They said it couldn't be done, that women weren't built to go the distance. The rules of the marathon didn't expressly forbid women from entering — but there were no races longer than 1½ miles (2.4 kilometres) that were open to women. A year earlier, Roberta Gibb hid in the bushes near the start line and ran the race as a bandit. But in 1967, K.V. Switzer trained hard and signed up for the Boston Marathon. Kathrine Switzer followed the rules and earned a bib number.

When race director Jock Semple realized that K.V. wasn't just another guy, he was infuriated and tried to forcibly remove her from the race. He made the mistake of attacking Switzer in front of the media bus and the moment was caught on film.

Switzer finished the race and became a focal point in the movement to open up sports to women. Her autobiography, Marathon Woman, was released this month.

CBC News Online recently talked with Switzer about that day in 1967 and where women's sports is headed.

You know, at first, [when] I started running Boston, I felt really smug. I said, "I get it, and other women are not getting it. I get it, I'm so smart." And then at about 22 miles — you know how your mind goes when you run, you can't run and stay mad, you start working out the problem — and I was suddenly realizing, "Hey, you're not so special, you're just lucky that you got here in the first place. Other women would be here if they had an Arnie [her coach, Arnie Briggs] or parents like I had." So when I finished the race, I felt great. I came out with a life plan. And every year, the plan grew and so, pretty soon, it became getting us into Boston and then it became creating events to get us into the Olympics. The closing chapter in my book is Joan Benoit coming into the Olympic stadium in 1984. Not just because it was wonderful and dramatic, but because it was televised to 2.2 billion people around the world and from traditional households in India and Afghanistan, people realized that women could run 42.2 kilometres. And everyone knows that's far! So, suddenly — oh my goodness — women can do anything. Like no kidding, that's what we've been telling you. But seeing women doing the race dramatically on TV, that's what changes history.

The term "quilt" comes from the Latin word culcita, which means "stuffed sack." While the origins of quilting are uncertain, the practice has been traced back to the ancient Egyptians (c. 3400 B.C.E.). In the late 11th century, crusaders from the Middle East brought the quilt to Europe, and in the Middle Ages, quilted garments became popular among knights, who wore them beneath their armor. The earliest surviving bed quilt is the "Tristan quilt," which was made in Sicily c. 1360 (Image 2).

Fast forward a few centuries and hop across an ocean, and we enter the heyday of the quilt in eighteenth and nineteenth-century America. Quilts, which provided excellent insulation against the cold, were particularly useful for colonists because access to new cloth was sparse, and homespun fabric was very labor intensive. The use of salvaged fabrics made quilting an effective means of maximizing one's resources. Quilting was often a communal activity, and villages would sometimes come together for "quilting bees," where multiple people worked on the same quilt. Quilts were an important part of daily life and were especially important items for young women, who were expected to complete a certain number of quilt tops as part of their trousseau.

In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution made manufactured cloth much more accessible, and it also marked the invention an important quilting tool: the sewing machine. In the 1850s, Singer started an installment plan, making these machines more feasible to purchase. With the rise of the sewing machine, women could devote more time to quilt-making (as opposed to sewing clothing for their families), and the quilt-making itself took significantly less time. This new technology, along with the new variety of colorful calicos, meant a shift in the style of quilts. A few earlier quilts had been made in block style, but these were uncommon until the 1840s, and the popularity of the style rose throughout the nineteenth century (Image 3). The tail end of the nineteenth century marked the new fad for "crazy quilts." These quilts were made of abstract shapes randomly sewn together and were often further embellished with embroidery (Image 4).

As we well know, the history of quilting certainly doesn't end here. The popularity of quilting continues into the present, and it's experiencing a resurgence at the fingertips of contemporary DIYers and seamstresses. And while this brief history has largely focused on America, many countries have similarly rich quilting traditions. Some major examples are the traditions of Sashiko (Image 5; Japan), Kantha (Image 6; Bangladesh and West Bengal), and Ralli (Image 1; predominantly from Pakistan and western India).

Mr. Heirens’ notoriety stemmed from the separate killings of two women, Josephine Ross and Frances Brown, in 1945. At the scene of the second murder, that of Miss Brown, someone had used lipstick to scrawl on a wall: “For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.”

The reports of a “lipstick killer” terrified Chicago as the press took note of other unsolved murders of women. Then, about two weeks after the Brown murder, on Jan. 7, 1946, a 6-year-old girl named Suzanne Degnan was discovered missing from her bedroom at her North Side home. A ladder was found outside the window. The police later determined that the killer had strangled her and taken the body to the basement of a nearby building, where it was dismembered. Her head was found in a sewer; other body parts were found scattered about the neighborhood.

The newspapers called the killing the crime of the century, and though the police questioned a parade of suspects, there was no arrest.

Almost six months later, Mr. Heirens (pronounced HIGH-rens), a 17-year-old student at the University of Chicago, was apprehended at the scene of a burglary in the girl’s neighborhood. The police charged him with the murder after determining that his fingerprints were on a $20,000 ransom note that had been left behind at her home.

Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.

Moreover, by a ratio of more than two-to-one (69% versus 29%), survey respondents say that the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. have many different cultures rather than a common culture. Respondents do, however, express a strong, shared connection to the Spanish language. More than eight-in-ten (82%) Latino adults say they speak Spanish, and nearly all (95%) say it is important for future generations to continue to do so.

Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans. About half (47%) say they consider themselves to be very different from the typical American. And just one-in-five (21%) say they use the term “American” most often to describe their identity. On these two measures, U.S.-born Hispanics (who now make up 48% of Hispanic adults in the country) express a stronger sense of affinity with other Americans and America than do immigrant Hispanics.

The survey finds that, regardless of where they were born, large majorities of Latinos say that life in the U.S. is better than in their family’s country of origin. Also, nearly nine-in-ten (87%) say it is important for immigrant Hispanics to learn English in order to succeed in the U.S.

This report explores Latinos’ attitudes about their identity; their language usage patterns; their core values; and their views about the U.S. and their families’ country of origin. It is based on findings from a national bilingual survey of 1,220 Hispanic adults conducted Nov. 9 through Dec. 7, 2011, by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

Cam ho news: Streamate, a Cyprus corp, now requires 1099 tax info for US chat hosts. If you're a cam ho tax cheat, your loophole is closed.

In an interview with Men’s Health magazine, Welch,71, says, “I think we’ve gotten to the point in our culture where we’re all sex addicts, literally. We have equated happiness in life with as many orgasms as you can possibly pack in.”

A sex-symbol herself, Welch comes in second place on the magazine’s “Hottest 100 Women of All Time” countdown, beaten only by Jennifer Aniston.

But despite her roles in racy films like “Myra Breckinridge” and “One Million Years B.C.,” the actress says, “I think this era of porn is at least partially responsible for it. Where is the anticipation and the personalization? It’s an exploitation of the poor male’s libidos. Poor babies – they can’t control themselves!”

How Different Groups Voted in Republican Primaries

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.

Who are these six remarkable women? Connecticut's Ella Grasso, Washington's Dixy Lee Ray, Kentucky's Martha Layne Collins, Vermont's Madeleine Kunin, Oregon's Barbara Roberts, and New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman. They are among the nine who comprise the first generation of women governors. Their political careers spanned fifty-plus years of American history: the rise of the women's movement and its backlash, the political shift to the right, and rising anger toward both politics and government.

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

The series Broken houses is based on photographs of abandoned structures neglected by man and destroyed by the weather. I find these photos on the web while pursuing an amateur photographer from North Dakota who obsessively documents the decaying process of these houses. His photographs are used to create small scale models. Afterward, in the studio, the models are photographed again, omitted from their background and placed in gray. Eventually these are digital pigment print size 30×36 cm (16”x18”).

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."

It should have been a triumphant day for women's soccer in North America – both Canada and the US had secured qualification for London 2012 by virtue of advancing to Sunday's final of the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament.

But less than 24 hours after the US women's national team defeated Canada 4-0 to win the tournament, the Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) announced plans to cancel the 2012 season. Two WPS players, Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan, played a starring role in USA's win, scoring two goals apiece.

Most, if not all, of the vitriol will be hurled in the direction of Dan Borislow, who owned and operated the magicJack franchise in WPS during the 2011 season.

The controversial owner, who made a tidy fortune with his magicJack internet phone system, has been involved in a legal battle with the league's owners since they voted to terminate his franchise at the conclusion of the 2011 season. The WPS announcement specifically stated that the league is "suspending the 2012 season in order to address the legal issues head-on before moving forward with competition".

• Most American families want two children. To achieve this, the average woman spends about five years pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant, and three decades—more than three-quarters of her reproductive life—trying to avoid an unintended pregnancy.[1]
• Most individuals and couples want to plan the timing and spacing of their childbearing and to avoid unintended pregnancies, for a range of social and economic reasons. In addition, untended pregnancy has a public health impact: Births resulting from unintended or closely spaced pregnancies are associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes, such as delayed prenatal care, premature birth and negative physical and mental health effects for children. [2,3,4]
• For these reasons, reducing the unintended pregnancy rate is a national public health goal. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2020 campaign aims to reduce unintended pregnancy by 10%, from 49% of pregnancies to 44% of pregnancies, over the next 10 years.[5]
• About half (49%) of the 6.7 million pregnancies in the United States each year (3.2 million) are unintended (see box).[6]

First-time filmmaker Jordan Thierry offers context and conversation in this honest exploration of fatherhood in Black America. Through a telling of his own story and interviews with historians, he traces the roots of the fatherless Black home and reveals a history much more complex and profound than is often told. Putting that history into perspective is a dialogue among fathers discussing their experiences, inspirations, and insight on how communities can come together to ensure the power of a father's love is not lost on America's Black children.

studies like a recent one from the Williams Institute at UCLA from their U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) shows some interesting stuff.

The study is "the longest-running study ever conducted on American lesbian families (now in its 24th year)." Huff Po reports, "In an article published today in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were asked about sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior."

Here's what they found: 

The paper found that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents reports having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 percent of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.

According to the authors, "the absence of child abuse in lesbian mother families is particularly noteworthy, because victimization of children is pervasive and its consequences can be devastating. To the extent that our findings are replicated by other researchers, these reports from adolescents with lesbian mothers have implications for healthcare professionals, policymakers, social service agencies, and child protection experts who seek family models in which violence does not occur."

