Genetically Altered Rice Causes Lawsuits

Cited:  AP

About 20 years ago, researchers at Ghent University in Belgium started a project that should have been a good thing for farmers.  That project was to create a string of rice that was strong enough to withstand popular herbicides to kill weeds in the rice paddies.

The scientists were so successful that Bayer CropScience, part of the German chemical giant that makes and markets the Liberty herbicide, eventually bought the company that the university scientists formed.

Now lawyers for Bayer CropScience are in an Arkansas courtroom, fighting the latest of several lawsuits claiming the company hurt rice farmers rather than helping them. Bayer has already lost three suits over the past five months, with more trials to come.

Growers in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas filed lawsuits against Bayer for hurting their sales after genetically altered rice escaped a Louisiana test plot. Bayer faces judgments of $4.5 million so far in the three cases it lost.

Two key things happened since the early 1990s. Concerns grew about foods marketed directly to consumers that were raised using genetically altered seeds. And the experimental, Liberty-resistant strain of rice — called Liberty Link — got loose and made its way into the stream of commercially marketed rice.

The announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in August 2006 that traces of Liberty Link rice had been found in the nation’s rice supply was not welcome news to rice farmers.

No nation has approved genetically modified rice for the marketplace. Rice futures plummeted by $150 million immediately afterward. European nations quit accepting shipments of rice from the U.S. that hadn’t been extensively tested to show they weren’t contaminated. Japan banned all American rice.

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“In August, you’re at the end of the line as far as your options — you’re basically 30 days from harvest,” said Willie Oxner of Brinkley, Ark., recalling what happened that year. “There you are sitting with a crop, if the people who are taking it don’t know what they’re going to do, you’re in a panic.”

Oxner, a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against Bayer over Liberty Link, said his 2006 rice crop brought in about half of what he had been expecting — $3 to $4 a bushel rather than $6 to $7 a bushel. Beyond that, he said, was the turmoil of not knowing if he would be able to sell it at all.

“For quite a while, there was no indication that the rice would even be (marketable) — the scare and the unknown, it was like a wildfire,” he recalled. “It built up steam and went from bad to worse.”

The effects were felt across the Southern rice belt and even in California, which grows little of the long-grain rice raised in the South, and where no Liberty Link contamination was found.

There was “a really significant amount of confusion” and demands from overseas customers for facilities to be cleaned and for costly testing of export shipments, said Kirk Messick, senior vice president of Farmers Rice Co-op in Sacramento, Calif. Those testing requirements are still in place.

“Our export customers didn’t want (it),” he said. “Immediately we had requirements for … testing for nearly all of our export market.”

“We still today … have to answer questions. There were a lot of hidden costs.”

Those costs come off the top of prices that farmers get.

In addition to compensation for the lower price of their crops in 2006, some farmers are seeking punitive damages. Earlier this month, jurors in Augusta, Ark., awarded $500,000 in punitive damages. In the Lonoke County case, the dozen plaintiffs are also seeking unspecified punitive damages.

That suit claims Bayer was not only negligent in its handling of Liberty Link rice, but acted with malicious intent by not announcing the contamination as soon as it learned of it. The suit says Bayer knew of the contamination as early as January 2006, before that year’s crops were sown.

Bayer attorney Dick Ellis said in court last week that the company acted responsibly in its handling of the experimental rice and if the farmers suffered any damages, they were minimal.

“It had some impact, but it was a small impact and didn’t last very long,” Ellis said.

He also disputed the effect of the European reaction, saying Europe was not a large market and that exporters quickly found new markets for the rice that would have gone there.

While some other major U.S. food crops, such as soybeans, corn and canola, are grown with genetically altered seeds, Liberty Link rice has never been approved outside of test plots in the U.S.

Why there was such an outcry over the rice, and the issue persists, may stem from rice’s place on the dinner table, while people don’t consume soybeans directly, said Steve Linscombe, director of the rice experimental station in Crowley, La. — where the Liberty Link tests were carried out.

“Countries (were) uncertain about their economic future (and) focused on feeding their population,” Coats said.

According to an economist with University of Arkansas Extension Service, Bobby Coats, the contamination of crops with Liberty Link started amidst global economic turmoil that started in 1997.  It also prompted many countries to be more protective of their agricultural sectors.

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My Take: My question is very simply, is Liberty Link rice bad to eat?  If not, the only problem I see is government approval.  That approval should come from the FDA and I wonder why they haven’t approved it yet.  Do they need to go through the Los Angeles court reports of the cases?  I doubt that very much.  Once the FDA approves the rice, it should improve the rice market considerably.

An LA California court reporting service must have had a lot of work for these lawsuits.  Big companies should not mess with family income, especially farmers.  Farmers may not have to worry about office workstations, but they do need to worry about feeding their families.  That crop is what feed their families and if they can’t sell it, they go hungry and worst-case, they lose their farm.

