Parents deported, what happens to US-born kids?

Parents deported, what happens to US-born kids? — Alexis Molina was just 10 years old when his mother was abruptly cut out of his life and his carefree childhood unraveled overnight.

Gone were the egg-and-sausage tortillas that greeted him when he came home from school, the walks in the park, the hugs at night when she tucked him into bed. Today the sweet-faced boy of 11 spends his time worrying about why his father cries so much, and why his mom can't come home.

"She went for her papers," he says. "And she never came back."

Janna Hakim, 18, shows a poster featuring a picture of her mother Faten on Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012 in New York. On Aug. 13, 2010, Faten was taken away from home by ICE officials and deported to Ramallah, Palestine. Janna has since engaged in public efforts to reunite the family. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Alexis' father, Rony Molina, who runs a small landscaping company, was born in Guatemala but has lived here for 12 years and is an American citizen. Alexis and his 8-year-old brother, Steve, are Americans, too. So is their 19-year-old stepsister, Evelin. But their mother, Sandra, who lived here illegally, was deported to Guatemala a year and a half ago.

"How can my country not allow a mother to be with her children, especially when they are so young and they need her," Rony Molina asks, "and especially when they are Americans?"

It's a question thousands of other families are wrestling with as a record number of deportations means record numbers of American children being left without a parent. And it comes despite President Barack Obama's promise that his administration would focus on removing only criminals, not breaking up families even if a parent is here illegally.

Nearly 45,000 such parents were removed in the first six months of this year, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Behind the statistics are the stories: a crying baby taken from her mother's arms and handed to social workers as the mother is handcuffed and taken away, her parental rights terminated by a U.S. judge; teenage children watching as parents are dragged from the family home; immigrant parents disappearing into a maze-like detention system where they are routinely locked up hundreds of miles from their homes, separated from their families for months and denied contact with the welfare agencies deciding their children's' fate.

At least 5,100 U.S. citizen children in 22 states live in foster care, according to an estimate by the Applied Research Center, a New York-based advocacy organization, which first reported on such cases last year.

And an unknown number of those children are being put up for adoption against the wishes of their parents, who, once deported, are often helpless to fight when a U.S. judge decides that their children are better off here.

Immigration lawyers say that — despite the ICE policy changes — they see families destroyed every day.

"I had no idea what was happening," says Janna Hakim of the morning in 2010 when a loud knocking at her Brooklyn apartment door jolted her awake. It was the first Friday of Ramadan, and her Palestinian mother, Faten, was in the kitchen baking the pastries she sold to local stores.

Janna, then 16, and her siblings were all born here. None knew that their mother was in the U.S. illegally — or that a deportation order from years earlier meant she could be whisked away by ICE agents and her family's comfortable New York life could come crashing to a halt.

"It was horrible, horrible," Janna says, describing the shock of seeing her mother in an ill-fitting prison uniform behind a grimy glass panel in a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J. She was deported after three months. Her family fell apart.

Janna's 13-year-old brother began wetting his bed, she said, and her 15-year-old brother began hanging out with gangs and experimenting with drugs. Her father, who has a prosthetic leg and relied on his wife for help, grew despondent. And her mother, back in Ramallah living with her own mother after more than 20 years away, grew desperate, unable to sleep or function or think about anything except her family.

"I am not a criminal. I am the mother of American children and they need me, especially the younger ones," she cried over the phone. "How can a country break up families like this?"

Critics say the parents are to blame for entering the country illegally in the first place, knowing they were putting their families at risk.

"Yes, these are sad stories," says Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates tougher enforcement against illegal immigration. "But these parents have taken a reckless gamble with their children's future by sneaking into the country illegally, knowing they could be deported."

"Not to deport them," he continued, "gives them the ultimate bonus package, and creates an incentive for others to do the same thing."

Others, including Obama, say splitting up families is wrong.

"When nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing ... when all this is happening, the system just isn't working and we need to change it," Obama declared during his first run for president in 2008. A year ago, he told a Texas audience that deportation should target "violent offenders and people convicted of crimes; not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income."

And, last year ICE announced a new policy of "prosecutorial discretion" that directs agents to consider how long someone has been in the country, their ties to communities and whether that person's spouse or children are U.S. citizens.

"That gave us a lot of hope," said David Leopold, general counsel for The American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Now we are all scratching our heads wondering where is the discretion when many of our lawyers continue to see people being deported with no criminal record, including parents of American children."

___

In the Molina case in Connecticut, after Rony Molina became a U.S. citizen in 2009, an immigration attorney urged Sandra to go to Guatemala, where her husband could then sponsor her to return legally.

It was bad advice. Though she has no criminal record her petition was denied. Desperate, she tried to re-enter with the aid of a "coyote" who demanded $5,000, but she was stopped at the border, detained in Arizona for two weeks, then deported in March 2011.

Immigrants who are deported and try to re-enter the country are considered felons and a top priority for immediate removal.

Back in Guatemala, she faced what many deportees experience — loneliness, suspicion and fear in a country that no longer felt familiar. She says her brother was held for ransom by kidnappers who presumed her American husband must be wealthy enough to pay. Eventually she fled to Mexico, where she says she feels so hopeless about her life that she has thought about ending it.

"I just want to be forgiven," she said, sobbing on the phone. "I feel I am about to go crazy, I miss my children so much. They are all I have. I cannot go on without them."

Back home in Stamford, her children are suffering too. The youngest cried constantly, the eldest became angry and withdrawn. Though their plight is documented in thick files that include testimony from psychologists and counselors about their need for their mother, appeals for humanitarian relief were denied.

"Quiet, slow-motion tragedies unfold every day ... as parents caught up in immigration enforcement are separated from their young children and disappear," Nina Rabin, an associate clinical professor of law at the University of Arizona, wrote last year in "Disappearing Parents: A Report on Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System."

Rabin, an immigration lawyer, says one of the most unsettling experiences of her life was witnessing the "cruel and nightmarish destruction" of one Mexican family whom she represented in a fruitless attempt to keep a mother and her children together.

The mother, Amelia Reyes-Jimenez, carried her blind and paralyzed baby boy, Cesar, across the Mexican border in 1995 seeking better medical care, Rabin said. She settled in Phoenix — illegally — and had three more children, all American citizens. In 2008 she was arrested after her disabled teen son was found home alone.

"When they took my girls, I felt as if my heart fell out," she said during an immigration court hearing. She described how her 3-month-old daughter, Erica, was snatched from her arms as the other children, ages 7, 9 and 14, screamed, "Mommy, Mommy."

Locked in detention, clueless as to her rights or what was happening to her children, she pleaded guilty to child endangerment charges, and then spent two years fighting to stay with her children.

Twice her attorneys tried to convince an immigration judge that she qualified for a visa "on account of the harm that would be done to her three U.S. citizen children if she were to be deported," Rabin said. She lost and was deported back to Mexico in 2010.

Last year, her parental rights were terminated by an Arizona court after a judge ruled that she had failed to make progress towards reunification with her children — something Rabin said was impossible to do, locked away for months without access to legal counsel or notifications from the child welfare agency.

The children are in foster homes and will likely be placed for adoption. Reyes-Jimenez works for a factory making cell phones, crying constantly over the loss of her family.

Her case is before the Arizona State Court of Appeals, but Rabin says regardless of the outcome the family has been destroyed.