ASHA is proud to have played an important role in the creation of the "National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12." 

The standards are the result of a cooperative effort by the American Association of Health Education, the American School Health Association, the National Education Association Health Information Network, and the Society of State Leaders of Health and Physical Education, in coordination with the Future of Sex Education (FoSE) Initiative. Nearly 40 stakeholders including content experts, medical and public health professionals, teachers, sexuality educators, and young people developed the standards in a two-year process.

Published January 9, 2012 in the Journal of School Health, the ground-breaking "National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12" provide clear, consistent, and straightforward guidance on the essential minimum, core content for sexuality education that is developmentally and age-appropriate for students in grades Kindergarten through grade 12. 

Colorado is the third state with a medical-marijuana program to ask the DEA to reschedule marijuana. But Revenue Department Executive Director Barbara Brohl's letter, written Dec. 22, does not come as a surprise. A law passed last year in the legislature required the state to ask for rescheduling by the end of this year.

In the letter, Brohl details briefly Colorado's regulations for medical-marijuana sellers and argues that current federal law, under which all marijuana possession and distribution is illegal, make it difficult for her to administer Colorado's laws.

"As long as there is divergence in state and federal law, there is a lack of certainty necessary to provide safe access for patients with serious medical conditions," Brohl wrote.

The letter asks that the DEA consider moving marijuana from schedule I — a category that includes such drugs as heroin and LSD that are not considered to have medicinal value — to schedule II. Drugs in that category, such as methadone and cocaine, are considered to have some medicinal value but also be highly addictive.

Schedule II substances are able to be prescribed by doctors but are still subject to strict controls. It is unclear whether Colorado's medical-marijuana laws — which allow doctors to authorize marijuana use through recommendation and allow patients to grow their own cannabis plants — would clash with those controls.

Earlier this year, the governors of Rhode Island and Washington also asked the DEA to reschedule marijuana. The DEA has in the past rejected similar requests to reclassify the substance.

In California it's illeagal for producers of alcohol beverages to list the names of retailers or restaurants that sell their products in advertising or even in newsletters. Also, no alcohol beverages can be displayed within five feet of a cash register of any store in California that sells both alcohol and motor fuel.

A person can be sent to jail for five years for merely sending a bottle of beer, wine or spirits as a gift to a friend in Kentucky. (sorry Jethro)

Maryland law, now requires that alcohol beverage writers be certified as experts, by an agency of the state before they can receive product samples, which it limits to three bottles per brand.

In Missouri, anyone under the age of 21 who takes out household trash containing even a single empty alcohol beverage container can be charged with illegal possession of alcohol in Missouri.

If a law enforcement officer is having a drink, in a bar, in Iowa. And an employee pours water down the drain, the water is legally considered an alcohol beverage intended for unlawful purposes. (huh?) Also, running a "tab" in Iowa is illegal as well. Don't go anywhere, there's more... An owner or employee of an establishment in Iowa that sells alcohol can't legally consume a drink there after closing for business.

In Connecticut, pharmasits must pay $400.00 each year for a license, in order to use alcohol in compounding prescriptions. (what a scam!)

The entire Encyclopedia Britannica is banned in Texas. Why? because it contains a recipe for making beer that can be used at home. Also, (I hope your all sitting down) Texas state law prohibits taking more than three sips of beer at a time while standing.

In Indiana, it's illegal for liquor stores to sell milk or cold soft drinks. They can, however, sell uinrefrigerated soft drinks.

Nebraska state law prohibits bars from selling beer unless they are simultaneously brewing a kettle of soup... I'm speachless.

North Dakota law, prohibits serving beer and pretzels at the same time in any bar or restaurant. That's just wrong!

Here's more from the great "state" of Texas, beer many not be purchased after midnight on Sunday, but can be purchased anytime on Monday...which happens to begin right after midnight on Sunday! So, it's illegal to buy it... when its legal to buy it?

Colorado law requires that wine be sold in containers of at least 24 ounces and spirits in containers at least a fifth of a gallon. But, at the same time, it also decrees that no alcohol beverage can be stored in hotel minibars in anything larger than miniature containers.

Ohio state law prohibits getting a fish drunk. Faciasts!!!

In Alaska, it's illegal to give a moose any booze. That explains alot about Bullwinkle.

It's illegal to sit on any street curb in St. Louis, Missouri, and drink beer from a bucket.

Here’s the problem: Penelope, and other people who say things like this, are making my life a whole lot harder, and I’d like them to knock it the fuck off.

I’m not going to argue that most women don’t want to stay home with their children. Frankly, I don’t care what most women want to do.

I know what I want to do, and what I want to do is to work at startups. I don’t want to have children. I’ve never wanted children. I never will want children, and I certainly wouldn’t want to give up working at startups for them.

So, when a publication like TechCrunch spews some nonsense about what women want, it means that the next time I go into an interview with a male founder (and they are overwhelmingly male for some reason that I’m not going to address here, but that Penelope assures us has nothing to do with bias) who has read that nonsense, he may be thinking, consciously or subconsciously, “she doesn’t really want to work at this startup because she wants to have a baby.”

Bruce E. H. Johnson, attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine, is a veteran litigator in the field of free speech and media law. In 2006 he drafted Washington state's media shield legislation, and in 2007 the state legislature passed it into law.

