Deputy Mark Leubscher , probably best known for his tasering of a 12 year old gi

Deputy Mark Leubscher , probably best known for his tasering of a 12 year old girl with her hands handcuffed behind her in a patrol car, strikes again!
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http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/11356527.htm
Orange County deputy uses stun gun on high schooler

By Dave Weber

THE ORLANDO SENTINEL

ORLANDO - An Orange County deputy sheriff used a Taser on another high-school student this week as a debate continued on whether stun guns belong in schools.

It was the seventh Taser incident at Colonial High during the past two years and the 18th in Orange County schools during that time. All involved deputy sheriffs.

Details of the incident came to light Friday, shortly before a task force appointed by Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary released a report urging more Taser training for deputies but saying they have shown restraint in using the devices.

The deputy working at Colonial High and the student disagree on when the Taser was used during a lunchtime scuffle Thursday outside the cafeteria.

Deputy Mark Leubscher reported that Phillip Planteny, 17, attacked him when he tried to break up a fight. A second deputy held Planteny to the ground while Leubscher gave him two shots with the stun gun, according to the officer's report.

Planteny told his mother he stepped in to break up the fight, which about 300 students gathered to watch. He told her he already was handcuffed when Leubscher used his Taser. She was outraged.

"When you are handcuffed, there is no reason you should be Tased," said Olga Hernandez. "And in school, a Taser is not called for."

Another student, Luiz Ortiz, 15, said he saw the fight and could not understand why the Taser was used.

"They put him in handcuffs, and then they Tased him," Ortiz said.

Leubscher would not comment on the incident Friday, but sheriff's officials spoke in his defense.

"The student lunged at the deputy and pushed him into a picnic table," said Crystal Candy, a sheriff's spokeswoman, who noted that the boy weighs 197 pounds. "He was not handcuffed when the Taser was administered."

Planteny is facing felony counts of battery on a law-enforcement officer, threatening a public official, and violation of probation for a previous offense, as well as a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the school, the sheriff's report said.

Leubscher previously used a Taser on an emotionally handicapped 12-year-old at Gateway School whose hands were cuffed behind his back, and on a 17-year-old boy at Colonial High who had been placed in the back of a patrol car.

Officials said a review of both incidents found the Taser was justified to keep those students from hurting themselves.

What the Heck is Versed and Why does it Induce Amnesia?

The Versed Option

What the Heck is Versed and Why does it Induce Amnesia?

You may have at some time, during a surgical procedure, had the whole thing done, and not have any memory of it. If so, you may thank a little compound used in combination with the analgesia/anesthesia called "Versed" or more properly, Midazolam.

What is Midazolam / Versed ?
From http://www.answers.com/topic/midazolam

"Midazolam
Medical
mi·daz·o·lam
A colorless crystalline derivative of diazepam with sedative and anxiolytic properties, usually used in its hydrochloride form as an intravenous anesthetic.."

For the more chemically minded, here is a bit about the structure.of this substance
http://web1.caryacademy.org/chemistry/rushin/

Structure



Midazolam hydrochloride is a benzodiazepine which is usually administered intravenously for sedation. The chemical name is 8- chloro- 6- (2- fluorophenyl)-1 methyl- 4H- imidizo [1,5- a] [1,4] benzodiazepine hydrochloride; the empirical formula is C18H14Cl2FN3-HCl; the molecular weight is 362.25. At a pH of 5 or less, benzodiazepine ring is open and the molecule is water-soluble. On reaching pH 7.4 (in human blood), the ring closes and it becomes fat soluble.





Versed belongs to a group of compounds called "Benzodiazepines". Those more well versed (no pun)
in drugs, may be aware of something called "Valium", also known as "diazepam" (note the similarity with the benzoDIAZEPines word).

From http://www.imprint-academic.demon.co.uk/T2000/02-08.html we find :


"Some sedative-hypnotic drugs produce marked anterograde amnesia. Drugs in the benzodiazepine family (including midazolam, ‘Versed’) and the alkylphenol class (propofol, ‘Diprivan’) produce profound amnesia when given in low concentrations to conscious subjects, while barbiturates (thiopental) and opioids (fentanyl) do not. We have studied midazolam and propofol using several different functional imaging techniques (recording the scalp electroencephalogram: EEG, functional magnetic resonance imaging: MRI, and measurement of cerebral blood flow using positron emission tomography: PET) to localize the neuroanatomical substrate of drug-induced amnesia. During drug administration in awake subjects, EEG beta power increases dramatically over frontal and central cortex while alpha activity decreases. These EEG changes correlate with dose-dependent decreases in verbal memory. Functional MRI scanning in single subjects has established that the neural transmission of primary sensory information to cortex is preserved during sedative drug administration. PET studies with 15O in subjects who received low or high doses of midazolam or propofol indicate that regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) changes over the anterior brain in a dose-dependent fashion. Before drug, subjects asked to learn words showed increased rCBF in the left prefrontal cortex when compared to an auditory control condition (nonsense syllables). After propofol, this activation was abolished, coincident with severely impaired recall and recognition. The left prefrontal cortex has been identified as an area involved in verbal encoding. Neural activity in this area may be selectively decreased by certain sedative agents, resulting in reversible drug-induced amnesia."

