 million - or just over 7 percent - of their $930 million general fund budget by the start of the next fiscal year.

The cuts could mean reductions in all kinds of services that residents use every day. Proposals include closing public swimming pools earlier to eliminating some after-school programs to delaying the opening of seven new fire stations.

The news caps off a pretty bad week for Phoenix, the city that frequently bills itself as "The Best-Run City in the World."

The city snagged the honor back in 1993; but you wouldn't know it from the past five days.

First there was a contaminated city water scare, then a Southwest Gas pipeline leak that cut service to 11,000 homes and businesses. Now this.

"I am just grateful we haven't been beset by a plague of locusts," Mayor Phil Gordon said Friday, after being briefed on the situation.

"It's going to be a very tough challenge for us to balance the budget and provide essential city services. But we will do it."

City officials say the cuts are necessary because projected revenues aren't growing as fast as skyrocketing costs.

The budget woes were made public Friday in a report from City Manager Frank Fairbanks, who has asked all city departments for recommendations on how to cut their budgets by 5 percent.

He has also implemented an immediate hiring freeze at City Hall.

It won't affect police officers or firefighters.

In fact, the city needs to hire hundreds of new public-safety personnel to keep up with growth and to offset the effects of an early-retirement program that begins in 2006.

To decrease the impact of the fiscal 2005-06 crunch, officials are hoping to implement roughly half the cuts, or $35 million, early, by May 23.

The rest would come July 1, when the new fiscal year officially begins.

Specifics by March 1

Program reductions and personnel cuts will be decided by March 1; they could result in layoffs, depending on which programs are recommended for elimination and whether enough employees volunteer for early retirements.

In tight budget times, the City Council traditionally has avoided cutting the budgets of the police and fire departments - two of the city's largest - preferring instead to make more draconian reductions in other areas.

Gordon said he hopes to exempt the two departments from cuts this time, as well.

"I will not support the reduction of police and fire personnel," Gordon said. "My first priority to this city is public safety."

Crunching numbers

Fairbanks and Budget Director Cecile Pettle have been crunching numbers repeatedly over the past six months, and said they weren't surprised that the city was facing this kind of deficit because the situation had "been continually worsening."

But the drastic nature of the news caught some City Council members off guard, including Gordon, who said he "didn't know" how deep the cuts would be.

Councilman Claude Mattox said these reductions will be felt by residents, particularly because the city has already sliced $105 million from its general fund during the past three years.

"When we started this process, we were told to do different levels of cuts." Mattox said. "The first set was easy, the second a little more difficult, and now the third is going into the bones and muscle."

To put it in perspective, Phoenix's projected deficit for next year almost equals the town of Gilbert's entire general fund.

The financial woes are being caused by a host of factors, including health, benefit and compensation packages for employees, the need to pour more money in the city's pension fund - which has lost money as the economy has struggled - and new expenses, like the hiring of police and fire officers.

One of the biggest problems has its roots in the budget cuts of previous years.

Usually leftovers

Usually, each city department has money left over at the end of any given year that it can then roll over and use to fund programs in the next year. But when officials began trimming budgets three or four years ago, those savings were eaten up.

The result: About $32 million that the city doesn't have to play with next year.

"This is the first time we've seen that happen in a major way," Fairbanks said.

City officials say this shortfall will not force them to raise taxes.

So far, plans to fix the deficit have focused solely on cutting personnel through attrition and voluntary layoffs and reducing services.

Departments cringing

Meanwhile, departments are hoping the slicing of their operations doesn't go too deep.

For example, a 5 percent budget reduction in fire department operations would cause response times, which are already at an all-time high, to get lengthier, said Assistant Phoenix Fire Chief Bob Khan.

"We were pretty much bare-bones without any more reductions," Khan said. "We would be getting into our ability to respond to emergencies."

Phoenix officials will discuss the budget problems at a policy session at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the City Council chambers, 200 W. Jefferson St.

They also plan to hold a series of budget hearings in early March so the public can weigh in on the proposed cuts.

Staff writers Meghan Moravcik, Judi Villa and Chris Ramirez contributed to this report.

Reach the reporter at ginger. richardson@arizonarepublic.com or at (602) 444-2474.

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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=AZPHG&SECTION=HOME

Jan 29, 12:52 PM EST

Insurgents kill 8 Iraqis, U.S. soldier

By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents killed eight Iraqis and a U.S. soldier in attacks Saturday and blasted polling places across the country on the eve of landmark elections, as Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government urged Iraqis to overcome their fear of violence and vote.

The soldier from Task Force Baghdad was killed by a roadside bomb in a western district of the capital, the military said. Bursts of heavy machine gun fire rattled through central districts at midday, and several heavy explosions shook the downtown area in the afternoon. American fighter jets roared through the skies in a show of force.

Iraqi police and soldiers set up checkpoints through streets largely devoid of traffic as the nation battened down for the vote, with a nighttime curfew imposed across the country and the borders sealed. Seven American soldiers were killed Friday in the Baghdad area, including two pilots who died in the crash of their OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter.

West of the capital, in the insurgent bastion of Ramadi, five Iraqis with hands tied behind their backs were found slain Saturday on a city street. One of the bodies was decapitated. Militants accused them of working for the Americans.

Sunni Muslim extremists have warned Iraqis not to participate in the election Sunday, threatening to "wash the streets" in blood. Iraqis will chose a 275-member National Assembly and provincial councils in Iraq's 18 provinces. Voters in the Kurdish self-ruled area of the north will select a new regional parliament.

At a press conference, Allawi's spokesman sought to boost Iraqi morale, appealing to his countrymen to take part in the election.

"I encourage the Iraqi people to overcome their fear. It is important. It will preserve the integrity of Iraq," spokesman Thaer al-Naqeeb said. "If you vote ... the terrorists will be defeated."

Allawi ordered a 30-day extension of the state of emergency in place across the country, except for Kurdish areas in the north, his office said in a statement. The current state of emergency, first declared in November, was to run out on Feb. 8. The decree gives the government the power to declare curfews, make arrests without warrants and launch police and military operations when it deems necessary.

President Ghazi al-Yawer acknowledged that the violence and insurgent threats could keep many from voting - though he said he expected a majority to cast ballots and that few would stay away because of calls for a boycott by some Sunni clerics who say the vote is illegitimate.

"We hope, God willing, that turnout at polling stations will be high. The minority that will not participate, will do that because of the security situation and not to boycott," al-Yawer told Al-Arabiya television.

The suicide attack occurred in Khanaqin, 70 miles northeast of Baghdad on the Iranian border. Police Col. Mohammed al-Khanaqini said the attacker was wearing an explosives belt and detonated himself outside a police station between a U.S. base and a courthouse.

Eight mortar shells landed at an Iraqi National Guard barracks in the central town of Suwayrah, killing one Iraqi soldier and wounding another, the Polish military said. South of Baghdad, rebels opened fire on U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces as they placed concrete blast barriers around polling stations south of the capital Saturday.

In the northern city of Mosul, rebels distributed leaflets warning people to stay clear of polling stations to avoid getting hurt.

In Khaldiyah, about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, insurgents burst into a school used as an Iraqi National Guard base, asked the few members there to leave and then destroyed it with explosives, residents said. No one was reported hurt.

Attacks on polling stations were reported in at least eight cities from Dohuk in the far north to Basra in the south.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have imposed strict security measures, including sealing the country's borders, closing Baghdad's international airport, extending the hours of the curfew to cover from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. and restricting private vehicles.

In Basra, however, hundreds of Iraqi police uniforms have gone missing in Iraq's second largest city and may be in the hands of insurgents to help them slip through checkpoints, according to a report by the British media pool.

Four police vehicles were stolen by insurgents from a prison at Umm Qasr south if Basra, British authorities said, raising fears the cars could be used in suicide attacks.

Members of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority - estimated at 60 percent of the population - are expected to turn out in force for the ballot, encouraged by their clergy. A heavy turnout is also expected in Kurdish areas.

But the key issue is participation by Sunni Arabs, many of whom fear domination by the Shiites or face intimidation from insurgents active in Sunni areas.

Al-Yawer waned that "any political process that does not have the participation of the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds will not be fated to succeed."

An electoral commission official in one of the four Sunni provinces where turnout is expected to be light said voting would be "almost impossible" in some cities because of violence. Khalaf Mohammed Salih, a commission spokesman in Salaheddin province, said he expected violence to virtually shut down voting in the provincial towns of Beiji, Dour and Samarra.

In Fallujah, the former Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold 40 miles west of Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers, their faces masked to hide their identity, stood guard on the streets, where many shops were shuttered for fear of election day violence.

"We will not vote because our houses have been destroyed," complained resident Ala Hussein. "We don't have electricity or water. The Iraqi National Guard fire at us 24 hours a day. So who will we vote for? We don't have security or pensions."

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

<#==#>

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/29home.html

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Michael Chertoff at a news conference this month in Washington.

Security Nominee Gave Advice to the C.I.A. on Torture Laws
By DAVID JOHNSTON, NEIL A. LEWIS and DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: January 29, 2005

This article is by David Johnston, Neil A. Lewis and Douglas Jehl.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 - Michael Chertoff, who has been picked by President Bush to be the homeland security secretary, advised the Central Intelligence Agency on the legality of coercive interrogation methods on terror suspects under the federal anti-torture statute, current and former administration officials said this week.

Depending on the circumstances, he told the intelligence agency, some coercive methods could be legal, but he advised against others, the officials said.

Mr. Chertoff's previously undisclosed involvement in evaluating how far interrogators could go took place in 2002-3 when he headed the Justice Department's criminal division. The advice came in the form of responses to agency inquiries asking whether C.I.A. employees risked being charged with crimes if particular interrogation techniques were used on specific detainees.

Asked about the interaction between the C.I.A. and Mr. Chertoff, now a federal appeals court judge in Newark, Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, said, "Judge Chertoff did not approve interrogation techniques as head of the criminal division."

Ms. Healy added, "We're not aware that anyone in the criminal division was involved in approving techniques because that responsibility would have belonged in the Office of Legal Counsel," another Justice Department unit.

One current and two former senior officials with firsthand knowledge of the interaction between the C.I.A. and the Justice Department said that while the criminal division did not explicitly approve any requests by the agency, it did discuss what conditions could protect agency personnel from prosecution.

Mr. Chertoff's division was asked on several occasions by the intelligence agency whether its officers risked prosecution by using particular techniques. The officials said the C.I.A. wanted as much legal protection as it could obtain while the Justice Department sought to avoid giving unconditional approval.

One technique that C.I.A. officers could use under certain circumstances without fear of prosecution was strapping a subject down and making him experience a feeling of drowning. Other practices that would not present legal problems were those that did not involve the infliction of pain, like tricking a subject into believing he was being questioned by a member of a security service from another country.

But in other instances Mr. Chertoff opposed some aggressive procedures outright, the officials said. At one point, they said, he raised serious objections to methods that he concluded would clearly violate the torture law. While the details remain classified, one method that he opposed appeared to violate a ban in the law against using a "threat of imminent death."

Mr. Chertoff and other senior officials at the Justice Department also disapproved of practices that seemed to be clearly prohibited, like death threats against family members, administration of mind-altering drugs or psychological procedures designed to profoundly disrupt a detainee's personality. It is not clear whether the C.I.A. or any other agency proposed these techniques.

But Mr. Chertoff left the door open to the use of a different set of far harsher techniques proposed by the C.I.A., saying they might be used under certain circumstances. He advised that they could be used depending on factors like the detainee's physical condition and medical advice as to how the person would react to some practices, the officials said.

In responding, Mr. Chertoff's division said that whether the techniques were not allowed depended on the standards outlined in an August 2002 memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel that has since been disclosed and which defined torture narrowly. That memorandum, signed by Jay S. Bybee, then the head of the legal counsel's office, said inflicted pain, for example, qualified as torture only if it was of a level equivalent to organ failure or imminent death.

The officials said that when the agency asked about specific practices, Mr. Bybee responded with a second memorandum, which is still classified. They said it said many coercive practices were permissible if they met the narrow definition in the first memorandum.

The officials said Mr. Chertoff was consulted on the second memorandum, but Ms. Healy of the White House said he had no role in it.

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The C.I.A. was seeking to determine the legal limits of interrogation practices in cases like that of Abu Zubaydah, the Qaeda lieutenant captured in March 2002.

The officials said Mr. Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect, evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the C.I.A. by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution.

Mr. Chertoff is scheduled to appear on Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. Senators have said that Mr. Chertoff, a highly respected former prosecutor, will have little difficulty being confirmed.

Still, questions about interrogation practices dominated the confirmation hearing of Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, and Mr. Gonzales's unwillingness to discuss his legal advice on the issue was a reason some Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee gave for voting against sending his nomination to the full Senate for approval.

The C.I.A. declined to comment on the agency's discussions with the Justice Department.

In interviews, former senior intelligence officials said C.I.A. lawyers went to extraordinary lengths beginning in March 2002 to get a clear answer from the Justice Department about which interrogation techniques were permissible in questioning Abu Zubaydah and other important detainees. The lawyers involved included Scott Muller, then the agency's general counsel, and John Rizzo, his top deputy, the officials said.

"Nothing that was done was not explicitly authorized," a former senior intelligence said. "These guys were extraordinarily careful."

In recent weeks, some former intelligence officials have expressed concern that a new legal opinion about torture the Justice Department issued in late December might leave C.I.A. officers exposed to prosecution. It defined torture more broadly than an August 2002 memorandum later repudiated by the Bush administration, thus implicitly allowing less latitude for extreme interrogation measures.

Many of the interrogation techniques in the C.I.A.'s list were adopted from the Air Force's Survival, Evasion, Rescue, and Escape training program.

As head of the criminal division, Mr. Chertoff was known in legal circles as an aggressive prosecutor who advocated the use of the civilian court system to handle many terrorism cases, which put him at odds with those in the administration who advocated a system of military tribunals. He successfully argued that Zacarias Moussaoui, charged as an operative of Al Qaeda, should be tried in a civilian court. That case has been bogged down in court by legal challenges, including objections to the use of classified evidence.

In November 2003, Mr. Chertoff, then a federal judge, delivered a widely noted speech in which he said the policy of open-ended detentions for terror suspects needed to be changed.

"We need to debate a long-term and sustainable architecture for the process of determining when, why and for how long someone may be detained as an enemy combatant, and what judicial review should be available," he said at a judicial conference in Philadelphia.

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Hey kevin:

are they still giving you lots of dope??

and if so is it interfearing with your ability to defend your self against the crimes your charged with? or perhaps preventing you with talking to your lawyer in a way that helps her defend you?

mike

<#==#>

http://www.prensahispanaaz.com/edicion/principal/notas/al.htm

Alertan por consumo de agua

Librada Martínez

Autoridades del Ayuntamiento de Phoenix alertaron a la población para que hiervan el agua antes de ingerirla, o usarla para cepillarse los dientes, lavar frutas y verduras, hacer hielo, preparar alimentos y lavar los trastes.
El alcalde de Phoenix, Phil Gordon, explicó que el llamado público es únicamente para tomar precauciones, “no para crear pánico en los consumidores, pues el agua no representa una amenaza ni riesgo para la vida”, dijo.
En la madrugada de ayer martes, autoridades del Departamento del Agua Potable advirtieron la presencia de lodo y otras partículas en una de las plantas que suministra el vital líquido a los residentes, como consecuencia de deslaves por las recientes tormentas.
El director de Departamento de Agua Potable del municipio, Mike Gritzuk, dijo a PRENSA HISPANA que el agua ha sido desinfectada con el doble de dosis de químicos con que normalmente se desinfecta, y además se ha clorado para eliminar cualquier presencia de bacterias.
Hasta el cierre de esta edición no se habían reportado casos de personas hospitalizadas por consumo de agua en Phoenix.

Hierva el agua

Para cocinar
Beber
Lavarse los dientes
Lavar trastes
Hacer cubos de hielo
Bañarse no representa ningún riesgo

Informes: (602) 262-6251

Fuente: City of Phoenix

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http://www.prensahispanaaz.com/edicion/principal/notas/rec.htm

Rechazan que agua represente un riesgo de salud pública

Librada Martínez

Autoridades del Ayuntamiento de Phoenix rechazaron que consumir agua represente un riesgo a la salud pública, luego de que este martes dieron a conocer la presencia de lodo y otras partículas en una de las plantas abastecedoras de agua potable, como resultado de las recientes tormentas que azotaron el Valle.
El presidente municipal, Phil Gordon, y el administrador, Frank Fairbanks, encabezaron una rueda de prensa para conminar a la población a extremar precauciones y hervir el agua potable que se usa para beber, lavar los dientes, los trastes, frutas y verduras.
“No es un asunto de salud pública, sino de precaución”, dijo el alcalde, quien pidió no crear una situación de pánico entre los residentes.
“La seguridad de los residentes es nuestra máxima prioridad”, dijo el alcalde al rechazar que el consumo del vital líquido constituya una amenaza para la vida de los habitantes, pues el riesgo es “mínimo”. Phoenix cuenta con cinco plantas suministradoras de agua, dos de las cuales están fuera de operación por mantenimiento y una más, la Val Vista, localizada en Mesa y que recibe agua del Río Salado, fue cerrada como resultado de las avenidas provocadas por las tormentas, y es la que causó los problemas.
Dicha planta ha sido sometida siempre a 103 exámenes distintos y ha superado 102.
Fairbanks explicó que los estándares federales requieren que el vital líquido no contenga más de una partícula de turbiedad por billón. Sin embargo, las autoridades fueron informadas que la planta Val Vista contenía 2.1 partículas por billón.
No obstante, no es significativo como para poner en riesgo la salud de los consumidores.
Autoridades de Tolleson y Scottsdale fueron informadas sobre el hallazgo en el agua, toda vez que una de las plantas de Phoenix alimenta a estas ciudades. De acuerdo con las autoridades, ninguna otra ciudad del Valle había reportado problemas similares.
Escuelas, hospitales y restaurantes fueron conminados a extremar precauciones.
El alcalde destacó que un equipo de ingenieros y expertos monitorean el agua de forma constante para detectar cualquier anormalidad.
Los funcionarios del Ayuntamiento rechazaron que vaya a presentarse escasez del vital líquido, pues las dos de las cinco plantas que actualmente se encuentran en operación pueden satisfacer la demanda en la presente temporada de invierno.

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this is about the government thugs who seize your home if you dont mow the lawn or keep your palm tree fronds trimmed

http://www.prensahispanaaz.com/edicion/comunidad/notas/en.htm

Edición: 695. Del 26 de enero al 1 de febrero del 2005. Phoenix, AZ.
Sección 8

Entre la necesidad y el abuso

Samuel Murillo

El programa Sección 8 fue creado por el gobierno federal con el propósito de ayudar a las familias de bajos ingresos a tener una vivienda digna.
Se trata de una ayuda económica del 30 por ciento del valor total de la renta de una vivienda unifamiliar.
Para ser elegible para este programa de ayuda existen una serie de requisitos, entre los que se incluye, como el principal, demostrar bajo nivel de ingresos.
Cada caso se evalúa en forma diferente, pero la regla general es que el solicitante demuestre que percibe un salario inferior al mínimo.
Por ejemplo, una familia de cuatro miembros debe reportar ingresos de menos de 17 mil dólares anuales.
Otro de los requisitos es que los solicitantes deben ser residentes legales o ciudadanos estadunidenses.
Por lo menos uno de los miembros de la familia solicitante debe demostrar que está legal en el país.
Antes de recibir la ayuda, los solicitantes son investigados ante la Policía y otras agencias de todo el estado, para asegurarse que no cuenten con antecedentes criminales ni hayan sido desalojados de otros sitios por incumplimiento de pago.
Una vez que resultan elegidos en el programa de Sección 8, se les proporciona un voucher (certificado de pago) para que realicen el contrato de arrendamiento de una vivienda que reúna los requisitos establecidos por el Departamento de Vivienda.
Entre esos requisitos destaca que la vivienda debe estar en perfectas condiciones tanto en infraestructura como en servicios, incluyendo aparatos electrodomésticos básicos como refrigerador, estufa, refrigeración y calentador de agua.
Las personas que reciben la ayuda deben comprometerse a cuidar que la vivienda se conserve en buen estado, incluyendo el buen aspecto en el exterior.
Bajo este esquema es como opera el programa de Sección 8, de acuerdo con Manuel González, director del Departamento de Vivienda en Phoenix.
Sin embargo, no todas las personas que están bajo este programa cumplen con las normas establecidas en el mismo, reconoció en entrevista el funcionario.

