Fathi: Solitary Confinement in Arizona's state prisons

Click here for the story of what solitary confinement in Arizona 
did to one young man...

 

----------From the ACLU Blog of Rights---------

Solitary Confinement in Arizona: Cruel and Unusual

Posted by David Fathi, 

ACLU-National Prison Project 

March 6, 2012 at 1:09pm 

A class action lawsuit filed today by the ACLU, along with the Prison Law Office, the Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms Jones Day and Perkins Coie, alleges that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) houses thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement conditions so harsh they violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. While other states also use solitary confinement, Arizona has added features that seem designed to gratuitously increase suffering. The cells in that state's supermax Special Management Units (SMUs) were deliberately constructed with no windows to the outside, so prisoners — many of whom have no means of telling the time — become disoriented and confused, not knowing the whether it is day or night. The cells are often illuminated 24 hours a day, making sleep difficult and further contributing to prisoners' disorientation and mental deterioration.

Some prisoners in solitary spend all but six hours a week alone in their cells. Their only respite occurs when they are taken to a slightly larger windowless cell, with no equipment, for "exercise." Many prisoners refuse to go, because the cell is so small that it doesn't allow meaningful exercise, and because prisoners are placed in restraints and strip-searched when going to and returning from the cell. And in a final cruelty, ADC reasons that because prisoners in solitary don't get much exercise, they don't need much food — some receive only two meals a day.

It's long been known that solitary confinement is extraordinarily damaging to mental health, often inducing mental illness in previously healthy prisoners. But it's particularly damaging to those with pre-existing mental illness. For these prisoners, solitary poses a grave risk of psychiatric injury, self-harm, and even suicide. Deprived of the social interaction that is essential to keep them grounded in reality, many prisoners with mental illness experience catastrophic and often irreversible psychiatric deterioration.

Courts have ruled that prisoners with mental illness suffer such grievous harm in solitary confinement that it violates the Eighth Amendment to house them there. One court compared putting a person with mental illness in solitary to "putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe." As a result, many states that use solitary confinement exclude the mentally ill. But not Arizona — even prisoners whom ADC itself has classified as "seriously mentally ill" are held in solitary.

In recent years, states as diverse as Mississippi, Colorado, and Maine have reduced their use of solitary confinement, generating substantial cost savings and experiencing no adverse effects on public safety. But Arizona remains an enthusiastic practitioner, with four large prisons devoted chiefly or exclusively to holding prisoners in solitary.

Last month Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced plans to close Tamms Correctional Center, that state's supermax prison. Tamms has long been criticized for its harsh conditions of solitary confinement — a federal judge found that it inflicts "lasting psychological and emotional harm" on prisoners — and the per-prisoner cost of Tamms is three times the state average. Arizona should follow Illinois' example. It would be a victory for fiscal prudence as well as human rights.

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AZ legs Ash & Gray support new limits to shackling pregnant prisoners.

It's about time. With two strong Republicans at the helm on this, we might actually see it pass the legislature this year. This shows, by the way, that some things done by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office actually can be reined in by proper legislative oversight - not everyone has to wring their hands and whine about being powerless in the face of the man abusing people. Thanks to Representative Cecil Ash and Senator Linda Gray for being willing to take this on.

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Bill limits shackling of pregnant inmates

by Alia Beard Rau 

Jan. 30, 2012

The Arizona Republic | azcentral.com

A bipartisan group of lawmakers hopes Arizona will join 14 other states in limiting how and when jails can shackle pregnant women.

Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to push legislation for the past two years. But this year, the effort may see some success. Republicans are sponsoring bills in both the House and Senate. And for the first time, the issue has been granted a hearing.

The Senate Public Safety and Human Services Committee will hear Senate Bill 1184 Wednesday morning. Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, is both the committee’s chairwoman and the bill’s primary sponsor, giving it a strong chance of passing at least the committee.

Rep. Cecil Ash, R-Mesa, is sponsoring a similar House Bill 2528.

