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Tea party speaker banned by Archdiocese

Tea party speaker, banned by Archdiocese of Cincinnati, moves to new site

 

The Enquirer • November 29, 2010

A new venue has been secured for a two-hour lecture by a tea party activist after his invitation to speak at a local Catholic school was rescinded for fear the topic would violate a Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati policy forbidding partisan and political speech.

Frantz Kebreau, a 43-year-old airline pilot and national director of an organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of All Colors, will speak from 2 to 4 p.m. Dec. 11 in the Conference Center at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. The event is free and open to all.

Kebreau recently told The Enquirer his speech, "Stolen History: What the Left Does Not Want You to Know," is a culmination of research he did independently and uncovers the truth about racism and civil rights in America's history.

Kebreau's visit was organized by Cincinnati 9/12 Project, part of a national effort championed by Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck. Initially he had planned to speak at Purcell Marion High School, but the archdiocese nixed the event once learning the title and sponsorship.

Entry #3,555

Karl Rove: Palin tour in Iowa 'smart

Rove: Palin tour in Iowa 'smart,' but she has to reach outside GOP ranks

Bridget Johnson
11/26/10 01:41 PM ET

 

GOP strategist Karl Rove doesn't think Sarah Palin's reality show will earn her any points for a presidential run, but said Friday that putting three of her 16 book tour stops in Iowa is "a smart thing to do."

Palin is hitting the road, including in the early presidential state, to promote her new book "America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag."

"It gives her an excuse to be there as something other than a candidate, which is really important," Rove said on Fox News.

"That's a pretty smart move if you're thinking about running for president," he added.

As there's no love lost between the former Alaska governor and President George W. Bush's onetime senior adviser, Rove went on to say that Palin had difficultly expanding beyond a "paint-me-red Republican."

"She's got a problem with independents and a problem with Democrats, and over the course of the next year, like all of the Republican candidates, she's got to demonstrate that she has an ability to unify the Republicans and reach outside the Republican ranks," Rove said.

"I mean, in 1980 this was a key test for President Reagan when he ran for the presidential nomination and he demonstrated he can unify the party and that he had a special appeal outside the Republican Party's so-called Reagan Democrats," he added, stressing that Republicans want to win in 2012 and want a candidate who can draw voters from outside the party.

Entry #3,553

Sometimes words fail stuttering gets a close-up

Sometimes words fail

 

In the lab and on the screen, stuttering gets its close-up.

 

Jessica Pauline Ogilvie

Special to the Los Angeles Times

November 29, 2010

Robin Sullivan was 10 when she first began looking for information about her stutter. She'd had the speech disorder for as long as she could remember — one of her earliest memories is of lying on a table practicing breathing exercises.

She wasn't bullied or teased, she says; she just felt ignored. "I went to the library, and I read everything I could get my hands on," she says. "I was looking for that feeling of not being alone."

It took Sullivan, now in her early 40s, until high school to find the help that she needed. "Up until then I felt out of control, helpless," she says.

An estimated 3 million American adults have a stutter that didn't resolve in childhood, according to the nonprofit Stuttering Foundation of America. As kids, many dealt with the giggles of classmates and confusion of teachers; as adults, they often deal with uncertain glances and the impatience of strangers. They've long sought comfort from each other, sharing their experiences at conferences and advocacy groups. Now, with the release of "The King's Speech," a critically acclaimed movie starring Colin Firth as King George VI, the so-called stuttering prince, many hope that the public will begin to comprehend their struggles.

There's no cure for stuttering — "I have good speech days and bad speech days," Sullivan says — but researchers and experts have made strides in understanding the complicated disorder. They've found versions of genes linked to stuttering risk; they've found differences in the brains of stutterers too. Both may offer clues to the roots of the speech block and, maybe, point the way toward medical therapies one day.

