Dee Hall covers an issue vital to our democracy - over zealous prosecutors:
A Wisconsin State Journal investigation, however, found instances in which court records and transcripts back up his critics' claims that he has crossed ethical lines. Stretching back to the early 1990s, Humphrey has been the subject of criticism accusing him of ethical lapses, poor judgment and unreasonably aggressive tactics. Critics have included defendants, defense attorneys, judges and three of the four district attorneys who've supervised him.US District Judge Lewis Kaplan recently expressed concern over "prosecutor's expansive power".The State Journal examined more than 2,000 pages of documents, including records from Humphrey's office files obtained under the open-records law. The newspaper also interviewed more than two dozen attorneys, judges, defendants, legal experts and law-enforcement officials.
The newspaper's investigation found that the veteran prosecutor:
— Wrongfully kept a young man in the Dane County Jail for a month, even after he was repeatedly notified of the error.
— Made false or misleading statements in affidavits, in correspondence and in court hearings to advance his case or to cover up mistakes.
— Charged two witnesses and had a third arrested for failing to show up for trials that had been cancelled — a tactic his boss had warned him was "an abuse of your authority."
— Aggressively pursued seven felony charges against a bankrupt father who was $2,846 behind in child support — a prosecution the judge said should "make one wonder about the integrity of (the) justice system."
— Twice pursued vehicular-homicide charges using speed estimates his own experts told him were inflated.
One of those cases was Humphrey's failed prosecution of Adam Raisbeck, a 17-year-old from Marshall. Humphrey's actions in the case prompted a blunt reprimand from his boss, and the misconduct findings that are headed to the Supreme Court.
See where the retreating British Army was massacred! Marvel at Osama bin Laden's old Tora Bora bunker! Gaze upon the crater where the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan stood before the Taliban blew them up!Lonely Planet's new Afghanistan guidebookOr maybe not. Tourism in Afghanistan, it's safe to say, is a tough sell these days. Nobody is touting it as "the new Croatia." Kabul and Kandahar never figure in the hunt for "the next Prague." And don't look for the war-ravaged country in the next installment of "Where in the World Is Matt Lauer?"
All of which makes Lonely Planet's new Afghanistan guidebook the most eyebrow-raising title of the year.
The 244-page guide contains all the usual write-ups of mosques, mountains and museums, plus colorful maps and 17 pages of enticing photographs. But turn to the "Dangers & Annoyances" section, and instead of the usual cautions about bedbugs and pickpockets you find a warning about "the danger of an insurgency in the south, plus warlordism and terrorist violence in some other parts of the country."
The true story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in the multi-award winning drama SOPHIE SCHOLL-THE FINAL DAYS. Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film of 2005, SOPHIE SCHOLL stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the young coed-turned-fearless activist. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl's life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence.In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.
I don’t subscribe to the newspaper my family sold to a chain in the mid-1990s. While I miss the New York Times crossword puzzle, I finally stopped my subscription, because I really wasn’t interested in reading the generic news that has replaced the community coverage we used to provide.In more than 30 years of newspaper management, I experienced the transformation described in your white paper on Media 3.0, as we faced increasing competition from direct mail, segmented cable and the myriad of other choices served to advertisers.
But there is one underlying reason why newspapers will not be able to take advantage of the opportunities so well presented in your paper: They simply lack the intellectual capacity...
n a recent interview, Mr. Santulli of NetJets marveled at the vast wealth driving this growth. He also said that not all of the big long-range luxury jets, like Gulfstreams, are ferrying teams of executives across the seas.Classic.“Take a wild guess. What do you think the most common city pair for our Gulfstream fleet is?” he asked.
“New York to L.A.?” I replied.
“Not even close. It’s New York to Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Richard McNider & John Christy:
THE United States faces two major security challenges this century. Both involve water.The increasing demand for water in the Western United States in an era of diminishing supply has put America’s highly efficient agricultural system in jeopardy. At the same time, our nation’s energy demands have led President Bush and Congressional leaders from both parties to call for more domestic production of biofuels like corn ethanol. Some agricultural experts fear that the country does not have enough water and land to both replace the declining agricultural production in the arid West and expand the production of biofuels.
There is, however, a sustainable solution: a return to using the land and water of the East, which dominated agriculture in the United States into the 20th century.
Until the middle of the 1900s, much of our country’s food and fiber was produced east of the Mississippi River. Maine led the nation in potato production in 1940, and New York wasn’t far behind. The South, including Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, dominated cotton. Large amounts of corn were grown in almost every state for consumption by the local livestock and poultry. Regional vegetable markets, especially in the mid-Atlantic states, served the population centers of the East.
