This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.
Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”
And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules’ alleged infringement on “religious liberty,” not contraception coverage, and denied the request. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”

The bike riders and current wave of home-buying white people are just the latest blossom of massive change that took root 60 years ago.

Portland State University professor Karen J. Gibson's article "Bleeding Albina" (which should be required reading for all Portlanders, offered to newcomers in a welcome packet that includes a bike light and a vacuum-sealed Kettleman's bagel) spells out the factors that led the Albina neighborhood—North Williams is the center of Albina, which covers the area north of I-84, east of what's now I-5, and west of NE 20th—to become Oregon's largest black neighborhood, and then to disintegrate.

One can't really downplay the impact of straight-up racism on the neighborhood. In 1919, Portland's Board of Realtors declared that it was against their code of ethics to sell a house to a black or Chinese person in a white neighborhood. A study in the 1950s found that 90 percent of real estate agents would not sell a house to a black person anywhere other than a black neighborhood. While these "redlining" rules were eventually phased out, disparate lending rates remain today: During the mortgage crisis, it came out that banks were twice as likely to give subprime mortgages to black and Hispanic borrowers than to white borrowers of the same income level.

That redlining made Albina the black cultural center of Oregon in the late 1940s and 1950s, with North Williams as its beating heart. The corridor was lined with small black-owned businesses: groceries, bakeries, record shops, churches, pool halls, bars, and jazz clubs. Despite the difficulty getting loans, 57 percent of neighborhood residents owned their homes.

The odious “Don’t Say Gay” bill sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield (right) has moved one step closer to becoming law: Having been approved by the Senate last year, it was just approved by the Tennessee House Education subcommittee yesterday. If enacted, it would mean elementary and middle-school teachers would be banned from discussing LGBT issues in the classroom.
Writes Chas Sisk in The Tennessean:
Opponents say it will not curb talk about homosexuality among grade school kids but will send the signal that it should be stigmatized. But several lawmakers argued that it would protect parents’ right to educate their children about their beliefs on their own terms.
“The basic right as an American is my right to life, my right to liberty and my right to the pursuit of happiness,” said state Rep. John DeBerry, D-Memphis, arguing to keep the subject of homosexuality out of elementary school classrooms. “Within that includes being able to run my home, raise my children as I see fit and to indoctrinate them as I see fit.”
Next, SB51 heads to the House Education Committee, which could vote on it as early as next week and put it before the full House by the spring.
Among the most vocal opponents of SB51 have been students: The Tennessean reports several dozen Nashville schoolchildren, many wearing purple T-shirts in solidarity with LGBT kids who have committed suicide, crowded into the senate chamber on Wednesday.

The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

Historic Images of African-American Life During the Depression
Photographs from the Farm Security Administration which collected and kept a record of American life between 1935-1944

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Betsy Markey concedes to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) that Sherman was forced to show security agents her colostomy bag — a violation of policy.

“It is not standard operating procedure for colostomy devices to be visually inspected, and [the Transportation Security Administration] apologizes for this employee’s action,” Markey wrote.

The letter says that Sherman, who uses a wheelchair, was escorted into a private area after she voluntarily lowered her pants to show screeners the device.

In the private room, she was patted down and told to show agents the colostomy bag, the letter says.

Markey still maintained that the Florida-based Sherman was never asked to remove her clothing.

“They asked me to pull my sweatpants down, and now they’re not telling you the truth,” Sherman fumed Monday.

Markey also denied that Zimmerman had been strip-searched, but did apologize for the conduct of a TSA agent who violated policy by scanning the Long Island granny’s back brace.

Zimmerman had told The News two female agents removed her clothes — instead of just patting her down — after she revealed that she was wearing a defibrillator.

“They’re lying,” said Zimmerman. “I don’t have a problem with [screeners checking] the back brace. I have a problem with being strip-searched.”

While the official definition of marriage as a right shared only between one man and one woman still stands on the federal lawbooks, one federal department has made its official definition of family more queer-friendly.
Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it has formally rewritten its official definition of "family" that's used to determine eligibility for public housing. The official "family" already specifically includes people without kids and single people, but under today's new rules this simple sentence is added onto the official family definition: “Family includes but is not limited to the following, regardless of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status...”

HUD has been attacking housing discrimination against LGBT folks for the last few years, launching studies of discrimination and updating its policies to make it clear that it's against the rules to ban someone from public housing because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Oregon is one of 20 states with laws that already prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Asked about the HUD change two weeks ago, Portland Housing Commissioner Nick Fish said, "For a federal government that's been unable to move on marriage equality, to say that discrimination based on orientation is unacceptable is a big deal. It's a big step forward for establishing the rights of a whole class of people."

More than 100 sex trade workers in Saskatoon have submitted personal details to a registry, to be used if police can't identify human remains in a homicide case.

The high-risk homicide registry is voluntary and was created with input from the Egadz Youth Centre in Saskatoon, which works with young people who are involved in the sex trade.

"This is the reality of the sex trade," said Don Meikle, the director of outreach services with Egadz.

Participants in the registry fill out a questionnaire.

"It's a really kind of detailed map of their body," Meikle explained. The result is an inventory of tattoos, scars, broken bones — any information that could help solve a murder, or aid a family member to identify the body of a loved one.

It also asks questions about clothing, such as the type of undergarment the person usually wears.


Meikle said the registry is mostly made up of aboriginal women between the ages of 13 and 30.


The information is sealed and kept in a lawyer's office.

The files are only opened when police find a body they are unable to identify.

