Cops Raid Free Poker Tournament, Because in Florida Gambling Does Not Require Betting

Jacob Sullum

For years the Nutz Poker League, along with several competitors, has been running free tournaments at bars and restaurants in the Tampa Bay area. It makes money by taking a cut of what players spend on food and drinks. The players accumulate points based on their spending as well as their poker performance and can ultimately win prizes such as vacations, cruises, laptops, cameras, and "various unique poker gifts." Twice a year the winner of the league's "grand championship" receives "a trip to Las Vegas and a Buy In to The World Series of Poker." Since there is no fee to play and no money is wagered on the games, Nutz owner Richard Danford believed he was complying with Florida's gambling laws. Evidently the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco disagreed. It expressed this disagreement by sending its agents, assisted by black-masked local police officers "in full riot gear" with "weapons drawn," to raid a Texas Hold 'Em tournament at Louie's Grill and Sports Bar in Largo the Saturday before last. The Tampa Bay Times reports that Danford and five of his employees "were arrested, accused of working for a gambling house," while "the restaurant owner was charged with keeping a gambling house." Those are third-degree felonies, punishable by a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

Pinellas-Pasco Assistant State Attorney Joshua Riba told the Times that Florida's definition of gambling, rather counterintuitively, does not require betting. "The statute itself does not require anybody to ante in," Riba says. "If they are playing cards, and they have an opportunity to win something of value, then they are technically violating this particular gambling statute." In fact, the offense of keeping a gambling house is defined as, among other things, letting people use a place "to play for money or other valuable thing at any game whatever, whether heretofore prohibited or not." On its face, this so-called crime is not limited to games of chance; a Scrabble tournament with a cash prize or a trivia contest that gives a bar tab to the winning team seemingly would qualify. The Times notes that Florida has an exception for private "penny-ante games," but it does not apply to public tournaments—even, according to state regulators, if the amount of money wagered is zero.

The Times says the Nutz Poker League raid followed "a months-long undercover investigation dubbed Operation Cracked Aces." It took months of undercover work to build a case against a poker league that operates openly and advertises its rules on its website? Doesn't the fact that Danford conducted his business completely in the open suggest he did not think he was doing anything illegal?

"We don't understand what's the law," one league member complained. "The league's been going on for years, and all of a sudden it's against the law?" Danford told the Times the raid was his first inkling that state officials considered his business a criminal enterprise. "Had there been even a sniff or a phone call or a cease-and-desist order," he said, "we would have stopped at once." The Times says the incoming speaker of the state House, Rep. Will Weatherford (R-Wesley Chapel), plans to address the confusing condition of Florida's gambling law. "There needs to be what I've called an adult conversation of what gaming should look like in the state," he said. In the meantime, it is hard to see how someone like Danford or the bar owners with whom he works can be accused of knowingly violating the law.

US detention of Imran Khan part of trend to harass anti-drone advocates

The vindictive humiliation of Pakistan's most popular politician shows the US government's intolerance for dissent

Glenn Greenwald

Imran Khan is, according to numerous polls, the most popular politician in Pakistan and may very well be that country's next Prime Minister. He is also a vehement critic of US drone attacks on his country, vowing to order them shot down if he is Prime Minister and leading an anti-drone protest march last month.

On Saturday, Khan boarded a flight from Canada to New York in order to appear at a fundraising lunch and other events. But before the flight could take off, US immigration officials removed him from the plane and detained him for two hours, causing him to miss the flight. On Twitter, Khan reported that he was "interrogated on [his] views on drones" and then added: "My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop." He then defiantly noted: "Missed flight and sad to miss the Fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance."

The State Department acknowledged Khan's detention and said: "The issue was resolved. Mr Khan is welcome in the United States." Customs and immigration officials refused to comment except to note that "our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband," and added that the burden is on the visitor "to demonstrate that they are admissible" and "the applicant must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility."

There are several obvious points raised by this episode. Strictly on pragmatic grounds, it seems quite ill-advised to subject the most popular leader in Pakistan - the potential next Prime Minister - to trivial, vindictive humiliations of this sort. It is also a breach of the most basic diplomatic protocol: just imagine the outrage if a US politician were removed from a plane by Pakistani officials in order to be questioned about their publicly expressed political views. And harassing prominent critics of US policy is hardly likely to dilute anti-US animosity; the exact opposite is far more likely to occur.

But the most important point here is that Khan's detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, "this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics."

Last May, I wrote about the amazing case of Muhammad Danish Qasim, a Pakistani student who produced a short film entitled "The Other Side", which "revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical effects of drones on the people in tribal areas of Pakistan." As he put it, "the film takes the audience very close to the damage caused by drone attacks" by humanizing the tragedy of civilian deaths and also documenting how those deaths are exploited by actual terrorists for recruitment purposes.

Qasim and his co-producers were chosen as the winner of the Audience Award for Best International Film at the 2012 National Film Festival For Talented Youth, held annually in Seattle, Washington. He intended to travel to the US to accept his award and discuss his film, but was twice denied a visa to enter the US, and thus was barred from making any appearances in the US.

The month prior, Shahzad Akbar - a Pakistani lawyer who represents drone victims in lawsuits against the US and the co-founder of the Pakistani human rights organization, Foundation for Fundamental Rights - was scheduled to speak at a conference on drones in Washington. He, too, was denied a visa, and the Obama administration relented only once an international outcry erupted.

There are two clear dynamics driving this. First, the US is eager to impose a price for effectively challenging its policies and to prevent the public - the domestic public, that is - from hearing critics with first-hand knowledge of the impact of those policies. As Wheeler asks, "Why is the government so afraid of Pakistanis explaining to Americans what the drone attacks look like from a Pakistani perspective?"

This form of intimidation is not confined to drone critics. Last April, I reported on the serial harassment of Laura Poitras, the Oscar-nominated documentarian who produced two films - one from Iraq and the other from Yemen - that showed the views and perspectives of America's adversaries in those countries. For four years, she was detained every single time she reentered the US, often having her reporters' notebook and laptop copied and even seized. Although this all stopped once that article was published - demonstrating that there was never any legitimate purpose to it - that intimidation campaign against her imposed real limits on her work.

That is what this serial harassment of drone critics is intended to achieve. That is why a refusal to grant visas to prominent critics of US foreign policy was also a favorite tactic of the Bush administration.

Second, and probably even more insidious, this reflects the Obama administration's view that critics of its drone policies are either terrorists or, at best, sympathetic to terrorists. Recall how the New York Times earlier this year - in an article describing a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documenting the targeting of Pakistani rescuers and funerals with US drones - granted anonymity to a "senior American counterterrorism official" to smear the Bureau's journalists and its sources as wanting to "help al-Qaida succeed".

For years, Bush officials and their supporters equated opposition to their foreign policies with support for the terrorists and a general hatred of and desire to harm the US. During the Obama presidency, many Democratic partisans have adopted the same lowly tactic with vigor.

That mindset is a major factor in this series of harassment of drone critics: namely, those who oppose the Obama administration's use of drones are helping the terrorists and may even be terrorist sympathizers. It is that logic which would lead US officials to view Khan as some sort of national security threat by virtue of his political beliefs and perceive a need to drag him off a plane in order to detain and interrogate him about those views before allowing him entrance to the US.

What makes this most ironic is that the US loves to sermonize to the world about the need for open ideas and political debate. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lectured the planet on how "those societies that believe they can be closed to change, to ideas, cultures, and beliefs that are different from theirs, will find quickly that in our internet world they will be left behind,"

That she is part of the same government that seeks to punish and exclude filmmakers, students, lawyers, activists and politicians for the crime of opposing US policy is noticed and remarked upon everywhere in the world other than in the US. That demonstrates the success of these efforts: they are designed, above all else, to ensure that the American citizenry does not become exposed to effective critics of what the US is doing in the world.

Showdown Set on Bid to Give UN Control of Internet

WASHINGTON - It is expected to be the mother of all cyber diplomatic battles.

When delegates gather in Dubai in December for an obscure UN agency meeting, fighting is expected to be intense over proposals to rewrite global telecom rules to effectively give the United Nations control over the Internet.

Russia, China and other countries back a move to place the Internet under the authority of the International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency that sets technical standards for global phone calls.

US officials say placing the Internet under UN control would undermine the freewheeling nature of cyberspace, which promotes open commerce and free expression, and could give a green light for some countries to crack down on dissidents.

