Is Perry's Roger going to "play games" with Kinky's campaign ?

Thwarting Perry foes ? Absurd, official says
Secretary of state says petition count will take weeks, not months
02:48 PM CDT on Sunday, April 30, 2006
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Secretary of State Roger Williams says it will take only a few weeks, not the two months his critics charge, to certify the candidacy of two independents seeking to challenge Gov. Rick Perry.
Mr. Williams denied that he is trying to keep the governor's political challengers, Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman, off the ballot.
And he said that his office has created a new computer program and hired an outside company to speed the process of verifying thousands of signatures the independents must collect and submit by May 11.
"We're working hard to do it as quickly as we can, but the main thing is to do it right," said Mr. Williams, outlining his agency's plans in detail for the first time.
The Strayhorn campaign has accused Mr. Williams, a Perry appointee, of delaying the certification process to help the governor win re-election.
"He's throwing up roadblocks all over the place, no question about it," said Strayhorn campaign manager Brad McClellan. "He's basically putting toll roads on the democratic process."
The campaign has filed suit in federal court challenging Mr. Williams' refusal to accept petitions as they are being collected, instead of all at once after the deadline. They also want him to sample signatures rather than verify each one.
A hearing is set for Monday in Austin.
Independent candidates for governor must collect 45,540 signatures from registered voters who didn't vote in the primary.
Mr. Williams defended his decision to validate every signature on the petitions rather than conduct a statistical sampling, as past secretaries of state have done.
"Maybe I'm leaning on my business background, but whenever I've taken an inventory, whenever I've counted things, I've always done it to get it exact," he said in an interview last week. "And we have an opportunity to get it exact."
Mrs. Strayhorn's campaign said Mr. Williams is departing from the quicker method in order to drag out the process and damage her campaign.
The clash underscores an increasingly acrimonious feud between the Republican governor and Mrs. Strayhorn, the Republican comptroller who is running for governor as an independent.
Break with precedent
Mr. Williams' predecessors have used statistical sampling to certify candidates for the ballot. Democrat John Hannah used sampling for Kay Bailey Hutchison in her 1993 Senate race, and Republican Tony Garza followed the same procedure to certify Ross Perot for the 1996 presidential ballot.
But Mr. Williams said this year's race is different because there might be two or more independent candidates on the ballot, in addition to Mr. Perry and Democrat Chris Bell.
Under state law, voters can't sign petitions if they've voted in the primary. If a voter signed more than one petition, the one signed first counts.
Faced with that prospect, Mr. Williams said, his office has created a computer program with the names of all registered voters who did not vote in the primary or runoff elections. That list will be compared with an electronic database of the collected signatures.
A private firm, Tela Technologies of Houston, has been hired to enter the names from the petitions into a computer database. It has four weeks to complete the task.
"Once we get that back, it shouldn't take long," Mr. Williams said. "Say, 48 hours."
Financial worries
The Strayhorn and Friedman camps say the secretary of state's plans harm their efforts.
"Financially, it hurts more than anything," said Mr. Friedman's campaign manager, Dean Barkley. "People do not want to invest in Kinky until they know he's actually going to be on the ballot."
Mr. McClellan said the Republican governor wants to sustain doubt as long as possible among voters and fundraisers about whether his challengers are legitimate.
"Rick Perry and his hand-picked political appointee know that when we're on the ballot, Rick Perry is in trouble," said Mr. McClellan.
Clay Mulford, a ballot-access expert and Dallas attorney who served as general counsel for Mr. Perot's presidential campaigns, said it appears the secretary of state "is changing the rules midway through the game."
Mr. Williams denied that and said he is acting on his own, not on instructions from Mr. Perry.
"The governor and I have not exchanged any dialogue at all about this," he said. "He hasn't asked and – what do they say – don't ask, don't tell."
Meanwhile, both independent gubernatorial campaigns say petition-gathering is going well.
The Strayhorn camp has contracted with two firms to gather signatures using paid workers. Their assignment is to produce more than enough valid signatures by doing their own computer cross-check. Volunteers will supplement that effort.
Although campaign officials won't say how many names they intend to turn in by May 11, those familiar with the effort predict the total number of signatures delivered to the secretary of state could exceed 150,000.
The Friedman campaign is relying mostly on volunteers, Mr. Barkley said. A program to pay signature-gatherers has been largely shelved because volunteer efforts have proved successful.
He said volunteers collected signatures at the weekend Fiesta celebration in San Antonio and an international film festival in Houston. Petition-gatherers were at recent Bob Dylan concerts in Grand Prairie and San Antonio.
"We're on target," Mr. Barkley said. "We firmly believe we'll be on the ballot, but we need more than just the 45,000 in case Roger is going to play games with us."
E-mail wslater@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-petitions_30tex.ART.State.Edition1.90a486f.html

I agree with Kinky about Perry & other politicians !

Independent Friedman says his aim is to increase turnout

By JOSH BAUGH
Eagle Staff Writer

Amid a slew of one-liners, gubernatorial hopeful Kinky Friedman on Wednesday outlined a platform that includes using gambling to fund education and placing a moratorium on the death penalty.
Friedman spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 in an auditorium at Texas A&M University's Mays Business School.
"I'm not running against Perry," said Friedman, donning his trademark black cowboy hat and holding an unlit cigar. "I'm running against apathy."
He said part of his mission on the campaign trail is to increase voter interest in the November general election in hopes of seeing a 50 percent voter turnout, up from less than 30 percent in the last race for governor in 2002.
Friedman also said his camp takes credit for the low turnout in the March primaries because people opted not to vote so they could sign a petition for an independent candidate. In order to be on the November ballot, he and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, also an independent gubernatorial candidate, must gather 45,540 signatures of registered voters who didn't cast ballots in either of the March primaries.
To make the May 11 petition deadline, Friedman said he's tapping young voters. His campaign tour is taking him to campuses across the state, and his Web site has a section devoted to students.
Calling himself the "Jewish Cowboy," Friedman explained his stance on a bevy of issues, though he often shot off couplets of serious statements followed by tongue-in-cheek comments.
"I support gay marriage," he said. "I think they have the right to be just as miserable as the rest of us."

He said Perry and other politicians spent years fighting for a ban on gay marriage to take the spotlight off more pressing issues.
"It's an easy way to take our eye off the ball," he said. "What they took our eye off of is education. What they took our eye off of is immigration."

Friedman said Texas could generate $5 billion dollars annually by legalizing gambling, which he would use to fund public schools.
"We've got to legalize casino gambling," he said. "We invented Texas Hold 'Em [poker] and we can't even play it here."
Friedman initially said the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test should be eliminated, but later said standardized tests aren't inherently bad. He said public schools must stop "teaching to the test."
During his 20-minute speech, Friedman - standing near an almost life-size caricature of himself - often drew laughter and applause from the crowd of mostly students. He also answered questions from the audience. Friedman said he hasn't developed a stance on nuclear energy, he's against Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor, and he believes that Texas should place a moratorium on the death penalty to study whether it's fairly administered.
Friedman said he plans to appoint Willie Nelson as his energy adviser. Nelson has been a champion of biodiesel, made from used vegetable oil gathered mostly from restaurants and then used to power his tour bus across the country.
If his plan unfolds they way he hopes, Friedman said not to expect too much work to come from the Capitol early in the morning.
"But we'll work late, and we'll be honest," he said.
Chris Bell is the Democratic nomination on the November ballot and James Werner is running as a Libertarian.
• Josh Baugh's e-mail address is josh.baugh@theeagle.com.

source: http://www.theeagle.com/stories/042706/politics_20060427006.php

The Brownwood Food Chain and Undocumented workers !

Business wary of guest-worker bills
By BARRY SHLACHTER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
(HARLINGEN) VALLEY MORNING STAR/JOE HERMOSA VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
About 60 percent to 80 percent of the state's agricultural workers are undocumented, the Texas Farm Bureau estimates.
More photos
Texas employers who rely on immigrant labor are wary of some of the proposals being debated in Washington to deal with the runaway expansion of the underground work force, now crucial to a number of industries.
Half of the bills don't address their greatest concern: how to keep enough employees on the job while their legal status is settled. Three of the six bills would require foreign workers to return to their homelands before applying for authorization to work in the U.S., according to a review by the Migration Policy Institute. Two proposals would bar them for a decade if they don't leave, and the other would exclude them three years.
"We would not like to see any plan that tells people to go back home," said Glen Garey, the Austin-based general counsel for the Texas Restaurant Association. "It's a disruption to their lives, our businesses and the economy."
Steve Pringle, legislative director of the Waco-based Texas Farm Bureau, put it more bluntly.
"We are concerned that if you start taking away these [estimated] 12 million workers, start removing them, you are going to shut down the economy of the United States," he said.
Pringle said as many as 60 percent to 80 percent of agricultural laborers in Texas are undocumented.
"I asked a dairyman from the Stephenville area about the percentage of undocumented milking hands in Erath and surrounding counties," Pringle said. "He told me 99 percent were undocumented -- even some of the managers."
While Congress debates a new guest-worker program, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff is taking a tougher stance.
On April 20, immigration officials in Texas and 25 others states arrested 1,187 immigrants working for IFCO Systems North America. The Houston-based shipping-pallet supplier recruited foreign laborers and, in some cases, provided false IDs, officials said. The arrests surpassed the total made in 2005, and Chertoff announced the start of a crackdown on companies hiring illegal immigrants.
But the sweep isn't likely to prompt farms, packinghouses, landscapers, cleaning companies, restaurants and construction companies to shed employees with dubious paperwork.
Past high-profile cases haven't slowed the tide of illegal workers. Not a $1.75 million fine paid by Houston-based Pappas Restaurants in 1997 for training undocumented workers as chefs, then supplying false papers and hiding places at its Pappadeaux Seafood and Pappasito's Cantina eateries in the Metroplex. Nor the $1.9 million penalty shouldered two years later by Filiberto's, a Phoenix chain of Mexican restaurants, or the $11 million forked over last year by Wal-Mart for having illegal immigrants fill cleaning crews even though the chain said it was unaware of their status.
Although there's little consensus among employers on which legislative proposal is best, those interviewed acknowledged that from a national-security perspective, the current system isn't working.
Of all the current ideas being tossed about Washington, a proposed guest-worker program sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, comes closest to what the farmers organization would like put in practice.
"It would allow for individuals to go back to their countries of origin, get the appropriate ID card, then come back and work," Pringle said. "The only thing we disagree with is the length of time those individuals can be here. We want as much time as possible. As long as they are working and contributing to society, we don't see why they should be forced to go home."
The Cornyn plan, co-sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., allows for three two-year employment terms in the U.S. with at least a year abroad in between. Other proposals range from two to three years, most with just a single renewal.
A proposal by President Bush, another by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and a third by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., do not require a trip home.
"We just need a system that's workable, enforceable and able to get workers when they're needed, then have them return to their home countries afterward," said Matt Brockman, executive vice president of the Fort Worth-based Texas and Southwestern Cattleraisers Association.
Without abundant labor, ranchers will continue to find ways to rationalize their operations, Brockman said. "Years ago, one ranch hand might tend to 300 cows and calves, now it's 700 to 800."
Employers stress the importance of streamlining the process of checking prospective workers' identities.
"For national security, we'd like some way to document them so that we'd see their background," said Garey of the restaurant association. "From an employer's viewpoint, he'd see who is documented. And from a worker's viewpoint, he wouldn't live in constant fear of being caught and deported."
Garey declined to estimate the percentage of undocumented workers busing tables and staffing kitchens but said some jobs would be mechanized and menu prices would rise if those employees were forced back across the border.
He professes to see little difference between the Texas-Oklahoma border and the Texas-Mexico border -- "We are all people" -- and says many people don't understand that illegal workers pay taxes.
"There's a lot of rhetoric that has hardened hearts to immigrants that they are not paying taxes. That's not true," he said. "When they rent an apartment, they pay property tax through their rent. When they go to a store, they pay sales tax, and on the job, Social Security and income taxes are withheld -- without them seeing any benefit."
One North Texas landscaper would like to see a program that uses technology to verify a prospective employee's identity.
"I would like to see them have some kind of national ID card with a magnetic strip given them at the border," said Tommy Dye, 60, owner of Lady Bug Landscape Co. in Keller.
"This kind of card would let them come to any employer," he said. "The employer picks up the phone and reads off the number [to confirm authenticity] or swipes the card in some kind of device.
"Let them work one year, pay their taxes -- the whole nine yards," Dye said. "Let them go home six months and return for another year, which is basically what they are doing anyway."
That might work in landscaping, but the restaurant trade, construction, poultry plants and other industries say they need the cheap, unskilled labor year-round.
And like them, Dye said landscapers would be hard-pressed to maintain an adequate work force without undocumented workers.
"Anytime we ask for help, Mexicans are the only ones who show up. I wonder where all the black and white people have gone, even at $8.50 and $9 an hour," he said. "It's the hard work, not the pay. I had an Anglo come in recently. He worked one day and didn't come back. He was the first Caucasian I hired in eight or nine years. That's pretty telling.
"The presumption is that these people work for the lowest wage," Dye said. "But at a day-labor center, I watched Mexicans refusing work that didn't pay $80 a day."
The owner of a restaurant chain agreed.
"We wouldn't have many employees without them, even at $10 an hour," said the businessman, who does not want his name published because of the sensitivity of the immigration debate. "We really need the Mexicans, all of the service industry does."
He questioned whether any new guest-worker system would work if it's simpler to illegally cross the border than to spend months or years navigating a complicated application process.
"We'd love to hire them legally. But it's just so difficult," he said. "There's so much bureaucracy applying for permission from Mexico, that it's just easier for them to come over illegally."
Leo Wadley, a Fort Worth roofing contractor, acknowledges taking a stance at odds with many in his field.
"I would like to see complete and total enforcement of all immigration laws and see all of the people here illegally shipped back to their country of origin as soon as possible," he said. "And the government should spend what it needs to enforce and penalize those who are in not in compliance."
Wadley concedes that the immediate effect would be higher roofing prices, but not as high as they would be if Texas imposed mandatory general liability insurance and workers' compensation like Florida, California, New York and Alabama.
The roofer said he's aware of undocumented workers who get injured on the job but get no help from contractors. They were often hired indirectly through labor brokers who carry no insurance coverage, he said. County hospitals often pick up the tab, which in effect means that taxpayers are subsidizing their neighbors' roofing repairs, he said.
"What business frankly wants is a steady stream of low-cost labor," said economist Jared Bernstein of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. "Immigrants are now a key component of the work force, and if they're gone, increased labor costs are passed on as higher prices for goods and services."

Barry Shlachter, (817) 390-7718 barry@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/14466774.htm
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Posted on Sat, Apr. 08, 2006

Southwest Kansas prepares for protests over immigration reforms
Associated Press
ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. - Immigrant rights supporters will hold rallies against proposed immigration reforms Monday, and the meatpacking plants' owners and the workers are divided about who should attend.
Dodge City's National Beef is advising its employees not to leave work to go to the demonstrations linked to the "National Day of Action" organized by labor, civil rights and religious groups. Another plant, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef of Arkansas City, is closing its doors Monday and urging employees to take part in the peaceful protests.
"We really agree with the perspective of the Hispanic community," said Rusty Wright, Creekstone's director of human resources. "There is a lot of mixed opinions on this controversial bill. I don't think we mind having our opinion."
Wright said his company is shutting down Monday because three-quarters of its 750 workers are Hispanic, and the company disagrees with a House bill that would make it a felony to be an illegal immigrant and would build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Wright said the company screens all their employees' applications through a computer system provided by the Department of Homeland Security to check that anyone Creekstone hires is eligible to work in the U.S.
But he said the company decided to stop operations because management thought workers should be able to protest the bill, which would also make it a crime to assist illegal immigrants.
Closing the plant won't be cheap. Creekstone's operations director, Kevin Pentz, said the plant will have to reschedule about 30 trailers of live cattle and may have to work longer hours next week to keep up with production.
"People think the Hispanics are taking away from jobs that could go to other people," said Pentz. "But in reality, these are jobs people don't care to have. These are skilled labor jobs, hard work."
National Beef, meanwhile, sent a letter to its workers last week questioning the wisdom of skipping work and urging workers to contact elected officials instead.
"We at National Beef already know that we need our Hispanic workforce," said the letter. "We disagree that not working is the best way to express your disapproval of this bill."
On Sunday, Latinos in Dodge City will have a town hall meeting to discuss immigration matters. Monday, immigrant rights groups and Hispanic advocacy organizations are expecting thousands of people will attend rallies in Dodge City and Garden City.
Superintendent Vernon Welch says he's preparing for a wave of absences among students and support staff in the Liberal Unified School District.
And as fliers, e-mails and text messages circulated urging area Latinos to leave work and school Monday, some community leaders are concerned that those who attend protests will actually hurt their cause.
"We don't want to promote anything that's going to hurt the (Hispanic) community," said Onesimo Aranda, who heads the Regional Latino Affairs Council in Dodge City. "We're trying to build them up."

source: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/state/14297380.htm
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Tyson says closing some U.S. plants on rally day

Updated: 1:01 p.m. ET April 27, 2006
CHICAGO - Top meat producer Tyson Foods Inc. joined other large processors and said Thursday that nine of its U.S. plants would be closed Monday due, in part, to expectations some of its workers will be attending an immigration rally.
Tyson also said market conditions played a role in deciding to close five of its nine U.S. beef plants and four of its six U.S. pork plants Monday.
The closings coincide with planned nationwide rallies on that day in support of immigration reform.
"While we understand the sentiment behind the May 1st events and support comprehensive immigration reform, we are not encouraging workers to participate in the rallies," Tyson said in a statement.
"We are asking workers not to take any unauthorized time off and instead seek pre-approval from their supervisor or participate during non-work hours," the statement added.
"Most of our red meat plants will not operate because of factors such as market conditions that permit scheduling changes and the potential shortage of workers," Tyson said.
Previously, Cargill Inc. had said its beef and pork plants would be closed Monday and Seaboard Corp. said its pork plant would be closed as well. Both firms said the actions were taken so that workers could attend the rallies.
Similar rallies earlier this month resulted in reduced beef and pork production. One catalyst for the rallies was a bill passed recently by the House that would categorize illegal immigrants as felons.
A large share of meat plant workers are Hispanic. Hispanics have been vocal in the need for laws that would make it easier to work in the United States.

source: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12515940/from/RL.1/
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Is this being discussed in Brownwood ?

Sorting out winners, losers in business tax plan
Proposed changes would shift burden from capital- to labor-intensive industries.

By Corrie MacLaggan, Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Sunday, April 30, 2006

In the past 13 years, prices on the menus at Maudie's Tex-Mex have risen just twice.
But items such as Skinny Sheryl's enchiladas ($6.50) soon could cost more at the five popular Austin restaurants because of a state business tax now working its way through the Texas Legislature.
Joe Draker, owner-operator of Maudie's Tex-Mex restaurants in Austin, says a new business tax that is being considered by the Legislature probably would mean higher payments for the business. The levy would require restaurants to pay one-half percent of most of their revenue.
The tax wouldn't automatically initiate price increases, but it would cause menu prices to go up sooner, said Joe Draker, owner-operator of Maudie's.
"You add this to the rising cost of energy . . . you tack a couple of these together, and you have to go up on prices," Draker said.
As legislators work on the details of the tax plan pushed by Gov. Rick Perry, some Texas businesses say the new tax penalizes them, while other businesses predict they'll come out ahead. The levy would replace the corporate franchise tax and require restaurants, retailers and wholesalers to pay one-half percent of most of their revenue; other businesses would pay 1 percent.
Capital-intensive industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing and utilities stand to benefit most because the new levy will be offset by large cuts to property taxes — a tax that has hit them particularly hard. Most major business organizations in the state are supporting the plan.
Labor-intensive businesses, such as law firms, engineering firms, hotels and barber shops, are more likely to pay higher taxes under the plan. And because the tax is based on total revenue, not profit, some owners of businesses with low profit margins fear it could hurt them.
"Frankly, there could be winners, and I've already heard from the losers," said Will Newton, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, whose 34,000 small and independent businesses in Texas are divided on whether to support the tax plan. "Small-business owners are starting to wake up to what's going on, and a bunch of people out there are really upset."
The business tax is part of Perry's larger effort to raise enough money to reduce school property tax rates by about one-third.
The plan, already approved by the House and sent to the Senate for consideration, is a response to the Texas Supreme Court's order that the Legislature give local school boards more leeway in the property tax rates they set.
The court has given lawmakers until June 1 to change the tax system or else it will cut off state money for schools; lawmakers are about halfway through a 30-day special session to respond to that order.
A higher cigarette tax and money from the state's budget surplus are also part of the plan.
A panel of business leaders from across the state wrote the Perry plan. Its supporters have never shied away from the fact that businesses, including some that actively lobby at the Capitol and support Republican candidates, had substantial input.
"Some of the language in the bill reflects the unique situation of certain industries," said Dale Craymer, a former official in the comptroller's office who is now with the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. "But, generally, those provisions were to prevent the tax from being too burdensome relative to their profit level."
Craymer said the capital-intensive industries that would benefit from the plan currently pay about two-thirds of all business taxes yet represent about one-third of economic activity.
Extending tax's reach
Not all businesses would pay the new tax. Juan in a Million, for example, a Mexican restaurant in East Austin, would be exempt because it's a sole proprietorship.
General partnerships and sole proprietorships would be exempt, as would businesses that gross less than $300,000 a year. General partnerships and sole proprietorships do not receive lawsuit liability protection from the state, the common thread among businesses that would pay the new tax.
The plan would replace the state's corporate franchise tax, which exempts even more types of businesses. About 150,000 of the state's 2.4 million businesses pay that tax, and many more have restructured to avoid it.
About 50,000 additional businesses would pay the new tax, so about 2.2 million businesses would still be exempt, largely because they are small businesses and sole proprietorships.
Although some major corporations have organized themselves as partnerships to avoid the current franchise tax, that would be less likely to happen under the Perry proposal, Craymer said. Businesses that avoid this tax will lose some state protection from lawsuits, and Craymer said that protection is fairly valuable.
"This tax is so broad that the planning opportunities are few and far between," Craymer said. "There may be some small businesses that will convert to sole proprietorships, but those are not businesses that account for much of the state's economic activity. In general, this tax is going to capture over 90 percent of the economic activity in the state."
By comparison, he said, the current franchise tax applies to about 75 percent of economic activity.
Perry has vigorously touted the support of business groups — including those representing restaurants, nurses, airlines, retailers and manufacturers — as proof that his plan will not hurt the economy.
"You can't make a perfect tax plan," Perry said. "And to those that would criticize it for not being perfect, I guess we'll stand up and say, 'We are not perfect, but this is the closest to perfect that the vast majority of the business community and these legislators have ever seen.' "
Several large companies declined to discuss how the plan would affect their tax bill and instead spoke in general terms.
"We've long advocated a fair and broad-based tax, and we think the House bill accomplishes that," said Colleen Ryan, a spokeswoman for computer maker Dell Inc.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Lisa Elledge said, "We do realize more of a tax burden (under the plan). But at the same time, we realize it's important for the state to move in this direction."
From none to some
Maudie's, which has 240 employees, grosses about $10 million a year, Draker said. A tax on gross receipts (about $35,000 under the formulas laid out) probably would be considerably higher for the business than what it pays in franchise taxes now, he said.
Businesses such as Maudie's could pass the tax increase on to customers, but doctors don't have that option, said Dr. Bruce Malone, an Austin orthopedic surgeon.
Malone estimates that his six-doctor practice, Austin Bone & Joint Clinic, which currently pays no franchise tax as a professional corporation, would pay about $17,800 per year under the 1 percent tax that physicians would pay.
That would be an increase in overhead costs that the practice couldn't charge patients because insurance companies and government programs usually foot health care bills and set the rates, he said. To compensate, the practice could decrease employee benefits or put off buying computer equipment.
Doctors should pay taxes to support public schools, Malone said, but he wants to see exemptions for charity care — free care for uninsured patients — remain in the tax plan.
The clinic, which sees about 1,400 patients each month, provides about $40,000 to $50,000 in charity care each quarter out of a sense of community obligation, he said.
"Not many other professionals are required to give their products to people," said Malone, who used a calculator on the Texas Medical Association Web site to estimate his tax liability. "It's a little different if you're the Exxon Corporation and you have gasoline and in order for someone to take the product, they have to pay."
The Texas Medical Association initially came out against Perry's plan but then endorsed it after the governor tweaked it to allow doctors to exclude from their tax base the government money they get for uncompensated care, Medicare, workers' compensation and military insurance programs, as well as 150 percent of reimbursements provided under Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
The version of the business tax that passed the House this week does not contain all those tweaks.
A shift with no change
Dry cleaners, barber shops, pest control or lawn services and other service businesses could see sharply higher taxes under the tax plan, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has said.
That's because those firms, unlike retail businesses, would pay the higher 1 percent rate and may own little or no property, so they wouldn't benefit from property tax breaks.
But Democrat John Sharp, a former comptroller Perry appointed to draft the tax plan, said he doesn't think such firms would see the tax increase Strayhorn predicted. "I've long ago since given up trying to figure out where the comptroller comes up with things," he said.
Bobby Jenkins, president of the ABC Pest and Lawn locations in Austin, San Antonio and College Station, said he's still calculating how the tax could affect his business but thinks his tax bill might be similar to what he already pays in the franchise tax. "On first blush, we're hoping it's going to be about a wash," he said.
Bob Landreth, an independent oil and gas producer who operates about 80 wells in West Texas, is a sole proprietor, so he would not be subject to the new tax. But he said many in his business who would pay the tax worry that the tax rate will increase in the future or that the property tax cuts will soon evaporate.
The House changed Perry's proposal to say any increases in the tax must be approved by the public in the future, but many have questioned whether that provision is legal.
Newton, of the National Federation of Independent Business, said his state group is asking lawmakers to add a provision protecting businesses in hard times. "They have to put in that if some business is going out of business that the tax liability is mitigated in some way," Newton said. "You don't want to kick a man while he's down."
As for Maudie's, Draker said he's "certainly willing to pay my share." But he's relieved that the full 1 percent tax won't apply since Maudie's, like other restaurants, has a relatively low profit margin.
If he had to pay the 1 percent tax?
"Oh, I think I'd have to get out of the restaurant business," he said.

cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 445-3548

jembry@statesman.com; 445-3654

Additional material from staff writer W. Gardner Selby.

The proposed business tax
•Most business would pay taxes equal to 1 percent of 70 percent of their gross receipts or all of their gross receipts minus their salaries and benefits or all of their gross receipts minus the costs of producing or manufacturing their goods. Businesses would pay the least of the three.
•Retailers and wholesalers would pay the same tax but with a rate of one-half percent.
•General partnerships and sole proprietorships would be exempt, as would businesses with annual revenue of less than $300,000.

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/30biztax.html

Did you hear this ?

click here

IDs of online forum users sought

Posted on Sat, Apr. 29, 2006

IDs of online forum users sought
By AMAN BATHEJA
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

S-T ARCHIVES/SHARON M. STEINMAN
Gerald Haddock, chairman of Sabine Production Partners, says that defamatory comments were written about him online.
A Fort Worth businessman has subpoenaed an Internet company to find out who made unflattering comments about him on an online message board.
Gerald Haddock, an attorney and former corporate executive who is chairman of Fort Worth-based Sabine Production Partners has subpoenaed Yahoo to find identifying information on 28 people who allegedly posted defamatory comments about him on message boards this year.
"Somebody has to stand up and be protected against anonymous posters who decide they want to take some liberties with their postings," Haddock said.
The online exchanges took place on Yahoo Finance message boards devoted to two oil-royalty trusts: Dallas-based Sabine Royalty Trust and Fort Worth-based San Juan Basin Royalty Trust. The conversations in late January and early February centered on an effort by Sabine Production Partners to take over Sabine Royalty Trust.
Royalty trusts are investment vehicles in which the unit holders own shares of specific reserves. The yield to investors is based on cash flow from the property rather than the financial performance of a company.
Haddock was lead transactions attorney for investor Richard Rainwater for nearly a decade, and he served as chief executive of Crescent Real Estate Equities, where Rainwater is chairman. He is now a director of Fort Worth-based Cano Petroleum.
Some of those who posted comments were skeptical of Haddock's takeover bid. They doubted statements from the partnership that Sabine Royalty Trust's reserves were in a state of decline and suspected that the partnership was trying to swindle the trust's unit holders.
"Apparently that Haddock guy is smoking something stronger than cigarettes. Looks like they just wasted some money trying to steal this trust," wrote utguy54 on Jan. 17.
"This attempt by these bank robbers to separate us from our money is beyond the pale. This is one of the biggest scams I have ever seen," wrote oliver4thid on Jan. 25 on the Sabine Royalty Trust message board.
The partnership eventually suspended its effort, citing geopolitical issues affecting the stability of oil and gas supplies.
Haddock said he was especially upset by posters who suggested that a $1 million donation that he and his wife made to Baylor University Law School was made with stolen money.
"They don't think they can get caught," he said. "That's the problem with anonymous postings."
In recent years, Internet companies have been served with hundreds of subpoenas asking for identifying information about postings on message boards, according to Paul Levy, a lawyer with Public Citizen, a consumer-advocacy group. The cases have been nicknamed CyberSLAPP suits, an acronym for strategic lawsuits against public participation. Public Citizen helps run CyberSLAPP.org, a Web site that gathers information on such suits.When faced with a subpoena, most major Internet companies regularly provide identifying information about its members, Levy said.
"There is no right to anonymity for defamatory statements," said Jeffrey Wolf, Haddock's lawyer.
Many courts, including ones in Texas, grant a petitioner the right to subpoena an Internet company for that private information without looking at the merits of the case first, Levy said. Some states are starting to require that judges determine that a case has merit before allowing someone to obtain such information.
"The marketplace of ideas does benefit from people speaking the truth," Levy said. "What we say is encourage the marketplace of ideas while making sure that someone who has a genuine libel case is really able to go forward."
Last month, a Tarrant County district judge granted Haddock the right to subpoena Yahoo based on a petition that included more than 50 pages of related postings from the company's message boards. On Friday, Wolf said that Yahoo had not yet provided the information requested and that he would file a motion to compel the company to abide by the subpoena.
Earlier this month, several people posted on the Sabine Royalty Trust message board that they had received e-mails from Yahoo notifying them that their information had been subpoenaed and that Yahoo was planning to comply. Several posters debated Haddock's motives.
"This appears nothing more than an effort to shift blame from a bad business model that the proposal was based on to critics merely exercising their right of free speech," wrote kruzeman.
In a separate post, kruzeman wrote, "I don't really think anyone had personal animosity towards Mr. Haddock."

Aman Batheja, (817) 390-7695 abatheja@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/14459625.htm

Austin to Brownwood: All Art is Local !

Oaxacan festival at Mexic-Arte
4/28/2006 9:59 AM
By: News 8 Austin Staff
There's a celebration of all things Mexican this weekend called Festival Mexico 2006. The event is the largest for the Mexic-Arte Museum.
More than 30 local and international restaurants will be on hand along with musicians and dancers.
This year's theme is Oaxaca. The festival kicks off at 6 p.m. Saturday.
The Mexic-Arte Museum is at Fifth and Congress Avenue in Downtown Austin.
You'll need a ticket to get in. For more information, call (512) 480-9373.
source: http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=160798
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Mexoc-Arte Museum link

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Oaxaca Art & Brownwood Boycotters

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Oaxaca Art @ Steves'

What's the latest on Kinky's Campaign ? See ya @ Hasting's tomorrow !