It is clear then, that not ALL benzodiazepines, and not all substances which bind to the benzodiapine receptors (such as nicotinamide / vitamin B3 ) result in retrograde amnesia.
Valium, for example, is not known for this.

What then is more about the mechanism by which Versed is able to induce such amnesia?

From the same source , we find this:

"179 A Unitary Physiologic Theory for the Mechanism of Anesthetic-Induced Unconsciousness M.T.Alkire (University of California, Irvine Medical Center, Department of Anesthesiology, Blg 53, Route 81-A, 101 City Drive South, Orange, CA 92868), R.Haier, J.Fallon.
A unifying theory of general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness must explain the common mechanism through which various anesthetic agents produce unconsciousness. Recently, functional brain imaging data obtained from volunteers during general anesthetic-induced unconsciousness demonstrated specific suppression of regional thalamic and midbrain reticular formation activity across two different commonly used volatile agents (Alkire, et. al., 2000) . The regions identified during the volatile agent study showed remarkable overlap with the regions identified during a similar imaging study investigating the effects of the intravenous anesthetic agent propofol on human consciousness (Fiset, et. al., 1999) . Intersecting the regions identified in both studies revealed the thalamus to be a primary target site for the effects of anesthetics on human consciousness. Integrating these findings with known functional neuroanatomy has lead us to the hypothesis that the essential common neurophysiologic mechanism underlying anesthetic-induced unconsciousness is likely to be, as with sleep-induced unconsciousness, a hyperpolarization block of thalamocortical neurons. Thalamocortical cells have two primary modes of firing, tonic and burst. Onset of physiologic sleep switches these cells from a predominately tonic-firing pattern to a predominately burst-firing pattern . The change in firing pattern occurs coincident with changes in the EEG pattern from one of behavioral arousal (i.e., low voltage, fast activity) to one of slow wave sleep (i.e., spindle and delta wave oscillations, high voltage, slow activity) . Animal physiology studies show that the switch in thalamocortical cell firing and the change in the EEG oscillation pattern happens because the thalamocortical cells become hyperpolarized. This hyperpolarization establishes a block to the transmission of sensory information through the thalamus, which results in the cortex being functionally disconnected from outside sensory experience with the onset of sleep-induced unconsciousness . During sleep this hyperpolarization block develops because of a decrease in tonic excitation from brainstem arousal centers. We suggest that hyperpolarization of thalamocortical neurons and the transition of thalamocortical activity from tonic to burst firing is likely to be a general principle of anesthesia that occurs through different mechanisms with different anesthetic agents. Anesthetics can affect the activity within thalamocortical-corticothalamic loops and cause thalamocortical hyperpolarization, coincident with the loss of consciousness, by at least four possible mechanisms including: (1) direct cellular hyperpolarization , (2) inhibition of excitement (i.e., decreased glutamatergic, cholinergic and aminergic signaling), (3) enhancement of inhibition (i.e., increased GABAergic and glycinergic signaling), or (4) any combination of these. A model of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness has been introduced to explain how the plethora of effects anesthetics have on cellular functioning ultimately all converge on a single neuroanatomic/neurophysiologic system (Alkire, et. al., 2000) , thus providing for a unitary physiologic theory of narcosis related to consciousness."

Secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, study says

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-08-smoking-breastcancer_x.htm

Secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, study says
By John Ritter, USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Scientists at an influential California agency have concluded that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, a finding that could have broad impact on cancer research and lead to even tougher anti-smoking regulations.
"Overall, women exposed to secondhand smoke have up to a 90% greater risk
of breast cancer, the report says."

Although recent studies have linked smoking to breast cancer, no major public
health group, including the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute, has declared it a cause
of the disease that kills 40,000 women each year in the USA.

The finding by scientists for the Air Resources Board — whose early efforts to
regulate auto emissions were a model for the rest of the country — could fuel
workplace smoking bans in more states. And it is likely to refocus the scientific
debate over the link between smoking and breast cancer.
(Related story: Firestorm could be brewing)

"I have to say without reservation it will stimulate continued and accelerated
scientific evaluation of the smoking and breast cancer issue," says
Terry Pechacek, associate director for science in the CDC's office on
smoking and health.

A scientific review panel is expected to approve the report as early as
Monday and forward it to the Air Resources Board, which has broad state
authority to regulate air pollution.

The 1,200-page report analyzes new data on the extent of Californians'
exposure to secondhand smoke and more than 1,000 studies of health
effects from secondhand smoke.

