A California attorney featured in a Center for Public Integrity investigation into school discipline will testify at a hearing at the Golden State’s Capitol in Sacramento on April 11. 

California’s Legislature is considering a number of proposals aimed at reducing student suspensions and expulsions, and paving the way for more use of alternatives to removing students.

Attorney Tim McKinley of Kern County, California, represented students whose experiences were recounted in the Center’s report on Kern, whose schools expelled more students than anywhere else in the state last year. The Center story included data showing that Kern’s schools expelled students at a rate four times greater than the California average and more than seven times the national average. 

Kern’s schools also had one of California’s highest rates of student suspension, a punishment that often paves the way for expulsion. Statistics released in March by the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection showed high rates of suspension and expulsion of black students, in particular, from Kern’s schools. Latino students are the largest ethnic group in Kern schools and are suspended and expelled at high rates as well.

Laura Faer, an attorney with the Los Angeles-based pro bono law group Public Counsel, helped organize witnesses to testify on April 11 before the California Assembly Education Committee. The group is sponsoring some of the discipline-related proposals before the Legislature, Faer said, and McKinley’s clients’ experiences illustrate a need for reforms.

 “This has been a year,” Faer said, “when people around the state are finally saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We know there are evidence-based strategies to help keep kids in school.” These counseling methods are more successful at changing behavior than the practice of removing students from classrooms, Faer said.

Repeated removal from school puts students behind, a growing number of educational experts agree, and can lead students to underperform and drop out.   

The Assembly Education Committee’s website and agenda include a list of multiple proposals to reform suspension and expulsion policies.

They include a proposal requiring that schools document attempts to use alternatives to get at “root causes” of misbehavior before resorting to suspending and expelling students for most offenses. The bill — authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco — refers to “positive behavior support” and “restorative justice,” alternative approaches that have proved successful at improving behavior in schools where they have been adopted.

Another bill by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson of Sacramento would change state law to eliminate out-of-school suspensions or expulsions for students based only on accusations of disruption or defiance of school authority. Instead, students could be assigned to supervised in-school suspension.  

In 2010-2011, the Center found, an unusually high number of students in Kern were expelled for allegedly committing acts of obscenity or vulgarity — more than one in four of all cases in California. Kern also had an exceptionally high number of expulsions for defiance or disruption.

McKinley, a former FBI agent, represented an 11-year-old Latino boy in Kern whose mother fought his expulsion from elementary school for alleged sexual battery and obscenity. He also represented an African-American teenager whose parents fought her expulsion for fighting after another girl picked a fight and physically struck her.    

The Bakersfield Californian, Kern County’s biggest newspaper, published an editorial on March 21 calling the Center’s report on expulsions “troubling,” and declaring that parents and the community “deserve an honest explanation from local schools on why expulsions are so high.”

“The reasons we've heard so far aren't very convincing,” the editorial continues. “Some school officials blame budget cuts, which have led to fewer counselors and psychologists to handle disciplinary problems. But budget cuts have been felt statewide; we're not alone there ... Otis Jennings, who oversees discipline for the Kern High School District, says the study has caught the district's attention, and district high schools are making attempts to send more students to counseling before expelling.”

A deadly disease is killing thousands of the world's poorest laborers — and no one knows what is causing it. Last December, reporter Sasha Chavkin and the Center for Public Integrity published an investigation about this deadly mystery, chronic kidney disease.

In the United States, chronic kidney disease is a manageable illness that mostly affects older people with diabetes and high blood pressure. But in Central America, each year thousands of agricultural laborers — almost all men, lacking the usual risk factors, and as young as their 20s — are dying of a new strain of chronic kidney disease that has baffled scientists for more than a decade. The disease has so decimated one community of sugarcane workers in Nicaragua called La Isla, or The Island, that it is now known to locals is La Isla de las Viudas — The Island of the Widows.

That first story about the epidemic prompted the Costa Rican government to launch a study and a leading Costa Rica plantation to announce an overhaul of its worker safety practices. Photographer Anna Maria Barry-Jester produced an award-winning photo gallery on the Island of the Widows that shows the day-to-day routines of a community where an incredible 40 percent of the working-age population suffers from the disease.

But new evidence suggests that this mysterious new form of CKD is not a regional anomaly but an international phenomenon. Sasha and Anna are working on a new investigation that will be the first to connect the outbreaks that are killing some of the world’s poorest and most marginalized workers in Central America to other parts of the world — across several continents.  

Now, we're asking for you to support this team to travel and report, for the first time, on the epidemic’s scope, and expose the risky working conditions and international neglect that have enabled the ailment to become a public health crisis to another part of the world. Sasha plans to write a series of articles exploring this new international threat, and Anna will produce a photo gallery and video illustrating its human consequences. Each year this deadly epidemic is killing thousands of the world's poorest citizens — please help make the world take notice by going to KickStarter and pledging your support for this work.

In 1995, U.S. spy satellites photographed telling moments in the massacre over four days of an estimated 7,800 Bosnians by Bosnian Serb forces near the town of Srebrenica. But these photographs were not publicized by U.S. officials until nearly four weeks after the massacre had ended.

Intelligence analysts did not circulate the evidence to senior officials for 22 days, even though two U.S. diplomats had picked up and circulated warnings about the killings on the first day and again 12 days later (“New Proof Offered of Serb Atrocities,” The Washington Post, Oct. 29. 1995, read an article excerpt on Highbeam).

It was an embarrassing disconnect between top policymakers and officials in the U.S. intelligence community, which jointly missed the chance to sound an alarm about a horrific, genocidal crime — the largest mass killing in Europe since World War II — while it was still under way.

In 2012, the public picture of what’s happening in Syria — where 9,000 people have been killed so far, according to the UN — literally looks different, due to an unusual agreement brokered by White House aides between the intelligence community and the State Department. For more than a month, U.S. intelligence analysts have been declassifying satellite photos depicting the movement of Syrian armor and the destruction of Syrian villages so the department’s Human Rights Bureau can plaster them on its website.

The photos do not depict atrocities, but they convincingly show the massing of Syrian armor and some of the damage caused by the shelling that government forces have made a hallmark of their military campaign against the rebellion. Several display damage to a mosque, school, medical clinic and other buildings in Homs; others display crater concentrations in the rebellious city of Homs and town called Zabadani.

The idea for the display came from officials on the National Security Council, including some with Bosnia experience. Samantha Power, a senior NSC director for multilateral affairs and human rights, is a former reporter in Bosnia who wrote a much-praised book about genocide; she has been a strong advocate for U.S. intervention to stop humanitarian crises. Derek Chollet, a senior NSC adviser for strategic planning who will shortly move to the Pentagon, is a former speechwriter for U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and the author of a book about the Bosnian peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio.

Some policymakers were initially wary about the idea. They worried — as counterparts did during the Bosnian crisis 17 years ago — that displaying evidence of attacks against civilians might inflame political appetites to intervene directly in the fighting. NSC spokeswoman Erin Pelton did not want to speak about internal deliberations but said that “we believe that it is important to reveal the facts of the Assad regime’s outrageous actions against the Syrian people. This type of evidence counters Assad’s false claims, and reveals for the world the true character of the regime.”

The State Department’ human rights bureau has robust competition in presenting the most compelling face of Syria’s repression — or attention-getting evidence of human rights abuses anywhere. Recall, for example, the international attention garnered by the brief film of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death in 2009 after a pro-government militia member shot her during a demonstration in Iran; that film won a Polk Award. Websites featuring evidence of human rights abuses around the world have begun to proliferate; one called the Satellite Sentinel Project, financed by the film actor George Clooney and others, has innovatively used commercially-obtained satellite imagery to document shelling and the destruction of villages by government forces in Sudan.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research, an autonomous group in the UN system with a mix of government and private support, has begun posting satellite photos of refugee camps and graphic maps of cumulative deaths in Syria. And video evidence collected by international news outlets continues to expand; on April 4, for example, a persuasive, depressing interview with a 13-year old boy tortured by Syrian security forces before fleeing to Lebanon appeared on Globalpost’s site.

The Human Rights Bureau’s display of Syrian satellite photos can best be described as a work in progress. It was updated in the past week by slide-show presentations of satellite photos taken in March, but still presents only a single photo linking what can be seen from the sky to what rebels and their supporters have been photographing and transmitting from the ground.

State Department officials have been trying to obtain imagery more quickly from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose expert analysts are working with State’s Syria desk to label tanks, troops, and shelling damage on the photos. The agency is reluctant to acknowledge its role, despite its humanitarian purpose. An NGA spokeswoman, Karen Finn, declined to say how many analysts were engaged in the work or even to confirm they were helping. “I don’t have an on-the-record statement for you,” she said.

Anthony Pahigian, a spokesman for the State Department, explained that until the bureau started its postings, “the only thing that people were seeing was wobbly phone camera pictures, locally sourced and put onto YouTube. What people don’t see is pictures from afar showing, day X tanks massing outside a town; and day Y four days later, many buildings have been destroyed.” He said that the department is not trying to publish data of tactical use to the rebels, but to “tell the story in a visual way.”

According to labels on the photos, some were produced for the government by the commercial satellite firms, Geoeye and Digitalglobe; others lack any recognizable markings, leaving open the possibility that they were derived from “national technical means” in space. The effort may fit into a broader State Department campaign to compile evidence of human rights abuses in Syria that can be turned over to international or local courts, a cause to which it has just committed $1.25 million.