Abusan del programa
Para González, todo mundo tiene derecho a una vivienda digna. Bajo esa premisa el Departamento de Vivienda de Phoenix opera diversos programas en los que provee ayuda a familias humildes para que puedan tener un lugar digno donde vivir.
Pero algunas de esas personas abusan de la buena fe de la dependencia y cometen fraude contra el gobierno.
El fraude más común se da cuando reportan ingresos que no corresponden a la realidad, señaló. Muchas veces presentan talones de pago que han sido modificados con la intención de hacer creer que perciben ingresos bajos. Aunque no precisó cifras, González, indicó que en este caso el Departamento de Vivienda obliga a las personas a pagar la diferencia que resulte del dinero que se omitió ante esa dependencia.
Otro de los fraudes comunes es cuando la familia que recibe ayuda mediante el programa Sección 8 ingresa a otras personas a la vivienda, esto sin notificar previamente al Departamento de Vivienda.
Familias se traen a vivir en la vivienda a parientes o amigos, provocando que se incremente el riesgo de daños y en algunos casos de inseguridad para los vecinos.
El riesgo de albergar a personas que cuentan con antecedentes criminales está latente, lo cual representa una amenaza para la seguridad del resto de los inquilinos en el vecindario.
Lo anterior constituye una falta grave, que de acuerdo con el entrevistado, podría significarle la expulsión del programa a quien sea sorprendido cometiendo este tipo de abuso.
Aunque es poco común que se castigue a los responsables, debido a que generalmente huyen de la vivienda en cuanto se percatan que fueron descubiertos, sus datos son archivados y posteriormente enviados a otras ciudades para prevenir que cometan la misma falta.

Hay 25 mil en lista de espera
Mientras que en la ciudad de Phoenix existen 5 mil 280 familias registradas en el programa Sección 8, el Departamento de Vivienda tiene una lista de espera de 25 mil personas.
Estas personas deberán esperar por lo menos cuatro años para poder recibir la ayuda federal, según Manuel González.
El recorte de presupuesto que sufrió en mayo pasado el programa de viviendas Sección 8 todavía no ha impactado en la gente que espera para recibir la ayuda. En todo caso, lo que podría pasar si se sufre otro recorte presupuestal es que se prolongue el tiempo de espera uno o dos años más.
No obstante, la realidad que se observa en varios complejos donde residen personas que están bajo el programa Sección 8, es de descuido y abandono.
La realidad contrasta muchas veces con el concepto de Sección 8. De esto no le cabe la menor duda al titular del Departamento de Vivienda. “Hemos encontrado vehículos de modelo reciente en estacionamientos de complejos habitacionales con Sección 8. Muchas veces el argumento que presentan es de que son regalos de otros familiares”, comentó.
Ante esa situación no se puede hacer nada. Salvo qu se llegue a comprobar lo contrario, pero para eso, admitió, no se tienen suficientes investigadores en el Departamento de Vivienda.
Otra de las situaciones comunes en algunos de estos complejos habitacionales es la basura regada por todos lados, el grafitti en paredes y bardas, y la presencia principalmente por las tardes, de grupos de jóvenes con vestimenta holgada y cabeza rapada.
De acuerdo con el detective Antonio Morales, de la Policía de Phoenix, el 90 por ciento de los delitos que se cometen en la ciudad se relacionan con los pandilleros.
Aunque no se refirió concretamente a los complejos de Sección 8, señaló que los pandilleros generalmente se refugian en vecindarios pobres como esos.

En cifras...

Personas bajo el programa sección 8: Cerca de 5 mil
En lista de espera: Cerca de 25 mil personas
Teléfono para denunciar anomalías: (602) 534 1974.

Fuente: Departamento de Vivienda de Phoenix.

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i didnt say VIETNAM!!! now the government idiots who started the war are saying VIETNAM.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0130insurgency-3day30.html

Iraq must assume insurgency battle
War starting to take toll at home

John Yaukey
Gannett News Service
Jan. 30, 2005 12:00 AM

Mary Cozort has lost 16 pounds since her son, Edward, deployed to Iraq more than four months ago.

"Every time I e-mailed him I'd write that he has the armor of God around him and he's going to be safe and he's coming home," the Glen Fork, W.Va., resident said. "I have to keep his morale up because he's already been hit by" bomb shrapnel.

Steven Krulish of Swanzey, N.H., finds himself battling episodes of intense dread after learning that his son Ethan's unit sustained heavy casualties in a recent mess-tent bombing near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

"When I write him, I don't ask him questions about what sort of military things he's doing," Krulish said.

The unanticipated insurgency in Iraq, with no end in sight, is taking a heavy toll back home.

It's especially taxing for the military families eager for an answer to the question that has come to shape the discussion of Iraq: When and how will the 150,000 American troops there get out?

A vague plan

All indications are that Iraq's insurgency will continue well past today's elections. By most measurements, it is getting larger, more brazen, better armed and more sophisticated.

Insurgents are killing and intimidating officials, security forces and election workers by the hundreds.

Historically, winning against insurgencies has proved extremely difficult, elusive and time-consuming.

"Ten to 15 years seems to be the norm for getting insurgencies straightened out," said Steven Metz, a professor at the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

If the insurgency in Iraq is as tenacious as it appears, perhaps the question to ask now is how much longer will Americans have to fight it?

Recent decrees and decisions at the highest levels of the Bush administration are starting to clarify the American plan. That said, the administration never planned to be fighting a raging insurgency nearly two years after the fall of Baghdad.

By stressing the importance of training an Iraqi army, the administration has made it clear that it has no intentions of ultimately defeating the insurgency with American troops, but rather handing it off to the Iraqis.

"Ultimately the success in Iraq is going to be the willingness of the Iraqi citizens to fight for their own freedom," President Bush said recently.

Iraqi forces

As Iraqi security forces expand and gain confidence, the Pentagon will scale down the U.S. force size. The hope is that this will reduce U.S. casualties, lower the American profile in Iraq and start reassuring Americans that there is an end in sight.

Iraqis have shown a shaky willingness and capability to fight the insurgents. Bush recently acknowledged that the training of Iraqi forces remains a major challenge, prompting the Pentagon to send retired four-star Gen. Gary Luck to Iraq to try to expedite the process.

The combat-ready Iraqi force is about 120,000 men strong, less than half the size U.S. commanders believe is needed to secure Iraq.

Their performance has been inconsistent at best. They are trained in weeks rather than months and many are poorly equipped.

The State Department's recent quarterly report to Congress paints a bleak picture. In some of the most violent parts of Iraq, Iraqi forces have been "rendered ineffective," the State Department wrote in its Jan. 5 assessment.

In Mosul, the 5,000-member security force dissolved under an insurgent assault Nov. 10. It has yet to reconstitute. The police force in the restive town of Ramadi also collapsed under attack. About half of the 1,600 officers reportedly have returned.

In one week in January, more than 80 Iraqi security troops were killed.

A recent report by the independent Center for Strategic and International Studies puts much of the blame on the Pentagon. Iraqi forces, the report says, were given "grossly inadequate training, equipment, facilities, transport and protection."

More than once busloads of unarmed Iraqis recently graduated from security training have been executed.

U.S. force size

The discussion about when and how to eventually withdraw U.S. troops also will pivot to some degree on the debate over whether they're stirring up more trouble than they're suppressing.

"It's not so much about troop levels as it is momentum," said attorney Mario Mancuso, who served in Iraq as a special-forces officer.

Concern about momentum has prompted the Pentagon to increase the troop size by about 12,000, to 150,000 at least through the elections. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is weighing the option of extending reserve deployments beyond the two-year ceiling.

But if maintaining U.S. troop levels provokes exacerbates the insurgency, withdrawing them too early could lead to civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis.

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i didnt even know they spent $3.6 billion to build the emporer a helicoptor!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/business/28cnd-copter.html

Lockheed Wins Marine One Contract
By LESLIE WAYNE

Published: January 28, 2005

The Pentagon today chose the Lockheed Martin Corporation and a group of international partners over an American-only team headed by the Sikorsky Aircraft Company to build the next fleet of presidential helicopters, perhaps the most prestigious aircraft contract in the world.

The $1.6 billion contract is not be the biggest ever handed out by the Pentagon, but it gives the winner global bragging rights and touches on the politically sensitive question of whether a president should be ferried around in a craft - known as Marine One when a president is aboard - that is made only in the United States or one that has some foreign parts, design and ownership.

For decades Connecticut-based Sikorsky has supplied most of the helicopters in the presidential fleet. George David, chief executive of United Technologies, the parent company of Sikorsky, told analysts before the announcement that "this is win or drop dead as far as we are concerned."

Analysts echoed that thought in advance of the announcement.

"Whoever wins the contract will have free advertising for the next 30 years," said Paul Nisbet, a military analyst with JSA Research, an aerospace research firm in Newport, Rhode Island. "Every time the president jumps on a helicopter, you see it."

The decision was made by a Navy source selection committee and was reviewed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

As the White House pressed the Pentagon for a quick decision, the Navy issued a report last week saying that the fast-track selection process for the new helicopter did not provide for sufficient pre-flight testing of the craft and violated the fly-before-buy concept.

In addition, the crash of a Sikorsky-made Marine CH-53E helicopter in Iraq this week, with the loss of all 31 aboard, illustrated the relative fragility of helicopters in general, which are far less stable than airplanes. While the version that Sikorsky was designing for Marine One was completely different than the one that crashed in Iraq, the timing could not have been worse for the company.

In many ways, the battle is over more than a helicopter. The selection of a partly foreign offering could quell complaints about the American military market's being closed to foreign suppliers and could be a way of rewarding some of the Washington's staunchest allies in Iraq.

But that consideration runs up against growing "Buy America" sentiment among members of Congress that ultimately determine the size of the Pentagon budget.

There were tremendous shows of confidence by both sides, said Richard Aboulafia, a military analyst at the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Northern Virginia. "The popular talk seems to be swinging from one side to the other," he said before the announcement. "It's been that tight."

While the helicopters are flown and maintained by the Marine Corps, it is acquired by the Department of the Navy, which includes the Marines.

The exact standards used by the Navy to select the new craft will never be known, since the mission of carrying the president is shrouded in secrecy. No one knows the exact specifications of the craft, its performance requirements and the sensitive equipment that it must carry. The government has never made public the requirements and specifications for the aircraft, so it is hard to judge which contractors' version is better suited for the job, said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Northern Virginia nonprofit that advocates smaller government.

The Lockheed side includes Augusta-Westland, which is majority-owned by Fionmeccanica of Italy. Their offering, the three-engine US101, is a variant of a helicopter used by the British Royal Navy and other European countries. Still, to position itself an American offering, Maryland-based Lockheed was running around the country, lining up suppliers and promising that the bulk of the craft would be built in the United States. And, in a bid to win presidential favor, Lockheed said that the airframe of the craft would be built by Bell Helicopters in Texas.

Sikorsky also made the same Texas pledge, saying it would hand off airframe construction to Vought Aircraft Industries in Dallas.

Last week, Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, announced that he had called Mr. Rumsfeld and personally pushed the defense secretary on Lockheed's behalf, according to a press release from Mr. Schumer's office.

The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, proved to be a dogged lobbyist for the venture, as well.

In a pre-Christmas meeting with Mr. Bush at the White House, Mr. Berlusconi was relentless. In response to an answer from an Italian reporter at a joint press conference, Mr. Berlusconi said the Italian helicopters were almost completely made and manufactured in the United States.

In response, Mr. Bush parried back: "With U.S. parts. I've got the message, yes."

But Mr. Berlusconi would not drop the issue, and continued, saying, "I can only say that I've been flying these helicopters for 30 years and I'm still here."

To which, Mr. Bush quipped back: "And you never crashed. That's a good start."

In a more serious mode, Mr. Bush said of the international bid: "I'm very aware of the joint venture. I understand the nature of U.S. jobs that will be created in the venture, and I assured him the venture will be treated fairly."

Beside the Italian prime minister, Lockheed also made an alliance with the Choctaw Indians in Mississippi with the promise of jobs if Lockheed landed the contract.

Just a few days ago, Lockheed announced a list of 42 California companies that would get business as well as 37 parts suppliers in the New England area.

On the Sikorsky side, the company offered decades of experience in building Presidential helicopters. Sikorsky's VH-92 Super Hawk is a variant of the new S-92 midsize helicopter that it made with international partners. The fact that Sikorsky lost a $39 billion contract to build the Comanche helicopter, a program that the Pentagon scrapped last year, had led some analysts to believe Sikorsky might benefit from a sympathy vote in the Marine One competition.

In Washington, the lobbying was fierce. Both companies promoted their respective causes with posters in Metro stations touting their offerings, and Sikorsky engaged retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the most highly decorated four-star general in the Army and a former head of the White Houses antidrug effort, to head its effort.

And no one was more energetic on Sikorsky's behalf that Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, who has been pitching for home-state Sikorsky on this issue since 2003.

Sikorsky's All-American pitch has gained a following among important conservative commentators. And in an appearance on Fox News, Mr. George, the United Technology's chief executive, gave a spirited pitch for Sikorsky's offering and easily won converts.

"I've got to tell you," the Fox host Neil Cavuto said, "I don't want to see a French firm carting our president around. I mean, were not going to see that, are we?"

Mr. George responded that Sikorsky helicopters had flown presidents for over 50 years and

"we'd like another half-century, too."

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vietnam!!!! that nasty word keeps coming up!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/29viet.html

Flashback to the 60's: A Sinking Sensation of Parallels Between Iraq and Vietnam
By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: January 29, 2005

ASHINGTON, Jan. 28 - Not quite 38 years ago, enmeshed in a drawn-out war whose ultimate outcome was deeply in doubt, Lyndon B. Johnson met on Guam with the fractious generals who were contending for leadership of South Vietnam and told them: "My birthday is in late August. The greatest birthday present you could give me is a national election."

George W. Bush's birthday is in early July, but his broad goals for the Iraqi elections on Sunday are much the same as the Johnson administration's in 1967: to confer political legitimacy and credibility on a government that Iraqis themselves will be willing and able to fight to defend, and that American and world public opinion will agree to help nurture.

"I think one lesson is that there be a clear objective that everybody understands," Mr. Bush said in an interview with The New York Times this week, reflecting on the relevance of Vietnam today. "A free, democratic Iraq, an ally in the war on terror, with an Iraqi army, all parts of it - Iraqi forces, army, national guard, border guard, police force - able to defend itself. Secondly, that people understand the connection between that goal and our future."

But the difficulties of achieving such objectives, then and now, have led a range of military experts, historians and politicians to consider the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq to warn of potential pitfalls ahead. Nearly two years after the American invasion of Iraq, such comparisons are no longer dismissed in mainstream political discourse as facile and flawed, but are instead bubbling to the top.

"We thought in those early days in Vietnam that we were winning," Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, one of this war's most vocal opponents, warned in a speech here on Thursday. "We thought the skill and courage of our troops was enough. We thought that victory on the battlefield would lead to victory in war and peace and democracy for the people of Vietnam. In the name of a misguided cause, we continued in a war too long. We failed to comprehend the events around us. We did not understand that our very presence was creating new enemies and defeating the very goals we set out to achieve."

Mr. Kennedy said that there would be "costs to staying and costs to leaving" Iraq, but that at least 12,000 American troops should leave immediately to signal the United States has a clear exit strategy. That is a version of the famous advice that Senator George Aiken, a Vermont Republican, gave Johnson: declare victory in Vietnam, then leave.

Prof. Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air Force's Air War College in Alabama, said he seldom provoked controversy when he warned his audiences of military commanders about the potential parallels between Vietnam and Iraq.

"There was a time when if you mentioned Iraq and Vietnam in the same breath, you were automatically considered antiwar and very pessimistic about our prospects there," he said. "And of course those arguments were used in the beginning by people who opposed the war. But all the more reason to take a sound and hopefully unbiased look at what comparisons there are and are not."

He is quick to point out that finding similarities is far from saying the ending will be the same. "The issue of creating a legitimate government in Iraq, and the domestic political sustainability of our policy in Iraq, are the two major areas of interface with our experience in Vietnam, where we failed," Professor Record said. "That doesn't mean we're necessarily doomed to failure."

But, he added, "the challenge of Vietnamization" - the Nixon administration's policy, begun in 1969, of phasing out American forces and turning war responsibilities over to the South Vietnamese, "is akin to Iraqicization." In Vietnam, unlike in Iraq, the United States "already had in place a rather large South Vietnamese army and security force" on which it could rely, instead of having to create one from scratch.

Stanley Karnow, who covered the Vietnam War and diplomacy as a journalist and wrote the exhaustive "Vietnam: A History," said, "You've got to be very careful about drawing analogies." But, noting recent polls that show overwhelming public concern that Mr. Bush has no clear plan for getting out of Iraq and deep skepticism that elections there will reduce the violence, Mr. Karnow added: "You are beginning to see the public turning off on Iraq. The same was true in Vietnam."

Anthony Lake, who as a young Foreign Service officer was vice consul in Hue and went on to serve as national security adviser under Bill Clinton, now teaches a graduate course at Georgetown University on Vietnam. His students' final assignment this year is to assess the parallels and dissimilarities between Iraq and Vietnam. Perhaps the most troubling comparison, in his view, is the lack of an achievable political goal.

"In Iraq, at the beginning, there was simply an assumption that in terms of a political goal, there would be immaculate democracy and rose petals," Mr. Lake said. Now, he said, that the administration is "setting as a goal is enough training and enough combat support so that there will be enough stability that we can leave. The paradox is that as long as we're there, we're fueling the very insurgency, or the very conflict which we say has to end before we can depart."

Michael Rubin, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who recently returned from Iraq, published an op-ed piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday in which he noted that Arab television in Baghdad routinely showed archival footage of American diplomats fleeing Saigon, as if to suggest that whatever Mr. Bush may say about America's staying power, "it is weak."

It is easy enough to catalogue all the important differences - some of them obvious, others less so - between Vietnam and Iraq. For one thing, American involvement in Vietnam began with more public support and greater agreement among the military, the government, the media and academia that fighting communism in Southeast Asia was a worthy goal. Precisely because of the Vietnam experience, the current war in Iraq began in spite of considerable domestic doubt about its wisdom and necessity.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two wars is that for more than two years in Vietnam, the Johnson administration steadily escalated American involvement, while from the beginning, the Bush administration has been intent on limiting the number of American troops in Iraq. Only a handful of voices in Congress have called for increasing the troop presence, and there is virtually no public support for doing so.

On Friday, Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who served in Vietnam, recalled in a speech here how J. William Fulbright, then chairman of the foreign relations committee, was criticized almost 40 years ago for holding hearings on Vietnam while a president of his own party was in power. He said Fulbright explained that he had done so in hopes of building a true consensus in the long run even at the risk of dispelling a false one in the short run.

