California: New law on the human right to water

Scoop.co

The Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, welcomed the adoption of a new law in the State of California which establishes the right of everyone to safe, clean, affordable and accessible water, adequate for human needs. The law, she said, “will be an inspiration not only for other states within the USA, but equally for many other countries in the world.”

Assembly Bill 685, adopted on 25 September in the most populated US state, with over 37 million inhabitants, also provides for coordination among state agencies about the use of water for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes – an essential dimension of the protection and promotion of the rights to water and sanitation for all.

“When I received the good news about the adoption of this bill, my thoughts immediately went to those people I met last year in California who still do not benefit from this fundamental human right,” the Special Rapporteur said.

“I remember the tragic stories of farm-worker women in Seville, in the San Joaquin Valley, who were condemned to drinking the water from their polluted wells because they did not have the money to purchase bottled water. I recall the crying women who told me that they were devoting about 20 per cent of their US$14,000 per year income to water and sanitation. I am also thinking about the indigenous people of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, whose lack of water and adequate sanitation was appalling.”

“This bill is a clear sign that bringing safe and affordable water to all in California is a political priority, which I warmly welcome. I am happy to congratulate the state of California for this historic step,” she added.

During her official visit to the United States in February and March 2011, at the invitation of the Government, the Special Rapporteur also met with Assembly Member Mike Eng, the author of the bill, the co-sponsors, and communities affected by the inadequate access to safe drinking water. She has been following developments with interest ever since, and said she found them very encouraging. Her findings and recommendations were frequently quoted when the bill was introduced, discussed and finally adopted.

“The men and women of many of the communities I visited engaged the democratic process over several years to bring change to inadequate policies,” Ms. Albuquerque said. “Their efforts are an inspiring success story for human rights defenders around the world.”

With this new law, the human rights to water and sanitation will be placed at the centre of policy formulation to ensure that all people in California have access to affordable, accessible, acceptable and safe water and sanitation in sufficient amounts to protect their health and dignity. California, as one of the states most dependent on water resources for its economy, and one likely to be heavily affected by climate change, should now become the first state in the country to adopt a comprehensive policy on the human right to water, the Special Rapporteur said.

“After the adoption of a comprehensive law, the crucial next step is to come up with a plan, policy and strategy for the sector. As part of the duties of our office, I am at the disposal of the Government to give the necessary support,” Ms. Albuquerque said.

“As the United States Government begins preparation for the 2014 Universal Periodic Review process, when it will report to the UN Human Rights Council on progress towards meeting human rights obligations, this important achievement in California will demonstrate the willingness of local government to address challenges identified in my 2011 mission report,” the Special Rapporteur added.

ENDS

Catarina de Albuquerque is the first UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. She was appointed by the Human Rights Council in 2008. Ms. de Albuquerque is a Professor at the Law Faculties of the Universities of Braga and Coimbra and the American University’s Washington College of Law and a Senior Legal Adviser at the Office for Documentation and Comparative Law, an independent institution under the Prosecutor General’s Office. Learn more, log on to: www.ohchr.org/srwaterandsanitation

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What We Still Don’t Know About Mittens' Taxes

Propublica 

With the documents Mitt Romney released recently, we know a bit more about his taxes.

We know, for instance, that Romney paid a rate of 14.1 percent on $13.7 million in income on his 2011 tax return, which he achieved by purposely overpaying. Though he was entitled to deduct $4 million in charitable contributions, Romney deducted only $2.25 million to keep his tax rate above 13 percent.

(Romney, it has been pointed out, could file an amended return to claim the full deduction after the election. We've contacted the Romney campaign, and Michele Davis, a spokeswoman, assured us he would not do so.)

We know, according to a letter from his accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, that Romney has paid state and federal income taxes each year since at least 1990, which would seem to disprove Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim in July that Romney had not paid any taxes for a decade.

And we know that Romney’s tax rate since 1990 never dipped below 13.66 percent, according to his accountants. Romney paid an average effective tax rate between 1990 and 2009 of 20.2 percent.

But there’s still a lot we don’t know. “I think most of the major questions we had before [last Friday] are still out there,” said Brian Galle, a tax law professor at Boston College. Here are a few: 

How much did Romney make before 2010?

While Romney has disclosed his average effective tax rate for the last two decades, he hasn’t said how much he earned in those years or how much — the dollar amount — he paid in taxes.

