Bullied children can suffer lasting psychological harm as adults

Feb. 20, 2013 ? Bullied children grow into adults who are at increased risk of developing anxiety disorders, depression and suicidal thoughts, according to a study led by researchers at Duke Medicine.

The findings, based on more than 20 years of data from a large group of participants initially enrolled as adolescents, are the most definitive to date in establishing the long-term psychological effects of bullying.

Published online Feb. 20, 2013, in JAMA Psychiatry, the study belies a common perception that bullying, while hurtful, inflicts a fleeting injury that victims outgrow.

"We were surprised at how profoundly bullying affects a person's long-term functioning," said William E. Copeland, PhD, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University and lead author of the study. "This psychological damage doesn't just go away because a person grew up and is no longer bullied. This is something that stays with them. If we can address this now, we can prevent a whole host of problems down the road."

A previous longitudinal study of bullied children, conducted in Finland, found mixed results, concluding that boys had few lasting problems, while girls suffered more long-term psychological harm. That study, however, relied on registry data in the health system that didn't fully capture psychiatric records.

Copeland and colleagues had a much richer data set. Using the Great Smoky Mountain Study, the research team tapped a population-based sample of 1,420 children ages 9, 11 and 13 from 11 counties in western North Carolina. Initially enrolled in 1993, the children and their parents or caregivers were interviewed annually until the youngsters turned 16, and then periodically thereafter.

At each assessment until age 16, the child and caregiver were asked, among other things, whether the child had been bullied or teased or had bullied others in the three months immediately prior to the interview.

A total of 421 child or adolescent participants -- 26 percent of the children -- reported being bullied at least once; 887 said they suffered no such abuse. Boys and girls reported incidents at about the same rate. Nearly 200 youngsters, or 9.5 percent, acknowledged bullying others; 112 were bullies only, while 86 were both bullies and victims.

Of the original 1,420 children, more than 1,270 were followed up into adulthood. The subsequent interviews included questions about the participants' psychological health.

As adults, those who said they had been bullied, plus those who were both victims and aggressors, were at higher risk for psychiatric disorders compared with those with no history of being bullied. The young people who were only victims had higher levels of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety, panic disorder and agoraphobia.

Those who were both bullies and victims had higher levels of all anxiety and depressive disorders, plus the highest levels of suicidal thoughts, depressive disorders, generalized anxiety and panic disorder. Bullies were also at increased risk for antisocial personality disorder.

The researchers were able to sort out confounding factors that might have contributed to psychiatric disorders, including poverty, abuse and an unstable or dysfunctional home life.

"Bullying is potentially a problem for bullies as well as for victims," said senior author E. Jane Costello, PhD, associate director of research at Duke's Center for Child and Family Policy. "Bullying, which we tend to think of as a normal and not terribly important part of childhood, turns out to have the potential for very serious consequences for children, adolescents and adults."

Costello and Copeland said they would continue their analysis, with future studies exploring the role sexual orientation plays in bullying and victimization.

In addition to Costello and Copeland, study authors include Adrian Angold of Duke and Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick, Coventry, England.

The work received support from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH63970, MH63671, and MH48085); the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA/MH11301); the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation; and the William T. Grant Foundation.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University Medical Center.

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Journal Reference:

1. William E. Copeland et al. Adult Psychiatric Outcomes of Bullying and Being Bullied by Peers in Childhood and Adolescence. JAMA Psychiatry, 2013 DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.504

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/xmq2AlUzl8I/130220163629.htm

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Ultrahigh-definition TV: New Quad HD TV chip developed

Feb. 20, 2013 ? It took only a few years for high-definition televisions to make the transition from high-priced novelty to ubiquitous commodity -- and they now seem to be heading for obsolescence just as quickly. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, several manufacturers debuted new ultrahigh-definition, or UHD, models (also known as 4K or Quad HD) with four times the resolution of today's HD TVs.

In addition to screens with four times the pixels, however, UHD also requires a new video-coding standard, known as high-efficiency video coding, or HEVC. Also at CES, Broadcom announced the first commercial HEVC chip, which it said will go into volume production in mid-2014.

