Sister Alice Marie Quinn -- known to her friends as Sister Sam -- leads a prayer in the kitchen of St. Vincent Meals on Wheels, which grew from an operation she began with one pot of stew in 1977.

After giving many meals, she will receive Sister Sam has fed the needy for decades with her St. Vincent Meals on Wheels program. Now some of L.A.'s top chefs are hosting her 75th birthday party. By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times June 12, 2010 As the director of St. Vincent Meals on Wheels, Sister Alice Marie Quinn has spent the last three decades serving food to the people who need it most. Each day she rises before dawn for an hour of prayer before overseeing the preparation and delivery of nearly 5,000 meals to the city's homeless, homebound, disabled and terminally ill. But at her 75th birthday party on Sunday, Sister Sam, as she is known by friends, will be on the receiving end. At a ballroom fundraiser at downtown's Vibiana, some of the city's top chefs will be feeding her. The dinner menu is heavenly: spicy tuna tartare in a sesame miso cone, roasted wild salmon with truffle smashed potatoes, ginger creme brulee … the list goes on.

Felons have lost their right to vote

Just because some racial groups may be more affected by laws barring felons from voting does not make them racist or unconstitutional.

Sharon Browne and Roger Clegg

June 13, 2010

Every state in the country except two — Maine and Vermont — prohibits at least some felons from voting. In January, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the state of Washington is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by disenfranchising felons. Now the full 9th Circuit has decided to hear the case, Farrakhan vs. Gregoire. The case has implications for all nine states within the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction, including California. Every other federal court of appeals so far has ruled against using the Voting Rights Act to give felons the right to vote.

The 9th Circuit should join them.

The 15th Amendment to the Constitution says: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race," and further provides that "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

If a state were to use its felon disenfranchisement laws deliberately to keep blacks from voting, as was sometimes done in the Jim Crow era, then it is clear it would be in violation of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has so ruled. But what if there is no such discriminatory intent: Is it enough to show that a disproportionate number of, say, African Americans are in prison?

The answer is clearly no when it comes to the Constitution. The claim in Farrakhan, however, is that such disproportionate "results" are enough to prove a violation of the federal voting rights law. The intent and history of the law refutes this claim.

When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, it was clearly aimed at the evil of systematic and deliberate exclusion of African Americans from the voting booth, and the record is replete with legislative statements that the new statute would not affect the nearly universal practice in the United States of denying convicted criminals the right to vote. Subsequent legislation has made this even clearer. For example, both the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 contain provisions aimed at facilitating felon disenfranchisement.

What's more, the Constitution explicitly assumes that felons may be barred from voting. The 14th Amendment — which, like the 15th, was passed during Reconstruction to ensure equal treatment of African Americans — acknowledges that states can disenfranchise people for "participation in rebellion, or other crime." So an interpretation of the Voting Rights Act to bar felon disenfranchisement would not only be inconsistent with the intent of that statute, it would exceed Congress' constitutional authority.

Or look at it this way: When someone is kept from voting because he has been convicted of a felony, this does not "result in a denial or abridgement of the right … to vote on account of race or color" (to quote the law); it results in the denial of the right to vote because that person has chosen to commit a serious crime against a fellow citizen.

Finally, even when civil rights laws are used to challenge practices that are not racially discriminatory in their terms, application or intent but simply because they have disproportionate racial effects, the defendant always has an opportunity to show that the practice is still justified. So, for example, requiring English fluency for a particular job may be permissible, even if it disproportionately excludes members of a racial or ethnic group.

Likewise, a state may have strong and legitimate reasons for limiting the right to vote, even though it may have a disproportionate effect. Allowing only citizens to vote may have a disproportionate effect on groups that include many recent immigrants, but that is surely permissible. And the state also has good reasons for denying the vote to those who have committed serious crimes.

We don't let everyone vote — not children, not noncitizens, not the mentally incompetent. There are certain minimum and objective standards of trustworthiness, loyalty and responsibility, and those who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens don't meet those standards. If you aren't willing to follow the law, you can't demand a role in making the law.

Today's laws may have a disproportionate impact on some racial groups, because at any point in time there are always going be some groups that commit more crimes than others, but that doesn't make the laws racist — just as the fact that more crimes are committed by men doesn't make criminal laws sexist.

And the people whose voting rights will be diluted the most if felons are allowed to vote are the law-abiding people in high-crime areas, who are themselves disproportionately black and Latino.

Sharon Browne is a principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, and Roger Clegg is president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. The groups have filed an amicus brief in the Farrakhan case.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-browne-felonvote-20100613,0,4985480,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Lawyers Report Intimidation by Rwanda

KAMPALA, Uganda — Defense lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , which has been prosecuting ringleaders of the 1994 genocide , are threatening to stop participating in cases after one of their colleagues was jailed by the Rwandan government last month.

