NEW YORK TIMES
The 33 miners who had been trapped underground for more than two months all returned to the surface late on Oct. 13th after a successful rescue operation that inspired Chile and riveted the world. The miners traveled up a narrow, nearly half-mile rescue shaft in a specially designed capsule. The final phase of the long rescue effort took roughly 22 hours. Luis Urzúa, the shift leader who organized the miners’ lives while they were underground, was the last to come up.
Many of the miners came bounding out of their rescue capsule as pictures of energy and health, able not only to walk, but, in one case, to leap around, hug everyone in sight and lead cheers. Their apparent robustness was testimony to the rescue diet threaded down to them through the tiny borehole that reached them on Aug. 22, but also to the way they organized themselves to keep their environment clean, find water and get exercise. Another factor was the excellent medical care they received from Chilean doctors who ministered to them through tubes leading 2,300 feet into the earth.
BACKGROUND: On Aug. 5, 2010, a gold and copper mine near the northern city of Copiapó, Chile caved in, trapping 33 miners in a chamber about 2,300 feet below the surface. For 17 days, there was no word on their fate. As the days passed, Chileans grew increasingly skeptical that any of the miners had survived — let alone all of them. But when a small bore hole reached the miners’ refuge, they sent up a message telling rescuers they were still alive.
A video camera threaded deep underground captured the first images of the miners, all apparently in good health. The discovery sparked jubilant celebrations nationwide as rescue efforts energized the country, which owes its prosperity to the rich copper mines in its northern region.
The miners later used a modified telephone to sing Chile’s national anthem to the hundreds of teary-eyed relatives celebrating above. In Santiago, the capital, motorists honked their car horns and people cheered wildly on subway platforms.
News reports suggested that ventilation shafts had survived the mine’s collapse, allowing enough fresh air to reach the chamber where the miners were trapped. The miners were able to use heavy equipment to provide light and charge the batteries of their head lamps, and they drank water from storage tanks to survive.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
School Sued over Nose Piercing
TWEEN TRIBUNE
The American Civil Liberties Union claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that a North Carolina school violated the constitutional rights of a 14-year-old student by suspending her for wearing a nose piercing.
The lawsuit from the state chapter of the ACLU seeks a court order allowing Ariana Iacono to return immediately to Clayton High School, which has kept her on suspension for four weeks since classes started.
The complaint hinges on Iacono's claim that her nose piercing isn't just a matter of fashion, but an article of faith. She and her mother, Nikki, belong to a small religious group called the Church of Body Modification, which sees tattoos, piercings and the like as channels to the divine.
"This is a case about a family's right to send a 14-year-old honor student to public school without her being forced to renounce her family's religious beliefs," wrote lawyers from the ACLU and the Raleigh firm Ellis & Winters in a brief supporting the lawsuit.
The Johnston County school system has a dress code banning facial piercings, along with short skirts, sagging pants, "abnormal hair color" and other items deemed distracting or disruptive.
But the dress code also allows for exemptions based on "sincerely held religious belief," and says, "the principal or designees shall not attempt to determine whether the religious beliefs are valid, but only whether they are central to religious doctrine and sincerely held."
That's where the school stepped over the line, the lawsuit alleges, saying officials repeatedly dismissed explanations of the Iaconos' faith by the family and their Raleigh minister.
"We followed all the rules, so I don't understand why the school is being so unreasonable," Nikki Iacono said. "The dress code policy allows for a religious exemption, and I explained to the principal and various school officials how my daughter's nose stud is essential to the expression of our family's religious values."
Terri Sessoms, spokeswoman for Johnston County schools, said the district had received notice of the lawsuit, but officials can't comment on disciplinary actions involving individual students.
Ariana Iacono has been suspended four times since fall classes started, missing 19 out of 28 school days so far. On Monday, the school system denied an appeal of her most recent suspension, and told her she'd have to attend South Campus Community School, an alternative facility for students with disciplinary and other problems. She still wouldn't be allowed to wear the nose piercing in the other school.
