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I'm happy to be the third stop on the awesome Kids' Crafternoon blog tour to celebrate the two latest volumes released, Felting and Beading. You may have seen my post in July with an interview and a giveaway for the first two books in the series, Papercraft and Sewing.
The Kids' Crafternoon series is edited by DIY mom extraordinaire, Kathreen Ricketson, and published by Hardie Grant. They are written especially to school-age kids and contain a wide variety of crafts to appeal to any kid and any skill level. The projects were contributed by crafters all around the world, and I was so pleased to for my owl cards to be included in Papercraft.
Here are only some of our favorite projects from the latest two books:
Speaking of Hardie Grant, they have generously provided a free copy of Felting and Beading for me to give away, one each to two lucky readers! All you need to do is leave one comment on this post and I'll randomly choose two winners on Friday. Be sure to follow the rest of the blog party for more chances to win and lots of project highlights.
The whole series of books are available for purchase at Booktopia.


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Tag: Bad-side
Innumerable Thoughts
Randomized relatable Thoughts
Crowned Papillon
It's a journey and it's personal! I love the Lord and I'm here to do His work and this blog is my way of doing it!
News from Ibonoco
Moments de vie, fragments de textes et quelques notes...
On Blunt Scattered Oceans
The music and the diamonds

subset: commoncrawl


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14 Great Sandwiches to Try in Chicago's Loop
If you hadn't already noticed, August is National Sandwich month, which explains why we've been writing about so many options between two slices of bread, from BLT variations to those that taste better with giardiniera. To cap off this bready month, we decided to look at some of our favorite options in the neighborhood where more people eat sandwiches on a daily basis than any other area in the city: the Loop.
Even though Dennis has been dutifully covering the downtown scene for years now, he's the first to admit that he hasn't visited every single option in the area. No matter how hard we try to cover the Loop, restaurants open and close with alarming frequency. Regardless, these are sandwiches that we can get behind. What's most surprising is how varied the options are. From classic cold cut offerings to bánh mìs to Mexican tortas, the choice is yours.
Take a look at some of our favorite sandwiches in the Loop by clicking on the slideshow.
- Pulled Pork Sandwich at Blackwood BBQ
- Le Canard sandwich at Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine
- Turkey Rueben at Eppy's Deli
- Egg Salad & Arugula Sandwich at Pret a Manger
- Chicken Salad Sandwich at Snarf's
- Pastrami Sandwich from Harry's Sandwich Shop
- The Skribeye at Skrine Chops
- Milanesa Torta at Tortas Frontera
- Cubano at Cafecito
- Sergio's Special at Hannah's Bretzel
- The Blockbuster at Fontano's
- Le Breton at Toni Patisserie & Cafe
- Classic Special Bánh Mì at Ba Le
- Turkey Breast Sandwich at Potbelly
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.


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PONTIAC(AP) - A 75-year-old Detroit-area woman is returning to court for her sentence in the fatal shooting of her teen grandson.
Sandra Layne is asking for just a year in custody for second-degree murder, which would be in addition to a mandatory two-year sentence for using a gun. But she also will get credit for 11 months in jail.
Jonathan Hoffman was shot six times, including twice in the back, last year in West Bloomfield Township. Layne says she shot him out of desperation during a physical altercation, but a jury rejected her claim of self-defense.
A 911 call reveals the 17-year-old being shot again while pleading for help. Prosecutors say Layne's guidelines call for a minimum of 12 years in prison for the murder, plus two years for the gun crime.


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Multi-million dollar gift supports USU business school
By Standard-Examiner staff
LOGAN — Utah State University on Wednesday announced a $6 million anchor gift made to the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business.
The donation, made by Jeffrey and Bonnie Clark, will establish the Jeffrey D. Clark Center for Entrepreneurship. An additional $4 million will be sought to complete the center's funding.
"This gift from Jeff and Bonnie and their active involvement with our entrepreneurship programs will move us ahead significantly," said Douglas D. Anderson, dean of USU's Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. "Now we can provide ever-more concrete, effective assistance to budding entrepreneurs who have great ideas they want to develop."


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In March 2011, Israel's Iron Dome missile interception system was deployed, after four years in the making. The intention was to form a protective canopy over the country, rendering its population centres as impregnable as possible to attacks from short-range artillery and rockets. But now, to the gall of many Israelis, the future of the system has been thrown into doubt.
In terms of size, Israel is roughly comparable to Wales. This, together with the close proximity of a host of hostile neighbours, means that millions of Israelis live within easy range of artillery attack. During the Lebanon War of 2006, 44 Israeli civilians were killed by rockets fired across the border, and millions more were evacuated or confined to air raid shelters. Iron Dome was supposed to end all this. It is now operational 24 hours a day, and can function on multiple fronts simultaneously, even in inclement weather.
The project was jointly funded by Israel and the United States, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars provided in addition to the annual $3 billion of military aid that America routinely provides to Israel. Last week, however, Randy Jennings, a former Congressional aide on defence issues and a defence industry consultant, warned that funding to Iron Dome may be stopped during the proposed process of "sequestration", in which $100 billion of next year's budget will be cut across the board, beginning in January.
Part of the problem with Iron Dome ia that it has not provided the blanket air protection for which many Israelis had hoped. In August 2011, seven rockets were fired from Gaza and only six were intercepted by Iron Dome. The remaining rocket fell in a residential area, killing one civilian. The Commander of the Air Defence Corps, Brig Gen Doron Gavish, said that the authorities had never claimed that Iron Dome was a "hermetic system".
The following March, after the assassination of the terrorist leader Zohir al-Qaisi in Gaza, an intense barrage of rockets were fired at Israel's civilian centres. Iron Dome was used against 71 of these, and successfully intercepted just 56. On the whole, these are not bad odds; but when rockets start to get through, even if the majority are shot down, the somewhat hyperbolically named Iron Dome becomes a natural target for criticism.
The recent incursion into Israeli airspace by an unidentified drone has further undermined the efficacy of Iron Dome. Although the missile system was not designed to deal with long-range drones but short-range artillery fire, the criticism has been stinging. Speaking to the Fars news agency, Jemaleddin Aberoumand, a brigadier general in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, mockingly suggested that the drone intrusion "shows the inefficiency of the Zionist regime's Iron Dome and defensive shield … the Zionist regime has abundant weaknesses."
On Monday, several Patriot missile interceptor batteries, similar to the kind used during the first Gulf War, were scrambled from Northern Israel to guard against any attempt by hostile powers to follow up the drone's incursion. These Patriot missiles are normally only brought into action during military exercises with the Unites States, and in the build-up to war.
The drone interception seems to have had a greater objective than simply testing the effectiveness of Iron Dome. Intelligence sources have suggested that fragments of the drone recovered from the desert are made of an advanced type of fibreglass that is invisible to radar. It is thought that the drone may have been made by Iranian engineers, who were able to create such a high performance device by analysing the captured American RQ-170 drone which came down in Iran last December, and using the technology in reverse.
The flight path that the drone took is particularly worrying to the Israelis. Undetected, it flew the length of Israel, paying particular attention to gas and oil facilities and the industrial area of Haifa. It also flew over the Navy bases located there, including the top-secret base of Flotilla 13, a well-known commando unit. More worryingly still, it passed the Palmachim air base and had ample chance to survey Nahal Sorek, thought to be one of the key sites of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons. Eventually, it was detected and shot down by fighter jets.
Brig Gen Doron Gavish has been quick to point out that Iron Dome is still in a process of development. "This is the first system of its kind anywhere in the world," he has said. "It is in its first operational test, and we've already intercepted a large number of sockets targeting Israeli communities, saving many Israeli lives." If Iron Dome is to continue to evolve, the case for its effectiveness must be made loud and clear, particularly in the corridors of Congress.


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The Frog Princess made this fantastic basket for me for Mother's Day this year.
Her kindergarten class made them, with their wonderful teachers
(whom I adore and will miss terribly in a few short days!)
Then they decoupaged tissue paper squares with a water and Elmer's School glue mixture.
When they were dry, the kids laced beads and silk flowers onto pipe cleaners
and added them as handles.
I love my new up-cycled basket so much.
I think we're going to have to make a bunch of them this summer!
Now I'm debating what to keep in it...
I'm thinking my small baby washcloths that are a kitchen staple around here
for wiping spills and sticky faces + hands.
This basket is much more artsy and green than the store-bought variety.
Go ahead and make one, you know you want to!


