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February 13, 2011

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To Defend the Accused in a Tucson Rampage, First a Battle to Get Inside a Mind

TUCSON — Judy Clarke, the public defender for the man charged in the Tucson shooting, Jared L. Loughner, has made motions on his behalf and entered a plea for him of not guilty. But one of her most essential acts of lawyering came when she patted Mr. Loughner on the back in court last month, leaned in close and whispered in his ear.

For the small cadre of lawyers specializing in federal death penalty cases, getting the defendant to trust them, or just to grudgingly accept them, can be half the battle. That is especially true when mental illness is a factor, as it may be in the case of Mr. Loughner, a troubled young man accused of opening fire on a crowd on Jan. 8 in an attempt to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

In her unassuming, almost motherly way, Ms. Clarke excels at getting close to people implicated in awful crimes. In jailhouse meetings that can stretch most of the day, she listens intently and grows to know her outcast clients in a way few ever have in their troubled lives, colleagues say.

Still, Ms. Clarke, who has made a name for herself representing notorious murderers and terrorists, sometimes falls short. One client threatened to kill her during his trial. More than one has tried to dump her midway through.

How Mr. Loughner and Ms. Clark get along, or fail to, will set the course for how the criminal case unfolds. One of Ms. Clarke's biggest challenges may be persuading Mr. Loughner to allow her to raise questions about his mental health; that issue led to conflict between Ms. Clarke and some of her previous clients, like the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski, and the Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui.

“It could go many different ways,” said Michael First, a psychiatrist who has worked on a case with Ms. Clarke. “He could be totally acknowledging he's mentally ill, or he could be the Kaczynski and Moussaoui type and be absolutely adamant there is nothing wrong with him.”

New York Times

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Inmate's Death Exposes Health Care Problems in Local Jails

LONGVIEW — Amy Lynn Cowling was 33, she had three children, and her first grandchild was born a day after she died in an East Texas jail — slumped over her bed, clutching a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, after a day of wailing and seizures.

Ms. Cowling was pulled over on Christmas Eve for speeding and arrested for outstanding warrants on minor charges. She was bipolar and methadone-dependent and took a raft of medications each day. For the five days she was in Gregg County Jail, Ms. Cowling and her family pleaded with officials to give her the medicines that sat in her purse in the jail's storage room. They never did.

Ms. Cowling's death is the most recent at Sheriff Maxey Cerliano's Gregg County Jail in Longview. Since 2005, nine inmates have died there — most were attributed to health conditions like cancer, diabetes and stomach ulcers — far more than at other facilities its size. Bowie County Jail, in East Texas on the Arkansas border, reported five deaths in the same period, as did Brazoria County Jail, south of Houston on the Gulf Coast. In Williamson County in Central Texas near Austin, the jail reported just two deaths.

Interviews with prison experts and people with firsthand experience with the Gregg County lockup and its medical staff, as well as a review of scores of public documents, reveal a troubled local jail where staff turnover is high and inmates routinely complain about conditions. Criminal justice advocates say the situation in Gregg County is not unique; it is representative of systemic problems that plague local jails statewide.

Sheriff Cerliano defends the medical treatment in his jail and said he does his best to weed out bad jailers. “It's only about doing the right thing,” he said.

Vicki Bankhead never went a day without talking to Ms. Cowling, her daughter and best friend. “I miss hearing her voice,” Ms. Bankhead said, sobbing. Ms. Cowling became a mother at age 15. She had become addicted to prescription pills and was found guilty in 2001 of possessing a fraudulent prescription. She struggled to keep a job.

New York Times

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$650k of cocaine found in backpack on Baltimore ship

The blue backpack with eight bricks of cocaine, totalling more than 20 pounds, was detected in a container of steel machine parts on the shipping vessel Ital Lunare, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The ship traveled from China to Panama, then stopped in Georgia and New Jersey, before mooring in Maryland, CBP spokesman Steve Sapp said.

Sapp said the cocaine was likely a "drop load" deposited on the ship by someone trying to smuggle drugs into the United States and it could have been placed on board at any of the ports.

"Someone must have been on this side waiting to get the drugs," he said.

It's now rare for authorities to find drugs on a ship in this region. That might be happening because fewer vessels are arriving from source nations or because other drug supply chains have been developed through air or ground transportation, Sapp said.

He said it's also unusual to find drugs on a vessel arriving from China, because the contraband is usually more valuable there. Authorities say they believe the cocaine was deposited on the ship in Panama.

Washington Examiner

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Big myth on campus

Why privacy shouldn't trump public safety

In the weeks since the Tucson shootings left six people dead and 13 wounded, I've heard a lot of denial on my campus and elsewhere. I've heard, for instance, that the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, was determined to commit violence and would have succeeded with or without a gun. I've heard too many people imply that lunatics will be lunatics, and there's just nothing to be done about them. And I've heard that it can't happen here – not in our state, not at our school. None of this is true.

For too long, we've been in denial about the risk of domestic terrorism on college campuses. In one 2009 study, the majority of college counseling centers surveyed said they were unlikely to discuss guns with students seeking mental health treatment. And a 2008 survey of university police chiefs revealed that the primary barrier to adopting campaigns to prevent gun violence was the belief that it “was not a problem on their campus.” This from a sample of about 400 colleges where 1 in 4 had experienced a firearm incident that past year.

The truth is, colleges aren't ivory towers, and student-age gun owners tend to be more dangerous, not less, than the general public. “Their brains are still developing, and they don't have the same impulse or judgment control as adults,” says Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “So there's a much greater danger when young people get access to firearms.” Harvard researchers have also found that student gun owners are less law-abiding than their peers and more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as binge drinking.

Even though 18- to 20-year-olds make up only 5 percent of the US population, Vice says, they are responsible for about 20 percent of the homicide and manslaughter cases.

At the memorial service in Tucson last month, President Obama assumed the role of healer in chief. He was right to call for a renewed faith in civility, but avoiding the subject of how to improve national safety was hardly a profile in courage. It was a missed opportunity to push forward policy that could reduce the chance that such tragedies will happen again.

Boston.com

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February 12, 2011

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Chandra Levy's killer sentenced to 60 years in prison

Ingmar Guandique was convicted last year of the 2001 killing of Chandra Levy, a Washington intern. Her disappearance became national news when she was romantically linked to Gary Condit, a married congressman.

WASHINGTON — The man convicted of killing former Washington intern Chandra Levy nearly a decade ago was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison. Ingmar Guandique, 29, will not be eligible for parole until he is at least 80, D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher said, rejecting pleas for a minimum sentence by lawyers for the illegal immigrant from El Salvador. "I think he is a dangerous person," Fisher said. "I think he is a dangerous person to women in particular, and I think will remain one for quite some time."

Levy's mother, Susan Levy, addressed the killer during the sentencing hearing. "Mr. Guandique, you are lower than a cockroach," she said, the McClatchy Newspapers reported, before closing her statement with: "[expeletive] you."

Guandique, who listened to Friday's proceedings through a headset, was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and was mostly restrained, although he appeared to be crying when the judge asked for his comments. "I'm very sorry for what happened to your daughter," Guandique said, addressing Levy's parents through an interpreter. "But I had nothing to do with it. I am innocent."

Levy, then 24, was planning to return to her hometown of Modesto, Calif., after completing an internship with the Bureau of Prisons. She disappeared on May 1, 2001, while running in the capital city's Rock Creek Park, where her remains were discovered 13 months later. Her disappearance set off a dragnet by the police and FBI that prompted headlines worldwide because it initially ensnared Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.), a married man who reportedly was having an affair with Levy.

Guandique was convicted of first-degree murder in November. He was serving a 10-year prison sentence for assaulting two women at knifepoint in the park around the time of Levy's disappearance and was to have been released in December. The new sentence will keep him in jail until at least 2062.

