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From LA Times

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Breast cancer screening program for poor women to stop accepting new patients

A cigarette tax-funded program that pays for breast cancer screenings for low-income women will stop accepting new patients Jan. 1, public health officials said this week. Officials said the decision came as a result of “unprecedented fiscal challenges” to the program which they hope to reopen by summertime.

If “ Every Woman Counts ” reopens July 2 as planned, its scope will be scaled back significantly. Although women ages 50 and older will still be eligible, women ages 40-49 will no longer be screened. State officials acknowledged that women ages 40 to 49 who had been served by the program will no longer have access to state-funded screening.

Officials said demand has grown for the free screening even as the program's main source of revenue, a tobacco tax, has dwindled. Women already enrolled in the program will continue to be eligible for annual screenings, officials said.

But Dr. Mark Horton, the state health officer, said in a statement that short-term increases in state funding for the program “have not been enough to keep pace with the growing demand for and cost of providing breast cancer screening services to women in this program.”

Debora Wright, president of Inner Images , a mobile mammography service based in Los Angeles County who relies heavily on the state program, called the state's changes to the program “cruel.”

“We're absolutely horrified,” Wright said, who added  that aggressive breast cancer can occur in women younger than 50. “I don't think our business can survive it.”

Wright said three out of four of her clients are first-time screeners or between the ages of 40 and 49.

The Department of Public Health said women seeking low-cost or free breast cancer screenings can contact their local health department or American Cancer Society.

The state's announcement comes a few weeks after the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that women younger than 50 do not need regular mammograms , concluding that the risk of breast cancer is very low in women ages 40 to 50. The task force concluded that the risk of a false breast cancer diagnosis and complications from biopsies and other invasive procedures is too high for the procedure to be used routinely.

Though screening saves lives, recent studies have made it clear that it also leads to biopsies, surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation, including some deaths , that otherwise would not have occurred.

Cancer doctors, however, have attacked those guidelines, as have other groups, including the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which said they would not change their guidelines and would continue to urge women to undergo the tests.

Dr. Willie Goffney, a surgical cancer doctor who serves on the board of directors for the California division of the American Cancer Society, said he was disappointed by the state's decision to put the free screening program on hiatus and then limit who can enroll.

“We feel we are moving in the wrong direction. We know that screening for breast cancer and having access to that screening saves lives,” Goffney said. “So to take those resources from people who need that access means more people will fall through the cracks, and will lead to more deaths from breast cancer.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/breast-cancer-screening-program-for-poor-woman-to-stop-accepting-new-patients.html#more

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Irvine man who went undercover in O.C. antiterrorist operation for FBI provided
'very valuable information' court papers show

An Irvine man who says he was recruited by the FBI to go undercover in an Orange County anti-terrorist operation had been working with the bureau in 2007 and had provided "very, very valuable information that [had] proven essential" to a federal prosecution, according to a court transcript made public Friday.

FBI officials have declined to publicly address Craig Monteilh's assertion that he was an informant and, citing bureau policy, continued to do so after the release of the previously sealed transcript Friday.

"The FBI has an historic policy of neither confirming nor denying the identity of informants; to do so would jeopardize investigations and the personal security of others," Laura Eimiller, a bureau spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement.

Monteilh, 47, went public earlier this year, saying that he served as a confidential informant for the FBI from July 2006 through October 2007 to identify and thwart terrorist plots in the Orange County Islamic community.

He says information he provided led to the indictment in February of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, whom Monteilh said tried to radicalize him while he was pretending to be a Muslim convert at the Islamic Center of Irvine.

According to an FBI agent who testified at Niazi's bail hearing 10 months ago, the defendant was secretly recorded by an informant while initiating jihadist rhetoric and threatening to blow up abandoned buildings.

Monteilh says he is the informant who made those recordings, but FBI officials have declined to confirm or deny his account.

Niazi, who was born in Afghanistan, has not been charged with terrorism. He was charged with lying on his citizenship and passport applications for failing to disclose that his brother-in-law is a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Monteilh also maintains he was instructed to lure Muslims from various mosques to local gyms to work out with him and that agents would later obtain security camera footage from the facilities and ask Monteilh to identify the people who showed up. A law enforcement source interviewed by The Times confirmed the surveillance occurred, but stressed that it was a narrowly focused operation that targeted people Monteilh had already implicated in crimes.