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gwald79 needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 26 designs submitted by 8 freelance designers.
A new startup focusing on providing solutions for people in need of caregivers and/or care facilities needs a modern, and warming, comforting logo. Will end contest early if design we like is submitted. Potential $40 for 2nd place depending on designs.
Help Companion
Desired Color Scheme:
Open to suggestions. Nothing too overbearing. Maybe some pastels. Will try to guide as I see designs.
Desired Style:
Sample logo links from sitepoint have been attached. Doesn't have to look like them, but just some basic ideas.
Accepted File Formats:
would prefer .png, but .jpeg, or anything compatible with Fireworks
We are looking for a logo that will determine how the whole website is going to look, feel, and flow - this includes the color scheme. We are looking to provide solutions to people in need of caregivers and/or care facilities and would like that warm, comforting feeling to reflect in the logo and colors (nothing too overbearing, but modern as well).
After searching through past contests at sitepoint, I have attached a few links with some basic design ideas that I liked. But please, use your imagination to determine what you think the best look and feel would be and I will give as much feedback as possible:
I would prefer any picture or image associated with the design to appear to the left of the words "Help Companion" or maybe above it will work too.
I will update this with more info and ideas as some ideas are submitted. We are very excited to get a logo, and hope to purchase from someone we can use again to design more for us.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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Today we found some stellar articles on frugal ideas to celebrate Mother's Day, things beginners must know about saving for retirement, and how to fill the hours after a layoff.
Today we found some awesome articles on free or cheap ways to celebrate the holidays, what Nelson Mandela can teach you about finances, and giving during the Christmas season.
Today we found some great articles on frugal ways to celebrate Halloween, saving on baby gear, and saving at warehouse clubs.
Today we found some fantastic articles on low-budget ways to celebrate Halloween, where to find unique presents for kids, and green ways to save money.
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There are currently no tropical cyclones.
*5-day Tropical Cyclone Forecast Track Map is available in MetEye.
Tropical cyclone warning services
A summary of the types of warnings that are issued by the Bureau, when and where they are issued and samples of the individual warnings.
Preparation & safety
Guides and checklists for cyclone safety and preparedness.
Check your local emergency agencies for more information.
About tropical cyclones
An overview of how tropical cyclones form, where they occur, what characteristics they have and the impacts experienced.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is there anything you'd like to know about tropical cyclones?


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1- What do I need to check in?
National photo ID, such as passport, driver's licence, ID card, national military service card, etc. The hostel management also accepts current, valid student cards.
2- Check-in & Check-out:
At 11:00 am. The hostel is open 24 hours, 7 days week. Check-out time is 10.00 am, so your room may not be ready before the check in time (12:00 am) if the previous resident has not yet left. If necessary, you can leave personal effects during the day.
3- Booking process:
*Online bookings: Go to "book now" menu at the home page, choose your city and hostel, then follow instruccions on the screen. The booking software will automatically send you your booking reference and an email with all your booking details.
*By email / form: if you prefer, you can always send us an email for special bookings, requests. . . You'll find all information in "Contact us", of fullfil the form that appears at the bottom page of the booking screen of every hostel.
4- Is there any booking fee?
No, we just charge you the first night to guarantee the booking. If you don't arrive or don't call to cancel the booking, you will lose this money. If you arrive as planned, you will then just have to pay the rest of your stay.
5- How long do I have to make a cancellation?
6- How many nights can I stay at the hostel?
You can stay as long as you like.
7- Are sheets included?
8- Is breakfast included?
No, but our clients can buy basic breackfast at a low price.
9- Is there Internet access?
Yes, you can use our broadband wifi connection for free. We also have an Internet room, where you can and you can use our computers free of charge during 20 minutes enjoying the latest technology.
10- What time do I have to leave the hostel?
Check-out is at 10:00 am.
11- Is there car parking?
No, but there is a garage just next door.
12- How do I get there?
All information on how to find us is included on the website ('Getting there' section).
13- Is there a curfew?
There is no curfew; you can go in and out as you please.
14- Is there any type of food available?
We provide continental breakfast. We also have microwave and fridges for your own use and some snacks & sandwich machines available.
15- Are the rooms unisex?
Our rooms are mixed dorms. If you need male or female dorms please send us a special request and we will do our best to fullfil your requirements.
16- Payment methods
We take cash and credit cards (1€ extra charge per night applied). We don't accept traveller's cheques neither American Express
17- Do you have weekly rates?
No, we do not have weekly or monthly rates.
18- Who can stay in our hostels?
Our hostels are independent, and it's not necessary to be a member of any organisation, and you don't need to show any hostel card to use our services. There are no age limits, you only must have a young spirit.


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Jerry Sandusky Scandal
Joe Paterno family: Freeh report 'speculative and fundamentally flawed'
Joe Paterno did not cover up child sex abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade ago, and the way he was portrayed in the scathing report by former FBI director Louis Freeh was "a profound failure," a report commissioned by the family said Sunday.
Through the report, the Paterno family seeks to change the national dialogue about the longtime Penn State coach whose reputation was tarnished after Freeh branded him part of a cover-up with other university leaders to escape bad publicity. The new report's team of experts, including an FBI sex crimes profiler and a former Pennsylvania governor, ripped into Freeh's methods and conclusions, saying he collected weak, out-of-context evidence and drew strikingly wrong conclusions.
"There is no evidence that Joe Paterno deliberately covered up known incidents of child molestation by Jerry Sandusky to protect Penn State football or for any other reason," said former Gov. Dick Thornburgh, one of the report's contributors. "The contrary statements in the Freeh report are unsupported and unworthy of belief.
"There is no reason to believe that Joe Paterno understood the threat posed by Jerry Sandusky better than qualified child welfare and law enforcement professionals."
The rebuttal was made available Sunday morning on the family's new website, Paterno.com. It followed Friday's release of a letter from Paterno's widow, Sue, to Nittany Lion lettermen in which she blasted the Freeh report and hinted toward the pending release of the full report.
Sue Paterno was interviewed by ABC's Katie Couric for her show, "Katie." The interview will air at 4 p.m. Monday.
The Paterno family's critique called Freeh's report "speculative and fundamentally flawed."
"It isn't a little wrong on the minor issues. It is totally wrong on the most critical issues," attorney Wick Sollers said. "That the (b)oard (of trustees) and the NCAA relied on this report, without appropriate review or analysis, is a miscarriage of justice."
Sollers said in a televised interview Sunday that the family is "considering all options at this point" on whether to file a lawsuit.
The response from the Paternos has been a long time coming. The family promised in July, after the Freeh report was released, to do their own investigation, and Sue Paterno had Sollers assemble the team to do the work.
Of course, the Paterno report re-ignited discussion over the Freeh report, which has already been bashed by Penn State reform groups, the attorneys for three senior university leaders who were indicted on cover-up charges, and people in the community. The Paternos' 238-page report, which an author said was not a "re-investigation of the investigation," is akin to defense attorneys in a high-profile civil lawsuit presenting their case, trying to raise doubt about and refute the plaintiff's evidence. Except in this case, there is no trial and there is no jury, just public opinion and NCAA sanctions.
On the surface, the Paterno report does not provide documentation of new interviews or rewrite history. However, it seeks to shred some of the conclusions by raising questions about Freeh's motives, the lack of access the investigators had to people directly involved in the scandal and the contradictions in his work.
Freeh called the Paterno report "self-serving" and reiterated belief in his work, which cost Penn State $6.5 million.
"I stand by our conclusion that four of the most powerful people at Penn State failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade," Freeh said in a statement. "These men exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky's victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not even attempting to determine the identity of the child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001."
Penn State leaders distanced themselves from the Paterno report and did not mention the former coach by name in a statement that said the Freeh report's purpose was identifying what went wrong in the university's governance and compliance operations.
"It is understandable and appreciated that people will draw their own conclusions and opinions from the facts uncovered in the Freeh report," said the statement, issued Sunday.
The rebuttal blasts Freeh for using email conversations from 1998 and 2001 to conclude that Paterno was involved in the alleged cover-up out of a fear of bad publicity.
It calls Freeh's work incomplete for not having interviewed witnesses such as Paterno or senior leaders Curley and Schultz, and it said Spanier was interviewed shortly before the report was released.
And it said Paterno, who was not friends with Sandusky, had no way of knowing his colleague was a pedophile.
The FBI child sex offender profiler, Jim Clemente, said the thousands of interactions Paterno had with Sandusky on the field at Beaver Stadium and behind the scenes inside the football buildings gave Sandusky a "proverbial blind spot" to hide by using his nice-guy, goofball reputation.
Freeh announced his findings during a press conference in a Philadelphia hotel in July. The NCAA used his report as the basis for leveling unprecedented sanctions against Penn State 11 days later.
The penalties included a $60 million fine, a 4-year postseason bowl ban and a personal indictment of Paterno by erasing his 111 wins from 1998 to 2011.
The Paterno family's report dealt only with Freeh's characterizations of Paterno, and the report highlighted what it called seven of the "most egregious, unfounded" errors in Freeh's work.
One of the seven concerned the 1998 incident in which Sandusky was not prosecuted after university police investigated him for showering with a young boy. The Paterno report said two email conversations among Curley, Schultz and Spanier do not confirm that Paterno knew about the incident or even provided context that one of the emails that referenced a "coach" wanting an update about something was about the shower incident.
The Paternos' analysts consulted the attorneys of Curley, Schultz and Spanier about the response to the 2001 Sandusky shower incident and found that Paterno did not try to hide the report, which was made to him by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary. Emails from 2001 suggest Paterno was involved and even influenced Curley's decision not to go to authorities, but the Paterno report said Freeh incorrectly assumed that Paterno was the decision-maker.
The report said Freeh missed a "fundamental reality that undermines any notion that Joe Paterno would protect Jerry Sandusky if he believed Sandusky molested kids": they were not friends and Paterno was disappointed in Sandusky's commitment to the football team long before the defensive coordinator retired in 1999.
The report said even though the two coached together for 30 years, they did not socialize outside of work and moved in different circles. Sandusky and Paterno attended different churches, and Sandusky made people who drank alcohol feel bad, the report said.
Thornburgh said even though Freeh's team interviewed 430 people and read more than 3 million pages of materials, there were only 30 documents used. And he blasted the work for not interviewing people necessary to draw conclusions.
"It is virtually impossible to provide a full account of incidents, and more importantly to make judgments related to them, without the benefit of talking to the individuals who were involved at the time they occurred," Thornburgh wrote.
The report also said Freeh was biased in his work and was "under enormous pressure and scrutiny to vindicate the rights of the child victims of this tragedy."
"That does not excuse the trampling of due process, or the finalizing of his conclusions without subjecting his views to outside scrutiny," the report said. "Nor does it excuse intentionally placing a lightning rod directly over Joe Paterno, which was unjustified by the record but relished by some who delight in tearing down others."
The report hinted that the Paterno family would begin supporting programs for child sex abuse awareness and prevention. The report said the details would follow, but Clemente, the FBI profiler, said he recommends a national organization to coordinate the efforts of local and state level services as well as a support group for young men Sandusky victimized.
Fred Berlin, the director of John Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit, also contributed to the report.
Penn State trustee Paul Silvis on Sunday said for him the whole situation has been very difficult because he had personal relationships with people involved, including Curley and Paterno.
"My personal opinion is that the entire community was fooled by Jerry Sandusky.," said Silvis, who emphasized that he could not speak for the entire board.
Silvis questioned if the trained psychologists at The Second Mile couldn't tell Sandusky was a pedophile, how could Joe Paterno?
"This has just been ripping Penn State apart, ripping the alumni apart," Silvis said. "I don't believe any of those men really knew for sure that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile because they would have acted."
Silvis admitted he doesn't know how the report will be received going forward, if it will be helpful or open wounds. He said all of the Penn State community needs to work together.
"The recommendations in the back of the Freeh report are really what we paid for and what we wanted," Silvis said, adding that the trustees have "taken those to heart" and worked hard at implementing them.
Tom Kline, a Philadelphia attorney representing Victim 5 of the Sandusky case, said the Paterno report does nothing for the victims in the case but rather "perpetuates an intramural squabble now picked by the Paterno family to try to resurrect the reputation of Paterno by essentially criticizing the procedural approach of the Freeh report."
"The criticism that somehow the Freeh report draws conclusions which are not based on facts that were established on a solid record isn't a justifiable criticism," Kline said. "It's understandable that the Paterno family is interested in the restoration of the reputation of Joe Paterno, but the facts tragically and unfortunately support a different conclusion."
The group Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship offered up support Sunday for the Paterno family's rebuttal of the Freeh report.
In a news release, the group renewed its call for the resignation of the members of the university's board of trustees who were serving in November 2011, when Paterno was fired. The group also asked that Freeh explain his methodology.
Sandusky, 69, is in solitary confinement in the state prison in Greene County where he is serving a 30- to 60-year sentence after he was convicted on 45 counts of child abuse in June.
Curley, Schultz and Spanier are awaiting court hearings for their perjury, obstruction, child endangerment, conspiracy and related cases. All three men's attorneys have pledged to fight the charges at trial.
CDT reporter Matt Morgan contributed to this story.


