Casino Down?
The Catskills’ Indian casino dreams appeared to evaporate late last month after hardball threats from Gov. George Pataki couldn’t get Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno to budge from a deal benefiting a tribe that has his son on the payroll forcing state lawmakers to end their annual legislative session unable to pass the plan to settle a two-decade long land-claim court battle with the St. Regis Mohawks, giving the tribe one of three authorized casinos in the Catskills.
Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther of Sullivan County shepherded the Mohawk bill through the Assembly but Bruno blocked it from ever getting to the floor in the Senate, instead pushing for a three-tribe deal including Wisconsin’s Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans and the Wisconsin Oneidas, who hired Bruno’s son as a $10,000-a-month lobbyist. Pataki went so far as to say more lobbying law reforms might be needed because of Bruno’s father-son connection in the deal. Then in an e-mail to lobbyists, he threatened to cut off other tribes hoping to build casinos in the Catskills.
“If your clients or their representatives succeed in their current efforts to prevent passage of the Mohawk settlement legislation, the state will engage in no further settlement negotiations with out-of-state tribes,” Pataki’s message said. Sen. John Bonacic slammed Pataki’s threat to end tribal talks, calling it no way to negotiate. Sen. Bill Larkin, chairman of the Senate Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee, said he would have rather seen one casino for the Catskills than none.
Bruno said his son never lobbied him directly on the issue and that he pushed to get other tribes casinos because he wanted three Catskills casinos, as the Legislature authorized in 2001, instead of just one.

Bad Traffic
Both the Catskills and the Poconos were recently included on a list of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country for holiday weekends, along with Lake George, Cape Cod, and The Hamptons, as far as Northeast trouble spots go. The study, called “Are We There Yet?” by the American Highway Users Alliance, says the Oregon Coast will see the most congestion, although the Catskills made the top 10, with the Poconos ranked the 11th worst. Lake George was 22nd, and The Hamptons rounded out the list at 25.
Simultaneous to the list’s release has come news that the Ulster County Legislature is currently reviewing a 50-page report from the Ulster County Transportation Council showing that that county is faced with a sharply rising use of highways during the next 25 years while there is a dwindling pool of funding available to provide drivers with safe commutes. There is expected to be a 55 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled and a 62 percent increase in vehicle hours traveled between 2000 and 2030. Under budgets planned between 2006 and 2010, there is $66.05 million expected to be used for 53 projects that receive state or federal aid. Included in county-wide hotspots, besides the Kingston area, is State Route 28 from state Route 375 to the Thruway in the towns of Hurley, Kingston and Ulster at 26 percent over capacity. Recommendations in the county study include: Adding park-and-ride areas near the Routes 9W and 209 interchange in the town of Ulster and at Thruway exit 20 in Saugerties while advertising an existing area at Ulster County Community College in the town of Marbletown; Investing in traffic detection and control equipment, traveler information, and signal communications along the entire Ulster County stretch of Route 9W; Providing shoulders along county routes in Esopus, Woodstock, Shawangunk, Gardiner, and Marlborough to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety and creating a pedestrian zone along U.S. Route 9W in the town of Ulster commercial district.