"Amelia's case is not a fluke," Rabin says. "Tragically, we hear of cases like this every day."

A key reason, she says, is the extreme disconnect between federal immigration and state child welfare policies that leads to "Kafkaesqe results" when parents and children are swallowed up by the system.

Many advocacy agencies now encourage immigrants to have a detailed plan in place in case they are deported, including granting power of attorney in advance to someone who can take custody of their children.

ICE, meanwhile, maintains it tries to work with such groups to ensure "family unity."

"ICE takes great care to evaluate cases that warrant humanitarian release," said spokeswoman Dani Bennett. "For parents who are ordered removed, it is their decision whether or not to relocate their children with them."

But immigration lawyers say that is not so easy. A recurring complaint is that clients "disappear," often sent to detention centers far from where they lived. They are routinely denied access to family court hearings, phones and attorneys. Many immigrant parents do not fully understand their rights, or that custody of their children might be slipping away.

Federal law requires states to pursue "termination of parental rights" if the parent has been absent for 15 out of 22 consecutive months, and some states allow proceedings to begin even sooner. In some cases, foreign consulates have intervened directly in a deportee's fight to retain parental rights.

In 2007, Encarnacion Bail Romero lost custody of her 6-month-old son, Carlos, after she was arrested during an ICE raid on a chicken plant in Missouri. While she was imprisoned, her baby was first cared for by relatives and later adopted, against her wishes, by a Missouri couple after a judge said the child was better off with them.

"Smuggling herself into a country illegally and committing crimes in this country is not a lifestyle that can provide any stability for a child," wrote circuit court Judge David Dally.

Last year the Missouri Supreme Court called the decision "a travesty of justice," saying "investigation and reporting requirements" weren't met before the mother's rights were terminated, and it sent the case back for retrial.

Although Bail Romero was ordered deported, the Guatemalan government arranged for her to get temporary legal status so that she could stay in the U.S. to fight in court for Carlos — now 5 and renamed Jamison by his adoptive parents. She hoped to bring the boy back to Guatemala to raise him with her two other children.

"I am the mother of Carlitos," she said, begging the court to return her child.

Her pleas were ignored. In July, a Greene County judge terminated her parental rights, saying she had effectively abandoned her son.

___

In the little mountain town of Sparta, N.C., the family of Felipe Montes is facing a similar fight. When immigration agents deported the 32-year-old laborer to Mexico two years ago, his three young sons — American citizens — were left in the care of their mentally ill, American-born mother. Within two weeks, social workers placed the boys in foster care.

Montes and his wife want the children to live with him in Mexico, saying they are better off with their father than with strangers in the U.S. He works at a walnut farm and shares a house with his uncle, aunt and three nieces.

But child welfare officials have asked a judge to strip Montes of his parental rights, arguing the children will have a better life here. Such a ruling could clear the way for their adoption.

"I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't use drugs," Montes said earlier this year. "I have always taken care of my children, I have always loved them."

But parental love is only part of the equation. Even when children join their deported parents in order to keep the family together, it can be a struggle to adjust. In many cases they don't speak the language and fall behind at school. Often standards of living are much poorer than what they were accustomed to.

"They don't have the same access to health care or education," says Aryah Somers, a Washington-based immigration lawyer who is in Guatemala on a Fulbright scholarship studying the effects of U.S. immigration policies on children. "Their parents can't even afford to buy the food that they are accustomed to, so we see a lot of children who are U.S. citizens suffering from malnutrition and living in conditions that would not be acceptable back home."

Sixteen of these American children live in the small Guatemalan mountain town of San Jose Calderas, growing up in extreme poverty, with little schooling and scant medical care. Their parents were among the nearly 400 immigrants rounded up in an ICE raid on a meatpacking plant in Iowa in 2008. The kids are undernourished and barely literate in either Spanish or English, Somers says.

But they have something their Guatemalan cousins can only dream of — a U.S. passport, their ticket to a better life. As soon as they are old enough — 10 or 12 — some parents say they will put them on a plane back to the U.S. And then, Somers says, the country will have to deal with — and pay for — the social, medical and psychological repercussions of banishing them in the first place.

Somers, who has been in Guatemala for eight months, says she has encountered scores of deportees who were removed from their families, including many who have no criminal record and were deported after the new ICE discretionary policy was announced.

She described a mother from Los Angeles, a victim of domestic violence, who was deported earlier this year after police responded to a fight at her home. Desperate to return to her 3-year-old son, a citizen, the woman recently went to Mexico, where she plans to try to cross the border again, illegally.

Although Somers advised against that, she understands. "How can you blame her?" Somers asks. "Her frustration and devastation was just so complete."

There are some signs of change. Somers said she has heard about ICE agents boarding a deportation jet before it left the U.S. and freeing deportees who had lived in the country since they were children and gone to school here — a direct response to Obama's June executive order allowing such young people with no criminal record to temporarily stay and work.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at the time that the policy change is part of a general shift by the administration to focus on deporting high-priority illegal immigrants.

In Chicago, Marilu Gonzalez, a coordinator at the Roman Catholic archdiocese's office of immigrant affairs, recently saw her first example of that shift. An immigrant mother, living here illegally, was arrested for driving under the influence and sent to a detention center. However, instead of being deported, she was released with an ankle monitoring bracelet and given a stay. And, instead of being placed in foster care, her children were permitted to stay with her sister, who is also here illegally.

"That would not have happened in the past," said Gonzalez, who sees hundreds of such cases. "She would have been deported."

In another rare move, Felipe Montes, the father who wants his children from North Carolina to join him in Mexico, has been granted permission to temporarily return to the U.S. to attend custody hearings, though he must wear an ankle monitoring bracelet.

Still, Gonzalez and others say the changes are too haphazard and random, open to interpretation by individual ICE agents. And many say it seems particularly cruel that deported parents who return illegally in order to be with their children should be a priority for removal.

In Congress, California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard has proposed legislation that would make it more difficult for local agencies to terminate the parental rights of immigrants. She calls it "heartbreaking ... that in the U.S., immigration status in itself has become grounds to permanently separate families." It is, she said, "absolutely, unquestionably inhumane and unacceptable, particularly for a country that values family and fairness so highly."

Twenty-four-year-old Lucas Da Silva knows all too well the heartbreak of having a parent deported. He vividly describes the day in 2009 that his father, didn't return home from his job cleaning swimming pools in Orlando, Fla.

"Until then, we were just a normal American family," Da Silva said. "Now, I don't know if we ever can be a proper family again."

With his father back in Brazil, Lucas, struggled to become the head of the house, even as he felt powerless listening to his 14-year-old year sister cry every night, seeing his mother straining to make ends meet, and watching his parents' marriage deteriorate.

"Everyone seems to agree that the current system is broken," he says. "But people don't seem to understand that it breaks families too." ( The Associated Press )

Eds: Helen O'Neill is a national writer for The Associated Press, based in New York. She can be reached at features(at)ap.org.

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Oklahoma teen missing in remote Oregon terrain

Oklahoma teen missing in remote Oregon terrain — An Oklahoma teenager who was inspired to live off the land by the movie "Into the Wild" is the target of a search effort in remote, rugged country in southeastern Oregon.

