Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low
CBS) The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.
Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they’re opposed to the agreement.
Citizens Sparked Dayworker Arrests, City Says
Orange city officials Monday defended the arrests last week of day laborers outside a Home Depot store, saying police need to respond to citizen complaints about loitering.
Although both immigrants rights advocates and foes of illegal immigrants agreed that the arrests were unusual, city officials said they were nothing new.
They said police had previously arrested day laborers for violating a municipal code that banned soliciting work outside.
“This is not a first and won’t be a last,” said Mayor Mark A. Murphy. “This is simply a situation where we responded to concerns in the community.”
Two teenage girls linked to website
CALABASAS - The note Edie Beyer found on her kitchen counter was unsigned and missing the usual X’s and O’s that symbolize hugs and kisses.
“Mommy,” said the note, scrawled in her daughter’s handwriting. “I love you very much. Goodbye forever.”
Alexis Beyer wrote the note Feb. 15, the day sheriff’s deputies say the 13-year-old walked out the door of the Calabasas condominium she shares with her mother.
Monday, February 27th, 2006
Ports buyer requests 45-day review of deal
UAE company seeks to avert conflict with Congress
(CNN)—After an outcry from U.S. lawmakers over possible security risks, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates has said it has asked for further review of its deal to buy management rights to terminals at major U.S. ports.
“We recognize that there are concerns regarding DP World’s acquisition of P&O’s U.S. terminal operations,” Ted Bilkey, Dubai Ports World’s chief operating officer, said in a statement Sunday. . .
Reiner Takes a Leave From Panel on Children
SACRAMENTO — Facing pressure from legislators and others, producer Rob Reiner said Friday he is taking a leave as chairman of a state commission that spent $23 million for ads touting the value of early education while he is promoting a statewide preschool initiative.
Reiner took the action in a letter addressed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The leave takes effect immediately and will last until June 7, the day after voters decide the fate of Proposition 82, a Reiner-backed initiative to raise taxes on wealthy Californians to pay for preschool for all 4-year-olds. . .
Planned Exhibit of Cartoons Protested
The caricatures of Muhammad will be displayed at a UCI student forum. Muslims object, and university officials are wary.
Plans by a Republican student group at UC Irvine to showcase the controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that led to violent protests around the world are drawing condemnation from Muslim groups and university officials.
The caricatures will be part of a panel discussion sponsored by the campus College Republicans scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. in UCI’s Crystal Cove Auditorium.
“We are firm believers in the 1st Amendment,” said Kristin Lucero, a 21-year-old UCI senior and president of the campus College Republicans. “The public has the right to discuss as well as view the cartoons.” . . .Friday, February 24th, 2006
Death Off the Table for Deputy’s Killer
The fugitive accused of killing a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy four years ago will face a maximum of life in a U.S. prison, not execution, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said this morning.
That means that Mexico will probably send Armando Garcia Arroyo, who was arrested in the state of Jalisco, to the United States for trial. Garcia is alleged to have killed Deputy David March at a traffic stop in Irwindale in April 2002.
Suspect in deputy’s killing caught in Mexican town
In a case that became a glaring symbol of how illegal immigrant fugitives escape U.S. justice, the man accused of murdering L.A. County sheriff’s Deputy David March in 2002 has been arrested in Mexico and faces extradition, authorities said Thursday.
Armando Garcia was captured Thursday in a small town outside of Guadalajara, and officials with the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico City said they will begin the process of returning him to the U.S. That process is expected to take about two months.
“It’s a great day,” said March’s widow, Theresa, who learned early in the day that Garcia had been apprehended.
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
The John & Ken Show would like to extend their condolences to the Ayres family on the passing of 15-year old Dylan Ayres, the son of Doug and Michelle Ayres.
A scholarship in Dylan’s memory is being set up. If you’d like to make a donation:
Leadership Institute
PO 2471
Orange, CA 92859
Or visit www.theleadershipinstitute.org
Click here to hear John and Ken’s on-air eulogy for Dylan Ayres
Inland lawmakers: Study port deal
GOP: They want the sale of operations rights delayed until its affect on security can be assessed.
Several Inland GOP representatives have joined the chorus of lawmakers asking President Bush to halt a deal that would allow an Arabian-owned company to take over operations at six U.S. seaports.
Bush supports the deal and has threatened to veto any legislation blocking it.
“Our ports are one of our most vulnerable targets for a terrorist attack,” Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, said in a statement. “I believe that this particular sale must be halted until further review.”
Temporary Permits to Be Extended
U.S. Order to Help 300,000 Immigrants
The Bush administration has decided to grant a one-year extension of temporary permits allowing about 300,000 Salvadoran, Nicaraguan and Honduran immigrants to remain legally in the United States, officials said last night.
The move is expected to benefit thousands of immigrants in the Washington area, who otherwise would lose their ability to live and work legally in the country. The decision on whether to extend the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, had been hotly debated in the federal bureaucracy.
