Sunday, June 8, 2014


News Clips For The Day


EXCLUSIVE: Obama Defends Taliban Swap, Says He'd Do It Again – NBC
BY ERIN MCCLAM
First published June 6th 2014

President Barack Obama told Brian Williams on Friday that he would authorize swapping five Taliban militants for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl again — even after an outcry over the soldier’s conduct, criticism of the deal and an uproar over why Congress was kept in the dark.

In an exclusive interview for “NBC Nightly News” from Normandy, France, where world leaders gathered to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Obama said the Bergdahl decision came down to a simple principle.

“When somebody wears our country’s uniform and they’re in a war theater and they’re captured,” he said, “we’re gonna do everything we can to bring ’em home.”

The extended interview airs on “NBC Nightly News” and on “Brian Williams Reporting: Journey to Normandy,” which airs Friday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.

The interview was Obama’s first since the Taliban returned Bergdahl to U.S. forces in exchange for five prisoners held at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Since then, Bergdahl’s platoon mates have accused him of desertion for walking away from his outpost in Afghanistan before he was captured in June 2009. Republicans in Congress have said the trade put American lives at risk because the five men could be called back to the fight. And members of Congress have suggested the president broke the law by not giving Congress 30 days’ notice before the operation

The administration has argued that it had to move quickly because Bergdahl’s health was deteriorating rapidly.

“We had to act fast in a delicate situation that required no publicity,” Obama told Williams.

On criticism of the deal, the president pointed out that the war in Afghanistan is ending, and that, by definition, “you don’t do prisoner exchanges with your friends, you do ’em with your enemies.”

“It’s also important for us to recognize that the transition process of ending a war is gonna involve, on occasion, releasing folks who we may not trust but we can’t convict,” Obama said.

He concluded: “This is something that I would do again, and I will continue to do wherever I have an opportunity, if I have a member of our military who’s in captivity. We’re gonna try to get ’em out.”

The exclusive interview covered a broad range of topics. Here are excerpts of what the president had to say.

Obama on Snowden

Edward Snowden, who leaked details of sprawling government spy programs, told Williams in an exclusive interview last week that the government could not point to anyone who had been hurt by the disclosures.

Obama said there are “patriots on both sides” of the debate, but he took issue with the idea that no harm had been done.

He said: “I will say that the disclosures that we’ve seen had a very significant impact on our intelligence operations around the world, had a grave impact on a number of our diplomatic relationships, compromised our ability to gain insight into some of the work that our adversaries do in probing and potentially finding weaknesses in our defenses.”

The president acknowledged that the capacity to collect data — not just by the government but by companies — has become “enormous.”

Still, he said, “In terms of how our intelligence services operate, it is much more constrained than, I think, both popular images that you see in movies and television would portray — or, frankly, how some of the commentators post-Snowden have, have described it.”

Obama on Putin

The D-Day gathering brought Obama face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since Putin’s forces took the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. They spoke on the sidelines of a lunch for world leaders.

Before that meeting, Obama told Williams that Putin had violated international law by breaching the territorial integrity of Ukraine and was “actively undermining” eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting security forces.

Obama held out hope that the U.S.-Russian relationship can improve if “Russia begins to act in accordance with basic international principles.”

“There are areas where there has been great cooperation between the United States and Russia,” the president said. “We could not have executed some of the work that we’ve done to bring Iran to the table on nuclear weapons without Russia’s cooperation. They have helped us provide passage for equipment and supplies to our troops in Afghanistan.

“We’ve worked together on certain counterterrorism issues, and we have worked on nonproliferation issues together as well. But on this particular issue of Ukraine, we have a deep difference.”

Obama on his grandfather's service

Obama’s maternal grandfather, the late Stanley Dunham, was a supply sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1944. He and his maintenance company followed the Allied front across France. They crossed the English Channel six weeks after D-Day.

“It’s quite a distinction to be able to say that a family member fought in Patton’s Third Army,” Williams said.

Obama described his grandfather, who died in 1992, as “the first to be very humble about his service.”

“So many of us have in our families, you know, these men who were so young when they, when they came here and showed such extraordinary courage and capacity to — and changed the world, and then go back home and settle back down. And they didn’t really make a fuss about it,” he said.

