Same-sex marriage Senate battle over, war is not
The Senate failed to Pass the Anti-Same-sex Ammendment.The demise of President Bush's pet project may well mark the beggining of Bush's own demise. The irrational dead end movement highlites the developing split with Republicans. Not only didn't they get the 67 votes needed to forward the Ammendment, nor did they get the 60 Votes to Keep it alive, They couldn't even get 50 percent. The vote wos 48 to 50 The missing votes were Kerry's and Edwards who continue to collect their paychecks for their no-show jobs.
The amendment, as proposed by Allard, would add these two sentences to the Constitution:
"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."
Some Republicans objected to the second sentence, saying it was so ambiguous that it also could prevent states from allowing gays and lesbians to join in civil unions.
Other senators expressed concern that the measure would usurp the states' traditional dominion over family law, and some questioned whether it was necessary.
Republican Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, who voted against moving the measure forward, said it was too early to make the assumption that judges might strike down laws such as the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act and 38 similar state statutes that define marriage as a union only between a man and a woman.
"Naturally, there exist concerns about what activist courts might do to undermine these rights and the Defense of Marriage Act," Sununu said in a statement. "But it is premature to amend the Constitution based upon a hypothetical scenario."
McCain went even further, calling the amendment "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans."
Sen. John Cornyn in a speech last week "It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. . . . Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."
All this talk about defending marriage makes one ponder just how same sex marriage poses any such threat. If it opposes ones religeous beliefs, the church doesn't have to participate. If the President wants to really give some support and protect to Marriage he should change the punitive tax, Social Security, and Medicaid Policy's. These policy's have forced married couples to get get divorced just to make ends meet. If Bush and company really cared about married Americans they would spend more energy on these money issues, but instead they focus on gaybashing.
Police Kill Wrong Man
The Denver Police
killed the wrong man because not only did they misidentify the victim the mistook a soda can for a weapon. This family has learned the hard way that we have more to fear from our own goverment than we do the terrorist.
A Denver police officer likely mistook a soda can for a weapon before shooting and killing a 63-year-old man in his bed, Police Chief Gerry Whitman said Monday.
Frank Lobato was shot once in the chest Sunday night during a police search for a domestic-violence suspect. Lobato, a career criminal and formerly homeless man whom neighbors said was disabled, was not involved in the domestic dispute.
Instead, officers were searching the home at 1234 W. 10th Ave. for Lobato's nephew Vincent Martinez, who was wanted on suspicion of domestic violence, assault and false imprisonment. Martinez, 42, was captured Monday evening.
Some neighbors and community members called the shooting questionable - and worse.
"I think it is disgraceful," neighbor Rose Salaz said. "I don't see how they can just go into people's houses shooting people. ... They are supposed to protect us."
The shooting comes weeks after the city and police announced reforms to the department's use-of-force policy in the wake of controversy surrounding police shootings.
Whitman and District Attorney Bill Ritter took the unusual step of calling a news conference to lay out some of the facts about the incident, the third fatal police shooting this year. But they answered few questions.
"It has now been determined that the party who was shot was not armed at the time of the shooting," a subdued Whitman said, reading from a prepared statement. "The officer stated that after he fired the shot, he heard an object fall to the floor on the other side of the bed. A beverage can was recovered from the floor in the area of the bedroom."
Ritter, standing next to Whitman, promised a full investigation to determine whether Officer Ranjan Ford Jr. broke any laws when he fired the fatal shot. No criminal charges have been filed against a Denver police officer for an on-the-job shooting during Ritter's 11-year tenure.
Ford, 33, came to the department in 2001. He has no prior shootings and no discipline problems, police said.
Before his hiring in Denver, Ford had been an officer in Jasper, Texas. Jasper Police Chief Stanley Christopher said Ford was a model officer there.
"I wish I had a dozen like him," Christopher said. "I'm telling you, he was a great officer. We really hated to see him go."
Ford was born in Boulder and attended Fairview High School, according to the application he submitted to become an officer in Denver. He speaks Singhalese, the native language of Sri Lanka. According to his application, he worked as a police officer and corrections officer in Texas beginning in 1993. Ford works in District 6 downtown.
"Knowing him as well as I do, if something happened, he was in fear for his life," Christopher said. "He's not a hot-dog. He's not a John Wayne-type."
Police were called to the home in the South Lincoln housing project by Martinez's wife, Cathy Sandoval, who said Martinez beat her and held her against her will for 17 hours on Sunday.
Now Sandoval said she is saddened and worried by the outcome. A relative is dead, and her angry husband is in jail.
"I'm worried he will think this is my fault," she said before her husband's capture Monday night.
The situation began when Sandoval and her husband of two months returned from an evening of drinking around 2 a.m.
Martinez was jealous because Sandoval had talked to people at the bar, Sandoval said. Once home, he became violent and he hit, choked and threw plates at Sandoval until about 10 a.m., she said.
For the rest of Sunday, Martinez refused to let Sandoval leave. She did not get out until about 6:45 p.m., when her mother arrived to return Sandoval's two children.
Once out of the house, Sandoval called police and agreed to meet them at a nearby McDonald's. She said she gave police permission to enter her home, and told them that her husband and his uncle Lobato were in the apartment.
Salaz said she watched police officers use a ladder to enter the apartment. They were in the apartment about a minute before she heard a shot, she said.
"People were out running around, grabbing their kids" when the shot went off, Salaz said. "Then, you could hear the officers inside yelling 'Put your hands up!"'
Salaz and other neighbors knew that Martinez had already jumped out a window and run away before three officers, including Ford, entered through the same window. Police had surrounded the building, but an officer walked around to the front, allowing Martinez an opportunity to flee, neighbors said. It was at least 25 minutes after Martinez ran away before the officers went in, Salaz said.
