MCCAIN SAYS REPORT IS “NOT TRUE”

	Gerald Herbert/Associated Press John and Cindy McCain leaving a news conference in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 21, 2008

Filed at 9:49 a.m. ETTOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — John McCain emphatically denied a romantic relationship with a female telecommunications lobbyist on Thursday and said a report by The New York Times suggesting favoritism for her clients is ”not true.””I’m very disappointed in the article. It’s not true,” the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood beside him during a news conference called to address the matter.

”I’ve served this nation honorably for more than half a century,” said McCain, a four-term Arizona senator and former Navy pilot. ”At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust.”

”I intend to move on,” he added.

McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to steer clear of McCain.

Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting before the 2000 campaign after ”a discussion among the campaign leadership” about Iseman.

But McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation, and denied that his aides ever tried to talk to him about his interactions with Iseman.

”I never discussed it with John Weaver. As far as I know, there was no necessity for it,” McCain said. ”I don’t know anything about it,” he added. ”John Weaver is a friend of mine. He remains a friend of mine. But I certainly didn’t know anything of that nature.”

His wife also said she was disappointed with the newspaper.

”More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He’s a man of great character,” Cindy McCain said.

The couple smiled throughout the questioning at a Toledo hotel.

The published reports said McCain and Iseman each denied having a romantic relationship. Neither story asserted that there was a romantic relationship and offered no evidence that there was, reporting only that aides worried about the appearance of McCain having close ties to a lobbyist with business before the Senate Commerce Committee on which McCain served.

The stories also allege that McCain wrote letters and pushed legislation involving television station ownership that would have benefited Iseman’s clients.

In late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson’s chief executive, Lowell W. ”Bud” Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.

McCain did not urge the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal, but he asked for speedy consideration of the deal, which was pending from two years earlier. In an unusual response, then-FCC Chairman William Kennard complained that McCain’s request ”comes at a sensitive time in the deliberative process” and ”could have procedural and substantive impacts on the commission’s deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties.”

McCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company’s jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.

”Riding on the airplane was an accepted practice,” McCain said Thursday, adding that he supported a change in rules since then. As for the letters, he said: ”I said I’m not telling you how to make a decision; I’m just telling you that you should move forward and make a decision on this issue. I believe that was appropriate.”

Since The New York Times story was published Wednesday night, the McCain campaign has sought to discredit it, distributing lengthy statements and deploying senior advisers to appear on news shows. The campaign calls the story a smear campaign to destroy the Republican nominee-in-waiting.

Robert Bennett, a Washington attorney representing McCain, told NBC’s ”Today” show that McCain’s staff provided the Times with ”approximately 12 instances where Senator McCain took positions adverse to this lobbyist’s clients and her public relations firm’s clients,” but none of the examples were included in the paper’s story.

”There is no evidence that John McCain ever breached the public trust and that is the issue and the only issue,” said Bennett, who once represented former President Clinton, on Thursday.

McCain said he won’t allow the reports to distract him from his presidential campaign.

”I will focus my attention in this campaign on the big issues and on the challenges that face this country,” he said.

He defended his integrity last December, after he was questioned about reports that the Times was investigating allegations of legislative favoritism by the Arizona Republican and that his aides had been trying to dissuade the newspaper from publishing a story.

”I’ve never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special-interest group. That’s a clear, 24-year record,” he told reporters.

McCain and four other senators were accused two decades ago of trying to influence banking regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud. The Senate Ethics Committee ultimately decided that McCain had used ”poor judgment” but that his actions ”were not improper” and warranted no penalty.

McCain has said that episode helped spur his drive to change campaign finance laws in an attempt to reduce the influence of money in politics.

 (Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com )

RACE MATTERS LESS IN POLITICS IN DEEP SOUTH

By ADAM NOSSITER

Published: February 21, 2008

CULLMAN, Ala. — The racial breakthroughs have come gingerly in Alabama over the years: a black mayor there, an old Klansman put on trial here, a civil rights memorial there.

Bob Farley for The New York Times

James Fields, with Misty Holloway and her daughter, Morgan, 4, went to school with Mrs. Holloway’s mother, Ann Hammond.

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James Patterson for The New York Times

Eric Powell, left, elected to the State Senate in Mississippi last year, with State Representative Bubba Carpenter of Burnsville.

And a few weeks ago, voters in a county that is more than 96 percent white chose a genial black man, James Fields, to represent them in the State House of Representatives. It is a historic first, but the moment is full of awkwardness.

“Really, I never realize he’s black,” said a white woman in a restaurant, smiling.

“He’s black?” asked Lou Bradford, a white Cullman police officer, jokingly.

“You know, I don’t even see him as black,” said another of Mr. Fields’s new white constituents, Perry Ray, the mayor of one of the county’s villages, Dodge City.

A woman congratulates Mr. Fields as he stops in traffic, and afterward, he shakes his head ruefully: “Sometimes, I have to pinch myself: ‘Am I really black?’ ”

Yet in a state once synonymous with racial strife, there is no denying this milestone, for all its tentativeness. Everyone — the voter in Cullman, the Alabama politician, the local historian — is rubbing his or her eyes, a little.

“It strikes me as a real watershed event,” said Samuel L. Webb, a historian at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Last fall, another black man, Eric Powell, was elected to the Mississippi State Senate from a district that is more than 92 percent white, and no one could find a modern precedent for that, either. Mr. Fields and Mr. Powell are Democrats who decisively beat white candidates in districts that traditionally support Republican presidential candidates.

Inevitably, there are questions about what this might mean for Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy in the Deep South, and the quick answer, perhaps, is not that much, at least in Cullman County at this moment. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Mr. Obama here, by a margin of four to one, in the Democratic primary this month, as many here readily point out.

Yet there are parallels. The very quality that voters here highlight, in so many words, as one of Mr. Fields’s more attractive attributes — that they are at ease with him — is one of Mr. Obama’s most important selling points. The implications are not lost on State Senator Zeb Little, the majority leader in the Alabama Senate and a Democratic power broker in Cullman: black politicians can win in unlikely districts, transcending history and partisan politics, if voters can see them as one of their own.

“James is comfortable around white people, and white people are comfortable around James, and you see the same thing with Obama,” Mr. Little said. (He had asked Mr. Fields not to run, he recalls, because he did not think a black candidate could win.)

Granted, the peculiar local circumstances at play in these elections are not readily duplicated in a national election. Mr. Fields and Mr. Powell were enmeshed in their communities — hometown heroes, well before their elections. Mr. Powell, 41, was a football coach in the local schools in Corinth, Miss., and had played at the University of Mississippi; Mr. Fields, 53, is a former marine and part-time Methodist minister who worked in the unemployment office here for years, helping many find jobs. He served on the board of the local electrical cooperative, was active in the Boy Scouts and was a high school basketball star.

“He’s a dadgum good fellow,” said W. F. Davis, a retired boilermaker, at Jack’s, a roadside restaurant here, as Mr. Fields basked in congratulations nearby. “He’s always been one of us.”

The distinction between “one of us” and something else, of course, is always present in a county where Mr. Fields still sees Confederate flags dotting the landscape.

“There’s two different races, in that race,” explained James Rice, a white resident describing black people, as Mr. Fields affably worked voters at Jack’s. “You got some that don’t want to be nothing, and you got some that want to help. You don’t find too many like James Fields.”

Still, with many voters here, Mr. Fields has a personal bond dating to the days before new factories brought a measure of prosperity. Voters — rural white Alabama voters — smilingly approach the big, open-faced man; they hug him and joke with him.

“When their sons and daughters needed jobs, they said: ‘You go see James Fields. You go see that black man down there,’ ” Mr. Fields recalled. “When I returned from college, my whole life was centered around helping people. I was a public servant,” he says — a description readily echoed by many he encounters here.

For unsavory historical reasons, it could easily have turned out differently in a county that is almost entirely white. Mr. Fields inherited a bitter racial legacy, one he is conscious of though unsoured by. If you drove into Cullman 70-odd years ago, you might have happened on “a neatly-painted sign” by the roadside, as the New York writer Carl Carmer described it in his book, “Stars Fell on Alabama,” one bearing a chilling and crude inscription telling blacks: “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in this Town.”

It had always been a place of few blacks because there were few plantations, and the whites wanted to keep it that way. The sign has long since passed into half-remembered folk memory. But the sentiments behind it lingered; the Ku Klux Klan and Citizens Councils were strong in these hills, and blacks in Cullman were effectively confined to a forlorn hillside hamlet known as The Colony, which is where Mr. Fields grew up.

Still, the racial legacy is complicated, as it is everywhere in Alabama: Cullman was also the home base of Gov. James E. Folsom, whose moderation on race helped damage his career in the 1950s.

Matter-of-factly, Mr. Fields recounts an early history hemmed in at every turn by racism, at least until high school years.

In town, on Saturdays, “you didn’t try anything on.”

“You’d look at stuff,” he said. “We literally had nothing going to the cotton fields, picking cotton, beans.”

His father worked the night clean-up crew at a poultry-processing plant. And “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” he said, blacks knew they were unwelcome in the white, white town of Cullman.

When integration came to the schools in the mid-1960s, no one was eager to embrace the black students. “We were up for auction: who wants the colored people,” Mr. Fields said, recalling that only a school in another town would accept them. His parents made him travel a back road to avoid trouble; he vividly recalls driving up on a Klan rally as a young man.

But then, in high school, things changed. His athletic prowess earned him friendship among white peers; when rival football teams yelled racial epithets at him, his own classmates protectively retaliated.

All his life, Mr. Fields says calmly, he has had to deal with white people, in the fields, at school, and at work. Mr. Powell had a similar experience.

“I spent more time, as a kid, growing up with my white friends in their homes,” Mr. Powell said. In a county that is 98 percent white, “we were always around each other,” he said.

People in Cullman talk about Mr. Fields’s excellent connections in the state capital, Montgomery — he once served as assistant director of the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations — but they also speak, hesitantly, about sloughing off an age-old burden.

As Rob Werner, the owner of an outdoor-goods store here, put it: “People said, ‘Of course, James is black. This is great, this will get this off our back.’ ”

(Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com)

Past Coverage

• Race and Gender Issues Erupt In a Tense Day for Democrats (January 14, 2008)
• Daring to Believe, Blacks Savor Obama Victory (January 5, 2008)
• ECONOMIC VIEW; The Divisions That Tighten the Purse Strings (April 29, 2007)
• A Senator’s Ambitious Path Through Race and Politics (February 21, 2007)

FOR MCCAIN, SELF-CONFIDENCE ON ETHICS POSES ITS OWN RISK

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Senator John McCain during his 2000 presidential bid. His campaign this year is not as focused on the corrupting power of money in politics.

By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON

Published: February 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

The Long Run

Honor and Influence

This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

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The lobbyist Vicki Iseman, whose relationship with Mr. McCain troubled some of his aides.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.

“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”

Mr. Cheshire added, “That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why he was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator,” Charles Keating, whose ties to Mr. McCain and four other lawmakers tainted their reputations in the savings and loan debacle.

During his current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. McCain has played down his attacks on the corrupting power of money in politics, aware that the stricter regulations he championed are unpopular in his party. When the Senate overhauled lobbying and ethics rules last year, Mr. McCain stayed in the background.

With his nomination this year all but certain, though, he is reminding voters again of his record of reform. His campaign has already begun comparing his credentials with those of Senator Barack Obama, a Democratic contender who has made lobbying and ethics rules a centerpiece of his own pitch to voters.

