Texas Proposes New 'State Bulb'

Hooray for Texas!!! Texas will have a favorite state bulb -- a light bulb. Texas believes in action and not just words according to the following:

To kick off a statewide campaign to get residents to replace old light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs, Texas mayors vowed to launch an effort to make the bulbs available, to encourage their use and to suggest that people give them as gifts for Christmas or other occasions.

"Individual Texans can save themselves money, and also take a lot of pressure off of utilities to not have to construct very, very expensive and polluting power plants," said Austin Mayor Will Wynn.

Mayors said use of compact fluorescent bulbs may help reduce electric demand from power plants that emit carbon dioxide, a gas blamed for global warming.

Also attending the Energy Conservation Summit called by San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger were Houston Mayor Bill White, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and El Paso Mayor John Cox.

The mayors declared the compact fluorescent, the "State Bulb of Texas," and took turns turning on the bulbs in sockets marking their cities in a huge granite map of Texas.

"Energy conservation starts at home," said Cox, who said if every Texas household converted a single light bulb to a CFL, it would mean the equivalent in air pollution reductions of removing 55,000 cars from city streets.

Now what is the State of Louisiana going to do? We all need to ask, "What buildings are benefiting from the Johnson Controls Energy Efficiency Contract?" Louisiana take note.

Myspace Won't Help

I am definitely not a fan of the social networking site, Myspace. You can search the internet everyday and find a negative story about young people's behavior on the site. I remember the difficulty various Attorney General's offices had when they attempted to get Myspace to release the records of convicted pedophiles. That was an uphill battle.

Why would anyone who want to do harm fear posting anything on Myspace? This news article is a prime example of lack of fear to use Myspace as a terrorist playground.

East St. John High School in Reserve will be closed Friday after two anonymous bomb threats and an Internet posting on myspace.com that warns that the school would be set on fire tomorrow.

St. John the Baptist Parish Schools Superintendent Michael Coburn said he ordered the closing as a precautionary measure and is hopeful the culprit will be found soon.

Parents will be notified of the closing using the district's telephone notification system. Students also were told of the day off.
School officials will determine next week how the day will be made up, Coburn said.

Two bomb threats were telephone into the Sheriff's Office emergency 911 system on Monday and Tuesday, officials said. The posting on myspace.com, a popular social networking site among teenagers, was apparently sent on Wednesday.

I do believe that they will be able to trace the bomb threats but trying to get cooperation from Myspace will be a totally different story.

'Justice Delayed' becomes 'Justice Denied'

This is one of the worst cases of justice denied that I have seen in a long time. According to KVUE Defenders Reporter, Rudy Koski has exposed several critical missteps in a criminal case that is more than 10 years old. It involves an escape to South America by an accused drunk driver who police say took the life of a University of Texas student. Marilyn Datz,mother of Lindsey Brashier,the co-ed who was killed, is still waiting for justice.

According to the accident report, the car Lindsey was riding in spun off the road and hit a utility pole.

“Was basically one car going way too fast,” said Robert Hasselman, now retired, was the investigating police officer at the scene. “I mean, this is totally a one car wreck, that the driver is totally responsible for everything.”

Brashier was dead at the scene. Another passenger, Tatina Sartori, 19, was critically injured. She was paralyzed and eventually returned to her home country of Brazil. Austin police arrested the driver, Evelyn Mezzich, 18. Her blood alcohol level was .10. The legal limit is .08.

Officers booked Mezzich into the Travis County Jail. Bond was set at $10,000. She was released after paying $1,000 to post the bond. Lindsay’s mother, Datz, wanted a higher amount.

While out on bond, a grand jury indicted Mezzich for intoxication manslaughter. The charge apparently did not slow down her social life. Datz was provided a photograph of Mezzich at a UT frat party. In the picture, she is seen smiling and holding some type of drink. It was only two months after the crash. Less than a year later, when District County Judge Bob Perkins called her case for trial, Mezzich did not appear. She jumped bail.

