In the News......
A sausage -- looted or not -- lands elderly church leader in prison
01:41 PM CDT on Thursday, September 15, 2005
Kevin McGill and John Solomon / Associated Press
KENNER -- Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000. Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.
Family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat but was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store. Not even the deli owner wants her charged.
"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them. Instead of chasing after people who were running, they grabbed the old lady was who walking," said Elois Short, Maten's daughter, who works in traffic enforcement for neighboring New Orleans police.
Short has enlisted the help of the AARP, the senior citizens lobby, the Federal Emergency Management Agency legal assistance office, made up of volunteer lawyers, and a private attorney to get her mother freed. But the task has been complicated.
Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour away. And the judge who set $50,000 bail by phone -- 100 times the maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts -- has not returned a week's worth of calls, her lawyer said.
"She has slipped through the cracks and the wheels of justice have stopped turning for Mrs. Maten," attorney Daniel Beckett Becnel III said.
read the entire article here: http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl091505sausage.5e3b6f64.html
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Weldon: Atta Papers Destroyed on Orders
By DONNA DE LA CRUZ, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 11 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.
The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa.
Weldon declined to name the employee, citing confidentiality matters. Weldon described the documents as "2.5 terabytes" — as much as one-fourth of all the printed materials in the Library of Congress, he added.
to read the entire article please visit: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050915/ap_on_go_co/sept11_hijackers
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Few people trust politicians, global survey shows
By Paul Majendie
Reuters
Thursday, September 15, 2005; 11:46 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Trust in politicians is abysmally low around the world and most citizens say their governments do not reflect the will of the people, according to an intriguing global survey of what influences our lives.
"Who Runs Your World?" was the question put by Gallup International and the BBC World Service to more than 50,000 people in 68 countries in what was billed as one of the biggest surveys of public opinion ever conducted.
Religion is crucial in Nigeria, family is vital in Latin America and the Japanese distrust authority figures.
One of the most striking findings was international disillusionment with politicians. They achieved extremely low confidence ratings, with only 13 percent trusting them.
Two out of three people polled around the globe felt unrepresented by their governments.
The exceptions were South Africans, Israelis and Scandinavians. Most of these believed their governments were in tune with the people.
There was a global desire to put more power in the hands of intellectuals such as writers and academics, the survey showed.
As technology shrinks the world to a global village, patriotism is still a strong force, with feelings of national identity strongest in Latin America, Southeast Asia and East Africa.
Muslims and Protestants were the most likely to trust religious leaders and give them more power. Jews appeared to be the most positive about being able to change their own lives.
to read the entire article please visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091501035_pf.html
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Man shoots himself after contest
LONGVIEW, Texas — A participant in an East Texas contest popularized in a 1998 documentary film left the event early Thursday, broke into a nearby store, retrieved a shotgun and killed himself, police said.
Richard Vega, 24, of Tyler, left the "Hands on a Hardbody" contest at Patterson Nissan around 6 a.m., about the time that a break was called, said police Sgt. Carlos Samples. The rules of the contest require participants to lay one hand flat on a truck at all times. The contestant who holds out longest drives the truck home. The contest was in its third day.
Vega crossed the street to a Kmart, broke the glass in the front door, climbed through, then went to the sporting goods department and took a 12-gauge shotgun, police said. Officers called to the scene were coming in the front of the store as Vega approached from the back.
Vega was ordered to drop the weapon, Samples said.
"He took a few steps back and actually fired the gun at himself and killed himself," Samples said.
The officer said police don't know why Vega committed suicide. Samples said he was unaware of any prior dispute or altercation at the contest, which was canceled.
Vega was not disqualified when he left the contest, said Steve Burnette, who was providing security for the auto dealership.
"This has been a tragic event for Ricky Vega and his family along with the other contestants and everyone at Patterson Nissan," said Burnette, reading a statement from the dealer's managers.
Mary Flores, a cousin of Vega's wife, said in a story in the Longview News-Journal's online edition that Vega "had no reason to do this at all."
"Everything in his life was going good. Everything," she said as she gathered with other family members outside th store where he died.
She said Vega had promised his wife he would win the Nissan truck. The top prize this year also would have included a pop-up camper. The newspaper reported that Vega had dropped out of the contest last year because of a family emergency.
Filmmaker S. R. Bindler made a documentary of the competition in 1995. "Hands on a Hardbody," the movie, traces the humor and heartbreak of the days-long event. The longest contest took 126 hours in 2000.
The dealership said the future of the contest hasn't been decided.
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September 15, 2005 - 8:12 p.m. CDT
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/hp/content/gen/ap/TX_Contest_Suicide.html
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BROWNWOOD REUNION CELEBRATION AWARDED
The “Hands on a House” contest that premiered at the 2004 Brownwood Reunion Celebration was named best new event at the Texas Festivals and Events Association’s annual conference held recently in Grapevine.
In total the 2004 Brownwood Reunion Celebration received five awards, and, besides the best new event recognition, also received awards for the best media stunt, best media campaign, best media kit and best sponsor packet.
Since its beginning four year’s ago, the annual Brownwood Reunion Celebration has earned 13 awards, said Randee Green, executive director for the annual “feels like home” event.