The Senate bill would ban any state or county correctional institution from using restraints on a prisoner or detainee in her final trimester of pregnancy or during labor, delivery and postpartum recovery unless medical staff request the restraints or a corrections officer determines that the situation “presents an extraordinary circumstance” such as being a substantial flight risk. It would ban leg or waist restraints in all circumstances during labor or delivery.

“This practice is not just dangerous to the mother but it’s also dangerous to the baby being born,” ACLU of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham said. “If you’ve had a baby or been in the labor room with a woman, you know their biggest priority is having that baby. They are not going to jump off the bed and take off.”

The proposed legislation would most impact county jails. The Arizona Department of Corrections instituted restrictions on shackling women in labor or postpartum recovery in 2003. The Federal Bureau of Prisons restricted it in 2008.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office has some concerns with the Senate bill, Deputy Chief Ray Churay said.

“We’re not super opposed to this,” Churay said. “There are just some adjustments we would ask for.”

He said some of the bill’s definitions are too vague. They’d like to see the bill require that a medical professional determine whether a woman is in labor, and they want Gray to clarify the definition of postpartum recovery so it does not ban law enforcement from shackling a woman who must remain in the hospital following her child’s birth for reasons unrelated to the delivery.

Churay said the county already does not routinely use leg or waist restraints on pregnant women. But he said the bill could impact a common practice of using a leg tether to lock the women to their hospital bed during postpartum recovery. He said the tether is long enough to allow a woman to walk to the bathroom and around the room.

“They are in a situation where security is very, very limited,” Churay said of inmates in the hospital. “We’ve never had a complaint about the leg tether from hospital staff or from an inmate. We have to take all precautions, and we believe the tether is necessary.”

 

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is facing a federal lawsuit over the shackling issue. Miriam Mendiola-Martinez filed a lawsuit in December alleging that county employees exhibited deliberate indifference to her medical needs and violated her constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment when she was shackled before and after her Caesarean section.

Women's health in prison: Breast Cancer Behind Bars

The following article was just published on Truthout by Vikki Law, author of "Resistance Behind Bars: The struggles of incarcerated women," and editor of Tenacious, a national zine written by and for women in prison.

In light of some of the distressed correspondence I've been receiving lately from women at Perryville prison complaining of serious medical neglect, I'll be making a point of researching and posting more on women's health in prison here in coming weeks.

In the meantime, for a first-person account on women's health care in Arizona state prisons, see Sue Ellen Allen's book "The slumber party from hell."

Thank you for this, Vikki. Can't wait for this state to finally be sued. What they've done to our people is criminal.

----from Truthout---

Breast Cancer Behind Bars: How a Prison Sentence Can Become a Death Sentence

Wednesday 25 January 2012

by: Victoria Law, Truthout

  .

Imagine finding a lump in your breast. Imagine that your efforts to schedule a medical check-up are stymied and you have to wait weeks, if not months, for that initial exam. In the meantime, the lump continues to grow. Imagine that, when you finally do see a doctor, you are told that you have breast cancer. When you walk out of the office, you are locked into your prison cell with no more information or sympathy than when you walked in. This is the daily reality for women in prison

In 2006, a Department of Justice (DOJ) study found that women in prison are at significantly greater risk for cancer than their male counterparts. Out of every 10,000 incarcerated women, 831 had cancer, compared to 108 per 10,000 men. Of those, 91 of every 10,000 women behind bars reported having had or currently having breast cancer. Given that 114,979 women were behind bars at the end of 2009, this would mean that over 1,000 women have had or currently have breast cancer. 

Despite these numbers, prevention, screening, diagnosis, care, pain alleviation and rehabilitation for breast cancer remain virtually nonexistent in prisons. In 1998, a study at an unnamed Southern prison found that, although many were at high risk because of family histories, women were not provided with a clinical breast exam, information or basic education on self-examination upon admittance. Seventy percent of women who should have had mammograms under standard medical procedure had never been tested. [Williams, Roma D, Terry D. Mahoney, and R. M. Williams, Jr, "Breast Cancer Detection Among Women Prisoners in the Southern United States," Family & Community Health 21.3 (1998): 32.]  Even women who enter prison already diagnosed with cancer must fight to receive lifesaving medical care.

