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One State Finally Cracked Down on Deceptive Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers

by QWCJaydentx Posted on October 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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California on Friday became the only state to target anti-abortion pregnancy centers with a law cracking down on deceptive practices some have used to prevent or dissuade women from having an abortion.

The new law, which forces some crisis pregnancy centers to offer information about public assistance for reproductive services and others to notify patients that there are no medical professionals on staff, passed the California state assembly with a large majority in late May. Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed the bill on Friday night.

It is the first time reproductive rights groups have succeeded in pushing regulations on crisis pregnancy centers across an entire state; only a handful of cities or counties have passed similar laws. Shortly before the act became law, Amy Everitt, the director of NARAL Pro-Choice California, a reproductive rights group that helped draft the bill, said in an interview, “There is more to come.”

But the new law may represent the outer limit of what legislatures can do to regulate crisis pregnancy centers. The measure, called AB 775, almost certainly faces the same fraught legal battles that stalled similar regulations in cities including Baltimore, New York, and Austin. Those battles forced NARAL and its allies to be conservative in crafting the new regulations. For instance, the law cannot force unlicensed centers to inform women that the state health department encourages women to visit licensed medical providers for prenatal care. A new court fight could erode their options even further.

Reproductive rights advocates and public health officials have long sought to raise alarms about crisis pregnancy centers. Run by anti-abortion groups, crisis pregnancy centers sometimes provide pregnant women with misleading medical information in order to discourage them from ending their pregnancies. Others are ambiguous about whether they perform abortions or not in order to get women through the door. According to an investigation by NARAL, almost half of California’s crisis pregnancy centers promulgate the popular anti-abortion myth that terminating a pregnancy is linked to a patient’s chances of developing breast cancer. At the same time, NARAL claims, a majority of the state’s crisis pregnancy centers present themselves as neutral on the issue of abortion.

Abortion foes deny that crisis pregnancy centers engage in such subterfuge. “A woman knows her options,” says Sandra Palacios, a government relations executive with the California Catholic Conference, which opposed the law. “Women are smart. They know where they’re walking into—a safe place where they can get all the information about abortion alternatives.”

But as AB 775 was debated in the general assembly, many California medical professionals complained that crisis pregnancy centers offered their patients health care of dubious quality. In a letter to the legislature, Therese McCluskey, the perinatal services coordinator for the Alameda County Public Health Department, said many patients who transfer from crisis pregnancy centers to the clinics she oversees come without prenatal records, lab reports, or the pregnancy verification form that entitles them to pregnancy-related health care. Patients typically transfer at the point when they are too far along in their pregnancy to obtain an abortion.

At a Senate hearing on the bill, one OB-GYN testified that crisis pregnancy centers can pose a risk even for women who wanted to be pregnant and planned to carry their pregnancies full term. Sally Greenwald, of the University of California—San Francisco, is an OB-GYN and recalled taking over the care of a pregnant diabetic woman from a pro-life center. The crisis pregnancy center had failed to treat the woman’s alarming blood sugar levels. “The fetus was exposed to lifelong risks, such as cardiac malformations, brain anomalies, and spine deformations,” says Greenwald. “We could have lowered the sugar in her blood and we could have had better outcomes both for mom and for baby.”

There are nearly 170 crisis pregnancy centers in California. At least 40 percent of them are licensed by the state as medical providers. Unlicensed clinics are prohibited from providing medical advice. For instance, an unlicensed clinic could conduct an ultrasound for a woman, but it could not use the results to determine gestational age.

California’s new law places two types of restrictions on crisis pregnancy centers. It requires pregnancy-related service providers that are not medically licensed to disclose that fact to patients. For reproductive health clinics, including crisis pregnancy centers, that are licensed, the law requires that they provide patients with information about California’s financial assistance for family planning services, prenatal care, and abortion.

“This bill is sort of a lessons-learned bill from all the previous efforts,” says Everitt, of NARAL. As the group and its allies crafted the bill, she adds, they were “acutely aware” of how other bills to regulate crisis pregnancy centers—including some NARAL helped author—had failed in the past.

