"We are simply United States citizens who are concerned by what we see happening on the border both in terms of increased violent criminal activity and in the possible erosion of basic civil rights," New Mexico Minutemen Security Chief Clifford Alford said. "If we see something going on that's illegal, we'll report it."

"We don't condone any of these groups," he said. "None of them are officials of the U.S. government. We will monitor the situation. Our mission is to protect the United States and we do not allow any of these groups to detract from our mission."

Other perspectives abound. Leo Samaniego, sheriff of El Paso County, said that the Border Patrol should have enough manpower to handle undocumented immigration from Mexico. But because they don't, the Minutemen are taking an active approach to encourage change, he said.

"It's enlightening to know that there are still people in this country who get tired of hearing the same story of the endless stream of illegal aliens coming in," he said. "Do I want them on the border? I don't think so. But as a last resort, if nobody's doing anything other than talk about what they're going to do along the border, then, by God, I think they should come here."

At the time [1900], there was no federal law against lynching, and most states refused to prosecute white men for killing black people. The U.S. House of Representatives, responding to pleas from presidents and civil rights groups, three times agreed to make the crime a federal offense. Each time, though, the measure died in the Senate at the hands of powerful southern lawmakers using the filibuster.

The Senate is set to correct that wrong Monday, when its members will vote on a resolution to apologize for the failure to enact an anti-lynching law first proposed 105 years ago...

The Senate's action comes amid a series of conciliatory efforts nationwide that include reopening investigations and prosecutions in Mississippi. Advocates say the vote would mark the first time Congress has apologized for the nation's treatment of African Americans.

"The economy remains on a firm path," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research Corp. "We are creating jobs, albeit at a slower pace. Inflation is mild and we have extremely desirable mortgage rates."

Although consumers' feelings about the economy improved over the month of May, they aren't as buoyant as they were a year ago, when the index clocked in at 91.3. The confidence index is benchmarked to a 100 reading on January 2002, when Ipsos started the gauge.

Economists keep tabs on confidence for clues about consumers' willingness to spend. Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity in the United States.

A measure that tracks consumers' feelings about current economic conditions jumped to 100.8 in June, up from 83.2 in May.

And a gauge that tracks consumers' feelings about making a purchase, saving and other investment decisions also rose sharply to 93 in June, compared with a reading of 75.8 in May.

Agents will monitor the camp because volunteers go beyond providing humanitarian aid and encourage migrants to continue on perilous desert journeys, Nicley said. He did not say his agents would specifically seek to apprehend illegal immigrants at the camps, but he did say that "if there's anybody out in the desert illegally, I'm going to take them into custody."

Camp organizers said the surveillance would have a chilling effect on their efforts to save migrant lives.

"We can't be seen as an arm of the Border Patrol," said the Rev. John Fife, one of the camp's organizers. "People in the desert hide or flee from Border Patrol even though they are in dire medical need."

Those having a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll.

However, some other institutions fared far worse this year, suggesting a broad level of cynicism or malaise.

Confidence in the presidency plunged from 52% to 44%, with Congress and the criminal-justice system also suffering 8% drops. Confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court fell from 46% to 41%. The 22% confidence rating for Congress is its lowest in eight years, and self-identified Republicans have only a slightly more positive view of the institution than do Democrats.

The military topped the poll with a 74% confidence rating, with the police at 63% and organized religion at 53%. Big business and Congress (both at 22%) and HMOs (17%) brought up the rear.

Read another way, the numbers aren't quite as bad for newspapers. Of those surveyed 24% say they had "very little" confidence in them, while 1% said "none." By far the highest number, 46%, said "some." This means (looking on the brighter side) that 75% had some, quite a lot, or a great deal of confidence in newspapers.

Julie Atkins' three daughters fell pregnant within a few short months of one another. Natasha recently gave birth to a girl, just around her 16th birthday. Her sister Jade, 14, also gave birth to a girl.

However, the first of the three sisters to deliver a baby was 12-year old Gemma, who gave birth to a boy. She named him T-Jay, which presumably means something in 12-year-old circles, and was chosen, of necessity, without consultation with the 14-year old father, who has made himself scarce.

Nor does 14-year old Jade seem to have any great expectations of seeing the father of her baby any time soon either, noting off-handedly that she became pregnant as a result of "a one-night stand".

Their twice-divorced mother, who lives with her daughters and their babies in a free three-bedroom council house told the papers, "Frankly, I blame the schools."

