Worried about security, property values and traffic control, residents booed and interrupted Jeff Nelson, mayor of the town of Southwest Ranches, when he offered details about the detention facility and the lot where it would be built.

Residents of Pembroke Pines and the town of Southwest Ranches have voiced opposition to the federally funded and privately managed detention center since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced it had chosen the Southwest Ranches/Corrections Corporation of America proposal in June. Citizens have even called for the resignation of Mayor Nelson.

Nelson said Saturday that the detention center had been publicly discussed but residents yelled that was not true. Former Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who facilitated the meeting, called for residents to let the mayor finish his presentation.

Nelson added that the project will add 1,000 temporary jobs and about 250 permanent jobs for area residents.

Gary Mead — executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE — told residents they had decided a little over a year ago that “we could have another dedicated facility in Florida.”

Mead said they selected the Southwest Ranches/CCA proposal and are now “moving that forward” and working on the final details of the facility, which would hold about 1,400 detainees. He added that the facility was well located for ICE field offices, immigration judges and the transportation of detainees.

Residents once again rejected the proposal, shouting that its location was not good for their homes, children and schools.

Tony L. Grande, executive vice president and chief development officer for CCA, told residents, “We’ve been looking forward to this opportunity to share information and dispel misinformation.”

When Grande concluded by saying that “this has been the result of many many years of deliberation, ” a resident yelled, “This discussion should have happened before a decision was made!”

Pembroke Pines residents have argued they were kept out of specific agreements between Southwest Ranches officials and their city, and have demanded those agreements be rescinded. During the meeting, they insisted that the Southwest Ranches mayor does not represent them.

Pembroke Pines signed an agreement in June to supply fire, rescue, water and sewage services to the immigration detention center, set to be built on land owned by CCA and surrounded by Pembroke Pines and unincorporated Broward County.

Pembroke Pines Vice Mayor Iris Siple said at the Saturday meeting she will ask the city commission to cancel this agreement.

Lucibeth Mayberry, vice president and deputy chief development officer for CCA, told residents her company complied with ICE’s requirements, and were selected for this detention center, but “until Wednesday or Thursday of this week we didn’t have the details we are here to share today.”

Mayberry also clarified that CCA will pay $1.5 million in property taxes to Southwest Ranches, and that once they build the detention center they will not have an agricultural tax exemption. “Facilities of this type do not affect property [values],” she added.

Steven Conry, vice president of facility operations for CCA, said his company works with the community, law enforcement and first responders. He added they have performed studies and are ready for traffic control, adding that their experience shows that CCA detention facilities do not have an impact on emergency medical services.

ICE’s Mead said their facilities have full medical services that operate around the clock.

“This is what happens when you don’t go to the people first,” said Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis, explaining the vocal opposition to the new detention center while admitting that the facility is a “Southwest Ranches issue.” Residents cheered and rose to their feet. “If this becomes a reality we will become a jail town,” Ortis said.

Edmonson says his partner — whom he asked us to keep anonymous — was diagnosed with AIDS in 1998, and since then has had an average body weight of 185 pounds. ”During his first 30 to 45 days in lockup he lost six to eight pounds,” Edmonson says, and because of his HIV status, “we brought this to the court’s attention.”

“The [facility] doctor testified that some body weight loss was normal because of the stress for someone who has never been incarcerated before,” he says.

Since the man’s arrest on April 1, he has lost 61 pounds and the loss of body weight “still has not been explained,” Edmonson says, adding that staff doctors at the detention centers have promised to do something, but nothing positive has happened.

According to Edmonson, his partner was arrested in Jacksonville, Fla., and indicted on eight counts of receipt, possession, advertising and distribution of child pornography. His partner has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Edmonson’s partner was first held at the D. Ray James Correctional Facility in Folkston, Ga., owned and operated by The GEO Group, “a world leader in the delivery of private correctional and detention management,” with facilities in the U.S., Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Edmondson says that, since late September, his partner has been detained at the Irwin County Detention Facility, owned and operated by Croft Michael Enterprises. Both are located in Ocilla, Ga.

“We’re not doctors, but ever since he’s been positive we’ve done a lot of research on HIV and AIDS,” Edmonson says. His partner is on a three-drug regimen he needs to take daily, “and they tell you there are three rules: Take it at the same time everyday, because the cocktail needs to stay in your bloodstream constantly over a 24-hour period.”

“The second rule is you take them every day, you don’t miss a dose, and the third rule is you take them with food,” Edmonson says, adding that when his partner “was first detained in Georgia, they missed several doses. When he did get it, he either didn’t get it at the same time every day or without food, so it was given improperly.”

