Pennsylvanian in exile

A suicide bomber blew himself up during evening prayers at a Shiite mosque Monday, killing one worshipper and wounding 20. The bomber slipped into the mosque during a gunbattle with police that left another attacker and two officers dead.

A crowd outraged by the attack went on a rampage afterward in this southern city, setting fire to cars and shops and killing at least six more people. Police recovered the bodies from a KFC restaurant burned by the mob.

All were restaurant employees, senior police official Manzoor Mughal said.

The attack occurred at the Madinatul Ilm Imambargah in eastern Karachi, said Asif Ijaz, a Karachi police official. Three attackers stole an automatic weapon from a police guard outside the mosque and shot him to death, Ijaz said.

Other policemen opened fire, killing one of the attackers and wounding another, and an officer also was killed, he said.

But the third attacker managed to get inside the mosque and detonated a bomb strapped to his body, Ijaz said. One worshipper died and four were seriously injured, while 16 others were treated for lesser wounds, said Zafar Hussain, an administrator of the mosque.

?It appeared to be a low-intensity bomb because it did not cause major damage,? said Mushtaq Shah, chief of police operations in Karachi.

About 1,000 Shiites, many beating their chests in mourning, rioted in the neighborhood near the mosque, Ijaz said. Two electricity transformers were also set on fire, plunging the neighborhood into darkness.

Rauf Siddiqi, home minister of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, condemned the bombing and said security had been put on ?high alert.?

?These incidents are happening one after the other. We are trying to find a link between them,? he told the private Geo television station. ?This is a criminal and merciless attack.?

The attack came three days after a suspected suicide bomber attacked a Shiite religious gathering during a festival at a shrine near Islamabad, Pakistan?s capital, killing about 20 people and injuring dozens.

Political and sectarian violence between radical groups within the majority Sunni and minority Shiite Muslims is common in Karachi.

# posted by Duane : 7:11 AM  0 comments

WE WALKED gently over the luscious lawns of Cypress Hills National Cemetery in Brooklyn, where 20,000 veterans rest and angels never fear to tread.

It was the annual memorial service of the Kings County American Legion, and a benevolent sun quickly dried the damp eyes of emotion of those who had lost comrades in foreign fields.

"I regularly walk up the hill to pay my respects at the grave site of Daniel Kiernan, who was killed in Korea. I remember him from the time we were both together at Holy Name Grammar School and we joined up together. What a guy," said Eddie Cush, chairman of today's Brooklyn Memorial Day parade.

"I'd always wondered whatever happened to Tommy Ryan, who we both went to school with. So one day recently, I just walked a few headstones further [from] where Daniel lay, and then, of course, I knew Tommy had been killed in the same Korean conflict. There was his headstone. Yes, it does get pretty emotional."

Some of the veterans found it a little harder to walk in the dedication band this year, but Irwin Meyer, 86, director of the legion's musical program, sprung around like a gazelle.

"Look at him," said Joseph Anderson, also 86, former New York state director of Veteran Affairs. "We were both blown up together on the Attack Transport PA-5 Barnett as we were landing in Sicily, but we're both here."

Anderson spent most of his emotional address to the group attacking the liberal media, which he believes is patently anti-American, anti-military and anti-veteran. He was met with loud applause.

The gathering hushed as Anne Viverito, president of the Kings County Legion, read a letter from a soldier in Iraq.

"Fransisco Martinez Flores wrote to his family the following letter: 'God will reward me in the future for the sacrifice I am making.' Two days later, Fransisco was killed in Iraq. Every day is Memorial Day when we have soldiers in 130 countries."

Not to know about Cypress Hills National Cemetery is to confess to a sad education in history. There are graves of veterans from 10 foreign countries?including the then-enemy. Fourteen British soldiers who were returning to England after defeat in the Revolutionary War were laid to rest there after drowning off Sandy Hook.

On one side of the cemetery, there is a plaque that reflects in part a poem by Theodore O'Hara titled "Bivouac of the Dead." It wouldn't set The New York Times' literary pages on fire, but O'Hara, a veteran of the Mexican-American War, wrote:

"On fame's eternal camping ground, the silent tents are spread, and glory guards with solemn bound, the bivouac of the dead."

I think it is magic.

So are all the men and women I saw in that cemetery yesterday.

# posted by Duane : 8:38 PM  0 comments

Which brings us to that spoonful of sugar. The American sugar industry is so strongly advantaged by quotas, tariffs and subsidies that total sugar imports have declined by about a third since the 1990s. Cafta would allow additional sugar imports from the Central American nations totaling 107,000 metric tons in the first year. Annual U.S. sugar production is about 7.8 million metric tons, so the effect of Cafta is to raise sugar imports into America by about one day's sugar production, or as Mr. Portman puts it, "approximately one teaspoon of sugar per week per adult American."
That threat--a teaspoon of sugar a week--has caused the U.S. sugar lobby to focus its efforts on killing Cafta. And it may succeed. The U.S. government agreed not to free up the sugar market in the 2004 trade pact with Australia.

American sugar producers claim they are not against free trade. But only trade agreements approved by the World Trade Organization are acceptable to them; any trade agreements reached between America and other nations evidently are not.

American sugar imports would depress sugar prices, they say. Well, American sugar prices today are about three times the world market's, so some price reduction would be good for Americans, just as lower gasoline prices would be.

U.S. Sugar Corp.'s Senior Vice President Robert Coker believes that "bilateral and regional trade agreements are death by a thousand cuts." Such economic protectionism--no bilateral trade agreements allowed--is the good old-fashioned socialism that has failed millions of people for hundreds of years. Like Lenin, U.S. Sugar seems to think that Americans should suffer economically rather than have a free market in sugar.

So a spoonful of sugar may kill an opportunity for six Central American nations to strengthen their $33 billion annual bilateral trade with the United States, prevent an increase in America's export trade of more than $2 billion a year, and mean thousands of American men and women won't get jobs that otherwise would be available.

