U.S. Military - the Suicide Factory

The talk of joining together military service with college as a way for a DREAMer to regularize his/her status is still with us. This added option will certainly help the DREAM Act pass. Yet at what price? Suicide is not the only consequence of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is also Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (which the military does not like to treat) - and the numerous horrifying brain injuries that we are now seeing - in soldiers who a few years ago would have died. Our new technologies are saving their lives, but the quality of their existence is questionable...

Soldiering has never been good for your health. But at least the military is now willing to see why so many are committing suicide...

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Study to Seek Clues to Soldier Suicides

By Steve Vogel

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, August 10, 2009

Doctors leading the largest study ever of suicide and mental health in the military are developing intensive soldier surveys that they hope will provide clues as to why suicide rates among Army personnel have grown dramatically in recent years.

The study, a collaboration between the National Institute of Mental Health and the Army, will seek data from every soldier recruited into the Army over the next three years as well as from about 90,000 soldiers already in the service, and the project could eventually involve half a million participants.

The soldiers will be asked on a volunteer basis for personal information that can be used to make psychological assessments. Family members might be contacted for further information. In some cases, saliva and blood samples will be collected for genetic and neurobiological studies.

The information will serve as an "ongoing natural laboratory," officials said, as researchers follow these soldiers for years, looking for common strands as to which individuals are more likely to commit suicide.

"We're looking at suicide as the culmination of a long chain of events," said Robert K. Heinssen, the NIMH study director.

In 2008, 143 soldiers committed suicide, the highest number in the three decades that the Army has kept records...link to complete WP article

chart is from the Huffington Post

San Francisco is ahead of the game against Hate Speech

August 10, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Aurora Grajeda - 415.368.8406 aurora-grajeda@comcast.net

Contact: Miguel Perez - 415.240.1697 nahuelyitomx@yahoo.com.mx

San Francisco Board of Supervisors resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a comprehensive investigation on hate speech in the media

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors and community groups are holding a press conference on Tuesday, August 11th, at 12 noon at City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, in San Francisco, on the Polk Street side steps. They will present a resolution sponsored by Supervisor David Campos and co-sponsored by Supervisors John Avalos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Bevan Duffy, Eric Mar, Sophie Maxwell and Ross Mirkarimi, "urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a comprehensive investigation on hate speech in the media, allowing public participation via public hearings, and asking the NTIA to update it's 1993 report on the Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes."

"An investigation on hate speech in the media has the potential of serving the highest interest of free speech, the First Amendment and the security of individuals and groups in their persons and in their living environments. A recent study from Leadership Conference on Civil Rights shows a correlation between hate radio and hate crimes - concerned organizations and individuals have seen how the volume and virulence in the rhetoric in the most virulent Shock Jocks, such as local host Michael Savage, continues to raise.

Full information on the resolution may be found at http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/bosagendas/materials/090995.pdf "

Meeting starts at 2 PM, the resolution will be discussed at the Board of Supervisors meeting in the Legislative Chamber, Room 250, the resolution is item # 39, public comment is invited.

The City and County of San Francisco prides itself in celebrating diversity in principle, values and practice; the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, reflects these principles, values and practices.

HATE SPEECH IS NOT RESPONSIBLE SPEECH

Beware inflammatory headlines

This morning's Houston Chronicle City & State page headline tells us in big letters: "Study links immigration, evacuee fears" -- It doesn't take a PhD to figure out what the author of this headline is saying - that evacuees (all of them?) during hurricane evacuations are fearful of immigrants hanging around their homes after they leave?

On the HC's webpage the article is no longer the main headline on the City/State page, instead it is on their main page, and further down, in small letters, and less inflammatory "Study: Some resented evacuees like they did immigrants" - the key word here is "some" -

While the HC has come around the past few years, in some ways much more reasonable and sensitive to the demographic realities of the Houston area, the headlines often continue to be troublesome.

