But the findings do point to some association between TV choices and intellectual function, and that could prove useful in evaluating older people for cognitive decline, according lead investigator Dr. Joshua Fogel of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

A study of 289 older women without dementia found that those who rated talk shows and soaps as their favorite programs performed more poorly on tests of memory, attention and mental quickness than their peers who cited other types of shows.

What's more, they were at greater risk of showing signs of clinical impairment. For example, compared with women who preferred to watch news programs, those who favored soaps were more than seven times more likely to show signs of impairment on one of the tests, while talk show fans were more than 13 times more likely to demonstrate impairment.

"Those findings are quite robust," Fogel told Reuters Health.

He said it's not possible to tell whether the programs somehow contribute to cognitive decline or whether women in the early stages of decline gravitate toward those shows. Preferences for daytime TV could also be a marker of a sedentary, homebound lifestyle, and research suggests that staying physically and socially active can help stave off mental decline.

But regardless of the reasons, a preference for talk shows and soaps "is a marker of something suspicious," Fogel said.

He believes that doctors could ask older patients about their favorite TV shows as one way of spotting those who might need more screening for cognitive decline.

"It's really a simple, friendly question to ask," Fogel said.

The findings, which are published in the Southern Medical Journal, are based on questionnaires and standard cognitive tests completed by 289 women ages 70 to 79. None had dementia or physical disabilities and the researchers factored in variables such as education, race, depression and history of heart attack, high blood pressure or diabetes.

Even with those factors considered, TV habits were related to cognitive performance.

According to Fogel, a potential explanation rests in the fact that talk shows and soap operas involve so-called "parasocial relationships," where viewers feel a connection to a show's characters or host. Such shows may, for instance, be better able to hold the attention of older women with some cognitive impairment.

"This doesn't mean 'Oprah' is bad for you," Fogel said. However, an older woman's fondness for the show could signal a possible problem, according to the researcher.

Asking patients about TV viewing and other daily activities could be "very useful" in assessing their cognitive health, according to Dr. Joe Verghese of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

But it's not time to toss the remote control, he writes in an accompanying editorial. Some programs, Verghese notes, might actually benefit intellectual functioning, and TV watching can help some people manage their stress levels.

The child, Larry Mugrage, was Martin's neighbor.

According to police, Martin and Mugrage had a history of arguments about Martin's yard. The two argued again Sunday, police said, and when Mugrage returned, Martin was waiting outside and shot him twice.
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He then called 911, officials said.

Martin: "I just killed a kid."

911 Operator: "You just killed a kid?"

Martin: "Yes, ma'am."

Later, the operator asked Martin to explain what happened.

Martin: "Kids just been giving me a bunch of (expletive), making other kids harass me in my place, tearing things up."
911 Operator: "OK, so what'd you do?"

Martin: "I shot him with a (expletive) 4-10 shotgun twice."

911 Operator: "You shot him with a shotgun? Where is he?"

Martin: "He's laying in his yard."

Neighbors said Martin lived alone quietly, often sitting in front of his one-story home with its neat lawn, well-trimmed shrubbery and flagpole with U.S. and Navy flags flying.

Another neighbor described the victim as "a good kid."

Mugrage, a student at Glen Este High School, was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Authorities said Martin has no prior criminal record, but he does have a history of complaints about neighbors allegedly damaging his property. Other teens from the neighborhood said Martin was obsessive about his lawn.

Martin is scheduled to be back in a Clermont County court Thursday.

It was about 2135 on a chilly January evening. The 37-year-old optometrist was unarmed, he had no history of violence and displayed no threatening behaviour.

But he had been under investigation for illegal gambling and in line with a local police policy on "organised crime" raids, the heavily armed team was there to serve a search warrant.

As officers approached with their weapons drawn, tragedy struck. A handgun was accidentally discharged, fatally wounding Dr Culosi.

