Category: David Schoetz
Landmark DNA Test Bill Passes Congress
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10-One after another, they came to the rostrum in crisp blue suits and spoke their minds. U.S. Rep. William Delahunt introduced his fellow congressmen who voiced their support for his bill.
Democrats spoke. Then Republicans. Delahunt wanted to demonstrate the bipartisan support for his proposal to give rape victims and convicted felons greater access to DNA testing.
The only problem was that very few were listening. They were already sold on the bill, called the Justice for All Act.
The House voted 393-14 on Wednesday for the comprehensive crime bill.
Then in a surprise move yesterday, the Senate approved the measure.
Many observers believed the bill would stall in the Senate, which adjourned yesterday as lawmakers headed back to their districts to concentrate on re-election campaigns.
Delahunt, the Cape’s congressman and a former district attorney, has lobbied for the bill for two years. He is the key House sponsor.
“This isn’t a liberal or Democratic issue,” Delahunt said last week, describing the legwork necessary to come this far. “Look at all the conservative support we’ve generated because we’ve taken the time to go one-on-one.”
The bill, approved in the Senate by voice vote, returns to the House for minor changes.
The measure would provide an additional $350 million to improve legal representation in death-penalty cases, ensure access to post-conviction DNA testing for those serving time in prison or on death row and provide $755 million in grants over the next five years to clear the backlog of some 350,000 untested DNA samples in rape evidence kits.
“It’s estimated 40 percent of the outstanding rapes could be solved by comparing the database coming from testing these kits in the existing database in our state prison systems where DNA’s on the record,” said U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.
The legislation addresses a range of holes in the criminal justice system and has evolved over the past four years to include a blend of propositions that appeal to politicians in both parties.
In an effort to win Senate approval, the House added a Senate-written plan that provides $155 million for victims’ assistance programs.
“I’ve been working on this problem for a long time,” Delahunt said. “We don’t have a criminal-justice system that people respect and have confidence in and that really erodes our democracy.”
The Justice Department has complained the bill could limit the use of DNA testing being done now and may make it more difficult for states trying to prosecute death penalty cases.
Lawmakers said while the burden will be on prosecutors to show a DNA test should not be granted during the first five years after conviction, after that the burden is on the defense to show it should be conducted.
Delahunt said that opponents of the bill are not concerned about money. Instead, he said, they fear that if the bill becomes law, state death penalties might come under fire as more wrongful convictions are discovered.
In recent years, more than 150 people convicted of murder, rape and other major crimes, including some sentenced to death, have been exonerated because of DNA tests, according to the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York City.
Despite fears the measure would stall, the Senate tackled Delahunt’s bill yesterday afternoon.
“Another year is a long time if you’re a crime victim or if you’re wrongly accused,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the measure’s chief Senate sponsor. “Another year (would) pile more untested rape kits to the thousands already stacking up in hundreds of crime labs across the country.”
Whale of Grant For Stranding Network
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - For the third consecutive year, the Cape Cod Stranding Network in Buzzards Bay has received the maximum grant awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service.
The non-profit organization, responsible for responding to stranded mammals on almost 700 miles of coastline stretching from Cape Cod to the Rhode Island border, will use the $100,000 Prescott Grant to improve daily operations and conduct a joint project with the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center to streamline data collection, said Kristen Patchett, the network's stranding coordinator.
Named after longtime New England Aquarium executive director John Prescott, the grants were introduced by the Department of Commerce, the oceanographic administration's parent, to fill a void in funding.
"Unfortunately, in the past there was never any funding," Patchett said. "Marine mammals were protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but we weren't funded."
Patchett and network program director Katie Touhey submitted their first proposals in 2001 and received two inaugural grants in 2002. In 2003, they won a third. The money, Patchett said, has had "a huge impact."
Prior to the grants, the network was forced to depend entirely on donations from individuals, private foundations and other non-profit groups.
"We've increased our staff, we've been able to upgrade a lot of our equipment and we collect better data from animals," Patchett said.
Dana Hartley, Northeast stranding coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that before the introduction of the Prescott grants, she had very little money to divide among the 15 stranding organizations in her sector, which covers coastal waters from the northern tip of Maine through southernmost Virginia.
"These organizations were doing the same work pretty much on their own," Hartley said. "I couldn't offer them very much in the way of help."
The Cape Cod network reports all incidents to Hartley, and she praised the network's performance in what she called the "hotspot" area of mammal strandings in the United States.
