Son says Romney was reluctant to run for president again: report

 Republican Mitt Romney's family had to convince him to make a second bid for the presidency because he was reluctant to run again after failing to secure his party's nomination in 2008, Romney's son told the Boston Globe on Sunday.
In an article that examined what went wrong with Romney's losing 2012 presidential campaign, Tagg Romney said his father Mitt said he had no intention of running again after he did not become the Republican presidential nominee in 2008.
Arizona Senator John McCain secured the Republican nomination that year and lost to Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential election.
In order to overcome his father's reluctance, Tagg Romney told the Globe he and his mother Ann worked to change his mind.
"He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life," Tagg Romney told the paper. "If he could have found someone else to take his place ... he would have been ecstatic to step aside."
Despite predictions that the 2012 election would be close, Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and businessman, fell well short of the 270 electoral votes needed to defeat President Obama.
In November, Obama won re-election with 332 electoral votes and won most of the battleground states, including Ohio and Florida.

Read More..

Deportations of illegal immigrants in 2012 reach new US record

The United States deported more than 400,000 illegal immigrants in 2012, the most of any year in the nation’s history, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports.
The record number, released Friday, is also important for another reason: It is a stinging reminder to Latinos that President Obama failed during his first term to pursue the comprehensive immigration reform that they seek.
The Obama administration framed its 2012 work in immigration enforcement as focused mainly on criminals – 55 percent of deportations came from convicted criminals, a record high – rather than on indiscriminately rounding up illegal immigrants and sending them home. ICE on Friday also issued new detention guidelines intended to emphasize legal action against those who have committed crimes above and beyond immigration violations.
Recommended: Second Amendment Quiz
“While the [fiscal year] 2012 removals indicate that we continue to make progress in focusing resources on criminal and priority aliens, we are constantly looking for ways to ensure that we are doing everything we can to utilize our resources in a way that maximizes public safety,” ICE Director John Morton said in a statement.
In four years, the Obama administration has deported three-quarters of the number of people that President George W. Bush’s administration did in eight. And unlike Mr. Bush, Obama made no concerted effort to reform the US immigration system – a history that’s not lost on the president’s Latino supporters.
"This is nothing to be proud of,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D) of Illinois, a leading lawmaker on immigration reform for a decade, in a statement on the deportation statistics.
While Representative Gutierrez lauded the crackdown on criminals as necessary, he said some 90,000 undocumented parents of American-born children continue to be deported each year.
“We must also realize that among these hundreds of thousands of deportations are parents and breadwinners and heads of American families that are assets to American communities and have committed no crimes,” the Gutierrez statement said. "Solving this problem in a humane and sensible way requires Congress to act on immigration reform and do what we have been unable to do for 25 or 30 years.”
The closest the Obama administration came to reshaping immigration policy was the summer 2012 implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, whereby some young unauthorized immigrants could gain a two-year deferral of deportation and access to work permits and driver's licenses.
Some 355,000 people have applied under the program, and just over 100,000 have been approved through mid-December, according to the latest data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. As many as 1.7 million undocumented immigrants could be eligible for the program over time, experts say.
While immigration advocates cheered the president's DACA order, they also remember his unfulfilled promise at the start of his term in 2009 to take on immigration reform, as well as the record number of deportations under his watch.
“The credibility of the president is on the line,” says Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “The president has to lead. The president has to show Republicans and Democrats that he’s serious about this and that he’s not just going to use it as a political lightning rod.”
Obama has promised to tackle immigration reform early in 2013, and congressional discussions about potential legislation are under way between lawmakers from both parties in the House and Senate.
If Obama doesn’t, Republicans will be eager to point out that Democrats once again broke their promises to some of the left’s key voting blocs.
“I just want to remind all of you, though, that the Democrats had two years to do something about immigration reform,” said Rep. Raul Labrador (R) of Idaho after a vote on a GOP-led bill that would have[would have? didnt that pass?] killed the diversity visa lottery in favor of more visas for highly educated immigrants in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.
“They had a White House. They had the House. They had the Senate. And they did nothing about immigration reform,” he said.
And that could make Latino and Asian voters, who sided overwhelmingly with Democrats in the 2012 election, susceptible to Republican overtures in the future.
“Everybody talks about the incredible turnout of the new American vote in 2012, but Latinos, Asians, and other voters are not die-hard Democrats,” Mr. Noorani says. “There’s a lot of space there for Republicans to step into.”
Until Obama and reform-minded members of Congress make good on their vows that 2013 will yield a comprehensive fix to America’s immigration system, however, Latino, Asian, and other pro-immigration forces will continue to feel uneasy about the high level of deportations under a Democratic president.

Read More..

Republicans Turn to An Unlikely Name for Inspiration: George W. Bush

As Republicans reassess their future in the presidential wilderness, seeking a message and messenger to resonate with a new generation of voters, one unlikely name has popped up as a role model: former President George W. Bush.
Prominent Republicans eager to rebuild the party in the wake of the 2012 election are pointing to Bush’s successful campaigns for Hispanic votes, his efforts to pass immigration reform, and his mantra of “compassionate conservatism.” Bush won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000 and at least 40 percent in 2004, a high-water mark for a Republican presidential candidate.
In contrast, Romney received only 27 percent of the Latino vote, after taking a hard-line approach to illegal immigration during the Republican presidential primaries, touting “self-deportation” for undocumented workers. In exit polls, a majority of voters said that Romney was out of touch with the American people and that his policies would favor the rich. While Romney beat Obama on questions of leadership, values, and vision, the president trounced him by 63 points when voters were asked which candidate “cares about people like me.”
These signs of wear and tear to the Republican brand are prompting some of Bush’s critics to acknowledge his political foresight and ability to connect with a diverse swath of Americans, although the economic crash and unpopular wars on his watch make it unlikely he will ever be held up as a great president.
“I think I owe an apology to George W. Bush,” wrote Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the conservative National Review Online, after the election. “I still don't like compassionate conservatism or its conception of the role of government. But given the election results, I have to acknowledge that Bush was more prescient than I appreciated at the time.”
The ebb in Bush-bashing could help pave the way for a 2016 presidential bid by his brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, another proponent of immigration reform with proven appeal in the Hispanic community. “The Bush family knows how to expand the party and how to win,” said GOP consultant Mark McKinnon, a former George W. Bush political aide, when asked about a possible Jeb Bush campaign. Voter wariness toward a third Bush administration could ease if the former president and his father, who served one term, are remembered less for their failures and more for their advocacy of “compassionate conservatism” and “a kinder, gentler nation.”
“I think all that certainly helps if Jeb decides to do so something down the road, though I think he will eventually be judged on his own,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who led the Florida Republican Party when Bush was governor.
President Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was tapped last week by the Republican National Committee to serve on a five-member committee examining what went wrong in the 2012 election. Two days earlier, a survey released by Resurgent Republic and the Hispanic Leadership Network found that a majority of Hispanic voters in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico  don’t think the GOP “respects” their values and concerns.
“One of the party’s biggest challenges going forward is the perception that Republicans don’t care about people, about minorities, about gays, about poor people,” Fleischer said. “President Bush regularly made a push to send welcoming messages, and one of the lessons of 2012 is that we have to demonstrate that we are an inclusive party.”
President Bush’s success with minority voters stemmed in large part from his two campaigns for governor in Texas. He liked to say, “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.” Unlike Romney, who invested little in Spanish-language advertising until the final two months of his campaign, Bush began reaching out to Hispanics early; he outspent his Democratic opponents in Spanish media in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
“I remember people grumbling about making calls in December 2003, but we kept pushing,” said Jennifer Korn, who led Bush’s Hispanic outreach in his 2004 campaign. The president’s upbeat Spanish-language ads depicted Latino families getting ahead in school and at work. “I’m with Bush because he understands my family,” was the theme of one spot.
Korn, who now serves as executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, said Republicans are constantly asking her how the party can win a bigger share of the Latino vote.
“I tell them we already did it,” she said. “President Obama just took Bush’s plan and updated it.”
Republicans are also looking at the groundwork that Bush laid on immigration reform. He has kept a low profile since leaving office, but he waded into the debate in a speech in Dallas last month. The legislation he backed in his second term would have increased border security, created a guest-worker program, and allowed illegal immigrants to earn citizenship after paying penalties and back taxes.
“America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time,” Bush said in Dallas. “As our nation debates the proper course of action related to immigration I hope we do so with a benevolent spirit and keep in mind the contributions of immigrants.”
Bush is even a presence in the current high-stakes budget negotiations between Capitol Hill and the White House. Although the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration for the wealthiest Americans have been a major sticking point, the tax policy it put in place for the vast majority of households has bipartisan support.
“When you consider that the Obama administration is talking about not whether to extend the Bush tax cuts but how much of them to extend, you see that Bush is still setting the agenda,” said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, who worked on Bush’s 2004 campaign.
While a possible presidential bid by Jeb Bush heightens the impact of his brother’s evolving legacy, it’s not unusual for a president’s image to change after leaving office. (Look at former President Clinton, who enjoyed positive ratings during most of his presidency, infuriated Obama supporters during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, and emerged after the election as a better Democratic spokesman than Obama.)  Gallup pegged Bush’s presidential approval at 25 percent at the end of his second term, the lowest ranking since Richard Nixon. But after President Obama spearheaded unpopular spending packages and health care reforms, Bush’s popularity began to tick up.
A Bloomberg News survey in late September showed Bush’s favorability at 46 percent, 3 points higher than Romney’s rating. Still, with a majority of voters viewing the former president unfavorably, Romney rarely, if ever, mentioned his name during the campaign. Asked to address the differences between him and the former president in one of the debates, Romney said, “I’m going to get us to a balanced budget. President Bush didn’t.” Obama seized on the comparison, taking the unusual tack of praising the Republican successor he had vilified in his first campaign to portray Romney as an extremist.
“George Bush didn’t propose turning Medicare into a voucher,” Obama said. “George Bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform. He didn’t call for self-deportation. George Bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.”
Democrats and moderate Republicans found themselves cheering for Bush, if only for a moment. A majority of voters said that Bush is more to blame for the current economic problems than Obama, according to exit polling. If Bush wasn’t the bigger scapegoat, Obama may not have won a second term.
Veterans of Bush’s campaigns and administrations say that while learning from his mistakes, Republicans should also take note of the political risks he took by proposing reforms to immigration and education laws and boosting funding for community health centers and AIDS outreach in Africa.
“One of the issues we ran into in the 2012 campaign is that there weren’t a lot of differences between Mitt Romney and Republican orthodoxy,” said Terry Nelson, Bush’s political director in the 2004 campaign. “I think that’s something Republican candidates in the future have to consider.  The public respects it when you can show you can stand up to your party on certain issues. Bush did that.