At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference this week, MIT researchers unveiled their own HEVC chip. The researchers' design was executed by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, through its University Shuttle Program, and Texas Instruments (TI) funded the chip's development.

Although the MIT chip isn't intended for commercial release, its developers believe that the challenge of implementing HEVC algorithms in silicon helps illustrate design principles that could be broadly useful. Moreover, "because now we have the chip with us, it is now possible for us to figure out ways in which different types of video data actually interact with hardware," says Mehul Tikekar, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and one of the paper's co-authors. "People don't really know, 'What is the hardware complexity of doing, say, different types of video streams?'"

In the pipeline

Like older coding standards, the HEVC standard exploits the fact that in successive frames of video, most of the pixels stay the same. Rather than transmitting entire frames, it's usually enough for broadcasters to transmit just the moving pixels, saving a great deal of bandwidth. The first step in the encoding process is thus to calculate "motion vectors" -- mathematical descriptions of the motion of objects in the frame.

On the receiving, end, however, that description will not yield a perfectly faithful image, as the orientation of a moving object and the way it's illuminated can change as it moves. So the next step is to add a little extra information to correct motion estimates that are based solely on the vectors. Finally, to save even more bandwidth, the motion vectors and the corrective information are run through a standard data-compression algorithm, and the results are sent to the receiver.

The new chip performs this process in reverse. It was designed by researchers in the lab of Anantha Chandrakasan, the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering and head of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In addition to Chandrakasan and Tikekar, these include Chiraag Juvekar, another graduate student in Chandrakasan's group; former postdoc Chao-Tsung Huang; and former graduate student Vivienne Sze, now at TI.

The chip's first trick for increasing efficiency is to "pipeline" the decoding process: A chunk of data is decompressed and passed to a motion-compensation circuit, but as soon as the motion compensation begins, the decompression circuit takes in the next chunk of data. After motion compensation is complete, the data passes to a circuit that applies the corrective data and, finally, to a filtering circuit that smooths out whatever rough edges remain.

Fine-tuning

Pipelining is fairly standard in most video chips, but the MIT researchers developed a couple of other tricks to further improve efficiency. The application of the corrective data, for instance, is a single calculation known as matrix multiplication. A matrix is just a big grid of numbers; in matrix multiplication, numbers in the rows of one matrix are multiplied by numbers in the columns of another, and the results are added together to produce entries in a new matrix.

"We observed that the matrix has some patterns in it," Tikekar explains. In the new standard, a 32-by-32 matrix, representing a 32-by-32 block of pixels, is multiplied by another 32-by-32 matrix, containing corrective information. In principle, the corrective matrix could contain 1,024 different values. But the MIT researchers observed that, in practice, "there are only 32 unique numbers," Tikekar says. "So we can efficiently implement one of these [multiplications] and then use the same hardware to do the rest."

Similarly, Juvekar developed a more efficient way to store video data in memory. The "naive way," he explains, would be to store the values of each row of pixels at successive memory addresses. In that scheme, the values of pixels that are next to each other in a row would also be adjacent in memory, but the value of the pixels below them would be far away.

In video decoding, however, "it is highly likely that if you need the pixel on top, you also need the pixel right below it," Juvekar says. "So we optimize the data into small square blocks that are stored together. When you access something from memory, you not only get the pixels on the right and left, but you also get the pixels on the top and bottom in the same request."

Chandrakasan's group specializes in low-power devices, and in ongoing work, the researchers are trying to reduce the power consumption of the chip even further, to prolong the battery life of quad-HD cell phones or tablet computers. One design modification they plan to investigate, Tikekar says, is the use of several smaller decoding pipelines that work in parallel. Reducing the computational demands on each group of circuits would also reduce the chip's operating voltage.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Larry Hardesty.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/technology/~3/DkJQYAuv5Kg/130220123421.htm

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Business Growth Via A Better Customer Experience: Transformation ...

A large and growing insurance company has managed to grow it?s revenue by leveraging a new customer experience that span both BPM and legacy applications. By leveraging something old and something new, this organization delivered growth at a constant cost .

?

The Journey:

Like most organizations, this company was looking at broadening their stance in the business by understanding the needs of the market. It eventually became clear that the service experience being offered by this organization? to their customers, and distributors alike, was not strong enough. Hence, they looked at bringing about a change in their operational culture, processes and skills, with the aid from technology.