In addition to questions, the registry includes fill-in-the-blank diagrams to illustrate locations on the body of tattoos, scars and similar marks.

The files also ask who should be notified in case they are victims of a homicide.

The registry just recently reached over 100 files.

State liquor officials launched an internal investigation. Hyun, who had worked for the agency for more than 15 years, resigned while he was being interviewed about the allegations on Dec. 21.

The incident comes at a delicate time for the OLCC, which is coming under greater scrutiny after voters in Washington approved a measure to privatize liquor sales, ending that state's monopoly on the market. Privatization supporters may launch a similar initiative in Oregon.

Scott called the resignation a rare event at the agency, which employs about 40 inspectors around the state. Sworn peace officers, they monitor activities and enforce rules at state-run liquor outlets and at bars licensed to sell hard drinks.

The internal investigation found no evidence of illegal misconduct, according to a Jan. 5 memorandum from OLCC Human Resources Director Gail Parnell to Hillsboro police Commander Mitch Rademacher. However, the memo goes on to say that Hyun confessed "that he had brought his wife and girlfriend into his office and on several separate occasions he had engaged in sexual activity with them."

The girlfriend, according to the memo, was licensed to serve liquor and worked at a restaurant in Hyun's enforcement district. The visits to the office apparently had been going on over a period of two years before they were discovered, according to the memo.

Hillsboro police spokesman Lt. Michael Rouches, said Hyun had been stationed in the precinct's office building for 11 years.

For our cash-strapped state, yesterday brought big money news: Tobacco maker Phillip Morris will pay the state $56 million as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed 14 years ago over the lung cancer death of an Oregonian.
Under Oregon law, that cash is supposed to go into the state's crime victim's fund. That pot of money helps fund crucial services in the state like sexual assault hotlines, domestic violence shelters, and victim counseling.

But domestic violence victims advocates are worried that the squeezed state government will take much of that $56 million and divide it up between other funds, leaving sexual assault resources in the cold. The millions pouring into the fund comes just when other state services—like schools and healthcare—are worried about drastic budget cuts. It's no surprise legislators would start eyeing the cash for other important uses.

This is a windfall for the fund, but it has to be viewed in the context that domestic violence services have been severely underfunded in the state for years.

Nearly 23,000 requests for emergency shelter from violence could not be met in Oregon in 2010 says local domestic violence shelter Raphael House, and domestic violence wound up killing 49 people. Back in 2009, the Portland Women's Crisis Line had to tell 65 percent of callers that there was no shelter space for them, suggesting people fleeing violence instead hunker down in 24-hour-coffee-shops, the airport lobby, or hospital waiting rooms.

Even desperately needed new projects, like the city and county's much-vaunted one stop shop shelter that opened in 2010, have to cobble together funds from sources and wait years to see the resources get off the ground.

Raphael House, the 40-bed Portland shelter that is "always full" according to its director, is asking the state to keep the entire $56 million in the crime victims fund. Just to put the finances in perspective, Raphael House works with 10,000 clients a year on a budget of only $1.8 million, eight percent of which ($143,000) currently comes from the state.

The Portland Police Bureau starts its new 'use of force' policy this week.

The change comes in response to an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

The bureau defines a 'use of force' event as any time an officer injures somebody; any time somebody complains of an injury; or any time a witness says excessive force was used. Up until this week, a supervisor only had to read a report about an incident. But Lieutenant Robert King says now any time an officer uses force, his or her supervisor has to go to the scene and conduct a review.

"They'll talk with the officer involved. They'll talk with witnesses. If there's any physical evidence, any photographs to be taken, that sort of thing. So they'll gather more information sooner in this new model than they ever have before," King said.

Several police bureaus around the nation are changing their use of force policies. A federal Department of Justice investigation into the Portland Police highlighted the need for a change. The Justice Department is conducting about 20 similar investigations across the country. Portland Police estimate one quarter of one percent of their contacts with civilians involve the use of force.

There are more than 1.6 million drug arrests in the U.S. every year - the vast majority for mere possession. So many deaths and so many people are behind bars because police use people who get caught with small amounts of drugs to set up family, friends and strangers.

Laura M. Edwards, who was executive director of the facility between June 2007 and June 2010, admitted to using corporate debit cards to embezzle what prosectors say was more than $213,000 the halfway house received under a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Edwards is disputing the amount of money involved, an issue that will be resolved at her sentencing on April 16.
The facility is now known as the Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center and provides residential services to federal offenders.
According to the District of Oregon U.S. Attorney's office, Edwards used the debit cards to establish an online retail business called The Adoption Shoppe, which purported to sell clothing and gift items to adoptive families. Instead, prosecutors say Edwards used the company to embezzle the halfway house funds.

A project to pave the way for humanity's journey to the stars will be helmed by a former astronaut, Mae Jemison, already a pioneer in her own right. She will lead DARPA's 100-Year Starship project, the BBC says, citing DARPA documents.

Jemison, the first black woman in space, was one of scores of people to submit proposals for DARPA's ambitious project. It doesn't seek to build an actual starship per se but rather a program that can last 100 years, and might one day result in one. As DARPA said last year, it's more of a thought experiment than a construction project. The idea itself sparked some other pretty audacious proposals, including one by J. Craig Venter to send human genomes toward the stars and reconstruct them upon arrival.

Jemison apparently won a contract for her proposal titled "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond," BBC said. Her organisation, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, is already a partner on the project with a non-profit called Icarus Interstellar and a group called the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

News 8 learned that Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Columbia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.
 
News 8 has learned ICE took the girl's fingerprints, but somehow didn't confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.
 
