Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

Bruno F. Caruso -- a grandson of family patriarch Bruno Roti Sr., identified by the FBI as an associate of Al Capone's -- ran Laborers' International Union Local 1001, which represented 3,500 city workers while Caruso was in power, mostly in two city departments -- Streets and Sanitation, and Transportation. They empty garbage cans, pave streets, fix potholes.

When Caruso left the union leadership, his cousin Nicholas Gironda took over.

Caruso's brother Frank "Toots" Caruso headed another Laborers' local that represented city workers. When he left, his cousin Leo Caruso took over.

Together, the four Roti family members controlled thousands of unionized city jobs, as well as pension funds and other union assets that once topped a billion dollars. Often, they decided who got unskilled laborers' jobs with the city and who got promoted into supervisory positions in those areas, sources said.

They had that power until they were forced out of or resigned their leadership posts over allegations of corruption and mob ties that had been pursued for years by the international union's in-house prosecutor. As part of that effort, the international union filed a complaint in 2003 that accused Gironda of taking bribes from city job-seekers "on behalf of" his cousins Bruno Caruso and "Toots" Caruso. By 2004, all were gone from the union.

Muffins that made 18 staff members at a Dallas-area high school ill contained the active ingredient found in marijuana, Dallas County health department officials said Thursday.

The Dallas FBI filed assault cases on Wednesday against two 18-year-olds in connection with drug-laced muffins that sickened 18 staff members at Lake Highlands High School in northeast Dallas.

Robert Tellini and Ian McConnell Walker, both of Dallas, have each been charged with five counts of assault on a public servant, a third-degree felony, authorities said.

The case will now be prosecuted by the Dallas County District Attorney’s office, according to a news release from the FBI

Though Israel regained the territory it had lost, Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede land to the Arabs, contributing to the first phases of a lasting Israeli-Egyptian peace. The move saw a warming in U.S.–Egyptian relations, bitter since the '50s, as the country moved away from its former pro-Soviet stance and into a close partnership with the United States. The peace was finalized in 1978 when U.S. president Jimmy Carter mediated the Camp David Accords, during which Israel returned the Sinai in exchange for an Egyptian agreement to recognize Israeli statehood and end hostility.

Now, as he sits in jail, Kevorkian may have had a change of heart — not about his dedication to the "death with dignity" movement, but on how he went about promoting it...

While Kevorkian stands firmly by the cause of physician-assisted suicide, his lawyer said he would promote the movement by speaking out or writing, not by helping out in any more suicides.

"At this point, he would never perform it again," Morganroth said. "But he certainly would work towards getting it legalized wherever possible."

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little had changed
I am the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't got for help...no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks..
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin'room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

The Texas Transportation Commission agreed Thursday to increase the speed limit to 80 mph on more than 521 miles of Interstate 10 and Interstate 20 in rural West Texas, through the Davis Mountains and toward the southern tip of the Rockies.

New signs could be posted as early as Saturday, Texas Department of Transportation officials say.

The 5 mph increase could theoretically reduce travel by 90 minutes between Kerrville, northwest of San Antonio, and Fabens, east of El Paso.

State officials say it's safe for drivers to travel up to 80 mph in the sparse, 10-county region where Texas plains turn to Chihuahuan desert.

The brief Spanish-American War ended more than a century ago, but not the federal tax assessed to fund the victory.

Until now.

On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury said it would stop collecting the 3% federal excise tax on long-distance calls, a fee originally assessed in 1898. The government also said it will issue refunds requested by consumers and businesses that paid the fee over the past three years. Taxpayers will be able to request refunds when they file 2006 tax returns in early 2007.

Republicans and Democrats alike railed Tuesday at a Justice Department weekend raid of a lawmaker's Washington office, saying the move threatens the independence of the legislative branch.

"This is a serious concern," said House Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Congress will clearly speak to the issue of the Justice Department invasion."

Very basic logic here means that utilitarians will not support people who say they are promoting happiness, while in fact they are doing the opposite. Communist elites who, as you aptly put it, "consume a nation's population for their own enrichment", are not promoting happiness. They know this and we know this.

People may claim that the state should be the cornerstone of culture in the name of utilitarianism, but since we know that their policies will not promote general happiness, we know their arguments are wrong. Totalitarian states are not just oppressive to the individuals who are sacrificed for the supposed common good, they are bad for the common good as well.

Mill's rebellion against utilitarianism did not prevent him from writing a qualified defense of it, and his "Utilitarianism" is acknowledged today as one of the few readable accounts of a moral disorder that would have died out two centuries ago, had people not discovered that the utilitarian can excuse every crime. Lenin and Hitler were pious utilitarians, as were Stalin and Mao, as are most members of the Mafia.