Nikki Iacono, 32, joined the Church of Body Modification in 2009, and her daughter followed a year later. Their minister, Richard Ivey, thinks school officials are dismissing a little-known belief system simply because it's unfamiliar.
"I'm shocked that it's gone this far, but I guess I'm not surprised they'd be so quick to stick with their first judgment and not hear anyone else's reasoning," he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that a North Carolina school violated the constitutional rights of a 14-year-old student by suspending her for wearing a nose piercing.
The lawsuit from the state chapter of the ACLU seeks a court order allowing Ariana Iacono to return immediately to Clayton High School, which has kept her on suspension for four weeks since classes started.
The complaint hinges on Iacono's claim that her nose piercing isn't just a matter of fashion, but an article of faith. She and her mother, Nikki, belong to a small religious group called the Church of Body Modification, which sees tattoos, piercings and the like as channels to the divine.
"This is a case about a family's right to send a 14-year-old honor student to public school without her being forced to renounce her family's religious beliefs," wrote lawyers from the ACLU and the Raleigh firm Ellis & Winters in a brief supporting the lawsuit.
The Johnston County school system has a dress code banning facial piercings, along with short skirts, sagging pants, "abnormal hair color" and other items deemed distracting or disruptive.
But the dress code also allows for exemptions based on "sincerely held religious belief," and says, "the principal or designees shall not attempt to determine whether the religious beliefs are valid, but only whether they are central to religious doctrine and sincerely held."
That's where the school stepped over the line, the lawsuit alleges, saying officials repeatedly dismissed explanations of the Iaconos' faith by the family and their Raleigh minister.
"We followed all the rules, so I don't understand why the school is being so unreasonable," Nikki Iacono said. "The dress code policy allows for a religious exemption, and I explained to the principal and various school officials how my daughter's nose stud is essential to the expression of our family's religious values."
Terri Sessoms, spokeswoman for Johnston County schools, said the district had received notice of the lawsuit, but officials can't comment on disciplinary actions involving individual students.
Ariana Iacono has been suspended four times since fall classes started, missing 19 out of 28 school days so far. On Monday, the school system denied an appeal of her most recent suspension, and told her she'd have to attend South Campus Community School, an alternative facility for students with disciplinary and other problems. She still wouldn't be allowed to wear the nose piercing in the other school.
Nikki Iacono, 32, joined the Church of Body Modification in 2009, and her daughter followed a year later. Their minister, Richard Ivey, thinks school officials are dismissing a little-known belief system simply because it's unfamiliar.
"I'm shocked that it's gone this far, but I guess I'm not surprised they'd be so quick to stick with their first judgment and not hear anyone else's reasoning," he said.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Could California's Prop. 19 lead to pot legalization across the U.S.?
TIME MAGAZINE
Next month, Californians will vote on Proposition 19: the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. Prop 19 would make recreational use of marijuana entirely legal — and allow cash-strapped cities to raise funds by taxing it. Completely legalizing pot may sound like a radical idea, but not to the people who are actually going to decide: the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll found that 52% of likely voters support Prop 19, with just 41% who oppose it.
In fact, Prop 19 is polling better than Senator Barbara Boxer or her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina. It is also outpolling the gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman. It is gaining support as the election grows nearer — and it has the backing of the state Service Employees International Union, perhaps the state's most powerful union.
One of the main arguments for rethinking marijuana laws is economic. A new study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that turning cannabis into a regulated commodity would save $8.7 billion in law-enforcement costs annually, while generating $8.7 billion in revenue.
Supporters of Prop 19 argue that in these dire fiscal times, when the state has been laying off teachers and hospitals have been firing nurses, putting low-level pot users through the legal system is a luxury California cannot afford. Governor Schwarzenegger — who opposes Prop 19, which he believes goes too far — said when he signed the pot-infraction law that bringing criminal charges for pot possession is a waste of "limited resources" in a time when the state faces "drastic budget cuts." The governor may also have been thinking about conditions in his state's prisons, which house twice as many inmates as they were designed to hold, and were ordered last year to reduce the overcrowding.