Fifty-two-year-old Margaret DeLuca had already been diagnosed with stage 3A breast cancer and undergone a left-breast mastectomy before arriving at Clinton Correctional Facility in New Jersey. "She knew exactly what she needed, but was unable to get it," stated Bonnie Kerness, a human rights advocate and coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee's (AFSC) Prison Watch Project, who helped DeLuca fight for proper medical care. Their advocacy resulted in incremental improvements in DeLuca's medical care but did not change the prison's health care system. [Interview with Bonnie Kerness, December 28, 2011]

Like DeLuca, 57-year-old Sue Ellen Allen entered Arizona's Estrella Jail with a diagnosis of breast cancer (hers was Stage 3B). She had also undergone six sessions of chemotherapy and was awaiting a mastectomy. Two and a half months later, she was awoken at midnight, then handcuffed, shackled and transported to another jail. At 9 AM, she was moved to the hospital for the mastectomy.

"I am locked in a room alone, freezing. I ask for a blanket. No, they snarl. Why is everyone so nasty?" she recounted. "I haven't eaten in twenty hours, I haven't slept, I'm freezing and facing surgery alone." After the mastectomy, Allen should have begun chemotherapy, but the jail delayed it to avoid shouldering the costs. Allen did not receive chemotherapy until she was transferred to the Perryville prison three months later.

The chemotherapy made Allen sick.

"On my way back to my yard, I collapse, vomiting. A guard comes and asks if I can walk the three blocks to medical. There are no wheelchairs." Allen collapsed and vomited twice while walking to the medical unit. Staff watched her, but the only acknowledgment she received about her condition was when a sergeant asked, "What's the issue, Allen?" 

Allen made it to the medical unit, where she continued to vomit into a wastebasket. The prison's doctor was not available to administer the shot that would stop Allen's vomiting. Allen continued to vomit for an hour. "Even the nurse is frustrated. She says there is no other emergency. He's doing paperwork." When the doctor arrived an hour later, Allen recounts, he was obviously irritated. "He acts like I'm faking and reluctantly administers the shot. Eventually, I am sent back to my room alone. I am dismissed."

Allen underwent three more chemo treatments. "Despite the rigid schedule, never is the medication ready on time, nor is the newly discovered chemo diet ready. I have to spend my sickest days walking to Medical, begging for what I'm missing. When I'm supposed to be healing, I'm worn out battling for proper treatment."

Allen is one of the more fortunate; she survived the ordeal. When 36-year-old Christina found a lump in her breast in April 2002, Perryville's medical staff ignored her concerns. By the time she was taken to the hospital in September, the lump had grown so large that the hospital skipped the chemotherapy and performed an immediate mastectomy. By then, however, the cancer had already spread to her other breast. Christina died the next year, three months after being released from prison. "If her cancer had been diagnosed and treated when she discovered her lump, maybe she'd still be alive," Allen wrote.

While breast cancer survivors and advocates outside prison would be horrified at these obstacles and delays, Allen received relatively prompt treatment under what passes as current standards for prison health care. Sherrie Chapman, a woman incarcerated in California, waited much longer.

In 1985, Chapman, who had a family history of breast cancer, found a lump in her right breast. She alerted the prison's doctor, who dismissed her concerns. Chapman persisted in demanding that the lump be further examined. In 1994, when the lumps were visibly protruding from her right breast, she finally received a mammogram. The radiologist at the outside hospital found "extremely dense breast parenchyma" and recommended a follow-up mammogram within one year. Chapman was unable to convince the prison's medical department that she needed the follow-up mammogram until late 1994. This time, the radiologist recommended immediate follow-up tests. The prison's doctor, however, refused to order a biopsy, ultrasound or fine needle aspiration. The prison labeled her a "drug seeker" for her repeated requests for something stronger than Motrin for the pain in her breast.