Dustin Self, 19, left his family home in the Oklahoma City suburb of Piedmont "to see if he could live in the wild," and to investigate some churches that practice a South American religion that uses a hallucinogenic tea as a sacrament, his parents said. One is in Ashland, and the other in Portland.

The Harney County Sheriff's Office and others searched for him on Tuesday on the northeast side of Steens Mountain after a rancher found his pickup truck had slid off a backcountry track and gotten stuck. Searchers on ATVs saw no tracks, but checked out remote cabins and worked their way up the mountain, with no sign of him before heavy snow and high winds curtailed their efforts, said Deputy Missy Ousley.

Associated Press/The Oregonian, Bob Ellis - This Aug. 4, 1999 file photo shows a rocky outcrop on Steens Mountain in southeastern Oregon. Dustin Self, 14, of Piedmont, Okla. was missing on the mountain, where a rancher found his abandoned pickup truck on Tuesday, April 18, 2013. The 30-mile long fault block of basalt is the highest point in the desert of southeastern Oregon at 9,773 feet. (AP Photo/The Oregonian, Bob Ellis)

Authorities hoped for a break in the weather so they could send up a plane to look for him.

"We did everything we could to try to talk him out of it," said his mother, Tammy Self. "He was leaving, no matter what."

The teen was well-prepared with gear he bought just before leaving, but had little experience of life in the wild beyond family camping trips, his parents said.

"He is not a survivalist," said his father, Victor Self, a manager at a box plant in Oklahoma City. "He is a very urban child."

His parents last heard from him March 15, when he called from the parking lot of a motel in northern Nevada where he was spending the night in the cab of his pickup. The next day, Dustin called his girlfriend in Austin, Texas, to say he was lost after his GPS had sent him onto a road along the east side of Steens Mountain in the high desert of southeastern Oregon.

Ousley said a storekeeper in Fields recalled him asking for directions to Lakeview, which would have taken him a different direction than where his truck was found.

A religious young man raised in a non-denominational Protestant church, Dustin had been searching for meaning in his life, his mother said. He read books like "Human Race: Get Off Your Knees," by David Icke, a former British sports reporter whose books about what he believes is really controlling life on earth are admired by conspiracy theorists. The last movie Dustin watched was "Into The Wild," about a young man who gives up his worldly goods to live in the Alaskan wilderness. A clean-cut bodybuilder in high school, he had lately grown his hair long and wore a bandanna around his head.

"I think he got a lot off the Internet," his mother said.

Tammy Self said her son is a vegetarian, with no desire to kill animals to eat.

"He thought he was going to eat berries," she said. "We tried to tell him, berries don't grow in wintertime."

His father called the Harney County Sheriff's Office on March 17, but a search along the route from Fields to Lakeview turned up nothing. He also filed a missing person report with his local police. Then on Monday, Dustin's truck was found. His backpack and camping gear were gone, but the keys, his computer, his GPS and some of his supply of protein bars and other food had been left behind.

"We're worried sick," said his father. "I just hope he's alive." ( Associated Press )

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Identity of First Americans Questioned

Identity of First Americans Questioned - Ancient stone projectile points discovered in a Central Oregon cave complex have cast new light on the identity of the first Americans.

While scientists agree they crossed the Bering Strait during an ice age, no one knows the identity of the first people to spread across the North American continent.

For some time, these first Americans were believed to have belong to a single group, called the Clovis culture, named for the New Mexican site where their distinctive, 13,000-year-old projectile points were first found.

Displayed in the hand of University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins are three bases for Western Stemmed projectiles from the Paisley Caves in Oregon. The bases date to some 13,000 years ago.

However, some have questioned this theory, and these newly discovered projectile points, the sort of stone tips added to spears, appear to add weight to these questions.

These stone points, a type known as Western Stemmed points, are narrower and lack the distinctive flute, or shallow groove, found on Clovis points. Researchers believe the two types of points represent different technologies, produced by different cultures.

"This brings into focus the concept that other people or perhaps even multiple waves of people bringing other technologies were certainly involved in the first colonization [of the Americas]," said researcher Dennis Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, in a podcast issued by the journal Science, where the work is published.

Dating these Western stemmed points accurately was key, since others like them have been found elsewhere; they are common on the U.S. West Coast and in the Great Basin of Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and California.

These are generally believed to be younger than Clovis points. However, researchers have had difficulty finding materials that can be reliably dated at the Western Stemmed point sites, Jenkins said during a press conference yesterday (July 11).

Archaeologists often look at the decay of radioactive carbon atoms within organic material to determine its age. In Oregon's Paisley Caves, where the four new Western stemmed points showed up, the researchers found some of the ancient organic material they needed, most notably, in coprolites, or dried feces, carrying human DNA.

The coprolites appeared to have been left behind at about the same time as the nearby projectile points.

Radiocarbon dating put the coprolites and other organic samples located near the points at more than 13,000 years old. The team examined the sedimentary layers and the artifacts to determine if the sediment, and as a result the timeline preserved as new layers are laid down, had been disrupted or if the samples had been contaminated.

As a result, they determined that the projectile points — which were broken and appear to have been cast aside as garbage — were as old or older than Clovis points found elsewhere.

"The radiocarbon dates we got have answered the question, are Western stemmed points as old as Clovis. It's been debated since the 1970s, and we have established that fact beyond question," Jenkins said in the podcast. "It certainly reinforces or substantiates, if you will, the concept that there were multiple cultural influences here during the Pleistocene [when the Americas were first colonized]." ( LiveScience.com )


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U.S. women in 20s less likely to get pregnant or have abortion

U.S. women in 20s less likely to get pregnant or have abortion -- Pregnancy rates for U.S. women in their early 20s fell nearly 18 percent from 1990 to 2008 and their abortion rate dropped by 32 percent, as those women delayed the decision to have a baby and used more effective birth control, said a government report released on Wednesday.

The findings for women in their prime child bearing years mirror similar studies showing declines in pregnancies and abortions among teenagers.

Nurse practitioner Gail Brown (L) an unidentified patient and other nurses look at a print out of an ultrasound from a prenatal exam at the Maternity Outreach Mobile in Phoenix, Arizona October 8, 2009. REUTERS/Joshua Lott

The report from the National Center for Health Statistics stated that in 2008, the pregnancy rate for the 20 to 24 age group was 163 per 1,000 women. By comparison, in 1990 that demographic had a pregnancy rate of 198.5 per 1,000, which was nearly 18 percent higher than in 2008.

Pregnancy rates for women between the ages of 25 and 29 fell a more modest 6 percent during the same time period, to 167.9 per 1,000, according to statistics in the report.

The abortion rate also declined among women in their early 20s, to 38.4 per 1,000 women in 2008 from 56.7 per 1,000 in 1990, the report said. That represented a drop of 32 percent.

Again, the drop was more modest for women in their late 20s, as their abortion rate fell to 28.6 per 1,000 in 2008, from 33.9 per 1,000 in 1990, the report said.

A report by the Guttmacher Institute released in February, based on government statistics, showed the teen abortion rate was down 59 percent in 2008 compared with 1988, and that in 2008 the teen pregnancy rate had fallen 42 percent compared to 1990.

The new report extends some of those trends to women who are beyond their teenage years.