Two months on, investigations into the incident are still continuing, a delay which Dr Culosi's family says is compounding the "horror and burden of it all".

Salvatore Culosi Sr, the dead man's father, told the BBC: "I never knew him to carry so much as a pocket knife so it bewilders me how a detective could spend three months investigating my son and not know he is a pussy cat.

"If anything comes out of this it must be that another family does not experience this pain and anguish for absolutely no reason.

"Policy needs to change so these kinds of accidents never occur again."

'Excessive force'

Professor Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year.

"I have no problem with using these paramilitary style squads to go after known violent, armed criminals, but it is an extreme tactic to use against other sorts of suspects," he said.



Dr Kraska believes there has been an explosion of units in smaller towns and cities, where training and operational standards may not be as high as large cities - a growth he attributes to "the hysteria" of the country's war on drugs.

"I get several calls a month from people asking about local incidents - wrong address raids, excessive use of force, wrongful shootings - this stuff is happening all the time," he adds.

Every wrongful death of a civilian, or criminal killing of a police officer, fuels the complex and emotive argument over the way the United States is policed.

Those who reject criticism of the use of Swat teams argue that the presence of the units actually prevents violence through the credible threat of overwhelming force.

John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, told the BBC: "What we find is that when Swat teams go out, shootings go down."



"We don't see it as escalating anything. We see it as reducing violence."



The NTOA rejects Dr Kraska's figures and says the actual number of deployments is far lower, but says there is a need for national training standards.

An NTOA study of 759 Swat team deployments across the US, found half were for warrant service and a third for incidents where suspects had barricaded themselves in a building - 50 were for hostage situations.

When criminology professor David Klinger looked at 12 years of data on Swat teams in 1998, he also found the most common reason for calling out teams was serving warrants, but that the units used deadly force during warrant service only 0.4% of the time.

Recruitment video

Last year the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) commissioned music video director JC Barros to make them a 10-minute film - To Protect and Serve - that would "get young men and women excited" about a career with the force.

More action film than recruitment video, it follows two LAPD officers who - in one day - capture a robbery suspect, are first on the scene when a gun-toting man takes a woman hostage, mediate a fight, and help to find a young kidnap victim.

Along the way they are supported by colleagues from bike patrol, K-9 dog teams, air support and, of course, the Swat team.

But Dr Kraska sees such initiatives as reflecting a changing culture of police work.

"These elite units are highly culturally appealing to certain sections of the police community. They like it, they enjoy it," he says.

"The chance to strap on a vest, grab a semi-automatic weapon and go out on a mission is for some people an exciting reason to join - even if policing as a profession can - and should - be boring for much of the time.

"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

FBI agent Harry Samit of Minneapolis originally testified as a government witness, on March 9, but his daylong cross examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon was the strongest moment so far for the court-appointed lawyers defending Moussaoui. The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is the only person charged in this country in connection with al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

MacMahon displayed a communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a bureau agent in Paris relaying word from French intelligence that Moussaoui was ''very dangerous,'' had been indoctrinated in radical Islamic Fundamentalism at London's Finnsbury Park mosque, was ''completely devoted'' to a variety of radical fundamentalism that Osama bin Laden espoused, and had been to Afghanistan.

Based on what he already knew, Samit suspected that meant Moussaoui had been to training camps there, although the communication did not say that.

The communication arrived Aug. 30, 2001. The Sept. 11 Commission reported that British intelligence told U.S. officials on Sept 13, 2001, that Moussaoui had attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. ''Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Moussaoui case would almost certainly have received intense, high-level attention,'' the commission concluded.

But Samit told MacMahon he couldn't persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. No one from Washington called Samit to say this intelligence altered the picture the agent had been painting since Aug. 18 in a running battle with Maltbie and Maltbie's boss, David Frasca, chief of the radical fundamentalist unit at headquarters.

They fought over Samit's desire for a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer and belongings. Maltbie and Frasca said Samit had not established a link between Moussaoui and terrorists.

