Eeyore's News and view

We blame everything for everything. Nothing like taking a little personal responsibility for anything anymore. It is the pizza's fault for the fight, for the crime. Lets punish all of the people that don't break they law, I guess you will be able to tell i needed to get about from the "big" news today. I will try to get "serious" again tomorrow.
Adams Morgan Councilman Sets Sights on Single-slice Pizza Sales
posted 05/22/09 11:39
WASHINGTON - A proposed crackdown on single-slice pizza sales in Adams Morgan has many patrons of the nightlife hot spot perplexed, especially considering the area's other issues, including violent crime.
But Ward 1 D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, who represents Adams Morgan, says the pizza parlors selling single slices along 18th Street, some of which are open until 4:30 a.m., are part of the problem when it comes a recent rash of street fights, stabbings, muggings and even a shootout involving two plainclothes police officers.
"Even though it's a legal business and everything, they have become a nuisance," Graham said. "Behaving the way they do in terms of music, in terms of letting people hang out and also in terms of tolerating a certain level of violence."
A hidden ABC 7 camera captured an example of what Graham is talking about a couple weeks ago. Two girls began arguing in front of one of the jumbo slice businesses, the altercation turned physical when punches were thrown and people wrestled to the ground. The melee went on for 10 minutes before police arrived.
But Graham's proposal has many opponents. For many, a slice after a night out has been a part of the tradition of visiting Adams Morgan for decades.
"It's big pizza, it's cheap and it's good after a night of bar hopping in Adams Morgan," said Nicole Harrison, a Silver Spring resident.
Adams Morgan resident John Sawyko agrees the late night congregating is at times overwhelming and down right scary, but he says blaming pizza is absurd.
"The crowd out here in general is the problem," Sawyko said. "The pizza places are a small part of the issue."
Abdul Souada is the manager of one of the three jumbo slice restaurants on 18th Street. He says he is unfairly being picked on just for being to "popular"
"We are taxpayers also," he said. "Our business is the same as bar business, as the club business, as the other restaurants next door..."
While most people who spoke with ABC 7 in Adams Morgan thought the proposal was a joke, Councilman Graham said he is very serious. He says he's already talked to the mayor about the issue and is drafting legislation.
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0509/625505.html

Our Strategies for a Safe City
On Feb. 6, the Fenty administration submitted to the D.C. Council the Omnibus Anti-Crime Amendment Act of 2009, an ambitious piece of legislation that seeks to modernize a number of laws and expand the tools available to law enforcement to protect residents of the District. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty led the effort to draft the legislation; it was a collaboration that included the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, the D.C. chief of police, the U.S. attorney's office and members of the community.
With the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, our city is entering an era in which we expect legal gun ownership to increase. The Fenty administration will comply with the ruling and ensure that law-abiding residents can possess handguns in their homes for self-defense. At the same time, criminal gun possession or use will not be tolerated.
The anti-crime bill contains several provisions designed to prevent gun crime and proposes a greater scrutiny of gun offenders from arrest through reentry into the community. The D.C. police department's aggressive gun recovery efforts and the office of the attorney general's coordinated emphasis on prosecuting gun-related crimes are showing strong results: In the past year, robberies with guns have decreased 12 percent; assaults with guns have decreased 14 percent; and overall violent crime has decreased by 5 percent in the District.
However, we can do more to ensure that violent gun offenders are not arrested and then allowed to return quickly to the communities they have victimized. The anti-crime bill would give the court more authority to detain these offenders. When an individual uses a gun in a crime of violence, illegally possesses a gun, or is a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, the act creates a presumption in favor of pretrial detention. While everyone accused of a crime is presumed innocent, the courts must weigh the nature of the charged crime when considering whether it is safe to release that person back into the community before trial. The act would also increase the sentence for possession of a firearm by any person previously convicted of a violent felony.
The act would create a "gun offender registry," which would require each gun offender to register and maintain an accurate address with the D.C. police for two years after incarceration or supervision. Measures focused on gun offenders are critical because studies show that gun offenders pose a high risk of recidivism, and their subsequent arrests are more likely to involve crimes of violence. Perhaps most significant is the finding that previous gun offenders are four times more likely to be arrested for homicide than other offenders.
The act would give the D.C. attorney general the ability to seek civil injunctions against criminal gangs operating in the District. Judges would be granted the authority to issue orders designed to shut down a gang's ability to control the streets, plan crimes and recruit new members. Civil gang injunctions can be a useful tool in combating gang violence and intimidation in the District.
The Fenty administration is committed to ensuring the safety of D.C. residents. We will continue to look for the best methods to prevent violence and to work closely with the community and the criminal justice system to make this a safe city for all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/14/AR2009031401564.html