Mezzich is from Lima, Peru. She and her parents packed their belongings, left Texas and escaped to South America. A warrant was issued, along with a new indictment for bail jumping. FBI agents found Mezzich in 2001. She was starting a new life in Lima, but the agents were not allowed to bring her back. There was a loophole in the treaty with Peru. Manslaughter did not qualify for extradition.

Datz wanted that loophole closed and contacted KVUE News. While researching the Treaty, Congressman Michael McCaul listened to Datz’s story.

“She is a broken woman, and she needs to be made whole,” said Rep. McCaul.

The congressman reviewed the case file and was surprised by what he read.

"It is a case that slipped through the cracks," said McCaul.

A former federal prosecutor, McCaul is currently a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. After some digging, he discovered the loophole was closed. It had been since 2003 when a new treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate. At the time, no one in the Travis County District Attorney’s Office knew about the new treaty. The case remained filed away.

“I sense that the attention that it deserved, it wasn't given the proper attention, they closed the book on this case, with the new treaty the book should be open,” said Rep. McCaul.

With the treaty problem resolved, all the Justice Department needed was a letter from the Travis County DA’s office requesting that the extradition process start up again. The DA’s office was notified in May. Five months would pass, and still no letter. In October, KVUE sent a letter requesting an interview with District Attorney Ronnie Earle to explain what was taking so long. In a phone interview, D.A. Earle explained he was just being made aware of the problem. He scheduled his first assistant, Rosemary Lehmberg, for an on camera interview.

“Well, I wish we could have accomplished more in the last five or six months, but, we are a busy office," said Lehmberg.

A formal request to extradite Evelyn Mezzich was made in late October. When asked if the delay was troublesome for her as a manager, Lehmberg said, “Well in our world that doesn't seem like such a long time.”

It was long enough for Evelyn Mezzich to experience several life changes.

Along with videos, her MySpace website is packed with pictures. She earned a degree in psychology, got a boyfriend and a diamond ring. She celebrated her engagement with friends at a Lima bar, married her boyfriend in August and is now pregnant -- big changes that certainly had not happened in 2003, when the new extradition treaty was ratified, or in May, when Travis County was told it could go get her.

It is all hard for Datz to understand and accept.

“And all I’m looking for is, I’m sorry, because the pain is just, it’s immense,” said Datz.

Datz may never get that apology. Why? Peru can simply say no. All treaties recognize a sovereign country's right to do that. Those working the extradition case at the Justice Department are not giving up, and neither is Congressman McCaul.

“This has been a long hard road for the mother, it’s been ten years, but we are going to keep fighting,” said McCaul.

It is a fight made even more difficult because Mezzich is pregnant. So as Mezzich prepares to celebrate a new life, the life Datz had so much hope for, ended much too soon. Her child remains buried at a Houston cemetery. Only time will tell whether Lindsay's story will continue to be one of justice denied, or justice delayed.
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Ms. Mezzich must be a very cold harded person. I know Myspace did not have anything to with her actions but it would be a nice gesture if they would delete her myspace account.

Should Police Officers Be Allowed To Wear Beards?

Well, according to the Houston Chronicle, four Houston police officers were placed on plain-clothes duty for wearing facial hair. These officers have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming discrimination for a skin condition that primarily affects black men.

Sgts. Shelby Stewart and Kenneth Perkins said they wear goatees because they suffer from pseudofolliculitis barbae, a dermatological condition common among men of African descent. Shaving can cause severe irritation, rashes and ingrown hairs. Stewart and Perkins, who are not allowed to work in uniform and have been reassigned, estimated that more than 100 HPD officers have the condition.

The lawsuit, which was also filed Tuesday by officers Adrian White and Raul Collins, claims the Houston Police Department is enforcing only the part of its appearance and grooming standards that disproportionately afflicts black officers. The City of Houston also is named as a defendant.

HPD lawyer Craig Ferrell said the department adopted the standards because officers with facial hair cannot properly seal gas masks in the event of bioterrorism attacks. He said the policy was not discriminatory, but will be changed.

