Still Protest GPS Systems, Credit Card Machines In Cabs
NEW YORK (CBS) ― For the second time in two months, some taxi drivers are planning to walk off the job.
The 24-hour strike will begin Monday morning.
The drivers are angry with the city requirement mandating all cabs have GPS and credit card machines installed.
The city has a contingency plan in place, which includes zone pricing and riders sharing taxis.
Stay with CBS 2HD for all the late-breaking developments on the second taxi strike.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Tennessee 38, Houston 36- Bironas sets mark for field goals in a game
By KRISTIE RIEKEN, AP Sports Writer
October 21, 2007
HOUSTON (AP) -- With Vince Young on the sidelines, the Tennessee Titans couldn't finish drives. With the day Rob Bironas had, it didn't matter.
Bironas kicked an NFL-record eight field goals, including the game-winner as time expired, to lead the Titans to a 38-36 win over the Houston Texans on Sunday.
Backup Kerry Collins led the offense while Young missed playing in his hometown because of a strained quadriceps. Collins didn't make many mistakes, but the offense couldn't capitalize in the red zone, ushering Bironas into the record book.
The record-setting kick foiled a spirited comeback by the Texans (3-4), who scored 29 points in the fourth quarter, capped by a 53-yard touchdown pass from Sage Rosenfels to Andre' Davis to take a 36-35 lead with 57 seconds to play.
The Titans (4-2) faced a third-and-10 at their 37 when Collins found Roydell Williams on a 46-yard pass that set up the winning kick.
Bironas said he didn't realize he was closing in on the mark.
"I knew we'd hit quite a few, but I try not to count," Bironas said. "I try not to know the distances when I go out there, so I'm always concentrating on making the same kick. I've never really counted. I'll remember this one, though."
Bironas' last two field goals were from 29 yards and he connected from 52, 43, 25, 21, 30 and 28 yards to break the previous record of seven field goals held by Billy Cundiff, Chris Boniol, Rich Karlis and Jim Bakken.
He doubled his field goal total for the season Sunday after kicking eight field goals in the five previous games combined. When someone pointed out that he had five field goals by halftime, he found it strange.
"I was like: `I've almost kicked as many as we've kicked the whole season,"' he said. "I'll take them when we need them."
Bironas also kicked two extra points and set the NFL record for most points by a kicker with 26. Cundiff's 23 points on Sept. 15, 2003, was the previous high.
Young was active, but didn't play and Collins got his first win as a starter in Tennessee after losing the first three games of last season. Coach Jeff Fisher said Young could have played if Collins had been injured, but that he wasn't at "full speed."
"I wasn't going to play at all because I didn't have any preparation or practicing," Young said. "I really feel like I need to practice to play. I can't just go out there and go off just off talent. That's not the type of guy I am."
Houston's offense stalled throughout the first three quarters before the furious rally began with a 7-yard touchdown catch by David Anderson early in the fourth quarter. Before that 70-yard drive, the Texans had managed just 34 yards of offense. A two-point conversion by Davis made it 32-15.
Texans coach Gary Kubiak blamed the offensive woes on himself.
"I'm just very disappointed in this guy you're looking at right here," Kubiak said. "For us to go out there and play offensively that way for that long, there's no excuse. That's my job."
Houston Starter Matt Schaub missed big chunks of the first half and the entire second half with ankle and hip injuries. Kubiak said Schaub would have an MRI on his hip but that X-rays on his ankle were negative.
Rosenfels accounted for four of Houston's six turnovers by throwing three interceptions and losing a fumble in Schaub's place.
"If we just convert on a couple of those turnovers that we got, deep in their territory and got touchdowns instead of field goals, we wouldn't have been in the situation we were in at the end," Collins said. "That's obviously going to be a point of emphasis for us and one we need to keep working on."
The Texans cut the lead to 32-22 on a 6-yard touchdown reception by Kevin Walter with about eight minutes left. The Texans forced a punt, but Anderson fumbled it and Tennessee recovered, putting a damper on Houston's comeback hopes.
Bironas seventh field goal made it 35-22 with 3:47 remaining.
But Jeb Putzier's 7-yard touchdown catch with less than two minutes remaining cut the lead to 35-29. The Texans recovered their first onside kick attempt but had to re-kick after an illegal formation penalty.
They recovered the second one, too, to set up Davis' touchdown.
Rosenfels four touchdown passes in the fourth quarter tied an NFL record. He finished 22-for-35 for 290 yards.
Chris Henry and LenDale White scored Tennessee's only touchdowns and White finished with 27 carries for 104 yards.
DeMeco Ryans sacked Collins, causing a fumble which he returned 26 yards for a touchdown that gave Houston a 7-3 lead in the first quarter.
The Texans managed 24 yards and two first downs in the first half, with the second one coming on a penalty. Jacoby Jones fumbled early in the first quarter and Rosenfels threw an interception and lost a fumble before halftime.
Rosenfels replaced Schaub midway through the first half after he injured his ankle on a sack. He threw the interception to Nick Harper on his first play.
Schaub returned in the second quarter, but was knocked out of the game just before halftime by a helmet-to-helmet hit by Albert Haynesworth. Rosenfels fumbled on the next play to set up a 28-yard field goal by Bironas, his fifth of the half.
Haynesworth said he didn't think it was a helmet-to-helmet hit and said it would have been better if Schaub would have stayed in.
"Well, heck, I mean we probably would have won this game 35-7 if he stayed in," Haynesworth said. "It was good to knock him out I guess, but he's going to come back and I don't think there'll be any kind of quarterback controversy because they pay that guy a lot of money."
Notes
The Texans had just 39 yards rushing. ... Titans fullback Ahmard Hall has a broken arm and will have surgery, Fisher said.
October 21, 2007
HOUSTON (AP) -- With Vince Young on the sidelines, the Tennessee Titans couldn't finish drives. With the day Rob Bironas had, it didn't matter.
Bironas kicked an NFL-record eight field goals, including the game-winner as time expired, to lead the Titans to a 38-36 win over the Houston Texans on Sunday.
Backup Kerry Collins led the offense while Young missed playing in his hometown because of a strained quadriceps. Collins didn't make many mistakes, but the offense couldn't capitalize in the red zone, ushering Bironas into the record book.
The record-setting kick foiled a spirited comeback by the Texans (3-4), who scored 29 points in the fourth quarter, capped by a 53-yard touchdown pass from Sage Rosenfels to Andre' Davis to take a 36-35 lead with 57 seconds to play.
The Titans (4-2) faced a third-and-10 at their 37 when Collins found Roydell Williams on a 46-yard pass that set up the winning kick.
Bironas said he didn't realize he was closing in on the mark.
"I knew we'd hit quite a few, but I try not to count," Bironas said. "I try not to know the distances when I go out there, so I'm always concentrating on making the same kick. I've never really counted. I'll remember this one, though."
Bironas' last two field goals were from 29 yards and he connected from 52, 43, 25, 21, 30 and 28 yards to break the previous record of seven field goals held by Billy Cundiff, Chris Boniol, Rich Karlis and Jim Bakken.
He doubled his field goal total for the season Sunday after kicking eight field goals in the five previous games combined. When someone pointed out that he had five field goals by halftime, he found it strange.
"I was like: `I've almost kicked as many as we've kicked the whole season,"' he said. "I'll take them when we need them."