The conclusion that secondhand smoke causes breast cancer, particularly
in younger women, challenges conventional scientific thinking because most |
studies, until recently, had found no connection between female smokers
and breast cancer.

But California scientists based their conclusion on recent human studies that
they determined had more careful assessments of long-term exposure to
tobacco smoke. The report also gave more weight to toxicology evidence
from animal studies than previous studies by the surgeon general and others.
It's well-documented that chemicals from cigarettes cause breast cancer
in lab animals.

Overall, women exposed to secondhand smoke have up to a 90% greater
risk of breast cancer, the report says. It says secondhand smoke kills as
many as 73,400 a year in the USA.

The report did not estimate the number of additional new breast cancer
cases annually, and scientists did not calculate risk levels based on doses
of secondhand smoke.

Tobacco companies, in public comments filed with the board, say the
report gives little weight to studies that found no breast cancer connection.

A new surgeon general's report on secondhand smoke is expected this year.

"The topic is still under review," says the report's senior scientific editor,
Jonathan Samet, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

"It's controversial," Samet says. "Concluding that passive smoke causes
breast cancer has potentially powerful implications for tobacco control
and breast cancer control. So there has been tension over it."

DOLLAR DROPS IN VALUE AGAIN FOR SEVENTH TIME IN FOUR YEARS

The dollar has dropped in value against the Euro again, for the seventh time in four years.
http://www.thehollandsentinel.net/stories/111804/bus_111804041.shtml
"The U.S. dollar plunged to a new low against the euro Wednesday as markets shrugged off Washington's insistence that it is committed to a strong dollar. And with the causes of the drop -- worries over oil prices and the U.S. trade and budget deficits -- not going away, some economists see the euro soaring to $1.35 or beyond."
I believe this reinforces the message I have been repeating for over a year now...i.e., that this economy in the US, is in great troub

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS?

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/22/opinion.poll/

The majority of Americans feel this creature is doing a good job?????
Now, I usually believe in the inherent good common sense of the American public and am GENERALLY of the opinion that the American public tends to be a reasonable bunch....however, this article just flat out proves me wrong....or at least, the extrapolated results of this poll would cause me to believe that it proves me wrong....

From the article :
"(CNN) -- Fifty-five percent of Americans like the way President Bush is handling his job, while the approval rating for his Iraq policies is slightly lower, according to the first full CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll following the November 2 presidential election.

Forty-two percent of those polled don't believe Bush is doing a good job. Sixty percent have a positive opinion of Bush, versus 39 percent with the opposite view."

WTF????????? Sixty percent have a "positive opinion of Bush"? Look, are you folks on CRACK or something harder?

How can 55 percent of the Americans actually say they like the way Bush is handling his job with a straight face? There is obviously something seriously wrong with 55 percent of the American public, if this poll is to be believed.

You folks obviously didn't wake up before the election, not DURING the election, and are obviously still hallucinating after the election.

The war is costing 5.8 BILLION A MONTH....Bush has asked for a budget of 388 BILLION. Now, if we round it off, that's around 6 BILLION a month, times 12 = 72 Billion a year that we will be spending on this war AT PRESENT LEVELS, which is almost 20 percent of the entire budget. It was noted that, as a result of this 388 BILLION BUDGET, lots of social programs would find their programs cut in funding levels.

Yeah, why the hell should we take care of our own people (as the mandate in the constitution is), when we can bomb the hell out of other people across the world.

Something is seriously wrong here folks...and it's a damn shame the majority is staying blind to that.

FOR THOSE WHO VOTED FOR BUSH

YOU VOTED FOR BUSH?

READ THE ARROGANT ASSHOLE'S OWN WORDS !

"Of course not," he said. "I'm the commander. See, I don't have to explain why I say things."

BUSH MIXES IT UP WITH CHILEAN SECURITY

SANTIAGO, Chile Nov 20, 2004 ? President Bush stepped into the middle of a confrontation and pulled his lead Secret Service agent away from Chilean security officials who barred his bodyguards from entering an elegant dinner for 21 world leaders Saturday night.

Several Chilean and American agents got into a pushing and shoving match outside the cultural center where the dinner was held. Bush noticed the fracas after posing for pictures on a red carpet with the summit host, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and his wife and first lady Laura Bush.

Abandoning the other three, Bush walked over to the agents, reached through the dispute and pulled his agent from the scrum.

The president, looking irritated, walked away with the agent. The incident was shown on APEC television.


Rebellious Republicans Derail 9/11 Reform
The Note: Sentimental Journey
Democrats Vie for Party Chair
"Chilean security tried to stop the president's Secret Service from accompanying him," said White House deputy press secretary Claire Buchan. "He told them they were with him and the issue was resolved."

VIOXX

One of the best sites for information on Vioxx, and all related drugs which have proven dangerous is
http://www.leflaw.com and the other great one is http://www.vioxxcentral.com

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