“I would very much like to think that I have never been a man whose favor can be bought,” Mr. McCain wrote about his Keating experience in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “From my earliest youth, I would have considered such a reputation to be the most shameful ignominy imaginable. Yet that is exactly how millions of Americans viewed me for a time, a time that I will forever consider one of the worst experiences of my life.”

A drive to expunge the stain on his reputation in time turned into a zeal to cleanse Washington as well. The episode taught him that “questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics,” he wrote, “and because they incite public distrust they need to be addressed no less directly than we would address evidence of expressly illegal corruption.”

A Formative Scandal

Mr. McCain started his career like many other aspiring politicians, eagerly courting the wealthy and powerful. A Vietnam war hero and Senate liaison for the Navy, he arrived in Arizona in 1980 after his second marriage, to Cindy Hensley, the heiress to a beer fortune there. He quickly started looking for a Congressional district where he could run.

Mark Mainz/Getty Images

Lowell W. Paxson, one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. She lobbied Mr. McCain on his behalf.

Andrea Mohin

Mr. McCain, with his lawyers, before he testified to the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 about his involvement in the Keating Five Scandal.

Mr. Keating, a Phoenix financier and real estate developer, became an early sponsor and, soon, a friend. He was a man of great confidence and daring, Mr. McCain recalled in his memoir. “People like that appeal to me,” he continued. “I have sometimes forgotten that wisdom and a strong sense of public responsibility are much more admirable qualities.”

During Mr. McCain’s four years in the House, Mr. Keating, his family and his business associates contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The banker gave Mr. McCain free rides on his private jet, a violation of Congressional ethics rules (he later said it was an oversight and paid for the trips). They vacationed together in the Bahamas. And in 1986, the year Mr. McCain was elected to the Senate, his wife joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.

Mr. Keating had taken over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and used its federally insured deposits to gamble on risky real estate and other investments. He pressed Mr. McCain and other lawmakers to help hold back federal banking regulators.

For years, Mr. McCain complied. At Mr. Keating’s request, he wrote several letters to regulators, introduced legislation and helped secure the nomination of a Keating associate to a banking regulatory board.

By early 1987, though, the thrift was careering toward disaster. Mr. McCain agreed to join several senators, eventually known as the Keating Five, for two private meetings with regulators to urge them to ease up. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” Mr. McCain later lamented in his memoir.

When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 — one of the biggest collapses of the savings and loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion — the Keating Five became infamous. The scandal sent Mr. Keating to prison and ended the careers of three senators, who were censured in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than the others, was reprimanded only for “poor judgment” and was re-elected the next year.

Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain’s investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple’s assets.) He should not be able to “put this behind him,” Mr. Black said. “It sullied his integrity.”

Mr. McCain has since described the episode as a unique humiliation. “If I do not repress the memory, its recollection still provokes a vague but real feeling that I had lost something very important,” he wrote in his memoir. “I still wince thinking about it.”

A New Chosen Cause

After the Republican takeover of the Senate in 1994, Mr. McCain decided to try to put some of the lessons he had learned into law. He started by attacking earmarks, the pet projects that individual lawmakers could insert anonymously into the fine print of giant spending bills, a recipe for corruption. But he quickly moved on to other targets, most notably political fund-raising.

Mr. McCain earned the lasting animosity of many conservatives, who argue that his push for fund-raising restrictions trampled free speech, and of many of his Senate colleagues, who bristled that he was preaching to them so soon after his own repentance. In debates, his party’s leaders challenged him to name a single senator he considered corrupt (he refused).

“We used to joke that each of us was the only one eating alone in our caucus,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, who became Mr. McCain’s partner on campaign finance efforts.

Mr. McCain appeared motivated less by the usual ideas about good governance than by a more visceral disapproval of the gifts, meals and money that influence seekers shower on lawmakers, Mr. Feingold said. “It had to do with his sense of honor,” he said. “He saw this stuff as cheating.”

Mr. McCain made loosening the grip of special interests the central cause of his 2000 presidential campaign, inviting scrutiny of his own ethics. His Republican rival, George W. Bush, accused him of “double talk” for soliciting campaign contributions from companies with interests that came before the powerful Senate commerce committee, of which Mr. McCain was chairman. Mr. Bush’s allies called Mr. McCain “sanctimonious.”

At one point, his campaign invited scores of lobbyists to a fund-raiser at the Willard Hotel in Washington. While Bush supporters stood mocking outside, the McCain team tried to defend his integrity by handing the lobbyists buttons reading “McCain voted against my bill.” Mr. McCain himself skipped the event, an act he later called “cowardly.”

By 2002, he had succeeded in passing the McCain-Feingold Act, which transformed American politics by banning “soft money,” the unlimited donations from corporations, unions and the rich that were funneled through the two political parties to get around previous laws.

One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of “bad publicity” after news reports of the arrangement.

Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain’s committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies.

Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him.

“Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don’t think his personal and social relationships matter,” said Charles Black, a friend and campaign adviser who has previously lobbied the senator for aviation, broadcasting and tobacco concerns.

Concerns in a Campaign

Mr. McCain’s confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.

The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?”

That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.

“Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation’s interests before either personal or special interest,” Mr. Weaver continued. “Ms. Iseman’s involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort.”

Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about “her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us.” He declined to elaborate.

It is not clear what effect the warnings had; the associates said their concerns receded in the heat of the campaign.

Ms. Iseman acknowledged meeting with Mr. Weaver, but disputed his account.

“I never discussed with him alleged things I had ‘told people,’ that had made their way ‘back to’ him,” she wrote in an e-mail message. She said she never received special treatment from Mr. McCain’s office.

Mr. McCain said that the relationship was not romantic and that he never showed favoritism to Ms. Iseman or her clients. “I have never betrayed the public trust by doing anything like that,” he said. He made the statements in a call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, to complain about the paper’s inquiries.

The senator declined repeated interview requests, beginning in December. He also would not comment about the assertions that he had been confronted about Ms. Iseman, Mr. Black said Wednesday.

Mr. Davis and Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s top strategists in both of his presidential campaigns, disputed accounts from the former associates and aides and said they did not discuss Ms. Iseman with the senator or colleagues.

“I never had any good reason to think that the relationship was anything other than professional, a friendly professional relationship,” Mr. Salter said in an interview.

He and Mr. Davis also said Mr. McCain had frequently denied requests from Ms. Iseman and the companies she represented. In 2006, Mr. McCain sought to break up cable subscription packages, which some of her clients opposed. And his proposals for satellite distribution of local television programs fell short of her clients’ hopes.

The McCain aides said the senator sided with Ms. Iseman’s clients only when their positions hewed to his principles.

A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.

In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain’s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain’s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.

Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.

Mr. McCain’s aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favoritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain’s advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers dispute that.

Recalling the Paxson episode in his memoir, Mr. McCain said he was merely trying to push along a slow-moving bureaucracy, but added that he was not surprised by the criticism given his history.

“Any hint that I might have acted to reward a supporter,” he wrote, “would be taken as an egregious act of hypocrisy.”

Statement by McCain

Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign issued the following statement Wednesday night:

“It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

Barclay Walsh and Kitty Bennett contributed research.(Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com )

COPS GONE WILD

Woman Suspected of DWI Leaves the Shreveport Police Dept. Bloodied and Bruised

Feb 19, 2008

A Shreveport police officer is off the force after what appears to be excessive force used on a DWI suspect. The shocking video shows a woman in custody, and then in obvious pain. A scuffle between an officer and the woman was all caught on camera, except the portion when the officer turned off the camera.You first see the woman inside Shreveport police headquarters. She’s just gotten in a wreck and is being given a DWI test. The videotape, which was taken last November, shows she does not want to listen to Officer Wiley Willis as he tries to read her rights. She was insistent on making a phone call, and at one point even mentioned the name of the attorney she wanted to call. When she tried to leave the room again, the officer handcuffed her.Then things get sticky. The officer reaches around and turns off the tape. When it is turned back on, the woman is lying on the floor in a pool of blood. It is later learned she suffered a broken nose, a severe cut on her forehead, two broken teeth, and bruises on her arms and shoulders. A second officer, who comes in the room, called paramedics and they transported her to a hospital. She’s now facing trial on charges of hit-and-run and DWI.The question investigators still want to know is:  Did the woman’s injuries happen during a fall, or while the camera was turned off? Shreveport police reviewed the tape and have now fired the officer for the way he handled the incident.

Reporter:  Greg Meriwether, WAFB 9NEWS

http://www.wafb.com/global/story.asp?s=7892724

http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=7895886

VIDEO:  http://www.wafb.com/global/video/popup/pop_player.asp?ClipID1=2208185&h1=Woman%20Bruised%20%26%20Officer%20Fired&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=141267&LaunchPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&playerVersion=1&hostPageUrl=http%3A//www.wafb.com/global/story.asp%3Fs%3D7892724&rnd=50204428

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INSIDE EDITION

Airdate: 2/19/2008

Angela Garbarino, under arrest for alleged DWI, tries to walk out of the interrogation room. The Shreveport, Louisiana police officer puts her in cuffs.
 
Garbarino pulls away, apparently looking for the surveillance camera. Garbarino: Is this on the record? 
Officer: Yes Ma’am.
Garbarino: Good!As he yanks her back, she hits the wall and falls.When the officer tries to sit her in a chair, she screams and resists.

But it is what happens next that is causing national outrage. The screen goes black as the officer turns off the camera.  When it goes on again, the woman is lying unconscious on the floor next to a pool of blood.  Another officer checks on Garbarino, paramedics were called, and she was hospitalized.

And in a photo taken by her lawyer, Garbarino displays a bruised face, broken nose, two broken teeth, a gash on her forehead and a swollen lip. 

Television legal expert Lisa Bloom reviewed the tape for INSIDE EDITION.

“Why does he turn the video camera off? What happened that would make any reasonable person highly suspicious?  The police officer escalated the incident. No question that this person began to get hysterical in trying to leave the room…he could have used less physical means to restrain her…to deescalate the situation.”

The police officer, Wiley Willis, has been fired.  His attorney says he did nothing wrong.  ” She tried to leave the room again and he tried to stop her…in that process she fell and injured herself.,” he said.

SHREVEPORT VIDEO OUTRAGE

Airdate: 2/20/2008

There is now a federal investigation into the disturbing video INSIDE EDITION showed yesterday. Since the video went public, the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI have announced they are now investigating how the woman ended up bloodied and bruised. Now, she’s speaking out, saying the whole ordeal left her “terrified”. (Quote from INSIDE EDITION.)

http://www.insideedition.com/news.aspx?storyId=1319

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THE SKATEBOARDER AND THE COP:

http://www.insideedition.com/videos.aspx?categoryID=DB

Airdate: 2/18/2008

The disturbing video, which grabbed national attention, depicted a Baltimore police officer’s confrontation with a teenage skateboarder:

An infuriated cop shoves a teenage skateboarder to the ground, and it’s caught on tape.Cop: Sit down!
Skateboarder: Dude!
Cop: Sit down! I’m not a dude!The just-released home video is creating controversy across America.Cop: Stop calling me ‘dude’!

14-year-old Eric Bush and his friends were skateboarding in a Baltimore, Maryland, park last summer when Officer Salvatore Rivieri told them it wasn’t allowed.

When the teenager kept calling him “dude”, the cop lost it and grabbed his skateboard.

INSIDE EDITION spoke by satellite with the teenager and his mother.

