First theatre safety checks complete

20 December 2013
Last updated at 20:11 ET

Initial safety checks at a London theatre where a part of a ceiling collapsed have been completed.

Seventy-six people were injured when ornate plasterwork at the Apollo fell during a production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time.

The Shaftesbury Avenue venue has been handed back to the Apollo’s owner, Nimax Theatres, by the authorities.

The investigation will be carried out by Westminster City Council after police ruled out criminal action.

The council said the building was safe for its investigators to go in to but would have to conclude its investigation before it could say whether it was safe to open.

A spokeswoman for Nimax Theatres said: “The relevant authorities handed the theatre back to Nimax which meant we could commence the process of carefully recovering and logging all personal effects left in the theatre following its evacuation and subsequently return them to their owners.”

‘Open for business’

The theatre was packed with 720 people when the ceiling partially collapsed on Thursday evening. Seven of those hurt were said to have serious injuries.

The situation was dealt with by London Ambulance Service, London Fire Brigade and Metropolitan Police. Three London buses were commandeered to take some of the casualties to hospital.

Most of the injured were treated for cuts and bruises, and discharged after a short time. Performances at the Apollo have been cancelled until 4 January.

London Mayor Boris Johnson said the emergency services were “exemplary”, and insisted the West End – heart of the capital’s Theatreland – remained “open for business”.

The mayor said: “I would stress that, although it is too early to say what caused this collapse, and whilst this was a serious incident, London’s world-renowned Theatreland is open for business and thousands of theatre-goers will rightly be out and about.”

Nicola Aiken, the council’s cabinet member for community protection, said there was no reason to believe it was anything other than “an isolated incident”.

She said: “We have confirmed with the Society of London Theatre that all theatres’ safety checks are up to date – however, as a precaution, all historic theatres are carrying out further safety checks.”

Ms Aiken said the council would leave “no stone unturned” in the investigation but could not say how long it would take.

Adverse weather

Reports suggested water dripped through ceiling cracks before it fell. London Fire Brigade said it was lucky more people were not injured.

One line of inquiry will be the effect of adverse weather on the Grade II-listed building.

There was a thunderstorm and a heavy rain burst in London on Thursday evening with a high number of lightning strikes across the capital.

Mhora Samuel, from The Theatres Trust, said: “This was a very, very rare thing to have happened. The public should be completely reassured that all the theatres in the West End are safe.”

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time has been running in London since August 2012.

The show started at the National Theatre before transferring to the Apollo in March this year.

Nimax also runs the Garrick, Duchess and Vaudeville theatres.

London theatres in numbers

In 2012:

• 
  

  theatres open*



• 
  

  performances



• 
  

  attendances



• 
  

  gross box office revenue

Source: Society of London Theatre, 2012

*Central London average

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First theatre safety checks complete

NSA Spying Scandal – US Checks and Balances System Is Broken

The founders of the United States envisioned a federal government that was constrained by a written Constitution, which further diluted power within that government into four competing branches. Those branches were the two houses of Congress, which were clearly supposed to be dominant in the federal sphere, and the executive and the judiciary. Unfortunately, over the more than two-and-a-third centuries of U.S. history, that’s not how it’s turned out. And the NSA spying scandal, more than anything else, shows that the founders’ original system has gone badly off the rails.

The founders’ idea of constraining government by a written Constitution and a system of checks and balances among the disparate branches was a good one. The system has probably slowed government encroachment on individual rights more than any other governmental system in the world. Yet constitutions and checks and balances are only parchment barriers to tyranny if the underlying political culture becomes broken. And the NSA spying scandal seems to indicate that it may have become so.

We have moved from the George W. Bush administration, which conducted an illegal and unconstitutional program of NSA spying on Americans, to the Obama administration, which is conducting a legal but unconstitutional NSA snooping effort. This change may seem to be at least an improvement, but it’s not.

When Congress discovered that the Bush administration was flouting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court and thereby not getting warrants to spy on Americans, it was outraged. In fact, Congress was so outraged that it widened that administration’s ability under law to do warrantless wiretapping!