That’s an important distinction, said Daniel Shaviro, a tax law professor at New York University. Various tax-planning strategies may have enabled Romney to reduce his adjusted gross income in some years.

In 2008, for instance, investors everywhere lost money when the stock market tanked. Romney may have carried those losses forward, Shaviro said, and used them to reduce his adjusted gross income in 2009. While we know Romney paid at least 13.66 percent of the income he recorded on his taxes in a given year, we don’t know what percentage he paid of the money actually took home that year.

Why is Romney’s IRA worth so much?

Much of Romney’s wealth sits in his IRA, which is worth as much as $101.6 million. It’s a remarkable number, in part because Romney would have been able to contribute a maximum of $30,000 a year to his IRA while he was at Bain, from 1984 to 1999.

Galle, the Boston College tax law professor, said the most likely explanation for the outsized IRA is that Romney put in shares in Bain investments that swelled in value. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bain allowed employees to buy a special class of shares in the firm’s investments. The shares didn’t cost very much, but they could be extremely lucrative. In one deal, the Journal reported, “some Bain employees saw a 583-fold increase” in the value of their shares — an astronomical return. Because the shares were in IRAs, the profits could be plowed into new Bain deals without subtracting taxes.

Romney also may have beefed up his IRA by contributing “carried interest” — a share of the profits in funds managed by Bain. As Reuters reported earlier this year, any potential carried interest would “not be disclosed in his personal financial summary or on a federal income tax return.” In other words, even if Romney released all his tax returns, we still might not know exactly how he accumulated his huge IRA.

What about Romney’s investments offshore?

We know many of Romney’s IRA investments are based in foreign countries but it’s hard to know how much. He valued one account in the Cayman Islands at anywhere between $5 million and $25 million.  

One thing we do know is that Romney pays a far lower tax rate overseas than he does here. According to Quartz, Romney paid only 2.4 percent in foreign taxes in 2011 on the $3.5 million he earned abroad.

We also know where Romney’s current overseas investments are held —Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Luxembourg — and many of the firms he has invested in, including a state-owned Chinese oil company and a Chinese bank that Romney’s family trusts sold their stake in last year. But we don’t have a lot of other important documentation, including forms would show whether Romney had, as the New York Times has reported, “over the years declared all of his foreign income to the IRS in a timely manner.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Romney’s offshore IRA investments likely helped him avoid a little-known tax called the unrelated business income tax. The tax, “meant to discourage tax-exempt entities such as an IRA or college endowment fund from unfairly competing with for-profit, taxpaying entities by operating a business without paying taxes on it,” could have hit Romney at up to 35 percent.

The Romney campaign seems unlikely to release any more information about his finances, but that hasn’t kept reporters from digging it up. Bloomberg, for instance, analyzed securities filings to report last Thursday that Romney has set up a type of trust known as an “I Dig It” trust — a legal way for Romney to avoid estate and gift taxes and pass some of his fortune onto future generations.

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George Zimmerman’s DNA problem

WashPost

George Zimmerman is in a bloody mess. The killer of Trayvon Martin claims that he was in a life-and-death struggle with the unarmed teenager. But DNA tests are not exactly bearing that out. Yes, they prove the two were in close proximity. One stain on the shirt that Trayvon wore underneath the hoodie was a DNA match to Zimmerman. But these tests raise more questions about (or poke more holes in) Zimmerman’s story.

Despite claims that Trayvon grabbed Zimmerman’s gun, Trayvon’s DNA was not found on the weapon or its holster. Despite claims that Trayvon pummeled Zimmerman in the face and the head, none of Zimmerman’s DNA was found on Trayvon’s hoodie. Not even on the cuffs or the sleeves.

And then there are Zimmerman’s shirt and jacket.

There were 47 stains tested for the presence of blood on Zimmerman’s shirt and jacket. Of the 16 on his shirt, 14 “gave chemical indications for the presence of blood.” All matched Zimmerman’s DNA profile. Of the 31 stains tested on the jacket, 17 “gave chemical indications for the presence of blood.” Nine of the 17 matched Zimmerman’s DNA profile. The remaining eight are nothing short of curious.

“Stain E” on the jacket showed the presence of “at least two individuals.” The major contributor was Zimmerman. The profile of the minor contributor “could not be determined.”

“Stain I” showed the presence of “at least two individuals.” Zimmerman was the major contributor, but Trayvon was “excluded as a possible contributor to the mixed DNA profile.” So, who is this second person?