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A family of probability distributions (i.e. a statistical model) is said to be sufficient for another, if there exists a transition matrix transforming the probability distributions in the former to the probability distributions in the latter. The so-called Blackwell-Sherman-Stein Theorem provides necessary and sufficient conditions for one statistical model to be sufficient for another, by comparing their "information values" in a game-theoretical framework. In this talk, I will extend some of these ideas to the quantum case.
I will begin by considering the comparison of ensembles of quantum states in terms of their "information value" in quantum statistical decision problems. In this case, I will prove that one ensemble is "more informative" than another if and only if there exists a suitable processing of the former into the latter.
I will then move on to the comparison of bipartite quantum states in terms of their "nonlocality value" in nonlocal games. In this case, I will prove that one bipartite state is "more nonlocal" than another if and only if the former can be transformed into the latter by local operations and shared randomness, arguing, moreover, that the framework provided by nonlocal games can be useful in understanding analogies and differences between the notions of quantum entanglement and nonlocality.


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Respondus has made life much easier for me! We have a campus-wide license and our instructors are really loving it!
Susan McKinnon
Georgia Perimeter College
Georgia Perimeter College
Changing the World of Assessments
For the past decade we've been reshaping how students are assessed. It began with Respondus, the first authoring tool to bridge the gap between print and online exams. Then came StudyMate, where students use interactive self-assessments and games to master course materials.
Today, LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor are transforming education by giving institutions flexibility in how they offer online exams — all while maintaining the integrity of the assessment process.
We might not be changing the world, but we are changing education. One million assessments at a time.


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In a murder trial, the defense attorney was cross-examining the coroner:
"Before you signed the death certificate, did you take the pulse, listen to the heart or check for breathing?"
"So, when you signed the death certificate, you weren't sure the man was dead, were you?"
"Well, the man's brain was in a jar on my desk, but I suppose he could have still been practicing law for a living."