But the biggest factor driving the pro-legalization movement is simply changing attitudes. People today are more skeptical of the claim that pot is a gateway drug and that people who use it are destined to move on to harder substances. In fact, a study published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior found that life factors like employment status and stress were stronger predictors of whether teenagers would use other illegal drugs than whether they had smoked marijuana.
Many supporters of legalization acknowledge that marijuana has bad health effects. They just argue that it is hypocritical to make pot use a crime, when alcohol — which has well-documented links to automobile fatalities, domestic abuse and birth defects — remains legal. The alcohol industry has been contributing to the "Say No on Prop 19" campaign, no doubt worried that if pot is legalized, it will cut into beer and liquor sales.
Next month, Californians will vote on Proposition 19: the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. Prop 19 would make recreational use of marijuana entirely legal — and allow cash-strapped cities to raise funds by taxing it. Completely legalizing pot may sound like a radical idea, but not to the people who are actually going to decide: the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll found that 52% of likely voters support Prop 19, with just 41% who oppose it.
In fact, Prop 19 is polling better than Senator Barbara Boxer or her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina. It is also outpolling the gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman. It is gaining support as the election grows nearer — and it has the backing of the state Service Employees International Union, perhaps the state's most powerful union.
One of the main arguments for rethinking marijuana laws is economic. A new study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that turning cannabis into a regulated commodity would save $8.7 billion in law-enforcement costs annually, while generating $8.7 billion in revenue.
Supporters of Prop 19 argue that in these dire fiscal times, when the state has been laying off teachers and hospitals have been firing nurses, putting low-level pot users through the legal system is a luxury California cannot afford. Governor Schwarzenegger — who opposes Prop 19, which he believes goes too far — said when he signed the pot-infraction law that bringing criminal charges for pot possession is a waste of "limited resources" in a time when the state faces "drastic budget cuts." The governor may also have been thinking about conditions in his state's prisons, which house twice as many inmates as they were designed to hold, and were ordered last year to reduce the overcrowding.
But the biggest factor driving the pro-legalization movement is simply changing attitudes. People today are more skeptical of the claim that pot is a gateway drug and that people who use it are destined to move on to harder substances. In fact, a study published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior found that life factors like employment status and stress were stronger predictors of whether teenagers would use other illegal drugs than whether they had smoked marijuana.
Many supporters of legalization acknowledge that marijuana has bad health effects. They just argue that it is hypocritical to make pot use a crime, when alcohol — which has well-documented links to automobile fatalities, domestic abuse and birth defects — remains legal. The alcohol industry has been contributing to the "Say No on Prop 19" campaign, no doubt worried that if pot is legalized, it will cut into beer and liquor sales.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Army investigators seize photos of soldiers posing with Afghan corpses, severed body parts
STAR/TRIBUNE
By GENE JOHNSON , Associated Press
SEATTLE - Those who have seen the photos say they are grisly: soldiers beside newly killed bodies, decaying corpses and severed fingers. The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.
Troops allegedly shared the photos by e-mail and thumb drive like electronic trading cards. Now 60 to 70 of them are being kept tightly shielded from the public and even defense attorneys because of fears they could wind up in the news media and provoke anti-American violence.
"We're in a powder-keg situation here," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute for Military Justice and a military law professor at Yale University. Since the images are not classified, "I think they have to be released if they're going to be evidence in open court in a criminal prosecution," he said.
Maj. Kathleen Turner, a spokeswoman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle, where the accused soldiers are stationed, acknowledged that the images were "highly sensitive, and that's why that protective order was put in place."
At least some of the photos pertain to those killings. Others may have been of insurgents killed in battle, and some may have been taken as part of a military effort to document those killed, according to lawyers involved in the case.
Among the most gruesome allegations is that some of the soldiers kept fingers from the bodies of Afghans they killed as war trophies. The troops also are accused of passing around photos of the dead and of the fingers.
