~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the Los Angeles Times

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OPINION

When America feared and reviled Catholics

In the early 1900s, many Americans — from ordinary citizens to those in high office — were frightened by the perceived threat from the Roman Catholic Church. Their fear had tragic consequences.

October 10, 2010

The mind-set is all too familiar: A radical religious group, lurking inside the country, owing loyalty to a foreign power, threatens America. No one denies that its members have a right to worship as they please, but good Americans, patriots, feel compelled to call for curbs against the menace they present. Because of the number of Americans sharing these fears, calls for restrictions on the religion are voiced openly and unapologetically, even proudly.

Today this description may bring to mind the flap over the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in New York, or recent calls for greater restrictions on Muslims in America, like banning their service on the Supreme Court or in the Oval Office. But in fact, it describes the year 1920, when the reviled group was Roman Catholics, not Muslims. As Mark Twain once quipped, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

In the early 1900s, many Americans were genuinely frightened by the perceived religious threat of the Roman Catholic Church and the suspected imperialistic intentions of its leader, the pope. He was plotting the overthrow of the United States, warned the fearful, to "make America Catholic." His foot soldiers, tens of thousands of Catholic men who called themselves the Knights of Columbus, were busily stockpiling arms and ammunition in the basements of their churches, all in preparation for the day when their papist leader would give the signal for the violent insurrection to begin.

The holders of such beliefs were not just some fringe crazies safely outnumbered by their clear-eyed, religiously tolerant neighbors. To the contrary, widely popular, openly anti-Catholic literature spilled from newsstands across the country, newspapers like Sen. Tom Watson's Jeffersonian out of Atlanta and the Menace of Aurora, Mo., whose subscriptions dwarfed those of the largest newspapers in New York City and Chicago combined. Elections were won on promises to oust Catholics from positions of public trust. Only "true Americans" should hold such positions, went the warning, not Catholics who were loyal first to their religious leader in Rome.

A number of state legislatures were persuaded to take steps against the perceived threat as well, mirroring the anti-Catholic fear in their "convent inspection laws." These laws, little remembered today, authorized the warrantless searches of Catholic buildings — convents, monasteries, rectories and churches — for weaponry and for young women supposedly seduced into the nunnery by Catholic lies.

Religious fear on this scale had fatal consequences. Eighty-nine years ago in Birmingham, Ala., in the midst of this simmering anti-Catholic atmosphere, Father James E. Coyle was brutally slain. Coyle, a native of Ireland, had been sent to the United States to begin his priesthood. When he dared to stand up in defense of his faith, federal agents warned the bishop in Mobile about death threats on Coyle's life and pledges to torch his Birmingham church.

Such threats were not idle. During this same period, the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan exploded after it rebranded itself a "patriotic" fraternal organization dedicated to safeguarding America against the threat of Catholics, Jews and the immigrants flooding the country in unprecedented numbers. This new Klan attracted some of "the best men in town" — doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officers, even clergymen.

On Aug. 11, 1921, one of those men — a Methodist minister, the Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson — brought a loaded gun to the porch of Coyle's home and shot him dead in front of a street full of witnesses. About an hour earlier, the priest had committed the apparently unforgivable act of marrying Stephenson's 18-year-old daughter to a practicing Catholic wallpaper hanger of Puerto Rican descent.

The KKK quickly circled its wagons around its initiate, raising funds for Stephenson's defense and hiring his lead attorney, a young future Supreme Court justice, Hugo Black. Black, it was hoped, might persuade a Southern jury to see Stephenson as the community's champion rather than a bigoted killer. Articles published in the Menace throughout the trial pounded the same theme, pitting one of the most potent worries of the day against justice itself. You can guess the outcome.

Stephenson walked out of the courthouse a free man, and he never so much as apologized. Black joined the Klan himself 18 months later and, with its support, was elected to the U.S. Senate. Only years later did he calmly state that he did not share the Klan's beliefs and was no longer a member, after a reporter revealed his membership as he prepared to take his seat on the Supreme Court. Black survived the ensuing scandal.

At the time, these men did not consider themselves religious bigots. They believed themselves patriots, upright fathers and sons, husbands and brothers protecting their families, and the nation, against a foreign threat they feared was intent on their destruction.

The anti-Catholic fever of the 1920s was not a regional story; it was an American story, extending north, east and west, casting Catholics as second-class citizens for decades. It didn't truly end for another 40 years, when presidential candidate John F. Kennedy felt compelled to say directly that his allegiance was to the United States, not the pope. Today, the worst of the anti-Catholic fervor might simply be an embarrassment, were the consequences less dire and were there not so many signs that we haven't learned from our mistakes.

