Lieberman proposes wide-ranging domestic violence plan
Associated Press Archive
January 2, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman targeted the court system, the workplace and the home on Friday with a wide-ranging plan to protect and assist victims of domestic violence.
Accusing President Bush of remaining silent on the issue, the Connecticut senator unveiled a series of proposals based on three goals: strengthening protections for battered women, helping victims lead safe and independent lives, and breaking the cycle of violence.
"I want to say to women who may be in this situation, 'Come out of the shadows. Don't take it. Ask for help,'" Lieberman said during a discussion at a campaign supporter's home in Bedford. "And I say to men, 'Strong men don't beat women. Strong men take care of their women.'"
Bush has underfunded the landmark Violence Against Women Act, Lieberman charged, and has missed opportunities to raise awareness about the damage done by batterers to millions of families. He promised to make the issue a top priority, starting with legal and law enforcement changes and continuing with a pledge to create 300 transitional homes for victims during his first term as president.
Lieberman proposed cracking down on abusers who violate restraining orders by making such violations a crime. In many states, protective orders are issued by civil courts, not criminal courts, and violating them carries no punishment. The senator would require states to criminalize the violation of civil court orders to qualify for federal violence-prevention funding.
Lieberman also would set up 24-hour hot lines so victims can obtain temporary restraining orders at any time and would create a program to help states share information so that restraining orders would be better enforced across state lines. Police would get more help in the form of federal matching funds for anti-domestic violence programs, and officers, judges, social workers and others would get more training on the complexities of domestic violence.
Lieberman proposed providing tax credits to employers that provide domestic violence education and support services; medical, financial and legal referrals; and flexible work, transfer and leave policies. He also would allow victims to collect unemployment benefits if they have to leave work and move to escape an abusive relationship and would exempt those who are on welfare from work if they are in the midst of a legal battle.
In a long-range measure to prevent children from becoming abusive adults, Lieberman proposed expanding the Violence Against Women Act to include funding for counseling for children who have been exposed to violence and refocusing mentoring programs to ensure boys are taught to develop stable, nonviolent relationships with women.
Mom given choice: deportation with, without kids
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
January 17, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Amina Silmi, a Lakewood mother fighting a deportation order, has 30 days to decide whether she will take her three children with her to her native Venezuela.
Silmi, 35, asked for a delay in the order, but federal immigration officials turned her down Friday. It was her second request. She had won a two-week reprieve Jan. 2 from an immigration official.
As American citizens, her children — ages 11, 6 and 5 — can stay. Silmi was born in Venezuela to Palestinian parents and entered the United States 13 years ago as a visitor. Immigration officials ruled that she overstayed her visa.
Silmi said that she has "absolutely nobody" in Venezuela and that her remaining family is in this country. Leaving her children behind is unthinkable, she said. Silmi’s husband, Ibrahim Salti, was deported last month on an immigration violation.
"I’m so sad right now," said Silmi, who had just heard of the decision. "I like America and I don’t want to leave."
She was given the option of taking the children with her, said Greg Palmore, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security.
"Our goal is not to separate the family, but that decision rests with her," he said.
Information that Silmi and her lawyer provided in the case was insufficient to warrant another deferral, Palmore said. He declined to describe what additional information they could have given.
Silmi’s lawyer, Svetlana Schreiber, did not know what else could be done.
"We provided a plethora of evidence," Schreiber said, including medical documentation of two of the children’s disabilities.
In a meeting Monday with immigration officials, Schreiber also provided a copy of a psychological evaluation showing that Silmi suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because she was a victim of domestic violence.
If she had more time, Silmi could apply for other visas, including one available under the Violence Against Women Act, Schreiber said. If she had an employer willing to petition for her, she’d be eligible for a green card. The government could grant Silmi more time, Schreiber said.
"They have nothing to gain by removing her," she said. "Why this woman? She is the mother of two disabled children and poses no threat to society. All she’s asking for is the right to stay in this country and work so that she can raise her children."
Silmi has an appeal pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals of the U.S. Department of Justice. Palmore said that despite the appeal, she can still be deported.
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose district includes Lakewood, asked Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge two weeks ago to stop Silmi’s deportation but has received no answer.
Kucinich strongly disagrees with this decision, said Kucinich spokesman Doug Gordon.
"He believes that the best thing for this family is that they remain together and they remain in this region."
The children want to stay too.
Silmi’s youngest daughter, Belal, 5, recently told her she wants to grow up to be a teacher. Another daughter, Haiat, 11, also has a dream.
"My oldest said, ‘I want to be lawyer so I can defend you,’ " Silmi said.
National experts will help combat law enforcement domestic abuse
Help for victims: Advocates to get three days of training
News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA)
February 8, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Local domestic violence victim advocates soon will receive training on how to help people who are abused by law enforcement officers, the first sessions for workers since last April's Brame shootings.
In March, the YWCA of Pierce County and the Tacoma Police Department will bring in two nationally recognized domestic violence experts - author and lecturer Diane Wetendorf of Chicago and Fort Wayne, Ind., Police Department Capt. Dottie Davis. Victim advocates and law enforcement officers from throughout the state and beyond are expected to attend. The events are not open to the public.
The sessions are a result of the death of Crystal Brame. Tacoma Police Chief David Brame fatally shot his wife and himself on April 26. In divorce papers, the Brames had accused each other of domestic violence.
Debra Hannula, director of legal services for the YWCA, organized the training sessions with help from Tacoma Police Lt. Tom Strickland, whose promotion to captain is effective Monday.
The YWCA and the Tacoma Police Department will share the $5,000 cost of the three days of training, Hannula said, plus the two trainers' hotel and air fare. Strickland said the police department's share will come from a federal Violence Against Women Act grant.
Hannula, who heads a group of community leaders that has met regularly since the shootings to look for ways to help people who are abused by law enforcement officers, said "police-perpetrated domestic violence is different." For example, she said, victims often are afraid to call 911 because they think their abuser's friends will answer the phone.
The sessions are:
* A two-day session, March 17-18 at the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall, for victim advocates. The session will be taught by Wetendorf, who lectures nationally on police-involved domestic violence and has written papers and created a Web site, www.abuseofpower.info, on the subject. It costs $100.
* A one-day session, March 19 at the Criminal Justice Training Center in Normandy Park, for law enforcement. The session will be led by Davis, director of the academy for the Fort Wayne Police Department. Wetendorf also will speak during the one-day session.
Wetendorf was a victim advocate at a Chicago resource center for 18 years. In 1996 she began a program just for victims of police-involved domestic violence. She said she's worked with 800 to 1,000 victims of police-involved domestic violence from throughout the country.
Davis has led training sessions on police-involved domestic violence since 1996. She and Wetendorf have co-written a paper on police policies regarding abusive officers.
Tacoma Police officers will not be required to attend the March 19 training session, Strickland said, because of staffing issues. But interim Chief Don Ramsdell has encouraged all officers in the department to go if they can, Strickland said.
Aside from the police department, the City of Tacoma is not involved in the training sessions, said Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg, though she said she supports the plan.
Almost 30 people from the YWCA likely will attend the sessions, said Karin White-Tautfest, director of advocacy services.
The City of Tacoma has two advocates and a manager who likely will attend. Ann Eft of the Pierce County Commission Against Domestic Violence is scheduled to speak at the training session, Hannula said.
Shame on you, Lynn Woolsey
Ocala Star-Banner (FL)
February 19, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
If California Rep. Lynn Woolsey were a Republican white male, feminists would be picketing his office, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe would be calling for his immediate resignation, and The New York Times would be in full editorial lynch mode.
But luckily for Lynn Woolsey, she is a card-carrying member of the untouchable ultraliberal women's brigade. This prominent Democrat's reprehensible behavior in a recent rape case has been buried by the national press and National Organization for Women elites. Here's what they won't tell you:
Last July, a 20-year-old thug named Stewart Pearson soaked a rag in toilet bowl cleanser and Ajax and used it to smother 17-year-old Tina Phan while she was sleeping in her Terra Linda, Calif., home. Tina gasped, trying to fend off Pearson, but he wielded a knife and overpowered her. Pearson raped and brutalized her. According to Phan, Pearson told her he had committed the same crime before and planned to do it again. Phan bravely persisted in pressing charges against Pearson. He initially denied raping Phan, but admitted guilt last fall.
Enter Rep. Woolsey. As first reported by the Marin Independent Journal, the outspoken feminist and anti-violence-preaching Democrat attempted to intervene in the case. She used her official stationery to send a letter to the local presiding judge in support of ... the convicted rapist.
In a bleeding-heart plea for leniency, Woolsey wrote: "Stewart Pearson is a young man from a supportive family. I believe he has a promising life ahead of him, and I urge you to consider these factors when deciding on a suitable sentence." Woolsey noted further that Pearson had volunteered for her campaign, as if stuffing envelopes for Woolsey somehow mitigated the violence he committed against Tina Phan -- whose promising life Woolsey didn't bother to show an ounce of concern for at all.
Thankfully, the judge ignored Woolsey and sentenced Pearson to eight years in prison, the maximum allowed under a plea deal.
What explains Woolsey's soft spot for this violent sexual predator? Pearson is the son of one of Woolsey's aides. Did she believe him to be innocent after carefully reviewing the facts of the case? "(I)n my mind, he is not a criminal," Woolsey told the Marin newspaper. Yet, Woolsey never bothered to fill her mind with the truth. She admitted she "knew nothing" about Phan's rape case and "had no idea what the courts had found."
The House Ethics Committee in Washington is probing whether Woolsey intervened inappropriately. But Woolsey is guilty of a far bigger sin -- the fraud she has perpetuated in the name of her "progressive" ideology at the expense of teen-age rape victim Tina Phan.
Woolsey has continually raked in campaign cash based on her reputation as a tireless champion for women's and children's rights. She lambasted college campuses for inadequate collection of rape and sexual assault data. She aggressively pushed for the Violence Against Women Act, the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Victims' Housing Act, the Stalking Prevention and Victim Protection Act, the Date-Rape Prevention Drug Act, the Protection of Women in Prison Act, and the Battered Immigrant Women Protection Act.
Woolsey has promoted women's rights in Afghanistan; called for stronger prosecution of rapists in East Timor; performed in the "Vagina Monologues" to show her solidarity with victims of rape, domestic abuse and genital mutilation; and crusaded for the "United Nations Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women" to show how much she cares for the oppressed women of the rest of the world.
Maybe if Tina Phan had been raped in a Third World country thousands of miles away and demanded a U.S. tax-subsidized abortion, Woolsey would have come to her aid. Instead, when it came down to putting her high-minded liberal ideals where her mouth was, she betrayed an innocent young constituent without hesitation.
Phan has courageously gone public to hold Pearson and Woolsey accountable for their actions. Her congresswoman, Phan blasted over the weekend, "represents the rapist who took advantage."
Lynn Woolsey, The Rapist's Representative. Liberal hypocrites in Marin County will probably forgive her. For Tina's sake, the rest of us should not let her forget.
Pregnant Politics
Bangor Daily News (ME)
March 4, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The problems with the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act" begin with its popular name, Laci and Conner's Law. The nomenclature is supposed to honor Laci Peterson and her unborn son, Conner. Ms. Peterson's husband, Scott, is now on trial for murder.
The problem is that the act, were it in effect, would have made no difference in the Peterson case. The act, basically, would make it a federal crime to kill or injure a child in utero, but only while in the act of committing another federal crime. The murder of Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant, was not a federal crime, she was not a federal employee and her murder did not take place in a federal installation.
Beyond its name, this act is also troubling in other word choices. Rather than refer to a fetus, the standard legal language for an unborn child, the law speaks of "a child in utero," which it describes as a "member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." This expansion of the definition of a human being to being a fertilized egg is far-reaching. Rather than simply stiffening penalties for the murder of a pregnant woman, this act would break ground for determining when life begins.
