A record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.
[...]
Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent while the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of all inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.
"Today's figures fail to capture incarceration's impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison," Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group supporting criminal justice reform, said in a statement. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails."
From 1995 to 2003, inmates in federal prison for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth.
What have I done? Well. I thought that I was posting my opinions to an open blog that is published on the internet and free for all to view and comment. There was no disclaimer about any such restrictions. The owner of the site, Konagod, has not ever voiced his concern that I leave here. In fact he has been very free in allowing people to say whatever they want.
I admit that I do still receive the profanity and name calling here that I received at her blog, although not as vile here as there. You can verify this by reading some transcripts of the older commentary from there. All this for posting my opinion. I have never used profanity, called names, made threats or voiced specific hatred of individual people by name. All of which I have seen on most of the blogs in question.
(konagod:) Have you ever altered an opinion based on anything you have ever heard or read?
(Jeff:) Yes, if there is a compelling argument. I have yet to see that here.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson on Tuesday ordered the Treasury Department to start working on the problem, leaving it up to government officials to determine the best solution. Possible changes include making bills of differing sizes or adding embossed dots or raised ink.
The government has 10 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling. The Treasury Department had no immediate comment.
Electronic devices are available to help blind people differentiate between bills, but many complain that they are slow, expensive and unreliable. Visually impaired shoppers frequently rely on store clerks to help them.
''It's just frankly unfair that blind people should have to rely on the good faith of people they have never met in knowing whether they've been given the correct change,'' said Jeffrey A. Lovitky, attorney for the blind plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
[...]
''Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations,'' Robertson wrote. ''More than 100 of the other issuers vary their bills in size according to denomination, and every other issuer includes at least some features that help the visually impaired.''
In court documents, government attorneys said changing the way money feels would be expensive. Cost estimates ranged from $75 million in equipment upgrades and $9 million annual expenses for punching holes in bills to $178 million in one-time charges and $50 million annual expenses for printing bills of varying sizes.
The US mint produces about 7 billion pennies every year (roughly half of all coins made each year), at a cost of $100 million dollars. About one-third of this money is used to pay for the zinc that pennies are made out of, which is why the zinc industry is lobbying to keep the penny in production.
Clark said Iraq will be a focus of the 2008 campaign. He disagreed with suggestions by some members of Congress that more U.S. troops should be sent to help stabilize Iraq. Neither would he begin reducing U.S. forces in Iraq within the next six months, as others have suggested.
"It's not a matter of fiddling with troop levels," Clark said. "It's a matter of politics inside Iraq and diplomacy in the region.... You can lose what's going on militarily inside Iraq, but you can't win it militarily, either by putting more forces in or by pulling them out."
The TV Land cable network has compiled a list of the top 100 greatest catchphrases in TV, from the serious Walter Cronkite's nightly signoff "And that's the way it is" to the silly: "We are two wild and crazy guys!"
The customers are rude tonight, drunk and bellicose. One guy doesn’t want to pay for his food, figuring it ought to be free. If he had wanted to rob the place, Ms. Castillo says with a tight smile, it would have been easy enough; the window doesn’t lock here like it does at the McDonald’s.
[...]
But consider the life inside that window on Loop 12 in West Dallas. There is a woman with children and no health insurance, undereducated, a foot soldier in the army of the working poor. The fry cook sneezes on the meat patties*. Cigarettes go half smoked. Cameras spy on the employees. Customers throw their fries and soft drinks sometimes because they think it’s funny.
...Burger King CEO George Brenneman abruptly announced his resignation recently, right after the company posted a net loss for its fiscal third quarter. Lucky for him, he signed an agreement with Burger King to ensure that he receives his base salary of $1.03 million for three years, and his annual bonus of $2.06 million for fiscal 2006. Thanks for the memories, indeed.
She takes the boys to a McDonald’s for breakfast at 7:15 — the same place she used to work — before dropping them off at school at 7:45. A man named Carlos works the window there. They used to work there together.
Every morning, the boys’ order is the same: one sausage, egg and cheese biscuit; one bacon biscuit; two hash browns; and two orange juices. Ms. Castillo could take free food home from Burger King, but the boys like McDonald’s better.
She returns home, sleeps until 2 and collects the boys from school. She cooks them supper prepared from frozen packages, and sometimes they eat it in front of the television. It takes time and money to eat healthy, she says.
