|
Cover
News | blog
Music | blog
Lazy I
Film | blog
Theater | blog
Art | blog
Sports
Lifestyle | blog
Dish | blog
Books | blog
Culture
8 Days
Heartland Healing
Hoodoo Blues
MoJoPo
News of the Weird
Television
Letters
|
|
|
Home - News
|
Pro-Life Politics - |
Bill to restore prenatal care for some 800 mothers flounders
By Sean McCarthy
The immigration reform debate tends to neatly separate key players into two groups: legal United States citizens; and those who are not. However, a state bill that would provide prenatal care for pregnant women regardless of citizenship illustrates how the issue becomes far murkier when it involves children born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
Proponents hope immigration politics won’t trump child welfare, and that the bill will have new life.
Babies that do not receive prenatal care are three times more likely to have a low birth weight and five times more likely to die than babies who receive prenatal care, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
|
|
|
|
Up Front: Dept. of Energy Ethanol pipeline not yet feasible - |
Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry wants the federal government to help pay for a $3.75 billion pipeline that would transport 240,000 barrels of ethanol a day from corn fields near Mitchell, S.D., to oil-thirsty New York markets.
But the U.S. Department of Energy said the country’s first ethanol pipeline which would be the longest in the world would only be feasible with “significant” increases in demand or increased percentages of ethanol in gasoline blends.
Terry and Iowa Rep. Leonard Boswell cosponsored a bill in February that would provide federal loan guarantees for the project. The bill remains in committee.
Poet Ethanol Products, an ethanol producer based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Magellan Midstream Partners, an Oklahoma pipeline company, hope to have the pipeline running by 2015.
|
|
|
|
News Hound - |
Post: Terry gets ‘so drunk’
The New York Post’s Page Six columnist said he caught Rep. Lee Terry disregarding House Minority Leader John Boehner’s advice to avoid female lobbyists in an effort to avoid appearance of wrongdoing before the 2010 midterm elections. The reporter said Terry asked a “giggling” female lobbyist at the Capital Hill Club in D.C., “Why’d you get me so drunk?” He then changed the subject to his three kids and how hard it is to pay their college tuition after noticing the nearby journalist, the paper reported. Roll Call verified the exchange, but its anonymous source said the question did not appear to be flirtatious.
Terry issued a statement saying, “The repulsive innuendo of the New York Post characterizing me as someone who socializes with female lobbyists is absolutely, unequivocally, 100 percent false.”
The news cycle didn’t get much friendlier for Terry on Saturday, when AOL News reported that he’d spent $5,812 for catering services. Terry said those funds were used for coffee at the Nebraska Congressional Breakfast, which the state’s delegates take turns hosting.
“I agree the cost for coffee service alone is outrageous,” Terry said in a statement, “but that’s an issue my office has taken up with the caterer and House Admin.”
Omaha man stabs stepmother to death
Police will charge David Brannan, 21, for murdering his stepmother Tracy Brannan, 33, early July 24. Harold Brannan, 60, and David had non-life threatening injuries, though Police say David’s injuries were self-inflicted. The Omaha World-Herald reported Tracy immigrated to America from Scotland to marry Harold in May. |
|
|
|
Community Cop - |
South Omaha’s ‘fearless’
female police captain comes from the neighborhood
by Hilary Stohs-Krause
The new captain of Omaha Police Department’s southeast precinct now oversees family and friends in the same district where she was born and raised. Katharine Gonzalez has spent five of her more than 16 years in the force working in the southeast precinct. And she feels at home there.
“It’s a melting pot,” said Gonzalez, who often gets her lunch from a taco truck about a block from the station. “It’s a wonderful place. There’s lots of community support.”
Gonzalez, 38, took over the position in February, after serving as acting captain for more than a year at the Criminal Investigations Bureau. She joined the department in 1994 after graduating with a degree in psychology and criminal justice from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“It was a very eye-opening experience,” she said. She met people who had $5 to last them two weeks. “I didn’t realize what a sheltered life I’d lived.”
Quality of life is a theme that arose time and again as Gonzalez talked about her goals for the precinct in her crisp white office, located in the precinct headquarters at 2475 Deer Park Blvd.
“We’re here to combat violent crime, but a lot of that stems from other issues,” she said. |
|
|
|
Up Front: The DREAM Remains - |
A dozen Californian students stopped in Nebraska’s capitol city, July 15, to urge Sens. Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns to support legislation to give legal status to undocumented people who complete two years of college or military service. Members of the “The Dream is Coming Caravan” met with the senators’ staffs and attended a rally hosted by Nebraska Appleseed while on their way to Washington D.C for a national DREAM Act rally from July 19-21.