Like the one about Sotomayor's Senate confirmation. It told us that the really hard work for her is just beginning. I admit, I'm sensitive about this, but the tone of the article made it sound like working on the Supreme Court would be really hard for her and she had to adjust - true the article mentions how others said it was so hard. But all along, there have been snide remarks questioning her competency (which I think are ridiculous, since she is the most qualified judge to have joined the Supreme Court in ages). This woman is used to working hard. She is extremely intelligent and focused. The "really hard work" for her was when she entered her Ivy League undergraduate program and she had to work like crazy to catch up with her boarding school colleagues. Once she did that she was on a roll...

Anyway, like Souter implied as he was leaving --- being on the court meant having to be kind of brain dead... that might be the biggest challenge for Sotomayor. I am not sure she can do the "brain dead" thing. As the NYT's said "Washington is only where Justice Souter goes for his “annual intellectual lobotomy.” At home, he reads history." (NYT May 3, 2009). The HC needed to read this NYT article before it posted it's headline that Sotomayor had such a hard job ahead of her.

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Study links immigration and evacuee fears

Worries over ‘strangers’ seen in Katrina exodus

By MIKE SNYDER

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Aug. 7, 2009, 9:51PM

In spring 2006, six months after an estimated 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees arrived in the Houston area, a survey showed increasing local anxiety about the impact of illegal immigrants on crime and public services... link to complete article

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link to image

Just in case you thought Americans were an informed population...

check out this link to the DailyKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/statepoll/2009/7/30/US/320

thanks to Y.R. for sending this along

DHS to stop sending families to HUTTO

A few days ago I was thinking about our current economic crisis. It occurred to me that the government would save billions of dollars if so many undocumented immigrants were not in detention. This group of people are living in contracted detention facilities in the U.S., at the cost of the government. They cannot work since they are incarcerated. Their families who are in the U.S. on the outside are in crisis, often needing costly social services.

Instead, our libraries are closing, plants are closing, unemployment benefits are limited, people are losing their houses because the government can't help them... but I guess that is OK for our government, since they seem to love paying money to private prison camps.... They are saying that the government will take the camps over... so now they will create their own work force to watch the huddled masses that we no longer care about.
If the Statue of Liberty had feelings, I wonder if she would cry to think about all the people in detention. The NYT says over 400,000 people are held in detention per year. 400,000 people.

Maybe this latest policy shift will be an improvement. Detainment camps for undocumented immigrants may get somewhat more comfortable, but they will still be prisons.

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U.S. to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants

By NINA BERNSTEIN

Published: August 5, 2009

...One move starts immediately: the government will stop sending families to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former state prison near Austin, Tex., that drew an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and scathing news coverage for putting young children behind razor wire.

“We’re trying to move away from ‘one size fits all,’ ” John Morton, who heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as assistant secretary of homeland security, said in an interview on Wednesday. Detention on a large scale must continue, he said, “but it needs to be done thoughtfully and humanely.”

Hutto, a 512-bed center run for profit by the Corrections Corporation of America under a $2.8 million-a-month federal contract, was presented as a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s tough approach to immigration enforcement when it opened in 2006. The decision to stop sending families there — and to set aside plans for three new family detention centers — is the Obama administration’s clearest departure from its predecessor’s immigration enforcement policies...link to complete NYT article

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AP sources: Feds return to run detention centers

By SUZANNE GAMBOA and EILEEN SULLIVAN

The Associated Press/Washington Post

Thursday, August 6, 2009; 3:01 AM

WASHINGTON -- The Homeland Security Department intends to put federal employees in charge of monitoring the treatment of detainees in the country's largest immigration detention facilities, two years after the government turned that job over to a private company...

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Cell Phones and Your Life - Part IV

My Cell Phone and

My New Car

Fighting capitalism for years, I finally gave up and decided I absolutely had to buy a car. I needed one that would start for sure every time. Yes, I know I could have bought a good used one, but this time I didn't want to take a chance. There are so many cars around Houston that have been in hurricanes and floods, its hard to take a chance.

