Eideard

Charles Holt, sterilized when he was a teenager

Charles Holt, 62, spreads a cache of vintage government records across his trailer floor. They are the stark facts of his state-ordered sterilization.

The reports begin when he was barely a teenager, fighting at school and masturbating openly. A social worker wrote that he and his parents were of “rather low mentality.” Mr. Holt was sent to a state home for people with mental and emotional problems. In 1968, when he was ready to get out and start life as an adult, the Eugenics Board of North Carolina ruled that he should first have a vasectomy.

A social worker convinced his mother it was for the best…

Now, along with scores of others selected for state sterilization — among them uneducated young girls who had been raped by older men, poor teenagers from large families, people with epilepsy and those deemed to be too “feeble-minded” to raise children — Mr. Holt is waiting to see what a state that had one of the country’s most aggressive eugenics programs will decide his fertility was worth.

Although North Carolina officially apologized in 2002 and legislators have pressed to compensate victims before, a task force appointed by Gov. Bev Perdue is again wrestling with the state’s obligation to the estimated 7,600 victims of its eugenics program.

The board operated from 1933 to 1977 as an experiment in genetic engineering once considered a legitimate way to keep welfare rolls small, stop poverty and improve the gene pool.

Thirty-one other states had eugenics programs. Virginia and California each sterilized more people than North Carolina. But no program was more aggressive.

Only North Carolina gave social workers the power to designate people for sterilization. They often relied on I.Q. tests like those done on Mr. Holt, whose scores reached 73. But for some victims who often spent more time picking cotton than in school, the I.Q. tests at the time were not necessarily accurate predictors of capability. For example, as an adult Mr. Holt held down three jobs at once, delivering newspapers, working at a grocery store and doing maintenance for a small city…

Over all, about 70 percent of the North Carolina operations took place after 1945, and many of them were on poor young women and racial minorities. Nonwhite minorities made up about 40 percent of those sterilized, and girls and women about 85 percent.

The program, while not specifically devised to target racial minorities, affected black Americans disproportionately because they were more often poor and uneducated and from large rural families.

“The state owes something to the victims,” said Governor Perdue, who campaigned on the issue.

But what? Her five-member task force has been meeting since May to try to determine what that might be. A final report is due in February.

This week, the task force set some priorities. Money was the most important thing to offer victims, followed by mental health services.

RTFA. Just another part of American history that ain’t part of what your generation learned about. Nor does the current generation either.

Personally, I think the practice was contemptible, how long it stuck around adds to that contempt, double down with the reactionaries who still care more for budgets than human beings. Regardless of the reasons offered, the practice at root always was political, always belonged to people who cared most about not being bothered with poor people.

The teaching profession catches a lot of political flak these days [mostly from dunderheads], so it’s nice to see a story like this, where a deserving educator gets what we would consider a pretty cool prize.

Chad Miller, a high school teacher in Kailua, Hawaii, will be rolling around in a Mitsubishi i MIEV for a year, provided by his local Mitsu dealer. Miller will also get two charging stations – one for home and another for his school – courtesy of AeroVironment. The EV was awarded to Miller for being named State Teacher of the Year.

We’ve written before about how Hawaii represents a perfect environment for electric cars, and this prize seems like a good grassroots marketing effort for both Mitsubishi and EVs in general. No doubt Miller will be the focus of some amount of attention from Kailua High’s thousand-plus students, especially since a charging station will be installed at the school.

Although he is a language arts teacher, we hope Miller will be generous in letting some of the science teachers at the school develop some curriculum around the car, as well.

I certainly hope so, as well. None of the teachers in my family ever got such a snazzy prize – even when they won comparable awards.

Egypt’s interior minister has disbanded the country’s feared state security agency, which was accused of torture and human rights abuses during the 30-year rule of former president Hosni Mubarak.

Major General Mansour el-Essawy, a former Cairo security chief and the new interior minister, announced the dissolution of the security apparatus…He said a new agency in charge of keeping national security and combatting terrorism will be formed “in line with the constitution and principles of human rights”.