By 1980, Western irrigation and improvements in transportation had largely destroyed this Eastern system of agriculture. Irrigated cotton in Arizona, California and Texas displaced the cotton economy of the Deep South. Idaho and Washington became the nation’s major potato producers. Corn production became more concentrated in the Midwest.
The "Truth About Cars" folks let 'er rip on Car and Driver's objectivity vs their essential advertising sales cash flow requirements:
When I first picked up Car and Driver’s (C&D) fateful December 2006 issue, I was convinced that the splashy, graphics-heavy revamp sounded the death knell for my favorite buff book. But the resulting reader backlash was so loud I felt sure Ann Arbor’s finest would be scared straight. A plaintive apology followed the editor’s arrogant dismissal of the reader revolt. C&D seemed poised for a revival. Nope. The October 2007 issue isn’t just the lowest point in the mag’s inexorable descent; it’s a dive below the limits of acceptability.Auto magazines are not the only print vertical dealing with decline.The buff books’ decline is inversely proportionate to digital media’s rise. Why fork over good money for a magazine subscription, endure two-month old editorials and wade through dozens of ads when the web provides fresh, instant and less ad-intrusive content for free? For the mags, there's an obvious answer: an upmarket re-imagining of the paper-based genre, like the UK’s elegant, ballsy evo magazine.
Paris Sunrise: August 2007 (taken while zooming around in a Paris cab driven by a former exchange student - who spent a year on a Iowa dairy farm).
Interesting interview with French President Nicolas Sarkozy:
“I want to tell the American people that the French people are their friends,” he said. “We are not simply allies. We are friends. I am proud of being a friend of the Americans. You know, I am saying this to The New York Times, but I have said it to the French, which takes a little more courage and is a little more difficult. I have never concealed my admiration for American dynamism, for the fluidity of American society, for its ability to raise people of different identities to the very highest levels.”I had an opportunity to visit with a French Foreign Legion officer while on travel. This man mentioned that he had served with Americans in many places, including Afghanistan, Bosnia and other locales. I asked him for an impression of America after these interactions (he's also travelled to the states with family): Resources. He said that when the Americans arrive, they always seem to have incredible resources. An well equipped base can be in service within "days".Mr. Sarkozy, who has been accused of being too enamored of all things American, said he considered France and the United States to be on equal footing and somehow better than many others, because they believe that their values are universal and therefore destined to “radiate” throughout the world. The Germans, the Spaniards, the Italians, the Chinese, by contrast, do not think that way, he said.
Car:
It's a collection of some of the best, funniest and cheesiest UK car adverts out there. However, it is by no means a definitive list - and this is where you come in. We want to hear about your favourite and we'll update the list below accordingly.
Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches… What if it controlled your life?
Occam's Rule: Sometimes the truth is so simple that even as it stares us in the face we are blind to it.The Federal Reserve cut its Fed Funds benchmark rate by 50 bp to 4.75%, more than most analysts' expectations. Already there have been trillions of pixels written to explain why, but none that I have seen follow the time-honored Occam or KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
Here is a chart that explains the FRB's move; for the non-professional there is an explanation after it.
Fifty miles north of Frankfurt lies the small German town of Solms. Turn off the main thoroughfare and you find yourself driving down tranquil suburban streets, with detached houses set back from the road, and, on a warm morning in late August, not a soul in sight. Nobody does bourgeois solidity like the Germans: you can imagine coming here for coffee and cakes with your aunt, but that would be the limit of excitement. By the time you reach Oskar-Barnack-Strasse, the town has almost petered out; just before the railway line, however, there is a clutch of industrial buildings, with a red dot on the sign outside. As far as fanfare is concerned, that’s about it. But here is the place to go, if you want to find the most beautiful mechanical objects in the world.
I don’t normally post personal items, but I think that everyone should know about some of the horrible things happening at San Diego International Airport and with Delta Airlines. I wrote this immediately after the events that transpired so that I would have an accurate log.Summers are the busiest travel time of the year. Each year more than 750 million passengers move through our country’s airports raking up more than 800 billion miles of travel. (Source) Along with the increase in demand, air travel complaints are up as well. (Source PDF)
Now, we all know this year has been a special one for the airlines and air travel as a whole. From the JetBlue hostage crisis, the terrorist “dry runs” on airport security around the country, and the most recent debacle on Southwest Airlines where they asked a woman to cover up because of her lewd attire.