April 26, 2006

Kinky's latest email campaign

Independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman was campaigning in cyberspace Wednesday, emailing out a new general election advertisement.
According to the news release, the latest KinkyToon features a musical ode by musicians Billy Joe Shaver, Bruce Robison, Kelly Willis, Willie Nelson, Pat Green and The Dixie Chicks.
"If you want Texas great again, not always bein' last, then save yourself for Kinky and tomorrow we'll kick ..." sings Shaver.
Friedman is trying to gather 45,540 valid signatures from registered voters before May 11 to get on the general election ballot.
"I asked Texans to save their primary vote in March and sign my petition instead," said Friedman. "And now I'm asking to be their choice again in November."
The KinkyToon can be seen at: http://www.kinkyfriedman.com

Posted by R.G. Ratcliffe at April 26, 2006 01:46 PM
Comments
Kindky's is the only option that can oust the current regime of Bushies.
I have always voted straight ticket,but enough is enough. We have to take Texas back
Posted by: Bucky at April 26, 2006 09:49 PM
The cartoon commercial is a lot of fun. On another note: I have noticed a lot of elephants sticking their noses under the big top and quite a few democrats jumping ship - just ask around, one never knows does one...... Talk about a colorful debate, oh that alone is worth signing the petition....
Posted by: John in Houston at April 27, 2006 04:54 PM

source: http://blogs.chron.com/texaspolitics/archives/2006/04/kinkys_latest_e.html
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Note:

40 of the 43 Hasting Book and Music Stores locations across the state of Texas will be collecting signatures for Kinky's Petition Drive on Saturday April 29,2006 between the hours of 11am and 4pm (San Angelo location from 4pm to 8pm).

What's been going on in Brownwood/Bangs/Comanche ? Who are the faces of the "other cases" ?

Convicted constable to lose his peace officer license for life
By Celinda Emison / emisonc@reporternews.com
April 28, 2006

BROWNWOOD - Brown County Constable Donnie Barnum, convicted Wednesday of three offenses, will avoid a long jail term, but will lose his peace officer license for life under an agreement made with prosecutors.
Barnum, who has worked in various law enforcement jobs in Brown and Comanche counties, also has been officially removed from office, according to an agreement made prior to the sentencing phase of his trial on Thursday.
He served as Precinct 1 constable. Precinct 1 includes parts of Bangs and southern Brownwood.
On Wednesday, a jury found Barnum was found guilty of two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with evidence.
Barnum, 43, was accused of unlawfully arresting and assaulting Gary Lee Joyner on Sept. 14, and then of concealing physical evidence pertaining to the incident.
Brown County Assistant District Attorney Perry Sims said Barnum received 10 years probation and a $5,000 fine for the charge of tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony. He could have received 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Barnum was ordered to serve one day in jail for each of the two misdemeanor official oppression charges and was fined $100 for each charge.
He could have been sentenced to a year in jail and fined $4,000 on each charge.
Barnum also was ordered to perform 240 hours of community service
''We believe the punishment is appropriate given that Barnum has never been convicted of a crime prior to this,'' Sims said.
As part of the agreement, Sims said, Barnum gave up any right to appeal the case.
In return, the state agreed not to prosecute three other cases against Barnum, including another for official oppression, aggravated assault and theft, Sims said.
Thirty-fifth District Judge Stephen Ellis filed the final order removing Barnum from office Thursday. That order also ended the temporary appointment of Bob Beadel, who has served since Dec. 22 when Barnum was temporarily removed from office.
County commissioners may either appoint someone to fill the vacancy until the general election in November, or leave the office vacant until the election.
source: http://www.reporternews.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4656983,00.html
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Tearful Barnum draws probation

By Steve Nash — Brownwood Bulletin


A tearful Donnie Barnum, stripped permanently from the office of Precinct 1 constable and barred from ever working as a peace officer again, left the Brown County Courtroom Thursday morning facing a 10-year felony probation but spared from prosecution in four other potential criminal cases.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,” a woman in a group of Barnum’s family and supporters said as the group left the courthouse. She would not give her name.

Barnum, wiping his eyes, ignored a request for comment as he walked by, surrounded by crying family members.

Barnum, 43, was sentenced as a result of an agreement reached by the prosecution and the defense before jurors were to begin hearing testimony in the punishment phase of Barnum’s trial.

The agreement bars the state from prosecuting Barnum on additional felony offenses related to retaliation, aggravated assault, theft and official oppression, 35th District Judge Stephen Ellis announced in court.

Because of the agreement, Barnum cannot file any appeals related to his conviction Wednesday on two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with evidence, Ellis announced.

The same jury that convicted Barnum after a week-and-a-half trial was set to hear testimony in the trial’s punishment phase. Ellis earlier told jurors the sentencing phase might take two days.

“Lance Wyatt and I strongly disagree with the jury’s verdict, but the jury rendered a verdict that we must respect,” lead defense attorney Keith Woodley of Comanche said. Wyatt, of Arlington, was co-defense counsel.

“Mr. Barnum certainly denies these extraneous offenses” that were barred from future prosecution.

District Attorney Micheal Murray said, “The sentence was definitely appropriate. We spoke with several jurors after the sentence was completed, and in our discussion with them we think the sentence was right on point.”

Ellis, before approving the sentencing agreement and permanently dismissing the jury panel, asked Barnum if anyone had threatened him to get him to accept the agreement. Ellis typically asks that question to defendants after the state and defense have reached an agreement on a plea or sentencing.

“No one directly threatened me,” Barnum replied.

Ellis asked Barnum if anyone had indirectly threatened him. After hesitating for several seconds, Barnum replied “no.”

Ellis asked Barnum if it was his choice to go forward with the agreement. “I’ve got no choice,” Barnum replied.

Ellis assured Barnum that he did have a choice and verified that he wanted to go forward. “Given the circumstances, I will approve this agreement,” Ellis said. “ ... He’s going to be on felony probation with various conditions I will impose.

“ ... All matters the state has knowledge of will be resolved by this agreement.”

Speaking directly to Barnum, Ellis said, “You will be relinquishing your peace officer certificate. That’s something that would be a by-product of conviction anyway.

“ ... This court is mandated to formally remove you as constable of Precinct 1.”

Ellis said he will notify the Brown County Commissioners Court of his action.

Ellis then admonished Barnum to adhere to the conditions of his probation and warned him he could go to prison if he violates those conditions.

Barnum had not served as constable since Ellis suspended him without pay in December.

Gary Joyner, who was involved in the Sept. 14, 2005 altercation with Barnum that led to Barnum’s trial, declined to comment Thursday.

Precinct 1 commission Steve Adams, who authored a letter published in the Bulletin in support of Barnum and was in the courtroom for the sentencing, also declined to comment.

Murray said the state would have asked jurors to consider assessing “the full range of punishment” for Barnum. The most serious charge Barnum faced — tampering with evidence, a third degree felony — could have resulted in a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Murray said the 10-year-probation will “make him conform his conduct to the law” and the $5,000 fine “is a significant penal sum for somebody to have to answer to.”

Another consequence, Murray said, is that Barnum will never be a peace officer again and is not permitted to own a gun under conditions of his probation.

Murray said he and Assistant District Attorney Perry Sims would have presented jurors in the punishment phase with evidence of the four offenses the state is now barred from prosecuting.

Murray said it is disappointing to have to prosecute a peace officer but “at the same time you have an obligation to the public to ensure that justice is served in all respects,” Murray said.

“I don’t know if it sets any type of precedent in the county but it should certainly serve as a reminder to all of us who are public servants, whether it be as district attorney or a peace officer, that even we have to live to the full extent of the law. Nobody’s above the law.

“ ... We think the state’s evidence showed a pattern of misconduct on the part of Mr. Barnum in using his badge to take out personal grudges against citizens, and to that extent we were certainly saddened by what the evidence told us.”

Murray and Sims discounted the defense’s suggestion during the trial that Barnum was the victim of a conspiracy among other law enforcement officials and agencies.

“There was no conspiracy,” Sims said. “The only thing that anyone did wrong here is that Donnie Barnum abused his color of office and as a result victimized Gary Joyner.”

Murray said the defense’s conspiracy theory “might as well have started off as ‘once upon a time,’ as most fairy tales do. It was ludicrous. There was no evidence that supported that and the jury saw right through that.”
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/04/28/news/news01.txt

Crazed chimpanzees attack Texas man, 3 others

04:51 PM CDT on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
From KHOU-TV Staff Reports
Police in Sierra Leone are searching for 20 chimpanzees that attacked several people including a Texas resident.
The incident happened at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in the West African rain forest on Sunday.
Officials said Pflugerville resident Gary Brown, taxi driver Melvin Mammah and two other Americans were touring the facility when the chimpanzees charged their station wagon and attacked the group.
"This thing was on a rampage and it acted as if it wanted to kill everyone of us," said Brown. "It had hatred in its eyes."
Brown said one of the primates cornered his group and began swinging at Mammah.
"It must have bitten his hand because he was sitting with his hand dangling," he said.
Brown said he hit the chimp with a stick and startled the animal long enough to free Mama and himself, then recruited help from nearby soldiers to go back for his friends.
"The other guys thought I was dead, and I thought they were," said Brown.
Brown's actions may have saved his friends' lives, but Mammah, the taxi driver, died later at a hospital.
"It was a nightmare," he said. "It's something I will never forget for the rest of my life."
Brown, a contractor who had been in Sierra Leone for a project, said he won't be going back to finish his work.

source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042706dnmetchimp.73ed2be2.html

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Link to Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary and others
http://www.wspa-usa.org/pages/39_sanctuaries.cfm

Kinky Friedman Visits Waco's Baylor University

Kinky comes to Baylor on campaign stop

Thursday, April 27, 2006
By Tim Woods
Tribune-Herald staff writer

Kinky Friedman’s campaign stop at Baylor University on Wednesday afternoon was interrupted by a surprise visit from the NoZe Brothers, an underground group of student pranksters.
Though the independent gubernatorial candidate addressed serious issues like immigration, education and renewable fuels — specifically biodiesel — the mood at the event was light and upbeat, thanks to Friedman’s often humorous delivery and the appearance of some NoZe members who “indicted” Friedman into their group.
They dubbed him “Bro. Yellow NoZe of Texas.”
Friedman took the interruption in stride, calling it “the most satisfying award I’ve received in my whole life, being inducted into the NoZe Brotherhood.”
Baylor student Justin Woods said he planned to vote for Friedman in November.
“I like his approach to education and especially his approach to alternative fuels because I think that’s one of the biggest issues we’re facing right now,” Woods said.
Friedman’s appearance was part of a whirlwind two-week tour through Texas as he tries to collect 45,540 signatures to be put on November’s ballot. He will make nine more stops at various cities between now and May 4, but said at a reception before Wednesday’s event that he was confident that campaign workers already had collected more than the requisite number of signatures. Friedman joked that he could not give an exact number because he has “a very young, ill-tempered campaign staff, and they don’t tell me how we’re doing.”
“But, I expect to have over 100,000 (signatures) by May 10,” Friedman said, referring to the date when the signatures must be turned in to Secretary of State Roger Williams for verification.
If Friedman gets on the ballot, he reiterated, people need to take his candidacy and message seriously, though he said he does not consider himself a politician.
One of the centerpieces of Friedman’s platform is education reform. He said he would increase teachers’ pay, which currently stands at $6,000 below the national average, by legalizing casino gambling and applying revenues to education.
Friedman said legalized casinos would net an estimated $4 billion, money that he said now is being spent by Texans in neighboring states where gambling is legal.
“We invented Texas Hold ’Em, and we can’t even play it here in Texas,” Friedman said.
Wednesday’s appearance was organized by Baylor Independents, a student organization that received its charter from the school earlier this month, according to group president Benny Barrett.
Barrett said his interest in starting the organization spawned from a meeting with Friedman last July at a Willie Nelson concert and that the organization now has between 60 and 80 members.
Though many of the nearly 100 in attendance voiced their support for Friedman and his stance on key issues, a few were clearly taken aback by some of the things he said, especially when Friedman touched on marijuana laws.
“I’m (in favor of) medicinal marijuana. But I’ll tell you, with Willie Nelson in my Cabinet, it’s going to be hard to crack down on marijuana,” Friedman said sarcastically.

twoods@wacotrib.com
757-5721
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/04/27/04272006wackinky.html

There's nothing normal about bullying

Experts tell parents and teachers: Take action - and don't just dismiss it as part of growing up
07:14 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
By JANUARY W. PAYNE / The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – To many adults, teasing and taunting among children and teenagers are natural and inevitable parts of growing up. But as a new school year begins, experts say such behavior is anything but normal and should be taken seriously by parents, teachers and school administrators.
"Bullying is a public health problem" linked to "the larger issue of youth violence in this country," said Joseph Wright, medical director of advocacy and community affairs at Children's National Medical Center. Allowing it to go unstopped, he said, fosters crime and mental health problems that can last into adulthood.
Dr. Wright and other child-health experts urged parents, teachers and community leaders to give the problem greater attention after the publication last month of a study done in rural Germany that used six months of family therapy sessions to treat 22 adolescent boys who showed bullying behavior. The report, which appears in the journal Pediatrics , is a reminder that the United States lags behind other countries in dealing with bullying, Dr. Wright said.
"We are really just at the recognition phase" in the United States, he said. "We have defined the problem and are recognizing the problem and trying to adapt," Dr. Wright said. "This just points out how far behind we are in even accepting bullying as something that's not a normative behavior."
At least 22 states have passed anti-bullying laws since 1999, some motivated by a 2002 U.S. Secret Service report that found that bullying had played a significant role in several school shootings, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Texas has a law on hazing, but no specific prohibition on bullying.
The intent of anti-bullying laws is to prohibit intimidation, bullying and harassment in schools, reports the state legislatures conference. Defining these unacceptable behaviors has been challenging, but guidelines generally consider the length of time threatening behavior has persisted and whether a perceived imbalance of power lets a student or group of students victimize others.
The Pediatrics study described measurable reductions in anger and improvement in quality of life and interpersonal relationships after family therapy. But several U.S. child-health experts said that because the study included only families who lived in rural areas, the findings are not likely to be applicable to large, urban school systems in this country. They also doubted that family therapy by itself could offer a solution and disagreed with the measures used in the study to identify bullies.

Encouraging bullies

U.S. researchers who have studied bullying say part of the problem is that such behavior is often accepted, even encouraged by adults. "There's a real value system ... that basically teaches kids that it's not just OK – it's more than OK," said Howard Spivak, a professor of pediatrics and community health at Tufts University in Massachusetts. "Social acceptability of bullying is a consequence of many complex things," including adults' approval and the influence of television, video games and movies that "teach them that being mean is not only acceptable, but good," he said.
More than 16 percent of U.S. schoolchildren report having been bullied, according to a 2001 survey of nearly 16,000 students in grades six through 10 funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. An estimated quarter to a third of U.S. students are involved in bullying, either as a victim or perpetrator, according to Dr. Spivak.
Research has linked bullying with violent and criminal behavior later in life, as well as emotional, psychological and social problems. A federally funded study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine reported in 2004 that bullies and their victims had more health problems and poorer emotional and social adjustment than their peers.
But that relationship is often poorly understood by parents and school officials. Parents often "have some concern if their kids have been victimized," said Bennett Leventhal, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. "But there are a lot of people who believe that bullying builds character – if you get through it, you're better off." He called that thinking dangerous.
According to the Department of Justice, bullying encompasses a variety of acts repeated over time that involve "a real or perceived imbalance of power, with the more powerful child or group attacking those who are less powerful." Bullying can take any of three forms: physical (spitting, pushing, stealing, hitting and kicking); verbal (name-calling, teasing, taunting and making threats); and psychological (social exclusion, extortion, intimidation, spreading rumors and manipulating social relationships).
The NICHD survey found that bullying was especially common in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Principal players include the bully, the victim and a third type who alternates between the two roles.

Afraid to leave home

Research shows bullying can make students reluctant to leave home or attend classes. About 5.4 percent of ninth- through 12th-graders reported feeling unsafe at school or on the way to or from school on at least one day in the month before they were surveyed in 2003 by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Betsy Pursell, executive director of the Empower Program, a Washington-based nonprofit that teaches strategies for dealing with bullying and aggression, called that a logical reaction. "Students can't focus on their academics if they're worried about walking through the hallways," Ms. Pursell said.
Bullying's link to violence has been repeatedly documented. For example, the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo., by two students who had been bullied, resulted in the deaths of 12 classmates, a teacher and the shooters themselves, and the wounding of 23 others.
The Secret Service initiated its investigation after the Columbine attacks and released its Safe Schools Initiative report in 2002. The agency, joined by the Department of Education, studied the causes of 37 cases of "targeted violence" – in which a school was "deliberately selected as the location for the attack and was not simply a random site of opportunity" – that took place between 1974 and 2000, the report says.
"In some of these cases the experience of being bullied seemed to have a significant impact on the attacker and appeared to have been a factor in his decision to mount an attack at the school," the Secret Service report states. "In one case, most of the attacker's schoolmates described the attacker as 'the kid everyone teased.' "
A variety of programs aim to reduce violence and bullying in schools. A New York-based organization called Operation Respect provides training for teachers, school administrators, students and parents, helping them adopt behaviors and rules conducive to a peaceful school environment.

A model approach

One well-regarded approach, developed by Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus, has been the model for many U.S. programs. His method – which involves schoolwide, classroom and individual interventions – has been thoroughly researched and is frequently cited in bullying research. The program includes parental, school and student involvement, and calls for school rules against bullying and anonymous student questionnaires to assess the prevalence of the problem.
Identifying bullies requires creating a comfortable environment for students to open up to adults, experts agree. "The best way to find out whether someone is a bully is to ask kids," Dr. Leventhal said. Links: Log on for more information and resources on bullying.

What parents can do to help
Addressing children's violence toward or intimidation of other children is not just the role of teachers and school administrators, say child health experts.
Parents also play a crucial role in recognizing and reducing the chances for such behavior.
Parents should assume their children "are either involved in bullying or have seen it," said Bennett Leventhal, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.
The trick is getting them to talk about it.
Dr. Leventhal's suggestion: Rather than asking "if" kids have seen or been involved in bullying, ask, "What about when you were bullied?" and "When have you picked on other kids or just stood by and watched when it happened?"
Then ask how the situation made them feel and ask if you can help.
Some changes in behavior patterns may also signal a child's involvement in bullying – either as victim or perpetrator.
But since these warning signs may also have other causes, say experts, it is important that parents talk with their children and seek professional help if needed.
January W. Payne
BULLY WARNING SIGNS
Aggressive, spiteful, oppositional, dominating, manipulative behavior
Enjoys insulting and teasing others
Fighting and getting into trouble at school
Using physical means to express anger
VICTIM WARNING SIGNS
Bruises, cuts or other injuries with no credible explanation
Damaged clothing or lost possessions without good explanation
Loss of interest in school or fear of going to school or taking school bus
Drop in grades
Choice of unusual route to go to school
Changes in eating, sleeping and other habits, including poor appetite, nightmares and mood swings
Symptoms such as headaches or stomachaches
TIPS FOR PARENTS
Seek the help of your child's school psychologist, counselor or social worker in addressing bullying concerns.
Ask if there are anti-bullying school programs you can join.
Reward good behavior with positive feedback.
Avoid using physical methods to punish children for bullying.
Be a good role model by not being aggressive or bullying in your own interactions.
If you observe bullying, stop it right away.
SOURCES: Expert interviews and the National Association of School Psychologists' Bullying Fact Sheet
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source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/texasliving/stories/DN-bully_0913liv.ART.State.Edition1.e6a9cce.html

QUOTE

" The students allegedly were driven by revenge against bullying classmates " ~Jeff Jacobson, mayor of North Pole, Alaska

We'd Welcome them to Brownwood. The invitations are in the mail !

Wed, Apr. 26, 2006

EYE SPY goes to the trailer park
By GAILE ROBINSON
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

The Sisters on the Fly were on the move, although they weren't moving very fast. It had taken them two hours to travel from Granbury to Fort Worth. When 30 women caravan, one or two to a vehicle, restroom stops and refueling can be a logistical nightmare. This is fairly typical travel for the Sisters, a group of almost 500 women who roam about the country, dragging diminutive travel trailers painted with cowgirl themes. They rally in various scenic locations for sisterly pursuits. Fishing, supposedly. Although, when they set up camp at Grapevine's Vineyard Campground last week -- after appearing at the Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth and in a parade in Grapevine -- they talked far more about hunting and gathering in the antique stores of Fredericksburg than of fly fishing. The spectacle of what looked like dozens of Dale Evans' dressing rooms tooling down the Interstate, driven by women dressed to the nines in cowgirl cocktail attire, caught the attention of Eye Spy. So we tracked them down and were taken to their leader.

Joyce Aiken, 65, Sister No. 466, and Marty Edmiston, 55, Sister No. 268 Mertzon
1961 Gulfstream, "Sugar Plum"
Darling Design Detail: The antique tooled-leather purses she uses to hold nonvintage hairstyling appliances.
How did your trailer get its name?
I bought it from Mr. Plum, and it was a sweet deal. He bought it new in 1962, took it hunting for 40 years, had a stroke and couldn't hunt anymore. When I drove off, both of us were in tears.
Wow, you have a bathroom, none of the others does. This is quite deluxe.
Yes, that's why I had to have the towels embroidered. I do have a copy of the "Cowgirl 10 Commandments" on the wall.
What are those?
Things like, "Honor your ma and pa and just one God." "Don't hanker for your neighbor's stuff."
Glenda Stone, "old enough to know, young enough to do," Sister No. 62 Sherwood, Ark.
1965 or 1973 Bell, (no one is quite sure which) "Circle G Bunkhouse"
Darling Design Detail: "Lucy" her doll from childhood, who travels everywhere with Glenda, kitted out in a custom-made denim ensemble.
How did you find out about this group?
My husband and I were on a trail ride and found some of the sisters camping. I said when we left, "I'm getting one of those trailers."
I never did anything by myself. If he wasn't with me, I didn't go. He said, "I can't see you doing that." And I said, "I'm going to get me one even if it sits in the driveway."
Thirty days later, we drove 500 miles, looking at trailers. On the way home, about 20 miles from our house, I saw one. A lady came out of the house. I said, "I saw that little trailer, and I was wondering if it was for sale?" She grabbed me with both hands and said [to her daughter], "Bethany, go get your father."
Well, later that night I called him and gave him an offer and it insulted him and he hung up on me. So I let him stew a little bit. I really wanted the trailer. I called back with an apology and another offer. He accepted it.
My first trip ever pulling my trailer, I drove 3,000 miles round trip and was gone for 16 days.
It was a life-changing experience.
Maurrie Sussman, 61, Sister No. 1 Phoenix
Darling Design Detail: A chandelier and faux fireplace in lieu of a Formica-topped dinette
So, Maurrie, how did this all begin?
My sister and I wanted girlfriends to come on adventures with us. It's like having a million more sisters. Well, about 500.
How does one become a sister?
You have to be a woman. Yes, a woman, that's about it.
Since you are No. 1, do you lead the caravan?
Yes, we line up in order. (She begins flirting shamelessly with the photographer.) You are darling. Can I take you with us?
Uh, Maurrie, tell me about your boots.
They go with the pink cowgirl pantaloons.
Is that a picture of James Garner on the wall?
Yes, it was such a cute frame. Normally we don't bring cowboys along, but I'd take him (pointing at the photographer).
Diane Smith, 67, Sister No. 16 Fort Collins, Colo.
12-foot 1957 Aloha
Darling Design Detail: What looks like hand-painted cowboy boots on the cabinet fronts are cut from wallpaper border.
How did you find out about this group?
I read about them in Country Living magazine, I called Maurrie and talked to her for about two hours. My first trip was to Wyoming and Idaho.
Did you have the trailer then?
No, I have a bigger Airstream, but I couldn't paint that.
Where did you find this tiny trailer?
On eBay, about nine months ago.
How frantic was the bidding?
It was pretty heated for a while. We laugh [that] you find a bargain for $500 and spend $20,000 fixing it up.
Do you have a name for it?
This is Udder. You know, I had one [trailer] and this is the Udder one.
Susan Whittington, 39, Sister No. 411 Johnson City
1962 Holly
Darling Design Detail: Nothing original is left in this trailer, which makes the wire shelving and two comfy-sized beds look anachronistic, but smart.
Where did you get your trailer?
We found it parked in town. We paid $200 on the spot and gutted it. My husband put in the hardwood floors, rewired it and put the paneling in. My daughter and I painted the ceiling.
Is this your daughter, painted on the outside?
Yes, this is my daughter Rilee. She's 8. She was with me last Sunday. They made her feel very welcome. Usually she's very shy, but she opened up. The next day she had to go back to school and she was so sad. She said, 'Momma, you'd be crying, too, if you had to leave,' and she'd be right.
Nina Elliott, Sister No. 231 Thrall
1973 Scamp, "Texas Lou's Roadhouse"
Darling Design Detail: A vintage cowgirl lamp, brown bandana curtains, leather throw pillows and .22-caliber rifle are the accessories of choice for this cowgirl's road house.
Where did you find your trailer?
Online. Once I got on the Thrifty Nickel it took about a week. I was going to name her Beulah. But my middle name is Louise, so that's how I came up with "Texas Lou." And "Roadhouse?" Well, there's usually a Shiner in the refrigerator.
You've got some great details, (a white picket fence hides the kitchen wastewater receptacle, a foot pad on the trailer hitch has been given a pedicure and ankle bracelets.)
I found the wagon bench in Fredericksburg.
Sounds like when you guys travel you're all looking for the same thing.
We go into shops and split up so we don't fight over stuff.
Kati Weingartner and Molly Westgate, collectively Sister No. 190 Chandler, Ariz.
1952 Boles Aero, "Pearl"
Darling Design Detail: Slick as an Italian sofa, the stark, clean-lined interior has not been beaten with a cute stick. It is just high-gloss varnish on lovely golden wood, with the trailer's original chrome hardware.
Is this an Airstream?
Don Boles built it. He was in the aerospace industry, he's still alive, and he's 93. Last month I met him and got him to sign one of the doors. Take a gander. It's not done yet.
That's what they all say. Oh, it's gorgeous. Look at all this lovely wood. How long have you had it?
Fifteen months and I've done nothing but try to restore it. I took it down to the bare metal. I made all the curtains, I redid the windows, Kati did all the electrical. Here, sit here.
What would you have to charge to get your money out of it?
I've been told I could get $50,000. It cost me $500 to get it out of the forest service. It hadn't moved for eight years; it was in bad shape. Only four-legged creatures lived in it.
Elaine Block, 54, Sister No. 151 Queen Creek, Ariz.
1957 Shasta, "Sassy Sister"
Darling Design Detail: Block has the best outside tableaux. She's made a wind chime out of tin camping cups and plates and uses an old washtub as a beverage cooler.
How do you get away for these weekends?
I tell the people at work I'm leaving. I'm a nurse in Scottsdale.
(At this point we are interrupted by the newest sister, Suellyn Kenimer, Sister No. 478, from Grapevine, who was inspired by the caravan of trailers and spontaneously joined. She is already planning her trailer.)
Suellyn: It'll have baby half moons, just like those. (She points at the vintage hubcaps.)
How will you get time to do this?
Suellyn: I'm retired from Exxon Mobil.
Elaine: I'm past ready to retire.

Gaile Robinson, (817) 390-7113 grobinson@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/14431560.htm

Who are the terrorists ? The bullies, those reacting to the bullies, or both ? Where were the adults & did they turn a blind eye/ear to the bullying

Alaska town among four communities unnerved by school plots
By Rachel D'Oro - April 25, 2006
The Associated Press
NORTH POLE, Alaska – The arrests of six boys accused of planning an assault on their school has gripped this small Alaska town with an unsettling epiphany: If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.
As the nation last week remembered the 13 victims of the Columbine High School massacre, authorities say similar plots were being discussed in at least four small towns in Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi and Washington.
The North Pole seventh-graders, all around 13 years old, had the attack planned down to the smallest detail, authorities said. The boys would first knock out the school's power and telephone systems, giving them time to stab and shoot teachers they didn't like and students who picked on them and then escape from the town of 1,600 just outside Fairbanks.
In all four alleged plots, authorities were tipped off by other young people and students were arrested.
The six in North Pole, arrested Saturday, could face charges of first-degree conspiracy to commit murder. Authorities found weapons in their homes, said Mayor Jeff Jacobson, who also teaches sixth-grade math and language arts at the 500-pupil school.
"I was shocked and then heartbroken," Jacobson said during a lunch break in his classroom Monday. "I saw one of them led away in handcuffs, this little boy."
Parents waiting to pick up their children after school said they were deeply shaken.
"We thought we were in a bubble," said Cindy Slingerland as she waited outside the school with her husband, Mark, for their 13-year-old daughter, Jenny. "Nothing ever happens here. This is by far the biggest scare for my children."
In Kansas, Washington and Mississippi, residents were feeling the same gut-wrenching blow.
Five boys in Riverton, Kan., were charged Monday with threatening to carry out a shooting spree at their high school last Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
In Mississippi, two Pearl Junior High School students were arrested Sunday night and charged with making threatening statements about classmates on the popular teen Web site Xanga and warning students not to go to school on May 1. Pearl Police Chief Bill Slade said the students used the name of Luke Woodham, who is serving a life sentence for a 1997 shooting rampage that killed his mother and two people at Pearl High School.
In Puyallup, Wash., a 16-year-old was charged Monday in an alleged plot to shoot people at his school. In an instant message to a fellow student, the teen wrote about an attack and suicide "to finally go out in a blaze of hatred and fury," sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.
Fears of another attack also rattled Minnesota's Red Lake High School, where a 16-year-old killed seven people and himself last spring. On Tuesday, The Star Tribune of Minneapolis quoted a letter sent to parents by interim Principal Brent Colligan saying investigators were looking into information that a "group of students were threatening to form some sort of an assault on the Red Lake High School."
For Alaskans, the arrests in North Pole — where a main road is called Santa Claus Lane and the light poles are curved and striped like candy canes — jogged memories of a school plot nine years earlier.
In 1997, Evan Ramsey opened fire with a 12-gauge shotgun as students assembled in a high school lobby, killing a principal and 16-year-old classmate in Bethel, a southwestern Alaska town of 6,000. Ramsey, then 16, is now serving a 198-year prison term.
In the North Pole case, authorities have said another child told a parent that rumors were circulating about a plot, and that parent went to police.
Nine other students at the school, including at least one girl, were suspended for withholding information and will not be allowed to return to school until authorities have completed the investigation.
School officials, meanwhile, tried to assure parents that their children were safe Monday. They stressed that no weapons were ever found on campus or in the nearby woods. A police officer patrolled the halls, and extra counselors were brought in to help students.
"It has been surprisingly calm," said Wayne Gerke, an assistant superintendent with the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.
Adults, perhaps, are having a tougher time shaking the anxiety than their children. The students initially reacted with fear, but by Monday streamed out of the school entrance, giggling and elbowing each other.
"I feel fine, I feel safe," 14-year-old Cabe Harris said as he climbed into the front seat next to his mother Jo Harris. "This is a nice place."
source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002952434_webschoolplots25.html
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Five students arrested in foiled southeast Kansas school shooting
MARCUS KABEL
Associated Press
RIVERTON, Kan. - Five teenage boys accused of plotting to kill other students in a shooting rampage at their southeast Kansas high school were arrested Thursday after details of the alleged scheme appeared on the Web site MySpace.com.
Cherokee County sheriff's deputies found guns, ammunition, knives and coded messages in the bedroom of one of the suspects, Sheriff Steve Norman said. In two of the suspects' school lockers, authorities found documents about firearms and references to Armageddon, he said.
All five suspects were arrested at their homes, some as early as 12:30 a.m. Charges were not immediately filed, and the names of the suspects had not been released.
Norman said he would seek charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder against the young men, who range in age from 16 to 18.
Attorney General Phill Kline said in a news release that his office was taking over the prosecution at the request of the Cherokee County attorney. He planned to discuss the case during a 6 p.m. CDT news conference after meeting with law enforcement and the prosecutor.
Deputies' interviews with the suspects indicated they planned to wear black trench coats and disable the school's camera system before starting the attack between noon and 1 p.m. Thursday, Norman said. The suspects apparently had been plotting since the beginning of the school year, he said.
"What the resounding theme is: They were actually going to do this," Norman said.
He said officials at Riverton High School, which has about 270 students, began investigating Tuesday after learning that a threatening message had been posted on MySpace.com.
Elementary School Principal Keith Wilson, who was standing guard at the door of the school while pupils were inside for after-school activities, said nothing like this has happened at the school in his 46 years living in Riverton.
"But if you don't think it can happen in your town, it can," he said. "I don't think you can ever really prepare for something like this."
The message discussed the significance of April 20, which is Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School attack in Colorado, in which two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher, wounded 24 others, then committed suicide.
"The message, it was brief, but it stated that there was going to be a shooting at the Riverton school and that people should wear bulletproof vests and flak jackets," Norman said in a telephone interview.
A message left with a spokeswoman for Myspace.com was not immediately returned.
School officials identified the student who posted the message and talked to several of his friends, Norman said.
But Riverton school district Superintendent David Walters said the significance of the threat didn't become clear until Wednesday night, after a woman in North Carolina who had chatted with one of the suspects on Myspace.com contacted authorities in her state, who contacted the Cherokee County sheriff's department. The woman had received more specific information that there would be about a dozen potential victims, at least one of whom was a staff member.
Norman said some potential victims were popular students and that the suspects, whom he described as "different," may have been bullied.
"I think there was probably some bullying, name calling, chastising," he said.
Holly Thornton, 18, who works at the Riverton Quik-Stop across the street from the school where she graduated last year, said she was shaken up when she got word of the plot.
"I think this is terrible," she said. "I was terrified for my sister because she's in eighth grade."
Riverton, along what once was the famed Route 66 in southeast Kansas, is a tiny, unincorporated area in near the Missouri line. It has a convenience store and no real industry to speak of aside from its main landmark, an Empire District Electric Co. power plant.
Norman said the suspects' parents were not aware of the plot.
In interviews with sheriff's deputies, the potential victims said some of the suspects had threatened them at school, Norman said. He also said investigators had learned the suspects were computer buffs who liked violent video games.
Walters said he visited the school Thursday to talk to students and staff.
"I specifically asked a girl if she felt safe and she said, 'Yes.'"
Barbara Gibson, a junior at the high school, said her classmates didn't seem too bothered by the threat during the day.
"A lot of people just talked about it," she said. "But there wasn't much reaction."

