Congress Debates Immigration Bill

The Senate has agreed to take up the Immigration Bill and will debate the pros and cons for about two weeks. The bill is a bipartisan effort to come up with a comprehensive approach to the problem of illegal immigrants currently residing and working in the US. There are five major areas that are addressed by this legislation:

1. Current Illegal Immigrants


2. Border Security


3. Workplace Enforcement


4. Guest Workers
   


5. Future Immigrants

For a detailed breakdown of each section click this link

The Bill provides for a path to citizenship for the more than 12 million illegals thought to be currently in the US and provides for better border security. However it is a complicated piece of legislation that has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike. One of the major complaints has been the rushed manner in which the bill has been introduced to the Senate. Many have not had time to actually read the 300 plus page "draft" version. The final "finished" version is expected to run almost 1,000 pages. Another complaint is that because the bill was rushed, there was no time to do a "fiscal analysis" so that the real cost of the bill remains unknown.

Many see the Bill as nothing more than amnesty for the 12 million illegals. This is because the plan is to issue "Z" visas to all illegal immigrants allowing them to work and stay in the US legally. This new class of visa would be available to any illegal residing in the country before Jan. 1 2007.

Others see problems with the guest worker provision that de-emphasizes the role of family re-unification in favor of a merit-based system that gives points for things such as education and work skills. According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada: "The bill impacts families in a number of ways that I believe are unwise."

However Reid said the bill is a good starting point and shows an encouraging spirit of bipartisanship. "If we can continue along that road in the coming days, I am confident that we can write another chapter in America's great immigration story that makes our country safer, treats people with dignity and keeps our economy moving strong," he said.

Sex on the Net IV

The Sex on the Net series continues with some educational, psychological and health issues related to sex. Sexual activity is a normal human exercise that often gets relegated to the darker side of our existence. It is spoken of in whispers and many get an incomplete or erroneous picture of the experience. What is taboo? Is this normal? Am I normal? Why is this happening to me? Where can I get help? are some of the questions that we all may have had at one point or another.

Case in point is this first story about women's breasts:

A World of Breasts

Seventy-five percent of women say they are unhappy with their breasts, according to a JANE survey. That might be because we don't often get to see what natural breasts look like, and are instead bombarded with false images of "perfection" that leave us feeling bad about ourselves.

Jane magazine found 23 women—of all shapes and sizes—to pose topless and show the world that we're all perfect. Some of the comments from the participants include:

Lucy, 24 - "They force me to have good posture and they make underwear look good."

Bonifacia, 21 - "They're small and cute, and they achieve magical cleavage."

Agent N., 27 - "When I'm on stage performing burlesque, audiences are entranced."

Joanna, 25 - "I don't have to wear a bra. I've even turned down a free boob job."

You can see these breasts and many more by clicking here. Breast truly do come in all shapes and sizes.

The Academy of Sex and Relationships

Visiting London, England anytime soon? If so try to visit Amora - The Academy of Sex and Relationships. This academy is dedicated to looking at love in a new light.

"We consciously differentiate ourselves from a museum: we are about sex today and tomorrow, not in the past," Amora's founder and chairman Johan Rizki told AFP. "The Amsterdam sex museum is sleazy; New York's is rather boring," added the Frenchman, New Yorker and Harvard Business School graduate.

Three years in the making, Amora uses visuals, interactive displays and sound to explore and explain relationships and sexual behaviour.

There are touch screens, hands-on exhibits -- including dildos, model vaginas, and fake breasts and testicles to show how to check for potentially dangerous lumps -- as well as video screens, hand-held audio guides, life-size models, computer animations and wall displays to educate and excite once inside.

Visitors discover seven zones blending knowledge with entertainment, covering aspects of sexual relationships including the chemistry of dating, erogenous zones, fantasies, techniques and sexual health.