Obama on a second D-Day

Williams asked Obama about a hypothetical second D-Day: “As commander-in-chief, do you roll over in your head the notion, God forbid the cause should arrive, could we do it again today, something this titanic, this massive, this all-in?”

Obama noted that it was important to do “the hard work of diplomacy” but said he was certain that the military would be up to the task.

“There are a lot of terrible things going on around the world,” he said. “but I have no doubt that if the, the freedom and liberty of not only ourselves, but our allies, were at stake, that our military would respond to my orders and would do as great of a job as the men who participated in the landing here.”





Of the complaints against Obama, one is most likely to cause him real trouble – that he “broke the law by not giving Congress 30 days’ notice before the operation.” “The administration has argued that it had to move quickly because Bergdahl’s health was deteriorating rapidly. 'We had to act fast in a delicate situation that required no publicity,' Obama told Williams.” On the issue of releasing dangerous prisoners, he said, “'It’s also important for us to recognize that the transition process of ending a war is gonna involve, on occasion, releasing folks who we may not trust but we can’t convict,'” He did, after all, promise to release all of the Guantanamo prisoners after trying and convicting those against whom there is a legal case, and that has proven impossible. I am still in favor of doing that.

On the telephone data file which Snowden made public, he said, “'In terms of how our intelligence services operate, it is much more constrained than, I think, both popular images that you see in movies and television would portray — or, frankly, how some of the commentators post-Snowden have, have described it.'” For my personal viewpoint, there are two things wrong with the operations of the NSA. First, they have quick enough access to telephone information when and if they need it, and of course with a court order, through the telephone companies records alone; and the massive data file they set up is too open to abuse for purposes like tracking political enemies and activists who are not actually trying to overthrow the government or do some kind of terroristic action. The FBI's records on the activities of Martin Luther King are a good example. Second, it is a major problem that the NSA has, reportedly, been bypassing the step of getting a court order, and that should stop. If this is an inaccurate portrayal of how the NSA has been operating, I would like to know exactly what their procedures have been. Some sunlight on that would really help. In defense of Obama, I would like to point out the obvious, that George W. Bush initiated that file. Obama, however, did not stop it.




Commissioner Apologizes for Using N-Word – NBC

A South Florida city commissioner apologized and admitted to using the "N" word, saying he said the slur after he felt "threatened" during a road rage incident Sunday.

The incident was sparked when a car began honking repeatedly at Wilton Manors Commissioner Ted Galatis in a Publix parking lot on Oakland Park Boulevard, according to a police report obtained exclusively by NBC6. The car followed him home, where the driver said Galatis “began calling her and her passengers ’N______,’” the report states. The driver then called the police, saying she was upset about the slur and “did not want him to get away with it.”

Galatis said in a statement provided to NBC6 by his wife that he felt threatened by the driver and the people inside her car. He said he “may have” used the slur “while protecting myself from the immediate threat.”

“I apologize for my use of the ’N’ word. It is something I never say,” the statement reads. “I offer no excuse, other than it was uttered when I was being threatened in front of my own home.”

His wife, Donna Galatis, told NBC6 reporter Jamie Guirola that the other people launched verbal attacks of their own, telling her “white B****, I’ll slice you up.” She declined to respond to additional questions.

Some of the commissioner's neighbors and constituents said they are offended.

"Unfortunately that just doesn’t go," the neighbor said. "I mean, it’s unfortunate you can’t say words like that and take them back. You know you got to pay the price. Donald Sterling just paid the price for what his situation was. "

No charges have been filed. The mayor said he has no comment on the situation.




This incident, if it is accurately described, does show a great deal of (unexplained) aggressiveness by the black woman. I can't imagine why she would have followed him home. It is a problem in modern southern culture that whites and blacks both are still so racially divided that any angry interaction may cause the use of racial slurs. Of course, I wouldn't have wanted Galatis to have called her a “bitch” either, which is anti-feminist. All citizens need to calm down and stop being so hostile. Even if he did cut in front of her or something in the parking lot, and she couldn't resist honking her horn repeatedly, that should have been the end of the matter. Enough is enough.