“Stain N” showed the presence of “at least two individuals.” Zimmerman was the major contributor. The “partial minor DNA profile match” was that of Trayvon.

“Stain U” showed the presence of “at least two individuals.” Trayvon is “a possible contributor” to the DNA mix. But “no determination” could be made about the “possible contribution” of Zimmerman to the DNA profile.

“Stain BB” showed the presence of “at least two individuals.” The major and minor contributors to the DNA profile could not be determined, but Zimmerman is “included as a possible contributor. “No determination” could be made about the possible contribution of Trayvon.

The DNA data from “Stain V” were deemed “insufficient for inclusion purposes.” While the results were “consistent with the presence of a male individual,” no determination could be made on whether that male was Zimmerman or Trayvon.

The DNA data from “Stain Z” and “Stain G” were “not interpretable.” While there was the “presence of a male individual” in “Stain Z,” there was also the “possible presence of non-human DNA.” How odd. Is this the result of contamination?

Of the 47 stains tested for the presence of blood on Zimmerman’s shirt and jacket, Trayvon was a “partial minor DNA profile” in one stain and a “possible contributor” in another. He was “excluded as a possible contributor” in a third. That’s just three stains out of 47.

“Unless Trayvon Martin was wearing gloves and a bonnet, it would normally be expected that there would be some evidence of him on the garment,” said Kendall Coffey, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

As I mentioned previously, Coffey noted that ambiguities in DNA evidence could undermine Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. But Coffey was cautious in assessing the DNA evidence after I read results to him. “This is nobody’s silver bullet,” he said. “All of these things standing alone are explainable. But when assembled at trial, they can provide meaningful support for the prosecution’s case.”

When Zimmerman takes the stand in his second-degree murder trial next year, he will tell his story of a life-and-death struggle once more. How he was cold-cocked by Trayvon. How his head was repeatedly slammed into the sidewalk. How he stopped Trayvon from using his gun on him. This time Zimmerman will tell his version of events under oath before a jury. And upon cross-examination, he will have to explain why and how there’s precious little DNA evidence to back it all up.

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US troop deaths in Afghanistan hit 2,000

Aljazeera A US soldier and a civilian contractor have been killed in Afghanistan by an Afghan soldier, bringing the total number of US soldier deaths in the 11-year-old conflict to 2,000. A US official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters news agency on Sunday that an American soldier and a civilian contractor had been killed in the incident in eastern Afghanistan. The attack happened at about 12:30 GMT on Saturday in the Sayd Abad district just outside a joint US-Afghan base in Wardak province, an Afghan defence ministry spokesman said on Sunday. Dangers of a numbers-focused strategy for ANSF NATO forces would only say that it was a "suspected insider attack" and that a NATO service member and civilian contractor were killed. Saturday's attack brings the total number of ISAF troops killed in 36 such attacks this year to 52, accounting for about 15 per cent of all coalition casualties in the war. Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Kabul, quoted witnesses as saying that gunfire erupted after a dispute between International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers, who were manning the checkpoint, and an Afghan National Army patrol. "[The NATO troops] were searching vehicles [carrying] men, women and children, and an Afghan Army patrol came along the highway [from their own checkpoint]. The Afghan patrol complained that the NATO troops were checking women and children, and it seems as a result of this confrontation a firefight broke out," he said. "It's a particularly grim day for the American forces because that death brings to two thousand the number of troops killed here in Afghanistan in more than ten years." So-called insider attacks are now among the biggest threats to coalition troops.

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Iranian jury finds Reuters chief guilty of 'propaganda' and 'spreading lies' - Reuters Kicked Out of Iran

Rt.com

A Reuters journalist has been convicted of “propaganda related offenses” by an Iranian media court. A jury found Tehran bureau chief Parisa Hafezi guilty of “spreading lies” in a video story about women training in martial arts.

The report contained a headline saying that Iranian women were studying to become ninja “assassins.” The story claimed the country was training more than 3,000 female ninjas to kill possible foreign invaders.

The young Iranian girls featured in the story are training in the art of Ninjutsu. They promptly filed defamation charges against Reuters after the report went viral on the internet.

The story's headline, "Thousands of female Ninjas train as Iran's assassins,” was corrected to read, "Three thousand women Ninjas train in Iran.”

Despite the correction, the bureau’s press accreditation was suspended last March. Reuters journalists have not been allowed to report inside Iran since then, Press TV reported.

Hafezi’s passport was confiscated in March, prohibiting her from traveling while the judge decides on a sentence. A ruling is expected in early October.