At the center of those past failures is a feud over whether abortion is a political or a health issue. Abortion foes claim that regulating crisis pregnancy centers is a violation of their right to express opposition to abortion. Reproductive rights advocates counter that the regulations are permissible because states have some latitude to regulate speech that is deceptive or coming from professionals licensed by the state. What is at stake is more than semantics: Supreme Court decisions have set a high bar for regulating political speech, but a low bar when it comes to individuals who are speaking as licensed professionals.

Regulating crisis pregnancy centers, even in blue states, has proved an elusive goal. Federal courts have struck down several laws forcing crisis pregnancy centers to make certain disclosures, such as informing women that they do not offer abortions, birth control, or referrals for those services.

Local officials in Baltimore, New York City, Austin, Maryland’s Montgomery County, and San Francisco have all attempted to regulate crisis pregnancy centers with mixed degrees of success. Federal courts are split over several laws forcing crisis pregnancy centers to disclose up front that they are not medically licensed or do not refer for abortion, and to specify which medical services they do or do not provide.

Attempting to avoid a similar outcome in California, Everitt says, NARAL enlisted the office of Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris. Harris’ office helped draft the bill from its inception with an eye toward eliminating openings for a First Amendment challenge—although a spokeswoman for Harris cautioned that the state’s involvement was no guarantee of success. Harris vocally backed the new law.

Their track record in federal court forced the drafters to leave what they saw as large holes in the new law. “We wish we could get crisis pregnancy centers to stop spreading scientifically unsound messages,” Everitt says, but such a law would likely be struck down in court.

Palacios said the California Catholic Conference intends to sue to block the law. A representative for a coalition of crisis pregnancy centers opposed to the bill did not respond to requests for an interview.

Everitt is confident the law would survive a court challenge. Her group was instrumental in drafting the San Francisco measure, passed in 2011, which has so far survived a legal onslaught. The law allowed the city to fine crisis pregnancy centers each time they falsely implied that they offered abortion services or referrals.

Just as she did in 2011, Everitt hopes the new law will become a national model, especially now that the umbrella organizations behind many crisis pregnancy centers push their affiliates to seek more medical licensing. Crisis pregnancy centers say it is a move to provide better care to women.

NARAL sees crisis pregnancy centers’ push for more licensing as a grab for legitimacy—and a tactical error. “The more there’s a relationship with the state, the more you have leeway to regulate crisis pregnancy centers,” says Rebecca Griffin, an assistant director for NARAL in California. “It’s an opportunity for us.”

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One State Finally Cracked Down on Deceptive Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers

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Inside the Scandal Rocking the Fantasy Sports World

by ShannaMoorman Posted on October 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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You’ve almost certainly seen the commercials. Turn on the TV or browse the Internet, and you’ll be bombarded with ads for daily fantasy football leagues that offer huge potential winnings each week of the season. But in recent days, the two largest daily fantasy sites—DraftKings and FanDuel—have been rocked by scandal. Now, the companies are facing a lawsuit, a state probe, and possible congressional hearings.

The controversy started last week, after a DraftKings employee won $350,000 in a FanDuel contest after inadvertently publishing information showing how many competitors had drafted certain players—before that information was supposed to be made public.

Earlier this week, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened an investigation into the business practices of DraftKings and FanDuel, seeking to determine whether employees at the sites won payouts based on access to internal information. In separate letters to each company obtained by the New York Times, Schneiderman demanded information on how both companies operated, their policies surrounding employee participation in fantasy games, and what access employees had to sensitive data.

And on Thursday, a class action lawsuit was filed in a federal court in New York against the two powerhouse fantasy sites, alleging that the companies “fraudulently induced” players to pay fees to participate in contests without acknowledging that employees participated in matches and had access to confidential, non-public information.

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins defended his company’s response to the data leak, saying in an interview with the Boston Globe that he runs a “very ethical company.”

An investigation of the daily fantasy sports industry, which gaming firm Eilers Research estimates will generate about $2.6 billion in entry fees this year alone, could disrupt the largely unregulated business. Lawmakers have called for hearings and Federal Trade Commission intervention into a world that walks the line between traditional fantasy leagues and online sports gambling.