Guandique's attorneys discussed his underprivileged upbringing in El Salvador and his psychological problems when making a case for a shorter sentence, but Fisher said if Guandique didn't deserve life in prison, he deserved something close to it. "That may be a life sentence," Fisher said. "In all likelihood it is a life sentence."

Fisher also recommended counseling for sexually deviant behavior and five years of supervision if Guandique is eventually released from prison. Fisher cited Guandique's history of criminal behavior against women and disturbing comments to police about an inability to stop himself from assaulting people in isolated and vulnerable positions. "The victim was a young, vibrant person with her whole life in ahead of her," Fisher said. "This is a truly powerful crime."

Los Angeles Times

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A dependency court cure

A bill that calls for California's dependency courts to conduct open proceedings would benefit children.

Secrecy in California's dependency courts, where cases of child abuse and neglect are heard, has protected negligent parents, foster parents and social workers from serious scrutiny of their actions. And it has failed children.

Elsewhere in the nation, these once-secret hearings have been opened, to positive results. Transparency has led to improved care and greater public confidence in Oregon and Minnesota and more than a dozen other states. California, however, has continued to conduct most dependency proceedings in closed courtrooms, shielded not only from the media but also from advocates for children and other interested observers. Elected leaders like to boast of their commitment to transparency and accountability, but in this case they have opted instead for closure and secrecy.

Thankfully, Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) has introduced a bill to remedy that. Details of the ultimate proposal will emerge from hearings next month to take testimony from experts on all sides of the debate. But Feuer's underlying goal is laudable: to insist that dependency proceedings be presumptively open rather than routinely closed. Though that's monumentally important, it's also notably modest. Feuer is not suggesting that all hearings in all dependency courts would henceforth be open to the public. In cases in which judges conclude that a child's welfare would be best served by closing a hearing, they could do so. But that decision would be made against a backdrop assumption that public accountability is desirable.

Opening the state's dependency courts is an idea that has been gaining momentum in recent years. Michael Nash, the presiding judge of Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, is a stalwart supporter, and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which once opposed it, now favors it as well. Public employee unions, whose members might be subjected to greater scrutiny, remain wary, but they should come to see that public proceedings will help instill public confidence. Witness the case of police officers who once flinched at putting cameras in patrol cars: Today, those cameras are widely regarded as protecting good officers from false accusations. So too would open proceedings protect those social workers who deserve it.

Feuer has devoted himself to finding solutions to problems that can be addressed without new spending; the state's finances make that imperative. He's succeeded with this bill, which involves no cost to taxpayers. "Opening these proceedings to public scrutiny," he said this week, "will promote needed reforms and help safeguard children by making everyone in the system more accountable." That is true and overdue.

Los Angeles Times

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3 Shot Dead, 3 Wounded in Virginia; Suspect Is Arrested

A 37-year-old illegal immigrant was under arrest Friday after three people were found shot to death and three others were wounded at two houses just blocks apart in the northern Virginia city of Manassas, the police said.

The victims in the shooting on Thursday night included several members of the same family, but said Chief Douglas W. Keen of the Manassas Police Department said it was not clear how, or if, the victims knew the suspect, Jose Oswaldo Reyes Alfaro, 37. Mr. Alfaro, 37, from El Salvador, had been ordered deported by a federal judge in 2002, but apparently never left the country, the authorities said.

Officers responding Thursday evening to a report of shots fired found the body of Brenda Ashcraft, 56, in the front yard of her house on Hood Road, Chief Keen said. Inside, the police found three other family members who had been shot.

William Ashbey Ashcraft, 37, died of a bullet wound on the way to the hospital, the police said. A 34-year-old woman and a 15-year-old girl were wounded; the woman is in a hospital in stable condition, and the girl was treated and released. Their names were not released.

About 30 minutes later, Chief Keen said, officers responding to another call of shots fired, on Brent Street, about a quarter-mile away, found the body of Julio Cesar Ulloa, 48. A 77-year-old woman with head wounds — possibly from a stabbing — was also inside the house, the police said. She was hospitalized in stable condition; her name was not released. About 45 minutes after the first call to police, Mr. Alfaro was arrested while driving nearby. Chief Keen said some of the victims had described the suspect and his car to the police.

New York Times

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Amber Alert Kidnapping Suspect Extradited Back To Florida

The man who allegedly kidnapped a 17-month old Tuesday night has been extradited from Alabama to the Escambia County Jail in Pensacola. Keith Square Sr., 36, of the 500 block of North B Street, Pensacola, is being held without bond on charges of kidnapping, interference with custody and a probation violation. He is a former resident of Blackmon Street in Century, according to Escambia County Circuit Court records.

Square Sr. is accused of kidnapping Keith Square, Jr. Tuesday, prompting a nationwide Amber Alert for the toddler. According to police, Square Sr. is not the father of Square Jr., and the mother has sole legal custody. The child's mother, Monique Slater, 29, of Pensacola, was visiting friends in the 1200 block of Cervantes Street in Pensacola Tuesday, according to police, when Square Sr. showed up and asked to take the baby to see some friends.

Davis said the mother agreed. A short time later, the suspect  Square called Slater and told her she would never see the baby again. Pensacola Police said Square called Slater several times threatening to harm the baby and also said that he and the baby “would not be taken alive.”

The vehicle believed to have been used in the kidnapping was later located in Brewton Tuesday night, where the driver told Brewton Police that the suspect and baby were dropped off at a residence near Century Woods on West Highway 4 in Century. The Escambia County Sheriff's Department unsuccessfully checked several possible suspect locations in Century, including homes on Blackmon Street and West Highway 4, Tuesday night in an effort to the find the child.

Someone dropped the child off at East Brewton (Ala.) Police Department Wednesday morning. About an hour later, Square, Sr. turned himself into authorities in Alabama and was booked into the Escambia County (Ala.) Detention Center in Brewton.

NorthEscambia.com

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Virginia Man Sentenced to 102 Months in Prison for Engaging in a Child Exploitation Enterprise

WASHINGTON – Ryan Chiles of Hampton, Va., was sentenced today in the Western District of Pennsylvania to 102 months in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for engaging in a child exploitation enterprise, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania David J. Hickton and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent in Charge John Kelleghan.

Chiles, 22, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Arthur J. Schwab on July 14, 2010, to one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. According to court documents and proceedings, Chiles and others distributed images and videos of children being sexually abused to other members of an international group that had restricted membership and was formed on a social networking website.  Members of the group distributed to one another thousands of sexually explicit images and videos of children, many of which graphically depicted prepubescent, male children, including some infants, being sexually abused and sometimes sodomized or subjected to bondage.   

This case was investigated by HSI in Pittsburgh and the High Technology Investigative Unit of the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig W. Haller of the Western District of Pennsylvania and CEOS Trial Attorney Andrew McCormack prosecuted the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov

Dept of Justice

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ICE part of unprecedented, multi-agency effort securing border in Arizona

'ACTT' combats border-related threats in high-risk areas to bolster safety

Tucson, Ariz. - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent in Charge for Arizona Matthew Allen, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Alan Bersin and Tucson Sector Border Patrol Chief Randy Hill, announced the results to date of the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT).

ACTT is a collaborative enforcement effort launched in September 2009 that leverages the capabilities and resources of more than 60 federal, state, local and tribal agencies in Arizona and the Government of Mexico. Together, these entities combat individuals and criminal organizations that pose a threat to communities on both sides of the border.

"The scope and complexity of criminal smuggling organizations operating along the ArizonaMexico border requires a united front from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies," said Allen. "ICE is proud to participate in this unprecedented effort to secure the Arizona-Sonora corridor and bring a smart and effective approach to border security."

Since its inception, ACTT has resulted in: 

• The seizure of more than 1.6 million lbs. of marijuana, 3,800 lbs. of cocaine, and 1,000 lbs. of methamphetamine;
• The seizure of more than $13 million in undeclared U.S. currency and 268 weapons;
• Nearly 14,000 aliens denied entry to the U.S. at Arizona ports of entry due to criminal background or other disqualifying factors; and
• About 270,000 apprehensions between ports of entry.