Four members of the unit — two of whom are also charged in the killings — have been accused of wrongfully possessing images of human casualties, and another is charged with trying to impede an investigation by having someone erase incriminating evidence from a computer hard drive. "Everyone would share the photographs," one of the defendants, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, told investigators. "They were of every guy we ever killed in Afghanistan."
The graphic nature of the images recalled famous photos that emerged in 2004 from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those pictures — showing smiling soldiers posing with naked, tortured or dead detainees, sometimes giving a thumbs-up — stirred outrage against the United States at a critical juncture. The photos were a major embarrassment to the American military in an increasingly unpopular and bloody war.
In a chilling videotaped interview with investigators, Morlock talked about hurling a grenade at a civilian as a sergeant discussed the need to "wax this guy."
Morlock's attorney, Michael Waddington, said the photos were not just shared among the defendants or even their platoon. He cited witnesses who told him that many at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar Province kept such images, including one photograph of someone holding up a decapitated head blown off in an explosion.
On Sept. 9, Army prosecutors gave a military representative of the defendants, Maj. Benjamin K. Grimes, packets containing more than 1,000 pages of documents in the case. Included were three photographs, each of a different soldier lifting the head of a dead Afghan, according to an e-mail Grimes sent to defense lawyers.
Later that day, before the documents could be shared with the defense lawyers, the prosecutors returned to Grimes' office and demanded to have the packets back, Grimes wrote, according to a copy of the e-mail first reported by The New York Times. The prosecutors cited national security interests and a concern that the photos could be released to the media.
Michael T. Corgan, a Vietnam veteran who teaches international relations at Boston University, said it should be no surprise that, even after Abu Ghraib, some soldiers take gruesome pictures as war souvenirs.
"They're proof people are as tough as they say they are," Corgan said. "War is the one lyric experience in their lives — by comparison every else is punching a time clock. They revel in it, and they collect memories of it."
By GENE JOHNSON , Associated Press
SEATTLE - Those who have seen the photos say they are grisly: soldiers beside newly killed bodies, decaying corpses and severed fingers. The dozens of photos, described in interviews and in e-mails and military documents obtained by The Associated Press, were seized by Army investigators and are a crucial part of the case against five soldiers accused of killing three Afghan civilians earlier this year.
Troops allegedly shared the photos by e-mail and thumb drive like electronic trading cards. Now 60 to 70 of them are being kept tightly shielded from the public and even defense attorneys because of fears they could wind up in the news media and provoke anti-American violence.
"We're in a powder-keg situation here," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute for Military Justice and a military law professor at Yale University. Since the images are not classified, "I think they have to be released if they're going to be evidence in open court in a criminal prosecution," he said.
Maj. Kathleen Turner, a spokeswoman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle, where the accused soldiers are stationed, acknowledged that the images were "highly sensitive, and that's why that protective order was put in place."
At least some of the photos pertain to those killings. Others may have been of insurgents killed in battle, and some may have been taken as part of a military effort to document those killed, according to lawyers involved in the case.
Among the most gruesome allegations is that some of the soldiers kept fingers from the bodies of Afghans they killed as war trophies. The troops also are accused of passing around photos of the dead and of the fingers.
Four members of the unit — two of whom are also charged in the killings — have been accused of wrongfully possessing images of human casualties, and another is charged with trying to impede an investigation by having someone erase incriminating evidence from a computer hard drive. "Everyone would share the photographs," one of the defendants, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, told investigators. "They were of every guy we ever killed in Afghanistan."
The graphic nature of the images recalled famous photos that emerged in 2004 from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those pictures — showing smiling soldiers posing with naked, tortured or dead detainees, sometimes giving a thumbs-up — stirred outrage against the United States at a critical juncture. The photos were a major embarrassment to the American military in an increasingly unpopular and bloody war.
In a chilling videotaped interview with investigators, Morlock talked about hurling a grenade at a civilian as a sergeant discussed the need to "wax this guy."
Morlock's attorney, Michael Waddington, said the photos were not just shared among the defendants or even their platoon. He cited witnesses who told him that many at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar Province kept such images, including one photograph of someone holding up a decapitated head blown off in an explosion.