Stuttering affects about 1% of the adult population worldwide, and four times as many men as women. The disorder is classified by disruptions that happen during speech; people who stutter may alternately repeat part of a word multiple times, or be unable to produce sound at all.

"It's like time stops for a moment," says Sullivan of her own stutter. Her lips and face tense up, and even as she hears conversations and activity continuing around her, for the brief minute that her mouth refuses to form words, she's on the outside of it all. "You feel stuck," she says. "Just plain stuck."

As children first learn to speak, stuttering isn't unusual: Nearly 5% of kids around the age of 3 or 4 have trouble with fluency. In four out of five of those children, stuttering resolves on its own. It's unclear what causes the remaining children to retain the disorder, but experts believe that the answer may lie in family history.

In fact, approximately 60% of people who stutter have family members with the disorder, according to the Stuttering Foundation of America. And in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February, government researchers uncovered the first genetic mutations that may be at the root of the problem for some. In a large family with a strong history of the disorder, mutations in one of three genes — known as NPTAB, GNPTG and NAGPA — were found in some affected participants.

Though it's progress, experts aren't sure how the three genes lead to stuttering, and the findings don't go far in explaining the disorder in the entire population.

"Mutations in these genes account for about 9%" of stuttering cases, estimates Dennis Drayna, a genetics researcher at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who co-authored the study. To make things more complicated, not everyone with the gene will develop a stutter, he adds.

Researchers are also looking for neurological differences in people who stutter. They've found several.

Among people who stutter, a number of brain regions responsible for movement control (including movement associated with speech) are overactive in the right hemisphere. Experts believe that this is a result

of the right hemisphere making up for a defect in the left. (In people who speak fluently, the left hemisphere is the dominant one for language.)

Parts of the left hemisphere "never fully develop" in stutterers, suggests Dr. Gerald Maguire, director of the Kirkup Center for the Medical Treatment of Stuttering at UC Irvine. "So the right hemisphere begins to compensate."

The longer a person stutters, Maguire adds, the more the right hemisphere compensates and the stronger the brain imbalance grows.

Scientists also believe that key differences between stutterers and non-stutterers lie in parts of the brain that compose what's called the basal ganglia. These structures, located toward the center of the brain, together play a complex role in the smooth timing and initiation of movements. Recent research has confirmed that the severity of stuttering correlates with the level of activity in the basal ganglia — and that this activity improves after participants undergo speech therapy.

In a 2004 literature review, Swedish researcher Per A. Alm suggested that in people who stutter, the basal ganglia are probably dysfunctional in their ability to properly start, and rhythmically time, speech. His theory that stuttering is, at least in part, a timing issue is supported by the fact that singing, speaking with a metronome or speaking in unison with other people often helps to improve the fluency of people who stutter.

Researchers are also examining whether activity of a nerve-signaling chemical called dopamine, which is responsible for regulating the basal ganglia, might be dysfunctional in people who stutter. In a 2009 study of 112 people who stutter and 112 who don't, researchers in China found that stutterers were more likely to have a mutation in several genes that regulate dopamine.

It's not nervousness

Whatever the future may reveal about the physiological underpinnings of stuttering, there is one point on which experts agree: Stuttering is not an emotional disorder.

"The most common misconception about people who stutter is that it's a sign of nervousness. That's not true — people who have anxious personalities do not have a higher degree of stuttering," says speech language pathologist Phil Schneider, who has several offices in and around New York City.

And yet those who stutter deal with this "it's just nerves" misconception on a regular basis. "If I had a dime for every time I heard, 'Slow down, relax, take a deep breath, think before you speak,'" Sullivan says, "I'd be wealthy."

Although the disorder isn't caused by anxiety, it can be exacerbated by anxiety. And for many who stutter, the very act of speaking is anxiety-inducing. "You're always on the alert for sounds or words that might strangle you," Sullivan says. People who stutter therefore often develop specific fears: it may be speaking in front of crowds, it could be talking on the telephone. When speech-language pathologists begin treatment, Schneider says, one of the initial issues they address is often emotions associated with stuttering — giving people an opportunity to talk about their feelings.