"It's not just the teens. Abortion rates are down across the board," said Stephanie Ventura, an author of the National Center for Health Statistics report, which is titled "Estimated Pregnancy Rates and Rates of Pregnancy Outcomes for the United States, 1990-2008."

While the pregnancy rates are down for teens and women in their 20s, they are up for women in their 30s and 40s, the report found. That is consistent with previous research.

Women between 40 and 44 had a dramatic increase in pregnancy rates of nearly 65 percent from 1990 to 2008, the report said. There were 18.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women in that age group in 2008, compared with 11.4 per 1,000 in 1990.

Women in their 20s are "postponing pregnancy," Ventura said.

Another reason for the decrease in pregnancies among younger women is more effective birth control methods, including the combined use of condoms and other methods such as contraceptive patches that release hormones, she said.

"If the pregnancy rates are down, including both births and abortion rates, that would show more efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies," Ventura said.

The report said that overall for all age groups in 2008, 65 percent of pregnancies ended in a live birth in 2008, 18 percent in an abortion and 17 percent in fetal loss. In 1990, 61 percent of pregnancies ended in a live birth and 24 percent were aborted, with 15 percent resulting in fetal loss. ( Reuters )

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American Mountain Lions May be Staging Comeback

American Mountain Lions May be Staging Comeback - American mountain lions, commonly called cougars, have been in decline for a century. Once found throughout North America, populations were isolated in the American West due to widespread hunting and loss of prey.

But new evidence shows the animals may be spreading again, returning to their old stalking grounds in the Midwest.

A group of researchers has confirmed 178 cougar sightings in the Midwest over the past few decades, with the number of confirmations steadily increasing between 1990 and 2008, according to a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management. Most of these sightings have taken place within a short distance of habitat considered suitable for the animal, researchers said.

"The western population has spread, with cougar populations re-establishing across the Midwest," University of Minnesota researcher Michelle LaRue said in a statement.

Three main cougar populations exist in the Midwest, centered around South Dakota's Black Hills, but a few of the animals have ventured far outside this range. One adult male thought to be from the Black Hills made it all the way to Connecticut — a journey of 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) — before being hit by a car June 11, 2011, LaRue said. It was the first confirmed cougar sighting in that statesince the 1880s, according to the Hartford Courant.

Of all cougar carcasses recovered, 76 percent were found to be male. This finding suggests males are leading a steppingstone-type dispersal of the cougar population. As the Connecticut example shows, males are capable of traveling long distances.

"While the distance the Connecticut cougar traveled was rare, we found that cougars are roaming long distances and are moving back into portions of their historical range across the Midwest," LaRue said. The study confirmed the presence of cougars from Texas, Arkansas and Nebraska to the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba.

The researchers examined cougar carcasses, tracks, camera trap photos, video and DNA evidence to draw their conclusions. They also analyzed cougar sightings by wildlife experts reported since the 1990s and cases of attacks on livestock across 14 states and provinces.

The finding raises new conservation questions, such as how humans can live alongside the returning predators. "We believe public awareness campaigns and conservation strategies are required across these states," LaRue said. ( LiveScience.com )

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Army reviewing traumatic stress diagnostic practices

Army reviewing traumatic stress diagnostic practices - The Army has started a system-wide review to ensure its mental healthcare facilities are not engaging in the "unacceptable" practice of considering treatment costs in making a diagnosis, Army Secretary John McHugh told a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday.

Lieutenant General Patricia Horoho, the Army surgeon general, initiated the review in response to the discovery that hundreds of soldiers being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder had their diagnoses reversed after being seen by psychiatrists at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington state.

Commuters drive over "Freedom Bridge" over Interstate-5 freeway past thousands of yellow ribbons fluttering in the wind as they enter the Madigan Army Hospital gate of Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM), Washington March 12, 2012. REUTERS/Anthony Bolante

The medical center is located at Joint Base Lewis McChord, the home base of Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who is suspected of killing 16 people, including nine children, in a shooting rampage in Afghanistan this month.

Bales was on his fourth deployment to a war zone in the past 10 years. His civilian lawyer told Reuters last week that PTSD would likely be part of the defense.

PTSD is a huge issue for the Defense Department. A recent Army study estimated as many as 20 percent of the more than 2 million U.S. troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan could suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Cost of care could range between $4 billion and $6.2 billion, it said.

The Army is looking at whether doctors at the medical center were influenced by the cost of PTSD diagnosis in terms of pensions and other benefits. One psychiatrist said the cost to taxpayers was $1.5 million over the lifetime of a soldier on medical retirement, the Seattle Times reported.

The review being carried out by the Army inspector general aims to ensure that standardized diagnostic procedures are followed by all psychiatrists "and equally important that fiscal considerations are not in any way a part of the evaluations," McHugh said. "It's simply unacceptable."

Referring to Bales, Representative Bill Pascrell, founder of a U.S. congressional task force on brain injuries, told reporters he wanted to "cradle this soldier in our arms" while condemning his actions until it could be determined what happened to him and whether he was properly tested and treated.

Bales had received a traumatic head injury and lost part of a foot during previous deployments in Iraq. The incident raised questions about the stress of repeated deployments, but McHugh said four was not uncommon.

"We have in the military writ large over 50,000 folks in uniform who have had at least four deployments," McHugh told members of the defense panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

'VERY CONCERNING'

Patty Murray, a U.S. senator from Washington state, told McHugh it was "very concerning" that 40 percent of the service members with PTSD who were seen by psychiatrists at Madigan "had their diagnosis changed to something else or overturned entirely."

"What it says is that over four in 10 of our service members - many of whom were already being treated for PTSD - and were due the benefits and care that comes with that diagnosis had it taken away by this unit," she said. "They were then sent back into the force or the local community."

General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said the Army wanted doctors and psychiatrists to have the attitude they were "patient advocates."

"That's the mindset that we're going to work on changing - to make sure that everybody understands that," Odierno said. "We are patient advocates. We are trying to get the best for what is right for our soldiers."

But Murray said senior military leaders had been saying that since the start of the war a decade ago.

"It's really disconcerting after 10 years to find now that that has not been the case," she said.

Murray said it was important to focus on the issue system-wide to make clear that "it isn't the cost of PTSD or any mental health evaluation that is of concern to the Army. ... It is making sure that those men and women get the care." ( Reuters )

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Don't blame welfare, blame "technology shock."

Don't blame welfare, blame "technology shock." - Does welfare spawn out-of-wedlock babies? The architects of the recently passed welfare reform believe it does. They hope that curbing payments for additional children and enforcing parental work requirements will reverse the 25-year trend that has brought large numbers of unmarried mothers onto the welfare rolls.

In 1965, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990, the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants and 18 percent for whites. Every year, about 1 million more children are born into fatherless families, at an enormously increased risk of growing up in poverty.

Efforts by social scientists to explain the rise in out-of-wedlock births have been unconvincing. Conservative Charles Murray, for example, blames overly generous federal welfare benefits. But as David Ellwood and Lawrence Summers have shown, cash welfare benefits rose sharply in the 1960s and fell in the 1970s and 1980s, when out-of-wedlock births rose most.

Liberals have tended to favor the explanation offered by William Julius Wilson, who, in a 1987 study, attributed the increase in out-of-wedlock births to a decline in the marriageability of black men, due to a shortage of jobs. But Robert D. Mare and Christopher Winship have estimated that at most 20 percent of the decline in marriage rates of blacks between 1960 and 1980 can be explained by decreasing employment.

