U.S. law enforcement will train local and state police officers from Mexico as part of the next phase of the two countries’ joint fight against transnational drug cartels, a U.S. State Department official said Wednesday.

U.S. agencies have been training Mexican federal police on both sides of the border for several years. However, William Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said it is clear that local forces face the most concentrated violence, especially in northern Mexico, and are in the most need of training.

“If we do not address these problems cooperatively today, we will be addressing them on our own front doorsteps in five years,” Brownfield said.

Brownfield was in the Texas border town of Laredo on Wednesday, signing an agreement outlining how deputies from the Webb County Sheriff’s Office could spend periods of three months, six months or more training their counterparts in Mexico.

It was the first such agreement the State Department has signed with a local law enforcement agency anywhere on the U.S.-Mexico border. Brownfield said more trainers are needed and the high rate of bilingual deputies with border experience made Webb County an attractive place to start such a program.

Police training has been a significant part of the Merida Initiative, which outlined the U.S. partnership with Mexico and Central America in the drug war and has committed $1.4 billion since 2008. However, the focus now shifts to historically out-gunned and ill-prepared local forces ducking bullets and facing ominous threats on a daily basis.

Mexico received $327 million for police training in fiscal 2009 from the U.S. State Department through Merida, placing it behind only Afghanistan and Iraq in total funds received for police training from the departments of State or Defense, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office in April.

Details of the proposed training programs have not been worked out, but Brownfield envisions three or four training centers in Mexico. He is holding complementary meetings with Mexican officials on this trip to begin working out the program’s shape. He said he spoke with officials in Juarez on Monday and will hold similar meetings in Monterrey Thursday.

Chihuahua and Nuevo Leon states, respectively, have been two of Mexico’s hardest hit by drug gang violence.

According to official figures, at least 35,000 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched his crackdown on organized crime. Other sources, including local media, say the number is closer to 40,000. The federal government has not released an update of its numbers since December.

U.S. involvement in Mexico has drawn attention there recently after Mexico’s government confirmed that U.S. intelligence agents operate there, analyzing and exchanging information. The New York Times had reported that CIA agents and former U.S. military personnel are working at a Mexican military base in the fight against drug gangs.

Brownfield stressed that involvement of U.S. trainers will come only with Mexican approval and that the training centers would be under Mexican authority. He also said a longer-term vision could include pairing trainers from an agency such as the Webb County Sheriff’s Office with a National Guard deployment from Texas. The National Guard has been active in the drug war on the U.S. side of the border in intelligence analysis.

The agreement signed Wednesday “sets guidelines for the Webb County Sherriff’s Office to train, advise and mentor international law enforcement agencies and officers.” The sheriff’s office will pay the upfront costs and receive reimbursement from the State Department. Its trainers, which it will release on a voluntary basis, will not carry weapons in other countries and will have to be approved in advance by the State Department. The State Department will be responsible for screening any trainees and will give pre-deployment training to trainers.

The agreement leaves open the possibility of training on U.S. soil, but Brownfield said from a cost standpoint it made more sense to send a few trainers to Mexico than bring hundreds of trainees to the U.S.

Brownfield said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo was very active in pushing the venture. Cuellar’s brother, Martin Cuellar, is Webb County sheriff.

The congressman said the benefits worked both ways. “When the teacher goes down there, the teacher will learn from the students.”

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AT&T is now suing the law firms that have been seeking to block the $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile. Back in July, New York-based law firm Bursor & Fisher began a “Fight the Merger” campaign in which they encouraged AT&T customers to file arbitration cases against the carrier to challenge the merger. So far, the firm has already filed 26 arbitration demands and over 900 notices of dispute on behalf of AT&T customers.

Arbitration cases are being filed instead of class-action lawsuits due to the result of the AT&T vs. Concepcion case last November, in which the Supreme Court sided with AT&T allowing their phone contracts to contain a mandatory arbitration clause that waived customers’ rights to class-action lawsuits against the company. Hence, Bursor & Fisher began encouraging customers opposing the merger to individually file arbitration complaints, hoping to file thousands of such complaints.