Sandoval said Lobato was in the room during the day as Martinez held her captive.
Lobato had a lengthy criminal record dating back to 1959, including arrests for drugs, assault and burglary. He had been in prison several times. His most recent arrest came in May on shoplifting charges.
On Monday night, Lobato's niece and grandniece said Lobato needed daily medication to keep his mind clear enough "to where he could cope."
Lobato was probably confused by the officers if he was aware of them at all, his niece Denise Cogil said, adding that the family has contacted an attorney in preparation for a lawsuit.
The shooting stirred echoes of the infamous 1999 shooting of Mexican immigrant Ismael Mena, who was killed during a no- knock drug raid at the wrong address. The city of Denver paid a $400,000 settlement to the family of Mena, who shot at police officers before he was killed and was discovered to have killed a man in Mexico.
Mayor John Hickenlooper, who has championed police reform, issued a statement Monday commending Whitman for being forthcoming about the shooting and promising continued investment in resources and training for police officers.
"This situation involves two tragedies: a brutal case of domestic violence and a loss of life," Hickenlooper said.
City Councilman Rick Garcia, chairman of the public safety committee, said his committee is planning to review further police reforms next month.
"For this action to happen does not bode well for the Police Department or the city," Garcia said. "I'm terribly distraught about it."
French woman admits she made up anti-Semitic attack
It was a horrible story but apparently it was
all a lie I was going to blog it yesterday, but it was late, and the story didn't make much of a constructive point. She made it all up!
A French woman who claimed last week she had been the victim of a vicious anti-Semitic attack admitted to police that she had made up the entire incident, and was detained for falsely reporting a crime.
After being questioned for a second time by investigators about the alleged incident on July 9, which shocked France and shed a negative light on government efforts to stamp out anti-Semitism, the woman admitted she had lied.
The 23-year-old had initially told police that a gang of six youths had accosted her on a suburban train outside Paris, slashing her clothes and drawing swastikas on her stomach after mistaking her for a Jew.
"The first declarations of the young woman reveal that her accusations were lies and that she had been making it all up," the public prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The woman admitted to "having made knife cut marks on herself, cut off a lock of her own hair and drawn swastikas on her body," it said.
Doubts had mounted Tuesday over her claim after no one came forward to corroborate the story, despite the fact that she said some 20 people had witnessed the alleged incident.
She changed her story Tuesday, too, to say that she and her 13-month-old child had been assaulted outside the train, but finally admitted that she had totally invented the attack, police said.
The woman has been placed in preventive detention for falsely reporting a crime, state prosecutor Xavier Salvat told AFP. She could face up to six months in prison and a 7,500-euro (9,200-dollar) fine if tried and convicted.
Her boyfriend has also been detained, police said.
President Jacques Chirac, who had strongly condemned the alleged incident, is sure to face questions about the case Wednesday, when he participates in his traditional Bastille Day live televised interview.
Last week, Chirac called for perpetrators of anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic acts to face tough punishment, and has excluded racist crimes from his annual July 14 clemency for prisoners.
"The explosion in the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts committed in our country these past few years is a reality that we must fight," government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said Tuesday.
The number of such incidents recorded in France -- home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities -- soared in the first half of the year, according to interior ministry figures.
The woman had testified that her alleged attackers -- whom she described as black and Arab North Africans -- believed her to be Jewish after discovering that she had once lived in the French capital's upmarket 16th district.
"Only Jews live in the 16th district," one of the men was quoted as saying when the group purportedly assaulted the woman, swiped her bag and tipped over the baby carriage with her baby inside.
But investigators said closed-circuit cameras at the station northeast of Paris where the woman said the attackers had left the train did not show the six youths.
Railway personnel at the ticket office where the woman said she reported the affair could remember nothing about it, investigators said.
A 28-year-old man told AFP he had seen the woman on the platform of the station where she said she boarded the train before the attack.
He said her clothes were already torn and she was crying, adding: "I asked her if she wanted help and she said no."
A police source told AFP on Tuesday that the woman had filed six prior complaints in recent years -- among them one for theft and one for sexual assault -- but that the alleged criminals had never been found.
Mouloud Aounit, president of the Movement against Racism and for Friendship among Peoples (MRAP), demanded a public apology over the incident.
"We can't fight against one racism by making statements that advocate another kind of racism," he said.
Will Compasses Point South?
The New York Times asks "
Will Compasses Point South?"
he collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which both guards the planet and guides many of its creatures, appears to have started in earnest about 150 years ago. The field's strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth.
During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, then reappears with opposite polarity. Afterward, compass needles that normally point north would point south, and during the thousands of years of transition, much in the heavens and Earth would go askew.
A reversal could knock out power grids, hurt astronauts and satellites, widen atmospheric ozone holes, send polar auroras flashing to the equator and confuse birds, fish and migratory animals that rely on the steadiness of the magnetic field as a navigation aid. But experts said the repercussions would fall short of catastrophic, despite a few proclamations of doom and sketchy evidence of past links between field reversals and species extinctions.
It looks likes its eventually going to happen.
Good laws gone bad.
No Treason One thing that's sure to evoke a scoff from the local nanny-state apologist is the "slippery slope" argument. Example: "Drunk driving laws are nice and all, but pretty soon you won't even be able to have a drop and get near a car."
Ha, ha. Stupid libertarians, always so paranoid.
Well, maybe not so paranoid.
Where to next
Its a good time to start working on the sidebar.
1: PCO advertisment.
2 Reconcille the Last Blog to here.
3 Update Links.
