Voter ID Laws: Again Obama Stands Opposite Americans He Is Supposed To Represent

By Susan Duclos

Rasmussen finds that Barack Obama, once again, is standing directly opposite of what the American people want.

RE: Voter ID Laws:

The Obama administration has blocked Texas’ new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying it would suppress Hispanic voter turnout, and the United Nations is now investigating the fairness of such laws in Texas and other states. But voters in this country still overwhelmingly support voter ID laws and don’t think they discriminate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote......

Obamacare, Immigration, Drilling....... all issues where Barack Obama ignores the American people he was elected to represent to further his own political agenda.

All reasons to replace Obama in 2012.

.

Court Upholds Texas Abortion-Sonogram Law

By Susan Duclos

Little late on this but on February 6, 2012, it was reported that a federal appeals court forced District Judge Sam Sparks to reverse his own previous ruling blocking portions of Texas' new law which would require doctors to perform sonograms on fetuses before performing abortions, and Sparks must now uphold the law.

A federal judge on Monday upheld the Texas law requiring women to have a sonogram before having an abortion, saying an appeals court had forced him to declare the law constitutional.

District Judge Sam Sparks had previously struck down parts of the law, but his latest ruling said he's bound to follow the direction of the New Orleans-based appeals court.

Texas will began enforcing the law Tuesday Feb. 7th, according to a spokeswoman for the Texas Health Services Commission.

The spokeswoman, Carrie Williams, states "Our enforcement activities can begin now that the materials and guidance are in place. We'll be providing technical assistance along the way, but facilities need to follow the law, and we'll be checking up on that during our facility inspections. We understand that this affects the facilities and the women who are going there for services, and we want to make sure everyone is well informed about this."

The Texas Department of State Health Services has listed information for providers and well as information for women on their website.

What this means: Texas law says your doctor must talk to you about certain things before you can have an abortion. After you get this information, your doctor must wait 24 hours before your abortion can be performed. The law also requires that you receive a sonogram from the doctor (or agent) who will be performing your abortion at least 24 hours before the abortion is to occur. If you live more than 100 miles away from the nearest abortion provider, you can waive this requirement, but you will still be required to have a sonogram by the doctor performing the abortion. It will need to occur at least 2 hours before the abortion, rather than 24 hours before.

Once you arrive at your doctor’s office, and before your sonogram, you will be asked to sign a sonogram/abortion election form. This form certifies that you are aware of the law and its requirements. The doctor will also give you materials to read. One of those materials should be the Resource Directory listed on this webpage.

During your sonogram, the doctor is required to display the sonogram images and make the heart beat audible. You may decline to view the images and listen to the heartbeat. The doctor must also provide a verbal explanation of the sonogram results. Only women who certify on the sonogram/abortion election form one of the following criteria can decline to hear the verbal explanation:

• the pregnancy is a result of a sexual assault, incest, or other violation of the Penal Code that has been reported to law enforcement authorities or that has not been reported because she reasonably believes that to do so would put her at risk of retaliation resulting in serious bodily injury;
• the woman is a minor and obtaining an abortion in accordance with judicial bypass procedures under Chapter 33, Family Code; or
• the fetus has an irreversible medical condition or abnormality, as medically documented in the woman's medical file.

Doctors who do not comply with the law could lose their medical license, be charged with a misdemeanor and face fines of up to $10,000.

HAUNTED SKIES - 1957 Flying Egg

http://hauntedskies.blogspot.com/2012/01/flying-egg-daily-telegraph-5-11-57.html

Texas Scrooge!

"It appears they had just celebrated Christmas. They had opened their gifts,"

Man it's the day after JC's birthday and seven people lost their lives in one horrific act in a Dallas area home.

There is just no holiday spirit here in A-merry-ca.

"The victims have not yet been identified, but Eberling said it appears they all died of gunshot wounds. He said authorities still don't know what sparked the incident.

Grapevine Police Lt. Todd Dearing said investigators believe that all the victims were related, but that some were only visiting and didn't live in the apartment. He said police are looking for other relatives to inform.

"Seven people in one setting in Grapevine, that's never happened before. Ever," Dearing said.