“You can see some changes,” said Michael Dobbs, a fomer Washington Post correspondent and fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who has been chronicling the trial of Ratko Mladic on genocide charges for Foreign Policy magazine. “It seems to have become easier bureaucratically to release some of this stuff … They have learned some of the lessons from Srebrenica.”

State transparency and accountability

In just four days our State Integrity Investigation — a corruption-risk grade card for every state — has been quoted, praised, assailed or otherwise cited by more than 200 media organizations, from The New York Times to NPR and dozens of public radio stations, and from Foreign Policy magazine to scores of local AOL Patch outlets and state newspapers and TV stations.

The idea of measuring accountability and transparency in state government seems to have touched a reformist nerve. Our state-by-state comparison, produced with partners Global Integrity and Public Radio International, has illuminated the often obscure, closed-door politics of state governments — from the budget process to pension management, from ethics enforcement to public access to information.

There is nothing like a failing grade, however, to prompt states to push for reform, and that is starting to happen, too. We’ll be reporting on where states are going right as well as wrong in weeks and months to come.

Until Next Week,

Bill

No "A" grades in state corruption risk index
State governments are largely doing a poor job delivering transparency and accountability to their citizenry. Meanwhile, statehouses remain ripe for corruption and self-dealing. This is the discouraging picture that emerges from the State Integrity Investigation, a massive, first-of-its-kind, data-driven assessment of transparency, accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms in all 50 states.

In the ranking, not a single state received an A from the year-long probe, which is a collaboration of the Center for Public Integrity, Public Radio International and Global Integrity:

• Only 5 states got a B grade
• Some 19 states received a C
• While 18 got D’s

And 8 states received failing grades

New Jersey tops the list
It might seem implausible, but New Jersey had the best report card in the State Integrity Investigation with a score of 87, or a “B+”. Why? States with histories of corruption and scandal tend to have more recent and robust laws in place to deter such behavior.

Georgia is the pits
Geogia came in dead last in the state integrity investigation, with a resounding “F”. A combination of lame transparency and ethics laws and poor implementation won the Peach state its failing grade—and its number 50th state ranking.

Pro-Romney super PAC outpaces Romney campaign
Romney’s campaign showed cash on hand at the end of February of $7.3 million, which is actually far less than the $10.5 million that his super PAC Restore Our Future has in the bank, a strong indication of how important a role these organizations are playing in the 2012 contest. We have the latest on all the PACs.

Going strictly by the numbers, the DOD appears to be a model agency when it comes to avoiding what the government calls “improper payments” — those that should never have been made, or amount to more than was agreed in a contract. Despite their $687 billion budget, DOD has reported contributing relatively little to the government’s estimated $100 billion in improper payments in each of the last three years.

Government watchdogs have concluded that DOD’s reputation is undeserved, however. That’s because while other agencies count their entire budget when doing an assessment of improper payments, DOD has traditionally only counted internal expenditures, such as military salaries and benefits, and not external contract payments — a part of their budget that has skyrocketed in the post 9-11 world.  

Although legislation in 2010 ordered the Pentagon to give a more accurate tally, it hasn't done so yet, and appears unlikely to do so soon, according to testimony at a Senate hearing March 28. As a result, the Pentagon’s ongoing accounting challenges — rather than its sterling reputation — were a key topic at the hearing, held by the Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee on Federal Financial Management. 

The hearing was a rare bi-partisan effort on the Hill, with lawmakers from both parties expressing concern about the military’s audit problems.

Every agency, as it turns out, estimates its improper payments using a statistical sample, and reports the results at the end of the year. Some agencies show regular improvement in cutting down on their improper payments, a trend seen as evidence of improved accounting practices; others, not so much.

DOD has been considered an outlier, in a good way. In 2011, when the improper payments total was estimated at $115 billion, DOD says they made “only” $1.1 billion in improper payments — a large sum to many, but a surprisingly small amount, given the size of their budget.

According to past reports by both the GAO and the DOD inspector general, however, that number does not reflect payments to contractors, involving around half of the department’s budget. Additionally, their statistical methods have been flawed, with a methodology that both watchdog agencies found was unreliable and could not be explained.

With the passage of 2010’s Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (IPERA), the DOD was required to factor in their entire budget when estimating improper payments. They did not do so in 2011, and meeting the requirement in 2012 also looks unlikely, according to testimony by Daniel Werfel, Comptroller from the Office of Federal Financial Management.

The department still has not developed “a statistically significant estimate,” said Werfel. "I think the issue is about setting interim, accountable milestones for DOD that are helping to drive the department to success.”

A 2011 DOD IG’s report found that in some cases auditors were simply checking with the military branches and asking if their books were in order without looking into the numbers themselves. That practice could easily miss millions of misplaced funds. “There are pockets within DOD that there is a sense they are not doing enough robust measurement,” said Werfel. “We have to figure that out.”

In Seoul last week President Obama announced a major new deal with Belgium, France and the Netherlands to reduce the amount of highly-enriched uranium used to create medical isotopes. Under the new deal, the three countries will soon start making isotopes only from low-enriched uranium — the much safer nuclear material that isn’t useful for terrorists or rogue nations looking for a quick way to damage a city by exploding a dangerous bomb.

In theory, the agreement will make the world a safer place. This assumes, of course, that the gains made in Seoul aren’t undercut by cheaper HEU-produced isotopes due to a joint Russian-Canadian agreement. Neither of those countries has agreed to the shift embraced by the Europeans.

Some isotopes are used in are scans for life-threatening conditions. About 50 percent of the scans are related to cardiac disease and 20 percent relate to cancer. When there have been isotope shortages, often caused by interference in the supply chain that travels the globe, doctors have shown a reluctance to perform tests or surgeries that might otherwise be routine.

Right now, America provides isotope producers with much of the HEU — a key component of a nuclear weapon — that they need to make the diagnostic tools used in numerous medical procedures around the globe. Nonproliferation experts have long pushed the major isotope generating facilities (located in South Africa, Australia, Canada, France, Belgium and the Netherlands) to use LEU — which is not suitable for nuclear bombs — instead. They argue that the technology is there for LEU-developed isotopes, and say that by limiting the movement of HEU around the globe they are minimizing the security risk it represents.

The challenge is that LEU is more expensive to use for isotopes. It requires facilities to buy new technology, train people differently, and there is less isotope yield from an LEU target than an HEU one. Essentially, companies get less bang for their buck.

Despite this extra cost, there has been some movement towards using LEU. The South African plant, for example, already produces isotopes using the less dangerous material. A driving force behind the LEU switch has been the U.S., which for years has used the fact it is the HEU supplier for these facilities as a cudgel. If you don’t begin moving to LEU, says America, we’ll simply cut off your HEU supply, and you’ll have to close up shop.

That’s where Russia comes in. In 2010, the Canadian firm Nordion signed a ten year agreement with a Russian company that supplies HEU for isotopes. With a new supplier of the cheaper material, the U.S. no longer has a stranglehold on the supply these companies need, and suddenly loses the stick used to beat companies into making the switch. At a time when there seems to be real progress in the global community towards switching to LEU, the deal threatens to undercut the market with cheaper, HEU isotopes.

So what can be done?

Alan J. Kuperman, an expert who heads the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, told the Center that the Seoul agreement is “a great accomplishment.” But he warns that without unless Congress intercedes, the Canadian-Russian deal could undo the gains the nonproliferation committee has achieved.

There is a bill to encourage the use of LEU sitting in Congress right now, but as reported by the Center in January, Kuperman and other experts have raised concerns that it does not contain “preferential procurement” language allowing U.S. purchases only from companies that go along.

That’s a loophole Kuperman and others think needs to be fixed. If Congress agreed, it would essentially force the Canadian producer to follow the rest of the world in switching to LEU, or lose out on the U.S. market entirely. The U.S. consumes around sixty percent the world’s supply of isotopes from Molybdenum-99 each year — around 16 million procedures. Without that language, buyers within the U.S. are free to choose between the cheaper HEU and more costly LEU produced isotopes. 

“Preferential procurement would be very helpful,” says Miles Pomper, a Senior Research Associate with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “It would help if the Canadians were just reasonable and the Russians were reasonable, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

But despite the concerns about the Russians and Canadians, Pomper sees the Seoul deal as a step in the right direction. “It’s a good deal. The big picture is, leaving aside details, this is a real step forward by the Europeans. It’ll have an impact.”

“They’re doing the right thing,” he said.

Sen. John McCain slammed the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision as “incredibly naïve” on Tuesday, and predicted there would be “huge scandals” in its wake.

The Arizona Republican was co-author with then-colleague Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., of the last major attempt by government to reform campaign finance laws in 2002. He was participating in a panel discussion on the decision at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

The law prohibited corporations and unions from bankrolling issue ads that mention a candidate within the final weeks before an election.

But under the contentious Citizens United ruling, corporations and unions were freed not only to fund issue ads that mention a candidate but to also make so-called “independent expenditures” that urge people to vote for or vote against candidates.

Many worry this change will increase the potential for corruption and unseemly alliances between lawmakers and special interests.

The ruling has given rise to independent expenditure groups called "super PACs," which can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, unions and trade groups. They may not donate money to candidates’ campaigns nor coordinate with candidates about their expenditures.

Super PACs have collectively raised more than $230 million since their creation in 2010, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

In the 2012 GOP presidential race, each candidate has benefited from super PACs — particularly former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — which have frequently been run by their former top aides and funded by an elite network of donors.

At the Thomson Reuters-sponsored event, McCain called this overlap between campaigns and super PACs “outrageous” and said the independence of super PACs is “the worst joke in Washington.”