ICE

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February 11, 2011

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EDITORIAL

Fine-tuning the Patriot Act

'Tea party' Republicans have blocked an extension, concerned about personal privacy. Some of their concerns are valid, but the U.S. still needs the law to fight terrorism.

An important message was sent Tuesday when the House failed to extend three provisions of the Patriot Act. It's not that the extension won't ultimately be approved; it was brought up Tuesday under special rules requiring a two-thirds majority, but will most likely be approved next week by a simple majority. Much of the opposition to the extension, notably from freshman Republicans associated with the "tea party" movement, signaled a recognition that the law infringes on personal privacy.

Not all of the provisions to be extended are objectionable. In fact, this page has already endorsed two of them: the use of roving wiretaps to keep track of suspected terrorists who change telephones, and the "lone wolf" provision allowing the surveillance of a suspected terrorist even if he or she is not connected with any specific terrorist group. But the third, which allows investigators to obtain business records with a court order, gives the government too much leeway.

Current law requires judges to presume that the material being sought is relevant to a terrorist organization. In 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee adopted a different standard, requiring investigators to convince a court that the material sought is reasonably likely to be relevant to an intelligence investigation. That still gives the government too much discretion, but it would have been an improvement over current law. We would prefer a standard that is closer to probable cause.

The business records section should be changed when the House and Senate versions of the extension are reconciled. But if that doesn't happen, Congress should act separately to prevent FBI agents and other investigators from engaging in fishing expeditions.

While Congress is at it, lawmakers should reform a part of the Patriot Act that did not require reauthorization. That section allows investigators to seek documents from businesses by presenting national security letters — subpoenas that do not require judicial approval. At present, an investigator must merely certify that the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation. The law should be amended to require that the use of a national security letter must be related to a suspected foreign agent or terrorist or a confederate.

The Patriot Act has become a symbol of overreaching by government in the war on terror. In fact, the law doesn't even include practices that some critics associate with it, such as the Bush administration's wiretapping without a court order or the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. Nevertheless, the law permits unjustifiable invasions of privacy. It needs to be changed.

Los Angeles Times

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Free Pollard? Never

Jonathan Jay Pollard was a spy who got caught stealing U.S. secrets. It doesn't matter that he spied for Israel, an ally. His life sentence is appropriate.

In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter to President Obama asking for the early release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was convicted of spying for Israel and sentenced to life in prison in 1987. The United States has steadfastly refused? requests for Pollard's release; it has every reason to continue that policy.

The Pollard clemency pleas are partly based on the close relationship between Israel and the United States. Under this theory, spying for Israel was not serious because it was on behalf of an ally and a friendly government, rather than an enemy of America.

But espionage on behalf of any foreign power is a serious crime for which there are severe punishments. It is a deed that should "shock the conscience" and evoke strong condemnation.

Although spying for another country might sometimes fall short of the legal definition of treason, it is always a betrayal of the spy's duty to his country and countrymen.

The "tradecraft" of the intelligence business takes this into consideration. Because persuading someone entrusted with his or her nation's secrets to betray that trust is extremely difficult, intelligence operatives are trained to use "false flag" recruitments to lower the barrier of conscience to such betrayal.

The Soviets successfully penetrated the British defense establishment during the Cold War by having a Soviet military intelligence officer pass himself off as a Canadian who was seeking secrets as part of a NATO "quality assurance" program.

If we were to accept that providing secrets to, say, the friendly South Korean government is somehow a lesser betrayal, we'd provide a field day to our North Korean enemies who would need only a phony ID to pass as our friends. Chinese Communists would have no trouble passing themselves off as Nationalist Chinese. Cubans could easily disguise themselves as Argentines, Mexicans or Puerto Rican Americans.

The essential point is that any nation that steals American defense or intelligence secrets does serious damage to our nation. It might be our friend in many other important ways. In this, it is the enemy. Pollard's crime would not be less heinous had he committed it on behalf of Canada or Ireland. His betrayal would not be more serious had he acted for Russia or North Korea.

Los Angeles Times

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Trafficking Investigations Put Surgeon in Spotlight

ISTANBUL — For a surgeon wanted by Interpol and suspected of harvesting human organs for an international black-market trafficking ring, Dr. Yusuf Sonmez was remarkably relaxed as he sipped Turkish red wine in a bustling kebab restaurant facing the wind-whipped Sea of Marmara.

Dr. Sonmez, refreshed from a ski trip to Austria, spoke last month while on a break from business trips to Israel and operations on cancer patients here.

He boasts about the results of his kidney transplant operations, more than 2,400 by his count. He keeps friends (and, incidentally, investigators) up to date on his life via a blog and Web site.

And in his seaside villa on the Asian side of Istanbul, he treasures a framed copy of a signed letter in 2003 from the Ministry of Health in Israel commending him for his life-saving aid to “hundreds of Israeli patients who are suffering from kidney diseases and awaiting transplants.”

Yet Interpol is circulating an international red-alert notice for the Turkish surgeon's arrest, with a mug shot of him in a surgical scrub cap. The Turkish authorities have shut down his private hospital. And an expert who monitors the lurid and lucrative global trade in human organs says Dr. Sonmez has been arrested at least six times in Turkey.

New York Times

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Murder Trial in Tucson Shows Rift in Minuteman Border Movement

TUCSON — In the weeks since Tucson buried Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old victim of the shooting rampage outside a Safeway supermarket, a trial under way in the county courthouse here has struggled to account for the earlier murder of yet another child of the same age.

Brisenia Flores, along with her father, Raul Flores, 29, were murdered in 2009 when robbers broke into the family's home in Arivaca, a tiny, remote town just north of the border. The person accused of being the ringleader of the robbery crew, Shawna Forde, a 43-year-old ex-beautician who traveled in the Minuteman movement, had hoped to rob enough people in Arivaca to finance a paramilitary organization that would seal off the border to immigrants, prosecutors and witnesses said.

“She did mention she was gonna change America,” Ron Wedow, an acquaintance and a Colorado Minuteman who testified last week, said in court papers. “And raise, raise this to a whole different level, is what she said.”

The two weeks of testimony, which ended Thursday, opened a window into the Minuteman world, and focused the jurors' attention on divisions between participants who watch the border from lawn chairs with binoculars around their necks, and those whom Mr. Wedow described to investigators as “a bunch of drunken idiots, um, running around with M4” rifles.

A friend of Mr. Wedow's described the “cowboy” mentality of some in their Minuteman circle, relaying to investigators an anecdote about a friend whose “dumb idea was to set the prairie on fire and expose” the trails that border-crossers used, according to court filings.

New York Times

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Ariz. countersues over immigration law

PHOENIX, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Arizona wants $760 million from Washington to pay for jailing illegal immigrants due to alleged lax federal immigration law enforcement, Gov. Jan Brewer said.

Brewer and state Attorney General Tom Horne said in a U.S. District Court filing in Phoenix the Obama administration has failed to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the border in huge numbers, leaving the state stuck with the tab for the failed federal policies, Brewer said.

The lawsuit -- which will seek more than $760 million to cover the cost of jailing illegal immigrants and about $240 million for other security measures -- claims Arizona is being "invaded" by illegal Mexican immigrants and the U.S. Justice Department's 2010 challenge to Arizona's "enforcement obligations" to root them out violated the U.S. Constitution's 10th Amendment, which says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution ... are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

The enforcement obligations were contained in Arizona's tough law on illegal immigration, part of which was struck down July 28 by U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton, who asserted the primary authority of the federal government over state lawmakers in immigration matters.

"While control of the border is a federal responsibility, illegal aliens who successfully cross the border and commit crime in Arizona become an Arizona responsibility," KPHO-TV, Phoenix, quoted Horne as saying.

