> But as for Kate Moss -- is anybody really scandalized by the idea
> that a celebrity model is using coke? Isn't that generally expected?
>
> "Scandal rocks America -- GRUNGE ROCKERS USE HEROIN!!!!!"
Well, what can I say? America is easily rocked by scandals: a flash of Janet Jackson's nipple, a blow job in the White House. . . . Doug says that America is a decadent empire. I'd call it a prurient empire -- the reason why I feel right at home here. :->
Kate Moss did lose a spate of lucrative contracts, but her fall from advertisers' grace didn't last long -- as I mentioned, she scored new big ones.
America shifted from drugs to immigrants in its search for enemies:
<blockquote>The New York Times
September 29, 2005 Thursday Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Column 1; National Desk; Pg. 16
HEADLINE: Prosecutions in Immigration Doubled in Last Four Years
BYLINE: By ERIC LICHTBLAU
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 28
Federal prosecutions for immigration violations more than doubled in the last four years, surpassing drugs as the most frequently pursued federal crime, according to new data released Wednesday by a private research group. The change reflects a major shift in priorities since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Immigration prosecutions surged to 38,000 last year from 16,300 in 2001, as federal authorities mounted a crackdown on illegal immigration as a way of deterring terrorism, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group connected to Syracuse University that compiled the data.
Prosecutions for drug crimes have begun to decline, dropping to 30,988 last year from 32,753 in 2001, the new data showed. The Syracuse group's data showed that immigration prosecutions passed drug crimes last year as the crime most frequently prosecuted by federal officials.
The study, analyzing half a million federal prosecutions, offers perhaps the firmest evidence to date of the refocusing of federal law enforcement priorities since the Sept. 11 attacks toward illegal immigration, terrorism-related offenses and gun crimes and away from drugs and white-collar crime. Prosecutions for white-collar crime dropped to 7,000 cases last year from 9,500 in 2001, the study found.
''This is a substantial shift any way you measure it,'' said David Burnham, co-director of the research group, which collects and analyzes federal data on law enforcement and financial issues. ''We're seeing choices being made by United States attorneys and by the president about what's important and what's not, and clearly, the administration has changed the priorities of the federal law enforcement machine.''
The Justice Department has often tangled with the Syracuse research group over its methodology and access to law enforcement data. Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the department, said the group's numbers were ''misleading'' because a significant number of misdemeanor immigration prosecutions in Texas that had not previously been counted were included.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, hundreds of agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who had been working on drug investigations have been diverted to terrorism cases, and many financial investigators at the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are now handling cases related to terrorist financing.
The new numbers from the Syracuse group bear out the trend. The number of cases brought by the Justice Department related to terrorism rose to nearly 800 last year from 115 in 2001. The number peaked at 1,208, but researchers at Syracuse and some critics of the administration's antiterror policies have asserted that the department inflated its prosecution numbers after Sept. 11 by including cases that had little or no connection to terrorism.
With the drop-off over the last three years, ''it appears that prosecutors are being more selective,'' Mr. Burnham said.
A separate study by Mr. Burnham's group at Syracuse, completed last month, found that the Justice Department was now bringing many criminal charges in immigration cases that once would probably have been handled as administrative matters. This was particularly true in South Texas, where prosecutors went into ''super drive'' on immigration crimes last year and spurred a 345 percent increase in recommendations for criminal prosecutions, rising in a single year to 18,092 from 4,062, the study found.
Federal prosecutions for gun and weapons crimes rose to more than 10,000 last year from about 6,500 in 2001, the study showed, and child-pornography prosecution rose to 728 cases last year from 428 in 2001.
GRAPHIC: Chart: ''Changing Priorities Since 9/11 Attacks''Federal criminal prosecutions in immigration cases have surpassed drugs as the top crime category.Graph tracks Federal criminal prosecutions in drugs, weapons, white collar and immigration cases from 1993 to 2004. (Source by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse)</blockquote>
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>