Watery Omens?
Local officials are once again worried that actions of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection will end up hurting the region. And as is usually the case. DEP officals scoff at upsate claims that the agency is out to get watershed dwellors.
This time around it’s about a memo from within DEP that fell into the hands of Coalition of Watershed Towns Chair Patrick Meehan and outlines an intent to request the reclassification of many streams in the watershed “to discourage and limit future development within the NYC watersheds.” The CWC thinks that if the major streams are reclassified it would result in the City’s development regulations and State regulations being on the same level. Currently, the City pays to fund several programs in the watershed because it was determined that its water protection regulations went above and beyond the regulations for the rest of the State. Therefore, anything required to bring local communities into compliance with the City regulations is paid for by the City, not the communities. Coalition officials fear that this could result in the City no longer being required to pay for annual operation and maintenance costs of sewer systems installed in watershed communities as part of the watershed agreement reached in 1997.
The City’s Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Ian Michaels said there is nothing new about this issue. He said the City has participated in the program since 1996. As for the financial implications on watershed communities, Michaels said the only objective the City has is protecting the drinking water and added that there has not been a concern about the past eight years of the City’s participation in the States stream reclassification program and that the State would hold public hearings and comment periods pertaining to any proposed reclassification. He stopped just shy of agreement when asked if he felt this was another matter of upstate officals over-scrutinizing DEP actions on behalf of local developers, who appear to be working overtime to discredit the agency.
DEP has announced that it would not issue the permits needed for approval of the Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, a large project that would include two golf courses, as many hotels and hundreds of residentiall units. The developers, Crossroads Ventures LLC., immediatly followed DEP's announcment with claims that DEP is oversteping it's authority in the watershed in several areas and have succeeded in riling up the Coalition of Watershed Towns, a regional advocacy group.

Rollover
Olive assistant fire chief Carl Swenson has noted that a June 25 rollover accident on state Route 28A in Boiceville, at around 8:15 p.m., was such that the victim, who was not identified, was able to extract herself from the vehicle and move by the time his department got there. Swenson said her injuries did not appear to be serious or life-threatening, but she was taken for evaluation to one of the Kingston hospitals by Olive First Aid. The woman was the only occupant of the car, and there were no other vehicles involved in the crash.

Domain Trouble
The Supreme Court has ignited fears from both the left and right, as well as considerable local conjecture, by ruling that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development. Specifically, the 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for a waterfront office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas. But according to interpretations of the new ruling. Municipalities and other governmental agencies could now have a wider power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue. Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, is what justices essentially said.
The case’s wheels were set in motion in 1998 when pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. (PFE) agreed to build a $270 million research facility next to the area in dispute. The New London City Council later adopted a redevelopment plan to transform 90 acres of the targeted neighborhood. The City Council then transferred power of eminent domain to a private, nonprofit group of residents and business owners called the New London Development Corp., which seeks to build a hotel complex, conference center, offices and other structures.
At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for “public use.” When several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Connecticut, filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices, city officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners’ property rights, even if the area wasn’t blighted.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, and announced her resignation following the decision, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers. “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “ Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful... The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
At least eight states - Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington - forbid the use of eminent domain for economic development unless it is to eliminate blight. Other states either expressly allow private property to be taken for private economic purposes or have not spoken clearly to the question. Legislation now working its way through Congress also would ban the use of federal funds for any project getting the go-ahead using the Kelo v. City of New London decision.
As a caveat to its ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy added, “A court confronted with a plausible accusation of impermissible favoritism to private parties should treat the objection as a serious one and review the record to see if it has merit, though with the presumption that the government’s actions were reasonable and intended to serve a public purpose.”

Our New Grads!
142 students guaduated Onteora High School on Saturday, June 25 despite great heat, moving on to attend a variety of colleges, enter the military or go directly into the workforce after stirring words from a series of fellow students. Guest Speaker Karen Clark Adin, owner of Kingston boutique Bop to Tottom, told graduates not to be guided by fear and to give back to the community.
“This entire community assisted in your getting where you are today,” Adin said. “Give back to a community ... here or wherever you live.”
Congrats to all grads!