Observers say a number of authoritarian states will back the move, and that the major Western nations will oppose it, meaning the developing world could make a difference.

"The most likely outcome is a tie, and if that happens there won't be any dramatic changes, although that could change if the developing countries make a big push," said James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"But there is a lot of discontent with how the Internet is governed and the US will have to deal with that at some point."

Lewis said there was still an overwhelming perception that the US owns and manages the Internet. Opponents have a "powerful argument" to create a global authority to manage the Internet, Lewis said, but "we need to find some way to accommodate national laws in a way that doesn't sacrifice human rights."

Terry Kramer, the special US envoy for the talks, has expressed Washington's position opposing proposals by Russia, China and others to expand the ITU's authority to regulate the Internet.

"The Internet has grown precisely because it has not been micro-managed or owned by any government or multinational organization," Kramer told a recent forum.

"There is no Internet central office. Its openness and decentralization are its strengths."

The head of the ITU, Hamadoun Toure, said his agency has "the depth of experience that comes from being the world's longest established intergovernmental organization."

Toure wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that any change in regulation should "express the common will of ITU's major stakeholders" and "find win-win solutions that will act as a positive catalyst."

But Harold Feld of the US-based non-government group Public Knowledge said any new rules could have devastating consequences.

"These proposals, from the Russian Federation and several Arab states, would for the first time explicitly embrace the concept that governments have a right to control online communications and disrupt Internet access services," Feld said on a blog post.

"This would reverse the trend of the last few years increasingly finding that such actions violate fundamental human rights."

Paul Rohmeyer, who follows cybersecurity at the Stevens Institute of Technology, pointed to a "sense of anxiety" about the meeting in part because of a lack of transparency.

He said it was unclear why the ITU is being considered for a role in the Internet.

"The ITU historically has been a standards-setting body and its roots are in the telecom industry. I'm not familiar with anything they've done that's had an impact on the Internet today," Rohmeyer told AFP.

And the analyst noted that the significance of extending "governance" of the Internet to the ITU remains unclear.

Some observers point out that the ITU hired a Russian security firm to investigate the Flame virus, which sparked concerns about the dangers in cyberspace and the need for better cybersecurity cooperation.

Rohmeyer said it was unclear whether a conspiracy was at hand, but that "the suggestion that the Internet is a dangerous place could be used to justify greater controls."

Observers are also troubled by a proposal by European telecom operators seeking to shift the cost of communication from the receiving party to the sender. This could mean huge costs for US Internet giants like Facebook and Google.

"This would create a new revenue stream for corrupt, autocratic regimes and raise the cost of accessing international websites and information on the Internet," said Eli Dourado of George Mason University.

Milton Mueller, a professor of information studies at Syracuse University who specializes in Internet governance, said most of the concerns are being blown out of proportion.

Mueller said the ITU "already recognizes the sovereign right of nations to restrict communications into and out of the country."

"What gets lost in the confusion over content regulation is that the real motive of most of the reactionary governments is to protect themselves from economic competition caused by telecom liberalization and deregulation, of which the Internet is only one part," he said.

12 against 1. another isolated incident.

On Monday evening, October 8, 2012, police were called about a man who was sleeping in the lounge of the Aliyah Center on East New York Ave. The caller may have mistakenly believed that the homeless man, Ehud H. Halevi, was loitering on the center’s property without permission. 

Aliyah is a synagogue and outreach center for troubled youth in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Two officers from the 71st precinct, one male and one female, arrived and woke the man. Confused as to why he was being accosted by police, the man refused the officers’ attempts to escort him outside, insisting that he had permission to be there and asking that they allow him to prove it.

His pleas fell on deaf ears, and they proceeded to place him under arrest.

When he resisted arrest, the male officer flew into a rage and began to beat the defenseless man. As can be seen in the video below, the officer assumed a boxing stance and then lurched towards his victim, pummeling him from all sides.

Over the next couple of minutes the man is also pepper-sprayed and beaten with a truncheon by the female officer, all while posing no threat to the officers’ well-being whatsoever.

After a good two minutes of sadistic thrashing, the officers are joined by a squadron of their peers, and successfully put him in handcuffs and under arrest.

A source confirmed with CrownHeights.info that the man had full permission to be there, and had been living there for a month without any trouble. It is unknown who called the police or why.

And it wouldn’t be a police beating without the obligatory charge against the victim for assaulting the police officer’s fist with his face.

The guy clearly wasn’t cooperating. But he wasn’t breaking any laws. Even if you don’t think the beating itself is excessive (I do), why not contact someone at the center to see if his story checks out before you move in with the cuffs? Why move immediately to confrontation, and then to escalation?

No, Copyright Is Not A Human Right

We recently discussed the common fallacy that "copyright is in the Constitution", but that's only one example of copyright defenders misrepresenting a document to support their cause. Another favorite, often invoked by folks like Rob Levine and David Lowery, is the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights—a relatively toothless document in the US (compared to the Constitution) but one that feels good to have on your side.

But here's the thing: it doesn't say what copyright supporters think it does. Not even close. Not only are they focusing on only one half of the declaration's relevant article, and ignoring additional detail from another UN declaration that is meant to go hand-in-hand with the first... even the tiny part they focus doesn't match their position. Let's take a look.

The line in the declaration that establishes a right to some sort of intellectual property is Article 27, Section 2:

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Right off the bat, we see a problem: moral and material rights. The US, explicitly and intentionally (with some very minor exceptions) does not protect the moral rights of creators—the copyright system is based almost exclusively around economic rights. So when copyright supporters in America cite the Declaration of Human Rights, they are in fact pointing to a clause that the US directly violates.

Now, maybe that doesn't sound like much—after all, at least US copyright is in line with the "material rights" part. But is it? That's where we need to look at the bigger picture of international rights. That's something that copyright supporters never seem to do, and it's pretty obvious why. As mentioned, the line they cite is the second section of the relevant article—now lets have a look at Section 1:

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Now it's starting to look like the Human Rights Commission intended for there to be a little bit more balance in Article 27—and that they had their priorities straight. Sections 1 and 2, taken together, would seem to suggest (at the very least) that copyright should be focused primarily on commercial endeavours (and that patents are a pretty questionable concept all around).

Is that a subjective interpretation? By itself, yes—but don't take my word for it. See, there's something else that copyright supporters are leaving out of the picture: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is just one of three documents that, together, form the International Bill of Human Rights (nobody ever accused the UN of efficiency). Another, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, provides considerable additional detail on the question of creators' rights. Let's take a look at Article 15 of that document:

1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone:

(a) To take part in cultural life;
(b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications;
(c) To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.

4. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the benefits to be derived from the encouragement and development of international contacts and co-operation in the scientific and cultural fields.

That's an awful lot of caveats and addenda, all focused on ensuring that the copyright reins aren't too tight. In fact it seems like the text is specifically trying to distance itself from traditional intellectual property regimes. This time, you definitely don't have to take my word for it, because here's where we get to the really damning evidence: the general comment (pdf) on the document from the Economic and Social Council, which attempts to further explain the intention of all the rights. Here are some choice quotes:

Whereas the human right to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from one’s scientific, literary and artistic productions safeguards the personal link between authors and their creations and between peoples, communities, or other groups and their collective cultural heritage, as well as their basic material interests which are necessary to enable authors to enjoy an adequate standard of living, intellectual property regimes primarily protect business and corporate interests and investments. Moreover, the scope of protection of the moral and material interests of the author provided for by article 15, paragraph 1 (c), does not necessarily coincide with what is referred to as intellectual property rights under national legislation or international agreements.

It is therefore important not to equate intellectual property rights with the human right recognized in article 15, paragraph 1 (c).

The right to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from one’s scientific, literary and artistic productions seeks to encourage the active contribution of creators to the arts and sciences and to the progress of society as a whole. As such, it is intrinsically linked to the other rights recognized in article 15 of the Covenant, i.e. the right to take part in cultural life (art. 15, para. 1 (a)), the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications (art. 15, para. 1 (b)), and the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity (art. 15, para. 3).

Moreover, the realization of article 15, paragraph 1 (c), is dependent on the enjoyment of other human rights guaranteed in the International Bill of Human Rights and other international and regional instruments, such as the right to own property alone as well as in association with others, the freedom of expression including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, the right to the full development of the human personality, and rights of cultural participation, including cultural rights of specific groups.