He said police were performing a "meticulous" search of the apartment and he expects them to be on the scene for many hours.

Police and firefighters first rushed to the Lincoln Vineyards complex after receiving an open-ended emergency services call at about 11:30 a.m., Eberling said.

"There was an open line. No one was saying anything," he explained." [Story]

These are tough economic times, and given where we put our priorities in A-merry-ca, it's going to be even tougher. When you care more about material things than everything else; bad things tend to happen.

Finally, it's not all bad news here in A-merry-ca. In my city the po po did a nice job of making sure that one poor soul enjoys the rest of the holiday.

"Christmas came early for a Boston music student who was reunited with the $170,000 violin she forgot in the overhead compartment of a regional commuter bus she rode last week, police said.

Muchen Hsieh, a student at the New England Conservatory in Boston, had traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, arriving at roughly 11 p.m. on Tuesday.

Christine O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia police, who helped Hsieh track down the missing instrument, said then came a moment of sheer panic for the student.

O'Brien said Hsieh realized she had forgotten the instrument after she was picked up from the bus station. She blamed her absent-mindedness on travel fatigue.

Hsieh called the bus company, Megabus, roughly 30 minutes after she arrived but the bus had already left the Philadelphia station, O'Brien said. Hsieh also notified police, making a plea for the instrument's recovery, O'Brien said.

The 176-year-old instrument, on loan to Hsieh from a Taiwanese cultural foundation, was found by bus cleaners in the same compartment in which Hsieh left it. They put it in storage, and police returned it to Hsieh on Friday.

Hsieh joins the ranks of esteemed musicians who have mislaid or forgotten their valuable and sometimes priceless instruments. World renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma once left his in a cab.

One German string player required medical attention from the stress caused when he left his violin, worth roughly $1.4 million, on a commuter train in 2010.

It is not unusual for students at Hsieh's school to have such valuable instruments, Ellen Pfeifer, spokeswoman for the New England Conservatory, told the Boston Globe.

"Most of our string players, whether violinists, cellists, or violists, have pretty expensive, old, rare, instruments," Pfeifer said. "They frequently get them on loan from wealthy foundations."

The violin, which is in pristine condition, was made in 1835 by Vincenzo Jorio in Naples.

"This is certainly one of the most expensive items I have ever heard of and we were so relieved to get it back to the owner," said Megabus spokesman Bryony Chamberlain, adding that people often forget stowed-away items after long trips.

Hsieh had traveled from Boston to New York City and then to Philadelphia, Chamberlain said, a trip that could have taken more than six and a half hours.

"Each division has incidents of lost items that rare -- but this is probably one of the most unique," police spokeswoman O'Brien said, adding that Hsieh put on a mini-concert for the officers who organized the recovery.

"She is very talented," O'Brien said."

Yes, and very lucky.

Private Prison Promises Leave Texas Towns In Trouble

by John Burnett

National Public Radio

March 25, 2011

Second in a two-part series on private prisons

The country with the highest incarceration rate in the world — the United States — is supporting a $3 billion private prison industry. In Texas, where free enterprise meets law and order, there are more for-profit prisons than any other state. But because of a growing inmate shortage, some private jails cannot fill empty cells, leaving some towns wishing they'd never gotten in the prison business.

It seemed like a good idea at the time when the west Texas farming town of Littlefield borrowed $10 million and built the Bill Clayton Detention Center in a cotton field south of town in 2000. The charmless steel-and-cement-block buildings ringed with razor wire would provide jobs to keep young people from moving to Lubbock or Dallas.

For eight years, the prison was a good employer. Idaho and Wyoming paid for prisoners to serve time there. But two years ago, Idaho pulled out all of its contract inmates because of a budget crunch at home. There was also a scandal surrounding the suicide of an inmate.

Shortly afterward, the for-profit operator, GEO Group, gave notice that it was leaving, too. One hundred prison jobs disappeared. The facility has been empty ever since.

A Hard Sell

"Maybe ... he'll help us to find somebody," says Littlefield City Manager Danny Davis good-n aturedly when a reporter shows up for a tour.

John Burnett/NPR

The 372-bed Bill Clayton Detention Center is a medium-security prison that is currently sitting empty in Littlefield, Texas.