Abetter theory might be called "Reproductive Technology Shock." In the late 1960s and very early 1970s (well before Roe vs. Wade in January 1973), the availability of both abortion and contraception increased dramatically. Many states, including New York and California, liberalized their abortion laws. In July 1970, the Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people was declared unconstitutional. Many observers expected liberalized abortion and contraception to lead to fewer out-of-wedlock births. But the opposite happened, because of the decline in the custom of "shotgun weddings."

Before 1970, the stigma of unwed motherhood was so great that most women would only engage in sexual activity if it came with a promise of marriage in the event of pregnancy. Men were willing to make (and keep) that promise, for they knew that even if they left one woman, they would be unlikely to find another who would not make the same demand. In the 1970s, women who were willing to get an abortion, or who used contraception reliably, no longer found it necessary to condition sexual relations on a promise of marriage in the event of pregnancy. But women who found abortion unacceptable, or who were unreliable in their contraceptive use, found themselves pressured to participate in premarital sexual relations as well. These women feared, correctly, that if they refused sexual relations, they would risk losing their partners.

By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father. And while only a few unmarried mothers once kept their babies, only a few put them up for adoption today, because the stigma of unwed motherhood has declined. Once shunned by their peers and whisked out of town, pregnant teen-agers now receive both encouragement and support to keep their babies, stay in school, and participate in other social activities.

Although doubt will always remain about what causes a change in social custom, the technology-shock theory does fit the facts. The new reproductive technology was adopted quickly, and on a massive scale. Marital and fertility patterns changed with similar drama, at about the same time.

The use of birth-control pills at first intercourse by all unmarried women jumped from 6 percent to 15 percent in just a few years, and probably much more among sexually active unmarried women. The number of abortions among unmarried women grew from roughly 100,000 a year in the late 1960s (compared with some 322,000 out-of-wedlock births) to more than 1.2 million a year (compared with 715,000 out-of-wedlock births) in the early 1980s. During the same period, births per unmarried woman roughly doubled for whites, while the fraction of white unmarried women rose about 30 percent. For black unmarried women, the birth rate actually fell by between 5 percent and 10 percent, but this was offset by an increase of about 40 percent in the number of unmarried black women. Meanwhile, fertility rates for married women of both races declined rapidly, making the out-of-wedlock birth ratio even larger.

The shotgun-marriage rate itself declined only gradually, but that is not surprising. Social conventions change slowly. It took time for men to recognize that they did not have to promise marriage in the event of a pregnancy in exchange for sexual relations. It may also have taken time for women to perceive the increased willingness of men to leave them if they demanded marriage.

One final puzzle, however, requires explanation. The black shotgun-marriage ratio began to fall earlier than the white ratio and shows no significant change in trend around 1970. Here, federal welfare benefits may play a role. Because blacks, on average, have lower incomes than whites, they are more affected by changes in welfare benefits. As a result, the rise in welfare benefits in the 1960s may have resulted in a decline in the black shotgun-marriage rate, and thus, in an increase in out-of-wedlock births.

What should be done? Even if possible, attempts to turn back the technological clock by restricting abortion and contraception would now be counterproductive. Besides denying reproductive freedom to women, such efforts would increase the number of children born and reared in impoverished single-parent families. Most children born out of wedlock are reported by their mothers to have been "wanted," but "not at that time." Some are reported as not having been wanted at all. Easier access to birth-control information and devices and to abortion could reduce the number of unwanted children and improve the timing of those whose mothers would have preferred to wait. ( slate.com )

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More Americans seeking love online

More Americans seeking love online - Online dating has upended traditional matchmaking, new research suggests, with more would-be suitors embracing the notion that Mr. or Ms. Right may only be a click away.

A review of roughly 400 studies and surveys reveals that for an estimated 25 million users around the world, the online dating scene has gone mainstream, shedding all vestiges of stigma.

Online dating is now second only to direct introductions though friends as a means of lighting the candle of romance.

However, the investigating team cautions that matchmaking sites may foster unrealistic expectations, while boasting of allegedly "scientific" dating formulas that are misleading and unproven.

"What we found is that online dating is a terrific and accepted addition to the ways people can meet," said study lead author Eli Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. "It helps all kinds of people get access to potential partners they might not otherwise have met. And it also tends to be particularly helpful to people who have idiosyncratic needs, such as same-sex partners or those who struggle with certain handicaps."

On the other hand, Finkel added, "many of the online industry sites say that they have used science to figure out who is compatible with you. And they make a lot of money with those claims. But the reality is they have presented no evidence to back up their notion of a 'special sauce'. And our review actually suggests that it's almost impossible that what they claimed they've figured out actually works, or that there's anything to it."

The study appears in the February issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

While less than 1 percent of Americans met mates via printed personals in the early 1990s, by 2005 a whopping 37 percent of singles said they had embarked on a date initiated in an online connection.

One study from Stanford University found that between 2007 and 2009, more than one in five straight couples said they had met their current mate online. Among gay couples that figure rose to more than 60 percent.

A gender divide existed in approaches to online dating, with men sifting through three times as many online profiles as women.

Men were 40 percent more likely to get in touch with a woman after checking out her profile than women were after reviewing a male prospect.

Finkel and colleagues found not a single reliable published study that backed up, with detailed evidence, claims that sites had developed a "scientific" method for boosting one's dating odds.

Such claims, they warned, are usually made by dating websites themselves, based on self-generated "secret" information that has never been vetted.

Jeffrey Hall, an assistant professor in communication studies at the University of Kansas, said online dating's popularity should be seen in the context of changing social norms.

"A lot of research loses sight of how amazing it is that something that was once the domain of creeps and losers is now fully incorporated as a functional part of our lives," he said. "And this study does a great job of showing us just how dramatically things have changed over the course of the last 15 years."

"There's an increased need for young people to find somebody to date as they spend a longer time between school and marriage," Hall said. "And they're increasingly comfortable using the Internet to do just that. Young adults are very comfortable using online media to present themselves and creating an online profile."

"One of the benefits is that shy or introverted people can put their best foot forward," Hall said. But the downside, he said, "is that people are going to be more shallow, and maybe use bad cues when making decisions, like focusing too much on how attractive someone is."

"What the Internet does is help people skip right to the first date. It helps people muster the courage to ask someone out," he concluded. ( HealthDay News )

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Obesity rates in U.S. stall, still high

Obesity rates in U.S. stall, still high - After over 20 years of a steady rise, obesity rates in the U.S. appear to be holding steady, having only increased “slightly” overall since 2005, according to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Going over the data, researchers found that in 2009 and 2010, the prevalence of obesity in adult men was 35.5%, and 35.8% among adult women. When compared to data from 1999 and 2000, researchers found that the increase in obesity rates only increased by around 1%.

“I’m not very surprised, but I think this is a kind of encouraging finding, given all the efforts we have been making,” Dr. Youfa Wang, head of the Johns Hopkins Global Center for Childhood Obesity in Baltimore, told Reuters Health. Wang was not involved in the study.

“The general public for sure nowadays has become more aware of the health consequences of obesity, and industry has been heavily influenced by all the efforts,” Wang said.