According to Eric, “A lot of people call people dudes…the only bad thing I was doing was skateboarding.”

Skateboarder: Dude, don’t take my skateboard, I didn’t do anything.
Cop: You call me dude, one more time…

The cop then yelled:

Cop: I’m not ‘man’, I’m not ‘dude.’  I am Officer Rivieri.

Eric’s mother says it should be noted that at no time during the incident did a curse word come out of her 14-year-old son’s mouth.

Since the incident, the officer has been suspended.

———————————————————————————

Now new video has surfaced showing yet another confrontation involving the same officer.  However, this time the footage includes a man using a remote controlled toy car rather than a boy on a skateboard.

“I’m just sitting in a public space,” says the man.
“I suggest you start moving,” says the police officer in the video.

In the incident, which happened in the summer of 2007, the officer is shown kicking the toy car and shouting at a man who uses the car as part of an art project. 

The man being yelled at is art student Bill Freeble, who tells INSIDE EDITION he harbors no ill-will towards the officer.

Officer Salvatore Rivieri has been suspended with pay pending an investigation into the skateboarding incident.

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***

There have been more developments in the case of the shocking video showing a Tampa Sheriff’s Deputy tossing a quadriplegic out of his wheelchair.

“To say this is unacceptable is an understatement,” says a representative from the sheriff’s department.

The county sheriff ordered the deputy involved, 22-year veteran Charlette Marshall Jones, charged with abusing a disabled person.

She was booked at the very same jail where the incident was caught by security cameras:

Friday, February 15, 2008

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A sheriff’s deputy who was videotaped dumping a paralyzed man from a wheelchair onto a jailhouse floor has been charged with abuse of a disabled person, a sheriff’s official said Friday.Surveillance footage from Jan. 29 shows Hillsborough County deputy Charlette Marshall-Jones, 44, dumping Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair and searching him on the floor after he was brought in on a warrant after a traffic violation.Sterner, 32, said when he was taken into a booking room and told to stand up, Jones grew agitated when he told her that he could not.Marshall-Jones was suspended without pay, and three other deputies were placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Marshall-Jones is charged with abuse of a disabled person, a third-degree felony, said Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee.

If convicted, she could be sent to prison for five years.

Gee said Marshall-Jones was aware of the warrant for her arrest, but that he didn’t know when she might turn herself in.

Marshall-Jones could not be reached by phone for comment Friday night. A telephone number listed in her name has been disconnected.

Sterner, who can drive a car but has not been able to walk since a 1994 wrestling accident, was arrested at his Riverview home and taken to the Orient Road Jail on a charge of fleeing and attempting to elude a police officer, according to records. He had called for charges to be filed against Marshall-Jones.”

http://www.break.com/index/cop-dumps-handicapped-person-on-floor.html

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=73747

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 SHERIFF BACKS 2ND DEPUTY:

ALLEDGED BEATING CAUGHT ON TAPE, NOT LIKE WHEELCHAIR DUMPING

By Abbie VanSickle, Times Staff Writer
Published February 20, 2008

TAMPA – Two videos splashed across television screens; two different reactions from law enforcement.

Several times after a television station aired video that showed a deputy dump a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair at the Orient Road Jail, several top officials at the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office continue to make public apologies.

“It was like a punch in the gut,” said Maj. Jim Previtera, the agency’s training division commander, on Tuesday. “You know, you put all your energy and your effort into training people and to putting a professional attitude into the deputies. It’s very hard for me to put into words the disappointment.”

When a second video surfaced, this time showing a detention deputy hitting a woman, the reaction was markedly different.

“I think it was just not put in the proper context,” said Sheriff David Gee. “You have to read the deputy’s report. It’s easy to make judgments. We can all do that. The TV stations, they threw it out there without any context.”

Marcella Pourmoghani, 40, filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the sheriff and county, claiming a deputy caused her brain injuries by hitting her. The woman’s attorney, Virlyn B. Moore III of Venice, has said the two videos show a systemic problem with the Hillsborough County jails, an accusation that Gee disputed.

Pourmoghani “was acting up,” Gee said.

“Once a struggle begins, it’s not like on TV. It’s not always pretty,” he said.

He stressed the importance of putting the video in context.

“It’s a jail. You book 75,000 people. You’re going to have uses of force in a jail. That’s just the reality of it,” Gee said.

Previtera declined to talk specifically about that case while the federal suit is pending, but he spoke at length about training. He said that if a deputy is attacked by an inmate, the deputy is allowed to use force, to punch, kick and strike the inmate.

Pourmoghani told reporters that, unprovoked, Deputy Shanna Marsh grabbed her by the hair and repeatedly punched her, bloodying her face. Pourmoghani said her injuries were so bad that she can no longer drive because of seizures.

An attempt to reach her attorney by phone Tuesday was unsuccessful. Moore’s wife, Alice G. Moore, said her husband would not comment until he had reviewed the tape released by the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office.

That tape, which has no audio, showed Pourmoghani and the deputy talking. Then, Pourmoghani puts her leg up on a chair, and Marsh grabs her and pulls her to the floor. Pourmoghani appears to wrap her arms around the deputy’s leg, and Marsh strikes her several times.

Sheriff’s officials said they have reviewed the case three times and found no evidence of wrongdoing by the deputy. Her personnel file showed she received positive evaluations and no history of disciplinary action.

Abbie VanSickle can be reached at vansickle@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3373.

[Last modified February 19, 2008, 23:28:52]

http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/20/Hillsborough/Sheriff_backs_2nd_dep.shtml

VIDEO:

http://video.ap.org/v/Legacy.aspx?partner=en-ap&g=1feeb336-356c-4c92-9bec-90e6f6ef155d&f=FLPET&mk=en-ap

MICHELLE OBAMA ON ‘PRIDE’

Michelle Obama in Rhode Island. (Photo: Stephan Savoia/Associated Press)

Michelle Obama sought today to clarify her “pride” in her country after two days of criticism, most notably from her potential Republican counterpart.

In Milwaukee on Monday, the wife of Senator Barack Obama said, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

Asked today to clarify the remark by a local news station in Rhode Island, which holds its primary during the next round, on March 4, she said, “What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud in how Americans are engaging in the political process,” according to the Associated Press. “For the first time in my lifetime, I’m seeing people rolling up their sleeves in a way that I haven’t seen and really trying to figure this out — and that’s the source of pride that I was talking about.”

She added that she has “absolutely” always felt proud of her country and that she and her husband owed where they are today to America’s possibilities.

Some saw her original comments as ungrateful, and on Tuesday, Cindy McCain, wife of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, told a Brookfield, Wis., audience, “I’m proud of my country. I don’t know about you – if you heard those words earlier – I’m very proud of my country.’’ It was widely seen as a swipe at Mrs. Obama.

michelle obama, rhode island

Related Posts

From The Caucus

• The Early Word: Turning to Texas and Ohio
• Blogtalk: Michelle Obama Under Fire
• Cindy McCain’s Pride
• Another Spouse Chimes In
• Edwardses Take On Michelle Obama
• This Could Be The Last Time

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Cindy McCain:  “I’m proud of my country. I don’t know about you – if you heard those words earlier – I’m very proud of my country.’’

Later, as Mr. and Mrs. McCain took questions, they were asked if she was referring directly to Mrs. Obama.

Mr. McCain said: “I don’t think we have any comment on that, do we? Do you have any comment?”

To which Mrs. McCain said, “I just wanted to make the statement that I have, and always will be, proud of my country.’’

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No, my ill-informed, petty, small-minded, ignorant Ms. McCain.

Ms. Obama has pride that this country which has lived off the blood and bodies of non-white people for over 500 years, this  country which has lauded the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their lands; this country which has gleefully upheld the parasitical leeching of free labor from the chattel enslavement of black Americans; this country which created the Asian Exclusion Laws; this country which enacted the Treaty of Hidalgo which literally gave away millions of acres of Mexican land to the United States—-this country which has been nothing but an hypocrisy against a huge portion of its citizens——is finally now getting the guts to live up to the laws it has espoused , laws which it has broken over, and over, and over again.

Ms. Obama is proud that this country which has murdered millions of its citizens of non-white ancestry is finally having the guts to work its way towards real change in this country. She is proud that this country is starting to, little by little, to break away from its narrow-minded, soul-murdering, dead-on-the-inside behaviour.

America has done much that it should be ashamed of. How can Ms. Obama, a black woman, have had much to be proud of when she like many black Americans have lived for generations in a country which has sought black citizens destruction in so many depraved, barbaric ways? Atrocities that would make a rabid dog hang its head in shame?

“I’m proud of my country. I don’t know about you – if you heard those words earlier – I’m very proud of my country.’’

Damn.

How the hell can you have had pride in this country that did so much wrong to many of its citizens in the name of white supremacy, Ms. McCain? From your mindless comments, you know nothing of this savage history of this country. From your comments, you wouldn’t know what the word patriotic means. Since you do not, allow me to break it down for you, since your education in life has left you inept, backwards and callously disrespectful as to how horrific life has been for non-whites in America:

Patriotism: love for or devotion to one’s country

You want to know what real patriotism is, Ms. McCain?

Patriotism is going to war to fight for a country which even after it has bit by bit, piece by piece, stolen your land from you, decimated your peoples to where they are no more than a 10TH of their former numbers that lived in this country. Patriotism is serving your country as a Navajo Code Talker, even when your country has herded your people onto reservations.

Patriotism is a black man serving your country to defend it against fascism and Nazism, only to come home to be tortured, burned and lynched while still in uniform.  Patriotism is abiding by the laws of this land, even when your taxes have paid for municipal services and amenities, only to be told that you cannot take your little girl to the zoo or park because Jane/Jim Crow laws said that she did not have a right to go to Circus Town day at the city park because of the color of her skin or her race.

Patriotism is being an Asian American serviceman, protecting your country against all enemies, both foreign and domestic, even though you are still looked upon as a perpetual foreigner, and your relatives are incarcerated into concentration camps because your people are looked upon as traitorous aliens.

Patriotism is still believing in this country’s principles, even though you as a non-white American see day after day, the hollowness that rings in the words:

“My country tis’of thee; sweet land of Liberty, Of thee, I sing.”

Patriotism is the love and loyal support of your country where no matter how it beats, kicks, burns, tortures, starves, humiliates, and tears to pieces you and your people, that you will not give up on America no matter how much America continues to give up on you, no matter how many times America has turned its back on you.

And as for Ms. McCain and her hateful, vindictive remark, what does she, a white woman know about patriotism?

What hells have she and white women, and white men, in America suffered?

Where was the patriotism of  so many white women who stood by and did nothing for almost 100 years as the husbands, fathers, and sons of thousands of black women were shot to death and lynched. Where was the patriotism of white women who stood by and did not join black women in solidarity to put an end to the gruesome lynchings that were carnivals of death?

Where were the white women who looked away when they saw child after child on the slave plantation come into the world? Children with lighter, and lighter skin—–children who looked like the white woman’s husband, son, uncle, brother?

Where was the patriotism of the white woman who looked the other way when during segregation her white male relatives raped, abused, broke, beat, and murdered so many tens of thousands of black women and girls. Many of whom became pregnant, carrying for 9 months the children of white men who gave not a damn for either the child’s black mother nor for the child?

White women who did nothing, who gave not a damn enough to speak up and out against the defilment of rape-mixing that did not end with the abolition of slavery, but, instead continued on for another 100 years under the white supremacist regime of segregation?

Where the hell were all of you? Where was your patriotism then?