Starting to paint a different picture, no? The comment goes on to offer some specifics, underlining how thoroughly different this human right is from intellectual property rights. For one thing, it's not transferable:

The Committee considers that only the “author”, namely the creator, whether man or woman, individual or group of individuals, of scientific, literary or artistic productions, such as, inter alia, writers and artists, can be the beneficiary of the protection of article 15, paragraph 1 (c). This follows from the words “everyone”, “he” and “author”, which indicate that the drafters of that article seemed to have believed authors of scientific, literary or artistic productions to be natural persons, without at that time realizing that they could also be groups of individuals. Under the existing international treaty protection regimes, legal entities are included among the holders of intellectual property rights. However, as noted above, their entitlements, because of their different nature, are not protected at the level of human rights.

For another, it calls for a bunch of specific moral rights that do not and have never existed in the US:

In line with the drafting history of article 27, paragraph 2, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 15, paragraph 1 (c), of the Covenant, the Committee considers that “moral interests” in article 15, paragraph 1 (c), include the right of authors to be recognized as the creators of their scientific, literary and artistic productions and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, such productions, which would be prejudicial to their honour and reputation

And even when it comes to material rights, special mention is given to the fact that this doesn't have to resemble traditional copyright, although it can:

The term of protection of material interests under article 15, paragraph 1 (c), need not extend over the entire lifespan of an author. Rather, the purpose of enabling authors to enjoy an adequate standard of living can also be achieved through one-time payments or by vesting an author, for a limited period of time, with the exclusive right to exploit his scientific, literary or artistic production

Now, in addition to all this, the general comment does include plenty of lines that make room for traditional intellectual property laws—it's not as though the whole thing reads as a total condemnation of copyright. However, this closer look at the contours of international human rights makes it abundantly clear that it was not intended as an endorsement of copyright either. Every time something that sounds like US copyright is mentioned, it's because it's being permitted but not required—and often written in such a way as to suggest that it's not recommended either. Moreover, it's impossible to avoid the fact that the US does not recognize the moral rights called for in the declaration—which I actually think is probably a good thing, but can't just be ignored by those who want to use the declaration as ammo for defending copyright.

I think the question of whether or not there is an innate human right to control one's creative output, in either the moral or material sense or both, is a fascinating and important topic with lots of room for debate. But that has very little to do with the current economic regime of copyright—least of all in the US, since many other countries do wrap moral rights into copyright law. Apologies to the IP crowd, but neither the Founding Fathers nor the United Nations support you the way you think they do—so you're going to have to stop falsely appealing to their authority and come up with some new arguments.

Lack of Willpower? Nope, Just a Realistic View of the World

David Berreby

Praised by politicians from Paul Ryan to Barack Obama, hailed by pundits as the root of all virtue and success, self-control is almost as popular this election cycle as Motherhood. In the prosperous 60s people talked about letting go and loosening up, and in the rich 90s we were more concerned with self-esteem, but now in a tough economy we pity those who can't keep it together. They must be flawed, damaged people, who need help to strengthen their character. All we're arguing about now is how best to give them that help (tax cuts and self-reliance or Head Start and community colleges). But in our worship of self-denial, we may be missing something important: Sometimes the urge for instant gratification makes perfect sense.

That's the message of this study, out this month in the journal Cognition. The authors—Celeste Kidd, Holly Palmeri and Richard N. Aslin—added a twist to a famous experiment that measured small children's ability to resist temptation. The original work assumed that this ability came from within: each child had a certain level of willpower, and the experiment was revealing the differences. But the version by Kidd et al. showed pretty clearly that kids' response to temptation depended on circumstances. Specifically, they showed that when the adults in the room appeared to be untrustworthy, children were far more prone to go for instant gratification. Which means their supposedly poor impulse control was a sensible reaction to the hand they had been dealt.

The famous experiment, conducted by the Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel in the 1960s, was this: A small child is left alone in a room with a marshmallow on a table. S/he's told that she can have two marshmallows, but only if she waits for the experimenter to return in 15 minutes without eating the one in the room. Some of kids gave in and grabbed the treat before their eyes. Others, though, managed to hang on for the full 15 minutes to win the bigger reward.

As the years passed, Mischel followed up with those children. As Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney wrote in their paean to self-discipline, Willpower, he compared the children and found that those who had waited the full 15 minutes scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT, were rated more popular by others, earned higher salaries and were less likely to abuse drugs or be obese.

That's striking. But Kidd et al. wonder if that kind of success should be attributed to some innate ability or well-acquired skill on the part of each kid. Maybe, instead, their resistance to temptation was a response to an environment where delayed gratification paid off. If your parents are around to give you the two marshmallows they promised, after all, your efforts to avoid eating one will go rewarded. On the other hand, as they write in the paper (pdf available here), "for a child accustomed to stolen possessions and broken promises, the only guaranteed treats are the ones you have already swallowed."

So they brought 28 young children (aged between three and half and five) into their lab for an altered version of the famous marshmallow experiment. Before the food test, the kids were each given two little art projects (one involving crayons and one involving a sticker). In both cases, the supplies on the table before them were pretty crummy. Each child heard the experimenter offer to go get better supplies. For 14 kids, this promise was fulfilled, when the adult returned with better stuff. For the other 14, the adult proved unreliable, by coming back and saying "I'm sorry, but I made a mistake," and explaining there were no other supplies. (Parents, feel free to cringe in recognition.)

The marshmallow test followed right after, and the results were striking: Children who'd dealt with the unreliable adult lasted an average of three minutes before eating the marshmallow in front of their eyes. But kids who had been with the reliable adult held out an average of 12 minutes. Of the 14 children who had been with the unreliable adult, only one managed to avoid eating the marshmallow for a full 15 minutes to earn the reward. On the other hand, in the group of kids who had dealt with a reliable adult, most (9 out of 14) were able to resist temptation. Which means that the variation in self-control in this experiment wasn't caused by differences in kids' willpower. It was caused by differences in the trustworthiness of the people they were dealing with.

There's a lot of confusion these days about two different claims about the mind: (1) People aren't nearly as rational in their decision-making as we think and (2) When people depart from the norms of the American upper-middle-class, they are being irrational. The evidence for (1), which is very strong, is not evidence for (2). Yet (1) and (2) are easy to conflate, especially for successful middle-class people, whose ranks include most of the researchers and most of the people who write about the research. If someone smokes, or fails to exercise, or blows their work deadlines all the time, it must because they're incapable of being rational about their life, right? After all, such behavior is never sensible in my life.

But the notion that a behavior is always bad is a pretty sure sign of an ideology. Human behavior varies because our circumstances vary. Being weepy and morose might be a sign of depression, or a sign that your best friend just died. Starting at every sound and keeping your finger on the trigger might be paranoia, or a good way to stay alive in a combat zone. Defining and pursuing a long-term goal might be an admirable trait—unless your long-term goal is to kill and eat a bunch of women.

This is why the paper's theoretical question for psychologists—is temptation resolved by self-management or by our understanding of the world around us?—should matter to the rest of us. It's a reminder that people are irrational when science has shown them to be, not when we wish to condemn them for not being more like us.

HBL-A0061

be it resolved that:

account status must always be clear and simply understood by account holders.

errors on the account must be clearly and distinctly marked with precise reasons as to what happened, why, and what the procedure is to sort it out.

L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter

 The BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome says the prosecution argued that the scientists were "just too reassuring"

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter.

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

The 6.3 magnitude quake devastated the city and killed 309 people.

Many smaller tremors had rattled the area in the months before the quake that destroyed much of the historic centre.

It took Judge Marco Billi slightly more than four hours to reach the verdict in the trial, which had begun in September 2011.

Lawyers have said that they will appeal against the sentence. As convictions are not definitive until after at least one level of appeal in Italy, it is unlikely any of the defendants will immediately face prison. 'Alarming' case

The seven - all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks - were accused of having provided "inaccurate, incomplete and contradictory" information about the danger of the tremors felt ahead of 6 April 2009 quake, Italian media report.

The Apennines, the belt of mountains that runs down through the centre of Italy, is riddled with faults, and the "Eagle" city of L'Aquila has been hammered time and time again by earthquakes. Its glorious old buildings have had to be patched up and re-built on numerous occasions.

Sadly, the issue is not "if" but "when" the next tremor will occur in L'Aquila. But it is simply not possible to be precise about the timing of future events. Science does not possess that power. The best it can do is talk in terms of risk and of probabilities, the likelihood that an event of a certain magnitude might occur at some point in the future.

