Same-Sex Pairs in Florida Say Jubilant ‘I Dos’

Abstract: MIAMI — Wedding ceremonies began and ended in the middle of the night in Fort Lauderdale and Key West, and hundreds of other marriages played out under blue skies in Miami Beach and Orlando, as Florida completed its long, arduous journey Tuesday to become the 36th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Along the way, the third-largest state, the home of antigay crusades in the 1970s, became a vivid symbol of the extraordinary changes that have shifted the landscape of marriage in America. Only six years ago, Florida passed a constitutional amendment to ban on gay marriage, garnering 62 percent of the vote. Arms interlocked, about 20 gay and lesbian couples, too eager to wait any longer, were married in a five-minute ceremony at 3 a.m. on Tuesday at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. “Do you take each other to be your spouse for life?” asked Howard C. Forman, the Broward County clerk of courts, emphasizing the word “spouse.” Together, the couples uttered their individual vows to each other. “I pronounce you legally married,” Mr. Forman said. With that, the couples and their families and friends roared, cheered and clapped, and Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E” blasted into the room. For Florida, the path to “I do” for same-sex couples is particularly noteworthy. It was here that Anita Bryant, a singer and the state’s pitchwoman for orange juice, began a high-profile campaign in 1977 to defeat a Dade County ordinance that barred discrimination on the basis of homosexuality. Six months later, Mrs. Bryant, whose antigay views and organization went national, succeeded when a large majority of voters in the county repealed the local law. On Tuesday, opposition to gay and lesbian marriage, while present, was mostly muted. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican and an opponent of same-sex marriage, did not mention the flurry of weddings crisscrossing the state during his inaugural speech. In large swaths of the state, there was widespread enthusiasm about same-sex marriages, both as a human rights issue and for its economic benefits. Floridians anticipated a boomlet for tourism and businesses catering to weddings and honeymoons. For others, the excitement was deeply personal and long overdue. Anthony Butera, 44, and Abdel Magid, 45, said there was no doubt that marrying as soon as possible in their home state was a must. A couple for 12 years, the two donned wedding finery — Mr. Butera wore a cream tuxedo jacket with a black handkerchief and Mr. Magid a black tuxedo jacket with a white boutonniere — and infectious smiles. Image A couple obtained their marriage license in Miami-Dade County, and planned to marry on Friday. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times “It’s special to be recognized and be treated like everyone else,” Mr. Magid said. Similar late-night ceremonies were held in Key West and Palm Beach County as scores of jubilant couples exchanged marriage vows and rings. Miami-Dade was the first to proceed on Monday when Sarah Zabel, a state judge there, lifted her temporary ban on same-sex marriages after Judge Robert L. Hinkle of Federal District Court in Tallahassee clarified his August order ruling same-sex marriages as constitutional. Three hours after lifting her ban, Judge Zabel officially married two of the six couples who had sued the county over the same-sex marriage ban. The weddings took place at Miami’s civil courthouse, where the couples exchanged rings. As of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, all 67 county clerks of the courts were required to issue wedding licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Some, like Mr. Forman, of Broward County, which has a large gay and lesbian population, embraced the duty eagerly. Others, particularly in more conservative northern Florida, took a more reluctant approach. While county clerks said they would abide by the law and issue licenses, some clerks, including for Duval County, home to Jacksonville, announced last week that they would end ceremonial courthouse weddings so as not to force staff members who object to the marriages to participate. The clerk of courts in Duval County, Ronnie Fussell, told The Florida Times-Union that marriage should be “between a man and a woman.” “Personally, it would go against my belief to perform a ceremony that is other than that,” Mr. Fussell said. Florida’s long road to same-sex marriage ended Tuesday after a temporary ban issued by Judge Hinkle expired at midnight on Monday. On Aug. 21, Judge Hinkle ruled that the state’s same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional, as part of a federal lawsuit brought on behalf of same-sex couples and a gay-rights group. The initial lawsuit was filed by two lawyers, William Sheppard and Samuel Jacobson, both of Jacksonville, and was consolidated with a second suit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. Image About 20 gay and lesbian couples, too eager to wait any longer, were married in a five-minute ceremony at 3 a.m. on Tuesday at the Broward County Courthouse. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images Judge Hinkle issued a stay, or a temporary hold, on his decision and gave Attorney General Pam Bondi until Monday to file an appeal. But her attempts to extend the deadline failed in the Appellate Court and the Supreme Court. After two weeks of confusion over whether the ruling applied to only one county in Florida, Judge Hinkle clarified his order on Thursday, saying that the “constitution” requires that clerks in all of the state’s 67 counties issue marriage licenses. While same-sex marriage is now legal in Florida, the larger battle on the merits of the case must still be waged in the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and, perhaps, the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is expected to meet this week to consider whether to take up related cases. As gay couples began to wed, Jeb Bush, the state’s former governor and long an opponent of same-sex marriages, struck a conciliatory tone on Monday, saying in a statement that “regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law.” Mr. Bush, who is considering running for president, did not indicate any enthusiasm for challenging the ruling. “I hope that we can show respect for the good people on all sides of the gay and lesbian marriage issue — including couples making lifetime commitments to each other who are seeking greater legal protections and those of us who believe marriage is a sacrament and want to safeguard religious liberty,” Mr. Bush said. Shortly after sunset on Miami Beach, a gay-rights stronghold, dozens of gay and lesbian couples reaffirmed their commitments at the botanical gardens. Many had run out of patience with Florida and gotten married elsewhere. Standing in a thick crowd, Julio Sanchez, 52, and Antonio Gonzalez Sanchez, 56, beamed. They were married June 11 in New York. “I wanted to get married for the longest time,” said Mr. Gonzalez Sanchez, who grew up in Miami, adding that the two had been together now for 18 years. “We waited and waited and waited, and it didn’t come through. Now we got a surprise.”

Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Florida
Sarah Zabel


Fenway Park Sellout Streak Seems to Be Nearing an End

Abstract: Chicago Cubs fans may disagree, but all streaks ultimately come to an end. On Wednesday night, the Boston Red Sox may fail to sell out Fenway Park for the first time in nearly a decade. Including their home opener Monday, the Red Sox have sold out a major-league-record 794 consecutive games, a streak that dates to the 2003 season, the year before the team ended an 86-year drought and won the World Series. Since then, rain or shine, freezing temperatures or summer heat, the Red Sox have sold all 37,000 or so seats at Fenway Park. The Red Sox’ streak dwarfs the 455 consecutive sellouts by the Cleveland Indians in the 1990s, and it is nearly five times as long as the second-longest current streak, 169 games, by the San Francisco Giants. (The Philadelphia Phillies’ sellout streak ended last August at 257 games.) But even Red Sox fans, who are among the most involved in baseball, finally have reasons to stay away. The team’s epic collapse in 2011 was followed by a last-place finish last season. The improvements to Fenway Park, including seats added to the top of the Green Monster, are no longer a novelty. Ticket prices have pushed up over the years. Tickets in April are also more difficult to sell because the weather is cooler and children are in school. Worse, the Red Sox will play 17 home games this month, a team record for April, making it that much harder to sell every ticket. The streak may end as soon as the second home game of the season — Wednesday’s matchup against the Baltimore Orioles — when the Red Sox expect ticket sales to surpass 30,000, but not reach capacity. If the sellout streak does continue Wednesday — the Red Sox are, after all, off to a good start and the weather has warmed, at least temporarily — it will probably end at some other point in April, Larry Lucchino, the president of the Red Sox, said in a telephone interview Monday. “Combined with the disappointment of last season and the disaster the year before, we are anticipating the streak coming to an end,” he said. It does not help the streak that interest has dipped on the resale market, where the average price of tickets for the home opener at Fenway Park fell to $171.68 this year, about half what they cost for the home opener last year, according to TiqIq.com, which tracks online ticket resellers. Fans could have paid as little as $63 to see Monday’s game, down from $103 last season. The prices for tickets to Wednesday’s game have fallen faster. Fans can find tickets for as little as $12 for that game, about 75 percent less than the cheapest seat for the second home game of the season last year, according to TiqIq.com. It should be noted that sellout streaks — including Boston’s and San Francisco’s — come with asterisks. For instance, The Boston Globe reported last May that the Red Sox had cut off ticket sales in the seventh inning of a Wednesday night game against Oakland with an estimated 300 tickets still unsold. Still, the game was declared a sellout. The explanation the Red Sox provided was that the hundreds of free tickets they had distributed to charities and others, the standing room tickets that had been sold and the many regular tickets that had been purchased added up to a total that was larger than Fenway’s capacity. Thus, a sellout, which the Red Sox executives defended as a standard definition under Major League Baseball guidelines. Likewise, The San Francisco Chronicle went to a Giants-Colorado Rockies game at AT&T Park in September and found big patches of empty seats in the upper deck. Nevertheless, the game was declared a sellout under the same guidelines the Red Sox and other teams use. And the Giants’ sellout streak remains intact and seems set to supplant Boston’s as the longest in baseball. Fenway Park’s capacity is 37,493 for night games and a few hundred less during the day, when some center-field bleacher seats are covered. With standing room, attendance can hit 39,000. Even so, Fenway Park is considered the third smallest stadium in baseball, trailed only by those in Oakland, Calif., and in St. Petersburg, Fla., where the Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays seal off entire sections because of lackluster ticket sales. Regardless of how long it lasts, and how it is defined, the Red Sox’ sellout streak is the result of a confluence of factors, the most important being a winning team. When the run began May 15, 2003, with Pedro Martinez beating the Texas Rangers, 12-3, the team — under a new management group that featured Lucchino, the owners John Henry and Tom Werner and General Manager Theo Epstein — was embarking on a long run of strong baseball that included World Series titles in 2004 and 2007. The new group presided over a $285 million refurbishment of Fenway Park, which celebrated its centennial last season. Seats were added on top of the wall in left field and a concourse and roof deck were added in right. Club seats were installed behind home plate, and Yawkey Way was closed to traffic during games. In all, 3,502 seats have been added over the last decade. “The preservation of Fenway is a major point of pride for us, just below winning the World Series,” Lucchino said, adding that the stadium was “viable” for another 30 or 40 years. “We have made changes that have increased capacity and amenities, but we haven’t changed the ambience of the park.” But many fans from around the country who wanted to see these new improvements have made their pilgrimage. They do not necessarily see the need to go again now. And because the market for reselling tickets has slipped substantially, fans who usually buy full-season ticket packages with the intent of reselling the games they do not want online may now think that is a losing proposition. Lucchino said season-ticket renewal rates were 88 percent to 90 percent this year, down from about 95 percent in recent years. While the Red Sox distribute free tickets, Lucchino maintained that during the long sellout streak, they have not resorted to buying up remaining tickets just before game time to keep the streak going. And, he added, they are not going to start doing so now. The team did give out commemorative baseballs on the days when the sellout streak reached 500, 600 and 700 games. But the Red Sox have no plans to commemorate the sellout streak — whenever it ends — by putting up a sign in the stadium, the way the Indians did. “We hope to really thank them with a decent season,” he said of Red Sox fans. “That would be the best thank you of all.”