A growing number of lawyers contend that Peter Erlinder, an American who represents a senior Rwandan Army officer accused of directing death squads, was arrested for his statements at the tribunal even though he is supposed to be protected by diplomatic immunity while working for it.

Mr. Erlinder, 62, is charged with denying Rwanda 's genocide and threatening national security through his writings and speeches. Rwanda's government argues that Mr. Erlinder's work can “instigate riots” and “civil disobediences,” but it seems that many of the statements that the Rwandan government finds objectionable are actually part of Mr. Erlinder's work as a lawyer in the United States and in Arusha, Tanzania, where the United Nations -backed tribunal for Rwanda is based.

So far, 11 lawyers with imminent court appearances have formally requested that the courts postpone their cases. At least 40 in total — a majority of the defense lawyers working for the tribunal — have signed a general petition saying they plan not to work unless their security can be guaranteed.

Officials from the tribunal say that they doubt that the lawyers, who are paid by the United Nations, will pull out, but that the tribunal's proceedings will be prolonged if that happens. Lawyers would be held in contempt — one already has been — and could face years in jail for withdrawing without court approval.

Despite assurances from Rwanda that Mr. Erlinder was not arrested for his work at the tribunal, officials at the tribunal say they also believe there is a connection. They have asked Rwanda for clarification and may bring the case in front of the United Nations Security Council .

“I.C.T.R. will not allow anyone to be prosecuted for the work that it has done for it,” said the tribunal's spokesman, Roland Amoussouga.

Rwanda says the protesting lawyers are creating “deliberate confusion,” and that while it is understandable to care for a colleague, their claims are “outrageous” and “false.”

“Defense lawyers at I.C.T.R. have a job to do, and the government of Rwanda understands that,” said a government spokeswoman, Louise Mushikiwabo. But she said the criminal case against Mr. Erlinder is about “his role as a denier, a propagator and a mobilizer of people who diminish, distort, deny the extermination of a million Tutsi of this country.”

This is not the first time there have been tensions between Rwanda and the United Nations tribunal. The Rwandan government was lukewarm about the court being established in the first place, citing sovereignty and the international community's inaction during the genocide. Since then, the Rwandans have been upset about the court's sluggishness — only 50 trials have been completed in more than 15 years, with 42 convictions. Last year, Rwanda threatened to stop sending witnesses to Arusha after the acquittal of two leading suspects.

Differences have also grown over how wide a net the court should cast. Rwanda stopped sending witnesses to the tribunal in 2002 after the tribunal considered prosecuting possible crimes against humanity committed by Rwanda's governing party, and the courts virtually ground to a halt. The tribunal relented later in the year, and a new prosecutor was appointed in 2003.

As Rwanda gears up for a presidential election in August, political tensions are rising. Mr. Erlinder was arrested after going to Rwanda to represent an opposition candidate, who was charged with espousing “genocide ideology” when she spoke out about atrocities that she said might have been committed by the governing party and had been overlooked.

The charges against Mr. Erlinder may stem from claims he made at the tribunal, where he argued that the members of the current government shot down a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, spontaneously setting off the genocide. Rwanda has published a report saying the former government was responsible, and many historians concur.

According to Rwanda's prosecution, Mr. Erlinder is guilty of denying the genocide because he has implied that the genocide was not planned. The prosecution cited a lawsuit he filed in Oklahoma on behalf of the widows of the two former presidents, and it also cited a 2008 trial at the tribunal in which they say Mr. Erlinder “downplayed genocide.”

He is currently awaiting trial at the central prison in Kigali, Rwanda's capital. His daughter says that he has not been able to speak to his family and that his health has taken a turn for the worse. She says her father was admitted to a Kigali hospital on Wednesday for the third time since his arrest.

Defense lawyers in Arusha worry that Rwanda's laws, which critics say are intentionally vague, could be used against them, too.

“I don't want to resign; I want the I.C.T.R. to guarantee our rights,” said Frédéric Weyl, a French defense lawyer who filed a second appeal for postponement this week. Mr. Weyl said that because of remarks he made during a legal conference in Paris in 2002 about the rights of the accused to question charges, the Rwandan government considered him a “negationist.”

“If I had a mission to Kigali, perhaps I can be in the same situation as Erlinder,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/world/africa/13rwanda.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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North Korea Renews Threat on Propaganda

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea renewed its threats on Saturday to destroy South Korean propaganda loudspeakers, vowing a “merciless strike” that could turn Seoul into “a sea of flame.”