Such a major change should not be contemplated in a roundabout way, capitalizing on the sympathy surrounding a horrible murder.
The act would only apply to very limited cases, such as the assault of a federal employee who was pregnant or an attack that took place on federal land. The attacker would not have to know that the woman was pregnant. Because of its limited scope, the act's detractors fear that it is really an attempt to roll back Roe v. Wade.
If the act passed, could a pregnant woman (identified as such, not as a "mother" in the act) be charged for harming her fetus? Could gyms prohibit pregnant women from working out for fear a miscarriage could be attributable to her exercise? Far-fetched fears? Maybe. Maybe not.
Without fully discussing the ramifications of such a major change in policy, members of Congress could be persuaded to pass a sympathetic-sounding bill with unintended consequences. The House passed the Unborn Victims Act last week. Maine's representatives, including the usually pro-life Michael Michaud, voted against it. The House rejected, by a vote of 229-183, an alternative measure to increase the penalties for attacks on pregnant women in which the fetus is injured or killed without conferring new rights to fetuses.
It is now up to the Senate, and Maine's two senators who remain undecided on how to vote on the bill, to see this bill for what it really is - not a memorial to Laci Peterson and her unborn child - but a chipping away at a woman's right to choose. If lawmakers really want to stop the abuse and murder of women, some of whom may be pregnant, they should fund existing programs that seek to stem such violence. Enacting the Violence Against Women Act, for example, was a positive step. Congress could also follow the 21 states that already have enhanced penalties for crimes against a pregnant woman if she suffers miscarriage, stillbirth or other injury to her pregnancy.
Stopping violence against women, pregnant or not, is a worthy goal. This act is not the right means to that end, however.
Some immigrants may qualify to receive SSI
Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL)
March 21, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Social Security is part of the retirement plans of most workers in the United States. However, many immigrants are confused about how to qualify for Social Security benefits.
Your immigration status, the amount of your earnings during your working years, and your age will affect your benefits.
In the United States people pay taxes into the Social Security system, and when they retire, or become disabled, the spouse or dependent children can receive monthly benefits based on their earnings.
The Social Security Administration defines "disability" as the inability to do any kind of work for which you are suited, and your medically determined impairment (disability) has lasted or is expected to last for at least a year or result in death.
According to the Law offices of Jeffrey A. Rabin and Associates, in general, beginning on Aug. 22, 1996, most aliens must fall into one of the following "qualified alien" categories in order to be eligible, and meet the conditions to get SSI:
- Permanent residents or green card holders.
- Refugees (as established by the law).
- Asylee's - same as refugees but applied for asylum status after coming to the U.S.
- Amerasians - children and their families, fathered by U.S. servicemen during the Vietnam conflict (Southeast Asia).
- Persons granted withholding of deportation, or withholding of removal - similar to asylum but granted after a deportation, or removal hearing.
- Victims of trafficking - individuals who have come into the U.S. against their will to work without pay.
- Cuban and Haitian entrants - created in 1980 includes those granted parole, and applied for asylum.
- Persons granted conditional entry - before 1980 refugee status.
- Victims (spouse and children) of domestic violence, or with an application pending under a family visa, or under VAWA (Violence Against Women Act).
- Persons paroled into the U.S. for at least one year.
- Any alien receiving SSI prior to a 1996 legislation change is the single exception to these rules - otherwise eligibility continues.
SSI (Social Security Income) may be paid for a maximum of seven years from the date the Department of Homeland Security granted the immigration status in the above stated categories, and the person's immigration status was granted within seven years of filing for SSI benefits.
Many individuals living in the U.S. as residents may want to consider citizenship.
Eleanor Smeal, Feminist Majority President, Decries Senate Move
``Defeat of Feinstein Amendment Shows Disdain for Women,'' says Smeal
Business Wire
March 26, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Feminist Majority Foundation Jeanne K.C. Clark, 703-522-2214 or 412-736-6092 (CEL)
Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority, today condemned the passage, by the United States Senate, of H.R. 1997, the so-called Unborn Victims of Violence Act, calling it a "serious erosion of women's rights."
"The very fact that the majority in the Senate refused to vote for the exact same bill with one small change -- not granting separate personhood to the fetus -- shows that this legislation had nothing to do with protecting pregnant women, and everything to do with restricting women's rights," said Smeal. "This is all part of the attempt by the right-wing to stop women's advancements, and to have legislation in place for when they capture the majority on the Supreme Court. This bill, along with others passed in states and federally, are traps waiting to be used to make abortion and birth control illegal.
"That's why the upcoming March for Women's Lives on April 25 in Washington, DC is so important," continued Smeal. "We can and must fight back against those who would drive women into the back alleys and out of the halls of power. Women and the men who love them must march as if their lives depend on it - because they do. If the right-wing has its way, U.S. women will join the 500,000 women worldwide who die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, much of it due to lack of access to safe, legal abortion and birth control."
Smeal is the most senior organizer among the coalition sponsoring the March for Women's Lives, with her first major campaign taking place in Washington at the Vatican Embassy in 1975. One of the architects of the modern drive for women's equality, Smeal is known as a political analyst, strategist, and grassroots organizer. She has played a pivotal role in defining the debate, developing the strategies, and charting the direction of the modern day women's movement. Smeal was the first to identify the "gender gap" -- the difference in the way women and men vote -- and popularized its usage in election and polling analyses to enhance women's voting clout. Smeal is the author of How and Why Women Will Elect the Next President (Harper and Row, 1984), which predicted that women's votes would be decisive in presidential politics.
For over 30 years, Smeal has been on the frontlines fighting for women's equality. She has been at the forefront of almost every major women's rights victory -- from the integration of Little League, newspaper help-wanted ads, and police departments to the passage of landmark legislation, such as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Equal Credit Act, Civil Rights Restoration Act, Violence Against Women Act, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and Civil Rights Act of 1991. She has pushed to make Social Security and pensions more equitable for women, and to realign federal priorities by developing a feminist budget. She has campaigned to close the wage gap and to achieve pay equity for the vast majority of women who are segregated in low-paying jobs.
A former three-term president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Smeal has promoted the involvement of young women in the feminist movement. Smeal initiated the Choices Campus Leadership Program, a groundbreaking organizing effort on college campuses throughout the country. This program is comprised of a nationwide network of campus-based feminist activist groups called Feminist Majority Leadership Alliances. Leadership Alliances are based on the Feminist Majority Foundation's innovative study and action model which focuses on four critical "choice" issues: Reproductive Choices, Career Choices, Leadership Choices, and Saving Choices: Fighting the Backlash. Smeal's innovative campus program has energized young feminist leaders on hundreds of public and private, two and four-year, large and small college campuses in 32 states and the District of Columbia.
Under her guidance, the Feminist Majority Foundation publishes Ms. Magazine, the nation's premier feminist publication. More information about the March for Women's Lives and the Feminist Majority is available online at www.feminist.org.
Woman deported from U.S. spends first night back in Venezuela in a park
Hays Daily News, The (KS)
April 6, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
VALENCIA, Venezuela (AP) - For lack of anywhere else to go, Amina Silmi spent her first night in Venezuela in a park, worried sick about the three children she left behind in the United States.
Last week Silmi, 35, was deported to this South American nation after 13 years as an illegal resident in the United States. Her case has outraged the Muslim community in Cleveland, the city she considers her home.
"I'm so depressed right now," told The Associated Press in a weekend interview, squeezing a crumpled napkin she used to wipe her tearstained face. "I don't know when I'll see my kids again. I can't think. I can't do anything."
The thin, raven-haired woman said she has no friends or family in a country she hasn't seen in more than a decade. She has no idea where to look for a job or a home.
Silmi arrived at Caracas' international airport on March 31, lugging her belongings in a trash bag. With some of the several hundred dollars given to her by charities, she took a cab to the central city of San Felipe, where she thought people she once knew might live.
She got lost and spent the night in a park. The next day, she traveled to the industrial city of Valencia, where a family took her in. They somehow knew her parents, but to her they are strangers - poor people who can't put her up for long.
In Ohio, a sister is looking after her children: Haiat Awad, 12; Fida Salti, 6; and Belal Salti, 5. They are U.S. citizens. Silmi let them stay because she didn't want to drag them into destitution with her.
Born in Venezuela to Palestinian parents, Silmi moved to New York with her family in 1990. She was 21 at the time and had a temporary visitor's visa.
A few months later she married a legal immigrant but the marriage lasted less than a year. When it ended, so did her right to stay in the country.
Six months pregnant with her first child, she moved in with her parents. She soon married again, this time to another immigrant she met during visit to the sister in Cleveland.
She had two more children, including Belal, who is autistic and needs special care that his mother says he would probably not get in Venezuela.
In 2000, her life began to unravel. During a family vacation to Niagara Falls, her husband took a wrong turn and ended up in Canada.
That's when U.S. immigration officials learned of Silmi's status. She says it was also the first time she learned her husband had two felony convictions that could cost him his green card.
Silmi decided to get her own green card and leave her husband. She secretly took high school equivalency classes and got her degree in 2003. But just as she started taking control of her life, her hopes for residency crumbled.
In December, her husband was deported Ramallah, West Bank, after being convicted of trafficking in food stamps before their marriage. Immigration officials ordered Silmi to surrender on Feb. 4.
Her lawyers tried to delay her deportation so she could apply for a visa under the Violence Against Women Act. Supporters say the law protects women like Silmi, who says her husbands were abusive and prevented her from fully understanding her rights.
"Often, the abuser holds their status over head. They say, 'If you report me, I'm going to report you to immigration.' It's another tool of power and control," said Julia Shearson, director of the Cleveland offices of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Her lawyers won a temporary stay, and she spent the next two months in prisons in several U.S. cities. One of her worst memories was being put in shackles while a reporter interviewed her in Atlanta.
"It was so humiliating. I begged them not to put them on," she said.
She lost her appeal March 18. She was jailed in Beaumont, Texas, before she was deported.
"This woman was in the country illegally for almost 14 years. She exhausted every sort of appeals possible," Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for the immigration service, said Monday.
In a Valencia coffee shop, Silmi stared glumly at her orange juice. Her immediate plan was to beg the family to let her stay for another night. Then she didn't know.
"I don't want to eat. I don't even want to live," she said.
God is a Republican? Surprising, but Jesus has to be a Democrat
Repository, The (Canton, OH)
Section: Letters
April 26, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Woe is me. I was shocked to learn ("Christians can’t in good conscience back candidates who are Democrats," April 8) not only that God must be a Republican but also that as a Democrat, I probably am condemned to Hades.
And I thought God would want me to belong to the "party of the common man," founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792 to fight for the Bill of Rights against the elitist Federalist Party.
After all, the Democratic Party has given us or supported: women’s right to vote, the League of Nations, labor laws, collective bargaining for workers, child welfare laws, TVA, National Industrial Recovery Act, Social Security, Marshall Plan, NATO, Peace Corps, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, the War on Poverty, Medicare, the Camp David Accord, the Brady gun bill, the Violence Against Women Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Student Loan Reform Act, the National Service Act and the School to Work Opportunities Act. The Democratic Party led us though World Wars I and II, led us out of the Great Depression with the New Deal, established the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and, during Clinton’s administration, led to the longest period of economic expansion in peacetime history.
Now I find out that God, as a Republican, didn’t care about any of those Democratic initiatives?
And I thought God would be, if anything, more of an independent and, as such, more able to decide who and what is really important.
Jesus, however, had to be a Democrat. After all, he labored as a carpenter, a common man; he didn’t own the lumber or the furniture company. And didn’t Jesus say in Mark 10:25: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God"? And don’t tell me he isn’t in heaven!
Robert Warden, Perry Township
Dying of political correctness
Daily Jeffersonian, The (Cambridge, OH)
Opinion
Author: Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist for the Orlando Sentinel
May 27, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The American women of Abu Ghraib have put to eternal rest any notion that girls are made of sugar 'n' spice and prompted a flurry of possible answers to the question: How could women have done such things?
