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From LA Times

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Donuts for Dads: 250 men read to students at Watts elementary school

More than 250 men, including LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, participated in a program this morning at 99th Street School in Watts aimed at getting fathers involved in their children's  education.

Called Donuts for Dads, the program was the brainchild of Principal Sherri Williams, who found that almost every time she called the homes of her students, she would talk to mothers. If a male would answer, he told her the mother was the spokesperson for the family.

After doing some research, Williams found that 50% of students at her school did not have a father living in the same household. In response, she started the program, in which men read to students at the elementary school for an hour.

“I wanted to create a forum where the fathers would feel comfortable,” Williams said.

In one classroom today, student Ryan Fleming excitedly patted Officer Rudolph Baca on the arm to show him his new skills.

“I'm a snail! I'm a snail!” said the first-grader clutching the book “Hooray for Snail.”

After the hour was over, two children near Baca did not want him to leave.

“Next time, I want you guys to read to me,” he told them.

Even though Baca read to the children for only an hour, it had an effect, he said.

“They were very receptive,” he said. “They appreciated it too.”

Henry Hartwell, 60, who volunteered for his granddaughter, Daunwa Brake, said students read to him in Spanish. He said he benefited from having two male relatives read to him.

“I did when I was a child,” he said. “And I'm no different from them.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/donuts-with-dads.html#more

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Judge: Army Corps of Engineers' negligence caused Katrina flooding

From the Associated Press

7:58 PM PST, November 18, 2009

NEW ORLEANS

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where two of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

The ruling is also emotionally resonant for south Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that Katrina, which struck the region Aug. 29, 2005, was a manmade disaster caused by the Army Corps' failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.

"Total devastation could possibly have been avoided if something had been done," said Tanya Smith, one of the plaintiffs. "A lot of this stuff was preventable and they turned a deaf ear to it."

The 36-year-old registered nurse anesthetist lived in Chalmette close to the channel when Katrina hit. She was awarded $317,000 in property damages, the most of any of the plaintiffs.

Duval referred to the corps' approach to maintaining the channel as "monumental negligence."

Joe Bruno, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, said the ruling underscored the Army Corps' long history of not properly protecting the New Orleans region.

"It's high time we look at the way these guys do business and do a full re-evaluation of the way it does business," Bruno said.

He said he expected the government to appeal.

The corps referred calls seeking comment to the Justice Department. Spokesman Charles Miller said the government would review the judge's ruling before making any decision on how to proceed.

During trial testimony, government lawyers and experts argued the levee system was overwhelmed by the massive storm, and levee breaches couldn't solely be blamed on the shipping channel dug in the 1960s as a short-cut between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.

The corps had also unsuccessfully argued that it is immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system.

In his 156-page ruling, Duval said he was "utterly convinced" that the corps' failure to shore up the channel "doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width" and that "created a more forceful frontal wave attack on the levee" that protected St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward.

"The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so," Duval said. "Clearly the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here."

The corps has been sued before over levee failures and flooding, but it had always walked away untouched. That included after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 over alleged flooding by the outlet. Ahead of Duval's ruling, experts had said it would likely have consequences for the way the Army Corps does business nationwide.

Pierce O'Donnell, another lead plaintiffs lawyer, said the ruling was the "first time ever the Army Corps has been held liable for damages for a major catastrophe that it caused."

The plaintiffs lawyers would like Congress to set up a compensation fund to speed up payments to the thousands of other claimants, whose claims must still be heard in court.

At a one-month trial in May, experts clashed over the causes of flooding and the channel's contribution to it.

Government experts argued the levees and floodwalls would have failed regardless of whether the MRGO had been dug.

By contrast, the plaintiffs' team of experts said the outlet became a "hurricane highway" that funneled storm surge into New Orleans. They said that without the channel, the flooding would have been minimal.

The lawsuit was the first major case against the federal government over Katrina flooding to go to trial. A decision rested with Duval because a jury cannot try a case against the federal government.

Despite its statements in court, the corps has acknowledged the area's flood risk and closed the channel with rocks. It is also building a $1.3 billion floodgate to stop surge entering the city from the direction of the channel and Lake Borgne.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-naw-katrina-floods19-2009nov19,0,1770783,print.story

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Obama and Holder defend plans to try Sept. 11 suspects

Republican lawmakers question whether a civilian trial would be successful and say it might again make New York a terrorist target. Holder counters: 'We need not cower in the face of this enemy.'