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Frequent Links
Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports cover dated November 2005
|Ellen Kampinsky[1]
|Consumer advocacy
|7,300,000 / month
|Consumers Union
|First issue
|January 1936
|23x15px United States
Consumer Reports is an American magazine published monthly by Consumers Union since 1936. It publishes reviews and comparisons of consumer products and services based on reporting and results from its in-house testing laboratory and survey research center. They accept no advertising, pay for all the products they test, and, as a not for profit organization, they have no shareholders. It also publishes cleaning and general buying guides. It has approximately 7.3 million subscribers[2] and an annual testing budget of approximately US$21 million.[3]
- 1 Editorial independence
- 2 Ancillary publications
- 3 History
- 4 Product changes after Consumer Reports tests
- 5 Lawsuits against Consumers Union
- 6 Controversy over child safety seats
- 7 Other errors or issues
- 8 Graphs
- 9 See also
- 10 References
- 11 External links
Editorial independence
Consumer Reports is well known for its policies on editorial independence, which it says are to "maintain our independence and impartiality... [so that] CU has no agenda other than the interests of consumers."[4][5] CR has unusually strict requirements and sometimes has taken extraordinary steps; for example it declined to renew a car dealership's bulk subscription because of "the appearance of an impropriety".[6]
Consumer Reports does not allow outside advertising in the magazine[4][5] but its website has retailers' advertisements. Consumer Reports states that PriceGrabber places the ads and pays a percentage of referral fees to CR,[7] who has no direct relationship with the retailers.[8] Consumer Reports publishes reviews of its business partner and recommends it in at least one case.[9] CR had a similar relationship with BizRate at one time[10] and has had relationships with other companies including Amazon.com,[11] Yahoo!,[12] The Wall Street Journal; The Washington Post;[13] BillShrink;[14] and Decide.com.[15] CR also accepts grants from other organizations,[16] and at least one high-ranking Consumer Reports employee has gone on to work for a company he evaluated.[17]
CR also forbids the use of its reviews for selling products; for example, it will not allow a manufacturer to advertise a positive review.[4] CR has gone to court to enforce that rule.[18]
Consumer Reports says its staff purchases all tested products at retail prices, anonymously in "most cases",[7] and that they accept no free samples in order to prevent bias from bribery or from being given better than average samples.[4] However, in order to review some products before they are publicly available CR does accept "press samples" from manufacturers but says it pays for the samples and does not include them in ratings.[7] For most of CR 's history it minimized contact with government and industry experts "to avoid compromising the independence of its judgment." In 2007, in response to errors in infant car seat testing, it began accepting advice from a wide range of experts on designing tests, but not on final assessments.[19] Also, at times CR allows manufacturers to review and respond to criticism before publication.[5]
Some objective and comparative tests published by Consumer Reports are carried out under the umbrella of the international consumer organization International Consumer Research & Testing. Consumer Reports also uses outside labs for testing, including for 11 percent of tests in 2006.[19]
Ancillary publications
ConsumerReports.org, the related website, claims more paid subscribers than any other publication-based website.[citation needed] Most of its information is available only to paid subscribers. ConsumerReports.org provides updates on product availability, and adds new products to previously-published test results. In addition, the online data includes coverage that is not published in the magazine; for example, vehicle reliability (frequency of repair) tables online extend over the full 10 model years reported in the Annual Questionnaires, whereas the magazine has only a six-year history of each model.
In 1990, Consumers Union launched Consumer Reports Television.[20] By March 2005 it was "hosted" by over 100 stations.[21][22]
On August 1, 2006 Consumers Union launched ShopSmart, a magazine aimed at young women.[23]
In 2008, Consumers Union acquired The Consumerist blog from Gawker Media.
Magazine copies distributed in Canada include a small four-page supplement called "Canada Extra", explaining how the magazine's findings apply to that country and lists the examined items available there.
In 2002, Consumers Union launched the grant-funded project Consumer Reports WebWatch, which aimed to improve the credibility of Web sites through investigative reporting, publicizing best-practices standards, and publishing a list of sites that comply with the standards. WebWatch worked with the Stanford Web Credibility Project, Harvard University's Berkman Center, The Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and others. WebWatch is a member of ICANN, the W3C and the Internet Society. Its content is free. As of July 31, 2009, WebWatch has been shut down, though the site is still available.
Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs is available free on Consumer Reports Health.org. It compares prescription drugs in over 20 major categories, such as heart disease, blood pressure and diabetes, and gives comparative ratings of effectiveness and costs, in reports and tables, in web pages and PDF documents, in summary and detailed form.[24]
Also in 2005 Consumers Union launched the service Greener Choices, which is meant to "inform, engage, and empower consumers about environmentally-friendly products and practices." It contains information about conservation, electronics recycling and conservation with the goal or providing an "accessible, reliable, and practical source of information on buying "greener" products that have minimal environmental impact and meet personal needs."
Consumers Union published a kids' version of Consumer Reports called Penny Power, later changed to Zillions.[25] This publication was similar to Consumer Reports but served a younger audience. It gave children financial advice for budgeting their allowances and saving for a big purchase, reviewed kid-oriented consumer products (e.g., toys, clothes, electronics, food, videogames, etc.), and generally promoted smart consumerism in kids and teens; testing of products came from kids of the age range a product was targeted toward.
See also the history of Consumers Union
As of 2007, 4.3 million people read the magazine, and 2.8 million people subscribed to the website.[26]
Product changes after Consumer Reports tests
In the July 1978 issue, Consumer Reports rated the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon automobile "not acceptable", the first car it had judged such since the AMC Ambassador in 1968. In its testing they found the possibility of these models developing an oscillatory yaw as a result of a sudden violent input to the steering; the manufacturer claimed that "Some do, some don't" show this behavior, but it has no "validity in the real world of driving".[27] Nevertheless, the next year, these models included a lighter weight steering wheel rim and a steering damper; Consumer Reports reported that the previous instability was no longer present.
In a 2003 issue of CR, the magazine tested the Nissan Murano crossover utility vehicle. Consumer Reports did not recommend the vehicle because of a problem with its power steering, even though the vehicle had above-average reliability. The specific problem was that the steering would stiffen substantially on hard turning. Consumer Reports recommended the 2005 model, which addressed this problem.[citation needed]
BMW changed the software for the stability control in its X5 SUV after replicating a potential rollover problem discovered during a Consumer Reports test.[28]
Chrysler also made changes to stability control software when Consumer Reports testing with the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee exposed handling issues.[29]
In 2010, Consumer Reports rated the 2010 Lexus GX 460 SUV unsafe after the vehicle failed one of the magazine's emergency safety tests. Toyota temporarily suspended sales of the vehicle, and after conducting its own test acknowledged the problem. A recall for the vehicle was issued, and the vehicle passed a Consumer Reports re-test.[30]
Lawsuits against Consumers Union
Consumers Union has been sued several times by companies unhappy with reviews of their products in Consumer Reports. Consumers Union has fought these cases vigorously.[31][page needed] As of October 2000, Consumers Union had been sued by 13 manufacturers, and never lost a case.[32][33]
In 1971 Bose Corporation sued Consumer Reports (CR) magazine for libel after CR reported in a review that the sound from the system it reviewed "tended to wander about the room". The case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which affirmed in Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc. that CR's statement was made without actual malice and therefore was not libelous.[34][35][36]
In 1988, Consumer Reports announced during a press conference that the Suzuki Samurai had demonstrated a tendency to roll and deemed it "not acceptable." Suzuki sued in 1996 after the Samurai was again mentioned in a CR anniversary issue. In July 2004, after eight years in court, the suit was settled and dismissed with no money changing hands and no retraction issued, but Consumers Union did agree no longer to refer to the 16-year-old test results of the 1988 Samurai in its advertising or promotional materials.[37]
Rivera Isuzu
In December 1997, the Isuzu Trooper distributor in Puerto Rico sued CR, alleging that it had lost sales as a result of CU's disparagement of the Trooper. A trial court granted CU's motion for summary judgment, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the favorable judgment.[38]
Sharper Image
In 2003, Sharper Image sued CR in California for product disparagement over negative reviews of its Ionic Breeze Quadra air purifier. CR moved for dismissal on October 31, 2003, and the case was dismissed in November 2004. The decision also awarded CU $525,000 in legal fees and costs.[39][40]
Controversy over child safety seats
The February 2007 issue of Consumer Reports stated that only two of the child safety seats it tested for that issue passed the magazine's side impact tests. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which subsequently retested the seats, found that all those seats passed the corresponding NHTSA tests at the speeds described in the magazine report. The CR article reported that the tests simulated the effects of collisions at 38.5 mph. However, the tests that were completed in fact simulated collisions at 70 mph.[41] CR stated in a letter from its president Jim Guest to its subscribers that it would retest the seats. The article was removed from the CR website, and on January 18, 2007 the organization posted a note on its home page about the misleading tests. Subscribers were also sent a postcard apologizing for the error.
On January 28, 2007, The New York Times published an op-ed from Joan Claybrook, who served on the board of CU from 1982 to 2006 (and was the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 1977 to 1981), where she discussed the sequence of events leading to the publishing of the erroneous information.[42]
Other errors or issues
In 2006, Consumer Reports said six hybrid vehicles would probably not save owners money. The magazine later discovered that it had miscalculated depreciation, and released an update stating that four of the seven vehicles would save the buyer money if the vehicles were kept for five years (including the federal tax credit for hybrid vehicles, which expires after each manufacturer sells 60,000 hybrid vehicles).[43]
In February 1998, the magazine tested pet food and claimed that Iams dog food was nutritionally deficient. It later retracted the report claiming that there had been "a systemic error in the measurements of various minerals we tested – potassium, calcium and magnesium."[44]
|This section requires expansion. (August 2012)
Consumer Reports graphs use a modified form of Harvey Balls for qualitative comparison.[45]
See also
- Good Housekeeping Institute
- Stiftung Warentest
- Underwriters Laboratories
- Which?
- Consumer protection
- Consumer education
- ^ Ellen Kampinsky Named Editor-in-Chief of Consumer Reports
- ^ Bounds, Gwendolyn (May 5, 2010). "Meet the Sticklers". The Wall Street Journal. p. D1. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
- ^ "Consumers Union shopping and testing". Consumer Reports. Archived from the original on 2006-06-16. Retrieved 2006-06-20.
- ^ a b c d "Our Mission". Consumers Union. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- ^ a b c Perez-Pena, Richard (8 Dec 2007). "Success Without Ads". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ Wald, Matthew (14 Apr 2001). "Consumer Reports Refuses to Renew a Mass Subscription". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ a b c Guest, Jim (Nov 2009). "From our president". Consumer Reports (Consumers Union). Retrieved 2012-11-02.
- ^ "Buy Kenmore 6002[2]". Consumer Reports. Consumers Union. Retrieved 2012-11-02.
- ^ "Start your engines!". Consumer Reports. Consumers Union. Oct 2010. Retrieved 2012-11-02.
- ^ Tedeschi, Bob (27 Oct 2003). "MediaTalk; Critics Take Wary View Of Shopping Web Link". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Technology Briefing: Internet; Amazon to Offer Consumer Reports". The New York Times. 7 Dec 2000. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Technology Briefing / E-Commerce: Yahoo To Sell Consumer Reports Research". The New York Times. 5 Jun 2001. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Consumer Reports: Foods can contain surprising, even alarming, ingredients". The Washington Post. 2011-09-12. Retrieved 2011-09-13.
- ^ Geron, Tomio (2011-04-26). "Consumer Reports Partners with BillShrink to Help Consumers Find the Best Deals On Wireless Plans, Credit Cards and TV and Cable Packages". Forbes. Retrieved 2011-09-08.
- ^ Perez, Sarah (2011-11-23). "Decide.com & Consumer Reports Partner On New Deals Site". TechCrunch (AOL). Retrieved 2011-11-29.
- ^ Collins, Glenn (13 Aug 2012). "Consumer Reports Receives $2 Million Grant for Food Safety Study13". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-14.
- ^ "David Champion, Director of Automotive Testing for Consumer Reports, Joins Nissan". The New York Times. 22 Aug 2012. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ Dougherty, Phillip (10 Oct 1983). "ADVERTISING; Regina Still Restrained On Consumer Reports". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ a b Seelye, Katharine (21 Mar 2007). "Magazine Will Begin Consulting With Experts". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ Mifflin, Lawrie (2 Sep 1996). "Consumer Reports Forges a TV Identity". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Nearly 100 stations now hosting Consumer Reports Television". Consumers Union. 23 Mar 2005. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Consumers Union Press Releases". Consumers Union. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ Aspan, Maria (24 Jul 2006). "Consumer Reports to Add Shopping Magazine". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Consumer Reports Drug Reports". Consumer Reports. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- ^ Ibiblio.org[dead link]
- ^ Story, Louise (11 Apr 2007). "Consumer Reports restructures after mishap". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ "Storm over the Omni Horizon", Time, 26 June 1978.
- ^ "No Test Dummies" Fortune, 11 June 2007
- ^ "2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Handling Concerns Resolved - KickingTires". Blogs.cars.com. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
- ^ Leonard, David. "Consumer Reports maintains old-school values". Bloomberg Businessweek/MSNBC. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- ^ "Getting Tools Used" (PDF). Center for Advancing Health. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- ^ Finn, Robin (5 Oct 2000). "PUBLIC LIVES; Still Top Dog, Consumers' Pit Bull to Retire". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 2012-11-15.
- ^ Eldridge, Earle (8 Apr 2004). "Consumers Union, Suzuki settle suit over tipping claim". USA Today (USA Today). Retrieved 2013-02-24.
- ^ Commentary on libel cases in general giving a specific example of Bose Corp. v. Consumer's Union of United States.[dead link]
- ^ "Opinion: Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union - 466 U.S. 485 (1984)". United States Supreme Judicial Court. Justia.
- ^ "Editorial: A Sound Affirmation". New York Times. 2 May 1984. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
- ^ Hakim, Danny. "Suzuki Resolves a Dispute With a Consumer Magazine", The New York Times, 9 July 2004.
- ^ Legal Watch Defamation Claim Arising from Consumer Report Dismissed
- ^ Quackwatch article
- ^ InfomercialWatch article
- ^ Detroit News
- ^
Joan Claybrook (2007-01-28). "Crash Test Dummies". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
How the testing mistake was made is instructive not only for Consumer Reports but for everyone who cares about public safety.
- ^ "Update: This is a revised report on "The dollars and sense of hybrids"". Consumers Union. September 2006. Archived from the original on 2006-11-30. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
- ^ "Consumer Reports' good reputation takes hit from flawed car seats report". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
- ^ "Qualitative Comparison". Support Analytics Blog. 11 December 2007. Archived from the original on 2012-04-08.


