|
|
|
Arizona governor: Abstinence-only education a failure
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is telling the Bush administration that the state does not want $1 million in federal funding for abstinence-only education because the programs don't work.
The move makes Arizona the 16th state to reject the federal money.
A raft of studies have shown that abstinence only programs in schools have done nothing to reduce teen sex. The most recent study was released in November and found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use."
Since 1996, the federal government has spent over a half a billion taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only programs.
A 2006 study by the independent Society for Adolescent Medicine called the programs "scientifically and ethically flawed."
Source: (365Gay.com) |
| Back to top |
| |
Judge throws out case against Katrina army corps
A judge has thrown out a class-action lawsuit against the US Army Corps of Engineers while castigating it for failing to protect New Orleans from flooding after Hurricane Katrina.
Federal judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the corps, which designed and built the levees and floodwalls meant to keep the below-sea-level city from being inundated, could not be sued because of a 60-year-old law.
The flood control act of 1928 makes the federal government immune from lawsuits over flood control projects.
Duval said he was forced by law to hold the corps immune even though the agency "cast a blind eye" in protecting New Orleans and "squandered millions of dollars in building a levee system... which was known to be inadequate by the corps' own calculations."
Duval added: "It is not within the court's power to address the wrongs committed. It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States' power to address the failures of our laws and agencies."
The lead plaintiffs' lawyer Joe Bruno said he would appeal the decision. "I know I'm fighting an uphill battle, but I'm not going to give up."
Hundreds of thousands of claims have been filed against the corps over the flooding and their total value comes to between $30 billion and $50 billion. The ruling was another blow to the people of New Orleans, where resentment against the corps remains high.
New Orleans activists and politicians said they would not give up on holding the corps accountable.
"We will stick with our mission of education that this was the worst engineering failure since Chernobyl," said Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org, a group that has lobbied for overhauling the corps.
Source: (Guardian (UK)) |
| Back to top |
| |
Justice Dept. accused of blocking Gonzales probe
The government agency that enforces one of the principal laws aimed at keeping politics out of the civil service has accused the Justice Department of blocking its investigation into alleged politicizing of the department under former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.
Scott J. Bloch, head of the US Office of Special Counsel, wrote Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey last week that the department had repeatedly "impeded" his investigation by refusing to share documents and provide answers to written questions.
The Justice Department wants Bloch to wait until its own internal investigation is completed. A department official signaled recently that the investigation is examining the possibility of criminal charges.
But that, the regulator wrote, could take until the last months of the Bush administration, "when there is little hope of any corrective measures or discipline possible" being taken by his office.
Since last spring, the Justice Department's inspector general and its top ethics officer have been jointly investigating the firings, along with allegations that the department, under Gonzales, allowed political considerations to factor into the hiring of career employees.
Bloch said that he had asked Justice officials on several occasions for access to documents and other evidence and that he had been repeatedly rebuffed.
Source: (Los Angeles Times) |
| Back to top |
| |
Pentagon wants $70 billion more for wars
The White House will ask Congress next week for another $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an amount that would help cover operational costs only until early next year when the next administration takes over.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that the money, included as part of the administration's 2009 budget request, would be considered an "emergency allowance" to pay for operations beginning Oct. 1, when the budget year begins, until possibly January.
President Bush asked for more than twice that amount -- $196.4 billion -- to fuel combat operations this fiscal year.
Since 2001, Congress has approved some $700 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Bush's 2008 and 2009 requests are approved in their entirety, that amount would increase to roughly $876 billion.
Source: (AP) |
| Back to top |
| |
Senate spy bill still shields telecoms
In a victory for the Bush administration, the Senate on Jan. 24 blocked legislation that would have cleared the way for lawsuits against phone companies that have cooperated with a warrantless wiretapping program authorized by President Bush.
The vote moves the administration closer to its goal of providing retroactive immunity to telephone companies and internet carriers that are facing multimillion-dollar lawsuits for giving US spy agencies access to international calls and messages streaming across their networks.
The issue is being considered by the Senate this week as part of the latest effort to overhaul a 1978 law that governs US intelligence agencies' ability to intercept electronic communications around the world. Congress passed a stopgap measure last summer that expires at the end of the month.
The controversial surveillance program launched by Bush involves intercepting international calls and emails of US residents without court warrants.