Also, after learning about Xeni’s experiences, reading Bruce’s article, I decided to post this. Here we go!
It was a rare and startling moment in any courtroom. The judge was sentencing a defendant, but directed some of his harshest comments at three witnesses who had helped prosecutors obtain the conviction.One of the witnesses "flat-out lied. He should be charged with perjury," said Multnomah County Circuit Judge Michael McShane.
The judge's outburst was unusual, but it also raised a fundamental question about the justice system: How much lying occurs in courtrooms by people who have sworn to tell the truth?
Home » About Vino Volo
About Vino VoloAt Vino Volo, our goal is to bring the world of wine tasting and retail wine sales to where it is most convenient for air travelers. Our innovative wine tasting restaurant and retail stores are specifically designed for passengers and our website is available to continue serving them even after they leave the airport.
Vino Volo (derived from Italian for "wine flight") combines a boutique retail store with a stylish tasting lounge and bar, allowing guests to taste wines in a comfortable setting. Vino Volo serves great wines from across the globe by the glass or in tasting flights. All wines poured are also available for purchase by the bottle, allowing travelers to purchase wines to take with them or have shipped to their home (subject to state law).
Our StoresWarm wood tones and comfortable leather lounge chairs welcome travelers into a sophisticated yet approachable post-security retreat in the airport terminal. Every Vino Volo location has an integrated retail area showcasing the wines being poured and offers elegant small plates to pair with the wines. Customers enjoy items such as locally-produced artisan cheeses, dry cured meats, and smoked salmon rolls wrapped around crab meat with crème fraiche. All of Vino Volo's dishes are available for customers to enjoy in the store or packaged to carry with them onto their flight.
7-10 new stores are planned for airports in 2007. We encourage you to check our website periodically for updates on new locations.
About Taste, Inc.Vino Volo is owned and operated by Taste, Inc., founded in 2004 and backed by industry leaders in wine, retail, and the hospitality industries. Vino Volo plans to open several dozen stores in airports across the country in the next five years. Taste, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Taste, Inc. is led by executives with deep industry expertise. Doug Tomlinson, Taste's CEO, has over 16 years of career success in launching and spinning off new businesses. Doug has helped several Fortune 500 clients start new businesses or divisions and has been featured as a cover author in Harvard Business Review. Ellen Bozzo, Director of Finance and Administration, has over 20 years of experience in multi-unit retail finance, including the role of Controller for Peet's Coffee & Tea. Joe LaPanna, Regional General Manager, has over 19 years of experience in high-end restaurant and wine retail management as well as managed the expansion of two major restaurant concepts. Carla Wytmar, Director of Development & Marketing, is a 20-year veteran in the food & wine industry, having worked with Hyatt Hotels Corporation, The Walt Disney World Company and as a consultant to top chefs and wine companies across the country.
Standing behind the Vino Volo team is a group of highly-credentialed investors and advisors with over a century of combined experience in retail, hospitality and wine that include the founder of Ravenswood Winery, the founder of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker, and the CEO of Jamba Juice, among others. Each member of this group sits on a formal Advisory Board and actively consults to Vino Volo on its development and execution. "Taste, Inc. DBA Vino Volo" is the California-based legal entity behind all Vino Volo operations.
About our TeamVino Volo prides itself on building teams dedicated to customer service and with deep expertise in wine tasting and retail. Customer service is a cornerstone of Vino Volo's strategy, and Vino Volo invests heavily in training its talented staff to make wine approachable. A highly trained team of Wine Associates helps customers explore and enjoy Vino Volo's wines. The company also has a patented tasting framework to ease customers through the wine discovery process. Vino Volo is redefining service in airports, recently ranking #1 in customer service among over 900 airport stores mystery shopped, and is the recipient of the Airport Revenue News 2007 Award for Highest Regard for Customer Service.
Vino Volo offers some of the best opportunities in the wine industry, including:
* Intensive training program on service and wine
* Opportunity to continuously taste and learn about wine
* Annual retreat to a wine region of the world
* Full benefits package to full-time employees
* Competitive compensation packageFor More Information
Visit our stores or Contact Us. We look forward to hearing from you!
Anything that can make airline travel more enjoyable is a welcome development, so beleaguered travelers take heart: Vino Volo…the leader of upscale wine bars at airports. – Wine Enthusiast
In Free Flight, the seminal book on the forthcoming reinvention of air travel, James Fallows tells a story about Bruce Holmes, who was then the manager of NASA’s general aviation program office. For years Holmes clocked his door-to-door travel times for commercial flights, and he found that for trips shorter than 500 miles, flying was no faster than driving. The hub-and-spoke air travel system is the root of the problem, and there’s no incremental fix. The solution is to augment it with a radically new system that works more like a peer-to-peer network.Today Bruce Holmes works for DayJet, one of the companies at the forefront of a movement to invent and deliver that radically new system. Ed Iacobucci is DayJet’s co-founder, president, and CEO, and I’m delighted to have him join me for this week’s episode of Interviews with Innovators.
