I read some more. I don't know what I'd have done if my daughter had this illness. They didn't find out right away, so they were bonded to the child.

I would hope she died. I would wish the situation never came about. But I would never even have conceived of halting her physical development. And I really don't know what I would do.

The Pillow Angel Case--Three Bioethicists Weigh In
We asked three of the country's most esteemed bioethicists to give their professional opinion--was the "Ashley Treatment" a wise decision?
By Christopher Mims

On January 3 of this year the parents of a girl with static encephalopathy, a disorder that leaves her unable to move and with the cognitive capacity of an infant, announced on a blog that they had been using hormones to stunt the growth of their daughter for medical and quality-of-life reasons. [More details are available via the original news report of the story .] The resulting, and very public, debate--much of it carried out in the comment thread of the original blog --has ranged from support for the parents to accusations of eugenics and worse.

In order to cut through the noise, we asked three bioethicists--doctors not unlike those who, as members of a medical ethics board, authorized the treatment in the first place--to relate their professional opinion of the case.

ON FEBRUARY 6, 2007 PRESTIGE RECORDS PRESENTS ITS FIFTH EDITIONOF RVG REMASTERS

Bala Cynwyd, PA Jan 04, 2007 In an interview by Richard Seidel in the February 2006 issue of DownBeat, Rudy Van Gelder replied to the question as to why nearly a half-century after they were recorded, albums that he engineered sound so modern: “I just heard ‘The Sidewinder’ [recorded by Lee Morgan in 1963] on the local jazz station and the commentator said, ‘That sounded like it was recorded two weeks ago.’ All I do is try to recreate the musicians’ performance in the way I think they want to be heard. I try to emphasize the good parts.”

Van Gelder sounds modest in his self-assessment of how he went about meticulously engineering thousands of albums in his New Jersey studio for labels such as Prestige, Blue Note, Savoy, Impulse!, Verve and CTI. In fact, he’s considered the master of sound, who since 1954, has recorded a passel of the all-time jazz greats. As Seidel puts it, “It would be easier to mention the musicians he hasn’t recorded than the ones he did.”

Today Van Gelder’s work continues as he remasters classic sides from the Prestige catalog, which today is owned by the Concord Music Group. Initially reluctant to revisit some of the albums he originally worked on, Van Gelder was encouraged by the technological advances of recording equipment and challenged by giving these masterworks a renewed 24-bit lease on life. He says of these artists that he still “feels strongly that I am their messenger.”

In the fifth edition of the RVG Remasters series, five more classic albums are polished for February 6 release: John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio: Traneing In; Jackie McLean: 4, 5, and 6; Miles Davis Quintet: Cookin’; Pat Martino: El Hombre; and Sonny Rollins: Plus Four.

Prestige inaugurated its RVG Remasters Series in March 2006 with ten seminal titles, then continued in June, July and September with five more discs each month. Each RVG engineered album includes original and new liner notes, and some albums are augmented by alternate take bonus tracks.

Backwoods Celebrity Faces Long Prison Term for Incest
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 27, 2006; A02

Robert Hale, a Bible-toting father of 15 who calls himself Papa Pilgrim, became an anti-government celebrity in Alaska by driving a bulldozer across a national park that encircles his land.

The Lord told him that using the bulldozer to clear 14 miles of derelict road through the park was a loving thing to do, Hale said in an interview three years ago.

"In order for me to love my children, I have to be a provider," Hale said then, explaining that he needed the bulldozer to fetch supplies for his children, whom he and his wife were home-schooling in an ultra-strict Christian way.

For the last six years the Bush Republican government has wielded the Justice Department like a rapier.

This case will be used to legitimize Bushista intrusions into anything less trivial than the question, "Did Barry Bonds do something that wasn't illegal or against the rules of baseball at the time in question?"

Media-Sourcing Debate on Deck at Capitol
Congress Is Likely to Revisit
Calls for Federal Shield Law
As Baseball Case Culminates
By JESS BRAVIN and SARAH ELLISON
December 22, 2006; Page B3

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is increasingly at odds with some Republicans over its efforts to make journalists reveal confidential sources.

This time, though...

A whistle-blower going unheard
Black leaders lined up behind Tennie Pierce. Where is their support for former county employee Patrick Porch?
Erin Aubry Kaplan
December 20, 2006

IT'S CHRISTMAS, and Patrick Porch is broke.

He's hardly alone in that. But how he got broke is a singular story that bears some resemblance to that of Tennie Pierce, the black former firefighter whose charges of institutional discrimination and harassment (and whose scuttled multimillion-dollar settlement) sparked ongoing public debate. The difference is that Porch is still struggling to be heard.