AT&T has already said that the claims are without merit and that an arbitrator does not have the authority to block a merger or affect the process and now it’s suing the law firm for its abusive actions. The carrier says that these individual claims are an attempt to act as a class and that their arbitration agreement prohibits any form of class-wide relief.

However, Bursor & Fisher partner Scott Bursor insists that the American Arbitration Association has already overruled AT&T’s objections and moved forward with the arbitration process.

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In spirit, No Child Left Behind, was always a good idea. It was an imperative from Washington that, rich or poor, our nation would strive to ensure that every child gets a proper education and not be left to fall through the many cracks in our educational system.

No Child Left Behind was President George W. Bush’s first major legislative accomplishment and it garnered strong support from both political parties. (Remember when that occasionally happened?)

But a decade after its passage, it appears that while No Child Left Behind has had some positive impact, it hasn’t done all it intended and has even had some negative consequences. Among them — school districts and states subtly or not-so-subtly lowering standards to make sure No Child Left Behind benchmarks are met and teachers rigidly “teaching to the test” to the exclusion of other important lessons.

No Child Left Behind needs some changes. It needs to be a vehicle for raising the bar for those kids and those schools that perpetually struggle and not a mechanism that, unintended or not, exacerbates problems and leaves those educators who truly are doing their best in tough circumstances throwing up their hands in disgust.

The U.S. Department of Education is working on making the law less burdensome for states that are trying to overhaul their school systems and improve student performance, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday at a press conference. Next month, federal education officials plan to issue rules to states that want a waiver from some of No Child Left Behind’s most punitive provisions, Duncan said.

At least 13 states have contacted the Obama administration about getting a waiver or have announced plans to seek a waiver. New Jersey, which has many chronically failing schools in its former Abbott districts scattered around the state, is “actively considering” requesting an exemption, the state’s acting education commissioner, Chris Cerf, said in a statement.

By seeking a waiver, what we don’t want to see, and what parents whose kids are stuck in forever failing schools shouldn’t want to see, is a retreat from demanding more of schools stuck in the mud. Those schools aren’t hard to identify. In New Jersey, many of them are the Abbotts — the places where we pump a lot of state tax dollars only to see consistently low scores, low grades and high dropouts rates.

Changes to No Child Left Behind should reasonably balance the use of the carrot and the stick while making sure that kids across states are judged the same way on their mastery of the same basic skills. Here are some things that ought to be revised:

Ease the reliance on testing.

Across the nation, kids in every grade from 3 to 8 are given standardized multiple choice tests every year for math and reading skills. With federal funding for districts riding on the results of these tests, there’s far too much emphasis on tests in many schools. In some place, there’s also widespread cheating, often not by students but by educators, to make the grade.

Figure out why reading performance hasn’t improved at the same rate as math scores.

A comprehensive study released in November 2009 by researchers Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob of the University of Virginia found that student improvement under No Child Left Behind has been concentrated in the earlier grades, most notably in Grade 4 math scores and mostly among Hispanic and low-income students.

Where No Child Left Behind hasn’t resulted among specific groups or in specific subjects, clearly either the instruction hasn’t improved or the assessment isn’t being done correctly.

Require more uniform testing and measurement from state to state.

Yes, we’re arguing to allow for less teaching to the test. But that doesn’t mean we want to see all standardized testing go away — not at all. If we’re going to have national standards for basic skills kids should possess by certain ages, there needs to be uniform testing standards. What good is it to punish so-called “failing” districts in one state while rewarding “successful” districts in other states where the bar is being set too low.

No Child Left Behind has always attempted to address this. But states still have their own assessments of kids and those assessments differ, sometimes greatly, from state to state in form and content.

We shouldn’t scrap the concept of demanding greater accountability for student performance in our schools. The United States, after all, still ranks far below where it should when its students’ skills are compared with kids being educated in other industrialized nations — particularly in math and science.

But a decade in, there’s evidence that shows where No Child Left Behind is ready for improvement.

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A broad and controversial immigration enforcement law in Alabama has even religious leaders in the state uneasy because many of them believe the law stands in their way of being good Christians.