For sale or contract: a 372-bed, medium-security prison with double security fences, state-of-the-art control room, gymnasium, law library, classrooms and five living pods.

Davis opens the gray steel door to a barren cell with bunk beds and stainless-steel furniture.

"You can see the facility here. [It's] pretty austere, but from what I understand from a prison standpoint, it's better than most," he says, still trying to close the sale.

For the past two years, Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to pay the note on the prison. That's $10 per resident of this little city.

A Resident Burden

Is the empty prison a big white elephant for the city of Littlefield?

"Is it something we have that we'd rather not have? Well, today that would probably be the case," Davis says.

To avoid defaulting on the loan, Littlefield has raised property taxes, increased water and sewer fees, laid off city employees and held off buying a new police car. Still, the city's bond rating has tanked.

The village elders drinking coffee at the White Kitchen cafe are not happy about the way things have turned out.

"It was never voted on by the citizens of Littlefield; [it] is stuck in their craw," says Carl Enloe, retired from Atmos Energy. "They have to pay for it. And the people who's got it going are all up and gone and they left us... "

"...Holdin' the bag!" says Tommy Kelton, another Atmos retiree, completing the sentence.

The Declining Prison Population

The same thing has happened to communities across Texas. Once upon a time, it seems every small town wanted to be a prison town. But the 20-year private prison building boom is over.

Some prisons are struggling outside Texas, too.

Hardin, Mont., defaulted on its bond payments after trying, so far unsuccessfully, to fill its 464-bed minimum security prison. And a prison in Huerfano County, Colo., closed after Arizona pulled out its 700 inmates.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

The Texas legislature, looking for budget cuts, is contemplating shedding 2,000 contract prison beds. Statewide, more than half of all privately operated county jail beds are empty, according to figures from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

"Too many times we've seen jails that have got into it and tried to make it a profitable business to make money off of it and they end up fallin' on their face," says Shannon Herklotz, assistant director of the commission.

The packages look sweet. A town gets a new detention center without costing the taxpayers anything. The private operator finances, constructs and operates an oversized facility. The contract inmates pay off the debt and generate extra revenue.

The economic model works fine until they can't find inmates.

In Waco, McLennan County borrowed $49 million to build an 816-bed jail and charge day rates for bunk space. But today because of the convict shortage, the fortress east of town remains more than half empty. The sheriff and county judge, once champions of the new jail, now decline to comment on it.

Former McLennan County Deputy Rick White, who opposed the jail, had this to say about the prison developers who put the deal together: "They get the corporations formed, they get the bonds sold, they get the facility built, their money is front-loaded, they take their money out. And then there's no reason for them to support the success of the facility."

Two of Texas' busiest private prison consultants — James Parkay and Herb Bristow — declined repeated requests for interviews.

The Inmate Market

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the total correctional population in the United States is declining for the first time in three decades. Among the reasons: The crime rate is falling, sentencing alternatives mean fewer felons doing hard time and states everywhere are slashing budgets.

Private prison companies insist their future is sunny.

A spokesman for the GEO Group declined to speak about the Littlefield prison, but he sent along a slew of press releases highlighting the company's new inmate contracts and prison expansions across the country.

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, says the demand for its facilities remains strong, particularly for federal immigration detainees.

New Jersey-based Community Education Centers, which has been pulling out of unprofitable jails across Texas, issued a statement that "the current (jail) population fluctuation" is cyclical.

One of the places where CEC is cancelling its contract is Falls County, in central Texas, where a for-profit jail addition is losing money. Now it's up to Falls County Judge Steve Sharp to hustle up jailbirds: "If somebody is out there charging $30 a day for an inmate, we need to charge $28. We really don't have a choice of not filling those beds," he said.

Another place where they're desperate for inmates is Anson, the little town north of Abilene, Texas, once famous for its no-dancing law. Today, Jones County owns a brand-new $34 million prison and an $8 million county jail, both of which sit empty. The prison developers made their money and left. Then the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reneged on a contract to fill the new prison with parole violators. The county's Public Facility Corporation that borrowed the money to build the lockups owes $314,000 a month — with no paying inmates. They've got a year's worth of bond service payments set aside before county officials start to sweat.

