Mulvaney: Concerned about ?legal immigration?

One of a number of issues that Congressional Republicans and Democrats have been jousting over continues to be how the country handles the issue of immigration reform. Appearing on MSNBC Monday morning, 5th District Congressman Mick Mulvaney said he is optimistic that an agreement is forthcoming on the issue and the dialogue has jelled around three general areas.?

Mick Mulvaney

??Border security, possibly as a trigger before anything else happens; fixing legal immigration, allowing more people to come here legally to work in our farms, to work in our hotel industry and so forth; and also dealing with the 11 million (undocumented aliens) who are here already.?

Mulvaney was one of six Tea Party-aligned House members who signed a letter expressing support for Sen. Rand Paul?s three-pronged immigration reform: expansion of legal immigration, ensuring border security, and a way to ?reasonably address? those already living in the U.S. who arrived illegally.

He says discussion on immigration reform cannot be limited to illegal immigration. Mulvaney says the red tape involved in legal immigration is a strong issue, especially in South Carolina, where agriculture is an important component of the state?s economy and migrant labor is important.

?Illegal immigration in terms of having a bunch of folks who are here in an undocumented fashion is not a big deal where I?m from. Having folks come to work in agriculture is. Right now my farmers can?t get the people to work. Small businesses are going out of business because of the bureaucracy involved in getting legal migrant workers into this country.?

Mulvaney says the red tape that causes delays is hurting agribusiness in South Carolina because the enterprise of agriculture is time-sensitive.

?You need them now to pick the peach crop in July, but if it takes you eight months to get the paper work finished they?re not here in time to pick that particular crop. The agriculture business is a very seasonal, very timely business and you drive up and down the roads in South Carolina now and see the packing facilities that have closed simply because we were unable to get folks to come to work and pick those crops.?

Mulvaney says another facet of legal immigration is making sure those immigrants who want to come to the U.S. to study, to cultivate their ideas, become entrepreneurs, and job creators can do so because they are important in growing the nation?s economy.

?We need to figure out a way to encourage the entrepreneurs to come here and stay here. The House has a?STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)?visa bill, I think late last year or early this year, so we are making steps in that direction,? he told the Morning Joe panel,??We are talking about things beyond ?just build the darn fence? and deporting people.?

Source: http://www.southcarolinaradionetwork.com/2013/03/26/mulvaney-concerned-about-legal-immigration/

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'Teen Mom 2' star Kailyn Lowry pregnant again, says sister-in-law

MTV

By Drusilla Moorhouse, TODAY contributor

"Teen Mom 2" star Kailyn Lowry is pregnant again, her sister-in-law told In Touch Weekly.?

The 21-year-old is said to be expecting her second child, first with husband Javi? Marroquin.

The news comes just a day after the reality star was shown assaulting then-boyfriend Marroquin in a controversial episode of the MTV docu-series. The couple reconciled shortly afterward and married in September 2012.

According to Lidia Marroquin, the 20-year-old military man's sister, "They're overjoyed! When Kailyn told Javi, he cried."

Although the baby, due this fall, wasn't planned, "they weren't preventing it, either," a friend of the reality star told the magazine.

Kailyn's co-star, Leah Calvert, 20, recently gave birth to her third daughter. She and her second husband, Jeremy, welcomed Adalynn on Feb. 4.

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Artifacts shed light on social networks of the past

Mar. 25, 2013 ? Researchers studied thousands of ceramic and obsidian artifacts from A.D. 1200-1450 to learn about the growth, collapse and change of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic Southwest.

The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made us all more connected, but long-distance social networks existed long before the Internet.

An article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic American Southwest and shows that people of that period were able to maintain surprisingly long-distance relationships with nothing more than their feet to connect them.

Led by University of Arizona anthropologist Barbara Mills, the study is based on analysis of more than 800,000 painted ceramic and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts dating from A.D. 1200-1450, uncovered from more than 700 sites in the western Southwest, in what is now Arizona and western New Mexico.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Mills, director of the UA School of Anthropology, worked with collaborators at Archeology Southwest in Tucson to compile a database of more than 4.3 million ceramic artifacts and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts, from which they drew for the study.

They then applied formal social network analysis to see what material culture could teach them about how social networks shifted and evolved during a period that saw large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and coalescence of populations into large villages.

Their findings illustrate dramatic changes in social networks in the Southwest over the 250-year period between A.D. 1200 and 1450. They found, for example, that while a large social network in the southern part of the Southwest grew very large and then collapsed, networks in the northern part of the Southwest became more fragmented but persisted over time.

"Network scientists often talk about how increasingly connected networks become, or the 'small world' effect, but our study shows that this isn't always the case," said Mills, who led the study with co-principal investigator and UA alumnus Jeffery Clark, of Archaeology Southwest.

"Our long-term study shows that there are cycles of growth and collapse in social networks when we look at them over centuries," Mills said. "Highly connected worlds can become highly fragmented."

Another important finding was that early social networks do not appear to have been as restricted as expected by settlements' physical distance from one another. Researchers found that similar types of painted pottery were being created and used in villages as far as 250 kilometers apart, suggesting people were maintaining relationships across relatively large geographic expanses, despite the only mode of transportation being walking.

"They were making, using and discarding very similar kinds of assemblages over these very large spaces, which means that a lot of their daily practices were the same," Mills said. "That doesn't come about by chance; it has to come about by interaction -- the kind of interaction where it's not just a simple exchange but where people are learning how to make and how to use and ultimately discard different kinds of pottery."

"That really shocked us, this idea that you can have such long distance connections. In the pre-Hispanic Southwest they had no real vehicles, they had no beasts of burden, so they had to share information by walking," she said.

The application of formal social network analysis -- which focuses on the relationships among nodes, such as individuals, household or settlements -- is relatively new in the field of archaeology, which has traditionally focused more on specific attributes of those nodes, such as their size or function.

The UA study shows how social network analysis can be applied to a database of material culture to illustrate changes in network structures over time.

"We already knew about demographic changes -- where people were living and where migration was happening -- but what we didn't know was how that changed social networks," Mills said. "We're so used to looking traditionally at distributions of pottery and other objects based on their occurrence in space, but to see how social relationships are created out of these distributions is what network analysis can help with."

One of Mills's collaborators on the project was Ronald Breiger, renowned network analysis expert and a UA professor of sociology, with affiliations in statistics and government and public policy, who says being able to apply network analysis to archaeology has important implications for his field.

"Barbara (Mills) and her group are pioneers in bringing the social network perspective to archaeology and into ancient societies," said Breiger, who worked with Mills along with collaborators from the UA School of Anthropology; Archaeology Southwest; the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Hendrix College; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the Santa Fe Institute; and Archaeological XRF Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.