It’s certainly good news that obesity rates in the U.S. aren’t seeing a significant increase, but Dr. David Ludwig, director of the childhood obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston, points out to the LA Times that the fight is hardly over.

“We’re by no means through the epidemic,’’ he said. “Children will be entering adulthood heavier than they’ve ever been at any time in human history. Even without further increases in prevalence, the impact of the epidemic will continue to mount for many years to come.’’ ( inquisitr.com )

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Mental United States: Study Finds 5% Of American Have ‘Serious’ Mental Disorders

Mental United States: Study Finds 5% Of American Have ‘Serious’ Mental Disorders - Mental disease has been on the increase in the United States over the last several decades or at least the diagnosis of such disorders and now a study performed by the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health has found that 20% of US adults suffer from some sort of mental illness while 5% suffer from “serious mental disorder.”

In more troubling news the group says less than half of those people suffering from mental illness get treatment while 60% of those with serious disorders fail to receive treatment.

The large scale study included randomly selecting 68,5000 people living in homes, dorms and shelters and interviewing them to determine their level of mental illness.

According to the Washington Post the following findings from the 2010 survey were extracted:

• Women, young adults, the unemployed, and those with low incomes were the most likely to suffer from mental illness.
• When it comes to mental health care, 40% of those who expressed an ‘”unmet need” said they could not afford to pay for it.
• Drug and alcohol abuse were not considered mental disorders for the purposes of this survey, but such abuse is more than twice as common in mental illness sufferers.
• About 4% of US adults consider suicide each year.

Mental disorders ranged everywhere from depression and anxiety disorders to schizophrenia and other diseases that affect adults throughout the United States.

Do you know anyone who has suffered from a mental disorder but has refused to get help from a professional? Share your own stories in our comment section. ( inquisitr.com )

READ MORE - Mental United States: Study Finds 5% Of American Have ‘Serious’ Mental Disorders

Obesity rates in U.S. appear to be finally leveling off

Obesity rates in U.S. appear to be finally leveling off - After three decades of climbing steadily, obesity rates appear to be stabilizing nationwide. Increases among certain demographic groups are still evident, however.

After a 30-year, record-shattering rise, U.S. obesity rates appear to be stabilizing.

New statistics cited in two papers report only a slight uptick since 2005 — leaving public health experts tentatively optimistic that they may be gaining some ground in their efforts to slim down the nation.

Many obesity specialists say the new data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a sign that efforts to address the obesity problem — such as placing nutritional information on food packaging and revising school lunch menus — are beginning to have an effect in a country where two-thirds of adults and one-third of children and teens are overweight or obese.

"A good first step is to stop the increase, so I think this is very positive news," said James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. "It may suggest our efforts are starting to make a difference. The bad news is we still have obesity rates that are just astronomical."

Many obesity specialists say the new data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a sign that efforts to address the obesity problem -- such as placing nutritional information on food packaging and revising school lunch menus -- are beginning to have an effect in a country where two-thirds of adults and one-third of children and teens are overweight or obese. (AFP/Getty Images)

Historically, there was little change in Americans' sizes from 1960 through 1980. But obesity rates soared through the end of the century, for reasons that are still debated.

The new studies reflect 2009-10 data, the most recent available, from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which examined 6,000 adults and 4,111 children, measuring their body mass index, among other items. Though a number of organizations measure obesity rates, the survey's data are considered among the most accurate.

The statistics showed that more than 35% of U.S. adults (78 million people) are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or greater. That is similar to the 2005-06 rate. Calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, the BMI is not a perfect measure of fatness but is still viewed as the gold standard in assessing population-wide trends.

An additional third of adults are overweight, the analysis found, also similar to the rates in 2005-06.

Likewise, data in children and teenagers from birth to age 19 reflect little change from the survey's 2007-08 data, according to the reports, which were published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Almost 17% are obese and 32% are overweight or obese.

But though obesity rates may be flattening overall, increases and disparities can still be found in specific racial and ethnic groups.

Rates have risen to 58.5% among non-Hispanic black women and to nearly 45% among Mexican American women since 2004, for example. And among children and teens, about 21% of Hispanics and 24% of blacks are obese compared with 14% of non-Hispanic whites.

The report also found that gender differences appear to be fading, with percentages of overweight males catching up with or even overtaking those of females.

Among males under 19, obesity rose from 14% in 1999-2000 to 18.6% in the latest survey; in adult men, the rate jumped from 27.5% to 35.5%.

In addition, more adult men are now overweight or obese as compared with women — 73.9% to 63.7%. Severe obesity remains more common in women, however.

"We found no indication that the prevalence of obesity is declining in any group," the authors wrote in one of the papers, which looked at obesity rates among adults.

It's not clear why obesity rates are still rising in some groups while stabilizing in others, said Cynthia L. Ogden, a coauthor of the two papers and a researcher at the CDC. But the best bet of some leading obesity experts is that obesity prevention initiatives in some pockets of the country are paying off.

The Let's Move! program founded by First Lady Michelle Obama has raised national awareness through actions such as persuading Wal-Mart to stock more healthful foods and working with professional sports organizations to create public service announcements encouraging children to exercise.

Certain states, including California, have made obesity prevention a major health goal through measures to reduce access to sugary drinks and high-calorie, unhealthful snacks in schools.

A UCLA study released in November showed obesity rates ticking down in some parts of the state between 2005 and 2010, including a decline of 2.5% in Los Angeles County. And research published last month found obesity rates in New York City children fell 5% between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 school years.

"The places that are making serious changes in the schools and communities can take hope that these changes are starting to have an effect," said Dr. James S. Marks, senior vice president and director of the health group for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a private organization aimed at improving health of Americans.

But, he added, a reduction in obesity rates will probably take many more years and more than the smattering of programs and initiatives so far underway.

The best hope for lowering rates, he said, is to stop people from getting fat to begin with: Experience and studies show that it is difficult for obese adults to permanently shed fat and that children who are already overweight or obese are highly likely to be overweight as adults.

Only one prescription anti-obesity medication is currently approved for long-term use, and researchers have stalled in their efforts to find more. Moreover, most obesity is untreated or under-treated.

Since obesity contributes to joint damage as well as diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, the epidemic truly is a national crisis, said Patrick M. O'Neil, president of the Obesity Society and director of the weight management center at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

"Even if the statistics stay at current prevalence rates, I see little good news in that," O'Neil said.

People should look to their own lives and individual experiences, and strive for progress by eating more healthfully and exercising more, he said.

"On a population basis you are trying to turn an aircraft carrier, and it's going to take a long time for it to change," he said. ( latimes.com )

READ MORE - Obesity rates in U.S. appear to be finally leveling off

Apple juice made in America? Think again

Apple juice made in America? Think again — Which food revelation was more shocking this week?

Did it blow you away that low levels of a fungicide that isn't approved in the U.S. were discovered in some orange juice sold here? Yawn. Or was it the news that Brazil, where the fungicide-laced juice originated, produces a good portion of the orange pulpy stuff we drink? Gasp!

While the former may have sent prices for orange juice for delivery in March down 5.3 percent earlier this week, the latter came as a bombshell to some "Buy American" supporters. But that's not the only surprise lurking in government data about where the food we eat comes from.

