4VF News – Daily News Channel – Page 2114

U.S. reverses policy, drops ‘enemy combatant’ term

In a dramatic break with the Bush administration, the Justice Department on Friday announced it is doing away with the designation of "enemy combatant," which allowed the United States to hold suspected terrorists at length without criminal charges.

In a court filing in Washington, the Justice Department said it is developing a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. The announcement says the Justice Department will no longer rely on the the president’s authority as commander in chief, but on authority specifically granted by Congress. And the government document says that individuals who support al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was “substantial.” The category of “enemy combatant” had been an important aspect of the Bush administration’s legal construct for dealing with terrorism suspects.

Why Conservative GOP Governors Are Spurning Stimulus Money

Few U.S. politicians enjoy fiscal grandstanding more than South Carolina
Governor Mark Sanford. Five years ago, the conservative Republican, who was
first elected in 2002, brought piglets under each arm to the state
legislature to protest pork-barrel spending. In heavily GOP South Carolina,
antics like that helped get him re-elected in 2006. So it’s hardly
surprising that Sanford, now chairman of the Republican Governors
Association, is one of the loudest voices in opposition to President Obama’s
$787 billion federal stimulus package. In fact, for Sanford it wasn’t enough
to declare this week that he’d reject a quarter of South Carolina’s $2.8
billion share of the funds unless he could use it to pare down the state’s
debt. On Thursday he even felt compelled to liken the stimulus to the
hyper-inflationary policies of Zimbabwe’s longtime leader, Robert Mugabe.

“What you’re doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more
money that we don’t have and send it to different states, we’ll create
jobs,” Sanford said. “If that’s the case, why isn’t Zimbabwe a rich place”
Obama’s stimulus “logic,” Sanford argued, “is being applied there with
little effect.”

But Sanford’s critics might ask their own rhetorical question: If the governor’s notoriously tightfisted ways are the answer, why isn’t South Carolina a rich place, instead of the state
with the nation’s second highest unemployment rate and crumbling schools, as Obama has noted more than once since taking office Even fellow
conservative Republicans in South Carolina were troubled by Sanford’s
Zimbabwe remarks, including 29-year veteran state senator and finance
committee chairman Hugh Leatherman. “That was one of the most asinine
comments any elected official could make,” Leatherman, 78, told TIME. “I’m
as conservative a person as ever walked the planet, but I also consider
myself a compassionate person who tries to make sure our people are taken
care of. Our people are hurting, and I’m going to fight as hard as I can to
get as much of that federal money into this state as I can.”

Leatherman, whom Sanford has reproached in the past because of state budget shortfalls, on Thursday introduced a measure to take advantage of a provision
in the federal stimulus legislation that lets state legislatures override a
governor’s rejection of the funds. It may well pass, especially since the
Republican speaker of South Carolina’s House, Bobby Harrell, is also at odds
with Sanford over the stimulus.

Still, most South Carolinians, like most Americans, know the stimulus is just part of a larger fight for the currently confused soul of the Republican Party. Now that Sanford has upped
the rhetorical ante, many wonder just how polarizing he and other GOP
governors like Texas’ Rick Perry — who announced Thursday he’ll also
decline a portion of his state’s stimulus money — intend to become in their
bid to preserve conservative fiscal principle and, perhaps in Sanford’s
case, position themselves as the Republicans’ presidential pick in 2012.

The debate over how to escape the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression seems a
battle that Sanford, 48, has been preparing for his entire political life.
Since leaving real estate to become a congressman in 1994 — the year Newt
Gingrich and the GOP stormed Capitol Hill pledging to rein in federal
largesse — Sanford has been the consummate fiscal hawk. He slept on an
office cot rather than rent a Washington, D.C., apartment; and, to his
credit, he limited himself to three terms in office to avoid assuming the Beltway’s
prodigal habits. In his 2000 book The Trust Committed to Me, he warned that
“politicians in our nation’s capital were unable — or unwilling — to control
spending. The more money the politicians sunk into their schemes, the more
expensive it got for the rest of us. I couldn’t expand my businesses because
the politicians kept expanding theirs.”

See pictures of the recession of 1958.
See pictures of the stock market crash of 1929.

Turkey bombs suspected Kurdish rebel targets in Iraq

Israelis demonstrate at the prime minister's home holding flags of Gilad Shalit.
Turkish warplanes bombed suspected Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Thursday, a military spokesman said Friday.