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Support for Haiti
ARRA Outreach
Collegiate Sports
Educational Equity
H1N1 Flu Virus
Odds And Ends
Quote to Note
Upcoming Events
Support for Haiti
Last week, Secretary Duncan issued the following statement in support of the people of Haiti:
"Like all Americans, I am deeply saddened by the destruction and loss of life caused by the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the people of Haiti and especially to its children and its educators. I am hopeful that the U.S. Department of Education can play a role in helping the people of Haiti rebuild their lives and rebuild their schools."
The U.S. government has mobilized resources and manpower to aid in the relief effort. Groups and individuals can get involved by contributing to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and American Red Cross, donating goods, and volunteering. Assets are also available for inquiring about the whereabouts and welfare of family and friends in Haiti.
ARRA Outreach
This week, the Department announced that 40 states and the District of Columbia submitted applications to be considered for Phase I of the Race to the Top competition. Race to the Top is the agency's $4.35 billion fund to dramatically reshape America's educational system to better engage and prepare students for success in the 21st century global economy and workplace. States' Phase I applications were due to the Department by January 19 at 4:30 p.m. ET.
Winners of the first Race to the Top awards will be announced in April. A second round of applications from states will be due in June, with winners announced this September. States that apply, but do not win in Phase I, may reapply for Phase II.
Earlier that day, President Obama announced his intention to propose in his Fiscal Year 2011 budget $1.35 billion to continue Race to the Top. He also announced his intention to expand the competition to include local school districts that are committed to reform. The announcement came during a visit with Secretary Duncan at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, one of the lowest-income yet highest-achieving schools in Fairfax County. (Note: A new White House fact sheet details revised state- and community-level educational policies and practices consistent with Race to the Top and other American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [ARRA] education programs.)
Also: The omnibus appropriations bill which was signed into law by President Obama on December 16, 2009, includes two major changes to the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program. First, the law allows states and school districts to use SIG funding to serve certain "newly eligible" schools. In particular, SIG funds may now be used to serve Title I schools that are not in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring and schools that are eligible for, but do not receive, Title I, Part A funds if those schools: (1) have not made Adequate Yearly Progress for at least two years or (2) are in the state's lowest quintile of performance based on proficiency rates. Second, the law increases the amount that a state may award for each school participating in the SIG program from $500,000 to $2 million annually. The Department is implementing these provisions by issuing interim final requirements defining how states and districts may use the new flexibility in eligibility and funding. States' SIG applications are due February 8.
Collegiate Sports
On January 14, at the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) annual convention in Atlanta, Secretary Duncan, who was co-captain of his Harvard University basketball team as well as played in Australia's professional basketball league from 1987 to 1991, praised the NCAA for developing leaders while sharply criticizing college teams that do not graduate their athletes. The Secretary also questioned the National Basketball Association's (NBA) minimum-age policy, which he argued "sets up" athletes for failure. Some key excerpts:
"Student athletes learn lessons on courts and playing fields that are difficult to pick up in chemistry lab. Resilience in the face of adversity, selflessness, teamwork, self-discipline, and discovering your passion are all values that sports can uniquely transmit. Many of those character-building traits are every bit as critical to succeeding in life as sheer book smarts.... More than 410,000 student athletes participate in NCAA championship sports, including more than 161,000 student athletes in Division I. For the vast majority of student athletes, intercollegiate sports enrich their college years and build a well-rounded student experience. Yet, the valuable role of sports on campus has a shadow cast over it these days because of ongoing abuses, especially in Division I men's basketball and big college football programs. About a quarter of the 64 teams in last year's NCAA men's basketball tournament graduated less than 40% of their players. Four teams graduated none of their African-American players. By contrast, Florida State, Robert Morris, Utah State, Wake Forest, and Western Kentucky all graduated 100% of their players black and white. You cannot explain away that kind of variation by reference to the usual suspects. The institutions and coaches have to play a role. There are too many coaches who care more about getting a student athlete out on the court in a uniform than about getting them in a cap and gown four years later."
"How can we protect men's basketball and football from abuses? Here are three ideas. First, slow down. Right now, coaches can make scholarship offers to elite athletes in eighth-grade. One fan web site joked that coaches would soon be making college offers to embryos. At a minimum, coaches should be obliged to wait to make offers until after the sophomore year of high school.... Second, boosting graduation rates should be part of a coach's job. I would suggest that teams with less than a 40% graduation rate be prohibited from post-season competition. Finally, it's time to re-empower coaches, but, at the same time, hold them to a higher standard of accountability. I would propose a grand bargain: when a program has a clean record and good outcomes, coaches should have more leeway to increase their contact with players in the offseason. We don't now cap the amount of time that a star violinist practices with the orchestra or the lab time of a budding scientist. But when programs show the wrong values and have terrible outcomes, coaches should be held personally responsible. They should be suspended, sanctioned, or barred. And if the coach jumps ship to a new team, the penalties should follow the coach rather than punishing innocent players left in their wake."
"It's time as well to reform the NBA's 'one-and-done' rule, which requires NBA recruits to 'attend' college for a year or be 19 before they are drafted. One-and-done is a mockery of college education.... Major league baseball has a much better system. Baseball allows players to be drafted straight out of high school. But if a high school baseball player is not drafted and heads for college, they cannot be drafted again until after their third year. If college men's basketball adopted a similar system, a handful of budding basketball superstars... could jump directly to the NBA. But, the vast majority of players would go on to college and get some education and maturity under their belt before they contemplate going pro."
Educational Equity
On January 15, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 81st birthday, Secretary Duncan challenged a full house of 1,000 students at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (where Dr. King and his father served as pastors) to realize King's vision through education. "Freedom is the ability to think and to pursue your own path, and only education can give you that freedom," he explained. "If Dr. King were here today, he would call on a new generation of leaders to build upon his work by doing the most important thing each of you can do: get an education, learn to think, learn to compete, and learn to win." The Secretary also cited the work of the Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces federal civil rights laws that protect the nation's more than 69 million elementary, secondary, and postsecondary students from disability, race, national origin, gender, and age discrimination; provides technical assistance to education institutions to help them understand their civil rights responsibilities; and provides outreach and technical assistance to students, parents, and other advocates to inform them of their rights under the law. "In recent years, this office has not been as aggressive as it should be. But that is about to change," he asserted. This year, OCR will broaden its data collection process to spotlight inequity around issues such as student discipline, distribution of effective teachers, and access to rigorous curriculum. This new information will help shape the Obama Administration's education equity agenda.
H1N1 Flu Virus
Students who have not yet been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus should do so, and all children under 10-years-old should receive a second dose of the vaccine so as to be fully protected against the virus and prevent further outbreaks of the flu. To underscore this message, Secretary Duncan joined Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin at a working vaccination clinic at Carlin Springs Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia. Arlington public schools and the Arlington County Public Health Division are working together to supply nearly 12,000 students with H1N1 vaccinations at in-school clinics like the one at Carlin Springs.
Note: The Flu Vaccine Locator identifies where to get vaccinated by state and zip code.
Odds and Ends
A new Department video offers tips to help students get started completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
In December 2009, Secretary Duncan visited Samuel Gompers Middle School in Los Angeles. He saw a school with many challenges and a great deal of diversity. Students wrote him following his visit, asking a number of questions, and the Secretary responded.
The latest issue of the Institute of Education Sciences' (IES) "Education Research News" features an overview of ARRA evaluation activities, research highlights, Director John Easton's goals, and an interview with the director of the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Initiative.
The Department's Teaching American History (TAH) grant competition is seeking help to review TAH grant applications. The anticipated grant review dates are April and May 2010. You may serve as a reviewer if you meet at least one of the following criteria: a degree in history; K-12 history teacher; history professor; TAH grant director; TAH grant partner; history scholar; other history-related professional; professional development provider; or evaluator/evaluation specialist. If you are interested, please email your abbreviated resume to Yianni Alepohoritis (firstname.lastname@example.com) or Adam Bookman (firstname.lastname@example.com) by February 12. If selected, you will serve on a panel with two other reviewers, reviewing about 10 applications; an honorarium is given per application.
Since 2007, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have cooperated to foster the development of students' skills in science, technology, engineering, and math. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two agencies supports the FAA's mission to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world and NASA's mission to pioneer space exploration, scientific discovery, and core aeronautics research. The MOU's initial focus is on a NASA curriculum called "Smart Skies," an online air traffic control simulator for students in fifth- through ninth-grades. It is designed to offer an exciting way to learn the math skills central to air traffic control while providing multiple modes of problem solving for students who learn in different ways. All materials are free and available online.
Quote to Note
"Even before states have received a single dime of [Race to the Top] taxpayer money, many of them have committed to instituting important reforms to better position themselves for a Race to the Top grant.... So, by rewarding some of these states submitting applications today, by extending the Race to the Top for states, by launching a Race to the Top among districts, and by applying the principles of Race to the Top to other federal programs, we'll build on this success. We're going to raise the bar for all our students and take bigger steps towards closing the achievement gap that denies so many students, especially black and Latino students, a fair shot at their dreams."
|President Barack Obama (1/19/2010), proposing continuation and expansion of Race to the Top
Upcoming Events
President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address on January 27 and release his FY 2011 budget on February 1.
The Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools (OSDFS) is planning a National Meeting on Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention in Higher Education in 2010. The meeting will include a comprehensive agenda designed to respond to the current needs on college campuses. Details will be posted online, as they become available. (Note: Please send topics or ideas for consideration to firstname.lastname@example.com.)
February 3-6, the Department will exhibit at the National Association of Bilingual Education's Conference in Denver. If you are attending this event, please stop by the Department's booth.
Credits, Subscribe & Unsubscribe
Please feel free to contact the Office of Communications and Outreach with any questions:
Director, Intergovernmental AffairsStacey Jordan, (202) 401-0026, email@example.com
Program AnalystAdam Honeysett, (202) 401-3003, email@example.com
To be added or removed from distribution, or submit comments (we welcome your feedback!), please contact Adam Honeysett. Or, visit http://www2.ed.gov/news/newsletters/edreview/index.html.
This newsletter contains hypertext links to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links are provided for the user's convenience. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Furthermore, the inclusion of links is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered, on these sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites.