It is important to recognize that utilitarianism is a moral philosophy, and therefore is a moral guide for an individual. Utilitarians do not suggest that the Constitution read, "Make whatever law creates the most happiness", and then let the government decide what that is. The utilitarian wants a constitution with checks and balances constrains the government enough so it doesn't make laws which lower aggregate happiness. A utilitarian voter will vote for the person whose policies he believes will create the most happiness.

Pastor has also called for the creation of a new currency which he has coined the "Amero," a currency that is proposed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso.

If President Bush had run openly in 2004 on the proposition that a prime objective of his second term was to form the North American Union and to supplant the dollar with the "Amero," we doubt very much that President Bush would have carried Ohio, let alone half of the Red State majority he needed to win re-election. Pursuing any plan that would legalize the conservatively estimated 12 million illegal aliens now in the United States could well spell election disaster for the Republican Party in 2006, especially for the House of Representative where every seat is up for grabs.

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as "other", different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

That whole mindset obviously is hostile not just to reason but to individualism. At the University of Pennsylvania several years ago a student was censured for turning in a paper in which she talked about her "deep regard for the individual and my desire to protect the freedom of all members of society." An administrator sent the paper back to her with the word "individual" underlined and with a note in the margin: "This is a red-flag phrase today. Arguments that champion the individual over the group ultimately privilege the individuals belonging to the largest or dominant group."

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

New research concludes that humans and chimpanzees interbred after the two species first separated – meaning they are much more recently related than was previously thought.

As Mill recognized, the "greatest happiness principle" must be qualified by some guarantee of individual rights, if it is not to excuse the tyrant. In response to his own wavering discipleship, therefore, he wrote "On Liberty," perhaps his most influential, though by no means his best, production.

At the time, Benthamite ways of thinking were influencing jurisprudence, and arguments based on the "general good" and the "good of society" appealed to the conservative imagination of the Victorian middle classes. It seemed right to control the forms of public worship, to forbid the expression of heretical opinions, or to criminalize adultery, for the sake of a "public morality" which exists for the general good. If individual freedom suffers, then that, according to the utilitarians, is the price we must pay.

Mill's hostility to privilege, to landed property, and to inheritance of property had implications which he seemed unwilling or unable to work out. His argument that all property should be confiscated by the state on death, and redistributed according to its own greater wisdom, has the implication that the state, rather than the family, is to be treated as the basic unit of society--the true arbiter of our destiny, and the thing to which everything is owed. The argument makes all property a temporary lease from the state, and also ensures that the state is the greatest spender, and the one least bound by the sense of responsibility to heirs and neighbors. It is, in short, a recipe for the disaster that we have seen in the communist and socialist systems, and it is a sign of Mill's failure of imagination that, unlike Smith, he did not foresee the likely results of his favored policies.

"Data mining" for terrorism -- the idea that searching through masses of data can find terrorist patterns or suspicious anomalies -- is provably flawed. Probability theory shows that searching for extremely rare events or conditions using even slightly flawed formulae will return mostly false positives. In other words, investigators searching through data about millions of Americans for the very few terrorists will send themselves on wild goose chases after innocent law-abiding citizens, with only the slimmest chance of stumbling onto terrorists or terrorism planning.

"Indonesia Welcomes Iran's Leader"--headline, Los Angeles Times, May 11

"Thousands of people fled the fertile slopes of Indonesia's most dangerous volcano Saturday as glowing lava oozed down the side and ash and rock spewed from the mountaintop."--Associated Press, May 13

"The problem you have right now is the conservative movement -- which is still very healthy in the country at large -- feels very abandoned in Washington," he told the Trib. "Conservatives actually believe in a balanced budget as a moral issue. Conservatives actually believe you ought to control the border as a matter of national security. Conservatives are the people who pay the taxes. They're not the people who get the pork."

Donna, played by Janel Moloney, as she and Josh walk down a hallway: "We have a $32 billion budget surplus for the first time in three decades. The Republicans in Congress want to use this money for tax relief, right?"

Josh: "Yes"

Donna: "Essentially what they're saying is we want to give back the money. Why don't we want to give back the money?"

Josh: "Because we're Democrats."

Donna: "But it's not the government's money."

Josh: "Sure it is. It's right there in our bank accounts."

Donna: "That's only because we collected more money than we ended up needing."

Josh: "Isn't it great?"

Donna: "I want my money back."

Josh: "Sorry."

Later, they pick up the argument:

Donna: "What's wrong with me getting my money back?"

Josh: "You won't spend it right."

Donna: "What do you mean?"

Josh: "Let's say your cut of the surplus is $700. I want to take your money, combine it with everybody else's money, and use it to pay down the debt and further endow Social Security. What do you want to do with it?"

Donna: "Buy a DVD player."

Josh: "See."

