"Foster mother held in baby's death; Conn. woman, 40, worked for state children's agency" by Susan Haigh, Associated Press | July 18, 2008
HARTFORD - An employee of the state Department of Children and Families has been charged in the death of a 7-month-old foster child, prompting the agency's leader to seek the worker's firing and announce reforms.
State Police charged Suzanne Listro, 40, of Mansfield, Conn., with manslaughter Wednesday in the May 19 death of Michael Brown Jr., who suffered a blunt trauma head injury at her home.
Listro, a children's services consultant for the department, received a foster care provider's license from the agency earlier this year, despite having been investigated twice within the past two years on allegations she abused another child she adopted, Susan Hamilton, department commissioner, said. Those allegations were not substantiated.
But in the name of the children, we have tyranny coming to Massachusetts!
TUCKED AWAY in an uncontroversial bill lengthening sentences for sex offenders in Massachusetts is a provision that expands the right of law enforcement officials to poke around - at their own discretion - in citizens' telephone, e-mail, and Internet records. Governor Patrick should tell legislators to drop or scale back this clause before he signs the overall bill.
Since 1966, prosecutors have been able to get telephone records without warrants. But getting access to e-mail and Internet records has required a grand jury subpoena. Attorney General Martha Coakley, who favors the expanded authority, sees it as simply a case of updating the tools prosecutors have to keep pace with new technology. She emphasizes, correctly, that the bill does not grant prosecutors access to any content. For that, a warrant is needed.
But all technologies are not created equal. It is not clear that records of email and Internet use are so similar to telephone records that prosecutors should have the same broad right to examine them - without first convincing a judge or grand jury that doing so is critical to a criminal case. Under the bill, prosecutors would need only to claim "reasonable grounds to believe" that the records are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."
Coakley refers to the measure's potential usefulness in investigating cases of child pornography, online threats, and identity theft. But nothing in the bill limits this new power to such cases. Her office cites the 1966 law as a precedent. While lawmakers sought it originally as a tool in bookmaking investigations, the wording of the law did not restrict its use to such cases. But this doesn't mean that, 32 years later, in an age of heightened sensitivity about privacy, the public wants prosecutors to have the same latitude to look at email and Internet records in connection with any form of criminal investigation.
The power that Coakley is seeking is quite different from the authority that Congress has unwisely granted the Bush administration to eavesdrop on telephone conversations without a warrant. But the measures have two elements in common. Each grants blanket immunity to the telecommunications companies involved, removing any incentive for them to blow the whistle on abusive practices. And each, by freeing officials of the need to get a warrant, eliminates the checks and balances that the court system can supply when prosecutors go on a fishing expedition. The governor should reject this bill and have the Legislature design one that is more focused on specific Internet-related crimes."And as if the society wasn't sick enough, see what a GREAT JOB the STATE DID in protecting a mother and her child?
"Woman in W.Pa. baby mystery partially eviscerated
PITTSBURGH (AP) - An autopsy on a woman's body found in an apartment linked to a mystery newborn baby found that the woman was partially eviscerated and her uterus was cut open, authorities said Saturday.
The body was found Friday in an apartment of another woman who showed up at a hospital with a newborn she falsely claimed was hers. Investigators were trying to determine the woman's identity, how she died and whether she was the mother of the baby that Andrea Curry-Demus allegedly told police she bought for $1,000.
The victim appeared to have been dead for about two days before she was found, Allegheny County Medical Examiner Karl Williams said in a statement. The woman's hands and feet were bound with duct tape, and her face was covered with a plastic material that had also been secured with duct tape. A placenta was recovered at the apartment.
The woman's body was found Friday after reporters called authorities about a foul odor coming from inside Curry-Demus' apartment. Police had been at the building Thursday night, but did not enter that apartment."
And why isn't the article complete?
Why must I CONSTANTLY TRACK DOWN REWRITTEN and REEDITED news items, folks?
What is with the CENSORSHIP, MSM?
"In the early 1990s, Currry-Demus pleaded guilty to charges relating to abducting a baby and stabbing a pregnant woman in a plot to steal her unborn baby, a newspaper reported.
Curry-Demus pleaded guilty in 1991 to various charges stemming from both incidents and was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison. She was paroled in August 1998 and began serving a 10-year probation term, the Tribune-Review reported.
My advice to you, American? Buy a GUN!