The records unsealed Friday show that state prosecutors sought to have Monteilh's probation in a theft case terminated early at the behest of the FBI.

The judge granted the prosecution's request and later issued an order sealing the notes regarding why the probation had been terminated early. That order was lifted Thursday morning by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Carol Williams Elswick in West Covina. The reporter's transcript of the hearing was public Friday.

Monteilh and his attorney, Adam J. Krolikowski, said they sought to have the records unsealed, in part, to pave the way for a lawsuit they plan to file against the FBI. Monteilh says the bureau reneged on various promises agents allegedly made while he was an informant.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/an-irvine-man-who-claims-he-was-recruited-by-the-fbi-to-infiltrate-mosques-in-orange-county-had-been-working-with-the-bureau.html#more

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Hemet police arrest parents of missing teen in the killing of 17-year-old

Police in Hemet said today that they have arrested the parents of one of two missing teenagers on suspicion of being an accessory to murder and are seeking four other suspects.

Jose and Maria Seym, the stepfather and mother of missing teen Jose Campos, 17, were taken into custody in connection with the killing of Adrian Rios, 17, whose charred and fragmented body was found last week in a shallow grave behind Campos' rented home.

"We believe the remains were one of the missing teenagers, Adrian Rios," said Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana during a news conference today. "We believe he was murdered prior to being placed in the fire pit and burned."

Dana said that Rios was apparently shot and that Campos' parents returned to the home while the fire was still burning. Police have issued arrest warrants for Campos, Felicia Sharpe, Rene Lopez Fregozo and an unidentified suspect.

Sharpe, 17, was initially reported missing last month with Rios and Campos. She turned up later with her mother and was interviewed by police. Now, she has disappeared again, and police think she may have given them false information.

Rios was last seen alive at the Campos home on Bluejay Way. Neighbors later reported a fire burning in the backyard with a bad smell. Police say those wanted in this case are to be considered armed and dangerous.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/missing-teens.html#more

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Marines give Afghan police the drill

The U.S. faces a tough task forging a reliable Afghan police force, a key goal of President Obama's new war strategy. About 5,000 of the additional American troops are to train the security forces.

by Tony Perry

10:56 PM PST, December 4, 2009

Reporting from Nawa, Afghanistan

It's only his second day on the job after graduating from a police academy sponsored by U.S. Marines, and Khair Muhammad is stopping cars along the main road to the Nawa market to check for explosives.

An ancient Toyota rolls up, jammed with four men, five boys, a woman fully covered in a burka and, against the back window, a small goat. In a friendly but firm voice, the 20-year-old police officer orders the men and boys out of the vehicle for a pat-down search.

Then he checks the glove box and underneath the floor mats -- as well as under the goat. He waves the car on its way.

From 20 yards away, Marines express satisfaction over how Muhammad is handling himself. "He's pretty squared away," Lance Cpl. Mitchell Romero says.

He's also still an exception among Afghan police.

Plagued by corruption, questionable loyalties and incompetence, the Afghan national police are a huge question mark as President Obama dispatches an additional 30,000 troops to try to crack the Taliban insurgency. Five thousand of them will be assigned to train Afghan police and soldiers, reflecting the seriousness of the challenge.

In Kandahar, the main city of southern Afghanistan and the heart of the Taliban movement, Mayor Ghulam Haider Hamidi said he was outraged recently to find out that some police were allowing Taliban fighters to sleep in their barracks. Here, officials say they gave police recruits drug tests. They excluded anyone who tested positive for opiates, but acknowledge that they were lenient about hashish and marijuana -- lest the district be unable to meet even minimal recruitment goals.

Western trainers complain that Afghan police slip away from their posts, spend their time taking naps or tea breaks, and malinger when called to dangerous duty.

And they have a bad reputation among many Afghans -- bad enough that the district governor wasn't happy to see the police in Muhammad's group arrive back late last month from a nine-week training course in the provincial capital run by the U.S. military and Virginia-based DynCorp International.

"As you know, in the past, the police were corrupt and there were bad things," said Haji Abdul Manaf. "Nobody wanted to help the government as the result."

The arrival of the police in Nawa from the training center was not entirely reassuring. Of 160 graduates from the Nawa district, 50 disappeared as soon as they got back. After a few days it was still unclear where they had gone.

The police who returned were empty-handed. The Helmand provincial government was unable to coordinate their return and the delivery of weapons, vehicles and other gear they will need. Across the country, Afghan police are almost completely dependent on Western troops for weapons, fuel and other supplies.