Porch is the county hospital employee whose life was made miserable when he tried to bring a misdeed to light. In 2003, according to court documents, the 40-year-old project manager came across more than $1 million worth of suspicious purchase orders at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center and showed them to his boss — despite the fact her signature appeared on several of the orders. Porch says the documents showed that hospital managers bought high-end home-improvement items with hospital money — including brass and crystal faucet fixtures, chef quality knives, stopwatches and a 94-gallon fish pond.

Last time I brought down the Fire of the Gods there were none of these damn satellites...

Solar Storm Disrupts Space Missions

An "energetic" storm on the sun disrupted signals in space and forced mission controllers to shut systems down to avoid damage to spacecraft orbiting Earth, the European Space Agency said.

The sun expelled a solar flare Wednesday after a buildup of magnetic energy triggered an explosion, the ESA said yesterday. The flare gave rise to a coronal mass ejection that sent a stream of fast-moving atomic particles toward Earth, the agency said.

One of four Cluster spacecraft operated by the agency lost power, and an instrument on another shut itself down after the burst of solar energy. Ten astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery and the international space station slept in a protected area as a precaution.

Sen. Johnson in Critical Condition After Surgery
Control of Chamber Could Be in Question if He Cannot Serve
By Charles Babington and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 14, 2006; 7:44 AM

Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) underwent emergency brain surgery overnight after falling ill at the Capitol and was in critical condition early this morning, introducing a note of uncertainty over control of the Senate just weeks before Democrats are to take over with a one-vote margin.

Johnson, 59, was taken to George Washington University Hospital early yesterday afternoon, shortly after becoming disoriented during a conference call with news reporters. He underwent "a comprehensive evaluation by the stroke team," his office said. Aides later said he had not suffered a stroke or heart attack.

Hutchins, the spokesman for the family of Kathryn Johnston, the elderly woman shot and killed by Atlanta police officers in November, said the whole matter was an "unfortunate misunderstanding" that someone used to embarrass him....

"I checked my statements [Monday] and he never made a deposit in January, February or March," Hutchins said. "The man went to the court and got the warrant in May. It is December now. Why did it take so long? It was $275. Had I known that [the warrant] existed, I would have paid it."

Activist calls jail on check charge a 'witch hunt'
Auto detailer paid Tuesday for year-old work
By ERNIE SUGGS, NANCY BADERTSCHER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/13/06

First of all.

But one after another, in conversations with Sergeant Kipp or Sergeant Wheeler, the men said they could not say how many shots they had fired. Two said they were unsure whether they had even fired at all, including a detective who investigators later learned had fired 31 shots, emptying his 9-millimeter Sig Sauer pistol, reloading and emptying it again during the frenzied barrage.

Undercover Mike didn't remember emptying a clip, reloading and emptying it again? He belongs in jail or the psycho ward. Personally, I prefer jail...no one should have to deal with the remains of NYS' mental health care system (which is pretty much to be assigned a bed in a homeless shelter).

Second,

Lieutenant Napoli’s account makes clear that he believed the men in Mr. Bell’s car knew he was a police officer because he had made eye contact with one of them. The report says Lieutenant Napoli could not articulate why he believed that.

That's easy...niggas know. 

Wow.

Mr. Benefield said a man he had not seen before stood in front of Mr. Bell’s car and simply opened fire, striking Mr. Guzman once, and that Mr. Bell then repeatedly drove forward and in reverse and collided with other vehicles in an attempt to drive away. His account differs from the accounts of some police officers that the detective opened fire after Mr. Bell’s car had struck him, crashed into a police van, and then nearly hit him a second time.

The police union has an interesting provision in their cintract. You can't even talk to a cop involved in a shooting for some 24 hours, I think. This time is normally used to "coordinate a defense." But this time there's a bag of witnesses. Finally,

None of the witnesses — police or civilians — whose accounts are detailed in the report recall hearing anything close to 50 rounds.

This is totally understandable.A neuron takes a certain amount of time to reset. In fact, a surprise burst of gunfire is the sort of thing that shuts down most folks' consciousness until one's ass is firmly ensconsed behind a really thick wall.

Anyway... 

50 Bullets, One Dead, and Many Questions
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and AL BAKER

When the shooting stopped, the police lieutenant edged toward the gray Nissan Altima with his gun drawn. He ordered the men inside to show their hands. The lieutenant had not fired his weapon, and as he neared the car, according to police records, one of the bloodied men inside complied and stuck his hands out the window. The other did not move.