"The market has changed nationwide in the last 18 months or two years. It's certainly a different picture than when we started this project. And so we're continuing to work the problem," Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin says.

Grayson County, north of Dallas, said no to privatizing its jail. Two years ago, the county was all set to build a $30 million, 750-bed behemoth twice as big as was needed. But the public got queasy and county officials ultimately scuttled the deal.

"When you put the profit motive into a private jail, by design, in order to increase your dollars, your revenues, your profits, you need more folks in there and they need to stay longer," says Bill Magers, mayor of the county seat of Sherman, a leading opponent.

When the supply of prison beds exceeds the demand for prison beds, there are beneficiaries.

The overcrowded Harris County Jail in Houston, the nation's third largest, farms out about 1,000 prisoners to private jails. Littlefield and most other under-occupied facilities in Texas have all been in touch with Houston.

"It really is a buyer's market right now, especially a county our size," says Capt. Robin Kinetsky, who is in charge of inmate processing for the Harris County Sheriffs Department. "They're really wanting to get our business. So, we're getting good deals."

Nearby, disheveled and unsmiling men are brought from a holding cell to stand before a booking officer for their intake interviews. The detainees are wholly unaware that they may soon become the newest commodities of the volatile inmate market.

Aarti Shahani contributed to this NPR News investigation and report.

Men behaving badly.

Hey fellows, how many of you, to this day, cringe when you see a little bunny rabbit? Yeah, me too. Those "Fatal Attraction" flashbacks will do that to you. For those of us old enough to remember that flick, it changed our lives forever. No more mind games with the jump -offs.

Well, unfortunately, some of us didn't learn that lesson, and the results were tragic for the girlfriend of former Chicago Bear, Shaun Gayle. Do you remember this story?:

"The pregnant girlfriend of the former Chicago bears All-Pro safety Shaun Lanard Gayle, Rhoni Reuter(42), was found shot to death in her suburban Chicago apartment on Thursday, according to the local police. The Deerfield Police Department says that the body was found when neighbors called the police, after hearing screams coming from Reuter's apartment. Lake County coroner said she suffered multiple gunshot wounds and confirmed that Rhoni Reuter was pregnant. Police indicated that Shaun Gayle was the father of the unborn child, but he was not a suspect in the shooting. " [Story]

Well apparently the trial is on the way for the jump-off who shot and killed Rhoni Reuter.
It's not looking good for Gayle. Some are suggesting that he should share some responsibility for the death of his former girlfriend as well. Sadly, I am nut so sure you can argue with them.

"It is too bad that Shaun Gayle can’t be charged with something in the murder of his girlfriend Rhoni Reuter and the couple’s unborn child.

Marni Yang is currently on trial for allegedly shooting Reuter at her Deerfield home.

This is not an attempt to diminish Yang’s responsibility for Reuter’s death if she is found guilty.

But Gayle should bear some responsibility for the doggish behavior that led to this tragedy.

When Gayle initially was questioned about his relationship with Yang, a real estate agent who helped Gayle with real estate deals, he denied having more than a business relationship with the woman to the media.

I always thought Gayle was being less than honest about the relationship.

Because in order to believe that Yang killed Reuter in a fit of jealousy, and also believe Gayle’s contention that he had no romantic involvement with Yang, you would have to believe that Yang was delusional or bonkers.

Casual sex for him, but not for her

On Tuesday, Gayle testified that he had a casual sexual relationship with the woman, and confirmed that the night before the pregnant Reuter was killed, he had sex with her rival.

Sexual triangles always pose a risk for great harm because some women (and men) will go to great lengths to dispose of their rivals. We’ve seen too many instances in which the matter is settled by violence.

But this was the first time that I’d heard of a woman killing another woman over the affections of a man she had absolutely no sexual relationship with whatsoever.

Worse yet, defense lawyers claim that Gayle was seeing 18 or 19 different women at the time he was involved with Reuter." [Story]

Damn Shaun! "18 or 19" jump-offs? You clearly did not see "Fatal Attraction". Shaun, I have to agree with the writer; your behavior was inexcusable, and while you can't be charged criminally, I don't know how you will ever be able to live with yourself.