On Saturdays she attends community college, hoping that in a few years she will be a paralegal going to work in a downtown office tower, wearing a pantsuit. She is hoping for $20 an hour and a lunch break.
[...]
She looks at the crummy little house across the parking lot with peeling paint. “That would be good too, a little house. I don’t want much.”
There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.
[...]
With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.”
His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”
A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.
Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.
Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."
[...]
Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.
The show wasn't interested in doing something just to be sensational, she said. GLAAD and some transgenders were brought in as consultants in shaping the character, teaching the producers when it is appropriate to call a character "she" even before surgery, she said.
Damon Romine, a spokesman for GLAAD, said he hasn't seen the show yet but feels people involved were genuinely interested in telling the story with dignity. Emotions are so close to the surface in soap operas, and this story can serve a purpose by showing what transgenders go through, he said.
At the Best Buy on Chenal Parkway in Little Rock, customers lined up as early as 12:30 p.m. Thursday for the 5 a.m. opening. As the time approached, about 800 people were lined up around the building and police were directing traffic.
Shortly after midnight yesterday, an estimated 15,000 shoppers pushed and shoved their way into the Fashion Place mall in Murray, Utah. Police soon joined them, responding to reports of nine skirmishes.
Once inside, shoppers ransacked stores, overturning piles of clothes as they looked for bargains. A retailer’s dream — too many customers! — quickly turned into a nightmare, forcing store clerks to shut their doors, and only let people in after others left. The mall even briefly closed its outside doors to avoid a fire hazard.
“It’s like a mosh pit,” said Lexie Dewegel, 19. “You get pushed everywhere.”
“Sold out, sold out, sold out,” announced the manager at a Staples on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan yesterday at 7 a.m. “When?” asked the incredulous customer. “An hour ago,” replied the manager — in other words, the minute the store opened.
In Lewis Center, Ohio, near Columbus, Cindy Milsap, 43, and her daughter, Ashley, 20, woke up before dawn to drive to the nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter, which advertised a 52-inch high-definition television for $474. “We don’t really need a new TV, Ms. Milsap said. “But at that price? C’mon.”
But the bargain eluded them. The “limited quantity” in the ad, she said, was three TVs — all sold by the time the pair arrived.
Among the giants of Delta and Chicago blues, Robert Lockwood Jr. may have been the last of the greats, having outlived Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers and John Lee Hooker.
He learned at age 11 directly from the itinerant blues singer Robert Johnson, who had become romantically involved with Lockwood's widowed mother in Helena, Ark. By 15, Lockwood was playing juke joints and fish fries throughout Mississippi and Arkansas with Johnson.
An Ohio-based company is recalling 46,941 pounds of turkey and ham products that officials fear could cause listeriosis, a potentially fatal disease...
[...]
HoneyBaked Foods Inc. is voluntarily recalling the meat, which includes cooked, glazed and sliced ham and turkey, USDA said in a statement.
Happy Thanksgiving, America.
photo: AFP/Wisam Sami
An Iraqi walks over a blood pool at the site where a roadside bomb exploded in southeast Baghdad.
Out-of-wedlock births in the United States have climbed to an all-time high, accounting for nearly four in 10 babies born last year, government health officials said Tuesday.
While out-of-wedlock births have long been associated with teen mothers, the teen birth rate actually dropped last year to the lowest level on record. Instead, births among unwed mothers rose most dramatically among women in their 20s.
Experts said the overall rise reflects the burgeoning number of people who are putting off marriage or living together without getting married. They said it also reflects the fact that having a child out of wedlock is more acceptable nowadays and not necessarily the source of shame it once was.
A passenger raised concerns about the imams — three of whom said their normal evening prayers in the airport terminal before boarding the Phoenix-bound plane, according to one — through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways.
[...]
The six were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Omar Shahin of Phoenix, president of the group.
"They took us off the plane, humiliated us in a very disrespectful way," Shahin said after the incident.
Shahin said Tuesday that three members of the group prayed in the terminal before the six boarded the plane. They entered individually, except for one member who is blind and needed to be guided, Shahin said. Once on the plane, the six did not sit together, he said.
When Shahin went back to the airport Tuesday morning, a ticketing agent told him his payment for Monday's flight had been refunded and the airline wouldn't sell more tickets to him or the other imams. An airline spokesman in Arizona said he wasn't aware of the ticketing decision and could not comment.
