Lots of Snow and Ice

A man,in New Bedford, Mass., used a blowtorch to melt ice on his back porch and ended up setting his house on fire, causing up to $30,000 in damage. Luckily no one was injured. The man used a torch hooked up to a 20-pound propane cylinder. He got too close to the building's wood frame and ignited the vinyl siding. The fire quickly spread into the building's second- and third-floor apartments. It took 25 firefighters to subdue the blaze that damaged bedrooms in the upstairs units, and caused damage to the structure and wiring. The homeowner will not be charged. He is lucky because not only could he have been charged with arson; he could be made to pay the firefighting costs. Also a bummer is that his insurance might not have to pay for fire damage.

Recount Update

Well, the results will be in January 5th. Congress convenes January 6. At this point Frankin is projected to beat Coleman by 78 votes. I guess we will know after Christmas break.

Some Minnesota election facts:

Minnesota has an automatic manual recount law that kicks in whenever the margin of victory is below 0.5 percent. This recount would have happened no matter what--whether Frankin or Coleman wanted it or not.

Minnesota law does not allow for a revote. The ballots will have to be counted and a decision made.

Our recount process and transparency in the process are being called a"model for the country." Yay Minnesota!

What does this refer to? Look up something on past Illinois governors and corruption...there is a history of it. Tell what you found.

No Cake for Adolf

A supermarket is defending itself for refusing to a write out 3-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell's name on his birthday cake.

Deborah Campbell, 25, of nearby Hunterdon County, N.J., said she phoned in her order last week to the Greenwich ShopRite. When she told the bakery department she wanted her son's name spelled out, she was told to talk to a supervisor, who denied the request.

Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the store denied similar requests from the Campbells the last two years, including a request for a swastika.

"We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake that we deem to be inappropriate," Meleta said. "We considered this inappropriate."

The Campbells ultimately got their cake decorated at a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania, Deborah Campbell said Tuesday.

Heath Campbell said he named his son after Adolf Hitler because he liked the name and because "no one else in the world would have that name."

The Campbells' two other children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who turns 2 in a few months, and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, who will be 1 in April.

Campbell said he was raised not to avoid people of other races but not to mix with them socially or romantically. But he said he would try to raise his children differently.

"Say he grows up and hangs out with black people. That's fine, I don't really care," he said. "That's his choice."

He said about 12 people attended the birthday party on Sunday, including several children of mixed race.

"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."

What do you think about the store's policy?

MID QUARTER BREAK

all postings from here to the end the quarter will count for your LAST 7 blogs of quarter 2...government is almost over and your senior year is almost half over as well...wow! where does the time go..................

Politics and Perks

Does Congress really want to ban privately funded travel?

Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel is a lovely luxury getaway. Nestled in the bluffs above a sandy beach in Kona, Hawaii, the hotel is perfect for weddings and honeymoons--and apparently for members of Congress attending conferences. Last January, the American Association of Airport Executives paid $40,000 for Republican Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who is on an aviation subcommittee, four other lawmakers, and the wives of some of them to go to Kona for a five-day get-together on aviation issues. The list of sponsors included contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. "You'll have an unparalleled opportunity to discuss your ideas and concerns with aviation industry leaders and Washington decision makers," the association said in its invite.

That's the kind of special access that worries government watchdogs. While the excursion was legal, such privately funded jaunts for lawmakers illustrate how interest groups use trips to gain influence in Congress--by paying for members to attend and by providing lobbyists with access to lawmakers. "At dinner ... you are sitting across from a lobbyist from Exxon Mobil or Verizon, and later they pick up the phone and call you and say: Hey, didn't we have a nice time in Italy ... oh, and by the way, you're going to support us on our bill, aren't you?" says Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause.

Members of Congress have received almost $20 million from private groups to travel since 2000, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan research group. More than 600 members of Congress have made over 6,000 privately funded trips since 2000. In January, for instance, the Aspen Institute paid about $86,000 for 12 lawmakers and spouses of many of them to go to Punta Mita, Mexico, for a conference on U.S. policy in Latin America. In August 2003, Century Business Services, the parent company of the lobbying firm Kessler & Associates, paid $30,000 for six lawmakers to stay at the Ashford Castle in Ireland for a trade seminar.

Who can bring and end to these kinds of trips and the influence that may result from them? Only Congress itself. They would have to pass a law limiting or banning these kind of trips. In 2005 , a ban on privately funded travel was proposed in Congress--it was defeated. Resistance was and remains strong.

What do you think? Does Congress want to ban privately funded travel?

Parents pay lobbyist to fight school closings

Parents on either side of a decision to close four elementary schools in southeast Oakville have drawn lines over influence and affluence.

The Clearview Oakville Community Alliance claims fat-cat rich parents have hired a high-priced lobbyist to fiddle with the Halton District School Board's plan to close the schools in 2010.

It's an unfair fight, says Michelle Sloane, president of the Clearview alliance. The group says closing the schools and building a new one will mean better quality education for all students in the area.

Particularly galling, she said, is a boast by their opponents of a $50,000 to fund the fight.

"We know the fight cannot be to overturn the decisionto close schools made by the district," Sloane said. "The only fight, logically, is to delay everything, unless they find some legal hitch (in the process).