One of the key strategic business goals was growth at constant cost. Their traditional green screen systems for ?imaging?? had been pronounced by various industry vendors as obsolete and in need of change before any sophisticated Case management solution could come in. The business could neither afford an overhaul of all their systems, nor could they afford to wait until this gets done ? at least 2-3 years by some estimates. Added to that complexity was the fact that other business units identified to use the same solution were using completely different platforms, some of which were modern web based systems. The chosen technology stack needed to allow for all of these to peacefully co-exist and yet enhance the overall solution to meet 21^st century needs.

Integrating the old and New:

This organization deployed a case management solution that perfectly addressed their requirement. The case management solution proved cost-effective upfront due to its tailor made functionality built for the Insurance industry, which would otherwise have been an expensive ?made-from-scratch? software development cycle. The product suite chosen inherently allowed for a ?headless? BPM strategy such that whenever legacy systems needed to be changed, there would be no changes needed in the solution provided.

The case management solution comprised of extremely flexible architecture that allowed for the UI layer to be independent of the underlying BPM system that controlled the flow of work. The solution incorporated critical decision making functionalities and business rules that ensured compliance pertaining to the insurance industry. Considering the existing systems had few features that accommodated integration, this solution provided a breakthrough approach and embedded the UI of the current systems into the new one allowing smooth knitting of information without any loss of critical data. This was accomplished through a ?dual screen interface mode? that allowed the user to monitor cases while simultaneously looking at customer information without having to switch systems or UIs, thus giving a complete view of the case and enabling flawless case management.

This comprehensive application catered to some of the core processes of the insurance business cycle such as New Business and Underwriting, Claims Processing and Customer Service. More importantly, the solution was federated in a way that the business content could independently function irrespective of the BPM engines and ECM systems with which it interacted, keeping in mind any changes of IT infrastructure that might come underway with time, thus enabling a future-proof operating environment. This provided the scalability to the application in its entirety, without disrupting business processes and content.

The Results:

The combination of case management, custom-built processes and integration with legacy systems brought about a step change in productivity that lead to better business outcomes and therefore, better customer service.

Some of the key outcomes of this transformation are enlisted below:

- Improved Customer Service

- Growth at constant cost

- Core process transformation

- Complete control over cases through effective Case Management

- Brought in the concept of knowledge workers and change in work culture

- Leveraged IT investment with best practice BPM methodologies

- Instrumental in shaping the Target Operating Model

- Business Analytics and Monitoring

- Regional Blueprint for New Business, Underwriting and Policy Servicing processes

- No loss of critical business/legacy data

- Scalability and flexibility of IT infrastructure to support future needs

Net; Net:

Incremental transformation is proven here with immediate benefits.? By taking a federated approach to all IT platforms underlying the solution to allow for changes and modernization in those at their own natural pace leveraging process and user experience.

?

The above success story has been summarized and made anonymous to get the essence of the success documented quickly. The source of this success story is a technology provider named AWPL

Category: Applications BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules Challenges IT Governance Optimization Social Success Technology Virtualization Visibility ? ? Tags: BPM, business, Business Process Improvement, Business Rules, Decision Management, Process Improvement, Process Management, Transformation

Source: http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2013/02/20/business-growth-via-a-better-customer-experience-transformation-tale/

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New evidence for link between depression and heart disease

Feb. 18, 2013 ? A Loyola University Medical Center psychiatrist is proposing a new subspecialty to diagnose and treat patients who suffer both depression and heart disease. He's calling it "Psychocardiology."

In his most recent study, Angelos Halaris, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that an inflammatory biomarker, interleukin-6, was significantly higher in the blood of 48 patients diagnosed with major depression than it was in 20 healthy controls.

Interleukin-6 has been associated with cardiovascular disease. Halaris presented his findings at a joint congress of the World Psychiatric Association and International Neuropsychiatric Association in Athens, Greece. At the congress, Halaris formally proposed creation of a new Psychocardiology subspecialty.

Forty to 60 percent of heart disease patients suffer clinical depression and 30 to 50 percent of patients who suffer clinical depression are at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, Halaris said.

