Katrina and Michigan's Rule of Evidence

Today is the four year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. It ranks at number three of the top five deadliest hurricanes in US history, the sixth strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, and the third strongest to make landfall in the US.

It formed in the Bahamas on the 23rd of August, crossed Florida as a category one, picked up speed and force and was briefly considered a category five before it slowed and landed in New Orleans as a category three. It may not have caused so much damage had the levees worked, but because of their massive failure, even hours after the hurricane had landed, New Orleans flooded under thousands of gallons of water. 1,833 lives (disputed, may be 1,825-1,850) were claimed in the aftermath that ensued when the levees failed. Katrina is estimated to be responsible for about $81.2 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in US history. The two storms more deadly? Lake Okeechobee in 1928 (2500 lives), and The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 (8000 lives). So, today think of those that passed and their families as they still try to move on and bring New Orleans back to its former glory. (Also, watch out for Hurricane Danny as it moves north along the eastern coast.)

In other news, Michigan's new Rule of Evidence has got people talking (and me thinking). Basically, "the order allows courts 'reasonable control over the appearance of parties and witnesses' so as to 'ensure that the demeanor of such persons may be observed and assessed by the fact-finder and ensure the accurate identification of such person.'"

In English, please? It means that if anyone wears any kind of religious head covering (Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, etc.) the court can ask you to remove it, even though certain religions forbid removing them in public or in front of members of the opposite sex for religious reasons.

Huh. That sounds suspiciously like a violation of the First Amendment -- Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This all started because a woman came to court wearing a niqab, which covers everything except the eyes (pictured left). She was asked to remove the niqab and when she said she couldn't because she was a practicing Muslim, the judge told her she could remove it or have her case dismissed. She chose the latter, probably because removing her niqab in front of men can be considered apostasy, the the rejection in word or action of one's religion. And in conservative Muslim circles, apostasy can be punishable by death. Is death worth the "$2,750 repair bill from a car rental company" she was contesting? Not so much.

She, of course, sued (it's the American way!), but the Federal District Court claimed it wasn't their jurisdiction. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is asking the Michigan court to "add a sentence to the rule saying "that no person shall be precluded from testifying on the basis of clothing worn because of a sincerely held belief,'" according to the Detroit Free Press, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is taking the judge to court over the incident.

The law goes into effect September 1.

In the news...

So, I've been really really bad at doing this newsworthy blogpost once a week like I said I would. I know, I'm sorry. But I'm trying, really! Anyways, here are some things that have happened in the past two weeks.

Erin Andrews, a female sports journalist, has been all over the news recently because someone decided to horribly invade her privacy and shoot a video of her alone in her hotel room. We can only assume what she was doing. As if female sports journalists didn't have enough issues with people doubting their credibility, they're being judged by their looks as well, which is pretty unfair. (Image cred: Chicago Sun Times & Google)

Chris Brown recently tried out an apology to the public in relation to his severe and cruel beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna. However, judging by how long it took him to apologize and his means of doing so (YouTube, man? Really?) it's doubtful whether or not his apology is actually sincere. I'll leave it to you to decide for sure. As for me, I think it sounds pretty scripted.

Internationally, three American hikers are being detained in Iran. Apparently they accidentally stumbled across the border and are now being charged with entering the country illegally. They had a fourth friend who stayed behind and is hopefully helping them and the US government get them safely out.

An 89-year-old survivor of three Nazi concentration camps was found strangled in his New York apartment last Thursday. On Saturday, an arrest was made in relation to the murder/robbery, but police are still searching for a man who was apparently the woman's accomplice.

The verdict for Aung San Suu Kyi, a Myanmar opposition leader on trial for subversion, was expected Friday but was delayed until August 11. She has been on house arrest since 1989 after she rose to fame as the face of democracy for Myanmar during the national uprising of August 8, 1988 (dubbed '8888'). She and her two housekeepers are now being charged with illegally allowing an American man to stay in her home. She's a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and if convicted could spent up to five years in prison.

China, which is often criticized for its (extremely) liberal use of the death penalty, is promising to (try to) reduce it's numbers of executions. "As it is impossible for the country to abolish capital punishment under current realities and social security conditions, it is an important effort to strictly control the application of the penalty by judicial organs," Zhang Jun, vice president of the Supreme People's Court, said. Of course, because the official paperwork basically says it's on a case-by-case basis and can be subjectively judged, this may just be a political stunt to look better, but nothing at all may change. Human rights groups estimate that somewhere between 1,700 and 5,000 people were executed in China last year for crimes as small as drug traffiking. I guess we'll see if that number drops at all in the next year.

As if Michael Phelps needed another record to boast about, he set the world record in the 200 m butterfly on Wednesday, shattering his own previous world record. Of course, this made up for the extremely shocking loss he experienced in the 200 m freestyle to German swimmer Paul Biedermann on Tuesday. Until then, he hadn't lost the 200 m freestyle event since 2004 in Athens. But I guess there's a first time for everything, huh, Michael? This has sparked what is being dubbed The Great Swimsuit Debate, which basically asks if new polyeurathane suits are acceptable to compete in since they create an obvious advantage for the wearer but are too expensive for every team to afford. We'll see if they get banned before the 2012 Olympics.