As of Tuesday, the network had responded to 199 strandings this year. The network generally reports 200-300 incidents annually, Patchett said. While there were no mass strandings this summer like in 2002, there have been many incidents involving Harp seals, which migrate south from Canada.
Patchett laughed nervously when asked about the possibility of not receiving the grant money in the future.
"These grants are needed," she said. "We're one of the busiest places in the world for strandings, it would severely limit what we could do."
House Kills Gay Marriage Ban
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 - The Republican-controlled House yesterday soundly rejected a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman.
The 227-186 vote, which capped an exhausting 2 1/2-hour debate, was 63 votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to pass a constitutional amendment on to the states for consideration. The Senate rejected its version of the amendment in July.
All 10 House members from Massachusetts, the only state in the nation to recognize same-sex marriages, voted against the amendment.
Proponents of the Marriage Protection Amendment said they were defending the sanctity of traditional values and argued that the measure was necessary because "activist" judges pre-empt lawmakers by legalizing gay marriage. Many members of Congress specifically bashed the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's same-sex marriage ruling.
Critics called the debate a diversion from policy issues that Congress should address before the November elections and an effort by Republican leaders to write discrimination into the Constitution. Many also argued that the same-sex marriage issue should be left to the states.
"Can anyone really say with a straight face that a constitutional amendment beating up on gay people is more important than funding our homeland security?" asked Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the first opponent to address the amendment.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who opponents say pushed the vote forward to further divide the electorate, said that most of his colleagues would prefer not to have the debate but that Congress has a responsibility to interfere with judges "who feel a greater responsibility to their own political ideology than the Constitution."
Thirty-nine states have statutes or state constitutional provisions in place that limit recognized marriages to those between men and women. In the last two months, Missouri and Louisiana voted in favor of constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages, while 11 other states will vote on the same issue in November.
President Bush supports an amendment to the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage while his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, wants individual states to decide the issue.
Ray McNulty, spokesman for the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative family values group, said the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court forced this issue from the states into the national arena.
"It's something that ought to be approved on the national level to prevent activist judges to take the same action that was taken in Massachusetts," McNulty said, "and we feel the only way that can be done is to amend the U.S. Constitution."
Public polls show strong opposition to gay marriage, but opinion is about evenly divided regarding a federal constitutional amendment to ban it.
Proponents of the amendment fear that federal judges might rule that marriages recognized by one state must be valid in all others.
Steve Schwadron, spokesman for Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., agreed with McGovern that yesterday's debate and vote was a political distraction.
"When most people on Cape Cod woke up this morning, their first thought wasn't, 'Is there a gay married couple in the community?' " Schwadron said. "Their first thought was whether their job was secure, whether they have health insurance and whether their sons and daughters serving in Iraq were safe."
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Cape Pols Want Honest Debate
http://www.bu.edu/dev/washjocenter/newswire_pg/fall2004/massachusetts/debate0930.htm
wrong article pasted
Cuba Travel Limits Defied
WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. William Delahunt entered a hostile floor debate last week to denounce the Bush administration's travel restrictions that hamper Cuban-Americans' visits to Cuba.
Carlos Lazo, a Cuban-born medic serving in the U.S. military in Iraq, has two sons living in Cuba. Delahunt, D-Mass., used Lazo's story to illustrate the severity of the travel restrictions.
Before June, Lazo could travel annually to Cuba to visit his two sons. Under the new rules, he can go only once every three years.
In the House vote that followed, enough Republicans crossed party lines to secure a 225-174 victory for an amendment that would deny the spending necessary to implement the stricter policies that took effect in June.
"We hear a lot about family values in this chamber," Delahunt told his House colleagues. "Well, today, this is a test for those who constantly speak to family values. It's time to put family above politics."
The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Jim Davis, D-Fla., would deny the Treasury Department the funds to implement the new policy.
In this heated political season, a vote against a Bush policy in the Republican-controlled House is a significant win for Democrats.
In June, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry called the Bush administration's travel and trade restrictions on Cuba a "cynical and misguided ploy for a few Florida votes."
Republican Cuban-American Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, brothers who represent southern Florida districts and vehemently oppose Fidel Castro, have said that restrictions on Cuba will facilitate an uprising against the Communist dictator. It is a stance intended to appeal to anti-Castro Cuban-American voters in Florida.