"Today, we must not be party to a false consensus in Iraq or any foreign policy issue," Mr. Hagel said, in urging an exit strategy that relies on increased training for Iraqi troops and stepped up diplomacy and burden-sharing. "Hopefully Iraq will someday be a democratic example in the Middle East. But Iraq could also become a failed state. We cannot let this happen."

There are, of course, a handful of people in central policy positions now who played important roles in the Vietnam era, and presumably the applicable lessons are not lost on them.

In 1973, John D. Negroponte, now Mr. Bush's ambassador to Baghdad, was Henry A. Kissinger's special assistant on Vietnam. Mr. Negroponte protested that the peace agreement that allowed North Vietnamese forces to remain in the South after the American withdrawal would leave the situation "basically unresolved," Mr. Karnow recounts in his book. But Mr. Kissinger was unmoved, asking: "What do you want us to do? Stay there forever?"

In Iraq this week, the top American commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., offered a similar view. "We cannot stay here forever in the numbers that we are here now; I firmly believe that," he told reporters. "The Iraqis have to take ownership of this."

While Mr. Bush has taken pains not to spell out any timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, American military commanders have said that after the elections on Sunday, their principal mission will become the training of Iraqi forces. The prevailing view among even conservatives who supported the war from the start is that such a handover must begin.

"It's rough in a place like Iraq, where you can always point to all the problems and weaknesses that the Iraqi security forces have," said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who strongly supported the Iraq invasion. "They're never going to be as good as the Marines or the 101st Airborne, so it's always going to be easy to say, 'We don't trust these guys.' But we're going to have to try."

He added: "What was disastrous in Vietnam is that we were suffering a lot of casualties with no obvious gain. We're not quite in that situation in Iraq, but you can certainly see a building sense of frustration about whether we're making progress."

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f*ck the constitution!!! you don't get no stinking trial

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/national/29smuggle.html

Judge Says Guilty Plea in Smuggling Must Stand
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: January 29, 2005

OUSTON, Jan. 28 - A federal judge refused on Friday to allow a woman who had confessed to leading the nation's worst smuggling debacle to withdraw her guilty plea, despite defense claims that the government had turned a blind eye to the smuggling.

The judge, Vanessa D. Gilmore, allowed last July's guilty plea by the defendant, Karla Chavez, to stand, with little ground for appeal. That leaves Ms. Chavez facing life in prison when she is sentenced in May in the deaths of 19 people sealed in a searing tractor trailer in South Texas in May 2003. The truck driver is awaiting trial on charges that carry the death penalty.

Lawyers for Ms. Chavez moved last week to revoke her plea, arguing in part that she had been deprived of the right to make an informed decision. Citing hearsay accounts, the lawyers, John C. LaGrappe and Jeffrey D. Sasser, raised the possibility that the truck packed with 74 people may have been under surveillance, may have been X-rayed at a checkpoint in Sarita, Tex., or may have been waved through after payoffs to border agents.

The United States attorney, Michael T. Shelby, and other prosecutors said in opposing papers that the government had no advance knowledge of the scheme and had no evidence of bribery. They said Ms. Chavez had reneged on her agreement to provide truthful testimony and cooperate with the government.

The hearing on Friday was the defense's chance to present its evidence. It began with high drama when Mr. LaGrappe said his first witness was so afraid for his life that he needed to testify in secret. The judge agreed, ordering news reporters and spectators out, overruling an objection by the news media.

Later, however, on a media lawyer's motion to unseal a transcript of the witness's 45-minute testimony, the judge agreed, with the witness's name redacted. The record showed he was a 49-year-old Houstonian who in 2003 had volunteered his services to federal agents as a way of protecting his daughter, who "had gotten involved with some shady characters who were dealing with money laundering and illegal alien smuggling."

In March 2004, he said, he became a confidential informant for the immigration and customs enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security.

He said that in March 2003 he learned that smugglers were carting immigrants in trailer trucks on Route 77 through the Sarita checkpoint, south of Corpus Christi, and a year later, when he was an informant, he told his immigration and customs handler, Gary Rennick, that one of the smugglers who had been operating for three years "had a Border Patrol agent in his pocket."

The witness said he was told "not to worry about it." But under cross-examination he acknowledged knowing nothing about events on May 13 and 14, 2003, when the truck with the 74 immigrants made its way through South Texas and the Sarita checkpoint. At one point, the two defense lawyers, Mr. LaGrappe and Mr. Sasser, began sniping so heatedly at each other over what questions to ask that Judge Gilmore asked: "What is this? Is this, like, you know, Fric and Frac practicing law?"

A second defense witness, Chris Petrowski, 35, testifying in a Transportation Security Administration shirt and ID badge, said he was ordered dismissed on Oct. 31 as a baggage screener at Houston's Hobby Airport after he complained about security lapses. "If it was busy we didn't check anything," he said.

He said that during pleasure trips through El Paso to Mexico he had seen trucks from Mexico being waved through without checks. But he also acknowledged having no information on the events at Sarita. Outside court he was confronted by a federal officer who demanded that he hand over his ID and shirt.

A final witness was a former Houston deputy constable, Thomas Will, cited in defense papers as a source of information on a customs agent supposedly transferred to Arizona in retaliation for complaining about security problems at Sarita. Mr. Will said he had lied when he told Mr. Sasser that he had talked to the agent's wife and that she had confirmed the transfer. "I never talked to the agent; I never talked to the wife of the customs agent," he said.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/national/29key.html

Graduate Cryptographers Unlock Code of 'Thiefproof' Car Key
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: January 29, 2005

ALTIMORE - Matthew Green starts his 2005 Ford Escape with a duplicate key he had made at Lowe's. Nothing unusual about that, except that the automobile industry has spent millions of dollars to keep him from being able to do it.

Mr. Green, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, is part of a team that plans to announce on Jan. 29 that it has cracked the security behind "immobilizer" systems from Texas Instruments Inc. The systems reduce car theft, because vehicles will not start unless the system recognizes a tiny chip in the authorized key. They are used in millions of Fords, Toyotas and Nissans.

All that would be required to steal a car, the researchers said, is a moment next to the car owner to extract data from the key, less than an hour of computing, and a few minutes to break in, feed the key code to the car and hot-wire it.

An executive with the Texas Instruments division that makes the systems did not dispute that the Hopkins team had cracked its code, but said there was much more to stealing a car than that. The devices, said the executive, Tony Sabetti, "have been fraud-free and are likely to remain fraud-free."

The implications of the Hopkins finding go beyond stealing cars.

Variations on the technology used in the chips, known as RFID for radio frequency identification, are widely used. Similar systems deduct highway tolls from drivers' accounts and restrict access to workplaces.

Wal-Mart is using the technology to track inventory, the Food and Drug Administration is considering it to foil drug counterfeiting, and the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, plans to implant chips in cadavers to curtail unauthorized sale of body parts.

The Johns Hopkins researchers say that if other radio frequency ID systems are vulnerable, the new field could offer far less security than its proponents promise.

The computer scientists are not doing R.&D. for the Mafia. Aviel D. Rubin, a professor of computer science who led the team, said his three graduate students did what security experts often do: showed the lack of robust security in important devices that people use every day.

"What we find time and time again is the security is overlooked and not done right," said Dr. Rubin, who has exposed flaws in electronic voting systems and wireless computer networks.

David Wagner, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, who reviewed a draft of a paper by the Hopkins team, called it "great research," adding, "I see it as an early warning" for all radio frequency ID systems.

The "immobilizer" technology used in the keys has been an enormous success. Texas Instruments alone has its chips in an estimated 150 million keys. Replacing the key on newer cars can cost hundreds of dollars, but the technology is credited with greatly reducing auto theft. - Early versions of in-key chips were relatively easy to clone, but the Texas Instruments chips are considered to be among the best. Still, the amount of computing the chip can do is restricted by the fact that it has no power of its own; it builds a slight charge from an electromagnetic field from the car's transmitter.

Cracking the system took the graduate students three months, Dr. Rubin said. "There was a lot of trial and error work with, every once in a while, a little 'Aha!' "

The Hopkins researchers got unexpected help from Texas Instruments itself. They were able to buy a tag reader directly from the company, which sells kits for $280 on its Web site. They also found a general diagram on the Internet, from a technical presentation by the company's German division. The researchers wrote in the paper describing their work that the diagram provided "a useful foothold" into the system. (The Hopkins paper, which is online at www.rfidanalysis.org, does not provide information that might allow its work to be duplicated.

The researchers discovered a critically important fact: the encryption algorithm used by the chip to scramble the challenge uses a relatively short code, known as a key. The longer the code key, which is measured in bits, the harder it is to crack any encryption system.

"If you were to tell a cryptographer that this system uses 40-bit keys, you'd immediately conclude that the system is weak and that you'd be able to break it," said Ari Juels, a scientist with the research arm of RSA Security, which financed the team and collaborated with it.

The team wrote software that mimics the system, which works through a pattern of challenge and response. The researchers took each chip they were trying to clone and fed it challenges, and then tried to duplicate the response by testing all 1,099,511,627,776 possible encryption keys. Once they had the right key, they could answer future challenges correctly.

Mr. Sabetti of Texas Instruments argues that grabbing the code from a key would be very difficult, because the chips have a very short broadcast range. The greatest distance that his company's engineers have managed in the laboratory is 12 inches, and then only with large antennas that require a power source.

Dr. Rubin acknowledged that his team had been able to read the keys just a few inches from a reader, but said many situations could put an attacker and a target in close proximity, including crowded elevators.

The researchers used several thousand dollars of off-the-shelf computer equipment to crack the code, and had to fill a back seat of Mr. Green's S.U.V. with computers and other equipment to successfully imitate a key. But the cost of equipment could be brought down to several hundred dollars, Dr. Rubin said, and Adam Stubblefield, one of the Hopkins graduate students, said, "We think the entire attack could be done with a device the size of an iPod."

The Texas Instruments chips are also used in millions of the Speedpass tags that drivers use to buy gasoline at ExxonMobil stations without pulling out a credit card, and the researchers have shown that they can buy gas with a cracked code. A spokeswoman for ExxonMobil, Prem Nair, said the company used additional antifraud measures, including restrictions that only allow two gas purchases per day.

"We strongly believe that the Speedpass devices and the checks that we have in place are much more secure than those using credit cards with magnetic stripes," she said.

The team discussed its research with Texas Instruments before making the paper public. Matthew Buckley, a spokesman for RSA Security, said his company, which offers security consulting services and is developing radio frequency ID tags that resist unauthorized eavesdropping, had offered to work with Texas Instruments free of charge to address the security issues.

Dr. Wagner said that what graduate students could do, organized crime could also do. "The white hats don't have a monopoly on cryptographic expertise," he said.

Dr. Rubin said that if criminals did eventually duplicate his students' work, people could block eavesdroppers by keeping the key or Speedpass token in a tinfoil sheath when not in use. But Mr. Sabetti, the Texas Instruments executive, said such precautions were unnecessary. "It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist," he said.

Dan Bedore, a spokesman for Ford, said the company had confidence in the technology. "No security device is foolproof," he said, but "it's a very, very effective deterrent" to drive-away theft. "Flatbed trucks are a bigger threat," he said, "and a lot lower tech."

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http://www.azcentral.com/lavoz/front/articles/012605agua-CR.html

Crisis de agua en la ciudad

Por Chakris Kussalanant
La Voz
Enero 26, 2005

Ayer, el alcalde de Phoenix, Phil Gordon, pidió a 1.4 millones de residentes que dejaran de consumir el agua de la ciudad por presentar evidencias de contaminación.

El anuncio oficial se hizo ayer en la mañana, después que funcionarios del Departamento de Agua de la ciudad descubrieran el pasado lunes por la noche lo que catalogaron como sedimentos, basura y partículas en su planta de tratamiento en Val Vista, la cual es compartida con la Ciudad de Mesa.

Aunque las autoridades dijeron que no hay evidencia de que el nivel de contaminación del agua de Phoenix sea peligroso, pidieron al público hervir el agua por al menos cinco minutos antes de consumir, lavar comidas o lavarse los dientes. Aparentemente, no hay ningún riesgo de bañarse con el agua que corre, pero instaron a tomar duchas cortas. publicidad

Tanto el alcalde como el administrador de la ciudad, Frank Fairbanks, solicitaron a la ciudadanía dejar de regar los jardines, lavar ropa o mantener fuentes por los siguientes días.

“Esta es una situación inconveniente, no mortal”, dijo Gordon. “En el peor de los casos, el riesgo para todos es mínimo”.

Los funcionarios aseguraron que para resolver el problema, la ciudad ha detenido la producción de su planta en Val Vista, así como otras dos plantas para llevar a cabo pruebas constantes durante las siguientes 24 horas.

Las plantas de tratamiento han sido cerradas por mantenimiento a causa de sedimentos excesivos producidos por recientes desagües e inundaciones, lo cual significa que sólo dos de las cinco plantas de la ciudad están actualmente abasteciendo a Phoenix, la de Union Hills y Verde.

Fairbanks aseguró que actualmente la producción de agua de la ciudad aprueba 102 de las 103 pruebas federales de calidad y agua potable.

“La prueba que estamos fallando es la de condición turbia”, dijo Gordon. “Usualmente debemos registrar una partícula por cada billón de unidades de agua, en estos momentos registramos 2.7”.

Tanto Fairbanks como Gordon aseguraron que los expertos e ingenieros del Departamento de Agua de la ciudad no han encontrado algún tipo de bacteria en el agua o que el agua haya sido expuesta a sedimentación proveniente de sitios industriales o agrícolas.

“La mayoría del agua que recibimos es de corriente arriba y pertenece al sistema del Río Salado. Son pocos los sitios agrícolas a lo largo del curso de este canal, así que es improbable que haya sedimentos de estos sitios”, dijo Faribanks.

Aunque Phoenix comparte su agua con Mesa, Scottsdale, Tempe y Tolleson, estas ciudades han cortado sus líneas de suministro con las plantas de Phoenix.

Mike Gritzuk, director del Departamento de Servicios de Agua de la ciudad, culpa a la madre naturaleza y no a la falta de verdadera prevención por la crisis actual.

“Nuestras plantas son centros convencionales de filtrado, consisten de unidades que introducen químicos para hacer las partículas grandes en el sedimento mas pesado y caiga al fondo. Después el agua es filtrada por arena y una serie de filtros. Son estos filtros los que están saturados con un alto nivel de sedimentos en las aguas del Río Salado”, dijo Gritzuk.

El funcionario explicó que normalmente el agua de consumo nunca llega a tener un nivel turbio de más de uno. Usualmente el “agua cruda” que entra a las plantas de proceso tiene un nivel máximo de 20, pero durante las semanas anteriores ese nivel ha registrado un promedio de 150 y en ciertas ocasiones 650.

El alto nivel de sólidos ha forzado al Departamento de Agua a la limpieza de los filtros de las plantas de la ciudad, a reducir la cantidad de agua que corre por los mismos y a disminuir la producción.

“Nunca hemos visto una situación como esta. Hemos estado en una terrible sequía, ahora cuando tenemos lluvias torrenciales las montañas desprenden mucho sedimento. No podemos prevenir una sequía o una tormenta que causa inundaciones, solo podemos ajustarnos”, dijo Gritzuk.

Si usted desea más información, conéctese a www.phoenix.gov.

Contacte al reportero: chakris@ashlandmedia.com

http://www.azcentral.com/lavoz/noticias/articles/0125agua-CR.html

Crisis de agua potable en etapas finales

The Arizona Republic
Enero 25, 2005

Phoenix, Arizona.- Funcionarios de la ciudad de Phoenix advirtieron ayer a los 1.4 millones de residentes de la ciudad de Phoenix que continúen hirviendo el agua antes de consumirla hasta el medio día de hoy, aunque la alerta que ocurrió cuando se encontraron altos niveles de sedimentos en el agua parece estar en sus etapas fianles .

El martes por la noche, los resultados de la prueba del agua de la planta contaminada de tratamiento de agua Val Vista en Mesa, indicaron que el agua está en buenas condiciones. Sin embargo, todavía se registraron residuos de aguas sucias en las tuberías de 18 millas.

Funcionarios de la Ciudad puntualizaron que las personas que toman el agua no corren ningún tipo de riesgo letal, sin embargo, oficiales del departamento de salubridad dijeron que algunos de los síntomas potenciales que resultan por ingerir agua sucia incluyen problemas gastrointestinales. Aquellas personas que corren un riesgo más alto son los niños de corta edad, los ancianos y aquellas personas que tienen un sistema inmunológico débil. publicidad

Los funcionaros de la Ciudad atribuyeron los altos niveles de sedimentos del agua a la madre naturaleza, sin embargo, reconocen que una serie de decisiones pudieran haber empeorado el problema.

"Creo que tenemos que analizar lo que sabíamos, cuándo tuvimos conocimiento de ello y si hay algo que podemos hacer diferente a lo que hicimos para prevenir que esto vuelva a suceder", puntualizó Claude Mattox, consejero de la Ciudad.

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Man fired in bikini ruckus raps Tempe

By Dennis Welch, Tribune

The Tempe public works supervisor fired after a bikini-clad woman
attended a retirement gathering on city property said he was the victim
of a "politically correct" employer.

City officials, however, said the severity of the incident and a
spotted
work history prompted their swift and aggressive response.

Dale Cogswell, who worked for the public works department 21 years,
told
city investigators he tried to break up the party but later allowed it
to continue.

"I didn’t think it was wrong for that woman to be passing out
doughnuts," he said. "I was a target of the ultrapolitically correct
world of Tempe because I stood up and was truthful."

John Osgood, the deputy public works manager, said he didn’t consider
the city’s actions as being politically correct.

"We consider this being a harassment free workplace in which all
employees are treated with respect and dignity," Osgood said.

Cogswell has been reprimanded twice during the past three years. In one
case, he was reprimanded about his bad attitude toward a mandatory
sensitivity training class for supervisors.

Cogswell also was suspended for 30 hours without pay for sending
sexually explicit e-mails to a co-worker. In a written statement, he
said there was nothing inappropriate about the message and he was
trying
to "pass on some humor."

He also received two letters of appreciation from supervisors for his
excellent work performance, according to his personnel record.

Cogswell said he was in his office at 5 a.m. Jan. 21 when someone told
him a retiring co-worker had brought a girl into the employee lounge.

After seeing the woman, Cogswell told her to get dressed and leave.

When Cogswell returned to the lounge moments later, he said she was
still sporting the bikini and handing out doughnuts.

"The guys were getting a kick out of it so I let it go on for a while
longer," he said. The woman stayed until the crews started their 5:30
a.m. shift.

Cogswell, fired Thursday after an internal investigation, said he was
three years away from retirement. Two police officers watched as he
cleared out his office before escorting him off city property.

He said Friday the city did not follow its termination policy. The city
should have offered him a chance to respond, but they didn’t, he said.

However, city records state that employees can be fired immediately
under certain circumstances.

"A process of progressive discipline is followed to ensure that
classified employees are afforded adequate opportunity to correct
unacceptable behavior," the policy states. "However, the seriousness of
the offense may dictate overriding progressive discipline, and serious
offenses may lead to immediate dismissal at any stage of the process."

Two other supervisors who were present at the gathering still face
disciplinary action pending the outcome of an internal investigation,
Osgood said.

Contact Dennis Welch by email, or phone (480) 898-6573

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=35513

but i bet the cops still get to have topless dancers at the parties the city pust on for them.

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http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2005/01/24685_comment.php#24701

Critical Mass Brutalized by Tempe Police
by Critical Mass Participant Saturday January 29, 2005 at 07:15 PM

The Tempe Police brutalize local bicyclists for participating in Critical Mass.