On Sept. 9, Army prosecutors gave a military representative of the defendants, Maj. Benjamin K. Grimes, packets containing more than 1,000 pages of documents in the case. Included were three photographs, each of a different soldier lifting the head of a dead Afghan, according to an e-mail Grimes sent to defense lawyers.
Later that day, before the documents could be shared with the defense lawyers, the prosecutors returned to Grimes' office and demanded to have the packets back, Grimes wrote, according to a copy of the e-mail first reported by The New York Times. The prosecutors cited national security interests and a concern that the photos could be released to the media.
Michael T. Corgan, a Vietnam veteran who teaches international relations at Boston University, said it should be no surprise that, even after Abu Ghraib, some soldiers take gruesome pictures as war souvenirs.
"They're proof people are as tough as they say they are," Corgan said. "War is the one lyric experience in their lives — by comparison every else is punching a time clock. They revel in it, and they collect memories of it."
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Census reveals 'new poor' in many Twin Cities suburbs
By JEREMY OLSON, Star Tribune
Poverty and joblessness rose sharply in many Twin Cities suburbs last year, according to U.S. census estimates released Tuesday, along with a rise in what advocates call the "new poor'' -- families whose financial stability has crumbled in the economic recession.
In Anoka County, for example, the unemployment rate shot up to 6.8 percent in 2009 from 3.3 percent in 2008. Child poverty in Dakota County more than doubled, to 8.2 percent in 2009, while the rate of uninsured residents increased in Washington County from 5 percent in 2008 to 6.7 percent in 2009.
While the suburbs' numbers may be lower than those in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- urban cores accustomed to battling poverty -- their increases from 2008 to 2009 are what struck many population experts.
"Now poverty is reaching up and snatching people down into it," said Robert Odom, president of Minneapolis-based Love Inc., which mobilizes churches to confront social problems in their communities. "They were pretty secure, living the American dream, and now it's been snatched from them."
The new census data also showed increases in the number of adults who have never married, and a decline in the number of women who gave birth. State Demographer Tom Gillaspy said both are hallmarks of the recession and its impact on people's life choices.
In the big picture, Minnesota remains among the most prosperous and healthy states in the nation, Gillaspy said. However, the data show that the recession and the wave of job cuts that started in 2008 did hurt the state in 2009.
According to the census figures: Minnesota's median household income fell from an inflation-adjusted $56,767 in 2008 to $55,616 in 2009. The state's share of manufacturing jobs continued to slide. The rate of adults without jobs rose from 3.5 percent in 2008 to 5.8 percent in 2009.
The state also saw its rate of residents without health insurance increase from 8.4 percent in 2008 to 9.1 percent in 2009. Only Minnesota and Alaska showed statistically significant increases.
Suburban counties are "moving from a very prosperous kind of attitude to one of very great concern," Gillaspy said. "If you're living out there, even if you have a job, you're going to notice people around you who are losing their jobs or losing their homes."
Advocates for the homeless said more suburban families are coming to urban homeless shelters. Families in Anoka found it so difficult to secure beds in downtown Minneapolis that area churches are now sheltering some of them. The street outreach coordinator for St. Stephen's Human Services in Minneapolis said she has responded to calls of homeless families living in cars in retail parking lots in Edina and Plymouth, and a woods in Minnetonka.
While the census data are a year old, the trends appear to be continuing into 2010, even though the recession technically ended last year.
Anoka County saw a 41 percent increase in food assistance cases from January to July this year. Many families that lost jobs in 2008 benefited from the federal economic stimulus package, which extended unemployment benefits. Now those extended benefits have run out, said Edna Hoium, a veteran social services administrator in Anoka County.
"I would say this is as bad as it's been. It's certainly a longer duration," she said. "It does appear to me to have hit a higher number of people who have never been in our system before."
Poverty and joblessness rose sharply in many Twin Cities suburbs last year, according to U.S. census estimates released Tuesday, along with a rise in what advocates call the "new poor'' -- families whose financial stability has crumbled in the economic recession.