By Josh Meyer

November 19, 2009

Reporting from Washington

The Obama administration on Wednesday strongly defended its decision to try the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks in a civilian New York court, but faced criticism from Republican senators who called it a "perversion" of justice that would risk freeing some of the world's most notorious terrorists.

President Obama supported such a trial in interviews with several U.S. television networks before leaving Beijing for South Korea on Wednesday. Obama said those offended by the constitutional protections being given to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators ultimately won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

But in Washington, some Republican lawmakers sparred with Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. over his announcement Friday that he was transferring the case of the five men from the U.S. military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a federal courthouse just blocks from ground zero in Manhattan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said the transfer to New York was proof that the Obama administration was wrongly "criminalizing" a war on terrorism in which those captured should be tried as "enemy combatants" in war crimes tribunals. Others said Mohammed would use a trial expected to be followed by millions worldwide as a stage from which to spew violent anti-American rhetoric, and that it could make New York a prime target for another terrorist strike.

The sharp exchanges at a crowded hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee were a clear indication that opposition to such a trial would only intensify in the months or even years of legal wrangling before it comes to fruition.

Several family members of those killed during the attacks on New York sat directly behind Holder and held up photographs of the deceased. A few cheered when Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) demanded to know how Holder could back up his prediction that the five men would be convicted.

Holder responded by saying that he had told prosecutors that "failure is not an option."

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told Holder that his response was "ludicrous," especially when even one lone juror could sabotage the prosecution's case.

"I'm a farmer, not a lawyer," Grassley said, "but I just want to make that observation."

Public reaction to the prospect of the trial has been mixed. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly both have expressed their support for the administration's position, as have some victims groups. But some of the attendees at the hearing Wednesday brought a foot-high stack of signatures that they said represented more than 100,000 New Yorkers who are demanding that Obama keep the men at Guantanamo.

"I don't feel that they belong on American soil," said Theresa Regan, whose firefighter husband Donald died at the World Trade Center. "They took my husband's rights away, and they don't deserve to have the kind of rights they will get in a U.S. court."

On the House side, Republicans intensified their efforts to block the trial by prohibiting the transfer of the detainees from Guantanamo to the U.S.

Meanwhile, Obama, in his televised interviews from China, acknowledged for the first time that his administration would miss a self-imposed January deadline to close the Guantanamo detention center, though administration officials have acknowledged for weeks that that was likely.

Mohammed and his four alleged accomplices have been at Guantanamo since September 2006, when President Bush ordered them moved from CIA secret prisons overseas so they could face military justice.

In more than three hours of testimony, Holder said he was convinced that a civilian court would convict Mohammed, two top lieutenants, an Al Qaeda paymaster and Mohammed's nephew, all of whom are accused of participating in the Sept. 11 plot.

And he said federal authorities in New York had a proven track record of prosecuting and safeguarding such complicated trials.

"We need not cower in the face of this enemy. Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready," Holder said.

Holder also said he was not worried about whether Mohammed, Al Qaeda's chief of operations before the attacks, makes public statements similar to those he made at preliminary hearings at Guantanamo.

If he does, Holder said, "I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is. I'm not scared of what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has to say at trial, and no one else needs to be afraid either."

At the hearing, Holder's arguments were bolstered by virtually every Democratic senator on the judiciary committee, which oversees the Justice Department.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) was supportive, but said New York would need federal funds to accommodate such a high-profile trial. He said New York officials recently told him it would cost $75 million just for initial logistics.

But Holder's biggest defender was Obama, who told CNN that federal courts, especially those in New York, had been used to convict "hundreds of terrorist suspects" now imprisoned in the United States.

"And, you know, I think this notion that somehow we have to be fearful, that these terrorists . . . possess some special powers that prevent us from presenting evidence against them, locking them up and, you know, exacting swift justice, I think that has been a fundamental mistake," Obama said, in a clear rejection of Bush administration policies.

The president also said that even though it was Holder's decision to make, he would answer for it, especially if something goes wrong.

"I always have to take responsibility," he said. "That's my job."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gitmo-trials19-2009nov19,0,3435653,print.story

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Man unable to enter China languishes in Tokyo airport

Activist Feng Zhenghu has been sitting near the customs booths at Narita International Airport for nearly three weeks, refusing to enter Japan in hopes his protest will gain him entry back home.

By John M. Glionna and Catherine Makino

8:12 PM PST, November 18, 2009

Reporting from Tokyo and Seoul

He is a man caught between two countries, a political protester who has stubbornly steeled himself inside the sterile purgatory of Tokyo's Narita International Airport.