Panelist David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, which advocates for First Amendment political rights, countered that there’s “no evidence there’s illegal coordination going on.”

Still, both McCain and former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) bemoaned the possibility of foreign money influencing U.S. elections.

McCain specifically cited billionaire Sheldon Adelson – the major bankroller of the most prominent super PAC aiding Newt Gingrich — as an example of foreign money already finding a way into the system, albeit in a roundabout way.

Adelson owns casinos in Macau, a former Portuguese colony off the coast of China.

Harman told iWatch News that if a donor owns foreign businesses, it makes sense political donations made by the donor may be tied to those offshore assets.

“I don’t have any proof of this, but I think that we will learn after this election that there was a lot of foreign money in the system,” she said.

Panelist Doug Schoen, a Democratic political consultant, agreed, saying this will be a “super PAC election,” where between 50 and 100 ultra-wealthy individuals will drive the agenda.

One panelist proposed eliminating super PACs entirely: Buddy Roemer.

The former GOP governor of Louisiana is making a long-shot presidential bid through a group called Americans Elect — a recently launched outfit that is attempting to gain ballot access in all 50 states.

His campaign finance reform plan calls for fully disclosing all campaign contributions (no matter how small), reporting all contributions to the FEC within 48 hours of their receipt, forbidding lobbyists from both lobbying specific politicians and fundraising for them, setting PAC contribution limits at the same level as individual limits and establishing criminal penalties for campaign finance violations.

Meanwhile, former FEC Chairman Michael Toner stressed that negative ads — which have dominated super PAC spending — are not a new phenomenon and argued that running for office makes you “fair game for vigorous, free-wheeling debate.”

He suggested that if campaign contribution limits to candidates were increased or lifted entirely, then members of Congress would spend less time fundraising and more time focused on legislating and serving their constituents.

Roemer was not impressed.

“Baloney,” he said, arguing that that would not be enough to change the “broken” system. “Sometime, somewhere, we’re going to stand up and say we want to be free of the big checks.”

In a report released this month, the Children’s Defense Fund has analyzed recent national data on gunfire deaths and produced some alarming figures on child casualties.  

The report also criticizes a wave of new state gun-rights laws that the Washington D.C.-based advocacy group argues put children in ever more peril.

The nonprofit advocacy group dedicated its report, “Protect Kids, Not Guns 2012,” to Florida teen Trayvon Martin, who was shot dead in February by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

George Zimmerman, 28, disregarded police advice and followed the unarmed Martin, 17, because Zimmerman thought the boy looked “suspicious.” Zimmerman killed Martin, who was walking to his father’s girlfriend’s home, during a confrontation and claims he acted in self-defense.

The Children’s Defense Fund report, which was released March 23, is based largely on U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2008 and 2009. The group’s analysis found that 2,947 children and teens died from gunfire in 2008 and 2,793 died in 2009.

Over time, the report’s charts show, child gunfire deaths rose from the early 1980s to a peak of 3,625 in the homicide category alone in 1993. Gun deaths of children overall began falling until 2004, when homicides and suicides again began to fluctuate.

The group acknowledges that its analysis found that the total number of children and teens injured by gunfire fell in 2009 to 13,791 from a high over the last decade of 20,596 in 2008.   

Among the report’s other findings:

• The total number of preschool-age children killed by guns during those years — 173 —was nearly double the number of law-enforcement officers — 89 — killed in the line of duty.
• African-American children and teens represented 45 percent of all guns deaths in their age group in 2008 and 2009, but only 15 percent of the total U.S. population of children.
• The top cause of death for black teens ages 15 to 19 was gun homicide, while for white teens it was motor vehicle accidents followed by gun homicides.
• More children and teens died from gunfire in 2008 and 2009 — 5,750 — than the number of U.S. military personnel killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Among 23 high-income countries in the world scholars have studied, the United States is home to 80 percent of all gun deaths, and 87 percent of all gun deaths of children younger than 15.

Marian Wright Edelman, Children’s Defense Fund president, writes in the report: “We must remove guns from our homes where children so often find them and put themselves and others in harm’s way. We must teach our children nonviolent ways to resolve conflicts and we must reject pervasive violence in our culture — on TV programs, songs, in movies, and on the internet.”

But Edelman also blames the excessive number of deaths on the “gun lobby,” Congress and state legislators who have loosened gun-control regulations or declined to impose more manufacturing safety standards and limits on firearms.

“Forty-two states have adopted preemption laws to ensure that state legislatures have control of gun policy, impeding the ability of cities to develop local solutions to gun violence in their communities,” Edelman also writes. This suggests, she says, “that they know best although states continue to make decisions detrimental to children.”

Trayvon Martin’s shooting in February has prompted national scrutiny of a 2005 state law in Florida called “Stand Your Ground,” which allows people who feel threatened in public settings, not just in homes, to use deadly force in self-defense. Similar laws have been adopted in more than 20 other states. Authors of Florida law say it should not be applied to Zimmerman, who is claiming he acted in self-defense and has not been arrested.

The Children’s Defense Fund report notes that in Kansas, Mississippi and Utah, state laws enacted  in 2011 now allow people to carry loaded, licensed, concealed weapons either inside or onto the grounds of elementary and secondary schools.

The report also describes another Florida gun-rights law signed by Gov. Rick Scott last year that forbids doctors or medical workers from asking patients about gun ownership and how guns are stored in homes to ensure child safety.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups filed suit to overturn the law, contending it violates free-speech rights doctors need to do their jobs responsibly. Last September, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the law.

Nicknamed “docs and Glocks,” the law was the first of its kind, according to the National Rifle Association, which helped draft it. It was inspired, supporters say, by a Florida couple who refused to answer a pediatrician’s questions about guns, and were upset when they were told they should find another doctor.

Marion Hammer, the National Rifle Association's lobbyist in Florida, told National Public Radio, “We take our children to pediatricians for medical care — not moral judgment, not privacy intrusions."

The NRA is a staunch proponent of legislation to ensure rights to carry licensed guns, which the group maintains help individual safety. The group also sponsors courses on safe gun use for adults and children. In response to the controversy over the Florida doctors’ law, NRA representatives said they didn’t object to doctors handing out information about gun safety if it were part of broader information on other safety matters, such as swimming pool hazards.

“Protect Kids, Not Guns” includes a list of mass shootings of children since 2008, some during rampages by adults or teens or family members.  

At the top of the list is the Feb. 27, 2012, Chardon, Ohio, school shooting that claimed the lives of three students and injured two when another student, T.J. Lane, opened fire in the school cafeteria and in a hallway. Lane, 17, may have used a family member’s licensed gun, which was missing from a barn where it was stored, according to press reports.

Delaware lawmakers have launched a new legislative effort designed in part to improve the C- grade the state received on lobbying disclosure from the State Integrity Investigation. The First State’s grade ranked it 22^nd among the 50 states in that category.  

The bill would require lobbyists to disclose the number of each bill or resolution on which they lobbied. The measure also calls for electronic filing of expenditures and registration forms by lobbyists, and requires the state’s Public Integrity Commission to post reports online “to allow public to review such information organized by bill, resolution, lobbyist, employer and subject.” 

In a press conference Wednesday, Senate President Pro Tem Anthony DeLuca (D-Varlano), called the proposed legislation a “big step” for public accessibility.

“If you look overall at what we’re trying to accomplish, and you look at the electronics involved in this and the fact that we’re going to be getting an updated system that the public can easily access, that is a major thing,” DeLuca said.

But the bill does not address several areas in which Delaware lost points in the State Integrity Investigation. Delaware lobbyists would still not be required to disclose their salary or overall compensation — only expenses related to food, travel, gifts and entertainment. And oversight would apparently not be affected. On a State Integrity Investigation scorecard question about effective monitoring of lobbying disclosure, Delaware scored only 16 percent. 

The bill charges the state’s Public Integrity Commission with posting the lobbying disclosure forms online. Delaware received a D- in the category of ethics enforcement agencies, due in part to the lack of staff and resources for the two-person public integrity panel. John Flaherty, president of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government, said the new bill could burden the agency with the additional work.

“They’re gonna need more help,” Flaherty said.  

Flaherty called the overall proposal a “blueprint for action,” but would like to see several additions, like a requirement for a cooling off period that would prohibit legislators from working as lobbyists for two years. 

Gov. Jack Markell said he expects the “bill will help us earn a better grade and create more openness.” He also noted the state’s new open records law, which he ordered in October, would improve the state’s results; Delaware earned its other F grade for public access to information.

The lobbying bill is co-sponsored by members in both chambers of the General Assembly, including DeLuca and House Speaker Robert Gilligan (D-Sherwood Park). Democrats control both chambers and the governor’s office.

“There will be a lobbying bill passed this session,” Gilligan told the Wilmington News Journal. “That’s a fact.”

Hands off my health care!

Remember those words from the health care reform debate of two years ago? I’m confident we’ll be seeing them on protest signs in Washington again this week as the Supreme Court hears arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. And we’ll see them again when the protest campaigns shift into high gear this summer.

One of the rules of effective communications is to keep it simple. In attacking something you don’t like, use as few words as possible, and make sure those words pack an emotional wallop. That’s why lies about “death panels” and a “government takeover” of health care have been so potent. Unfortunately for those advocating reform, it’s far more challenging to explain and defend a law as complicated as the Affordable Care Act.

Maybe, then, supporters of the law should co-opt the “hands off” slogan and make it their own. That would require adding just a few more words here and there to make clear what would be lost if the law is repealed, gutted or declared unconstitutional.