An eye on voters
But Rob Sequin, the South Yarmouth publisher of the online Havana Journal, said the brothers' appeal may not carry the same weight with second- and third-generation Cuban-American voters as it does with the first Cubans who fled to the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
"There's a disconnect between the first-generation Cubans and the third-generation Cubans," said Sequin, who traveled legally to Cuba on a business trip last April. Sequin said he believes that regardless of party politics, eventually the United States will abandon all Cuban restrictions.
According to U.S. Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise, the Bush policies in question were designed for the "closing of loopholes" that allow money to make it to Castro. They are consistent with President Bush's desire to end the dictator's regime, she said.
"The administration's position, from the day the president took office, is that he wants to hasten the day to a free Cuba," Millerwise said, "and in doing so, hopes to choke off hard-currency dollars that are flowing out of the United States and into Cuba."
According to Sarah Stephens, director of the Freedom to Travel Campaign at the Center for International Policy in Washington, last Tuesday's House vote provided evidence of the new policy's hollow connection to finance.
Cuban-Americans divided
"The vote yesterday was about Cuban-Americans visiting family members in Cuba," Stephens said, adding that the Bush policy "backfired" because it has left Cuban-Americans divided.
"As soon as the other side can come out and show some evidence that this money is going into Fidel Castro's coffers, then we'll have that conversation," she said.
Delahunt keyed on a State Department statement that acknowledged "no humanitarian exceptions" to the restrictions.
"Think about that," Delahunt said. "If your mother and father die within three years of each other, you have to decide which funeral to attend."
Mary Zepernick of South Yarmouth, who has traveled twice to Cuba representing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, called the Bush policy "deplorable."
"This administration, even more than others - and others cannot be left off the hook - have politicized what is a humanitarian issue," Zepernick said. "Any country in our back yard that dares to try another model feels the weight of the United States come down and crush it."
Despite the impact of the House vote, the Davis amendment is likely to fall victim to veto by Republican leadership.
Steve Schwadron, a spokesman for Delahunt, said his boss was aware that the amendment faces an uncertain future. "We decided, he said, "that win or lose, this was a battle that needed waging."
Delahunt Honors Bourne Adoptive Parents
WASHINGTON - As Scott and Terry Murphy of Bourne sat patiently in U.S. Rep. William Delahunt's office Thursday, their only worries were figuring out the city's subway system and about their 6-year-old twins left with Scott's parents at home.
"Here's my hero," Terry Murphy said, rising to meet Delahunt as he entered the room.
Delahunt has known the Murphys since 2003, when they contacted him seeking help with an adoption that had become complicated. Their representative obliged, and this year he chose the pair to represent the 10th District at the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute's annual "Angels in Adoption" event, which honors citizens from across the country for their adoptive efforts.
In February 2001 the Murphys, having finally completed the dense paperwork required to finalize an adoption, visited Romania intending bring home a 2-year-old boy named Sammy.
When they arrived in Arad, they learned from an escort that Sammy had a twin sister named Emmy whom orphanage directors believed - incorrectly, it turned out - was autistic.
Despite feeling "shock" at learning Sammy had a sister, the Murphys said they wanted to bring Emmy home as well.
But the Romanian government, responding to accusations of corruption, had instituted a moratorium on international adoptions, a ruling that halted an already time-consuming process.
"All of a sudden the moratoriums came down," Terry Murphy said. "We started running into roadblocks."
After five days in Romania, the new parents left for Bourne with Sammy and began nearly three years of work to reunite the twins. While Sam adapted to Cape Cod, sleeping in a customized "boat bed" his father, a builder, had crafted, the Murphys added a second bedroom in the upstairs of their Cape in preparation for Emmy.
They also began writing government representatives, and in 2003 they received a call from Delahunt's office.
On Nov. 20, 2003, Delahunt sat down with representatives from the Romanian embassy, some of whom he had known from his foreign relations work.
Less than a month later, the Murphys won approval to adopt Emmy. In January 2004 they brought her home to Bourne.
Delahunt, whose grown daughter, Kara, was adopted from Vietnam during the 1975 Saigon airlift, has established himself as one of the foremost legislators in the arena of international adoptive rights.
In 2000 he spearheaded the Child Citizenship Act, which conferred automatic U.S. citizenship upon any child adopted from another country. Previously, children arriving in the United States were subject to the same naturalization process as other immigrants, a step that prolonged an already lengthy process.
Sitting in Delahunt's office, the congressman thumbed through photos of Sammy and Emmy and chatted with the Murphys about the twins. Sammy is a first-grader and Emmy, who has been in the United States for less than a year, will be home-schooled while she acclimates.