Each day, Feng Zhenghu sits on a bench in front of the Japanese customs booths, calmly looking on as tens of thousands of arriving passengers go by, resigning himself to residence in a diplomatic no man's land.

He refuses to pass through government customs because that would mean entering Japan -- something Feng has decided he simply will not do. He wants to go home to China.

Eight times since June, the 55-year-old activist has been rebuffed by Chinese officials in his attempts to reenter his homeland, with no reason being given.

On four of the occasions, airlines in Japan didn't allow him to board. On the other four, he got as far as Shanghai's Pudong International Airport before being dispatched back to Tokyo.

During the last go-round, on Nov. 2, a defiant Feng drew the line: Arriving back at Narita, he refused to enter the country.

Feng, an economist turned human rights author and blogger, was sentenced in 2000 to three years in a Chinese prison for writing a book he said criticized Chinese regulations against foreign company investment.

He also believes a speech he once gave criticizing the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown is being held against him.

Still, he said, officials cannot banish him on mere pretense. Speaking on his cellphone recently, Feng said he would prefer to languish in a Chinese jail rather than live as a free man in Japan or anywhere else.

Although he is angry at his government, Feng misses his homeland -- his family, his friends, the feel of the place he has spent most of his life.

"I just want to go home," he told a reporter Wednesday, tears welling in his eyes as he spoke. "I'm Chinese. Why can't I go home? I didn't do anything illegal. I just wrote a book that didn't meet with the regulations of the Chinese government."

Feng's plight is reminiscent of that of the Tom Hanks character in Steven Spielberg's 2004 film "The Terminal." But this unlikely sojourner has no access to food courts or hot showers.

For 17 days now, he has kept a lonely vigil at the south arrival wing of Narita's hyper-busy Terminal 1. Many workers and travelers are unaware he's there, staging a protest in a nation where few people question authority.

The days are long. Feng gets to bed about midnight. He sleeps fitfully in a chair, often using his suitcase as a pillow. He rises at 6 a.m., jarred by the first passengers arriving on international flights.

On a white T-shirt, he has scrawled messages about his protest in both English and Mandarin -- pulling the garment over his luggage to create a small billboard.

One message reads, "The Chinese government is shameful."

He uses his cellphone to accept calls and send text messages. He also keeps a diary on his computer. He hasn't showered; instead he splashes water on his face in the restroom.

He eats only snacks -- candy, ramen noodles, cookies -- offered by well-meaning passengers and supporters.

Embarrassed airport authorities say they must follow regulations and would prefer that Feng enter Japan so they can be rid of him.

"Every day the officers gently try to coax me to leave," he said. "They say: 'It's a beautiful world out there. There's lots of good food to eat. All you have to do is walk through those doors.' "

For days Feng survived on tap water after Japanese officials refused to accept his money for snacks at airport eateries.

"The authorities obviously want to distance themselves," said Yang Jianli, a fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "At first they thought if no food or supplies were provided, he would give up and enter Japan. But they miscalculated his determination."

Yang, a onetime Chinese political prisoner who met Feng this fall at a human rights conference in Washington, is funding a campaign to supply the activist with food and emotional support.

With Feng lodged in a high-security area between the airplane disembarkation point and immigration, airport officials will not allow non-traveling airport visitors to meet with him. The only way to reach him is to arrive via plane at the south wing of Terminal 1 and greet him at customs.

Hong Kong activist Christina Chan learned that lesson the hard way. Arriving at the north wing of the terminal, she was not allowed to see Feng.

So Yang paid her fare back to Hong Kong, where she boarded a different flight she knew would land in the south wing.

"He looks better than I thought he'd look," Chan, a pro-Tibet student campaigner, said of Feng. "He believes that if he sticks to his struggle, they will eventually have to let him back into China.

"It's a theme familiar to many: the right to go home again."

Feng's sister, Natsuki Suzuki, who lives in Japan, has not been allowed to visit her brother. But she calls him often on his cellphone.

"My brother is stubborn," Suzuki said. "He insists there is only one way for him to go -- back to China."

Feng, who has studied law, says he traveled to Japan from China in April after being inexplicably jailed for 41 days there. Chinese officials insisted that he could return to Shanghai in June, after the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, he said.

But when he tried to return in mid-June, authorities blocked his path and have rejected him since, Feng said.

One day at Narita, Feng spotted a top official in the Chinese Communist Party's international department passing by. He slipped a note to a member of his entourage but has not had a response.

