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KDE-Services extends the features of the Dolphin File Manager right-click menu in the KDE graphical environment. It allows you to play and convert between several video formats, extract audio from movies and convert them to MP3 or FLAC, convert audio to MP3 or FLAC, securely send a file or directory to Mailx as an email, send files to Thunderbird as attachments, burn and checksum ISO images, execute scripts and applications, get low-level information on video files, build ISO images from folders, replace text, search, SSH, use Midnight Commander, use system, network, and backup/restore tools, use Samba, extract subtitles from MKV video, multiplex subtitles into MPEG-2 videos, and work with YouTube, DVDs, multimedia, GPG. You can add a timestamp prefix to a filename or directory name. A paranoid shredder, an HTTP publisher, graphic tools, RPM package tools, Xorg configuration, and Dropbox tools are included.
Kvpm is a GUI front end for Linux LVM and GNU parted. LVM2 groups and volumes can be created, removed, and manipulated using most of the options supported by the standard LVM2 tools. Some support for creating and operating on partitions is provided. It also handles creating and mounting filesystems. LVM version 2.02.88 or newer must be installed with the lvm2app library. Only the KDE 4 libraries need to be installed, not the entire desktop, so it my be run from within Gnome, for instance.
DireKtion is a satellite navigation project based on data from OpenStreetMap.org. It aims to provide a free (not just as in beer) satellite navigation solution for any vehicle/person that can carry a Linux device. It is able to calculate a route between any two points on a map, and displays directions for traveling between them.


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Taking a cue from the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, protesters across the world took to the streets Saturday to demonstrate against what they say is corporate greed, the banks and government austerity cuts.
Organizers of the global protests say there will be demonstrations in 951 cities in 82 countries. On their website, the organizers say they're demanding change and to let politicians and the financial elite know it's up to the people to decide the future.
As many as 1,000 protesters were marching Saturday morning to a Chase bank branch in New York's financial district, banging drums, blowing horns and carrying signs decrying corporate greed.
Some say they are angry about the role that banks played in the financial crisis.
A few protesters went inside the bank to close their accounts, but they didn't stop other customers from getting inside or seek to block the business.
Police told the marchers to stay on the sidewalk, but the demonstration appeared to be fairly orderly as it wound through downtown streets.
In London, one of the financial capitals of the world, hundreds of people gathered on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, close to the financial district. They waved banners spelling out their message: "Bankers are the real looters"; "Beware, people are coming out of their comas."
Speaking to the BBC, Naomi Colvin, an organizer of Occupy the London Stock Exchange, explained why she is protesting: "We are concerned about the role the financial services industry plays in this country and the relationship between the financial services industry and government."
In Toronto, hundreds of demonstrators converged near the Toronto Stock Exchange and the headquarters of some of Canada's major banks to decry what they say is government-abetted corporate greed that has served the elites at the expense of the majority of people.
The Toronto demonstrators are marching to St. James Park in the east-central end of the city, where they plan to camp for at least the next few days.
Across the globe in Sydney, more than 500 demonstrators set up camp in Martin Place in the central business district.
"We're not just talking about a change of government," Josh Lees, one of the group's organizers, said. "I think what everyone here is talking about is a change in the entire way our system works. Our entire way that money dominates all of our political lives, the big corporations — the 1 percent who we're talking about — the mining companies, the banks and so on who dominate our entire political establishment, too. Both major parties in Australia are effectively just servants of capital, big money, and everything like that."
NPR's Philip Reeves and Larry Miller reported from London, and Stuart Cohen reported from Sydney for this report, which contains material from The Associated Press.

subset: commoncrawl


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SPRING VALLEY — The Spring Valley City Council plans to seek an extension for its TIF (Tax Increment Finance)
District, which is scheduled to run out in 2029.
An extension would allow the city to keep its TIF an additional 12 years and serve the maximum 35 years.
A TIF is a method of using future gains in taxes to subsidize current improvements, which are projected to create the conditions for said gains. The city can use its collected TIF funds for a variety of improvement projects within the district including demolition of a building, rehabilitation of a structure, prepping a site to build infrastructure, pay for engineering costs, etc.
The city's last TIF collection carried a gross increment of about $470,000, which about 20 percent was committed to local school districts.
A map highlighting Spring Valley's TIF District can be found on the city's website.
The council invited attorney Herb Klein to last Thursday's committee meeting to talk more about how to proceed with an extension.
Klein explained how the process to get an extension is different than establishing the TIF. When seeking an extension, the ultimate decision-maker is the legislature in Springfield.
The process involves introducing a bill and getting it passed by the House, the Senate and ultimately signed by the governor.
"The practice of the legislature in Springfield is they will not introduce a bill or seek a TIF extension if any of the taxing bodies are in opposition," Klein said. "Ideally, (the taxing bodies) will write a letter stating they are in support of the extension."
Spring Valley would have to get support from three school districts, Illinois Valley Community College, the Bureau County Board and the township.
Klein said there have been a number of communities in the surrounding area that have gotten a TIF extension, including Ohio, Oglesby, Ottawa, Morris and Mendota. He said the county board supported the Ohio extension, and IVCC has a history of supporting TIF extensions.
"There have also been instances we have become familiar with where cities have tried getting TIF extensions and haven't been able to get them," he said. "There's no guarantee. It's a process to work through. Usually what happens when you seek a TIF extension is start by having meetings with leadership of the taxing bodies and explain your reason for it and what we need. Also, show them the financial side of it and how it will benefit the town, how it will benefit them and what they would get out of it."
Mayor Walt Marini asked if there were any bills on the horizon that could impact the city's chance of getting the extension.
"Last year and the year before, there were a number of TIF reform bills. Some of them negatively impacted the ability to set up new TIFs or made it much more difficult, but none of them were introduced this year. But it doesn't mean they could come back next year," Klein said. "It's hard to predict what will happen in Springfield."
Council members agreed to get the process moving, in which Klein said he would get together with Marini; the best thing to do is start setting up meetings with the affected taxing bodies.
Klein said the city is only into its eighth year of the 23-year TIF, so if action with the taxing bodies isn't good now, it doesn't mean it won't be in the future.
Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.


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Factory worker Wu Suqing hunches over a machine knitting a green cashmere sweater bound for a department store in China where demand for the luxury wool is growing even as Western sales shrink.
Surrounded by towering piles of brightly colored pullovers, Wu and dozens of workers at a factory in northern China churn out more than 100,000 sweaters a year that retail in Beijing and Shanghai for hundreds of dollars each.
"At the beginning I was tired, but now I'm used to it," Wu said above the clamor of knitting machines in a dingy building in Ordos in northern China's Inner Mongolia, where she works 11 hours a day.
China is the world's largest producer of cashmere, churning out 75 to 80 percent of the global supply — worth an estimated 5 billion to 6 billion yuan (US$770 million to US$924 million) per year.
This "soft gold" or "diamond fiber," as highly prized cashmere is known in the industry, has traditionally been exported to affluent overseas markets, but China's growing taste for luxury products is changing that.
High-altitude northern and western China are ideal for producing the cloud-like wool. Their cold, dry winters cause the long-haired goats scattered to grow rich coats to keep the animals warm.
The soft fiber is spun into yarn and then knitted into sweaters, scarves and shawls sold by luxury brands such as Hermes and Eric Bompard in Paris, New York and Sydney.
More than half of the country's cashmere clothing and accessories are still exported, but are finding a growing market in increasingly affluent Chinese cities.
"It is easy for a Chinese person to buy a cashmere sweater now. People are much richer than before," said Zhang Quanxiang, vice director of the China Livestock Marketing Association's cashmere department.
The number of Chinese-made cashmere sweaters exported last year fell to 12 million, down 33 percent 2007, as the financial crisis hit US and European buyers, said Zhang, former vice president of China's largest cashmere producer, Ordos Group.
However, he adds that the growing Chinese market has helped offset that.
Raw cashmere prices have nearly doubled in recent years because of the Chinese demand, fewer goats following recent bitterly cold winters and a ban on grazing the sharp-hooved animals on open land in Inner Mongolia to prevent soil erosion.
The rising prices have been life-changing for herders such as Meng Lounu, 77, whose family lives in a village on the edge of the Gobi, where they raise hundreds of goats in large earthen-floor pens.
The family earns one million yuan each year selling cashmere to factories in Ordos. Recently, they have been able to buy a new pick-up truck and build several block-shaped cement houses for family members.
"Our standard of living gets better and better," Meng said, herding dozens of long-horned goats around a yard strewn with dung and straw. "Before, our life was bad, but now it's great. We can eat as much as we want — we make more and more money."
China is the world's fastest-growing market for luxury goods and is forecast to be the biggest by 2015, according to consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
A woman shopper at a wholesale outlet in Ordos, where a 100 percent cashmere sweater sells for up to 2,000 yuan, said she liked the soft fiber because it was comfortable.
The picture is less rosy for China's cashmere factories, whose profit margins have been eroded by the soaring wool prices and increasing competition from other Chinese manufacturers enticed by the growing market.