In Anoka County, for example, the unemployment rate shot up to 6.8 percent in 2009 from 3.3 percent in 2008. Child poverty in Dakota County more than doubled, to 8.2 percent in 2009, while the rate of uninsured residents increased in Washington County from 5 percent in 2008 to 6.7 percent in 2009.
While the suburbs' numbers may be lower than those in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- urban cores accustomed to battling poverty -- their increases from 2008 to 2009 are what struck many population experts.
"Now poverty is reaching up and snatching people down into it," said Robert Odom, president of Minneapolis-based Love Inc., which mobilizes churches to confront social problems in their communities. "They were pretty secure, living the American dream, and now it's been snatched from them."
The new census data also showed increases in the number of adults who have never married, and a decline in the number of women who gave birth. State Demographer Tom Gillaspy said both are hallmarks of the recession and its impact on people's life choices.
In the big picture, Minnesota remains among the most prosperous and healthy states in the nation, Gillaspy said. However, the data show that the recession and the wave of job cuts that started in 2008 did hurt the state in 2009.
According to the census figures: Minnesota's median household income fell from an inflation-adjusted $56,767 in 2008 to $55,616 in 2009. The state's share of manufacturing jobs continued to slide. The rate of adults without jobs rose from 3.5 percent in 2008 to 5.8 percent in 2009.
The state also saw its rate of residents without health insurance increase from 8.4 percent in 2008 to 9.1 percent in 2009. Only Minnesota and Alaska showed statistically significant increases.
Suburban counties are "moving from a very prosperous kind of attitude to one of very great concern," Gillaspy said. "If you're living out there, even if you have a job, you're going to notice people around you who are losing their jobs or losing their homes."
Advocates for the homeless said more suburban families are coming to urban homeless shelters. Families in Anoka found it so difficult to secure beds in downtown Minneapolis that area churches are now sheltering some of them. The street outreach coordinator for St. Stephen's Human Services in Minneapolis said she has responded to calls of homeless families living in cars in retail parking lots in Edina and Plymouth, and a woods in Minnetonka.
While the census data are a year old, the trends appear to be continuing into 2010, even though the recession technically ended last year.
Anoka County saw a 41 percent increase in food assistance cases from January to July this year. Many families that lost jobs in 2008 benefited from the federal economic stimulus package, which extended unemployment benefits. Now those extended benefits have run out, said Edna Hoium, a veteran social services administrator in Anoka County.
"I would say this is as bad as it's been. It's certainly a longer duration," she said. "It does appear to me to have hit a higher number of people who have never been in our system before."
Monday, September 27, 2010
Gubernatorial candidates debate education
STAR/TRIBUNE
Republican Tom Emmer and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner went on the offensive during Thursday's gubernatorial debate on education, attacking Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, and its choice for governor, DFL candidate Mark Dayton.
Though all three candidates agreed that effective teachers and principals are key to improving education, they differed significantly over how to keep good educators in schools, flush out bad ones and fund needed reforms.
Emmer said that when he talks with business and higher education leaders, he hears a common theme: "We're not producing what we have to out of our K-12 system." Horner and Emmer called for change in the state's teacher tenure system, one of the most hotly debated issues in education.
Despite pressure to consider such change, Education Minnesota has clung tightly to tenure, which affords teachers great protections after a three-year probationary period.
Dayton, who has the union's endorsement, agreed that banishing "bad teachers and bad principals" is key, but argued that wholesale change is not necessary. He'd opt to use a scalpel rather than a saw to refine the law, he said.
Emmer also pledged to support alternative-teacher licensure, another proposal that Education Minnesota has opposed. Supporters of alternative licensure are pushing for quicker, more direct methods of getting more people without teaching degrees into classrooms, especially in subjects where there are teacher shortages such as science, math and world languages.
Horner accused Emmer of double-talk on early childhood education, saying that he had voted against funding for such programs. Emmer referred to a single vote on the issue as a snapshot of his record.