Donna: "But my $700 is helping employ the people who manufacture and sell DVD players, not to mention the people who manufacture and sell DVDs. It's the natural evolution of the market economy."

Josh: "The problem is the DVD player you buy might be manufactured in Japan."

Donna: "I'll buy an American one."

Josh: "We don't trust you."

Donna: "Why not?"

Josh: "We're Democrats."

Donna, exasperated: "I want my money back."

Josh, snickering: "You shouldn't have voted for us."

I just want to know who thought it was a good idea...to put a guy named Dusty Foggo in a power position at the CIA. The manager of a singles bar, yes. A waterbed store owner, yes. A porn director, yes. CIA executive director — no.

Scots infected with HIV protested Bill Clinton's appearance in Glasgow yesterday, highlighting the former president's connection to a scandal in which tainted blood from high-risk Arkansas prisoners was used to treat thousands of people in Europe who later came down with AIDS and hepatitis.

Clinton was in Scotland to address a business conference but was met with protesters outside the event who say he is culpable for their illnesses.

In the early 1980s, while Clinton was serving as governor of Arkansas, his administration awarded a contract to Health Management Associates to provide medical care to the state's prisoners. The president of the company was a long-time friend and political ally of Clinton and was later appointed by him to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. Later, he was among the senior members of Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election team.

As part of the deal HMA struck with Arkansas, in addition to treating the prisoners, the company collected their blood and sold it. Because of the exploding AIDS crisis, U.S. regulations didn't permit the sale of prisoners' blood within the country. But HMA found a willing buyer in Montreal, which brokered a deal with Connaught, a Toronto blood-fractionator, which didn't know the source of the supplies. The blood plasma was distributed throughout Canada by the Red Cross. Sales continued until 1983, when HMA revealed that some of the plasma might be contaminated with the AIDS virus and hepatitis. The blood was also peddled overseas.

Thousands of unwitting hemophiliacs who received transfusions of a product called "Factor 8" made from this blood died as a result.

"I needed Factor 8 because I was in pain, but in being given that treatment I was given a death sentence," a protester in Glasgow told BBC.

As a result of the tainted blood product, the man, who did not want to be named, was infected with both HIV and hepatitis C at age 14.

"He is the perfect Democratic candidate," Coulter said. "The environmental crazies are really leading the pack in the Democratic Party. It used to be the abortion ladies, but the enviros are about to heave them off the boat because they haven't helped them win elections."

Coulter feels heartened by Gore's constant chatter about "global warming," which she predicted in an earlier book, would be the defining issue for Democrats in the upcoming election.

The U.S. economy will continue to grow in the second half of 2006, the nation's purchasing and supply management executives concluded in a semi-annual economic survey released on Tuesday.

Manufacturing revenue is expected to grow 6.6 percent in 2006, while non-manufacturing revenue is expected to be up 6.0 percent during that period, the Institute for Supply Management said.

The ISM survey released in December 2005 had anticipated manufacturing revenue to be up 5.4 percent for 2006 and non-manufacturing revenue to be up 6.6 percent for 2006.

Castro reportedly makes his fortune by heading a number of state-run companies, but also through alleged kickbacks from missiles, cigars and rum that run through the Communist island nation.

Most domestic and international observers consider his regime to be one of the most corrupt, ethnocentric, oppressive and anti-democratic states in the world.

Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well-established liberal democracy — Norway. Two others have recently made a transition to democracy — Mexico and Nigeria. Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps. That's it. Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship — and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.

My associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ian Cornwall, calculates that if oil averages $71 a barrel this year, 10 autocracies stand to make about $500 billion more than in 2003, when oil was at $27. This windfall helps to squelch liberal forces and entrench noxious dictators in such oil producers as Russia (which stands to make $115 billion more this year than in 2003) and Venezuela ($36 billion). Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez can buy off their publics with generous subsidies and ignore Western pressure while sabotaging democratic developments from Central America to Central Asia.

The "dictatorship dividend" also subsidizes Sudan's ethnic cleansing (it stands to earn $4.7 billion more this year than in 2003), Iran's development of nuclear weapons ($45 billion) and Saudi Arabia's proselytization for Wahhabi fundamentalism ($149 billion). Even in such close American allies as Kuwait ($35 billion) and the United Arab Emirates ($36 billion), odds are that some of the extra lucre will find its way into the pockets of terrorists.

Hello friend !
You have just received a postcard from someone who cares about you!

This is a part of the message:
"Hy there! It has been a long time since I haven't heared about you!
I've just found out about this service from Claire, a friend of mine who also told me that..."
If you'd like to see the rest of the message Click HERE to receive your animated postcard!

Well there is now a spammer hacker out there sending them out as a "friend" and most people will click on the link not realising that it is actually an exe file wich will download malicious software onto your computer or a really vile virus.

A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.