Officers for the new agency will be chosen in the coming few days, the statement said, adding that the new agency will “serve the country without intervening in the lives of citizens while they practice their rights and political life”…

The security branch, which was empowered to conduct emergency trials, was widely hated and its officers accused of committing torture.

The move was announced as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited the capital, Cairo in a bid to lend support to Egypt during its transition. Speaking at a joint news conference with the Egyptian foreign minister Nabil Elaraby during a visit to Cairo on Tuesday, Clinton welcomed the announcment.

RTFA. Overdue.

Think we’ll ever get round to the NSA and FBI?

No – I’m not suggesting you print this out and sell it on your own

Five Hawaii Democratic state legislators have introduced a bill that would allow anyone seeking an original, certified copy of Barack Obama’s birth record to obtain one — for $110.

The measure, introduced in the state legislature last week, would change a state law that currently limits the release of vital documents to persons with a “direct and tangible interest,” such as family members.

“I’m hoping that it will also reduce the number of calls that we get and calm the birthers down,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Rida Cabanilla, in an interview. “It may to a certain extent reduce the conspiracy theories, but at least the fee might reduce the number of frivolous calls asking for explanations about why a copy cannot be released.”

The Obama campaign released an electronic copy of his “certification of live birth” in 2008. But it didn’t quiet skeptics who insist, without evidence, that Obama was born in Kenya. They have flooded phone lines at Hawaii’s health department with hundreds of requests for access to original documents.

The certified copy lists the date, hour and location of Obama’s birth, as well as the names and races of his parents. It includes an embossed seal of authenticity from the Department of Health, according to images posted online.

Cabanilla’s bill would allow anyone to receive a physical copy of that certification for a fee…

“Those records are very fragile and are kept in a state vault. They shouldn’t be released or exposed to the elements,” said Cabanilla. “We’re hoping providing people access to the certified copy will quiet them down.”

Which is as absurd as explaining the world is round to some of the same crowd in the KoolAid Party.

Nutballs convinced of one or another conspiracy theory are perfectly religious, no different from any other apocalyptic sect, in that they see no science, reason or material fact able to dissuade their True Belief. All the rest of reality must be wrong.

As a 64-year-old woman with a grandchild, state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, says she’s not the type of person you would normally associate with marijuana. And yet Dickerson has again introduced legislation that would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in Washington state.

“I believe that it’s a smart way to raise badly needed revenue,” said Dickerson, who chairs the House Health and Human Services Appropriations and Oversight Committee. “It also would at the same time mean that we can focus our law-enforcement efforts on more important things.”

House Bill 1550, filed Tuesday, would regulate marijuana much like alcohol. It proposes that pot be sold through state liquor stores to adults age 21 and older, that the sales be taxed and that the state Liquor Control Board issue licenses to commercial growers. Most of the revenue would go to health care, and substance-abuse treatment and prevention.

The bill would also classify as felonies interstate transportation of marijuana and unauthorized transportation of marijuana within Washington above a certain amount.

Dickerson proposed a similar bill last year, but it failed in a House committee. New provisions in this year’s bill include authorizing the production of industrial hemp and allowing limited growing of marijuana at home for personal use.

Amazing. Someone in Washington state with a brain has been elected to state office.

Good thing we needn’t worry about that happening in New Mexico. Or Congress.

The Haredi Vuvuzela

Israeli police broke up a scam carried out by ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups who faked ID cards for fictitious students in order to receive millions of extra dollars from the state.

Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police arrested six people after they found more than 1,000 fake ID cards during a raid on three ultra-Orthodox educational institutions in Jerusalem.

The fraud lasted more than a year, Rosenfeld said, and cost the government “tens of millions of shekels.”

Israel provides stipends for students who study at full-time Jewish seminaries, or Yeshivas, a policy in place for years, but one that has been facing increased opposition from the country’s secular majority.

Consecutive government coalitions receive support of ultra-religious parties just like old-fashioned ward-heelers who in turn get a payoff from the government treasury.

Certainly looks like it works well. For votes, I mean. Not honesty or education.

You’ve heard of a long distance relationship but what about a long distance marriage? And by marriage, we mean the ceremony, not the subsequent relationship.