Meanwhile, the sleepless nights and long days have begun to take their toll. Feng says he has started to feel weak. He has dark circles under his eyes and an open sore on his lower lip.

But he plans to stay put for as long as it takes to persuade the Chinese government to bend.

"I don't know how long I will stay," he said. "It all depends on the Chinese government."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-japan-terminal-man19-2009nov19,0,2129438,print.story

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YouTube partners with Univision to offer Spanish-language programs; creates citizen journalism service

The largest Hispanic media company in the United States has agreed to feature short and full-length programs on YouTube, including new and archived programs from the Univision , TeleFutura and Galavision networks, Reuters and AFP report.

The agreement is the latest in several YouTube ventures with major entertainment partners, reports the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Revenue will come from ads featured around the programs, and Univision will receive most of it, Reuters says.

YouTube has also created a citizen journalism tool, YouTube Direct , which allows news organizations to request and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from users. You can read about it here on the YouTube blog.

Read more on this story here.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2009/11/youtube-partners-with-univisi%C3%B3n-to-offer-spanish-programs-creates-citizen-journalism-service.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LaPlaza+%28La+Plaza%29

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Editorial

Fort Hood shooting hearing is too little, too soon

Sen. Joe Lieberman's rushed Senate inquiry is unlikely to provide any answers.

November 19, 2009

The shocking shootings at Ft. Hood -- and whether they exposed gaps in the monitoring of radicalized members of the U.S. armed forces -- are both suitable subjects for investigation. But a Senate hearing hastily scheduled for today to provide a "preliminary assessment" of the tragedy is premature and seems politically inspired. And, thanks to the Obama administration's understandable unwillingness to have its investigators testify about the ongoing case, the hearing is unlikely to be enlightening even about their tentative conclusions. So anyone who expects definitive answers from this supposedly urgent exercise will likely end up seeing it as another example of Washington's cluelessness.

Today's hearing by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was meant to fulfill a promise by the panel's chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), that he would try to ascertain the motives of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who allegedly went on a rampage at the Texas facility on Nov. 5, and whether the Army "missed warning signs that should have led them to essentially discharge him." But those questions are already being asked by the military justice system, which has charged Hasan with 13 counts of murder, and by the Pentagon and intelligence community .

Results of those investigations might well provide the basis for future congressional hearings that would focus on established facts in the Hasan case and what they might reveal about accusations that the military is insufficiently vigilant about "homegrown" extremism, Islamic or otherwise. Congress also would be within its rights to hold hearings if the executive branch bungled its investigations or, as occurred with Watergate, actually covered up wrongdoing.

But today's hearing is unlikely to satisfy. It won't feature much senatorial sleuthing, not only because of the absence of government witnesses but also because Lieberman, rightly, says he won't question witnesses to the shootings. Thus, the hearing can't shed much light on whether Hasan was, in Lieberman's words, an "Islamist extremist."

It's possible that the outside experts who testify today will illuminate some general issues connected with extremism in the military or offer intriguing speculation about Hassan's possible intentions, much as commentators in the media have done. But how much specific information is likely to come from a New York police official, a retired soldier and a former advisor to George W. Bush who is currently a CNN contributor? Given the constraints on the committee, Lieberman's rush to pick up the gavel strikes us as a case of "don't just stand there -- chair something."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-fthood-2009nov19,0,6025056,print.story

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From the Washington Times

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Work site arrests of illegals fall dramatically

by Stephen Dinan

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday.

Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.

"Those stolen jobs should be returned to out-of-work citizens and legal immigrants," he said. "The Obama administration should put citizens and legal immigrants first, especially when it comes to jobs."

One area where the Obama administration has made progress was in audits of businesses' I-9 forms, which jumped 300 percent. Those audits could produce fines in the future, but Republicans said that most businesses consider them a cost of doing business, not a deterrent.

The numbers were released just days after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the administration has made such advances on border security that Congress should now work on legalizing illegal immigrants.

"These statistics reflect a myopic, outdated and distorted view of effective enforcement," said Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler. "Just a week ago, we highlighted the more than 11,000 murderers, rapists and kidnappers identified in our jails by the Secure Communities program in the last year, nearly 2,000 of which have already been deported. ICE has prioritized its enforcement efforts by focusing on hardened criminals and employers who knowingly hire illegal workers and break the law."

Frank Sharry, founder of America's Voice, an immigrant rights advocacy group, said Mr. Smith shouldn't be surprised - this is what Mr. Obama promised to change from the George W. Bush administration, which focused heavily on illegal immigrant workers rather than employers.