"My idea was to create somewhere for talking about sex, but in a very fun, interesting, up-to-date way," said Rizki. "No-one before has ever brought love into a physical space where it is accessible to people. We have sex therapists where people can go and ask questions and there are workshops and academics host debates."

"We talk about love in an entertaining way," Rizki said. "There are no taboos. We don't take a stand, but we ask you, is it for you?" There are plans to open an Amora in Paris, Germany and the United States.

Secrets of the Sexes.

BBC Science, in collaboration with researchers in the United Kingdom and North America, designed their research project on psychological sex differences in conjunction with their TV documentary, Secrets of the Sexes. The project culminated in the creation of the BBC Internet Survey, which was posted on the BBC Science and Nature website. Here are some of the results from this study.

• Men rank good looks and facial attractiveness more important than women do

• Women rank honesty, humor, kindness, and dependability more important than men do.

• Participants who describe themselves as bisexual also to describe themselves as ambidextrous.

• For women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both women and men.

• For men high sex drive is associated with increased attraction to one sex or the other, but not both.

Sex Relieves Stress

Got some public speaking to do? Have sex beforehand. But make sure it's penetrative sex. Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, UK, compared the impact of different sexual activities on blood pressure when a person later experiences acute stress. For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI), masturbation or partnered sexual activity excluding intercourse. After, the volunteers underwent a stress test involving public speaking and mental arithmetic out loud.

Volunteers who'd had PVI but none of the other kinds of sex were least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who'd only masturbated or had non-coital sex. Those who abstained had the highest blood-pressure response to stress.

"The effects are not attributable simply to the short-term relief afforded by orgasm, but rather, endure for at least a week," says Brody. He speculates that release of the "pair-bonding" hormone oxytocin between partners might account for the calming effect.

I guess the lesson here is there is nothing like sex to relieve stress.

How a Photo Can Ruin Your Life

Have you ever taken a photograph of your kids naked? You could be arrested just like grandma Marian Rubin or father Jeffrey B. I know this sounds ridiculous but this could easily happen to anyone who owns a camera and wants to catch their kids doing the cute kinds of things that kids often do. In the name of fighting child pornography the FBI has issued blanket requests to photo processing labs and computer repair shops in some cities to be on the lookout for pictures of kids in compromising positions, urging them to call the authorities whether they're sure or not about a picture's legality.

Three-year-old Sarah M. is either a toddler in her birthday suit playing in the garden, or a nude temptress with a sultry look who requires protection from the culprits who took this photograph -- her doting parents. Tragically for a number of people all over the country, innocent family photos turned over to the police have led to financial ruin, divorce, debt, public humiliation, and lifelong scorn as a registered sex offender for mothers and fathers. Here's how a zealous prosecutor could view Sarah M.'s picture: Smoldering eyes; styled, tousled blond tresses; pouty, parted lips; splayed legs; an engorged navel. And that viscous liquid dripping from the wand onto her thigh? Money shot.

Some cases involved pictures much less provocative than Sarah M.'s. Based on the way prosecutors interpreted photos in a few of those cases -- Marian Rubin, a New Jersey grandmother charged for taking nude photos of her granddaughters, then aged 3 and 8; and Jeffrey B., a New York father who lost custody of his two daughters after he shot pictures of them mooning him -- it's possible to spot red flags where our innocence used to be. Just because they didn't shoot the picture for the purpose of sexual stimulation doesn't mean parents who just want to document their child's garden years can't get stuck in the sordid world of pedophilia.

Below are the stories of Marian Rubin and Jeffrey B. both of whom have had their lives turned upside down after taking nude pictures of their kids.

MARIAN RUBIN

In early 2000, Marian Rubin's granddaughters, Amy, then 8, and Kayla, then 3, were dancing naked on her bed before bath time, strutting their best Britney and Christina moves. In still photos, they must have looked posed. The night that she was arrested, after picking up the nude pictures of the girls at a local MotoPhoto outlet -- Rubin, an experienced and award-winning art and children's photographer, insists that she never intended to publish these photos -- Montclair, NJ, police went to the girls' home and had their parents wake them up.