The suits resulted from a two-month effort in April and May in which private investigators posed as buyers at 40 stores that had sold guns linked with more than 800 crimes in New York City between 1994 and 2001.

The teams, usually a man and woman, conducted what law enforcement officials describe as a straw purchase: one customer would deal with the seller until the last moment of the sale, when the second customer would step in to pay and fill out the forms for a background check.

Federal law prohibits a seller from handing over the weapon in such cases, because it lets people obtain guns without federal scrutiny of their criminal record Mr. Bloomberg said that straw purchases were one of the most common schemes used by gun traffickers, giving the city the right — with a bold interpretation of public nuisance laws — to go after out-of-state dealers for their weapons’ deadly consequences.

The matches were found on the seat of a woman who had attempted to conceal the odour of flatulence with the matches, Nashville airport authorities said.

All 99 passengers and five crew left the plane while it was searched.

The woman was questioned by the FBI but released without charge and allowed to board another American Airlines flight.

"It was determined that she was trying to conceal body odour," said Lynne Lowrance of the Nashville Airport Authority.

Many people have focused solely on the racial aspect of the Pierce case. But as I explained to the City Council, and as the city attorney is well aware, the city's liability does not hinge on whether race was a motivating factor for the dog food incident.

Pierce initially asked for three things: a permanent transfer to a new fire station; a full investigation; and fair punishment for those involved. Instead, the Fire Department tried to make Pierce return to Fire Station 5; there was no investigation; and the perpetrators received discipline that Pierce felt was a slap on the wrist. Had the department addressed Pierce's needs, there never would have been a lawsuit.

When I saw this case reported, I said NOTHING. Someone mentioned it here in the comments, I forget who...my only response was that I'm not feeling the racism part of the complaint.

This is because race obviously had nothing to do with it. And I'm glad the race noise was just editorializing in the media...while at the same time I'm totally unhappy that it was editorialized as a racial issue. We got enough legitimate ones.

Racism was only part of Pierce's case
The ex-firefighter was a victim of retaliation after he reported the dog-food incident.
By Genie Harrison

Genie Harrison is the attorney who represents Tennie Pierce in his case against the L os Angeles Fire Department.

December 7, 2006

WHAT HAPPENED to Tennie Pierce at Fire Station 5 in Westchester cannot be compared, as one angry Angeleno suggested, to an episode of "Survivor" or "Fear Factor" with a payout of $2.7 million. Pierce wasn't given a choice. Instead, he was fed dog food against his will for the purpose of "humbling" him, as the Fire Department's own inquiry found, and was forced off the job when he followed department rules and reported the incident.

The New Black Panther Party™ held a rally in memory of Sean Bell. This is how the Village Voice reported on it.

Early Saturday, a throng of media and curious locals converged outside the cop shop with cameras ready for a spectacle. They got one.

The tension began when members of the Progressive Labor Party made a bid for media attention with its chant, "Black power, white power all the same. Racist terrorism is the name of the game." They were overwhelmed when the New Black Panther Party began a call and response with the crowd, its members pumping fists into the air like exclamation points at the end of the signature "Black Power!" war cry.

Qusan told me about this broadcast.

Friday, December 1st, 2006
Hundreds to Attend Sean Bell Funeral, Community Leaders Criticize NYPD For Raids

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Time to face reality

I've had a sobering week, and I have to make some difficult choices. I have to let go of some things in my life or risk dire consequences. Right now, this blog is one of them. I have learned much, and I am grateful for the thoughtful comments and kind words this work has attracted over the last three years. Perhaps one day I can return. In the meantime, I hope that the archives contained here will be of some enduring value. Farewell for now.
 

They had come and been there for her, rushing to her side to introduce themselves — at her son’s wake, at his funeral, at the protests on the streets. Amadou Diallo’s mother, Malcolm Ferguson’s mother, Nicholas Heyward Jr.’s father, Abner Louima himself.

At Sean Bell’s wake yesterday, in a crowded church in Jamaica, Queens, Mrs. Dorismond was weeping in the second row of pews, only a few feet from the open coffin, when Amadou Diallo’s mother, Kadiatou, arrived. Mrs. Dorismond rushed to her friend, the two hugged for several minutes, and Mrs. Dorismond shouted: “Again? Again? Again?”

Police Shooting Reunites Circle of Common Loss
By SARAH KERSHAW

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said. "I do think there needs to be better laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when trying to pass laws to protect privacy."

MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill
By Ryan Singel
02:00 AM Dec, 01, 2006

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

Court documents said the government has identified 184 illegal immigrants who falsely received U.S. citizenship from Schofield, but Walutes said the government believes the actual number is in the hundreds. "We have to go out and arrest these people," Walutes said. "It's a huge endeavor."

Immigration Official Pleads Guilty to Falsifying Documents
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 1, 2006; A16

A Department of Homeland Security supervisor pleaded guilty yesterday to pocketing more than $600,000 in bribes in exchange for falsifying immigration documents to help Asian immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship.

Business Chief Hedges, a Bit, on Running for Mayor
By DIANE CARDWELL

In political circles, Richard D. Parsons, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, has become a perennial favorite among the possible candidates mentioned to succeed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Yesterday, while saying he was not running for the job, he suddenly sounded a lot more like a man who wants to keep the option open.

During a question-and-answer session at the Reuters Media Summit yesterday, a reporter mentioned the many news stories speculating that he was considering a run for City Hall and asked Mr. Parsons if he saw himself “pursuing a political career.”

Police rules mandate that an officer pause after firing three rounds to assess the situation. If the shooters had followed procedures, they might have seen there was no threat before it was too late. Mayor Bloomberg has rightly called for a quick and impartial investigation. The officers must be held accountable for what has happened. But the Police Department must also confront the fact that a disaster that everyone swore to prevent seven years ago has repeated itself in Queens.

50 Bullets and a Death in Queens

Much has changed in New York since Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, was killed in a hail of 41 bullets fired by city police officers in 1999. Mr. Diallo’s death sent racial tensions in the city nearly to a boiling point — helped along by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who regularly shunned meetings with black leaders and failed to treat the crisis with the urgency it required.

It ought to be a pretty amusing story by the time I advance to Prometheus 8 or 9.

Lots go to businesses, such as apartment complexes, car dealers and the like. But a sizable number end up with homeowners, said Don DelPlace, publisher of Golf Car Advisor, a trade magazine and wholesale catalog with products for the residential set. Among the Advisor's offerings: alloy wheels, rifle holders (for hunting) and kits to convert carts to roadsters resembling a Hummer H2 or a Buick Lucerne.

Inside Scanlon's garage, as many as five Navy veterans -- all in their 40s, all working for the government or for government contractors -- gather to watch football. In their Navy careers, they logged a combined 20,000 hours of flight time. These days, those without carts sometimes drive over aboard riding lawnmowers, giving them a place to sit to watch the games.

"Since the c-21558 family's first detection in March 1999 the total counterfeit activity (passed and seized notes) has exceeded $23 million," according to the report. In 2005, the Secret Service detected $5.3 million from the Caucasus ring, up from $1.5 million in 2003, the report said.

That compares to the approximately $2.8 million in "supernotes" linked to North Korea that the agency says it confiscates, on average, each year. The production of supernotes, so called for their quality, has become a major diplomatic issue between the United States and the government of Kim Jong Il.

Georgian investigators said the fake bills from South Ossetia are made with special ink and paper and have watermarks, different serial numbers and other features that allow them to be easily passed off as real. "They are of very high quality," Konstantin Kemularia, secretary of Georgia's National Security Council, said in an interview....

The fake notes have been passed at numerous businesses throughout the Baltimore area and have also surfaced in New York, Newark and Buffalo, according to court papers and the joint report to Congress by the Secret Service, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. The report, issued in September, also said the number of counterfeit notes produced in this region and passed in the United States has "increased dramatically" in recent years.

Probe Traces Global Reach of Counterfeiting Ring
Fake $100 Bills in Maryland Tied to Organized Crime in Separatist Enclave
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 26, 2006; A01

TBILISI, Georgia -- The U.S. Secret Service and Georgian police are investigating an international counterfeiting operation that stretches from a separatist enclave in this former Soviet republic to Maryland, where fake $100 bills have been seized, according to senior officials and investigators here. The allegations are supported by American diplomats, U.S. court documents and a recent report to Congress.

The Mint made three billion state quarters in 2005 but only five million Sacagawea dollars. By law, it has to continue making the Sacagawea dollars...

The coins were authorized last year by a law that also provides for a series of 24-karat $10 gold coins honoring all the presidents’ wives, which will be sold to collectors and investors rather than released for general circulation. The first of those, showing Martha Washington, will be issued before the end of 2007.

Presidents, Well Known or Not, Will Have Their Day on a Dollar
By MATTHEW HEALEY

The United States Mint is unveiling four designs for one-dollar coins today, featuring likenesses of the first four presidents. They begin a series that is to last a decade and portray every deceased president.

The thing is, Greenleaf doesn't really have crime. At least as most cities define it. The most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.