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|« "Life...is in the blood"
|Dandy Omelet »
Swimmer's cramp
My daughter has not had a glass of milk since the day I started on the Blood Type Diet. She never liked milk, and she resisted drinking it. When I read that milk was an avoid for Type As I felt so guilty. I said, "I will never make you drink a glass of milk again." She has a protein shake made with soy milk for breakfast every morning, and she eats yogurt several times a week, but she has not touched cow's milk. However at 14, her body needs calcium. I had been giving her 160 mg of magnesium and 400 mg of calcium a day.
She swims in a summer swim league, and she asked if I would consider swimming at night so that she could start getting in shape for the season. Three weeks ago we went to the pool together. She blew past me on the first lap, but several minutes later she was sitting on the side of the pool. She had a serious foot cramp. She stretched it and massaged it, but she was through swimming for the night. I knew it was her calcium so I added another 500 mg per day.
Last week she swam a little farther, but again had to stop because of a cramp in the other foot. This week she's taken 320 mg of magnesium and 1100 mg of calcium. She swam tonight completely free of pain.
When I started trying a new vegetable a week I was at a loss about what to do with some of them. If you've never had escarole, it helps to know that it's a type of lettuce! (I know half of you are thinking how can anyone not know what escarole is and the other half of you are saying esca-what.) I have lots of cook books, but most of them have fancy recipes with lots of avoids. I went to Half Price Books (a used book store) and found several vegetable guides. I bought one that described how to choose vegetables and how to prepare them.
This week the grocery had really fresh looking Swiss Chard. When I got home I consulted the vegetable book and learned that Swiss Chard is "two vegetables in one." The book said to strip the leaves from the stems and cook the leaves like spinach. They were very good, almost as good as beet greens. The book said the stems could be eaten either raw or cooked like asparagus. I prepared them both ways and we voted. My daughter and I both like them raw. I ate mine dipped in olive oil, she dipped hers in peanut butter. My husband preferred them cooked.
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The lights are on
Have you ever seen that one movie with that dude in it? Chances are someone here has, and they want to talk to you about it. Grab some popcorn and discuss all things relating to the silver screen.
Who's watching Robin Hood aka Gladiator Part II this weekend? If you have seen it already what did you think about it, I heard it got mixed reviews. I'm checking it out on Saturday, I hope it is as good as it looks.
i'm pumped for it! I'm going to go see it with my grandpa, saturday maybe.
check out my blog!
Rainheart, I'll never forget you.
apparently it's good in the action department, but it takes away a lot of the charm from previous incarnations of the character, so big fans of the robin hood mythology will probably be bummed
"If you really loved me you'd all kill yourselves right now" -Spider Jerusalem
yea that's what I've heard
Yeah, It's a pretty standard "serious business" action movie. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly a masterpiece of cinema. Except there was one whole scene that gave me a "Saving Pvt. Ryan" flashback. That was pretty funny.
During the Wii's console cycle, only 2 games got a perfect score from GI. Both were Zelda games.
gg, Nintendo. gg.
I just need to hurry up and see this flick.
I saw a while back and it was really good
I havn't seen it, but I heard it was good.
I haven't seen it, but I've heard mixed reviews on it.


