Brownback backs study of media's effects on children

LJWorld.com weblogs Congressional Briefing

Posted by Joel Mathis August 11, 2006 at 6:56 a.m.

Sam Brownback[(SF Chronicle commentary) Subjecting our youth to cyberspace experiments:][1] Sitting in committee right now is a most unusual bill -- unusual in part because of the diversity of its Senate sponsors: Clinton, Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Sam Brownback, R-Kansas. The Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act would authorize long-term funding to establish a coherent research program on the many forms of electronic media and the myriad ways it affects children, from their developing brains to their developing bodies. [(Radio Free Europe)U.S. Helsinki Commission Outraged By Kyrgyz Extraditions:][2] The U.S. Helsinki Commission has condemned Kyrgyzstan's extradition this week of five Uzbeks to their home country.The five are wanted in Uzbekistan on charges connected with a violent clash between demonstrators and security forces in the town of Andijon in May 2005. In a statement, commission chairmen U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (Republican, Kansas) and U.S. Representative Christopher Smith (Republican, New Jersey) say they are "outraged" by the Kyrgyz move to extradite the five Uzbek nationals. Brownback says the international reputation of Kyrgyzstan -- which had earlier allowed the UN to resettle Uzbek refugees to third countries -- will "certainly" suffer from its "change of policy."[(Financial Times commentary) Disaffection with Congress may fail to bring real change:][3] As a result, Republicans are becoming more conservative and Democrats more liberal. This explains why parties spend so much time pandering to their "base" with trivial but symbolic initiatives such as recent Republican attempts to ban flag-burning and the singing of the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish. "It would be nice if we could undertake social conservative initiatives in odd years as much as we do in even [election] years," says Sam Brownback, a leading Christian conservative and Republican senator for Kansas.How to contact As always, you can find information to contact members of the Kansas congressional delegation [here.][4] [1]: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/08/10/EDGOBIQ0N71.DTL [2]: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/08/79684d63-6717-4035-8df9-e9a37d2444d4.html [3]: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1d9c5ef8-2899-11db-a2c1-0000779e2340.html [4]: http://ljworld.com/extra/where_to_write.html#fed