From there, therapists help clients learn physical exercises to make their speech more fluent. The most widely used methods are ones that slow the speed of speech: prolonging the first sound or syllable of a word, pausing more frequently during speech, or easing gently into a word by starting with a humming noise.

"Stuttering is speed-sensitive," Schneider says. "The faster you go, the more likely you will have interruptions."

In treating children, parents are a key component. Specialists may recommend that parents set aside a few quiet minutes every day to talk to their child, model slow speaking and talk openly about the problem.

"What we try to emphasize with children and adolescents is the notion that what the child is saying is far more important than how he or she is saying it," said Tommie Robinson, president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Assn.

Speech therapy may last anywhere from a few sessions to a lifetime. But the exercises are often difficult, and for that reason, Schneider often suggests practicing them for no more than a few minutes each day.

"To use the brain to think about speaking [instead of] what you want to say — it's like trying to walk backwards all day long," he says.

No medication is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat stuttering. But doctors occasionally prescribe drugs off-label that have been shown to help, including antipsychotic drugs such as risperidone and olanzapine, which affect brain levels of dopamine. And some people who stutter find relief from anti-anxiety medication.

Recently, experts had high hopes for a drug called Pagoclone, but it failed in a trial to meet the goals of its manufacturer, Endo Pharmaceuticals, and it's unclear whether further trials of the drug will take place.

As more is understood about the genetics and the brains of people who stutter, researchers hope that medication aimed directly at the disorder eventually will become available. "The basal ganglia [could be] the target of our medication," Maguire says. "If we fix the timer or initiator [of speech] then we can jump-start the whole system."

For now, Sullivan says, many who stutter find solace in meeting others who struggle with similar issues, and in knowing that there are resources available. She runs regular stuttering support groups in the San Fernando Valley area, to help others find the community she sought as a child.

"If one teenager, one kid, finds out they're not alone," she says, "I'll have come full circle."

Entry #3,552

Tracy McGrady says LeBron James made a bad decision joining Heat

Tracy McGrady says LeBron James and Dwyane Wade lack chemistry because both command the ball

Frank Isola
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Monday, November 29th 2010, 4:00 AM

LeBron James (c.) and Dwyane Wade (r.) are not succeeding together in Miami because they are similar players and neither is a great shooter, says Pistons forward Tracy McGrady (below).

Fuentes/APLeBron James (c.) and Dwyane Wade (r.) are not succeeding together in Miami because they are similar players and neither is a great shooter, says Pistons forward Tracy McGrady (below).

Yeater/AP

 

AUBURN HILLS - Tracy McGrady believes there is a fundamental problem with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.

"When they're on the court together," McGrady says, "they're terrible."

McGrady isn't saying LeBron and Wade are terrible as individual players but rather that the chemistry between the two isn't good.

"Him and D-Wade don't complement each other," McGrady said. "They're somewhat the same type of players, 'Bron and D-Wade. If you look at Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, (Allen's a) traditional shooting guard. Ray Allen, he doesn't need the ball. And Paul Pierce is a small forward. You add Kevin Garnett ...

"(LeBron and Wade), they're not like that. Both of those guys need the ball and they don't shoot the ball like Ray Allen. That's why they're having trouble scoring in the halfcourt because they can't get a rhythm, because one of them is dominating the ball. That guy might be getting off, but the other guy (isn't).

"That's why when they're on the court together, they're terrible. They're rhythm players that need the ball. I'm like that. I can't stand out there and catch and shoot. I've never been a guy that sits out there waiting for the ball to come to me."

McGrady feels that if James had made up his mind to leave Cleveland he would have been better off in Chicago with Derrick Rose as his running mate.