Bironas also kicked two extra points and set the NFL record for most points by a kicker with 26. Cundiff's 23 points on Sept. 15, 2003, was the previous high.
Young was active, but didn't play and Collins got his first win as a starter in Tennessee after losing the first three games of last season. Coach Jeff Fisher said Young could have played if Collins had been injured, but that he wasn't at "full speed."
"I wasn't going to play at all because I didn't have any preparation or practicing," Young said. "I really feel like I need to practice to play. I can't just go out there and go off just off talent. That's not the type of guy I am."
Houston's offense stalled throughout the first three quarters before the furious rally began with a 7-yard touchdown catch by David Anderson early in the fourth quarter. Before that 70-yard drive, the Texans had managed just 34 yards of offense. A two-point conversion by Davis made it 32-15.
Texans coach Gary Kubiak blamed the offensive woes on himself.
"I'm just very disappointed in this guy you're looking at right here," Kubiak said. "For us to go out there and play offensively that way for that long, there's no excuse. That's my job."
Houston Starter Matt Schaub missed big chunks of the first half and the entire second half with ankle and hip injuries. Kubiak said Schaub would have an MRI on his hip but that X-rays on his ankle were negative.
Rosenfels accounted for four of Houston's six turnovers by throwing three interceptions and losing a fumble in Schaub's place.
"If we just convert on a couple of those turnovers that we got, deep in their territory and got touchdowns instead of field goals, we wouldn't have been in the situation we were in at the end," Collins said. "That's obviously going to be a point of emphasis for us and one we need to keep working on."
The Texans cut the lead to 32-22 on a 6-yard touchdown reception by Kevin Walter with about eight minutes left. The Texans forced a punt, but Anderson fumbled it and Tennessee recovered, putting a damper on Houston's comeback hopes.
Bironas seventh field goal made it 35-22 with 3:47 remaining.
But Jeb Putzier's 7-yard touchdown catch with less than two minutes remaining cut the lead to 35-29. The Texans recovered their first onside kick attempt but had to re-kick after an illegal formation penalty.
They recovered the second one, too, to set up Davis' touchdown.
Rosenfels four touchdown passes in the fourth quarter tied an NFL record. He finished 22-for-35 for 290 yards.
Chris Henry and LenDale White scored Tennessee's only touchdowns and White finished with 27 carries for 104 yards.
DeMeco Ryans sacked Collins, causing a fumble which he returned 26 yards for a touchdown that gave Houston a 7-3 lead in the first quarter.
The Texans managed 24 yards and two first downs in the first half, with the second one coming on a penalty. Jacoby Jones fumbled early in the first quarter and Rosenfels threw an interception and lost a fumble before halftime.
Rosenfels replaced Schaub midway through the first half after he injured his ankle on a sack. He threw the interception to Nick Harper on his first play.
Schaub returned in the second quarter, but was knocked out of the game just before halftime by a helmet-to-helmet hit by Albert Haynesworth. Rosenfels fumbled on the next play to set up a 28-yard field goal by Bironas, his fifth of the half.
Haynesworth said he didn't think it was a helmet-to-helmet hit and said it would have been better if Schaub would have stayed in.
"Well, heck, I mean we probably would have won this game 35-7 if he stayed in," Haynesworth said. "It was good to knock him out I guess, but he's going to come back and I don't think there'll be any kind of quarterback controversy because they pay that guy a lot of money."
Notes
The Texans had just 39 yards rushing. ... Titans fullback Ahmard Hall has a broken arm and will have surgery, Fisher said.
New England 49, Miami 28
By STEVEN WINE, AP Sports Writer
October 21, 2007
MIAMI (AP) -- Tom Brady emerged from the locker room Sunday wearing a suit and tie complemented by a pocket scarf, his stylish look marred only by a few small drink stains on one side.
So he's not perfect.
But he and the New England Patriots are awfully good.
Flawless at the start and off the bench, Brady threw a team-record six touchdown passes to help the unbeaten Patriots rout the winless Miami Dolphins 49-28.
With his team comfortably ahead, Brady came out early in the fourth quarter, then re-entered and threw for New England's final score. His TD total exceeded his career high of five, set last week against Dallas.
"He's looking awesome," Dolphins linebacker Zach Thomas said. "He has always been awesome. That's where it all starts for them. But he has more talent to work with now."
The Patriots, who led 42-7 at halftime, improved to 7-0 for the first time in their 48-year history.
"We've got a long way to go," Brady said. "Our goals are bigger than winning seven games this year."
Brady completed his first 11 passes for 220 yards and four scores, including throws of 35 and 50 yards to Randy Moss. His other touchdown passes covered 14 and 16 yards to Wes Welker, 30 to Donte Stallworth and 2 to Kyle Brady.
"Those guys are making the plays," Brady said. "I'm just throwing it. They're making my job awful easy."
Brady has 27 touchdown passes after seven games and is on pace for 61. The NFL record is 49 set by Peyton Manning in 2004.
The drubbing was the biggest downer yet for the Dolphins, who fell to 0-7 for the first time in their 41 seasons. They next play the New York Giants in London.
"We can't win in America," defensive end Jason Taylor said. "Maybe we can win overseas."
Miami also lost running back Ronnie Brown to a knee injury in the third quarter. Brown, who came into the game leading the NFL in yards from scrimmage, is scheduled to undergo an MRI exam Monday.
The Patriots have won all seven of their games by at least 17 points, matching a league record to start a season. They showed little letup until backup quarterback Matt Cassel entered the game with 11 minutes left.
When Taylor intercepted Cassel's second pass and returned it 36 yards for a touchdown to make the score 42-21, Patriots coach Bill Belichick sent Brady back in.
"I did it because of the score," Belichick said. "One more turnover, and then it's a 14-point game in the middle of the fourth quarter."
"Coach Belichick looked back over at me and goes, `Yep, you're going back in,"' Brady said. "By that time I had taken all my stuff off, so I suited back up."
Brady then drove New England 59 yards in four plays, the last a touchdown pass to Welker.
The Patriots were that relentless all afternoon, dominating even on special teams. Willie Andrews returned a kickoff 77 yards for a touchdown. The first time the Patriots punted, Chris Hanson's kick pinned the Dolphins at their 1.
Even when Miami forced New England into a third-and-18 situation, Brady hit Moss for a touchdown. Moss outfought defenders in the end zone for both of his scores, making one of the catches one-handed.
"If you want to know why we're 0-7, you look at plays like that, and it says a lot," Miami cornerback Andre Goodman said.
But the entire NFL is struggling to stop Moss, who has 10 touchdown catches in his first season with the Patriots.
"You give him a chance, he usually comes down with it," Brady said. "He's such a mismatch. He has a size and speed advantage on every defender he plays against."
Brady finished 21-for-25 for 354 yards and no turnovers. For the second game in a row, the Patriots scored their highest points total in 23 years. Their 42 points by halftime were a franchise record for a half.
Notes: S Renaldo Hill hurt his right knee on Moss' second touchdown pass. S Courtney Bryan hurt his thigh, further depleting Miami at a position plagued by injuries. ... Taylor's touchdown was the eighth of his career, breaking the modern career NFL record for a defensive lineman he shared with George Martin. ... Patriots RB Laurence Maroney returned after missing three games with a groin injury. He carried six times for 31 yards.
October 21, 2007
MIAMI (AP) -- Tom Brady emerged from the locker room Sunday wearing a suit and tie complemented by a pocket scarf, his stylish look marred only by a few small drink stains on one side.
