Obama's Bracket

I caught this lovely little number over at IowaHawk:

School Safety Drill: What The Hell Is Going On In Iowa?!?

It seems that insanity and stupidity prevailed among school "leaders" at a school in Western Iowa (emphasis added):

Iowa Safety Drill Portrays Mock Shooter as 'Anti-Immigration' Pro-Gun Student

An emergency drill set to take place in an Iowa school Saturday is drawing outrage after organizers revealed the mock scenario involves an “anti-immigration” pro-gun student shooting dozens of students in a racially-motivated shooting spree.

Operation Closed Campus is designed to ensure school officials, emergency responders and support organizations are prepared in the event they face a school shooting, according to the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency. 

The agency, along with the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program, distributed an exercise plan Wednesday to detail exactly how the drill -- to be held at Treynor High School and involving roughly 300 people, local police, hospitals and the Red Cross -- would be carried out.

Along with logistics, the exercise plan also details the fictitious backstory behind the mock shootings, which begins with the premise:

“In the past 6 months, the City of Treynor and Treynor Community School District has received a significant influx of minority residents,” causing “controversy regarding national immigration policies as well as racial tensions with a few embedded, typically silent, white supremacy affiliates.”  Based on those tensions, a white 18-year-old high school senior who “has been seen with anti-immigration demonstrators” and whose family “is known to be firearm enthusiasts, if not fanatics” starts a fight with a group of minority students “blurting racial slurs and that he is tired of them moving in and stealing jobs and money from Americans” then “pulls a handgun from his waistband, shooting one of the minority students.”

A 17-year-old friend of the shooter then joins him in "firing upon anyone in their path and chasing down anyone who is against their ill-perceived stand,” the plan says.

Critics say organizers are clearly using the drill as a way to portray gun owners and opponents of illegal immigration as terrorists.

"I believe it's politically motivated, it’s wrong and it's a slap in the fact to any person that loves our country and is concerned about our border security," Robert Ussery, state director of Iowa Minutemen, a group against illegal immigration, told FoxNews.com. "We’re going to contact our legislators to put a stop to this."

Kevin Elwood, superintendent of Treynor Community Schools, told FoxNews.com he started receiving complaints from all over the Midwest after the plan went out.

“I’m getting a few emails today saying, ‘Are you crazy? Are you really doing this in school?’” Elwood said Thursday. 

Elwood said he was as surprised as anyone to see the scenario in the Exercise Plan. 

“It hadn’t been discussed at any previous meetings leading up to this event or any of the planning sessions we’ve had," he said.

In a follow-up memo distributed Wednesday afternoon, Doug Reed, the lead exercise planner for the county’s Emergency Management Agency, said the scenario was only constructed for the purpose of securing Department of Homeland Security Grant funding, which requires the drill simulate a terrorism scenario. (Comment: Given Janet Napolitano's previous comments, I'm surprised the scenario didn't include a veteran ...)

“This scenario and supporting suspect profiles are only in the plan in order to define this FICTITIOUS INCIDENT as a domestic terrorism event and to provide simulated intelligence that responding law enforcement would want and/or eventually request during the event,” Reed wrote. “There will be NO role-playing of racist protests, slander or hate crimes during the actual exercise … the only thing being exercised is the RESPONSE to a shooting, we are not exercising events leading up to the shooting.”

Reed added that the exercise and scenario have “nothing to do" with the continued political debate over immigration laws. 

"There is no political party that was or is in charge of planning this exercise," he said. "This exercise has nothing to do with intimidating or preventing any American citizen their rights or liberties.”

But Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, said it “bothers” him even more that the federal government would encourage that kind of a scenario.

“They ought to be pushing for making it so that people who have concealed carry permits -- maybe teachers, principles, janitors -- can be armed,” Pratt told FoxNews.com. “Right now this would be a terribly inviting target because schools are -- stupidly -- a criminal-friendly zone and nobody would legally be able to protect themselves if something his horrendous were to happen.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

Elwood said he hopes the controversy surrounding the Exercise Scenario doesn’t compromise the exercise itself.  “We’re excited about this drill," he said. "We hope it’s not ruined by this one little one page-and-a-half that describes a scenario that really doesn’t apply to anything we’re doing.”