Stress is the key to understanding the association between depression and heart disease. Stress can lead to depression, and depression, in turn, can become stressful. The body's immune system fights stress as it would fight a disease or infection. In response to stress, the immune system produces proteins called cytokines, including interleukin-6. Initially, this inflammatory response protects against stress. But over time, a chronic inflammatory response can lead to arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and cardiovascular disease.

It's a vicious cycle: depression triggers a chronic inflammation, which leads to heart disease, which causes depression, which leads to more heart disease. Clinical depression typically begins in young adults. "Treating depression expertly and vigorously in young age can help prevent cardiovascular disease later on," Halaris said.

Physicians often work in isolation, with psychiatrists treating depression and cardiologists treating cardiovascular disease. Halaris is proposing that psychiatrists and cardiologists work together in a multidisciplinary Psychocardiology subspecialty.

A Psychocardiology subspecialty would raise awareness among physicians and the public. It would forge closer working relationships between psychiatrists and cardiologists. It would formalize multidisciplinary teams with the requisite training and expertise to enable early detection of cardiovascular disease risk in psychiatric patients and psychiatric problems in heart disease patients. And it would provide continuing education to physicians in the safe and correct use of medications in cardiac patients who have psychiatric disorders.

"It is only through the cohesive interaction of such multidisciplinary teams that we can succeed in unraveling the complex relationships among mental stress, inflammation, immune responses and depression, cardiovascular disease and stroke," Halaris said.

Halaris is medical director of Adult Psychiatry and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/heart_disease/~3/5H5KM4TLpJw/130219121604.htm

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Mindy McCready becomes 5th 'Celebrity Rehab' death

HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) ? Perhaps there was one heartbreak too many for Mindy McCready.

The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons.

McCready had attempted suicide at least three times since 2005, as she struggled to cope amid a series of tumultuous public events that marked much of her adult life.

Speaking to The Associated Press in 2010, McCready smiled wryly while talking about the string of issues she'd dealt with over the last half-decade.

"It is a giant whirlwind of chaos all the time," she said of her life. "I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos. It's just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that's really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality."

This time it seems the whirlwind overwhelmed McCready.

Her death comes a month after that of David Wilson, her longtime boyfriend and the father of her youngest son. He is believed to have shot himself on the same porch of the home they shared in Heber Springs, a small vacation community of large lakefront houses about 65 miles north of Little Rock. His death also was investigated as a suicide.

It was the most difficult moment in a life full of them. McCready issued a statement last month lamenting his death. And she called him her soul mate and a caregiver to her sons in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.

"I just keep telling myself that the more suffering that I go through, the greater character I'll have," she said, according to a transcript of the interview.

Like so many times before, McCready showed a little toughness in the midst of a personal storm, again endearing herself to her fans. But as usual, the brave face for the camera hid a much more complicated internal struggle that surfaced publicly time and again over the last 10 years.

This time, along with her remembrances of finding Wilson as he lay dying, she also answered questions about whether they'd argued earlier that evening about an affair and if she'd shot him.

"Oh, my God," the "Today" transcript reads. "No. Oh, my God. No. He was my life. We were each other's life."

It's unclear what circumstances led to McCready taking her own life, but it appears she was struggling again with twin issues that have persisted for years ? substance abuse and the custody of her children. She checked into court-ordered rehab and gave her children up to foster care earlier this month after her father asked a judge to intervene, saying she'd stopped taking care of herself and her sons and was abusing alcohol and prescription drugs.

It's not clear where her sons, 6-year-old Zander and infant Zayne, were Sunday.

A deputy stationed outside McCready's home Sunday night referred questions to the Cleburne County sheriff, who was unavailable. Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the front yard and a dark-colored pickup truck sat in the driveway.

News of McCready's death spread quickly Sunday night on Twitter, with major country stars paying their respects to the onetime Nashville darling.

"Too much tragedy to overcome. R.I.P Mindy McCready," wrote Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks.

And Carrie Underwood added: "I grew up listening to Mindy McCready...so sad for her family tonight. Many prayers are going out to them... ."

On Monday, neighbors who never met McCready but knew well of her very public struggles expressed grief.