They gathered at a protest tent erected by Noam and Aviva Shalit in front of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s house in Jerusalem and demanded that he develop a deal to release the soldier. The Shalits have moved from their home in Israel’s Galilee region to the tent across from Olmert’s home, a step designed to increase pressure on the government to get their son freed. They have vowed to stay there until Olmert ends his term as prime minister. Palestinian militants crossed into Israel from Gaza in 2006 and kidnapped Shalit. Talks on a deal to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Shalit have been ongoing through Egyptian mediation. Olmert has said that he is committed, in the time that he has left, to try to bring back Shalit. Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel returned to Israel on Friday after spending a number of days in Cairo in an effort to move the process forward. Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said the prime minister “has no illusions that the process will end in success, but it is ongoing.” After Shalit’s capture, Israel launched a military incursion into Gaza to try to rescue him.

Israelis protest for captured soldier

Israelis demonstrate at the prime minister's home holding flags of Gilad Shalit.
Hundreds of people in Israel made a show of support Friday for the parents of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

The Grass-Roots Marijuana Wars

Don Duncan says he is not a pot smoker. “I haven’t in eight or nine years now,” says Duncan, 37. “It wasn’t the right thing for me.” Which is ironic, since he spends most of his day around plenty of cannabis as part owner of a West Hollywood, Calif. dispensary of medical marijuana, a storefront operation where as many as 100 customers — Duncan is careful to call them patients — line up daily with letters from their doctors to procure products with names like L.A. Confidential and Purple Urkel.

Lately, however, Duncan directed more energy toward his role as California director of Americans for Safe Access, a group of merchants, doctors and patients that aims to make it easier to dispense and obtain marijuana for medical purposes. The organization’s central mission: fighting U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids on dispensaries.

California is the largest of 12 states allowing marijuana for certain medical uses, but the federal government considers all marijuana illegal. The conflicting statutes have led to an uncomfortable existence for California’s growing ranks of marijuana providers. “At any moment, the DEA can come kicking down the door,” says Duncan.

That is just what happened on May 27 to Virgil Edward Grant III, 41, owner of six L.A.-area dispensaries. Grant and his wife Psyhra Monique Grant, 33, were charged with 41 counts, including, drug conspiracy and money laundering and aiding and abetting the distribution of marijuana near a school. Grant pleaded not guilty on June 2. An employee, Stanley Jerome Cole, 39, pleaded not guilty to charges of selling a pound of marijuana to an undercover agent from the back door of one dispensary.

Timothy J. Landrum, special agent in charge of the DEA in Los Angeles, called the suspects “nothing more than drug traffickers.” Prosecutors say Cole sold marijuana to a motorist charged with gross vehicular manslaughter in connection with a December accident near Ventura, Calif. His truck hit a parked car on a highway shoulder, killing the driver and seriously injuring a California Highway Patrol officer. Police said the driver was under the influence of marijuana that he said he had purchased at a dispensary in Compton, where one of Grant’s operations is located.

Even before the Grants’ arrest, Duncan’s group had stepped up its efforts to fight the DEA, securing letters from six California mayors to U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee, requesting that the DEA halt the raids. In an April letter, Conyers asked the DEA to explain its use of “paramilitary-style enforcement raids” against medical marijuana patients and suppliers in California. Duncan’s group also backs a California state senate bill that would callon the federal government to respect the state’s marijuana laws.

In fact, the day the Grants were arrested, Duncan was at L.A.’s city hall with a group of protesters delivering a petition to enlist the help of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa . When they learned that DEA agents were at one of Grant’s dispensaries, just a few blocks away, the group quickly moved to the dispensary, surrounding its entrance while the DEA agents were still inside. The bust proceeded as Los Angeles Police Department officers stood by, but also not interfering with the peaceful rally.

Duncan has been an activist for more than a decade, starting out by helping to gather signatures for the 1996 initiative that legalized marijuana for medical purposes. At first skeptical, the Texas-born son of a physician and a nurse was moved by meeting a Berkeley schoolteacher who used marijuana to cope with the pain of glaucoma. “I thought, ‘this isn’t somebody wanting to get high — this is real,'” recalls Duncan. “I want to help.”