I first met Ed way back in 1991 when he came to BYTE to show us the first version of Citrix, which was the product he left IBM and founded his first company to create. As we discuss in this interview, the trip he made then — from Boca Raton, Florida to Peterborough, New Hampshire — was a typically grueling experience, and it would be no different today. A long car trip to a hub airport, a multi-hop flight, another long car trip from hub airport to destination.
Stewart Brand, a pioneer of both environmentalism and online communities, has not lost his willingness to rock the boat.IN SOME respects Stewart Brand's green credentials are impeccable. His mentor was Paul Ehrlich, an environmental thinker at Stanford university and author of “The Population Bomb”, published in 1968. That book, and the related Club of Rome movement of the 1970s, famously predicted that overpopulation would soon result in the world running out of food, oil and other resources. Though it proved spectacularly wrong, its warning served as a clarion call for the modern environmental movement.
Mr Brand made his name with a publication of his own, which also appeared in 1968, called “The Whole Earth Catalogue”. It was a path-breaking manual crammed with examples of small-scale technologies to enable individuals to reduce their environmental impact, and is best known for its cover, which featured a picture of the Earth from space (which Mr Brand helped to persuade America's space agency, NASA, to release). The book became a bestseller in anti-corporate and environmental circles. In 1985 Mr Brand co-founded the WELL, a pioneering online community that was a precursor of today's social-networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Mr Brand still has a following among the Birkenstock set, and even lives on a tugboat near San Francisco. But meet him in person and it becomes clear he is not exactly your typical crunchy-granola green. Sitting down to lunch at a posh beach resort on Coronado Island, off San Diego, he does not order a vegan special but a hearty Angus burger with bacon, cheese and French fries, and a side-order of lobster bisque. “I'm genetically a contrarian,” he says with a broad smile.
Northwest Airlines Corp.'s planned investment in the corporate parent of Midwest Airlines came about after Midwest Chairman and CEO Timothy Hoeksema contacted his counterpart at Northwest - about one week after Midwest shareholders elected three board members nominated by rival suitor AirTran Holdings Inc.I've noticed that Midwest is no longer competing for the lowest (or lower) fares to many markets from Milwaukee and Madison. Northwest is often lower, largely to compete with AirTran. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.... I assume this was one, perhaps of several reasons why Northwest would like to keep Midwest around - higher fares within their near-monopoly upper Midwest markets. Southwest may well address the upper midwest market - a boon for local flyers.Also, Northwest's planned ownership stake in Oak Creek-based Midwest Air Group Inc. would be around 47%, based on its level of equity investment in the transaction.
Those facts were disclosed today in a preliminary proxy statement Midwest Air filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The document includes previously withheld details on how Midwest Air reached its sale agreement in August with TPG Capital, a Fort Worth, Texas-based private equity firm, and Northwest.
According to the statement, Hoeksema on June 22 called Doug Steenland, Northwest chairman and chief executive officer, and "discussed Northwest's interest in exploring a possible transaction with us."
The conversation was "following up on a call (Hoeksema) had placed in early June," the statement said, without specifying a date.
"It looks like Corton, doesn't it?" asked one man admiringly as our group gazed up at the tightly spaced rows of Pinot Noir grapevines hugging the hillside at Stoller Vineyards in Oregon's Willamette Valley.It did look a bit like France's famed Corton, a tree-topped hill in Burgundy's Côte de Beaune region that's caressed by vines on its lower slopes. Corton is home to some of the world's finest Pinot Noir wines, and while accepting Stoller as Le Corton takes a bit of imagination, Willamette Valley vintners use the hill as inspiration as they try to produce Pinot Noirs rivaling those of Burgundy. And they're getting there.
Still, why would a Bay Area Pinot Noir buff travel to Oregon, when fine wines are made much closer to home, in the Russian River Valley, Carneros and Monterey County?
First, the wines are getting better, and fast gaining critical praise. The best Pinots, and those from the small rising stars, are sold in the tasting rooms, with little chance of finding their way to California store shelves.