The DREAM Act has been introduced since 2001, but failed to move through Congress. Nelson and Johanns both oppose the idea. Nelson said in 2007 that it was a piecemeal approach to immigration reform. He wanted more focus on border security. Johanns said this path to citizenship would be unfair to those who wait years to legally enter the United States. |
|
|
|
News Hound - |
Suttle presents 2011 budget
Faced with a projected $33.5 million shortfall, Mayor Jim Suttle called his 2011 budget “both a comprehensive solution to our financial dilemma and a strategy for financial recovery,” during Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
The proposed $675 million budget includes increased wheel and property taxes and a new restaurant tax that would raise an estimated $44 million in revenue. The council will hold a public hearing for the proposed budget Aug. 10 at 7 p.m.
New police contract revealed Mayor Suttle’s proposed contract with the Omaha Police Union would end end spiking, and would eventually solve a half-billion dollar unfunded pension liability, he says. The contract, which City Councilman Franklin Thomas made public against Suttle’s wishes, would cut pension benefits for police officers for the first time in 30 years.
New hires and 48 new officers would receive a pension based on a base pay. Officers would contribute more to the pension fund, while the city would pay an extra $12.5 million this year. That number would increase by $500,000 each year until 2013. Officers would have to serve for five more years until age 50 to receive their full pension. New hires would have to stay on the force until age 55.
The council will vote on the contract July 27.
Abortion law stopped
Planned Parenthood won the first battle against the State of Nebraska over an abortion law but the war isn’t over. A federal judge ordered an injunction July 14 on the state law that requires mental health screenings for women considering abortions.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland President and CEO Jill June said the next step is a hearing to determine whether the injunction will be made permanent. That hearing is not yet scheduled yet, but June believes it will come before the year’s end. |
|
|
|
Party Hopping - |
Richard Carter’s alternating political convictions
By Hilary Stohs-Krause
Richard Carter went from Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and underdog Democratic candidate who opposed the war and Rep. Lee Terry in both rhetoric and action, to working for the 2nd District Republican in about a year and a half.
Critics say Carter, now chair of Terry’s 2010 reelection campaign, realized he had no future in the Democratic Party after losing the 2008 primary to Jim Esch with only 19.5 percent of the vote. Terry won the general election with 52.2 percent of the vote to Esch’s 47.8 percent Terry’s closest election since he became a congressman in 1998.
“A couple of years ago [Carter] was calling for universal health care. He clearly has had quite the change of heart since then,” said Ian Russell, campaign manager for Nebraska Legislator Tom White, Terry’s 2010 opponent. “That’s certainly not what Terry is advocating now.
|
|
|
|
Up Front - |
One Fremont two communities
A Fremont resident declared, “The enemy is here,” and started counting off how many Latinos were in the room when members of the One Fremont-One Future campaign walked into the Fremont City Council meeting July 6, said group organizer Kristin Ostrum. It was the first council meeting since the special election June 21, when citizens voted for a city ordinance that would make it illegal to rent or lease property to undocumented immigrants. One Fremont-One Future is a citizens group that opposes the law.
Other ugly scenes at the meeting included a man telling a Latino woman that she wasn’t welcome, Ostrum said. The woman replied that she was a U.S. citizen, but the man ordered her to go back to Mexico. |
|
|
|
Up Front - |
Rallying for hemp, immigration reform and white nationalism
The U.S. Constitution might be the perfect paper from which to roll a joint. The founding fathers wrote the document on hemp, according to Bill Hawkins of HEMP Nebraska. The grassroots organization, which aims to repeal cannabis laws, held a rally outside the state's capital on Monday. The event came one week before Nebraska's Board of Pharmacy will discuss medical marijuana. But it was sparsely attended -only about 18 people were there about 15 minutes into the event. |
|
|
|
Boiling Water - |
Republican officials talk tea
By Sean McCarthy
The Tea Party is a movement--not a party, said a man named Jim, who wouldn't give his last name because he said he's involved in upcoming legislative campaigns.
"It's an umbrella," he said.