Finally, this story out of Cleveland, Texas has me troubled and shaking my head. I am sure you all of heard it by now. (Especially some of my white readers who switch back and forth from the fields to Stormfront.) As much as 18 men (and possibly more to come) ages 14-27 charged with sexually assaulting an 11 year old girl. This is not good. Everyone of the men charged looked like me, and the alleged victim was Hispanic. So, apparently, it being Texas, racial tensions are running high. The word is that the yo....-I won't even call her a young lady I will say child.- the child acted way older than her age, and she posted pictures of herself on Facebook doing things that 11 year old girls shouldn't be doing. But this is not an excuse. She is ELEVEN. I know that kids are looking more mature these days, but, again, she was ELEVEN. Had she been fifteen or sixteen I would have still called for the prosecution of those adults who allegedly assaulted her, but I would not have been as outraged.

I have been reading some blogs about this story, and they have written that folks are shying away from the gorilla in the room: race. Well I am not. I never do. If what the prosecutor alleges did in fact happen, every one of those young men should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Just as the perpetrators in the Dunbar Village assault should have. The fact that they all happened to be black doesn't matter to me.

Some of you parents need to do a better job with your kids, that's all. Especially your sons. I bet that somewhere out there Shaun Gayle's parents are nodding their heads.

Death Penalty

A Threat to Liberty



"About the issue of capital punishment: I would say, in principle, morally, I approve of capital punishment, in cases of first degree murder. That is, if someone by conscious, deliberate intention has murdered someone, he does morally deserve to forfeit his own life. But the issue of objective proof enters here, and I think a good argument could be made -- and I would be inclined to agree with it -- that precisely because errors in proof and evidence are always possible, capital punishment should be outlawed: not out of moral consideration for the murderer, but precisely in order to protect the possible, rare instance of an innocent man being convicted, on the principle that it is better to sentence nine actual murderers to life imprisonment, rather than execute one innocent man." - Ayn Rand

A jury in 2002 refused to impose the death penalty on Andrea Yates, the infamous Houston Texas mother who methodically drowned her five children in the family bathtub. It was the right decision not to put her to death, but in all the media madness surrounding the decision one heard every imaginable reason to spare her but the best one.

Nowhere was the media frenzy more intense than in Yate's hometown of Houston. While the trial made the front pages of most newspapers around the country, few could compare with the screaming headlines that appeared daily in the Houston Chronicle. I was visiting at the time in a middle-class neighborhood right next to the Clear Lake area where the Yates family lived. My cousin works at NASA, as did Russell Yates and thousands of others in Houston, which likes to call itself in its promotional campaigns, "Space City." To the rest of the country the Yates tragedy was about that weird woman down in Texas who did that unspeakable thing, but in Houston it was a hometown story about a hometown girl. That gave the coverage a personal quality which only made it all the more melodramatic.

I was walking downtown near the courthouse on the day when Yates was sentenced to prison rather than to death, and the street was so clogged with media personnel and broadcasting technology that it was almost impassable. In Houston, the Yates case was not just a nighmarish abstraction conveyed through the mass media, but an actual physical presence.

Yet for all of that intimacy with the case, the local media coverage in most ways parroted the national commentary and coverage, including the death penalty stage of the trial. Everyone asked all of the predictable questions: Is mental illness a sufficient excuse? Was the husband in some ways negligent? Conservatives predictably declared the case to be the ultimate example of the collapse of family values. Liberals just as predictably blamed society. Most of the public sentiment fell somewhere in the middle, disgusted and saddened simultaneously. Yet for all the questions and all the chatter about Yate's fate, most of it missed the point.



There is no question that there are situations where it is difficult to argue against the death penalty. In fact in some cases the behavior of the criminal is so despicable that even execution seems too kind. The serial killer Ted Bundy (above) was convicted for killing (among others) a 15-year-old girl whose body was found with dozens of cigarette burns all over her body. The autopsy revealed that she had been alive when those burns had been inflicted. The death penalty for a monster like Bundy? That seems far too compassionate; it feels more like justice to torture him first!