A jury member at the Tehran penal court said on Sunday that Reuters was also found guilty of propagating against the Islamic Republic, by "disseminating false information to disturb public opinion."

Reuters has apologized for the error, but declined to comment on the case “until a decision is issued.”

Hafezi joined Reuters as a member of staff in 2003 and was appointed bureau chief in 2009.

She was one of four female journalists to be honored by the International Women’s Media Foundation at the 2011 Courage in Journalism Awards for risking her life to cover the news.

In the past, Hafezi has been targeted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, faced government interrogations, and been kidnapped as a result of her work, More magazine reported.

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Pathological liar Bachmann forces AP to impose 'fact check' quota

Rt.com

Do you think you had it rough trying to make sense of the countless quips spewed from the mouth of Rep. Michele Bachmann on the campaign trail? The AP had to implement a Bachmann-specific standard for fact checking during her presidential run.

Speaking before members of the National Press Club this week, Associated Press Editor Jim Drinkard told fellow reporters that when it comes to getting to the truth, some subjects require a little bit of extra scrutiny. Take Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), for example, whose failed attempt at securing the GOP’s nomination for presidency last year was highlighted by a hilarious collection of factually inaccurate gaffes and goofs.

For the AP, though, her rampant and ridiculous outbursts weren’t exactly fun and games.

“We had to have a self-imposed Michele Bachmann quota in some of those debates,” Drinkard told attendees at his address.

AP articles involving the congresswoman had to be repeatedly vetted for accuracy, Drinkard added, causing an “overload” at times when she was involved in select stories.

“Often she was just more prone to statements that just didn’t add up,” Drinkard added.

Until she resigned from the Republican Party race, Bachmann was notorious on the campaign trail for touting imaginary facts and erring on seemingly everything under the sun. Despite these mistakes, however, she still managed to be an early favorite among GOP voters, placing first in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa in August 2011. Over the course of only a few months, however, that support waned as, coincidentally, the congresswoman increasingly ad-libbed during presidential debates and dropped countless incorrect statements to the media.

At the height of her popularity last summer, Rep. Bachmann warned that “the rise of the Soviet Union” posed a very real threat to a United States in the midst of America’s “unstoppable decline.” Weeks later, she suggested that Cuba was in cahoots with terrorists aligned with Hezbollah and that violent extremists “could have training camps or perhaps have missile sites or weapons sites in Cuba,” without ever introducing any evidence.

In December, the then-candidate’s publicist had to put out a press release after she once again erred on America’s foreign policy, advocating that she would close down the US embassy in Iran if president — more than 20 years after it had already been done.

“Congresswoman Bachmann is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and is fully aware that we do not have an embassy in Iran and have not had one since 1980,” her camp was coaxed into admitting. “She was agreeing with the actions taken by the British to secure their embassy personnel and was speaking in the hypothetical, that if she was President of the United States and if we had an embassy in Iran, she would have taken the same actions as the British.”

Bachmann formally ended her run for the White House in January.

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Crime at the US-Mexico border goes corporate

AP

When a regional manager for the Mexican Gulf cartel moved his operation to a more lucrative territory on the border, he took along not only his armored trucks and personal army, but also his department heads and a team of accountants.

In the grotesque violence that has enveloped Mexico it's easy to lose sight of the fact that, ultimately, these criminal organizations are complex businesses that rely on careful accounting as much as assault rifles. The structures underlying the most successful criminal organizations are stable in a way that means capturing or killing the man at the top may only be a temporary setback and pinching one revenue stream will only drive a search for others.

Rafael Cardenas Vela, a Gulf cartel member who ran three important "plazas," or territories, testified this week about the organization's structure and operations in such detail that it could compose a short course — Narco 101, perhaps.

When prosecutors asked Cardenas to walk jurors through a decade of moves in the cartel's command and control structure, he turned to a giant organizational chart that would be recognizable to anyone in the corporate world except for spaces at the bottom for those "arrested" and "deceased."

Cardenas explained that in his plaza he had managers in charge of each revenue stream, including marijuana, cocaine and "cuota," or extortion payments demanded of legal and illegal businesses. Each department had an accountant. An additional accountant tracked the "piso," or tax that was charged on any drug loads moving through his territory. Another accountant supervised them all.

"I can't do everything myself," Cardenas said. "That's why we have someone in charge of every department."

That structure means simply removing the head is often not enough.