text:
In this "anything for an opportunity to feature Sly Cooper" edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter GiantBoyDetective pronounces his love for platforming games that have you find countless things.
The Sly Cooper Collection has been sitting at the top of my backlog for a good while now and I finally got around to playing it again last night. I haven't even tried 2 and 3, but the original is exactly the kind of game I love.
I know some people hate platformers where you have to collect loads of things, but those are my favourite kinds. Donkey Kong 64 was a collect-o-thon and love that game to pieces. Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro. These are the games that truly make me love gaming.
Are there other platformer titles I've somehow over looked on the PS3? Sonic games seem to be the only ones I can't get in to.
About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run.


text:
Headlines archive
Court officials warn of fraudulent e-mail messages
Madison, Wisconsin - January 15, 2014
Wisconsin court officials are advising residents to be aware of a recent spate of fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to require the recipient to appear in "the court of Washington."
Recipients are advised in the message to open an attached file, which may infect computers with a virus or malware. The scam has been reported since late December in jurisdictions nationwide, including Wisconsin.
Washington County (Wisconsin) Clerk of Circuit Court Theresa M. Russell reported Wednesday that her office has received more than 100 calls from people who received the seemingly important message regarding an upcoming court hearing.
Russell said the messages are not legitimate. Anyone wanting to verify an upcoming state court appearance in Wisconsin may check online on the Wisconsin court system's website at http://wcca.wicourts.gov/index.xsl or contact a particular county clerk of circuit court office directly.
Tom Sheehan
Court Information Officer
(608) 261-6640


text:
Publications Tagged: intra-state warfare
- Added April 01, 1995
- Ready For What and Modernized Against Whom?: A Strategic Perspective on Readiness and Modernization. Authored by Dr. Jeffrey Record.
- The U.S. military continues to prepare for large-scale inter-state warfare even though intra-state conflict is the primary source of violence in the post-Soviet era. Conventional "Cold War" force structures are of limited utility against irregular adversaries operating on their own territory. Accordingly, selected conventional force modernization programs should be reexamined and new force structures considered.