An 8-year-old girl in Phoenix was lured into a shed, pinned down, and sexually assaulted by four boys, all 14 or younger. The family was described as "ashamed of her" because the crime made the family look bad. As shocking as this is to Americans, people who know Liberian culture know this is typical. After 14 years of civil war in which rape was one of the tactics used by fighters, groups like Amnesty International have estimated that 60-70% of women in Liberia have been sexually assaulted. A government report in '06 said that have 1,600 women surveyed, 92% reported some kind of sexual assualt, including rape. In Liberian communities, rape victims are often ostracized because of the crime, so many keep it quiet, and it's not because they think rape is okay, but because it's considered part of everyday life. In 2005, after Liberia's first woman was elected president, rape was finally made a crime. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had this to say about the crime: "Those parents should know that things have changed in Liberia," she told CNN last week. "No longer do we tolerate this. This is not a question of shame on the family. It's a question of the assault of a young child, and that cannot be tolerated."

In the news...

So, Walter Cronkite died. :( He was 92 years old when he passed away on Friday. How sad -- he was an honest, trustworthy news anchor that America actually trusted. RIP, Walter Cronkite.

Yesterday, two rail cars collided in San Francisco and injured 44 people, but there were no fatalities and none of the injuries were considered especially serious.

Police shot and killed 12 in the Uyghur ethnic riots that occurred earlier this month. The 12 were supposedly "mobsters" who were not deterred by previous shots into the air. It's not clear whether the men were Uyghurs or Han (the two groups the ethnic riots are happening between -- Uyghurs are predominantly Muslin, and Han is pretty much the majority of China). This situation isn't being helped by the fact that Seyfullah, the leader of the Turkistan Islamic Party is encouraging the Uyghurs to "kill the Chinese Communists...ambush them wherever..."

As far as Iran goes, the situation isn't getting much better. Students are countinuing protests at a university in Shiraz, and now an opposition candidate has come out and say that he is "embarrassed" by the "thoughtless and clear lies" that the government and military is feeding to the world. Maybe it's a good thing that someone other than students and Moussavi is saying something now though. Also in Iran, the last British Embassy worker was finally freed after being held for about a month. He and nine other workers were arrested after the elections last month for supposedly trying to incite protests. As the unrest continues, human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr was arrested according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Other lawyers have been being detained and around 40 other demonstrators were also arrested on Saturday. Sadr is apparently in poor health and due to have surgery sometime in the next week.

In the news...

United for Neda -- More than two dozen Iranian superstars have united to spread the message of non-violent resistance against the human rights violations by the Iranian government. The music video was recorded in both English and Farsi using only cell phones and can be found on YouTube.

Okay, I’ll try not to rant with this one: Leave it to Texas to attempt to politicize education. Conservatives in Texas are trying to “shift focus of state social studies lessons” away from ‘liberal’ ideas toward much more obviously conservative ones. The article, of course, doesn’t say that, but read it and you’ll see what I mean – Anne Hutchinson, Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, and Cesar Chavez have all been deemed “overrated” by evangelical ministers and Republican social conservatives. Instead of these people/events that helped end segregation, start women’s rights movements, and end abuses in the labor force, they want us to focus more on Ben Franklin (because we clearly don’t know enough yet), Roe v. Wade and how evil abortion is (okay, they didn’t say that, but let’s face it, they were thinking it). The article also mentioned how “the Founding Fathers wanted a distinctly Christian nation based on biblical principles.” Wrong – not all the Founding Fathers were Christian. Their beloved Franklin, for instance, was actually a Deist. I’m a Christian, but REALLY, Texas? REALLY!?

Police are calling Steve McNair’s death a murder-suicide, which I think a lot of people suspected from the beginning. Evidence says that his mistress, Sahel Kazemi (20), had snapped over fears that she was losing him so she shot him four times then shot herself. McNair’s wife and four children are in my thoughts.

The Group of Eight (G-8) meeting (it’s a economic summit between the world’s leading industrialized nations – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the US) going on in Italy today is focusing on working with representatives of up-and-coming economies (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) to fix global warming. They eight have pledged to make huge cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, and 80% reduction by the leading countries – but the article mentions that it may not work out. G-8 leaders didn’t actually call on those other developing counties to set specific goals, instead asking them to “undertake quantifiable actions” to cut back, meaning it probably won’t actually happen. Hooray for publicity stunts.

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni is going to try to ban female circumcision, also known as female genital cutting or female genital mutilation. It’s meant as a rite of passage into womanhood, but it mostly causes complications during labor, is extremely painful because it’s typically done without anesthetic, and makes any sexual activity extremely painful. Good luck Museveni, I honestly hope you succeed.