Theories have run the gamut: They were just trying to fit in; they were exploited by higher-ups to humiliate male Iraqi prisoners; they were an inevitable extension of the male-bashing culture back home, expressions of feminist orthodoxy in extremis.
Some feminists have expressed deep disappointment to discover that women can be just as bad as men. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote that a certain kind of feminism a feminist naivete died in Abu Ghraib. No longer could men be viewed as perpetual perpetrators and women as perpetual victims.
Activists in the men's movement - some of them victims of domestic violence - expressed no surprise."What happened in Abu Ghraib is no isolated incident, no aberration," wrote Ray Blumhorst for MensNewsDaily.com. "I have little doubt that all of the females implicated at Abu Ghraib will have little trouble finding jobs in the multibillion-dollar VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) domestic violence industry, just as soon as 'American, gender feminist justice' rationalizes away all their misbehavior."
In searching for answers myself, I've managed mostly to come up with a question I've posed before: What the heck were women doing there in the first place? The last time I asked that question I was referring to Jessica Lynch. I'll keep asking it, even though I know the answer.
It is political correctness, scourge of our times. That intellectual burlesque that places greater value on protecting political sensibilities than on protecting our nation through attention to political realities.
Also, undoubtedly some women can fight. Whose brilliant idea was it to place women in positions of power over male prisoners?
No single person can be blamed, most likely, as the lie that makes men and women equal in all things is a culture-wide deceit. Ehrenreich says she always supported women in the military because she "knew women could fight, and because the military is one of the few options around for low-income young people."
Undoubted some women can fight. And it's true that military service is often a dead ender's exit. But neither assertion satisfies the only question necessary to national defense: Does the presence of women advance or delay the goal of security?
In most combat situations requiring physical strength and endurance, most women clearly fall under the "delay" column. As for prison guard duty, some reports suggest that women purposely were used to humiliate detainees as a "softening up" measure antecedent to questioning.The grinning woman in many photographs, Lynndie England, was in fact a clerk who wasn't supposed to be in the prisoner section of Abu Ghraib. Her thumbs-up poses were recorded during visits to her equally infamous boyfriend, Cpl. Charles Granger, widely reported to have fathered the child England now carries. At the very least, we can safely say that no male soldiers ever got pregnant.
If one were compelled to justify the clearly unjustifiable presence of women in a men's military prison, one could argue that the women's participation did, in fact, advance the desired result of softening up detainees. But that argument stands only if (a) detainees provided useful information; (b) there were no other way to get the same information; (c) there were no other considerations to outweigh the value of such information.
We now know that other considerations were myriad. Our war against terror is not only a military war, but also a war of public relations. From the outset, we've talked of the necessity of winning hearts and minds, of respecting other cultures, of humbly bearing the burdens of a superpower.
We knew the rules of the Muslim world, yet we displayed only contempt while giving Osama bin Laden propagandist fodder to nourish generations of deadly America-haters.
It's easy to blame the president or the secretary of defense for what happened at Abu Ghraib, but we're all to blame for insisting that nothing matters as much as advancing the myth of gender equality. It's time to grow up and put our PC notions to rest before our enemies do it for us.
Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist for the Orlando Sentinel
WOMEN WHO BATTER, AND THE MEN WHO FEAR THEM
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
June 4, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
SO WHAT'S A GUY to do?
Dean Lai-how did everything by the book when his ex-wife began harassing and haranguing him. It wasn't enough to stop her fatal attraction.
In January, Dean looked out the window of his apartment near Seattle. To his shock, his ex-wife was just standing in the parking lot, looking up.
In March, his ex-wife showed up at the Target department store in Lynnwood, where Dean worked. She approached with a plastic container of kerosene while smoking a cigarette. She told Dean she had "something he would cherish the rest of his life," according to prosecutors.
The next day the ex appeared at his apartment complex at 3 in the morning. When Dean arrived, she followed him to his unit and threw a lighted Christmas ornament filled with kerosene as he rushed to shut his door, police say. The ornament didn't ignite, but detectives later found kerosene on the door and walls.
There was the time the ex-wife allegedly told Dean she was so angry with him she felt like running him over with a car. On another occasion she falsely accused him of molesting her children. Letters accusing Dean of pedophilia mysteriously turned up in neighbors' mailboxes. Police do not believe the accusations were legitimate but do suspect Dean's ex-spouse had something to do with the letters.
Yet another time, prosecutors say, the ex-wife told Dean that she could easily buy a gun and use it.
Dean decided enough was enough. He applied for a protection order. A hearing was set for May 19 to decide whether to make permanent a temporary protection order that Dean had gotten in March. The day before the hearing, the 34-year-old was slain by his ex-wife, police say.
Society often hears terrible stories about domestic violence. The stories typically involve women who are beaten for months or years before their boyfriends or spouses maim or kill them. Statistically speaking, women who are injured or killed by the men in their lives make up most domestic-violence cases.
A 1998 National Violence Against Women Act survey found about 1.5 million women are victims of domestic violence each year, compared with about 835,000 men. The Justice Department said in 2000 there were 1,247 women killed by "intimate partner" violence compared with 440 men that year.
But the National Institute of Mental Health, which has studied domestic violence at length, has said women are as likely as men to initiate violence. That counters the claims that women hit only in self-defense.
"One thought is that female aggression has always been a function of protection, or reaction. But the data doesn't support that," Martin Fiebert, a psychology professor at California State University-Long Beach, said in an interview with the Knight Ridder/ Tribune news service.
Fiebert has reviewed more than 100 research studies on domestic violence.
"It turns out, in 50 percent of the cases, you can't separate who started it," he said. "And in the other 50 percent, it's equal."
Experts believe the number of male survivors of domestic violence is a conservative figure at best. That's because in addition to the broad stigma surrounding domestic violence, there is also the misguided societal notion that such violence doesn't "apply" when men are the targets. And what guy wants to admit that his girlfriend or wife beat him up?
But women can be violent. Their violence can be escalating, predatory and lethal.
That is the case with Dean, who represents the less visible face of domestic abuse.
Reading through police reports and court papers, it becomes apparent that Dean's ex-wife, Rebecca Lynn Lai-how, was ticking, waiting to detonate.
The couple separated three years ago. They divorced a year ago.
Ironically, the justice system came to appreciate Rebecca's potential for danger only after Dean was dead and Rebecca had turned herself in to police.
"The defendant's escalating violence in this case as well as her apparent mental health and substance abuse issues render her a poor candidate for pretrial release," writes Mary Barbosa, a senior deputy prosecutor for King County.
Rebecca, it turns out, was building to her crescendo in a case mirroring so many in our region in recent years in which men have killed wives or girlfriends.
But here is one big difference: Dean's killing for some reason failed to make front-page news or stir up the public outcry that predictably reverberates when men kill estranged female partners. Is it because the victim was a man?
Dean lived in mortal fear. The protection order he sought against his ex-wife was never served because Rebecca could not be located. Dean was waiting to move away after Rebecca was served with the order. "He felt that way his new address would not be in the (order) request and Rebecca would not know where he was living," court documents say.
In April, Rebecca got her hands on a Ruger .357 revolver. A sales receipt shows the gun was bought at a Portland-area gun shop. On May 18, around 10:30 in the morning, authorities got a 911 call from a Renton apartment.
Dean was on the line: Help me! I've been shot! By my ex-wife!
Dean had been walking a dog when a woman jogged up with something black in her right hand, according to one witness. A bang sounded. A neighbor heard Dean scream: "Ouch!" The neighbor saw the mystery woman chase Dean as he scrambled toward the stairs of his apartment and dashed inside.
Police and medics had to force open Dean's locked door. They found him dying on the floor of the dining room. Medics couldn't save him. The bullet had entered his right shoulder and ravaged his lungs, lodging in the aorta.
At the police station after the shooting, Rebecca said the gun and bullets were in the trunk of her blue Mitsubishi, parked right outside. She locked eyes with a detective. "No one was supposed to get hurt like this," said Rebecca, 41 ((age)), who has been charged with first-degree murder.
Her words are what so many batterers tend to say. They say it after they harm the ones they love.
Expanding federal hate-crime laws - for no good reason
Sun, The (Baltimore, MD)
June 22, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
CHICAGO - Jesus warned his followers to beware "when all men speak well of you." He knew that universal praise can hide a multitude of sins.
That is certainly the case with the hate-crimes law passed the other day by the U.S. Senate, which shows that irreproachable impulses can yield bad policy.
The measure would expand existing federal laws against "hate crimes" to include violent acts committed because of the victim's "gender, sexual orientation, or disability." This will enable federal law enforcement agents to go after criminals who single out gays, women or disabled people.
The law is needed, says Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, because it "sends a signal that violence of any kind is unacceptable."
Actually, existing criminal laws already do that. This one sends a signal that violence of certain kinds is especially unacceptable.
Getting stomped to a pulp because you're gay is somehow worse than getting stomped because you're wearing a Red Sox jersey in the Bronx, or because someone resents your opinion of the war in Iraq.
No one doubts that people are sometimes assaulted or even killed out of bigotry. But it's hard to see why special laws are needed for these cases. Assault and murder are illegal no matter what the sentiments of the attacker or the characteristics of the victim. Those who carried out the most notorious hate crimes of our time, the murders of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, and Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., were caught, convicted and given severe sentences.
Passing laws to punish conduct that is already punishable makes about as much sense as sending two Christmas cards to everyone on your list. But that's not the only defect in this bill. Another one is that it indulges a chronic impulse to turn over more and more power to federal law enforcement.
Fighting crime used to be the almost exclusive province of state and local governments, but no more. Today, reports Louisiana State University law Professor John S. Baker Jr., there are some 4,000 federal criminal offenses, and the ratchet is strictly one-way: The number is allowed to rise but is never allowed to fall.
What's wrong with that?
A lot of these statutes are akin to the orange juice squeezer you got as a wedding gift: presented with pride and received with delight, only to be put away and forgotten. They allow Congress to claim credit for taking stern action against a national scourge without doing anything useful.
Even the existing federal law mostly warms the bench. The Human Rights Campaign says that while the FBI has counted 75,000 hate crimes since 1991, only 53 have been prosecuted as such by the Justice Department.
Any federal crime measure runs up against a new obstacle: the Supreme Court's recent discovery that Congress can't pass laws without clear constitutional authority. The usual congressional pretext for meddling in state and local matters is that they affect "interstate commerce," which is a federal responsibility. But four years ago, the court struck down a section of the Violence Against Women Act because the offenses it targeted didn't affect interstate commerce. The same could be said of the vast majority of hate crimes.
The authors of this bill have addressed that problem by limiting it to attackers who cross a state line or national border to carry out their vile deeds. But this restriction turns the law into the equivalent of a ban on purple cows.
"They've solved a problem that didn't exist," marvels George Mason University law Professor Ronald Rotunda.
The Human Rights Campaign argues that the Byrd and Shepard episodes prove the need for change. Texas prosecutors were able to get federal funds to help pay the cost of the case, because it was covered by existing federal law. But because attacks on gays aren't treated as federal hate crimes, Wyoming authorities "could not receive the same federal assistance and had to furlough five law enforcement employees to be able to afford to bring the case forward."
It's true that a major trial can strain local government resources. But the problem is not unique to hate crimes. Local governments have been bearing those burdens since the founding of the republic, and they have managed tolerably well. If Matthew Shepard had not been gay, Laramie still would have had to pay for prosecuting his killers.
His case does, however, prove something inconvenient to advocates of this measure: Today, hate crimes against gays are taken just as seriously as other forms of violence, and those who commit them can expect to be punished. That's a great achievement, and it didn't take a federal law.
Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing newspaper. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Sun.
REP. SCHAKOWSKY: REPUBLICANS SHORTCHANGE FUNDING FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT BY $55 MILLION
US Fed News (USA)
July 7, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, July 7 -- Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. (9th CD), issued the following press release:
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) today expressed disappointment that House Republicans have shortchanged funding for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by $55 million. Schakowsky said that VAWA funding in the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2005 is "inadequate."