"You have to keep attacking the command and control elements again and again," said Will Glaspy, who oversees the Drug Enforcement Administration's operations in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, across the border from Gulf cartel territory.

Since Osiel Cardenas Guillen, Rafael Cardenas' uncle, was extradited to the U.S. in 2007, the cases have been building on themselves.

The man who took over for Osiel Cardenas was captured this month. Osiel Cardenas' brother was killed by Mexican marines in 2010. Most recently, a third brother was arrested in Mexico this month. Juan Roberto Rincon-Rincon, the plaza boss convicted Friday in Brownsville, is one of three Gulf cartel plaza bosses arrested in the U.S. last year. And Mexican authorities captured another alleged boss this week.

"It's the government of Mexico that has had such tremendous success targeting the Gulf cartel over the last five or six years," Glaspy said. "They're the ones who have continued to attack and focus on the command and control of the Gulf cartel."

"(The Gulf cartel's) corporate structure doesn't exactly look like a Fortune 500 company, but it's probably not far off," he said.

The structure reflects diversified interests. The cartel is still known primarily as a drug-trafficking organization, but it receives important revenue from smuggling immigrants and its extortion rackets.

The U.S. Border Patrol sector that covers much of the Gulf cartel's territory seized just over 1 million pounds of marijuana in 2011 and apprehended nearly 60,000 illegal immigrants. The cartel receives a cut for every kilogram of drugs and every illegal immigrant that passes through its territory.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, chairwoman of the government department at the University of Texas-Brownsville, credits Osiel Cardenas with leading the cartel's structural evolution. She said his nephew's testimony revealed the similarities between today's drug-trafficking organization and a legitimate corporation with transnational networks and diversified interests.

Osiel Cardenas' biggest move was creating the Zetas, former special forces troops, as a new department to handle the cartel's security and enforcement, she said.

"When (Osiel Cardenas) introduced the Zetas he changed the whole panorama of drug trafficking and organized crime in the hemisphere," she said. Their expansion into other criminal enterprises beyond drug trafficking served as a lesson for their longtime patrons and other criminal organizations. The Zetas split from the cartel in 2010 and became an independent criminal organization.

Without the critical smuggling corridors controlled by the Gulf cartel or its supply lines, the Zetas initially couldn't count on drug-trafficking revenue so they diversified to piracy and extortion, Glaspy said.

"It's all about the money, and if they're not making the money from drugs they will seek out other criminal activity to reinforce or find other revenue streams," he said.

The younger Cardenas testified that it cost him about $1 million a month when he ran the Rio Bravo plaza to cover payroll, rent, vehicles and bribes. He had to recruit, train and equip his own gunmen. When they were killed, he continued paying their salaries to their families.

He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and marijuana and is cooperating with U.S. authorities in other cartel cases with the hope of receiving a shorter sentence.

Bribes went to every level of law enforcement, the press, members of the military and corrupted U.S. officials, he said.

"In order to have your plaza well, all organized, you have to pay all the police agencies," Cardenas said. Paying off the local police in Rio Bravo alone cost $20,000 per week, he said.

And when the Gulf cartel began going head to head with the Zetas in early 2010, he said, costs rose to the point where they were just breaking even.

Cardenas worked for nearly a decade as a plaza boss. Each of his plazas was within an hour's drive of the Texas border.

"All of the plazas that have river on the border are better," he said. More drugs and immigrants crossing, as well as border businesses such as pharmacies popular with American tourists. "More money."

Election officials: Electronic voting machines in Nashville were programmed wrong

TheRepublic

An election official says that problems with electronic voting machines in Metro Nashville during the primary election were caused by inaccurate programming.

Several prominent Democrats were given Republican ballots in the primary in some precincts.

Election Commissioner Steve Abernathy told The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/TSaVeW) that the vendor had programmed the electronic poll books for a closed primary instead of an open one.

Abernathy said the company has changed the software to prevent the problem from occurring again. Even so, the election commission has opted not to use the electronic machines in November's general election.

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California urged to improve prison isolation unit conditions

Jurist

Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] on Thursday urged [press release] California authorities to end "shocking conditions" in high-security prison isolation units. In a report [text, PDF] entitled "The Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California's Security Housing Units," AI examined the prison conditions of over 3,000 individuals who have been confined in isolation in California prisons. The prisoners, who spend over 22 hours each day in their cells without work, activities or rehabilitation, endure "inhuman suffering," AI asserted. US Researcher for AI Angela Wright visited several prisons in the state and deplored the conditions:

The conditions and length of imprisonment in California's isolation units are simply shocking. To deprive prisoners in a segregated environment of natural light, adequate exercise or meaningful human contact is unnecessarily punitive and unjustifiable in all circumstances. Access to natural light and exercise are basic needs, essential for physical and mental health.