Eva Fisher, an administrative assistant at the Emergency Management Agency, said the drill's organizers were on a conference call Friday morning, but that she believed it was still set to take place as scheduled.

Well, the day after the above was reported, the UK's Mail Online reported that the drill was cancelled after receiving a threat that the threat would be carried out for real:

U.S. anti-terrorism drill showing white supremacists shooting immigrants cancelled following threats to carry it out for real

An anti-terrorism drill featuring a white supremacist U.S. student on a racially-motivated gun spree has been cancelled - after a critic of the event threatened to carry it out for real.

The planned exercise at Treynor High School in western Iowa featured a mock scenario where an anti-immigration pro-gun student shouts racist abuse before shooting a minority pupil.

Emergency management officials in the state had organised the drill, which was going to involve 300 people, police and hospitals.

But the event has been shelved after bosses received an anonymous threat from a furious caller who warned: 'You better not come to work today because your school shooting is really going to happen.'
...

Nice.  I'm sure the lone whacko who placed the threatening call will be lumped in with all the other "racists" that the MSM love to pile on, such as members of the Tea Party, the NRA, and those poor crazed veterans that Napolitano warned us about.

Japan: 30 Children Wait Silently for Their Parents

Just heartbreaking ... from the UK's Daily Mail:

Sitting silent in their classroom, the 30 children whose parents have not come to collect them after tsunami swept away their town

Even amid the carnage and despair of Japan's tsunami victims, the plight of the 30 children at Kama Elementary School is heartbreaking. 


They sit quietly in the corner of a third-floor classroom where they have waited each day since the tsunami swept into the town of Ishinomaki for their parents to collect them. So far, no one has come and few at the school now believe they will.


Teachers think that some of the boys and girls, aged between eight and 12, know their fathers and mothers are among the missing and will never again turn up at the gates of the school on the eastern outskirts of the town, but they are saying nothing.

Instead, they wait patiently reading books or playing card games watched over by relatives and teachers, who prevent anyone from speaking to them.


Officials fear that even the sound of the door sliding back might raise false hope that a parent has come to collect them. Their silence is in marked contrast to other children playing in the corridors of the four-storey building, whose parents survived due to a complete fluke.


Sports teacher Masami Hoshi said: 'The tsunami came just when the parents of the middle age group were starting to arrive to collect their children so we managed to get them inside and to safety.


'The younger ones had left with their parents a little earlier. The ones who went to homes behind the school probably survived, the ones who went the other way probably didn't.' 

Remember, it is so easy to donate to help Japan:

1) The Red Cross: to make a $10 donation to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami (to be added to your cellphone bill), text REDCROSS to 90999 or click here for online donating.


2) The Salvation Army, text "Japan" or "Quake" to 80888 to make a $10 donation, or click here to donate online.

And, it's so easy and powerful to pray for Japan and her people. 

Relief Efforts in Japan; Situation Desperate

Check out this video interview of an American relief worker helping in Sendai, Japan:

Fukushima 50: Pray for These Brave Heroes!!

Such courage is rarely seen ... please keep the Fukushima 50, Japan, and all relief workers and relief efforts in your prayers!!!!

Fukushima 50 Stay Behind to Prevent Nuclear Meltdown

They are known as the Fukushima 50, the workers who stayed behind at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in order to prevent a meltdown in Japan.

Between 50 and 70 plant engineers -- who have not been identified and are being hailed as heroes -- continue to work around the clock in dangerous conditions, as hundreds of thousands have evacuated the area, fearing a meltdown.

Two of the workers are missing after an explosion and fire at the Unit 4 reactor, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Workers have since resumed operations, Reuters reports.

