Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal

Wednesday, Feb 29, 2012

RT News

Just when you thought the government couldn’t ruin the First Amendment any further: The House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday that outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it.
The US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which is being dubbed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. In the bill, Congress officially makes it illegal to trespass on the grounds of the White House, which, on the surface, seems not just harmless and necessary, but somewhat shocking that such a rule isn’t already on the books. The wording in the bill, however, extends to allow the government to go after much more than tourists that transverse the wrought iron White House fence.

Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country.

Under current law, White House trespassers are prosecuted under a local ordinance, a Washington, DC legislation that can bring misdemeanor charges for anyone trying to get close to the president without authorization. Under H.R. 347, a federal law will formally be applied to such instances, but will also allow the government to bring charges to protesters, demonstrators and activists at political events and other outings across America.

The new legislation allows prosecutors to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function with a fede

ral offense if Secret Service is on the scene, but the law stretches to include not just the president’s palatial Pennsylvania Avenue home. Under the law, any building or grounds where the president is visiting — even temporarily — is covered, as is any building or grounds “restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance."

It’s not just the president who would be spared from protesters, either.
Covered under the bill is any person protected by the Secret Service. Although such protection isn’t extended to just everybody, making it a federal offense to even accidently disrupt an event attended by a person with such status essentially crushes whatever currently remains of the right to assemble and peacefully protest.

Hours after the act passed, presidential candidate Rick Santorum was granted Secret Service protection. For the American protester, this indeed means that glitter-bombing the former Pennsylvania senator is officially a very big no-no, but it doesn’t stop with just him. Santorum’s coverage under the Secret Service began on Tuesday, but fellow GOP hopeful Mitt Romney has already been receiving such security. A campaign aide who asked not to be identified confirmed last week to CBS News that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has sought Secret Service protection as well. Even former contender Herman Cain received the armed protection treatment when he was still in the running for the Republican Party nod.

In the text of the act, the law is allowed to be used against anyone who knowingly enters or remains in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so, but those grounds are considered any area where someone — rather it’s President Obama, Senator Santorum or Governor Romney — will be temporarily visiting, whether or not the public is even made aware. Entering such a facility is thus outlawed, as is disrupting the orderly conduct of “official functions,” engaging in disorderly conduct “within such proximity to” the event or acting violent to anyone, anywhere near the premises. Under that verbiage, that means a peaceful protest outside a candidate’s concession speech would be a federal offense, but those occurrences covered as special event of national significance don’t just stop there, either. And neither does the list of covered persons that receive protection.
Outside of the current presidential race, the Secret Service is responsible for guarding an array of politicians, even those from outside America. George W Bush is granted protection until ten years after his administration ended, or 2019, and every living president before him is eligible for life-time, federally funded coverage. Visiting heads of state are extended an offer too, and the events sanctioned as those of national significance — a decision that is left up to the US Department of Homeland Security — extends to more than the obvious. While presidential inaugurations and meeting of foreign dignitaries are awarded the title, nearly three dozen events in all have been considered a National Special Security Event (NSSE) since the term was created under President Clinton. Among past events on the DHS-sanctioned NSSE list are Super Bowl XXXVI, the funerals of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, most State of the Union addresses and the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

With Secret Service protection awarded to visiting dignitaries, this also means, for instance, that the federal government could consider a demonstration against any foreign president on American soil as a violation of federal law, as long as it could be considered disruptive to whatever function is occurring.

When thousands of protesters are expected to descend on Chicago this spring for the 2012 G8 and NATO summits, they will also be approaching the grounds of a National Special Security Event. That means disruptive activity, to whichever court has to consider it, will be a federal offense under the act.

And don’t forget if you intend on fighting such charges, you might not be able to rely on evidence of your own. In the state of Illinois, videotaping the police, under current law, brings criminals charges. Don’t fret. It’s not like the country will really try to enforce it — right?

On the bright side, does this mean that the law could apply to law enforcement officers reprimanded for using excessive force on protesters at political events? Probably. Of course, some fear that the act is being created just to keep those demonstrations from ever occuring, and given the vague language on par with the loose definition of a “terrorist” under the NDAA, if passed this act is expected to do a lot more harm to the First Amendment than good.