Read More..

Why the Election Polls Missed the Mark

In the days following an election in which his organization's polls proved to be inaccurate, Gallup Editor in Chief Frank Newport published a blog post warning of "a collective mess."
The results of the election--President Obama's 4-point victory--was not the only indication that Gallup's polls were biased in favor of Republican Mitt Romney. Websites that average and aggregate polls showed, on balance, that Obama was in a stronger position than Gallup's polls did, which allowed some observers to paint the longtime pollster as an outlier, both before and after the votes were tallied.
Newport, in his blog post three days after the election, saw these aggregators as a threat--not only to the Gallup Organization but to the entire for-profit (and nonprofit) public-opinion industry. "It's not easy nor cheap to conduct traditional random sample polls," Newport wrote. "It's much easier, cheaper, and mostly less risky to focus on aggregating and analyzing others' polls. Organizations that traditionally go to the expense and effort to conduct individual polls could, in theory, decide to put their efforts into aggregation and statistical analyses of other people's polls in the next election cycle and cut out their own polling. If many organizations make this seemingly rational decision, we could quickly be in a situation in which there are fewer and fewer polls left to aggregate and put into statistical models."
Newport's hypothetical--that because aggregators that averaged polls or used polls to model the election results more accurately predicted the results than his traditional, phone polling--sounds a little paranoid on its face. But it underscores the effects that increasing costs and decreasing budgets are having on media organizations that cover politics and typically pay for this kind of survey work.
It also reopens a long-standing debate over poll aggregation. Some pollsters and media organizations think the practice of averaging polls that survey different universes or are conducted using different methodologies is bunk. They warn that considering cheaper, less rigorous polling on the same plane as live-caller polls that randomly contact landline and cell-phone respondents allows the averages to be improperly influenced by less accurate surveys. And, ultimately, while the poll averages and poll-based forecasts accurately picked the winner, they underestimated the margin of Obama's victory by a significant magnitude.
But others, including the poll aggregators themselves, maintain that averaging polls, or using poll results as part of a predictive model, produces a more accurate forecast than considering any one individual poll. Before an election, it's difficult to predict which polls will be more accurate and which polls will miss the mark. Averaging results together also provides important context to media and consumers of political information when every new poll is released, proponents argue.
Ultimately, this is a debate that also goes beyond the statistical questions about averaging polls. It touches on the nature of horse-race journalism and the way in which we cover campaigns.
The First Number Crunchers
Real Clear Politics began the practice of averaging polls before the 2002 midterm elections. RCP was joined by Pollster.com--which is now part of The Huffington Post--four years later. "Pollster started in 2006, and we were really building on what Real Clear Politics did," founding Coeditor Mark Blumenthal said. The statistician Nate Silver began a similar practice in 2008, and his site, FiveThirtyEight, was acquired by The New York Times shortly thereafter. More recently, the left-leaning website Talking Points Memo started its PollTracker website before the 2012 election.
Each of these organizations differ in their approaches. Real Clear Politics does a more straightforward averaging of the most recent polls. TPM's PollTracker is an aggregation involving regression analysis that uses the most recent polls to project a trajectory for the race. FiveThirtyEight and HuffPost Pollster use polls, adjusting them for house effects--the degree to which a survey house's polls lean consistently in one direction or another. FiveThirtyEight also uses non-survey data to project the election results.
All four of these outlets underestimated Obama's margin of victory. Both Real Clear Politics and PollTracker had Obama ahead by only 0.7 percentage points in their final measurements. HuffPost Pollster had Obama leading by 1.5 points, while FiveThirtyEight was closest, showing Obama 2.5 points ahead of Romney in the last estimate. The aggregators that came closest to Obama's overall winning margin were the ones that attempted to account for pollsters' house effects.
"The polls, on balance, understated President Obama's support," said John McIntryre, cofounder of Real Clear Politics. "Our product is only as good as the quality and the quantity of the polls that we use."
These sorts of house effects were why HuffPost Pollster moved to a model that attempted to control for them, but their average still underestimated Obama's margin of victory by a sizable magnitude. "One of the main reasons why we moved to using a more complex model that controlled for house effects was precisely to prevent that phenomenon from happening," Blumenthal said. "Our goal is to minimize that to next to zero."
Pros and Cons
John Sides, a political-science professor at George Washington University and the coauthor of the blog The Monkey Cage, is one of the more prominent proponents of using polling averages--and a critic of press coverage that doesn't. "You're better off looking at averages, because any individual poll may be different from the truth because of sampling error and any idiosyncratic decisions that pollsters make," he said.
Sides believes that news coverage of campaigns tends to overemphasize some polls at the expense of others. In some cases, a poll is considered newsier because it shows something different than the balance of other polling in the race. In other words, polls that are outliers are given more attention than polls that hew more closely to the average, and those outlier polls are more likely to be inaccurate, Sides argues.
"I'm not overly optimistic that the averages are going to become a more important factor in news coverage. I think there are still strong incentives to seek drama where you can find it. And that may mean chasing an outlier," Sides said. "I would like to think that it would start to creep in at the margins. So instead of saying, 'Some polls say ___,' it may say, 'A new poll showed ___, but other polls haven't showed that yet.' "
But, as this year's results show, the averages aren't perfect, and they all showed a closer race than the actual outcome. Comparing polls that accurately predicted the election--the final poll from the Pew Research Center, for example--to the poll averages at the time would have made those more accurate polls appear to be outliers.
Part of that problem, at least when it comes to the national presidential race, were the daily tracking polls from Gallup and automated pollster Rasmussen Reports. Both firms reported results that were biased in favor of Romney this cycle, but by publishing a new result every day, their polls could be overrepresented in the averages. "The one sort of Achilles' heel of the regression trend line that we've done classically on our charts, there are two pollsters that contribute most of the data points," said Pollster's Blumenthal. "Not only does that make the overall aggregate off, it can also create apparent turns in the trend line that are [because] we've had nothing but Gallup and Rasmussen polls for the last 10 days."
In addition to the ubiquitousness of surveys from some firms, poll aggregators also worry that partisans may try to game the system by releasing polls with greater frequency, or by skewing or fabricating results. A prominent Democratic strategist told National Journal last month that some outside groups conducted polls in presidential swing states and released them to the public as a means of countering polls from Rasmussen Reports that were less favorable to President Obama. Blumenthal told National Journal that his biggest fear was not the increase in partisan polls but the possibility that groups would release rigged or fabricated results, as outfits like Strategic Vision and Research 2000 apparently have over the past handful of years, to influence the averages. "My biggest concern over the last two or three years has been the potential for the repeat of something like that," Blumenthal said.
"Champagne" of Polls
The blog post written by Gallup's Newport after the election demonstrates another source of opposition to poll averages: the pollsters themselves. Pollsters all make choices about how best to sample the probable or likely electorate, and those choices vary. Additionally, more expensive live-caller polls compete in the averages with cheaper automated-phone and Internet polls that may not make the same efforts to obtain random samples of voters; merits aside, those live-caller pollsters surely want to protect their businesses from less expensive competitors. Moreover, news organizations that spend tens of thousands of dollars to conduct a poll are likely to report and trumpet their poll's results over other surveys.
"If you're merely an information aggregator, it's very hard for me to see how you're adding value to the proposition," Gary Langer, whose firm Langer Research Associates produces polls for ABC News, told National Journal in a phone interview last month. "Averaging polls is like averaging champagne, Coca-Cola, and turpentine," Langer added.
Overall, 2012 brought more attention than ever to poll aggregators, with their methods becoming more sophisticated. But where do they go from here?
"I don't think there are great advances in averaging or modeling horse-race polling data," Blumenthal said. "We are ultimately reliant on the quality of the data that's collected."
There is evidence that data are becoming less reliable, but supporters of using polling averages argue the underlying changes that are leading to more variable polls bolster their case for using averages instead of individual poll results. "It's a powerful piece of information, and it's a very good piece of information, and I think it's better than any one single poll in terms of using it as a data point to analyze a race," said RCP's McIntyre.
The questions remain open over how much attention the averages will get in the next election--and how much attention they deserve. But, for the horse-race media, 2016 is right around the corner, and some aggregators have already started keeping score.

