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City firefighter grew over 100 marijuana plants, endangered kids living over drug den: prosecutor

John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

 

Monday, August 23rd 2010, 4:15 PM

 

WASHINGTON — A federal district judge on Monday blocked President Obama’s 2009 executive order that expanded embryonic stem cell research, saying it violated a ban on federal money being used to destroy embryos.

The ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at universities across the country, which had viewed the Obama administration’s new policy and the grants provided under it as settled law. Scientists scrambled Monday evening to assess the ruling’s immediate impact on their work.

“I have had to tell everyone in my lab that when they feed their cells tomorrow morning, they better use media that has not been funded by the federal government,” said Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplantation program at Children’s Hospital Boston, referring to food given to cells. “This ruling means an immediate disruption of dozens of labs doing this work since the Obama administration made its order.”

In his ruling, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that his temporary injunction returned federal policy to the “status quo,” but few officials, scientists or lawyers in the case were sure Monday night what that meant.

Dr. Daley was among those who said they believed that it meant that work financed under the new rules had to stop immediately; others said it meant that the health institutes had to use Bush administration rules for future grants.

Steven H. Aden, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which sued to stop the Obama administration rules, said the judge’s ruling “means that for now the N.I.H. cannot issue funding grants to embryonic stem cell research projects without any further order from the court.”

Officials at the health institutes said that lawyers at the Department of Justice would interpret the ruling for them. Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, wrote in an e-mail, “We’re reviewing the decision.”

The judge ruled that the Obama administration’s policy was illegal because the administration’s distinction between work that leads to the destruction of embryos — which cannot be financed by the federal government under the current policy — and the financing of work using stem cells created through embryonic destruction was meaningless. In his ruling, he referred to embryonic stem cell research as E.S.C.

“If one step or ‘piece of research’ of an E.S.C. research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding,” wrote Judge Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan.

In other words, the neat lines that the government had drawn between the process of embryonic destruction and the results of that destruction are not valid, the judge ruled.

For scientists, the problem with the judge’s reasoning is that it may render all scientific work regarding embryonic stem cells illegal — including work allowed under the more restrictive policy adopted by President George W. Bush in 2001.

For years, private financing has been used to create embryonic stem cell lines, mostly from discarded embryos from fertility clinics. The process destroys the embryos. President Bush agreed to finance embryonic stem cell research, but limited federally financed research to 21 cell lines already in existence by 2001.

Under the Obama administration, private money was still needed to obtain the embryonic stem cells, but federal money could be used to conduct research on hundreds more stem cell lines, as long as donors of embryos signed consent forms and complied with other rules.

Ron Stoddart, executive director of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, an agency that was one of the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to Monday’s ruling, said he was pleased with the judge’s ruling.

“We do not want to see stem cell research that would destroy embryos,” Mr. Stoddart said. “Embryos are preborn human life that should be protected and not destroyed. If there was a way of extracting the stem cells without destroying them, I would not be opposed to it.”

Mr. Stoddart said he would be surprised if the judge’s ruling led to a complete ban on embryonic stem cell research. Rather, he said his group hoped the government’s policy would return to the balance struck by President Bush.

Mr. Aden, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said Judge Lamberth would have to clarify whether President Bush’s rules were legal.

Dr. Irving L. Weissman, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, said the ruling was “devastating to the hopes of researchers and patients who have been waiting so long for the promise of stem cell therapies.” Dr. Weissman said he hoped that the judge’s ruling would be overturned.

The lawsuit at issue was brought last year on behalf of the adoption agency; two stem cell scientists, Dr. James L. Sherley and Dr. Theresa Deisher; embryos; and others. The judge dismissed the suit last year, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing, meaning they were not materially affected by the rule change.

But the Court of Appeals reversed that ruling last year, saying the two researchers could be harmed by the new policy since they worked exclusively with adult stem cells and would face increased competition for federal financing under the new policy. After the appeals court ruling, all but Dr. Sherley and Dr. Deisher were dropped as plaintiffs to the suit.

With the case back in his court, Judge Lamberth ruled that the administration’s policy violated the clear language of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a law passed annually by Congress that bans federal financing for any “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.”