# posted by Duane : 8:54 AM  0 comments

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.

The researchers said a short pointed knife may cause a substantial superficial wound if used in an assault - but is unlikely to penetrate to inner organs.

In contrast, a pointed long blade pierces the body like "cutting into a ripe melon".

The use of knives is particularly worrying amongst adolescents, say the researchers, reporting that 24% of 16-year-olds have been shown to carry weapons, primarily knives.

The study found links between easy access to domestic knives and violent assault are long established.

French laws in the 17th century decreed that the tips of table and street knives be ground smooth.

A century later, forks and blunt-ended table knives were introduced in the UK in an effort to reduce injuries during arguments in public eating houses.

The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

"The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime.

"We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect."

# posted by Duane : 12:08 AM  0 comments

When I moved to Florida in 2003 to become a professor at the University of Florida, I knew I was moving to a red state famous for political problems such as counting votes in presidential elections. Even I was not fully prepared, however, to find flags in UF classrooms this summer.

Supposedly, these flags "teach" patriotism. But this is patent nonsense. To paraphrase an NRA slogan, flags don't teach patriotism, teachers do. Professors are hired at UF to teach their areas of expertise, whether they are in physics, law, engineering, medicine, or, as in my case, literature.

The Florida Legislature putting flags in classrooms to teach patriotism makes as much sense as Planned Parenthood putting free condoms in classrooms to teach sex education or Coca-Cola putting vending machines in classrooms to teach capitalism. The merits of any of these "lessons" is beside the point. Anything that distracts from a professor's ability to teach his or her subject or from the students' ability to learn it does not belong in the classroom.

Richard Burt,
department of English,
University of Florida

# posted by Duane : 9:06 AM  1 comments

Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left - more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.

I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.

A turning point came at a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan's use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.

When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil'" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport.

My progressive companions had a point. It was rude to bring a word like "gulag" to the dinner table.

I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.

Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.

Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the "courage" of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to "automobile statistics." The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day.

I smile when friends tell me I've "moved right." I laugh out loud at what now passes for progressive on the main lines of the cultural left.

In the name of "diversity," the University of Arizona has forbidden discrimination based on "individual style." The University of Connecticut has banned "inappropriately directed laughter." Brown University, sensing unacceptable gray areas, warns that harassment "may be intentional or unintentional and still constitute harassment." (Yes, we're talking "subconscious harassment" here. We're watching your thoughts ...).

Wait, it gets better. When actor Bill Cosby called on black parents to explain to their kids why they are not likely to get into medical school speaking English like "Why you ain't" and "Where you is," Jesse Jackson countered that the time was not yet right to "level the playing field." Why not? Because "drunk people can't do that ... illiterate people can't do that."

Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals -- people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense -- is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.

All of which is why I have come to believe, and gladly join with others who have discovered for themselves, that the single most important thing a genuinely liberal person can do now is walk away from the house the left has built. The renewal of any tradition that deserves the name "progressive" becomes more likely with each step in a better direction.

# posted by Duane : 1:05 PM  0 comments

It is unconstitutional to force capital murder defendants to appear before juries in shackles during the penalty phase of trial, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, brushing aside warnings by two justices about courthouse safety.

In a 7-2 decision, the high court threw out the death sentence of Carman Deck, a convicted murderer who was shackled in leg irons and handcuffed to a chain around his belly when he faced a Missouri jury that considered his fate.

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, said shackling almost always implies that authorities consider the offender a danger to the community, a factor juries weigh in considering a sentence.

Breyer brushed aside a strongly worded dissent by the court's most conservative members, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who warned the decision risks the lives of courtroom personnel.

"The court's holding defies common sense and all but ignores the serious security issues facing our courts," Thomas said in dissent.

# posted by Duane : 10:02 PM  0 comments

Medicaid is providing Viagra to nearly 200 of the state's worst sexual predators, under a federal program that has outraged local lawmakers, according to a new government report.

Among those receiving Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after being convicted of a sexual crime was a fiend who preyed on a 2-year-old, and a criminal who attacked a 90-year-old woman, the report says.

"The whole purpose of Viagra is to increase sexual performance, is to increase libido, is to increase blood flow, to increase the capacity of the user of the medication to perform sexually," said state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, whose office released the study.

"Some of them, as a condition of their parole, are required to take medication to do the opposite, and this contradicts it. The bottom line is that this is a category of patients that should not be receiving these drugs."

Those receiving the drug have been convicted of everything from first-degree rape to sexual touching, and are Level 3 offenders ? who, under state criminal guidelines, are those deemed most likely to commit crimes again.

During a review of Medicaid pharmacy spending, Hevesi's auditors matched Viagra recipients with the names of Level 3 offenders on the Internet and discovered that some were receiving the prescription drug and were being reimbursed by Medicaid for the expense.

The review did not include the names of Level 1 and Level 2 offenders, whose names are not required to be listed on the Internet.

Viagra costs about $10 a pill, and the average monthly prescription is six pills, officials said.

"It is just mind-boggling to think that Level 3 sexual offenders can get Viagra, which may indeed help them perpetrate other horrible crimes," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

"And what we know about Level 3 offenders is this: They almost never change. They're almost never rehabilitated."

Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro said she has prosecuted sex offenders who used Viagra before preying on their victims.

"That Medicaid would pay for this is an outrage," Pirro said. "Sex offenders are obviously devious and cunning and will use anything they can to access our children."

Hevesi has asked Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt to change federal distribution policies of the drug.

In 1998, the department informed states that Medicaid programs covering prescription drugs must also cover Viagra when medically necessary, or face financial sanctions.

# posted by Duane : 9:30 PM  6 comments

The owner of two Kentucky theaters has refused to show the new Jane Fonda film "Monster-in-Law" because of the activist role the actress took during the Vietnam War.