Sharon Davies is a professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and the author of "Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Religion in America."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-davies-catholics-20101010,0,2794015,print.story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OPINION

Put Probation on probation

Federal supervision is needed to fix intractable problems at the L.A. County Department of Probation, where the real victims are the youths in its custody.

By Connie Rice

October 10, 2010

On a classroom wall of the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall where Los Angeles County houses — and is supposed to help — juvenile offenders, there is a sign that reads "No Reading Newspapers, No Cell Phone Use and No Alcohol Consumption During Class."

The message is for the staff.

The sign was posted after the Department of Justice found serious problems with the county's Department of Probation, including staff members drinking on the job and retaliating against whistle-blowers. The problems were so widespread that, in a 2004 memorandum of agreement, Justice Department officials required the Probation Department to "ensure that staff … do not maintain or consume alcohol at the camps" or "threaten and intimidate youth who report … mistreatment."

Six years later, the department has even bigger problems. Employees have been charged with sexually exploiting the youths in their custody, pepper-spraying them inappropriately and staging fights between kids.

After a decade of federal prodding, multiple civil rights lawsuits, muzzled warnings from the L.A. County Commission for Children and Families, deflected whistle-blower actions, dozens of unheeded Board of Supervisors resolutions and a spate of embarrassing news articles, the Probation Department's malpractice continues. Which means children in county custody are still committing suicide, dying from untreated illnesses, being "jumped" into gangs at the camps, receiving "diplomas" while still illiterate, being held in solitary confinement without needed mental health treatment and cycling directly into adult prison. As Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas recently revealed, the department even fails to feed its wards meals that meet minimal state nutrition requirements.

In August, new leadership at the Probation Department released an impressive, if disturbing, assessment that confirmed the extent of the dysfunction. It noted a lack of hiring standards, ineffective discipline, unsuitable staff, inadequate data systems, managers without authority, corruption in promotions and work rules that maximize staff convenience but damage operations. The assessment concluded that the department needed to "return to the basics."

But that's like recommending Mel Gibson attend a session with Miss Manners. The problems are so profound that, in my opinion, the department's new leaders need outside help to overhaul and replace the current culture. Among their recent findings is that staff need to learn "the expectation of 40 hours of work in a workweek," and "the consequences of failing to adhere to policies." It's hard to imagine solving such problems that deeply rooted without outside intervention.

For decades, the county Board of Supervisors' oversight has been ineffective, hiring standards lax and training inadequate. Employees have refused to collect data, conduct assessments or perform evaluations. Too many kids are locked up, and the idea of rehabilitating them was never effectively embraced. The department is organized to serve staff needs rather than those of the kids in its care, and the resulting culture of entitled indolence shields incompetence, shuns excellence and sinks the good employees struggling to do a good job.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. The county presided over a similar disintegration of mission with Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. As far back as the 1970s, some of King/Drew's best nurses were sounding the alarm, demanding the removal of incompetent colleagues who were endangering patients. Instead, the county transferred the good nurses and left the incompetent ones in place. Some 30 years later, King/Drew's emergency facility was mismanaged into closure and the Board of Supervisors was finally forced to cede control over a new hospital to independent medical professionals.

So, why does the county continue to allow institutions to sink to such depths?

The County of Los Angeles, the nation's largest local government, is a world unto itself. Its huge, cubicle-filled departments are reactive and risk-averse. This sclerotic mind-set limits action to "inside factors" that bureaucrats can control from their desks. A refusal to deal with "outside factors" — say, the gangs operating in juvenile detention facilities — means that not only are problems rarely solved but, as one expert in child development noted, new ones are created: "The county grows a lot of the worst kids from inside its own departments."

The county's departments operate as fiefdoms, competing for funding and votes from the Board of Supervisors. Cross-department cooperation is so rare that when the Probation Department and the Department of Children and Family Services — two agencies that ought to be in constant contact — worked together to keep a family intact, it generated a Section A article in this paper.

Because transparency might bring embarrassment and more inept micromanaging from the board, departments are opaque, seemingly unable to produce such simple information as the number of employees in a given program. The supervisors, lacking information, try to exert control through budgets and interfering in departmental hiring, operations and policies. Not every county department has probation's level of dysfunction, but the big departments that deal with poor children all tend to bury problems to avoid the supervisors' wrath. Bringing in new managers at the top of the Probation Department will definitely not be enough.

It's time for outside intervention. Because the county has shown itself unable to protect the basic civil rights of the children in its care, the situation demands deeper and more aggressive intervention by the Justice Department. Just as with the resurrection of King/Drew, expanded federal supervision must empower outside professionals to help the new leaders create a functioning Probation Department.

