December 22, 2009
Arizona Prisons Plan to Transfer Illegal Immigrants to Federal Custody
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Desperate to save money, Arizona will transfer illegal immigrants who have been convicted of nonviolent crimes to federal custody for the last three months of their sentences, saving the state the cost of housing them.
Currently, prisoners who are not illegal immigrants are eligible to leave prison 90 days before their sentences end and begin community service. Under the new plan, which begins Jan. 1, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency will take custody of the illegal immigrants pending deportation. The Arizona Department of Corrections said that a total of more than 1,200 prisoners would be moved this fiscal year and next, saving about $5.7 million.
Gov. Jan Brewer called for the move in an address to senior members of her administration after the Legislature hammered out a plan over the weekend to cut nearly $200 million from the current budget to help close a $1.5 billion shortfall. Like many other Western states, Arizona has been hit disproportionately by the foreclosure crisis, halting the state’s economic growth.
Arizona also has some of the toughest sentencing laws in the country, and its prison costs are about $1 billion a year.
“The cost of incarcerating these criminals is not Arizona’s responsibility,” Ms. Brewer said in prepared remarks. “By federal law, the cost of their incarceration is the responsibility of the federal government. However, the federal government is refusing to adequately fund this program.”
Arizona, like many other states, already releases some jailed illegal immigrants to the immigration authorities, but the new plan would expand the pool. Currently, it releases about 200 prisoners a month to immigration before their sentences are finished, according to the federal agency.
“Identifying and removing deportable criminal aliens is a top priority for I.C.E.,” Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in a prepared statement.
hey its keke ...whats up?? ...well
arizona will transfer illegal immigrants who have been convicted of nonviolent crimes to federal custody for the last three months of their sentences, saving the state the cost of housing them.
ok....this is suppose to be to save money..since we are in a recession people! arizona inmates...i mean immigrant inmates have no rights...they aren't even suppose to be here...they want to remove those convicted of nonviolent crimes. basicly if they can they tryna put them in other places or send them packing back to where they came from....sending them to immigrantion...there they will be deported aka bye bye...how do i feel about this? ....go arizona...save that money...their criminals they came here and messed up....send them back!!!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
D.C. Council Approves Gay Marriage
December 16, 2009
D.C. Council Approves Gay Marriage
By IAN URBINA
WASHINGTON — The City Council passed a measure Tuesday legalizing same-sex marriage, making the nation’s capital the first jurisdiction below the Mason-Dixon Line to allow such unions.
The bill, which passed by an 11-to-2 vote, may still face obstacles in Congress, among city voters and in the courts, but most advocates of same-sex marriage say they expect it to become law by spring. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has said he will sign the bill.
“Today’s vote is an important victory not only for the gay and lesbian community but for everyone who supports equal rights,” said Councilman David A. Catania, an independent and the author of the bill.
Opponents have vowed to overturn the bill by putting it to a referendum or by working with Congress, which has a month to review the measure once it is signed.
The city already recognizes same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont. New Hampshire will begin allowing same-sex marriage early next year.
Republicans and conservative Democrats in the House, which oversees the District of Columbia’s budget, are considering a variety of legislative methods to block the bill, including adding a rider to future appropriations bills. But Democrats who support the measure can probably prevent that.
Other opponents vowed to continue fighting.
“The City Council’s action today is not the final word,” said Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., and chairman of a group called Stand4MarriageDC.
Mr. Jackson said he would lobby Congress to intervene, but he acknowledged that such a move threatened to upset some of his local supporters, who may be put off by the prospect of subverting local autonomy in Washington.
The city’s Board of Elections and Ethics decided not to hold a referendum on legalizing same-sex marriage, and Mr. Jackson’s group is challenging that decision in court on Jan. 6.
Councilman Catania opposes putting the matter to a popular vote. He noted that in a referendum in 1865, only 36 of the city’s residents voted to extend the franchise to African-American men.
“It isn’t that I’m fearful of losing,” Mr. Catania said. “I think the process is diminishing. I think that putting the rights of minorities on the ballot and allowing the forces of intolerance to spend an unlimited amount to demonize and marginalize a population is unsavory.”
In November, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said that if the ordinance were passed, the church might have to limit its social service programs that help residents with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Under the bill, religious organizations would not be required to perform same-sex weddings or make space available for them. Officials from the archdiocese, however, said they feared that the ordinance might require them to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples.
Other religious groups have endorsed the bill.