In the most recent iteration of the NSA scandal, the NSA, in 2010, just decided to lift restrictions on itself to nose around into phone call and e-mail logs – not only would they track such patterns on foreigners but on Americans too. Yet the agency loosened the reins on itself because in 1979, the Supreme Court had ruled that Americans should have no expectation of privacy surrounding what phone numbers they called.

Say what? The Ninth Amendment in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights clearly states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This indicates that just because the Constitution doesn’t say that people have the right to expect privacy on whom they call, the benefit of the doubt should be given to presuming it to be an unstated right rather than presuming that the supposedly restrained government in a republic has a right to snoop therein. Conservatives, despite their rhetorical love affair of limited government, often decry the “artificial creation” of privacy rights vis-à-vis encroaching government power, but the Ninth Amendment seems to indicate that the presumption should be that they are already there. Also, the fact that it took the NSA 31 years after the Supreme Court ruling to take advantage of its ruling must mean that some subtle public norm against such spying must have waned.

Yet this is not the first time the Supreme Court has taken away citizens rights in the face government intrusion, especially in “national security” cases. In fact, in the national security arena, the courts routinely defer to executive or legislative violations of cherished individual rights.

The larger problem here is that all three branches of the federal government often approve of unconstitutional violations of American citizens’ rights. For example, the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights requires “probable cause” that a crime has been committed for the government to have the authority to search and seize a citizen’s property. In addition, the amendment makes no exemption even for national security. Yet, the courts have allowed Congress to pass laws, and the executive branch to executive them, which have a lower standard.

When it was discovered that the NSA was unconstitutionally collecting the phone calls of all Americans, all of Washington, including the Obama administration and members of both parties from the congressional intelligence committees, rushed to defend the practice. And the FISA court – which, as a secret judicial body, should have no place in a republic – merely rubber stamps such practices. The couple of instances in which that powerless court has reprimanded the NSA should not be taken as the constitutional push back that the founders envisioned.

Policemen should not police themselves, nor should lawyers or doctors or any other occupations – for obvious reasons of bias for the profession against the citizen. Yet our governmental system allows the federal branches to monitor and police each other. Predictably, federal courts often rule in favor of the federal government at the expense of the citizen. Congress regularly allows, and even applauds, executive branch breaches of the Constitution and vice versa. For example, President George W. Bush not only didn’t veto government warrantless snooping enshrined by Congress in the flagrantly unconstitutional PATRIOT Act, he demanded that the law be passed.

What is the citizen to do if all three branches of the federal government lend a veneer of legal and legitimacy to violations of individual constitutional rights? In the old days, the states offered some push back to such tyranny but not so much anymore. The entire system might need to be reformed, but that is unlikely.

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NSA Spying Scandal – US Checks and Balances System Is Broken

Eroding the Checks on Campaign Contributions

WASHINGTON — Shaun McCutcheon, an electrical engineer and self-described “conservative with a pretty good libertarian streak,” remembers the first time he was shown a “massively confusing chart” about federal limits on political contributions.

No more than $ 48,600 to candidates for federal office per two-year election cycle. No more than $ 74,600 to political parties and political action committees. Maximum $ 123,200 total.

The Alabama Republican didn’t understand why he couldn’t write as many checks as he wanted, and he asked a Republican lawyer friend. “He said, ‘Oh, you can challenge those. It will go all the way to the Supreme Court,’” McCutcheon told me. “I didn’t believe it would actually happen.”

This week, the court hears oral arguments on McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. Campaign finance reform advocates warn that the case could be the next Citizens United, further dismantling limits on big money in politics. Opponents hope they’re right.

In a world of $ 10 million checks to super PACs, the notion of strict overall limits on giving directly to candidates and parties has a rather quaint ring. In the aftermath of Citizens United and related cases, donors interested in pumping big money into elections have ample opportunities. Donors seeking to steer mega-resources to a campaign aren’t especially constrained by the $ 2,600 limit on direct giving to a particular candidate.

Is a candidate aware of a donor’s big check to a supposedly independent super PAC really less indebted than if the contributions went directly to candidates and parties, violating the limits at issue in McCutcheon?