In addition, voters need to create a child-safety enforcement and accountability unit that has the power to publish data and enforce the well-being of the county's most vulnerable kids without micromanaging by supervisors. As taxpayers investing more than $630 million a year in the Probation Department, we must demand child safety and fully rehabilitated youth, and end this abysmal revolving door of danger and abuse.

Connie Rice is a civil rights attorney in Los Angeles.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rice-probation-department-20101010,0,7152522,print.story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OPINION

L.A. County Probation Dept. blues

What those in the system need is to be treated like human beings by adults who care about them and want to help them change. We did it once; we can do it again.

By Sal Martinez

October 10, 2010

I arrived at Camp Mendenhall in the hills above Palmdale on a cold November day in 1987. I was 17 years old. I had shackles on my legs. And I was about to serve a seven-month sentence after being shot by an LAPD officer during a drug raid. I was selling PCP.

For years, I had been a gangbanger in the Boyle Heights neighborhood on Los Angeles' Eastside. I knew how to use a shotgun and an assault rifle. I knew how to protect a drug house from rival gangs. I expected to be dead before I was 20.

As the van pulled into the probation camp that fall, I had nothing but contempt for the cops who arrested me and the court that sent me to this Godforsaken place. But that first day, when I was signed over to the camp and dropped off at the director's office, I experienced something completely new.

Mr. Garrison walked in and looked directly at me. "I don't care what's in your file," this man said to me in a smooth, still voice. "I do care about how you leave here. It won't be easy at first. But we will guide you." For the first time in my life, someone was offering to alter my destiny.

From the minute my head was shaved and I was assigned to a camp unit, the regimen was tough. I had to introduce myself to every staff member: Last name: Martinez! Dorm Unit: Yankees! Sentence: Track 2 (Six months to a year)! My first night I was deducted five points for speaking without seeking permission.

Mandatory morning exercise included cleaning my nails, my ears and my wardrobe. I must have cut my face a hundred times before I could master the art of shaving off my few facial hairs.

And I still remember the abuse that Mr. Halsey would hurl at us every day. "You wards of the court are losers! You wards of the court are the reasons I have a nice home!" he would yell, daring us to commit more crime when we got out so his friends in the prison system could keep their jobs.

But in the end, when you were getting ready to leave, Mr. Halsey would quietly tell you that he would gladly trade in his fortune to see you never ever come back to a camp or a prison.

It was that kind of caring ethic that guided most of the people who worked in the probation system back then. Each one had a message for us.

Mr. Palumbo, who used words I couldn't understand to describe my problems, made it a condition of my release that I learn one new word a day from the dictionary.

In the camp school, Mrs. Love gave me the first "A" I ever received, helping me unlock skills and interests I never knew I had.

And no one did more for me than Mary Ridgway, my street probation officer. Mary, whom I first met on my last day at camp, would become my guardian angel.

When I left Camp Mendenhall on May 24, 1988, and went home, it was Mary who stayed on me to abandon the gang life in Boyle Heights that had gotten me into trouble in the first place. She walked me to the local enrichment program and made sure I finished school.

She visited me at home and took me on field trips to Catholic retirement homes and sit-down restaurants, where she taught me how to read a menu and how to eat with a knife and fork. When I was a fool, she called me a fool. And she didn't hesitate to report my friends for probation violations and send them back to jail if they kept dealing drugs or if she felt they would be safer in camp than on the street.

Mary, who remained my friend for the next two decades, died tragically last year after a short bout with cancer.

Sadly, I'm afraid the approach to young people that she embodied is withering too.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department is at a crossroads. Fights are roiling the camps and halls where our juvenile offenders are locked up. Corrupt probation officers are lining their own pockets. There is now talk of closing some detention centers.

When I visit the camps — which I do from time to time as a community volunteer — I see probation officers dressed in combat boots and fatigues acting like soldiers, not teachers. No one is talking to the kids. Sometimes, they are left to just sit around doing nothing. Many kids today cycle through the camps so quickly that they don't get a chance to take a real break from the street and open themselves to another, less destructive path.

These kids may have committed violent crimes. But they aren't all that different from the gangsters I grew up with. What they need is to be treated like human beings by adults who care about them and want to help them change.

There is a blueprint for doing that. I know. I was once part of this system. And it saved my life.

Sal Martinez works as warehouse supervisor and volunteers as a youth advocate in Boyle Heights. He is married and has two children.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-martinez-probation-20101010,0,3075717,print.story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the New York Times

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Allies in War, but the Goals Clash

WASHINGTON

IN the panoply of national security conundrums facing the Obama administration, there is one that stands central.