On the final Friday of January of this year, approximately 20 bicyclists gathered at Gentle Strength Cooperative to soon begin the festivity known as Critical Mass. Critical Mass is a movement of bicyclists who use direct action to assert their right to public roads. We promote alternatives to supporting the oil oriented motor industries, and believe this can best be achieved through healthy and conscious living, community, and environmentally clean transportation. Some participants attend to protest, while others simply attend to enjoy themselves amongst fellow bicyclists.

We first headed north on the Mill Avenue Bridge, and then back south on Mill to Apache Boulevard. We peacefully bicycled and followed all traffic signals and broke no laws.

Eventually, we headed north on Rural Road to University. Before being able to complete or left turn onto University, a participant in front of the Mass was asked for his Identification Card. At this point, there were two police vehicles, and about half a dozen Bike-Cops. The CM participant complied with the officer, and was asked to merge off the turn lane and onto the sidewalk. At this point, the remaining portion of the Mass, about 18 people, was also escorted onto the sidewalk for questioning. While the first approached individual gave the police officer (Officer K. Mayer, male, Badge#15984) the needed information, another CM participant (we’ll call him Subject A) monitored the police officer for any wrongdoing or unlawful conduct. Subject A was told that he was obstructing a “criminal investigation” and eventually made his way to the east side of the parking lot, less than one hundred feet away, where the majority of police and bicyclists were at. Subject A was not at this point being questioned by any police official, and decided to simply leave. Before he could leave the area, Officer R. Smith (male, Badge# 10291) grabbed his arm and told him several times to “go over there”. Subject A complied, but asked Officer Smith, “Am I under arrest?” (According to the American Civil Liberties Union, one can legally leave if not detained or under arrest) Subject A repeatedly asked if he was being placed under arrest, and finally, Officer Smith replied, “Yes”, and tackled Subject A to the ground, causing the arrestee to hit his head and face as his legs were tangled in his bicycle. At this point, several other police officers joined the violent arrest and piled upon one another to restrain him and put him in handcuffs. Subject A showed no resistance to his arrest, and complied with the officers, however he continued to ask Officer Smith, “on what grounds…On what grounds am I being placed under arrest?” Subject A was charged with “Obstructing and interfering with an criminal investigation”. His court date is scheduled for early March.

Moments later, another arrest followed. A female officer (Officer K. Click Badge#167474) instigated violence upon a participant for using ‘excessive’ body language to express her feelings of disappointment of the Police behavior. She said nothing foul or inappropriate, but simply expressed her feelings on the matter. Officer K. Click suddenly grabbed the CM participants hand, and screamed violently, “Don’t you ever point your finger at me!”. It was at this point that the participant’s boyfriend (we’ll call him Subject B) stepped in out of concern. He made no physical contact with the police officer. Approximately four Police officers surrounded him and placed him in handcuffs.
At this point there was two police vehicles temporarily blocking northbound traffic, almost one dozed Bike-Cops, a paddy wagon, and at least two more police vehicles in the parking lot. This was a clear example of the Police State repressing our basic freedoms and way of life. We can’t allow them to come into our communities and instigate violence with a badge as justification. Something has to be done.

Passers-by were very sympathetic of the brutalized Critical Mass, and were disgusted with the ill behavior of the Tempe Police Department. Below is a list of mostly all of the officers involved:

Officer K. Mayer, male, B# 15984 [personally gave citation(s)]
Officer K. Click, female, B# 167474 (personally arrested Sub. B and gave other citation(s)]
Officer K. Kelch, male, B# 15293
Officer D. Lee, male, B# 15749
Officer D. Diaz, male, B# 16715 [personally gave citation(s)]
Officer McCormick, male, B# 435
Officer R. Smith, male, B# 10291 [personally arrested Sub. A]
Officer S. Gage, female, B# 11435
Detention Officer Richards, male, B#558--also the driver of the Paddy Wagon (License # G 299DM)
Officer K. Renwiche, male, B# 266

*Please Note: The above information is partial; it does not include the names and numbers of the police officers in some of the vehicles, because they left before their information could be attained. And in the brackets next to specific names is that officers direct involvement, however all officers were participants *

After the brutal arrests took place, and all the citations were given out, the remaining Mass dispersed into small groups and slowly began to leave the area. About seven bicyclists went to the Tempe Police Department to show jail solidarity to both Subject A and Subject B. The girlfriend of Subject B posted bond for $500 dollars and he was released with a court trial pending. Subject A, however, stayed the night and was released the following morning, January 29, at 9:30am.

Those who were ticketed were cited mostly for not having bike-lights. One was cited for having an expired drivers license (even though he was not presently driving), and another for simply not having her bike-light switched on while being questioned. All arrested and those given citations are to appear in court in early March.

The brutal effort by the Tempe Police Department was intended to repress the freshly birthed Tempe Critical Mass and to intimidate us into no longer participating in this monthly event. But they will not succeed. We will be back, and we will not be hindered by their attack as they intended. We welcome every one of all walks of life that are fighting for coexistence and alternatives to mass oil consumption to come and participate in the Phoenix area Critical Mass. Don’t allow the police to dismay you. The greater our numbers, the greater our strength and effectiveness. We are Traffic!

*For future information on the local chapter of Critical Mass, check out http://www.cmphx.org or the AZ Indy media Calendar page

www.cmphx.org

add your comments

Tempe Cops Suck
by Stand Up For Your Rights Saturday January 29, 2005 at 07:53 PM

The Tempe cops totally suck! Email the Mayor and City Council.

add your comments

Email City Council
by Blatant Harrassment Saturday January 29, 2005 at 07:57 PM

mailto:hugh_hallman@tempe.gov mailto:ben_arredondo@tempe.gov mailto:hut_hutson@tempe.gov mailto:mark_mitchell@tempe.gov mailto:len_copple@tempe.gov mailto:pam_goronkin@tempe.gov mailto:barb_carter@tempe.gov

1st Amendment
by Take It All The Way Saturday January 29, 2005 at 08:03 PM

Take this one all the way, 5 to 4 or not!
STATEWIDE DAY OF ACTION
by Action Man Sunday January 30, 2005 at 09:09 AM
police_states_suck@yahoo.com

Tempe Police Repression of Critical Mass
Flagstaff Police Repression of activists at Kerry Rally
Tucson Police BRUTALITY with 70 rubber bullet hits on one guy

These are all current stories on Indymedia Arizona.

We need to have a statewide day of action to stop the brutality and harassment we feel, it is totally out of control now. If you don't think we live in a police state, then you must already be in jail. Action Now!

I have called for actions in Flag in solidarity with the rest of the state. Lets make FEB 25 a statewide show. Critical Mass, Rally, Marches, Picket the Police stations, press releases, press conferences, the whole nine yards.

Stop the hate and end the Police State!

Seriously, if you know how to organize...NOW in the time.
FEB 25
STATEWIDE DAY OF ACTION AGAINST POLICE REPRESSION AND BRUTALITY

This could follow with MAR 15 (This date gets worldwide support)
International Day of Action against Police Brutality

Protest At Tempe Police HQ
by the DooooD Sunday January 30, 2005 at 10:47 AM

I think that a protest should be staged as soon as possible in front of the Tempe police station.

Signs, etc and hopefully get the corporate media out for it.

Maybe the anarchists can organize this? [sic]

TD
by TD Sunday January 30, 2005 at 12:55 PM

How's this you crazy liberals - GET THE FUCK OFF OUR ROADS. You have NO rights to block traffic, cause dangers to pedestrians and motorists, and distract the police from doing their more important jobs (such as stopping drunk drivers, rapists, murderers.) Instead of letting the police work ,you PURPOSEFULLY draw them out, provoke them, and force them to protect you incompetent idiots from yourselves.

Let me put it this way again - YOU HAVE NO FUCKING RIGHT TO BE IN THE ROAD WITH 20 PEOPLE BLOCKING TRAFFIC. You cannot evan maintain the speed limit, by doing so, you're causing MASSIVE risks to yourselves, and to the people around you. It's all fun and games, but what happens when you cause people to get killed? You're going to go crying to the police to help.

GET OUT OF OUR FUCKING ROADS. God you liberals are so clueless.

Get a car you fucking bums

This is why we have the 2nd Amendment
by Cop Killer Sunday January 30, 2005 at 12:57 PM

This is why the founders created the 2nd Amendment. If the government fails to obey the constitution we have the right to overthrow the government. And thats what guns are for.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0131IraqCrash31-ON.html

Al Jazeera airs video showing alleged shootdown of British plane

Associated Press
Jan. 31, 2005 09:35 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents claimed to have shot down a British military plane north of Baghdad over the weekend, and Al-Jazeera television aired a videotape from guerrillas Monday showing flaming wreckage of a plane. Britain said all 10 personnel on the flight were missing and presumed dead.

The authenticity of the video could not be confirmed. It showed a finger pressing a button, and then two missiles or rockets flying up into the air. The video did not show any impact with a plane. Instead, it cut to footage of people walking through a plane's wreckage burning on the ground.

In London, officials at the British foreign office said they were aware of the reported video, but offered no further comment.

An Iraqi militant group claimed responsibility for shooting down the plane in an Internet statement.

If the deaths are confirmed, it would be the biggest single loss of British lives since the start of the Iraq war. The previous highest number was eight.

In a statement on an Islamic Web site, Ansar al-Islam claimed its fighters tracked the aircraft, "which was flying at a low altitude, and fired an anti-tank missile at it." The plane was flying from Baghdad to the town of Balad, where the U.S. military has an air base.

"Thanks be to God, the plane was downed and a huge fire and black clouds of smoke were seen rising from the location of the crash," said the statement posted Sunday.

A spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Defense said he could not confirm Ansar al-Islam's claim. "People on the ground are investigating," he said on condition of anonymity.

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said that nine British air force personnel and one soldier were missing and believed killed in the crash.

Capt. David Orwin, a British military spokesman in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, told the Press Association news agency that the crash site had been secured by U.S. and British forces.

A senior U.S. military officer in Iraq said the Royal Air Force Hercules C-130 aircraft crashed 25 miles northwest of Baghdad, adding that the plane's wreckage was scattered over a large area. The Ministry of Defense in London said the crash occurred 19 miles northwest of the Iraqi capital.

Ansar al-Islam and other insurgent groups are known to operate in the area, and insurgents have fired at coalition aircraft before. Several thousand surface-to-air missiles disappeared from Iraqi military arsenals after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime and many of them are believed to have fallen into the hands of insurgents.

Britain, America's top ally in the coalition, has 9,000 troops in Iraq, mostly in the south of the country near the city of Basra. British officials haven't said why the Hercules was flying north of Baghdad.

"It is the largest single loss of British service lives since the military action began almost two years ago," Straw said of the plane crash. "Our hearts go out to the families and comrades of those who were killed and those injured," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

One of the dead was a serviceman with joint British-Australian citizenship, Flight Lt. Paul Pardoel, the Australian government said.

The British military has reported 76 deaths since the start of the Iraq war. Eight British troops died along with four American crew when a U.S. helicopter crashed over Kuwait on March 21, 2003.

Britain's Royal Air Force flies several versions of the American-built C-130 Hercules aircraft, which is used to carry troops, passengers and freight. The older C-130K model has a crew of five or six and carries up to 128 troops. The newer C-130J version has a crew of three and can also carry up to 128 infantry. The RAF has some 60 Hercules aircraft, about half of which are newer planes.

Military expert Air Vice-Marshall Tony Mason said the fact the wreckage was widely scattered indicated the Hercules may have been shot down.

"The first statement said the crash site covered a wide area, which suggests impact in the air rather than the ground," Mason told BBC radio. "My concern is that at the moment it could very well be hostile action."

<#==#>

some of us say this is the american empire installing a puppet government in iraq. free elections yea sure! you can vote for anybody the american government let on the ballot. i suspect they allow write in votes for george w bush too.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0131IraqVote31-ON.html

Iraqis vote in 'new era'

Associated Press
Jan. 31, 2005 09:25 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's interim leader called on his countrymen to set aside their differences Monday, while polling stations finished the first-phase count of millions of ballots from the weekend election that many Iraqis hope will usher in democracy and hasten the departure of 150,000 American troops.

From the counts by individual stations, local centers will prepare tally sheets and send them to Baghdad, where vote totals will be compiled, election Commission official Adel al-Lami said. Final results could take up to 10 days.

With turnout in the vote still unknown, concern was focused on participation by Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, amid fears that the group that drives the insurgency could grow ever more alienated. Electoral commission officials said turnout in hardline Sunni areas was better than some expected, thought they cited no numbers. A U.S. diplomat warned that Sunni participation appeared "considerably lower" than that of other groups.

Meanwhile, the militant group Ansar al-Islam claimed on Monday that its fighters, using an anti-tank missile, shot down a British military C-130 Hercules transport plane that crashed north of Baghdad just after polls closed Sunday.

All 10 military personnel on the flight were missing and presumed dead - which would be Britain's heaviest single loss of life of the war - Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said. The British government would not comment on the Ansar claim, saying the cause of the crash was still being investigated.

In his first news conference since the elections, Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi called on Iraqis to join together to build a society shattered by decades of war, tyranny, economic sanctions and military occupation.

"The terrorists now know that they cannot win," he said. "We are entering a new era of our history and all Iraqis - whether they voted or not - should stand side by side to build their future." He promised to work to ensure that "the voice of all Iraqis is present in the coming government."

The country was already focusing on goals almost as challenging as the election itself: forming a new governing coalition once the vote is known, then writing a constitution and winning trust.

The main Shiite clerical-backed faction in the race was already claiming a strong showing in the election. Officials of the United Iraqi Alliance said they expected to win at least 45 percent - and maybe even a slim outright majority - of seats in the 275-member National Assembly. Local officials of the parties within the alliance said the list swept some southern cities, winning 90 percent of the votes in Najaf and 80 percent in Basra.

The claims could not be confirmed, and the Alliance had been expected to run strong in the Shiite heartland. Going into the vote, the list headed by Allawi was also considered a main contender.

A powerful showing for the Alliance, which was endorsed by the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, could make Sunnis even more reluctant to accept the results of the election - particularly if Sunni participation turns out to have been low.

Although turnout figures were unavailable, a U.S. diplomat briefing reporters on condition of anonymity said "good anecdotal information" indicated that "Sunni participation was considerably lower than participation by the other groups, especially in areas which have seen a great deal of violence."

In the heavily Sunni town of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, 48-year-old history teacher Qais Youssif said no member of his family had voted.

"The so-called elections were held in the way that America and the occupation forces wanted," Youssif said. "They want to marginalize the role of the Sunnis. They and the media talk about the Sunnis as a minority. I do not think they are a minority."

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni faction, feels the vote was not inclusive "because an important segment of the Sunni Muslim community didn't take part," said party official Naser Ayef al-Ani. Large, heavily Sunni sections of the country were unable to cast ballots, and in some places lack of security forced polling places to open late or not at all, officials said.

In neighboring Jordan, King Abdullah said in an interview with CNN on Monday that Sunni participation was "a lot lower than any of us hoped."

On Sunday, the electoral commission said it believed that turnout overall among the estimated 14 million eligible Iraqi voters appeared higher than the 57 percent, or roughly 8 million, that had been predicted before the vote.

Not even the country's frequent power outages could stop the count. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, election workers began their task crouched on the ground, counting ballots by the glow of oil lamps.

After an election ban on most daytime driving, cars again wove their way down Baghdad's streets Monday. The city was relatively calm at midmorning after a day of thundering mortar shelling and gunfire.

"Now I feel that Saddam is really gone," said Fatima Ibrahim, smiling as she headed home after voting in Irbil, in the Kurdish northern region. She was 14 and a bride of just three months when her husband, father and brother were rounded up in a campaign of ethnic cleansing under Saddam. None have ever been found.

The absence of any catastrophic single attack Sunday seemed at least partly a result of the heavy security measures, including a ban on most private cars. At least 44 people were killed in violence on election day, when there were nine suicide attacks, most near polling sites in Baghdad.

Two U.S. service members also died in fighting in the Sunni stronghold of Anbar province west of Baghdad Sunday.

It was still unclear if the successful vote would deal a significant blow to the insurgents or lead to a short-term rise in violence. The militants might need time to regroup after the spate of attacks they launched in the weeks before the vote.

The election was hailed as a success around the globe, with President Bush declaring: "The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East."

The top opponents to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had praise for the vote, though with reservations. French President Jacques Chirac phoned Bush and said he was satisfied by Iraqi participation in the vote and said "the strategy of terrorist groups has partly failed."

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the election "undoubtedly a step toward democratization of the country."

But his Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the low Sunni turnout, echoing worries expressed by several world leaders. It warned of difficulties "if other political forces feel removed from state affairs."

Sunday's historic election came seven months after Iraq's interim government took over from a U.S.-led coalition and less than two years after Saddam's ouster.

The 275-member National Assembly, elected for an 11-month term, will draft a permanent constitution, and if the document is approved, Iraqis will vote for a permanent government in December. If the document is rejected, Iraqis will repeat the whole process again.

Once results are in, it could take weeks of backroom deals before a prime minister and government are picked by the new assembly. If that government can draw in the minority Sunni Arabs who partly shunned the election, the country could stabilize, hastening the day when 150,000 U.S. troops can go home.

International debate immediately turned to just that issue. On Monday, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid plans to call on Bush to outline an exit strategy for Iraq.

Iraq's interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, told Britain's Channel 4 News he expected there would be no need for U.S. troops any longer than 18 months because that's when he anticipates Iraq's security forces will be trained well enough to handle the job.

But Allawi said recently that it was premature to know when Iraqi troops would be ready.

<#==#>

the new iraqi puppet government speaks for its american empire masters

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201Iraq01-ON.html

U.S. troops should stay, Iraqi president says

Associated Press
Feb. 1, 2005 07:10 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's president said Tuesday it would be "complete nonsense" to ask foreign troops to leave the country now, although some could depart by year's end. Officials began the final vote tally from elections to produce a government to confront the insurgency.

Meanwhile, Iraq reopened its borders Tuesday and commercial flights took off from Baghdad International Airport as authorities eased security restrictions imposed to protect last weekend's landmark voting.

In Baghdad, about 200 election workers Tuesday began the second - and possibly final - stage of the count. They reviewed tally sheets prepared by workers who counted ballots starting Sunday night at the 5,200 polling centers across the country and began crunching the numbers into 80 computer terminals. Officials said no figures were expected to be released Tuesday.

The Sunday ballot, which occurred without catastrophic rebel attacks, raised hopes that a new Iraqi government would be able to assume greater responsibility for security, hastening the day when the 170,000 U.S. and other foreign troops can go home.

During a news conference, President Ghazi al-Yawer was asked whether the presence of foreign troops might be fueling the Sunni Arab revolt by encouraging rebel attacks.

"It's only complete nonsense to ask the troops to leave in this chaos and this vacuum of power," al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, said.

He said foreign troops should leave only after Iraq's security forces are built up, the country's security situation has improved and some pockets of terrorists are eliminated.

"By the end of this year, we could see the number of foreign troops decreasing," al-Yawer said.

Al-Yawer had been a strong critic of some aspects of the U.S. military's performance in Iraq, including the three-week Marine siege of the Sunni rebel city of Fallujah in April.

Al-Yawer helped negotiate an end to that siege. But the city fell into the hands of insurgents and religious zealots, forcing the Marines to recapture Fallujah last November in some of the heaviest urban combat for American forces since the Vietnam war.

"There were some mistakes" in the occupation "but to be fair ... I think all in all it was positive, the contribution of the foreign forces in Iraq," al-Yawer said. "It was worth it."

Later Tuesday, Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said Iraq would only ask U.S. and other forces to leave when the country's own troops were capable of taking on insurgents.