As part of that program, the Bush administration convinced AT&T, Sprint and other major telecommunications companies to allow US spy agencies extensive access to the streams of data flowing across their networks.
Those companies now face lawsuits for cooperating with an espionage operation that even many members of Congress have called illegal.
The Senate vote was considered a clear signal that the White House is likely to prevail.
Source: (Los Angeles Times) |
| Back to top |
| |
Soldier suicides reach record level
Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.
At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq War began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the US Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.
Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.
Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years.
Last year, twice as many soldier suicides occurred in the United States than in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Source: (Washington Post) |
| Back to top |
| |
Study calls Taser's safety claims into question
Taser stun guns may not be as safe as their manufacturer claims, according to a study carried out by Chicago researchers.
The team of doctors and scientists at the trauma center in Chicago's Cook County hospital stunned 11 pigs with Taser guns in 2006, hitting their chests with 40-second jolts of electricity, pausing for 10 to 15 seconds, then hitting them for 40 more seconds.
When the jolts ended, every animal was left with heart rhythm problems, the researchers said. Two of the animals died from cardiac arrest, one three minutes after receiving a shock.
The findings call into question safety claims made by Taser International, the Arizona company that makes the stun guns, which are used by dozens of police departments across Canada.
Bob Walker, one of the lead researchers on the Chicago study, said the fact that one of the pigs died three minutes after being stunned is significant.
"It says that the effect of the Taser shot can last beyond the time when it's being delivered," he said. "So, after the Taser shock ends, there can still be effects that can be evoked and you can still see cardiac effects."
Source: (CBC news) |
| Back to top |
| |
US flouts human rights with secret prisons, torture: HRW
The United States continues to violate basic human rights by keeping secret detention facilities abroad, holding people illegally as "disappeared" and justifying torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Jan. 31.
The Human Rights Watch World Report 2008 found no improvement in the human rights situation in the United States, despite efforts by the US Congress to end the alleged abuses carried out in its so-called "war on terror."
"There was no evident progress concerning the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, including those held at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), or the use of secret detention facilities" in foreign countries, HRW said.
The rights group said it believed 39 people were being held in US secret detention facilities and recalled that the US government had admitted to holding 100 prisoners in all.
"Under international law those persons remain unlawfully 'disappeared' until the United States can account for them," the report said.
And despite congressional pressure forcing the Pentagon to adopt new rules for prisoner interrogations to preclude torture-like abuses, HRW said the US government continues to justify such techniques in certain cases.
"The CIA contends that it is not bound by these rules, and the (US) administration has gone to great lengths to justify the CIA's continued use of certain techniques banned for use by the military," said the report.
On the domestic front, HRW said 2.2 million people were imprisoned in 2007 in the United States, a 500 percent increase over the past 30 years and equivalent to five times the entire prison population of Britain.
In addition to having the largest prison population in the world, the report added, the United States imprisoned blacks at a rate 6.5 times higher than that of whites.
Source: (AFP) |
| Back to top |
| |
US justice chief refuses to call waterboarding torture
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused on Jan. 30 to define waterboarding as illegal torture, even while admitting that if he underwent the interrogation technique that he would "feel" it is torture.
Fending off pressure in a Senate Justice Committee hearing to categorically call waterboarding, which simulates drowning, as torture under US law, the top US legal official suggested that under certain conditions it could be legal, and said that learned people could disagree on the issue.
"I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgement on the technique's legality," he said.
"There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit waterboarding's use. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."
In his first testimony to the committee since becoming attorney general on Nov. 9, Mukasey said that torture is illegal under US statutes, but that waterboarding is not definitively covered by those statutes.
He declined to say whether it had been used in the past.
"I am not authorized to talk about what the CIA has done in the past," he told the Senate panel.
Senators were adamant that it is torture, with committee head Patrick Leahy insisting that waterboarding "has been recognized as torture for the last 500 years."
"Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?" Senator Ted Kennedy asked Mukasey.
"I would feel it was," Mukasey said, while insisting that that does not constitute a legal opinion.
"It's like saying you are opposed to stealing but aren't sure if bank robbery would qualify," Kennedy said.
Source: (AFP) |
| Back to top |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
|
| Quote of the Week |
| " Total US deaths in Afghanistan have doubled under President Obama, and when the next US soldier is reported dead, the majority of US deaths in Afghanistan will have occurred under President Obama. " |
-- Robert Naiman, truthout, 8/16/2010.
|
|
|