Here’s are some suggestions:

“Hands off my health care! Granny doesn’t need her meds all year anyway!”

The Affordable Care Act is closing the despised and even deadly “doughnut hole” in the Medicare prescription drug program, which was designed in 2003 largely by lobbyists for insurance and pharmaceutical companies who were more interested in protecting their companies’ profits than helping seniors stay alive. The way the law was cobbled together, Medicare beneficiaries get prescription drug coverage only up to a certain amount. When they reach that limit, they fall into the “doughnut hole” and have to pay about $4,000 out of their own pockets for their prescriptions before coverage resumes. As a consequence, many people stop taking their medications because they don’t have the money to pay for them. And many of them die. The Affordable Care Act has already shrunk that gap and will close it completely in 2020.

“Hands off my health care! Who cares if insurers refuse to cover sick kids?”

Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies routinely refused to insure children who were born with disabilities or who developed life-threatening illnesses like diabetes or cancer. It was perfectly legal for them to refuse to sell coverage to anyone — even children— who had what insurers call a “pre-existing condition.” The reform law already requires insurers to cover all kids, regardless of health status. It will apply to the rest of us in 2014.

“Hands off my health care! My 24-year-old daughter can just stay uninsured!”

Insurers have long had a policy of kicking young adults off their parents’ policies when they turn 23. Many of these young folks don’t have the money to buy coverage on their own—and a lot of them can’t buy it at all because of, you guessed it, pre-existing conditions. That’s why young people comprise the biggest segment of the uninsured population. Because the Affordable Care Act allows parents to keep dependents on their policies until they turn 26, an estimated 2.5 million young people had become insured again as of the end of last year.

“Hands off my health care! If I lose my coverage because I lose my job, so be it!”

Millions of Americans fall into the ranks of the uninsured every year when they get laid off. That’s one reason the number of people without coverage swelled to 50 million during the recession. Many of them can’t afford to buy insurance on their own and many of them have—you guessed right again—pre-existing conditions and can’t buy it at any price. Starting in 2014, not only will the Affordable Care Act prohibit insurers from refusing to sell coverage to people of any age because of their medical history, it will also provide subsidies to low-income individuals and families to help them buy insurance.

“Hands off my health care! It’s not my problem if your insurance company dumps you when you get sick!”

To avoid paying claims, insurers for years have cancelled the coverage of policyholders when they got sick. A former nurse in Texas testified before Congress in 2009 about getting a cancellation notice from her insurer the day before she was to have a mastectomy because she had failed to note on her application for coverage that she had been treated for acne. The Affordable Care Act makes it illegal for insurers to cancel policies for any reason other than fraud or failure to pay premiums.

“Hands off my health care!” Maybe we ought to think that through a little bit more before we take to the streets with those words on our placards.  Insurers who profited from the way things used to be will laugh all the way to the bank if you start waving those signs, but you and people you love might live to regret it.  On the plus side, at least for the special interests, you probably won’t live as long.

In one of the deadliest nightclub fires in American history, 100 people died at a rock concert in Rhode Island nearly a decade ago. But the biggest killer wasn't the flames; it was lethal gases released from burning sound-insulation foam and other plastics.

In a fatal bit of irony, attempts to snuff fires like this catastrophic one could be making some fires even more deadly.

New research suggests that chemicals – brominated and chlorinated flame retardants – that are added to upholstered furniture and other household items to stop the spread of flames increase emissions of two poisonous gases.

"We found that flame retardants have the undesirable effect of increasing the amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide released during combustion," study co-author Anna Stec, a fire specialist at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

These two gases are by far the biggest killer in fires. They are responsible for 60 to 80 percent of fire deaths, according to the National Fire Protection Assn. During the Rhode Island fire, the levels of hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide were high enough to kill in less than 90 seconds.

Flame retardants made of brominated or chlorinated chemicals are added to furniture cushions, carpet padding, children's car seats, plastics that encase electronics and other consumer items. Under California standards adopted in the 1970s, foam inside furniture must withstand a 12-second exposure to a small, open flame, and much of the nation’s furniture is manufactured with flame retardants to meet that standard.

However, while the chemicals may be slowing the spread of flames, when fires do occur, they may be more deadly. Few details of the new research from the United Kingdom are available since the findings have not yet been published. But the researchers said in one experiment, nylon containing the flame retardant brominated polystyrene released six times more hydrogen cyanide when set afire than the same material containing a halogen-free flame retardant.

Hydrogen cyanide is 35 times more deadly than carbon monoxide, and during a fire it can kill in as little as one minute, said Todd Shoebridge, a 30-year fire service veteran who is a captain at the Hickory Fire Department in North Carolina. "It's that serious," Shoebridge said.

Both carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide are products of incomplete combustion. As a room on fire loses oxygen, combustion becomes less efficient and gases and smoke rapidly increase. Inhaling the toxic air becomes unavoidable for people trapped in a fire.

Brominated and chlorinated flame retardants work by interfering with combustion, which can increase the amount of the gases.

The evidence "leads one to assume that these chemicals could increase fire safety concerns, not decrease them," said Heather Stapleton, an environmental chemist at Duke University who specializes in studying brominated compounds.

The new research focused on brominated polystyrene, a newer flame retardant manufactured by Albemarle Corp. and other companies. It is added to nylon for use in textiles, upholstery and electrical connectors.

These newer compounds were designed to replace older flame retardants, mostly polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs, which have been banned since 2004 because they were building up in human bodies, including breast milk. PBDEs are still found in furniture manufactured before the bans.

PBDEs and other halogenated flame retardants were already known to produce other toxic chemicals when they burn, including highly toxic dioxins and furans.

Another replacement for PBDEs is called Tris or TDCPP, (1,3-dichloroisopropyl) phosphate. Foam containing this chemical was shown to release high amounts of carbon monoxide and smoke during ignition, according to a 2000 study.

With or without fires, research suggests, flame retardants may have risks. PBDEs and other halogenated flame retardants have come under intense scrutiny in recent years. PBDEs have been linked in some studies of people and animals to impaired neurological development, reduced fertility, early onset of puberty and altered thyroid hormones. Tris also may be toxic to the developing nervous system.

Albemarle Corp., based in Baton Rouge, La., and maker of Saytex 3010G, a brominated polystyrene flame retardant similar to mixtures tested in the new research, did not return requests for comment. Chemtura Corp., another flame retardant manufacturer based in Philadelphia, Penn., also did not return requests.

The companies have maintained that flame retardants play a critical role by allowing longer escape and response times during a fire, thereby saving lives and property.

"It is estimated that escape times can be up to 15 times longer when flame retardants are present, providing increased survival chances," according to a statement from the European Brominated Flame Retardant Industry Panel, which includes Albemarle and Chemtura.

But a document signed by more than 200 scientists from 30 countries disputes that flame retardants have been proven effective. “Brominated and chlorinated flame retardants can increase fire toxicity, but their overall benefit in improving fire safety has not been proven," the 2010 statement says.

The health threats from halogenated flame retardants combined with their persistence in the environment have driven a search for more environmentally friendly alternatives.

"Reducing the use of toxic or untested flame retardant chemicals in consumer products can protect human and animal health and the global environment without compromising fire safety," says a 2010 report by a group of 10 scientists, including Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

In the new research from the United Kingdom, some alternatives were found to create less toxic air than the halogenated flame retardants. Inorganic, or mineral-based, flame retardants had little effect on toxic gases released in a fire.

Each year, about 10,000 people die in fires in industrialized countries. On average in the United States in 2010, someone died in a fire every 169 minutes, according to the National Fire Protection Assn.

Previous research has focused on carbon monoxide and soot from halogenated flame retardants. But lately, hydrogen cyanide and other gases are getting a closer look, said Richard Hull, a chemist at the University of Central Lancashire who presented the new flame retardant research at an American Chemical Society conference in San Diego last week.

"Carbon monoxide is an important toxicant in fire effluents. However, we have seen that it is less important than hydrogen chloride from burning PVC, or hydrogen cyanide from burning nitrogen-containing polymers such as nylon, polyurethane or acrylic, in developed fires," Hull said.

New research has suggested that hydrogen cyanide –  so lethal it was used in the Nazi gas chambers – is a bigger cause of fire deaths than previously thought.

In one example, a fire devastated a prison in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1990. Thirty-five inmates died as a mattress fire spread through the prison. But flames did not kill the convicts, a post-mortem blood analysis revealed. Hydrogen cyanide did.

"The results indicated that death in the 35 fire victims was probably caused by HCN [hydrogen cyanide], generated during the extensive polyurethane decomposition provoked by a rapid increase of temperature," according to the analysis of the victims in the Argentina fire.

Hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide are odorless, colorless chemicals, making them silent killers.

"If there is a fire, it doesn't matter how big or how small," said Shoebridge, who is lead advocate of North Carolina's "Everybody Goes Home" firefighter safety program. "You have the possibility for those gases."

A federal judge’s decision to block imports of a drug used in executions will leave states to rely more on a substitute drug that could itself be getting scarce — developments that raise questions about both how these drugs are regulated and whether states will have the drugs they need to continue capital punishment by lethal injection. 

Over the past three decades, lethal injection has become the primary method of execution in the United States because it is widely viewed as the most humane alternative. Thirty-five states and the federal government use this method and more than 1,100 inmates have been put to death by lethal injection.

State justice or corrections departments have conducted these executions by administering the anesthetic sodium thiopental in a lethal dosage on its own, or as part of a three-step “cocktail” in which sodium thiopental is followed by pancuronium bromide, a paralytic agent, then potassium chloride, which stops the heart and causes death.