"We don't want to have foreign troops in our country, but at the same time we believe that these forces should stay for some time until we are able to control the borders and establish a new modern army and we have efficient intelligence," Shaalan told reporters. "At that time ... we'll ask them to leave."

With the election complete and the ballots safely in Baghdad, Iraqi authorities eased the severe security measures that had been put in place to protect the voters and polling centers.

Royal Jordanian Airlines and Iraqi Airways resumed flights to and from Baghdad. Cars, trucks and buses began crossing the border between Iraq and Syria at Tanaf. However, the Yarubiya crossing point which leads to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

A five-mile line of trucks loaded with goods was waiting on the Syrian side to cross, the official said.

The security measures for Sunday's vote included an election day ban on most private vehicles and extended hours for the nighttime curfew. The restrictions were credited with preventing rebels from pulling off catastrophic attacks, although more than 40 people were killed in about 100 attacks on or near polling stations.

A statement attributed to an al-Qaida affiliate dismissed Sunday's elections as "theatrics" and promised to continue waging "holy war" against the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

In Baghdad, an election official said marked ballots, which were counted at polling stations after voting ended, have been sent to Baghdad. The ballots will not be recounted unless there are challenges or discrepancies in the tally sheets, officials said.

A Shiite clerical-backed alliance was expected to win the most number of seats in the 275-member National Assembly. But the alliance is not expected to win the two-thirds majority required to name a prime minister without support from other parties.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's ticket was expected to finish second among the 111 candidate lists.

Officials have not released turnout figures, although it appeared that many Sunni Arabs stayed away from the polls, either out of fear of insurgent reprisals or opposition to an election under U.S. occupation.

That has raised concern about further alienation among the country's Sunni Arabs, who form about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people but whose role in the country's educational, technical and intellectual elite is much greater.

Although security conditions have remained stable enough to relax the election restrictions, there were still scattered incidents reported around the country.

In the northern city of Mosul, clashes broke out early Tuesday in the eastern neighborhood of Nablus between insurgents and Iraqi National Guards, officials said. One person was killed and another injured.

Two policemen were killed when a bomb they were trying to defuse exploded on a street in the Kurdish-run city of Irbil.

In the south, U.S. troops opened fire on detainees rioting at the Camp Bucca prison facility, killing four prisoners, the U.S. command said. The unrest broke out Monday during a search for contraband and quickly spread. Detainees hurled rocks and fashioned crude weapons from materials in their quarters, the statement said.

The purported al-Qaida statement appeared Monday on an Islamist Web site.

"These elections and their results ... will increase our strength and intention to getting rid of injustice," the statement said.

As the vote count continues, the leader of the main Shiite coalition pledged to build a government that would include representatives of all of Iraq's people.

"We are still insisting to form a partnership government including all segments of the Iraqi people," Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of the United Iraqi Alliance told Al-Arabiya television.

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hey kevin! did this guy share the same floor with you?

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201bearup01.html

Arpaio rival's son loses fair-trial decision

Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 1, 2005 12:00 AM

A murder suspect who claimed he was a victim of political retribution by Sheriff Joe Arpaio failed to win a court finding Friday that his fair-trial rights were violated.

Patrick Bearup, 27, is one of four defendants in the 2002 slaying of a man who was beaten, shot and dumped off a cliff near Crown King. He is the son of Tom Bearup, a former Arpaio aide Arpaio who ran against him in last year's election.

Patrick Bearup complained in December that he was being isolated in the Madison Street Jail's psychiatric unit even though he has no mental health problems.

Correctional Health Services records obtained by The Arizona Republic support that claim, noting that Bearup "has no psychiatric problems" and was in the ward "per order of MCSO because his father was running as an opponent to Sheriff Arpaio."

Sheriff's Office officials denied that retaliation was a motive and said Patrick was housed with mental patients because of concerns that he might be suicidal and for his own safety from other inmates.

One day after The Republic reported on the controversy, Patrick was moved to Navajo County Jail.

He filed papers in Maricopa County Superior Court alleging that the transfer was further political retribution and violated his right to legal representation under the Sixth Amendment.

A copy of Judge Warren Granville's ruling was unavailable, but Arpaio and Tom Bearup concurred that the judge found no fair-trial violation.

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guess the feds never had any stinking probable caused needed to bust them!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201pilots01.html

Feds drop case vs. ex-AmWest pilots

Catherine Wilson
Associated Press
Feb. 1, 2005 12:00 AM

MIAMI - Federal prosecutors dropped criminal charges against two fired America West pilots less than three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed state prosecutors to pursue their own case.

The decision leaves the pilots facing one trial instead of two after videotape showed the pilots spent much of the night before their flight drinking beer at a bar in Miami.

Pilot Thomas Cloyd of Peoria and co-pilot Christopher Hughes, a former Gilbert resident who now lives in Leander, Texas, backed their Airbus, carrying 124 passengers, out of a Miami airport gate for a flight to Phoenix in July 2002. The plane was ordered back to the terminal after airport security reported smelling alcohol on the pilots.

Blood-alcohol results were above the state drunkenness standard of 0.08 percent but below the federal standard of 0.10.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke signed an order Friday accepting the federal government's request to drop charges that the pilots were under the influence of alcohol when operating the jet.

Without a higher blood-alcohol reading, federal prosecutors would have had to prove the charge by the pilots' behavior.

In state court, they face charges of operating an aircraft while intoxicated, driving a vehicle while impaired and culpable negligence. Arguments on motions are set for March 22, and a tentative trial date is set May 4.

The pilots' attorney for the state case had no comment Monday.

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arizona governor janet napolitano and Secretary of State Jan Brewer seem to think we should flush the 1st amendmend and the arizona constition down the toilet and mix religion and government in arizona

at the american atheist meetings in phoenix we have talked about this monument which on the north side of the state capital. the government buerocrat say that ANYONE can erect a monunment like this. they didnt mention that before ANYONE can erect a monument like this it has to be voted and approved by the arizona house and senate and then signed into law by the governor. yea sure ANYONE can erect a monument on the capital lawn.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=35689

Napolitano defends monument
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
February 1, 2005

Gov. Janet Napolitano joined Monday with a group that promotes what it calls "pro-family’’ legislation in Arizona in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let a six-foot monument of the Ten Commandments remain in a public park across the street from the state Capitol.

The brief, filed by the Scottsdale-based Center for Arizona Policy, said these kinds of monuments have "a valid secular purpose.’’ Peter Gentala, the organization’s legal counsel, got not only the governor to join in the plea but also Secretary of State Jan Brewer and 38 of the 90 state lawmakers.

Officially, the case before the nation’s high court relates to a monument in Austin, Texas. A federal appeals court has rejected efforts to have it removed.

There is a similar monument in Wesley Bolin Memorial Park, east of the House and Senate buildings. Any ruling on the legality of the Texas monument will determine the fate of its Phoenix counterpart.

The decision by Napolitano came as no surprise to Eleanor Eisenberg, director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She noted the governor opposed efforts by her organization two years ago to have the monument removed. A lawsuit threatened at that time has been held in abeyance awaiting the outcome of the Texas case.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments March 2.

Tim Nelson, the governor’s chief counsel, said Napolitano does not believe the monument amounts to a state endorsement of religion, something that is prohibited by the First Amendment.

"It’s one of many, many monuments out there’’ in the park, Nelson said. Others include a monument to Armenians martyred in Turkey in the last century and another to Jewish war veterans.

"One is not more prominent than the other,’’ Nelson said. Gentala, in his legal papers, said there is no reason to move the Arizona monument. "Like Texas, the people of Arizona, by the decision of their elected officials, display a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of their State Capitol,’’ he wrote. "Arizona’s Ten Commandments monument is one of the many ways the State acknowledges the role of religious faith in the lives of its citizens.’’

Contact Howard Fischer barizona governor janet napolitano and Secretary of State Jan Brewer seem to think we should flush the 1st amendmend and the arizona constition down the toilet and mix religion and government in arizona

at the american atheist meetings in phoenix we have talked about this monument which on the north side of the state capital. the government buerocrat say that ANYONE can erect a monunment like this. they didnt mention that before ANYONE can erect a monument like this it has to be voted and approved by the arizona house and senate and then signed into law by the governor. yea sure ANYONE can erect a monument on the capital lawn.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=35689

Napolitano defends monument
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
February 1, 2005

Gov. Janet Napolitano joined Monday with a group that promotes what it calls "pro-family’’ legislation in Arizona in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let a six-foot monument of the Ten Commandments remain in a public park across the street from the state Capitol.

The brief, filed by the Scottsdale-based Center for Arizona Policy, said these kinds of monuments have "a valid secular purpose.’’ Peter Gentala, the organization’s legal counsel, got not only the governor to join in the plea but also Secretary of State Jan Brewer and 38 of the 90 state lawmakers.

Officially, the case before the nation’s high court relates to a monument in Austin, Texas. A federal appeals court has rejected efforts to have it removed.

There is a similar monument in Wesley Bolin Memorial Park, east of the House and Senate buildings. Any ruling on the legality of the Texas monument will determine the fate of its Phoenix counterpart.

The decision by Napolitano came as no surprise to Eleanor Eisenberg, director of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She noted the governor opposed efforts by her organization two years ago to have the monument removed. A lawsuit threatened at that time has been held in abeyance awaiting the outcome of the Texas case.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments March 2.

Tim Nelson, the governor’s chief counsel, said Napolitano does not believe the monument amounts to a state endorsement of religion, something that is prohibited by the First Amendment.

"It’s one of many, many monuments out there’’ in the park, Nelson said. Others include a monument to Armenians martyred in Turkey in the last century and another to Jewish war veterans.

"One is not more prominent than the other,’’ Nelson said. Gentala, in his legal papers, said there is no reason to move the Arizona monument. "Like Texas, the people of Arizona, by the decision of their elected officials, display a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of their State Capitol,’’ he wrote. "Arizona’s Ten Commandments monument is one of the many ways the State acknowledges the role of religious faith in the lives of its citizens.’’

Contact Howard Fischer by telephone at () -

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free election??? yea sure if you vote for the right person!

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0202iraq-rdp02.html

Thousands turned away from polls, leader says
Some sites ran out of ballots or didn't open

Sally Buzbee
Associated Press
Feb. 2, 2005 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - Iraq's interim president said Tuesday that tens of thousands of people may have been unable to vote in the country's historic weekend election because some polling places, including those in Sunni Arab areas, ran out of ballots.

As clerks pounded vote-count tallies into computers to compile final results, President Ghazi al-Yawer also said chaos and a power vacuum in Iraq mean U.S. forces need to stay for now, even though a new government will be formed after the results are known.

Scattered clashes were reported in rebel areas across the country, but authorities still eased security restrictions by reopening borders and allowing commercial flights to take off from Baghdad Airport for the first time since the weekend's landmark election.

The allegation that many voters were turned away could further alienate minority Sunnis, who already are complaining they have been left out of the political process.

"Tens of thousands were unable to cast their votes because of the lack of ballots in Basra, Baghdad and Najaf," Yawer, himself a Sunni Arab, said at a news conference. Najaf is a mostly Shiite city, but Basra and Baghdad have substantial Sunni populations.

Elections officials acknowledged that irregularities kept people away, including in the volatile northern and heavily Sunni city of Mosul. Security worries in Sunni areas were partly to blame for the fact that some polls did not open and ballots were too few, they said.

"The elections took place under difficult conditions, and this undoubtedly deprived a number of citizens in a number of areas from voting," said Abdul-Hussein al-Hendawi, who heads the Iraqi electoral commission.

At his news conference, Yawer was asked whether the presence of foreign troops was fueling the country's Sunni-led insurgency by encouraging rebel attacks.

"It's only complete nonsense to ask the troops to leave in this chaos and this vacuum of power," Yawer said.

He said foreign troops should leave altogether only after Iraq's security forces are built up and the country's security situation has improved.

"At the end of this year, we will witness the beginning of the decrease of forces and not their withdrawal," Yawer said. The president has been a strong critic of some aspects of the U.S. military's performance in Iraq, including the three-week Marine siege of the former Sunni rebel stronghold of Fallujah in April.

Sunday's election, which took place without catastrophic rebel attacks, raised hopes that a new Iraqi government would be able to assume greater responsibility for security, hastening the day when the 170,000 U.S. and other foreign troops can go home.

January was the third month since the U.S. invasion of Iraq that U.S. troop deaths reached or exceeded 100. According to the Pentagon's latest count, at least 100 died in January, while an Associated Press tally put the figure at 102. The only months deadlier for U.S. troops were November, when 138 died, and April, with 135. More than 1,400 troops have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

As Yawer spoke in the heavily fortified Green Zone, armed Western security guards and monitors watched nearby as election workers began a final count of the country's vote, tapping at computer keyboards and sifting through bags of tally sheets.

On Monday afternoon, workers at polling centers nationwide finished an initial hand count of ballots from more than 5,200 precincts. Tally sheets and ballots were then trucked to Baghdad under U.S. military escort.

On Tuesday, about 200 clerks began logging data from the tally sheets into laptop computers for the final count. Election officials have not said when the compilation will be completed and final results made public.

The issue of Sunni participation is key because of fears that further political alienation could fuel the Sunni-led insurgency bedeviling the country.

One Iraqi Sunni tribal leader went to the Arab League in Cairo on Tuesday, complaining the election was illegitimate because it was imposed under military occupation.

Some Sunnis called for a boycott because of the presence of U.S. troops.

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DPS agrees to stop racial profiling. But they also lie and say they never have used racial profiling.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0202racialprofiling-ON.html

DPS settles lawsuit on racial profiling

Paul Davenport
Associated Press
Feb. 2, 2005 11:40 AM

The state announced Wednesday that it has reached a settlement of a class-action lawsuit that alleged Arizona Department of Public Safety officers used racial profiling in traffic stops in northern Arizona.

The settlement will be submitted for federal court approval, which would result in dismissal of the suit originally filed in 2001 by 11 minority motorists stopped while traveling on Interstate 17 and Interstate 40.

In the settlement, the Department of Public Safety reaffirmed its past denials that Highway Patrol officers used ethnicity to decide which motorists to stop.

Other settlement provisions include having the DPS declare its intolerance of racial profiling and to train and discipline officers accordingly.

Other provisions include collecting statewide data on traffic stops and working to put video cameras in patrol vehicles to record stops, detentions and searches.

The settlement includes no damage award to plaintiffs. However, the state said it agreed to pay the plaintiffs just under $140,000 in attorney fees and costs.

The settlement followed mediation ordered by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the plaintiffs appealed a U.S. district judge's dismissal of the suit.

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I wrote a letter to the post office asking what the DMM says the rules are for sending letters to people in jails and prisons. this is the letter i got back

Dear Postal Customer:

This is in response to your letter regarding rules and requirements on addressing letters to prisoners. According to the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), mail addressed to an inmate or patient at an institution is delivered to the institutional authorities. If the addressee is no longer at the address, the mail must be redirected to the current address, if known; or endorsed appropriately and returned by the institution ot the Post Office.

Authorized personnel of prisons, jails, or other correctional institutions, under rules and regulations promulgated by the institution, may open, examine, and censor mail sent from or addressed to an inmate of the institution An inmate may designate in writing an agent outside the institution to receive his or her mail, either through an authorized address of the agentm if the mail is so addressed, or at the delivery Post Office serving the institution, if the mail is addressed to the inmate at the institution.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to provide you with this information.

Sincerely

Ronda Carrington, Manager
Consumer ffairs & Claims

PO BOX 21628
Phoenix, AZ
85036-1628
(602)223-3223
(602)223-3202
http://www.usps.com

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Sheriff Joes thugs are fingerprinting people they stop for minor traffic violations

http://www.azcentral.com/community/westvalley/articles/0203fingerprint03-ON.html

Traffic violators to give fingerprints as part of pilot program

Brent Whiting
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 3, 2005 11:21 AM

Starting today, motorists ticketed by sheriff's deputies in the southwest Valley will be asked to offer a fingerprint, a move aimed at preventing identity theft, officials said.

This way, the person who committed the traffic violation can be verified as the person that shows up in court, said Sgt. Travis Anglin, a Maricopa County sheriff's spokesman.

The move is intended to catch people who take the wheel with stolen or falsified licenses, as well making sure that innocent people aren't prosecuted for infractions they didn't commit, he said.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio concedes that the plan, similar to a voluntary program launched Dec. 30 by police in Green Bay, Wis., may be viewed by some critics as a constitutional infringement.

"It isn't," Arpaio said. "In fact, the overall benefit to the public, especially our court system, may very well outweigh any outcry from potential critics."

There was no immediate comment from Eleanor Eisenberg, director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union.

In Wisconsin, the program was questioned by Eisenberg's counterpart there, Christopher Ahmuty.

"It's unfortunate ID theft goes on, but if they stop thousands of people each year that are innocent except for tailgating or jaywalking, to treat them as if they are committing identity theft without any particularized suspicion, it doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of resource or fairness," Ahmuty told the Associated Press.

Green Bay police estimated the voluntary program there would prevent about a half-dozen people a year from being wrongly jailed.

In the Valley, the fingeprint regimen will be launched as a pilot program by deputies assigned to the sheriff's substation in Avondale, Anglin said.

They will use inkless pads to obtain a print, he said. Eventually, the program may be expanded to the entire county.

Some details remained to be clarified by Arpaio, including whether the offering of a fingerprint from a motorist will be voluntary or mandatory.

Reach the reporter at brent.whiting@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-6937.

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http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0204mentalhospital04.html

State Hospital troubles grow
Feds threaten sanctions over 3 deaths, lack of oversight

Jodie Snyder and Susie Steckner
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 4, 2005 12:00 AM

The Arizona State Hospital faces federal sanctions for the second time in five months after reviewers found the hospital conducted little or no investigation into the deaths of three seriously mentally ill patients.

The review last fall by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found hospital officials asked too few questions about how the deaths happened or how they could be prevented. In one case, top administrators told reviewers they weren't aware that a hospital doctor had incorrectly treated a patient who later died. In another, a 33-year-old patient's death was never investigated.

Reviewers also found a lack of follow-up when patients escaped from the hospital, inadequate nutrition and care for some patients, and medical staff not following emergency, drug and other procedures. advertisement

In May, reviewers found some patients not getting psychiatric care, being handcuffed inappropriately and being secluded for hours unnecessarily. They found patients plunked down in front of televisions or allowed to wander around instead of being engaged in treatment.

The second critical survey means the hospital, which provides treatment for the state's most seriously mentally ill, could lose its Medicare certification and $2.7 million in federal payments. The state would have to make up that gap.

Federal officials could also pull $28 million in funding for Arizona hospitals that serve a large number of poor patients.

This latest review reveals far more serious conditions than previously described by the state Department of Health Services, which oversees the hospital.

In December, Director Catherine Eden said reviewers found minor nutrition and documentation issues, and she described the review as a "love fest."

On Jan. 12, speaking before the Legislature's House Health committee, Eden also downplayed hospital woes.

Another surprise visit

The state's plan of correction has been approved by federal officials, but the state won't be in the clear until it passes another surprise visit.

Eden was not available for comment Thursday. DHS spokesman Michael Murphy said Eden takes the survey results "very, very seriously."

As for Eden's characterization of the survey results, he said, "When she said record (or documentation) issues, I think that's what she was referring to, the deaths."

On Thursday, DHS Deputy Director Leslie Schwalbe said the state doesn't dispute reviewers' latest findings.

Some changes have already been made. For instance, all deaths will now be investigated. Schwalbe said prior hospital policy didn't call for investigations when patients died off grounds.

"We know now that that's in error, and we should have investigated it (patient deaths) as a sentinel (serious) event," she said.

The hospital, at 24th and Van Buren streets, houses mentally ill patients who are either civilly or criminally committed. There were 260 patients at the hospital in December; the federal reviews involve only the 128 civil patients.