United Press International

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Jared Loughner's lawyers try to halt release of mug shots

Lawyers for Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner filed an emergency motion Thursday to stop the U.S. Marshals Service from releasing Loughner's official mug shots to the media.

Loughner has so far been charged with the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the attempted murder of two of her staffers.

He is expected to be re-indicted in federal court on charges tied to two of the six murders Jan. 8 near Tucson, Ariz. Eventually, he likely will be charged with numerous state crimes.

Defense lawyer Reuben Camper Cahn, a federal public defender from San Diego, wrote in his motion that "mug shots are powerfully associated with criminality." To publish them is tantamount to trying the case in the media, he wrote.

Under federal law, mug shots are not released except in the 6th U.S. Circuit, which includes Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee. There, case law dictates that they be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The photo of Loughner that has been displayed around the world is not an official mug shot, but a photograph taken by the Pima County Sheriff's Office after Loughner's arrest.

Official mug shots, or booking photos, were taken in Phoenix, when Loughner was booked into custody. Those are the photos that Cahn is trying to block.

The Arizonal Republic

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Air traffic control error numbers double

WASHINGTON — In a time of unparalleled aviation safety in the United States, reports of mistakes by air traffic controllers have nearly doubled — a seeming contradiction that has safety experts puzzled.

The latest incident — the near midair collision of an American Airlines jet with 259 people aboard and two Air Force transport planes southeast of New York City, has raised eyebrows in Congress and led to questions about a nonpunitive culture of error reporting in air-traffic control facilities.

A US Airways plane carrying 95 people crossed paths with a small cargo plane in September, coming within 50 to 100 feet of each other while taking off from Minneapolis. A few months earlier a US Airways Airbus 319 intersected the path of another cargo plane during an aborted landing in Anchorage, Alaska.

In fact, an air traffic controller at the Ronkonkoma, N.Y., radar facility that handled the American plane says he complained about a lax atmosphere at the facility — the second busiest of its kind in the nation.

Controller Evan Seeley, 26, said he ran afoul of the local union when he tried to prevent sick leave and scheduling abuses aimed at increasing overtime pay. Even more disturbing were Seeley's charges that controllers sometimes watch movies and play with electronic devices during nighttime shifts when traffic is slower. He said he has sent his complaints to the Transportation Department's inspector general and to the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower charges. He claims his recent demotion from his position as a frontline manager was related to the complaints.

In the 12 months ending on Sept. 30, 2010, there were 1,889 operation errors — which usually means aircraft coming too close together, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's official tally. During the same period a year earlier, there were 947 errors. And the year before that there 1008 errors. Before 2008 the FAA used a different counting method, so a more historical pattern isn't available.

Wall Street Journal

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Lawmakers Discuss Expanding Amber Alert Guidelines

JEFFERSON CITY - Missouri lawmakers discussed a bill Thursday that would expand the Amber Alert System to include missing people from all ages. It would also change the name of the system to the "Amber Alert and Silver Alert System".

The Missouri House Committee on Crime Prevention and Public Safety heard testimony that would broaden the system of alerts in Missouri.

In its current form, House Bill 41 would expand Amber Alert guidelines to include people of all ages. Representative Sara Lampe (D-Greene), the bill's sponsor, said although the target is elderly people, she would like for the alert system to protect people of all ages.

"When we talk about people with a mental disability and a physical disability, anybody over the age of 18 is an adult, so I think we need to expand this to include those people," said Lampe.

Capt. Kim Hull, Missouri Amber Alert Coordinator, testified at Thursday's hearing. Hull argued the amber alert guidelines are too narrow as they stand right now. 

"The Amber Alert criteria is very specific for what you have to meet to do an amber alert and those types of situations don't meet the criteria for the Amber Alert," said Hull.

KOMU.com

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Testimony of Transportation Security Administrator John S. Pistole Before the House Committee on Homeland Security

Subcommittee on Transportation Security, "Terrorism and Transportation Security: TSA Oversight"

Good morning Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member Jackson Lee, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you and this Subcommittee today to discuss the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). TSA's mission is to prevent terrorist attacks and reduce the vulnerability of the Nation's transportation system to terrorism. In meeting this mission, TSA's goal at all times is to maximize transportation protection and security in response to the evolving terrorist threat while protecting passengers' privacy and facilitating the flow of legal commerce.

In the aviation domain, TSA has implemented an effective and dynamic security system consisting of multiple layers of risk-based measures, working in concert with our international, federal, state, local, tribal, territorial and private sector partners. Our security approach begins well before a traveler arrives at an airport, with our intelligence and law enforcement partners working to detect, deter, and prevent terrorist plots before they happen, and continues all the way through the flight, providing security throughout a passenger's trip—not just at screening checkpoints.

In the surface arena, we continue to work with our partners to reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience against a terrorist attack. We are working to direct grants to the most at-risk transit properties. Our Surface Security Inspectors are assisting with the development of specific security programs. And our Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams are being deployed in thousands of mass transit, maritime and highway security initiatives.

Despite all our efforts and advances in intelligence, technology, and screening processes, the threat to the U.S. transportation sector remains high. We face a committed enemy who continues to collect its own intelligence against our security measures, seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in the system. As a result, we must continue to work to stay ahead of this constantly evolving threat.

Dept of Homeland Security - TSA

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February 10, 2011

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U.S. terrorism threat at 'heightened' state

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the terrorism threat is the highest it has been since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Senior Homeland Security Department officials warned Wednesday that the threat to the United States is the highest it has been since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, citing the emergence of more foreign terrorist groups, a sharp increase in extremists in this country and the "lone wolf" operator whom authorities worry they may not be able to stop.

"The terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "In some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened state since those attacks."

Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said his concerns included someone operating unbeknownst to authorities and with the means and determination of a Faisal Shahzad, who is accused of parking a car bomb in New York's Times Square last May. The bomb failed to detonate, and Shahzad was arrested as he was boarding a flight out of the United States.

"Perfection is no more possible in counter-terrorism than it is in any other endeavor," Leiter said. Though officials "work tirelessly," he said, "we cannot guarantee safety."

The officials appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee in its first hearing since Republicans took control last month. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), the panel's new chairman, is planning more hearings next month into the radicalization of American Muslims. Despite growing complaints that the hearings will unfairly target the Muslim community, King vowed again Wednesday to press forward.

"Homegrown radicalization is a growing threat, and one we cannot ignore," he said. "This shift, as far as I'm concerned, is a game-changer that presents a serious challenge to law enforcement and the intelligence community."

Los Angeles Times

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California plans $2-billion program to help distressed homeowners

The Keep Your Home California program could help more than 100,000 struggling homeowners, including about 25,000 borrowers with underwater mortgages.

More than 100,000 struggling homeowners could get help from a $2-billion program that California is launching, including about 25,000 borrowers who owe more than their properties are worth and could see their mortgages shrink.

The Keep Your Home California program, which uses federal funds reserved for the 2008 rescue of the financial system, has the potential to make a sizable dent in California's foreclosure crisis and help the general housing market. State officials hope to fend off foreclosure for about 95,000 borrowers and provide moving assistance to about 6,500 people who do lose their homes.

Consumer advocates have criticized other attempts at foreclosure prevention as falling short, particularly the Obama administration's $75-billion program to help troubled borrowers. They were heartened by the scope of California's effort but concerned it would be hampered if the state can't get major banks on board.

Out of the five major mortgage servicers — Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Ally Financial and Citigroup Inc. — only Ally has formally signed on to a key part of the plan: reducing mortgage principal on homes that are "underwater," or worth less than the size of the mortgage. A Bank of America spokesman said the bank intends to participate but hasn't yet reached a formal agreement with the California Housing Finance Agency, which designed the program.

Said Paul Leonard, California director for the Center for Responsible Lending, "Two billion dollars in total for the state to provide assistance to help borrowers avoid foreclosure is a substantial amount of money, and we hope that it will have some significant impacts in achieving its goals.