While such bellicose language is common in North Korea's official news media, the threats underscore the continuing tensions here since the March sinking of a South Korean warship. South Korea has responded with measures like curtailing trade with the North and resuming psychological warfare broadcasts along heavily fortified border between the nations.

The broadcasts are seen as a largely symbolic gesture by the South to signal that the sinking has pushed ties back to an era of hostility reminiscent of the cold war.

The South is building a dozen sets of huge speakers to blare propaganda into the North.

South Korea's conservative president, Lee Myung-bak , has struggled to find ways to punish the North for the sinking of the Cheonan , which an investigation ruled last month was the result of a torpedo attack by a North Korean submarine.

On Saturday, the General Staff of the Korean People's Army, the North Korean military, issued a statement saying that the North would carry out an attack to destroy propaganda facilities along the border. It said the attack would be “a merciless strike foreseeing even the turn of Seoul” into “a sea of flames.”

Seoul, a city of 10 million residents that is the South's political and economic hub, lies within artillery range of North Korean forces amassed along the Demilitarized Zone.

The threats, which were carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, came a day after South Korea's defense minister told Parliament that the loudspeakers would begin broadcasting after the United Nations Security Council decided on new measures against the North.

There had been talk in the South about delaying the broadcasts. But Mr. Lee has vowed to take a tough line on the North for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/world/asia/13nkorea.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Behind the Veil

ALBUQUERQUE

HEBAH AHMED assessed the weather before she stepped out of her minivan. “It's windy,” she said with a sigh, tucking a loose bit of hair into her scarf. Her younger sister, Sarah, watched out the window as dust devils danced across the parking lot. “Oh, great,” she said, “I'm going to look like the flying nun.”

Hebah, who is 32, and Sarah, 28, do wear religious attire, but of the Islamic sort: a loose outer garment called a jilbab; a khimar, a head covering that drapes to the fingertips; and a niqab , a scarf that covers most of the face. Before the shopping trip, they consulted by phone to make sure they didn't wear the same color. “Otherwise, we start to look like a cult,” Sarah explained.

When Hebah yanked open the van's door, the wind filled her loose-fitting garments like a sail. Her 6-year-old daughter, Khadijah Leseman, laughed. Hebah unloaded Khadijah and her 2-year-old son, Saulih, while struggling to hold her khimar and niqab in place.

The wind whipped Sarah's navy-blue jilbab like a sheet on a clothesline as she wrangled a shopping cart. Her 3-year-old son, Eesa Soliman, stayed close at her side, lost in the billowing fabric.

Most people in the parking lot stopped to stare.

If the sisters were aware that all eyes were on them, they gave no signs. In the supermarket, they ignored the curious glances in the produce section, the startled double takes by the baked goods and the scowls near the cereal. They glided along the aisles, stopping to compare prices on spaghetti sauce.

Two Hispanic children gasped and ran behind their mother. “Why are they dressed that way?” the girl asked her mother in Spanish. “Islam,” the woman said, also telling the child that the women were from Saudi Arabia.

Hebah, who is from Tennessee, smiled at the girl, but all that could be seen of her face were the lines around the eyes that signaled a grin. After nearly a decade under the veil, she and her sister know full well that they are a source of fascination — and many other reactions — to those around them.

Hebah said she has been kicked off planes by nervous flight attendants and shouted down in a Wal-Mart by angry shoppers who called her a terrorist. Her sister was threatened by a stranger in a picnic area who claimed he had killed a woman in Afghanistan “who looked just like” her. When she joined the Curves gym near her home in Edgewood, N.M., some members threatened to quit. “They said Islamists were taking over,” Ms. Ahmed said.

Her choice to become so identifiably Muslim even rattled her parents, immigrants from Egypt.

“I was more surprised than anything,” said her father, Mohamed Ahmed, who lives in Houston with her mother, Mervat Ahmed. He said he raised his daughters with a deep sense of pride about their Muslim background, but nevertheless did not expect them to wear a hijab, a head scarf, let alone a niqab.

Raised in what she described as a “minimally religious” household by parents who wore typical American clothes, Hebah used to think that women who wore a niqab were crazy, she said.

“It looked like they were suffocating,” she said. “I thought, ‘There's no way God meant for us to walk around the earth that way, so why would anyone do that to themselves?' ” Now many people ask that same question of her.

HEBAH AHMED (her first name is pronounced HIB-ah) was born in Chattanooga, raised in Nashville and Houston, and speaks with a slight drawl. She played basketball for her Catholic high school, earned a master's in mechanical engineering and once worked in the Gulf of Mexico oilfields.

She is not a Muslim Everywoman; it is not a role she would ever claim for herself. Her story is hers alone. But she was willing to spend several days with a reporter to give an idea of what American life looks like from behind the veil, a garment that has become a powerful symbol of culture clash.