Four years ago, he moved to Los Angeles, helping to open a dispensary and working to recruit activists and local politicians to the cause. Now he does that from a small office just upstairs from his four-room dispensary, which sits next to a Tattoo parlor and around the corner from a Target store. Two beefy security guards watch the door and a smiling receptionist sits next to a case displaying bongs and other paraphernalia. Inside, patients examine samples in glass cases. Some day, Duncan says, this will be as normal as visiting Walgreens. For now, he’s less focused on his inventory than on his group’s efforts to supply activists with “raid kits” — protest signs, bullhorns, and sunscreen — so they can show up on a moment’s notice to confront DEA agents. Says Duncan: “I predict we’re going to have a very long summer.”

Biden announces $1.3 billion for Amtrak

Vice President Joe Biden continued the administration’s rollout of the recently passed economic stimulus package Friday, highlighting $1.3 billion in federal funding for Amtrak.

The money for the rail service, which carried almost 29 million passengers in the previous fiscal year, will go primarily to infrastructure repair and improvement. The $787 billion stimulus plan includes a total of $8 billion for improvements in rail service, a crucial investment to help ease traffic in the congested northeast corridor running from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, Biden argued. It is “a necessity for a great nation to have a great [rail] passenger system,” Biden said. “I’m tired of apologizing for help for Amtrak. … It’s an absolute national treasure and necessity.” The $1.8 billion will roughly double the size of Amtrak’s capital investment program over the next two years, according to the vice president’s office. Leading Republican critics of Amtrak argue that the money is a poor use of taxpayer dollars and that the often-struggling rail service should instead be stripped of public money in an effort to force changes that would make it more profitable.

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Administration warns of tighter reins on stimulus

Amtrak is “poorly run and poorly managed,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Tuesday. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a train service, but we [shouldn’t] give additional money and reward incompetency and inefficiency. If that’s what the stimulus is about, we’re in a whole lot worse trouble.” Coburn argued that it is fundamentally unfair to ask taxpayers to heavily subsidize one mode of public transportation when other modes operate independently. “If everybody in America says we ought to subsidize Amtrak, [then] let’s start subsidizing all our airplanes again. Let’s subsidize our taxi-cab rides. Let’s subsidize everything.” Amtrak’s financial struggles are more a result of inadequate public support than managerial incompetence, responded Ross Capon, head of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. “By and large, this organization has survived an incredible amount of low funding [for] years,” Capon said. There is very little rail service in states like Oklahoma, “so it might not be surprising that one of Amtrak’s fiercest critics comes from a state that, relatively speaking, would not notice it if Amtrak disappeared tomorrow.” Biden frequently commuted on Amtrak between Washington and his home near Wilmington, Delaware, during his more than three decades in the Senate. In his remarks Friday, Biden argued that every modern passenger rail service in the world depends on subsidies. He also claimed that U.S. highways and airports are actually subsidized more than the railway system. “So let’s get something straight here. Amtrak has not been at the trough. Amtrak has been left out,” he said. During the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama pledged to support a national network of faster passenger trains. He has proposed an additional five-year, $5 billion investment in high-speed rail as part of the administration’s suggested fiscal year 2010 budget. An average of more than 78,000 passengers ride Amtrak each day, according the rail’s press office.

When the Super-Rich Go Green, They Do It Big

The very rich are different from you or me. For one thing, their carbon footprints are bigger. Between their private jets, fleets of cars and large houses, the wealthy tend to suck up more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources. And that’s not even counting the environmental impact of the businesses that built their bank accounts.

But as Edward Humes makes clear in his new book Eco-Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires Who Are Saving Our Planet a high-income tax bracket gives the rich another advantage: a platform on which they can advance the causes that matter to them. And, believe it or not, a surprising number of super-wealthy Americans are using their money to fight for what Humes calls “a secret plan to save the Earth.”

These are Humes’ “eco-barons” — the modern-day counterpart to the 19th-century robber barons who helped set the U.S. on its resource-gobbling path — and they’re using their vast wealth and will to help protect the Earth’s quickly vanishing wilderness. The eco-barons’ mission, Humes says, has been all the more important at a time when Washington shrank from its role as environmental guardian. “In an era in which government has been either broke, indifferent or actively hostile to environmental causes,” writes Humes, “a band of visionaries…are using their wealth, their energy, their celebrity and their knowledge of law and science to persuade, and sometimes force, the United States and the world to take a new direction.”