He said it marks a major change from former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to Ms. Napolitano, and that it will pay dividends as employers take heed.

"I would argue that Napolitano's being tough and smart, rather than what Chertoff did, which was looking tough but giving employers a pass," Mr. Sharry said. "I would suggest Lamar Smith is more interested in expelling millions of illegal workers than truly getting tough on bad-actor employers."

After Mr. Bush's efforts to pass an immigration bill failed in 2007, Mr. Chertoff said he would step up enforcement on his own and that workplaces would be a key target.

That led to high-profile raids and drew protests from immigrant rights groups who said families were being separated by the actions.

During last year's presidential campaign, Mr. Obama said those efforts were misplaced and he promised to refocus on unscrupulous employers who made a pattern of hiring illegal immigrants.

According to the newly released figures, administrative arrests of violators of immigration laws fell 68 percent from 2008 to 2009, criminal arrests fell 60 percent, criminal indictments fell 58 percent and convictions fell 63 percent.

Fiscal 2008 ran from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2008. Fiscal 2009 began Oct. 1, 2008, and ran through Sept. 30 of this year. Mr. Obama took office Jan. 20.

In an April memo, Marcy M. Forman, director of ICE's Office of Investigation, laid out the new enforcement policy.

She said arresting illegal immigrant workers is still important but the focus must shift to employers.

"Enforcement efforts focused on employers better target the root causes of illegal immigration," she said, pointing to numbers that showed that under the Bush administration in 2008, employers made up just 2 percent of all work site arrests.

She also said ICE agents also should go after employers not just for hiring, but also look for mistreatment of workers and evidence of human trafficking, identity fraud or money laundering.

The Obama administration has promised to pursue a new legalization program next year. It would create a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who commit to steps such as paying back taxes and waiting a set period of years.

In a speech last week, Ms. Napolitano said they have made enough progress on border security and immigration enforcement that Congress can now turn its attention to legalization.

But Republicans said her speech was premature. They pointed to uncertainties about the numbers and that with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants still being apprehended on the borders, the flow has not been controlled.

They also argue that legalizing illegal immigrants in the middle of a recession is unfair to Americans looking for jobs.

Led by Mr. Smith and Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, House Republicans are holding a forum Thursday to look at how illegal immigrants are affecting the job market.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/19/work-site-arrests-of-illegals-fall-dramatically//print/

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One million unemployed might lose benefits soon

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON | More than 1 million people will run out of unemployment benefits in January unless Congress quickly extends federal emergency aid, a nonprofit group said Wednesday.

States typically provide 26 weeks of unemployment insurance for those who lose their jobs through no fault of their own, with weekly checks averaging about $300. Congress on Nov. 6 extended coverage for the fourth time since the recession began, granting 14 to 20 more weeks to try to keep about 1.3 million people who have been jobless for well over a year from running out of benefits before the end of 2009.

That boosted the total number of weeks a person could collect unemployment to as much as 99 in the hardest-hit states. But that legislation didn't address an underlying problem: The emergency unemployment compensation program, including all 73 additional weeks, expires at the end of this year.

If the program isn't renewed, after Jan. 1 recipients who have used up their 26 weeks of state benefits won't get any extra coverage. The National Employment Law Project estimated Wednesday that 450,000 people will fall into that category in January.

An additional 600,000 will run out of extended coverage that month, the NELP estimates. Since the extra federal benefits are provided in stages, recipients won't be able to continue to the next one after Jan. 1, unless the emergency program is reinstated.

Under the most recent extension, all states received 14 extra weeks. States with unemployment rates of 8.5 percent or above received six more weeks on top of that -- 20 in total. But a group of state agencies that administer the benefits noted this week that few, if any, recipients will be able to access those additional six weeks if the program ends Dec. 31.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Tuesday that Congress would consider continuing the federal emergency program and other benefits included in the stimulus package as part of a bill focused on jobs. But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has said the Senate will finish work on health care before taking up a jobs bill, which could mean that it won't act until next year.

Congress could face opposition over the cost of extending the program into 2010, especially with a proposed health care overhaul bill carrying an $849 billion price tag.

Business groups estimate that extending the stimulus package's benefits for another year could cost $70 billion. But advocates warn that letting the program end or delaying an extension would create uncertainty for millions of recipients and potentially long gaps between benefit checks, making it difficult for many to make mortgage or rent payments.

About 9 million people are receiving unemployment insurance, 5 million on the state programs and 4.1 million on the federal extensions.