United States Representative Justin Amash (MI-03) was one of only three lawmakers to vote against the act when it appeared in the House late Monday. Explaining his take on the act through his official Facebook account on Tuesday, Rep. Amash writes, “The bill expands current law to make it a crime to enter or remain in an area where an official is visiting even if the person does not know it's illegal to be in that area and has no reason to suspect it's illegal.”

“Some government officials may need extraordinary protection to ensure their safety. But criminalizing legitimate First Amendment activity — even if that activity is annoying to those government officials — violates our rights,” adds the representative.

Now that the act has overwhelmingly made it through the House, the next set of hands to sift through its pages could very well be President Barack Obama; the US Senate had already passed the bill back on February 6. Less than two months ago, the president approved the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, essentially suspending habeas corpus from American citizens. Could the next order out of the Executive Branch be revoking some of the Bill of Rights? Only if you consider the part about being able to assemble a staple of the First Amendment, really. Don’t worry, though. Obama was, after all, a constitutional law professor.

When he signed the NDAA on December 31, he accompanied his signature with a signing statement that let Americans know that, just because he authorized the indefinite detention of Americans didn’t mean he thought it was right.

Should President Obama suspend the right to assemble, Americans might expect another apology to accompany it in which the commander-in-chief condemns the very act he authorizes. If you disagree with such a decision, however, don’t take it to the White House. Sixteen-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue and the vicinity is, of course, covered under this act.


 

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

Tuesday, Feb 21, 2012
Robert M. McDowell

On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet's flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.
Since the Net's inception, engineers, academics, user groups and others have convened in bottom-up nongovernmental organizations to keep it operating and thriving through what is known as a "multi-stakeholder" governance model. This consensus-driven private-sector approach has been the key to the Net's phenomenal success.
In 1995, shortly after it was privatized, only 16 million people used the Internet world-wide. By 2011, more than two billion were online—and that number is growing by as much as half a million every day. This explosive growth is the direct result of governments generally keeping their hands off the Internet sphere.
Net access, especially through mobile devices, is improving the human condition more quickly—and more fundamentally—than any other technology in history. Nowhere is this more true than in the developing world, where unfettered Internet technologies are expanding economies and raising living standards.

Farmers who live far from markets are now able to find buyers for their crops through their Internet-connected mobile devices without assuming the risks and expenses of traveling with their goods. Worried parents are able to go online to locate medicine for their sick children. And proponents of political freedom are better able to share information and organize support to break down the walls of tyranny.

The Internet has also been a net job creator. A recent McKinsey study found that for every job disrupted by Internet connectivity, 2.6 new jobs are created. It is no coincidence that these wonderful developments blossomed as the Internet migrated further away from government control.

Today, however, Russia, China and their allies within the 193 member states of the ITU want to renegotiate the 1988 treaty to expand its reach into previously unregulated areas. Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling:
• Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control;
• Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for "international" Internet traffic, perhaps even on a "per-click" basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries;
• Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as "peering."
• Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinates the .com and .org Web addresses of the world;
• Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;
• Regulate international mobile roaming rates and practices.

Many countries in the developing world, including India and Brazil, are particularly intrigued by these ideas. Even though Internet-based technologies are improving billions of lives everywhere, some governments feel excluded and want more control.
And let's face it, strong-arm regimes are threatened by popular outcries for political freedom that are empowered by unfettered Internet connectivity. They have formed impressive coalitions, and their efforts have progressed significantly.

Merely saying "no" to any changes to the current structure of Internet governance is likely to be a losing proposition. A more successful strategy would be for proponents of Internet freedom and prosperity within every nation to encourage a dialogue among all interested parties, including governments and the ITU, to broaden the multi-stakeholder umbrella with the goal of reaching consensus to address reasonable concerns. As part of this conversation, we should underscore the tremendous benefits that the Internet has yielded for the developing world through the multi-stakeholder model.

Upending this model with a new regulatory treaty is likely to partition the Internet as some countries would inevitably choose to opt out. A balkanized Internet would be devastating to global free trade and national sovereignty. It would impair Internet growth most severely in the developing world but also globally as technologists are forced to seek bureaucratic permission to innovate and invest. This would also undermine the proliferation of new cross-border technologies, such as cloud computing.
A top-down, centralized, international regulatory overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net, which is a global network of networks without borders. No government, let alone an intergovernmental body, can make engineering and economic decisions in lightning-fast Internet time. Productivity, rising living standards and the spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in the developing world, would grind to a halt as engineering and business decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body.