AI criticized California in particular for holding prisoners in isolation for longer periods than in any other US state prison system. AI recommended that California adopt a behavior evaluation based process by which prisoners in isolation could earn their way into the general prison population. The advocacy group also proposed changes to the high security isolation unit conditions, including better exercise and more human contact.

US prisons have been criticized for conditions leading to human rights abuses and overcrowding. In April AI contended that solitary confinement conditions in Arizona's maximum security prisons violate international human rights law [JURIST report]. In January Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] released its annual World Report and criticized US illegal detention programs [JURIST report], pointing to extreme prisoner rights abuses and a high level of incarceration of illegal immigrants and racial minorities. A week earlier the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) [official website] criticized the US human rights record, including the indefinite detention [JURIST report] of Guantanamo Bay [JURIST backgrounder] detainees, in a report that called the situation in Guantanamo "the main outstanding [human rights] issue" in the US. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata [Cornell LII backgrounder] to uphold an order requiring California to release up to 46,000 prisoners [JURIST report] to remedy the state's overcrowded prisons [JURIST news archive].

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Desperate Mittens Sends Out Lyme Disease Mailer in VA

ThinkProgress

The Romney campaign is sending out a flyer in Northern Virginia pledging to fight Lyme Disease, which is describes as a “massive epidemic threatening Virginia”:

The Washington Post notes that “According to the CDC there are less than 1,000 reported cases of Lyme disease in Virginia a year — in a state of eight million people.”

It’s fairly difficult to contract Lyme disease because “an infected tick must be attached to the skin for at least 36 hours to transmit Lyme bacteria.” For those who are affected, there is a straight-forward and effective treatments for the disease — a course of antibiotics for 2 to 4 weeks.

So what’s the point of this Romney mailer?

A highly influential social conservative in Virginia, Michael Farris, believes that people can contract “chronic Lyme disease” that must be treated with long-term antibiotics. The Center for Disease Control says there is no such thing as “chronic Lyme disease” and “long-term antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease has been associated with serious complications.”

You can read about these complications in this article from “Clinical Infectious Diseases,” the official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, called “Death from Inappropriate Therapy for Lyme Disease.”

Farris “claims that his wife is a chronic Lyme sufferer as are all his seven children.”

Farris, who has no medical training, was invited to speak with Romney on his campaign bus a couple of weeks ago. Farris said that he and Romney “talked about Lyme disease. It was cordial and encouraging.” Here’s a photo of the meeting from Romney’s Facebook page:

The Romney flier advocates providing “local physicians with protection from lawsuits to ensure they can treat the disease with the aggressive antibiotics that are required.” Farris’ wife receives treatment from “Dr. Joseph Jemsek, who moved his practice to Washington, D.C., after losing his medical license in North Carolina for treating patients with long-term antibiotics.”

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Chemist at MA drug lab falsified thousands of tests

DailyKos

A former chemist at a Massachusetts drug lab was arrested yesterday after being accused of mishandling and falsifying thousands of tests.  As a result, a good number of drug convictions in the Boston area are now in doubt.

Annie Dookhan was arrested at her home outside Boston.

Police said the former state crime lab chemist admitted that she altered or faked test results of drug cases assigned to her. Prosecutors said she went as far as adding cocaine to samples that were negative.

"There was clearly a short cutting of corners," State Attorney General Martha Coakley said. "There was just getting this done as quickly as possible and all of that we're looking at."

Officials said during her nine years the lab, Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples. About 11,000 people now in jail were put there in part due to her work.

Dookhan told investigators, "I screwed up big time.  I messed up, I messed up bad."  Considering the ramifications, that can only be described as an understatement.

Dookhan came under scrutiny in part because she tested more than 500 samples a month--five times the average.  And yet, her supervisor claimed to have never seen her in front of a microscope.  She also had a bad habit of misidentifying samples.  