Maurice Ensellem, the NELP's policy co-director, said state agencies will start notifying recipients next month that their benefits will run out, unless Congress acts.

"That's going to create a lot of anxiety," Ensellem said. "Every interruption in benefits creates real chaos."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/18/million-unemployed-might-lose-benefits-soon//print/

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From the Wall Street Journal

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• NOVEMBER 18, 2009, 10:06 P.M. ET

  Hasan, Not KSM, Is Our Real Problem

  Violent Islamic Web sites pose a clear and present danger to the U.S.
  
  by DANIEL HENNINGER

  If it accomplished nothing else, the Obama administration's announcement last Friday to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan blew the Nidal Hasan murders out of the news. The KSM fiasco deserves all the attention it gets. What Hasan represents, however, is a more immediate concern.

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an old-school jihadi. They sit in far-off redoubts, assembling terror teams of foreign nationals who now must figure out how to get themselves and their plot inside the U.S. Not impossible, but harder than before 9/11.

  Hasan is new school. He is what's known as a homegrown terrorist. Virtually all the Islamic terrorist plots thwarted here in recent years were homegrown, not designed from afar by a KSM.

  Najibullah Zazi, the Colorado airport-shuttle driver arrested in New York this September and charged with conspiring to detonate bombs, came to the U.S. in 1999.

  Daniel Henninger discusses how we should be worried about homegrown terrorists like Nidal Hasan who spend their time viewing violent Islamic Web sites.

  Podcast

  The Fort Dix Six, convicted in December of conspiring to attack U.S. military personnel, were mainly ethnic Albanians whose family came to New Jersey in the 1980s.

  Zakaria Amara, the leader of the Toronto 18, who were planning to blow up skyscrapers in Canada, was born in a Toronto suburb.

  In testimony to Congress in September, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, Mike Leiter, said the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab includes "dozens of recruits from the Unites States," mostly ethnic Somalis.

  How do individuals sitting in Colorado, New Jersey, Toronto or Texas suddenly transform into mass murderers for jihad? Most of the time, they become radicalized by spending vast amounts of time viewing violent Islamic Web sites run from abroad.

  Two years ago, Lawrence Sanchez of the New York City Police Department's intelligence division told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the Internet is "the most significant factor in the radicalization that is occurring in America." Mr. Sanchez described this process as "self-imposed brainwashing."

  In New York Times reporter David Rohde's account of his captivity by the Taliban, he wrote that "watching jihadi videos" was his guards' favorite pastime. He describes them as "little more than grimly repetitive snuff films" of executions.

  ***

  If you sit in the United States and watch this stuff 'round the clock—self-brainwashing—it is fully protected activity. It qualifies as "speech," protected by the panoply of First Amendment law. These protections exist nowhere else in the world.

  The biggest controversy surrounding Maj. Hasan is that the Army knew about his radical Islamic sympathies, from the Walter Reed lecture and the monitored emails to the English-speaking, American-born Yemeni imam Anwar Awlaki, whose Facebook page, with a reported 4,800 "friends," is depicted nearby.

  The argument is that the Army should have mustered him out of the service and thereby avoided the 13 murders. Really? After kicking him out of the Army, there was no probable cause for authorities to surveil a civilian Nidal Hasan. In time he as easily could have killed 13 Americans in a suburban Texas mall.

  He has 4,800 Facebook 'friends.'

  Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as the judge presiding over the 1995 trial of the "blind sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman, for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had to instruct the jury that the sheikh's violent, "holy war" sermons at New York mosques were legal, protected activity (he was convicted of conspiracy).

  There is a mosque in Manhattan at 96th Street and Lexington Avenue, on whose sidewalk one can hear adherents spouting support for violence against the U.S. That, too, is protected.

  A violent ideology is just an ideology, and that is protected speech. It requires acts to put in motion aggressive surveillance, such as wiretapping.

  I think the Hasan case shows this is wrong, or at least too dangerous. First Amendment law has never dealt with a widely distributed ideology that has as its raison d'être the mass murder of Americans and destruction of American property.

  For now this is the way it is: Future Hasans can get jacked up all day on kill-the-Americans Web sites, and we have to wait until they put in motion a conspiracy like Fort Dix or the Colorado jihadists. Or until they start shooting.

  Politics is the only recourse.

  This is what the political fight was through the Bush years—fights over the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps of conversations between U.S. citizens and foreign suspects, using the SWIFT financial data system to track terrorist transfers (or, with KSM, military tribunals versus civil courts). The argument against these policies was that "our values" require that judges review and approve virtually all such activity.