Federal officials said problems found in May were corrected, but a new crop of problems was discovered during two follow-up visits in the fall. Among them, three patients died unexpectedly:

? A 43-year-old man collapsed suddenly, and a hospital doctor inserted a tube into his mouth to help him breathe but mistakenly stuck it down his esophagus rather than his trachea. That meant the patient's stomach, instead of his lungs, was getting oxygen. The mistake can cause irreversible damage to the heart or brain, or even death. Federal reviewers found that he had didn't have oxygen for 17 to 31 minutes.

It's unknown whether the doctor's mistake contributed to the man's death, and hospital officials never fully investigated the case. Nor is there a record of hospital officials checking into reports that the patient may have drunk cleaning fluid to kill himself. The hospital's chief quality officer said she learned of the doctor's error about seven months later when federal reviewers pointed out discrepancies in his report.

Hospital officials didn't know the physician wasn't certified to intubate the patient nor did they know personnel hadn't followed their own emergency procedures until federal reviewers asked them about it.

? In another death, an obese man in his 40s with a history of smoking and possible coronary artery disease complained of chest pain, saying, "My heart hurts." He was seen by a doctor, who ordered that his vital signs be checked every shift as deemed necessary by nurses. About a week later, he was found unconscious in his room. He was taken to a Phoenix hospital, where he died less than an hour later.

The hospital's review of his death wasn't complete when reviewers asked for it a month later. Hospital policy calls for reviews to be done in 14 days.

Federal surveyors noted that the patient could have received more medical intervention. After the federal review, hospital officials told doctors that a drug he was taking, Clozapine, a widely prescribed drug for schizophrenia, could have lethal cardiac side effects. The hospital also said it would better evaluate patients who complained of chest pain.

? A 33-year-old man escaped in May from the hospital. A day later, he was found dead in a nearby canal. There was no review conducted into his death. Hospital officials told federal surveyors that one should have been done.

In addition to the deaths, reviewers found:

? Two patients, both obese, received inadequate nutrition and/or treatment plans. In one case, a patient gained nearly 100 pounds in about nine months, hitting 406 pounds. Her treatment plan called for exercise, but she was restricted to her living area, making her only exercise a walk to a patio for a smoke break. In another case, an obese 14-year-old was repeatedly ordered to have a 2,600-calorie meal plan. She gained 22 pounds in five months.

? Patients escaped, but in certain cases the hospital didn't attempt to find out how they left. In three cases marked "unknown," reviewers looked at security video to determine that patients jumped the hospital fence. Reviewers also found that hospital staff members weren't counting patients as they should have, including one who was counted as being on hospital grounds when in fact he was off the grounds because a housekeeper had let him out.

A key finding by reviewers is that the hospital didn't report the death involving the incorrect treatment as a sentinel event. Reporting such events is crucial so errors won't be repeated, said Dr. Paul Schyve, senior vice president with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. "It is in the organization's best interests to be able to say to people, 'We take this seriously and are actually working with JCAHO (the commission) to reduce the chances of that happening again,' " he said.

The commission is now reviewing the incident involving the incorrect treatment.

Hospital officials have made several changes in light of the review.

They said they will investigate patient deaths and report findings in a timelier manner. To prevent help escapes, they said, patients will be more closely watched on the patio and staff members will have to actually see patients when they count them. When patients escape, they said, staff members will investigate how they left. The hospital has posted signs stating who can let a patient out. The hospital has also increased the height of fences and beefed up security patrols.

The hospital hired consultants to help its staff better assess patients' nutritional needs and make healthier meals and snacks.

Schwalbe said patient care has improved since the May audit, despite reviewers' concerns in the fall audit.

"It's a continual effort of ours to make sure that everyone's engaged in meaningful activities. I think it's gotten much better," she said.

In the meantime, the state continues to look for a new hospital chief executive officer. Jack Silver, who had been CEO since 1997, retired last year. Dr. Jerry Dennis, the medical director for the DHS' division of behavioral health services, is acting CEO.

Reach the reporters at jodie.snyder@arizonarepublic.com or susie.steckner@arizonarepublic.com.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0204duicop04.html

Ex-officer gets 5 years for crash with deputy

Jim Walsh
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 4, 2005 12:00 AM

The two law enforcement officers will never be the same. Not the sheriff's deputy, who lost part of his left leg, nor the drunken Scottsdale police officer who caused the life-altering collision.

But former Officer Kevin Scott Baxter's sentence offers some hope for preventing future alcohol-related tragedies.

Judge James Keppel of Maricopa County Superior Court on Thursday sentenced Baxter, 32, to five years in prison but also ordered the ex-Marine to lecture high school and college students and military personnel on the carnage caused by drunken driving. advertisement

"I've seen alcohol and drugs ruin more lives than anything I can name," Keppel said. "I think if anyone can tell a story, I think you certainly can. I hope you take this opportunity to get the word out."

Keppel sentenced Baxter to the least amount of prison time possible under his guilty plea to aggravated assault and leaving the scene of a serious injury accident charges. The maximum punishment was 12 years in prison.

But the judge said he is convinced Baxter is remorseful, because he admitted responsibility for Deputy Doug Matteson's life-threatening injury shortly after his arrest.

"I do not believe that Mr. Baxter would ever go out and do this again," Keppel said. The sentence calls for Baxter to spend 500 hours lecturing others about drunken driving and places him on probation for five years after his release from prison.

Matteson, 30, who has returned to work, did not attend Baxter's sentencing. His mother, Sue, said he is recovering from his 10th surgery and did not want to face Baxter.

"It's been very difficult for him to deal with this," Sue said. "He's both sad and angry."

Pat McGroder, the civil attorney for Matteson, said they are pursuing a civil lawsuit against Baxter, the bars that served him the day of the accident and an insurance company.

Baxter had a 0.173 percent blood alcohol content more than three hours after the May 1 collision, more than twice the 0.08 percent level at which Arizona drivers are presumed to be under the influence.

Baxter's Mustang struck Matteson's motorcycle from behind at 2:15 a.m. on the Superstition Freeway in Mesa, according to court records.

While Matteson struggled to avoid getting run over, Baxter, who was driving 85 mph, took off, the reports said.

Sue Matteson had no comment on Baxter's sentence. Four law-enforcement officers, including two Scottsdale officers, spoke on Baxter's behalf, as did his mother.

Fort Worth police Officer Jeremy Spann said he and Baxter served together in the Marines. "Please give him a minimal sentence, because he's not a criminal."

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bet that will send a message that abusing POW's will not be tollerated:)

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0205iraq-security05.html

GI given 6-month jail term
Soldier admitted Abu Ghraib abuse

T.A. Badger
Associated Press
Feb. 5, 2005 12:00 AM

FORT HOOD, Texas - Sgt. Javal Davis, who admitted abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003, was sentenced Friday to six months in a military prison and given a bad-conduct discharge from the Army.

A nine-man military jury deliberated for about 5 1/2 hours to determine the punishment for Davis, a former Abu Ghraib guard who earlier in the week confessed to stepping on the hands and feet of a group of handcuffed detainees and falling with his full weight on top of them.

The 27-year-old reservist from Roselle, N.J., faced up to 6 1/2 years in prison for battery, dereliction of duty and lying to Army investigators. A deal with prosecutors, however, reportedly capped his sentence at 18 months.

Davis said he saw detainees being physically mistreated and sexually humiliated by other guards, but that he failed to help them or report the abuse, as required under military law. He also admitted lying to an Army investigator by denying his misdeeds at the Baghdad prison.

Maj. Michael Holley, one of the prosecutors, asked the nine jurors to sentence Davis to 12 to 24 months in prison. Holley said Davis's misdeeds have tarnished the image of American soldiers in the world's eyes and endangered forces serving in Iraq.

"There must be consequences for those actions," the prosecutor said during his closing arguments. "These assaults are best characterized by two words: brutal and cowardly."

Defense lawyer Paul Bergrin implored the jury of four Army officers and five senior enlisted men to go lightly on Davis, saying he is a good man and a good soldier who has already been punished enough for a brief lapse in judgment.

Bergrin said Davis will forever have a felony conviction on his record, and that he has performed 10 months of menial duties, including painting curbs and picking up trash, while confined to a U.S. base in Iraq after his arrest.

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gaurding brain-dead prison inmate!!! jobs program for cops and prison gaurds??? it costs $1,056 a day to gaurd this brain-dead prison inmate.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/10825015.htm?1c

Posted on Sat, Feb. 05, 2005

Governor ridicules need to guard man in coma

By Mark Gladstone

Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday assailed as ``ludicrous'' his own administration's policy of posting two officers on overtime to guard shackled and comatose inmates when they are hospitalized outside of prison walls.

Citing various shortcomings in the prison system, Schwarzenegger said the state needs to ``tighten the screw so we don't have this misuse of money. And instead of having these two guys standing there 24 hours a day guarding this guy that is in a coma, why not have these two guys working somewhere else where they really are needed.''

Recent Mercury News articles have revealed the 60 percent jump over the past six years in spending to guard and transport severely ill inmates. The standard policy is to have two guards, one armed, watch over sick inmates sent to community hospitals and to shackle the prisoners to thwart escapes.

The governor's comments follow Mercury News reports about the case of Daniel Provencio. He is being guarded around the clock only by a single officer at a cost of $1,056 a day, even though his family has been told he's brain dead. Provencio, 28, was shot by a guard Jan. 16 at Wasco State Prison. He was hit in the head with a foam projectile used in riot control. The shooting is under investigation.

After the governor's appearance before the Mercury News editorial board Friday morning, the Department of Corrections announced that Provencio had been unshackled in his room at Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield.

``A guard will remain at the hospital to ensure that the proper visitors are visiting him,'' said Todd Slosek, a Department of Corrections spokesman. ``Potentially, someone could come in and wheel him out.''

Slosek said the Provencio case is ``very complicated'' and is freighted with legal issues.

``We could parole him, but the decision was made not to because we don't want to dump the cost and liability on the hospital,'' said Slosek. He added that Provencio, most recently a construction worker, would be eligible for Medi-Cal, but under that program for the indigent the hospital would be reimbursed at a lower rate.

Provencio's mother, Nancy Mendoza, said she is clinging to hope that her son might recover, even though she has been told by doctors that he is brain dead. Mendoza said another of her 10 children went into a coma as an infant and recovered and is now 29.

``I've told my children that if I feel at any time that Danny won't pull out of this, I'll let him go,'' Mendoza said. ``There's hope.''

Provencio, a high school wrestler, was sent to prison originally on drug charges. He was released but returned in August on parole violations, including drunken driving. Last month, he apparently tried to interfere with officers seeking to break up a fight at Wasco State Prison.

Slosek reiterated Friday that the department is seeking to adjust its overall guarding policy to deal with cases like Provencio's. While the cost of guarding Provencio is more than $1,000 a day, the department has not been able to estimate the cost of his medical care to the taxpayers.

But Mendoza cannot give up hope. ``All his organs are functioning,'' she said. ``It means he's still alive and gives him the opportunity to survive.''

Mercury News Staff Writer Dion Nissenbaum contributed to this report. Contact Mark Gladstone at mgladstone@mercurynews.com or (916) 325-4314.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/02/05/backpage/2_4_0520_33_59.txt

Brain-dead inmate lies in limbo as family fights to free him

By: BRIAN MELLEY - Associated Press

SACRAMENTO -- An inmate who was left brain-dead after being shot by a prison guard nearly three weeks ago lay in a hospital bed Friday, guarded around the clock at a cost of more than $1,000 a day in a situation family members and a lawmaker called absurd.

"This sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel," said Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero. "Why are we guarding a dead man?"'

State corrections officials tried to find a way around a department policy that requires guarding hospitalized inmates. They compromised Friday afternoon by unchaining the inmate's legs but kept a guard on duty so he couldn't be smuggled from the hospital.

Daniel Provencio, 28, was shot in the head with a supposedly nonlethal foam projectile while he allegedly tried to prevent guards from breaking up a fight between two other inmates.

The state has spent $1,056 a day in overtime guarding Provencio since he was taken Jan. 16 to a Bakersfield hospital, where he lay hooked up to a ventilator.

The Corrections Department continued to pay for Provencio's medical care because his family, hoping for some miracle, wanted him on life support.

Romero said the issue of whether to pull the plug or keep Provencio in his current state is complicated by a rift among family members. The decision may be left to a hospital ethics committee.

The department said it was trying to waive its policy so Provencio could be moved to a nursing home or halfway house, but it was unclear who would pick up the tab and the possibility seemed unlikely late Friday, said spokesman Todd Slosek.

"He's in such a critically medicated state that there are very, very few options for him to be released to an outside facility, and we've had no takers," Slosek said.

To some of Provencio's family the situation is heartbreaking and bizarre. Relatives, who live about a two-hour drive away, are allowed to visit for only one hour a day, during which they are watched by a guard.

"I don't know if they think I'm going fit him in my back pocket and take him out, but that ain't going to happen," said the inmate's mother, Nancy Mendoza. "For them to keep him shackled and have a guard inside, for a person they consider dead, that's kind of crazy."

Corrections officials said that any inmate taken out of prison for treatment must be shackled and guarded to protect the public, hospital employees and guards. The policy is also tied to contracts with hospitals that treat inmates and the powerful prison guards' union. The hospital and guards went along with the decision to remove the shackles, the department said.

The state spent $29 million guarding medical patients last year, the department said. The San Jose Mercury News reported recently that the department spent $81,745 to watch over a heavily sedated prisoner for 58 days and paid $55,305 to guard a paraplegic with a lung infection during a 45-day hospital stay.

Romero, who chairs an investigative committee looking at the troubled prison system, said she was told by Corrections Director Jeanne Woodford that no other dead men are in the system.

"If there are other dead men or dead-like, we should have a policy in place," Romero said. "It is a bit disturbing to be in a situation where we're crafting policy."

Provencio allegedly tried to prevent guards from breaking up a fight and disobeyed an order to stand down. A guard in an elevated gunner's station fired a 40 mm foam projectile, ordinarily considered nonlethal. The projectile is supposed to be shot at arms and legs, but Provencio was struck in the head.

The guard, who has not been named, remains at work while three investigations are conducted into the incident.

Provencio is listed in critical condition at Mercy Hospital, where he is hooked up to a heart monitor, intravenous tubes and a ventilator that keeps him breathing.

Mendoza said her son was sent to prison for violating parole on drug convictions by driving drunk.

The last time his family saw him alive was in a Ventura County jail before he was moved to Wasco State Prison near Bakersfield, where he was shot.

Now the only sign of life is an occasional finger twitch or an eyelid opening, his older brother, Johnny Provencio Jr. said.

"I don't know if they're expecting him to walk out of there," his brother said. "If they believe he's brain-dead, where is he going to go?"

http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/12225636p-13089580c.html

Editorial: Beyond bizarre
He may be dead, but he's eligible for parole

Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, February 3, 2005
What does it take to get declared dead in California, anyway?
The question isn't as dumb as it may seem. Consider:

 A person who is declared brain dead is legally and physiologically dead. "Brain dead" is dead.

By that standard, a Wasco State Prison inmate surely qualifies as being dead. So why is he being treated as alive?

The prisoner, Daniel Provencio, has been at Mercy Hospital in Bakersfield since he was shot in the head with a "foam" bullet by a prison guard Jan. 16. Members of Provencio's family told the Bakersfield Californian that doctors declared him clinically dead the morning of Jan. 20 after tests found no brain activity.

Under California law, the hospital must do two examinations by two different doctors to determine death. If the patient meets all criteria for death on both examinations, this is noted in the medical record at the time of the second exam and is recorded as the time of death. The coroner's office typically is called as soon as death is declared.

Yet Provencio's mother said Wasco Warden P.L. Vazquez expects Provencio to "serve out his sentence" from a hospital bed. The family has asked obvious questions: "If he's dead, why are they keeping him? How does a dead man do time?"

Here's how. Provencio is on a mechanical ventilator and a feeding tube, even though he's dead. And he's shackled to the bed by both ankles, even though he's dead. He's being guarded by prison guards 'round-the-clock at a cost of $1,056-a-day, even though he's dead.

No, we are not making this up. But the absurdities don't end there.

The Department of Corrections apparently now is considering a "compromise" that might allow the dead man to be released on "early parole."

Obviously, this preposterous situation can't go on. The hospital needs to step forward and make a definitive declaration: Is Provencio dead? If yes, what was his time of death, and why hasn't he been released for burial?

Time of death is recorded on a patient's chart as the time he met the criteria of brain death. If he's not dead, who told the family that Provencio is "brain dead," which is dead-dead? Either the family is being denied the right to bury their relative or they have been subjected to a huge hoax.

The absurdities aren't confined to the handling of Provencio's current condition. Consider the chain of events that led to the present situation.

At Wasco State Prison on Jan. 16, two inmates were fighting; Provencio apparently tried to prevent prison guards from intervening.

KGET-TV 17 News reported that the incident was an "alcohol-fueled brawl between inmates." Officers told the station that inmates brew fruit and other food ingredients. A guard shot Provencio in the head, though "foam" bullets are meant to be fired at a person's legs and arms.

Alcohol production and brawls. Shooting inmates in the head. Shackling and guarding a dead inmate. What is going on at this prison? The Department of Corrections needs to get control of this out-of-control institution. And it needs to end the macabre saga of the (apparently) late Daniel Provencio.

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=2903994

SACRAMENTO An inmate who was left brain-dead after being shot by a prison guard nearly three weeks ago remains shackled to a hospital bed today.

He is guarded around the clock at a cost of more than a thousand dollars a day, in a situation family members and a lawmaker called absurd.

Twenty-eight-year-old Daniel Provencio was shot in the head with a nonlethal foam projectile while he allegedly tried to prevent guards from breaking up a fight between two other inmates.

State corrections officials say department policy requires the guarding of hospitalized inmates, but they are trying to find a way around the rule.

The Corrections Department continues to pay for Provencio's medical care because his family, hoping for a miracle, want him on life support.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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another randy weaver, kevin walsh, laro nicol, or eric boudet that we have not heard about???

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0206outlaw06.html

Infamous Idaho outlaw is released

John Miller
Associated Press
Feb. 6, 2005 12:00 AM

OWYHEE COUNTY, Idaho - Idaho's most infamous outlaw, Claude Dallas, killed two state officers in a remote desert 24 years ago in a crime that brought him notoriety as both a callous criminal and a modern-day mountain man at odds with the government.

Now a bespectacled 54-year-old, Dallas is to be released from prison today after serving nearly 22 years for the execution-style slayings of Conley Elms and Bill Pogue, officers for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

The case has been among the most polarizing in Idaho history, with some expressing disgust at how Dallas has gained a measure of folk-hero status among those who rally against the establishment.

Dallas' 1986 jailbreak only heightened the legend perpetuated by his friends, that his rugged lifestyle got crossways with a heavy-handed U.S. government. Dallas hid for nearly a year before he was caught and sent back to prison. He was charged in the escape but acquitted by a jury after he testified he had to break out because the prison guards threatened his life.

"It's sure an emotional issue, and his release has heightened those emotions," said Jon Heggen, head of the Fish and Game Department's enforcement bureau. "There's been a lot of tears shed the last two weeks."

Dallas' 30-year sentence was cut by eight years for good behavior.

He was convicted of manslaughter in 1982 for shooting the officers, who had entered his winter camp on the South Fork of the Owyhee River, one of the West's least-populated regions, to investigate reports of illegal trapping.

Jim Stevens, a friend of Dallas who was visiting the camp, witnessed the killings.

According to evidence at the trial, Pogue, who had drawn his own weapon, was hit first with a shot from Dallas' handgun. Dallas then shot Elms two times in the chest as the warden emerged from the trapper's tent, where he'd found poached bobcats.