Can the United States ever succeed in the Afghanistan war if its two principal allies mistrust each other? Indeed, can the war succeed if one of those two principal allies is in cahoots with the enemy?

The enemy, of course, is the Taliban. And the allies are the Pakistani and Afghan governments. Troops from both countries, as well as American forces, have been fighting elements of the Taliban on their respective soils.

But Pakistan has also been accused of pulling its punches in that fight, because it fears the day when a strong Afghanistan might align with India. It would be convenient for Pakistan if the Taliban remained a force to prevent that.

That explains why suspicions of such double-dealing were the talk of Washington last week, spurred by the multiple attacks on NATO convoys that just about every diplomat, foreign policy official and Beltway taxi driver laid at the feet of the Pakistani government.

In retaliation for American helicopter strikes that killed three Pakistani border soldiers on Sept. 30, the Pakistani government had shut down a border crossing used to supply the Afghan war effort. That offered Taliban and Qaeda insurgents a golden opportunity to blow up the NATO convoys, and within a week, three major attacks destroyed dozens of trucks.

Although the United States responded by blanketing Islamabad with mea culpas for the helicopter strikes, the incident has laid bare the fundamental challenge of the American-Pakistan alliance: When it comes to Afghanistan, America and Pakistan have very different national security interests.

President Obama defines American national security interests in South Asia as revolving around the need to prevent the region from becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks on the United States and American allies.

That's why, Mr. Obama says, American troops are in Afghanistan, and that's why the United States is pushing the Pakistani government to act on its soil against militants like the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Haqqani network. That's also why American troops were engaged in cross-border strikes.

But Pakistan, for its part, defines its national security interests as revolving around India, its nemesis in a tangle of disputes that have proven intractable for six decades. Every step that the Pakistani government takes is seen through that prism.

What Pakistan wants most in Afghanistan is an assurance that India cannot use it to threaten Pakistan. For that, a radical Islamic movement like the Taliban, with strong ties to kin in Pakistan, fits the bill. That is why the Pakistani government's intelligence agencies helped the Taliban in its initial rise to power in the 1990s.

Now, Pakistan wants to ensure against the possibility of an Afghan national government with a strong army emerging on its border and aligning with India. So supporting the Afghan Taliban is again a hedge, as it was in the 1990s.

What's more, the Pakistanis don't believe that the United States will stay in Afghanistan, and Mr. Obama's announcement that he will begin a pullout starting in July 2011 has exacerbated that belief. And if the United States leaves, the Pakistanis believe, it is only a matter of time before the Afghan Taliban return to power. When they do, Islamabad wants to make sure that it has kept in the Taliban's good graces.

Finally — again because of India — the Pakistani government wants to make sure that its historic allies, including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, will be deeply entrenched in any efforts to reach a political settlement that would involve power-sharing in Afghanistan.

“The Haqqanis represent a powerful element of the Pashtuns,” said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. “Those are the tribes that straddle the border.” The Pakistani government, Mr. Nawaz said, “feels that if the Pashtuns are in power, Indians are less likely to have a strong hold, because the Indian relationship has been very overtly with the Northern Alliance.” He was referring to the group of largely non-Pashtun Afghan militias that ousted the Taliban in 2001 with American assistance.

Moeed W. Yusuf, a South Asia adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, adds: “Pakistan sees that any political settlement in Afghanistan that does not include groups that are friendly to Pakistan, like the Haqqani network, will mean that Pakistan will have gotten the rough end of the deal. It will not be able to ensure an Afghanistan which does not allow inroads to India.”

Why not give the Pakistanis the strategic hedge that they want? For anyone who hasn't read the latest policy brief on the Haqqani network, here's a quick summary: From its base in the frontier region near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the network led by Sirajuddin Haqqani is suspected of running much of the insurgency around Kabul, and across eastern Afghanistan; that insurgency has carried out car bombings and kidnappings, including spectacular attacks on American military installations. It is allied with Al Qaeda and with leaders of the Afghan Taliban branch that answers to Mullah Muhammad Omar. Though he is now based in Quetta, Pakistan, Mullah Omar was in charge when the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan and sheltered Al Qaeda there, notably on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, Western officials have blamed the Haqqani network for a string of attacks, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the kidnappings of the British journalist Sean Langan and the New York Times reporter David Rohde, and hundreds of attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. Sirajuddin Haqqani is believed to be in the top tier of the allied forces' “kill or capture” list.

In short, the Haqqani network has a lot of American blood on its hands.