Ike Boutwell, who trained pilots during the Vietnam War, displayed pictures of Fonda clapping with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft crew in 1972 outside the Elizabethtown Movie Palace to show his disapproval. The marquee outside Showtime Cinemas in nearby Radcliff reads: "No Jane Fonda movie in this theater."

Both theaters are just a few miles from the Army post of Fort Knox, south of Louisville.

"I think when people do something, they need to be held responsible for their actions," Boutwell said. "When you give the enemy aid, it makes the war last longer."

Fonda has apologized for being photographed on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, but not for opposing the war.

"Monster-in-Law" raked in more than $23 million last weekend as the top-grossing movie across the country, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. and Nielsen EDI Inc. In the film, Fonda plays Jennifer Lopez's villainous prospective mother-in-law, trying to stop Lopez from marrying her son.

Sal Mancuso, an Elizabethtown resident, said he personally thanked Boutwell for not showing the film.

"I think Vietnam veterans appreciate this," said Mancuso, who fought in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam war. "There is no defense for what she did."

Boutwell also banned previous Jane Fonda films, as well as Michael Moore's film, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

# posted by Duane : 9:27 PM  0 comments

A serial killer who struggled to hasten his own death ? and was forced to prove he wasn?t out of his mind ? was put to death early Friday in New England?s first execution in 45 years.

Michael Ross, 45, died by injection after fighting off attempts by public defenders, death penalty foes and his own family to save his life.

?The execution of Michael Bruce Ross has been carried out,? Warden Christine Whidden said shortly after Ross was pronounced dead at 2:25 a.m.

The Ivy League-educated Ross was sent to death row for the murders of four young women and girls in Connecticut in the 1980s, and confessed to four more such slayings in Connecticut and New York. He also raped most of the women.

Last fall, Ross announced he was abandoning all remaining appeals, which could have kept him alive for many years, because his victims? families had suffered enough.

?I owe these people. I killed their daughters. If I could stop the pain, I have to do that. This is my right,? the former insurance agent and Cornell University graduate said last year. ?I don?t think there?s anything crazy or incompetent about that.?

Death penalty opponents warned that Ross? execution could break down a political and psychological barrier against capital punishment in New England and start a domino effect in the region.

?The whole thing is just disheartening to me and I think we?re going to live to regret this day,? said attorney Antonio Ponvert III, who represented Ross? father and filed several lawsuits trying to block the execution.

# posted by Duane : 6:35 AM  0 comments

A woman who couldn't talk or feed herself after suffering head trauma in a traffic accident has spoken her first words in more than two years.

Tracy Gaskill, 30, began speaking and swallowing about three weeks ago, family members and medical personnel said. She had suffered internal injuries and head trauma when her pickup truck rolled over on a highway in September 2002.

"I have never seen this happen in my career," Dr. David Schmeidler said. "I've read about it happening, the severely brain damaged recovering suddenly, but never seen it until now."

Gaskill's family believes the care she has received and their daily visits and prayers helped her recovery.

"In the last year and a half, she's indicated that she knows us; she has been watching TV and smiling," said her grandfather, Don Gaskill. "More recently, she started nodding her head when we asked her questions. Then a few months ago, she'd laugh out loud."

There have been a few other widely publicized examples of brain-damaged patients showing sudden improvement after a number of years, at least temporarily.

# posted by Duane : 1:57 PM  0 comments

A clergy abuse survivors group wants the Allentown Diocese to release the names of pedophile priests and is asking the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office to launch a grand jury investigation of the diocese.

Members of the Lehigh Valley chapter of SNAP -- Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests -- will make a formal request for an investigation following a news conference today at the Lehigh County Courthouse in Allentown, group members said.

"We want the names of all perpetrators the church knows about to be released, whether criminal charges have been filed or not," said SNAP Lehigh Valley Chapter co-director Tammy Lerner.

SNAP will ask the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office to conduct a grand jury probe into the Allentown Diocese, Lerner said.

That request is being made partly because of a report last week that the Allentown Diocese will send priests who abuse children to a Schuylkill County facility, Lerner said.

Two priests and a clergyman appointed to monitor priests removed from the ministry are living in a restricted access wing of St. Francis Center in Orwigsburg. The wing can hold up to eight people, and another one or two can be sent to live there in the next month, Allentown Diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said last week.

The diocese told Schuylkill County District Attorney Frank R. Cori about the facility, and residents of the assisted living center were also notified, Kerr said.

However, the diocese did not release the names of the priests found in violation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People adopted by U.S. bishops in 2002.

"As a parent and mother, I'm outraged those names weren't released. And it's beyond me why Catholics aren't enraged if the church continues to withhold the names," Lerner said.

After today's request for a grand jury investigation, SNAP members will deliver a request to the Allentown Diocese to release the names of admitted pedophile priests, Lerner said.

Lerner said she hopes Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin will call for a grand jury investigation as did Philadelphia District Attorney Lynn Abraham with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The reason for the grand jury request is primarily to release the names of abusive priests, Lerner said.

"Criminal charges would be great. But our priority is letting the public know who the perpetrators are," Lerner said.

# posted by Duane : 8:57 AM  0 comments

N A just world, Jerry Hobbs would be stabbed in his eyes and left to die. I'd volunteer to help put down this beast.

But in our humane society, lethal injection is the best we've got.

So please, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Do the right thing.

Your state has for years observed a misguided moratorium on the death penalty, preventing good people of the Midwest from ridding themselves of human toxic waste such as Hobbs. Now is the time to push that lethal plunger.

The details of the crime Hobbs admits committing are too painful to bear. But if justice is to be served, we must not turn away.

Hobbs told cops he punched two little girls in the face because they missed curfew. One of the children was his own daughter, Laura. She was 8.

By Hobbs' account, Laura's friend, Krystal Tobias, 9, pulled out a paring knife, a desperate act that enraged the attacker.