"The longer they stay, the more dangerous it becomes for them," Margaret Harding of the American Nuclear Society told CBS News.

The engineers are trying to cool nuclear reactors with seawater, while trying to avoid fires and explosions.

"You are the only ones who can resolve a crisis. Retreat is unthinkable," Japanese Prime Minister Naota Kan told them, the Financial Times reported.

The workers have exposed themselves to high doses of radiation, which could cause cancer.

"These workers, in a few hours, are getting fairly high doses I would say by contemporary standards for worker protection, and that's likely to pose some risks down the line," David Richardson, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, told the BBC. He added that the radiation the Fukushima 50 would receive in an hour is the same amount a U.S. nuclear worker would be exposed to over an entire career.

Last Friday's magnitude 9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami have left 11,000 dead or missing.

Gingrich and Biofuels: A Poor Candidate with A Poor Policy

We know that at this point, there are a number of names floating around for possible GOP candidate for the presidential race.  I have never really been able to put my finger on why I don't care for Newt Gingrich, other than the nasty divorce he went through when marriage #2 ended due to his infidelity while his wife was suffering through cancer (... a la John Edwards).  But, a favorite blogger has some extra ammo against Gingrich for the nomination (emphasis added):

GOP: Avoid Newt Gingrich like the plague
 by Chuck Rogér

Would Republicans nominate a presidential candidate who pushes thoroughly-debunked biofuel nonsense? Were the party to select Newt Gingrich, it will have nominated, in the Wall Street Journal's words, "Professor Cornpone."

Professor Cornpone hasn't yet officially announced, but he is running for President.

In a recent speech to ethanol lobbyists, Gingrich alleged that criticism of the heavily taxpayer-subsidized corn ethanol industry constitutes "big-city attacks" aimed at robbing rural Americans of their chance at prosperity. An over-the-top, class-divisive, vitriol-spewing progressive couldn't have said it better--or worse, depending on perspective.

Gingrich added, "Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill [the corn ethanol subsidy program] because it's working, and you wonder, 'What are their values?'"

Indeed, Mr. Gingrich's values seem to exclude truth. The efficacy of ethanol as an additive to automotive fuel and a "solution" to global warming has been totally debunked. Gingrich comes off as a fallacy-spreading, political pandering fool for continuing to push for biofuel corn crops to replace food crops. And Gingrich's motive for advancing falsehoods is simple: win votes in corn country.

The WSJ exposes the extent of Gingrich's intellectual dishonesty and the selectiveness of the man's memory.
 
Of course, the ethanol boom isn't due to the misallocation of resources that always stalks inflation. It is the result of decades of deliberate industrial policy, as Mr. Gingrich well knows. In 1998, then Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer tried to kill ethanol's subsidies for good, only to land in the wet cement that Speaker Gingrich had poured.

Yet today this now-mature industry enjoys far more than cash handouts, including tariffs on foreign competitors and a mandate to buy its product. Supporters are always inventing new reasons for these dispensations, like carbon benefits (nonexistent, according to the greens and most scientific evidence) and replacing foreign oil (imports are up). An historian of Mr. Gingrich's distinction surely knows all that. Gingrich knows the truth. But being on the campaign trail appears to bring out the worst in Newt. In light of President Obama's State-of-the-Union push for yet more taxpayer subsidies for mostly worthless "green" technology, the Journal adds:

So along comes Mr. Gingrich to offer his support for Mr. Obama's brand of green-energy welfare, undermining House Republicans in the process. In his Iowa speak-power-to-truth lecture, he even suggested that the government should mandate that all new cars in the U.S. be flex-fuel vehicles—meaning those that can run on an ethanol-gas mix as high as 85%—as if King Corn were in any danger of being deposed.