The official announcement of the one-year extension is expected tomorrow, when Salvadoran President Elias Antonio Saca is scheduled to visit Washington, officials said. But word leaked out yesterday when Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said the White House had given her advance notice.
Officer arrested in sex sting in Laguna
The 51-year-old was one of 13 charged with attempted child molestation in Internet operation.
LAGUNA BEACH – A California Highway Patrol lieutenant was among 13 men charged with attempted child molestation Wednesday after an Internet sting that authorities called the largest of its kind in Orange County.
Lt. Stephen Robert Deck, 51, of Carlsbad was arrested Saturday at a Laguna Beach park where police said he expected to meet a 13-year-old girl who wanted to have sex with him. Instead, he met a female police officer and was arrested.
“He was not feeling well. He showed signs of having a lot of anxiety,” Laguna Beach Police Chief Michael Sellers said.
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
WEMPE GOES DOWN!
Guilty of One Count of Molestation
The pedophile priest whom Cardinal Roger M. Mahony apologized for returning to the ministry in Los Angeles was convicted this afternoon of molesting a young boy, but jurors deadlocked on four other counts.
Michael Edwin Wempe, now retired from the Los Angeles Archdiocese, has admitted sexually abusing 13 boys during his 36-year career in the archdiocese — but not the one he was today convicted of sexually abusing.
The retired priest, 66, now could be sentenced to prison. The conviction was in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe.
A mistrial was declared on the other counts, according to Associated Press. It was not known whether prosecutors would retry Wempe on the four charges on which jurors could not reach verdicts.
Bush Wasn’t Told of Ports Deal Until it Had Been OKd
President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said today.
Defending the deal anew, the administration also said that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction, which has triggered a major political backlash among both Republicans and Democrats.
Bush on Tuesday brushed aside objections by leaders in the Senate and House that the $6.8 billion sale could raise risks of terrorism at American ports. In a forceful defense of his administration’s earlier approval of the deal, he pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement involving the sale of a British company to the Arab firm.
STATE POSTPONES MORALES EXECUTION
Doctors’ ethical dilemma: ‘This is a job for an executioner, not a physician’
A decision by two California anesthesiologists to participate in the execution of Michael Morales—and then to abruptly withdraw—underscores the fierce opposition to physicians getting involved in capital punishment led by medical groups that consider such a role for doctors unethical.
The American Medical Association, the California Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists and its California affiliate have long declared their opposition to the participation of doctors in executions, but their ethical pronouncements carry no legal authority in the state.
President George W. Bush, trying to put down a rapidly escalating rebellion among leaders of his own party, said Tuesday that he would veto any legislation blocking a deal for a state-owned company in Dubai to take over the management of port terminals in New York, Miami, Baltimore and other major American cities.
Bush issued the threat after the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, and the 
House speaker, Dennis Hastert, publicly criticized the deal and said a thorough review was necessary to ensure that terrorists could not exploit the arrangement to slip weapons into American ports. Bush suggested that the objections to the deal might be based on bias against a buyer from the Middle East, one he said was an ally in fighting terrorism.
Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
Execution of Killer-Rapist Is Postponed After Doctors Walk Out
Court-ordered anesthesiologists refuse to participate in the process, citing ethical concerns.
The scheduled execution of convicted murderer-rapist Michael Morales was postponed this morning after court-ordered anesthesiologists refused to participate in the process. The prison warden abruptly changed plans and announced that the inmate would be executed with a lethal dose of barbiturates.
At 2:55 a.m., Warden Steven Ornoski announced that the prison intends to carry out the execution at 7:30 p.m. today with an unprecedented single dose of sodium pentothal, a lethal barbiturate, rather than the standard three-chemical potion.
The execution of Michael Morales for the 1981 rape and murder of a teenage Lodi girl was postponed early today when two anesthesiologists balked at their court-ordered assignment to make sure Morales remained unconscious during the lethal injection.
San Quentin State Prison’s warden quickly rescheduled the execution for 7:30 tonight by eliminating the anesthesiologists’ role and ordering that Morales be put to death with one drug, the powerful barbiturate sodium pentothal, instead of the three that the state has used since 1996. A federal judge had given the state that option but officials had previously rejected it, because it would take an estimated 30 to 45 minutes to kill the inmate instead of the usual eight to 10 minutes.
Judge Orders Jurors To Continue Deliberations In Wempe Trial
A jury struggling to decide whether a former priest should be convicted of child molestation was ordered Tuesday to continue deliberating in hopes of breaking its deadlock on four of five counts.
Contract that would turn over 6 U.S. ports to Arab control spurs bipartisan outrage and demand for review
The panel last week reached a unanimous decision on the one count, which alleges Michael E. Wempe orally copulated a boy in the defendant’s car during a driving lesson.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe ordered that the verdict remained sealed pending the outcome of further deliberations on the other counts.
Frist wants Dubai ports deal put on hold
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Tuesday the Bush administration should put on hold a deal with a state-owned Dubai company to manage major U.S. seaports, saying it needed a “more extensive review.”
“If the administration cannot delay the process, I plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review,” Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said in a statement.