None of you spoke up for black women, you only stood by and gave not a damn for the sanctity of black women’s womanhood. None of you spoke out against the lynching spectacles, but, instead you showed your patriotism by bringing food to these rituals of blood against black citizens. Only after tens of thousands of innocent black people were sadistically slaughtered did you find the backbone to speak up, almost 100 years later.

Patriotism.

Patriotism is the love and loyal support of one’s country.

All of it, and everyone in it.

If an American is truly patriotic, they will not stand by and allow their country to do wrong to any of its citizens. A true patriot speaks up for and fights for all. A true patriot is not afraid to have strong convictions in their beliefs, no matter how much they are attacked for those beliefs. A true patriot is used to being a voice in the wilderness, a lone voice in a sea of mendacity, a voice that refuses to lay down before cruelties and lies that have and still strangle the principles of democracy on which this country was based. A true pariot shows no favoritism of one group of people over another. A true patriot does not abridge nor deny the most basic human rights to some of their citizens because of those citizens color, race, nationality, religion, creed, or gender.

A true patriotic American wants the very best for all Americans, and sadly, America has never been a country that loved and cared for all of her citizens, all of the time.

And still does not.

“We have frequently printed the word Democracy yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word
the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened …

It is a great word, whose history, I suppose remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.”

— Walt Whitman
Democratic Vistas (1860)

Ms. Obama has not had much to be proud of from her years of living in white supremacist America:

-Murders of Civil Rights workers:  women, men and even children; murderers walking around free who have not been brought to justice;

-Lynchings of black men, as well as women and children;

-Inhumane military campaigns to annihilate Native Americans off the face of the Earth, so as to immorally take their land;

-Chinese railroad workers shot to death by whites when they spoke up for themselves for better humane treatment in working conditions

Patriotism.

A true patriotic America does not stand by and watch this country go straight to hell committing crimes against humanity.

A true patriotic American stands up for right, justice, fairness, and equality, and America has never overwhelmingly done right on any of those levels.

Patriotism.

Much of America has been un-American, un-human, un-patriotic.

And the people who have been the most patriotic have been those whose people have suffered the most at the hands of brutal white supremacy, all the while loving and protecting this country from itself.

You want to know who have been the most patriotic in this country, Ms. McCain?

Ask the many black men and women alive who lived through the hell of segregation; the Black/ Native/Asian/Latino soldiers who protected this country abroad, while it was destroying their rights and their families back home in America; the black women who had to care for white people who degraded them with menial, back-breaking domestic labor; the Native American women who are forgotten and invisible in the eyes and minds of the rest of America; the Latino children who work in migrant labor fields and have to miss school due to their families following the seasonal agricultural crops; the Asian women who work in sweat shops in America; the Asian women who suffer from sex slavery right here in the good ol’ USA———-those people and many millions more are and have been the most patriotic Americans.

Blacks and many others have been more patriotic, more Christian—–more human than the many white people who have sought to destroy them and the laws of this country.

Would that people like you, Ms. McCain, could truly learn what it really means to be patriotic.

BUSH CONFRONTS HARD QUESTIONS IN GHANA

Jason Reed/Reuters

President George W. Bush and Laura Bush greeted Ghanaian tribal groups in Accra on Wednesday.

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: February 21, 2008

ACCRA, Ghana — Traveling across Africa this week, President Bush has been a little like Santa Claus, a benevolent figure from another land handing out gifts — American foreign aid — and generating smiles wherever he goes.

But here in the capital of Ghana on Wednesday, the smiles stopped for a moment as Mr. Bush confronted skepticism about American military policy and his AIDS initiative.

Mr. Bush used a news conference to address the widespread suspicion that the United States planned to establish military bases in Africa as it expanded its strategic role on the continent. And for the first time, he suggested that he might consider dropping a requirement that one-third of AIDS prevention dollars be spent on abstinence programs — but only if he was convinced that the approach was not working.

“I know there’s rumors in Ghana, ‘All Bush is coming to do is to try to convince you to put a big military base here,’ ” Mr. Bush said at a news conference with the country’s president, John Kufuor. “That’s baloney. As they say in Texas, that’s bull.”

The suspicion grows out of the administration’s plan to establish Africom, a command headquarters that the Pentagon says would involve only operational and planning offices to help train African troops. Even so, there is concern in countries like Ghana, where memories of colonial rule are still fresh, that the United States wants to use the command as the first step toward putting American troops on the continent, possibly in a move to gain access to African oil or to counter the growing influence of China.

Only Liberia, which Mr. Bush intends to visit on Thursday, has expressed interest in playing host to the Africom headquarters. But the Pentagon says that for now, the headquarters will remain in Stuttgart, Germany.

Still, Mr. Bush said: “That doesn’t mean we won’t develop some kind of office here in Africa. We haven’t made our minds up.”

Also Wednesday, for the first time on the trip, Mr. Bush faced tough questioning from an African reporter about his administration’s requirement that one-third of the AIDS initiative’s prevention funds be spent on programs promoting abstinence.

The independent Institute of Medicine has said the abstinence requirement is hindering prevention efforts. Democrats in Congress, debating reauthorization of the initiative, want it dropped.

Mr. Bush’s questioner on Wednesday told the president that the requirement was not realistic, because “multiple sexual relationships or partner relationships is the reality” in African societies, “though it’s not spoken of in public.”

As he has in the past, Mr. Bush defended the requirement, but he then went a step further.

“I monitor the results,” he said. “And if it looks like it’s not working, then we’ll change. But thus far I can report, at least to our citizens, that the program has been unbelievably effective. And we’re going to stay at it.”

The prevalence of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, is relatively low in Ghana when compared with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa; Mr. Kufuor said the infection rate dropped to 2.2 percent last year from 2.6 percent in 2006. And while Ghana receives AIDS assistance from an international fund to combat the disease, it is not one of the so-called focus countries, which receive extensive financing from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as Pepfar.

Ghana was the fourth stop on Mr. Bush’s five-country tour of Africa, which the administration has used to promote American aid, like his programs to combat AIDS and malaria.

Mr. Bush has been handing out assistance packages all week, and Wednesday was no exception. With Mr. Kufuor by his side, the president announced he would make available $350 million over five years to provide treatment for lesser-known tropical diseases like hookworm, river blindness and schistosomiasis, also known as snail fever. Many health experts say such diseases have been neglected amid the focus on AIDS and malaria.

The administration added some star power on Wednesday. Jordin Sparks, the winner of the “American Idol” singing contest last year, sang the national anthem when Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, visited the American Embassy here. Ms. Sparks is here promoting the charity Malaria No More.

(Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com )

Past Coverage

• Tanzania Welcomes Bush, but Obama Is Topic No. 1 on the Streets (February 18, 2008)
• Bush, in Africa, Emphasizes Successes Over Conflicts (February 17, 2008)
• Turmoil in Africa Alters Focus of Bush’s 5-Nation Tour (February 15, 2008)
• U.S. Agency’s Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid (December 7, 2007)

JUSTICES MAKE IT TOUGHER TO SUE MEDICAL DEVICE MAKERS

By DAVID STOUT

Published: February 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — In a case with huge implications for the health care-technology industry, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the manufacturer of a federally approved medical device cannot be sued under state law if the device causes an injury.

Related

Supreme Court Says 401(k) Participants Can Sue (February 20, 2008)

Court Rules Against Judge Alex (February 20, 2008)

Court Extends Cross-Examination Rule (February 20, 2008)

Court Invalidates Maine Tobacco Law (February 20, 2008)

Opinion: Riegel v. Medtronic

Times Topics: Supreme Court

 Back Story With The Times’s Gardiner Harris (mp3)

The 8-to-1 ruling in favor of Medtronic, the Minneapolis-based maker of cardiovascular devices, made it much more difficult for patients and their families to sue makers of medical devices that have been granted federal approval.

In 1996, a balloon catheter burst and severely injured Charles R. Riegel while he was undergoing an angioplasty. Mr. Riegel and his wife, Donna, sued the company in federal court, contending that the catheter had been designed, labeled and manufactured in a way that violated New York state law, and that those defects had caused severe and permanent injuries to Mr. Riegel.

But a federal district court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, dismissed the Riegels’s suit on the ground that the catheter had been given pre-market approval by the Food and Drug Administration, thus protecting the manufacturer from liability under state law. (The case of Riegel v. Medtronic was tried in federal court because the plaintiffs and defendant were based in different states.)

The Supreme Court upheld the lower federal courts on Wednesday, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority that Medtronic and other manufacturers were protected under the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, which in its section on pre-emption bars states from imposing on medical devices “any requirement which is different from, or in addition to, any requirement applicable under this chapter.”

But the justices’ ruling was hardly the last word on when F.D.A. approval bars patients from suing. They are already considering at least three cases involving drugs and drug-labeling.

In 1996, when there was a different lineup of justices, the Supreme Court ruled that medical devices approved by the F.D.A. under a different, more expedited process were not shielded from state liability. At the time, the federal government took that position.

But in 2004, the Bush administration reversed the government’s position and began to take the side of manufacturers. In the Medtronic case, the administration argued that there would be “serious undermining of F.D.A.’s approval authority and its balancing of the risks and benefits” if juries could second-guess the agency.

Justice Scalia wrote that the F.D.A. spends an average of 1,200 hours reviewing each device application and grants pre-market approval only if it finds there is a “reasonable assurance” of its “safety and effectiveness.”

“It may thus approve devices that present great risks if they nonetheless offer great benefits in light of available alternatives,” Justice Scalia wrote, noting that the F.D.A. approved a ventricular assist device for children with failing hearts “even though the survival rate of children using the device was less than 50 percent.”

Justice Scalia said jurors would probably not be in a position to weigh the benefits and dangers of medical devices as well as agency experts. A jury, he wrote, “sees only the cost of a more dangerous designed, and is not concerned with its benefits; the patient who reaped those benefits are not represented in court.”

The majority was apparently persuaded by Theodore B. Olson, the lawyer for Medtronic, who argued before the justices on Dec. 4 that the F.D.A. and not the courts was the right forum for imposing requirements on cutting-edge medical devices. Arguing that “nothing is perfectly safe,” Mr. Olson said it would harm patients and future patients to “discourage the marketing of products that might save our lives.”

Medtronic, which makes a wide variety of medical products and is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cardiovascular devices, no longer makes the type of catheter used on Mr. Riegel, who died several years after the operation. As part of its defense, the company maintained that the doctor involved failed to heed a warning not to use the device on a patient who had calcified arteries, as Mr. Riegel did. Founded in 1949, Medtronic has more than 37,000 employees and had revenues of $12.3 billion in its last fiscal year, according to the company’s Web site.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the lone dissenter on Wednesday, asserting that the majority had adopted an unnecessary “constriction of state authority.” Justice Ginsburg said she did not believe that Congress had intended to bring about “a radical curtailment of state common-law suits seeking compensation for injuries caused by defectively designed or labeled medical devices.”

Allison M. Zieve, the lawyer for Donna Riegel, expressed her disappointment to Bloomberg News. “Pretty bad for patients, pretty good for industry profits,” she said.

Leading Congressional Democrats criticized the high court’s decision and issued statements vowing to enact legislation to allow lawsuits against medical device makers.

“The Supreme Court’s decision strips consumers of the rights they’ve had for decades,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “This isn’t what Congress intended and we’ll pass legislation as quickly as possible to fix this nonsensical situation.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, agreed, saying: “Congress never intended that F.D.A. approval would give blanket immunity to manufacturers from liability for injuries caused by faulty devices. Congress obviously needs to correct the court’s decision. Otherwise, F.D.A. approval will become a green light for shoddy practices by manufacturers.”

(Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com )

Past Coverage

• NEWS ANALYSIS; A Second Case on Detainees Complicates Supreme Court Deliberations (February 6, 2008)
• Supreme Court Won’t Hear Complaint by Enron Investors (January 23, 2008)
• Justices Will Hear Liability Cases With Federal-State Disparity at Issue (January 19, 2008)
• Supreme Court Limits Lawsuits by Shareholders (January 16, 2008)

TEXANS, THE TEXAS PRIMARY AND THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

For my fellow Texas who may be fretting and wondering how they will go about voting in the upcoming Texas primary, here is some help on answers to FAQS on the Texas Caucus/Primary, and how to go about registering to vote in the primary. The following questions and answers hopefully will be of help to all of you who need help on what to take with you to the polling place where your precint is located; what your federal rights are to cast your vote (no one can turn you away if you are still standing in line after 7:00PM; by law, you have the right to still vote, no matter how late the precinct must stay open to accomodate you.  Election officials at your precinct cannot make you leave); how to go about doing early voting; it is against the law for the state/county to arbitrarily move or shut down a polling precinct because to do so infringes on a citizen’s right to enfranchisement.

Anyway, here is the information that hopefully answers as many questions that I am sure many people have.

I have also included in my post exerpts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Get out there and vote everyone.

Please do not take the privilege of voting lightly nor be disrespectful of it.

Too many people gave their lives so that We the People could exercise this most cherished of rights.

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TEXAS PRIMARY

How Does the Texas Primary Work? Texas has an open primary system, and voters do not register by party. An individual can vote in either, but not both, primaries. For example, even if a person voted in the 2006 Republican Primary, they can vote in the 2008 Democratic Primary, or vice versa. Texas will send a total of 228 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. 126 delegates will be assigned based on primary results in 31 State Senate Districts (instead of allocating delegates by its 32 Congressional Districts like many states). The number of delegates in each Senate district varies based on previous Democratic turnout in the last two general elections. The delegates from each Senate District are assigned to candidates proportionally based on the percentages they receive on primary day.Of the remaining 102 delegates, 67 are determined through a convention process that begins at precinct conventions (caucuses) on the night of March 4 and culminates with delegate allocation based on each candidate’s delegate strength at the State Convention on June 6-8. Of those 67 delegates, 42 are “at large” rank and file delegates and 25 are pledged party leaders, legislators, and local elected officials.The remaining 35 delegates are “unpledged” delegates, including 32 so-called “superdelegates” who are DNC Members, Members of Congress, a former House Speaker and a former DNC Chair. Three other delegate slots are reserved for highly-honored state Democrats, such as respected former officeholders. 126 Senatorial District Level Delegates allocated by primary results. 42 At-Large Delegates and 25 Pledged Party Leaders, Democratic Mayors and Legislators, all allocated by the presidential preference of delegates attending the State convention (with a 15 percent threshold). 32 Super Delegates made up of Members of Congress, Members of the DNC, past House Speakers and former DNC Chairs. 3 Unpledged Delegates (Add-Ons) elected through a three-tier, post-primary convention process.  Texas Democratic Delegate Totals By Senate District SENATE DISTRICT  DELEGATES  Region 1 4 East 2 4 East 3 4 East 4 4 East 5 4 East-Central 6 3 Houston – Galveston 7 3 Houston – Galveston 8 4 North Texas 9 3 North Texas 10 5 North Texas 11 4 Houston – Galveston 12 4 North Texas 13 7 Houston – Galveston 14 8 Austin 15 4 Houston – Galveston 16 4 North Texas 17 5 Houston – Galveston 18 4 East-Central 19 4 Border/South 20 4 Border/South 21 4 Border/South 22 3 Hill Country – Central 23 6 North Texas 24 3 Hill Country – Central 25 6 Hill Country – Central 26 4 Border/South 27 3 Border/South 28 3 West Texas 29 3 Border/South 30 3 West Texas 31 2 West Texas Total 126   Texas Democratic Delegate Subtotals by Region Region Color Delegates Austin Light Blue 8 Border/South Green 22 Hill Country – Central Orange 12 East-Central Brown 8 East Purple 16 Houston – Galveston Red 26 North Texas Yellow 26 West Texas Dark Blue 8 Texas 126 (Source: Texas Democratic Delegate Selection Plan) http://www.lonestarproject.net/index.html

 TEXAS CAUCUS

WHAT IS A CAUCUS?

A caucus is most generally defined as a meeting of supporters or members of a political party or movement. The exact definition varies among political cultures.In U.S. politics and government, caucus has several distinct but interrelated meanings.One meaning is a meeting of members of a political party or subgroup to coordinate members’ actions, choose group policy, or nominate candidates for various offices. The term is frequently used to discuss the procedures used by some states to select presidential nominees, such as the Iowa caucuses, the first and largest in the modern presidential election cycle.

Primary Covention

10 Facts on the Texas Primary-Caucus 1. Texas will be holding a mixed primary-caucus on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008. The process will appoint delegates to the 2008 Democratic/Republican National Convention. 2. The primary process will award 126 delegates, and the caucus process will award 67 delegates. 3. The primary voting will last from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM on March 4th. It is a private vote that is similar to any other election. 4. If a voter believes his or her name has been mistakenly omitted from the list of eligible voters at his or her polling place, the voter is allowed to cast a provisional ballot. 5. The Texas Democratic/Republican Primary is open to members of any party, but you must vote in the precinct where you are registered. You can visit the Secretary of State’s “Online Voter Central”  https://voterinfo.sos.state.tx.us/voterws/viw/faces/Introduction.jsp  to determine where you are registered. If you no longer live in the precinct where you registered, you can vote absentee using our online absentee sign up form 6. From February 19th to February 29th you can vote early. Anyone who is able toearly vote should.  7. The Precinct Caucuses will start at 7:15 PM on March 4th. Anyone who votes in the Democratic Primary, or who votes early can participate in the Precinct Caucuses. Get to your caucus location at 7 PM. 8. The Precinct Caucuses will be called to order by the Precinct Chair after the last person who intends to caucus has voted in the Primary. If the Precinct Chair is absent, any qualified participant may call the meeting to order. 9. You cannot vote in the Texas Democratic/Republican Primary if you have participated in the nominating process of any other party this election cycle. You must also have registered to vote at least 30 days before the March 4th, 2008 primary. 10. You must be 18 by March 4th, 2008 to participate in the Texas DemocraticDelegate Selection process.

 TEXAS ‘TWO-STEP’ PRIMARY CONFUSING FOR SOME VOTERS: http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=2c8c060e-fcd1-4388-b735-887464aeed13&rss=68

VIDEO – HOW THE TEXAS CAUCUS SYSTEM WORKS: http://www.woai.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=509007@video.woai.com&navCatId=5

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ELECTIONS AND VOTER INFORMATION:  FAQ

The below Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) have been compiled with the March 4, 2008 Primary Election in mind. We hope that you will take a moment to review these pages, as you may find the answers to questions of your own. We encourage you to explore our website for more detailed information on elections and voting in Texas. We hope you find this useful, and we appreciate this opportunity to serve you.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS) and Other Popular Topics

Note: We have grouped questions and answers in categories and provided links to additional information when needed.

Getting Registered for the First Time or Making Changes to Your Current Registration

Q: I’m not registered, but want to vote in the Primary Election; how can I be sure that I’m registered in time to vote?

A: The deadline to register and be eligible to vote in the March 4, 2008 Primary Election is February 4, 2008. This can be either the postmark date or the date the application is received in the office of the voter registrar. You may, of course, register at any time before that date to ensure that your registration is effective for voting in November. For the purpose of determining the effective date of a voter’s registration, if the 30th day before election day falls on a weekend or a legal state or federal holiday, the document is considered timely if it is submitted on the next regular business day.

• To request a postage-paid voter registration application:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/reqvr.shtml
• Addresses and phone numbers of Voter Registrars: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/votregduties.shtml

Q: If I send my registration by the deadline, when will I receive my voter certificate?

A: Your voter registration becomes effective 30 days after it is submitted and accepted, so you should receive your voter certificate within 30 days. Once received, be sure to read the information on the back of the certificate, sign by the X on the “front” of the card and keep your voter card in a safe place. This is what you will take with you to the polls to vote.

Q: I am registered to vote, but I moved this past year. Is there anything I need to do to make sure that I won’t have a problem voting in March?

A: If you moved within the same county where you are currently registered, you must file the new address information in writing with your voter registrar OR you may submit the ‘in county” change online:   http://www.texasonline.state.tx.us/NASApp/sos/SOSACManager.  The last day to make a change of address that will be effective for the March 4, 2008 election is February 4, 2008. If you miss this deadline, you may return to your old precinct to vote, but you will be required to complete a “statement of residence” confirming your new address in your new precinct.

• Addresses and phone numbers of Voter Registrars:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/votregduties.shtml

A: If you moved to a new county, you must re-register in your new county of residence by February 4, 2008 to be eligible to vote in the March 4, 2008 Election. If you miss this deadline, you may be eligible to vote a “limited” ballot. A limited ballot is available only during the early voting period. The limited ballot application will also act as a voter registration application. Contact the county clerk or elections administrator in your new county for information. You can also find information on this topic by going to:

• Special Procedures for Voters Who Recently Moved:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/pamphlets/specialearlyvoting.shtml
• For addresses and /phone numbers of County Clerks and Elections Administrators:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/county.shtml

Q: I don’t remember seeing my certificate lately. Is that a problem? Don’t I just stay registered?

A: New certificates are mailed out every two years to the most recent address you gave to the voter registrar. If you do not recall receiving a new light orange certificate in late 2007, it could mean that you have moved without updating, or there is some other problem with your registration. If the certificate was mailed to an old address, it was returned to the registrar, and you were placed on the “suspense list” in that county. This means you have a grace period that allows you to vote in the same county in your old precinct, but if you do not vote, your name will be removed from the rolls after two federal elections have passed since you were placed on the suspense list. If you did not receive your certificate because you moved to a new Texas county, you will need to re-register.

Q: I am reviewing this page and nothing makes sense to me. These are not the rules I have heard. I’m in Connecticut — does that matter?

A: If you are visiting our website from another state, please remember that each state has slightly different rules. These rules describe Texas state law, for voters who consider their permanent home to be in Texas and want to vote a Texas ballot. If you arrived at this page through a search engine and you need another state’s election law, check the National Association of Secretaries of State page for other state websites.

Voting Without a Certificate – Voting Early – Election Day Voting

Q: I can’t find my voter certificate/card. Will I be able to vote without it?

A:If you are a registered voter and you have lost or misplaced your voter certificate, you may vote without your certificate by providing some form of identification (see list below) and signing an affidavit at the polls. This is the procedure to follow if your voter registration is still current and your name appears on the voter rolls in your county of residence. You may also contact your county voter registrar to obtain a replacement certificate.

Acceptable documents are:

1. a driver’s license or personal identification card issued to you by the Department of Public Safety or a similar document issued to you by an agency of another state, regardless of whether the license or card has expired;
2. a form of identification containing your photograph that establishes your identity;
3. a birth certificate or other document confirming birth that is admissible in a court of law and establishes your identity;
4. United States citizenship papers issued to you;
5. a United States passport issued to you;
6. official mail addressed to you, by name, from a governmental entity;
7. a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows your name and address; or
8. any other form of identification prescribed by the secretary of state.