"What archaeology has to offer for a study of networks is a focus on very long-term dynamics and applications to societies that aren't necessarily Western, so that's broadening to the community of social network researchers," Breiger said. "The coming together of social network and spatial analysis and the use of material objects to talk about culture is very much at the forefront of where I see the field of social network analysis moving."

Going forward, Mills hopes to use the same types of analyses to study even older social networks.

"We have a basis for building on, and we're hoping to get even greater time depth. We'd like to extend it back in time 400 years earlier," she said. "The implications are we can see things at a spatial scale that we've never been able to look at before in a systematic way. It changes our picture of the Southwest."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona. The original article was written by Alexis Blue.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Barbara J. Mills, Jeffery J. Clark, Matthew A. Peeples, W. R. Haas, Jr., John M. Roberts, Jr., J. Brett Hill, Deborah L. Huntley, Lewis Borck, Ronald L. Breiger, Aaron Clauset, and M. Steven Shackley. Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest. PNAS, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1219966110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/0K6u-laZM0Y/130325184018.htm

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Artifacts shed light on social networks of the past

Mar. 25, 2013 ? Researchers studied thousands of ceramic and obsidian artifacts from A.D. 1200-1450 to learn about the growth, collapse and change of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic Southwest.

The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made us all more connected, but long-distance social networks existed long before the Internet.

An article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic American Southwest and shows that people of that period were able to maintain surprisingly long-distance relationships with nothing more than their feet to connect them.

Led by University of Arizona anthropologist Barbara Mills, the study is based on analysis of more than 800,000 painted ceramic and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts dating from A.D. 1200-1450, uncovered from more than 700 sites in the western Southwest, in what is now Arizona and western New Mexico.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Mills, director of the UA School of Anthropology, worked with collaborators at Archeology Southwest in Tucson to compile a database of more than 4.3 million ceramic artifacts and more than 4,800 obsidian artifacts, from which they drew for the study.

They then applied formal social network analysis to see what material culture could teach them about how social networks shifted and evolved during a period that saw large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and coalescence of populations into large villages.

Their findings illustrate dramatic changes in social networks in the Southwest over the 250-year period between A.D. 1200 and 1450. They found, for example, that while a large social network in the southern part of the Southwest grew very large and then collapsed, networks in the northern part of the Southwest became more fragmented but persisted over time.

"Network scientists often talk about how increasingly connected networks become, or the 'small world' effect, but our study shows that this isn't always the case," said Mills, who led the study with co-principal investigator and UA alumnus Jeffery Clark, of Archaeology Southwest.

"Our long-term study shows that there are cycles of growth and collapse in social networks when we look at them over centuries," Mills said. "Highly connected worlds can become highly fragmented."

Another important finding was that early social networks do not appear to have been as restricted as expected by settlements' physical distance from one another. Researchers found that similar types of painted pottery were being created and used in villages as far as 250 kilometers apart, suggesting people were maintaining relationships across relatively large geographic expanses, despite the only mode of transportation being walking.

"They were making, using and discarding very similar kinds of assemblages over these very large spaces, which means that a lot of their daily practices were the same," Mills said. "That doesn't come about by chance; it has to come about by interaction -- the kind of interaction where it's not just a simple exchange but where people are learning how to make and how to use and ultimately discard different kinds of pottery."

"That really shocked us, this idea that you can have such long distance connections. In the pre-Hispanic Southwest they had no real vehicles, they had no beasts of burden, so they had to share information by walking," she said.

The application of formal social network analysis -- which focuses on the relationships among nodes, such as individuals, household or settlements -- is relatively new in the field of archaeology, which has traditionally focused more on specific attributes of those nodes, such as their size or function.

The UA study shows how social network analysis can be applied to a database of material culture to illustrate changes in network structures over time.

"We already knew about demographic changes -- where people were living and where migration was happening -- but what we didn't know was how that changed social networks," Mills said. "We're so used to looking traditionally at distributions of pottery and other objects based on their occurrence in space, but to see how social relationships are created out of these distributions is what network analysis can help with."

One of Mills's collaborators on the project was Ronald Breiger, renowned network analysis expert and a UA professor of sociology, with affiliations in statistics and government and public policy, who says being able to apply network analysis to archaeology has important implications for his field.

"Barbara (Mills) and her group are pioneers in bringing the social network perspective to archaeology and into ancient societies," said Breiger, who worked with Mills along with collaborators from the UA School of Anthropology; Archaeology Southwest; the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Hendrix College; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the Santa Fe Institute; and Archaeological XRF Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.

"What archaeology has to offer for a study of networks is a focus on very long-term dynamics and applications to societies that aren't necessarily Western, so that's broadening to the community of social network researchers," Breiger said. "The coming together of social network and spatial analysis and the use of material objects to talk about culture is very much at the forefront of where I see the field of social network analysis moving."

Going forward, Mills hopes to use the same types of analyses to study even older social networks.

"We have a basis for building on, and we're hoping to get even greater time depth. We'd like to extend it back in time 400 years earlier," she said. "The implications are we can see things at a spatial scale that we've never been able to look at before in a systematic way. It changes our picture of the Southwest."

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona. The original article was written by Alexis Blue.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Barbara J. Mills, Jeffery J. Clark, Matthew A. Peeples, W. R. Haas, Jr., John M. Roberts, Jr., J. Brett Hill, Deborah L. Huntley, Lewis Borck, Ronald L. Breiger, Aaron Clauset, and M. Steven Shackley. Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest. PNAS, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1219966110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/0K6u-laZM0Y/130325184018.htm

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$3 bowl worth $2 million? Tag sale find goes for $2.225 million

A $3 bowl just sold for $2.225 million at Sotheby's in New York. The last time it changed hands, this 1,000-year-old Chinese bowl was sold at a tag sale for $3.

By Associated Press / March 19, 2013

This 1,000-year-old Chinese ?Ding? bowl from the Northern Song Dynasty, purchased at a tag sale for no more than $3, was sold by Sotheby?s for $2.225 million on Tuesday, March 19.

Sotheby?s Auction House/AP

Enlarge

When's the last time you made a million-fold return on investment? A rare Chinese?bowl, bought at a tag sale for $3, has sold at a New York City auction for more than $2.2 million.

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The 1,000-year-old?bowl?was part of the opening session of Sotheby's fine Chinese ceramics and works of art auction Tuesday.

Sotheby's says it was sold to a London dealer for $2.225 million, far above the presale estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.

The person who put the?bowl?up for auction bought it at a tag sale in 2007 and displayed it in the living room for several years before becoming curious about its origins and having it examined.

