today is take back the blog day!

Take Back the Blog!

what is this you may ask (in case you don't know)

it's to remind everyone - women have a right to do whatever they want (you know what i mean. not murder and the like) WITHOUT threats or scorn or stalking or harassment or intimidation or violence. yes, that even includes blogging or otherwise working on the internet.

we are EQUAL citizens of the world. we are your mothers, wives, partners, employers, employees, aunts, teachers, nurturers AND friends.

(don't piss us off please)

if you're not busy sunday night

how about stopping in at the bee and thistle inn to hear andy thibault?


Bee And Thistle Storytellers

Litchfield author Andy Thibault is among six writers featured during the Sunday Night Storytellers series this spring at the Bee And Thistle Inn in Old Lyme. The series of dinner parties runs March 18 through April 29.Thibault's appearance is scheduled for 6 p.m. on April 29."We're quashing the winter doldrums," innkeeper Linnea Rufo said.Thibault, author of Law &Justice in Everyday Life, published the award-winning Cool Justice column in The Connecticut Law Tribune from 2000-06. He currently publishes a blog on cops, courts, general news and the arts at www.cooljustice.blogpsot.com.F. Lee Bailey described Thibault as "a gunslinger from the Old West, ready to fire at anything that moves -- especially if he doesn't take kindly to the movement ... He is in a way a corollary of Robin Hood; he takes from the powerful and gives to the weak."Thibault's reporting on the Smolinski missing person / love triangle case last fall coincided with a request by the Waterbury police department to seek FBI assistance. Documents disclosed by order of the state Freedom of Information Commission revealed Waterbury police did virtually nothing to follow up a tip that Smolinski was strangled in Woodbridge and buried under concrete in Shelton.A series he co-authored about a shady land deal and an attempt to shut down a Montessori school in Enfield has drawn the attention of corruption investigators. An extensive interview with Thibault about blogs was published in the Fall 2006 edition of Readings, the quarterly publication of The Connecticut Center for the Book.He is an adjunct lecturer in English and a mentor in the MFA writing program at Western Connecticut State University. He is a consulting editor for the literary journal Connecticut Review and the author of several other books including The History of the Connecticut State Police and The 12-Minute MBA for Lawyers. Thibault chairs a non-profit foundation that awards $1,000 prizes annually to young poets and writers in Connecticut -- The IMPAC-Connecticut State University Young Writers Trust. He is also a licensed professional boxing judge and a private investigator.As chief investigator for the Washington, D.C. public interest law firm Judicial Watch, Thibault brought in from the cold two girlfriends of the late U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown as the firm probed cash for trade mission placements and other corruption in that agency.Thibault delivered the 2004 Pew Memorial Lecture in Journalism at Widener University, Chester, Pa. His speech was reprinted in The Executive Speaker newsletter.Other authors in the Bee and Thistle Inn series have included: Robert Holland, The Voice of the Tree; and Mary-Ann Tirone Smith. Girls of a Tender Age.The Bee and Thistle Inn sits on five acres by the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme. It has 11 guest rooms. The inn was built in 1756 as a private home. Patrons can reserve for the storytelling series and a three-course dinner at 860-434-1667 or by email at innkeeper@beeandthistleinn.com Thibault has been an editor at publications including The Hartford Courant, The Commercial Record and The Times Leader, Wilkes Barre, Pa. His writing also has appeared in Connecticut Magazine and on "Page Six" of The New York Post. He is a former commissioner of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, a former vice chairman of the Litchfield Board of Education and a former board member of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. He has also served as vice president of the Litchfield-Morris Rotary.Thibault's work as an investigative reporter and feature writer hasearned numerous state and national awards, including a series that won first place prizes from the National Newspaper Association for investigative reporting, the New England Press Association for community service and the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists for in-depth reporting.Thibault is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He also serves on the advisory board of the Connecticut Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress.

cool justice report

i am NOT jumping to any conculsions here

i don't know if in fact these four active and one retired officers were/are being discriminated against by the town of greenwich. i don't know if they are good officers or bad officers. what i DO know is they all did time in iraq. they ALL served their country.

they're not movie stars of millionaires (i don't think). they're cops. if in fact they WERE/ARE being discriminated against, i sure do hope they nail greenwich's ass to a board!

Officers sue over military leave

By Neil Vigdor Staff WriterApril 26, 2007
Four current members of the police department and one former officer are suing the town for alleged discrimination against them because of their military service, which they claim has cost them promotions, choice assignments and pay.All five officers behind the federal lawsuit, which the town was served on Monday, have done tours of duty in Iraq during the first and second Gulf wars as members of the Army Reserve and Army National Guard.Sgt. Robert Berry, Patrolman Sean O'Donnell, Sgt. Kraig Gray, Lt. James Heavey and retired Detective Terry McCue filed the seven-page lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport on April 13."These guys are just trying to make sure that their rights and their privileges are protected the same way that they protect the rights of everybody in the United States as citizen soldiers and the way they protect the citizens of Greenwich as police officers," said Richard Gudis, the Old Saybrook lawyer for the officers and a fellow Army reservist........