Associated Press Writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.
source: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/14389311.htm
------------------
Police arrest 6 boys in plot
NORTH POLE: School was target for alleged murder conspiracy.
By TATABOLINE BRANT
Anchorage Daily News

Published: April 23, 2006
Last Modified: April 23, 2006 at 03:02 AM
Six seventh-grade boys, whom police said may have been out for revenge because they were being picked on, were in custody Saturday in North Pole on suspicion they plotted to bring guns and knives to school and kill teachers and students they didn't like.
The boys -- not named because of their ages -- were taken to a Fairbanks Youth Facility and face first-degree conspiracy to commit murder charges, authorities said.
The arrests culminate a tense, weeklong investigation that involved a number of police agencies and that gripped the small town of 1,600. Events during the week stirred numerous parents to keep their children home from North Pole Middle School, school officials said.
"I think all of us were horrified that anybody would be thinking to kill someone else," said the town's mayor, Jeff Jacobson, who also teaches sixth-graders at the school. "This is a wake-up call for all of us that we need to keep the channels of communication open with our kids."
The investigation began with a tip to North Pole police Monday from a concerned parent, who had heard about the murder plot from a child. Police immediately notified school officials and by that evening, 12 students were suspended.
The plot was to be executed the following day, according to a statement released Saturday by North Pole Police Chief Paul Lindhag.
Police speculated the boys were driven by motives ranging from being picked on by other students to disliking staff and students, according to the statement.
"This plan included the disabling of the school's telephone and power system, setting an allotted amount of time to remain in the school to kill their victims, and their escape route from the school and North Pole area," the statement said.
In the days following the suspensions, police conducted dozens of interviews and searched the school and surrounding grounds for weapons. Jacobson said no weapons were found on students at the school or in any area near the school. He said he couldn't say for sure if the boys had access to weapons.
School principal Ernie Manzie said in a telephone interview Saturday that the weapons search was done as a precaution.
He said news of the murder plot has been understandably unnerving for parents, students and faculty. In order to further calm fears, a police officer will be stationed at the middle school for the remaining four weeks of classes, Manzie said. An extra safety monitor has also been added to the school.
"We have really tried to stress with the parents that we believe the school is safe," he said.
Jacobson said attendance started to drop off Wednesday and that by Thursday about 10 percent of the middle school's 500 students were staying home. Teachers worked with parents to ensure the students didn't fall behind, Jacobson said.
Jacobson said he thought news of the arrests would reassure parents that it is safe to send their children to school. He said the school and police did a great job handling the tip.
"We had a system in place and it worked," he said.
North Pole is about a 15-minute drive outside of Fairbanks, but has its own culture, apart from the neighboring city. Tourists know the Christmas-themed town as home of the Santa Claus House -- a sprawling gift shop with a giant Saint Nick statue along the highway.
Some of the people who live in North Pole work at the nearby Eielson Air Force Base or Fort Wainwright, or at the local oil refinery, which sends jet fuel to Anchorage along the Alaska Railroad.
Conrad Gonzalez, who taught high school social studies in North Pole for about nine years, described the town as religious, generous and more conservative than Fairbanks.
"There was a relaxed atmosphere, more so than I've seen at larger schools, whether in Anchorage or Fairbanks," Gonzalez said in a telephone interview Saturday. "It was a very low key, friendly ... familial."
Not all of the students initially suspended are believed to be involved in the murder plot, but they will not be allowed back to school until the police investigation is complete, Lindhag told The Associated Press.
Jacobson said the parents of the six boys in custody have been cooperative with authorities, allowing police to question their youngsters and making sure the children had supervision while suspended from school.
"I think they were in just as much shock as everyone else," he said.
The North Pole arrests came just days after five Kansas teenagers suspected of planning a shooting rampage at their high school were arrested Thursday, the seventh anniversary of the Columbine massacre. But North Pole police said their investigation revealed no connection to any other school tragedy.

Daily News reporter Tataboline Brant can be reached at tbrant@adn.com or 257-4321. Daily News reporter Kyle Hopkins and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

source: http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/crime/story/7656452p-7568021c.html
--------------------
Teen put classmates on hit list, police say
Princeton: Student charged with making terroristic threats
08:58 AM CDT on Friday, April 28, 2006
By TIARA M. ELLIS / The Dallas Morning News
PRINCETON – A Princeton teenager was charged Thursday with making terroristic threats based on a hit list he had and e-mails and cellphone text messages he sent to other students, Princeton police and school officials said.
The 16-year-old sophomore, not identified because of his age, remained in the Collin County Juvenile Detention Center on Thursday.
He was arrested Wednesday at an alternative education center in McKinney, where he'd been attending classes after expulsion from Princeton High School, Princeton Police Chief Jeff Barnett said.
Police and Princeton High School officials met Thursday afternoon with the 20 students and two staff members on the hit list, as well as with the students' parents.
Letters about the case were sent home with other students, Princeton schools Superintendent Philip Anthony said.
"The threat was not specific. But prior incidents [with this student] led us to think this might be a more credible threat," Mr. Anthony said. "As always, parents need to be on the lookout during and after school hours."
The same student was arrested on April 12 after a fight at Princeton High.
He wasn't supposed to be on campus because he'd been expelled and was taking classes at the alternative school, Mr. Anthony said. Because of the student's age, school and police officials would not discuss the reasons for that expulsion or whether there were any previous arrests.
Princeton High, which has one resource officer, was on "heightened security," with regular police patrols, while the student was being investigated. After his arrest Wednesday, security returned to normal, officials said.
Police were first notified of the case by students who received threats through text messages and e-mails, Chief Barnett said.
"We believe he was physically capable of carrying out the threats he made, so we wanted to make sure parents and the school district were notified," Chief Barnett said.
There was mention of a firearm in one of the threats, but no guns were found in the teen's home, which was searched Wednesday with a parent's permission, Chief Barnett said.
Police investigators plan to continue talking to students and parents at the school to try to determine a motive. Chief Barnett said the fight may have been one motive but that he believes there is more than one.
"It only takes one student. And we want to take any indication [of danger] seriously," Mr. Anthony said.
At Princeton High on Thursday, sophomore Zane Barns said rumors about the case were spreading fast, even after the letters were sent home to parents. .
"I heard the list had 100 people on it. Supposedly he had a gun and police had not caught him yet," Zane, 16, said after meeting his mother at the car.
His mother, Renee Raia, said her son wouldn't be returning until the school has addressed the situation in a meeting with all students' parents, not just those of students named on the list.
The Princeton school district has five schools and a special-programs center that serve 2,500 students in Princeton, which is east of McKinney. Princeton High has 750 students.
E-mail tellis@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/042806dnmetthreat.78e7d88b.html
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What is the Brownwood Independent School District policy on Bullying ? Why is this portion of the equation "not" being talked about by Brownwood "talking heads" ? Are they too busy making fun of self esteem issues ? You just need to listen !

Resources:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/emotion/bullies.html

http://www.safechild.org/bullies.htm

So cracked, makes an Armadillo look smooth !

Prison employees arrests continue climb
Critics: Low pay, hiring shortfall gets blame

By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 23, 2006

It might have seemed like a few tough weeks for Texas' prison system.
The system's former gang-enforcement chief pleaded guilty to sexually harassing employees. The personnel chief of the prison school system was arrested after being accused of lewd conduct at a Conroe park. A human resources official was sought as a fugitive after being charged with killing two pedestrians in an alleged drunken driving hit-and-run.
And three guards were arrested separately, one accused of raping a male convict, another of smuggling marijuana into a prison and the third of holding his ex-wife hostage at gunpoint.
Five weeks this spring saw almost two dozen arrests of correctional employees, on an assortment of felony and misdemeanor charges.
But it wasn't just a bad month. It was fairly typical for the state's 38,600-employee prison system, the second-largest in the country.
State records show at least 761 arrests of Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees in 2005. Another 148 arrests have been logged during the first two months of 2006 — a number that, if the trend continues, could set a record.
The number of employee arrests has steadily climbed during the past decade to a record 781 in 2003, the agency's statistics show, even as officials say the number of employees has remained about the same.
"Maybe it's bad luck, and maybe it's because we pay too little. Because we're 2,500 correctional officers short all the time, I guess we can't be too choosy about who we hire," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, which monitors Texas' corrections system. "Maybe the problem is where we built all these prisons. Maybe there isn't anything else to do out there but get in trouble."
Little else is known about the arrests. Prison officials said they could not immediately make public the details of who was arrested, when and on what specific charges. They also would not provide details on how many of the arrested employees were convicted.
Agency officials insist that the increasing numbers of arrests are no cause for concern. Others disagree, noting that lawbreaking by prison employees can compromise security and endanger lives. At the same time, they concede the problem is not just who is being hired, noting that several of those arrested in recent weeks are longtime employees.
The percentage of prison employees arrested in other states is lower.
"We probably had three or four dozen (arrests) last year," said Linda Foglia, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Correctional Services, the nation's third-largest prison system, with 32,000 workers in 69 prisons, 21,000 of them correctional officers.
In Florida, the fourth-largest state prison system, 297 of 26,700 Department of Corrections workers were arrested in the past year, about 1 of every 90. The Texas ar- rest rate was 1 in 51.
"It's not a good situation," said Brian Olsen, executive director of the correctional employees union, which represents about 4,000 of the agency's 23,700 correctional officers. "But when you're hiring so many new people so fast — the turnover is about 500 people a month — you're going to get some bad apples. And that's happening more than occasionally."
Still, Olsen and others involved with the prison system said they think the situation is improving. In recent months, they said, the quality of new hires has improved.
At the same time, officials are "getting better at catching the bad apples," Olsen said.

Ongoing problems
The issue surrounding arrested and convicted employees sometimes working in Texas prisons is nothing new.
Ask longtime employees about it, and many will tell you about a case in the late 1980s in which a man once convicted of conspiring to kill the Huntsville sheriff was discovered working in maintenance at the Huntsville prison while still on probation, after which he was quickly cashiered by red-faced prison officials.
But a growing chorus of officials and employees worry that the increasing numbers of arrests bode ill for the agency, leaving some wondering whether hiring standards have been relaxed too much and why the strict line that's supposed to separate the guards and the guarded has become increasingly blurred.
"If they're breaking the law, we want them out of there," Olsen said. "If they're bringing dope into the units, or cell phones or tobacco or any other contraband, and selling it to the inmates, then the inmates own them. And pretty soon, the inmates will control the unit.
"That endangers people's lives," he said.
Carol Blair Johnson, the prison system's human resources director, said that since 1985, the agency's hiring criteria have gotten more restrictive on past criminal convictions.
"There are no policy exceptions to the employment criteria relating to misdemeanor and felony convictions," she said.
Under current policy, enacted in 1998, no convicted felons can work in the prison system.
But prisons will accept applicants convicted of Class A or Class B misdemeanors, the two most serious categories, so long as the convictions are more than five years old. Under state law, people convicted of Class A misdemeanors (such as second-offense drunken driving) are prohibited from becoming police officers. Those with a Class B conviction (first-offense drunken driving) can be considered after five years.
Prison employees convicted of such crimes are terminated or allowed to resign.
Anyone convicted of Class C misdemeanors, the least serious, can be considered for work in the state's prisons.
"For security reasons, it is in the agency's best interest to hire correctional officers with limited or no criminal history," said Johnson, noting that pre-employment background checks are conducted to weed out those who do not meet the qualifications. Roughly half of the applicants are hired, Johnson said, though she said the reasons vary: Some fail required exams or the background check; some want to work only in areas of Texas where prison jobs are not open; and some take another job.
Since February 2005, applicants no longer have to take a physical agility test. The reason: Too many applicants might not pass, officials concede.
"The number of correctional officer applicants reflects the decrease in the number of Texas residents who are seeking employment," Johnson explains on the agency's Web site. "In order to ensure that staffing and security needs continue to be met in the current economic climate, the agency must assess various factors that may further influence the number of correctional officer applicants."
Prison officials say their hiring standards are strong and fairly standard: An applicant must be a U.S. citizen or an alien authorized to work in the United States, be 18 years old, have a high school diploma or General Educational Development certificate and never have been convicted of a felony, a drug-related offense or a crime involving domestic violence, among other qualifications.
Increasing workload
In March, when the agency hired 514 correctional officers, Johnson said it was still 2,616 short. Critics say low wages are a key problem. Texas ranks 47th among the 50 states in correctional officers' salaries, starting trainees at about $22,000 a year.
Critics and agency insiders both argue that if Texas were to increase its wage scale for correctional officers and raise its hiring standards, the high numbers of arrests among prison employees would decline.
In addition, they say, all employees should be electronically fingerprinted to improve enforcement, a system implemented nearly a decade ago for convicts, but not for employees.
To be sure, the increasing numbers of employee arrests mean more work for the prison system's Office of the Inspector General, the independent bureau that serves as an investigative watchdog.
The office is working with fewer resources just three years after lawmakers slashed its budget to save money. Seventy employees, half of them investigators, were cut.
"It's a 24-7 job. There's no hanging it up at 5 o'clock any day," said Inspector General John Moriarty.
Despite the increasing workload, officials say they increasingly rely on technology such as hidden cameras to catch bad actors — with success.
Consider what showed up months ago on a surveillance videotape in a hallway at one prison, the contents of which were described by prison officials.
A female guard grabs an inmate and holds him in a long embrace — a fireable offense.
A sergeant practices hitting a guard in the face, then slugs him hard. Investigators think that was to cover for an
unauthorized use of force, so the guard could say he was hit first by an inmate when he wasn't — another fireable offense.
A short time later, another guard is caught on camera leading an inmate into a room where they have sex — another fireable offense.
For the record, officials said, all those employees were let go.
mward@statesman.com; 445-1712

Arrests of Texas prison employees
Numbers are totals for the calendar year
Year Number
1991 140
1992 189
1993 229
1994 350
1995 529
1996 548
1997 562
1998 598
1999 560
2000 632
2001 630
2002 666
2003 781
2004 704
2005 761
2006 *148

*2006 numbers are for January and February.
Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/23PRISON.html
---------------------------
A miscue that still troubles
Klan leader almost hired as prison guard

By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 23, 2006

HUNTSVILLE — Five years later, they're still wondering how James Lee Roesch slipped in.
Roesch, then 20, was an aspiring Texas prison guard. He'd passed his background checks and was within weeks of graduation from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's spring training academy. He'd even volunteered to work on the tougher-than-nails East Texas prison that houses death row.
Then, he opened his mouth.
According to internal prison system documents obtained by the Austin American-Statesman, Roesch seemed to know too much about the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a notorious prison gang, during a presentation to his trainee class by a gang-enforcement officer.
He even bragged that "he had friends who were members of ABT and who had been in prison."
Prison investigators decided to dig deeper into Roesch's background.
What they found was a story that never has been publicly told: Roesch was the national Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, whose white separatist views had earned him national headlines and a rap sheet with Ohio authorities, two years before the prison system hired him.
Somehow, that hadn't turned up in prison officials' previous background checks, which included a search of state criminal history files with the Department of Public Safety. If it had, officials insist, Roesch would never have been hired in March 2001.
Before the prison system hired him, Roesch had been interviewed dozens of times by reporters, chronicling his fast rise to become head the Klan's old-school, hard-line Knights of the White Kamellia faction. His photo in Klan regalia had appeared in national magazines.
Police in Ohio — where he lived before moving to Jasper in 1999, just after the racially motivated dragging death there of James Byrd — had arrested him as a teenager for menacing another teenager with a handgun and for plastering posters to a tree that demanded: "Deport Niggers."
In one magazine interview in April 2000, Roesch even acknowledged pasting stickers on Byrd's gravestone in Jasper: "A Ku Klux Klansman Was Here."
On his application to become a prison guard, Roesch acknowledged the Ohio arrests for misdemeanor crimes — menacing and mutilation of a public tree. But apparently no one delved further, officials now privately concede, since misdemeanors do not automatically keep someone from being hired as a prison guard in Texas.
"It is my belief that Trainee Roesch may be associated with or have ties to Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and that he needs to be monitored for ABT activity," gang-enforcement officer Irma Fernandez wrote in a memo after meeting Roesch at a training session a few weeks after he was hired. "Trainee Roesch was informed that correctional officers are not to associate with ex-convicts. Roesch then corrected himself and said that he has not associated with them."
Roesch was interviewed by internal affairs investigators on April 12 and gave a written statement detailing his rise to power in the Klan, beginning at age 15 when he and a friend "started a little group called NWO (New White Order)." Ohio state police quickly filled in other details.
Roesch was let go four days later, officials said.
Roesch, who lived in the Woodville area at the time he was hired, could not be reached for comment last week.
Though investigators were unsettled that Roesch was even hired, another fact left them even more unsettled.
Just after he started his training, Roesch submitted a handwritten request to work in Livingston, where the prison that houses death row is located. There, two of the three men convicted of killing Byrd awaited execution.
Did he want to work on death row? And to what end?

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/23PRISONSIDE.html
--------------------------
COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO

Prison guards, prisoners: in Texas, you can't tell 'em apart
Sunday, April 30, 2006
The Texas prison system has some of the meanest, hardest criminals on the planet.
And the convicts are pretty bad, too.
Whom would you rather meet in a dark alley over in Huntsville: a guard, or an inmate? Heck, if you met one of each, you might get mugged twice.
It's as if some prison employees are working on their felony merit badge. The personnel chief of the prison school system gets busted for lewd conduct at a park in Conroe, the former gang enforcement head pleads guilty to sexually harassing employees, one guard gets popped for raping a convict and another gets nailed for holding his ex-wife hostage at gunpoint.
That's why I'm suggesting Prison System Swap Day, which I'm hoping will improve prison system employee decorum.
On Prison Swap Day, to be held once a month, the inmates would become guards for the day, and the guards would become inmates. That's right. On this day the two sides would simply change uniforms and the sides of the bars they stand on. A little bit of this treatment and maybe the prison workers might straighten the heck up.
There could be arts and crafts. It would be interesting to see who could make the highest quality shiv: a guard, or an inmate.
It's often been said that there's a thin line between law enforcement and criminals. But at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the line has gotten so thin you could read the newspaper through it.
Look, 148 TDCJ employees were arrested during the first two months of this year. If that pace keeps up, 888 TDCJ workers will be busted this year, which would break the old 2003 TDCJ record of 783 by 105 arrests.
See, the problem in Texas is that our prison system is a major industry. We've got so many darned lockups that it takes 38,600 workers just to keep these joints up and running. And who at high school career day raises his hand when the guidance counselor asks, "Hey, y'all, who in here wants to work at a place where the men bang their dinnerware with a large spoon?"
Hey, it ain't the class valedictorian.
So, you got prison correctional officers in 2005 being popped for assault and family violence, hot checks, smuggling cigarettes into jail, cruelty to animals, carloads of DWIs (maybe the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is running a sting operation at the Walls Unit), bigamy, even littering.
Naturally, it was a higher-up guard — a lieutenant — who got arrested for bigamy. Only a lieutenant could afford that second double-wide.
And littering? You'd think a prison guard could at least pick up after himself. That's the embarrassing one, if you're in the slammer.
"Whaddaya in for?" "Littering." "Hey, girls, dig this. Missy here is in for gum wrappers."
So anyway, I'm thinking it would be swell if the guards and the prisoners just switched positions on an occasional Swap Day.
Maybe that way some of the convicts' good behavior would rub off on the guards.

John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com.

source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/30kelso.html

As it relates to Brownwood's Hotheads !

email this
Hotheads ignorant of state history
BUD KENNEDY
In My Opinion

STAR-TELEGRAM ARCHIVES
Juan Seguin, a hero of the Battle of San Jacinto, was praised by Sam Houston for his "chivalrous and estimable conduct."
Juan Seguin is a hero who fought proudly for Texas' freedom.
Yet if he were alive today, he would be called a traitor. And some Yankee blabbermouth on Dallas talk radio would probably call him an "illegal" or tell him that he should "go back to Mexico."
Seguin was born a fourth-generation Texan in San Antonio. He befriended Stephen F. Austin and led a Texas army company into battle 170 years ago Friday when Texas won its independence at San Jacinto.
Oh, by the way, he spoke only Spanish.
In the raging radio bluster about the 1.4 million illegal immigrants in Texas and their equally illegal employers, some new Texans seem to be confused about who is a Texan and who is not.
If you speak Spanish or take pride in our bilingual and bicultural heritage, you are not less of a Texan.
On the other hand, if you don't like hearing Spanish or celebrating Latino traditions, then you don't belong in Texas.
Seven million Tejanos are not "aliens" or "illegals."
They are Texans and Americans.
Five of six Texas residents of Hispanic descent live here legally, including nine of 10 schoolchildren. Some are descended from families that have lived in Texas since the 18th century.
But to hear a few Dallas radio entertainers and their callers, you'd think that Texas has been "invaded" by "aliens" speaking Spanish and celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
By the way, the hero of Mexico's Cinco de Mayo holiday was a Texan. You are welcome to look up Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza.
You might also want to look up the first vice president of the Republic of Texas.
He was from Merida, Yucatan: Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala.
And you might want to look up our Founding Fathers. There were two native Texans among them: Jose Antonio Navarro and Jose Francisco Ruiz of San Antonio.
Those Founding Fathers ordered all Texas documents printed in English and Spanish.
Then you might want to look up Juan Seguin.
Texas President Sam Houston praised him for his "chivalrous and estimable conduct" as a colonel at San Jacinto, where he led an all-Tejano company of soldiers with names such as Flores and Manchaca and Herrera.
Then, Seguin was sent to retake control of San Antonio for the Texas army. He took on the job of burying Texas' fallen defenders at the Alamo. Later, he was elected to the Texas Senate and became mayor of San Antonio. But he was accused of remaining loyal to Mexico and fled there. During the Mexican War, he fought against the United States -- reluctantly, he would later say. Eventually, he returned to become a Bexar County Democratic leader and a South Texas county judge, and then he recrossed the unregulated border and retired in Nuevo Laredo.
If Seguin were alive today, "he would probably be as confused as he was back then," said professor Frank de la Teja, chairman of the history department at Texas State University-San Marcos and the editor of a collection of Seguin's translated memoirs.
"The more I think about Seguin, the more I understand the complexity of Texas," de la Teja said Friday by phone.
"People like Juan Seguin felt like, as proud Texans, they were very much part of two worlds. Then all these newcomers came into Texas and treated them like outsiders.
"Your parents were Texans, your grandparents were Texans, your great-grandparents were Texans -- and suddenly, you're an outsider? You should 'go back to Mexico'?"
Sound familiar?
De la Teja said Seguin would be bitterly disappointed today to hear Dallas radio stations bash Spanish-speaking Tejanos as "invaders" or "illegals."
"He would be confounded by such a narrow-minded, jingoistic attitude," de le Teja said. "There's just a lot of ignorance.
"He was aligned with Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston. These were people who were thinking progressively and trying to build Texas together. They weren't trying to divide Texas."
In de la Teja's book, he quotes Seguin as complaining about the increasing disenfranchisement of Tejanos: "The Mexico-Texians were among the first who sacrificed their all in our glorious Revolution, and the disasters of war weighed heavy upon them, to achieve those blessings which, it appears, [they] are destined to be the last to enjoy."
The book also quotes Seguin's eulogy, translated into English, at the burial of the Alamo defenders:
"These remains ... are those of the valiant heroes who died in the Alamo.
"The spirit of liberty appears to be looking out ... and pointing to us, saying: 'There are your brothers, Travis, Bowie, Crockett and others whose valor places them in the rank of my heroes.'"
Seguin was our brother standing on that burial ground. What would we call him today?

Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. (817) 390-7538 bud @budkennedy.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists/bud_kennedy/14405054.htm

Ross Perot Helps Brownwoodians "Get Past" Their Denial !

Funding boost for veterans' ills
By CHRIS VAUGHN
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

STAR-TELEGRAM/RON T. ENNIS
Dr. Robert Haley, left, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison at the announcement of research funding for Gulf War illness Friday in Dallas.
DALLAS -- Nearly 12 years after Ross Perot Sr. initiated the first studies at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas of mysterious ailments affecting Gulf War veterans, the federal government is following his early hunch with $75 million.
Suddenly free from the year-to-year challenges of raising money for his ground-breaking research, the nation's top expert on what is known as Gulf War illness has set an ambitious timetable for answering the most vexing questions about why so many veterans got sick after a 100-hour war.
"It's been 15 years, and these guys are still suffering," said Dr. Robert Haley, the chief of epidemiology at UT Southwestern. "Everybody is frustrated."
UT Southwestern, where Haley has led most of the pioneering studies of Gulf War illness, was targeted for $15 million a year in funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the next five years, making it the epicenter of nationwide efforts.
The research consolidation at UT Southwestern was written into legislation last year by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Dallas, who has long pushed for more federal research into the disease.
Officials from UT Southwestern and the VA formally signed the agreement Friday.
"This is our greatest hope -- having some neutral party able to regulate the research," said Julie Mock, president of the National Gulf War Resource Center and an Army veteran with Gulf War illness and multiple sclerosis. "This is the best-case scenario."
The two biggest projects Haley wants to tackle are developing a neuroimaging machine that allows doctors to diagnose Gulf War illness definitively and starting an experimental treatment program at the VA hospital in Dallas. He hopes to do both in the next year to two.
Currently, even with the most sophisticated brain imaging equipment in the world, doctors cannot diagnose Gulf War illness with any certainty. The illness looks similar to the early stages of Parkinson's or Huntington's diseases. And treatment options are mostly symptom-based and aren't believed to have much effect on the underlying problem.
"That's why the disease is so controversial," Haley said. "It's a disease without a diagnostic test. Nobody anymore questions that there is an illness. What they question is, 'What is the basis for it?'"
According to various estimates, from 1 in 7 to 1 in 4 veterans of the Gulf War have at least some symptoms of Gulf War illness, a broad name given to a disease that causes fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, headaches, rashes, sleep problems and memory loss. Haley has also shown that Lou Gehrig's disease is more common in Gulf War veterans.
Similar illnesses have not shown up in veterans of the most recent Iraq war.
In the mid-1990s, at Perot's urging and with his financial backing, Haley came to the conclusion that the veterans had brain injuries, most likely caused by exposure to sarin gas, pesticides and anti-nerve-gas pills. That exposure amounted to a toxic stew that affected different areas of the brain in different people, some not at all, depending on their genetics, researchers believe.
The Defense Department and the VA continued to disagree with Haley's findings, instead blaming the maladies on combat stress, and reported that Gulf War veterans had no more health problems than any other group. Perot called it the "ultimate insult" that the government fought so hard against the people it sent to war.
"I couldn't understand why we were spending so much money trying to prove it didn't exist," Hutchison said.
Four years ago, though, the Defense Department began funneling money to UT Southwestern, which was used to upgrade the brain-imaging equipment, and then-VA Secretary Anthony Principi appointed a committee to study what should be done.
That committee's report, issued in November 2004, called for the VA to target its research money at one location that was out of the normal government sphere of influence.
It was Hutchison's idea to make that UT Southwestern, said James H. Binns, chairman of the committee and a Phoenix businessman.
"Normally the government looks at how many employees are working on a problem and how much money is being spent on it, but that isn't the right approach," Binns said. "They needed to take a bold step and focus that money in one place. I'm more hopeful than I've ever been."
Hutchison and Perot said they believe that the research will yield benefits for civilians exposed to nerve agents or pesticides.
The VA will continue to spend research money at other institutions examining Gulf War illnesses, but the majority will be at UT Southwestern or under its oversight, said Dr. Jonathan Perlin, VA undersecretary for health.
"It seems hard to imagine a more important investment than studying the illnesses of combat veterans," he said.
IN THE KNOW
What is Gulf War illness?
Sometimes called Gulf War syndrome, it is the broad name for a complex set of symptoms, including disabling fatigue, memory loss, sleep problems, muscle loss and gastrointestinal problems. Thousands of veterans of the Gulf War in 1991 began to complain of mysterious problems in the months after returning home.
Researchers believe that the combination of exposure to low levels of sarin gas, frequent use of pesticides and the use of anti-nerve-gas pills handed out by the military created a toxic stew that caused brain damage in veterans with the right genetic makeup.

Chris Vaughn, (817) 390-7547 cvaughn@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/14405048.htm

In Brownwood, An Official " Feels Like Home " Town, they paid a price for going public ( Hate, Judgment & Shunning ) !