"Cal HFA went out of its way to meet the needs of the financial industry in terms of providing a generous incentive to get them to participate, and even after taking their extensive input into the design, the banks are still not stepping up to participate in what is really a critical element of the program."

Los Angeles Times

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Targeting Muslims

Rep. Peter King wants to hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims, but he's not identified any true threats to national security.

Next month, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, plans to hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims. Unlike some of his critics, we don't think King is motivated by animus toward Islam. Nor do we believe that the hearings' subject matter should be broadened, for appearances' sake, to include other sorts of extremism. If the radicalization of American Muslims is, as King suggests, a significant and growing threat to the nation's security, then hearings should by all means be held.

The problem is that King hasn't identified such a threat, and certainly not at a level that would justify singling out one religion to be targeted for special scrutiny.

Take the congressman's comments about Islamic clerics. He says that federal and state law enforcement officials have told him they received "little — or in most cases no — cooperation from Muslim leaders and imams." He also says that he knows of "imams instructing members of their mosques not to cooperate with law enforcement officials investigating the recruiting of young men in their mosques as suicide bombers." But King has offered few details; his evidence is anecdotal and sketchy. And it is contradicted by others, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who said this week that Muslims in the county have been pivotal in helping to fight terrorism.

Obviously, some American Muslims have been converted to radical Islam and have engaged in terrorism. The alleged Ft. Hood gunman — an American-born U.S. Army major of Palestinian descent — is often held up as an example. It would be negligent for the FBI not to investigate such cases, and in some situations that may involve interviewing Muslim clergy and worshippers.

But the premise of King's hearings has yet to be established. And while ordinarily no great harm is done when a hearing is based on inadequate evidence, the proceedings to be chaired by King are different. They appear to attribute danger and disloyalty to one particular religious group — a group that is, not incidentally, relatively unpopular at the moment.

Los Angeles Times

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Lawmakers Hear of Threat by Domestic Terrorists

WASHINGTON — The House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday opened a wide-ranging review of terrorist threats facing the United States as the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches.

Additional hearings the Republican-led committee has scheduled for the week of March 7 on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism have drawn criticism from both the right and the left over the scope of the topic and the witnesses to be summoned.

But the panel's debut session on Wednesday with two of the government's top counterterrorism officials underscored an increasingly familiar and commonly accepted concern: One of the most serious emerging threats to the country is posed by radicalized American citizens or residents capable of carrying out terrorist attacks with little or no warning.

The increase in homegrown terrorists inspired by, but not necessarily directed from, Al Qaeda's headquarters in Pakistan or its affiliates in Yemen and Africa, has forced the Obama administration to scramble to thwart a small but rapidly evolving domestic threat that authorities say is much more difficult to detect than most foreign-based plots.

“In some ways, the threat today may be at its most heightened state since the attacks nearly 10 years ago,” Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, told lawmakers.

The testimony from Ms. Napolitano and Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, served as a scene-setter for the more contentious hearings next month called by the panel's new chairman, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York.

The panel's focus on domestic extremism comes after a two-year period in which, United States authorities say, two dozen American citizens or residents have been arrested on terrorism-related charges. Those include the failed plot to bomb the New York City subway system in 2009 and an attempt last year to detonate an S.U.V. packed with explosives in Times Square.

New York Times

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North Carolina Man Admits to Aiding a Jihadist Plot

Daniel Patrick Boyd, a North Carolina man whose arrest on terrorism-related charges surprised the residents of his bucolic town, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in New Bern, N.C., on Wednesday to conspiring to assist violent jihadists and to participate in attacks in foreign countries, Justice Department officials said.

Mr. Boyd, 40, an American citizen who worked for a company that installed drywall, and six other men, including two of his sons, were first charged in July 2009 with participating and supporting violent jihad overseas.

A superseding indictment two months later contained more charges, including one accusing Mr. Boyd and another man of plotting an attack on the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va. He did not enter a plea on that charge on Wednesday.

Mr. Boyd is scheduled to be sentenced in May. He faces up to 15 years in prison on one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and a life sentence for conspiring to “murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons in a foreign country.”

The cases involving the other defendants, including Mr. Boyd's sons, are working their way to trial, said Robin G. Zier, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney's office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

New York Times

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Veterans more likely to be homeless, study says

More than 75,000 veterans were living on the streets or in a temporary shelter that night. In that year, 136,334 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter — a count that did not include homeless veterans living on the streets.

The urgency of the problem is growing as more people return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found 11,300 younger veterans, 18 to 30, were in shelters at some point during 2009. Virtually all served in Iraq or Afghanistan, said Mark Johnston, deputy assistant secretary for special needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

"It's an absolute shame," he said.

President Obama has set a goal of ending chronic homelessness of veterans and others by 2015.

"This report offers a much clearer picture about what it means to be a veteran living on our streets or in our shelters," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said. "Understanding the nature and scope of veteran homelessness is critical if we hope to meet President Obama's goal of ending this national tragedy within five years."

USA Today

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Testimony of Secretary Janet Napolitano Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, "Understanding the Homeland Threat Landscape – Considerations for the 112th Congress"

The Response to a Changing Threat

Since 9/11, the United States has made important progress in securing our Nation from terrorism. Nevertheless, the terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly in the last ten years – and continues to evolve – so that, in some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened state since those attacks. This fact requires us to continually adapt our counterterrorism techniques to effectively detect, deter, and prevent terrorist acts.

Following 9/11, the federal government moved quickly to build an intelligence and security apparatus that has protected our country from the kind of large-scale attack, directed from abroad, that struck us nearly ten years ago. The resulting architecture yielded considerable success in both preventing this kind of attack and limiting, though not eliminating, the operational ability of the core al-Qaeda group that is currently based in the mountainous area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Today, however, in addition to the direct threats we continue to face from al-Qaeda, we also face growing threats from other foreign-based terrorist groups that are inspired by al-Qaeda ideology but have few operational connections to the core al-Qaeda group. And, perhaps most crucially, we face a threat environment where violent extremism is not defined or contained by international borders. Today, we must address threats that are homegrown as well as those that originate abroad.

One of the most striking elements of today's threat picture is that plots to attack America increasingly involve American residents and citizens. We are now operating under the assumption, based on the latest intelligence and recent arrests, that individuals prepared to carry out terrorist attacks and acts of violence might be in the United States, and they could carry out acts of violence with little or no warning.

Department of Homeland Security

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41 Gang Members and Associates in Five Districts Charged with Crimes Including Racketeering, Murder, Drug Trafficking and Firearms

Trafficking Enforcement Actions Against More Than 110 Individuals Across the United States in February as Part of Doj Efforts to Combat Gangs and Gang-Related Violence

WASHINGTON – Forty-one members of various street gangs have been charged in indictments or criminal complaints unsealed today in five judicial districts, the Department of Justice announced today.

The federal indictments and complaints unsealed today charge members and associates of a variety of street gangs, including:

The charges in these separate cases relate to a wide range of alleged illegal activity, including racketeering conspiracy, murder, murder conspiracy, narcotics trafficking, robbery and gun trafficking. The defendants will make initial court appearances in the respective districts in which they are charged. Teams of federal, state and local law enforcement officers have today arrested 29 of these defendants, with additional arrests expected.

Dept of Justice

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February 9, 2011

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House panel set for hearings on the terrorist threat within

The Homeland Security Committee hearings will look into the radicalization of some American Muslims. The number of Americans arrested in alleged homegrown terrorism plots has grown dramatically as Al Qaeda tries a different approach.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad was born Carlos Bledsoe, played high school football and attended business school. He mowed his grandmother's lawn. He converted to Islam at a Tennessee mosque, studied in Yemen, and while there reportedly fell in with a group of extremists.

By the time he returned to the U.S., federal law enforcement officials say, he had been dangerously radicalized. After he was accused of opening fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting station in 2009, he became part of a rising trend — one of 50 Americans arrested on terrorism charges in the last two years.