Farmers may not worry about office supplies but they do worry about their crops because it is their livelihood.  Messing with a person’s livelihood can be dangerous.  And it looks like Bayer is getting into dangerous territory.

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Proposed New SS Card May Cause More Problems

Cited: Time

New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham believe that a national identity card could resolve the heated debate over immigration reform.  Recently, they presented a blueprint of an immigration bill to President Barack Obama that included a proposal to issue a biometric ID card.  This ID card would contain various physical data such as fingerprints or even retinal scans and would be given to all working Americans.

The “enhanced Social Security card” is being touted as a way to curb illegal immigration by giving employers the power to quickly and accurately determine who is eligible to work. “If you say [illegal immigrants] can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it,” Schumer told the Wall Street Journal. Proponents also hope legal hiring will be easier for employers if there’s a single go-to document instead of the 26 that new employees can currently use to show they’re authorized to work.

But with a congressional skirmish over comprehensive immigration reform on the horizon, skeptics from the left and the right have raised numerous concerns about the biometric ID — some of which pop up every time a form of national identification is proposed, and some that hinge on the shape this plan ultimately takes.

The sheer scale of the project is a potential problem, in terms of time, money and technology. The premise of using a biometric employment card (which would most likely contain fingerprint data) to stop illegal immigrants from working requires that all 150 million–plus American workers, not just immigrants, have one. Michael Cherry, president of identification-technology company Cherry Biometrics, says the accuracy of such large-scale biometric measuring hasn’t been proved. “What study have we done?” he says. “We just have a few assumptions.”

Schumer estimates that employers would have to pay up to $800 for card-reading machines, and many point out that compliance could prove burdensome for many small-to-medium-size businesses. In a similar program run by the Department of Homeland Security, in which 1.4 million transportation workers have been issued biometric credentials, applicants each pay $132.50 to help cover the costs of the initiative, which so far run in the hundreds of millions. “This is sort of like the worst combination of the DMV and the TSA,” says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU, an organization that has traditionally opposed all forms of national ID. “It’s going to be enormously costly no matter what.”

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Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says the pace of expanding the program is crucial. He believes that issuing the cards on a rolling basis and viewing them as “the next version of the driver’s license” makes the idea of a nationally issued biometric ID seem much less daunting. “I think that there is a risk in overreaching too quickly,” he says.

Another potential issue is whether the card will result in people being wrongfully denied work. The average person isn’t equipped to determine whether two fingerprints are a match — even FBI fingerprint experts have their off days, as when they incorrectly implicated a Portland, Ore., attorney in the 2004 bombings in Madrid — which means employers would be relying on an automated system. And that, as well as the fingerprinting process itself, invariably leads to some small number of mistakes.

In testimony given at a Senate immigration hearing in July 2009, Illinois Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, who has led the drive for immigration reform in the House, pointed out that an error rate of just 1% would mean that more than 1.5 million people — roughly the population of Philadelphia — would be wrongly deemed ineligible for work. “This is no small number,” he said, “especially in this economy, where so many workers already face extraordinary obstacles to finding a job.” Dean Pradeep Khosla, founding director of Carnegie Mellon’s cybersecurity lab, estimates that the error rates of computerized systems would likely be less than 2% (and could be less than 1%) but says they can never be zero. Civil-liberties advocates, citing the secret post-9/11 no-fly lists that innocents couldn’t get their names removed from, worry about whether those mistakenly put on the no-job list will ever be given the chance to correct the information.

Many skeptics also worry about false positives that come not from the computer but from counterfeits or employers looking to bypass the system. “It’s naive to think that this document won’t be faked,” Calabrese says. “Folks are already paying $10,000 to sneak into the country. What’s a couple thousand more?” In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Schumer and Graham said the card would be “fraud-proof” and that employers would face “stiff fines” and possibly imprisonment if they tried to get around using it. But Cherry half-jokes that someone could falsify such an ID in 15 minutes, and Khosla says that while current technology makes fingerprints the most feasible biometric marker to use, they’re also one of the easiest to steal.

Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, believes that keeping biometric information out of a centralized database is “the biggest challenge.” Otherwise, she says, the prospect of having millions of fingerprints on hand would be too tempting for the government not to abuse. In their op-ed, the Senators said the information would be stored only on the card.

Although the card is being presented as existing solely for determining employment eligibility, “it will be almost impossible to say that this wealth of information is there, but you can only use it for this purpose,” Coney says. “Privacy is pretty much hinged on the notion that if you collect data for one purpose, you can’t use it for another.” Calabrese expresses worries that this ID will become a “central identity document” that one will need in order to travel, vote or perhaps own a gun, which Melmed calls “mission creep.”