In rules announced last year, the administration allowed financing of research into any embryonic stem cell lines that either were allowed by the Bush administration or had been created using embryos discarded after fertilization procedures and in which unpaid donors had given clear consent for the embryos to be used for research purposes.

The Obama administration said that its rules abided by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment because the federal money would be used only once the embryonic stem cells were created but would not finance the process by which embryos were destroyed. The judge disagreed, writing that embryonic stem cell research “necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.”

Dr. Leonard I. Zon, director of the stem cell program at Children’s Hospital Boston, said he was surprised by the ruling. “The Obama administration’s permission to use federal funds is critical for embryonic stem cell research to move forward and has set a great standard for the United States,” he said.

Mr. Aden said he hoped the ruling would lead to increased financing of adult stem cell research, which his clients have argued is more scientifically promising than embryonic stem cell research anyway.

 

Tiger Woods and wife Elin Nordegren officially divorced; couple will share custody of two children

Corky Siemaszko
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

 

Monday, August 23rd 2010, 1:40 PM

 

IKIMULISA LIVINGSTON and YOAV GONEN

Last Updated: 4:50 AM, August 23, 2010 

Posted: 4:26 AM, August 23, 2010

Mark this one a gutter ball.

KCRG TV

An Eastern Shore man pumped gasoline into the car in which his estranged wife was sitting and then set it on fire Friday night, causing an explosion and sending both to the hospital, according to Maryland State Police. 

An arrest warrant was issued for Pernell Clanton Jr., 47, of the 100 block of Forest Drive in Grasonville, charging him with attempted first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, first-degree malicious burning, first- and second-degree arson, and two counts of malicious destruction of property over $500. 

Clanton is under guard at Bayview Hospital, where he is being treated for injuries he sustained from the fire. 

Police identified the victim as Yolanda M. Clanton, 43, who was taken to a hospital for burns to her face and arm. Court records show that on Aug. 14 she was granted a protective order, which was made final Thursday, requiring her husband to surrender firearms and to stay away from their home and his wife's workplace.

At about 10:30 p.m. Friday, police from the Centreville Barracks responded to a call at a convenience store in the 100 block of Main St. in Stevensville and found a 2002 Dodge Intrepid engulfed in flames next to a gas pump. Yolanda Clanton told police that the pair had stopped for gas. When her estranged husband began pumping fuel while smoking a cigar, she said she told him he should not be smoking around the pumps, according to the release. 

She told police that she was still belted into the driver's seat when her husband removed the pump nozzle from the gas tank and began pumping gas into the car through an open rear window. According to the release, Pernell Clanton used a lighter to ignite the gas in the car, and she escaped the vehicle just as it exploded. 

A nearby motorist was able to use the emergency cutoff switch to turn off the pumps. Crews from the Stevensville Volunteer Fire Department put out the fire. The car was destroyed but neither the gas pumps nor the store caught fire. 

The investigation is continuing.

 

John Diaz

SF Chronicle 

Sunday, August 22, 2010

 

Knowledge is power, but it is not always welcome. The Los Angeles Times just completed an extensive study of how individual teachers have fared at raising their students' math and English test scores in the state's most populous city. The raw data have been available to the L.A. Unified School District for years, but it never bothered to crunch those numbers, let alone share them with parents. The Times has pledged to publish its ratings of 6,000 elementary school instructors. 

Reaction of the local teachers union? It has called for a "massive boycott" of the Times. 

So it goes in California education, where even the most modest attempt to hold teachers accountable encounters fierce resistance from teachers unions. Earlier this year, the unions successfully leaned on their friends in the California Legislature to defeat a bill (SB955, by Sen. Bob Huff, R-Glendora) that would have allowed districts to consider factors other than seniority in teacher layoffs. Proposals to create merit pay, loosen tenure rules, expand inter-district transfers or allow more innovation through charter schools are reflexively denounced by the unions as attacks on a noble profession and the many dedicated teachers whose heroic efforts are underpaid and underappreciated. 

All of us know, from our experience as students and parents, how a special teacher can perform magic on an individual or even an entire class. The Times identified one such teacher from the poorest corner of the San Fernando Valley whose fifth-grade students consistently made striking gains from their fourth-grade scores on standardized tests. Students from the same neighborhood who had a teacher down the hall, in the same school, consistently slipped in math in their year with him. 