The decision to prosecute some of Italy's leading geophysicists drew condemnation from around the world. The scholarly bodies said it had been beyond anyone to predict exactly what would happen in L'Aquila on 6 April 2009.

But the authorities who pursued the seven defendants stressed that the case was never about the power of prediction - it was about what was interpreted to be an inadequate characterisation of the risks; of being misleadingly reassuring about the dangers that faced their city.

Nonetheless, the verdicts will come as a shock to all researchers in Italy whose expertise lies in the field of assessing natural hazards. Their pronouncements will be scrutinised as never before, and their fear will be that they too could find themselves embroiled in legal action over statements that are inherently uncertain.

In addition to their sentences, all have been barred from ever holding public office again, La Repubblica reports.

In the closing statement, the prosecution quoted one of its witnesses, whose father died in the earthquake.

It described how Guido Fioravanti had called his mother at about 11:00 on the night of the earthquake - straight after the first tremor.

"I remember the fear in her voice. On other occasions they would have fled but that night, with my father, they repeated to themselves what the risk commission had said. And they stayed." 'Hasty sentence'

The judge also ordered the defendants to pay court costs and damages.

Reacting to the verdict against him, Bernardo De Bernardinis said: "I believe myself to be innocent before God and men."

"My life from tomorrow will change," the former vice-president of the Civil Protection Agency's technical department said, according to La Repubblica.

"But, if I am judged by all stages of the judicial process to be guilty, I will accept my responsibility."

Another, Enzo Boschi, described himself as "dejected" and "desperate" after the verdict was read.

"I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don't understand what I was convicted of."

One of the lawyers for the defence, Marcello Petrelli, described the sentences as "hasty" and "incomprehensible". 'Inherently unpredictable'

The case has alarmed many in the scientific community, who feel science itself has been put on trial.

Some scientists have warned that the case might set a damaging precedent, deterring experts from sharing their knowledge with the public for fear of being targeted in lawsuits, the BBC's Alan Johnston in Rome reports.

Among those convicted were some of Italy's most prominent and internationally respected seismologists and geological experts.

Earlier, more than 5,000 scientists signed an open letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in support of the group in the dock.

After the verdict was announced, David Rothery, of the UK's Open University, said earthquakes were "inherently unpredictable".

"The best estimate at the time was that the low-level seismicity was not likely to herald a bigger quake, but there are no certainties in this game," he said.

Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at the UK's Royal Berkshire Hospital said that the sentence was surprising and could set a worrying precedent.

"If the scientific community is to be penalised for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavour will be restricted to certainties only and the benefits that are associated with findings from medicine to physics will be stalled."

No-fly list strands man in on island in Hawaii

By AUDREY McAVOY

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AP) -- Hawaii is a paradise for most visitors. But it was Wade Hicks Jr.'s prison for five days.

The 34-year-old from Gulfport, Miss., was stranded in the islands this week after being told he was on the FBI's no-fly list during a layover for a military flight from California to Japan.

The episode left Hicks scrambling to figure out how he'd get home from Hawaii without being able to fly. Then he was abruptly removed from the list on Thursday with no explanation.

It also raised questions beyond how he landed on the list: How could someone on a list intelligence officials use to inform counterterrorism investigations successfully fly standby on an Air Force flight?

Hicks said he was traveling to visit his wife, a U.S. Navy lieutenant who's deployed in Japan. He hitched a ride on the military flight as is common for military dependents, who are allowed to fly on scheduled routes when there's room.

Hicks said that during his layover at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent told him he was on the no-fly list and wouldn't be allowed on a plane.

"I said, `How am I supposed to get off this island and go see my wife or go home?' And her explanation was: `I don't know,'" Hicks said.

Hicks said he was shocked and thought they must have had the wrong person because he doesn't have a criminal record and recently passed an extensive background check in Mississippi to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

But the agent said his name, Social Security number and date of birth matched the person prohibited from flying, Hicks said. He wasn't told why and wondered whether his controversial views on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks played a role. Hicks said he disagrees with the 9/11 Commission's conclusions about the attacks.

A Homeland Security spokesman referred questions to the FBI Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the report. A spokesman for the center declined to comment on Hicks' case. The government doesn't disclose who's on the list or why someone might have been placed on it.

The list of roughly 20,000 people and about 500 to 600 Americans includes names and classified evidence against suspected terrorists who are not allowed to fly in U.S. airspace.

The list can be updated within minutes, so it's possible Hicks was added to the list while in midair from Travis Air Force Base in California to Hawaii.

A spokesman for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's office said passengers who fly standby on military flights are screened against the FBI's list only on international flights. Domestic passengers are screened only through an internal military system, not the Advanced Passenger Information System run by Customs and Border Protection.

"It's scary to know that something like this can happen in a free country. You're not accused of any crime. You haven't been contacted by anyone. No investigation has been done. No due process has taken place," he said.

He got a hotel room at the Pearl Harbor naval base while he worked things out. Being on the list didn't stop him from staying on a base that's home to submarines, cruisers and destroyers.

Hicks said he called politicians in Mississippi and Hawaii and brainstormed ways to get home with friends, speculating on taking a private plane, a cruise ship or even a fishing boat from Alaska. He then got a call on Thursday that he had been removed from the no-fly list.

Hicks planned to take a military flight back to California on Friday to meet his wife, who will be coming from Japan, and said he plans to seek to recoup his added travel costs from the government.

Why Firing a Bad Cop Is Damn Near Impossible

A brief history of the "law enforcement bill of rights"

Mike Riggs

Over the summer, a still from a surveillance camera showing a police officer kicking a handcuffed woman in the head went viral on Facebook and email. The text below the picture read, "Rhode Island police officer Edward Krawetz received no jail time for this brutal assault on this seated and handcuffed woman. Now he wants his job back. Share if you don't want this to happen." The allegation was wild enough to pique the interest of the rumor-debunking site Snopes.com, which determined that the story was, in fact, true.

In 2009, Officer Edward Krawetz of the Lincoln Police Department arrested Donna Levesque for unruly behavior at a casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island. While seated on the ground with her hands cuffed behind her, Levesque kicked Krawetz in the shin. Krawetz responded by cocking back his right leg and nailing Levesque in the side of the head, knocking her over. In March 2012, Krawetz was convicted of felony battery despite his claim that he kicked Levesque in "self defense." The 10-year sentence he received was immediately suspended, and Krawetz was ordered to attend anger management classes.

But he wasn't fired from the Lincoln Police Department. Under Rhode Island law, the fate of Krawetz's job as a cop rested not with a criminal court, or even his commanding officer, but in the hands of a three-person panel composed of fellow police officers—one of whom Krawetz would get to choose. That panel would conduct the investigation into Krawetz's behavior, oversee a cross-examination, and judge whether Krawetz could keep his job. The entire incident, in other words, would be kept in the family.

The same was true for Rhode Island Police Officer Alfred Ferretti after he followed two women home while in uniform and exposed himself; for Officers Robert Neri and Robert Lobianco after they were found having a threesome while on duty; and for Officer Nichalas Laprade after two women reported that he stared at them while masturbating as he drove down I-95 in his personal vehicle.

All of these Rhode Island cops, and many more like them across the county, were able to keep their jobs and benefits—sometimes only temporarily, but always longer than they should have—thanks to model legislation written and lobbied for by well-funded police unions. That piece of legislation is called the "law enforcement bill of rights," and its sole purpose is to shield cops from the laws they're paid to enforce.

The inspiration for this legislation and its similarly named cousins across the country is the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights, introduced in 1971 by New York Rep. Mario Biaggi (D), at the behest of the Police Benevolent Association. Having once been the most decorated police officer in the country, Biaggi didn't need much convincing to put forward the union-friendly bill.

Biaggi pushed for the POBOR until March 1987, when he received two indictments back-to-back. The first was for accepting a paid vacation from Brooklyn Democratic Leader Meade H. Esposito in exchange for using federal funds to bail out a company in Esposito's neighborhood. A second indictment handed down three months later charged Biaggi with extorting $3.6 million in cash and stock options from a small Bronx machine shop called Wedtech. Both charges resulted in convictions and Biaggi's resignation from Congress.