“Social justice and equality are goals for all people of faith, which is why so many religious leaders and faithful people in the District support this legislation,” said the Rev. Robert Hardies, senior pastor of All Souls Church Unitarian and a co-chairman of D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality. “The D.C. marriage equality bill ends harmful discrimination against same-sex couples, and we celebrate the City Council for supporting the human rights of all residents.”
Same-sex marriage was briefly legalized in California until the policy was struck down in 2008. Last month, Maine voters repealed a similar bill, making their state the 31st to vote in a referendum to block gay and lesbian couples from marrying.
hey its keke and of course i got something to say. washington dc council passes a measure that can legalize gay marriage. ofcourse people are already opposing this and planning on fighting it. well first off let me say that im glad dc did this. gays should have the same rights are any other human being MARRIAGE. marrriage isn't just the wedding. legally a married couple has certain rights that two people that are just in a relationship do not have.why don't other people support gay rights? well they put the bible up and swear that they are doing a godly thing by making human beings feel like outsides. god accepts us all and we all sin...church on sunday after partying and drinking all night saturday. please! if we all really lived by the biblde or want to bring it in everything, every single person wouldn't be allowed to be themselves. let people have self expression. gay people don't want you! i don't see gay people attack people or beat up straight people. How does gay people having the right to get married effect you. it doesn't!!! let gay people be happy or as miserable in marriage like everyone else. give them a choice to have rights if something happens to their partner. you don't have to like it but accept that things must change................................. this article is accurate and i agree on its content. yea i said i support gay rights,blue,red,purple,yellow,brown and orange rights too.i thank the new york times for this article and i support the dc decision to legal gay marriage. ---keke
ps. comment..tell me what you think?...do you support gay rights?...why or why not
U.S. Sees an Opportunity to Press Iran on Nuclear Fuel
New York Times
jan/3/2010
U.S. Sees an Opportunity to Press Iran on Nuclear Fuel
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
WASHINGTON — As President Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, the administration says that domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Tehran’s nuclear program make its leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions.
The long-discussed sanctions would initiate the latest phase in a strategy to force Iran to comply with United Nations demands to halt production of nuclear fuel. It comes as the administration has completed a fresh review of Iran’s nuclear progress.
In interviews, Mr. Obama’s strategists said that while Iran’s top political and military leaders remained determined to develop nuclear weapons, they were distracted by turmoil in the streets and political infighting, and that the drive to produce nuclear fuel appeared to have faltered in recent months.
The White House wants to focus the new sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military force believed to run the nuclear weapons effort. That force has also played a crucial role in the repression of antigovernment demonstrators since the disputed presidential election in June.
Although repeated rounds of sanctions over many years have not dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear technology, an administration official involved in the Iran policy said the hope was that the current troubles “give us a window to impose the first sanctions that may make the Iranians think the nuclear program isn’t worth the price tag.”
While outsiders have a limited view of Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration officials said they believed that the bomb-development effort was seriously derailed by the exposure three months ago of the country’s secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qum. Exposure of the site deprived Iran of its best chance of covertly producing the highly enriched uranium needed to make fuel for nuclear weapons.
In addition, international nuclear inspectors report that at Iran’s plant in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges spin to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, the number of the machines that are currently operating has dropped by 20 percent since the summer, a decline nuclear experts attribute to technical problems. Others, including some European officials, believe the problems may have been accentuated by a series of covert efforts by the West to undermine Iran’s program, including sabotage on its imported equipment and infrastructure.
These factors have led the administration’s policy makers to lengthen their estimate of how long it would take Iran to accomplish what nuclear experts call “covert breakout” — the ability to secretly produce a workable weapon.
“For now, the Iranians don’t have a credible breakout option, and we don’t think they will have one for at least 18 months, maybe two or three years,” said one senior administration official at the center of the White House Iran strategy. The administration has told allies that the longer time frame would allow the sanctions to have an effect before Iran could develop its nuclear ability.
Another administration official said that Israeli officials, while still publicly hinting that they might take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, “now feel that what’s happening in Iran makes the country vulnerable to real sanctions,” and might give Mr. Obama more time to persuade China and Russia to go along. A senior Israeli diplomat in Washington said that in back-channel conversations “Obama has convinced us that it’s worth trying the sanctions, at least for a few months.”
Sanctions will be a difficult balancing act for the administration, since it acknowledges that three previous rounds of sanctions have failed to deter Iran, and it also wants to avoid angering Iranians protesting in the streets by depriving them of Western goods. That is why the administration is focusing on the Revolutionary Guards, who are increasingly detested by the protesters, and who have built up billions of dollars of business interests in telecommunications, oil and construction.
The administration aims to get Arab and Asian nations to join Europe in cutting off financial transactions with front companies for the Revolutionary Guards.