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Why not just say "violation of team rules" ? He lied, no getting around it.
Brendan Gibbons Expelled, Untruths Rampant
The university and athletic department handled Gibbons about as well as he handled this field goal. [Eric Upchurch]
The Daily has revealed that the sketchy way Brendan Gibbons exited the program—a "tweak" before the OSU game followed by barely-credible claims of "family issues"—was in fact a result of the university expelling him for the 2009 rape allegations that were exhumed earlier this year:
"You will be permanently separated from the University of Michigan effective December 20, 2013," reads a Dec. 19, 2013 letter addressed to Gibbons at his Florida residence from the University's Office of Student Conflict Resolution, which facilitates disciplinary proceedings against students. The Michigan Daily did not obtain these documents from the University.
In human language, "permanently separated" is expulsion. The OSCR took that action based on a preponderance of the evidence.
Why it took almost five years to reach this conclusion is unknown. The Daily suggests that revised policies from 2011 may have forced the University to re-evaluate, but policies from 2011 do not result in December 2013 expulsions. Given the timing here it's clear that the guy who dumped various court documents on the internet was the proximate cause. That is of course terribly embarrassing for the university, which was apparently fine with having a student they eventually concluded they were at least 50.1% sure raped a girl as long as no one was complaining about it.
Meanwhile, the athletic department's optics here are horrible. Having him on the team is not the issue, or if it is it's on Rodriguez's head. The incident was a year old and seemingly dead when Hoke came in; without the OSCR or other university body stepping in there would be no reason to reconsider Gibbons's status.
But once they knew things were coming to a head they could not have been dumber about this. Not content with offering up the generic and 100% true "violation of team rules" explanation—being enrolled at the university is kind of important if you're going to be on the team—they chose to cloak Gibbons's departure in a thin veneer of sympathy by claiming "family issues." That is a lie. Now they look horrible, and for something a bit more serious than having a noodle in the stadium.
Meanwhile, Hoke's explanation for Gibbons's unavailability for Ohio State is questionable at best. Was this "tweak" legitimate? Is it at all plausible that Gibbons was "iffy" for the bowl game on December 16th, three days before the very last gear of ponderous university justice ground to a halt?
"He's a little iffy," Hoke said. "He's kicking a little bit. But I don't want to over-kick him (in practice).
"I've never been a kicker, so I can't imagine that (muscle pull) problem. So, he's a little iffy."
There is absolutely no chance that Brady Hoke was not fully informed of the status of his kicker by this point. Dave Brandon did not call Brady up on the 19th and say "you're never going to believe this, but…" That's also a lie, and in the service of what cause again?
UPDATE: A user who used to work at the OSCR provides details on the process:
Having worked at the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (the "disciplinary" office that administered the expulsion proceedings against Gibbons) for two years in undergrad, I thought maybe I could offer some insight / clear up some confusion about the OSCR process in this thread.
OSCR is not, in any appreciable sense, an investigatory body. It is a passive office that acts only after receiving a complaint from some member of the University community. While any individual student, faculty, or staff member can file a complaint, the most common OSCR complainants by far are Residence Education (Housing) and DPS. In order to pursue a complaint with OSCR, the Complainant has to provide all the necessary evidentiary backing; again, OSCR does not investigate events on its own.
The process for initiating and pursuing a complaint with OSCR goes as follows:
- An OSCR staff member conducts an intake meeting with the Complainant to discuss the nature of his/her/its complaint and inform the Complainant of the various resolution pathways available (in addition to formal arbitration, OSCR offers a number of alternative dispute resolution pathways that do not result in disciplinary action).
- An OSCR staff member will then conduct an intake meeting with the Respondent to notify him of the complaint and inform him of his rights/options in the process.
- At that point, the Respondent can either accept responsibility for the complaint or indicate that he's willing to proceed to a formal arbitration.
- Assuming that the Complainant is also interested in pursuing a formal arbitration, OSCR will either appoint a trained member of the University staff to serve as the formal arbiter, or it will select a panel of student arbiters.
- After hearing from both the Complainant and the Respondent, the arbiter or the student panel will reach a finding of "responsible" or "not responsible," and will then proceed to make a sanction recommendation.
- Any recommendations for expulsion have to be approved by a member of the University administration. When I was there, I believe this was the responsibility of the VP for Student Affairs, E. Royster Harper.
As you can see, this is a multi-step process that requires several meetings and often many different witnesses, advisors, and arbiters. With that said, it is emphatically NOT a three- or four-year process. Given that all of the investigatory work is already completed before a complaint is filed, the formal arbitration process does not take very long at all. In my time at OSCR, I can't remember a single arbitration - including those involving sexual assault allegations - lasting more than a single semester, from initial complaint to final sanction.
and maybe with a major news conference to clear the air. Because unless I'm missing something, it looks like Gibbons could have been protected to keep Lewan in games too. I don't see anyone raising this point??? And with all of the accusations swirling FOR YEARS about this, getting a handle on whether even some of it was true cannot have been that freaking difficult, unless I am missing something. And if that was obvious--if it was clear that there was serious wrongdoing (whatever the extent)--then the standard has to be that you remove that person from the squad. . . at least until the thing is cleared up, for god's sakes. Instead, both of those guys played.
I don't necessarily think the management here suppressed this story, as some are alleging. (And I certainly don't think that Brian's post above takes anything but the right very serious tone.) But I would like to hear Brian explain why conversation on this topic got so little play here was so carefully tiptoed around. Maybe for every good reason, but I'd like to understand what the thinking/rationale was.
April 3, 2011. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, Russlyn Ali, sends an open letter threatening Title IX sanctions if institutions fail to follow up on claims of sexual harassment to her satisfaction:
I was criticized in the MGoBoard thread on this topic, for having politicized the question by advising all of the existence of the very widely-praised column by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal in which he movingly told the story of political correctness run amok at Auburn.
It is a wonderful column. I recommend it to all.
But let's set aside Taranto and the Journal. Here's noted civil libertarian and law prof Jonathan Turley on the same topic, with much the same concern as James Taranto:
I wish for once, that rich, white, powerful males would work to ensure due process for women who are sexually assulted. Even with highly publicized cases like Duke, and relatively clear cases like Auburn, the pendulum (for the last 250,000+ years or so) has swung WAAAAAAAAAY too far on the side of the alleged assulter. It should swing a hell of a lot more toward the alleged victim and is finally doing so now.
A well-to-do powerful white prosecuting attorney helped her make a phony case against the Duke Lacrosse players. And a well-to-do white defense attorney helped her when she was accused of attempted murder, first-degree arson, assault and battery, identity theft, communicating threats, damage to property, resisting an officer, misdemeanor child abuse, and, lastly, the guilty verdict in the second-degree murder case that has sent her to prison in North Carolina for 14-18 years.
I worked in Durham at the time. I don't believe that the prosecutor was well-to-do. They are incredibly underpaid. As are most defense attorneys. It's one reason I'm not a criminal defense attorney. If you have facts to support your characterization, I'd be interested.
We were firing back at the ridiculous race/class/gender -card huckstering; I didn't bring the issue of "wealthy powerful white men" into this debate. There's no good reason for anyone else to have done so, either. If the white man who was placed in the role of defendant in this case was denied due process, it certainly wasn't a case of white privilege.
I understand the reason why you said it. Unfortunately, it was based on assumptions and stereotypes that proved false. Lawyers must be wealthy, white and male? How do you know that the prosecutor and defense counsel were white or male, for that matter? Did you bother to look them up?
I suggest that if you get your facts straight, and lessen your assumptions about people, your views will be taken more seriously.
As to your broader point, race, class and gender have everything to do with sexual assault. Always have, always will. Sexual assault is about power and sexualizing violence. If you think that power and violence are somehow divorced from class, gender and race, you live in a very different reality from the rest of us.
I understand the reason why you said it. Unfortunately, it was based on assumptions and stereotypes that proved false. Lawyers must be wealthy, white and male? How do you know that the prosecutor and defense counsel were white or male, for that matter? Did you bother to look them up?
Well, I wrote it because I knew that I was right on the facts, and I wanted to attack the whole race-card gambit.
The Duke Lacrosse phony-rape case prosecutor; Mike Nifong. Now disbarred in North Carolina after having been found guiltly of fraud, material false statements before a judge, lying about exculpatory DNA evidence, etc. etc.
The Crystal Mangum murder-trial defense lawyer, Dan Meier:
I apologize if I misled you into thinking that I was apologizing for anything that I wrote. But rather than continuing that sort of back-and-forth, I'll just say; the Duke and Auburn (and how many others?) cases belong in courts of law. With legal protections for the accused. God only knows, if the Duke Lacrosse case had never been in court, and if no charges had been filed, and instead we only had some weird student disciplinary council hearing resulting in no conviction but expulsion from the university... We would never have gotten to the bottom of that story. THESE CASES BELONG IN COURT.
Criminal cases involve a state actor. As such, it requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt in order to protect the innocent against the far greater power of the state. That, at least, is the theory. On the other hand, individuals have a right to meet and form associations and to include and exclude parties as they deem fit. If I start a Section 1 Fan Club, I can allow in, and kick out, anyone I want, for any reason I want, as long as that reason doesn't violate state law (e.g., I can't exclude someone based on race, etc.).
The University is nominally a state entity, though its funding from the State is minimal. Many institutions, however, are private. To tell a private institution that it must continue to contract with a person, and may not exclude them, for any or no reason is questionable constitutionally, legally and ethically. Are you going to stand for the proposition that once a student is admitted to a school, that school has to allow the student to remain, regardless of whether there is stronge evidence of wrongdoing, unless the person has been subject to criminal process? You seem to be concerned about government overreach, but that would be an overreach beyond proportion.
"To tell a private institution that it must continue to contract with a person, and may not exclude them, for any or no reason is questionable constitutionally, legally and ethically."
There are limited restrictions on hiring and firing. These have various constitutional justifications (e.g., to protect against improper discrimination or limits that go with governmental funding). Obviously, this is not a case where labor laws apply.
Not to mention citing a ludicrous claim of 250,000 years of the pendulum swinging in an unfavorable direction, when 245,000 of those years is essentially unrecorded history. Nevermind that the concept of rape as crime in the context that we understand it today has only really been codified within the last 2 -2.5 centuries.
does the number really matter?
We've looked at your anecdote. Let's look at data.
It' s not going well.
I love that I'm able to keep baiting Section 1 and others to point to Auburn and Duke. Keep going. shall we go for 2? 4? wanna try for double digits?
the point is, false acusations of rape/sex misconduct are most assuredly not a major problem in this country. and if anything that may actually prevent men from sexually assulting women or even coming close to a line that someone might interpret as having been crossed into sexual assault at a party. that kind of sucks, I get that. As someone mentioned, it must be scary to be a sexually active male these days. Yes, yes it must be, I'd imagine (lol). Almost as scary as being a sexualy active female. Or an inactive one for that matter- b/c sometimes the women doesn't have a choice in the matter.
letting rapists and sexual molesters go free is a fucking epidemic and has been for all of human history.
So "a lot of sexual assault goes unpunished" means "anyone accused of sexual assualt is not entitled to due process"? That's a bold position.
The "dear colleague" letter shows that, far from the pendulum swinging far toward the accused, we're actively knocking down legitimate and necessary due process (a reasonable standard of guilt for serious offenses, the right to face accusers and present evidence, the right to counsel) in the name of upping the conviction rate, and damn the collateral damage.
Expecting the accused to have a reasonable chance to defend themselves before unleashing hell on them is a far cry from "letting rapists go free".
re:paragraph 1: More like: "75%+ sexual assault goes unpunished" means "anyone accused of sexual assualt is entitled to an equal due process as the alleged victim AND a an equal burden of broof (51/49) as described by the term preponderance of evidence."
re: paragraph 2: this is not a court of law (TM) so conviction isn't directly the goal, but prevention and defense of the victim.
So you set an "equal" burden of proof, but then you seed the proceeding with bias toward the accused ("75% go unpunished! We have to defend women! We'll look really bad if we don't punish someone") and deny equal due process by rejecting the accused's evidence and preventing them from cross examining or even knowing the identity of the witnesses against them (read the article I posted earlier or nearly anything else discussing the nature of these proceedings).
That's a recipe for a kangaroo court with a 100% "conviction" rate. And yes I understand conviction is a term of convenience. Please stop playing "gotcha" games with criminal vs. civil - I know and recognize the difference and am arguing against that difference.
In one case a young man got expelled and was not reinstated even though he was not only never charged by the police, but his accuser actually got convicted of filing a false report (and that's really rare). My point is not to say that false accusations are a bigger or more serious problem than sexual assault. But I do think there's a real problem when the standard is so weak that evidence that doesn't even rate a filing of charges (meaning they don't even have confidence in obtaining an indictment) in the legal system can and does result in expulsion in the academic system.
Mostly I'm concerned with the degree to which you downplay the seriousness that ought to attend an expulsion in a public institution. It would be one thing if we were talking about relatively minor administrative punishment such as sensitivity / code of conduct training or the college equivalent of a restraining order. I'd be fine with applying that even in the face of 49% uncertainty. I think Yale tried something like that. But the burden of proof for expulsion ought to be higher, given that it will seriously disrupt the ability of the expelled to obtain an education. I think Yale tried something like that - comparatively mild punishment at a low burden of proof but a higher burden of proof for the most severe punishments. To me that seems fair. However they were attacked for giving minor punishment for rape (as if a preponderance of evidence was a beyond doubt finding of a criminal act).
I just think someone accused of rape and threatened with expulsion ought to have a bit more protection than someone challenging a parking ticket, and right now that's emphatically not the case.
the lower half of this sounds fair. something less than expulsion that is a porbationary period plus rehab.
as to the 1st paragraph, it's very well known that the overwhelming majoriety of sex assualts & rapes are not even disclosed, let alone investigated, tried (in a kangaroo court or otherwise), much less convicted. this is certainly NOT b/c the alleged assaulters are innocent, as section 1 keeps saying ("Gibbons didn't sexualy assault anyone: b/c he hasn't been charged/convicted"). It's b/c
- women don't feel that the system works enough to protect them, and on the contrary works MORE to protect the alleged assulter, which it does. So women are not willing to go after the assulter b/c there's so little chance to actually have any consequences brought to the assulter due to his actions.