The?bowl?is white in color and from the Northern Song Dynasty.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/bEl76lqfUsI/3-bowl-worth-2-million-Tag-sale-find-goes-for-2.225-million

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Colo. Corrections Dept. chief shot, killed at home

Searchers use a dog Wednesday, March 20, 2013 to search the area around the Monument, Colo. home of Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Tom Clements. Clements was shot and killed Tuesday evening when he answered the front door of his house, and police are searching for the gunman. (AP Photo/The Colorado Springs Gazette, Mark Reis) MAGS OUT

Searchers use a dog Wednesday, March 20, 2013 to search the area around the Monument, Colo. home of Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Tom Clements. Clements was shot and killed Tuesday evening when he answered the front door of his house, and police are searching for the gunman. (AP Photo/The Colorado Springs Gazette, Mark Reis) MAGS OUT

Searchers use a dog Wednesday, March 20, 2013 to search the area around the Monument, Colo. home of Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Tom Clements. Clements was shot and killed Tuesday evening when he answered the front door of his house, and police are searching for the gunman. (AP Photo/The Colorado Springs Gazette, Mark Reis) MAGS OUT

This undated image provided by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows its director, Tom Clements. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Kramer says Clements was shot to death around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night, March 19, 2013 when he answered his front door in Monument, Colo., north of Colorado Springs. Police are searching for the shooter. (AP Photo/Colorado Department of Corrections)

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper speaks at a news conference at the Capitol in Denver on Wednesday, March 20, 2013, where he talks about the shooting death of Tom Clements, the executive director of the Department of Corrections, who was shot and killed when he answered the front door of his house Tuesday night, in Monument, Colo. Police are searching for the gunman and trying to figure out if the attack had anything to do with his position. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper stops at the office of the Department of Corrections Executive Director Tom Clements in Colorado Springs, Colo. to give support to Clements' staff on Wednesday, March 20, 2013. Clements was shot and killed at his home in Monument on Tuesday night. The flags on the buildings were flying at half staff as the governor addressed the media on his way out. (AP Photo/The Colorado Springs Gazette, Jerilee Bennett)

MONUMENT, Colo. (AP) ? In the weeks before Colorado's top prisons official was fatally shot after answering his front door, he carried out a variety of functions including requesting execution chemicals and speaking to legislators about security issues.

It's unknown what role Tom Clements' position as executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections might have played in the shooting Tuesday, but investigators said they aren't ruling out any possible motives, including whether it was random or a work-related attack.

Colorado corrections spokeswoman Adrienne Jacobson would not comment on whether Clements had security at his home. Security was stepped up for other state officials, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, who was ashen-faced as he addressed reporters at the Capitol before signing bills placing new restrictions on firearms.

"Tom Clements dedicated his life to being a public servant, to making our state a better place and he is going to be deeply, deeply missed," Hickenlooper said Wednesday.

Authorities are looking for a late-model car, possibly a Lincoln or a Cadillac, that a neighbor spotted outside Clements' home around the time of the shooting Tuesday, El Paso County Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Jeff Kramer said in a report carried by the Denver Post.

Kramer also said investigators want to speak with a woman seen speed-walking near Clements' home not long before the shooting because she may have seen the suspect. The woman was wearing light pants, a dark windbreaker and possibly a hat.

While small in numbers, similar attacks on officials have been increasing in the U.S. in recent years, said Glenn McGovern, an investigator with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's office in California who tracks such incidents worldwide. He said there have been roughly as many in the past three years ? at least 35 ? as the entire prior decade. Revenge is usually the motive, he added.

"It's often taking place away from the office, which makes sense, because everyone's hardening up their facilities," he said, adding that he advises prosecutors to constantly assess the safety of their residences.

On Jan. 31, Texas prosecutor Mark Hasse was gunned down as he left his car in the parking lot to the county courthouse. McGovern also counts the rampage by an ex-Los Angeles police officer who killed the daughter of a retired city police officer as part of a plot to avenge his firing.

In Colorado, a prosecutor was fatally shot in 2008 as he returned to his Denver home. In 2001, federal prosecutor Thomas Wales was fatally shot by a rifleman while he worked on a computer at night in his Seattle home. Both cases remain unsolved.

Attacks on legal officials are still extremely rare, said Scott Burns of the National District Attorneys Association, which counts 11 prosecutors as having been slain in the last 50 years. But he acknowledged that legal officials are vulnerable outside of protected offices and courthouses.

"If someone wants to truly harm or kill them, it's very difficult, frankly. There's not a lot we can do," he said.

Mike McLelland, the district attorney in rural Kaufman county east of Dallas, is a 23-year military veteran. Since his prosecutor, Hasse, was killed on his way into the office, McLelland has warned his staff to be vigilant about their surroundings and possible danger.

"The people in my line of work are going to have to get a lot better at it, because they're going to need it more in the future," McLelland said, adding that he carries a gun everywhere he goes.

Clements came to Colorado in 2011 after working three decades in the Missouri prison system. He began a review of Colorado's solitary confinement system and closed a new prison built specifically to hold prisoners being held in solitary ? Colorado State Penitentiary II.

He lived in a wooded neighborhood of large, two-story houses on 2-acre lots dotted with evergreen trees in an area known as the Black Forest. Long driveways connect the homes to narrow, winding roads that thread the hills. After word of the shooting spread Tuesday night, some residents slept with shotguns at the ready, fearful the shooter would return.

It would have been simple to find Clements' house. It took two clicks to get his street address through a publicly available Internet locator service Wednesday morning. The listing also included his previous address in Missouri.

McGovern said he tells his prosecutors to assume that any possible assailants can find their home addresses online and to check for areas they may be especially vulnerable such as neighboring alleys and poorly lit porches.

There is no central database of attacks on legal officials and senior law enforcement executives like Clements.

McGovern has documented 133 of them in the U.S. since 1950 by searching news accounts and court cases. The total includes 41 killings of judges, prosecutors and other justice and police officials. The assaults usually come with little warning, he said.

Steven K. Swensen, a former U.S. Marshal who runs a business consulting on security for court officials, said attacks on legal staff used to occur in courtrooms. As security has been expanded to protect those rooms, then courthouses, the attacks have spilled out further and further.

"Now we're having more violence off-site, in judges' houses, on their way to and from work," Swensen said.

Clements' survivors include two daughters and his wife, who is director of the state Office of Behavioral Health.

While Clements generally kept a low profile, his killing comes a week after he denied a request by a Saudi national to serve out the remainder of a Colorado prison sentence in Saudi Arabia.