The scandal started brewing in December, when she was suspended for not signing things in and out.  After an investigation revealed she'd cut corners on several of her tests, she resigned in March.  Further investigation revealed she'd gone as far as outright faking several tests--including dousing non-drug substances with cocaine to make them look positive.  She'd also lied about getting a master's degree at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

The ramifications of Dookhan's actions are staggering.  State officials think that at least 1,140 drug convictions are now in doubt.  Additionally, dozens of defendants in the Boston and Cambridge areas have already had their bail reduced due to concerns about tainted evidence.  At least one defense attorney thinks that more than a few "very dangerous people" could end up walking because of this.

Dookhan currently faces as much as 22.5 years in prison if she's convicted on all three counts of obstruction of justice and falsifying academic records.  However, it looks like under Massachusetts sentencing guidelines, she could get as little as three years (based upon a peek at the sentencing guidelines grid--anyone from Massachusetts can correct me).  Given how reckless (at the very least) her behavior was and that it may have led to a lot of innocent people going to jail, I'm hoping for significant upward departure here.

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Informal justice systems must be part of broader human rights initiatives: UN report

Jurist

A UN report [text, PDF] released on Wednesday concludes that informal justice systems must be used as part of broader initiatives to ensure that human rights of people in developing countries are protected. The report shows that many groups of people, including women, children and minorities, benefit from informal justice systems because they empower them to make claims on issues such as divorce, custody and property rights. According to the report, "[informal justice systems] may be more accessible than formal mechanisms and may have the potential to provide quick, relatively inexpensive and culturally relevant remedies." The report also states...

White Party Canvassers Deceiving Nevada Voters?

ColorLines

Our Nevada-based community journalist Kate Sedinger tells us about a troubling development in Carson City, Nevada targeting senior citizen voters.

Carson Now reports that canvassers identifying themselves as part of the Romney campaign told seniors leaving a big box store that new legislation required that they re-register in order to vote. The deception doesn't stop there. Another senior names Janet Riggs says that she got a phone call, also informing her that she had to re-register.

Voter deception targets vulnerable communities--aside from seniors, youth and people of color are purposefully confused, so that they won't participate in the voting process. To read about the way that former felons are being tricked, read Brentin Mock's feature, Florida's Felonious Voting Trap.

If you hear or see something that doesn't jive with what you already know to be true about registering or voting, remember that you can always contact Election Protection by going online or calling 1-866-Our-Vote

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Blacks Three Times More Likely to be Arrested for Marijuana Possession Than Whites

ColorLines

Amanda Reiman, a policy manager at the Drug Police Alliance says it's important to consider why marijuana was deemed illicit 75 years ago on October 1st.

Take a look at what the first Commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry Jacob Anslinger said:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

Below is an excerpt from Reiman's piece "75 Years of Racial Control: Happy Birthday Marijuana Prohibition," that explores the history and the legacy marijuana prohibition has left behind.

As we approach the 75th anniversary of marijuana prohibition in the United States on October 1, it is important to remember why marijuana was deemed illicit in the first place, and why we as Americans must open our eyes to the insidious strategy behind 75 years of failed policy and ruined lives. Marijuana laws were designed not to control marijuana, but to control the Mexican immigrants who had brought this native plant with them to the U.S. Fears over loss of jobs and of the Mexicans themselves led cities to look for ways to keep a close eye on the newcomers. In 1914, El Paso Texas became the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to ban the sale and possession of marijuana. This ban gave police the right to search, detain and question Mexican immigrants without reason, except the suspicion that they were in possession of marijuana. Folklore started to erupt about the effect that marijuana had on those who used it. As Harry Anslinger stated, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

Fast forward to 2012. Marijuana is still an illicit substance and the laws are still being used to justify the search, detainment and questioning of populations deemed "untrustworthy" and "suspicious" by modern society, namely the poor and young men of color. A prime example is New York's Stop and Frisk program, which stopped nearly 700,000 people in 2011. Hailed as a strategy for removing guns and violent crime from the streets, this method of stopping and questioning "suspicious" individuals, highlights the racial inequities associated with drug laws. From 2002 to 2011, African American and Hispanic residents made up close to 90% of people stopped. This is not limited to New York. In California, African-Americans are 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana, 12 times more likely to go to prison with a felony marijuana charge, and 3 times more likely to go to prison with a marijuana possession charge.

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Warrantless Electronic Surveillance Surges Under Obama Justice Department

Citizens for Legit Gov

Including Internet and email information requests, more than 40,000 people were targeted in 2011. 28 Sep 2012 The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the number of people subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance of their telephone, email and Facebook accounts by federal law enforcement agencies, new documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday revealed. The documents, released by the ACLU after a months-long legal battle with the Department of Justice, show that in the last two years, more people were spied on by the government than in the preceding decade.