While Biaggi's bill never made it through Congress, police unions didn't wait for city managers or police department higher-ups to write their own. Benevolent associations in Maryland successfully pushed for the passage of a police bill of rights in 1972; Florida, Rhode Island, Virginia, New Mexico, and California followed suit before the 70s were over. The 1980s, 90s, and 2000s saw still more states adopt police bill of rights at the behest of police unions.

The rights created by these bills differ from state to state, but here's how a typical police misconduct investigation works in states that have a law enforcement bill of rights in place:

A complaint is filed against an officer by a member of the public or a fellow officer. Police department leadership reviews the complaint and decides whether to investigate. If the department decides to pursue the complaint, it must inform the officer and his union. That's where the special treatment begins, but it doesn't end there.

Unlike a member of the public, the officer gets a "cooling off" period before he has to respond to any questions. Unlike a member of the public, the officer under investigation is privy to the names of his complainants and their testimony against him before he is ever interrogated. Unlike a member of the public, the officer under investigation is to be interrogated "at a reasonable hour," with a union member present. Unlike a member of the public, the officer can only be questioned by one person during his interrogation. Unlike a member of the public, the officer can be interrogated only "for reasonable periods," which "shall be timed to allow for such personal necessities and rest periods as are reasonably necessary." Unlike a member of the public, the officer under investigation cannot be "threatened with disciplinary action" at any point during his interrogation. If he is threatened with punishment, whatever he says following the threat cannot be used against him.

What happens after the interrogation again varies from state to state. But under nearly every law enforcement bill of rights, the following additional privileges are granted to officers: Their departments cannot publicly acknowledge that the officer is under investigation; if the officer is cleared of wrongdoing or the charges are dropped, the department may not publicly acknowledge that the investigation ever took place, or reveal the nature of the complaint. The officer cannot be questioned or investigated by "non-government agents," which means no civilian review boards. If the officer is suspended as a result of the investigation, he must continue to receive full pay and benefits until his case is resolved. In most states, the charging department must subsidize the accused officer's legal defense.

A violation of any of the above rights can result in dismissal—not of the officer, but of the charges against him.

Because of these special due process privileges, there's little incentive for police departments to discipline officers. In most cases, it's more financially prudent to let a District Attorney or outside law enforcement agency do the heavy lifting, and then fire the officer if he's convicted. This is the only "easy" way, under police bills of rights, for departments to get rid of bad cops--which essentially means the only way to get rid of bad cops is if some other law enforcement agency can make a felony charge stick. This is the biggest problem with law enforcement bills of rights--they encourage police departments to let external forces determine what behavior is unacceptable. That's eventually why Rhode Island's Krawetz resigned his post.

But Rhode Island is by no means an outlier.

In the last year, a Florida narcotics detective was charged with a slew of crimes ranging from rape and torture, to embezzlement and forgery; a Virginia police officer shot a retired Sunday school teacher in the back of the head and throat as she drove out of a church parking lot; six California cops beat a homeless man into a life-ending coma; a Milwaukee police officer was arrested for sodomizing suspects; a drunk man slapped a Philadelphia cop, and the cop responded by beating the drunk man's face bloody with his baton.

What do they all have in common? They were all known by their colleagues and employers to be bad cops long before they came to the public's attention.

Major Joseph Floyd was a problem cop at departments across Florida before beginning his two-year reign of terror in Crestview, Florida. Daniel Harmon-Wright was hired at the Culpeper Police Department despite a known drinking problem, and kept on the force despite complaints that he illegally entered a home and threatened its residents at gunpoint. At least one of the Fullerton PD officers who beat Kelly Thomas into a coma from which he never woke was accused of brutality the year before. Michael Vagnini's superiors in Milwaukee knew "for a couple years" that he'd been conducting illegal rectal searches. Before William J. Gress beat a drunk and unruly Oktoberfest reveler, he broke a woman's nose and spat on her outside a restaurant.

Additionally, all of those officers were working in states with a law enforcement bill of rights, and when they were all eventually disciplined, it was by a law enforcement agency other than the one they worked for.

While it's possible—maybe even likely, depending on the department—that these officers would have faced no internal discipline even if their states did not have law enforcement bills of rights, such laws discourage discipline and make it nearly impossible for the public to hold bad cops accountable.

Outlawed by Amazon DRM

A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst.

Linn travels a lot and therefore has, or should I say had, a lot of books on her Kindle, purchased from Amazon. Suddenly, her Kindle was wiped and her account was closed. Being convinced that something wrong had happened, she sent an e-mail to Amazon, asking for help. This was the answer:

Dear Linn [last name],

My name is Michael Murphy and I represent Executive Customer Relations within Amazon.co.uk. One of our mandates is to address the most acute account and order problems, and in this capacity your account and orders have been brought to my attention.

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been cancelled.

Per our Conditions of Use which state in part: Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content, or cancel orders at their sole discretion.

Please know that any attempt to open a new account will meet with the same action.

You may direct any questions to me at resolution-uk@amazon.co.uk.

Thank you for your attention to this email.

Regards

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

This answer was very confusing. Which account was he talking about? She had never had any other accounts at Amazon.

So, she replied to Murphy’s e-mail:

Dear Michael Murphy,

I am very surprised to read your email. What do you mean by “directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies”. I can only remember ever having this one account, and I use it quite regularly to buy books for my Kindle, as you probably can see by my purchase history. How can there suddenly be a problem now? I use amazon.com and not co.uk for my Kindle, does that make any difference?

I sincerely hope you can help me solve this matter, because I would very much like to have my account reopened. And please let me know if there is any action I can take to help.

Best regards,
Linn [last name]
[Linn's phone number]

The answer provided no progress:

Dear Linn [last name],

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.

Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

I appreciate this is not the outcome you hoped for and apologise for any disappointment this may cause.

Regards,

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

Not getting an answer to why the account was closed, she sent another e-mail:

Dear Michael Murphy,

Is it correct that you cannot give me any information about
1. How my account is linked to the blocked account
2. The name/id of the related blocked account
3. What policy that was violated

I have no knowledge about any other account that could be related to mine, and cannot understand how I could have violated your policies in any way.

Br,
Linn [last name]

Unfortunately, the answer was the same:

Dear Linn [last name],

We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

Thank you for your attention to this email.

Regards

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

Did she violate any terms? Amazon will not tell. Perhaps by accident? Amazon does not care. The conclusion so far is clear: Amazon closed her account, wiped her Kindle and refuses to tell her why. End of discussion.

The worst of DRM

As a long-term writer about technology, DRM, privacy and user rights, this Amazon example shows the very worst of DRM. If the retailer, in this case Amazon, thinks you’re a crook, they will throw you out and take away everything that you bought. And if you disagree, you’re totally outlawed. Not only is your account closed, all your books that you paid for are gone. With DRM, you don’t buy and own books, you merely rent them for as long as the retailer finds it convenient.

Now what?

Linn lives in Norway, far away from Amazon’s jurisdiction. How will she ever find the means to get her books back? By suing a large corporation half-way round the earth?

Linn is outlawed by Amazon.

Stingrays: The Biggest Technological Threat to Cell Phone Privacy You Don't Know About

On Friday, EFF and the ACLU submitted an amicus brief in United States v. Rigmaiden, a closely-followed case that has enormous consequences for individuals' Fourth Amendment rights in their home and on their cell phone. As the Wall Street Journal explained today, the technology at the heart of the case invades the privacy of countless innocent people that have never even been suspected of a crime.

Rigmaiden centers around a secretive device that federal law enforcement and local police have been using with increased frequency: an International Mobile Subscriber Identity locator, or “IMSI catcher.” These devices allows the government to electronically search large areas for a particular cell phone's signal—sucking down data on potentially thousands of innocent people along the way—while attempting to avoid many of the traditional limitations set forth in the Constitution.


How Stingrays Work

The Stingray is a brand name of an IMSI catcher targeted and sold to law enforcement. A Stingray works by masquerading as a cell phone tower—to which your mobile phone sends signals to every 7 to 15 seconds whether you are on a call or not— and tricks your phone into connecting to it. As a result, the government can figure out who, when and to where you are calling, the precise location of every device within the range, and with some devices, even capture the content of your conversations. (Read the Wall Street Journal’s detailed explanation for more.)

Given the breadth of information that it can stealthily obtain, the government prefers the public and judges alike not know exactly how Stingrays work and they have even argued in court that it should be able to keep its use of the technology secret. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a FOIA request for more information on Stingrays, but the FBI is dragging its feet and is sitting on 25,000 pages of documents explaining the device.