All that's visible of Ms. Ahmed when she ventures into mixed company are her deep brown eyes, some faint freckles where the sun hits the top of her nose, and her hands. She used to leave the house in jeans and T-shirt (she still can, under her jilbab), but that all changed after the 9/11 attacks. It shook her deeply that the people who had committed the horrifying acts had identified themselves as Muslims.

“I just kept thinking ‘Why would they do this in the name of Islam?' ” she said. “Does my religion really say to do those horrible things?”

So she read the Koran and other Islamic texts and began attending Friday prayers at her local Islamic Center. While she found nothing that justified the attacks, she did find meaning in prayers about strength, piety and resolve. She saw them as guideposts for navigating the world.

“I was really questioning my life's purpose,” Ms. Ahmed said. “And everything about the bigger picture. I just wasn't about me and my career anymore.”

She also reacted to a backlash against Islam and the news that many American Muslim women were not covering for fear of being targeted. “It was all so wrong,” she said. She took it upon herself to provide a positive example of her embattled faith, in a way that was hard to ignore.

So on Sept. 17, 2001, she wore a hijab into the laboratory where she worked, along with her business attire.

“A co-worker said, ‘You need to wrap a big ol' American flag around your head so people know what side you're on,' ” Ms. Ahmed said. “From then on, they never let up.”

Three months later, she quit her job and started wearing a niqab, covering her face from view when in the presence of men other than her husband.

“I do this because I want to be closer to God, I want to please him and I want to live a modest lifestyle,” said Ms. Ahmed, who asked that her appearance without a veil not be described. “I want to be tested in that way. The niqab is a constant reminder to do the right thing. It's God-consciousness in my face.”

But there were secular motivations, too. In her job, she worked with all-male teams on oil rigs and in labs.

“No matter how smart I was, I wasn't getting the respect I wanted,” she said. “They still hit on me, made crude remarks and even smacked me on the butt a couple times.”

Wearing the niqab is “liberating,” she said. “They have to deal with my brain because I don't give them any other choice.”

Her first run-in with public opinion came, ordinarily enough, while driving.

“A woman in the car next to me was waving, honking, motioning for me to roll down my window,” she said. “I tried to ignore her, but finally, we both had to stop at a light. I rolled down the window and braced myself. Then she said ‘Excuse me, your burqa is caught in your door.' That broke the ice.”

Her sister Sarah started wearing a niqab around the same time, while completing her engineering degree at Rice University . The learning curve was steep; both sisters found they needed to carry straws for drinking in public, but eating was another story. Once Sarah forgot she was wearing a niqab and took a bite of an ice cream cone. “Humiliating,” she said, shaking her head.

Breathing wasn't as difficult as they had imagined, but Hebah had a hard time contending with all the material around her.

“I kept losing things or leaving them behind,” she said. “But it's like when you first put on high heels or a bra. It's not the most comfortable thing, but there's a purpose, and you believe that purpose outweighs the discomfort.”

WOMEN who cover totally, called niqabis, make up a tiny sliver of the estimated three million to seven million Muslims in the United States, yet they have come to embody much of what Westerners find foreign about Islam. Hidden under yards of cloth, they are the most visceral reminders of the differences between East and West, and an indisputable sign that Islam is weaving its way into American culture.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is backing a bill to ban women from publicly wearing the niqab and its more conservative cousin, the burqa, which covers the wearer's eyes with a mesh panel. Similar legislation is being considered in Canada and Belgium.

In the United States, there have been flashpoints: in 2006, Ginnnah Muhammad, a plaintiff in a small claims case in Detroit, refused the judge's request to take off her niqab during court proceedings and so her case was thrown out. She later found herself in front of the Michigan Supreme Court, arguing for her right to wear the niqab in court. The high court upheld the judge's action.

Ms. Muhammad and five other American niqabis were interviewed for this article, in addition to the Ahmed sisters. All of them made the decision to wear the niqab when they were single. And, although the Muslim faith does not require women to cover their faces, all believe the niqab gave them a bit of extra credit in the eyes of God. “The more clothes you wear, the closer you are to God,” Ms. Muhammad said.

Menahal Begawala, 28, was raised in Queens, the daughter of Indian immigrants. She began covering her face at age 19. “I suppose there is some part of me that wants to make a statement, ‘I am a Muslim,' ” she said.

She is a former grade school teacher now living in Irving, Tex. “I think I blow perceptions because I speak English, I'm educated and it's my choice to cover,” Ms. Begawala said.

Sarah Zitterman, who as a teenager was a blond California surfer, converted to Islam after living in Zanzibar as a student. In Africa, she felt more at peace with the call to prayer than she ever did at church back home in San Diego. Now 30 and the mother of three in Fresno, Calif., Ms. Zitterman said that being white and American has made her experience under the niqab a little easier.