Clements also recently requested chemicals to execute Nathan Dunlap, who was convicted of killing four people in a 1993 shooting rampage at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant and is scheduled to become the second person executed in Colorado since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.

Clements' father-in-law, Carroll Smith, told The Denver Post (http://bit.ly/YX6lLN) that Clements opposed the death penalty.

Earlier this week, Clements spoke to legislators about the need for more security staff in the department's food service areas, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said. Last year, a kitchen worker at a state prison was killed and another was injured in an assault involving an inmate.

Clements is at least the second state prisons chief killed in office. Michael Francke, director of the Oregon corrections department, was stabbed to death outside his office in 1989 in what prosecutors described as a bungled car burglary. A former Oregon prison inmate was found guilty of aggravated murder in 1991 and sentenced to life in prison.

Hickenlooper ordered flags lowered to half-staff at public buildings until the day after Clements' funeral.

___

Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert in Monument, Colo.; Steven K. Paulson, Dan Elliott, Nicholas Riccardi, Alexandra Tilsley, and Colleen Slevin in Denver; and Maria Sudekum in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-21-Corrections%20Director%20Killed/id-e83b28919fee4699917507d43296379b

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Shapiro: GOP disarray on full display at CPAC

By Walter Shapiro

In politics, nothing is as fascinating as a party in disarray, uncertain about its future and bitterly divided about whether and how to change. That?s why for the next few years, Republican agonies offer an infinitely more compelling narrative than the arrogance of the puffed-up Obama Democrats.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which ended its annual meeting Saturday, represented a high-profile opportunity for top Republicans to ask painful what-next questions -- or avoid them.

In an era when every politician is a robotic follower of message discipline, CPAC was riotously off-message. The chief reason for the thematic disarray was that most prominent Republicans simply do not agree on the long-term message to offer that will help them win presidential elections.

The CPAC press contingent, which was big enough to cover the O.J. Simpson trial, had collectively decided that CPAC was the kick-off for the 2016 Republican nominating contest. Bulletin: Only 41 months to the next GOP Convention.

What matters at this stage are not the fleeting image boosts for would-be 2016 contenders (though Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and even Scott Walker did quite well), but rather the collective effort to define the party. This is something that needs to be done beyond the short-term maneuvering of GOP congressional leaders. It is not John Boehner?s and Mitch McConnell job to redefine Republicanism.

But the party does need redefinition. This is not just my conclusion from the press box, but also the interpretation offered across the conservative spectrum at CPAC.

Sure, Sarah Palin won the sound bite wars with her shrill call to ?furlough the consultants? and send ?the architect? back to Texas -- a thinly veiled swipe at Karl Rove.

But the party?s problems are much deeper than its failure to match Barack Obama?s 2012 voter-targeting effort. Put simply, Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections ? and four of those contests weren?t close.

No one in politics has had as good a month as Rand Paul, who vaulted out of the shadow of his father, libertarian stalwart Ron Paul, with his 13-hour Senate filibuster attacking Obama?s drone policy. At CPAC he capitalized on his newfound fame and ill-concealed 2016 ambitions by castigating the party establishment: ?The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered.?

Newt Gingrich, who has become the aging Cassandra of the Republican Party offering dire warnings that are never fully accepted, was similarly scathing about the GOP?s direction. The former House speaker called upon Republicans to reject ?the establishment?s anti-ideas approach.?

On fiscal matters, Gingrich said, ?We must disenthrall ourselves from the accountant green eyeshade approach to thinking about budgets.?

It is tempting to offer a diagnosis that the Republicans are on the wrong side of every 21st century demographic and cultural trend ? antagonizing Latino voters with their opposition to immigration reform; alienating younger voters with hard-line positions on social issues like gay marriage; and remaining an almost entirely all-white party as ethnic diversity transforms America. In his CPAC speech, Jeb Bush warned his fellow Republicans, ?All too often we?re associated with being anti-everything ? anti-immigration, anti-women, anti-gay.?

But that wasn?t what Rand Paul was referring to when he called the party ?moss-covered.? And it was certainly not Gingrich?s message when he called the GOP ?anti-ideas? and single-mindedly obsessed with cutting budgets.

A telling reflection of the Republican Party?s ideas gap is its Ronald Reagan problem.

At CPAC, virtually every orator felt compelled to reverently invoke the Gipper at least twice ? and sometimes three times if the audience?s attention was drifting. It is worth pointing out that Reagan, for all his accomplishments, was last on a ballot in the Orwellian year of 1984.

Yes, when Reagan swept 49 states to win a second term, Paul Ryan wasn?t old enough to drive. Something is wrong when a party?s hero comes from an era when a smart phone was one that had a mechanical answering machine attached.

This is a common malady for a party mired in an inescapable losing streak. When the Democrats were on the ropes in the 1970s and 80s, party orators still felt compelled to invoke Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.

Nothing underscored the rectitude of both Gingrich?s and Paul?s critiques of GOP than the speeches delivered by its 2012 standard bearers.

Mitt Romney, making his first major public appearance since the Election Day unpleasantness, delivered a speech of such soul-numbing banality that I half expected him to eat up time by reciting the words to ?America the Beautiful.?

There were no driving ideas and no revealing personal anecdotes. Just bland Mitt-isms like, ?I utterly reject pessimism. We may not have carried on November 7th, but we haven?t lost the country we love. And we have not lost our way.? It is telling that Romney refuses to take any rhetorical risks even now that the active phase of his political career is over.

Ryan, Romney?s erstwhile running mate, offered a reprise of his latest plan to balance the budget in 10 years by slashing (forgive me, ?reforming?) Medicare and Social Security. ?Our debt is a threat to our country,? Ryan said. ?We have to tackle this problem before it tackles us.?

This was the kind of green-eyeshade politics Gingrich has decried. Ryan?s remarks proved that while you can take a man out of Capitol Hill and put him on a national ticket, you can?t take Capitol Hill out of man. Unlike Marco Rubio, a far more compelling speaker, Ryan comes across more as the eternal House Budget Committee chairman than a visionary of the GOP?s future.

Another CPAC headliner was failed 2012 presidential contender Rick Perry, who still has his power base as Texas governor.

Perry offered the most reassuring argument to partisans refusing to believe the party needs to change. Decrying what he called a ?media narrative? suggesting conservative arguments have failed, Perry said ?That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012.?

There is an element of truth to Perry?s argument, since neither John McCain (who voted against George W. Bush?s 2001 tax cuts) nor Mitt Romney (remember the Massachusetts health-care plan) are traditional conservatives. Perry?s words also reflect the insistence by many in conservative movement who blame weak candidates for their problems and see no need to adjust their views.