And it all began with a mishap. Let’s start at the beginning:

What are fantasy sports, anyway? For years, fantasy leagues have captivated audiences, giving people a new way to follow their favorite professional sports. Basically, participants enter a league, draft athletes to their rosters, and compete in weekly or nightly matches against others based on their players’ statistical performances. So, for instance, it’s football season, so you get together with a few buddies and act as your own general manager—every time one of the players on your team scores a touchdown or kicks a field goal in real life, you get points in your fantasy league. In the United States, about 31 million people participate in fantasy football leagues. You often play for free, for money, or for bragging rights.

What makes daily fantasy leagues such as DraftKings and FanDuel different? Unlike the typical office pool, at DraftKings and FanDuel, participants must drop an entry fee—anywhere from 25 cents to $1,000—into contests and draft a fresh team on a nightly or weekly basis to compete against hundreds of opponents. The stakes are higher: Competitors can win as much as $2 million, depending on the size of the competition. What’s unique about daily fantasy sites is the inclusion of a “salary cap.” Participants are given a limited budget to draft a lineup of players. That means it’s important to predict which undervalued players will perform well that week.

Who’s making money off this? While participants have the chance to win millions of dollars in these competitions, the reality is, you’re more likely to lose the money you’ve put in than to gain anything substantial. An analysis by the Sports Business Journal showed the disparity between the most successful competitors and the rest of the field. The top 1.3 percent of participants in the daily fantasy baseball economy accounted for 91 percent of all player profits. And while the majority of small-time players lose about $10 per month on games, a few—5 percent of the field known as the “big fish”—accounted for 75 percent of the losses. “Hence, the DFS economy depends heavily on retaining the big fish,” Ed Miller and Daniel Singer wrote.

Eilers Research partner Adam Krejcik told Bloomberg in September that DraftKings and FanDuel would bring in a combined $60 million in entry fees in the first week of the NFL season, compared to the $30 million the sports bookies in Las Vegas would handle. At the same time, the two companies, which are each valued at more than $1 billion, hauled in a combined total of nearly $800 million in funding from investors. Those investors included New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Fox Sports, Comcast/NBC, Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association, among others.

This summer, Disney (which owns the majority of ESPN) pulled out of a potential $250 million investment deal with DraftKings. But ESPN subsequently reached an advertising agreement with DraftKings, making it the network’s exclusive fantasy partner. After the scandal came to light, ESPN partially distanced itself from the company, and Outside the Lines host Bob Ley announced the network would stop airing segments sponsored by DraftKings on its original programming. ESPN told media outlets such as Deadspin and CNN Money that it would be evaluating how it incorporates DraftKings into its programming “day-to-day.” â&#128;&#139;

OK, so what’s the current controversy all about? The scandal surfaced after Chris Grove, editor of legalsportsreport.com, reported that Ethan Haskell, a content manager at DraftKings, had inadvertently released lineup data for his employer’s most popular contest—the Millionaire Maker—before it was supposed to go public but after games started at FanDuel.

Before the scandal hit, employees at FanDuel and DraftKings were barred from competing in their own companies’ events, but they were still allowed to compete elsewhere. So when Haskell came in second place in a million-dollar FanDuel competition and raked in $350,000, eyebrows were raised. Questions swirled about employees’ access to data that can be used to gain a competitive advantage—in this case, information about the percentage of participants who drafted certain players.

No evidence has surfaced suggesting that Haskel actually used that information to gain an advantage. In a statement on Tuesday, DraftKings said that after a “thorough investigation,” the fantasy site found “this employee could not have used the information in question to make decisions about his FanDuel lineup” because he did not see the data until after all FanDuel lineups were finalized.

“This clearly demonstrates that this employee could not possibly have used the information in question to make decisions about his FanDuel lineup,” DraftKings stated. “Again, there is no evidence that any information was used to create an unfair advantage and any insinuations to the contrary are factually incorrect.”

A FanDuel spokesperson told ESPN that 0.3 percent of its prize money had been won by DraftKings employees—though that still amounts to at least $6 million. Both companies have now banned their employees from participating in any daily fantasy events for money. DraftKings enlisted former US Attorney John Pappalardo to conduct an internal investigation, and FanDuel has asked former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey to “review the facts and evaluate our internal controls, standards, and practices,” according to a company statement.