Well, the car is nice (not the payments however) - but it is pretty, that expensive ($500) "platinum white" paint job, by day 4 already has a couple of 2mm dings (I cover them with some of my artist oil paint). I have never driven a car that big (that I can remember). Maybe my 1988 Honda Accord what that size, but that was so long ago.

Anyway. To my shock and dismay, the saleswoman excitedly told me that I could hook up my cell phone to the car. A handsome young salesman came and tried to coordinate my antiquated cell phone with the Blue Tooth on the car. He couldn't do it, the phone is too out of date. THANK GOODNESS. He was very apologetic, but I told him, hey you did me a favor. You think I want to be driving around talking on the phone, hands free or not? Well, I guess I have been out of the loop for sometime. A colleague says her car also has this phone hook up. I suppose all the new cars have them. What does that mean? The studies are showing that handsfree is also dangerous. The point is you are distracted when you talk on the cell.

This post is especially important for DREAMers, who are at that age --- you all text and talk on the cells non-stop. I know that. I constantly ask you and my other students to stop texting during class. Well, those of you that drive new cars don't have a chance, of course you will succumb to this Blue Tooth gadget... if you are still talking on the phone (with your hands or not) while you drive, please re-consider. Your life is not worth it.

see this press release from the Governor's Highway Safety Association

click here for the GHSA website

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Federal Agency Plans Distracted Driving Forum

New York Times

By MATT RICHTEL

Published: August 4, 2009

The secretary of transportation on Tuesday announced a plan for a “distracted driving summit,” an action that safety advocates say is a shift in the federal government’s recognition of the dangers of behind-the-wheel multitasking...link to complete NYT article

Make Nice when a Cop Yells at You

About 10 years ago, I was crossing the international border to the United States from Mexico with my cousin, who is a Mexican citizen. She was going to visit me for a few days.

The ICE officer she was speaking to about a tourists visa was outrageously rude. She is a retired school teacher, which is stated on her I.D. Instead of using the word "retirada" (retired), he said she was "retardada" (retarded). She and I were shocked at his audacity. Yet, neither one of us said anything. You cannot say anything to an ICE officer, or he'll find a way to make your life miserable. In that particular situation, she would not have been able to cross over with me.

What my cousin experienced, and many other people who cross into the U.S. (and millions of Latinos and Blacks who encounter police officers who are rude, cruel, mean, or inappropriate).

This is what happened to Henry Louis Gates. It is what some people call "living while black." Well there is also a "living while Latino."

As Bob Herbert says so eloquently, Gates' mistake was to yell at the officer. The officer's mistake was to arrest a man who already proved he was breaking the door to his own home.

Obama's remark about it being "stupid" - was not off the mark. He was reacting to an ridiculous situation that happens continuously to Black and Latino men. Being President, his choice of words could have been better - but what he said was true. I wonder how many times in his life he was treated disrespectfully because he is Black...

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Op-Ed Columnist
Anger Has Its Place

By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 31, 2009

Cambridge, Mass.


...Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about race....link to complete NYT article

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Bad Words on Race

Whoever says that race hatred has gone away now that Obama is President, is wrong. It is all over Texas - (in the suburbs and rural areas), and unfortunately in Boston. See this video related to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

Perhaps the Houston Fire Department should learn from how Boston is handling their current racial crisis..

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Imperial - a book about immigration by William Vollman

Imperial is about immigration and Imperial Valley California. It may be long, but worth reading. The photos are amazing (click here for link to photos from the book).

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An Author Without Borders

by Charles McGrath

New York Times

July 28, 2009

...The book is a little like the Imperial Valley itself: pathless, fascinating, exhausting. Its two great themes are illegal immigration — the struggle of countless thousands of Mexicans to sneak into the United States through the Imperial Valley — and water, which has transformed the valley, or parts of it, from desert to seeming paradise but at great environmental cost... complete NYT article

detail of photo from Imperial

link to photo

Dozens lost in Haitian Boat Sinking

link to photo

For those who severely criticize people who they think are "sneaking into our country" -- it might be good to note that people don't take chances like this unless they are desperate or don't have enough food to eat at home...