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U.S. Forcibly Drugged All Guantanamo Prisoners With Scopolamine - Documents

Citizens for Legit Gov

New evidence has emerged that all Guantanamo Bay prisoners, including David Hicks, were drugged involuntarily with a substance that has a long history as a truth serum. Recently declassified US documents revealing medical procedures have shown that scopolamine was administered to all detainees taken to the Cuban detention centre. Documents... reveal that the rationale for the drug's use on all detainees was to prevent motion sickness. However, US military experts have said that scopolamine is not recommended for motion sickness because of its severe side effects. The Sun-Herald revealed this month that Mr Hicks and other prisoners were drugged against their will with unknown substances and that detainees' medical records were incomplete, with the names and dosages of drugs removed.

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The most dangerous drug in the world: Scopolamine can block free will, wipe memory and even kill

Citizens for Legit Gov

The most dangerous drug in the world: 'Devil's Breath' chemical from Colombia can block free will, wipe memory and even kill --Within minutes, victims are like 'zombies' - coherent, but with no free will 12 May 2012 The drug is called scopolamine, but is colloquially known as 'The Devil's Breath,' and is derived from a particular type of tree common to South America. Demencia Black, a drug dealer in the capital of Bogota, said the drug is frightening for the simplicity in which it can be administered. Black said that one gram of Scopolamine is similar to a gram of cocaine, but later called it 'worse than anthrax.' In high doses, it is lethal. [Right, in addition to CIAciopaths committing war crimes by forcing Scopolamine on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Scopolamine was likely administered to James Holmes by his handler. --LRP]

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South African miners continue strike

Rt.com

Hundreds of South African workers from gold, chrome and coal mines have refused to report for duty as they continued a mass strike. The latest wave of labor protest follows a major strike that turned violent at the...

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Jesse Jackson Jr.’s wife Sandi lashes out at ‘jackals’ in media

The Grio

The wife of embattled Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) has no patience for the local media. Sandi Jackson, currently serving as an Alderwoman, called the media “jackals” outside of a Chicago restaurant. Her family has been under intense media scrutiny after her husband took an extended leave of absence from Congress to be treated for chronic depression. The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th) referred to the media as “jackals” at a fund-raising event Tuesday night and said her husband was at home and doing well.

“The jackals are outside. Let them stay outside,” she shouted into a microphone, referring to the press staked outside a birthday fund-raising bash. “We are family in here . . . it’s because of you all that I keep it going on.”

Jackson, who could be heard outside Park 52 restaurant, said if she were wearing more makeup lately it was a sign: “this girl is under pressure.”

She thanked supporters for helping her deal with the issues that had befallen her family of late.

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Kentucky candidate compares Obama to Hitler, Ted Bundy in new ad

theGrio 

One Kentucky congressional candidate is shocking viewers with a new television ad calling President Barack Obama a “murderer.”

“Would you vote for a murderer?” the ad by independent Kentucky House candidate Andrew Beacham asks in the beginning of the ad. “Would you vote for a man who paid others to murder for him? Would you vote for a man who stole from others to pay for his murder?”

The 30-second spot shows gruesome photos of a dismembered fetus and dead bodies and photos of Adolf Hitler and serial killer Ted Bundy as Beacham accuses Obama of giving “your money to Planned Parenthood to murder babies and to the Muslim Brotherhood, who murders Christians and Jews.”

Beacham has admitted in an interview with the Associated Press that he knows he probably isn’t going to win.

“Clearly, our main goal is to cause Obama’s defeat,” Beacham said. “But if I were to get elected, that would be great.”

Beacham is able to avoid Federal Communications Commission indecency regulations because the organization requires local stations to give candidates “reasonable access” to air political ads. Bowling Green’s WKBO plans to run a disclaimer along with the ad.

“We have no right to censor the ad, and we can’t refuse it either,” Rick McCue, general manager of the station said. “We can at least give people a heads up, and we intend to do that.”

The ad cost $5,000 and will air around 22 times in three different Kentucky markets.

There are six other congressional candidates in the country who are planning to use the same shock tactics to hurt Obama’s re-election campaign. AP reports that all of them, including Beacham, are affiliated with anti-abortion leader Randall Terry, who joined the presidential race for the same reason.

“Our message is simple,” Terry said in a statement. “No Christian can ethically vote for Obama.”

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