RANDY WEAVER: SIEGE AT RUBY RIDGE

By David Lohr

GOVERNMENT GONE WRONG

Ruby Ridge cabin, aerial view (AP)

In August of 1992 Americans tensely watched as events began to unfold on a remote ridge in Northern Idaho, involving a white separatist family and the FBI. Eleven days after it had begun, a 14-year-old boy, a 42-year-old mother, a federal marshal, and one yellow Labrador retriever had all been shot dead.

The incident ultimately led to one of the most intensive and controversial investigations in recent history. The FBI faced widespread resentment and Attorney General Janet Reno established a Justice Department task force to investigate what had happened. National debates on the case were said to have fueled anti-government sentiments, which eventually played a role in the Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Freemen conflict. Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the government building in Oklahoma City is said to be at least partially motivated by revenge for what happened at Ruby Ridge.

Prior to the incident, the Weaver family had moved to the remote mountaintop to escape what they viewed as a sinful world. Randy Weaver lived with his wife and four children in a cabin he himself built on Ruby Ridge, just 40 miles south of the Canadian border. The cabin had no electricity or running water. According to friends, the Weavers simply wanted to be left alone as they awaited Armageddon. While many may have viewed their intent as unusual, it appeared to be quite harmless to most who knew them.

Almost a decade later many questions remain: What went wrong at Ruby Ridge? Why did over 400 members of the FBI, military and local law enforcement converge on the mountain? Why did so many have to die? These and similar such questions are not easily answered, however; some answers may lay hidden within the details provided.

Text Messaging for the rest of us

Fox News Replaces Helen Thomas and AP in the front row seat

FCC, FDA Partner on Wireless Health IT

FCC, FDA Partner on Wireless Health IT
By Kenneth Corbin
July 27, 2010


The Federal Communications Commission and Food and Drug Administration have joined forces in an effort to promote the development and deployment of wireless technologies to improve health care and lower costs while also taking care to protect patients' safety.
Through the partnership, the agencies aim to streamline the approval process and regulatory requirements for wireless health IT device makers, spurring innovation and investment in an emerging sector of the medical industry.
Wireless health applications offer the potential to provide remote consults with specialists from distant medical centers, delivering a level of care beyond the reach for many rural Americans.
Similarly, medical monitoring applications can provide remote diagnostic information, such as a crop of smartphone apps that can check glucose levels in diabetics.
"The benefits that wireless technologies can provide to healthcare are clear, but to harness the full power of those benefits, we must navigate a delicate balance between innovation and safety and effectiveness," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a statement. "Working alongside the FCC, we can improve the efficiency of regulatory processes in areas where our jurisdictions overlap."
The agencies developed a set of operating principles (PDF available here) and a memorandum of understanding (PDF) clarifying that the agreement is limited to areas that come under the regulatory purview of both the FCC and FDA.
Under the agreement, each agency will establish a liaison officer who will be responsible for sharing information of mutual interest.
The joint effort on wireless health IT marks the first partnership between the two agencies, and broadly aims to pair the FCC's technical expertise overseeing areas such as spectrum with the FDA's focus on consumer safety.
"The FCC is responsible for overseeing the efficient use of the airwaves, and the FDA is responsible for the safety and efficacy of medical devices," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a speech at a health IT event announcing the partnership this week. "It's vitally important that we work together on issues where wireless meets medical."
The wireless health IT push builds on a set of recommendations included in the national broadband plan the FCC delivered to Congress in March, and extends the administration's advocacy of tapping advanced technology to overhaul the country's medical system.
In addition to the nearly $20 billion allocated to health IT initiatives in last year's economic stimulus bill, the administration has taken several steps to drive the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and other similar initiatives.
Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services issued the final set of rules to reward providers for using EHRs with Medicare and Medicaid payment bonuses.
EHRs are widely viewed as a path to reduce manual errors in patients' records and improve the coordination of care, while helping to flag for harmful drug interactions and reduce duplicate or unnecessary tests.
The new rules aim to clarify the certification criteria that vendors' EHR systems will have to meet in order to qualify for the incentives, and provide similar guidelines for doctors and hospitals.
HHS said it could pay out as much as $27 billion in Medicare and Medicaid bonuses to providers that adopt EHR systems that satisfy the requirements for "meaningful use" under the new regulations.
The same week, the FCC announced a major initiative to expand broadband access to doctors and health facilities operating in remote and rural areas. The program would reallocate as much as $400 million annually under the FCC's Universal Service Fund to deliver high-speed connectivity to more than 2,000 rural health-care facilities.
The commission noted that nearly 30 percent of rural clinics receiving federal funding don't have broadband service that's either fast or secure enough to handle health IT applications such as a remote consultation with a specialist or the transmission of data-intensive records like X-rays or MRIs.