Mercury Autism?
Seven years after it began, the debate over mercury-based vaccines and autism is gathering steam, with a growing number of churches having started a grass-roots movement to rid vaccines of mercury and a new book on the subject suggesting that governmental knowledge of the connections between mercury-base vaccines and a rise in the occurrence of autism in this country has been quieted by the Bush administration, who have been protecting against possible lawsuits instead of looking for cures to what some are calling a new epidemic.
According to press accounts of the controversy, discussion is tainted from all sides with a growing number of parents filing lawsuits. And many scientists showing ties to vaccine makers or selling their expertise in court cases. To top things off, government officials have stated that they don’t want people to turn away from vaccines, which have clearly benefited public health. Compounding the problem is that signs of autism tend to emerge simultaneous to when children get their first shots.
In 1997, Congress ordered the Food and Drug Administration to review mercury in vaccines, drugs and food, then stated that they had found no evidence of harm but that vaccine makers should move toward eliminating thimerosal to be safe. It wasn’t until 1999 that vaccines with only trace amounts of thimerosal started to be introduced. Later that year the CDC suggested thimerosal should be removed from vaccines “as quickly as possible.”
Scientists are now saying the problem might be a subset of kids who can’t handle mercury because of a genetic or other kind of predisposition, and might be something else in the vaccines, such as aluminum, or a hyper-reaction to the vaccine itself. There’s a 3 percent to 8 percent recurrence rate of autism in families and the disorder is four times more common in boys.
In June 2000, government officials, scientists and vaccine makers held an invitation-only meeting at a Georgia retreat to review safety data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had from several large HMOs. They reportedly found statistics “alarming,” as did a 2001 Institute of Medicine report which found the theory of mercury-caused autism “biologically plausible,” although “evidence was inadequate to accept or reject it.” Fights over limits to damages that families could seek in lawsuits followed. In 2002 Congress passed a measure limiting damages people could collect from vaccine makers. The measure was later repealed, but has since been reintroduced.

Plame Game
A growing number of media pundits and journalists in the know have started acknowledging that the anonymous source whose comments about who outed CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame to noted Conservative columnist Robert Novak two years ago, in relation for her husband’s authorship of a New York Times op-ed piece pointing out how the Bush administration fudged a uranium-seeking report used to drum up support for a war against Iraq, is none other trhan top White House mastermind Karl Rove.
If the reports are true, Rove may face a federal perjury rap for having told the grand jury investigating the Plame case that he has not leaked to Cooper.
Meanwhile, Newsweek magazine is reporting that e-mails between Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and his editors show that Rove spoke to Cooper in the days before a CIA operative’s identity was revealed in the media, although it wasn’t clear what Cooper and Rove discussed. Rove’s attorney has since said that his client did not disclose any confidential information.
Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller face jail on civil contempt charges for refusing to reveal their source to a federal grand jury.
Federal law makes it a crime to deliberately reveal the identity of a CIA operative.

Baddest TV…
The more time children spend watching television the poorer they perform academically, according to three new studies, which found that having a home computer with access to the Internet resulted in comparatively higher test scores.
American homes with children have an average of nearly three televisions each, the report said, and children with televisions in their bedrooms averaged nearly 13 hours of viewing a week compared to nearly 11 hours by children who did not have their own sets. Children in third grade (approximately 8 years old) who had televisions in their bedrooms — and therefore watched more TV — scored lower on standardized tests than those who did not have sets in their rooms.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has urged parents to limit children’s television viewing to no more than one to two hours per day — and to try to keep younger children away from TV altogether.
It was also discovered that children who regularly watched television before the age of 3 ended up with lower test scores later on, and children and adolescents who watched more television were less likely to go on to finish high school or earn a college degree. University of Washington researchers reported that 59 percent of U.S. children younger than age 2 watch an average of 1.3 hours of television per day, though there is no programming of proven educational value for children that young.
TV watching appeared to help 3- to 5-year-olds with basic reading recognition and short-term memory, but not reading comprehension or mathematics, so the net effect of television watching is ‘’limited in its beneficial impact.”