Read More..

The Tea Party's War on Itself Now Includes a Literal Armed Rebellion

It's been more than a month since the 2012 election was decided, but the postmortems continue, particularly for the Tea Party, which continues to have its relevance questioned after a tumultuous year. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times published Christmas Day stories about competing factions within the movement — gun-toting infights and all — and how they will fight to control its mission looking forward to 2014.
RELATED: Dick Armey Quit FreedomWorks Over a Book Deal, Really
The Post story in particular underscores how deep and bitter the division can run, even among the most devoted activists. In the middle of this year's election season, former House majority leader Dick Armey found himself at odds with fellow executives at FreedomWorks, the libertarian-leaning group they helped build and run together. Armey was the chairman, while author and activist Matt Kibbe is the president.
RELATED: The Big Takeaways From Glenn Beck's Rally
For years, the two men had created an effective partnership. But on September 10, according to the Post, Armey showed up at the FreedomWorks offices with his wife, and aide, and a unidentified man wearing a gun on his hip. The armed man escorted Kibbe and his top deputy out of the building, while Armey began suspending other staffers.
RELATED: House Republicans Open Up the Leadership Table to Freshmen
However, two weeks later, it was Armey who found himself forced out. A member of the board of director threw his support behind Kibbe, pledging $8 million in new donations to FreedomWorks, which expanded into a super-PAC this election cycle, if Armey resigned and the suspended workers returned to their jobs. That's a lot more money than what Politico originally reported as a spat over a book deal.
RELATED: What We Can Learn from the 'Most Offensive Political Ad Ever'
In addition to just being plain scary — the incident happened just two weeks after a man had been shot trying to break into the Family Research Council, another conservative lobbying group — the tale of Armey and the gun-wielding suspensions also raises questions about just who is really running the Tea Party movement. FreedomWorks has long portrayed itself as a grassroots organization, yet the donation shows how it's really become a handful of wealthy individuals who are calling the shots for these groups. The man behind the pledge, Illinois millionaire Richard Stephenson, gave more than $12 million to FreedomWorks donations before this election cycle, funneling the money through two dummy corporations set up just one day apart in Tennessee.
RELATED: It's Not Class Warfare If You're Just Bad at Math
The Times story, meanwhile, examines how much of the Tea Party's efforts are being redirected from major nationwide issues like taxes and Obamacare, to smaller pet causes on the state or local level. Some are pushing states to nullify health care law, while others are pursuing voter fraud cases. Meanwhile, others are focusing on individual races, which can make the Tea Party a greater election headache for moderate Republicans than Democratic opponents.
The strength of the Tea Party has always worked better when directed at smaller campaigns than through national causes. And those smaller campaign are often the pet causes of the millionaires who fund their activities. Stephenson founded Cancer Treatment Centers of America, a for-profit health care company. (Kibbe and Stephenson became close after Kibbe was treated at his centers.) One of biggest issues for FreedomWorks has been the repeal of Obamacare. That's not happening any time soon, but Stephenson, FreedomWorks, and the other Tea Party activists aren't giving up; they're just trying a different path.

Read More..

Russia: Syrian chemical weapons under control

 Russia's foreign minister says the Syrian government has consolidated its chemical weapons in one or two locations amid a rebel onslaught.
Sergey Lavrov says Russia, which has military advisers training Syria's military, has kept close watch over its chemical arsenal. He says the Syrian government has moved them from many arsenals to just "one or two centers" to properly safeguard them.
U.S. intelligence says the regime may be readying chemical weapons and could be desperate enough to use them. Both Israel and the U.S. have also expressed concerns they could fall into militant hands if the regime crumbles.
Lavrov also told reporters on a flight from an EU summit late Friday that countries in the region had asked Russia to convey an offer of safe passage to President Bashar Assad.

Read More..

Kate and William to spend Christmas Day with her parents

 Prince William and his pregnant wife Kate will spend Christmas Day with her parents, their office said on Saturday, in a break with the tradition of royals joining The Queen at her country estate at Sandringham.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will celebrate in private with Carole and Michael Middleton at their home in the village of Bucklebury, about 50 miles (80 km) west of London.
"The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will spend Christmas Day privately with the Middleton family," a St James's Palace spokesman said.
The couple's decision was taken with the approval of the Queen. They are expected to visit Sandringham, in eastern England, for part of the Christmas holiday.
Kate, 30, who married the second-in-line to the throne in April 2011, spent four days in hospital this month with an acute form of morning sickness.
Members of the British royal family usually spend Christmas at Sandringham and stay until February, following a custom set by Queen Elizabeth's father and grandfather. Kate and William spent Christmas there last year, meeting scores of well-wishers.
The Middletons are likely to join millions of Britons in watching Queen Elizabeth's annual Christmas broadcast, a tradition that her grandfather George V started in 1932.
For the first time, the monarch has recorded her television broadcast in 3D. It will be shown at 1500 GMT on December 25.

Read More..

UK prosecutors consider charges over royal hoax call

 British detectives investigating the death of a nurse found hanged after she took a prank phone call at a hospital treating Prince William's pregnant wife Kate have passed an evidence file to prosecutors, police said on Saturday.
Public prosecutors must decide whether the case is strong enough to bring charges over a stunt that was condemned around the world and fuelled concerns about media ethics.
Indian-born Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found hanging in her hospital lodgings in London, days after she answered the hoax call from an Australian radio station, an inquest heard.
She put the call through to a colleague who disclosed details of the Duchess of Cambridge's condition during treatment for an extreme form of morning sickness in the early stages of pregnancy.
"Officers submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for them to consider whether any potential offences may have been committed by making the hoax call," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
A CPS spokesman confirmed it had received the file, but declined to comment on the timing or nature of possible charges.
"That is what we will be considering," he said.
Prime Minister David Cameron has described the case as a "complete tragedy" and has said many lessons will have to be learned from the nurse's death.
Australia's media regulator has launched an investigation into the phone call. Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of radio station 2Day FM, has apologised for the stunt.
Britain's own media is already under pressure to agree a new system of self-regulation and avoid state intervention following a damning inquiry into reporting practices.
The presenters who made the call, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, have apologised for their actions.

Read More..

Prince William to spend Christmas with the in-laws

 Prince William will spend Christmas with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury, royal officials said Saturday.
That means a family Christmas for the Duchess of Cambridge, who was recently hospitalized after suffering from severe morning sickness.
A statement from St. James' Palace, William's official residence, didn't go into much detail, saying only that the prince and Kate would spend their time in Bucklebury "privately." But a recent article penned by Kate's sister, Pippa Middleton, gave some insight into what a Bucklebury holiday might look like for the royal pair.
"The Middletons' Christmas should be blissfully calm. We're good at keeping each other's spirits up," Pippa wrote in the most recent edition of Britain's Spectator magazine. She added that her father, Michael, liked to surprise the family with bizarre costumes.
"He buys a new costume each year and typically gets a bit carried away — a couple of Christmases ago, he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit," she wrote.
British royals traditionally spend the holidays at Sandringham, a vast estate in eastern England, and a spokesman for William said that royal couple would pay a visit at some point over the festive season. He noted that William's absence from Sandringham had been approved by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and her husband, Prince Philip.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because palace rules forbid his identification in the press.

Read More..

Pope pardons ex-butler who stole, leaked documents

 Pope Benedict XVI granted his former butler a Christmas pardon Saturday, forgiving him in person during a jailhouse meeting for stealing and leaking his private papers in one of the gravest Vatican security breaches in recent times.
After the 15-minute meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children. The Vatican said he couldn't continue living or working in the Vatican, but said it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon.
"This is a paternal gesture toward someone with whom the pope for many years shared daily life," according to a statement from the Vatican secretariat of state.
The pardon closes a painful and embarrassing chapter for the Vatican, capping a sensational, Hollywood-like scandal that exposed power struggles, intrigue and allegations of corruption and homosexual liaisons in the highest levels of the Catholic Church.
Gabriele, 46, was arrested May 23 after Vatican police found what they called an "enormous" stash of papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican tribunal on Oct. 6 and has been serving his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks.
He told Vatican investigators he gave the documents to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and thought that exposing it publicly would put the church back on the right track.
During the trial, Gabriele testified that he loved the pope "as a son loves his father" and said he never meant to hurt the pontiff or the church. A photograph taken during the meeting Saturday — the first between Benedict and his once trusted butler since his arrest — showed Gabriele dressed in his typical dark gray suit, smiling.
The publication of the leaked documents, first on Italian television then in Nuzzi's book "His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers" convulsed the Vatican all year, a devastating betrayal of the pope from within his papal family that exposed the unseemly side of the Catholic Church's governance.
The papal pardon had been widely expected before Christmas, and the jailhouse meeting Benedict used to personally deliver it recalled the image of Pope John Paul II visiting Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981, while he served his sentence in an Italian prison.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "intense" and "personal" and said that during it Benedict "communicated to him in person that he had accepted his request for pardon, commuting his sentence."
Lombardi said the Vatican hoped the Benedict's pardon and Gabriele's freedom would allow the Holy See to return to work "in an atmosphere of serenity."
None of the leaked documents threatened the papacy. Most were of interest only to Italians, as they concerned relations between Italy and the Vatican and a few local scandals and personalities. Their main aim appeared to be to discredit Benedict's trusted No. 2, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Vatican officials have said the theft, though, shattered the confidentiality that typically governs correspondence with the pope. Cardinals, bishops and everyday laymen write to him about spiritual and practical matters assuming that their words will be treated with the discretion for which the Holy See is known.
As a result, the leaks prompted a remarkable reaction, with the pope naming a commission of three cardinals to investigate alongside Vatican prosecutors. Italian news reports have said new security measures and personnel checks have been put in place to prevent a repeat offense.
Gabriele insisted he acted alone, with no accomplices, but it remains an open question whether any other heads will roll. Technically the criminal investigation remains open, and few in the Vatican believe Gabriele could have construed such a plot without at least the endorsement if not the outright help of others. But Lombardi said he had no new information to release about any new investigative leads, saying the pardon "closed a sad and painful chapter" for the Holy See.
Nuzzi, who has supported Gabriele as a hero for having exposed corruption in the Vatican, tweeted Saturday that it appeared the butler was thrilled to speak with the pope and go home. "Unending joy for him, but the problems of the curia and power remain," he wrote, referring to the Vatican bureaucracy.
A Vatican computer expert, Claudio Sciarpelletti, was convicted Nov. 10 of aiding and abetting Gabriele by changing his testimony to Vatican investigators about the origins of an envelope with Gabriele's name on it that was found in his desk. His two-month sentence was suspended. Lombardi said a pardon was expected for him as well. He recently returned to work in the Vatican.
Benedict met this past week with the cardinals who investigated the origins of the leaks, but it wasn't known if they provided him with any further updates or were merely meeting ahead of the expected pardon for Gabriele.
As supreme executive, legislator and judge in Vatican City, the pope had the power to pardon Gabriele at any time. The only question was when.