From May 2009 to last November, authorities broke up 22 alleged homegrown terrorism plots, compared with 21 during the previous eight years.

The House Homeland Security Committee opens hearings Wednesday into the terrorist threat in the U.S. In the weeks ahead, the panel will hold sessions on the radicalization of American Muslims.

For Al Qaeda, tapping into a new generation of potential terrorists already here is easier and cheaper than finding ways to get attackers into the country, though the result has not approached anything close to the death toll of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"The threat is real, the threat is different, and the threat is constant," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said recently.

Los Angeles Times

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Public health flier warning of dangers of Ecstasy at raves to be revised

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich is criticizing a county Public Health Department flier warning rave attendees about the dangers of Ecstasy, and has asked the agency to stop distributing it.

The flier was intended to be handed out at future raves at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena. It tells about the effects of Ecstasy overdose and "how to minimize potential harms," including warnings that taking Ecstasy with other substances, especially alcohol, can increase risks. The flier also advises to "aim low" in dose and frequency, because "Ecstasy risks increase with larger doses."

The flier also advises rave attendees to not drive, to stay hydrated and take frequent breaks. It also advises that people "stay away" from Ecstasy, saying that "the only way to completely avoid the risks is to avoid the drug."

Antonovich said the flier, created after a 15-year-old girl died of an Ecstasy overdose after attending a Coliseum rave last June, did not fit the spirit of the county's anti-drug policy.

"Counseling young people on the use of the illegal drug Ecstasy is stupid and contrary to Los Angeles County's zero-tolerance policy on drugs," Antonovich said in a statement.

Los Angeles Times

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After a False Dawn, Anxiety for Illegal Immigrant Students

MILWAUKEE — It was exhilarating for Maricela Aguilar to stand on the steps of the federal courthouse here one day last summer and reveal for the first time in public that she is an illegal immigrant.

“It's all about losing that shame of who you are,” Ms. Aguilar, a college student who was born in Mexico but has lived in the United States without legal documents since she was 3 years old, said of her “coming out” at a rally in June.

Those were heady times for thousands of immigrant students who declared their illegal status during a nationwide campaign for a bill in Congress that would have put them on a path to legal residence. In December that bill, known as the Dream Act, passed the House, then failed in the Senate.

President Obama insisted in his State of the Union address and in interviews that he wanted to try again on the bill this year. But with Republicans who vehemently oppose the legislation holding crucial committee positions in the new House, even optimists like Ms. Aguilar believe its chances are poor to none in the next two years.

That leaves students like her who might have benefited from the bill — an estimated 1.2 million nationwide — in a legal twilight.

New York Times

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Former Judge Is on Trial in ‘Cash for Kids' Scheme

SCRANTON, Pa. — A former Pennsylvania judge went on trial in federal court on Tuesday, charged with racketeering, bribery and extortion in what prosecutors say was a $2.8 million scheme to send juvenile delinquents to privately run prisons.

The case against the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., who presided in Luzerne County, drew national attention for what legal experts say is a dangerous gap in the juvenile justice systems of many states — children appearing in court without lawyers.

Mr. Ciavarella, now 60, sentenced thousands of young people, funneling them into two private detention centers prosecutors say were run by his friends who slipped him payments in a “cash for kids” scheme.

Few of the young people had lawyers, a chronic problem that legal scholars say makes guilty pleas more likely, saddling them with criminal records. The state has since expunged more than 6,000 records of youths Mr. Ciavarella sentenced, some for crimes as small as stealing a jar of nutmeg.

“It was a terrible lesson,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School who founded the Obama administration's Access to Justice Initiative.

He added: “It highlighted the dangers for juveniles who don't know their rights, haven't talked to a lawyer and are urged by overburdened courts to take a plea. Once that happens, future opportunities for the child are essentially gone.”

New York Times

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Measure Would Prohibit Misuse of Body Scans

Misusing body scanner images would become a federal crime punishable by up to a year in prison under a proposal offered Tuesday in the Senate, an effort by lawmakers to address concerns raised by some travelers.

The measure would prohibit anyone with access to the scanned body images, whether security personnel or members of the public, from photographing or disseminating those images.

New York Times

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EDITORIAL

What Are They Waiting For?

We applauded back in December when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced that it was seeking an emergency rule requiring gun dealers near the Mexican border to report multiple purchases of high-power semiautomatic rifles that use a detachable magazine. It looked as if the Obama administration was finally awakening to the urgent need to combat the illegal trafficking of AK-47s and other assault weapons across the border and into the hands of violent drug cartels. It turns out that we were wrong to applaud.

The White House Office of Management and Budget must sign off on the plan, and the bureau asked it to do so by Jan. 5. When that date passed, administration officials insisted approval would be coming soon. Last Friday, the bureau's answer arrived: The White House said that gunrunning to Mexico was a continuing problem rather than an emergency and did not warrant an exception to the 90-day process for implementing regulations.

The drug wars in Mexico have claimed more than 30,000 lives since 2006. That violence is fueled by gun-smuggling operations and the fact that American dealers can make bulk sales of military-style rifles favored by cartel gunmen without having to report those sales to federal authorities.

Dealers of handguns have to report bulk sales under federal statute, but the National Rifle Association and some of its supporters in Congress have protested that requiring a limited segment of gun dealers to report multiple sales of rifles would impose an onerous burden, and exceed the authority of the A.T.F.

Administration officials say the decision had nothing to do with the gun lobby's strong opposition, adding that approval from the budget office could come by late March when the public comment period is over. These officials also say the president's upcoming budget will seek additional financing for the A.T.F. to strengthen enforcement.

We wish we could feel confident. Meanwhile, we have heard nothing from the president or his aides about closing gaping holes in the background check system for gun purchases and other gun issues raised by the massacre in Tucson. These are real emergencies. What are they waiting for?

New York Times

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Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Remarks to the Homeland Security Advisory Council

Washington, D.C. - Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today met with the Homeland Security Advisory Committee (HSAC) - an independent, bipartisan advisory board of leaders from state and local government, first responder communities, the private sector and academia - to discuss the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) ongoing initiatives and key priorities in 2011.

During the meeting, Secretary Napolitano applauded the critical role of the HSAC Homeland Security Advisory System Task Force in leading to the Department's announcement last month, during the first annual "State of America's Homeland Security" address, that it will discontinue the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) in favor the new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) based on the Task Force's assessment. Under the new system, DHS will coordinate with other federal entities to issue formal, detailed alerts when the federal government receives information about a specific or credible terrorist threat. The alerts will provide a concise summary of the potential threat, information about actions being taken to ensure public safety, and recommended steps that individuals and communities, businesses and governments can take.

Secretary Napolitano also highlighted the Department's priorities for the upcoming year - reiterating DHS' continued commitment to protecting the nation against evolving threats of terrorism, further strengthening security along the Southwest border, increasing the security of the global supply chain through DHS-led new initiatives and partnerships, and coordinating with the Department of Justice on implementing the nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative as well as the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign to better assist law enforcement in protecting their communities from threats.

Dept of Homeland Security

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WANTED by Portland FBI:

DAVID ANTHONY DURHAM

Wanted for: Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution - Attempted Aggravated Murder (4 counts), Attempted Murder (10 counts), Assault in the First Degree, Assaulting a Public Safety Officer, Unlawful Use of a Weapon (12 counts), Recklessly Endangering Another (10 counts), Menacing (10 counts), Attempted Assault in the First Degree (9 counts), Assault in the Second Degree (3 counts), Attempted Assault on a Public Safety Officer (3 counts), Fleeing or Attempting to Elude a Police Officer (3 counts), Reckless Driving, Assault in the Third Degree

A local arrest warrant was issued for Durham in the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon for the County of Lincoln on January 27, 2011, and he was charged with the various violations listed above. A federal arrest warrant was issued in the United States District Court in Portland, Oregon, on January 29, 2011, and Durham was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Portland FBI

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February 8, 2011

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Afghanistan's most loyal troops

Dogs play an increasing role in ferreting out roadside bombs in key provinces. As with their masters, not all of them get to come home.