Samit testified that on Aug. 22 he had learned from the French that Moussaoui had recruited someone to go to Chechnya in 2000 to fight with Islamic radicals under Emir Ibn al-Khattab. He said a CIA official told him on Aug. 22 or 23 that al-Khattab had fought alongside bin Laden in the past. This, too, failed to sway Maltbie or Frasca.

Under questioning from MacMahon, Samit acknowledged that he had told the Justice Department inspector general that ''obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism'' on the part of FBI headquarters officials had prevented him from getting a warrant that would have revealed more about Moussaoui's associates. He said that opposition blocked ''a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks.''

The FBI's actions between Moussaoui's arrest, in Minnesota on immigration violations on Aug. 16, 2001, and Sept. 11, 2001, are crucial to his trial because prosecutors allege that Moussaoui's lies prevented the FBI from discovering the identities of 9/11 hijackers and the Federal Aviation Administration from taking airport security steps.

But MacMahon made clear the Moussaoui's lies never fooled Samit. The agent sent a memo to FBI headquarters on Aug. 18 accusing Moussaoui of plotting international terrorism and air piracy over the United States, two of the six crimes he pleaded guilty to in 2005.

To obtain a death penalty, prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's actions led directly to the death of at least one person on 9/11.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty last April to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings. But he says he had nothing to do with 9/11 and was training to fly a 747 jetliner into the White House as part of a possible later attack.

Samit's complaints echoed those raised in 2002 by Coleen Rowley, the bureau's agent-lawyer in the Minneapolis office, who tried to help get a warrant. Rowley went public with her frustrations, was named a Time magazine person of the year for whistleblowing and is now running for Congress.

Samit revealed far more than Rowley of the details of the investigation.

MacMahon walked Samit through e-mails and letters the agent sent seeking help from the FBI's London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters files, the CIA's counterterrorism center, the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, an intelligence agency not identified publicly by name in court (possibly the National Security Agency), and the FBI's Iran, Osama bin Laden, radical fundamentalist, and national security law units at headquarters.

Samit described useful information from French intelligence and the CIA before 9/11 but said he was not told that CIA Director George Tenet was briefed on the Moussaoui threat on Aug. 23 and never saw until after 9/11 a memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix about radical Islamists taking flight training there.

For each nugget of information, MacMahon asked Samit if Washington officials called to assess the implications. Time after time, Samit said no.

MacMahon introduced an Aug. 31 letter Samit drafted ''to advise the FAA of a potential threat to security of commercial aircraft'' from whomever Moussaoui was conspiring with.

But Maltbie barred him from sending it to FAA headquarters, saying he would handle that, Samit testified. The agent added that he did tell FAA officials in Minneapolis of his suspicions.

As predictably as the tides, via Greenwald I see that Glenn Reynolds has flat-out compared Mearsheimer and Walt to David Duke. Obviously, comparing scholars to a Grand Wizard of the Klan solely for publishing a paper whose conclusions you disagree with--with absolutely no evidence that either of them remotely share Duke's fascist worldview--is beneath contempt, but par for the course where Reynolds is concerned.

This is part of a recurring pattern with Reynolds. You'll recall that Reynolds a couple of years ago also repeatedly smeared MEChA as a racist organization, despite the fact that this was almost entirely a groundless charge. Reynolds compared MEChA to Jim Crow, and also labeled them "fascist hatemongers," and accused them of being both racist and homophobic.

The latter was especially egregious, since Reynolds was forced to correct the post factually: the link he gave was in fact to an anti-Semitic Latino group that has no connection to MEChA. And while he rather mutedly explained this fact, he utterly failed to explain that the charge they were homophobic racists was completely groundless; he also failed to apologize for the smear. But then, Reynolds rarely apologizes even in circumstances that obviously warrant it.