When the neighbors, reading this, lost no time in calling the papers to report that Mrs. Atkins had been allowing her then-11-year old daughter to have sex with her 13 year old boy friend in the family home, Mrs. Atkins widened her sphere of culpability for her daughters' pregnancies to include "the government."

One-third of scientists surveyed said that within the previous three years, they'd engaged in at least one practice that would probably get them into trouble, the report said. Examples included circumventing minor aspects of rules for doing research on people and overlooking a colleague's use of flawed data or questionable interpretation of data.

Such behaviors are "primarily flying below the radar screen right now," said Brian C. Martinson of the HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis, who presents the survey results with colleagues in a commentary in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature...

Nearly 13 percent of those who responded said they'd overlooked "others' use of flawed data or questionable interpretation of data," and nearly 16 percent said they had changed the design, methods or results of a study "in response to pressure from a funding source."

The Indonesian island of Sumatra, smashed by a tsunami and shaken by an enormous earthquake in the past six months, is now at risk from two potentially major quakes, one of which could generate waves 10 metres high, seismologists warn.

The research team is headed by the same expert who predicted with uncanny accuracy a quake that struck Sumatra on March 28, barely three months after the December 26 temblor, one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded.

He fears the next quakes may be as high as 7.5 and 9 respectively on the Richter scale and in the latter case, cities along much of Sumatra's west coast would be exposed to a tsunami.

The new science of claytronics, which will use nanotechnology to create tiny robots called catoms, should enable three-dimensional copies of people to be "faxed" around the world for virtual meetings.

A doctor could also consult with a patient over the phone, even taking their pulse by holding the wrist of the claytronic replica, reports New Scientist.

And the nano "clay" could be carried around, shape-shifting into virtually anything when required. Your claytronic mobile phone could turn into a hammer for a spot of DIY and then a pair of shoes to go jogging. The creator, Dr Todd Mowry, director of Intel's research labs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said: "You could have a little lump of this stuff you carry around and it could be a million different things. It's like the world's ultimate Swiss army knife." His partner, Dr Seth Goldstein, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said: "It's absolutely going to work."

Intel's robotics expert, Jason Campbell, added: "The more you look at it, the more likely it seems we will be able to manufacture these things.

According to Steve Jones, a principal of Lyon Research, and a respected researcher, who specializes in culling data at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and various military and museum repositories across the country, Kerry's full file could contain a number of other documents not released on Monday, such as documents that verify his status in the Reserves up to 1978.

But redirecting media and the public away from his full file appears to have been Kerry's plan all along, because he submitted his SF-180 to the wrong entity.

"It doesn't make sense that he is going through the Navy," says Jones. "Applying through the Navy gives this scenario the appearance of a personnel shuffle. Kerry said he applied to the Navy and the Boston Globe said they received his record from the Navy and that makes no sense when the relevant records are at the National Personnel Record Center, a part of the National Archives. By going through the Navy Kerry makes it appear that he is using the Navy to screen his file; he added a layer of bureaucracy when all he needed to do was sign an authorization allowing a third party to look at his record at the NPRC."

What is the difference between the Navy and the NPRC?

The Navy, which created the documents to begin with, is legally obligated to protect the privacy of the veteran. If, as many conspiracy theorists have posited, negative material was expunged from Kerry's file, the Navy could most likely only include the final version of a document.

For example, if an individual were to have a received a less than honorable discharge, but were to have gained a full, honorable discharge some years later, only the honorable discharge order might appear in the Navy file, while all of the individual's documents might be in the NPRC file in St. Louis, Mo.

"The Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce... among the several States." The majority opinion, written by John Paul Stevens and joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, and Anthony Kennedy, noted precedents like the absurd 1942 decision Wickard v. Filburn, affirming that the federal government may prohibit a farmer from growing wheat for consumption on his own farm because of the indirect effect on prices in the regulated wheat market. The primary dissent, written by Sandra Day O'Connor and joined in part by William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, pointed out that, since the statute in question had an exemption for wheat farms smaller than six acres, even "Wickard did not hold or imply that small-scale production of commodities is always economic, and automatically within Congress' reach."

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything -- and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case involving two seriously ill California women who use marijuana. The court said the prosecution of pot users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

"I'm going to have to be prepared to be arrested," said Diane Monson, one of the women involved in the case.