Q: How do I find out if I am registered to vote or if I am on the voter rolls in the county where I reside?

A: To inquire about the status of your voter registration, call the voter registrar’s office in the county in which you reside. To find the number, review the list of County Voter Registration Officials: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/votregduties.shtml  and scroll to your county.

Q: Can anybody vote early in person, or only those people who are going to be out of town on election day? What are the dates for voting early in person?

A: Any registered voter may vote early by personal appearance (in person). Early voting by personal appearance for the March 4, 2008 Primary Election begins on February 19, 2008 and ends on February 29, 2008.

Q: Where do I go to vote?

A: This office DOES NOT have polling place information. For information on locations of early voting polling places, you will need to contact your County Clerk or Elections Administrator. Also, many newspapers publish early voting and election day polling locations, so you might be able to find the information there.

For addresses and phone numbers of County Clerks Elections Administrators:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/county.shtml

Q: Can anybody vote early by mail (also referred to as absentee voting)?

A: Only specific reasons entitle a person to vote early by mail (no longer called absentee voting). You may request a ballot by mail if you:

• will be away from your county on Election Day and during early voting;
• are sick or disabled;
• are 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
• are confined in jail.

Q: I fall under one of the 4 reasons above. What do I do now? Are there deadlines connected with this procedure?

A: First, request an Application for Ballot by Mail (ABBM) from the Early Voting Clerk in the county where you are registered, or from our office. Once received, read the instructions carefully, complete the ABBM form and return to the Early Voting Clerk in your county. The dates applicable to the March 4, 2008 Primary Election are as follows: the first day you may submit an ABBM is January 4, 2008; the last day (or deadline) to submit an ABBM is February 26, 2008—this is NOT A POSTMARK DATE—the ABBM must be RECEIVED IN THE OFFICE OF THE EARLY VOTING CLERK by February 26, 2008 in order for you to receive a ballot by mail.

• For addresses and phone numbers of Early Voting Clerks:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/county.shtml 
• To learn more about the ABBM process and to request an ABBM from our office:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/earlyvoting.shtml (or print one directly from the web):

Q: It’s election day, March 4, 2008, and I’m registered and ready to vote. Where do I go? What are the hours for voting on election day?

A: Election-day polling place information can be obtained by contacting the County Clerk or Elections Administrator: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/county.shtml  in your county of registration. You may also want to check your local newspaper for a listing of locations. This office does not have polling place information.

The hours of voting on election day are 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.Please contact your County Clerk or Elections Administrator:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/county.shtml for address and phone numbers.

Help America Vote Act

Q: How can I learn more about the 2002 Federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA)?

A: A summary about the act and Texas’ latest plan to implement HAVA:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/hava/index.shtml is available for review.

Provisional Voting

HAVA created a new voting process called “provisional voting” which is designed to allow a voter whose name does not appear on the list of registered voters due to an administrative error to vote. It involves: (1) the voter must complete stating the reasons he or she is qualified to vote; and (2) it is used if the voter cannot be qualified by the methods described above. Other key features of provisional voting are: (1) the cast ballots are kept separately from the regular ballots and (2) the voter’s records will be reviewed later by the provisional voting ballot board (the early voting ballot board), and the ballot is counted only if the voter is determined to be a registered voter. Provisional voters will receive a notice in the mail by the 10th day after the local canvass advising them if their provisional ballots were counted, and if they were not counted, the reason why.

Military & Overseas Voters

Military and overseas voters are welcome to use the regular registration and early voting by mail process available to all voters away from their home county on Election Day. However, there are also special provisions for military and overseas voters:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/pamphlets/federalapp.shtml that are available on our website.

Voters with Special Needs

Rather than providing sample questions & answers, we are directing you to the special needs information (PDF, 79kb):  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/forms/brochures/services.pdf on our website to ensure that you are fully informed on the services available to you.

Student Voters

Student voters often seek advice regarding residency issues for voter registration purposes. Information regarding student residency: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/studentvoters.shtml  issues is available on this website.

Convicted Felons and Voting

In Texas, a convicted felon regains the right to vote after completing his or her sentence. Therefore, once you have completed the punishment phase (including any term of incarceration, parole, or supervision, or completed a period of probation ordered by the court), you would be eligible to register and vote in the state of Texas:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/pamphlets/largepamp.shtml.

Liquor Elections

For information on the local option liquor petition:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/liquorelections.shtml and election process in Texas, you may review our office’s educational materials that are posted on our website.

Political Parties

For information on registered political parties in Texas, please contact those organizations directly:

• Republican Party of Texas
• Texas Democratic Party
• Libertarian Party of Texas

Additional Information

We have information located in various sections of our website – “Voter Information: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/index.shtml ,” “Candidates:  http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/candidates/index.shtml,” and “Conducting Your Elections: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/conducting/index.shtml ” (for election administrators), just to name a few. You will notice that some materials are repeated in different places–our hope is to gear each section to the audience for easier bookmarking and future use.

Thank you. Should you need additional information, please email or call us at 1-800-252-VOTE(8683).

LINK:

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/pamphlets/faqs.shtml

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THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT

AN ACT To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress [p*338] assembled, That this Act shall be known as the “Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

SEC. 3.

(a) Whenever the Attorney General institutes a proceeding under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment in any State or political subdivision the court shall authorize the appointment of Federal examiners by the United States Civil Service Commission in accordance with section 6 to serve for such period of time and for such political subdivisions as the court shall determine is appropriate to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment (1) as part of any interlocutory order if the court determines that the appointment of such examiners is necessary to enforce such guarantees or (2) as part of any final judgment if the court finds that violations of the fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred in such State or subdivision: Provided, That the court need not authorize the appointment of examiners if any incidents of denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color (1) have been few in number and have been promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, (2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their recurrence in the future. (b) If in a proceeding instituted by the Attorney General under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment in any State or political subdivision the court finds that a test or device has been used for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, it shall suspend the use of [p*339] tests and devices in such State or political subdivisions as the court shall determine is appropriate and for such period as it deems necessary.

(c) If in any proceeding instituted by the Attorney General under any statute to enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment in any State or political subdivision the court finds that violations of the fifteenth amendment justifying equitable relief have occurred within the territory of such State or political subdivision, the court, in addition to such relief as it may grant, shall retain jurisdiction for such period as it may deem appropriate and during such period no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect at the time the proceeding was commenced shall be enforced unless and until the court finds that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, except that neither the court’s finding nor the Attorney General’s failure to object shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure.

SEC. 4. (a) To assure that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State with respect to which the determinations have been [p*340] made under subsection (b) or in any political subdivision with respect to which such determinations have been made as a separate unit, unless the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in an action for a declaratory judgment brought by such State or subdivision against the United States has determined that no such test or device has been used during the five years preceding the filing of the action for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color: Provided, That no such declaratory judgment shall issue with respect to any plaintiff for a period of five years after the entry of a final judgment of any court of the United States, other than the denial of a declaratory judgment under this section, whether entered prior to or after the enactment of this Act, determining that denials or abridgments of the right to vote on account of race or color through the use of such tests or devices have occurred anywhere in the territory of such plaintiff. An action pursuant to this subsection shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of section 2284 of title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. The court shall retain jurisdiction of any action pursuant to this subsection for five years after judgment and shall reopen the action upon motion of the Attorney General alleging that a test or device has been used for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.

If the Attorney General determines that he has no reason to believe that any such test or device has been used during the five years preceding the filing of the action for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, he shall consent to the entry of such judgment

(b) The provisions of subsection (a) shall apply in any State or in any political subdivision of a state which (1) the Attorney General determines maintained on November 1, 1964, any test or device, and with respect to which (2) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 percentum of the persons of voting age residing therein were registered on November 1, 1964, or that less than 50 percentum of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 1964.

A determination or certification of the Attorney General or of the Director of the Census under this section or under section 6 or section 13 shall not be reviewable in any court and shall be effective upon publication in the Federal Register.

(c) The phrase “test or device” shall mean any requirement that a person as a prerequisite for voting or registration for voting (1) demonstrate the ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter, (2) demonstrate any educational achievement or his knowledge of any particular subject, (3) possess good moral character, or (4) prove his qualifications by the voucher of registered voters or members of any other class.

(d) For purposes of this section no State or political subdivision shall be determined to have engaged in the use of tests or devices for the purpose or with the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color if (1) incidents of such use have been few in number and have been promptly and effectively corrected by State or local action, (2) the continuing effect of such incidents has been eliminated, and (3) there is no reasonable probability of their recurrence in the future.

(e)(1) Congress hereby declares that to secure the rights under the fourteenth amendment of persons educated in American-flag schools in which the predominant [p*342] classroom language was other than English, it is necessary to prohibit the States from conditioning the right to vote of such persons on ability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter in the English language. (2) No person who demonstrates that he has successfully completed the sixth primary grade in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the predominant classroom language was other than English, shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his inability to read, write, understand, or interpret any matter in the English language, except that, in States in which State law provides that a different level of education is presumptive of literacy, he shall demonstrate that he has successfully completed an equivalent level of education in a public school in, or a private school accredited by, any State or territory, the District of Columbia, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in which the predominant classroom language was other than English.

SEC. 5. Whenever a State or political subdivision with respect to which the prohibitions set forth in section 4(a) are in effect shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964, such State or subdivision may institute an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, and unless and until the court enters such judgment no person shall be denied the right to vote for failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, [p*343] or procedure: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced without such proceeding if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, except that neither the Attorney General’s failure to object nor a declaratory judgment entered under this section shall bar a subsequent action to enjoin enforcement of such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure. Any action under this section shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of section 2284 of title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. SEC. 6. Whenever (a) a court has authorized the appointment of examiners pursuant to the provisions of section 3(a), or (b) unless a declaratory judgment has been rendered under section 4(a), the Attorney General certifies with respect to any political subdivision named in, or included within the scope of, determinations made under section 4(b) that (1) he has received complaints in writing from twenty or more residents of such political subdivision alleging that they have been denied the right to vote under color of law on account of race or color, and that he believes such complaints to be meritorious, or (2) that, in his judgment (considering, among other factors, whether the ratio of nonwhite persons to white persons registered to vote within such subdivision appears to him to be reasonably attributable to violations of the fifteenth amendment or whether substantial evidence exists that bona fide efforts are being made within such subdivision to comply with the fifteenth amendment), the appointment of examiners is otherwise necessary to [p*344] enforce the guarantees of the fifteenth amendment, the Civil Service Commission shall appoint as many examiners for such subdivision as it may deem appropriate to prepare and maintain lists of persons eligible to vote in Federal, State, and local elections. Such examiners, hearing officers provided for in section 9(a), and other persons deemed necessary by the Commission to carry out the provisions and purposes of this Act shall be appointed, compensated, and separated without regard to the provisions of any statute administered by the Civil Service Commission, and service under this Act shall not be considered employment for the purposes of any statute administered by the Civil Service Commission, except the provisions of section 9 of the Act of August 2, 1939, as amended (5 U.S.C. 118i), prohibiting partisan political activity: Provided, That the Commission is authorized, after consulting the head of the appropriate department or agency, to designate suitable persons in the official service of the United States, with their consent, to serve in these positions. Examiners and hearing officers shall have the power to administer oaths.

SEC. 7.