The Marines here, eager to get the police to the four checkpoints ringing Nawa, lent each officer an AK-47 assault rifle. As the weapons were being handed out, many officers immediately checked to see if there was a round in the chamber by squeezing the trigger, to the dismay of Marines.

A dispute immediately broke out about plans by Afghan police brass to replace one of the Nawa commanders. The commander told Marines he feared he might be killed by police if sent to a new district.

Most of the police are illiterate. Much of the Nawa district force, as was true of Muhammad, has been recruited from outside the area, lured by a starting salary of about $180 a month. Muhammad hails from Oruzgan, the next province to the north. Although no ethnic or regional differences were immediately apparent in Nawa, officials and trainers are aware of the danger.

There has yet to be much interest among the young men of Nawa in joining the local police force, officials said.

The risks are considerable -- here and in many parts of Afghanistan. In Nawa, police recruits expect to do battle with the Taliban. Much of their training focuses on how to repel Taliban attacks and how to launch a counteroffensive, tactics that are much more akin to those of a military force.

Standing in line to get his AK-47, bayonet, and 120 rounds of ammunition, 25-year-old Zahir Turkman, whose wife and young son live in Pakistan, said proudly, "I have killed three Taliban. I will kill more."

Muhammad, decked out in his new gray uniform, plus weapon and crash helmet, has yet to exchange fire with the enemy. He's sure he'll be ready when the time arrives.

In many areas, particularly rural provinces such as this, there are no Afghan army units. Isolated, lightly staffed and poorly armed police posts are magnets for insurgent attacks. Casualty rates for police are considerably higher than for Afghan soldiers.

"We don't have the army here, so the police have big security responsibilities -- trying to keep the highway safe -- and sometimes they engage in direct fights with the enemy," said Ghulam Dastagir Azad, governor of Nimruz province, which borders Helmand in far southwestern Afghanistan.

Seven regional training centers, with 800 military personnel and 700 DynCorp employees, are training the police on a district basis. The process is expected to take several years. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, has said he would like to see the number of police increase from the current 93,000 to 160,000.

Training begins at the basic level: Don't steal from people, don't demand bribes, don't be brutal. Ethics training precedes even weapon instruction.

"We focused initially on just being a decent human being," said Staff Sgt. Donnie Hoskins, one of the instructors at the training center in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand. "Only later did we get into tactical issues of how to be a cop."

A couple of days later, the Kentuckian was bawling out a police commander for a number of transgressions, including failing to hand out blankets to his unit that the Americans had provided, and not telling the Americans where he was deploying his force.

While the Nawa unit was at the training center, a group of fill-in police took its place, mentored by soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. With their return, the fill-ins and the U.S. soldiers moved to another district to free up police there to go for training.

For the present, the new police will live in tents in the Marines' austere outposts. Marines such as Romero, the lance corporal, who learned rudimentary Pashto during a two-month course sponsored by the Marines at San Diego State University, will watch them at checkpoints and do joint patrols. The Marines have civilian advisors, mostly retired U.S. police officers, to offer advice. There are also plans by the U.S. and Britain to build police stations.

"We have learned to serve the people, help good people, not to cause problems for people," said Abdullah Mohammed, 28. His new colleague, Agha Mohammed, 24, agreed: "This is our country, we want to help."

Two days after the return of the police to Nawa, Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal came to the village to preside over a giveaway of rice and cooking oil, a tradition of the Eid al-Adha festival. In a speech, he called the police the cornerstone of his effort to rid the region of Taliban and win people's trust.

Before Mangal's speech, several police officers had to be discouraged from taking bags of the gifts meant for the poor.

"There will be some problems" between the police and the villagers, Mangal said. "But there will be far fewer than before, now that they are trained and professional."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghan-police5-2009dec05,0,1307407,print.story

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States point fingers over Maurice Clemmons' release

Washington and Arkansas officials trade blame over how the man accused in the deaths of four Seattle-area police officers came to be free.

by Kim Murphy

December 5, 2009

Reporting from Seattle

Officials in Washington and Arkansas have been trading charges over who was responsible for the release of Maurice Clemmons, accused of killing four Seattle-area police officers while out on bail last weekend.

Clemmons had a long history of committing violent crimes, and records released this week show prosecutors and corrections officials in Washington were urgently trying to make sure he remained behind bars. But, they said, they were thwarted by Arkansas' refusal to take Clemmons back and by Washington's bail laws.