"Funding for VAWA programs in the Department of Justice, programs which serve to protect older and disabled women from violence, to provide transitional housing for women fleeing abusive partners, to protect students on campus from sexual assault, to reduce stalking, remains $55 million short of full funding. This is simply unacceptable," Schakowsky said. In addition to continuing to push for full funding of VAWA, Schakowsky has authored legislation to expand protection for battered immigrant women and to provide transitional housing for victims of domestic abuse.
Below is Schakowsky's statement:
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my disappointment with the wholly inadequate level of funding in the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2005 for grants to combat violence against women. Women in this country are in the midst of a crisis, continuing to be terrorized by sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking, and the situation is not getting much better. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least one out of every six women and girls in the United States will have been beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. So what is the Republican leadership's response? According to this bill, it is to cut funding for grants to states to combat violence against women. This bill closely follows the President's request and cuts VAWA funding by 1% from last year's levels down to $383.5 million. Funding for Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) programs in the Department of Justice, programs which serve to protect older and disabled women from violence, to provide transitional housing for women fleeing abusive partners, to protect students on campus from sexual assault, to reduce stalking, remains $55 million short of full funding.
This is simply unacceptable. We have the money in this country to help every woman who is raped, to provide counseling and services to every family trying to overcome domestic violence, to train police officers to help victims of stalking - yet the President's budget chooses not to do this.
Instead, the Republican majority chooses to spend more of our money on tax cuts for the wealthy. I go back to my district and I see women who have worked so hard to survive domestic abuse and sexual assault. I meet families who have lost a mother or a sister to domestic violence. When they ask me - what is my government doing to help me? what is my government doing to make sure this doesn't happen to another woman? - I will have to tell them that the government is not doing nearly enough. The Republican leadership is cutting funding for programs to prevent violence against women. That is a disgrace.
Victim wins 10-year immigration fight
Seattle Times, The (WA)
August 25, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Laura Luis Hernandez, a victim of domestic violence, wanted the right to live in the United States. She took her case to an immigration judge, then an appeals board until finally a federal appeals court temporarily halted her deportation.
Yesterday, after nearly a 10-year legal battle, Seattle immigration Judge Edward Kandler granted her legal permanent residency, congratulating Luis Hernandez and giving her his blessing.
"I wish you safety, good luck and fortune," he said.
An attorney gave her flowers. Luis Hernandez, 45, wept.
"I know this case will open doors for thousands of women who suffer. I hope they can come out into the light," she said during a celebration yesterday.
She is a Mexican national who was beaten by her husband, Refugio Acosta Gonzales, while they lived in Mexicali. Fearing for her life, she fled Mexico and crossed illegally into the United States. He tracked her down and promised not to hurt her again. She returned home.
But when the violence resumed, Luis Hernandez again fled and again crossed into this country, eventually settling in Seattle.
When her lawyers failed to persuade an immigration judge to adjust her immigration status, attorneys took the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that domestic violence isn't limited to physical abuse.
"... [T]he interaction that took place in the United States presents a well-recognized stage within the cycle of violence, one which is both psychologically and practically crucial to maintaining the batterer's control," wrote Judge Richard Paez last October.
"We conclude that an abuser's behavior during the `contrite' phase of domestic violence may, and in circumstances such as those present here does, constitute `extreme cruelty.' "
Under the law that protects illegal immigrants who are the victims of domestic violence by a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident, a provision of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, the judges ruled that she could stay in the country and have her immigration status adjusted.
In Luis Hernandez's case, her husband was a legal permanent resident of the U.S. who was living in Mexico when he beat her.
Yesterday's immigration-court proceeding was the final one in a decadelong ordeal.
Luis Hernandez, who has two jobs working for groups serving the homeless, will be able to visit her two children in Mexico once she gets her green card, which could take a few months.
"You made it," said attorney Ann Benson to Luis Hernandez, as she handed her gladiolas and daisies.
"No, we made it," Luis Hernandez replied.
SEN. BIDEN, DELAWAREANS COMMEMORATE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMAN ACT
US Fed News (USA)
September 10, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
DOVER, Del., Sept. 10 -- The office of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., issued the following press release:
On the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), nearly 200 of the state's victim advocates, nurses, counselors, business and community leaders joined the architect of the landmark legislation, Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to commemorate the law that transformed the way our nation deals with family violence.
The legislation, which Senator Biden refers to as his "proudest legislative accomplishment," strengthened federal penalties for abusers, stalkers, and repeat sex offenders and provided $3.8 billion to states to fund battered women's shelters, rape exam kits, special training for police, prosecutors and nurses and to establish a national domestic violence hotline. Delaware has received nearly $10 million in VAWA funding, using the money to, among other things, train sexual assault nurse examiners, provide free legal services to victims of abuse and open shelters, including a special shelter in Sussex County to serve Hispanic women and children.
"With the passage of the Violence Against Women Act we started talking about that dirty little secret that no one wanted to say out loud," said Senator Biden. "I am proud to say that since then, we've witnessed an incredible transformation in state and federal criminal and civil law enforcement, communities' victim services, and societal attitudes toward domestic violence and sexual assault. Abused women have become safer. A rape victim or battered wife can now turn to a trained police officer, an emergency room nurse, or a 1-800 telephone operator. We transformed private 'family matters' into public crimes with true accountability and meaningful victim services."
At the event, Senator Biden also released a comprehensive report detailing the genesis of the law, its progression over the years and new challenges to be addressed by future legislation. Among the findings:
* Crime is Down, Reporting is Up According to recent studies there has been an almost 50% drop in domestic violence; more than 20% decline in the number of women killed by their partners; incidents of rape are down by 60% since 1992 and attempted rape is also down by 57%. In addition, the percentage of women who reported the crime in 1998 (59%) was greater than the percentage in 1993 (48%); more than half (53%) of rape victims are now stepping forward and reporting these crimes to the authorities, while from 1993 to 1995 only 30.8% reported their attacks.
* More Prosecutions, Better Access to the Courts There have been more than 660 new state laws passed on domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Studies have shown that abused women who obtained protection orders were 80% less likely to be assaulted during the year after the abuse than women without such orders.
* Each month the National Hotline on Domestic Violence fields more than 16,000 calls from across the country. In August 2003, the Hotline received its one-millionth call since its inception in 1996.
* The Act's programs have helped communities reach out to new populations of abused women. One study found that with VAWA funds, 72% of surveyed victim service organizations were able to bring help to more women, and 70% of surveyed victim service organizations were able to tap into entirely new victim populations.
* The Act not only saves lives, but also saves money. A 2002 university study found that money spent to reduce domestic violence saved nearly ten times the potential costs incurred between 1995 and 2000. During that time, the federal government spent $1.6 billion for the Act's programs and avoided spending an estimated $14.8 billion on medical, legal and other victimization costs that arise from domestic violence. On an individual level, the act costs roughly $15.50 per woman in the United States and saves an estimated $159.
The report also highlighted the work that remains to be done to better protect the nation's women and children, including: legislative remedies that take into account new types of stalking technology such as global positioning devices; violence against women serving in the military; violence prevention services for children from abusive homes and additional housing needs for families in crisis.
Biden noted that the second generation of the Act, VAWA 2000, expires at the end of this calendar year, but he has already begun collaborating with lawmakers on the follow-up Violence Against Women Act 2005. "The legacy of the Violence Against Women Act must not fade as resolute police chiefs retire, state task forces reorganize or committed district attorneys' are replaced with newly elected leaders," said Senator Biden. "Tragically, there are still far too many women and children vulnerable to the cowardly criminals who abuse them." At the event, Senator Biden was also awarded the first annual HOPE award for his leadership in domestic violence. As part of the award, Verizon Wireless will donate $10,000 to the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence in his honor.
Women can speed progress for gender at the voting booth
Peninsula Clarion, The (Kenai, AK)
Author/Byline: Barbara Mcdaniel
September 14, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
I was registering people to vote this spring when I called an apparently disadvantaged young woman over to my table to talk about voting. As she balanced her toddler on her hip, she told me, "I don't really know much about politics. I always vote for who my dad says I should vote for." I wondered if her dad advised her based on his political needs or hers, if he was into patriarchy, if he liked women systematically weakened, or if he was the kind of dad who wanted equal opportunity for self-sufficiency for his daughter?
Patriarchy is broadly defined in Websters as "control by men of a disproportionately large share of power." Patriarchal institutions such as supremacist, conservative or evangelical organizations are battling to maintain this historical imbalance of power in our modern world. Even though Americans embrace the logic of checks and balances and equal power as important safeguards from tyranny in government, conservatives are suspiciously reluctant to apply that logic to relationships between men and women. And tyranny is thriving in Alaska, where conservatism and its partner, patriarchy, dominate policy; imbalanced Alaska is commonly known to be tops in the nation for wife-battering, rape and child abuse.
However, hope is on the way. Despite the passionate effort of conservatives, the ancient order of patriarchy is slowly dying at the hands of scientific progress and other changing environmental forces. The question is how many more generations of women will suffer before it's finally over? If women do nothing but wait for more men to evolve and support equal rights policies, the shift will come later. However, if most women, including dominated women, simply vote for equal rights candidates now, the end to the prevailing tyranny of patriarchy will come sooner.
In the Nov. 2, 2004, election, opposing candidates and party platforms clearly take one side or the other: patriarchy vs. equality. Following are some current issues taken from The ABC's of Women's Issues, which impact the quality of life and self-sufficiency of women. (For complete issue information visit www.womensorganizations.org.)
* Access to bank credit and federal government contracting goals and safeguards for women-owned businesses must be im-proved.
* Affordable, quality child care for all who need it must be a national priority.
* Women must be explicitly guaranteed equal rights by the U.S. Constitution.
* All women and their families must have access to affordable and comprehensive health care.
* Privacy rights guaranteed by Roe v. Wade and comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education, including discussions of disease prevention, family planning and birth control, must be defended and promoted.
* Inequality of pay between men and women -- full-time, year-round female workers currently earn, on average, 77 percent of what full-time male workers earn -- can be explained by occupational segregation and traditional patterns of discrimination. Women and men performing work of equal skill, effort and responsibility should be paid equally, even if job titles are different.
* Any effort to weaken Title IX, such as giving educators more flexibility to establish single-sex education or decreasing funding for women's sports should be defeated.
* The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) must be fully funded as well as improved with new, innovative programs providing assistance to victims of violence.
There are men who appreciate the benefits of equal rights for women and behave accordingly. However, other men, conservatives especially, prefer that women are hobbled. They demonstrate that preference by using public policy and religious pressure to preserve their imbalanced, patriarchal system.
Women with patriarchal partners may feel afraid to assert their political beliefs. Despite that, there are ways these women may safely vote for their own best candidate. Restricted women may request a registration form or absentee ballot from the Division of Elections by phone or online. Less restricted women may go to the polls and rely on the private voting booth for safety. No threatened woman need ever tell an abuser how she actually votes. Whatever it takes, I urge every woman, in honor of our chastised, suffragette foremothers and in the best interests of our granddaughters, to vote as if her life depends on it ... because it does.
Barbara McDaniel is a lifelong Alaska resident who is employed in the mental health field.
ON 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT, SEN. DAYTON RECALLS SEN. WELLSTONE, MRS. WELLSTONE’S COMMITMENT TO ENDING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
US Fed News (USA)
September 15, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 -- The office of Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., issued the following press release:
Sen. Mark Dayton today observed the 10th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), a bill championed by the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone and his wife, Sheila.