What do you think? Should these officers be allowed to wear facial hair?

Racism Alleged In New Orleans' Trash Dispute

Alvin Richard, right, of Richard's Disposal and Jimmie Woods, president of Metro Disposal, left, confer as sanitation workers fill council chambers.
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A debate that started simmering last month over whether New Orleans' two highest-paid trash vendors are complying with the terms of their contracts boiled over Monday into a racial clash as dozens of black ministers and civil rights activists alleged that the City Council has singled out the deals because they are held by minority-owned firms.

Supporters of Richard's Disposal and Metro Disposal, both New Orleans companies owned and run by African-Americans, told council members during a hearing in advance of Friday's vote on the city's 2008 budget that any attempt by the council to change terms of the agreements, which Mayor Ray Nagin signed last year, would amount to racism and could incite activists to abandon the city in the throes of the winter tourism season.

Last month, city officials acknowledged that a provision of the contract that Richard's and Metro signed calls for collecting "unlimited bulky waste," including demolition material. The city, however, is not requiring the contractors to pick up construction debris generated at properties under renovation because of Hurricane Katrina.

Instead, Nagin's sanitation director, Veronica White, has said the city requires the vendors to collect only debris that conforms with limits laid out in an ordinance adopted five months after Nagin signed the deals. She also has said that the contract's inclusion of an option for emergency collection of storm debris implies that such waste is not covered by the regular terms.

The companies' owners, Alvin Richard and Jimmie Woods, reiterated Monday a point they have made throughout the debate: that in bidding on the contracts last summer, they assumed city officials were following industry norms when they called for "unlimited bulky waste" collection. That refers to debris created in the course of ordinary life and by minor construction projects, they said, not the mountains of waste generated by a flood.

Noose Sightings Are Spreading

In the wake of the Jena 6, noose sightings have been spreading rapidly:

Stories of nooses hanging in offices, schools and public spaces have peppered local newspapers across the country, and not just in Southern states.

A mixed-race student found the image of a noose and a racial epithet painted on his car Oct. 19 after attending a high school football game in DeKalb County, Ala.

A Haitian chaplain found a noose hanging from the door of his office in a Rockland, N.Y., children's psychiatric center Nov. 4.

A toilet-paper noose was discovered hanging from a campus bathroom stall Nov. 8 at North Carolina State University.

Construction workers in Cicero, Ill., found a noose hanging from a beam where they were working on a municipal building Nov. 12.

An African-American police sergeant in Bridgeport, Conn., found a noose under her patrol car Nov. 14.

In Louisiana, teachers at an elementary school run by Grambling State University put a noose around a child's neck in late September during a lesson on the civil rights movement and the Jena Six rally.

The Thibodaux Police Department fired officer Michael Rodrigue on Oct. 29 after another white officer reported seeing a noose hanging from the rear-view mirror in his personal car parked on public property.

Until law enforcement officials view this as a serious offense, I doubt that these horrific and hateful acts will diminish.

In Name Only

The headquarters of Intermarine Inc. exist in New Orleans in name only.

What Can A Company Do When "New Orleans" Is So Bad?

The company's chief executive, chief financial officer and most of its senior staff live and work in Houston. Most of the company's clients are in Houston, too.

"The official headquarters is in New Orleans. There is no desire to change the headquarters," said Mike Dumas, the company's chief financial officer. "But now most of our employees are in Texas. Most key personnel is in Texas, and we're hiring mostly from within the Texas area. At the end of the day, we have to attract high-quality employees who are comfortable with the living environment."

In order to do that, the company has slowly and relatively quietly moved its base of operations to the neighboring state.

Intermarine is one in a long list of companies that -- citing concerns about infrastructure, corruption, crime, taxes and work force -- have shifted operations from the metro area. Katrina exacerbated those pre-existing issues.

I can relate to this business. I have been living in Houston, Texas and I feel torn right now. Part of me would like to return to New Orleans, however, I realize that it is not feasible economically as well as mentally.