But in late March, a federal judge blocked importation of sodium thiopental, ruling that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ignored the law by allowing it to be imported into the country without following regulatory protocol. The drugs were slated for executions, a purpose unapproved by the agency — and unlikely to ever be approved by the agency. Sodium thiopental is only available from overseas, because its U.S. manufacturer, Hospira Inc., stopped making it 2011, as a result of controversies over its use in executions.

Search for an alternative 

The logical alternative to sodium thiopental is pentobarbital, an anesthetic that causes people to lose consciousness, sensation and memory. Since 2010, 12 state justice departments have used pentobarbital, a drug veterinarians also administer to euthanize animals, to execute 47 inmates, usually as part of a three-drug cocktail, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that publishes annual reports on capital punishment.

With sodium thiopental now nearly impossible to access, pentobarbital is likely to become even more critical for those who want to carry out executions in the near future, Richard Dieter, executive director for the Death Penalty Information Center, told iWatch News. If the restrictions become effective, correctional departments may have to choose another drug or form of execution altogether, he said. 

But pentobarbital could eventually become scarce. Most state justice departments say that for security reasons they cannot specify how much of the drug they have stored, but pentobarbital’s manufacturers for human uses have in recent months acted on a number of fronts to prevent its use for executions. 

Lundbeck Inc., a Danish pharmaceutical company that manufactured the drug until late last year, sent letters last August to governors and correctional departments in 16 states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia — saying it did not want its drug used for executions. 

When that request was ignored, the company switched from using several distributors last June to using a drop ship program, selling its product directly to health care facilities through a single distributor, Cardinal Health. In addition, every medical facility that received the drugs had to sign a document saying the product would not be used for executions or resold for that purpose.  

“We stated very clearly that we’re in the business of improving peoples lives and using it for capital punishment is against what we do,” Matt Flesch, spokesman for Lundbeck, told iWatch News. 

Finally last December Lundbeck sold its pentobarbital rights to Illinois-based Akorn Inc., which signed an agreement promising it would not sell the drug for the purpose of executions.  

Stockpiled 

For the moment, though, pentobarbital is still available. States bought supplies of the drug before distribution limitations were enacted, Flesch said, though some states may soon run out, or the drug could expire. Like most pharmaceuticals, pentobarbital has an expiration date of about 18 months.

Dale Baich, assistant federal public defender in the state of Arizona, said his state and other obtained pentobarbital some time ago. “In Arizona, the state was ordering it in 2010, along with sodium thiopental,” he said. “Other states stockpiled it.”

A spokesman for the Department of Criminal Justice in Texas, the state responsible for the highest number of executions in the country, would not specify how much pentobarbital the state had left, though he did confirm in an email to iWatch News that there was enough to carry out the seven executions it has scheduled for 2012. In Georgia, a spokeswoman also confirmed in writing that the state had “an adequate supply of all pharmaceuticals necessary to carry out lethal injections.”

But the efforts to limit the supply for executions may be having some effect. Oklahoma only has enough pentobarbital to execute three more people, said Jerry Massie, public information officer at the state’s Department of Corrections. Two inmates were executed earlier this year, and the state had purchased enough pentobarbital for five executions. Two more executions have been scheduled for 2012, and the state has more than 60 inmates on death row.

Obstacles

The use of pentobarbital is facing other challenges, as well. In several cases, judges have put executions on hold until questions about the drug can be answered. Alabama was supposed to put Thomas Douglas Arthur to death by lethal injection last week, but shortly before the scheduled execution date, a federal appeals court put his execution on hold for the fifth time over the course of his 29 years in prison, because of concerns about pentobarbital.  

His attorney, Suhana Han, argued it might not knock her client out all the way. This could make the subsequent injections extremely painful, she argued, falling under the definition of “cruel and unusual punishment,” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

Megan McCracken, Eighth Amendment resource counsel at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, is worried that states have simply switched to using pentobarbital in executions without much study or oversight. “There really hasn't been a thorough look at the use of this drug in a three-drug execution protocol,” she said, “where the prisoner is paralyzed, and cardiac arrest is induced, shortly after administration of the pentobarbital.” 

Texas started using pentobarbital last year, and did not consult a physician in the process. The decision was made by officials within the correctional department, a department spokesman told iWatch News.

In Ohio and Washington state, the three-step execution cocktail has been scrapped altogether in favor of a single, lethal dosage of pentobarbital.  

Mike Rushford, president and CEO at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, is encouraging states to use this approach. The important thing is not whether states use pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, he said, but to simplify the process so the arguments against lethal injections fall away. 

Regulatory limbo 

Just who has the authority to decide whether pentobarbital can or should be used in executions is more than a little murky. Tightly monitoring the use of any drug is nearly impossible. The safety and efficacy of all drugs has to be approved by the FDA, but once pharmaceuticals are approved for any purpose, it is up to physicians to determine to whom and for what reasons they will prescribe them, said Ed Elder, director at Lenor Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

The FDA-approved uses for pentobarbital include short-term treatment for insomnia and seizure control for patients with epilepsy. It is not FDA approved to alleviate Reye’s syndrome, a disease of the brain and liver, though some physicians have prescribed it for that purpose. 

It is also not FDA-approved for use in executions or for the use of anesthesia, but it’s not clear the FDA believes that’s its business. A spokeswoman declined to comment on the FDA’s role in overseeing pentobarbital for the use of executions, but spoke generally of the agency’s practices. “FDA has authority to take both administrative and judicial actions to protect the public from dangerous and illegal products, to punish persons and companies who violate the law, and to deter violations,” she said. 

Elder said drugs for the use of executions may fall outside their oversight definition, and in the past the FDA has publicly taken that stance. “The use of drugs for an indication that doesn’t involve making people well is contrary to what the FDA is trying to do with approving drugs,” he said.  

In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol that Kentucky used for lethal injections. The state was using the former drug, sodium thiopental, as its anesthetic. The high court hasn’t said anything about pentobarbital, but several federal courts and the Florida Supreme Court have signed off on it. 

Rushford from the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation sees the concerns raised about legal injections as merely the latest effort by groups whose mission is to thwart the death penalty. “These are claims by people who wouldn’t want to execute any murderer under any circumstances by any means,” he said.

Beneath the oceans, on distant islands, in barren deserts, on icy hillsides, and at hundreds of other spots around the globe, special sensors are sniffing the air, measuring ground motion, watching for a particular kind of light, and listening for unique sounds. Their function is to pick up the telltale sign of a nuclear explosion, and according to a scientific report released in Washington on March 30, they can now do it very well.

The sensors, deployed at more than 260 sites under the supervision of an international organization based in Vienna, are singly or collectively able to discern the distinctive traits of such blasts anywhere in the world, down to a level of explosive force “well below” the equivalent of 1000 tons of TNT, or a fraction of the force of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, a panel of the National Research Council told the White House in its report.

U.S.-owned intelligence gear deployed around the globe and on satellites can do even better, the report said, without disclosing how much. Its overall message was that if the United States decides to join a global treaty banning nuclear tests — a goal professed by many U.S. officials since the treaty was completed in 1996 — it would not have to worry about militarily-significant, undetected cheating by others.

That conclusion is welcome news to the Obama administration, which has endorsed the treaty but opted not to press for its ratification this year because of Republican roadblocks. Acting Under Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller has repeatedly described this year as a good moment for skeptical, conservative lawmakers to learn more about the treaty, and the new, 204-page report by one of the country’s most respected scientific panels is meant to be their basic textbook.

The report — an unclassified version of a restricted study principally conducted by nine experts with government clearances — was conceived as an update of a similar analysis by the council in 2002, and its presentation at the National Academy of Sciences offices in Washington was uniformly upbeat. Among the authors is a former head of one of the U.S. nuclear weapon laboratories, a former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, and a former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration under President George W. Bush.

Due to scientific advances, the ability to detect nuclear blasts “is now actually better” than the council predicted it would be at this point, said the chairwoman, Ellen D. Williams, a specialist in nanoscience who now oversees scientific work at BP. And while the science of detection has been advancing by leaps and bounds — utilizing improved computational power and radioactive xenon noble-gas monitoring techniques, among other things — the science of hiding or muffling nuclear tests in caves and large holes has essentially been static since the late 1950’s, according to the panel.

The notion of trying to conduct a hidden nuclear blast is not as far-fetched as it might seem. Israel and South Africa collaborated on such a blast, over a remote portion of the South Atlantic Ocean, in 1979, according to some U.S. experts. Neither country has ever admitted it.

But the NRC panel said experienced nuclear powers such as China or Russia would gain nothing of value by conducting extremely small, hidden tests, while other states would “face serious costs, practical difficulties … and uncertainties” in trying to conceal such tests today. In any event, such achievements “would not require the United States to return to testing,” because the United States has or could readily produce more capable nuclear weapons based on existing designs and its long experience, the report said.

It added a cautionary note: Terrorists or others could potentially assemble a working bomb — without ever testing it — using fissile materials and design knowledge they grab from others. But the answer to that would also not be a return to U.S. testing, the panel said.

The international monitoring group, formally known as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, gets a hefty portion of it funding from Washington, even though the United States is not a treaty partner. But it runs on a total of $100 million, or roughly the cost of a single U.S. F15E fighter plane. The panel stressed that even though its capabilities cannot match those of the U.S. government, the evidence it picks up can be shared with others — unlike what the U.S.-owned systems glean. It has “a competent and dedicated staff that is operating well,” the panel said.