"We wanted to keep him in custody, absolutely. We would have been willing to get on an airplane and fly him back to Arkansas where he belonged," Pierce County Sheriff's Det. Ed Troyer said in an interview. "But they quashed the warrant."

Six months before Clemmons allegedly ambushed the Lakeland, Wash., officers while they were having their morning coffee, he had been arrested on charges of assaulting a police officer and second-degree rape of a child.

A provision in the state constitution requires reasonable bail for all offenders except those who have committed capital offenses. A judge set Clemmons' bail at $150,000 on the rape charge and $40,000 more on the assault charge. Under Washington's three-strikes law, he could have faced a life prison term.

E-mails released by the Washington Department of Corrections reveal that police in Pierce County had warned it "would not be easy" for them to re-arrest the 37-year-old Tacoma landscaper if he made bail because "Mr. Clemmons did not like them."

In July, with the possibility that Clemmons might be able to post bond, Washington officials asked Arkansas to issue a no-bail "abscond" warrant because he was alleged to have violated his parole from that state.

Arkansas complied, but -- to the exasperation of prosecutors, police and corrections officials in Washington -- later decided to drop the warrant.

"Please provide your justification for canceling the abscond warrant. . . . I'm concerned that you have no problem releasing your offender into our community, based on his behavior," a Washington corrections official said in an e-mail to counterparts in Arkansas. "I thought [the interstate agreement on parolee supervision] was all about community safety."

Arkansas then issued a second, weaker warrant that did not seek a no-bail hold or Clemmons' return. Instead it offered to allow Washington to continue supervising him.

At that point, prosecutors and police were reduced to hoping Clemmons would not be able to make bail. But in November his relatives came up with $40,000 in cash and offered their homes as collateral for the remaining amount -- enough to secure his release.

"Who would have thought the entire family would have gotten together and raised $150,000?" Troyer said. "And the family that got him out of jail is the same group of people that helped him after he committed these acts of murder."

So far, six friends and family members have been arrested on charges of helping Clemmons bandage his gunshot wound and evade arrest after the officers were shot in a Parkland, Wash., coffee shop.

Gov. Chris Gregoire announced this week that Washington would no longer accept parolees from Arkansas. But after a phone conversation Thursday with Gov. Mike Beebe, she said the two would work together to improve the interstate pact that governs parolees across the nation.

Beebe's spokesman, Matt DeCample, said it was natural that Arkansas officials would cancel the original warrant when they learned Clemmons was in jail and no longer a fugitive. The second warrant the state issued at Washington's request, DeCample said, should have been enough to hold Clemmons until the charges against him were adjudicated.

"That's ludicrous," said Scott Blonien, assistant secretary for government and community compliance at the Washington Department of Corrections. "It's clear from the e-mails that we sent out that we were concerned about community safety. . . . There's a number of heated pleas from Washington state to Arkansas to please issue the warrant, and they didn't."

The second warrant, he said, "was a little bit like ordering something over the Internet, and you get a package, and not only is it delivered to the wrong address, it's not what you ordered."

There is talk of an amendment to Washington's constitution allowing defendants to be held without bail not only for capital crimes, but also for cases in which they face a life prison term.

"Those are the folks that are likely to abscond, most likely to retaliate against victims, most likely to intimidate witnesses, because they've got their life at stake," said Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Assn. of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

"What we'd like to do is make it easy for the judges to say, 'In these cases, no bail is appropriate,' " he said, adding that the issue cannot be debated until the Legislature reconvenes in January.

"Everybody wants to saddle up now and do something. But let's pay our respects to the officers, and then have a quiet, effective and reasoned look at what occurred, and see if there are some things that will actually improve the situation," he said. "This may be one of those cases where evil people do evil things. We don't live in a fail-safe society."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-police-shooting5-2009dec05,0,3259722,print.story

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Drug makers offer ideas on stopping misuse of painkillers

Prodded by federal regulators intent on curbing the misuse of potent prescription painkillers, drug makers on Friday proposed that all doctors prescribing the medicines be trained and certified by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The proposal, however, would require Congress to broaden the DEA's mission from enforcing drug laws to include certifying doctors. That could be a long process, easily bogged down in the bureaucracy — and with no guarantee of success.

Dr. John Jenkins, head of the Food and Drug Administration's Office of New Drugs, said that if the requirements were too burdensome, doctors would opt out and their patients would be denied access to the drugs, which, though dangerous in certain circumstances, are important tools in pain management.