Any attempts to expand intergovernmental powers over the Internet—no matter how incremental or seemingly innocuous—should be turned back. Modernization and reform can be constructive, but not if the end result is a new global bureaucracy that departs from the multi-stakeholder model. Enlightened nations should draw a line in the sand against new regulations while welcoming reform that could include a nonregulatory role for the ITU.

Pro-regulation forces are, thus far, much more energized and organized than those who favor the multi-stakeholder approach. Regulation proponents only need to secure a simple majority of the 193 member states to codify their radical and counterproductive agenda. Unlike the U.N. Security Council, no country can wield a veto in ITU proceedings. With this in mind, some estimate that approximately 90 countries could be supporting intergovernmental Net regulation—a mere seven short of a majority.
While precious time ticks away, the U.S. has not named a leader for the treaty negotiation. We must awake from our slumber and engage before it is too late. Not only do these developments have the potential to affect the daily lives of all Americans, they also threaten freedom and prosperity across the globe
 

Bruce Springsteen cools on Obama
Friday, Feb 17 2012
Caitlin McDevitt


The Boss was all about Obama in 2008, but Bruce Springsteen is less enthusiastic these days.

"I still support the president, but there are plenty of things that I thought took a long time and would have been closed by now,” Springsteen said at a press conference in Paris on Thursday, the AFP reports.

On what Obama could have done better, he said, "I would like to have seen more activism in job creation sooner than it came, I would like to have seen people helped out, seen some of these [home] foreclosures stopped somehow."

Springsteen also said that the president had been "more friendly to corporations than I thought he would be,” adding that “there's not as many middle-class or working-class voices heard in the administration" as he expected.

“But on the other hand, we're out of Iraq and hopefully we'll be out of Afghanistan soon,” he said. Rattling off more of Obama’s accomplishments, Springsteen said, "He kept GM alive, which was incredibly important to Detroit and Michigan, and he got the health care law passed, although I wish there had been a public option and didn't leave the citizens victims of the insurance companies. He killed Osama bin Laden … He brought some sanity to the top level of government."

The Boss, who stumped for Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004, said it’s less likely that he’ll hit the campaign trail this year.

"I got into that sort of by accident. The Bush years were so horrific that you couldn't just sit around,” he said. "I never campaigned for politicians previous to John Kerry and at that moment it was such a blatant disaster occurring at the top of government, you felt that if you had any cachet whatsoever, you had to cash it in because you couldn't sit around and watch it."

Explaining that he’d rather “stay on the sidelines,” Springsteen said, "I'm not a professional campaigner and every four years I don't think that I'm going to go and pick a guy and go after him.”

Still, he won't be left out of the 2012 fray entirely: A song from Springsteen's new album is on President Obama's reelection campaign playlist.
 

8 Music Stars for Republicans
Thursday, Feb 17 2012

MJ Lee

1. Kelly Clarkson, singer, for Ron Paul: “I love Ron Paul. I liked him a lot during the last republican nomination and no one gave him a chance. If he wins the nomination for the Republican party in 2012 he’s got my vote. Too bad he probably won’t.” (Dec. 29, 2011, Twitter)

2. Gene Simmons, Kiss bassist, for Mitt Romney: “Who’s got a chance? Mitt Romney’s got a chance. And he’s got the experience. He’s run successful companies, knows how to make money, and knows how to be taxed at 15 percent instead of 48 percent, if he lived in Beverly Hills, the way I get taxed.” (Jan. 27, 2012, interview with ComicBookMovie.com)

3. Michelle Branch, singer, for Ron Paul: Responding to a tweet from Kelly Clarkson (see #1): “@kelly_clarkson I wholeheartedly agree. #RonPaul” (Dec. 29, 2011, Twitter)

4. Prodigy, rapper, for Ron Paul: “I love Ron Paul, man. I love what he represents. I read his books while I was locked up, “End the Fed” and all that. I would like to see that happening because I would like to see him shake things up a little bit. You know what I mean? I like that type of shit. Shake these people up a little something, we need that out here … But let’s be clear, that’s not happening. They’re not going to let him win. I wish him the most success. I hope he does win, to tell you the truth, but they’re not going to let that man win.” (May 17, 2011, interview with “We Are Change.”)