Imagine that.

In 2004, the National Rifle Association honored Republican Florida state legislator Dennis Baxley with a plum endorsement: Its Defender of Freedom award.

The following year, Baxley, a state representative, worked closely with the NRA to push through Florida’s unprecedented “stand your ground” law, which allows citizens to use deadly force if they “reasonably believe” their safety is threatened in a public setting, like a park or a street.

People would no longer be restrained by a “duty to retreat” from a threat while out in public, and would be free from prosecution or civil liability if they acted in self-defense.

Florida’s law is now under a cloud as a result of the controversial February shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, in Sanford, Fla. The 28-year-old shooter, George Zimmerman, who was licensed to carry a gun — and once had a brush with police — claims he acted in self-defense after a confrontation with Martin, and some legal experts say Florida’s law could protect Zimmerman, who has not been charged. The case has inflamed passions nationwide in part because Zimmerman is Hispanic and Martin was African-American. Baxley, whose state party has benefited from large NRA donations, contends his law shouldn’t shield Zimmerman at all because he pursued Martin.

The NRA has been curiously quiet on the matter since the shooting as the nation takes stock — in light of the Martin case and other similar examples — of whether “stand-your-ground” laws are more dangerous than useful to enhance public safety. The gun-rights organization did not respond to requests for comment. But the group’s silence contrasts sharply with its history of unabashed activism on stand-your-ground legislation. Since the Florida measure passed, the NRA has flexed its considerable muscle and played a crucial role in the passage of more than 20 similar laws nationwide.

Beginnings

The Florida law is rooted in the centuries-old English common law concept known as the “Castle Doctrine,” which holds that the right of self-defense is accepted in one’s home. But the Florida law and others like it expand that established right to venues beyond a home.

Since Florida adopted its law in 2005, the NRA has aggressively pursued adoption of stand-your-ground laws elsewhere as part of a broader agenda to increase gun-carrying rights it believes are rightly due citizens under the 2^nd Amendment.   

To gain attention and clout at the state level, the NRA has ponied up money and offers endorsements to legislators from both parties. The NRA and the NRA Political Victory Fund, its political action committee, have donated about $2.6 million to state-level political campaigns, committees and individual politicians since 2003, according to records compiled by the National Institute on Money and State Politics.

And ambitious politicians take note that the NRA is heavily invested and involved in congressional races.

The organization showered the Florida Republican Party Committee with a total of $125,000 in donations between 2004 and 2010. That sum tops the list of all NRA donations to state party committees between 2003 and 2012, according to National Institute on Money in State Politics records. The Senate Republican Campaign Committee of New York was next with $119,700.

The NRA energetically monitors state elections, from governor’s races down to the most obscure special election for a state legislative seat — if the seat is considered crucial — and, as its legislative action website shows, it regularly mobilizes constituents to flood lawmakers with calls and e-mails.    

Following the Florida victory, the “Stand Your Ground” movement accelerated. In July 2006, the NRA posted celebratory news on its website, noting that legislators in eight more states — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Dakota — had already followed Florida’s lead.

“This train keeps a rollin’ — Castle Doctrine Sweeps America,” the NRA’s 2006 message said. The campaign, the group said, “is turning focus from criminals’ rights to those of the law-abiding who are forced to protect themselves.”

Since then, a host of other states have passed various laws expanding the “Castle Doctrine.” Among them: Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee Texas, Utah, Washington and West Virginia.

To spread the word, the NRA said in an Aug. 12, 2005 website posting, it approached the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, which drafts legislation for like-minded state lawmakers. ALEC, as it is known, adopted model stand-your-ground legislative language in 2005 after Florida’s top NRA representative made a presentation.

And along the way key lawmakers benefited from NRA support. In Indiana, for instance, GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels, who took office in 2005, received $12,400 in NRA donations between 2004 and 2008. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue got $7,500 from the group between 2004 and 2006. Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s attorney general, received $22,500 between 2004 and 2008.  

Case study

But it hasn’t been smooth sailing quite everywhere. An emotional debate in Minnesota this year resulted in passage of a proposal in both houses, which are GOP-controlled, but a veto just this month from Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. A couple of GOP lawmakers changed their votes from no to yes in the course of the legislative process, state records show.

“We had a few people tell us apologetically and privately that they were afraid of the NRA,” said Joan Peterson, a Minnesota activist with the Northland chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Proponents didn’t get enough votes to override Dayton’s veto.

Heather Martens, executive director of Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, which opposed the proposal, said that a newly elected Democratic legislator who reluctantly voted yes had faced a tough special election campaign in 2011. At the center of the campaign were accusations that she would be anti-gun.

“Take your best shot,” a Minnesota Republican Party-sponsored mailer against Democrat Carly Melin said back then, urging voters to protect their gun rights from St. Paul liberals. 

The Minnesota bill’s Republican sponsors, state Rep. Tony Cornish and state Sen. Gretchen Hoffman — who is now running for Congress against a Democrat who's had NRA support — did not respond to requests to discuss their proposal.

Fighting back

Opposition to the laws has gone beyond gun-control activists. Some of the staunchest critics the NRA has faced while promoting “stand your ground” laws have been state police chief’s and sheriffs’ associations and district attorneys’ groups.

In 2007, the Virginia-based National District Attorneys Association issued a report, “Expansions to the Castle Doctrine,” warning that the phenomenon “could have significant implications for public safety and the justice system’s ability to hold people accountable for violent acts.”

Scott Burns, the association’s executive director, said legislators’ decisions to buck law-enforcement officials on this issue can only be explained by “the volatile issue of guns rights and the 2^nd Amendment.” He said many of these laws, in his opinion, have nothing to do with the true intent of the Castle Doctrine.

How can the Castle Doctrine apply, he said, seven miles from your home, at a shopping mall?

In Florida, the Tampa Bay Times reported that “justifiable homicides” in Florida spiked after the 2005 law, from an average of 34 yearly to more than 100 in 2007.

Prosecutors said the law permitted gang-related assailants from being prosecuted after a 2008 shoot-out in Tallahassee that killed a 15-year-old boy, the paper reported. A judge dismissed charges based on the “stand your ground” defense.

In 2010, Trevor Dooley, upset about a skateboarder on a Valrico, Fla., basketball court, marched into a park with a handgun, for which he was licensed and legally able to take into the park. Dooley ended up in a confrontation with David James, who was in the park with his young daughter. Dooley and James scuffled and Dooley shot James dead. In a case that is still pending, he was arrested for manslaughter but also claims he is protected by the “stand your ground” law.

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Violence, accuses the NRA of “feeding on fear and paranoia” to expand concepts such as the Castle Doctrine. His group’s research, he said, shows that politicians can survive an NRA stamp of disapproval more than they think, and that his priority is to convince more politicians the group is a “paper tiger.”

“We are behind closed doors with politicians all the time,” Gross said, “who say they want to do the right thing, but that the gun lobby will ruin them.”

Back in Florida, the soul-searching about the law has now extended to the legislature. Baxley, the sponsor, told CBS News that “sometimes the application or interpretation of its use is the problem.” He defended the law as important to “law-abiding citizens,” but suggested, according to other reports, that perhaps legislators should look at limiting crime-watch volunteers’ ability to pursue people and confront them.

“Nothing,” he said, “is ever finished in the legislature.” 

The Energy Department kept Treasury Department officials in the dark until late in the government's review of the $535 million loan to now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, triggering a rushed consultation that may have left concerns unresolved, a new audit released Wednesday found.

The audit by the Treasury Department’s inspector general found that Treasury officials had raised serious concerns about the terms of the loan, but there was no documentation of whether they were addressed. The report’s findings of hurried reviews and ignored warning signs echo previous iWatch News reporting on Solyndra.

The loan, originally touted as a model of President Obama’s green energy program, has become a political weapon. “The Treasury report echoes what our investigation has shown over and over; Solyndra was a bad bet from the beginning that was rushed out the door while every red flag was ignored,” Republican Reps. Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns said in a statement Wednesday.

Though the Energy Department arranged the loan, it was actually processed by the Federal Financing Bank, a government lending institution under Treasury’s control. The newly released audit found that Treasury was not involved in the process until the loan negotiations were largely complete.

Treasury officials raised concerns about the terms of the loan, including the fact that it included a 100 percent guarantee, rather than a partial guarantee, auditors found. After a conference call with Energy Department officials, one Treasury official wrote, in an email uncovered by auditors, “we pressed on certain issues … but the train really has left the station on this deal.”

Terrible medical care, long delays in service, and soldiers who felt like they were in a “petting zoo”: Those are just some of the issues identified in a Department of Defense Inspector General report issued March 30th on the Wounded Warrior Regiment.

Founded in 2007 as a way to help guide wounded Marines and sailors towards accepting and living with their injuries, the WWR has supported nearly 27,377 wounded, ill, and injured Marines. With camps throughout the country, WWR is among the leading groups in rehabbing both injured service members and their families.

But it has been seriously shortchanged by the Marines, according to the IG’s report. Both staff and service members undergoing treatment had a litany of complaints. Some beefed that they were forced to endure visits from VIPs, nonprofit groups and reporters looking for “visibly wounded” Marines with whom they could talk. One said he felt like he was in a “petting zoo.” Prescriptions were poorly monitored and frequently given in excessive quantities, creating a potential for drug misuse. The health care privacy act known as HIPPA was not respected at one location, causing medical information to be passed around loosely.