How the Poll Was Conducted

Abstract: The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Sept. 8 through 12 with 1,301 adults throughout the United States. Of these, 1,170 said they were registered to vote. The sample of land-line telephone exchanges called was randomly selected by a computer from a complete list of more than 72,000 active residential exchanges across the country. The exchanges were chosen so as to ensure that each region of the country was represented in proportion to its share of all telephone numbers. Within each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to listed and unlisted numbers alike. Within each household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey. To increase coverage, this land-line sample was supplemented by respondents reached through random dialing of cellphone numbers. The two samples were then combined and adjusted to assure the proper ratio of land-line-only, cellphone-only and dual phone users. Interviewers made multiple attempts to reach every phone number in the survey, calling back unanswered numbers on different days at different times of both day and evening. The combined results have been weighted to adjust for variation in the sample relating to geographic region, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, age, education and number of adults in the household. Respondents in the land-line sample were also weighted to take account of the number of telephone lines into the residence. Findings regarding the presidential candidates were also weighted in terms of an overall “probable electorate,” which used responses to questions dealing with voting history, attention to the campaign and likelihood of voting as a measure of the probability of respondents’ actually turning out on Election Day. Self-identified Republicans, Democrats and independents were also adjusted to their average proportion among likely voters in the most recent two polls by The Times and CBS News. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, overall results based on such samples will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking to interview all American adults. For smaller subgroups, the margin of sampling error is larger. Shifts in results between polls over time also have a larger sampling error. In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of public opinion may introduce other sources of error into the poll. Variation in the wording and order of questions, for example, may lead to somewhat different results. Michael R. Kagay of Princeton, N.J., assisted The Times in its polling analysis. Complete questions and results are available at nytimes.com/polls .

Polls and Public Opinion
Elections
Presidential Election of 2012


Obama Pledges Thorough Inquiry Into Afghan Attack

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama pledged on Tuesday that a thorough investigation would be conducted into the bloody rampage by an American soldier in Afghanistan . “The United States takes this as seriously as if this was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered,” Mr. Obama said, in his first public remarks since the shooting took place on Sunday. He said he was “heartbroken by the loss of innocent life,” calling it outrageous and unacceptable. “It’s not who we are as a country, and it does not represent our military,” he added. The president said the Pentagon would follow the facts “wherever they lead us,” though he offered no new details about the identity of the soldier or the circumstances of the attack. Mr. Obama said he met on Monday with the American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen , and with the ambassador, Ryan Crocker. Mr. Obama insisted that the furor stirred up by the rampage would not alter the policy or timetable of the United States as it winds down the war in Afghanistan. The administration, he said, was on track to withdraw 23,000 troops from the country by the end of the summer. That would remove the troops added for the “surge” in 2010, and lower the total number of American troops in Afghanistan to 68,000. “There’s no question that we face a difficult challenge in Afghanistan,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. “But I’m confident we can continue the work of meeting our objectives, protecting our country, and responsibly bringing this war to a close.” Later in the day, the president was scheduled to welcome Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain to the White House, for a visit that is likely to be dominated by questions about Afghanistan, where Britain is a crucial member of the coalition. Mr. Cameron, according to a senior British official, was expected to express wariness about allowing the rampage to change the coalition’s timetable in Afghanistan, which calls for NATO forces to turn over responsibility for security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014. Britain recently lost six soldiers after an explosion hit their armored vehicles in southwestern Afghanistan.

Afghanistan War
Civilian casualties
US Military
Barack Obama


House Bill Takes a Scythe to Spending

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Financial regulators would lose hundreds of millions of dollars needed to implement the new Wall Street regulatory law. The Internal Revenue Service’s budget would not be increased, with a prohibition on cash transfers to implement the health care law . President Obama’s energy-efficiency and renewable energy efforts would be gutted, along with international climate change programs. And regulations to force new efficiency standards in federal buildings would be blocked. Quietly, the House Appropriations Committee is working hard to undo much of the president’s first-term ambitions — or at least provoke a showdown with the White House ahead of the fall election. On Tuesday, the committee introduced a new agriculture spending bill that slashes the administration’s request for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by 41 percent as the agency gears up to begin regulation of the $300 trillion swaps market, assigned it by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulatory law. On Wednesday, the House moved toward final passage of an energy and water spending bill that would bring spending on energy efficiency and renewable energy to its lowest level since 2006, during the more oil-friendly Bush years. “I don’t think there’s any question the policy that we’re trying to promote is one of fiscal prudence, but also if we feel the sort of green initiatives the president has been about are not yielding the result that was intended and the mission is not one that we would support, certainly we would focus on trying to end that,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in an interview. “There are policy implications any time you go about affecting spending levels.” The House’s spending bills still must be reconciled with Senate measures that will be considerably more administration-friendly. But by setting an initial bargaining level so low, Republicans are signaling they are preparing for battle. And that fight would come in the heat of the 2012 campaign, when the next fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. “Obviously, we’re deeply concerned,” said Thomas R. Nides, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, who is looking at a 9 percent cut to the State Department’s overall financing. At the root of the shearing is the House’s decision to cut domestic spending over all by $19 billion below the levels set last summer in the deal to end the debt-ceiling imbroglio. Senate Democrats and Republicans have pledged to abide by those caps, and Mr. Obama has threatened to veto any bill that cuts spending to the lower House level. Beneath that larger battle, House Republicans are picking a host of smaller fights. The energy spending bill nearing completion in the House has policy measures to keep the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain on life support, even though the Obama administration has declared the project dead. On Tuesday, the House prepared to vote to shift $10 million from other programs to resume the licensing process. “We need to send a clear message to all agencies that this is not how the Constitution works,” said Representative John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, decrying administration efforts to kill the Yucca facility. And it jabs at the administration’s “green energy” efforts in a host of ways, curtailing eligibility for its program to “weatherize” homes, blocking implementation of new regulations to make federal buildings more energy-efficient, and cutting the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by $886 million below the president’s budget request and $428 million below this year’s level. Solar and building efficiency programs would be cut in half. The Dodd-Frank law would take a drubbing. Under the act, the sleepy futures commission is given vastly expanded responsibilities for overseeing previously unregulated financial instruments known as swaps. In March, the commission’s chairman, Gary Gensler, told the House agricultural appropriations subcommittee that at 710 employees, his agency has grown 10 percent since the 1990s, while the futures market has grown eightfold, to $37 trillion. The Dodd-Frank law dropped oversight of the $300 trillion swaps market in the commission’s lap. To address that, Mr. Obama asked for a $103 million increase to bring staffing to 1,015. On Tuesday, the committee handed him a $25 million cut . “The result of the House bill is to effectively put the interests of Wall Street ahead of those of the American public,” Mr. Gensler said Tuesday in a statement. Also on Tuesday, the committee introduced its financial services appropriations bill which also takes aim at White House achievements. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s requested $245 million increase was whittled down to $50 million, with the proviso that the extra money be spent on technology, not Dodd-Frank implementation. The I.R.S., which is responsible for collecting penalties from people who do not carry health insurance under the new health care law, would see its enforcement budget remain at $5.3 billion, eliminating the president’s requested $402 million increase. A provision stipulates that the Department of Health and Human Services could not transfer money to the I.R.S. to police the Affordable Care Act. The committee even cut the White House budget office’s budget by 10 percent, and ordered it to resume widely distributing paper copies of the president’s massive annual budget plan. To save costs, the White House had moved to a digital release. Mr. Nides said the State Department’s biggest concern is the impact of spending cuts on front-line programs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The administration had requested $750 million for a new Middle East-North Africa fund to respond to rapid changes wrought by the Arab Spring. A bipartisan group of senators had moved to raise the amount to $1 billion; the House eliminated it. “I think there is a blind eye to our nation’s future with this slash-and-burn approach to the federal government,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a senior Democrat on the appropriations committee.