"She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was," Turner said.
 
Through her granddaughter’s Facebook messages, Turner says she tracked Jakadrian down.

U.S. Federal authorities got an address. U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia asked police to pick her up.

But that was a month ago, and the Colombian government now has her in a detention facility and won't release her, despite her family's request.
 
"I feel like she will come home," the grandmother said with tears in her eyes. "I just need help and prayer.”
 
There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national. Immigration officials are investigating and released a statement late Tuesday.

When her pimp was arrested this month in Brooklyn, the girl, like many other victims of sex trafficking, was set free, but was fearful, alone and empty-handed.

That’s when a special unit within the Brooklyn district attorney’s office stepped in. The teen will see a social worker who’s part of the sex trafficking unit, and she will be given help finding shelter, schooling and a job, if she needs it. And she was able to go to the unit’s “closet,” a room where victims can choose from donated toiletries, clothing, shoes and bags.

The unit at the district attorney’s office was created less than two years ago to combat what District Attorney Charles Hynes called a disturbing, often overlooked crime of sex trafficking in the United States. New York City is thought to play a role in the international trafficking trade, both as an entry point for smugglers from abroad and as a city where victims are put to work.

While other parts of the city have prosecutors who specialize in sex trafficking cases, the Brooklyn unit is unique for its dedicated staff that includes the social worker, and the social services aspect. A boutique hosted a clothing drive, and Avon recently donated bags full of toiletries for victims.

It’s difficult to gauge how many victims are out there. Right now, the Brooklyn office is dealing with 31 indicted defendants, and that means multiple victims.

That's right -- 99% of women in the U.S. who have been sexually active have used birth control. It's used by women of every demographic, every geographic location, every income level -- and every religious group.

So does it sound crazy that a small group of religious leaders and tea-party Republicans are fighting to eliminate women's access to birth control?

But that's exactly what's happening. Right now in Washington, D.C., a small but influential group is lobbying the White House to prevent millions of women in America from having equal access to birth control under insurance plans. It seems as though having one of the highest unintended pregnancy rates, not to mention the highest teen pregnancy rate, among the world's most developed countries isn't enough -- we've got to make it even harder for women to access family planning.

The dangerous proposal put forth by this vocal minority tries to take advantage of an unfair exemption crafted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that allows certain religious employers to opt out of the new federal requirement that insurance plans include birth control and other preventive services with no co-pay.

A trip to the DMV can be an exercise in patience for anyone—but for one transgender Tennessee woman, it became a fight for equality.  Andrea Jones of Morristown, TN, went in to change her sex from male to female on her driver’s license; when her request was denied, she walked out to the parking lot and took her shirt off. She was arrested for indecent exposure, and argued that if the state recognized her as male, she had the right to be topless in public.  
Jones underwent partial sex change and received paperwork from a doctor stating that she no longer had testicles; this was enough for the Social Security office to recognize her as female, but the Tennessee Department of Safety told Jones they would need further proof in order to change her driver’s license.  When she was arrested for her parking lot protest, the police report referred to her as male: "Mr. Jones continued to yell that he had the right to show his breasts in public and wanted to be recognized as a female."
Jones says, “It's not right for the state to ask me to be both male and female. A choice needs to be made. They cannot hold me to both standards.” 
 There are so many frustrating elements to this story—from inconsistencies between federal and local governments to the totally contradictory nature of cissexism—but major props to Jones for calling out that bullshit with a brilliant, badass move.

For the six-month period ending June 30, 2011, Google received approximately 1,000 requests to remove approximately 8,400 pieces of content (it doesn’t give exact numbers for some countries), and it complied with 64 percent of them. In the United States, Google received 92 requests requesting the removal of 757 items total, and it complied with 63 percent of them. According to Google, the number of U.S. requests increased 70 percent over the previous six-month period, while U.K. requests increased by 71 percent.

Worldwide, the majority of requests were based on claims of defamation, privacy and security, or “other.” YouTube content was targeted by more requests than that of any other Google service, followed by Blogger and web search. AdWords, however, was the largest target in terms the sheer volume of content requested to be removed.

One in five Native American children in Multnomah County is placed in foster care, often with non-Native American guardians, one of the highest rates in the country, according to a densely-detailed profile of the county's Native population released today.

That compares to one in 63 for Native children across the country and one in 18 for those in Oregon, says the 113-page report, "An Unsettling Profile," produced by the Coalition of Communities of Color, Portland State University and the Native community.

The high rate of foster care for Native children in Multnomah County reflects poverty, unemployment, school failure, health problems, crime, trauma and other disadvantages, says Terry Cross, executive director of the non-profit, Portland-based National Indian Child Welfare Association.

An initiative to allow grocery stores to sell liquor easily passed Tuesday night in the first round of results.

The Costco-backed I-1183 passed by more than 60 percent statewide with King, Pierce, Snohomish and Spokane counties reporting results.

I-1183 kicks the state out of the liquor business, allowed grocery stores to sell liquor and deregulated wine distribution.

Costco spent more than $22 million on the campaign, making it the largest single donor to a voter initiative in state history.

The opposition was financed by wine and liquor distributors, who fear deregulation in Washington would spread to other states.

California's homeless sex offender parolees will be rounded up and kept indoors Halloween night under a new initiative announced under the state's annual Operation Boo crackdown.

The state corrections department began the Halloween night initiative in 1994 and has expanded it since.

Sex offenders on parole are required to remain indoors from 5 p.m. Halloween night to 5 a.m. the next day and are banned from turning on external lights or decorating their houses for Halloween.