“His wife, Donna Galatis, told NBC6 reporter Jamie Guirola that the other people launched verbal attacks of their own, telling her 'white B****, I’ll slice you up.' She declined to respond to additional questions.” If the black people did say this, especially after following Galatis and his wife home for no good reason, it would have been logical and fair for Galatis to have called the police and had her arrested for making a threat on their lives and a “racist slur!” Her behavior was indeed threatening and as offensive as Galatis' own. Until both whites and blacks stop these polemics there will be no peace between the two camps. The reason for the Civil Rights legislation in our country was to establish fairness in the law and therefore allow forgiveness and openness to occur between the races. Whites and blacks socializing – going to the same church, for instance – should be much more common by now than it is. I personally am seeing to it that I behave without racial animus. I don't find it very difficult.




Growing Ebola Outbreak Threatens to Overwhelm Volunteers – NBC
BY MAGGIE FOX
First published June 6th 2014

When a team from Tulane University sent a batch of protective clothing and equipment to help workers fighting an outbreak of Ebola virus in Sierra Leone last month, they were fairly confident the 300 or so packs would be enough for a good start.

They couldn’t have predicted what they would be up against.

The World Health Organization says 22 new cases of Ebola virus were reported in Sierra Leone between May 29th and June 5. WHO counts 81 cases with 6 deaths but Sierra Leone’s health ministry says it has a total of 95 confirmed and suspected cases.

“This is worse than expected. I am fearful that it could get much worse,” said Robert Garry, a virologist and specialist in viral hemorrhagic fevers at Tulane University. Garry flew to Kenema Government Hospital last month with as much personal protective equipment (PPE) as he could carry, but he says they are running out fast.

"We have to ration them," he said.

Kenema Hospital is treating 11 patients with Ebola, all being kept in isolation. Six more have died. With each worker needing a complete change of gown, mask, gloves, goggle and other protective gear with each visit, that means supplies go fast.

At least 35 lab-confirmed Ebola cases have been traced to a traditional healer whose grieving patients apparently handled her body at her funeral and became infected themselves, Garry says.
The healer had treated patients just over the border in neighboring Guinea. This cross-border outbreak is worrying health officials because it's spreading in an area where people cross from one country into another casually, passing through large cities on their travels.

Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses known. It kills quickly, taking anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of victims, depending on the strain.

The good news is it doesn’t spread terribly easily — it requires direct contact with bodily fluids. But caregivers and health care workers can become infected while caring for patients, and funeral rituals such as washing a body can expose more people.

“Community resistance is hindering the identification and follow-up of contacts."

And if people don’t know they’ve been exposed, they can travel sometimes long distances to spreads the virus to others when they themselves become ill. WHO says experts are trying to track down 30 people now.

“Community resistance is hindering the identification and follow-up of contacts,” WHO says.

“They are just scattering,” Garry confirmed. “It’s very hard to track them down.” Garry's working with local and international experts to identify cases, distribute protective gear, train workers and test samples.

"Unfortunately, these numbers will rise dramatically as cases from the Koindu and Daru regions are tallied. Reports from the field for villages surrounding Koindu and Daru are grim."

The outbreak started in Guinea earlier this year, the first time Ebola had been seen in West Africa. WHO says at least 21 people died and 48 new cases of suspected Ebola were recorded in Guinea between May 29 and June 3, taking Guinea’s total to 344.

With more than 215 deaths so far, the West African outbreak is one of the worst on record.

Ebola first arose in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1976. In that outbreak, 318 people were sickened and 280 died, with a mortality rate of 88 percent. The biggest outbreak affected 425 people in Uganda in 2000, killing 224 of them.

Education is the key to fighting it. Garry says many people in affected regions don’t understand it’s a virus and often don’t believe advisories about how it’s spread. His team is educating health care workers so they can protect themselves and teach others.

“They pay attention once they hear how it’s spread,” Garry said. “The idea is to train these people here to go back and disseminate the main instructions about the disease.”

An Ebola infection often looks like malaria at first, so people may not suspect they have it. It later progresses to the classic symptoms of a hemorrhagic fever, with vomiting, diarrhea, high fever and both internal and external bleeding.

With so many bodily fluids pouring from a patient, it is easy to see how caregivers could become infected.

“They pay attention once they hear how it’s spread."

“Ebola is a disease that scares people and that is perceived as mysterious, but people can overcome it,” says Marie-Christine Ferir, emergency coordinator for the group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders. “Earning people’s trust is essential in efforts to fight the epidemic."

WHO says six experts and 5,000 sets of protective equipment have been sent to Sierra Leone by various groups.