United States Politics and Government
Republican Party
Democratic Party
House of Representatives
Federal Budget (US)
Presidential Election of 2012
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry


Payments by Oscar Pistorius Take Center Stage at Hearing

Abstract: LONDON — Oscar Pistorius , the South African track star convicted of killing his girlfriend, returned to court in the capital, Pretoria, on Wednesday for a third day of sentencing hearings that were overshadowed by disclosures about payments he made to the victim’s family. News of the transactions emerged Tuesday when a probation officer testifying for the defense, Annette Vergeer, disclosed that Mr. Pistorius had been making monthly payments to the family of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, after he shot her to death in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013. But the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, said Ms. Steenkamp’s parents, June and Barry, had rejected a lump-sum payment equivalent to $33,000 from the sale of an automobile as “blood money” and had promised to repay the monthly stipend. Dup de Bruyn, a lawyer acting on behalf of the Steenkamps, told reporters on Wednesday that the payments of roughly $550 per month for their “rent and expenses” began when the family found itself facing financial difficulties in March 2013, and that they continued until last month. Mr. Pistorius had requested that the payments remain confidential, the lawyer said. It had always been the Steenkamps’ intention to offset the monthly payments against a civil claim for damages, Mr. de Bruyn said, but the family decided to repay the money after choosing not to pursue a civil claim. At the same time, he said, the family’s lawyers approached Mr. Pistorius about a lump sum without the Steenkamps’ knowledge. The family was no longer in the same financial position, Mr. de Bruyn said, because he had “made some deals” for them. He did not elaborate. Barry Roux, Mr. Pistorius’s lead defense lawyer, said during the televised hearing in court on Wednesday that the money from the sale of the automobile had been placed in a trust in case the Steenkamps wanted the funds at a later date. Mr. Pistorius had paid the monthly amounts to the family unconditionally and did not seek repayment, Mr. Roux said. But the family “decided, for various reasons, that they did not want any payment from Mr. Pistorius,” he said, reading from a statement initially issued by the Steenkamp family. Ms. Vergeer returned to the witness stand on Wednesday, where she was the subject of close and sometimes aggressive questioning from Mr. Nel about her knowledge of South African prison conditions after she said Tuesday that incarceration would “break” Mr. Pistorius. She had recommended that Mr. Pistorius be sentenced to house arrest. After a trial that started in March, Mr. Pistorius was found guilty last month of culpable homicide — equivalent to manslaughter — but was acquitted of more serious murder charges. In his defense, he said he shot Ms. Steenkamp by mistake in the belief that an intruder had entered his Pretoria home. The prosecution accused Mr. Pistorius of deliberately killing Ms. Steenkamp after an argument. Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa has discretion over sentencing, which, for culpable homicide, can range from a fine to 15 years in prison. News reports said the judge might hand down a sentence on Friday. As the hearing unfolded on Wednesday, Mr. Nel said he would call three or four witnesses to support his argument that Mr. Pistorius should be sent to prison. But he asked for an early adjournment until Thursday morning after the first witness he called — Kim Martin, a cousin of the victim — testified tearfully about what she described as Ms. Steenkamp’s loving nature and her parents’ enduring financial difficulties. Offering a clear indication of her timetable for the sentencing hearings, Judge Masipa said she was committed to other business after this week.

Murders
Oscar Pistorius
Reeva Steenkamp
South Africa
Criminal Sentence


It Takes a Bit, but Texas Gets Its Payback Against Texas Tech

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — All week, there was plenty of banter about Texas seeking revenge against Texas Tech . It stemmed from the then-top-ranked Longhorns’ dramatic last-second loss in November to the then-seventh-ranked Red Raiders on a reception by wide receiver Michael Crabtree in what was possibly last season’s most thrilling game. The stunning defeat had dire consequences because it cost Texas a chance to play in the Bowl Championship Series title game and probably denied quarterback Colt McCoy a Heisman Trophy. But none of the vengeance talk disseminated from the Longhorns, now ranked No. 2. They, of course, insisted they were focused on Saturday against Texas Tech and not last season’s failure. As offensive lineman Charlie Tanner explained earlier in the week, “We are Texas,” this year’s motto that players and coaches wear on wristbands. And with top-ranked and defending national champion Florida underwhelming in its victory earlier in the day against Tennessee, the stage was set before a national television audience Saturday night for the Longhorns and McCoy to make their cases for No. 1 and the Heisman Trophy. Yet Texas disappointed early before coming alive in the second half and holding off pesky Texas Tech for a 34-24 victory in front of a crowd of 101,297 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in a sloppy start to Big 12 Conference play this season. McCoy, last year’s runner-up for the Heisman, threw for 205 yards and a touchdown, but he also had two interceptions that came on tipped passes. After the game, John Bianco, Texas’ assistant athletic director of media relations, said that McCoy missed practice Tuesday and was battling the flu. “We’re a work in progress,” Texas Coach Mack Brown said. “We’ve got a lot of things to do. I’m proud of the way they grew up. I’m proud of the way they worked all game.” But Texas’ defense made up for McCoy’s off-night and had the biggest play of the game in the fourth quarter. It came when defensive end Sergio Kindle flattened Texas Tech quarterback Taylor Potts on a blindside hit that forced a fumble. The Longhorns recovered it at the Red Raiders’ 14 with 11 minutes 49 seconds left. “I just speed rushed,” Kindle said of his hit on Potts, who finished 46-of-62 passing for 420 yards and 3 touchdowns. “The quarterback was there for the taking.” The violent collision knocked off Potts’s helmet as he fell. Afterward, he lay on the field grabbing at his face. Six plays later, McCoy threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Dan Buckner to extend his team’s lead to 31-17. Texas Tech (2-1, 0-1) added another touchdown later that was answered by a Texas field goal, but there would be no Crabtree-like heroics for the Red Raiders. “Give credit to the defense,” McCoy said. “Sometimes, not everything’s going to go our way.” Although Texas failed to make a statement Saturday, its win was instrumental in the Big 12 South race. Hyped in the preseason as the nation’s best division, it has been disappointing after early-season losses by the former top-10 teams Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Texas (3-0, 1-0) and Texas A&M (2-0) are now the division’s only undefeated teams. The Longhorns host Texas-El Paso and Colorado before playing Oklahoma on Oct. 17 in Dallas. In a game expected to be filled with offensive fireworks, the first half was an oddity. There were no offensive touchdowns, and the lone touchdown came on a 46-yard punt return by Texas’ Jordan Shipley. Before Shipley’s score, Texas Tech led by 3-0 after a 41-yard field goal on the game’s first possession. Texas added a 43-yard field goal early in the second quarter for a 10-3 halftime advantage. “We did not handle that in the first half,” McCoy said of Texas Tech’s defense. “But in the second half we came out and played pretty well.” Texas’ victory certainly lacked style points, and it seemed to show on the faces of the Longhorns after the game. But Texas actually had reason to celebrate. The Longhorns had survived against Texas Tech, which they failed to do last season. That is plenty of revenge for a team that lives to remain in the national title chase for another week. “It is survival,” Brown said. “It’s not playoffs. It’s not anything else. It is survival. We didn’t survive for one half last year and got disappointed.”

Football
College Athletics
University of Texas at Austin
Texas Tech University
McCoy Colt
Potts Taylor


Indonesia Official Acquitted in Killing

Abstract: An Indonesian court cleared a former deputy intelligence chief on Wednesday of any wrongdoing in connection with the killing of Indonesia ’s most celebrated human rights campaigner, a decision likely to bring renewed attention to the country’s dubious justice system and poor human rights record. Hundreds of Indonesians demonstrated against the decision to free the officer, former army Gen. Muchdi Purwoprandjono. The campaigner, Munir Said Thalib, was poisoned with arsenic while traveling to the Netherlands on a commercial flight aboard the state carrier Garuda in 2004. In 2008, an off-duty Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who jockeyed to sit next to Mr. Munir on the flight, was sentenced to 20 years. Analysts, however, have long suspected that Indonesia’s intelligence agency ordered the killing. Phone records showed that Mr. Pollycarpus had phoned General Muchdi dozens of times before the murder. The case has been seen as a test of Indonesian reforms since the fall of the authoritarian ruler Suharto in 1998. Domestically, the case has also served as a challenge for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general who swept into office during Indonesia’s first direct elections on promises to clean up a corrupt government and military. He is up for re-election in 2009.


