Headlines

Local News
Rock the Republic comes to Bryan

This weekend Rock the Republic, a diverse live music and arts event, will be taking place in Downtown Bryan. According to an article in the Texas A&M Battalion, the event will feature a variety of musicians, slam poets and urban artists exclusively from Texas with emphasis on the overall experience of the event. The event organizers emphasize that it is not a festival, but a “a spectacle of sight and sound.” Tickets are $10 for a one-day pass and $25 for the full three days, and the event is expected to sell out. Sales end on Monday, October 12th.

Listen to 89.1FM KEOS this Wednesday from 6:00-7:00pm to hear an interview with the events organizers on Biased Transmission.

Local Politics
CS City Manager Considers Ethics Complaint Baseless

The Bryan-College Station Eagle reports that the College Station city manager responded to ethics complaints; last week a complaint was filed with the Texas Ethics Commission alleging that City Manager Glenn Brown used $20,000 in public funds to produce and mail misleading information about the red light cameras. Brown characterized the complaint as disappointing and without merit, and Brown believes that he has done anything wrong. Brown said the brochures cost $14,000 to $15,000 to print and mail and were intended to remind residents of the upcoming election and to let them know of the polling locations. Residents will vote November 3rd on whether to remove the city's red light cameras.

Texas News
Houston Police Investigating Possible Hate Crime at Mosque

The FBI and Houston police are investigating a possible hate crime after someone scrawled anti-Islamic remarks on the wall of a southwest Houston mosque. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle, earlier this week an unidentified man entered the Turkish Center Mosque and wrote hateful phrases about Islam and Muslims on the wall. Dr. Aziz Siddiqi, president of the nonprofit Islamic Society of Greater Houston that represents 300,000 area Muslims, characterized the phrases as “very derogatory,” but declined to repeat their exact wording. The Houston Police Department is reviewing surveillance video to try to identify the suspect, who used chalk to write on the walls of the mosque, and the FBI is conducting its own inquiry to determine what happened and whether the incident falls within federal jurisdiction.

National News
Arlington Unveils a New Unknown Soldier

For the first time in a generation, Arlington National Cemetery has marked the burial of an unknown on its storied grounds. However, according to an article in Salon, twenty-five years since the last interment at the Tomb of the Unknowns, the identity of the body remains a mystery not because the ravages of war made identification impossible, but because in a bureaucratic error the cemetery lost the paperwork showing the identity of the remains. This is the first time the cemetery has marked an unknown since 1984, when Arlington entombed the remains of a Vietnam veteran in the Tomb of the Unknowns, and that unknown soldier was supposed to be the last unknown interred in any U.S. military cemetery, given advances in DNA technology and a multimillion dollar effort to account for every soldier and identify all remains. Rather than publicly admit this error, Arlington quietly left the remains unmarked for six years.

National Politics
Top Payers In Health Care Reform

The National Journal reports that the Chamber of Commerce has spent more money lobbying during the health care debate than any other group. The Chamber of Commerce, who will not support legislation that includes a public option, spent $17.4 million in the first half of 2009. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, who is opposed to any pharmaceutical price controls, has spent $13 million in the first half of 2009 including $4 million on TV ads featuring “Clintoncare” throwbacks Harry and Louise voicing their support for reform. AARP has spent the third most in the first have of 2009, $9.4 million, is opposed to decreases in funding of Medicare but has been supportive of health care reform. The American Medical Association spent $8.2 million, and the Business Roundtable spent $7.4 million in the first half of 2009.

War and Peace
Contractors in Iraq Are Hidden Casualties of War

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has depended on contract workers more than in any previous conflict - to cook meals for troops, wash laundry, deliver supplies and protect diplomats, among other tasks. According to a report by ProPublica, tens of thousands of civilians have worked in the two battle zones, often facing the same dangers as U.S. troops and suffering the same kinds of injuries. Contract workers from the U.S. have been mostly men, primarily middle-aged, many of them military veterans drawn by money, patriotism or both, according to interviews and public records. They are police officers, truck drivers, firefighters, mechanics and craftsmen, mostly from rural corners of America, especially the South. Nearly 1,600 civilian workers -- both Americans and foreign nationals -- have died in the two war zones. Thousands more have been injured. (More than 5,200 U.S. service members have been killed and 35,000 wounded.) Many of the civilians have come home as military veterans in all but name, sometimes with lifelong disabilities but without the support network available to returning troops

Economy
Quarter of America's Total Income is Earned By the Top 1%

The Economist reports that in 2007, the latest year for which data are available, the top 1% increased their share of the country's income to 23.5. The concentration of income earned by this top percentile now stands at its highest since 1928. Two-thirds of the country's total gains in the five years to 2007 accrued to the top 1%, whereas the bottom 90th percentile saw only 12% of the extra income.