The conservative faith that all the Republicans need is a right-from-the-start presidential nominee may be buttressed by the 2014 midterm elections. Up to now, the party that controls the White House almost invariably loses congressional seats in the sixth year of a president?s term. (Recall that the Democrats took over Congress in the sixth year of George W. Bush?s presidency). If the pattern holds in 2014, the Republicans may win undeserved self-confidence from an off-year electorate that is older and whiter than in presidential years.

The CPAC Convention ended Saturday with a (yikes!) 2016 Straw Poll. The results were totally meaningless since CPAC convention attendees are not a cross-section of anything ? and, hey, we are nearly three years from the 2016 Iowa caucuses. (But if you must, absolutely must, know who won, it was Rand Paul).

As tempting as it is for the GOP (and, yes, the media) to get prematurely caught up with polls and presidential possibilities, the party needs to find the big ideas to offer the nation as an antidote to Obama-ism. Judging from CPAC 2013, that looks like a long journey. Before the Republicans can elect a president, they first need to solve what George H.W. Bush once awkwardly referred to as ?the vision thing.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/republican-disarray-on-full-display-at-cpac-151848460.html

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ST-Ericsson joint venture begins dissolution process, 1,600 jobs gone in the process

It's typically a bad sign when a major semiconductor company sees its CEO walk away, and no one in adjoining offices stops to do anything about it. Such is the case with ST-Ericsson, a (now) failed joint venture of STMicroelectronics and Ericsson. The two outfits have seemingly failed to find a suitor for the JV, leaving them with relatively few options -- poor ones at that. In a release posted today (and embedded after the break), the entity has stated that each partner company will take on some of the business, but around 1,600 jobs will be lost from the sectors that neither has interest in. ST-Ericsson was an attempt to jump-start a semiconductor business in Europe, but it actually hasn't turned a profit since forming in 2008.

Ericsson will take on the design, development and sales of the LTE multimode thin modem products, including 2G, 3G and 4G multimode, while ST will take on the existing ST-Ericsson products, other than LTE multimode thin modems, and related business as well as certain assembly and test facilities. It's expected that the particulars will clear regulatory hurdles in Q3 of this year, and in order to make sure things go as well as they can in the interim, Carlo Ferro is being appointed president and CEO of the JV starting on April 1st.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: ST-Ericsson, Ericsson

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/18/st-ericsson-joint-venture-closing/

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Curiosity Mars rover sees trend in water presence

Mar. 18, 2013 ? NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.

Last week, the rover's science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favorable for microbial life. Additional findings presented today (March 18) at a news briefing at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling.

Using infrared-imaging capability of a camera on the rover and an instrument that shoots neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen, researchers have found more hydration of minerals near the clay-bearing rock than at locations Curiosity visited earlier.

The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) can also serve as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool, reported Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe. "Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam's near-infrared filters."

Ratios of brightness in different Mastcam near-infrared wavelengths can indicate the presence of some hydrated minerals. The technique was used to check rocks in the "Yellowknife Bay" area where Curiosity's drill last month collected the first powder from the interior of a rock on Mars. Some rocks in Yellowknife Bay are crisscrossed with bright veins.

"With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area," said Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix."

The Russian-made Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on Curiosity detects hydrogen beneath the rover. At the rover's very dry study area on Mars, the detected hydrogen is mainly in water molecules bound into minerals. "We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay," said DAN Deputy Principal Investigator Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute, Moscow. "More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation."

Findings presented today from the Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity's arm indicate that the wet environmental processes that produced clay at Yellowknife Bay did so without much change in the overall mix of chemical elements present. The elemental composition of the outcrop Curiosity drilled into matches the composition of basalt. For example, it has basalt-like proportions of silicon, aluminum, magnesium and iron. Basalt is the most common rock type on Mars. It is igneous, but it is also thought to be the parent material for sedimentary rocks Curiosity has examined.

"The elemental composition of rocks in Yellowknife Bay wasn't changed much by mineral alteration," said Curiosity science team member Mariek Schmidt of Brock University, Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

A dust coating on rocks had made the composition detected by APXS not quite a match for basalt until Curiosity used a brush to sweep the dust away. After that, APXS saw less sulfur.

"By removing the dust, we've got a better reading that pushes the classification toward basaltic composition," Schmidt said. The sedimentary rocks at Yellowknife Bay likely formed when original basaltic rocks were broken into fragments, transported, re-deposited as sedimentary particles, and mineralogically altered by exposure to water.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to investigate whether an area within Mars' Gale Crater has ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life. Curiosity, carrying 10 science instruments, landed seven months ago to begin its two-year prime mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more about the mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl and http://www.nasa.gov/msl .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/1jC99ENd1RQ/130318133315.htm

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Alarming report: The Health Insurance Woes of African Americans ...

Health care is on the front pages once more as the controversial Affordable Care Act develops into one of the critical pivots on which the success of President Obama?s second term is expected to turn. In 2012, 17.4% of non-Hispanic Blacks were uninsured. More critically, only 55.9% of African Americans are expected to continue to live in good health

---

Source: http://visual.ly/alarming-report-health-insurance-woes-african-americans

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Bus crash that killed Pa. coach being investigated

CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) -- Police are investigating what caused a bus carrying a college women's lacrosse team to veer off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and crash into a tree, killing a pregnant coach, her unborn child and the driver.

Seton Hill University team players and coaches were among 23 people aboard when the bus crashed Saturday morning. The team was headed to an afternoon game at Millersville University, about 50 miles from the crash site in central Pennsylvania.

Head coach Kristina Quigley, 30, of Greensburg died of her injuries at a hospital, Cumberland County authorities said. Quigley was about six months pregnant and her unborn son didn't survive. The bus driver, Anthony Guaetta, 61, of Johnstown, died at the scene.

The other passengers were taken to hospitals as a precaution; two passengers were still being treated Saturday night. The front left side of the bus was shorn away, and the vehicle rested upright about 70 yards from the road at the bottom of a grassy slope.

Police couldn't immediately say what had caused the crash.

Both Saturday's game and a Sunday home game were canceled after the crash, and Seton Hill, a Catholic liberal arts school of about 2,500 students near Pittsburgh, said a memorial Mass was planned for Sunday night on campus. The school is also offering grief counseling to students.

Duquesne University women's lacrosse coach Mike Scerbo remembered Quigley as a warm, outgoing person who immediately impressed him when he hired her to be an assistant during the 2008 season.

Quigley, a Duquesne alum, spent just one season under Scerbo before moving to South Carolina to start Erskine College's NCAA Division II program.