"A six-year record isn't a snapshot; it's a motion picture," Horner shot back.
Dayton attacked Emmer's plan to deny education funding increases for the next two years, arguing that his stance would continue the trend of underfunding public education.
With the state's growing student population, Emmer's plan to hold funding "harmless" by not increasing or decreasing it, would actually do more harm than good, Dayton said, by not adjusting for inflation. "This is an investment in the future of our state," he said.
In his closing statement, Emmer made his platform clear: He believes that more spending won't solve the problems. "Politicians have been making promises my whole life," he said. "This is about recognizing that we have limited resources."
Republican Tom Emmer and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner went on the offensive during Thursday's gubernatorial debate on education, attacking Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, and its choice for governor, DFL candidate Mark Dayton.
Though all three candidates agreed that effective teachers and principals are key to improving education, they differed significantly over how to keep good educators in schools, flush out bad ones and fund needed reforms.
Emmer said that when he talks with business and higher education leaders, he hears a common theme: "We're not producing what we have to out of our K-12 system." Horner and Emmer called for change in the state's teacher tenure system, one of the most hotly debated issues in education.
Despite pressure to consider such change, Education Minnesota has clung tightly to tenure, which affords teachers great protections after a three-year probationary period.
Dayton, who has the union's endorsement, agreed that banishing "bad teachers and bad principals" is key, but argued that wholesale change is not necessary. He'd opt to use a scalpel rather than a saw to refine the law, he said.
Emmer also pledged to support alternative-teacher licensure, another proposal that Education Minnesota has opposed. Supporters of alternative licensure are pushing for quicker, more direct methods of getting more people without teaching degrees into classrooms, especially in subjects where there are teacher shortages such as science, math and world languages.
Horner accused Emmer of double-talk on early childhood education, saying that he had voted against funding for such programs. Emmer referred to a single vote on the issue as a snapshot of his record.
"A six-year record isn't a snapshot; it's a motion picture," Horner shot back.
Dayton attacked Emmer's plan to deny education funding increases for the next two years, arguing that his stance would continue the trend of underfunding public education.
With the state's growing student population, Emmer's plan to hold funding "harmless" by not increasing or decreasing it, would actually do more harm than good, Dayton said, by not adjusting for inflation. "This is an investment in the future of our state," he said.
In his closing statement, Emmer made his platform clear: He believes that more spending won't solve the problems. "Politicians have been making promises my whole life," he said. "This is about recognizing that we have limited resources."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Despite Setback, Gay Rights Move Forward
NEW YORK TIMES
Efforts that could lead to a reversal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits openly gay soldiers from serving in the military may have stalled in the United States Senate, but the legal fight is advancing in the federal courts along with other important gay rights litigation.
In addition to the military policy, two laws restricting gay rights — the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the California ban on same-sex marriage — have been declared unconstitutional by federal judges in recent months.
The three recent decisions on gay rights issues suggest that federal judges are increasingly willing to strike down what they see as antigay bias embodied in legislation, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at the University of California, Irvine. “Federal judges are no longer persuaded that a moral condemnation of homosexuality justifies government discrimination,” he said.
The path ahead for the litigation in all three cases is long, difficult to predict and risky, legal experts say. The ultimate question is whether a majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court will agree with the district court judges’ interpretation of the court’s own rulings in cases like Lawrence v. Texas, a case that struck down a state sodomy law.
In the 6-to-3 majority opinion in Lawrence, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote of due process rights associated with “autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct.”
While Justice Kennedy argued that the decision did “not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter,” Justice Antonin Scalia angrily predicted in dissent that the majority opinion would, in fact, justify homosexual marriage.
To Richard Epstein, a libertarian legal scholar at New York University, the logic of the Kennedy opinion in Lawrence inexorably leads to a grant of rights against discrimination. “There’s just no way, once you start down that road, that you’re going to get off of it,” he said. “If you can’t criminalize it, you can’t discriminate against it.”
While saying that he is “no seer,” he predicted that if the three cases made their way to the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy would ultimately write majority opinions that upheld the three recent district court opinions.