During the curfew they may only open the door to law enforcement.

The new condition imposed this year deals with transient sex offenders, who will be required to report to special centers to spend the night under supervision.

In Southern California, several government entities have taken a hard line on sex offenders leading up to Halloween this year.
Riverside County supervisors and the cities of Hemet and Temecula have passed measures prohibiting sex offenders (including those not on parole) from decorating their houses or passing out candy.

Our expanding Archive of Americana—a fully searchable online family of historical materials printed in America between 1639 and 1994—features more than 2,000 newspapers, landmark collections of government publications and more than 100,000 books, broadsides and ephemera.

Our acclaimed digital edition of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports offers online access to the U.S. government's fundamental record of political and historical open source intelligence between 1941 and 1996.

Created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries, our World Newspaper Archive will include historical newspapers published in Africa, Latin America, Slavic and East Europe, South Asia and other regions.

An Iowa girl who was born two years after her father died is not eligible to receive his Social Security Benefits, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision this week reversed a district court ruling that granted benefits to the girl, who is now 8 years old.

Her mother, Patti Beeler of West Branch, had filed for the benefits on behalf of her daughter in 2003 but was denied by the Social Security Administration because of a state law's definition of "natural child" and the inheritance rights of a child. Bruce Beeler died of leukemia in 2001, and Patti Beeler was later artificially inseminated with sperm the couple had decided to preserve.

Patti Beeler sued to challenge the agency's decision and won, but that was overturned by the St. Louis-based court, which ruled Monday that the girl did not satisfy requirements under Iowa's inheritance laws to be eligible for her father's benefits.

Telephone messages left Wednesday for Beeler and her attorney were not immediately returned. The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

At dispute in the case is an outdated Iowa law, which limited inheritance rights to a child who had a relationship with a person at the time of that person's death. Earlier this year, the Iowa Legislature passed a bill granting inheritance rights to children conceived posthumously, but did not make those rights retroactive. The measure was signed into law in May.

According to “The State of America’s Children 2011,” a report issued last month by the Children’s Defense Fund, the impact of the recession on children’s well-being has been catastrophic.

Here is just a handful of the findings:

• The number of children living in poverty has increased by four million since 2000, and the number of children who fell into poverty between 2008 and 2009 was the largest single-year increase ever recorded.

• The number of homeless children in public schools increased 41 percent between the 2006-7 and 2008-9 school years.

• In 2009, an average of 15.6 million children received food stamps monthly, a 65 percent increase over 10 years.

• A majority of children in all racial groups and 79 percent or more of black and Hispanic children in public schools cannot read or do math at grade level in the fourth, eighth or 12th grades.

• The annual cost of center-based child care for a 4-year-old is more than the annual in-state tuition at a public four-year college in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

Grim data, indeed. And there is no sign that things will get better anytime soon.

As a report issued last week by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out: “Of the 47 states with newly enacted budgets, 38 or more states are making deep, identifiable cuts in K-12 education, higher education, health care, or other key areas in their budgets for fiscal year 2012.

A three-judge federal appeals court panel has unanimously ruled that a Wisconsin law banning hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery for transsexual prison inmates is unconstitutional.

Clevert’s ruling came in a case that Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union brought on behalf of three Wisconsin inmates whose hormone therapy was cut off after the Inmate Sex Change Prevention Act was passed in 2005. The judge found that the law violated the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment as well as the 14th Amendment's equal protection requirement.

Judge Joan B. Gottschall’s opinion for the appeals panel upheld Clevert's 8th Amendment ruling, and so found it unnecessary to take up the 14th Amendment claim.

The Supreme Court has ruled that indifference to the serious medical needs of state prison inmates violates the 8th Amendment, and federal courts have come to agree that gender dysphoria and transsexualism may create a serious medical need.

Prior to the law’s enactment, Wisconsin officials had authorized hormone therapy as medically necessary treatment for three inmates. Subsequent press reports about taxpayers subsidizing “sex changes” for inmates, however, caused a political storm in the Legislature and led to the adoption of the 2005 statute, which prohibited the Department of Corrections from spending money or using resources “to provide or to facilitate the provision of hormonal therapy or sexual reassignment surgery.”

Oregon has 18,000 registered sex offenders and an unknown fraction are homeless. Tracking them is a nationwide problem, said Vi Beaty,  manager of the sex offender registry in Oregon.

When he emerged from prison, his parole officer told him to stay at the Union Gospel Mission in Salem.

The agency offers a bed, food and clothing to help former prisoners ease back into society. In exchange, they're expected to attend chapel services. Corry, an atheist, found that offensive. So he slept under a Salem bridge instead.

Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk's application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.

The decision was issued July 26. Immigration Equality, a gay-rights group that is working with the couple, received the notice Friday and made it public Monday. Makk was ordered to depart the United States by Aug. 25. Makk is the sole caregiver for Wells, who has severe health problems.

Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk's application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.

The decision was issued July 26. Immigration Equality, a gay-rights group that is working with the couple, received the notice Friday and made it public Monday. Makk was ordered to depart the United States by Aug. 25. Makk is the sole caregiver for Wells, who has severe health problems.

Silicone breast implants were pulled off the market in 1992 amid concerns that leaks from the implants could lead to cancer or autoimmune disease.

Five years ago, revamped products returned to the market. But now the Food and Drug Administration has evaluated the safety of the second generation of silicone implants and the results are mixed.

An FDA report, released in late June, says silicone implants are generally safe. But complications from implants are frequent — things like hardening of the skin around the implant; ruptured, wrinkled, or lopsided implants; scarring, pain and infection.

