The News

Beyond Terrorists?: Cabinet Expands Fingerprinting

Bush Signs Presidential Directive for Cabinet Officials to Expand Biometric Database
Since 2001, the FBI and CIA have detained and fingerprinted untold numbers of people overseas, focused on building “the world’s largest database of known or suspected terrorist fingerprints.” Now, a new push by the Cabinet will look to expand those efforts beyond “terrorists,” even as the process by which individuals are targeted and detained remains murky at best. “The bottom line is we’re locking people up,” said Thomas E. Bush III, FBI assistant director of the Criminal Justice Information Services division. “Stopping people coming into this country…That’s the beauty of this whole data-sharing effort. We’re pushing our borders back.” Washington Post

Prestigious NYC High School to Offer Arabic for “Finance” Reasons
Friends Seminary in NYC will be the first high school in the state without a significant ethnically-Arabic student body to offer the language. Unlike the Khalil Gibran School in Brooklyn, which debuted amidst controversy for its teaching of Arabic language and culture, Friends Seminary students have instead cited more capitalist motivations: “I’m interested in emerging markets,” said one. The move marks the end of a school-wide debate, in which administrators and students argued between the usefulness of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. New York Times

Texas Democrat Calls for Inquiry into County Legal System
U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee claims Harris County’s legal system is “tarnished,” citing various “controversial cases and scandals,” including e-mails that “mocked Islam,” and a grand jury indictment that let off a suburban homeowner who shot two men suspected of burglarizing a neighbor’s home. “The pattern of behavior raises questions about bias in the system,” she said. LA Times

Park Service Seeks to Attract People of Color
Recent surveys have shown that Blacks and Hispanics are far less likely to visit national parks, and are for more likely to feel uncomfortable in them. “The national parks are still a middle-class Caucasian visit, primarily,” said David Barna, a parks services spokesman. This new push accompanies other efforts to expand the appeal to high school students, who are recruited heavily from urban areas for employment. LA Times

Posted at 7:22 AM, Jul 07, 2008 in News | Permalink | View Comments