“People are waiting to see something in writing,” Calabrese says. “But the idea doesn’t fill people with a warm, fuzzy feeling.”  Because of general government mistrust many dismissed privacy concerns rather than legitimate technical issues.  Before the “social acceptance debate” over biometric cards can even begin, Melmed believes that the practical issues will have to be addressed first.  Both actually rely on details that the Senators have not yet presented.

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My Take: Isn’t this something the government has been trying to get in the works for years, a national ID?  Now they want to make it so that the card holds personal information?  I can just see the future, instead of needing iPod repair, people will need their Social Security card repaired.  Wait a minute that repair service will need to be certified by the federal government!  Or will we just have to go to Social Security office?

I suppose they will have to have Los Angeles data centers on the west coast and New York data centers on the East Coast dedicated to Social Security cards just to hold the information cards contained.  They will probably have a colocation New York as backup.  When the guy who does PlayStation repair will change his profession and start repairing Social Security cards.

But, it just might create jobs for load testing products and those products would be Social Security cards.  They will newly US software test to make sure that the software works roughly and they will need people to do that as well.

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2 Wall Street Banks Now Face Discrimination Lawsuit

Cited: ABC News

It is never easy to balance work and family or anyone, especially Wall Street and family.  To Wall Street banks now face discrimination complaints from two women that claim they were discriminated against in their jobs.  Both are seeking financial compensation after losing their jobs after taking time off to have children.

Charlotte Hanna, a former Goldman Sachs vice president in the human resources division, claimed she was demoted after having her first child and fired while on maternity leave for her second child.

Dorly Hazan-Amir, an associate at Citigroup’s asset finance division, claimed she was treated poorly after announcing her pregnancy and demoted after returning from maternity leave.

“Working mothers on Wall Street not only have to contend with the newfound obligations of caring for their child, but must also overcome the stereotype and biases that they are unable to do both,” said Douglas Wigdor, the lawyer representing Hanna and Hazan-Amir.

Mommy-Tracked

In her suit, Hanna claimed that she was “mommy-tracked” into positions that hurt her earnings potential and professional growth after she had her first child and took advantage of a Goldman Sachs program that allowed her to work three days a week.

At the time, the suit claimed, she was demoted from her position as the head of her department and moved from her private office into a cubicle. Then, while on maternity leave with her second child, she was allegedly told her position had been eliminated only to discover later that another employee had been hired to take over her duties.

“I was shocked to learn that I was being fired while I was on maternity leave,” she told ABC News.com via e-mail. “I wanted to continue my career at Goldman but, unfortunately, they do not view a woman who has had a child as a productive employee.”

Goldman Sachs said Hanna’s case is without merit.

“Ms. Hanna was treated very fairly throughout her employment at the firm, and we are very proud of the programs and initiatives we have in place to support working mothers,” a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman said.

To the firm’s credit, it has often been recognized for its efforts in hiring women and bringing mothers back into the fold. The firm was named by Working Mother magazine last year as one of the best 100 companies to work for, based partly on the “Returnship” program it launched a few years ago to help women who have left their jobs “ramp” back onto their careers.

‘Butt of Jokes’

Hazan-Amir’s case is slightly different. She complained about a long-standing “boys club” culture at Citi and claimed that supervisors have discriminated against her because of her gender since the beginning of her tenure. When she became pregnant, the attitude of her bosses reportedly worsened, she claimed.

One manager allegedly asked her whether she planned to be a “career mom” or a “mom mom,” which Hazan-Amir said was inappropriate because it implied she had to choose between career and family.

Rough Relationship

Another manager allegedly told her if she wanted to continue to work in the group, she would have to put her career first and her family second, she said.

“My pregnancy became the butt of jokes in the office as my male co-workers discussed setting up a pool to discuss how much weight I would gain as a result of my pregnancy,” she said.

Citigroup did not return a call for comment.

Women and Wall Street have always had a rough relationship. Dozens of other complaints and lawsuits have been brought against banks over the years, from women all along the pay scale.

Morgan Stanley famously settled two suits for more than $100 million in 2004 and 2007, brought by thousands of female employees claiming they were denied promotions and equal pay because of their gender.

Smith Barney  paid out $33 million in a similar suit two years ago.

Neither company admitted wrongdoing.

“Employers have become more savvy, so they often don’t say blatantly discriminatory things to women, but there are many cases of more subtle forms of marginalization,” said Dina Bakst, co-president of A Better Balance, a New York-based non-profit that advocates for women’s rights.

While firms often have programs to help parents balance their responsibilities, women sometimes say the programs feel like a dead-end.

“Many women feel they are mommy-tracked and penalized for taking that path,” Bakst said.

Nina Godiwalla, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley who is writing a book about her experience as a woman in banking, said life for Wall Street mothers can be difficult.

“Breaking into that culture as a woman is really about you becoming as closely as possible one of the guys,” said Godiwalla, author of “Suits: A Woman on Wall Street.”