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Rescuers Search Atlantic After Haitian Boat Sinks

By DAMIEN CAVE

New York Times

Published: July 28, 2009

MIAMI — The Coast Guard said Tuesday that for a second day it was scouring a wide area of the Atlantic for dozens of Haitians who had crammed onto a rickety sailboat that sank near the Turks and Caicos Islands with 200 people aboard. As of 5:30 p.m., Coast Guard officials here said 15 bodies had been found, 118 people had been rescued and at least 67 were missing...link to complete NYT article

ICE deporting undocumented jail inmates

According to Harris County Sheriff, Adrian Garcia, the criminals who don't want to follow the rules in Houston need to go back to their home country. Is this really what is happening?

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July 26, 2009

Debate Intensifies Over U.S. Deportation Policy

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

HOUSTON — The Obama administration is vastly expanding a federal effort begun under President George W. Bush to identify and deport illegal immigrants held in local jails. But here in the city where the effort got a trial start eight months ago, people on each side of the immigration debate have found fault with it.

Under the effort, known as Secure Communities, local officials check every set of fingerprints taken at jails against those of people who have had a brush with federal immigration authorities; in the past, they could check only for a criminal history in the F.B.I. database. If a person turns out to be an illegal immigrant, the case is turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible deportation proceedings in addition to the criminal charges.

The Obama administration considers the trial program successful enough to pledge $195 million over the next year to expand the effort with an eye toward establishing it nationwide by late 2012, when it is projected to cost about $1 billion a year. It is now under way in 70 counties across the country, including those containing the cities of San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami and Durham, N.C...link to complete NYT article

The Race Dialogue We Won't Have

Washington Post

By Jonathan Capehart
Sunday, July 26, 2009

This is what is likely to come of the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home by a white police officer: nothing.

The July 16 arrest of the African American scholar by a Cambridge, Mass., police officer looks a little more complicated and a lot more nuanced today than it did when the story broke on Monday. But it has sparked another conversation on race in America that, I suspect, will end as quickly as it began, with no clearer understanding of the roots of the racial reactions that fueled it. I'll explain why in a minute.

We've made enormous strides in the 46 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. expounded on a dream of racial equality. America in 1963 envisioned neither a prominent, wealthy and powerful black professor at Harvard nor a black president of the United States.

"I am standing here as testimony to the progress that's been made," President Obama said at the end of his news conference Wednesday night when asked about the confrontation in Cambridge. But then he added, "And yet the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, [race] still haunts us." It certainly haunted Obama.

Two days after the president said he thought the police "acted stupidly" in the Gates affair, he stood in the White House briefing room to ask everyone -- himself included -- to "take a step back" from the heated rhetoric from all sides. He acknowledged that he "could have calibrated those words differently" and that the controversy shows that "these are issues that still very sensitive here in America."..link to complete article

Washington Post

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And Now, a Comment on the DREAM Act

During the weeks that dreamacttexas was in hibernation, many things happened. For one, 500 DREAMers went to Washington to stage a graduation - to show the country that they count, they graduate, they are educated, and they need the DREAM Act NOW.

It is looking like the DREAM Act is going to be attached to Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which is not a good thing... makes the chances of it passing much less. All we need is to get Senator Sessions going again, and he'll put on his Huck Finn suit and give a great show on the floor of the Senate--- getting even more Minute Men types upset that "these illegals are taking away our resources"

Mark Twain was much more intelligent than Sessions. Even though Twain had a mostly Southern mentality, he would have agreed that DREAMers need to be free to use their education and contribute to our country. Maybe Twain's ghost will come down and whisper in Sessions' ear... you never know what will happen. There may be a miracle.