AWOL soldier out of Army
By CHRIS VAUGHN
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

"I'm happy as hell. I can go on with my life," Jacob Hounshell said after his discharge.
The nightmares and panic attacks don't come as often for Jacob Hounshell anymore.
His memories from Iraq, while still vivid, don't provoke the same anxiety, and the suicide note he left in May 2005 is no longer a harrowing threat to his parents.
"I have a few bad days, but I take them as they come, and I've learned to deal with it," he said.
Hounshell, 21, who went AWOL from the Army after a 14-month tour in Iraq, is trying to start over, free from the military service that he said was a constant reminder of his one-time mental problems and fractious run-ins with his Army command.
The Army discharged him last week, 14 months early from his four-year enlistment, after he finished a monthlong jail sentence.
"I'm happy as hell," the Brownwood man said. "I can go on with my life."
Much has been written in the last two years about the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in returning Iraq veterans and the programs set up by the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs to treat it.
About one in five soldiers or Marines returning from Iraq reported a "mental health concern," and 35 percent sought mental-health services, according to an Army study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March.
Not all of those numbers are related to post-traumatic stress; some are marital or financial, but the military has started a number of programs to help soldiers adapt to life back home after being in a war zone for a year at a time.
Rare, though, is the family that opens the door to its life the way the Hounshells did last May, when Bobbie and Larry Hounshell called the Star-Telegram because they didn't know anyone else to call. The Star-Telegram profiled them in a front-page story in June.
Jacob Hounshell, a private first class in a scout platoon who was cited for his quick thinking during battle, had gone AWOL from his unit at Fort Hood with his parents' help.
He was suicidal, angry and emotional, and he couldn't sleep.
He and his family said that his commanders were indifferent to his problems and that the highly touted mental-health programs were not helpful.
The Army denied both accusations.
"We're not trying to hurt our soldiers overseas, and we didn't want this fight with the Army," his mother said at the time. "But my son had problems when he came home, and all he was told was, 'Drive on.'"

In a small town, the Hounshells paid a price for going public. They said many people shunned them, made hateful phone calls and were quick to judge.

Eventually Bobbie Hounshell wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, asking for understanding from a mother who couldn't say "that we were right or we were wrong. It is a decision based on love and emotion."
For nine months, Jacob Hounshell stayed at his house in Brownwood, eventually finding a steady job. In February, he learned that a federal warrant was about to be issued.
That day he drove to Fort Hood and surrendered. Reassigned to his old unit, he reported for duty to a different commander and first sergeant, who he said treated him respectfully.
He said that he was offered counseling by Army psychologists but that he declined because he had already soured on the system.
"I just wanted to deal with it like I had been," he said.
In a summary court-martial in early March, an officer found Hounshell guilty of being absent without leave. The officer sentenced him to 30 days, to be served in the Bell County Jail.
It was the maximum punishment for a private first class.
Hounshell was released in early April and returned to Fort Hood, where the Army started his discharge. He received a general discharge under honorable conditions, he said.
Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, the spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division, said he could not discuss the terms of Hounshell's discharge because of privacy concerns.
His father said the jail time seemed to change his son for the better.
"He had his freedom taken away, and he knows what that feels like now," he said. "He's not interested in losing it again. He just wants to get into a routine, get up and go to work, and come home again."
IN THE KNOW
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychiatric ailment that can occur in people who experience or witness life-threatening events such as combat, natural disasters, terrorism, serious accidents or violent assaults.
Sufferers often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping and feel detached or estranged. The symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to impair the person's daily life.
An estimated 7.8 percent of Americans will experience post-traumatic stress in their lives. Women (10.4 percent) are twice as likely as men (5 percent) to develop the disorder.
The ailment is treated with talk therapy and drug therapy.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD
Chris Vaughn, (817) 390-7547 cvaughn@star-telegram.com
source:http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/14405058.htm

"Supporting our Troops" ? Yeah, Right !

Arizona governor fighting Army in rebuff of Guard families
PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano wants the Secretary of the Army to reverse a decision by military commanders to withdraw housing support for the families of Arizona National Guard troops set for training at Fort Hood.

The deployment of the 447 troops will be the largest National Guard mobilization overseas from Arizona since the Iraq war began.
Most troops are scheduled to ship out to Texas during the first week of May, along with 15 helicopters. The deployment, including training, is expected to last 20 months.
Guard officials said many of the troops' families had planned to move to Fort Hood but got word last week that they would no longer be entitled to housing support.
Maj. Paul Aguirre, a spokesman for the Arizona National Guard, said that troops were assured repeatedly during the past year that their families could accompany them to Fort Hood. They were told they could live off base in Texas and would receive monthly stipends.
Napolitano said she plans to call the secretary of the Army, seeking to overturn the decision by Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of the 1st Army.
Military units typically are not allowed to bring families for short-term training operations at U.S. bases, lasting a few months or less. However, when training goes for six months or more, family privileges and other benefits are considered routine.
Aguirre said those policies traditionally apply to active-duty military units as well as Guard units training at active-duty installations.
The Arizona soldiers will spend an unusually long time in Texas because, in addition to pre-deployment training, the unit must be certified as combat-ready with the Apaches.
Aguirre said Honore canceled the housing privileges last week, saying the troops are in mobilization mode and therefore will be isolated at Fort Hood, living in barracks with base restrictions as if the soldiers were on mission in Afghanistan.
At least 124 families planned to make the move and 57 of them already had spent money seeking off-base housing in Texas, according to the Arizona Guard.
___
Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/gen/ap/AZ_Guard_Rebuffed.html
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Note from Steve, These type of Bush administration actions do not follow their "talking points" and "slogans" ! I support the Arizona Governor and all of the military families. Beware the forked tongues ! In Texas, who do you think would fight the hardest for our guard members and their families, a Governor Kinky Friedman (Independent) or a Governor Rick Perry (Republican) ? I beleive it would be Kinky Friedman hands down !

___

Quote

"I'm a yellow dog Democrat, I represent Tom DeLay and I'm for Kinky -- I see no contradiction there," ~Texas Lawyer Dick DeGuerin

All Film Ideas/Story Lines are Local !

Kimberly Peirce goes to war
Boys Don’t Cry helmer films soldier’s tale…
09 Nov 2005 1:16pm

Kimberly Peirce must like controversy. She’s developing the film Stop-Loss, which takes a critical peek at a US Army law which forces demobbed soldiers to return to duty.

Hardly used before the casualty-heavy Iraq conflict, the Stop-Loss statute is a subject close to Peirce’s heart: her own brother was recalled to Iraq after serving his term. The director was planning a documentary on the subject, but decided to turn the idea into a dramatic script.

The movie will follow a trooper returning home to Texas, who’s called back to Iraq. He’s forced to go on the run when he refuses the order. “This is a story about great guys who do the right thing by fighting for this country, and are then done wrong,” says Peirce of the film. “The fatality rates for second and third tours are very high, and you understand why these guys feel like they've being asked to play another round of Russian roulette."

source: http://www.totalfilm.com/movie_news/kimberly_peirce_goes_to_war

How does Current Brown County Sheriff Bobby Grubbs (Former Brown County Texas Ranger) feels about this ?

AP: 6 Davidians to be freed from prison
05:20 PM CDT on Wednesday, April 19, 2006
By ANGELA K. BROWN / Associated Press

WACO – Thirteen years after the Branch Davidians' armed standoff with federal agents ended in an inferno that killed nearly 80 people, six sect members who were sent to prison are about to be released from custody.
Most of those who will be freed over the next two months escaped from the compound near Waco as it burned to the ground on April 19, 1993 – 51 days after a shootout that erupted when federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to arrest religious leader David Koresh for stockpiling guns and explosives.
The six men went to federal prison for manslaughter, weapons offenses or both in connection with the Feb. 28 shootout, which left four federal agents and six Davidians dead.
Once the men are out, they will be under supervised release for three to five years. Among other things, they will be barred from associating with one another.
A seventh Davidian is also still behind bars but is not scheduled for release until next year.
Paul Gordon Fatta, who is to be released next month in San Diego, said he remains angry about the government's actions. He was at a gun show in Austin during the ATF raid and was not at the compound during the standoff.
"They needed their pound of flesh, so they took the survivors and put them on trial. Somebody had to pay," Fatta, 48, told The Associated Press by telephone. "They just want it to go away, and they hope people will forget as time passes. But it's going to be with me the rest of my life."
Koresh and nearly 80 followers, including two dozen children, died in a blaze that survivors say was ignited by tear gas sprayed into the compound buildings from military tanks. Authorities claim the Davidians committed suicide by setting the fire and shooting themselves.
Jaime Castillo, who is to be released next month from a Los Angeles halfway house, said he plans to remain there and try to rebuild his life by forming another band – which is how he met Koresh in 1988 – or by working as a personal trainer. He said he might someday visit the compound site, where a few survivors still meet for Bible study each weekend.
"For me, I don't think it could ever be re-created," said Castillo, 37. "They study and reflect on teachings. I could do that by myself; I don't need somebody to tell me that. I've always been an individual."
In 1994 in San Antonio, 11 Davidians went on trial; all were acquitted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges. However, five were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and weapons charges and three were convicted on weapons charges. A 12th Davidian who was indicted pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for testifying against the others; she was sentenced to three years in prison and was released in 1996.
The federal judge sentenced most to 40 years but in 2000 reduced most terms to 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his decision. One of the eight was sentenced to five years on a weapons charge and got out in 1997.
Jane McKeehan of Johnson City, Tenn., whose 28-year-old son Todd McKeehan was one of the ATF agents killed, said she and her family have tried to focus on their son and not think too much about the Davidians.
"It is in our minds every day; it completely changes your life," McKeehan said. "We're Christians, and we know we're going to see Todd again, so we try to focus on the good. He was doing what he wanted to do and was adamant about making it a better world."
While in prison, Castillo, who maintains that he didn't shoot any agents during the raid, said he has thought a lot about the events on the Central Texas prairie 13 years ago. He wishes Koresh had surrendered with the entire group – 21 children and 14 adults did leave during the standoff – although Castillo believes that Koresh felt he was following God's will.
"Certain things change. You have to re-evaluate, and now you think, 'Dave probably shouldn't have done this,"' Castillo said. "But if I start questioning this, what's the point now? It's the past. It's not going to benefit anyone now."
Fatta, who moved to a halfway house last year and now works at a restaurant, said he has enjoyed seeing his family more. But Fatta said "it's pretty unfair" that he won't be allowed to see his co-defendants.
"I'm proud of my friends, and it was a privilege for me to have gone there to study the Bible, regardless of what the world thinks," Fatta said. "If I had it to do all over again, I would do the same thing. Did I like going to prison? No. Did I like my friends being murdered by federal agents? No. If you look at history, people take a stand for what they believe in, and they're misunderstood."
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source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042006dntexdavidians.1682071c.html
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Fuel Cans Found at Davidian Compound

Associated Press Writer, July 10, 2000
By Sherri Chunn

WACO, Texas (AP) - Four gas cans and a homemade torch were recovered from what had been the dining room of the Branch Davidian complex after fires consumed it in 1993, Texas Rangers testified Friday.
Bobby Grubbs, one of the Rangers who helped gather evidence including the fuel cans after the deadly fire, testified that Clive Doyle, one of nine people who escaped, told him the blaze was started with Coleman fuel that was distributed throughout the compound.
When asked if he knew who started it, Doyle refused to answer the question, Grubbs testified.
``I felt he had information; he just wouldn't give it to us,'' Grubbs said.
About 80 Branch Davidians and leader David Koresh died - some from fire, others from gunshots - when their compound went up in flames on April 19, 1993, at the end of their 51-day standoff with federal agents.
Fire investigators have said one of three blazes that day started in the dining room area, and the government was using Grubbs' testimony to support its contention that the Branch Davidians were suicidal and started the fires themselves.
Davidian survivors and relatives of those who were killed in the standoff claim in their $675 million wrongful death lawsuit that federal agents contributed to or caused at least some of the fires.
A fire expert hired by the plaintiffs has testified that tanks used in an FBI tear-gassing operation on the final day turned the compound into kindling by punching holes in the walls, allowing wind gusts to feed the flames.
Plaintiffs also say tanks could have contributed to or caused the flames by knocking over lanterns used to illuminate the compound during the standoff or by tumbling fuel cans used to fill the lanterns. Grubbs said lantern parts were found near the cans.
Grubbs said Rangers interviewed Doyle a day after the fire, as he lay in a burn ward of a Dallas hospital. Doyle's mother, Edna Doyle, who sat in the courtroom with her 59-year-old son, quietly repeated the words ``You're a liar'' as Grubbs testified about the interview.
The younger Doyle, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, testified last week he could feel skin ``rolling off his hands'' as he jumped out of the burning building through a hole made by government tanks.
A government attorney presented Doyle with the melted remains of a blue nylon jacket he wore on the final day of the standoff and asked why the sleeves of the jacket were covered with ignitable liquids.
``It could have come from constantly filling lanterns,'' Doyle testified at the time. ``I don't know.''
Dozens of lanterns were in use throughout the building after FBI agents cut off the compound's electricity.
Texas Ranger Sgt. Lane Aiken also testified that while searching the burned grounds of the compound the day after the siege ended, a fellow Ranger found a damp torch in the mud near the rear of the building.
Lead plaintiffs' attorney Michael Caddell asked Aiken if he knew it really was a torch.
``It certainly looks like a torch. I can't imagine it being used for something else,'' he said. The torch later failed lab tests that checked for flammable liquids.

source: http://www.rickross.com/reference/waco/waco214.html
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More here

Texas Republican Governor "Working it" for all it's worth !

Editorial: Advertise plan, not Perry

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

We’ve seen it a million times, and from both sides of the political aisle: Elected officials exploit official business to splash their faces across TV or billboards.

So it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see TV spots in which Gov. Rick Perry promotes himself as he also pitches for a tax restructuring plan he supports for school finance.

But since this is an election year — even if it weren’t, the issue would be the same — Perry’s proponents are right to point out something:

A planned ad campaign touting Perry’s tax plan is being footed by corporate dollars. Corporations can’t donate to political campaigns.

Perry can say this isn’t his re-election campaign. That might satisfy a court should opponents sue, but it’s not worth wasting a judge’s good time. If Perry is really concerned about schools and not about getting his face before the voters (they already know what he looks like) he should advertise the plan, and not himself.

source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2006/04/18/04182006waceditorial2.html

So Rick Perry is Upset. Maybe these folks remember his "on air" performance during the Evacuation !

County leaders oppose Perry's hurricane planning orders
They want committee to determine when to evacuate.
By Paul J. Weber
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wednesday, April 19, 2006

HOUSTON — Counties that were saddled with chaos and traffic-choked highways before Hurricane Rita are defying an order from Gov. Rick Perry to empower one person to make evacuation decisions during a disaster.
Instead, a group of elected Gulf Coast leaders adopted a different plan Tuesday that puts the authority in the hands of a 15-person committee, even though the ultimate power to evacuate still rests with individual counties.
Houston Mayor Bill White was among more than two dozen government executives from a 13-county region surrounding Houston who unanimously approved the creation of the Unified Area Coordination Committee.
During a hurricane, the committee would make decisions such as how to stagger evacuations and when to allow traffic on clogged highways to flow differently.
County officials have said that appointing one incident commander, as instructed by Perry's order last month, for a region spanning 12,500 miles is impractical and welcomes uninformed decisions.
Elected officials from Coastal Bend counties also have opposed the order.
But Perry, who made the order after about 60 people died when more than 1.5 million people tried to evacuate the Houston area in September, was upset that officials in the state's most vulnerable hurricane region ignored his command.
"'I think it makes abundant good sense in those grand, large situations like that to have one individual being able to make a decision on the evacuation of an entire region," Perry said Tuesday from Austin. "I think that is fraught with danger to put into place a committee, and hopefully they will reconsider that."
That wasn't the indication after Tuesday's meeting of the Houston-Galveston Area Council. Jack Steele, the council's executive director, said he would proceed "right away" with the committee because the hurricane season begins June 1.
Under the Texas Disaster Act adopted in 1975, executive orders issued by the governor "have the force and effect of law." Perry spokeswoman Rachel Novier said that for now, the governor will continue to work with the region.
Steele said the formation of the committee will begin immediately. Each county judge will appoint one member, with the other two decided by White and Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas.
Counties aren't required to obey the committee during a disaster, but backers of the plan don't expect officials to defiantly call their own shots during a hurricane.
"What elected official is going to take the responsibility of not cooperating and causing the evacuation to collapse?" asked former Kemah Mayor Bill King, who served on the governor's hurricane task force. "I just can't see that happening."
Not everyone is so sure. The mayor of Taylor Lake Village, a community of about 4,000 people that sits off the Gulf of Mexico and is surrounded by water on three sides, wondered whether the committee would be knowledgeable enough about her town's situation.
"If I'm told it's not my turn to evacuate, and I believe it is my turn to evacuate, I'm going to evacuate my city," O'Neill said. "I'm not going to wait."
According to a report released Tuesday, Texas should also develop a way to track special-needs patients during evacuations, ensure that their medical records are sent with them and let emergency responders know which hospitals and shelters have room for them.
The report, commissioned by the Texas Department of State Health Services, found communication breakdowns and difficulties acquiring, tracking and deploying resources hindered the effort to care for hurricane victims and evacuees.
Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, commissioner of state health services, said his department will use the recommendations to improve its plans.
source:http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/19hurricane.html

What you did not hear on Brownwood Talk Radio Airwaves this morning !

The Sunday Times - World

The Sunday Times
April 16, 2006

Generals advance on Rumsfeld
Sarah Baxter

REPUBLICANS are divided over the future of Donald Rumsfeld, America’s embattled defence secretary, as a generals’ revolt against his conduct of the Iraq war gathers force.
Senator John Warner, chairman of the influential armed services committee, declined to rally behind Rumsfeld this weekend. “Senator Warner believes that the decision on whether to keep the secretary is up to the president,” his spokesman said.
President George W Bush interrupted his Easter holiday at Camp David to express support for Rumsfeld’s “strong and steady leadership” but has failed to halt the rising criticism.

Major-General Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq until 2004, warned that Rumsfeld could cost America the war: “His arrogance is what will cause us to fail in future.”

Pat Buchanan, a former Republican presidential candidate and critic of the Iraq war, said: “There is an unstated message of the generals’ revolt. If Iraq collapses in chaos and sectarian war, and is perceived as another US defeat, they are saying, ‘We are not going to carry the can’. The first volley in a ‘who lost Iraq?’ war of recriminations has been fired.”
Bowing to pressure from generals to sack Rumsfeld could undermine the civilian leadership’s authority over the military, one of the cornerstones of American democracy. But Bush is mindful of criticism from his own party, as he showed when he dropped Harriet Miers, the White House counsel, as his Supreme Court nominee after she ran into a hail of conservative opposition.
Republican politicians, particularly those facing congressional elections this autumn, have become increasingly critical of the invasion, although only a handful of senior Republicans, such as Senator John McCain and Senator Chuck Hagel, have openly called for Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives who hopes to run for president in 2008, said last week that the occupation of Iraq was a “big mistake” and that America should pull out most of its troops, leaving only a small force.
He may have been reflecting the private thoughts of Rumsfeld, no admirer of nation-building, who has been criticised by the generals for failing to commit enough troops to Iraq.
Gingrich is close to Rumsfeld and serves as an adviser on his hand-picked Defence Policy Board. “Gingrich is an interesting bellwether,” said Jack Shaw, a former Pentagon official. “He would not have come out with his statement unless Rumsfeld wanted him to do it.”
Shaw said the 73-year-old Rumsfeld was afraid of becoming “McNamara Two” — a reference to Robert McNamara, defence secretary at the time of Vietnam, who later admitted to private reservations about the war and went on to oppose it in public.
William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine and a supporter of the Iraq war, said Rumsfeld’s resignation was long overdue. The generals were “acting out of patriotism”, Kristol said.
“This is not fun for them. They are reluctant to step forward in this way and for good reason. But I believe they are doing it because they believe that Rumsfeld is endangering the course of foreign policy.”
Other neoconservatives said that the generals’ revolt was as much to do with bureaucratic infighting as Iraq. “Look, he’s trying to change an institution that is very set in its ways and that’s not easy,” said Richard Perle, a former chairman of the Defence Policy Board. “You’ve got some disgruntled former officers. It’s no big deal.”
The generals’ criticism is appearing increasingly co- ordinated. In recent days six generals have attacked Rumsfeld, including Lieutenant- General Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the joint chiefs of staff before the war, who said that the “cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood”.
Anthony Zinni, a retired general and former commander of US Central Command, which oversees the war, accused Rumsfeld of throwing out years of contingency planning for the invasion and urged him to go.
Senator John Reed, a Democrat member of the armed services committee, said he expected more retired officers to speak out against Rumsfeld this week.
The first demands for Rumsfeld’s sacking emerged in 2004 at the time of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. He offered Bush his resignation twice but was refused.
Rumsfeld has previously said he will leave office at the “pleasure of the president”. There is no sign yet that Bush has given up on his defence secretary, but with support for the war plummeting he may come to accept the need for a fresh start.

source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2136300,00.html
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April 17, 2006

Recipe for Holy War: Add two nut jobs and stir

All right. I'm now officially scared.
Having just read Seymour Hersh's article about Bush's Iran plan, it appears that we no longer have a case of the good guys versus the bad guys.
What we have here is the bad guy versus the bad guy - two madmen playing an international game of chicken, ratcheting up the rhetoric to appeal to their fundamentalist followers.
There's no doubt that Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is mad in the head. In fact, it might help you remember his name if you pronounce it "Ah'm mad in ee head."
He's got a uranium enrichment program going on so he can build nuclear power plants. But since he's crazy, there's a lot of worldwide concern that he's going to build a nuclear bomb while he's at it.
The U.N. atomic watchdog agency, which paid him a little visit last week, says there's no evidence that he's working on weapons. Even so, the world is feeling a little squirmy about letting Ah'm Mad In Ee Head carry on with his nuclear program. Everyone keeps asking him to quit it, but he's dug in his heels.
So that's one madman on the loose.
The other one - our very own nut job in the White House - is licking his chops over what he perceives as a stubborn challenge from Iran's president.
In last week's New Yorker magazine, Hersh provided a detailed look at Bush's response to Ah'm Mad In Ee Head. According to Hersh's sources, Bush wants Ah'm Mad In Ee Head to defy U.N. demands to quit playing with uranium.
You know why? Because our own madman wants to trot out one of our own nukes and bomb Iran's madman out of business - along with a few hundred thousand other Iranians, of course.
As one congressman told Hersh, "The most worrisome thing is that Bush has a messianic vision." Bush is waging a holy war. He's on a crusade. And so is Ah'm Mad In Ee Head.
One nut-job fundamentalist Christian plus one nut-job fundamentalist Muslim equals one nut-job Holy War.
The administration's talking heads deny this, of course. They say Hersh is in "fantasyland." That's funny. It's exactly what they said about Hersh when he broke the story about U.S. soldiers torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
And so the rest of the world's people are as scared of George Bush as they are of Ah'm Mad In Ee Head. This unelected president of ours has systematically been dehumanizing Arabs. He's imprisoned them without charges. He's tortured them. He's killed them. And now he wants to nuke them.
He's like a child with a serious case of ADHD. He's lost interest in Iraq and is looking for a new toy to break. Iraq, after all, has turned out badly, so he's doing what he always does when he makes a mess of something - he's turning his attention elsewhere and starting a whole new mess.
The rest of the world prefers diplomacy, and for a good reason.
If Bush attacks Iran, he will unleash Hezbollah - Iran's strong, well organized terrorist organization. And who do you think Hezbollah's first target will be? The sitting ducks right next door in Iraq - American troops. Then Europe and Israel will go up in flames.
So now I'm officially scared. On their own, Bush and Ah'm Mad In Ee Head are frightening enough. Working together, these two could create the Perfect Storm.
Let's have a drink
There are 1,009 days 'til Inauguration 2009 - if we live that long. That means we'll break 1,000 next week. Let's drink a toast to Day 999 on Friday. At 7 p.m. on April 28 I'll be in the downstairs bar at Catherine's Restaurant, 153 West Main St., Goshen. If you plan to stop in, let me know so I can tell Steve at the restaurant what kind of crowd to expect.
Beth's column appears on Monday. Talk to her at 346-3147 or at bquinn@th-record.com.

source: http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2006/04/17/news-bethcolapril17-04-17.html

The Abilene/Brownwood Blackout: Is there more to the story ?

Abilene hit by rolling blackouts
Power also cut in Brownwood, Stephenville; hot weather causes statewide problem

By Staff and wire reports
April 18, 2006

HOUSTON - Unseasonably hot weather forced power utilities to conduct rolling blackouts around the state, including the Big Country, for several hours on Monday.
As temperatures climbed into the upper 90s and above 100 in some areas for another day, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs Texas' electricity grid, declared an emergency situation and ordered the blackouts because of the lack of electricity around the state.
By early Monday evening, ERCOT said things were better and operations were back to normal.
In Abilene, power was cut off to 1,600 residential customers for about 30 minutes about 5 p.m., said Greg Blair, regional manager of community affairs for AEP Texas.
The outages were in areas served by three power substations - one near Dyess, one at North 2nd and Shelton streets, and the Rainey Creek substation to the north of town.
''This affected residential customers,'' Blair said. ''We don't take out critical customers such as hospitals.''
Traffic lights tied into residential service areas were inoperative.
An Abilene police and fire dispatcher said the rolling blackout prompted calls about power outages and traffic congestion caused by non-functioning traffic signals, but no accidents were attributed to the outages.
Elsewhere in the Big Country, TXU Electric Delivery cut off power for 15 minutes at 4:30 p.m. in Brownwood and 4:45 p.m. in Stephenville.
''Each circuit handles up to 800 customers,'' said Jose Bernal, of TXU Electric Delivery in Brownwood. ''We had the customers back on in about 15 minutes.''
ERCOT said it declared the emergency after concluding there was insufficient generating capacity in the region to reliably serve the public's electricity demand. ERCOT said its power grid needed to decrease its load by 1,000 megawatts on Monday.
As much as 15 percent of the state's power supply goes off-line each spring so plants can perform seasonal maintenance before energy usage peaks in the summer, said Public Utility Commission spokesman Terry Hadley. He said maintenance is typically finished by mid-May.
But unusually high temperatures this spring have pushed demand for electricity, creating a shortage, he said.
The typical usage for Texas in April is about 40,000 megawatts a day, but the state pushed 52,000 megawatts on Monday, said ERCOT spokesman Paul Wattles.
''The good news is, (the blackouts) worked,'' Wattles said. ''This prevents region-wide outages. It isolates the outages so a few people share the pain to avoid a region blackout like we had in the Northeast in 2003.''
The rollouts were limited to the ERCOT grid, which provides electricity to about 80 percent of Texas.
Traffic backed up at intersections in Grand Prairie, just west of Dallas, and in Tyler in East Texas during the afternoon rush hour.
CenterPoint Energy spokeswoman Emily Mir Thompson said rolling blackouts every 15 minutes for the Houston area were ordered just after 4 p.m. Monday and ended by around 6:30 p.m.
In Houston, about 68,000 customers were affected during each blackout, Thompson said. CenterPoint Energy serves a total of 1.9 million customers in the Houston area.
Austin Energy said it began rotating blackouts about 4:20 p.m. to comply with its share of the load-shedding requirement.
Dallas-based TXU Electric Delivery also rotated outages every 15 minutes. TXU spokeswoman Carol Peters said the rolling blackouts were a success.
''They went exactly as we planned, as ERCOT set forward,'' she said. ''It's something we practice every year and it worked exactly as we expected it to.''
Peters said the rolling blackouts covered areas from West Texas to East Texas, as far north as the Texas-Oklahoma border and as far south as Round Rock. Towns around Kerrville also reported power blackouts.
ERCOT urged customers around the state to curtail their use of electricity to the lowest level possible, including setting their thermostats at 78 degrees or higher and not using electric lighting, appliances or equipment unless absolutely necessary for health or safety.
Abilene Reporter-News staffers Larry Zelisko, Jerry Daniel Reed and Celinda Emison contributed to this report, along with Associated Press writers Juan A. Lozano, Paul J. Weber and Steve Quinn.
source: http://www.reporternews.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4629497,00.html
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Today's high could challenge state's power grids again

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

By Mike Anderson and Mónica Ortiz Uribe
Tribune-Herald staff writers

Record-high temperatures today may continue testing the ability of Texas energy providers to fill a sudden jump in user demand, which Monday caused rolling brownouts statewide, leaving many Central Texans without power and many motorists mired in traffic jams.
Unseasonably hot temperatures caused an overload in electricity use, prompting the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), an energy monitoring coalition, to move into emergency mode and order that power be temporarily shut off in sections throughout the state, TXU Electric Delivery spokesman John Hardesty said.
Beginning about 4:30 p.m., the outages rotated from one sector to another, specifically excluding areas where there were hospitals or nursing homes, he said.
The rolling brownouts ended at 6:15 p.m.
The outages were noticeable in Waco, then sweltering under humid conditions.
Businesses suddenly found themselves without power, and motorists became ensnared in 5 p.m. traffic jams on Valley Mills Drive because of traffic lights being shut off.
Robert Spikes, service manager at Jerry Stevens Firestone, 1111 Lake Air Drive, said the brownout that threw the shop into darkness and made a mess of traffic out front lasted only about 15 minutes, “but it seemed a lot longer.”
“It put us way behind,” he said late Monday. “You can’t lift cars and put tires on without air and electricity.”
Waco’s high Monday was 97, breaking the old record of 93 set in 1987.
Besides heavy utility use statewide, as much as 15 percent of the state’s power supply was already off-line for seasonal maintenance in anticipation of summer energy use peaks.

Also, four power-generating plants shut down unexpectedly, ERCOT spokesman Paul Wattles said.

Whether the meticulously engineered brownouts continue today depends largely on how much demand energy users place on the system, Hardesty said. He urged everyone to watch consumption.
Little advance notice about the brownouts was given by ERCOT because of the suddenness of the spike in demand. ERCOT advised power companies to reduce energy consumption in rotating, 15-minute shifts or face severe blackouts for longer periods, Hardesty said.
TXU’s share of energy cuts was 380 megawatts, he said. One megawatt is tantamount to about 10 homes, according to a news release from TXU.
Traffic lights out
Tony Flores, TXU district manager, said local brownouts stretched from Marlin through Lorena, Waco and into West.
The energy company shut down individual electric “feeders,” which are typically 5 to 10 miles long in Waco, for about 15 minutes each starting at 4:24 p.m., he said.
Waco police Sgt. Ryan Holt said the department was inundated with calls about traffic lights being out. Most of the city’s traffic lights went out at some point during the afternoon, he said.
Several accidents are suspected to be related to the signal outage, but Holt said he did not have an exact number Monday evening.
“We had to treat them as uncontrolled intersections because we don’t have enough officers to staff even the major intersections,” he said. “For the most part, people did well, so far.”
Police also responded to several home-alarm systems that sent out alerts after power was restored, Holt said.
For the second day in a row, Waco set a record high temperature Monday. The National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office said Waco reached a record 95 degrees Sunday, compared with a previous high of 92 in 1925.
Another record high is possible today with meteorologists predicting 97 — a degree higher than the current record of 1925.
Records were set across Central Texas on Monday, with Gatesville reporting a high of 100 and Hillsboro hitting 99. To the north, Fort Worth reached 101, the weather service reported.
NWS meteorologist Dan Shoemaker said the heat wave is caused by an area of high pressure parked over the state bringing in dry, warm desert air from the west.
Unlike the extended withering days Texans are accustomed to in summer, this heat wave will be short-lived, he said.
Cold front coming
A cold front is due to roll through late tonight, bringing a chance of rain and cooler temperatures, he said. Highs for the rest of the week are anticipated to be in the upper 70s to lower 80s, he said.
Local air conditioning repair services got an early hint Monday morning of the power drain to come. Eddie Morris, a service administrator for Waco’s Lochridge Priest, said the company received calls from more than 100 customers with air conditioning problems.
“The phones were ringing off the walls from the moment we got here, and they haven’t stopped,” he said. “This early temperature jump took people by surprise. They haven’t had the air conditioner on all winter, and they turned them on today and found out they have problems.”
Morris recommended people planning to use their cooling systems for the first time in months make sure they have a fresh air filter and that outside units be checked for any debris that might block airflow.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
manderson@wacotrib.com
757-5741
mortiz@wacotrib.com
757-5751
Tips for saving energy:
* Lower the thermostat to 78 or even 80. Ceiling fans can help make this a viable option.
* Insulate the attic. Badly insulated attics can lose nearly half of your cooling.
* Clean and regularly replace air conditioning filters. A dirty filter taxes your air conditioner, causing it to use more power.
* Don’t use the oven. Use a microwave oven or an outdoor barbecue grill.
* Check for holes in your roof and in your pipes. This can help save up to 10 percent of your heating and cooling costs.
* Close doors to unused rooms. Turn air conditioners off when no one is home.
* Install solar screens or films on sunny windows to reduce heat gain in your home.