"It was a better decision, a better place for him," said McGrady, who scored a season-high 13 points off the bench for the Pistons Sunday but was 0-for-3 after intermission. "You can't just go somewhere and have that type of chemistry he had in Cleveland."

McGrady appeared in 24 games for the Knicks last season and apparently the decision not to return to New York was mutual. McGrady never embraced Mike D'Antoni's system while the Knicks wanted to use McGrady's expiring salary to make a run at James.

"I told you that wasn't going to happen," McGrady said of the Knicks' failure to sign LeBron. "They obviously added an All-Star in Amar'e and a guy that I think will help them. (Raymond) Felton is a great addition for the team. Seems like he's playing with a lot more confidence than he did in Charlotte. I think they're capable of making the playoffs."

NOT BETTER LATE: Several Pistons players arrived at the arena less than 90 minutes prior to the 1:30 p.m. start. And on the television screen inside the Pistons locker room? A tape of the Knicks? No, it was ESPN's NFL pregame show.

Entry #3,550

Undocumented UCLA law grad is in a legal bind

Undocumented UCLA law grad is in a legal bind

 

Law student Luis Perez, who in May became the first undocumented immigrant to graduate from UCLA School of law, came to L.A. from Mexico at the age of 8 and made getting a good education his top priority. But because he's not in the country legally, he may not be able to practice law even if he passes the bar. (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

 

His family crossed the border illegally when he was an 8-year-old, but he has done everything right since then. Will his adopted country now do right by him?

 

Hector Tobar
LA Times
November 26, 2010 

 

Ever since he was 8 years old, Luis Perez has dedicated his life to becoming an American.

In grade school, days after his arrival from Mexico, he studied hard to master English — it quickly displaced Spanish as his dominant language.

As a teenager he woke up every morning at 5:30 a.m. for a long bus trip across the San Fernando Valley, away from a neighborhood with a bad gang problem, to a high school where being a studious young man didn't make him a social outcast.

When he eventually made it to college, it was the U.S. Constitution that grabbed hold of him, especially the Bill of Rights. And this year, his study of American institutions culminated with his graduation from UCLA School of Law.

Today, at age 29, Luis Perez has the right to call himself a juris doctor. But he can't yet call himself an American. In fact, because he's an undocumented immigrant, it will take an act of Congress to change that. But that hasn't stopped him from trying.

"People used to tell me, 'Why go to college if you can't get a real job when you graduate,'" he said. With no right to work for a large company or law firm, it seemed that only jobs in construction and or yardwork awaited him, no matter how educated he was.

"If I had listened to those people, I wouldn't have done anything with my life," he told me.

Perez is the first undocumented immigrant to graduate from UCLA's law school. He's taking the bar exam in January. "I'm spending my Christmas with the books," he told me.

If he passes that test, with its questions about contracts, property, torts, criminal law and many other topics, Perez will have completed a most unlikely journey.

His story is at once inspiring and also maddening, because it's a reminder of just how broken our immigration system is. Among other things, its failed policies have given us hundreds of thousands of people like Perez who are Americans, culturally speaking, but who don't have the legal right to live here.

Perez was born in Guadalajara. He remembers going hungry there, and also teachers who doled out corporal punishment. "I value education because I had a really bad experience with education in Mexico," he told me.

Then, as now, a better life and low-wage jobs awaited his parents on the U.S. side of the border.

But there was no legal way for poor families like his to get here — to obtain U.S. tourist visas, residents must present proof that they have bank accounts, property or a business.

"There is no line for people like my family," Perez said. His grandmother's been trying to get a tourist visa to visit her grandchildren in the U.S. for 20 years without success, he said.

Growing up in the Valley, Perez has always known that he and his family were living on the margins of the law.

"It was traumatic," he said of his surreptitious border crossing, near San Diego. "Those memories are hard to forget. I was old enough to know that it wasn't a safe thing to do."

He saw it all through the eyes of an 8-year-old. He remembers the "coyote" smuggler who picked him up and carried him over a shallow creek. Once across, he spent an hour hidden inside a large tractor wheel.