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The New York Times

Editorial

June 24, 2009 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

Graduation Dreams

We were caught between exhilaration and despair on Tuesday as we watched more than 500 young people in caps and gowns gather in a park a few steps from the United States Capitol. It was a graduation, but it wasn't. There were awards, but no diplomas. And while there was talk of bright futures, the speeches were threaded with notes of impatience and defiance and made clear that those hopes were in no way assured.

That is because all of the students are in this country illegally. They were rallying to support the Dream Act, a bill in Congress that would open a path to citizenship for undocumented high school graduates who complete two years of college or military service.

These students came here as minors, hitched to their parents' aspirations for a better life. But once they graduated from high school, they found their choices restricted to the same dead-end jobs and shadowed lives that their parents live.

The Dream Act, their best hope, has languished since it was first introduced in 2001, welded in recent years to comprehensive immigration reform bills that have gone nowhere. The all-or-nothing comprehensive strategy holds that if a bipartisan immigration bill doesn't contain the right mix of sweeteners like the Dream Act to offset hard-line enforcement measures, it won't attract enough votes to pass.

That strategy hasn't worked but backers are hoping that President Obama will lead the way. The youthful grass-roots advocates from more than a dozen states who rallied on Tuesday share that hope, but they also know they are running out of time. They are getting older, and their window of eligibility for relief is closing.

One speaker, Walter Lara, 23, who graduated from college with honors, was caught by immigration in Miami. He is scheduled to be deported to Buenos Aires on July 6.

Just to talk with him and his fellow advocates who came up with him from Florida is to see an inspiring wealth of potential -- with no place to go. They are from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru. They all went to community college. But because they are here illegally, they got no financial aid or in-state tuition (they paid $800 per class, instead of $250) or loans or work-study jobs.

They want to go into international relations, psychology, chemistry, engineering, mass communications, political science. But one is a handyman; the others work in restaurants and as church volunteers. The drive to Washington took them 18 hours. They looked tired, solemn, defiant, hopeful in the way young people have that banishes cynicism. They seemed incredulous that a message they grew up with -- work hard, stay in school, study and you will succeed -- does not apply to them. link to editorial

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Cell Phones and Your Life - Part I

Yesterday I was going down a Houston freeway with my best friend. No, I wasn't talking on the cell or texting. She was. In that second of distraction, I moved to the right lane, barely missing a big black sedan. The other driver honked at me. Thank goodness he had quick reflexes and there was no one on his right side. Otherwise my friend would have been smashed.

So what happened? I was distracted by her talking on the cell phone...

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Editorial

The Truth About Cars and Cellphones

New York Times

Published: July 22, 2009

We find it terrifying every time we get on the highway and see all of those multitasking drivers racing along while they yammer and text on cellphones, juggle hot coffee and a Mc-whatever or attend to personal grooming in the rearview mirror. So it is especially distressing to learn that in 2003, officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration quashed a proposal for a large-scale study of cellphone risks and withheld hundreds of pages of research that warned about the dangers of cellphone use while driving.

That information — including estimates that cellphoning drivers caused 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents in 2002 — was finally pried loose this week by a freedom of information lawsuit.

The former leader of the agency told The Times’s Matt Richtel that he was urged by officials at the Department of Transportation to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing the Congressional appropriators who controlled the highway budget. They had made clear that they wanted the agency to gather safety data but not to “lobby” the states.

What we want to know is: Since when did trying to save lives constitute lobbying?

The researchers had rightly proposed a warning to state governors about the initial finding that laws mandating the use of hands-free devices did not solve the problem. The conversation is the distraction. This is a finding since confirmed by other studies that show a driver on the phone is four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and is comparable to someone with 0.08 blood-alcohol content, the threshold for drunken driving.