“It's less scary for others,” she said. “But the hardest is when kids are frightened. If there's no men around, I'll uncover and say ‘Hey, I'm just a mommy — see?' ”

Most of the niqabis interviewed said that they have received almost as much criticism at their local mosques as at their local malls. Many Muslim Americans do not like being associated with the niqab, saying it gives non-Muslims the wrong idea about their faith.

“The idea of covering one's face is challenging, even in our community,” said Edina Lekovic, communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. “For more-mainstream Muslims, the understanding is that you dress modestly and cover everything but your hands and your face. So for a woman to choose to wear niqab is above and beyond what the Koran calls for.”

SARAH and Hebah Ahmed live only a few miles apart in Albuquerque's East Mountains — Hebah off a winding dirt road with her children and husband, Zayd Chad Leseman, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico ; Sarah in a rural geodesic dome with her son and husband, Yasser Soliman, an engineer with Intel.

Hebah and her husband, who is from Moline, Ill., met as graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. By the time they were married in 2003, he had converted to Islam and taken the first name Zayd. People were often confused by the sight of the couple, she said, because he looks like “a corn-fed, Midwestern guy, then he's walking with this covered women who's dark — they can tell from my eyes.” She laughed and added, “They must wonder where he bought me.”

Mr. Leseman supports his wife's decision to wear the niqab. “I am proud of my wife's conviction to her beliefs, but it took some adjustment being out in public with her, especially with all the stares and comments,” he said.

Once, he said, “we wanted to go to my sister's softball game, and my mother said ‘Yeah, right! Hebah will have to stay in the van.' People think because her face is covered that her feelings are, too.”

The sisters make the 30-minute drive to Albuquerque a few times a week to grocery shop, attend prayers at the Islamic Center of New Mexico and drink smoothies at Satellite Coffee. The trunk of Hebah's car is filled with pamphlets on Islam, English translations of the Koran and granola bars for her children.

When it comes to dealing with the public, she is a niqabi ambassador, friendly and outgoing. “I look at those run-ins with people as an opportunity to explain who I am and maybe shed some light on Islam,” Hebah said. “If they knew me or more about my faith, I'm sure they would think differently.”

She is used to explaining that a niqab is not a burqa and that no, she doesn't wear it at home. In an all-female setting like Curves, one would not be able to identify a niqabi among the other women in workout gear. It does get hot under the jilbab, but as Sarah explained, it is “sort of like a self-contained air-conditioning unit that circulates cool air.”

Hebah has grown so used to her attire, she often forgets she has it on. “Sometimes I'll pass a guy who's looking at me, and I'm like ‘Is he checking me out?'” she said. “Then I'll catch a glimpse of myself in a window and it's like, ‘Uh, hello, Hebah — no.' ”

WHILE driving on Interstate 40, heading home, Ms. Ahmed wedged her cellphone between her khimar and ear, then joked, “Look, a hands-free device.” Sarah rolled her eyes.

There are many types of niqabs, Hebah explained, pulling at least a half-dozen out of her closet. Pushing aside her worn copy of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” she made room for them on the bed.

Her niqabs were made by a seamstress in Egypt whom she met while visiting extended family, but many American niqabis buy their garments online. “You can't get them here,” Hebah said. “I mean, the ones at the back of our local halal store — hideous.”

As she rummaged through her scarves, Khadijah tied one around her waist and twirled like a ballerina. Muslim women who cover usually wait until puberty to conceal their hair and bodies in public, but Khadijah likes to wear a hijab for dress-up — especially the pink one with sparkles.

Hebah said she wanted Khadijah “to be a confident female who is not victimized or abused.” She explained: “For me, the best way to do that is to do what I'm doing, and not just because Mama told her to, but because of her conviction. At the end of the day, she has to stand in front of God alone.”

When reminded that hers is a rocky path, and it would likely be the same for her daughter, Ms. Ahmed paused, then began to cry.

“People don't understand,” she said, wiping a tear with the edge of her sleeve. “We're really strong, but it takes a toll on you. Sometimes you think, ‘I just want to rest.' ”

Sarah, helping her sister out, said: “We think of paradise at that point. Heaven is where we're supposed to rest. That's what gets us through.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/fashion/13veil.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Do You Take This Immigrant?

THE retired mechanic from Michigan looked shell-shocked beside his bride, a classical pianist from Moscow who clutched the printed e-mail exchanges of their Internet romance. Young newlyweds from Long Island, still recovering from their reception for 600 guests the previous weekend, faltered as their lawyer quizzed them on the details of their City Hall ceremony four months before. A Manhattan woman bickered with her Turkish spouse about the kinds of questions they had been warned to expect.