China and Russia have been particularly reluctant and could seize on the Obama administration’s view of Iran’s nuclear troubles to resist Mr. Obama’s argument that new sanctions are needed now to punish Iran’s defiance of the United Nations Security Council mandate that it cease enriching uranium.
Iran’s insistence that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only is roundly rejected by Western officials and, in internal reports, by international nuclear inspectors. Yet Washington’s assessments of how much progress Iran has made toward a weapon have varied greatly over the past two years, partly a reflection of how little is known about the inner workings of the country’s nuclear programs.
Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.
After reviewing new documents that have leaked out of Iran and debriefing defectors lured to the West, Mr. Obama’s advisers say they believe the work on weapons design is continuing on a smaller scale — the same assessment reached by Britain, France, Germany and Israel.
In early September, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davies, warned that Iran had “possible breakout capacity.” Administration officials say that Mr. Davies’ assessment was technically accurate, yet the new evidence suggests that Iran is less likely to use its uranium stockpile to assemble one or two bombs, a move officials say would be likely to provoke an Israeli strike.
The administration’s current view of Iran’s nuclear program was provided by six senior administration officials advising Mr. Obama on his strategy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. The administration’s review of Iran’s program, which they said was based on intelligence reports, information from allies, and their own analysis, did not amount to a new formal intelligence assessment.
In interviews, those officials as well as European officials engaged in the Iran issue and private experts described Iran’s nuclear program as being in some disarray.
The biggest disruption came in late September when Mr. Obama, along with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, publicly exposed Iran’s covert effort to build an enrichment plant near Qum.
Western intelligence agencies had been studying the underground plant from afar for nearly a year, and two European officials say that Iranian nuclear spies recruited by Europe and Israel provided some confirming evidence about the purpose of the plant.
International inspectors who were granted access to the underground site in October found that the plant was about a year away from operation and that it was designed for just 3,000 centrifuges — not enough to produce the large amounts of fuel needed for commercial reactors, but sufficient for the stealthy production of highly enriched bomb fuel. (By comparison, the Natanz plant, which is ostensibly for producing reactor fuel, is designed for 54,000 centrifuges.)
American officials say that the Qum plant is now useless to the Iranians. “They spent three years and tens of millions of dollars on a covert plant that they will probably never turn on,” said the senior official involved in the White House strategy.
The official added, “It would take Iran three to four years to build a duplicate of Qum,” although he acknowledged that Iran could have another secret facility that Western intelligence had missed.
Both administration officials and experts say that another factor slowing Iran’s nuclear development is that it is working with older centrifuge technology that keeps breaking down.
By the recent count of inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency, there were 3,936 centrifuges running at Iran’s enrichment plant in the desert at Natanz — down from a peak of 4,920 centrifuges in June.
Administration officials say Iran began producing almost all of its own centrifuge components after discovering that the United States and other Western countries had sabotaged some key imported parts, and they have made a series of manufacturing errors.
R. Scott Kemp, a Princeton University physicist, said that another factor was in the basic design of the centrifuges, obtained from Pakistan nearly two decades ago. “I suspect design problems,” Mr. Kemp said. “The machines run hot and have short lives. They’re terrible. It’s a really bad design.”
If Mr. Kemp and others are right, it suggests that Iran has a long way to go before it can make good on its recent vow to open 10 new enrichment plants. Iranian officials have said publicly that those plants will use a new version of the centrifuges. But Paul K. Kerr, a nuclear analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said research on the new generation of centrifuges had apparently proved “less successful” than the original, primitive design.
Another possible problem for Iran is the Western sabotage efforts. In January, The New York Times reported that President Bush had ordered a broad covert program against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including efforts to undermine electrical and computer systems that keep the nuclear program running. The Obama administration has been silent about the progress of that program, one of the most heavily classified of the United States government.
jan/3/2010
U.S. Sees an Opportunity to Press Iran on Nuclear Fuel
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
WASHINGTON — As President Obama faces pressure to back up his year-end ultimatum for diplomatic progress with Iran, the administration says that domestic unrest and signs of unexpected trouble in Tehran’s nuclear program make its leaders particularly vulnerable to strong and immediate new sanctions.
The long-discussed sanctions would initiate the latest phase in a strategy to force Iran to comply with United Nations demands to halt production of nuclear fuel. It comes as the administration has completed a fresh review of Iran’s nuclear progress.
In interviews, Mr. Obama’s strategists said that while Iran’s top political and military leaders remained determined to develop nuclear weapons, they were distracted by turmoil in the streets and political infighting, and that the drive to produce nuclear fuel appeared to have faltered in recent months.