And yet, according to Reynolds, I'm the fellow in the blogosphere with a "tendency to hurl unsubstantiated charges of racism." All because I make it a habit of pointing out right-wingers' blind spots when it comes to domestic terrorism.

And I'm wagering he will neither correct nor apologize for this latest foray. That, too, is part of his pattern. I guess when your ego is as big as all Tennessee and your ethics as big as Bell Buckle, that's how the world works.

In any event, I have a question for the Perfesser:

David Duke also endorsed George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Does that mean the White House "has David Duke"?

Since we began our project seven years ago, members of our staff have encountered a few unmistakable incidents of surveillance --by whom, we cannot say for certain. Although one episode back in 2000, when the retired local field director of the FBI came by the used bookstore where I worked at the time, leaves me with some suspicions. It had been two months since I'd been arrested in Seattle during the WTO demonstrations, and one month since my step-brother had died from a heroin overdose in New Jersey. I was ringing up some books for this older man --who I later discovered was named John Quigley -- when he casually uncorked the shocking comment: "Oh, Eamon...did I read somewhere that your brother was sick? You're a writer, right?"

I'd never met this man before and was stunned, speechless. He'd blind-sided me. After a quick and intensely strange interaction in which I explained that my brother had in fact suddenly died recently, and the sheer impossibility of his having read anything about my brother anywhere, he disingenuously apologized and left. He would continue to shop at the store regularly, almost always parting with a "be careful" farewell. Then of course, there was the time almost three years ago when I'd confronted two men videotaping my fellow editor and I outside of the cafe where she had been working that Sunday afternoon. A few months later, one of these gentlemen had the audacity to appear at one of our benefits, merely to hang out by the club entrance, not speak with anyone and enjoy several cups of water. For some reason, this man who had been our very first patron that night, suddenly lost interest in the show and quickly disappeared after I approached him to chat a little.

But last week was special. There are moments in time when historic change emerges from its sublimated status in the mundane and crystallizes itself into personal consciousness and awareness. These are what I call "WAKE UP" moments. It is in these jolting moments when one discovers that what they are experiencing is endemic of something larger and much greater than themselves. Last week I experienced one of those "WAKE UP" calls. On a whim, I'd decided to drive to a favorite cafe to get breakfast. After I'd finished eating, I went outside to small-talk with a friend of mine. After a few minutes, my friend pointed out to me that somebody up the street was taking our picture.

Perhaps realizing he'd "been made," our mysterious photographer immediately put his elephantine zoom-lens camera down and made haste to walk away. I followed him.

He seemed surprised when he soon discovered I was silently standing right behind him at an intersection. Abruptly he attempted to cross the street in front of oncoming traffic. Giving him about a yard of distance, I continued to follow him anyway. Halfway across the street, he turned his head back and noticed me on his heels, and then instantly started walking diagonally back in the direction we'd came. What followed next can only be described as a scene that was equal parts Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock and Monty Python.

After a few minutes of this sort of preposterous, zigzagging pursuit back and forth across the street in bizarre paces alternately shifting between a fast trot and a sluggish lurch, I decided to give the man some space and sat down on a portico stoop next to a closed restaurant He stopped walking too, and then, while standing right next to me, proceeded to place his zoom lens camera up against the window of the pitch-black, lifeless restaurant and take pictures of ... nothing. At this point, it's more than obvious that I've been following him, but his behavior never shifts from feigned oblivion and muted, but comic, confusion.

A few seconds pass and he starts to walk away. I duck behind a car and watch him through the vehicle's large windows. A minute later he turns around, looks in my direction and attempts to take my picture through the glass. I squat and hide, which begins an absurd round of "peek-a-boo" with me popping up and down, into and out of his view, frustrating his attempts to catch me again on film. Suddenly it maybe dawned on him that we were now fully engaged -- still, without having any open, verbal acknowledgment of such--and he abruptly quits the game and keeps walking.

