Freed inmates carried out killings, Mexico police say

By Ken Ellingwood

Los Angeles Times

July 25, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

Prison inmates allowed to leave their cells with weapons borrowed from guards carried out last week's killing of 17 people in northern Mexico, federal authorities said Sunday.

Ricardo Najera, spokesman for the federal attorney general's office, said prison officials in the northern state of Durango lent the inmates weapons and official vehicles to carry out several tit-for-tat killings on behalf of organized crime.

The deadliest was the July 18 attack on a birthday party at an inn in Torreon, in neighboring Coahuila state. Gunmen sprayed gunfire at revelers who had been summoned by an invitation on Facebook.

Authorities have not specified a motive for the attack, which also left 18 people wounded.

Mexican prisons, overcrowded and poorly run, are hotbeds of violent criminal activity, including telephone extortion schemes and drug operations. Allowing inmates out to act as hit men would mark a new extreme.

Najera said inmates from the same prison, in the Durango city of Gomez Palacio, are suspected in shootings this year at a pair of bars in Torreon, which sits across the state line, that killed a total of 18 people.

Four prison officials, including the director, Margarita Rojas, and the security chief, were being held under a form of house arrest as the investigation continued.

"The criminals carried out the execution as part of a settling of accounts against members of rival gangs tied to organized crime," Najera said during a news conference. He said "innocent civilians" also were killed.

The inmates returned to their cells after the attacks, Najera said.

It was not immediately clear how many prisoners or guards might have been involved in the shootings.

Federal authorities said their investigation of guards at the Durango prison had turned up four AR-15 rifles that matched shells from the July 18 slayings.

The charges point to the staggering official corruption confronting Mexican President Felipe Calderon's war on drug cartels.

The anti-crime campaign, launched in late 2006, is already beset by widespread police graft, especially at the state and local levels, where many officers moonlight as enforcers for trafficking groups.

Mexico's new interior minister, Francisco Blake, said the episode was a reminder of the "state of deterioration" afflicting many local law-enforcement institutions.

Blake vowed to investigate who gave the orders for "these cowardly and condemnable acts."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-killings-20100726,0,7593118,print.story

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U.S., South Korea enter second day of joint drills

By John M. Glionna and Ju-min Park

Los Angeles Times

July 25, 2010

Reporting from Seoul

A powerful four-day show of joint U.S. and South Korean sea and air power entered its second day without incident Monday, despite North Korea's pledge to start a "sacred war" over the maneuvers.

Dubbed "Invincible Spirit," the participants in the joint military exercises — featuring about 20 vessels, including the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George Washington — left port just after dawn Sunday, shadowed by hundreds of U.S. and South Korean fighter jets.

The drills provided a potent reminder for the government in Pyongyang of the consequences of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula. The exercises have been in the works since the March 26 sinking of a South Korean naval ship that killed 46 crewmen. An inquiry led by South Korea concluded that the ship was struck by a North Korean torpedo; North Korea has denied involvement.

Pyongyang has criticized the military maneuvers — the largest launched by the U.S. and South Korea since 1976 and the first to include the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet in South Korean airspace — and threatened to start a "retaliatory sacred war." North Korea also has put its military and residents on high alert, according to local media.

The maneuvers, involving more than 8,000 service members from the U.S. and South Korea, were witnessed by four officers from Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Forces, officials here said. In the coming days, the war games will include "a drill for infiltration by submarines," according to an official for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff who requested anonymity.

The March sinking of the naval patrol ship Cheonan, which Seoul called the worst military attack since the end of the Korean War, prompted the investigation by an international team of experts that ended up implicating the North.

Although condemning the incident, the United Nations Security Council stopped short of naming North Korea as the perpetrator. Still, international pressure has been building to punish strongman Kim Jong Il's regime for the incident.

After a visit last week to the heavily armed demilitarized zone, which divides the two Koreas, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the U.S. would impose new sanctions on the North in retaliation for the Cheonan attack. Days later, the European Union suggested that it too would consider new sanctions against Pyongyang.

The military drills, initially scheduled to take place in the Yellow Sea, were moved to the Sea of Japan after China complained about the presence of the 97,000-ton George Washington, a symbol of U.S. military might with about 5,000 crewmen and a capacity to carry dozens of aircraft, including F-18 fighter jets.