Overall, America's insatiable desire to chomp on overseas food has been growing. About 16.8 percent of the food that we eat is imported from other countries, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 11.3 percent two decades ago. Here are some other facts:

FILE - In this Feb. 27, 2008 file photo, a Vietnamese woman works at a fish market in Nha Trang, Vietnam. It might have surprised you to learn in recent news that Brazil tops Florida as the world's largest orange juice producer. You probably also didn’t know most of our apple juice comes from China. What about the fact that 85 percent of the fish Americans eat is imported, too? (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki, File)

• Not all juices are treated the same. About 99 percent of the grapefruit juice we drink is produced on American soil, while about a quarter of the orange juice is imported; more than 40 percent of that is from Brazil.
• About half of the fresh fruit we eat comes from elsewhere. That's more than double the amount in 1975.
• Some 86 percent of the shrimp, salmon, tilapia and other fish and shellfish we eat comes from other countries. That's up from about 56 percent in 1990.

Better communication (thank you, Internet) and transportation (thank you, faster planes) play a role in all the food importing. And in many cases, it's just become much cheaper to pay for shipping food from distant countries, where wages are often lower and expensive environmental rules often laxer than in the U.S.

Our expanding population — and bellies — also has made feeding people cheaply more important. The U.S. has about 309 million residents, as of the 2010 U.S. Census. In 1990, that number was about 249 million.

There's also a shift in our food psychology. New Americans — those who have immigrated from Latin America and other countries — want the foods that they enjoyed back home. Not to mention that Americans in general have come to expect that they should be able to buy blueberries, spinach and other things even when they're not in season in the U.S.

"This is about the expectation that we're going to have raspberries when it's snowing in Ithaca," said Marion Nestle, a food studies professor at New York University.

Of course, the U.S. government still has high standards when it comes to dining on vittles that were created elsewhere.

For instance, while 85 percent of the apple juice we drink is imported, only about 7 percent of the apples we eat are. Andy Jerardo, an economist at the USDA, says that's because the juice often comes from China, which produces apples that are inferior for snacking but good for drinking.

And we still get the majority of American dinner staples like wine, red meat and veggies from within the U.S. The U.S. is more inclined to import foods that can be easily stored and won't spoil quickly. For example, 44 percent of the dry peas and lentils Americans consume are imported.

Also, we're much less likely to import foods that we already grow a lot of here. Indeed, only about 1 percent of the sweet potatoes we eat — which grow plentifully in states like California and North Carolina — come from outside the nation's borders. And basically all of our cranberries are from U.S. places like Massachusetts and Oregon.

But stuff like fruit and fish can be a little trickier to gauge.

The USDA's Kristy Plattner says the percentage of imported fruit has grown because we're eating more tropical fruits. That's a result of two things: More Americans have ties to Latino cultures and as a nation, we're becoming more adventurous eaters.

So, even though we consume fewer apples than we did 30 years ago (about 15.4 pounds per person in the 2010-11 season, down from 19.2 pounds in 1980-81), we eat more mangos (about 2.2 pounds, up from about one-fourth of 1 pound). We also chow on more limes, lemons, kiwi, papayas and avocados.

Fish importing has risen for another reason. The U.S. isn't building its aquaculture industry, or fish farms, as aggressively as some other countries.

Fish farms supply about half the world's seafood demand, including about half of U.S. imports, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But in the U.S., our seafood farms meet less than 10 percent of the country's demand for seafood.

Lorenzo Juarez, deputy director of the NOAA's aquaculture office, says the U.S. has stricter environmental and safety standards for its farms. But that's not to say that the NOAA is opposed to U.S. fish farms.

In fact, the agency sees them as the best way to feed an expanding country, especially in light of USDA recommendations that Americans should expand their seafood intake.

"The amount of fish that can be had sustainably from the wild fisheries is set," Juarez said. "If we need to increase per-capita consumption, the only way this can happen is through aquaculture."

In other words, there are only so many fish in the sea. ( Associated Press )

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Americans Continue to Pack on the Pounds

Americans Continue to Pack on the Pounds - We have stuffed ourselves with turkey, and even before the leftovers are gone, it's time for a reality check.

American men and women, on average, report weighing nearly 20 pounds more than they did in 1990, according to the annual Health and Healthcare survey conducted by Gallup in early November.

Men, on average, said they weighed 196 pounds, while women, said they weighed 160 pounds, according to a report on Gallup's website.

This puts us further from our ideal weights, which have also gone up: Men reported wanting to weigh 181 pounds and women see themselves at 138 pounds, the survey of 1,012 adults indicated.

Our perceived ideal weight has increased along with our self-reported weight, but not as quickly.As a result, we have gotten further from our ideal weight over the past 20 years. For men, who now say they'd like to weigh 181 pounds, that difference has climbed from 9 to 15 pounds. For women, who say their ideal weight is 138 pounds, the gap has risen from 13 to 22 pounds.

This year, 39 percent of American adults reported they are very or somewhat overweight.

However, it appears we may be cutting ourselves too much slack. Separate data collected by Gallup and the company Healthways indicate that nearly 62 percent of Americans are overweight or obese based on their body mass index, a ratio of height and weight that gauges a person's level of body fat.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links being overweight or obese with increasing levels of risk for coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, high blood pressure, stroke and a number of other potentially serious health conditions. ( foxnews.com )

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How the conservative belief in American exceptionalism has become a matter of faith

In God They Trust - How the conservative belief in American exceptionalism has become a matter of faith.

A small group of colonies manages to break away from a large empire in the closing years of the 18th century. The resulting state would probably be not much more than the Chile of the Northeast—a long littoral ribbon between the mountains and the ocean—if it were not for the imperial rivalries that allow for the rapid growth of the new republic’s influence. When one of the rival empires gets into serious financial trouble, it sells the new republic enough territory to double its size, at a bargain basement price. This new territory, rich in all aspects, also gives access to a vast internal basin of navigable rivers. On exploration, this system eventually gives place to the coast of another ocean, and to lands that contain vast reserves of such desirable minerals as gold. Another immense tract of this, today known as Alaska, is almost casually sold to the envoy of the new republic, along with tremendous deposits of what will one day be known as “oil.” …

So yes, I suppose you could say that the United States had some kind of luck, or force, or destiny, on its side. There were certainly those, even among its most secular founding fathers, who felt that more than ordinary realpolitik was involved. Thomas Paine for example was taken by the idea of a new Garden of Eden and a fresh start, and it was his words that were later to be quoted by Ronald Reagan when he said that he thought humanity had found the power to begin the world over again.

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry

Of course, with any Eden there must be a serpent and an original sin. In the American case at least, Thomas Paine knew quite clearly what it was. The vile stain of slavery was present at every point, just as the awful profitability of cotton, and the easy availability of unpaid human labor from the African trade, corrupted the ideals of the new republic from the very first. In the end, the reckoning for this historic crime led to a war in which much of the ill-gotten wealth was squandered. On the other hand, that same civil war led to the triumph of capitalism and the expansionist state, with the new republic soon becoming an empire in all but name in the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico.