5. Pat Boone, singer, for Rick Santorum: “I am excited to endorse Rick Santorum for president. I’ve known Rick for many years, and Rick has been a consistent defender of conservatism and the values our great nation was founded upon. I began supporting my friend, Ronald Reagan in the 1960s and I was a Reagan delegate at the 1976 convention because I saw in him a strong leader who would defend traditional America. I see many of those same qualities in Rick Santorum. He’s experienced, honest, and deeply principled.” (Feb. 6, 2012, in a statement)

6. Juliette Lewis, singer/actress, for Ron Paul: “Let me be clear I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN or a Democrat even. I like #RonPaul #PresidentPaul. He is anti DefenseAct and 4ConstitutionRights.” (Jan. 10, 2012, Twitter)

7. Joe Perry, Aerosmith guitarist, for Ron Paul: “Obama hasn’t done anything close to what he promised he’d do.didn’t get my vote and I got lotta grief. Well,my votes for Ron Paul”; “Media is trying to crush Paul. It’s so transparent. They will smear himevery chance.beware! Get your news from lot of different sources.” (Jan. 3, 2012, Twitter)

8. Dave Mustaine, leader of Megadeth, for Rick Santorum: “You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum.” (Feb. 14, 2012, interview with MusicRadar.com) While he specifically said he hopes the GOPer that ends up in the White House will be Santorum, he later told Billboard, “Contrary to how some people have interpreted my words, I have not endorsed any presidential candidate.”

MSNBC Drops Pat Buchanan

Friday, Feb 17 2012

Tim Mak

Longtime political analyst Pat Buchanan is being dropped by MSNBC as a result of the controversy surrounding his book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

“After 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well,” read a statement from the network, according to the AP.

“My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end,” wrote Buchannan in a Thursday column at The American Conservative blog. “After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.”

Buchanan’s departure comes four months after MSNBC suspended him for the publication of his last book.

“The ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC,” said network president Phil Griffin in an interview at the time of Buchanan’s suspension.

The book, which contained chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America,” was blasted by critics as homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist.

In his Thursday column, Buchanan asserted that he had been targeted by Color of Change, a group that describes itself as dedicated to “strengthening Black America’s political voice,” and the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish group.

“The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate,” Buchanan wrote. “Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their ‘smelly little orthodoxies.’”

“Let error be tolerated, said Thomas Jefferson, ‘so long as reason is left free to combat it.’ What [ADL President Abe] Foxman and ADL are about in demanding that my voice be silenced is, in the Jeffersonian sense, intrinsically un-American,” he added.

Buchanan has twice run for president as a Republican, and was hired by MSNBC in 2002 when the network had no obvious political leanings, according to the New York Times. Since then, he has appeared increasingly out of place at a station that has leaned to the left of the political spectrum.

Mitt Romney 2012: Cartoon millionaire

Wed Feb 8 2012

Maggie Haberman

He thinks “corporations are people,” but doesn’t much worry about real people if they’re “very poor.”

Homes? Three. Tax returns? None of your business. He invests in the same exotic places a James Bond villain might, the Cayman Islands and a Swiss bank account.

He said he has feared getting a “pink slip” – and his firm was responsible for plenty of them at companies it took over. Maybe that’s because, as he said himself, “I like to fire people….” - never mind that he was talking about health insurance companies, not steelworkers. Some people think the man was even mean to his own dog.

All that’s missing from this menacing portrait of Romney – if you listen to the Democratic message points – is a Snidely Whiplash mustache to twirl.

Never mind that some of these events are taken out of context or distorted beyond recognition. Romney’s an easy figure for mockery, simple to tag as an out-of-touch rich guy – a caricature even simpler to sketch than the one Republicans made of John Kerry in 2004, and in 2012, potentially even more devastating.

At a time when Democrats are prepared to stoke a little class resentment, they may well be able to pigeonhole the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination into the narrative President Barack Obama laid out in his State of the Union address: the rich versus rest of us.
And the reality is, Romney himself is helping them do it.

It’s more than miscues here and there - it’s Romney’s way of talking about jobs, or firing service providers, or wealth, or taxes, by a man whose success in the business world came in private equity, a field that not many Americans understand easily and which his campaign has done little to define. And it all plays into the narrative of Romney as disconnected from average people.