Source: TXU Electric, AZoBuild, Entergy
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/04/18/04182006wachotweather.html
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Enron/California Blackout Background.....Wonder how many in Brownwood saw the Enron Movie ?

Read more here

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and more here !

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and yet another look at the situation !

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and while the Enron Trial is taking place in Houston (see below), Texas is experiencing Rolling blackouts !

Chipping at ex-Enron CEO
PROSECUTOR ATTACKS CREDIBILITY IN SKILLING CROSS-EXAMINATION
By Bruce Nichols
Dallas Morning News
HOUSTON - The lead prosecutor scored no knock-out punches Monday in his first day trying to pick apart former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling's testimony and claims of innocence in the 2001 collapse of the energy giant.
But he managed to chip away at Skilling's credibility.
``At the end of the day, it's your word . . . that is at issue, correct?'' prosecutor Sean Berkowitz asked early in cross-examination.
``I think it's more a question of figuring out what makes sense,'' replied Skilling, who argued in testimony last week that prosecutors' theory of the case makes no sense. ``I have nothing to hide.''
The long-awaited cross-examination is expected to consume the 12th week of the conspiracy and fraud trial of Skilling and Enron founder Kenneth Lay. Lay is expected to testify later. The December 2001 collapse of Enron lost shareholders billions of dollars and cost thousands of employees their jobs and retirement savings. Skilling also faces charges of insider trading and lying to auditors.
Prosecutors charge that Skilling and Lay oversaw an effort to exaggerate earnings and hide losses and debt to mislead investors. The defendants argue that the only wrongdoing at Enron was by a small group whose theft from the company panicked the stock market.
Although Skilling said he had nothing to hide, Berkowitz pointed out that he had produced no supporting personal notes taken during conversations or meetings to show the jury, and that his recollections often differed from those of other witnesses who did have notes.
``I didn't destroy them,'' Skilling said, explaining he tended to have mostly to-do lists. ``I think once I checked off all the things on the to-do list, I'd throw them away.''
He testified that he didn't use e-mail, that he had others send e-mails for him. And when his own calendar disagreed with his recollection, he cast doubt on the accuracy of his calendar.
Often, Skilling didn't recall events or conversations, or he recalled them differently from other witnesses. He said he learned about a lot of things after the fact. At one point, Berkowitz went down a list of eight witnesses, all former Enron executives, who recalled things differently from Skilling.
Berkowitz asked about an Aug. 22, 2001, meeting with Lay, eight days after Skilling resigned suddenly as chief executive. Lay had just received a now famous memo from accounting executive Sherron Watkins raising questions about Enron bookkeeping. And he was scheduled to meet with her four hours after meeting with Skilling.
But Skilling said they didn't talk about the Watkins memo.
``Absolutely not,'' Skilling said. ``The discussion I had with Ken was a very upbeat discussion about future strategies I just wanted to make him aware of.''
Controls not followed
Skilling testified he was a ``controls freak,'' meaning he wanted controls in place to make sure Enron's dealings were proper.
But then Berkowitz took him through a list of events related to off-balance-sheet financing arrangements by former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow. Skilling acknowledged he didn't carry out controls -- specifically, personally signing off on deals.
Skilling testified he grew weary of conflict-of-interest issues related to Fastow's running off-balance-sheet partnerships doing financing deals with Enron. But he acknowledged his own apparent conflict -- a personal relationship with a photographer whom he helped by funneling Enron business her way.
Berkowitz walked Skilling through his multimillion-dollar sales of Enron stock in fall 2000 and those of his ex-wife and his then fiancee. And he asked Skilling whether those sales were triggered by inside information of trouble at Enron.
``Coincidence,'' Skilling answered, noting that Enron stock was near its all-time peak price.
Skilling, acknowledged, however that the sales came about the same time as the unraveling of an attempt to sell underperforming power plants and other assets Enron owned in India, South America and other parts of the developing world.
California market
At one point, Skilling appeared to smile when he compared the risks of doing business in California with the hazards of investing in the developing world.
California deregulated its electricity market in 1998 under pressure from Enron and others. Two years later, the state experienced blackouts and astronomical prices before the market stabilized. Part of the blame has been assigned to Enron traders, who made millions.
``You think that's funny?'' Berkowitz asked. ``You previously made fun of what happened in California, publicly made jokes?''
Skilling squirmed, replying: ``A joke, yes.''
``Do you regret that now? Do you regret making that joke about what happened?'' Berkowitz asked.
Skilling paused for a long moment, before saying: ``Yes, now I do.''
source: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/14367545.htm
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Brownwood Republicans, listen to how your guys act ! You'll know them by their walk and their talk !

Now Playing in Brownwood SUV's with DVD Players ?

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Tell me again how the Republican Party is the Party of Morals and Ethcis !

Print this out before the next Blackout !

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The Plant shut-downs were coincidental !

POWER BLACKOUTS
Blackouts possible into May
Power official says Texas could see more outages if triple-digit temperatures continue
By Robert Elder
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The manager of the state's electric transmission grid promised a "major investi- gation" of Monday's rolling blackouts across Texas but didn't rule out a repeat performance if temperatures spike to dead-of-summer levels in the next few weeks.

Sam Jones, the chief operating officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told a state House committee Tuesday that much of generating capacity currently down for repairs will not be up and running until early May. If 100-degree-plus temperatures return, he said, equipment breakdowns, combined with reduced capacity because of repairs, could mean more blackouts.


Ralph Barrera
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

(enlarge photo)
Kevin Brown, an electric system controller supervisor for the energy control center of Austin Energy, monitors the flow of electricity use in the city Tuesday. The map pinpoints mainline units in neighborhoods, with the red dots showing power flowing and the green dots showing no power flowing.
"I'm very hopeful we won't see another heat wave in the next two, three weeks. . . ." Jones told the House Committee on Regulated Industries. "I shudder to think we'd see higher than low-100-degree days between now and May, when we get generation back."
ERCOT said there were no major grid-related power outages Tuesday, when temperatures were at or near 100 degrees in much of the state, including Central Texas.
A little more generating capacity was available compared with Monday, ERCOT said, in part because some operators agreed to delay planned maintenance.
About 14,000 megawatts of generation — about 20 percent of the statewide system's total capacity — was offline Monday for seasonal maintenance. The shortage turned critical when four plants unexpectedly shut down Monday afternoon.
Jones said it was a coincidence that the plants shut down at a time when so much capacity wasn't available.
ERCOT was prepared to handle a peak load of 53,575 megawatts Tuesday, and the system could handle up to 56,000 megawatts, Jones said.
By contrast, ERCOT officials had predicted that the grid could handle up to 48,000 megawatts Monday, a total that proved inadequate once the four plants shut down. The plants' locations are confidential under ERCOT rules, Jones told the committee, but will be available 60 days after the shutdowns.
An ERCOT spokeswoman said the names of plants taken offline are kept secret so other power companies can't take advantage of the knowledge to charge higher prices. Many parts of Central Texas had no blackouts Monday, but some areas of Austin were without power for as long as three hours, and others had several shorter blackout periods. The outages were spotty, including parts of South and South-Central Austin, the Zilker neighborhood, Cedar Park, Pflugerville and Hutto.
ERCOT said the blackouts don't foreshadow widespread outages this summer because plants under repair should be running by about May 10.
Jones said ERCOT ordered utilities to reduce the amount of power they were generating Monday, the first time that has happened since Dec. 22, 1989, when temperatures near zero degrees enveloped much of the state.
The ERCOT grid covers 75 percent of Texas and 85 percent of the electricity load in the state. Only the El Paso area, the Panhandle and parts of East Texas are outside the ERCOT grid.
Austin Energy spokesman Ed Clark said customers of the city-owned utility used 2,060 megawatts of power Monday, the highest for any day in April during the agency's 111-year history. Customers used 2,050 megawatts Tuesday.
He said officials project that customers use about 1,870 megawatts on an average 85-degree day. On an average 100-degree day, customers use about 2,300 megawatts during peak demand.
ERCOT said there was little danger of widespread outages like those that disrupted service to 50 million people across the northeastern United States in the summer of 2003.
Some lawmakers were not assuaged. Regulated Industries Committee member Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houson, suggested that ERCOT "should anticipate a worse scenario than we've anticipated in the past."
Texas experienced a power plant building boom in the late 1990s, as it headed toward partly deregulating the retail electric market.
But energy experts predict that Texas will run short of electricity generation in about three years because not enough new plants are on the drawing board, and the ones that are planned will have a hard time getting financing.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates warned in February that a shortage of investment capital would hamper the construction of enough new plants to meet demand, particularly in fast-growing states such as Texas.
The report, released in Houston, said the country would likely face "power shortages in some areas within the next five years." It said Texas could face severe constraints in 2009.

relder@statesman.com; 445-3671. Staff writer Tony Plohetski contributed.
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/19ercot.html

Relaxing on Mae West's 1931 HouseCar

Relaxing on Mae West's 1931 HouseCar
Originally uploaded by photosteve.

2006 National RV History Tour w/Mae West's 1931 HouseCar

2006 National RV History Tour w/Mae West's 1931 HouseCar
Originally uploaded by photosteve.

Did you hear this on the Brownwood Talk Radio Airwaves ? No, I don't think so !

Snohomish County opinion
Coming home — disillusioned

By Christopher H. Sheppard
Special to The Times

Three years ago, I was a Marine Corps captain on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border, participating in the invasion of Iraq. Awestruck, I heard our howitzers thunder and watched artillery rockets rise into the night sky and streak toward Iraq — their light bathing the desert moonscape like giant arc welders.
As I watched the Iraq war begin, I completely trusted the Bush administration. I thought we were going to prove all of the left-wing antiwar protesters and dissenters wrong. I thought we were going to make America safer. Regrettably, I acknowledge that it was I who was wrong.
I believed the Bush administration when it said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I believed its assertion that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Africa and refine it into weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. I believed its claim Iraq had vast quantities of biological and chemical agents. After years of thorough inspections, all of these claims have been disproved.
I believed the administration when it claimed there was overwhelming evidence Iraq was in cahoots with al-Qaida. In January 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that there was no concrete evidence linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
I believed the administration when it grandly proclaimed we were going to bring a stable, Western-style liberal democracy to Iraq, complete with religious tolerance and the rule of law. We never had enough troops in Iraq to restore civil order and the rule of law. The Iraqi elections have produced a ruling majority of Shiite fundamentalists and marginalized the seething Sunni minority. Iraq dangerously teeters on the brink of civil war. We have emboldened Iran and destabilized the entire Middle East.
I believed the administration when it claimed the war could be done quickly and cheaply. It said the war would cost only between $50 billion and $60 billion. It said that Iraqi oil revenue would fund the country's reconstruction. I believed President Bush when he landed on the USS Lincoln and said "major combat operations have ended."
The war has cost the American taxpayers $250 billion and counting. The vast majority — 94 percent — of the more than 2,300 United States service members killed in Iraq have occurred since Bush's "Top Gun" proclamation. The cost in men and materiel has been far beyond what we were led to believe.
I volunteered to go back to Iraq for the fall and winter of 2004-2005. I went back out of frustration and guilt; frustration from watching Iraq unravel on the news and guilt that I wasn't there trying to stop it. Many fine Marines from my reserve battalion felt the same and volunteered to go back. I buried my mounting suspicions and mustered enough trust and faith in my civilian leadership to go back.
I returned disillusioned by what I saw. I participated in the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. We crushed the insurgents in the city, but we only ended up scattering them throughout the province. The dumb ones stayed and died. The smart ones left town before the battle, to garner more recruits and fight another day. We were simply the little Dutch boy with our finger in the dike. In retrospect, we never had enough troops to firmly control the region; we had just enough to maintain a tenuous equilibrium.
I now know I wrongfully placed my faith and trust in a presidential administration hopelessly mired in incompetence, hubris and a lack of accountability. It planned a war based on false intelligence and unrealistic assumptions. It has strategically surrendered the condition of victory in Iraq to people who do not share our vision, values or interests. The Bush administration has proven successful at only one thing in Iraq — painting us into a corner with no feasible exit.
I will never trust any of them again.
Christopher H. Sheppard is a former Marine captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq as a combat engineer. He currently is finishing his master's degree in mass communication and lives in Marysville.

source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002925025&slug=snomarine12&date=20060412

Where are the Brownwood Clergy on this one ? Their silence is deafening and telling !

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller
-----------------
Posted on Sat, Apr. 15, 2006

It's time for ministers to start asking 'WWJD ?'
By BUD KENNEDY
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

What does your preacher say about Christian compassion and immigration reform?
The former president of Texas Baptists has an Easter message in mind:
"Jesus told us that he came to bring good news to the poor and liberty to the oppressed," said the Rev. Albert Reyes, president of a San Antonio seminary and a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
"What does that 'good news' mean for the 12 million immigrants who have come to this country without papers? Where is the freedom from dysfunctional immigration laws?"
Reyes is a third-generation Texan and Southern Baptist. He is a lifelong political conservative who supports President Bush.
He calls immigration reform the "civil rights issue of the 21st century."
He supports both stronger borders and a plan that would allow minor immigration violators to "earn their citizenship with dignity and respect." It's unethical, he said, for Christians to call border crossers "illegal," but then eat the restaurant meals they cook, stroll in the gardens they tend and trust them as family caregivers, often at unfair wages.
And he wonders why more Christian leaders don't speak up.
"I'm a little perplexed that there hasn't been more of a statement," said Reyes, president of the Baptist University for the Américas. He was speaking by cellphone on his way to a Baptist Hispanic youth conference in Houston.
Evangelical political groups have been split on the issue, and mostly silent.
The Mississippi-based American Family Association has published a harshly worded poll about securing the borders and a column criticizing the Roman Catholic church's advocacy for illegal immigrants. Colorado-based Focus on the Family has been notably quiet, although the U.S. representative from nearby suburban Denver, Republican Tom Tancredo, leads anti-immigrant hardliners.
I hear from so-called "pro-family" conservatives who say America must punish illegal immigrants -- they never mention all the employers who have gone unpunished -- and how we are a "nation of laws."
"I agree that we are ordered to obey the laws," Reyes said. "We must also pass just laws.
"Our current immigration laws have not worked, either for those who want to come here or those employers who want to hire them.
"To say we should reject the teachings of Jesus because that's the current law seems myopic.
"Jesus himself was an international refugee. His family was fleeing infanticide. I see no reference in my Bible about them having official documents when they crossed the [Egyptian] border."
Reyes is the grandson of immigrant workers in the cotton fields of the South Plains. He watched with interest as a new generation of young Tejanos marched this month, protesting a House bill that might imprison their parents and grandparents as "aggravated" criminal felons simply for overstaying a visa or crossing the border.
"This is a watershed time in the history of our state and our nation," he said.
"When Dr. King led the civil rights marches, there was a lot of opposition. But the speeches and demonstrations helped the issue bubble up to the point where our nation was willing to change our laws and make a positive step forward. This movement is just starting to bubble up."
He is not ashamed to compare the crusade for racial equality to the current campaign for legitimizing 12 million immigrants, either as guest workers or eventually as American citizens.
"It is all about justice and decency," he said.
"Where is our sense of decency for human beings who just want to survive and want their families to eat? Yes, they came without permission. But there were a lot of Americans who needed them here and wanted them here."
He spent last week in Washington and joined about 50 evangelical leaders to sign a letter supporting immigration reform that includes stronger border law enforcement and the opportunity for selected current illegal immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship.
His message is on his seminary's Web site at www.bua.edu: "Does Jesus Still Have a Mission to the Poor, the Prisoner, the Blind and the Oppressed?"
Why don't you ask your preacher the same question ?

Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. (817) 390-7538 bud @budkennedy.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists/bud_kennedy/14350708.htm

WARNING: Could be unsettling to some minds !

Rural Texas pastor bucks the norm, running for legislature as Democrat
By Hannah Elliott
Published March 15, 2006

COVINGTON, Texas (ABP) -- Pastor and politician Kerry Horn has been called an agent of Satan. He has faced country farmers trembling with rage. And his faith has been questioned by members of his own congregation. And that’s just the reaction of his “Christian”
constituents.
“People find it interesting," Horn said. "I just live with it.”
Horn’s situation is interesting, to say the least. Horn, 48, is running for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in the fall 2006 election. The fact he also is pastor of First Baptist Church of Covington, Texas, makes potential voters perk up their ears. The fact he is running as a Democrat in the deeply Republican region leaves some voters confused and others downright distressed.
After Horn’s announcement that he’d run on a Democratic ticket, he said, several locals at a community meeting got worried -- and mad. One burly fellow couldn't see any reason why a self-respecting Baptist pastor would ever associate with Democrats, let alone join the party. “I thought he was going to hit me,” Horn said.
Emotions in the House race are running high in part because, while Democrats led the state decades ago, Republicans have since dominated for years in most Texas counties. And because of close ties between the Religious Right and the Republican Party, many Bible-belt believers associate the Republican platform with Christian values. That makes Horn not only an oddity but, to some, a threat.
Many of Horn’s advocates -- some of whom are Baptist pastors themselves -- have supported Republican candidates in the past but have become sour to what they call the latest attitude change in Austin. Others have decided to vote for Horn because they trust him, no matter what political party he represents.
Joe Williams, a pipeline inspector, often eats at a diner inside Covington's busy Shell gas station. Leaning back in his overalls after lunch on a bright spring day, Williams said he’s not too picky when it comes to choosing who gets his vote.
“The number one thing people around here want is honesty,” Williams said. “If we can get a good, honest person in office, we’ll do all right.”
In his opinion, Williams said, the leadership in District 10 -- Hill and Ellis counties -- needs “new blood,” no matter what party the candidate represents.
Clint Quattlebaum eats at the same diner, the lone building between highways 171 and 67. The station gives him a place to meet friends and catch up on news.
A member of First Baptist Covington since the 1960s, Quattlebaum said he hopes Horn can improve community education, the local infrastructure and crime rates. Horn, the church's pastor for nine years, conducted Quattlebaum’s wife’s funeral several years ago, and the retired letter-carrier said locals respect the pastor.
“I like Kerry,” Quattlebaum said. “He is honest. I will vote for him. I think he has a chance.”
Horn will need more than a chance to win this race. He faces influential incumbent Jim Pitts, who has served District 10 since 1993. Pitts chairs the powerful House Committee on Appropriations and earned Texas Monthly magazine’s citation as one of Texas’ 10 best legislators in 2005.
Pitts also has endorsements from many key organizations in Texas, including the National Rifle Association, Texas Right to Life, Texas Hospital Association, Texas Farm Bureau, Texas Municipal Police Association, and Texas State Association of Fire Fighters.
But Horn is no political rookie either. He began his political career as a Republican, working as an assistant sergeant at arms in the state Senate in 1981. He graduated from Stephen F. Austin University in 1983 and worked as a field operative for the Republican lieutenant governor. Later he coordinated events for the Republican Party, worked as a consultant for legislative races, and orchestrated federal relations for Margaret Spellings, now U.S. Secretary of Education.
Still the race between Horn and Pitts is shaping up as a David-versus-Goliath clash, with Horn playing David against a party he used to promote. No matter, Horn said. Back then, he considered himself a “Rockefeller Republican,” in a time when “a conservative Democrat was more conservative than a Republican.”
“When I was there, we took great pride in our independence,” Horn said. “Washington didn’t call the shots. We took great pride in our ability to pull together for the good of Texas.”
Horn said he eventually left Austin in 1990, when he could no longer “emotionally support the issues.”
“The attitude then became very negative,” Horn said. “The Moral Majority was neither moral nor a majority. No political party can claim moral superiority over the other as long as it’s made up of the same fallen people.”
After a period of soul searching -- while serving as a deacon and Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Austin, and driving a laundry truck -- Horn began to consider a possible vocation in full-time ministry. The career move took some prompting, though, from Horn’s wife, Laura.
Horn had considered going into the ministry during high school, and he was ordained at First Baptist of Austin in 1992. But he kept the pastoral role in the background as he explored the political realm.
Then one Sunday, after he gave announcements and the pastoral prayer at First Baptist, friends mentioned that Horn should consider leading a church himself. While Horn waffled on deciding to preach, Laura secretly arranged an appointment with Robert Sloan Jr., then president of Baylor University, which had recently formed Truett Seminary.
“Sloan told me, ‘I want you in this [seminary]. You bring a dynamic to this class, a diversity,’” Horn recalled. “That first class at Truett was the brightest, most gifted group of men and women I had been around. The friendships developed there are solid and sound, and always will be.”
Matt Cook, pastor of Second Baptist in Little Rock, Ark., belonged to that first group. He and Horn participated in a preaching practicum together and often met for lunch after they graduated. Now, he said, Horn is fulfilling a desire many pastors have --to impact the world.
“Kerry will jump in and try what most of us want to do on our worst days,” Cook said. “He reminds me of an old-style Southern politician. Homespun wisdom, that’s Kerry for you. He’s not willing to be pigeon-holed.”
Cook said Horn’s challenge of running against an incumbent, and a powerful one at that, might prove daunting to others, but not to Horn.
“Kerry is an ornery enough cuss to jump in and give it a try,” Cook said. “He wouldn’t run if he didn’t want to win. But he’s more interested in getting the truth out there.”
Kyle Reese, the pastor of First Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas, agreed. He too belonged to the first graduating class of Truett Seminary.
“He’s walking a tight rope as a Democrat, but I think he can pull it off,” Reese said. “If anyone can do it, Kerry can. He knows his way around Austin.”
That knowledge of the political landscape will come in handy for Horn. For people in rural areas like Hill and Ellis counties -- which have a combined population of 143,681 and an average per capita income of roughly $20,000 -- issues like education and taxes are touchy subjects.
According to Horn, a fifth-generation Texan, schools in a community the size of Covington comprise an integral part of the town. Laura Horn works as a second-grade teacher, so Horn gets to see the system first-hand. He said leadership in Austin has frustrated local teachers, who have not received a pay raise in six years, while teachers have to meet increasingly difficult state requirements.
In the same vein, propositions to consolidate small rural schools into bigger ones and mandates urging more reporting from teachers to authorities in Austin don’t sit well with small-town educators.
“Consolidation is not the issue. Accountability is not the issue,” Horn said. “At issue is the legislature using them as a smokescreen to usurp local authority. They’ve kept us in the dark and fed us manure and think we don’t notice.”
Representing Hill and Ellis counties -- roughly 60 miles south of Dallas -- requires a political balancing act. Ellis County is on the verge of “suburban” Dallas, Horn said, and infrastructure improvement is the critical need. Meanwhile, Hill County remains more agricultural and has a need for development planning.
Because Ellis County is less affluent, cuts in Medicare and Medicaid are hitting Covington residents harder, Horn said. Prenatal care for women is an important tenant of Horn’s agenda.
Martha McGregor, the county Democratic chairperson, said Horn’s integrity will help him protect “the true family values of Texans,” including the issues about which he feels most passionate.
“Our current state leadership has underestimated the electorate's capacity to tell that their rhetoric does not match their actions,” McGregor, a practicing attorney, said. “Kerry draws attention to those inconsistencies by telling the truth and trusting the people.”
Representatives from Pitts’ office in Austin did not return phone calls for this story.
Despite his political aspirations and the demands of a campaign, Horn depicts himself as a candidate with a life -- a family life, that is. When it comes to attention and time, Horn’s family comes first, he said, and he plans to keep it that way. The Horns have a daughter in high school and a son in 8th grade.
Even if he wins, there's still a church to serve as pastor. First Baptist will remain a large priority for Horn's time and energy, even if he becomes bivocational. Both politics and the pastorate involve “helping people with issues in which they may not be able to help themselves,” he said.
But when he's doing church visitation, he's not campaigning, Horn said. He plans to keep his congregants out of his politics, he said, and “I’ve always kept politics out of the pulpit.”
Before the news of his campaign appeared in local papers, Horn sent church members a letter announcing his plan to run. “They don’t know quite what to make of it,” Horn said. “They may not know that the legislature is not a full-time job. There is the concern that my accessibility will be limited.”
Quattlebaum said many Covington locals want Horn to win, even if it takes time away from the church. “It’ll be a lot of work if he wins,” Quattlebaum said. “He’ll be busy, but he can do it.”
More challenging, at least in the minds of some critics, is how Horn reconciles his position as a pastor with some parts of the Democratic platform traditionally shunned by Baptists, such as abortion rights. Horn said he is not bound to all parts of the national Democratic agenda.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “I’ve learned that I care more about people than I do about catering to powerbrokers. As a pastor, I try to make sure the opportunity for the choice of abortion to be moot; I preach that sex outside of the bonds of marriage is wrong, no matter if you’re gay or straight.”
Horn said he has a “moral compass calibrated by a higher standard than a party platform.”
He has little patience for Christians whose political opinions are focused on certain hot-button moral issues. “Here you get enraged about abortion and homosexual action, but you wink and nod at adultery,” Horn said. “Don’t give me this holier-than-thou business when you dismiss other sins.”
Horn's impatience for “demagoguery,” as he calls it, grew out of his bout with cancer in 2004. While now 100 percent cancer-free, Horn said, it took a year to recover from the disease.
“My father died at 49,” he said. “I’m now 48, and I realize how young that was. It made me realize I’ve got a lot to offer on several different fronts. It made me a little less patient with foolishness. I just want someone to tell me the truth.”
-30-
source: http://www.abpnews.com/882.article

Apathy sweeps Texas

Admittedly, the Democratic and Republican runoffs didn’t have much excitement to lure Texans to the voting booth.
But a 2.9 percent statewide turnout is hugely embarrassing.
In Bexar County, a paltry 1.2 percent of voters participated in the runoffs.
And since the state’s two independent gubernatorial candidates have been collecting signatures for a month, apathetic Texans couldn’t claim that they were saving themselves for Kinky Friedman or Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
Only about 10 percent of the state’s registered voters cast ballots in the March primary; in Bexar County, the figure was 7 percent.
These numbers send truly depressing messages about the health of our democracy, both political parties and the level of civic commitment felt by contemporary Americans.
When citizens don’t respond to government by voting, it’s no surprise that government is unresponsive to citizens.

San Antonio Express-News
source: http://www.claremoreprogress.com/archive/article25614

Kinky working to get signatures

By Gerard MacCrossan
The Daily Times
Published April 13, 2006

The 45,540 target for registered voters signatures is in independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman’s sights. With four weeks remaining until the May 11 deadline, the Kerrville area’s only local candidate seeking the governor’s job was back home for a couple of days to mark the Jewish Passover and a couple of days off the campaign trail.
Speaking by phone from his home near Medina, the Kinkster, as he introduced himself, was frank about the process for petitioning an independent candidate onto the ballot. If successful, he likely will face independent (now Republican Texas Comptroller) Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Democrat Chris Bell and incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry in the November general election.
“ This was designed to keep us off the ballot, but it’s really put us on the map all over the state,” he said. “It’s fun and it’s had an odd effect. It’s inspiring ... particularly the young people; they’re getting on board.
“If you’re old enough to die in Iraq, you’re old enough to fix Texas,” he said he tells them.
On the issues, Friedman started with Texas’ needs.
“We’re 50th in education and in care for the elderly (among the U.S. states),” he said. The fix will come by refusing to meet with lobbyists — which he said former Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota did for his term in office.
“Every time the bell rings, a lobbyist gets his wings,” he described the current legislative process.
Fixing finances
The state’s financing needs revising. Funds could come from introducing casino gambling and retaining the money, and he suggested seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong as the gambling commissioner.
“We invented Texas hold ’em and we can’t even play it here,” he said. “Have people like Lance Armstrong in your administration ... a guy like that who irritated the French for seven years.”
A Internet poll this week in the San Antonio Business Journal put Kinky at 40 percent of the vote, with Rick Perry projected as getting 32 percent. The poll is interesting because it comes from business people who typically are conservative, he said.
“What people really want in Texas, they are drooling for a little bit of honesty,” Friedman said. “I think it was George Washington who said, ‘Politicians need common sense and honesty.’”
Friedman said he doesn’t plan to involve himself in the special session effort to fix school finance.
“I’ll stay as far away as I can,” he said. “If Perry was a CEO and this was a business, we’d have fired him five years ago. They (the Republicans) forget they weren’t hired to attack the Democrats. They were hired to serve the people of Texas.”
Cigars in Ingram
Friedman’s trademark cigar came under fire in a letter to the editor in Tuesday’s Times. In a visit to Ingram Tom Moore High School, he addressed students with cigar in hand and was criticized for violating school rules and promoting a habit that impacts health.
Responding, Friedman said he believes children should be treated like adults.
“I did not smoke the cigar on the school property; I held it,” he said. “I think running the school buses on biodiesel would do more to help the lady’s son’s asthma than seeing a man holding a cigar.”
The situation was similar to the furor raised when he was accused of drinking a can of Guinness during the Dallas St. Patrick’s Day parade. Both incidents, as well as legislation on gay marriage and cheerleading, deflect from the important issues, he said.
“The governor just discovered there is a border (with Mexico),” he said. “This is what (Sen.) John McCain and I talked about (at Texas A&M University last week). I’m not afraid to offend people. The No. 1 thing about politicians is they are afraid to offend people.
“To pretend the border doesn’t exist, like Perry has done for six years, that doesn’t fix it,” Friedman said. “I believe it’s a political reason. Don’t offend the Hispanics; they’re trending Republican now.”
It is the anti-immigration marches in Dallas that are attracting attention. He said the U.S. borders with Mexico need to be secured and green card programs that protect America and immigrant workers introduced.
“Let’s admit we have a serious problem,” Friedman said. “We can’t deport 11 million people. We need their help really.”
He said Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley pose the question “What are we going to do with all these Mexicans coming over here?”
The answer is education, he said.
Who’ll be governor in 2007
Friedman’s assessment is if the voter turnout is low, Rick Perry will be governor. A high voter turnout will put the Kinkster in Austin, he said.
Money is a key to modern elections.
“That’s what Perry and Strayhorn are counting on,” Friedman said. “They will saturate the TV for the last two months. But the guy with the most money shouldn’t win.”
He said the primary turnouts showed that there is interest in the independent candidates.
“It was one of the lowest turnouts on record for the modern times,” Friedman said. “We believe so many people have saved themselves for Kinky. If God wanted us to vote, he’d have given us candidates.
“The people are angry in Texas,” he added. “With good reason; the politicians are out of touch.”
He said he believes Strayhorn miscalculated her ability to run as an independent.
In Kinky’s only previous run for elected office — an unsuccessful bid for justice of the peace in Kerr County — he ran as a Republican because “I couldn’t do it as a Democrat.”
Strayhorn — who like Perry started out as a Democrat — doesn’t have a party’s support, which will hurt no matter how much money she has.
“Money doesn’t vote, people do,” he said. “If there is a small turnout, Perry will beat her. If there is a big turnout like Ann Richards had (against Clayton Williams) — 50 percent of the voters — I am going to be the governor.
“It’s a sad state that the governor is hoping for a small turnout,” he said. “ If I lose, I retire in a petulant snit and never speak again to anybody.”
He doesn’t believe that he will lose, Friedman added.
“I think this is going to be a real moment for Texas,” he said.

For more information about the Kinky Friedman campaign, visit www.kinkyfriedman.com.
source: http://web.dailytimes.com/story.lasso?ewcd=cfb03ae8a9ec426d

Personal Responsibility for the Men Too (and their brand of Religion), Steve ?