The proposal came in response to an FDA order this year to 16 drug manufacturers requiring them to devise a way of cutting misuse of so-called long-acting opioids, a category of narcotics that includes fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone and methadone.

“I think the challenge for us is there are serious ongoing safety issues with the use of these products that we have to address,” Jenkins said during a conference call after the meeting with pharmaceutical makers.

The long-acting opioids are responsible for hundreds of deaths annually through accidental or deliberate overdosing or inappropriate prescribing.

One problem is that the drugs contain relatively high levels of narcotics intended to be absorbed slowly via a sustained release mechanism.

Accidentally or intentionally chewing the drug can defeat the timed-release attribute of the medication, resulting in a dangerous infusion that can lead to fatal overdoses.

The drug makers also proposed stepping up educational efforts aimed at patients. But Jenkins said that would tax the resources of the FDA by requiring it to conduct detailed reviews of at least 18 versions of the drugs.

Jenkins said the FDA would consider the industry proposals and submit its safety guidelines for public comment and review by an advisory committee of experts in the spring.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2009/12/drugmakers-offer-ideas-on-stopping-misuse-of-painkillers.html

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Virginia Tech report criticizes slow alerts

Some staff warned their families about the gunman before the campus was notified. Trash pickup also was halted before the e-mail alert was sent.

Associated Press

December 5, 2009

Blacksburg, Va.

Some Virginia Tech administrators warned their families and ordered the president's office locked well before the rest of the campus was notified a gunman was on the loose, according to a revised state report on the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.

Virginia's governor called some of the administrators' actions "inexcusable," and some victims' relatives -- who have been demanding the resignation of President Charles W. Steger since the 2007 massacre that left 33 people dead -- reacted bitterly to the findings.

"He's got to live with himself," said Dennis Bluhm, whose son Brian was killed. "If he's got any heart at all, and I'm not sure he does, he's got a long life to live with this on his brain."

The report adds to the long list of apparent missteps by university officials before, during and after the rampage by Seung-hui Cho. The mentally ill student shot two students to death in a dorm, then three hours later chained the doors of a classroom building and killed 30 more people before committing suicide.

A state-appointed panel that wrote a report two years ago issued an updated account Friday that indicates that at least two members of the school's policy group, which includes top administrators, notified their families about the dorm shootings around 8:05 a.m. -- an hour and 20 minutes before a campus-wide e-mail warning was sent to staff members, faculty and students. The massacre in the classroom building began at 9:40 a.m.

"There is almost never a reason not to provide immediate notification," Gov. Tim Kaine told the Associated Press. "If university officials thought it was important enough to notify their own families, they should have let everyone know."

The report also said that Virginia Tech's government affairs director ordered Steger's office locked around 8:52 a.m. Two classroom buildings were also locked down well before the notification went out.

Steger's office said Friday that he was unavailable for comment and referred questions to university spokesman Mark Owczarski, who said that the president's office was never locked, despite e-mailed instructions to do so.

Owczarski also said that the two unidentified people in the report who supposedly warned their families about the shootings were not members of the policy group, but staff members in the offices of the president and senior vice president.

"If these are the two notifications that the amended report alludes to in its findings, clearly they do not comprise a concerted effort by university staff to notify their own families of danger in advance of notifying the campus community," he said in a statement.

In other new findings in the report:

* It took 17 minutes for the chief of the Virginia Tech Police Department to get through to the executive vice president's office after he learned of the shooting.

* One student in the dorm, Emily Hilscher, survived several hours after being shot, but no one notified her family until she had died.

* A policy group member e-mailed a colleague in Richmond around 8:45 a.m. that a gunman was on the loose, but warned the colleague to make sure that information didn't get out because it was not yet "releasable."

* Campus trash collection was canceled 21 minutes before students and teachers were warned.

The updated report did not revise the original report's conclusions and recommendations.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-virginia-tech5-2009dec05,0,5006181,print.story

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White House, Kremlin to keep START Treaty in force as talks continue

The long-expected deal keeps key provisions of the nuclear arms treaty in effect while the two powers try to reach a follow-on agreement.

by Paul Richter

9:10 AM PST, December 4, 2009

Reporting from Washington

The Obama administration and the Kremlin agreed today to continue the provisions of their keystone nuclear arms control treaty while they try to negotiate a follow-on agreement.

