Monthly Archives: March 2015

Connecticut Teen Who Refused Chemo Now in ‘Remission,’ Seeks Freedom – Video

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Connecticut Teen Who Refused Chemo Now in #39;Remission, #39; Seeks Freedom
17-year-old girl who initially refused treatment for a highly curable cancer is now in remission and is seeking release from state custody to finish her last two months of chemotherapy at home,...

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Connecticut Teen Who Refused Chemo Now in 'Remission,' Seeks Freedom - Video

Lois Lerner Out From Under Freedom Path Lawsuit For Now

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Lois Lerner might have had a bit of a breathing spell for a couple of days before the announcements about more e-mails being found. It was so short that it has largely been missed, but since I am playing catch-up I noticed it. Lerners brief reprieve was the work of Judge Sidney Fitzwater, a Reagan appointee, of the District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Judge Fitzwaters decision in Freedom Path Inc v Lois Lerner et alat least gets Lois Lerner out from under one lawsuit. Freedom Path was suing Lois Lerner, unnamed officials of the IRS, the IRS and the United States. The suit was about targeting FP due to its conservative views as it was applying for exempt status, illegally releasing information about FP and the general use of a facts and circumstances test in the IRS evaluation of political activities. Freedom Path complained in its lawsuit about the slow pace of its application and additional intrusive questions. Also a copy of its application (Form 1024) was released to ProPublica. On the application FP had indicated that it would not be engaging in political activity. ProPublica released a story Controversial Dark Money Group Among Five That Told IRS They Would Stay Out of Politics, Then Didntthat mentioned Freedom Path as one of the five. In April 2013 Freedom Path was asked for further information, which it was hesitant to release because of the disclosure to ProPublica. The IRS then offered FP the opportunity to enter into a new expedited process, but that did not work for them.

Under this process, Freedom Path could obtain approval of its pending application if it made certain representations regarding the organizations past, current, and future spending on political activities. Freedom Path alleges that it declined to participate in this optional expedited process because it viewed the required representations as unconstitutionally broad and as an IRS attempt to force Freedom Path to relinquish some of its First Amendment rights.

Lois Lerner Not A Texan The reason that Lois Lerner was dismissed from the suit is one that her supporters, if there are any, might not find very satisfying. Her detractors, who are legion, will probably find it infuriating. She was dismissed, because she does not have enough connection with Texas which is where the suit was brought (although in a federal court).

Freedom Path maintains that it has made a prima facie showing of in personam jurisdiction based on Lerners contacts with the state of Texas in connection with the IRSs unconstitutional scheme to target conservative organizations like Freedom Path. Alternatively, Freedom Path requests leave to conduct limited jurisdictional discovery to demonstrate Lerners contacts with the state of Texas. In Freedom Paths complaint, its only allegations related to the courts power to exercise personal jurisdiction over Lerner are that she oversaw the IRSs Office of Exempt Organizations, whose Examinations unit was headquartered in Dallas, Compl. 13, and that she sent an email to the Director of the Examinations unit, located in Dallas, regarding an audit of an organization not involved in the present case, Compl. Ex. 10 at 4; P. Resp. 34. These allegations are insufficient to make a prima facie showing of either specific jurisdiction or generalin personam jurisdiction over Lerner. Freedom Path has certainly failed to make a prima facie showing of general jurisdiction, that is, that her affiliations with the state of Texas are so continuous and systematic as to render her essentially at home in Texas. And it has also failed to make a prima facie showing of specific jurisdiction. Freedom Path does not allege that Lerner took any actions in Texas that are relevant to its complaint or that she directed any actions at Texas. In fact, Freedom Path does not even allege that Lerner had any personal involvement with its application for tax-exempt status or was even aware of the application.

Other Counts Dismissed Without Prejudice Because the IRS has not taken final action on Freedom Paths application, its other claims about use of the facts and circumstances test and view point based targeting were also dismissed, although Freedom Path is allowed to refile.

In count IV, Freedom Path challenges as unconstitutional the IRSs use of certain policies and procedures to target conservative organizations for heightened review of applications for tax-exempt status. Although the IRSs adherence to these policies and procedures may ultimately culminate in a final decision regarding Freedom Paths tax-exempt status, the use of these policies and procedures neither marks the consummation of the IRSs decisionmaking process nor determines Freedom Paths rights or obligations or precipitates legal consequences. Therefore, the policies and procedures that Freedom Path challenges in count IV do not constitute final agency actions, as 704 requires to state a claim for relief under the APA. Because Freedom Paths claims in count IV arise under the APAs general provisions and do not challenge final agency action, the court concludes that count IV does not state a claim on which relief can be granted, and it grants the federal defendants motion to dismiss count IV under Rule 12(b)(6).