- even if they do attempt to do so, due to the nature of these crimes (private, personal, 'he said, she said') it is almost impossible to gain enough evidence to secure conviction (read:expulsion from the U in this case). The odds are overwhelmingly and undoubtedly against the victims of rape & sexual assault. The focus of the rights of the accused in our justice system results in this imbalance, IMO.
Well, that is, until the T9 'preponderance of evidence' 51/49 threshold that was recently inacted by the Fed in non-legal (university tribunal) cases. The goal of this is mainly to encourage more women to actually report sexual assualt in the 1st place b/c YES, it makes it easier for men to be accused and found to have misbehaved (can't think of a better word than convicted) and oh IDK, actually feel the consequences of their reprehensible actions.
I know people like to go to "innocent before proven guilty," "due process" or the heretofor unquoted "better to let 100 guilty men go free than to have one innocent man be found guilty." In general: "ensure the rights of the accused." And I agree with that and certainly understand the arguement. I'd use it myself, in cases that aren't sex. assault/rape. And I'd be MUCH more concerned about due process and the rights of the accused in the court of law under prosecution by a state or federal government. However, IMO, in the exclusive and unique case of sex. assault/rape crimes, the defense of the accused standard needs to be relaxed b/c it WAY TOO OFTEN protects the powerful and guilty and works against the innocent and the victims. I've come to this opinion b/c
- I think it's become pretty clear that our justice system/society has done a HORRIBLE job of preventing the crime of sex. assault/rape, perhaps moreso than in any other type of criminal conduct. The focus in our justice system on the rights of the accused has led to the imbalance as mentioned in point 2 above (IMO).
- rape/sexual assault is very aguably the most reprehensible crime that can be committed.
I guess the bottom line is, I'm willing to trade the potential that an innocent man be found to have misbehaved for the hundreds/thousands of rape/sex assault cases that would actually be reported (again, b/c women feel like they might have a chance with this lowered threshold). Overall, men should be just as afraid to commit sexual assault as women are afraid of to be victims of it. perhaps even more than that. Right now, that's not the case. But due to the T9 mandate form the Fed, that's beginning to change. I think the benefits outweigh the costs of this change, and thus think it's a good change.
Some days I am not so proud ot it, but I had my own practice in a farily big city as a criminal trial lawyer. I have tried scores and scores of cases to verdict, at both the state and federal level. I have tried scores of criminal sexual assault cases of all kinds with respect to defendants and alleged victims. (These are state criminal allegations; sexual crimes are essentially state violations, not federal)
I find it mildly amusing whenever I read the opinions of people like Section 1 (whose background I admittedly know nothing about), but whose understanding of the reality of the way the American justice system works in my opinion lacks both breadth and depth. It's a little different than talking about football.
I do not have the time at this instant to engage in protracted debate; however, I find your analysis of this situation to be much more in line with reality than most others.
I am relatively disgusted with the way the some people employed by our athletic department have handled this matter, though I am not too sure that it would not have been far worse at most other institutions than UM.
I find the power and proclivity of the government and the police to buy into false allegations to be pretty scary, but I feel like you have a good grip on what actually happens out there.
I'm disturbed that in a discussion that you know is nuanced and complex, you have a hardee-fucking-har attitude towards how this touchy subject plays out for young men in this country who are just learning how to negotiate sexuality and being sexually active. MOST young men are not rapists or abusers or scumbags, and yet they need to be sensitive and careful about this issue so they don't end up making young women feel victimized, AND so they don't end up vulnerable to allegations.
That's a significant problem that we can address, or not. I vote for the former.
There is a horrible past and present bias against victims, no question. Does this justify not giving a shit about half our young population? Does this justify not caring about innocent people?
this claim is just false. false accusations of rape and actual rapes are both serious problems in this country. the sad fact is that any instutional changes to protect against one injustice are likely to be susceptible to the other type of injustice. it may be that the pendulum has swung too far one way or another, but false accusations do occur and they often ruin the lives of innocent people
Precisely. Should we point out a major case like FSU, the complete opposite of the Duke case? This was an incrediby high profile case in which the accused got away with it despite plenty of evidence. You're right - the number of rapists and sexual molesters who go free is a bigger problem than the number of false accusations.
There was a preponderance of evidence in the FSU case to say the least (I won't get into details for reasons of maintaining decorum).
Winston got off scot-free with a fucking embarassing, chuckling press conference from the redneck Tallahassee DA who more or less gave him a figurative pat on the back.
only 3 in 100 rapists serve time. It boggles the mind that some guys are so threatened by the idea of justice for something so ugly and so rampant that they cling to one or two widely publicized instances where false allegations were laid. Sociologists have spoken for decades of a rape culture in this country, and the bogus defenders ally themselves with it.
The fact is that a lot of guys are raped, too--almost three million American men, by one count, many of them in the military. It is SO FUCKING IMPORTANT that they are able to speak out. This is a huge f'ing problem, and if my university, where I first learned to analyze and dreamed about fixing these societal ills is tucking it under the rug, I am really pained by that.
If Section 1 isn't pushing a political agenda here--almost daily--I don't know who is. Let's push back with some facts.
Nobody wants a university to be "tucking it under the rug." Nobody expects that. Nobody wants that. I certainly don't, anyway.
All I want, is to turn these cases over to law enforcement, to the extent that they impact criminal or quasi-criminal issues.
I don't want one individual guy to pay for "societal ills" with his reputation, if and when his substantive due process rights are violated.
lost his job for no reason...
...I'm not sure if I am allowed to make any further arguments.
So, just a question: What, exactly, about the Ann Arbor Police investigation, and the prosecutorial decision to forego charges, did you find to be in error? Why, exactly, were any such decisions in error?
Be specific, and succinct.
NONE. I have no problem with Gibbons NOT being charged with a crime by the state or federal government.
I also have no problem with him being expelled.
THEY HAVE DIFFERENT THRESHOLDS of guilt. One is a prosecutorial threshold that would need to be upheld in a court of law by the state. the other is the 51/49 "perponderance of evidence" threshold that leads to expulsion from a university.
Look, I'm done arguing with about this b/c you refuse to accept that there is a difference b/t being charged by the state of a federal or state crime ... and being found guitly of breaking the students code of conduct at a university thru a "perponderance of evidence" threshold.
they should be open to FOIA, unles FERPA concerns trump that, which I assume they do so this post is moot
In Michigan, the FOIA Act only exempts "Academic transcripts...if the transcript pertains to a student who is delinquent in the payment of financial obligations to the institution." However, state courts have found that releasing individuals' college or university transcripts falls under the "Information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy" exemption, in part because of the expectation of privacy under FERPA.
(Not a lawyer, but have had to become familiar with this for other purposes.)
Given the severity and consequences of expulsion, WHY is "preponderance of evidence" appropriate when basically every college had determined "clear and convincing evidence" was the right standard until an unelected official enacted the weaker standard by fiat? And given that it applies to publicly funded universities?
I am well aware of the different standards, and I am very skeptical of them - defend them, don't just state them.
Yes, two different standards.
First, there is the "guilt beyond reasonable doubt" standard. Imposed under conditions/requirements of due process and equal protection in a court of law, using the state or federal rules of evidence. That's a good standard, for something as serious as criminal guilt. All alleged sexual assaults should be exhaustively investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted under that standard.
Second, there is the "preponderance of evidence" standard. Which might be okay for civil or administrative matters. But should never substitute for strict due process requirements in quasi-criminal matters. That p.c. universities, under Obama-administration Dept. of Education rules are systematically dropping due process requirements in student expulsion/discipline cases is a large national problem.
I find it deeply disturbing that without sufficient evidence to charge Brendan Gibbons, he was nevertheless expelled in the present climate. I find disgusting all of the posts all over MGoBlog, of people presuming that Gibbons was guilty of sexual assault, and that the police and/or university officials were guilty of having covered up the crime.
If there is a problem with sexual assaults, then investigate and prosecute them. Offer any alleged sexual assault victims the full array of legal remedies under statutory and civil law. Tort actions; personal protection orders. But don't abandon the legal protections owed to the accused.
The student, once expelled, has the right to pursue legal action against the university. Presumably, the university would not wantonly expel someone, for fear of exposure to a colossal law suit. It's the same as a company firing an employee for what it seems to be impropriety. The aggrieved party may then seek legal relief.
They can certainly sue on the basis of the standard being arbitrary (and given that it changed after Gibbons enrolled at Michigan that he should be subject to the standards he effectively agreed to when enrolling). He probably would not win a suit on the facts given the standard employed but the process itself is ripe.
You make excellent points on both front. And, yeah, the leaker likely was a university employee. The accuser wanted the case to go away. So who else could have leaked a copy of the expulsion document? I really doubt Gibbons did.
There's no rape without a complaining witness. Now, there are a number of potential factors that could lead to the woman in question making the decision to not go forward:
1) It didn't happen. The circumstantial evidence (mostly the testimony of her friends as to her state of mind that night) and some of the physical evidence (vaginal trauma) described in the police report frankly does not fit this account. I tend to err on the side of accusers personally because:
2) Shame. Rape victims frequently are incredibly ashamed and blame themselves.
3) She knows that a woman accused of rape, especially against a football player or similar type of person (politician, musician, etc.; someone who will have large numbers of defenders in the public sphere) is frequently put on trial herself. Particularly her sexual history. Especially because she was drunk. If not in court, because that's usually illegal, in the court of public opinion.
4) Taylor Lewan is a gigantic asshole who should have been charged himself REGARDLESS if a rape actually happened. But the nice thing about his crime is for the woman to testify about it she has to talk about the rape allegations in court, which she didn't want to do either. So he got off with a warning and will be a millionaire in a couple months, hooray. Oh and he got everyone to write charming stories about his twosie and a fucking pig.
As a sidenote, "brunette girls" gets much, much darker if you know about this story. I HOPE that Hoke wasn't informed until he was expelled, because:
a) he wouldn't need to have been since the whole thing happened over a year before he was hired and presumably the university wouldn't feel the need to inform him about it.
b) that's super gross if he did.
c) he has a daughter.
You are missing one thing—complaining witnesses can be forced to be complaining witnesses through compulsory process. Doesn't always happen because then the witness is recalcitrant, but it is not the victim's decision to go forward (a common misconception), it is the prosecutor's decision.
And most people rightfully view that as a violation of the victim's rights.
I do not know how you profess to speak for "most people"; however, if you are correct in your guess, then I would say that most people are wrong in the their views in this regard according to the law of the land. Rightfully or wrongfully is not the present point, those are political value judgments, the law makes it the decision of the prosecutor's office.
I don't see how the physical evidence doesn't fit the accuser's account. The medical exam revealed some tears/trauma," no? Not necessarily proof of rape -- consensual sex can also cause mild trauma -- but the evidence wasn't inconsistent with her allegation.
I worded that maybe confusingly? I'm saying the physical evidence to my mind lends credence to the idea that there was a rape. It doesn't fit the account that nothing happened is what I was trying to say.
that due process is present only where the standard is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process refers to the right of the accused to contest allegations made against him in a meaningful way. It has nothing to do with the standard of guilt/liability. In many countries, there is a high standard without due process, and in civil suits in this country we have the preponderance of the evidence standard with due process. Are you suggesting that our entire civil justice system fails to offer anyone due process because it doesn't use the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt? I didn't think so.
"That p.c. universities, under Obama-administration Dept. of Education rules are systematically dropping due process requirements in student expulsion/discipline cases is a large national problem."
This has nothing to do with due process. You're not entitled to due process with regards to university discipline. The students are not being convicted and punished for a crime. You can be expelled by the university for several reasons that are not crimes/illegal. If school officials have sufficient evidence to boot you, you're gone. It's not a double standard and has nothing to do with "PC universities" or Obama. You have to abide by U of M's rules.
And as another commenter pointed out , the students do have their own legal recourse to take against the university if they feel they were wrongly, unjustly expelled. They are entitled to due process and taking the U to civil court is part of it.
From what I understand, the case was pushed under the rug for several years because the victim was afraid to press charges, for fear of attention, retaliation, etc. If you read the police report, it seems like there is plenty of evidence against Gibbons. But, since we're not in the position to try or investigate the matter we can't really say for sure if he is guilty or innocent.
But. the way U of M handled this is embarassing.
I think we need some clarity on the concept of "due process". Due process is the general idea that one shouldn't face negative repercussions without certain related procedural rights, e.g., the right to a trial, a jury of peers, etc.
There are rules regarding due process that apply to criminal and civil cases. They don't apply here. Here, we're talking about an action by a university against a student, so the amount of process that is "due" is less. There was a process (evidence heard, the student was given a right to be heard, etc). As such, I would say that there was due process, though one may argue regarding how much process is "due" in this case, e.g., is preponderance of evidence sufficient. Whether a student has a "right" to due process in this matter is a separate question, but in this case there was some level of due process. I leave it to others to determine whether it was sufficient.
My question is why is it Ok to suspend due process at the University level? I find this to be repulsive.
My question is why do you assume that due process was suspended in this case? Nothing published to date indicates that this was so. it was an administrative, rather than a criminal, due process, but he got to tell his side of the story, and the decision of the OSCR was reviewed and approved by higher-level university officials. That seems like due process to me.
I, for one, am in agreement with this post. For whatever there reasons were, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office must have felt that there was little, if any, chance the victim's allegations against Gibbons could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, so they therefore exercised prosecutorial discretion and decided not to pursue charges. Happens every day all over this country. Fact that it was Gibbons, in my experience, would have made the prosecutor's office MORE likely and eager to pursue charges than if the suspect had been just the average person.
The DA never made a decision to drop the case. The cops did.