In 1995, Chapman was examined by a different prison doctor, who immediately ordered a biopsy. By that time, the cancer had spread to both breasts and metastasized in her neck, forcing her to undergo two mastectomies. Post surgery, guards signed her out against medical advice to return her to the prison. Staff ignored chemotherapy appointments. In addition, her uterus began to hemorrhage. Medical staff allowed her to bleed for 18 months before performing a hysterectomy. In 2000 and 2001, Chapman discovered other growths in her neck and shoulder areas. The prison doctor's response? "You've just got swollen glands. Don't worry; they're not cancerous." 

Chapman appeared before the parole board in June 2002. The board rejected her and admonished her to use the self-help available in the prison, ignoring the fact that, by then, she was too ill to participate in groups that required regular attendance. She died on December 12, 2002, at the age of 45, under the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), with a prison guard posted in her room.

Women have not quietly accepted this gross medical neglect and failure. They have attempted to advocate for themselves and draw attention to the issue. In California, Chapman testified before the legislature about the dangerous medical care in the state's women's prisons. She also filed a lawsuit against the CDCR and the prison doctor for ignoring her initial complaints about painful breast lumps. Chapman won and was awarded a $350,000 settlement. Her efforts also led to several magazine articles exploring the failures of the prison health care system to address the needs of those battling cancer. [See: "A Cancer Grows," in The Nation, and A. Clay Thompson, "Cancer in the Cells," San Francisco Bay Guardian February 24, 1999 (not available online)]

Breast cancer survivors imprisoned in other states have had less success in finding advocates and attorneys to help them push for change. Allen wrote letters to numerous lawyers, all of whom declined to file suit. "Most firms don't have the resources to fight the state," she noted.

Allen did not allow the lack of legal support to deter her from trying to change the culture of prison indifference and isolation. Recognizing that each woman battled both breast cancer and the prison's life-threatening and indifferent medical care, Allen began a cancer support group. The process of starting such a group would be simple enough on the outside, but behind bars, nothing is ever straightforward. "It took me a year of begging," Allen recounted, "but I finally got permission." The group, which quickly grew to include 14 other women, met once a month with an outside volunteer from the American Cancer Society.

Allen remembered that women were initially reluctant to attend: "They didn't expect anyone to help them or care. They didn't know how to talk about their fears." The support group provided them with a space to talk - and to vent. "There is no place in prison to vent," said Allen. The volunteer also brought information about cancer, enabling the women to understand the protocols and procedures of cancer treatment and to know what questions to ask. Given that women are told nearly nothing about their illnesses, treatments and recuperation, such information is invaluable. [Interview with Sue Ellen Allen, December 27, 2011]

Looking back, she notes that, with the exception of Christina, all of the support group members were white. Although white women are more likely to get breast cancer (125 per every 100,000), African-American women are not far behind, with 116 per 100,000 diagnosed. Latinas, who make up the largest proportion of Arizona's women's prison population, have a rate of 91 per 100,000. Given these statistics, Allen wonders how many women of color remain undiagnosed.

Although Allen was unable to find an attorney or legal group to help file suit against the Arizona Department of Corrections, other prisoners' attempts to change the prison's medical care system over the years finally sparked outside action. In October 2011, Prison Law Office, a legal advocacy group for prisoners nationwide, sent a letter to Arizona Corrections Director Charles Ryan. The letter listed dozens of specific allegations of deliberate indifference to prisoners' health needs and asked Ryan to agree to a court injunction to address problems as a way to avoid a lawsuit in federal court. On November 17, 2011, Arizona's Department of Corrections signed an agreement to investigate the medical claims. Prison Law Office and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona agreed to delay any lawsuit for three months.

In New Jersey, DeLuca reached out to the AFSC to help her advocate for the care she needed. "It was a partnership between inside and out, which is often the most effective way to obtain change," Kerness remembered. Although their efforts did not improve the overall quality of prison medical care, it did have a ripple effect within the circle of women around DeLuca. Through her example, other women became aware of the power of advocacy and their ability to help outside supporters advocate on their behalf. [Interview with Bonnie Kerness, December 28, 2011] Sadly, many women battling breast cancer and other serious medical issues lack outside support. Breast cancer survivors and advocates need to recognize that, for women with breast cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, a prison sentence may mean a sentence to death by neglect. Then they need to speak out and take action to help women inside successfully fight for their lives.