(a) The examiners for each political subdivision shall, at such places as the Civil Service Commission shall by regulation designate, examine applicants concerning their qualifications for voting. An application to an examiner shall be in such form as the Commission may require and shall contain allegations that the applicant is not otherwise registered to vote. (b) Any person whom the examiner finds, in accordance with instructions received under section 9(b), to have the qualifications prescribed by State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States shall promptly be placed on a list of eligible voters. A challenge to such listing may be made in accordance with section 9(a) and shall not be the basis for a prosecution under section 12 of this Act. The examiner [p*345] shall certify and transmit such list, and any supplements as appropriate, at least once a month, to the offices of the appropriate election officials, with copies to the Attorney General and the attorney general of the State, and any such lists and supplements thereto transmitted during the month shall be available for public inspection on the last business day of the month and, in any event, not later than the forty-fifth day prior to any election. The appropriate State or local election official shall place such names on the official voting list. Any person whose name appears on the examiner’s list shall be entitled and allowed to vote in the election district of his residence unless and until the appropriate election officials shall have been notified that such person has been removed from such list in accordance with subsection (d): Provided, That no person shall be entitled to vote in any election by virtue of this Act unless his name shall have been certified and transmitted on such a list to the offices of the appropriate election officials at least forty-five days prior to such election.

(c) The examiner shall issue to each person whose name appears on such a list a certificate evidencing his eligibility to vote.

(d) A person whose name appears on such a list shall be removed therefrom by an examiner if (1) such person has been successfully challenged in accordance with the procedure prescribed in section 9, or (2) he has been determined by an examiner to have lost his eligibility to vote under State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

Sec. 8. Whenever an examiner is serving under this Act in any political subdivision, the Civil Service Commission may assign, at the request of the Attorney General, one or more persons, who may be officers of the United States, (1) to enter and attend at any place for holding an election in such subdivision for the purpose [p*346] of observing whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote, and (2) to enter and attend at any place for tabulating the votes cast at any election held in such subdivision for the purpose of observing whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated. Such persons so assigned shall report to an examiner appointed for such political subdivision, to the Attorney General, and if the appointment of examiners has been authorized pursuant to section 3(a), to the court. SEC. 9.

(a) Any challenge to a listing on an eligibility list prepared by an examiner shall be heard and determined by a hearing officer appointed by and responsible to the Civil Service Commission and under such rules as the Commission shall by regulation prescribe. Such challenge shall be entertained only if filed at such office within the State as the Civil Service Commission shall by regulation designate, and within ten days after the listing of the challenged person is made available for public inspection, and if supported by (1) the affidavits of at least two persons having personal knowledge of the facts constituting grounds for the challenge, and (2) a certification that a copy of the challenge and affidavits have been served by mail or in person upon the person challenged at his place of residence set out in the application. Such challenge shall be determined within fifteen days after it has been filed. A petition for review of the decision of the hearing officer may be filed in the United States court of appeals for the circuit in which the person challenged resides within fifteen days after service of such decision by mail on the person petitioning for review but no decision of a hearing officer shall be reversed unless clearly erroneous. Any person listed shall be entitled and allowed to vote pending final determination by the hearing officer and by the court [p*347] (b) The times, places, procedures, and form for application and listing pursuant to this Act and removals from the eligibility lists shall be prescribed by regulations promulgated by the Civil Service Commission and the Commission shall, after consultation with the Attorney General, instruct examiners concerning applicable State law not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States with respect to (1) the qualifications required for listing, and (2) loss of eligibility to vote.

(c) Upon the request of the applicant or the challenger or on its own motion the Civil Service Commission shall have the power to require by subpoena the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of documentary evidence relating to any matter pending before it under the authority of this section. In case of contumacy or refusal to obey a subpoena, any district court of the United States or the United States court of any territory or possession, or the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia, within the jurisdiction of which said person guilty of contumacy or refusal to obey is found or resides or is domiciled or transacts business, or has appointed an agent for receipt of service of process, upon application by the Attorney General of the United States shall have jurisdiction to issue to such person an order requiring such person to appear before the Commission or a hearing officer, there to produce pertinent, relevant, and nonprivileged documentary evidence if so ordered, or there to give testimony touching the matter under investigation, and any failure to obey such order of the court may be punished by said court as a contempt thereof.

SEC. 10. (a) The Congress finds that the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting (i) precludes persons of limited means from voting or imposes unreasonable financial hardship upon such persons [p*348] as a precondition to their exercise of the franchise, (ii) does not bear a reasonable relationship to any legitimate State interest in the conduct of elections, and (iii) in some areas has the purpose or effect of denying persons the right to vote because of race or color. Upon the basis of these findings, Congress declares that the constitutional right of citizens to vote is denied or abridged in some areas by the requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting. (b) In the exercise of the powers of Congress under section 5 of the fourteenth amendment and section 2 of the fifteenth amendment, the Attorney General is authorized and directed to institute forthwith in the name of the United States such actions, including actions against States or political subdivisions, for declaratory judgment or injunctive relief against the enforcement of any requirement of the payment of a poll tax as a precondition to voting, or substitute therefor enacted after November 1, 1964, as will be necessary to implement the declaration of subsection (a) and the purposes of this section.

(c) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of such actions which shall be heard and determined by a court of three judges in accordance with the provisions of section 2284 of title 28 of the United States Code and any appeal shall lie to the Supreme Court. It shall be the duty of the judges designated to hear the case to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date, to participate in the hearing and determination thereof, and to cause the case to be in every way expedited.

(d) During the pendency of such actions, and thereafter if the courts, notwithstanding this action by the Congress, should declare the requirement of the payment of a poll tax to be constitutional, no citizen of the United States who is a resident of a State or political [p*349] subdivision with respect to which determinations have been made under subsection 4(b) and a declaratory judgment has not been entered under subsection 4(a), during the first year he becomes otherwise entitled to vote by reason of registration by State or local officials or listing by an examiner, shall be denied the right to vote for failure to pay a poll tax if he tenders payment of such tax for the current year to an examiner or to the appropriate State or local official at least forty-five days prior to election, whether or not such tender would be timely or adequate under State law. An examiner shall have authority to accept such payment from any person authorized by this Act to make an application for listing, and shall issue a receipt for such payment. The examiner shall transmit promptly any such poll tax payment to the office of the State or local official authorized to receive such payment under State law, together with the name and address of the applicant.

SEC. 11. (a) No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person’s vote. (b) No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under section 3(a), 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12(e).

(c) Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address, or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another [p*350] individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both: Provided, however, That this provision shall be applicable only to general, special, or primary elections held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the United States Senate, Member of the United States House of Representatives, or Delegates or Commissioners from the territories or possessions, or Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

(d) Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of an examiner or hearing officer knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals a material fact, or makes any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

SEC. 12. (a) Whoever shall deprive or attempt to deprive any person of any right secured by section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 10 or shall violate section 11(a) or (b), shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (b) Whoever, within a year following an election in a political subdivision in which an examiner has been appointed (1) destroys, defaces, mutilates, or otherwise alters the marking of a paper ballot which has been cast in such election, or (2) alters any official record of voting in such election tabulated from a voting machine or otherwise, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both [p*351]

(c) Whoever conspires to violate the provisions of subsection (a) or (b) of this section, or interferes with any right secured by section 2, 3 4, 5, 7, 10, or 11(a) or (b) shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(d) Whenever any person has engaged or there are reasonable grounds to believe that any person is about to engage in any act or practice prohibited by section 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, or subsection (b) of this section, the Attorney General may institute for the United States, or in the name of the United States, an action for preventive relief, including an application for a temporary or permanent injunction, restraining order, or other order, and including an order directed to the State and State or local election officials to require them (1) to permit persons listed under this Act to vote and (2) to count such votes.

(e) Whenever in any political subdivision in which there are examiners appointed pursuant to this Act any persons allege to such an examiner within forty-eight hours after the closing of the polls that notwithstanding (1) their listing under this Act or registration by an appropriate election official and (2) their eligibility to vote, they have not been permitted to vote in such election, the examiner shall forthwith notify the Attorney General if such allegations in his opinion appear to be well founded. Upon receipt of such notification, the Attorney General may forthwith file with the district court an application for an order providing for the marking, casting, and counting of the ballots of such persons and requiring the inclusion of their votes in the total vote before the results of such election shall be deemed final and any force or effect given thereto. The district court shall hear and determine such matters immediately after the filing of such application. The remedy provided [p*352] in this subsection shall not preclude any remedy available under State or Federal law.

(f) The district courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction of proceedings instituted pursuant to this section and shall exercise the same without regard to whether a person asserting rights under the provisions of this Act shall have exhausted any administrative or other remedies that may be provided by law

SEC. 13. Listing procedures shall be terminated in any political subdivision of any State (a) with respect to examiners appointed pursuant to clause (b) of section 6 whenever the Attorney General notifies the Civil Service Commission, or whenever the District Court for the District of Columbia determines in an action for declaratory judgment brought by any political subdivision with respect to which the Director of the Census has determined that more than 50 percentum of the nonwhite persons of voting age residing therein are registered to vote, (1) that all persons listed by an examiner for such subdivision have been placed on the appropriate voting registration roll, and (2) that there is no longer reasonable cause to believe that persons will be deprived of or denied the right to vote on account of race or color in such subdivision, and (b), with respect to examiners appointed pursuant to section 3(a), upon order of the authorizing court. A political subdivision may petition the Attorney General for the termination of listing procedures under clause (a) of this section, and may petition the Attorney General to request the Director of the Census to take such survey or census as may be appropriate for the making of the determination provided for in this section. The District Court for the District of Columbia shall have jurisdiction to require such survey or census to be made by the Director of the Census and it shall require him to do so if it deems the Attorney [p*353] General’s refusal to request such survey or census to be arbitrary or unreasonable. SEC. 14.

(a) All cases of criminal contempt arising under the provisions of this Act shall be governed by section 151 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (42 U.S.C.1995). (b) No court other than the District Court for the District of Columbia or a court of appeals in any proceeding under section 9 shall have jurisdiction to issue any declaratory judgment pursuant to section 4 or section 5 or any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction against the execution or enforcement of any provision of this Act or any action of any Federal officer or employee pursuant hereto.

(c)(1) The terms “vote” or “voting” shall include all action necessary to make a vote effective in any primary, special, or general election, including, but not limited to, registration, listing pursuant to this Act, or other action required by law prerequisite to voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted properly and included in the appropriate totals of votes cast with respect to candidates for public or party office and propositions for which votes are received in an election. (2) The term “political subdivision” shall mean any county or parish, except that, where registration for voting is not conducted under the supervision of a county or parish, the term shall include any other subdivision of a State which conducts registration for voting.

(d) In any action for a declaratory judgment brought pursuant to section 4 or section 5 of this Act, subpoenas for witnesses who are required to attend the District Court for the District of Columbia may be served in any judicial district of the United States: Provided, That no writ of subpoena shall issue for witnesses without the District of Columbia at a greater distance than one hundred [p*354] miles from the place of holding court without the permission of the District Court for the District of Columbia being first had upon proper application and cause shown.

SEC. 15. Section 2004 of the Revised Statutes (42 U.S.C.1971), as amended by section 131 of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (71 Stat. 637), and amended by section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (74 Stat. 90), and as further amended by section 101 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (78 Stat. 241), is further amended as follows:

(a) Delete the word “Federal” wherever it appears in subsections (a) and (c); (b) Repeal subsection (f) and designate the present subsections (g) and (h) as (f) and (g), respectively.