The Brownwood Bulletin
Friday April 14, 2006
Op Ed: Columnists

Personal responsibility lacking in recent court cases — Steve Nash

It’s open season on children — been that way for awhile.
We declared that with a Supreme Court decision in 1973, and since then, we’ve had many occasions to affirm that we really don’t put much value on the lives of children.
The most recent affirmation: we gave a “pass” to a woman in North Texas who severed her 10-month-old daughter’s arms with a kitchen knife. The woman claimed at her capital murder trial that she was not guilty by reason of insanity, and the judge declared a mistrial after jurors couldn’t reach a verdict.
Then the judge heard the case, and he found her not guilty.
That verdict indicates that the little girl’s life didn’t matter, her death inconsequential. Do you ever wonder how much that child suffered or what her final moments of life must have been like?
What horrendous act did this child ever commit to deserve this?
The prosecutor in the case was quoted in a recent Associated Press article as saying the verdict shows lawmakers need to revisit the state’s insanity defense law. You think?
A state legislator was quoted by the AP as defending the verdict and existing insanity laws. He said there’s gotta be room for some common sense in these cases.
Exact-a-mundo.
I’m just not seeing any.
My point is not to wax obsessive about this particular case, although it does infuriate me. My point is not to argue about supposed insanity as a defense, although I do tend to reject it as an excuse.
What I can’t fathom that is in too many — not every, but too many — cases, we just don’t seem to get excited about the suffering and murders of children. Too often we go out of our way to make or accept excuses for the perpetrators and then, if we mete out any punishment, we go easy. In too many cases, animals have more rights than children.
The AP reminds us that the case involving the severed arms is the latest in a string of cases in which women murder their children and then plead insanity.
We have all but given a pass to Andrea Yates, who confessed to drowning her five children in a bath tub but claimed innocence by insanity.
Another Texas woman was acquitted by reason of insanity for bludgeoning her two children to death in 2003.
We watch casually as young women secretly give birth, then callously kill their own babies or simply abandon them in a trash can to die.
It takes a lot to shock us — something along the lines of Columbine or other school shootings. That finally makes us take a little notice, but unless the perpetrators end their own lives in the carnage, we really don’t do much to the shooters — we just go back to making excuses for them.
But should anyone be shocked at any of these events? We’ve been devaluing life for a long time. Make no mistake, we reap what we sow, and I believe the violence against children — and in some cases, committed by children — is the crop we’re sowing from the Supreme Court’s ruling on “privacy” in 1973.
And I’m not suggesting local law enforcement officials don’t take cases of child abuse or child murder seriously.
One local officer, speaking off the cuff, suggested an appropriate consequence for the woman who cut off her baby’s arms, and it wasn’t pretty.
———
It’s always somebody else’s fault.
According to another recent AP article, the father of a freshman who died two years ago of a heroin overdose at a New England university has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, claiming lax supervision contributed to his daughter’s death.
This was a terrible event, but maybe the young woman’s decision to use heroin contributed to her death. The lawsuit claims her death could have been prevented if university officials provided more student counseling and kept drug dealers off campus, according to the AP.
I am sorry that this happened, but where is the concept of personal responsibility? We apparently think it’s someone else’s responsibility to control or excuse our own behavior.
We can go from the tragic to the ridiculous to see that principle. Oh, that coffee is hot? Well, gee ...
In 2004, a young woman’s family sued a major retailer in north Texas after she bought a shotgun at the store and used it to kill herself. The woman was a “diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic (who) assaulted police officers and was arrested for attacking a fellow customer at a (nearby store owned by the same company) where she had a prescription for anti-psychotic medication,” the AP reported.
“Given all those signs, her parents say, another (store) just seven miles away should never have sold her the shotgun she used to kill herself at age 23 in 2003.”
I am sorry for this woman’s problems and her ultimate suicide. I do not accept the lawsuit’s contention that it was the store’s fault.

Steve Nash writes his column for the Brownwood Bulletin on Thursdays. He may be reached by e-mail at steve.nash@brownwoodbulletin.com.

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/04/13/op_ed/columnists/opinion05.txt
------------------------
Note from Steve Harris, Bulletin Reporter/Columnist Steve Nash will keep his distance from articles like the ones linked below which point out the obvious similarities in these cases.

Read about them here

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Read about them here

Did you hear this on the Brownwood Airwaves ? I don't think so !

Student fights write-up for showing U.S. flag

By Greg Moran
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
April 13, 2006
DON KOHLBAUER / Union-Tribune
Malia Fontana, a sophomore at Fallbrook High School, received an incident report in her student file for tucking a small American flag in the pocket of her pants. She says her right to freedom of speech was violated.
A small American flag, tucked into the back right-hand pocket of her pants.
And for that, the Fallbrook High School sophomore was stopped by a security officer, taken to an assistant principal's office and written up in an incident report that was placed in her student file.
Malia, who is an honors student, said she was shocked, then dismayed at what she believes was a violation of her free speech rights on March 31.
She and her mother contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties, and the ACLU dispatched a letter to district officials demanding that they remove the report from Malia's file.
Update
Dispute over flag at Fallbrook High School leads to inquiry (April 14, 2006)
The ACLU also is demanding that the district fashion a policy that conforms to long-standing law allowing students the right to express themselves on campus. If the district does not agree, a federal civil rights suit will be filed on behalf of Malia, said Kevin Keenan, the ACLU executive director in San Diego.
“I didn't think it was right,” Malia, 15, said of the school's actions.
Officials with the school district, which is on spring break this week, did not respond to phone messages and e-mails seeking comment.
Malia said other students also were told to put flags away, including a friend who was told one day before Malia's encounter to put away an American flag bandana.
Seeing that spurred Malia – after talking it over with her mother, Nikki Fontana – to take the small flag to school the next day.
That was the week of emotional student demonstrations across the county over proposed revisions to immigration laws. In Oceanside on March 29 student protesters faced off with police and hurled milk cartons and other objects, prompting officers to respond with pepper spray.
The fracas led to Oceanside officials closing the middle and high schools for two days. Superintendent Ken Noonan then banned students from bringing flags on campus, contending that they were inciting misconduct.
He was roundly criticized because the ban, eventually lifted after tensions eased, prevented displays by students of the American flag, as well as the Mexican flag.
The flags had become powerful symbols – used by both sides in the debate – during the demonstrations.
While Oceanside was in turmoil, however, Fallbrook had a small and peaceful demonstration of about 50 students, and Malia said tensions were not running high at the campus.
Nonetheless, she said she was approached by a security guard during the lunch hour and told to put away the flag sticking out of her pocket.
Malia, who wrote a paper in eighth grade advocating a Children's Bill of Rights, asked why. “I said, 'I'm an American citizen. Why can't I wear the American flag?,'” she said.
Her refusal landed her in the office of the assistant principal. Malia eventually agreed to put away the flag and returned to class.
But an incident report, which can lead to more discipline such as Saturday detention or worse, was placed in her file. Malia's mother was told by school officials later that it would remain there until six months after her daughter graduated.
Nikki Fontana said her daughter has had no discipline problems in the past and was simply expressing herself.
“She wasn't raising the flag in anyone's face, causing a disturbance or anything,” Nikki Fontana said. “No one approached her and said they were offended. Her teachers didn't say anything.”
Keenan of the ACLU said the district appears to have no firm policy regarding what students can and can't do to express themselves. He said the law does allow school to restrict student expression, but only in certain circumstances.
“The law is very clear,” he said. “Only if they (school officials) can show that there has been or will be material and substantial disruption of school activities can they censor expression.”
He said that standard allows school officials leeway, while protecting student rights of expression.

Greg Moran: (619) 542-4586; greg.moran@uniontrib.com
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060414/pl_nm/iraq_usa_dc_6

And how do the Brownwood Republican "Talking Heads" handle this news ?

Generals clamor for Rumsfeld's ouster

By Steve Holland Thu Apr 13, 10:42 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two more retired U.S. generals called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign on Thursday, claiming the chief architect of the Iraq operation ignored years of Pentagon planning for a U.S. occupation and should be held accountable for the chaos there.
As the high-ranking officers accused Rumsfeld of arrogance and ignoring his field commanders, the White House was forced to defend a man who has been a lightning rod for criticism over a war that has helped drive President George W. Bush's public approval ratings to new lows.
Six retired generals have now called for Rumsfeld to step down, including two who spoke out on Thursday.
Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni added to the pressure for Rumsfeld's scalp by telling CNN that Rumsfeld should be held accountable for a series of blunders, starting with "throwing away 10 years worth of planning, plans that had taken into account what we would face in an occupation of Iraq."
His views were supported by other commanders who served under Rumsfeld.
"I really believe that we need a new secretary of defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him," said retired Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, who led the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq.
"Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces," he told CNN.
Retired Major Gen. John Riggs told National Public Radio that Rumsfeld had helped create an atmosphere of "arrogance" among the Pentagon's top civilian leadership.
"They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda. I think that's a mistake, and that's why I think he should resign," Riggs said.
But at the White House, the 73-year-old Rumsfeld drew unflinching support. "Yes, the president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a very fine job during a challenging period," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
Recently retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, urged Rumsfeld on Wednesday to resign.
In recent weeks, retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold and Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton have also spoke up.
The demands for Rumsfeld's departure came as opinion polls show eroding public support for the 3-year-old Iraq war in which about 2,360 U.S. troops have died and Bush is struggling to bolster Americans' confidence in the war effort.
IGNORING THE CALLS
Rumsfeld has offered at least twice to resign, but each time Bush has turned him down.
Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff said Rumsfeld is ignoring the calls for him to quit and they have not been a distraction.
"Has he talked to the White House? The answer is no, he's not. And two, the question of resignation: was he considering it? No."
Ruff added: "I don't know how many generals there are -- a couple thousand, at least. And they're going to have opinions."
Critics have accused Rumsfeld of bullying senior military officers and disregarding their views. They often cite how Rumsfeld dismissed then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's opinion a month before the 2003 invasion that occupying Iraq could require "several hundred thousand troops," not the smaller force Rumsfeld would send.
But retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Mike DeLong rejected the idea that new leadership was needed at the Pentagon.
"Dealing with Secretary Rumsfeld is like dealing with a CEO," he told CNN. "When you walk in to him, you've got to be prepared. You've got to know what you're talking about. If you don't, you're summarily dismissed. But that's the way it is, and he's effective."
The White House pointed to comments supportive of Rumsfeld from Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and said criticism was to be expected at a time of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We are a nation at war and we are a nation that is going through a military transformation. Those are issues that tend to generate debate and disagreement and we recognize that," McClellan said.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan)
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060414/pl_nm/iraq_usa_dc_6
----------------
Answer; These talking heads try and discredit the Generals by pondering if the Generals have book deals in the works ! Just like the Brownwood Republicans who try and label the Tillmans as "Another Sheehan". These must be the same Brownwood Republicans who will do or say anything in the name of GOD ( and this is a quote from a Republican Chief of Staff regarding Brown County ) !

Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House

By Larry Margasak The Associated Press

Monday 10 April 2006

Washington - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 - as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.
The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.
Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.
Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.
Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.
The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.
A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.
A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls - mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office - between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.
There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.
Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.
Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors "tried a very narrow case," said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.
The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices "at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day."
While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.
By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.
Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.
Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.
"As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.
Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.
"On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington," Kelner said.
"If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day," he said.
source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041006Q.shtml

The State of the Republican Party from the Conservative National Review

GEORGE'S TAKE
The State of the GOP, 2006

John Fund, after discussing how disgruntled the GOP base may be, has it exactly right: "Republicans have appeared to the world to be as unprincipled and rudderless as the politicians they campaigned against back in 1994. Unless they change course dramatically in the seven months between now and Election Day, they may well find themselves facing the same fate as the Democratic political dinosaurs of that year that they replaced." I'm disgruntled, too, and I'm going to get it all of my chest this morning: I've never voted for a Democrat in a general election in my life, and I don't expect to anytime soon, but it's been impossible for me over the past couple of years to get enthused about the Republican party. I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption — and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true — foreign and military policy incompetence. Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over.
[ 04/10/2006 07:57 AM ]

source: http://conways.nationalreview.com/archives/094549.asp

Quote

"'I will stand with Will Rogers and Mark Twain any day over Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff," ~ - Kinky Friedman in San Angelo ( http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4608435,00.html)

"Common Sense" Kinky in San Angelo ......

Politics with a punch line
Offbeat candidate full of picnic spirit

By PAUL A. ANTHONY, panthony@sastandardtimes.com or 659-8237
April 9, 2006
To raucous cheers and sprays of beer, gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman made his pitch at the San Angelo Picnic with a campaign speech that was both a sermon of populism and a stand-up comedy routine.
As volunteers with petitions circled through the several thousand who attended the eighth annual outdoor concert along the Concho River, Friedman stood on stage - can of beer in one hand, cigar in the other - and delivered his well-worn diatribe against the powers in Austin.
''MLK isn't a street; JFK isn't an airport,'' he said. ''They were people just like us. We can make a difference, just like them.''
Friedman made his appearance, his second of the day in San Angelo, as a friend of Blaine's Pub owner Blaine Martin, who founded the music festival in 1999.
The humorist, author and musician is one of two high-profile candidates trying to gather the 45,540 petition signatures necessary to be on the November ballot. State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn also is looking to be on the ballot, while Republican incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Chris Bell, a former U.S. representative, won their respective primaries last month.
''It's not so much that we're Republican, Democrat or independent,'' Martin said. ''I'll support anyone that tries hard to get on the ballots.''
Earlier in the day, Friedman stopped at the Chicken Farm Art Center for a private fundraiser before heading to the picnic at the Bill Aylor Sr. Memorial RiverStage.
Friedman has been criticized for relying too much on wit and not enough on wisdom in his campaign, a charge he deflected in an interview before his speech by comparing himself with similar men who laced political commentary with humor.
''I will stand with Will Rogers and Mark Twain any day over Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff,'' Friedman said, referencing the former House Majority Leader and the former Washington lobbyist - both of whom have been the focus of numerous ethical complaints and legal charges.
While on stage, Friedman touched on his main campaign points - legalizing gambling in the state and using the tax money to fund education.
Backstage, he also advocated the removal of the standardized Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and the legalization of corporate sponsorship for high school sports.
''Do those three things,'' he said, ''and I expect you're going to be fine.''
Friedman often has been described as a maverick as he has launched fiery barbs at the Legislature's inability to pass a constitutional school finance plan and the ethical lapses of those in office.
It's an image he has embraced, frequently mentioning the last independent candidate to become governor of Texas - Sam Houston.
Throughout the day, volunteers for Friedman's campaign - mostly Austin college students - milled through the crowd, seeking signatures for their petitions.
By the time Friedman took the stage, hundreds of picnic attendees who had not voted in the March 7 primary had signed up. After his speech, small crowds surged toward the volunteers.
''Oh my God, yeah, he should have the right'' to be on the ballot, said Rebecca Stephenson, who came from Abilene and signed the petition when approached by Friedman volunteer Carolyn Crowder. But, she added, when asked if she would vote for him: ''I'll have to hear a little more.''
Friedman's volunteers said they didn't know how well the signature drive was going because many across the state will not turn in their petitions until later, but they expressed unwavering confidence that he will make the ballot.
One volunteer, Central High School student Kristen Vanderzant, will still be 17 the day of the election, yet she stood in the middle of the outdoor arena, holding her clipboard with petition sheets attached, flagging down potential signatures.
''All my friends love Kinky, and they talked me into him,'' she said. ''I'm too young to vote, but I'm old enough to know he would be good in office.''
source: http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_4608435,00.html

Would this Republican be Tarred and Feathered in Brownwood ?

VIEWPOINTS
Conniving, greedy, lying and deceitful
Thursday, April 06, 2006 - Bangor Daily News << Back

By Duncan E. Beaton

I have been a registered Republican since the early 1950s, as has my wife, Dot. In fact our dedication to the Grand Old Party was such that we used to ride our horses around our Buckingham Township, Pa., neighborhood with Republican candidates' bumper stickers on their backsides. Now, we never considered the implication, but we found out later that one of those candidates was a real "horsesass."
If we had horses today, that's right where we'd stick George Bush's bumper sticker, on our horses' asses.
This is the worst administration in our memory. As a Fiscal Conservative, I began disliking Bush when he proposed major tax cuts as a means to get elected in 2000. Despite that, given the choice of two inept presidential candidates we voted for Bush as "the lesser of two evils." Little did we know. Once elected he immediately borrowed $49 billion to fund the massive tax cut, which primarily benefited the wealthy, increased the deficit and the national debt.
After Sept. 11, 2001, I wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Bangor Daily News condemning the atrocity, but suggesting we need to find the root cause which drove those Arabs to do what they did. Despite numerous articles by people more knowledgeable than I or this administration on matters of the Middle East, urging the same, it has stupidly maintained its tunnel vision focusing only on terrorism and the terrorist, but not the root cause.
Instead, three years ago, Cheney (Halliburton), Bush and Rumsfeld, had allegedly already made plans to invade Iraq which many people suspect was for its oil. They built the case for war by giving us and Congress false information about Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and its involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. All lies with no foundation in fact. So, for illegitimate reasons, we invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq, which was not threatening us.
Three years later we still have no business being there. Neither the Iraqis nor we can safeguard their oil facilities. Their infrastructure throughout the country is in shambles and the newly "elected" government is mostly inoperable because of opposition from various fanatic religious factions and insurgents.
We have lost nearly 2,400 troops and thousands more have been maimed for life. Forty thousand to 60,000 Iraqis have been killed and probably 100,000 wounded and maimed as well, nearly all civilians. Currently, our troops are at risk from fanatical insurgents and religious zealots. They should not be.
Well, the time has come, long overdue, for our two senators to disavow this deceitful and conniving president and lead the Congress into forcing him to withdraw our troops from Iraq starting immediately. George "Dubya" never should have put our sons and daughters in harm's way for such a brainless mistake.
In fiscal matters, from 2001 through 2008, Bush will increase the National Debt by $3.919 trillion to a projected total of $9.689 trillion by 2008 according to the Office of Management and Budget. That's an average Annual Deficit of $489 billion, and a 72 percent increase in the national debt. Yet, he has the gall to cut many domestic programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Half or more of this debt increase has or will go toward financing this stupid Iraq war.
We can't impeach Bush because that would put Cheney in the Presidency. Unfortunately we have no recall mechanism that would allow us to remove an administration for egregious malfeasance in office.
The sad truth is that we are stuck with this deceitful collection of incompetents until 2009. Perhaps the time has come to develop a more intelligent process for selecting presidential candidates that will save us from getting another loose cannon on a rolling deck.

Duncan E. Beaton is the former town manager of Easton and Mapleton-Castle Hill-Chapman, and is the current chairman of the Aroostook County Finance Committee.

source:source: http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=131659

Why I'm Joining the Republican Party

by JDRhoades

Wed Apr 05, 2006 at 03:24:16 PM PDT
It suddenly occurs to me that I've been going about this all wrong. As I wrote in a recent newspaper column, life could be a lot easier for me if I were to join the GOP.
JDRhoades's diary :: ::
My good friends, I have a momentous decision to announce.
For years, I have proudly listed my voter registration as "Unaffiliated." I've been proud of my stance as a political independent. But in these troubled times, with deep divisions that have rent our country, I think it's time I made a stand and declared for one party or the other.
So I've decided to become a Republican.
I know this comes as a shock to some of you. And, I confess, it wasn't an easy decision for me. After all, there are a lot of things that the Republicans have claimed to stand for lately that I don't agree with: Teaching religious theories in the public schools. Warrantless wiretaps in blatant disregard of well-established law. Stuff like that.
But then I looked around and I realized that all of that stuff is just window dressing. The current Republican Party stands for just one principle. That principle is summed up in the acronym IOKIYAR, which stands for It's OK If You're A Republican.
I think, deep down, I've known about this for years. I mean, Republicans continued to lionize former Education Secretary William Bennett, even after it was revealed in 2003 that Bennett had lost up to $8 million at the Las Vegas gambling tables.
Now, if I were a famous Democrat, losing $8,000, much less $8 million, would get me pilloried by every right-wing pundit in Christendom. But not ol' Gamblin' Bill. It's nobody's business, right-wing pundits insisted. It's a victimless crime, after all. What they were really saying, of course is: IOKIYAR.
Then there's Rudy Giuliani. Rudy's had, shall we say, a little fidelity problem. At one point, his wife had to get a restraining order to keep Rudy from moving his mistress into the mayoral mansion, considering that said wife and kids were still living in the mansion at the time.
If a Democratic elected official gets accused of a little extramarital hanky-panky in the house provided for him by the government -- well, need I say more? But IOKIYAR! Rudy was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention. He's even being touted as a possible successor to Lord Dubbya Bush.
I could go on. Rush Limbaugh's admitted prescription drug addiction. Sexual predator Bill O'Reilly's obscene phone calls and falafel fetish. And, of course, there's Dick Cheney's whole shooting your buddy in the face and telling the police to buzz off till the next morning thing. These guys aren't just tolerated by the GOP. They're heroes.
I took note of all of these things at the time they were happening. Fool that I am, however, I never realized what IOKIYAR could mean for me personally.
But the scales finally fell from my eyes after I heard the story of former Bush domestic policy adviser Claude Allen.
Allen, a former aide to Republican icon Jesse Helms, a former Bush nominee for a judgeship in the Fourth Circuit, recently left his cushy job at the White House to "spend more time with his family." Then, in a shocking twist, Allen was arrested and charged with, of all things, defrauding Target stores. Allegedly, Allen was buying merchandise, taking it to his car, going back in with the receipt, picking the same item off the shelves, and going to the service desk and demanding a refund.
Now, a black Democratic politican (say, Jesse Jackson) accused of this sort of thing would be lucky not to be given a symbolic public flogging of Clintonian proportions. It's absolutely true that a person in Allen's position committing this type of offense is showing signs of a serious mental illness and that he deserves our sympathy.
I doubt seriously, however, that a Democrat, if caught committing petty theft, could expect any sympathy from the compassionate conservatives of the right. But that's exactly what Allen's getting from no less a source than the president his ownself.
"If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen's life, and that is really sad," George Dubbya said after hearing the news.
And if Republican pundits and bloggers mention it at all, their tone ranges from sympathy for Allen's plight, to suggestions that the crime was actually committed by Allen's "Evil Twin" (no, I didn't make that up) to (and this is the most common) indignation at those awful, awful, AWFUL liberals for daring to even bring this up.
And that's when it hit me. The Republican Party is the place for me. Because whether it's adultery, drug addiction, gambling or petty theft, you can always count on the party to pull together, circle the wagons and back you up.
Not that I'm planning any of those things, of course, but, you know, stuff happens. And it's got to be a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that, whatever your personal failings or peccadilloes, IOKIYAR. Next week, I'm headed down to join up.
Now if I could only get my wife on board with this ...
source: http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/5/182416/0331

QUOTE

" A good district attorney can indict a ham sandwich if he wants to " ~ - Republican Tom DeLay’s Defender and fellow Texan, Republican Rep. John Carter

What's Up in Brownwood ?

Brown County official charged with theft maintains her innocence

By Celinda Emison / emisonc@reporternews.com
April 7, 2006

Posted 10:47 a.m. BROWNWOOD — Brown County’s tax assessor/collector was indicted and arrested Thursday and charged with theft, Texas Ranger Nick Hanna said Friday.
Linda Lewis Parker, 52, of Bangs, was arrested Thursday after a grand jury handed down an indictment in 35th District Court. Parker faces charges of theft by a public servant of more than $1,500 and less than $20,000; and for recording a false name and information as part of her duties involving registration of vehicles.
Hanna said Parker was charged with the theft of $11,733. The money was missing from accounts for vehicle registration for the Texas Department of Transportation, and for the county’s road and bridge fund.
Hanna and District Attorney Investigator Vance Hill arrested Parker at the Brown County Courthouse. She was booked into the Brown County Jail around 4:30 p.m. and released just before 5 p.m. Thursday on bonds totaling $10,000.
The charges are third-degree felonies and Parker could face two to 10 years in prison with a $10,000 fine for each charge.
It was unknown Friday morning whether Brown County officials would allow Parker to continue working, but Parker said she planned to show up for work.
Hanna said he has been conducting the investigation since March 10 and has interviewed all of the employees in the tax assessor’s office.
From her home in Bangs on Friday, Parker maintained her innocence. As of Friday, Parker had not hired an attorney.
She said she reported the missing funds Feb. 1 after balancing her books for November, December and January.
"I went straight to the auditor’s office and reported the missing funds and asked what to do," she explained.
Neither Hanna, nor Brown County Auditor Nina Cox would confirm whether Parker reported the missing money.
Parker said that in March, she took out a personal loan to reimburse the county for the missing funds.
"I just wanted the funds to be there so we could operate the office during the investigation," Parker said. "I felt like it was my responsibility to put the money back in the accounts since I am the elected official responsible for the state and the county’s money."
Hanna confirmed that Parker reimbursed the funds on March 15 and that the money is being held in an escrow account.
Parker said she and four other employees work in the tax assessors office and all of the employees had the combination to the office’s safe during the time the funds came up missing.
She said Friday she had no idea she was going to be indicted or arrested.
"I’m basically in a state of shock," she said. "I will go back to work because I am responsible for what happens in that office."
Parker, who was elected to office in 1997, has worked in the tax assessor’s office for the past 15 years. Parker ran on the Democratic ticket in 2004 and was re-elected.

source: http://www.reporternews.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4603826,00.html
-----------------
Brown County official indicted
Tax assessor/collector charged with theft of state and county transportation funds

By Celinda Emison / emisonc@reporternews.com
April 8, 2006

BROWNWOOD - Brown County's tax assessor/collector was indicted and arrested Thursday and charged with theft, Texas Ranger Nick Hanna said.
Linda Lewis Parker, 52, of Bangs, was arrested Thursday at the Brown County Courthouse after a grand jury handed down an indictment in 35th District Court. County attorney Shane Britton was preparing a petition Friday to have Parker removed from office. An interim assessor had not been named by Friday afternoon.
Parker, who was released Thursday from the Brown County Jail on bonds totaling $10,000, said Friday she was shocked by her arrest and maintains her innocence. She reported to work briefly Friday and said she plans to return Monday.
''I'm basically in a state of shock,'' she said. ''I will go back to work because I am responsible for what happens in that office.''
Parker faces third-degree felony charges of theft by a public servant of more than $1,500 and less than $20,000; and of recording a false name and information as part of her duties involving registration of vehicles.
If convicted, Parker could face two to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine on each charge.Hanna said Parker was charged with the theft of $11,733. The money was missing from accounts for vehicle registration for the Texas Department of Transportation, and from Brown County's road and bridge fund.
District Attorney Investigator Vance Hill said the investigation began in mid-March when a check written on the road and bridge fund account bounced.
''That discovery led to an audit that revealed numerous cash deposits that had not been made,'' Hill said.
Hill said Parker is also accused of registering a vehicle in her mother's name, showing a large down payment to ''reduce the tax paid on the vehicle.''
Parker, who has not hired an attorney, said she reported the missing funds Feb. 1 after balancing her books for November, December and January.
''I went straight to the auditor's office and reported the missing funds and asked what to do,'' she said.
Neither Hanna, Hill nor Brown County Auditor Nina Cox would confirm whether Parker reported the missing money.
Parker said that in March, she took out a personal loan to reimburse the county for the missing funds.
''I felt like it was my responsibility to put the money back in the accounts since I am the elected official responsible for the state and the county's money,'' Parker said.
Parker said she and four other employees work in the tax assessors office and all of the employees knew the combination to the office's safe during the period when the funds came up missing.
Hanna confirmed that Parker reimbursed the funds March 15. That the money is being held in an escrow account.
Linda Lewis Parker
Has worked in the Brown County tax assessor's office for 15 years.
Was first elected tax assessor/collector in 1997.
Defeated Republican Towanna Nail in the 2004 election.
source: http://reporternews.com/abil/nw_local/article/0,1874,ABIL_7959_4605571,00.html
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Saturday April 8, 2006

News
Petition readied to remove Parker

By Steve Nash — Brownwood Bulletin

A bounced check on a county account sparked an investigation that led to the indictment of Brown County Tax Assessor-Collector Linda Lewis Parker, a law enforcement official said Friday.
In other developments Friday:
Brown County Attorney Shane Britton said he was preparing a petition seeking the removal of Parker from office.
An eight-paragraph indictment for theft by a public servant, unsealed Friday in 35th District Court, contained details of the state’s case against Parker. Audits discovered nearly $12,000 in outstanding cash deposits in Parker’s office, officials have said.
Parker, 52, maintained her innocence, saying she did not steal $11,773 in county funds. “I didn’t take it. I wish I knew where it was, but I don’t,” Parker said.
Parker was arrested late Thursday afternoon after the Brown County Grand Jury returned two indictments against her. She was released on bonds totaling $10,000.
In addition to the theft indictment, Parker was charged by indictment with “false name, false information and forgery,” court documents state.
In that indictment, Parker is alleged to have provided, in October 2005, “false or incorrect information” on an application for a vehicle title on which the down payment was listed as a rebate, documents state.
Each of the indictments is a third degree felony, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, according to the state penal code.
District attorney’s investigator Vance Hill said the theft investigation “initially began when one of the accounts handled through (Parker’s office) had a returned check on it” in January.
Hill said the bounced check was on a road and bridge account and led to audits by County Auditor Nina Cox and certified public accountant Weldon Stark. The audits found that numerous cash deposits were missing, Hill said.
Parker said in an earlier interview that she determined herself that the funds were missing when she reconciled her books in early February.
“No comment on that,” Hill said.
According to the indictment, authorities allege that Parker took county funds on eight occasions in January 2006.
While Parker has said she did not take the money, she said she obtained a personal loan and offered to reimburse the county for the missing funds. Officials said the money from Parker has been placed into an escrow account pending the outcome of the investigation.
Britton said he was working Friday on a petition seeking Parker’s removal from office, but he had not completed it by Friday afternoon. The petition will be filed in 35th District Court.
Britton said he was tied up Friday, along with felony prosecutors Micheal Murray and Perry Sims, in a deposition related to the case of another official accused of wrongdoing — Precinct 1 Constable Donnie Barnum. He was indicted in November on two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with evidence.
Barnum also faces a petition, filed by Britton, seeking his removal from office.
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/04/08/news/news02.txt
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Saturday April 8, 2006

News
Tax assessor-collector hears words of support
By Steve Nash — Brownwood Bulletin

Linda Lewis Parker arrived at the courthouse Friday morning to find two sheriff’s officials waiting for her. She left about an hour later, saying she’ll be back in her office Monday and garnering the support of some backers.
As she walked to her car, two well-wishers hugged her and offered their support.
In between her arrival and departure, Parker met briefly in the courthouse with sheriff’s Lt. Ellis Johnson and deputy Wayne Coffman, then visited her office, where she met with district attorney’s investigator Vance Hill.
Parker, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, arrived at the courthouse around 10 a.m.
Before she arrived, Brown County Judge Ray West, speaking in the courthouse, said Parker had a right to go to her office and work if she chose to.
West said, however, “My preference is that, under the present circumstances, it would be best if she did not, in the immediate future, be present in the courthouse.
“The law of the state of Texas is clear that until action is taken to remove her, she is the tax collector. She is an elected official. I think it would be a distraction to her staff. They have a job to do. We don’t need the distraction.”
As West spoke, Parker, Ellis and Johnson walked into the empty commissioners courtroom. Several minutes later, Parker left the commissioners courtroom and walked toward the county tax assessor-collector’s office and entered her private office.
“They don’t want me staying,” Parker said. “I think Ray (West) has already removed me from my job.”
Parker walked into the tax assessor-collector’s office, where she met with Hill in her private office for several minutes.
“We’re just here to make sure there’s no problem,” Johnson said of his and Coffman’s presence. “It’s very emotional for everybody.”
Johnson said later that he and Coffman had not asked her to leave but had told her she could remove personal items from her office.
After Hill met with Parker, he explained the purpose of his meeting. “She just wanted some clarification on what she was charged with,” Hill said, speaking on the courthouse steps.
As Parker walked out to her car, Sheila Richardson, executive secretary and treasurer of the Brown County Democratic Party, emerged from the party headquarters across from the courthouse and hugged Parker, who ran as a Democrat.
Richardson offered words of encouragement and said Brown County Democrats support her. “Oh, heavens yes, heavens yes, 100 percent,” Richardson said when asked if Parker has their support. “Every one of us.”
Barbara Eldred, who is also active in the Brown County Democratic Party, came outside from the party headquarters and expressed support.
“It means a lot to have everybody’s support,” Parker said.
Parker said she was leaving after only a short visit because she had matters to tend to. Saying again that she’ll return to her office Monday, Parker acknowledged, “I guess it is going to be a little awkward.”
Parker said later that she won’t put in a full day’s work Monday. She said she doesn’t know how long she will be there but said, “I have some business” there.
Parker said she did not yet have a lawyer. “I hate to hire an attorney but I guess I’d better,” she said.
After Parker drove away, Richardson, Eldred and several others inside the Democratic Party headquarters said they believe Parker is innocent.
“Linda is a wonderful person, and that is not in her DNA to take anything that didn’t belong to her,” Richardson said.
“I think (the indictment is) a big mistake. If Linda Parker can go to jail, any of us can go to jail. We’re as honest as the day is long, and so is she. We don’t know everything that’s going on, but we do know who Linda is. That’s just not Linda.”