Hobbs used the weapon to butcher these defenseless children. He pierced their necks. He plunged the knife into each of his daughter's eyes, making sure that his face was the last thing his girl ever saw.

Then, in an act of cruelty that defies even the sickest imagination, Hobbs left the girls in the woods around Zion, Ill.

He abandoned his own baby and her best friend in the dark. Now it is clear that during the entire short lives of Laura and Krystal, the fiendish father was rehearsing for the hideous crime. And everybody in a position to stop him ? including cops and Laura's own relatives ? did nothing.

In his 34 years, Hobbs racked up an impressive 29 arrests in the Texas town of Wichita Falls, starting with a 1990 conviction for stabbing a man with a hunting knife. But it was Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, who took the brunt of Hobbs' rage. The pair had three children together. She left him on occasion. But always, she took him back. And for that, may she burn in hell.

Sheila Hollabaugh shares blame with Texas cops who did less than nothing to save a trailer-park family saddled with a human time bomb.

In 2001, after an argument with Sheila, Hobbs chased neighbors with a chainsaw. Someone knocked him down with a shovel before he could kill anyone.

For the chainsaw attack, Hobbs was sentenced to probation ? an outrage. He did go to jail for two years for violating probation. So on April 12, Jerry Hobbs was shipped back to his woman, now living in Illinois with her parents and kids.

She welcomed him home. Her father, Arthur Hollabaugh, defended Hobbs ? until the moment he confessed.

It is too late to save Laura and Krystal. It is high time to put an end to Jerry Hobbs.

# posted by Duane : 7:41 AM  1 comments

The use and abuse of academic freedom to indemnify not the expression of unpopular opinions but political incitement of various kinds is one symptom of the degradation of American academic life. The newfound impatience with some extreme examples of that abuse is a heartening sign. Nevertheless, the whole issue of academic freedom is only part of a much larger phenomenon. Academics have an unspoken compact with society. As scholars, their charge is to pursue the truth in their chosen discipline; as teachers, their charge is to help preserve and transmit the truth by encouraging thoughtful study and candid discussion. The largely unspoken nature of this compact was part of its glory--it underscored the element of freedom that has always been a central ingredient in liberal education. To a large extent, that freedom has been violated. How has this happened?

Academic life, like the rest of social life, unfolds within a frame of rules and permissions. At one end, there are things that one must (or must not) do; at the other end, there is rule of whim. The middle range, in which behavior is neither explicitly governed by rules but is not entirely free, is that realm governed by what the British jurist John Fletcher Moulton, writing in the early 1920s, called "Obedience to the Unenforceable." It is a realm in which not law, not caprice, but virtues such as duty, fairness, judgment and taste hold sway. In a word, it is the "domain of Manners," which "covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself."

A good index of the health of any social institution is its allegiance to the strictures that define this middle realm. "In the changes that are taking place in the world around us," Moulton wrote, "one of those which is fraught with grave peril is the discredit into which this idea of the middle land is falling." One example was the abuse of free speech in political debate: "We have unrestricted freedom of debate," say the radicals: "We will use it so as to destroy debate."

The repudiation of obedience to the unenforceable is at the center of what makes academic life (and not only academic life) today so noxious. The contraction of the "domain of Manners" creates a vacuum that is filled on one side by increasing regulation--speech codes, rules for all aspects of social life, efforts to determine by legislation (from the right as well as from the left) what should follow freely from responsible behavior--and on the other side by increased license. More and more, it seems, academia (like other aspects of elite cultural life) has reneged on its compact with society. What, as Lenin memorably asked, is to be done?

As with any disease, the malady besetting academia requires two stages of therapy: first accurate diagnosis, then effective treatment. In some ways, the diagnostic stage is the most difficult, because it is the hardest to sustain. One corollary of society's natural obedience to the unenforceable is the tendency to assume that those institutions in which we have invested great trust are inherently trustworthy. "Academic institutions are expensive, socially respected bodies whose imprimatur is a powerful door-opener and tool of accreditation, ergo they must be doing a good job." Some such sentiment is the prevailing one, so when someone like Ward Churchill comes along to remove the scab, the shock is great--and unwelcome. One of the chief tasks for critics of what has happened to academic life in this country is to show the extent to which Ward Churchill, the Kirkland Project, the transgender follies at Smith College and elsewhere, and similar deformations are not exceptions but the predictable result of institutions that have gradually abandoned their commitment to education for the sake of radical posturing. The prime difficulty facing the aspirant diagnostician is not the elusiveness of symptoms--they are florid and ubiquitous--but the patience required to set forth chapter and verse repeatedly and in language that effectively conveys the depredations on view.

# posted by Duane : 7:26 AM  1 comments

On April 28, First Lieutenant William A. Edens was killed in Tal Afar, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device destroyed the armored vehicle in which he was traveling. Four other U.S. soldiers died with him. Lieutenant Edens, who was 29, is survived by his wife, Christina, and by his parents. At his memorial service last week, he was remembered as "a great man, an amazing soldier and a wonderful friend" by First Lieutenant Joshua Grenard, a classmate of Eden's in the ROTC program of the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Now consider a different Columbia: Columbia University, in New York City. On Friday, the university senate voted by a 53-10 margin, with five abstentions, against a resolution to re-establish an ROTC program on campus. Prominent in this roll call of dishonor was President Lee Bollinger, who voted against, and Provost Alan Brinkley, who gave an impassioned speech comparing the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy to a campus organization that allowed "African-Americans to join . . . only if they pass for white." Oddly, Mr. Brinkley abstained from voting, suggesting he lacked even the courage of these convictions.

The gay issue does seem to offer Columbia a convenient alibi for refusing to participate in ROTC. But however one feels about the policy--and reasonable people can differ--surely it isn't as egregious as the military's pre-1948 policy of segregating black soldiers. Yet by the logic of Friday's vote, perhaps Columbia should now feel ashamed of the prominent role it played, both institutionally and through its alumni, in helping America's war efforts in World War II.