Along the way, it was inevitable that politicians like Albert Beveridge would proclaim the idea of “manifest destiny” and the natural right of Americans to a dominant role in the world. It is the self-confidence involved in this idea—or rather the loss of it—that some people think should be the subject of the current presidential campaign. A candidate can expect to be ambushed and asked to affirm or deny the special position of the United States as an exemplary city on a hill, “shining” as a beacon to the less fortunate. On a slightly lower element of the scale, people answering polls have recently been asked whether they agree with this statement: “Our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others.” The most recent polling on the latter point shows less than half of Americans in favor of the slightly tepid proposition, though it’s not obvious whether the perfection or the superiority is being voted on the most.

Especially to the extent that it starts to look like a loyalty oath, I think that the underlying question here should be dismissed as rash or stupid or both. Is the United States “chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world”? Anybody claiming to have the answer to that question—as George W. Bush once seemed to do—would be a fool. For a start, what would be his sources of information? And how good a historian would he be? In the long view, very few of the survivors of the Roman Empire would have predicted that the inhabitants of the frozen and backward British Isles would be among the next builders of a global system, but so it proved. And there was no question that the British or English, especially the Protestant fundamentalist ones, believed that they had God on their side. In fact, I know of no European state that doesn’t have some kind of national myth to the same effect. The problem, as everybody knows, is that not all these myths can be simultaneously right.

Long-term ideas of “destiny” are not easily assimilated to shorter-term glooms about the loss of American power and prestige. It’s a strange fact, but in the present political season it is the American right that seems to harbor the most skepticism about American power. I personally find this odd: Yet again the United States has managed to get itself largely on the right side of a massive historical shift—the Arab Spring—which it had not “read” very well the first time round. And yet, most of the remarks made by seekers of the Republican nomination have been sour or grudging.

I remember Bernard-Henri Levy saying, in the early stages of the Iraq war that he opposed, that America had been essentially in the right about combating fascism and Nazism, and essentially right about opposing and outlasting the various forms of Communism, and that all else was pretty much commentary or, as one might say, merde de taureau. Something of the sort seems to apply in the present case, both in recent developments in Burma and Vietnam as well as in Libya and Syria. The crowds have a tendency to be glad that there is an American superpower, if only to balance the cynical powers of Moscow and Beijing. Perhaps if it were not for President Obama being in the White House, our right wing would be quicker to see and appreciate this point.

The ancients taught us to fear “hubris,” and the Bible teaches the sin of pride. I am always amazed that American conservatives are not more suspicious of self-proclaimed historical uniqueness. But proclaim it they do, as if trying to reassure themselves against the blasts of what looks like a very bad season. ( slate.com )

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Are Americans smarter than ever?

Are Americans smarter than ever? - The nation's IQ scores have kept climbing over the past 100 years. Does that mean we're brighter than our forebears?

Are we really getting smarter?

We are, at least in terms of intelligence quotient, or IQ, which is the most broadly used measure of mental ability. Over the past hundred years or so, raw scores on IQ tests have improved steadily. The phenomenon is known as the Flynn effect, after political scientist James Flynn, who discovered it in the 1980s. According to his extensive research, IQ test scores in the U.S. increased by an average of three points per decade during the 20th century. IQs themselves have not risen, since the scoring of each new test version is calibrated to assure a mean score of 100, defined as average intelligence. But if measured on an unadjusted scale, the current generation would have IQs more than 20 points above those of their grandparents­ — or enough to distinguish a "dull normal" from a "bright normal." The shift is by no means exclusive to the U.S.: Many European countries, as well as Canada, Japan, Israel, China, Australia, and New Zealand, also recorded strong increases in IQ scores over the last century.

IQ test scores in the U.S. increased by an average of three points per decade during the 20th century. Photo: Tim Pannell/CORBIS

Why have IQ scores risen so consistently?

No one knows exactly, but there are many theories. Improved nutrition and medical breakthroughs in the 20th century enabled children in advanced nations to develop more quickly, enhancing their brainpower. Psychologists also point to a rise in educational standards during that time. As society's inequalities evened out, children at the low end, or "left tail" of the intelligence curve, were less likely to be left behind, contributing to a general rise in intellect. If that's true, however, the Flynn effect should now be weakening, since the vast majority of children in the Western world have access to schools, medical care, and adequate food.

Is that happening?

There is some evidence that IQ scores have stopped rising in Scandinavia, but a major new study has concluded that the Flynn effect is still going strong in the U.S. Researchers at Duke University examined IQ tests of more than 1.7 million American 5th, 6th, and 7th graders between 1981 and 2010, and established that the scores were still rising as steeply as ever. The study also found proof, for the first time, that the Flynn effect is not merely a result of formerly deprived children improving and bringing up the average score. The IQ scores of the brightest 5 percent of children — or the "right tail" of the intelligence curve — were shown to be rising, too. "The 'smart' are getting increasingly smarter," said Duke researcher Jonathan Wai.

Why would that be?

Environmental stimulation might play a part, Wai and his team suggest. Most 21st-century adolescents engage every day in problem solving similar to that encountered on IQ tests — whether it's puzzling over increasingly complex video games or watching TV shows with labyrinthine subplots and large casts of characters. "Because people are now forced to make sense of Lost or the Harry Potter series or World of Warcraft," says Jonah Lehrer, an author of books on psychology, "they're also better able to handle hard logic puzzles." Some scholars also point to a "social multiplier effect'' — the phenomenon that smart people who hang around with other smart people tend, as a group, to get even smarter.

Do IQ tests reliably measure 'smartness'?

That's a hotly debated question. IQ tests gauge abstract intelligence — the ability to solve logic problems — rather than verbal reasoning, mathematical skills, literacy, or creativity. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, among others, has argued that linguistic, musical, physical, and personal skills all ought to factor into any assessment of intelligence. Flynn himself has said that IQ really reflects the extent to which a person has adopted a scientific rather than a concrete or utilitarian worldview. "If you asked a person in 1900 what a dog and rabbit had in common, they would say you could use a dog to hunt rabbits," he said. "Today you would say they both are mammals." The second answer is worth two points on standard IQ tests; the first, though hardly an invalid response, yields zero points.

Do we profit from rising IQs?

Individually, yes; more broadly, not necessarily. The American Psychological Association has found that high IQ scores correlate with both high grades at school and good job performance. Flynn has noted that people with high IQs are lateral thinkers prone to "solving business problems on [their] feet rather than running to the boss for help." Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware argues, however, that pure intelligence "is a useful tool, but not a virtue." It helps people get ahead, she says, but has little connection with emotional well-being or conscientiousness. In other words, people today might be better problem solvers on paper than previous generations. But that doesn't mean they'll be willing to do what's necessary to, say, solve the problems of the U.S. economy.

The decline of thinking outside the box

While IQ scores are indisputably on the rise, American creativity levels are bottoming out. Analysis of the results of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking suggests that the creative abilities of American children have been spiraling downward for almost 20 years. The Torrance tests analyze young children's ability to come up with original ideas and put them into practice. Kyung Hee Kim, an assistant professor at the College of William & Mary School of Education, found that scores on Torrance tests taken by children up to 6th grade between 1968 and 2008 showed a steady decline after 1990. That's a serious issue at a time when creative thinking is among the most desperately needed skills in the American workplace. A recent study found that 85 percent of employers concerned with hiring creative people say they can't find the right applicants. Kim blamed America's standards-obsessed schools for creating an environment in which creative thinking was not nurtured. "Creative students cannot breathe, they are suffocated in school," she said. "Then they become underachievers." ( theweek.com )

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