How exactly could non-public information skew the results? In daily fantasy sports, data is crucial. Participants make roster decisions based largely on which players are doing well at that point in the season and how much value they are likely to offer at their going “salary.” The complaint in the lawsuit against DraftKings and FanDuel explains why it would be so valuable to know how often each player is drafted: “Because the goal is to beat the other players, a player with statistical data about ownership percentages of competitors would have an edge over players without this data in many ways, including the ability to make rosters with enough players different from competitors’ rosters.â&#128;&#139;”

While DraftKings says it found no evidence indicating the employee in question used that information to his advantage, the lawsuit suggests that employees’ ability to access such information and the company’s awareness that employees participated in these outside competitions constitutes wrongdoing. DraftKings and FanDuel declined to comment on the lawsuit.

What are the legal implications of all this? Marc Edelman, an associate professor of law at the City College of New York, told Mother Jones that while the most recent scandal doesn’t necessarily reflect “insider trading,” it lifts the curtain on the “lack of institutional walls in place” on online fantasy groups. Sports legal expert Michael McCann wrote on SI.com that if the companies “knowingly” failed to prevent their employees from making money off their access to non-public data, other users could argue that both DraftKings and FanDuel “are engaged in anti-competitive conduct that violates antitrust law.”

It’s no surprise then that an investigation is under way in New York, which has one of the stronger consumer protection laws in the country. McCann noted that the Federal Trade Commission could also dive into the case and explore “whether insider knowledge in the DFS industry poses an anticompetitive, consumer-harmful practice in violation of federal trade regulations.” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has said she will not pursue an investigation into DraftKings, which is headquarted in Boston. Healey noted that no federal or state law prevents the company from operating.

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, a Kentucky-based fantasy player named Adam Johnson, argues that DraftKings breached its duties by “failing to prevent persons with inside information and data by virtue of their employment at other DFS sites from competing” against other players. The complaint alleges that DraftKings also “willfully failed to disclose” that employees with access to non-public information could compete at other sites, causing financial damage to players. The lawsuit alleges that by letting employees at both sites play in competitors’ contests, both companies “committed negligence and/or fraud.”

Why isn’t this considered sports gambling? In 2006, Congress passed legislation that outlawed online gambling. Fantasy sports, however, were left in the clear and exempted from the law. Lawmakers were apparently persuaded by an intense lobbying campaign from the professional sports industry, which argued that success in fantasy sports requires skill, not chance. As a result, it’s legal and largely unregulated.

What’s going to happen now? Lawmakers may now reconsider whether fantasy sites should be regulated. New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., (D) recently made the argument that the rise in popularity of daily fantasy sites supports the case for the legalization of sports gambling nationwide. He and Sen. Bob Menendez, (D-N.J.) wrote a letter to FTC director Edith Ramirez asking whether the commission could regulate and set for rules the industry.

“Like professional sports betting, fantasy sports should be legal, but both are currently operating in the shadows,” Pallone said in a statement.

Other lawmakers have joined the fray. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who once oversaw the Nevada Gaming Commission, told the Huffington Post that Congress should scrutinize the fantasy sports industry in light of its “scandalous conduct.” And Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) requested that the House Judiciary Committee hold a hearing to examine whether the multi-billion dollar industry should be allowed to police itself.

The New York Times and the Boston Globe have penned editorials calling for regulation. Fantasy enthusiasts are calling for changes, too: Cory Albertson, who, along with his playing partner Ray Coburn, has won millions from fantasy sports, declared in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “Let’s cut to the chase here: Playing daily-fantasy sports games for money is gambling. And it should be regulated.â&#128;&#139;”

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Inside the Scandal Rocking the Fantasy Sports World

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Clinton Changes Her Mind on Obama’s Trade Deal

by DakotaMacDonnel Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton firmly distanced herself today from a top priority of the Obama administration, announcing her opposition to President Barack Obama’s controversial trade deal after avoiding a firm position on the pact for months.

In an interview with CBS’s Judy Woodruff in Iowa on Wednesday afternoon, Clinton stated her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a deal that, after years of negotiations, Obama hopes will be a cornerstone of his presidential legacy. In the interview, Clinton cited apprehension that protections against currency manipulation were absent from the details of the TPP, as well as her concern over the imbalance between benefits for pharmaceutical companies and those for patients.