On Saturday, the North Korean military denounced the games in a statement read on Korean Central Television in Pyongyang, saying the drills by "the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces deliberately push the situation to the brink of war."

Although termed defensive in nature, the exercises were expected to include firing artillery, dropping anti-submarine bombs and air-to-air refueling, South Korean officials said.

Capt. Ross Myers, commander of the George Washington's air wing unit, called the maneuvers an effort to maintain "peace and stability" on the Korean peninsula but told the Yonhap news agency in Seoul on Sunday that such a powerful military presence was seen as a threat by Pyongyang, which considered such drills a rehearsal of invasion.

Said Myers: "North Korea doesn't want these exercises."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-war-games-20100725,0,1291261,print.story

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Arizona immigration law tints neighborhood dispute

By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

July 26, 2010

Reporting from Phoenix

Had Arizona's governor not just signed the toughest law against illegal immigrants in the nation, the killing of Juan Varela probably would have been written off as just a tragic neighborhood dispute.

The 44-year-old U.S. citizen was watering chile plants in his front yard when a neighbor confronted him and shot him to death, according to police documents.

Varela's brother, Antonio, told police that the neighbor, Gary Kelley, who is white, called Juan Varela by an ethnic slur and said he had to "go back to Mexico" now that Gov. Jan Brewer had signed SB 1070. The family campaigned to publicize the death, culminating with the county prosecutor's decision last month to add a hate-crime allegation to the second-degree murder charges filed against Kelley.

But Kelley's Latino tenant and neighbors say he displayed no racial animus and had criticized the new law as unfair. Most immigrant rights activists have shied away from the case, skeptical that the killing was racially motivated.

To some Arizonans, it's an illustration of how incidents in the state now get interpreted through the prism of the new law.

"When this happened, everyone immediately wanted to make this about 1070," said an exasperated Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman who downplayed any racial overtones to Varela's killing.

Tensions are rising here as the clock ticks down to Thursday, the day the law is scheduled to take effect.

Some activists sometimes compare Arizona to the Jim Crow-era South or Nazi Germany, and other groups privately worry about civil unrest. Meanwhile, Brewer has contended that most illegal immigrants entering her state are drug smugglers. ( Civil rights groups and the Obama administration have asked a federal judge to halt SB 1070.)

Police departments are still trying to figure out what the complex measure requires their officers to do. The key provisions mandate that police check the immigration status of people they lawfully stop and suspect are in the country illegally. It also makes it a state crime to lack immigration documents.

Some police departments say little may change on Thursday because many officers already check the status of people they believe are committing crimes.

Instead, the biggest effect of the law may be psychological. It marks the enactment of a new state policy, known as attrition through enforcement, to push illegal immigrants out of Arizona by making clear they're not wanted. And it has convinced some Latino citizens, like the Varelas, that they are also under attack.

Juan Varela's parents moved from Texas to south Phoenix in 1952, when cornfields still lay near their small house. They raised 14 children who felt comfortable in the mostly white town.

"I felt like I was just part of society," said Susie Mendoza, one of Juan Varela's sisters. She didn't even teach her children Spanish, which was regularly spoken at home in her childhood.

Juan Varela, who coached a diverse Little League baseball team, was deeply religious and had a troubled past. He was convicted of aggravated assault in 2008 and had spent years on disability. Less than two weeks after Brewer signed SB 1070, he and Antonio Varela, who lived next door, discussed a documentary they had seen about Emmett Till, a black teenager in Mississippi who was killed after reportedly whistling at a white woman in 1955. They saw new relevance in the tragic tale.

"I said, 'Man, if we don't watch ourselves, things are going to be that bad here,' " Antonio Varela recalled. "He said, 'Let's pray on that.' It was constant. Every time you turned to a [television] channel, it was SB 1070."

Days later, on May 6, Antonio drove his mother, who lives with Juan, to the local Kmart. Afterward, as he pulled into the driveway to drop her off, he saw Kelley walking toward his brother in his front yard.