Death By Delay? According to this Politico story Freedom Path is one of the organizations whose exempt determination is still waiting for word from the IRS on its exempt status.

Nearly two years after the IRS was exposed for improperly sidetracking requests for tax exemptions from tea party groups, POLITICO has learned that at least a half-dozen conservative applicants are still waiting for an answer.

It is likely the lawsuit that is continuing to hang it up. Whether Freedom Path was a dark money group or not to begin with remains undetermined, but apparently the group has gone entirely dark except for the lawsuit.

Without an answer, Freedom Path, currently suing the IRS, stopped operating in late spring of 2012 out of concern that it would be denied tax-exempt status and forced to pay back taxes. It also feared donor information could be revealed to the IRS. Freedom Path exists mostly in name now. It doesnt even have a website. Its six-figures in debt for legal bills suing the IRS. Weve had to reduce all of our expenses, and really were in a position now where were just struggling with legal bills, Bensing said. Were closer to bankruptcy than to solvency.

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Lois Lerner Out From Under Freedom Path Lawsuit For Now

Freedom ride marks 50 years since Charles Perkins' ride for Aboriginal equality

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Paul Kelly sings to Dubbo high school students. Photo: Peter Rae

It was a day of songs and gratitude to the original freedom riders who 50 years ago hopped on a bus heading for Aboriginal equality.

On Wednesday afternoon, buses containing 28 of the next generation of freedom riders and about a dozen of the original freedom riders from 1965 arrived in Dubbo to chants of "freedom" .

The Aboriginal Freedom freedom riders in Casino, New South Wales, on February 17, 1965. Photo: Ted Golding

It was the first stop in a four-day re-enactment to mark the 50th anniversary of the ride ledby Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins and Bill Ford, who had been inspired by the American freedom riders.

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Australia's freedom ride helped bring about a resounding yes vote in the 1967 referendum, which included Aboriginal people in the census for the first time, and allowed the goverment to make policies providing for better health and education.

When original freedom rider Robyn Iredale stepped off the Freedom Bus or modern coach with air conditioning and seat belts as it is todayDubbo women rushed to shake her hand. Others chanted "freedom", and said it was a day of celebrating and partying. Singers Paul Kelly and Troy Cassar-Daley will tonight perform at a free concert, which is expected to include a new song by Cassar-Daley to mark the event.

The 50th anniversary Freedom Ride, with original members, sets off from Sydney University on Wednesday. Photo: Peter Rae

During the day, new songs were sung, original poems were recited, but perhaps the most moving was the welcome sang by a local Aboriginal woman."Years ago I would have been locked up for singing in my language," she said. Now the local primary schools teach the local indigenous languages.

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Freedom ride marks 50 years since Charles Perkins' ride for Aboriginal equality

Civil-rights soundtrack still on freedom highway

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In the midst of the stirring "Glory," the musical centerpiece of the Oscar-nominated movie "Selma," South Side rapper Common delivers a terse summation of how words, melody and a protest merged during the civil-rights movement.

"We sing, our music is the cuts that we bleed through," he raps.

The blood of dozens of African-Americans was spilled in the first of three attempted voting-rights marches to the Alabama capital of Montgomery from Selma 50 years ago, on March 7, 1965. But as "Glory" suggests, the legacy of Selma is hardly in the past.

"The movement is a rhythm to us, freedom is like religion to us," Common raps in "Glory." Then he draws a connection between the '50s civil-rights pioneer Rosa Parks and last year's protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the police slaying of an unarmed African-American resident, Michael Brown:

" That's why Rosa sat on the bus, that's why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up."

In the months after the outrage stirred by the deaths of Brown and another unarmed African-American, Eric Garner, in New York, singer D'Angelo released his first album in more than a decade, "Black Messiah," which included references both glancing and startlingly direct to the chain of events between Selma and Ferguson. "All we wanted was a chance to talk," he sings in "Charade, " 'stead we only got outlined in chalk."

It is the most recent evidence that the soundtrack for the civil-rights movement continues to be written. As Newsweek said in 1964, "History has never known a protest movement so rich in song."

In its original incarnation during the '60s, African-American "freedom songs" aimed to motivate protesters to march into harm's way and, on a broader scale, spread news of the struggle to a mainstream audience. The gospel music of black churches spoke to a better life in the hereafter, but soul, R&B and jazz secularized that message and speeded up the timetable so that the good life or at least an equal opportunity to live it could be experienced now. As preachers and ministers such as Martin Luther King articulated the movement's goals, artists such as Chicago's Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke and the Staple Singers crafted a musical counterpoint rooted in gospel but speaking the language of popular culture.