Six years later, the Transportation Department advises drivers to avoid cellphones except in emergencies. But far too many Americans now consider phoning while driving to be standard behavior. The department estimates that roughly 12 percent of drivers are on the phone at any given time — twice the estimate of its own researchers when their effort to document the risks was rebuffed...link to NYT editorial

Obama and Henry Louis Gates

Obama Addresses Race and Gates Incident

By Krissah Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, July 23, 2009; 10:12 AM

President Obama said Wednesday night that racial issues still haunt America, even as he noted "the incredible progress that has been made."

Obama was asked at the end of his news conference about the arrest last week of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. outside his home. The incident has sparked a national discussion about race relations.

Obama noted that "Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here," and he referred to the professor's account of arriving home to find a jammed door, forcing it open and then being confronted by a white police officer looking for proof that Gates lived in the house. According to Gates's account, he showed the officer his ID and became angry when the officer would not identify himself.

The president said he understands the professor's outrage. If he were trying to "jigger into" his old house in Chicago, Obama said, he would assume that the police would be called on him as well. But once Gates showed his ID, he added, it seemed to him the officer should have considered the issue resolved.

"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that," Obama said. "But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

The remarks received extensive coverage overnight on blogs and top billing on several television news shows Thursday morning.

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"What I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact," Obama said Wednesday night. He said he had pushed for the passage of a bill in the Illinois legislature to address the problem.

Obama went on to say that he stood in the White House "as testimony to the progress that's been made."

"And yet the fact of the matter is . . . this still haunts us," he said. "And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently, and oftentime for no cause, casts suspicion, even when there is good cause." ...link to complete WP article

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Will ICE be punished for the illegal home raids?

DREAMers tell me that there were home raids as recently as June 2009 - in the state Indiana... So much for Obama wanting to straighten out our immigration policy.

At least someone is now willing to say the home raids are illegal. Click here for link to a report on the illegality of ICE Home Raids, published by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

See NYT article below:

Report Says Immigration Agents Broke Laws and Agency Rules in Home Raids

New York Times

By NINA BERNSTEIN

Published: July 21, 2009

Armed federal immigration agents have illegally pushed and shoved their way into homes in New York and New Jersey in hundreds of predawn raids that violated their own agency rules as well as the Constitution, according to a study to be released on Wednesday by the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

The study by the school’s Immigration Justice Law Clinic, backed by several law enforcement experts including Nassau County’s police commissioner, found a widespread pattern of misconduct by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement after analyzing 700 arrest reports obtained from the agency through Freedom of Information lawsuits.

The raids were supposed to focus on dangerous criminals, but overwhelmingly netted Latinos with civil immigration violations who happened to be present, the study said. Raiders mistakenly held legal residents and citizens by force in their own homes while agents rummaged through drawers seeking incriminating documents, the report said.

Acting without judicial search warrants, the agents were required to obtain informed consent from a resident before they entered a private residence. But the study found that in 86 percent of the Nassau and Suffolk County arrest reports that it analyzed, and a quarter of the New Jersey cases, no consent was recorded.

“If any local law enforcement agency in the nation were involved in these types of widespread constitutional violations it would prompt a federal investigation,” said Lawrence W. Mulvey, the Nassau police commissioner, who led a panel that guided the Cardozo report. “Federal immigration agents simply need to play by the same rules as every other law enforcement officer.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded with a brief e-mail statement defending the conduct of its agents and the home raids — the same kind of response it has made to similar criticism since the Bush administration vastly expanded their use in 2006...link to complete NYT article

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Cell Phones and Your Life - Part II

Driving while using a cell phone MORE dangerous than we thought

And the reason we didn't know this is that the U.S. Department of Transportation withheld a report about its danger because they feared Congress would be angry. This is amazing and horrible. How many people have been hurt or killed because of someone talking or texting on a cell phone?

Here is the link to the report

The reason I am emphasizing this is because most DREAMers drive and talk on their cells on the same time.

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July 21, 2009

Driven to Distraction

U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving

By MATT RICHTEL

In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel.

They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.

But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

On Tuesday, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site.