“We’ve learned a lot about trade agreements in the past years,” Clinton said. “Sometimes they look great on paper. I know when President Obama came into office he inherited a trade agreement with South Korea. I, along with other members of the cabinet, pushed to get a better agreement. Now looking back on it, it doesn’t have the results we thought it would have.”

Shortly afterward, Clinton published a fuller explanation of her opposition to the deal.

“As I have said many times, we need to be sure that new trade deals meet clear tests,” Clinton wrote. “They have to create good American jobs, raise wages, and advance our national security.”

This move from Clinton is not altogether surprising in the context of her political evolution regarding trade deals. In June, Clinton proclaimed that had she still been serving in the Senate, she would have voted against giving Obama “fast-track authority” to enact the TPP. But in her 2014 book Hard Choices, she wrote that while the TPP “won’t be perfect,” it would still “benefit American businesses and workers.” And as Obama’s secretary of state, she called it the “gold standard in trade agreements.”

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Clinton Changes Her Mind on Obama’s Trade Deal

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The Photos That Helped End Child Labor in the United States

by GustavoAstudill Posted on October 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the early 1900s, Lewis Hine left his job as a schoolteacher to work as a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, investigating and documenting child labor in the United States. As a sociologist, Hine was an early believer in the power of photography to document work conditions and help bring about change. He traveled the country, going to fields, factories, and mines—sometimes working undercover—to take pictures of kids as young as four years old being put to work.

Partly as a result of Hine’s work (as well as that of Mary Harris Jones, who Mother Jones is named after), Congress passed the Keating-Owens Child Labor Act in 1916. It established child labor standards, including a a minimum age (14 years old for factories, and 16 years old for mines) and an eight-hour workday. It also barred kids under the age of 16 from working overnight. However, the Keating-Owens Act was later ruled unconstitutional, and lasting reform to federal child labor laws didn’t come until the New Deal.

In 2004, retired social worker Joe Manning set out to see what had happened to as many of the kids in Hine’s photos as he could find. He’s documented his findings—showing the lives of hundreds of subjects—on his website, MorningsOnMapleStreet.com.

Breaker boys who worked in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Company, South Pittston, Pennsylvania

A group of breaker boys in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The smallest is Sam Belloma.

A young driver in Brown Mine in Brown, West Virginia. Hine said the boy had been driving one year, working from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily.

A tipple boy working at Turkey Knob Mine in MacDonald, West Virginia.

A trapper boy working in the Turkey Knob Mine in Macdonald, West Virginia. The boy had to stoop because of the low roof. This photo was taken more than a mile inside the mine.

Drivers in a coal mine in West Virginia

Vance, a trapper boy, was 15 years old when this photo was taken. He was paid 75 cents a day for 10 hours of work. His job was to open and shut this door. Because of the intense darkness in the mine, the writing on the door was not visible until plate was developed.

A view of Pennsylvania Coal Company’s Ewen Breaker in South Pittson, Pennsylvania. The dust was so dense at times, it was difficult to see, Hine wrote. A man sometimes stood over the boys, prodding or kicking them, the photographer wrote.

Noon at Pennsylvania Coal Company’s Ewen Breaker in South Pittston

A young leader and a driver for the Pennsylvania Coal Company worked in Shaft #6 in South Pittson. The workers are Pasquale Salvo and Sandy Castina.

At the end of the day, workers for the Pennsylvania Coal Company waited for the cage to go up at Shaft #6 in South Pittson, Pennsylvania. The small boy in front is Jo Pume, a nipper.

A photo of a miner boy named Frank as he was going home. At the time, he was about 14 years old. He had worked in the mine for three years helping his father pick and load. He was in the hospital one year, after his leg was crushed by a coal car, Hine wrote.

Workers at the end of the day in a Pennsylvania coal mine. The smallest boy, near the far right, is a nipper. On his right is Arthur, a driver. Jo, on Arthur’s right, is a nipper. Frank, the boy on the left end of the photo, is a nipper and works a mile underground from the shaft, which is 5,000 feet down.

James O’Dell helped push these heavily loaded cars. He appears to be about 12 or 13 years old, Hine wrote. James worked at Knoxville Iron Co.’s Cross Mountain Mine, which is in the vicinity of Coal Creek, Tennessee. James had been there four months.