Read More..

Europe mulls banning 'boxes' for abandoned babies

German pastor Gabriele Stangl says she will never forget the harrowing confession she heard in 1999. A woman said she had been brutally raped, got pregnant and had a baby. Then she killed it and buried it in the woods near Berlin.
Stangl wanted to do something to help women in such desperate situations. So the following year, she convinced Berlin's Waldfriede Hospital to create the city's first so-called "baby box." The box is actually a warm incubator that can be opened from an outside wall of a hospital where a desperate parent can anonymously leave an unwanted infant.
A small flap opens into the box, equipped with a motion detector. An alarm goes off in the hospital to alert staff two minutes after a baby is left.
"The mother has enough time to leave without anyone seeing her," Stangl said. "The important thing is that her baby is now in a safe place."
Baby boxes are a revival of the medieval "foundling wheels," where unwanted infants were left in revolving church doors. In recent years, there has been an increase in these contraptions — also called hatches, windows or slots in some countries — and at least 11 European nations now have them, according to United Nations figures. They are technically illegal, but mostly operate in a gray zone as authorities turn a blind eye.
But they have drawn the attention of human rights advocates who think they are bad for the children and merely avoid dealing with the problems that lead to child abandonment. At a meeting last month, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child said baby boxes should be banned and is pushing that agenda to the European Parliament.
There are nearly 100 baby boxes in Germany. Poland and the Czech Republic each have more than 40 while Italy, Lithuania, Russia and Slovakia have about 10 each. There are two in Switzerland, one in Belgium and one being planned in the Netherlands.
In the last decade, hundreds of babies have been abandoned this way; it's estimated one or two infants are typically left at each location every year, though exact figures aren't available.
"They are a bad message for society," said Maria Herczog, a Hungarian child psychologist on the U.N. committee. "These boxes violate children's rights and also the rights of parents to get help from the state to raise their families," she said.
"Instead of providing help and addressing some of the social problems and poverty behind these situations, we're telling people they can just leave their baby and run away."
She said the practice encourages women to have children without getting medical care. "It's paradoxical that it's OK for women to give up their babies by putting them in a box, but if they were to have them in a hospital and walk away, that's a crime," Herczog said. She said the committee is now discussing the issue with the European Parliament and is also asking countries which allow the practice to shut them down.
Herczog also said it's wrong to assume only mothers are abandoning these children and that sometimes they may be forced into giving up children they might otherwise have kept. "We have data to show that in some cases it's pimps, a male relative or someone who's exploiting the woman," she said.
In some countries — Australia, Canada and Britain — it is illegal to abandon an infant anywhere. Yet, in the U.S. there are "safe haven" laws that allow parents to anonymously give up an infant in a secure place like a hospital or police department. A handful of other countries including Japan and Slovakia have similar provisions.
Countries that support this anonymous abandonment method contend they save lives. In a letter responding to U.N. concerns, more than two dozen Czech politicians said they "strongly disagreed" with the proposed ban. "The primary aim of baby hatches, which (have) already saved hundreds of newborns, is to protect their right to life and protect their human rights," the letter said.
However, limited academic surveys suggest this hasn't reduced the murder of infants. There are about 30 to 60 infanticides in Germany every year, a number that has been relatively unchanged for years, even after the arrival of baby boxes. That's similar to the per capita rate in Britain where there is no such option.
Across Germany, there is considerable public support for the boxes, particularly after several high-profile cases of infanticide, including the grisly discovery several years ago of the decomposed remains of nine infants stuffed into flower pots in Brandenburg.
Officials at several facilities with baby boxes say biological parents sometimes name the infant being abandoned. "The girl is called Sarah," read one note left with a baby in Lubeck, Germany in 2003. "I have many problems and a life with Sarah is just not possible," the letter said.
The secretive nature also means few restrictions on who gets dropped off, even though the boxes are intended for newborns. Friederike Garbe, who oversees a baby box in Lubeck, found two young boys crying there last November. "One was about four months old and his brother was already sitting up," she said. The older boy was about 15 months old and could say "Mama."
Still, Germany's health ministry is considering other options. "We want to replace the necessity for the baby boxes by implementing a rule to allow women to give birth anonymously that will allow them to give up the child for adoption," said Christopher Steegmans, a ministry spokesman.
Austria, France, and Italy allow women to give birth anonymously and leave the baby in the hospital to be adopted. Germany and Britain sometimes allow this under certain circumstances even though it is technically illegal. Eleven other nations grant women a "concealed delivery" that hides their identities when they give birth to their babies, who are then given up for adoption. But the women are supposed to leave their name and contact information for official records that may be given one day to the children if they request it after age 18.
For German couple Andy and Astrid, an abandoned infant in a baby box near the city of Fulda ended their two-year wait to adopt a child nearly a decade ago.
"We were told about him on a Sunday and then visited him the next day in the hospital," said Astrid, a 37-year-old teacher, who along with her husband, agreed to talk with The Associated Press if their last names were not used to protect the identity of their child. The couple quietly snapped a few photos of the baby boy they later named Jan. He weighed just over 7 pounds when he was placed in the baby box, wrapped in two small towels.
When Jan started asking questions about where he came from around age 2, his parents explained another woman had given birth to him. They showed him the photos taken at the hospital, introduced him to the nurses there and showed him the baby box where he had been left.
Earlier this year, the couple began the procedure to adopt a second child, a boy whose mother gave birth anonymously so she could give him up for adoption.
Astrid said Jan, now 8, loves football, tractors and anything to do with the farming that he sees daily in their rural community. She said it's not so important for her and her husband to know who his biological parents are.
But for Jan, "it would be nice to know that he could meet them if he wanted to," she said. "I want that for him, but there is no possibility to find out who they were."

Read More..

Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.
Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.
The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.
The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.
"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.
Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.
More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.
"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.
Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.
The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.
Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.
A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.
Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

Read More..

U.S. kids getting recommended amount of sleep: study

 Children in the U.S. appear to be getting as much shut-eye as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends, according to a new study.
"We can't say this is the amount that they should be sleeping," said Jessica Williams, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"All we could really do is compare our estimated norms with what is recommended, and it seems like it falls pretty well in line with the recommendations," she told Reuters Health.
Williams and her colleagues point out in their study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, that there has been concern that U.S. kids are getting too little sleep.
Insufficient sleep has been tied to all sorts of issues in kids and teens, from behavior problems to heart health risks (see Reuters Health reports of October 2, 2012 and October 16, 2012).
But there isn't a lot of hard evidence on how much shut-eye children typically get, Williams said, so the group set out to get an estimate of average sleep duration from birth to age 18.
The researchers gathered data from a nationwide survey that has tracked families for decades.
For this study, they focused on parents' reports of their children's sleep, beginning in 1997.
At the time, 2,832 children were included. In 2002 and 2007 the families were surveyed again and there were 2,520 and 1,424 children included, respectively.
Dr. Maurice Ohayon, director of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center in Palo Alto, California, said one of the big strengths of the study is that it tracked changes in sleep among the same children as they aged.
"We have an evolution of the sleep during the childhood," said Ohayon, who was not involved in the study. "That is the unique thing."
Williams's team found that until their second birthday, babies in the study slept an average of 12 to 14 hours during each 24-hour period.
By age four that had dropped to about 11 hours of sleep and by age 10, to 10 hours. By age 16, kids were getting an average of about nine hours of sleep per night.
The findings suggest most kids' sleep habits are in step with government guidelines.
According to the CDC, toddlers should be getting 12 to 14 hours of sleep. Preschoolers should get 11 to 13 hours of sleep, and adolescents age 10 to 17 should get 8.5 to 9.5 hours.
The researchers didn't find any differences in the amount of sleep between boys and girls, and only a slight gap between white and Hispanic kids.
Hispanic children tended to sleep 19 minutes longer than white children after age nine, but Williams said that difference is too small to matter for individual kids.
Parent reports of how much sleep their kids get are not perfectly accurate, and they often can't describe the quality of sleep, such as whether kids wake up in the night. Williams said it's still possible individual children aren't sleeping enough, because the study could only measure reports of sleep duration, and not sleep quality.
Tracking sleep in a laboratory is more precise, but would cost too much for a study this size, said Ohayon.
He told Reuters Health the study still offers a good sense of how much sleep children typically get, which is valuable in helping to gauge whether a child has a sleep disorder.
"What we are hoping to do with these norms is give some sort of reference to be used by clinicians and parents to see if children fall far from average," said Williams.