text:
Theyre everywhere, a handful of scholars and pundits with an opinion for every reporters phone call. Is there anything wrong with turning again and again to the usual suspects, or should journalists try harder to diversify the expert pool?
Mark Francis Cohen
Mark Francis Cohen, whose work has appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times, is a contributing editor at Washingtonian magazine.
Larry J. Sabato, who bills himself on the paid speaking circuit as "probably the most quoted college professor in the land," recently donated $1 million to the University of Virginia.
That sum of money--estimated to be 12 to 13 times the scholar's annual salary--makes Sabato, 52, the most generous faculty member the university has ever employed. Actually, it's one of the biggest gifts an active professor has handed to a school anywhere.
So where did Sabato get all this cash? "Thank goodness for compound interest," the mustachioed pundit told the Washington Post the day his gift was announced. "It's amazing what you can live on eating Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for dinner."
Still, a prudent lifestyle and savvy investment decisions hardly explain Sabato's beneficence. The scholar has amassed mounds of extra cash writing 23 books and moonlighting as a public speaker. He's a successful pundit whose words and face blanket the newspapers and airwaves, appearances that boost his profile and his cachet on the speaking circuit.
Commentators like Sabato who speak frequently to reporters have earned a reputation as easy quotes or dial-a-quotes. Harried reporters on deadline can phone these scholars at any time to get a quick and pithy comment on a remarkable range of subjects, from missile defense to the Mississippi Delta. And in an age in which government officials often speak anonymously or on background, reporters depend on analysts with real names to provide information--even if they don't always have much of substance to contribute.
But many editors and some reporters, suffering from quote fatigue, say overuse of these scholars has created something of a permanent commentariat. Such a "punditocracy," as The Nation's Eric Alterman has called it, is thought to dispense a numbing conventional wisdom, as more obscure analysts who offer fresh insight or bring greater expertise to a particular topic are neglected. Critics argue journalists should work harder to plumb opinions from a vast expanse of sources.
"If there's some name that keeps coming up and getting in stories, I'll try to urge reporters to get other sources," says Michael Abramowitz, national editor at the Washington Post. "Reporters should always be trying to challenge their assumptions about things. If we're talking to the same people all the time, we're not challenging our assumptions."
Some news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press have officially and unofficially blacklisted certain ubiquitous analysts over the years, banning reporters from using them in articles.
While official bans are less common, it has become routine for individual editors, say on a national desk, to forbid reporters from using certain pundits as sources. Many editors interviewed for this article would only admit such prohibitions anonymously. "I have told my reporters not to use Larry Sabato anymore," says the editor of a publication that covers Congress. Besides Sabato, the mainstays of this likely-to-be-banned list include Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, Stephen Hess and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report and John Pike of Globalsecurity.org.
A sign of their quote-giving prowess: From September through March, Ornstein garnered 95 mentions in U.S. newspapers, while the others received 127, 49, 89, 93 and 67 mentions, respectively, according to a Lexis-Nexis search.
Jeffrey Birnbaum, a Washington Post columnist who has worked at Fortune magazine and the Wall Street Journal, says using a myriad of sources "adds to the credibility of what you write." He explains: "It can be lazy to use the same people over and over. It appears the reporter lacks imagination."
Much of the reliance on established quotemeisters stems from deadline reporting. When time is tight, when a deadline is looming, reporters have to home in on the pundits they know will be accessible and will answer questions quickly and articulately.
Says Susan Page, USA Today's Washington bureau chief: "When I have time, I'll put a request out on Profnet," a Web site that connects reporters with academic experts. "Sometimes, though, you'll get an assignment at 4 and have to turn it in by 7, and you need someone who you know will call you back."
Hess, Sabato, Ornstein and Pike are known for their quick responses. These experts also give reporters their home phone numbers and respond to requests late into the evening.
Reporters also depend on pundits when they don't have high-ranking government sources. "When you can't get someone from the White House to return your calls, you call the Heritage Foundation," says Anna Badkhen, a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, referring to the conservative think tank. Badkhen writes about international politics and often includes analysts in her stories. "The Heritage Foundation has a perspective that's close to the White House."
Besides, the opinionmongers who dominate reporters' Rolodexes offer crisp and entertaining commentary, perfect for plugging into a news story. "It's not that these people are simply quote whores," says William Powers, a National Journal columnist who writes about the media. "Most academics are used to giving long, tortured answers to a question that work in the academic world but don't work for a quotation. A lot of experts get called but never get used because they're boring and dull."
It's easy to see why Marshall Wittmann was once one of the hottest quote-givers in Washington. He speaks succinctly. He laughs readily. He dishes similes and metaphors freely and makes exotic analogies, even when he's explaining why only a handful of commentators are popular among journalists. "There's no Better Business Bureau for quotemeisters," says Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council and a former GOP operative. "It's a self-validating process. These people have been quoted so often that they've become the high priests of observerdom."
He says skilled commentators know intuitively what a reporter is looking for and can give it to them a few minutes into the interview. "Reporters want someone who will say something interesting," Wittmann says. "Reporters don't want something wonky. They want something that encapsulates the point they are trying to make."
Wittmann is still quoted, but for a couple of years, he had reached a star status only a few commentators achieve. In 2001, Wittmann, then a scholar at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, was a major media figure. He had worked for years in Republican politics, including stints in the first Bush administration, at the Christian Coalition and the Heritage Foundation. Wittmann supported U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the 2000 Republican primaries and became an outsider after George W. Bush won the nomination and the presidency.
What made Wittmann, a Waco, Texas, native, a media darling was his willingness to bash members of his own political tribe. When U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont quit the GOP and became an independent, dozens of media outlets looked to Wittmann for comment, and he obligingly hurled verbal bombs all over the place. As he told the Financial Times: "Not only is the president's honeymoon over, he now has a divorce on his hands." The New Yorker dubbed him "the King of Quotes" in a June 2001 profile piece, describing his appearance in a breathtaking number of publications. The magazine found that "readers of the New York Times were particularly blessed: four separate Marshall Wittmann quotes in four different stories in a single weekend."
Soon after this scrum of attention, though, Wittmann left the Hudson Institute and became an aide to McCain--a period during which he wasn't authorized to speak to reporters. "For two years, I went cold turkey," Wittmann says. "Life went on. When my name stopped appearing in the paper, it wasn't a personal crisis."
Even so, Wittmann concedes there's something intoxicating about being a go-to guy for reporters. "The truth is, it's flattering, because everybody likes to see their name in the paper," he says.
Reporters call on pundits like Wittmann for many stories because administration officials refuse to speak on the record, a practice that has become more frequent during George W. Bush's presidency (see "In Control," February/ March). At the same time, there's been a drastic increase in analysis pieces. "Curtain raisers," such as stories previewing Bush's State of the Union address in February, require reporters to lean on outside observers to make points that are highly speculative--and quite possibly incorrect.
With the rise of 24/7 cable news, reporters--particularly in print--began writing more analysis pieces and increasingly sought the views of experts, says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism and an oft-quoted media critic in articles such as this one. "It wasn't Larry Sabato out there who called reporters up and said, 'Let me tell you this.' It was the reporters who called him."
The Chronicle's Badkhen says she quoted Sabato in January about the Iraqi elections because she knew he had a particular perspective. "He had strong opinions that echoed a point I was trying to make," she says. "I'm a reporter, not an editorial writer. Every point I make has to be backed up by analysts."
Ornstein finds reporters write pre-baked analysis stories more frequently than in the past. "There are lots of reporters who call you because they have something specific they want you to say," he says. "I get a lot of that now. They want you to say something, and they get unhappy when you don't."
Tired of seeing Norman Ornstein's name again and again, in story after story, Los Angeles Times editors put a stop to it, prohibiting reporters from quoting him on subjects on which he wasn't an expert. The edict, instituted in the early 1990s, was jokingly referred to as the "No Norm! Rule," says Doyle McManus, the Times' Washington bureau chief. "People would come into the office and say, 'Can I really not quote him?' It worked, though. It required the reporter to make that extra step."
Ornstein says he's been banned lots of times. (And he's been spoofed: The now-defunct Spy magazine once included a quote from Ornstein in every story in one issue.) "Reporters will tell me they can't quote me anymore," he says. "It's foolish. You get editors who say, 'Stop using this person. We're quoting him too much,' and the reporters will go out and find somebody else and quote them a lot until the editor says something again."
In fact, the L.A. Times' edict on Ornstein didn't last, and he has appeared in the newspaper numerous times since the rule was eased. Last year, his comments graced eight stories, including one about Teresa Heinz Kerry's tax returns.
Editors argue that bans are imposed because reporters should be digging up the "new," which includes unearthing new commentators. But does snagging a new commentator necessarily change the result? Or is it really a game of musical chairs, where the quotes are pretty much the same, and only the names change?
Editors insist that going to alternative commentators makes a difference. This year Don Frederick, national political editor at the Los Angeles Times, had a researcher assemble a list of more obscure sources for his reporters. Frederick wanted his writers to get fresh perspectives. "Sometimes you have to push your folks," he says. "We're trying to guard against being lazy in the reporting."
Jerry Seib, the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau chief, echoes that. "You have to be careful about using the same people over and over," he says. "The overuse of some people is a sign of not casting a wide enough net generally."
But National Journal's Powers doesn't see anything wrong with using commentators frequently and says absolute bans are simply ridiculous. "Yes, we all get tired of seeing the same names," he says. "But you're telling reporters to avoid talking to the people who have emerged as the most authoritative experts on a subject."
Or maybe journalists just need to avoid the quotemeisters until they get new jobs. Stephen Hess recalls how excited one Associated Press reporter became after the Brookings scholar began teaching at George Washington University: "He said, 'Oh great, I can quote you as a GW professor, and I don't have to use Brookings. My editors will like that.' "
While Sabato may be one of the most likely pundits to find himself on a do-not-call list, the number of times he's been quoted has actually increased during the last four presidential election cycles. A Lexis-Nexis search of the month of October during those election years shows Sabato was quoted 78 times in 1992; 122 times in 1996; 179 in 2000 and 344 times in 2004.
But Sabato sympathizes with editors who ban him. "You know reporters; they have a deadline, and they want somebody who will call them back relatively quickly," he says. "Once reporters find somebody who will regularly call them back, using them can become a habit. Editors have to break them of that habit."
Despite their reliance on pundits, reporters are developing a curious disdain for them. In fact, the term "pundit" has become a pejorative. Such aversion was evident in a 1996 New Republic article in which Sabato and other academics were made to look like hacks for speaking to the press. Author Franklin Foer analyzed Sabato's comments during September of that year and was astounded by the menu of subjects the U.Va. professor had addressed. "His ambit includes Perot's exclusion from the debates, Clinton's policy toward Iraq, Whitewater, Dole's attitude toward pot-smoking, Dick Morris, negative ads, the continued relevance of political parties," Foer marveled. In other words, Sabato, a political scientist, had the gall to talk to reporters over the course of a month about a month's worth of political topics.
"For goodness sake, I'm an academic helping reporters out," says Sabato, who initially declined to answer questions for this article because he thought it was going to be critical of heavily quoted sources. "Returning reporters' phone calls is something I do on top of my real work. I will return a call from a freshman student before I call a reporter. That's the way I run my life."
It's a love-hate relationship that journalists have with the Larry Sabatos of the world. Reporters call these sources repeatedly for their informed and colorful commentary. But once "sources" are quoted often enough to become "pundits," journalists think of them as self-serving P.R. reps on the make. As it happens, many commentators are experts in their field with top-drawer credentials, years of experience and incisive minds. Sabato, for instance, who was a Rhodes Scholar, directs U.Va.'s Center for Politics; he's engaged in 30 years of research and taught more than 14,000 students.
That's not to say getting quoted doesn't enhance an expert's credentials. Ornstein, the dean of easy quotes, found appearing in print was a boon to his career. It also started a chain reaction, with the first quote in one newspaper story leading to calls from other reporters and so on. "When I was starting out, when I wasn't well-known, it gave me credibility and gave me entree to members of Congress," he says.
Nevertheless, Ornstein says getting calls from reporters has grown less pleasurable in recent years. "Sometimes it's a pain in the ass," he says. "Sometimes a reporter will get you on the phone and keep talking and keep asking things, and I don't want to be rude. But I have other things to do."
Universities, think tanks and other research organizations clearly see a benefit to having their scholars quoted in newspapers or on TV. The publicity arms of such places aggressively pursue media interest in their experts. "It's amazing the number of universities that send me sources," the L.A. Times' Frederick says. A number of organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution, have built television studios in their offices to make it easier for their experts to appear on air.
For journalism, though, the issue may not be access to more quotable sources so much as it is a growing reliance on commentators to fill speculative pieces. Consider coverage of the Iraqi elections. On the day the voting took place, the Chronicle's Anna Badkhen produced an article exploring how the elections would affect Bush's ability to govern during his second term. Newspapers across the country ran similar stories that day.
Badkhen quoted Sabato, who said: "Bush's second term could easily disappear into a black hole akin to Vietnam... When you're involved in an unpopular foreign war, you can only do so much. Ask Lyndon Johnson."
Tom Raum, an Associated Press reporter, wrote a comparable story a few days earlier. In it he cited a less-popular pundit, Stephen J. Cimbala, a Penn State University political science professor who has "studied the effect of the Iraq war on domestic politics," Raum wrote. But Cimbala's contribution to Raum's story was remarkably similar to Sabato's quote: "And as 2008 approaches, the Iraqis will pretty much have to be in charge of their own political destiny, otherwise you're going to hear the word quagmire more and more," Cimbala was quoted as saying.
Sure it's nice to hear a different voice, but finding another expert might not solve the root of a journalistic problem. While many analysis pieces can be valuable, others don't necessarily add much understanding to the day's news.
"There's too much mindless analysis out there," Tom Rosenstiel says. "What happened to fact-based reporting? We need stories that verify and synthesize what is the truth. That is certainly more important than one more story filled with conjecture."
Even if it doesn't quote Larry J. Sabato.


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Next Episode of MADtv is
not planed. TV Show was canceled.
Late night sketch-comedy show based on the humor of MAD magazine.
Christina Moore(Various)
Andrew Daly(Various)
Ike Barinholtz(Various)
Keegan-Michael Key(Various)
Bryan Callen(Porn Director - Encore Sketch)
Andrew Bowen(Various)
Debra Wilson(Various)
Michael McDonald(Various)
Aries Spears(Various)
Bobby Lee(Various)
Nicole Parker(Various)
Jill-Michele Melean(Various)
Looks like something went completely wrong!
But don't worry - it can happen to the best of us,
- and it just happened to you.
Please try again later or contact us.