Shhhh…. Labor!
The Labor Department kept secret for more than a year government studies that supported Democratic opponents of the Bush administration’s new Central American trade deal, internal documents show. The studies, paid for by the department, concluded that several countries the administration wants to be granted free-trade status have poor working conditions and fail to protect workers’ rights. The agency dismissed the conclusions as inaccurate and biased, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
‘’In practice, labor laws on the books in Central America are not sufficient to deter employers from violations, as actual sanctions for violations of the law are weak or nonexistent,’’ the contractor, the International Labor Rights Fund, wrote in one of the reports. The studies’ conclusions contrast with the administration’s arguments that Central American countries have made enough progress on such issues to warrant a free-trade deal with the United States.
The administration and its congressional supporters argue that the elimination of trade barriers for U.S. products would open new Central American markets for U.S. farmers and manufacturers. Critics argue the trade agreement would allow serious labor violations to continue in Central America.
Behind the scenes, the administration began as early as spring 2004 to block the reports’ public release. The Labor Department instructed its contractor to remove the reports from its Web site, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they became public, banned release of new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it couldn’t discuss the studies with outsiders.
The Labor Department has now worked out a deal with the contractor that will allow the labor rights group to release the country-by-country final reports - provided there’s no mention of the agency or federal funding. At the same time, the administration began a pre-emptive campaign to undercut the study’s conclusions.
Simultaneously, a Republican congressman wants an investigation of whether the Bush administration tried to suppress a survey indicating U.S. policies spurred immigrants to illegally enter the country. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said the U.S. Border Patrol’s three-week survey was discontinued after initial results showed illegal immigrants believed they would be granted amnesty once in the United States. Tancredo cited a report by Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, that included copies of an internal memo barring Homeland Security Department employees from publicly discussing the survey’s results. The Border Patrol is a branch of the department.
‘’It is crucial that the American people know that their government is not letting politics get in the way of national security,’’ Tancredo said.
The Judicial Watch report cites interviews from the Border Patrol survey with immigrants caught illegally crossing the U.S. southwest border with Mexico between Jan. 7 and Jan 27. Sixty-one percent of those interviewed said they had heard of the temporary worker program, and 45 percent said they believed they would be given amnesty by the Bush administration, according to the report.
Immigration advocates dismissed the report’s results.

No Abstinence
A leading group of pediatricians says teenagers need access to birth control and emergency contraception, not the abstinence-only approach to sex education favored by religious groups and President Bush. The recommendations are part of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ updated teen pregnancy policy.
“Even though there is great enthusiasm in some circles for abstinence-only interventions, the evidence does not support abstinence-only interventions as the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy,” said Dr. Jonathan Klein, chairman of the academy committee that wrote the new recommendations.
Teaching abstinence but not birth control makes it more likely that once teenagers initiate sexual activity they will have unsafe sex and contract sexually transmitted diseases, says the report, which supports a new policy which says that while doctors should encourage adolescents to postpone sexual activity, they also should help ensure that all teens - not just those who are sexually active - have access to birth control, including emergency contraception.
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said counseling only abstinence, preferably until marriage, is the best approach because it sends a clear, consistent message. Teenagers who are sexually active should have access to contraception, but making birth control available to teens who aren’t sends a contradictory message, he said.
The academy’s recommendations “to some extent confuse prevention and intervention,” Horn said.
Citing 2003 government data, the academy’s report says more than 45 percent of high school girls and 48 percent of boys have had sexual intercourse. While teen pregnancy rates have decreased in recent years, about 900,000 U.S. teens get pregnant each year. Moreover, U.S. teen birth rates are higher than in comparable industrialized countries, which may be partly due to greater access to contraception in some countries, the report said.

