Study Finds One-Third in D.C. Illiterate

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Study Finds One-Third in D.C. Illiterate
WASHINGTON (AP) - About one-third of the people living in the national’s(sic) capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia.

Adults are considered functionally illiterate if they have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out job applications.

The study by the State Education Agency, a quasi-governmental office created by the U.S. Department of Education to distribute federal funds for literacy services, was ordered by Mayor Anthony A. Williams in 2003 as part of his four-year, $4 million adult literacy initiative.

The growing number of Hispanic and Ethiopian immigrants who aren’t proficient in English contributed to the city’s high functional illiteracy level, which translated to 170,000 people, said Connie Spinner, director of the State Education Agency. The report says the district’s functional illiteracy rate is 36 percent and the nation’s 21 percent.

Adults age 65 and older had the lowest literacy score of any group, the report found.

The District of Columbia Chamber of Commerce, which contributed to the report, said the city lost up to $107 million in taxes annually between 2000 and 2005 because of a lack of qualified job applicants.

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Very sad. In our Nation’s capital no less.
As an aside - Not exactly a plus for the pro-state crowd.

Senate Votes to Change Way U.S. Attorneys Appointed : Bloomberg.com

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aW8o9TK8SUN8&refer=home

March 20 (Bloomberg) — The Senate voted 94-2 to repeal a year-old law that Democrats said gave Attorney General Alberto Gonzales too much power to name temporary U.S. prosecutors without senators’ consent.
The legislation was proposed by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein following the disclosure that eight U.S. attorneys were dismissed last year as part of a Bush administration effort to replace them with other political appointees.
The firings triggered investigations by two congressional committees into whether President George W. Bush’s staff injected politics into law enforcement.
They also prompted calls for Gonzales’s ouster by several top Democrats and at least three Republicans.
“We need to close the loophole that the Department of Justice and the White House exploited that facilitated this abuse,” Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in floor debate.
The little-noticed 2006 provision, added to the extension of the USA Patriot Act, allowed the attorney general to make temporary appointments of U.S. attorneys for indefinite periods of time.
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Yet another indicator of the wonderfulness that is the Patriot Act. Good grief.

Blackwater: Shadow Army

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I've been worried about this for awhile. Especially after Katrina. The problem I was initially worried about is that Bush could use them without violating Posse Comitatus. He's since eliminated Posse Comitatus so that's not as much of a worry now (haha). This shit is just scary.