Free Republic

WATERLOO - Polygraph testing will soon be used to help supervise and treat local sex offenders. The Seneca County Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed Tuesday to contract with Michael Schank, owner of New York State Polygraph Service of Himrod, to provide the exams under the supervision of the county Probation Department, which will work in conjunction with the Mental Health Department. The service was recommended by the Public Safety & Jail Construction Committee Nov. 28 as a part of the county's new comprehensive sexual offender treatment program. The initial suggestion came from William Kelly, a licensed clinical social worker under...

Seneca County NY is taking a stand against sex offenders. It’s among the first counties in New York State to tell moderate and high risk sex offenders where they can and can’t live. New residency restrictions on sex offenders just took effect in Seneca County. Thursday, some sex offenders started looking for a new place to live, because the new law regulates exactly where they can live and keeps them away from kids. Most Waterloo residents are happy about the new residency requirements in their county. County Attorney, Steven Getman, researched the law. He said the main mission in the...

WATERLOO, N.Y. --New York state has agreed to pay most of the legal fees incurred by counties in opposing Indian efforts to put land into federal trusts. Seneca County had been seeking reimbursement from the state since the trust process began a year ago. The state originally refused to pay, citing an opinion by the state attorney general's office. However, Seneca County Attorney Steven Getman said Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said this week that state law allowed reimbursement to counties for legal costs associated with defending the claims. Getman said the state agreed to pay both future costs and approximately...

WATERLOO, N.Y. The Cayuga Indian's 25-year-old land claim will not get a second look from a federal appeals court. Seneca County Attorney Steven Getman says today's decision by the Second U-S Circuit Court of Appeals is another victory for property owners. The Cayuga Indian Nation of New York and the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma had asked for a rehearing after the court's split decision in June. The decision said the tribe was not entitled to a 248 (m) million land claim judgment awarded by a lower-court jury. Today's decision cited an earlier U-S Supreme Court ruling in a separate case...

The US Supreme Court has announced it will not hear an appeal of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling throwing out the Cayuga land claim. Seneca County Attorney Steven Getman says the ruling means the end of the more than two decade old land claim. The Cayuga and Seneca-Cayuga Indians had asked the Supreme Court to review the lower court ruling, saying the Appeals Court incorrectly cited the Sherill case involving the Oneida Indians in throwing out the quarter billion dollars awarded the Indians. The focus of the battle between the Indians and governments in Seneca and Cayuga Counties...

AUBURN NY--A federal Department of Interior official said the U.S. Supreme Court's city of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation decision applies to the Cayuga Nation's purchase of land within their land claim area on the open market. Based on the Sherrill decision, when taxes are not paid, the Cayuga Nation's property would be subject to foreclosure, Associate Deputy Secretary James Carson wrote in a Sept. 22 letter to U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New Hartford. Boehlert had contacted the department of behalf of Seneca County attorney Steven Getman. Carson wrote that questions about the legality of the tribe's bingo halls in...

A mother who "deliberately and unjustifiably frustrated" a father's attempts to visit his child was appropriately stripped of child support and primary custody, an appellate panel in Albany has held. The Appellate Division, Third Department, unanimously affirmed a Schuyler County Family Court judge in a case where the custodial mother had repeatedly hindered her estranged husband's efforts to establish relations with his daughter, even though the father made no attempt to enforce his visitation rights for six years. Luke v. Luke, 510880, centers on a child born in 2001 to Melvin W. and Heidi L. Luke. The Lukes, who are...

In December 2001, as the investigation into the U.S. anthrax attacks was gathering steam, coalition soldiers in Afghanistan uncovered what appeared to be an important clue: a trail of documents chronicling an attempt by al-Qaeda to create its own anthrax weapon. The documents told of a singular mission by a scientist named Abdur Rauf, an obscure, middle-aged Pakistani with alleged al-Qaeda sympathies and an advanced degree in microbiology. Using his membership in a prestigious scientific organization to gain access, Rauf traveled through Europe on a quest, officials say, to obtain both anthrax spores and the equipment needed to turn them...

Qaeda Letters Are Said to Show Pre-9/11 Anthrax Plans WASHINGTON, May 20 -Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.... The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.The letters...detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room"...

[An extensive set of articles referred to lay out a definitive explanation on the source of the anthrax mailings.] Link to story: http://www.anthraxandalqaeda.com "Dad," he whispered. His Dad could barely hear him. "'I've been arrested, I'm being taken, I don't know where or why." Moazzam Begg was in the trunk of a car being taken away from his apartment in Islamabad. He had been picked up by Pakistan and US agents. The Britoner had come to Pakistan with his wife and children after the US strikes began in Afghanistan.  It was February 2002. Months later, he would confess to being...