The Rigmaiden Case: An Illusory Warrant

In Rigmaiden, the government asked a federal judge in Northern California to order Verizon to assist in locating the defendant, who was a suspect in a tax fraud scheme. But after they received an order telling Verizon to provide the location information of an Aircard they thought to be the defendant’s, the government took matters into their own hands: they claimed this authorization somehow permitted its own use of a Stingray.

Not only did the Stringray find the suspect, Rigmaiden, but it also got the records of every other innocent cell phone user nearby.

The government now concedes that the use of the device was a “search” under the Fourth Amendment and claims it had a warrant, despite the fact that, as we explain in our brief, “the Order directs Verizon to provide the government with information and assistance, but nowhere authorizes the government to search or seize anything.”

In fact, the government's application made no mention of an IMSI catcher or a Stingray, and only has a brief sentence about its plans buried at the end of an 18-page declaration: “the mobile tracking equipment ultimately generate[s] a signal that fixes the geographic position of the Target Broadband Access Card/Cellular Telephone.”

A judge initially signed off on this order, but clearly, the government did not accurately and adequately explain what it was really up to.


General Warrants: Unconstitutional, All You Can Eat Data Buffets

Beyond the government's conduct in this specific case, there is an even broader danger in law enforcement using these devices to locate suspects regardless of whether they explain the technology to judges: these devices allow the government to conduct broad searches amounting to “general warrants,” the exact type of search the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent.

A Stingray—which could potentially be beamed into all the houses in one neighborhood looking for a particular signal—is the digital version of the pre-Revolutionary war practice of British soldiers going door-to-door, searching Americans’ homes without rationale or suspicion, let alone judicial approval. The Fourth Amendment was enacted to prevent these general fishing expeditions. As the Supreme Court has explained, a warrant requires probable cause for all places searched, and is supposed to detail the scope of the search to ensure “nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant”.

But if uninformed courts approve the unregulated use of Stingrays, they are essentially allowing the government to enter into the home via a cellular signal at law enforcement’s discretion and rummage at will without any supervision. The government can’t simply use technology to upend centuries of Constitutional law to conduct a search they would be prevented from doing physically.


Stingrays Collect Data on Hundreds of Innocent People

And when police use a Stingray, it’s not just the suspects’ phone information the device sucks up, but all the innocent people around such suspect as well. Some devices have a range of “several kilometers,” meaning potentially thousands of people could have their privacy violated despite not being suspected of any crime. This is another fact the government didn’t fully explain to the magistrate judge in Rigmaiden.

The government now claims it protected privacy by deleting all third-party data on its own after it collected it. But the government’s unilateral decision to binge and purge comes with its own consequences. Now there’s no way to know what exactly the government obtained when it used the device.

Had the government told the court what it really was planning on doing and the amount of information it would obtain, the court may have exercised its constitutional role of ensuring the government narrowed its search. After all, it was for the court, not the government, to decide how best to balance the government’s need for information with third-party privacy, and any suspect’s future interest in access to potentially exculpatory information.


Enough Warrantless Excursions

Unfortunately, US government excuses for conducting warrantless searches are becoming all too familiar. Whether it’s the hundreds of thousands of searches for cell phone location information, the skyrocketing of warrantless surveillance of who and when you’re calling, or the NSA’s still-active warrantless wiretapping program, Americans are seeing their Fourth Amendment privacy rights under attack from all angles. We hope in this case and others like it, the court will prevent such violations of privacy from occuring again.

What “health of the mother” means

When cancer was suspected during my pregnancy, I faced a decision no woman wants -- and few politicians understand

By Suzanne Edwards

Twelve weeks into my pregnancy, my spouse and I were delighted to see our “bean” on ultrasound. We thrilled to the sight of a four-chambered squeezing heart, an enormous head, and tiny, thrashing limbs. When the technician glimpsed an unusual growth on my ovary, we barely paid attention. Only a biopsy could determine what those bulbous shadows in the ultrasound were, but the doctor explained it was either a benign cyst (very likely) or cancer (very unlikely). The chances that the biopsy would result in miscarriage were slightly greater than the odds that the growth would threaten my health if left alone. Buoyed by the doctor’s assurances that the baby looked great, we decided the biopsy was a bad bet.

At the ultrasound eight weeks later, we laughed when we found out the baby was a girl. Her older sister was vibrating in anticipation of learning her sibling’s gender and entirely unprepared to accept the possibility of a little brother. The ultrasound technician found nothing troubling when she scanned the baby’s anatomy. Turning her attention to my ovaries, though, she saw a black circle that she couldn’t interpret. When they told me I could get dressed before the doctor came to talk to us, my spouse and I exchanged an anxious look: They never let you put your pants back on. The cyst on my ovary had grown significantly, it seemed, and now they thought they saw another growth on the other ovary, developments that could put my health and the baby’s at risk.

We scrambled through a wrenching week of anxious phone calls, hospitals, insurance headaches, and ultrasounds that were by turns frightening and reassuring. Sometimes it seemed as though we were in the middle of a real crisis, so numbed by shock that we couldn’t understand what was happening. At other times, it seemed as though we were at the top of a molehill raised to great heights by medicine. The end of the line was a gynecologic oncologist’s office. In the waiting room, my visibly pregnant body sparked looks of confusion and hopeful smiles from women suffering the intertwined effects of cancer and chemotherapy.

Finally, the oncologist explained that ovarian cancer was rare among women in their 30s, but that the tests they had done were inconclusive. More alarmingly, he said that if a biopsy revealed a malignancy, it would not be possible to treat the cancer effectively without terminating the pregnancy.

None of our options seemed good. I could get the biopsy, have the relief of a benign result, but suffer a miscarriage. I could get the biopsy, face a malignant result, and have to weigh my life against my child’s in even starker terms. I could skip the biopsy, only to discover later that cancer had gone untreated for months, possibly putting both the baby’s and my life at risk. Whichever way we went, everything we cared about was on the line.

We wanted more information, and the oncologist ordered one more test, an MRI. The loud banging of the magnets imaging our future made the baby jump like a toddler trying to escape her mother’s lap. Then, less than 24 hours later, the oncologist called: “I do not believe you need me now, and I hope that you never need me.” Only a biopsy could provide certainty, he reminded us. We decided that we didn’t want or need to know for sure. It seemed like the crisis had passed.

But the oncologist turned out to be wrong. At 36 weeks pregnant, my placenta tore loose from my uterus, and a life-threatening hemorrhage sent me careening into the operating room for an emergency C-section. The last thing I heard before the anesthesia kicked in was a nurse saying she could not find the baby’s heartbeat. When the obstetrician made her hurried incision, she saw my ovary glued to my uterus with cancer. After she stopped the blood loss, she called in a gynecologic oncologist to address the cancer that had probably precipitated it. In a painstaking eight-hour surgery, he found cancer everywhere from my rectum to my diaphragm. Amazingly, our daughter suffered no long-term ill effects from our shared near-death experience, though I still nurse its scars.

If I could go back to those sickening, decisive moments in the middle of my pregnancy with the full understanding of what I know now, I cannot say with any certainty what I would do. There are too many competing obligations that cannot be fully reconciled. Too many people who need me. Too many people whom I need.

I have learned that there is a significant survival advantage to diagnosing ovarian cancer early. Women diagnosed when the disease is confined to the pelvis have at least twice the chance of surviving five years than those diagnosed after the cancer has spread throughout the abdomen. If those risks seem insignificant compared to the potential life of a fetus at 20 weeks gestation, you must understand that I shook with relief when my oncologist put my chances of suffering a recurrence (and near-certain death) at 70 to 80 percent rather than the 90 percent I had thought.

It haunts me to think of my husband as a single father. Even given our economic and social privilege, raising two children by himself will tax his psychic and financial resources. It horrifies me to think of my daughters without a mother. When I travel for work, my 4-year-old weeps and tucks the notes I leave behind into her special blankie. It saddens me to think of my parents without their daughter. My mother, who eagerly speculated about how a fourth grandchild would change her understanding of genetic variation, pleaded with me not to dismiss the threat of cancer, not to jeopardize her child’s life. I don’t want any of them to live in a world without me.