In L.A., his father worked construction, his mother as a nanny. And as he grew into an adolescent, a teenager and finally into a young adult, Perez looked to anyone who met him like just another smart kid from the Valley.

But in the back of his mind, he knew he didn't belong. So he worked his tail off to prove that he did. And to understand how he might eventually belong, he studied the law.

"Most students experience law school as a trade school," said Saul Sarabia, an administrator at UCLA School of Law. "They learn doctrines, rules and apply them to a set of theoretical situations. But in Luis' case, his entire future turns on whether a law can become reality."

The great hope for Perez, and for thousands of others like him, is the Dream Act, a bill that would grant a path to legal residency for undocumented immigrants who graduate from college or serve honorably in the military.

President Obama has called on Congress to pass the Dream Act before the end of the year.

Unfortunately, there are also many media commentators, and an army of Internet scribes, dedicated to slurring the name of people like Luis Perez. They want to convince you that the Dream Act is a bad idea.

For them, no insult is too extreme, no stereotype too crude, because of the single word they can attach to Perez's name: illegal. They make up false statistics, and focus on the crimes of the few to taint the many.

Perez has heard all their arguments, and he's ready with a lawyerly riposte.

"Being undocumented is not a criminal issue, it's a civil issue," he said. "The law sees us not as lawbreakers but as people without legal status."

While he was still in high school, Perez lobbied state representatives for the passage of California Assembly Bill 540, which granted affordable, in-state college tuition to undocumented immigrants.

After AB 540 became law in 2001, he enrolled at UCLA and eventually earned a B.A. in political science and then his law degree. He became a student leader and worked construction jobs on the weekends to help pay for his tuition. (He still holds a construction job, in part to pay off $3,000 in law school debt.)

The state Supreme Court upheld AB 540 earlier this month. To some Californians, giving undocumented immigrants an affordable college education is an act of generosity that we cash-strapped Californians can't afford.

But really, it's the smart thing to do.

The Dream Act would be another intelligent investment in our collective future. We'd get even more people like Perez, because the Dream Act would reward young people for making the choices he's made since the was 8: choosing education over ignorance, service over apathy.

"I'm not asking for anything," he said of his hope for legal status. "This is something I've earned. I've graduated from school, served my community and tried my best to reach my potential."

Even if he passes the bar, Luis Perez will probably need the Dream Act to become a practicing lawyer. Until then, he'll be in the same limbo he's always been in: an English-speaking, L.A.-raised kid, now educated in American law but unable to be an American.

For the time being he's embraced a slogan chanted by immigrant students at protests from Washington to Phoenix and Sacramento: "Undocumented and unafraid."
Entry #3,548

Ex-boyfriend demands payment or breast implants

German woman fears boyfriend may take her fake boobs after she fails to repay him

Reuters
Friday, November 26th 2010, 4:00 AM

German woman fears her boyfriend may want her implants after she doesn't cough up dough.

Getty German woman fears her boyfriend may want her implants after she doesn't cough up dough.

 

BERLIN- A German woman who splurged on breast implants with a loan from her then boyfriend now fears her assets could be repossessed after she failed to fully reimburse him, the 20-year-old woman told Bild newspaper.

Her ex-boyfriend is demanding that she return the $5,865 he gave her to pay for her breast enlargement surgery in 2009 or he'll call the police and get the repossessors involved, Bild reported on Wednesday.

"It's true that Carsten signed a loan agreement shortly before the operation," the woman named only as Anastasia is quoted saying. "The condition was that I wouldn't have to pay him back if I stayed with him for a year."