In interviews, the officials who withheld the research offered their fullest explanation to date.

The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

The group petitioned for the information after The Los Angeles Times wrote about the research last year. Mother Jones later published additional details.

The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002.

The researchers also shelved a draft letter they had prepared for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to send, warning states that hands-free laws might not solve the problem.

That letter said that hands-free headsets did not eliminate the serious accident risk. The reason: a cellphone conversation itself, not just holding the phone, takes drivers’ focus off the road, studies showed.

The research mirrors other studies about the dangers of multitasking behind the wheel. Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content.

The three-person research team based the fatality and accident estimates on studies that quantified the risks of distracted driving, and an assumption that 6 percent of drivers were talking on the phone at a given time. That figure is roughly half what the Transportation Department assumes to be the case now.

More precise data does not exist because most police forces have not collected long-term data connecting cellphones to accidents. That is why the researchers called for the broader study with 10,000 or more drivers.

“We nevertheless have concluded that the use of cellphones while driving has contributed to an increasing number of crashes, injuries and fatalities,” according to a “talking points” memo the researchers compiled in July 2003.

It added: “We therefore recommend that the drivers not use wireless communication devices, including text messaging systems, when driving, except in an emergency.”

Dr. Jeffrey Runge, then the head of the highway safety agency, said he grudgingly decided not to publish the Mineta letter and policy recommendation because of larger political considerations.

At the time, Congress had warned the agency not to use its research to lobby states. Dr. Runge said transit officials told him he could jeopardize billions of dollars of its financing if Congress perceived the agency had crossed the line into lobbying... link to complete article

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Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrested by Cambridge MA police

What did he do wrong? He was standing on his own front porch...

For those of you who don't know this man. He is considered one of the most important African American scholars in the nation. click here for a list of the books he has written.

click here for link to police report

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Harvard professor Gates arrested at [his] Cambridge home

July 20, 2009 05:55 PM

Boston Globe

By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.

Police arrived at Gates' Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.

He was booked for disorderly conduct after exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, according to a police report. Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had "no idea who he was messing with,'' the report said.

Gates told the officer that he was being targeted because "I'm a black man in America.'' [To read a copy of the police report, click here]

Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver's license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.

The police report said Gates was arrested after he yelled at the investigating officer repeatedly inside the residence then followed the officer outside, where Gates continued to upbraid him. "It was at that time that I informed Professor Gates that he was under arrest,'' the officer wrote in the report.

Gates, 58, declined to comment today when reached by phone.

The arrest of such a prominent scholar under what some described as dubious circumstances shook some members of the black Harvard community... link to complete article

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Our fearful leaders - Senator Sessions & Co.

The Sotomayor hearings last week were too hard for some to bear. Observing Senator Sessions and others talk to her like she was retarded was so absurd, we had to turn off the tv. Good thing that she came off as an intelligent, educated, articulate woman. Sessions and Co. were an embarrassment to the U.S. Senate.

excerpt from:

Answers to Questions

by Jeffrey Toobin

The New Yorker

Are you supposed to agree with people just because you are from the same ethnic group? Even if you think their ideas are way off the mark?

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Cell Phones and Your Life - Part III

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Please don't text or talk on your cell when you drive

July 18, 2009, 12:00 pm

Should Cellphone Use by Drivers Be Illegal?
New York Times

By The Editors

An increasing number of studies show that driving while talking on a cellphone can be dangerously distracting. Yet most states have not barred handheld phones, and none have banned all drivers from using hands-free devices. (Half a dozen states and the District of Columbia prohibit driving while holding a phone; currently 14 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving.)

Some opponents say cellphone bans are simply not enforceable. Others argue that drivers do all sorts of distracting things while driving — like eating, arguing with kids in the back seat, listening to music — so it makes little sense to outlaw one activity.

We asked several experts how significant is the cellphone hazard? As a matter of public safety, should all cellphone use while driving be banned?

click here for complete NYT article

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