Mothers often felt pressure to prove their loyalty to the bank, she said, by participating on conference calls right before giving birth, or showing up at work the day after delivering.

Changing Tide?

“When you’re that person who says, ‘I’m taking three months off for my kids,’ then suddenly your loyalty is in question,” she said.

Women who want to start a family often decide to leave the financial business altogether, or opt for less stressful careers at regional banks or small investment funds.

But Hanna and Hazan-Amir said they are unwilling to let go without a fight.

“I want other women who have had children to know that they have done nothing wrong and that they are not alone,” she wrote in the e-mail. “Many do not want to stand up and fight against a big company like Goldman. Hopefully, when others see what I did, they too will have the courage to fight back.”

Hannah stated that she would like her old job at Goldman Sachs back.  Hazan-Amir still works at Citi.

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My Take: What is it about male-dominated careers that make men so self-conscious that they fear a woman will take their place?  Women do not fear men taking their place!  I suppose that is one reason why New York sexual harassment lawyers are hired mostly by men and a Manhattan discrimination lawyer is needed by woman.

There are so many weird things men do, that women do not.  I have seen men pay cash for junk cars so that they can beef them up in their spare time.  You do not see a woman go out and buy junk cars just to beef them up, although some have done it.  The same thing can go for car racing.  Not many women are known for racing cars.  That is one male-dominated career.

Maybe some of these guys should do what women do.  Go home, run a nice hot bubble bath and light some wickless candles and enjoy the aromatherapy that goes with them.  I highly recommend the these candles because they are wickless and you don’t have to put up with all that melted wax.

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Relax Drug Laws for Marijuana

Cited: Newsweek Web Exclusive

A section of San Diego is called “Old Town”.  However, it is not like the nine block area in downtown Oakland that is called by locals “Oaksterdam”.  This area at one time was filled with vacant storefronts and now it is a pot utopia where everything moves just a little bit more slowly than in the rest of the world.  This is where medical marijuana is legal.  There is the Blue Sky Coffeeshop, which is a pot dispensary where getting a cup of coffee may take 20 minutes but picking up a sack of “Purple Kush” that is neatly wrapped in a brown sack only takes about five minutes.  Then just down the street you’ll find the “Bulldog Café”, which has back room where the sounds of “Dark Side of the Moon” are heard through a thick haze of smoke.  You will also find a glass-blowing shop amongst these storefronts or you can get artful bongs.  Then you have Richard Lee who operates the fabled pot school known as Oaksterdam University.

At 47, Lee is a kind of unofficial Buddha to the pro-pot movement. He has transformed a neighborhood and brought thriving new businesses to Oakland’s downtown. Now, as the sponsor of an initiative that was approved this week by the California secretary of state—to appear on November’s ballot—Lee hopes the rest of California will join Oakland as a kind of trailblazer in the fight for marijuana legalization. If approved by voters, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act would make California the first state in the nation to make pot legal, allowing Californians 21 and older to grow and possess up to an ounce. And in much the same way Oakland has embraced the medical-marijuana industry, the law would pave the way for local jurisdictions to tax and regulate the marijuana trade—a concept that, with the California state government billions in the red, even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said should be up “for debate.” “People are no longer outraged by the idea of legalization,” former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown wrote in a recent op-ed. “And truth be told, there is just too much money to be made both by the people who grow marijuana and the cities and counties that would be able to tax it.”

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron has estimated that the cost to the country of cannabis prohibition is $13 billion annually, with an additional $7 billion lost in potential tax revenue. With that in mind, Oakland voters became the first in the nation earlier this year to enact a special cannabis excise tax—$18 for every $1,000 grossed—that the city believes will generate up to $1 million this year. Lee hopes legalizing marijuana on a state level would do the same, only on a much larger scale. “The reality,” he says, “is that we’re creating jobs, improving the city, filling empty store spaces, and when people come [here] they can see that.”

California has allowed for medical-marijuana use since 1996. But “medical” is something of an open joke in the state, where anyone over age 18 with a doctor’s note—easy to get for ailments like anxiety or cramps, if you’re willing to pay—can obtain an ID card allowing access to any of the state’s hundreds of dispensaries, or pot shops. “You can basically get a doctor’s recommendation for anything,” one dispensary worker told Newsweek. Federal law, of course, still forbids the cultivation and possession of marijuana. It was banned, over the objections of the American Medical Association, in 1937. But in February of last year, Attorney General Eric Holder stunned critics when he announced that the Department of Justice would cease raiding medical-marijuana dispensaries (in California and elsewhere) that had been authorized under state law. Obama’s newly appointed drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, has since condemned legalization, in a speech to police chiefs in San Jose earlier this month.