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PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) - An official in Florida says three inmates who were missing after an apparent gas explosion at a jail have been located.
Escambia County spokeswoman Kathleen Castro said Thursday the inmates were unaccounted for in the chaos after the explosion. She says they were missing as hundreds of inmates were taken to hospitals and nearby jails, but the three were always under the county's control.
Officials say two inmates were killed and more than 180 inmates and correctional officers were injured in the explosion. County spokesman Bill Pearson says only two inmates and one corrections officer are still at hospitals. Pearson wouldn't describe the extent of their injuries.
The Pensacola area was soaked by record-setting rains this week and parts of the jail were flooded, but officials have not determined if the weather had anything to do with the explosion.


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Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
A lot of people probably see something like affronting going in displays of effrontery . In fact effrontery might almost be defined as a willingness (the , or not) to affront without compunction. Hence the following are not really at all surprising:
They had the affrontery to attempt to raise their weapons in rebellion against me. They will die for this
The Concours also fought against the army doctors who had the affrontery to take on private patients;
This book will no doubt challenge Frank Dunlop's book, for sheer affrontery and profiteering from
Both affront and effrontery (like the word front itself) derive from the Latin word for the forehead. But they had different prefixes, and came by quite different etymological paths. Affronting was directing yourself (or your offensive words and actions) straight at (towards the forehead/face of) the other person, whereas effrontery comes via the French effronté "shameless," from Old French esfronte "shameless, brazen" and from there back to the Latin.
I willingly admit that before looking this up I thought the semantic connection between affronting and effrontery was more direct: the question was less whether they were related than why the second word would be spelt with an e . So I am a sort of perp on this one (I have not yet caught myself spelling it affrontery , however). Anyhow, somebody eggcorned it somewhere, it would appear.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2013-04-10 18:43:42)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Offrontery also occurs, and maybe some of you can come up with a good eggcornish rationale for it. It looks to me to be mostly either a plain misspelling or an OCR silicism, or a blend of effrontery with offense(iveness) , off-putting and similar things. Still, any perception of off there is at least mildly eggcornish.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2013-04-10 19:14:43)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
I have not yet caught myself spelling it affrontery
I've been schooled by your post. If I have not made this mistake, it is only because I've never used the word "effrontery" in my writing.
Also a few examples of "iffrontery." I can imagine it being uttered by a contradictory person who insists on saying "but what if…"
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Speaking of frontery, I've always liked the Quebec expression, "Avoir le front tout autour de sa tête", or "have a forehead that goes all the way around your head".
I agree that affrontery is so appealing that its existence should probably be kept under wraps. Here's a simbling that is also seductive: upfrontery.
My specialist says I should be the customer from hell and march out to the kitchens to inspect. Too early for that sort of upfrontery!
Rickárla, being a big burley muscle clad beast of a creature was by far no where near agile enough to avoid the death-ice, finding herself twisting her body to the side just to minimize the inevitable damage that was to come from the wild osprey of shards. ..her black hubrised eye shooting wide open to the realization of blackend corruptive blood seeping from her wounds, but if anything her face would tell a story of pure masochistic ecstasy as the pain throbbed and gravulated through her veins….With her adrenaline pumping and her battle lust far from sated, she was driven into a crazed charge, this time feigning with great speed to the left and striking up with a diagonal cleave for Vaxir's chest, to which she Vaxir would respond to with deft for sight and countership Unleashing another feral snarl from the pit of her chest, she lurched to meet the behemoth head on once more. Yet Rickarla's sudden change of course, an unusual ploy from the brute headed beasts usual upfrontery, would result in a loud clash and screech of saronite versus saronite, shrieking out as the hulking war-axe held in Rickarla's rigored grip collided with Vaxir's midriff, the breastplate's lower part being sheered clean off and diving a horrific gorge deep into the dead flesh
Shear awesomeness, Tocayo!
(Reminds me of the similarly battle-frenzied text )
There are a bunch you didn't highlight (yeah, I know: it would have been more highlight than normal text). The blackend corruptive blood, for one, caught my hubrised eye. Eggcorn potential there in the black and bitter end?
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2013-04-16 13:28:36)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Our point dog, DavidB, flushes the eggcorn from the semantic deadfall! Upfrontery will surely be one of the year's best.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
There's poetry in there. I can't get gravulated out of my head. That one's worthy of Lewis Carroll. Gravitated in a granulated and gravelly way. The pain gravely ululated. It growled and grovelled through her veins. Also loved rigored. Her disciplined, rigored and morticed grip.
Last edited by David Bird (2013-04-14 08:23:07)
mortised and tendoned grip?
I agree: gravulated is top of the trees (or spread around on all the ground under the trees, or something.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2013-04-16 13:33:00)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
Mortared and tendoned grip.
After the battle, with all that strain on the tendons:
Allkind still crafts timber joints using the traditional mortise and tender joint
Those Amish are so principled:
No tools required because mortise and tenet Amish built is sustainable handcraft.
Other imaginative articulations that are out there: mortise and tenor, mortise and tension, mortise and tongue, and mortise and tenant. No mortgage and tenant joints, unfortunately.
Mortise and tongue seems vaguely legitimate to me. I think I've heard a tenon called a tongue, in fact. (cf. tongue and groove .)
burred wrote:
No mortgage and tenant joints, unfortunately.
Those're digs where the landlord owes the bank bigtime?
He also ordered Mrs Colon to erase computer records of accounts, and sacked her after she upfronted
him about using clients' money.
Some other dude gave him shit for budging and the white boy upfronted him and said lets fight.
Dont even get me started with chocolate or chips!! i have told 4 of my closest friends because they have
upfronted me with their conserns.
In these it seems like confront would have been a more likely target than affront , but people mix those two words up. Not surprisingly: it's not easy to confront somebody without affronting him or her. Anyhow, confront can perilously easily mean "to speak frankly to, be upfront with", in which case it's not so clear there's any eggcorning (as opposed to coinage) going on.
There is also a verb to upfront (someone) meaning to advance money to the person.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2013-04-30 18:42:30)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
A couple more examples that sound like the eggcorn we're after:
be all rights bring this up to him, or at least mention how deep it cuts me.. but it`s difficult to talk to him sometimes, he gets very upfronted.
Wow the end of the interview is really revealing as Frank gets very tense and starts acting as if he is very upfronted.
This next one pretty clearly means "I will not be outdone/upstaged by him". Odd.
Monkeys are really simple after getting over my intial fear, I didn't think I would be able to do them then a friend down one first shot and I was like "I will not be upfronted by him." And walah I did a quirky monkey. A few days later I was doing monkeys over desks and rails at about neck height.
[… ¶ Response:]
Watching someone else do something you've been unsuccessfully attempting for ages is sometimes the best motivation. I know i've been having arguments with myself inside my head as to whether or not I can do something, then seen someone else do it and decided I probably can.
This one might mean affronting (confrontative/blunt?). It might also mean 'easily offended' or something of the chip-shoulderish sort.
I can be VERY upfronted to people and often critisizing.
Anybody help me with the meaning of this (apparently standard) usage re horses and sheep/goats?
He is very upfronted with a beautiful head and perfect tippy ears. His tail has been in a set and boy can he wear his bridle! This horse is soooo …
She is exceptionally long bodied, good topped, and a very upfronted, pretty profiling sheep. She is the dam of: 2003 Keeper Ewe Lamb by Stunner
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
I would guess that the horse one means attractive in the front parts. Maybe the sheep one, too.
"I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific." – Lily Tomlin
DavidTuggy wrote:
He also ordered Mrs Colon to erase computer records of accounts, and sacked her…
Of course he sacked her; Mrs Colon was an asshole. It was a cul de sack situation.
You otta be.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
I'm discovering new frontiers in the region of these substitutions:
They had the audacity, the bare-faced cheek and the frontery to call this car a Sunny!
car discussion
What is very clear is that there is no sneaking round the rear in any of these variations. Perhaps such blatancy is what upfronts the affronted. Here's another:
Shakespearean actor, passed over lor the Critics Circle drama award, avenges the atfrontery by slaying members of the group. Vincent. Price.
... like others, I have been astonished at the atfrontery which gives out so much smoke and so little fire. He merely dips his syringe into the gutter of filth and…