  The problem with this view is that "our values" were already protected to an unprecedented degree. Raising the bar higher is asking too much of the people assigned to catch all these self-radicalizing jihadists.

  The Democrats have cast their lot with tighter restrictions. The past six years and a presidential campaign proved that. In the wake of Hasan's 13 dead people, revisiting the limits of our vulnerability has to be on the table in next year's congressional elections, and then a presidential election.

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574544010614138416.html
  
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  From the White House
  
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  H1N1 Flu Guide Helping Community and Faith-based Organizations across the Country

  Posted by Joshua Dubois on November 18, 2009 at 04:00 PM EST

  To help keep communities healthy during the flu season, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships (Partnerships Center) led by Alexia Kelley and with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released an H1N1 Flu guide specifically targeted to help community and faith-based organizations.  Flu season is in full swing, and communities are finding innovative ways to spread awareness through community outreach programs.  Here are just a few examples.

  • Johnson County in Kansas recently posted an entry on its county blog about the release of the new HHS H1N1 Flu guide alongside helpful links of how local organizations can prepare for flu and other emergencies and disasters.
    
    
  • To help combat flu in their area, the Health Department of Lexington-Fayette County in Kentucky created flu outreach response teams, also known as “ Lex Flu Crews .” Armed with flu knowledge and prevention handout materials, the “Flu Crews” have reached out to over 800 businesses and 300 faith-based organizations by hosting meetings and flu-education sessions to help prevent the spread of both seasonal and H1N1 flu.
    
    
  • In San Francisco, Emily Hughes of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is having trouble holding on to copies, saying, “The guides are flying out of our office.”
    
    
  • Also in California, Community Action Partnerships of San Bernardino County tell us that the guide has been crucial to helping local organizations during flu season.

  The H1N1 Flu guide, which is also available in Spanish online , provides specific action steps that community and faith-based organizations can take to help keep communities healthy during flu season, including:

  • Communicating important information about flu;
    
    
  • Supporting vaccination efforts;
    
    
  • Linking vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations to vital information and resources; and
    
    
  • Expanding and adjusting organizational activities to help people stay healthy.

  We encourage folks to check out the guide, and let us know how we can support local organizations that are helping to keep communities healthy.

  Joshua DuBois is the Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships

  http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/11/18/h1n1-flu-guide-community-and-faith-based-organizations-helping-organizations-across -
  
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  From the Department of Homeland Security
  
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  Secretary Napolitano Meets With Private Sector Critical Infrastructure Leaders, Launches New Web Site

  Release Date: November 17, 2009

  For Immediate Release
  Office of the Press Secretary
  Contact: 202-282-8010
  
  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today hosted the first in a series of roundtable meetings with private sector leaders to discuss critical infrastructure security and unveiled a new Web site designed to inform the public about the Department's critical infrastructure protection, readiness and resiliency efforts—part of her increased effort to heighten awareness about the importance of protecting America's vital assets, systems and networks over the coming weeks.

  “Securing our nation's critical infrastructure is vital to maintaining the safety of communities across the country,” said Secretary Napolitano. “DHS is committed to working with federal, state, local, territorial and tribal partners, the private sector and the public to protect against threats to these assets—from cyber networks to drinking water.”

  During today's meeting with leadership from the Sector Coordinating Councils of the Energy, Nuclear, Water and Chemical Sectors, Secretary Napolitano highlighted her commitment to ensuring a more ready and resilient national approach to critical infrastructure protection—promoting vigilance, preparedness and risk reduction.

  This session was the first of three Secretary Napolitano expects to hold with sector leaders. Two additional sessions are scheduled in the next two weeks focusing on public health, transportation, government facilities, information technology, communications, postal and shipping, national monuments and icons, manufacturing, and agriculture and food, emergency services, and defense industrial base sectors, among others.

  Secretary Napolitano also unveiled a new Web site— www.dhs.gov/criticalinfrastructure —designed to provide stakeholders and the public with easily accessible information about their role in safeguarding critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR). The Web site features a link to the new CIKR Resource Center, which includes information about how to sign up for free Web-based seminars on the tools, trends, issues, and best practices for infrastructure protection and resilience; resources concerning potential vulnerabilities for chemical facilities; and details about the National Response Framework, which outlines guidance for all response partners to prepare for and provide a unified response to disasters and emergencies.

  The Web site also provides information about DHS' ongoing CIKR efforts—including the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), the U.S. Government's unified approach, coordinated by DHS, to ensure protection and resiliency of CIKR through partnerships with thousands of public and private members.