You’d think it might make California users nervous—except that the drug czar does not have the legal authority to enforce drug laws. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy did not return Newsweek’s calls for comment, but experts say the reality is that the federal government doesn’t have the resources, or the desire, to go after each and every Californian who is operating within their local laws. Federal punishment for marijuana possession of up to an ounce is harsh: up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine. Under California law, the same crime is a misdemeanor—subject to a measly $100 fine. “We already have the Justice Department saying they’re not going to interfere with practices that are in compliance with state law,” says Paul Armentano, the deputy director of NORML, a pro-pot lobbying group. “That statement was made in reference to medical marijuana, but there’s no reason to think the approach to recreational use would be any different.”

The arguments against the passage of this kind of law are easy to list: that it glamorizes pot use, promotes a gateway drug, leads to abuse. And though studies show the health effects of marijuana are fairly mild in comparison to drugs like heroin, cocaine, or even alcohol, there are still risks to its consumption. Heavy pot users are more likely to be in car accidents; there have been some reports of it causing problems in respiration and fetal development. And, as the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, put it recently, there are a number of medical professionals, and many parents, who worry that the drug’s increased potency over the years has heightened the risk of addiction. “It’s certainly true that this is not your grandfather’s pot,” says Mark Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. Opponents of the initiative, including California’s Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, who is seeking the governorship, and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, a Democrat who is running to replace Brown as attorney general, are gearing up for a fight. But Lee has pledged to use $1 million of his own funds from his various thriving businesses in Oaksterdam, and he has put together a highly organized group of allies, including former Clinton White House consultant Chris Lehane. It’s also possible he’ll tap multibillionaire investor George Soros and George Zimmer, the head of the Men’s Wearhouse chain of clothing stores, who have donated to efforts to relax drug laws in the past.

The vote will be the second time in nearly 40 years that Californians have had the chance to decide the issue of legalization; the first one was Proposition 19 in 1972 (it failed). But much has changed since then, in both legal regulation and cultural attitudes. Thirteen states now allow medical marijuana, and a number of cities, such as Oakland and Seattle, have passed measures making prosecution of adult pot use the lowest law-enforcement priority.

In April, an ABC/Washington Post survey showed that 46% of Americans support legalization measures, up from 22% in 1997. And in California, a recent Field Poll showed that 56% are already on board to legalize and tax the drug.  In March, NORML launched a national ad campaign that will appear in the center of Times Square, declaring “Money Can Grow on Trees!” And everyone from the president to the most successful Olympic athlete in recent history (Michael Phelps) has talked about smoking it at one point or another.

“This is a new world,” says Robert MacCoun, a professor of law and public policy at University of California, Berkeley, and the coauthor of Drug War Heresies. “If you’d have asked me four years ago whether we’d be having this debate today, I can’t say I would have predicted it.”

While California voters will agree?  They did once before, will they again?

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My Take: I am one of those who think that marijuana should be legalized, if for nothing else than medical reasons.  For people who need marijuana for medical purposes, it would mean they would not need to hire a Freehold NJ criminal attorney.  However, if they’d been arrested for possession prior they may need a New Jersey expungement attorney instead.

I know there are many San Francisco CA criminal attorneys that may lose money if California legalizes marijuana.  Name sure the San Francisco CA DUI attorney will be able to take up the slack.  And a Riverside car accident attorney may get more business because of it.  Because people will be using their marijuana for medical reasons they will need to learn how much they can use and drive.  I am sure there will be lots of accidents until I do learn.

I am sure that Orange County criminal attorneys will not mind a loss of business in one part of their practice as long as another area will require a Los Angeles drunk driving accident lawyer.  I remember when Arizona lowered their legal drinking age to 19 and there was an increase in drunk drivers.  It didn’t take long for them to change that law back.

I really wonder if Dallas criminal attorneys, Bucks County criminal attorneys or even Nashville TN criminal attorneys will really be concerned whether or not marijuana becomes legal or not.

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Alcala Sentenced to Death after 30 Years

Cited: Associated Press

Finally, three weeks after a jury recommended death for the 66-year-old man, a judge sentenced serial killer Rodney Alcoa to death before hearing emotional testimony from the families of the four women and a 12-year-old girl he strangled in the 1970s.  Our club was convicted last month of five counts of first-degree murder after bizarre and surreal trial.

After the sentencing, Bruce Barcomb, the brother of victim Jill Barcomb, begged Alcala to admit to the murders to help family members heal.

“There is murder and rape and then there is the unequivicable carnage of a Rodney Alcala-style murder,” he said. “Give up your debt Rodney: all victims, all states, all occurrences. Own your truth.”

Alcala acted as his own attorney during the trial and unveiled a rambling defense that included questioning the mother of one of his victims, playing an Arlo Guthrie ballad and showing a clip from the 1970s TV show “The Dating Game.”