We all know how useful Skype can be for maintaining relationships that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. However, a couple in Texas took things to the next level by getting married over Skype. Though a Skype wedding is pretty remarkable in itself, there’s something else extraordinary about this marriage ceremony: It is the first legal same-sex wedding in Texas.

Mark Reed and Dante Walkup had been together ten years when they decided it was high time they tied the knot. Unfortunately, though they wanted nothing more than to get married in their native Texas, theirs is a state that does not legally allow same-sex couples to marry. However, Reed and Walkup were not to be deterred and the two came up with a way to have a legal wedding without flying family and friends to another state.

Jay Morris writes that the couple traveled to Washington D.C. back in May to receive their certificate of marriage. Fast forward five months and the two were married in Texas, with a D.C. official (accompanied by several witnesses) marrying them via Skype.

Bravo, Mark and Dante.

Take it one more step around the nutball reactionaries and the homophobic government of Texas.

McGill was a prolific artist, designing more than 12,000 cards over six decades, and selling more than 200 million cards in British seaside towns. Before he was banned for “indecency” in 1954.

Now each can be viewed at a museum in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, which is home to the world’s largest collection of McGill’s work.

At the height of his fame McGill only earned three guineas a design, but today his original artwork sells for up to £1,700 in auction and up to £2,500 in London galleries.

Even if an artist doesn’t outlive his censors – and censorship – quality work, humor and wit eventually win out over ignoranuses.

The Haskell County, Oklahoma, Commission has 10 years to pay attorneys’ fees of $199,000 after it was forced to remove an 8-foot-tall Ten Commandments monument.

The county has been in litigation with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma since 2006, after it allowed a resident to pay for and erect the granite monument on the courthouse lawn in Stigler.

After a series of court decisions up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, the ACLU prevailed. The monument was removed in March, and the attorneys’ fees were settled last week, ACLU attorney Micheal Salem said…

“It’s a very unwelcoming thing for those who do not subscribe to the Judeo (Christian) belief system. The government should not be in the business of showing favoritism or endorsing religion,” ACLU’s Chuck Thornton said. “The ACLU would never have been involved if it was somewhere other than public property. We don’t want to squelch anyone’s rights of free expression.”

Haskell County is a community of more than 12,000 residents southeast of Tulsa.

Let’s see – that’s a bit over $16.58 apiece just to show the world how important their religion must be.

I don’t know about y’all; but, if I had a spare $16 to blow on what I believe – I’d probably spend it on buying someone a meal or supplies for schoolchildren.

Google says its ready to offer its online office suite to the U.S. government.

At a press briefing…at its headquarters, Google announced a new version of its Apps suite designed specifically for government customers. This tier will be sold alongside the existing version of Google Apps and priced the same as the company’s premiere license–$50 per user, per year.

Google Apps for Government features all the same applications that can be found in other versions but comes with a higher level of security, which Google says meets the requirements set forth by the Federal Information Security Management Act. This includes segregated data centers, which Google says goes beyond FISMA regulations, and will keep government e-mail and calendar event data within U.S. borders.

Google says it got its FISMA certification late last week, after having to change a number of back-end security features and protocols…

According to Google, the federal government spends $76 billion on information technology, while some $56 billion is spent by state and local governments. Glotzbach pointed to examples from the existing Google Apps installations at the Berkeley Lab and the U.S. Navy–both of which he says will save those groups money over the systems they were using before. In the case of the Berkeley Lab, Google says it’s a projected savings of $1.5 million to $2 million over the next five years.

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, who dropped in near the end of the news briefing, said the government organizations the company had talked with were “dying” to make the move to a cloud-based office infrastructure. “All of them have the same problem. They’re trapped in architecture that’s 15 to 20 years old. They would much prefer to have somebody manage the services than them manage the data centers,” he said…

You can bet the two biggest questions delaying acceptance will be a full-court press of lobbying from the traditional vendors of software and hardware systems to government – and bureaucrats falling over themselves to figure out how to maintain their own power and prestige.

And then there will still be those who fear technology beyond pencils.