According to the Well Project, a nonprofit, HIV education group:

• HIV drugs need to stay in a patient’s blood at certain levels to fight HIV. If the level falls too low, the drugs cannot work well.
• Not taking medicines on schedule may allow HIV to make copies of itself and even change. These mutations can help the virus survive; this is called resistance.
• When HIV becomes resistant to a drug a patient is taking, that drug will probably stop working. This may lead to an increase in one’s viral load and a decrease in one’s CD4 cell count. At that point, the patient will probably have to switch to another HIV drug.

Edmonson adds, “We have been back to court this past month three or four times,” adding that Judge James Klindt, faced with the detainee’s weight loss, said he would seek a suitable third party custodian to release his partner to so he can get back to his doctor. The final decision on the release is due next Monday.

Half of the members of Congress are millionaires.

Bristol Palin and The Situation teach kids about safe sex…

…and Palin’s fans rig the Dancing With the Stars voting system.

Salon ranks the sexiest men of 2010.

50 Cent’s “In Da Club” gets translated into English.

Lieberman thinks Palin is qualified to live near him, if not be president.

You can download the new Girl Talk album for free.

Dennis Kucinich doesn’t trust Darrell Issa on oversight.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both sides seem to think the study confirms their beliefs: Advocates of the policy said the study showed it was successful in driving out immigrants, while critics pointed to findings that crime and spending were mostly unchanged by the policy.

The study, which was a three-year project by the University of Virginia’s Center for Survey Research, looked at a variety of factors to determine the impact of a policy meant to drive out illegal immigrants. Since it was modified in 2008, the policy has required police officers to check the immigration status when they make arrests. Originally, the policy required checks only if the officer suspected the person was an illegal immigrant — much like Arizona’s SB 1070 — prompting fear of racial profiling and backlash against Latinos.

Although the Latino population dropped following the policy’s implementation, experts cautioned there could be a number of other reasons for the change, such as a sluggish economy and few jobs in sectors like construction:

“I think the policy had an effect on the ground in the direction it was intended, but it also came at a time of a very sharp economic downtown, which also contributed to changes in population … and migration behaviors,” said Brookings Institution demographer Audrey Singer, who focuses on race and U.S. immigration policy. “I think the researchers are being very careful with what they say because they can’t get a very hard estimate.”

The policy was intended to reduce crime and lower spending on social services to illegal immigrants. But the University of Virginia study found that overall crime has been on the decline in Prince William County for the past 10 years — including the years when many undocumented immigrants moved to the country.

Undocumented immigrants only made up a small number — about 6 percent — of those arrested for serious crimes in the county in 2009. The study’s authors said there was no noticeable impact on crime from the immigration enforcement policy and that social service spending remained about the same. Implementing and maintaining the policy cost the county about $3 million.

Although the study found few reports of racial profiling, some Latino residents said fears of profiling still may have led some Latinos to leave the area and harmed the county’s reputation.

What does the study mean for other counties and states that might want to replicate the Prince William County policy? It depends on who is asked. Prince William Board Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R) said he hopes the study’s findings will help with his push to expand it statewide. But the study’s authors said the lessons from Prince William County should be applied with “great caution” elsewhere.

“This is not a free policy; the board allocated substantial amounts of money” for this, Thomas Guterbock, director of Center for Survey Research, told the Washington Post. “Don’t try this if you don’t want to spend some money.”

Among the donors spotted at the conference on Tuesday, the second day of the three-day gathering, were former Stride Rite chairman Arnold Hiatt, hedge fund financier Donald Sussman, electronics pioneer Bill Budinger, real estate developer Wayne Jordan and Suzanne Hess, the wife of real estate mogul Lawrence Hess.

There was no sign of some of the deepest-pocketed Democracy Alliance members, such as tech entrepreneur Tim Gill, insurance magnate Peter Lewis, or billionaire financier George Soros, though Michael Vachon, a Soros representative, did attend.

The conference itself featured mostly big picture analyses of the midterm elections and their predicted impact on the donors’ favored policy causes,rather than strategic planning for the 2012 elections, sources told POLITICO. And – despite the tens of millions of dollars in independent advertisements aired in 2010 by GOP allies attacking Democratic candidates – Democracy Alliance is not formally recommending its donors contribute to any outside groups that focus primarily on election advertising.

Indeed, despite that fact that Democrats were outspent by outside groups on electoral advertising in the 2010 midterms by a big margin, they’re still divided on the question of the right approach to take leading up to 2012. One of the reasons is that the Democracy Alliance was founded in 2005 in the wake of an election in which outside left-leaning groups spent heavily and still lost the presidency. The idea was to take a new approach that would challenge the right’s “intellectual infrastructure” — think tanks like the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation — by creating institutions like the Center for American Progress to influence policy and media debates.