Did they know the color of each other's toothbrush? The pattern of the bathroom tile? What had they done last New Year's? And were they ready to answer far more intimate queries from a government official hunting for signs their marriage was fake?

“Embarrassing questions,” explained the Manhattanite, Lindsay Garvy-Yeguf, 28, the butterfly tattoo on her foot growing jittery, as her husband, Gunes Yeguf, 31, turned paler in his dark suit. “They might ask you about your sex life.”

These three were among dozens of couples inside federal immigration headquarters in Manhattan one recent Tuesday, seated in a crowded waiting room where posters exhorted everyone to “Celebrate Citizenship, Celebrate America.”

Having flunked their first interviews with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services , they had entered the mysterious world of the “Stokes unit,” a uniquely New York variation on the marriage interviews conducted nationwide whenever a citizen seeks a green card for a foreign spouse. Named for a 1976 federal court settlement that gave couples, among other protections, the right to bring a lawyer to a second, recorded interview if their first one raised suspicions of fraud, the Stokes unit recently doubled its staff to 22 officers.

It is a story line familiar from pop culture: “ The Proposal ” last year, “ Green Card ” in 1990. And while the authorities do not question the validity of the marriage of Faisal Shahzad , the failed Times Square bomber, his arrest last month did renew questions about the process of scrutinizing spousal green-card petitions. Nationwide, the number of such petitions denied for fraud is tiny: 506 of the 241,154 filed by citizens in the last fiscal year, or two-tenths of 1 percent (an additional 7 percent were denied on other grounds, like failing to show up for an interview).

Some critics contend that the low numbers simply show the system is easily fooled, while others say that exaggerated estimates of marriage fraud over the years have created a bureaucratic monster, thwarting legitimate, if unconventional, couples and spurring unconstitutional intrusion into their lives.

In some parts of the country, the authorities stage dawn bed checks. “Someone shows up at your house with a badge and a gun, unannounced,” said Laura Lichter, an immigration lawyer in Denver. “ ‘Hi, we're here from immigration. Do you mind if we come in to look and see if two towels are wet?' ”

While Stokes makes such home visits off-limits in New York State, lawyers and immigrant advocates complain that, at its worst, the process is a Kafkaesque version of “ The Newlywed Game ,” with dire consequences: those who fail can be put on a path to deportation. Couples' futures together depend on proving separately to a skeptical bureaucrat that, as the law states, they did not marry “solely” for a green card. (Passing the interviews simply makes a foreign spouse eligible for a green card; getting one requires a separate application and security clearance.)

In the modern jambalaya of online dating, arranged weddings, bicoastal relationships, open marriages and serial divorce, a bona fide union can be harder than ever to discern, leaving lovers who are unable to produce a land-line telephone bill facing questions about birth control. That Tuesday in the Stokes unit, one couple volunteered that the wife was eight weeks pregnant only to have the husband be asked: “Is it yours?”

“The latitude that officers have is broad, and one that has to be exercised with a lot of care,” said Andrea Quarantillo, the immigration agency's district director for New York. “Is it perfect? No. It's judgmental.”

According to an agency worksheet that was recently leaked online, red flags include “unusual cultural differences,” a large age discrepancy, an “unusual” number of children and a citizen with meager means. Daniel Lundy, an immigration lawyer, said the boxes on the worksheet “pretty much invite racial profiling and other stereotypes.”

“You could be married 50 years and still find it difficult to pass,” Mr. Lundy said of the Stokes process.

The unit's lore is worthy of its own reality TV series — sham couples caught red-handed, yes, but also quirky ones whose authenticity surprised everyone. The gay man who claimed he had suddenly found his female soul mate (denied); the recovering alcoholic who had lost his memory (approved); the man who volunteered that he had erectile dysfunction in an attempt to explain why his mate did not know the location of his nine tattoos (unsuccessful); the elderly citizen who lost an arm in a subway accident, but found happiness with a young Caribbean wife (successful).

“We can't impose our definition of marriage, especially being in New York,” said Maria Guerra, a Stokes supervisor. “We've seen it all.”

AN officer looked out on the waiting room, trying to read body language. Were some couples over the top, snuggling and holding hands? Did some seem like strangers?

In one corner were the newlyweds from Long Island: Ersan Kahyaoglu, 25, a robustly built electrician, American born of Turkish descent, his rumpled shirt hanging out; and Dilek Kahyaoglu, 21, Turkish but having lived in America for a decade, slim in her fitted black suit.

“I think it's impossible to know all the answers,” Mr. Kahyaoglu complained. “I don't remember what color her dress was at the civil ceremony. It was, like, different colors.”