Jim Jones, 58, said police had already blocked off McCready's house Sunday evening when he and his wife pulled up to their weekend home down the street. People knew McCready lived in town, but many homeowners live only part-time in Heber Springs, particularly in the warmer months for the boating, fishing and golfing.

"I never met anybody. That's the thing about up here. So many of them are summer lake houses that you don't know your neighbors."

Melinda Gayle McCready arrived in Nashville in 1994 still in her teens with tapes of her karaoke vocals and earned a recording contract with BNA Records. She had a few memorable moments professionally, scoring her first No. 1 hit almost immediately.

"Guys Do It All the Time," a self-assured dig at male chauvinism, endeared her to female fans in 1996. She also scored a hit with "Ten Thousand Angels," and her album of that title sold 2 million copies.

Beyond that, though, she's mostly remembered for a string of dramatic moments as she spent the next 15 years chasing another huge hit. Her problems included a custody battle with her mother over one of her sons, arrests, overdoses and discord in her love life.

She made headlines in April 2008 when she claimed a longtime relationship with baseball great Roger Clemens. Published reports at the time said she met the pitcher at a Florida karaoke bar when she was 15 and he was 28 and married. Clemens has denied the relationship.

On Monday, Clemens handed a written statement to reporters at the Houston Astros spring training facility in Kissimmee, Fla., where he is serving as a special instructor for the team.

"Yes, that is sad news. I had heard over time that she was trying to get peace and direction in her life. The few times that I had met her and her manager/agent they were extremely nice."

A decade earlier she was engaged to actor Dean Cain, but the two never married.

She also had a turbulent relationship with Billy McKnight, a country singer who is the father of her oldest son. McKnight was arrested in 2005 on charges of attempted murder after authorities say he beat and choked her.

During this period she also pleaded guilty to obtaining the painkiller OxyContin fraudulently at a pharmacy and got probation. She violated the probation with a drunken driving arrest in May 2005, a few days before McKnight was arrested. And in July 2007, she was arrested in her hometown of Fort Myers, Fla., on misdemeanor charges of scratching her mother, Gayle Inge, on the face during a scuffle and resisting sheriff's deputies.

Less than a year later, McCready was arrested and charged with violating her probation by falsifying her community service records relating to the 2004 drug charge. A month later, she entered an extended care facility for undisclosed treatment, and followed that with a 60-day jail sentence. Inge took custody of Zander.

There were at least three suicide attempts between July 2005 and December 2008.

She tried to get help in an unusual way, joining the cast of "Celebrity Rehab 3" with Dr. Drew Pinsky. McCready came off as a sympathetic figure during the show's run. Pinsky called her an "angel" and in an interview in 2010 said it appeared McCready was doing "rather well."

Pinsky helped treat McCready for love addiction on the show and said he'd referred her to professionals who could continue to help her afterward.

"A love addict basically is somebody that really didn't have a good model for intimacy in their childhood, often times traumatized in one way or another, thereby intimacy becomes a risk place, becomes an intolerable place," Pinsky said. "And so what they tend to do is attach themselves to idealized, bigger than life, unavailable others, specifically go after some public figure that's married or go after some rock star who is himself a sex addict and not interested in a relationship, and then idealize that person and actively pursue them to the point of obsession."

McCready suffered a seizure in one of the show's scarier moments. Tests showed she has suffered brain damage, something she attributed to her abusive relationship with McKnight.

McCready is the fifth celebrity to pass away since appearing on Pinsky's show and the third from Season 3. Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr and "Real World" participant Joey Kovar both died of overdoses.

In the months after her stint, McCready said she found some peace, telling The Associated Press in early 2010 that she hoped to get her career restarted, write a book about her experiences and begin production on a reality show with her brothers. She'd just met Wilson and talked openly about their relationship, although the producer and musician declined to speak on the record.

With a publicist, reporters, cameras, makeup artists and musicians swirling around her during a press day for her last album, "I'm Still Here," McCready fended off questions about a sex tape and said she and Wilson started out as friends.

"And I've never had a relationship like that before where we started completely as friends," she said. "It turned into friends really caring about each other and then it turned into love and I've never had that happen before."