Stevens said the court was not passing judgment on the potential medical benefits of marijuana, and he noted "the troubling facts" in the case. Monson's backyard crop of six marijuana plants was seized by federal agents in 2002, although the California law was on Monson's side.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

"Our national medical system relies on proven scientific research, not popular opinion. To date, science and research have not determined that smoking marijuana is safe or effective," John Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy, said Monday.

Republicans concentrated their attacks on the Democratic stronghold of King County, the state's most populous county. The trial exposed various problems, from inaccurate mail ballot reports to Election Director Dean Logan's admission that he didn't know whether the results were accurate within 129 votes.

In the short run, Republicans say they want a new election for Rossi. But many hope the facts aired at trial will spur more election reform. The state Legislature passed several election reform bills this year, but left many others on the table.

"This is the biggest mess I've ever seen," GOP attorney Dale Foreman said in his opening statement. "The system is broken and it must be fixed."

Throughout the trial, Republican attorneys argued that election errors, illegal votes and fraud stole the election from Rossi.

"This is a case of election fraud by the upper management of the King County elections," Foreman alleged. "This election was stolen from the legal voters of this state by a bizarre combination of illegal voters and bungling bureaucrats."

Democratic attorneys scoffed at the GOP claims, saying they lacked the clear and convincing proof needed to justify overturning the election. The election errors that Republicans characterized as "sinister," Democrats described as innocent mistakes that happen in every county, in every election.

"It's not enough to show a mistake, it's not enough to show a bad mistake, and it's not enough to show a really bad mistake," Democratic attorney Jenny Durkan said in her closing argument. "In order to prove their case, they still have to show that Gov. Gregoire did not receive the highest number of legal votes."

American Civil Liberties Union has been shredding documents over repeated objections of its records manager and in conflict with longstanding policies on preservation, disposal of records... Developing...

Janet Linde, who oversaw the A.C.L.U.'s archives for over a decade until she resigned last month, raised concerns in e-mail messages and memorandums for over two years that officials' use of shredders in their offices made a mockery of the organization's policy to supervise document destruction and created potential legal risks.

"It has been shown in many legal cases over the years, including the Enron case, that if a company has an established and documented shredding program they will not be liable if documents at issue in a lawsuit are found to have been destroyed," Ms. Linde wrote in a 2003 memo. "If, however, the means for unauthorized shredding is present in the office we cannot say that we have made a good faith effort to monitor and document our records disposal process."

Ms. Linde said she was disturbed that her correspondence had become public and declined to comment further. A spokeswoman for the organization, Emily Whitfield, declined to answer specific questions but made the following statement: "The A.C.L.U.'s records management policies have always been of the highest standards in keeping with, if not more stringent than, those of other nonprofits."

The organization refused to address which documents were being shredded, among other questions.

Under the A.C.L.U.'s policy, employees deposit documents, disks and other files slated for destruction in locked bins in their departments. They are required to complete and sign a form next to the box, describing what they have deposited.

A contractor collects the bins each month and shreds the contents under the watch of an A.C.L.U. records manager, who then countersigns the sheets to confirm the destruction.

The full text of H.R. 1528 can be viewed by going to thomas.loc.gov.

Enter "HR1528" in the search box. Check the "enter bill number" button under the search box. Click "search".

This entire bill is bad for a variety of reasons, but the worst part, the Stalinist part, is Part D, Section 425. Here's what it says . . .

"`SEC. 425. (a) It shall be unlawful for any person who witnesses or learns of a violation of sections 416(b)(2), 417, 418, 419, 420, 424, or 426 to fail to report the offense to law enforcement officials within 24 hours of witnessing or learning of the violation and thereafter provide full assistance in the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of the person violating paragraph (a).

`(b) Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced to not less than two years or more than 10 years. If the person who witnesses or learns of the violation is the parent or guardian, or otherwise responsible for the care or supervision of the person under the age of 18 or the incompetent person, such person shall be sentenced to not less than three years or more than 20 years.'."

This proposed new law also requires you to provide full assistance in investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting drug law offenders who are personally known to you. This could involve working undercover and wearing a wire to entrap and convict friends, family members, and neighbors.

This law, as with so many others, is constructed in such a way that it can be justified as a measure to protect children, which includes anyone under the age of majority, including many college students. It also ensnares the private activities of parents related to substances like marijuana. The government considers parents who smoke pot in the privacy of their bedroom after hours a serious threat, whereas Senators and Congresspersons who drink large amounts of alcohol in front of their children in the light of day, are not.