According to police documents, Antonio said he heard Kelley yell, "Go back to Mexico!" and warn Juan that he was going to die if he didn't leave. Juan confronted Kelley on the sidewalk. He kicked at Kelley but missed, Antonio said. Kelley pulled a pistol from his waistband and shot Juan, the documents say.

In an interview, Antonio said Kelley tried to shoot him too, but the gun misfired. Kelley ran to his house and emerged only when police arrived, holding a can of beer, which he poured over his head. According to police documents, Kelley said that Juan Varela had kicked him in the groin and that he was defending himself.

According to police, Kelley, 50, told officers, "I love all people — white, black or Hispanic, and I am not racist in any way."

Two city councilmen later came to the neighborhood, along with police spokesman Thompson, saying that the killing did not seem racially motivated. They were relying on statements from people like Ana Gutierrez, who said Kelley used to chat with her parents, who were his neighbors, and spent Thanksgiving at their house. She said Kelley told her father days before the shooting that he opposed SB 1070.

"It's just weird to hear them say he's racist," Gutierrez said.

Lydia Guzman, a prominent local immigrants rights activist, said she and others organizing protests against SB 1070 were wary of the case. "This guy did not get shot because he was Mexican," Guzman said. "We are being extra cautious" about making such claims, she added.

The Varela family, baffled that racial elements of the incident have been downplayed, held news conferences demanding hate-crime charges. They said the Phoenix police chief had asked them to stay quiet about the case — an assertion that is completely inaccurate, according to the department.

In June, family members met with Maricopa County Atty. Richard Romley, who added the hate-crime allegation against Kelley. Romley said at a news conference that the extra allegation, which can enhance the penalties against Kelley, was added because of witness statements. A spokesman for Romley said he could not elaborate.

The Varela family says that the hate-crime allegation is a small comfort but that the public needs to know the threat the new law has created.

"We want the governor to understand that what she's doing is causing crimes to take place," Mendoza said.

Two doors down from the Varela home, Kelley's house is still partly occupied. Fernando Perez, a construction worker, has rented half the house from Kelley for the last year. He said he never heard his landlord make biased remarks. He is skeptical that the immigration law had anything to do with Varela's death, pinning the blame instead on what he believes was a simple dispute.

"Don't blame the law," he said, "if your own actions are to blame."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immigration-arizona-20100726,0,4054142,print.story

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Fire department fees: An abdication of government

July 26, 2010

Democrats and Republicans validly debate the size and reach of government. But certain services have always been considered fundamental. During California's pioneer days, rudimentary municipal services sprang up when communities of settlers agreed to chip in to provide common law enforcement, fire protection and, usually, basic public education.

In the latest efforts to close the gaps in public budgets, though, an increasing number of California cities are ripping holes in the fabric of local government. More than two dozen municipalities, including Stockton and Roseville, now charge motorists who are involved in auto accidents that require the fire department to respond to the scene. That might be for emergency rescue or putting out a fire with foam. Some charge anyone involved in a crash; many levy a fee only on nonresidents who have the bad luck to be in an accident in such inhospitable locales.

Several municipalities bill only insured motorists, on the assumption that insurance companies will cover the cost. That's particularly wrongheaded because it rewards people who illegally fail to insure their vehicles.

On July 1, the Placer County Fire Department began charging nonresidents; and now Sacramento, the seat of state government, is considering doing the same. The fees are being pushed by collection agencies that take on the task of billing motorists or their insurance companies for a percentage of the take. The insurance industry , of course, objects.

This time, the insurers have it right. Some companies don't cover these bills, and as the number of localities imposing them grows, more insurers will probably either exclude the fees or raise premiums. In the end, all drivers pay, including those who never visit those places and who never experience an accident.

Cities that impose such fees are abandoning the commitment to the common good that inspired people to form fire departments in the first place: the idea that we should all share the cost of putting out fires, of rescuing the injured and trapped. What's more, they give fire departments a financial incentive to show up whether or not they're needed; every accident represents a potential source of revenue. And what's the accident victim supposed to say? Go away, I can't afford the jaws of life?