Garry says his team is building on years of groundwork. He's been working with the Kenema hospital for a decade to build its capacity to fight another viral hemorrhagic fever, Lassa.

Lassa fever is a serious problem in West Africa, making between 100,000 to 300,000 people sick every year and causing 5,000 deaths. It can also cause hemorrhagic symptoms, although it is far less deadly than Ebola, killing 20 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized and 1 percent of patients overall.

Protective measures for health care workers treating patients with Lassa fever or Ebola are the same.

“We tell them to wear gloves and to protect their eyes,” Garry said, speaking by telephone from the hospital. “And we’ve shown people how to do a traditional burial, only wearing gloves. And you can allow the body to be washed briefly. Workers have been attentive to the traditions, allowing the body to be wrapped without exposing people to the virus.”

Genetic analysis of the virus causing the current outbreaks show it’s distinct from the virus seen in east Africa. This suggests it may be from a local source. No one’s sure just where Ebola cames from. It can affect great apes but fruit bats are a prime suspect.

Garry, who was only scheduled to stay for a couple of weeks, now says he is not sure when he can leave. "I don't think it's going to be soon," he said.




“'Community resistance is hindering the identification and follow-up of contacts,' WHO says. 'They are just scattering,' Garry confirmed. 'It’s very hard to track them down.... The outbreak started in Guinea earlier this year, the first time Ebola had been seen in West Africa.... Genetic analysis of the virus causing the current outbreaks show it’s distinct from the virus seen in east Africa. This suggests it may be from a local source. No one’s sure just where Ebola cames from. It can affect great apes but fruit bats are a prime suspect.”

This disease resembles malaria and Lassa fever, causing people to be unaware that they have Ebola. In addition, they are “scattering” rather than coming for treatment, thus spreading it. This article also says that this virus in Guinea has different DNA characteristics from the disease in other parts of Africa, so it may have emerged from a local host. The fact that scientists have yet to find out which animals carry it in the wild has also made eliminating it more difficult. It is known to have been in monkey and chimpanzee populations, and in other articles I have read, the fact that these animals are frequently killed and eaten by tribesmen has been suspected of spreading Ebola. The other problem is also one of education. The people there often have no understanding of what a virus is and how it spreads, though WHO has developed a plan with which they could safely prepare the dead Ebola victims for burial without getting infected.

The only good news I know about Ebola epidemics is that they kill so quickly that victims may die without spreading it, thus they are self-limiting. They tend to flare up suddenly, spread and cause the death of about 88% of the victims, and then stop. Another piece of good news is that once a patient lives through the symptoms, as some do, they are immune. Perhaps a vaccine could be developed so the populations could be inoculated. An African doctor during an earlier epidemic used the blood of a recovered victim to transfuse some patients and they survived the disease. This huge panic that occurs every decade or so could be eliminated if efforts to develop the medication were made now. No matter the cost it would be worth it, it seems to me. If Ebola were happening in the US and especially if it were to spread through the air there would be a vaccine I'm sure. See below.


http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v7/n5/abs/nrmicro2129.html

Ebola virus infection is a highly lethal disease for which there are no effective therapeutic or preventive treatments. Several vaccines have provided immune protection in laboratory animals, but because outbreaks occur unpredictably and sporadically, vaccine efficacy cannot be proven in human trials, which is required for traditional regulatory approval. The Food and Drug Administration has introduced the 'animal rule', to allow laboratory animal data to be used to show efficacy when human trials are not logistically feasible. In this Review, we describe immune correlates of vaccine protection against Ebola virus in animals. This research provides a basis for bridging the gap from basic research to human vaccine responses in support of the licensing of vaccines through the animal rule.





Man charged with killing Mounties obsessed with guns – CBS
AP June 7, 2014

MONCTON, New Brunswick - A chilling portrait of a man obsessed with guns and anti-government rhetoric began to emerge as people in this eastern Canadian city struggled to reconcile the knowledge that the person charged with murdering three Mounties was the same one who had seemingly lived quietly among them.

Justin Bourque, 24, was caught and charged with three murders and two attempted murders Friday, ending a 30-hour manhunt that closed schools, forced residents to hide inside their homes and paralyzed Moncton with fear. He appeared briefly in court Friday after he was charged in the second deadliest attack on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in nearly 130 years.