As it is, the military's policy on gays wasn't the reason Columbia originally expelled ROTC in 1969. Rather, it was opposition to the Vietnam War and, once that was over, reflexive hostility to all things military. On other campuses, that hostility has abated in recent years, particularly after 9/11; Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, among Ivy League schools, have ROTC programs, while Harvard University President Larry Summers has been outspoken in his advocacy for ROTC's return to Harvard.

Yet Columbia remains a holdout, not least because of Mr. Bollinger's dismal leadership. It certainly didn't have to be this way. The 1994 Solomon Amendment forbids universities that exclude ROTC from their campuses from receiving Pentagon funding--reason enough, we would think, for a university president to bring his school into compliance with the law. In April 2003, Columbia held a student referendum on ROTC. Two-thirds voted to bring it back. This led the university senate to appoint a 10-member panel to examine the subject; it split down the middle on the question of readmitting ROTC "as soon as is practicable."

But maybe we shouldn't be too bothered by this. Throughout America, schools such as the University of Missouri continue to graduate outstanding young men such as Lieutenant Edens. He may not have earned an Ivy League degree, but he did earn a nation's respect--which is more than most of Columbia's faculty can ever hope to get.

# posted by Duane : 7:22 AM  0 comments

Isabel Gottlieb is the kind of student any teacher would love to have in class.

The easy-going high school senior plays trumpet in the school band, letters in three different sports, and reportedly makes excellent grades.

But despite her outgoing and studious nature, the 18-year-old Gottlieb will not graduate next month because of an academic concession she's unwilling to make.

"Why would I drop an AP biology class to take P.E.?" Gottlieb said. "It's just not on my priority list."


The mistake wasn't caught by the school's counseling department last spring when Gottlieb's schedule was set. Her mother takes part of the blame, saying that at the time she was working 100-hour workweeks as a part of her medical residency at Concord Hospital.

While the two other credits were worked out, it is the remaining health and physical education class that will sideline the student athlete at the school's graduation ceremony June 18.

The class in question is called BEST, or Building Essential Skills for Tomorrow, and is required for all Bow students to graduate ? but in greater credit numbers than the state requires.

At the Seattle high school Gottlieb attended before moving to Bow, physical education requirements were routinely waived for students in varsity sports. But those waivers aren't something Bow High School is willing to accept.

"Waivers vary from school to school and they're not standardized at all," said Principal George Edwards. "Credits are easy. We deal very easily with credits."

Moreover, the school contends, her participation in sports such as lacrosse and alpine skiing also don't replace the BEST class that they say teaches students larger issues of "personal wellness."

"That's different from competitive athletics," Edwards said.

That meant that Gottlieb still owed the school one year of BEST. Gottlieb added the class last year after the school told her she had to take it, then dropped it when she found out it was too much on top of classes she was already taking, including two advanced placement classes and calculus.

In addition, she said, there were after-school sports, band, her senior project and other commitments that made for a full schedule. The same was true for this semester: not enough time given other priorities, she said.

Both Gottlieb and her mother said the school suggested dropping either band, chorus, AP biology or calculus. She and her mother decided sacrificing any of those would have diminished the quality of Gottlieb's education.

"I'm trying to get into college and someone isn't going to want to see someone drop an AP biology class a month into the year in order to pick up P.E.," said Gottlieb.

When Gottlieb came to Bow High School, the school told her she had to take a world history class, something that she said her daughter had already taken back in the ninth grade.

"When they read her transcript, they didn't believe she had already taken that class, so they made her retake it. That took two credits of her time," Warner said.

There will likely be no compromises in time for graduation. The class is not offered in the summer, and Gottlieb has moved on, regardless.

She's been accepted to Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., where she plans to major in biology, and minor in marine studies and art.

Trinity is aware of Gottlieb's situation and said that as long as she gets her GED in time, there won't be a problem. Gottlieb said that she already has taken the practice test and, once she hears back on that, will schedule a time to take the official version of the high school equivalency test.

# posted by Duane : 7:21 AM  8 comments

Sex rarely makes the news in Brazil's conservative Northeast ? until a small town declared an official Orgasm Day on Monday.

Espertantina Mayor Felipe Santolia endorsed the May 9 holiday, which he said was intended to improve relationships between married couples.

"We're celebrating orgasm in all its senses. There's even a panel discussion on premature ejaculation. But from what I've seen, women have more trouble achieving orgasm than men, especially in marriage," Santolia said by telephone from Esperantina, 1,300 miles north of Rio de Janeiro.

Santolia said the remote town of 38,000 people has been unofficially celebrating orgasm day for years, but that the town's former mayor had vetoed a bill making it an official municipal holiday.

The city council passed a law Saturday creating the holiday. Santolia, who took office earlier this year, said he would sign the bill later Monday.

"I'm 32, single and I have an open mind. Beside the theme is very much of the moment," he said.

Orgasm Day celebrations include a series of panel discussions by sexologists from across Brazil and a presentation of Eve Ensler's play "The Vagina Monologues."

Santolia said the idea of celebrating Orgasm Day at first created a scandal in this poor region, known for its religious fervor. But he said residents gradually residents warmed to the idea.

"I've seen scientific studies that show when a woman is unloved, when her husband can bring her to orgasm, it affects all aspects of her life, her relationships with her children, at home, with the city and at work," Santolia said.

# posted by Duane : 11:09 PM  0 comments

A high school student was suspended for 10 days for refusing to end a cell phone call with his mother, a soldier serving in Iraq, school officials said.

The 10-day suspension was issued because Kevin Francois was "defiant and disorderly" and was imposed in lieu of an arrest, Spencer High School assistant principal Alfred Parham said.

The confrontation Wednesday began after the 17-year-old junior got a call at lunchtime from his mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, who left in January for a one-year tour with the 203rd Forward Support Battalion.