In his book, Humes profiles an assortment of eco-barons — from businessmen to inventors — and discovers that what binds them is a “clear view of the insanity attached to the way we live,” he says. Doug Tompkins, who founded the clothing line Esprit — then left it behind, still wildly successful, for conservation in the 1990s — is the quintessential eco-baron and the source of Hume’s best writing. Tompkins was always an outdoor adventurer — even while heading up Esprit, he would regularly disappear for months-long trips to the forests of South America — so when he burned out in the corporate world, Tompkins took his fortune, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and began steadily buying acre after acre of threatened virgin forest in Chile. But he met with considerable resistance from the Chilean government and media — the idea of a rich gringo coming down to South America to protect nature, not exploit it, seemed so absurd to post-Pinochet Chileans that they suspected Tompkins was up to something.

He was, but it wasn’t what the Chileans thought. Tompkins and his wife Kristine DeWitt, the former CEO of the ultragreen clothing company Patagonia, were planning to create a nature sanctuary in the middle of Chilean rainforest. Slowly, gradually, as Humes aptly chronicles, they convinced the government that they wished nothing more than to protect one of the most beautiful and heretofore untouched stretches of forest in the world — what the Chilean poet Mario Miranda Soussi once called the “Patagonia of infinite land and water.” Today Tompkins and his wife own two million acres in Chile and Argentina centered on the private nature sanctuary of Pumalin Park, which Tompkins plans to turn over to the Chilean people eventually. “He’s preserved more rainforest than anyone else on Earth,” says Humes.

Eco-Barons profiles other do-gooders, including Andy Frank who created the plug-in hybrid car, but those stories are less compelling than Humes’s description of Tompkins. The book starts to feel repetitive as we’re introduced to one extraordinary green after another. But Humes’ ultimate point is well taken: at the very moment when the government began abdicating its responsibilities on the environment, the eco-barons stepped in. “We’d be years behind where we are now without these individuals,” says Humes.

We may no longer need them to lead the way, now that the Obama Administration has promised the country that its environmental agencies are back on the job. And in a recession, there will be few barons, eco- or otherwise, left standing. But even with a friend in the White House, the environmental movement still faces hurdles, from oil companies to civic passivity, so there will always be a role for those with the will — and sometimes the wealth — to make a difference.

See TIME’s pictures of the week.

An American Pastime: Smoking Pot

The Netherlands, with its permissive marijuana laws, may be known as the cannabis capital of the world. But a survey published this month in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science, suggests that the Dutch don’t actually experiment with pot as much as one would expect. Despite tougher drug policies in the U.S., Americans were twice as likely to have tried marijuana than the Dutch, according to the survey. In fact, Americans were more likely to have tried marijuana or cocaine than people in any of the 16 other countries, including France, Spain, South Africa, Mexico and Colombia, that the survey covered.

Researchers found that 42% of people surveyed in the U.S. had tried marijuana at least once, and 16% had tried cocaine. About 20% of residents surveyed in the Netherlands, by contrast, reported having tried pot; in Asian countries, such as Japan and China, marijuana use was virtually “non-existent,” the study found. New Zealand was the only other country to claim roughly the same percentage of pot smokers as the U.S., but no other nation came close to the proportion of Americans who reported trying cocaine.

Why the high numbers Jim Anthony, chair of the department of epidemiology at Michigan State University and an author of the study, says U.S. drug habits have to do, in part, with the country’s affluence — many Americans can afford to spend their income on recreational drugs. Another factor may be an increasing awareness that marijuana may be less toxic than other drugs, such as tobacco or alcohol. . As for the popularity of cocaine, the reason may simply be the close proximity of South America, the world’s only coca plant producer. And finally, Anthony notes, it’s a matter of culture: the U.S. is home to a huge baby boomer population that came of age when experimenting with drugs was a part of the social fabric. “It became a more mass-population phenomenon during a period when there were a large number of young people who were in the process of creating a culture of their own,” Anthony says.

The survey also found that more Americans not only experimented with drugs, but also tended to try pot and cocaine for the first time at a younger age compared with people in other countries. Just over 20% of Americans reported trying pot by age 15 and nearly 3% had tried cocaine by the same age. Those percentages jumped to 54% and 16%, respectively, by age 21. That finding isn’t surprising, says Dr. Richard Schottenfeld, a professor of psychiatry and a drug expert at the Yale University School of Medicine, since peer influence has a significant impact on the prevalence of drug use. In the Netherlands, for example, there is a large, vocal and homogeneous conservative population that is staunchly opposed to marijuana, says Schottenfeld. And anti-drug activists have made recent attempts to tighten the country’s cannabis policies.