..........."These issues are not new," said Sgt. James Bonney, president of the Silver Shield Association. "They didn't get any respect. These are guys who are out there defending the country, putting their lives on the line for the country."........

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

how LOW do you have to be to do this Waterbury Man Charged In Thefts From Graves

WATERBURY, Conn. -- A city man, who lived next to a historic Waterbury cemetery, was arrested Thursday for allegedly stealing jewelry and gold dental work from its graves.Joseph Vecchiarelli, 28, was charged with six counts of interfering with a cemetery or burial ground, a class C felony, and one count of larceny...................

yet ANOTHER example of stupidity in our fair state

stupidity AND balls - BIG uns

Alleged Car Thief Tried To Trade In Jeep To Dealer

NORWALK, Conn. -- A Bridgeport, Conn., man has been arrested after he tried to trade in a Jeep to a car dealer, a month after allegedly stealing the same Jeep from that same dealer, a police representative said.
Jazrahel King, 29, was arrested Saturday after a sales manager at Wholesalers of America recognized King's 2003 black Jeep Liberty as a vehicle that was reported stolen from his lot in early March.
The sales manager, Diego Coleman, said King brought the sport utility vehicle in, hoping to trade up for a larger vehicle.....................

i'm not sure i quite understand this

well i understand the separation of church and state. i don't understand if this is a post office OR a private company. is mailboxes, etc a private company? i thought it was

i didn't know the postal service contracted out. i DO know i don't want to watch evangelical movies when i go to mail a package

Post Offices Can't Promote Religion

HARTFORD -- A federal judge has ruled that post offices nationwide run by churches and other contractors cannot promote religion through pamphlets, displays or any other materials.U.S. District Judge Dominic J. Squatrito, in a case involving a church-run post office in Manchester, said such actions violate the separation of church and state clause in the Constitution's First Amendment.
The judge sided with Jewish veteran Bertram Cooper, who in 2003 sued the U.S. Postal Service and the church that has the contract to operate the Sincerely Yours Inc. post office in downtown Manchester.Customers at the post office have been able to buy stamps, ship packages, pick up religious brochures and donate money to Christian ministries. It also had a television that showed religious programming, and photos of the church's mission work in Africa on the walls..............

wednesday 4/25 3:30 - 5:00 Hartford Hospital

For Immediate Release Contact: Justin Goodman
April 24, 2007 860-882-2492/Justin_goodman@sbcglobal.net

Medical professionals, activists decry live animal trauma lab at Hartford Hospital

Hartford -- Local animal rights campaigners are planning a demonstration at Hartford Hospital on Wednesday afternoon to denounce the use of live pigs in surgical training exercises.

Date- Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Time- 3:30pm-5pm
Place- Entrance to Hartford Hospital, 80 Seymour Street, Hartford,CT

Hartford Hospital, in concert with the UConn School of Medicine, administers a program called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners manage fourteen different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the kidney, pancreas, stomach, diaphragm, and heart.

Hartford Hospital uses five pigs per month in this series of highly invasive surgical procedures. Those pigs who survive the traumas and surgeries are killed at the end of the exercises. According to documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the facility regularly confines over 100 pigs for use in this program. They also use numerous mice, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits and sheep in various other forms of experimentation.

Justin Goodman, a local animal rights campaigner, stated, "Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable." He continued, "Regardless of how many pigs these doctors operate on, some human patient in the ER is still going to have to be their first. Why waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead?"

The promising alternatives Goodman cites include the work of Dr. Emad Aboud and his colleagues at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. They have developed a model for conducting surgical training exercises that utilizes donated human cadavers and could completely eliminate the need to use live animals for trauma exercises. His method entails circulating artificial blood through the vessels of the cadaver using a mechanical pump to simulate a live human being.

Added John Pippin, M.D., Senior Medical and Research Adviser for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: "The surgery training paradigm has moved beyond the use of live animals. More than 95 percent of American medical schools have eliminated the use of animals to teach surgery skills, the majority of Advanced Trauma Life Support courses do not use animals, and the American College of Surgeons no longer uses animals in its own courses or in its revised surgery curriculum."