Maine’s ‘Clean’ Medical Marijuana: ‘Organic’ in Disguise

Abstract: FARMINGTON, Me. — In a suite one flight above the bustling main street of Farmington, a university town in the foothills of western Maine, LoveGrown Caregiver Services is a marijuana lover’s delight. Large glass jars contain potent buds called Blue Cheese and Headband, with high-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content. Another jar holds an aromatic strain of Critical Mass that is rich in cannabidiol, which has therapeutic effects but has relatively little THC and will not make users feel stoned. The business owner, Erica Haywood, grew it all. Maine is one of 25 states, plus the District of Columbia, that permit the use of marijuana for medical purposes. It is a competitive market with thousands of growers, known as caregivers under state law. But Ms. Haywood now claims a distinction that sets her apart. She is among the first five farmers whose weed is labeled Certified Clean Cannabis by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association . Branded MC3, the marijuana is grown following organic standards, but it cannot be labeled “organic” under federal guidelines. Ms. Haywood hopes the certification will help her stay nimble in a fast-changing industry. “From a business standpoint, I felt like putting a label on my product from a certifying agency would set me apart and above the rest of the caregivers who are moving in and becoming competition,” she said. Some medical marijuana users may not care if the product they buy is certified as clean; their primary concern is whether it meets their needs. But growers like Ms. Haywood see the distinction as an opportunity in an intensely competitive market. Image D.J. Taylor, a master cannabis gardener, trims harvested marijuana buds. Credit Tristan Spinski for The New York Times Maine’s caregiver program is growing quickly, up nearly 150 percent to 2,921 growers in 2015, from 1,197 in 2013. It is also competing with a parallel network of eight marijuana dispensaries in the state. If Maine voters approve a citizens’ initiative in November, marijuana will be legalized, and competition will probably increase exponentially. Prices are flat already. Ms. Haywood typically sells her marijuana for $10 a gram (0.035 ounce), but other growers are charging less and offering discounts for buying by the ounce. Margins are tight, but the business provides growers with a steady, if small, income, Ms. Haywood said, adding that she earns less than $30,000 a year after costs. “I feel like anybody who uses anything that is not organic, whether it’s food or smoke, or whatever, they are making a mistake,” said Dawson Julia, 45, another grower. “I feel like it’s a bad health choice.” (The fit-looking Mr. Julia offered this health tip: “I work 14 hours a day, and I smoke a lot of cannabis, so that’s my secret. No gyms allowed.”) Getting the certification, however, was an arduous process in Maine. Mr. Julia, who owns East Coast CBDs, which is housed in a warehouse in the small town of Unity , Me., is a longtime marijuana user. He said the state’s medical marijuana program, approved by citizens’ initiative in 2009, allowed him to turn his passion into a livelihood. “When it passed on the ballot, it was like a dream come true,” he said. Mr. Julia sowed the seeds for the clean certification program in 2013. He was one of the first growers to approach the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association about it. The industry association has 11,000 members and a staff of 30, and it has been certifying Maine farms as organic since 1972. “I called thinking I was just going to sign up for the program, you know, ‘I want to grow organic marijuana, where do I get the paperwork?’” That is when he learned that the word “organic” is defined by the Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program, which sets the standards for certification. Marijuana, still illegal under federal law, is not a crop the program recognizes (tobacco, however, is). Image Harvested and dried marijuana buds await trimming. Credit Tristan Spinski for The New York Times Mr. Julia was undeterred. If the Maine association had no program for marijuana, he thought it could start one. If growers could not use the organic label, they would use another. He found an ally in the board member John Krueger, a gardener who grows much of his own food and once ran the Maine Health and Environment Testing Laboratory. Mr. Krueger said he saw parallels between this new generation of marijuana growers and his peers in Maine’s 1970s back-to-the-land movement. They convened a committee, which included Ms. Haywood. After dozens of meetings over two and half years, the certification plan was started in August as a one-year trial. The plan follows the United States Department of Agriculture standards. Plants must be grown in soil (hydroponics do not qualify) and fertilized with natural nutrients, and pesticides are tightly restricted. But Mr. Julia does not expect to increase his prices as a result. “Just because I got a certificate that says this is official, clean cannabis, I’m absolutely not going to charge any more,” he said. “If anything, it’s an incentive to help inspire other people to follow our lead.” Maine is following the lead of Western states, where the industry is more mature. Clean Green Certified has been certifying marijuana in five Western states since 2004, including 20,000 pounds in 2015. And Colorado’s Organic Cannabis Association has developed a pesticide-free certificate. Amy Andrle, of L’Eagle Services , which grows and sells marijuana in Denver, serves on the association’s board. She said as pot consumers are becoming more sophisticated, “there’s nothing like the value of a third-party certifier” to give growers a marketing edge. Certification is just one tricky aspect of an industry that Ms. Haywood said was fraught with complexity. Image Dawson Julia, right, and Bernard Dozier chat at the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Me. Credit Tristan Spinski for The New York Times For one thing, she cannot open a business bank account. Banks are closely scrutinized over illegal drug-trafficking , which has posed a vexing problem for legal businesses. Visa and MasterCard will not process transactions for marijuana dispensaries, and most banks will not open accounts for the businesses. Proposed state regulations pose another hurdle. Ms. Haywood has visited the State House in Augusta dozens of times in the last few years and submitted many pages of testimony to fight increased regulation, which she calls “legislative overreach.” Mr. Julia and his wife are both classified as caregivers, so their operation can be twice as large as Ms. Haywood’s. Each caregiver can serve as many as five patients and grow up to six flowering plants for each. Mr. Julia’s warehouse holds 60 flowering plants. Many others are immature, spread out in a rabbit warren of rooms painted white, with bright lights and ventilation ducts hanging from the ceiling. But there is little opportunity to grow further largely because of staffing issues and state limitations. “My business is maxed out,” he said. “We turn away new patients now, because we can’t grow enough to keep up with everybody.” One restriction is a state regulation that allows each caregiver to hire just one employee, so Mr. Julia and his wife may hire only two others. “It’s frustrating,” Mr. Julia said. “Because I’ve got employees that are working 60 to 65 hours a week, and I’ve got to pay overtime, and they are getting burnt out. Meanwhile, we’ve got customers that are expecting products and service.” Security is another challenge. Even though his operation is in the heart of a small town, he has been robbed twice. But he said he also feels the squeeze from law enforcement. When state regulators came to inspect his business recently, Mr. Julia said, they brought a small convoy from the county sheriff’s office, though he was not cited for any infraction. Ms. Haywood says she often feels in limbo. “I feel the heavy hand of government, and kind of an eye in the sky always watching me,” she said. “And I feel, frankly, like I’m a criminal, yet a business owner at the same time. It’s a dichotomy that I deal with every day.”

Marijuana,Pot,Weed
Medical Marijuana
Agriculture
Regulation and Deregulation
Organic Food
Maine


At the Convention: A Rock ’n’ Roller Draws Boos, and Talking Up New York and Michigan

Abstract: CLEVELAND — New York Times correspondents are chronicling the colorful, the unusual and the quirky at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Whole Lotta (Fist) Shakin’ Goin’ On Historically, rock ’n’ roll has been about challenging authority. The ’90s band Third Eye Blind decided to renew that tradition in a big way early Wednesday morning at a convention-related party held, fittingly enough, at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum here. Appearing at a charity event to benefit Musicians on Call, the band’s frontman Stephan Jenkins chose the end of the group’s set to urge the Republican Party to become more accepting of gay Americans — “like my cousins” — and to “not live your life in fear and imposing that fear on other people.” The group then played its 1998 hit “Jumper,” which is about an alienated young man who commits suicide. Needless to say, many of those in the previously festive crowd, nearly all Republicans in town for the convention, were not pleased at being lectured on what they expected to be friendly turf. Some disagreed with Mr. Jenkins’s point and others were angry at the interjection of divisive politics into the fun. Still others noted that they were already supportive of gay rights, had relatives who were gay and weren’t interested in being scolded by a self-righteous rock ’n’ roller. Angry boos began to ring out along with shouts of “Trump, Trump, Trump.” Some upset guests screamed obscenities and urged those around them to walk out en masse. Mr. Jenkins then taunted the crowd from the stage, which only riled it up even more. There was no encore. The event, produced and sponsored by the Recording Industry Association of America, was not officially connected with the convention but is one of many invitation-only parties that are held to entertain and build relationships. The recording industry group stages concerts at both conventions to benefit Musicians on Call, which provides live and recorded music to health care facilities. Rock groups are sometimes queasy about playing at Republican conventions, worried that such appearances can clash with their image and personal ideology. But the events can provide a nice paycheck and exposure, and bands sometimes quietly go along even if they don’t share the Republican viewpoint. Mr. Jenkins wrote a piece for The Huffington Post in 2012 saying that Third Eye Blind had chosen not to play a private party at the 2012 Republican National Convention because doing so would be “a tacit endorsement of the Republican presidential candidate and the party platform.” He obviously decided on a different approach to make his point this year. Video The Times’s national political correspondent Jonathan Martin examines how protests have shaped the history of national political conventions ever since Chicago in 1968. Credit Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times Musicians on Call issued a statement on Wednesday, but did not address the episode directly, saying that “last night’s event helped raise money to support our programs across the country,” and that “our supporters are as diverse as the music they play for patients in hospitals.” On Wednesday afternoon, the members of Third Eye Blind posted a statement on social media with the subject line, “About last night.” They didn’t apologize or back down, and said the band repudiates “every last stitch of the RNC platform and the grotesque that is their nominee” “We have Republican friends, family members, and fans, and we love them all,” the statement said. “What we reject is what their party has come to stand for.” New York, Finally Up Front The New York delegation, long accustomed to being the ugly, more moderate stepsister at Republican conventions — hidden in the back so no one can see — is the Cinderella of the Trump festivities. “In 2012 we were staying way outside of Tampa, and our spot on the floor was way in the back,” gushed Representative Lee Zeldin, who represents eastern Long Island. “This time the hotel is right near the arena, and we are front and center on the floor!” The Trump campaign’s approach to floor seating pretty much mirrors the campaign — unorthodox, confusing and seemingly intended to offend those being wooed. Ohio denizens were relegated to a decidedly B spot, in spite of their role as host state, and New York people (did they mention they are staying at the Renaissance?) have prime real estate along with the blue state of California. “It’s fantastic for us,” said Nicholas Langworthy, the party’s chairman in Erie County, which includes Buffalo. “And it’s great for the New York party.” The state delegation was given the honor of putting its native son, Donald J. Trump, officially over the top in the nomination vote on Tuesday afternoon. “It was almost surreal,” said Representative Chris Collins, from upstate New York. No doubt. Gandering at Michiganders Random dialogue from Michigan lobbyists overheard in a convention center hallway: Lobbying man No. 1, describing a client meeting that involved celebrities discussing their summer homes in and near the Great Lakes state. “It was great. Wendie Malick was there. Also that ‘Law and Order’ guy, the one with the glasses. And they whip out their phones and are comparing sunsets near their homes in Canada! It was awesome!” Lobbying man No. 2: “You know who has a cottage in Leland? That guy from ‘This Old House!’ ”

2016 Presidential Election
Republican National Convention,RNC
Third Eye Blind
Donald Trump
Stephan Jenkins
Gay and Lesbian LGBT


Villanova Defeats Seton Hall

Abstract: Darrun Hilliard scored 19 points and No. 8 Villanova hit a dozen 3-pointers in an 83-67 victory over undermanned Seton Hall in Newark. Villanova (14-1, 3-0 Big East) beat Seton Hall (10-6, 1-2) for the 11th time in 12 games. The Pirates played without swingman Fuquan Edwin, their second-leading scorer, and Eugene Teague, their top rebounder. Both are injured. ■ Shabazz Napier scored 13 of his 18 points in the second half as Connecticut beat visiting Harvard, 61-56. The Huskies (12-3) overcame a 5-point halftime deficit. Siyani Chambers hit five 3-point baskets on his way to 21 points to lead Harvard (13-2). Harvard was without the star player Wesley Saunders, who had pain in his left knee and was held out as a precaution.