"In that time, I really saw how much passion she had to be a coach, and how much she enjoyed working with the kids," Scerbo said. "She was a teacher, and she wanted to help kids grow and learn, not just about the sport, but about life."

She spent three years at Erskine before taking the top job at Seton Hill for the 2012 season. She stayed in touch with Scerbo, often seeking his guidance and showing up at the Duquesne alumni game.

"She was a very happy person, very passionate about life, about her players, about her job and most importantly about her family," Scerbo said.

Quigley, a native of Baltimore, was married and had a young son, Gavin, the school said.

The bus operator, Mlaker Charter & Tours, of Davidsville, Pa., is up-to-date on its inspections, which include bus and driver safety checks, said Jennifer Kocher, a spokeswoman for the state Public Utility Commission, which regulates bus companies.

The agency's motor safety inspectors could think of no accidents or violations involving the company that would raise a red flag, she said, though complete safety records were not available Saturday.

On Tuesday, another bus carrying college lacrosse players from a Vermont team was hit by a sports car that spun out of control on a wet highway in upstate New York, sending the bus toppling onto its side, police said. One person in the car died.

Source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LACROSSE_TEAM_BUS_CRASH?SITE=ORAST&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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French Study Indicates Some Patients Can Control H.I.V. After Stopping Treatment

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A crucial element, as with a Mississippi case involving the apparent cure of a baby born with H.I.V., appears to be initiating drug treatment shortly after the infection occurs.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/16/world/europe/french-study-indicates-some-patients-can-control-hiv-after-stopping-treatment.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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More religious leaders join battle against Manitoba anti-bully bill

WINNIPEG - More religious leaders have joined opposition to Manitoba's proposed anti-bullying law, saying religious schools must not be forced to accommodate groups that promote equality for gays and lesbians.

"Orthodox Judaism believes in the sanctity of the Bible that rejects homosexuality, as do other great religions," reads a letter to Premier Greg Selinger by Rabbi Avrohom Altein of Winnipeg.

"It would be the height of intolerance to ban a religious group from teaching and practising as it believes."

Bill 18 is aimed at preventing bullying in schools and promoting equality based on gender, race, sexual orientation and other factors. A section that would require schools to allow gay-straight alliance groups if students wished to establish them has drawn the most criticism.

The bill has already come under fire in Steinbach, a small city with a strong Mennonite population. About 1,200 people attended a recent meeting in opposition to the proposed legislation.

A similar bill caused controversy last year in Ontario when Catholic church leaders said their religious freedom was being compromised. However, it eventually passed last June.

Altein's letter was released Friday by Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge, along with letters from Muslim, Sikh and Coptic leaders.

Bruinooge said there is "a very wide group of faith communities" opposed to the bill.

However, some pastors and ministers have publicly stated they support the bill.

Education Minister Nancy Allan said Friday she will not back down.

"We know clearly that young people need to be protected in this particular area. We know clearly that young people who are gay have higher rates of depression and mental health issues, they talk about suicide, they are harassed and bullied," she said.

Allan said a gay-straight alliance is simply a venue in which students can share their feelings and get support.

"You're just providing a space for young people to talk."

But Altein said a gay-straight alliance would be the same as a group demanding non-kosher food in school.

"It would be wrong for a student of an Orthodox Jewish school to demand the right to eat a lunch of non-kosher food such as pork. It would be even more disrespectful for students to form an official group within the Jewish religious school to advocate for the 'right' to eat pork."

A letter from Ismael Mukhtar, president of the Manitoba Islamic Association, said Bill 18 "infringes on our constitutionally protected right of freedom of religion."

The debate over the bill will come to a head in the spring, when a legislature committee holds public hearings on the legislation.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/more-religious-leaders-join-battle-against-manitoba-anti-184315499.html

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PFT: Dolphins sign TE Keller to one-year deal

AP

On Friday evening, the Broncos released a statement from executive vice president of football operations John Elway detailing the organization?s version of events that left defensive end Elvis Dumervil without a job ? at least for now ? after the team claimed they didn?t get the necessary documentation for a contract restructuring in time.

Elway?s statement:

?For the last week, Elvis Dumervil?and his agent were aware of our desire to change the financial terms of his contract to ensure he would remain a Denver Bronco. After numerous conversations with both Elvis and his representative, we submitted our final contract proposal to Elvis today at 11 a.m. MDT. Based on our previous discussions, we believed our offer was fair and were hopeful it would resolve this matter.

?Due to the procedural elements that were involved in executing the new proposal, we imposed a 1 p.m. MDT deadline for a decision, one hour before the NFL?s waiver wire at 2 p.m. MDT. Our deadline was clearly communicated to Elvis? representative.

?At 1 p.m. MDT, we were informed by Elvis? representative that he declined our offer. We then prepared Elvis? termination notice to officially file his release with the NFL office.

?At approximately 1:25 p.m. MDT, however, we were informed that Elvis changed his mind and accepted the same contract we proposed nearly two-and-a-half hours earlier. Although we expressed our concern regarding the time constraints, we were assured that the signed documents would be submitted to us before the league?s waiver deadline.

?We did not receive the documents from Elvis by the league?s deadline and were forced to release him shortly before 2 p.m. MDT.

?Due to this situation, there are now salary cap implications associated with this transaction that we must consider with regard to potentially re-signing Elvis. At this moment, we are discussing all of our free-agency options to determine what?s best for the Denver Broncos.?

Marty Magid, Dumervil?s agent, told his side of the story to USA Today?s Mike Garafolo. Magid told USA Today that Denver had changed part of the contract, which was one of the multiple factors that led to the fax coming too late for Denver to execute the deal, the agent said.

Rarely does a deal unspool like this in public fashion, and the outcome is something?PFT?s Mike Florio pins on both sides.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/15/dolphins-add-dustin-keller/related/

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Exclusive: BP's mighty trading unit under scrutiny as earnings drop

By Dmitry Zhdannikov

LONDON (Reuters) - BP's oil trading division, the alma mater for a generation of the world's top traders and a former cash-generating machine, is under greater scrutiny after becoming a weak link for the oil major.

The company says the unit, which once generated a tenth of profits, was responsible for its failure to fully deliver on a pledge to improve performance at its refining division.

BP last restructured its trading desk in 2010 to put more focus on fast growing markets in China and India, and denies more big changes are planned: "Major interventions are neither considered necessary nor are contemplated," it said in a statement.

But industry sources and former insiders say the weak performance has sparked an internal debate about the unit. The developments at BP, once the most powerful oil trading desk, highlight generally weak performances across many trading units at oil majors and trading houses over the past three years due to relatively low market volatility.

"If earnings drop too close to the cost level, the reforms debate will intensify," one former BP trading insider said.