Yet it still remains inappropriate to execute people, even when it is fiends like Ted Bundy. The primary reason is that capital punishment is incompatible with a free society. Supposedly in a free society it is the people that are in charge. The government should act only in the role of the servant of the citizens, existing primarily to preserve their rights - foremost of which is the right to live. Have you ever heard of a servant who had the right to kill the people they are serving? If our government is truly our servant, then it shouldn't have the right to kill us either.

In other words, in a free society the government should purposely be kept small and weak, the better to leave its citizens alone to enjoy their lives free of the interference of undue government authority. A free people should not allow the death penalty for the simple reason that no government acting genuinely as a servant of the people should be allowed to have that kind of power.

Liberals, despite being the ones who usually campaign most stridently against the death penalty, generally don't like to use that argument. Liberals tend to like government power so they can impose their agenda of control over people's income and social behavior in behalf of what liberals consider the greater good. An anti-death penalty argument based on the principle of freedom from Big Government undermines the rest of their agenda, which requires the government to be fat and powerful. For that reason they argue against the death penalty primarily on the grounds of compassion, insisting that it is simply too cruel to put someone to death. Opinion polls show that this argument for compassion has little public support, which is no surprise. Any argument against the death penalty that is based upon pity for murderers will not only fail, but deserves to.

As for conservatives, who generally support the death penalty, they seem strangely blind to their own logical inconsistencies. Conservatives usually have no problem recognizing government overreaching in other matters, yet when government tries to assume the greatest power that that any government can claim to have, the power to kill its own citizens, they are oddly unable to see the glaring inconsistency of supporting the death penalty and their otherwise pro-freedom philosophy.

It was right that Andrea Yates was spared, not because we felt sorry for her, or because she was mentally ill, or because her husband was a shmuck or her minister a creep or because society was somehow to blame. She should not have been killed for the one reason that no one seemed to state, here in Houston or anywhere else.

That reason, and the only reason necessary, is that free societies as a matter of principle do not grant to their governments the power to kill their citizens, no matter what they do or why they do it. In all the millions of words written and said regarding the death penalty in the Yates case, how unfortunate that so few ever suggested anything like that. If they had, then the senseless deaths of those children would at least have had the virtue of sparking a real debate over an essential issue. Alas the coverage, in Houston and everywhere else, never seemed to rise above the level of just another ugly public drama, with the media merely rehashing all of the predictable bromides. So although Yate's life was spared, an important opportunity for public enlightenment on the proper role of government was lost.

Down Dixie



While we're talking about Texas, here's some old pics of me in the City of Devine, located in Texas near San Antonio, in 2001. This is me in front of the Chamber of Commerce.



Here I am in front of the local internet provider.



The editor of The Devine News poses with my Dad, my Uncle John and myself.




Panties Man

The ageless Tom Jones played Northampton the other night. Jim Neill took this photo showing all the ladies undies that were thrown on stage.



Jim brought a pair to throw on stage, but Tom Jones seemed mysteriously reluctant to accept them.



Today's Video

Tony Pierce saw Amherst's Dinosaur Jr. perform in Los Angeles Wednesday night and thought the sound quality sucked:



you know what i like? rock concerts

you know what else i like? being able to hear the singer sing at rock concerts.

you know what i didnt hear last night at the Dinosaur Jr. show? J Mascis' beautiful singing.

being that this is the second show in two years at the Troubadour where the vocals were clearly missing from the dinosaur mix, it would lead me to believe that either the band doesnt want the crowd to hear the singing - or that the sound engineer was overwhelmed with the literal wall of sound produced by a trio of Marshall amps placed behind the gray haired rock god.

funny thing happened on the way to thinking that the band didnt want J's vocals to be heard: the two songs sung by the bassist Lou Barlow

couldnt hear him neither.

fortunately beers were cheap and inspired the crowd to get over the fact that the show had turned into a rock band karaoke night and the last four songs of the set included some spirited moshing and crowd surfing.

let it be known that i will gladly get the new dinosaur record that came out yesterday but i probably will pass if they ever play the troubadour again.

In this video the band is shown in March rehearsing material from the new album at J. Mascis' Amherst home.