QUOTE OF THE DAY “I call it the terrorist lottery loophole.” Rep. Mike Rogers,
the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, on surveillance on anyone inside the U.S., except in rare court-approved instances, having
to be dropped by the National Security Agency and handed off to the FBI Article, this page2 women sue for marriage recognition
PHILADELPHIA - Two women who wed in Massachusetts before moving to Pennsylvania asked a federal court on Thursday to force their new home state to recognize the marriage, as it does for opposite-sex couples.
The plaintiffs, Isabelle Barker and Cara Palladino, say they are being denied about 600 marriage-related benefits, from filing joint state tax returns to co-owning property. They also have encountered reams of paperwork for health-care coverage and prepared legal documents to protect the interests of their son - red tape they say wouldn’t be needed if their marriage was recognized.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the northeastern U.S.
without same-sex marriage or civil unions. Like 36 other states, it also does not recognize gay marriages performed legally in other jurisdictions. The lawsuit filed Thursday asks a judge to declare unconstitutional the state law barring recognition of such unions.
Ex-teacher freed after 30 days for rape
BILLINGS, Mont. - A former Montana high school teacher was released from prison Thursday after completing a 30-day sentence for raping a 14-year-old student, a term that is under review by the state’s high court and has critics calling for a judge’s removal.
Stacey Rambold, 54, left the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge after serving the sentence handed down byDistrict Judge G. Todd Baugh of Billings for the 2007 rape of Cherice Moralez.
The judge was criticized last month over the sentence’s leniency and comments he made that appeared to pin some of the blame on the student.
The teen committed suicide in 2010 before Rambold went to trial.
State prosecutors are appealing the sentence, saying Rambold should have received a minimum of two years. But barring new offenses, the former teacher has served his time and will stay out of prison pending the appeal.
Plan set to power rail line after failure
NEW YORK - Officials announced a plan to supply partial power to a heavily traveled line of the nation’s second-largest commuter railroad as tens of thousands of commuters took to the highways, turning Interstate 95 into a virtual parking lot for much of Thursday, and continued to scramble for alternative routes after a power failure disrupted service along the line serving the densely populated Connecticut suburbs and New York City.
New York-based utility Consolidated Edison was setting up three transformers to try tod supply the needed 27,000 volts of power to a high-voltage line that failed Wednesday at a suburban New York Metro-North Railroad station, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said at a news conference Thursday evening in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.
But it was unclear how many electric trains could be served by the transformers’ power, which would take power from lines in residential areas and step them up to reach the needed 27,000 volts.
Farmers face charges in listeria outbreak
DENVER - The owners of a Colorado cantaloupe farm were arrested Thursday on charges stemming from a 2011 listeria epidemic that killed 33 people in one of the nation’s deadliest outbreaks of food-borne illness.
Federal prosecutors said brothers Eric and Ryan Jensen were arrested on misdemeanor charges of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce.
Prosecutors said the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that the Jensens didn’t adequately clean the cantaloupe.
Criminal charges in food-poisoning cases are rare, said attorney William Marler, who represents many of the listeria victims in civil cases. Only four other people have faced such charges in the past decade, he said.
“The real significance of the case against the Jensens is they are being charged with misdemeanors, which do not require intent, just the fact that they shipped contaminated food using interstate commerce,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/27/2013