Still, Jett insists, the menace of high crime may be on the horizon.

Idaho town asks residents to own guns
By Jesse Harlan Alderman, Associated Press Writer  |  November 16, 2006

GREENLEAF, Idaho --After seeing the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, a city councilor in this tiny Idaho town founded by pacifist Quakers came up with a novel idea.

Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf's 862 residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun at home in case they are overrun by refugees from disasters like Katrina.

"You saw from my campaign I got experience..."

(I'm sorry, but the joke was sitting there blocking my path.)

Mike Tyson To Be A Prostitute

Former boxing champion Mike Tyson is to become a male escort after agreeing to work at legendary Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss' new legalized brothel for women. Fleiss bought 60 acres of land in Nevada, and his work is scheduled to begin on Heidi's Stud Farm.

She has high hopes for Tyson, once heavyweight champion of the world - despite the fact he is a convicted rapist.

She says, "I told him, 'You're going to be my big stallion.' It's every man's fear that their girlfriend will go for Mike Tyson."

Tyson, 40, adds, "I don't care what any man says, it's every man's dream to please every woman - and get paid for it."

I am actually grateful that some white folks had this indominatable sense of entitlement. If all those white college students hadn't joined the Freedom Rides, those buses would have just vanished. If Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner hadn't been killed, James Chaney would have been another missing nigger.

That link is not work safe, though not because there's anything sexual on the other side...it's because there is narration of things no one wants to remember.

Anyway, I am grateful, but I've long been of the opinion that the equality everyone lauds will come together at the low end. I think this has finally come to pass, as this poor kid tries to talk to the cops like he was a white guy in a Dave Chapelle skit. You see how it turned out...

What would you have the USofA do if, say, five countries decided to treat a couple of Americans this way at the same time?

When the question of whether the international tribunal’s ruling must be followed reached the United States Supreme Court last year, President Bush issued a memorandum to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales directing state courts to abide by the decision of the tribunal.

At the same time, the State Department announced that the United States had withdrawn from the protocol that gave the tribunal jurisdiction to hear such disputes. The tribunal, the International Court of Justice, is the United Nations’ principal judicial organ.

More realistically, it seems Texas' brief history as an independent country has caused its court to mistake the relationship between the POTUS and the SCOTUS for that between the POTUS and itself.

Texas Court Ruling Rebuffs Bush and World Court
By ADAM LIPTAK

Texas can proceed with the execution of a death row inmate notwithstanding a ruling by an international tribunal and a memorandum from President Bush directing state courts to comply with the tribunal’s decision, Texas’ highest court for criminal matters ruled yesterday.

“We hold that the president has exceeded his constitutional authority by intruding into the independent powers of the judiciary,” Judge Michael Keasler wrote for the court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

I think this is a pretty fair overview of the Min. Farrakhan's career and the issues that will arise on his passing, as far as data is concerned. Couple of conclusions here and there I might not have drawn...

He is regularly charged with inciting anti-Jewish sentiments among African-Americans, but few realize that Farrakhan’s voice is a relatively conciliatory one in the Black Nationalist community. He can’t be too conciliatory, however, lest the NOI chief alienates the fire-breathing militants who comprise a major part of his base—and, more importantly, still fall under his influence.

Through an artful combination of outrageous rhetoric and mollifying gestures, Farrakhan has managed to maintain his radical base without undermining his mainstream credibility. His dominance of the radical fringe also has served to limit the appeal of Islamist radicalism among those African Americans most vulnerable to its lure.

Those who welcome Farrakhan’s retreat from the national stage may not have fully considered the implications of his absence.

Farrakhan Steps Back
By Salim Muwakkil

Minister Louis Farrakhan failed to deliver the keynote address at the 11th anniversary celebration of the 1995 Million Man March. Complications from cancer treatments forced the Nation of Islam (NOI) leader to cancel the first major address he has missed in his 29 years of leadership.

20 eunuchs to collect taxes in India
November 10, 2006

PATNA, India --One cash-strapped Indian city has launched a unique collection service to dislodge payment from tax deadbeats: Door-to-door eunuchs.

Eunuchs -- a term used in India to describe transvestites, postoperative transsexuals and hermaphrodites -- traditionally make a living on tips for dancing at weddings or for blessing newborns. They frequently refuse to leave until they are given money.

Patna, the capital of Bihar state in eastern India, hired scores of them Wednesday to compel shop owners to pay their back taxes.

"We are confident that their reputation and persuasive skills will come in handy for the municipal authorities to collect taxes from defaulters," said Bharat Sharma, a revenue officer.