Scott Murphy said the two children were fast friends. "Right off the bat," he said with fatherly grin, "It was like they never missed a heartbeat."
According to Terry Murphy, Emmy's a phonics whiz and both kids have fallen in love with Cape Cod. "They're water babies for sure," Terry Murphy said.
"I'm always looking at my watch, buzzers are always going off, there's always another meeting," Delahunt told the Murphys, explaining the rush of Washington life. "It's moments like this that really make a difference."
But the pleasure - healthy children Sammy and Emmy - was all theirs.
Cape Tribes Join Rites at The Mall
WASHINGTON - The procession of more than 400 Indian tribes stretching nearly the entire length of the National Mall, patiently and proudly snaking toward the opening ceremony of the National Museum of the American Indian, temporarily stalled.
CheeNulKa Pocknett, a 19-year-old Mashpee Wampanoag and a student at Cape Cod Community College, emerged before his tribe in full traditional regalia.
With some members beating on handmade drums and others simply chanting in a deep tone, the joint Wampanoag tribes of Mashpee and Aquinnah provided a cadence while Pocknett danced.
When the procession started again, a wave of applause followed the roughly 80 Wampanoags, a group that included several generations. The Wampanoag tribe is well-known for hosting the Pilgrims of Plymouth Bay Colony at the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
"I told him, 'Go out there and represent yourself,' " said David Pocknett, CheeNulKa's father, who brought three children to Washington to celebrate the opening of the museum, a tribute to this hemisphere's native people that he said is long overdue.
Those who came to the mall this week are "a minority in a minority," said Pocknett, 51, who was raised in Mashpee by his grandmother and has closely cherished the Wampanoag traditions she instilled in him. "It's time we make something that will be there for generations to come."
Event organizers called the procession's estimated 20,000 participants yesterday the largest tribal gathering in history. The massive march launched a weeklong celebration of the completion of the Smithsonian's $220 million National Museum of the American Indian.
Set on the National Mall between the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum and the Capitol, the earthy limestone building, with a smoothly curving exterior, was designed to model a rock formation carved over time by nature. While it houses many ancient artifacts, the museum also focuses on the evolution of native traditions.
Beverly Wright, chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribal Council of Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard, called the event "an experience of a lifetime" but agreed with David Pocknett that the museum should have been built earlier.
"We're the first Americans," Wright said, "but the last people to get a place on the mall."
A highlight of Wright's week will be a breakfast meeting tomorrow at the White House with President Bush. She also enjoyed a sneak preview of the museum at a reception yesterday and called the building's interior "very impressive."
Glenn Marshall, president of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, was not as eager to see the president. He said that presidential administrations over the years in both parties have been too slow to address the needs of native populations.
"This has been our home for centuries," Marshall said, clutching a corner of the Mashpee Wampanoag banner as the delegation moved toward the Capitol. "And this is a big lobby. This vote alone could change the outcome of November's election."
The procession yesterday ended with an opening ceremony at the foot of the Capitol that included traditional native music and remarks from a range of dignitaries, including Alejandro Toledo, the president of Peru, and Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., the son of a Northern Cheyenne, and Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.
Throughout the week, the National Mall will host outdoor music and dance performances and feature traditional Native artisans and storytellers. The museum also will welcome its first visitors.
Vernon "Silent Drum" Lopez, chief of the Mashpee Wampanoags, called the event a "great happening."
"We've been to some pretty big powwows," Lopez said. "But nothing like this."
‘Job Tracker’ to Highlight Outsourcing
WASHINGTON - AFL-CIO affiliate Working America unveiled an Internet service yesterday designed to allow Americans to monitor companies that send jobs overseas and lay off employees.
Offering sharp criticisms of the Bush administration, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Richard Trumka introduced the "Job Tracker" service and painted a bleak picture of the country's job outlook.
"This job crisis is not inevitable," Trumka said at AFL-CIO headquarters. "But, unfortunately, the official policies of the current administration in Washington promote exporting American jobs instead of attacking the problem."
Almost 2.7 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost since January 2001, with about 300,000 jobs lost in the past year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The AFL-CIO endorsed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in February and has consistently attacked the Bush administration for overlooking labor issues and placing too much attention on national security.
"We're told there's no crisis," Trumka said. "But this administration adamantly and consistently refuses to enforce trade laws."
Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO that works with citizens uninvolved with organized labor, created the Web site. Visitors plug a ZIP code into a search field and the site sifts through a database and presents a list of nearby companies that have been "reported as exporting jobs" or "laying off workers ... because of the impact of trade on their business."
Each of the listed companies can be searched for further information, including the company's address, the source of the job loss information and the salary of the company's CEO.
"You can type in any ZIP code in America and a company will pop up," Trumka said. Yet the Hyannis ZIP code 02601 produced no results within a 50-mile radius.
Kathleen Casavant, treasurer of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said labor issues are critical throughout the state's economy, which according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has lost almost 85,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2001.
"I think this is a great tool," said Casavant, whose Boston ZIP code returned more than 30 company results in a 50-mile radius. "It highlights the fact that in Massachusetts Mitt Romney hasn't done his job. He came to this state on a campaign that said he was going to bring jobs to Massachusetts."
Economist David Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that job loss to companies overseas can be an integral part of the larger economic scope, and that vilifying companies for trying to survive is a "knee-jerk" response.
"I don't think, first and foremost, that it's a moral issue," Autor said. "Firms are responding to competitive pressures. They don't have free hand."
While Autor supported the organization's collection of data, he was skeptical about the Web site's methodology and purpose. "Outsourcing is not the great hobgoblin of American economics that people have made it out to be," Autor said.
Is it Time to Graduate the Electoral College
WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. William Delahunt reintroduced legislation this week that he first proposed in 2000 calling for an end to the Electoral College, a system he said undermines fundamental tenets of democracy.
The Massachusetts congressman said Al Gore's loss to George Bush in 2000 - despite Gore's winning the popular vote by more than half a million votes - highlighted flaws Congress should confront before they occur again.
"Public officials, from selectmen to senators, are chosen by majority vote," Delahunt said. "That's the way it's supposed to work in a democracy. And that's how we should elect the president of the greatest democracy on earth."
The Electoral College system "cannot be squared with the principle of majority rule," he said, adding that the system is inconsistent with "one person, one vote."
Acknowledging he is "under no illusion" about the challenge of amending the Constitution, he said the antiquated system requires reform before it forces lawmakers into cleaning up an unnecessary election mess.
"But now is the time to act - while the memory of the 2000 experience is fresh," Delahunt said, "and while there is still time to spare the American electorate from a possible rerun of that ordeal."
The Electoral College system designates a number of electoral votes for each state based on its population. Each state is assigned a number of votes equal to its number of House representatives, plus two more votes for the two senators from the state. Washington, D.C., is allocated three electors.
A candidate must receive 270 of the 538 electoral votes to become president-elect. Winning a majority vote in Massachusetts currently earns a candidate 12 electoral votes.
Only a constitutional amendment could abolish the Electoral College system.
Making every vote count
David Agnew, spokesman for Cape Codders for Peace and Justice, said he supports the direct popular vote that Delahunt argued would simplify the process and assure that every American's vote counts equally.
"I think it's a given that in Massachusetts that we're going to vote for John Kerry," said Agnew, of Chatham. "I care deeply about democracy, and yet, I'm wasting my time going to the polls. It shouldn't be that way."
The current system, he said, forces Kerry and President Bush to devote too much attention to "battleground states" whose sought-after electoral votes will likely determine the election. He said people in states considered "decided" are prone to political apathy because candidates tend to ignore them.
James Whitson, who in 1999 founded PresidentElect.org, a Web site devoted to the Electoral College, said a purely popular vote would result in neglected voters, as candidates would pass up rural areas to court populous regions.
"It would make the elections more concentrated in populated, urban areas because it would be cheaper and more convenient," said Whitson. "The Electoral College actually forces candidates to campaign around the country."
A call for more debate
Some who might be inclined to support Delahunt on the issue are wary of the timing.
Margie Burgess, chairwoman of the Plymouth Republican Town Committee, said it would be wiser to educate Americans more carefully about how the Electoral College works and "allow time to debate both sides of the issue."
"It's worked well for years and I don't think you take a system we've had in government for many years, and change it without a lot of thought," Burgess said. She said that the system may benefit from change, but also suggested that Delahunt's proposal may reflect Kerry's recent slump in the polls.
"I can understand the reasoning behind some people's interest in changing the system," Burgess said, "but this timing's suspect."
Delahunt spokesman Steve Schwadron dismissed this idea.
"It is precisely because we are coming toward a presidential election that the timing makes sense," Schwadron said. "So there is not even a hint of partisan advantage for any camp."