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After the verdict, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in Alcala’s possession in hopes of linking him to other unsolved murders around the country. Authorities from New Hampshire to Washington are now trying to determine if the UCLA graduate may have killed in their states.

Alcala has been sentenced to death twice before in the 1979 murder of young Robin Samsoe, but those verdicts were overturned on appeal. Prosecutors refiled charges in that case and added the four other murders in 2006 after investigators linked them to Alcala using DNA samples and other forensic evidence.  Those cases, which had gone unsolved for decades, went on trial for the first time this year.

The 12-year-old Samsoe disappeared on June 20, 1979, while riding a friend’s bike to ballet class in Huntington Beach in Orange County. Her body was found 12 days later in Angeles National Forest, where it had been mutilated by wild animals.

Alcala was arrested a month after Samsoe’s disappearance when his parole agent recognized him from a police sketch and called authorities. He has been in custody ever since.

He was first tried in Samsoe’s murder in 1980. Prosecutors added the murders of the four women in 2006 after investigators discovered forensic evidence linking him to those crimes, including DNA found on three of the women, a bloody handprint and marker testing done on blood Alcala left on a towel in the fourth victim’s home.

Alcala was convicted on Feb. 25, and also found true special-circumstance allegations of rape, torture and kidnapping, making him eligible for the death penalty.

During the guilt phase of trial, Alcala played a seconds-long clip of himself on a 1978 episode of “The Dating Game.” He said the grainy clip proved that he was wearing a gold-ball earring almost a year before Samsoe was killed.

Prosecutors said the earring, found in a small pouch with other earrings in a storage locker Alcala had rented, belonged to Samsoe and that Alcala had taken it as a trophy. They also found the DNA of another victim of Alcala on a rose-shaped earring in the same pouch.

During the penalty phase, the trial took another bizarre twist when Alcala played Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 song “Alice’s Restaurant,” in which the narrator tries to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War by trying to persuade a psychiatrist that he’s unfit for the military because of his supposed extreme desire to kill.

“I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth,” the song’s narrator sings. “Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean: kill, kill, kill, kill.”  The song prompted Samsoe’s brother to stalk out of the courtroom when it was played.

Rodney Alcala was also charged with killing Jill Barcomb, 18, who had just moved to Los Angeles from Oneida, N.Y.; Georgia Wixted, 27, of Malibu; Charlotte Lamb, 32, of Santa Monica; and Jill Parenteau, 21, of Burbank in addition to Samsoe.

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My Take: We need to improve our parole system considering this man was on parole when he started his killing spree.  One thing is for sure, he definitely should have had a Cornwall criminal lawyer to assist in his defense.  What is the saying, “a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client”?  I think it’s something like that.  The verdict shows the truth.  He definitely didn’t need a Toronto drug lawyer that’s for sure.

Although, he probably could use a Monmouth County fraud lawyer for imitating a human being.  Because I just cannot see how any human being can do such a thing.  I don’t think that even a Manasquan NJ criminal defense lawyer could have gotten him off unless they claimed insanity.  I do know one thing, the man thought he was on a stage performing for an audience.  One of his problems was that the court does not have seating risers and there is no stage that requires stage skirting.  I do know one thing, stage or no stage a barricade was required in the courtroom.

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Catholicism Faces More Than Sex Scandals

Cited: MSNBC

Catholicism is in turmoil as priests avoid the mention of the Pope Benedict XVI in their Masses.  People stopped going to confession as one woman states she sees priests as more flawed than she is.  Even some British protesters are calling for the pontiff to resign.

As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.

There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.

“There’s too many victims, and too much lying from the church about what really happened,” said Martin Sherlock, a Catholic newspaper vendor in Dublin, Ireland.

Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportions.

“This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant,” said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.

‘Incompetent people’

Collins, 69, said the abuse controversy was not mentioned by the priest in his own church near Canberra on Palm Sunday, but that the congregation discussed it afterward outside.

“People are outraged really, they’re furious with the complete failure of the church’s leadership and their view would be that we are led by incompetent people,” Collins said.

That view was echoed by many Catholics interviewed around the world by The Associated Press in recent days, although the pope also had defenders.

One of them was John Ryan, a retired glue factory worker, who said he was impressed by the letter Benedict wrote to the Irish faithful earlier this month in which he chastised Irish bishops.

“I was talking to my parish priest last weekend, and we were reading the pope’s letter, and he told me: This pope is the most intelligent pope we’ve had in the last thousand years,” said Ryan, 66, after a Mass in Dublin. “I couldn’t disagree with that. I don’t really think we could do better than with Benedict. I know they’re supposed to be infallible, but I’d say most Catholics today would accept that nobody’s perfect — not even the pope.”

But across the Atlantic, Jasmine Co said her faith in the church was badly shaken.

The 56-year-old nurse, who recently moved to the U.S. from the Philippines, said she has stopped confessing her sins to priests, and is turning to God directly.