SEC. 16. The Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, jointly, shall make a full and complete study to determine whether, under the laws or practices of any State or States, there are preconditions to voting, which might tend to result in discrimination against citizens serving in the Armed Forces of the United States seeking to vote. Such officials shall, jointly, make a report to the Congress not later than June 30, 1966, containing the results of such study, together with a list of any States in which such preconditions exist, and shall include in such report such recommendations for legislation as they deem advisable to prevent discrimination in voting against citizens serving in the Armed Forces of the United States. SEC. 17. Nothing in this Act shall be construed to deny, impair, or otherwise adversely affect the right to vote of any person registered to vote under the law of any State or political subdivision.

SEC. 18. There are hereby authorized to be appropriated such sums as are necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act [p*355]

SEC 19. If any provision of this Act or the application thereof to any person or circumstances is held invalid, the remainder of the Act and the application of the provision to other persons not similarly situated or to other circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

Approved August 6, 1965.

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=100&page=transcript

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STATEMENTS FROM CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF REAUTHORIZATION OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT:

http://renewthevra.civilrights.org/press_room/6_16_06_audio.html

AFTER CHALLENGES, HOUSE APPROVES RENEWAL OF VOTING RIGHTS ACT 0F 1965:

http://renewthevra.civilrights.org/vra_news/remote-page.jsp?itemID=28439279

FINAL VOTES FROM ROLL OF THE HOUSE [PASSED 390-33]:

http://renewthevra.civilrights.org/HR9Tally2.pdf )

U.S. SENATE ROLL CALL OF THE 109TH CONGRESS [PASSED, 98-0]:

http://renewthevra.civilrights.org/SenateVote.pdf

CHILD BULLFIGHTERS FACE DEATH IN THE RING

11:26 AM CST on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

By Angela Kocherga / 11 News

They draw some of the biggest crowds at bullfights across Mexico, but they’re the smallest bullfighters. They’re children and teenagers.  And their participation in such a dangerous, bloody sport raises questions for some.

They practice their moves after school, mastering lessons that can mean the difference between life and death.

There is no age limit to enroll in bullfighting school in Mexico.

Former bullfighter Francisco Parra said bullfighting school accepts kids as young as 6 – both boys and girls.

AP

A 9-year-old bullfighter in Mexico.

Young matador Lourdes de la Vega explains that the bull doesn’t know if you’re a man or a woman … or in this case, a child.

One of the newest students at bullfighting school is Kevin Fernandez.  He’s an American, but he enrolled while living with relatives in Mexico.

Luis Perez, one of the school’s most experienced students, has the battle scars to prove it. He compares bullfighting to being a gladiator who faces death every time he steps into the ring.

Mexico is the only place where aspiring young bullfighters can take their training to the next level. Even in Spain, the birthplace of bullfighting, anyone younger than 16 is banned from getting in the ring.

In Mexico, young matadors are matched with young bulls, but the risks remain the same.

In 2007, a 14-year-old Spanish bullfighter nearly died while working in Mexico. A bull weighing more than 900 pounds pierced his left lung, coming within an inch of his heart.

The teen recovered and is now back in the ring, but he was lucky. 

The young matadors learn quickly that in this blood sport, all too often there are no second chances.

 (Article courtesyof the Houston Chronicle:  http://www.chron.com )

WISCONSIN HANDS OBAMA A VICTORY, THE NINTH IN A ROW

Dave Einsel/Getty Images

Senator Barack Obama speaking in Houston on Tuesday night.

By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY

Published: February 20, 2008

Senator Barack Obama decisively beat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday night, accelerating his momentum ahead of crucial primaries in Ohio and Texas and cutting into Mrs. Clinton’s support among women and union members.

Election Results

• Hawaii
• Washington
• Wisconsin
• Full Results »

 

Michael Czerwonka/European Pressphoto Agency

Senator John McCain, with his wife, Cindy, talking to reporters in Brookfield.

With the two rivals now battling state by state over margins of victory and allotment of delegates, surveys of voters leaving the Wisconsin polls showed Mr. Obama, of Illinois, making new inroads with those two groups as well as middle-age voters and continuing to win support from white men and younger voters — a performance that yielded grim tidings for Mrs. Clinton, of New York.

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain of Arizona won a commanding victory over Mike Huckabee in the Wisconsin contest and led by a wide margin in Washington State. All but assured of his party’s nomination, Mr. McCain immediately went after Mr. Obama during a rally in Ohio, deriding “eloquent but empty” calls for change.

For Mr. Obama, Wisconsin was his ninth consecutive victory, a streak in which he has not only run up big margins in many states but also pulled votes from once-stalwart supporters of Mrs. Clinton, like low- and middle-income people and women. Voters in Hawaii were also holding caucuses, but results were not expected until Wednesday morning.

Mrs. Clinton wasted no time in signaling that she would now take a tougher line against Mr. Obama — a recognition, her advisers said, that she must act to alter the course of the campaign and define Mr. Obama on her terms.

In a speech in Ohio shortly after the polls closed in Wisconsin, she alluded to what her campaign considers Mr. Obama’s lack of experience, and his support for a health insurance plan that would not initially seek to cover all Americans.

“This is the choice we face: One of us is ready to be commander in chief in a dangerous world,” Mrs. Clinton said in the remarks, which she also planned to expand upon in a speech in New York City on Wednesday. “One of us has faced serious Republican opposition in the past — and one of us is ready to do it again.” Mrs. Clinton did not mention the Wisconsin results; she did, however, call Mr. Obama to congratulate him on the victory.

As Mrs. Clinton was speaking, Mr. Obama appeared on stage at a rally in Texas, effectively cutting her off as cable television networks dropped her in midsentence, a telling sign of the showmanship power of a front-runner.

“Houston, I think we achieved liftoff here,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of 20,000 people in that city as he hailed the voters of Wisconsin. “The change we seek is still months and miles away, and we need the good people of Texas to help us get there.”

With 90 percent of the electoral precincts in Wisconsin reporting, Mr. Obama had 58 percent of the vote to Mrs. Clinton’s 41 percent. On the Republican side, Mr. McCain had 55 percent to Mr. Huckabee’s 37 percent. And early returns in Washington State showed him with 48 percent of the vote to Mr. Huckabee’s 21 percent.

In Wisconsin, the survey of voters leaving the polls found that Democrats believed Mr. Obama would be more likely than Mrs. Clinton, by 63 percent to 37 percent, to defeat the Republican nominee in the fall.

Her latest loss narrowed even further Mrs. Clinton’s options and leaves her little, if any, room for error. Her road to victory is now a cliff walk.

By the calculation of her own aides, she now almost certainly will need to win the next two big contests, Texas and Ohio on March 4, as well as Pennsylvania on April 22 in order to maintain a viable claim to the nomination and stop so-called superdelegates from breaking for Mr. Obama. But there has been evidence this month that Mr. Obama is building momentum with each victory, and recent polls have suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s once-large lead in Ohio and Texas is shrinking.

What is more, it may not be enough at this point for Mrs. Clinton to simply win Ohio and Texas. She needs delegates to catch up with Mr. Obama; under the rules by which the Democratic Party allocates delegates, she will need to win double-digit victories to pick up enough delegates to close the gap.

Finally, Mrs. Clinton continues to struggle to find a way to try to raise questions about Mr. Obama and stop what has been a rush of voters to his side. Her Tuesday night speech about Mr. Obama’s experience level was one of her toughest yet; still, she has been making similar arguments for months now, and they have not caught fire thus far.

With his Wisconsin victory, Mr. Obama moved into a lead over Mrs. Clinton in delegates; going into the vote, he had 1,078 delegates to Mrs. Clinton’s 1,081, according to a count by The New York Times. Wisconsin had 74 pledged delegates in play, while Hawaii had 20 pledged delegates.

Although Wisconsin borders Mr. Obama’s home state, Illinois, the primary presented a challenge because of the large share of blue-collar workers, a group that he has struggled to win over. Yet the results represented a turnaround for Mr. Obama: About one-third of voters in the Democratic primary came from union households, and they split their votes evenly between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, according to a statewide exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool.

By contrast, in the Feb. 5 primaries in New Jersey and California, two states Mrs. Clinton won, the percentage of Democratic voters from union households was also about one-third of those surveyed by Edison/Mitofsky, but they supported Mrs. Clinton more strongly than in Wisconsin.

About 6 in 10 white men voted for Mr. Obama, while white women split evenly between him and Mrs. Clinton, the polls showed. Mrs. Clinton turned in another strong performance with voters over the age of 60, meanwhile.

In forging ahead, Clinton advisers say she is determined to win strongly among women and union members in Ohio and Texas, and cited a number of factors that they were counting on: Mrs. Clinton’s performance in televised debates in each state this month, including one in Texas on Thursday; her increasingly populist message at campaign rallies; attacks by her and her advisers on Mr. Obama’s authenticity; and her continuing portrayal of him as inexperienced.

On the Republican side, Mr. McCain declared victory in Wisconsin shortly after the polls closed and continued rolling past his last major challenger, Mr. Huckabee, toward the goal of winning the 1,191 delegates needed to seal the party’s nomination.

But surveys of voters gave evidence of misgivings about his candidacy: more than 4 in 10 voters said Mr. McCain was not conservative enough; conservative voters split their votes evenly between the two men. And Mr. Huckabee won a majority of the vote of the one-third of evangelical voters who participated in the Republican primary.

Addressing a packed ballroom in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. McCain said to cheers that he would urge the nation not to be “deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history” and warned against risking “the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate.” He did not even allude to Mrs. Clinton.

Both Democrats have been increasingly sounding populist notes recently to reflect the economic concerns of voters. In her remarks in Youngstown on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton allied herself with Americans working on the “night shift” — a phrase that is also the title of a new advertisement that began running in Ohio on Tuesday night. The ad ends with an image of Mrs. Clinton doing paperwork, illuminated by a lamp, as a narrator says, “She’s worked the night shift, too.”

While Mrs. Clinton drew some of her largest crowds to date in Texas, her decision to spend time away from Wisconsin troubled some of her supporters, who believed she had erred in not campaigning enough in states she lost recently, like Maine.

Mr. Obama’s audiences, meanwhile, were filled with a tapestry of supporters — young and old, black and white — many of whom said they had been following the presidential race as it unfolded in neighboring states like Iowa.

Mary Liedtke, a defense lawyer in Eau Claire, Wis., said she had been a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. But in the final weeks of the Iowa caucus campaign, she said she had become inspired by Mr. Obama’s supporters.

“Some elderly women I’ve heard say, ‘I want to see a woman president before I die,’ and I know that’s why some of them are supporting Hillary,” Ms. Liedtke said in an interview after seeing Mr. Obama last weekend in her town.

“But you know what? That’s a selfish reason to vote for a president just because you want to see a woman before you die,” she added. “What about the kids coming up? I feel we should vote for the young people.”

John M. Broder contributed reporting from Ohio, and Megan Thee from New York.(Article courtesy of The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com )

Speech Transcripts: McCain | Clinton | Obama

ELECTION RESULTS

Wisconsin »

Democrats	%
Obama	58%
Clinton	41
97% reporting

Republicans	%
McCain	55%
Huckabee	37
Paul	5
97% reporting

Wash. »

Republicans	%
McCain	49%
Huckabee	21
Paul	7
54% reporting

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With another primary win in his pocket, Obama rallies support in Houston

Barack Obama addressed a boisterous rally in Houston on Tuesday night after defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton in Wisconsin for his ninth straight win. | Trail Mix Blog: Behind the scenes at the rally Story