Saying the law criminalizes their efforts to be good Samaritans, three Christian bishops recently joined a growing number of groups who are challenging the law in court, including the American Civil Liberties Union, a number of teachers’ unions, the U.S. Justice Department and even 16 foreign countries.

The statute not only makes it legal for law enforcement officers to attempt to determine the immigration status of people they pull over for traffic violations, but also makes it a crime to “transport, harbor or rent property to people who are known to be in the country illegally.” Furthermore, the law makes void any contracts with illegal immigrants.

The situation here is a bit out of the norm for liberal politics, with the left in this case citing biblical principles to support its stance, but hey, the more challengers to such a discriminatory law, the merrier! —BF

The New York Times:

An Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop, all based in Alabama, sued on the basis that the new statute violated their right to free exercise of religion, arguing that it would “make it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans.”

“The law,” said Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, “attacks our core understanding of what it means to be a church.”

While church leaders have spoken out against similar laws elsewhere, Alabama is the only state where senior church leaders have gone so far in formal, organized opposition. But the law in Alabama, a state with an estimated 120,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, goes further than any other.

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A group tracking national security has filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Rick Scott over a new law that streamlines the state’s textbook selection.

Citizens for National Security, based in Boca Raton, Fla., said Wednesday the new procedure does not provide for careful review of textbooks, The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported. In the past, textbooks were selected by 10-member committees, but the new law provides for two people with a third brought in if a tie breaker is needed.

The group said it is especially concerned about the treatment of world religions.

“Middle and high school history and geography textbooks, there was a lot of unbalance in the discussion of Islam in comparison to Christianity and Judaism,” William Saxton, the group’s chairman, said.

George Perreault, in charge of textbook acquisition in Orange County, which includes Orlando, said most textbooks come from a handful of major publishers and are very much alike. Local districts make the final decision about textbooks and he said Orange County will continue to set up large committees to do so.

Scott, who became governor in January, has been named as a defendant in at least eight lawsuits so far. The plaintiffs range from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Police Benevolent Association.

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Kari Schuster thinks a new Missouri law banning teachers from communicating privately with students through social media has problems.

Schuster, who teaches sixth grade at Smithton Middle School, said she has a colleague who is worried she’ll have to “de-friend” her daughter on Facebook because the girl is also a public school student.

“It’s a few of the bad teachers out there whom people should be concerned about,” said Schuster, president of the Columbia Missouri State Teachers Association. “Social networking is a great way for teachers to contact students.”

The law, which takes effect Aug. 28, doesn’t ban public school teachers from having connections with students on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Rather, it forbids private interactions between teachers and students, and it requires school districts to come up with written policies on social media by Jan. 1, 2012.

In September, the Columbia School Board will take up revising its current policy after it gets some guidance from the Missouri School Boards’ Association, said Michelle Baumstark, community relations coordinator for the district.

Meanwhile, some Columbia teachers and administrators are concerned the law will limit legitimate communication and sow confusion among educators.

Issue precedes social media

Mark Maus, principal of Rock Bridge High School, said that when he first read about the new law, he questioned the motivations behind it. If social media had caused an increase in sexual misconduct between teachers and students, it would have been understandable, he said.

“I personally have not seen an increase in (sexual misconduct),” said Maus, who has been in public school education for 12 years. “I don’t know nationwide if that’s true or not or if it’s in the state of Missouri that there has been an increase of student-teachers or student-adult relationships.”

State Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, proposed the law after an Associated Press investigation found 87 Missouri teachers between 2001 and 2005 had lost their licenses because of sexual misconduct. Some of the misconduct involved exchanging explicit online messages with students.

State lawmakers passed the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act in May, and Gov. Jay Nixon signed it into law last month. It is named after a Missouri woman who testified to being manipulated into a sexual relationship with a teacher while in junior high.

“If that’s the reason, then I can understand it,” Maus said. “But if this is for one case, I don’t agree with it because that was probably going to happen whether the technology was there or not.”

He thinks social media has positives for public school instruction. He said it creates another avenue for communication.