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2006/04/08/news/news03.txt
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From the Brownwood Bulletin Archives.........

" Saturday April 8, 2006
Archives: Search Results
Enter search word(s):
New Search
You searched for: ray west margaret woods
Displaying 1-7 of 7 result(s) found.
Officials: They didn t change, the party did
Brown County Judge Ray West said neither he nor Brown County voters have changed their political views. Both he and the county have always been conservative, and attracted to conservative Democrats such as former U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm, West said...

6.0K - Dec. 18, 2005; scored 1000.0

Democrats surprised, disappointed at trio s switch to GOP
Some local Democrats expressed surprise, and in some cases anguish, that three longtime Democratic office holders have filed to run as Republicans. Of course we re hurt and disappointed, but people do what they have to do, said Sandra Blasingame, wh...

4.0K - Dec. 18, 2005; scored 631.0

Ballot choice could await county voters
Indications are, starting with the primary elections in 2006, that Brown County voters could be answering the question, Paper or electronic? That may change next week, but on Monday, after a lengthy debate, commissioners voted 3-2 to have both paper...

2.8K - Oct. 18, 2005; scored 513.0

West, Wood, Brown running in GOP primary
Three longtime Brown County public officials who have held office as Democrats are changing parties in the March 7 primary elections. Brown County Judge Ray West, County Clerk Margaret Wood and District Clerk Jan Brown filed for re-election in the Ma...

1.9K - Dec. 16, 2005; scored 470.0 "

source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/shared-content/search/index.php?search=go&o=0&q=ray+west+margaret+woods+&d1=03-25-2005&d2=04-08-2006&s=relevance&r=Subject%2CAuthor%2CContent&l=20
--------------------
Here's a post from Brownwood's COB Website.......

" BROWN COUNTY: BROWN COUNTY GENERAL

LOCAL DEMOCRAT THIEF linda lewis parker
smileyrevenge
14
96
04/08/2006 12:08:31 PM
by: Redeemed "

source: http://www.cityofbrownwood.com/active.asp
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and below is the link posted on the Brown County Republican Party Website ( I wonder if anybody over there knows who "smileyrevenge" is ? ) ......

" Unofficial City of Brownwood website
For a Community Forum with topics ranging from Household Tips to Politics! See what the local hu-bub is about! "

source: http://www.browncountytexasrepublicanparty.com/
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MLK Jr. ?

Bush's America: " I'm with Homeland Security ... I'll move it when I want to.'

Local Teacher's Run-In With Homeland Security Creates Insecurities
Thu Apr 6, 5:29 PM ET

A local school employee said a rough run-in with a couple of Homeland Security officers has left him with a strong sense of insecurity.
Leander Pickett, a teacher's assistant at Englewood Elementary, said he was manhandled and handcuffed by two plain clothed Homeland Security officers in front of the school Tuesday for no reason at all.
"I would like to treat people the way I would want to be treated, and yesterday I wasn't treated that way," Pickett said.
Pickett has been working at Englewood for two years, and his principal and colleagues told Channel 4 they have never met a harder worker or nicer guy.
"He's well loved by everyone because he's willing to do anything to help children," said the Englewood Elementary Principal Gail Brinson.
However, Tuesday afternoon Pickett's niceness turned to anger, disappointment, and betrayal when, as Pickett was directing bus traffic, he said he was handcuffed and roughed up and humiliated by the very people that were supposed to protect him.
"I walked up to him and said, 'Sir, you need to move.' That's when he said 'I'm a police officer. I'm with Homeland Security ... I'll move it when I want to.' That's when he started grabbing me on my arm," Pickett said.
However, Homeland Security tells a different story.
The department said the only reason the officers were at the school was because they pulled over to look at a map.
The department also said it's looking into what happened, and that Pickett's version is wrong. It claims he was antagonizing the officers.
Several people were outside of the school, watching the incident take place, and those witnesses agree with Pickett's story.
"Mr. Pickett asked the guy blocking the bus loading zone to move, and the guy told him he would move his car when he got ready to move it," said Englewood coach Alton Jackson.
"At that point I intervened and I went up to the gentleman and said, 'Mr. Pickett is an employee here,' and they said that didn't matter," said Englewood media specialist, Terri Dreisonstok.
"'We're with Homeland Security,' and on and on they went, and pretty soon, before you know it, he's handcuffed and slammed against a car," Brinson said. "All the children are watching, they're all upset."
After about 30 minutes, the men released Pickett.
"The part that really upsets me is all these students were watching, and that and it isn't good," Jackson said.
Pickett said he plans to sue.
"You now you hear these stories everyday and say, 'This will never happen to me,' but yesterday it happened to me," Pickett said.
"If this is Homeland Security, I think we ought to be a little afraid," Brinson said.
The central office of Homeland Security contacted Channel 4 about the incident and stated that it considers all allegations seriously and the matter has been referred to a neutral investigative entity.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/wjxt/20060406/lo_wjxt/3379371

Have you heard/seen this ?

Not Playing over the Brownwood airwaves ?

" Cut and Run Democrats " ? I don't think so !

Read about them here

Republicans Still Defending Tom Delay in Brownwood !

Dallas Morning News Editorial

The House That Tom Built: A far cry from the hopes and principles of '94

05:20 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Tom DeLay is many things, but "bad politician" is not one of them.

When the feds last week flipped Mr. DeLay's former top associate, Tony Rudy, who told them about a criminal operation being run out of Mr. DeLay's office, the Texas Republican clearly saw the political noose tightening around his neck and decided to cheat the hangman.
He will avoid a vicious re-election campaign this fall, one that he might have lost and that, given the intense media coverage sure to attend the race, certainly would have been damaging to Republican prospects nationwide. GOP leaders must be relieved.
They should take whatever consolation they can from the end of Mr. DeLay's extraordinary career, because his legacy is a political, moral and even historical burden for the party whose entrenched power he did so much to affect.
It's a political burden because the ongoing ethics catastrophe engulfing Mr. DeLay and his top associates powerfully symbolizes the culture of corruption that overtook key elements of the GOP in Washington. Polls show that the House Republicans are in serious trouble this midterm election year, and the perception that the party sold its soul to lobbyists like Mr. DeLay's dear friend Jack Abramoff has a lot to do with it.
Moral burden
The same take-no-prisoners partisanship that made him one of the most effective House majority leaders ever turned the GOP's principled stand for ethics in government – which helped the insurgent Class of 1994 turn the compromised Democrats out of the House majority after 40 years – into damning pretense.
They don't call him The Hammer for nothing. Mr. DeLay was a master of Machiavellian maneuvering – indeed, one suspects that the reason some Democratic operatives despise him so intensely is because he was a lot better at the game than they were.
When the GOP took power in the House in 1994, the atmosphere of freshness, optimism and possibility was palpable. It didn't take long for the opportunists to get to work. In 1995, key conservative strategist Grover Norquist was talking up to National Journal an old friend drawn back to the new Washington seeking opportunity: "What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs. Then this becomes a different town."
It certainly did, thanks in large part to Mr. DeLay. He and his cohorts got to work launching The K Street Project, named after Washington's infamous lobbyist row. Its aim was to compel lobbying firms to hire former Republican staffers if they hoped to do business with the new GOP bosses on the Hill. Mr. DeLay increased his influence immensely through his skill as majority whip, which kept the House Republicans in line and made him a feared powerbroker.
Was the man from Sugar Land a bare-knuckles brawler? Without question – and the now-public e-mail exchanges among top DeLay aides and Jack Abramoff are jaw-dropping in their ruthlessness and amorality. But here's the thing: Mr. DeLay delivered for his team. Victory, especially to people who aren't used to winning, can too easily become an end that justifies the means undertaken to achieve it.
One of the corrupt Renaissance popes is supposed to have remarked upon his election, "God gave us the papacy; let us enjoy it." Tom DeLay would have understood. The voters delivered the House to the Republican Party, and no one was as effective as Mr. DeLay in exploiting that circumstance.
For better and for worse, we now have the House that Tom built. Newt Gingrich inspired the 1994 Republican Revolution, but Mr. DeLay consolidated it.
Historical burden
What happened in 1994 was an epochal event for American politics, a grand realignment that happens only once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. Voters fed up with 40 years of often-corrupt Democratic rule gave Republicans a chance to lead, to do better, to be better than the exhausted party they replaced. It's now up to those House Republicans who still believe that power is only good when put in service of principle to redeem the party's name.
The conservative journalist Andrew Ferguson observed a few months back that in 1995, when Speaker Gingrich became a reality and not just the stuff of Democratic nightmares, people asked themselves: "Would the Republicans change Washington or would it be the other way around?"
The pomps and works of Jack Abramoff give us the answer, Mr. Ferguson wrote. And now, so does the rise and fall of Thomas Dale DeLay.
NOW: "I'm a realist. I've been around awhile. I can evaluate political situations." Tom DeLay, explaining his decision to step down (Time.com, April 3)
THEN: "We have a small faction, and they are a minority who believe they are there to govern. Then there is the majority of us who believe that indeed we are there to govern, but, more importantly, we are there to be an opposition to the Democratic philosophy, and the only way to do that is through confrontation." Tom DeLay, to the Houston Chronicle (April 14, 1991)
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-delay_05edi.ART.State.Edition1.4d01c6c.html

" He received his by saving lives "

Decorated conscientious objector buried with honors
Served as medic in World War II

Tuesday, April 4, 2006; Posted: 5:36 p.m. EDT (21:36 GMT)
CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee (AP) -- The only conscientious objector to receive a Medal of Honor in World War II has been buried at a national cemetery with a 21-gun salute.
Desmond T. Doss Sr., 87, died March 23 in Piedmont, Alabama, where he and his wife, Frances, had been living with family.
A horse-drawn hearse delivered the flag-covered casket to the grave site Monday in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. Military helicopters flew overhead in a tribute formation.
Doss had endured ridicule for his beliefs but "remained true to his convictions even when it was not the most popular thing to do," said Patti Parks, a retired Navy commander and director of the Medal of Honor Museum in Chattanooga.
Doss, who refused to carry a weapon during his wartime service in the Pacific as an Army medic, was the subject of a book, "The Unlikeliest Hero," and a 2004 documentary, "The Conscientious Objector."
Medal of Honor Society records show he was among 3,442 recipients of the nation's highest military honor.
While under fire on the island of Okinawa, Doss carried 75 wounded soldiers to the edge of a 400-foot cliff and lowered them to safety, according to his citation.
During a later attack, he was seriously wounded in the legs by a grenade. According to the citation, as he was being carried to safety, he saw a more critically injured man and crawled off his stretcher, directing the medics to help the other man.
"He wanted to serve. He just didn't want to kill anybody," said a veteran who attended the service, Fred Headrick, 85. "Most all of [Medal of Honor recipients] received their medal for killing someone. He received his by saving lives."

source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/04/doss.funeral.ap/index.html

Cynthia Mckinney

I'm waiting to see the video of the incident !

'Mafia Cops' Convicted In N.Y. Mob Killings

POSTED: 3:39 pm EDT April 6, 2006
NEW YORK -- Two former police detectives were convicted Thursday of moonlighting as hitmen for the mob in what a prosecutor described as "the most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen."
A federal jury deliberated for two days before announcing the verdicts against Louis Eppolito, 57, and Steven Caracappa, 64.
The two former detectives, who spent a combined 44 years on the force and once worked as partners, were convicted of racketeering conspiracy, which included eight murders, witness tampering, witness retaliation and obstruction of justice. They also were convicted of money laundering and drug charges and face up to life in prison.
Both men rubbed their faces and stared at the jury as the verdicts.
"They should go find the real killers," Eppolito's 28-year-old daughter, Andrea, said outside court. She accused the prosecutors of hiding evidence from the jury.
Defense attorneys said they would appeal.
Eppolito and Caracappa were highly decorated detectives who were respected by their colleagues in the New York City Police Department, but prosecutors said the two were leading a double life moonlighting as hired killers for Luchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Wenner described their crimes and mob association as "the bloodiest, most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen."
Eppolito and Caracappa used their positions as crime fighters to aid the crime family for a mob salary of $4,000 a month, prosecutors said. That increased when the two personally handled the killing, authorities said; they were paid $65,000 for the slaying of a mobster during a phony traffic stop.
Casso also referred to the pair as his "crystal ball" that provided inside information on law enforcement interest in the mob world, authorities said.
Caracappa, who retired in 1992, had helped establish the police department's office for Mafia murder probes.
Eppolito, the son of a Gambino crime family member, was a much-praised street cop -- although there were suggestions that some of his arrests followed tips provided by mobsters. He detailed that contrast in his autobiography, "Mafia Cop," played a bit part in the classic mob movie "GoodFellas," and once tried his hand at screenwriting.
After retiring, they moved into houses on the same block in Las Vegas.
Since their arrests in March 2005, both Caracappa and Eppolito have insisted they are innocent. Neither testified at trial.
The key prosecution witness against them was Burton Kaplan, an acknowledged drug dealer who spent four days on the stand linking the pair to an assortment of murders between 1986 and 1990. Kaplan testified he served as middleman between Casso and the detectives.
Casso, known as one of the most brutal mobsters in the city, was reportedly involved in 36 murders himself. Both sides considered calling him as a witness, but ultimately decided Casso came with too much baggage -- even after he wrote a letter from prison insisting the detectives were innocent of several crimes.
The details prosecutors laid out as they described the killing spree were chilling.
The detectives allegedly "arrested" a mobster named Jimmy Hydell in 1986, then delivered him to Casso for torture and execution.
That same year, according to prosecutors, the pair furnished the underboss with information to locate Nicholas Guido, a mobster involved in a planned hit on Casso. Their inaccurate tip led to the death of an innocent man with the same name, who was killed after Christmas dinner at his mother's house.
The detectives also were accused of killing Gambino family member Eddie Lino during what began as a routine traffic stop.
U.S. District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein revoked their $5 million bail pending their May 22 sentencing.
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source: http://www.news4jax.com/news/8512311/detail.html

Waco's Baylor University: Up the Road from Brownwood's HPU and Lubbock's Tech

Muslim BU student: Need for greater tolerance is crucial

Friday, April 07, 2006
By Terri Jo Ryan
Tribune-Herald staff writer

A 20-year-old Baylor junior from Bedford, Texas, who wears an Islamic head scarf on the campus of the world’s largest Baptist university knows all about standing out.
“You can spot me from a mile away,” said Hoda Said.
But as an American and one of about 600 Muslims on campus, she says she has a right to go to any university she wants to — and the international studies major wanted to go to Baylor for its pre-medicine curriculum.
Most of the 14,000-strong student body are “friendly, even nice,” respectful and tolerant, she said. But a handful have made her time there miserable — and she’s not staying silent about it anymore.
“I was too quiet,” she said this week, “and this is the result. The more quiet we are, the more it will empower the bullies who think they can get away with it.”
Said is referring to Saturday night’s assault of her friend and fellow Baylor student, Nohayia Javed, reported to authorities Sunday.
Javed, a Chicago-born Muslim of South Asian heritage, said she was jumped from behind as she walked from the Student Union Building to her dorm room in Dawson Residence Hall. A large man grabbed her hijab, or head scarf, and pulled her to the ground, all while making anti-Muslim and ethnic slurs.
Despite a death threat to keep silent, Javed screamed. Her attacker responded, she said, by slapping and kicking her multiple times in the ribs before running away.
Javed, a 19-year-old senior, is recovering from the attack at her family’s home in Tulsa. Although Javed said she believes her assailant came from off campus, Said claims both women have been subjected to harassment by Baylor students based on their appearance.
To battle such attitudes, leaders of Baylor’s student government and various campus organizations conducted a candlelight ceremony Thursday night in front of the Bill Daniel Student Center, close to where Javed said she was attacked Saturday, to highlight the need for tolerance.
Said, who at one point spoke to the crowd of about 250 and read an e-mail from her friend Javed, wasn’t alone in her beliefs Thursday night. Several girls held signs that read, “Islamic Center of Hewitt: Freedom of Religion.”
The attack has sparked concern among local Muslims as well as the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose officials convinced the FBI to assist Baylor’s Department of Public Safety in investigating the assault as a hate crime. CAIR is holding a press conference in Waco this morning to promote racial and religious tolerance.
‘Like a trophy prize’
Said and Javed say they have experienced difficulties on campus based on their appearance, faith and ethnicity. Last semester, Javed said, two men managed to pull her scarf off, spit in her face and run away waving it “like it was a trophy prize.”
A year ago, Said recalled, she was hit by a full bottle of water dropped on her head from the balcony of Waco Hall in the middle of a chapel presentation. It followed two sessions of unknown persons throwing paper wads at her, which she had tried to ignore.
“When the bottle hit my head, the girls behind me laughed,” she said. “It hurt my feelings; it hurt my pride. And I had to wonder, what are they going to throw at me next?”
Baylor’s immediate reaction was to close off the balcony for several weeks, she said, and Dub Oliver, Baylor’s interim vice president for student life, recommended she reduce her exposure by sitting in the back of the auditorium.
Oliver said Thursday that he also asked chapel assistants to be more vigilant — and that to help Said feel safe in that environment, he offered to sit with her, off-stage, during chapel.
‘Diminishes Christian witness’
“It breaks my heart that something like this (ethnic intimidation) could take place here, particularly at Baylor,” Oliver said. “It diminishes the Christian witness of the entire university” when such actions are taken.
“Jesus crossed social and religious and racial differences in his own time, and we should do the same,” Oliver said.
And what is alleged to have happened to Javed on Saturday, he added, “clearly is horrible. We need to speak out against violence in all its forms, against any student, as unacceptable here.”
Baylor spokesman Larry Brumley said ethnically abusive behavior isn’t worthy of a world-class, faith-based institution such as Baylor and that officials are dedicated to ridding it. But realistically, he said, Baylor has students from every state in the nation and many countries. Not every student who comes here has developed an appreciation for ethnic or religious diversity.
“It’s a part of our job as a university to help these students be respectful and tolerant of differences,” he said.
Brumley said Baylor encourages interaction among “our international and domestic students” by hosting cross-cultural events on campus.
Faculty and staff have worked hard, he said, to weave students of different faiths, creeds and colors into the fabric of university life, raising their public profile and helping them feel at home at Baylor.
tjryan@wacotrib.com
757-5746

source: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/04/07/04072006wacislamicbaylor.html
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Terrorists not only ones with closed minds

Kristen Gilbreth
Issue date: 10/25/01 Section: Opinions

While at a local coffeehouse sipping a latte and reading “The Never Ending Jihad” by Jeffery Goldberg, a writer for New York Times Magazine, I began to comprehend the magnitude of foolishness.
In March 2000 Goldberg was accepted into a madrasa, a Muslim religious seminary, in Pakistan. The insights he brought back were chilling.
The Jewish American journalist interacted with young boys who despised everything he was. They spent most of their days sitting cross-legged on hard wood floors memorizing the Holy Koran. Most of the students knew the words by the age of nine and could quote them with perfection. Their teachers indoctrinated them on how to interpret what they read. And that’s the scary part.
To arm a child with words is meaningless, but to turn those words into a mission is murderous. There are more than one-million students studying in these Islamic radical schools. Taliban leaders were once young boys among the graduates and now we’ve all seen the harsh interpretation of Islamic law they practice as men.
They don’t learn history. They don’t learn math. They learn a sheltered worldview. They learn to hate Americans.
We are the infidels. We are those who seek to pollute holy lands and tarnish Islam. We are the enemy of Allah. They call us Satan.
Their perception is their reality. These impoverished young men, many of them orphans, sit barefoot with a turban on their head as they are educated from one book.
I was trying to imagine what it would be like to grow up in a place filled with such brainwashing, when two young Texas Tech students interrupted my imaginary picture of myself in a burka with their quoting of the Bible. The most outspoken boy was quite impressed with his vast knowledge of scripture. As I eavesdropped, I realized that his entire life revolved around this book. I wondered if he really knew what he was saying. Had he ever really thought about it? Either way, he was armed with a mission.
My thoughts quickly flashed back to my philosophy class at the private Christian university from where I transferred. While the textbook would question religion, at the end of a debate the professor would always interject, “BUT...Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.” The students at my school were simply a different breed of sheep than those in the madrasas. They were brainwashed by choice.
And my, were they armed with a mission. A mission to convert. A mission called the Great Commision. Their “mission trips” took them as far as China to go from village to village to bring souls to God.
I once sat passively silent as my Christian friends harshly told exchange students who barely understood English that they would go to Hell if they refused to accept Christ.
My friends thought they were doing a favor to these foreigners by arming them with the truth. But, something in me knew it wasn’t right.
I also dated a fundamentalist Christian man who told me the 70 percent of the world that are non-believers in the gospel were simply damned to hell.
“It is Biblical,” he said.
When I questioned this, he told me we could not be together because I was so arrogant to think I could pick and choose what I wanted to believe in God’s word.
He scorned me for questioning God’s wisdom.
The truth is he was the arrogant one. And I wasn’t questioning the wisdom of God. I was questioning the wisdom of man.
One day we were talking about WWII and the atrocities of Hitler and I asked him if he believed all of the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were now in Hell because they had not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.
He said only God knew.
But, if you really get down to the core of belief if you call yourself a Christian, you define yourself by the moment you accepted Jesus as your savior. You define yourself by your mission to save others. You define yourself by the afterlife and the glory of your eternity in Heaven, while you define the fate of others as separation from God forever in a place the Bible calls Hell.
When I listened to Billy Graham preach on the National Day of Mourning, I heard something that most American’s didn’t. He said “some” of the people who died on Sept. 11 are now in Heaven and would not want to come back to this earth. It was a beautiful sentiment until I realized where he clearly thought the other people were.
And this is exactly why we have difficulty having “diversity without division.”
In our contemptuous confidence we condemn.
In his controversial book, “Why Christianity Should Change or Die,” Bishop John Sprong said, “We must lay down the primitive claims we have made for our religious traditions. None of them represents the only way to God. None of them can be used legitimately to coerce or compel another to belief. All evangelical and missionary activities designed to convert the heathen are base born. They are the expressions of our sense of superiority and our hostility toward those who are different.”
Blood on the hands of the fanatically religious did not end with the Crusades, the Inquisition, or WWII. And it won’t end with ridding the world of current terrorist groups. As Goldberg pointed out, millions are being raised to carry the torch.
Bernard Russell once said, “The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.”
We have freedom of choice in America. We can choose to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. We can choose to have a worldview that is neither foolish nor fanatical. We can choose to be wise.
Kristen Gilbreth is a senior communications studies major from Brownwood. She can be contacted at kristengilbreth@aol.com.

source: http://www.dailytoreador.com/media/storage/paper870/news/2001/10/25/Opinions/Terrorists.Not.Only.Ones.With.Closed.Minds-1272765.shtml

Brownwood PTSD, AWOL and The Bush Administration

AWOL soldier from Brownwood gets out of jail
By Celinda Emison / emisonc@reporternews.com
April 7, 2006
A young Brownwood soldier diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder was released from jail last week after serving time for being AWOL from Fort Hood for nine months.
U.S. Army Pfc. Jacob Hounshell, 20, was released from his 30-day sentence at the Bell County Jail five days early for good behavior. The Bell County Jail holds inmates from Fort Hood, where Hounshell returned after being released from jail Saturday.
Hounshell served for 14 months in Iraq and earned a commendation for arresting insurgents and finding makeshift bombs. Hounshell returned home to Brownwood battling depression - his family said he threatened to commit suicide. The Army diagnosed him with PTSD.
Hounshell was considered absent without leave from the Army for nine months. He returned to his unit in the 1st Cavalry Division on Feb. 9 because he had learned a federal warrant was about to be issued for him, and he was sentenced to jail time.
Larry Hounshell and his wife Bobbie visited their son each Saturday during Jacob's incarceration. The visits each lasted 20 minutes.
''It was really tough and I got upset about that,'' Larry Hounshell said. ''He risked his life for 14 months and served his country and there he was being confined in jail.''
Larry Hounshell said his son is now delivering food to troops who are training in the field. Jacob is anxious to return home, get back to work at military uniform manufacturer, and ''not to have to look over his shoulder,'' his father said.
Larry Hounshell said he expects the Army to grant Jacob a general discharge next week.Soldiers who receive a general discharge are eligible for Veterans Administration benefits, said Master Sgt. David Larsen, 1st Cavalry Division public affairs supervisor. However, soldiers with a general discharge are not eligible for GI Bill educational benefits, survivor/dependant educational assistance or civil service retirement credit.
Larsen would not comment on Jacob Hounshell's specific case, but explained a general discharge is given ''under honorable conditions if the military records are satisfactory but not sufficiently meritorious to warrant an honorable discharge.''Hounshell can request a review within 15 years of his discharge date and ask to have it upgraded to an honorable discharge.

Keeping track

June 2004: U.S. Army Pfc. Jacob Hounshell of Brownwood left the United States to serve first in Kuwait, and then in Iraq, for about one year
May 2005: Hounshell returns to Brownwood, but does not return to Fort Hood. He is considered AWOL.
Feb. 9: Hounshell turns himself in to officials at Fort Hood
March 8: Hounshell begins 30-day term in Bell County Jail
April 1: Hounshell released from jail five days early

source: http://reporternews.com/abil/nw_military/article/0,1874,ABIL_7960_4602871,00.html
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" I am quite certain there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration. "
U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice Saturday, April 1, 2006
source: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/04/01/uk.rice.straw/index.html
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Note From Steve:

Who do you think in the Bush Administration will serve jail time for their mistakes ?

Perry's Trans Texas Corridor: Do Brown County Republicans Support This ?