He says that had Cox's case been heard in a Washington court, the outcome (at least in regards to the shield law) would have most likely been different.

"I believe the shield law would have been applied [in Washington state]," Johnson tells Seattle Weekly. "Oregon's law was probably written before blogging was accounted for."

​Media shield laws exist in 40 U.S. states and protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources in court.

One in 10 children ages 10 to 17 has used a cellphone to send or receive sexually suggestive images, but only 1 in 100 has sent images considered graphic enough to violate child pornography laws, a new study found.

The results of the study, published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are based on detailed telephone interviews with 1,560 children across the country. It is one of the largest surveys yet to look at the prevalence of sexting among minors, a phenomenon that has drawn concern from schools and law enforcement and that has prompted nationwide legislation trying to curb it.

An earlier, often-cited study had estimated that as many as one in five teenagers engaged in sexting, but it included 18- and 19-year-olds, most likely increasing the overall prevalence.

Over all, the new report found, 149 youths interviewed for the study, or 9.6 percent, said they had sent or received images that included full or partial nudity in the previous year. Just over 2 percent of those who engaged in sexting said they had appeared in the pictures or had taken them themselves, and 7.1 percent said they received sexual images from someone else.

About 31 percent who appeared in or took sexual images said that alcohol or drug use had been a factor. And despite public concerns about lewd photographs of minors that start out as private messages becoming widely distributed, only 3 percent of the minors in the study said they had forwarded sexual photographs that they had received.

Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Research Center in Washington, noted that the report’s findings dovetailed with Pew research released last month. In that study, which involved 800 minors between 12 and 17, only 2 percent said they had sent nude or almost nude pictures to someone they knew. In contrast, the center found that 17 percent of adults between 18 and 29 had sent sexually suggestive pictures, and that 5 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds admitted sending them.

American Worker Cooperative

369,629 people died on America's roads between 2001 and 2009. Following its analysis of UK casualties last week, transport data mapping experts ITO World have taken the official data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - and produced this powerful map using OpenStreetMap. You can zoom around the map using the controls on the left or search for your town using the box on the right - and the key is on the top left. Each dot represents a life

The Food and Drug Administration has approved two vaccines against infection by certain strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States.  Initially, the vaccines were recommended only for girls and young women, but in 2011 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention broadened them to include boys and young men. The fact sheet discusses HPV and cancers related to the virus, use of the HPV vaccines for both females and males, and insurance coverage and access to the vaccines.

Nevada, famous for its casinos, Mafia and the Sin City of Las Vegas, is the only state in the US where brothels are legal. Since the days when the place was populated by gold miners, prostitution has been accepted as just another service industry.
In September I visited four legal brothels as part of a radio documentary on the enduring debate about whether legalising prostitution makes it safer for the women involved.
On this journey I met the pimps who ran the brothels, the women who worked in them and the punters who paid for sex.
Outside my Vegas hotel men line the streets inT-shirts advertising  ”A girl to your room in 20 minutes”. The phone directory has more than 200 pages of adverts for prostitution services.
Unsurprisingly, most of the people visiting Vegas, one survey says, think that all prostitution in the state is legal.
In fact there are just 24 legal brothels in Nevada, operating mostly in the sparsely populated northern region. Allowed only in counties with populations of fewer than 400,000, the trailer-type compounds are in the middle of nowhere and the women often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave.


Brothel owners typically pocket half of the women’s earnings. Additionally, the women must pay tips and other fees to the staff of the brothel, as well as finders’ fees to the cab drivers who bring the customers. They are also expected to pay for their own condoms, wet wipes, sheets and towels.
Meanwhile, illegal brothels are on the increase in Nevada, as they are in other parts of the world where brothels are legalised. Nevada’s unlawful prostitution industry, according to research by the US Government, is already nine times greater than the state’s legal brothels.

Nevada, famous for its casinos, Mafia and the Sin City of Las Vegas, is the only state in the US where brothels are legal. Since the days when the place was populated by gold miners, prostitution has been accepted as just another service industry.
In September I visited four legal brothels as part of a radio documentary on the enduring debate about whether legalising prostitution makes it safer for the women involved.
On this journey I met the pimps who ran the brothels, the women who worked in them and the punters who paid for sex.
Outside my Vegas hotel men line the streets inT-shirts advertising  ”A girl to your room in 20 minutes”. The phone directory has more than 200 pages of adverts for prostitution services.
Unsurprisingly, most of the people visiting Vegas, one survey says, think that all prostitution in the state is legal.
In fact there are just 24 legal brothels in Nevada, operating mostly in the sparsely populated northern region. Allowed only in counties with populations of fewer than 400,000, the trailer-type compounds are in the middle of nowhere and the women often live in prison-like conditions, locked in or forbidden to leave.


Brothel owners typically pocket half of the women’s earnings. Additionally, the women must pay tips and other fees to the staff of the brothel, as well as finders’ fees to the cab drivers who bring the customers. They are also expected to pay for their own condoms, wet wipes, sheets and towels.
Meanwhile, illegal brothels are on the increase in Nevada, as they are in other parts of the world where brothels are legalised. Nevada’s unlawful prostitution industry, according to research by the US Government, is already nine times greater than the state’s legal brothels.