“The problem isn’t that he’s rich,” said Democratic strategist Jim Jordan, who worked for Kerry. “Americans don’t dislike rich politicians. The Senate’s full of them, and the White House has been, too. FDR and Kennedy and plenty of others have understood how middle-class Americans live, their aspirations and worries. Romney just doesn’t have the gift of empathy. He doesn’t understand most Americans and he doesn’t care and his language and, worse, his policies make that all too obvious to voters. Which is why most of them, more all the time, simply dislike him.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul dismissed the issue as a “frenzy” created by Democrats with “the help of the liberal media…(in an) attempt to mask the fact that on this President’s watch, more Americans have seen job losses than under any president in modern history.”

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"Gasland" Director Josh Fox Arrested at Congressional Hearing

Thursday, Feb 2 2012

The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox was handcuffed and arrested Wednesday as he attempted to film a congressional hearing on the controversial natural gas drilling technique known as fracking, which the Environmental Protection Agency recently reported caused water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming.

Fox directed the award-winning film, "Gasland," which documents the impact of fracking on communities across the United States, and is now working on a sequel.

Fox says he was arrested after Republicans refused to allow him to film because he did not have the proper credentials.

"We wanted to report on what happened [at the hearing]. I was not interested in disrupting that hearing. It was not a protest action," says Fox. "I was simply trying to do my job as a journalist and go in there and show to the American people what was transpiring in that hearing, so that down the line, as we know there will be a lot of challenges mounted to that [Pavillion, Wyoming] EPA report—and frankly, to the people in Pavillion, who have been sticking up for themselves and demanding an investigation into the groundwater contamination—and to make sure that people could view that in a larger forum than usually happens."  

K’naan to Mitt Romney: Don't use my music
Wednesday, Feb 1 2012

Guy Dixon

No, they didn’t ask. “I have not been asked for permission by Mitt Romney's campaign for the use of my song,” said Somali-Canadian musician K’naan

on Wednesday, after the politician celebrated his victory in the U.S. Republican Florida primary to the sound of the global hit Wavin’ Flag.


“If I had been asked, I would certainly not have granted it. I would happily grant the Obama campaign use of my song without prejudice,” said the musician in a statement, adding that he is currently looking into legal action to prevent any further use of the song.

K’naan’s initial response, on Twitter – “Yo @mittromney I am K’naan Warsame and I do not endorse this message” – was an embarrassment for the Romney campaign, but the situation isn’t unique: Earlier this week, Frankie Sullivan of the group Survivor and co-writer of Eye of the Tiger filed a lawsuit against Republican Newt Gingrich for using the power ballad at rallies as far back as 2009.
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Newt Gingrich and the politics of resentment
Mon Jan 23 2012
Richard Gwyn

If Newt Gingrich becomes the Republican presidential candidate — now quite likely although far from certain — next fall’s presidential contest will become one of the nastiest and most divisive in a long time.

Some of the ugliness that may then disfigure American politics is already plain to see. Gingrich keeps calling Barack Obama a “food-stamp president” (as opposed to himself as a “paycheque” one), a reference, indirect but intentional, to the colour of those most likely to depend on food stamps, and also the most likely to vote for Obama.

At the same time, though, an Obama-Gingrich contest would not be just a race between two individuals to win the world’s most important job (or to hold onto it). It would be at the same time a contest between two radically different ideas about American society.

In a prototypically American way, the presidential election of 2012 thus may end up as an exercise in democracy at both its worst and its best, in the latter instance because it would have the potential to change the nature of the country. 

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Ron Paul should watch out: Stephen Colbert may be trying to steal his voters in the upcoming South Carolina primary.
Wednesday January 18 2012

Peter Grier


Laugh if you want, but this is semi-serious, in the way that the chips in a chocolate chip cookie are usually semi-sweet. Talk-show host/political provocateur/hair model Colbert has formed an exploratory committee to look into the possibility of running for president of South Carolina, in case you haven’t heard. He took this action after a Public Policy Polling survey showed him ahead of at least one real politician, Jon Huntsman, in the Palmetto State race.

Mr. Huntsman’s since dropped out, of course, which Mr. Colbert says was the result of his (Colbert’s) possible candidacy.

But there is a flaw in the comedian’s ointment: South Carolina has no provision for write-ins on its ballot, and it’s too late for Colbert to enter the primary.

What to do? Flip the problem around, and adopt the name of someone who can’t get off the ballot, even though they’re no longer running: Herman Cain. Brilliant!

“Anybody who shares my values can show it by voting for Herman Cain,” said Colbert on his Monday night show.

