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Ohio attorney and prisoner-rights activist Alice Lynd was held in contempt of court and sentenced to jail on November 19 until she agrees to testify before a grand jury about an inmate's purported confession to her that he killed an inmate during the bloody Lucasville prison riot in 1993.

 Lynd was released two hours later pending a decision by the Fourth Appellate Court on the issue.

In an emotional hearing before Scioto County Common Pleas Judge William T. Marshall in Portsmouth, Ohio, Lynd, 74, refused to testify about what an inmate she referred to only as "Mr. X" told her about the murder because it would violate attorney-client privilege.

Prosecutors argued that Lynd was not the inmate's attorney and that attorney-client privilege did not apply. Judge Marshall agreed, and sentenced Lynd to jail. He offered to stay the sentence while Lynd's attorney sought a stay from the appeals court if she agreed to testify if the appeals court upheld his ruling. Lynd said she could not, in good conscience, testify about what "Mr. X" told her without his permission under any circumstances.

I was a state legislator in Arizona for many years and I specialized in election law. I'm worried that all of the recount efforts will be wasted on activities that SUGGEST fraud, but don't really PROVE anything.

Why doesn't somebody select a very suspicious small precinct(s) in Ohio and just call (or go to see) everybody that voted, tell them you're testing the accuracy of the voting system, and ask them who they voted for? It's easy to do... I suspect that every registered voter was called (or visited) SEVERAL TIMES before the election.

You'll have the ultimate exit poll, and if the results varied from the official results, you'll have a list of people who would probably be willing to sign affidavits. These would be convincing proof that you could take to a courtroom. This method is really the only one that will work where there is no paper trail.

We're trying this in a couple of precincts in Tucson, AZ .... but we don't have any touch screens here and AZ wasn't a "battleground" state so I doubt if we'll find anything.

A nationwide strike of 46,000 flight attendants has been authorized by the board of the Association of Flight Attendants. They are resisting airline employers making workers labor for longer hours at lower wages, and threatening to get rid of their pensions. A strike vote will be taken at four airlines——UAL Corp.'s United, US Airways Group Inc., ATA Holdings Inc.'s ATA Airlines and Hawaiian Holdings Inc.'s Hawaiian Airlines—with the votes set to be counted by the end of December.

Many U.S. air carriers are in financial distress and squeezing their work forces in an effort to return to profitability. The judicial branch of the state is a key player. For example, US Airways is trying to use federal bankruptcy court to void collective bargaining agreements for current and retired employees over hourly pay, pension plans and health care coverage.

Several factors are driving insolvency for US Airways. One is the rising price of jet fuel. This has increased the cost of energy for the carrier and the airline industry as a whole.

In all the fulsome talk about rigged elections, I never see mention of a new election. The people who rig elections are not going to stop work when a new count is ordered; they'll rig that, too. The only way to be sure is to redo the disputed elections, but no one says so. "The cost," officials would say, if compelled to comment. Given the cost of seeing American democracy subverted, the price tags for new elections--especially low-tech ones that don't involve voting machines but do involve focused human examination and counting of ballots--is inconsiderable. This doesn't apply only to Ohio. The world's holding its breath.

Mitch Clogg
Mendocino, CA
There is a movement afoot, originating on the left coast, to amend the United States' Constitution to allow foreign-born U.S. citizens to obtain the highest office in our land. Chiefly, the advent of Arnold Swarzzenegger's Governorship of California is the most recent spark that has again brought this issue to the public forefront. Still, I don't quite buy into it.

Our forefathers safe-guarded the Presidency with this provision for a reason, or several reasons. Certainly we are a nation that is in a large part indebted to emigrants and immigration. Americans born elsewhere have surely made the ultimate sacrifice for their grateful adopted nation. And yes, few or no families (apart from Native American Indians) cannot trace their ancestry beyond our borders; however, all of this is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Much has been written about America’s role as the world’s policeman-that it is a part no one has asked us to play, that we do so ineptly, etc. But even a cursory examination of the behavior of the United States for the past three years will reveal that our country has not acted in such a manner during that period. Consider that Bush is now beginning his prewar rampup to a war in Iran by sending Colin Powell onto stage to claim that those evil Persians are building missiles and warheads to deliver nuclear (nucular to you, Mr. President) weapons against America. Then Mr. Bush started talking tough against North Korea again, warning it that no nuclear weapons would be tolerated within its borders. Watch out, Mr. Kim Jong Il, he’s got a mandate in his pocket. Then, to top things off, our chief executive demanded an explanation from President Putin of Russia as to why he had taken actions that Bush felt were undemocratic. I guess the latter didn’t realize that he had been reelected President only of our country, not the world. Vladimir had better shape up, or George W. will “preempt” him.

According to Benito Mussolini, "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power."

Following the president's re-election by the electoral synod last week, the sentimental apoplectic in me couldn't help picturing the last scene in "The Day After," the movie about a nuclear holocaust. Shredded and shrunken, Jason Robards' doctor-character sits on the rubble of his house as the camera pans out to reveal a flattened Lawrence, Kan.

What hydrogen bombs couldn't do to the Democratic Party, Karl Rove and George W. Bush finally did, with a little help from a ringer. Five votes swung the election Bush's way four years ago. It took just one vote this time -- Osama bin Laden's, cast with impeccable timing over the last three years to keep fear the value-added commodity it's been for the Bush administration. Without fear, there could be no crusade (against heathens abroad and at home, but mostly at home), and, without crusade, there could be no appeal to the deciding factor in American politics: the religious bloc. So, the 2004 election panned out as a choice between committed evangelicals and committed secularists. Evangelicals won.

If you're still upset over the injection of conservative "moral values," into this year's election you can thank the Puritans this Thanksgiving, a contribution for which they are better-remembered.

Although the Puritans fled to the New World for freedom of religion, their goal was freedom to practice their religion, not necessarily to let others practice theirs. And the belief that America was chosen by God for a special place in history quickly became an article of the Puritans' faith.

''In our culture, we have this strong belief that the American nation has a divinely ordained purpose, a contract with God, to play a pre-eminent role in human history,'' David Adams, a professor emeritus at Ohio State University's Lima campus, has noted. ''The Puritans regarded themselves as a second chosen people and believed themselves to be lineal descendants of the Hebrews. . . . That made North America the promised land.''

AUSTIN, Texas -- Whilst the punditry wanders weak and weary in the deep fogs of the "moral values debate," what say we pay some attention to what is going on, eh?

According to Newsday, "The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Ladin ..."

Bad Nooz. In the first place, the concept of "purge" has not hitherto played much part in our history, and now is no time to start. Considerable pains have been taken to protect the civil service from partisan pressure for extremely good reasons.

"Disloyalty to Bush," or any president, is not the same as disloyalty to the country. In fact, in the intelligence biz, opposing the White House is sometimes the highest form of loyalty to country, since when we fight without good intelligence, we fight blind.

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