Cell phones are allowed on campus but may not be used during school hours. When a teacher told him to hang up, he refused. He said he told the teacher, "This is my mom in Iraq. I'm not about to hang up on my mom."

Parham said the teen's suspension was based on his reaction to the teacher's request. He said the teen used profanity when taken to the office.

"Kevin got defiant and disorderly," Parham said. "When a kid becomes out of control like that they can either be arrested or suspended for 10 days. Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we're not trying to cause her any undue hardship; he was suspended for 10 days."

# posted by Duane : 3:05 PM  0 comments

RIGHT now some folks circling in orbit around George Pataki are think ing deep thoughts about the New York governor's future. Should he run for a fourth term, even though his competition will surely be the formidable Eliot Spitzer? Or should he forswear Albany for a shot at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008?
Yes, just think of the bumper stickers and campaign slogans:

"George Pataki - He Can't Get It Done!"

"Pataki for President: He'll Do for America What He's Done for Ground Zero!"

"George Pataki - From Hero to Zero!"

George Elmer Pataki is toast. Put a fork in him, because he's done. No politician can survive the sort of calamitous debacle over which Pataki has presided in and around the 16 acres of Ground Zero. No politician should survive it.

Is this hyperbole? Hardly.

Just for a moment, imagine we have jumped ahead in time to October 2006. Eliot Spitzer is the Democratic candidate for governor, facing Pataki. Assuming that Pataki is even within shouting distance of Spitzer by that point, the Democrat will be able to crush the sitting governor with a single sentence:

"In 2002, the voters of New York entrusted George Pataki with the future of Ground Zero, and he squandered our trust."

History made Pataki the steward of Ground Zero. It was the most pressing and most important challenge of his career, and it won't be enough to say that Pataki didn't rise to the challenge. His stewardship has been an abject and embarrassing failure.

Through a poisonous combination of arrogance, indolence, cowardice and foolishness, Pataki has made sure that the crater created by al Qaeda will remain unfilled for at least nine years.

Rather than seizing the initiative, Pataki checked out. He delegated the job of recreating Ground Zero to a ludicrous academic competition that spat out a series of hideous designs. Faced with these unpalatable choices, the governor then championed a spectacularly silly design by an architect of questionable talent and non-existent engineering skills.

The preposterous master plan of the preposterous Daniel Libeskind has proved unworkable in almost every particular. Some of its more grandiose aspects ? the ridiculous "Wedge of Light" and the memorial to be constructed for no apparent reason inside the concrete "bathtub" that kept the Hudson River from undermining the foundation of the Twin Towers ? disappeared almost instantly, once the plan was a go.

Now it appears Libeskind's design wasn't just unworkable, but actually unsafe. For security reasons, the "Freedom Tower" at the heart of the Liebeskind plan was poorly sited. And it now appears that its off-center spire might have been impossible to stabilize architecturally.

It is almost impossible to believe that Pataki didn't ensure the technical viability of the Libeskind design before he committed the city, state and country to it. All it would have taken was a few more days, maybe a few more weeks, of study.

Remember, this was the most important and visible public-works project in our lifetimes. Pataki didn't bother to get it right. He didn't bother much at all. His carelessness with this world-historical matter makes him unfit to serve even one more day as governor.

But serve George Elmer Pataki will, as a walking political corpse, until his successor takes the oath of office at the beginning of 2007.

# posted by Duane : 10:48 AM  0 comments

Mid East dialogue a success
May 05, 2005

We would like to take this opportunity to tell the campus community about a unique event that took place this week at UMass.

For the past seven weeks we, students and members from diverse religious, ethnic and political backgrounds, have met weekly to organize a dialogue session between local Jews, Arabs and Muslims on campus from UMass and the local community. On Tuesday evening, the fruits of our labor were displayed in "Crossroads," a well-attended dialogue between students focusing on religion, identity, culture and the political conflict in the Middle East.

This dialogue was intended to promote understanding, learning, free expression and the creation of safe spaces for that expression. As the evening began with icebreakers, the diverse group of students warmed up to each other and preliminary tensions began to fade.

Shortly after enjoying samples of Mediterranean foods the diverse group of students refocused and broke up into several dialogue groups based on where they discussed issues in the Middle East relating to the themes of Mid East identity, religion, culture and politics. The discussions were lead by student facilitators who presented prepared questions on the individual topics. This allowed for the creation of a safe environment where each student had equal time to share as well as listen. The structure and organized format of the dialogue allowed for all voices to be heard.

As the organizers and facilitators of this event, we were extremely pleased with the varied turn out. The participants expressed contrasting opinions that seemed to transcend religious, ethnic, cultural and national boundaries. On many issues, people of seemingly similar backgrounds disagreed on varying topics.

Towards the end of the evening, we formed a Middle Eastern drumming circle led by local world music performer/educator Michael DiMartino and created rhythms together, with one voice, in the spirit of dialogue and cooperation. The energy engaged the crowd and set differences aside as it unified people of different backgrounds and perspectives.

We closed the drumming circle and the evening with a song of peace in Hebrew and Arabic. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who participated in and supported the event and reached out to others in the spirit of dialogue to promote understanding and hope for the future. We hope to engage the community in more events like and to inspire others to do the same.

Matt Bertuzzi

Anisa Kagzi

Ramzi Kanazi

Susan Moser (UMass Hillel)

Yousef Munayyer

Abby Robin

Victoria Roytenberg

Elena Zaurova

# posted by Duane : 10:44 AM  0 comments

* Jane Fonda is the daughter of famous actor Henry Fonda, who is best known for his role in not giving Jane enough spankings as a child.

* Despite the similarity of the name, Jane Fonda is not a tasty cheese sauce for dipping pieces of bread in.

* Like the beaver, Jane Fonda must constantly gnaw down trees, lest her front teeth grow too long and puncture her lower jaw.