“Class schedules, exam schedules, helping (study) pages can be posted on Facebook,” he said.

“We just had one of our graduates pass away, and how we got the information passed from student to student was all through Facebook,” Maus said.

Carol Bo Sun of Columbia died last week of the rare, genetic Moyamoya Disease. His Facebook profile was filled with condolences from friends and teachers from Rock Bridge, who heard about his condition through Sun’s Facebook page.

“There are so many positive way to use Facebook,” Maus said.

Inappropriate behavior existed before cell phones and computers, he said. “I hate blaming technology for (it),” Maus said.

Teachers are part of community, too

Matt Dingler, who teaches social studies at Rock Bridge, has been using Facebook since 2004. Like Maus, he said he understands the intention behind the law.

“But I think this is made by some people who don’t understand where our lives are going,” Dingler said. “Perhaps even in two years, social networking will be not a new thing; most people will have social networking on their cell phone.”

It is also important to realize that teachers are community members who have lives outside the classroom, he said.

“For instance, another use of my half of Facebook is for a recreational sports team that is associated with community, so I need to get ahold of those players,” Dingler said.

Many other appropriate uses for Facebook relationships between teachers and students exist, he said, such as connecting through religious affiliation or community organizations.

Law seen as good protection

Bernard Solomon, principal of Lange Middle School, sees the law as a good move for the state.

“I think the intention is good to provide protection for kids and teachers as well to make sure it doesn’t create a greater opportunity for people to do some unethical thing,” Solomon said.

“I don’t think it will discourage teachers from interacting because most teachers are pretty good about finding ways to interact with students to build appropriate relationships,” Solomon said. “Social networking isn’t the only way to communicate with students.”

The district does have one substitute for social media. “Our school district has had a discussion board called ‘ANGEL’ for last four years,”Schuster said. “It’s public, and it’s been successful.”

ANGEL is a web-based environment where students can go to find their teachers for discussion and questions, Schuster said. Students can also submit homework through ANGEL, which stands for A New Global Environment for Learning.

Not meant to curb social media use

Cunningham, who championed the law, said its purpose is not to discourage teachersfrom using social media.

“There is only one very limited prohibition, and that is hidden communication between an educator and a student that is not available to be monitored by third parties such as parents or school personnel,” Cunningham said.

Maus said he doesn’t think the senator’s intention was to discourage the use of social media.

“But I think the perception by a lot of teachers will be ‘I’m just going to get away from it. I thought it was an excellent tool to use, but I don’t want to get caught and be in a trouble,’” he said.

“I don’t know if this will make teachers to use this correctly,” Maus said. “If someone is going to make a bad decision, then they will make a bad decision.”

New policy under construction

Baumstark said the current policy in Columbia broadly addresses appropriate relationships between teachers and students.

She said the Board of Education Policy Committee had an extensive discussion about social media policy before tweaking it in January.

In May, the district prohibited student use of social media sites such as Facebook during school hours.

“Certainly we did spend some time this past school year talking about this exact issue, and our board voted not to specifically include Facebook,” Baumstark said. “So, we have to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate that, through the policy committee, as a result of this legislation.”

“I think we always have to keep in mind that regardless of whether or not it’s through technology or face to face or in any other communication method, it’s important to make sure the relationship between students and teachers is appropriate,” she said. “That’s the key point.”

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Gaping holes in Michigan’s medical marijuana law have allowed dangerous people to hijack the system, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said Wednesday.

Schuette, along with several other Michigan legislators and law enforcement officials, unveiled a list of legislative proposals that would close what they say are gaps in the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act passed by Michigan voters in 2008.

Among these is a provision that would make it a felony for patients to lie about a medical condition to get a marijuana prescription and for a doctor to knowingly certify fake information.

“The situation we have now is literally like the wild, wild west,” said Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, who was among the group of representatives that unveiled the proposals with Schuette.

David Clark, an Okemos attorney who specializes in medical marijuana law, said false information by patients and doctors to attain medical marijuana is a widespread problem across the state.