So he's not perfect.
But he and the New England Patriots are awfully good.
Flawless at the start and off the bench, Brady threw a team-record six touchdown passes to help the unbeaten Patriots rout the winless Miami Dolphins 49-28.
With his team comfortably ahead, Brady came out early in the fourth quarter, then re-entered and threw for New England's final score. His TD total exceeded his career high of five, set last week against Dallas.
"He's looking awesome," Dolphins linebacker Zach Thomas said. "He has always been awesome. That's where it all starts for them. But he has more talent to work with now."
The Patriots, who led 42-7 at halftime, improved to 7-0 for the first time in their 48-year history.
"We've got a long way to go," Brady said. "Our goals are bigger than winning seven games this year."
Brady completed his first 11 passes for 220 yards and four scores, including throws of 35 and 50 yards to Randy Moss. His other touchdown passes covered 14 and 16 yards to Wes Welker, 30 to Donte Stallworth and 2 to Kyle Brady.
"Those guys are making the plays," Brady said. "I'm just throwing it. They're making my job awful easy."
Brady has 27 touchdown passes after seven games and is on pace for 61. The NFL record is 49 set by Peyton Manning in 2004.
The drubbing was the biggest downer yet for the Dolphins, who fell to 0-7 for the first time in their 41 seasons. They next play the New York Giants in London.
"We can't win in America," defensive end Jason Taylor said. "Maybe we can win overseas."
Miami also lost running back Ronnie Brown to a knee injury in the third quarter. Brown, who came into the game leading the NFL in yards from scrimmage, is scheduled to undergo an MRI exam Monday.
The Patriots have won all seven of their games by at least 17 points, matching a league record to start a season. They showed little letup until backup quarterback Matt Cassel entered the game with 11 minutes left.
When Taylor intercepted Cassel's second pass and returned it 36 yards for a touchdown to make the score 42-21, Patriots coach Bill Belichick sent Brady back in.
"I did it because of the score," Belichick said. "One more turnover, and then it's a 14-point game in the middle of the fourth quarter."
"Coach Belichick looked back over at me and goes, `Yep, you're going back in,"' Brady said. "By that time I had taken all my stuff off, so I suited back up."
Brady then drove New England 59 yards in four plays, the last a touchdown pass to Welker.
The Patriots were that relentless all afternoon, dominating even on special teams. Willie Andrews returned a kickoff 77 yards for a touchdown. The first time the Patriots punted, Chris Hanson's kick pinned the Dolphins at their 1.
Even when Miami forced New England into a third-and-18 situation, Brady hit Moss for a touchdown. Moss outfought defenders in the end zone for both of his scores, making one of the catches one-handed.
"If you want to know why we're 0-7, you look at plays like that, and it says a lot," Miami cornerback Andre Goodman said.
But the entire NFL is struggling to stop Moss, who has 10 touchdown catches in his first season with the Patriots.
"You give him a chance, he usually comes down with it," Brady said. "He's such a mismatch. He has a size and speed advantage on every defender he plays against."
Brady finished 21-for-25 for 354 yards and no turnovers. For the second game in a row, the Patriots scored their highest points total in 23 years. Their 42 points by halftime were a franchise record for a half.
Notes: S Renaldo Hill hurt his right knee on Moss' second touchdown pass. S Courtney Bryan hurt his thigh, further depleting Miami at a position plagued by injuries. ... Taylor's touchdown was the eighth of his career, breaking the modern career NFL record for a defensive lineman he shared with George Martin. ... Patriots RB Laurence Maroney returned after missing three games with a groin injury. He carried six times for 31 yards.
77 Percent Of Americans Approve Of Marriage Between Blacks And Whites
That's according to a video by The Gallup Group and presented by Dr. Frank Newport, editor and chief of the Gallup Group. The video also reports that Independents are more supportive over Democrats or Republicans. It also says that Blacks are more supportive than Whites. Additionally, the older a person is over 50 years of age, the more likely they are not to support marriage between Blacks and Whites.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Bill Maher Goes Off On 9-11 Conspiracy Theorist Hecklers
Part of me thinks Bill's jumping into the audience was to use YouTube to boost his show's ratings by generating buzz. He's got the buzz; let's see how the ratings do in the future.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bill Maher can add "security guard" to his job description alongside comedian and political commentator.
Maher helped security give the boot to a rowdy protester from the studio of his weekly HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, and it was all captured on live television.
Maher was talking science during one of his weekly panel discussions when a protester in his audience stood, held up a smuggled-in sign reading "9/11 is a cover up fraud" and shouted comments to the same effect.
The host tried to shout down the audience member, who only became more agitated.
"Do we have some (expletive) security in this building," Maher yelled, "or do I have to come down there and kick his (expletive)?"
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When security reached the man's aisle and he resisted leaving, Maher ran into the seats and helped them push him out the door, shouting "Out! Out! Out!"
Several other protesters, sprinkled throughout the audience, then stood up and shouted.
"This isn't the Iowa Caucus, OK, we're not here to debate," Maher shouted with most of his audience cheering him on. "This is the problem with live television."
The incident was shown live on the East Coast, and the network appeared to show the entire affair unedited for the taped-delayed West Coast version.
After the instigators were ejected, Maher told his panelists — MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson — that they often linger outside his studio to share 9/11 conspiracy theories with him and try to get into the show.
"It's the only time I defend Bush," he said.
"I'm thinking about firing my audience department," he added.
Regular audience members found the ruckus thrilling.
"We picked a very exciting night to be here," Eliot Stein, a 54-year-old high school teacher, said via cellphone. "There's few live TV shows anymore, and here you got to see, it was like a movie. it was great."
Stein's friend John Lovell said "It was positively surreal."
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and wife Elizabeth had been in the studio for an interview before the panel discussion and dustup.
Elizabeth Edwards was shown in the audience after her husband's interview, but it was not clear whether she remained in the seats during the incident.
Phone and e-mail messages left with HBO officials late Friday were not immediately returned.
Second Life Focus Of CSI: NY Episode Wednesday
According to TechCrunch , CSI: NY will go to Second Life:
Second Life is bracing itself for an influx of new members this coming week with the long awaited episode of CSI:NY does Second Life to be shown in the United States on Wednesday.
The episode will see Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) entering Second Life to pursue a killer who has killed a Second Life user in a case of virtual stalking gone too far.
CSI:NY fans will be encouraged to join Second Life and investigate the case by following a link on the CBS website. CSI:NY will have three options for CSI-related inworld activities. The first option will allow viewers to walk around virtual New York buildings and visit a CSI lab and play forensic games.
The second option consists of a game called “Murder by Zuiker,” a unique murder plot which can be solved by users finding clues. The 100 people who come closest to solving the murder will win virtual gifts.
Here's the CBS preview on YouTube:
Second Life is bracing itself for an influx of new members this coming week with the long awaited episode of CSI:NY does Second Life to be shown in the United States on Wednesday.
The episode will see Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) entering Second Life to pursue a killer who has killed a Second Life user in a case of virtual stalking gone too far.
CSI:NY fans will be encouraged to join Second Life and investigate the case by following a link on the CBS website. CSI:NY will have three options for CSI-related inworld activities. The first option will allow viewers to walk around virtual New York buildings and visit a CSI lab and play forensic games.