Now, just days after US troops handed security control over to local forces, bomb blasts killed 64 people in Iraq. Watch, someone will blame the US for this even though it’s due to increased political tensions between Arabs and Kurds in the area. Bombs also killed 25 in Afghanistan earlier today in what was supposed to be an attack on NATO, but didn’t result in a single injury to coalition troops.

Why Verizon sucks & Mary Kay is awesome

First things first, in my last post I mentioned that I hoped that reformist Moussavi would win Iran's presidential election, but it's been announced that Ahmadinejad has been re-elected, despite the fact that the vote count is still highly disputed. He's planning his victory parade and refusing to guarantee Moussavi's safety.

As far as life goes -- my family might just kill Verizon Fios. See, on Wednesday, we lost internet. We thought it was because of a big storm that rolled through the area, so we didn't complain too much, but did ask them to get it up and running. They said they would soon, probably within the next few hours; one day at the most. Two days passed. Still no internet. So on Friday, my mom and I started making some phone calls, trying to figure out why we had no internet still and finally, after getting hung up on four times, repeating our problem to five different people, and being told "Oh, our computers show that internet is up in your area," five times, we were finally told "Oh, you don't have internet on your plan."

Excuse me? Yes, we do. We've had it for over a year now.

There was much yelling involved from both my mother and I and finally the (admittedly poor) guy on the phone finally said that he could get our internet up and running soon, but would have to switch us to billing. In the transfer to the billing department, we were hung up on.

Saturday. We'd had a dinner party to go to Friday night that we were already late to by the time we were told we didn't have internet, so further calls had to wait until Saturday morning, when my father could ge involved. While I think my mom and I were doing a pretty decent job, he's a much more intimidating person, even over the phone. However, the same basic thing starts happening to him -- during four hours, he was hung up on three times, talked to numerous people, then finally started demanding to talk to a supervisor because, let's face it, this is getting ridiculous. Now, my father is not a yeller. In fact, he's kind of the quiet angry man that just stares at you when he's pissed and you know without being told that you want to get the hell out of that room. But, on the phone with Verizon, he was treading that thing line between 'speaking loudly' and yelling. Why? Because someong finally admitted that all the previous people we'd talked to had lied to us.

Ummm, what?

Now, we never really figured out exactly what we were lied to about because after we figured that one out, we were hung up on again. But when my dad finally got to talk to a supevisor -- I was scared. I'd never seen him that angry. But it worked -- by 4 yesterday afternoon, we finally had internet again. I think they owe us like six months free, but we're still trying to get them to get our Verizon emails working (because they disabled those and won't give them back) so that hasn't even come up in discussions yet. We'll see how that goes.

The only other real thing going on is that I had my Mary Kay Grand Opening party yesterday. It went really well! I sold almost a thousand dollars in product and everyone had a lot of fun. I have to order a few things because we actually sold out of a few things people wanted, so I'm about to start working on that. I'm really excited!

In the news...

I've decided that, along with posts on liberty (or the lack thereof) around the world, I'm also going to do a weekly posting of things in the news that I find interesting and/or worthy of being aware of.

First -- girls that kick butt: Jessica Terry diagnosed herself with Crohn's disease in science class after doctors couldn't do it in labs for eight years. While the fact that she has Crohn's disease is awful (it's a disease that causes intense pain and can't be cured), it's pretty cool that she figured it out on her own.

Regardless of your opinion of America's war in Iraq, this is something to know: Al Qaeda fighters are relocating into the horn of Africa. Countries like Somalia and Yemen could end up being safehavens for Al Qaeda fighters attempting to escape dangers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi could win Iran's presidential election today. We'll see if that's true later on after polls close, but for now it's something I'm watching. If he does, it'll be the first time the incumbent president (the current one likes to pretend the Holocaust didn't happen) doesn't win a second term.

This man claimed to be a veteran of the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and to have survived a roadside bomb as a Marine. He appeared for campaigns, he spoke on behalf of veterans, and he set up an alliance for veterans in Colorado. Now it's come out that none of that is true. He's being investigated for embezzlement charges in relation to the alliance he set up.

This is something that is actually really close to my heart, and I'm surprised I don't talk about it more: Young girls in Zimbabwe have begun turning to prostitution for food, school books, or simply attention. Now, they're also being targeted to become sex slaves during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

A man shot up the Holocaust Museum to express his opinion that the Holocaust apparently didn't exist (maybe he'd get along with the current president on Iran?).

In celebrity news, Hugh Grant has made an ass of himself again, Sonny and Cher's child Chastity will henceforth be known as Chaz -- she (he, now, I guess) is in the early stages of transition from female to male, Madonna won her adoption appeal in Malawi, Rihanna was served a subpoena to testify against Chris Brown, and Palin is crying foul against Letterman -- waaaaaahhh!'

Five things that make me happy today:
1. Cold hot chocolate (Buon Giornio's!)
2. Internet!
3. Going shopping with Mommy (and maybe Cyndi?)
4. Paychecks! (We got paid yesterday, I deposited it today.)
5. New music (Cyndi burned me a really good summer mix.)