At the time, Pinsky thought the relationship was on the right track: "She's an easy person to like and to care about and we hope she does well," Pinsky said. "So far so good as far as I can tell."

McCready said her main goal in 2010 was to pull her family back together: "I would like my son back with me and for my brothers and I and he to be able to go and do this (TV reality show), and I think after that I will be a pretty happy girl."

The new album debuted at No. 71 and failed to gain radio airplay. McCready's plans never materialized and she soon was in legal trouble again, this time fighting for custody.

McCready took her older son from her mother, the boy's legal guardian, in late 2011. She fled to Arkansas without permission over what she called child abuse fears. Authorities eventually found McCready hiding in a home without permission and took the boy into custody.

She and Wilson had their son in April 2012.

___

Music Writer Chris Talbott reported from Nashville, Tenn. Baseball Writer Noah Trister, in Kissimmee, Fla., and Associated Press writer Tamara Lush in Tampa, Fla., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/singer-mindy-mccready-dies-apparent-suicide-042201275.html

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Leaked White House immigration plan threatens to derail bipartisan ...

An woman takes the oath of allegiance during a naturalization ceremony at the at district office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on January 28, 2013 in Newark, New Jersey. Some 38,000 immigrants became U.S. citizens at the Newark office alone in 2012. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Congressional Republicans are calling foul on the Obama administration for potentially compromising immigration reform after a White House draft proposal that grants a pathway to citizenship within eight years?was?leaked to?USA Today.

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., all publicly lashed out at the White House, they say for undermining bipartisan efforts already underway in both chambers of Congress.

The leaked?plan provides a path to legal permanent residency within eight years via a ?Lawful Immigrant Visa??for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in?the country illegally. Under the proposed plan, undocumented immigrants would file behind legal applicants, and would not be approved for green-card status until the earlier of two dates: either eight years after the law is enacted or 30 days after the last legal applicant is processed.

Similar to congressional proposals already in the works, the White House plan also builds on calls for increased border security and would require all employers to check the immigration status of new hires using an expanded E-Verify system within four years.

The revelation of a White House proposal, deemed a ?draft? by White House officials eager to downplay its significance, angered congressional Republicans. It comes just days after the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on comprehensive immigration reform and as a bipartisan ?Gang of Eight? in the Senate laid out a framework for new policy.

Rubio, a member of the ?Gang of Eight,? denounced the Obama plan as ?dead on arrival? saying it ?creates a special pathway that puts those who broke our immigration laws at an advantage over those who chose to do things the right way and come here legally.?

While the policies outlined in the draft legislation are largely the same as those advanced by the president in a speech in Las Vegas earlier this month, and while the next day he revealed in an interview with Telemundo?s Jose Diaz-Balart that he had a draft, the release of the document threatens to disrupt a delicate balance between congressional Republicans and Democrats.

The night before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, President Obama laid out his vision saying that ?the time has come? to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and praising efforts in Congress.

?As we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts,? Obama said in his State of the Union address. ?Now let?s get this done. Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away.?

A number of Republicans said they appreciated the president?s?non-confrontational?tone on immigration during Tuesday?s address. Former vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., told the?New York Times, ?I thought on immigration he used the right words and the right tone, which tells me he actually?doesn?t?want to politicize this, which is conducive to getting something done.?

Yet the airing of the draft legislation crafted by the White House without input from both parties angered Ryan, who?insinuated?on ABC?s This Week that the leak was intentional.??By putting these details out?that tells us he is looking for partisan advantage and not a bipartisan solution. This particular move is counter productive,? Ryan said.

A White House official denied an intentional leak in comments to NBC News. ?This was not the administration floating anything?We were surprised to learn what appeared to be draft language had been given to the press, thought it was unfortunate, and reached out to senate offices on both sides of the aisle on Saturday evening to make that clear.?

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough downplayed the plan?s significance on the weekend talk shows, and said that the Obama administration was ?very aggressively supporting? the bipartisan talks on the Hill. ?We?re just going to be ready,? he said of the proposals.

Telemundo?s Jose Diaz-Balart questioned the timing of the release, which has Republicans on the defensive and the president looking more aggressive than he has in the past, at a crucial junction in the immigration debate that hinges on bipartisan cooperation.