Another former BP insider, now with a rival, said: "For the first time in a generation there is a debate, soul searching going on at their trading desk as people are asking questions - have we lost our competitive advantage?"

BP has not released separate figures for the performance of its trading desk since 2005, but in regulatory filings it noted that the unit disappointed last year.

"In March 2010, we outlined an opportunity to deliver an additional $2 billion of performance improvement by 2012 relative to a 2009 base-line," it said.

"We were unable to fully deliver this level of improvement principally due to a significant reduction in the supply and trading contribution in 2012 compared with a particularly strong performance in 2009."

BETTER PAID THAN THE CEO

Oil trading has been one of BP's most prestigious and high-paying divisions for decades.

The head of BP's U.S. crude business, a position currently held by Donald Porteous, is believed to be one of the best paid jobs in the world of oil trading.

"On a good year, the head of the U.S. book was making more than the CEO. Much more," one of several former insiders said.

BP declined to comment on traders' salaries. Chief Executive Robert Dudley's total pay fell 21 percent last year to $2.673 million.

Top management at BP also understands trading. Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary was head of trading between 2005 and 2010.

Like other European oil majors Shell, Total and ENI, BP has long had a big trading desk, which not only sells the firm's products and buys oil to meet refining needs, but also seeks to make profits on its own.

That contrasts with U.S. Exxon Mobil, which buys oil and products only to meet its needs and does not trade to make profits or use derivatives for hedging and other purposes.

BP's trading arm, like those of other oil firms, benefits from the information the company compiles from its control of producing, storage and refining assets.

For example, it controls large storage facilities, pipelines and a refinery in the U.S. oil hub of Cushing, Oklahoma, giving it big logistical and information advantages over competitors.

In the last three years BP has sold $40 billion worth of assets to raise cash to cover bills from its Macondo oil spill, including some U.S. storage facilities and refineries, but it says that did not hurt its competitive advantage in trading.

"We have continued to invest in facilities and contracts in the areas of the world most relevant to trading," BP said.

VOLUMES STAGNANT

But trading volumes have largely been stagnant for the past few years, while rivals like Vitol, Glencore and the trading arm of Shell expanded trading.

Between 2009 and 2012, BP's trading arm sold 2.4 million barrels per day of refined oil products while crude sales fell to 1.5 million from 1.8 million bpd. By contrast, total volumes at Vitol rose from 5 to 6 million bpd over the same period.

In 2007, BP paid $303 million in fines to settle criminal and civil cases related to manipulation of the U.S. propane market. It also had an independent monitor sitting on its trading desk for several years.

The big restructuring of the trading unit in 2010 saw it set up separate oil and gas trading desks.

Overall trading head count has remained stable over the past 12 months, according to its reports, although about 300 posts have been cut from the gas desk and a similar number added to its oil desk. It now has 1,800 staff in oil and 1,200 in gas.

WILD SWINGS

The last time BP disclosed figures for trading, in 2005, it earned $2.97 billion, or over a tenth of the firm's overall net profit.

People familiar with the trading division's performance say 2009 was the last year of such truly impressive success. Crude, products and gas trading made $1 billion each amid soaring oil prices. As prices steadily rose, a market-forward price structure made storing oil profitable. Costs in the division stood at around $1 billion.

But the following years were more difficult, insiders say. Earnings from oil products trading halved in 2010 after a loss on fuel oil as core traders left. The situation improved in 2011 but last year saw a further decline across the board.

BP now includes trading in its consolidated figure for its downstream division, which has had widely varying results, ranging from 3 percent to 15 percent of the firm's total core earnings over the past four years.

In its annual filings it has described trading's contribution as weak in 2012, stronger in 2011, weak in 2010 and "very strong" in 2009, when trading helped make up for sharp falls in refining profits in the downstream division.

Those swings have not come under serious investor scrutiny at BP, although some activist shareholders have raised questions about the advantages of large trading divisions at other firms.

U.S. Hess Corp said it would offload its energy trading arm, Hetco, and exit its retail businesses by 2015 after pressure from investors.

(Additional reporting by David Sheppard; Editing by William Hardy and Peter Graff)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-bps-mighty-trading-unit-under-scrutiny-earnings-144447660--finance.html

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Md. lawmakers vote to repeal death penalty

FILE - Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley attends the National Governors Association 2013 Winter Meeting in Washington, in this Feb. 24, 2013 file photo. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, has been pushing for the change since his first year in office. A repeal bill has already been approved by the state Senate and it was expected to win final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday March 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

FILE - Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley attends the National Governors Association 2013 Winter Meeting in Washington, in this Feb. 24, 2013 file photo. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, has been pushing for the change since his first year in office. A repeal bill has already been approved by the state Senate and it was expected to win final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday March 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

FILE - Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley attends the National Governors Association 2013 Winter Meeting in Washington, in this Feb. 24, 2013 file photo. Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, has been pushing for the change since his first year in office. A repeal bill has already been approved by the state Senate and it was expected to win final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday March 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) ? Maryland lawmakers approved a measure abolishing the death penalty on Friday, and the bill is expected to be signed by the Democratic governor who has long pushed for banning capital punishment in the state.

If the measure is signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, it will make Maryland the 18th state in the nation to do away with the death penalty.

A repeal bill won final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday. It already had been approved by the Senate.

The House advanced the legislation this week after delegates rejected nearly 20 amendments, mostly from Republicans, aimed at keeping capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.

If passed, life without the possibility of parole would be the most severe sentence in the state.

Supporters of repeal argue that the death penalty is costly, error-prone, racially biased and a poor deterrent of crime. But opponents say it is a necessary tool to punish lawbreakers who commit the most egregious crimes.

Maryland has five men on death row. The measure would not apply to them retroactively, but the legislation makes clear that the governor can commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The state's last execution took place in 2005, during the administration of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich. He resumed executions after a moratorium had been in place pending a 2003 University of Maryland study, which found significant racial and geographic disparity in how the death penalty was carried out.

Capital punishment was put on hold in Maryland after a December 2006 ruling by Maryland's highest court that the state's lethal injection protocols weren't properly approved by a legislative committee. The committee, whose co-chairs oppose capital punishment, has yet to sign off on protocols.

O'Malley, a Catholic, expressed support for repeal legislation in 2007, but it stalled in a Senate committee.

Maryland has a large Catholic population, and the church opposes the death penalty.

In 2008, lawmakers created a commission to study capital punishment after repeal efforts failed again. The panel recommended a ban later that year, citing racial and jurisdictional disparities in how the death penalty is applied.