As many as half of patients will need to have additional surgeries or have the implants removed in the first decade.

It also turns out that the longer a woman has the implants, the more likely she is to experience these complications.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives Federal civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, State and local government services, and telecommunications.

An individual is considered to have a "disability" if he or she has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a record of such impairment, or is regarded as having such impairment. Persons with HIV disease, either symptomatic or asymptomatic, have physical impairments that substantially limit one or more major life activities and thus are protected by the ADA.

Persons who are discriminated against because they are regarded as being HIV-positive are also protected. For example, the ADA would protect a person who is denied an occupational license or admission to a school on the basis of a rumor or assumption that he has HIV or AIDS, even if he does not.

“We do need to have an inquiry, possibly inquiries, into what has happened,” the prime minister, David Cameron, told Parliament after days of disclosures that have horrified Britons. There were reports that hackers working for News of the World, owned by News Corporation, listened to the voice-mail messages left on the phones of murder and terrorism victims. One was a 13-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 2002. Additionally, Scotland Yard detectives are also investigating whether the voicemail accounts of relatives of victims of the bombings of three London subway trains and a double-decker bus on July 7, 2005, had also been hacked, according to some of the relatives.

“We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into,” Mr. Cameron said. “It is absolutely disgusting, what has taken place, and I think everyone in this House and indeed this country will be revolted by what they have heard and what they have seen on their television screens.”

A furor has been building in England for months after disclosures that journalists from News of the World, a mass-circulation gossip-laden Sunday tabloid, hacked into the voice-mail messages of celebrities and other prominent people. But, this week, the extent of the alleged hacking has broadened dramatically with reports that the newspaper hacked the cellphone of the slain 13-year-old girl nine years ago, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that added to vain hopes that she was still alive.

The disclosures have focused on two people in particular — Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, which runs the British newspaper operations of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and Andy Coulson, a former News International editor, who went on to become Mr. Cameron’s director of communications before he was forced to quit in January, months after the phone-hacking scandal erupted with new vigor.

This is a time of great change. There is enormous growth among open knowledge projects and communities at all levels and in many countries. This gathering tide of open data and content is the creator and driver of massive technological change. How can we make this data available, how can we connect it together, how can we use it to collaborate and share our work? We will explore these issues, and more, at OKCon 2011 in Berlin.

What kind of topics will be covered?

We welcome proposals on any aspect of creating, publishing or reusing content or data that is open in accordance with http://opendefinition.org. Potential topic areas include, but aren’t limited to:

Open Data Technology
Open Science and Open Data in Academic Research
Open Law, Society, and Democracy
Open Culture, Education, and Commons Research

Oregon is the freest Pacific state and the top state in terms of personal freedom. Moreover, Oregon enjoyed the greatest increase in freedom of any state since 2007 and the highest positive jump in the overall rankings (from #22 to #8). This was primarily due to big improvements in the quality of its court system, the enactment of same-sex civil unions, and a substantial decline in tax collections (from 9.7 percent to 8.8 percent of personal income). Despite the low taxes, government spending in Oregon remains much too high, resulting in relatively high state debt. Public safety, administration, and environment and housing look particularly ripe for cutting. Gun control laws are a bit better than average. Marijuana possession is decriminalized below a certain level, and there is medical marijuana (cultivation and sale are felonies, though). However, arrests for victimless crimes are surprisingly high (though Oregon’s drug law-enforcement rate declined markedly since 2007). Oregon is one of the few states to refuse to authorize sobriety checkpoints. It is also the only state besides Washington (and now Montana, which allowed it after the closing date on our data) to permit physician-assisted suicide. Private- and homeschool regulations are quite reasonable. Oregon also does quite well in terms of asset forfeiture. The state’s cigarette taxes are higher than most, and its smoking bans were recently tightened. Oregon’s spirits tax is the highest in the country and quite extreme (though interestingly, its neighbor, Washington, is the only other state three standard deviations above the national average). State land-use planning is very advanced. The minimum wage is the second highest in the country when adjusted for average wages. Labor laws are generally poor. Occupational licensing is excessive. However, health-insurance coverage mandates are a bit below the national average.

S. 596:
Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2011
112th Congress
2011-2012


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Primary Source
See S. 596 on THOMAS for the official source of information on this bill or resolution.

A bill to establish a grant program to benefit victims of sex trafficking, and for other purposes

Keisling, who was speaking to students who attended the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference, shared many somber statistics from the NCTE's survey on transgender discrimination, which was released in February and was also created with the help of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The survey is the largest ever conducted of transgender individuals, and it takes a frightening snapshot of the difficulties faced by nearly 6500 transgender people in the U.S. "We tried to find bigger studies," Keisling said. "This is the biggest study."

The survey results show that transgender individuals face serious barriers to meeting their basic needs, starting with employment. Ninety percent of survey respondents reported being harassed, mistreated or discriminated against on the job. Another 47 percent reported being fired, not hired or denied a promotion. These workplace struggles mean that transgender individuals are four times more likely to live in poverty (less than $10,000 a year) than the general population.

They're also twice as likely to be homeless as the general population. And of the survey respondents who had experienced homelessness, more than half had been turned away from a shelter.