Shorpy Higginbotham was a greaser at Bessie Mine in Alabama, working for the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company. Hine said the boy told him that he was 14 years old, but Hine suspected the boy wasn’t telling the truth. At work, Shorpy carried two heavy pails of grease and was often in danger of being run over by the coal cars.

A greaser at Bessie Mine in Alabama

Harry and Sallie. Harry was a driver for the Maryland Coal Co. Mine, which was near Grafton, West Virginia. Hine said the boy was afraid of being photographed because he might be forced to go to school. Harry was probably 12 years old, Hine wrote.

Tom Vitol (also called Dominick Dekatis) was photographed in Hughestown Burough, Pittston, Pennsylvania. He worked in Breaker #9 and was probably younger than 14 years old, Hine wrote.

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The Photos That Helped End Child Labor in the United States

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All 8,400 Apollo Moon Mission Photos Just Went Online. Here Are Some of Our Faves.

by Greg3678myvmzjm Posted on October 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Every photo ever taken by Apollo astronauts on moon missions is now available online, on the Project Apollo Archive’s Flickr account. That’s about 8,400 images, grouped by the roll of film they were shot on. You can finally see all the blurry images, mistakes, and unrecognized gems for yourself. The unprocessed Hasseblad photos (basically raw scans of the negatives) uploaded by the Project Apollo Archive offer a fascinating behind-the-scenes peek at the various moon missions…as well as lots and lots (and lots) of photos detailing the surface of the moon. Here’s a very small taste. All photos by NASA/The Project Apollo Archive.

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All 8,400 Apollo Moon Mission Photos Just Went Online. Here Are Some of Our Faves.

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Alabama Just Made It Even Harder for Black People to Vote

by Burton6385 Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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In Alabama, you need a driver’s license or other form of photo ID to vote. But getting that ID just got a lot harder, especially in the state’s majority-black counties.

Due to budget cuts, Alabama is closing 31 satellite DMVs across the state. The biggest impact will be in rural, largely black counties that voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Alabama Media Group columnist John Archibald put it this way:

Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That’s Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them. All but Dallas and Montgomery will be closed.

Closed. In a state in which driver licenses or special photo IDs are a requirement for voting…

Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one.

Archibald predicted the move would invite a Justice Department investigation, as did his fellow columnist, Kyle Whitmire:

But put these two things together—Voter ID and 29 counties without a place where you can get one—and Voter ID becomes what the Democrats always said it was.

A civil rights lawsuit isn’t a probability. It’s a certainty.

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Alabama Just Made It Even Harder for Black People to Vote

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Oregon Sheriff Handling Massacre Fought the White House on Gun Control After Newtown

by BorisCanty99 Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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As the sheriff in Douglas County, Oregon, John Hanlin was front and center following Thursday’s shooting at Umpqua Community College, which left at least 13 people dead and 20 others wounded.

Two years ago, Hanlin was one of hundreds of sheriffs around the country to vow to stand against new gun control legislation. In a January 15, 2013, letter to Vice President Joe Biden, he wrote, “Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings.”

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Oregon Sheriff Handling Massacre Fought the White House on Gun Control After Newtown

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Shooting at Oregon Community College Leaves at Least 13 Dead, 20 Wounded

by ThereseFornacho Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update, 8:15 p.m. EDT: Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin says the fatalities are less than originally reported by the attorney general— there are 10 fatalities and 7 injured. There are still no details on the shooter.

Update, 5:03 p.m. EDT: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown confirms that the shooter was a 20-year-old male. “I know I am joined by my fellow Oregonians and Americans in profound dismay and heartbreak at this tragedy at Umpqua Community College,” Brown said.

Update, 4:52 p.m. EDT: Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin confirms that the shooter is dead. “I couldn’t be happier with the officer response today,” Hanlin said.

Hanlin said the scene is still active and being investigated.

Update, 4:08 p.m. EDT: Oregon’s attorney general confirms that at least 13 people were killed and 20 people wounded in today’s shooting.

In response to the shooting, the White House repeated its call for increased gun control laws. “The issue of sensible steps that can be taken to protect our communities from gun violence continues to be a top priority of this administration,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Thursday.