Mayfield wrote and sang on a string of message-oriented Impressions singles, including "Keep on Pushing" and "People Get Ready." Cooke delivered the yearning "A Change is Gonna Come," and there was also Little Milton's "We're Gonna Make It," Oscar Brown Jr.'s searing "Driva Man" with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam," and the defiant, repurposed spirituals and folk songs of the Freedom Singers.

All this creativity was inspired by pain, struggle and bloodshed. The three Selma marches in 1965 aimed to draw attention to the struggle for black voting rights and proved to be a turning point in the struggle, as police turned tear gas, dogs and clubs on the unarmed protesters, walking arm and arm across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, with a ferocity that shook even the occupants of the White House.

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Civil-rights soundtrack still on freedom highway

Freedom camps in the red zone

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Joseph Johnson

FREEDOM CAMPING: The Christchurch City Council is investigating whether parks and reserves, including those in the red zone, could be made available to freedom campers in a bid to reduce the problems caused by makeshift camps.

Parks and reserves in Christchurch's red zone may be opened up to freedom campers to get them out of the way of residents.

Freedom camping numbers in the city have grown since the quakes and are causing unease among residents forced to put up with unwelcome neighbours.

In a bid to reduce the problems caused by makeshift camps, Christchurch City Council staff are investigating whether parks and reserves, including those in the red zone, could be made available to them and whether some toilet facilities could be left open at night.

"The problem is not going to go away and we need to find some solutions," Councillor Glenn Livingstone said. "The threshold of going down the path of looking at a bylaw has been reached."

A report on freedom camping will be considered by the council on Thursday but it recommends holding off on introducing a bylaw that would limit where freedom campers could go until other options have been exhausted because it could be problematic to enforce.

Earlier this summer a group of freedom campers who had taken up residence in the Beresford St car park in New Brighton upset neighbours by defecating outside and partying late at night.

The campers were all foreign tourists on working holidays and most have since taken up residence in the Waimairi Surf Club car park. Complaints there include campers blocking an emergency entrance to the beach, slamming doors in the middle of the night and using the sand dunes as a toilet.

Chris Smith, who manages the surf club, said the council needed to act. The group using the club car park was "quite confrontational and intimidating" and although there had been no physical altercations so far, tensions were escalating.

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Freedom camps in the red zone

It's time for California to compensate its forced-sterilization victims

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Last week, Virginia became the second state to compensate victims of one of the most shameful acts in U.S. history: state-sponsored forced sterilization. Virginia has agreed to give each surviving victim $25,000. North Carolina was the first to compensate its victims, setting aside $50,000 per individual in 2013. Now it's time for California to compensate its sterilization victims.

The discredited pseudo-science of eugenics (meaning well-born) purported that certain traits such as intelligence and social behaviors are hereditary. Advocates believed that the same selective breeding theories applied to corn and cattle could also govern the intellectual and social characteristics of humanity. As a result, American bureaucrats and legislators eagerly implemented policies aimed at preventing those they deemed undesirable and defective from reproducing. The scheme promulgated that sterilization was a cost-effective way of relieving society of the burden of providing for the social welfare of the unfit and socially inadequate.

In 1909, California became the third state to pass virtually without opposition a forced-sterilization law. In 1913, state legislators amended the law to broaden its reach, seeking to target anyone with mental disease, which may have been inherited and is likely to be transmitted to descendants. What followed was the most zealous eugenics campaign in America.

From 1909 until its repeal in 1979, the Golden State coercively sterilized more than 20,000 of its citizens. Nearly a third of all the forced sterilizations in the United States were done in California. Various organizations were established to assist in ridding society of its costly subhuman defectives: the Eugenics Society of Northern California, the California Division of the American Eugenics Society, the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and others.

Other state legislatures followed suit and by 1924, 15 states had enacted similar sterilization laws.

Even Adolf Hitler took notice. In Mein Kampf, published in 1925, he celebrated the ideology. There is today one state, wrote Hitler, in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of citizenship] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States. Hitler's Reich deployed its own sterilization laws, nearly identical to those in the United States, within six months of taking power in 1933.

The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately weighed in on the issue. In Buck vs. Bell (1927), the court held 8 to 1 that the state, under its police powers, had the constitutional authority to segregate and systematically sterilize people to reduce the economic and societal burden they inflicted on the nation.

In the majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote: It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

As Holmes' words acknowledge, the intent of eugenical sterilization laws like California's was not simply to deprive victims of children, but also to ensure that they and their posterity ceased to exist. It was the state-sponsored means of eradicating entire classes of people. It is only when the victim dies that the stated objective is accomplished.