In an address to members of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Dayton paid special tribute to the Wellstones for their passionate advocacy and support of VAWA. Dayton also praised the law which has improved the lives of thousands of women and children throughout the country. "As we observe this tremendous anniversary, let us remember two incredible people - Paul and Sheila Wellstone - who were deeply committed to the protection of our families and the termination of domestic violence in our communities," said Dayton. "There is no doubt Paul and Sheila would continue to champion this noble cause if they were with us today. I am very proud to celebrate this legislation which protects our nation's women and children from the horrors of domestic abuse." Since its enactment in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act has benefited thousands of women and children. The act has increased the number of programs and shelter services available to victims, provided resources to prosecutors and police officers investigating domestic violence cases, and created a national toll-free hotline to report abuses and receive counseling.
MERCED FAMILY SUES OVER DELAYS
HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICE ACCUSED OF CONSTITUTIONAL BREECH IN GREEN CARD CASE
Modesto Bee, The (CA)
October 16, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A mother, son and daughter from Merced are the lead plaintiffs in a nationwide class-action lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"They have a right to be here, and to work," said David Armendariz, a lawyer representing Maria Santillan and her grown children in the case.
But the Santillans have no "green cards" to prove they're here legally.
"Thousands and thousands" of recently legalized immigrants across the country are in the same situation, Armendariz said Friday.
The Santillans' lawsuit, filed in early July in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeks to get green cards issued to all those people.
The exact number is not known.
All have been before immigration judges who ruled that the immigrants are entitled to permanent resident status rather than deportation.
Federal officials, however, acknowledge that the government is no longer issuing green cards immediately after such rulings.
The government asserts that security-related background checks are the reason for the delay.
The Santillans' case cleared a preliminary hurdle Tuesday, when Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that the Merced family can sue on behalf of thousands of immigrants nationwide.
Efforts to reach the Santillans were not successful Thursday or Friday.
Their attorneys claim the Santillans have suffered great hardship as a result of the federal government's heel-dragging on the green cards for 17 months.
The family spent five years in deportation proceedings, asserting that instead of being forced to leave the United States, they should receive green cards.
What happened was that in 1998, Santillan, who had lived in the United States for more than a decade, was charged by immigration authorities with being here illegally.
SPOUSAL ABUSE A FACTOR
But she was the wife of a legal U.S. resident. He could have petitioned to have her and her children declared legal residents.
But he didn't.
He had abused her, according to her legal papers.
A 1992 law, the Violence Against Women Act, allowed her to seek permanent resident status for herself and her children.
She applied under that law, which provided for temporary working papers for her and her children while an immigration judge weighed the case.
Five years later, the judge ruled in the Santillans' favor.
It was May 2003, and the old Immigration and Naturalization Service had just been abolished.
The new agency that handled processing of green cards, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, was just 2months old.
NEW AGENCY, NEW PROCEDURES
The agency, created as part of the Department of Homeland Security, implemented procedures that delayed the processing of green cards for people granted permanent resident status by a judge, according to documents in the case.
The Santillans waited and waited. While they were waiting, their temporary employment authorization cards expired.
That was the end of the cashier's job that Flora Rodriguez-Santillan had held for five years: With no valid employment document, she was fired, the family's lawsuit states.
Maria Santillan and her son also fear they'll lose their jobs.
And Santillan can't travel to visit her 85-year-old mother in Mexico: Without a card, she can't return to the United States.
"They're in the same position as undocumented persons," said Armendariz, who works with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law of Texas. The private law firm Cooley Godward also is working on the case.
U.S. immigration officials cite national security to justify the delays.
"Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the need to conduct more rigorous and thorough background checks" has caused delays, Homeland Security official Janis S. Sposato said in a sworn declaration.
Her declaration said the agency is working to speed up the process.
The Santillans' lawsuit asserts that the delays violate the Constitution's guarantee of due process, or fair procedures.
Gun convictions aid effort against domestic abuse
Prevention: Laws impose stiff sentences for possessing firearms after domestic abuse convictions
Salt Lake Tribune, The (UT)
October 18, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The legal problems of three Utah men didn't end with their misdemeanor convictions for domestic violence.
The trio are targeted for stiff sentences for allegedly possessing a firearm, a violation for defendants with domestic violence convictions already on their records. The indictments were handed up by a federal grand jury last week -- coincidentally, in the middle of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Erick Somchith, 22, of Sandy; David Todd Heckenliable, 43, Eureka; and Jaime DeLuna, 30, Sunset, each face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if found guilty of possessing a firearm following a domestic violence conviction.
U.S. Attorney Paul Warner says prosecutions like these, conducted under an anti-gun violence initiative, are making communities safer by taking offenders off the streets and warning potential criminals of the consequences of illegally owning a weapon.
"We're interested in prevention," Warner said last week at a news conference in Salt Lake City marking the 10th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
VAWA and subsequent legislation created new laws targeting domestic violence and stalking, increased penalties for repeat sex offenders, required states to enforce protection orders, provided relief to battered immigrants that stops their abusers from using immigration laws to control their victims and established the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Warner and other law enforcement officials said Project Safe Neighborhoods, a multiagency effort to crack down on gun violence, has been a useful tool in combating domestic abuse. Many PSN cases are prosecuted under VAWA laws, which prohibit individuals who have been convicted of a domestic violence offense or who are subject to a protective order from having a firearm.
John Huber, the Utah PSN coordinator, said 750 offenders have been prosecuted for all kinds of gun crimes since the project began in 2000 and are serving a collective 2,800 years in prison. One result is a decrease in aggravated assaults, he said.
"Domestic violence is our new focus," Huber added.
Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse said the most dangerous calls for officers involve domestic violence and agreed all levels of law enforcement need to concentrate on these cases. And Davis County Attorney Mel Wilson called the coordinated effort against gun crimes and domestic violence "a godsend," helping to protect victims and prevent more violence.
Those with questions about gun laws or information about possible violations can contact the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or local police.
Chief Justice Rehnquist hospitalized for treatment of thyroid cancer
Anniston Star, The (AL)
October 25, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the second-oldest man to preside over the nation's highest court and its premier conservative figure, is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer.
Rehnquist, 80, underwent a tracheotomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in suburban Maryland on Saturday, the Supreme Court announced Monday. It said he expects to be back at work next week when the court will next be in session.
Even so, Rehnquist's hospitalization little more than a week before the election gave new prominence to a campaign issue that has been overshadowed by the war on terrorism. The next president is likely to name several justices to a court that has been deeply divided in recent years on issues as varied as abortion and the 2000 election itself.
Rehnquist, a conservative named to the court in 1972 by President Richard Nixon and elevated to chief justice by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, has had a series of health problems.
In 2002 he missed several court sessions after hurting his knee in a fall at his home. He had surgery to repair a torn tendon. Rehnquist also has struggled with chronic back pain over the years and has spent time in physical therapy.
The thyroid gland, located in the neck, produces hormones that help regulate the body's use of energy. There are several types of thyroid cancer and it was not immediately known which type affected the justice.
About 23,600 people develop various types of thyroid cancer each year in the United States.
Rehnquist turned 80 earlier this month, a milestone reached by only one other chief justice of the United States. The only older chief justice was Roger Taney, who presided over the high court in the mid-1800s until his death at 87.
Word of the cancer came in a two paragraph release from the court. It said Rehnquist was recently diagnosed with cancer and that he was admitted to the hospital on Friday. There were no other details about his condition.
Rehnquist has frequently been mentioned as a possible retirement prospect, although he has hired law clerks through June 2006. He turned 80 on Oct. 1, and at a birthday celebration he made no mention of stepping down.
No matter who is elected president next week, a vacancy on the high court is likely during the next presidential term. Both President Bush and John Kerry have avoided describing a litmus test for a Supreme Court nomination, although their differences on abortion are cut along partisan lines. The future of the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion is the most visible symbol of the court's ideological split.
Neither Bush nor Kerry has suggested any names for possible nomination if a Supreme Court seat becomes vacant during the next four years, but they have spoken about judges' approaches to specific issues.
On the subject of gay marriage, Bush said at the Republican convention: "I support the protection of marriage against activist judges, and I will continue to appoint federal judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law."
Kerry has said he would nominate only Supreme Court justices who support abortion rights, and his campaign Web site says he would name "judges with a record of enforcing the nation's civil rights and anti-discrimination laws."
On Dec. 13, 2000, Rehnquist joined four other Supreme Court justices in reversing Florida's court-ordered recount of presidential election ballots. The majority of the high court determined there was no time to conduct a lawful recount.
That decision resulted in George W. Bush being awarded Florida's 25 electoral votes - and thus the presidency - over Democrat Al Gore.
Rehnquist presided over then-President Clinton's 1998 impeachment trial in the Senate, giving most Americans their first televised view of the chief justice. The previous year, he presided as the court ruled unanimously that Paula Jones could sue Clinton for sexual harassment.
The last vacancy on the court occurred in 1994, and then-President Bill Clinton appointed Stephen Breyer to fill the seat vacated when Justice Harry M. Blackmun retired.
Other members of the high court have also been treated for cancer. Justice John Paul Stevens, the oldest at 84, has had prostate cancer. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had breast cancer and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had colon cancer.
Word of the illness comes as the Supreme Court deals with multiple legal fights stemming from the election campaign season. On Saturday, the court refused to place independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in Pennsylvania. The high court has not yet acted on a similar appeal from Nader involving Ohio.
Rehnquist, a widower since 1991, has three children.
Rehnquist has defied retirement rumors, even as some observers wondered aloud whether his conservative legacy - empowering states, limiting abortion and preserving the death penalty - may have run its course.
When he was appointed, Rehnquist was a conservative who had campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Nixon.
Rehnquist quickly became known as the "lone ranger" among his more liberal colleagues at the time, writing stinging dissents in cases upholding abortion rights and busing to desegregate schools.
A series of more conservative judicial appointments by presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush changed the court's makeup. By the late 1990s, Rehnquist was at the forefront of several majority rulings allowing the use of public money for religious institutions and greater government powers for police searches.
Rehnquist was a 47-year-old Justice Department lawyer with a reputation for brilliance and unbending conservative ideology when Nixon nominated him to succeed the retired Justice John Harlan.
It was a period when the court, under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, was beginning a slow journey away from the liberal jurisprudence and civil rights agenda personified by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
"He probably had more of a crusader's attitude when he first got the job, and was writing lone and blistering dissents," Washington lawyer Charles Cooper once said about the justice he served as a law clerk in 1978-79.
Rehnquist's opinions are often simply worded and short, and his courtroom style is dry and brusque. He is known as a stern and efficient taskmaster at the court, and a fierce competitor on the tennis court and at the poker table.
Rehnquist has suffered from a chronic sore back, for which he had surgery in 1995. For several years, he has gotten up to stretch his back at least once during the court's hour-long oral arguments.
Rehnquist has varied interests in history, geography, music and painting. He is prolific author, with books on the Supreme Court's history and on a topic that later became prophetic - political impeachment.
While rulings on social issues, free speech and crime drew more headlines, many lawyers point to the notion of states' rights, or federalism, as the hallmark of the Rehnquist court.
Less combative than Justice Antonin Scalia, less doctrinaire than Justice Clarence Thomas, Rehnquist has been the low-key force behind the court's push for greater states' rights at the expense of federal control.
Rehnquist was in the majority as the court struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act, invalidated the Gun-Free School Zones Act and prevented state employees from suing their employers for various kinds of alleged discrimination.
Women must get informed and vote
Leader, The (Corning, NY)
Section: Opinion
October 29, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
According to USA Today, 22 million unmarried women who were eligible to vote in the 2000 election did not.
Twenty-two million. That figure does not account for the married women who didn't vote, either. Ladies, our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought hard for our right to have a voice in this country. We need to use it and be heard. We should not and cannot stand by and let other people make decisions that are harmful for our country and the generations to come. So, what can you do?
Don't just vote - become an informed voter. Know where the candidates stand on issues that mean something to you, such as environment, energy, education, health care, economy. Also, know that we are not just voting for a new president in November. We are also voting for House and Senate representatives. These people are a lot closer to home and will vote for bills that are in your interest.