Dallas then used a rifle to fire one round into each man's head.

The 28-day trial made national headlines, with Dallas claiming the game wardens were out to get him. A group of women gathered daily to support him.

A jury of 10 women and two men acquitted Dallas of murder, finding him guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter instead.

"We remain horrified somebody could have gotten manslaughter for cruelly killing our people, and then following it up with shots from a .22 rifle," said former Fish and Game Director Jerry Conley, who testified at Dallas' sentencing.

Jury foreman Milo M. Moore, a retired shopkeeper, said Dallas might have been freed outright if he hadn't used his .22 caliber rifle.

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sure we got free speach in the good old AMERICAN EMPIRE at home.
but the USA government seems to want to shut down free speach
in the arab world where the american empire is currently in a war
in both iraq and afganhistan

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0206jazeera06.html

Under pressure, Qatar may sell Arab TV network

Steven R. Weisman
New York Times
Feb. 6, 2005 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Qatar is a crucial American ally in the Persian Gulf, where it provides a military base and warm support of U.S. policies. Yet relations with Qatar are also strained over an awkward issue: Its sponsorship of Al-Jazeera, the television station that is a big source of news in the Arab world.

Some Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have complained heatedly to Qatari leaders that Al-Jazeera's broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq.

The pressure has been so intense, a senior Qatari official said, that the government is accelerating plans to put Al-Jazeera on the market, though Bush administration officials counter that a privately owned station in the region may be no better from their point of view. advertisement

"We have recently added new members to the Al-Jazeera editorial board, and one of their tasks is to explore the best way to sell it," said the Qatari official, who said he could be more candid about the situation if he were not identified. "We really have a headache, not just from the United States but from advertisers and from other countries as well." Asked if the sale might dilute Al-Jazeera's content, the official said, "I hope not."

Estimates of Al-Jazeera's audience range from 30 million to 50 million, putting it well ahead of its competitors. But that success does not translate into profitability, and the station relies on a big subsidy from the Qatari government. The official said Qatar hoped to find a buyer within a year.

Its coverage has disturbed not only Washington but also Arab governments from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. With such a big audience, but a lack of profitability, it is not clear who might be in the pool of potential buyers, or how a new owner might change the editorial content.

Administration officials have been reluctant to talk about the station, being sensitive to charges that they are trying to suppress free expression. Officials at the State and Defense departments and at the embassy in Qatar were reluctant to comment. However, some administration officials acknowledged that the well-publicized U.S. pressure on the station - highlighted when Qatar was not invited to a summit meeting on the future of democracy in the Middle East last summer in Georgia - has drawn charges of hypocrisy, especially in light of President Bush's repeated calls for greater freedoms and democracy in the region.

"It's completely two-faced for the United States to try to muzzle the one network with the most credibility in the Middle East, even if it does sometimes say things that are wrong," an Arab diplomat said. "The administration should be working with Al-Jazeera and putting people on the air."

Since the Iraq war, some top-level White House figures have been interviewed by Al-Jazeera. But when the interim government of Iraq kicked Al-Jazeera out of the country in August, the Bush administration uttered little criticism.

The administration's pressure thus encapsulates the problems of "public diplomacy," the term for the uphill efforts by Washington to sell U.S. policies in the region.

Some administration officials acknowledge that their "public diplomacy" system is fundamentally broken, but there is disagreement on how to fix it. Two years ago, the United States launched its own Arab television network, Al-Hurra, but officials say it has yet to gain much of a following.

Among the broadcasts criticized by the United States were repeated showings of taped messages by Osama bin Laden. The network also reports passionately about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Administration officials say that U.S. government debates over what to do about Al-Jazeera have sometimes erupted into shouting matches.

Al-Jazeera officials said they go out of their way to get U.S. comment for stories and that they often broadcast briefings of Pentagon officials' news conferences.

"We understand that Americans are not happy with our editorial policies," said Ahmed Sheikh, the network's news editor. "But if anyone wants us to become their mouthpiece, we will not do that. We are independent and impartial, and we have never gotten any pressure from the Qatari government to change our editorial approach."

<#==#>

this case maybe interesting to laro and those who know him.
also there is a question did the scottsdale cops grossly make the bombs they would much worse them they actually are. did they maybe find 4 black cat fire crackers and call them homemade bombs. also did they do the same for the gun silencers. hell i know that a common potato can be used as a gun silencer if you shove in on the barrel of a gun.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0207nebomb07.html

Man facing charges for explosives

Holly Johnson
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 7, 2005 12:00 AM

SCOTTSDALE - His mother thought he was making and repairing bicycles in their garage.

But instead, her 39-year-son had a stash of explosives there. The man now faces federal charges after a raid on his home netted 14 containers filled with explosives, four homemade bombs and six silencers.

Michael Hershberger is being held at Madison Street Jail on several previous arrest warrants. He will face charges including possessing and manufacturing destructive devices and silencers, according to Special Agent Tom Mangan of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

ATF agents, along with Scottsdale and Mesa police, obtained a federal warrant to search the house of Hershberger's mother in the 7800 block of East Monte Vista Road on Thursday and found the explosives.

Scottsdale police stopped Hershberger as he rode a bicycle down East Thomas Road at 10:20 p.m. Jan. 31. A check revealed he had warrants for misconduct with a weapon, resisting law enforcement, possession of marijuana and aggravated assault.

Officers found three knives in the bag, a .22-caliber handgun with a silencer and no visible serial number, and two improvised devices and cartridges filled with explosive material. It's still not clear what Hershberger intended to do with the homemade devices, Mangan said.

Hershberger has not made any statement to police.

Reach the reporter at holly.johnson@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-6849.

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from this article it seems that all the GIs busted for war crimes at the  Abu Ghraib prison are just skape goats and that the knowlege of the crimes went to the very top of the military command

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0207huachuca07.html

Courts-martial hit close to Huachuca

Joseph A. Reaves
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 7, 2005 12:00 AM

FORT HOOD, Texas - The Lawrence Williams Justice Center, tucked into a remote corner of this bustling military reservation, is where the Army reckons with its flawed heroes.

It is where careers end, dreams are shattered and the horrors of the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal are coming alive again in a series of gut-wrenching courts-martial.

Two of those courts-martial last week highlighted troubling questions about the roles senior military officials, including some from the Army Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca in southern Arizona, played in creating a climate for abuse and failing to rein it in.

"If we had been able to present all our evidence, we would have unequivocally and categorically proven that all individuals in the chain of command, up to the highest levels, knew what was going on," said Paul Bergrin, a New Jersey attorney who represented one of the soldiers in last week's courts-martial.

Actions 'condoned'

"The commanders condoned the actions and nobody ever condemned it."

Bergrin claimed that among the commanders who knew what was going on at the Iraqi prison or helped make it possible were Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, a former deputy commander of Huachuca whose appointment to command the fort has been on hold for five months because of the Abu Ghraib scandal, and Col. Thomas Pappas, who was stationed at Huachuca until 2002 and commanded an intelligence brigade at Abu Ghraib.

"General Fast was putting pressure on Pappas, who was putting pressure down the line to break the detainees and get as much information any way possible," Bergrin said.

"Everyone knows that. I can't believe General Fast is still in the military."

Fast, one of the few women in the Army to reach the rank of two-star general, was chief of intelligence in Iraq at the time of Abu Ghraib. She has refused to talk to the media but has never been accused of wrongdoing in any of several military investigations into the abuse.

In fact, Fast was lauded in one of the most-thorough reports for setting up a system that "exponentially improved the intelligence process (in Iraq) and saved lives of coalition forces and Iraqi civilians."

But two senators, Arizona's John McCain, a Republican, and Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin, were concerned enough about the lapses at Abu Ghraib that both opposed Fast being given command of Fort Huachuca until all investigations were completed.

Soldiers facing justice

Seven soldiers have come through the Army's 3rd Military Judicial District courtroom at Fort Hood to face justice in connection with the Abu Ghraib scandal. All seven have pleaded guilty or been convicted.

Two others, including Pfc. Lynndie England, who became a symbol of the scandal when she was photographed leading a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash, are awaiting trial.

The nine soldiers sentenced or charged so far are from Army reserve units. None is regular Army.

Seven of the nine are privates or specialists. The highest-ranking is a staff sergeant.

And only two were directly involved in military interrogations and intelligence. The others were military police.

Those factors have combined to create a perception, often reinforced by statements from senior military leaders, that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the result of a small group of "rogue MPs" who ran amok.

The implication is that military intelligence personnel, regular Army soldiers and their leaders, from non-commissioned officers on up, behaved differently.

But testimony last week in the court-martial of Sgt. Javal S. Davis of the 372nd Military Police Company painted a far more complex and disturbing portrait of what went wrong.

Maj. David DiNenna, the staff officer in charge of Abu Ghraib, spent nearly two hours on the witness stand describing what he called "almost a state of lawlessness" at the prison during the time of the abuse.

DiNenna, an MP reservist, said military interrogators, civilian contractors and the CIA routinely paraded nude prisoners down hallways, creating a perception among MPs that the practice was accepted. He said he was powerless to stop it.

Reservist criticized

DiNenna has been criticized for his role at Abu Ghraib. Investigators last fall recommended he be relieved of command and given a formal reprimand for failing to report an incident in which he saw a soldier throw a prisoner off the back of a truck.

The only military intelligence personnel to face charges so far are Spc. Armin Cruz, an analyst, and Spc. Roman Krol, an interrogator. Both pleaded guilty, were given bad-conduct discharges and sent to prison, Cruz for eight months and Krol for 10 months.

Krol, a Russian ?igr? trained at Fort Huachuca and served with military intelligence in Bosnia before being deployed to Iraq.

In the other court-martial last week, Davis, 27, pleaded guilty to stepping on the toes and feet of several detainees who were piled together on the floor of Abu Ghraib in November 2003, then lying to investigators two months later about his actions. He was sentenced to six months in prison and given a bad-conduct discharge.

Unlike Krol and most of the others who pleaded guilty, Davis exercised his right to a formal sentencing hearing before a panel of military officers and enlisted personnel. Most of the others who pleaded guilty chose to let a military judge impose their sentences.

Bergrin spent three days trying to convince the panel of four officers and five enlisted men to go easy on Davis, who, like Krol, had an impressive career before Abu Ghraib and wept in the courtroom at the "thought of never wearing this uniform again."

Using graphic testimony by DiNenna and other witnesses, Bergrin painted a picture of life at Abu Ghraib that one soldier-turned-minister called "hell on Earth" for U.S. troops as well as prisoners.

Pigeons, rats and dogs

They described a compound overrun by pigeons, rats and wild dogs, where food was in short supply and water often was unavailable or tainted with leftover fuel from the tankers that trucked it in.

Prison bathrooms were clogged with "years worth" of feces and urine and so disgusting and unsanitary that they could not be cleaned and had to be boarded up.

Witnesses told of soldiers under frequent mortar attack and being so short on basic supplies that they had to ask families back home to mail radios so they could communicate with one another.

Complicating the fear and misery, Bergrin and his witnesses argued, was the fact that many of the rank-and-file soldiers lacked training or proper supervision for the jobs they were doing.

"There was so much confusion between MI (military intelligence) and the MPs about who did what that essentially there was a kind of lawlessness," said Ervin Staub, a Hungarian-born psychologist who studies conditions and influences that lead to violence.

Fellow psychologist and sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic said soldiers who were caught up in "the poisoned atmosphere of Abu Ghraib . . . could rationalize away the abuse." Once that abuse happened, he said, the soldiers were discouraged from reporting it because they thought their superiors condoned it.

Abuse was reported

But Maj. Michael Holley, chief prosecutor, pointed out that several soldiers did come forward to report the abuse.

Bergrin tried before and during the sentencing hearing to place some blame for the abuse at Abu Ghraib on the military chain of command. He was shot down repeatedly.

Before the hearing, he was denied permission to call Fast to testify.

During sentencing, Col. James Pohl, the military judge, refused to allow Bergrin or the prosecution to go beyond the specific allegations against Davis.

"I was frustrated we never could get to the chain of command," Bergrin said. "The fact is MI created the dysfunctionalism and chaos at Abu Ghraib and everyone in the chain of command knew it."

No one has proved that. But one thing was certain when they emptied the Lawrence Williams Justice Center last week: two more careers were ended and the dreams of two men who made bad decisions under horrific conditions were shattered.

Reach the reporter at joseph.reaves@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8125.

<#==#>

this ohio supreme court judge has a record of dealing with drunk drivers in her court cases with an iron fist, but when she gets stopped for drunk driving its a different story. and she has the gall to say this is the first time in 22 years she has got drunk. yea sure!

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5225906.html

Ohio Supreme Court judge fights her arrest for DWI

Alice Robie Resnick, 65, an Ohio Supreme Court justice pulled over for drunken driving, urged a police officer not to arrest her and cited her rulings in drunken driving cases, according to police videotapes. Resnick's blood-alcohol content registered 0.22 percent, more than twice the legal limit in Ohio of 0.08 percent. Resnick could get six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000.

http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/news/stories/20050204/opinion/1954455.html

Justice Knows Loophole for Drunken Driving drunken driving

E D I T O R I A L

Justice Alice Robie Resnick's refusal to take an alcohol breath test shows that drunken drivers still have a legal loophole. It's up to legislators to close it.

Yes, it is appalling to see police video of a state Supreme Court justice casually driving off after police stopped her on suspicion of drunken driving. And it is even more offensive to hear her comment that she should have a personal police chauffeur.

But the most disturbing thing about Justice Alice Robie Resnick's apparent drunken cruise Monday is that she used her knowledge of Ohio law in the worst way -- to find a loophole.

Resnick refused to take an evidentiary Breathalyzer test, resulting in her driver's license being suspended for a year. However, a judge has the discretion to shorten the suspension. Undoubtedly, she has a high-priced lawyer looking to get her suspension reduced and contend nothing can prove she was drunk in the absence of the Breathalyzer.

This is just an advertisement to drunken drivers that it's OK to get loaded and get behind the wheel -- as long as you make sure to cover your tracks by refusing the test. A Supreme Court justice should know better, and should set an example of integrity and not slippery legal tactics. If she was innocent, why not take the test and prove it? Why try to get around the system she was sworn to uphold?

We hope the courts don't let Resnick off easy after refusing the test, and make sure her license stays revoked for the duration. The public needs to know that refusing the Breathalyzer is not a "get out of jail free" card.

But more importantly, we hope that legislators will take this as a warning that our laws for drunken driving offenders has a big hole in it.

Thankfully, law enforcement officials have realized how dangerous it is to drink and drive, and don't let offenders skate once they're pulled over.

Our representatives need to make sure our legal system picks up where our police leave off. Those who refuse official breath tests must face harsher consequences, or the law will fail to deter Ohioans from drinking and driving.

Originally published Friday, February 4, 2005

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-arrest07.html

Ohio justice tried to get out of DUI ticket

February 7, 2005

Advertisement

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A state Supreme Court justice pulled over for drunk driving urged a police officer not to arrest her and cited her rulings in drunken driving cases, according to police videotapes.

Justice Alice Robie Resnick, 65, of Toledo, is scheduled to appear in court today, one week after police pulled her over on Interstate 75 in northern Ohio. Her attorney filed a request last week indicating she wants to change her innocent plea. She is charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence.

In the video, shot by a camera on the dashboard of the patrol car and released Friday, a police sergeant questioning Resnick in the front seat tells her he can smell alcohol on her breath.

Resnick assures the officer she can drive safely, but he asks her to take a portable breath-analysis test. She then lowers her voice and says, ''I did have something to drink.''

Resnick also repeatedly asks to be let go, saying, ''My God, you know I decide all these cases in your favor. And my golly, look what you're doing to me.''

Resnick's blood-alcohol content registered 0.22 percent, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent. But the portable test cannot be used as evidence in court.

She refused to take a Breathalyzer test, which means an automatic one-year license suspension.

AP

http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20050207/opinion/1963708.html

Resnick should have used better judgment

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

E D I T O R I A L
The recent actions of Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick are below the standard of what Ohio expects from its top judges.

Resnick drove off without permission after being asked to take a sobriety test, police and State Highway Patrol officials said. The officers had to pursue Resnick and pull her over on Interstate 75 near Bowling Green in northwest Ohio Monday. Resnick, 65, of Toledo, was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and driving outside marked lines, said Lt. Rick Zwayer, a patrol spokesman.

This is unfortunate for someone in Resnick's position. She should have known better to drink and drive. Someone with her experience in the criminal judicial system must set a stronger example.

But she still deserves a day in court.

Resnick failed field sobriety tests, including registering an alcohol level of 0.216 percent on a portable breath test administered at the scene, according to a patrol report. The blood-alcohol legal limit in Ohio is 0.08.

She refused to take an official evidentiary Breathalyzer test when she was taken to a patrol post and her driver's license was suspended for a year, although a judge can revise the suspension to a shorter period or up to three years. The portable breath test is not admissible in court.

Resnick, who previously served as an assistant county prosecutor, a municipal judge and a state appeals court judge, has voted in a handful of drunken driving cases with the Supreme Court.

In 1996, she wrote the majority opinion in a case that said police do not have to tell people suspected of drunken driving that they have the right to a second, independent blood alcohol test.

Her arrest came just days after the conclusion of a long-running court battle over an unsuccessful attempt by business groups to unseat her in 2000. Last week, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce was forced to disclose who contributed to the advertising campaign.

Resnick can rebound from these charges and should return to the bench to serve Ohio residents. She should use better judgment in the future.

 Email this story

Originally published Monday, February 7, 2005

http://www.nbc4i.com/news/4172007/detail.html

Judge Sentences Resnick Following Guilty Plea
Supreme Court Judge Ordered To Jail Or Alcohol Treatment Facility

POSTED: 12:42 pm EST February 7, 2005
UPDATED: 1:44 pm EST February 7, 2005

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick changed her drunken driving plea to guilty on Monday afternoon.

Alice Robie Resnick

Bowling Green Municipal Court Judge Mark Reddin sentenced Resnick, 65, to three days in jail or 72 consecutive hours at an alcohol treatment center that she must complete by May 8. Resnick was also placed on a two-year probation and was fined $600. Her driver's license was suspended until July 31.

SLIDESHOW: Resnick In Court
SLIDESHOW: Judge Pulled Over

Resnick, 65, of Toledo, did not give a statement in court.

Sources close to NBC 4 said that Resnick was eager to get the events of this past week behind her.

Resnick was pulled over on Interstate 75 in Wood County on Monday.

Drivers alerted the Ohio State Highway Patrol to a possible drunken driver on the road because the Jeep Cherokee she was driving was weaving in and out of traffic.

When Resnick agreed to take the portable alcohol test, she registered 0.216 percent, more than twice the blood-alcohol legal limit in Ohio of 0.08. The portable test can't be used as evidence in court.

FeedRoom

Police Video: Judge Arrested
Justice Arrest On Tape

The incident was taped from a trooper's squad car. "I don't believe that test," Resnick told a trooper. "Do you have another test I can take?"

Resnick could have faced as much as six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000.

She refused to take an official evidentiary Breathalyzer test, which means an automatic one-year license suspension and a three-year ban from driving state vehicles. She will need a driver to get to Columbus for hearings, but the court has said the service won't be state-paid.

Resnick apologized in a statement last week, saying that she would come to court and then move on.

Resnick, a justice since 1989, is the court's only Democrat.

Watch NBC 4 and refresh nbc4i.com for continuing coverage.

isnt that a crock. this ohio supreme court judge says that this is the first time in 22 years she has gotten drunk!!!!!!!