The Economy Through Campaign Glasses

Abstract: ACCORDING to numerous economic indicators, the American economy is getting better. According to the same indicators, the economy is not doing very well. The accompanying charts illustrate that dual reality, and do so in ways that either the Barack Obama or Mitt Romney campaigns might choose to use if they were producing charts. The short-term charts — the ones the Obama campaign might endorse — show the changes in four indicators since July 2010. They are consumer confidence in the current economic situation, new-car sales, new-home sales and unemployment. All have gotten substantially better during the period shown. The other charts — think of them as the Romney ones — are based on the same data. But they show changes since December 2000. Those dates were not, of course, chosen at random. The earlier date came at the end of a great economic boom, when the economy was running at full speed and arguably a little more. In those days, there were newspaper articles on how hard it was for companies to find workers. The unemployment rate was 3.9 percent. The July 2010 date came a few months after the American economy hit bottom. The unemployment rate then was 9.5 percent, down from the peak of 10 percent but still very high. Since then, the rate has declined to 8.1 percent. That decline of 1.4 percentage points looks pretty impressive on the short-term chart, while the same decline is far less impressive in the context of the longer term. Perhaps the sharpest difference in the charts comes in new-home sales. They have rallied strongly in recent months, and the short-term chart makes that rally look quite strong. But those gains have pushed the annual rate of sales — based on the most recent three months of data — up to only 369,000 new homes. That is little more than a quarter of the rate in the heady days of 2005. Car sales were strong and showed relatively little volatility during the years before the credit crisis and recession sent them plunging. The recovery since then has produced a rate of over 14 million sales per year, more than two million below the pace that once seemed normal. The consumer confidence figures shown are for the current condition, as measured by the Conference Board. The index is based on answers to two questions: Are business conditions currently good, bad or normal? Are jobs plentiful, not so plentiful or hard to get? Americans are a lot more confident than they were at the bottom. In the preliminary September results, released this week, 15.5 percent of respondents said they thought business conditions were good, while 33.3 percent thought they were bad. In July 2010, the figures were 8.8 percent and 43.3 percent. Those are significantly improved numbers. But back in December 2000, 40.8 percent thought conditions were good, while just 9.5 percent deemed them to be bad. Similarly, back in 2000, only 12.4 percent thought jobs were hard to get. By July 2010, that figure had leapt to 45.1 percent. Now it is down to 39.9 percent, a long way from boom times even if it is an improvement. In the days of vaudeville, a staple joke had one comedian asking another, “How’s your wife?” “Compared to what?” was the reply. So it is with the economy. It is very good, compared to a couple of years ago. It is quite poor, compared to the good old days.

Consumer Confidence (Economic Indicator)


With Teamwork, Humans Best Other Primates

Abstract: Unlike other animals, humans have a “cumulative culture” enables us to build bigger, better and more powerful tools by sharing knowledge and learning from one another. So researchers are reporting after a study that compared preschool-age children with chimps and capuchin monkeys when solving a puzzle. The children cooperated; the animals did not. For the study , which appears in the current issue of Science, the researchers presented children, chimps and monkeys with a puzzle box that had to be solved in stages. Each stage provided a better reward (stickers for the children, fruit for the primates). “Human children would teach other and motivate each other,” said an author of the study, Kevin Laland , a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “We saw literally hundreds of cases where children would give other children stickers they’d received.” Among the chimps and capuchins, by contrast, “we didn’t see one instance of sharing,” he said. The scientists also wondered whether adult chimps and monkeys would help their young learn. “But in fact, we found exactly the opposite, that parents were stealing their offspring’s food,” Dr. Laland said. The study highlights one of the most important aspects of modern human society: the power of teaching. “Perhaps the most effective means through which you can cooperate is through teaching,” Dr. Laland said. In this way, a basic skill or piece of knowledge spreads through society, “and then one individual will refine it, and then that will be spread through the society, and then that process will be repeated.” That may help explain why “we have particle accelerators and sophisticated medicine,” he continued. “When you think about all the component parts that go into it, the technology that we have now is way beyond anything any one individual could invent.”

Monkeys and Apes
Children and Childhood
Science (Journal)


North Carolina Lawmakers Met With Protests Over Bias Law

Abstract: RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina General Assembly, already buffeted by weeks of bitter debate over a law about gay and transgender rights, faced competing demonstrations and new pressure as lawmakers opened their annual session here on Monday. The immediate fate of the law, which limits bathroom access for transgender people in public buildings and broadly forbids discrimination claims in state courts, was not in question, after Republican leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers said they anticipated leaving the measure intact. Yet supporters and critics alike used the General Assembly’s return as a rallying point about a law that set off an economic backlash and shoved the state into a rollicking national debate. “We are using the tools available to us in democracy — petitions, lobbying, public protests, civil disobedience — to say this law is wrong at its core, and it must be immediately repealed,” said the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, the executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality. During public gatherings across the state government complex, supporters of the law, which many people refer to as House Bill 2, outnumbered critics. At one rally, after church buses ferried supporters from places like Thomasville and Rural Hall, thousands of people, many of them in lawn chairs, heard speaker after speaker praise the measure. “I suggest, to the chagrin of many that believe otherwise: to resist any appeal of H.B. 2 is to show love,” the Rev. Mark H. Creech, the executive director of the Christian Action League, said at the rally, which had the feel of a revival meeting. “It is a tough love. Nonetheless, the struggle to support the measure is a proper application of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind.” The battle about the law, approved during a one-day special session last month, is poised to ripple throughout the so-called short session, which often deals with the budget. Democrats have moved to repeal the law. With the repeal proposal widely expected to fail, critics of the law argued Monday that the existing statute is more far-reaching than its supporters like to acknowledge, in part because it blocks local governments from enforcing policies like anti-discrimination and minimum-wage ordinances. “They want you to call this a bathroom bill,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II, the president of the North Carolina N.A.A.C.P. and a leader of Monday’s protests against the law. “It’s not a bathroom bill, but there’s a lot of stuff in here that ought to be thrown in the outhouse,” Image Zachary Anders of Asheville, N.C., protested against the law, also known as House Bill 2, outside the state capitol in Raleigh on Monday. Credit Dillon Deaton for The New York Times Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who is seeking re-election this year, urged legislators to change the part of the law limiting where discrimination claims can be filed. It is unclear whether lawmakers will heed Mr. McCrory’s recommendation. Republican leaders have framed the law’s preservation as a matter of public safety. Critics, the governor and his supporters contend, are political opportunists who have misconstrued the law. “Our values are not shaped by the N.B.A. or Bruce Springsteen or some opinion poll,” state Representative Phil Shepard, a Republican and a Baptist minister, said, referring to some of the bill’s critics. “We’re standing strong.” Another Republican legislator, state Representative Dan Bishop, described the outcry as “a dishonest, media-fueled carpet-bombing.” But legislators were still left to reckon with a law that led companies including PayPal and Deutsche Bank to abandon or pause plans to add jobs in North Carolina, and prompted the Obama administration to weigh whether the state will remain eligible for billions of dollars in federal aid. Many of the law’s opponents fear that North Carolina’s reputation has already been tarnished, perhaps irrevocably. On Friday, in a development that did not go unnoticed here, the law was even a subject during President Obama’s news conference with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain. “I can’t get over the fact that the president and the prime minister were talking about us in an international news conference where they were talking about the fate of the European Union and some other major issues,” said state Representative Darren G. Jackson, a Democrat and an architect of the repeal effort. “That’s not what I want to project for the state of North Carolina.” And so critics renewed their vows for a long campaign of resistance to the law, already the subject of a legal challenge, in a broadening of the Moral Monday movement that has shadowed the Republican-dominated Legislature in recent years. “The religious right has always been there, but it just seems we’re living in a context now, in the national political discussion, where hateful bigotry is allowed to stand loud and proud in public,” Barbara Zelter said while she considered whether she would stay long enough to be arrested at a sit-in later Monday, when 54 protesters were arrested after chanting inside the General Assembly’s building. Ms. Zelter, 66, conceded that her display of outrage was unlikely to produce quick results. “How social movements change things,” she said, “is by changing the wind, changing the culture.”

North Carolina
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Transgender,Gender Dysphoria
Discrimination
Bathrooms
Pat McCrory
Legislation


813 Quakes in 11 Days at Yellowstone. (Not to Worry.)

Abstract: DENVER — Yellowstone National Park is a restless place, even in the calmest of times. Tiny earthquakes — and sometimes not so tiny — are part of life in one of the world’s most seismically active and mysterious regions. But scientists said Monday that one of the biggest earthquake swarms ever recorded in the park took place in the last week of 2008 into early 2009, with 813 quakes in 11 days, most of them deep under Yellowstone Lake and felt by almost no one. Only one other swarm, in 1985, was more intense. Records go back to 1973. A sign of looming geological upheaval? Probably not, said Jacob B. Lowenstern, the scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a partnership between the park, the United States Geological Survey and the University of Utah. Dr. Lowenstern said that the observatory received hundreds of calls and e-mail messages during and after the swarm, many filled with heated, end-of-days rhetoric, and some even citing the ancient Mayans as an authority. (The Great Cycle of the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, which has been taken by believers in celestial-based prophecy as a bleak indicator.) “No explosions,” Dr. Lowenstern said. If Yellowstone — in the northwest corner of Wyoming — were really moving into a new, more volatile phase, he said, some dramatic blowoff of steam or flow of lava would probably have accompanied the swarm, indicating a buildup of pressure. But the wave of quakes subsided suddenly on Jan. 5, ending as enigmatically as it began, leading the observatory to keep its volcano monitor level for the park at normal or green — the lowest level of concern. Much of Yellowstone sits atop a giant volcano that last erupted about 70,000 years ago — a moment that capped perhaps 100,000 years of intense geologic violence, followed by the relative calm of the modern age. Dr. Lowenstern did grant that having the swarm take place under Yellowstone’s largest lake — more than 300 feet deep — added to the sense of mystery. “If there was a swarm under land, you could easily look for changes in hydrothermal activity — if magma was coming out, you would see it,” he said. “We don’t know if there are changes beneath the lake.” And so, normal is back — normal for Yellowstone, anyway, where 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes are cataloged in an average year. “If we had another swarm in six months, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me,” Dr. Lowenstern said.