Ladies, a bit of information: The more women political leaders we have, the more we are represented and heard. Our needs will continue to be met and women's rights will not regress. Samara Barend is running for Congress in our district. She is a woman and will fight for women. This year is the 10th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act. Domestic violence is a plague upon women and continues because of silence. The act is up for renewal next year, and it is imperative that we have a representative who will maintain it. Sam will speak out against these horrific acts against women. Sam will also fight for equal pay for women. As of right now, full-time working women earn an average of 73 cents for every dollar that a man earns. We must continue to fight for these constitutional rights.
Lastly, follow up. Send letters to your Congress people and senators. Tell them where you stand on certain issues and how you would like them to vote on upcoming House and Senate issues.
Most important, let's not let another election go by without taking a stand. It is in our hands to make a difference and take this country where it needs to go. Let's make election year 2004 the year that America hears women roar.
Kristin Mitcham, Campbell
Husband's suicide leaves ex-nun facing deportation
Peruvian immigrant in legal black hole - Marriage of 2 years required for residency
Seattle Times, The (WA)
November 1, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Rubi Dobrenz stares intently at her hands — her voice tiny, her accent strong — as she tells how her husband of three months left their Mount Vernon home one Sunday morning and never came back.
The Peruvian national, a former cloistered nun, says now that she should have known something was wrong. In the days before Al Dobrenz shot and killed himself, he'd seemed out of sorts: He'd been too nervous, too antsy, too concerned that his wife knew exactly where everything was in the house — clothes, money, stuff.
His death four years ago has left her in a kind of immigration black hole — and in a small fraternity of foreign nationals whose claim to permanent residency in the U.S. died when their U.S.-born spouses did.
With Al Dobrenz's death, U.S. immigration officials two years ago had no choice but to deny the petition he had filed on his wife's behalf and to place her in the pipeline for deportation.
Had the Dobrenzes been married at least two years at the time he died, she would have been eligible to self-petition for a green card.
But U.S. immigration law, largely seen as generous when an American marries a foreigner, makes little provision for those on the path to permanent residency when the U.S. citizen spouse unexpectedly dies.
"It's been said that in this country when it comes to immigration, if you follow the rules you will be given a chance," said Brent Renison, an immigration attorney in Portland, who is working to bring attention to these cases.
He has a client, a South African woman whose truck-driver husband of 11 months was killed when his car was crushed by an oncoming truck, who also is fighting deportation.
"These people followed the rules, and by an act of God that chance was taken away."
Across the country, at least 23 foreign nationals, caught in circumstances similar to Rubi Dobrenz's, are fighting to stay in the U.S.
The majority of them are women; half of them have children born in this country.
"In some areas of immigration law, we have local discretion. In others, we simply don't," said Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
This, she said, is one of the latter.
2-year green card
The procedures by which an American citizen and a foreign-born spouse can petition for permanent residency were established by the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.
Contrary to what many believe, the marriage does not make permanent residency automatic.
The foreign-born spouse qualifies for a conditional green card that is good for two years. At the end of that period, the couple must return to have the conditions removed.
Five decades ago, the process was simple and quick, Renison said. "Many of these cases were adjudicated [decided upon] the same day."
It wasn't until 1999 that Congress made allowances for the death of a spouse. Widows and widowers of U.S. citizens could then self-petition for a green card.
But concerns about possible marriage fraud prompted lawmakers to require couples to have been married at least two years before the U.S. citizen spouse's death.
"It's a somewhat arbitrary cutoff," Rubi Dobrenz's Seattle attorney, Bart Stroupe, said of the two-year rule.
"In some cases, like Rubi's, it creates a hardship. There are procedures that the immigration service uses to judge the bona fides of a marriage — even if it's a brief marriage."
Over the years, there have been exceptions to the two-year rule: Spouses of Sept. 11 victims were granted waivers, as have widows or widowers of active-duty military personnel killed in combat.
In 2000, Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., won congressional approval of a bill written on behalf of a widow from Thailand whose husband was killed in a car crash near their home in Vancouver, Wash.
But a bill in Congress that would grant waivers to people like Rubi Dobrenz, assuming they can prove their marriage was legitimate, has been stalled.
"There's an awareness the problem exists," Renison said. "Congress doesn't want to be seen to be deporting 9/11 widows and widows of servicemen.
"But we should cover everybody if we will cover anyone in this group of people whom I believe everyone will agree is deserving of some sort of humane consideration."
Dobrenz, who first came to the U.S. in 1997, is hanging her hopes on a section of the law reserved for victims of domestic violence — the Violence Against Women Act.
In her case now pending before an immigration judge, Stroupe makes the argument that despite Al Dobrenz's love for his wife, his suicide was an extreme act of cruelty.
"In all the litigation, no one has questioned that Al and Rubi loved each other, that he wrote a will that left everything to her, that they had joint bank accounts, real estate ... that they had joined their lives like married people do," Stroupe said.
20 years in convent
What makes Dobrenz's case even more compelling is that she's a former nun who spent 20 years — nearly half her life — in a cloistered convent run by the Carmelite Order.
Cloistered nuns set themselves apart from the outside world for prayer and reflection, said Sister Charlene Hudon, a member of the Sisters of Providence religious order who knows Rubi Dobrenz.
Dobrenz had left the convent in Peru temporarily and returned to her parents' home, where her father was dying from colon cancer.
Thinking a change would be good for her, her convent had recommended that she be transferred to a facility in New Mexico. But she never made it there, in part, because the time with her father had kept her away too long.
She came to the U.S. in 1997 on a visa the government grants religious workers. She went to Mount Vernon, where a younger brother lived, and took a job packing potatoes.
Al Dobrenz would become the first man she was ever involved with.
Inside the modest, ranch-style house that she bought two years ago, Rubi Dobrenz — shy at first — recently talked about how their relationship developed.
She met him at the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley the year after she arrived. She had gone with a Peruvian friend to the event, and later Al, married at the time, invited several other Peruvians to his home for a party.
More than a year went by before she saw him again — at the wedding of the friend she'd gone to the festival with. It was just in passing — she was arriving as he, divorced by now, was leaving. Later her friend told her there was someone who had an interest in her.
Initially, she resisted the advances of Al Dobrenz, who was 63 at the time he died. He was much older than she, and the initial attraction wasn't there, she admits.
But Al Dobrenz didn't give up.
"He was really nice," she said. "He came every day to my job. I had seen before he was so special," she said. "I know he was good man."
They were engaged in January 2000. "At first I didn't think it would work," she said. "But every day I came home he had vacuumed and cleaned and put things away. I didn't have much.
"He stole my heart and I think I did start to love him."
In March 2000 they were married.
Al Dobrenz, a veteran who had run a small business, encouraged his new wife to quit her job.
They rented a house and settled into a life together. "Every day, everything we did together," she said.
Court documents show that Al Dobrenz believed he had colon cancer, although his doctors told him he was cancer-free.
Rubi said that the day before he died he was "acting nervous, was really stressed out."
The next morning she noticed more odd behavior. He kept asking if she knew where certain items were in the house, she recalls.
Around 8 a.m. he took off in his car.
Two hours later the police showed up at the house to tell her he was dead.
"I feel really bad because I couldn't understand," she said. "At that time I still didn't speak English very well, and there were probably things he was trying to say to me that I didn't understand. It's a painful thing that I couldn't understand what he was experiencing."
Her younger brother, who lives in Mount Vernon and is a U.S. citizen, had petitioned for her to get her green card before she was married. But it could take at least 15 years before she reaches the head of the line, her attorney said.
"Rubi came here with baggage behind her but still within her, not knowing the outside world, not knowing men," said Sister Charlene, who first met Rubi Dobrenz when she began taking English classes shortly after she arrived.
"If she has to go back, what would a 46-year-old single [widowed] woman do in a society that does not recognize divorce and has certain beliefs about what it means to be in religious life and then leave it?"
COURT UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE
Roanoke Times, The (VA)
December 7, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A federal appeals court has upheld a death sentence for Aquilia Barnette, who killed a passing motorist in North Carolina for the car he drove to Roanoke to kill his former girlfriend.
Monday's decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a significant step in the long-running case, which began in the summer of 1996 when Robin Williams was chased from a Loudon Avenue home, gunned down in the street, and left to die in her mother's arms.
Barnette, angry at Williams at the time for breaking off their relationship, admitted to killing her. He also admitted to killing Donald Lee Allen in Charlotte, N.C., the day before. He told police that he picked Allen at random, waiting at a darkened intersection for a lone motorist to get caught by a red light, because he needed a car to find Williams.
After ordering Allen out of the car and shooting him in the back, Barnette drove the stolen car to Roanoke and used the same shotgun to kill the 23-year-old Williams.
Although Barnette's guilt was never in question, his case took several unusual turns. Virginia and North Carolina authorities opted for an unusual trial in federal court in Charlotte that consolidated both killings in one case. The result was the nation's first death sentence under the Violence Against Women Act.
That verdict was reversed in 2000 by the 4th Circuit, which ruled that defense lawyers should have been given the chance to rebut psychiatric testimony that portrayed Barnette as a cold-blooded psychopath.
A second death sentence from a different jury was affirmed Monday by the same court. Rejecting 10 arguments that generally dealt with procedural grounds and the makeup of Barnette's jury, the court commented Monday on "the infinite care" taken to protect his rights at both trials.
"Justice has been served," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose said. "The facts of this case were horrible, horrible facts."
Although Barnette can still appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Monday's unanimous opinion by a three-judge panel substantially limits his chances of avoiding lethal injection. "There's not a whole lot of room left to maneuver," Rose said.
Barnette is the first person to be sentenced to death for a Roanoke murder since 1978, when Major Henry Johnson was condemned for killing and robbing his landlord. Johnson's sentence was reversed on appeal, and he later received a life sentence.
Barnette, 31, is being held on the federal government's death row in Terre Haute, Ind.
SEN. BIDEN CALLS SUPREME COURT RULING IN VIOLENCE CASE 'EXTREMELY TROUBLING'
US Fed News (USA)
December 8, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 -- The office of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., issued the following press release:
Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., author and chief sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act, today called the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Morrison "extremely troubling" and expressed concern that the court was usurping policy-making power from Congress. The ruling struck down a provision of the Violence Against Women Act that allowed victims of domestic violence or sexual assault to sue their attackers in federal court.
"This ruling will have a significant impact on Congress's power to be responsive to public needs," Biden said.
"I am troubled by the direction the Court has headed in the past eight years or so. In my view, the Supreme Court has become bolder and bolder in stripping the federal government of the ability to make decisions on behalf of the American people," Biden said. "Congress, and not the courts, should have the primary responsibility for striking the right balance between state and federal power."
In a 5-4 ruling today, the Court said the civil rights provision of the Violence Against Women Act exceeded Congress's authority under the Constitution's commerce and equal protection clauses.
"Four years of congressional hearings and a massive legislative record showed that violence against women substantially and directly affects interstate commerce by preventing a discrete group — women — from participating fully in the day-to-day commerce of this country," Biden countered.
"Congress also found that some states violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution by treating violence against women less seriously than other crimes," Biden said. "The states simply could not or would not adequately address the problems of domestic violence and sexual assault. And this provision was an appropriate way to redress discrimination in state legal systems."
Biden also noted that the Court's ruling did not affect the majority of the Violence Against Women Act. "It is important to emphasize that the civil rights remedy struck down by the Court represents only one small piece of the comprehensive approach to violence against women embodied in the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Nothing in the Court's decision today affects the validity of any other provision or program in the Act."
The Rehnquist Revolution
New Republic, The (USA)
December 27, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A Court Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law By Mark Tushnet (W.W. Norton, 384 pp., $27.95)
Learned Hand, an influential federal judge from New York, used to be famous for saying, in the middle of World War II, that "the spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." Hand practiced what he preached. A leading apostle of judicial restraint, Hand was reluctant to strike down the decisions of state and federal governments. Sharply critical of the liberal Warren Court, which he thought unduly activist, Hand was a conservative icon, simply because he believed that judges should give the benefit of every doubt to the elected branches of government.