"In the interest of upholding their duty to practice ethical medicine, doctors and researchers should be abandoning these flawed animal models in favor of pursuing human-relevant, humane alternatives," Goodman said.
--------------
On Wednesday, activists will also be protesting animal experimentation at the UConn Health Center (Farmington) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (Wallingford). Call Justin Goodman at 860 882 2492 or email justin_goodman@sbcglobal.net for more information.

Hartford Hospital is hell for animals AND THEY NEED YOUR HELP!!!!

We recently learned that Hartford Hospital, in concert with the UConn School of Medicine, administers a program called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners manage 14 different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the kidney, stomach, spleen and heart.

Hartford Hospital uses five pigs per month in this series of highly invasive surgical procedures. Those pigs who survive the traumas and surgeries are killed at the end of the exercises. According to documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the facility regularly confines over 100 pigs for use in this program. They also use numerous mice, dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits and sheep in various other forms of experimentation.

Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable. Regardless of how many pigs these doctors operate on, some human patient in the ER is still going to have to be their first. Why waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead?Your can read more detailed info about the Hartford Hospital campaign at:www.uchckillsmonkeys.com/harthosp

Act now!Tell Hartford Hospital to end live pig trauma courses!!
Dr. John Meehan
President and CEO
Hartford Hospital
80 Seymour Street Hartford, CT 06102
Tel: 860 545-2100
Email: meehan [at] harthosp.org

****Sample letter/talking points****Dear Dr. Meehan:Thank you for your time. I am writing as a concerned citizen to express my opposition to a program at Hartford Hospital called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners manage fourteen different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the bowel, bladder, kidney, ureter, pancreas, duodenum, stomach, diaphragm, liver, inferior vena cava, spleen and heart. Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable. It is a waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead. More than 95% of American medical schools have eliminated the use of animals to teach surgery skills and the American College of Surgeons no longer uses animals in its own courses or in its revised surgery curriculum.In the interest of upholding their duty to practice ethical medicine, doctors and researchers at Hartford Hospital should be abandoning these flawed animal models in favor of pursuing human-relevant, humane alternatives.I look forward to hearing from you.Sincerely,(name)(address)


ACTION ALERT!Yes, the cruel monkey experiments being conducted by David Waitzman at the University of Connecticut Health Center have been terminated. However, the school has yet to agree to a permanent ban on the use of nonhuman primates in experimentation. In recognition of World Week for Animals in Labs, and in solidarity with the millions of animals who are suffering as you read this, please take a moment to write, call, or fax the UConn Health Center administration (even if you already have) and let them know you'd like to see this publicly-funded monkey torture ended forever.For more info on our campaign: www.uchckillsmonkeys.com/campaignTo contact UConn now, see below or visit: www.uchckillsmonkeys.com/takeactionBlock of all available email addresses listed below:deckers@nso.uchc.edu, Philip.austin@uconn.edu, dfriend@alvarezandmarsal.com,goldberg@nso1.uchc.edu, rhennessey@oscient.com, gerard.burrow@yale.edu, james.abromaitis@po.state.ct.us, j.robert.galvin@po.state.ct.us, bcarlson@adp.uchc.edu, walter@nso.uchc.edu, lalande@uchc.edu, sarmstrong@uchc.edu, yas@pobox.upenn.edu, paplauskas@adp.uchc.edu, jlorenzo@nso2.uchc.edu, pohl@uchc.edu----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

sometimes people ask me why i don't eat meat. i never tell anyone why. well, not the real reason.

i'm not judging anyone. the decisions i've made are my own and are RIGHT FOR ME.

i think there is something VERY wrong with eating (much less wearing and experimenting upon) animals. i've felt this way since i was a child. i always had problems and issues when my plate had a big hunk o' meat on it. if it had a bone too, forget it, that just wasn't going to happen. as with many things i think we can comfortably share our lives with animals (the domesticated ones of course). my feelings on the subject go very much deeper than this. i don't wish to share more of them, at least at this time.

if you're really feeling that urge to fight

the testosterone is just oozing out of your pores and ya gotta rumble, there are BETTER PLACES to throw down than the lobby of a police station

(he should be suspended from the team-on stupidity ALONE)

UConn Football Player Sidelined After Two Arrests In One Week
Wide Receiver Also Banned From Team Activities Through May 29

STORRS, Conn. -- A UConn football player is sidelined after being arrested during Spring Weekend, and it wasn't the wide receiver's only run-in with police in the past week, NBC 30 reports.
One of Brandon Mclean's arrests occurred after a fight at police headquarters. Police said the other occurred at a campus dorm days earlier. .....