Independent?
Ulster County’s Independence Party, the county’s third largest in terms of voter enrollment, nominated a slate of 33 candidates for the Ulster County Legislature election in November. The process involved a screening committee of 10 party members interviewing 130 candidates for county and local offices in early June for the 3,555 strong party.
Independence Party nominations include:
District 1 (All of Rochester and Wawarsing and part of Marbletown, four legislators): Incumbents Susan Cummings, R-Ellenville, and Joseph Stoeckeler, D-Ellenville, and Lenny Distel, an Ulster Heights Democrat, and Mary Sheeley, an Ellenville Democrat.
District 2 (All of Denning, Hardenburgh, Shandaken and Woodstock and part of West Saugerties, two legislators): Incumbents Brian Shapiro, D-Woodstock, and Michael Stock, R-Woodstock.
District 3 (All of Olive and Hurley, most of Marbletown, three legislators): Incumbents Peter Kraft, D-Hurley, Richard Parete, D-Accord, and Robert Parete, D-Boiceville.
District 4 (All of the town of Kingston, most of Saugerties, and part of the town of Ulster, four legislators): Incumbents Robert Aiello, R-Saugerties, Joseph Roberti, R-Saugerties, and Democrats Gary Bischoff and Gilda Riccardi, both of Saugerties.
District 5 (Most of the town of Ulster and part of the city of Kingston, two legislators): Incumbent Michael Berardi, D-Ulster, and Brian Cahill, a town of Ulster Democrat.
District 6 (Part of the city of Kingston, two legislators): Incumbent Jeanette Provenzano, D-Kingston, and Kingston Republican Chris Burns.
District 7 (All of Esopus and Rosendale, three legislators): Incumbents Joan Every, R-Rosendale, and Brian Hathaway, R-Bloomington, and Rosendale Democrat Phil Terpening.
District 8 (All of Gardiner, most of Shawangunk, and part of New Paltz, three legislators): Incumbents Tracey Bartels, D-Gardiner, Albert Meyer, R-Wallkill, and Glenn Noonan, R-Gardiner.
District 9 (All of Plattekill and Marlboro, and part of Shawangunk, four legislators): Incumbents Frank Felicello, R-Marlboro, and Richard Gerentine, R-Marlboro, and Democrats Stan Ackerman of Plattekill and Billiam van Roestenberg of Clintondale.
District 10 (Most of New Paltz, two legislators): Incumbents Hector Rodriguez, D-New Paltz, and Susan Zimet, D-New Paltz.
District 11 (All of Highland and part of New Paltz, two legislators): Incumbent Charles Busick, R-Highland, and Democrat A. Peter Kazolias of Highland.
District 12 (Part of the city of Kingston, two legislators): Incumbents David Donaldson, D-Kingston, and Peter Loughran, D-Kingston.
Candidates will need to submit petitions signed by Independence Party members in order to secure a place on the November ballot.
Local races, such as Shandaken and Olive, were not decided in recent meetings and will go to official caucuses, and primaries, later this summer.

County Change?
Ulster County’s Charter Commission has unanimously decided county government should henceforth be led by an elected county executive. The 11-member Charter Commission’s recommendations will be codified into a written charter by the end of this year. That charter will have to be first adopted by the county Legislature, and then passed in a public referendum, for its recommendations to be enacted.
Those who back a county executive form of county government say the position creates a single source for public accountability, and creates a top county post that is elected by all of the people of Ulster County, giving the position a public mandate. Under the current system, the top position of Legislature chairman is elected by the 33 members of the county Legislature from among its ranks, so there is not a countywide election for the post.
The commission has also voted that reapportionment should be taken out of the hands of county lawmakers and handled instead by an independent community group, decided not to impose term limits on county lawmakers, and spoken about enacting staggered four-year terms for county lawmakers. Earlier, they backed the results of a 2003 public referendum that calls for shrinking the Legislature from 33 members to 23 members who will run in single-member districts rather than the multi-member districts currently in place, effective in 2012.
The Charter Commission will meet next on Monday, July 18, in the library conference room on the sixth floor of the Ulster County Office Building on Fair Street in Kingston.