These new fees subvert the tradition of mutual aid, in which law enforcement and fire agencies assist each other in providing services; each municipality guards the safety of the public within its borders, even if the individuals involved live and pay property taxes elsewhere. If fees like these are justified, the logical next step is to charge tourists $300 for the arrest of the mugger who just robbed them of $40.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-fire-20100726,0,5207410,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Khmer Rouge Figure Is Found Guilty of War Crimes

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A United Nations -backed tribunal on Monday found a 67-year-old former prison warden of the Khmer Rouge guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes for overseeing the torture and killing of more than 14,000 prisoners. He was the first major figure to be tried in the murderous regime since it was toppled 30 years ago.

But in a sentence that was likely to be considered shockingly lenient here, the court sentenced him to serve 19 years in prison — 35 years minus 16 years for time already served. Prosecutors had sought 40 years. There is no death penalty in Cambodia .

The defendant, Kaing Guek Eav , commonly known as Duch, had admitted in an eight-month trial to many of the accusations against him. He oversaw a system that came to symbolize a regime responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.

Dressed in a blue button-down shirt, sipping sometimes from a glass of water and carrying what appeared to be a Bible, he listened impassively as a judge read out the charges and verdict against him. The packed courtroom included some survivors of the prison he ran — three of whom had testified about the torture inflicted upon them.

The tribunal , which began work in 2006, now moves to “Case Two,” for which four high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials are in custody awaiting trial sometime next year. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot , died in 1998 .

Duch's own plea was unclear. On the final day of the trial, in November, he unexpectedly asked to be set free , seeming to contradict a carefully constructed defense in which his lawyers sought to minimize his sentence through admissions of guilt mixed with assertions that he was just one link in a hierarchy of killing.

“I am accountable to the entire Cambodian population for the souls that perished,” he said at one point. “I am deeply remorseful and regret such a mind-boggling scale of death.”

But he added: “I ended up serving a criminal organization. I could not withdraw from it. I was like a cog in a machine. I regret and humbly apologize to the dead souls.”

Many of his victims, along with outside observers, questioned the sincerity of his remorse, particularly as it was coupled with a sometimes aggressive and arrogant demeanor in the courtroom and evasiveness regarding many specific allegations.

Despite those doubts, David Chandler, a historian of Cambodia, noted that Duch was the only one of the five defendants to have admitted guilt.

“He's a guy who's thought about it, faced up to some stuff,” said Mr. Chandler, the author of “Voices From S-21,” a book about the prison, known as S-21 or Tuol Sleng. “Duch is the only human on trial. The others are monsters.”

A former schoolteacher, Duch took obvious pride in the efficiency of his operation, where confessions — some of them running to hundreds of typed pages — were extracted by torture before the prisoners were sent in trucks to the killing fields.

He disappeared after the Khmer Rouge was driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion and was discovered in 1999 by an Irish journalist, Nic Dunlop, living quietly in a small Cambodian town, where he said he had converted to Christianity.

At one point in his testimony, in an extravagant display of contrition, Duch appeared to compare himself with Christ.

“The tears that run from my eyes are the tears of those innocent people,” he said. “It matters little if they condemn me, even to the heaviest sentence. As for Christ's death, Cambodians can inflict that fate on me. I will accept it.”

It is more common among Cambodians — most of whom are Buddhists — to believe in spirits. Tuol Sleng is now a museum, and when part of its roof collapsed last week during a storm, some people said the ghosts of the dead were crying out for justice.

Running parallel with courtroom testimony, the tribunal has faced criticism as it tries to apply international standards of justice within a flawed Cambodian court system.

“The court has struggled to deal with allegations of kickbacks involving national staff, heavy-handed political interference from the Cambodian government, bureaucratic inefficiency and incompetence, and disturbing levels of conflict between international and national staff,” said John A. Hall, a professor at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, Calif., who has been monitoring the trials.

“Indeed, perhaps one of the most surprising things so far is that the tribunal has not collapsed,” he said.

In an innovation, the trial made room for about 90 “civil parties,” who registered to apply for reparations and were represented in court by lawyers who acted as additional prosecutors.

“For 30 years, the victims of the Khmer Rouge waited while a civil war raged, international actors bickered and the leaders of the Khmer Rouge walked free,” said Alex Hinton, director of the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Now, for the first time, one of them has been held accountable. The importance of this moment can't be underestimated.”

But over the years, Cambodia has moved on, with new generations, new concerns and new horizons. Many young people know little about the Khmer Rouge era, and many older people have chosen to forget.