The following tables show aggregated prime contract dollar totals for the state of Wisconsin. Key data elements (agencies, companies, metropolitan areas) are ranked by their FY2006 - FY2007 YTD Totals. All aggregated data is copyrighted by Eagle Eye Publishers, Inc. Tables may not be reproduced without written permission from Eagle Eye.
John Solomon & Jeffrey Birnbaum:
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) confronted David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, on the House floor in March over this practice, noting that a spending bill then under debate contained $35 million for a risk-mitigation program at a federal space-exploration facility, even though the measure had been certified to contain no earmarks.Much more on earmarks, here."We have passed some good rules with regard to earmark reform and transparency," Flake said. "But we have found a way around them already." Obey said that the provision was not an earmark under the rules. "An earmark is something that is requested by an individual member," Obey said. "This item was not requested by any individual member; it was put in the bill by me."
Two months later, Obey again rebuffed Flake when Flake pointed out that a supposedly earmark-free bill on the House floor contained an allocation of $8.7 million to ward off floods in New York. The provision was not called an earmark, Flake noted, but Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) put out a news release applauding the provision and its potential benefit to her district.
Making private space travel possible and accessible to everyone has been a recurring topic at recent TED conferences, discussed by speakers such as Burt Rutan at TED 2006 (watch his speech), Peter Diamandis at TEDGLOBAL 2005, Richard Branson at TED 2007 and others. This week the first images of the central terminal and hangar facility at New Mexico's future private spaceport have been released.
Fifty years ago today, Don Mazzella skipped out of school to see the hot new car that everybody was talking about, the hot new car that almost nobody had actually seen.Ford Motor Co. had proclaimed it "E-Day," and Mazzella and two buddies sneaked out of East Side High School in Newark, N.J., and hiked 13 blocks to Foley Ford so they could cast their gaze upon the much-ballyhooed new car that had been kept secret from the American public until its release that day.
It was called the Edsel.
"The line was around the block," recalls Mazzella, now 66 and an executive in a New Jersey consulting firm. "People were coming from all over to see this car. You couldn't see it from the street. The only way you could see it was to walk into the showroom and look behind a curtain."
Mazzella and his truant friends waited their turn, thrilled to be there. "Back then for teenagers, cars were the be-all and end-all," he explains. They'd read countless articles about the Edsel and seen countless ads that touted it as the car of the future. But they hadn't seen the car. Ford kept it secret, building excitement by coyly withholding it from sight, like a strip-tease dancer.
Rapid advances in genetic testing promise to transform medicine, but they may up-end the insurance business in the process “IF YOU can make a good soufflé, you can sequence DNA.” That assertion sounds preposterous, but Hugh Rienhoff should know. When his daughter was born about three years ago, she suffered from a mysterious disability that stunted her muscle development. After many frustrated visits to specialists, Dr Rienhoff, a clinical geneticist and former venture capitalist, decided to sequence a specific part of her genome himself. He discovered that her condition, which most resembled a rare genetic disorder known as Beals's syndrome, was probably due to a new genetic mutation. “Without a lab and for just a few hundred dollars, you can contract or outsource almost all the steps,” he explains. What a well-connected and highly motivated scientist in California can do today the rest of the world will be able to do tomorrow. Indeed, a number of firms are already offering tests for specific ailments (or predispositions to ailments) directly to the public, cutting out the medical middle-man. Dr Rienhoff, for his part, will soon launch MyDaughtersDNA.org, a not-for-profit venture intended to help others to unravel the mysteries of their family's genes in the way that he unravelled those of his own.
Presidential Candidate in waiting Fred Thompson weighs in on Federalism and the "compelling reasons not to look to the federal government first". Video
You can't make this stuff up, folks. Last week, during a speech to a labor group in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told the crowd: "One of the things [Americans] should be asked to do is drive more fuel-efficient vehicles." Asked if by saying that he was specifically telling Americans to give up their SUVs, Edwards replied, "Yes."t's a wonder we Americans haven't choked to death on all the hypocrisy we've been force-fed of late. Naturally, Edwards owns and drives an SUV himself -- several, in fact. In Washington D.C. he often pilots his Cadillac SRX, while at his North Carolina spread -- a 28,000-square-foot manse more than ten times the size of the average American home -- one can easily spot several more those-aren't-Priuses (click to enlarge accompanying photo). Asked at the labor-group speech how he can reconcile asking other Americans to sacrifice while he's living so large, Edwards replied: "I have no apologies whatsoever for what I've done with my life. My entire life has been about the same cause, which is making sure wherever you come from, whatever your family is, whatever the color of your skin, you get a real chance to do something great in this country."