"They asked totally inappropriate questions," says Rubin, who is now 72. "'Did Granny get undressed, too? Did Granny touch you? Did Granny touch herself?' They threatened my son and daughter that, if they didn't cooperate, the kids would be taken away."

Rubin wrote a book, Naked Truths (www.naked-truths.com), detailing her outrage at what she calls vigilante film processors, and she excoriates cops and prosecutors for being unable to admit they'd made a mistake.

On her lawyer's advice, she took a deal called a "Pretrial Intervention" that amounted to conditional probation but left her with no criminal record. She now regrets not taking the case to trial. Even though a federal judge later found the pictures to be "totally inoffensive," Rubin is still paying off the $30,000 debt.

"I haven't taken a nude picture since," says Rubin, who has won awards for nude bodyscape photography. "Portraiture was my thing. They took away my innocence, constricted my vision, brainwashed me into seeing things differently. They definitely changed my pictures of children."

JEFFREY B.

Jeffrey B. (he requested his last name not be printed to protect his daughters) was divorced and had custody of his two girls, then aged 4 and 7, until a Genovese drugstore photo lab in the New York City borough of Queens inserted a note into a packet of his prints that said several shots had been turned over to police. Seven years later -- after four weekends in jail, three years on probation, mandated therapy, losing custody of his daughters, contemplating suicide, and incurring about $300,000 in lawyer's fees and loss of income -- he's a registered sex offender and has no contact with his children.

The lawyer who handled his appeal, Joseph Klempner, who also wrote Irreparable Damage, a novel based on the case, says Jeffrey B. is "destroyed," and has not taken a single picture in seven years. "I'd stake my life on the fact that all he was doing was taking cute photos of his kids," says Klempner, who saw the offending pictures.According to Klempner, the prosecutor said she found the silk sheets on the bed where the 7-year-old's picture was taken "very telling." The girl had mooned her father, and he snapped a picture from across the room. "It would take the Hubble Telescope" to see her unmentionables, relates Klempner.

In the other offending photo, the girls are shot from below, sans bathing suit bottoms, as they pretend to read books. A crucial fact in Jeffrey's conviction: One girl testified that Daddy posed them.

It is a sad commentary when parents who obviously love and dote on their kids can be arrested and imprisoned for taking pictures of their own kids in the buff. Maybe next time someone will be arrested for changing diapers in an inappropriate place.

Kids on the Campaign Trail

How do the various candidates vying for the Presidency of the US see the role of their children in the campaign? The following is a look at how some have dealt with this situation:

• Hillary Clinton
  
  
  
  • The Clinton's only child is Chelsea Clinton. She could make history as being the only child to have both her father and her mother as President. She is now 27 years old, single and dating Marc Mezvinsky. She works for Avenue Capital a New York-based hedge fund. So far Chelsea has not been involved much in the campaign. She recently joined her parents onstage at a campaign fundraiser in Manhattan, but did not address the audience. She may become more active as the campaign progresses. "She has got her own life to live. She works. She does her own range of other activities," Hillary Clinton said in a CNN interview. "She cares a lot about politics and she wants her mom to win. But she has got a life to live and we don't want to interrupt that."
  
  
  
  


• Barack Obama
  
  
  
  • Barack Obama has two young daughters, Malia 8yrs old and Natasha 5yrs old. Both of them have appeared at his campaign kickoff but have otherwise been shielded from the spotlight. It remains to be seen how often they will appear in public.
  
  
  
  


• John Edwards
  
  
  
  • The Edwards have four children Wade, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack. They lost Wade, the eldest, to a car accident in 1986. John Edwards has appeared often with his two younger kids aged 9 and 7. Cate is a 25 year old Harvard Law student. She has made campaign appearances for her father.
  