10 out of 10 times i will come down on the right (if it is a strongly held religious conviction) of the parent to decide. I see this case as nothing different. I find it absolutely amazing at the double standard that the courts and the law enforcement community have. They will allow abortions (the murder of innocent children) and yet will force this into court.
Minn. boy, mom who dodged chemo return
A mother and her 13-year-old boy who has treatable cancer returned to Minnesota on Monday after a week on the run from court-ordered chemotherapy treatment, police said.
An arrest warrant for Colleen Hauser was dropped after she and son Daniel arrived in New Ulm, about 100 miles southwest of Minneapolis, on a charter flight, Brown County Sheriff Rich Hoffman said.
The boy and his mother "were taken home where Daniel was immediately checked over medically," Hoffman said.
He said an Orange County, Calif., lawyer, Jennifer Keller, contacted the sheriff's office Sunday "and indicated that Colleen wanted to bring Daniel home."
The sheriff said the pair returned on a flight arranged by Asgaard Media of Las Vegas and Corona, Calif.
On a video produced by Asgaard and released by the sheriff's department, Colleen Hauser described how the first chemotherapy treatment Daniel received made him sick and she said he planned to run away from home.
"Then what do I have? I mean, he was going to run," Hauser said. "And that just broke my heart. I can't have one of my children running away from something that they should face."
Hauser expresses optimism that her son can beat cancer.
At one point on the video, an unseen woman asks Daniel what he'd say to people who claim he's not old enough to decide whether he needs chemotherapy.
"I'd tell them to back off," he replies.
Daniel Hauser, who has a cancerous tumor in his chest, was being evaluated by a doctor at a hospital in the Twin Cities, said Tom Hagen, an attorney with a law office representing the parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser.
Daniel has Hodgkin's lymphoma, a disease which doctors say has a 90% chance of being cured in children if treated with chemotherapy and radiation.
Daniel underwent one round of chemotherapy in February but stopped after that treatment, citing religious beliefs.
A judge ruled that the parents medically neglected Daniel and ordered them to get him an updated chest X-ray as well as select an oncologist for a re-evaluation. After the X-ray showed a tumor in Daniel's chest had grown, the mother and son left town.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-25-forced-chemo_N.htm

One of the list of broken promises. Is it surprising of course not. Being President is a lot harder then when you are running for it. When politicians have there mouth open and words are coming out, you know they are lying. I long for a true Statesman to show up again. But if they did they probably could not get elected.
Obama ducks promise to delay bill signingsComplete bills not on Web for pledged 5 days
It seemed among the easiest of his transparency pledges and is entirely under his control, but President Obama is finagling his promise to post bills on the White House Web site for comment for five days before he signs them.
Mr. Obama last week signed four bills, each just a day or two after Congress passed and sent it over to him.
The White House said it posted links from its Web site to Congress' legislative Web site about a week before Mr. Obama signed the measures, but transparency advocates say that doesn't match the president's pledge to give Americans time to comment on the final version he is about to sign.
"He didn't say, 'When there's a bill heading to my desk,' or 'When we're pretty sure a bill will soon be passed.' He said when a bill ends up on his desk - a strong implication that public review would follow the bill arriving at his desk," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute.
During the campaign and again during the transition, Mr. Obama said opening bills up for public comment was a way of fighting back against special interests' control of the process.
"When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing," Mr. Obama said in a major campaign speech laying out his goals for transparency.
Mr. Harper said that to him, the pledge means putting a copy of the bill on www.whitehouse.gov and then waiting five days to allow comments to roll in.
"That's the only interpretation of this promise that delivers solid transparency," he said. "Posting a bill late in the process doesn't give the public a chance to review the final legislation - especially last-minute amendments, which are where a lot of congressional hijinks happen."
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the clock starts ticking when a link is posted to bills when they are in their final version, such as a conference report, even if they haven't passed Congress.
"A conference report, as you know, is an unamendable piece of legislation that has to be approved by both houses, language has to be simultaneous, it gets sent down here, and we sign it," he told reporters Friday.
But that was not the case for last week's bills, at least some of which weren't in their final form until a day or two before being sent to Mr. Obama.
In the case of a Defense Department weapons acquisition bill, the White House posted its link to the Library of Congress Web site, www.Thomas.gov, on May 14, even though the conference report wasn't done until May 20. Congress passed that bill on May 21 and Mr. Obama signed it the next day.
On the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights Act, the White House posted a link to Congress on May 14, but the Senate didn't finish its work until May 19; the House agreed to the Senate's version on May 20, and Mr. Obama signed it two days later.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a White House official said the link to Congress' Web site allows readers to find every version of the bill and is more up-to-date.
"We link to Thomas pages that list the latest version, so once they were amended people could still read that latest version once it got posted, as opposed to us posting text that became outdated," the official said.
The link the White House posts goes to a list of bills in various stages of the process. In the case of the military procurement measure, the White House listed two bills winding their way through Congress, because it couldn't know which version would actually be presented.
Mr. Obama has exempted emergency bills from his promise and used that to justify his signing some major measures such as the stimulus spending bill before a full five days had elapsed. But there was no stated emergency for last week's bills.
"They're certainly not making it a priority to live up to the pledge," said John Wonderlich, policy director at the Sunlight Foundation.
Sunlight is pressing for a waiting period for Congress, to prevent instances like last week, when House and Senate negotiators filed their final version of the weapons acquisition bill and put it to a vote in the Senate the same day. The House voted on it the next day.
Mr. Wonderlich said Congress is where the actual changes to a bill can happen. By the time it gets to the president, he can only sign or veto it. In light of that, Mr. Wonderlich said, some transparency advocates have questioned the value of Mr. Obama's five-day pledge.
Mr. Harper, though, said the value will come if and when Mr. Obama enforces the rule.
"Members of Congress are very skilled political risk analyzers. When the president is enforcing this rule and they know their work is going to sit for five days before signing, they're going to know they can't slip in that last earmark," he said.
He pointed to the language that allowed American International Group executives to claim bonuses as an example. That language was added in the conference committee between House and Senate negotiators, at the very end of the legislative process.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/26/obama-vow-to-delay-signing-is-subject-to-interpret/