No spanking

Anti-spanking: Jordan Riak, a retired teacher
who calls his 25-year campaign against corporal
punishment and spanking his "life work."

(Kevin Kerr / For the Times)

A spanking ban: are we gonna get it?
Parents say lawmaker's plan to outlaw hitting children under 4 smacks of the nanny state.
By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer
January 20, 2007

SACRAMENTO — Assemblywoman Sally Lieber hit a nerve when she mused publicly this week about making it illegal for parents to strike children younger than 4.

The Bay Area Democrat hasn't introduced a bill yet, but critical calls and e-mails — including some personal attacks — have flooded her offices since her local newspaper wrote about her intention.

Unbowed, Lieber said she would introduce a bill next week to make California the first state to make the hitting of a toddler or baby a crime. Language was still being drafted, but Lieber was considering making a violation a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in county jail.

"It would get us out of the ridiculous situation of having our law saying there's justifiable beating of children," Lieber said, "in the midst of a society where we say we value children and protect them."

Readers of the San Jose Mercury News blasted the idea — "Although I don't believe in spanking, I sure do not need some media-grubbing politician to tell me how to raise my kids," wrote one — but Lieber said she was confident that she would win Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's support.

In a Mercury News interview Thursday, Schwarzenegger described how as a child he "got smacked about everything" by his father, but has never spanked his own four children. He questioned how such a law could be enforced, but said he understood the desire to "get rid of the physical, the brutal behavior that some parents have."

Answering questions after delivering a healthcare speech Friday to Los Angeles business leaders, Schwarzenegger said he and his wife, Maria Shriver, quickly found that threatening to ground their children to do schoolwork worked well. "We can discipline the kids … without hitting," he said.

Schwarzenegger's native Austria banned corporal punishment of children in 1989. Fifteen other nations have done so, most in Europe, according to the nonprofit Center for Effective Discipline in Columbus, Ohio. California is one of 29 states that ban corporal punishment in schools. Most states — including California — ban physical discipline in child-care settings.

Nadine A. Block, a former school psychologist who 25 years ago began pushing for an end to paddling in schools, said a Wisconsin lawmaker unsuccessfully sought 15 years ago to make all hitting of children illegal. A similar effort failed last year in Massachusetts, she said.

But the narrower scope of Lieber's bill and California's progressive tendency give it better odds of success, said Block, executive director of the Center for Effective Discipline.

"Most people know you should not hit babies and babies do not know right from wrong," she said. "Babies you have to distract, remove, supervise, protect."

Lieber's proposal promises to draw national media attention like that triggered in 1994 when then-Assemblyman Mickey Conroy, an Orange County Republican, proposed paddling juvenile graffiti vandals with an 18-by-6-inch wooden paddle. Conroy was sought by dozens of radio talk shows and TV news programs to talk about his bill, which was defeated in committee. Conroy died in 2005.

Lieber said she has gotten plenty of encouragement — including from prosecutors — but Mercury News readers rejected the idea in e-mails posted on the newspaper's website.

"The day that the [government] gives birth to my children, then they have a right to raise them," wrote Esther. "Till then they are mine to do with as I please. I will raise them the way I see fit. If I think that those little butts need a swat … I will be the one to give it to them."

Having seen the way some people fetishize violence against their own children, this is a good idea. Sure, a slight tap for a toddler running towards traffic is hardly a crime, but a lot of people need a reminder that they might want to use other methods with their kids.

We weren't spanked as kids, my mother wasn't spanked. We didn't turn into criminals.

This isn't in the plans for the Kurds

Draft Law Keeps Central Control Over Oil in Iraq

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: January 20, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 19 — After months of tense bargaining, a cabinet-level committee has produced a draft law governing Iraq’s vast oil fields that would distribute all revenues through the federal government and grant Baghdad wide powers in exploration, development and awarding major international contracts.

The draft, described Friday by several members of the committee, could still change and must be approved by the Iraqi cabinet and Parliament before it becomes law. Negotiations have veered off track in the past, and members of the political and sectarian groups with interest in the law could still object as they read it more closely.

But if approved in anything close to its present form, the law would appear to settle a longstanding debate over whether the oil industry and its revenues should be overseen by the central government or the regions dominated by Kurds in the north and Shiite Arabs in the south, where the richest oil fields are located.

The draft comes down firmly on the side of central oversight, a decision that advocates for Iraq’s unity are likely to trumpet as a triumph. Because control of the oil industry touches so directly on the interests of all Iraq’s warring sectarian groups, and therefore the future of the country, the proposed law has been described as the most critical piece of pending legislation.

“This will give us the basis of the unity of this country,” said Ali Baban, the Iraqi planning minister and a member of the Sunni-dominated Tawafaq party who serves on the negotiating committee. “We pushed for the center in Baghdad, but we didn’t neglect the Kurds and other regions,” Mr. Baban said.