Yet experts say the findings of the new survey don’t fairly reflect the success or failure of any particular drug policy. The survey asked only whether people had ever tried drugs in their lifetime — it did not ask about habitual use. “For drug policy, what you look at is regular use,” says Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Somebody having tried pot in 1968 in college doesn’t really have much to do with what the current drug use picture in the United States is.”

Though current findings may not provide enough context to judge existing drug policy, Anthony says they do highlight some valid issues, especially since stringent laws don’t appear to impact whether kids experiment with drugs. “One of the questions raised by research of this type is whether Americans will want to continue supporting the incarceration of young people who use small amounts of marijuana,” Anthony says.

The ongoing study, which surveyed more than 85,000 people in 17 countries, is part of a larger project through the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative. Anthony says further research about the frequency of worldwide drug use, and new data from additional countries will be released in the future.

Father gets 15 to life for fatal shaking of New Year’s baby

Camryn Jakeb Wilson was the first baby born in 2008 in Summit County, Ohio, arriving at 12:33 a.m. January 1.
The father of a New Year’s Day baby pleaded guilty Thursday to killing the infant by violently shaking him.

Craig Wilson’s guilty plea in Akron, Ohio, to murder and child endangering charges ended a yearlong saga surrounding the death of Camryn Jakeb Wilson, the first baby born in Summit County, Ohio, in 2008. “This type of crime is always difficult to understand, but today I do hope that Camryn’s mother has some closure and that today is one step toward healing,” Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh said. Camryn’s mother, Crystal Wilson, had left the 10-week-old infant in his father’s care on March 12, 2008, while she attended a meeting. When she returned to their Cuyahoga Falls home she found Camryn in a baby swing, listless and breathing abnormally while her husband of 10 months sat on a couch. Doctors at Akron Children’s Hospital quickly determined that Camryn had suffered traumatic brain injuries and bleeding in his eyes that could only have been caused by violent shaking. Learn about shaken baby syndrome » Camryn died in his mother’s arms, surrounded by other family members, on March 25, 2008, shortly after being removed from life support.

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Craig Wilson, 29, confessed to police that he was frustrated after an argument with his wife over his ex-girlfriend and a child he had with her. He shook and squeezed Camryn before laying him in the swing but hadn’t intended to hurt the infant, he told police. The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome estimates that as many as 1,400 babies annually are injured or killed by shaking.

Links
National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome

Prevent Child Abuse America

Shaken Baby Task Force

Tribute page: The Children of Shaken Baby Syndrome

Despite the confession, the case dragged on for a year after an autopsy showed Camryn had suffered broken ribs prior to the fatal shaking. The finding raised the possibility that another person had previously abused Camryn and perhaps contributed to his death, said Jonathan T. Sinn, Craig Wilson’s defense attorney. See photos of the family » Craig Wilson’s trial was scheduled to begin Monday. Sinn had hoped to negotiate a plea deal with prosecutors that would send Craig Wilson to prison for a flat 20-year term, but in the end, prosecutors wouldn’t budge.

“From the moment my client was arrested, he took responsibility for his actions and for the killing of his child,” Sinn said. “From a human perspective, that’s very admirable. From a defense perspective, it makes it difficult to mount a defense when somebody acknowledges completely their guilt.” Judge Lynne Callahan sentenced Wilson to 15 years to life. He is unlikely to be paroled in less than 20 years, Sinn said.

Shoe-thrower fans unite online

A Lebanese student in Beirut attends a December rally to support the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist.
They’ve sung his praises on social networking pages, calling him a "hero," "the greatest man of our time," "a legend." They’ve said he deserves to be knighted and should be decorated with medals. They’ve cried out for his amnesty and have even proposed serving time for him.