In the decade from 2000 to 2010, the Mexican-American population grew by 7.2 million as a result of births and 4.2 million as a result of new immigrant arrivals. This is a change from the previous two decades when the number of new immigrants either matched or exceeded the number of births.

The current surge in births among Mexican-Americans is largely attributable to the immigration wave that has brought more than 10 million immigrants to the United States from Mexico since 1970. Between 2006 and 2010 alone, more than half (53%) of all Mexican-American births were to Mexican immigrant parents. As a group, these immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born Americans to be in their prime child-bearing years. They also have much higher fertility.

Meanwhile, the number of new immigrant arrivals from Mexico has fallen off steeply in recent years. According to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of Mexican government data, the number of Mexicans annually leaving Mexico for the U.S. declined from more than one million in 2006 to 404,000 in 2010-a 60% reduction. This is likely a result of recent developments in both the U.S. and Mexico. On the U.S. side, declining job opportunities and increased border enforcement may have made the U.S. less attractive to potential Mexican immigrants. And in Mexico, recent strong economic growth may have reduced the "push" factors that often lead Mexicans to emigrate to the U.S.

As a result, there were fewer new immigrant arrivals to the U.S. from Mexico in the 2000s (4.2 million) than in the 1990s (4.7 million). However, the Mexican-American population continued to grow rapidly, with births accounting for 63% of the 11.2 million increase from 2000 to 2010.[1]

At 31.8 million in 2010, Mexican-Americans comprise 63% of the U.S. Hispanic population and 10% of the total U.S. population. According to Pew Hispanic Center tabulations from the March 2010 U.S. Current Population Survey, 39% of Mexican-Americans-or 12.4 million-are immigrants. With the exception of Russia, no other country in the world has as many immigrants from all countries as the U.S. has from Mexico alone.

Data from national cause-of-death files plus census surveys were examined for the study, released online today in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Reports contained information on more than 200,000 suicides and 130,000 homicides for people who turned 18 between 1967 and 1989. During those years, drinking ages in the U.S. were changing, from under age 21 to 21 and older.

Among men and women, researchers saw no link between minimum drinking age laws and the rates of suicide and homicide. However, when broken down by gender, women who were exposed to those laws had a 12% greater risk of suicide and a 15% greater risk of homicide.

"For homicide, females are victimized by acquaintances in 92% of the cases," study co-author Richard Grucza said in a news release. Grucza, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine, added: "If lower drinking ages result in elevated rates of alcohol problems, this could contribute to alcohol-fueled domestic violence. Alcohol use by both women and their partners could contribute to domestic-violence situations. For suicide, it may be that alcohol contributes to the severity of suicide attempts."

The Occupy Wall Street Movement has swept across the nation and as hundreds flock to the tent cities in peaceful protest, many are thinking twice about their safety. As advocates, we are all aware of the astounding number of sexual assaults that occur in our normal (and tragic) day-to-day, but we are also aware of the risk factors that may increase the likelihood of an assault. Perhaps a tent city, which began without considering proper security procedures, might be a risk?

U.S. births hit an all-time high in 2007, at more than 4.3 million. Over the next two years, the number dropped to about 4.2 million and then about 4.1 million.

Last year, it was down to just over 4 million, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For teens, birth rates dropped 9 percent from 2009. For women in their early 20s, they fell 6 percent. For unmarried mothers, the drop was 4 percent.

Experts believe the downward trend is tied to the economy, which officially was in a recession from December 2007 until June 2009 and remains weak. The theory is that women with money worries — especially younger women — feel they can’t afford to start a family or add to it.

Europeans have been fascinated with the sexuality of “savages” since the Middle Ages, long before they came into contact with Africans. (The Irish were “lewd, lustful, lascivious” and so were the savages of the Americas.) During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several English travelers had made references to the “Large Propagators” of the African men, which whetted the imaginations of many Europeans, It was immediately assumed that the large propagators [penis’s] made African men oversexed, sensuous, and lustful, and their nudity was evidence of uninhibited and restrained sexual behavior. It is Rushton’s conclusion that Africans thus beget a lot of children to whom they give little care.
Moreover the RK theory flounders in the light of some obviously contradictory and incontrovertible facts. The MOST reproductively successful population in the world are the Chinese. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they had one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Today they number more than 1.3 billion people despite small penises and presumably little interest in sex!
Race in North America: Origin And Evolution of a Worldview by Audrey Smedley. pg. 302-303

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.

Last week, the global population hit seven billion, highlighting the high stakes of reproducing ourselves. Clearly, there is no longer a biological need to pop out children to ensure the survival of the race—but young adults who opt against children face a serious stigma.

Humans have bickered over the morals of not having children ever since 1500 BC, when God killed Onan for spilling his seed during coitus interruptus. Since then, we've progressed a surprisingly short distance—while even the pope no longer considers contraception grounds for smiting, the image of a normal family is one that includes children.

SPREADING THE SEED

The 2010 Census revealed that having a child is becoming less and less a requirement for being a mainstream American family: There are now more American homes with dogs than children. The number of houses with kids under 18 dropped 2.5 percent in America over the past decade, declining in 95 percent of US counties. Locally, Oregon has the 42nd lowest birth rate in the country. Only 25 percent of Portland homes include kids, and that number is declining.