They may smile and go along, but the Kurds want Kirkuk and the oil

Provoking Sadr

Main aide of Muqtada al-Sadr arrested

By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 19, 6:33 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces swooped into a mosque complex in east Baghdad on Friday and detained a top aide to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the latest in a series of operations aimed at eviscerating the leadership of the Mahdi Army militia.

The raid drew immediate criticism from the Iraqi government, which complained it had not been consulted. An aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his job as Iraqi leader to al-Sadr's backing, said the operation was not part of a coming joint U.S.-Iraq security drive.

Under the plan, to which President Bush has committed an additional 21,500 American troops, U.S. commanders have been promised a freer hand against both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen.

"There was no coordination with the Iraqi political leadership and this arrest was not part of the new security plan," Sadiq al-Rikabi, the al-Maliki adviser, told Al-Arabiya television. "Coordination with the Iraqi political leadership is needed before conducting such operations that draw popular reactions."

Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji was captured in the early morning raid and his bodyguard was killed in what Abdul-Zahra al-Suweiadi, a senior al-Sadr aide, called a "cowardly act." Al-Sadr's office said al-Darraji was media director for the cleric's political movement and demanded his immediate release.

"America is playing with fire and our patience is beginning to fade," said Abdul-Razzaq al-Nidawi, an al-Sadr aide in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. "This savage barbarian act will not pass peacefully."

The U.S. military, in a statement that did not name al-Darraji or mention the Mahdi Army by name, said special Iraqi army forces operating with U.S. advisers had "captured a high-level, illegal armed group leader" in Baghdad's Baladiyat neighborhood, which is adjacent to Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold.

"Iraqi forces detained him based on credible intelligence that he is the leader of an illegal armed group (involved in) ... the organized kidnapping, torture and murder of Iraqi civilians. The suspect is also reportedly involved in the assassination of numerous Iraqi Security Forces members and government officials," the U.S. statement said.

It said two other suspects were detained for questioning.

Also Friday, the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said he thought some of the extra troops might return home after a few months.

"I think it's probably going to be the summer, late summer, before you get to the point where people in Baghdad feel safe in their neighborhoods," Casey said at a news conference at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq with visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Asked how long the additional American forces would remain, Casey replied, "I believe the projections are late summer."

The first group of extra troops — a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division — has just arrived in Baghdad, and Gates said it was too early to predict how Bush's plan for quelling the sectarian violence in the capital will work.

Four other brigades are to be sent to Iraq between now and May, assuming the Iraqis follow through on their commitment to bring three additional Iraqi army brigades into Baghdad and to allow raids against all illegal militias.

Gates' daylong visit was not announced in advance. The defense chief met with U.S. commanders and their allied counterparts as the Bush troop buildup was encountering widespread opposition in Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said Friday that the Iraq war "is not an obligation of the American people in perpetuity." The president, she said, "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder."

Democratic support was building around a resolution that would rebuff Bush's plans for more troops to Iraq, and more Republicans were looking for ways to sign on to the measure.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper, al-Sadr said the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown already has begun. And he confirmed reports that 400 Mahdi Army men have been arrested.

The La Repubblica interviewer quoted al-Sadr as saying he feared for his life and stayed on the move constantly. His aides have told The Associated Press he seldom sleeps in the same place for two nights in succession.

Al-Sadr said his militias would not fight back immediately because Islam forbids killing during the Muslim holy month of Muharram, which starts Friday for Sunnis and Saturday for Shiites.

"Let them kill us. For a true believer there is no better moment than this to die: Heaven is ensured," he was quoted as saying. "After Muharram, we'll see."

Al-Sadr said he is being targeted.

"For this reason, I have moved my family to a secure location. I even have had a will drawn up, and I move continuously in a way that only few can know where I am," he was quoted as saying by La Repubblica.

Jenna writes a book

First Twin Jenna Shops a Book
Jenna Bush and the First Lady

You can soon add the title of author to first daughter Jenna Bush's résumé. Whispers learns that the 25-year-old blond twin of Barbara Bush is shopping a book proposal to major publishers in New York City. We're told that the project is vague and that she's initially only gauging publishers' interest. The White House wouldn't comment, but others say it will be a young-adult book based on the former grade school teacher's experiences with charity causes in Latin America. It ought to sell: She's represented by super lawyer-agent Robert Barnett, who squired her around publishing offices in the Big Apple earlier this month. The profits will go to charity.

Do people realize how disliked Jenna Bush is?

How many people think her ass belongs in Iraq?

Who cares if she writes a book?

The Clash - I Fought The Law

the jam - that's entertainment

Elvis Costello -