California officially apologized to victims for its repugnant act in 2003. But just 10 years later, the state's prison system was found to have been sterilizing dozens of female inmates without lawful consent. Has our thinking really changed? Defending the cost of such surgeries, one prison gynecologist said, Over a 10-year period, that isn't a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children as they procreated more.

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It's time for California to compensate its forced-sterilization victims

Residents up in arms over 'problem after problem' with Ludlow estate's eco heating system

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It is a green estate in Shropshire, heated by a state-of-the-art biomass boiler. But people living in the homes, on the outskirts of Ludlow, are fed up with a system that constantly breaks down and costs them an arm and a leg.

They live on the Rock Green estate, one of scores across the country that have taken on their own heating system in an effort to be environmentally friendly.

In fact the development of 91 sustainable homes has won awards for being a pioneer in clean energy.

But residents say they are not impressed after problem after problem with the heating, which was created along with the estate in 2009. And today 41 one of them have produced a petition calling for a review of whole system and set up.

South Shropshire Housing Association, which runs the site, insists problems had been resolved and today denied tenants had been charged for downtime when not using heating.

Michael Reading, an engineer who has lived in Rocks Green Crescent on the estate for two-and-a-half years, disagreed.

He said in January his heating bill had doubled for no obvious reason, and tenants were unhappy because they could not switch energy supplier unlike others they had no option but to use the woodfuel system.

He said: There have been problems from day one. Tenants have various issues with the heating but one major concern we all have is the pricing and accuracy of the readings taken each month.

It seems there can be a massive jump from one month to the next, and it seems theres no way of turning the heating completely off. Even if you switch it off at the mains, apparently its still generating heat and youre still paying for it.

He said some tenants were paying over 120 a month for little or no usage, and some were worried they were racking up bills of more than 1,000.

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Residents up in arms over 'problem after problem' with Ludlow estate's eco heating system

Eco-terrorists threaten to poison infant formula

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Story highlights New Zealand police reveal threat to poison infant formula Letters were sent containing contaminated formula and a demand to government The letters called for government to halt use of 1080 poison in pest control efforts

Police appealed for public help to find the alleged blackmailer, at a press conference in Wellington Tuesday.

They revealed an investigation had been underway since November, when anonymous letters were sent to giant dairy cooperative Fonterra and a farmers' lobby group.

The letters were accompanied by small packages of milk powder containing a concentrated form of 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate), a poison used by New Zealand's Department of Conservation to control introduced pest species such as possums and rats.

The letters threatened to contaminate infant and other formula with 1080 unless New Zealand stopped using the poison for pest control by the end of March, police said in a statement. The letters said the threat would be made public if the demand was not met.

New Zealand's heavy use of 1080 -- it uses about 80% of the world's manufactured stocks, according the country's Environmental Protection Agency -- has been a controversial issue, with conservationists and farmers generally supporting the measure, and some hunters and animal rights activists opposed.

Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said the threat amounted to "eco-terrorism."

Prime Minister John Key said at a press conference that police had advised that there was a low likelihood of the threat being carried out.

Meanwhile, government officials said supplies of formula had not been contaminated, and urged consumers to continue using the products.

"We are confident that New Zealand infant and other formula is just as safe today as it was before this threat was made," said Scott Gallacher, Deputy Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries.

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Eco-terrorists threaten to poison infant formula

'Eco-terrorism' threat in New Zealand

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Story highlights New Zealand police reveal threat to poison infant formula Letters were sent containing contaminated formula and a demand to government The letters called for government to halt use of 1080 poison in pest control efforts

Police appealed for public help to find the alleged blackmailer, at a press conference in Wellington Tuesday.

They revealed an investigation had been underway since November, when anonymous letters were sent to giant dairy cooperative Fonterra and a farmers' lobby group.

The letters were accompanied by small packages of milk powder containing a concentrated form of 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate), a poison used by New Zealand's Department of Conservation to control introduced pest species such as possums and rats.

The letters threatened to contaminate infant and other formula with 1080 unless New Zealand stopped using the poison for pest control by the end of March, police said in a statement. The letters said the threat would be made public if the demand was not met.

New Zealand's heavy use of 1080 -- it uses about 80% of the world's manufactured stocks, according the country's Environmental Protection Agency -- has been a controversial issue, with conservationists and farmers generally supporting the measure, and some hunters and animal rights activists opposed.

Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said the threat amounted to "eco-terrorism."

Prime Minister John Key said at a press conference that police had advised that there was a low likelihood of the threat being carried out.

Meanwhile, government officials said supplies of formula had not been contaminated, and urged consumers to continue using the products.

"We are confident that New Zealand infant and other formula is just as safe today as it was before this threat was made," said Scott Gallacher, Deputy Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries.

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'Eco-terrorism' threat in New Zealand