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By Tiernan Ray
During a vigorous — and expletive-laden — media presentation yesterday by T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere, Legere made some off-handed remarks accusing hedge funds of selfishly trying to exploit the merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS (PCS). This afternoon, one of those hedge funds shot back.
John Paulson of Paulson & Co., which owns 9.9% of PCS stock, issued a statement saying it "strenuously objects" to Legere's "characterization of MetroPCS shareholders as greedy because they believe the current terms of the merger are poor for MetroPCS shareholders."
Paulson had already made known his objections to the merger terms, mainly because those terms would put too much debt into the combined entity, as The New York Times's DealBook reported in February.
Here's the full statement:
NEW YORK, March 27, 2013
Paulson & Co. Inc. ("Paulson"), the largest MetroPCS shareholder, owning 36.3 million shares or 9.9% of the shares outstanding as of the record date, strenuously objects to T-Mobile CEO John Legere 's characterization of MetroPCS shareholders as greedy because they believe the current terms of the merger are poor for MetroPCS shareholders.
Paulson reminds MetroPCS shareholders that John Legere owns no MetroPCS stock, wants the best deal for T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom, not MetroPCS, and is the wrong person to comment on the interests of MetroPCS shareholders.
If anyone is being greedy here, it is Deutsche Telekom by stripping out $15 billion of senior debt at above market rates and terms for themselves before the proforma shareholders get anything. MetroPCS shareholders are left with a subordinated minority stake in an over leveraged equity stub. When the $15 billion debt Deutsche Telekom strips out is added to Deutsche Telekom's 74% equity in the new company, Deutsche Telekom gets 85% of the total consideration even though they contribute only 77% of the combined 2012 EBITDA. If MetroPCS were to receive proportional value for their 2012 EBITDA contribution, MetroPCS should receive an incremental $5.58 per share above the current terms. While we support industry consolidation, the current proposal is a bad deal for MetroPCS shareholders. We believe MetroPCS is worth more as a standalone company rather than with T-Mobile under these unfavorable terms.
We have participated in thousands of merger transactions and have cast our support in favor of 99% of them. This is the only one in the recent past that we are voting against. It is not surprising that Deutsche Telekom is so eager to close this deal as they get the lion's share of the benefits. As a shareholder of a public company, we have the right to vote against a transaction that we think severely undervalues our stake. If Deutsche Telekom wants to get MetroPCS shareholder support, we suggest Deutsche Telekom significantly reduce the debt they are taking back and/or dramatically increase MetroPCS's proforma share of the combined company.


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District 4 Councilmember Richard Leon will host his first live online chat Tuesday, April 22, at 3 p.m. The one-hour chat will provide an opportunity for citizens to ask questions and discuss topics with the council member.
To access the chat, go to the city's website at www.capecoral.net and open the news item in the latest news section. There will be a link to the chat in the announcement.
The city continues to use social media outlets to communicate with the residents of Cape Coral. The live chat is a chance to pose questions and provide feedback to our elected officials.


text:
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- TJX Cos. TJX, -0.71% parent of the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains, said Tuesday that its fiscal third-quarter profit rose to $462 million, or 62 cents a share, from $406.5 million, or 53 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose 11% to $6.4 billion with comparable sales increasing 7%. The company projected adjusted fourth-quarter profit of 72 cents to 75 cents a share, with same-store sales coming in flat to up 2%. That guidance included a 7-cent benefit from an extra week in the fiscal calendar. Analysts surveyed by FactSet estimated profit of 62 cents a share in the third quarter and 76 cents a share in the fourth quarter.
TJX profit rises; outlook falls short
Quote References
-0.63 -0.71%


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On May 4, Partners In Education (PIE), along with Dairyland Donkeyball, is bringing donkeys to town for donkey basketball games.
On May 4, Partners In Education (PIE), along with Dairyland Donkeyball, is bringing donkeys to town for donkey basketball games.
They will begin at 7 p.m. in the high school gym. They will have teachers riding against students (16+) and also people from the community riding. If you have never been to a donkey basketball game – you are in for a real treat! It is fun for the whole family– and they will also have free donkey rides for the first 125 kids 12 and under. Everyone is invited to come and cheer for their teachers, principals and friends.
Riding donkeys for the USD 490 team will be Kimberly Barb, McKenzie McClure, Megan Eldridge, Lisa Lechtenberg, Steve Fellers, Russell Baker, Linda Johnson, Amie Oltman, Amber Olson, Caleb Carson (firefighter) and Shane McCoy (firefighter).
On the student team from El Dorado High School will be Timothy Fry, Breck Towner, Morgan Limon, Garrett Howland, Isaac Ramsey, Dakota Wilson, Jeff Jones, Ryan Foster, Scott Johnstone,Alex Bisbing, Kailey Clites and Kurtis Anderson (alternate).
Riding for the community teams are: Community 1 – Mark Hart (PIE Vice President), Kendra Porter, Russ McCaig, Ben Coffey, Bill Oats, Cindy Koehler (PIE President), Matt Wolf, Billy Gomez, Lonnie Owens and Craig Webb, and on Community team 2 – Leon Leachman, Cyndi Reid, Dan Flowers, Staci Rickard (PIE board), Reggie Graham, Zac Sundgren, Mike Traylor, Sheriff Kelly Herzet, Marcus Deaver and Jeremy Sheffler.
Tickets are $6 in advance or $8 at the door.
The high school DECA Club will be serving a hot dog supper (including drink and dessert) for $4 in advance, $5 at the door and an ice cream sundae bar for $3 before the games from 5:30 to 6:30.
Call Judy Smith at 322-4800 or e-mail jusmith @eldoradoschools.org for more information or to order tickets for either the games, supper or both.
The EHS Drumline will perform before the games and there will be a silent auction of student artwork as well as homemade cakes supplied by Sue Givens and her administrative team.
In addition, they are honoring the dedicated military during the game. Their special guests will be Craig Webb, U.S. Air Force, and Jeremy Sheffler, Air National Guard. Both have daughters attending Grandview Elementary.