His wife prompted him, gently: “Black and white, flowery.”

“Who cooks?” asked their lawyer, Raj Jadega, practicing. “I cook,” she said proudly.

“When was the last time you made dinner?” She looked blank.

“Then you don't cook,” he said.

It would have been funny if the stakes were not so grave. The couple was an automatic Stokes referral because the wife was in deportation proceedings. She had come with her family on a tourist visa at 11 and was 13 when their applications for green cards derailed because their first “lawyer” was not one.

“The questions can be arbitrary and very detailed, and they're on the firing line right now,” Mr. Jadega said, as the couple discussed the fine points of each other's favorite music and food (Techno? More like rock. Chicken parmigiana or stuffed peppers? Chicken.) “If a certain number of questions are answered incorrectly,” he said, “they can stop the interview right there.”

It was hours later when the nervous groom emerged from his interview. The officer had mainly asked “basic stuff,” he said: “birth dates, the type of house we live in, how much rent we pay — maybe 25 questions.”

But then: was his wife on birth control?

“I said no,” Mr. Kahyaoglu said. “He said that could mean using condoms. I said, ‘No sir, we're not using anything.' ”

Separately, his wife was pressed about condom use, and said, “Once in a while.”

“How am I supposed to explain it to him?” the groom asked later. “ ‘Well, sometimes I feel like reaching into the drawer by the bed — '?”

Despite the discrepancy, they passed, and left rosy-cheeked, elated.

THE idea of marriage as a gateway for terrorists, and prosecutions of scandalous fake-marriage rings, have periodically stirred alarm. In 1986, an estimate by the immigration agency that one in three marriages were counterfeit spurred Congressional preoccupation and tough laws, but turned out to be a gross exaggeration — it was later revised to 8 percent.

An agency audit of marriage fraud, conducted in 2007, has never been released. When The New York Times filed a request for such data under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency identified 656 relevant pages, but blacked out 655, saying the information would disclose the deliberative process or law enforcement techniques. The Times has appealed.

Agency officials said they could not provide New York statistics to compare with national numbers, or even count what share of New York couples were referred to the Stokes unit, because of a flawed computer system. Officials did agree to track results during two weeks in April: 93 of the 114 couples interviewed were approved, or 81 percent. In addition to the 21 interviewed couples whose denial was pending, 2 other marriages were deemed invalid because prior divorces were flawed, and 22 couples were no-shows denied out of hand.

On that Tuesday, 5 of the 25 couples in the Stokes waiting room were headed to rejection because of discrepancies, though none were among those The Times had interviewed beforehand, and none were classified as fraudulent.

“We're not mind readers,” Ms. Guerra, the Stokes supervisor, said. “If we lived with them for a month, we might see they have a marriage. But if they get everything wrong in the interview, we have to deny the case.”

Stokes supervisors said that officers were trained to avoid questions about sex, but they cannot stop X-rated answers, like one from the citizen wife who was asked what she did for her spouse's birthday and began recounting their night together in explicit detail. Some couples offer photographic evidence in the mistaken belief that the government requires proof of a marriage's consummation.

“It's not something a normal couple would do,” Ms. Guerra said. “They're overcompensating.”

Occasionally the cubicle turns into a confessional, with one spouse revealing infidelities — even children — unknown to the other. And though the criminal penalties for marriage fraud are up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, a few citizens risk prosecution, withdraw their petition and exit by a back door, leaving officers to break the news to the immigrant spouse.

Barbara Felska, a star of the Stokes unit, said her message to couples was: “Do not fear Stokes if your marriage is real — all you need is love!” But her method is to seek evidence of three aspects of a marriage: legality (like valid divorce decrees); the commingling of assets and other joint documentation (which young or poor couples often lack); and “mental and emotional connection through shared life experience.”

The last is the most subjective, and Ms. Felska, 38, a naturalized citizen from Poland who won the green card lottery, likes to dream up creative questions while doing dishes. Like: “What piece of jewelry means the most to your wife?”

On this Tuesday she was examining the three-year marriage of Yusuf Mohammed and Sally Bines. Mr. Mohammed, 42, a twice-divorced and Muslim taxi driver, had not seen his sons in Ghana for seven years; his first American wife had dropped her petition for his green card. Ms. Bines, 41, a Christian divorcée of Puerto Rican descent, was studying to be a teacher at Hostos Community College , where they met.

They were ushered past a cubicle where an officer could be heard demanding, “But are you the bill-payer?” and again, louder, after some Spanish translation, “So you're the bill-payer, yes or no?”

Ms. Felska has a lighter touch. She tells couples: “I should never know more after interviewing your husband or your wife for 45 minutes as a federal officer than you know about her or him after two years of marriage.” The key moment, she finds, is when couples try to explain mismatched answers.