Affordability
Educating local residents and municipal officials about affordable housing and eliminating the stigma attached to the concept are vital to the success of affordable housing efforts in Ulster County says a new report issued by the Ulster County Housing Consortium,
“The level of public understanding - including (among) public officials at the municipal level - about the importance of (affordable) housing ... is very low in the county,” the report states. “As a result, NIMBY (‘not in my back yard’) is pervasive and, to a great extent, effective across the county when it comes to the development review process for housing projects - particularly for those in the low to moderate price-rental cost range.”
One issue the consortium hopes to address is the growing gap between local housing costs and incomes, a widening disparity that is making it “increasingly difficult for many residents to live, work and raise their families here,” the report states.
For example, in the past six years, the median home price in Ulster County has nearly doubled, from $96,000 in 1998 to $190,000 in 2004, while the median household income has risen less than 25 percent in the same period. What this means is the average Ulster County household, which earned $49,213 last year, could not afford the average Ulster County house, which requires an income of about $64,000 per year to support.
Changes recommended in the report include a more proactive approach to housing planning on the town, city and village levels, including changing municipal zoning codes to encourage low- and moderate-income housing development; vigorously pursuing public funding for housing; using county-owned land and properties seized for nonpayment of taxes for housing development; and strengthening partnerships with state and federal agencies that support affordable housing.
For further information one can view the report in its entirety on the county Planning Department’s Web site, www.co.ulster.ny.us/planning.

Yo, Youths!
The Ulster County Youth Board is seeking requests for proposals for state funding to support county youth programs in 2006. Funding will be provided through the state Office of Children and Family Services’ Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention and Special Delinquency Prevention programs.
The Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention grants require a dollar-for-dollar match from the agency or municipality applying for the program funds. Programs must reach the general youth population with quality recreation, social, and/or skill-building programs. Eligible agencies must be nonprofit or community-based organizations with federal identification or charities registration numbers.
The 100-percent-reimbursable Special Delinquency Prevention Program grants are available to programs that demonstrate service and impact on youth-at-risk target populations identified by the Office of Children and Family Services. These populations include youth being considered for placement outside of the home, discharged from institutional care, currently in residential care, on Persons-in-Need-of-Supervision (PINS) or juvenile delinquency charge, on probation, homeless or runaway, truants or school drop-outs, pregnant, prostitutes, victims of abuse of neglect, or have a family member involved with juvenile justice, mental health or social service systems. Eligible agencies must be nonprofit or community-based organizations with federal identification or charities registration numbers.
For funding applications, call the Ulster County Youth Bureau at (845) 334-5264. Completed applications are due at the Youth Bureau, 407 Development Court, Kingston, N.Y. 12401, no later than 5 p.m. July 22.

Political Genetics
On the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people’s gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people’s general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes. Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team. But the report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science, including why some people defect from the party in which they were raised and why some political campaigns, like the 2004 presidential election, turn into verbal blood sport, though polls find little disparity in most Americans’ views on specific issues like gun control and affirmative action.
For years, political scientists tried in vain to learn how family dynamics like closeness between parents and children or the importance of politics in a household influenced political ideology. But the study suggests that an inherited social orientation may overwhelm the more subtle effects of family dynamics. A mismatch between an inherited social orientation and a given party may also explain why some people defect from a party. Many people who are genetically conservative may be brought up as Democrats, and some who are genetically more progressive may be raised as Republicans, the researchers say.
Although the two broad genetic types, more conservative and more progressive, may find some common ground on specific issues, they represent fundamental differences that go deeper than many people assume, the new research suggests. The researchers are not optimistic about the future of bipartisan cooperation or national unity. Because men and women tend to seek mates with a similar ideology, they say, the two gene pools are becoming, if anything, more concentrated, not less. Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team.
In tracking attitudes over the years, geneticists have found that social attitudes tend to stabilize in the late teens and early 20’s, when young people begin to fend for themselves.

Coming Draft?
The Defense Department began working last month with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying. Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government’s right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work. The Pentagon has said that anyone can “opt out” of the system by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate “suppression file.” That file will be matched with the full database regularly to ensure that those who do not wish to be contacted are not.
According to a Federal Register notice, the data will be open to “those who require the records in the performance of their official duties.” It said the data would be protected by passwords. The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.