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Comcast and Time Warner are going to be busy. Just IDing and notifying the downloaders is going to be a pain in the ass, and God forbid the customer moved, switch, and/or can't be found. As a manager, I would file a motion to stop this just to keep my cost down. Furthermore, this is a witch hunt and the sitting Judge needs to step down for being incompetent. While I may not have a JD, any rational person can see that the company is just trying to start a legal phishing scheme.
What really irks me, is that they'll try to sue these people into paying rather than engaging them as customers. MPAA, here's an idea, instead of sending notices to ISPs about someone stealing a movie, how about you work with ISPs to send the downloader a link to pay for the movie instead. Give the option to rent or buy it, and play with the price until you find a sweet spot these el cheapo's are willing to fork over. Threatening them with lawsuits because it seems like a great way to set an example hasn't worked thus far, why keep beating this dead horse then?
i have no doubt in my mind that there is a "safe" list of IPs that will never receive a subpoena. i'm sure getting added is just an embarrassing phone call away.
I can't wait till a few Governors, Congressmen, Senators, Justices get hit because their kids downloaded content.
There are about a thousand individuals in the US with enough political power to get the ball rolling for change in this matter. Of them, their demographics put them with an average age of upper 40's to lower 50's making well over a million each year. Among those who still have kids living at home, to most of them, their thousand dollar settlements is chump change.
Given a US Internet population of about 200 million, and the assumption that 50 thousand will face legal action of similar nature, statistically, there is not even a 1% chance that someone with political sway has dealt with this.
Spoof an IP address. Make friends with their kids. Break their WiFi. Probably some I missed. Not that I advocate breaking the law, just pointing out ways it could be done.
Even better idea, hypothetically, do the same with the 'Copyright Group' members. Or their lawyers. Haven't heard from Anonymous recently. But I would never advocate anything illegal.
I think another thread really captured it though
Ah, must have missed it, though I still think it would be possible to these guys, somehow. Not that I advocate anyone. I have to stop trying to speed read stuff- seems I'm not good at it.
I'd expect it to be tossed. The US Copyright Group can't provide the torrent and then sue people for using a lawfully provided torrent. Unless of course the US Copyright Group didn't have the right to distribute those files, in which case they'd be liable for say, eleventy billion dollars.
Why would they?
It's not like they need to. The movie's gonna end up on BitTorrent the day it's released (or, more likely, beforehand), whether or not they put it there. It's not worth the extra hassle.
TWC and Comcast are just conduit providers connecting their subscribers to the rest of the world. I'm sure they don't like having to rat out their own customers. But the law is the law, and subpoena's can't be ignored.
While I may not have a JD, any rational person can see that the company is just trying to start a legal phishing scheme.
The **AAs know that the courts can't handle a flood of 23,000 cases.
The **AAs know that the major ISPs can't handle a flood of ID requests.
I think that longterm, this is part of a **AA plan to change the way civil copyright cases are dealt with.
They're going to engaging in mass lawsuits until Congress passes ACTA or some similar lawyer enabling regime.
The **AA were created by man. They evolved. And they have a plan.
The courts wouldn't see 23,000 cases. The usual procedure here is settlement. The copyright holder just has to make an offer that cannot be refused: Either settle for $7,000 or so, or go to court and face tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees even if you win.
You can actually file a motion to have the prosecution pay your legal fees if you win. You shouldn't have to look very far to find a lawyer who's willing to take on the case without charging you directly, considering some of the precedent that's be
As for the ISPs, I imagine the **IAs would love to see them inconvenienced even further by piracy. It means more of an incentive to put in place technological measures to stop piracy like blocking popular trackers, traffic shaping and tiny usage quotas.
Or an incentive to just stop caring and start ignoring the requests from media lawyers.
Since the court ruling of IP address != identity. I would certainly like to see said copyright group charged with extortion.
That's a useless distinction, legally. The way BitTorrent works, as soon as you finish downloading the first block you are sharing it out to someone else. Seeding only refers to when you have 100% of the file and you are sharing it. You can be sure if you have 99% of the file and are sharing it out nobody is going to make the legal distinction that you weren't "seeding" it.
I agree that seeding is meaningless, but can't you make a legal distinction between somebody with a 1:1 ratio and somebody with a 1:100? Surely these are not the same level of infringement?
Even the pirates do not consider your contribution to be worthwhile until you reach 1:1. For all practical purposes you have not made anything available to anybody.
Since the court ruling of IP address != identity. I would certainly like to see said copyright group charged with extortion.
The rulings of a single district court judge counts for damn little in the American federal system.
Tracing an IP address stands a pretty good chance of leading yoiu to the primary account owner.
The legally responsible adult, if you like.
It isn't perfect. But nothing in the law has to be perfect. Least of all in the earliest stages of civil litigation.
That a plaintiff disagrees with a lower court judge in Texas on the law of evidence does not make the offer of a settlement in New York or California extorti
IP != person in logic. An IP refers to an access point. It very well may be a personal access point, but since most private wireless networks can be broken into easily by any competent person with google, it stands to reason that assuming that IP = person is a logical fallacy. A "snapshot" of your IP address only proves that your access point was used to download copyrighted material. If there were a connection that you are, in fact, the only person to use this access point, then the conclusion may be m
They'd pick the richest hundred or so of the group and destroy them in court, and drop the rest.
But the 100 richest would be the ones who could hire expensive lawyers and take off work to fight the them in court just for fun.
What if all 23,000 file sharers each ponied up $50 dollars to make the problem go away? And by make the problem go away I mean hire some professional hit men to brutally kill a bunch of the lawyers who thought suing 23,000 people would be a good idea. I reckon that for 11.5 million dollars you could buy yourself a great big heap of dead lawyers.
They should countersue for the time they lost watching the movie.
Can I join that class-action suit even though I rented it from NetFlix?
That 23,000 people downloaded that movie intentionally.
I feel sorry for the poor folk who wasted drive space on that piece of crap.
I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."
Why did it require a visit to the court system in order to establish this 'obvious' fact?
The IP in my opinion only identifies a service/hardware to which it's tied. Not a human being. Seems obvious to me.
Doesn't matter how obvious something is until either a law or a precedent says so. It's better that way. The problem is when aging judges who think televisions are the bees' knees fail to understand what we know to be obvious. See the WoW Glider case, and the ruling that copying a program from your harddrive to your RAM constitutes copyright infringement.
See the WoW Glider case, and the ruling that copying a program from your harddrive to your RAM constitutes copyright infringement.
How did I miss this one? That's like the old lady who calls to piss and moan about her cell phone not giving her a dial tone...
It is obvious and has been so forever, even for wired connections.
Most (all?) standard Internet connections today gives you one IP per household, and inside each a number of private IP's are issued to the devices that request an IP. They all share the public IP. Now, households with just one person exist of course but most have more than one person and usually also more than one device that's using the Internet connection. Seen from the outside is it completely impossible to determine who in the household m
Now, you cannot prosecute a household, only specific people. But you cannot determine from the outside who was behind any action on the Internet so you cannot put a name on the offense. You can also not knowingly accuse an innocent of something (one committed the offense, everybody else is innocent), nor can you say that the Internet connection was used with permission, thus putting a name on someone 'responsible', so in essence you cannot use any log just showing an IP as any kind of 'proof' of someone in particular committing something, as you need a specific person to prosecute.
Thankfully the court have ruled in favor of this obvious fact.
This "obvious fact" has been up in courts several times before, and they've gone the other way. I doubt this ruling will stand (and it's not binding on any other court anyway).
You bring an action against a "John Doe" - you don't need a specific name, nor are you prosecuting a household. Once you bring the action and have established a prima facie case that someone has committed copyright infringement via a particular modem, then you get subpoena power from the court and can get router logs, hard drive scan
You coming for me?
I'll be waiting, bitches!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: All of these cases are based on the work of unlicensed private investigators, working behind closed doors, doing who-knows-what. There is absolutely no proof that ANY of their "evidence" is real. These "investigators" and their shyster lawyer accomplices are the real criminals. They are the ones who should be fined and imprisoned. And given a good flogging.
The movie grossed $103 million at the US box office
Assuming a movie ticket price of $20, this means that 5.3 million people saw the movie in theatres. These guys are suing 23222 people, or about 230 times fewer
At $150K per defendant, the potential works out to $3.48billion or roughly 33 times the US gross (and $700million more than the highest grossing movie ever - Avatar
My business pitch to the movie studios would be: "Straight to torrent then litigate - that's where the money is..."
Nobody really mentions this, but if ever I download something whether legitimate or not, I rarely if ever see my seed ratio exceed 10:1. So even if I let 10 people fully download a movie from me, the real loss of distribution is only $200 assuming the inflated $20 a box office ticket. Even if we take a potential loss of 100:1, that's still only $2000 and I highly doubt anyone ever really seeds to this amount. Even a $2,000 fine is incentive enough to get someone to stop torrenting copyrighted works and d
It still identifies the account holders with the ISP, who can, quite reasonably, be held accountable for damages caused through their accounts, unless any of the subscribers can provide further assistance to identify the actual parties who should be sued, I can see no reason why they should not have to pay damages here.
Maybe when people realize they can be civilly liable for damages if they don't properly secure their network access, people will actually start practicing respectable security policies at
I am not one to condone copyright theft however if I leave my front door open it does not make me a criminal. The person that enters that door locked or not however is very much a criminal.
Akin to leaving your keys in the car - someone uses it and damages another's prorperty - then you would be liable.
I think the same could be said of your unsecured wireless Internet connection that you don't take reasonable measures to protect from harming others.
I'm not a lawyer, just throwing that out there.
Its funny how people keep making analogies to things being stolen as a counterpoint to my statement when the general concensus seems to be on slashdot that copyright infringement is not theft.
It's a lot more like if your kid breaks something in a store and you have to pay for it. If you don't want to be accountable for what your kid breaks, don't bring him into the store. If you don't want to be accountable for what people you don't know do with your internet connection, then don't let them use it. S
Akin to leaving your keys in the car - someone uses it and damages another's prorperty - then you would be liable.
Right, because as we all know, leaving the keys for anything in plain sight is an open invitation for people to come and use that thing, even though they know that the thing does not belong to them.
That's right up there with the "Did you see what she was wearing? Dressed like that, she was just ASKING to be raped!" line of "reasoning."
I am not one to condone copyright theft however if I leave my front door open it does not make me a criminal. The person that enters that door locked or not however is very much a criminal.
Actually, if you leave your front door open, and leave a gun on your coffee table, and someone comes into your home, takes the gun and uses it to commit a crime, you could be liable for civil damages. The doctrine is known as "attractive nuisance". I imagine similar reasoning might apply to deliberately unsecured WiFi connections.
In the law of torts, the attractive nuisance doctrine states that landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by a hazardous object or condition on the land that is likely to attract children who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object or condition. The doctrine has been applied to hold landowners liable for injuries caused by abandoned cars, piles of lumber or sand, trampolines, and swimming pools. However, it can be applied to virtually anything on the property of the landowner.
The last sentence notwithstanding, all tests against this doctrine are with regards to child trespassers.
If a child walked into a house with a loaded gun on the coffee table and popped his pal who happened to be with him, this holds merit; an adult walks in, however, grabs the gun, and goes house-to-house offing neighbours, this is completely off the table.
unless any of the subscribers can provide further assistance to identify the actual parties who should be sued, I can see no reason why they should not have to pay damages here.
That's just another form of being guilty until proven innocent. Just because you can't prove somebody else did it doesn't make you guilty... it's the plaintiff's responsibility to prove to some standard that you did it.
Ironically DMCA protects you as an account holder from liability for people that use the Internet Service you Provide. Basically all you need is to inform your users they they'll get the boot if they are repeat infringers and "reasonably implement" that policy. Then the most the RIAA/MPAA
To download the torrent now, then show up in court with the copy I bought like 3 months ago. Actually won't be a bad idea to try and push the trademark, pirating, owning, multiple copy, whatever else ideas they try into court. Probably too expensive though, since it wouldn't fall under "frivolous" or "malicious," and wouldn't be able to recoup lawyer costs.
"What happened to Copyright being between the artist/developer and the customer. How is it right to have these a "Copyright group"? If someone has breached copyright on a particular product, it should be up to the original developer of that product to sue them."
This is a very good point; one I wanted to make myself. The recent Righthaven case made it clear that the parties who sue must have sufficient rights to do so. They may not just be some group of thug-lawyers who were hired to pursue the case. Righthaven did not actually own any copyrights, so the judge told them they had no standing to sue. Period.
I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."
Easy! From now on, only IP addresses can be sued for infringement. If one of them loses, it goes straight back into the ICANN IPv4 pool. That way, not only do the lawyers get to sue a number of IP, but the movie pirates get to save the internet without all this complicated IPv6 nonsense!
Downloading the movie or having bad enough taste to download the movie?
BitTorrent should support a "random assist" mode. Clients (even if idle) announce they want to assist. The tracker selects an active torrent randomly or based on need and returns a peer list.
The client doesn't have the
After a random amount of time the client leaves the swarm, and securely deletes the torrent and any data from it.
The reasoning behind this is that you cannot determine if anyone on an infringing torrent had any intent to infringe. It could just be their client assisting the swarm. Even if the peer downloaded every piece of the torrent, it could be their client randomly decided to assist for a long time.
A beneficial side effect of this is that all swarms will get more peers.
The absent ones are always at fault.