The White House wants to focus the new sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military force believed to run the nuclear weapons effort. That force has also played a crucial role in the repression of antigovernment demonstrators since the disputed presidential election in June.
Although repeated rounds of sanctions over many years have not dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear technology, an administration official involved in the Iran policy said the hope was that the current troubles “give us a window to impose the first sanctions that may make the Iranians think the nuclear program isn’t worth the price tag.”
While outsiders have a limited view of Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration officials said they believed that the bomb-development effort was seriously derailed by the exposure three months ago of the country’s secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qum. Exposure of the site deprived Iran of its best chance of covertly producing the highly enriched uranium needed to make fuel for nuclear weapons.
In addition, international nuclear inspectors report that at Iran’s plant in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges spin to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, the number of the machines that are currently operating has dropped by 20 percent since the summer, a decline nuclear experts attribute to technical problems. Others, including some European officials, believe the problems may have been accentuated by a series of covert efforts by the West to undermine Iran’s program, including sabotage on its imported equipment and infrastructure.
These factors have led the administration’s policy makers to lengthen their estimate of how long it would take Iran to accomplish what nuclear experts call “covert breakout” — the ability to secretly produce a workable weapon.
“For now, the Iranians don’t have a credible breakout option, and we don’t think they will have one for at least 18 months, maybe two or three years,” said one senior administration official at the center of the White House Iran strategy. The administration has told allies that the longer time frame would allow the sanctions to have an effect before Iran could develop its nuclear ability.
Another administration official said that Israeli officials, while still publicly hinting that they might take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, “now feel that what’s happening in Iran makes the country vulnerable to real sanctions,” and might give Mr. Obama more time to persuade China and Russia to go along. A senior Israeli diplomat in Washington said that in back-channel conversations “Obama has convinced us that it’s worth trying the sanctions, at least for a few months.”
Sanctions will be a difficult balancing act for the administration, since it acknowledges that three previous rounds of sanctions have failed to deter Iran, and it also wants to avoid angering Iranians protesting in the streets by depriving them of Western goods. That is why the administration is focusing on the Revolutionary Guards, who are increasingly detested by the protesters, and who have built up billions of dollars of business interests in telecommunications, oil and construction.
The administration aims to get Arab and Asian nations to join Europe in cutting off financial transactions with front companies for the Revolutionary Guards.
China and Russia have been particularly reluctant and could seize on the Obama administration’s view of Iran’s nuclear troubles to resist Mr. Obama’s argument that new sanctions are needed now to punish Iran’s defiance of the United Nations Security Council mandate that it cease enriching uranium.
Iran’s insistence that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only is roundly rejected by Western officials and, in internal reports, by international nuclear inspectors. Yet Washington’s assessments of how much progress Iran has made toward a weapon have varied greatly over the past two years, partly a reflection of how little is known about the inner workings of the country’s nuclear programs.
Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.
After reviewing new documents that have leaked out of Iran and debriefing defectors lured to the West, Mr. Obama’s advisers say they believe the work on weapons design is continuing on a smaller scale — the same assessment reached by Britain, France, Germany and Israel.
In early September, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davies, warned that Iran had “possible breakout capacity.” Administration officials say that Mr. Davies’ assessment was technically accurate, yet the new evidence suggests that Iran is less likely to use its uranium stockpile to assemble one or two bombs, a move officials say would be likely to provoke an Israeli strike.
The administration’s current view of Iran’s nuclear program was provided by six senior administration officials advising Mr. Obama on his strategy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. The administration’s review of Iran’s program, which they said was based on intelligence reports, information from allies, and their own analysis, did not amount to a new formal intelligence assessment.
In interviews, those officials as well as European officials engaged in the Iran issue and private experts described Iran’s nuclear program as being in some disarray.
The biggest disruption came in late September when Mr. Obama, along with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, publicly exposed Iran’s covert effort to build an enrichment plant near Qum.
Western intelligence agencies had been studying the underground plant from afar for nearly a year, and two European officials say that Iranian nuclear spies recruited by Europe and Israel provided some confirming evidence about the purpose of the plant.
International inspectors who were granted access to the underground site in October found that the plant was about a year away from operation and that it was designed for just 3,000 centrifuges — not enough to produce the large amounts of fuel needed for commercial reactors, but sufficient for the stealthy production of highly enriched bomb fuel. (By comparison, the Natanz plant, which is ostensibly for producing reactor fuel, is designed for 54,000 centrifuges.)
American officials say that the Qum plant is now useless to the Iranians. “They spent three years and tens of millions of dollars on a covert plant that they will probably never turn on,” said the senior official involved in the White House strategy.