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KBR Won't Face Trial in Convoy Driver Death Cases Court Rules

Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk

(Bloomberg News) – Halliburton Co. (HAL), won’t face a jury on claims they sent unarmed civilian convoy drivers into an Iraqi battle zone in 2004, knowing the workers would be injured or killed, an appeals court ruled.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans today ruled the drivers’ claims were blocked by the Defense Base Act, a U.S. law that shields military contractors from lawsuits. The drivers were attacked and injured because of their role in support operations for the U.S. Army, which is covered under that statute, the judges said.

“Coverage of an injury under the DBA precludes an employee from recovering from his employer,” even if the worker claims the company was “substantially certain” the injuries would occur, U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla R. Owen said in a 30-page ruling by the panel.

KBR, a Houston-based government contractor, was sued in 2005 by the families of seven drivers killed while working in Iraq for the largest U.S. military contractor. The company appealed a 2010 lower-court ruling that jurors could weigh the companies’ actions without second-guessing the actions of the Army.

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Starting a charity at 8? Meet the generation taking action

Mon Jan 2 2012

Gayle MacDonald

The diminutive young woman sitting in a throne-like chair in the hall of a prestigious Toronto private school could not have been faulted for being nervous about speaking to 700 fidgety boys at assembly one Monday morning.

But when Cheryl Perera took to the stage, it became instantly clear this slip of a thing was an articulate powerhouse – one whose fervour and first-hand knowledge of the global child sex trade silenced the room in 10 seconds flat.

The foot-tapping, neck-stretching and ceiling-gazing ceased as Ms. Perera, who founded the OneChild organization when she was a Toronto teenager to support victims of child sex tourism in developing countries, began showing slide after slide of boys and girls being paraded before leering men often old enough to be their grandfathers. When she played a video of an eight-year-old Filipino girl mouthing, “I love you” to a client, a female teacher started to cry. The boys’ eyes bugged.

Perera, now 26, had become passionate about raising awareness and funds to fight sexual exploitation after researching the topic for a high-school project. Appalled at the atrocities, the then 16-year-old asked her parents if she could travel to their homeland of Sri Lanka to see for herself. After watching kids being ordered in bars as breezily as cocktails, Ms. Perera returned to Toronto and eventually started OneChild, in 2005, with the help of nine friends. Since then, the organization has raised more than $187,000 to build two rehabilitation centres in the Philippines for children who’ve escaped the sex trade.

Ms. Perera’s story is impressive, but no longer unique. She’s one of a growing throng of social-minded young charity crusaders who heed the call for change. Rather than turning to established foundations, they’re starting their own. Youths – and in many cases, even younger children – are the driving force in the grassroots fight to help others.

Fanned by the flames of activism on the Internet, church and school groups, and government initiatives encouraging volunteerism as part of an education mandate, many students no longer sit at home playing video games and thinking about where their next bag of chips is coming from.

“There is a great consciousness emerging, and kids of all stripes are quite aware of social causes and are willing to participate,” said Michael Ungar, a professor in Dalhousie University’s School of Social Work, and the author of 2009’s We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids.

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Florida Citizens Groups Take Voting Rights Battle to Court

Tuesday, Dec 20 2011

Danielle Wright

The League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote and the Florida Public Interest Research Group claim that new GOP-sponsored voting requirements will hurt students, seniors, the disabled and minorities — groups that often vote Democratic in the state.

The GOP's efforts to narrow voting rights in Florida have now engendered legal resistance. The League of Women Voters and other civic groups, claiming that a new state law unconstitutionally “burdens their efforts” to simply register voters, filed suit in state court last week seeking to dismantle the new legislation.
 
Attorneys for the League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote and the Florida Public Interest Research Group argue that Florida’s new law 40 requires so-called “third party voter registration” organizations such as theirs to pre-register with the state and satisfy a number of cumbersome disclosure requirements before engaging in any voter registration activities. Under the law, they are now also required to continually submit updates about their organization’s status, an act the groups call “burdensome.”
 
"There is no indication that Florida's existing law was inadequate in addressing the state's interest in preventing voter registration fraud and ensuring the integrity of the registration process,” the complaint reads. “Furthermore, even if the state had discovered shortcomings in the existing law, the new law burdens far more speech and associated activity than is necessary to accomplish any legitimate government interest."

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