But as neighbors of his parents and others who knew Bourque spoke of a quiet man from a well-liked, religious Catholic family that home-schooled its children, recent posts on social networks told a very different tale - a litany of paranoid conspiracies that included statements on Russia being a threat to Canada and deep animosity toward authority figures.

A friend, Trever Finck, said he noticed changes in Bourque's behavior over the last year, particularly after he created a new Facebook page for himself in February and filled it with anti-police messages and conspiracy theories. His profile picture shows him standing in the woods with a friend, wearing camouflage gear and clutching a shotgun. What appear to be dozens of spent shell casings lie at their feet.

"I just want to know what was going through his head," Finck said.

Church administrator Dianne LeBlanc said it had been many years since she had seen Bourque, who moved out of the family home about 18 months ago. But his parents never missed a Sunday service at Christ the King Catholic church, she said. They often arrived with at least a couple of their grown children in tow, she added.

LeBlanc said parents Victor and Denise home-schooled their children, who were raised speaking French.

"They're a good family," LeBlanc said. "They were such good Catholics. I'm sure (parishioners) are very sad for them."

Bourque was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder Friday, during a short court appearance in which he appeared bearded and shaggy-haired amid high security. Clad in aqua-colored jail clothes, he stared ahead intently, paying attention but showing little emotion. Bourque nodded when the judge said his name. Officers stood guard outside the courtroom with their weapons drawn.

Bourque, who was represented by a court appointed legal aid attorney, is due back in court July 3. Prosecutors and the defense agreed that a psychiatric evaluation was not immediately necessary.

On Friday, police released the names of the victims: Constables David Ross, 32, originally of Victoriaville, Quebec; Fabrice Georges Gevaudan, 45, originally of Boulogne-Billancourt in France; and Douglas James Larche, 40, of Saint John, New Brunswick.

Roger Brown, commanding officer of RCMP in New Brunswick, choked back tears as he addressed journalists.

"Fortunately most people will never have to experience what our officers have gone through in the last two days," he said. "I can't dig deep enough to explain the sadness that we all feel."
Ross' mother, Helene Rousseau, said there was a difficult road ahead for her son's wife, who has a one-year-old and is due to have a second child in September.

"These children won't remember of course. They will not have had the opportunity of knowing their father," Rousseau said.

Armed with high-powered long firearms, Bourque was spotted three times Thursday as he evaded the manhunt that all but shut down the normally tranquil city of about 60,000 people east of the Maine border. Schools and businesses were closed for a day and police asked residents of the city's northwest section to lock themselves in their homes as nearly 300 police officers searched for Bourque. A tip led police to a wooded, residential part of Moncton where they found Bourque at 12:10 a.m. Friday. An aircraft equipped with an infrared camera and heat-sensing equipment helped officials detect the suspect in the heavily wooded area, Transport Canada spokeswoman Adria Patzer said.

He wasn't carrying any weapons at the time of his capture, but some were found nearby, police said.

"I'm done," a witness heard him tell the arresting officers.

On Saturday, several dozen Mounties scoured a field and wooded area searching for clues near the site where Bourque was captured.

Police have not given a possible motive for the shootings.

Meanwhile, residents moved from feeling relief at Bourque's capture to grieving for the lives lost. Families and school groups placed flowers and notes on the steps of a downtown police station, where one person placed a portrait of a solemn Mountie atop a horse. Hundreds attended a vigil Friday night.

"It goes from fear to happiness to joy to sadness," said Lynne Lannigan. "At this point it doesn't matter if you're blood related or not."

Back in Bourque's neighborhood, a trailer park community in the city's suburban outskirts, Nathalie Aube described Bourque as someone neighbors rarely noticed - until her husband saw him for the last time Wednesday as he walked down the street carrying what looked like long firearms.

"It's over now. We can breathe," Aube said. "We're still leery, but it's nice that he's away."