Of course, much of that decline comes from women and couples waiting until later in life to have kids (the average age of a mother's first birth rose from 21 in 1970 to 25 today). And you can also thank both the current years-long recession for the drop—birth rates decline during hard economic times—and increased access to birth control.


Dating website OkCupid crunched the data from its 3.1 million members and found that a whopping 29 percent of its users under the age of 30 state that they never want children. Olsen is just one of many who are taking permanent steps to ensure they never wind up with a kid.

The intimidation and harassment of reporters by authorities has not been confined to widely-publicised hotspots such as New York and Oakland, Calif., but has moved into the heartland, with recent arrests of journalists caught on video in Wisconsin and Tennessee.

The latest incidents came Wednesday night, when police arrested Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Photographer Kristyna Wentz-Graff as she took pictures during a demonstration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Oakland police arrested freelance journalist and cartoonist Susie Cagle.

They followed the arrest three days earlier of Nashville Scene reporter Jonathan Meador outside of Tennessee’s Capital building. Meador’s arrest was preceded nearly a month earlier by the arrests of three journalists covering protests in New York City.

International Press Institute (IPI) Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said: “While many law enforcement officers have appropriately distinguished between demonstrators and journalists covering protests, a disturbing number have not. It is completely unacceptable to hinder reporting on a subject that is undoubtedly of public interest. Such reporting is vital to democracy, and authorities at every level of government – federal, state and local – must honour their constitutional obligation not to infringe upon the freedom of the press.”

When the Goddess of Liberty was given to the United States, its donor’s agenda was to burnish France’s republican roots after the oppressive reign of Napoleon III and to celebrate the two nations’ commitment to the principles of liberty.

The only immigrants mentioned at the dedication in 1886 were the “illustrious descendants of the French nobility” who fought on behalf of the United States against Britain during the American Revolution.

But it was the words of a fourth-generation American whose father was a wealthy sugar refiner and whose great-great-uncle welcomed George Washington to Newport, R.I., that almost single-handedly transformed the monumental statue in New York Harbor into the “Mother of Exiles” that would symbolically beckon generations of immigrants.

Emma Lazarus’s poem only belatedly became synonymous with the Statute of Liberty, whose 125th birthday as a gift from France will be celebrated on Friday by the National Park Service.

Lazarus’s “New Colossus,” with its memorable appeal to “give me your tired, your poor,” was commissioned for a fund-raising campaign by artists and writers to pay for the statue’s pedestal.

Today’s 18- to 29-year-olds value parenthood far more than marriage, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of attitudinal surveys.

A 2010 Pew Research survey found that 52% of Millennials say being a good parent is “one of the most important things” in life. Just 30% say the same about having a successful marriage– meaning there is a 22 percentage point gap in the way Millennials value parenthood over marriage.

When this same question was posed to 18- to 29-year-olds in 1997, the gap was just 7 percentage points. Back then, 42% of the members of what is known as Generation X said being a good parent was one of the most important things in life, while 35% said the same about having a successful marriage.

"Smokers are less likely to be obese. And the declining use of cigarettes across the country — due to both tightening pocketbooks and new laws (thanks, Mayor Bloomberg) — accounts for a bigger increase in the obesity rate in the U.S. than any other factor, according to paper authors Charles L. Baum and Shin-Yi Chou, who have both written with some frequency on the economics of obesity."

Sismondo is the author of the new book, America Walks Into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops. She says she was inspired to write it after traveling through America and realizing how many important events in the country's history had their roots in bars and taverns.

"This is where people organized, this is where people aired their grievances, this was where people spread political propaganda," Sismondo says. You could get a tumbler of whiskey, and you could find out what your neighbors thought about the latest news — and what they planned to do about it.

And when it comes to the latest economic data on women, the news is even worse than most people seem to realize. But you couldn’t learn that by reading The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, neither of which even mentioned women in their front-page stories about the rise in the poverty rate, which has soared to its highest level since 1993.

When it comes to discovering what that means for the majority of the American population, one had to look elsewhere. For the news the big guys didn’t see fit to print, we can thank the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that focuses on women’s economic security and legal rights.

When the NWLC crunched the latest numbers from the Census Bureau, the results showed that record numbers of women are living in poverty. And in news that should surprise no one, the findings reveal that millions of those women do not have health insurance.


Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The poverty rate among women rose to 14.5 percent last year, up from 13.9 percent in 2009—the highest rate in 17 years. The “extreme poverty rate” among women was the highest ever recorded, climbing to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009.

“Extreme poverty” means that your income is below half of the federal poverty line—and by 2010, more than 7.5 million women had fallen into that dire category.

What all those statistics add up to is that more than 17 million women were living in poverty last year, compared with 12.6 million men. As usual, things were worse for older women; twice as many women over 65 were living in poverty, compared with men.

And those numbers just represented the population-wide average. For Hispanic and black women, the poverty rate increased even faster and rose higher—to 25 percent for Hispanic women and to 25.6 percent for black women.

As usual, single mothers are having the hardest time of all. More than 40 percent of women who head families are now living in poverty. With more than half of poor children living in female-headed families in 2010, the child poverty rate jumped to 22 percent.