Read More..

Gay Men, Moms Sue NJ Conversion Therapists for Fraud

Four gay men and two of their mothers filed a lawsuit today against a New Jersey conversion therapy group that claims to rid men of same-sex attractions and turn them straight.
The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of New Jersey Hudson County, alleges that methods used by the Jersey City-based Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing (JONAH) do not work and constitute fraud under the state's consumer protection laws.
Arthur Goldberg, JONAH's co-director, and Alan Downing, a "life coach" who provides therapy sessions, were also named in the suit.
The plaintiffs include Michael Ferguson, Benjamin Unger, Sheldon Bruck and Chaim Levin, all of whom used the services of JONAH when they were in their teens or young 20s.
Two of the men's mothers, Jo Bruck and Bella Levin, who paid for therapy sessions that could cost up to $10,000 a year, were also plaintiffs.
One of the plaintiffs alleges that therapy sessions that involved a virtual "strip tease" in front of an older male counselor, as well as reliving abuse and homophobia were "humiliating."
They are seeking declaratory, injunctive and an undisclosed amount of monetary relief, as well as court costs, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs have received legal help from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which claims in the lawsuit that conversion therapy is a dangerous practice that has been "discredited or highly criticized" by every major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional organization.
Three of the young plaintiffs are from an ultra orthodox Jewish background; Ferguson came from a Mormon background and met Downing at a "Journey Into Manhood" retreat, according to the lawsuit.
JONAH appears to cater to orthodox Jews, but its methods "do not have a strong religious aspect," according to SPLC lawyer Sam Wolfe.
The lawsuit alleges that some of the methods used included: telling boys to beat a pillow, the "effigy of the client's mother," with a tennis racket; encouraging "cuddling" between younger clients and older male counselors; and even instructing attendees to remove their clothing and hold their penis in front of Downing.
Attendees were also subjected to ridicule as "faggots" and "homos" in mock locker room and gym class role playing, according to the lawsuit.
"It's definitely cruel and unusual and doesn't work," said Wolfe. "They are peddling bogus techniques that have no foundation in science and are basically ridiculous and even harmful."
Wolfe paraphrased JONAH's message as: "All you have to do is put in the work to overcome your sexual attractions. If you follow our program your true orientation emerges and will turn you into a straight person."
"Often if what the conversion therapist tells them doesn't work, it's their fault," Wolfe added.
In 2008, when the plaintiffs were seeking help from JONAH, the cost of an individual therapy session was $100 and for a group session, $60. JONAH also "strongly pushed" attending weekend retreats that could cost as much as $700, said Wolfe.
Arthur Goldberg said he "knows nothing about the lawsuit," which was filed this morning, and referred ABCNews.com to JONAH's website.
"We have a lot of people who were a success and were healed," he said of JONAH's 14 years in service. "Hundreds of the clients we serve are satisfied ... Our therapy is very conventional."
When asked about the group's practices, he said, "I can't tell you about the methodology." Goldberg admitted he had "no background specifically in counseling."
"I am the administrator," he said. "I used to teach family law."
When asked about instructing boys to take off their clothes, he said, "I know nothing about that."
Goldberg also said he had "no idea" how to reach Downing because he was an "independent contractor."
According to JONAH's mission statement on its website, the nonprofit group is "dedicated to educating the world-wide Jewish community about the social, cultural and emotional factors which lead to same-sex attractions."
"Through psychological and spiritual counseling, peer support, and self-empowerment, JONAH seeks to reunify families, to heal the wounds surrounding homosexuality, and to provide hope," the statement reads.
JONAH's Goldberg, who runs the business side of the nonprofit, says on the website that "change from homosexual to heterosexual is possible … homosexuality is a learned behavior which can be unlearned, and that healing is a lifelong process."
According to the lawsuit, JONAH cites the "scientific" work of Joseph Nicolosi, one of the primary proponents of conversion therapy and Richard A. Cohen, who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association in 2002 for "multiple ethical violations."
Nicolosi's methodology is based on the belief that a weak father-son relationship and a dominating mother contribute to homosexuality. He advocates "rough and tumble games," as well as father-son showers, according to the lawsuit.
Cohen uses a technique called "bioenergetics" that includes having male patients beat a pillow, which represents their mother, as a way of stopping same-sex attraction, according to the lawsuit.
Conversion therapists also cite child abuse and bullying as a "primary cause" of homosexuality, according to the lawsuit.
APA Calls Gay Conversion Therapy Risky
The American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization, among other mental health groups, have cited the potential risks of reparation therapy, including "depression, anxiety [and] self-destructive behavior," according to the lawsuit.
Chaim Levin, the most vocal of the plaintiffs, is now 23 and a gay rights advocate who writes a blog, Gotta Give 'Em Hope.
He grew up in a Jewish ultra orthodox community in Brooklyn where religious leaders threw him out of the Hebrew-speaking yeshiva at the age of 17, when they learned he was gay.
Levin told ABCNews.com that he had been abused as a boy and that he was "confused" by his sexuality and took a rabbi's advice and began 18 months of gay conversion therapy at JONAH.
[Levin filed a civil lawsuit against his cousin in July, alleging he was abused for three years from the time he was 6.]
When Levin met co-director Goldberg, he said the defendant told him JONAH could change his sexual orientation, "as long as I tried hard enough and put enough effort into it."
"He told me, 'You will marry a woman and have a straight life,'" said Levin.
"Given where I came from, with three older siblings who were married with kids and not knowing any gay people or English, I was sure I could change," he said. "That was the theology."
Levin first did a retreat with Downing, then saw him weekly at therapy sessions in Jersey City.
"A lot of the therapy involves reliving the experience," he said. Levin alleges he was forced to relive the sexual abuse by his cousin, "with no counseling afterwards."
But the most "humiliating" experience, the one that Levin alleges made him quit therapy, was being asked by Downing to take off his clothes, article by article and told to touch his "private parts" -- to hold his penis in front of a mirror to "be in touch with my masculinity."
"I told him I wasn't comfortable, but I desperately wanted to change and was ready to do anything," said Levin. Afterward, he said he felt "degraded and violated."
Today, Levin no longer identifies as orthodox, but said his parents have been "supportive" of the lawsuit.
Some Jewish denominations and many congregations are inclusive of homosexual congregants, and even New York's orthodox communities are more open-minded now, according to Levin.
"I had gone for help and they had misrepresented themselves," he said.

Read More..

How Social and Emotional Learning Could Harm Our Kids

Editor's note: The following is a critique of a social and emotional learning program called MindUP that I have covered in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit " Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control"). Please also read a response to this critique, posted separately, from MindUP's Rebecca Calos. I hope this debate provides food for thought about how to best encourage healthy social and emotional development in our children.
By Tina Olesen
"Self-regulation" is the latest buzz word in education, and the MindUP curriculum for schools, conceived by actor Goldie Hawn, capitalizes on it. MindUP is marketed to teachers as a means of helping children to develop self-regulation, which is another way of saying "self-control." The program's "core practice" involves teaching children focused breathing techniques while they also practice non-judgmental awareness of their thoughts, which is supposed to help them calm down and be less anxious. Hawn's curriculum is also supposed to make children feel happier and more optimistic. This is all purported to help them to be better able to learn. The truth is that MindUP can interfere with a child's innate self-regulator, the conscience, impeding his moral development and thus his ability to learn. Rather than help him develop self-control, it trains him to manipulate his mind and manipulate others to get pleasurable feelings for himself.
The "core practice" taught in MindUP is akin to certain forms of Buddhist-style mindfulness meditation including Anapanasati and Samadhi. In MindUP, the teacher strikes a Zenergy chime, and students are generally asked to sit cross legged, palms up and eyes closed. They are to direct their attention to the sound of the chime and focus intently on their breathing. The chime can gradually evoke a conditioned response in the children, as similar tools do in Buddhist monks. Teachers are encouraged to use this core practice several times a day. Mindfulness meditation such as this can be a way of bringing the mind into an altered state of consciousness. Many people who practice meditation have encountered unexpected negative side effects such as a sensation of being disconnected from one's body or from reality, among other frightening reactions. Teachers of MindUP are exposing children to these potential dangers.
To teach a child to practice non-judgmental awareness is to risk interfering with the child's ability to heed his sense of right and wrong. A child must make judgements to choose between right and wrong actions. When he acts in accordance with his sense of what is right, he grows in moral character, and develops greater self-control. While MindUP claims to be teaching non-judgmental awareness of thoughts and feelings, it actually teaches a child to judge any thought or feeling besides optimism and happiness as bad. It shows him how to escape the warnings of his conscience with pleasurable feelings--to make himself feel good even when he has done or experienced something that he ought to feel bad about. The program even encourages a child to do things for others with the motive of getting a pleasurable sensation, a dopamine high, for himself. Thus, rather than practicing self-control, children instead practice self-indulgence. They learn to escape from reality and difficult relationships, rather than working through them.
The way to help the child develop real self-control is tried and true: a caring adult patiently and unflaggingly commits to the moral training of that child. Directing, warning, correcting and disciplining day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, the adult encourages the child to do what is right, whether or not it feels good. When a child consistently chooses to act in accordance with what is right, he develops moral character. As he develops moral character, he becomes increasingly capable of governing himself and applying himself to his studies, and he develops the self-control required for learning. This can be a long and arduous process that requires self-sacrifice and much patience on the part of a parent or teacher. There are no short cuts. As Swiss philosopher Henri-Fr?d?ric Amiel once said, "The test of every religious, political or educational system is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal." As a society, we risk injury to our children's consciences at our own peril.
Tina Olesen is a school teacher on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. She examined the MindUP curriculum after hearing about it in her local school district.

