Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract:     This paper examines members' of congress decision to deliver one-minute speeches and special orders addresses. These speeches are institutionally supportive forums for Mayhewian position taking behavior. Not only is unconstrained floor time available for any MC, the forums provide an opportunity to deliver messages directly to constituents via the television from House floor. Using count data from the 101st through 106th congresses, I argue that these forums are particularly popular among the institutionally disadvantaged and party leaders. Committee leaders do not participate in the activities because they already dominate general floor debate and committee hearings. The results indicate support for my theory for one-minute speeches only. I show that special orders generate a distinct distribution of legislators and therefore be treated separately.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The last 30 years has witnessed a fundamental change in the structure and flow of information development and dissemination. Key to this change has been the gradual removal of technocrats from the process and, as a result, an expansion the pool of persons who are able to access, analyze, and interpret the ever-expanding flood of data that are being collected on all aspects of the juvenile justice system.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the aftermath of President Clinton’s “last-minute” pardons, a variety of “experts” appeared before congressional subcommittees in an attempt to place the resulting “scandal” in a proper historical and legal context. Although no data were presented to support the notion, testimony suggested previous presidents had generally exercised the pardoning power “evenly” across terms, “four or five times” a year, without any “particular” increases in activity near the end of administrations. At the time of the hearings, all of the available empirical research on the topic (published and unpublished) and data reported by the Department of Justice suggested otherwise. The empirical research, however, largely focused on administrations from 1789 to 1932. This paper explores “last-minute” pardons with a new, original data set on the exercise of clemency from 1932 to 2001 initially gathered by researchers at the University of Chicago. The analysis clearly demonstrates members of a congressional subcommittee were wildly misinformed with respect to the use of clemency in previous administrations. The author then explores some possible explanations for the poor quality of congressional testimony, including: governmental policies, partisan transition in the White House and the vested interests of those participating in such hearings.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Background: Though widely used for more than fifty years, the Apgar score has been associated only with infant mortality and severe neurological conditions, seldom has been examined in relation to outcomes beyond infancy, and never has been studied as a predictor of more general measures of health.

Methods: Using the Manitoba Population Health Research Data Repository and Canadian census data, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of all children born in Manitoba, Canada from January 1, 1984 to June 1, 2002. Information on all hospitalizations as well as potential confounders relating to maternal, infant, pregnancy and delivery factors were available within the repository. Census data provided information on family socioeconomic status. Odds ratios relating 5-minute Apgar score to risk of post-neonatal all-cause hospitalization were determined for one, five and ten years as well for the age-specific periods from first to fifth birthday and fifth to tenth birthday.

Results: Of children born in the study period, 132,089 (86.5%) had Apgar scores assigned and were alive and living in the province through their tenth birthday. Among these children, 31.6% had been hospitalized after one month of age. Using a 5-minute Apgar score of 9-10 as a reference, the odds ratios for post-neonatal hospitalization in the first ten years of life were: 1.85 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.36-2.51) for children with an Apgar score of 0-3; 1.76 (95% CI, 1.47-2.11) for Apgar score 4-5; 1.33 (95% CI, 1.24-1.42) for Apgar score 6-7, and; 1.12 (95% CI, 1.08-1.17) for Apgar score of 8. After adjustment for potential confounders, the relative risk of post-neonatal hospitalization showed a linear, monotonic increase for each incremental decrease in Apgar score. This relationship persisted when examining age-specific hospitalizations occurring only between the first and fifth birthday and between the fifth and tenth birthday.

Conclusions: In a birth cohort of Canadian children, Apgar scores – across the full range of values – were predictive of 10-year, post-neonatal hospitalization rates in a graded, continuous association. This observation suggests that physiologic recovery from the birth process is longitudinally related to serious threats to health through middle childhood.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Silence is normally regarded as an integral part of everyday conversation. For example, the hearer may be silent when the speaker talks,or when asked a question, an addressee may be silent for reasons such as embarrassment or ignorance. As it contrasts with speech, silence has meaning, to be interpreted in the context. Silence in the legal context, for example the right of silence of a person under arrest, has been extensively researched. Another institutionalized case of silence is in the title to this paper – the one-minute silence which is observed in many countries when the population remember its war dead.
The title "One Minute Silence" was given by Mike Batt and his musical group, the Planets, to one track of silence on the CD Classical Graffiti, released in 2002. A legal problem arose from this silence when the copyright holders of the works of the American avant-garde composer John Cage, whose 4'33" is perhaps the most famous work of silence, claimed that Cage's estate had exclusive rights over such a performance of silence.
The paper will focus not only on an author's legal rights to silence (Richardson 2003), but especially on how Batt's one-minute silence may acquire meaning through intertextuality. For example, the intertext may be a pragmatic model of the interpretation of silence, or the institutionalized one-minute silence, or, of course, Cage's four-and-a-half minutes of silence.