Charlton Library Sends Police To Collect Overdue Books From 5-Year-Old

CHARLTON (CBS) – A Charlton mom says her local library crossed the line when they sent police to collect her daughter’s overdue library books.

Her mom says the 5-year-old girl was so afraid that she burst into tears.

Charlton Police Sergeant Dan Dowd stopped by the home of Shannon Benoit to let her know that her daughter had two books several months overdue which needed to be returned or paid for...[Full Article]

TSA to put Hub fliers on the spot

Boston Herald

Some skeptical of new security program

Boston’s TSA screeners — part of a security force whose competency has come under fire nationwide — soon will be carrying out sophisticated behavioral inspections under a first-in-the-nation program that’s already raising concerns of racial profiling, harassment of innocent travelers and longer lines.

The training for the Israeli-style screening — a projected $1 billion national program dubbed Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques — kicks off today at Logan International Airport and will be put to use in Terminal A on Aug. 15. It requires screeners to make quick reads of whether passengers pose a danger or a terror threat based on their reactions to a set of routine questions.

But security experts wonder whether Transportation Safety Administration agents are up to the challenge after an embarrassing string of blunders — including patting down a 95-year-old grandmother in Florida and making her remove her adult diaper and frisking a 3-year-old girl who screamed “stop touching me” at a checkpoint in Tennessee...[Full Article]

Radioactive Oatmeal Given To Massacheussets Children In 1940's And 1950's

Quaker Oats and the Massacheussets Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) sponsored a project in the 1940's and 1950's which used children to study the effects of radioactivity on human beings...

America's Deep, Dark Secret
Bob Simon Reports On Hundreds Of Thousands Of Warehoused Kids

CBS News

...The Fernald School, and others like it, was part of a popular American movement in the early 20th century called the Eugenics movement. The idea was to separate people considered to be genetically inferior from the rest of society, to prevent them from reproducing.

Eugenics is usually associated with Nazi Germany, but in fact, it started in America. Not only that, it continued here long after Hitler's Germany was in ruins.

At the height of the movement - in the ‘20s and ‘30s - exhibits were set up at fairs to teach people about eugenics. It was good for America, and good for the human race. That was the message.

But author Michael D'Antonio says it wasn't just a movement. It was government policy. “People were told, we can be rid of all disease, we can lower the crime rate, we can increase the wealth of our nation, if we only keep certain people from having babies,” says D’Antonio.

He says back then, schools tested children regularly, and those classified as feeble-minded got a one-way ticket to Fernald -- or to one of the more than 100 institutions like it.

“Idiot, imbecile, and moron were all medical terms. They were used to define various levels of retardation or disability. Moron was coined to describe children who were almost normal,” says D’Antonio. “I would estimate that at least 50 percent would function in today’s world well.”...

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RELATED ARTICLES...

Settlement Reached in Suit Over Radioactive Oatmeal Experiment (New York Times)

Seeking Freedom From Label at Last (Los Angeles Times)

The voice of a lost generation (Boston Globe)

Revolt of the Innocents (People.com)

New Logan searches blasted
TSA tests frisky frisking policy

Logan airport security just got more up close and personal as federal screeners launched a more aggressive palms-first, slide-down body search technique that has renewed the debate over privacy vs. safety.

The new procedure - already being questioned by the ACLU - replaces the Transportation Security Administration’s former back-of-the-hand patdown.

Boston is one of only two cities in which the new touchy-feely frisking is being implemented as a test before a planned national rollout. The other is Las Vegas...

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US School For Disabled Forces Students To Wear Packs That Deliver Massive Electric Shocks

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) has filed a report and urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Center for the disabled, located in Massachusetts, violates the UN Convention against Torture.

The rights group submitted their report this week, titled "Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center," after an in-depth investigation revealed use of restraint boards, isolation, food deprivation and electric shocks in efforts to control the behaviors of its disabled and emotionally troubled students.

Findings in the MDRI report include the center's practice of subjecting children to electric shocks on the legs, arms, soles of feet and torso -- in many cases for years -- as well as some for more than a decade. Electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child's back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEI).

The disabilities group notes that stun guns typically deliver three to four milliamps per shock. GEI packs, meanwhile, shock students with 45 milliamps -- more than ten times the amperage of a typical stun gun...