I don't want laying hens spending their entire lives in cages smaller than this newspaper page, or hogs having their curly tails cut just so their tails won't get infected when bitten by other cranky, overcrowded hogs. I don't want cattle standing in their own waste at feedlots.
Why let animals suffer just so corporations can make more money? It's wrong. My position is supported by Michael Pollan in his fantastic book "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals."
While we'll spend Thanksgiving celebrating gluttony, if you'll be eating meat, please consider meat that had a chance to live a good life before being dispatched to your dinner table. A good start is looking for chow from local farmers market participants.
Hundreds of Austinites from different faiths and cultures came together Sunday as part of the 22nd annual Austin Area Interreligious Ministries' Thanksgiving service.
More than 90 churches, synagogues, temples and mosques participated...
Mr. Romney, a Republican, said he would file a request this week for a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court to direct the secretary of state to place the question on the ballot if lawmakers do not vote on the issue on Jan. 2, the final day of the session.
The governor, an opponent of same-sex marriage who decided not to seek re-election as he considers running for president, made his announcement to the cheers of same-sex-marriage opponents at a rally on the Statehouse steps. Supporters of same-sex marriage staged a protest across the street.
“A decision not to vote is a decision to usurp the Constitution, to abandon democracy and substitute a form of what this nation’s founders called tyranny, that is, the imposition of the will of those in power, on the people,” Mr. Romney said. “The issue now before us is not whether same-sex couples should marry. The issue before us today is whether 109 legislators will follow the Constitution.”
“One of the tenets of the Constitution is that you do not put the rights of a minority up for a popularity contest,” said Mark Solomon, campaign director of Mass Equality, a group that supports same-sex marriage. “It is one of the very principles this country was founded upon.”
The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose immodest goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. 22 while focusing on world peace.
"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."
The couple are no strangers to sex and social activism. Sheehan, no relation to anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, brought together nearly 50 women in 2002 who stripped naked and spelled out the word "Peace."
"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.
Before now, the Christian right was not a political force in this mostly secular, liberal country. But it is coalescing with new clout and credibility, similar to the evangelical Christian movement in the United States in the 1980s, though not nearly on the same scale.
Today, half a dozen organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada work full time in Ottawa, four of which opened offices in the past year, all seeking to reverse the law allowing gay marriage.
“With the legalization of gay marriage, faith has been violated and we’ve been forced to respond,” said Charles McVety, a leader of several evangelical Christian organizations that oppose gay marriage and president of the Canada Christian College in Toronto.
[...]
[McVety] asked the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other American evangelical leaders for advice on building a religious movement in Canada and traveled Ontario and Quebec in a red-and-white “Defend Marriage” bus.
A Midwest hotel chain with several properties in Illinois has pulled CNN and CNN Headline News from its guest rooms and lobbies in response to the cable network's broadcast of an insurgent video showing Iraqi snipers shooting at U.S. troops.
"It was shocking and repulsive," he said. "Their actions supported terrorism."
Dennis Cunningham, a retired factory worker from northern Missouri staying at the hotel for several weeks while his wife undergoes brain surgery, said he supported Thompson's decision.
"I agree with him. I think it was inappropriate," Cunningham said. "We don't need to see things like that over here."
The Senate gave overwhelming approval late Thursday to President Bush’s deal for nuclear cooperation with India, a vote expressing that a goal of nurturing India as an ally outweighed concerns over the risks of spreading nuclear skills and bomb-making materials.
Opponents of the measure also warned that the deal would allow India to build more bombs with its limited stockpile of radioactive material, and could spur a regional nuclear arms race with Pakistan and China.
The town council of Pahrump, which lies in the Mojave Desert west of Las Vegas, voted 3-2 on Tuesday to make flying any foreign flag above the U.S. flag or alone an offense punishable by a $50 fine and 30 hours' community service.
Murtha, 74, was a problematic candidate because of his penchant for trading votes for pork projects and his ties to the Abscam bribery sting in 1980, the only lawmaker involved who wasn't charged.
Democrats also selected James Clyburn of South Carolina as majority whip, their No. 3 post. Clyburn, who is black, would become the highest-ever ranking member of his race in Congress.
Click the graphic above to go there. Nominations will take place until November 24 and it's simple. But please, please, do not nominate me for Best Conservative Blog. I'm just not worthy.Best Psycho Blog wait.. that's not a category.