"But to hire a lobbyist firm from downtown – and supposedly this person they've hired is extremely good at the education side of things – we don't have funding to do that. We have to be our own lobbyist.

"It's a scary fight," said Sloane, who won't reveal how much money her group has raised. "We just feel that they have the means that we don't. We are concerned that because they have the ability to hire big time Bay St. lawyers and big time Bay St. lobbyists, that they may have the ability to influence somebody that we don't have the ability to do.

"We're not jealous. We're concerned. We're at a different income level."

Mark Caskenette, an executive member of Oakville Residents for Public Education, said concerned parents who belong to his group have never said that no schools should be closed as population demographics change in Ward 3.

But he said they never imagined that four schools would be shuttered.

"We're not opposed to closing schools," Caskenette said. "What we opposed was a process that we believe was flawed, that lacked openness and transparency."

He said the board didn't provide a review committee of parents and school officials with a selection of scenarios to deal with dwindling student numbers in some schools and how students would be redistributed within the ward.

"It seemed to be a process with a foregone conclusion," Caskenette said. "Our perception was that there was a bias to build a school in Clearview."

He said his group has no specific recommendation about which schools should be closed.

"We've tried to be open-minded," he said.

"What we say is that the process has been flawed. We want to revisit and come up with a solution that satisfies the whole community."

Recount Update

U.S. Senate Race Recount--Most Recent Update

Al Franken (DFL)	1,197,965	Contesting 3,197 ballots
Norm Coleman (R)	1,193,307	Contesting 3,311 ballots
Current Lead	4,658
Net gain from Nov. 4 count	+10 Franken
Learn what numbers mean	See recounted votes by precinct or county
Ballots Recounted: 98.88% Precints Reporting: 99.37% 8:00 p.m. - 12/04/2008

Fla. Congresswoman Hangs Up On Obama, Twice

When a man sounding remarkably like President-elect Barack Obama called a Florida congresswoman Wednesday, she assumed it was a crank call. So Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hung up. But, the Miami Herald reports, this was no prank. "I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me," Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper. "They got Fidel Castro to go along. They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no, I won't be punked."'

The call came about 1 p.m. Obama congratulated her on her re-election, saying he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper. The conversation lasted about a minute when she cut Obama off, telling him she wasn't falling for the hoax and that he was a better impersonator than the guy on Saturday Night Live, she said.

Then Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, called the congresswoman to tell her it wasn't a joke. But she hung up on him, too. It took a call from Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to persuade Ros-Lehtinen that Obama really did want to talk to her. When the two finally talked, Ros-Lehtinen said she and Obama had a good conversation and she congratulated him for his victory despite how hard she campaigned for his opponent, Sen. John McCain. He didn't even blame her for mistaking him for a radio-station prank, she said. "He laughed a lot, saying in Chicago they do it all the time," Ros-Lehtinen said. "He said, 'I don't blame you for being skeptical."'

Study on Teens and the Internet

Results from the most extensive U.S. study on teens and their use of digital media show that America's youth are developing important social and technical skills online -- often in ways adults do not understand or value.

"It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online," said Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the report's lead author. "There are myths about kids spending time online -- that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age. It concludes that learning today is becoming increasingly peer-based and networked, and this is important to consider as we begin to re-imagine education in the 21st century."

Significant findings include:

• There is a generation gap in how youth and adults view the value of online activity. Adults tend to be in the dark about what youth are doing online, and often view online activity as risky or an unproductive distraction. Youth understand the social value of online activity and are generally highly motivated to participate.
• Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online. Young people are learning basic social and technical skills that they need to fully participate in contemporary society. The social worlds that youth are negotiating have new kinds of dynamics, as online socializing is permanent, public, involves managing elaborate networks of friends and acquaintances, and is always on.
• Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online. The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another. Young people respect each other's authority online and are more motivated to learn from each other than from adults.
• Most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet. Most youth use the Internet socially, but other learning opportunities exist. Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible to pursue interests that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups. "Geeked-out" learning opportunities are abundant -- subjects like astronomy, creative writing and foreign languages.

What do you think about the findings?

You be the Election Judge

What is all the recount fuss about? How hard can it be to recount the ballots and figure out who the votes are for??? MPR has put together a nice site to show you what some of the contested ballots look like. Go to the link below and be the judge.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/19_challenged_ballots/


What did you find? What did you think about the ballots?

MN Senate Race

U.S. Senate Race Recount

Here are the most current results of the recount. Both sides are contesting ballots that were thrown out for invalid reasons. The secretary of state's office reports that 3,594 ballots have been challenged so far, with 1,836 questioned by Coleman's camp and 1,758 questioned by Franken's. Some 12,000 absentee ballots were rejected from the initial vote count because of technicalities and errors. These ballots are now being looked over and counted if possible.

There are also reports of missing ballots. In Oak Park Heights, for instance, one precinct showed 1,462 votes on Nov. 4, but only 1,449 during the recount. In some places, election officials have said the mismatched figures were the result of a faulty machine reading on Election Day that led to some ballots being fed through twice. Others located ballots in storage areas.

Both sides have lawyers and observers watching over the recounts in every county.

Norm Coleman (R)	1,044,255	Contesting 2448 ballots
Al Franken (DFL)	1,040,285	Contesting 2292 ballots
Current Lead	3,970
Net gain from Nov. 4 count	Coleman +77