In 2009, lawmakers tightened the law to reduce the chances of an innocent person being sent to death row by restricting capital punishment to murder cases with biological evidence such as DNA, videotaped evidence of a murder or a videotaped confession.

According to the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services website, Maryland has executed only five inmates since 1976. There were three in the 1990s, and two when Ehrlich was governor.

In contrast, neighboring Virginia has executed 110 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. However, Virginia's death row population has dwindled to eight from a peak of 57 in 1995, in part because fewer death sentences are being handed down in the state amid an increased acceptance of life without parole as a reasonable alternative.

The center said death sentences have declined by 75 percent and executions by 60 percent nationally since the 1990s.

Connecticut abolished the death penalty last year. Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have outlawed it in recent years.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-03-15-Death%20Penalty-Maryland/id-523aff6622c140089ac0458a8e413a6c

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Pope Francis: For Hispanic Catholics in US, a rush of joy and optimism

For Hispanic Catholics in the US, the election of Pope Francis, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, means the Catholic Church is being led by 'one of our own.'

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald,?Correspondent / March 13, 2013

A worshiper holds up the front page of a magazine showing a photograph of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis I) during celebrations in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday. Nearly half of the world's Catholics are Hispanic, many of them reacted with joy to the selection of the former Argentinean Cardinal.

AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano

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Hispanic Catholics in the United States reacted with jubilant optimism Wednesday to news of the world?s first Latin American pope, saying they hoped he might use his background to help mend rifts and surmount challenges that hamper their communities, the church, and the world.

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On a basic level, they celebrated the fact that Pope Francis I, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, shares aspects of their backgrounds and could, it seems, be their father or grandfather.

?He?s one of our own,? says Rosendo Urrabazo, the Chicago-based provincial superior for the Claretian Missionaries, a Catholic order of priests and brothers. ?Somebody with a Hispanic last name and whose mother tongue is Spanish ? that touches people?s hearts.?

Francis I will be endearing, too, Rev. Urrabazo says. He met the man in Buenos Aires, where then-Archbishop Bergoglio rode the bus to work every day and answered the door to the chancery himself.

Others say they hope to see such unpretentiousness in the new pope because today?s challenges require a leader who relates to ordinary people. That includes Hispanic Catholics, who comprise nearly half the church?s global membership of 1.2 billion.

Consider young adults. A Gallup survey released in February found that Hispanics in America, especially those under age 30, are increasingly unlikely to identify as Catholic. But having a Latin American atop the church hierarchy could help young Hispanics feel that they belong, according to Lily Morales, who coordinates events for young adult Hispanics in the Diocese of Austin.

?We really wanted someone [in the papacy] who could represent the American continents,? Ms. Morales says. ?I think Hispanic young adults will feel stronger connections to the church because [Pope Francis I] is Latino.?

Similar dynamics might help more young men consider the priesthood, says Urrabazo, whose work involves finding men to join his religious order as priests and brothers. They might be more curious to investigate the option, he notes, if they see a man of integrity at the helm who looks and sounds a bit like they do.

On a broader scale, Hispanic Catholics said they hope the new pope?s identity as a Latin American can help him make inroads on thorny social issues. Morales talks of a need to mend a church strained by tensions around homosexuality, abortion, and the handling of clergy sexual abuse cases.

As a Latino, ?he represents a huge chunk of the Catholic community,? Morales says. ?I hope that having that in mind, and having that background, will help to repair the church.?

What?s more, many Hispanic Americans struggle with problems, such as poverty and families separated by immigration policies, that need moral leadership to resolve, says Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, a Latino theology expert at Loyola Marymount University. Pope Francis I can?t remedy these alone, she admits. But he can, in her view, point the way to compassionate solutions, especially if he exudes ?cari?o? ? a special kind of warmth that engenders love and trust.

?I want to see if he has cari?o,? she says. ?It?s a concept for a way of life.? I?m waiting to see if I see that in him.??

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/GWkB2lbuLY8/Pope-Francis-For-Hispanic-Catholics-in-US-a-rush-of-joy-and-optimism

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Blue Jeans Network Integrates With Tely Labs, Releases New iOS ...

Blue Jeans Network was designed to make cross-platform video conferencing across multiple systems easy and less expensive from a capex standpoint. As a result, it?s also seeking to increase availability and usage of video conferencing through enterprises. The company is taking a few steps to do so, with the launch of an upgraded iOS app, and integration with a new, affordable video conferencing endpoint from Tely Labs.

Up until now, the company has sought to connect disparate video conferencing systems that its clients had already invested in, and to also make them available to users of its browser-based video chat and mobile and tablet apps. Blue Jeans worked with endpoints from Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, Sony, Huawei, Microsoft Lync, Skype, and Google ? allowing users to connect regardless of the hardware or software that was already in their enterprise.

While using browser-based conferencing might work when connecting to a single remote user, it was less than ideal for teams who were based in one place connecting to groups in another. So Blue Jeans has partnered with Tely Labs, the maker of affordable video conferencing hardware, to allow its clients to set up secondary rooms for video collaboration without having to invest heavily in new equipment.

With the partnership, Tely will be rolling out an Enterprise Edition of its video chat appliances, which will have Blue Jeans connectivity built in. The company?s video chat hardware ? the TelyHD and TelyHD Business Edition ? previously worked primarily with Skype for point-to-point connections. But the Enterprise Edition will work with Blue Jeans? cloud-based conferencing platform for connecting to users on endpoints from multiple vendors.

And the price is affordable ? Blue Jeans estimates that secondary video conferencing rooms can be set up for as little as $1,000 using the TelyHD Enterprise product. That?s much lower than even most low-end video conferencing hardware. Rather than buying new hardware, customers with existing Tely units will be able to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition for a fee.

In addition to the Tely integration, Blue Jeans is making available new, feature-rich mobile apps for iPad and iPhone users that provides more flexibility to control video conferences. Previously, its iOS users were able to connect to video conferences, but could do little else. The new apps enable users to join and participate in high-quality, bi-directional video chat and media sharing, even from their mobile devices.

That should help promote more media-sharing between users. But since not everyone has the same need or desire to view either video or other presentations or media, Blue Jeans has created a ?slider? for layout control, so that individual users can customize the way their screens appear on the fly.

At Blue Jeans Network, their mission is to make video communications as easy and pervasive as audio communications, enabling more effective collaboration at work, at home, and on the road. Their cloud-based conferencing service enables people to connect with each other any time, any place, and from practically any device.

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Tely Labs was founded in early 2010 with the goal of turning a standard HD television into a two-way communications and entertainment center. In the home living room, and the office conference room, Tely Labs will revolutionize how people communicate and relate to each other.

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Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/13/blue-jeans-network-tely-ios/

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