“The aims of the U.S. and Pakistan in Afghanistan,” says Mr. Nawaz, of the Atlantic Council, “are not congruent.”

So given all this, the logical thing to do might be to focus on the Pakistan-India problem. After all, if you remove Pakistan's fears of India as a threat, maybe the Pakistanis will stop working against American interests in Afghanistan?

Not so fast.

“It's unfixable,” said C. Christine Fair, assistant professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. “That's why we'll be working on this for the next 50 years.”

Professor Fair argues that because India is on the ascent, and will be even stronger militarily and economically in 10 years than it is now, the Indian government has no reason to negotiate seriously with Pakistan over the host of issues that bedevil the two adversaries now, when it can throw its weight around much easier later.

“If there was an easy way out of this, someone would have figured it out,” Professor Fair said. “But I don't think it's possible to untie this Gordian knot.”

Of course, Alexander the Great managed to conquer the Gordian knot. But we shall leave musings of how well he did in Afghanistan for a later article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/weekinreview/10cooper.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Marijuana, Once Divisive, Brings Some Families Closer

To the rites of middle-age passage, some families are adding another: buying marijuana for aging parents.

Bryan, 46, a writer who lives in Illinois, began supplying his parents about five years ago, after he told them about his own marijuana use. When he was growing up, he said, his parents were very strict about illegal drugs.

“We would have grounded him,” said his mother, who is 72.

But with age and the growing acceptance of medical marijuana, his parents were curious. His father had a heart ailment, his mother had dizzy spells and nausea, and both were worried about Alzheimer's disease and cancer. They looked at some research and decided marijuana was worth a try.

Bryan, who like others interviewed for this article declined to use his full name for legal reasons, began making them brownies and ginger snaps laced with the drug. Illinois does not allow medical use of marijuana, though 14 states and the District of Columbia do. At their age, his mother said, they were not concerned about it leading to harder drugs, which had been one of their worries with Bryan.

“We have concerns about the law, but I would not go back to not taking the cookie and going through what I went through,” she said, adding that her dizzy spells and nausea had receded. “Of course, if they catch me, I'll have to quit taking it.”

This family's story is still a rare one. Less than 1 percent of people 65 and over said they had smoked marijuana in the last year, according to a 2009 survey by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. But as the generation that embraced marijuana as teenagers passes into middle age, doctors expect to see more marijuana use by their elderly patients.

“I think use of medical marijuana in older people is going to be much greater in the future,” said Dan G. Blazer, a professor of geriatric psychology at Duke University who has studied drug use and abuse among older people.

The rate for people ages 50 to 65 who said they smoke marijuana was nearly 4 percent — about six times as high as the 65-and-over crowd — suggesting that they were more likely to continue whatever patterns of drug use they had established in their younger years. In both age groups, the rate of marijuana abuse was very low, about 1 in 800.

Cannabinoids, the active agents in marijuana, have shown promise as pain relievers, especially for pain arising from nerve damage, said Dr. Seddon R. Savage, a pain specialist and president of the American Pain Society, a medical professionals' group.

Two cannabinoid prescription drugs are approved for use in this country, but only to treat nausea or appetite loss. And while preliminary research suggests that cannabinoids may help in fighting cancer and reducing spasms in people with multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease, the results have been mixed.

Dr. Savage said doctors should be concerned about older patients using marijuana. “It's putting people at risk of falls, impaired cognition, impaired memory, loss of motor control,” she said. “Beside the legal aspects, it's unsupervised use of a pretty potent drug. Under almost all circumstances, there are alternatives that are just as effective.”

Dr. Savage added, however, that there was a considerable range of opinions about marijuana use among pain specialists, and that many favored it.

Older people may face special risks with marijuana, in part because of the secrecy that surrounds illegal drug use, said Dr. William Dale, section chief of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center, who said he would not oppose a law allowing medical marijuana use in Illinois.

The drug raises users' heart rates and lowers their blood pressure, so doctors needed to weigh its effects beside those of other medications that users might be taking, he said. But patients do not always confide their illegal drug use, he said.

“It's a fine balance between being supportive of patients to gain their trust and giving them your best recommendations,” Dr. Dale said. “I wasn't taught this in medical school.”

For some families, marijuana, which was once the root of all their battles, has brought them closer together. Instead of parental warnings and punishment, there are questions about how to light a water pipe; instead of the Grateful Dead, there are recipes for low-sodium brownies.

But for parents, there is also the knowledge that they are putting their children at risk of arrest.

“I was very uncomfortable getting my son involved,” said the father of Alex, 21. The father, who is 54, started using marijuana to relieve his pain from degenerative disc disease. He soon discovered that Alex, who lives in Minnesota a few miles away, had access to better marijuana than he did.