“I go around the country and not a lot of people ask about the trial,” said Ou Virak, president of the independent Cambodian Center for Human Rights , which holds forums on issues of concern to the public. “Not even my mom — and my dad was killed by the Khmer Rouge.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26cambo.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Cities View Homesteads as a Source of Income

BEATRICE, Neb. — Give away land to make money?

It hardly sounds like a prudent scheme. But in a bit of déjà vu, that is exactly what this small Nebraska city aims to do.

Beatrice was a starting point for the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal law that handed land to pioneering farmers. Back then, the goal was to settle the West. The goal of Beatrice's “ Homestead Act of 2010 ,” is, in part, to replenish city coffers.

The calculus is simple, if counterintuitive: hand out city land now to ensure property tax revenues in the future.

“There are only so many ball fields a place can build,” Tobias J. Tempelmeyer, the city attorney, said the other day as he stared out at grassy lots, planted with lonely mailboxes, that the city is working to get rid of. “It really hurts having all this stuff off the tax rolls.”

Around the nation, cities and towns facing grim budget circumstances are grasping at unlikely — some would say desperate — means to bolster their shrunken tax bases. Like Beatrice, places like Dayton, Ohio, and Grafton, Ill., are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills.

In Boca Raton, Fla., which faces a budget gap of more than $7 million, leaders are thinking about expanding the city's size and annexing neighborhoods as an antidote. Sure, more residents would cost more in services, but officials hope the added tax revenues will more than make up for it.

And leaders in Manchester, N.H., and Concord, Mass., are taking an approach that might have once seemed politically unthinkable. They are re-examining whether their communities' nonprofit organizations really deserve to be tax-free.

“The stress of the past couple years is causing us to look absolutely everywhere,” said Anthony Logalbo, the finance director in Concord, where officials realized that 15 percent of the town's property value had become tax exempt and sent letters to nonprofit groups asking whether they would consider paying something to the town.

“Private schools and nonprofit museums and community organizations benefit the town in lots of ways,” Mr. Logalbo said, “except that they don't contribute to the cost of running the town.”

Analysts say that this year and next, city budgets will reach their most dismal points of the recession, largely because of lag time inherent in the way taxes are collected and distributed.

Despite signs of a recovery, if a slow one, in other elements of the economy, it may be years away for many municipalities. Between now and 2012, America's cities are likely to experience shortfalls totaling $55 billion to $85 billion, according to a survey by the National League of Cities, because of slumping revenues from property taxes and sales taxes and reduced support from state governments.

And even in places like Concord and Beatrice, where officials say budget strains are not severe enough to lead to layoffs or major cuts, a slow chafing has still taken a toll.

Beatrice (pronounced bee-AT-russ), which sits about 40 miles south of Lincoln down a highway called the Homestead Expressway, is recognized as home to the first Homestead Act application nearly 150 years ago. That law ultimately granted 270 million acres of land in 30 states to nearly anyone who could survive on it and pay a minimal fee.

Daniel Freeman , who came from Ohio, is said to have filed his claim for 160 acres near Beatrice just after midnight on Jan. 1, 1863, the day the law took effect. There were others who filed claims in other places on the same day (some say they were actually first), but Mr. Freeman captured a place in history. The government paid to take back his Nebraska homestead decades later to turn it into a national monument that honors the Homestead Act and how it transformed the nation's population.

Beatrice's new Homestead Act is not the first to revive the land giveaway. Some tiny towns, particularly in the Great Plains, have made such offers before, mainly as a way to increase dwindling populations. But disappearing is not the fear in Beatrice, which is home to several lawn-mowing equipment manufacturers and where the population has held steady at around 12,000 for decades.

Instead, city officials are hoping to return some of the many lots the city has accumulated, because of unpaid taxes or flooding risks from the Big Blue River, and return them to the tax rolls. The city has not suffered gaping budget shortfalls or the property tax declines seen in some larger cities, but some large purchases and road reconstruction have been delayed, waiting for a return to flusher times.

If the city were to give away just a few lots — and if people were to, as required by the law, build homes on them and stay for at least three years — Beatrice would secure annual real estate taxes on them, collect money for water, electric and sewer use, and no longer pay to mow the lawns.

