Lots of good stuff on Sixty Minutes tonight.

[Cleita]

DemoTex has a good thread on the Mai Lai massacre, but the story I was interested a lot in was about the prison women who were able to get a writing class through a kind teacher Wally Lamb eventually, he was able to get the women's work published and guess what? The state of Connecticut went after them for money for their incarceration. The program was cancelled and all kinds of hell broke loose after a prestigeous literary award was given to the women.

[Cleita]

1. Sigh.

As usual, no one cares about what is done to women.

[peekaloo]

2. I missed the last few minutes of that segment.....

The money was divided evenly then the state sued each individual for an outrageous amount........all because the women wrote about their life stories prior to incarceration?

Are these cases still pending?

[Wonk]

3. Settled for $500 each

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/07/60minutes/main616203.shtml

(snip)

Kroft asked Blumenthal if the PEN award, calls from 60 Minutes and the bad publicity had anything to do with his decision to settle the lawsuit.

“We knew we would face exactly the question that you've asked,” says Blumenthal. “Isn't it 60 Minutes? Isn't it the PEN award? But my feeling was that we should do the right thing.”

In this case, the right thing requires each of the inmates who shared in the proceeds of the book to pay the state of Connecticut $500 -- not hundreds of thousands of dollars the state had originally sought. Almost all of that money will go to the prison writing program, the same one the state tried to shut down.

[peekaloo]

4. Thank you. eom

[Cleita]

7. Thanks for the link.

eom

[readmylips]

5. Nothing new about Saudi Arabia kingdom...

Saudis ordered innocent people arrested, charged with terrorist acts and brutalized, tortured, just to show bush that they were co operating with capturing terrorists. Nice friends you got george!

[Cleita]

6. The Saudis are not good guys.

Time to revisit them and our ties to them. Saudi's did 911.

[Raster]

8. not while this group is in power...they'll block and/or hinder...

...any meaningful investigation.

Anyone remember The Manchurian Candidate? What we have now is the Riyadh Candidate. The BFEE is funded lock, stock and barrel by the Saudis.