Alex's father had smoked marijuana when he was younger; Alex, by contrast, had been active in antidrug groups at his school and church. In college, he started smoking infrequently and studying marijuana's medicinal properties.

“When he told me he was using cannabis, I think he expected it to be a bigger deal for me,” Alex said. “But it opened my eyes to what he was going through.”

Before trying marijuana, Alex's father took OxyContin, a narcotic, which he said made him “feel like a zombie.” He also took antidepressants to relieve the mood disorder he associated with the OxyContin. Marijuana has helped him cut down on the painkillers, he said.

He and Alex have smoked together twice, but it is not a regular practice, both said. Yet they say the drug has strengthened their relationship.

“We spend our bonding time making brownies,” Alex said.

Florence, 89, an artist who lives in New York, smokes mainly for relief from her spinal stenosis -- usually one or two puffs before going to sleep, she said. She buys her pipes through an online shop and gets her marijuana from her daughter, Loren, who is 65.

“A person brings it to me,” said Loren, who uses marijuana recreationally. “I'm not out on a street corner.” Florence said that she had told all of her doctors that she was using marijuana, and that none had ever discouraged her or warned of interactions with her prescription drugs, including painkillers.

“I think I've influenced my own physician on the subject,” she said. “She came to me and asked me for some for another patient.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/us/10pot.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EDITORIAL

Lethal Force Under Law

The Obama administration has sharply expanded the shadow war against terrorists, using both the military and the C.I.A. to track down and kill hundreds of them, in a dozen countries, on and off the battlefield.

The drone program has been effective, killing more than 400 Al Qaeda militants this year alone, according to American officials, but fewer than 10 noncombatants. But assassinations are a grave act and subject to abuse — and imitation by other countries. The government needs to do a better job of showing the world that it is acting in strict compliance with international law.

The United States has the right under international law to try to prevent attacks being planned by terrorists connected to Al Qaeda, up to and including killing the plotters. But it is not within the power of a commander in chief to simply declare anyone anywhere a combatant and kill them, without the slightest advance independent oversight. The authorization for military force approved by Congress a week after 9/11 empowers the president to go after only those groups or countries that committed or aided the 9/11 attacks. The Bush administration's distortion of that mandate led to abuses that harmed the United States around the world.

The issue of who can be targeted applies directly to the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen hiding in Yemen, who officials have admitted is on an assassination list. Did he inspire through words the Army psychiatrist who shot up Fort Hood, Tex., last November, and the Nigerian man who tried to blow up an airliner on Christmas? Or did he actively participate in those plots, and others? The difference is crucial. If the United States starts killing every Islamic radical who has called for jihad, there will be no end to the violence.

American officials insist that Mr. Awlaki is involved with actual terror plots. But human rights lawyers working on his behalf say that is not the case, and have filed suit to get him off the target list. The administration wants the case thrown out on state-secrets grounds.

The Obama administration needs to go out of its way to demonstrate that it is keeping its promise to do things differently than the Bush administration did. It must explain how targets are chosen, demonstrate that attacks are limited and are a last resort, and allow independent authorities to oversee the process.

PUBLIC GUIDELINES The administration keeps secret its standards for putting people on terrorist or assassination lists. In March, Harold Koh, legal adviser to the State Department, said the government adheres to international law, attacking only military targets and keeping civilian casualties to an absolute minimum. “Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust,” he said in a speech, without describing them.

Privately, government officials say no C.I.A. drone strike takes place without the approval of the United States ambassador to the target country, the chief of the C.I.A. station, a deputy at the agency, and the agency's director. So far, President Obama's system of command seems to have prevented any serious abuses, but the approval process is entirely within the administration. After the abuses under President Bush, the world is not going to accept a simple “trust us” from the White House.

There have been too many innocent people rounded up for detention and subjected to torture, too many cases of mistaken identity or trumped-up connections to terror. Unmanned drones eliminate the element of risk to American forces and make it seductively easy to attack.

The government needs to make public its guidelines for determining who is a terrorist and who can be targeted for death. It should clearly describe how it follows international law in these cases and list the internal procedures and checks it uses before a killing is approved. That can be done without formally acknowledging the strikes are taking place in specific countries.

LIMIT TARGETS The administration should state that it is following international law by acting strictly in self-defense, targeting only people who are actively planning or participating in terror, or who are leaders of Al Qaeda or the Taliban — not those who raise funds for terror groups, or who exhort others to acts of terror.