The Senate, in a 30-16 vote, agreed to let voters decide during the May primaries whether the state Constitution should ban same-sex marriage. The House approved the measure the day before, 75 to 42.

It is already illegal for people of the same sex to marry in North Carolina. If the amendment passes, it will serve to reinforce that ban and make it more difficult for future legislatures to extend marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.

It could also call into question domestic partnership benefits offered by public institutions and the application of domestic violence laws, said Holning Lau, an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. The proposal also would bar the state from sanctioning civil unions. Originally, backers wanted the issue on the ballot in November 2012, where it might help attract voters more likely to vote against President Obama and Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat. To quell accusations that the ballot initiative was driven solely by politics, the date was moved to the state’s primary election in May.

In 1991, Gwen Jacob was arrested for walking in a street in Guelph while topless. She was acquitted in 1996 by the Ontario Court of Appeal on the basis that the act of being topless is not in itself a sexual act or indecent. Since then, the court ruling has been tested and upheld several times.

In a 1992 New York case, Ramona Santorelli and Mary Lou Schloss were arrested along with five others in a Rochester park for violating a law that prohibited women from showing "that portion of the breast which is below the top of the areola." The women argued that the law was "discriminatory on its face since it defines 'private or intimate parts' of a woman's but not a man's body as including a specific part of the breast." The New York Court of Appeals ruled in favour of the two women.

In 2005, Jill Coccaro was arrested in New York City for going topless, but sued the city and received a $29,000 settlement.

In 2008, Vancouver city council gave women the right to go topless in public, not solely at swimming pools and beaches.

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.

The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run/First Manassas marks the first in a summer full of re-enactments of the American Civil War.

Re-enactors, in their thick wool uniforms and custom-made weapons, converged on the Virginia battlefield to fight in the battle of a lifetime.

But for one re-enactor, this day in history still means so much to her, even in modern times.

Joyce Henry, dressed as Lt Harry Buford, talks about one woman's role in the Civil War and how it feels to be in those boots.

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.

NOLA rising – abandoned Six Flags – New Orleans. According to the photographer, “Something that I’ve only seen is New Orleans so far is the hopeful graffiti. A lot of the graffiti throughout the park spoke of love and renewal…and cockroaches.” Photo #48 by © lostlosangeles facebook.com/lostlosangeles

When an amusement park is abandoned and an eerie silence settles over the rusty and crusty decay, the setting seems to twist the atmosphere of enthusiastic excitement into a suffocating blanket of dread. The place takes on creepy vibes and freaks people out. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and ripped the heart of fun and the amusement out of this park. Almost six years later, Six Flags in New Orleans is unnaturally silent, no lines and no laughter. This 140-acre surreal setting has morphed into a nightmarish land of twisted dreams. It seems as if the post-apocalyptic atmosphere might be the perfect place to make a zombie movie. As if lured by a distant echo of scattered screams and the ghost of good times, urban explorers venture out of curiosity and capture the moments and crumbling scenes. They share with us in a virtual urban exploration tour of this creepy abandoned amusement park – Six Flags New Orleans.

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.

U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate. While the United States spends billions on medical care, as of 2006, the US ranked 28th in the world in infant mortality, more than twice that of the lowest ranked countries.  (DHHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics.  Health United States 2010, Table 20, p. 131, February 2011.)

The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011  - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant.   Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster.  In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.

Spewing from the Fukushima reactor are radioactive isotopes including those of iodine (I-131), strontium (Sr-90) and cesium (Cs-134 and Cs-137) all of which are taken up in food and water.  Iodine is concentrated in the thyroid, Sr-90 in bones and teeth and Cs-134 and Cs-137 in soft tissues, including the heart.  The unborn and babies are more vulnerable because the cells are rapidly dividing and the delivered dose is proportionally larger than that delivered to an adult.

Data from Chernobyl, which exploded 25 years ago, clearly shows increased numbers of sick and weak newborns and increased numbers of deaths in the unborn and newborns, especially soon after the meltdown.  These occurred in Europe as well as the former Soviet Union. Similar findings are also seen in wildlife living in areas with increased radioactive fallout levels.

“M” found these stencils for sale at V & D, a large department store in Leiden, and sent me this snapshot. I think it goes without saying that this sort of thing would never fly in the states. 

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

This short-lived series surveyed great American icons, successful ad campaigns and products. Though artistically sound and well-written (and edited), the sales department at Signs Of The Times magazine didn't regard it as being cost-effective.

In the US, the sexualized female remains a target of horror and judgment in a culture that apparently obsesses about sexuality while bemoaning it. Which, for example, causes women to cover up beneath tents when breastfeeding in public.

The difference in attitudes between those aged 18 to 34 and those aged 55 and older was stark when it came to pornography, with 42 percent of the younger group polled by Gallup saying that it was morally acceptable, in contrast to 19 percent of those in the older group.
In general, Americans in the "broadest" sense agreed on certain behaviors they believe are morally wrong, Gallup reported.
For example, at least eight in 10 U.S. adults interviewed in the survey said extramarital affairs, polygamy, cloning humans and suicide were wrong, while least six in 10 people surveyed said pornography and cloning animals were morally wrong, Jones said.
On the question of gay and lesbian relationships, 66 percent of younger Americans said they were moral — 13 percentage points higher than among the older cohort.
While there is no final tally on the number of lesbian, gay, or bisexual Americans, those surveyed believe the number was higher than nine years ago, with half of those polled saying at least 20 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian.