The Supreme Court has long been firmly under conservative control, but it has not been following Learned Hand. Consider a simple fact. In its first seventy-five years, the Supreme Court struck down only two acts of Congress. In the eighteen years since Ronald Reagan nominated William H. Rehnquist as chief justice, the Court has invalidated more than three dozen. Under Rehnquist, the Court has compiled a record of judicial activism that is, in some ways, without parallel in the nation's history. Its most controversial majority opinions have usually been produced by its two moderate conservatives, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, and its three more extreme conservatives, Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.
Rehnquist is now extremely ill, and it is widely rumored that he will be leaving the Supreme Court soon. An unfailingly gracious and generous man, Rehnquist must be counted as one of the giants of American law, because he has presided over and greatly contributed to a Supreme Court that has radically revised previous understandings of the Constitution. Since joining the Court as associate justice in 1971, Rehnquist has had a clear agenda for constitutional interpretation: to renew limits on Congress's power under the commerce clause, to increase the protection of private property, to strike down affirmative action programs, to scale back the use of the Constitution to protect those accused of crime, to reduce the protection of privacy, to stop the use of the equal protection clause to assist members of disadvantaged groups (disabled people, the elderly, illegitimate children, women), and much more. The Rehnquist Court has not always acted in accordance with the views of William Rehnquist, but it has moved dramatically in his preferred directions. What complicates the picture is that O'Connor and Kennedy have frequently insisted on caution. In some cases, the result has been to lead the Rehnquist Court to respect for precedent, to restraint, and to a modest but unmistakable degree of continuity with the rights-protecting decisions of the Warren Court.
In Mark Tushnet's account, the division between the two sets of conservatives on the Court corresponds to a deeper division, one that has played a large role in modern American politics. O'Connor and Kennedy represent the older and more traditional wing of the Republican Party, and Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist represent the modern Republican Party as it has been transformed by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. The latter side of the party is far more radical, for it rejects "the principles that animated our government from the New Deal through the Great Society." Tushnet thinks that we have an emphatically Republican Supreme Court whose majority is split between the party's two wings.
In his view, the old Republicans on the Supreme Court have worked with the new ones to produce significant constitutional change, above all by limiting the power of the national government. But the new Republicans, including the chief justice, have been abandoned by the older ones on the social issues: thus the Court has refused to move in radically conservative directions on such issues as abortion, affirmative action, gay rights, and the separation of church and state. Tushnet's conclusion is that "the Court's economic conservatives won and its cultural conservatives lost." And the reason is that in politics, too, economic conservatives have been winning and cultural conservatives have been losing. The outcomes on the Rehnquist Court reproduce the outcomes in the American political process.
The bulk of Tushnet's discussion is divided into two parts, the first exploring individual members of the Rehnquist Court, the second focusing on particular areas of constitutional law. He offers a detailed treatment of Kennedy, stressing an underappreciated fact: this Reagan appointee wrote both of the Rehnquist Court's key decisions protecting gay rights. The first, in 1996, struck down a weird Colorado amendment to the state constitution, forbidding states and localities to protect gays and lesbians against discrimination. The second, in 2003, invalidated a ban on homosexual sodomy (and heterosexual sodomy, too).
In both cases, Kennedy wrote in bold and ambitious terms, describing a constitution whose meaning changes over time. He began his opinion in the Colorado case in this way: "One century ago, the first Justice Harlan admonished this Court that the Constitution 'neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.' Unheeded then, those words are now understood to create a commitment to the law's neutrality where the rights of persons are at stake." In the Texas case, he insisted that "liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters relating to sex.... As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom." Tushnet criticizes Kennedy for what he sees as a streak of pomposity, and he is unable to explain Kennedy's interest in gay rights; but he sees Kennedy as an old-style Republican, with a strong libertarian streak and a willingness to make changes in the law in accordance with evolving social values.
Tushnet depicts Scalia as a fundamentally different judge, committed to the view that the Constitution is solid and unchanging, and to a belief that those who disagree with him are essentially lawless--and dumb, and maybe dishonest. As Tushnet acknowledges, Scalia's principal contribution to the Court (and it is an important one) has been an insistence on the need for clear rules laid down in advance. Hence Scalia is skeptical of the time-honored idea, emphasized above all by O'Connor, that judges should decide one case at a time; he believes that an approach of this kind makes the law unpredictable and increases the discretion of unelected judges. Scalia's commitment to rules is linked to his belief in "originalism," the view that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with the original understanding of those who ratified it. (Here Scalia differs from Rehnquist, who pays much attention to history but has not endorsed originalism as a creed.) Tushnet adds that some of Scalia's surprising votes in free-speech cases have a great deal to do with his enthusiasm for rule-bound law: he provided a key vote, for example, in two majority opinions protecting flag-burning. Tushnet argues that Scalia feared the dissenters' approach would breed confusion and uncertainty in the law.
In fact, Scalia has been generally a strong advocate of free speech, in part because he believes that judges would be unable to administer a system that carves out vague exceptions from the free-speech guarantee. But Tushnet does not mean to celebrate Scalia, whom he describes as arrogant and far too sure that he is right. In Tushnet's view, Scalia "isn't as smart as he thinks he is." He believes that Scalia's inflated sense of his own abilities has been reinforced by the "vocal admiration that Scalia received from conservative legal activists." Tushnet also believes that Scalia's much-praised writing is just "the sound-bite style of Crossfire, highly quotable, reducing complex issues to simple--and often misleading--phrases," in which he treats those who disagree with him as "stupid" or as "liars." The more general point is that unlike Kennedy and O'Connor, Scalia has a clear agenda, seeking large-scale changes in constitutional law that cut across both economic and social issues.
Clarence Thomas has a similar agenda, and he certainly rejects the view that the Constitution allows affirmative action and protects abortion and gay rights; but Tushnet argues that Thomas is no Scalia clone, and indeed Tushnet seems to admire him. No less than Scalia, Thomas insists that the Constitution should be interpreted to fit with the original understanding of those who ratified it. But much more than Scalia, Thomas is willing to reject longstanding precedent in order to reclaim that original understanding. In a controversial opinion in 1992, for example, Thomas wrote that severe beatings of prisoners by their guards do not offend the cruel and unusual punishment clause, which was not originally understood to question "any hardship that might befall a prisoner during incarceration." Thomas went much further in 2004, invoking the original understanding to make the radical (though historically plausible) suggestion that the establishment clause--the constitutional source of the separation of church and state--does not apply to the states at all.
With respect to racial discrimination, Thomas has been a particularly distinctive voice, challenging what he sees as "racial paternalism." Where Scalia appears to see affirmative action as a form of social engineering, Thomas contends that it reflects condescension and pity and is ultimately incompatible with equality itself. Thomas insists that affirmative action programs "will help fulfill the bigot's prophecy about black underperformance." At various times in his life, Thomas has been said to have admired Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Richard Wright, and Malcolm X; and it is a unifying theme for these diverse figures that they favored self-help and abhorred pity. Thomas's skepticism about what he calls a "patronizing indulgence" from the state marks much of his writing and makes his voice genuinely unique.
Tushnet devotes a full chapter to only one member of the Rehnquist Court who cannot be characterized as conservative: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He focuses on her successful effort to interpret the Constitution's equal protection clause to forbid official discrimination on the basis of sex. As Tushnet notes, much of Ginsburg's career, before she moved to the bench, was devoted to the claim that sex discrimination, like racial discrimination, is often motivated by prejudice--and should be struck down unless government can justify it in neutral terms. As a lawyer, Ginsburg accomplished a great deal to move the law in this direction. As a Supreme Court justice, she wrote the majority opinion in the Rehnquist Court's most important sex-discrimination case, involving the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). There the Court struck down the exclusion of women from VMI notwithstanding the claim that women could not handle its "adversative method," which involves a great deal of physical and psychological hazing. The Court acknowledged that if women were admitted, VMI would have to alter some features of the adversative system, but it rejected, on the basis of history, the claim that the slightly modified system would be unsuitable for women.
With this ruling, Ginsburg moved constitutional law very close to treating sex discrimination with the same hostility applied to racial discrimination. And O'Connor and Kennedy joined Ginsburg's opinion. Tushnet's most general point is that the Court's opinion was a reflection of "changing social values about the role of women." He writes, somewhat sardonically, that the Rehnquist Court "was entirely unified about women's issues appealing to suburban women."
Tushnet describes a court that has followed the extreme conservatives on some important issues. Under Rehnquist's leadership, the constitutional law of federalism has seen a kind of revolution. Between 1937 and 1995, the Court did exceedingly little to limit the power of the national government, failing to issue even a single ruling to the effect that Congress had exceeded its authority under the commerce clause. By contrast, the Rehnquist Court has re-invigorated limitations on congressional power, striking down provisions of both the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the Violence Against Women Act. For many decades, the Court ruled that Congress had a great deal of flexibility to protect liberty and equality under its power to "enforce" the Fourteenth Amendment. Sharply limiting these rulings, the Rehnquist Court has struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and parts of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Tushnet thinks that these decisions reflect "disdain for Congress."
Under the Rehnquist Court, as Tushnet explains, U.S. corporations have had many significant successes. Countless companies have been alarmed at the prospect of high punitive-damage awards, and indeed jury awards can be both huge and unpredictable. Does the Constitution stand in the way of such awards? For almost all of the nation's history, the answer was no; juries could award punitive damages without the slightest constitutional restriction. But under the Rehnquist Court, all this has changed. In two crucial decisions, the Court has required that the punitive award have some relationship to the monetary value of the harm that was done. This requirement imposes a real discipline on what juries may do.
As Tushnet reports, some of the most dramatic corporate victories have occurred in the domain of speech. The First Amendment used to be about "rebels and rabble-rousers"; under the Rehnquist Court, it is far more often about money and marketing. In 1976, the Burger Court ruled, for the first time, that commercial advertising is protected by the First Amendment. This was a tentative development, but the Rehnquist Court has massively expanded the protection given to commercial advertisers. Here Thomas has been especially aggressive, arguing that the Court should invalidate any regulation based on the paternalistic (and condescending) idea that consumers cannot decide for themselves. Indeed, Thomas has argued that commercial advertising should receive the same level of protection as political speech. Other members of the Rehnquist Court have shown at least some sympathy for this position, going so far as to invalidate efforts to regulate tobacco advertising.
Many conservative activists have wanted the Supreme Court to expand greatly the reach of the constitutional clause requiring government to protect "just compensation" for any "takings" of private property. In particular, they have wanted the Court to require government to pay compensation when environmental regulations diminish the value of private property. Under the leadership of Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas, the Rehnquist Court has made some movement in their direction--but O'Connor and Kennedy have ensured that the movement has been modest. In Tushnet's summary, the "Rehnquist Court didn't force governments to pay substantially for any modern environmental, wetlands, or historic preservation regulations--if the governments proceeded carefully enough." But after the Court's pro-property decisions, "business and developers can credibly threaten to tie regulation up in court with takings clause challenges unless the regulations are to their liking."
With respect to social issues, Tushnet contends that the Court, led by O'Connor and Kennedy, has been quite cautious. Here Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas have often been thwarted; and here Rehnquist's personal agenda has been partially stalled. True, the Court has narrowly confined affirmative action programs, but it has not eliminated them entirely. In the area of abortion, it has cut back on Roe v. Wade, allowing some regulations that previous decisions forbade; but the Court has refused to reject the fundamental right to choose. The religious right has certainly scored a number of victories before the Rehnquist Court--above all, perhaps, in the Court's decision upholding a system of vouchers in education. The Court has also moved away from the idea of a strict separation of church and state, tending to require instead a form of "neutrality" that will permit government to aid religious institutions so long as it is aiding secular ones as well. But there has been no sea change as yet. (Recall Thomas's suggestion that the establishment clause does not even apply to the states--a suggestion that would make a revolution in the law.)