* There are no other beaver-related tidbits about Jane Fonda

* Don't even go there.

* Although the word "traitor" is often tossed around lightly when talking about anti-war protestors, in Jane Fonda's case, it should be hurled with great force after being written on a rock.

* In a battle between Aquaman and Jane Fonda, Aquaman would tell lies about Jane and encourage his aquatic friends to spit on her at airports.

* In the 80's, Jane Fonda produced a popular workout tape along with a best-selling diet book, "Puke Yourself Pretty".

* Jane Fonda currently lives in a small house in the woods that's made out of gingerbread, where she survives by cooking and eating lost children.

* Some people say that Jane Fonda only married Ted Turner for his money, but the truth is that she just has a thing for powerful men with cheesy moustaches.

* This may explain all those "secret admirer" notes that John Bolton's been getting lately.

* In 1990, Jane Fonda retired from movie-making because she was weary of assuming human form in public.

* She had modest success writing children's books such as "Green Eggs and Communism" and "Horton Hears a Mao".

* Her groundbreaking work for the advancement of feminism includes being the only woman ever to win a John Kerry Look-Alike award.

* Jane Fonda is the owner of Fonda Farms, a California ranch that raises deformed frogs which are planted in swamps across the country so that crazed hippies can claim Bush's environmental policies are destroying the planet.

* Jane Fonda's current horrific appearance is NOT the result of botched plastic surgery, but rather it was caused by being dropped into a vat of chemicals by Batman.

* During the last election, Jane Fonda missed becoming Pope by 3 votes.

* Apparently some of the Cardinals hated Barbarella because it didn't feature enough pointy hats.

* Other Cardinals were more appreciative of what pointiness it DID offer.

* When listening to a Jane Fonda political speech, do not attempt make sense out of anything she says or operate heavy equipment.

* When carefully considering their respective life stories, it becomes obvious that Jane Fonda is actually the Bizarro World version of Arnold Schwarzeneggar.

# posted by Duane : 9:56 PM  0 comments

The first woman charged in Wyoming for allegedly using methamphetamine while she was pregnant is back in jail for an alleged drug violation.

Michelle Ann Foust, 31, was jailed last Wednesday when a urine sample allegedly showed the presence of methamphetamine, which would violate the terms of her bond agreement.

Just five days earlier, Foust was in court for a preliminary hearing on a charge of child endangerment. She was arrested last October shortly after she gave birth to a son after blood tests allegedly showed both Foust and the infant had meth in their bloodstreams.

A new law that went into effect last year made it illegal for an adult to allow a child to ingest meth. Foust is the first person to be charged for allegedly passing the drug through her bloodstream to a fetus.

The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell for bringing the case. Foust's attorney, Gordon Ellis, said the law shouldn't apply to Foust because a fetus is not a child.

# posted by Duane : 9:51 PM  0 comments

For a time, it still seemed that reconstruction might work. "In 1870 things looked pretty good -- if not rosy, at least optimistic," says McPherson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1988 narrative, "Battle Cry of Freedom." A black man was serving in the U.S. Senate and Northerners were investing in what they believed would be a new South.

But the insurgency was potent and took more than 1,000 lives. Along with the Ku Klux Klan, there were underground groups such as the White Brotherhood and the Knights of the White Camellia, determined to preserve the old regime's power. White insurgents staged bloody riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866. The rebels also drew support from the remnants of irregular Confederate units such as Quantrill's Raiders, which produced the outlaws Frank and Jesse James. "It was a matrix of lawlessness," says Oregon law professor Garrett Epps, who chronicles the period in a forthcoming book, "Second Founding."

The poison that destroyed reconstruction was racial hatred. The white elite managed to convince poor whites that newly freed blacks were their enemies, rather than potential allies. There's an obvious analogy to the Sunni-Shiite divide that has poisoned postwar Iraq. In the South, the die-hard whites began to believe that if they held tough, the North would abandon the campaign to create a new, multiracial South. And it turned out they were right.

By 1877, says McPherson, the North essentially gave up. Demoralized by the economic depression of 1873, Northern investors pulled back from projects in the South and turned their attention to the West. The troops occupying the South were withdrawn. White Southerners, defeated in war, had won the peace. The South slipped into more than 80 years of racism, isolation and economic backwardness.

What lessons does this dismal history convey for U.S. forces in Iraq? First, what you do immediately after the end of hostilities is crucial, and mistakes made then may be impossible to undo. Don't attempt a wholesale transformation of another society unless you have the troops and political will to impose it. Above all, don't let racial or religious hatred destroy democratic political institutions as in the post-bellum South. Giving up on reconstruction led to a social and economic disaster that lasted nearly a century. That's a history nobody should want to repeat, least of all the Iraqi insurgents.

# posted by Duane : 8:41 AM  0 comments

University of Oklahoma baseball coach Larry Cochell resigned Sunday, two days after reports surfaced of alleged racial remarks he made during two off-camera interviews to ESPN.

The longtime coach submitted a letter of resignation to president David Boren, who had met hours before with athletic director Joe Castiglione and members of the university's black community on the matter.

Boren accepted the letter and said Castiglione has designated Sunny Golloway as interim baseball coach for the rest of the season.

Tuesday, before the telecast of the Oklahoma-Wichita State game on ESPN2 and ESPNU, Cochell used a racially insensitive term in off-camera interviews with ESPN to describe Sooners freshman outfielder Joe Dunigan III, an African-American.

Cochell was speaking with play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne when he called Dunigan over to praise him for staying in school. When the freshman returned to the field, Cochell told Thorne, "There's no n----- in him." The network informed the school that Cochell used similar language in an interview with ESPN analyst Kyle Peterson.

"I just felt like [resigning] was the right thing to do," Cochell told The Oklahoman newspaper. "I don't know why I said it. I have never in my life used that kind of language. It was a phrase I heard a long time ago, and it just came out."