This is one of those cases of probable mental illness. Often a mentally disturbed person will simply be considered “quiet,” by friends and family until they erupt in violence. The fact that both his own defense attorney and the prosecutor agreed that a mental examination was not “necessary,” is scandalous. He is known to have become obsessed with guns and paranoid about authority figures. He may well be schizophrenic. This is too bad, but unfortunately typical. Many people are in prisons who need therapy or medications. Young people often become symptomatic for the first time in their early twenties, and if no family member or friends intervenes, they may become violent. His friends was quoted as saying he had “changed” over the last year, “particularly after he created a new Facebook page for himself in February and filled it with anti-police messages and conspiracy theories. His profile picture shows him standing in the woods with a friend, wearing camouflage gear and clutching a shotgun. What appear to be dozens of spent shell casings lie at their feet.'” To me, he had clearly become symptomatic, but unfortunately society doesn't always consider obsession with guns and conspiracy theories to mean that people are deranged. I hope somebody wises up and gets him some treatment and a good defense, but unfortunately when a police officer is killed the shooter is likely to receive the maximum jail term instead.





Aid Targeted for Arizona Site Holding Migrant Kids – ABC




Officials are working to improve conditions at a makeshift holding center in southern Arizona where immigration authorities are housing hundreds of unaccompanied migrant minors.

A federal official said that mattresses, portable toilets and showers were brought in Saturday for 700 of the youthful migrants who spent the night sleeping on plastic cots inside the Nogales area center.

The Homeland Security official told The Associated Press that about 2,000 mattresses had been ordered for the center — a warehouse that has not been used to shelter people in years.

With the center lacking some of the basics, federal officials have asked Arizona to immediately ship medical supplies, Gov. Jan Brewer's spokesman Andrew Wilder said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security started flying immigrants in the country illegally to Arizona from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas last month after the number of immigrants — including more than 48,000 children traveling on their own — overwhelmed the Border Patrol there.

Immigrant families were flown from Texas, released in Arizona, and told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office near where they were traveling within 15 days. ICE has said the immigrants were mostly families from Central America fleeing extreme poverty and violence.

The Homeland Security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the matter publicly, said the holding center opened for unaccompanied migrant children because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had nowhere to turn.

At the holding center, vendors are being contracted to provide nutritional meals, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, will provide counseling services and recreational activities.

The Homeland Security official said the number of children at the warehouse was expected to double to around 1,400. The warehouse has a capacity of about 1,500.

The Arizona Daily Star reported Saturday ( http://bit.ly/UlC3VD ) that Jimena Díaz, consul general of Guatemala in Phoenix, visited the center Friday and said there were about 250 children from Guatemala, with the rest coming from El Salvador and Honduras.

Diaz told the newspaper that the children are being kept in separate groups, divided by age and gender. Most of them are between 15 and 17, Diaz said, with a few much younger than that. Teenage mothers with their children are also being detained separately, he said.

The warehouse began sheltering children flown from South Texas last Saturday. About 400 were scheduled to arrive Friday but, because of mechanical issues with the planes, only about 60 came, the Homeland Security official said. Saturday's flights were canceled, also because of mechanical problems. There are flights scheduled through mid-June.

Federal authorities plan to use the Nogales facility as a way station, where the children will be vaccinated and checked medically. They will then be sent to facilities being set up in Ventura, California; San Antonio, Texas; and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Customs and Border Protection in Arizona "is prepared to and expects to continue processing unaccompanied children from South Texas," said Victor L. Brabble, a spokesman for the agency in Tucson.

The children being held in Nogales are 17 or younger. The official estimated three of every four were at least 16.





According to this article Homeland Security “started flying immigrants in the country illegally” to the warehouse in Arizona last month when the Texas border patrol were “overwhelmed.” “Federal authorities plan to use the Nogales facility as a way station, where the children will be vaccinated and checked medically. They will then be sent to facilities being set up in Ventura, California; San Antonio, Texas; and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Customs and Border Protection in Arizona "is prepared to and expects to continue processing unaccompanied children from South Texas," said Victor L. Brabble, a spokesman for the agency in Tucson.”

This is the latest on the mystifying and upsetting situation of children, many unaccompanied by adults, coming en masse across the border into Texas. Authorities are trying to cope as well as they can, I think, but I do wish the UN would try to intervene in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to stop the flow.





FBI: Child Porn Found on Josh Powell's Computer
June 8, 2014

Investigators found child pornography on Josh Powell's computer at least 17 months before he killed his children and himself, according to FBI documents.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported Saturday ( http://tinyurl.com/q8effoc ) that the documents show the FBI was investigating the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell, as well as possession of child pornography.