Aww, just pick some. In the Ecosystem group, I fall under "Best of the Rest of the Blogs (8751+)" My current standing as I type this is 11,172 which has me as a Slimy Mollusc. Ewwww. (sniff, sniff -- it's humiliating!) I would nominate myself but I hate being categorized. Just surprise me.
Leave a comment in the associated nomination post with the blog name and URL:
konagod
http://konagod.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/konagod
P.S. A suggestion for a category next year: Best Queer Hippie Vegetarian Blog.
Fox will slaughter the competition the final week of the November ratings sweeps when it airs a two-hour interview in which O.J. Simpson details how he would have murdered his wife, Nicole, and Ronald Goldman more than 10 years ago.
Had he done it.
Which he didn't.
Just ask him.
[...]
"If I Did It" is also the title of the former pro football player's new book that, Fox said yesterday, hits bookstores Nov. 30 -- just in time for the holiday gift-buying season, ho, ho, ho.
Avoid overuse of rhetorical questions. Know what I mean?
Avoid clichés like the plague.
During debate on the measure, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said same-sex unions or same-sex marriages should be afforded similar space as heterosexual marriages "in the sunshine of democracy".The minister said that the question before MPs was not "whether same-sex marriages or civil unions were right or not; it was whether South Africa was going to suppress same-sex partners or not".
African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe described the passage of the Bill as "the saddest" day of the democratic Parliament in 12 years. He said while some forces are trying to convince people that homosexuality was okay, God considers it "an abomination".Voting in favour of same-sex marriage was a rejection of God's laws, and those who did so would face divine wrath, Meshoe warned MPs. He said the Bill, by inference, "calls sexual perversion a legitimate alternative lifestyle that should be openly accepted".
Council members in this Dallas suburb unanimously approved tough new anti-immigration measures Monday evening that are intended to keep illegal immigrants away from the city.
In a series of 6-0 votes, the council members approved making English the official language, fining landlords who deal with illegal immigrants and allowing local authorities to screen suspects in police custody to see whether they are in the country illegally.
Since 1970, Farmers Branch has changed from a small, predominantly white community with a declining population to a city of almost 28,000 people, about 37 percent of them Hispanic.
One of his favorite preaching places was just outside London, on a great open tract known as Moorfields. He had no designated time for his services, but whenever he began to preach, thousands came to hear -- whether it was 6 a.m. or 8 p.m. Not all were fans, as evidenced by his oft-repeated testimony, "I was honored with having stones, dirt, rotten eggs and pieces of dead cats thrown at me." In the morning some 20,000 listened to him, and in the evening some 35,000 gathered! Whitefield was only 25 years old. Crowds up to 80,000 at one time gathered there to hear him preach for an hour and a half.
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who favors mandatory cuts in emissions linked to global warming, will become chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, replacing Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has called the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.”
Research carried out for Unesco found on Friday that the rate of increase in emissions from burning fossil fuels between 2000 and 2005 was four times that between 1990 and 2000.
"We want to be on offense, and many of these candidates come here having pledged to support new clean energy policies,"
One is Senator-elect Jon Tester from Montana. He's a Democrat, an organic farmer, and a big supporter of alternative energy. Another is Democrat Jerry McNerney, a wind power entrepreneur from California.
McNerney defeated Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), who drove environmentalists crazy as head of the House Resources Committee. For years, Pombo tried to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
Nearly two million children a year die for want of clean water and proper sanitation while the world's poor often pay more for their water than people in Britain or the US, according to a major new report.
...I believed that when she promised to stay with him "till death do us part," she really meant it this time, unlike with that guy she married in Las Vegas.
[...]
If Republicans really want to protect the institution of marriage, and were not simply trying to ban gay marriage to use it as a wedge issue in the campaign, then they should prove their dedication to this cause by introducing the Defense of Britney's Marriage Act as the first order of business in the lame-duck session of Congress...
Now that it’s clear, more or less, where gays can get hitched, what about getting un-hitched?
If, say, two women have “civil-unioned” in Vermont and then move to Wisconsin, can they legally untangle themselves in the place they now call home? Can a couple married in Massachusetts be put asunder in Ohio? The questions are new, so answers are in short supply, and court rulings have been mixed. In one dispute involving the collapse of a Vermont civil union, courts in Vermont and Virginia are on a collision course that could end in the Supreme Court.
Frederick Hertz, a lawyer in Oakland, Calif., who specializes in same-sex family law, said it could take five years to resolve some of the issues.
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
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| What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot. | |
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