A moment later he turns around again and looks back, but I've disappeared. Briskly, he marches back in the direction he came and I continue to discreetly follow him. Not much later, as we near what will be his final destination -- a parking garage blocks away from the restaurant where this escapade began, and right near our office -- a healthy-looking man in "homeless" garb suddenly crosses my path, saying intently to me, "are you still following him?" Undistracted, I keep on the first stranger and follow him to the garage. As he pays his fee to leave, I make no attempt to hide the fact that I'm copying down his license plate number. He looks at me, and without a word, takes off.

The creepiest part about all of this is that I'd driven to the restaurant. He obviously had not and was perhaps informed about my location? Of course, one must always hold out the possibility that this man was just a garden-variety Asheville wing-nut. Not only does our city have our fair share, but it has become a well-established facet of our local culture such that it has earned us national notoriety. Like I said before, we
cannot say for sure who these strangers are, or what exactly they represent. But their appearance in our lives would seem to dovetail with current events, the likes of which, we've made it our duty to report. And our website seems to be a big hit with employees of the US Department of Defense. The following day, with little media fanfare, President Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into permanence. The lack of media attention to this historic event was all the more glaring in that Bush was in effect signing the death certificate of the Fourth Amendment -- which protects US citizens from unwarranted spying -- at the precise moment that his administration was fending off controversy about abusing that very right. Also attracting little media attention that day were the staggering remarks made by recently retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor who'd made the astonishing admission that she feared the US republic was edging towards a dictatorship.

Indeed, days before on the Senate floor, resident constitutional expert Sen. Robert Byrd issued a stark warning about the PATRIOT Act that demands to be quoted at length: "This new proposal would erase too many of our freedoms guaranteed to the American people. In essence, this legislation says that the Bill of Rights is right no more... There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security."

Now this week it was revealed that a local college freshman and former Eagle Scout had his computer confiscated by the Secret Service. Why? He'd made the grave mistake of quoting some lyrics by the band The Misfits on his Myspace.com web page, in which he had replaced some of the words describing the assassination of JFK to portray a Bush version of the theme. Our local Gannett monopoly franchise newspaper, the Asheville Citizen-Times would reflectively opine that "it pays to be cautious online."

No doubt. It was also reported this past week that the FBI has listed Indymedia -- an open source newswire born out of the WTO protests which disseminates news very similar to our newspaper -- as one of the current, top ten domestic terrorist threats in the US. Did you catch that? The FBI now considers disseminating news an act of terrorism.

As I entered our office this morning, I passed two guys who recently moved into our building. They're media producers of some sort, and they were intensely discussing a new ad campaign they're working on for the military. The one fellow looked very much like Verizon's trendoid posterboy --horn-rimmed glasses, vintage bowling shirt, elaborate arm tattoos -- and he reeked of the musk of "X-treme sports" and that "I think capitalism is killer, dude," ethic that seems more and more common in our gentrifying city.

"We'll have the soldiers marching down the street together in formation...the main theme of these ads is unity," this guy was instructing his friend. "It's all about unity. Maybe use the image of a man who is lonely and sad (gestures with arms over his head) and then cut to 'No man should have to be alone.' Then the Navy logo will come in, and it'll build up, cut with images of power and masculinity... I really like the idea of using imagery of thunder and lightening...we want to stress unity and masculinity, power, the warrior spirit -- all that man was meant to be, all that man was born to be." Famous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels often said similar things.

However seemingly unrelated, for me, all of these events knit together into a social mosaic of "WAKE UP" moments. As each of us individually struggle to make our way through this competitive world, it can be easy to lose sight, let alone recognize the fabric deterioration of our ostensibly "democratic" social compact. Who knows who walks among us, what their intentions are and what greater purpose they may ultimately serve? You may not care and perhaps you may only register bafflement about what any of this paranoid portrait of contemporary life may indicate. But I for one, Senator Byrd, Justice O'Connor, am hearing you loud and clear.

Eamon Martin is an editor of Asheville Global Report.