Arpaio being sued for shackling woman in labor.

Press Release

DECEMBER 20, 2011
Phoenix, AZ
RE: WOMAN SHACKLED DURING LABOR SUES JOE ARPAIO
Mendiola v. Arpaio, et. al
Arizona District Court Number 11CV2512

Yesterday, through her attorneys, Miriam Mendiola-Martinez filed a federal lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa Medical Center, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Officers, and Maricopa Medical Center doctors and nurses, alleging that she was shackled by Maricopa County Sheriff’s officers during labor and after her Cesarean delivery. Her attached complaint, alleges that Sheriff Arpaio and the other defendants violated several constitutional rights, to include the Eighth Amendment rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and the right of prisoners to adequate health care.

The complaint states that in December 2009, while she was held as a prisoner in Maricopa County jails, Ms. Mendiola-Martinez was repeatedly shackled during her labor and while she recovered from a Cesarean birth. She also alleges that a MCSO deputy or correctional officer forced her to walk, with her hands and feet shackled, wearing only a hospital gown and with a bleeding surgery wound, out of the hospital and then back into the hospital while she was being discharged from the hospital.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association oppose the shackling of women in labor or recuperating from delivery. In 2008, in Nelson v. Norris, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appealsfound the shackling of women prisoners during labor to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The Arizona Department of Corrections eliminated the practice of shackling women in labor or in postpartum recovery in 2003. In 2007, the United States Marshal’s Service eliminated the practice of shackling women in labor. In 2008,the Federal Bureau of Prisons eliminated the practice of shackling women in labor.

Ms. Mendiola-Martinez is represented by Attorneys Joy Bertrand, Shannon Peters, and John McBee.

All eyes on Eyman: Human Rights and the SMU.

Following are two posts about Supermax prisons / Special Management Units (like ASPC-Eyman), and solitary's harmful effects from David Fathi in the ACLU Blog of Rights. If you have a loved one in AZ prisons with a mental illness being managed by moving them into more restrictive/non-therapeutic settings (like detention or SMU) instead of providing them with adequate psychiatric treatment services, please contact me. We need to work together on this.

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Turning the Corner on Solitary Confinement?

February 24, 2011

This week, Colorado state Sen. Morgan Carroll and Rep. Claire Levy introduced a bill that would substantially limit the use of solitary confinement in the state's prisons. S.B. 176 would restrict solitary confinement of prisoners with mental illness or developmental disabilities, who currently make up more than one-third of the state's solitary confinement population. It would require regular mental health evaluations for prisoners in solitary, and prompt removal of those who develop mental illness. And it would significantly restrict the practice of releasing prisoners directly from solitary confinement into the community, where they are more likely to re-offend than prisoners who transition from solitary to the general prison population before release.

The shattering psychological effects of solitary confinement, even for relatively short periods, are well known. "It's an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his time in isolation as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. "It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment." The American journalist Roxana Saberi, imprisoned by the Iranian government, said that she was "going crazy" after two weeks in solitary. Imagine, then, that 54 prisoners in Illinois have been in continuous solitary confinement for more than 10 years.

These reforms are long overdue for Colorado and for the nation as a whole. Solitary confinement is an expensive boondoggle – in Colorado, it costs an additional $21,485 per year for each prisoner. And all we get for that investment is an undermining of our public safety. The vast majority of prisoners who are forced to endure long-term isolation are eventually released back into the community, where the devastating impact of solitary confinement leaves them more damaged and less capable of living a law-abiding life.