But the pair split shortly after she underwent the plastic surgery. The woman said she had transferred nearly $4,000 into her ex-boyfriend's account last week.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/11/26/2010-11-26_german_woman_fears_boyfriend_may_take_her_fake_boobs_after_she_fails_to_repay_hi.html#ixzz16Tl7uXtO

Entry #3,546

Neptune pastor may take time off after Facebook decree

Neptune pastor may take time off after Facebook decree, three-way relationship landed him in news

 

NANCY SHIELDS • STAFF WRITER • November 24, 2010

 

FACEBOOK PASTOR: In a Jan. 17, 2010 photo, Pastor Cedric Miller, delivers the sermon during a service at Living Word Christian Fellowship in Neptune, N.J. Miller said 20 couples among the 1,100 members of his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have run into marital trouble over the last six months after a spouse connected with an ex-flame over Facebook. Because of the problems, he is ordering about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions. 

FACEBOOK PASTOR: In a Jan. 17, 2010 photo, Pastor Cedric Miller, delivers the sermon during a service at Living Word Christian Fellowship in Neptune, N.J. Miller said 20 couples among the 1,100 members of his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have run into marital trouble over the last six months after a spouse connected with an ex-flame over Facebook. Because of the problems, he is ordering about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions.

(STAFF PHOTO: MARY FRANK)

 

The Rev. Cedric A. Miller, who has received wide publicity for both his decree that church leaders to get off Facebook save their marriages and for the details of his own past marital indiscretions, appears headed for some time off.

Miller said Wednesday afternoon an official statement from Living Word Christian Fellowship Church will be read at the 9:30 a.m. service Sunday.

The Associated Press reported earlier Wednesday that Miller would be taking time off following a church vote Tuesday night. Miller told the AP that church members gave him a vote of confidence subject to some restrictions he would not list.

Later Wednesday, Miller again declined to say what those restrictions were. He said he would be at both the Thanksgiving service today and the Sunday service.

Miller, 48, leapt into the headlines a week ago after calling the Asbury Park Press to get coverage for his plan to ask his married church leaders — perhaps a couple dozen — to set an example and remove themselves from Facebook because he believes the social networking website was causing infidelity among people coming to him for counseling.

He said the church officers would have to step down from their leadership positions if they did not give up their Facebook accounts. Miller gave up his account last week.

Soon after that story came out, it was revealed that in court proceedings in 2003, Miller admitted to a three-way sexual relationship that had been ongoing, but ended, and included a close church male assistant and Miller's wife, Kim.

Hazel Samuels, chairwoman of the church board of trustees, said Wednesday she could not did speak for the church or congregation about the Tuesday night meeting because she did not attend.

At the service Sunday, a day after his previous indiscretions were in the news, Miller appeared to have strong backing from most of the 250 to 300 people attending, with many going up to stand behind him as he spoke.

He said that day that for many members, the revelations were old news, but "for others of you, it was shocking."

He said that Tuesday night there would be a church meeting where questions would be answered. He mentioned that if people wanted to leave the congregation, the elders would help them find another church.

Miller charged the church elders to do all they could do to protect the church.

The pastor and his wife founded their independent church in their then home in Neptune in 1987. They now live in Millstone Township. The church is on Route 35 in Neptune.

In his 2003 testimony concerning charges — later dismissed — on another matter he had brought against the man in the three-way relationship, Miller painted a picture of having near total control over the church.

He said in his testimony that for accountability purposes, he had an outside pastor he did not name who would listen to church tapes and look at the church's financial records.

And Miller testified that according to the church's constitution, he could be fired for gross, moral misconduct and refusal to repent.

"And who would fire you?" an assistant prosecutor asked.

"That's a very tricky question, because the trustees would have to do it, and they're appointed by me," Miller answered.

"OK, so if someone were to recommend that you would be fired, who would that be?" he was asked.

"I never thought of that. If somebody was to recommend that I'd be fired, they probably wouldn't have a job," Miller testified.

"Could it be a situation where the board on their own might decide to take up a vote?" he was asked.

"I guess it's conceivable, but it's not very probable in an independent church," Miller answered.

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