Anne Bremner, an attorney for Susan Powell's parents, said the family was never told the FBI was investigating Josh Powell for child pornography. If the state of Washington's Department of Social and Health Services had known about the suspected child pornography, it "never would have let him have those kids," she said.

When a state worker delivered 7-year-old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden to Josh Powell's rented home in Graham, Washington, on Feb. 5, 2012, Josh Powell locked out the worker and ignited a fire that killed him and his sons.

Susan Powell, who was last seen at her West Valley City, Utah, home on Dec. 6, 2009, has never been found.

Josh Powell had been previously linked to child pornography, the Tribune reported. At hearings in the state of Washington to determine custody of his children, then-Assistant Washington Attorney General John M. Long said Powell was under investigation for child pornography after cartoon images of incest between mothers and children were found on his computer in late 2009 or early 2010.




For some reason, sexual crimes are rarely given the serious attention that drugs are, and they are at least as serious. Sexual “oddities” are a sign of some level of mental illness, which may be accompanied by violence. Well adjusted people don't want to look at pornography at all, I don't think. They are sexually active with consenting adults, instead. Sexual peccadilloes start small and escalate with time if they aren't stopped, going from pornography to stalking to rape and even murder, in too many cases. Powell was clearly mentally ill. If the authorities had arrested him in the beginning, maybe he wouldn't have ended up killing his children.





A New Government Database Would Know Almost Everything About You – ABC
Column by Adam Levin, Credit.com
June 8, 2014

Millions of Americans may soon become part of an expanded database that would give two federal regulatory agencies an up-close and personal (perhaps too up-close and personal) view of their private financial lives that, if breached, could make for a really bad day for a whole lot of people.

The seed for this proposed database expansion was buried in the 261-page Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008; a requirement that the Federal Housing Finance Agency monitor the National Mortgage Database, and expand it, to provide a monthly report on the state of the mortgage market.

That didn’t sound unreasonable.

All the information collected in the expanded NMD would be shared with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and also used in an annual report on the mortgage market presented to Congress. Again, not unreasonable.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray’s Jan. 28 testimony before the House Financial Services Committee included a clear statement that the database would aggregate information -- but that there would be no personal identifiers attached to it. Anonymized data has become the coin of the realm and certainly can be helpful if utilized properly.

However, there’s much more to the story.

Too Much Information

The National Mortgage Database was started in 2012, and tracks “first-lien single-family mortgages in existence any time from January 1998 forward.”

According to the Washington Examiner, the National Mortgage Database contained information on at least 10.1 million mortgage holders as of July last year, and the FHFA has two contracts with CoreLogic, which says it has the industry’s “largest, most comprehensive active and historical mortgage databases of over 227 million loans.” Cordray confirmed that NMD was using data from CoreLogic.

While such a large trove of financial data stored in one place would be worrisome, the fact that the data points were aggregates disconnected from particular people made it acceptable.

Then on April 16, the FHFA and CFPB posted a notice to the Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government, which detailed a policy shift regarding the kinds of data that would be included in the expansion of the National Mortgage Database. It beggared the imagination.

The proposed expansion would allow the FHFA and the CFPB to see more information than most people can remember about themselves, including your name, current and past addresses, your telephone numbers, your date of birth, race/ethnicity, gender, the languages spoken in your home, your religion, your Social Security number -- even your education records, military status/records, and employment history. Additionally, it would include every detail of your financial history stretching back to 1998, including balances owed, payment history, how much you paid for your house, your debt-to-income ratio and a gaggle of other data points.

On May 15, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee issued a letter proclaiming the expansion, “an unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of ordinary Americans.”





“According to the Washington Examiner, the National Mortgage Database contained information on at least 10.1 million mortgage holders as of July last year, and the FHFA has two contracts with CoreLogic, which says it has the industry’s 'largest, most comprehensive active and historical mortgage databases of over 227 million loans.'”

Here we go again with the huge databases of information. I'm glad to see that two Texas Republicans stepped in complained about this one. Hopefully there will be a stop to the FHFA and CFPB “policy shift,” as there is no possible need for all that information. The language you speak and you religion? How are those things of any economic use? As Hensarling and Crapo said, the database would be “'an unwarranted intrusion into the private lives of ordinary Americans.'” It also simply makes no sense. People have gone data crazy since we have the computers to do such things.