Pint-Size Eco-Police, Making Parents Proud and Sometimes Crazy

Abstract: Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, 10-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Eliza. The Acura MDX she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again? Tsk, tsk. “I have very, very environmentally conscious children — more so than me, I’m embarrassed to say,” said Ms. Ross, a social worker in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. “They’re on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs.” Ms. Ross’s children are part of what experts say is a growing army of “eco-kids” — steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture — who try to hold their parents accountable at home. Amid their pride in their children’s zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive. They pore over garbage bins in search of errant recyclables. They lobby for solar panels. And, in a generational about-face, they turn off the lights after their parents leave empty rooms. “Kids have really turned into the little conscience sitting in the back seat,” said Julia Bovey, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council , a leading environmental group that recently worked with Nickelodeon on a series of public service announcements and other programming called “Big Green Help.” “One of the fascinating things about children is that they don’t separate what you are doing from what you should be doing,” Ms. Bovey said. “Here’s this information about how we can help the environment, and kids are not able to rationalize it away the way that adults do.” In Clinton Hill, Brooklyn , Jan Schmidt, a stay-at-home mother, and Mark Goetz, a professor of furniture design, have watched, amazed, as their 4-year-old son chastises them for letting the water run while they brush their teeth. “He’ll come over and turn it off and say, ‘Every day is Earth Day ,’ ” Ms. Schmidt said. “He learned it at school.” Their older child, 12-year-old Elly, extols the clothesline in her bedroom the way other girls her age might show off a new beanbag chair. An aspiring marine biologist, Elly raised $250 last year to protect coral reefs by selling handmade earrings at school. And she was a big factor in the family’s decision to hang on to their current car instead of buying a bigger one. “With Elly, there’s sort of an unspoken thing about not buying an S.U.V.,” Ms. Schmidt said. Elly elaborated: “I wouldn’t be happy if they bought an S.U.V. because they’re not fuel efficient, and they pollute more than other cars.” They learn this stuff everywhere. In the summer, the Pixar film “Wall-E” served up an ecological parable of a planet so punished that it had to be abandoned. The Girl Scouts recently added patches including “Environmental Health, ” “ Get With the Land,” “ Earth Pact” and “Water Drop.” Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, has teamed up with the American Museum of Natural History to create Web sites and magazines about climate change and other environmental issues. A Scholastic message board where children share eco-friendly tips, called Save the Planet, has had three million page views in the past year. And school districts across the country are adding lessons on the environment to their curriculums in many subject areas, as well as enforcing idle-free zones in school driveways, switching to plant-based cleaners, doing away with pesticides and, in some places, installing solar panels. In the Byram Hills School District in Armonk, N.Y., middle-school teachers plan to roll out new material related to the environment starting in January. “We’re trying to integrate it into anything where it naturally fits,” said Jackie Taylor, the district’s superintendent. “It might be in a math lesson. How much water are you really using? How can you tell? Teachers look for avenues in almost everything they teach.” Katie Ginsberg, co-founder and executive director of the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit group in Chappaqua, N.Y., has trained hundreds of teachers from Massachusetts to New Jersey in issues of sustainability and environmental science. More than 1,500 students attended the group’s annual expo, Students for a Sustainable Future, at Pace University this spring. “In 2002, the environmental education children were getting was very isolated,” Ms. Ginsberg said. “It was emphasized mainly on Earth Day and an occasional field trip to a nature center. We started looking for different paradigms of environmental education around the world.” But the green initiatives in schools have not been universally embraced. Some critics say such lessons are a distraction as districts struggle to meet minimum standards on math and reading tests. Others say turning children into stewards of the environment is an inappropriate use of taxpayer money. And even parents who are impressed by their children’s commitment to remake the world can also sometimes feel, well, badgered. Paul Wyckoff, a writer in Hunterdon County, N.J., said his 15-year-old son, Will, yells at him for “leaving the car idling for a few seconds in the driveway.” He has even taken to turning off nightlights to save energy. “My philosophy is get the big stuff,” Mr. Wyckoff said. “I think he takes it too far. But I’m proud of him. I think he’ll moderate with age.” Given that children often lack a sense of social boundaries, things can get sticky when their haranguing extends beyond the home. Liz DiVittorio, of Raleigh , N.C., a mother of three, recalled walking with her 10-year-old son, Michael, this summer after a rainstorm and seeing a neighbor running his sprinkler. “My son looked at him and said, ‘Why are you watering your lawn? It just rained,’ ” said Ms. DiVittorio, who works for a software company. “I sat there and cringed.” For middle schoolers, money is fairly abstract — and therefore no object. Sarah Hodder and Dr. Peter Allen of Chappaqua have three boys, the oldest of whom, Charles, 10, is itching to go solar. “Any time we pass a house with solar panels, he says, ‘Why can’t we do that?’ ” said Ms. Hodder, co-chairwoman of the Roaring Brook Elementary School Environmental Committee. “I always say, ‘Talk to Daddy.’ A lot of these steps are cost-prohibitive, although ultimately in the long run they’re good for the environment and the wallet.” Ms. Hodder said that in the short term, she and her husband are making more modest changes, with the children’s support, like turning down the heat, composting, walking to school and “not buying so much stuff.” But as enthusiastic as Ms. Hodder is about protecting the environment, the children seize on her lapses, as when Peapod delivers the groceries in plastic bags. “They’ll say, ‘Mom, I thought we weren’t supposed to use plastic bags,’ ” she said. Douglas and Alison Distefano, of Rumson, N.J., who have two children, dubbed their fifth grader, Olivia, “the recycling militant general.” “For us, Earth Day is a reason to go outside,” said Mr. Distefano, an executive with Soltage, a solar energy company. “But for them it’s a religious holiday.” Ann Tedesco, a psychologist in Armonk, said her daughter Celeste, 9, “is always policing the regular garbage bins to make sure we’re not throwing paper away in there,” adding: “She particularly enjoys catching her older sister.” Dr. Tedesco’s husband, Rick Alimonti, a lawyer, recalled how their son, Lucas, 7, kept reminding him to turn off the engine while waiting outside school. “I was only idling for a minute, and I explained that it uses more gas and pollutes the atmosphere more to turn the engine off and back on again,” he said. “I looked it up afterward to make sure I wasn’t exaggerating.” He was in the clear: Several blogs asserted that idling for a minute or less is preferable to shutting off and restarting the engine.

Sustainable living
Family
Environment
Recycling


Economic Reports for May Show an Entrenched Slowdown

Abstract: The nation’s private companies hired far fewer workers than expected in May and output in the manufacturing sector slowed to its lowest level since 2009, according to new reports, raising concerns that the recovery was running out of steam. Economists cut their forecasts for Friday’s closely watched United States payrolls report after private-sector job growth tumbled to just 38,000, its lowest level in eight months. Losses in stocks and the value of the dollar accelerated after the Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists’ expectations for 57.7. New orders, a barometer of demand ahead, fell to 51.0 from 61.7 in April, the lowest since June 2009. “One has to wonder whether the U.S. recovery is starting to stumble,” said Greg Salvaggio, vice president for trading at Tempus Consulting in Washington. “It draws a big bull’s-eye on Friday’s payrolls report.” The ADP Employment Services report on private sector hiring and the Institute for Supply Management’s data were the latest signals that economic growth remained sluggish in the second quarter after hitting a soft patch in the first months of the year. Data last month showed the economy grew at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter, softer than analysts had anticipated. “This only adds fuel to the argument that the slowdown story is here in the U.S.,” said Tom Porcelli, chief United States economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York. “This is exactly what we do not want when other significant data shows things are slowing down as well.” The ADP report showed private employers added 38,000 jobs last month, falling from a downwardly revised 177,000 in April and well short of expectations for 175,000. It was the lowest level since September 2010. Credit Suisse lowered its estimate for Friday’s employment number to 120,000 from its previous forecast of 185,000 and its private payroll estimate to 135,000 from 200,000. ADP’s number has been weaker than the government’s private payrolls figure for 12 of the last 14 months, making Friday’s government numbers likely to come in above ADP’s report, Credit Suisse said. The Labor Department report is expected to show a rise in overall nonfarm payrolls of 180,000 in May, slowing down from a gain of 244,000 the month before, according a Reuters poll. Private payrolls are expected to come in at 205,000. The ADP report is jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers, whose chairman said he expected Friday’s figure to disappoint. Stocks extended losses after the I.S.M. survey with the Dow Jones industrial average down nearly 1 percent. The dollar hit a new low against the Swiss franc. The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury debt slipped to its lowest level since early December. A separate report showed the number of planned layoffs at American firms rose modestly in May with the government and nonprofit sectors making up a large portion of the cuts. Employers announced 37,135 planned job cuts last month, up 1.8 percent from 36,490 in April, according to a report from the consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The housing market, meanwhile, continued to struggle as a report from an industry group showed applications for home mortgages fell last week, pulled lower by a decline in refinancing demand. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, fell 4 percent in the week ended May 27.