The interviews were not taped, and Thorne and Peterson didn't know Cochell had used similar language in both instances until they spoke with each other days later, ESPN director of media relations Josh Krulewitz said.

"We recognize that stories of this nature could have significant repercussions and we took great pains to bring the appropriate sensitivity and balance to our reporting," Krulewitz said Sunday.

# posted by Duane : 10:04 PM  1 comments

Florida dropped its fight on Tuesday to prevent a 13-year-old girl in state care from having an abortion in a case that marked the state's second recent foray into controversial personal rights issues.

Weeks after it unsuccessfully tried to intervene in the bitter dispute over the fate of a brain-damaged woman, Terri Schiavo, the state's Department of Children & Families said it would not appeal a ruling from a Palm Beach state court allowing the teenager to have an abortion.

"There will be no further appeals and we will respectfully comply with the court's decision," DCF District Manager Marilyn Munoz said in a written statement.

It was not immediately known if the girl, who is 14 weeks pregnant, had had the abortion.

The case stirred concerns among civil libertarians who argued the child had a constitutional right to decide to have an abortion under state law and condemned the Florida government's attempts to interfere in personal rights.

"You've got to be blind not to see a pattern here," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. "The pattern is the state's hostility to the exercise of personal freedom ... when that personal freedom is not consistent with the prevailing ideology of the state government."

Florida's governor is Jeb Bush, President Bush's younger brother, who was active in trying to keep Schiavo alive and who has said he personally opposes abortion.

"It's a tragedy that a 13-year-old child would be in a vulnerable position where she could be made pregnant and it's a tragedy that her baby will be lost," Jeb Bush said on Tuesday. "There's no good news in this at all."

The child, identified in court only as L.G., is a ward of the state who became pregnant when she ran away from a state-licensed group home. Under Florida law, a 13-year-old cannot consent to sex, making her pregnancy the result of a statutory rape.

LEGAL GUARDIAN SAYS NO

The Department of Children & Families, her legal guardian after her parents' rights were terminated, petitioned the courts to block an abortion, arguing she was not mature enough to make such a choice.

It cited a state statute that says: "In no case shall the department consent to sterilization, abortion or termination of life support."

Florida law, however, allows minors to choose to have abortions. Critics of the DCF action argued that the child's constitutional right overrode any conflicting state statute.

"The constitutional right belongs to the child, and it belongs to the child even if the parents object," said Mary Coombs, a family law professor at the University of Miami. "In this case, DCF didn't have any more right than the parents."

The DCF legal effort marked the second time in recent weeks the state welfare agency had tried to intervene in a high-profile case involving personal rights issues.

It petitioned the courts to take custody of Terri Schiavo, the subject of a controversial right-to-die case in which her parents fought for years against attempts by her husband to remove her feeding tube and allow her to die.

Critics condemned attempts by Jeb Bush to intervene in a family dispute in which courts had repeatedly ruled in favor of Schiavo's husband Michael, who said he was carrying out his wife's wishes. Terri Schiavo died on March 31.

In the abortion case, Palm Beach County Judge Ronald Alvarez, who temporarily blocked the abortion last week, ruled on Monday that the girl could have the procedure over the objections of the DCF, her guardian.

Mathew Staver, president of Orlando, Florida-based Liberty Counsel, a conservative advocacy group, said he was disappointed by the state's decision not to pursue appeals.

"A second opinion is clearly warranted in a case where life and death is at stake," he said. "An appellate court shou

# posted by Duane : 5:55 PM  0 comments

Eva Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council's Education Committee, has a lot more sense than most Democrats in this city when it comes to education policy.

She's long been a supporter of charter schools, and she's put pressure on the Bloomberg administration to honor its responsibilities to grant students transfers out of failing schools, as required under federal law.

So what, exactly, is she doing pushing a "bill of rights" for convicted criminals to gain immediate access to the schools of their choice upon release from prison?

Yes, these are young, school-age criminals ? though it's worth remembering that "school age" goes all the way up to 21. But they're criminals nonetheless.

Moskowitz wants to make sure that these juvenile offenders don't run into roadblocks in claiming their legally mandated, state-funded education when they get out of jail.

Too many schools, it seems, have declined to admit such kids ? sparking a class-action lawsuit against the city and the state by seven of them.

To be sure, these kids have a right to some form of an education under state law.

But what about the rights of the rest of the city's students, the ones who have played by the rules ? or at least stayed within the law ? and hardly need more disruptive and potentially dangerous classmates?

And what about principals, whose jobs are already hard enough, being told that they must take students who'll make their jobs even harder?

How is the swift placement of juvenile offenders anywhere near the top of the priority list in a city where roughly one-quarter of students applying to public high schools don't get into even their fifth-choice schools?

If anything, juvenile offenders should be doing more schoolwork during their time in prison, so as to burden the school system as little as possible when they're released.

Moskowitz's bill of right touches on the inadequacy of prison schooling ? and that should be the focus.

That, and giving principals as much latitude as possible to boot troublemakers when necessary and to refuse to take them in when it can be avoided.

It's as simple as that.

# posted by Duane : 9:19 PM  0 comments

Willie Nelson's name is off the road again.

A state legislator had proposed naming a 49-mile stretch of Texas Highway 130 being built around Austin in honor of the Texas country music singer.

But two Republican senators, Steve Odgen of Bryan and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, said they didn't want Nelson's name on the road that crosses their districts, citing the musician's fondness for drinking and smoking, and active campaigning for Democratic candidates.

"It's frustrating, and sad in a way, but at this point, there is no reason to make this an unpleasant experience for anyone, especially Willie, so I'll take no further action on the bill," said state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, an Austin Democrat and the bill's author.

Barrientos said he wanted to honor Nelson "for so much good music and so many good works."

# posted by Duane : 8:41 AM  0 comments