The arrival of new, improved homes might also have an infectious effect on existing neighborhoods, said Neal Neidfeldt, the city administrator. The plan has its critics; at least one candidate for mayor here wonders what right the city has to give out public land to any non-taxpaying outsider who asks.

Officials acknowledge that the benefits sound modest, in the thousands of dollars annually, but say the revenue is needed.

“What is the value of a lot to us if it's empty?” said Tom Thompson, the mayor of Grafton, where an offer of 32 city-owned lots, promoted with a television advertising campaign, has quickly led to eight takers so far. “This is strictly financial — a way to go upstream from the trend.”

In Dayton, officials are offering thousands of vacant, foreclosed or abandoned properties under certain conditions for nominal fees — $500, in many cases, to cover the cost of recording fees or $1,200 if the city must initiate tax foreclosure proceedings. The prospect of city savings on mowing fees alone is enormous: each year, Dayton spends $2 million to cut grass on the properties.

Back in Beatrice, though, the effort is only creeping along. Since the Homestead Act took effect in May, many people have called with inquiries, but no one has moved onto the lots along a gravel-covered road called Grace. Two families filled out an application — which seeks only a name, address and telephone number — but both have since put off plans.

One applicant, William Hendrix, 47, said the city's law requiring him to secure permits for a new home on the property within six months, then build within a year after that, was too daunting. What if he could not get loans? What if he could not pay for the construction? What if he built a home but could never sell it?

“Right now, giving away the land isn't going to be doing anybody favors,” Mr. Hendrix said. “I realized that Beatrice will get the taxes they want, but it won't do me any good in this market.”

For their part, people in Beatrice sound patient. The peak of homesteading acres claimed under the federal act, they point out, came in 1913, some 50 years after the act's passage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/us/26revenue.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Venezuela's Chavez threatens to stop oil sales to U.S.

Associated Press

July 26, 2010

VENEZUELA - President Hugo Chávez threatened Sunday to cut off oil sales to the United States if Venezuela is attacked by its U.S.-allied neighbor Colombia in a dispute over allegations that Venezuela gives haven to Colombian rebels.

Chávez made his warning in an outdoor speech to thousands of supporters, saying, "If there is any armed aggression against Venezuela from Colombian territory or anywhere else supported by the Yankee empire, we . . . would suspend shipments of oil to the United States."

If carried out, such a threat would be a titanic economic blow for Chávez's government, which depends heavily on oil sales. The United States is the top buyer of oil from Venezuela, which is its fifth-biggest foreign supplier.

But Colombia has not threatened military action, and it's likely that Chávez issued the warning in part to put Washington and Bogota on notice that he will not stand for a more aggressive international campaign to denounce allegations that leftist Colombian rebels are finding refuge in Venezuela.

Chávez cut off diplomatic relations with Colombia on Thursday after outgoing President Álvaro Uribe's government presented photos, videos and maps of what it said were Colombian rebel camps inside Venezuela. Chávez called it an attempt to smear his government and said Uribe could be trying to lay the groundwork for an armed conflict.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072502754.html

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Americans with Disabilities Act hits 20 today

BY ZLATI MEYER

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Marva Ways remembers peering longingly through restaurant windows at the diners enjoying their meals.

Today, the 60-year-old Dearborn Heights woman and millions of others who have benefited will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The legislation made everything from sign-language interpreters at speeches to public restroom grab bars to anti-discrimination hiring policies possible.

"Before the ADA was passed, it was almost like people with disabilities had no civil rights," Ways said. "A lot of it had to do with attitudinal barriers."

Fifteen percent, or 41.3 million, of (noninstitutionalized) Americans have disabilities, according to the most recent American Community Service data from the U.S. Census.

Paralyzed in a 1976 car accident, Ways told the Free Press she often had to deal with inaccessibility issues when she began traveling the country as a disability-rights advocate.

"People didn't recognize us as the first-class citizens that we were," said Ways, a professional motivational speaker who was the first runner-up in the 2005 Ms. Wheelchair America contest.

Michigan was among the first states in the country to have laws protecting disabled people, and in some areas is stricter than the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the head of Wayne State University's disability law clinic.