Still, lifting the limits on overall direct giving would further undermine a system awash in big money. After all, it was only 11 years ago that Congress banned unlimited “soft money” contributions to political parties. With election lawyers adept at setting up joint fundraising committees that collect cash for multiple candidates simultaneously, eliminating overall limits would reopen the soft money spigot for individual donors.

In addition, dollars that flow directly to candidates are more valuable to them — candidates get to control the message and spending — and therefore potentially more corrupting. And even in an era of super PACs, it’s chilling to imagine individuals being legally allowed to funnel — and, worse, officeholders or candidates being legally allowed to solicit — direct contributions totaling more than $ 3.6 million (the sum if someone gave the maximum to all Senate and House candidates and party committees).

But the stakes in McCutcheon’s case don’t simply involve the precise limits themselves. What matters for the future of campaign finance rules, should the justices rule for McCutcheon, is what rationale they use.

Since the 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, the court has distinguished between limits on campaign contributions and limits on political spending. Contribution limits are treated with deference, and have almost always been upheld, on the theory that they prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption while imposing a “marginal” restriction on speech. What matters, the court has said, is the symbolic act of contributing, not the size of the check. By contrast, restrictions on spending are subject to the toughest test because they directly curtail individuals’ own speech and, at least in the court’s dubious view, such independent expenditures by definition can’t be corrupting.

Time was that advocates of limits on campaign cash lamented the contribution/expenditure distinction because it was used to strike down spending limits. Now they cling to it as the last bulwark against a campaign finance free-for-all.

McCutcheon’s lawyers, the Republican National Committee and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have asked the court to use his case to overrule Buckley and subject both contribution and spending restrictions to strict scrutiny as intrusions on free speech.

Three justices — Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas — are on record calling for Buckley to be overruled. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito have resisted that urge, and the court could invalidate the overall contribution limits without going so far. Yet the activist inclination displayed in Citizens United could re-emerge. The court granted separate time to the lawyer for McConnell, whose brief focuses on overruling Buckley, to argue for that outcome.

The consequences, as the Campaign Legal Center has warned, “would destabilize all contribution limits.” Already the RNC’s lawyer, James Bopp, has cases in the pipeline attacking the long-standing ban on corporations donating directly to candidates. Limits on individual’s contributions to particular candidates might survive even under a stricter standard, but a challenge would certainly be mounted.

This is a case to watch — and a cause for worry. 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Eroding the Checks on Campaign Contributions

The FBI’s background employment checks are filled with inaccuracies

MassPrivateI

No amount of economic growth will land you a job if you get unfairly snagged in the FBI’s faulty background check system. And you can lose your job because of the FBI file inaccuracies, too.

After working without incident at a Philadelphia port for 33 years, Russ F. was told he was out of a job when a newly required post-9/11 security clearance check found an arrest dating back to 1971. Charges were never filed, and Russ was never prosecuted.  

But the nearly 40-year-old arrest was reported on his FBI background check with no additional information, and Russ needed months to track down documentation to prove he had never been convicted or even charged with a crime. Only then could he regain his job.

A National Employment Law Project report found the FBI ran a record 16.9 million employment background checks — a six-fold increase from a decade ago — for jobs ranging from child care to truck driving, port workers to mortgage processors. Although background checks can contribute to workplace safety, inaccuracies in the FBI database mean that these checks are blocking about 600,000 Americans a year from jobs for which they may be perfectly qualified. This unfair barrier to employment can and must be fixed.

The glitch is that FBI records often fail to report the final outcomes of arrests. The case might have been dismissed or the charges reduced, but a prospective employer might not know it from the FBI background check. Roughly one-third of all felony arrests don’t result in conviction, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and many more are reduced to misdemeanors. By the Justice Department’s own count, roughly 50% of FBI background records are incomplete and don’t include the final outcome of an arrest.