Read More..

Egypt opposition alleges vote fraud in referendum

Egypt's opposition said Sunday it will keep fighting the Islamist-backed constitution after the Muslim Brotherhood, the main group backing the charter, claimed it passed with a 64 percent "yes" vote in a referendum.
The opposition alleged vote fraud and demanded an investigation — a sign that the referendum will not end the turmoil that has roiled this country for nearly two years since the uprising that ousted authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak. Many Egyptians, especially the tens of millions who live in extreme poverty, had hoped the new constitution might usher in a period of more stability.
A heated political debate over the past month leading up to the referendum at times erupted into deadly street battles. There were no mass opposition demonstrations on Sunday after the unofficial results came out.
Renewed violence and political tensions have further imperiled Egypt's already precarious economy, reeling from dwindling resources and a cash-strapped government whose plans to borrow from the International Monetary Fund had to be pushed back because of the turmoil.
The finance ministry said Sunday the budget deficit reached $13 billion in the five months from July-November, about 4.5 percent higher compared to the same period last year.
Official results of the referendum are not expected until Monday. If the unofficial numbers are confirmed, it will be a victory Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who is from the Brotherhood.
But the opposition allegations look likely to prolong the fight. Beyond allegations of fraud, the opposition will likely challenge new laws issued on the basis of the constitution as well as Morsi's economic policies.
"The referendum is not the end game. It is only a battle in this long struggle for the future of Egypt," said the National Salvation Front, the main opposition group. "We will not allow a change to the identity of Egypt or the return of the age of tyranny."
The opposition claims the new constitution seeks to enshrine Islamic rule in Egypt and accuses the Islamists of trying to monopolize power.
Critics say it does not sufficiently protect the rights of women and minority groups and empowers Muslim clerics by giving them a say over legislation. Some articles were also seen as tailored to get rid of Islamists' enemies and undermine the freedom of labor unions.
The latest political battle began with Morsi's Nov. 22 decrees that gave him powers to protect the Islamist-dominated panel writing the constitution and dismiss the country's top prosecutor, a holdover from the Mubarak era.
Although Morsi subsequently rescinded the powers that gave him immunity from judicial oversight, his decision to replace the prosecutor general was viewed by many in the judiciary as trampling over their powers. Hundreds of prosecutors held a rally Sunday demanding the new, Morsi-appointed prosecutor general quit, days after he retracted his resignation claiming it was rendered under pressure.
The prosecutors said in a news conference that they will be on strike until he quits.
Scores of lawyers who support Morsi's decision held an earlier rally, demanding that the top prosecutor stay, and accusing the opposition of being "thugs."
One major concern in the aftermath of the constitutional turmoil is Egypt's deteriorating economy, which has been battered by the two years of turmoil and taken an added hit from renewed violence recently.
Adding to the anxiety, state television reported on Saturday amidst voting on the referendum that the central bank governor had resigned, then retracted the report. The governor turned up at a meeting of the government's economic team Sunday in an apparent attempt to quell nervousness over the state of the economy.
The government stressed the urgency of stability.
"The financial and economic situations are dire," government spokesman Alaa el-Hadidi said, according to comments published by the state news agency MENA. With the referendum behind, el-Hadidi said economic policies must be at the center of attention, adding that the government will work to improve the investment environment to attract foreign investors.
The government had to postpone a request for $4.8 billion of IMF loans, putting off unpopular tax increases and reforms to after the referendum for fear they would only stoke political tensions.
A day before the official results of the constitution are expected, the opposition front said it filed complaints to the country's top prosecutor and the election commission asking for an investigation.
"The results of the referendum are for sure because of the rigging, violations and mismanagement that characterized it," the National Salvation Front said.
It alleged the vote was marred by lack of complete judicial supervision, which led to overcrowding that pushed down the voting rate. It also charged there was interference by those who were supposed to be supervising the vote, with some instructing people to vote "yes." Many judges who traditionally supervise elections boycotted supervising the vote.
"We don't think the results reflect the true desires of the Egyptian people," Khaled Dawoud, the front's spokesman, told The Associated Press.
However, the Brotherhood insisted violations were limited and should not affect the referendum's integrity.
The Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political arm, said it hoped the passage of the constitution would be a "historic opportunity" to heal Egypt's divisions and launch a dialogue to restore stability and build state institutions.
If the violations are considered serious enough, there could be new votes in some areas that alter the results slightly.
The referendum was conducted in two stages with the first vote on Dec. 15 and the second on Saturday. The Muslim Brotherhood and some media outlets have accurately tallied the outcome of past elections by compiling numbers released by electoral officials at thousands of individual polling stations shortly after voting closes.
Turnout for the vote was 32 percent of Egypt's more than 51 million eligible voters, according to the Muslim Brotherhood. That was significantly lower than other elections since the uprising ended in February 2011. The opposition has pointed to the low turnout as well as allegations of violations in the voting to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the referendum.
The Brotherhood said 64 percent voted "yes" to the constitution in a tally of both stages of voting. For Saturday's second stage only, the Brotherhood said 71 percent of those who voted said "yes" with 99 percent of polling stations accounted for.
As expected, it was a jump from the first round of voting when about 56 percent said "yes." The provinces that voted in the second round were known for being a base for Brotherhood supporters.
Only about eight million of the 25 million Egyptians eligible to vote in the second stage — a turnout of about 30 percent — cast their ballots. Some 32 percent of eligible voters participated in the first round.
The Front said that regardless of the results, it welcomed the participation of many who rejected the constitution and refused to consider it a vote on Islamic law. The group vowed to continue to "democratically" work to change the constitution and praised the high turnout of women.
The Islamists say Islam is core to Egypt's identity and they view the constitution as a foundation to move forward, elect a parliament and build state institutions.
The new constitution will come into effect once official results are announced.
Once that happens, Morsi is expected to call for the election of parliament's lower chamber, the more powerful of the legislature's two houses, within two months.
The opposition said that even though it is challenging the results of the referendum, it will continue to prepare for the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Until the lower chamber is elected, the normally toothless upper house, or Shura Council, will have legislative powers.
On Sunday, Morsi appointed 90 new members to the Islamist-controlled Shura Council as part of his efforts to make the council more representative. The new appointments included at least 30 Islamists and a dozen Christians. They also include eight women, four of them Christians.

Read More..

South Korea charges North building missile that could reach US

South Korean defense officials say they have evidence showing a recent North Korean missile launch was to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
South Korean navy divers have recovered more than three tons of debris from the first stage of a missile Korean analysts say was fueled by a type of nitric acid developed in the former Soviet Union over 40 years ago for firing missiles with warheads more than 6,000 miles. The rocket, fired from a pad in northwestern North Korea on December 12, managed to put a small satellite into orbit, but officials offer the discovery of nitric acid as evidence of the real reason why North Korea was anxious to test it.
The defense ministry released a photograph of a truck carrying the most conspicuous piece of the debris – the gleaming white casing for the first stage. The word Unha in Korean lettering, the name of the rocket, was clearly visible.as it was in North Korean pictures of the rocket before the launch.
Recommended: Blast-off: 6 recent missile advances
“Definitely their main purpose is to have the capability of reaching the US west coast,” says Kim Tae-woo, former president of the Korea Institute for National Unification. “North Korea this time proved the capability of their ICBM."
The evidence of the rocket’s mission as a test of an ICBM, according to the defense ministry, was that the main piece of the wreckage was a container for “redfuming nitric acid” that’s not ordinarily used in missiles for launching satellites.
A member of the team that examined the rocket was quoted by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, as saying they had found the rocket “was intended for testing ICBM technology rather than developing a space launch vehicle.” He said the team based this conclusion on the fact that “red fuming nitric acid” was used “as an oxidizer” and could “be stored for a long time at normal temperature.”
Navy divers reportedly found still more wreckage on Sunday and are still scouring the seabed of the Yellow Sea off the southwestern coast of South Korea.
The major piece picked up from a depth of 250 feet measured more than 25 feet long and nearly 8 feet in diameter. Mr. Kim, who worked for many years as a senior North Korea analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, says the success of North Korean scientists and engineers in launching the rocket “does not mean an immediate threat.”
“They are successful this time,” he says, but “it was just a simple test.” He adds that “their satellite technology is very primitive” – so much so that analysts here believeNorth Korea has lost touch with the 200-pound object as it circles the earth.
Mr. Kim is quick to add, however, that putting a satellite into orbit “is not their main target.” Rather, he says, the North Koreans want to develop the technology for firing a warhead a long distance – a highly complicated feat..
The great question is when and how North Korea will test the response of the incoming administrations of both the United States and South Korea. Park Geun-hye, daughter of the long-ruling dictator Park Chung-hee, assassinated by his intelligence chief in 1979, was elected as South Korea’s president last Thursday and is to be inaugurated in February.
“North Korea might be tempted to test John Kerry either by long-range missiles or another nuclear test,” says Lee Chang Choon, a retired South Korean diplomat whoserved as ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. President Obama has nominated Senator John Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
Recommended: Blast-off: 6 recent missile advances
North Korea has conducted two previous underground nuclear tests – in October 2006 and again in May 2009 – soon after test-firing long-range missiles.
Kim Tae-woo agrees with that assessment. “Traditionally North Korea may be preparing to test the will of the second Obama government,” he says. “North Korea definitely wants to test Mr. Kerry.”
North Korea has been celebrating the launch of the rocket – and the satellite – with exuberant displays in Pyongyang. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, reported by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency to have visited the launch site and personally penned the hand-written order to go ahead with the launch, urged more launches at a dinner Friday honoring scientists, engineers and technicians responsible for the launch 11 days ago. KCNA quoted the North Korean leader as urging them to develop “carrier rockets of bigger capacity” in order to put “a variety of more working satellites” into orbit.
The rocket is believed capable of carrying a payload of 1,200 pounds.
South Korea, says Kim Tae-woo, is developing ballistic missiles with a maxium range of 500 miles – enough to reach any target in the North, including the launch site of the Unha. “We can have a much greater deterrence,” he says, “but it takes time.