........UConn police said Mclean was one of several people involved in a fight in the lobby of the police department early Saturday morning, during which Mace was sprayed and fists flew. Mclean was charged with breach of peace.
He had already been arrested and charged with breach of peace for another incident earlier in the week. It was at the Hilltop Suites that UConn police said they arrested Mclean on Wednesday after he angrily refused to leave a dorm room. He also faces threatening and criminal trespass charges in the incident..........
Head coach Randy Edsall suspended the senior for the first three games of the season for conduct unbecoming a player. The first three games are at Duke, then home against Maine and Temple

and people wonder why i hang

here

(my new friend eric after a softball game)

CHECK OUT THE TEAM NAME

strawberry hat

for "n"

(ann norling pattern)

as a coincidence

i posted a welcome home to the 102nd yesterday. well i was mindin' my own bid-nez (as everyone knows i do).....

i saw someone with a 102nd infantry tee on. i asked him if he had just gotten home and he was shocked and surprised and said yes, and asked how i knew. (well i knew because i read it in the papers and saw it on the news).

anyway, ANOTHER welcome home and one big one to my new friend dave!

may you all slide right back into your former lives.

how can tim ngo only be considered 10% disabled?

his skull was blown up by a grenade in iraq while he was serving his country. part of it had to be removed.

yet the military didn't disable him enough so he could get disability benefits and WORSE, he is not eligible for military insurance coverage.

why aren't we making the king and his court account for tim ngo? the king SENT him to iraq to 'fight the war on terror'. then the king just kicks tim ngo to the curb when he returns?

Injured Troops Struggle to Get Health Care

by Joseph Shapiro

All Things Considered, April 20, 2007 · When service members are forced to leave the military by war injuries or illness, they face a complex system for getting health and disability benefits. Sometimes, health care gets cut off when new veterans find they need it most. Some retired soldiers and their families say they are worried that the Pentagon won't spend enough money to give the injured the care they deserve.

'10 Percent Disabled'

Tim Ngo almost died in a grenade attack in Iraq. He sustained a serious head injury; surgeons had to cut out part of his skull. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he learned to walk and talk again..........

............But here is the part that is in dispute: The Army says Tim Ngo is only 10 percent disabled............

..........When a service member is retired for medical reasons, the military's disability rating makes a difference. If Ngo had been rated 30 percent disabled or higher, he would have gotten a monthly disability check instead of a small severance check. He also would have stayed in the military's health-care system.

Instead, Ngo enrolled with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Typically, there's a waiting period for the VA.

In October, while he was uninsured, Ngo had a seizure, caused by his war injury.
...............

do NOT get an iguana (or for that matter any pet) if you cannot care for it

otherwise people like aj gutman have to care for them. i think what she is doing is noble. it costs a great deal for her to house and feed the unwanted, sick or unruly lizards. SOMEONE has to care for unwanted iguanas. again, do NOT get a pet if you cannot handle one. THINK first.
(oh and i went to school on steele road. the school isn't there any longer. the building is though. it was tiny. beach park elementary)

The Plight Of The Iguanas

By DANIEL P. JONES, Courant Staff Writer

WEST HARTFORD -- From the curb, AJ Gutman's chalet-style home on Steele Road looks like it could have been a set from "The Sound of Music." You're almost waiting for Julie Andrews to throw open the shutters and sing.But step closer to the front door and there's a clue that something different might await: a little white metal sign with black letters that says "Beware of Lizard." Once inside, the scene could easily pass for a back room of the reptile house at the Bronx Zoo.
About 30 iguanas share the Gutman home with the people who pay the mortgage. About half the reptiles - a foot long or shorter - live in terrariums. The larger ones - up to 20 pounds and 5 feet long - are free to scamper along the wood floors.........

..............The Gutman house is a sort of foundling home for unwanted iguanas.Although she knows how to rehabilitate and care for the tropical reptiles, Gutman, 50, freely admits she's inept at raising money or trying to organize and establish a nonprofit organization to keep her home-based Connecticut Iguana Sanctuary going..............

welcome back to the 102nd infantry out of new haven

we're all happy you're home! of course our thoughts were (and are) with the family and friends of sgt phaenuf

Warm welcome home for Conn. troops

by News Channel 8's Jamie Muro

(Windsor Locks-WTNH) _ Members of the 102nd Infantry Battalion of New Haven returned home Saturday after a one-year tour in Afghanistan.
Grandmother Lenor Rodriguez was waiting for her son and her grandson, Luis and Joshua Amaro. They are possibly the first father to follow son into service since the Civil War.
"I'm just thankful to God that they're here. They had a victory," said Lenor............

................One father is absent to hug his son and the rest of his family. Staff Sergeant Joseph Phaenuf was killed in action in December.
"His efforts did not go forgotten, he paid the ultimate sacrifice. The reason why they are here today, he's part of it," said Lt. Col. John Whitford..............