The two governments issued a joint statement saying that, because of their desire for stability, "we express our commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the START Treaty following its expiration."

The governments also cited a "firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enters into force at the earliest possible date."

The governments have long been expected to reach a deal.

Senate approval, which is necessary for an agreement to take effect, may take months.

The United States and Russia have about 20,000 nuclear weapons between them, which is an estimated 90% to 95% of the world's arsenal.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-start-treaty5-2009dec05,0,5630618,print.story

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From the Washington Times

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Colorado State U. passes campus gun ban

ASSOCIATED PRESS

DENVER (AP) | Colorado State University will join most major colleges nationwide in forbidding concealed weapons on campus after a vote that pitted faculty asking for a ban against students demanding the right to carry guns.

The university's Board of Governors voted 7-0 Friday to require gun bans on its campuses in Fort Collins and Pueblo.

Guns are already off-limits at K-12 schools in Colorado, the University of Colorado and at virtually all campuses nationwide. But Colorado State University has followed a state law that allows people to carry guns, even concealed weapons, with the right permit.

Both concealed and unconcealed weapons will now be banned.

Officials said the gun ban will leave Utah campuses as the only ones where concealed weapons are allowed. Utah has a law allowing concealed weapons on state property, and a court has ruled there is no exception for colleges.

Colorado State board members acted Friday after a faculty group at the Fort Collins campus asked for a ban.

"Overwhelmingly the faculty feel our campus will be a safer place" with a concealed- weapons ban, said Dan Turk, associate professor of computer information systems.

But many students opposed the ban, and the student government at the Fort Collins campus urged the board not to ban guns.

Senior Brady Allen, who lawfully carries a weapon on campus, told the board that fear of an accidental discharge from a concealed weapon was a silly reason to ban guns.

"You might as well ban everything that has a potential risk - cars, alcohol and sports," said Mr. Allen, 25, a history student and a former Marine.

Almost all college campuses nationwide ban concealed weapons, but gun-rights advocates say the bans make students vulnerable to attack. The question took on greater prominence after a gunman at Virginia Tech killed 32 people and wounded 23 before killing himself in 2007.

Since the Virginia Tech massacre, proposals to repeal campus gun bans have been considered in many states, although none has been repealed.

Currently, 26 states ban concealed weapons on any school property. Twenty-three states, including Colorado, allow individual campuses to decide for themselves, though CSU officials say they don't know of any other major schools that allow concealed firearms.

In Colorado, it's not clear how many students at either campus are permitted to carry concealed weapons. The campuses don't keep records.

But spokesmen for both schools have said they suspect that few carry guns. Many students aren't even eligible, as Colorado requires permit holders to be at least 21 years of age.

Colorado State's unusual gun policy stems from a 2003 Colorado law that made concealed weapons legislation statewide, not variable by county. After that, the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU) banned concealed weapons.

Gun rights activists sued, arguing CU couldn't change state law on campus.

When a judge sided with CU in April, upholding the gun ban, the faculty at Colorado State's Fort Collins campus proposed a ban there, too.

Now it's up to both Colorado State presidents to write and enact gun bans on their campuses. The board's vote instructs the presidents to submit a weapons plan by February.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/05/university-passes-campus-gun-ban//print/

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Ft. Hood unit off to Afghan war

by Angela K. Brown ASSOCIATED PRESS

FORT HOOD, Texas | More than 40 Army reservists dedicated to counseling troubled soldiers in war zones deployed to Afghanistan on Friday, a month after a shooting spree at Fort Hood left nearly a fourth of their unit dead or seriously wounded.

The soldiers from the Wisconsin-based 467th Medical Detachment arrived at a Fort Hood chapel before dawn. Minutes later, led by a deploying soldier carrying the unit's flag, they boarded a bus to the airport. Fort Hood spokesman Mark Kalinoski confirmed that their plane took off for Afghanistan.

The members of the Army Reserve combat stress unit had arrived at the sprawling Texas post only one day before the Nov. 5 rampage. Yet the soldiers said they never wavered in their determination to serve.

They spent the past month training together, and several soldiers from across the country volunteered to fill the void left by the three soldiers killed and six others seriously wounded in their unit.

Department of Defense officials decided only recently that the unit would deploy as originally scheduled.