“I don’t believe in confession to the priest because I don’t know if that priest is more of a sinner than I am,” Co said after attending a Palm Sunday service in central Philadelphia.

On Sunday in London, about 50 protesters staged a demonstration calling on the pope to resign — something that hasn’t happened in 700 years.

Church of Christ, not ‘Lord Pope’

The criticism is also coming from pulpits. Udo Fischer, an Austrian priest known for his liberal views, avoids mentioning Benedict and other church leaders by name during his Masses — at least until he sees stronger signals of remorse from the Holy See.

“We always stress that this is the church of Jesus Christ — that of the Lord Jesus and not that of the Lord Pope,” Fischer said after a Palm Sunday service in his parish in Paudorf, a village near Vienna.

Parishioners young and old squeezed into pews in Fischer’s modern and airy church clutching bunches of pussy willows blessed by the priest.

Traditionally Catholic Austria, shaken by clergy abuse claims in past years and again in recent weeks, risks a drop in already dwindling support for the church if no concrete action is taken to prevent further abuse and cover-ups, says Regina Polak of the University of Vienna’s Institute for Practical Theology.

“The situation is very fragile right now,” Polak said. “The potential for frustration is high.”

In the pope’s native Germany, the Roman Catholic diocese in the western city of Trier said Monday that 20 of its current and former priests had been accused “in recent weeks” of sexual abuse.

The allegations involved incidents from the 1950s to 1990, AFP reported. Ten of the accused priests have since died and another two have retired.

The BBC reported that the church was launching a hotline for German abuse victims.

In Spain, a heavily Catholic country where secular lifestyles are eroding church attendance, a coalition of more than 100 liberal-minded lay and clergy-based groups called the Vatican’s handling of the scandal “irresponsible and insufficient,” saying it failed to “put itself firmly on the side of the victims.”

In Norway, Oslo’s Bishop Bernt Eidsvig told Catholics in a letter last week that “the culture of silence that certain bishops advised is a betrayal.”

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Perhaps most ominous is the threat to the pope’s own authority.

David Gibson, author of “The Rule of Benedict,” a biography of the pope, said the criticism focusing on Benedict puts the “the mystique of the papal office” in peril.

“And above all, it diminishes his credibility, his ability to convince people of his message, to have people listen to him. It distances many Catholics, I think, even further from the institutional hierarchical church,” said Gibson.

Even as Easter Week began, anxiety was heard in many places, with people struggling to draw a line between the crimes of some priests and their own deep attachment to communities and the beliefs that sustain them.

“At this point in my life I wouldn’t leave the church for somebody else’s sins,” said Linda Faust, 56, after a Mass in Greendale, Wisconsin — the state where the late Rev. Lawrence Murphy was accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. Benedict, at the time Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is linked to a decision in the 1990s not to defrock Murphy.

Instead, Faust said that she and her husband pray for the child victims, the abusive priests and the archbishops who let them transfer to other parishes.

A key focus for those seeking church reform is celibacy — a tradition dating to Christianity’s early days but only made mandatory in the 11th century. Both Collins in Australia and Bishop Geoffrey Siundu, a former Catholic priest in Kenya, said the rule should go.

Siundu now heads the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ in Kenya, said the celibacy rule has driven 30 other ex-priests to join his church.

Retired Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini also believes mandatory chastity for churchmen should be thought over to help the church regain lost trust.

Martini, the former archbishop of Milan, told Austria’s Die Presse newspaper that only through an open discussion can the church regain its credibility.

Church ‘will survive’

Kathrin Radelmayer, 24, attended Mass in Munich, where Ratzinger’s handling of a case when he was archbishop there has been questioned. She said she was sticking with the church even though many of her friends and relatives are distancing themselves now.

“It is such a shock for the church, but the church has withstood a lot in its 2,000 years and I think that it will survive this as well,” Radelmayer said.

Marina Buendia, a 22-year-old nurse from Madrid, went to St. Peter’s Square in Rome for the Pope’s Palm Sunday Mass. She defended the church.

“The news of these cases has come to the Vatican far too late for the Vatican to be held responsible,” she said. “I think that the Vatican has accepted the problem, which is a step in the right direction. We are both very religious and feel a very strong personal bond with the pope, which would never be affected by such scandals. As young Catholics, we feel welcome and included by the church.”

“I’ve had a lot of disappointments over the years, and I’m hanging by a thread,” Schweitzer said. “I keep coming back for the community — the way we support each other in so many ways. Do you give up on that? Or do you stay in it and fight for justice? I think that’s where a lot of us are at now.”

One 45-year-old English teacher, Teresa Schweitzer, said that her disenchantment over other matters was compounded by the handling of the abuse cases.  Those matters include women denying leadership roles.  Watching many of the Catholic priests and activists helping the poor and pursuing social justice has given her comfort recently.