When Pfc. Colton Rusk was shot in Afghanistan by a Taliban sniper, a Marine dog named Eli immediately ran to him, guarding the downed Marine against further attack.

Even Marines who rushed to Rusk's side were initially kept at bay by the snarling Labrador, who had been Rusk's inseparable companion through training and then deployment to a dangerous place called the Sangin Valley.

Rusk, 20, a machine gunner and dog handler from the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, died from his wounds that brutal day in early December.

Out of gratitude for Eli's loyalty to their son, Darrell and Kathy Rusk, with the support of Marine brass, arranged to adopt Eli and take him to their ranch in Orange Grove, Texas, near Corpus Christi.

Such adoptions are unusual, though not unprecedented. Last week, Rusk's family took possession of Eli at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, a major training site for military dogs.

Trainers at Lackland and other sites are busy these days. Dogs are playing an increasing role in the U.S.-led fight in Sangin and neighboring Kandahar province — particularly in ferreting out the buried roadside bombs that are the Taliban's weapon of choice.

"They're Afghanistan's forgotten heroes," said Sgt. ShainNickerson, 24, of Rayland, Ohio, whose German shepherd, Aja, accompanies him on patrol in Sangin. "They're out there every day risking their lives to keep Marines safe."

Los Angeles Times

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OPINION

Rude awakening

Los Angeles is a strangeropolis. But it doesn't have to stay that way.

Snapshot from Los Angeles, the place Travel + Leisure readers deemed the rudest city in America: It's late morning in an L.A. coffeehouse. Everybody's staring down into something — a laptop, spreadsheets, a college entrance exam workbook — until the door opens and an elderly woman carrying a canvas book bag walks in. Writers stop writing, students stop studying and wave, smile and call hello to the woman, who smiles brightly and waves back. A few get up, one by one, and go give her a hug.

The woman is Kay, and her husband, who comes in 20 minutes later, steadied by a walker, is Earl. Another round of hugging ensues. I can't trace back exactly how this hugging tradition started, but somebody hugged Kay, and somebody else saw it happen, and now it's just how things are. When Kay and Earl come in, people get up and go hug them.

The people who decided L.A. was America's rudest city probably aren't going to get to this coffeehouse and see how some of us make Los Angeles an incredibly warm and neighborly place. Sure, L.A. is big and spread out, and it's easy to feel alienated here — if you let yourself be alienated. To a great extent, you inhabit the world you create wherever you are.

To understand why L.A. can be a tough city to feel at home in, it helps to understand why people are rude. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar figured out that the human neocortex seems to have a capacity to manage social interaction in societies of about 150 people. Beyond that number, social order seems to break down.

In other words, people are rude — in L.A. and many other places — because we live in societies too big for our brains. In a small society in which everyone knows each other, you can't act out the way you can around strangers. If, however, you're around people you'll never see again, you can get away with all sorts of nasty behavior. 

Los Angeles Times

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An H.I.V. Strategy Invites Addicts In

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — At 12 tables, in front of 12 mirrors, a dozen people are fussing intently in raptures of self-absorption, like chorus line members applying makeup in a dressing room.

But these people are drug addicts, injecting themselves with whatever they just bought on the street — under the eyes of a nurse here at Insite, the only “safe injection site” in North America.

“You can tell she just shot cocaine,” Thomas Kerr, an AIDS expert who does studies at the center, said of one young woman who keeps readjusting her tight tube top. “The way she's fidgeting, moving her hands over her face — she's tweaking.”

Insite, situated on the worst block of an area once home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America, is one reason Vancouver is succeeding in lowering new AIDS infection rates while many other cities are only getting worse.

By offering clean needles and aggressively testing and treating those who may be infected with H.I.V., Vancouver is offering proof that an idea that was once controversial actually works: Widespread treatment, while expensive, protects not just individuals but the whole community.

Because antiretroviral medications lower the amount of virus in the blood, those taking them are estimated to be 90 percent less infective.

New York Times

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Support Grows for Tiered Risk System at Airports

One reason airport security measures frustrate travelers is that screening procedures tend to treat all passengers the same: as potential terrorists.

But in the wake of the furor last fall over pat-downs and body scanners, several industry organizations are working on proposals to overhaul security checkpoints to provide more or less scrutiny based on the risk profile of each traveler.

While the proposals are in the early stages, they represent a growing consensus around a concept that has the support of John S. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration: divide travelers into three groups — trusted, regular or risky — and apply different screening techniques based on what is known about the passengers.

“Today we have T.S.A. agents looking at TV screens, but they don't know anything about the person going through the system,” said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association. “The idea is to take data that the government and the airlines are already collecting about passengers and bring it to the checkpoint.”

A crucial part of the group's “checkpoint of the future” proposal, and similar plans under discussion by other industry organizations, is creating a trusted traveler program that would allow passengers to undergo a background check to gain access to an expedited security lane at the airport.

These trusted travelers would probably pay a fee for the vetting, much like the $100 application fee for the Global Entry program operated by United States Customs and Border Protection. After submitting to an interview, a background check and a fingerprint scan to join Global Entry, members can clear customs using a kiosk instead of waiting to speak with an agent.

New York Times

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Switzerland: Rights Groups Issue ‘Indictment' of Bush

Two rights groups issued what they called a preliminary indictment against former President George W. Bush on torture charges in Geneva on Monday, vowing that he would face a case against him wherever he traveled outside the United States.

The 42-page document by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights said that Mr. Bush had authorized the torture of terrorism suspects in American custody. The document was described as “a preliminary legal analysis” that could be modified for particular plaintiffs and countries.

“So if he decides to leave the United States in the future, as soon as we hear about it we will have a complaint filed,” said Katherine Gallagher, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Mr. Bush canceled a trip to Geneva this week because of security concerns.

New York Times

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Muslims to Be Congressional Hearings' Main Focus

WASHINGTON — The new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Monday that he planned to call mostly Muslim and Arab witnesses to testify in hearings next month on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said he would rely on Muslims to make his case that American Muslim leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the effort to disrupt terrorist plots — a claim that was rebutted in recent reports by counterterrorism experts and in a forum on Capitol Hill on Monday.

“I believe it will have more of an impact on the American people if they see people who are of the Muslim faith and Arab descent testifying,” Mr. King said.

The hearings, which Mr. King said would start the week of March 7, have provoked an uproar from both the left and the right. The left has accused Mr. King of embarking on a witch hunt. The right has accused him of capitulation for calling Muslims like Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, to testify while denying a platform to popular critics of Islamic extremism like Steven Emerson, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer.

As the hearings approach, the reaction from Muslim groups — initially outraged — has evolved into efforts to get Mr. King to enlarge the scope of the hearings beyond Muslims. They want to use the forum to reinforce the notion that the potential for terrorist violence among American Muslims is very marginal and very isolated.

“Our heads aren't in the sand,” Alejandro J. Beutel, the government and policy analyst for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a national advocacy group, said at a forum his group sponsored on Monday on Capitol Hill. “The threat clearly exists, but I also want to put it in perspective. The threat exists, but it is not a pandemic.”

Fifty-one Muslim, civil rights and interfaith groups sent a letter last week to Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, protesting Mr. King's hearings as modern-day McCarthyism. They said that if Congress was going to investigate violent extremism, it should investigate extremists of all kinds and not just Muslims.

New York Times

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ACLU wants city to stop putting up cameras

The American Civil Liberties Union is urging the city to order a moratorium on expanding its video-surveillance system and is calling on new rules to safeguard citizens' privacy.

Chicago's network of more than 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras is already the most extensive and integrated in the nation.

