Al's Morning Meeting

Illinois this week became the 14th state to ban Toughman fights. During the last 17 months, four fighters have died after suffering injuries in Toughman bouts around the country.

In Texas, where the fights looked like they would survive a big political battle, the state has not banned them, but it has made them practically impossible to continue. The Dallas Morning News said:

The amateur boxing elimination matches known as Toughman Contests, which came close to being outlawed in Texas last year, have been driven from the state by new regulations.

Promoter Art Dore said Monday that he has canceled Toughman events scheduled for this year in six Texas cities, including Fort Worth. The reason, Mr. Dore said, is a change in state law that requires participants to sign up 30 days before fighting.

"It's almost impossible to do," Mr. Dore said. "These guys [contestants] won't get ready 30 days in advance."

Even Dore's home state of Michigan has imposed tough new restrictions on Toughman. The Saginaw News reported:

Michigan officials had issued a cease-and-desist order to stop Toughman events unless Dore could provide unlimited health insurance for his fighters. Facing a court battle with the state, Dore agreed to insure each of his fighters for $2 million -- and a previous ruling requires that Dore get rid of a section of his pre-fight waivers that asks that fighters pledge never to make any insurance claims.

The agreement kept Toughman critics in the Legislature from banning the events entirely, said state Rep. John Stewart, a Plymouth Republican who called the fights "repulsive."

Colorado is considering a ban, and Washington state has legislation pending to ban the fights.

The Chicago Sun-Times says:

Illinois officials Wednesday delivered a KO to Toughman competitions in Illinois, issuing emergency rules closing loopholes in state law allowing a promoter to stage amateur fighting events here.

At least eight people have died in Toughman events sponsored by Michigan-based promoter Art Dore -- the latest a 30-year-old woman named Stacy Young, who signed up on the spur of the moment and died of brain injuries after a bout last June in Florida.

Several Toughman fights are set for this weekend around the country, in Washington, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. (See newsletter section of the Toughman page.)

Last year, the American College of Sports Medicine urged lawmakers to demand better safety standards for the no-holds-barred events or ban them completely. (See their statement.)

Here's an in-depth Wall Street Journal story on Toughman.

Last February, I told you about new rules that were going into place that restrict how many hours medical residents can work a week. (I also did a story on this issue back in 2001.)

Now that it has been 6 months since the rules took hold, Al's Morning Meeting reader Jason Straziuso at AP discovered that some hospitals force residents to violate that rule and lie about how many hours they work.

His story says:

Justin Wood, a spokesman for the union Committee for Residents and Interns, said a common story he hears is residents are told "more or less explicitly" to falsify time sheets.

Sometimes residents, particularly those in difficult specialties, work long hours by choice.

"The kind of people who are attracted to surgery ... want to stay. It's hard to push people out the door sometimes," said Dr. Larry Kaiser, the surgery department chair at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

A resident in Philadelphia, who asked not to be identified for fear of the retaliation, said she worked a 34-hour shift last week because she didn't want to dump work on her colleagues.

Dr. Lauren Oshman, president of the American Medical Student Association, said there are too many disincentives for reporting violations: no whistle-blower protection, resentment from peers, and the risk of getting one's own program disaccredited.

Still, the overall atmosphere is very different from when residents regularly worked 120 hours and studies showed sleep deprivation was leading to mistakes. A death in New York in 1984 caused in part by weary residents led to stricter laws there.

Jason says he found websites like this one, for medical residents, helpful in learning about the conditions under which residents work.

As Jason said in his note to Al's Morning Meeting, "It's an easy, high-impact story to localize, although it's a complex issue. If there is something shady going on, though, it's going to take a little more digging than just getting on the phone with the hospital spokesman."

Gary Price at Resourceshelf collected some sites for you that will help you and your public understand the sometimes-confusing Iowa system.

• Official Democratic Caucus website
• Caucus Quick Fact Sheet
• 2004 Delegate Selection Plan
• Caucus Guide (via Secretary of State's Office)
• Caucus History (PowerPoint Presentation) from Secretary of State
• Iowa Democratic Party Page Home Page
• Past Results from the Iowa Democratic Caucus
• Background Guide
• Caucus FAQ

Iowa Democrats Ask Media to Delay Reporting

Here's a story from AP via SF Gate.

Who Gives?

Look up donors in your town, by name, by zip code, by city, or by state. The Center for Responsive Politics, which operates that wonderful website opensecrets.org, reports:

The average American does not spend his or her money on political campaigns. In fact, just one-third of one percent of U.S. adults give political contributions totaling more than $200 in federal elections. But the top fund-raisers for the 2004 presidential campaigns are anything but average.

In addition to raising millions for presidential hopefuls, these fund-raisers also contribute substantial amounts of their own money to federal campaigns.

The 350 individuals and couples identified as of today by the Bush campaign as Pioneers and Rangers -- those who have raised at least $100,000 and $200,000, respectively -- have personally given close to $40 million (see their names), or an average of $113,000, to federal candidates, leadership PACs, and party committees since 1999. The 32 individuals and couples identified by John Kerry's presidential campaign as having raised more than $100,000 have given close to $4 million, or $123,000 apiece, over the same period.

The New York Times reported:

The top health official in the Pentagon said there were at least 21 suicides last year among troops serving in Iraq.

The official, Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said 18 of the deaths were Army soldiers. He said the rate was a slight increase over past years.

Dr. Winkenwerder said the figures reflected a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000. In 2001, the overall suicide rate in the United States was about 11 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Reuters said that up to 400 troops have been evacuated from Iraq for "stress-related problems."

AP reported:

Suicide has become such a pressing issue that the Army sent an assessment team to Iraq late last year to see if anything more could be done to prevent troops from killing themselves. The Army also began offering more counseling to returning troops after several soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., killed their wives and themselves after returning home from the war.

The military has nine combat stress teams in Iraq to help treat troops' mental health problems, and each division has a psychiatrist, psychologist and social worker, Winkenwerder said. Of more than 10,000 troops medically evacuated from Iraq, between 300 and 400 were sent outside the country for treatment of mental health problems, he said.

The military prefers to treat mental health problems such as depression by keeping troops in their regular duties while they get counseling and possibly medication, Winkenwerder said. Less than one percent of the troops in Iraq are treated for mental issues during an average week, he said.

It is still in beta testing. Try it. It searches something like 7,000 sources.

C/net reported:

Yahoo on Wednesday said it will drop search partner Google during the first quarter of 2004 in favor of its own technology, opening a new phase in the battle for Web search dominance. The announcement from Yahoo CEO Terry Semel marks the first time the company has publicly disclosed a specific timeline for replacing Google, a move that has been widely expected since Yahoo announced plans to acquire search provider Inktomi for $235 million in December 2002. Inktomi has developed so-called algorithmic search technology similar to Google's that indexes Web pages and ranks them based on search terms.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, story excerpts, and other materials from a variety of websites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed, and a link will be provided, whenever possible.