"Michigan was an early leader in the field of disability civil rights," said professor David Moss, who teaches discrimination law.

In 1976, the state enacted what was called the Michigan Handicappers' Civil Rights Act to require accessibility and outlaw discrimination.

Under federal law, only businesses that have more than a certain number of employees are bound by the ADA. But Michigan's stricter law applies to companies that have only one employee.

In 1973, when Congress was revising a statute that provided funding for vocational rehabilitation training, it included several provisions -- little noticed at the time -- that forbade any program that received federal funding from discriminating based on disability, Moss explained.

By the late 1980s, the ADA was a natural next step after an era when many under-recognized groups, including African Americans and women, fought to be acknowledged. The measure, enacted 20 years ago today, also coincided with the national sweep of deinstitutionalization, which had been motivated by the wave of parents of disabled children around the 1940s who wanted to enroll them in public schools.

"The way to celebrate what this law really means to people with disabilities is the simple fact that you see so many disabled people out and about and part of the community and part of our society -- that it's so commonplace you don't even think about it anymore," said Richard Bernstein, a Farmington Hills disability rights attorney.

Bernstein, 36, who is blind, has traveled extensively. He said no country compares with America's laws requiring equality for disabled people.

"This is one law that the U.S. should take tremendous pride in," Bernstein said. "For people with disabilities at this time and at this place, there is no greater country than the United States of America."

Although people have become more understanding and inclusive of people with disabilities, there has been some public backlash, Moss said. The use of new service animals, like ducks who calm down people with mental illness or monkeys that predict seizures, has been questioned along with a plethora of lawsuits claiming discrimination. Among the latter, Moss said, was one filed against a strip club that wasn't wheelchair accessible.

"It's been 20 years since the ADA was passed, and if a restaurant is supposed to be accessible after 20 years and it isn't, whose fault is that?" Moss said. "The lawyer's fault for bringing the suit, or the restaurant's for not being accessible?"

Years ago, if Sheryl Emery wanted to find out how late a shop was open, she couldn't call up and ask what the store hours were. She had to drive there to ask or ask someone to call for her.

It's not that her budget couldn't accommodate a telephone: The telephone couldn't accommodate her.

Emery is deaf, and before the ADA, people on both ends of the phone had to have TTY machines. They enable deaf people to type over phone lines to communicate. Now, professional relay services -- a hearing person serving as intermediary between the TTY machine user and the hearing party -- are mandatory.

The watershed federal legislation mandated such assistance tools for disabled people, along with architectural upgrades to public spaces for physically disabled people and equal accessibility to everything from jobs to government programs to movie theaters.

"If you were deaf back in the early '80s, you were dependent on volunteers ... You couldn't have direct conversation with someone who didn't have a TTY," Emery, director of the state's Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Lansing, said in an interview using updated telecom technology.

When someone without a TTY machine calls the 50-something Southfield resident, the relay operator doesn't type the conversation to Emery. Instead, she watches the operator on a video screening sign what the other person is saying.

Ways has used a wheelchair for 34 years. Among her frustrations, she recalled people addressing her daughter instead of her, getting a perfunctory apology after finding her wheelchair damaged at an airport baggage claim and being unable to go to local government offices to conduct business because of a lack of wheelchair ramps.

Detroit streets are dotted with orange barrels as the city redoes its sidewalk curb cuts so they properly accommodate wheelchair access. Before that, the city was sued for using buses that had broken wheelchair lifts.

"Here we are in 2010, the 20th anniversary of the ADA, and we're discussing curb cuts being done correctly," Ways said.

One of the most recent publicized battles involved disabled veterans and others upset over wheelchair seating and accessibility at the University of Michigan football stadium. U-M officials were eventually pressured to make changes as part of major renovations to the Big House to better accommodate fans with wheelchairs.

Ways said despite the successes of the ADA, "people with disabilities, even nowadays, have to be vigilant that there are reasonable accommodations made in the workplace and the everyday environment."

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100726/NEWS06/7260316/1320/Americans-with-Disabilities-Act-hits-20-today&template=fullarticle

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Mexico Braces for Effect of Arizona Immigration Law

Migrant shelters along the border in Mexico say they're bracing for new arrivals after the law goes into effect Thursday.