Indeed, Ms. Bines left that afternoon in a huff over one of her husband's responses. “Some jewelry he said he bought me that he didn't buy, he's going to buy me right now!” she announced, as he tried to explain that he had always meant to buy her that necklace.

The very real quarrel helped convince Ms. Felska that the marriage was real, too.

ANOTHER union approved that day was the Internet romance between the retired mechanic, Larry Christiansen, 66, and his Russian bride, Alla, 53, who has a Ph.D. in music and a daughter at Baruch College .

Theirs was the kind of international courtship that Congress moved to regulate in 2005, requiring that the citizen disclose any criminal record to the foreigner —the first such law to cast the American husband as potential villain. It was a striking shift from 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments after hearings that harped on “the devious foreign husband trying to dupe some poor American citizen into marrying him,” said Kerry Abrams, a legal scholar at the University of Virginia .

Mr. Christiansen, a white-haired man with an arthritic gait who was divorced in 2001 after 35 years of marriage, called his new union “the best thing that ever happened in my life,” and was shocked when “they even asked me if she paid me to marry her!”

The couple's lawyer, Irina Matiychenko, was pleased to report that when the officer reunited them and asked, “Who's the boss?” there was instant disagreement.

“He said, ‘I'm the boss.' And she said, ‘No, you're not' ” — a good sign that she was not playing the part of docile mail-order bride vulnerable to an abusive husband, Ms. Matiychenko explained.

Yes, there was a cultural gulf. “I'm basically a redneck and she's very sophisticated,” Mr. Christiansen said. “The princess marrying the frog.

“She's a sweetheart,” he added. “That's what drew me to her. When she smiles, it's real.”

NO lawyer helped Miguelina Montalvo Diaz, a 32-year-old mother from Yonkers, show that she and her Dominican husband of six months had a life together. The letter summoning them listed documents to bring, including a letter from their bank about joint accounts. So they quickly opened a joint account.

Red flag! Documents dated close to the interview immediately raise suspicion. A Stokes officer asked Ms. Diaz to explain. “I didn't want to have a joint account,” Ms. Diaz said she protested. “You guys asked for that!”

But the couple emerged later arm-in-arm, giddy. Their separate answers to questions like “Where do you keep the hamper?” and “Where do you keep the shoes?” were “100 percent on target,” said Ms. Diaz, who was recently laid off from a department store, and describes her husband, Ramon Emilio Diaz, who has four sons in the Dominican Republic, as a wonderful father to her 3-year-old boy. “We did good.”

Still, they were not home free. The immigration officer had noticed that Mr. Diaz still had a separate account, in addition to their joint one. “They said he needs to put me on that account,” Ms. Diaz said, adding, “My mom has been married 25 years and they don't have a joint account.”

She was not about to argue. In the balance was the green card that would let Mr. Diaz easily visit the Dominican Republic and return. And because they had been married less than two years, Mr. Diaz could be granted only a “conditional” green card. In two years, they could be back in the Stokes waiting room, facing another round of personal questions from another stranger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/nyregion/13fraud.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Fox News

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Officer Gahiji A. Tshamba

Baltimore PD Search for One of Their Own Posted By Gretchen Gailey June 12, 2010 WASHINGTON - Police in Baltimore, MD are conducting a manhunt looking for one of their own Saturday night. An arrest warrant has been issued for Officer Gahiji A. Tshamba for last week's murder of an unarmed marine outside a Baltimore nightclub. Thirty-two year-old Tyrone Brown who had served two tours of duty in Iraq was shot 13 times at close range after approaching and making advances towards a woman who was with the off duty officer. Witnesses say that an altercation began and the fight turned physical, that is when Tshamba allegedly pulled out his service weapon and opened fire according to Baltimore Police Officer, Anthony Gugliemlmi. Officers from the Warrant Apprehension Task Force have been looking for Tshamba since the arrest warrant was issued Friday by State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy. Tshamba will face first degree murder charges as well as charges for use of a firearm in commission of a crime of violence once apprehended. Detectives believe Tshamba is on the run and may have possibly left the city of Baltimore. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld commended the BPD Homicide Section for their swift work on the case.

"The Baltimore Police Department is committed to holding itself accountable to the citizens Baltimore," said Bealefeld. "The men and women of the Baltimore Police Department protect and serve our City with the highest integrity. The allegations against Gahiji Tshamba in this incident are an aberration and affront to us all."

If you have an information on the whereaboutas of Officer Tsamba, please contact Baltimore Police at toll free number, 1-866-7-LOCKUP

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/12/baltimore-pd-search-for-one-of-their-own/print/

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