Examples of activities that could force you to inform or face the risk of prison time:

#You see a joint passed to a college student. Call the police immediately.

• Your child has a substance-abuse problem and begs someone else to acquire drugs. You cannot deal with this as a family matter, or in a drug-treatment setting. You must inform on both of them.

• Your hear someone say they bought Ecstasy to share with college age friends. Report this within 24 hours or risk prosecution.

• Your sister, who has kids, mentions that she bought some pot to share with her husband. Inform on your sister or risk prison time.

If this is not the kind of America you want to live in, please ask your elected representatives to oppose this law. Click here to send your message.

The rulers of Mexico have always been Spanish, or what we might call, Castilian. They are indeed Caucasian, but they are very few in number. Today they make up less than 10 percent of the total population of over 106 million people. The indigenous groups (Mexican Indians) total about 30 percent of the population, and the predominant group, the famous “mestizos” (mixed Indio-Caucasian), comprise about 60 percent.

The mestizos, of course, represent most of the Mexican population migrating (legally or illegally) into America. They definitely do not appear white, but nor do they appear Indian. The 2001 estimate put 40 percent of the Mexican population below the poverty line. Most of what Americans see immigrating, particularly illegally, are in this sector.

Now, Presidente Vicente Fox, son of a wealthy Irishman (who was living in Guanajuato) has shown “exemplary” (should we say, typical?) concern for the Mexicans: he’s pushing them all out of the country, just as fast as they can cross the borders. He offers them nothing within Mexico, but instead claims they have a right to be American. A real patriot he is, Presidente Fox, for all nations concerned.

And it seems the Mexican immigrants don’t care anything about Mexico, either. And they don’t care about the United States. They have become a mass of expatriated orphans, unwanted where they were, and unwanted where they are. This is tragic.

The ACLU said the material would show that the abuse was "more than the actions of a few rogue soldiers."

Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the 144 pictures and videos can be turned over in redacted form to protect the victims' identities. He gave the Army one month to release them...

Government lawyer Sean Lane had argued that releasing pictures, even in redacted form, would violate Geneva Convention rules by subjecting the detainees to additional humiliation.

NEWARK, N.J. -- A public school prohibited a second grader from singing a religious song at a talent show, prompting a lawsuit Friday alleging violation of the girl's constitutional rights.

A federal judge declined an emergency request to compel Frenchtown Elementary School to allow 8-year-old Olivia Turton to sing "Awesome God" at the Friday night show, but allowed the lawsuit to go forward.

Zeayadali Malhamdary, 39, an Iranian with permanent resident status in the United States, is accused of trying to buy phony Mexican visas so that three Iranians could fly into Mexico before being smuggled across the border. He was indicted Tuesday...

Malhamdary, owner of Palez Tailoring on Baseline Road, bragged to an undercover FBI agent that he had smuggled as many as 60 Iranians into the United States using fake Mexican visas, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona.

Draft rules from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would require that paid political advertisements on the Internet declare who funded the ad, as television spots do.

Similar disclaimers would be placed on political Web sites, as well as on e-mails sent to people on purchased lists containing more than 500 addresses. The FEC also is considering whether to require Web loggers, called bloggers, to disclose whether they get money from a campaign committee or a candidate and to reveal whether they are being paid to write about certain candidates or solicit contributions on their behalf.

These rules would not affect citizens who don't take money from political action committees or parties.

In my opinion, bloggers who wish to do serious work should disclose all funding sources that could present a conflict of interest. In the case of DvT, clearly those payments cast a different light on their writing. Had Thune just bought blogads for their site, we would have seen the sponsorship up front and incorporated that information into our estimation of their credibility. The very fact that they chose not to disclose the payments or sponsorship in general now calls their motives and work into serious question.

"I saw inadvertent mistakes and errors of human beings who were working their hearts out," Handy said...

GOP attorney Dale Foreman challenged Handy's claim of impartiality Tuesday, pointing to a January e-mail in which Handy discussed how to discredit Republicans' claims that discrepancies could indicate fraud.

"If we can successfully demonstrate that this is an unfounded claim, I would hope that this would serve to undermine the confidence of the court in the other R claims," Handy wrote in the e-mail that Foreman submitted as evidence.

Handy said his office merely wants a "fair and impartial" hearing of the facts.

"How can you say that?" Foreman asked, his voice dripping with contempt. "You're under oath."