United States Economy
Factories and Manufacturing


Abstract: Many parents are content to lay their newborns down to sleep and go watch a little television. Others, however, may enjoy watching a “Truman Show”-esque video feed of their sleeping angel using night-vision and high-resolution wireless transmission technologies. The Graco Imonitor Digital Color Video Baby Monitor makes that possible. It includes a miniature camera base as well as a receiver with a cellphone-size 1.9-inch color screen. Parents can plant the base on a dresser or attach it to a wall. The system transmits throughout the house to a range of 600 feet for video and a little farther for audio only. An infrared mode allows parents to watch even if the baby is in complete darkness. Lights around the edge of the receiver react to loud noise, letting parents turn down the audio and still notice when the baby is squalling. The monitor costs $200 and is available from Babies “R” Us and other retailers. Unfortunately, there is no two-way operation, so parents cannot transmit mission-critical information to their diaper-clad sleep commandos. JOHN BIGGS

Wireless Communications
Graco Incorporated


Jerome Kurtz, Leader of I.R.S. During Carter Era, Dies at 83

Abstract: Jerome Kurtz, who as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service during the Carter administration was known for cracking down on tax shelters and other tax advantages for the wealthy, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 83. The cause was complications of surgery, his family said. Considered one of the leading tax policy experts of his time, Mr. Kurtz advocated what he called “horizontal equity” in taxation, meaning that people should be taxed equally based on what they earn, regardless of the source of the money. “Income is income, whether it comes from capital gains or a salary,” he was quoted as saying in a 1977 article in The New York Times on his taking office as I.R.S. commissioner. “People should be assessed according to their ability to pay.” Mr. Kurtz drew criticism from some quarters for a series of major policy proposals. Wealthy taxpayers were angered by his efforts to eliminate tax shelters, like investments in master phonograph recordings and coal. Businessmen were angered by his scrutiny of deductions for travel and business lunches. He also moved to enforce regulations that had eliminated the tax-exempt status of racially segregated private schools — a stand that brought him death threats requiring Secret Service protection, according to his daughter Madeleine. The Reagan administration later overturned the regulations. Mr. Kurtz was quoted in The Times as calling the new policy “outrageous and clearly contrary to the law, a reversal of years and years of precedent.” Several of Mr. Kurtz’s principles of tax equity were reflected in later policy initiatives, culminating with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, said William Rosoff, a longtime friend and associate. “From the standpoint of overall philosophy, it has gotten undermined in the last number of years, but it is always a back and forth depending on the administration,” he said. Born in Philadelphia on May 19, 1931, Jerome Kurtz was the second of two sons. His father died when he was a year old, and he was raised by his grandmother and his mother, who worked as a bookkeeper. Mr. Kurtz graduated from Temple University in 1952 and from Harvard Law School in 1955. In 1956, he married Elaine Etta Kahn, an artist, and started a two-year stint in the Army. Mr. Kurtz had joined the law firm Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen in 1955 and returned to the firm after serving in the Army. In 1966, he was recruited to the Treasury Department to work as a tax legislative counsel by the tax law scholar Stanley Surrey, who had taught Mr. Kurtz at Harvard and had a major influence on his philosophy toward tax policy, Mr. Rosoff said. Mr. Kurtz returned to Wolf, Block in 1968. He was also a lecturer on taxation at Villanova Law School and the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. After leaving the I.R.S. in 1980, Mr. Kurtz went on to work as a partner in the Washington office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He was later a professor at New York University Law School, where he led its graduate tax program, and continued to do consulting work after he retired. Mr. Kurtz’s survivors include his daughters, Madeleine Kurtz and Nettie Kurtz Greenstein, and four grandchildren. His wife died in 2003. Madeleine Kurtz said her father’s philosophies on tax policy stemmed from an innate sense of fairness. “He would say doing what is fair is what is right,” she said.

Obituary
IRS
Jimmy Carter
Philadelphia
Jerome Kurtz


Indian Girl’s Rape Called Case of Eye-for-Eye Village Justice

Abstract: SWANG GULGULIA DHOURA, India — For many years, under a tall, spreading neem tree in the middle of this settlement, the village headman has adjudicated disputes between his neighbors, doling out tongue-lashings and occasional penalties. This, the local police believe, is what happened here a week ago. It began with an ordinary case of bad behavior: A young man crept into a hut after dark and groped Suguna Devi, a married woman and the daughter of the village’s headman, before her shouts woke the village and he fled. The next day, villagers waited to see what punishment the headman would impose on the assailant — until midafternoon, when they said they saw Ms. Devi’s husband drag the young man’s 13-year-old sister from her father’s hut and into the woods, where he raped her. The worst thing, said the girl’s father, was that no one did anything to stop it. “My wife wept, but nobody listened,” said the father, Munna Pasi, 62. “My daughter said, ‘Save me, save me,’ but nobody listened. All these people became blind when he was dragging my daughter away.” It is the latest in a series of shocking assaults that have drawn attention to remote villages in India, where police precincts are far-flung and traditional forms of justice still dominate. After a surge of news coverage of the episode, police inspectors converged on the destitute settlement of Swang Gulgulia Dhoura on Saturday. Image The wife of a man arrested in the rape lay on a charpoy, or makeshift bed, under the neem tree in the center of the village. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times The authorities have arrested Ghosal Pasi, 45, the village’s headman, on suspicion of ordering the rape, and his son-in-law, Nakabandi Pasi, on suspicion of rape. The girl’s brother, Harendra Pasi, is in custody, on suspicion of assaulting Ms. Devi. Under the neem tree, the headman’s daughter lay inert on a rope cot, tears streaking her cheeks, promising that, if only her father were released, he would not mete out any more punishments. In the future, she said tonelessly, “if something will happen, people will go to the police station.” But others warned that it would be foolish to expect an end to village justice. “There is a practice here, to sort out matters themselves,” said Vinod Vishwakarma, head of an elected village council whose territory includes the hamlet. “I spoke to some women, they said if something like this will happen in our village again we will oppose it. But when the girl tried to seek help from people, they turned away their faces. That’s the fact.” There have been other recent examples of sexual assaults being imposed as punishment. In January, when a woman in West Bengal was found with a married man, an elected village head sent her to a hut where she was raped repeatedly, perhaps by as many as 15 men, the police said. And in Pakistan’s Punjab Province the same month, a caste council ordered the rape of a 45-year-old woman as a penalty after her brother was accused of rape. The residents of Swang Gulgulia Dhoura, members of an untouchable caste who traditionally earned money by begging, are strikingly isolated from mainstream society. When he began pushing for the village’s children to attend school, Anant Das, an aid worker, was shocked that the residents “were not aware of national holidays” and that many could not identify Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. Only in the last few years, he said, have a few televisions appeared in the village. “Nobody knows these people,” he said. “They have no education. They are not being treated as human beings.” Image The mother of the girl wept while recounting her daughter’s ordeal in a clearing in the woods. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times The victim, a watchful, reed-thin girl with a long ponytail, clasped and unclasped her fingers on Saturday as the adults discussed what had happened to her. On Sunday night, said Munna Pasi, her father, the girl’s brother Harendra had consumed “a kind of rice beer” and crept, partly disrobed, into Suguna Devi’s house, where he “tried to molest her.” First thing in the morning, Mr. Pasi said, he approached the headman, seeking some settlement. “I said, ‘My son did wrong, and we are willing to take the punishment,’ ” he said. “I realized we needed to pay some fine. I said, if you want to impose a punishment, then beat him.” But when the headman gave no answer, Mr. Pasi said, he went to work scavenging coal. While he was gone, the police say, the headman delivered his verdict. “Ghosal told his son-in-law, ‘You do the same thing to his daughter that this man did to your wife,’ so he grabbed her and dragged her to the jungle,” said Lakshman Prasad Singh, inspector general of the Jharkhand State police. The girl’s mother, Sonamani Devi, 42, said that her daughter was folding clothes inside their hut when the headman’s daughter burst in and “caught hold of my daughter by grabbing her hand and hair” and then passed her to her husband, Nakabandi Pasi. Sunita Devi, a neighbor, said she and other women heard the girl screaming but did nothing because, she explained, “We did not know he was going to rape her.” The girl limped back to her family’s hut 45 minutes later, and then set out on the hourlong walk to the nearest police station. In interviews, the headman’s relatives denied that he ordered the assault or looked on as the girl was dragged away. Gupta Kumar, 18, his son, said that there was a plan to convene a council to decide on a punishment, but that Harendra did not show up, and that after that the headman slept for much of the day because he had taken a medication. “My father did not order anything,” he said. “Out of anger my brother-in-law did this thing.” Pressure seemed to be building in the village on Saturday. The district administration had stationed two armed guards outside the victim’s hut, and politicians had been stopping by with small cash gifts and sacks of food for the family. Mr. Pasi, his face grave and deeply lined, said that the headman’s relatives had come to him repeatedly, asking him to withdraw the charges, but that he had refused. “When this was done to my family and my daughter, nobody came forward to help us,” he said. “Why should I be lenient to anybody?”