When it comes to premarital sex, Americans aged 18 to 34 were even more enthusiastic, with 71 percent approving. But just 47 percent of older Americans approved of sex before marriage.

55 percent of Democrats, for example, said abortion was acceptable, while only 18 percent of Republicans believed abortion was morally OK.

Vermont is now the first state to pass legislation clearly allowing people to change the sex on their birth certificates without necessarily having surgery, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force announced on its blog Wednesday.
“Although some other states allow gender changes without proof of surgery in their policies, Vermont becomes the very first to have clear language in its statute that makes clear surgery is not necessary to update one’s birth certificate,” NGLTF wrote.
Senate bill, signed by Governor Peter Shumlin on May 18 and effective immediately, states that “surgical, hormonal, or other treatment appropriate for that individual for the purpose of gender transition shall constitute sufficient evidence for the court to issue an order that sexual reassignment has been completed.”

The trend against requiring surgery for identity documents is growing, with many states abandoning old-fashioned surgery requirements. The Department of State modernized its policy on passports in 2009. And, the policy for “Consular Reports of Birth Abroad,” which are federal birth certificates for U.S. citizens born outside of the U.S., also no longer requires proof of surgery.

Founded in September 2002, FAMILIES FOR FREEDOM is a New York-based multi-ethnic defense network by and for immigrants facing and fighting deportation. We are immigrant prisoners (detainees), former immigrant prisoners, their loved ones, or individuals at risk of deportation. We come from dozens of countries, across continents. FFF seeks to repeal the laws that are tearing apart our homes and neighborhoods; and to build the power of immigrant communities as communities of color, to provide a guiding voice in the growing movement for immigrant rights as human rights.

FFF has evolved into an organizing center against deportation. We are source of support, education, and campaigns for directly affected families and communities -- locally and nationally.

Federal law encourages states to keep juveniles out of adult jails. But Oregon gets around those guidelines with a legal loophole created by Measure 11, a tough-on-crime law Oregon voters passed in 1994. According to the nonprofit Partnership for Safety and Justice, 92 kids like Jasmine spend time in adult jails statewide in an average year.

A new bill, HB 2707, which the governor signed into law Friday, May 20, may reverse this unusual status quo in Oregon. But it still leaves the door open for counties to imprison teenagers in adult jails.

In a year where most votes split along hard partisan lines, the youth-in-jails bill passed the House and Senate with only a single vote against it (that would be Clackamas County Republican Fred Girod).

Under Measure 11, 16- and 17-year-olds who are tried as adults are held in adult jails before their trials. Strangely, even if they're convicted of adult crimes the youths are housed in juvenile facilities after their sentencing. But for that pretrial limbo, which can last over a year, the teens are held alongside adults, often in 23-hours-a-day solitary confinement for their own protection.

A nationwide study from the Campaign for Youth Justice showed that juveniles in adult jails are frequently victims of sexual assault and are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than when they're held in juvenile facilities.

Juvenile detention offers better mental health counseling and educational opportunities than adult facilities (the Multnomah County juvenile facility has 220 days of school a year), but costs are more than triple per inmate per day versus adult facilities. Some counties also lack enough beds for all the juveniles.

Of youths in the state juvenile justice system, 68 percent have a diagnosed mental health disorder and 80 percent have used alcohol or drugs.

Upset about invasive screening techniques at the airport, the Lone Star State was considering a bill that would make a TSA patdown that involves touching “the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person including through the clothing” a misdemeanor, allowing Texas law enforcement to arrest TSA officials and charge them with sexual harassment. It would have meant that TSA officials could be fined $4,000 and spend up to a year in jail for doing their jobs of feeling up prospective fliers.

The Transportation Security Administration was not happy when the bill was passed in the Texas House of Representatives, blogging in response that Texas is barred by the U.S. Constitution from regulating the federal government.

In a nation with 93 million obese people, a few ob-gyn doctors in South Florida now refuse to see otherwise healthy women solely because they are overweight.

Fifteen obstetrics-gynecology practices out of 105 polled by the Sun Sentinel said they have set weight cut-offs for new patients starting at 200 pounds or based on measures of obesity — and turn down women who are heavier.

Some of the doctors said the main reason was their exam tables or other equipment can't handle people over a certain weight. But at least six said they were trying to avoid obese patients because they have a higher risk of complications.

Kyle Pearce was charged with "obscene and indecent exposure of his person by exhibiting his penis and masturbating in plain view."
For his in-flight masturbatory shenanigans, Pearce faces a maximum sentence of 90 days in jail with a year of supervised release and a fine of up to $5,000.

These are recent stories submitted to my blog Stop Street Harassment. Across three years I’ve received hundreds of stories from women in 30 countries detailing the sexually explicit comments, following, groping, whistling, and public masturbation that men impose on them, simply because they are female and occupy public space.

The first set of 2010 Census Demographic Profiles are ready for viewing.  These profiles provide details about race and Hispanic groups, age, sex and housing status. The profiles will be released on a state-by-state basis for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

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