Do you think parents might want to have access to that information? I certainly do. So does Arne Duncan, President Obama's reform-minded secretary of education, who asked, "What is there to hide?" 

The union argument is that the tests are flawed, and an attempt to link them to teacher performance is "an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning," as A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, told the Times.

 Admittedly, students' performance on a standardized test is a limited window into a teacher's effectiveness. But it is a window worth opening. The Times analysis uses what is known as a "value added" statistical approach: looking at a student's past scores to project his or her future results. The difference between the projection and the student's actual results is considered the "value" the teacher added or subtracted. 

This methodology is neither radical nor irresponsible. Its tracking of individual students takes into account the cultural or socioeconomic factors that might otherwise penalize teachers who work in the most challenging classrooms. California and other states competing for Obama's Race to the Top grants have agreed to measure their teachers this way as a condition of their application. 

Jack O'Connell, the state's superintendent of public instruction, said student scores should be one of "a multitude" of elements in evaluating a teacher. 

"Should it be a factor? - yes," said O'Connell, a former teacher, a Democrat and a usual ally of the unions. "Should it be the exclusive factor? - in my opinion, no." 

I asked him whether those teacher ratings should be available to the public. His answer: yes. 

"The more information parents have - we all have - the better off the system is," O'Connell said in a phone interview. 

I put the same questions to Carlos Garcia, San Francisco's schools chief, who has been aggressive in trying to identify and help underperforming teachers. Garcia, like O'Connell, suggests that test scores should only be "a percentage" of a teacher's evaluation. 

"I'm not sure what good it does to publish it for everyone in the world to see," said Garcia, who added that he did not believe that test scores "should ever be used to beat up teachers." 

But Garcia does not dismiss the value of such ratings. In fact, San Francisco has been using test scores at the school-site level to help identify teachers who are achieving gains in the classroom and others who might need mentoring or other professional development.

"Teachers want to learn from other teachers," he said. 

Garcia's strategies include treating teachers as professionals and approaching parents with respect - and to engaging them as partners in the education of their children. Greater transparency about those classroom-by-classroom scores would advance, not undermine, those worthy objectives. 

Parents in Los Angeles should be thanking - not boycotting - the Times for providing them with this limited but important insight into teacher performance. And parents in San Francisco and everywhere else in the state should be pushing school administrators to make this data available to them.

Mike Lillis 

The Hill

08/22/10 12:47 PM ET

"The people around the president have really misjudged what goes on elsewhere in the country, other than Washington," D.C.Dean told Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union."

"I don't think this is true of the president, but I do think his people, his political people, have got to go out and spend some time outside Washington for a while."

The comments came in response to recent criticisms lodged by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs against what he called the "professional left" — liberals who "wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president," Gibbs told The Hill earlier this month.

"I don't know what he meant by that," Dean said Sunday. "The average Democrat is a progressive. And, you know, there are some things that are upsetting about the kind of deals that were made by the president's people on health care."

Dean — who opposed the Democrats' health reform bill because, among other things, it didn't include a public insurance option — urged party leaders to put aside differences and shift their focus to November. 

"This is the time to put that stuff behind us," he said. "We've got to win this election."

Dean's comments came just a few days after Charlie Cook, a prominent election handicapper, predicted the November midterms would shift House control back to the Republicans.

"We're just seeing every sign in the world that this is going to be a wave — and a pretty good sized wave," Cook told the Wall Street Journal Friday. "It's more likely than not that the House is gonna tip over."

Dean disagreed, arguing that the party is "in much better shape" that the pundits say. He's predicting the Democrats will keep control of the House this November, even if their majority is "as small as five or 10 [seats]."

"We're going to have some pick-ups; we're going to have some losses," Dean said. "But at the end of the day, I think we control both houses."

The reason, Dean said, is that the Democrats have a wildcard: President Obama.

"This election, for better or for worse, depends on how hard the president fights between now and election day," Dean said. "For the president to be out there fighting, as he has been for the last two or three weeks, and sounding like Harry Truman, people love that stuff. 

"They want to see a fighter. They want to see strength in their leaders, and I think president Obama is showing that strength. … He appears to want to win this."

Dean did, however, concede one caveat. "Obviously," he said, "I'm partisan about this."