Entries for September 2007

Hopes for a bill allowing illegal immigrant teens to move toward citizenship are dimming.

The DREAM act, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, had been attached to the Department of Defense authorization. But yesterday the amendment was dropped from the defense bill because of opposition from Republican leadership.

Government soldiers moved today to break up large demonstrations in Myanmar, formerly Burma.  They clubbed activists, raided monasteries, and cut Internet access, raising international fears that more killing is to come. At least 10 protesters are reported dead.

A week after American civil rights activists took to the streets in Louisiana, one of the Jena 6 defendants was released on bail. Seventeen-year-old Mychal Bell, who had been imprisoned for 10 months, was released on $45,000 bail yesterday but is due back in court next week. Bell was charged with aggravated second-degree battery for the beating of a white classmate.

One Blackwater USA guard told colleagues to "stop shooting" during the September 16 incident that left 11 Iraqi civilians dead, raised tensions between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and spurred several new investigations over private contractor work in Iraq. One such congressional investigation determined that Blackwater guards in 2004 triggered the first battle of Fallujah in Iraq by sending unprepared security forces into an insurgent stronghold.

What's in a name? Plenty, when referring to the protests that are becoming increasingly violent in the Asian country being referred to as both Myanmar and Burma. Governments around the world are condemning the actions of the military junta, which started cracking down on protesters, killing at least nine people and arresting more than 100 Buddhist monks.

Pollsters and communications advisers to congressional Republicans are urging lawmakers not to follow President Bush's lead when it comes to talking about terrorists and the threat they pose to the nation.

Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, who runs the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said that the use of satellites and other intelligence community imagery domestically can be very useful but that it is carefully regulated.

"Anytime we do anything domestically, it is in support of a lead domestic agency," he told reporters yesterday. Requests typically come from the Department of Homeland Security but have also originated at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and elsewhere.

Protests continued for the 10th day in Myanmar, with police firing automatic weapons into the crowd. Tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and other protesters have taken to the streets in the largest display of defiance against the military junta since a failed uprising in 1988.

In Iraq, Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi held a two-hour meeting in Najaf with the top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to discuss political reform in an effort to quash sectarian violence and promote unity.

In another blow to the Patriot Act, a federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that two provisions of the legislation are unconstitutional because they allow secret wiretapping and searches without having to show probable cause.