“That’s against some stiff competition,” Green said, “such as the Pasadena Strawberry Festival, Rio Fest, Borderfest and Neiman Marcus Christmas Parade.
“Our community has so many things to be proud of, the Brownwood Reunion Celebration just adds one more to the list,” she said.
The Hands on a House contest, which will have its second annual competition at this year's Brownwood Reunion Celebration, allows for 20 men and women to compete for an 80-square-foot playhouse, built by local building company Seymore Construction.
Coldwell Banker Don Johnson-Mark Campbell and Associates employees will again judge the event all weekend.
The concept of the contest is relatively simple. Contestants place one hand on the house and as they take their hand off, they are out. The last remaining contestant will win the house.
In 2004, Olivia Tobias Cantwell, a product safety analyst, planner and scheduler at 3M, outlasted 18 others competing to win the playhouse by keeping her hands on the playhouse for 32 hours, 25 minutes.
source: http://www.brownwoodtx.com/event/event_media_05.asp
Hands on Contest Stress Testimony :
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Young: Let the profiteering begin
Thursday, September 15, 2005
John Young Opinion page editor
Waco Tribune-Herald
Quick action after storm? Yes, if buck is to be had
Judge for yourself if President Bush on Tuesday issued a mea culpa or a they-a culpa.
Whatever the case, the seed of political ingenuity germinates afresh in the post-Katrina implication: Government failed. All of it.
Sounds like a theme. Go to video. To serve the people, you just can't trust government.
You can, however, trust your friendly private contractor.
How many more New Orleanians would be alive today were National Guardsmen there as quickly as Halliburton and Bechtel?
Reports of FEMA awarding, lickety-split, no-bid contracts to various favored corporations for Katrina relief put the lie to the notion of bureaucracy in molasses.
When there's patronage to be done and profit to be had for political friends, see this government move.
The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday said he would scrutinize the no-bid contracts. If this inquiry alters even one of those contracts, I'll buy gumbo for everyone.
Speaking of corporations: Rapidly on the scene in New Orleans was Blackwater USA, the security firm, called a mercenary force by many, that has become an add-on branch of the military in Iraq.
The Washington Post reported that Blackwater would supply security to FEMA posts in Louisiana. Mother Jones online described Blackwater employees toting assault weapons, patrolling the streets in New Orleans, claiming they were deputized. By whom?
Government can't be trusted. But you can trust armed individuals answering to a board of directors in Moyock, N.C. Don't have a National Guard? Hire one.
Meanwhile, in the “rebuilding” front, some sobering news is going to greet the thousands of small businesses decimated by the storm: the recently passe bankruptcy reform bill.
Democrats on Capitol Hill urge that victims of Katrina get a year grace period from the stiffer new laws aimed at curbing abuse of bankruptcy.
Republicans say the bill has enough flexibility to do justice to extreme individual circumstances.
Let's see for how many of these small businesses a bill sculpted by credit-card companies is a double whammy that makes the rebuilding of the coast much more onerous.
And when it comes to helping these small businesses, as Washington says it will do, we'll see which businesses really benefit. How many will be time zones away from Katrina?
The Associated Press recently connected the dots of a host of loans dished out by banks under a program aimed specifically at 9/11 victims.
While AP spoke to small-business owners in New York City who couldn't get loans, it uncovered loans to an Oregon winery, a South Dakota radio station and a perfume shop in the Virgin Islands, among others.
To get that result, we put our trust in our friends in big business – private lending institutions – to handle that money, apparently with little oversight.
What's the alternative to trusting big business? Trust a government of, by and for the people?
John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2005/09/15/20050915wacyoung15.html
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State & Local | 4/1/2005
Detective investigated in child porn complaint
By Nikki Buskey
A detective with the Austin Police Department is under investigation for allegations that his home computer was used to e-mail child pornography after complaints were made by an Internet provider to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Lance McConnell, a veteran of APD's alcohol control team, has been placed on restricted duty with pay by the department while the investigation is conducted by the attorney general's office.
Tom Kelley, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott's office, said officers confiscated McConnell's laptop computer, several compact disks and diskettes and a Web cam from his Lockhart home on March 23 to conduct a forensic investigation into the allegations.
A Caldwell County judge ordered that McConnell's two children be removed from his home Wednesday by Child Protective Services as a result of the investigation.
read the entire article here: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/news/2005/04/01/StateLocal/Detective.Investigated.In.Child.Porn.Complaint-909375.shtml
UPDATE:
Former Austin police detective guilty of possessing child porn
McConnell had hundreds of images and movie clips on his computer
By Steven Kreytak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 15, 2005
A former Austin police detective pleaded guilty to seven counts of child pornography in federal court Thursday, admitting that he possessed on his personal computer hundreds of images of male and female children engaged in sexual acts.
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McConnell is a former Lockhart City Council candidate and had been a member of the city's planning and zoning commission until he resigned on April 4.
McConnell had been on the Austin police force for seven years, most recently assigned to investigate illegal alcohol sales, before he was fired after a grand jury handed up an indictment against him in May.
At the time, Assistant Police Chief Rick Coy called the allegations a "a great embarrassment" to the department.
"A case of this sort tarnishes everyone in the department," Coy said.
read the entire article here: http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/metro/stories/09/16plea.html
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