Previously:

Multiple media outlets are reporting a shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

On MSNBC, Brian Williams interviewed a local firefighter who said he had been on the scene and witnessed “multiple deceased” and “multiple” injured people who were transported for emergency care. He said the campus had been evacuated.

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Emergency responders are in the process of clearing buildings at Umpqua Community College now. Students are being escorted now to get off campus. Wayne Crooch building has just been secured.

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As news of the shooting first broke, a student tweeted the following:

According to the gun safety coalition Everytown, today’s shooting marks the 45th school shooting in 2015 alone.

This is a breaking news post. We will update as more news becomes available.

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Shooting at Oregon Community College Leaves at Least 13 Dead, 20 Wounded

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Girls Are the Fastest-Growing Group in the Juvenile Justice System

by MarielBrookfiel Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over the past 20 years, there’s been a promising decline in arrests of youths in the United States. The reasons for the drop are elusive, but one factor might be a renewed interest within the juvenile justice system in paying better attention to child welfare before kids are drawn to crime. States are also seeking alternatives to traditional punishment once kids are in the system.

But a new report out this week finds that for young girls, the trend is going in the opposite direction. The proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system has increased at every stage of the process over the last 20 years, from arrests to detention and probation.

National Women’s Law Center/ National Crittenton Foundation

The report’s authors, Boston College law professor Francine Sherman and Annie Balck, a policy consultant at the National Juvenile Justice Network, attribute the gender gap to the juvenile justice system’s long-standing “protective and paternalistic” approach to dealing with delinquent girls. The system tends to detain girls, the authors write, because they’re seen as needing protection. It’s a strategy that is ill-suited to the personal histories of trauma, physical violence, and poverty that lead many girls into bad behavior. Even when the system acknowledges these factors, there are limited options available beyond traditional arrests and detention.

This report highlights several disparities in the treatment of girls in the system. For instance, there’s a gender gap in the detention of girls for low-level crimes: Nearly 40 percent of detained girls were brought in on status offenses (behavior that is only illegal when you’re under 18), compared with just 25 percent of boys.

National Women’s Law Center/ National Crittenton Foundation

Among girls in the system, there’s also stark racial inequity. In 2013, African American girls, the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population, were 20 percent more likely to be detained than white girls, while American Indian girls were 50 percent more likely.

The authors also argue that detention is uniquely harmful to youths, and can lead to catastrophic consequences for girls. One study cited in the report found that girls who had been detained were five times more likely to die by age 29 than children who had not. For Latina girls, that likelihood increased—they were nine times more likely to die by age 29 than the general population. Detention is a drastic and developmentally incorrect measure to take, the report’s authors maintain, because in most cases the crimes girls commit are the result of past trauma that isn’t being properly addressed. Few have been found delinquent for more serious offenses such as assault.

The report cites a 2014 study of traumatic experiences in justice-involved youth. In the study, 31 percent of girls reported a personal experience of sexual violence in the home, 41 percent reported being physically abused, and 84 percent reported experiencing family violence. Girls reported having been sexually abused at a rate 4.4 times higher than boys.

“Greater restriction is rarely the answer and cannot address the violence and deprivation underlying so many girl offenses,” write the authors. To reverse the growing gender gap in juvenile justice, they say, “systems must craft reforms that directly address the root causes of their behavior and provide an alternate, non-justice-system path for girls’ healthy development and healing.”

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Girls Are the Fastest-Growing Group in the Juvenile Justice System

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The Latest Hillary Clinton Emails Contain These Comic Gems

by ShermanArkwooke Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The State Department today released the fifth batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary of state, as part of the ongoing effort to make public the more than 30,000 emails she sent and received while in office. The latest release includes about 6,300 pages, containing roughly 3,900 emails sent between October 2010 and September 2011, bringing the total number released so far to nearly 20,000. The State Department will continue releasing monthly batches through January 2016.

The emails offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the operations of the State Department under Clinton, with everything from mundane scheduling concerns to more serious matters of diplomacy. There are some comical gems in there, too. In this email, the White House operator did not forward Clinton’s call because she did not believe Clinton was who she said she was:

There was also the time Sen. Chris Coons’ (D-Del.) feelings were hurt because she didn’t recognize him:

And the time she joked about “the Chinese” playing games with her email:

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The Latest Hillary Clinton Emails Contain These Comic Gems

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