The district court judges are reflecting an increasingly obvious shift in public opinion, said Andrew Koppelman, a professor of law at Northwestern University. “The gay rights movement has been a spectacularly successful movement for cultural change,” he said. “A few decades ago these people were cultural pariahs. It was taken for granted that gay people are mentally ill, contaminated and unclean. Now the cultural valence has flipped — it is that view of gay people which is itself stigmatized.”
As life-tenured appointees, judges can look beyond politics to posterity, Professor Koppelman said. “Right now it seems like a good bet that if you are friendly to gay rights claims,” he said, “future generations will honor you for that.”
President Obama has had an effect as well, said Jennifer Pizer, director of the national marriage project of the Western regional office of Lamba Legal, a public interest legal group for gay issues. Activists have criticized the president for the Justice Department’s defense of the federal laws being challenged, but he has also urged the repeal of laws that discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
“Having the president repeatedly say these rules discriminate and cause harm — so the discussion shifts to choice of processes for removing them rather than justifying them — seems to have changed the discussion,” she said.
On that, Ms. Pizer and Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, agree, though he deplores the trend. “I think he’s creating an environment in which the courts feel comfortable pushing the envelope with these decisions,” Mr. Perkins said.
Efforts that could lead to a reversal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits openly gay soldiers from serving in the military may have stalled in the United States Senate, but the legal fight is advancing in the federal courts along with other important gay rights litigation.
In addition to the military policy, two laws restricting gay rights — the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the California ban on same-sex marriage — have been declared unconstitutional by federal judges in recent months.
The three recent decisions on gay rights issues suggest that federal judges are increasingly willing to strike down what they see as antigay bias embodied in legislation, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at the University of California, Irvine. “Federal judges are no longer persuaded that a moral condemnation of homosexuality justifies government discrimination,” he said.
The path ahead for the litigation in all three cases is long, difficult to predict and risky, legal experts say. The ultimate question is whether a majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court will agree with the district court judges’ interpretation of the court’s own rulings in cases like Lawrence v. Texas, a case that struck down a state sodomy law.
In the 6-to-3 majority opinion in Lawrence, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote of due process rights associated with “autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct.”
While Justice Kennedy argued that the decision did “not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter,” Justice Antonin Scalia angrily predicted in dissent that the majority opinion would, in fact, justify homosexual marriage.
To Richard Epstein, a libertarian legal scholar at New York University, the logic of the Kennedy opinion in Lawrence inexorably leads to a grant of rights against discrimination. “There’s just no way, once you start down that road, that you’re going to get off of it,” he said. “If you can’t criminalize it, you can’t discriminate against it.”
While saying that he is “no seer,” he predicted that if the three cases made their way to the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy would ultimately write majority opinions that upheld the three recent district court opinions.
The district court judges are reflecting an increasingly obvious shift in public opinion, said Andrew Koppelman, a professor of law at Northwestern University. “The gay rights movement has been a spectacularly successful movement for cultural change,” he said. “A few decades ago these people were cultural pariahs. It was taken for granted that gay people are mentally ill, contaminated and unclean. Now the cultural valence has flipped — it is that view of gay people which is itself stigmatized.”
As life-tenured appointees, judges can look beyond politics to posterity, Professor Koppelman said. “Right now it seems like a good bet that if you are friendly to gay rights claims,” he said, “future generations will honor you for that.”
President Obama has had an effect as well, said Jennifer Pizer, director of the national marriage project of the Western regional office of Lamba Legal, a public interest legal group for gay issues. Activists have criticized the president for the Justice Department’s defense of the federal laws being challenged, but he has also urged the repeal of laws that discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
“Having the president repeatedly say these rules discriminate and cause harm — so the discussion shifts to choice of processes for removing them rather than justifying them — seems to have changed the discussion,” she said.
On that, Ms. Pizer and Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, agree, though he deplores the trend. “I think he’s creating an environment in which the courts feel comfortable pushing the envelope with these decisions,” Mr. Perkins said.
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