Yet there are currently dozens of flex-fuel models on the market, and auto makers already get a benefit if they sell them, via the prior fuel-economy mandates that did so much to devastate Detroit. The problem is consumers rarely want to pay more for flex-fuel cars when they get 25% to 30% fewer miles per gallon with E85, according to Energy Department data. The GOP needs reality-based strength to lead it into the White House in 2012. A candidate who embraces honesty, facts, and reason must face down Obama. Newt Gingrich is not that person.

For a refresher, click here are some problems with biofuels.

Obama Eclipsed as a "World Leader": Could Britain Be Regaining World Stage?

This was a great op-ed piece I found the other day at the UK's Telegraph (emphasis added):

Is David Cameron eclipsing Barack Obama as a world leader?

Nile Gardiner

Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.

Back in October 2009, I wrote a piece for The Telegraph arguing that David Cameron should fill the leadership vacuum left by Barack Obama if he became Prime Minister. As I wrote at the time:

President Obama’s naïve and weak approach to international affairs threatens to usher in the biggest decline of American global power since the days of Jimmy Carter, and has created a distinct leadership vacuum. In contrast, the next British Prime Minister should seek a resurgence of British power, with a foreign policy that projects pride and confidence in Britain’s great and distinguished past, as well as a firm commitment to the transatlantic alliance. David Cameron must reject the folly of the Obama doctrine and follow the example of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in advancing real international leadership.

In the last few days the PM has projected strong British leadership on the Libya crisis, in marked contrast to his US counterpart, who has been distinctly underwhelming. He is winning plaudits across the Atlantic for his handling of the issue, with influential conservative publication The Weekly Standard praising his “Churchillian” statement in the House of Commons yesterday. Cameron’s recent landmark speech in Munich attacking multiculturalism and throwing down the gauntlet to militant Islamists was also widely praised in the United States, and stood in stark contrast to President Obama’s silence on the issue.

There’s no doubt about it – Britain is once again making its mark on the world stage after a period of decline under Gordon Brown, precisely at the same time that American leadership is sorely lacking. As I’ve written before, Britain may no longer be a superpower but it remains a world power, and still retains a key role in helping shape international affairs.

And in advancing this vision, Cameron is helped by a strong team of pro-Atlanticists with an important understanding of British history and her role in the world, including Defence Secretary Liam Fox, Foreign Secretary William Hague, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Education Secretary Michael Gove. This a group that does firmly believe in British exceptionalism, in contrast to a US presidency that rejects the Reaganite concept of American exceptionalism.

It is heartening to see the Prime Minister adopting a more assertive role for Britain internationally. But in order to back up a more robust foreign policy, Cameron must lay the foundations for the rebuilding of Britain’s military power after a decade of erosion under Labour. In light of the huge changes sweeping the Middle East, he must now give urgent consideration to reversing the damaging defence cuts his Coalition have introduced, and increase defence spending rather than reduce it. The UK should be spending at least 3 percent, and ideally 4 percent of GDP on defence if it wishes to significantly project power abroad and protect British interests.

At the same time his government must free Britain from the shackles of the Lisbon Treaty and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), millstones round the necks of Britain’s leaders. Great Britain cannot lead effectively on the world stage as long as its own national sovereignty is constrained, and the British people are denied the freedom to choose their own destiny in Europe.

David Cameron is beginning to eclipse Barack Obama in terms of international leadership, and is likely to continue doing so. But at the same time, he must work to ensure that Britain has the military power to back up his statements when dealing with international crises, and is not tied down by a supranational European superstate. In addition, his government should protect the long-term future of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, vital to British interests, which will long outlast the current US administration.

Japan: An Amazing Rescue Story!

Tsunami victim Hiromitsu Shinkawa, 65, waves to rescuers who spotted him floating on the roof of his home nearly 10 miles out to sea. Photograph: AP

I just caught this over at FoxNews ...

Man Swept 9 Miles Out to Sea by Tsunami Is Rescued

Published March 13, 2011 | NewsCore

MINAMISOMA, Japan -- A Japanese man who was swept 9 miles out to sea by Japan's deadly tsunami was plucked to safety Sunday after being spotted clinging to a piece of wreckage, officials said.

A Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer rescued 60-year-old Hiromitsu Shinkawa after discovering him floating on a piece of roof in waters off Fukushima Prefecture, two days after the disaster struck.

The man, from the city of Minamisoma, which was virtually obliterated, was swept out along with his house after the massive tsunami tore into Japan's northeast, following an 8.9-magnitude earthquake Friday.

He was conscious and in "good condition" after his rescue, which took place around 12:40pm local time, ministry officials said, adding that he was transported to the hospital by helicopter.

"I ran away after learning that the tsunami was coming," Shinkawa told rescuers, according to Jiji Press. "But I turned back to pick up something at home, when I was washed away. I was rescued while I was hanging to the roof from my house."

"Several helicopters and ships passed by, but none of them noticed me," he was quoted by another defense agency spokesman, who refused to be identified by name, as saying.

Japanese troops used a small boat to pluck him from the ocean.

Military officials said Shinkawa was lucky that mild weather and relatively calm seas enabled him to stay afloat for nearly two days, the Kyodo news agency reported.

"I thought today was the last day of my life," it quoted him as saying.

The government said that at least 1,000 people were believed to have lost their lives in the disaster, and police estimated that more than 215,000 people were huddled in emergency shelters.

However, the police chief of badly-hit Miyagi Prefecture, which lies north of Fukushima, said that the death toll was certain to exceed 10,000 in his district alone.

The Associated Press and NewsCore contributed to this report.

WOW!!!  Let's hope there are maaaaaaannyyyy more such miraculous stories to come.

 

DON'T FORGET TO DONATE!!

Japan: How to Help

Technology has made getting donations to relief organizations sooooooo incredibly easy.  Here are ways to take advantage of that in our efforts to help poor Japan ... from FoxNews:

How You Can Help the Victims of the Devastating Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

Hundreds are confirmed dead and many more are missing after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan this past week. The disaster has left the region in ruin and in need of help. Here are several of the organizations working on relief and recovery in the region and requesting donations:

The American Red Cross International Relief Fund is stationed in the affected areas. Text REDCROSS to 90999 from your cell phone to donate $10.00 to the Red Cross. Click here to donate.

The Salvation Army has been in Japan since 1895 and is currently providing emergency assistance to those in need. To contribute, text 'JAPAN' or 'QUAKE' to 80888 to make a $10 donation. Click here to donate.

Global Giving is taking donations that go toward several charities that have sent emergency relief workers to the pacific area. You can go to www.globalgiving.org and click on 'Japan Earthquake' and Tsunami Relief Fund. Choose from an amount of $25, $50 or $75 dollars and click "give now. " Click here to donate.

The International Medical Corps are putting together relief teams that will bring supplies to those most in need. You can text MED to 80888 from any mobile phone to give $10 or go to their website. Click here to donate.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is sending relief to the affected areas. You can go to www.jdc.orgClick here to donate. and click on "Donate to JDC's Japan/Pacific Emergency Relief Fund." 

You can access other organizations and charities that are providing assistance through Network for Good. Click here to go to the Networkforgood.org site.

And, as always, there are the numerous church-affiliated, denominational relief organizations.  Just be sure you're dealing with a reputable, well-known agency when donating.

Obama's Green Agenda Criticized by Clinton and Bush

Now, the part about W criticizing Obama's green agenda isn't surprising, but that Bill Clinton agreed with Bush on permitting drilling, especially in time of economic difficulties, was a surprise.  As Rick Moran of American Thinker puts it, the statement shows that Obama's stubbornness proves he is an ideologue, whereas Clinton and Bush are not "stupid" but rather practical politicians.  Here's Moran's report and commentary (emphasis added):

Bill Clinton thinks drilling delays 'ridiculous'

Rick Moran

There is a difference between an ideologue like Obama and a practical politician like Bill Clinton.