“I have a sinking feeling that a lot of physicians will just take the word of the patient,” Clark said, adding the Legislature could pass laws in place requiring documentation of a medical condition for a marijuana prescription.

But Clark also said many of the proposed laws are being brought to the table by Republicans who were against the act to begin with.

“It’s certainly a political motive,” Clark said. “No one is surprised Mr. Schuette is taking this position; I’m sure he didn’t vote for (the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act).”

Schuette also is seeking to clarify contradicting Michigan laws that make it unclear whether medical marijuana patients can drive with any amount of the drug in their system.

“Driving with marijuana in your system is unsafe and jeopardizes the safety of our roadways,” Schuette said Wednesday in a statement. “If you take drugs, don’t take the wheel.”

Clark said the current law can make it illegal for medical marijuana patients to drive even several days after using marijuana as small doses of the active ingredients can linger in a person’s system.

Jones also has sponsored legislation aimed to help communities locally regulate medical marijuana, including one bill that ensures communities cannot be sued for regulating where dispensaries can open — an issue East Lansing as faced extensively in recent months.

City officials have felt scrutiny from all sides this year after passing a medical marijuana ordinance that restricts dispensaries to medical office districts of the outskirts of town.

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Members of the New York State Broadcasters Association are ecstatic over a new law that makes it illegal to operate a radio station without a license.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed legislation making pirate operation in the state a “Class A” misdemeanor. Florida and New Jersey, other states where pirate radio is a particular problem, have similar laws.

Proponents say the legislation gives local law enforcement an important tool to help them prosecute pirates and confiscate equipment.

New York State Broadcasters Association President David Donovan said licensed radio stations air life-saving information during emergencies, as well as daily news and entertainment, but “many consumers cannot receive emergency information or enjoy their favorite radio station because of technical interference from illegal operators. Unlicensed operators simply ignore consumer protection laws and the public interest responsibilities” that guide licensed radio stations.

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A new state law clarifies that jurors are prohibited from texting, tweeting and using smart phones to discuss or research cases.

The bill by Democratic Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes of Sylmar also clarifies that jurors cannot use electronic or wireless communications to contact court officials. Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB141 on Friday.

The bill adds to existing jury instructions. It specifies that jurors consider only facts presented to them in court without doing their own research or communicating outside the jury room.

The system’s Judicial Council says jurors’ use of electronic devices has become “an increasingly significant threat to the integrity of the justice system.”

The law, which takes effect in January, makes it a misdemeanor for jurors to use electronic or wireless devices to research or communicate with others.

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A group of 10 corporate law professors asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to require corporations to disclose to shareholders most political spending.

In a petition filed Thursday with the SEC, the professors asked the agency to establish rules to deal with new campaign finance laws that allow companies to donate to outside political groups directly from their corporate treasuries, rather than through political action committees funded by employee contributions.

The law professors, led by Lucian Bebchuk, of Harvard Law School, and Robert Jackson, of Columbia Law School, argue that while the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional any restrictions on corporate speech during elections, the high court’s ruling in the case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, assumed shareholders would be able to monitor the use of corporate resources on political activities.

“For this mechanism to work, however, shareholders must have information about the company’s political speech,” the professors said in the 11 page petitition. “Because the Commission’s current rules do not require public companies to give shareholders detailed information on corporate spending on politics, shareholders cannot play the role the Court described.”

They also said: “Shareholders need to receive such information for markets and the procedures of corporate democracy to ensure that such spending is in shareholders’ interest. Such spending is likely to become even more important to public investors in the future.”

SEC spokesman Kevin Callahan declined to comment on the petition.

Donations to federal candidates and political action committees are already disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, but the new rules would affect the numerous political nonprofits, operating under a special section of the tax code, that do not have to disclose their donors. Companies donating to those entities – such as Crossroads GPS, which advocates for conservative causes, and Priorities USA, a progressive group started by two former White House aides – would be required make their contributions public.

The petition is part of a push by good government groups and some in the business world to disclose the names of all corporate donors. Proponents of anonymous donations say it is protected by federal case law and free speech rights.

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