Mexico's government has added more workers to its consulate in Phoenix to assist detained Mexicans. Migrants who have been deported say they're watching to see how the law is enforced before deciding whether to try again to cross the border illegally into Arizona.

"On the plane, everybody was talking about the law," said Ernesto González, a deportee who arrived here last week on a U.S. government flight from Tucson . "Everybody knows it's coming."

Arizona's law makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally. It requires police to check a person's immigration status when the person has been involved in another offense and the officer has reasonable cause to suspect the person is in the country illegally. The check can be made only during the course of a lawful police action, such as a traffic stop or investigation of a crime.

The law also allows Arizona citizens to sue police departments if they feel the new law is not being enforced — a provision related to "sanctuary cities," where local government officials refuse to enforce anti-illegal-immigration laws.

The Obama administration and several rights groups have sued to stop the law from taking effect. The Mexican government has filed a "friend of the court" brief supporting the lawsuits.

In Nogales, Sonora, the state shelter for migrant children added 50 beds to the 100 it already had, Director Maria Isabel Arvizu said. The San Juan Bosco shelter in Nogales also is expecting more migrants, Director Francisco Loureiro said.

"All of us are getting ready for people to come back," Arvizu said.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry declined to comment on preparations for the law. But El Universal newspaper reported that the consulate in Phoenix increased its consular-protection staff from eight to 11 and is distributing pamphlets to inform Mexicans about the law.

Across Mexico, radio talk shows, blogs and the news media have turned Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer into a household name.

On Friday, a morning show on Televisa aired a comedy skit in which an actor dressed as the Republican governor rampages through Mexico City with a stun gun, zapping people.

The country's newspapers have been running articles daily about the legal battle over the law.

Academics in Mexico say they are paying attention to the Arizona law and similar proposals in other U.S. states, said Victor Manuel Sánchez, a researcher at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, a graduate school in Mexico City.

"It's going to have an effect on the ways people migrate," Sánchez said.

The Mexican government has also made changes to its own immigration laws after some rights groups, such as Amnesty International , claimed it was mistreating illegal immigrants in its country.

This month, Mexico increased the punishment for migrant smugglers from a maximum of 12 years in prison to 16 years.

And the Mexican Interior Ministry said it will step up efforts to protect migrants here in response to a report by the United Nations that accused Mexico police of robbing migrants and extorting bribes from them.

However, Mexico retains Article 67, a law that requires local Mexican authorities to check the immigration papers of all foreigners who come to them for help.

Many Mexicans coming off the deportation flight here last week said the risk of being punished as criminals under the Arizona law was making them think twice about trying to get back into the state.

"I think people are going to think harder about it and decide not to risk it because it's scary to think that you'll be tried as a criminal and they'll want to put you in jail," said Francisco Juárez, who jumped a border fence into Arizona on Tuesday and was caught minutes later by the Border Patrol .

Others, though, said nothing would stop them. "My wife is up there. My whole life is up there," said Efrén de la Paz, 34. "Of course I'm going to try again."

Texas GOP wants more National Guard troops on border

Dave Montgomery and Anna M. Tinsley

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Republican Gov. Rick Perry, one of Obama's harshest critics in Texas, has asked to meet with Obama during his Aug. 9 fundraising trip to discuss his concerns about Obama's "grossly insufficient" allocation of Guard troops, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said.

Perry chief of staff Ray Sullivan has "reached out" to the White House to request a meeting between Perry and Obama when the president visits Austin and Houston for fundraisers sponsored by the Democratic National Committee and the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, Cesinger said.

"The scope and magnitude of the threat our nation faces demands a more serious and robust commitment," Perry told Obama in a recent letter.

Obama's administration has announced that it will send 1,200 Guard troops to the four states bordering Mexico beginning next Sunday. Texas, which has more than 60 percent of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, will get 20 percent of the allocation, or 250 troops. The Texas allocation equates to one troop for every five miles of the state's border with Mexico.

Arizona, which has 19 percent of the border, will get 524. California will receive 224 troops, New Mexico will get 72, and the rest will go to a national liaison office.

To read the complete article, visit www.star-telegram.com.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/26/v-print/1746873/texas-gop-wants-more-national.html

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