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text: Connor Overton Brendan Maloney No. 18 Rice Edges ODU, 3-2 In 17 Innings In Game 1 March 08, 2014 By ODU Athletics Photo Gallery Game1 box Photo Album HOUSTON, TX- Skyler Ewing's one-out hit in the bottom of the 17th lifted the 18th ranked Rice Owls to a 3-2 victory over Old Dominion University in game one of a doubleheader Saturday at Reckling Park. This was the second longest game in ODU baseball history, one inning shy of the school mark of 18 set on May 19, 2006 at Towson. Total time was 4:53 minutes in a contest that started at 11 am ET. The Monarchs took the early lead in the third inning when Josiah Burney singled and would later score on a Josh Eldridge single. Rice took a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the fourth when Michael Aquino doubled to right scoring Keenan Cook. The second Owl run came on John Clay Reeves sacrifice fly to rightfield which brought home Skyler Ewing. In the eighth, ODU rallied and tied the game as Ben Slaton doubled and came home on Jordan Negrini's RBI single. In the 17th, Stainback singled with one out, and Keenan Cook followed with a single to put runners on the corners. Ewing then hit an 0-2 pitch to leftfield to bring home the game winner. The Monarchs threatened in the top of the 17th. Taylor Ostrich got a two-out double and Mike Perez followed with a walk, but were left stranded. Josh Eldridge, Ben Slaton and Jordan Negrini led ODU with two hits each. The two teams will play game two at 4:30 today. Listen to it live on Star1310 AM radio with Ted Alexander. ODU 001 000 010 000 000 00=2-10-1Rice 000 200 000 000 000 01=2-12-2 ODU – Alexander, (4) Sam Sinnen, Bishop (7), Gero (9), Diaz(13),Ali (17) and Perez Rice- Fox ,T.Teykl(8),Ditman(8), Duplantier (10), McCarthy (12), Orewiler(17) and Reeves WP- Orewiler (1-0) LP: Diaz (1-1)


text: Hello, I am driving LSWS from some custom automation and after modifying the configuration we use the lswsctl restart to reload the config. The issue I am having is that if the restart doesn't complete (ie the old lsws is still hanging around finalising requests) and I issue another reload, the processes just back up and I start getting intermittant errors. What is the best way to know when LSWS has finished the reload and the old process has exited?


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May 4, 2007
Santa Barbara, Calif. - Senior co-captain Elad Stern sat out the men's tennis season due to a shoulder injury suffered in one of the first matches. However, his motivational leadership style helped his team win the Big West Championship. The team can be caught in action at the NCAA First Round agianst USC in Los Angeles on May 12.
1. If you could trade places with any historical figure, who would it be?
King Arthur
2. What is your favorite word?
Demolish, I love it and I always use it. Crrrazy and of course with 3 r's.
3. What is the funniest thing that happened to you in the last week?
We won the Big West because we were 4-18 before the tournament
4. What would your pirate name be?
Elad the Grinder
5. When you die, what do you want a higher power to say to you?
6. What is the best way you could spend a vacation?
Best friends. Vegas. Suite. I've been there and I'll be back.
7. What would you name your car? I have a car named Betsy. My roommate gave it to me and he had already named it.
8. What characteristic do you envy in other people?
The ability to not procrastinate
9. What is your favorite prank?
Last year, I told one of the guys I was going to shave his head and he didn't believe me and then in the middle of the night I did.
10. What is the worst job you ever had?
I was the salad maker at Carrillo Dining Commons so I had to wake up at 6:30 in the morning and put my hands into the freezing salad.
11. What is your favorite quote?
If I like it, I do it
12. What kind of plant would you be?
I would be a reed because it is flexible and never breaks.
13. Who is your most inspirational role model?
I have a few, Michael Jordan and for tennis John McEnroe and Stephan Edberg. And also my dad. I have a few more but we can leave it at that.
14. What do you think about Britney Spears?
Whatever. I don't care about that.
15. What would the mascot of your university be?
The Clumsy Albert Einstein
16. What is your favorite household appliance?
The refrigerator because all the food is inside. The grill is good too.
17. What is the worst skateboard accident you have been involved in or seen?
I was next to Freebird's and my skateboard hit something and I flew forward and the skateboard flew backward. Everyone saw and I just got up and said that I was ok.
18. What is your least favorite song?
Who let the dogs out.
19. Who is your favorite artist?
20. When you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A tennis player.


text:
Creating more jobs. It's not just about adding minimum wage workers. NBR's Darren Gersh look at the push for new middle class jobs. Finance ministers and central bankers from the world's biggest economies meet to debate spending cuts versus growth. NBR's Erika Miller has more on why international strategists are becoming more bullish. And, hedge fund manager Carl Icahn ups his stake in Herbalife calling the vitamin maker a legit business. NBR's Ruben Ramirez takes a look at the battle between two of the hedge fund world's biggest names.
Visit the Website: http://nbr.com/
Episode #32053 / Length: 26 minutes


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Hundreds of workers from Colt Manufacturers told lawmakers new gun control laws will put them out of work at a rally at the state Capitol in Hartford Thursday morning.
"Save our jobs," employees at the demonstration shouted.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is pushing for a ban on certain military-style weapons, which could affect companies such as Colt Manufacturers, Stag Arms and Ammunition Storage Components.
"We are for safer Connecticut," said Mike Holmes, who is a Colt Manufacturers employee. "We have been at the table. We want to continue to be at the table."
Colt Manufacturers told Eyewitness News that the company sold 10,000 AR-15s in 2011 and then in 2012, they sold 100,000.
The Colt factory emptied out its doors Thursday, so close to 500 employees could rally near the State Armory.
The group was scheduled to meet with lawmakers about proposed legislation that would limit the sale of guns here in Connecticut.
Earlier this week, representatives from Stag Arms, based in New Britain, spoke with Eyewitness News about being affected if lawmakers were to ban assault weapons.
If Connecticut lawmakers pass an assault weapons ban, officials with Stag Arms said the AR-15 would not be completely illegal, but it would eliminate certain features, such as the pistol grip.
If that happens, Stag Arms officials said they would not be able to make a version they could sell in Connecticut.
"Banning certain firearms for purely cosmetic reasons will make no one in Connecticut safer, but it will have a severe impact on a vital New Britain industry," said Stag Arms owner Mark Malkowski in a statement to the media Thursday.
But Connecticut Against Gun Violence says lives are at stake, if lawmakers fail to act.
"We feel it should be done," said Ron Pinciaro of Connecticut Against Gun Violence. "Other states have acted the country are watching us."
Hundreds of employees from the gun manufacturers attended a community forum at New Britain High School, which will be hosted by Malloy. The hour-long conversation was mostly dominated by talk of guns.
"Making a semi-automatic rifle illegal based on cosmetic features, I don't see how that will do anything to make a safer state of Connecticut," Malkowski said about laws banning the popular AR-15.
However, the governor had an answer for the gun manufacturer.
"This weapon, you might be a manufacturer of it," Malloy said. "It is inherently dangerous and has the capacity to kill or maim large numbers of people in very short periods of time."
If the AR-15 were to be banned from sale in this state, Malkowski, who left the meeting visibly upset, said he may be forced to move.
"It's hard enough to do business in Connecticut in general," he said. "It's going to be even harder to if such laws get passed."
"We're not going to make anyone leave the state of Connecticut," Malloy said. "Provided they are making something that can be legally sold somewhere in the United States."
A special state, bipartisan legislative task force was created after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy where 20 children and six adults were shot and killed.
The task force was formed to make suggestions for changes affecting guns, mental health and school security.
The special committee made more than a dozen recommendations to the governor.
In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a ban on assault weapons and large ammunition magazines.
However, it still must be voted on in the full Senate and House of Representatives.
Another hearing on gun control was held in Connecticut Thursday where people on both sides were heard by the public safety committee on a number of proposals.
One bill would require background checks for private sales and gun shows. Another would prevent those with a mental illness from getting a permit.
"The concerns can be individually addressed to determine that person is presenting worrisome behaviors," said James McGaughy, who is the executive director of Connecticut's Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.
The Connecticut General Assembly could end up voting on not just one bill, but three, with one on school safety, another on mental health and a third on guns.
A vote is expected to take place in about two weeks.
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text:
ST. LOUIS (AP) - Russ Cochran and Kenny Perry each shot 5-under 66 on Friday to share the second round lead in the Senior PGA Championship.
The longtime Kentucky friends were 7 under at Bellerive Country Club in the major championship. They will play together for the third straight day Saturday.
Japan's Kiyoshi Murota was two strokes back after a 70. Jay Haas and Duffy Waldorf, tied for the lead after the first round, matched Loren Roberts at 4 under. Roberts had a 68, and Haas and Waldorf shot 72.
The 54-year-old Cochran tied for seventh in the 1992 PGA Championship at Bellerive. The left-hander began play on the back nine and had five birdies in a span of six holes, peaking at 8 under before a bogey on No. 6.
The 52-year-old Perry had five birdies in a bogey-free round.