Without criticizing Obama directly, Bill Clinton, sitting on a panel at an energy conference, agreed with many of the points made by former President George Bush about oil and gas drilling, including the idea that it was stupid to prevent drilling for oil and gas at a time of economic rebuilding.

Politico:

But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year's Gulf of Mexico spill.

"Bush said all the things you'd expect him to say" on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, "You'd be surprised to know that I agree with all that," according to Noe and others in the room.

Clinton said there are "ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn't need it," according to Noe and others.

"That was the most surprising thing they said," Noe said.

The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.

Clinton and Bush also agreed on the need for more domestic shale gas production, with Clinton noting that it has been done safely for years in his home state of Arkansas.

Clinton is a lot of things, but a stupid politician he is not. The problem when you have a president who believes in greening our energy supplies instead of increasing them comes into focus when practical politicians like Clinton and Bush comment on our current, inexplicable policy.

Fitness Test: Army Includes Faith and Spirituality in Soldiers' Resiliency

USA Today author Cathy Lynn Grossman asked a great question in the title of her recent post: "No God, no mantra?  You'd flunk Army's 'spiritual fitness' test."  It seems that the Army assesses its soldiers level of "faith fitness" as a factor in a soldier's level of resiliency.  However, this assessment point has drawn controversy with charges of the Army endorsing religion.

Here's the story (emphasis added):

No God, no mantra? You'd flunk Army's 'spiritual fitness' test

You don't pray or meditate. You're among the "Nones" -- folks who claim no religion and maybe you shrug off spirituality, too.

So you might flunk the five spiritual questions on the U.S. Army's current well-being assessment survey for soldiers. Already, one church-state watchdog, Michael "Mikey" Weinstein is having a constitutional fit over their inclusion in a battery of questions to measure a soldier's resilience.  Is he or she fit to fight for inner peace.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty at NPR has the story on the Army's efforts to assess how resilient soldiers are, all the better to meet their needs as our two-war times take an emotional and psychological toll.
Since Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, found data that "spiritual fitness has a positive impact"  on quality of life, on coping and on mental health," the army included a required survey for soldiers assessing their well-being and relationships including their spiritual dimension..

One self-described "Foxhole Atheist", Justin Griffith  a sergeant at Fort Bragg, N.C., checked out 100% un-spiritual. When he submitted the computerized survey, the auto-response came back:

Spiritual fitness may be an area of difficulty... You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and to others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles and values...Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal."

Cornum defends the assessment to Hagerty as merely a helpful resource for soldiers, saying,

There's no pass-fail, nothing happens. No one sees it but the guy who takes it.

But Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says he has 220 soldiers ready to sue if the survey doesn't drop those questions. Weinstein has been embroiled in years of battles with the military over what he perceives as an evangelical invasion of the armed forces. 

A recent Weinstein profile in Foreign Policy magazine describes him as ...

doing battle with a Christian subculture that, he believes, is trying to Christianize the U.S. armed forces with the help of a complicit Pentagon brass. He calls it the "fundamentalist Christian parachurch-military-corporate-proselytizing complex," a mouthful by which he means holy warriors in contempt of the constitutional barrier between church and state.

As you might expect, the Military Association of Atheists and Free Thinkers wants the assessment test rewritten. And another site, Truthout, also attacked the assessment, saying it was designed by a psychologist promoting his own theories of "learned optimism."

Brig.Gen. Rhonda Cornum, who orchestrated the assessment of soldiers emotional and psychological resiliance -- including questions on spirituality -- had her own resiliance tested in 1991 when she was an Iraq War POW. Cornum suffered broken arms when the helicopter she was flying crashed in southern Iraq on a search and resuce mission.

By Barry Thumma, Associated Press

Cornum, former commander of the Army's Landstuhl military hospital in Germany, it should be noted, is one very resilient  person. As a flight surgeon during 1991 Iraq war she was captured by enemy forces, held for eight days and sexually molested in captivity. She later wrote:

Being a POW is the rape of your entire life. But what I learned in those Iraqi bunkers and prison cells is that the experience doesn't have to be devastating, that it depends on you.