The Court's conservatism has been more conspicuous in criminal cases, in which the Court has been reluctant to limit police discretion, even when that discretion might well be exercised in racially discriminatory ways. Here, too, Rehnquist has often led the way: he has long sought to scale back Warren Court decisions using the Constitution to protect criminal defendants. Tushnet argues that the Court has "licensed racist police officers to act on their impulses, leaving victims with legal remedies that were available in theory but unavailable in practice." But for most of the social issues, Kennedy and O'Connor have been more moderate than Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist; and as a result, the Court has been more moderate as well.
Tushnet concludes with a big question: what is likely to happen in the future? In his view, a Democratic president would not appoint liberal activists like Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall. Any Democratic appointees would likely continue the O'Connor-Kennedy approach on social issues while rejecting the Rehnquist Court's activism on economic issues. By contrast, moderate Republican appointees would continue to scale back Congress's power, perhaps by invalidating the Endangered Species Act; they would also be more willing to find that environmental regulations violate private-property rights. Conservative Republican appointees would go much further. They might overrule Roe v. Wade; they would certainly be unwilling to use the Constitution to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. They might even strike down laws forbidding discrimination as beyond Congress's power or as interfering with freedom of association. Tushnet believes that these are unlikely scenarios, not least because the confirmation process tends to ensure a measure of moderation. Tushnet's more general point is that the political process is central to movements in constitutional developments--partly because of the process of appointment and confirmation, and partly because the Court is inevitably influenced, at least some of the time, by public opinion.
Tushnet is right to insist that legal arguments by the justices often grow out of political commitments, and from that standpoint he offers a number of shrewd insights about the justices and the law. Ronald Reagan was able to transform the Supreme Court in important ways, above all by appointing Scalia and by elevating Rehnquist to chief justice, but also by appointing O'Connor and Kennedy, two justices with little enthusiasm for the rights-protecting innovations associated with liberal activists such as Warren, Brennan, Marshall, and William Douglas. Republican presidents may not have gotten everything that they desired, but they succeeded in dramatically changing the law, simply because the constitutional understandings of their appointees tended toward the right.
Of course Tushnet is correct to reject the view--ludicrous but widespread in conservative circles--that the Rehnquist Court, or at least Scalia and Thomas, is speaking neutrally for "the law." The conservatism of the Rehnquist Court is a product of a self-conscious and highly politicized re-engineering of the federal judiciary brought about by conservatives in the White House and Congress. Tushnet is also right to insist that all the current justices are at least occasional activists, willing and able--some of the time--to use judicial power to invalidate practices that do not obviously violate the Constitution.
Unfortunately, Tushnet does not adequately defend his central claim, which is that the division on the Rehnquist Court reflects a split between old and new Republicans. I believe that the split lies elsewhere. Tushnet thinks that the traditional Republicans favor less economic regulation without being social conservatives, whereas the new Republicans are conservative on both economic and social issues. But it is not easy to show that affirmative action, abortion, and gay rights were favored by some older generation of Republicans. Many of the current divisions in the Republican Party involve a split between the libertarians, who favor free markets and also privacy rights of various sorts, and the more powerful Reaganites, who favor free markets but also have sympathy with the religious right and hence distrust privacy rights. O'Connor and Kennedy have some libertarian inclinations, but they are hardly libertarians. In any case, many contemporary Republicans are moderate on both economic and social issues (Christine Whitman, Rudolph Giuliani, George Pataki). In short, it is not easy to map divisions in the Republican Party onto the Rehnquist Court.
My own view is that the real divisions in the Rehnquist Court involve two radically different approaches to constitutional law. In a nutshell: O'Connor and Kennedy are incrementalists, reluctant to make large-scale changes in existing understandings of the law. Scalia, Thomas, and (to a lesser extent) Rehnquist are legal fundamentalists, or "movement judges," eager to insist on the supremacy of their own view of the Constitution, whatever the precedents say.
Most of the time, O'Connor and Kennedy are certainly conservatives. But they tend to decide cases one at a time. They respect precedent, even when they disagree with it. They do not want to revolutionize the law by reference to first principles. They also show some interest in public opinion, or in what Kennedy has called "evolving social values." Apparently they believe that the Constitution's meaning changes over time; and they think that evolving values play a legitimate role in the interpretive process. Hence, perhaps, their willingness to invalidate laws that interfere with sexual privacy and that discriminate against women. In all these ways, O'Connor and Kennedy are quintessential common-law judges, distrustful of general theories and broad rules, and willing to adjust the law to new conditions and emerging principles.
Scalia and Thomas are altogether different. (Rehnquist is generally with them, but he is somewhat more cautious. In his early days on the Court, he was a bit of a firebrand, carrying out the role now associated with Scalia; but as chief justice he has seemed more moderate, perhaps because of the requirements of his new role, perhaps because the Court as a whole has moved far to the right, and thus has often joined him.) Scalia and Thomas are radicals, seeking to make large-scale changes in constitutional law. They are angry about existing law in a way that O'Connor and Kennedy are not. As Tushnet emphasizes, their organizing theme is "originalism"; they believe that the Constitution should be interpreted to reflect the original understanding of those who ratified it. Originalism enjoys a lot of appeal among many people, but it is also vulnerable to serious objections. As an approach to constitutional interpretation, it must be defended, not simply asserted. Taken seriously, it would seem to lead to consequences that everyone, including Scalia and Thomas, would reject: permitting racial segregation by the national government and probably by the states, allowing sex discrimination, and authorizing a great deal of censorship as well.
Scalia and Thomas do not follow the logic of originalism wherever it leads. Most disturbing of all, they seem least interested in the original understanding when it runs counter to their moral and political convictions. For example, a great deal of historical work suggests that, as originally understood, no provision of the Constitution bans affirmative action programs. Yet Scalia and Thomas have repeatedly declared that the Constitution forbids such programs--and they have not so much as bothered to investigate the original understanding. So, too, a great deal of historical work suggests that under the original understanding, the constitutional protection against "takings" of private property did not require government to pay compensation when regulations merely diminish the value of property. But without even a glance at history, Scalia and Thomas have voted to require government to pay compensation when regulations diminish the value of property. In these (and other) cases, the constitutional understandings of Scalia and Thomas seem uncomfortably close not to the original understanding of the Constitution but to the ideology of the right wing of the Republican Party.
What Tushnet does not emphasize is that the most aggressive decisions of the Rehnquist Court reflect a truly radical change in conservative legal thinking since the 1970s and early 1980s. In that period, the Warren Court was a principal target of conservatives, and many conservatives sought to challenge aggressive judicial interventions into democratic processes, above all Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade. Conservatives claimed that federal judges should give greater respect to the decisions of elected officials; and they offered strong, principled arguments on behalf of that claim.
In a short time, however, things have changed dramatically. For many admirers of Scalia and Thomas, the real target now is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not Earl Warren. There is increasing talk of restoring what is being called the Constitution in Exile--the Constitution as of 1932, Herbert Hoover's Constitution, before Roosevelt's New Deal. This was a period in which the Supreme Court's understanding of the Constitution, obviously rooted in the justices' political convictions, jeopardized maximum-hour legislation, minimum-wage legislation, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Social Security Act--and would certainly have forbidden the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. This was also a period in which racial segregation was constitutionally fine, and in which it would have been ludicrous to say that the Constitution banned sex discrimination or protected a right to sexual and reproductive privacy.
The Bush administration does not lack sympathy for the Constitution in Exile, and President Bush has nominated judges who appear to believe that it should be restored. Conservatives speak of "strict construction," but most of them do not practice it. Few are willing to argue that judges should stay out of the democratic arena. Bush v. Gore was a far more radical intervention into political processes than anything dared by the Warren Court, and it is celebrated rather than reviled. And Bush v. Gore is merely the most visible of a long line of cases in which the Rehnquist Court has seized on ambiguous constitutional provisions to invalidate decisions of Congress and state governments.
Even in its aggressive moments, the Rehnquist Court has not suggested that the Constitution was properly understood by the Supreme Court in 1932. But in limiting national authority to protect disadvantaged groups and in protecting property rights, it has shown unmistakable sympathy for the pre-New Deal Constitution. This is a political program in legal dress. The harsh irony is that the program has been advanced especially aggressively by those members of the Rehnquist Court who contend, and even appear to believe, that they are speaking neutrally for the Constitution.
Guidelines for treating rape victims omit morning-after pills
Wenatchee World, The (WA)
December 31, 2004
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
PHILADELPHIA -- The U.S. Department of Justice has issued its first-ever medical guidelines for treating sexual assault victims -- without any mention of emergency contraception, the standard precaution against pregnancy after rape.
The omission of the so-called morning-after pill has frustrated and angered victims' advocates and medical professionals who have long worked to improve victims' care.
Gail Burns-Smith, one of several dozen experts who vetted the protocol during its three-year development by Justice's Office on Violence Against Women, said emergency contraception was included in an early draft, and she does not know of anyone who opposed it.
"But in the climate in which we are currently operating, politically it's a hot potato," said Burns-Smith, retired director of Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services.
For two weeks, Justice officials were unavailable to talk about the new 141-page protocol, published in September. But in an e-mail, department spokesman Eric Holland reiterrated points made in the document.
"The goals of the protocol are to ensure that all victims, regardless of differences in background or location of service, receive the same high quality medical and forensic exam, while being treated with respect and compassion, and to improve prosecution of sexual assault cases through the appropriate collection of evidence," he wrote. "The protocol is not intended to supercede the many state, local, and tribal protocols that are currently in practice."
Lynn Schollet, a lawyer with the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said without emergency contraception, the trauma of rape could be compounded by an unplanned pregnancy.
"It is very unfortunate to set forth a model national standard that is not giving women the best care available," Schollet said.
The controversy has erupted just weeks before the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to reconsider whether to make it easier to get emergency contraception. A year ago, the FDA rejected non-prescription sales of Plan B, an emergency contraceptive. The ruling delighted conservative groups who had lobbied the Bush administration, but went against the FDA's own staff, advisory panels and major medical societies.
The manufacturer's latest application would make Plan B available without a doctor's orders only to women 16 and over.
The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is now collecting signatures on a petition urging the Justice Department to fix the "glaring omission in an otherwise thorough document."
In the half-page on pregnancy "risk evaluation and care," the protocol says to take victims' pregnancy fears "seriously," give a pregnancy test, and "discuss treatment options, including reproductive health services."
Advocates point out that emergency contraception, which is nothing more than high-dose birth control pills, reduces the chance of pregnancy 75 percent to 90 percent -- but only if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
"This narrow window of effectiveness makes timely access to emergency contraception critical," declares the petition.
Five states -- New York, Illinois, California, Washington and New Mexico -- have laws requiring hospitals to provide the contraception to victims, or at least tell them how to get the pills.
The development of national guidelines was required under the 2000 renewal of the decade-old federal Violence Against Women Act to develop uniform, quality care for sexual assault victims.
"In too many hospitals, the nurses and doctors are still reading the rape kit directions while they're doing the exam," said Linda Ledray, a sexual assault exam trainer who directs the Sexual Assault Resource Service in Minneapolis.
One of the most inconsistent aspects of care is the morning-after pill.
A 2002 analysis of national emergency room data by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey found that only 21 percent of sexual assault victims received it.
The risk of pregnancy after rape is small -- less than 5 percent -- but the vulnerable group is large.
Of 333,000 sexual assaults and rapes reported in 1998, about 25,000 resulted in pregnancies -- of which 22,000 could have been prevented, estimated Princeton University population researcher James Trussell.
Emergency contraception is controversial because, like stem cells and cloning, it has become tangled in the politics of abortion. The method usually works by keeping an egg from being released or being fertilized.
However, it may sometimes prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus -- equated with murder by some conservative groups and the Catholic Church, which opposes all forms of contraception.