  CIKR include physical and digital assets, systems and networks that play significant roles in America's safety, economy and public health. Their incapacitation or destruction could debilitate the overall stability of the United States and threaten national security.

  CIKR is comprised of 18 unique sectors—the vast majority of which is owned and operated by the private sector—including key areas such as food and water, manufacturing, energy, communications and transportation systems, and emergency services. DHS engages with these private sector partners via Government and Sector Coordinating Councils, which bring together state, local, tribal and private sector partners to coordinate security efforts.

  For more information, visit www.dhs.gov/criticalinfrastructure

  http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1258492512905.shtm
  
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  Mean Old Levee: Homeland Security's Levee PLUGS Pass a Second Test

  It's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
  It's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
  Gonna leave my baby, and my happy home

  The lyrics to the 1929 blues classic “When the Levee Breaks” refer to the cataclysmic flood that began when heavy rains pounded the central basin of the Mississippi River in summer 1926. Swollen to capacity, the Mississippi broke out of its levee system in 145 places, flooding 17 million acres, and affecting an area the size of New England. Nearly a million people were displaced.

  The levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina are, of course, fresher in the American mind.

  If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
  If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
  And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay

  The challenge is to change that tune: to develop the technology to quickly seal a levee breach and reduce floodwaters through the opening within four to six hours of detection— before the water can do major damage.

  Enter Wil Laska of the Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), the research arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Laska has sought out innovative technologies from industry, academia, and government to meet this challenge. Any proposed system, he dictated, had to not only be capable of quickly closing breaches, but also be suitable for scenarios in which the breach may be difficult or impossible to reach with conventional construction equipment.

  “The thing is,” Laska deadpans, “there's an effective structural material that's readily available during floods…Water.”

  He found four technologies that met his requirements, and on Nov. 9, 2009, all of them passed their second test at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service, Hydraulic Engineering Research Unit in Stillwater, Okla. The facility is used by the Army Corps of Engineers to test hydrology equipment and study water flow, dams and levees.

  The largest technology, proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss., is a large balloon or tube—light enough to be transported by helicopter and flexible enough to adapt to a wide range of environmental situations. When launched or dropped, the engineers hypothesized, the tube would in quick succession fill with water, float on the flood currents to the breach, and adhere to the breach in the earthen berm or levee that had failed.

  It worked.

  Dubbed the Portable Lightweight Ubiquitous Gasket (PLUG), the tube of non-stretch fabric is dropped into the floodwaters and an attached pump rapidly fills it to 80 percent capacity—a bubble of air inside keeps the tube from sinking beneath the waters. Positioned upstream, flood currents pull it toward the breach. The incompressible nature of water and the unyielding fabric turn the tube into a rigid plug that conforms to the breach and seals it.

  Monday's PLUG demonstration was about 30 per cent larger than the ¼ scale model that was first successfully tested in September 2008. The Stillwater site is currently the only facility that can provide the water flows needed—125 cubic feet per second for several minutes.

  While the PLUG system is designed specifically for narrow, deep breaches, several other solutions tailored for other types of levee breaches were also tested on Nov. 9:

  • A smaller version of the PLUG–designed to prevent the over-topping flow of a long, shallow breach.
    
    
  • The Rapidly Emplaced Protection for Earthen Levees (REPEL)—designed to protect against erosion during the intentional overtopping of levees, mitigating erosion from the back slope of a levee which over time could cause a deep breach.
    
    
  • The Rapidly Emplaced Hydraulic Arch Barrier (REHAB)—an arched tube designed to hold back a surge of water during a levee breach repair, to seal breaches obstructed by debris or other structures, and to be used as a rapidly emplaced surge or flood gate.

  Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good
  Oh cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do no good
  When the levee breaks, mama, you got to lose

  Engineers could be on their way to writing a less bluesy version of a 90-year-old song:

  When the levee breaks, mama, you may need a PLUG .

  Background

  There are roughly 14,000 miles of levees owned and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and an estimated 85,000 miles of privately owned and operated levees. Most are more than 50 years old, and many were built in agricultural areas now deeply embedded in the urban landscape.

  Levees fail for many reasons, not all of which are weather related. For instance, California's major concern is liquefaction of their levees during an earthquake. And some Midwestern levees have failed under sunny skies due to erosion caused by the long-term effects of previous high water and flood conditions.

  The intended primary customer of the PLUG would be local levee boards and State Emergency Management Agencies.

  http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc_1214511688798.shtm

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