Kenneth Corbin is an associate editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

Criminals to be weeded out of medical marijuana centers

written by: Jeffrey Wolf  Deborah Sherman
21 mins ago

DENVER - More than half of the medical marijuana
center owners in Colorado have criminal arrest or
conviction records for crimes like dealing drugs,
sexual assaults, burglaries and weapons, according
to statistics by the Drug Enforcement Agency
obtained by 9Wants to Know, but that will all change
on Sunday.
- Broomfield bans marijuana centers

The DEA says 18 percent of medical marijuana
center owners have been convicted of felonies.

"This business seems to have an inappropriate
number of people with criminal backgrounds
involved as business owners," Kevin Merrill,
assistant special agent in charge for the Denver field
division of the DEA, said. "I would be hard-pressed
to find any other business group where their
members have so many criminal violations, arrests
and convictions."

DEA statistics show while 8 percent of Colorado's
adult population has been arrested for drug crimes,
28 percent of the medical marijuana center owners
have drug histories.

The charges include 77 cases of assault, 22
burglaries, 34 cases of domestic violence, 11 rapes,
29 weapons charges and four arrests for murder,
attempted murder and/or involvement in a
homicide.

Those felons will be weeded out of the medical
marijuana business this weekend when new rules
take effect Sunday that prohibit anyone with a drug
felony conviction or anyone with a felony sentence
within the last five years from obtaining a medical
marijuana center license in Colorado.

Businesses that sell medical marijuana have been
commonly referred to as dispensaries, but the state
now official calls them centers.

Matt Obrochta, owner of Burnzwell Medical
Marijuana Center on Broadway in Denver, is now
scrambling to figure out what to do since he
received a five-year suspended sentence for
possessing pot, a felony, in 1998.

Obrochta did not want to comment on his old
conviction, but a representative of the medical
marijuana industry agreed to speak on behalf of
owners with criminal histories.

"They don't think it's fair," Sensible Colorado
Executive Director Brian Vicente said. "A lot of
people have been convicted of felonies or any crime
and they have done their time, they've paid their
debt to society and now want to move on and work
in this field and aren't able to do so."

Vicente believes someone with a criminal record for
marijuana may be best suited to work in the industry
because it shows they have experience working with
the drug.

"Many of those people the DEA arrested themselves
for growing marijuana legally under Colorado law,
so I don't think they're a credible source for
providing information about folks who are following
state law," Vicente said.

The DEA used public records, advertisements and
property records to collect the names of the owners
of medical marijuana centers. Then agents ran
criminal background checks to gather the data.

"The DEA investigates all drug crimes and marijuana

is still a schedule one and our job is to know who
we are dealing with because we may come into
contact with them at some time," Merrill said.

The state expects the new rules about felons along
with high licensing fees and in-state residency
requirements will reduce the number of medical
marijuana centers in the state by about 50 percent.

There are currently 1,100 medical marijuana centers
operating in Colorado, according to the Department
of Revenue.

DOR Senior Director Matt Cook is leading a team of
investigators for the Medical Marijuana Enforcement
Division that will be conducting an "exhaustive"
check of arrest records, business associations and
tax returns for anyone who applies for a medical
marijuana license.

"Anybody who has a prohibited conviction will not
be eligible to hold a license," Cook said. "They want
to make sure that the public has confidence in the
people that they're doing business with and that it's
not a drug cartel selling tainted medicine to them
they could harm them when they ingest it."

One of Cook's biggest concerns with the new
requirements is that some owners with criminal
backgrounds or drug cartels may try to hide their
ownership in a medical marijuana center.

"Those persons typically that would not qualify to
hold a license often times try and find somebody
else to front the business for them. They will fund
them through very elaborate lending schemes and
reap the benefits of the business," Cook said.

"It potentially may just push the true owners under
the carpet behind the closed door and make it even
more difficult for investigators to determine who
truly owns this," Merrill said.

The most abundant supply of marijuana is Mexican-
grown and is brought into and through Colorado by
poly-drug trafficking organizations, according to
the Office of National Drug Control Policy data in
June 2008.

In March, Erie Police arrested two suspected drug
runners on charges that they moved 64 pounds of
marijuana between Colorado and California
involving dispensaries.  One suspect, Max
Hernandez, owned the Denver dispensary

Colorado Compassionate Caregivers', according to Colorado

Secretary of State Records.

Hernandez and Bryan Mark Manard have been
charged in Weld County with possession of
marijuana and intent to distribute, both felonies.