April 4, 2006, 11:29PM
Proposed toll road could displace 1 million residents
Report shows $6 billion project would cover 2,400 square miles of prime farm land

Associated Press
DALLAS - The study of a proposed toll road stretching from North Texas to Laredo will include an area with more than 2,400 square miles of prime farm land and nearly 1 million residents, according to a federal report released Tuesday.
About half of those in the path of the $6 billion project are minorities and nearly a quarter are below the poverty level. The findings were included in a 4,000-page draft environmental study by the Federal Highway Administration.
The tollway, which officials hope to open by 2015, is part of the Trans Texas Corridor, a $184 billion plan to build thousands of miles of highways, railways and utilities crisscrossing the state.
Rural farmers worried about losing large chunks of land have opposed the plan. If the corridor is 1,200 feet wide in some areas as planned, a farmer could lose up to 146 acres per mile, according to the Texas Farm Bureau.
The federal study also reports the 521-mile tollway could affect the homes of 46 threatened or endangered plant and animal species. Thirteen square miles of parks could be affected, too.
The plan calls for the corridor to begin at the Red River and skirt the eastern side of Dallas County before running parallel along Interstate 35.
In 2004, Spanish consortium Cintra-Zachary signed a $3.5 million project development agreement with the state to help plan the corridor.
About 50 public hearings are scheduled around the state to give residents a closer look at the plan.
Last month, more than 700 residents attended a meeting with gubernatorial hopefuls in Seaton, about 60 miles north of Austin and near the path of the corridor.
Democratic nominee Chris Bell and independent candidates Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman blasted the plan. Gov. Rick Perry, who supports the toll road, did not attend.
source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3771918.html
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State narrows area for toll road twin to I-35
Cross-state toll road would run east of I-35, cut through Blackland Prairie, south to Laredo.
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
GRAPEVINE — The Trans-Texas Corridor toll road twin to Interstate 35 will flank the freeway to the east from Dallas to San Antonio, include the Texas 130 turnpike in Central Texas and go to Laredo rather than Brownsville, according to a draft environmental report that state officials released Tuesday.
The centerpiece of the 4,300-page, 2-foot-thick draft report is a fat blue line showing an approximately 10-mile-wide area from Gainesville to San Antonio and a thinner line running south, delineating what has been a much-anticipated path for the turnpike. The road, to be called TTC-35, is part of Gov. Rick Perry's plan for a network of intrastate toll roads, railroads and utility easements.
Rural Texans, in particular, have been waiting to see whether their lands would fall in that blue swath — indicating that they might have to sell their land someday for the road. Even if a particular parcel lies within that corridor, however, the tale is far from being told.
The draft environmental impact statement is still subject to review, more public hearings and tinkering over the next year.
Then, for particular road segments or rail projects, the state will conduct a second-tier study that will narrow the path to a few hundred feet in width.
The report did little to mollify critics from the Dallas and Hillsboro areas who think that the road should be cheek to jowl with I-35 the whole way and cut through the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, not loop around it, possibly drawing business away from the established I-35 corridor.
Nor did it change the position of the Texas Farm Bureau, which opposes the corridor altogether because of the widespread belief among farmers and ranchers that the road will take valuable land out of production and create logistical problems for owners whose parcels are bisected.
"We looked at (the map) and said, 'That kills us,' " said Will Lowrance, mayor of Hillsboro, noting that the blue swath is at least 15 miles away from his town on I-35. "That's too far east."
As for the farm bureau, spokesman Gene Hall said, "We're still opposed to it, and we'll do everything we can to stop it."
Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson, leading the news conference at a Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Hyatt hotel where the map was unveiled, said that I-35 from San Antonio to north of Dallas simply cannot be widened much beyond its current configuration.
With that highly populated area of the state due to get an additional 15 million people over the next quarter-century, Williamson said, a twin road is crucial to the state's future.
"You're going to have moments where the state's interests and local interests collide," Williamson said. "No one enjoys having to contemplate taking another person's property. But almost all the property in Texas is owned privately. You can't expand the footprint of the transportation system without taking someone's property."
Construction of any kind is unlikely until 2010 or later. But Tuesday's report, preliminary though it is, answers some big-picture questions:
• East, west or down the middle? East. The state had at least held open the possibility that TTC-35 (and the rail lines likely to accompany it eventually) could go west of Fort Worth or even in between Fort Worth and Dallas. Although the report leaves a slight opening, including 11 other "reasonable" alternatives that include swinging west around Fort Worth, it makes it clear that a western route would be bad for rail lines because of that area's steeper hills and would divert much less traffic from I-35.
"In Texas, goods tend to go to the eastern United States," said Doug Booher, environmental manager for the Texas Department of Transportation's turnpike division. "The alternatives that go east of Dallas-Fort Worth do a much better job of relieving congestion."
•Is Texas 130 part of the corridor? Yes, for all but its northerly few miles where it juts back and connects to I-35. This always seemed inevitable, given that the state would hardly want to have two toll roads flanking Austin.
The 10-mile-wide corridor leaves plenty of room east of Texas 130, which is under construction and should open in 2007, for rail lines.
But, significantly, the recommended corridor does not go far enough east to include an existing Union Pacific line that runs north-south through Elgin and Bastrop.
State officials happily announced last week that Cintra-Zachry, the partnership in line to build the TTC-35 toll road, has submitted a proposal to build a rail line along the corridor from Oklahoma to Mexico.
Cintra-Zachry, composed of the Spanish toll road builder Cintra and Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio, has said it would spend $6 billion on a four-lane turnpike from Oklahoma to San Antonio, paying the state $1.2 billion in concession fees.
The 600-mile rail line, which would be built to avoid all road crossings and allow freight trains to go 70 mph, could go up to an additional $6 billion, Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton said last week.
• Will the corridor avoid the best cropland? No. Although alternatives west of I-35 would have run over less fruitful lands, rather than the rich Blackland Prairie east of I-35, they scored low on fulfilling the road's purpose: to take cars and trucks off I-35.
The 10-mile swath does hug I-35 closely, with its western edge typically within two to five miles of the interstate, which might allow much of it to be built on the less-valued chalky soils there.
But north of Waco, it cuts away from I-35 and I-35 East significantly to follow the most direct route toward Dallas' eastern side, a path that puts it over the Blacklands area.
The recommended corridor, according to the report, includes 2,403 square miles of prime farmland soils, the highest amount of the 12 alternatives studied. (However, the narrower actual route would take perhaps only 2 percent of that much.
Aside from considering cropland, the report analyzed the various routes for environmental features, such as wetlands, aquifers and river and stream crossings.
Analysts said all 12 of the "reasonable alternatives" had substantially similar impact on the environment.
•Laredo or Brownsville? Laredo. This was perhaps the most surprising element of the report. Not the destination, but the path. South of San Antonio, the study corridor narrows from 10 miles to 4 miles and falls right on top of I-35, rather than to the side of it.
Critics had said during the past few years that Perry's plan for the toll roads, most of them flanking various interstate highways, was unnecessary in some lightly traveled parts of the state. South of San Antonio, for instance, current traffic on I-35 is only a little over 10,000 cars a day on a road that can accommodate several times that many.
Showing the corridor on top of the road indicates that state officials have taken that criticism to heart and would simply widen I-35 through sparsely populated and flat South Texas when additional road capacity is needed.
Michael Behrens, executive director of the state Transportation Department, said the agency in about two weeks will announce a series of public hearings on the draft report. In addition, copies of the tome will be sent to libraries up and down the I-35 corridor, he said.
And the complete study and maps are available on the state's Web site for the Trans-Texas Corridor, www.keeptexasmoving.org.
Environmental impact
Each of the 12 routes considered "reasonable alternatives" would have substantially similar effects on the environment. The recommended route:
•Contains more than 2,400 square miles of prime farmland, 13 square miles of parks and 63 landfills.
•Area includes almost 1 million residents, almost half of them minorities and almost a quarter below the poverty level.
•Could affect the homes of 46 threatened or endangered plant and animal species.
•Includes five federally recognized historic sites of 23 acres or greater.
•Would traverse three major and six minor aquifers.
Source: Texas Department of Transportation draft environmental impact statement
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/5ttc.html
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State wants corridor to shadow I-35
Trans-Texas road and rail route narrowed to 10-mile-wide study area
09:40 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 4, 2006
By TONY HARTZEL / The Dallas Morning News
A coordinated network of new toll roads, rail lines and utility lines should be built on or very near one of the main concrete arteries of Texas commerce, according to a new report and study released Tuesday.
Texas transportation officials have chosen "a study area" closely associated with Interstate 35 as the preferred route for the so-called Trans-Texas Corridor.
Also Online
The path being studied (.pdf)
Maps and more information
(TxDOT)
Recommended area for the Trans-Texas Corridor (.pdf)
Ric Williamson, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, said the gigantic public works project would help ease terrible traffic congestion on I-35 as the population continues to grow.
"The Interstate 35 corridor is the single most important economic generator in the state of Texas," Mr. Williamson said. "We would not have pursued this solution if we were not convinced that this is the best solution and the only solution."
The 4,300-page draft environmental report represents a significant early step in a long process that could lead to construction of the Trans-Texas Corridor. At the earliest, a toll road or freight rail line could open in about 10 years. State highway officials and the project's private developers do not have any plans to build passenger rail lines in the foreseeable future.
The draft report, two years in the making, narrows the corridor's potential location to a 10-mile-wide study area that, in part, clips the southeast corner of Dallas County, runs just east of Lake Ray Hubbard and winds through much of Rockwall County.
Local concerns
Local leaders throughout the state – and particularly in North Texas – have expressed worries that the study area would be too far away from urban areas, effectively drawing new development away from cities and increasing traffic in rural areas.
Dallas City Council member Bill Blaydes said if the corridor is built in the proposed study area, it would do nothing for southern Dallas, which is underdeveloped and would benefit greatly from a closer corridor location. "We will not accept the plan as it currently exists," he said.
In addition, a route as far away as central Kaufman County or Rockwall County could entice existing manufacturing and freight businesses to move farther east, Mr. Blaydes said.
State highway officials say it would be impractical or impossible to put a 1,200-foot-wide corridor through the urban landscape in Dallas.
The proposed route area was a closely held secret until Tuesday morning. Local leaders were not briefed before the unveiling.
The state did conduct 117 public meetings and received more than 4,000 videotaped or written comments, said Texas Department of Transportation spokeswoman Gaby Garcia.
But Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey said the state should have held formal public hearings to take testimony about route options.
"I'm sorry to say our neighbors in Austin feel like they should have more input than the people in North Texas," Ms. Dickey said.
Ms. Garcia, however, said, "Public input is public input."
As proposed in the report, the corridor will run 521 miles from Gainesville on the Red River to Laredo on the Rio Grande. In areas where roads, rail and utility lines are built together, the corridor will be 800 to 1,200 feet wide.
The challenge for state leaders may be balancing the needs of a statewide corridor with the interests of North Texas. The largest part of that challenge will lie in how the state or project developers connect the main corridor study route with urban areas.
State officials say that North Texas leaders have come up with good ideas to connect Dallas to the proposed road and rail corridor.
Those ideas include construction of toll roads along a State Highway 360 southern extension and along a long-planned Loop 9 in southern Dallas County.
"I want to tell anyone who will listen that we are not opposed to that route," Mr. Williamson said. Project developers "are not going to build a road that doesn't have interconnecting facilities."
In the new plan, the state has designated almost all of North Texas as a "modal transition zone" where road and rail connections can run directly from urban areas around Dallas into the corridor project to the east.
Rockwall County leaders have anticipated the Trans-Texas Corridor coming through their area since the idea was first raised, Commissioner Bruce Beaty said.
"If you're a resident and in the path, it's going to be a bad thing," Mr. Beaty said. "In the long run, it'll probably be good. We keep talking about economic development, and this is something that could help us."
Rockwall and Collin counties are working on a long-term highway project that they hope will eventually mesh with the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor.
"It [the corridor] is a wide swath," said Collin County Commissioner Joe Jaynes. "If it does happen, there will be some issues to work on."
The public will have its say on the corridor this summer, when the Texas Department of Transportation holds more than 50 public hearings on the draft report. A report outlining the final study area is expected in mid-2007.
After the 10-mile-wide study area is finalized, the state then may begin environmental reviews of specific projects. To build the toll roads from San Antonio to Dallas, for example, is expected to involve about six separate projects.
In general, those detailed reviews can take an average of almost four years to complete, said Doug Booher, environmental manager for the state transportation department's turnpike division.
Proposed in 2002
Gov. Rick Perry first announced plans for the Trans-Texas Corridor in 2002 as a way to solve the state's increasing highway congestion woes. The project has at times drawn opposition from the Texas Farm Bureau and from three of Mr. Perry's opponents in this fall's gubernatorial election.
The farm bureau said the corridor would take too much agricultural land to complete and split some farms in half.
"Our position is fundamentally unchanged. We are opposed to the corridor," said Gene Hall, a farm bureau spokesman who pledged to get the corridor shelved in the next legislative session.
As part of the corridor, project developer Cintra-Zachry has laid out general plans to build $6 billion in toll roads. Last week, the partners announced plans for another $6 billion in new freight rail lines from San Antonio to North Texas.
The Blackland Coalition, a group representing rural interests in Central Texas, said the proposed corridor is not needed and serves to benefit foreign investors.
"They seem to be in a rush to build without a common-sense understanding of who is going to use this road," Chris Hammel, the group's co-founder, said recently.
Staff writer Ian McCann contributed to this report.
E-mail thartzel@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/040506dnmettranstexas.1d51651.html
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Sex tourism thriving in Bible Belt

By Verna Gates and Mickey Goodman Tue Apr 4, 9:10 AM ET
ATLANTA (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.
A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.
None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.
It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world's busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.
"Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.
A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.
But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton County.
"Men are coming to Atlanta to have sex with a child," said LaKendra Baker, project manager for the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according to experts.
Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet, where girls innocently post profiles, said Baker.
Just in March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found through the Internet, said Cathey Steinberg, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Fund, which funds treatment for abused girls and prevention.
Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way.
He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with the Peachtree City Police Department.
"People are stunned that Atlanta's the No. 1 sex center in the country," said Steinberg.
The FBI has identified 14 U.S. cities as centers for the sexual exploitation of children. In addition to Atlanta, they are Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, St. Louis, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.
RUNAWAYS AT MOST RISK
In all, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 underage girls are prostituted in the United States, according to a University of Pennsylvania study.
Most youths caught up in the sex trade are runaways, like Brittany, whose 19-year-old "rescuers" soon demanded a return on their investment.
"I didn't have any place to go. My mom hated me for what I was doing to the family," said Brittany, who did not want to be identified by her real name.
Up to 90 percent of runaways are believed to end up as prostitutes, with a third lured into prostitution within 48 hours. Some are sold into sexual slavery by their parents, according to a 2005 study by the Atlanta Women's Agenda.
Some get seduced by recruiters. Pimps use handsome young men and sometimes girls as fronts.
"A 16-year-old controlling a group of girls will not face the same penalties an adult would receive," said Patricia Crone, director of the Office of Juvenile Justice Demonstration Project.
Once snagged, the grooming process begins. Typically, the pimp's friends sleep with her, then come threats, beatings and gang rapes. Caresses and gifts, including drugs and alcohol, follow abuse, the Atlanta Women's Agenda study found.
Brittany said she was showered with fancy dinners, clothes and methamphetamine. But she also describes horror. "It made me feel dirty. It was demeaning," said Brittany.
The sex slaves are trafficked in and out of cities to supply sporting events, conventions or rap concerts.
During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, one man kept boys and hosted sex parties nightly, said Baker of the group CEASE.
The pimps even held an annual "Player's Ball" in Atlanta in 2003, openly buying and selling women and naming a "Player of the Year," according to the Atlanta Women's Agenda study.
The risks are worth it. While there are few reliable statistics, child sexual exploitation is believed to be the world's third-biggest money maker for organized crime, said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
One reason for the demand is the false assumption that youths are disease-free.
On the contrary, with tissues not fully developed, they are more prone to lacerations. HIV infections among females aged 16 to 21 are 50 percent higher than for men, a 1998 study in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported.
Atlanta has won two new federal grants to establish units to fight the trafficking of underage sex slaves and to hire more undercover detectives, said Carole Morgan, director of the North Central Georgia Law Enforcement Academy.
But the experts fear that may not be enough.
"It won't stop until people say, 'My city isn't safe for kids anymore,"' said Crone.
"This is a place where you can buy, sell or rent kids. It must be stopped."
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060404/us_nm/crime_sextourism_dc
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Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary arrested
April 4, 2006

POLICE REPORT:
Deputy Press Secretary for U.S. Department of Homeland Security Arrested on Polk County Charges
Brian J. Doyle, DOB 4/7/50, the Deputy Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., was arrested this evening at his residence in Silver Springs, Maryland, on 23 Polk County charges related to the use of a computer to seduce a child and transmitting harmful materials to a minor. Doyle's arrest is the result of a joint investigation by the Polk County Sheriff s Office, working with Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jerry Hill s office, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General s Office.
The Investigation
On March 12, 2006, Doyle contacted a 14-year-old girl whose profile was posted on the Internet, and initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her. The girl was actually an undercover Polk County Sheriff s Computer Crimes detective. Doyle knew that the girl was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During future online chats, Doyle gave the undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl his office phone number and his government-issued cell phone number, so that they could have telephone conversations, in addition to their online chatting. Doyle used the Internet to send hard-core pornographic movie clips to the girl and used the AOL Instant Messenger chat service to have explicit sexual conversations with her. The investigation revealed that the phone numbers given to the detective were in fact Doyle s, and that the AOL account used was registered to Doyle. Doyle also sent photos of himself to the detective, which were not sexually explicit but did serve to further positively identify him.
The Conversations
On many occasions, Doyle instructed the victim, whom he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, to perform a sexual act while thinking of him, and described explicit and perverse sexual acts he wished to have with her, in addition to sending her numerous obscene .mpg files (digital movies). He also had sexually explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as a child on his office line and cell phone. He attempted to seduce the girl during their online chats, encouraging her to purchase a web cam so that she could send graphic images of herself to him, and promised her that he would likewise send nude photos of himself. Many of the conversations he initiated with the victim are too extraordinary and graphic for public release.
The Charges
On March 27, 2006, Tenth Judicial Circuit (FL) Judge Neil Rodenberry viewed the pornographic movies in question and found probable cause to believe the material sent over the Internet by Doyle was Harmful to Minors, as defined by Florida State Statute 847.001(6). The next day, March 28th, 23 felony charges were direct-filed by Assistant State Attorney Brad Copley and a warrant for the arrest of Brian Doyle was signed by Judge J. Dale Durrance. The charges are as follows: 7 counts Use of a Computer to Seduce a Child, and 16 counts of Transmission of Harmful Material to a Minor.
The Arrest
Brian Doyle was taken into custody at 7:45 p.m. this evening at his residence by the Montgomery County Police Department and booked into the Montgomery County Jail on the Polk County charges, where he will await extradition to Polk County. Agents with the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General s Office, the U.S. Secret Service, the Montgomery County Police, and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office also served a search warrant at his residence, during which they seized his home computer and other materials relative to this case.
We will go after child predators, no matter where they live, to protect our innocent children, says Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. This investigation shows that the long arm of the law can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime, who tries to harm our youth. There is no question that Doyle believed that he was having these disgusting, obscene discussions, on-line and on the phone, with a young girl. His conduct is vile and inexcusable.

Source: Polk County Sheriff's Office
source: http://www.tampabays10.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=28229
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The "Pushing Armageddon Crowd" is always local !

How the GOP Became God's Own Party
By Kevin Phillips
Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page B03

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.
We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.
Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.
The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate.
The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.
President Bush has promoted these alignments, interest groups and their underpinning values. His family, over multiple generations, has been linked to a politics that conjoined finance, national security and oil. In recent decades, the Bushes have added close ties to evangelical and fundamentalist power brokers of many persuasions.
Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics. On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860.
I have a personal concern over what has become of the Republican coalition. Forty years ago, I began a book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which I finished in 1967 and took to the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, for which I became the chief political and voting-patterns analyst. Published in 1969, while I was still in the fledgling Nixon administration, the volume was identified by Newsweek as the "political bible of the Nixon Era."
In that book I coined the term "Sun Belt" to describe the oil, military, aerospace and retirement country stretching from Florida to California, but debate concentrated on the argument -- since fulfilled and then some -- that the South was on its way into the national Republican Party. Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt.
Some of that evolution was always implicit. If any region of the United States had the potential to produce a high-powered, crusading fundamentalism, it was Dixie. If any new alignment had the potential to nurture a fusion of oil interests and the military-industrial complex, it was the Sun Belt, which helped draw them into commercial and political proximity and collaboration. Wall Street, of course, has long been part of the GOP coalition. But members of the Downtown Association and the Links Club were never enthusiastic about "Joe Sixpack" and middle America, to say nothing of preachers such as Oral Roberts or the Tupelo, Miss., Assemblies of God. The new cohabitation is an unnatural one.
While studying economic geography and history in Britain, I had been intrigued by the Eurasian "heartland" theory of Sir Halford Mackinder, a prominent geographer of the early 20th century. Control of that heartland, Mackinder argued, would determine control of the world. In North America, I thought, the coming together of a heartland -- across fading Civil War lines -- would determine control of Washington.
This was the prelude to today's "red states." The American heartland, from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and the Appalachian coal states, has become (along with the onetime Confederacy) an electoral hydrocarbon coalition. It cherishes sport-utility vehicles and easy carbon dioxide emissions policy, and applauds preemptive U.S. airstrikes on uncooperative, terrorist-coddling Persian Gulf countries fortuitously blessed with huge reserves of oil.
Because the United States is beginning to run out of its own oil sources, a military solution to an energy crisis is hardly lunacy. Neither Caesar nor Napoleon would have flinched. What Caesar and Napoleon did not face, but less able American presidents do, is that bungled overseas military embroilments could also boomerang economically. The United States, some $4 trillion in hock internationally, has become the world's leading debtor, increasingly nagged by worry that some nations will sell dollars in their reserves and switch their holdings to rival currencies. Washington prints bonds and dollar-green IOUs, which European and Asian bankers accumulate until for some reason they lose patience. This is the debt Achilles' heel, which stands alongside the oil Achilles' heel.
Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence.
The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots.
Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity.
Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened. When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership.
Besides providing critical support for invading Iraq -- widely anathematized by preachers as a second Babylon -- the Republican coalition has also seeded half a dozen controversies in the realm of science. These include Bible-based disbelief in Darwinian theories of evolution, dismissal of global warming, disagreement with geological explanations of fossil-fuel depletion, religious rejection of global population planning, derogation of women's rights and opposition to stem cell research. This suggests that U.S. society and politics may again be heading for a defining controversy such as the Scopes trial of 1925. That embarrassment chastened fundamentalism for a generation, but the outcome of the eventual 21st century test is hardly assured.
These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system.
Conservative true believers will scoff at such concerns. The United States is a unique and chosen nation, they say; what did or did not happen to Rome, imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic and Britain is irrelevant. The catch here, alas, is that these nations also thought they were unique and that God was on their side. The revelation that He apparently was not added a further debilitating note to the late stages of each national decline.
Over the last 25 years, I have warned frequently of these political, economic and historical (but not religious) precedents. The concentration of wealth that developed in the United States in the bull market of 1982 to 2000 was also typical of the zeniths of previous world economic powers as their elites pursued surfeit in Mediterranean villas or in the country-house splendor of Edwardian England. In a nation's early years, debt is a vital and creative collaborator in economic expansion; in late stages, it becomes what Mr. Hyde was to Dr. Jekyll: an increasingly dominant mood and facial distortion. The United States of the early 21st century is well into this debt-driven climax, with some analysts arguing -- all too plausibly -- that an unsustainable credit bubble has replaced the stock bubble that burst in 2000.
Unfortunately, three of the preeminent weaknesses displayed in these past declines have been religious excess, a declining energy and industrial base, and debt often linked to foreign and military overstretch. Politics in the United States -- and especially the evolution of the governing Republican coalition -- deserves much of the blame for the fatal convergence of these forces in America today.

Kevin Phillips is the author of "American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century" (Viking).

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html

Slaying of CPS official stuns town

Posted on Sun, Apr. 02, 2006

Slaying of CPS official stuns town
By JACK DOUGLAS JR.
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

VICTORIA -- Sally Blackwell was a former college cheerleader, a proud single mother, an avid gardener and, as regional director of Texas Child Protective Services, one of the most highly regarded people in town.
Michael Buchanek was something of a hometown hero: a 26-year veteran of the Victoria County Sheriff's Department, commander of the SWAT team and one of the first American law enforcement officers to go to Iraq to train security personnel.
Blackwell and Buchanek lived two blocks from each other. A welcome sign greets visitors at his front door; a wooden swing hangs from a tree in her front yard.
On March 15, her strangulation shook the peaceful neighborhood called Cimarron.
Two police bloodhounds, Quincy and James Bond, were called in to pick up the scent of a nylon rope tied around the neck of Blackwell's body, which had been found in a field near her home.
With police officers in tow, the dogs followed the scent.
Quincy and James Bond did not stop until they reached Buchanek's home.
No arrest has been made in a crime that has stunned this placid town of 60,000 residents, 30 minutes from the Gulf Coast. And authorities insist they are investigating several strong possibilities that are unrelated to Buchanek. One theory is that Blackwell, 53, may have angered someone through her job at an agency that protects children from unfit parents.
But the only visible suspect, identified in the media and in a police affidavit, is Buchanek, 52. He has told investigators he used to date Blackwell.
The badge was gone, as was the police macho, when Buchanek answered his door last week. He was shirtless, his belt buckle was undone and his lips quivered when he spoke:
"I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I just don't have anything to say."
A dangerous job
A 16-year veteran of CPS, Blackwell led a force of 46 caseworkers who investigate reports of child abuse and neglect in the region.
"She reiterated that it was really up to us to keep children safe," said Brad Irvin, a friend of Blackwell's who is now a CPS supervisor in nearby Cuero. Her death, Irvin said, has reminded caseworkers just how dangerous their jobs can be: They enter homes -- always unarmed and seldom with a police escort -- to deal with parents accused of being unfit.
"We make a lot of people angry," Irvin said.
That was never more apparent than on March 8, a week before Blackwell was found dead, when a man and woman walked into the lobby of the CPS office in Victoria, demanding to speak to Blackwell about an "open case" filed against them. When told that she was in a meeting and unavailable, the man raised his voice and said something like "the lawsuit is back on" and "we're going to get her job for this," said Patrick Crimmins, a CPS spokesman in Austin.
Blackwell was reportedly upset when told of the outburst. And Crimmins said an e-mail was immediately sent to caseworkers, urging them to take extra precautions as they do their work in a "business of inherent conflict."
Local and state law enforcement investigators are trying to learn whether that episode is connected to Blackwell's death. They have also examined the contents of her home computer, a report says, after it was learned she had been dating online.
There are a half-dozen "persons of interest" in the investigation, said Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O'Connor, and no motive or suspect has been firmed up. Officers hope blood and DNA test results will prove vital in identifying the killer, he said.
The awkward part of the probe is the sheriff's relationship with Buchanek.
"He trained me," O'Connor noted. "I've been under his command."
A career officer
Buchanek began his police career in 1977 in the small Texas town of Shiner. He became a Victoria County sheriff's deputy in 1980, rising to the rank of captain before he left in January 2004 to train security forces in Iraq.
Before his departure, Buchanek was quoted in the Victoria Advocate as saying, "I've had the privilege of being an American police officer for 26 years, and I felt like [going to Iraq] was an opportunity to share with people who have never experienced American criminal justice."
Buchanek returned to Victoria in 2005, telling people he had been injured by a bomb, and he was allowed to settle back in as a reserve sheriff's deputy -- a position he held until he was implicated as a potential suspect in Blackwell's death.
She was known as highly energetic and always dependable. So on March 14, when Blackwell failed to show up for a second job at a counseling clinic, friends and co-workers began to worry. Then police discovered evidence suggesting that Blackwell had been forced from her home, leaving one of her two dogs trapped in the garage.
"This was very unusual as Blackwell treated this dog like a child and ... it was considered one of her 'babies,'" said an affidavit later written by police to justify their search of Buchanek's house and car.
The next day, in a field, Blackwell's purse was found. It contained her driver's license, cash, credit cards and cellphone.
"Judging by the exact location of the purse in the field, in relation to the road, it appeared the purse had been discarded from a moving vehicle," the affidavit said.
Then, as panicked family members were printing out missing-person posters, Blackwell's partially clad body was found in the field.
Hours before the dogs were called out, a Victoria police detective went to Buchanek's home after being told that Blackwell had gone out with him.
"Buchanek advised that the last date that he went on with Blackwell was sometime during the end of December 2005," the affidavit said.
That outing was cut short, the report said, when Blackwell began receiving calls from work. The next time Buchanek contacted Blackwell she told him "she had met someone else," according to the affidavit.
It said the detective who conducted the interview was "bothered" because Buchanek seemed "emotionless, had no reaction to the disappearance of Blackwell, did not seem concerned and did not offer to assist in anyway."
On the trail
According to police, Quincy and James Bond, in dog years, are almost as experienced in law enforcement as Buchanek.
"Quincy has been trailing since November 1997. She has run 845 felony trails. ... James Bond has been trailing since November 2004. He has run 100 felony trails," the affidavit said.
The dogs first sniffed clothing samples from Blackwell's body and the rope wrapped around her neck, and then they nosed around the area where her body was found.
"The bloodhounds then began to follow the scent ... directly to the residence of Michael Buchanek," the affidavit said. "The bloodhounds walked up the front walkway ... then alerted on the car in the driveway as well."
Residents in the Cimarron subdivision say they can't believe it -- one neighbor dead, another a suspect.
"He always seemed like a friendly guy, " said Brian Polzin, who lives next door to Buchanek. "He's always waved."
Two blocks away, at the house next to Blackwell's, Sheila Hoffman said, "There's a sadness in the neighborhood, especially on this end of the block.
"I wish it were a nightmare," Hoffman added, fighting back tears. "And I'd wake up. And it was over."

Jack Douglas Jr., (817) 390-7700 jld@star-telegram.com
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/14245684.htm

SPAM: How long has it been ?

At Spamarama, a battle of titans
Cook-off and celebration of potted meat draws 3,500
By Miguel Liscano
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 02, 2006
It was a clash of two Spam chef titans Saturday afternoon, one with a string of wins behind him and another who came out of retirement to try to reclaim the title of king of the canned meat pantheon.
The 28th Spamarama cook-off at Waterloo Park had 12 other competitors. But none had won the coveted Spamerica's Cup as many times as David Spooner, the defending champ and six-time winner, and seven-time cup holder John Myers, who won so many times he's called "Chef Spam."
They faced off for the first time at Saturday's competition, offering judges a taste of not just their dishes, but showmanship.
"I treat it as a good piece of meat to work with and do a lot of things to it and present it on fine china as a fine food," a confident Spooner said before the competition.
First, he had to get past Myers, who said, "I'm coming back to take the cup."
With 72 cans of Spam behind him, Spooner, 57, of Austin, prepared his cookoff dish: "Grilled crab stuffed Spam fillets, with roasted pattypan squash, Spam truffle risotto and Spam sauteed in truffle oil." He served it on a silver platter with an embroidered napkin as well as wine to wash it down.
"I think it's going to be a blush today," said Anne Spooner, David's wife.
Spooner has won the top prize in the chef's competition six times in eight tries since he started competing in 1995.
"Yeah,"John Myers quipped. "Since I retired."
Myers, 54, of Plantersville, retired from the competition in the early 1990s after his seven wins. He won the competition three other times before the Spamerica's Cup even existed.
At the competition, Myers altered "Chicken of the Sea" labels to read "Tuna of the Land." His chef's coat bore an embroidered label that said "Spameril Pigasse," and every time he put something in the frying pan, he shouted, "Spam!"
Like Spooner, he thought up his dish — "Spambucca D'Marsala" — about a month before the event and started preparations on Friday to save time.
"Once you get the sautée pan hot, it's bam, bam, bam, or Spam, Spam, Spam, and then it's done," Myers said. Spamarama was dreamed up 30 years ago by Dick Terry and David Dryden Arnsberger as an alternative to chili cook-offs, which they thought were too easy, according to the festival's Web site.
This year's event included Spamalympics — contests that included a Spam disc shoot, a Spam call, a Spam Can Relay and a Spamburger eating contest.
All proceeds went to Disability Assistance of Central Texas, a nonprofit that helps people with disabilities live independently and find jobs. Terry Beck, an organizer, said about 3,500 people attended.
At one table, people in togas served Spam on a toothpick with a piece of pineapple, dipped in melted chocolate flowing from a fountain. They called it Spambrosia, after the mythical Greek food of the gods.
Tasters could be seen leaving the table with smiles. But not everyone was a fan. "It's good, isn't it?" asked toga wearer Colette Brown, smiling at one less-than-enthusiastic reaction.
As for the clash of Spam royalty, Spooner's Spam risotto beat Myers' Spam Marsala.
"I got good responses on my sauce," Spooner said.
Myers shook Spooner's hand, saying, "Congratulations. Now you've tied me."

mliscano@statesman.com; 512-392-8750
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/2SPAMARAMA.html

FYI - Brownwood Teachers

Posted on Sat, Apr. 01, 2006

Perry opponents take their campaigns to teachers
JIM VERTUNO
Associated Press
AUSTIN - The top three candidates vying to unseat Gov. Rick Perry took turns bashing the Republican to Texas teachers Saturday, with each pledging they could do a better job with education.
Democratic nominee Chris Bell and independent candidates Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman spoke to the Association of Texas Professional Educators' annual convention, peppering their speeches with jabs at the governor.
"(Perry) has made an awful mess of things," Bell said. "He's proven he can't lead a silent prayer."
Perry was invited but declined to attend because of a scheduling conflict. Spokeswoman Kathy Walt said Perry was in Texas but out of town on personal business.
Saturday was Sen. Frank Madla of San Antonio's chance to serve the traditional post of governor for a day, a time when sitting governors usually leave town, Walt said.
Perry's opponents all laid out broad-stroke education platforms with common themes: pay raises for teachers, more money and wiser spending in the classroom and getting educators involved in state policy.
Bell called for a $6,000 across-the-board pay raise. Strayhorn went for $4,000 with guaranteed increases every two years. Friedman promised a raise but no specific amount.
Each said the state placed too much emphasis on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, a test of reading and math ability, in measuring performance. They also praised teachers for their work.
"You all are heroes of mine, and I ain't got many heroes," Friedman said.
Bell and Strayhorn said they reject private school vouchers. Strayhorn pledged to veto "any plan that puts a single dollar into any voucher program, period."
All of them got a standing ovation from most of the crowd.
Perry has called a special legislative session on school finance to begin April 17. The current tax structure has been ruled unconstitutional by the Texas Supreme Court, and the state has until June 1 to fix it. If not, money to schools will be cut off.
The governor's plan would reduce property taxes, create a new broad-based business tax and raise the cigarette tax to pay for schools and meet the court mandate.
Three previous special sessions Perry has called since 2004 have failed to fix the school funding system.
Perry campaign spokesman Robert Black said the governor has met with lawmakers, business leaders and parent-teacher groups to build support for his plan.
The other candidates "have offered complaints and criticism without price tags," Black said. "That's not leadership."
Saturday's convention was an important campaign stop for the three who were there. The association is the largest teachers group in Texas with more than 107,000 members, said spokesman Eric Allen.
Bell, Friedman and Strayhorn all set up campaign booths to hand out literature and bumper stickers. Strayhorn and Friedman also collected signatures they need to get on the November ballot.
Barbie Ryza, a high school chemistry teacher from Cameron, signed petitions for both candidates. She signed Strayhorn's first, which by law would be the one that counts.
"I love independent candidates," Ryza said. "It's what America is all about."
Several people in the crowd held up "Strayhorn for Gov." signs during her speech, delivered in her typical rapid-fire, sharp-tongued style. Afterward, she worked the crowd near her booth, signing autographs on posters and T-shirts.
Greg Signall, who teaches Spanish as a second language in Mesquite, said he considers himself a conservative voter and wanted to hear from Perry, although he didn't think the governor would get a very good reception.
"If he really has a vision, no matter how many boos or heckles he would get here, he has to come in and stand before his critics," Signall said.
Strayhorn mocked Perry for not addressing the teachers group.
"I want to debate him anytime, anyplace, anywhere," Strayhorn said. "He ought to be here today to let the people hear where we are in education."
source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/14242139.htm