The second option consists of a game called “Murder by Zuiker,” a unique murder plot which can be solved by users finding clues. The 100 people who come closest to solving the murder will win virtual gifts.
Here's the CBS preview on YouTube:
Top Clinton Aids Have Lobbied and Worked For Iowa Ememy Monsanto
Currently, Hillary Clinton's being hammered for holding her "Rural Americans For Hillary" party at a lobbying firm's office in Washington DC, and for Monsanto, which has a terrible record with Iowans and even that state's Attorney General's investigating their business practices.
But I learned that Clinton herself has ties to Monsanto. In 1998 top aides to her husband President Bill Clinton lobbied for Monsanto in Europe -- including President Clinton and Al Gore. According to Commondreams.org...
Top Clinton aides--including U.S. Trade Rep. Charlene Barshevsky, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Secretary of Commerce William Daley--also have lobbied their European counterparts on Monsanto's behalf.
Even Bill Clinton and Al Gore got in on the act, engaging in some last minute arm-twisting of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahren and French President Lionel Jospin. Both the French and the Irish caved in to the pressure.
Indeed, Monsanto's well-known for hiring former aids to Bill Clinton. The most famous example is Mickey Kantor, who after representing President Clinton as trade representative, became a Monsanto Board member .
Senator Clinton's got herself in a real pickle this time. This is so bad, she should issue a formal appology to Iowa voters for her conduct in associating with Monsanto.
But I learned that Clinton herself has ties to Monsanto. In 1998 top aides to her husband President Bill Clinton lobbied for Monsanto in Europe -- including President Clinton and Al Gore. According to Commondreams.org...
Top Clinton aides--including U.S. Trade Rep. Charlene Barshevsky, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman and Secretary of Commerce William Daley--also have lobbied their European counterparts on Monsanto's behalf.
Even Bill Clinton and Al Gore got in on the act, engaging in some last minute arm-twisting of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahren and French President Lionel Jospin. Both the French and the Irish caved in to the pressure.
Indeed, Monsanto's well-known for hiring former aids to Bill Clinton. The most famous example is Mickey Kantor, who after representing President Clinton as trade representative, became a Monsanto Board member .
Senator Clinton's got herself in a real pickle this time. This is so bad, she should issue a formal appology to Iowa voters for her conduct in associating with Monsanto.
Hillary Clinton Uses Lobbiyst Troutman Sanders To Meet Iowa Alledged Violator Monsanto
Troutman Sanders is hosting a party for Hillary Clinton and "Rural America"
First, who's Troutman Sanders? Well, their website reports a huge client list of large corporations . which is listed below in this blog post.
What Hillary Clinton's doing is using their office space to meet Monsanto, one of Troutman Sanders' major clients. The title of the event is "Rural Americans for Hillary." Monsanto is under investigation by office of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller regarding its business practices in Iowa and how they impact Iowa farmers. Monsanto's also the focus of a patent dispute with Iowa State University.
What's weird is that the event is not only entitled "Rural Americans for Hillary" but is being held in Washington DC and that Monsanto is judged as the most unethical investment in the World by one website.
Hillary's getting bashed by Iowans over this story, and it could be the nail in the coffin of her chances to win in Iowa. Meanwhile, let's look at the lobbying firm Troutman Sanders. It's no surprise that Hillary Clinton's not taking questions from Iowa voters at press conferences.
They are listed and seen as lobbyists. As stated, Monsanto's one of Troutman Sanders' top clients, but in addition, former aids to President Bill Clinton have lobbied for Monstanto in the recent past.
TSPAG representative client list:
Aetna
AFLAC
American Insurance Association
American Lawyer Media, Inc.
Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.
Assurant Health
BellSouth Corporation
Branded Pharmaceutical Association
Camp, Dresser & McKee, Inc
CarMax
Cerner
CIGNA Healthcare
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
City of Atlanta
City of Forsyth, Georgia
City of Sacramento City Manager's Office
City of Sacramento Department of Utilities
City of Watsonville
Coastal Heritage Society
The Coca-Cola Company
Columbus Community Services
County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County
Digimarc ID Systems
Entertainment Software Association
First United Ethanol, LLC
General Electric Company
General Motors Corporation
Georgia Crown Distributing Company
Georgia Southern University
Gilbane Building Company
Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority
Home Builders Association of Georgia
Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, Inc.
Long Fence
L. R. Wechsler, Ltd.
Medco Health Solutions, Inc.
Merck & Company
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Microsoft Corporation
Mid-Dakota Rural Water System, Inc.
Monterey County Administrative Office
Monterey County Water Resources Agency
Monsanto
Novartis Pharmaceuticals
Outfitters Association
Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency
Paulding County Airport Authority
Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America
Press Ganey Associates
Property Casualty Insurers Association of America
Prudential Financial, Inc.
Recording Industry Association of America
Schwan's Global Supply Chain, Inc.
Southern Company
Synovus Financial Corp.
USA Rice Federation
University of Arkansas, School of Agriculture
Verizon Wireless
Virginia Bar Association
Virginia Economic Developers Association
Vitech
Walter Industries
First, who's Troutman Sanders? Well, their website reports a huge client list of large corporations . which is listed below in this blog post.
What Hillary Clinton's doing is using their office space to meet Monsanto, one of Troutman Sanders' major clients. The title of the event is "Rural Americans for Hillary." Monsanto is under investigation by office of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller regarding its business practices in Iowa and how they impact Iowa farmers. Monsanto's also the focus of a patent dispute with Iowa State University.
What's weird is that the event is not only entitled "Rural Americans for Hillary" but is being held in Washington DC and that Monsanto is judged as the most unethical investment in the World by one website.
Hillary's getting bashed by Iowans over this story, and it could be the nail in the coffin of her chances to win in Iowa. Meanwhile, let's look at the lobbying firm Troutman Sanders. It's no surprise that Hillary Clinton's not taking questions from Iowa voters at press conferences.
They are listed and seen as lobbyists. As stated, Monsanto's one of Troutman Sanders' top clients, but in addition, former aids to President Bill Clinton have lobbied for Monstanto in the recent past.
TSPAG representative client list:
Aetna
AFLAC
American Insurance Association
American Lawyer Media, Inc.
Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc.
Assurant Health
BellSouth Corporation
Branded Pharmaceutical Association
Camp, Dresser & McKee, Inc
CarMax
Cerner
CIGNA Healthcare
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
City of Atlanta
City of Forsyth, Georgia
City of Sacramento City Manager's Office
City of Sacramento Department of Utilities
City of Watsonville
Coastal Heritage Society
The Coca-Cola Company
Columbus Community Services
County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County
Digimarc ID Systems
Entertainment Software Association
First United Ethanol, LLC
General Electric Company
General Motors Corporation
Georgia Crown Distributing Company
Georgia Southern University
Gilbane Building Company
Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority
Home Builders Association of Georgia
Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, Inc.
Long Fence
L. R. Wechsler, Ltd.
Medco Health Solutions, Inc.
Merck & Company
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Microsoft Corporation
Mid-Dakota Rural Water System, Inc.
Monterey County Administrative Office
Monterey County Water Resources Agency
Monsanto
Novartis Pharmaceuticals
Outfitters Association
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Teachers Having Sex With Students: 2,500 Cases Since 2001 - AP Report
We all knew there was a problem, but this study shows just how large it really has been.
AP: Sexual Misconduct Plagues US Schools
By MARTHA IRVINE and ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writers
The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader's breast during recess. "I guess it was just lust of the flesh," he told his boss.
That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn't end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.
When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 - 40 years after that first little girl came forward - it wasn't a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.
Lindsey's case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation's children.
Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love.
An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.
There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators - nearly three for every school day - speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.
Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.
And no one - not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments - has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.
Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators - the very definition of breach of trust.
The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.
The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.
Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.
Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.
"From my own experience - this could get me in trouble - I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."
One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.
Jennah Bramow, one of Lindsey's accusers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wonders why there isn't more outrage.
"You're supposed to be able to send your kids to school knowing that they're going to be safe," says Bramow, now 20. While other victims accepted settlement deals and signed confidentiality agreements, she sued her city's schools for failing to protect her and others from Lindsey - and won. Only then was Lindsey's teaching license finally revoked.
As an 8-year-old elementary-school student, Bramow told how Lindsey forced her hand on what she called his "pee-pee."
"How did you know it was his pee-pee?" an interviewer at St. Luke's Child Protection Center in Cedar Rapids asked Jennah in a videotape, taken in 1995.
"'Cause I felt something?" said Jennah, then a fidgety girl with long, dark hair.
"How did it feel?" the investigator asked.
"Bumpy," Jennah replied. She drew a picture that showed how Lindsey made her touch him on the zipper area of his pants.
Lindsey, now 68, refused multiple requests for an interview. "It never occurs to you people that some people don't want their past opened back up," he said when an AP reporter approached him at his home outside Cedar Rapids and asked questions.
That past, according to evidence presented in the Bramow's civil case, included accusations from students and parents along with reprimands from principals that were filed away, explained away and ultimately ignored until 1995, when accusations from Bramow and two other girls forced his early retirement. Even then, he kept his teaching license until the Bramows took the case public and filed a complaint with the state.
Like Lindsey, the perpetrators that the AP found are everyday educators - teachers, school psychologists, principals and superintendents among them. They're often popular and recognized for excellence and, in nearly nine out of 10 cases, they're male. While some abused students in school, others were cited for sexual misconduct after hours that didn't necessarily involve a kid from their classes, such as viewing or distributing child pornography.
They include:
- Joseph E. Hayes, a former principal in East St. Louis, Ill. DNA evidence in a civil case determined that he impregnated a 14-year-old student. Never charged criminally, his license was suspended in 2003. He has ignored an order to surrender it permanently.
- Donald M. Landrum, a high school teacher in Polk County, N.C. His bosses warned him not to meet with female students behind closed doors. They put a glass window in his office door, but Landrum papered over it. Police later found pornography and condoms in his office and alleged that he was about to have sex with a female student. His license was revoked in 2005.
- Rebecca A. Boicelli, a former teacher in Redwood City, Calif. She conceived a child with a 16-year-old former student then went on maternity leave in 2004 while police investigated. She was hired to teach in a nearby school district; board members said police hadn't told them about the investigation.
The overwhelming majority of cases the AP examined involved teachers in public schools. Private school teachers rarely turn up because many are not required to have a teaching license and, even when they have one, disciplinary actions are typically handled within the school.
Two of the nation's major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, each denounced sex abuse while emphasizing that educators' rights also must be taken into account.
"Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations," said NEA President Reg Weaver, who refused to be interviewed and instead released a two-paragraph statement.
Kathy Buzad of the AFT said that "if there's one incident of sexual misconduct between a teacher and a student that's one too many."
The United States has grown more sympathetic to victims of sex abuse over recent decades, particularly when it comes to young people. Laws that protect children from abusers bear the names of young victims. Police have made pursuing Internet predators a priority. People convicted of abuse typically face tough sentences and registry as sex offenders.
Even so, sexually abusive teachers continue to take advantage, and there are several reasons why.
For one, many Americans deny the problem, and even treat the abuse with misplaced fascination. Popular media reports trumpet relationships between attractive female teachers and male students.
"It's dealt with in a salacious manner with late-night comedians saying 'What 14-year-old boy wouldn't want to have sex with his teacher?' It trivializes the whole issue," says Robert Shoop, a professor of educational administration at Kansas State University who has written a book aimed at helping school districts identify and deal with sexual misconduct.
"In other cases, it's reported as if this is some deviant who crawled into the school district - 'and now that they're gone, everything's OK.' But it's much more prevalent than people would think."
The AP investigation found efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse. It starts in school hallways, where fellow teachers look away or feel powerless to help. School administrators make behind-the-scenes deals to avoid lawsuits and other trouble. And in state capitals and Congress, lawmakers shy from tough state punishments or any cohesive national policy for fear of disparaging a vital profession.
That only enables rogue teachers, and puts kids who aren't likely to be believed in a tough spot.
In case after case the AP examined, accusations of inappropriate behavior were dismissed. One girl in Mansfield, Ohio, complained about a sexual assault by teacher Donald Coots and got expelled. It was only when a second girl, years later, brought a similar complaint against the same teacher that he was punished.
And that second girl also was ostracized by the school community and ultimately left town.
Unless there's a videotape of a teacher involved with a child, everyone wants to believe the authority figure, says Wayne Promisel, a retired Virginia detective who has investigated many sex abuse cases.
He and others who track the problem reiterated one point repeatedly during the AP investigation: Very few abusers get caught.
They point to several academic studies estimating that only about one in 10 victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to someone who can do something about it.
Teachers, administrators and even parents frequently don't, or won't, recognize the signs that a crime is taking place.
"They can't see what's in front of their face. Not unlike a kid in an alcoholic family, who'll say 'My family is great,'" says McGrath, the California lawyer and investigator who now trains entire school systems how to recognize what she calls the unmistakable "red flags" of misconduct.
In Hamburg, Pa., in 2002, those "red flags" should have been clear. A student skipped classes every day to spend time with one teacher. He gave her gifts and rides in his car. She sat on his lap. The bond ran so deep that the student got chastised repeatedly - even suspended once for being late and absent so often. But there were no questions for the teacher.
Heather Kline was 12, a girl with a broad smile and blond hair pulled back tight. Teacher Troy Mansfield had cultivated her since she was in his third-grade class.
"Kids, like, idolized me because they thought I was, like, cool because he paid more attention to me," says Kline, now 18, sitting at her mother's kitchen table, sorting through a file of old poems and cards from Mansfield. "I was just like really comfortable. I could tell him anything."
He never pushed her, just raised the stakes, bit by bit - a comment about how good she looked, a gift, a hug.
She was sure she was in love.
By winter of seventh grade, he was sneaking her off in his car for an hour of sex, dropping in on her weekly baby-sitting duties, e-mailing about what clothes she should wear, about his sexual fantasies, about marriage and children.
Mansfield finally got caught by the girl's mother, and his own words convicted him. At his criminal trial in 2004, Heather read his e-mails and instant messages aloud, from declarations of true love to explicit references to past sex. He's serving up to 31 years in state prison.
The growing use of e-mails and text messages is leaving a trail that investigators and prosecutors can use to prove an intimate relationship when other evidence is hard to find.
Even then, many in the community find it difficult to accept that a predator is in their midst. When these cases break, defendants often portray the students as seducers or false accusers. However, every investigator questioned said that is largely a misconception.
"I've been involved in several hundred investigations," says Martin Bates, an assistant superintendent in a Salt Lake City school district. "I think I've seen that just a couple of times ... where a teacher is being pursued by a student."
Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.
"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames - "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."
Laws in several states require that even an allegation of sexual misconduct be reported to the state departments that oversee teacher licenses. But there's no consistent enforcement, so such laws are easy to ignore.
School officials fear public embarrassment as much as the perpetrators do, Shakeshaft says. They want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher. They also don't want to get sued by teachers or victims, and they don't want to face a challenge from a strong union.
In the Iowa case, Lindsey agreed to leave without fighting when his bosses kept the reason for his departure confidential. The decades' worth of allegations against him would have stayed secret, if not for Bramow.
Across the country, such deals and lack of information-sharing allow abusive teachers to jump state lines, even when one school does put a stop to the abuse.
While some schools and states have been aggressive about investigating problem teachers and publicizing it when they're found, others were hesitant to share details of cases with the AP - Alabama and Mississippi among the more resistant. Maine, the only state that gave the AP no disciplinary information, has a law that keeps offending teachers' cases secret.
Meanwhile, the reasons given for punishing hundreds of educators, including many in California, were so vague there was no way to tell why they'd been punished, until further investigation by AP reporters revealed it was sexual misconduct.
And in Hawaii, no educators were disciplined by the state in the five years the AP examined, even though some teachers there were serving sentences for various sex crimes during that time. They technically remained teachers, even behind bars.
Elsewhere, there have been fitful steps toward catching errant teachers that may be having some effect. The AP found the number of state actions against sexually abusive teachers rose steadily, to a high of 649 in 2005.
More states now require background checks on teachers, fingerprinting and mandatory reporting of abuse, though there are still loopholes and a lack of coordination among districts and states.
U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the last 20 years on civil rights and sex discrimination have opened schools up to potentially huge financial punishments for abuses, which has driven some schools to act.
And the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification keeps a list of educators who've been punished for any reason, but only shares the names among state agencies.
The uncoordinated system that's developed means some teachers still fall through the cracks. Aaron M. Brevik is a case in point.
Brevik was a teacher at an elementary school in Warren, Mich., until he was accused of using a camera hidden in a gym bag to secretly film boys in locker rooms and showers. He also faced charges that he recorded himself molesting a boy while the child slept.
Found guilty of criminal sexual conduct, Brevik is now serving a five- to 20-year prison sentence and lost his Michigan license in 2005.
What Michigan officials apparently didn't know when they hired him was that Brevik's teaching license in Minnesota had been permanently suspended in 2001 after he allegedly invited two male minors to stay with him in a hotel room. He was principal of an elementary school in southeastern Minnesota at the time.
"I tell you what, they never go away. They just blend a little better," says Steve Janosko, a prosecutor in Ocean County, N.J., who handled the case of a former high school teacher and football coach, Nicholas J. Arminio.
Arminio surrendered his New Jersey teaching license in 1994 after two female students separately accused him of inappropriate touching. The state of Maryland didn't know that when he applied for teaching credentials and took a job at a high school in Baltimore County. He eventually resigned and lost that license, too.
Even so, until this month, he was coaching football at another Baltimore County high school in a job that does not require a teaching license. After the AP started asking questions, he was fired.
Victims also face consequences when teachers are punished.
In Pennsylvania, after news of teacher Troy Mansfield's arrest hit, girls called Kline, his 12-year-old victim, a "slut" to her face. A teacher called her a "vixen." Friends stopped talking to her. Kids no longer sat with her at lunch.
Her abuser, meanwhile, had been a popular teacher and football coach.
So, between rumors that she was pregnant or doing drugs and her own panic attacks and depression, Kline bounced between schools. At 16, she ran away to Nashville.
"I didn't have my childhood," says Kline, who's back home now, working at a grocery cash register and hoping to get her GED so she can go to nursing school. "He had me so matured at so young.
"I remember going from little baby dolls to just being an adult."
The courts dealt her a final insult. A federal judge dismissed her civil suit against the school, saying administrators had no obligation to protect her from a predatory teacher since officials were unaware of the abuse, despite what the court called widespread "unsubstantiated rumors" in the school. The family is appealing.
In Iowa, the state Supreme Court made the opposite ruling in the Bramow case, deciding she and her parents could sue the Cedar Rapids schools for failing to stop Lindsey.
Bramow, now a young mother who waits tables for a living, won a $20,000 judgment. But Lindsey was never criminally charged due to what the former county prosecutor deemed insufficient evidence.
Arthur Sensor, the former superintendent in Oelwein, Iowa, who vividly recalls pressuring Lindsey to quit on Feb. 18, 1964, regrets that he didn't do more to stop him back then.
Now, he says, he'd call the police.
"He promised me he wouldn't do it again - that he had learned. And he was a young man, a beginning teacher, had a young wife, a young child," Sensor, now 86 years old, said during testimony at the Bramows' civil trial.
"I wanted to believe him, and I did."
---
John Parsons, special projects manager for the AP's News Research Center, contributed to this story.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
AP: Sexual Misconduct Plagues US Schools
By MARTHA IRVINE and ROBERT TANNER
AP National Writers
The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader's breast during recess. "I guess it was just lust of the flesh," he told his boss.
That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn't end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.
When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 - 40 years after that first little girl came forward - it wasn't a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.
Lindsey's case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation's children.
Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love.
An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.
There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators - nearly three for every school day - speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.
Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.
And no one - not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments - has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.
Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators - the very definition of breach of trust.
The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.
Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.
The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.
Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.
Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.
"From my own experience - this could get me in trouble - I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."
One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.
Jennah Bramow, one of Lindsey's accusers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wonders why there isn't more outrage.
"You're supposed to be able to send your kids to school knowing that they're going to be safe," says Bramow, now 20. While other victims accepted settlement deals and signed confidentiality agreements, she sued her city's schools for failing to protect her and others from Lindsey - and won. Only then was Lindsey's teaching license finally revoked.
As an 8-year-old elementary-school student, Bramow told how Lindsey forced her hand on what she called his "pee-pee."
"How did you know it was his pee-pee?" an interviewer at St. Luke's Child Protection Center in Cedar Rapids asked Jennah in a videotape, taken in 1995.
"'Cause I felt something?" said Jennah, then a fidgety girl with long, dark hair.
"How did it feel?" the investigator asked.
"Bumpy," Jennah replied. She drew a picture that showed how Lindsey made her touch him on the zipper area of his pants.
Lindsey, now 68, refused multiple requests for an interview. "It never occurs to you people that some people don't want their past opened back up," he said when an AP reporter approached him at his home outside Cedar Rapids and asked questions.
That past, according to evidence presented in the Bramow's civil case, included accusations from students and parents along with reprimands from principals that were filed away, explained away and ultimately ignored until 1995, when accusations from Bramow and two other girls forced his early retirement. Even then, he kept his teaching license until the Bramows took the case public and filed a complaint with the state.
Like Lindsey, the perpetrators that the AP found are everyday educators - teachers, school psychologists, principals and superintendents among them. They're often popular and recognized for excellence and, in nearly nine out of 10 cases, they're male. While some abused students in school, others were cited for sexual misconduct after hours that didn't necessarily involve a kid from their classes, such as viewing or distributing child pornography.
They include:
- Joseph E. Hayes, a former principal in East St. Louis, Ill. DNA evidence in a civil case determined that he impregnated a 14-year-old student. Never charged criminally, his license was suspended in 2003. He has ignored an order to surrender it permanently.
- Donald M. Landrum, a high school teacher in Polk County, N.C. His bosses warned him not to meet with female students behind closed doors. They put a glass window in his office door, but Landrum papered over it. Police later found pornography and condoms in his office and alleged that he was about to have sex with a female student. His license was revoked in 2005.
- Rebecca A. Boicelli, a former teacher in Redwood City, Calif. She conceived a child with a 16-year-old former student then went on maternity leave in 2004 while police investigated. She was hired to teach in a nearby school district; board members said police hadn't told them about the investigation.
The overwhelming majority of cases the AP examined involved teachers in public schools. Private school teachers rarely turn up because many are not required to have a teaching license and, even when they have one, disciplinary actions are typically handled within the school.
Two of the nation's major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, each denounced sex abuse while emphasizing that educators' rights also must be taken into account.
"Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations," said NEA President Reg Weaver, who refused to be interviewed and instead released a two-paragraph statement.
Kathy Buzad of the AFT said that "if there's one incident of sexual misconduct between a teacher and a student that's one too many."
The United States has grown more sympathetic to victims of sex abuse over recent decades, particularly when it comes to young people. Laws that protect children from abusers bear the names of young victims. Police have made pursuing Internet predators a priority. People convicted of abuse typically face tough sentences and registry as sex offenders.
Even so, sexually abusive teachers continue to take advantage, and there are several reasons why.
For one, many Americans deny the problem, and even treat the abuse with misplaced fascination. Popular media reports trumpet relationships between attractive female teachers and male students.
"It's dealt with in a salacious manner with late-night comedians saying 'What 14-year-old boy wouldn't want to have sex with his teacher?' It trivializes the whole issue," says Robert Shoop, a professor of educational administration at Kansas State University who has written a book aimed at helping school districts identify and deal with sexual misconduct.
"In other cases, it's reported as if this is some deviant who crawled into the school district - 'and now that they're gone, everything's OK.' But it's much more prevalent than people would think."
The AP investigation found efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse. It starts in school hallways, where fellow teachers look away or feel powerless to help. School administrators make behind-the-scenes deals to avoid lawsuits and other trouble. And in state capitals and Congress, lawmakers shy from tough state punishments or any cohesive national policy for fear of disparaging a vital profession.
That only enables rogue teachers, and puts kids who aren't likely to be believed in a tough spot.
In case after case the AP examined, accusations of inappropriate behavior were dismissed. One girl in Mansfield, Ohio, complained about a sexual assault by teacher Donald Coots and got expelled. It was only when a second girl, years later, brought a similar complaint against the same teacher that he was punished.
And that second girl also was ostracized by the school community and ultimately left town.
Unless there's a videotape of a teacher involved with a child, everyone wants to believe the authority figure, says Wayne Promisel, a retired Virginia detective who has investigated many sex abuse cases.
He and others who track the problem reiterated one point repeatedly during the AP investigation: Very few abusers get caught.
They point to several academic studies estimating that only about one in 10 victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to someone who can do something about it.
Teachers, administrators and even parents frequently don't, or won't, recognize the signs that a crime is taking place.
"They can't see what's in front of their face. Not unlike a kid in an alcoholic family, who'll say 'My family is great,'" says McGrath, the California lawyer and investigator who now trains entire school systems how to recognize what she calls the unmistakable "red flags" of misconduct.
In Hamburg, Pa., in 2002, those "red flags" should have been clear. A student skipped classes every day to spend time with one teacher. He gave her gifts and rides in his car. She sat on his lap. The bond ran so deep that the student got chastised repeatedly - even suspended once for being late and absent so often. But there were no questions for the teacher.
Heather Kline was 12, a girl with a broad smile and blond hair pulled back tight. Teacher Troy Mansfield had cultivated her since she was in his third-grade class.
"Kids, like, idolized me because they thought I was, like, cool because he paid more attention to me," says Kline, now 18, sitting at her mother's kitchen table, sorting through a file of old poems and cards from Mansfield. "I was just like really comfortable. I could tell him anything."
He never pushed her, just raised the stakes, bit by bit - a comment about how good she looked, a gift, a hug.
She was sure she was in love.
By winter of seventh grade, he was sneaking her off in his car for an hour of sex, dropping in on her weekly baby-sitting duties, e-mailing about what clothes she should wear, about his sexual fantasies, about marriage and children.
Mansfield finally got caught by the girl's mother, and his own words convicted him. At his criminal trial in 2004, Heather read his e-mails and instant messages aloud, from declarations of true love to explicit references to past sex. He's serving up to 31 years in state prison.
The growing use of e-mails and text messages is leaving a trail that investigators and prosecutors can use to prove an intimate relationship when other evidence is hard to find.
Even then, many in the community find it difficult to accept that a predator is in their midst. When these cases break, defendants often portray the students as seducers or false accusers. However, every investigator questioned said that is largely a misconception.
"I've been involved in several hundred investigations," says Martin Bates, an assistant superintendent in a Salt Lake City school district. "I think I've seen that just a couple of times ... where a teacher is being pursued by a student."
Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.
"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames - "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."
Laws in several states require that even an allegation of sexual misconduct be reported to the state departments that oversee teacher licenses. But there's no consistent enforcement, so such laws are easy to ignore.
School officials fear public embarrassment as much as the perpetrators do, Shakeshaft says. They want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher. They also don't want to get sued by teachers or victims, and they don't want to face a challenge from a strong union.
In the Iowa case, Lindsey agreed to leave without fighting when his bosses kept the reason for his departure confidential. The decades' worth of allegations against him would have stayed secret, if not for Bramow.
Across the country, such deals and lack of information-sharing allow abusive teachers to jump state lines, even when one school does put a stop to the abuse.
While some schools and states have been aggressive about investigating problem teachers and publicizing it when they're found, others were hesitant to share details of cases with the AP - Alabama and Mississippi among the more resistant. Maine, the only state that gave the AP no disciplinary information, has a law that keeps offending teachers' cases secret.
Meanwhile, the reasons given for punishing hundreds of educators, including many in California, were so vague there was no way to tell why they'd been punished, until further investigation by AP reporters revealed it was sexual misconduct.
And in Hawaii, no educators were disciplined by the state in the five years the AP examined, even though some teachers there were serving sentences for various sex crimes during that time. They technically remained teachers, even behind bars.
Elsewhere, there have been fitful steps toward catching errant teachers that may be having some effect. The AP found the number of state actions against sexually abusive teachers rose steadily, to a high of 649 in 2005.
More states now require background checks on teachers, fingerprinting and mandatory reporting of abuse, though there are still loopholes and a lack of coordination among districts and states.
U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the last 20 years on civil rights and sex discrimination have opened schools up to potentially huge financial punishments for abuses, which has driven some schools to act.
And the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification keeps a list of educators who've been punished for any reason, but only shares the names among state agencies.
The uncoordinated system that's developed means some teachers still fall through the cracks. Aaron M. Brevik is a case in point.
Brevik was a teacher at an elementary school in Warren, Mich., until he was accused of using a camera hidden in a gym bag to secretly film boys in locker rooms and showers. He also faced charges that he recorded himself molesting a boy while the child slept.
Found guilty of criminal sexual conduct, Brevik is now serving a five- to 20-year prison sentence and lost his Michigan license in 2005.
What Michigan officials apparently didn't know when they hired him was that Brevik's teaching license in Minnesota had been permanently suspended in 2001 after he allegedly invited two male minors to stay with him in a hotel room. He was principal of an elementary school in southeastern Minnesota at the time.
"I tell you what, they never go away. They just blend a little better," says Steve Janosko, a prosecutor in Ocean County, N.J., who handled the case of a former high school teacher and football coach, Nicholas J. Arminio.
Arminio surrendered his New Jersey teaching license in 1994 after two female students separately accused him of inappropriate touching. The state of Maryland didn't know that when he applied for teaching credentials and took a job at a high school in Baltimore County. He eventually resigned and lost that license, too.
Even so, until this month, he was coaching football at another Baltimore County high school in a job that does not require a teaching license. After the AP started asking questions, he was fired.
Victims also face consequences when teachers are punished.
In Pennsylvania, after news of teacher Troy Mansfield's arrest hit, girls called Kline, his 12-year-old victim, a "slut" to her face. A teacher called her a "vixen." Friends stopped talking to her. Kids no longer sat with her at lunch.
Her abuser, meanwhile, had been a popular teacher and football coach.
So, between rumors that she was pregnant or doing drugs and her own panic attacks and depression, Kline bounced between schools. At 16, she ran away to Nashville.
"I didn't have my childhood," says Kline, who's back home now, working at a grocery cash register and hoping to get her GED so she can go to nursing school. "He had me so matured at so young.
"I remember going from little baby dolls to just being an adult."
The courts dealt her a final insult. A federal judge dismissed her civil suit against the school, saying administrators had no obligation to protect her from a predatory teacher since officials were unaware of the abuse, despite what the court called widespread "unsubstantiated rumors" in the school. The family is appealing.
In Iowa, the state Supreme Court made the opposite ruling in the Bramow case, deciding she and her parents could sue the Cedar Rapids schools for failing to stop Lindsey.
Bramow, now a young mother who waits tables for a living, won a $20,000 judgment. But Lindsey was never criminally charged due to what the former county prosecutor deemed insufficient evidence.
Arthur Sensor, the former superintendent in Oelwein, Iowa, who vividly recalls pressuring Lindsey to quit on Feb. 18, 1964, regrets that he didn't do more to stop him back then.
Now, he says, he'd call the police.
"He promised me he wouldn't do it again - that he had learned. And he was a young man, a beginning teacher, had a young wife, a young child," Sensor, now 86 years old, said during testimony at the Bramows' civil trial.
"I wanted to believe him, and I did."
---
John Parsons, special projects manager for the AP's News Research Center, contributed to this story.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
BARACK OBAMA CATCHES HILLARY CLINTON - $2.1 MILLION RAISED!
Senator Barack Obama has quickly caught Senator Hillary Clinton in the presidential election fundraising race, adding $2.1 million via an email campaign in just four days. This closes a gap said to be created by Washinton lobbyist's money going to Clinton.
Presidential Polls - "Eligible Voter" v. "Most Likely Voter" Important
How many times this year have you seen a presidential poll that says it surveyed "most likely voters"? Chances are you've seen or heard this a lot -- almost every day. But think. How many times have you listened to someone use the term "eligible voter"?
Chances are, not a lot.
This difference reflects poll manipulation in action. Eligible Voters are those people old enough to voter. Period. But the designation "Most Likely Voter" blocks young people from consideration in polls because only older people are considered. It's a very important difference because...
" In A Journalist’s Guide to Public Opinion Polls, another 1992 situation is described in which additional changes in eligibility procedures dramatically altered the polls. In this example, the authors document how CNN’s change from "eligible voter" to "most likely voter" in the latter days of the ‘92 campaign, impacted the Bush-Clinton numbers by a full six percentage points... overnight!
It's also interesting that CNN's matched with Clinton in the example above. CNN uses the term "most likely voter" today, in what seems to me like an attempt to skew the polls toward people who are more conservative and thus more likely to vote for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama.
Then CNN reports on the results of such out-of-wack reports nationwide, making people think that she's got it in the bag.
Nope.
This is because the "Most Likely Voter" approach consistently avoids surveying new voters, according to Ruy Teixeira, at the Joint Fellow at the Center For American Progress, and who claimed that the Gallup Poll's design benefited more older, more conservative voters who were more likely to vote for Bush in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in this election.
The polls also don't pick up cell phone users. Again, according to Teixeira,...
"Cell phones are yet another thing that pollsters are scrambling to try to figure out how to deal with. The thing that mitigates the cell phone problem is that most people who have cell phones also have landlines. The number of pure cell phone users is relatively small, though it is growing fast. However, even if you confine your intention to that group, there is some evidence that by excluding the cell phone-only users, it is a group with a fairly distinct demographic profile which leads to a certain kind of politics. They tend to be poor, they tend to be renters. There is some evidence that excluding them from polls does skew the polls slightly."
In addtion, there's every indication to believe that cell-phone-only homes are near 25 percent of the voting population now.
One dynamic is clear in the 2008 Presidential Election to this point. While the youth vote is driving campaigns, especially Senator Obama's effort with its reliance on social networking online tools commonly used by young people, and Ron Paul's almost totally internet-based campaign surge, the polls and the mainstream media are all but ignoring the youth vote, thus creating the climate for what will be the most suprising election in history.
Chances are, not a lot.
This difference reflects poll manipulation in action. Eligible Voters are those people old enough to voter. Period. But the designation "Most Likely Voter" blocks young people from consideration in polls because only older people are considered. It's a very important difference because...
" In A Journalist’s Guide to Public Opinion Polls, another 1992 situation is described in which additional changes in eligibility procedures dramatically altered the polls. In this example, the authors document how CNN’s change from "eligible voter" to "most likely voter" in the latter days of the ‘92 campaign, impacted the Bush-Clinton numbers by a full six percentage points... overnight!
It's also interesting that CNN's matched with Clinton in the example above. CNN uses the term "most likely voter" today, in what seems to me like an attempt to skew the polls toward people who are more conservative and thus more likely to vote for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama.
Then CNN reports on the results of such out-of-wack reports nationwide, making people think that she's got it in the bag.
Nope.
This is because the "Most Likely Voter" approach consistently avoids surveying new voters, according to Ruy Teixeira, at the Joint Fellow at the Center For American Progress, and who claimed that the Gallup Poll's design benefited more older, more conservative voters who were more likely to vote for Bush in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in this election.
The polls also don't pick up cell phone users. Again, according to Teixeira,...
"Cell phones are yet another thing that pollsters are scrambling to try to figure out how to deal with. The thing that mitigates the cell phone problem is that most people who have cell phones also have landlines. The number of pure cell phone users is relatively small, though it is growing fast. However, even if you confine your intention to that group, there is some evidence that by excluding the cell phone-only users, it is a group with a fairly distinct demographic profile which leads to a certain kind of politics. They tend to be poor, they tend to be renters. There is some evidence that excluding them from polls does skew the polls slightly."
In addtion, there's every indication to believe that cell-phone-only homes are near 25 percent of the voting population now.
One dynamic is clear in the 2008 Presidential Election to this point. While the youth vote is driving campaigns, especially Senator Obama's effort with its reliance on social networking online tools commonly used by young people, and Ron Paul's almost totally internet-based campaign surge, the polls and the mainstream media are all but ignoring the youth vote, thus creating the climate for what will be the most suprising election in history.
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