LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The good news is that our Republican colleagues finally recognized that America must pay its bill and meet its financial obligations without conditions.The bad
news is they only want to do it for three months.”
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
Article, 1A
East to feel the cold until weekend
PORTLAND, Maine - A cold wave with subzero temperatures is expected to keep its icy grip on much of the eastern United States into the weekend before seasonable conditions move in.
A polar air mass blamed for multiple deaths in the Midwest moved into the Northeast on Wednesday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue windchill warnings across upstate New York and northern New England.
In northern New Hampshire, John Arsenault, a Shelburne man who crashed his snowmobile while going over a hill Tuesday and spent a “bitterly cold night” injured and alone on a trail, died Wednesday, the state’s Fish and Game Department said.
The lowest temperatures were expected Wednesday and today, after which conditions should slowly moderate before returning to normal, said John Koch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service regional headquarters in Bohemia, N.Y. For the most part, temperatures have been around 10 to 15 degrees below normal, with windy conditions making it feel colder, he said.
In northern Maine, the temperature dipped to minus 36 Wednesday morning. The weather service was calling for wind chills as low as minus 45.
Sex offender Facebook ban is tossed
INDIANAPOLIS - An Indiana law that bans registered sex offenders from using Facebook and other social-networking sites that can be accessed by children is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The 7th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Chicago overturned a federal judge’s decision upholding the law, saying the state was justified in trying to protect children but that the “blanket ban” went too far by restricting free speech.
The 2008 law “broadly prohibits substantial protected speech rather than specifically targeting the evil of improper communications to minors,” the judges wrote.
“The goal of deterrence does not license the state to restrict far more speech than necessary to target the prospective harm,” they said in a 20-page decision.
The judges noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has also struck down laws that restricted the constitutional right to freedom of expression, such as one that sought to ban leafleting on the premise that it would prevent the dropping of litter.
Returned Coast Guardsman put in brig
HONOLULU - A Coast Guardsman who disappeared more than three months ago and showed up at his home over the weekend was in military custody at Pearl Harbor on Wednesday after being released from the hospital.
Tripler Army Medical Center medically cleared and released Petty Officer 1st Class Russell Matthews on Tuesday night, Coast Guard spokesman Chief Warrant Officer Gene Maestas said.
When Matthews, 36, vanished in October, he was being discharged from the Coast Guard for illegal use of marijuana, Maestas said.
Matthews hasn’t been arrested. But Maestas said Matthews’ unauthorized absence for three months and the circumstances surrounding his disappearance make him a flight risk, so his commanding officer ordered him into pretrial confinement at the naval brig on Ford Island while the Coast Guard investigates his case.
Leahy bill targets ‘straw’ gun-buying
Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation Wednesday that would give law-enforcement officials more tools to investigate so-called straw purchasing of guns.A straw purchaser is someone who buys a firearm for someone else who is prohibited from obtaining one on his own.
The bill, known as the Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act, also would create tough penalties for those who make purchases with the intent to transfer a gun in that manner, particularly in cases involving crimes of violence or drug trafficking.
Leahy announced his bill a day before Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California introduces her own measure, which would ban military-style assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
The Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing of the 113th Congress on gun violence on Wednesday; a witness list will be made public later in the week.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/24/2013