Special measures are taken before an American citizen is added to the terrorist list, officials say, requiring the approval of lawyers from the National Security Council and the Justice Department. But again, those measures have not been made public. Doing so would help ensure that people like Mr. Awlaki are being targeted for terrorist actions, not their beliefs or associations.

A LAST RESORT Assassination should in every case be a last resort. Before a decision is made to kill, particularly in areas away from recognized battlefields, the government needs to consider every other possibility for capturing the target short of lethal force. Terrorists operating on American soil should be captured using police methods, and not subject to assassination.

If practical, the United States should get permission from a foreign government before carrying out an attack on its soil. The government is reluctant to discuss any of these issues publicly, in part to preserve the official fiction that the United States is not waging a formal war in Pakistan and elsewhere, but it would not harm that effort to show the world how seriously it takes international law by making clear its limits.

INDEPENDENT OVERSIGHT Dealing out death requires additional oversight outside the administration. Particularly in the case of American citizens, like Mr. Awlaki, the government needs to employ some due process before depriving someone of life. It would be logistically impossible to conduct a full-blown trial in absentia of every assassination target, as the lawyers for Mr. Awlaki prefer. But judicial review could still be employed.

The government could establish a court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes wiretaps on foreign agents inside the United States. Before it adds people to its target list and begins tracking them, the government could take its evidence to this court behind closed doors — along with proof of its compliance with international law — and get the equivalent of a judicial warrant in a timely and efficient way.

Congressional leaders are secretly briefed on each C.I.A. attack, and say they are satisfied with the information they get and with the process. Nonetheless, that process is informal and could be changed at any time by this president or his successors. Formal oversight is a better way of demonstrating confidence in American methods.

Self-defense under international law not only shows the nation's resolve and power, but sends a powerful message to other countries that the United States couples drastic action with careful judgment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/opinion/10sun1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From Google News

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anti-gay torture allegations stun neighbors in NYC

By VERENA DOBNIK and DAVID B. CARUSO (AP)

NEW YORK — Allegations that gang members attacked two teens and a man last week because they were gay don't square with the reputation of their Bronx neighborhood, where gay men and women live openly and neighbors are tolerant of homosexuality, residents and city leaders said.

One teen even called the suspects themselves "chill," though she and other neighbors said the gang members often partied and were violent when drinking.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was sickened by the accusations of violence, which police said included sodomizing one man with a plunger handle and hourslong torture of others, "and saddened by the anti-gay bias." The attacks came following a string of teen suicides around the country last month that were attributed to anti-gay bullying.

Eight suspects have been arrested, and a ninth was at large early Sunday. The suspects were awaiting possible arraignment Sunday, the Bronx District Attorney's office said.

Several of the suspects had made statements implicating themselves in the crime, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

Asked if the men had expressed remorse, Kelly said, "I wouldn't call it remorse."

Such violent acts "chip away at the tolerance and equality that have always been the pillars of our great city," Bloomberg said. "... New Yorkers have always had an answer to acts of prejudice and intolerance, and that is: We reject them. We renounce them."

Police said the nine members of a gang that called itself the Latin King Goonies heard a rumor that one of their new recruits, a 17-year-old, was gay, and trapped and brutalized the men on Oct. 3-4.

Investigators say the teen was stripped, beaten and sodomized with a plunger handle until he confessed to having had sex with a 30-year-old man who lives a few blocks away.

The group found a second teen they suspected was gay and tortured him, too, police said. Finally, they invited the 30-year-old to the house, telling him they were having a party. When he arrived, they burned, beat and tortured him for hours. The attack included sodomizing him with a miniature baseball bat, police said.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is gay, and other elected officials went to the empty brick townhouse where the attacks took place and passed out leaflets Saturday.

"People were very, very clear that they wanted it to be known that the acts of these individuals do not represent their neighborhood," said Quinn. "They were as stunned as anyone that something so violent, so premeditated ... could happen here."

Gay men and women live openly in the largely Hispanic neighborhood, Morris Heights, and while residents were disturbed by some past violent behavior by the suspects, some said they hadn't previously targeted homosexuals.

The suspects arrested Thursday and Friday were identified as Ildefonzo Mendez, 23; David Rivera, 21; four 17-year-olds, Steven Caraballo, Denis Peitars, Nelson Falu and Bryan Almonte; and Brian Cepeda, 16. All face charges including robbery, assault and unlawful imprisonment as hate crimes; Mendez, Rivera and Falu were additionally charged with committing a criminal sex act.

The eighth suspect, Elmer Confresi, 23, of the Bronx, turned himself in Saturday. A lawyer representing the ninth suspect had arranged for his client to turn himself in, but the suspect never showed, Kelly said.