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A few weeks ago, I had a boutique sell side research firm randomly reach out to me requesting that I take this test called the Wall Street Assessment Test (WSAT). It is an hour to hour and a half online test where you are tested on financial and analytic abilities. Apparently I did well enough for a phone interview two weeks ago. This was my first real interview for a research position after my four trips out to NYC. While I felt comfortable going into the interview, it was my first so I was slightly nervous.
Last week, a regional bank also reached out to me regarding a research position. This was not as random of an encounter as the small shop. I applied for the position on the corporate website, or as I like to think about it a black pit. Since my attitude towards this approach is not bright to say the least, I reached out to a contact at the firm in research asking if he could do anything to help. He knew all the networking and learning I have been going through and must have felt comfortable enough to help me out.
These two opportunities are a purely due to my networking efforts. The first company that reached out to me somehow received my resume or heard about me through some contact I made and impressed enough to reach out on my behalf. The regional bank reached out to me not because I applied online, but due to a contact that I reached out to asking if he could pass my information along. Both of these are validation of effort that was put in through pounding the pavement and building relationships with people. As one of my contacts has told me, "you only need one". Hopefully having two opportunities is better than one.


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Statement on Auditing Standards Issued by the Auditing Standards Board AICPA American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Letters for Underwriters 1. The services of independent certified public accountants include examination of financial statements and schedules contained in registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ( the SEC) under the Securities Act of 1933 ( the Act). In connection with this type of service, accountants often are called upon to confer with clients, underwriters, and their respective counsel concerning the accounting and auditing requirements of the Act and of the SEC, as well as to perform other services. One of these other services is the issuance of letters for underwriters, commonly called comfort letters, which are generally concerned with the subjects described in paragraph 6. 2. Much of the uncertainty and consequent risk of misunderstanding with regard to the nature and scope of comfort letters has arisen Note: This Statement supersedes SAS No. 38, Letters for Underwriters. The changes to SAS No. 38 are in response to revisions of financial reporting requirements of the SEC and other developments in auditing and reporting practices. The principal changes are to add or revise guidance on the following: • Shelf registration statements ( paragraphs 8 and 48) Independence ( paragraphs 13 and 36 and examples A and K) • Compliance with SEC requirements ( paragraph 15) • Accountants' reports ( paragraph 18 and footnotes 21 and 23) • Pro forma financial information ( paragraph 19g and example L) • Comments on unaudited condensed interim financial statements that are not included in the registration statement ( paragraph 24) • Comments on subsequent changes and decreases ( paragraph 31) • Tables, statistics, and other financial information ( paragraph 43 and example J ) This Statement also includes certain minor revisions, such as to references to SEC regulations; the paragraphs have also been renumbered. Copyright © 1984 by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Inc. 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N. Y. 10036- 8775 1234567890 AudS 8987654 September 1984 49


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When Anthony Caravella went to take a lie-detector test with Broward Sheriff's Office Sgt. Tony Fantigrassi in 1983, the mentally challenged 15-year-old was considered a witness to a homicide.
Four hours later, he was a suspect. The teen had confessed, for the first time, to being involved in the crime — a key turning point in the Miramar Police Department's investigation that eventually led to Caravella being convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
On Thursday, Fantigrassi took the witness stand to defend himself in a civil suit filed on behalf of Caravella, who was imprisoned for more than 25 years before DNA tests overturned his conviction in the rape and murder of a Miramar woman. Caravella, now 44, is seeking compensation from Fantigrassi, as well as the city of Miramar, the Sheriff's Office, and three retired Miramar detectives.
Jurors will only hear what Fantigrassi did in the Caravella case, but over the years he was a key player in some of Broward's most notorious wrongful conviction cases. He was also linked to a controversy over a wrongly worded Miranda rights warning form used for years in Broward. And he retired under a cloud in 2005 during the Sheriff's Office faked crime statistics scandal.
"When the same people are involved in the same horrendous results, one cannot think it's a coincidence," said Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein when asked about Fantigrassi's record.
"Anybody can make a mistake. When you have some of the most horrendous results in Broward County history and the same people are involved – make no mistake, it wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a coincidence, it was the design and the intent of the people who brought you this [the Caravella case] and other horror stories," Finkelstein said.
Caravella's lawyer Barbara Heyer has cast doubt on whether Fantigrassi really performed a lie-detector test on Caravella because neither a chart generated by the polygraph machine nor Fantigrassi's detailed report of the interview have ever been produced. A summary of Fantigrassi's conclusions was given to Heyer but Miramar police reports said Fantigrassi later changed some of his conclusions about the polygraph results to fit new information.
Fantigrassi denied he knew some important details about the case before interviewing Caravella and said that he let the teen meet with his mother during the process, and that Caravella confessed to his mother while they were alone. Heyer also said that Fantigrassi asked overly complicated questions of Caravella and jurors were told that polygraphs were not, and are still not, considered reliable enough to be used as evidence in court but were used for investigative purposes.
Jurors saw a Sheriff's Office policy issued in 1983 that cautioned detectives about the use of polygraphs for "juveniles" or anyone with "limiting physical, mental or emotional conditions." Fantigrassi had permission from Caravella's mother to do the test.
Fantigrassi testified he never thought Caravella was mentally challenged: "I did not sense at all that there was a communication breakdown between him and me."
Heyer, Fantigrassi and Gregg Toomey, the lawyer who represents Fantigrassi and the Sheriff's Office, declined to comment to the Sun Sentinel.
Fantigrassi started his career as a jail deputy in April 1971, rose to the agency's top brass – major – and retired after 34 years. He is living on a state pension of $11,603 per month, according to a sworn statement he gave and state retirement records.
Questions about Fantigrassi's conduct first became public a dozen years ago when Jerry Frank Townsend, a mentally retarded man serving a life sentence for the murders of six Broward women, was exonerated by DNA. Townsend, now 61, was released in 2001 after 22 years in prison. The DNA testing linked many of those murders, and several more, to another man who avoided arrest.
In 2009, Heyer won a $2 million settlement from the Sheriff's Office for Townsend. Heyer alleged in that civil lawsuit that the Sheriff's Office and its deputies "fabricated evidence, concealed exculpatory evidence, tampered with witnesses, and coerced a false confession by intimidation and deception from [Townsend], who they knew was a mentally challenged person" in 1979. Then-deputies Fantigrassi and Mark Schlein got confessions from Townsend that were later discredited, and there was evidence Townsend was shown crime scene photos and brought to crime scenes. Fantigrassi had testified that Townsend brought them to the scenes and knew details only the killer would know.
In another Broward case in 2002, U.S. District Judge Donald Graham wrote that Fantigrassi's theories were "implausible" and his "opinions, on occasion, [were] unsupported by evidence in the case" after Fantigrassi testified in an effort to uphold the conviction of Tim Brown. Brown served many years in prison for the 1990 murder of Deputy Patrick Behan but the judge ruled that Brown was "actually innocent" and threw out the conviction.
Fantigrassi also fought hard to defend flawed wording in a form the Sheriff's Office used for years to warn arrestees about their rights. The form did not tell suspects they had a right to an attorney "during" questioning. A Sun Sentinel investigation in 2005 showed that dozens of cases against suspected killers, robbers and drug dealers were thrown out, dismissed or weakened because of the botched form.
Former Sheriff Ken Jenne announced the retirement of Fantigrassi and three other senior supervisors at a press conference in 2005 when he acknowledged systemic problems with how the agency cleared crimes and faked crime statistics. Jenne called all four retirees "honorable men."
When Anthony Caravella went to take a lie-detector test with Broward Sheriff's Office Sgt. Tony Fantigrassi in 1983, the mentally challenged 15-year-old was considered a witness to a homicide.


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20 U.S. Code § 7321a - Consolidation and use of funds
§ 7321a.
Consolidation and use of funds
(a) In general
(1) Authority
Under a local flexibility demonstration agreement entered into under this division, a local educational agency may consolidate Federal funds made available to the agency under the provisions listed in subsection (b) of this section and use such funds for any educational purpose permitted under this chapter.
(b) Eligible programsProgram funds made available to local educational agencies on the basis of a formula under the following provisions may be consolidated and used under subsection (a) of this section:
(Pub. L. 89–10, title VI, § 6152, as added Pub. L. 107–110, title VI, § 601, Jan. 8, 2002, 115 Stat. 1888.)
LII has no control over and does not endorse any external Internet site that contains links to or references LII.


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Dining by Design
Each year the San Francisco's Design Center transforms from a showroom showcase into a host for a plethora of micro-dining rooms. Each with its own unique style and flair. What fun eh?! And all for a good cause too!
Better yet, last year, we were honored to join some of their creative forces.
Offering up our grape-wood airplan laden table top and vertical gardens and our oh so charming teardrop dioramas- we helped complete the dining scene with the Karen Villanueva and Paul O'Rourke's installation.
"Creating a connection through design." – San Francisco based design firms: Villanueva Design and Paul O'Rourke Design
Their dining room reflected the essence of our city's contemporary urban-ism with a tossed in bit of organic – to make it oh so San Francisco. Nature juxtaposed with man-made created a warm and welcoming room.
All photos by Sophie de Lignerolles