In the mid-1960s, President Johnson saw the need for independent nonpartisan analysis of the problems facing America's cities and their residents. The President created a blue-ribbon commission of civic leaders who recommended chartering a center to do that work. In 1968, the Urban Institute became that center.
Today, we analyze policies, evaluate programs, and inform community development to improve social, civic, and economic well-being. We work in all 50 states and abroad in over 28 countries, and we share our research findings with policymakers, program administrators, business, academics, and the public online and through reports and scholarly books

It's up to Gov. Rick Scott to sign off on two bills passed in the Florida Senate and House Wednesday which target droopy drawers and bestiality.
The bestiality bill (SB 344) bans sexual activity between humans and animals and has been championed for years by Sen. Nan Rich, from Sunrise.
Rich took up the anti-bestiality fight after a number of cases involving sexual activity with animals in recent years, including a Panhandle man who was suspected of accidentally asphyxiating a family goat during a sex act and the abuse of a horse in the Keys. The bill would make such acts a first-degree misdemeanor.
Also passed by the House and Senate Wednesday is the so-called "droopy drawers bill" (SB 228), will will force students to hike up their pants while at school.
Students caught showing their underwear or butt crack could face suspensions and other punishments.

District service providers for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault will face a $3 million budget shortfall next year. According to Melissa Hook, director of D.C.'s Office of Victim's Services, the "substantial decrease in budget" is the result of several factors, including rising costs, the expiration of key federal funding, and the slow drain of the D.C. Crime Victims Compensation fund.

Hook says that her office has seen a "substantial increase in annual fixed costs to support the operations and debt service" of key victims services in the city, including "three new domestic violence shelters," the D.C. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program, and "24/7 crisis response to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and survivors of victims of homicide."

Meanwhile, funding from the D.C. Superior Court's Crime Victim Compensation Program has declined in recent years. In the past decade, the program has funneled $38 million in court fines and fees to help victims service providers support between 15,000 and 30,000 victims of violent crime each year. In a testimony in front of the D.C. council last week, Hook said that the "substantial revenue from the courts" helped "build capacity, introduce best practices, and establish an excellent coordinated community response to victims of violent crime in our communities."

The FBI’s definition of “forcible rape” in their Uniform Crime Report (UCR): “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” [PDF]
What that definition leaves out: anal, oral and statutory rape; incest; rape with an object, finger or fist; rape of men
Number of men raped in any year, according to the UCR: 0 [PDF]
Estimated number of men actually raped each year, according to the Dept. of Justice: 93,000 [PDF]
Number of women raped in 2007 under the UCR definition: 91,874
Number of sexual assaults in 2007–which includes rapes the FBI leaves out–according to the National Crime Victimization Survey: 248,300
Dept. of Justice estimate of how many women are actually raped each year: 300,000 [PDF]
Number of arrests for rape in 2007 (UCR): 23,307
Percentage of rapes that result in incarceration: 0.35 percent [PDF]
Number of murders/manslaughters in 2007 (UCR): 17,157
Number of arrests for murder/manslaughter in 2007 (UCR): 13,480
Percentage of murders that result in incarceration: 20 percent or more [PDF]
Average number of rapes to every murder committed annually: 5 to 1
Two of the top five cities in the U.S. with the most “unfounded” (i.e., falsely reported, according to police) rapes: New Orleans and Baltimore
Percentage of rape reports deemed “unfounded” by New Orleans police in 2008: 60 percent
Percentage of rape reports deemed “unfounded” by Baltimore police in 2009: 32 percent
Percentage of actual estimated false rape reports in any given year according to research studies: 2-8 percent
Percentage of rape reports deemed “unfounded” by the FBI in 2006: 5 percent
How Baltimore police once explained their “unfounded” rape rate: “One of the things we know is that victims do lie.”
Percentage of rape reports deemed “unfounded” (i.e. falsely reported) by Philadelphia police in 1983: 52 percent
The year Philadelphia was forced to clean up its rape reporting practices: 1999
Percentage of rape reports deemed unfounded in Philadelphia in 2007: 10 percent
What a Philadelphia police officer once called his city’s sex crimes unit: “The lying bitches unit.”
“Reasons” women lie about rape, according to Philadelphia’s police department in 1984: revenge; free abortion; covering up truancy, pregnancy, infidelity, lost money, sexual precocity.
Number of people who have signed a letter urging the FBI to change its definition of rape: 2,019 (and counting)

Portland City Council at a meeting Wednesday approved, with a vote of 3-0, giving the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office money to hire a deputy district attorney who will focus solely on prosecuting drug crimes in high-impact areas like Old Town in Northwest Portland.

Commissioners Dan Saltzman and Nick Fish were absent for the vote.

The resolution, which came as a result of the concerns raised by Old Town residents about drug activity, also provides money for Portland Police Bureau officers to be paid for overtime hours spent walking around the high-impact areas, called Illegal Drug Impact Areas. The district attorney's office will determine the boundaries of the areas based on data and input from police and the community.

Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that in number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined. According to Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute, wages for college-educated workers outside of the inflated finance industry have stagnated or diminished. Unemployment has hit recent graduates especially hard, nearly doubling in the post-2007 recession. The result is that the most indebted generation in history is without the dependable jobs it needs to escape debt.

In addition to the billions colleges have spent on advertising, sports programs, campus aesthetics, and marketable luxuries, they’ve benefited from a public discourse that depicts higher education as an unmitigated social good. Since the Baby Boomers gave birth, the college degree has seemed a panacea for social ills, a metaphor for a special kind of deserved success. We still tell fairy tales about escapes from the ghetto to the classroom or the short path from graduation to lifelong satisfaction, not to mention America’s collective college success story: The G.I. Bill. But these narratives are not inspiring true-life models, they’re advertising copy, and they come complete with loan forms.

The Department of Defense estimates that more than 19,000 service members were raped or sexually assaulted in 2010. Due to a military culture heavy on retaliation and light on prosecution, only 13.5 percent of the victims report the rape.