But I now know my baby, too. Because she is here, I do not want to live in a world without her. Eighteen pounds of fleshy velocity, curling hair, and two sharp teeth, her existence is no small consolation for a diagnosis that, whether sooner or later, would still have come. In the mornings, she stands in the middle of the kitchen, waving a cloth napkin and shrieking at me to look. In the evenings, she and her older sister fall to the floor in tangled abandon, and their indistinguishable laughs remind me of the pleasures of having a sister. When my spouse holds her, I can see how much she resembles him and how she has made him into a different kind of man, one who can withstand nonsensical screams of outrage with equal parts compassion and detachment.

It is good for me to be here, just as it is good for her to be here. I still do not know how to reconcile those two things. My body, our body, nourished her nascent life but also the disease that is trying to take mine. It is an unthinkable calculus, both now, when we are in possession of facts we could not have known, and a year ago, when we acted based on the best information we could get.

Ultimately, I was spared from having to make an impossible choice. Although I do not know whether it was right to forgo the biopsy or what I would have done if I’d learned of my cancer earlier, I do know that both decisions were mine to make. I came to the present tormented and joyful moment in my life with informed consent about the risks I was taking. The full knowledge that both of our lives were in my hands, and that we might not both get out alive, made that consent meaningful. To disregard the impact of my possible sickness and death on my family was, to me, just as problematic as terminating my pregnancy. Had I been a single mother or had my job been a financial necessity for my family, I might well have weighed my choices differently. I might not have been able to take the chances that came along with skipping the biopsy. It is painful to imagine how I would feel, now, if the choice had been out of my hands—or if it had been so sharply circumscribed that it was clear that it was mine only in form, not substance.

I wonder whether mine is the kind of case politicians have in mind when they talk vaguely about outlawing abortion with exceptions for the health of the mother. There was disagreement among experts about whether continuing my pregnancy threatened my life, what kinds of treatment for cancer during pregnancy would be possible, and whether treatment would dramatically alter my chances of survival or my baby’s. Politicians like Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., who glibly stated recently that there is no such thing as a medically necessary abortion, seem little aware of how devastating situations like mine can be. No one other than the women and families who will live with the consequences should make those heartbreaking choices.

My case is rare. Indeed, only one in 1,000 pregnancies coincide with a cancer diagnosis. But I think that’s why my story matters: It underscores how difficult such dilemmas can be. It illustrates how important the promise of choice can be, especially when the decisions at hand are not the ones we wanted to make. Mothers whose impossible choices unfold in the midst of educational, financial, and social disadvantages for which they are not responsible are granted little mercy in our public discourse about reproductive choice. That is a shame, because my experience has taught me that we’re all doing the best we can in situations beyond our control. That is how we live into the next day, in hope and humility.

But humility is in short supply in a public debate on reproductive rights that favors sound bites and unyielding absolutes. These are decisions that call for uncommon emotional and ethical depth. Abortion is a complex ethical issue, one that tests the limits of our beliefs about autonomy and responsibility to others. It is never a good choice, but it may sometimes be the right choice. Just as that is true for the women who face such a choice, it is also true for us as a culture. We can understand abortion as fraught and respect those women who choose it as painfully cognizant of that very fact. If the women in situations like mine wrestle to make the best choices we can, then how can anyone — particularly extraordinarily privileged (and overwhelmingly male) judges and politicians — presume to make them for us?

I hope that my daughters will one day read this essay as their mother’s defense of both of them. I hope that they live in a world that respects their inherent dignity. Whatever impossible choices they face, I want them to know that I trust them to make those decisions on their own.

The psychology of poverty

Imagine this: You’re at your child’s baseball game. You’ve got a deadline coming up tomorrow and its been a hard day. You want to focus on your child’s game, but you can’t. To some, you may seem like a bad parent, but you can’t shake the fact that you have things to do. This is something we can all relate to. Harvard professor Sendhil Mullainathan claims that poverty has a similar effect on people’s minds.

“When faced with financial scarcity, people’s minds keep coming back to concerns such as -- how will I pay rent this month,” Mullainathan said.

But doesn’t this apply to everyone? If you have to make a bunch of decisions, aren’t you going to be somewhat distracted? What’s so different about poor people being psychologically affected? Mullainathan said the difference is in the magnitude and intensity of that effect.

“You and I can be busy and we take a vacation from work. You can’t take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered,'" Mullainathan said.

However, some poor families do spend their money on things they don't especially need sometimes, like televisions. Mullainathan said a big part of this is happiness, which he claims is a scarcity for a poor household. And the things people look for to provide that happiness are individualistic.

"If someone who is poor says, 'I may not have much money, but for me what's really important is to have a good television so my family can enjoy and watch,' we should be a little careful and recognize that just like we all have individual liberty to make the choices we want, that we not judge too much on that," Mullainathan said.

He also said that poor people have less room for error when making bad financial decisions.

"Think of yourself when you're very busy. Even in those busiest moments you spent an hour procrastinating, when you knew full well you should be working," Mullainathan said.

He said we all make mistakes, the only difference is that some people have the slack to make them and not suffer the consequences.

Mullainathan said that a lot of the psychological problems poor people face come from lack of planning.

“Organizations talk about spending their lives firefighting -- dealing with the next problem without having the bandwidth to deal with what is down the pipeline. I think most of the poor have that problem,” Mullainathan said.

Mullainathan claims that although planning is a central part of poverty, poor people are better at making financial decisions than the rich and middle class.

“If you go and stop people at a supermarket and ask them for their receipt and say, ‘Hey how much did you just spend,' middle class shoppers have no idea. The poor know what they just spent," he said.

Flamin' Hot Cheetos Banned from Schools

"Flamin' Hot Cheetos are a wildly popular snack that literally leaves its indulgers red-handed.

And now several schools in California, New Mexico and Illinois have banned the high-fat, high-salt and possibly addictive treat.

Some schools in Pasadena, Calif. have even said that if a parent packs the snack in their child's lunch, the spicy Cheetos will still be confiscated, KTLA reports.

The main reason cited by these schools for the ban is a lack of nutritional value. One snack-size bag contains 26 grams of fat and a quarter of the amount of sodium recommended for an entire day.

And new research suggests that "hyperpalatable foods"--salty, fatty or sweet foods--can trigger brain responses similar to those created seen in individuals addicted to drugs or alcohol, the Chicago Tribune reports.

"Eight out of 10 kids bring them to school," Lake View High School senior Abigail Hernandez told the paper. "And I used to be one of them in middle school. I ate them every day, even for breakfast, and I got really big. There were days when, if my mother didn't buy them for me, I would get so mad. ... It took me three months to quit."* Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola (TYT University) break down the Flamin' Hot Cheetos ban as well as the effectiveness of banning foods from schools.

Mom Confronts Daughter's Bully, Gets 'Terroristic Threat' Charge

"A New Jersey woman who says her 9-year-old daughter was bullied took matters into her own hands and confronted one of the students she says harassed the girl. Now, the mother is facing assault charges, even though she denied touching or hitting anyone.

Rebecca Sardoni and her mother boarded a school bus Friday morning bound for East Dover Elementary School, looking for a boy they claimed had been bullying her daughter on the bus.

From that point, there are conflicting versions of what happened next.

Several students on the bus said Rebecca Sardoni then cursed at the boy and slapped him and a boy seated next to him while her mother yelled at the two boys, Toms River Police Chief Michael G. Mastronardy told The Asbury Park Press.

Rebecca Sardoni, 28, of Toms River, and her mother, 51-year-old Stephanie Sardoni, of Beachwood, were arrested Friday and released on summonses. Rebecca Sardoni is charged with simple assault, criminal trespass and making terroristic threats. Stephanie Sardoni is charged with criminal trespass." *Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss whether or not Rebecca Sardoni deserved the charges and what might be a fair way to treat bullies.

Bible Verses Allowed on School Banners, Judge Says

"The cheerleaders of Kountze High School are free to wave their Bible verse banners at football games, at least for the rest of the school year, after a judge granted a temporary injunction Thursday preventing school officials from enforcing a ban on the signs.

In a case that has ignited a national controversy over religious freedom, Hardin County District Judge Steve Thomas said the cheerleaders had "raised some relatively complex issues."

Thomas said he decided to "preserve the status quo" pending a jury trial June 24, in effect allowing the cheerleaders to keep displaying their banners for the rest of the school year, including a big football game Friday night.

The Lions have a 5-1 record, the best in recent memory. Among the verses on the "breakaway" banners that players have run through to burst onto the field this season: "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens! Phil 4:13" and "If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31."