The official added, “It would take Iran three to four years to build a duplicate of Qum,” although he acknowledged that Iran could have another secret facility that Western intelligence had missed.
Both administration officials and experts say that another factor slowing Iran’s nuclear development is that it is working with older centrifuge technology that keeps breaking down.
By the recent count of inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency, there were 3,936 centrifuges running at Iran’s enrichment plant in the desert at Natanz — down from a peak of 4,920 centrifuges in June.
Administration officials say Iran began producing almost all of its own centrifuge components after discovering that the United States and other Western countries had sabotaged some key imported parts, and they have made a series of manufacturing errors.
R. Scott Kemp, a Princeton University physicist, said that another factor was in the basic design of the centrifuges, obtained from Pakistan nearly two decades ago. “I suspect design problems,” Mr. Kemp said. “The machines run hot and have short lives. They’re terrible. It’s a really bad design.”
If Mr. Kemp and others are right, it suggests that Iran has a long way to go before it can make good on its recent vow to open 10 new enrichment plants. Iranian officials have said publicly that those plants will use a new version of the centrifuges. But Paul K. Kerr, a nuclear analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said research on the new generation of centrifuges had apparently proved “less successful” than the original, primitive design.
Another possible problem for Iran is the Western sabotage efforts. In January, The New York Times reported that President Bush had ordered a broad covert program against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including efforts to undermine electrical and computer systems that keep the nuclear program running. The Obama administration has been silent about the progress of that program, one of the most heavily classified of the United States government.
Monday, December 14, 2009
OBAMA
our first black president...but better yet a president we can relate to...
mr.obama
approval rating? low less then 50%
what do you think?
12/13....ugh...being open minded
There is a lot to be said about the political world. First off…everything I say is my opinion !!! Freedom of speech. On my blog I address politics head on. No sugar coating or butter-ups. There are so many issues to talk about and to express what I think about them. On this page there is freedom of expression so comment and say what you want. One of the major issues I will address on my page is U.S politics and its effect of Americans. Why is politics everywhere? Its how we think that causes America problems. We are a bully country! If you isn’t down with us we coming for you! We are always trying to spread democracy and push or beliefs on others. If they don’t agree and aren’t helping us their a threat. The U.s has some nerve, we aren’t perfect. Ever since we gained our independence we thought we were hot. Head all in the sky. What we fail to do however is to correct what is already happening in OUR OWN COUNTRY!!! Why we don’t stay here???…corruption in politics…well people don’t fight fair and personally I’m not a democrat or a republican. Quick question…how do you pick a side before you hear the issue???? IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE siding with your party. No!…be independent. Listen to the issues and stop judging something before you understand it. I call it as I see it. But let me be specific here. Ill address a political issue that bugs me like flies. Political issue: should women have the right of abortion. As a female a believe it is a women’s choice. Its her body and the she can have circumstances that no one knows about. Also I believe that when you bring a child in this world you are prepared for it. To take care of it and help it grow. I can already hear people saying its murder and your killing a human being. Murder!!! OK uh let me finish. It is wrong to kill someone but a baby is born when it takes its first breathe so if its still in the stomach it not alive per-say. Once again I believe it is up to the woman. How can people stop females for making abortion? I’m calling congress and asking ok I know you own my house my school…do you own my body to? Where’s my rights or my justice. If I were to ever be in that situation where I could or didn’t want to take care of the baby that started to grow inside me, yes abortion for me! Don’t get mad I’m not happy about giving it up…but if your not ready.. Why give birth and then that child life is bad or you regret it and you struggle. Nope I don’t want to call a child a mistake but how many parents do you hear about abusing their children or killing them. Nope shouldn’t have had them. Poor babies L…they die at the hands of their parents. I believe that’s murder…abortion uh its jus a prevention of a lot of death of babies or abuse. I’m jus saying…because I got something to say. --keke
p.s
People seem to think that we really live by the constitution. That we live in a democracy. Lol uh sure we do. Our country is at war now for what? Is war inevitable? Somebody please tell me? Don’t say it was September 11. Don’t say it was for oil! I disagree with this war. How about you? Check this out we going to Afghanistan smh poor troops…can see there faces..:(… Comment!!
p.s
People seem to think that we really live by the constitution. That we live in a democracy. Lol uh sure we do. Our country is at war now for what? Is war inevitable? Somebody please tell me? Don’t say it was September 11. Don’t say it was for oil! I disagree with this war. How about you? Check this out we going to Afghanistan smh poor troops…can see there faces..:(… Comment!!
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