In the face of such errors, only a fraction of job seekers successfully correct their FBI records — and then only with great effort and expense. Those unable to correct their reports are often trapped in a cycle of poverty that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder decried in a recent speech.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, introduced a bill to clean up incomplete FBI background checks for employment. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, has also introduced the Accurate Background Check bill, specifically focusing on federal employment. These bills are coming not a moment too soon.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/opinion/neighly-fbi-background-checks/?hpt=hp_bn7

The National Employment Law Project report:
http://www.nelp.org/page/-/SCLP/2013/Report-Wanted-Accurate-FBI-Background-Checks-Employment.pdf?nocdn=1

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http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-fbis-background-employment-checks.html

The FBI’s background employment checks are filled with inaccuracies

Illinois expands background checks to all gun purchases

A customer inspects a 9mm handgun at Rink’s Gun and Sport in the Chicago, suburb of Lockport, Illinois in this June 26, 2008 file photograph.

Credit: Reuters/Frank Polich/Files

CHICAGO | Sun Aug 18, 2013 9:58pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a gun-control measure into law on Sunday that expands background checks to cover all firearms purchases in the state, closing what he said was a loophole that exempted gun sales between private parties.

The new law also requires all gun owners to report any lost or stolen firearms to local police within 72 hours.

“Guns are a plague on too many of our communities,” Quinn, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Making sure guns do not fall into the wrong hands is critical to keeping the people of Illinois safe. This commonsense law will help our law enforcement crack down on crime and make our streets safer.”

The expanded background checks go into effect on January 1, 2014.

Previously in Illinois, where Democrats control the state legislature but remain sharply divided over firearms safety, only adults buying guns from a licensed firearms dealer or at a gun show in the state have been subject to background checks.

Those buyers must have a firearm owners identification (FOID) card, which is issued by Illinois state police to applicants who pass a screening of state criminal and mental health records. The seller must then call a state-run hotline to check that a buyer’s FOID card is valid before making the sale.

Under the new law, gun sales or transfers between private parties, including those that take place online, will have to follow the same system.

Not all of Quinn’s gun-control efforts, which tend to draw greater support in the state’s cities than in its rural areas, have been successful.

In July, state lawmakers voted to override the governor’s veto of parts of a gun bill allowing individuals to carry more than one gun, to carry guns into some places that serve alcohol, and to carry a partly exposed gun.

The bill was drafted after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s law banning people from carrying a concealed weapon in public last December, saying it violated the constitutional right to bear arms.

In April, the U.S. Senate rejected an effort, championed by President Barack Obama, to pass new federal gun-control laws, including an expansion of background checks to include people buying guns online or at gun shows.

(Reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago; Writing and additional reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Steve Gorman and Will Dunham)

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Reuters: Politics

Illinois expands background checks to all gun purchases

IG: IRS Employees Abused Charge Cards and Wrote Bad Checks

Terence P. Jeffrey
CNS News
June 13, 2013

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in a recently released audit report that in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 Internal Revenue Service employees misused government charge cards issued by Citibank.

The report said that during the two years in question agency employees sent Citibank a total of 325 bad checks written on personal accounts that had insufficient funds to cover them, that agency officials with top-secret security clearances had their charge accounts suspended for failure to pay the balances, and that the IRS had a tendency of being “overly lenient” in disciplining those who misused the cards.

Despite the more than 1,000 IRS employees who misused the charge cards, the inspector general’s report found that the IRS did a “generally effective” job in controlling its employees use of the cards.

Read more

This article was posted: Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 1:12 pm

Tags: domestic news, government corruption

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Infowars

IG: IRS Employees Abused Charge Cards and Wrote Bad Checks

Senate leader won"t weaken gun background checks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he won’t accept watered-down background checks as the price for pushing gun control legislation through the Senate.

The Nevada Democrat isn’t getting into specifics. But gun control advocates have worried that if Democrats are trying to declare victory on the issue, they might remove required record-keeping of gun sales from the legislation.

Advocates say that would make the bill toothless.

Reid says efforts to find the 60 Senate votes needed haven’t borne much fruit.

Reid isn’t saying when there might be a new vote. The original version was defeated in April.

Reid spoke to families from Newtown, Conn. They were in Washington, lobbying a day before the six-month anniversary of the massacre that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Congress News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Senate leader won"t weaken gun background checks