MS 13 comes to downtown Silver Spring and Montgomery Blair HIgh

The Tai Lam memorial spot in downtown Silver Spring on Sunday evening.

Arrest made in murder of Tai Lam.
County police arrest Takoma Park man
By Kiera Zitelman, Online Editor-in-Chief 11/08/2008

See also the stories here and here.

Around 7 p.m. on Friday, Montgomery County police arrested Hector Mauricio Hernandez, 20, of Takoma Park, for the murder of Blair freshman Tai Lam, according to Lieutenant Robert McCullagh. Detectives obtained a warrant for first degree murder. Hernandez is a member of the MS-13 gang, though police are still investigating whether gang involvement played a role in the shooting. He is being held without bond.

Lam, 14, and two others, 14 and 15, boarded a Ride On bus in Silver Spring with a large group of friends on Nov. 2. The three boys were shot around 11 p.m. after a verbal exchange with a group of four to five older men. When the bus stopped at Arliss Street and Piney Branch Road, the older group exited the bus. One of them fired into the back of the bus, hitting Lam and the two other boys, who attend Blair and Northwood High School.

The nature of the verbal exchange is still under investigation. "For unknown reasons...as one of those subjects was getting off, he turned and fired a handgun from the area of the rear door of the bus into the bus striking the three teens," according to a police press release. "That subject has been identified as Hernandez."

Lam died later that night, while the other boys were taken to Georgetown University MedStar Hospital in critical condition. Both have since been released and are recovering from their injuries.

Police are still searching for others on the bus and expect to make more arrests, according to McCullagh. "We are still looking for associates as witnesses or defendants," he said.

Hernandez will be brought before a grand jury for indictment, and the next step would be a Montgomery County circuit court trial. "They will eventually stand trial in Montgomery County for murder," McCullagh said.

Police are asking anyone with information related to the case to call (240) 773-5070. Callers may remain anonymous.

VOTE: Provisional ballots and other ways to make sure your vote counts

Election Day is this Tuesday, November 4. If you have any problems at the polls, call the Maryland ACLU Election Day Hotline: 1-888-496-ACLU (2258).

Virginia voter information is here (English and Spanish).

You have rights: Every worker who's eligible to vote has the right to be absent from work if your schedule would otherwise leave you unable to vote at the polls (see Voter Empowerment Card for MD law). The polls in Maryland will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. You have the right to vote if you're in line or inside your polling place when the polls close. You can take written or printed election materials with you as long as they're for your own use in casting your ballot. Most voters won't need to show ID at all. However, if you're a first–time voter, you may need to show ID. If you don’t have ID, you can prove your residence with a wide array of alternative documents.

Problems you may encounter at the polls:

• If you are told you're not on the voter list, ask an election judge to check the list again. If you’re not on the list, confirm that you're at the correct polling place for your address. If you are at the correct polling place, ask for a provisional ballot. If you’re not, go to the correct polling place to cast your ballot.
  
• If someone challenges your right to vote, you have the right to prove your identity. Poll workers cannot challenge your eligibility. The only legal challenge is one in which the challenger claims that you are not the person you claim to be. If you cannot prove your identity, you have the right to cast a provisional ballot.
  
• If someone tries to intimidate or harass you, report the problem to an election judge and Maryland ACLU Election Day Hotline at 1-888-496-ACLU (2258). If the election judge is the problem, call the ACLU Hotline.
  
• If you make a mistake while voting, tell an election judge before submitting your vote.
  Be sure to review your selections and submit your vote.

Important reminders about your right to vote:

• If you have been convicted of a misdemeanor, you are eligible to vote. You can vote by absentee ballot if still in jail. If you have been convicted of a felony, you can vote once you have completed probation and/or parole.
  
• If you are homeless, you can vote in the precinct where you live and usually sleep (which can be a street corner, a park, a shelter, or any other place).

Tips to avoid problems:

• Check your voter registration status beforehand.
• Locate your correct polling place.
• Vote in the middle of the day if you can.
• Bring some form of ID, even if it's not required.
• Read instructions carefully and ask for help if needed.

Get the full story about your rights by downloading your Maryland Voter Empowerment Card (in English and Spanish). Get informed, get empowered, and VOTE!

Sincerely,
ACLU of Maryland

Who is Joe the plumber?

Oops. Joe Wurzelbacher is Charles Keating's brother in law. That's Charles Keating, the man who with McCain's help destroyed Savings and Loans in America.

Mr. Keating's son-in-law is Robert Wurzelbacher, a senior vice president of American Continental, Lincoln savings and Loan's parent company, the American Continental Corporation.

LATimes:

The issue: Probably the biggest political embarrassment of John McCain's career emanated from his close ties to Charles H. Keating Jr., the high-flying owner of Lincoln Savings & Loan who later went to federal prison. Lincoln's failure would ultimately cost taxpayers $3.4 billion, the most expensive rescue of the S&L crisis in the late 1980s.

Catholics for Obama

"Despite what some Republicans would like Catholics to believe, the list of what the church calls "intrinsically evil acts" does not begin and end with abortion. In fact, there are many intrinsically evil acts, and a committed Catholic must consider all of them in deciding how to vote."

Although much of Catholic leadership has forsaken other moral principles for the single one that woman can control, Nicholas P. Cafardi has spoken out for those other moral principles: to reduce poverty, to protect other gifts from the Creator such as environment. Cafardi is the second high profile Catholic legal scholar who is staunchly anti-abortion yet says he supports Barack Obama. Douglas Kmiec, Ronald Reagan’s constitutional lawyer as head of the office of legal counsel for the Department of Justice, publicly argued a similar case for Obama several weeks ago.

Are you sure Ronald Reagan had a consitutional lawyer? Really?

Cafardi continued, "Last November, the U.S. bishops released 'Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,' a 30-page document that provides several examples of intrinsically evil acts: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, torture, racism, and targeting noncombatants in acts of war."

McCain's position on torture, noncombatants, and racism do not seem to disturb the people who would silence voices, such as Cafardi's, who speak out against these other evils.

"The Party of Stupid"

The economist who calls today's GOP "The party of stupid" won the Nobel prize in economics Monday. Winner Paul Krugman, Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, was recognized for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect international trade patterns.

Tore Ellingsen, a member of the prize committee, said, "We disregard everything except for the scientific merits."

Ellingsen acknowledged that Krugman was an "opinion maker" but added that he was honored on the merits of his economic research, not his political commentary.

Krugman has also come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying McCain is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago."

Krugman writes a regular column and has a blog called "Conscience of a Liberal."

On McCain, Krugman recently wrote:

We’ve known for a long time, of course, that Mr. McCain doesn’t know much about economics — he’s said so himself, although he’s also denied having said it. That wouldn’t matter too much if he had good taste in advisers — but he doesn’t.

Remember, his chief mentor on economics is Phil Gramm, the arch-deregulator, who took special care in his Senate days to prevent oversight of financial derivatives — the very instruments that sank Lehman and A.I.G., and brought the credit markets to the edge of collapse. Mr. Gramm hasn’t had an official role in the McCain campaign since he pronounced America a “nation of whiners,” but he’s still considered a likely choice as Treasury secretary.

And last year, when the McCain campaign announced that the candidate had assembled “an impressive collection of economists, professors, and prominent conservative policy leaders” to advise him on economic policy, who was prominently featured? Kevin Hassett, the co-author of “Dow 36,000.” Enough said.