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My Take: I am one of those people who do not believe that a priest has the right to forgive anyone, let alone another priest.  God is the only one that has that right!  As for these abuse cases, the church has been asking for it for years.  It has been medically proven that men need that release because it releases hormones into their bloodstream that they need to be healthy.  Yet, a priest has to practice abstinence.  I was told by someone who is very well versed in Catholic history that the only reason priests are like that is because of one Pope was a misogynist and declared that all priests should not partake in that particular activity.

That is like telling someone from the Deep South they cannot fly Confederate flags or even telling the average American that they cannot have a flag American.  You are asking for something that is almost impossible to accomplish.  Note that I said “almost”, not impossible.  I also know that there are some priests who have the intestinal fortitude to request help if they have these types of tendencies.

When a man studies to be a priest, it is nothing like taking New York motorcycle classes is the study of Catholicism, the Bible and religious history.  Of course, that is not to say that a priest cannot take a motorcycle driving course NY if they have a driver’s license.

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Evangelist Convicted on 10 Sex Abuse Counts

Cited: Associated Press

The one-time street preacher of what the federal government over claims he underpaid followers for church work and was the outfitter of the stars, Tony Alamo, was convicted of taking five girls across state lines for the purpose of having sex.  Alamo transported girls as young as age 9, in violation of a nearly century-old federal law and was found guilty by a jury of nine men and three women.  The 10-count indictment said that the abuse started in 1994.

Women ranging from age 17 to 33 told jurors that Alamo “married” them in private ceremonies while they were minors, sometimes giving them wedding rings. Each detailed trips beyond Arkansas’ borders for Alamo’s sexual gratification.  Alamo, 74, never testified. His lawyers told him he should not directly challenge their testimony and they argued to jurors that the girls traveled for legitimate church business.

The evangelist could spend the rest of his life in prison, since each count is punishable by 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing will be held in six to eight weeks.  State and federal agents raided Alamo’s compound last Sept. 20 after repeated reports of abuse.

Defense lawyers said the government targeted Alamo because it doesn’t like his apocalyptic brand of Christianity. Alamo has blamed the Vatican for his legal troubles, which include a four-year prison term for tax evasion in the 1990s.

With little physical evidence, prosecutors relied on the women’s stories to paint an emotional portrait of a charismatic religious leader who controlled every aspect of his subjects’ lives. No one obtained food, clothing or transportation without him knowing about it.

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At times, men were ordered away from the compound and their wives kept as another Alamo bride. Minor offenses from either gender drew beatings or starvation fasts.

In the end, prosecutors convinced jurors in Arkansas’ conservative Christian climate that Alamo’s ministry offered him the opportunity to prey on the young girls of loyal followers who believed him to be a prophet who spoke directly to God. They described a ministry that ran on the fear of drawing the anger of “Papa Tony.”

Alamo remained defiant as jurors heard testimony for a week. He openly referred to the Branch Davidian raid at Waco, Texas, muttered expletives during others’ testimony and fell asleep at times – while alleged victims spoke from the witness stand and again as prosecutors urged his conviction.

The evangelist built a multi-state ministry on the backs of followers who worked in various businesses to support the church. In the 1980s, he designed and sold elaborately decorated denim jackets, hobnobbed with celebrities and owned a compound in western Arkansas that featured a heart-shaped swimming pool.

Federal agents seized a large portion of his assets in the 1990s to settle tax claims after courts declared his operations a business, not a church. Among items offered for auction were the plans for the studded jacket Michael Jackson wore on his “Bad” album.

Lowest ministry is considered a “cult” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  For violating the nearly century-old Mann act, prosecutors indicated that Alamo could face a total of 175 years in prison.  The Mann act as a morality law once aimed at stopping women from being sold into prostitution.  Each count that Alamo has been charged with also carries a possible fine of $250,000 each.

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My Take: As a woman, I think anybody who uses a child for sexual purposes should have their throats cut.  I firmly believe that anybody who is found guilty of rape (any kind of rape) should get the death penalty.  This man deserves to die more than any because he is supposed to be a religious leader.  A person who is supposed to guide people through their faith not destroy it.  He was supposed to be someone that they could trust.  He probably used womens sexy Halloween costumes to make them feel grown up.  How sick can a person be used Halloween costumes in that way, if he did.

I doubt that he used any tricks other than the fact that he “married” them.  However, I think he should be searching for burial urn and not wondering which prison he will be in.  I would even let him purchase a pet urn so his dog could go with him.  I do not think he has the right to live.  However, that is my opinion and I am entitled to it.

As long as he spends the rest of his life in jail without the possibility of parole I will live with it.  I firmly believe that anybody who rapes or murders anybody should lose his or her own life.  They have stolen one life so they should lose theirs.

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