Some attendees nevertheless felt left out in the rain at Saturday's Independence Day Tea Party rally at Walnut Grove. More than 400 people attended the event at the public park at about 150th and Q. The event was sponsored by conservative organizations including: The Heritage Foundation; National Write Your Congressman; Americans For Prosperity; Oath Keepers; and Sarpy County's wing of Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project. |
|
|
|
OP/ED: Conor Gets Mad - |
Today I feel ashamed to be a Nebraskan. After Monday's vote (June 21) in Fremont it is clear that many people of this state wish to position us alongside Arizona as a beacon of intolerance and bigotry. Such positioning will hurt every Nebraskan in the long run. The new ordinance - which bans the harboring, hiring of and renting to undocumented immigrants - is unenforceable, economically wasteful and as the wave of impending lawsuits will prove, unconstitutional. More importantly, it is morally wrong. |
|
|
|
The News Hound - |
Planned Parenthood: No so fast, abortion law
Planned Parenthood Federation of America has filed a lawsuit to challenge the Nebraska law that would force doctors to screen patients to determine whether they were pressured into having an abortion. The organization says doctors would not be able to meet the requirements specified by the law, which was passed in April and would go into effect July 15. |
|
|
|
The Jump - |
|
Best as I can remember, sometime in early 2005, my then-editor (as well as friend and fellow University of Nebraska J-School alum) Andrew Norman mentioned that he thought our sports coverage needed a little kick in the pants. The Jump you've been reading for the past few years is that kick, and this is the last Jump from me that you'll read. |
|
|
|
Kill Shot - |
Nightclub argument ends deadly
by Rob McLean
The weapon laying near the dead man’s hand was only a CO2-powered pellet gun.
Josι Barrera told The Reader about the events that proceeded the shooting death of his brother, Abel Barrera-Siguenza, 22, by the hand of an off-duty Omaha police officer early Monday morning, June 21, outside a popular South Omaha nightclub. |
|
|
|
Up Front - |
Laying pipe across ‘The Good Life’
The pipeline would transport 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast in Texas. It would run over the Ogallala aquifer one of the largest aquifers in the world and through the Nebraska Sandhills, an area routinely plagued by soil erosion. And, despite concerns raised by farmers, landowners and environmentalists, construction of this 1,700 mile-long pipeline 3 feet in diameter and buried 4 feet deep could start as early as the first part of next year. |
|
|
|
Newshound - |
Author of Fremont ordinance may represent the city
Kris Kobach, architect of the recently-passed Fremont immigration law, has offered to defend the city in court for free, according to the Fremont Tribune.
The law, which passed by ballot measure on June 21, bars landlords from renting to undocumented workers and prevents employers from hiring them. Similar laws in Texas and Pennsylvania town are currently held up in court on grounds of being unconstitutional. Hazleton, Pa., has spent more than $5 million defending its law, while Farmers Branch, Texas, has spent around $3.2 million. Kobach helped write both measures. |
|
|
|
The Jump - |
Find a die-hard baseball fan and you’re likely to find someone with a personality quirk or three. They might collect baseball cards or bobble heads. Maybe it’s game-used bats and balls or jerseys. Perhaps it’s a mix of all of the above. Deep down in most baseball geeks, however, is a deep appreciation for the game. An unquenchable thirst for nostalgia and yesterday. Before Astroturf, pitch counts and the designated hitter changed the game. |
|
|
|
A Vote for Fear - |
Rhetoric heats up after town passes Arizona-style immigration law
by Rob McLean
Voters in Fremont passed a city ordinance Monday that would ban illegal immigrants from renting or leasing property. The town joins Hazelton, Pa., and Farmers Branch, Texas, which passed similar laws in 2006 that have yet to be enforced and remain tied up in courts. The towns have spent, collectively, more than $8 million to defend their laws. |
|
|
|
Upfront - |
ES&S machines questioned in strange S.C. election
In South Carolina, the ultimate dark horse won the Democratic primary for the Senate seat held by Republican Jim DeMint June 8. Alvin Greene has no website, is unemployed and lives with his father. Before the fall’s general election, he might also serve time for a felony obscenity charge for allegedly showing a University of South Carolina freshman pornographic images before propositioning her. |
|
|
|
The Newshound - |
Politics
Terrys win war with a good ol’ fashion book banning
Millard Public Schools has shelved The Down-To-Earth Guide to Global Warming until its authors and publishers make “a key correction,” according to Nebraskawatchdog.org. If teachers do use the text, however, they are to inform students of “both sides” of the global warming’s debate. The text’s removal comes after Rep. Lee Terry’s 12-year-old son, a student in the MPS system, received the book as a non-fiction reading assignment. Robyn Terry, the congressman’s wife, told Nebraska Watchdog, global warming is “highly debatable as to whether it is fact, theory or down right fiction.” |
|
|
<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>
|
|
|