The system of justice designed to adjudicate cases of rape in the military is in complete shambles. Victims are blamed. Assailants are promoted. Unit commanders - whose promotions are dependent on the conduct and performance of the soldiers they supervise - have an incentive to see that allegations are few and convictions are fewer. As a result, the overwhelming majority of cases get swept under the rug.

This abomination is not new. The Pentagon has largely ignored the recommendations of 18 reports on sexual assault and rape in the military over the past 16 years. As a result, the problem is now worse than ever. So I have pledged to speak about this issue every week on the floor of the House of Representatives until this Congress and this administration do something more than offer lip service.

the base chaplain claims that 96 percent of sexual assaults on women occur when drinking is involved.

Oregon law does not allow an individual to seal or expunge sex crime convictions, most traffic arrests or any traffic convictions, Class A felony convictions (except racketeering), and nearly all Class B felony convictions.

Oregon criminal charges (misdemeanors and felonies) are found in the Oregon Revised Statutes (known as ORS). While it is impractical to list each and every criminal charge, the following is a list of most Oregon crimes. Note that a few of the offenses below are non-criminal violations.

On Friday, February 18, the US House of Representatives passed a GOP-backed spending plan that cuts all of the $317 million the feds usually give to family-planning programs. On Monday night, February 21, more than 400 Portlanders took to the streets in front of Planned Parenthood's NE Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue clinic, waving signs at rush-hour traffic and chanting, "Women's health care is under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

Oregon has the highest per capita rate of Planned Parenthood use of any state—in 2009, the local Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette distributed 333,000 units of birth control and did 23,000 STD tests. A whopping 92 percent of their clients qualified for free or subsidized birth control under the threatened federal program.

None of Oregon's representatives voted for the spending bill, and President Obama has said he will veto the plan if it passes the Senate.

I had a short conversation yesterday about what I wish PDX11 was doing better with it’s marketing. I was the person who suggested we call this effort PDX11, and I bought the domains and asked the Open Source Lab to host our sites. I created the mailing lists and setup and ran the hackathon.

The Oregon State Archives, a division of the Secretary of State's Office, provides access to the permanently valuable records of Oregon government.

The division houses some of the state's oldest documents, including records from the provisional and territorial governments, the Oregon Constitution, and extensive holdings from all three branches of state government. The State Archives also publishes the biennial Oregon Blue Book, the authoritative source of information on Oregon's history and government.

Until recently, my family never knew any of this. I repressed it, even when I heard about my mother's abortion. I didn't want her to know I understood something about what she was talking about. So when I see my guy friends -- who are more than happy to wax philosophically for hours about the "conditions on the ground" in Libya and Bahrain (admittedly important), but who make nary a mention of issues that might directly and immediately impact them -- I wonder if their careful avoidance isn't born of a similar kind of embarrassment. I think this may be one of the reasons so many men have trouble talking about this issue. For me, it represents my low point as a human being and as a man: I was a failure, I couldn't take care of myself let alone a child, I couldn't provide for myself, or a wife, or family. My weakness and carelessness resulted in people hurting. I was not a man, I was something so much less than that. Why would anyone ever want to talk about something like that? I recognize that not every man out there has found himself in my situation specifically. I've been told a lot of pro-choice guys don't talk about "women's issues" for fear of saying the wrong thing. All I know is: We're not talking -- as if it doesn't have to do with us, as if it's "their" problem, not ours.

the compelling new documentary called "Miss Representation," which addresses the many problems of our media's portrayals of women, including women in leadership. I had the chance to speak with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who wrote and directed the film.

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage.

Two Portland LGBT activists got an alarming email in their Google mail inbox this month—their “customer information” (including any name, home address, phone numbers, and billing info) had been subpoenaed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing Christian nonprofit. Google, along with several other email providers nationwide, was ordered to hand over the activists’ personal info in conjunction with a major lawsuit a Michigan megachurch is filing against queer group Bash Back.
“This really feels like an invasion of privacy, an invasion of my life,” says Portlander Oliver Hayes, who received an email with the attached subpoena to be filled by March 16th. “It's something that just happened because I'm a queer activist, because I'm a queer person. And that, in my opinion, is a very bad reason to track me down.”

It likely comes as a shock that courts can snag your personal info from email accounts. Under federal law, the courts can’t go rifling through email inboxes. But everything that’s not “content” in your email account can be subpoenaed.

@znmeb yes, but expanding it too. have you checked out yet?

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 2:41 PM PDT
In addition to the drug-free zone ordinance, the prostitution-free zone law also will sunset. Potter and Leonard will investigate how to increase community-based treatment services for those arrested for prostitution.
Designated prostitution-free zones include the downtown transit mall and portions of Burnside Street, the MLK/Killingsworth corridor and Sandy Boulevard/82nd Avenue.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the Innocence Lost National Initiative, the FBI Crimes Against Children Unit coordinated a national sting entitled Operation Cross Country to combat domestic sex trafficking in children. From June 18 to June 23, 2008, Innocence Lost Task Forces in 16 cities participated in the operation by targeting venues such as street tracks, truck stops, motels, casinos and the Internet where children are prostituted.

Over 350 law enforcement officers from over 50 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies, joined together to rescue child victims and the criminals who victimize them. This operation included sting operations in 16 cities across the country, resulting in the arrest of 356 individuals and the recovery of 21 children. Over 30 defendants have already been charged, largely on state and local violations, some whom may also face federal charges.

areas where the number of arrests where there was probable cause to believe a person has committed any of the offenses enumerated in Section 14B.30.030 for a twelve (12) month period within the eighteen (18) months preceding its designation is significantly higher than that for other similarly sized geographic areas of the City that are not located within a prostitution-free zone.