The man many hundreds of thousands of Facebook users honor is no other than Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison for hurling his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush. The double-whammy size 10 shoe toss, neither of which hit Bush, took place in December at a news conference in Baghdad, Iraq. In many traditional Middle East circles, throwing shoes at someone is considered a grave insult. To do this to an American president surrounded by Secret Service agents, no less, was as shocking to riveted viewers who watched the footage later as it was to the president himself. Watch video about the shoe thrower’s sentencing » “First of all, it’s got to be one of the most weird moments of my presidency,” Bush said later. “Here I am getting ready to answer questions from the free press in a democratic Iraq, and a guy stands up and throws his shoe. … I’m not angry with the system. I believe that a free society is emerging, and a free society is necessary for our own security and peace.” Expressing their own freedom on Facebook, a worldwide fan base rose up to laud al-Zaidi’s actions. They formed hundreds of fan pages and groups, big and small, serious and light. One is even called the “Shoe-Throwing Appreciation Society.” Mike Trainor, 28, was watching a football game when a news break brought footage of the incident across his TV screen. “I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen,” said Trainor, a Queens, New York, stand-up comedian behind “Guy Who Threw His Shoes at Bush,” which has attracted nearly 270,000 fans. The comedian may have created the post for laughs, but he quickly learned how loaded the issue was. “It grew into this crazy thing,” in which Bush supporters began to weigh in on message boards calling al-Zaidi supporters “a threat to America” and insults in reaction flew, he said. “It shows people have a lot of passionate feelings about it, that’s for sure.” One message board on his page, titled “YOU GUYS HATE AMERICA,” drew 384 posts in reaction. The creator started it with these words: “seriously you guys are all a**holes. why would you be happy about some freaking foreigner throwing his shoes at the leader of the free world I don’t care if he’s dumb he’s my president of my wonderful country [sic].” And interspersed amid the groups of fans were those that spoke out against the al-Zaidi worship. “That shoe thrower is not a hero,” attracted 94 members, many of them with Arabic names. One London poster said the shoe thrower “did nothing but bring shame upon us iraqis [sic],” and another from Halifax, Nova Scotia added, “I dont care about bush but this guy was very disrespectful to the Iraqi Prime minister who was standing right next to him [sic].” But the shoe-thrower fans, at least in the world of Facebook, seem to far outweigh those who decried his actions. “This site is intended to express the appreciation of those who share the frustration and anger that you expressed when you blew Mr Bush those boot-kisses [sic],” reads the description on “Thank you Muntadhar al-Zaidi,” a nearly 500-member page created by a teacher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

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Protests of the journalist’s arrest and now sentence brought Arab and Muslim demonstrators to the streets. But what Facebook has shown is that al-Zaidi’s angry expression resonated with those beyond his religion and region. From England and Uruguay to China and Bush’s own red, white and blue, supporters have made noise, at least virtually. “We’re talking about a common man, like me and you,” who was “tired of years of lies from a self-called ‘freedom saver,’ ” said Matteo Ferigo of Padova, Italy, the 30-year-old creator behind “Save Muntadhar al-Zaidi,” which has 116 members. “I understand that his act was not so civil, polite or ‘politically correct,’ but I also understand how Iraqi people can see George Bush and what he represents to them.” Ari Vais, the creator of the page, “Free the Iraqi shoe throwing journalist!,” said his own history taught him the value of free expression. “I was born in the Soviet Union, where dissent like this was cracked down on severely,” said Vais, a 39-year-old Queens, New York, musician. “We came to America when I was a boy because we knew that people should be free.” What al-Zaidi did was a reflection of the democracy Vais thought Bush intended to spread. “We were supposed to be liberators, and what America stands for is freedom of self-expression and human rights,” he said. “All he did was throw a couple shoes. And he missed! It was political theater and not jail-time stuff.” But it was serious business. Anyone, no matter where they live, would be tackled by Secret Service and face charges for such an attempted assault on the president. And if al-Zaidi had done this to Saddam Hussein, one has to wonder what would have come of the man who’s now celebrated. The shoe throwing, because it was so shocking, proved great fodder for late-night talk shows. Comedians, beyond Trainor, had a field day with this one. It inspired online games for people who wanted to play al-Zaidi. Matt Love of Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada called the Iraqi journalist’s move “an act of great courage” and said that in showing his disdain for Bush, “He spoke for many millions of people.” The 52-year-old retired Washington state department of transportation worker believes everyone can learn from the shoe thrower. Commenting Thursday on several fan pages, including one calling for a Nobel Peace Prize for al-Zaidi, Love suggested that people turn out for Bush’s March 17 speech at the TELUS Convention Centre in Calgary. “Lets [sic] show some solidarity…and lob some loafers,” he wrote. “Will the Canadian government lock us up for 3 years Let’s find out.”

Reached later in the day, however, he assured CNN that this was written tongue-in-cheek. “Let me be clear,” Love said. “I won’t be throwing shoes at anyone.”