"I think they decided that same day [of the shooting] that they were more dedicated than ever in honor of the soldiers that we lost and have stood firm in that commitment," Maj. Laura Suttinger of Fort Atkinson, Wis., said late Thursday. "They were all very dedicated, caring soldiers and they will not be forgotten, and we're carrying on in their honor."

She and another leader in the unit declined to talk about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the shooting spree. Maj. Hasan, who was supposed to deploy with the unit, remains in a San Antonio military hospital and is paralyzed from wounds he sustained in the rampage.

Army officials have not said whether Maj. Hasan knew anyone in the unit or if he allegedly was targeting them. The shootings occurred in a building full of several hundred soldiers.

Maj. Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. Army officials have not said whether they will seek the death penalty, but they plan an evaluation in the next 45 days to determine his mental state that day and whether he is competent to stand trial.

To help in the healing process, the 467th made black bracelets etched with the names of its three slain members - Maj. Libardo Caraveo, Capt. Russell Seager and Sgt. Amy Krueger - as well as the names of two soldiers killed that day from another stress-combat unit. Everyone in the unit will wear them to symbolize that "we are carrying our fallen comrades into combat with us," said 1st Sgt. James McLeod, one of the unit's leaders.

He said he thinks that after going through the tragedy, the unit actually is better equipped to help soldiers struggling with what they've seen in combat or worried about their families or finances back home. The unit includes psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and occupational therapists.

"They have an opportunity to be part of history, to do something that hasn't been done before," Sgt. McLeod said. "Even though we lost our fallen comrades ... 'no one is going to stop us from completing our mission' is really what their goal is."

And with President Obama's announcement that he will send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan by next fall, "we're needed there more than ever," Maj. Suttinger said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/05/fort-hood-unit-off-to-afghan-war//print/

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Clemency for Clemmons

by Debra J. Saunders

There is no need to tiptoe gingerly around this topic: Maurice Clemmons, who was shot and killed as authorities tried to apprehend him for the shooting deaths of four Washington police officers - is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's Willie Horton. Horton, as you may recall, is the convicted killer who raped a woman while wrongly released as part of a prison furlough program supported by former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis - thus helping to torpedo the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee's bid for the White House. The Clemmons story likewise should kill any chance of a Huckabee victory, should he run in 2012.

Clemmons was 17 in 1989, when he was convicted on a string of felony charges - including aggravated robbery, burglary and possession of a gun at a school - and sentenced to a jaw-dropping 108 years. Mr. Huckabee said on Joe Scarborough's radio show, "If he were a white kid from an upper middle-class family, he would have gotten a lawyer and some counseling. But because he was a young black kid, he got 108 years."

The parole board and a judge supported the release, even though Clemmons had more than two dozen rule violations while in prison, including citations for fighting in 1997 and 1998. Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Dina Tyler described Clemmons as a teenager who entered prison "angry, aggressive and lacking coping skills," who had outgrown that stage.

Unfortunately, Clemmons had not outgrown his menace-to-society stage. Within a year of his release, he was back in prison on robbery charges.

And once again, Clemmons won parole in 2004. In a statement, Mr. Huckabee said that if Clemmons killed the four officers, "this horrible tragedy" would be the "result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington state."

One should note that Mr. Huckabee opened that door. I am especially angry at Mr. Huckabee because I support the pardon system. With so many nonviolent, first-time drug offenders serving long federal sentences, there should be more - not zero - sentence commutations from the Obama White House.

But the pardon system works only when executives do their homework lest they release inmates who are violent or sure to re-offend.

When I looked into Mr. Huckabee's pardon record in 2006, I expected to praise what became his more than 1,000 pardons, including 163 commutations.

Instead, I found a sorry history of Mr. Huckabee failing to do his homework. He commuted the sentence of a three-time drunken driver serving a six-year sentence - only to see the man become a four-time drunken driver. Mr. Huckabee commuted the sentence of rapist Wayne Dumond, who went on to kill a Missouri woman.

In 2004, Mr. Huckabee commuted the sentence of convicted murderer Denver Witham after prosecuting attorney Robert Herzfeld revealed that Witham had omitted some of his convictions on his pardon application. When Mr. Herzfeld wrote a letter to Mr. Huckabee suggesting that the governor accept more public input on clemency issues and explain his reasons for each decision, an aide responded that the governor laughed out loud at Mr. Herzfeld's letter, closing, "I wish you success as you cut down on your caffeine consumption."

Team Huckabee isn't laughing now.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/05/clemency-for-clemmons//print/

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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"...on this historic island."

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