*In Utah, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed the nation’s most backward “open records” law. It will enable agencies to keep practically any government record private unless citizens can prove “by a preponderance of the evidence” that it should be public.

*In North Carolina, state-agency lobbyists are fighting Republican-sponsored legislation to establish access to public information as a constitutional right.

*The sheriff in Portage County, Wis., banned the public and press from seeing jail records on weekends. In effect, that allows the sheriff’s department to secretly arrest people until records are viewable on Mondays.

*In Ohio, Republican Gov. John Kasich initially banned photographing and broadcasting of his state budget message. He relented the day before his speech.

*In Oregon, as we editorialized on Sunday, Attorney General John Kroger advised state officials not to talk with the Statesman Journal about consultants’ work at Oregon State Hospital. Kroger, a Democrat, said disclosing details of the consultants’ work might hurt the state’s case in federal litigation.

Officials who take such actions usually do so while standing under the banner of “good government.” They contend that too much openness would unreasonably interfere with government efficiency, or people’s privacy, or tip off criminals or complicate a lawyer’s work.

Sometimes they’re right. Open government makes for messy government. Democracy is not nearly as tidy as a dictatorship.

But the Founders valued freedom over efficiency. Having lived under a monarchy, the Founders crafted a Constitution with a strong central government, and then they added a Bill of Rights to protect people from that government.

Plan B could have been made widely available in 2003, but was not offered over the counter until 2006 . We’re still waiting on an over the counter emergency contraceptive for individuals under the age of 18.  Many states require waiting periods for individuals seeking abortions, and parental notification/permission if the patient is under 18 years.  In 42 of the 50 U.S. States, you are more likely to live in a county without an abortion provider than in a county with one.  Abstinence-only sex education prevents young people from being prepared to protect themselves when the time for intimacy comes. Combine these facts with the recent string of murders of abortion providers and the subsequent closing of even more clinics, and you have a climate that can only be described as antagonistic, aggressive and hostile.

The recent push to defund Planned Parenthood was particularly egregious given that its affordable and accessible birth control has prevented hundreds of thousands of unwanted pregnancies and abortions annually. According to a March 3rd article, “Planned Parenthood helped prevent 973,000 unintended pregnancies, which would have resulted in 433,000 unplanned births and 406,000 abortions in 2008.”

New Ministry of Justice guidelines says: “An establishment must permit prisoners who consider themselves transsexual and wish to begin gender reassignment to live permanently in their acquired gender.
“Transsexual people, particularly those who have not undergone surgery or extended hormone therapy, may use various items to assist with their presentation in their acquired gender. These can range from sophisticated prostheses to padded bras.
“Regardless of their level of sophistication, access to them can only be restricted in exceptional circumstances.
“These items may only be prohibited when it can be demonstrated that they present a security risk which cannot be reasonably mitigated.”

Transgender people who are undergoing medical treatment to change sex are required to live in the sex they are changing to for a period of time. This is known as real life experience or real life test.

The guidelines say trans prisoners will be permitted to order appropriate clothes at their own expense and staff should address them by their chosen names and titles. Prison officers must currently address inmates as Mr, Miss or Ms.

Trans women who are legally recognised in their new gender must be placed in female prisons unless there are security reasons not to do so, the document says.

Those who have not yet acquired a Gender Recognition Certificate will not automatically be placed in the appropriate prison. Instead, the document says, a meeting will be held to determine where they should be placed.

Rules say: “This is a legal issue rather than an anatomical one, and under no circumstances should a physical search or examination be conducted for this purpose.”

Trans campaigners estimate that there are between 20 and 30 trans individuals in UK prisons at any time.

Stacked Graph of Unemployed U.S. Workers by Industry

The TSA is responsible for the safety of its own X-ray devices. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it does not routinely inspect airport X-ray machines because they are not considered medical devices. The TSA's airport scanners are exempt from state radiation inspections because they belong to a federal agency.

Some of the records were written by employees of the machines' maker: Rapiscan Systems. In a written statement, the company's executive vice president, Peter Kant, said, "The mistakes were the result of calculating and procedural errors that were identified by Rapiscan management and have been corrected. In actuality, the systems in these airports have always been well below acceptable exposure limits."

Rapiscan Systems said in a Dec. 15 letter to the TSA that company engineers who tested the backscatter machines were confused by inspection forms and instructions, leading them to make mistakes on the forms that vastly inflated the radiation emitted by the machines.

Rapiscan vowed to redesign its inspection forms and retrain its engineers.

The TSA released inspection reports from 40 backscatter machines, and reports for 19 of those machines had errors, including six that were deemed "considerable."

The Department of Homeland Security told a federal court that the agency believes it has the legal authority to strip search every air traveler. The agency made the claim at oral argument in EPIC's lawsuit to suspend the airport body scanner program. The agency also stated that it believed a mandatory strip search rule could be instituted without any public comment or rulemaking. EPIC President Marc Rotenberg urged the Washington, DC appeals court to suspend the body scanner program, noting that the devices are "uniquely intrusive" and ineffective. EPIC's opening brief in the case states that the Department of Homeland Security "has initiated the most sweeping, the most invasive, and the most unaccountable suspicionless search of American travelers in history," and that such a change in policy demands that the TSA conduct a notice-and-comment rule making process. The case is EPIC v. DHS, No. 10-1157. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS and EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology.