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Monday 25 February 2013

Biden: Washington frozen by partisanship

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Vice President Joe Biden says Washington is frozen by intense partisanship ? but he's hoping it's just temporary.

Biden told governors gathered at the White House for an annual meeting Monday that they're more disciplined than Congress. He chided Washington lawmakers, asserting that they are preventing a solution to the automatic spending cuts set to kick in on March 1.

Biden says Democratic and Republican governors alike ask him how he can deal with gridlock in Congress. He says people may disagree on solutions, but everyone agrees the so-called sequester should be addressed.

The White House has warned the $85 billion budget mechanism could affect everything from commercial flights to classrooms to meat inspections. They would slash domestic and defense spending, leading to furloughs for hundreds of thousands of workers.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-25-US-Budget-Battle-Biden/id-39f199e57b704491987e4aebcddb881b

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Sunday 24 February 2013

Top GOP Voter ID Crusader Loses Virginia Election Panel Post

Hans Von Spakovsky in his official FEC photo taken during former President George W. Bush's administration.

FEC.gov

To those who closely follow the voter ID wars, Hans von Spakovsky is a household name, one of the nation's leading crusaders against voter fraud, and also one of its more controversial. Days before the 2012 election, The New Yorker profiled him as "the man who has stoked fear about imposters at the poll."

So it was news that von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer and scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, failed to get a second term on the electoral board of Fairfax County, Virginia's largest county, despite being the top choice of the county's Republican Party.

It was the kind of local personnel change that normally wouldn't get much attention ? except that von Spakovsky has become something of a national lightning rod.

The panel of county circuit court judges who approve the political parties' nominees to the board voted to replace von Spakovsky with another Republican lawyer, Brian Schoeneman. County Democrats had accused von Spakovsky of being hyperpartisan and a master at voter suppression tactics, charges that have trailed him for years.

In an email to my request for reaction to his judicial decision, von Spakovsky, whose term ends Feb. 28, wrote:

"The 'partisanship' claim is disproved by a very simple, uncontested fact, which is reflected in the minutes of the January 10, 2013, meeting of the Board.

"I asked our clerk in December to total up all of the votes taken by the Election Board since Seth Harp, the Democratic appointee to the Board, took office. There were 224 votes taken during that time period. The Board voted 2-1 on only three issues. All remaining votes were unanimous.
"It is a bit much to claim we (or I) acted in a partisan manner on the Board when the Democratic member voted with me in 99% of all of the votes of the Board.

"But then, a majority of the judges who made this decision are Democratic appointees and they clearly made a purely partisan, political decision. They apparently don't like someone who has stood up for the integrity of the election process as I have."

According to Jay McConville, chairman of the county's Republican Party, it was the first time to his knowledge or that of those he consulted that the county's judges rejected one of the two major political parties' top choices to the electoral board. In an interview with me, he said:

"In my opinion it was the unprecedented, unnecessary and really unacceptable protest by the Fairfax County Democrats. And for reasons that are very hard to understand other than just being partisan gamesmanship. They've broken a longstanding tradition honestly because they want to show that they can. And that's really unfortunate.

"... What we care about in the Republican Party is defending the vote and free elections where qualified folks can vote. And make sure it runs well. Hans is an expert on that and he should be on the board."

Fairfax County Democrats agree that the circumstances surrounding von Spakovsky were unprecedented, though they put their emphasis not on how he is leaving the board but rather how he arrived.

Bettina Lawson, an official, said:

"What was unprecedented, actually, was the original nomination of the Fairfax County Republican Party of Hans von Spakovsky. He has a national reputation for efforts to suppress the vote with his various positions on voter identification and creating a lot of fear about voter fraud. And putting a person like that on the Fairfax Electoral Board was the original problem.

"What we did in the last three years was experience the results of that. That's why the Fairfax Democratic committee took the step of sending the letter to the judges to say, we want you to know that this man has this reputation. While he has been on our electoral board he's continued these efforts."

Von Spakovsky pushed successfully to end the practice of providing multilingual voting information in the voter registrar's office, Lawson said, a problem in a county with considerable diversity. He also succeeded in removing from the registrar's office nonpartisan informational material provided by the League of Women Voters that the county had long been made available to voters.

These and other actions made Democrats seek to permanently suppress von Spakovsky's vote on the board by getting him kicked off.

Von Spakovsky was a George W. Bush appointee to the Federal Elections Commission. But it was von Spakovsky's work before that as a Justice Department political appointee that drew the praise of voter ID proponents and ire of those opposed to the controversial laws.

As NPR's Peter Overby reported in 2007 at the time of von Spakovsky's confirmation hearing to the FEC, von Spakovsky critics accused him of, among other things, being overly partisan:

"In 2003, he worked on a redistricting plan from Texas. Tom Delay, then the most powerful Republican in Congress, drew the plan to add Republicans to the state's Congressional delegation. Career lawyers in the Justice Department said it shouldn't be approved. Von Spakovsky and other politicos thought it should be, and it was.

" ... Here are other notable cases, too. In 2005, Justice reviewed a voter identification law from Georgia. Critics said it discriminated against poor people who would have the hardest time getting photo IDs. Von Spakovsky had published a law review article arguing strongly for voter ID laws, but he'd used a pseudonym so no one connected him to it. He oversaw the review of the Georgia case at Justice and once again he overruled the career lawyers. After that career employees say there was a purge.

"... Von Spakovsky has drawn other criticism as well. At the Federal Election Commission, he declared that a proposal to regulate political advertising was equivalent to the Alien and Sedition Acts, laws that were enacted in 1798 in an effort to silence attacks on President John Adams. Proponents of stronger campaign finance regulation questioned his commitment to enforcing policies that he so clearly opposes. Von Spakovsky declined to be interviewed for this piece."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/02/22/172722972/top-gop-voter-id-crusader-loses-virginia-election-panel-post?ft=1&f=1001

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Saturday 23 February 2013

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Port of Salalah holds union elections

Salalah: The Port of Salalah last week conducted the elections of the company's Union Administrative Authority (UAA) and the registration of General Assembly (union) members.

A total 875 employees at the Port of Salalah have registered with the union for the upcoming four-year period, of which approximately 85 per cent are Omani nationals and the remaining 15 per cent are expa-triates. These employees elected the leaders of the UAA from a group of 11 Omani candidates.

The Port of Salalah, currently the largest private sector employer in the Dhofar region with more than 2,200 employees, formed the first representative body in 2000. Following the amendment to Oman's Labour Law in 2006 to formalise the establishment of trade unions in Oman, the first official union body was elected at the port in 2009, which served its four-year term until 2012. The current round of elections lasted for two days, following staff members' enrolment and campaign.

The elections were supervised by Masoud bin Ali Jaaboub, head of the trade union organisations at the Dhofar governorate office for the Ministry of Manpower.
Masoud praised the administration's organising committee for maintaining transparency in its registration, nomination, and screening process.?

The newly elected UAA members include Salim Masoud Ali Bait Said, Zeyad Ahmed Salim Al Marhoon, Khalid Salim Ali Jaboob, Said Mahad Musallam Bait Said, Musallam Said Ahmed Tabook, Ali Salim Ali Al Jahfali, and Salim Said Musallam Al Kathiri.

Ahmed Akaak, Deputy CEO at the Port of Salalah, said, "At the Port of Salalah, we place a lot of emphasis on providing support to facilitate the work of the union authorities, and we praise all efforts made in this regard."

Hind Jumaan Hubais, the head of the election organising committee and member of the port's human resources department, said that the fact that the employees were fully exercising their electoral rights reflected the election's success and employee credibility.
Hubais also underlined the support offered by the members of the organising committee in this regard.

Former president of the port's UAA, Ahmed bin Salim Al Amri, pointed out that the new union authority was picking up from the previous union's success and the results that had been achieved in an era of strong dialogue and sound negotiations.

Al Amri also thanked the former members of the UAA for their hard work and offered his best wishes to the newly elected? members.

Source: http://www.timesofoman.com/News/Article-9216.aspx

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Colo. teen heard on 911 call saying he killed girl

This photo provided by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office shows Austin Reed Sigg on Nov. 27, 2012. Sigg, 18, accused of kidnapping and killing a 10-year-old Westminster girl, is due in court for a hearing laying out the evidence against him. Sigg's hearing on Friday comes a day after the Colorado Supreme Court overturned a judge's decision to keep proceedings closed to the public.(AP Photo/Jefferson County Sheriff's Office)

GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) ? A Colorado teenager told a 911 dispatcher last fall that he kidnapped and killed a missing suburban Denver school girl and hid her remains in a crawl space at his mother's home, according to a recording played by a prosecutor in court Friday.

The recording was played at a preliminary hearing at which a judge decided there's enough evidence for Austin Sigg to stand trial in both the death of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway and an attack on a jogger at nearby Ketner Lake in May.

Westminster police Detective Michael Lynch testified at the hearing that Sigg first confessed to his mother, telling her that he kidnapped Jessica as she walked past his car, bound her arms and her legs, placed her in the back seat, drove around for a little bit, then took her to his house.

He had Jessica change clothes and tried to strangle her, first with zip ties and later with his hands, Lynch testified. He then took the girl's body to a bathtub where he dismembered her using a saw, he said.

Sigg, now 18, is charged with murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and robbery in Jessica's death.

Prosecutors have added three counts of sexual exploitation of a child because child pornography was allegedly found during the investigation.

He also faces an attempted kidnapping charge for the attack on the jogger. Attempted murder and attempted sexual assault charges have been dropped in that case.

Jessica's disappearance on her way to school on Oct. 5 set parents in the Denver area on edge for several weeks. Hundreds of officers canvassed the area, investigated leads and took DNA samples as parents waited with their children at bus stops and thought twice about letting them out of sight.

On Oct. 23, Sigg's mother called 911 to say her son wanted to turn himself in and had confessed to killing the girl. When the dispatcher asked what her son had said, Mindy Sigg replied, "That he did it, and he gave me details, and her remains are in my house."

She can be heard crying and asking if her son will talk to the dispatcher, who asks him general questions.

"I don't exactly get why you're asking me these questions. I murdered Jessica Ridgeway. I have proof that I did it," Austin Sigg said. "You have to send a squad car down here, and I'll answer any questions you want to ask me."

He also said the remains were in a crawl space.

When asked about his criminal record, he told the dispatcher: "The only other thing that I have done was the Ketner Lake incident where the woman got attacked. That was me."

Mindy Sigg told investigators that her son appeared sick the day he confessed and said he opened the conversation by saying he was a "monster," Lynch testified.

The teen had been on investigators' radar before his mother turned him in. A neighbor called a tip line suggesting they check him out because he seemed preoccupied with death, Westminster police Detective Luis Lopez said.

Two FBI agents responded and took a DNA sample from Sigg on Oct. 19, four days before his mother called 911.

Lopez said Sigg's DNA ? the kind left behind by touching something ? was found on Jessica's clothing, but no semen was found.

Sigg told investigators that he didn't rape Jessica, Lynch said.

"It was a comment he had made right off the bat, 'I didn't rape her. I didn't torture her.'"

Some of Jessica's remains were found in garbage bags in an open space park five days after she went missing. Friday was the first time investigators revealed that the bags contained her torso. Lopez testified that she died of asphyxiation.

The judge originally ordered Friday's hearing to be closed to the public but the Colorado Supreme Court sided with media organizations who argued that he failed to show that holding the hearing in public would jeopardize Sigg's right to a fair trial.

Arraignment is set for March 12.