Read More..

Monti says he is open to leading next government

After keeping Italians, and the rest of Europe, in suspense for weeks, caretaker Premier Mario Monti on Sunday ruled out campaigning in February elections, but said he would consider leading the next government if politicians who share his focus on reform request it.
The decision positions him to take the helm again without having to get into the political nitty-gritty of an election — preserving his image as someone above the fray who can make tough decisions on imposing austerity. His previous measures have boosted confidence in Italy's finances, and fellow European leaders have made no secret they want to keep them in place.
Silvio Berlusconi, the scandal-tainted ex-premier considering another run, commented scathingly on Monti's openness to another term.
"I had a nightmare — still having a government with Monti," the media mogul said in an interview on state TV. He has said in the past that he would run again if Monti did not, but made no commitment Sunday about his own political future.
Monti, who after his resignation Friday is continuing in a caretaker role, ruled out heading any ticket — even a center-right grouping that Berlusconi said he would be willing to back.
But the 69-year-old economist made it clear he was willing to take another turn in power.
"If one or more political forces is credibly backing (my) agenda or even has a better one, I'd evaluate the offer," Monti said during a news conference.
"To those forces who demonstrate convincing and credible adherence to the Monti agenda, I am ready to give my appreciation, encouragement, and if requested, leadership, and I am ready to assume, one day, if the circumstances require it, the responsibility that would be entrusted to me by Parliament."
Monti refused to head any ticket himself, saying "I have no sympathy for 'personal' parties."
Italy is struggling to shore up its finances and emerge from recession, a challenge made harder by its volatile politics. The country has had dozens of governments over the years that let tax evasion spread, avoided unpopular reforms like raising the retirement age, and allowed public spending to balloon.
Monti was appointed in November 2011 to head a non-elected government with the goal of saving Italy from a Greece-style debt debacle after financial markets lost faith in his populist predecessor, Berlusconi.
Berlusconi triggered Monti's resignation last week, a few months ahead of the term's end, when he yanked his Freedom Party's support in Parliament for the government. Parliament was then sent packing last week by Italy's president, and elections scheduled for Feb. 24-25.
Monti's announcement Sunday pleased some parties but irked others.
"Yet again, Monti shows himself to be arrogant and (Pontius) Pilate-like," said Antonio Borghesi, a leader of the small center-left party that refused to back him during Monti's 13 months at the head of a non-elected government. "He won't directly commit himself, but he doesn't rule out that his name be used by others who share his agenda and he gives his willingness, if asked, to again be leader the country."
The tiny centrist Italy Future party, meanwhile, hailed Monti as a "great political leader and international statesman," and said in a statement: "We reiterate our willingness to back with pride the agenda of Premier Monti."
The party's leaders include pro-Vatican politicians and industrialists, notably Luca di Montezemolo, president of Ferrari, the Italian Formula One racing team.
Monti said he was spurning Berlusconi's offer to sit out the election if Monti would head a center-right ticket. He expressed bewilderment at Berlusconi's sharp condemnation of his economic policies and his seemingly contradictory offer to back another Monti-led government.
"Yesterday, we read that he assessed the work of the (Monti) government to be a complete disaster. A few days earlier I read flattering things," Monti said of his predecessor. The logic "escapes me" Monti said, drawing chuckles.
Berlusconi has said he would try for a fourth term as premier if Monti doesn't run, even though he continues to face several legal and sex-related scandals.
Monti praised Parliament for backing his government's recipe of spending cuts, new taxes and pension reform, which he said saved Italy from the debt crisis.
"Italians as citizens can hold their heads up high in Europe," Monti said, noting Italy had avoided the bailouts that Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus have had to take.
Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano dissolved Parliament after Monti resigned Friday following approval of the country's national budget law. Monti noted that as a senator-for-life, he remains in Parliament and doesn't need to run for a seat in the legislature.
Voter opinion polls indicate a centrist ticket backing Monti would take about 15 percent of the vote, meaning any government he heads would need support from either of Italy's two largest political groupings: the center-right, led by Berlusconi, or the center-left, led by Pier Luigi Bersani.
After Monti's announcement Sunday, Bersani, whose forces turned out to be Monti's staunchest proponent this past year, vowed to keep up the premier's anti-crisis efforts.
By declining to directly campaign for February's balloting, Monti avoids a direct clash with him. On Sunday, Monti would only would say that Bersani is a highly "legitimate candidate for premier of a coalition."
In an interview on state TV later Sunday, Monti declined to say if he thought his agenda would get more backing from Bersani's or from Berlusconi's supporters.
Some had speculated that Monti had his sights set on the Italian presidency, since Napolitano's term ends this spring. But Monti ruled that out.

Read More..

Syrian Christians fear bleak future after Assad

With Christmas just days away, 40-year-old Mira begged her parents to flee their hometown of Aleppo, which has become a major battleground in Syria's civil war.
Her parents refused to join her in Lebanon, but they are taking one simple precaution inside their besieged city. For the first time, Mira says, her parents will not put up a Christmas tree this year for fear their religion might make them a target.
"They want to stay to guard the property so nobody takes it," said Mira, who spoke to The Associated Press in Lebanon on condition that only her first name be published, out of concern for her family.
"They cannot celebrate Christmas properly. It's not safe. They are in a Christian area, but they don't feel secure to put a tree, even inside their apartment," Mira said.
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Syria's population of more than 22 million, say they are particularly vulnerable to the violence that has been sweeping the country since March 2011. They are fearful that Syria will become another Iraq, with Christians caught in the crossfire between rival Islamic groups.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians fled Iraq after their community and others were targeted by militants in the chaotic years after dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003.
During the Syria conflict, Christians have largely stuck by President Bashar Assad, in large part because they fear the rising power of Muslim hard-liners and groups with al-Qaida-style ideologies within the uprising against his rule. Many Christians worry they will be marginalized or even targeted if the country's Sunni Muslim majority, which forms the majority of the opposition, takes over.
The rebel leadership has sought to portray itself as inclusive, promising no reprisals if Assad falls. But some actions by fighters on the ground have been less reassuring.
This week, the commander of one rebel brigade threatened to storm two predominantly Christian towns in central Syria — Mahrada and Sqailbiyeh — saying regime forces were using the towns to attack nearby areas.
The commander, Rashid Abul-Fidaa, of the Ansar Brigade in Hama province demanded the towns' residents "evict Assad's gangs" or be attacked.
Christians and other minorities have generally supported Assad's regime in the past because it promoted a secular ideology that was seen as giving minorities a degree of protection.
The regime and ruling elite are dominated by the Alawite sect, itself a minority offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad belongs, but it has brought Christians and other minorities — as well as Sunni Muslims — into senior positions.
Christians have flourished under the Assad regime, which came to power four decades ago under Assad's father, Hafez. The regime divided economic privileges among minorities and certain Sunni families in exchange for giving up political power.
The threat of Islamic extremism resonates deeply in Syria, a country with many ethnic and religious minorities, and the regime has used their worries to try to keep their support. Assad has warned repeatedly that the country's turmoil will throw Syria into chaos, religious extremism and sectarian divisions.
Still, Christian activists have also figured prominently among the opposition to Assad, advocating an end to autocratic rule in the country. Christians were among the numerous political opponents that the regime jailed alongside Muslims over the years.
Aya, a Christian artist who has been campaigning against the regime for years, predicted prison won't be enough in the eyes of the rebels to balance the perception of Christian support for Assad. She fears score-settling if the regime falls.
"Many Christians think that this regime is good for us," said Aya, a 51-year-old from Aleppo who fled to Beirut in October. "They think that if they keep quiet, Assad will stay, and protect us. But this is an illusion."
When the government deployed fighter jets to Aleppo to drive back rebel advances in the northern city, they did not spare Christians in the city, Aya said.
"We all got hit, but it's too late now for Christians to change their minds about this regime," Aya said. "I am afraid that now we will pay the price for being silent about this terrible regime all these years."
Even for those who support the rebels, the nature of the opposition has caused ripples of apprehension. As the fight to overthrow Assad drags on, the rebels' ranks are becoming dominated by Islamists, raising concerns that the country's potential new rulers will marginalize them or establish an Islamic state.
Al-Qaida-inspired groups have become the most organized fighting units, increasingly leading battles for parts of Aleppo or assaults on military installations outside the city.
"Most (Christians) want to return (to Syria), but they want to wait until the fighting is over and see who will be ruling Syria after the war," Mira said.
Aleppo's schools are closed. Food and electricity are scarce. Most stores have been shut for months. Even though some areas of the city — including the predominantly Christian district along Faisal Street — are still controlled by government forces, the streets are unsafe, she said.
Aya lamented that it's nearly impossible to imagine the country going back to what it was. In the weeks before she fled for good, she said, the violence overwhelmed her.
"There was so much shooting, such terrible bombings, and I could not take it," she said. "In two weeks I slept for 10 hours, I did not eat and I cried all the time, because my city was turning into ruins, and I saw it with my own eyes."

