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************************************** Inhaler Update Regarding that matter in Texas where a student was "expelled" for sharing his inhaler with a fellow student suffering an asthma attack. As you know, the school issued the "canned" response to your emails which claimed we were operating on "erroneous" information and blamed the Internet for creating one of those urban legends we've become accustomed to on the web. Such an accusation understandably raises concerns on our end. So let me assure you of two things: (1) I attempted to get the school's side of the story last Friday before sending out our Brushfire Alert. Principal Poole's secretary blew me off. So *if* there was any erroneous information out there, it was only because the school refused to clear it up when given the chance. (2) In any event, the information we acted upon was provided by, not one, but THREE credible media outlets; a Wall Street Journal column, a major Houston newspaper and a Houston television station. This was NOT based on some unreliable Internet source. Early yesterday afternoon I received a professional and courteous phone call from Dr. Poole, the principal. I offered him an opportunity to come on "Always Right" tonight to discuss the situation but haven't heard back from him with a "yes" or "no." In the meantime, some quick points of clarification which came from our conversation: 1) As the school's response notes, the boy in question is not in jail; however, it is TRUE that he WAS taken into custody by police and had formal felony charges brought against him. Those charges have since been dropped and the kid will NOT have any kind of permanent criminal record. 2.) The boy in question WAS "expelled," but Principal Poole says it was a "probationary expulsion" (an oxymoron along the lines of "postal service" and "military intelligence"). The young man could have returned to school after a few days, but was subject to being formally tossed out if he didn't keep his nose clean, so to speak. 3.) If the nurse involved in the incident had reported it to Principal Poole instead of the school police, Dr. Poole maintains this molehill might not have been blown into such a mountain. However, he says that once the cops were brought into the equation, his hands were tied and there was no wiggle room for him to exercise any discretion. 4.) The main bone of contention here seems to be the characterization of the asthma attack. Yes, the girl originally went to the nurse for a headache as Dr. Poole's email suggests, but it was THERE that the girl and boy involved say she had the attack. The girl says the boy "saved her life;" the school maintains there was no life-threatening situation. It's a classic "he said/she said." You be the judge. Now, the school may be calling into question the girl's veracity; however, the girl hasn't changed her story. We did report ACCURATELY, not erroneously, what the girl told the authorities and the media at the time. In conclusion, Dr. Poole complimented us profusely on the effectiveness of our Brushfire Alert. He said he had received over 1,400 emails on the incident and that because of them, the school will take a look at how they respond to public inquiries in the future. Indeed, had the school responded to my inquiry last Friday instead of stonewalling me, maybe the whole thing would have gone unreported. In any event, don't let anyone tell you getting involved like this doesn't make a difference. The folks at Caney Creek High School will certainly attest otherwise. Your public pressure helped resolve this matter in a satisfactory manner and may have helped prevent problems of this nature from occurring in the future. ************************************** Jensen Update 12-year-old Parker Jensen of Utah was diagnosed with Ewings sarcoma, a form of cancer. A tumor was removed from his mouth six months ago. Subsequent blood tests have found no lingering cancer cells. Nevertheless, the state of Utah has attempted to grab custody of Parker from his parents in order to force Parker into chemotherapy treatments...and even went so far as to file kidnapping charges against the Parkers for to taking their son out of state to avoid the court-ordered chemotherapy. Last month the state dropped the kidnapping charges along with their efforts obtain custody; however, Utah officials are refusing to withdraw a petition accusing the parents of medical neglect which could still result in lost custody and forced chemo. Richard Anderson, director of the Utah Division of Child and Family Services said the law requires that he continue to hound the Parkers with a medical-neglect complaint. A trial has been scheduled for November 17. ************************************** Turning Up the Heat "Students of the partisan divide in Congress find it heating up to the level of kickboxing this year. In the annual spending bills now passing below the public's radar, House Republican leaders are coolly threatening to deny Democrats hundreds of millions of dollars in local projects in retaliation for their block-vote protest against the flawed majority bill on spending for health and education. "Republicans note that cross-aisle vendettas are nothing new in the Capitol. But the G.O.P. would be elevating strong-arming to a whole new level by taking meat-and-potato projects from dissenting Democrats and serving this election-year bacon to Republicans." - New York Times editorial, 10/11/03 ************************************** Slim Pickings "The gubernatorial pool is where you look for presidential talent, and right now (the Democrats') only star governor is Jennifer Granholm, who can't run for president because she was born in British Columbia. That's why in Thursday's (Democrat presidential) debate half the presidential candidates are sad-sack senators dulled by decades of deal-making and Beltway-speak and the other half are goofs and oddballs." - Columnist Mark Steyn *************************************** Time for a Good Housecleaning "A CIA official tells NewsMax that anger over the revelation that Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was outed -- is nonsense. Even if Plame was an undercover operative, the agency regularly moves such operatives out of deep cover if the operative's spouse becomes very high profile. This is done exactly because of concerns we are seeing in the current controversy. "...Our CIA source says the continuing controversy over Plame stems more from the Bush administration's failure to clean house at the CIA of Clinton-Gore careerists that still dominate there. But the CIA is not the only problem, Clinton-Gore careerists still run State, Defense and most other agencies. Why the administration has dragged its feet in cleaning house and appointing their own people, as all previous administrations have done, is not clear." - NewsMax.com, 10/13/03 ************************************** Goin' Postal "Postal workers in New York City falsified delivery dates for express mail to give the appearance the mail was delivered on time, according to a study by the United States Postal Service's Inspector General. The study found that in the year ending Aug. 12, 2002, 12 to 48 percent of express letters in six major Manhattan post offices had been hand-marked as delivered, instead of tracked by a computer system that records delivery times. In those cases, it found that drivers and mail carriers feared disciplinary measures for late delivery and 'used the manual function on their scanner to falsify delivery times.'" - New York Times, 10/4/03 *************************************** NEW: Should Drug Benefit Be "Means Tested"? Day by day we get closer and closer to a showdown over adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare. Conservatives in Congress say that any such benefit should be available only to the poor who can't afford it. Liberals and some moderates are insisting that any new drug benefit should be made available to anyone, regardless of income. What do you think? 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