?The day after that speech, I spoke with the president at the White House, and among the things he told was that he already had this plan written,? Diaz-Balart said on Andrea Mitchell Reports Monday. ?So we know it?s there. We know it?s written. We know he is ready to file it if things break down. The question is the timing of this leak. Is it now a time to say, ?Here are the specifics of a proposal that I will present if you fail,? before they have even failed??

Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the Hispanic civil rights organization National Council of La Raza, voiced optimism on?Andrea Mitchell Reports Monday, calling the back-and-forth between President Obama and lawmakers ?healthy tensions? and saying, ?what we?re seeing played out is just the making of legislation.?

?I think it?s legitimate for Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. McCain, who have been leading efforts on the Republican side, to say, ?Wait a minute. Give us a chance to keep moving our bipartisan effort forward,?? Murguia told Mitchell. ?But it?s equally legitimate for the president to say, ?I want to have a marker out there? and if things sort of derail or end up taking too long, then he can have an option of putting his bill forward.?

Source: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/18/leaked-white-house-immigration-proposal-threatens-to-derail-bipartisan-efforts/

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Fox News: Obstructionism Is Bad When Dems Do It, Good When It?s The GOP

Fox News once again shows its hypocrisy in praising Senate Republicans for refusing to vote on Chuck Hagel?s confirmation. This is the first time in history a nominee for Secretary of Defense has been blocked by the Senate.

According to Media Matters, the only time Democrats have come close to doing this is when some expressed concern over Condoleezza Rice?s nomination in 2005, and they only held the vote up for a day. At the time however, Fox News called the move petty and full of sour grapes, and averred, ?The president is entitled to his Cabinet.? This time, however, it doesn?t appear to matter as they themselves called on their viewers to contact their senators and request that they filibuster the vote.

Sean Hannity even called this ?a victory for Republicans.? GOP obstructionism is nothing new over the last four years, and has gotten significantly worse since 2010, when many Tea Partiers were elected to Congress. Fox News calling such obstruction of a Cabinet nominee a victory for the party is a testament to their propaganda machine, despite their tagline saying they are ?fair and balanced? news.

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However, Fox likes to call out hypocrisy in others, whether it?s there or not. They called out Obama on his recent calls for more gun control, and tried to make it appear that this was at odds with his objection to an Illinois state bill that would have automatically tried juveniles aged 15 and over as adults for firing guns in school zones. Media Matters reports that Obama?s statement regarding that objection was that he took issue with expanding reasons for trying juveniles as adults when the general assembly had just overhauled the law to limit how often children were tried as adults.

Of course, Fox News isn?t really a bastion of truth and fact, so contradiction and hypocrisy aren?t unexpected with them. They?ve been part of Rupert Murdoch?s News Corp. empire since their founding in 1996, and have been the voice of conservatism the entire time. They were seen as the lone counter to what was dubbed the ?liberally-biased media,? and their ratings appeared to confirm that most Americans are conservative, when the truth of that matter was that most Americans who did not watch Fox News divided their attention between multiple other networks, keeping those ratings from skyrocketing the same way.

Fox?s problem, however, is not their right-wing bias. Bias, whether we like it or not, appears all over the news. It?s in every newspaper, on every network, in new media and traditional media. But bias and propaganda are two different things; Fox?s problem is with their decision to be the voice of outrage over increasing progressivism, and to report propaganda to that effect (as opposed to news, biased or not).

A Jan. 24 article on Media Matters discusses the outrage model that is Fox News and Breitbart, and how that lends credence to the GOP?s current image of being a bunch of whiny, entitled white guys suffering the distress of the privileged. ?Phony outrage,? as author Eric Boehlert calls it, focuses on the trivial and ignores the substantial, and calls out liberals in general and Obama in specific for being horribly partisan, refusing to work with anyone who disagrees with them.

Which brings us back to the point: Fox News? hypocrisy as they predictably praise the GOP for refusing to cooperate on something as comparatively trivial as a Cabinet nomination, but scream, cry and whine in outrage about virtually everything Democrats do.

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Source: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/02/18/fox-news-obstructionism-is-bad-when-dems-do-it-good-when-its-the-gop-video/

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