Now that they’ve been outgunned on the airwaves and trounced at the ballot box, some donors are getting restless and looking to create a political spending outfit to rival the network of right wing groups that revolve around American Crossroads and political operative Karl Rove. The meeting ended without any resolution to direct spending through any new group of this nature.

The report isn’t pretty. It points to “failures and missed indications of hazard,” “insufficient checks and balances” on safety and a “lack of a suitable approach for anticipating and managing the inherent risks.”

Though The Wall Street Journal had a story on the report today, I thought I’d pull out some key points.

• “The failures and missed indications of hazard were not isolated events during the preparation of the Macondo well for temporary abandonment. Numerous decisions to proceed toward abandonment despite indications of hazard, such as the results of repeated negative-pressure tests, suggest an insufficient consideration of risk and a lack of operating discipline. The decisions also raise questions about the adequacy of operating knowledge on the part of key personnel.”
• “Available evidence suggests there were insufficient checks and balances for decisions involving both the schedule to complete well abandonment procedures and considerations for well safety.”
• “The various failures mentioned in this report indicate the lack of a suitable approach for anticipating and managing the inherent risks, uncertainties, and dangers associated with deepwater drilling operations and a failure to learn from previous near misses.”

The interim report was conducted by the Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future. The report was commissioned by the Interior Department.

In a statement, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar praised the report:

Their independent, science-based analysis of what went wrong in the lead up to the blowout will help guide our continuing efforts to raise the bar for safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations, and will be of assistance to other ongoing investigations.  I look forward to receiving the team’s final report and to the additional insight and recommendations they will be providing us over the coming months.

Representative Pete Sessions, a Republican in leadership, said he could back extending jobless benefits, favored by Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in exchange for an extension of all Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthiest groups.

“What we’re going to do is sit down and talk with Mrs. Pelosi,” Sessions told Reuters as he left a meeting of House Republicans. “I see nothing wrong with her winning as long as the American people do.” [...]

“It really strikes me as hard to explain why we would give charity to the richest people in America with additional tax cuts of $100,000 a year and deny the basic necessities of life to people who are out of work through no fault of their own,” said Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

Obviously, no deal is yet in sight, but the comments above indicate that a link between the two concepts is becoming increasingly likely — and it’s doubtless a good messaging strategy for Democrats. As a lobbyist pushing for a year-long unemployment benefits extension told the Huffington Post, “Leadership is very aware of the beautiful symmetry of tax cuts for millionaires doesn’t need to be offset but $293 a week for the long-term unemployed does.”

Neither the Senate nor the House plans to be in session next week, however, meaning an extension of unemployment benefits would have to pass this week for nearly 2 million Americans to avoid losing their benefits come December. Linking the extension to the tax cut debate might give it a greater chance of passing, but it also seems destined to drag out the debate and virtually ensure that Congress will allow the crucial benefits to lapse one again. With Republican leadership rescheduling its much anticipated meeting with President Obama until after Thanksgiving, don’t look for any major deals to occur in the meantime.

In total, he promised to implement 131 recommendations that were made in an administrative report last year on how legal and illegal immigrants could be better integrated into the state. But for some of the changes, including driver’s licenses and in-state tuition, Patrick said he would need Congress to pass immigration reform legislation — something that seems unlikely in the next couple of years.

Reid said yesterday before the meeting that he was unsure about bringing the proposal up for a vote in the lame-duck session, even though he had promised Rockefeller a vote on the bill before the end of the year. He told reporters yesterday:

It’s real hard just to say, yeah, we can do this, because we have limited time to go through all the procedural motions. But if there’s a way we can do it, I’ll be happy to work with him on that.

But after the meeting, both Rockefeller’s and Reid’s offices were quiet about whether any final decisions were made.

Regan Lachapelle, Reid’s spokeswoman said, “I don’t have a comment from the meeting.” And Rebecca Gale, Rockefeller’s spokeswoman, said simply, “Nothing yet.”

“I don’t think so,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told the National Journal in response to whether she would comply with the resolution. She argued the moratorium was simply “about messaging” and would give a false impression about taking serious action on reducing the deficit. Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) expressed similar reservations yesterday.

And Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for her part, attempted to backpedal on her definition of exactly what an earmark is, telling the Minneapolis Star Tribune that transportation projects should be excluded. “I don’t believe that building roads and bridges and interchanges should be considered an earmark,” Bachmann said. “There’s a big difference between funding a tea pot museum and a bridge over a vital waterway.”

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Mark Udall (Colo.) have teamed up with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) to press for a vote on the Senate floor on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, remains a staunch proponent of earmarking and he has said he’ll block any efforts to have a floor vote on the issue should it be brought up today. He argued the Senate simply doesn’t have enough time to consider the measure right now, but would be open to a vote at another time.