Read More..

UK 'plebgate' scandal becomes police crisis

The "plebgate" scandal started with an angry exchange over a bicycle in front of Downing Street. The controversy over what a senior politician did or didn't say to officers guarding the prime minister's official residence has now grown into a full-blown crisis which is raising new questions about the ethics of Britain's largest police force.
Scotland Yard's reputation has already been battered over its failure to curb law-breaking journalists and police corruption exposed in the phone hacking scandal which exploded last year.
The force faces renewed scrutiny after Andrew Mitchell, formerly the Conservative Party's chief whip, said a police report quoting him as abusing officers as "morons" and "plebs" — a term of abuse for working-class people — was based on lies.
"For the next three weeks, these awful phrases were hung round my neck in a concerted attempt to toxify the Conservative party and destroy my political career," Mitchell wrote in The Sunday Times, describing the period which followed the leak of a police report into the incident.
"I never uttered those phrases; they are completely untrue."
Mitchell has long acknowledged losing his temper and swearing as he tried to maneuver his bike into Downing Street on the evening of Sept. 19. He was running late and officers were refusing to open the main gate, he said. But he has long denied using the term "pleb" or telling officers to "learn your place," words which he described on Sunday as "a bad caricature of what an ill-mannered 1930s upper-class lout might say."
In Britain, a country very sensitive to issues of social class, the story dominated the headlines for weeks. Some police constables, or PCs, walked around with T-shirts bearing the words "PC Pleb." Political opponents called for Mitchell to lose his job. When an email from what appeared to be an independent witness emerged to corroborate the police account, Mitchell found himself with little choice but to resign in October.
The police account, however, has now been challenged; the independent witness was allegedly a policeman who wasn't even at the scene. Security camera footage taken from Downing Street and broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 didn't seem to line up with the officers' accounts. Two people have been arrested as Scotland Yard has pledged to get to the bottom of what happened.
"The allegations in relation to this case are extremely serious," Scotland Yard chief Bernard Hogan-Howe said in a statement Sunday. "For the avoidance of doubt, I am determined there will be a ruthless search for the truth — no matter where the truth takes us."
If it turned out that officers conspired to frame Mitchell, it would be another dark chapter for the respected force, which has already seen several high-profile resignations and arrests and a wrenching police corruption probe spawned by the phone hacking scandal. Politicians are already talking of the need for reform.
Britain's former policing minister, Nick Herbert, said journalists and public servants might reflect on whether they jumped to conclusions about Mitchell, but added that "it is the police service which above all must take stock and examine its own culture."
The scandal, meanwhile, has revived Mitchell's political fortunes, with many calling for him to be reinstated to Prime Minister David Cameron's Cabinet.

Read More..

NRA returns to public debate, to meet with media

One week after the mass shootings that killed 26 people at a Connecticut elementary school — 20 of them children — the nation's largest gun-rights lobby is returning to the spotlight as Congress prepares to consider tighter restrictions on firearms in the new year.
The 4.3 million-member National Rifle Association largely disappeared from public debate after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., choosing atypical silence as a strategy as the nation sought answers after the rampage. The NRA took down its Facebook page and kept silent on Twitter.
Unlike its actions in the wake of other mass shootings, the group did not put out a statement of condolence for the victims while simultaneously defending the rights of gun owners.
That strategy, however, is set to change, starting with a news conference Friday.
In the lead-up, the group re-activated its Facebook account — it has 1.7 million members — and its Twitter feed now warns supporters that "President Obama supports gun control measures, including reinstating an assault weapons ban." The group also announced that its top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, planned to appear Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
It's an about-face from the group that ignored requests for comment and shunned media attention for four days following last week's shootings.
"The National Rifle Association of America is made up of 4 million moms and dads, sons and daughters and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown," the group said in its first public statement since the shootings, released Tuesday. "Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting."
The group also promised "meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again" and announced plans for Friday's news conference on what is, in reality, the last real work day before Washington scatters for the long Christmas holiday.
Since the slayings, President Barack Obama has demanded "real action, right now" against U.S. gun violence and called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants proposals on reducing gun violence that he can take to Congress by January.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would end a provision that allows people to purchase firearms from private parties without a background check. Obama also has indicated that he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines.

Read More..

NRA calls for armed police officer in every school

Guns and police officers in all American schools are what's needed to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings," the National Rifle Association declared Friday, taking a no-retreat stance in the face of growing calls for gun control after the Connecticut shootings that claimed the lives of 26 children and school staff.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said Wayne LaPierre, the group's chief executive officer.
Some members of Congress who had long scoffed at gun-control proposals have begun to suggest some concessions could be made, and a fierce debate over legislation seems likely next month. President Barack Obama has demanded "real action, right now."
The nation's largest gun-rights lobby broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a defiant presentation. The event was billed as a news conference, but NRA leaders took no questions. Twice, they were interrupted by banner-waving protesters, who were removed by security.
Some had predicted that after the slaughter of a score of elementary-school children by a man using a semi-automatic rifle, the group might soften its stance, at least slightly. Instead, LaPierre delivered a 25-minute tirade against the notion that another gun law would stop killings in a culture where children are exposed daily to violence in video games, movies and music videos. He argued that guns are the solution, not the problem.
"Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else; as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work," LaPierre said. "And by that I mean armed security."
He said Congress should immediately appropriate funds to post an armed police officer in every school. Meanwhile, he said the NRA would develop a school emergency response program that would include volunteers from the group's 4.3 million members to help guard children.
His armed-officers idea was immediately lambasted by gun control advocates, and not even the NRA's point man on the effort seemed willing to go so far. Former Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, whom LaPierre named national director of the program, said in an interview that decisions about armed guards in schools should be made by local districts.
"I think everyone recognizes that an armed presence in schools is sometimes appropriate," Hutchinson said. "That is one option. I would never want to have a mandatory requirement for every school district to have that."
He also noted that some states would have to change their laws to allow armed guards at schools.
Hutchinson said he'll offer a plan in January that will consider other measures such as biometric entry points, patrols and consideration of school layouts to protect security.
LaPierre argued that guards need to be in place quickly because "the next Adam Lanza," the suspected shooter in Newtown, Conn., is already planning an attack on another school.
"How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark?" LaPierre asked. "A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?"
While there is a federally maintained database of the mentally ill — people so declared by their states — a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that states can't be required to contribute information has left significant gaps. In any case, creation of a mandatory national database probably would have had little impact on the ability of suspected shooters in four mass shootings since 2011 to get and use powerful weapons. The other people accused either stole the weapons used in the attacks or had not been ruled by courts to be "mentally defective" before the shootings.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the NRA is blaming everyone but itself for a national gun crisis and is offering "a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe."
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., called the NRA's response "both ludicrous and insulting" and pointed out that armed personnel at Columbine High School and Fort Hood could not stop mass shootings. The liberal group CREDO, which organized an anti-NRA protest on Capitol Hill, called LaPierre's speech "bizarre and quite frankly paranoid."
"This must be a wake-up call even to the NRA's own members that the NRA's Washington lobbyists need to stand down and let Congress pass sensible gun control laws now," CREDO political director Becky Bond said in a statement.
The NRA's proposal would be unworkable given the huge numbers of officers needed, said the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Craig Steckler.
He pointed to budget cuts and hiring freezes and noted that in his hometown of Fremont, Calif., it would take half the city's police force to post one officer at each of the city's 43 schools.
The Department of Education has counted 98,817 public schools in the United States and an additional 33,366 private schools.
There already are an estimated 10,000 school resource officers, most of them armed and employed by local police departments, in the nation's schools, according to Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.
Gun rights advocates on Capitol Hill had no immediate comment. They will have to walk a tough road between pressure from the powerful NRA, backed by an army of passionate supporters, and outrage over the Sandy Hook deaths that has already swayed some in Congress to adjust their public views.
A CNN/ORC poll taken this week found 52 percent of Americans favor major restrictions on guns or making all guns illegal. Forty-six percent of people questioned said government and society can take action to prevent future gun violence, up 13 percentage points from two years ago in the wake of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six and wounded then Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Since the Connecticut slayings, President Obama has demanded action against U.S. gun violence and has called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants proposals that he can take to Congress next month.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and to pass legislation that would stop people from purchasing firearms from private sellers without background checks. Obama also has indicated he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity firearms magazines.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said former President Bill Clinton called her with an offer to help get an assault weapons ban reinstated. Clinton signed such a ban into law in 1994, but it expired after 10 years.
Feinstein said she's not opposed to having armed guards at schools, but she called the NRA proposal a distraction from what she said was the real problem: "easy access to these killing machines" that are far "more powerful and lethal" than the guns that were banned under the old law.

Read More..