Environment
EPA Probes Herbicide Atrazine for Human Health Threats

The Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that the commonly used weed killer atrazine will undergo a new comprehensive evaluation to determine its effects - first on humans and later on amphibians and aquatic ecosystems. According to an article in the Environmental News Service, the most recent studies on atrazine and its potential association with birth defects, low birth weight, and premature births will be included in the year-long evaluation of the chemical's effects on humans. To evaluate atrazine's potential cancer and non-cancer effects on humans, the EPA will engage the federal Scientific Advisory Panel established by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. The panel, composed of biologists, statisticians and toxicologists, serves as the primary scientific peer review mechanism for EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. Next September, at the end of this process, the EPA will decide whether to revise its current risk assessment of the pesticide and whether new restrictions are necessary to better protect public health.

Immigration
Napolitano Vows Continued Enforcement of Immigration Laws

The McClatchy news services reported that in response to widespread criticism from immigrant advocates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced steps this week to improve conditions of detainees and allow them easier access to attorneys. But Napolitano stood firm on the Obama administration's efforts to continue strict enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. In her mixed message of humane treatment and tough enforcement, Napolitano made it clear she intends to reform detention operations from what she described as a patchwork of privately-run and government-run facilities with different standards in different locations.

Reproductive Rights
Unsafe Abortion Cost the Developing World Millions of Dollars Each Year

Treating the complications that result from unsafe abortion costs Africa and Latin America $227–280 million each year, according to a new study from the Guttmacher Institute. These costs (reported in 2006 US$) place a considerable added strain on struggling national health systems in Africa and Latin America, which spend an estimated $490 million annually treating complications from pregnancies and births. Unsafe abortion costs the developing world at least $341 million when the Asian and Pacific regions are taken into account. Globally, 15–25% of women who need hospital-based care for complications from unsafe abortion never receive it. If these women had access to the services they needed, the costs to health care systems would at least double. Currently, an unknown number of women who never receive treatment suffer lifelong consequences or die from their complications, a grave illustration of the social and medical costs of unsafe abortion.

Women’s Issues
Marital Rape is Still an Underreported Crime in India

According to a report by Women’s International Perspective, regardless of culture, status or religion, women across the world continue to show reluctance in pressing charges against the rapist when the culprit is their spouse, despite the fact that marital rape accounts for a quarter of all rape cases reported globally. In India where a staggering 70% of women feel denying their husbands’ sexual demands is an offense that justifies wife beating, it doesn’t come as a surprise that more than two-thirds of the country’s married women between the ages of 15 and 49 have been raped. It has taken Indian lawmakers a very long time to recognize marital rape as a crime. And yet having a law in place that criminalizes this form of violence against women is not enough to address this largely underreported epidemic.

GLBT Issues
House Approves Hate-Crimes Measure

Legislation to punish hate crimes became a flashpoint on Capitol Hill on this week, according to an article in the Washington Post. A measure expanding the definition of such crimes was attached to the bill outlining the Defense Department budget and approved by the House over the strong objections of Republicans. The bill passed the House this week, 281 to 146, with 131 Republicans and 15 Democrats in opposition. The measure must pass the Senate, in a vote that could come as early as this week, before it can head to President Obama's desk for his signature. The provision would broaden the current definition of federal hate crimes to include attacks based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It would also create a new federal crime to cover attacks against U.S. military personnel because of their service.

Race and Racism
Justice Department Probe Examines Treatment of Latinos by Suffolk Police

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the U.S. Justice Department has begun an investigation into allegations of “discriminatory policing” by the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Police Department over how officers responded to reports of crimes against Latinos. The investigation, announced last week, will be conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the local U.S. attorney’s office. It comes about nine months after the agencies began looking into a complaint that the Suffolk police force failed to adequately investigate crimes against Latinos and discouraged them from seeking assistance. The complaint was filed shortly after the November killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant fatally stabbed in the town of Patchogue in what authorities say was a hate crime.