In an order granting the injunction, the judge wrote that if he did not act, the district's "unlawful policy prohibiting private religious expression will remain in effect" and the cheerleaders "will be prohibited from exercising their constitutional and statutory rights."* Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola (TYT University), and Jayar Jackson break down what it means to allow religious verse in school and whether this would be allowable for other religions.

Private Cops on the Public Dime

Oakland taxpayers' money is being funneled to an anti-union company that employs private cops to patrol the downtown and uptown areas and influences OPD policies.

by Darwin BondGraham

Even as Oakland prepares to lay off more than one hundred city employees, the city will continue paying several hundred thousand dollars each year in taxpayer funds to two privately controlled — and politically influential — organizations that manage the downtown and Uptown areas, records show. Much of this public money, in turn, will be funneled to a powerful, private, Christian-based corporation that has a record of opposing unions. This company, Block by Block, a subsidiary of the Nashville-headquartered SMS Holdings, employs low-paid, private cops, known as "security ambassadors," and has been influencing Oakland law enforcement policies and procedures in the downtown area.

The City of Oakland's contributions of taxpayer dollars to the Downtown Oakland Association and Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association — both known as business improvement districts — represent significant financial commitments for the cash-strapped city. This year, Oakland taxpayers must provide the Downtown Association with $109,904 because of assessments the association has levied on five city-owned properties in its boundaries, including City Hall. That's right: Oakland taxpayers must pay taxes on their primary municipal building to a private entity. Unlike other taxes, public properties are not exempt from business district assessments.

As Full Disclosure previously reported, the Downtown and Uptown business districts are controlled by representatives from big banks and corporations and large property owners that wield considerable influence over City Hall. The associations also applied intense pressure on Mayor Jean Quan last fall to order two major police raids on Occupy Oakland (see "The One Percent Solution," 11/16/2011).

Adding further costs to the city is the elimination of the Oakland Redevelopment Agency. It means that the city is now on the hook to pay assessments for four former Redevelopment Agency-owned properties in the downtown association's boundaries — costing the city more than $30,000 a year. According to the Downtown Association's own records, the largest single contributor to the district's budget is not a private landlord but rather the City of Oakland, which pays about 14 percent of the total.

The city is paying the Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association another $52,068 in public funds this year, and is the sixth largest funder of the district. When the city council green-lighted the creation of the Downtown and Uptown associations four years ago, staff members of the city's Community Economic Development Agency pegged the city's fiscal commitments over the ten-year lifespan of each district at $1.58 million and $566,000, respectively.

Staff characterized these obligations of public dollars as a "strategic and productive investment of public funds." But what are these funds helping to pay for?

According to the Downtown and Uptown association's own documents, Block by Block's contract is one of the largest single expenditures for the business districts. According to the associations' joint 2009-2010 Annual Report to the city council, "Block by Block receives approximately $60,000 per month from both organizations." That's roughly $720,000 per year.

So what is Block by Block? SMS Holdings, the parent company of Block by Block, began in 1988 as a janitorial services company in Nashville, Tennessee. In the late 2000s, SMS went on a growth spurt, buying up security companies. Among these was Block by Block, a Louisville, Kentucky firm that controls a large share of the national market for "security ambassadors" and cleaning services provided to business improvement districts. By 2008, SMS posted revenues topping $300 million, and its vice president predicted then that it would surpass a half-billion by 2011.

A document entitled "The SMS Holdings Way," available on the company's website, reveals the Christian beliefs of its owners and executives: "From our company's beginning, our business philosophy has been God-centered and faith-based. While we will always show tolerance and acceptance of the personal beliefs of others, we recognize that there is a higher order that provides a basis for all of our core values."

It's unclear just how deeply the Christian core values of SMS Holdings' owners and executives shape company policy, but in another area, the results are much clearer. Subsidiaries of SMS Holdings, like Block by Block, maintain relatively low-wage, anti-union workplaces. SMS has been very aggressive over the past decade in lobbying federal legislators to privatize thousands of government jobs. Paying minimum wage-levels (and, in some workplaces, even less), SMS Holdings has been able to skim enormous profit margins off of outsourced local and federal government jobs.

An example of the company's anti-union policies took place in Pittsburgh when Block by Block's security ambassadors attempted to unionize through the SEIU in 2009. Block by Block managers opposed the simpler card check process, pressing instead for a secret ballot election, a procedure that gives employers more tools to scuttle pro-union outcomes. Block by Block management barred employees from wearing union buttons or talking to the media, and, according to reports in the Pittsburgh Gazette, even conducted surveillance and called the police on some of their own ambassadors who passed out pro-union literature in front of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership's offices.

Block by Block appears to be a relatively small, if growing, segment of SMS Holdings. The company's bigger and more profitable ventures in recent years are private security and aviation service workers whose ranks were greatly expanded with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and then privatized en masse by the Bush administration.

The SMS Holdings subsidiary PrimeFlight specializes in providing service workers to airports and airlines. At the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where PrimeFlight workers drive passengers through terminals, company managers have pressured their less-than-minimum-wage employees to over-report tips in order to qualify SMS Holdings for lucrative state subsidies, and to justify extremely low wages. The Houston Chronicle reported on November 1, 2011 that PrimeFlight's participation in a state subsidization program had been suspended, and that the company is being investigated for violating labor laws.

The most profitable anti-union activities of SMS Holdings have been directed at workers employed by its FirstLine Transportation Security subsidiary. FirstLine contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to provide airport security screeners at eight locations nationwide.

SMS Holdings' ability to combat the unionization of its workforce has been greatly enhanced by the political ties the company's executives have cultivated since the early 2000s. According to Federal Elections Commission data, executives of SMS Holdings contributed more than $100,000 to the campaigns of congressional representatives since 2003. Much of this money was funneled through the FirstLine Transportation Security PAC to select members of Congress whose powerful committee appointments gave them control over lucrative TSA contracts. Among those who benefitted from SMS Holdings contributions were Republican House members John Mica of Florida and Dan Lungren of California. Mica is the current Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, while Lungren holds a seat on the House Subcommittee on Transportation Security. In the Senate, Republicans John Thune and Jim DeMint, members of the Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security Subcommittee, have been recipients of FirstLine PAC money and contributions directly from SMS Holdings' executives. These political connections continue to work for FirstLine and SMS Holdings. As recently as November of 2011, Mica was arguing for privatizing all TSA screening jobs.

But it's not just SMS Holdings' labor policies that raise concerns. In Oakland, business improvement district staffers, with much assistance from Block by Block's local operations manager Ted Tarver, have been influencing OPD policies. From the start, both the Downtown and Uptown associations have organized meetings with OPD and City Hall leaders in an attempt to integrate the districts' private security guards with OPD. Many OPD officers, however, have been resistant to working with Block by Block's ambassadors.

Even so, some OPD commanders have shown much deference to the associations and their agenda. Oakland Police Captain Anthony Toribio told the Downtown Association board in December 2009 that the department supports joint patrols of OPD officers and Block by Block security, and that these private cops could act as a "force multiplier," according to minutes of the meeting. In another meeting, Captain Toribio told the Uptown Association board that he wanted the district's private security to "share intelligence" with OPD.

In the same board meeting, Ted Tarver of Block By Block and Captain Toribio discussed ways to discipline OPD officers who continued to resist integration with Block by Block's security force: "Officers that do not like them and are resistant to work with them will be held accountable," read the minutes from the board meeting. Captain Toribio recommended that Block by Block security staff "record the car or badge number" of cops who refuse to cooperate with them, and "he will follow up with [the officers]."

Early on, Block by Block private cops also were allowed to attend OPD daily lineups. According to notes from a December 2009 Uptown Association board meeting, OPD officers also have been receiving "weekly security updates" drafted by Block By Block's Tarver.

Another means by which the Downtown and Uptown associations are "force multiplying" police and private security is through technology. Block by Block initially sought permission for its security ambassadors to carry OPD radios, but due to resistance from police rank and file, and because this could be a violation of the law, it was decided instead that OPD officers would carry Nextel phones used by Block by Block employees.

The next stage of this kind of "intelligence sharing" apparently will involve hand-held PDA devices developed by the Eponic Corporation. Former Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts is listed on the company's website as a supporter because while heading up the Long Beach Police Department his officers shared real-time information with Block by Block security guards there to track "quality of life issues such as panhandling" and enforce curfew laws against the homeless.