Anyone who lies on their Colorado medical
marijuana center application will be arrested and
charged for filing a false instrument, Cook said.

The state application is 22 pages long and asks for
bank account numbers, education and marital
information.

"I don't even know what my high school diploma has
to do with providing medicine to patients, but
apparently it's one of the requirements," Carl
Wemhoff, president of Herbal Remedies Inc. in
Westminster, said.

Wemhoff says the application is so long and
complicated he has taken some of his employees off
of other projects to get it done.

"We've got a four-man team working day and night
for three weeks to get this done. It's that involved,"
Wemhoff said.

Wemhoff, who does not have a criminal history,
hopes to benefit from the new regulations by buying
up a couple of medical marijuana centers that will
be forced to shut down. In addition to no prior felony drug convictions,
there are several other automatic disqualifiers for
holding a license: if you haven't paid student loans
or are in arrears for your taxes or child support.

The state says any dispensary caught operating
without having applied for a state license as of Aug.
1 will be prevented from ever holding a Colorado
license.

Even though the change is coming over a weekend,
the Department of Revenue will be open on Saturday
and Sunday to accept and start processing business
applications.

The first license will be issued on July 1, 2011. Until
then, medical marijuana centers are allowed to
operate with their application paperwork.

If you have any news tips, please e-mail 9Wants to
Know Investigator Deborah Sherman at Deborah.
Sherman@9NEWS.com.

(KUSA-TV © 2010 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)

New gov't rules allow unapproved iPhone apps

By JOELLE TESSLER,
AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writer

1 hr 15 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally break electronic locks on their devices in order to download software applications that haven't been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday.
The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized uses. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing use of copyright-protected material.
In addition to jailbreaking, other exemptions announced Monday would:
• allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.
• allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.
• allow college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos.
• allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

‘Keep the Negroes Out of Most Classes Where There Are a Large Number of Girls’: The Unseen Power of the Ku Klux Klan and Standardized Testing at The University of Texas, 1899-1999

Thomas D. Russell 
University of Denver Sturm College of Law

March 22, 2010

U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-14 
Abstract:    
The paper’s title is a quotation from The University of Texas registrar nine days after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. This paper examines 20th-century techniques of racial domination at The University of Texas by crosscutting two narratives.

The first narrative that the paper presents is one of the development of bureaucratic or institutional forms of racial exclusion. The paper describes the university’s efforts to limit the application of the Brown v. Board of Education.

In the immediate years after the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, The University of Texas developed and instituted entrance exams that university officials knew would exclude a disproportionate number of African-American applicants. Publicly, the university presented the testing as race-neutral. The university stalled post-Brown integration until the exclusionary admissions testing was in place.

An explicit concern of the university in seeking to exclude African-American students during the 1950s was a racialized sexual concern about the university’s white women.

The second narrative is the story of William Stewart Simkins, a law professor at The University of Texas from 1899 to 1929. Professor Simkins helped to organize the Ku Klux Klan in Florida at the conclusion of the American Civil War, and he advocated his Klan past to Texas students.

Like the university registrar during the 1950s, Professor Simkins was explicitly concerned with the sexual defense of white women. Relying upon the analysis of historian Grace Elizabeth Hale, the paper links Professor Simkins’s advocacy of the Klan to the early 20th-century history of lynching and white supremacist violence.

During the 1950s, the memory and history of Professor Simkins supported the university’s resistance to integration. As the university faced pressure to admit African-American students, the university’s faculty council voted to name a dormitory after the Klansman and law professor. The dormitory carries his name to the present day. During this time period, alumni also presented the law school with a portrait of Professor Simkins. Portraits and a bust of Professor Simkins occupied prominent positions within the law school through the 1990s.

The sources for the paper are drawn largely from primary materials of the university’s archives, including the papers of the university’s Board of Regents, Chancellor, President, and faculty committees. The author completed this research during the 1990s while a member of The University of Texas School of Law faculty.
Keywords: legal history, University of Texas, Simkins, Ku Klux Klan, legal education, law professor, race, racism, standardized testing, admissions, integration, segregation, Brown v. Board of Education, Sweatt v. Painter, USSC, Supreme Court, Thomas D. Russell, Tom Russell
Working Paper Series

Date posted: April 05, 2010 ; Last revised: May 19, 2010

Suggested Citation

Russell, Thomas D., ‘Keep the Negroes Out of Most Classes Where There Are a Large Number of Girls’: The Unseen Power of the Ku Klux Klan and Standardized Testing at The University of Texas, 1899-1999 (March 22, 2010). U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-14. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1583606