But the overarching problem highlighted in the report is the length of time it takes service members to be cleared to leave WWR facilities. At one location, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Warriors spent an average of 730 days — two full years — before being discharged. More than a fifth of the wounded service members at that location spent three years there, sometimes just waiting for paperwork to be processed. Some Marines had to wait three months for neurological exams, and then wait again to get a pain management appointment.

For a group of Marines accustomed to a life of action, being forced to stay in one place for two years can be torture. Marines told DODIG investigators that the barracks was a “‘sad place to be,’ and that Marines, specifically junior Marines, did not know how to handle their ‘down time,’ had low morale, and that they did not feel they were ‘part of a team.’”

Said one Marine, “Everyone seems so depressed, angry, and stressed, and they just want to get out of here.”

The staff saw the same problems. One was quoted in the report as saying the process takes “too long, making it hard to keep Marines out of trouble while their board was being processed.”

The main problems, according to the IG, are short staffing and poor organization. Again using Camp Lejeune as an example, the ratio of marines to counselors was 95:1, as opposed to the recommended 20:1. Excessive military bureaucracy drags the whole system down, with Lejune organizers complaining about a long lag time to get responses from DC and the absence of an organized filing system.

Much of the challenge stems from how the program came into existence, according to those interviewed by the IG's investigators — one respondent said putting the program together was like ““building an airplane in flight.” The report recommended providing “meaningful activities” such as internships to service members, emphasizing patient satisfaction metrics, and screening visitors more carefully.

In a response included in the report, an officer in the regiment generally concurred with the recommendations. Lt. Col. N. E. Davis, of Camp Lejeune, also asked the IG to note that since the review was conducted, "there have been ongoing efforts” to improve performance. These included moving wounded soldiers at the base into a new barracks closer to medical experts, and conducting an “organizational climate survey.”

“Process improvements in wounded warrior care and family support are ongoing. We continue to enhance the initiatives noted by the DoD IG team as ‘noteworthy practices,’ as well as [to] identify challenges that inhibit support,” Davis said.

Since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia clearly isn’t going to take the time to actually read the health care reform law before he decides whether or not it’s constitutional, maybe he and a couple of his buddies on the High Court can catch a screening of “The Hunger Games”, the movie about children battling each other to the death in a futuristic America, renamed Panem.

“You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” Scalia asked during arguments on the constitutionality of the law last week. “Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?”

He joked that spending time to read the Affordable Care Act before the Court decides its fate would put him in danger of violating the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. LOL, Judge.  

Cruel and unusual punishment is crucial to the Hunger Games, but it only lasts 142 minutes and no one in the audience gets hurt, mitigating anybody’s risk of violating the Constitution. The movie portrays a government completely disconnected from the people who struggle every day for the most basic elements of survival, including medical care. Only the wealthy residents of the Capitol have access to hospitals and modern medicine, which, fortunately for them, seems to have a cure for everything.  

This society-gone-bad scenario of denying basic care to citizens based on their income or social status seems on the big screen not only cruel and unusual but even incomprehensible. I can just hear Justice Scalia asking, again, “Is this not totally unrealistic?”

Guess what, Judge, it’s not. In fact, it’s occurring every day in what is still called the United States. And if you and your colleagues decide to scuttle ObamaCare, it won’t be long before we have PanemCare. For many Americans, we already do.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an offer. Travel with me later this month to Sullivan County, Tennessee, where I grew up, to witness an event that I’m betting you and other denizens of Washington’s northwest quadrant can hardly imagine.

For three days beginning April 13, Remote Area Medical (RAM), an organization that flies American doctors to remote, third-world villages, will be hosting a massive outdoor clinic in the infield of the famous Bristol Motor Speedway. Ironically (or not), Bristol is an Appalachian Mountain town, part of what the Hunger Games calls District 12. The heroine hails from District 12, just like me.

Justice Scalia will have to be an early riser to get the full effect of a scene as surreal as anything Hollywood could dream up.  Here’s the advice RAM offers on its website about the Bristol event:

“Be sure to arrive early. The clinic opens at 6:00am, and patients are seen on a first-come, first-served basis. Lines can be long and start early in the morning. Numbers will be given out around 3:30am each day prior to the clinic opening. For the best chance of being seen, plan to arrive by 3:30am on the day you wish to receive treatment. Be prepared for cool weather and bring snacks. Once registered, be prepared for long waits before being seen by a doctor.”

If you travel to Bristol with me, Judge, I’m almost certain you will be a changed man. You will begin to grasp just how dysfunctional and inequitable the U.S. health care system is and why the law you seem determined to declare unconstitutional was deemed necessary. Just knowing that most of RAM’s clinics are now held in the United States rather than third world countries should tell you something.

The highway I traveled to a RAM clinic in Wise, Virginia, in 2007 from my parents’ home not far from Bristol turned out to be my Road to Damascus. I was so struck by what I saw — thousands standing in hours-long lines to get care in animal stalls at the Wise County Fairgrounds — that I quit my job a few months later and began telling the truth. The truth about how health insurance companies really operate and how bad things really are out there for millions of Americans.  

Until that day, I had been able to think, talk and write about the U.S. health care system and the uninsured in the abstract, as if real-life human beings were not involved. But when I witnessed what many citizens must go through to receive basic medical care, I could no longer see them as merely numbers on a spreadsheet.  

So Justice Scalia, et al. If it’s too much of a chore to actually read one of the most important pieces of legislation that will ever cross your desks — one that will truly mean the difference between life and death for many — go see the Hunger Games and travel with me to Bristol. It will be good for your constitution. And it might just save all but the very wealthiest of us from PanemCare.  

Multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson and his family, who have kept the flagging presidential candidacy of Newt Gingrich alive, seem poised to send millions to Republican-allied groups and possibly a super PAC backing frontrunner Mitt Romney, according to fundraisers with ties to the casino owner.

Adelson along with wife Miriam and other family members has garnered notice by donating a whopping $16.5 million to a super PAC backing Gingrich for president.

A private dinner Adelson hosted on March 22 at his home in Las Vegas drew Republican bigwigs from Washington, D.C., plus some of the GOP’s best-known fundraisers and donors. The diners were in Las Vegas early for a weekend summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a nonprofit advocacy group that Adelson has backed heavily.

At the dinner, the Adelson family privately sent strong signals to some Romney allies that millions would flow from them to a super PAC backing the former Massachusetts governor — perhaps on a par with what they’ve given to Gingrich, assuming the ex-House Speaker, who is trailing badly, eventually drops out of the race.

Adelson, whose fortune is pegged at almost $25 billion by Forbes, is a prime example of the new breed of super donor who in the wake of court rulings in early 2010, can give unlimited amounts to outside spending groups supporting a candidate.

The big name attendees at Adelson’s private soiree last Thursday included Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and ex-Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, who now chairs a super PAC and a nonprofit group raising millions to help House Republicans and is also an RJC board member.

Both men spoke at the dinner, thanking Adelson for his support for GOP causes in recent years.

Also at Adelson’s dinner bash were Florida real estate magnate Mel Sembler, St. Louis investor Sam Fox and Washington super lobbyist Wayne Berman. The three men are RJC board members and each has raised big bucks for the presidential drive of Romney, say campaign sources.

Berman gave the legal limit of $2,500 to Romney for his primary fight campaign. In addition, FEC records show Berman has bundled $424,825 for Romney’s campaign. Sembler gave $2,500 to Romney for his primary fight, as did his wife Betty, son Brent, daughter-in-law Debbie and son George. Fox also gave $2,500, as did his wife Marilyn, son Jeff, daughter-in-law Marilyn, son Greg and daughter-in-law Merle.

Sembler and Fox were both ambassadors in the George W. Bush administration.

Meanwhile, Adelson is now weighing requests for financial assistance from other groups. They include: the Coleman-chaired American Action Network, which in 2010 reported spending $26 million on political activities, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is planning a $50 million issue advocacy campaign to help the GOP take control of Congress, according to fundraisers familiar with the casino owner’s political operation.

In 2010, Coleman’s network received $4 million from the RJC, which also donated the same sum to the nonprofit Crossroads GPS, which was founded by GOP super-consultant Karl Rove. Those donations were itemized in the 2010 tax filings of the RJC and first reported by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Adelson is expected to make a multimillion-dollar donation to Crossroads GPS or an affiliated super PAC, American Crossroads, say GOP fundraisers.

Other bigwigs who flew to Vegas for the RJC summit but did not attend the dinner included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California and Gov. Robert McDonnell of Virginia who runs the Republican Governors Association.

The RJC has held several meetings in Vegas in past years at the elegant Venetian, an Adelson resort hotel and casino. Matt Brooks, executive director of the RJC, has told the Center for Public Integrity that the group expects to spend as much as $5 million on electoral and issue advocacy drives in 2012, or almost double its previous high.

The day after the March 22nd dinner, Adelson jetted off to Asia on casino business and missed much of the RJC conference itself.

At this point it is unclear whether Adelson will continue to support the super PAC backing his long-time friend and political ally Gingrich.

Adelson’s fame is new, but he has been a big GOP check writer for some time. 

Adelson, who has been close to Rove since his days as the top political adviser to former President George W. Bush, provided the lion’s share of the $30 million raised in 2008 by Freedom’s Watch, a now-defunct nonprofit that was a major outside spender in that year’s elections.

Michael Beckel contributed to this report.

Citing the Buckeye State’s D grade from the State Integrity Investigation, Democratic legislators in Ohio have called for a bipartisan task force to review current ethics laws and consider new legislation to strengthen accountability and transparency.