 

Humor in the News: Funny Mugshot

These days, you gotta look for humor where you can find it ...

Mid-haircut stabbing results in arrest, awesome mug shot

A New Haven, Conn., man is in the hospital and due in court later this month after police said he stabbed someone while getting his hair cut in Stamford. 

David Davis, 21 of New Haven, was sitting inside an apartment on Henry Street in Stamford's south end just before 12:30 p.m., getting a haircut, when a man he had been arguing with approached him, police said.

Davis thought the other person was going to harm him, so he picked up a pair of scissors and slashed the other in the back, police said.

Patrol and canine officers later found Davis in an apartment and took him into custody.

Davis had a cut on the right side of his upper back and is being treated at a local hospital. He is expected to recover.

Davis was charged with first-degree assault and is being held on $5,000 bond.

He is due in court on March 22.

He was also wanted on a second-degree failure to appear warrant for a previous arrest with a court-set bond of $750.

No information is available on the victim. NBC Connecticut has left a message with Stamford police.

Rainforests Regrowing: Debate on New Versus Virgin Rainforests

I was surprised to read the other day that the tropical rainforests are regrowing!  This is from The New York Times at the end of January -- (emphasis added): 

New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests

CHILIBRE, Panama — The land where Marta Ortega de Wing raised hundreds of pigs until 10 years ago is being overtaken by galloping jungle — palms, lizards and ants.

Jungle is developing again on old holdings around Chilibre. 

Instead of farming, she now shops at the supermarket and her grown children and grandchildren live in places like Panama City and New York.

Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s — and much larger swaths of farmland — are reverting to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings.

These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest — an iconic environmental cause — may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.

“There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.

The new forests, the scientists argue, could blunt the effects of rain forest destruction by absorbing carbon dioxide, the leading heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, one crucial role that rain forests play. They could also, to a lesser extent, provide habitat for endangered species.

The idea has stirred outrage among environmentalists who believe that vigorous efforts to protect native rain forest should remain a top priority. But the notion has gained currency in mainstream organizations like the Smithsonian Institution and the United Nations, which in 2005 concluded that new forests were “increasing dramatically” and “undervalued” for their environmental benefits. The United Nations is undertaking the first global catalog of the new forests, which vary greatly in their stage of growth.

“Biologists were ignoring these huge population trends and acting as if only original forest has conservation value, and that’s just wrong,” said Joe Wright, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute here, who set off a firestorm two years ago by suggesting that the new forests could substantially compensate for rain forest destruction.

“Is this a real rain forest?” Dr. Wright asked, walking the land of a former American cacao plantation that was abandoned about 50 years ago, and pointing to fig trees and vast webs of community spiders and howler monkeys.

“A botanist can look at the trees here and know this is regrowth,” he said. “But the temperature and humidity are right. Look at the number of birds! It works. This is a suitable habitat.” 

Dr. Wright and others say the overzealous protection of rain forests not only prevents poor local people from profiting from the rain forests on their land but also robs financing and attention from other approaches to fighting global warming, like eliminating coal plants.

But other scientists, including some of Dr. Wright’s closest colleagues, disagree, saying that forceful protection of rain forests is especially important in the face of threats from industrialized farming and logging.

The issue has also set off a debate over the true definition of a rain forest. How do old forests compare with new ones in their environmental value? Is every rain forest sacred?

“Yes, there are forests growing back, but not all forests are equal,” said Bill Laurance, another senior scientist at the Smithsonian, who has worked extensively in the Amazon.

He scoffed as he viewed Ms. Ortega de Wing’s overgrown land: “This is a caricature of a rain forest!” he said. “There’s no canopy, there’s too much light, there are only a few species. There is a lot of change all around here whittling away at the forest, from highways to development.” 

Continue here for the rest of the article.  Also, go here and here for continued debate about the new versus virgin rainforests.