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Behind the wheel, troopers shouldn't be above the law - seattlepi.com

seattlepi.com

by Thomas Shapley

February 26, 2005

"We humbly apologize." Those are words no appointed state official wants to utter to the chairman of a key legislative committee after just three weeks on the job.

But Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste had little choice in making that apology after a state legislator received a barrage of nasty, even threatening, e-mail messages apparently sent by troopers and their families. Batiste, who took the top WSP job earlier this month, offered the apology "as an individual and as a group," to House Transportation Chairman Ed Murray, D-Seattle, and Rep. Toby Nixon, R-Kirkland, at a committee hearing Wednesday evening. "I and the union representative want to apologize for the behavior of a few," he said.

The U.N.'s rape of the innocents

Townhall

by Michelle Malkin

February 16, 2005

Kofi Annan must have the world's thickest set of industrial-quality earplugs. How else can he block out the cries of Congolese girls raped by United Nations "peacekeepers" sent to protect the innocents from harm'

Fifty U.N. peacekeepers and U.N. civilian officers face an estimated 150 allegations of sexual exploitation and rape in the Congo alone. Last Friday, ABC's "20/20" program aired a devastating expose by investigative reporter Brian Ross highlighting some of the worst alleged crimes.

Drug Regulators Are Trying to Quash Study, Senator Says

Alliance for Human Research Protection

by Gardiner Harris

February 12, 2005

The tension surrounding a crucial federal drug advisory committee meeting, reached a boil when Senator Charles E. Grassley charged that federal drug regulators intended to suppress an important study.

The panel has been convened to discuss whether Celebrex and Bextra, heavily selling arthritis pills from Pfizer, hurt the heart and are worth their potential risks. But top officials of the Food and Drug Administration have forbidden Dr. David Graham, a drug-safety officer at the agency, to discuss before the panel a large study of that very question, said Dr. Gurkirpal Singh of Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Graham's co-author.

First North American Heroin Maintenance Study Now Underway in Vancouver

Stop The Drug War

February 11, 2005

Hard-core heroin users began lining up this week in Vancouver to participate in a pioneering study where researchers will provide them with free heroin.

The study, known as the North American Opiate Maintenance Project (NAOMI), won final approval Monday from Health Canada. Moving quickly, researchers this week began the process of selecting 158 participants, 88 who will receive free heroin and 70 -- the control group -- who will get methadone. The NAOMI project is slated to expand to Toronto and Montreal later this year. In all, some 450 heroin users will participate in the one-year pilot project. At the end of the study period, the doses of heroin will tail off. The study is designed to see whether heroin is more effective than methadone in getting users who have proven resistant to other therapies to quit using. While similar projects have taken place in Switzerland and the Netherlands, the NAOMI project marks the first attempt to provide heroin maintenance therapy to drug users in North America.

Democracy Is Not Freedom

lewrockwell.com

by Rep. Ron Paul, Md

February 7, 2005

We've all heard the words democracy and freedom used countless times, especially in the context of our invasion of Iraq. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different.

George Orwell wrote about "meaningless words" that are endlessly repeated in the political arena.* Words like "freedom," "democracy," and "justice," Orwell explained, have been abused so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell's view, political words were "Often used in a consciously dishonest way." Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As a result, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word "democracy" as a synonym for freedom, and thus to believe that democracy is unquestionably good. The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this, as evidenced not only by our republican constitutional system, but also by their writings in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere. James Madison cautioned that under a democratic government, "There is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual." John Adams argued that democracies merely grant revocable rights to citizens depending on the whims of the masses, while a republic exists to secure and protect pre-existing rights. Yet how many Americans know that the word "democracy" is found neither in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence, our very founding documents?

Cashing in on Cons

In These Times

by Silja J.A. Talvi

February 5, 2005

Keeping litigation costs down is only one way prison corporations profit from incarceration. In addition, for-profit prisons also increase revenues by contracting with other corporations to provide substandard or overpriced services to prisoners.

In some states, companies like Microsoft pay prisons to employ prisoners at wages far below market rates. Taking advantage of the unprecedented prison boom of the late ’80s and ’90s, prison administrators, politicians, lobbying firms and corporate boards created a prison-industrial complex in which everyone benefits except the prisoners.

Brain Immaturity Could Explain Teen Crash Rate

Washington Post

by Elizabeth Williamson

February 1, 2005

NIH study: Risk-taking diminishes at age 25

A National Institutes of Health study suggests that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully formed until age 25, a finding with implications for a host of policies, including the nation's driving laws.

The research has implications beyond driving: Attorneys cited brain development studies as the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether juvenile offenders should be eligible for the death penalty. The court is expected to reach a decision by midyear.

S.F. board votes to ban smoking in city's parks - Only golf courses would be exempt from tobacco taboo

San Francisco Chronicle (CA)

by Suzanne Herel

January 26, 2005

Smokers, take heed: A new law is kicking your butts out of San Francisco parks and open spaces.

The Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday to outlaw smoking outdoors in all recreational areas managed by the city except for golf courses. That includes parks, squares, gardens and playing fields but not federal lands such as the Presidio or Ocean Beach.

Tying jobs to smoking too draconian

The Kalamazoo Gazette (MI)

January 26, 2005

Over the last quarter-century, smokers have become pariahs. As of Jan. 1, KVCC will no longer hire tobacco users for full-time jobs.

Once they could smoke at their desks, anywhere in restaurants, in stores. Nowadays, smokers may not light up in the workplace, in many public places and even many businesses that have declared themselves smoke-free.

Lakewood no-smoking plan gets both sides all fired up

The Cleveland Plain Dealer (OH)

by Kaye Spector

January 26, 2005

Sentiment over a proposed citywide smoking ban has bar and restaurant owners fuming, but others concerned about health issues are holding their breath that the proposal will become law.

A hearing on the proposed ban Tuesday night drew a capacity crowd to the City Hall auditorium. About 80 people were seated, and more lined the walls along the back and side of the room. Bar and restaurant patrons, business owners, high school students, health professionals and a group from Toledo stepped forward one by one to deliver their thoughts to the eight members of a panel appointed by council to study a ban.

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