  
  
  


• John McCain
  
  
  
  • John McCain married twice and has seven children between the two marriages, three of whom have been adopted. Two of his sons John and James are both serving in the military. His children have been supportive and have appeared on the campaign trail with him.
  
  
  
  


• Rudy Giuliani
  
  
  
  • Rudy Giuliani has two children Andrew 21, and Caroline 18. He has acknowledged his estrangement from his children.
  
  
  
  


• Mitt Romney
  
  
  
  • Mitt Romney has five sons. They are all heavily involved in their father's campaign. They are even publishing a joint campaign blog in support of the campaign it is called http://fivebrothers.mittromney.com/
  
  
  
  

The Dalai Lama under Pressure

As Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, contemplates his retirement, his popularity has remained steady throughout the world; that is everywhere except in China. The Chinese leadership has continued to try to ostracize the Dalai Lama. With its promise of trade agreements, China is exerting its economic and political influence with its trading partners, the present and the hopefuls, in an effort to stifle the voice of the Dalai Lama. Such is the case with Belgium.

The Dalai Lama was scheduled to attend a conference - The Fifth International Conference of Tibet Support Group in Brussels, Belgium, from 11-14 May 2007. In a letter to the conference, regretting his inability to attend, he explained the circumstances surrounding his decision.

I HAD HOPED that I would be able to join you all at this conference to personally express my gratitude and to share my thoughts on the issue of Tibet, which is of concern to all of us. However, the Belgian Government shared with me their predicament on account of pressure from the People's Republic of China in connection with the upcoming visit of Belgian trade delegation led by the Crown Prince. At the same time they made it clear that they are a democratic country and if I chose to come I would be welcomed. They further informed me of the continued widespread interest in Tibet in Belgium. Having considered the situation, I have decided not to visit Brussels this time.

I understand the situation of the Belgian Government. I am aware of the strong support that the people and the Government of Belgium have extended to the Tibetan people in the past. I do not want to cause any inconvenience to the Government. I am aware that my decision will disappoint many of you. I ask for your understanding.

The Dalai Lama says he wants greater autonomy, not independence, for his predominantly Buddhist homeland, but China considers him a separatist and accuses him of continuing to promote Tibetan independence. China warned other countries against developing close ties with the Dalai Lama, one day after the exiled leader of Tibet cancelled a trip to Belgium: "We hope relevant parties and countries can keep on high alert for attempts by the Dalai Lama to undermine their relations with China and keep alert to his words and actions to split the motherland," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said at a regular news conference. The message is clear: "If you want to do business with China, don't associate with the Dalai Lama"

The Chinese strategy seems to be working. The Dalai Lama is scheduled to visit Australia in June 2007. This is causing a headache for the political leaders of the country. Should they meet the religious leader, knowing that any contact will upset sensitive diplomatic and trade ties with China? Recently China has overtaken Japan as Australia's biggest trading partner and politicians and business are anxious to capitalize further on China's hunger for resources as it continues to boom. So far there have been no planned meetings with any of Australia's politicians but while the Dalai Lama was not seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister he would be happy to meet him.

"His Holiness said that it was appropriate that he let the political leaders know, wherever he is going, that he is going to be in their jurisdiction and that a meeting could be arranged," the spokeswoman said. "We've approached the Prime Minister's office but we've had no confirmation."

Even though political leaders seem to be shying away from the Dalai Lama, the awards of recognition keep on coming. The Award gala, “Bild Osgar 2007” scheduled to take place in the German city of Leipzig will recognize the Dalai Lama’s persistent and non-violent struggle on behalf of the Tibetan people. In awarding the Dalai Lama with its Peace Award, Bild-Zeitung, Europe’s largest circulating daily newspaper, believes that in the time shaped by terrorism and violence, the Dalai Lama’s message of non-violence, reconciliation and dialogue is unique. He still commands huge crowds of people wherever he goes. Below is a clip from a conference in Chicago attended by over 12,000:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxC_PZN2I2A]