Officials Covered Up Italian Olympian’s Doping, Investigators Say

Abstract: Investigators in Italy say officials for track and field’s world governing body had evidence that an Olympic gold medalist used performance-enhancing drugs but made no effort to prevent him from competing in last summer’s Olympic Games in London. The revelation stemmed from an investigation being conducted by prosecutors in Bolzano, Italy, into Dr. Giuseppe Fischetto, the medical director for the Italian track and field federation and a member of the international track organization’s Anti-Doping Commission. During the investigation, Italy’s military police said in a report, the authorities obtained e-mail messages indicating that as early as April 2012, officials for track and field’s world governing body, known as the I.A.A.F., were aware of abnormal doping test results for the racewalker Alex Schwazer, who won gold at the 2008 Beijing Games. Schwazer eventually failed a doping test conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency shortly before he arrived in London last summer, and he was removed from Italy’s team before the 50-kilometer racewalk. During a televised news conference, he admitted to using the blood-boosting hormone EPO. Image The Italian racewalker Alex Schwazer, during a news conference in August, admitted using the blood-boosting hormone EPO. Credit Othmar Seehauser/Associated Press On Tuesday, Italy’s paramilitary police force, the Carabinieri, searched the home and office of Fischetto, as well as those of two other officials of the Italian track and field federation in Rome. They are accused of covering up the doping practices of Schwazer. In their search warrant, the prosecutors accuse Fischetto of “complicit behavior, that consisted in not activating any anti-doping control against the athlete, in fact allowing him to take illegal performance enhancing substances.” Fischetto denied the accusations. “My correspondence proves that I never did that,” he said Tuesday in a phone interview from Italy. “If anything, I would have protected him if I had alerted everybody. But I didn’t. I decided to ask for more frequent controls.” According to law enforcement documents, the e-mail exchange started on April 4, 2012, when Thomas Capdevielle, the medical and antidoping manager of the I.A.A.F., sent Fischetto the results of an out-of-competition blood test conducted three days earlier on Schwazer. Capdevielle emphasized that the values recorded in Schwazer’s blood were high. Less than two hours later, Fischetto responded, “Hi Thomas, absolutely sure manipulation.” He added, “No doubt at all.” On April 5, an antidoping project manager for the I.A.A.F. sent an e-mail to Fischetto suggesting an analysis of Schwazer’s biological passport, which tracks an athlete’s blood profile over time. Fischetto gave his approval: “I think he should be controlled now, immediately and very strictly.” Image Schwazer after winning the 50-kilometer racewalk at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Credit Kevin Frayer/Associated Press On July 13, another antidoping official for the I.A.A.F. sent an e-mail to Fischetto: “Dear Giuseppe, please find attached confidentially all the ABP (Athlete Biological Passport) files sent to the expert panel for the profile review and their feedback.” It went on: “It is highly unlikely that the longitudinal profile is the result of a normal physiological or pathological condition and may be the result of the use of a prohibited substance or prohibited method.” A few hours later, Fischetto restated his belief that Schwazer was using illegal performance-enhancing substances. But according to the Carabinieri, neither the Italian federation nor the I.A.A.F. moved to stop Schwazer from competing in the Olympics. Capdevielle said Tuesday that he and the I.A.A.F. handled the case appropriately. “We did what we had to do regarding Mr. Schwazer,” Capdevielle said in a telephone interview. “Our conscience is clear.” On July 30, 2012, days before the 50K race at the London Games, Schwazer was disqualified for testing positive for EPO. The World Anti-Doping Agency conducted that test without informing Fischetto. “Although strongly convinced that Schwazer had used doping substances and in possession of data confirming it, doctor Fischetto ignored the issue until Wada tested the athlete,” the office of the Bolzano chief prosecutor, Guido Rispoli, said in a search warrant request. “This circumstance can only be explained by the desire to ‘preserve’ a national track and field star for the 2012 London Olympic Games, in the expectation that he would perform well for Italy both in the 20 and the 50 km walk race. “With this complicit behavior, which consisted in not activating any anti-doping control, doctor Fischetto has in fact allowed the athlete to take illegal performance enhancing substances, which is a crime under article 9 of the Italian criminal law.”

International Assn of Athletics Federations


Unlikely Activist Who Got to the Tea Party Early

Abstract: SEATTLE — Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv on weekends and lives here in a neighborhood with more Mexican grocers than coffeehouses. You might mistake her for the kind of young person whose vote powered President Obama to the White House. You probably would not think of her as a Tea Party type. But leaders of the Tea Party movement credit her with being the first. A year ago, frustrated that every time she called her senators to urge them to vote against the $787 billion stimulus bill their mailboxes were full, and tired of wearing out the ear of her Obama-voting fiancé, Ms. Carender decided to hold a protest against what she called the “porkulus.” “I basically thought to myself: ‘I have two courses. I can give up, go home, crawl into bed and be really depressed and let it happen,’ ” she said this month while driving home from a protest at the State Capitol in Olympia. “Or I can do something different, and I can find a new avenue to have my voice get out.” This weekend, as Tea Party members observe the anniversary of the first mass protests nationwide, Ms. Carender’s path to activism offers a lens into how the movement has grown, taking many people who were not politically active — it is not uncommon to meet Tea Party advocates who say they have never voted — and turning them into a force that is rattling both parties as they look toward the midterm elections in the fall. Ms. Carender’s first rally drew only 120 people. A week later, she had 300, and six weeks later, 1,200 people gathered for a Tax Day Tea Party. Last month, she was among about 60 Tea Party leaders flown to Washington to be trained in election activism by FreedomWorks , the conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader. This month, a year to the day of her first protest, Ms. Carender stood among a crowd of about 600 on the steps of the State Capitol, acknowledging the thanks from a speaker who cited her as the original Tea Party advocate. Around her were the now-familiar signs: “Can you hear us now?” “Is it 2012 yet?” “Tea Party: the party of now.” Jenny Beth Martin, a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots , an umbrella organization of local groups that Ms. Carender has joined, calls her an unlikely avatar of the movement but an ideal one. She puts a fresh, idealistic face on a movement often dismissed as a bunch of angry extremists. “She’s not your typical conservative,” she said. “She’s an actress. She’s got a nose ring. I think it’s the thing that’s so amazing about our movement.” The daughter of Democrats who became disaffected in the Clinton years, Ms. Carender, 30, began paying attention to politics during the 2008 campaign, but none of the candidates appealed to her. She had studied math at Western Washington University before earning a teaching certificate at Oxford — she teaches basic math to adult learners — and began reading more on economics, particularly the writings of Thomas Sowell , the libertarian economist, and National Review . Reading about the stimulus, she said, “it didn’t make any sense to me to be spending all this money when we don’t have it.” “It seems more logical to me that we create an atmosphere where private industry can start to grow again and create jobs,” she said. Her fiancé, Conor McNassar, urged her to channel her complaints into a blog, which she called Liberty Belle . “He didn’t mind hearing it,” she said. “He just couldn’t hear it all the time.” It was not enough. So she called the city parks department, which suggested a location and gave her a permit. She still did not know if any other protesters would show up. She put out the word to some friends from the Young Republicans, which she had joined in late 2008, but it was not a big group. She called Michael Medved , the Seattle-based conservative radio host, but he did not put her on the air. She scanned a list of economics professors who had signed a Cato Institute letter opposing the stimulus and found two locally, but they could not make it. She also called someone she had met at an election results watch party, who agreed to spread the word among Republicans. She called a conservative local radio host, who put in a plug. And she sent an e-mail message to the conservative writer Michelle Malkin , who agreed to announce the protest on her blog and even sent some pulled pork to feed the crowd. The porkulus protest did not draw enough people to finish the pulled pork, which Ms. Carender took to a homeless shelter. But she collected e-mail addresses, remembering that Senator Barack Obama had done that at events as he prepared to run for president. The “tea party” label came three days later, from a rant the CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli delivered from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the nationwide protests followed. Six weeks later, Ms. Carender’s e-mail list had grown to 1,000 — it is now 1,500 — allowing her to summon protesters on short notice and making her the model child of the Tea Party Patriots, which has since become a driving force for advocates nationwide with its weekly conference calls to coordinate Tea Party activity. In her activism, Ms. Carender has also drawn on her theatrical experience. Discovering that advocates of a health care overhaul were marching in the city last summer, she staged a “funeral for health care,” with protesters wearing black and bagpipers playing. For her first Tea Party event, she dressed as Liberty Belle (newspaper accounts mistook her for Little Bo Peep). In a video viewed 68,000 times on YouTube, she confronted Representative Norm Dicks, Democrat of Washington, at a town-hall-style meeting on health care. “If you believe that it is absolutely moral to take my money and give it to someone else based on their supposed needs,” she said, waving a $20 bill to boos and cheers, “then you come and take this $20 and use it as a down payment on this health care plan.” Ms. Carender is less certain when it comes to explaining, for instance, how to cut the deficit without cutting Medicaid and Medicare . “Well,” she said, thinking for a long time and then sighing. “Let’s see. Some days I’m very Randian. I feel like there shouldn’t be any of those programs, that it should all be charitable organizations. Sometimes I think, well, maybe it really should be just state, and there should be no federal part in it at all. I bounce around in my solutions to the problem.” She, like many Tea Party members, resists the idea of a Tea Party leader — “there are a thousand leaders,” she says. Glenn Beck? “He can be a Tea Partier, but it’s not like the movement bends to him.” Sarah Palin? She will have to campaign on Tea Party ideas if she wants Tea Party support, Ms. Carender said, adding, “And if she were elected, she’d have to govern on those principles or be fired.” Ms. Carender herself has become a Tea Party leader, even a celebrity. At the Olympia rally, she did a television interview and accepted a hug from Kirby Wilbur, the radio host who first publicized her porkulus protest. “This is the future of the conservative movement!” he declared upon seeing her. Her biggest goal now, Ms. Carender said, is replacing Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat elected three times by wide margins, in November. So Ms. Carender held a small anniversary rally on Saturday at a local mall. But her focus is on vetting candidates and using the contacts she has established over the last year to get out the vote. “There is no way we will out-fund-raise the liberals,” she said. “The only weapon we have is energy and time.”

United States Politics and Government
Tea Party Movement
Carender Keli


Kings Slip Past the Blue Jackets

Abstract: Jeff Carter and Dwight King each had a goal and an assist to lead the Los Angeles Kings past the host Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-3.

Ice hockey
Blue Jackets
Los Angeles Kings