The United States uses long-term solitary confinement to a degree unparalleled in other democracies, with an estimated 20,000 prisoners in solitary at any one time, and it's attracting increasing criticism from international human rights bodies. The U.N. Human Rights Committee and Committee Against Torture have both expressed concern about the use of prolonged isolation in U.S. prisons and recommended scrutinizing this practice with a view to bringing prison conditions and treatment of prisoners in line with international human rights norms. And the European Court of Human Rights has temporarily blocked the extradition of four terrorism suspects to the United States on the ground that their possible incarceration in a Supermax prison, where solitary confinement is the norm, could violate the European Convention on Human Rights.

Last week the ACLU urged the U.N. Human Rights Council to address the widespread violations of the human rights of prisoners in the United States associated with solitary confinement. Many of the measures we call for, such as prohibiting solitary confinement of the mentally ill and careful monitoring of prisoners in solitary for mental illness, are also part of Colorado's S.B. 176. Colorado may be only one state, but the bill's introduction is a hopeful sign that the United States may, at last, be turning the corner on solitary confinement.

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Supermax Prisons: Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading

Jul 9th, 2010

This week the European Court of Human Rights temporarily halted the extradition of four terrorism suspects from the United Kingdom to the United States. The court concluded that the applicants had raised a serious question whether their possible long-term incarceration in a U.S. “supermax” prison would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “torture or … inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The court noted that “complete sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation, can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason,” and called for additional submissions from the parties before finally deciding the applicants’ claim.

The court’s decision was not a surprise. International human rights bodies have repeatedly expressed the view that supermax prisons — in which prisoners are held in near-total social isolation, sometimes for years on end — may violate international human rights law. In 2006, the U.N. Committee Against Torture expressed concern about “the extremely harsh regime” in US supermax prisons, which it said could violate the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a human rights treaty ratified by the United States in 1994.

Despite these warnings, supermax prisons are common in the United States. In the 1990s they were a raging fad, yet another round in the perpetual “tough on crime” political bidding war. Suddenly every state had to build one — Virginia was so tough it built two. By the end of the decade, more than 30 states, as well as the federal government, were operating a supermax facility or unit.

The devastating effects of isolated confinement on the human psyche have long been well known. In 1890, the Supreme Court described the results of solitary confinement as it had been practiced in the early days of the United States:

A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.

Conditions in modern supermax prisons are, if anything, even more damaging, as technological advances like video surveillance have made possible a greater degree of social isolation than in earlier times.

The ACLU has been bringing challenges to supermax prisons for over a decade, and what we’ve found is troubling. The official line is that these prisons are reserved for the “worst of the worst” — the most dangerous and incorrigibly violent — but most states have only a few such prisoners. In overcrowded prison systems, the typical response has been to fill the remaining supermax cells with "nuisance prisoners" — those who file lawsuits, violate minor prison rules, or otherwise annoy staff, but by no stretch of the imagination require the extremely high security of a supermax facility. Thus in Wisconsin's supermax, one of the "worst of the worst" was a 16-year-old car thief. Twenty-year-old David Tracy hanged himself in a Virginia supermax; he had been sent there at age 19, with a 2 ½ year sentence for selling drugs.

The mentally ill are vastly overrepresented in supermax prisons, and once subjected to the stress of isolated confinement, many of them deteriorate dramatically. Some engage in bizarre and extreme acts of self-injury and even suicide. In an Indiana supermax, a 21-year-old mentally ill prisoner set himself on fire in his cell and died from his burns; another man in the same unit choked himself to death with a washcloth. It’s not unusual to find supermax prisoners who swallow razors and other objects, smash their heads into the wall, compulsively cut their flesh, try to hang themselves, and otherwise attempt to harm or kill themselves.

Lawsuits by the ACLU and others have mitigated some of the worst features of supermax confinement, but thousands of prisoners remain entombed in these facilities throughout the United States. Fortunately, with states facing record budget deficits, supermax facilities, which are far more expensive to build and operate than conventional prisons, have lost much of their appeal. Bills have been introduced in the Illinois and Maine legislatures to substantially restrict supermax confinement in those states. There’s a long way to go, but these are important first steps toward bringing U.S. prison conditions into line with human rights norms, and with basic human decency.

(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)

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