Most aldermen appear to like it that way because of the sense of security that cameras can bring to residents of high-crime neighborhoods.

Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), chairman of the City Council's Finance Committee, scoffed at the demand for a halt in installing new cameras.

“Anyone who's had a tour of the 911 center would agree that surveillance cameras are one of the most effective tools in law enforcement today and it seems like they're very popular with the local residents,” said Burke, a former Chicago Police officer.

“I wouldn't want to see anything that would interfere with what the Police Department has been able to achieve in reduction of crime. A large part of that is using technology to supplement personnel,” he added.

Chicago Sun Times

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National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: Coming Together to Fight HIV/AIDS

To commemorate National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Senior Advisor to President Obama Valerie Jarrett shared her heart-felt thoughts on the importance of combating HIV/AIDS.

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness is not just a day to increase awareness, but a day to act on your own health.

• Do you know your status? If not, text your zipcode to 566948 (“KNOWIT”) to find and HIV testing site near you or go to HIVtest.org.
  
  
• You can also call 1-800-CDC-INFORMATION for more information and testing sites in your area.
  
  
• Visit www.aids.gov for Federal resources, events in your area and tools to commemorate National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

The White House

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Chester County, Pa., man charged with child sex tourism

PHILADELPHIA - An indictment was unsealed Feb. 4 charging John Charles Ware in a case of child sex tourism, announced U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. This case is being investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Philadelphia.

Ware, 47, of Oxford, Pa., is charged with: two counts of transporting a minor in foreign commerce with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, involving two minors; one count of transporting one of those minors in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity; two counts of attempting to transport a minor in foreign commerce with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, involving two additional minors; production of child pornography and the receipt and possession of child pornography. He was arrested Feb. 4.

If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison with a mandatory minimum of 15 years, a $1,750,000 fine, a mandatory 5 years supervised release to lifetime supervised release, and an $700 special assessment.

ICE

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Operation Four Horsemen Results in Millions Going Back to Law Enforcement Agencies

Millions Seized in Major Drug Case; Five Agencies to Share $8 Million

FEB 03 --ATLANTA - In a brief presentation at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Atlanta Division today, millions of dollars in seized assets from the two-year investigation code-named Operation Four Horsemen were distributed to law enforcement agencies who contributed hours and efforts in the case. The investigation was led by DEA and coordinated through the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program.

“This investigation further reveals that the greater Atlanta area has become the hub of operations for Mexican cartel groups who seek to destroy lives by distributing a multitude of illegal drugs in the Eastern United States,” said DEA Atlanta Field Division Special Agent in Charge Rodney G. Benson. “The seizure of large sums of U.S. currency from this organization severely disrupted its operations. Today's sharing of these forfeited funds are a direct result of the great working relationship that DEA continues to have with its federal, state and local counterparts.”

United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates, whose office coordinated the transfer of the forfeited funds, said, “This is one of the largest drug and money cases in this district in recent history. The law enforcement officers working this case seized over $23 million in cash which was on its way back to Mexico to fuel the cartels. By taking money out of the pockets of the cartels and putting it into our local law enforcement, we can help provide the resources necessary for our local law enforcement agencies to fight an international threat. Our partnership with the state and local counterparts is critical to effective law enforcement in this district.”

Dept of Justice

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February 7, 2011

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N.Y.U. Report Casts Doubt on Taliban's Ties With Al Qaeda

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan Taliban have been wrongly perceived as close ideological allies of Al Qaeda, and they could be persuaded to renounce the global terrorist group, according to a report to be published Monday by New York University.

The report goes on to say that there was substantial friction between the groups' leaders before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that hostility has only intensified.

The authors, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, have worked in Afghanistan for years and edited the autobiography of a Taliban diplomat, many of whose ideas are reflected in the report. The authors are among a small group of experts who say the only way to end the war in Afghanistan is to begin peace overtures to the Taliban.

The prevailing view in Washington, however, is “that the Taliban and Al Qaeda share the same ideology,” said Tom Gregg, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan and a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at N.Y.U., which is publishing the report. “It is not an ideology they share; it is more a pragmatic political alliance. And therefore a political approach to the Taliban ultimately could deliver a more practical separation between the two groups.”

Some American officials have argued that the military surge in Afghanistan will weaken the Taliban and increase the incentive to negotiate. But the report cautions that the campaign may make it harder to reach a settlement.

New York Times

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Killing of Missionary Rattles Texas Border

PHARR, Tex. — Mexico has always had a reputation here as a place where things can go wrong in a hurry. But the fatal shooting of a Texas missionary across the border late last month has reinforced the widely held belief in this region that the country has become a lawless war zone.

The missionary, Nancy Davis, who had worked in Mexico for decades, was shot in the back of the head by gunmen in a pickup truck who had pursued her and her husband for miles in Tamaulipas State.

Her husband, Samuel Davis, piloted his bullet-ridden truck across the two-mile international bridge here, driving pell-mell against traffic on the wrong side of the bridge to evade the pursuers and reach an American hospital. He arrived on the United States side too late to save Ms. Davis, 59.

State Department officials say that 79 American citizens were murdered in Mexico in 2009, and that at least 60 were killed last year from January to November, though an official annual figure has yet to be compiled. The numbers have been rising since 2007, when 38 American citizens were murdered in Mexico, State Department records show.

In late September, an American man was shot to death while he and his wife were riding water scooters on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake. A month later, a student at the University of Texas, Brownsville, was taken off a passenger bus and killed by gunmen. Then in November, four men from San Marcos, Tex., along with a 14-year-old visitor from Chicago, disappeared in Nuevo Laredo and are presumed to have been abducted, the F.B.I. said.

New York Times

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Pharmacies Besieged by Addicted Thieves

BINGHAM, Me. — The orange signs posted throughout Chet Hibbard's pharmacy here relay a blunt warning: We Do Not Stock OxyContin.

Mr. Hibbard stopped dispensing the highly addictive painkiller last July, after two robbers in ski goggles demanded it at knifepoint one afternoon as shocked customers looked on. It was one in a rash of armed robberies at Maine drugstores last year, a sharp increase that has rattled pharmacists and put the police on high alert.

“I want people to know before they even get in the door that we don't have it,” Mr. Hibbard said of OxyContin, which the authorities say is the most common target of pharmacy robberies here. “Outside hiring an armed guard to be in here 24/7, I don't know what else to do.”

Maine's problem is especially stark, but it is hardly the only state dealing with pharmacy robberies, one of the more jarring effects of the prescription drug abuse epidemic that has left drugstores borrowing heist-prevention tactics from the more traditional targets, banks. In at least one case, a tiny tracking device affixed to a bottle let the police easily track a thief after a robbery.

More than 1,800 pharmacy robberies have taken place nationally over the last three years, typically conducted by young men seeking opioid painkillers and other drugs to sell or feed their own addictions. The most common targets are oxycodone (the main ingredient in OxyContin), hydrocodone (the main ingredient in Vicodin) and Xanax.

New York Times

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Fraternity Shooting Kills 1 and Hurts 11

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — Two men have been arrested and charged in a shooting at a fraternity house near Youngstown State University that killed one student and injured 11 people, the police said on Sunday.

The suspects, both in their early 20s, were charged with aggravated murder, shooting into a house and 11 counts of felonious assault, said Chief Jimmy Hughes of the Youngstown Police Department.

The men were involved in a dispute during a party at the house early Sunday, Chief Hughes said. They left the event, returned later and began firing outside the house, which was bustling with 50 or more people, he said.

The Mahoning County coroner's office identified the dead student as Jamail E. Johnson, 25. He was shot once in the head and multiple times in his hips and legs, said Dr. Joseph Ohr, a forensic pathologist with the coroner's office.

The 11 people injured ranged in age from 17 to 31. Most suffered slight injuries, but two were shot in the abdomen. The most seriously hurt was a 17-year-old who had a critical wound near one ear.

New York Times

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