No one answer a knock at Rivera's door in the Bronx . Telephone numbers could not be found for the other suspects, and it wasn't immediately clear whether they had attorneys.

Bryan Almonte's stepmother, Carmen, told The New York Times that he was hospitalized Friday after going into diabetic shock during his arrest. She said his father died three months ago.

"Bryan is not a bad kid," she told the newspaper. "If he was there, he didn't do anything."

Cepeda was interested in becoming a police officer, said his mother, Ada Cepeda.

"He's not rude; he's quite intelligent," Cepeda told the Times. "I'm a realist. It's not that my son is a saint. But I doubt he would do that."

A gay 16-year-old who lives in the neighborhood said she was friends with all of the suspects.

"They were chill. There was no beef," Natty Martinez said.

"I had no idea they had no heart."

Sitting on the steps of the home where the attacks took place, Martinez and three friends said the accused men had frequently partied in an empty apartment on the block.

The young men were kind and some even went to church, the girls said. But they added that when the group drank heavily, their behavior worsened and they had sometimes beat people.

"How can people do something like that?" asked Keith Handsford, 35, an air conditioning repairman who lives in the neighborhood.

He said he has two gay teenage nieces who live in the neighborhood, who have had no problems with serious harassment.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gxmtIu3XkGzNbdSZznbjAy9l1aIgD9IOMEF00?docId=D9IOMEF00

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eighth suspect in anti-gay beatings is arrested

The man turned himself in, and investigators are still seeking a ninth suspect. The gang members are accused of attacking two teens and one 30-year-old man.

Times wire services

October 10, 2010

NEW YORK—An eighth suspect is in custody in the anti-gay gang attack on three men in New York City, police said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters at City Hall that the man turned himself in at a police precinct in the Bronx on Saturday afternoon.

Investigators are still seeking a ninth suspect.

Police say the gang went berserk after learning that a 17-year-old recruit was gay.

Investigators say the teen was stripped, beaten and sodomized with a wooden plunger handle at an empty Bronx apartment. Gang members then allegedly grabbed a second gay teen and tortured him.

The third attack involved a 30-year-old man who was lured to the apartment and sodomized with a small baseball bat.

"When you hear the details of what occurred, torture really is the only word that comes to mind," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a Saturday news conference with Kelly.

"I was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened at the anti-gay bias that contributed to them," Bloomberg said. "Hate crimes such as these strike fear into all of us."

Kelly on Friday had announced the arrest of seven suspects.

The eighth turned himself in Saturday and police had received word that the ninth suspect was prepared to do the same but "wound up not doing it," Kelly said.

It is tragic to see what hate can do," Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said Saturday. "These three men were brutally attacked … simply for who they are."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-new-york-hate-crimes-arrest-20101010,0,6384384,print.story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bloomberg, other N.Y. politicians decry attacks on 3 gay men

NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Saturday that he was "sickened" by a string of attacks against gay men last weekend in the Bronx, joining a chorus of New York City leaders in condemning what many are calling the most horrific anti-gay violence in the city in recent memory.

Bloomberg said the quick arrests in the case - eight suspects are in custody and a ninth is sought - should be a message that people who commit hate crimes in New York City "will go to jail for a very long time."

Police said the nine members of a gang that called itself the Latin King Goonies went berserk after hearing a rumor that one of their new recruits, a 17-year-old, was gay. In an abandoned building, the teen was stripped, beaten and sodomized with a plunger handle until he confessed to having had sex with a 30-year-old man who lives a few blocks away, investigators say.

Then, the group grabbed a second teen they suspected was gay and tortured him, too.

Finally, they lured the 30-year-old to the house, telling him they were having a party. When he arrived, they beat and tortured him for hours. He was sodomized with a miniature baseball bat and burned with a cigarette, police said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said several of the suspects had made statements implicating themselves in the crime. Asked if they had expressed any remorse for what they had done, Kelly said, "I wouldn't call it remorse."

Five City Council members and other elected officials visited the block Saturday, including Speaker Christine Quinn, who is gay. They were joined by area ministers, civic leaders and residents. "People were very, very clear that they wanted it to be known that the acts of these individuals do not represent their neighborhood," said Quinn. "They were as stunned as anyone that something so violent, so premeditated . . . could happen here."

The first of the attacks happened in the early morning hours of Oct. 3. The next two began the next night, and lasted into the early hours of Oct. 4.

Residents on the block said they were shocked.

"How can people do something like that?" asked Keith Handsford, an air conditioning repairman who lives next to the building where the assaults took place.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/09/AR2010100904813.html

.