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050203/NEWS02/502030448/0/NEWS14

Article published Thursday, February 3, 2005

Resnick breaks silence on DUI arrest
Justice extends 'regrets,' accepts 'full responsibility'

By JIM PROVANCE
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

COLUMBUS - Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick yesterday broke her silence on her very public drunken-driving arrest Monday and said she accepts "full responsibility for my actions."
"It is unfortunate that this situation has arisen after 22 years of sobriety," she said in a written statement. "For that, I extend my regrets to the citizens of Ohio.

"The overwhelming outpouring of support and assistance during this difficult time has strengthened me to continue to do the important work of the court," she said.

The 65-year-old Ottawa Hills resident, the only Democrat remaining in statewide office, declined to comment further. Her husband, retired 6th District Court of Appeals Judge Melvin L. Resnick, answered the phone at her home.

"We've had these other problems with my mother, who's 97 years old," he said. "We had to take her into the hospital last night. That's part of the problem."

Justice Resnick faces a March 2 date in Bowling Green Municipal Court on charges of driving under the influence and failure to stay within marked lines.

The misdemeanor DUI charge carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and $1,000 fine.

The justice missed a second day of oral arguments on the court bench.

Court spokesman Chris Davey said justices work 50 to 60 hours a week and are not asked to justify their time. Associate justices earn $131,519 a year.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, in a statement, said he expects Justice Resnick to be back on the bench when the next oral arguments are heard Feb. 15.

"I am concerned for her as she confronts this issue," he said.

Although embarrassed by the arrest, which was caught on a highway patrol video later released to the media, Justice Resnick has long been considered a friend of those cracking down on DUI.

"If you look at her voting record in both the [6th District] Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, I think she has come down on the side of law enforcement," said Perrysburg Chief Prosecutor Martin Aubry, a Mothers Against Drunk Driving volunteer who has lobbied for tougher drunken-driving laws.

"Maybe it's because she was a former prosecutor," he said.

In one case in 1987 while on the 6th District bench, she voted with the majority to allow police to pull over suspects based solely on witnessing weaving within or outside the driver's lane. That was the reason cited by the Ohio Highway Patrol in pulling her over Monday on I-75 South near Cygnet in Wood County.

In another that she authored in 1990 on the Supreme Court, she voiced confidence in the accuracy of a field sobriety eye movement test that, 15 years later, she initially refused to take.

"We hold that the [horizontal gaze nystagmus] test has been shown to be a reliable test, especially when used in conjunction with other field sobriety tests and an officer's observations of a driver's physical characteristics in determining whether a person is under the influence of alcohol," she wrote.

Although she refused to take that test when first approached by police while parked at a gas station in Bowling Green, she ultimately did take it after being pulled over a short time later on I-75.

The highway patrol said the results were one factor considered when the decision was made to arrest her.

She registered 0.216 blood-alcohol content, nearly three times the legal limit of 0.08, on a portable field breath test, the results of which are inadmissible in court.

At the Findlay patrol station, she refused to take an official Breathalyzer test, a decision that resulted in an automatic one-year suspension of her driver's license.

"This just shows that it doesn't matter what the point limit is if we don't get tougher laws passed on refusing to take the Breathalyzer test," said Tilde Bricker, state victims' services specialist with MADD.

In a sampling of other Supreme Court cases, Justice Resnick:

&#9679;Sided with the majority in holding that a defendant seeking to challenge the accuracy of a Breathalyzer test must first ask the court to suppress the evidence obtained from that test.

&#9679;Sided with the majority last year in agreeing that, while the results of a field sobriety test may not be admissible in court, the arresting officer can testify as to his observations of the defendant while taking the test.

Contact Jim Provance at:
jprovance@theblade.com
or 614-221-0496.

<#==#>

this ohio supreme court judge has a record of dealing with drunk drivers in her court cases with an iron fist, but when she gets stopped for drunk driving its a different story. and she has the gall to say this is the first time in 22 years she has got drunk. yea sure!

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5225906.html

Ohio Supreme Court judge fights her arrest for DWI

Alice Robie Resnick, 65, an Ohio Supreme Court justice pulled over for drunken driving, urged a police officer not to arrest her and cited her rulings in drunken driving cases, according to police videotapes. Resnick's blood-alcohol content registered 0.22 percent, more than twice the legal limit in Ohio of 0.08 percent. Resnick could get six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000.

http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/news/stories/20050204/opinion/1954455.html

Justice Knows Loophole for Drunken Driving drunken driving

E D I T O R I A L

Justice Alice Robie Resnick's refusal to take an alcohol breath test shows that drunken drivers still have a legal loophole. It's up to legislators to close it.

Yes, it is appalling to see police video of a state Supreme Court justice casually driving off after police stopped her on suspicion of drunken driving. And it is even more offensive to hear her comment that she should have a personal police chauffeur.

But the most disturbing thing about Justice Alice Robie Resnick's apparent drunken cruise Monday is that she used her knowledge of Ohio law in the worst way -- to find a loophole.

Resnick refused to take an evidentiary Breathalyzer test, resulting in her driver's license being suspended for a year. However, a judge has the discretion to shorten the suspension. Undoubtedly, she has a high-priced lawyer looking to get her suspension reduced and contend nothing can prove she was drunk in the absence of the Breathalyzer.

This is just an advertisement to drunken drivers that it's OK to get loaded and get behind the wheel -- as long as you make sure to cover your tracks by refusing the test. A Supreme Court justice should know better, and should set an example of integrity and not slippery legal tactics. If she was innocent, why not take the test and prove it? Why try to get around the system she was sworn to uphold?

We hope the courts don't let Resnick off easy after refusing the test, and make sure her license stays revoked for the duration. The public needs to know that refusing the Breathalyzer is not a "get out of jail free" card.

But more importantly, we hope that legislators will take this as a warning that our laws for drunken driving offenders has a big hole in it.

Thankfully, law enforcement officials have realized how dangerous it is to drink and drive, and don't let offenders skate once they're pulled over.

Our representatives need to make sure our legal system picks up where our police leave off. Those who refuse official breath tests must face harsher consequences, or the law will fail to deter Ohioans from drinking and driving.

Originally published Friday, February 4, 2005

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-arrest07.html

Ohio justice tried to get out of DUI ticket

February 7, 2005

Advertisement

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A state Supreme Court justice pulled over for drunk driving urged a police officer not to arrest her and cited her rulings in drunken driving cases, according to police videotapes.

Justice Alice Robie Resnick, 65, of Toledo, is scheduled to appear in court today, one week after police pulled her over on Interstate 75 in northern Ohio. Her attorney filed a request last week indicating she wants to change her innocent plea. She is charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence.

In the video, shot by a camera on the dashboard of the patrol car and released Friday, a police sergeant questioning Resnick in the front seat tells her he can smell alcohol on her breath.

Resnick assures the officer she can drive safely, but he asks her to take a portable breath-analysis test. She then lowers her voice and says, ''I did have something to drink.''

Resnick also repeatedly asks to be let go, saying, ''My God, you know I decide all these cases in your favor. And my golly, look what you're doing to me.''

Resnick's blood-alcohol content registered 0.22 percent, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent. But the portable test cannot be used as evidence in court.

She refused to take a Breathalyzer test, which means an automatic one-year license suspension.

AP

http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20050207/opinion/1963708.html

Resnick should have used better judgment

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

E D I T O R I A L
The recent actions of Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick are below the standard of what Ohio expects from its top judges.

Resnick drove off without permission after being asked to take a sobriety test, police and State Highway Patrol officials said. The officers had to pursue Resnick and pull her over on Interstate 75 near Bowling Green in northwest Ohio Monday. Resnick, 65, of Toledo, was arrested and charged with driving under the influence and driving outside marked lines, said Lt. Rick Zwayer, a patrol spokesman.

This is unfortunate for someone in Resnick's position. She should have known better to drink and drive. Someone with her experience in the criminal judicial system must set a stronger example.

But she still deserves a day in court.

Resnick failed field sobriety tests, including registering an alcohol level of 0.216 percent on a portable breath test administered at the scene, according to a patrol report. The blood-alcohol legal limit in Ohio is 0.08.

She refused to take an official evidentiary Breathalyzer test when she was taken to a patrol post and her driver's license was suspended for a year, although a judge can revise the suspension to a shorter period or up to three years. The portable breath test is not admissible in court.

Resnick, who previously served as an assistant county prosecutor, a municipal judge and a state appeals court judge, has voted in a handful of drunken driving cases with the Supreme Court.

In 1996, she wrote the majority opinion in a case that said police do not have to tell people suspected of drunken driving that they have the right to a second, independent blood alcohol test.

Her arrest came just days after the conclusion of a long-running court battle over an unsuccessful attempt by business groups to unseat her in 2000. Last week, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce was forced to disclose who contributed to the advertising campaign.

Resnick can rebound from these charges and should return to the bench to serve Ohio residents. She should use better judgment in the future.

 Email this story

Originally published Monday, February 7, 2005

http://www.nbc4i.com/news/4172007/detail.html

Judge Sentences Resnick Following Guilty Plea
Supreme Court Judge Ordered To Jail Or Alcohol Treatment Facility

POSTED: 12:42 pm EST February 7, 2005
UPDATED: 1:44 pm EST February 7, 2005

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick changed her drunken driving plea to guilty on Monday afternoon.

Alice Robie Resnick

Bowling Green Municipal Court Judge Mark Reddin sentenced Resnick, 65, to three days in jail or 72 consecutive hours at an alcohol treatment center that she must complete by May 8. Resnick was also placed on a two-year probation and was fined $600. Her driver's license was suspended until July 31.

SLIDESHOW: Resnick In Court
SLIDESHOW: Judge Pulled Over

Resnick, 65, of Toledo, did not give a statement in court.

Sources close to NBC 4 said that Resnick was eager to get the events of this past week behind her.

Resnick was pulled over on Interstate 75 in Wood County on Monday.

Drivers alerted the Ohio State Highway Patrol to a possible drunken driver on the road because the Jeep Cherokee she was driving was weaving in and out of traffic.

When Resnick agreed to take the portable alcohol test, she registered 0.216 percent, more than twice the blood-alcohol legal limit in Ohio of 0.08. The portable test can't be used as evidence in court.

FeedRoom

Police Video: Judge Arrested
Justice Arrest On Tape

The incident was taped from a trooper's squad car. "I don't believe that test," Resnick told a trooper. "Do you have another test I can take?"

Resnick could have faced as much as six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000.

She refused to take an official evidentiary Breathalyzer test, which means an automatic one-year license suspension and a three-year ban from driving state vehicles. She will need a driver to get to Columbus for hearings, but the court has said the service won't be state-paid.

Resnick apologized in a statement last week, saying that she would come to court and then move on.

Resnick, a justice since 1989, is the court's only Democrat.

Watch NBC 4 and refresh nbc4i.com for continuing coverage.

isnt that a crock. this ohio supreme court judge says that this is the first time in 22 years she has gotten drunk!!!!!!!

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050203/NEWS02/502030448/0/NEWS14

Article published Thursday, February 3, 2005

Resnick breaks silence on DUI arrest
Justice extends 'regrets,' accepts 'full responsibility'

By JIM PROVANCE
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

COLUMBUS - Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick yesterday broke her silence on her very public drunken-driving arrest Monday and said she accepts "full responsibility for my actions."
"It is unfortunate that this situation has arisen after 22 years of sobriety," she said in a written statement. "For that, I extend my regrets to the citizens of Ohio.

"The overwhelming outpouring of support and assistance during this difficult time has strengthened me to continue to do the important work of the court," she said.

The 65-year-old Ottawa Hills resident, the only Democrat remaining in statewide office, declined to comment further. Her husband, retired 6th District Court of Appeals Judge Melvin L. Resnick, answered the phone at her home.

"We've had these other problems with my mother, who's 97 years old," he said. "We had to take her into the hospital last night. That's part of the problem."

Justice Resnick faces a March 2 date in Bowling Green Municipal Court on charges of driving under the influence and failure to stay within marked lines.

The misdemeanor DUI charge carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and $1,000 fine.

The justice missed a second day of oral arguments on the court bench.

Court spokesman Chris Davey said justices work 50 to 60 hours a week and are not asked to justify their time. Associate justices earn $131,519 a year.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, in a statement, said he expects Justice Resnick to be back on the bench when the next oral arguments are heard Feb. 15.

"I am concerned for her as she confronts this issue," he said.

Although embarrassed by the arrest, which was caught on a highway patrol video later released to the media, Justice Resnick has long been considered a friend of those cracking down on DUI.

"If you look at her voting record in both the [6th District] Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, I think she has come down on the side of law enforcement," said Perrysburg Chief Prosecutor Martin Aubry, a Mothers Against Drunk Driving volunteer who has lobbied for tougher drunken-driving laws.

"Maybe it's because she was a former prosecutor," he said.

In one case in 1987 while on the 6th District bench, she voted with the majority to allow police to pull over suspects based solely on witnessing weaving within or outside the driver's lane. That was the reason cited by the Ohio Highway Patrol in pulling her over Monday on I-75 South near Cygnet in Wood County.

In another that she authored in 1990 on the Supreme Court, she voiced confidence in the accuracy of a field sobriety eye movement test that, 15 years later, she initially refused to take.

"We hold that the [horizontal gaze nystagmus] test has been shown to be a reliable test, especially when used in conjunction with other field sobriety tests and an officer's observations of a driver's physical characteristics in determining whether a person is under the influence of alcohol," she wrote.

Although she refused to take that test when first approached by police while parked at a gas station in Bowling Green, she ultimately did take it after being pulled over a short time later on I-75.

The highway patrol said the results were one factor considered when the decision was made to arrest her.

She registered 0.216 blood-alcohol content, nearly three times the legal limit of 0.08, on a portable field breath test, the results of which are inadmissible in court.

At the Findlay patrol station, she refused to take an official Breathalyzer test, a decision that resulted in an automatic one-year suspension of her driver's license.

"This just shows that it doesn't matter what the point limit is if we don't get tougher laws passed on refusing to take the Breathalyzer test," said Tilde Bricker, state victims' services specialist with MADD.

In a sampling of other Supreme Court cases, Justice Resnick:

&#9679;Sided with the majority in holding that a defendant seeking to challenge the accuracy of a Breathalyzer test must first ask the court to suppress the evidence obtained from that test.

&#9679;Sided with the majority last year in agreeing that, while the results of a field sobriety test may not be admissible in court, the arresting officer can testify as to his observations of the defendant while taking the test.

Contact Jim Provance at:
jprovance@theblade.com
or 614-221-0496.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0208churchscam08.html

Jury finds Georgia preacher guilty of stealing from churches

Errin Haines
Associated Press
Feb. 8, 2005 12:00 AM

ATLANTA - A preacher was convicted Monday of stealing nearly $9 million from hundreds of small, Black churches across the country by promising them big returns on small investments.

Abraham Kennard was found guilty by a federal jury in Rome on 116 counts, including fraud and evasion.

Prosecutors said he ran a pyramid scheme that took advantage of the tight network of Black preachers to which he belonged.

"I know you can see clearly it was a scheme, all right. And for some 1,600 churches, it was a nightmare," prosecutor David McClernan said during closing arguments.

Kennard, 46, of Wildwood, Ga., countered he was not guilty of anything.

"It's not a law against riding in a Cadillac if you don't want to ride in a Volkswagen," Kennard, who represented himself, said in his opening remarks. Michael Trost, who served as Kennard's standby counsel, said he believed Kennard intended to help the churches.

He is scheduled to be sentenced April 15.

Prosecutors said Kennard claimed his company was developing Christian resorts around the country. He told preachers that for a fee of a few thousand dollars, their churches could be "members" of his company. In return, he promised that in time the churches would get a grant or a forgivable loan of up to $500,000.

The scheme spread as the trusting ministers told their friends, relatives and fellow pastors.

"It wasn't about ignorance. It was about trust," said the Rev. James Cane of Victory Worship Center in Birmingham, Ala., a government witness.

Kennard's brother, Laboyce, was also found guilty Monday of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors said he accepted more than $360,000 from his brother.

The Kennards' cousin, Jannie Trammel, and stepbrother Alvin Jasper also were indicted but pleaded guilty and testified at the trial. A lawyer was charged with money laundering and will be tried later.

<#==#>

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0208shanley08.html

Defrocked priest convicted for child rape

Denise Lavoie
Associated Press
Feb. 8, 2005 12:00 AM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in the sex scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese, was convicted Monday of repeatedly raping and fondling a boy at his Roman Catholic church during the 1980s.

The conviction on all four charges gives prosecutors an important victory in their effort to bring pedophile priests to justice for decades of abuse at parishes around the country.

Shanley, 74, could get life in prison for two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child when he is sentenced Feb. 15. His bail was revoked, and he was immediately led off to jail.

The victim, now 27, put his head down and sobbed as the verdicts were announced after a trial that turned on the reliability of what the man claimed were recovered memories of the long-ago abuse. Shanley showed no emotion as he stood next to his lawyer.

The jury deliberated 13 hours over three days.

During the trial, the accuser broke down on the stand as he testified in graphic detail that Shanley pulled him out of Sunday-morning catechism classes and molested him in the bathroom, the rectory, the confessional and the pews starting when he was 6 and continuing for six years.

"He told me nobody would ever believe me if I told anybody," he testified.

The accuser said that he repressed his memories of the abuse but that they came flooding back three years ago, triggered by news coverage of the scandal that began in Boston and soon engulfed the church worldwide.

Shanley, once a long-haired, jeans-wearing "street priest" who worked with Boston's troubled youth, sat stoically for most of the trial, listening to his accuser's testimony with the help of a hearing aid.

The defense called just one witness, a psychologist who said that so-called recovered memories can be false even if the accuser ardently believes they are true. A lawyer for Shanley argued that the accuser was either mistaken or concocted the story with the help of personal-injury lawyers to cash in on a multimillion-dollar settlement resulting from the sex scandal.

The accuser, now a firefighter in suburban Boston, was one of at least two dozen men who claimed they had been molested by Shanley. The archdiocese's personnel records showed that church officials knew Shanley publicly advocated sex between men and boys yet continued to transfer him from parish to parish.

Prosecutors said the young man had no financial motivation in accusing Shanley of rape in the criminal case because he received his $500,000 settlement with the archdiocese nearly a year ago. They also cited his wrenching three days on the stand during which he sobbed and begged the judge not to force him to continue testifying.

"The emotions were raw. They were real," prosecutor Lynn Rooney said.

Frank Mondano, Shanley's lawyer, said he will appeal.

Shanley is one of the few priests whom prosecutors have been able to charge. Most of the priests accused of wrongdoing escaped prosecution because the statute of limitations ran out long ago. But in Shanley's case, the clock stopped when he moved out of Massachusetts.

He was arrested in California at the height of the scandal in May 2002, brought back to Massachusetts in handcuffs and charged with raping four boys from his parish in Newton. All four claimed they repressed memories of the abuse, then recovered them when the scandal broke.

But the case ran into numerous problems. In July, prosecutors dropped two of the accusers in what they said was a move to strengthen their case. Then, on the day jury selection began, they dropped a third accuser because they were unable to find him after a traumatic experience on the witness stand at a hearing last fall.

The clergy-abuse scandal in Boston began in early 2002 when Cardinal Bernard Law acknowledged he shuffled a pedophile priest from parish to parish despite evidence the priest had molested children. That priest, John Geoghan, was convicted of assault and was later killed in prison.

The scandal intensified later in 2002 when the church released Shanley's 800-page personnel file.

He resigned from parish work in 1989 and moved to California. At the time, Law, who resigned as archbishop in December 2002 at the height of the scandal, praised his "impressive record." Boston church officials recommended him for a job in the Diocese of San Bernardino as a priest in "good standing."

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