“We have a responsibility to the people of Ohio and it is simply unacceptable for us to fail to ensure government is working for Ohioan’s best interest at all times, not for special interest or influences,” said Rep. Jay Goyal (D-Mansfield), in a press conference held Tuesday.  

In a letter to legislative leaders, the House Democrats noted “great concern over the recent ethics report from the State Integrity Investigation.” Among the 14 categories on the state scorecard, they pointed out, Ohio only received two grades higher than a C-.

The state failed three categories: legislative accountability, lobbying disclosure and redistricting. Ohio also received D- grades for executive accountability and judicial accountability, D+ grades for pension fund management and insurance commissions and C- grades for public access to information, political financing, procurement and ethics enforcement.

Rep. Ted Celeste (D-Grandview Heights) said the grades are not something to be proud of, especially since the state received F’s in a few individual categories. “We should do everything we can to improve our efforts here,” he said.

In addition to its call for new legislation, the letter also asked for reconsideration of some earlier proposals. Celeste said House Democrats have previously put forth legislation that would address some of the gaps in Ohio’s ethics laws, but those bills have not received serious consideration. Celeste and his colleagues are calling for hearings on those measures, which include proposed new regulations on independent expenditures by corporations and unions and creation of a public financing system for judicial elections. Those hearings would be held when the legislature returns from spring recess.

Another bill would require that records of public-private partnerships, a growing trend in Ohio, be made available to the public. Rep. Matt Lundy (D-Elyria), who sponsored the bill, said these entities — like JobsOhio, a semi-private agency focused on economic development — spend state dollars but are not currently subject to the state’s open record laws

“It’s hard to keep track of where the money is going,” Lundy said. “If you can’t follow the dollars, you can’t keep track of accountability.”

The fate of the Democrats’ recommendations seems uncertain at best. A spokesman for the Republican House speaker, William Batchelder, told the Columbus Dispatch that the speaker takes transparency and accountability seriously, but questioned the “flawed methodology” of the State Integrity Investigation. The GOP controls both the state House and Senate, as well as the governor’s office.

Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said he stands by the State Integrity Investigation’s methodology and reporting. 

U.S. authorities have located international fugitive Kyung Ho Song in his native South Korea, more than a decade after he fled Illinois to avoid being tried for drunken driving and reckless homicide in an accident that killed a 43-year-old single mother.

The search for Song was reactivated last spring after the Chicago Tribune contacted prosecutors and police about the dormant case. Even though U.S. authorities discovered Song’s location in December, they have yet to formally request help from South Korean officials, and it is not clear when or if Song might be extradited back to Illinois.

His case provides another glimpse into the gaps and lack of coordination in the criminal justice system that allow border-crossing fugitives to avoid prosecution.

Law enforcement officials would not comment on why there was no progress in the case for so many years, but one official suggested that it languished because of a lack of communication among the police, county prosecutors, federal agents and Justice Department officials. All played some role in pursuing Song, but none seemed to take stewardship of the extradition effort and push the case.

The Tribune's “Fugitives From Justice” series, an examination of more than 200 international fugitives cases from northern Illinois and thousands more nationwide, spotlighted Song's case in November. Tribune reporters then teamed up with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to try to locate Song. 

Independent of authorities, Tribune and ICIJ reporters in recent weeks found Song in a glass and concrete high-rise apartment in Yongin, a quiet residential suburb about an hour and half’s drive from the capital city of Seoul.

During four interviews, the once-prosperous shoe store owner, who is now 73, bemoaned how his life had unraveled since his flight.

“I am such an unlucky guy,” Song said.

Brenda Molina, the daughter of Song’s alleged victim, said she was stunned that Song could be found by reporters and outraged that authorities had waited so long to act.

“It’s sad that it’s taken all of 16 years to do something that should have been done years ago,” Molina said. “If you could do something now, something could have been done years ago. Oh my God, it’s been hard.”

As in many of the cases, the victim was an immigrant — in this case from Ecuador — whose family did not have the clout or the know-how to press for justice.

Remembered as a high-spirited woman who liked to play bingo and dance, Sonia Naranjo worked as manager of housekeepers at a suburban hotel. She was heading to a casino with three friends in October 1996 when their station wagon broke down just after midnight on a well-lit stretch of Lake Street just west of Route 59 in Bartlett.

Song’s white Oldsmobile plowed into them from behind as they tried to push their car to safety, according to police records. Police found Naranjo crumpled against Song’s front bumper, and she was dead on arrival at an Elgin hospital, while one of her friends was severely injured, records and interviews show.

Song had no significant injuries, just a slight discoloration and swelling on one lip. But he had red, bloodshot eyes and smelled of liquor, a police report said.

Song later presented himself to the court as a modest, $12,000-a-year shoe store manager and was released after putting down a $2,500 bail bond deposit.

In fact, Song co-owned a strip mall, a large Schaumburg home and Chicago commercial property worth a total of more than $1 million, the Tribune’s subsequent investigation found.

After Song was charged, he worked with his wife to liquidate those assets. Then, in 1998, he withdrew his guilty plea to reckless homicide and aggravated driving under the influence and absconded to South Korea, government records show.

“I was scared,” Song said in the recent interview. “I don’t understand the U.S. law. I didn’t understand what is going on.”

On the evening of the accident, Song said in the interview, he had “a couple of shots of Korean liquor” with friends before climbing in his car.

But Song denied being drunk, even though a Bartlett police breath alcohol test taken more than an hour after the accident showed his blood alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit, according to court records.

Recounting the crash, Song said he “didn’t even realize they were hit. Then the lady died. It was an accident. I blame my unfortunate fate.”

“My life changed upside down since then,” Song said.

Since fleeing to South Korea, Song has worked intermittently as a school janitor, earning roughly $700 a month, and lived in an apartment funded in part by a relative, according to interviews in South Korea.

After liquidating his assets, Song claimed he was able to give his wife about $80,000 and his son in Chicago $50,000 and used $70,000 to pay the Chicago lawyer who defended him in court and helped him execute the financial deals before he fled.

But Song also had ready cash when he landed in South Korea. In the interview, Song asserted that when he arrived, “I only had about $100,000 in my hand.”

Song said a wealthy nephew put him up in an apartment in Chungju, southeast of Seoul, for a year and a half. Then, Song said, he put down $70,000 and his nephew another $125,000 to buy him the apartment where he now lives in Yongin.

A reporter located Song in February, though at first he would speak only through the closed door, asking, “Why are you interested in the incident that happened 15 years ago?”

Song later called the reporter and agreed to meet, but he insisted on a cafe about two hours by subway from his home.

Wearing a black hat and thick down coat, Song looked anxious and frail as he sipped coffee and offered a guarded account of his life and the accident.

“It is the incident I don’t want to remember at all,” he said.

The night before that cafe interview, Song said, “I couldn’t sleep. I thought about jumping off my apartment balcony and killing myself.” But, Song said, “when I think about my children, I couldn’t. I have already disappointed them, and if I commit suicide, I am burdening them even more.”

Song said he is now retired and has not worked since last year. “I am an old guy; no one wants to hire me,” he said.

Song said no authorities have come to look for him in South Korea since he fled the United States.

In 2003, the U.S. Justice Department filed a warrant for Song, saying he had phoned U.S. authorities to tell them he was living permanently in the Sungdong-gu district of Seoul and to inquire about his immigration status.

Song said it must have been a relative who called on his behalf. He asserted he has “never called the U.S. immigration office, never applied for the green card, never thought about going back to the United States. I was and am still scared that they would find me and catch me.”

The South Korean immigration office’s records also show he has not left the country.

The FBI located Song in December, and Cook County prosecutors then asked the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs to submit an arrest request to South Korea. It will ultimately be up to South Korean authorities to arrest Song.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office said Justice officials have not yet sent the request to South Korean authorities but have indicated they intend to move forward.

“We want him, and the case is strong,” said Fabio Valentini, criminal division chief of the state’s attorney’s office.

Although Song and his wife divorced in Chicago before he fled, other Chicago business and court records indicate that they continued to live together, bought property and secured a business loan as husband and wife.

In his interview, Song said the divorce was genuine and that he and his wife had fought for years. “I used to drink a lot in Korea, and we used to argue over my drinking habit,” he said.

His wife “said she couldn’t stand me anymore” and left him, and Song said he does not know where she is or how she is doing. Song said he now lives with another woman who does not know of his past.

Song added that his daughter-in-law had divorced his son because she “couldn’t stand the fact that her father-in-law is a criminal.”

Song said that from time to time, he talks to his three adult children, who all live in the U.S., but they don’t visit him in South Korea. “Why would they? They are ashamed of me,” he said.

Song, who was a member of a Korean-American Presbyterian church in Elk Grove Village, had few words for those killed and injured the night of his car accident but said: “I know I committed a sin. I go to the cathedral and pray for the victims every day.”

Brenda Molina, who was 23 when she lost her mother, penned a two-page letter to Song’s judge that still sits in the Cook County criminal court file.

“Mr. JUDGE when I found out my mom had past (sic) away, I wanted to die,” Molina wrote. “When I saw my mom laying in the coffin, I felt so bad. I was going crazy, I was screaming, crying, yelling, saying to my mom to wake up.”

Molina continued: “We’ve lost the best thing we had in this world (OUR MOM). We all wanted to go with her, so she won’t be cold any more, because her hands were so cold.”

*David Jackson and Gary Marx are Tribune reporters. Nari Kim, a reporter for South Korea’s Channel A, is an associate of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity. Her work on this story in South Korea was funded by a grant to ICIJ from The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.